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CHAPTER II.

OF THE CHANCELLORS FROM THE CONQUEST TO THE REIGN OF
HENRY II.

CHAP.
II.

FROM the Conquest downwards, we have, with very few interruptions, a complete series of Chancellors. Yet till we A. D. 1066. reach the reign of Richard I., when records begin which are still extant, containing entries of the transfer of the great scal, we can seldom fix the exact date of their appointment; and we glean what is known of them chiefly from the charters which they attested, from contemporary chroniclers, and from monkish histories of the sees to which they were promoted.

Chancel

lors under

early Norman reigns,

Few of those who held the office under the Norman monarchs before Henry II. took any prominent part in the conduct of public affairs, and they appear mostly to have confined themselves to their official duties, in making out writs, superintending royal grants, authenticating the acts of the sovereign by affixing the great seal to all instruments which ran in his name, and by sitting, in a subordinate capacity, in the Aula Regia to assist in the administration of justice.

The office of Chief Justiciary, introduced by William, long continued to confer great splendour on those who held it, while the highest functions of the Chancellor were considered those of being almoner and secretary to the King. Odo, Bishop of Bayeux *, William Fitzosborne, and William de Warenne, who were the first justiciaries, were men of historical renown; they assisted William in his great military enterprise; they afterwards took an active part in imposing the yoke on the conquered, and they governed the realm as viceroys when he occasionally visited his native dominions.

He was William's uterine brother, and, though an ecclesiastic, he was a distinguished military leader. In the famous Bayeux tapestry giving a pictorial history of the Conquest, he makes the greatest figure next to William and Harold. The other justiciaries of this reign were hardly less eminent,

Till Thomas à Becket arose to fix the attention of his own age and of posterity, the Chancellors were comparatively obscure.

They probably, however, were William's advisers in the great changes which he made in the laws and institutions of the country. English writers, with more nationality than discrimination or candour, have attempted to show that he was called Conqueror, because he obtained the crown by election instead of hereditary descent.* In all history there is not a more striking instance of subjugation. Not only did almost all the land in the kingdom change handsthe native English being reduced to be the thralls of the invaders—but legislative measures were brought forward, either in the sole name of the sovereign, or through the form of a national council under his control, seeking to alter the language, the jurisprudence, and the manners of the people.† It would have been very interesting to have ascertained distinctly by whose suggestion and instrumentality the French was substituted for the English tongue in all schools and courts of justice; the intricate feudal law of Normandy superseded the simplicity of Saxon tenures; trial by battle was introduced in place of the joint judgment of the Bishop and the Earl in the county court; the separation was brought about between ecclesiastical and civil jurisdictions; and the great survey of the kingdom was planned and accomplished, of which we have the result in DOMESDAY, "the most valuable piece of antiquity possessed by any nation.” ‡ But while there is blazoned before us a roll of all the warlike chiefs who accompanied William in his memorable expedition, and we have a minute account of the life and character of all those who took any prominent part in the battles, sieges, and insurrections which marked his reign, we are left to mere conjecture respecting the manner in which

As in the law of Scotland property acquired by an individual is called his conquest.

The vitality of the Anglo-Saxon language and institutions at last prevailed, but there is hardly to be found such a striking instance of race tyrannising over race, as in England during the reigns of the Conqueror and his immediate descendants.

CHAP.

II.

Hume.

CHAP. justice was administered under him*, and the measures of his civil government were planned and executed. †

II.

Chancellors

But I must now proceed to give the names of William's of the Con- Chancellors, with such scanty notices of their history as can be furnished from the imperfect materials which are preserved

queror.

MAURICE.

Made
Bishop of
London,

and resigns

Great Seal.

to us.

In 1067, the year after the battle of Hastings, when he had obtained the submission of a considerable part of England, although it was not till long after that he reduced the northern and western counties to his rule, he appointed as his first Chancellor, MAURICE, a Norman ecclesiastic, who had accompanied him as his chaplain when he sailed from St. Vallery for the coast of England.

We know little with certainty of the acts of this functionary beyond his perusing and sealing a charter by which the Conqueror, after the example of the Confessor, granted large possessions to the abbot and monks of Westminster. ‡

In the usual course of promotion, Maurice, being Chancellor, was made Bishop of London. Here we find him highly celebrated for his exertions to rebuild St. Paul's. The year before his consecration the greatest part of the City of London, built of wood, had been consumed by fire, and the Cathedral where it now stands, on the site of an ancient temple of Diana, had been almost entirely destroyed.

But

A very ample report of the cause célèbre between Odo, as Earl of Kent, and Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Penenden Heath, before Chief Justiciary Godfrey, has come down to us, but no notice of any other judicial proceeding in this reign can be traced.

