Still one farther appeal seemed possible: the king of France, to whom his Majesty is bound, both as his friend and his liege, used all his influence, but could not obtain a hearing. We sought an interview, but were not admitted to his presence; neither would he suffer mention to be made either of our own name, or of the cause of God. We deputed holy men to lay before him our letters patent, setting forth the extent of our demands, and the justice of them, but our own labour and theirs, as far as his Majesty could frustrate it, went for nothing. In all this we had acted faithfully on the instructions of our Lady the Empress; and, as you well know, and as she cannot fail to perceive, every expectation that has been held out has proved delusive.

Seeing then that this our patience is injurious to the church of God-still more injurious to his Majesty, whose latter end waxes daily worse than his beginning; and to ourself most injurious of all, in that we shall have to give account before the tribunal of the Lord, not for our own misdeeds alone, but also for His blood that is shed, and for the sufferings of His spouse; know for certain, and be pleased to intimate the same to our Lady the Empress, that in a short time, yea, very short, God being our guide and authority, we shall unsheath against his person and his territory the sword of the Holy Spirit, "which is sharper than any two-edged sword," for the destruction of his obdurate flesh, and the salvation of his well-nigh quenched soul.

Endeavour to reconcile our Lady the Empress to this our intended course; for her son's misdeeds are such as we may not longer overlook. Assure her, moreover, that even now, if his Majesty shall revive to a spiritual life, and listen to the counsels of his mother, and to the voice of God, he will find us ready, in all things lawful, to attend his wishes. Meanwhile we mourn over his approaching death, with the same tenderness as herself, and hope and pray to God with no less earnestness for his preservation and honour. These things we say with sorrow and tears, as though our own heart was being torn from us. God is our witness; that God, against whom we dare no longer persist, with an unhallowed piety, in preferring to him either father or mother, or sister or lord. There is no grief like this grief; but the love of God, and the true interest of his Majesty, for whose soul's health we labour, bids us support even this with such fortitude as we can summon. Farewell.

Salute my brethren, and entreat their prayers for me, that I may obtain the spirit of wisdom and fortitude; and for our Lord the King, that he may turn and repent, and restore peace to the church of God.†

This letter must have been written almost immediately before the archbishop's journey to Soissons, which will be mentioned presently, and accords well with the highly wrought frame of mind which that journey evinces.

XXII.

JOHN OF SALISBURY TO BARTHOLOMEW, BISHOP OF EXETER.

After speaking of the political perplexities in which the king of England was involved, the letter proceeds

i. e. spiritual extinction by the sentence of excommunication.
† Ep. D. T., 137.

Bartholomew seems to have been one of the oldest and most intimate friends of John of Salisbury; they had been brought up together under Theobald, the late Archbishop of Canterbury. Bartholomew was promoted from thence to the Archdeaconry of Exeter; and, on the death of Warelwast, was recommended by Theobald to succeed him in the bishoprick. At that time Thomas Becket was chancellor, and John of Salisbury was employed to solicit his voice for the promotion of Bartholomew, which was accordingly effected, A.D. 1161.-(Ep. Tom. Saresb. 77.)

But what most harasses him is the war he is waging against Christ and the church, in which he now sees before him an inextricable labyrinth.

A few days since, at Chinon, he held a consultation with his Nobles, and those of his friends who are notorious for their skill in evil, conjuring them, with promises and threats and protestations, to assist him with some device against the church, and complaining bitterly, with sighs and groans, of the archbishop's conduct towards him. According to those who were present at the time, he asserted, with tears in his eyes, that the archbishop would take from him both body and soul; and, in conclusion, called the whole assembly a set of traitors, who had not zeal nor courage enough to rid him of the molestations of one man." On this his Lordship of Rouen rebuked his Majesty with some warmth, yet gently, in his own way, and with the spirit of meekness, whereas the cause of God required a sterner course.

What so especially embittered his Majesty on this occasion was a fear which he had conceived from letters sent to himself and to his mother by the aforesaid archbishop. I enclose you a copy of them. He feared, and with justice, that an interdict was to be pronounced against his kingdom, and himself anathematized without further delay, under the immediate sanction of the Pope. While he was in this strait, the Bishop of Lisieux suggested, as a last resource, that the impending sentence might be warded off by an appeal. Thus, by a strange fatality, it came to pass that his Majesty, w while supporting those very constitutions,† by which he sought to void the right of appeal, was compelled himself to sanction it for his own protection.

