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 exiled prelate to defend his own action on the ground of pressing necessity, and at the same time to urge that Thomas would send a kindly word to Reginald, who was greatly distressed at the alienation, and who was a man worth making a friend: 'I know at any rate,' he says, 'his goodness to me' (Ep. 24). We cannot follow Peter's movements for a while after this; but we have a letter (Ep. 61) which belongs to this period and illustrates his outspokenness towards his friends. 'You must give up your hawks,' he writes to the archdeacon of Salisbury, 'with all your benefices you have received the care of souls, and not the care of birds: a bishop you soon will be; so turn from your birds to your books.'

For two years after the murder of Becket (29 Dec. 1170) we lose sight of Peter. Possibly he returned to Paris, and taught pupils there. He expected two nephews of Bishop Jocelin of Salisbury, but they did not come; nor did he receive a pension which that bishop had promised him (Ep. 51). He wrote to Reginald the archdeacon, begging him to secure for him the next vacant prebend at Salisbury (Ep. 230).

In the spring of 1173 Peter reappears in the service of Rotrou archbishop of Rouen. It was a moment of great distress and of serious danger for the English king. His sons, with the connivance of their mother Eleanor, had broken into open revolt, and many of the barons both of Normandy and of England had taken their side. In his anxiety to prevent a fratricidal struggle after his death, the king had apportioned the various provinces of his empire among his sons, and had caused the young Henry to be crowned as king of the English, But he had refused to relax his own personal control over any part of his wide dominions, or even to supply his sons with independent revenues adequate to the positions which they held. Early in March 1173 the young Henry suddenly left his father, and fled to the court of the king of France, Louis VII, where he was presently joined by his brothers Richard and Geoffrey. The king sent Archbishop Rotrou and Arnulf the bishop of Lisieux on an embassy to the French king at Paris. Peter of Blois went with them — we should have supposed in attendance on the archbishop; but he appears to regard himself as sent directly by the king (Ep. 71). It was by his pen that the two envoys made the report of their unsuccessful mission (Ep. 153). This letter contains the remarkable statement that the envoys could not induce the king of France 'to return the king's salutation': he had heard with patience all that they said, 'sola salutatione excepta.' The obscurity of the phrase is made clear when we read the account of this mission which is given by