ened and prudently fortified, so as to make it impregnable, a castle named Connach, that it might serve to check the inroads and sallies of the Welch, and so he returned in triumph from that country. About the same time, Raymond, count of Provence, and father of the queens of France and England, paid the debt of human nature ; a man who, by the exceeding magnificence of the marriages which he procured for his daughters, caused amazement to the whole world. But the lord the king, when he retired from the castle of Connach, which had been, as has been already stated, fortified at an immense expense, deposed Maurice, the justiciary of Ireland, from his office, because he had been evasive and slow in bringing aid from Ireland to the lord the king when he was in danger. And he appointed John, the son of Godfrey, justiciary in his place. The same year, too, at the request of the lord the king of France, who, as has been already mentioned, assumed the sign of the Cross when in danger of death, a certain papal legate à latere was sent to advance the business of the Cross by his preaching. In consequence of whose preaching, a great many nobles of France assumed the sign of the Cross, partly for God's, and partly for the king's sake. Likewise the lord the king of France procured from the church throughout his kingdom, by the permission and indulgence of the lord the pope, one-tenth part of all its revenues of every sort, for the promotion of his pilgrimage. And the lord the pope, as a requital of this beneficence, demanded from the kingdom of France a tax of a twentieth, for the support of the landgrave, whom he had elected as a successor to Frederic in the empire, and for overthrowing Frederic himself, whom he had deposed. But the Saracens, and especially the Chorosmines, who had already trampled over the Christians in the Holy Land when they had provoked God to anger, and who had overrun the Holy Land as far as Acre, after having crushed the Hospitallers and Templars, and Christian nobles, when they heard of these events fortified themselves strongly, that they might not be overwhelmed by the arrival of the French. About the same time,, that is to say on the first of December, Master Richard, chancellor of the church of Exeter, was consecrated bishop of Exeter. And about the same time, Walter, the earl mareschal, died in London, and soon after, that is to VOL. TT. 8