Nigel (Bishop of Ely) - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

Nigel died on 30 May 1169. In either 1164 or in 1166, or possibly both, he had been struck by paralysis, and after this he seems to have withdrawn from active affairs. He took little part in the disputes between the king and Thomas Becket, although he did agree with his fellow bishops who opposed the king's attempt to reduce clerical benefits. He may have been buried at Ely, where a 12th-century marble slab possibly marks his tomb.

Nigel was a married bishop, and his son Richard fitzNeal was later Lord Treasurer and Bishop of London. Another son was William, called William the Englishman. Richard, who wrote the Dialogus de Scaccario, or Dialogue concerning the Exchequer about the procedures of the Exchequer, had been taught those procedures by his father. Nigel's uncle Roger had at least one son, Roger, who was King Stephen's chancellor; Adelelm, who succeeded Nigel as treasurer after his first term, was probably Roger's son also. Another relative was William of Ely, who succeeded Richard fitzNeal as treasurer in 1196, although the exact relationship is unclear.

Nigel was active in draining the Fens, the swampy land around Ely, to increase the agricultural lands around his bishopric. He also fortified the Isle of Ely with stone defences, probably starting around 1140. The remains of one castle on Cherry Hill in Ely probably date to Nigel's fortifications. Early in his time as bishop he was active in recovering lands of the church that had been granted to knights by his predecessors, and soon after his consecration he ordered an inquest made into the lands actually owned by the diocese and cathedral chapter. The bishop spent most of his life in debt, but in the year he died he managed to clear it with his son's help. The monks of his cathedral chapter did not like the fact that they were required to pay for the bishop's appeals to Rome to recover his see, or pay for regaining the king's favour. Their dislike of their bishop is evident in the Liber Eliensis. The art historian C. R. Dodwell wrote of Nigel's efforts:

When .... Nigel ... needed to raise money in order to repair his own political fortunes, he stripped down, sold, or used as security, a quite astounding number of Ely's monastic treasures. These numbered Crucifixes of gold and silver from the Anglo-Saxon past, and they included an alb with gold-embroidered apparels, given by St Æthelwold, and a chasuble, given by King Edgar, which was almost all of gold. A gold and bejewelled textile covering ... was sold to the Bishop of Lincoln, Alexander, who took it with him to Rome as a gift of particular splendour. It is a biting commentary on attitudes of the Anglo-Norman episcopy to Anglo-Saxon art, that it was left to the pope to point out that such an artistic heirloom should never have left Ely in the first place and to order its return.

Most historians have seen Nigel as an administrator, not a religious bishop. The historian David Knowles wrote that Nigel "had devoted all his energies and abilities to matters purely secular; in the department of financial administration he was supreme, and more than any other man he helped to ensure the continuity and development of the excellent administrative practice initiated under Henry I". The historian W. L. Warren said that "Stephen probably paid dearly for the dismissal of Bishop Roger of Salisbury and Bishop Nigel of Ely, for the expertise of the exchequer was lodged in their expertise." Whatever Nigel's administrative talent, his ecclesiastical abilities are generally held to be low; the Gesta Stephani says of both him and Alexander that they were "men who loved display and were rash in their reckless presumption ... disregarding the holy and simple manner of life that befits a Christian priest they devoted themselves so utterly to warfare and the vanities of this world that whenever they attended court by appointment they … aroused general astonishment on account of the extraordinary concourse of knights by which they were surrounded on every side."