not so. For a year and a half after the publication of the interdict the two Wells brothers were the trusted counsellors of the king.
Jocelin's political position did not escape contemporary criticism. A satirical poem of the time contrasts Bath, Norwich, and Winchester with the three stalwarts, London, Ely, and Worcester; and just mentions, without special virulence, that Rochester and Salisbury were still at home. I venture to turn the stanza which relates to Bishop Jocelin:[1]
If one should ask my lord of Bath
How many marks the exchequer hath,
He promptly will the sums rehearse
He gathers for the royal purse:
In such a decalogue he's wise;
For canon law he has no eyes.
We leave the whitewashing of K. John to the regicide William Prynne. That eccentric writer's learned tomes had the merit of rendering available for the first time the documents of the reign preserved in the Tower of London. But he failed to discern that Matthew Paris, though a 'monkish historian', was not papal but anti-papal in his proclivities; and, throwing aside all the chronicles, he chose to judge John by the record evidence only—in other words, by the state documents of his own chancery. The king's reputation can never recover from the indictment of his unredeemed worthlessness drawn by Bishop Stubbs.[2] Were he not so despicable, we should
- ↑ T. Wright, Political Songs, Camd. Soc, 1839, p. 10:
Si praesuli Bathoniae
Fiat quandoque quaestio,
Quot marcae bursae regiae
Accedunt in scaccario:
Respondet voce libera,
Mille, centum, et caetera,
Ad bursam regis colligo:
Doctus in hoc decalogo,
Caecus in forma canonis. - ↑ Preface to Walter of Coventry (Rolls Ser.), vol. ii.
'Quid plura? Recesserunt latentcr ab Anglia Willelmus Londinensis, Eustachius Eliensis, Malgerus Wigorniensis, Jocelinus Bathoniensis et Egidius Herefordiensis episcopi, satius arbitrantes saevitiam commoti regis ad tempus declinare quam in terra interdicta sine fructu residere.' This is perhaps the source of the error. Yet it need not be taken to mean that all these bishops left England at once, though, if we had not evidence to the contrary this might well seem to be its meaning. As however Roger de Wendover appears to have written towards the end of his life (†1236), and is ill-informed as to the promulgation of the interdict and the personal excommunication of the king, the most probable explanation is that he made a mistake. He knew that Jocelin did go into exile, and no doubt he thought that he went at once.
