chief-justiciary, Pope's legate, and king's vicegerent in his absence, was an acknowledged spiritual and temporal sovereign.

More than one primate of the English Church have been canonized as martyrs. The only one who in strictness deserves the name, is the Saxon Elphege, whom we may be well content to retain under his title of Saint in our English calendar, although denied him by one of his Norman successors, Lanfranc. When Canterbury was a third time pillaged by the Dancs, in their last and successful invasion under Sweyn -the fit retribution for the massacre of St. Brice-Elphege, a Benedictine of the strictest type, of noble birth, and pure unselfish character, whose translation to Canterbury had been hailed as a national blessing, defended his cathedral city against the pagans for three weeks. While he encouraged those to fight, whose lawful calling it was, his own weapons were prayer and the sacraments of the church. When at last an entrance was effected by treachery, he offered himself as a victim if the destroyers would spare the women and children. They promised him his life if he would ransom it with the treasures of the church, but he steadily refused. At one of their intemperate banquets, they summoned him, and repeated their demand for the last time-"Gold, bishop, gold!" They hurled at him the heavy ox-bones and skulls which strewed the floor where they had been feasting; and as he lay there writhing with pain, one more merciful than the rest-it was said a Christian convert whom Elphege had made-ended his misery with a battle-axe.

The Norman conquest found Stigand on the archi-episcopal throne; a name familiar to most readers as crowning King Harold in the facsimiles of the Bayeux Tapestry. That ceremony took place at Lamhithe, or Lambeth. To crown and anoint the kings and queens of England had been the privilege of the see of Canterbury, probably from a very early date since its establishment-certainly long before the Conquest. The Conqueror was not so crowned; either the archbishop, having already anointed Edgar the Atheling, could not conscientiously repeat the office for a rival claimant; or William declined to ask the services of a primate whom the Pope would not have recognized. For Robert of Jumieges, the predecessor of Stigand, who had prepared the way for William's accession by forming a Norman party in England, had been deposed by the king and his witan (under Stigand's presi dency) in defiance of the papal authority. William was crowned by the Archbishop of York; and, probably from that precedent, the prelates of that see claimed. more than once a share in the ceremony. The Bishop of Durham, at the coronation of King John, protested against its legality unless his own metropolitan were present. But the popes, when appealed to, maintained the sole prerogative to Canterbury.*

* "Pertinet, et pertinuit ab antiquo," are the words of the Pope's letter in the case

Stigand was but a half patriot, and would have made no martyr in any cause. William is accused of having treated him cruelly, and there is no doubt but that his imprisonment was marked with all the severities of a cruel age, and probably hastened his death; but it must be remembered that he had been taken in open rebellion in the "Camp of Refuge," after formally tendering his own allegiance, and that of the Saxon prince, to the Conqueror. He was deposed by the legates of Alexander (or rather by Hildebrand, who was already pope in all but name) on the merest technical pretences; but any pretence was welcomed by the See of Rome, to establish, if it might be, the coveted supremacy in England.

