By the Bet\ J. K. Floyer, M.A., F.8.A. 



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 III., and Peter 

 des Roches was the only bishop remaining in England. 1 In the 

 following year, 1209, he was sent by King John to meet Arch- 

 bishop Langton, whose appointment by the Pope had been the canse 

 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 Eoches 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, 2 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 1283, 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." 3 



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 Grrosteste, 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. 



i 2 