In classic antiquity lawgivers were honoured not less than conquerors, and all the most celebrated laws of Rome bore the names of their authors; but in our own history (horresco referens) oblivion seems to await all those who devote themselves to legal reform. We do not know with any certainty who framed the Statutes of Westminster in the time of Edward I, the Statute of Fines, the Statute of Uses, the Statute of Wills, or the Statute of Frauds, although they ought to have been commemorated for conferring lasting benefit on their country.

"Sed omnes illacrimabiles
Urguentur, ignotique longa
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.

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The Grenville Act for the trial of controverted elections was the first which conferred any éclat on the name of its author, and Fox's Libel Act is almost the only other down to our own times.

The charter is thus attested, "Ego, Mauritius Cancellarius, favendo legi et sigillavi." 4 Inst. 78.

by his pious exhortations, assisted by a royal grant, it rose from its ashes with new magnificence.*

Maurice enjoyed the dignity of Chancellor on his first appointment but for a short space of time, as it seems to have been the policy of William never to allow his great seal to remain long in the same hands. Spelman represents him as having been again Chancellor in 1077†, and there can be no doubt that he continued a person of considerable influence during the whole of this and the succeeding reign.

CHAP.

II.

Conduct of cellor Maurice on the

Ex-chan

death of William

We have, however, no distinct account of the part which he again took in public affairs till Rufus was accidentally killed by Sir Walter Tyrrell while hunting in the New Forest. Henry, the king's younger brother, who was of the party, in violation of the superior claims of Rufus. Robert, then absent in Normandy, hastened to London to A. D. 1100. claim the vacant throne. In those days anointment by a prelate was supposed to give a divine right to kings, and the commencement of a reign was calculated from the day of the coronation, not from the death of the predecessor. The privilege of crowning the Kings of England has always been considered to belong to the Archbishop of Canterbury as Primate, but Anselm from his quarrel with the late King was now in exile. Henry in this extremity applied to Maurice, the Ex-chancellor, and overcame his scruples respecting the law of primogeniture by a share of the royal treasure, which he had secured to himself as he passed through Winchester, and by which history records his usurpation was accomplished. On the third day from the tragical end of Rufus, Maurice placed the crown on the head of the new sovereign in the abbey of Westminster.

The Great Seal was now again within his reach, but he preferred the quiet use of his riches, and the hope eagerly cherished, though never realised, of succeeding to the primacy. He died in 1107, still Bishop of London, having seen a rapid succession of eight or nine Chancellors after his own resignation or dismissal.

The Conqueror's second Chancellor was OSMOND. Dugdale OSMOND.

W. Malmesb. De Gestis Pontificum, lib. ii. + Gloss. Series Cancell. Angl.

CHAP.

II.

His charac

ter.

His literary works.

ARFASTUS.

and Spelman leave the year of his appointment uncertain, and we might never have been informed of his having filled this office, had it not been that in 1078 he was promoted to the bishopric of Sarum, and we find some account of him in the annals of that see. He was, of course, a Norman, for now, and long after, no Saxon was promoted to any office, civil, military, or ecclesiastical. Having come over with William, and fought for him in the field, he was first made Earl of Dorset, and now being girt with a sword, while he held the Great Seal in one hand, a crosier was put into the other. *

Of Osmond's conduct in his office of Chancellor few particulars are transmitted to us; but he is said to have been much in the confidence of the Conqueror, who consulted him about all the most arduous and secret affairs of state, as well as confiding to him the superintendence of the administration of justice. William of Malmesbury is his chief panegyrist, celebrating his chastity, his disinterestedness, his deep learning, and above all, his love of sacred music, — representing as the only shade on his character his great severity to penitents, which was caused by his own immaculate life. After his elevation to the episcopal dignity, he devoted himself entirely to his sacerdotal duties.

He is the first Chancellor I have to mention as an author. His principal work was "A History of the Life and Miracles of Alden, a Saxon Saint, the first Bishop of Sherborne." He likewise composed the service "secundum usum Sarum," which remained in great repute, and was followed in the West of England till the Reformation.†

From the testing clause of a charter granted by the Conqueror to the Dean and Canons of St. Martin's, in the city of London, bearing date in the year 1073, we know that the great seal was then held by ARFASTUS, Bishop of Helmstadt, in Germany. As he never was preferred to an English

Such a combination long continued very common, and the Reformation even did not recognise the separation which now prevails between sacred and secular employments James I. had a bishop for Lord Keeper of the Great Seal; Charles I. had a bishop for his Lord Treasurer; Queen Anne, with the loud approbation of Swift and the High Church party, had a bishop for her Lord Privy Seal and one of her ambassadors to negotiate the treaty of Utrecht. † De Gestis Pontificum, lib. i.

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