or treacherous surgeon, called in by the justiciar, cauterised his wounds so severely that his sufferings became intense.  He died of fever on the 16th, and was buried, as he himself had willed, in the Franciscan church at Kilkenny.  No one rejoiced at the death of the hero save the traitors who had lured him to his doom and the Poitevins who had suborned them.  Their victim, the weak king, mourned for his friend as David had lamented Saul and Jonathan.[1] The treachery of his enemies brought them little profit.  While Richard Marshal lay on his deathbed, a new Archbishop of Canterbury drove the Poitevins from office.

    [1] Dunstable Ann., p. 137.

In the heyday of the Poitevins’ power the Church sounded a feeble but clear note of alarm.  The pope expostulated with Henry for his treatment of Hubert de Burgh, and Agnellus of Pisa, the first English provincial of the newly arrived Franciscan order, strove to reconcile Richard Marshal with his sovereign in the course of the South-Welsh campaign.  More drastic action was necessary if vague remonstrance was to be translated into fruitful action.  The three years’ vacancy of the see of Canterbury, after the death of Richard le Grand, paralysed the action of the Church.  After the pope’s rejection of the first choice of the convent of Christ Church, the chancellor, Ralph Neville, the monks elected their own prior, and him also Gregory refused as too old and incompetent.  Their third election fell upon John Blunt, a theologian high in the favour of Peter des Roches, who sent him to Rome, well provided with ready money, to secure his confirmation.  Simon Langton, again restored to England, and archdeacon of Canterbury, persuaded the pope to veto Blunt’s appointment on the ground of his having held two benefices without a dispensation.  His rejection was the first check received by the Poitevin faction.  It was promptly followed by a more crushing blow.  Weary of the long delay, Gregory persuaded the Christ Church monks then present at Rome to elect Edmund Rich, treasurer of Salisbury.  Edmund, a scholar who had taught theology and arts with great distinction at Paris and Oxford, was still more famous for his mystical devotion, for his asceticism and holiness of life.  He was however an old man, inexperienced in affairs, and, with all his gracious gifts, somewhat wanting in the tenacity and vigour which leadership involved.  Yet in sending so eminent a saint to Canterbury, Rome conferred on England a service second only to that which she had rendered when she secured the archbishopric for Stephen Langton.