260 ANNALS OF ROGER BE HOVEDEN. A.D.119]· against our venerable brother Hugh, bishop of Durham, and certain other persons, and, messengers from them having come to our presence, a full discussion has been held on both sides in our consistory in relation to the said sentence and certain other matters ; we, considering that the sentence that has been fulminated against him as well as against the other persons, has been inconsiderately pronounced, and corroborated by no grounds of reasonable cause for the same, have, by the'hdvice of our brethren, publicly pronounced that the same shall not hold good, nullifying the same, and forbidding that it shall have any authority whatever. To the end, therefore, that what we have decreed may in your country be publicly promulgated, we do, by these Apostolical writings, command you to declare throughout your churches, that the said sentence has been nullified by the authority of the Apostolic See ; that the faithful may in security live in brotherly communion both with the others as well as with the bishop so unjustly put under the said ban, and may not in any way avoid intercourse with them on account thereof. Given at the Lateran." In addition to this, our lord the pope, by other letters, directed the said bishops of Lincoln and Rochester and abbat of Burgh, that if they should ascertain that, after appeal made to the Boman Pontiff, the archbishop of York had broken the altars and chaBces with which the bishop of Durham, either himseBOr by means of another, had celebrated the mass, then, by reason thereof the bishop of Durham should not be bound to make any submission to the said archbishop of York so long as the two should live. YvTien the said archbishop and bishop had come into the presence of the said delegates at Northampton and a long discussion had taken place on both sides in relation to the above matters, at length, by the advice and suggestion of the lord bishop of Lincoln, the discussion was postponed till the octave of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, in order that, mutually anticipating the decision, they might, by the grace of God, be more easily induced to agree to a full reconciliation, all things in the meantime in dispute between them remaining in the same state in which they then were. It was further resolved, that if a reconciliation could not in the meantime be effected, the letters directed by our lord the pope to the delegates, should have the same force that they would have had, if the said space of time had not intervened ; for such time all exceptions on both sides being saved