288 MATTHEW OF WB0rMIK8TXB. A.D. 1247. the king, landed in England, at the same port, namely, at Dorer ; their names were Gay de Licinun, a knight, and William de Valence, who was not yet made a knight, and iElmar, a clerk, and they had come on the invitation of the king ; and besides these, came Alesia, their sister, who was also the uterine sister of the king, a damsel not yet married : in order that, leaving Poitou, which the French began to trample on, dividing the inhabitants, and calling them traitors, they might be enriched and fattened on the riches and luxuries of England. And on their arrival the king met them with joy, and rushing into his brothers' embraces and multiplied kisses, he promised them honours and most ample possessions, and faithfully fulfilled his promises without any delay, to a degree beyond what he had engaged to do, as the subsequent history will clearly show to my readers. Some damsels are married to some nobles of England. The same year, in the beginning of the month of May, when the lord the king was staying at Woodstock for that especial purpose, from the festival of Saint Vitalis to the day after that of the apostles Saint Philip and Saint James, two maidens from foreign parts, born in the countries of Savoy or Provence, (in consequence of the prudence and management of Peter of Savoy, who had gone thither for them), were married to Edmund, earl of Lincoln, and Richard de Burgh, two youths of noble birth, whom the lord the king had brought up in his palace for several years, and had caused to be instructed in polite manners and accomplishments. At which marriage, because strange and foreign women were married to natives and Englishmen, women of low birth, as it was said, to nobleblemen, ugly women to handsome men, the latter, too, being disinclined to the marriage, great discontent and indignation was excited among the nobles, who were in no small fear that the king intended day by day to bring the nobility of England to degeneracy by a spurious admixture of race. Joanna, daughter of Warren de Mutenheinsil, is married. In those days, namely, on the thirteenth of August, Joanna, the daughter of Warren de Mutenheinsil, is married to William de Valence, the uterine brother of the lord the king ; the marriage having been the wish and the result of the earnest and persuasive advice of the lord the king, in consequence of