In 1252 Henry III. again demanded a subsidy, which Grosseteste resisted until the King should give promise of amendment. This suggested promise now took a definite shape. Those who wished for better government demanded that the King should take an oath to observe the provisions of the Great Charter. A solemn service was held in which the King swore to keep the Great Charter, and then all the bishops present, each holding a lighted candle in his hand, solemnly excommunicated all who should violate the Charter. The King was asked to take a candle himself, but he tremblingly refused. Grosseteste was persuaded that he did not mean to keep his vow, and ordered the excommunication to be repeated at Lincoln. He was determined to throw the weight of the Church on the side of good government. In that same year he made an inquiry into the incomes drawn by foreign ecclesiastics from English benefices. He discovered that there was sent out from England every year no less a sum than 70,000 marks, equal to about £1,150,000 of our money; while the royal revenue for secular purposes did not amount to a third of that sum. This gives some notion of the way in which the papal Court pillaged England and drained it of its wealth for its own political purposes.
Next came the event which made Grosseteste most famous. In the last year of his life he received a papal mandate to institute to a benefice one of the Pope's nephews, Frederick de Lavagna. Grosseteste refused to accept the nomination, and wrote a letter to the Pope on the subject in language to which the Pope was very little accustomed. There could not,
