Pagina:Annales monastici Vol IV.djvu/51

PREFACE. xliii that are given. Though lawsuits are occasionally men- tioned, we do not hear of many ; and the monks, as a body, do not seem to have been of a very litigious character, certainly not so much so as their brethren of Dunstable. The leases fall in and are renewed in regular succession ; one vicar dies or is promoted, and the priory appoints his successor, as regularly as a modern college appoints its incumbents ; and, excepting Quarrels in the cases of bishop William of Blois, and bishop the m-!ory Godfrey Giffard, the relations between the priory and and bishops the bishops of Worcester seem to have been more than gj^jg ^^^^^ usually amicable. The former, (who_^had been forced upon Godfrey the convent by the legate Gualo in 1218,) after excom- municating three monks in 1221 (p. 414), deposed the prior in 1222 (p. 415), and the writer speaks of his cruelty to the priory. There was a suit against him by the priory in 1223, and this led to the settlement between them iu 1224. With the latter, up to the time of his death, the priory was in constant feud. To such a height did this rise at last, that in 1300, when archbishop Winchelsey visited the convent, they presented to him a formal accusation against the bishop, containing thirty-six articles.^ Several of the causes of the quarrel between the two parties are given in detail in the Annals. One of them arose out of an ordination at Westbury. The ordi- In 1288, when tlie bishop was holding his ordination westbury. there, Thomas de Wiche, precentor of Worcester, accord- ing to ancient custom, summoned those who were to be ordained. The archdeacon, John of Evreux, a nephew of the bishop, asserted that this was his office ; the precentor, with the assent of the bishop, was forcibly > This may be seen, together with the bishop's answer to each charge, in the Appendix to Thomas's Survey of the Cathedral Church of Wor- cester, No. 67, pp. 63-73, who gives it from bishop Giffard's Register. It is alluded to in the Annals, p. 550. Some of the accusations relate to the bishop's appropriating the churches which the priory claimed as theii' own, away from them.