Sometimes the brethren were suffered to have a glimpse of the great world without the convent with their own eyes. The prior, who was of the company of mitred abbots, was frequently forced to journey to whatever place the King might appoint for the meeting of the parliament. The rank and file of the convent had now and then opportunities of seeing life in travel. They might undertake a pilgrimage; or, when a dispute was on hand, and appeal had been made to the Holy Father, one of the brethren would journey Rome-wards, with well-lined pockets, to look after the convent's interest at the papal court. These lawsuits were not infrequent, as may be shown by the career of Geoffrey, Prior of Coventry during the reign of Henry III.[48] In 1224 the monks tried to raise him to the episcopal throne, but the election was quashed by the archbishop, and the usual appeal to Rome only brought another--a papal--candidate to fill the vacant seat. This occurrence did not in all probability predispose the minds of the actual and would-be bishop to mutual goodwill. In 1232 the prior was suspended for resisting the episcopal visitation, and, together with the abbot of Westminster, set out hot-foot to Rome, to lay his grievances before the Pope. A year or two later we find him involved in a quarrel with the Abbot of S. Augustine's, Bristol. What heart-burnings these obscure disputes must have occasioned, what journeyings to and fro, and, above all, what wealth was lost to the monastery to satisfy the Roman greed of gold! It is the record of these disputes that forms the bulk of the history of the monastic houses of England, and the priory of Coventry is no exception to the general rule. Placed in a somewhat dependent position--for during the episcopate of Robert de Limesey (1086-1121) the bishop's seat had been transferred from Chester to this place--the monks were, earlier or later, bound to realise the dangers of episcopal tyranny and encroachment. Limesey, the first bishop in whom the abbacy was vested--the superior of the convent being henceforward called a prior--soon made the monks feel his heavy yoke. Bitter were the complaints they made concerning his conduct. On the death of the last abbot he obtained leave to farm the convent revenue, and, using the permission to serve his own ends, wrought much harm to the estates of the monastery, pulling down houses thereon, and carrying off the materials to his own manors, seizing horses and other monastic property. But the crying instance of his greed, one which the chroniclers have carefully and tremblingly noted, was his plunder of the magnificent minster. He scraped off the silver coating of a beam--worth 500 marks--most likely from a shrine in that goodly treasure-house![49] It was little wonder that the indignant monks turned to Rome for aid against this devourer of their substance.[50]