October 15, Sleaford

Mandate to the bishops of Salisbury and Ely to enquire and report to the pope touching the reported excesses of the bishop of Durham, who is said to have been guilty of bloodshed, simony, adultery, sacrilege, rapine, perjury, and dilapidation, the oppression of clerks, orphans, poor, and religious, of interfering with (impedire) the wills of the dying, of detracting from (minuere) the king's rights, of taking part in divine offices though excommunicate, of never preaching, and of swearing that as long as he lived Durham should have no peace. A monk of Durham has complained that the bishop's servants dragged him out of a church and wounded him. [Matt. Paris, iii. 62.]