The high reputation with which Doctor Grossetete filled the Divinity chair in Oxford, seems to have been the occasion of his quitting it and of his being promoted to a more weighty office, in the Diocese of Lincoln, whereof Oxford was then a part. Whitlock saith he was first made Archdeacon of Chester, in the Diocese of Coventry and Lichfield but this seems a mistake built on a wrong interpretation of the word Legecestrensis, or Legrecestrensis, which are sometimes confounded by our ancient historians, or their copyists, and are used to signify sometimes Chester, and sometimes Leicester. His promotion to the Archdeaconary of Leicester was at latest in the year 1223. For in that year, Adam de Marisco, late rector of the noble church of Wiremouth in the Bishopric of Durham, and now a Franciscan Friar, and one of Professor Grossetete's favourite disciples, was called over into Italy by St Francis. Upon which Doctor Grossetete wrote a letter to the provincial Agnellus Pisanus, expressing his regret to see Adam separated from their holy society. And this letter is subscribed by Grossetete, as Archdeacon of Leicester R. Archidiaconus Leircestriensis, fratri Agnello, ministro patrum minorum et conventui oxoniensi. This same year 1223, the sixteenth of the pontificate of Bishop Hugh Wells, who had made him his Archdeacon, the same prelate gave him also for the support of his dignity the rectory of Albodesleigh, or Albotel as Grossetete himself calls it. Tanner places Albodesleigh in Nottinghamshire; there's an Albodel in Cambridgeshire. Grossetete was only deacon when promoved to this rectory, but was thereupon in all probability ordained Priest. In which last quality he had the church of Clifton given him, which was a prebend in the Cathedral of Lincoln. Sometime after his promotion to the Rectory of Albodel, he had a contest with the Abbot [Adam de Latebury], and Convent of Reading, which only served to shew both the spirit and pacific temper with which he carried it on. That Abbot and Convent laying claim to some annual dues or rents upon the Rectory of Albodel, the payment thereof by injunction of the ordinary the Bishop of Lincoln, had been suspended under Robert's predecessor, and by Robert himself till such time as the Abbot of Reading could make but their title to the rent in question.