double election, a second error was committed worse than the first, which was the seed of many tribulations and scandals in England, which were never afterwards completely quieted and extirpated. This year the order of preachers was firmly established. The nolle castle of Mount Alban is taken by king John. A.D . 1206. King John celebrated the day of the Lord's Nativity at Oxford ; on which occasion he also sent some monks of the church of Canterbury to the Roman court, the chief of whom was the Master Elias de Brandefeld, whom the king supplied with ample resources from his own treasury, that they might procure from the pope a confirmation of the election of the bishop of Norwich. Likewise, at the same time, the suffragan bishops of the church of Canterbury sent agents to the court of Rome, conveying grave complaints on their part to the pope, that the monks of Canterbury had rashly presumed to hold an election to the archbishopric without consulting them, when they had, both by common law and ancient custom, a right to be present with them, and to join in the election. Their deputies also alleged many decrees and precedents to establish these arguments, and produced witnesses, and exhibited letters of evidence, by which they endeavoured to show that the suffragan bishops, in union with the monks, had elected three metropolitans. But the monks, on the contrary, asserted that, by a special privilege granted to them by the Roman pontiffs, and by approved and ancient custom, they had been used to elect the archbishops without the concurrence of the suffragans, and they undertook to establish this point by competent witnesses. The allegations having been heard, and witnesses produced on both sides, and the question having been diligently examined, a day was appointed by the lord the pope, being the twenty-first of December, for him to pronounce sentence, and the deputies were ordered to attend and to receive the pope's decision on the law. At last, definitive sentence was delivered by the lord the pope Innocent on this point, in favour of the monks, and the privileges which they claimed were established for ever. The same year, king John crossed the sea, taking with him a large army, and on the tenth of July he landed at Rupel, and the inhabitants of that part of the country came to meet him, and gladly adhered to him. From thence he proceeded