We learn from our own great historian, William of Malmesbury, that Kenulf wrote two later letters to Leo on this subject, and he gives us Leo’s reply.[120] Athelhard, the Pope says, has come to the holy churches of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, to fulfil his vow of prayer and to inform the Pope of his ecclesiastical mission. He tells the king that by the authority of St. Peter, the chief of the apostles, whose office though unworthily he fills, he gives to Athelhard such prelatical authority that if any in the province, whether kings, princes, or people, transgress the commands of the Lord, he shall excommunicate them till they repent. Concerning the jurisdiction which the archbishops of Canterbury had held, as well over bishops as over monasteries, of which they had been unjustly deprived, the Pope had made full inquiry, and now placed all ordinations and confirmations on their ancient footing, and restored them to him entire. Thus did Pope Leo III condemn the injustice of Pope Hadrian I. We had better have managed our own affairs, instead of paying to foreigners infinite sums of money to mismanage them. Before we leave this strange episode of the creation of an archbishopric of Lichfield, it is of special local interest to us in Bristol, and to the deanery of Stapleton, that the chief Mercian prelate, Higbert of Lichfield, signed deeds relating to Westbury upon Trym and Aust on Severn, above the archbishop of Canterbury. This was in 794. Offa the king signed first, Ecgferth, the king’s young son, second, and then Hygeberht; Ethelhard of Canterbury coming fifth in one and fourth in the other. The first deed gave from the king to his officer Ethelmund, in 794, four cassates of land at the place called Westbury, in the province of the Huiccians, near the river called Avon, free of all public charges except the three which were common to all, namely, for the king’s military expeditions, for the building of bridges, and for the fortification of strongholds.[121] The other deed restores to the see of Worcester (Wegrin) the land of five families at Aust, which the duke Bynna had taken without right, it being the property of the see of Worcester. To make all safe, six dukes made the sign of the cross at the foot of this deed, which is, as we all know, the origin of the modern phrase ‘signing’ a deed or a letter. The dukes included Bynna himself. [Sidenote: Ep. 85. A.D. 797.]