Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/350

 This was greatly enlarged from the author's manuscripts, with new matter taken from parliamentary journals, state acts, and other authentic documents. To it the editor added an account by Curry of ‘The State of the Catholics of Ireland from the settlement under King William to the relaxation of the Popery Laws in 1778.’ Besides the above-mentioned works Curry wrote ‘An Essay on ordinary Fevers,’ London, 1743, 8vo; and ‘Some Thoughts on the Nature of Fevers, on the causes of their becoming mortal, and on the means to prevent it,’ London, 1774, 8vo. He was one of the founders of the first catholic committee, which met privately in March 1760 at the Elephant Tavern in Essex Street, Dublin, and which was the forerunner of the powerful associations that achieved emancipation seventy years afterwards under O'Connell.



CURSON, DE COURÇON, DE CORCEONE, or DE CURCHUN, ROBERT (d. 1218), cardinal, born at Kedleston in Derbyshire, was a member of a noble family. He is said to have studied at Oxford, and certainly did so at Paris, where he became a scholar of some eminence, and from Paris went to Rome. He returned to France, and was employed there by Innocent III. He was a canon of Noyon in 1204 (Ep., vi. 399) and of Paris in 1211 (ib. xiv. 563). The next year he was made cardinal-priest of S. Stefano in Monte Celio, was employed by the pope in the case of Philip Augustus and his wife Ingeborg, and appears to have received the queen's confession as to the relations that existed between her and her husband (ib. xv. 688). In 1213 he was appointed legate a latere in France, with the special charge of preaching a crusade for the deliverance of Jerusalem. He at once held a council at Paris for the reformation of abuses (, xx. 331), in which many canons were published (, xxii. 818–43, where this council is wrongly dated 1212; comp., Collectio Ampliss. vol. vii. col. 102). Usurers were especially denounced; these usurers, who were called ‘Causins,’ carried on a vast business in France, and the king wrote to the pope complaining of the legate's attack on them. Innocent replied that, though it certainly was not exactly what he sent the legate to do, the suppression of usury was needful in order that money might be forthcoming for the crusade (, iii. 577). Robert's action in this matter was remembered in England when the oppressions of the Causins became intolerable here, and Bishop Grosseteste spoke of him as one of ‘the fathers and doctors’ who had protested against their practices (, v. 404, an. 1253). He and the preachers whom he enlisted in the cause of the crusade preached rather for the people than for the nobility; they said what pleased the lower classes, and spoke with great bitterness of the clergy. Their sermons attracted large crowds, and they gave the cross to ‘little children, old men, and women, to the halt, the blind, the deaf, and the lepers,’ so that the rich held back from offering themselves (, Recueil, xvii. 108). While Robert angered the clergy by his denunciations of them, he was by no means stainless himself. At Limoges, for example, in August 1214, he deposed the abbot of S. Martial as incapable, and gave his office to another, who offered him ‘half the treasure’ of the abbey for himself, and a pension of twenty livres to be paid to the canons of S. Stefano (, Recueil, xvii. 233, 799). He succeeded in gaining nearly all who were engaged in preaching for the Albigensian crusade as preachers for the crusade in the East, and this greatly annoyed Simon of Montfort and his party (, Recueil, xix. 82). Moreover, he offended the French as a nation, for after the battle of Bouvines, when John was still in Poitou, he acted as his ambassador, and joined the Earl of Chester in arranging a truce for five years between him and the French king, when Philip, it was said, might easily have destroyed his enemy, and though he pretended that he made peace in order to remove any hindrance to the crusade, it was generally held that he acted as ‘one Englishman for another’ (, Recueil, xviii. 783; ). He also incurred a rebuke from Innocent for interfering in the affairs of the convent of Grammont, and taking the part of the lay brethren against the prior and clergy (Recueil, xix. 593).

The renewed energy with which the Albigensian war was conducted after the victory of Muret, and the interest that the pope took in its progress, caused Robert to suspend his labours on behalf of the Holy Land, to preach the crusade against the heretics of Toulouse, and to take the cross himself. His zeal in the cause became notorious, and he is said to have invented new names for the heretics, calling them ‘Almericani’ and ‘Godini,’ after two of their principal teachers (Chron. Mailros, p. 183). He marched with the army of Guy