Robert Burnell and the new archbishop were extreme types of two opposite sorts of churchmen. The chancellor, who was wholly devoted to the king's service, was a statesman of high order. He was magnificent in his tastes and expenditure, held many rich preferments, and took care that his relations also should be enriched out of the wealth of the Church. His mode of life was secular, and the grand matches that he arranged for his daughters created no small scandal. Peckham, on the other hand, was a model friar, pious and learned, with exalted ideas of the rights of the papacy and the privileges of the clergy. He was fearless and conscientious, unwise and impracticable. Between him and Bishop Robert and the other clerical advisers of the king there was, of course, no sympathy. He was anxious that the dignities and benefices of the Church should be worthily bestowed, and laboured to carry out the injunctions of Nicolas III. against the prevalent abuse of pluralities. On this matter Peckham wrote plainly to Edward that he would oblige him as far as he might without offending God, but could go no further, and that he was already sneered at for "conniving at the damnable multitude of benefices held by his clerks." Nicolas strove to check the promotion of secular-minded bishops, and when Edward procured the election of Burnell to the see of Winchester, ordered the chapter to proceed to another election. Peckham was blamed for this, and it was also alleged that he had used his influence at Rome against another of the king's ministers, Anthony Bek, afterwards the warlike bishop of Durham. However, he denied that he had said anything to hinder the promotion of either. Almost immediately on his arrival in England in 1279, the archbishop came into collision with the king. He held a provincial council at Reading, in which, besides publishing the canons of the Council of Lyons against pluralities, he decreed that excommunication should be pronounced against all who obtained the king's writ to stop proceedings in ecclesiastical suits against any royal officer who refused to carry out the sentence of a spiritual court, and against all who impugned the Great Charter; and further ordered that the clergy should expound these decrees to their parishioners, and affix copies of the Charter to the doors of cathedral and collegiate churches. These decrees were a direct challenge to the king, and Edward treated them as such; for in his next parliament he compelled Peckham to revoke them, and to declare that nothing that had been done at the council should be held to prejudice the rights of the Crown or the kingdom. [Sidenote: Statute of Mortmain, 1279.]