He frequently objected to episcopal elections, but his objections were not always sustained on appeal to Rome. He was a strenuous upholder of the metropolitan's rights of visitation. He began in 1299 with a visitation of the diocese of Chichester, and in 1300 passed on to that of Worcester. In 1300 he had an unseemly dispute with St. Albans Abbey (Gesta Abbatum S. Albani, ii. 47–8, Rolls Ser.). In the same year he extracted a tax of 4d. in the mark from all his clergy to assist the execution of his numerous plans of reformation (Worcester Ann. p. 547). On 8 Sept. 1299 Winchelsea officiated in his own cathedral at the king's second marriage (ib. p. 542). He was in 1300 entrusted by Boniface VIII with the delivery of the apostolic mandate to withdraw from attacking the Scots, whom the pope had taken under his protection. A letter of Winchelsea to Boniface (Ann. Londin. pp. 104–8) relates in detail his long journey to Carlisle, his difficulty in reaching the king, his perils from the sea and the Scots, and his final interview with Edward at Sweetheart Abbey on 27 Aug. The king refused the pope any final answer until he had consulted the magnates. But it seemed to be in obedience to the mandate that he now withdrew from Scotland. Winchelsea returned southward. He traversed slowly the province of York, ostentatiously bearing his cross erect before him even when close by the city of York. In September he was in Lincolnshire. In October he was back at Otford in his own house.
At the parliament of Lincoln of January 1301 the troubles between Winchelsea and Edward were renewed in a more violent form. On Winchelsea's advice the barons presented through Henry of Keighley, knight of the shire for Lancashire, a bill of twelve articles, demanding an immediate settlement of the forests question and certain other outstanding grievances. The influence of the primate is almost certainly to be traced in the bishops' fresh declaration, with the assent of the barons, that they could not agree to any clerical tax contrary to the pope's prohibition, and in the demand for the removal of Winchelsea's enemy, Walter Langton [q. v.], bishop of Lichfield, from the treasury. Edward yielded to the pressure, but never forgave Winchelsea, whom he looked upon as the real instigator of the movement. Even in this parliament he managed to isolate the archbishop from his baronial allies. The barons' famous letter of protest addressed to Boniface was a repudiation of Winchelsea as well as of the pope. Edward made the split more emphatic by rejecting Winchelsea's addition to the articles of the barons limiting clerical taxation without papal consent. Another cause of quarrel soon arose between Winchelsea and Edward. During the vacancy at Canterbury the king had presented Theobald, brother of Edward's own son-in-law, the count of Bar, to the living of Pagham in Sussex, of which the archbishop was patron. In 1298 Winchelsea deprived Theobald on the ground of an informality, and conferred Pagham on Ralph of Malling. Before this, in 1297, Edward had induced Boniface to reappoint Theobald by papal provision (Cal. Papal Letters, i. 572). Winchelsea paid no heed to the papal action, whereupon Boniface on 15 Jan. 1300 renewed the grant of Pagham (Cal. Papal Letters, p. 591). The abbot of St. Michael's, in the diocese of Verdun, was sent to England to secure for Theobald the execution of the papal provision. As Winchelsea still resisted the appointment of a non-resident pluralist in subdeacon's orders, he was on 15 Oct. solemnly excommunicated by the abbot. Only after Winchelsea's submission was the sentence removed, in 1302.
During this time Winchelsea revengefully continued his attack on Langton. His agents at Rome supported the monstrous charges brought by John de Lovetot against the treasurer. However, in February 1302 Boniface put Winchelsea in a difficult position by associating him with the provincials of the Franciscans and Dominicans on a commission appointed to investigate the accusations. Winchelsea was forced to report to Rome that Langton was innocent, and in June 1303 Boniface formally acquitted the archbishop's great enemy (Cal. Papal Letters, i. 610). The collapse of the papacy after the fall of Boniface VIII removed Winchelsea's best support against his sovereign, for Boniface, if sometimes hostile, might be relied upon to uphold all who maintained the clerical against the civil power. Meanwhile Winchelsea was busy visiting his province and constantly giving fresh causes of irritation. He offended Edward once more by exercising through an unworthy stratagem the right of visiting the king's free chapel within Hastings Castle, and by visiting almost by force the king's hospital of St. Giles-without-London (Cal. Patent Rolls, 1301–7, pp. 189, 397). He had incurred widespread unpopularity through his constant claims of jurisdiction. In 1303 the Canterbury mob broke open his palace while he was residing there, and brutally maltreated the dean of Ospringe at Selling for no other offence than serving the archbishop's
