who next day sent him—a willing messenger—to ‘persuade the young king that the primate wanted to depose him’ (ib. p. 406). From the boy-king's court Geoffrey was proceeding with Richard of Ilchester [q. v.] to follow the three bishops to Normandy, when at Southampton they were overtaken by a message from young Henry, asking their advice how to answer Thomas's request for leave to come and visit him. Geoffrey sent word back: ‘I know your father's wishes; and never will I be a party to admitting into your presence a man who purposes to disinherit you’ (ib. i. 111). Geoffrey did not sail with his brother archdeacon, and did not reach Normandy till some time after him (ib. iii. 127). He seems to have been there again in the summer of 1171 (Eyton, pp. 157, 159–60). He must have been released from excommunication before 1 May 1173, when he was chosen bishop of Ely (Ann. Mon. ii. 61). On 17 May, Ascension Day, he was enthroned in his cathedral church (Hist. Elien. p. 631; R. Diceto, i. 368). The young king appealed to the pope against the appointment, accusing Geoffrey of ‘many things,’ particularly of complicity in the murder of St. Thomas, and of immorality; but on the new archbishop's return to England [see Richard, (d. 1184)] in September 1174, Geoffrey came to meet him in London, and in St. Catherine's Chapel at Westminster publicly purged himself of the crimes laid to his charge (R. Diceto, i. 392). He was consecrated at Canterbury on 6 Oct.
Ralph de Diceto notes how Geoffrey's career had kept pace with that of his fellow archdeacon and justiciar, Richard of Ilchester [q. v.]; ‘contemporaneously holding the foremost rank at the court of the same sovereign, both archdeacons, both called to be bishops at the same time, consecrated together, enthroned in their respective sees’—for the second time, it seems—‘on the same day, 13 Oct.’ [1174] (R. Diceto, i. 395). The parallel runs on nearly to the end of their lives. Like Richard, Geoffrey was at the archbishop's council at Westminster, 18 May 1175, and at a royal council at Woodstock in July, and witnessed Henry's treaty with the king of Connaught at Windsor on 6 Oct. (Gesta Hen. i. 84, 93, 103); and next year, in July, he shared with his old comrade the duty of meeting at Northampton a papal legate who was on his way to Scotland, and of making him swear not to infringe the rights of the English crown (ib. p. 118). At a council held by another legate at Westminster, 14 March, Geoffrey had sided strongly with his own metropolitan in a quarrel with Roger of York; and a formal complaint of having suffered personal violence at the hands of the bishop of Ely was laid by Roger before the court assembled at Winchester on 15 Aug. Geoffrey, however, cleared himself by taking a solemn oath, in the king's presence, that he was not the doer of the act of which the archbishop complained (ib. i. 113, 119). At the end of the month Geoffrey, with the archbishop of Canterbury, sailed for Normandy as escort to the king's daughter Joanna; they accompanied her on her way to Sicily as far as St. Gilles, and returned to England before Christmas (ib. pp. 119–20, 127).
In this year, 1176, Geoffrey became custos of the honour of Eye (Eyton, p. 208). He was one of the three prelates commissioned by the king to dissolve the college of secular canons at Waltham, 20 Jan. 1177 (Gesta Hen. i. 135). Soon afterwards Henry sent him, with the archbishop of Canterbury, on an embassy to Flanders (cf. ib. pp. 116 and 136, with Eyton, p. 205 n. 2, and p. 210 n. 2). In March he was in London, witnessing Henry's award between the kings of Castille and Navarre. Early in June he went, with others, on a mission from Henry to the young king in Normandy, and to Louis of France. He was one of the four bishops who were with the king at Stanstead on 12 July, when tidings came that the realm was threatened with an interdict, against which they immediately appealed (Gesta Hen. i. 144, 154, 168, 175, 177, 181). At Christmas 1178 he was with the court at Winchester (Eyton, p. 224). In 1179 he was head of the justices itinerant on the midland circuit (Gesta, i. 239); and from April 1179 to April 1180 he shared with his old comrades, the bishops of Winchester and Norwich, the office of chief justiciar (R. Diceto, i. 435). From 1180 to 1185 there are notices of him—frequently in company with Bishop Richard of Winchester—as justice of the curia regis and baron of the exchequer (1180, Dugdale, Baronage, i. 700; 1181–2, Feet of Fines, p. 1; cf. Eyton, p. 244 n. 6, and p. 249 n. 2; 1183, Eyton, p. 251; 1184, Madox, Exch. i. 215 d; 1185, Eyton, p. 266). About August 1181 he was with the king at Nottingham. He assisted at the marriage of the king of Scots, at Woodstock, on 5 Sept. 1186, and at a council at Marlborough on 14 Sept. (Gesta Hen. i. 280, 351, 352); at Christmas he was with the court at Guildford (ib. ii. 3). In 1189 he held pleas in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, and Cambridgeshire (Pipe Roll, 1 Ric. I, pp. 69, 160, 194). On 4 June he was present at a conference between Henry and Louis at La Ferté Bernard (Gesta Hen. ii. 66). He had apparently returned to England before Henry's death on 6 July. He was trustee for some of the
