# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Paul (d.1093)

​PAUL (d. 1093), abbot of St. Albans, a Norman by birth, was a kinsman, and according to tradition a son, of Lanfranc [q. v.], afterwards archbishop of Canterbury (Gesta Abbatum, i. 51; Hook, Archbishops of Canterbury, ii. 80). It is possible that he was the scholar who was with Lanfranc when he fell among thieves as he was going from Avranches towards Rouen before he became a monk (Chronicon Beccense, p. 195). Paul probably took the monastic vows at Bec, and was certainly a member of the convent of St. Stephen at Caen, over which Lanfranc was made abbot in 1066. The abbacy of St. Albans was vacant in 1077, and Lanfranc, then archbishop, who had been granted the patronage of the house (Eadmer, Historia Nov. i. 12, 18; Gervase Cant. ii. 373), appointed Paul, whom he is said to have loved as a son (Gesta Abbatum, u.s.) Paul entered on his office on 28 June. He rebuilt the monastery and its church, rearing the vast edifice that, in spite of the mischief wrought by modern so-called restoration, still excites the admiration of all beholders (Norman Conquest, iv. 400). In this work he largely used stones and bricks obtained from the ruins of Roman Verulam, together with timber that had been collected and stored by his predecessors. In the work Paul was liberally aided ​by Lanfranc, who is said to have contributed a thousand marks towards the expense of the building. He placed bells in the great tower, one of which was given by a wealthy Englishman named Lyulf, who sold some of his flocks to buy it, and the other by Lyulf's wife (Gesta Abbatum, i. 60). The monastic reform that was urged forward by Lanfranc was thoroughly carried out by Paul at St. Albans, which under his rule became a pattern of religious order and discipline to all the Benedictine houses in England. Under him, too, the monastery became a place of learning; he rebuilt the ‘Scriptorium,’ assigned to it a separate endowment, so that the scribes employed in it had their own daily allowances, and caused many books to be copied by well-skilled hands. He gave a large number of relics, vestments, ornaments, and other precious things to the convent, and among them twenty-eight fine volumes, besides psalters and other service books. Certain lands that had been lost to the monastery were regained through his exertions, and its possessions were further increased by the gifts of benefactors who admired the vigour of his rule and the reformation that he effected in his house (ib. p. 55). On some of these new possessions—at Wallingford in Berkshire, Tynemouth in Northumberland, Belvoir in Lincolnshire, Hertford, and Binham in Norfolk—he, by the advice of Lanfranc, founded cells or dependent priories, inhabited by monks from St. Albans, and ruled by priors sent from the mother-house. On the other hand, certain of the abbey's lands were lost in his time, some through his carelessness, and others in consequence of leases that he granted without having sufficiently provided against frauds and legal subtleties. He also secretly, and to the great damage of his church, enriched with its property his Norman kinsmen, no doubt relations of his mother, who were unworthy, lazy, and ignorant, some being unable to write. Like Lanfranc, he despised the English monks, and destroyed the tombs of his English predecessors, many of them men of royal race and venerable memory, declaring that they were ignorant and uncultivated. Probably owing to his contempt for the English, he neglected to translate the bones of Offa [q. v.], king of Mercia, the founder of his house, into his new church. Nevertheless, while recording these injuries that Paul caused to St. Albans, Matthew Paris declares that the good that he did to the abbey outweighed the evil. In 1089, probably on the death of Lanfranc, Paul sent the rules that the archbishop had drawn up for the English Benedictines to Anselm, and received his approval of them. When Anselm was appointed archbishop in 1093, Paul supplied him with money, and Anselm is said to have shown his gratitude by contributing to the rebuilding of the abbey. In that year Paul went to take possession of the church of Tynemouth. It had been granted to the abbey by Robert de Mowbray [q. v.], earl of Northumberland, at his request, and sorely against the will of the monks of Durham, who claimed it, and with whom the earl had a quarrel. When Paul reached York, Turgot, the prior of Durham, sent a deputation of monks and clerks, who, in the presence of Thomas, archbishop of York, solemnly forbade Paul to take possession of the church, to which he had already sent a body of his monks. He answered indignantly, and took no heed of the friar's message. While he was at Tynemouth he fell sick, and as he was returning died at Settrington in the East Riding of Yorkshire, on 11 Nov. The monks of Durham regarded his death as a judgment on him for violating the rights of their church (Sym. Dunelm.) He was a typical specimen of the better sort of the Norman abbots of his time, devoted to the monastic life, a lover of literature, a strict disciplinarian, and an able and magnificent ruler, yet with some of the faults of his race, for he was proud, scornful, and apparently addicted to forwarding the interests of his kinsfolk by all means in his power, however unfair to others.
[Gesta Abb. Mon. S. Albani, i. 51–65 (Rolls Ser.); Chron. Beccense ap. Opp. Lanfranci, i. 195, ed. Giles; Anselmi Epp. i. 71, Eadmer's Hist. Nov. i. 12, 18, both ed. Migne, i. col. 1141, ii. cols. 355, 369; Gervase of Cant. ii. 373, Will. of Malmesbury's Gesta Pontiff. pp. 72, 317, Matthew Paris's Hist. Angl. i. 41 (all Rolls Ser.); Wendover, ii. 39 (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Sym. Dunelm. i. 124, 125, ii. 221, 261, 346 (Rolls Ser.); Freeman's Norman Conquest, iv. 399, 400, and William Rufus, i. 424, ii. 18, 606; Hook's Archbishops of Canterbury, ii. 80; Newcome's Abbey of St. Alban, pp. 45–50.]
W. H.