ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



The prolonged vacancy of the see, extending over nearly fifty 

 years after the death of Bishop Adelulf in 1 156, was so unprecedented 

 that writers of distinction were driven to hazard various guesses to 

 account for it. The tradition among the antiquaries of the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries that a certain Bernard, indiscriminately styled 

 Archbishop of Ragusa and Archbishop of Sclavonia, immediately suc- 

 ceeded Bishop Adelulf, was transmitted to our own day and accepted 

 without hesitation till recent years. In fact, two Bernards in succession 

 were often conjured from the shades to supply the missing links and 

 preserve the continuity in the roll of bishops. But the witness of the 

 chronicles alone, without the aid of charter evidence, is conclusive that 

 no bishop had accepted the see of Carlisle during the reigns of Henry II. 

 and Richard I., though the former king, notwithstanding his well-known 

 habit of keeping the ecclesiastical revenues of vacant dignities in his own 

 hand, made a genuine attempt to remedy the scandal in Carlisle. So 

 great was the injustice to the diocese that Gervase of Tilbury, a chronicler 

 who wrote at the close of the reign of Richard I., while describing the 

 condition of the northern province, stated that the archbishop of York 

 had only two suffragan sees, Durham, which enjoyed so many privileges 

 from the Roman church, and Carlisle, which by reason of its prolonged 

 vacancy was relegated to oblivion more than to subjection. 1 When 

 Robert de Torigni was accounting for the absence of some of the bishops 

 from Prince Henry's coronation in 1170, he mentioned this fact among 

 others that Adelulf, bishop of Carlisle, was dead and that his cathedra 

 up to that date had remained without an occupant. 2 In 1 186 the king, 

 being in Normandy, dismissed Hugh, bishop of Durham, from his attend- 

 ance on the court, and sent him back to his diocese to celebrate the 

 Easter festival, as there was no bishop in the northern province at the 

 time, York with many other bishoprics in England being vacant, one of 

 which was Carlisle, which had been without a bishop for almost thirty 

 years. 3 



There can be no question about the sincerity of Henry's intention 

 in 1 1 86 to fill the vacancy by the appointment of a bishop. Many 

 things occurring at that time contributed to bring about this desirable 

 work. Christian, bishop of Whithern, who had been acting as suffragan 

 to the archbishop in his administration of the diocese of Carlisle, had 

 died at Holmcultram in that year. 4 The King reached Carlisle about 

 the same time on his expedition to punish Roland, lord of Galloway. 

 There is reason to believe that Archdeacon Robert, the local head of 



1 The words of Gervase, in his Otia Imperialist, are important in this connexion ' Eboracensis 

 Archiepiscopus hos duos tantum habet suffraganeos : Durhamensem, qui tot gaudet privilegiis Romanse 

 ecclesis, quod jam in plenam se recepit libertatem : et Carleolensem, qui saepissime 'tanto tempore 

 vacat, quod oblivioni potius datur quam subjection! ' (Leibnitz, Scriptores Rerum Brunsvicensium (Han- 

 over, 1707), i. 917). 



* Chron. of Stephen, Henry II. and Richard I. (Rolls Series), iv. 245. 



Benedict Abbas, Gesta Hen. II. et Ric. I. (Rolls Series), i. 344. 



< Chron. de Mailros (Bannatyne Club), 95 ; Pipe Rolls (Cumberland), 5 and 6 Hen. II. ; Reg. of 

 Lanercost, MS. i. i. 



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