Stigand

views updated May 29 2018

Stigand (c.1000–72), archbishop of Canterbury (1052–70), was a worldly prelate, whose extensive lands placed him among the wealthiest magnates in Edward the Confessor's England. Promoted rapidly by the king, he held the bishoprics of Winchester and Canterbury in plurality after 1052, an arrangement for which there were precedents in England, but which was illegal in canon law. His appointment to Canterbury after the Norman Robert of Jumièges had been forced into exile was also deemed uncanonical by the papacy. He was at first apparently accepted by William the Conqueror, even though he had crowned Harold Godwineson. This was presumably a consequence of William's early policy of trying to work with the native English. But in 1070 a case for his removal was built up from his numerous irregularities and he was deposed by a papal legate. He died a prisoner in 1072.

David Richard Bates