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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. II. A.D. 1066 to A.D. I307.

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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. II. A.D. 1066 to A.D. I307.
page 258



of the Apostolic See, and noble and mighty members of the Roman church, to be taken prisoners and stripped of all their property, and conducted repeatedly to different places with great insult, and committed to prison. Moreover, that privilege which our Lord Jesus Christ himself gave the blessed Peter and his successors in his diocese, namely, ' Whatsoever thou ehalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven/ in which the authority and power of the Roman church consists, he labours with all his might to diminish and to take from the church ; writing that he is not alarmed at the sentence of excommunication which was pronounced against him by the aforesaid Gregory ; not only despising the keys of the church by not observing its injunctions, but also by himself and his officers compelling others to disregard both that sentence and any other of excommunication or interdict, which he has altogether despised. Moreover, he has seized and still retains possession of the estates of the before-mentioned Roman church, namely, the March, the duchy of Beneventum, the walls and towers of which city he has caused to be destroyed, and others which he has besieged in the districts of Tuscany and Lombardy, and other places, not fearing, with a few exceptions, to occupy them himself ; and as if that were not sufficient for him, that he was manifestly acting by himself or by his officers in violation of the oaths before mentioned, in presuming to do such things, he compelled the men to whom those possessions belonged to forswear them, absolving them, in fact, though he could not do so of right, from the oaths by which they were bound to the Roman church, and making them also abjure the fidelity which has been mentioned, and to take the oaths of fealty to himself. It is also quite plain that he has been a violator of peace, because as formerly, during the existence of the peace which had been re-established between himself and the church, he had sworn before John, of pious memory, prior of Abbeville, and before the bishop of Sabionetta, and before Master Thomas, who was at that time cardinal priest of Saint Sabina, in the presence of many prelates, princes, and barons, that he would be bound by, and yield .exact and unconditional obedience to all the injunctions of the church as to those matters, for the sake of which he lay under the ban of excommunication, the peace of that excommunication being regularly stated in


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