Baring-Gould’s sources: Dempster, in his Scottish Menology, on May 22, July 12, August 3 and 4. August 4 was the day of his death, the other days were kept in commemoration of translations. But on August 3 he is set down in Whytford’s and Wyon's Anglican Kalendars, and has been inserted in the Cistercian Menology of Chalefont, and has been given by the Bollandists. Authority: — His life by Jordan or Jocelin, monk of Furness, between A.d. 1207 William the Conqueror married his niece Judith to Waltheof, son of Siward, Earl of Northumberland. Waltheof and Judith had a daughter named Maude. Whilst William was in Normandy in 1073, subjugating Maine, Waltheof, Earl Ralph of East Anglia, and Earl Roger were feasting at Norwich, and filled with drink they began to scoff at William and say that it was unseemly that England should be governed by a bastard. The words were repeated to William on his return, and he seized the earls and executed them. Maude, the daughter of Earl Waltheof, was given in marriage to Simon of Senlis, Earl of Huntingdon, and they had two sons, one whom they called Waltheof, the subject of this memoir, and Simon, the elder.

The children soon showed the difference of the bent of their natures. Simon built castles of tree-boughs, or astride on a bulrush rode about with another rush brandished in his hand. But Waltheof built churches of pebbles, and. imitated the gestures and song of a priest saying mass. Simon of Senlis having incurred the anger of Henry I., was banished the country, and went a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and died abroad. Maude was sent to Scotland, on the death of Simon, to become the Queen of King David, at the same time that Henry took to wife Mathilda, the sister of David.

Waltheof accompanied his mother to Scotland, and was shown the utmost kindness and the affection of a father by King David. There the stripling grew up, with the desire of becoming a monk and a priest ever before his imagination. Once only did his resolution waver. There was a fair young girl in the court, and he fell in love with her, confessed his passion, and they exchanged rings. But in the evening, as he sat musing over the fire, he thought of earthly love, and weighed it in the balance with the love of God; the fair young face flickered before him in the red flames, and it seemed to him that his lot would be in the unquenchable fire if he deserted his true vocation for a lower course of life. Then he plucked the betrothal ring from his finger and threw it into the fire. If he remained in Scotland and took holy orders [ordination; “orders” means the sacrament by which deacons, priests and bishops are ordained] he was certain immediately to be given numerous and rich benefices. It was better for him to go elsewhere. He therefore rode south, and coming to Nostel Priory, in Yorkshire, took the habit of a regular canon in the church dedicated to S. Oswald. There he served as sacristan, till he was elected Prior of Kirkham. It was at Kirkham one day, a,s he was saying mass, that the truth of the doctrine of the Real Presence was miraculously revealed. For as he was elevating the host, suddenly he was as in a trance, and saw in his hands the radiant form of the infant Jesus, with a crown of starry jewels on his head. He thought the Holy Child put forth his hands and stroked his hair. Jordan of Furness heard this from Everard the confessor [in old usage, a saint who was not martyred, or who suffered for the faith without being killed], who had heard the particulars from the lips of Waltheof.

One day a priest at Kirkham was saying mass, when a great spider dropped into the chalice. What was to be done? By coughs and scrapings of the feet,1 he signalled to the prior to come to his assistance. Waltheof, “after having deliberated in himself, and having poured forth his prayer and given his benediction, burning with the flame of 1 “Tussi ac sonitu, quo potuit, priorem acquisivit.” •S'. Waltheof.

faith, bade the priest swallow the spider with the contents of the chalice.” Spiders in those days were supposed to be deadly poison. Wonderful to relate, the priest survived. That afternoon, as he was sitting in the cloister scratching a gathering he had on his hand, he saw a great black spider run over his fingers, and rushed to the conclusion it was the creature he had swallowed in the morning which had escaped out of the festered place.

