of the seal from the 8th of the preceding November to Friday, on the morrow of the decollation of John the Baptist (being the day before the date of the record), on which day the King sent him on an embassy to foreign parts.[1] Another entry occurs in the following year, showing that he had returned from his mission, and that he had received back the custody of the seal on Monday after the feast of St. Lawrence (August, 1248); and by the patent roll of 33 Hen. III. it appears that he held it till the feast of the nativity of St Mary in that year, being 8th September, 1249.[2] In none of these entries is he called Chancellor; and as they were evidently made by his direction it is not likely that the title would have been omitted if it had belonged to him.[3]
In the letters patent by which this latter appointment is certified, he is styled Provost of Beverlac (Beverley), a post conferred upon him by the Archbishop of York, about the year 1247. In that year (1247) he was sent with the Abbot of Westminster to Germany to arrange preliminaries with the Duke of Brabant for contracting a marriage between Prince Edward, afterwards King Edward I., and the daughter of the said Duke, but the embassy proved a failure, and the ambassadors "returned in sorrow, with empty saddle-bags, and each of them grieved that he had wasted his trouble and expences to no purpose."[4] At the close of that year, viz., on 13th December, 1247, Maunsell was elected Dean of Wimborne.[5]
In 1249, when he was about to accompany the King and Queen to the enthronization of Boniface de Savoy, the uncle of Queen Eleanor, he was seized with a sudden sickness. Boniface had been elected Archbishop of Canterbury in 1240, and consecrated in 1245; but his enthronement did not take place until
