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 archbishop will fulfil the pope's order and excommunicate him within fifteen days. On 26 May the archbishop, with Waleran the newly consecrated bishop of Rochester and four Norman bishops, excommunicated at St Stephen's Caen all who had fostered the dissensions between the kins; and his sons. It is said by Roger de Hoveden that the young king was excepted from this sentence: perhaps, however, the excommunication was in such general terms that some may have held that he was excepted and others that he was included. For we have a letter written by Peter to Ralph the bishop of Angers, urging him to punish with ecclesiastical censures the Angevins who had deserted K. Henry, and adding that the archbishop of Canterbury had, at the pope's bidding, excommunicated at Caen all who broke the peace not excepting the young king (Ep. 69). Suddenly on 11 June the young king died. As his body was being taken to Rouen, it was forcibly detained at Le Mans and buried there: shortly afterwards, however, K. Henry and the archbishop removed it to Rouen. The second letter of Peter's collection—the first, that is, after the prefatory epistle—is addressed to the king at this time, exhorting him not to yield to excessive grief for the loss of his son. It may well be that this letter of consolation was appreciated by the king and led to the request that Peter would publish his letters (see Ep. 1).

The archbishop returned to England on 11 August, and eight days afterwards Peter was present in the chapter-house of Christ Church, when the new bishop of Rochester, who had been consecrated abroad, did fealty to the church of Canterbury. Peter's service to the archbishop was soon to close, for Archbishop Richard died on 16 Feb. 1184.

The king returned to England in June, and the Christ Church monks were ordered to proceed to the election of an archbishop. Of their four nominees none satisfied the king. Then the bishops elected Baldwin the bishop of Worcester: he had been the protégé of the good bishop Bartholomew of Exeter, who made him his archdeacon: after this he had joined the Cistercians, and had become abbot of Ford in Devonshire. It took much negociation before the monks of Canterbury would agree to elect him; but they did so at last, after his election by the bishops had been formally quashed, in the king's presence at Westminster on 16 Dec. 1184. Baldwin's old patron, the bishop of Exeter, had died the day before. At the end of January 1185 Heraclius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, arrived to plead for a new Crusade: he stayed in England till