275 A.D. 1192. LETTER. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF ROTTEN". Ely had pronounced under the pretext of certain letters92 against you and the dean and certain others -who were obnoxious to the chancellor. Moreover, our lord the pope, proceeding in his sentence, pronounced the chancellor excused for the injury ho had done to the archbishop of York without any prescribed form [of trial]. He also declined to take away from him either his legateship or the powers attached thereto, as he had but lately conferred the same at the urgency of the king's entreaties, and at the request of yourself as well as of all the bishops of England. However, he pronounced that he should perform the duties of the legateship with this exception thereto appended, that in the meantime he should not have the power of pronouncing sentence of suspension or excommunication against you, or against the dean of Rouen, or against the bishops of England, or the justiciaries and nobles thereof. Of this sentence we trust that we shall have a more precise version, and that we shall be enabled to transmit to you the very words themselves in the letters of the pope himself. To the said judgment he also added, that, convoking a council of the cardinals, and inviting ourselves thereto as well as the deputies of the lord bishop of Ely, he will nominate some venerable persons in your parts through whose mediation peace and reconciliation may possibly be effected between you and the lord chancellor, at least so far as to assuage the rancorous feel-* ings that exist between you. Erom the tenor, however, of the deliberation that took place, and from the form of the sentence which we have mentioned, we believe that for certain those letters will be entirely revoked, which, although they were directed to the bishops of the whole of England, still upon the pretence thereof the said chancellor pronounced you and many others under the ban of excommunication. With reference, however, to this denunciation, when, in conformity with the request of our lord the dean of Rouen, we laid open his complaint in full consistory before all the cardinals and the people, on the said letters being read and examined, the pope protested with the loudest voice possible, in the presence of 9 2 It is not clear what the meaning of the adjective " probabilium" here is. It may possibly signify "of letters probably written by you ;" or it may stand for the Norman legal term " probalium," and allude to the letters written by the pope to the bishop of Ely, in which case it would mean, " under the pretext of the pope's letters made public by him." The latter is most probably the meaning, from the reference to this letter at the end of the present letter. τ 2