oe x 
IO PS 
Roger, 1107—1139. 181 
believed that he was actually plotting with the Empress and her 
partizans. At last a peremptory order is issued commanding his 
attendance at a Great Council at Oxford. He goes, though most 
unwillingly, having a special foreboding of evil coming upon him. 
A disturbance between the retainers of Count Alan of Richmond - 
and those of the Bishops of Sarum and Lincoln is made the 
excuse for seizing the latter and imprisoning them. Bishop Roger 
was treated with especial severity and indignity. His castle at The 
Devizes, which had been left to the keeping of Maud of Ramsbury, 
was besieged, till its surrender was obtained by threats of hanging 
the chancellor, his son, and keeping the father without meat or drink. 
In the end all Bishop Roger’s castles—at Salisbury, Sherborne, 
Devizes, and Malmesbury—were given into the king’s hands. At 
a synod held shortly afterwards at Winchester, Theobald the arch- 
bishop, and the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen’s brother, protested 
against the king’s violent conduct. Stephen made a show of sub- 
mission, but restitution was out of the question. He held fast to 
the castles which he had seized. 
Before the end of that same eventful year—on December 4th, 
1189—Bishop Roger died, a broken-hearted man, his death hastened 
by the harshness of the treatment he endured. As he was nearly 
breathing his last sigh at Old Sarum, the residue of his money and 
treasure, which he had placed upon the altar for the purpose of com- 
pleting his Church, was carried off against his wish. Malmesbury 
tells us that it moved his pity to think “ how few really pitied Bishop 
Roger in his fall, so much envy and dislike had his excessive power 
drawn upon him, and undeservedly too from some of those very 
persons whom he himself advanced to honor.” 
There are two sepulchral effigies, now lying near the south-west 
end of the nave of the Cathedral, one of which—authorities are 
divided on the subject—has been supposed to be that of Bishop 
Roger. I think no one—I speak however with diffidence on a 
subject which I have not made a special study—ean doubt from 
their general character, that the one with the Latin inscrip- 
tion down the centre of the chasuble and round the edge of the 
slab is the older of the two, and I think I shall be able to give 
