The first two or three years of Alexander's tenure of the deanery were the closing years of Bishop Reginald's episcopate. The building of the new church had begun about the year 1186, and Alexander who then held the prebend of Hengstridge, on the Dorset border near Templecombe, made a generous grant towards the work.[1] We may be confident that as dean he did his utmost to further it, and that to him it was mainly due that the dark days of Bishop Savary's episcopate are not marked by any break in the continuity of the building.
Of this gloomy period we must now give some account, as their loyalty to the bishop brought the dean and many of the canons into painful conflict with the monks of the great neighbouring abbey.[2] On 29 Nov. 1191 Bishop Reginald was elected to the archbishopric of Canterbury; but within a month he* died (26 Dec). Savary his cousin was consecrated to the see of Bath at Rome, 20 Sept. 1192. At this time K. Richard was a prisoner in Germany, and Savary who claimed kinship with the emperor Henry VI was engaged in the negociations for the king's release. He persuaded the emperor to insist on K. Richard's assent to an arrangement by which the abbey of Glastonbury should become like the abbey of Bath a cathedral monastery with the bishop as the abbot, the city of Bath being given to the king in exchange. To further this end he also arranged that the abbot of Glastonbury, Henry de Sully, should at once be promoted to the vacant see of Worcester. Savary proceeded to England and took possession of the abbey; but the king on his return made him surrender it until the pope's decision should have been received. On receiving the bull of Celestine III Savary, who was then at Tours, requested Dean Alexander to go to Hubert Walter, the archbishop of Canterbury, taking the letters executory addressed to the archbishop by the pope, and entreat him to act upon them.
The archbishop delayed, and at length in the autumn of 1196 the dean went with the envoys of Savary to Glastonbury to present a letter from the bishop declaring the contents of the papal bull. He was refused admittance into the chapter house, but in the prior's chamber the dean opened the letter and read it out in the presence of some eight of the monks, one after another of whom slipped away as the reading went on. The dean then departed, and on the morrow the subprior and others came over to Wells, and read in the dean's presence an appeal to the pope.
Thereupon Bishop Savary went to Rome and obtained a prohibition
