of excommunication: the cardinals were pledged to renounce all avarice and luxury, and to preach the Crusade in person.[1] Gregory at least was in deadly earnest, and he deserves to be recognised in history as the founder of the Third Crusade.[2] He at once made peace with the emperor, and he refused to continue his predecessor's bitter opposition to the English archbishop and king.
Peter and his fellow envoy, William of St Faith, the precentor of Wells, had written the news of Urban's death and Gregory's accession somewhat too exultantly to the archbishop, who was with the king in Normandy. The king at once took the new church under his protection, and Baldwin began to adopt more violent measures with the monks. On 11 January 1188 he returned to England, and on the following Sunday he excommunicated the subprior and certain others. But the next day news reached him that the friendly pope was dead, and that he had been succeeded on 19 December by Clement III. It was the monks' turn to rejoice: for the new pope reaffirmed the commands of Urban III, though he did not at once appoint a commission to enforce them.
The Crusade was now in all men's minds. On 21 January 1188 Henry and Philip met near Gisors, and took the Cross together. Henry returned to England, and held a council at Geddington on 11 February, when Baldwin preached the Crusade.[3] Of Peter we lose sight for a while; but he must have left Ferrara about November 1187. He rejoined the archbishop, and was with him when Almeric the brother of Guy of Lusignan, the king of Jerusalem, told a story of Reginald de Chatillon and the True Cross. Peter's pen was set goino in the cause of the Crusade, and he wrote the Passio Reginaldi.[4] Presently he wrote a long lament on the delay which was caused by the renewal of hostilities with France.[5]
Meanwhile the trouble at Canterbury found no solution. At the beginning of 1189, after an interview with one of the monks at Le Mans, the king made a new effort at reconciliation. After consulting with the archbishop he charged Hubert Walter, then dean of York, to write certain proposals in a letter to Canterbury. The letter had been given to the monk and sealed in the chancery, when the archbishop insisted that he must see it. He accordingly sent
- ↑ This letter, or a fragment of it, is preserved in the Gesta Henrici II (Rolls Ser., ii. 15), though it does not occur in the MSS of Peter's Epistles. It is printed by Giles as Ep. 224.
- ↑ The short pontificate of Gregory VIII has been carefully investigated by G. Kleemann in Ienaer historische Arbeiten, fasc. 4 (1912).
- ↑ Gesta Henrici II, ii. 23.
- ↑ Petr. Blesens. Opp. (Giles), iii. 261.
- ↑ De Hierosolymitana peregrinatione acceleranda.
