at Dunstable, he took a prominent part with the other bishops in resisting it. Finding that many parishes had been impoverished and left without resident priests, in consequence of the monasteries converting to their own use much of the tithes and possessions of the churches, he obtained a papal letter authorising him to revoke these seizures, and to proceed against all that opposed. He cited the beneficed monks of his diocese to appear before him to hear this, his object being to take the benefices into his own hands, so that he might institute vicars in them. Those who had exemptions, the templars, hospitallers, and others, appealed to the pope, and Grosseteste at once started for Lyons, where the pope still was. If we may trust Matthew Parish’s account, the pope had been influenced by the gold of the religious orders, and the bishop could get no redress, and left the pope's presence after an exclamation against the influence of money at the Roman court. He remained some time longer at Lyons, and on 13 May delivered his celebrated sermon against the abuses of the papal court and the scandals prevalent among the clergy (Brown, Fasciculus, ii. 250). In September he returned, 'tristis et vacuus,' to England, and even contemplated resigning his see, influenced by the example of his old friend Nicholas of Farnham, bishop of Durham. However, he soon recovered himself, and set about his duties with more than usual vigour, displaying especial severity in his visitation of the monasteries.
In 1251 he suffered a temporary suspension from the pope in consequence of his refusal to admit an Italian ignorant of English to a rich benefice in his diocese; but the next year, though he was thwarted in his endeavour to compel all beneficed persons to become priests, he obtained a papal letter authorising the appointment of vicars and their payment out of the revenues of the livings. In 1252 he excommunicated Hurtold, a Burgundian, who had been collated by the king to Flamstead in spite of the queen's having already appointed one of her chaplains, and laid the church under an interdict. In October, at the parliament, he took the lead in withstanding the king's demand for a tenth of church revenues for the necessities of his crusade, this to be estimated, not according to the old computation of the values of the churches, but by a new one to be made after the will of the king's creatures. It was alleged that to oppose both pope and king would be impossible, and that the French had been obliged to give way in a similar case. Grosseteste pointed out that this was an additional reason for resistance, seeing that 'twice makes a custom.' He had a calculation made this year of the revenues of the foreign clerks beneficed in England, and found that the incomes of those appointed by Innocent IV amounted to seventy thousand marks, more than three times the clear revenue of the king. In 1253 the pope wished to provide for his nephew, Frederick di Lavagna, and Grosseteste was ordered by the papal commissioners to induct him into a canonry at Lincoln. His answer refusing obedience (Letter 128), though perfectly respectful in tone, is very decided, the bishop pointing out how unfit the individual was for the post. This letter has done more to perpetuate Grosseteste's fame in modern times than all his other works. He was able to be at the parliament in May of this year, and to take part in the solemn excommunication of the violators of Magna Charta; but his health gave way soon afterwards, and in October he fell ill at Buckden, and sent for his friend and physician, John of St. Albans. He died on 9 Oct. 1253, and was buried in the upper south transept of his cathedral. Legends and miracles followed: bells were heard in the sky on the night of his death; the pope is said to have dreamed of his coming to him and wounding him in the side, from which he never recovered. There were several attempts to procure his canonisation (see the letter of Archbishop Romanus to Pope Honorius IV in 1287, and of Archbishop Greenfield to Pope Clement V in 1307, Raine, Letters from Northern Registers, pp. 87, 182, and that of the dean and chapter of St. Paul's to Pope Clement V in 1307, Wharton, Anglia Sacra, ii. 343), and the university of Oxford expressed in strong terms its sense of what it owed him. His affection for the Franciscans remained to the last, as he left his books to the Franciscan convent at Oxford; they remained there till the sixteenth century, when Leland saw them reduced to little more than dust and cobwebs.
Probably no one had a greater influence upon English thought and English literature for the two centuries following his time than Bishop Grosseteste: few books written then will be found that do not contain quotations from 'Lincolniensis.' Roger Bacon says of him: 'Solus unus scivit scientias ut Lincolniensis episcopus;' 'solus dominus Robertus … præaliis hominibus scivit scientias.' Tyssyngton (Shirley, Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 135) speaks of 'Lincolniensis, cujus comparatio ad omnes doctores modernos est velut comparatio solis ad lunam quando eclipsatur.' It is not only works on theology, such as his ponderous 'Dicta' or his 'De cessatione legalium,' that he wrote, but
