The early years of Henry I’s reign were marked by his dispute with Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury. William Giffard, who had been given his ecclesiastical ring and pastoral staff by Anselm, was caught in the middle. He was still unconsecrated when Henry suggested the Archbishop of York should do the job, and Giffard agreed to the ceremony. To be consecrated with him were Reinhelm of Hereford and Roger of Salisbury. Reinhelm, siding with Anselm, declined to accept York and did not attend the ceremony, but Giffard did, and it was only in the middle of the service that he gave way to his conscience and walked out.
There followed a scene of violent confusion, and the festivities were abandoned. Many people applauded Giffard’s courage in taking the side of the Church over the state in religious matters, but the King was less than pleased. He reacted with immediate and predictable harshness, banishing Giffard from England and confiscating all his property. Anselm tried to intervene, but Henry remained adamant. Anselm and Giffard grew closer, and when Anselm was exiled in 1103, Giffard accompan-ied him on his travels around Europe. We do not know when Henry forgave Giffard, but he was back in England by 1105, and was eventually consecrated – by Anselm – in 1107.
Giffard thereafter introduced Cistercian reform into England and founded its first house at Waverley in Surrey. He founded a house of Austin Canons at Taunton and was instrumental in raising the Church of St Mary Overy in Southwark. It was near this church that he built a palace, for use by future bishops of Winchester while they stayed in London. Contemporary chroniclers give him a strong moral character.
It is thought that Giffard came from the same family as Walter Giffard, the Earl of Buckingham. Walter Giffard died on 15 July 1102, leaving a widow called Agnes and a son named Walter. On 25 October of that same year, Sibylla de Conversano, Duchess of Normandy and wife to Henry I’s brother, Duke Robert, gave birth to a son, William (known as ‘the Clito’). It is not clear what happened later, only that by 18 March 1103, Sibylla was dead. She was reputed to be intelligent and sensible – which the Duke was not – and it is generally agreed that her death was bad news for Normandy.
The chronicler William of Malmesbury blames the disaster on medical problems following the birth of her son, but the contempor-ary historian Orderic Vitalis (1075-c. 1142) has a darker suggestion: that Duke Robert’s mistress, one Agnes Giffard, poisoned her. The rumour may have been down to spite, because Sibylla was popular and the mistress was not, but we shall never know the truth. We do know that if Agnes did murder the Duchess, she did not gain from her crime. The Duke’s realm began to fall apart, and he was far too busy quashing rebellions to marry his mistress.