Gilbert Foliot - Bishop of London

Bishop of London

Foliot was Becket's rival for the Archbishopric of Canterbury. He objected to the king's choice on the grounds that Becket was too worldly, the only bishop or magnate known to have opposed the king's choice. When the newly elected archbishop was presented to the court before his consecration, Foliot remarked that the king had performed a miracle by turning a layman and a knight into an archbishop. Soon after Becket's consecration the king wrote to the pope asking for permission to make Foliot the royal confessor. This may have been a conciliatory move to appease Foliot after the loss of Canterbury, or it may have been that the king and the new archbishop were already having differences of opinion and the king wished Foliot to be a counter-weight to Becket's influence.

After Becket's election as archbishop, Foliot was nominated to the Diocese of London, to which he was translated on 6 March 1163. His nomination had been put forward by the king, who wrote to the pope stating that Foliot would be more accessible as an adviser and confessor if he was in London, rather than in Hereford on the Welsh Marches. Becket wrote to Foliot urging him to accept the translation. His transfer was confirmed by Pope Alexander III on 19 March 1163 and Foliot was enthroned at London on 28 April 1163. Papal confirmation was required because the movement of bishops from one see to another was still frowned on at this time. The medieval chronicler Ralph de Diceto, who was a canon at London, states that the cathedral chapter at St Paul's Cathedral, London, the cathedral of the London diocese, approved of Foliot's selection. Becket was unable to attend Foliot's enthronement, and Foliot did not make a profession of obedience to the archbishop, arguing that he had already sworn an oath to Canterbury when he became Bishop of Hereford, and thus no further oath was required. The issue was sent to the papacy, but the pope refused to be pinned down to an answer. Foliot then attempted to make London independent of Canterbury by reviving Pope Gregory I's old plan for an archbishopric at London. Foliot proposed either to have London raised to an archdiocese along with Canterbury, or to have London replace Canterbury as the archiepiscopal seat for the southern province. Foliot did though support Becket in the latter's attempt to prevent the Archbishop of York having his archiepiscopal cross borne in procession before him when visiting the province of Canterbury.

By 1166, Foliot had been presented with a petition for annulment of the marriage of Aubrey de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, and Agnes of Essex. On the couple's third appearance before the bishop in his episcopal court on 9 May 1166, Countess Agnes appealed to the pope to affirm the validity of her marriage. Foliot enclosed her appeal in his own surviving letter setting out the salient features of the case. While the case was under papal consideration, Foliot reprimanded the earl for his treatment of his wife, reminding him that until the pope had ruled otherwise, Agnes was to be considered his wife in bed and board. When Pope Alexander III wrote to the bishop concerning the countess's maltreatment, and requiring Foliot to threaten the earl with excommunication, he also chastised the bishop for his handling of the case.