tion addressed to the king of England, to forhid his invading hie territories in a hostile manner while he was absent, and fighting in the cause of God, embarked in a crusade against the Albigenses. And having collected a very numerous army, because all those who had assumed the cross joined him, and were compelled to follow his expedition, he behaved in a very arrogant manner. And while he besieged and blockaded the city of Avignon all round, he stormed it by a stratagem devised by himself, and made himself master of it. But the success of his stratagem was not long-lived ; for by the management of the earl of Champagne, who, as evil fame reports, was a paramour of queen Blanche, king Louis died of poison. About the same time, Falcas, owing to the intrigues of the Roman court, which had been bribed by gifts and promises, to expedite his business for him, which he had managed chiefly by the agency of his clerk, Robert Passelewe, an Englishman by birth, as he was returning towards England with the object of a second time disturbing the king and kingdom, was poisoned, and so suddenly ended his wicked life at Saint Cyriac. The same year also, Richard de Mantis, a man in manners and example resembling king John, who had made him bishop of Durham, died at Burgh, on the first of May, after he had distressed the monks by innumerable tyrannies, leaving his church encumbered with debts amounting to nearly forty thousand marks. He was succeeded by Richard of Salisbury, a postulate, who at that time was successively elected to the government of three cathedral churches. The same year, the following bishops died ; Benedict of Rochester, and Pandulph of Norwich. Pandulph was succeeded by Thomas de Blondville, a clerk of the king's exchequer, through the effectual interposition of Hubert, the justiciary ; and he received con* secration from Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, on the Sunday next before the consecration of the Lord. The charters of liberties are cancelled after the collection of the fifteenth—Pope Honorius the Third dies, and is succeeded by 'Gregory the Ninth—Earl Richard returns from the parts of Gascony. A.D . 1227. King Henry the Third celebrated the feast of the Nativity of the Lord, at Reading. And at the same Christmas season, that there might not seem to be anything delightful in the wprld without some admixture of pain, William! earl