184 ROGER OF WE.NDOVER. [A.D . 1199. The French kingdom is laid under interdict. About this timo, Poter of Capua, a cardinal and legate of the apostolic see, laid the kingdom of France under an interdict, on account of the imprisonment of his brother Peter de Douay, bishop-elect of Cambray; but the king of the French released the said bishop-elect before the sentence was withdrawn. In the same year, too, the same legate came to the king of the English and demanded, under pain of interdict, the release of the bishop of Beauvais, who had now been most cruelly detained in prison for two years, and the king's free permission for that prelate to depart ; but since the said bishop had, in disregard of the dignity of his order, been taken in arms like a soldier or routier, h e was not allowed to depart before be bad satisfied the rapacity o f the king by paying six thousand marks of silver sterling weight into bis treasury; after which the said bishop swore that h e would never again during his life carry arms against the Christians. Of the decision of the old cause between the churches of Tours and Dot. In this year a very old eause between the churches of Tours and Dol, was decided at Koine by a definitive decree of pope Innocent ; the archbishop of Tours requiring submission from the bishop of Dol, and the bishop o f Dol opposing it. The church of Dol was the head of Cesser Brittany, and the high priests of that church, as well as all the other prelates of Lesser Brittany, had in the time o f St. Martin, and before and long since that time, been suffragans of the church of Tours, but they afterwards revolted from their allegiance to that church; the reason of which was this. When the English came into the Greater Britain to subdue it, and Uterpendragon, king of the Britons, being taken seriously ill, was confined to his bed at Wrttlailliuin, so that he was able neither to help himself nor to defend his kingdom again-t the rage of the barbarians of tie' country, the superstition of the English (Saxons) is said to have prevailed to such an extent, that the whole island almost was laid waste from sea to sea, and the holy churches levelled to the ground. On this, the pontiffs and prelates of the churches, seeing the desolation of the country and the subversion of the