John de Gray - Episcopal Affairs and Later Career

Episcopal Affairs and Later Career

As bishop, de Gray settled a long-running dispute between the monks of his cathedral chapter and his predecessors as bishop. He also allowed the monks of his cathedral chapter the right to appoint and replace the clergy of the dependent churches of the cathedral. De Gray received a 1203 missive from Pope Innocent III decrying the marriages of some secular clergy, in contravention of canon law. In more secular matters, he granted the town of Bishop's Lynn (now King's Lynn) the right to hold a weekly market and two fairs per year. He also built a palace at Gaywood.

De Gray's ability to raise money made him useful to King John. In 1213 de Gray mustered 500 knights during a period when King Philip II was threatening to invade England, bringing this force over from Ireland along with mounted men-at-arms to support the king in England. In May 1213, John and Innocent finally resolved the dispute over Langton's election to Canterbury, and part of the settlement was that John gave Ireland and England to Innocent and received them back from the pope, making John a papal vassal. The settlement was sealed with a treaty, to which de Gray was one of the witnesses. After John settled with the papacy, de Gray was not included in the general pardon, and had to go to Rome to be pardoned. While in that city the bishop was named as one of the guarantors of a new financial arrangement between the king and the pope dealing with feudal payments from England, which lowered the lump sum that had to be paid before Innocent would lift the interdict. After Innocent pardoned de Gray, the pope recommended his election as Bishop of Durham in 1213; but de Gray died during his journey back to England on 18 October 1214, at Saint-Jean-d'Angély in Poitou. He was buried in Norwich Cathedral, but his tomb has not survived.

As well as encouraging his nephew's career, de Gray took into his household two of Hubert Walter's household clerks: David, and Robert of Ruddeby. Another clerk employed by de Gray, Robert de Bingham, was in the bishop's household during the papal interdict on England; he went on to become a teacher of theology at Oxford, and Bishop of Salisbury in 1228.

De Gray remained close to John for most of the bishop's life, and one of the king's chief fundraisers. Sidney Painter, a historian and biographer of John, said of de Gray that he was "probably the only man whom John trusted absolutely and without reservation for the whole period of their association". The medievalist Ralph Turner called de Gray "one of John's greatest favourites", and another of John's biographers, W. L. Warren, described de Gray as "one of the best brains of the royal administration". Matthew Paris, a medieval writer, called him an "evil counsellor", and blamed many of the difficulties of John's later reign on de Gray's failed election to Canterbury.