of all secular ladies, Blanche, died, after much tribulation, which she had endured on account of her sons. John Mansel, chaplain and special counsellor of the lord the king, as hie industry well deserved, was enriched with very large revenues and estates. This year also, Robert, bishop of Lincoln, caused a diligent account to be taken of the revenues in the possession of foreigners in England, as granted to them by pope Innocent, and it was found that none of his predecessors, in three times the same length of time, had ever enriched such a number of persons of his family and country. About the same time, the king very cunningly permitted the men of the religious orders to be oppressed by the nobles, who kept hounds for hunting, and who lived near them, so that their liberties were weakened, and their cultivated lands trampled on. The same year, pope Innocent established a rule that the cardinals should wear scarlet hats. Concerning the disturbance of a banquet at Winchester. A.D. 1253. King Henry the Third, in the thirty-seventh year of his reign, was at the time of the feast of the Nativity of the Lord at Winchester ; and according to their general custom at that solemn festival, the citizens of Winchester made a noble entertainment, though it was only lately that the king had compelled them to pay two hundred marks in a short time. But this feast was interrupted in no small degree by the quarrel that had already arisen between the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of Winchester, the king in some degree stirring it up, on account of some injury which had been done to Master Eustace de Len, his official, by the said bishop elect, who, on this account, had had the sentence of excommunication passed against him. However, this disturbance, by the intervention of the king and queen, was soonexchanged for peace. About this time, all the prelates of England were convened before the king, and as they urgently requested that the charters of their predecessors might be preserved, they easily obtained the consent of the king to this. And when sentence had been given on this point, they lighted their tapers, and published the fact, in return for which they cheerfully granted a by no means inconsiderable contribution, which the king demanded of them. A certain brother of the order of Preachers, by name