The irretrievable blunder which the Great Council had committed at Christmas, 1224, in making a bargain with the Crown for a renewal of the Charters, was already bringing forth its fruit. Archbishop Stephen’s prohibition to the commissioners in Kent was probably dictated by caution; certainly not by unwillingness to help in supplying the needs of the Crown. The Pope, on 3rd February, wrote to the English prelates and clergy exhorting them to make collections in their several dioceses for the King, but to take care that the proceeds went “for useful and necessary purposes,” not in “superfluous and vain expenses,” and that this collection should not be made a precedent.[1204] When this letter reached England Stephen bade his suffragans urge their clergy to obey it by contributing an aid out of such of their property as was exempt from the fifteenth, and also to pay up their share of that tax, but to take care that whatever money they gave was kept safe till further orders.[1205] Their compliance with these exhortations was made none the easier by the arrival, just before Christmas, of a papal messenger, Master Otto, and his presence in England during the next four months. The expenses which fell upon persons who went on business to the Roman Court were a subject of general complaint; Honorius proposed that this should be remedied by the reservation of a prebend in every cathedral and collegiate church, and a certain proportion of the revenue of every bishop and every religious house in all the realms of Latin Christendom, for the Apostolic See, so that the Pope and the officers of his court might have sufficient means to dispense with the need of charging such heavy fees.[1206] A council assembled at Bourges on S. Andrew’s day[1207] opposed this project so strongly that Cardinal Romanus decided to urge it no further in France till it should be accepted in the Empire, England, and Spain.[1208] In England, whither the Pope’s demand was carried by Otto, the need of consulting all the estates of the realm, and the King’s illness in January, 1226, served as reasons or excuses for deferring a decision till the middle of April. Then, according to one account, the King and the prelates followed the cautious example of their French brethren, saying they would wait to see how other countries would deal with the question; or, according to another authority, they answered that in any case England ought to be free from such an exaction, by reason of her annual tribute to the Pope.[1209] But that tribute was heavily in arrear, and obviously it was not to be expected that either Otto or Honorius would be satisfied till the arrears were paid up. This, therefore, had to be done, and a sum of over fifteen hundred marks went with Otto back to Rome.[1210] All this while Otto’s long stay had been adding to the financial burdens of the English clergy, for a papal envoy was entitled to claim from every cathedral and collegiate church procurations to the amount of