ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY answer for the support they had accorded to the enemies of the king, and for their disregard of the sentences of excommunication and interdict. The Bishop of London crossed to the Continent about Easter and did not return for nearly seven years,"' Later in the year 1266 London was again under an interdict for a more obviously ecclesiastical offence. A clerk was taken by the king's servants from the church of St. Sepulchre, to which he had fled for sanctuary, and condemned to death for robbery. When Godfrey de St. Dunstan, warden of the spiritualities of the see of London in the bishop's absence, heard of this outrage on the liberties of the Church, he immediately excommunicated the breakers of sanctuary and placed the City under interdict. The clergy and ' bailiffs ' of the City held a meeting to discuss the matter, and committed the criminal to the Tower under ecclesiastical custody, until they should obtain the decision {voluntas) of the legate, who was then at Kenilworth ; the interdict was at the same time relaxed. Shortly afterwards Prince Edward came to the Tower, and ' being consumed with a great anger at the saving of the clerk and not regarding the liberty of Holy Church,' executed the criminal and im- prisoned Godfrey in the Tower, from which the legate soon procured his release."' In April 1267, when the 'disinherited' were still carrying on their resistance to the king, the Earl of Gloucester occupied London and lodged at Southwark, where he received certain excommunicated fugitives from the Isle of Ely. The legate, then at the Tower, laid an interdict on Southwark and threatened to include the City, but delayed this most serious penalty at the intercession of the wife of Philip Bassett, brother of the late Bishop of London. In spite of attempts at arbitration, Gloucester afterwards attacked the Tower, and the legate in consequence on the Wednesday after Easter forbade the ringing of bells in the City and the celebration of divine service ' with song, but the same was to be performed in silence, the doors of the churches being closed that the enemies of the king known as the " disheri- soned " might not be present at the celebration of divine service.' This interdict was not removed until 16 June, on the reconciliation of the City with the king."* London suffered at this time for the ecclesiastical crimes of the Arch- bishop of York, who in 1268 had his cross carried before him in derogation of the dignity of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and so caused the laying of a modified interdict upon the City, with the district round for two miles on every side ; divine service was to be celebrated only in silence, and no bells were to be rung except in the City. The Archbishop of York persisted in bearing his cross until his departure, and when he came to London early in 1270 for the Translation of Edward the Confessor at West- minster, he again brought down on the City and district the same "•/"Aw Hist. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 9, 262 ; Chron. Edw. I and Edw. II (Rolls Ser.), i, 65, 71, 72 ; Lib. de Antiquis Legibus (Camd. Soc), 83 ; Thos. Wykes, Ann. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 185. Proceedings had apparently been begun earlier against the bishop, but were suspended for inquiry to be made ; Cal. of Papal Letters, i, 404, 419. '" Chron. Edw. I and Edw. II (Rolls Ser.), i, 74, 75 ; French Chron. of Lond. (Camd. Soc), 8. For another instance of Godfrey's zeal for the rights of the Church, this time in reference to probate, see Lib. de Antiquis Legibus (Camd. Soc), 106. '" Chron. Edw. I and Edw. II (Rolls Ser.), i, 77 ; Lib. de Antiquis Legibus (Camd. Soc), 91. Another interdict appears to have been laid on the City some days later, but it only lasted a few hours. Ibid. 92. J 95
