Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/202

 [q.v.], bishop of Exeter, wrote in a similar strain (ib. Ep. cccxvi); and the chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury, added their testimony to Richard's merits as a father of the poor and comforter of the afflicted, and a friend and protector of the convent in its troubles (, Ep. ccccxx, cf. Ep. ccccxxii). He seems to have been enthroned, though unconsecrated, on Ascension Day, 17 May (, i. 368). At midsummer 1174 the justiciars, having struggled for twelve months to put down the revolt stirred up by the young king, and having vainly sent messenger after messenger to call Henry II to their aid, 'unanimously agreed to send over the elect of Winchester, knowing that he would speak to the king much more familiarly, warmly, and urgently than any one else, and lay before him more fully the distressed state of the nation.' On his arrival the Normans said they supposed the next messenger sent from England would be the Tower of London (, i. 381-2). Richard probably returned with the king in July; on 6 Oct. he was consecrated at Canterbury by Archbishop Richard (ib. p. 392; . i. 251), and he is said to have been again enthroned at Winchester on 13 Oct. (, i. 395). In May 1175 he attended a council held by the archbishop at Westminster; in July he was at a royal council at Woodstock; on 6 Oct. he witnessed Henry's treaty with Roderic of Counaught at Windsor (Gesta Hen. i. 92-3, 103). At the end of July 1176 Henry sent him, with the bishop of Ely [see ], to Northampton to meet a papal legate, Vivian, on his way to Scotland, and make him swear to do nothing prejudicial to English interests (ib. i. 118). Next month, when the king's daughter, Joanna, set out for her new home in Sicily, all the arrangements for her household and for her provisions and expenditure on the journey were undertaken by the bishop of Winchester (, i. 414). At Michaelmas Henry sent him to Normandy. The seneschal of the duchy was dead; Henry appointed Richard not merely seneschal, but justiciar (Gesta Hen. i. 1 24); i.e. he entrusted him with the supreme control of the Norman administration and government, and he seems also to have given him a special charge to examine into and amend the Norman system of taxation and finance (, i. 415, 424). Richard was one of the commissioners appointed in June 1177 to urge upon Louis of France the fulfilment of his treaties with Henry (Gesta. Hen. i. 168). He witnessed a XXXXX aty between the two kings on 25 Sept. XXXXXX icourt (ib. p. 194; i. XXXXXX, i. 422). On 21 March 1174 he returned to England (, i. 424). and was at once reinstated in his old place of special honour at the exchequer table (Dial. de Scace. p. 781). Of his eighteen months' work in Normandy no certain record remains: the earliest extant roll of the Norman exchequer dates only from 1180, and there is nothing to show how much or how little of the close resemblance between the system therein revealed and that of the English exchequer may be due to the visit of the English justiciar.

In 1179, when a papal legate was importuning the reluctant English bishops to attend a council at Rome, 'the bishop of Winchester alone was left in honoured repose at the request of the French king' (, i. 430). Richard's `repose' was not idleness: the chief-justiciarship was this year put into commission among three prelates, of whom he was one (Ib. p. 435), and he was also head of the southern circuit of the itinerant judges (Gesta Hen. i. 238). Early next spring (1180), however, [q. v.], was made sole chief justiciar, and on 5 March the bishop of Winchester, in company with the vice-chancellor, [q.v.], started on an embassy to France (, ii. 4). He returned before Michaelmas (Mag. Rot. Scace. Norm. i. 38), and on 23 Oct. was sitting as a baron of the exchequer at Westminster (, Baronage, i. 700). He appears in the same capacity in April 1182 (Feet of Fines, p. 2), and again in May 1183 (, p. 251). On 21 Feb. 1182 he was entertaining King Henry at his manor-house of Waltham in Hampshire (Mem. of St. Edmunds, i. 227): he witnessed Henry's will made there during his visit, and was trustee for some of the bequests therein contained ( i. 298-9). On 28 Feb., at Merewell (Isle of Wight), he gave the benediction to the newly elected abbot, Sampson of St. Edmund's (Mem. of St. Edmund's,ii. 5). He was at the council at Westminster in which Baldwin was elected primate [see Baldwin, d. 1190], 2 Dec. 1184 (Gesta Hen. i. 319). On 10 April 1185 he was at Dover with the king (Coll. Topogr. et Geneal. iii. 176-7). At the end of April 1186 he received the king at Merewell (, ii. 41 ). He died on 21 or 22 Dec. 1188 (Gesta Hen. ii. 58; . i. 438;, ii. 58), and was buried on the north side of the presbytery of his cathedral church. The monks of that church once sent a deputation to Henry II to complain that their bishop, Richard, had cut down the number of dishes at their dinner from thirteen to ten. `Woe betide him,' answered