recension of it) was not written until some time after Peter had attained to his new dignity.
Peter found the archdeaconry of London, if we are to accept literally the language of his bitter disappointment, a wholly unremunerated office. He writes to Innocent III (Ep. 151) that he had declined it when first offered to him, pleading with the bishop in the prophet's words (Isaiah iii. 7): 'In my house is neither bread nor clothing; make me not a ruler of the people.' In truth, he says, he has mounted on the wind; for that archdeaconry is a dragon that hath nought to live on save the wind. It is a bare and naked honour. For, whereas in that city there are 40,000 inhabitants and a hundred and twenty churches, no layman pays him tithes or oblations, no church pays synod-fees or procurations; nor can he extract such customary dues as archdeacons ought to have. The archdeacon could not live for a single month on the income of his office. He asks that the pope will instruct the bishops of Ely and Winchester to make enquiry on the spot, to establish the office in the status of other archdeaconries, and to obtain the royal sanction for the new establishment.
There is nothing to help us in dating this letter, unless it be the unexpected order in which the bishops whom he suggests as commissioners are named. The bishop of Ely is Eustace, who was consecrated in 1198. Godfrey de Lucy, bishop of Winchester, was consecrated in 1189 and died 11 Sept. 1204: his successor Peter de Roches was consecrated at Rome 25 Sept. 1205. If the latter be referred to, we can the more easily understand that he should be named after the bishop of Ely.
Another letter which Peter writes to the same pope (Ep. 214) may throw some light on the stricken condition of his archdeaconry. For in it he makes loud lamentation that in defiance of true Catholic order the functions of archdeacons are usurped by the officials of bishops, so that the honour of archdeacons is destroyed.
Peter had soon to complain that ' the whole honour ' of his archdeaconry had been taken from him in a still more galling fashion. In order to understand this new grievance it is necessary to observe that not all the cathedral chapters of secular canons were constituted after the model of St Osmund's foundation at Salisbury. Exeter, for example, even at this time had not a dean. And the. chapter of St Paul's appears to have been slow in developing the dignities of precentor, chancellor, and treasurer. In chapters which followed the Sarum model the precentor held the next place to the dean, occupying the first stall on the north side of the choir. But at St Paul's that was the stall of the archdeacon of London. The precentorship would
