Roger of Salisbury
Norman medieval Bishop of Salisbury and the seventh Lord Chancellor and Lord Keeper of England (1065-1139)
Roger of Salisbury (died 1139), was a Norman medieval bishop of Salisbury and the seventh Lord Chancellor and Lord Keeper of England.
Life
Roger was originally priest of a small chapel near Caen in Normandy. He was called "Roger, priest of the church of Avranches", in his notification of election to the bishopric. The future King Henry I, who happened to hear mass there one day, was impressed by the speed with which Roger read the service and enrolled him in his own service.
According to William of Newburgh, Roger was poor and uneducated, but this is considered unlikely by the historian B. R. Kemp. On coming to the throne, Henry almost immediately made him Chancellor in 1101. He held that office until late 1102. On 29 September 1102 Roger received the bishopric of Salisbury at Old Sarum Cathedral, but he was not consecrated until 11 August 1107 owing to the dispute between Henry and him. He was consecrated at Canterbury. During the dispute between Henry and Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury, he skillfully managed to keep the favour of both.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Roger of Salisbury” is norman medieval Bishop of Salisbury and the seventh Lord Chancellor and Lord Keeper of England (1065-1139). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Roger, Salisbury and Norman, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1363930. VIAF identifies the subject as 7241156497234917740005. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1139, 1101, 1102 and 1107.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roger of Salisbury” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.