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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. II. A.D. 1066 to A.D. I307.

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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. II. A.D. 1066 to A.D. I307.
page 260



probable argument that they have not the uncontrolled power of electing. And not only has he caused the property of the churches in his kingdom to be seized as he pleased, but he has also laid hands on the crosses, the chalices, the incenseburners, and other sacred treasures belonging to them, and on the silken cloths, which he has carried off like a contemner of divine worship, although, as it is said, they may have been in part restored to the churches after the exaction of a fixed price as ransom for them. Moreover, the clergy are afflicted in various ways by taxes and imposts, and are not only dragged before the tribunal of secular judges, but, as it is eaid, are compelled to endure wars, are imprisoned, put to death, and tortured on gallows, to the confusion and disgrace of the clerical order. And no satisfaction whatever has been made to the aforesaid Templars, Hospitallers, and other ecclesiastical persons, for the injuries inflicted on them. " Moreover, it is certain that he has been a committer of sacrilege. For when the aforesaid bishops of Portsmouth and Premeste, and a great many other prelates of churches, and secular clergy, and brethren of religious orders, were crossing the eea to the seat of the apostles, to attend the council which even he himself had previously desired to have summoned, since the roads by land were entirely closed against them, in consequence of his mandate ; he sent his son Encius with a great number of gallies, and a great many other vessels, which he had prepared a long while before, with this view, and having placed them in ambush on the coast of Tuscany, in order that he might be able the more formidably to vomit against those prelates the venom that he had conceived, he caused them to be taken prisoners, by an act of sacrilegious daring, some of the prelates themselves and some other persons being drowned in the act of their being taken, and some being slain, and some being put to flight and pursued by the enemy, and the rest stripped of all their property, and conducted with every circumstance of insult from place to place, till at last they reached the kingdom of Sicily, and there they were committed to loath-Bome prisons, where some of them, being worn out by dirt and want of food, died in a miserable manner. " Moreover, a suspicion of heretical error is very deservedly entertained against him. Since, after he had incurred the sentence of excommunication from the aforesaid John, bishop of Sabionetta, and the cardinal Thomas, and after the pope


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