has passed sentence of excommunication, and has publicly denounced them as excommunicated, when they have been neither cited nor defended, nor are, as they say, conscious of having committed any fault, nor have been convicted or made confession thereof. In addition to this, our venerable brother, the bishop of Salisbury, when absent and undefended, having neither confessed to or been convicted of any crime, has been suspended from the sacerdotal and episcopal office before the grounds of his suspension had been submitted to the judgment of his brother bishops of the province, or indeed of any one else. If, therefore, this method of passing judgment is to be carried out with regard to the king, and with regard to the kingdom, in so preposterous, not to say, irregular a manner, what are we to suppose may be the possible consequence ? For the days are evil, and find numerous pretexts for speaking ill of us, unless the bonds of peace and of brotherly love, by which the sovereignty and the priesthood are held together, are burst asunder, and we, together with the clergy entrusted to our charge, depart hence, dispersed in exile, or else, which God forbid ! withdraw from our fealty to you, and are hurled into the evils of schism, and into the abyss of iniquity and disobedience. For this is the shortest possible way to the entire destruction of religion, and to the subversion and ruin of both clergy and people. Wherefore, let not, in the days of your Apostolate, the Church be thus grievously subverted ; let not our lord the king and the people his servants, be, which God forbid ! turned away from their obedience to you ; let not the wrath of our lord the archbishop of Canterbury, which, by the machinations of certain private persons, is contrived to be levelled against him and his mandates, be enabled to work any grievance against our lord the King , or his kingdom, or ourselves, or the churches committed to our charge. To your highness, by word and by writing, we have appealed, and have fixed on the Ascension of our Lord as the day of our appeal, choosing, in all humility, to endure whatsoever shall in all respects be pleasing unto your Holiness, rather than suffer daily grievances, till we are wearied, from his manifestations of loftiness of spirit, our deserts not meriting the same. Beloved father in Christ, may the Lord Almighty preserve the safety of your Church to avai l even unto ages far distant."