situation of England rendered inviting, and
which gratified, in an eminent degree, both his resentment and his
ambition.

[MN Disorders in England.]
Immediately after Richard had left England, and begun his march to the
Holy Land, the two prelates, whom he had appointed guardians of the
realm, broke out into animosities against each other, and threw the
kingdom into combustion. Longchamp, presumptuous in his nature,
elated by the favour which he enjoyed with his master, and armed with
the legatine commission, could not submit to an equality with the
Bishop of Durham: he even went so far as to arrest his colleague, and
to extort from him a resignation of the earldom of Northumberland, and
of his other dignities, as the price of his liberty [b]. The king,
informed of these dissensions, ordered, by letters from Marseilles,
that the bishop should be reinstated in his offices; but Longchamp had
still the boldness to refuse compliance, on pretence that he himself
was better acquainted with the king's secret intentions [c]. He
proceeded to govern the kingdom by his sole authority; to treat all
the nobility with arrogance; and to display his power and riches with
an invidious ostentation. He never travelled without a strong guard
of fifteen hundred foreign soldiers, collected from that licentious
tribe with which the age was generally infested: nobles and knights
were proud of being admitted into his train: his retinue wore the
aspect of royal magnificence: and when, in his progress through the
kingdom, he lodged in any monastery, his attendants, it is said, were
sufficient to devour, in one night, the revenue of several years [d].
The king, who was detained in Europe longer than the haughty prelate
expected, hearing of this ostentation, which exceeded even what the
habits of that age indulged in ecclesiastics; being also informed of
the insolent, tyrannical conduct of his minister, thought proper to
restrain his power: he sent new orders, appointing Walter Archbishop
of Rouen, William Mareschal Earl of Strigul, Geoffrey Fitz-Peter,
William Briewere, and Hugh Bardolf, counsellors to Longchamp, and
commanding him to take no measure of importance without their
concurrence and approbation. But such general terror had this man
impressed by his violent conduct, that even the Archbishop of Rouen
and the Earl of Strigul durst not produce this mandate of the king's;
and Longchamp still maintained an uncontrolled authority over th