minster, in which, according to the ‘Chronique de la Traison’ (p. 77), the plot to surprise the king at Windsor on 6 Jan. 1400 was arranged (cf. Wavrin, 1399–1422, pp. 19, 20). According to Wylie (p. 98), who, however, gives no authority, he was with the conspirators at Cirencester. But this seems irreconcilable with his committal to the Tower on 10 Jan. 1400 (Fœdera, viii. 121), and we have a statement that he and Roger Walden, the late archbishop of Canterbury, were taken from the liberties of Westminster (Chronique de la Traison, p. 100).
On 28 Jan. the special justices for the trial of treasons and felonies in London and Middlesex were empowered to try any archbishop or bishop, notwithstanding the statute 18 Ed. III, c. 1, reserving such (unless by the king's special command) for other remedy (Fœdera, viii. 123; Kennett, pp. 70 sqq.) The trial of the Bishop of Carlisle had begun on Tuesday, the 27th, according to the record quoted by Kennett (p. 71), and was adjourned to the Wednesday following, when the bishop, after his plea of episcopal privilege had been set aside, was found guilty by a common jury, but judgment was reserved, and he was sent back to the Tower (ib.; Ann. Hen. IV, p. 330; Cont. Eulog. iii. 387; Walsingham, ii. 245; Chronique de la Traison, p. 101; Adam of Usk, p. 42). On 23 June Merke was removed to the custody of the Abbot of Westminster until the king's further pleasure should be known (Fœdera, viii. 150). Between the two dates he had been deprived of his bishopric, custody of whose temporalities was granted on 18 Feb. to William Strickland (Pat. 1 Hen. IV, p. 5, m. 9). Henry had desired to have Merke degraded and handed over to the secular arm. But his trial not being canonical, Pope Boniface IX had hastened to ‘accommodate matters to his own supremacy’ by translating Merke to a titular eastern see, and filled up Carlisle by provision, without election by the chapter or consent of the king. He craftily provided Strickland, whose election by the chapter in 1396 he had quashed in favour of Reade, and who was now favoured both by the chapter and the king (Kennett, p. 102; Le Neve, iii. 236). The translation was in flat contradiction of his recent undertaking (20 Oct. 1399) not to have recourse to this device in such cases (Kennett, p. 102). Henry on 15 March wrote him a very strong remonstrance (Proceedings of Privy Council, i. 115–117). He got no satisfaction in the matter of the translation, but did not acknowledge the appointment of Strickland as successor until he was elected by the chapter and confirmed by himself (Kennett, p. 117). It was not until 15 Nov. that he gave Strickland restitution of the temporalities of Carlisle (Pat. 2 Hen. IV, p. 1, m. 13, misplaced by Rymer, viii. 106), and on 28 Nov. granted Merke a conditional pardon in consideration of his spiritual capacity (Fœdera, viii. 165). On 29 Jan. 1401 Merke surrendered himself at Westminster to the prison of the Marshalsea, and pleading his pardon of 28 Nov., and giving securities for good behaviour, was dismissed (Kennett, p. 122). Merke had been translated ‘ad ecclesiam de Samastone’ (Pat. 2 Hen. IV, p. 2, m. 11). This see has been variously identified with Samos, Samos in Cephalonia, and Samothrace. But none of these conjectures can be right. Le Quien (Oriens Christianus, iii. 1383) takes it to be Salmasa, or Salmastrum, eight days' journey east of Nineveh. But the adjective Samastenus rather points, though not conclusively, to Samosata, and while there was a papal collector for Salmasa (ib.), in Samastone there was ‘neither Christian clergy nor people.’ Moved by the poverty into which Merke thereby fell, Henry, on 21 March 1401, allowed him to solicit benefices from the pope, bishoprics excepted, provided their annual value did not exceed one hundred marks (Pat. 2 Hen. IV, p. 2, m. 11; Kennett, pp. 127–8). The pope, it would seem from a letter written by Merke from Oxford on 7 June 1401, gave him the prebend of Masham, the ‘golden prebend’ of York, but his claim was disputed (Letters of Hen. IV, Rolls Ser., i. 66; cf. Fisher, Hist. of Masham, pp. 322, 328–9). On 5 Nov. 1401 Henry gave him permission to accept further ‘expectations’ of benefices from the pope up to three hundred marks per annum, along with a full pardon (Wylie, i. 109). It would almost appear, from a passage in Wadding's ‘Annales Minorum’ (ed. 1734, ix. 256), that Boniface on 6 Nov. 1402 translated Merke from Samastone to some other see, the name of which is not given, but which may be concealed in the ‘Millatencus’ of Adam of Usk (p. 42). The king himself, on 19 Nov. 1403, presented him to the vicarage of Sturminster Marshall, Dorset (Wylie, i. 110; Hutchins, Dorsetshire, ii. 133), and the abbot and convent of Westminster to the rectory of Todenham in Gloucestershire on 13 Aug. 1404 (Le Neve, iii. 237; Kennett, p. 138). He acquired the confidence of Wykeham and Arundel, acting occasionally as deputy of the former, and being commissioned by the latter, on 18 Oct. 1405, to perform episcopal functions in the diocese of Winchester during its vacancy (Lowth, Life of Wykeham, p. 247; Kennett, p. 139). He was returned as a member of the lower house of convocation
