ROGER OK WENDOVER. [A.D. 1234. advisers, and then fully discovered how he had been led away hy the craftiness of his former advisers, who, being pricked in conscience, withdrew from the king's presence. The king demands an account from Peter de Rioault, ejc. At the same conference, Edmund archbishop of Canterbury, in the presence of the king and the whole assembly of bishops, carls, and barons present, read a copy of the letters containing the treacherous orders with regard to Richard the earl marshal, and which had been sent to the nobles of Ireland by the king's counsellors, at which the king himself, and all the rest who heard them, were deeply grieved and even moved to tears. The king acknowledged as a fact, he had, on the compulsion of the bishop of Winchester, and Peter de Rivaulx and his other counsellors, ordered his seal to be set to some letters which were placed before him, but he declared on oath that he never knew the purport of them. The archbishop in reply said to him, "Examine your conscience, my king, for all those who caused those letters to be sent and were aware of the treachery intended, are just as guilty of the murder of the marshal, as if they had slain him with their own hands." The king then, after taking advice, issued letters summoning the bishop of Winchester, Peter de Rivaulx, Stephen dc Segrave, and Robert Passelcwe, to meet him at a conference on the feast of St. John, to render him an account not only of his money received and expended by them, but also of their misuse of his seal, without his knowledge ; and ordered them to appear on that day to answer to the charge ; they however, found their consciences plead guilty to all the charges, and were in dread of the anger of the king on one side, and on the other of that of the brothers and friends of the marshal, whose death they had caused. The bishop of Winchester, and Peter de Rivaulx, therefore fled to the sanctuary of the church, and hid themselves in the cathedral church at Winchester, withdrawing themselves entirely from the sight of men ; Stephen de Segrave concealed himself in the church of St. Mary at Leicester, and thus he, who had formerly tied from his clerkship to take up arms, now returned to his clerical duties and reassumed the chaplet which he had abandoned without the consent of his bishop ; Robert Passelcwe sought a hiding place which nobody was aware of, and many asserted that he had gone to Rome ;* sicnis and sufferings, which reconciliation the said 11 uberi ascribed to God and not to man. The king then after reflection, led by a similar spirit of piety, Ale. inc. * Paris here adds ;—So that he could not be found, and many thought that he had gone to Rome, to which court he had often gone when a proctor forhis lord Falcatili*; but in fact he was Ivm^ concealed in a scent cellar at the New Temple, feigning to lie ill, ami covered up like a hare. .Nor when aroused at the summons of the king, after Ins hiding place was known, did he dare ;o leave it; nome others aho, whose consciences pr.cked them, were