ed the disappearance of his line in the third
generation, and that King Philip was only an illegitimate descendant of
Charlemagne. He was accused of having incessantly labored to excite
revolts against the king in the south, at one time for the advantage of
the local lords, at another in favor of foreign enemies of the kingdom.
Being summoned before the king and his council at Senlis (October 14,
1301), he denied, but with an air of arrogance and aggression, the
accusations against him. Philip had, at that time, as his chief
councillors, lay-lawyers, servants passionately attached to the kingship.
They were Peter Flotte his chancellor, William of Nogaret, judge-major at
Beaucaire, and William of Plasian, Lord of Vezenobre, the two latter
belonging, as Bernard de Saisset belonged, to Southern France, and
determined to withstand, in the south as well as the north, the
domination of ecclesiastics. They, in their turn, rose up against the
doctrine and language of the Bishop of Pamiers. He was arrested and
committed to the keeping of the Archbishop of Narbonne; and Philip sent
to Rome his chancellor Peter Flotte himself and William of Nogaret, with
orders to demand of the pope "that he should avenge the wrongs of God,
the king, and the whole kingdom, by depriving of his orders and every
clerical privilege that man whose longer life would taint the places he
inhabited; and this in order that the king might make of him a sacrifice
to God in the way of justice, for there could be no hope of his amendment
if he were suffered to live, seeing that, from his youth up, he had
always lived ill, and that baseness and abandonment only became more and
more confirmed in him by inveterate habit."

To this violent and threatening language Boniface replied by changing the
venue to his own personal tribunal in the case of the Bishop of Pamiers.
"We do bid thy majesty," he wrote to the king, "to give this bishop free
leave to depart and come to us, for we do desire his presence. We do
warn thee to have all his goods restored to him, not to stretch out for
the future thy rapacious hands towards the like things, and not to offend
the Divine Majesty or the dignity of the Apostolic See, lest we be forced
to employ some other remedy; for thou must know that, unless thou canst
allege some excuse founded on reason and truth, we do not see how thou
shouldest escape the sentence of the holy canons for having laid rash
hands on this bishop."

"My