nobles of England ; nearly all of whom met, with their horses and arms, at Southwark, the day week after the feast of Saint Hilary, intending to attack Simon de Montfort and the earl of Lincoln, and so the peace of the whole kingdom was disturbed. But this disturbance was appeased by the prudence of lord Otho, at that time legate, and by William Valentine, who, at the very time that the confusion was at its height, arrived from foreign parts ; and the earl of Lincoln and Simon de Montfort were removed from the king's councils. The same year, the lord legate Otho spent the feast of Easter at Lincoln, and a fortnight after Easter he left that city and travelled through Oxford, and staid at Oseney, where, as his household provoked the clerical scholars of that town to quarrels and railing, a fight took place between them, so that while the scholars attacked the Romans, and the Romans resisted, the cook of the lord legate was slain on the spot, and many persons on each side were mortally wounded. And then, the aforesaid legate, having been besieged by the clerical scholars till the hour of vespers, in his fear ascended the tower of the church, and sent secretly to the king, who was at that time at Abingdon, earnestly entreating him to release him from his blockade ; and the next day the king, by means of his soldiers, conducted him to Wallingford, where he publicly excommunicated all who had insulted him in this way, and denounced them as persons deprived of every office or benefice, and published their names as lawless men. And likewise, he placed all the churches in Oxford under an interdict, and suspended all study in that city. And he caused these sentences to be published, and execution of them to be demanded, in the church of Saint Frediswide at Oxford, with great solemnity, by the agency of the bishop of Winchester, and the abbots of Evesham and Abingdon, on the day after the feast of Saint Philip and Saint James, the clergy and laity having been convened. But the king, because of this infraction of his peace, caused Master Odo of Kilkenny, who was said to have been present at the insult offered to the legate, to be arrested, with eighteen other scholars, and to be thrust into prison, their clerical privileges being entirely suspended ; and thus the scholars were dispersed and study suspended at Oxford for the whole summer. At length the abbot and canons of Oseney, and the regent masters of Oxford, with unshod feet, uncovered heads, their upper garments stripped off and ungirt, with