184 Bishops of Old Sarum. 
Blois, brother of King Stephen ; and when justly angry because of 
that king’s treatment of the Church, and possibly under the im- 
pression that Matilda’s triumph was at hand, that bishop took part 
against his brother, then Jocelin de Bohun became Bishop of Sarum. 
Humphrey de Bohun was her great champion who so gallantly de- 
fended the castle at Trowbridge against Stephen, and it was a fitting 
reward that his kinsman should be advanced tv the see of Sarum. 
Of course, at the death of Stephen and the accession of the son of 
Matilda as Henry II., there was none to challenge his rightful 
appointment, and no trial of his own loyalty. 
It would appear that King Stephen endeavoured, immediately 
after the death of Bishop Roger, to obtain the see of Sarum for 
Philip de Harecurt, his chancellor, who would seem also to have 
been Dean of Lincoln, The appointment was however strongly 
opposed by Henry of Blois, the king’s brother, then Bishop of 
Winchester and papal legate, who, it is said, wished to obtain it 
for his own nephew. ‘The strong opposition manifested against both 
candidates caused the matter to be postponed.’ The triumph of 
Matilda, and the imprisonment of Stephen, in 1141, of course 
changed matters entirely. Philip de Harecurt got his reward in 
the bishopric of Bayonne, and Jocelin de Bohun, one of a family 
that through all her conflicts had been true to the Empress Matilda, 
became in 1142, during her temporary triumph, Bishop of Sarum. 
It was no doubt to his rightful influence with the Empress Matilda, 
that, during the time of her ascendancy in England, she restored 
into the hands of the bishop the possessions wrested from his pre- 
decessors by King Stephen; notably the estates of Potterne and 
Cannings which had always belonged to the see. There are few 
more interesting documents to my mind than those charters, still 
preserved among the bishop’s records, by which, first of all, the 
Empress Matilda, and, in due course, her son Henry II., gave back 
to the bishop and his cathedral i aa the estates of which they 
had been unjustly deprived.? 
1 Neustria Pia, p. 233. 
2See Hatcher and Benson’s Salisbury, pp. 724—726, 
