ABSTRACT
The importance of Stephen Langton and Robert Grosseteste as learned prelates who helped to shape the history of their time has been recognized by their own contemporaries and by succeeding historians. But they have overshadowed their colleagues. The difference between the two may be accounted for by training as well as character. For M. Richard le Poore had graduated from Paris and attended the lectures of Langton; he was ‘vir quietissimus et pacificus’, ‘eximiae sanctitatis et profundae scientiae’. Langton supported Poore’s election to Durham in 1214, and he was also influential in the promotion of Benedict Sansetun to Rochester, William of Blois to Worcester, and Henry of Sandford to Rochester. M. Henry of Sandford, who succeeded Benedict as Bishop of Rochester, had, as Archdeacon of Canterbury, been closely associated with Langton’s diocesan work throughout the latter’s episcopate. He was appointed an executor of his will, and after his death he kept alive his memory.
