Peter's agents. The king was surrounded by greedy foreigners -Poitevins, Gascons, Provencals, Italians, Savoyards, who encouraged him in his extravagant tastes. He was constantly in want of money, and was continually evading or violating the obligations of the Great Charter. Any resistance to his will was treated as rebellion, and to meet it the chief fortresses of the kingdom, and the most important official posts, were put into the hands of the very foreigners whose hateful presence provoked the opposition. The king courted alliance with the pope, and the pope used it as a means of extracting money for his own needs. The twofold oppression of king and pope ended in producing a national revolt.

The spiritual suzerainty of the papacy had always been admitted in England, and as long as subsidies were asked for which might fairly be considered conducive Royal and purposes papal exac to the general welfare of Christendom, the English tions. Church, like others, acquiesced in the demand. Nor did the nation seriously resent the use of Church endowments to furnish incomes for high officials of the State, so long as they were natives, and honestly devoted to the welfare of the nation. But when the pope treated the kingdom merely as a fief, when he demanded large pecuniary aids in support of his own needs or enterprises, and when he bestowed rich ecclesiastical preferments on non-resident foreigners, over-riding the rights of lawful patrons, a spirit of national indignation was roused. The sight of their castles, their cathedrals, and many of their monastic and parish churches in the hands of aliens united laity and clergy in a common bond of hatred of the foreigner and determination to expel him.

Abp. Edmund supports

party.

At a parliament held in Westminster on February 2, 1234, the king accused some of the bishops, and especially Alexander of Lichfield, of too intimate a friendship with the Earl Marshal. Bishop Alexander indignantly the national denied that friendship with the earl implied enmity to the king; and knowing that the charge was suggested by Peter des Roches, he and the other bishops solemnly excommunicated all who maliciously accused them, or who tendered counsel to the king's enemies, or disturbed the peace of the kingdom. They found an able and courageous champion of their cause in the new primate. He was

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THE KING IS WARNED

231

consecrated on April 2, and on April 9, after conference with his suffragans, he addressed the king in very plain language, as the spokesman and leader of the whole body. "My lord and king," he said, "we tell you as your faithful subjects that the counsel which you are now following is neither salutary nor safe, but displeasing to God, contrary to sacred law, and charged with danger to yourself and this realm of England; we mean the counsel of Peter, Bishop of Winchester, and Peter de Rievaulx, and their accomplices." After assigning reasons for this statement, the archbishop added that unless the king desisted from his errors, and made peace with his faithful subjects, he would promptly excommunicate the aforesaid evil counsellors, together with all other adversaries of peace and concord. The king, who was no by means destitute of religious sentiment, and was not so liable as his father and grandfather to fits of Angevin rage, meekly replied that he would defer in all things to the advice of the bishops. Peter des Roches was ordered to retire from court and confine himself to the duties of his diocese ; Peter de Rievaulx also was dismissed, and the Poitevin mercenaries were sent out of the kingdom. Archbishop Edmund, with the bishops of Lichfield and Rochester, were sent into Wales to try and arrange peace with the Earl Marshal and the malcontents there. When they returned with the sad tidings that the earl had died of his wounds in Ireland, the king exhibited great grief, ordered his chaplain to say a requiem mass, and made a liberal distribution of alms to the poor. In addition to these acts of penitence he consented, by the advice of the archbishop, to grant the inheritance of the earl to Gilbert his brother, and to recall Hubert de Burgh and other honest counsellors.

Dismissal of Peter des Roches, 1234.

other

The amendment in Henry's conduct was short-lived. The marriage of his sister Isabella in 1235 to the Emperor Frederick II., and his own marriage in 1236 to Peter des Eleanor, daughter of the Count of Provence, involved Roches and him in enormous expenses and brought a host of foreigners foreigners relations and dependents of the queeninto the country. The queen was brought to England by her uncle William, Bishop-elect of Valence, who speedily became one of the king's most confidential councillors. Peter des Roches

recalled.

and his creatures, Stephen de Segrave and Peter de Rievaulx, were reinstated in favour, and very soon all the old evils revived in full force.

