The question whether or not real vineyards were grown,
or real wine made from them, in England has been a
very vexed question among the antiquaries. But
it is scarcely possible to read Pegge’s dispute
with Daines Barrington in the Archaeologia without
deciding both questions in the affirmative.—See
Archaeol. vol. iii. p. 53. An engraving of the
Saxon wine-press is given in STRUTT’s Horda.
Vineyards fell into disuse, either by treaty with
France, or Gascony falling into the hands of the English.
But vineyards were cultivated by private gentlemen
as late as 1621. Our first wines from Bordeaux—
the true country of Bacchus—appear to have
been imported about 1154, by the marriage of Henry
ii. with Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Lanfranc, the first Anglo-Norman Archbishop of Canterbury.
Lanfranc was, in all respects, one of the most remarkable
men of the eleventh century. He was born in
Pavia, about 1105. His family was noble—his
father ranked amongst the magistrature of Pavia, the
Lombard capital. From his earliest youth he gave
himself up, with all a scholar’s zeal, to the
liberal arts, and the special knowledge of law, civil
and ecclesiastical. He studied at Cologne, and
afterwards taught and practised law in his own country.
“While yet extremely young,” says one
of the lively chroniclers, “he triumphed over
the ablest advocates, and the torrents of his eloquence
confounded the subtlest rhetorician.”
His decisions were received as authorities by the
Italian jurisconsults and tribunals. His mind,
to judge both by his history and his peculiar reputation
(for probably few, if any, students of our day can
pretend to more than a partial or superficial acquaintance
with his writings), was one that delighted in subtleties
and casuistical refinements; but a sense too large
and commanding for those studies which amuse but never
satisfy the higher intellect, became disgusted betimes
with mere legal dialectics. Those grand and
absorbing mysteries connected with the Christian faith
and the Roman Church (grand and absorbing in proportion
as their premises are taken by religious belief as
mathematical axioms already proven) seized hold of
his imagination, and tasked to the depth his inquisitive
reason. The Chronicle of Knyghton cites an interesting
anecdote of his life at this, its important, crisis.
He had retired to a solitary spot, beside the Seine,
to meditate on the mysterious essence of the Trinity,
when he saw a boy ladling out the waters of the river
that ran before him into a little well. His
curiosity arrested, he asked “what the boy proposed
to do?” The boy replied, “To empty yon
deep into this well.” “That canst
thou never do,” said the scholar. “Nor
canst thou,” answered the boy, “exhaust
the deep on which thou dost meditate into the well
of thy reason.” Therewith the speaker
vanished, and Lanfranc, resigning the hope to achieve
the mighty mystery, threw himself at once into the
arms of faith, and took his refuge in the monastery
of Bec.
