If his fame as an ecclesiastic is not so
assured as that of his illustrious predecessor, in architecture and in
secular history he has left a decided mark. He was a poor Norman
priest, who won his mitre by singing a hunting mass quickly before
Henry I. Made chaplain by the king on his accession, he afterwards
became first chancellor, and then justiciary. He organized the Court
of Exchequer, which has preserved the earliest official records known
to us. His castles at Devizes, Sherborne, and Malmesbury excited the
jealousy of the nobles; his son was chancellor, one nephew Bishop of
Ely, and another nephew Bishop of Lincoln. Besides much work, now
destroyed, at Old Sarum (so that whether he merely restored the damage
caused by lightning, or rebuilt it from the foundations, according to
the Norman custom, we cannot tell), his additions to Sherborne Minster
are still memorable as a new departure in Norman architecture; in
fact, he has been called the great architectural genius of the
thirteenth century. "Unscrupulous, fierce, and avaricious," he is a
type of the great feudal churchmen when they were veritable rulers.
According to William of Malmesbury, "was there anything contiguous to
his property which might be advantageous to him, he would directly
extort it either by entreaty or purchase, or if that failed, by
force." Although after King Henry's death Henry, Bishop of Winchester,
persuaded him to open the vast treasure of the late king to Stephen,
yet in the fourth year of his reign Stephen imprisoned him, and the
Bishop of Lincoln, his nephew, and seized their castles of Devizes and
Sherborne, Newark, and Sleaford. Bishop Roger the same year, according
to one chronicler, "by the kindness of death, escaped the quartan ague
which had long afflicted him, and died broken-hearted." But another
version says that "he starved to death through a promise to King
Stephen that his castle of Devizes should be surrendered to him before
he eat or drank; but his nephew, the Bishop of Ely, who then had
possession of it, kept it three days before he made the surrender to
the king."

=Jocelin de Bohun=, or, as he is sometimes called, de Bailleul (1142
to 1184), is best known from his quarrel with Thomas a Becket, of
Canterbury. For his share in framing the "Constitutions of Clarendon,"
he was excommunicated by the archbishop. On the death of Roger, in
1139, King Stephen nominated Philip de Harcourt, but the canons
preferred Jocelin, wh