the seneschal of Normandy, died. In his stead the king appointed Richard of Ilchester. Richard, to judge by his surname, must have been an Englishman by birth; from the second year of Henry’s reign he was employed as a “writer” in the royal treasury;[934] about 1163 he was made archdeacon of Poitiers, but his archidiaconal functions sat as lightly upon him as upon a contemporary whose name is often associated with his, Geoffrey Ridel, archdeacon of Canterbury and vice-chancellor; and throughout the struggle with Archbishop Thomas he was one of the most active agents of Henry’s foreign diplomacy.[935] Unlike his colleagues Geoffrey Ridel and John of Oxford, he contrived, notwithstanding the ecclesiastical disgrace in which he became involved through his dealings with the schismatic Emperor and the antipope, to retain the general respect of all parties among his fellow-countrymen.[936] Throughout the same period, when not absent from England on some diplomatic mission, he frequently appears as an acting justice of the King’s Court and baron of the Exchequer.[937] He continued to fulfil the same duties after his elevation to the see of Winchester in 1174; and the estimation in which he was held is shewn by the fact that on his return from Normandy, where he was replaced at the end of two years by William Fitz-Ralf,[938] a special seat was assigned to him at the exchequer-table between the presiding justiciar and the treasurer, “that he might diligently examine what was written on the roll.”[939] He was evidently invested with far more authority in Normandy than that which usually appertained to a Norman seneschal--authority, in fact, more like that of an English justiciar; indeed, he is actually called justiciar, and not seneschal, by contemporary English writers.[940] His work in the duchy seems to have been moreover specially connected with finance;[941] and we may perhaps venture to see a trace of his hand in the organization of the Norman Court of Exchequer, which first comes distinctly to light in Henry’s latter years, its earliest extant roll being that of the year 1180.[942] The earlier stages of the legal and administrative organization of Normandy are, however, so lost in obscurity that neither constitutional lawyers in Henry’s day nor constitutional historians in our own have been able to determine the exact historical relation of the Norman system to that of England;[943] and the speedy severance of the political connexion between them makes the determination of the question, after all, of little practical moment. [929] Contin. Becc. (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. p. 180). Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 459, 460. [930] Rob. Torigni, a. 1162. [931] Rob. Torigni, a. 1171. See above, p. 128. [932] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 138. [933] See above, p. 125.