He resolved in consequence simply to absent himself from Dublin. He procured a royal license which excused him from personal attendance at the parliaments held at Dublin, on the ground, that within the province of Dublin he was not permitted to have his cross borne before him. In 1349 he was charged by the same king to plead in the royal name before the Sovereign Pontiff Clement VI. for the grace of a jubilee on behalf of the people subject to the English crown. In Oxford there is a MS. entitled _Propositio ejusden (Ric. Rad. sive Fitz-Ralph Archiepiscopi Armachani) ex parte Regis Angliae Edwardi III. in consistorio Domini Papae, Avinione pro gratia jubilaei ejus Domino Regis populo obtinenda, anno 1349_. A similar heading is prefixed to another _propositio_ of the same prelate, which, as we shall see, he urged in person at Avignon in 1357. Pope Clement VI. was engaged in anxious efforts to restore the oriental churches to union with Rome. The Armenians were in an especial manner the objects of his paternal solicitude. The remarkable series of questions which the Pope proposed to the bishops of that church are well known in ecclesiastical history. It was, probably, during this visit to the Holy See that Archbishop Fitz-Ralph became acquainted with the two Armenian prelates, Nerses or Narses of Manasgarda and John, Bishop elect of Clata, in Greater Armenia. These oriental bishops had long and earnest conferences with their Irish brother on the sad state of their once flourishing church, and at their earnest and oft-repeated requests, the Primate resolved to contribute his aid to the great work of bringing back the Armenians to unity. One circumstance connected with the occasion, though it narrowed his field of argument for the time, has given, nevertheless, to his writings a character which makes them valuable in modern controversy. In his _Questiones Armenorum_ he was forced to defend the Catholic doctrine almost exclusively from the Holy Scriptures, seeing that his adversaries did not admit the authority of the Roman Church. Hence his position as a controversial writer does not differ from that which the Reformation has imposed upon modern theologians since the time of Bellarmine.