Clement of Dunblane - On The Wider Stage

On The Wider Stage

Clement's position as Bishop of Dunblane provided the opportunity to participate on the larger national and international stage. In 1241, the Cistercian general chapter began postulating the Pope about the saintliness of Edmund of Abingdon, formerly Archbishop of Canterbury. In the following year, various clerics wrote pieces and compiled evidence supporting this Edmund's claim to sainthood. Clement was one of these clerics. Edmund's saintliness was endorsed by Pope Innocent IV in 1246. Clement took part in a similar campaign in 1249. He was part of the movement to canonise Queen Margaret, one of the ancestors of the contemporary Scottish kings. Clement was appointed to investigate her saintliness, and in the following year Margaret too was canonised. Meanwhile, in 1247, Pope Innocent IV gave Clement the more onerous and demanding appointment of papal tax collector. Clement was charged with collecting one twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues within the Kingdom of the Scots. The purpose was to finance a new crusade, and Clement's appointment was part of a money-raising initiative carried out throughout Western Christendom.

Perhaps Clement's most significant activities were, however, in relation to the bishopric of Argyll. In 1241, Argyll's last bishop, William, had been drowned while at sea. Argyll was the poorest bishopric in Scotland, and the area lacked strong royal authority, and hence good royal protection. In the following six years, no one had taken up the vacant bishopric. From at least 1247, then, Clement was given charge of the diocese. He was essentially being asked to do for Argyll what he had previously done for Strathearn. The sources are quite thin on this ground, but by 1249 he had brought at least one more church into the control of the bishopric. On 23 December 1248, he was also authorised by the Pope to appoint, with the agreement of the Bishop of Glasgow, a new bishop for Argyll. In January 1249, Clement was given permission to move the cathedral of Argyll, based on Lismore, to the mainland. Clement's problem seems to have been with the ruler of Argyll, Eóghan. The lack of royal authority in Argyll made it difficult for the national and international church to exercise control in the province; at the same time, establishing a strong bishopric in the area was vital to integrating the area fully into the kingdom, an aim cherished by the contemporary king, Alexander II. Thus Alexander's goal and Clement's goal were essentially one and the same. It is impossible to be more specific, but in 1249, King Alexander II launched an expedition against Eóghan. The king was attempting to force Eóghan, whose lands lay within both the overlordship of the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of Norway, to renounce his allegiance to the King of Norway. Eóghan told Alexander that he was unable to do this. The contemporary historian Matthew Paris wrote that:

The king therefore declared Eóghan unfaithful and pursued him hostilely by ship near Argyll; urged, as is said, by the vehement promptings of a certain indiscreet bishop of Strathearn, a friar to wit of the order of the Preachers.

This "indiscreet bishop ... friar" was, of course, Clement. Alexander died from ill-health on this expedition, with Clement by his side at his deathbed. Alexander's last act was to make a grant to the bishopric of Argyll. Despite the king's death, the expedition was a success for Clement. There was a new Bishop of Argyll by 27 September 1250; in the longer term, the see continued to be ruled by bishops with no long vacancies until the Reformation. Moreover, by 1255 Eóghan had given his full allegiance to the Scottish crown, albeit because of lack of favour given to him by the King of Norway. Clement's close association with the late King Alexander II and his reputation as a successful bishop made him a key political figure during the minority of Alexander III. Clement was on the Council of Guardians, the small group of nobles and clerics who were to "govern" Scotland until the end of Alexander III's boyhood. The governing Council broke down around two rival factions, one centred around Walter Comyn and the other around Alan Durward. There is little evidence about Clement's activities in regard to the Council, but he was associated with the Comyn faction, who enjoyed the ascendency after Walter gained control of government in 1251. In 1255, the Durwards staged a coup at Roxburgh and ousted the "Comyn faction" from effective power. Unfortunately for Alan Durward, Comyn's supporter Gamelin, who had been placed in the bishopric of St Andrews and excluded from his diocese by Durward, had fled to the papal court and convinced the Pope to excommunicate Alan. The sentence was delivered by Bishop Clement and the abbots of Melrose and Jedburgh. This is Clement's last known act.