fulness of power, and all things are therefore lawful for you; yet, according to the law, no other judge may help an advocate in matters of fact, but only in matters of law.' To this the Pope replied, "You are in error; a judge may help in both." Thomas held his tongue, though he had a grievance, and actually complains that the sentence was delayed through the justice of the Pope. The result was a new commission, and the fact of prescription was to be tried over again in England by the bishops of Ely and Rochester, with Benedict, one of the canons of St. Paul's, London.

It is commonly said that the Popes always favoured the monks whenever they attempted to release themselves from the control of the bishops; and some have gone so far as to say, that money rather than justice, or even expediency, was the moving cause of the many immunities which were enjoyed by religious houses. But in this story of Evesham Abbey there is no trace of anything of the kind; the monks were too much impoverished to pay anybody, and their abbot was, if not hostile, certainly lukewarm in their cause. Thomas of Marlborough, though he gained his suit, admits that the Pope was not favourable to him, or to his views, and says plainly that the bishop had the good wishes of the Sovereign Pontiff, who apparently did not, in the least degree, desire to see the churches of the Vale of Evesham exempt from episcopal control and subject only to the abbey. If the churches of the Vale were exempted originally by a Papal act, that was the work of the bishop of Worcester, who founded the abbey, and who voluntarily resigned whatever rights he had, or his successors might have. If, on the other hand, the abbey obtained the jurisdiction over those churches by prescription, that was the fault of the bishops of Worcester from time to time, and the Pope could give sentence only on the facts proved before him. The bishop asked for his rights, the abbey asked for its rights also, and there was no other means of settling the dispute than that of evidence of possession.

On the 18th January, 1206, was signed and sealed the great sentence by which the abbey recovered its rights, and by which the bishop of Worcester lost the visitation of the monastery for ever. Thomas tried to get it in duplicate, but he failed. He succeeded, however, in procuring its insertion at full length in the executory letters, and this, under the circumstances, was no little advantage, and, indeed, sufficient for his purpose, because he was not likely to get permission to leave Rome himself. The abbot and he had borrowed 400 marks, and the lenders, who had gone to England with the abbot in order to be paid, had returned without their money. They were, therefore, in

no humour to lend more, and were even lying in wait for Thomas, who had himself borrowed fifty marks, that they might put him in prison. More than this, the Pope himself, probably on the application of the creditors, had forbidden Thomas to quit the city. Thomas was not without help; he and the abbot's clerk, and Adam Sortes, were bent on returning; and, as Adam was seriously ill, he was sent secretly away with the executory letters, and Thomas now could contemplate his creditors without very painful emotions. Adam travelled as fast as he could, and presented the letters to the abbot of Westminster and Stanlegh, who were to put them in force; and, on the second Sunday after Easter, which was the ecclesiastical anniversary of the day on which the bishop had entered the abbey the year before, the monks were again free.

Thomas remained in Rome at the mercy of his creditors, to whom he was forced to consign the original sentence by way of pledge for the debt; but he cared little for this now, because it had gone secretly to Evesham in a sufficiently authentic form. The chaplain of the abbot also was still in Rome, and on his falling ill, Thomas sent him home with the Roman creditors, who were to go to Evesham with all the papers, and to deliver them up on payment of their debt. Thomas was detained by the Pope, for reasons not told us, but sorely against his will. According to his own account, it was because he had not made the usual presents to the judges of his cause. Be this as it may, Thomas was not a man to be easily beaten. He visited the shrines of the Apostles, and of the saints of the holy city, and then, mingling in a crowd which was kneeling to receive the Papal benediction, considered himself as blessed, and withdrew secretly from Rome. He expected to be pursued and caught, but he was not-perhaps his absence was never observed-and at last he arrived in England, bent upon accomplishing the deposition of the abbot.

Roger, having escaped out of the hands of the bishop, and looking upon his position as unassailable in any court except that of the Pope himself, began to make the monastery a more comfortable place to govern upon his peculiar principles. He proposed to expel those two disturbers of the peace, Thomas of Marlborough and Thomas of Northwich; but the monks resisted, and made common cause with the intended victims of the abbot's malice. The aged and infirm monks were to remain in the monastery, guardians of the relics and the treasure of the church; the common seal was hid in the ground, and the old men were to offer a passive resistance to the abbot, even to the effusion of their blood. On S. Catherine's day, November 25th, 1206, thirty-two monks left the convent in procession,

with the cross borne before them. The abbot was sitting in his court, administering justice, but he saw that strange procession, and knew at once what it meant. He summoned his friends and retainers to the pursuit, and with swords and staves hurried after the departing Israelites, who were running away from the tyranny of Pharao. Having overtaken them, he bade them return. The habit of obedience was strong, and one of them moved towards the abbot, but was instantly restrained by one of his brethren, who denounced his weakness. Authority now proved powerless, and the monks refused to obey. The abbot directed his men to use material force against the drawn swords of his retainers, the monks used their staves, and there ensued a serious fight on the road, unarmed priests contending against the mailed soldiers of the abbot. With their wooden staves the monks drove back the abbot's men, and then pursued their journey, giving God thanks that they had lost none of their number, though their enemies had suffered severely,

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The abbot did not think it could do him any service to lose his monks in this way, so, collecting his scattered troopers he, followed them again, and now, in a more peaceable manner, endeavoured to move them from their resolution. They consented at last to return upon certain terms--one of which was the surrender of the brief in virtue of which he had expelled the two monks. The brief was delivered up, and instantly torn to pieces. The seal of the monastery was then sent for from its hiding-place, and peace was sealed and sworn to between the abbot and his monks, who in the evening were once more safe at Evesham, but not more reconciled to Roger than was Roger to them.

