writes for him to Alexander III (Ep. 68) tells how the abbot of Malmesbury, refusing obedience to the bishop of Salisbury, had gone off to Wales and got his benediction from the bishop of Llandaff. And the archbishop had a struggle of his own of many years' duration with Roger, the abbot-elect of St Augustine's, who refused to make him the oath of obedience and appealed to the pope. This struggle took Peter to Rome, on what was perhaps his third visit to the papal court. In the autumn of 1177 he and Master Gerard la Pucelle left England as proctors in this suit, and after some months a conclusion favourable to the archbishop seems to have been reached. But suddenly the tables were turned, as Peter narrates in a letter to John of Salisbury, the bishop of Chartres (Ep. 158). 'I had nicely finished my business,' he says, 'and was starting for home, when the pope called me back. The elect of St Augustine's had turned up, and all was to begin over again. Master Gerard and I did our best against him; but he so silvered the wings of the dove and covered her back with gold, that we could hardly get a hearing. Indeed he was to have been blessed the very next Sunday; but by an immense effort I managed to stop that. At last with a bad fever on me, as July came in, I went out, and left the Roman court.' The facts to which reference is made were these: on 3 April 1178 the pope, writing as he says in the presence of Masters Gerard la Pucelle and Peter of Blois, decides in favour of Roger;[1] and on 17 April he writes to the bishop of Worcester to bless the abbot, if the archbishop should still refuse. Yet Roger failed to get the benediction either way, till he returned to Rome and received it from the pope himself on 28 January 1179. Even that, as we shall see, was not quite the end of the struggle.
We have now reached the year of the great Lateran council, which was held 5-19 March 1179. The archbishop started for it, but in fact got no further than Paris. Reginald the bishop of Bath was at the council, with other English bishops; and so was Peter of Blois. Peter may have brought the archbishop's excuse; but he did a little business besides on his own account. This comes out incidentally on two occasions in later years. We shall find him pleading that Bishop Reginald had infringed a privilege then obtained, by which Peter and his subordinates were not to be molested by excommunication or suspension unless after trial and conviction. Moreover Lucius III wrote (c. 1181) to the archbishop of Canterbury to compel Master Peter of Blois his chancellor to make good certain pecuniary engagements into which he had entered at the time of the Lateran
- ↑ Hist. S. Aug. Cant. (Rolls Ser.). p, 421.
