ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



Herfast was by no means inclined to submit quietly to either pope or 

 primate, and the letters of Lanfranc exhibit an intemperance of language and 

 tone which betray some personal dislike of Herfast and a readiness to believe 

 the worst of him. Later on a fresh ground of quarrel arose when Herfast 

 threw the weight of his influence in favour of the married clergy, and 

 ordained one man as deacon and another as priest, though each had a wife 

 from whom he refused to separate. Lanfranc interfered warmly in the case 

 {u. s. Letters, 21 and 22) and ordered peremptorily that both men should be 

 degraded. How it ended we are not told. In the year 1075 an important 

 council assembled in London under the presidency of Lanfranc at which it 

 was enacted that henceforth the English bishops should transfer their 

 residences from villages to cities,' and in obedience to this decree Herfast 

 ceased to reside at Elmham and transferred the seat of the bishopric to 

 Thetford, then a town of importance, with a church dedicated to the Holy 

 Trinity, apparently the most stately church in the diocese. Up to this time 

 St. Mary's had been a mere parish church, but on Herfast's removal of the 

 see from Elmham, St. Mary's became in effect the cathedral church of the 

 diocese.' Thetford had a history which reminded men of the prowess of 

 their martyred King Edmund, and its position was eminently central on the 

 border between the counties of Suffolk, and Norfolk. But Thetford had seen 

 its best days, and twenty years later the seat of the bishopric was once more, 

 and finally, removed to Norwich, which was at that time beyond compare 

 the most important city in East Anglia.' A successor to Herfast, who died 

 in 1086, was appointed in the person of William de Bellafago, of whom we 

 know little more than that he was one of the king's chaplains, as were the 

 other two prelates who were appointed with him. He was consecrated 

 bishop of Thetford, i September, 1086, by Lanfranc* Bishop William was 

 a scion of an extremely wealthy Norman family whom the Conqueror had 

 enriched with wide possessions ; like his two immediate predecessors, he was 

 a married man.' Celibacy continued to be more and more enforced upon 

 the English clergy during the next two centuries, but instances of married 

 priests are to be met with in Norfolk as late as the middle of the thirteenth 

 century, and the frequent occurrence of such examples indicates that in East 

 Anglia the general feeling was rather in favour of the married men than the 

 reverse. 



Bishop William's tenure of the bishopric was brief. A successor to the 

 see was found who was prepared to pay heavily for the preferment, in the 

 person of Herbert Losinga, consecrated some time in 1091, apparently a few 

 months after the death of his predecessor. 



Herbert Losinga was undoubtedly one of the most cultured and accom- 

 plished prelates of his time. Of the family from which he sprang nothing is 



' Will, of Malmes. Gesta Ponlif. (Rolls Ser.), 66. On this subject see Freeman, Norm. Conq. iv, 414. 



' Blomefield, Hist, of Norf. ii, 48 and 60. 



' In changing his episcopal residence to Thetford, Herfast availed himself of the opportunity to despoil 

 his bishopric by handing over half of the great lordship of Elmham to his foster brother Richard of St. Denis, 

 as has been already noticed. It was an instance of the way in which in those times men could, by some 

 cunning device or another, alienate lands from the old endowments, by giving a perpetual lease of them at a 

 nominal rent to their relatives or dependants ; a practice of which we have some shameful instances in the 

 after time. 



' Reg. Sacr. Jnglic. Freeman, Norm. Conq. iv, 690 ; M.itth. Paris, Chron. Majora (Rolls. Sen), ii, 22. 



'Planche, The Conqueror and his Companions, ii, 283 ; Munford, Analysis of the Dom. Bk. of Norf 31. 



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