Meanwhile the bishop of Worcester was prosecuting his claim to the jurisdiction over the churches of the Vale before the Papal commissioners, to whom the Pope had delegated the power to decide the question, provided the litigants would be bound by their decree. After several hearings before the judges, the bishop and the abbot agreed upon a compromise; but the monks refused to be a party to it, and the litigation continued, because it was clearly not to the interest of the abbey to have it brought to an end. In the year 1208 the commission was suspended, because of the interdict of the kingdom brought upon it by the wickedness of king John; nor could it be resumed before the submission of that sovereign to the Pontiff he had outraged. The bishop, Malgerus, was forced to quit the kingdom, and died in July, 1212, at Pontigny, where he had taken refuge from the persecution of the king.

The Roman creditors were in England when John set the

law at defiance and refused to allow Cardinal Langton to take possession of the archbishopric of Canterbury. His wrath fell also upon these innocent men, whom he compelled to give up their securities to his safe-keeping. The papers were kept in the treasury in London, but were afterwards removed to Corfe Castle, and in these removals one of them was lost or stolen. When they recovered them from the king's officers, they brought their action against the monastery of Evesham and claimed the principal of 400 marks, together with 700 more on the ground of expenses and by way of penalty for the delayed payment. Thomas of Marlborough appeared for the abbey, as usual, and pleaded that nothing was due by way of penalty because the king had seized the lands of Evesham, and had made it impossible for the monks to satisfy any of their creditors. The matter after much discussion was compromised, and the creditors consented to accept 500 marks in satisfaction of the whole debt.

Roger Norreys refused to ratify this agreement, and swore that he would never pay it. Thomas remarks ironically upon this-that he must have had the spirit of prophecy when he took that oath. The legate Nicholas, bishop of Frascati, was now in England, and in November, 1213, went down to Evesham to investigate the story of that unhappy monastery, and to administer to it the justice it had need of. Now, at last, the time had come when the long-forbearing monks could tell their grievances and demand justice in the presence of one whose jurisdiction they all acknowledged. No rights of the abbey could be compromised now, and no alien could enter in. They had been patient and silent for more than twenty years; they had suffered hunger and thirst; they had been scantily clad in winter, and they had been rendered unable to keep their rule; they had been more than once offered relief, but, as its acceptance involved the loss of rights and the encroachments of usurped jurisdiction, they generously forbore, and endured affliction, waiting for the true Moses, who was to deliver them out of the hands of the oppressor. The Papal legate was a lawful judge.

The legate, surrounded by his clerks, and with many abbots in his train, sat down in the chapter-house of Evesham, and bade Thomas open pleadings against Roger, the unworthy abbot. Thomas at first was silent, but at last he spoke, and to some purpose. He gave a biography of the abbot in the abbot's hearing. He described the ruin of the monastery, temporal and spiritual, the neglect of the divine office, the dilapidations of the property, the intrusion of the abbot, and his tyrannical rule. When the terrible story had been all told, the abhot was called upon for his answer. Roger could not deny the

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facts, but he objected to the admission of the witnesses, because they were his monks, and banded together in a conspiracy to procure his deposition. The legate overruled the objection, and Roger had no other defence; for, the witnesses once admitted, his case was gone. Even now the legate showed mercy in his justice he asked Roger to resign,-it was the only way to save his reputation. Roger at first refused; but after a little reflection he consented, and the legate cut the knot that bound him to the abbey. But as the man had been a monk, though a scandalous one, and had filled so conspicuous a place as that of abbot of Evesham, the legate would not humble him more than he could help. The prior of Penwortham, in Lancashire -no other than Adam Sortes, who had taken refuge there,wished to return to the abbey from which the harshness of Roger had driven him; and, accordingly, the legate replaced him by the fallen abbot. Roger seems to have been hopelessly incurable; even now he did not repent, and the legate, at the end of five months, was compelled to remove him. Roger now went to Rome, but he obtained no help there; on his return, he offered his wretched services to the bishop of Worcester, and whatever ill he could do to the abbey that he did; but his strength was not equal to his will. He was now a monk loose on the world, as he was when Baldwin and Richard sent him, to their great discredit, to be abbot of Evesham. At last another legate, Pandulf, had pity on him and sent him back to Penwortham, where he lived nearly six years. During that interval, with death drawing nearer day by day, he refused to be reconciled to the monks of Evesham. They were anxious about his soul, and entreated him to be at peace with them; but he would not listen, and the miserable man, so far as the monks knew, died in his uncharitable spirit, hating the monks whose very bread he was eating, and to which he had no right; for he had never been one of the monks of the abbey which he had so scandalously outraged by his wicked life and graceless demeanour.

The litigation about the churches of the Vale rested now with the bishops of Worcester, for the abbey was content with the sentence of the delegates. Thomas had discovered and denounced in Rome an act of the bishops which was not likely to help them. It seems that when secular priests had been deans of the Valley they had paid to the bishops of Worcester the sum of one pound, which was due for Peter's pence,* and

* It may interest some to learn that the tax of Peter's pence was a fixed sum, levied on each diocese separately, without reference to the number of houses or of persons. The largest sum, £42, was levied on Lincoln; and the smallest, £5, was raised in the diocese of Ely.