Hubert Walter and Peter of Blois to fetch it. The seal was broken and the archbishop required the addition of certain clauses. Though the monks blamed Peter for this, Hubert Walter who had dictated the letter and given it to be sealed was of course responsible and within his rights. Doubtless it was his duty to make it such as the archbishop as well as the king should approve. Nothing came of this new effort. A legate from the pope—the third commissioned, for two in succession had died—came to Le Mans in May, and a fruitless conference took place. Then, on 6 July, Henry II died at Chinon, and his body was taken for burial to Fontevrault. Baldwin hastened back to England, and on 12 August an agreement with the monks was hastily patched up. K. Richard was crowned on September. The quarrel with the monks broke out again: the king intervened, and Baldwin determined to change the site of his church and build it at Lambeth. On 6 March 1190 he left England for the Crusade, never to return.
At this point it will be convenient to pause in our story, and say what little there is to be said as to Peter's archdeaconry of Bath. Among his letters (Ep. 29) is an angry remonstrance, addressed to the abbot and convent of St. Albans, against the conduct of the prior of their daughter- house at Wallingford. 'I was returning', he says, 'from the visitation of my archdeaconry, and had sent my servants on to Wallingford to prepare me a lodging. They asked the prior to allow me the use of an empty house for a single night, being ready themselves to provide what was necessary for man and beast. But all they got was savage abuse.' It may be that Peter was out of favour on the ground of his opposition to the Canterbury monks. For us the interest of the incident lies in the fact that it is our only direct proof that he ever discharged his archidiaconal duties in person. He was by no means peculiar in the lax interpretation of the duties of his office. Indeed he was but following the example of his immediate predecessor John Cumin, lately promoted to the archbishopric of Dublin, whose energies had been entirely devoted to the king's service, just as Peter's energies were to the service of two archbishops in succession.[1] Another glimpse of him in connexion with the archdeaconry is given us in a letter (Ep. 58) in which he complains that Bishop Reginald has
- ↑ See above Appendix C (pp. 90 ff.) on 'The early career of John Cumin, archbishop of Dublin'. He was the intruded archdeacon of Bath whom the pope ordered to resign on pain of excommunication: he had come in by lay appointment in the vacancy of the see before Bp Beginald (1174). But he would seem to have retained his post till he became archbishop of Dublin, where he is famous as the founder of St Patrick's.
