Final Years and Legacy
Ralph suffered a stroke on 11 July 1119 as he was removing his vestments after celebrating Mass. From then until his death, Ralph was partially paralysed and unable to speak clearly. He was still involved in decision making and, in 1120, he agreed to King Alexander I of Scotland's suggestion that Eadmer become the next Bishop of St Andrew's. Ralph was one of the lords consulted about the remarriage of Henry I to Adeliza of Leuven at London in 1121. He also successfully asserted his right to celebrate the king's new marriage, over attempts by Roger of Salisbury to officiate instead. Due to the damage from the stroke, Ralph was unable to perform the ceremony but, when Roger made an attempt to do so, Ralph successfully insisted on choosing the officiant and William Giffard the Bishop of Winchester performed the marriage. Ralph died on 20 October 1122, at Canterbury. He was buried in the nave of Canterbury Cathedral on 23 October 1122. His nephew, John, was a clerk under Ralph, and later Ralph appointed him Archdeacon of Canterbury. After Ralph's death, John was elected to the see of Rochester.
Ralph was regarded as a "witty, easygoing" man. The struggle with York, however, along with his illnesses and the effects of the stroke, turned Ralph in his last years into a quarrelsome person. Orderic Vitalis said that he was well educated and well loved by people. Even William of Malmesbury, no lover of ecclesiastics and always ready to find fault with them, could only find fault with him for his occasional lapses into unbecoming frivolity.
Ralph wrote a sermon for the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin and it survives in some fifty Latin manuscripts, probably because it was thought to have been written by Anselm of Canterbury, until shown to be Ralph's in 1927. A surviving English translation of the sermon is also preserved in the manuscript British Library, Cotton Vespasian D. xiv. The Latin version, which Ralph was a translation of his originally spoken French version, has been edited and published in 1997. Ralph also had the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury search for documents relating to the privileges of Canterbury and had those documents copied into a manuscript which still survives, BM MS Cotton Cleopatra E. His seal is one of the first to take the usual form for bishop's seals, with Ralph standing, in full vestments including a mitre, and performing a benediction with his right hand while holding his crosier in his left. The seal took the form of a pointed oval.
Read more about this topic: Ralph D'Escures
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