quick despatch the journey to Bristol, he liberated the queen, on whose return, William, the earl's son, was set free from his detention. It is, moreover, sufficiently notorious, that, although, during the whole of his captivity and of the following months till Christmas, he was enticed by numberless and magnificent promises to revolt from his sister; yet he always deemed his fraternal affection of greater importance than any promise which could be made him. For leaving his property and his castles, which he might have quietly enjoyed, he continued unceasingly near the empress at Oxford, where, as I have said before, fixing her residence, she held her court.
In the meantime, the legate, a prelate of unbounded spirit, who was never inclined to leave incomplete what he had once purposed, summoned by his legatine authority a council at Westminster, on the octaves of St. Andrew. I cannot relate the transactions of this council with that exact veracity with which I did the former, as I was not present. We have heard that a letter was then read from the sovereign pope, in which he gently rebuked the legate for not endeavouring to release his brother; but that he forgave him his former transgression, and earnestly exhorted him to attempt his liberation by any mode, whether ecclesiastical or secular: that the king himself entered the council, and complained to the reverend assembly, that his own subjects had both made captive, and nearly killed him by the injuries they inflicted on him, who had never refused them justice. That the legate himself, too, by great powers of eloquence, endeavoured to extenuate the odium of his own conduct: that, in truth, he had received the empress, not from inclination, but necessity; for, that, while liis brother's overthrow was yet recent, all the earls being either dispersed or waiting the issue of events in suspense, she had surrounded Winchester with her party: that she had obstinately persevered in breaking every promise she had made pertaining to the right of the churches: and that he had it from unquestionable authority, that she, and her partisans, had not only had designs on his dignity, but even on his life: that, however, God, in his mercy, had caused matters to fall out contrary to her hopes, so that he should himself escape destruction, and rescue his brother from captivity: that he commanded
