669-690] Theodore of Tarsus 555 he meant to bring the English Church into line with them, if he could. The opportunity of making a beginning in his own person soon offered itself, owing to the death of Tuda, the bishop who had been placed over Lindisfarne after Colman's withdrawal. To fill the vacancy the Northumbrian princes not unnaturally turned to Wilfrid, and he was quite willing to accept their offer but on the condition that the site of his see should be transferred to York, partly to shew that he was more truly the successor of Paulinus than of Aidan, and partly in imitation of the urban Frankish bishoprics. He further stipulated that he must be consecrated abroad, as he regarded the English bishops as irregularly appointed. He accordingly went to Frankland, and the ceremony took place with great magnificence at Compiègne in presence of twelve Gallican bishops. After this Wilfrid is represented as moving about with a prince's body-guard of one hundred and twenty retainers; but so much state was hardly justified, for he found, on returning to England, that Oswy had quarrelled with his son, that Alchfrid had been driven from Deira and that as a result Oswy was determined not to have his son's friend as bishop of the Northumbrians. Oswy in fact had already appointed another man to Wilfrid's see, in the person of Ceadda, abbot of Lastingham, later known as St Chad. The motive of so anti-Roman a step is not quite clear, but its importance is obvious. It made Wilfrid a bitter opponent of the Northumbrian house and drove him to look towards Mercia. He still remained abbot of Ripon but in 667 we find him performing episcopal functions in Mercia for Wulfhere. The following year a yet more important step in binding England to civilisation and Roman culture took place when Pope Vitalian helped in filling up the archbishopric of Canterbury and selected for the post, not an energetic Englishman like Wilfrid, but a scholar and born organiser, who was well acquainted at once with Rome and Italy, and with the Greek world of the Byzantine Empire, then without question the most civilised part of Christendom. This remarkable man, called Theodore of Tarsus, from his birthplace in Cilicia, was already sixty-six when he landed in England in 669, and men must have thought that age alone would soon damp his zeal. If so, they were mistaken; for never was an archbishop so strenuous in every sphere, whether as administrator, legislator, counsellor, or peacemaker, so that for twenty-one years he kept himself foremost in every English movement, and by his ceaseless activity made the English understand what could be gained from unification and orderly government. The work which Theodore set himself to do was the thorough organisation of the English Churches upon a centralised system in subjection to Canterbury. Since Augustine's day no archbishop had played any real part outside Kent, and Canterbury had enjoyed only an honorary precedence. Theodore on the contrary regarded all England as his province, and at once set out to visit all its petty kings and make 556 The subdivision of Dioceses. Death of Oswy [671-675 himself acquainted with their peoples and their needs. In each diocese he required an acknowledgment of his authority; in York for example he re-established Wilfrid; and everywhere he inculcated the need of uniform machinery and ritual. Condemning the merely missionary types of church organisation as insufficient, he early decided that there ought to be a greater number of bishops and clergy, a greater number of dioceses and churches, and a substantial landed endowment, if possible, for each minister of the church, whether priest, monk, or prelate, to free them from the insecurity of dependence on lay charity. The central feature of this programme was the subdivision of unwieldy dioceses and the foundation of more mother churches, a somewhat hazardous adventure, as the existing bishops were naturally jealous of any diminution of their importance. The first step was to get the existing churches into touch with each other, and make them acknowledge the importance of uniformity and good discipline. For this purpose Theodore summoned a synod of bishops to meet at Hertford in 673, a memorable event; for though only four of his six suffragans attended, the meeting may be regarded as the first attempt in England at a national, as distinct from a tribal, assembly. The chief work of the synod, as reported by Bede, was the adoption of certain canons for the guidance of the bishops, and this was followed up in 674 by the actual putting into force in East Anglia of the policy of smaller sees, the bishopric founded by Felix being partitioned and two new sees created, one at Dunwich for Suffolk and the other at Elmham for Norfolk. A good beginning was thus made without opposition; but in his further progress Theodore soon found himself entangled in the political rivalries of Mercia and Northumbria and in quarrels connected with Wilfrid. Theodore had reconciled Oswy and Wilfrid, but in 671 Oswy died and Northumbria passed to his son Ecgfrith, an ill-fated prince, who