The king’s half-brother, Ethelmar, bishop-elect of Winchester, deprecated resistance to the will of pope and king, and urged that the French had consented to pay a similar demand. “Yes,” said the Bishop of Ely, “and it brought their king no good.” “For the very reason the French have yielded must we resist,” replied Grosseteste. “To do a thing twice makes it a custom, and if we pay too, we shall have no peace. For my own part, I say plainly that I will not pay this evil demand, lest the king himself as well as us should incur the heavy wrath of God.” The other bishops followed Grosseteste’s lead, and the old man went on to advise them to pray the king to think of his eternal salvation, and to restrain his rash impulses. Henry naturally declined to send an independent remonstrance to the pope against the mandate, and the bishops decided they could do nothing in the way of granting this special tithe. But they were hard put to it, “between the pulling of the king and the pushing of the pope.” All Grosseteste’s dealings with the king show the same firm resolution to stop the royal extortion, and to insist on the fulfilment of the charters of liberties obtained from the crown. He carries on the work of Stephen Langton, always backing up the unsuccessful efforts of the good St. Edmund Rich (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1234–1240) to keep Henry faithful to his word, and prepares the way for the great campaign of his friend Simon of Montfort.[37] The very worst period of Henry’s long reign is covered by Grosseteste’s episcopal life. Hubert de Burgh’s wise rule was over by 1232, and Peter des Roches and the horde of aliens were fleecing the country for the next twenty years. It is not till after Grosseteste’s death that the barons dealt with Henry’s misrule to any purpose. At the great council held in London in 1248, at which Grosseteste was present, a full list of the national grievances is given: the lavish waste of the wealth of the country on foreigners, the ruin of trade by the arbitrary seizure of goods by the king and his agents, the robbery of poor fishermen by royal authority, “so that they think it safer to trust themselves to the stormy waves and seek a further shore,” and the keeping bishoprics and abbacies vacant so that the crown may enjoy the revenues therefrom, are the chief causes of complaint. They were not new grievances, for the most part, and they were not to die with Henry III., all charters and royal promises notwithstanding. Added to the common wrongs of Henry’s wretched misrule were the papal extortions, directly encouraged by the king. In return for papal mandates directing churchmen to supply the king with money, what could Henry--himself the most devoted servant of the papacy--do but help the pope to get what he could out of England? The wealth of England was held to be of fabulous amount at Rome, and popes beset by fierce ungodly emperors naturally turned to it in their need as to a treasury.