Rome. The bishop had secured the best
possible advocates, but after the abbey's records of privileges were found to be genuine
the monastery was declared exempt. Marleberge fainted in court when he heard the
favourable verdict, 24 Dec. 1205. The question of the bishop's jurisdiction over the
churches of the vale of Evesham was, however, referred, on the ground that neither
party produced sufficient evidence, to the
bishops of Ely and Rochester, who gave sentence for the bishop. The decisions are extant
in the decretals of Gregory IX (ib. p. xxviii),
but all the letters and bulls of Innocent III
are wanting during the period of the trial
(ib. p. xxix). Marleberge had borrowed
money to pay for legal advice during the
litigation, and a bond for one of his loans
from Peter Malialard, a Roman merchant,
is extant (ib. p. xxvi). The Bishop of Worcester had meanwhile inquired into Abbot
Norreys's conduct, and forwarded to Rome
an adverse report ; but Marleberge, who was
undesirous of the abbot's deposition, hushed
the matter up, and succeeded in leaving
Rome secretly in order to avoid making the
usual presents to the pope and cardinals, and
perhaps also to escape his creditors, in whose
hands he was obliged to leave the much
valued privileges of the abbey. The abbey,
careful to preserve what rights still remained,
decided to appoint a secular dean to superintend the churches of the vale, and Marleberge was appointed to the office. He held it till he became abbot.
In 1206 Marleberge was again at Eves- ham. The papal legate soon afterwards began a visitation, but left its completion to two abbots who ordered no reforms. The abbot had provided himself with papal indulgences at Rome, and claimed new powers under them. By their authority he expelled Marleberge and his friend Thomas de Northwich, but thirty monks accompanied them into banishment as a protest. The abbot pursued them with an armed company, but they successfully beat off the attack and compelled the abbot to withdraw his claim to expel brethren on his own authority. In 1213, when the Roman creditors arrived to claim the sums owed to them by the abbey, Marleberge was sent as a proctor to York, Northampton, and London, to extricate the convent from its financial embarrassments. At Wallingford it was proposed to liquidate the debt on payment of five hundred marks, but the abbot refused to agree, as he held that Marleberge alone was responsible. Marleberge thereupon urged Pandu If, the legate, to depose the abbot. An inquiry followed in which Marleberge gave important testimony, and on 22 Nov. Norreys was deposed. The monks neglected to choose a new abbot, and the legate appointed Randulf prior of Worcester. Marleberge worked with him harmoniously, the creditors were paid, and in 1215 he accompanied him to Rome to get the book of the abbey's customs confirmed. Marleberge was made sacrist in 1217 and prior in 1218.
On the death of Randulf in 1229 he was elected abbot. He was consecrated at Chester by the Bishop of Coventry 12 July 1230; temporalities were restored 10 Sept., and he was installed 20 Sept. He set to work to clear off the debt which still oppressed the abbey, and although mainly occupied with finance found time to carve monuments for himself and for his two predecessors, Norreys and Randulf. He represented himself and them in full pontifical robes, the right to wear which Norreys had basely surrendered as a bribe to the Bishop of Worcester. On 16 April 1233 Marleberge made a formal act of submission for himself and the abbey to the visitatorial authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury (Tanner MS. 223, Bodl. Libr. ; Chron. Abb. p. xxxii). He died in 1230.
Marleberge was an architect and a good mechanical workman. As sacrist he made a reading-desk, and this is possibly still in existence (Archæologia, xvii. 278 ; Mat, in his History of Evesham, p. 57, ed. 1845, inclines to ascribe it to an earlier date) ; he made the fireplace in the church, and a pedestal to the clock (? cum pede horologii) ; he repaired all the glass windows, broken by a fall of the tower, mended and made shrines, and added new slabs to the altar. He strengthened the five arches of the presbytery, and one at the entrance to the crypt. When he became prior lie collected money to rebuild the tower, repaired the walls of the presbytery in modum pinnaculorum, and the words of his biographer seem to imply that he made a triforium which did not exist in the monastery before. The throne for the shrine of St. Egwin was his work. He arranged that the shrines of the principal saints should be placed before the altar on their feast days. He improved the seating of the choir, and procured new stone tombs for two of his predecessors. He repaired the stained-glass window at the east end, and added two others at the west end. While abbot he made a new altar, adorned it with a marble slab, and erected above it a splendid cross with the images of St. Mary and St. John. He enlarged the abbot's dwelling, and improved the vaulted roofing in various parts of the house. His stables
