This book of Polycraticus on the Triflings of Courtiers and the Foot-prints of Philosophers[1588] is a strange medley of moral and political speculations, personal experiences, and reflections upon men and things, old and new. Its greatest charm lies in the revelation of the writer’s pure, sweet, child-like character, shining unconsciously through the veil of his scholastic pedantries and rambling metaphysics; its historical value consists in the light which it throws on the social condition of England with respect to a crowd of matters which the chroniclers leave wholly in the dark. “Part of it,” says the author in his dedication, “deals with the trifles of the court; laying most stress on those which have chiefly called it forth. Part treats of the foot-prints of the philosophers, leaving, however, the wise to decide for themselves in each case what is to be shunned and what to be followed.”[1589] We need not weary ourselves with John’s meditations upon Aristotle and Plato and their scholastic commentators; they all come round to one simple conclusion—that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the love of Him the end of all true philosophy.[1590] It is in the light of this truth that he looks at the practical questions of the day, and reviews those “trifles of the court” which are really the crying abuses of the government, the ecclesiastical administration, and society at large. In the forefront of all he does not hesitate, although dedicating his book to the chancellor whose passion for hunting almost equalled that of the king himself, to set the inordinate love of the chase and the cruelties of the forest-law.[1591] The tardiness of the royal justice and the corruption of the judges—“justitiæ errantes, justices errant are they rightly called who go erring from the path of equity in pursuit of greed and gain”[1592]—was also, after seven years of Henry’s government, still a ground of serious complaint. So, too, was the decay of valour among the young knighthood of the day—a consequence of the general relaxation of discipline, first during the years of anarchy, and then in the reaction produced by the unbroken peace which England had enjoyed since Henry’s accession. Chivalry was already falling back from its lofty ideal; military exercises were neglected for the pleasures and luxury of the court; the making of a knight, in theory a matter almost as solemn as the making of a priest, was sinking into a mere commonplace formality;[1593] and the consequences were beginning to be felt on the Welsh border.[1594] John was moved to contrast the present insecurity of the marches with their splendid defence in Harold’s time,[1595] and to lament that William the Conqueror, in his desire to make his little insular world share the glories of the greater world beyond the sea, had allowed the naturally rich and self-sufficing island to be flooded with luxuries of which it had no need, and thus fostered rather than checked the indolent disposition which had helped to bring its people under his sway.[1596]

The ills of the state had each its counterpart in the Church; the extortions and perversions of justice committed by the secular judges were paralleled by those of the ecclesiastical officials, deans and archdeacons;[1597] and at the bottom of the mischief lay the old root of all evil. Simony was indeed no longer public; spiritual offices were no longer openly bought with hard cash; but they were bought with court-interest instead;[1598] the Church’s most sacred offices were filled by men who came straight from the worldly life of the court to a charge for which they were utterly unfit;[1599] although, in deference to public opinion, they were obliged to go through an elaborate shew of reluctance, and Scripture and hagiology were ransacked for examples of converted sinners, which were always found sufficient to meet any objections against a candidate for consecration and to justify any appointment, however outrageous.[1600] All the sins of the worldly churchmen, however, scarcely move John’s pure soul to such an outburst of scathing sarcasm as he pours upon the “false brethren” who sought their advancement in a more subtle way, by a shew of counterfeit piety:—the ultra-monastic, ultra-ascetic school, with their overdone zeal and humility, and their reliance on those pernicious exemptions from diocesan jurisdiction which the religious orders vied with each other in procuring from Rome, and which were destroying all discipline and subverting all rightful authority.[1601]

