818 MATTHEW WE8TMDÌ8TEB. A.D. 1251. 1 a great deal of thunder was heard, and much lightning seen. The king, because he was designing to visit the countries of the east as a pilgrim, where gold coin is chiefly used, began to seek for and collect gold money, so that every one who wished to get his business settled in the king's court gave the king gold rather than silver. Frederic being dead, as has already been mentioned, his son Conrad caused all the captives whom Frederic, his father, had kept in prison, to be removed to the more remote districts of his kingdom, to Palermo and other cities of Sicily, that he might be more secure of them. But he allowed some of them to be sent to Henry, the son of the emperor Frederic, and nephew of the king of England, to be ransomed by him, or to be treated in any other way according to his pleasure. About the same time, quarrels arose among the most powerful soldans of the Saracens, and especially between the soldans and magistrates of the Alapensians and Babylonians. For the former were indignant and envious because the soldan of the Babylonians had taken the most illustrious and powerful king of France in battle ; and were even more moved at his having allowed him to be ransomed and to depart freely, 1 and at his now being in safety among the Christians at Acre. , But the amount of the ransom of the king of France was ] sixty thousand pounds of the choicest and purest gold, besides a great deal of the common coinage of the ordinary ι sterling money, and of the coinage of Tours and Poitou, amounting to an incalculable sum. The number of those who were slain in that expedition amounted to sixty thousand, and twenty thousand and more were dispersed as fugitives, without counting those who were drowned, and those who voluntarily surrendered themselves to the enemy, and those who apostatised, who did us more harm than the rest. This year, the Jews were forbidden by the king, and the king's ministers, to eat flesh on the sixth day of the week, or during Lent, under great penalties. For they had become very odious to the king of England, because it had been stated to the king of France, as a reproach and matter of disgrace, that the Christians allowed Jews to dwell among them, who had inflicted such numbers of injuries on their Lord and God, and had at last crucified him. Manfred, the natural son of the emperor, after a short respite, rose in insurrection against the pope. The city of Nutheta, in which more than three thousand