king assembled all the ships of his fleet at Portsmouth, he commanded that they should look for orders to William of Wrotham, archdeacon of Taunton.
We are now in a position to understand the work upon which Hugh of Wells was about to enter. We find him at Rouen in the service of the new king, 26 Aug. 1199, in company with Simon archdeacon of Wells.[1] In March 1203 the king gave him a stall at Lincoln, where he was afterwards to be bishop; and, when Simon was elected to the see of Chichester in April 1204, Hugh took his place in the king's chancery and also in the archdeaconry of Wells.
Jocelin his brother had already been drawn into the same service, and in February the king gave him the benefice of Lugwardine in Herefordshire, allowing him to have a perpetual vicar in the person of Master Alard, who afterwards was his subdean at Wells. It may be that Hugh, as a Wells man and a canon of Wells, felt more strongly than Simon had felt the responsibility of his archdeaconry, and that it was found convenient that Jocelin should frequently act in his place at the court. In the early part of 1205 Jocelin despatches the king's letters from Lexington, Windsor, and Winchester. But two events were soon to happen, which were to affect for good and ill his future career. On 13 July 1205 Archbishop Hubert Walter died: on 8 August, far away in Italy, that incessant wanderer Bishop Savary found, as his epitaph says, his last day of life and his first day of rest. Once again the two sees were vacant at the same moment. We will consider the fate of the less important first.
The Election of Bishop Jocelin
When the news of Savary's death reached England, the king chanced to be in Somerset. In the earlier years of his reign he had spent nearly all his time in Normandy; but in 1204 he was in Somerset for a fortnight (4–19 July), and twice he visited Wells. And now in August 1205 he spent another fortnight in these parts: on 3 Sept. he was at Glastonbury, the next day at Pilton, and the next at Wells.
The abbey of Glastonbury was highly excited: the moment had come for a fresh struggle for liberty. The king acquiesced, and the monks appealed in piteous terms to the pope to dissolve the unnatural union between the abbey and the bishopric. The canons of Wells and the monks of Bath alike supported them, and from every quarter appeals poured in. The king himself wrote to Innocent III on 7 November, desiring him to promote 'the reformation' of the church
- ↑ Round, Doc. in Fr., p. 392.