Over against the picture of the world and the Church as they actually were, the disciple of Archbishop Theobald sets his ideal of both as they should be—as the primate and his children aimed at making them. For John’s model commonwealth, built up in a somewhat disjointed fashion on a foundation partly of Holy Writ and partly of classic antiquity, is not, like the great Utopia of the sixteenth century, the product of one single, exceptionally constituted mind; it is a reflection of the plans and hopes of those among whom John lived and worked, and thus it helps us to see something of the line of thought which had guided their action in the past and which moulded their schemes for the future. Like all medieval theorists, they began at the uppermost end of the social and political scale; they started from a definite view of the rights and duties of the king, as the head on which all the lower members of the body politic depended. The divine right of kings, the divine ordination of the powers that be, were fundamental doctrines which they understood in a far wider and loftier sense than the king-worshippers of the seventeenth century:—which they employed not to support but to combat the perverted theory that “the sovereign’s will has the force of law,” already creeping in through the influence of the imperial jurisprudence;[1602]—and which were no less incompatible with the principle of invariable hereditary succession. “Lands and houses and suchlike things must needs descend to the next in blood; but the government of a people is to be given only to him whom God has chosen thereto, even to him who has God’s Spirit within him and God’s law ever before his eyes.... Not that for the mere love of change it is lawful to forsake the blood of princes, to whom by the privilege of the divine promises and by the natural claims of birth the succession of their children is justly due, if only they walk according to right. Neither, if they turn aside from the right way, are they to be immediately cast off, but patiently admonished till it become evident that they are obstinate in their wickedness”[1603]—then, and then only, shall the axe be laid to the root of the corrupt tree, and it shall cumber the ground no more.[1604]

Such was the moral which the wisest and most thoughtful minds in England drew from the lessons of the anarchy. On a like principle, it was in the growth of a more definite and earnest sense of individual duty and responsibility, as opposed to the selfish lawlessness which had so long prevailed, that they trusted for the regeneration of society. They sought to teach the knights to live up to the full meaning of their vows and the true objects of their institution—the protection of the Church, the suppression of treason, the vindication of the rights of the poor, the pacification of the country;[1605] so that the consecration of their swords upon the altar at their investiture should be no empty form, but, according to its original intention, a true symbol of the whole character of their lives and, if need be, of their deaths.[1606] And then side by side with the true knight would stand the true priest:—both alike soldiers of the Cross, fighting in the same cause though with different weapons—figured, according to John’s beautiful application of a text which medieval reformers never wearied of expounding, by the “two swords” which the Master had declared “enough” for His servants, all the lawless undisciplined activity of self-seekers and false brethren being merely the “swords and staves” of the hostile multitude.[1607] Into a detailed examination of the rights or the duties of the various classes of the people no one in those days thought it necessary to enter; their well-being and well-doing were regarded as dependent upon those of their superiors, and the whole question of the relation between rulers and ruled—“head and feet,” according to the simile which John borrows from Plutarch—was solved by the comprehensive formula, “Every one members one of another.”[1608] To watch over and direct the carrying-out of this principle was the special work of the clergy; and the clerical reformers were jealous for the rights of their order because, as understood by them, they represented and covered the rights of the whole nation; the claims which they put forth in the Church’s name were a protest in behalf of true civil and religious liberty against tyranny on the one hand and license on the other.[1609] “For there is nothing more glorious than freedom, save virtue; if indeed freedom may rightly be severed from virtue—for all who know anything aright know that true freedom has no other source.”[1610]

