Herbert Poore, 1194—1217. 



223 



permitted at all were in the case of the baptism of children, and the 

 administration of the eucharist to the dying. But in no case were 

 funeral rites to be performed ; the bodies of the dead were carried 

 out of cities and towns and buried in roads or in ditches — without a 

 (priest's blessings without a mourner's prayer. 



Nor was this the only trial endured ; for the King, infuriated by 

 the interdict, began to wreak his vengeance on the unoffending 

 priests — giving the bishoprics, abbacies, and priories into the charge 

 of laymen, and ordering all ecclesiastical revenues to be confiscated. 

 The corn of the clergy was everywhere seized ; religious men, and 

 others ordained of any kind, were, on their travels, ill-treated and 

 robbed. The relatives especially of the Bishops who had proclaimed 

 the interdict, were, by the King's orders, wherever they could be 

 discovered, to be arrested, robbed of all their property, and thrown 

 into prison. 



In the year 1209 King John was excommunicated by name, 

 and three years afterwards the Pope proceeded to pass on him 

 the sentence of deposition from his kingdom. In 1213, terrified 

 into submission, the craven- hearted king forced himself at last 

 into the humiliation of resigning his crown to Pope Innocent. 

 Soon afterwards followed Runny mede and " Magna Charta," wrung 

 from him by his Barons. On the cruel, nay savage, treatment, 

 of the clergy and all christian people, the chroniclers are pain- 

 fully explicit. 1 The King's soldiers ransacked towns, houses, 

 churches, and even cemeteries, robbing every one, and sparing 

 neither women nor children. Even the Priests, standing at the 

 very altars, clad in their sacred robes, were seized, ill-treated, robbed, 

 and tortured. Markets and traffic ceased — goods were exposed for 

 sale only in churchyards — agriculture was at a stand-still — no one 

 dared to go beyond the limits of the churches whither they fled for 

 sanctuary. 



No wonder, that, amid such and other troubles, nothing could be 

 done in the way of removing the cathedral from Old Sarum. Many 

 consultations indeed took place between Bishop Herbert and his 



1 Wendover, ii., 352. 



