Page:Somerset Historical Essays.djvu/122

 against the flatterers who try to prevent the bishop from giving promotion to his own nephew, Robert of Salisbury: it is not right, he says, to prefer a less fit stranger to a fit nephew. In this letter to the bishop Peter writes as 'suus canonicus', and there is other evidence that he held for a time a canonry at Chartres. In writing to the dean of Chartres and the archdeacon of Blois he speaks of himself as having been their 'concanonicus'. It is in this letter (Ep. 49) that he defends his father's memory against the charges brought up in the suit with Robert of Salisbury for the provostship of Chartres. This office he still claims as his rightful due; he had designed to devote the remainder of his days to Our Lady of Chartres, but foes of his own household have conspired against him: God however has provided him with a more fruitful benefice. Perhaps we should put even before this letter another which he writes to the dean and chapter of Chartres, when his duties with the archbishop of Canterbury prevent him from coming to them as he had planned (Ep. 234). He is grateful to the dean for an offer of a pecuniary kind, but says he will take nothing from him or any one during his persecution. This melancholy story comes to a close with another letter to Bishop John (Ep. 130), repudiating charges of attempts to bring various influences, royal or papal, to bear in order to secure the provostship which Robert the nephew now holds. He writes as the archbishop of Canterbury's chancellor; and this office may be the better benefice referred to above. Some years afterwards, in 1182, Peter wrote to congratulate Rainald, a new bishop-elect of Chartres, and said nothing at all as to his own troubles and hopes (Ep. 15): a little later, however, he writes to two members of the bishop's household, and says: 'Your lord had promised to recall me from exile: but there are frogs in bishop's chambers' (Ep. 20).

We must now come back to England and to the household of Archbishop Richard, where Peter's real work lay. To what extent be was from time to time attached to the royal court it is difficult to say; but it is certain that he was there on occasions in the archbishop's interest. Once he was sent abroad on a mission to the king, and on reaching the other side of the channel he wrote back a lively description of his perilous passage: 'The king is off to Gascony, and I after