How far these lofty views had made their way into the high places of the Church it was as yet scarcely possible to judge. The tone of the English episcopate had certainly undergone a marked change for the better during the last six years of Stephen’s reign. Theobald’s hopes must, however, have been chiefly in the rising generation. Of the existing bishops there was only one really capable of either helping or hindering the work which the primate had at heart; for Henry of Winchester, although his royal blood, his stately personality and his long and memorable career necessarily made him to his life’s end an important figure in both Church and state, had ceased to take an active part in the affairs of either, and for several years lived altogether away from England, in his boyhood’s home at Cluny.[1611] A far more weighty element in the calculations of the reforming party was the character and policy of the bishop of Hereford, Gilbert Foliot. From the circumstances in which we find Gilbert’s relatives in England,[1612] it seems probable that he belonged to one of the poorer Norman families of knightly rank who came over either in the train of the great nobles of the conquest or in the more peaceful immigration under Henry I. His youth is lost in obscurity; of his education we know nothing, save by its fruits. Highly gifted as he unquestionably was by nature, even his inborn genius could hardly have enabled him to acquire his refined and varied scholarship, his unrivalled mastery of legal, political and ecclesiastical lore, his profound and extensive knowledge of men and things, anywhere but in some one or other of the universities of the day. It is curious that although Gilbert’s extant correspondence is one of the most voluminous of the time—extending over nearly half a century, and addressed to persons of the most diverse ranks, parties, professions and nationalities—it contains not one allusion to the studies or the companions of his youth, not one of those half playful, half tender reminiscences of student-triumphs, student-troubles and student-friendships, which were so fresh in the hearts and in the letters of many distinguished contemporaries. Only from an appeal made to him, when bishop of London, in behalf of his old benefactor’s orphan and penniless children, do we learn that he had once been the favourite pupil, the ward, almost the adoptive son, of a certain Master Adam.[1613] It is tempting, but perhaps hardly safe, to conjecture that this Master Adam was the learned Englishman of that name who in like manner befriended another young fellow-countryman, John of Salisbury, when he too was studying in Paris.[1614] This, however, was not till Gilbert Foliot’s student-days had long been past. Wherever his youth may have been spent, wherever his reputation may have been acquired, the one was quite over and the other was fully established before 1139, when he had been already for some years a monk of Cluny, had attained the rank of prior in the mother-house, and had thence been promoted to become the head of the dependent priory of Abbeville.[1615]

In 1139 the abbot of S. Peter’s at Gloucester died; Miles the constable, the lord of Gloucester castle and sheriff of the county, and the greatest man of the district after Earl Robert himself, secured the vacant office for Gilbert Foliot,[1616] who was a family connexion of his own.[1617] The abbey of S. Peter at Gloucester, founded as a nunnery in the seventh century, changed into a college of secular priests after the Danish wars, and finally settled as a house of Benedictine monks in the reign of Cnut, had risen to wealth and fame under its first Norman abbot, Serlo, some of whose work still survives in the nave of his church, now serving as the cathedral church of Gloucester. Gloucester itself, the capital of Earl Robert’s territories, was still, like Hereford and Shrewsbury, a border-city whose inhabitants had to be constantly on their guard against the thievery and treachery of the Welsh, who, though often highly useful to their English earl as auxiliary forces in war, were anything but loyal subjects or trustworthy neighbours. The position of abbot of S. Peter’s therefore was at all times one of some difficulty and anxiety; and Gilbert entered upon it at a specially difficult and anxious time. Stephen’s assent to his appointment can hardly have been prompted by favour to Miles, who had openly defied the king a year ago; he may have been influenced by fear of giving fresh offence to such a formidable deserter, or he may simply have been, as we are told, moved by the report of Gilbert’s great merits.[1618] The new abbot proved quite worthy of his reputation. His bitterest enemies always admitted that he was a pattern of monastic discipline and personal asceticism; and his admirable judgement, moderation and prudence soon made him a personage of very high authority in the counsels of the English Church. Holding such an important office in the city which was the head-quarters of the Empress’s party throughout the greater part of the civil war, he of course had his full share of the troubles of the anarchy, whereof Welsh inroads counted among the least. There is no doubt that in bringing him to England Miles had, whether intentionally or not, brought over one who sympathized strongly with the Angevin cause; but Gilbert’s sympathies led him into no political partizanship. During his nine years’ residence at Gloucester he consistently occupied the position which seems to have been his ideal through life: that of a churchman pure and simple, attached to no mere party in either Church or state, but ready to work with each and all for the broad aims of ecclesiastical order and national tranquillity. That these aims came at last to be identified with the success of the Angevin party was a result of circumstances over which Gilbert had no control. He was honoured, consulted and trusted by the most diverse characters among the bishops. Mere abbot of a remote monastery as he was, Nigel of Ely was glad to be recommended by him to Pope Celestine, Jocelyn of Salisbury to Lucius, and Alexander of Lincoln to Eugene III.[1619] He was treated almost as an equal not only by his own diocesan Bishop Simon of Worcester, by his neighbour Robert of Hereford, and by Jocelyn of Salisbury, but even by the archbishop of Canterbury and the legate Henry of Winchester; and he writes in the tone of a patron and adviser to Bishop Uhtred of Landaff and to the heads of the religious houses on the Welsh border.[1620] He seems indeed to have been the usual medium of communication between the Church in the western shires and its primate at far-off Canterbury, who evidently found him a trustworthy and useful agent in managing the very troublesome Church affairs of the Welsh marches during the civil war.

