when Maud de Neyrford was to appear in court, he had boasted with threats that it should ill betide any one who should gainsay her. The bishop, on the earl's petition, granted his licence for the suit of divorce to be carried on, and several hearings took place in April before Gilbert de Middleton and William de Bray, canons of St. Paul, and the Prior of Trinity in South wark Church. One of the archiepiscopal citations describes the earl as "imitating the obstinacy of Pharaoh, and closing his ears like a serpent (more aspidis), degenerate from his high ancestry, regardless of his salvation, and prodigal of his fame and honour, while he lived in notorious adultery with Matilda de Neyrford, who had been duly married to Sir Simon de Derby" (domino Simoni de Dribi nuptiis ex more celebratis et matrimonialiter conjuncta).
The earl's French letter to the archbishop, dated from Sandal in Yorkshire, exhibits him as apparently anxious to prove himself blameless.
"To the honourable father in God and our dear friend Walter, by the grace of God Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, his (le soen) John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, greeting and due honour. Sire, in respect to that which we have learnt by your order, be pleased to understand that we are and shall be ready to do every thing that holy Church can demand by law and in reason, and upon divers other points we will answer you in time in such a manner that no man shall be able to blame us rightfully or with reason; and, sire, if you wish us to do anything that we can, be pleased confidently to command us, and we will do it to the utmost of our power. Adieu, sire, and may God preserve you. Given at our castle of Sandale, the 10th day of June."
A few days later (June 18th) the earl in another letter urged that the matter was so serious (la chose et si haute en sei), that it behoved him to be well advised in his answer, and that he should require for that purpose a more distant day than the Quinzaine of St. John (June 24th) which had been fixed.[1]
King Edward II must have been anxious to put an end to
- ↑ I am much indebted to the Rev. Mr. Thomas, now Librarian at Lambeth Palace, for the facility of consulting and copying the MSS. Registers of Archbishop Reynolds concerning this matter. The extracts above given are in the original volume at pp. 52, b.—72, a.b.—73,—106. a. b.—107, a.—125, a. An abstract of all the Lambeth Registers was made by Dr. Ducarel, in fifty-two volumes folio, now in the British Museum, Addl. MSS. 6065.
