III. THEOBALD AND BECKET (p. 37). "Ille Theobaldus, qui Christi præsidet aulæ Quam fidei matrem Cantia nostra colit, Esse putans reges, quos est perpessa tyrannos; JOH. SARISE., Enthet. de Dogm. Philos., 1293 seq. "Did Becket," asks Dean Milman, "decide against the Norman laws by the Anglo-Saxon? Has any one guessed the meaning of the rest of John's verses on the chancellor and his court? I confess myself baffled" (iii. 453). Although John's Xenien are abundantly enigmatical, I must hazard a conjecture as to the meaning of this passage. It does not seem to refer to Becket as a judge (see App. I.), but to describe him as reversing by legislation and administration what had been done under Stephen (the Hircanus of the following lines, and of vv. 147 sqq.), who, notwithstanding the defectiveness of his title and the disorders of his reign, had been generally popular. There is a similar passage as to Becket in the Entheticus in Polycraticum * (Patrol. cxcix. 379): "Hic est qui regni leges cancellat iniquas, I cannot see that a letter in which Theobald gives advice to the King as to the choice of a successor in the archbishopric (Joh. Sar. Ep. 54) points to Becket; indeed some of the expressions might rather be construed as deprecating the appointment of one who was supposed to be more devoted to the King than to the Church-"Non quæratis in hac re quæ vestra sunt, sed quæ Domini," &c. IV.-FOLIOT AND THE BISHOPRIC OF LONDON (p. 41). There is a letter of Foliot, in which he begs the King to excuse him for declining a proposal made through Becket as chancellor "Ut curam Londoniæ episcopatus suscipiam, et ex parte redituum episcopatus episcopum ipsum et domum ejus exhibeam, reliquum vero domino meo regi, prout sibi spiritus Dei suggesserit erogandum, conservem" (Ep. 119). Mr. Morris supposes the proposal to have been made while the see was vacant, and renders the words which I have marked by italics-"with part of the income to maintain myself and my household as its bishop" (p. 33). But the meaning clearly is, "That I should maintain the bishop and his household;" and the most probable explanation seems to be, that, the bishop having become incapable, Foliot was desired to undertake the management of the diocese, to apply part of the revenues to the support of the old man and his dependents, and to pay over the rest into the Treasury. Such an arrangement would have been much less discreditable to the authors of it than either of those which Mr. Morris suggests, while it would have been questionable enough to warrant Foliot in speaking of it as "periculosum, et in multum animæ meæ dispendium," even if these words might not be accounted for by his unwillingness to add the care of London to that of Hereford. V.-FOLIOT'S JUDGMENT OF HIS SUPERIORS (p. 41). John of Salisbury, in his 'Polycraticus' (written before the quarrel which ranged him on the opposite side to Foliot), reports an amusing confession : "Venerabilis pater Gilbertus Herefordensis episcopus mihi referre consuevit claustralium morem quem in se ipso se fatebatur expertum. Cum enim monasterium in gressus esset, fervens adhuc igne, quem de novo conceperat, magistratuum suorum ignaviam arguebat. Nec mora, promotus in modico, miseratione complicium motus est; nondum tamen pepercit majoribus. Paulo post ad priores ascendit prioribusque compatiens, carpere non cessavit abbates. Factus est et ipse abbas, et propitius in coabbates episcoporum cœpit vitia intueri. Tandem et ipse episcopus, coepiscopis parcit. Nec tamen invidiæ vitio arbitror laborasse, sed vir prudens quod hominibus quodammodo ingenitum est, eleganter expressit.”—vii. 24 (col. 704). VI.-FOLIOT'S LETTER TO BECKET, No. CXCIV. (p. 44). This letter was first published from a MS. in the Cotton collection, by Lord Lyttelton (iii. 186), who supposes that it and others had been omitted by Wolf on account of their unfavourable bearing on the character of Becket. Its genuineness has been denied by Mr. Berington (665 sqq.), who is followed by Dr. Lingard (ii. 131, 623); but their arguments are very weak, and have been refuted by Mr. Turner (i. 233), Dean Milman (iii. 454), Dr. Pauli (iii. 69), and the Romanist Mr. Buss (429). Mr. Morris seems also to admit its genuineness, while he attempts to profit by the suspicion which has been cast on it (414-6). The charge of suppression against Wolf, however, is probably unfounded, as the letter itself does not appear in the Vatican MS., although the title of it is there (Beringt. 