He had a handsome pension, too, £36 a year, if not more, and an allowance for his nephew Ralph. Madox goes so far as to conjecture that the special duties which were assigned to him were the basis of the later office of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Another Englishman in Sicily was Herbert, a man of Middlesex, who was Archbishop of Compsa between the years 1169 and 1180; another, more famous, was Richard, surnamed Palmer, Bishop of Syracuse from 1165 to 1183, and Archbishop of Messina from 1183 onwards; a kindly man who entertained the relations of Becket when they were driven into exile. He had the credit of first proposing a matrimonial alliance between the two royal houses, and seems to have been detached from Becket's interests by the hope of obtaining the Bishopric of Lincoln. Walter, Archbishop of Palermo 1169-1187, and Bartholomew his brother. Bishop of Agrigentum, who succeeded him at Palermo, are likewise called Englishmen. So close and continuous was the connexion maintained by these men with the kindred realm that we can quite understand the influences which prevailed on William the Good to propose Henry II as his successor, and Richard I meditating the translation of the Archbishop of Monreale to Canterbury. More apposite, however, to our present subject is the fact that owing to these men and their connexions at home, there was a constant flow of epistolary intercourse between England and Italy, independent of that which moved to and fro between Rome and the English Church. Henry II doubtless availed himself of both currents for his diplomatic intrigues. The King of Sicily and the Bishop of Syracuse, as well as the men of Milan and Bologna, were sub-agents in the great game which he was playing. And the Italians, Italian as they were, learned to feel some interest in England besides a pecuniary one. The books of later Italian heraldry recognise, I fear somewhat apocryphally, the exiled kinsfolk of Becket as the progenitors of the family of Becchetti of Fabriano. Now and then they repaid the loan of Robert Pullus and Thomas Brown with a scholar or clerk of half English birth, as Robert and Thomas had in their turn repaid part of the debt incurred by
