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 and also why at the council of Constance he took rank not as a cardinal but as a simple bishop (, iv. 591;, xxvii. 818). In 1412 he lent the king five hundred marks as a contribution towards the expenses of his foreign expedition (, viii. 767). On 20 Oct. 1414 Hallam was appointed with nine colleagues to act as the English ambassadors at the council summoned to meet shortly at Constance (ib. ix. 167), and further to conclude a treaty with Sigismund, king of the Romans (ib. 168 f.); they arrived at Constance on 7 Dec. (, iv. 23), Hallam being provided with sixty-four horses and a great company of attendants (, p. 46). He took with him a treatise, written at his request by Dr. Richard Ullerston or Ulverstone, an Oxford divine, in 1408, and entitled ‘Petitiones quoad Reformationem Ecclesiæ militantis’ (printed by, i. 1128–71). This treatise Hallam is said to have produced at the council. During its earlier sessions he seems to have guided the action of the English ‘nation,’ in securing for it an independent vote, and uniting it closely with the German ‘nation’ and with King (afterwards Emperor) Sigismund in a definitely reforming policy. Of the several objects for which the council was summoned that for which he sought earnestly to claim precedence was the reformation of the church ‘in capite et in membris.’ Such an aim naturally placed him in opposition to John XXIII, the pope to whom he owed his highest preferment; and he made himself conspicuous by the energy with which he denounced his conduct (witness his famous declaration, ‘Rogo dignum esse Iohannem papam,’ 11 March 1415, ib. iv. 1418, and Fasti, p. 21), and asserted that the council was superior to the pope (ib. iv. 59). John mentions Hallam's hostility as one of the causes which drove him to flee from Constance and take refuge at Schaffhausen, 21 March (Informationes Papæ, &c., ib. ii. 160). The bishop appears, indeed, to have taken an active share in the negotiations concerning Pope John; on 17 April he signed on behalf of the English nation the council's letter to the kings and princes of Europe, relating the facts of the pope's flight and its issues (ib. iv. 125–9); on 13 May he was placed upon a commission to hear appeals (ib. 172); on the following day he gave his assent on the part of his nation to the suspension of Pope John (ib. 183). The trials of Hus and of Jerom of Prague and the condemnation of Wycliffe's doctrines seem to have interested him less; once, perhaps, he interposed a question during the second hearing of Hus, 7 June (ib. 310), and again on 5 July, the day before his death, Hallam took part in a committee of the nations at the Franciscan convent which sat to urge the prisoner by any means to recant his errors (ib. 386 f., 432). There is also a hint of the bishop's desire for fair play and moderation in dealing with Jerom of Prague, 23 May (ib. 218). But it would be a mistake to suppose that he looked with the smallest approval upon the religious movement in Bohemia, which doubtless appeared to him, as to the mass of the ‘reforming’ members of the council, in the light of a vexatious obstacle to the success of their hopes.

On 19 Dec. 1415 Hallam was present at a congregation of the nations, when the German president made an emphatic protest against the council's delay in attacking serious and admitted abuses in the church, particularly simony (ib. 556 f.). On 4 Feb. 1416 Hallam joined in signing the articles of Narbonne relative to the admission to the council of Benedict XIII's supporters (ib. 591), and on 5 June he made a speech on the reception of the ambassadors from Portugal (ib. 788). After the treaty made with Sigismund during his visit to England in 1416, Hallam was placed upon commissions for the purpose of entering into alliances with various powers, the king of Arragon, the princes of the empire and other nobles of Germany, the Hanse towns, and the city of Genoa, 2 Dec. 1416 (, ix. 410–16, cf. 437). Just before Sigismund was expected back at Constance, Hallam and the other English bishops celebrated the prospect of a speedy termination of their labours by a banquet to the burghers of the city on Sunday, 24 Jan. 1417, followed by a ‘comœdia sacra’—evidently a sort of mystery play—in Latin, on the subject of the nativity of Christ, the worship of the magi, and the murder of the holy innocents (ib. 1088 f.). On the 27th, when the king arrived, Sir John Forester reports to Henry V that after the first solemn reception had taken place ‘thanne wente my lord of Salisbury to fore hestely to the place of the general consayl … and he entryde into the pulpette: war the cardenal Cameracence [Ailly], chief of the nation of France and 3our special enemy, also had purposith to have y maad the collation to for the kyng, in worschip of the Frenche nation: bot my lord of Salisbury kepte pocession in worschip of 3ow and 3owr nation; and he made ther ryth a good collation that plesyde the kyng ryth well’ (ib. ix. 434). Two days later the English bishops were received with marked consideration by the king, and on the 31st they entertained him at a great feast