Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/200

 Richard kingdom that he preferred a moderate to an heroic policy, and kept on good terms with the king ( iii.c. 8;, ii. 399; , Epp. 6, 38); De Rebus a se gestis, c. 5, and De Invectionibus c. 18, ap. Opera, i. 53, 144).

[Gervase of Cant., Gesta Hen. II, R. de Diceto, Rog. Hov., Gir. Cambr., Elmham's Hist. Mon. S. Aug. (all Rolls Ser.); W. de Newburgh (Engl. Hist. Soc.); R. de Torigni (Société de l'Histoire de France);Peter of Blois, ed. Giles;Thorne's Chron. ed. Twysden; Hook's Archbishops of Canterbury.]

 RICHARD (d. 1188), bishop of Winchester, was born in the diocese of Bath (, i. 319), at Sock (, i. 158, from Bishop Drokensford's Register), i.e. probably Sock Dennis, near Ilchester. The 'Annals of Tewkesbury' call him 'Richard Hokelin' (Ann. Monast. i. 54). Later writers give him the surnames of Toclyve or Tocliffe, and More; for the former there seems to be no authority but the inscription on his tomb: Præsulis egregii pausant hic membra Ricardi; Toclyve, cui summi gaudia sunto poli; and for the latter none at all. Gilbert Foliot [q. v.] called him kinsman (G., Ep. cxcix). He spent his youth in his native diocese, and early obtained some ecclesiastical preferment there (R., i. 319). From 1156 to 1162 he figures in the 'Pipe Rolls' as 'Richard, scribe of the court' (scriptor curiæ); Henry II at the outset of his reign had granted him a mill at Ilchester worth 40s. a year (cf. Pipe Rolls, 2 Hen. II, p. 30, 9 Hen. II, p. 26, 10 Hen. II, p. 10); and his contemporaries uniformly designate him `Richard of Ilchester.' He is said to have been a clerk of Thomas Becket (i.e. probably he worked under Thomas in the chancery) and to have owed to Thomas's influence his appointment to the archdeaconry of Poitiers (Materials iii. 120), which took place between September 1162 and March 1163 (cf. Pipe Roll, 8 Hen. II, p. 21; Gesta Abb. i. 157). This office he held for ten years, although he seems to have set foot in the diocese only once, and then for a purpose quite out of harmony with his ecclesiastical duties.

He was one of the counsellors specially consulted by Henry at the trial of a suit between the abbot of St. Albans and the bishop of Lincoln in March 1163 (Gesta Abb. i. 151, 154, 157). The abbot also applied to him, as 'one who had the king's ear,' for help in recovering for the abbey a benefice which the king had seized as crown property. Richard exacted two-thirds of the value of the benefice as the price of his intercession (ib. p. 124). After the first dispute between Henry and Thomas over the royal 'customs,' Oct. 1163, Henry sent Richard of Ilchester, with Bishop Arnulf of Lisieux, to beg for a confirmation of them from the pope; the two envoys 'experienced the fury of the waves six times within three months,' but could not gain their end (R., i. 312; cf. Materials, v. 85). When the 'customs' were finally drawn up at Clarendon in January 1164, Richard, according to one account, was appointed to share with the chief justiciar the duty of publishing them throughout the realm (Thomas Saga, i. 333). Possibly his special task may have been to publish them in his own archdeaconry. In June the bishop of Poitiers [see Belmeis, John (DNB00)] was visited by two commissioners from the king, of whom one, described by him as 'our friend Luscus, the eye of whose mind God has blinded,' was apparently Archdeacon Richard. Luscus, after vainly endeavouring to win the bishop's assent to the customs, called out the forces of Aquitaine in Henry's name against the king of France, and then published the customs at Poitiers in defiance of the bishop (Materials, v. 38-40, 115). Canon Robertson (ib. pp. 38, 115) suggested less probably that 'Luscus' was Richard de Lucy [q. v.]

Richard of Ilchester was a member of the embassy sent by Henry to the pope after the flight of Archbishop Thomas (November 1164) (Materials, iv. 61;, i. 315). The archbishop's party, however, did not regard him as an enemy; John of Salisbury [q. v.] addressed him as a friend, trusted much to his influence with the king in behalf of himself and others of Thomas's exiled clerks (Materials, v. 153, 347-52, 544), and had a personal interview with him at Angers at Easter 1165 (cf. ib. p. 348, iii. 98). Richard was no doubt then on his way to Germany, whither Henry had despatched him and John of Oxford [q. v.] on a mission to the Emperor Frederick. The upshot, according to general belief, was that the two English envoys, in their sovereign's name, abjured Alexander IIIand promised adherence to Frederick's ally, the anti-pope Paschal, at Würzburg on Whit-Sunday, 23 May (ib. i. 53, v. 182-3; Thomas Saga, i. 331). They were, in consequence, excommunicated by Thomas on 12 June 1166 (Materials, v. 383, 388, 390, 395). Richard's excommunication had been staved off for a year apparently by the intercession of John of Salisbury, who, however, had got no thanks for his good offices, and was therefore not eager to renew them when urged to do so by one of Richard's friends after the sentence was passed (ib, vi. 4). Richard, who was now on the continent with the king, was