À.. -D. 1299. THE COINAGE IS DEBASED. 529 An d their cause was agitated a long lime before the archbishop o f Canterbury ; but when, nevertheless, it was terminated in favour of the prior, the chancellor appealed to the Apostolic See , taking a journey thither in his own person to plead Ms cause. The prior, too, although he met with many hindrances of divers sorts, also undertook the same journey to defend the rights of his church. And when they were both in the presence of the supreme pontiff, accompanied by the procurators of the college of Ely, and when both parties had resigned their rights into the hands of the pope, he, being favourable to the procurators of the aforesaid college, permitted them the favour of electing one of the exempt abbots of that order, namely, the abbot either of Westminster, or Saint Edmund's, or of Saint Augustine's, or of Saint Alban's. But as they all refused it when offered, the pope, being angry at their obstinacy, translated the bishop of Norwich to the diocese of Ely, and appointed the prior of Ely to the bishopric of Norwich. * And as brother William Ottonin, archbishop of Dublin, died at that time, in returning from the court of Borne, the jjope ι, gave that archbishopric to Master Richard de Feringes, arch, deacon of Canterbury, and the vacant archdeaconry he gave V to the lord John de Langton, chancellor of England. The king a second wife doth take, Called Margaret, for her mother's sake. A.D . 1299. Margaret, the sister of Philip, king of France, i landed at Dover on the feast of the Nativity of the blessed ·; Mary, and two days afterwards she was lawfully married to the king of England, by the authority of the supreme pontiff, c at Canterbury. The lord John de Balliol, king of Scotland, who was detained in custody by the king of England, being ^ permitted to leave his confinement, went to visit the king of •j, France, who, as soon as he saw him, himself at once released some illustrious knights belonging to England, namely, John de St. John, and others, who had been a long time detained in his prison, on certain conditions. ^ In this year, as the island of England was polluted with pi base money, which is called crohard and pollard, on the day ψ of the Nativity of Saint Stephen, the protomartyr, it was cleft 0 in two, that is, it was taken for only a halfpenny. In refer{ enee to this, a son of a stone-cutter, contemplating the work .' VOL. n. MM