! f ι count of Artois, and the bishop of Paris, and others, but very few intimate friends of his own ; and they were all grieving that the king was now dead and cold ; but his mother Blanche, unable to conceal her maternal affection, ordered the holy cross, with the lance, and crown of thorns, which a few years before had been brought into France, to be applied to the apparently, and, as some insisted, really dead body ; and then sighing, while sobs interrupted her voice, she said, " Not unto us, Ο Lord Christ, not unto us, but unto thy name give the praise. Save this day the kingdom of France, and the crown which hitherto thou hast sustained by thy grace ; show the virtue of thy tokens which thou hast left behind thee on the earth to appear at the great judgment,—in which we place our confidence and our boasting.'' A strange miracle ! The king immediately yawned, and contracted his legs and arms towards his body,' and drawing his breath and sighing, he requested to be signed with the sign of the cross, and made a vow that he would go to the Holy Land—which he did. In the course of the same year, David, prince of North Wales, who, as has been already mentioned, had fled to the asylum of the pope, and found favour with him to enable him to shake the yoke of the king from off his neck, now deservedly obtained the following letters from the lord the pope, whom he had chosen as his protector, though not without a great expenditure of money. " Innocent, &c. to the beloved faithful brethren of de Al bere and de Kern, of the Carthusian order, and the diocese of Bangor, sendeth greeting and his apostolic benediction, on the part of our beloved son the noble David, prince of North Wales, &c. as above. Since then those things which are done through violence and fear, as far as such feelings can influence a brave man, ought to have no validity or ratification, we by our apostolic power enjoin your discretion, that, having first examined the truth of these matters, you, if the truth be so, do by our authority entirely absolve the before-mentioned prince from the observance of an oath which was extorted from him in such a manner, and relax any sentence which in consequence may by chance have been pronounced by any one against his person or kingdom." But when this had come to the knowledge of the lord the king and his nobles, and had soon afterwards reached the ears of other princes, by the common report of fame, they, being