In 1237 the Pope Gregory, at the request of the king, sent Cardinal Otho into England to execute, as was alleged, some Arrival of necessary reforms in the Church and realm. ArchCardinal Otho bishop Edmund reproved the king for having invited as legate. him without the knowledge and consent of the magnates of the kingdom. Nevertheless, he and his suffragais received the legate with all due honour and respect. As for the king, he bowed his head before the pope's representative until it almost touched his knees; he loaded him with costly gifts, and deferred to him in everything with such abject servility that men said he was rather the feudatory of the pope than King of England. Otho remained in England till the year 1241, and in the course of his stay extracted enormous sums from the kingdom on one pretext or another for the benefit of the pope. His claims were based not only on the spintual authority of the pope, but also on his feudal Pope demands money and supremacy by virtue of king John's surrender. benefices for Besides direct taxation, a vast deal of money was foreigners. raised by the appropriation of canonries and rich livings to papal nominees. This practice culminated in 1240 in a demand addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of Salisbury and Lincoln for provision to be made for three hundred Italian clerks before any preferment was bestowed on Englishmen; and in the same year, in a council at Reading, a subsidy of a fifth of their goods was required from the nobles and prelates to enable the pope to carry on his war with the emperor.

The spirit of the archbishop was so broken by prolonged but vain resistance to the exactions of the legate that he counselled his suffragans to make a virtue of Abp. Edmund retires to necessity and yield to the demand. He himself Pontigny, paid his fifth, amounting to 800 marks, and the other bishops followed his example. In the summer of the same year he could bear the strain no longer. He saw the Church despoiled of her property and of her ancient rights and liberties; his appeals to the king were met with procrastination, his remonstrances to the legate were derided, his

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DEATH OF ARCHBISHOP EDMUND

233

authority was thwarted or set at nought in every direction, his attempts to reform the monastery of Christchurch were met by open rebellion. He was weary of life, which was no better than a living death; he bade farewell to the king and took his journey to Pontigny, the favourite retreat of English archbishops in trouble. His health and his heart were broken, and he spent the short remainder of his and dies at days as a simple monk in devotional exercises of Soisy-en-Brie, the most ascetic kind, and prayers for the deliverance of his country from distress which he had been unable to mitigate. He died at Soisy-en-Brie, November 16, 1240, and was buried at Pontigny. Seven years afterwards he was canonised, and in 1254 Henry III. offered humble devotion at the shrine of the prelate to whose counsels and warnings he had paid so little regard.

1240.

AUTHORITIES.-Ralph of Coggeshall, ending 1224; Walter of Coventry, vol. ii. (Rolls series); Roger of Wendover, Flores iv. (Eng. Hist. Soc.), ending 1235; Matt. Paris, iii. iv. v., ed. Luard, and Royal Letters Henry III., ed. Shirley. Ann. Monast. i.- v., ed. Luard, esp. Ann. of Waverley and Continuations of Gervase of Canterbury and William of Newburgh (all in Rolls series); Life of Edmund Rich, said to be by Bertrand of Pontigny in Thesaurus Anecdotorum III. (Martene and Durand) and a MS. Life in Lambeth Library, No. 135. Bp. Stubbs's Const. Hist., c. xiv., and Select Charters; Relations between England and Rome during earlier part of reign of Henry III., by H. R. Luard.

CHAPTER XIII

Robert Gros

of Lincoln.

THE CHURCH AND THE PATRIOTS

HAPPILY for the Church and nation, men of commanding ability, courage, and force of character were raised up to effect the deliverance for which Archbishop Edmund seteste, Bp. longed and prayed. Robert Grosseteste had been made Bishop of Lincoln in 1235. As a scholar he had no equal; he had been rector of the schools in the University of Oxford, and had won the highest reputation there both as a teacher and an administrator. He ruled his diocese with vigour, suppressing or reforming all manner of abuses with a very strong hand. Every form of injustice and unrighteousness was abhorrent to him, and he firmly but respectfully opposed the encroachments, alike of the king and the pope, on the liberties of the Church. Obedience, he said, was due to the king as long as he acted rightly, and to the pope as long as his commands were in harmony with the teaching of Scripture; but royal edicts ceased to be royal if they were contrary to the law of right, and apostolic precepts ceased to be apostolic, if they were contrary to the teaching of the apostles and of Christ, who was their Lord.

absolution.

When Henry tried to violently force the queen's uncle William, Bishop -elect of Valence, into the see of Winchester, Grosseteste rebuked the king for his Opposes royal tyrannical conduct, and threatened to lay his private chapel under an interdict. The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Boniface of Savoy, although himself an uncle of the queen, was persuaded by Grosseteste to support him in this resistance, and the king had to give