Infra, 37, n. 3. n. 3. of the family of Akeny is perhaps to be sought in Norman, rather than in English history. Walter de Cou- Geoffrey resigned the see of Lincoln, tances, 1183-1184. without consecration to it, January 6, 1182. His successor, Walter de Coutances, was elected Infra, 38, May 8, 1183,' and was consecrated abroad July 3. He made his first appearance at Lincoln, and was enthroned, Dec. 11 of the same year. Within less than six months, perhaps much less, he was elected, or postulated rather, Infra, 38, to the archbishopric of Rouen, but was not enthroned there until Feb. 24, 1185. n 4. At the time of his election to Lincoln Walter de Coutances, as we are elsewhere told by Giraldus, was archdeacon of Oxford, treasurer of Rouen, and "archisi gillarius" of Henry II. He was a very able and busy man, and a man of great note and great power, in the court and councils and doings of the later years of Henry II.; and for a time equally in high favour, and 1 According to Ben. Abb., he was elected unanimously by the chapter of Lincoln. But he was not the person recommended to them by Henry H., who therefore forbade his consecration, because elected without his will and assent, and appealed thereon to the pope (Gesta H. Secundi, i. 299, Stubbs). Henry, however, soon relaxed his opposition. After the death of the young king Henry, June 11, 1183, Ben. Abb. says that all was peace, and that master Walter de Coutances, elect of Lincoln, was ordained priest, and a few days afterwards consecrated bishop of Lincoln (ibid., 304). There is, however, something not quite congruous in these statements of Ben. Abb., because Walter was ordained priest, not after the death of the young king, but on the very day of his death. Ralph de Diceto, a personal friend and correspondent of Walter de Coutances, tells us much about his election and consecration to Lincoln (Twysden, 615, l. 16, &c., 692, 1. 50, &c.), but says nothing whatever of any opposition of Henry II. Ben. Abb. is a quite sufficient authority that there was some such opposition; but Diceto's silence about it, and the short time that elapsed between Walter's election on May 8, and his consecration on July 3, prove that this opposition was very brief indeed,-perhaps little more than some of Henry's savage words, according to his usual fury, on first hearing of any opposition to his will. 2 See Glossary, infra, 256. 3 In his Life of archbishop Geoffrey, Angha Sacru, ii. 399. graced with still higher appointments by Richard I. His history would be a very long one; but it belongs to the courts of Henry II. and Richard I., and to the archbishopric of Rouen, and very little indeed to the bishopric of Lincoln, to his very brief connection with which I must confine myself. In the little that our Infra, 38, Lincoln authorities say of him, they closely agree; but 199. Giraldus is somewhat more ample than John de Schalby, and he no doubt somewhat improved, as he thought, upon the original records. The only additional statement they give us, as to his Lincoln episcopate, is that he disgraced himself, and greatly offended his chapter, by confirming bishop Chesney's gift of churches to the Sempringham house of St. Catherine without Lincoln. This perhaps not disgraceful deed, with the dates and circumstances of his election, &c., to Lincoln, as gathered above from other contemporary and good sources, form the whole amount of his Lincoln history. He came to Lincoln and was enthroned; he may have stayed there for a few days afterwards, or a few weeks perhaps, but he could not have stayed for long. His deed in favour of St. Catherine's may have been executed on the very day of his enthronement. At any rate, with his enthronement, and this deed, his Lincoln history ends. The Lincoln records, according to John de Schalby's compilation from them, stated that though called Walter de Coutances, he was a native of Cornwall. Giraldus Infra, 199. further says that he was a true Cornish Briton, sprung from the noble Trojan stem of Corineus. This probably Infra, 38. is a mere fanciful embellishment of Giraldus, upon the Cornish nativity of the Lincoln history. We may perhaps rather suppose that Walter de Coutances, as his name almost proves, was a member of a Norman family settled in Cornwall, which still, as very generally, retained in the middle of the twelfth century its Norman name. xi. Hugh of Bur- The hitherto close agreement between gundy, 1196-1200. Giraldus and John de Schalby naturally ends, as I have said in note 2, p. 39 infra, with the episcopate of Walter de Coutances. The first edition of this Vita S. Remigii was issued about 1198, during the Supra, P. lifetime of Walter's successor Hugh of Burgundy; and Giraldus's account of St. Hugh in Cap. XXVI., as we now here have it only in a second edition, addressed to archbishop Langton about fifteen years afterwards, is no doubt mainly the same as that of the first edition of 1198; and therefore was not derived from the entry made in the Lincoln records, after St. Hugh's