GAMEL SON OF ORME’S SUNDIAL FROM A SHORT ACCOUNT OF SAINT GREGORY’S MINSTER, KIRKDALE, BY REV. F. W. POWELL, VICAR. THE TRANSLATION IS AS FOLLOWS:]
“ORM GAMAL’S SON BOUGHT S. GREGORY’S MINSTER WHEN IT WAS ALL BROKEN DOWN AND FALLEN AND HE LET IT BE MADE ANEW FROM THE GROUND TO CHRIST AND S. GREGORY, IN EDWARD’S DAYS, THE KING, AND IN TOSTI’S DAYS, THE EARL.”
THE CENTRAL PANEL HAS ON THE DIAL— “THIS IS DAY’S SUN MARKER AT EVERY TIME.” AND AT THE FOOT— “AND HAWARTH ME WROUGHT AND BRAND, PRIESTS”
Political circumstances delayed the beginnings of ecclesiastical reform for more than three years after the battle of Hastings had placed the destinies of the English church in Norman hands. While the Conqueror was fighting at Stafford and York, he could not be presiding over synods at Winchester and London. No steps, therefore, were taken in this question before 1070, when the fall of Chester destroyed the last chance of a successful English rising, and made it no longer expedient for William to be complaisant to Stigand and the nationalist party in the English episcopate. But in 1070 the work was begun in earnest under the immediate sanction of the Pope, expressed in the legation of two cardinal priests who visited England in that year. There could be little doubt what their first step would be; and when Stigand was formally arraigned for holding the sees of Winchester and Canterbury in plurality, usurping the pallium of his predecessor, Robert, and receiving his own pallium from the schismatic Benedict X., he had no defence to offer beyond declamation against the good faith of the king. Three other bishops fell at or about the same time; Ethelmer, brother of Stigand, and bishop of East Anglia, Ethelwine, bishop of Durham, and Ethelric, bishop of Selsey. In regard to none of these last bishops are the grounds on which their deposition was based at all certain; and in the case of Ethelric, an aged man who was famed for his vast knowledge of Anglo-Saxon law, the Pope himself was uneasy about the point, and a correspondence went on for some time between him and Lanfranc on the subject. But it is a noteworthy fact that these four prelates are the only bishops deposed during the whole of the Conqueror’s reign. Nothing was further from William’s purpose than any wholesale clearance of the native episcopate. He was King Edward’s heir, and he wished, therefore, to retain King Edward’s bishops in office, so far as this was consistent with the designs of his ally the Pope. On the other hand, William was no less determined to fill all vacancies when they occurred in the course of nature with continental priests. Herein he and the Pope were in complete harmony. It was only by this means that continental culture and ideas of church government could be introduced into England, and William trusted in his own strength to repress any inconvenient tendencies which might arise from the ultramontane ideals of his nominees.