ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



A considerable difficulty, however, arose about the consecration of 

 Giffard which redounds greatly to the credit of that prelate. The 

 important dispute as to lay investiture was now at its height. A Lateran 

 Council of 1099, when Anselm was present, had declared any bishop 

 excommunicate who should accept investiture from a king. Anselm 

 was ordered by Henry to consecrate Giffard and two others nominated 

 respectively to the sees of Salisbury and Hereford. The archbishop 

 refused, save in the case of GifFard, who had declined to accept the ring 

 and crosier at the king's hands. Henry thereupon commanded the Arch- 

 bishop of York to consecrate the three bishops-elect, to which Gerard 

 consented. But the bishop-elect of Hereford declined, returning to the 

 king both ring and staff, the recognized symbols of spiritual power. 

 The king ordered Gerard to proceed with the consecration of the bishops 

 of Winchester and Salisbury; but in the very midst of the ceremony 

 Giffard's conscience asserted itself, and suddenly interrupting the service 

 he declared his agreement with his brother of Hereford, and that he 

 could not do this indignity to Anslem by accepting consecration from 

 Gerard of York. GifFard was then banished from court, and his pro- 

 perty seized by the Crown. The dispute was not settled until 1 1 07, 

 when on 1 1 August, at Canterbury, GifFard was at last consecrated by 

 Anselm, assisted by Gerard and divers other bishops. 



For twenty-eight years GifFard now ruled the diocese with much 

 zeal. In the episcopal city the bishop made a considerable change by 

 removing the New Minster from its position so closely adjacent to the 

 Old Minster that the two interrupted each other's plain song to Hyde 

 Meadow, leaving a fine open space that still remains to the north of the 

 cathedral church. At the close of his episcopate, in 1129, Bishop 

 GifFard conferred a great blessing on his diocese by being the first 

 English bishop to recognize the spirit of religious revival and devotion 

 as shown forth in the Cistercian order, which did something to redeem 

 the bitterness of the coming days of anarchy and bloodshed. The 

 bishop in that year founded the first English monastery of Cistercians at 

 Waverley, close to the borders of Hampshire, in the northern part of 

 the great forest of Andred. Three years later the second English house 

 of this order was founded in the Winchester diocese, for in 1132 a 

 Cistercian abbey was established at Quarr, Isle of Wight. Some seventy 

 years later the great abbey of Beaulieu was founded, and from thence, in 

 1239, went a colony to establish Netley on the other side of the South- 

 ampton Water, so that Hampshire had three Cistercian abbeys within its 

 borders as well as one on its immediate confines. By the end of the 

 century this reformed order of earnest Benedictines had 1 20 houses in 

 Great Britain. 



The episcopate of Henry of Blois, the son of the Conqueror's 

 daughter Adela, and the king's brother, extending from 1129 to 1171, 

 is one of the most striking in the annals of the see. There was far 

 more of the princely baron about Henry of Blois than of the Christian 

 bishop. He spent most of his great income in the building of castles, 



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