But he was fated, nevertheless, to turn again and revisit the Roman Court; for while he tarried in Master Southam's lodgings at Avignon, in September, 1378, there came news of a notable murder committed in the church of Westminster while the Gospel was being read at High Mass,[34] on August, 11. The victim was one Robert Hawle, who had escaped from the Tower and had taken sanctuary at Westminster. The incident had its political aspects; it raised various perilous questions; and Southam advised that Colchester should return to Rome in order to counteract any plots that might be mooted in behalf of the authors of "that horrible deed." So again the expenses began to roll up--the journey overland to Marseilles; a passage by galley to Ostia; a sojourn in Rome for the greater part of December, 1378; gratuities on several occasions to the Papal janitors for free entrance to the Chamber and the Consistory, and to the valets for access to the Pope himself; an expensive struggle by each faction to extract from the Curia the kind of Bull that each side wanted, in which our Proctor was apparently successful; and a journey from Rome to Bruges lasting forty-one days. Colchester waited for three weeks at Sluis to secure a passage across the Channel, in the belief that the enemy was watching Calais with the intention of doing him violence;[35] and when he reached his native shore, he rode up to London by ways that were devious for the same reason, arriving there in November, 1379. It was neither easy nor without peril to be the chosen representative of Westminster at the Roman Court. V AN ARCHDEACON