286 nOGF.l; OK WEN DOVER. [A .D .1213. St. Mary, laid siege to the castle of Murclle. At this news the venerable fathers, the bishops of Toulouse, Niâmes, St. Agatha, Bounlcuux, l /es, Louvaine, and Cuuiiuenges, and the abbate of Clairvaux, AlagucviLk', and St. Tiberius, hut the other messengers he neither saluted when they left him, nor dui hi* honour them with uny presents. They then returned home and told John all that they had seen and heard, on which he wept in bitterness of spirit at being despised by the king Km ir, and at being balked in his purpose. Robert however liberally regarded the king from the foreign gifts bestowed on hi:n, so that it was evident he had been received more favourably than the others, though at first he had been repulsed and kept silence ; on which account the king honoured him mort* than the others, and by way of reward this wicked extortioner bestowed un him the charge of the abbacy of St. Alban's, although it was not vacant, so that this transgressor of the faith remunerated his own clerk with the property of another. This Robert then, without consulting, yea even against the will of the temporary abbat, John de Cell, a most religious and most learned man, seized on everything which was then in the ehureh and the convent at pleasure, and appropriated it to his own use; and in eat h bailiwick, which we call obediences, he ap pointed a porter, as a careful and resolute searcher of everything, by which means the aforesaid clerk, Robert, cheated that bouse of more than a thousand marks. He, however, had a regard for some of the chief servants of the abbat, and a monk of St. Al ban's, namely, Laurence knight of the seneschal, Laurence a clerk, and Master Walter a monk and painter, and them he kept as his familiars, to whom lie showed bis jewels and other in secret presents from the emir, and related what had passed between them, the hearing of MATTHEW, WH O HAS WKITTEN AND M.LATKD TÌÌLSÌJ ÎVLMS. King John reçoives to place England under the papal rule. From that time then king John began to strengthen his purpose, from which he had thought to retract, and to make his condition worse and worse, to the detriment of the whole kingdom ; he hated, like viper's poison, all the men of noble rank in the kingdom,and especially Silver de Queney, Robert Fitz-Walter, and Stephen archbishop of Canterbury, lie also knew and had learnt by manifold experience, that the pope was beyond all other men ambitious and proud, and an insatiable tliirster after money, nnd ready an»! apt to perform any s,n for a reward or on the promise of one. Ile therefore sent messengers with orders of speed and by them transmitted a large sum of money to him with a promise of more, and assured him that he was, and always would be, subject and tributary to him on condition that be would, when an opportunity occurred, endeavour to abase the archbishop of Canterbury, and excommunicate the barons of Kngland, whose part he had formerly taken ; and he eagerly longed lor this that he might glut his evil disposition by disinheriting, imprisoning, and slaying them when excommunicated. And these plans, which he had wickedly raked up, he more wickedly carried into execution, as will be related hereafter. King John enterlaint evil opinions of the faith. About this time king John became so foolish that he conceived evil thoughts about the resurrection of the dead, and other matters connected