In 1138, Gilles, a monk barely into manhood, is sent by the great Benedictine abbey of Bec in Normandy to its estate of Stivetun in Berchescire. His charge seems routine: to oversee the farming of the abbey’s lands and to cure the souls of its peasant tenants. But England is in a state of political and religious upheaval, a morass that draws the naïve Gilles into a series of dilemmas which will test his ingenuity and his faith. He must contend with the self-serving Bishops of Wyncestre and Sarum; Alvric, the obdurate reeve of the village; and the seductive Maud of Walingeford. And then there is the guileful Peter of Waneting, his old mentor from Bec, who is forever shifting shape. Gilles’ sense of justice and truth thrusts him to the forefront of calamitous events and compels him to make choices that will seal the fate of some and the salvation of many.
It is nearly nine hundred years since my predecessor, Gilles of Bec, was appointed priest of Steventon. Yet the troubles he faced are echoed by modern day events: the dominion of the powerful over the weak; people driven from their homes and loved ones by war and ethnic tensions; the wrestling between religion and politics for the high-ground. The story will resonate with all who have a sense of the past and an eye for future. It is a tale of courage that will not fail to inspire.
Rev’d Phil Sutton, St Michael’s and All Angels, Steventon 2017-25
How England fell into bloody civil war
The death of William of Atheling led to seventeen years of war between the Empress Matilda and Stephen of Blois for the throne of England.
he Bishop of Wyncestre sat back in his episcopal throne, settling into the cushions stuffed with the finest of Hamptunscire wool, and closed his eyes. It was the most unpredictable but the most preventable of catastrophes that had set the ass braying in the first place. It was November 1120 – eighteen years ago when he was still a novice monk at Cluny – that some damned fool of a sea captain and his equally delinquent crew of drunkards set forth from Barfleur, with half the wine-sodden royal court on board, still celebrating the outbreak of peace between their king, Henry of England, and Louis of France. Not only did the rocks off the harbour mouth rip the bottom out of the boat, they ripped the bottom out of Henry’s heart too. On board was his only son, William the Atheling, heir to his Kingdom of England and lands in northern France, including the Duchy of Normandy. Despite the profligacy of his loins – Henry managed to sire at least nineteen illegitimate children as a consequence of his romps through the bedchambers of England and beyond – no further legitimate issue arrived. Henry was left with his one daughter, Matilda, the Empress.
The Lamentations of Henry, Bishop of Wyncestre, 1096-1171, recorded in The Cage Full of Birds, the first book in The Gilles of Bec Chronicles.