Winston Bishop Quotes

I have made more bishops than anyone since St. Augustine.

Thereafter the King, for the sake of Christ’s sepulchre, virtually put the realm up for sale. Money he must have at all costs for his campaign in far-off Palestine. He sold and re-sold every office in the State. He made new and revolutionarily heavy demands for taxation. He called for “scutage”, the commutation of military service for a money payment, and later reintroduced “carucage”, a levy on every hundred acres of land. Thus he filled his chests for the Holy War. Confiding the government to two Justiciars, William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, and Hugh de Puiset, Bishop of Durham, under the supervision of the one trustworthy member of his family, his mother, the old Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, he started for the wars in the winter of 1189.

The rectors of Berkshire published a manifesto denying the right of Rome to tax the English Church, and urging that the Pope, like other bishops, should “live of his own”.

In the eleventh century however the Papacy had been reinvigorated under Pope Gregory VII and his successors. Rome now began to make claims which were hardly compatible with the traditional notions of the mixed sovereignty of the King in all matters temporal and spiritual. The Gregorian movement held that the government of the Church ought to be in the hands of the clergy, under the supervision of the Pope. According to this view, the King was a mere layman whose one religious function was obedience to the hierarchy. The Church was a body apart, with its own allegiance and its own laws. By the reign of Henry II the bishop was not only a spiritual officer; he was a great landowner, the secular equal of earls; he could put forces in the field; he could excommunicate his enemies, who might be the King’s friends. Who, then, was to appoint the bishop? And, when once appointed, to whom, if the Pope commanded one thing and the King another, did he owe his duty? If the King and his counsellors agreed upon a law contrary to the law of the Church, to which authority was obedience due? Thus there came about the great conflict between Empire and Papacy symbolised in the question of Investiture, of which the dispute between Henry II and Becket is the insular counterpart.

Knight to bishop three—then rook ten to king seven—

Reporting, honesty in: "Hold it as a maxim that displeasing things must be sent as well as pleasing ones, and the prince, in the end, if he is a man of wisdom and understanding, will be better satisfied with the ambassador who will not have concealed from him any item he may have learnt where he is stationed, than with the one who, to spare him annoyance, will have abstained from writing unpleasant things but which it would have been of interest for him to know in time." — Bishop Danès, 1561 cited by J. J. Jusserand Reporting, memoranda of conversation: "No one ever lost an argument in his own memorandum of conversation." — Dean Acheson Reporting, purpose of: The purpose of diplomatic reporting is not just to anticipate and analyze events. It is to point out the implications of trends for national interests and to enable governments to act to shape events to their advantage and to the disadvantage of their adversaries. Reporting, reward for honest: The rewards for diplomats who report honestly and forthrightly on foreign developments that contradict the convictions of their leaders at home have been well established by history. They will first be ignored, then charged with disloyalty, and, finally, dismissed. Diplomatic reporting is therefore always a contest between the professional integrity of those doing it abroad and the prejudices of those who read it at home. Reporting, style of: Diplomatic reports are useful only if read by those with the capacity to address the problems they identify and the solutions they propose. Reporting, style of: "The zeal and efficiency of a diplomatic representative is measured by the quality and not by the quantity of the information he supplies. He is expected to do a great deal of filtering for himself, and not simply to pour out upon us over these congested wires all the contradictory gossip which he hears." — Winston Churchill