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YORK.
that it must have been completed before the upper
part of the west front, in which flowing tracery is
introduced. It is certainly the most beautiful chapterhouse
existing in England, a distinction which is
proudly challenged by the rhyming inscription which
yet survives on one of the walls of its entrance :
Ut Rosa flos florum sic est donius ista domorum.
Romanus was not altogether happy in various matters
connected with his archiepiscopal office. The
papal provisions were a cruel thorn in his side, some
of the best preferments in his church and diocese
being given to foreigners. In one instance he made
a bold and successful resistance. Pope Nicholas III.
gave the stall of Fenton, in York, to a nephew who
was a cardinal-deacon and head of a hospital at
Rome. The cardinal obtained his uncle's consent
to the appropriation of this stall to the hospital over
which he presided.
This was an unheard-of exercise
of arbitrary power, and a blow to the independence
of the English Church. It was resisted by the Archbishop
with great spirit. The matter was also taken
up by the king, and the opposition was so strong that
the claim was at last abandoned.
The Archbishop had feuds also with the dean and
canons. He took measures to deprive the former
of his deanery and sundry other great preferments,
for causes which must have been deemed of weight,
inasmuch as the dean consented to resign on the
receipt of an annual pension. His quarrel with the
chapter was on the question of his right to hold a
visitation of the minster. The matter was laid before
the king, and the result was an order for its being