Hilary of Chichester - Henry II's Reign

Henry II's Reign

Hilary held the office of Sheriff of Sussex in 1155, and then again in 1160 through 1162. It was very unusual for a bishop to hold the post of sheriff, and was a measure of the trust that King Henry II had in Hilary. Hilary was the only bishop to hold the office of sheriff during Henry's reign, with the possible exception of Robert de Chesney, the Bishop of Lincoln. An English church council in 1143 had forbidden clergy to hold office as stewards or tax gatherers for non-clergy. As the office of sheriff involved the gathering of the county farm, or income from the county, and the payment of those revenues into the Exchequer, clergy holding office as sheriffs would have been acting against the decrees of the 1143 council. Hilary was well known as a canon lawyer, and was often employed by the papacy as a judge-delegate, hearing cases that had been appealed to Rome, and then sent back to the country of origin for trial. He also assisted other papal judges, including Theobald of Bec. Hilary served in England as a royal justice in 1156, and then was with the king in Normandy from late 1156 to April 1157. Hilary acted as judge-delegate for the papacy in at least 15 cases during his bishopric. He acted as a legal advisor to Henry II on a number of occasions, and Hilary's clerks occasionally drew up documents for the king.

Hilary created the offices of treasurer and chancellor of the diocese of Chichester, in order to regulate and improve the finances of the cathedral chapter and the diocese. He also was involved in the canonization of Edward the Confessor, writing a letter to Pope Alexander III in favour of Edward's sainthood, and was one of the three bishops who announced the canonization at Westminster Abbey and celebrated a mass in honour of the new saint. The other bishops were Robert de Chesney and Nigel, Bishop of Ely.

In May 1162, Hilary was part of the deputation sent to the monks of Christ Church Priory by King Henry II to secure the election of Thomas Becket as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. When Gilbert Foliot, the Bishop of Hereford, objected to Becket's candidacy, Hilary took the position that the king desired the election, so the bishops and electors should elect the king's choice. When it was suggested that a monk should hold Canterbury, as had been the custom previously, Hilary asked if the questioners thought that only one way of life was satisfactory to God.

The next year, a council held at Westminster became one of the early stages in the king's growing quarrel with Becket over criminal clerks. The quarrel was sparked by the problem of clergy who committed crimes; Becket supported the Church's position that all clergy, even those in minor orders, could be tried only in ecclesiastical courts. As perhaps as many as a fifth of the population of England may have been in some form of clerical orders, including the minor ones, allowing this would have diminished the king's authority. In the past, English law had tried clerks who committed serious offences in the royal courts, but recent changes in canon law were changing this practice. At Westminster, Henry tried to get the leading laymen and bishops to swear to uphold the old customs of England, instead of the newer canon law practices. All the bishops swore, with the reservation that the customs were not in conflict with canon law. Hilary, however, added no qualifiers to his oath. Although the oath supported Becket's position, after the council most of the bishops, including Hilary, were persuaded by the king to support some compromise position, and threw their support behind Henry.

After the Council of Westminster, Hilary supported the king throughout the Becket dispute, and one factor in his royalist position may have been that Hilary remembered who had opposed his case against Battle Abbey, and thus refused to support the archbishop. Towards the end of 1163, Henry sent Hilary on an embassy to Becket, to persuade the archbishop to modify his position, but Becket was unmoved. Hilary also took part in the king's embassy in 1164 to Pope Alexander III and King Louis VII of France, which attempted to persuade the pope and the king of France to favour King Henry instead of Becket, and to keep Becket from finding a haven in France during his exile.