To Henry,
He was nephew, by his mother, of Henry I, King of
England, brother of King Stephen, and son of Stephen, Count of Blois. “His
mother, Adela,” says William of Newburgh, “not wishing to appear to have borne
children only for the world, had him tonsured.” In 1126, The History of the
Abbey of Glastonbury counts him among the number of the abbots of that
monastery, and says, “he was a man extremely versed in letters, and of
remarkable regularity of character. By his excellent administration the Abbey of
Glastonbury profited so much that his tame will be held in everlasting memory
there” (Monast. Anglican. Vol. ii. p. 18). Henry was elevated later on to
the see of Winchester, and Bernard complains of him in writing to Pope Eugenius.
“What shall I say of his Lordship of Winchester? The works which he does show
sufficiently what he is.” Harpsfield reports that he extorted castles from
nobles whom he had invited to a feast, and Roger that he had consecrated the
intruder William to the See of York (Annal. under year 1140).
The latter calls him legate of the Roman See. Brito and Henriquez must,
therefore, be wrong in counting him among the Cistercians, and the latter in
particular, in speaking of him as a man of eminent sanctity, taking occasion
from the testimony of Wion (Ligno vitæ), who calls him a man gifted with
prophecy, because when on his death-bed, in receiving the visit of his nephew,
Henry, he predicted to him that he would be punished by God on account of the
death of S. Thomas of Canterbury, whom he had himself consecrated; as if that
saying may not have been inspired by fear rather than prophecy, as Manrique
rightly says in his Annals. Peter the Venerable wrote many
letters to him, which are still extant, among others Letters 24 and 25 in Book
iv., in which he requests that he may return to Cluny to die and be buried
there. Being invited to do so at the request of Louis, the King of France, and
of the chief nobles of Burgundy, and also at the letters of Pope Hadrian IV., he
sent on his treasures to Peter the Venerable, and, leaving England without the
permission of the King, arrived at Cluny in 1155. He discharged from his own
means the debts of the abbey, which were then enormous; he expended for the
support of the monks who lived at Cluny, more than four hundred in number, 7,000
marks of silver, which are equal to 40,000 livres. He gave forty chalices for
celebrating mass, and a silk pannus (which may have been an
altar vestment, or more probably a hanging—[E.]) of great price; he buried with
his own hands Peter the Venerable, who died January 1st, 1157. Having returned
at length to his see, he died, to the great grief of the Religious of Cluny, on
August the 9th, 1171.
Bishop of Winchester