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 the church defenceless before the attacks of Rome, and her humiliation was to be effected through the humiliation of her chief metropolitan. Unable to see the future, Chichele, in the discourse he made at the opening of the first parliament of Henry VI, declared that men might expect the new reign to be prosperous, for the number six was of good omen.

In 1423 he held a visitation of the dioceses of Chichester and Salisbury, and in 1424 of the diocese of Lincoln. In the course of his Lincoln visitation he came to Higham Ferrers, his native village, and there dedicated a college he had oegun to build two years before for eight secular priests or fellows, of whom one was to be master, four clerks, of whom one was to be grammar master and another music master, and six choristers. For the endowment of this college he gave certain land which had fallen to the crown by the suppression of the alien priories, and which he had bought of the king, besides this foundation he also built a hospital for twelve poor men, and provided it with an endowment which was increased by the gifts of his brother Robert, the lord mayor, and William, one of the sheriffs of London. Both in 1421 and 1422 Martin V had vainly tried to procure the abolition of the statutes of provisors and præmunire, which limited the exercise of the papal authority in England. Foiled in these attempts, he now attacked the archbishop, who had proclaimed an indulgence to all who should in 1423 make a pilgrimage to Canterbury. In a violent letter he declared that this was a presumptuous imitation of the papal jubilee; he compared the archbishop's conduct to the attempt of the fallen angels, and ordered him to withdraw his proclamation. Chichele was afraid to resist, and the pope succeeded in his attack on the independence of the national church (, xxvii. 573;, History of the Papacy, ii. 26). As archbishop, Chichele was a prominent member of the council, and by an ordinance of July 1424 his salary as councillor was fixed at 200l. a year, the same sum as that paid to Beaufort. For ecclesiastical, if for no other, reasons, he was opposed to Beaufort, and upheld Gloucester against him. At the same time he was not a violent partisan, and on several occasions acted as mediator. In the disturbance in London of October 1425 he and the Duke of Coimbra interfered, to make peace between the two rivals [see ], and in January 1426 he, with other lords of the council, endeavoured to pacify Gloucester and persuade him to attend the council. When in March 1427 the Protector demanded that the lords in parliament should declare the extent of his power, the archbishop read, and probably drew up, their answer (Rot. Parl. iv. 326). Beaufort's acceptance of the cardinalate and the legatine commission in 1426 was a serious injury to him and to the national church. Martin V followed up the blow in 1427 by peremptorily ordering him to procure the abolition of the statutes of provisors, complaining at the same time that the crown had disregarded the papal reservations. Chichele defended himself and the Protector from the charge of being hinderers of the liberty of the church; for himself he declared that he was the only man in England that would speak of the matter. In a wrathful answer to this letter the pope said that he had not spoken of the Protector, and that the archbishop must show his obedience by deeds, not words; he suspended him from the office of legate which pertained to his see. Against this violation of his rights Chichele made an appeal to the judgment of a future council, and at the bidding of the crown Geoffrey Lowther, the constable of Dover, made the pope's collector give up his master's letters, and so the suspension did not take effect. Then the bishops, the university of Oxford, and divers temporal lords, wrote letters to the pope declaring how greatly the archbishop was honoured, and interceding for him. Nevertheless Martin still persisted in his demands, and in 1428 Chichele appeared before the commons, in company with the Archbishop of York and other bishops, and with tears in his eyes set before them the danger of withstanding the pope. The commons, however, would not give up the statutes, and sent a petition to the council representing that the pope had acted to the prejudice of the archbishop, and 'of our aller mother the church of Canterbury, and praying that the council would have the archbishop recommissed.' Accordingly ambassadors were sent to Rome to pacify the pope, and the matter dropped (, xxviii. 57; Concilia, iii. 471–86; Rot. Parl. iv. 322; Fœdera, x. 405). Although the statutes were not repealed, the pope had succeeded in humiliating the head and representative of the national church.

With the policy adopted by Gloucester with reference to the cardinalate and legatine commission of Beaufort the archbishop was of course in full sympathy, and he was present at the meeting of the council in November 1431 at which writs of praemunire and attachment were sealed against the cardinal. In spite of the defeats Chichele had suffered from Rome he made a complaint to his provincial synod in 1438 when