At the breaking up of the consultation, the Bishops of Lisieux and Seez went out from before the face of God and the King, to seek his Lordship, the Archbishop, with all haste, that they might be in time with their appeal,‡ and suspend the sentence till the Sunday after Easter, 1167. The Archbishop of Rouen, too, accompanied them, not (as he protests) to join in the appeal, but, if possible, to mediate a reconciliation. But our Archbishop, who was now girding himself as it were against the day of battle [in procinctu ferendæ sententiæ constitutus], had made a sudden journey to Soissons, where are the three famous shrinesthat of the blessed Virgin, whose memory is cherished there; and another of the blessed Drausius, to whom men resort before a duel; and the third, of the blessed Gregory, the founder of the English church, whose body rests in that city. To these saints he wished to commend himself against the approaching struggle. But the blessed Drausius is that most glorious confessor who, according to the belief in la France and Loraine, imparts the certainty of victory to all those who watch a night before his shrine. The Burgundians too, and even the Italians fly to him for succour before they hazard any perilous encounter. Here it was that Robert de Montfort watched before his combat with Henry of Essex. Thus, by God's grace, it came to pass that the assiduity of the state Bishops was frustrated; for when they arrived at Pontigni they found no Archbishop to appeal against, and returned at once, much mortified at the expense and trouble which had procured them nothing.

It will be perceived that these are the very expressions which Henry uttered in 1170, and which were the immediate occasion of the archbishop's murder. This letter was written in June, 1166, so that the king brooded over the intended murder for four years.

+ Of Clarendon, article viii. "De appellationibus, si emerserint, ab archidiacono debent procedere ad episcopum et ab episcopo ad archiepiscopum. Et si archiepiscopus defuerit in justiciâ exhibendâ, postremo ad regem est perveniendum, ut præcepto ipsius in curia archiepiscopi controversia terminetur, ita quod non debeat ulterius procedere absque assensu regis.”

An appeal against a sentence of excommunication, in order to be valid, must be made before the sentence is passed: after the sentence, the person excommunicated, being no longer a member of the church, cannot be acknowledged in the character of an appellant, but only as a penitent. This is not the case with any other appeals except that against excommunication.

But the Archbishop, when he had watched three nights before the shrines of the above-named saints, the day after Ascension day hastened to Vezelay,* intending on the following Sunday to pronounce sentence against the king and his party.

It so happened, however, by God's will, that on the Friday, while he was in the church of R—, he received a well authenticated and true account of the severe indisposition of the King of England, which had prevented his intended interview with the King of France, though he himself had been most anxious to procure it. This had been certified on oath by Richard, Archdeacon of Poictiers, and Richard de Humaz; and was made known to the Archbishop by an express from the King of France, for which reason he has for the present deferred to pass sentence against the king, sicut ei ante consuluerat Johannes vester.

But John of Oxford he “publicly denounced as excommunicate, and excommunicated him by the authority of the Roman High Priest,” (I use his own words,) "because he had fallen into a damnable heresy, in taking an impious oath to the Emperor, and because he had held communion with the schismatic of Cologne, and, in the face of the Pope's mandate, had usurped the deanery of Salisbury." These causes he alleged from the pulpit in the hearing of all those who from divers nations had flocked together to Vezelay for the festival. In the same place, too, after assigning various and just causes, he excommunicated Richard, Archdeacon of Poictiers, Richard de Luci, Jocelin de Bailliol, Radolph de Broc, Hugh de St. Clair, and Thomas Fitz Bernard; also all others who, for the future, shall lay hands upon the possessions or goods of the church of Canterbury, or interfere with their appropriation to those purposes for which they are intended.

As to the king, he had been already summoned, according to the custom of the church, by letter, and by special messengers, as his rank required, but the invitation to repentance was on this occasion publicly renewed, and accompanied with a threat that unless he returned to a better mind, and made full atonement for his daring conduct towards the church, the same sentence should speedily be pronounced against himself. To this step, however, the Archbishop will resort most reluctantly; indeed, I know none of his attendants who does not dissuade it.

Moreover, the writing in which are contained those wicked devices of the enemies of the church, which they call traditionary customs, he publicly condemned, including, in a general anathema, all those who for the future shall acknowledge its authority. The following articles were, by the advice of the Romish church, selected for special condemnation :

• Vezelay is one of the most curious and interesting places with which the translator is acquainted. It stands on the top of a conical eminence in the broad and fertile valley of the river Cure, on the borders of Burgundy and Nivernois. The situation was selected on account of its strength, at the time when this part of France was exposed to the ravages of the Saracens, and at that time, i. e. in the year 878, (if we are to believe Hugh of Poictiers, a monk of Vezelay, who wrote in the middle of the twelfth century,) the greater part of the present church was built. It is a structure of very great dimensions, and, if we are to judge merely by the architecture, anterior to any of the known styles of Gothic or Norman. Its ornaments, which are rich and large, are much more like the deteriorated Roman workmanship than any thing subsequent to the revival of the arts; the seven western arches of the nave appear to have undergone no alteration from the first, nor has any part of the church been altered since the year 1160; so that it is now exactly what it was when St. Thomas of Canterbury visited it. The translator hopes to give a more detailed account of it in a subsequent Number.

i. e. he pronounced a decree by which all such offenders became ipso facto excommunicate. This an archbishop might do with the pope's sanction.

