A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



reverence and obedience to his metropolitan. 1 On 10 January 

 12034 King John intimated to the archbishop of York that he had 

 confirmed the arrangement, and at the same time he had directed his 

 letters to the clergy of the diocese of Carlisle to receive Bernard and 

 obey him as their bishop. 2 Thus closed one of the strangest chapters 

 in the history of the northern church, for from this date the irregularity 

 in the episcopal succession may be said to have ceased. Perhaps there 

 is no diocese in England which presents so many curious features of 

 ecclesiastical vicissitude. If we consider the political difficulties which 

 confronted the first bishop, the lengthy vacancy which followed his 

 death owing to the poverty of the see, the attempts which were made 

 to remedy the deficiency, the personality of the second bishop as primate 

 of a foreign province whose allegiance to the papal chair was so slender 

 that he forsook his charge without permission, we can in some measure 

 estimate the early struggles of our ancestors in building up the church 

 in this portion of the kingdom, and the sacrifices they were called on 

 to make before such a glorious heritage could be handed on to their 

 children. 



Soon after the episcopate of Bishop Bernard it was found possible 

 to put the tenure of the diocese on such a financial basis that a return 

 to the old state of things which existed before his arrival was not likely 

 to occur. The time had come for a partition of the property of the 

 church of Carlisle between the priory and the bishopric. During the 



i This letter of Innocent III. to the archbishop of York is interesting. In the first place the pope 

 expressed the fear that Bernard's poverty would bring the ministerial office into disrepute. He acknow- 

 ledged also the source from which the grant of the bishopric of Carlisle was derived, for it was conferred 

 on Bernard, not by the pope himself, but ' de munificentia et liberalitate clarissimi in Christo filii nostri, 

 Johannis regis Anglorum illustris,' for his maintenance. It is important, too, in explaining Bernard's 

 future position in the diocese of Carlisle, that is, the tenure of a suffragan see by an archbishop. Ber- 

 nard's ecclesiastical status in relation to his metropolitan is thus set out ' Nos enim ei de sedis aposto- 

 licae benignitate concessimus, ut in ipso episcopatu, absque usu pallii, officium episcopale valeat exercere, 

 tibi tanquam metropolitano reverentiam et obedientiam impensurus ' (Migne, Patrologiae, ccxv. 

 58-9). Bishop Stubbs must have overlooked this letter, as he does not acknowledge him to have been 

 one of the bishops in regular succession. In one place he says that the see had not been ' filled up until 

 1219, although administered for a time by Bernard, ex-archbishop of Ragusa' (Benedict Abbas, i. 344) : 

 in other places he calls him 'the administrator of Carlisle' (Registrum Sacrum, p. 51, new edition; 

 Hoveden, iv. 89). It is evident that Stubbs had been misled by the phraseology of some writs of 

 Henry III. For instance, on the restitution of the temporalities to Bishop Hugh in 1218, the sheriff 

 is commanded to give such seisin as ' Bernardus, Archiepiscopus Sclavonic, quondam custos ejusdem 

 Episcopatus inde habuit cum custodiam inde recepisset per dominum Johannem Regem patrem nos- 

 trum ' (Rot. Liu. Claus. [Rec. Com.], i. 369). There can be no doubt that Bernard was as much bishop 

 of Carlisle as any of his successors. 



2 Rot. Litt. Pat. (Rec. Com.), pp. 3/b, 38 ; Rymer, Fcedera, new edition, i. 90 ; Migne, Patrologiae, 

 ccxvij. no-Il ; Prynne, Chronological Vindication, ii. 241. But Bernard must have had the offer 

 of Carlisle some years before 10 January 1203-4, ^e date of his nomination and acceptance, for King 

 John granted the see to the archbishop of Sclavonia in 1200 till he could provide him with a better bene- 

 fice (Rot. Chart. [Rec. Com.], i. 96b). Bernard was evidently holding out in hope of more important 

 preferment, for in 1202 the diocese was still vacant (Rot. Litt. Pat. [Rec. Com.], i. 7), and in 1203 Alex- 

 ander de Lucy had the archdeaconry and custody of the bishopric (ibid. i. 306, 35b). King John en- 

 deavoured to supplement the slender income of the northern diocese. In 1206-7, he granted to ' Bernard, 

 bishop of Carlisle,' an annual pension of twenty marks for life (Rot. Litt. Claus. [Rec. Com.], i. 67b ; Rot. 

 Litt. Pat. [Rec. Com.], i. 76). As the bishopric was again vacant in 1214 (ibid. i. 118, 1380, 142, I42b), 

 Bernard ruled the diocese from 1204 to 1214. Fordun states that in 1212 he was ' aetatis decrepitae, 

 et infirmitatis continuae, sicque mortem in januis ei cerneret imminere,' and that he afterwards died as 

 bishop of Carlisle ' episcopo Karliolis mortuo ' (Scotichronicon, ed. Goodall, ii. 12-13). 



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