unhappy meeting of the two fleets took place on the day of Saint Mark the Evangelist. In the meantime, too, the papal collectors, namely Peter Rubeus, a kinsman and intimate friend of the lord the pope (for that was the title put at the head of his letters), and Peter de Supen, were indefatigably labouring throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, by all sorts of arguments, to collect money for the necessities of the lord the pope, the king, under the guidance of evil councillors, permitting all their proceedings. In those times, too, every one was absolved who pleased, being invested with the cross, for the sake of money, both the Minor Brothers and the Preaching Brothers preaching and recommending that step by command of the pope ; so that many of those who assumed the cross to-day, were on the morrow, for the payment of money, absolved from their vow, to the great astonishment of many persons. The same year, on the twenty-eighth of May, Gilbert Mareschal, earl of Pembroke, died outside the city of Hereford, having had many of his limbs broken in a tournament, where the knights unhappily were vying with one another in contests of strength ; and his body was conveyed to London to be buried. And after his death, because all tournaments were prohibited by the king, and because no special leave had been obtained for this one, Walter, the brother of earl Gilbert, had great difficulty in obtaining from the king the inheritance that belonged to him. About the same time, the king of France conferred on his brother, Alfonzo, the county of Poitou, and formally, with all due solemnity, invested him with the belt of a knight, to the exclusion of count Richard, who was at that time fighting for God in the Holy Land. About this time too, the aforesaid count Richard made a truce with the soldan of Babylon, on condition that all the French who were detained prisoners should be restored to liberty ; and that Jerusalem also, and the neighbouring places, and many other cities and castles, should be left in freedom and peace, with other conditions such as were honourable and advantageous to the Christiane, as is contained in the letter of this same count. At the beginning of which business, the king of Navarre, who is also count of Champagne and Brittany, and other men, remarkable for their seditious conduct, wickedly and treacherously betook themselves to secret flight, embarking on board ship at Joppa, to