way, but to set an example to others, which will indeed be useful and honourable to the Universal Church and the entire clergy." He then goes on to say that, by the advice of the archbishop of Canterbury and other bishops, he has directed his officers to require a tithe of all hay and mill produce on lands held by ecclesiastics from the Crown, and he pledges himself to exact the same for the future from the nobles.'

In forwarding these letters to the bishops of his province, Cardinal Langton wrote reminding them of what had been agreed upon. He begged them to use their influence with all concerned, that the proposed tax might be paid cheerfully. "In these days," he writes, "grave needs are pressing heavily upon the king, and considering how upright and good he is, and how upon his peace, the peace of the Church rests," we have determined to come to his aid with a grant of money, over and above what is usually given. And, although in their meeting the bishops had determined upon a fifteenth as a maximum contribution from the clergy, Langton suggests that under the circumstances, and as the pope had urged them to afford their sovereign a competens auxilium proportionate to their means, they should try and induce the ecclesiastics of their various dioceses to make the tax a twelfth part, or at any rate a fourteenth part, of their incomes.2

It may readily be supposed that these demands caused considerable misgivings in the minds of the clergy at large. Many of the secular priests, says one of the contemporary chroniclers, refused to pay the tax which the bishops had sanctioned, and the king forthwith applied to the pope for his letters to compel them to pay. In the case of Salisbury

1 Reg. S. Osmundi (Rolls ed.), ii. 56.

3 Ann. Monastici, iii. 93.

2 Ibid., 58.

diocese, there exists the record of meetings held by the Chapter to consider the situation. On the one hand they did not wish, or did not see their way, to refuse the suggested "fitting help" to the king: but on the other, they wished to secure that any grant they might make would not be at any future time strained into a precedent to their detriment. They could come to no satisfactory conclusion. It was a matter of common interest, they said, which made it imperatively necessary that all the clergy should act together. It would constitute a danger to the best interests of the Church if some were to order or arrange for the collection of the tax whilst others held back. Any premature action might prejudice the common interests of the English Church. The Salisbury Chapter therefore suggested that the archbishop of Canterbury should call together delegates from the various dioceses of England, who might agree upon a common answer to the pope, and at the same time, in concert with the archbishop, devise some effective way of obtaining security from the king that, should the tax be paid, he would not try and convert their free gift into a precedent for future taxation.1

Before this proposed assembly could meet, however, the clergy had other matters to engage their attention. In the middle of the year 1225, rumour in this country spoke of the appointment of a papal chaplain, Otho, as nuncio on a special mission to England. Considerable anxiety seems to have been felt in the country as to the meaning of this appointment, and various conjectures were made about it. In reality, the main object of the embassy was to look after the interests of the pope and the Curia in England; but in August, the king's agents, who interviewed the French legate at St. Omer's, wrote home to say that they suspected 1 Wilkins, i. 602 seqq.

that the nuncio's real mission was to intercede in behalf of the pope for Falkes de Breauté. The papal legate, Romanus, had told them that, even with him, Otho had maintained a discreet silence as to the object of his mission, and that, though he had shown him letters from King Henry on the subject, and had tried to persuade him that it would not be prudent or politic to proceed to England, the nuncio turned a deaf ear to these suggestions, and declared his intention of carrying out the instructions he had received.

The legate Romanus promised Henry's agents to try and hinder Otho on his journey, and by his advice they wrote to their royal master to suggest that, should the nuncio cross over into England, the most politic way would be to receive him with all honour, and then to postpone the consideration of any business until such time as his real intentions could be discovered, when judicious delays could easily be arranged to prevent anything being done. If this plan should fail, they hinted that no doubt Otho could be induced, precibus et pretiis, to wait quietly until such time as the king could himself ask for, and receive, papal explanations as to the mission. Meantime, at all costs, Otho should be prevented from going about England, and thus perhaps stirring up an agitation in favour of Henry's enemies in general, and of de Breauté in particular.1

When this letter was dispatched by the royal agents in France, the whereabouts of Otho was not known, and all that was certain was that he was already well upon his journey towards England. It was a difficult situation, for in a postscript the agents confessed that they were really in the dark, both as to the object of the new papal mission, and as to the extent of the powers he possessed. It is not

1 Royal Letters, etc., i. 264.

unimportant to notice that Otho was not appointed by Honorius as his legate, but merely as a nuncio. It will be remembered that Cardinal Langton had received the papal promise that no further legate should be sent into England as long as he lived, and this pledge was still kept unbroken in the appointment of a nuncio. The difference in the two offices is considerable. The presence of a legate a latere in a country, necessarily superseded all the ordinary ecclesiastical jurisdiction, as if the holder of the office were the pope himself; whereas a nuncio was merely a papal envoygeneral, sent by the pope for a specific object, and possessing no extraordinary powers or rights over the existing ecclesiastical hierarchy of the country. It is useful to bear in mind this distinction, since it in some way explains the advice given by the legate Romanus for the reception of Otho in England, as well as what subsequently happened, partly, no doubt, in consequence of this advice.

Meantime the royal agents abroad dispatched messengers in various directions to discover and intercept the nuncio. They found him at last, and having interviewed him, returned with a letter from him to those who had sent them. After thanking them for the honour they had done him in sending their messengers to express their esteem for his high qualities, he proceeds: "I am astonished and not a little dismayed to understand that the lord king is at all angry or disturbed at my coming to him. It is not my intention to do aught, or to engage in any business which might issue in loss or injury to him, nor is it the design of the Roman Curia, that has sent me, that I should do so. My mission is rather for the advantage and honour both of the king and of his kingdom. I therefore hope that when I shall meet him and shall have fully explained what I have been ordered to do, I shall not only satisfy him

about myself, but in regard to the business I have with him and with others, I shall earn his gratitude."

The actual date of Otho's arrival in England is uncertain. Probably it was in the late autumn of 1225 that he reached Dover bringing with him letters to Henry on what Roger de Wendover describes as "important business of the Roman Church." When these were presented to the king they were found to request from England, what at the same time was being demanded from all the other Christian countries, and what our Chronicles have described as exactiones indebitas. Henry without hesitation declared that he neither could, nor indeed ought of himself to give any reply to the papal demands, since they touched the interests of both clergy and laity and were thus the business of the whole country. By the advice of Archbishop Langton, he consequently summoned a meeting of ecclesiastics and laymen at Westminster in the early days of January, 1226.

Meantime the nuncio opened to the king his plea on behalf of Falkes de Breauté, but to this Henry absolutely refused to listen, saying that his case had been considered and settled by the laws of the land, and refusing to allow any right of interference to outsiders. Repulsed in this way, Otho had no alternative but to drop the subject, and whilst awaiting the meeting in January amused himself by endeavouring to extract "from all the conventual churches in England two marks of silver under the head of 'procuration,'" or fees claimed for the support of papal officials in England. A copy of his letter on this subject is preserved in the register of Bishop Poore of Salisbury, in which he claims the sums usually paid to legates and nuncios, and begs that they may be collected and forwarded to 1 Royal Letters, etc., i. 270. 2 Ibid., ii. 289. 3 Ibid., ii. 290; cf. Matthew Paris, iii. 97 seqq.