as being unseemly for an abbot; entreating him to resign his abbey rather than wear them. A subsequent letter (Ep. 93) congratulates him on having taken the latter course, and having returned from poisonous Sicily to the enjoyment of his native air and the wines of Blois. He speaks of William as his only brother (frater unice), and he rapturously concludes: 'Sumus, frater, in dulci Francia.' This letter was written after Peter had learned of the death of Stephen of Perche, and of the avenging earthquake which had consumed Catana on 4 Feb. 1169.
Peter's Sicilian experience was unfortunate, and left behind it a permanent embitterment. He had nearly touched greatness in his youth, and never rose quite so high again. From that time forth he was a disappointed man, for ever discoursing on the uses of adversity and vainly protesting that he had left ambition behind him.
When Peter got back to France the Becket controversy was nearing its miserable close. Every one was thoroughly tired of it, except the archbishop himself; and he had succeeded in alienating almost all his English friends. Even the good bishop Jocelin of Salisbury had come under his ban; and so a breach had been made between Archbishop Thomas and Reginald the archdeacon of Salisbury, Jocelin's son, who resented the unjust treatment of his father. Reginald was a man of importance in the king's court, and was just now returning from a second mission to the pope, on which he had started early in 1169. He was with K. Henry at Domfront, when the legates Gratian and Vivian, sent to make peace at last, arrived there in the month of August. It would appear that Peter had travelled with these legates from Benevento to Bologna, and had gathered that a reconciliation would certainly be effected, or else that Thomas would be transferred 'to the eminence of a greater patriarchate'. There is however a chronological difficulty in so interpreting the letter which relates this (Ep. 22), as it refers to the coronation of the young Henry (14 June 1170) which had roused Becket to fresh anger: yet it does not seem possible to explain otherwise the reference to the legates of the apostolic see, and the letter may have suffered from re-editing.[1]
Peter had betaken himself to Reginald, who had befriended him in earlier days in Paris. He was at the time quite unaware of the archbishop's anger against the archdeacon, and when he was reproached on having joined the enemy's camp he wrote to the friends of the
- ↑ That Peter did visit the Roman court about this time may seem to be confirmed by Ep. 48, in which he recalls the kindness shown him by the cardinal William of Pavia on his return from his 'exile'.
