A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



makes its way to the sea at Yarmouth, an obscure monastic house of whose 

 origin nothing is known, but which developed into the abbey of St. Benets 

 Hulme.^ The bishop of Elmham at this time was ^Elfgar or Algar, who had 

 been one of the domestic chaplains of St. Dunstan, and his vision at the great 

 archbishop's deathbed is mentioned in all the contemporary biographies. He 

 is spoken of as a man of conspicuous learning and purity of character, and it 

 looks as if he had gained some influence over Canute, and so had obtained 

 for the Norfolk monastery those huge grants of land which the great Norfolk 

 magnates bestowed so liberally upon it.* Algar was called the Almsgiver ; ^ he 

 died on Christmas Day, 102 1, and was succeeded by Mliwin or Alwin, of whom 

 there is little or nothing to tell.* Then come thirty years of confusion. 



After i^lfric, who died in 1038, the scramble for the bishopric of 

 Elmham was incomparably scandalous. Grimketel, a Dane, we are told, 

 bought the see from the king — that is Harold Harefoot — but he was ousted. 

 Then Stigand, ' Canute's Priest,' managed to step into the vacant place. He 

 in his turn was compelled to resign it when he became bishop of Winchester ; 

 but his influence procured the bishopric for his brother iEthelmer or Aylmer, 

 who held it for some twenty-three years, and dreary years they were for his 

 diocese. But Aylmer, too, came to an end at last, four years after the 

 coming of the Norman Conqueror. His successor in 1070 was Herfast, who 

 had been appointed chancellor of the kingdom the year before. With the 

 episcopate of Herfast began those changes in the East Anglian see which 

 constituted an epoch in its history. 



Herfast, appointed bishop of Elmham in 1070, was the first foreigner 

 who presided over the East Anglian see since the days of St. Felix. Before 

 the death of Edward the Confessor he had been intimately connected with 

 the Conqueror as his chaplain for several years, and shortly after Duke 

 William had married his consort Matilda, he had come into conflict with 

 Lanfranc, then prior of Bee, on the subject of the legitimacy of this union.' 

 The royal chaplain and the monk of Bee Herlwin were to have more than 

 one quarrel after this, when the one had become bishop of Thetford and the 

 other archbishop of Canterbury. We do not know the exact date of 

 Herfast's consecration to his bishopric, but it was probably early in 1070, for 

 he assisted in consecrating Lanfranc as archbishop on 29 August of that year. 

 He was a married man, and left a son who inherited considerable possessions 

 from his father in Yorkshire at the time of the survey." Herfast soon became 

 embroiled with the powerful Suffolk abbey of St. Edmund's, over which he 

 claimed the right of visitation as bishop of the East Anglian diocese. The 

 dispute appears to have been left to Lanfranc for settlement. Herfast 

 was dissatisfied with the decision whatever it was, and on an appeal to the 

 Court of Rome (20 November, 1074) Gregory VII, then pope, sent a very 

 strong letter to the archbishop commenting severely on Herfast's conduct, 

 an J in e^ect giving the decision in favour of the abbot? 



' John of Oxenedes, Chron. (Rolls Ser.), a.d. 1019, 19, and App. No. i, 291. 



' Memorials of Dunstan (Rolls Ser.), 94, 120, 218, 317. Eadmer says that Dunstan himself saw the vision. 



' y/.S. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 286. 



' Liebermann, Anglo-Norman Geschichte, 92, 206, says he was a monk of Ely ; but I know not on what 

 authority. 



* Palgrave, Engl, and "Normandy, iii, 263. ^ Dom. Bk. (Rec. Com.), i, fol. 'izja. 



'The letter may be read in the Epistolae at the end of Dacier's edition of Lanfranc's works, folio Venice, 

 1749, 20- 



218 



