vicegerent

As the direct representatives and plenipotentiaries of the vicegerent of God the legates carried and exercised the supreme authority of the Holy See into the remotest corners of Christendom.

The first was Thor of the Edda; the second Storjunkare, his vicegerent, the common household god; and the third Beywe, the Sun.

His son-in-law, Defderdar, known popularly as the “Scourge of God,” was his acting vicegerent.

Through his high-handed course, both as a leading ecclesiastical dignitary in Normandy and as earl of Kent and vicegerent in England, he gave William no small amount of trouble.

They illustrate, as nothing else could, the growth and the development of the popular conception of the duties outside the Court that Englishmen connect to-day with the Sovereign or the Sovereign’s social and ceremonial vicegerents.