Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/415

 on the exclusion of foreigners from the king's council as a condition of the thirtieth granted.

Edmund was now to come forward as the champion of the national church against the claims of Rome. In 1237 (c. 29 June) he rebuked the king for having invited the legate Cardinal Otho to England, and in the autumn (19–20 Nov.) he was present at the great ecclesiastical council of St. Paul's, on which occasion consistency would certainly have demanded that he should support the legate in his attempt to limit the abuse of pluralities (see Vita Bertr. c. 25; but cf., iii. 194, &c.). This council is rendered remarkable by being the occasion of a dispute between Edmund and his old pupil, the Archbishop of York, as regards the right of precedence (, iii. 395, 416, &c.).

Four weeks later (c. 17 Dec.) Edmund left England for Rome. Since his elevation he had been forced into many disputes. In 1235 he had refused to consecrate Richard de Wendene, whom the monks of Rochester had elected their bishop, and the disappointed electors appealed to the pope. He had quarrelled with his own monks of Canterbury as to the place where he should consecrate Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln. A lawsuit with the Earl of Arundel as to the right of hunting in the archiepiscopal forests had been decided against him. The monks of his own priory of Christ Church had fallen into vices of which the chronicler refuses even to speak. Added to this he was at feud with the king. This, however, did not prevent Henry from charging him to inform the pope as to the details of the clandestine marriage between Simon de Montfort and his own sister Eleanor, who, on the death of her first husband, had taken the vow of chastity before the archbishop himself. This combination of causes took Edmund to Rome that he might plead his case in person. His biographers note it as a special mark of the divine favour towards so holy a man that on one occasion, by refusing an invitation to the pope's table, he avoided being witness of a shocking murder that was then perpetrated under the very eyes of Gregory. Judgment seems to have been delivered against him on every count (20 March), and he returned home about August, though only to find himself engaged in a fresh quarrel with his monks, whom before long he was forced to excommunicate. Once more they appealed to Rome, and refused to pay any attention to his interdict. A little later he excommunicated the prior of Christ Church, seemingly because he had abetted the king in the infringements of Magna Charta.

In the spring of 1240 Edmund was present when the prelates refused the pope a fifth for his war against the Emperor Frederic, and a little later he bade a tearful farewell to Earl Richard of Cornwall as the latter was starting on his crusade. His differences with the king were by this time so great that he was obliged to abandon the church of secular canons he was just beginning to build at Maidstone (1239). It was in vain that he wrote letters to the pope, claiming the right to appoint successors to vacant sees if the king should not fill them up within six months after the death of the previous occupant. In Gregory IX he had not a pontiff who would play an Alexander to his Becket. At last, foiled in all his efforts, he gave way to the papal exactions instead of continuing to resist the king's. His courage broke down beneath the strain, and, in the hope of winning his cause against his monks, he paid down a fifth of his revenue (eight hundred marks) to the pope's agents. The other English prelates followed his example. A little later came the demand that three hundred English benefices should be forthwith assigned to as many Romans. This attack on his church's rights the archbishop could no longer endure. His eyes naturally turned towards Pontigny, the refuge of his great predecessors, St. Thomas and Stephen Langton. There he came in the summer of 1240 begging to be received as a simple monk. The heat drove him from Pontigny to Soisy, whither he now went, promising to return on St. Edmund's day. At Soisy his illness grew worse. His strength gradually left him; but even as the very end drew on he refused to undress or lie upon his bed. The last days of his life were spent with his head resting on his hand or sitting fully dressed upon his couch. After receiving the holy communion he broke out into a homely English proverb: ‘Folks say game [sport] goeth into the womb [belly]; but I say now game goeth into the heart.’ The features of his physicians told him that his last hour was near; but he uttered no moan, nor did his wits wander. At last, on 16 Nov. 1240, just as the day was breaking, he died. His body was carried to Pontigny for burial.

Numerous miracles were reported to mark his final resting-place, and a demand soon rose for his canonisation. This demand was opposed by Henry III and Boniface of Canterbury, but was urgently supported by Louis IX and his wife. Commission after commission was appointed to investigate the authenticity of the wonders ascribed to the dead archbishop. The inquisition in England was conducted by Richard de la Wich, bishop of Chichester, Robert Bacon, and the prior of Esseby, of whom the two former were his