A.J). 1182. THE BISHOP OF DCEHAM DISPLEASES THE KING. done. For the entire devise, which in his illness he had made, was, by the king's command, rendered null and void ; as our lord the king asserted that the before-named archbishop of York had pronounced an opinion in his lifetime that it was not lawful for any ecclesiastical person to make a devise except at a time before he was taken ill. In the same year, count Stephen, the uncle of Philip, king of France, seized the lands of a certain person his neighbour, and withheld them by force, and did homage for them to Philip, earl of Flanders ; on doing which, the king of France laid hands on them, and the earl of Flanders claimed restitutution thereof to be made to himself and earl Theobald ; and the king of France, refusing to accede thereto, the earl of Flanders entered the territories of the king of France with a hostile hand, and ravaged them. In the same year, Hugh, earl of Chester, departed this life, and was succeeded in the earldom by his son Ranulph. After the death of Eoger, archbishop of York, our lord the king gave orders to his justices in England to make diligent inquisition as to the monies left by the before-named archbishop, and wherever such were discovered, in his name, to make demand thereof. In consequence of this, the said justices demanded of Hugh, bishop of Durham, three hundred marks of silver, which the said bishop had received out of the monies of the archbishop, for the purpose of distribution among the poor; on which he made answer to them:—"I distributed the three hundred marks of silver which you demand of me, during the lifetime of the archbishop who gave them to me, among the lepers, the blind, the lame, the dumb, and the rest of the necessitous, and in the repair of churches and bridges, for the salvation of his soul, according as he himself had ordered ; therefore let him who wants them collect them, for by me they will never be collected." Accordingly, an answer of this nature exasperated the feelings of our lord the king beyond measure, so much so, that he ordered the castle of Durham to be seized in his name, in order that the bishop might be harassed by every kind of persecution. In the year of grace 1182, being the twenty-eighth year of the reign of king Henry, son of the empress Matilda, the said king was at Winchester, in England, on the day of the Nativity of our Lord, which took place on the sixth day of the week. In. the same year died the count of Zelders, who had married