Lanfranc, a Norman abbot, who had been first a successful pleader in the law-courts of Pavia, then a lecturer and teacher of European reputation-"an Aristotle in dialectics, a Tully in rhetoric, an Augustine in theology"—to whom William had intrusted the education of his sons, was selected by him for his new archbishop. "Nolo episcopari" was an honest phrase enough in his mouth; he had already declined the archbishopric of Rouen, and very unwillingly accepted Canterbury. It was not at present a very cheerful preferment. The cathedral lay in ruins, and he was consecrated in a temporary shed. Disaffection was strong in the country, and the foreign archbishop was coldly looked upon both by his suffragans and the people. But, setting aside his strong Norman predilections, he was an able and conscientious primate. He rebuilt his cathedral and palace in the improved Norman taste; he reclaimed the confiscated estates of the see; and he supported the king in resisting the claim of the Pope to send legates into England, and in maintaining the disputed prerogative of the nomination of bishops. In his time the important question of episcopal precedence was thus arranged:~York to sit at the right hand of the primate, London on the left, and Winchester next to York. Thomas of York had been very unwilling to acknowledge Canterbury as his ecclesiastical superior; and, on a subsequent occasion, objected successfully to its being called "the Metropolitan Church of all England;" as implying that York was not also metropolitan. It was then settled that the style should be, as it has run ever since, "Primate of all England." Thurstan, elected to the see of York a generation later, refused the oath of canonical obedience to Canterbury, and was supported by the Pope; but he failed to make good his position. The jealousy between the two sees broke out into an actual fight-"baculis et pugnis"-between the two archbishops in the presence of the Papal legate at Westminster, in the reign of Henry II. of Archbishop Winchelsea, as given in Rymer I. iv., p. 105. Archbishop Ralph (temp. Henry I.) and subsequently Parker, claimed also, and maintained the right to marry the Sovereigns, as being their especial parishioners; but this does not appear to rest on such good foundation.

Canterbury now lay vacant for four years; the unscrupulous "Red King" meanwhile enjoying the revenues; an evil precedent, which future kings too often followed in the case of both bishoprics and abbacies. The Conqueror, in his zeal for independence of the Pope, had said "he would have all the croziers in England in his own hands.” His son, when pressed to nominate to the vacancy, swore "by the Holy Face of Lucca, he would have no archbishop of Canterbury but himself.” At last he nominated Anselm, a pupil of Lanfranc in early life, to whom the whole Church pointed as his successor, but who, like him, was unwilling to accept the responsibility. But, unlike Lanfranc, he was overawed by his reverence for the apostolic see. The rights of the Church with him meant the claims of the papacy. A sovereign like William Rufus was not likely to pay much regard to either; and the conscientious rebukes which Anselm administered to him for keeping Church appointments vacant in order to enjoy their revenues, and for other royal misdemeanours, did not improve his influence with his coarse and violent master. They were at issue during the whole reign. Council after council was held without result; one of them at Lambeth, in 1100; a place which from this time was cften visited by the archbishops, and seems to have been assigned to them as a lodging by their suffragans of Rochester. The chief cause of quarrel was Anselm's refusal to forego his claim of appeal to Rome. William's impatience of any supremacy but his own made him the unintentional defender of the liberties of the Church; and the archbishop remained in a sort of voluntary exile until the arrow shot in the New Forest allowed him to return, amidst public acclamations, under another king. Henry I. promised to do all that the Church could desire, and to maintain "the good laws of King Edward," an apocryphal code to which discontented subjects appealed during many reigns after the Conquest, and which had a very indefinite interpretation. But Anselm found a new difficulty. When the king offered to reinstate him in his barony, he declined to receive investiture at the hands of a layman. In vain even the bishops of the province protested against this scruple, as inconsistent with the fealty of a vassal to his suzerain. Anselm was obstinate, and after perpetual discussions and delays, and threats of excommunication from the archbishop, it ended in a compromise; in which the king seems to have given up the right which his predecessors had assumed in most cases, of nominating bishops of their own independent choice. But Anselm agreed with the king in resisting the attempt of the Pope to send a legate into England; an important point which two of his almost immediate successors conceded, by accepting the office themselves.

The primacy of Becket is a history in itself, and as such may be reserved for independent treatment in our pages; only it may be observed that in the course of his long struggle with King Henry, though

BALDWIN AND HUBERT THE CRUSADERS.

13

much was claimed on both sides, scarcely anything was really gained by either; and that the celebrated "Constitutions of Clarendon" left the English Church pretty nearly where they found it.

