ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



pilgrimage as important as the shrine of St. Edmund was to the great Suffolk 

 monastery, but his success in this attempt was small. The offerings at 

 St. William's altar before the fourteenth century was half over had sunk to 

 a few pence a year. 



The story of the martyrdom and the preposterous catalogue of miracles 

 and wonders which were palmed upon the credulity of the multitude seem to 

 have had no hold upon them, Thomas of Monmouth's Hfe of the boy-saint is a 

 poor specimen of the literature to which it belongs, a book absolutely wanting 

 in any moral element, and characterized exclusively by its appeal to the 

 superstitious appetite in a superstitious age.^ 



When Bishop William died in January, 1 174, Henry II was in 

 Normandy. He returned to England in July and on the 12th of that month 

 he did penance at Becket's tomb at Canterbury. In August he again crossed 

 the channel and remained away until May, 1175. Not till 26 November 

 was the vacancy at Norwich filled up by the promotion of John of Oxford, 

 dean of Salisbury, who was consecrated at Canterbury 14 December under the 

 title of bishop of the East Angles. 



The new bishop had been conspicuous for many years as among 

 the most consistent and astute supporters of the king in his determined 

 efforts to resist the encroachments of the extreme papal party, which 

 was always attempting to make the church dominant over the state 

 in England. His name ' Oxoniensis ' is to be accounted for probably 

 from his having been a distinguished academic lawyer at the time when 

 under the influence of Vacarius and his disciples the schools at Oxford 

 were rapidly acquiring reputation." We hear of him first in 11 64, 

 when he presided over the memorable Council of Clarendon. From this 

 time the king had no more useful adherent nor one on whose wisdom and 

 prudence he could more implicitly rely. His elevation to the episcopate 

 produced no change in his way of life. We find him all through the reign 

 of Henry II either in constant attendance upon the king, acting as justice 

 itinerant in the law-courts, or sent as ambassador again and again. He 

 appears for many years to have been associated with Ranulph Glanville, the 

 great jurist, and his nephew Hubert Walter, a lawyer scarcely less renowned 

 than his uncle. He eventually became archbishop of Canterbury (a.d. 

 1 189— 1205). These two eminent men were both East Anglians, and both 

 possessed considerable estates in Suffolk. The last occasion when the three 

 are found in close connexion with one another was in the summer of 1 190, 

 when Hubert Walter then bishop of Salisbury, Archbishop Baldwin of 

 Canterbury, Ranulph Glanville the chief justiciar, and John of Oxford bishop 

 of Norwich, started on the crusade to recover, if it might be so, the Holy 

 Sepulchre from the grasp of the infidels. The archbishop and Ranulph 

 Glanville died within a month of one another at Acre.^ John of Oxford 

 managed to escape the risks which the others were content to run, and 

 making his way to Rome obtained from the pope a release from his crusader's 

 vow. A year later King Richard was captured by the duke of Austria, and 



' Dr. James's chapter on The Cult and Iconography of St. JVUliam, in the introduction of Thomas of 

 Monmouth's Life and Miracles of the saint referred to above, will be found instructive and suggestive. 

 ' Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, ii, 462. 

 ' The archbishop on the 19 Nov., Ranulph Glanville in Oct. 1 1 90. 



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