The Constitutions of Clarendon.

1. That no Bishop may excommunicate any tenant of the crown, except with the King's permission.

2. That no Bishop may imprison any inhabitant of his diocese for perjury or breach of faith.

3. That clerics may be compelled to appear before the secular courts.

4. That laymen, whether the King or others, may interfere in questions concerning tithes or presentations to benefices.

5. That appeals to the apostolic see may not be prosecuted except with the permission of the King or his officers.

6. That no Archbishop nor Bishop, nor other dignitary, may attend a summons from his holiness the Pope without the King's licence.

And similar articles, which are opposed either to the laws of God,* or to the institutions of the holy Fathers.†

After this he absolved all the Bishops from the promise which they had made to observe these articles, contrary to the laws of the church.

All these things he denounced by letter to the Archbishops and Bishops, as the Roman see had directed. Such has been the occupation of the Archbishop.

(Written in the end of May, or the beginning of June, 1166.)

OUR parish churches are in almost all situations striking and pleasing objects. Even those who care little about their interior will acknowledge this. Their situations are, indeed, as various as can well be imagined. Some stand on an eminence, and seem to look down on the cottages beneath them, not like the frowning battlements of the feudal ages, in scorn and defiance, but addressing them in that well-known warning voice, "Come unto me, all ye that travel and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Others are placed in the low sequestered valleys, and surrounded with all the different species of trees congenial to the soil, which, by their yearly growth, seem emulous to hide the little spire

Such as article 1.

Such as all the rest; for they were contrary to the canon law, and the canon law was at this time, in all such matters, the law of the land, as appears from the deed of William the Conqueror, quoted by Mr. Turner.

We are informed by a contemporary historian, William Fitzstephen, that it was scarcely possible to find a messenger daring enough to deliver these letters. " Hujus sententiæ in Angliam portitor vix repertus est." Hist. Ang. Scrip. a Sparke, p. 56. John of Salisbury had great difficulty in sending the letter which has just been translated; it is without address and signature, and the reason he assigns for this is the danger of detection.

In fact, immediately after the return of the bishops of Lisieux and Scez from their fruitless journey, Walter de Insula was sent off to order a strict blockade along the coast of England and Normandy, as is stated by John of Salisbury after the foregoing narrative.

placed in the midst of them. It has the advantage, however, over its companions-in due time they are consigned over to the sturdy hand of the village hind, to be cut down, and their hitherto verdant branches dry up and wither, but the little spire still lifts up its head, like the Mount Zion, which may not be removed, but standeth fast for ever.

The church of Buxted is not placed in either of the situations I have just described, but in the centre of an ornamental and well-wooded park, on the north side of the splendid mansion of the Earl of Liverpool, from which it is intercepted only by the garden and shrubbery, in the openings of which you may catch a glimpse of the church, a venerable and picturesque edifice, with its grey walls and shingle* spire. Yet different as its situation is, it appears to me perfectly appropriate. The nobles of the land are the very persons who, if they know their own happiness, or even their own interest, are the proper guardians of the church. It looks well that in the immediate neighbourhood of the house of God we should find the abode of those to whom he has intrusted ten talents, to be used in his service, and in influencing the minds of his creatures. The neighbourhood of such an object is, indeed, as great a blessing to the peer as the peasant. Its solemn warnings apply to all ranks alike, and, in the quaint but powerful language of Sir T. Browne, "It makes us to consider time gone like a shadow, and time to come present; to conceive that near which may be far off, and to approximate our last times by present apprehensions of them; to live like a neighbour unto death, and to think that there is little to come."

Buxted is a Peculiar in the gift of the See of Canterbury,† and may be referred to, with many others, in proof how well the patronage in the gift of the church is ordinarily bestowed, if to give it to worth and learning be to bestow it well. At the commencement of the last century it was held by Dr. Saunders, Chancellor of St. Paul's, who left to the two parishes of Buxted and Uckfield very considerable property to endow a school and to provide for the apprenticeship of a certain number of the boys. To the master he bequeathed a library, which, from the catalogue, appears to have been the well-chosen and useful library of a very learned

This word, in Kent and Sussex, designates thin boards, which are laid on somewhat like slate, and, from the colour which they take, form very beautiful spires. What is the derivation?

The church itself is spacious, and there is a solemnity almost approaching to gloom in it, which is very impressive. Its architecture is not of a very decided character, but there are marks enough about it to shew that it is of an early date. The great east window is a very handsome specimen of the decorated style, and the chancel itself has its roof ornamented in plaster in a style very uncommon in country

churches.