in, however, was resolved on, and
was prosecuted with great severity. The legate degraded him from his
dignity; the king confiscated his estate, and cast him into prison,
where he continued in poverty and want during the remainder of his life.
Like rigor was exercised against the other English prelates: Agelric,
bishop of Selesey, and Agelmare, of Elmham, were deposed by the legate,
and imprisoned by the king. Many considerable abbots shared the same
fate: Egelwin, bishop of Durham, fled the kingdom Wulstan, of Worcester,
a man of an inoffensive character was the only English prelate that
escaped this general proscription,[*] and remained in possession of his
dignity. Aldred, archbishop of York, who had set the crown on William's
head, had died a little before of grief and vexation, and had left his
malediction to that prince, on account of the breach of his coronation
oath, and of the extreme tyranny with which he saw he was determined to
treat his English subjects.[**]

It was a fixed maxim in this reign, as well as in some of the
subsequent, that no native of the island should ever be advanced to any
dignity, ecclesiastical, civil, or military[***]

[* Brompton relates, that Wulstan was also
deprived by the synod; out refusing to deliver his pastoral
staff and ring to any but the person from whom he first
received it, he went immediately to King Edward's tomb, and
struck the staff so deeply into the stone, that none but
himself was able to pull it out; upon which he was allowed
to keep his bishopric. This instance may serve, instead of
many, as a specimen of the monkish miracles. See also the
Annals of Burton, p. 284.]

[** W. Malmes de Gest. Pont. p. 154.]

[*** Ingulph. p. 70, 71.]

The king, therefore, upon Stigand's deposition, promoted Lanfranc, a
Milanese monk, celebrated for his learning and piety, to the vacant see.
This prelate was rigid in defending the prerogatives of his station; and
after a long process before the pope, he obliged Thomas, a Norman monk,
who had been appointed to the see of York, to acknowledge the primacy of
the archbishop of Canterbury. Where ambition can be so happy as to cover
its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance
of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human
passions. Hence Lanfranc's zeal in promoting the interests of
the papacy, by which he himself augmented his own authori