A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



of each of these disputes was brought out at the respective councils of Rock- 

 ingham and Northampton. In connexion, too, with the Crusades, the two 

 most important councils, so far as the church was concerned, were held at 

 Geddington and Pipewell. 



At the time of Anselm's promotion to Canterbury the papal see was 

 claimed by two rival popes, and Anselm, as abbot of Bee in Normandy, was 

 supporting Urban, in whose favour that province had decided. Early in 

 1095 he asked the royal permission to go to Rome to receive from Urban the 

 pall, but the king seized on this request as an act of treason, and 

 as infringing a principle observed, so he declared, by the Conqueror, that no 

 pope should be acknowledged in England without the consent of the crown. ^ 

 At Anselm's suggestion the king summoned the council, which met at Rock- 

 ingham Castle on 25 February, 1095.^ The archbishop complained that, 

 he was reduced to the dilemma of forfeiting his fealty to the king, or 

 renouncing his obedience to the pope, and called upon the bishops to give 

 him their counsel and support. They, however, played a timorous and un- 

 worthy part — including Bishop Bloet, of Lincoln, the chancellor and tool of 

 the king — and attempted to induce their chief to yield. But their efforts 

 were fruitless. The case was twice adjourned, and when the bishops, 

 instigated by William and encouraged by his example ' refused faith and 

 obedience ' to the archbishop, the barons, knowing that the general feeling 

 of the clergy and laity was on Anselm's side, emphatically declined to 

 do likewise.' Eventually the king was obliged to give way, and soon 

 afterwards he recognized Urban as pope, and was formally reconciled to the 

 archbishop.* The struggle between the crown and the primate was renewed 

 later on more general grounds," and was revived in the following reign on 

 the question of lay investitures.* The dispute was eventually ended by a 

 compromise ; the bishops were to do homage and take the oath of fealty to 

 the king ; but they were no longer to be invested by him in their bishoprics 

 by the delivery of a pastoral staff or ring. 



For half a century after the death of Anselm the ecclesiastical history of 

 England was comparatively uneventful, although the church was making 

 much quiet progress. The creation of the see of Ely in 1109,^ by taking 

 from the diocese of Lincoln — still ruled, down to i 123, by Bishop Bloet ^ — 

 the whole of Cambridgeshire, rendered episcopal ministration in the remainder 

 of the parent diocese, including Northamptonshire, somewhat more thorough. 

 But Lincoln still remained the largest diocese in England, comprising seven 

 counties and a half,' and it is all the more scandalous, therefore, that for the 

 greater part of nineteen years, from the death of Bishop Robert de Chesney 

 in I 167, to the appointment of Hugh of Grenoble (afterwards St. Hugh) in 

 1 1 86, it was practically without episcopal supervision. In the latter half of this 

 century the struggle between Church and State was renewed with an intensity 

 even greater than in the days of Anselm, and again Northamptonshire was 

 the centre of the fray. The actual points at issue between Becket and the 

 king are apparently trivial ; they were really fundamental. Becket's concep- 



' Eadmer (Rolls Ser.), 52-3. 



' Ibid. 53 and note ; Stephens, Hist, of the Engl. Church, a.d. i 066-1 272, 97 et seq. 



» Eadmer (Rolls Ser.), 54-64. ' Ibid. 69, 71. 



' Ibid. 77 et seq. ' Ibid. 131, 186. 



' M.itt. Paris, Chron. Maj. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 136. ' Stubbs, op. cit. 24. 



' Hill, op. cit. 263-4 > Stephens, op. cit. 192. 



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