PRELIM.]] ON EXCOMMUNICATION AND ABSOLUTION. 365 are here assembled in your presence, instruct me to tell you that yon are ruining Christendom, and that it is sinking in your hands." The king, upon this, crossed himself, and said, " Bishop, iuform me how this happens, and by what cause." " Sire," answered the bishop, "it is because no notice is taken of excommunicated persons; for at this moment a man would rather die in a state of excommunication than be absolved, and will no way make satisfaction to the church. It is for this reason, sire, that they unanimously call on you, in the name of God, and in conformity to your duty, that you would be pleased to command your bailiffs, provosts, and other administrators of justice, that wherever in your realm they shall find any one who has been excommunicated a whole year and a day, they constrain him to be absolved by the seizure of his goods." The holy man replied, that he would most cheerfully order this to be done to every one who should be found unjust towards the church, or towards his parents. The bishop said, it only belonged to them to be acquainted with their own cause of complaint. To this, the good king said, he would not act otherwise, and that it would be blameable before God, and against reason, to force those who had been injured by churchmen to absolve themselves without being heard in their own defence. And he quoted, as an example, the count of • Brittany, excommunicated as he was, having pleaded for seven years against the prelates of Brittany, and at last brought the business before our holy father the pope, who gave judgment against them in favour of the count. " Now, should I have constrained the count to seek absolution instantly after the expiration of the first year, he would have been forced to allow to these prelates their demands whether he would or not, and I should, by so doing, have behaved wickedly towards God and towards the count of Brittany." After the prelates had heard this, they were satisfied with the favourable answer the king had made them ; and from that time I have never heard that there was further question about it The peace which St. Louis made with the king of England* * The pi^iminaries of this peace were settled at London on the Monday after St. Valentine's Day in the year 1258, between Guy, dean of St. Martin's church in Tours, Odo, treasurer of the church of Bay eu*, and