of York, with his train, which amounted to above 300 persons. This prelate was also employed to settle the claims of the pretenders to the Scottish crown, and was present when sentence was given against Robert Bruce, and when John Baliol did homage for the kingdom of Scotland ‘to his sovereign lord the King of England.’ He was commissioned by the Pope to collect tenths in all the dioceses of Scotland; and in 1302 was Governor of Carlisle Castle, and had charge of all the Scottish hostages and prisoners of note, many of whom, as appears from his papers, died in durance. By the orders of Pope Clement V., he, conjointly with the Archbishop of York, in 1305, excommunicated ‘by bell, book, and candle,’ Robert de Brus, Earl of Carrick, and all his adherents, for the murder of John Comyn in the church of Dumfries. He was present at the Parliament held at Carlisle in 1307, and in the same year was summoned to the coronation of Edward II. He was also in Carlisle in 1314, when that city was blockaded by Edward Bruce. In 1318, Edward II., with the sanction of the Pope, appropriated the church of Horncastle, in Lincolnshire, to the use of Bishop Hilton, as a recompense for his great services, and that he and his successors might have a place of refuge from the Scots. This Bishop was one of the plenipotentiaries in a treaty of peace with Robert de Brus in 1320, but he died in 1324, having held the see thirty-two years.”
From this it may be conjectured very fairly that this castle must have been in those past dim times the scene of many stirring events. Bishops were then different in many things from what they are now.
