A HISTORY OF NORFOLK known, but in late life he speaks of his high birth, his great connexions, and his large resources.' Others mention his handsome person, the charm of his manner and his conversational powers. He spent his early years in the splendid abbey of Fecamp in Normandy, and was probably there as a young postulant when the Conqueror kept his Easter at this monastery in 1067.* Here in process of time he became prior, or sub-prior.^ In 1088 he was promoted to be abbot of Ramsey, then one of the wealthiest religious houses in England, and it was while occupying this important position that he managed to obtain the abbacy of the new minster at Winchester for his father, Robert Losinga, and the bishopric of Thetford for himself. Anselm was not the man to pass over unnoticed the irregularity in the appointment of Herbert to the East Anglian bishopric, especially when it was a burning question in all the churches of Europe whether a bishop could be considered canonically a bishop of any see to which he had not been duly invested with his ring and staff by the pope of Rome. Moved by the primate's persuasion, or urged by his own convictions, Herbert decided to make his peace with the pope, ask forgiveness, and in the meantime resign his staff into the hands of the king. The next thing we hear is that Herbert slipped away to Rome, and there receiving formal investiture at the hands of Pope Urban II was back again in England in April, 1095. From this year the title of bishop of Thetford disappears. Herbert and his successors in the East Anglian see became from henceforth bishops of Norwich. Bishop Herbert had the instincts of a reformer and the practical ability and tenacity of purpose necessary for the carrying out of his schemes ; also he was a man who could bide his time. During the years when the preaching of the first crusade on the continent was rousing the most phlegmatic to every kind of wild fanaticism, the contagion of religious frenzy seems to have had no effect upon the Norfolk people, high or low. It may be inferred that the bishop set his face against the crusading madness ; he had his own work to do, and he gave himself to that in earnest. Norwich, which by this time had become from its position the chief town in the diocese, was chosen as the seat of the bishopric in place of Thetford, which could not claim equal advantages, and in the first instance had, or so it would seem, been chosen rather for want of a better site than for any peculiar fitness. But Norwich, with all its qualifications, possessed no church which could be made the cathedral church of the diocese. So it happened that the first act of Bishop Herbert, after the selection of Norwich as the seat of the bishopric, was the establishment of the great monastic house in which, as at Rochester, Durham, and elsewhere, the bishop of the diocese took the place of abbot. Here the parochial clergy were summoned to appear before their bishop at the annual synods, to give an account of themselves and to hold their deliberations under their bishop's eye. To the building of this great religious foundation all the magnates of the shire were invited to contribute each according to his power, much in the same way that in our own time the wealthy classes are subscribing to ' Goulburn, Life and Letters of Herbert Losinga, ep. xxviii, vol. i, 46. 'Freeman, Norm. Conf. iv, 87 et seq., where there is a good account of Fecamp. • In Anthony Bek's book in the Lincoln Archives, he is s.iid to have been 'Monachus et Subprior.' 220
