maining comities." Ely was the new bishopric, created, as Matthew Paris relates, by Henry I. in the year 1109; and as our author informs us that his father died a.d. 1110, there seems to be a significance in the phrase that, "about the time " of the death of Nicholas, he himself succeeded to the archdeaconry of two of the counties. The appointment may have been made in the lifetime, and on the resignation of the fonner incumbent; but, however this may be, the account furnishes almost conclusive evidence that Nicholas, the father of our historian, preceded him as Archdeacon of Huntingdon, and that Hertfordshire was attached to that archdeaconry.
While yet "a mere child," Henry was admitted into the family of Robert Bloet, a prelate of great talents and influence, who held the see of London from a.d. 1093 to 1123, taking a distinguished part in the civil, as well as the ecclesiastical, affairs of the time. Our author gives a lively account in his "Letter to Walter"[1] of the sumptuous magnificence of the bishop's household, in which he had opportunities of associating with noble, and even royal[2], youths, who, according to the custom of the age, were nurtured in such establishments. Here he pursued his studies imder the tuition of Albinus of Anjou, a canon of Lincoln, and subsequently Abbot of Ramsey, of whom he speaks in terms befitting his learning and worth.
Henry appears to have continued in the Bishop Bloet's family until he arrived at manhood, and probably received from him, as his first preferment, a canonry of Lincoln; which Bale[3] states as a fact, though he does not refer to any authority for it. Our author informs us, that during these early years, he composed several books of epigrams, satires, sacred hymns and amatory poems, which he afterwards published with his more important works. He could not have been much more than thirty years of age at the time of his appointment to the archdeaconry, and he was probably indebted for his early promotion to so important an office, to the estimation in which his talents and his father's character were held by the bishop.
