He threatened Waltham with excommunication. Two days afterwards Waltham yielded (Godwin, De Præsulibus, 1743, pp. 348, 349).
In 1390 Waltham himself got into similar difficulties with the chapter of Salisbury, which resisted his visitatorial authority. Finally, the king intervened, and an agreement was drawn up between the bishop and chapter, and confirmed by Boniface IX, which permanently settled the mode, duration, and precise limits of the episcopal jurisdiction over the chapter. By this agreement visitations of the cathedral could be held only septennially.
Waltham was made treasurer of England in May 1391 (Godwin, De Præsulibus, 1743, p. 348; Higden, Polychronicon, ix. 247; Stubbs, Const. Hist. ii. 508). The Monk of Evesham (p. 123) gives the date of appointment as the beginning of October. Waltham held this office till his death. His acts as treasurer, no less than as bishop or as keeper of the rolls, were unpopular. A complaint was made against the ‘novelty’ of his causing certain cloths to be sealed (Rot. Parl. iii. 437 b, 541 b). Complaints also were made of excessive prisage of wines taken at his order (ib. pp. 446 b, 477 b).
Waltham died on 17 Sept. 1395. Richard II honoured him in death as in life, and ordered his tomb to be erected among the kings in Westminster (Le Neve, Fasti, ii. 601; Walsingham, Hist. Angl. ii. 218; Godwin, De Præsulibus, 1743, p. 348). The king overruled by costly presents the objections of the monks to the burial of Waltham in the royal chapel. A fine brass still remains in St. Edward's Chapel representing Waltham in full canonicals. This brass is one of very few remaining from the fourteenth century. He is the only person not of royal blood who is honoured with a tomb among our kings and queens (Bradley, Annals of Westminster Abbey, p. 89). His will, dated on 2 Sept. 1395, was proved on 26 Sept. (Le Neve, Fasti, ii. 601).
The bishop must be distinguished from a contemporary John de Waltham, prior of Drax, a house of Austin canons, and afterwards subdean of York. The bishop was a ‘secular,’ the prior of Drax a ‘regular,’ priest. It is possible that some of the preferments attributed above to John of Waltham, afterwards bishop of Salisbury, may have fallen to this second John of Waltham. Both John de Walthams have also been confused with John de Walton (fl. 1410) [q. v.]
[Calendars of Patent Rolls, 1377–81, 1381–5; Rolls of Parliament, vols. iii. and iv.; Rymer's Fœdera, vol. vii.; Le Neve's Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, ed. Hardy; Godwin, De Præsulibus Angliæ (1741); Stubbs's Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum; Walsingham's Historia Anglicana and Higden's Polychronicon (both in Rolls Ser.); Monk of Evesham, ed. Hearne; Foss's Judges of England and Biographia Juridica; Jones's Diocesan Hist. of Salisbury; Bradley's Annals of Westminster Abbey.]
WALTHEOF, or Lat. Waldevus or Guallevus (d. 1076), Earl of Northumberland, was the only surviving son of Siward [q. v.], earl of Northumbria, by his first wife, Elfleda, Ælflaed, or Æthelflaed, one of three daughters of Earl Ealdred or Aldred, son of Earl Uhtred [q. v.] Waltheof was a mere boy at his father's death in 1055. From the fact that he had learned the psalter in his youth it may be conjectured that he was intended for the monastic life, that the death of his elder brother [see under Siward] caused this intention to be abandoned, and that his early training was not without some influence on his life. At a later time he was Earl of Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire, the most probable date for his appointment being that of the downfall of Tostig [q. v.] in 1065 (Freeman, Norman Conquest, ii. 559–60). That he took part in the battle of Fulford against the Danes is unlikely (it is asserted only by Snorro, Laing, iii. 84, where there seems a confusion between him and Edwin the brother of Morcar [q. v.]), and there is no trustworthy evidence that he was at the battle of Hastings (ib. p. 95; Freeman, u.s. iii. 352, 426, 526). Along with other great Englishmen, he was taken by the Conqueror to Normandy in 1067.
When the Danish fleet was in the Humber in September 1069, Waltheof joined it with some ships, and in the fight at York with the garrison of the castle took his stand at one of the gates, and as the French fugitives issued forth from the burning city cut them down one by one, for he was of immense strength; his prowess on this occasion is celebrated by a contemporary Norse poet, who says that ‘he burnt in the hot fire a hundred of the king's henchmen’ (Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ii. 227). After the Danes had left England he went to meet the king, who was encamped by the Tees in January 1070, submitted to him, took an oath of fealty, and was restored to his earldom (Orderic, p. 515). William gave him to wife his niece Judith, a daughter of his sister Adelaide, by Enguerrand, count of Ponthieu, and in 1072 appointed him to succeed Gospatric [q. v.] as earl of Northumberland. He was friendly with Walcher