S. Malachi, the Irish bishop, came to Kirkham on his way through England to Rome. The prior found he was in want of a horse, so he gave him his own horse, a sound, rough, grey cob, and said he was sorry he could not give him a better animal, but it was the only one he possessed. S. Malachi gladly accepted it. “ Dear to me shall be the gift of a kind heart.” This horse eventually became quite white. It was a question agitated between Irish and English monks whether the horse was bleached through the 1 merits of S. Malachi who sat on him, or of S. Waltheof who gave him.

On the vacancy of the archbishopric of York, his kinsman, the Earl of Albemarle, said to him, “ I will use my influence with King Stephen to obtain the archbishopric for you, if you will make over to me the lands of Shirboume 1 for my life.” The saintly prior answered with indignation that he would be no party to such simoniacal transactions. But there was no chance of the king sanctioning his promotion, which was talked of, for he would favour no one who adhered to the party of Maude.

Occasionally the Prior of Kirkham rode to Rievaulx to visit S. ^Elred. These visits caused a change in his life. We know the road he took. After leaving the broad vale of York, his horse’s head was turned to the Hambledon hills, up steep Wath bank. Then over the brown heather. l Near York rousing grouse from their cover, the eye stretching over the hills to Cleveland, on the north, and far away over the rich plain to the west to Pendle Hill, and the setting sun glittering on Morecambe Bay. Then a sudden fall in the track, into a deep, richly-wooded network of valleys, traversed by the clearest of streams, and a broad belt of the brightest emerald meadow, in the midst of which, pointing north and south, the grey limestone church of Rievaulx. The situation, charming to the tourist at the present day, must have exerted greater fascination then, when the bells rang from the tower and white-habited Cistercians [strict Benedictine reform begun at Cîteaux in 1098] sang in the choir. Waltheof felt on each visit to this green, happy valley, shut in by brown bare moors, that he could not rest till he was a monk. At the advice of S. -®lred, he assumed the Cistercian habit in the monastery of Warden, in Lincolnshire. But when the news reached his brother Simon and his other relations, they were so angry that they threatened to burn Warden if he did not leave it. He was therefore obliged to escape from it, and take refuge in his dearlyloved Rievaulx.

In 1147, on the deposition of the Abbot Richard of Melrose, Waltheof was elected in his room, and ruled with gentleness and wisdom.

He maintained the strictest guard over himself. If his mind wandered for a moment to any frivolous matter, if he uttered a word which was not edifying, or spent a minute in idleness, he rushed at once to his confessors. “ And as this took place ten or more times a day, he overwhelmed his confessors with immense weariness through such constant repetitions, as they have told me themselves. Master Everard, first Abbot of Holm Cultram,toldme, that onedayjas he was travelling with this man of God, a horsefly sat on Waltheof s neck or hand, and he kept on flapping it away with his sleeves, but the fly incessantly returned. At last, S. Waltheof.

giving a more violent slap, he killed it. Then clambering down from his horse, Waltheof flung himself prostrate by the dead fly before the abbot and confessed his sin in having killed a creature of God, which he was unable to restore to life again. The abbot smiled, and gave him a very light penance. But he lamented more for the murder of the gadfly than many do for effusion of human blood.” After the lapse of some years, Waltheof revisited Rievaulx. He arrived at noon one summer’s day. All was hushed within. The brethren were asleep, taking the brief slumber accorded at that hour by their rule. The Abbot of Melrose would not jangle the bell, and disturb their repose, but sitting down without, fell asleep, whilst waiting. And in dream he saw his old friend William, who had been Abbot of Rievaulx, approach in shining clothes, with a crown of Paradise on his head, who said to him, “ As long as the monks keep the rule and live soberly, thrice a year will I revisit my monastery, and see that all within is well.” Saying which he vanished.

Waltheof died, after a sickness of excruciating pain, on August the 4th, 1160. In the Chronicon de Mailros, at the year 1171,.is the record of the opening of his tomb, and the discovery of his body uncorrupt, by Ingelram, Bishop of Glasgow, and four abbots.