The lord the pope murmurs at the English complaining of their oppressions, hut especially of the tribute, and seeks pretences for revenge. A.D . 1246, which is the thirtieth year of the reign of king Henry the Third, the said king was at the feast of the Nativity of our Lord at Westminster, to which place he had invited also many of the nobles of his kingdom, and especially his brother Richard, earl of Cornwall, with his wife, and a great many other persons, who with the king had borne the burden and heat of the war in the territories of Wales, encountering great dangers and great expenses ; in order that they who had been his companions in tribulation, should also be his comrades in the hour of exultation. About the same time, Boniface, archbishop of Canterbury, pastor and prelate, a man very unlike his predecessors, who before him had been eminent for their many virtues in the church of Canterbury, gave the lord the pope to understand, not without great injury and insult to Saint Edmund and the rest of hie holy predecessors, that the prelates who had preceded him in the government of the archbishopric of Canterbury, had embarrassed the church irretrievably, although it was a rich one, with an incalculable load of debt. By which representation he obtained most execrable letters from the pope, the sum of which was as follows: "We , by these our letters, do command our venerable brother, the bishop of Hereford, to take care that for seven years, and no longer, the first year's revenues of all the ecclesiastical benefices which shall for the future become vacant in the city and diocese, and province of Canterbury, till they amount to a sum of ten thousand marks (and if they can be brought up to that sum before the end of the aforesaid period of seven years, then nothing more need be demanded) ; and also two thousand marks from the revenues of the archbishop himself, shall be collected each year, and be faithfully applied by him to the payment of the debts of the aforesaid church. Provided that out of the revenues before mentioned, the same bishop shall cause an adequate payment for their support to be assigned to the persons serving in those benefices, that the benefices may not be deprived of their proper βervice8., , About the same time, the nobles of the kingdom were summoned to meet at London on the day when the anthem " Rejoice, Ο Jerusalem/' is sung, that they might deliberate care fi 2