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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. II. A.D. 1066 to A.D. I307.

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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. II. A.D. 1066 to A.D. I307.
page 157



been said, John Marischal, and other messengers of the king, who held baronies in chief of the king, arrived, bearing a positive order that no one should bind any lay-fee of his to the Roman church, by which measure the king might be deprived of the service which was his due ; and thus they all returned home again. About the same time, William Longs word, earl of Salisbury, having been tossed about by a tempest and the waves of the sea, took to his bed with severe sickness. But the bishop coming in, who had been summoned for the purpose of receiving his confession, entered, bearing the body of our Lord, to give it as a viaticum to the earl, at his entreaty ; and the earl, weeping, and lamenting, and heaving sobs from the bottom of his. heart, and being entirely naked except his drawers, leaped out of bed, having a halter round his neck, and threw himself on his face on the floor before him who came bringing the body of Christ, and testifying against himself as a traitor to his Creator, moved all the bystanders to sobs and tears, and would not rise nor move from the place till he had made fuH confession of all his sins, and with an everflowing stream of tears had received the communion of the lifegiving sacrament. And persevering thus for some days, in the bitterness of his repentance, he a short time afterwards happily breathed forth his contrite spirit. But it happened that when his corpse was being carried out about a mile to burial, from the castle to the new church, the wax tapers, which, according to custom, were lighted, and borne with the cross, though there was a heavy fall of rain, and violent gusts of wind, could not be extinguished ; so that, as it happened likewise in the case of the blessed Hugo, bishop of Lincoln, and confessor, they plainly showed that the earl, who had repented so bitterly of his sins, had his place among the sons of light. This year also a master from Rome was sent from the lord pope to the country of Gaul, to fill the office of legate in that country, and when he arrived there, he immediately demanded that the same honours should be conceded by the French to him that the legate Otho received from the English; but his demands were denied to his face : that, however, he might not appear to have been wholly unsuccessful, he caused a general preaching to be delivered throughout the whole district over which his power as legate extended, on the subject of taking up the cross against the count of Toulouse. But Louis, king of the French, having obtained a papal prohibi


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