July 1, Avignon

To the bishops of Meath, Down, and Clonmacnoise. Mandate to enquire into the charges made against the archbishop of Armagh, and pending the aftiair to take charge of the diocese, seeing that the archbishop is said to have ceased for two years to execute his office. It has been stated by the chapter of Armagh, and Oddo, abbot of SS. Peter and Paul, an Augustinian monastery in that city, that archbishop Roland has been for five years excommunicate, being guilty of perjury in not keeping his oath to pay common service due from him to the apostolic camera, that nevertheless he has appointed and consecrated Gelasi:s, bishop of Clogher, and has refused to publish the processes by cardinals Gaucelin and Luke against Robert Brus, thereby incurring further sentences, as also by absolying a nobleman called Columba, of his province, who, as an adherent of the suid Robert, was excommunicate ; also that on his income being sequestrated for debt he violated the sequestration ; also that he gave the church of Termirafechin to Robert de Cotgrave, perpetual vicar of the same, it having been appropriated to the prior and convent of St. Mary's, Luueth, who the bishop imprisoned and despoiled, also that he beat Alan, a priest, and wounded Nicholas de Drumeskin, a clerk, and took a silver-gilt image made in honour of St. Michael, a holy water vessel, an aspersory, an incense-boat, a thurible, and many silver chalices from the treasury of his church, and pawned them witha merchant, pledging also vestments belonging to the archbishop's chapel, and removed roof timbers, called in those parts meremia, from the buildings of the manor of Ruschath, and sold them to : a kinght, doing the same to the roof of a house in the manor of Terinunfechin, and ruining the manor and town of Inisquin. He is charged with these and many other crimes, such as bloodshed, adultery, and incest. Although for four years he has not visited his province he has received from Derry 30 marks, from Clogher the same, from Dromore 15 marks, and has taken a bribe of 40s. from a nobleman to remove from the land an interdict under which it had been placed, an account of his having put away his lawful wife in order to live in adultery with another woman, which the archbishop still permits. The archbishop is to be cited to appear in person before the pope, the chapter and abbot by their proctors. [Theiner, 223.] To William, archbishop of York. Faculty to give to a fit person the archdeaconry of the East Riding, void by the cession of Bertrand de Fargis, who held it as a pluralist without lawful dispensation. Mar. April. May. Oct. May. REGESTA, VOL. LXXIUI. Decree, at the king's request, whereby the omission of the value, to wit, 40 marks, of a church in the gift of the abbot and convent of St. Mary's, York, papal reservation of which had been made to Richard de Fereby, shall not be to his prejudice, notwithstanding that he has a church value 20 marks, which on obtaining the other he is to resign.