The King speaks.
Roger Bigod demands that the charge be read.
The charge formally brought.
At this stage the King speaks for the first time, and, in
this first speech the words of William the Red are mild
enough. He had hoped, he said, that the Bishop would
have first made answer to the charges which had been
brought against him, and he wondered that he had taken
any other course. But the charge had not yet been formally
made. Amid the Bishop's protests about the rights
of his order, this somewhat important point was pressed
by one of his fellow-rebels. This was Roger the Bigod,
he who from the castle of Norwich had done such harm
in the eastern lands, but who now appears as an adviser
of the king against whom he had been fighting a few
months before. Let the charge, he said, be brought in
due form, and let the Bishop be tried according to it.[1]
After more protests from the Bishop, the charge was
made by Hugh of Beaumont.[2] It contained a full
statement of the Bishop's treason and desertion, as
already described,[3] and the time is said to have been
when the King's enemies came against him, and when
his own men, Bishop Odo, Earl Roger, and many others,
strove to take away his crown and kingdom.[4] It is
demanded that, on this charge and on any other charges
that the King may afterwards bring, the Bishop shall
abide by the sentence of the King's court. We have
- ↑ Mon. Angl. i. 247. "Tunc Rogerus Bygotus dixit regi, 'Vos debetis episcopo dicere unde eum appellare vultis, et postea, si ipse nobis voluerit respondere de responsione sua facite eum judicari; sin autem, facite inde quod barones vestri vobis consulerent.'"
- ↑ I cannot identify this Hugh. "Hugo cognomento pauper" (Ord. Vit. 806 A), son of Count Robert of Meulan, and afterwards Earl of Bedford (Gest. Steph. 61), was not yet born.
- ↑ See above, p. 30.
- ↑ Mon. Angl. u. s. "Rex te appellat quod, cum ipse audivit quod inimici sui super eum veniebant, et homines sui, episcopus scilicet Baiocensis et Rogerus comes et alii plures regnum suum pariter sibi et coronam auferre volebant, et ipse per consilium tuum contra illos equitabat." There is something odd in this calm mention of Earl Roger as an open rebel.
