II - Contest with his secular Chapter of Lincoln and victory over them.

Summary

The first considerable opposition our Prelate met with from any body of men was that from his own secular Chapter of Lincoln, as the first care of his impartial and prudent zeal was to visit and reform them, the more surely to compass the reformation of others. This opposition of the Chapter of Lincoln was against the Bishop's attempts to visit them and their dependent churches. This affair which began in 1239 lasted until 1246. i.e. the space of 7 years. A duration which would have tired any other but the vigorous Bishop of Lincoln, whom Matthew Paris justly styles, ‘Indefatigable in his Episcopal office’.

This undertaking to visit the Chapter of Lincoln, being likely to raise contradiction, the wise Prelate took the precaution to arm himself, not only with his ordinary episcopal powers, but with an extraordinary delegation from his Holiness Pope Gregory IX. Thus doubly commissioned on the eve of the nativity of the Blessed Virgin he gave notice to the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln that in virtue of an apostolick mandate, as well as by his own ordinary jurisdiction, he intended to visit them on the Thursday after St Luke, immediately after the forementioned feast of Our Lady. The Bishop began his visitation of some of the prebends on St Faith's day, (the 6 of October in the Sarum Calendar), the Dean and Chapter being assembled consulted on the affair of the visitation and on the following Sunday they from the pulpit bespoke the people, as it were for their approbation, to apply to the Pope against the injury done them, they said, by their Bishop.

Upon this as it were declaration of war, the Bishop wrote to William the Dean and to the Chapter his 71 letter, full of affection and humility, complaining that in their appeal to the Pope against the pretended injuries he had done them, they had violated the respect due to him as their father and bishop, and that if he had really done them any injury they ought first to have exposed it to him in private and not to the publick. He also exhorted them to lay aside all selflove and only to seek the truth, which if they did an agreement would soon follow. As to himself he makes this humble and affectionate protestation.