A.D. 1254. THE POPE AGAIN SENDS TO THE KING. 339 seneion, which was the cause of his being thus pressed to hasten his arrival. On the ninth of August, Hugo, bishop of Ely, died, who had formerly been abbot of Saint Edmund's, and who in the two churches had served God in an exemplary manner for about forty years. And his body was buried with great respect in the cathedral of Ely, in the new presbytery, which he had built from its foundations with great magnificence, at his own expense. And by his death the Black Friars lost the flower of their order, inasmuch as he was the abbot of abbots in England, and was distinguished as" the bishop of bishops. On the vigil of the Assumption, about one o'clock, a clap of thunder, accompanied with lightning, sounded, attended also with a vast storm of rain, and the thunderbolt fell on the tower of Saint Peter's church, in the town of Saint Alban's, and penetrated it with a horrible crash, twisting the large beams of oak as if they were rags, and crushing it and scattering it into minute splinters. Master Thomas de Vieux Ponts was elected bishop of Carlisle, although the lord the king was very earnest in his petition for some one else, namely, for the prior of Newburgh. This summer, some nobles belonging to the Greek empire arrived at the court of Rome, clothed in gold, with riding horses, and sumpter horses, and a very numerous household, who attacked the lord the pope, and in most violent language charged him with having erred enormously in the faith, and also with having been the cause that all the people of Latium had erred, who say that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, inasmuch as by them he was asserted to proceed from the Father, according to the demonstration and established belief of the Greeks. And this error of the Greeks is one of long standing. They also accused him of other improper things, which his court notoriously practised. But the pope bestowed valuable presents on them, and sent them away well instructed in the faith. When Master Albert had returned to Rome, and reported the answer of earl Richard to the lord the pope, he was a second time sent by the pope, on a secret message to the king of England, to offer and grant him the kingdoms of Apulia and Sicily for his son Edmund, urging him to hasten like a king to take possession of them, and · to prepare as large a force to assist him as he could without inconvenience. But ζ 2