Conditions of the Bishop's sailing.
November 21,1088.
November 14. Bishop of Durham asks Count Alan to find him a haven and ships at Southampton. The King steps in; "Know well, Bishop, that you shall never cross the channel till I have your castle"—adding, with a remembrance of the doings of another prelate at Rochester—"for the Bishop of Bayeux made me smart with that kind of thing."[1] If the castle of Durham was in the King's hands by the fixed day, the fourteenth day of November, the Bishop should have the ships and the safe-conduct without further delay. The King then bids Count Alan and the Sheriff Gilbert[2] to give the Bishop at Southampton such ships as might be needful for his voyage seven days after the day fixed for the surrender of the castle. Meanwhile, on the appointed day, the castle of Durham was received into the King's hands by Ivo Taillebois and Erneis of Burun—names with which we have long been familiar.[3] They disseized the Bishop of his church and castle and all his land; but they gave to the Bishop's men a writ under the King's seal, promising the most perfect safety to the Bishop and his men through all England and in their voyage.[4] And, according to the most obvious meaning of the narrative, Heppo, the King's balistarius—a man of whom, like Ivo Taillebois, we have heard in Lincolnshire—was put into their hands as surety for the observance of the safe-conduct.
It might have seemed that the Bishop's troubles were now ended, so far as they could be ended by leaving the land which he professed to look on as a land of perse-*
- ↑ Mon. Ang. u.s. "Bene scias, episcope, quod nunquam transfretabis donec castellum tuum habeam; episcopus enim Baiocensis inde me castigavit."
- ↑ Gilbert of Bretevile appears as a considerable landowner in Hampshire (Domesday, 48) and Wiltshire (71). He may have been Sheriff of either shire.
- ↑ See N. C. vol. iv. pp. 215, 800. Besides Erneis himself, we have heard of a Ralph Fitz-Erneis at Senlac, vol. iii. p. 494.
- ↑ Mon. Ang. u. s. "Dissaisiverunt episcopum de ecclesia et de castello et de omni terra sua xviii. Kal. Dec., et liberaverunt hominibus episcopi Helponem balistarium regis." The King's writ follows. Helpo must be Heppo. See N. C. vol. iv. p. 216. See Appendix C.
