A.D. 1198. LETTEE OF POPE INNOCENT. 423 Tiie Letter of pope Innocent to Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, ordering the demolition of the chapel at Lambeth. " Innocent the bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his dearly beloved brother, Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, health and the Apostolic benediction. The more sincere the affection with which we love your person, the greater the grief with which we are afflicted, so often as we hear of actions of yours which are derogatory to pontifical propriety. Por, whereas the church of Canterbury, over which you are known to preside, is considered among the churches of England to hold the foremost rank, and in religion has been accustomed to stand pre-eminent among the rest, we and our brethren are both afflicted and amazed that (as our dearly beloved sons, the prior and convent, have with humble complaint showed unto us,) you occupy yourself in manifold ways, and exert your utmost endeavours in the building of the chapel at Lambeth contrary to the prohibition of Urban and Clement, the Poman Pontiffs, of blessed memory, which were issued against your predecessor Baldwin, relative thereto. After multiplied appeals to the Apostolic See, to the great prejudice of the church of Canterbury, you have still in your rashness proceeded therein, and have installed canons in the same, endowed with the property of the said church, whereas, better consulting yourself and your honor, you would have entirely desisted from the building of the said chapel, if you had been ready to shew that respect and obedience which you owe to the Church of Borne, and would have sought to make provision and shew all anxiety for the church committed to your charge, and would not have made it your study to proceed in that which you know to have been so strictly forbidden to your predecessor by the ApostoBc See. Wherefore, inasmuch as we ought not nor wiB we on any account put up with the lessening of the church of Canterbury, walking in the footsteps of our aforesaid predecessors, by the advice of our brethren, we do, by these Apostolic writings, command your brotherhood and strictly enjoin you, all delay and excuses laid aside, that if you should be absent from your church, anything whatever notwithstanding, whatever is known to have been done in the building of the aforesaid chapel, after the appeals made both in the time of your pre decessors as also in your own to the Apostolic See, as also the prohibitions thereof by our predecessors, you will, within