By the Rev. J. E. Jackson. 



31 



very vital quarrel : whether the Bishop of Sarum was, or was not, 

 of right Abbot of Malmesbury. This was in 1190, and the Bishop 

 (being the fourth who had put forward this claim) was Hubert 

 Walter. King Richard I. had gone to the Crusades and had left 

 Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, Chancellor and Governor of England. 

 The revival of the claim is thus quaintly described in an ancient 

 Latin chronicle by Richard of Devizes. 1 " The King of darkness 

 that ancient firebrand between the church of Sarum and the 

 monastery of Malmesbury, applying fresh fuel, kindled an old fire 

 into a new blaze. The Abbot was summoned, not upon the question 

 of making his profession to the Bishop but upon that of laying 

 aside altogether his name and the staff of a pastor." [This would 

 imply that the Bishop of Sarum claimed the Abbey altogether.] 

 "The King's letter to the chancellor was produced, ordering the 

 Abbot to answer in law to the demands of the Bishop of Sarum. 

 But the Abbot " (Robert de Melun) " whose fortune was at stake, 

 was one whom no danger found unprepared, and who was not a 

 man to lose any thing by cowardice. He gave blow for blow : and 

 got other letters from the King counteracting the former ones. 

 The Chancellor perceiving the shameful contradiction in the King's 

 mandates, in order that the King's character might not suffer if 

 any further steps should be taken, put the whole case off until the 

 King's return." This claim on the part of the Bishops of Sarum 

 seems always to have broken down : and the reason probably was 

 that they never succeeded in obtaining the sanction of the Pope. 



King Richard settled the rents of the Town of Malmesbury in 

 dower upon his Queen Berengaria : and when King John came to 

 the throne (1199) he also did the same for his Queen Isabella. 



King John befriended the monks. He transferred the crown- 

 interest in the borough and in the hundreds of Chedgelow and 

 Sterkeley (now merged in the hundred of Malmesbury) to the 

 Monastery, on their paying to the crown every year a fee farm rent 

 of £20, which he ordered them to pay to his son, the Earl of 

 Cornwall. 



In 1215 (17 John) the castle, being no longer wanted, was pulled 

 1 Chronicon Ricardi Divisiensis, sect. 17. 



