As might be supposed, Roger Bacon cultivated the acquaintance of men who held sentiments similar to the above, which could not please his brethren. Among them we have mentioned Grostête, bishop of Lincoln, who usually resided at Oxford. This prelate, who was a good mathematician, and a resolute opponent of undue interference on the part of the see of Rome (_terrificus papae redargutor_, says Camden), had opposed Innocent IV., who attempted to appoint his nephew, a boy, to a prebend at Lincoln. On being excommunicated, Grostête appealed from the tribunal of Rome to that of Christ; and so prevalent was the opinion of his antipathy to the pope, that a story is gravely told by Knyghton (cited by Blount, 'Censura,' &c.), that the Bishop of Lincoln, after his death, appeared to Innocent in a dream, and exclaiming "_Surge, miser, veni in judicium!_" actually stabbed his Holiness, who was found dead next morning. It is needless to say that Innocent IV. died a natural death, and useless to speculate upon the means by which such a circumstance as the preceding, if true, could come to be known. But perhaps the memory of Grostête may have been one reason of the willingness with which succeeding popes continued Bacon's imprisonment, to which we shall soon come; for though they might hold his spirit guiltless of the death of Innocent, they long remembered what he had done in the flesh; and when Edward I. and the University of Oxford, long after, applied to Clement V. for the canonization of Grostête, they received for answer that the pope would rather his bones were thrown out of consecrated ground.