Thenceforth every church was closed; no bell pealed forth, no mass was offered, no matins nor vespers were sung. Only the dying were permitted to communicate, but their corpses were laid in the ground with maimed rites; infants were baptized, but their mothers were churched only in the churchyard, where on Sunday a sermon was preached, and on Good Friday the cross was carried out and exposed for the veneration of the people. The monasteries were allowed to carry on their services, on condition that they did so with closed doors, admitting no one from without; and the Cistercian order considered it as their privilege to be exempt, and to open their churches for worship as usual. Neither did the King’s favorite, Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, nor De Gray himself, choose to acknowledge the interdict, so that the services continued as usual in their sees, and in many single parishes. These were the only two bishops in England; for the three who proclaimed the interdict had at once to flee for their lives, and the others, few in number at present, soon followed them. De Gray being soon after sent as deputy to Ireland, Des Roches was the sole bishop left to all England. The King made light of it; and when, in the chase, he killed an unusually fat buck, he said, laughing, “Here is a fellow who has prospered well enough without ever hearing matins or vespers.” But he was much enraged; he imprisoned the relatives of the fugitive bishops, and announced himself ready to drive every priest who should obey the interdict out of the kingdom, to be maintained, as he said, by the Pope. The Archdeacon of Norwich experienced his cruelty for consulting with his brethren on enforcing it. The Angevin soldiers seized him, and soldered on his neck a cope of lead, so that he perished in prison under its weight, and from hunger. Afterward, however, some terror seized on John, and he ordered his officers to allow the bishops enough to provide them two dishes of meat each day, while the secular clergy were to receive as much as should be adjudged needful for their support by four sworn men of their parish. Moreover, the man who, by word or deed, abused any of the clergy, should forthwith be hanged upon an oak! The Pope followed up his interdict by excommunicating John, and absolving his subjects from their oaths of allegiance, but a strict watch was kept on the ports, and no one seems ever to have dared to lay the bull before the King. However, its existence was well known, and rendered John very uneasy. He wished to hear what his fate was to be, and his half-brother, William Longsword, brought him a hermit, named Peter of Wakefield, who told him he would wear his crown no longer than next Ascension Day. John flew into a rage, and called him idiot-knave; declared that, as idiot, he pardoned him, but, as knave, he imprisoned him in Corfe Castle, till he should see whether his tale came true.