IV.
EARLY SOMERSET ARCHDEACONS
Archdeacons reappear in England after the Conquest. In the period immediately preceding it the very title had almost died out: but the new Norman bishops introduced the foreign custom by which a diocese was divided into three or four archdeaconries.[1] Although Giso (1061-88), the Lotharingian bishop brought over by K. Edward, was an ardent reformer, we do not find an archdeacon in the diocese of Wells until 1084. In that year the Gheld Inquest mentions Benselin the archdeacon as holding a hide and a half under Bishop Giso. Two years later the Domesday Survey says that Benthelin (designated archdeacon in the Exeter Book) holds the church of Yatton.[2] And Benzelin the archdeacon attests a Bath charter of Bishop John, which appears to belong to the early years of his episcopate.[3] It appears therefore that Benselin was Bishop Giso's archdeacon, appointed in all probability after K. William's decree of 1076 enforcing the distinction between the ecclesiastical and civil jurisdictions, and maintained in office during the early years of Bishop John, when the see was transferred from Wells to Bath.
The next name we meet with is that of Girbert, who attests the Dunster charter of William de Moion in the time of William Rufus. This charter was confirmed by Archbishop Anselm, and should perhaps be assigned to 1094–7.[4] In 1106 Girbert attests Bishop John's record of his gifts to the church of Bath.[5] Here he is preceded by two other archdeacons, Walcher (' Walkerius ') and Robert, who perhaps were senior to him in appointment; but they do not occur again. Girbert however is at the bishop's court at Bath on 30 June 1120 (?), where again we find three archdeacons: 'cum archidiaconis tribus, Johele Salisberiensi et Girberto Bathensi et Araldo'. [6] It
- ↑ The subject is carefully treated by Dr Frere in his Introduction to Elizabethan Articles and Injunctions (Alcuin Club Collections, 1910), i, pp. 35-53.
- ↑ Victoria County History, Somerset, i, pp. 458, 351.
- ↑ Bath Chartularies (Som. Rec. Soc, vol. 7), i. 51.
- ↑ Ibid. i. 34; cf. 65.
- ↑ Ibid. i. 53.
- ↑ Ibid. i. 49. This is the record of a case which opened by the recitation of a writ from William, the king's son. As Prince William was drowned in the White Ship near the end of 1120, the date given in the chartulary (1121) is probably a mistake.
