one, cost 3s. 4d. each for the men, and double for the horses. At that cost they reached Calais, and within three days were at Bruges, where again there was a long halt. For the royal letters had not come. Edward III. was on his death-bed, and passed away eleven days after our travellers left London. But Colchester is convinced that an enemy had done this, and when he insists that the issue of the letters has been frustrated "per aduersarios," we must remember that the Dean and College of St. Stephen's were closer to the royal ear than our Abbot and Convent. Whatever the cause, the result was the entry in his account of the cost of nine days' commissariat at Bruges, together with a reward of 10d. to the hotel servants, which he at once resents and excuses as being the custom of the country. 27 In brief, he had already spent nearly all the £10 which he received at his journey's start from the hands of Brother John Lakyngheth, his rival for monastic promotion.

So now he converts his balance of 16s. 8d. from sterling into florins, reckoning a florin at 3s. 2d. To this he adds seven florins by the sale of his own horse—a creditable bargain, for, having paid 34s. 8d. for the beast in London, he has ridden it to Bruges, and there parted with it for 22s. 2d. On the other hand, Gerard's horse has turned out badly; the journey has nearly killed it; 28 and it goes for three florins, or 9s. 6d. Colchester negotiated a loan of twenty-three florins, and on they went towards the south, sometimes hiring mounts, sometimes begging a ride in a cart, often in terror of the Frenchmen, who laid an ambush for them as they entered Dauphiné, so that our travellers hired a guide and went through byways. On the 27th day after leaving Bruges they entered Avignon, and next day they found Master Southam at his lodgings by the church of Our Lady of Miracles.

For a moment I lay aside Colchester's ledger and turn to a separate document; for Southam had with him at Avignon another Westminster monk, John Farnago, who became Colchester's paymaster and in due course presented to the Abbey an account 29 of what he had laid out on his behalf. We are thus furnished with the date of the arrival of Colchester and Gerard—July 24—and learn that they required bed and board at Avignon till August 19. Farnago purchased for his Brother a fresh outfit—cape, tunic, and hood of black Benedictine cloth, a scapular and cowl, and a plain colobium (or sleeveless tunic), buying the last, as he says, from Hagyuus, a Jew, whose real name was probably Hayyim. He also provided a horse for the journey to Marseilles, where Colchester was to take ship, and put some money in his scrip. So our Proctor turned his back on Avignon, perhaps not fully realizing that when on August 14, five days before his departure, he and Farnago witnessed the probate of Cardinal Langham's will, 30 he had been concerned with a document which was to have a vast effect on the church and the conventual buildings of St. Peter, Westminster.

We turn back to Colchester's own ledger, and note that he does not enter the actual date of his arrival in Rome; but we can fix it fairly closely. He says that, having got thus far, he was obliged to move on to Anagni, some forty miles southward from Rome on the road to Naples; and we know that Gregory XI., who had spent the summer of 1377 there, returned to Rome on November 17. 31 Colchester must have found the Papal Court busy at the packing of its trunks and must have returned with it forthwith to Rome; for the first date that he mentions is November 20. It would be wearisome to pursue the details of his activity in engaging counsel, English and Italian, and in paying their fees; but it is worth while to notice that there has been no great change since his day in legal expressions—retinuit duos aduocatos—and perhaps not a complete reform of illegal practice; for instance, he explains that he gave six florins to the valet—cubicularius—of the Cardinal of Milan, who was concerned in the decision of the case, with a view to the man's stirring up his master to sign a certain document; the object of the gift, says Colchester, was greater security, because at the moment there was a fierce altercation between the parties to the suit.

His expenses, already large, received a sudden addition through the death, on March 27, 1378, of Gregory XI. Seldom can an observant traveller have had a more exciting experience than to be in Rome during the session of the Consistory 32 which set Bartolommeo Prignano, Archbishop of Bari, upon what Colchester calls "the apex of the chief Apostolate." On personal grounds our monk must have been pleased at the choice of the electors, for the new Pope was the special protégé of the French Cardinal of Pampeluna, Simon Langham's friend and executor. But financially the effect was provoking. We know that Urban VI. proved himself a man "full of Neapolitan fire and savagery," who thought "that the Cardinals could be reduced to absolute obedience by mere rudeness," 33 and we are quite prepared for Colchester's statement that between the Pope and the Sacred College there arose a great dissension. Cardinals and curials fled secretly, he says, in some numbers, and among the latter the two advocates whom he had briefed and paid. That money at any rate was a dead loss, but there was this advantage in Urban's case, that, knowing the preference of the Cardinals for Anagni as a summer residence, he decided for Tivoli in their despite, and Colchester could get there in a few hours for a couple of florins. Six weeks had to be spent within sound of Horace's waterfall before his business was finished. His return journey led him through Nice, where he was robbed of his cloak and other property. Then to Avignon once more, and thence in due course—at least, so he hoped—to the Abbey.

But he was fated, nevertheless, to turn again and revisit the Roman Court; for while he tarried in Master Southam's lodgings at Avignon, in September, 1378, there came news of a notable murder committed in the church of Westminster while the Gospel was being read at High Mass, 34 on August, 11. The victim was one Robert Hawle, who had escaped from the Tower and had taken sanctuary at Westminster. The incident had its political aspects; it raised