the legate, though for the moment his absorption in the cares of his diocese distracted his attention from general questions.  The bishops generally had become so hostile that Otto shrank from meeting them in another council, and strove to get money by negotiating individually with the leading churchmen.  The old foe of papal usurpations, Robert Twenge, renewed his agitation on behalf of the rights of patrons, and the clergy of Berkshire drew up a remonstrance against Otto’s extortions.

    [1] For Grosseteste, see F.S.  Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste,
    Bishop of Lincoln (1899).

Archbishop Edmund saw the need of opposing both legate and king; but he was hampered by his ecclesiastical and political principles, and still more, perhaps, by the magnitude of the rude task thrown upon him.  He had set before himself the ideal of St. Thomas, not only in the asceticism of his private life, but in his zeal for his see and the Church.  But few men were more unlike the strong-willed and bellicose martyr of Canterbury than the gentle and yielding saint of Abingdon.  A plentiful crop of quarrels, however, soon showed that Edmund had, in one respect, copied only too faithfully the example of his predecessor.  He was engaged in a controversy of some acerbity with the Archbishop of York, and he was involved in a long wrangle with the monks of his cathedral, which took him to Rome soon after the legate’s arrival.  He got little satisfaction there, and found a whole sea of troubles to overwhelm him on his return.  At last came the demand of the fifth from Otto.  Edmund joined in the opposition of his brethren to this exaction, but his attitude was complicated by his other difficulties.  Leaning in his weakness on the pope, he found that Gregory was a taskmaster rather than a director.  At last he paid his fifth, but, broken in health and spirits, he was of no mind to withstand the demands of the Roman clerks for benefices.  If he could not be another St. Thomas defending the liberties of the Church, he could at least withdraw like his prototype from the strife, and find a refuge in a foreign house of religion.  Seeking out St. Thomas’s old haunt at Pontigny, he threw himself with ardour into the austere Cistercian life.  On the advice of his physicians, he soon sought a healthier abode with the canons of Soisy, in Brie, at whose house he died on November 16, 1240.  His body was buried at Pontigny in the still abiding minster which had witnessed the devotions of Becket and Langton, and miracles were soon wrought at his tomb.  Within eight years of his death he was declared a saint; and Henry, who had thwarted him in life, and even opposed his canonisation, was among the first of the pilgrims who worshipped at his shrine.  It needed a tougher spirit and a stronger character than Edmund’s to grapple with the thorny problems of his age.