October 15, Sleaford

Mandate to S. cardinal archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert de Burgo, justiciar, and others, the king's counsellors, to persuade the king to withdraw from the siege of the above castle, and to get the better of his vassals by benefits rather than by arms. Letters to the pope, from [Lewis] king of France, sent by Stephen, his clerk, informing him that when the truce, settled between the late king Philip and himself of the one part, and king Henry of the other, was threatened, Lewis, who had no counsel from his barons as to making the truce with Henry, went in person to take possession of his fiefs of Poitou, of which and other fiefs in France king John had been deprived by sentence of his peers the French barons, before Henry was born, since which time all those fiefs came into the hands of Philip and himself as heir to the realm of France; but Henry, offering opposition to this on the part of the realm of England as a fief of the Roman church, sends an army to claim those fiefs of Lewis, of which John had been deprived by sentence of his peers. Lewis therefore prays the pope to revoke what has been done on the part of England as a papal fief; but if the king of England has acted on the pope's authority, the pope must not be surprised if Lewis determines to oppose him. REGESTA, VOL. XIII. Jan.