FLAMBARD, RANULF, or

See also:

• RALPH (d. 1122)

RALPH (d. 1128)  , bishop of Durham and chief minister of William Rufus, was the son of a Norman parish priest who belonged to the diocese of Bayeux . Migrating at an early age to England, the young Ranulf entered the chancery of William I. and became conspicuous as a courtier . He was disliked by the barons, who nicknamed him Flambard in reference to his talents as a mischief-maker; but he acquired the reputation of an acute financier and appears to have played an important part in the compilation of the Domesday survey . In that record he is mentioned as a clerk by profession, and as holding land both in Hants and Oxfordshire . Before the death of the old king he became chaplain to Maurice, bishop of London, under whom he had formerly served in the chancery . But early in the next reign Ranulf returned to the royal service . He is usually described as the chaplain of Rufus; he seems in that capacity to have been the head of the chancery and the custodian of the great seal . But he is also called treasurer9 and there can be no doubt that his services were chiefly of a fiscal character . His name is regularly connected by the chroniclers with the ingenious methods of extortion from which all classes suffered between 1087 and 1100 . He profited largely by the tyranny of Rufus, farming for the king a large proportion of the ecclesiastical preferments which were illegaly kept vacant, and obtaining for himself the wealthy see of Durham (1049) . His fortunes suffered an eclipse upon the accession of Henry I., by whom he was imprisoned in deference to the popular outcry . A bishop, however, was an inconvenient prisoner, and Flambard soon succeded in effecting his escape from the Tower of London .

A popular

legend represents the bishop as descending from the window of his cell by a rope which friends had conveyed to him in a cask of wine . He took refuge with Robert Curthose in Normandy and became one of the advisers who pressed the duke to dispute the crown of England with his younger brother; Robert rewarded the bishop by entrusting him with the ad-ministration of the see of Lisieux . After the victory of Tinchebrai (11(36) the bishop was among the first to make his peace with Henry, and was allowed to return to his English see . At Durham he passed the remainder of his life . His private life was lax; he had at least two sons, for whom he purchased benefices before they had entered on their teens; and scandalous tales are told of the entertainments with which he enlivened his seclusion . But he distinguished himself, even among the bishops of that age, as a builder and a pious founder . He all but completed the cathedral which his predecessor, William of St Carilef, had begun; fortified Durham; built Norham Castle; founded the priory of Mottisfout and endowed the college of Christchurch, Hampshire . As a politician he ended his career with his sub-mission to Henry, who found in Roger of Salisbury a financier not less able and infinitely more acceptable to the nation . Ranulf died on the 5th of September 1128 . See Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica, vols. iii. and iv . (ed. le Prevost, Paris, 1845) ; the first continuation of Symeon's Historia Ecclesiae Dunelmensis (Rolls ed., 1882); William of Malmesbury in the Gesta pontificum (Rolls ed., 187o) ; and the Peterborough Chronicle (Rolls ed., 1861) . Of modern writers E .

A .

Freeman in his William Rufus (Oxford, 1882) gives the fullest account . See also T . A . Archer in the English Historical Review, ii. p . 103; W . Stubbs's Constitutional History of England, vol. i . (Oxford, 1897); J . H . Round's Feudal England (London, 1895) . (H . W .

C .