On a journey to Rouen he was robbed and left bound in a wood, where
some peasants found him, and brought him for shelter to the Abbey
of Bec, recently founded by Herluin. Here he felt himself called to
the monastic life, and became a monk at Bec, which sprang up
rapidly under him into a school no less of literature than of
piety, where William often retired to make spiritual retreats, and
where an intimacy sprang up between them. He became successively
Prior of Bec and abbot of William's new foundation of St. Stephen's
at Caen. His influence with the Pope procured the papal sanction
for the invasion of England; and afterwards, in 1070, the
Archbishopric of Canterbury was pressed upon him by William, which
he held until his death in 1089, in the eighty-fourth year of his
age.
In some respects he dealt harshly with the English clergy, and
connived at their wholesale deprivation. We must own, in
extenuation, that their lives and conduct had not been such as to
do honour to God, that they were said to be the most ignorant
clergy in Europe; and that the sins of the nation under their
guidance were owned, even by the English, to have brought the heavy
judgment of the Conquest upon them. Otherwise, Lanfranc was a
protector of the oppressed, in which character he is introduced in
the tale.
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