death, as John de Schalby's would of course be. Infra, 39, &c. Supra, p. xiv. In the above-named note I speak of some "possible alteration in the later edition; but I now think that I ought to have said "very probable" instead, or "almost "certain." What Giraldus says about Hugh's completion Infra, 40. of the building of the choir, for instance, can hardly have been true in 1198: there seems good evidence that it was only just and barely completed at the time of Hugh's death in November 1200.1 What follows directly about See Magna Vita S. Hugonis, Hugh's choir cannot well have we are told, among one or two other brief notices of Lincoln matters, that it was in 1192 that the foundation of the church of Lincoln was laid. The entry under that year in these annals, which are in Latin, and written about 1274, is, " Jacitur "fundamentum ecclesiæ Lincolniæ." Their Lincoln entries were probably derived from some English ecclesiastic who had settled in Ireland, and had before been in some way connected with Lincoln. We may well accept their 1192 as the true date of the actual commencement of Hugh's choir. The eight years, between 1192 and Hugh's death in his beginning an episcopal palace at Lincoln, and purpos- Infra, 41. ing to finish it in a far ampler and nobler fashion than its predecessor, can hardly have been written until after his death. These entries about Hugh's buildings at Lincoln, I think, must have been altered considerably, if not entirely added in the second edition. 80. Contents of Chap- Giraldus has already, in this his Infra, 43ters XXVII.-XXIX. life of Remigius, wandered far away from his subject, after his manner, in giving the history of the successors of Remigius up to his own time. In the last three long chapters of the life, XXVII.-XXIX., which occupy in the manuscript several more pages than all the preceding part of the treatise, he wanders much further away from Remigius, far away altogether even from Lincoln. In these three chapters, he gives in three pairs, accounts or anecdotes rather, of the six more laudable bishops, after his estimation, of his own time. Cap. XXVII. is devoted to St. Thomas of Canterbury, and his consecrator, bishop Henry de Blois of Winchester: Cap. XXVIII. to bishop Bartholomew of Exeter, and Roger of Worcester: Cap. XXIX. to archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, and bishop Hugh of Lincoln. Of the value of what Giraldus here tells us of these extra-Lincoln bishops, I shall say very little. The anecdotes of them which he gives are no doubt interesting and valuable in a way; but they seem to me to be, in large measure, rather the idle gossip of the day, than sober truthful history. But I must confess that I have not so closely gone into the history of these bishops, as at all to make me a judge of what Giraldus says about them. The contents of these chapters, with the exception of part of Cap. XXIX., are so utterly 1200, would be quite enough for finishing the choir, with all his energies pushing on the work; but we can hardly suppose that such progress could have been made, some two years, or perhaps more, xvi. xii. foreign to Remigius, and to Lincoln in any way, that I have deemed it but right and natural, in a volume dedicated to Lincoln history, to pass them over thus cursorily, with very little examination, large part of the life of Remigius though they occupy. § 4. AFTER USE OF THIS TREATISE. This life of St. Remigius, a mere local Lincoln history in great part, we can hardly expect to find used or mentioned by after writers other than Lincoln ones. No general historian, so far as I know, and no monastic historian of any house in the diocese of Lincoln, ever makes use of it. It even seems plain, as I have Supra, p. before said, that the most important by far of after Lincoln historians, John de Schalby, closely as he often agrees with this treatise, yet drew nothing from it. He may well have been acquainted with it, as Giraldus Supra, p. had given a copy to the Lincoln library; but if so, then he very wisely chose to draw his materials, as to the bishops up to 1200, not from Giraldus, a mere compiler, but from the contemporary Lincoln histories of these bishops, which had supplied to Giraldus all that was authentic in his accounts of them. But it is possible that Schalby never saw this treatise of Giraldus, it was lost from the library we know before the end of the century succeeding his, and for anything we know to the contrary, may have been lost before his own time. This, however, is not very likely, as this treatise of Giraldus was certainly used, amongst other authorities, by a later very brief compiler of Lincoln history, who wrote about the year 1440; a copy of whose work is preserved in a Cottonian manuscript of the British Museum.1 It seems far more likely that John Ibid. 1 Titus A. xix., f. 4, &c The writer of this treatise must have derived some of his information from Giraldus's Life of Remigius. For instance, he says of bishop Chesney, "Hic prebendam ecclesiæ |