200 MÀtfTHïw OF ymmasmxR. A.D. i24i. About that time, Peter of Savoy, the uncle of the queen, came to England, and the king going to meet him with great solemnity, besides the earldom of Richmond which he had previously conferred on him, gave liirn many valuable presents, and made him president of his council. But on the day of Saint Edward, which the king kept with great solemnity, according to his custom, he invested Peter himself with the belt of knighthood, and fifteen other youths, that he might signalize his apprenticeship by a more solemn observance than usual. And the same day, he celebrated his own festival, as though it had been a feast for the wedding of the emperor, with a vast number of guests, in the great palace of Westminster. About the same time, Master Nicolas de Farnham was elected bishop of Durham, a man of eminent virtue and learning, and was, though not without difficuly, received as such by the king and all the people, and soon had his election confirmed. The same year, too, the Jews were compelled to submit to a most terrible ransom, under the penalty of death or exile, and paid the king twenty thousand marks. But when the spring season and the fine weather came, William de Fortibus, earl of Albemarle, Peter de Malolac, and many other nobles of the kingdom of England, set out on the expedition to Jerusalem with great magnificence. The holy cross, too, was this year brought to the kingdom of France, and received at Paris with such solemnity and devotion as no one remembered ever to have seen before. The new walls which had been built round the Tower of London, fell down, as they had done the year that had just elapsed, and on the same night, to the astonishment of many. This year also, the lord emperor, fearing the danger which might threaten him, if the swarm of the pope, who was so exceedingly hostile to him, should meet in the council which was just at hand, changed his mind, and wrote to the différent princes, and, with especial intimacy, to the king of England, to entreat him diligently to exhort the prelates of his kingdom not to go to a council which was an object of suspicion to him, knowing that a free passage through the imperial dominions was utterly denied by land and by sea to their persons or possessions. And the lord the pope wrote earnestly to the same prelates, desiring them to lay aside all fear of the threats of an excommunicated emperor, and come boldly to the coun*