wax taper, ‘cereum rege dignum,’ offered by the king, broke in two, as he put it in Alexander's hands, an omen of the crushing of the king's power. The chain by which the pyx hung above the altar suddenly snapped asunder, and the sacred wafer fell to the ground at the bishop's feet. A month later we find Alexander at Winchester, taking part, in the solemn reception in the cathedral of the Empress Maud by the legate, Bishop Henry of Blois, 3 March 1141, and in the synod which followed, in the presence of Archbishop Theobald (7 April); he was one of those who, having, it is recorded, previously obtained the king's leave, bent to the times and swore allegiance to his rival (‘impetrata venia ut in necessitatem temporis transirent,’ Will. Malm. Hist. Novell. lib. ii. 105). A terrible accusation is brought against Alexander, together with his brother bishops of Winchester and Coventry, by the author of the ‘Gesta Stephani,’ of having helped to aggravate the miseries of those days of anarchy, not only by conniving at the acts of cruelty and rapacity of the barons and their retainers which were turning the land into a hell, ‘fearing to strike with the word of God those children of Belial,’ but even by openly imitating their evil deeds, extorting money by torture and imprisonment.
Alexander, having replenished his coffers by suchlike acts of barefaced rapacity, in 1145 paid a second visit to Rome. A new pope had just taken his seat on the throne of St. Peter, Eugenius III, the friend of St. Bernard. As on his former visit, when his prodigal liberality procured for Alexander the title of ‘the Magnificent,’ he lavished money with the utmost profusion, both in his private expenditure and in his gifts. His welcome was in accordance. He was received with the utmost honour by the pope and the whole court, who, after his prolonged stay—for he did not leave Rome till the following year—pursued their open-handed guest with grateful memories and vain regrets (Hen. Hunt. lib. viii. 225.) During his absence the conflagration of his cathedral had occurred, to which reference has already been made, and the first work of the bishop on his return to his diocese, where he was received with the utmost reverence and joy, was to restore the blackened and roofless walls of the stern Norman church of Remigius to more than its original beauty and to add a stone vault (ibid.) It was at the close of the year 1146 that Stephen, having at last got his powerful subject, the Earl of Chester, into his hands by treachery and obtained the surrender of the castle of Lincoln and other strongholds as the price of his ransom, feeling himself for the first time a king in fact, kept his Christmas at Lincoln, and, in defiance of an ancient prophecy denouncing disaster to any monarch who should thus adopt full regal state within its walls, was crowned there anew. Neither the place where, nor the person by whom, the ceremony was performed, is recorded; but we can hardly be wrong in concluding that it took place in the renovated cathedral at the hands of Bishop Alexander. Alexander's career was now nearly at an end. The summer of the following year he started for Auxerre to pay a visit to Pope Eugenius, who was sojourning in that city. He was again honourably received by the pontiff, but the excessive heat of the season injuriously affected his health, and on his return to England he brought with him the seeds of a low fever, which proved fatal at the beginning of the next year, 1148 (Hen. Hunt. p. 226). He was buried in his cathedral on Ash Wednesday, but no monument marks his grave, and its place is unknown. Henry of Huntingdon, whose patron he was, and who dedicated to him the history he had written at his request, though not sparing his faults, gives this attractive description of Alexander's person and character: ‘His disposition was always kind; his judgment always equal; his countenance at all times not only cheerful but joyous.’ A letter is extent addressed to him by St. Bernard of Clairvaux on the occasion of one of the canons of his cathedral entering the Cistercian order. The saint's warnings ‘not to lose the lasting glory of the next world for the sake of the transient glory of a world of shadows, nor to love his possessions more than his true self, lest he thereby lose both,’ afford an instructive comment on the notorious worldliness of his life (Bernard, Ep. lxiv.) Alexander's relatives profited by his episcopal patronage. He made his brother David archdeacon of Buckingham, and his nephew William archdeacon of Northampton. The last-named appears to have been his uncle's executor, handing over to the dean and chapter the books bequeathed to them by Alexander, viz. Genesis (imperfect), the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John, and the Book of Job, all glossed, the canonical Epistles and Apocalypse, and a volume containing Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles.
