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 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY incurring severe censure in consequence from one chronicler, who says that the prelates abroad lived at ease, behaving 'like hirelings who when they saw the wolves coming deserted their flocks and fled.' "* He does not seem, how- ever, to have deserved this censure, for he was constantly journeying between Rome and England trying to arrange terms of peace. ^^^ As time went on the interdict was mitigated. In 1209 the Bishop of London was granted licence to have the divine offices celebrated privately before himself ; ''*' in I 21 2 he was also allowed to administer the viaticum to those at the point of death, and conventual churches were permitted to celebrate three times a week ; '" and in 121 3, at a council held at St. Paul's under Stephen Arch- bishop of Canterbury, leave was given to both conventual churches and secular priests to chant the canonical hours in their churches in a low voice in the hearing of their parishioners.^^* The king submitted to the pope, and was absolved at Winchester on 15 May 121 3, and next year on the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul the interdict was solemnly relaxed by Nicholas, the papal legate, in the church of St. Paul, bells were rung, and the Te Deum sung with a loud voice.^'^ The City's adherence to the baronial party brought down the third interdict. The king's enemies had been excommunicated by the pope in general terms in 1215,^*" and in December of that year a second excommunication followed, naming them individually, and including Gervase de Hobregge, Chancellor of St. Paul's, and London was laid under an inter- dict.^" But this time the interdict was totally disregarded, on the ground that the pope had no right to interfere in the affairs of the kingdom, and throughout the whole City the divine offices were celebrated with a loud voice. ^*^ The barons then appealed to Louis of France, who came over and received the homage of barons and citizens in London. Gualo the papal legate went to John at Gloucester, and excommunicated Louis and all his followers, including the already excommunicated Gervase de Hobregge, who held it 'a vain and empty sentence.' ^*^ After John's death and the battle of Lincoln, Louis and his followers were absolved, but the bishops and other clergy who had celebrated the divine offices while under excommunication were deprived of their benefices and compelled to go to Rome for absolution,^** and the altars on which the masses of the excommunicated had been celebrated were destroyed and others placed in their stead. ^*^ No notices of even isolated cases of heresy in London occur before 12 10. In that year, however, in the very middle of the interdict, an Albigensian was burnt in London,"* who according to one chronicle ' by craft oft quenched the fire.'"^ In 1336 a heretic named Ranulf, who had belonged to the order of Friars Minors and had apostatized, came to London in hermit's dress. He was examined by the masters of theology, and afterwards by the Bishop of London, and ' superstitiously and pertinaciously maintained many things '" Roger of Wendover, Floies Hist. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 46, 48. '" Diet. Nat. Biog. "'■ Cal. of Papal Letters, i, 32. '" Ralph of Coggeshall, Chron. (Rolls Ser.), I47- "' Roger of Wendover, Flores Hist. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 83. "'Ibid. 103. '"Ibid. 151. '*' Ibid. 167. '"Ibid. 171. '"Ibid. 182. '•' Ibid. 225 ; Ralph of Coggeshall, Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 174. '" Ann. Mon. Dunstable (Rolls Ser.), iii, 51. '" Lib. de Antiquis Legibus (Camd. Soc), 3. '" Chron. of Land. (ed. Nicolas), 7. Gregory's Chronicle {Hist. Coll. of a Land. Citizen [Camd. Soc], 63), says that in I 222 ' a man that feyned him selfe Cryste at Oxynforde, he was cursyde at Aldermanbery at London,' but this is probably an error due to a series of misreadings ; see Jnn. Mon. Dunstable (Rolls Ser.), iii, 76 ; Higdcn, Polychron. (Rolls Ser.), viii, 200 ; Chron. of Lond. (eJ. Nicolas), II. 185 24