Anthony Paice

The Winchester Powerhouse

Presenting portraits of the Winchester bishops down to the Norman Conquest, The Winchester Power-House is the first volume of a study covering the lives of some one hundred holders of the high ecclesiastical office. Characterised overwhelmingly by benevolence, the pre-Conquest prelates were at the forefront of the reconversion of southern Britain to Christianity.

Beyond their spiritual role, however, they also helped to make Winchester – rather than London or Canterbury – the powerhouse of the expanding kingdom of Wessex and eventually of all England; they helped ensure that it remained the most prized and prestigious diocese in England down to the Reformation.

As key counsellors to the Wessex kings, as reformers, even warriors on occasion, these men exerted a strong influence on the introduction of successive Saxon legal codes and judicial process. Indeed, during the development of an embryonic royal chancery in the early 11th century, the bishop was invariably the choice for chancellor, the king’s chief minister. It is no accident that the last bishop, Stigand, was both bishop of Winchester and archbishop of Canterbury.