selfishness and artifice, trying to veil themselves under lofty professions and language; cant, too evidently known by those who used it to be nothing better than cant; strange tossing to and fro of Scripture perverted by allegory and misapplication. On the part of the Pope there is temporizing and much which must be called duplicity; the cardinals and other high dignitaries appear corrupt and crafty; Becket is arrogant, intemperate, and querulous; Henry at once violent and slippery ; Louis weakly hypocritical; Foliot smooth, politic, and tricky. The most vehement enemies of Rome might enrich their abuse of the Medieval Church from the language and imputations which her eminent members lavish on each other. She appears distracted by schism and faction, corrupted and degraded by a multiplicity of evils, pitiably subjected to the variations of temporal affairs, and attempting to assert herself against the world, not by leavening it with a higher and purer element, but by setting up pretensions unfounded, mischievous, and of a rival worldliness.

b

The best letters of the whole cycle are those of John of Salisbury. This eminent man had in his youth been a pupil of Abelard, and perhaps may have derived from that teacher something of the independent spirit which appears throughout his writings. At a later time he had been secretary to Archbishop Theobald, in whose name many of his earlier letters are written, and towards the end of that patron's life he had been in some trouble with the King, partly in consequence of Arnulf's machi

b Tosti, Storia di Abelardo, 198,

a Joh. Sarisb. Metalog., ij. Nap. 1851.

17; iii. init.

nations. Unlike most of those with whom he is associated in the correspondence, he is free from cant, and writes with apparent honesty; he is genial, learned, and sensible. Although a strenuous adherent of Becket, he is by no means blind to his faults, or sparing in reproof of them; while his ill opinion of the plausible Bishop of London finds vent in a variety of amusing ways. John had been banished or compelled to withdraw from England about the time of the Council of Westminster; and, until he was followed by his master into France, had been indefatigably employed as his agent in that country. It was now in his power to return to England, on condition of swearing that he had not acted against the King-an oath which he believed that he might safely take; but he had reason to suspect that it might be unfairly interpreted, and the Pope advised him on this account to decline the terms. Nor would he consent to make his peace by abandoning the Archbishop, although he declared that he had stood by him only when justice and moderation were on his side, and that, whenever Becket had appeared to exceed the bounds of right, he had firmly "withstood him to the face."a He therefore remained an inmate of the abbey of St. Rémi, at Rheims, which was then under the headship of Peter of

121.

a Joh. Sar., Epp. 96, 112, 115, zelo quodam inconsultius visus est ad amaritudinem provocasse, cum pro loco, et tempore, et personis, multa fuerint dispensanda" (Ep. 141).

b"Novit cordium inspector, et verb[or]um judex et operum, quod sæpius et asperius quam aliquis mortalium corripuerim dominum archiepiscopum de his, in quibus

ab initio dominum regem et suos

See Appendix XXIII.

d Joh. Sarisb., Epp. 141-2, 163-4.

La Celle, one of the most learned men of the age, and long after the successor of John in the bishopric of Chartres.a

In Lent, 1165, Henry crossed from England into Normandy, where he received an embassy from Frederick Barbarossa, headed by Reginald, archbishop-elect of Cologne and chancellor of Italy. The ostensible

object of this mission was to ask one of the King's daughters in marriage for the Emperor's son, and another for his kinsman, Henry the Lion, of Saxony; but it was also connected with ecclesiastical affairs, as Alexander's late treatment of Henry suggested the hope that the King might be won to the side of the Imperialist antipope. From Normandy the Germans followed the King into England, where, although received with formal honour, they were regarded with coolness on account of their connexion with the antipope; the Earl of Leicester refused to kiss the "arch-schismatic" of Cologne, and the altars on which they had celebrated mass were thrown down, or purified from the contamination of their rites." On their return to Germany, however, they were accompanied by John of Oxford and Richard of Ilchester, and

a

Ep. 300, fin. See Peter's high estimation of John's letters, Ep. 70; (Patrol., ccii.)

с

Raumer, ii. 192.

d Diceto, 539; Wendover, ii. 312. There is a letter from Regib Rob. de Monte, A.D. 165; nald to the King of France, excusPauli, 59. See Luden, Gesch. des ing himself for having been unable Deutschen Volkes, xi. 633. Rau- to wait on him, and requesting 'the schismatic mer gives a very favourable cha-him not to abet racter of Reginald, Gesch. d. Roland" (i. e. Alexander). Rec. Hohenst., ii. 85.

des Hist., xvi. 120.

66

Reginald boasted that he had won to the antipapal party the King of England, who would bring with him more than fifty bishops from his wide dominions." At Whitsuntide a great diet was held at Würzburg, where the Emperor exacted of his prelates an oath to support Paschal as Pope, and to renounce Alexander, with all who should be chosen to succeed him; and in this oath, according to documents issued by Frederick, and to a letter of one of Becket's agents, the English envoys joined in their master's name. The truth would seem 'to be, that these statements represent as absolute an engagement which was only conditional, and dependent on the course which the Pope should take in the disputes between the King and the Primate; but it is clear that the affair, however qualified, was discreditable to Henry and injurious to his reputation. Rotrou de Beaumont, formerly bishop of Evreux, and now archbishop of Rouen, a kinsman of the Earl of Leicester, was com

et's letter, 38" (Lat. Christ. iii. 484). That such a fact, if real, should be omitted, not only by the biographers but by the chroniclers, is hardly conceivable. But, although William mentions it immediately after the Würzburg proceedings, the connexion which leads him to do so seems rather to be one of subject than of time; and Becket's letter is placed later, both by the old editions (1. iv. 47) and by Mr. Froude, who dates it in 1170 (p. 630). To that time I believe that William of Canterbury's statement also relates. See below, p. 229.

missioned to assure a cardinal that the King had never promised the Emperor to desert Alexander for the Antipope, and would make no concession to the Germans, "even if they were to labour three days at it," except in accordance with his duty to the Pope and to the King of France. Henry himself wrote to the same cardinal, in explanation and vindication of his acts; and John of Oxford, whose behaviour at Würzburg had given rise to the general belief, was sent to swear before Alexander that he had done nothing "against the faith of the Church and the honour and interest of the Pope." The state of affairs had by this time encouraged Alexander to return to Italy: he quitted Sens in April, 1165— being accompanied by Becket as far as Bourges "—sailed from Maguelone in September, and, after having touched in Sicily, entered his capital on the 23rd of November.

C

Early in 1166 Henry again passed into his continental territories, where he remained until 1170. At Angers, where he kept the festival of Easter, John of Salisbury, Herbert of Bosham, and others of Becket's clerks, were admitted to an interview with him, in consequence of a request made by the French King and nobles, that they might be allowed to return to their country, or, at least, to enjoy the income of their preferments. John of

iv. 148. Comp. Foliot, v. 240. b vi. 281.

Joh. Sarisb., Ep. 204.

d Alan, 365.

f We follow Mr. Froude as to the year of this interview. In the narrative of Fitzstephen it holds a later place, but with the vague Pontificum, date of " aliquando" (i. 264). Dr. Giles places it in 1167. ii. 121.

N