Page:Somerset Historical Essays.djvu/137

 Rheims, and it begins with a graceful reference to the peace made by his intervention between the English and French kings. Now we know that in June 1197 Hubert Walter, having concluded an arrangement between K. Richard and the archbishop of Rouen, Walter de Coutances, in the matter of Andely, went on into France to make a truce with K. Philip. The reference may perhaps be to Archbishop William's services on this occasion. The letter goes on to recall with gratitude the hospitality shown to St Thomas in earlier days when William was archbishop of Sens. But the point of the letter is only reached when the archbishop says: 'Do not listen to the detractions of our brother, who has inherited from his predecessors a quarrel with our church. We grieve for his present troubles, and would help him, if only he would take reasonable advice.' The reference is undoubtedly to Geoffrey archbishop of York; and we must read 'frater noster' (with some of the MSS), not 'frater vester'. But Geoffrey's troubles were too persistent to be any guide in fixing the date of this letter, and the only sure indication is given by the title of legate which Hubert Walter enjoyed after March 1195.

The other letter (Ep. 135) is one which Peter must have written with a peculiar satisfaction. It requires the dean and chapter of Salisbury to dispense from residence Master Thomas de Husseburne, one of the king's justices. It goes on to assert the archbishop's right to claim a similar exemption for canons whom he requires for his own service. Moreover the law of residence must be interpreted with reasonableness, and such pleas as ill-health and the smallness of a prebend are not to be disregarded. As the archbishop writes as legate, the letter cannot be earlier than 1195. Richard Poore became dean of Salisbury in 1198, and the pressure upon absentee canons probably originated with his reforming zeal. The statutes of Bishop Osmund, which had made Salisbury the model of a reformed cathedral after the Norman Conquest, had expressly recognised the right of the archbishop to call away one canon at any time for his own purposes; but they did not contemplate an unlimited demand, nor could they properly be interpreted to cover all the pleas which Peter had introduced into the archbishop's letter. But the disintegration of the cathedral system had gone far in the hundred years since those statutes were drawn up. The prebends were too small to attract men of distinction unless they could be held in plurality; and the king's business, far more than the archbishop's, continually drew off the abler canons. In 1215, the last year in which Richard Poore was dean, his reforms were