which made them eager to please him by gifts and service of all kinds.[1]
Versions of the story of the Bishop of Durham.
The King again summons the Bishop.
The speed with which some of the greatest among the
rebel leaders were restored to their old rank and their
old places in the King's favour is shown by the way in
which, within a very few months, we find them acting
on the King's side against one who at the worst was
their own accomplice, and who himself professed to have
had no part or lot in their doings. We must now take up
again the puzzling story of Bishop William of Durham.
We left him, according to his own version, hindered
from coming to the King by the violence of the Sheriff
of Yorkshire, and suffering a seven weeks' harrying of
his lands which carries us into the month of May.[2]
This is exactly the time when the national Chronicler
sets the Bishop himself before us as carrying on a
general harrying of the North country.[3] It is likely
enough that both stories are true; in a civil war above
all it is easy, without the assertion of any direct falsehood,
to draw two exactly opposite pictures by simply
leaving out the doings of each side in turn. Anyhow the
King had summoned the Bishop to his presence, and the
Bishop had not come. The King now sends a more
special and urgent summons, demanding the Bishop's
presence in his court, that is, in all likelihood, at the
Whitsun Gemót, or at whatever assembly took its place
- ↑ Ord. Vit. 669 B. "Quorumdam factiones sævissimis legibus puniit, aliquorum vero reatus ex industria dissimulavit. Antiquis baronibus, quos ab ipso aliquantum desciverat nequitia, versute pepercit, pro amore patris sui cui diu fideliter inhæserant, et pro senectutis reverentia, sciens profecto quod non eos diu vigere sinerent morbi et mors propria. Porro quidam, quanto gravius se errasse in regiam majestatem noverunt, tanto ferventius omni tempore postmodum ei famulati sunt, et tam muneribus quam servitiis ac adulationibus multis modis placere studuerunt."
- ↑ See above, p. 32.
- ↑ See above, p. 28.
