Introduction
Ranulf Flambard followed William the Conqueror over to England, helped compile the Domesday Book, and collected eye-watering taxes for William II ‘Rufus’. On his accession in 1100, Henry I won many friends by making the abrasive and ambitious cleric, now Bishop of Durham, the Tower of London’s first prisoner.
BY the king’s command, he was allowed every day two shillings for his diet while in confinement,* so that, with the assistance of his friends, he fared sumptuously for a prisoner, and kept daily a splendid table for himself and his keepers.*
One day a cord was brought to the bishop in a flagon of wine,* and he caused a plentiful banquet to be served which the guards (having partaken of it in his company) washed down with Falernian cups in the highest spirits.* Having intoxicated them to such a degree that they slept soundly, the bishop secured the cord to a mullion in the centre of the tower window, and, catching up his pastoral staff, began to lower himself by means of the cord.
But, now, having forgotten to put on gloves, he found his hands excoriated to the bone by the rough cord, and as it did not reach the ground, the portly bishop fell, and being much bruised, groaned piteously.*
Two shillings was indeed generous: in Henry I (2003), scholar Warren Hollister notes that common knights were paid threepence a day (with 12 pence to the shilling).
The Constable of the Tower was William de Mandeville, whose complicity or carelessness cost him his job and a third of his estates. His son Geoffrey de Mandeville recovered both the land and the position of Constable in the reign of King Stephen (r. 1135-1154).
Ranulf was imprisoned on August 15th, 1100, the Feast of the Dormition of Mary; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle dates his escape to February 2nd 1101, Candlemas, though others give the date as the following day, suggesting a time in the small hours.
Falernian wine was a prized white (or rather amber) wine of the Roman Republic, grown in Italy, and also exported to Britain; as a rule, Greek wine was the more expensive but Falernian was among the exceptions and particularly strong — Horace watered it down. By the time of Pliny the Elder (23-79) its quality was in decline, ‘growers being more solicitous about quantity than quality’. Galen (129-?200/216) was of the opinion that much so-called Falernian wine was spurious (no appellation d’origine contrôlée in those days), and by Orderic’s time it was a name from history only.
‘Whether he hurt his arms, or grazed the skin off his hands,’ sniffed William of Malmesbury, aware of details in Orderic’s account that might encourage sympathy for the absconding cleric, ‘is a matter of no importance.’
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
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