olas could not pay for his education, and was
obliged to attend the school of the monks on charity. [1] This
circumstance would seem to have put his father so painfully to the
blush, that he took an unnatural dislike to his son; whom he shortly
compelled by his threats and reproaches to flee the neighbourhood in a
state of utter destitution.

Thus cruelly cast on the world, Nicholas to settle the church in those
remote countries, where it had been planted about 150 years. The
circumstances which led to this legation were as follows:[2]--originally
the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, were
spiritually subject to the archbishop of Hamburg, whose province was
then the most extensive in Christendom. In the year 1102, Denmark
succeeded, after much protracted agitation of the question, in
obtaining from Pope Paschal II., a metropolitan see of its own, which
was founded at Lund; and to whose authority Sweden and Norway were
transferred. The same feeling of national independence, which had
procured this boon for Denmark, was not long before it began to work
in those kingdoms also; and the more so as the Danish supremacy was
asserted over them with much greater rigour than had formerly been
that of Hamburg, and was otherwise repugnant to them, as emanating
from a power with which they stood in far closer political relations,
and more constant rivalry than with Germany. After some indirect
preliminary steps in the business,--which do not seem to have
forwarded it,--the kings of Sweden and Norway sent ambassadors to Pope
Eugenius III., to request for their states the same privilege which
his predecessor had granted to Denmark; and which he himself had just
extended to Ireland, in the erection of the four archbishoprics of
that country. The arrival of these ambassadors at Rome happened a year
before the elevation of the abbot of St. Rufus to the see of Albano.
The pope promised to accede to their request. It was in fulfilment of
this promise that Nicholas Breakspere was sent into the north.
Doubtless, the circumstance of his being an Englishman had weight in
his selection; as, in consequence of that circumstance, he would be
viewed as far more likely to possess a correct knowledge of the
character and government peculiar to northern nations than an Italian.

Taking England in his way, the Cardinal legate passed thence into
Norway; where he landed in June of the year above-mentioned. The
country was then governed by