Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 1.djvu/27

 for peace with the King of Scots, and by his mediation a marriage was arranged to take place between Princess Margaret, the King's daughter, and Alexander III., King of Scots, which was celebrated at York on 26th December of that year.

In the following year, 1252, we find him again acting as a peacemaker. There had been a feud of several years standing between the Abbot of Westminster and the monks of his Convent. This dispute was at length referred to the arbitrament of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, afterwards King of Germany, and John Maunsell, by whom matters were amicably arranged. In this year he himself had a controversy with the Abbot and Convent of Tewkesbury concerning the tithes of their manor of Kingston, which Maunsell claimed as belonging to his church of Ferring. By the award of the Bishop of Chichester a compromise was made, under which the tithes, both great and small, of Kingston were given up to the monks of Tewkesbury, subject to an annual payment of l00s. to the mother church of Ferring. On 16th June, 1252, we find him testing a letter for the King, at Windsor.

In 1253, John Maunsell, Chancellor of London and Provost of Beverley, was sent with W[illiam de Bitton], Bishop of Bath and Wells, into Spain on a special embassy, with letters patent of 15th of May, directed to Alphonso, the young King of Castile and Leon (who had succeeded to his dominions in the previous year), to treat of a matrimonial alliance between the two Kings; and Maunsell, whom the King calls his secretary, is entrusted with special power to make oath, on the King's behalf, that he will adhere to any engagement that it may be considered necessary to make for promoting the said business. The charter which they brought back, with its golden seal, is still preserved among the archives at Westminster. A few days