655). Mr. Froude, without going into the question of its genuineness, considers himself entitled to disbelieve what is stated in the letter, on the ground that it was not a private communication, but a "published pamphlet," intended to vindicate the writer, and asperse Becket, at a time when the Archbishop was banished, and all communication with him was forbidden (588). I am not disposed to trust either the friends or the enemies of Becket implicitly, but cannot agree to this wholesale rejection of all testimony except that which is favourable to Mr. Froude's hero. VII-CASE OF BATTLE ABBEY (p. 61). I am altogether unable to admit Mr. Froude's argument (p. 577), that Becket's conduct in the case of Battle Abbey must have been irreproachable in an ecclesiastical point of view, because he himself, in a letter to the Pope (A.D. 1168), speaks of that case as one in which the secular power had been wrongly exalted against the papacy (Epp. Thom., i. 54). For in truth it would appear that Becket was quite incapable of viewing his own conduct dispassionately. He seems to have fancied that, in exchanging the chancellorship for the primacy, he had not only been released from all obligations as to money, but had got rid of his former self; and thus he would have been quite ready to reprobate, as if he were altogether guiltless, an act in which he had been a chief instrument. A Too much, however, has been made of this affair. consideration of the constant disputes as to monastic exemptions would probably have moderated the inferences which Lord Lyttelton (ii. 133) draws from the Battle case against Becket, while it would have saved Mr. Froude much very sophistical reasoning, and the bold supposition that the Abbey records were "intentionally disguised" (577), in order to give a false colouring to the story. Hilary, Bishop of Chichester, whom we shall hereafter meet with as a royalist, had enunciated the most extreme Hildebrandine opinions in the matter of Battle, and was reproved for them by the Chancellor. Mr. Buss, while he argues that Becket, as chancellor, generally defended the Church, gives up his conduct in this case (170). VIII.-FAMILY OF RIDEL (p. 65). M. Thierry has here missed an opportunity of working his Saxon theory. For wherever Norman enterprise had penetrated, there the Ridels were conspicuous. One fought at Hastings, and is on the Roll of Battle Abbey. Others figure in the chronicles of the Italian Normans as Dukes of Gaeta and Lords of Pontecorvo (see the Chron. Casinense, in Pertz, vii., and the old French translation of Amatus, published by Champollion Figeac). An earlier Geoffrey Ridel was Chief Justiciary of England under Henry I., and perished with Prince William in the "White Ship" (see Order. Vital., 1. xii. c. 14; Foss, i. 133). In Scotland we find Gervase Ridel as a witness to the "Inquisition of Prince David" in 1113 (Wilkins, Concilia, i. 393), and Hugh Ridel as a surety for William the Lyon when taken prisoner at Alnwick in 1174 (Bromton, 1105); and from these are descended the existing Riddells of Riddell. The following paragraph is copied from Notes and Queries' for 1854 (vol. x. p. 285): "The newspapers lately announced that the office of Proctor in Convocation for the clergy of Canterbury was to be contested by the Rev. A. Oxenden and the Rev. J. C. B. Riddell-gentlemen who, I believe, trace their ancestry to the companions of Hengist and of Rollo respectively. Might not a disciple of M. Thierry make something of this? Let us try : 66 6 Aujourd'hui même, que huit siècles se sont écoulés depuis la funeste bataille de Hastings, on voit encore, sous les voûtes de la même cathédrale où le Saxon Thomas Becket a succombé sous les coups meurtriers des ennemis de sa race, une vive contestation pour la représentation du clergé de Cantorbéri entre M. Ochsenbein, membre d'une très ancienne famille du royaume Saxon de Kent, et M. Ridel, descendant du Sieur de Ridel qui se trouve sur le Rol de Batel-Abbaye, et parent de ce Geoffroy Ridel à qui |