By the Rev. J. K. Floyer, M.A., FSA. 105 
Henry III., became one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. 
It will be remembered that the year 1208 was one of those in which 
England was under the interdict of Pope Innocent II1., and Peter 
des Roches was the only bishop remaining in England.' In the 
following year, 1209, he was sent by King John to meet Arch- 
bishop Langton, whose appointment by the Pope had been the cause 
of the trouble. In the year after, 1210, he helped the king to 
lead an army into Wales, at the time when John was under sentence 
of excommunication. In 1213 Peter des Roches was made Chief 
Justiciary, and held this office when King John was his guest at 
Downton on the last recorded occasion. It is probable that the 
castle obtained its importance from these circumstances, which 
ceased to exist on the death of Des Roches in 1238. 
So far as has been ascertained there is no trace of its occupation 
after the death of John, and on the abandonment of Clarendon as 
a royal residence, the castle at Downton was most likely not kept 
in repair and gradually decayed. 
There is no truth, however, in the tradition that it was ever a 
king’s castle. At an inquisition held at Salisbury in 1274 it was 
declared by the jurors that the king had no rights whatever in the 
manor of Downton, that the bishops of Winchester had always held 
it, and as far back as the time of Bishop Peter the bishops had 
held also the rights of chase in three lordships in the hundred of 
Downton,? and moreover, that these rights had been sometimes 
invaded by the county forestarius. The bishops’ right of chase is 
further illustrated by a notice in 1288, in which year a commission 
of oyer and terminer was issued “ touching the persons who broke 
the park of John, Bishop of Winchester, at Downton, hunted 
therein, and carried away deer.” ° 
The period we have been considering was a time of lax discipline 
and morals, both among clergy and laity, broken here and there 
by reformers such as Bishop Grosteste, of Lincoln, and Archbishop 
Peccham. In 1284 the latter made a visitation for purposes of 
1 Annals of Dunstable. 
2 Rot. Hund., Ed. I. 
3 Patent Rolls. 
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