ABSTRACT
From Ralph d'Escures eight-and-a-half-year pontificate twenty-six authentic charters survive, an average of three per year. Of Ralph d'Escures twenty-six charters, twenty-two deal with institutions in southeastern England, in the counties of Kent, Essex, Berkshire and Sussex. Equally important are the new ways in which Archbishop Theobald employed his power. Ralph d'Escures and Archbishop William of Corbeil seem to have acted only rarely to resolve disputes, whereas sixty of Theobald's charters concern such cases. The York election dispute illustrates another change that had come to England since the times of Lanfranc and St. Anselm. Archbishop Theobald had new and powerful neighbors in the monks who had come to inhabit the reformed monasteries of England. This distribution of gifts suggests that Theobald tended to grant spiritual benefits to older and wealthier institutions, reserving gifts of land and revenues for new, less well established houses and those in which he had a special interest.
