V - Grossetete's last and famous letter to the Pope, whether he was excommunicated for it.

Summary

The Bishop of Lincoln who returned from Lions about Michaelmas 1250, seeing the little effect of his zeal, whether for reducing his refactory children or for the general correction of abuses, as also the general confusion which threatened the Church, whether in the broils between the Pontificate and the Empire or the incursions of the Saracens on the Holy Land, he resolved within himself to imitate his most pious and learned friend, Dr Nicholas de Farnham Bishop of Durham, who but two years before had resigned his bishoprick and bid farewell to this world, the better to prepare himself for the next. Nevertheless, as our Prelate's zeal was no less considerate than it was ardent, he could not help reflecting on the bad consequences of his friend's resignation which was a long vacancy of that important see and therefore fearfull of the like fate for his own Church, or that the King would intrude upon it some worthless creature of his own, he wisely kept his counsel to himself and suspended the execution till a more favourable opportunity offered for doing it with safety. Preferring the publick good of his Church to his own private satisfaction which he promised himself in a more quiet course of prayer, contemplation and study.

To enjoy some part of his projected abdication of the episcopacy he discharged himself of the most distracting part of his office upon Dr Robert de Marisco his official and since Archdeacon of Oxford and Dean of Lincoln. He was however far from being idle himself. He continued with his usual ardour to oppose and root out abuses, whether from the particular field of his own diocese, or from the general one of the whole English Church. In the beginning of 1251 he made a general visitation of all his clergy and religious of both sexes, and in spite of his great age and infirmities continued to preach frequently to his people and clergy. All that he found living contrary to the canons, especially in the article of chastity, he chastised according to the same canons, without distinction of clergy or religious, natives or foreigners, English or Romans. Such of these last as were not edifying in their lives, he rejected tho armed with papal provisions and abhorred them as so many venimous and destroying serpents.