quickly quarrelled with Wilfrid and about 675 reopened the feud with Mercia by again seizing Lindsey. Both events were made use of by Theodore, for they furnished him with opportunities for intervening. To subdivide the see of York had been quite impracticable so long as Wilfrid had political support; but now Ecgfrith himself came forward and offered to ignore Wilfrid and further the archbishop's reforms. Theodore at once announced that though he was willing to let Wilfrid continue bishop of a reduced see of York, he wished for four moderatesized bishoprics in Ecgfrith's dominions, proposing as their seats, in Bernicia Lindisfarne and Hexham, in Deira York, and in Lindsey Sidnacaester. Wilfrid obstinately resisted this proposal, declaring that Theodore had no power to divide his see and that he would appeal to Rome if any division was forced upon him. Theodore treated the threat as contumacious, declared Wilfrid deposed, and appointed the 675-680] Death of Wulfhere. Aethelred of Mercia 557 new bishops. Wilfrid replied by sailing for Frisia. In 679 he reached Rome and laid his case before Pope Agatho, being the first English bishop to appeal against his metropolitan to the papal tribunal. Ecgfrith's attack on Lindsey, delivered about 675, at first was successful, for it coincided with the death of Wulfhere and the accession of Aethelred, his younger brother, to the throne of Mercia. This prince however soon proved himself even more capable than his brother. His first exploit was to overrun Kent and burn Rochester, and by 679 he was quite ready to attack Ecgfrith. No account exists of the campaign, beyond the fact that Aethelred won a decisive victory on the banks of the Trent and would have invaded Deira, had not Theodore suddenly interposed as a mediator, and effected a peace by which Lindsey and perhaps Southern Yorkshire once more passed to Mercia. This was a blow to Northumbrian prestige of such a deadly nature that for the next thirty-five years (679–714) no Northumbrian king dared to attack Mercia, and it was quickly followed by the acceptance of Aethelred's overlordship by Kent which gave him an even greater position than had been enjoyed by Wulfhere. The part played by Theodore in these developments reveals his farsightedness. It would have been natural if he had seen his interest in preserving the independence of Kent. His policy was just the reverse. He saw that Mercia was the strongest English kingdom, and well able to help in a centralising movement, and so he threw his influence on to Aethelred's side. Hence arose a close connexion between Canterbury and Tamworth, which was to last for over a century. The first result of this alliance was the erection of three additional Mercian dioceses, the first for the South Mercians and Middle Angles at Leicester, the second for the Hwicce at Worcester, and the third for the southern branch of the Wreocensaete, the Hecana or Magesaete, at Hereford. Even so the mother see at Lichfield remained unwieldy, as it extended over South Lancashire, Cheshire, and Shropshire as well as over the lands of the North Mercians in Staffordshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire. Mercia thus obtained five dioceses, for Dorchester was also a Mercian see. The three new sees seem to have been created not simultaneously, but clearly at dates not far off 680, a year made memorable by a second great synod summoned by Theodore to meet at Heathfield to signify the English Church's orthodoxy on the Monothelete question. Having achieved the reorganisation of northern and central England Theodore might well congratulate himself. Wessex remained undealt with, but he now had fourteen suffragans in place of seven and each had a fairly manageable diocese. The problems which still faced him were the provision of permanent endowments on a sufficient scale and of parish priests and churches. As to the latter, time alone could solve the difficulty and no complete parochial system came into existence for several 558 Endowment of the Church. The Landbook [679 centuries. Parishes were only slowly evolved as the richer landowners built churches for their estates and most villages had for a long time to be content with the occasional visits of travelling priests. The most that could be done at once was to provide little groups of clerics, living a semi-collegiate life, in monastic cells scattered here and there in each diocese, and let these serve the neighbouring districts. Traces of this system of petty monasteries can probably still be seen in such village names as Kidderminster, Alderminster, Upminster, Southminster, and so on, a system very similar to that of the Welsh clas but one that ultimately passed away as more churches were built. With regard to permanent endowments nothing very definite can be said, except that they largely increased under Theodore's auspices, and that it appears to be in his time that the practice of conferring estates on the churches by means of written grants first arose. Bede tells of grants of land in some cases before 670 but of none of any large amount, the largest being