250 liOGLl; OK WKXPOVER. [A.M. 1200. who was studying the liberal arts at Oxford, accidentally slew a woman, and when he found that she was dead he consulted his own safety by flight. Hut the mayor of the city and several other persons coming up, and finding tindead woman, began to search for the murderer in his house, which he had rented, together with three others his fellow elcrks, and not finding the murderer, they made prisoners of his three fellow clerks, who were altogether ignorant of the murder, and thrust them into prison; and a few days afterwards they were, by order of the king, in contempt of the rights of the church, taken outside the city and hung. On this the clerks to the number of three thousand, masters as well as pupils, retired from Oxford, so that not one remained out of the whole university : some of these went to Cambridge, and others to Heading to pursue their studies, leaving the city of Oxford empty. In the same year Hugh archdeacon of Wells, and chancellor of the king, was, by the management of the said king, elected to the bishopric of Lincoln, and immediately after the election was made, he received from the king free jurisdiction over the whole bishopric. flow king John teas excommunicated by name. King John had now for nearly two years, as has been said before, unceasingly continued throughout England, on account of the interdict, a most severe persecution against tin1 clergy as well as some of the laity, and had entirely destroyed all kind of hope in every one of any improvement or satisfaction, and pope Innocent could no longer put oil" the punishment of his rebellion ; wherefore, by the advice of his cardinals, he, in order to cut up by the root such an insult to the church, gave orders to the bishops of lyoudon, Ely, and Winchester, to declare the said king excommunicated by name, and solemnly to publish this sentence every Sunday and feast day in all the conventual churches throughout England, that thus the king might be more strictly shunned by every one. Hut after the aforesaid bishops had, by the apostolic authority, entrusted the publication of this sentence to their fellow bisliops who had remained in England, and to the other prelates of the church, they all, through fear of or regard for the king, became; like dumb dogs not daring to bark, wherefore they put off fulfilling the duty enjoined on