The Chronicle of Lanercost Priory

Summary

Lanercost Priory, near Carlisle, was an Augustinian community which was founded in c.1166, and at some later date this strange little legend about a meeting between the bishop of Winchester and the spirit of King Arthur was recorded in its chronicle. The entry date in the chronicle giving the year 1216 as the time of the meeting corresponds to a particularly chaotic year during the period when Peter des Roches held the see of Winchester. This bishop played a key role as an adviser to King John during the civil war which followed the king's alienation from his barons. As we have seen in ‘The Dark Hunters of Peterborough’, supernatural incidents of this kind were often recorded as a means of highlighting the portentous implications of turbulent political events. Quite why the chronicle of a monastery near the Scottish border should record a legend about a churchman from the south of England is unclear, although both the border country and the district around Winchester itself had legendary associations with Arthur (there is a hilltop called Sleepers’ Hill near Winchester where the recumbent king supposedly lies awaiting the call of destiny). There are themes in this story – the palace in the woods, the attentive servants, the powerful monarch from another time who lives on in a dimension close to our own – which are reminiscent of Walter Map's accounts of apparitions and the wandering of King Herla. The folk-tales connecting Bishop Peter des Roches with butterflies may have arisen from the tendency of ‘this kind of fluttering creature’ to hatch out from the crevices in his tomb when the winter sunlight fell on his effigy in Winchester Cathedral.

MEDIEVAL GHOST STORIES 97

King Arthur and the Butterfly Bishop

AD MCCXVI

At this point I will record the stories told to me by older men about Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, to whom I have referred from time to time. He was a proud man, overly attached to secular affairs, in the manner of many of our churchmen. As he enjoyed pleasurable pastimes rather than the healing of souls, it is said that on one occasion he went off with some huntsmen on one of his frequent forays to pursue game in a nearby forest which was owned by his bishopric.