A.D.1247. THE NOBLES AND ARCHDEACONS MEET IN* LONDON. 275 and hie especial counsellor, being preferred to many of the nobles. Though afterwards he appeared to have lost-the king's favour to such a degree, that he was thrown into prison, and gave rise to some ridiculous stories which were bruited about among the common people. So this year passed, one full of suspicion and alarm to the Holy Land ; mischievous to the universal church, adverse to the empire, fraught with disgrace and hatred to the Roman court, pregnant with hostile exactions and rapacious turbulence to the kings of France and England. Of the complainte addressed io the pope about his frequent exactions. However, eleven thousand marks are given him. A.D . 1247. which is the thirty-first year of the reign of king Henry the First, the said king held his Christmas court at Winchester, in the presence of many jpicked nobles of the kingdom. And when he arrived at that city, the bishop of Winchester met him joyfully, entreating him earnestly to dine with him, his bishop, on the day after the Nativity of our Lord, that by this it might be proved to all men that he had entirely forgotten all his former offences, and that he had admitted the bishop, in the presence of all his guests, to his former friendship. About the same time, being compelled to do so by the revival of the papal command referring to the bringing of the contribution which had been previously levied, and to which the bishops had unfortunately bound the clergy in the general council of Lyons, the lord the king caused his nobles and the archdeacons of the whole of England to be summoned to London by royal letters. Αρά when the archdeacons had arrived thither on the appointed day, the bishops all absented themselves gratuitously, lest they should seem to stand aloof from and to oppose their own actions ; for they knew that the hearts of all men were naturally wounded to the degree of feeling bitterness of soul. But when the stream of those.days had passed by, then the devotion of the faithful became lukewarm, and the affection of filial love, which every Christian is bound to entertain towards his spiritual father the lord pope, was impaired and lost, not without great peril to men's souls, and was, in fact, turned into deteetable hatred and secret maledictions. Also many nobles of the kingdom of France conspired against the pope and the universal church,