[Sidenote: Frequent unfit appointments in the Church. Henry corrects them when possible.]
It was not always that the Church appeared in such an amiable light. Henry no doubt, on the whole, attempted to make good appointments, but interest or desire to reward an ardent partisan sometimes put an unfit person into office. Thus Henry of Poitou was given the Abbey of Peterborough, although he already held an abbey in France, apparently as a reward for the support he gave the King in upholding the illegality of the marriage between William Clito and Sibylla of Anjou on the score of consanguinity. “He came like a drone to a hive,” says the chronicler; “all that the bees draw towards them the drones devour and draw from them, so did he.” It is fair to say that Henry, when he found out how bad a person he had appointed, had him removed. “It was not very long after that that the King sent for him, and made him give up the Abbey of Peterborough, and go out of the land.” Thus, again, after a great distribution of abbeys in 1107, it is remarked “that the abbots were rather wolves than shepherds.” Such complaints are however usually uttered by English writers, and the plight of the conquered people was evidently very miserable.
[Sidenote: Wretched condition of the people.]
[Sidenote: Extracts from old chroniclers.]
It was a time of great suffering on more accounts than one, and the suffering was of a kind to fall chiefly upon the lower orders. Agriculture was so rough that any little irregularity in the seasons produced a failure of the crops, and the habits of the people were such that any infectious disease was liable to become a pestilence. The constant warfare, either against his vassals or his enemies, which the King carried on, was the cause of frequent taxation, against which no class in the State had it in their power to remonstrate; while the natural and artificial causes of suffering were further aggravated by the frequent issue of false coin. Thus we find year after year such entries as these in the chroniclers:--“The year 1105 was very miserable, because of the failure of the crops, and the ceaseless taxation.” “The year 1110 was full of wretchedness, because of the bad season, and the tribute the King demanded for his daughter’s dowry.” “In this year (1124) were many failures in England in corn and all fruit, so that between Christmas and Candlemas the acre seed of wheat was sold for six shillings; and that of barley, that is three seedlips for three shillings, the acre seed of oats for four shillings, because there was little corn, and the penny was so bad that a man who had at market a pound could by no means buy therewith twelvepenny-worth.” “In this same year (1125) was so great a flood on St. Lawrence’s mass day that many towns and men were drowned, and bridges shattered; corn and meadows totally destroyed, and for all fruits there was so bad a season as there had not been for many years before.” “In that year (1131) there was so great a murrain of cattle as never was in the memory of man.” This carried off neat, swine, and domestic fowls alike. And when the harvest was good the pestilence came. “This year (1112) was a very good year, and very abundant in wood and field, but it was a very sorrowful one through a most destructive pestilence.” Or again, the year 1104, “It is not easy to recount all the miseries the country suffered this year through various and manifold illegalities and imposts which never ceased nor failed, and ever as the King went there was plundering by his followers on his wretched people, and at the same time often burnings and murders.”