Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/62

 the king, whom he entertained at Winchester at the following Christmas ( ii. 237; ii. 259), and shared with Hubert de Burgh and Pandulf the direction of the government.

He was present at the siege of William de Fortibus, earl of Aumale, in Biham, early in 1221; but on 19 Sept. he took the cross, and left England with the bishop of Hereford and Faukes de Breauté [q. v.] (Ann. Wav. ii. 295). Peter had been elected archbishop of Damietta, and that place seems to have been their destination; but on the news of its capture they turned homewards (Ann. Dunst. iii. 75;, p. 190). He attested several acts of the king in the latter part of the year (Close Rolls, i. 470 b, 472 b, &c.) On 18 Sept. 1222 he gave the first benediction to Richard of Barking, the new abbot of Westminster; and in the same year took part in an arbitration which decided that that abbey was independent of the bishop of London (, iii. 74, 75).

Jealous of Hubert de Burgh and the natural head of the Poitevin party, Peter was probably more than privy to the plot which was concerted in 1223 by his friend Faukes de Breauté, the Earls of Chester and Aumale, and Brian de l'Isle, to surprise the Tower of London and remove the justiciar. Hubert denounced him as a traitor to the king and kingdom, and he retired from the council violently threatening the justiciar (Ann. Dunst. iii. 84). Langton brought about a temporary reconciliation at Christmas at Northampton, and Honorius III, in a letter to Henry on 18 Jan. 1224, intervened in Peter's behalf (Royal Letters Henry III, i. 218). But Hubert, who had the ear of the king, used his power against Peter. The bishop and the earl of Chester retaliated by withdrawing, in 1224, from the army, which had been sent against Faukes de Breauté, with whom they probably had an understanding (Ann. Dunst. iii. 86). But in the same year the bishop was with the king's army in Wales (Close Rolls, i. 606 b). On 28 Sept. Henry III summoned him to answer for his encroachments on the royal forest rights in Hampshire (ib. i. 633), and the bishop replied by an excommunication directed against the foes of the church (Ann. Wint. ii. 84). Next year (1226) the king and the bishop resumed friendly relations (cf. Close Rolls, ii. 19; Royal Letters Henry III, i. 261).

Though Henry still trusted Peter, he was weary of the bishop's tutelage. In February 1227 the king, at the instigation of Hubert, renounced his guardianship, and dismissed all his followers from the court. The king's attitude, coupled with the continued strength of Hubert's influence, led Peter to quit England and join the crusade which was preparing under the leadership of Frederick II. Henry had already written, on 3 Nov. 1226, recommending him to the emperor's favour (Close Rolls, ii. 204). Frederick II, on his arrival in the Holy Land in 1228, found there a considerable army, of which the bishop of Winchester was one of three leaders ( ii. 351). Cæsarea and Joppa were fortified mainly with the aid of Peter's money, and after the conclusion of Frederick's truce (18 Feb. 1229) he and the bishop entered Jerusalem together on 8 April (Palm Sunday) (Ann. Margam, i. 37). Among the accusations brought against Frederick II by Gregory IX was one of having besieged Peter and his companion, the bishop of Exeter, in their houses while in the Holy Land. But Matthew Paris says Peter des Roches mediated successfully between the pope and the emperor (Chron. Maj. iii. 490), and Frederick appealed to the testimony of Peter and his fellow-bishop that his truce with Saladin was not a dishonourable one (Richardus de S. Germano in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, tom. vii. col. 1016; see also letter of 28 Aug. 1230 in, Histoire Diplomatique de Frédéric II, iii. 218). During his stay in the Holy Land he, with the concurrence of the patriarch of Jerusalem, caused the order of the canons at St. Thomas the Martyr at Acre, founded by Hubert Walter, to be changed into a house of the order of the Sword of Spain, and had it removed to a healthier situation, nearer the sea. Peter started home in 1231, having succeeded in ingratiating himself with both pope and emperor. On his way through France he arranged a truce for three years between the king of France on the one side and the king of England, with the earls of Brittany and Chester, on the other. He arrived at Winchester on 1 Aug. 1231, and went to the assistance of the king in Wales, giving him more aid than all the other bishops put together. At the close of the campaign he invited the king, the justiciar, and the other royal officers to spend Christmas with him at Winchester, where he lavished on them enough victuals, vestments, gold, silver, jewels, and horses to have sufficed for a royal coronation (Ann. Dunst. iii. 126; iii. 13).

The bishop employed his accession of popularity to avenge himself on Hubert. Suitable weapons were not wanting. The bishop had been charged by the pope to excommunicate