Oswy's gift of 120 hides for 12 monastic cells after the battle of Winwaed, while he definitely says that the Scottish prelates actually refused land in many instances. Wilfrid however had introduced the desire for magnificence, and Theodore encouraged it. More and more we hear of larger gifts, as for instance a gift to Benedict Biscop of 70 hides to found Wearmouth, and a gift to Wilfrid of 87 hides to found Selsey, shortly followed by one of 300 hides in the Isle of Wight. With more frequent gifts came also the need for better means of recording them and rendering them irrevocable; and so arose the use of written conveyances, "Landbooks" as the Saxons called them. These were clearly introduced by the clergy from abroad, being based on Frankish models with formulas drawn from Roman precedents, but no genuine examples can be produced for England before Theodore's time. The earliest specimen in fact that has survived to the present day seems to be a landbook, dated 679, preserved by the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, by which Lothaire, king of Kent, granted Westanae, that is the western half of Thanet, later known as Monkton, to the abbot of Reculver. Only two or three other examples claim to be of Theodore's time, but few of these are above the suspicion of forgery, and it is clear that it was only after his death that the use of such instruments gradually grew into favour. Even in the case of so old a church as Rochester, its landbooks only begin with a deed dated 735, and altogether there are not more than forty genuine landbooks extant which bear dates earlier than 750. The later years of Theodore's activity were also a critical period for Wilfrid. As we have seen, he reached Rome in 679, but he did not gain much by his appeal, important as it was as a precedent. Pope Agatho, it is true, issued bulls in his favour, but when he returned to England he was accused of buying them and Ecgfrith put him in prison. Regaining his freedom after nine months, he decided to become a missionary and 681-702] Battle of Nechtansmere. Death of Theodore 559 betook himself to Aethelwalch of Sussex, whose people were still heathen. Here he laboured with great success for five years (681-686), baptising the chief men and founding a monastery at Selsey. In connexion with this foundation Bede adds the interesting note that there were 250 male and female slaves on the estates which Aethelwalch gave for its endowment, and that Wilfrid gave them their freedom, a significant indication at any rate that a considerable percentage of the English lower orders were excluded from the ranks of the freemen in the seventh century. Meanwhile a path was opening for Wilfrid's return to Northumbria. On the one hand he became reconciled with Theodore, on the other the Northumbrian king was dead. After his defeat by Mercia Ecgfrith had turned his attention northwards and had been busy fighting the Picts and Scots. In 681 he set up a bishopric at Abercorn on the Forth, to minister to the lands he claimed to have subdued, and in 684 he sent a fleet to attack Ireland. In 685 his raids were even pressed beyond the Tay in pursuit of Bruide the Pictish king; but here he met with disaster, being slain with many of his nobles at Nechtansmere near Forfar. From this date onwards Northumbria distinctly loses its vitality and gradually falls into a chronic state of civil war. Ecgfrith's successor was Aldfrid, a prince who had spent much of his time in a monastery and who was no fighter. He was willing to be reconciled to Wilfrid but would not restore him to his old position. He only offered him the reduced see of York, and the abbacy of Ripon. With this Wilfrid had to be perforce content, but not whole-heartedly, and he was soon engaged in a new quarrel with Aldfrid over a proposal to create a separate bishopric at Ripon. This question was just becoming acute when Archbishop Theodore died at the great age of eighty-eight in 690. The absence of his moderating influence soon made itself felt and within two years Wilfrid was again in exile, taking refuge with Aethelred who gave him the monastery of Oundle in Middle Anglia and later made him bishop of Leicester. The appointment of a new archbishop of Canterbury in 692 in the person of Berctwald, the abbot of Reculver to whom Lothaire had granted Westanae, did nothing to stop the feud, and Wilfrid remained in Mercia for eleven years (691-702). The most interesting notice we have of him at this epoch implies his attendance in 695 at the translation of the body of St Aethelthryth, the virgin foundress of Ely, formerly Ecgfrith's queen, who in her life had played a considerable part in bringing about his original quarrel in Northumbria. In reviewing Theodore's achievements, it will be noticed that the only important English kingdom not touched by his activity was Wessex; but here also great changes took place in his later days. These were brought about by the rise to power of Ceadwalla, a young pagan princeling who is first heard of in 684 making an attack on Aethelwalch of Sussex. For some time before this Wessex had been |