His parents were grown old, and having become impoverished, perhaps by the exactions perpetrated either by the Danes, or to bribe them away, retired from the world, and entered convents at Worcester. Wulstan, wishing to devote himself to the Church, sought the service of the Bishop, who ordained him to the priesthood.
He lived, though a secular priest, with monastic strictness, and in time obtained permission from the Bishop to become a monk in the convent, where he continued for twenty-five years, and at length became Prior of the Convent. The Prior was the person next in office to the Abbot, and governed the monastery in his absence; and in some religious orders, where there was no Abbot, the Prior was the superior.
Wulstan's habits in the convent show us what the devotional life of that time was. Each day he bent the knee at each verse of the seven Penitential Psalms, and the same at the 119th Psalm at night. He would lock himself into the church, and pray aloud with tears and cries, and at night he would often retire into some solitary spot, the graveyard, or lonely village church, to pray and meditate. His bed was the church floor, or a narrow board, and stern were his habits of fasting and mortification; but all the time he was full of activity in the cause of the poor, and, finishing his devotions early in the morning, gave up the whole day to attend to the common people, sitting at the church door to listen to, and redress, as far as in him lay, the grievances that they brought him-at any rate, to console and advise. The rude, secular country clergy, at that time, it may be feared, a corrupt, untaught race, had in great measure ceased to instruct or exhort their flocks, and even refund baptism without payment. He did his best to remedy these abuses, and from all parts of the country children were brought to the good Prior for baptism. Every Sunday, too, he preached, and the Worcestershire people flocked from all sides to hear his plain, forcible language, though he never failed to rebuke them sharply for their most prevalent sins.
The fame of the holy Prior of Worcester began to spread, and on one occasion Earl Harold himself came thirty miles out of his way to confess his sins to him and desire his prayers.
About the year 1062, two Roman Cardinals came to Worcester with Aldred, who had just been translated from that see to the Archbishopric of York. They spent the whole of Lent in Wulstan's monastery; and when, at Easter, they returned to the court of Edward the Confessor, they recommended him for the Bishop to succeed Aldred; and Aldred himself, Archbishop Stigand, and Harold, all concurred in the same advice. The people and clergy of Worcester with one voice chose the good Prior Wulstan; his election was confirmed by the king, and he received the appointment. He long struggled against it, protesting that he would rather lose his head than be made a Bishop; but he was persuaded at last by an old hermit, who rebuked him for his resistance as for a sin. He received the pastoral staff from King Edward, and was consecrated by his former Bishop, Aldred.
As a Bishop he was more active than ever, constantly riding from place to place to visit the different towns and villages; and, as he went, repeating the Psalms and Litany, his attendant priests making the responses; while his chamberlain carried a purse, from which every one who asked alms was sure to be supplied. He never passed a church without praying in it, and never reached his resting-place for the night without paying his first visit to the church. Wherever he went, crowds of every rank poured out to meet him, and he never sent them away without the full Church service, and a sermon; nay, more-each poor serf might come to him, pour out his troubles, whether temporal, or whether his heart had been touched by the good words he had heard. Above all, Wulstan delighted in giving his blessing in Confirmation, and would go on from morning till night without food, till all his clergy were worn out, though he seemed to know no weariness.
His clergy seem to have had much of the sluggishness of the Saxon, and were often impatient of a temper, both of devotion and energy, so much beyond them. If one was absent from the night service, the Bishop would take no notice till it was over; but when all the others were gone back to bed, he would wake the defaulter, and make him go through the service with no companion but himself, making the responses. They did not like him to put them out, as he often did on their journeys, while going through the Psalms, by dwelling on the "prayer-verses;" and most especially did they dislike his leading them to church, whatever season or weather it might be, to chant matins before it was light. Once, at Marlow, when it was a long way to church, very muddy, and with a cold rain falling, one of his clergy, in hopes of making him turn back, led him into the worst part of the swamp, where he sunk up to his knees in mud, and lost his shoe; but he took no notice until, after the service was over, he had returned to his lodgings, half dead with cold, and then, instead of expressing any anger, he only ordered search to be made for the shoe.
Wulstan took no part in what we should call politics; he thought it his duty to render his submission to the King whom the people had chosen, and to strive only to amend the life of the men of the country. He was in high favor with Harold during his short reign, and was for some time at court, where the fine Saxon gentlemen learnt to dread the neighborhood of the old Bishop; for Wulstan considered their luxury as worthy of blame, and especially attacked their long flowing hair. If any of them placed their heads within, his reach, he would crop off "the first-fruits of their curls" with his own little knife, enjoining them to have the rest cut off; and yet, if Wulstan saw the children of the choir with their dress disordered, he would smooth it with his own hands, and when told the condescension did not become a Bishop, made answer, "He that is greatest among you shall be your servant."
Aldred, Wulstan's former Bishop, now Archbishop of York, was the anointer of both Harold and William the Conqueror. He kept fair with the Normans as long as he could, but at last, driven to extremity by the miseries they inflicted on his unhappy diocese, he went to William arrayed in his full episcopal robes, solemnly revoked his coronation blessing, denounced a curse on him and his race, and then, returning to York, there died of grief.
Eghelwin, Bishop of Durham, gave good advice to Comyn, the Norman Earl, but it was unheeded, and the townsmen rose in the night and burnt Comyn to death, with all his followers, as they lay overcome with wine and sleep in the plundered houses. The rising of the northern counties followed, and Eghelwin was so far involved in it, that he was obliged to fly. He took shelter in the Camp of Refuge, was made prisoner when it was betrayed, and spent the rest of his life in one of William's prisons.
Our good Wulstan had a happier lot, and spent his time in his own round of quiet duties in his diocese, binding up the wounds inflicted by the cruel oppressors, but exhorting the Saxons to bear them patiently, and see in them the chastisement of their own crimes. "It is the scourge of God that ye are suffering," he said; and when they replied that they had never been half so bad as the Normans, he said, "God is using their wickedness to punish your evil deserts, as the devil, of his own evil will, yet by God's righteous will, punishes those with whom he suffers. Do ye, when ye are angry, care what becomes of the staff wherewith ye strike?"
He had his own share of troubles and anxieties, but he met them in his trustful spirit, and straight-forward way. At Easter, 1070, a council was held at Winchester, at which he was summoned to attend. He was one of the five last Saxon Bishops; Stigand, who held both at once the primacy and the see of Winchester; his brother, Eghelmar, Bishop of Elmham; Eghelsie, of Selsey; and the Bishop of Durham, Eghelwin, who was in the Camp of Refuge.