Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/99

 Balsham his trust. Without the fear either of St. Ethelreda or of God before his eyes, he cut down the timber, emptied the parks of their game and the ponds of their fish, pauperised the tenants, and did all the harm in his power to the monks and to the diocese at large. And while the bishop-elect and the convent were hoping to be heard in their own exculpation on a day appointed by the king for the purpose, Henry made use of the occasion to break out into abuse against the choice they had made, inveighing against the bishop-elect above all on the ground that the isle of Ely had from of old been a place of refuge for defeated and desperate persons, and that it would be unsafe to commit the custody of a place which was much the same as a citadel to a simple cloistered monk, feeble, unwarlike, and without experience in statecraft. Accordingly, on the feast of St. Gordian and St. Epimachus, 10 May 1257, the election of Hugh, though perfectly in order, was quashed by the united action of the king and Boniface of Savoy, the archbishop. But before this (for such seems to have been the order of events) the bishop-elect had betaken himself to Rome, there to appeal to the pope (Alexander IV); while the archbishop had written to his personal friends at the papal Curia, asking them to thwart Hugh's endeavours. The archbishop appears (from a statement in Ely, 179, note 7)to have taken up the untenable position that, should the election be annulled, the appointment would devolve upon himself; in which case he intended to name Adam de Marisco. Hugh spent considerable sums in vindication of his claims; and Henry de Wengham, who had been no party to the royal application in his favour, entreated the king to stay his manœuvres and 'armed supplications' against the pious monks who had chosen a better man than had been recommended to them. When he heard that the famous Franciscan, Adam de Marisco (Marsh), had been proposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury(Boniface),the modest chanchellor protested that either of the two others was worthier of the see than himself. On the other hand, Adam de Marisco (according to the same authority, Matthew Paris, whose prejudice against the Franciscans is transparent), although an old and learned man and a friar who had renounced all worldly greatness and large revenues in assuming the religious habit, was reported to have given a willing consent to the substitution of himself for Hugh de Balsham.

Hugh de Balsham succeeded in obtaining not only confirmation, but also consecration from Pope Alexander IV, 14 Oct. 1257 (Profession Roll of Canterbury), and returned home. As for Henry de Wengham, his modesty was rewarded by his election to the bishopric of Winchester two years afterwards (see, v. 731). Adam de Marisco died within a few months of the termination of the dispute. Had his life been prolonged, his election to the contested bishopric might have exercised a momentous influence not only upon the history of that see, but also upon that of the university with which it was already closely connected. He had been the first Franciscan who read lectures at Oxford, and was, 'if not the founder, an eminent instrument in the foundation, of that school, from which proceeded the most celebrated of the Franciscan schoolmen' (, Monumenta Franciscana, preface, lxxx). A generation had hardly passed since (in 1226) the Franciscans had arrived in England, and already their numbers had risen to more than 1,200, and Cambridge as well as Oxford was among the towns where they multiplied. Readers or lecturers belonging to the order were here appointed in regular succession (for a list of those at Cambridge, seventy-four in number, see Monumenta Franciscana 555-7). The success of the Franciscans at the English universities was doubtless in some measure due to the fact that after a violent struggle between the citizens and the university of Paris, ending in 1231, the regulars had there achieved a complete triumph over the seculars, and that in this triumph the Franciscans had largely participated (, Histoire de l'Université de Paris, i. 389 seqq.). Not only did the Franciscans establish themselves at Cambridge as early as 1224, but in 1249 the Carmelites moved in from Chesterton to Newnham: in 1257 the friars of the Order of Bethlehem settled in Trumpington Street; and in 1258 the friars of the Sack or of the Penitence of Jesus Christ settled in the parish of St. Mary (now St. Mary the Great), whence they were afterwards moved to the parish then called St. Peter's without Trumpington Gate. So many orders, writes Matthew Paris, under the year of Hugh de Balsham's election, had already made their appearance in England, that the confusion of orders seemed disorderly (Chronica Majora, v. 631 ). At Cambridge there were added at a rather later date (1273) the friars of St. Mary, and two years afterwards the Dominicans. Besides these establishments older foundations existed, of which here need only be mentioned that of the Augustinian Canons who had been for a century and a half settled in their priory at Barnwell, and that of the brethren of St. John's Hospital, who were