FLAMBARD, Ranulph(Ralph), (d. 1128), bishop of Durham, and justiciar under William Rufus, was a Norman of low birth, who came to England in the train of William the Conqueror in 1066. He took holy orders, obtained several church preferments, and was appointed chaplain to the bishop of London, and made prebendary of St Paul’s. He demanded the deanery also, and this being refused him, he left the bishop’s service. He afterwards passed into the service of the king, William II., who made him his chaplain. Ambitious, greedy, and unscrupulous, ho flattered and ministered to the vices of his master, and thereby raised himself to the highest places in church and state. To fill the royal coffers he suggested various arbitrary and oppressive measures, by which he earned the hatred of the people, and at the same time the eulogy of the king, that he was the only man who, to please a master, dared to brave the vengeance of mankind. Flambard appears to have been the first to apply the feudal theory to the estates of the church. He suggested that they should be considered as fiefs or benefices held of the king, and that as such at every vacancy they devolved to the crown till the vacancy was supplied. The lesson was quickly learnt, and the immediate consequence was that benefices were kept vacant during the king’s pleasure, and refilled only on payment of a large sum of money. It was not till after the death of Lanfranc that the king gave himself up unreservedly to the influence of Flambard. The justiciar obtained for himself the custody of the vacant abbeys of Winchester and Chertsey, the bishopric of Lincoln, and the archbishopric of Canterbury. His extortion and oppressions drew upon him the curses of the clergy as well as of the people, and in 1099 an attempt was made to ...