Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/150

Geoffrey Yorkshire. John ordered him to be disseised of all his estates, and transferred the sheriffdom to James de Poterne. James apparently took possession of his new office by main force. Geoffrey retaliated by excommunicating him and his followers, as well as the townsfolk of Beverley, who had broken into the archbishop's park, and all who 'without just cause had stirred up, or should stir up,' his royal brother against him. In October John returned to England, restored Geoffrey's temporalities, and appointed a day for him to answer for his proceedings before the king's court. When John visited York in March 1201, however, a temporary compromise was arranged. John took Geoffrey's barony in pledge for his debts, and appealed to the pope against him (Rot. Chart. p. 102). Two months after, Geoffrey managed to turn this truce into a peace by the usual means. John granted him a charter of forgiveness for the past, and confirmation in all his canonical and territorial rights for the future, in consideration of 1,000l. to be paid within twelve months, Geoffrey's barony remaining pledged to the crown meanwhile. Eight months later, however, it seems that Geoffrey had not yet received full compensation for the injuries done to him by John's servants during the quarrel (Rot. Pat. i. 5). Another dispute between the archbishop and his chapter about the appointment of an archdeacon had begun in the summer of 1200, and was not finally settled till June 1202, when the pope decided it against Geoffrey. In February or March 1204, John, being again at York, formally took the canons under his protection against Geoffrey and all men; and a year later, at the same place, Philip of Poitiers, bishop of Durham, the metropolitan chapter, and the heads of fourteen religious houses in the diocese appealed to Rome in the king's presence against a possible sentence of excommunication or suspension from their primate. One more reconciliation, patched up between the half-brothers at Worcester in January 1207, lasted only a few weeks. On 9 Feb. John, after vainly endeavouring to win the consent of the bishops to a grant of a fixed proportion of revenue from every beneficed clerk for the needs of the royal treasury, laid a tax of a thirteenth of all chattels, movable and immovable, upon all lay fiefs throughout the realm, except those belonging to the Cistercian order, and on 26 May he called upon the archdeacons to procure a similar contribution from the clergy in general. The writ was issued from York, as if on purpose to goad the archbishop into a desperate act of defiance, for Geoffrey had headed the successful opposition to John's first demand. He at once forbade his clergy to pay the tax, and denounced all who should do so as excommunicate. But no one dared to resist the king's demand, and Geoffrey, hurling a last anathema against the collectors and payers of the tax, and against all spoilers of the church in general, fled in despair over sea. His archiepiscopal property was of course seized by the king; he appealed to the pope, and Innocent interfered energetically, putting the church of York under interdict for his sake, but without effect.

Geoffrey was not heard of again till his death in 1212. In a note to Godwin, 'De Præsulibus Angliæ' (p. 677, ed. Richardson, 1743), he is said to have died on 18 Dec. at 'Grosmunt' in Normandy. Mr. Stapleton (Observ. on Norm. Exch. Rolls, p. clxx) gives the same date, and shows that Grosmunt stands for the religious house of Notre-Dame-du-Parc, commonly called Grandmont, near Rouen. No contemporary authority for either day or place is forthcoming; but Geoffrey was undoubtedly buried in the church of Notre-Dame-du-Parc, and there his grave and epitaph were still to be seen in the middle of the last century (, Anglo-Norm. Antiq., pp. 37-8). The 'good men' of Grandmont were special favourites of King Henry II, brought by him from Aquitaine to undertake the care of a lazar-house into which he had converted his own hunting-lodge in the park outside Rouen. So it seems that the earliest and best affection of Geoffrey's life was also the most abiding. Unquestionably, secular office in his father's service, rather than the episcopal career into which he was urged against his own better judgment, was Geoffrey's true vocation. Yet even at York the worst charge that could ever be honestly brought against him was that of an impracticable self-will and an ungovernable temper. 'Vir quidem magnæ abstinentiæ et summæ puritatis' (, p. 400) was the character that, when all struggles were over, he left behind him there.

[Giraldus Cambrensis, Vita Galfridi Archiepiscopi and Vita S. Remigii (Opera, ed. Brewer and Dimock, vols. iv. vii.); William of Newburgh, ed. Hewlett; Annales de Waverley (Ann. Monast., ed. Luard, vol. ii.) Gervase of Canterbury, Ralph de Diceto, Gesta Henrici Regis and Roger of Hoveden, ed. Stubbs. The above are all in Rolls Series. See also T. Stubbs's Chronica Pontificum Ecclesiæ Eboracensis, pt. ii. (Hist, of Church of York, ed. Raine, vol. ii.); Walter Map, De Nugis (Camd. Soc.); Geoffrey of Coldingham (Hist. Dunelm. Scriptt. Tres, Surtees Soc.); Roger of Wendover, ed. Coxe (Engl. Hist, Soc.); Peter of Blois, Epistolae, ed. Giles;