The third crusade saw an Archbishop of Canterbury once more in warlike harness. Baldwin took the white cross, and with the banner of St. Thomas before him, and Hubert, Bishop of Salisbury, riding at his side, charged at the head of his own mounted retainers, and saved the Christian forces from total defeat before Acre. It was under him that Lambeth House became an appanage of Canterbury. Previous archbishops-Ralph, William of Corbeuil, Theobald, and Richard-from their connection with Rochester, had already held frequent consecrations, and performed public acts there. Baldwin now made an exchange of some of the lands belonging to his own see for the manor and manor. house. He intended to have made it the site of a college of secular canons, who were to form in future the chapter of the archbishop; for the present establishment at Christ Church, in Canterbury, now consisted of regular monks, strong in power and influence as the guardians of the shrine of the new and popular martyr, St. Thomas, showing little respect for their diocesan, and claiming the right to elect him in opposition to the bishops of his province. To humble the monks, Baldwin would have transferred the chapter, and with it the election, to Lambeth. He died broken-hearted in Palestinc, leaving his design incomplete. His successor, Reginald, only lived six weeks. Hubert Walter, who had fought by Baldwin's side against the infidels, and had won King Richard's heart by his gallant bearing and wise counsel, was recommended by him to the vacant primacy; and he either completed his friend's purchase, or at least carried out his design of building a collegiate church at Lambeth. The Canterbury monks raised the alarm. They represented to the Pope that their privileges were in danger, and a bull from Rome demanded the demolition of the new college within thirty days, under penalty of suspending the archbishop, and absolving the monks from their canonical allegiance. Both the king and the archbishop resisted; but Richard was no match for Pope Innocent, and Rome had gained too strong a footing in England. Lambeth College ended its short existence, and the new canons were unhoused, and heard of no more. But all England, say the chroniclers, rang with indignation at the papal audacity. Archbishop Hubert never made Canterbury his home again; he restored and enlarged Lambeth manor-house, and spent most of his time there. So also did his successor, Stephen Langton, who continued the improvements; and probably the stone arches under the chapel may be a portion of their work. From that time Lambeth House (for Palace it is not rightly called) has been the favourite residence of the archbishops of Canterbury. Of its future fortunes we may have something to say in our next number.

THE NEW CURATE.

CHAPTER I.-THE SMALL ROOM IN LAURA PLACE.

"You are a lucky fellow, Selturne! A curate with more money than he knows how to spend, and a comfortable family living in store for him- -a rare bird in our days."

"The

"It's ill waiting for dead men's shoes," was the dry response. living of Repton is filled at present, and money is but means to an end."

"Don't preach before you are in the pulpit, Ralph, don't. If you are not a lucky fellow, shall I tell you what you are? A young bear with all his sorrows before him. You don't know what it is yet to do a curate's work in a hard parish.”

"Don't I?"

"And the vicar away too. You look supercilious; well, we shall see; good-bye."

The Rev. Ralph Selturne nodded with a half smile, as he turned away from the speaker. He did know, he thought, pretty well, the kind of duties on which he was entering; the life was one he would have chosen before all others; and as he thought about it his heart swelled with the consciousness of individual power to trample under foot the thorns and brambles which might spring up in his way. If the work were hard was not he young and strong for it, a man of thews and sinews?

He had no fear-nothing but hope and anticipation.

And a week after that conversation he sat alone in his lodgings, a disappointed, weary man. There on the table before him, in its black velvet cover lay the sermon, over the composition of which he had spent so much care, and built so many castles of future success. But in all his philosophy and vain imaginings had he ever dreamed of such a parish as this, to which he, the Rev. Ralph Selturne, had just been ordained? That was the unanswered question which worked in his mind bitterly at the close of his first Sunday amongst his new parishioners. A lucky fellow, was he? Or a young bear with all his sorrows before him-which? He eyed that new velvet cover disconsolately. Making no allowance for the fact that he was tired mentally and bodily with unusual work-hard because unusual-he suffered a cloud of despondency to creep over him, as the cloud from over the dark red chimneys up in the town came stealing over the suburb to tell him it was night.

It was not that the situation of his parish disappointed him; it was not that he felt oppressed by the preponderance on the town-ward side of poor and miserable and uncouth; or that he disliked the style of