When at last the storm subsided and a turn of the tide came with the spring of 1148, Theobald openly shewed his confidence in the abbot of Gloucester by commanding his attendance on that journey to Reims which the king had forbidden, and which was therefore looked upon as the grand proclamation of ecclesiastical independence, as well as of devotion to the house of Anjou. Gilbert, with characteristic caution, excused himself on the plea that the troubles of his house urgently required his presence at home;[1621] but he ended by going nevertheless,[1622] and when his friend Bishop Robert of Hereford—one of the three prelates whom Stephen had permitted to attend the council of Reims—died during its session, the Pope and the primate rewarded Gilbert with the succession to the vacant see.[1623] For his perjury in doing homage to Stephen for its temporalities after swearing to hold them only of Henry Fitz-Empress he may be supposed to have quieted his conscience with the plea that there was no other means of securing them for Henry’s benefit;—a plea which Henry, after some delay,[1624] found it wise to accept. The heads of the Angevin party knew indeed that Gilbert regarded all homage to Stephen as simply null and void; he had just written it plainly to Brian Fitz-Count, when criticizing Brian’s apology for the Empress, in a letter[1625] which, we may be very sure, must have been handed about and studied among her friends as a much more valuable document than the pamphlet which had called it forth.

The career of the new bishop of Hereford was but the natural continuation of that of the abbot of Gloucester. His more exalted office enabled him to be more than ever Theobald’s right hand in the direction of the western dioceses. In their secular policy he and Theobald were wholly at one; whether they really were equally so in their ideas of Church reform is a question which was never put to the test; but the tone of Gilbert’s mind, so far as it can be made out from his letters and from his course in after-years, does not seem to have altogether harmonized with that which prevailed in the primate’s household; and the one member of that household with whom Gilbert was on really intimate terms was precisely the one who, as afterwards appeared, had imbibed least of its spirit—Roger of Pont-l’Evêque. Gilbert’s character is not an easy one to read. Its inner depths are scarcely reflected in his letters, which are almost all occupied with mere business or formal religious exhortation; we never get from him such a pleasant little stream of unpremeditated, discursive talk as John of Salisbury or Peter of Blois delighted to pour out of the abundance of their hearts into the ears of some old comrade, or such a flood of uncontrolled passion as revealed the whole soul of Thomas Becket. Gilbert’s letters are carefully-balanced, highly-finished compositions; almost every one of them reads as if it had received as much polishing, in proportion to its length and importance, as the review of Earl Brian’s book, which, the abbot owns, occupied what should have been his hours of prayer during two days.[1626] A strong vein of sarcasm, very clever as well as very severe, is the only token of personal feeling which at times forces its way strangely, almost startlingly, through the veil of extreme self-depreciation with which Gilbert strove to cover it. The self-depreciation is even more disagreeable than the sarcasm; yet it seems hardly fair to accuse Gilbert of conscious hypocrisy. There was a bitter, sneering disposition ingrained in his innermost being, and he knew it. His elaborate expressions of more than monastic humility and meekness may have been the outcome of a struggle to smother what he probably regarded as his besetting sin; and if he not only failed to smother it, but drifted into a much more subtle and dangerous temptation, still it is possible that he himself never perceived the fact, and was less a deceiver than a victim of self-deception. During his episcopate at Hereford, at any rate, no shadow of suspicion fell upon him from any quarter; primate and Pope esteemed, trusted and consulted him as one of the wisest as well as most zealous doctors of the English Church; and when the young king came to his throne he did not fail to shew a duly respectful appreciation of Gilbert’s character and services.