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 not so. For a year and a half after the publication of the interdict the two Wells brothers were the trusted counsellors of the king.

Jocelin's political position did not escape contemporary criticism. A satirical poem of the time contrasts Bath, Norwich, and Winchester with the three stalwarts, London, Ely, and Worcester; and just mentions, without special virulence, that Rochester and Salisbury were still at home. I venture to turn the stanza which relates to Bishop Jocelin:

We leave the whitewashing of K. John to the regicide William Prynne. That eccentric writer's learned tomes had the merit of rendering available for the first time the documents of the reign preserved in the Tower of London. But he failed to discern that Matthew Paris, though a 'monkish historian', was not papal but anti-papal in his proclivities; and, throwing aside all the chronicles, he chose to judge John by the record evidence only—in other words, by the state documents of his own chancery. The king's reputation can never recover from the indictment of his unredeemed worthlessness drawn by Bishop Stubbs. Were he not so despicable, we should