was, of course, a foregone conclusion, and this was accorded on 22nd December, 1233, on which date Gregory IX wrote to the suffragans announcing his ratification of the election, and to the king and the monks of Canterbury urging them to accept the new archbishop.'

Even before his consecration, the new archbishop-elect was called upon to act in a gravely difficult matter. A parliament was held at Westminster on 2nd February, 1234, at which he was present, and in which, at the head of the bishops, he presented a remonstrance to the king on the course he was pursuing, in putting himself so completely into the hands of foreign advisers. The bishop of Lichfield, "vested in full pontificals," had indignantly denied that friendship for the fallen earl marshal in any way implied enmity to the king, and he had obtained from the bishops generally a promise to utter an anathema against all who made such accusations. This was followed by a solemn warning, given by the bishops to the king in person, against trusting to the bishop of Winchester or Peter de Rievaulx, and their accomplices, and letting them persuade him that his English subjects, whom they hated and despised, were disloyal to him. It was, they declared, by just such a policy that King John had been alienated from the affection of his people, and further, that it was by following the advice of the same bishop, that he had lost Normandy, dissipated all his treasures uselessly, nearly sacrificed his rule over England and never knew peace again, except by making his country pass through the horrors of an interdict, and by leaving it in the end as a tributary kingdom. They felt constrained to tell him the truth, they said, and they warned him that unless he changed all this, they would not hesitate to place him and 1 Registres de Grég. IX., i. col. 907. 2 Matthew Paris, iii. 268.

1

all his advisers under ecclesiastical censure, only waiting till after the consecration of the new archbishop of Canterbury to do so, should it be necessary.'

Meanwhile the king's agents in Rome had evidently not been idle, and the pope was induced to write a letter to the bishops of Durham and Rochester, which was intended to check the action of the archbishop. He had learnt with sorrow, he says, that the bishops had not acted as vigorously against the disturbers of the peace as he had urged them to do. He hopes that the archbishop will now prove that the choice made of himself was right, and that he will take every means to restore the tranquillity of the country, imperilled by the negligent attitude of the episcopate in the past. If he and his suffragans neglect their duty, then Gregory IX enjoins the two bishops to act promptly with full papal power.

This letter was followed by another papal admonition directed to Archbishop Edmund himself, dated 3rd April, 1234.3 His mission, as pope, is to unite and bring to harmony where there was division. "It is, therefore, necessary," writes the pope, "that you sedulously exhort and warn those born in England not to take it amiss if strangers living amongst them obtain honours and benefices in the country, since with God there is no acceptance of persons, and he who lives according to justice in any nation, finds favour in His sight." It is proper that you "show spiritual love and kind feeling to such as the English king has honoured, and "earnestly exhort others to show their trust and devotion to him. In this way, and in this way only, the new archbishop will be able to prove that the good reports upon which the pope had appointed him to his high office were well founded."

'Matthew Paris, iii. 270-271. 2 Royal Letters, i. 554.

3 Ibid., 556.

▲ Ibid.

The archbishop was consecrated in his metropolitan church on 2nd April, and within a week he was called upon again to come into official opposition to the king on the all-disturbing question of foreigners. At a meeting on 9th April, a long list of grievances was read, and St. Edmund declared that he and his fellow-bishops were fully prepared to excommunicate the king if he refused to listen to reason. Henry surrendered, and the following day sent an order to de Rupibus to confine himself henceforth to the episcopal duties of his diocese, and no longer to take any part in the government of the kingdom. Peter de Rievaulx, the bishop's ally and friend, was ordered to furnish an account of his receipts as treasurer, from which office he was to consider himself dismissed. At the same time all the Poitevins were deprived of their posts in the public service and ordered to quit the country. The archbishop, with the bishops of Rochester and Chester, went from the king to the earl marshal, to take him the royal assurance of peace and friendship.1

Before the close of the year 1234 the pope was again bestirring himself to obtain the money necessary to prosecute the crusade in the Holy Land. He addressed an earnest appeal to the English bishops and people to help him. Those taking the cross were to be protected by the spiritual arm of the Church, and if they were in debt, their creditors were to be compelled to act reasonably towards them; if these creditors were Jews and had already exacted usurious interest, the secular power was to compel them to forego that interest, and until they did so no Christian was to be allowed, under pain of excommunication, to deal with them. The crusade was preached everywhere by the friars, Dominican and Franciscan, who were 2 Ibid., 280-287.

2

1 Matthew Paris, iii. 272, 273.

received in towns and villages with great ceremony and enthusiasm.

With a view to the more speedy collection of this aid, Roman officials came over into England. Matthew Paris tells us that while they went under the name of simple nuncios, they really possessed the ample powers of Apostolic legates, and by preaching, supplicating, ordering, threatening, excommunicating, not to mention their own fees, obtained under the name of "procurations," they reduced many of the clergy to practical beggary.1

Sometime in the following year, 1235, Peter de Rupibus was summoned to Rome. Gregory IX was at war with the Romans and desired his assistance. He had experience, gained in the Holy Land, and there was plenty of money in the Winchester diocese which, Matthew Paris hints, the pope was anxious to share with the bishop.2

At the same time many disturbances were caused in England by the oppressions of the foreign usurers, who had come into the country in the train of Stephen of Anagni, and who, by lending the clergy money to pay the papal tenth, had them in their power. The bishop of London first warned these rapacious money-lenders; and finding this of no avail, excommunicated them. Upon this, through their influence at the Curia, they prevailed upon the Roman authorities "peremptorily" to summon abroad the bishop, who was now old and infirm, to answer to injuries done to papal merchants! The bishop, however, unwilling to expose the shame of those connected with Rome, gave wa y and placed himself under the patronage of St. Paul, who had said, that "even if an angel were to preach the contrary (to the faith) let him be anathema."3

1 Matthew Paris, 279.

3 Ibid., 332.

2 Ibid., 331-332.

CHAPTER IX

ST. EDMUND AS ARCHBISHOP

THE episcopate of St. Edmund was one long series of troubles. It is difficult, perhaps, in these days, to apportion the blame for all the quarrels and contentions, which naturally must have interfered with the due working of the See and province of Canterbury during the six years that he was archbishop. But it is not unreasonable to see in St. Edmund's previous career one cause at least conducive to that attitude of mind which led to misunderstandings with those with whom in later life he had to do. He was a student, whose training had not previously brought him much into contact with his fellow men, and a professor whose authority had been rightly accepted without question by his disciples. Because of this mental training it is more than likely that he was unable, or found it difficult, to make allowances for that deviation from strict law and principle, which every practical ruler of men has to admit as a working hypothesis. The word of the superior is not always in practice a law to his subjects, as that of the professor rightly is to his students; and the man who has been buried in books and used to teaching in the schools is apt to expect more of mathematical precision in obedience, from those over whom he may afterwards be placed by Providence, than in real life is usually accorded.

Be the cause what it may, the fact is obvious that the attitude adopted by St. Edmund in the government of his