 Following a financial dispute between the king and the Bishop of Exeter, Sheriff Theobald was ordered by the king in the summer of 1347 to enforce an order made against the bishop in the Court of King's Bench.He marched to the bishop's manor of Bishops Tawton at the head of an army of 500 persons and seized goods to the value stated, not without killing several occupants of that manor.In January 1348 he made apology on bended knee to the bishop in his great hall at Chudleigh.