It is difficult to imagine Bristol as a port in the early 1100s. It was an Anglo-Saxon burgh, a walled town built on a grid system, and its four main streets – Corn, Wynche (Wine), High and Broad – still exist. No one knows how many churches were in the burgh at the time; some scholars argue there was only one, while others claim there were more than ten. Since then, rivers have been culverted and diverted, the old walls lost, and many medieval buildings destroyed. Little remains of its once-great fortress, except some wall fragments and a grassy park overlooking the river.
Beiminstre (Bedminster) was a royal manor. The earliest record of St John the Baptist’s dates from 1003, and it was rebuilt several times until it was finally destroyed by incendiary bombs in the 1940s. It was an important place, once mother-church to magnificent St Mary Redcliffe. The village we now know as Long Ashton was called Estune in the Domesday survey of the 1080s, while Dundry was called Dundreg. The village of Saltford, between Bristol and Bath, was called Sanford.
Many people in the story were real. John de Villula and Clarembald were physicians known to have worked for King Henry or his family. John (died 1122) was probably at the Conqueror’s deathbed, and was Rufus’s chaplain before being granted the bishopric of Wells. Wells did not suit John, and he moved his ecclesiastical seat to Bath. Bath had a mint, which, along with its moneyer Osmaer (Osmier), passed into John’s care. John died of a heart attack after eating his Christmas dinner.
Clarembald (died c. 1133) is a shadowy figure, although he seems to have been a collector of books and miracle stories. He spent a lot of time in Exeter, perhaps in the service of the colourful William de Warelwast, Bishop of Exeter (died 1137). Warelwast has been called the first professional civil servant, more interested in effective administration than in affairs of the soul. He was said to have had little learning, but plenty of talent, and was the kind of crafty ambassador Henry I liked.
Robert Bloet, Bishop of Lincoln, had a son called Simon. Simon seemed destined for great things in Henry’s Court, but fell from grace. He was imprisoned, but escaped and died in poverty and exile. William Giffard (died 1129) was Bishop of Winchester. Giffard would have been known as Bishop William, but so would Warelwast, so I have used their second names to avoid confusion.
The Coiner's Quarrel Page 39
