which he had greatly longed for, though he refused to look upon it as a gratuitous present, saying that it was only a payment of what was due to him. And when they heard this, they added besides a very valuable vessel, and then they received his thanks. Not long afterwards, the king making an investigation into the conduct of the Londoners, in the matter of a certain clerk, who had been condemned to death, and imprisoned in Newgate, and had escaped from thence, exacted three thousand marks from them by way of punishment. But they answered that the king had given up the prisoner to the bishop, on the ground of his being a clerk ; but because the bishop had not a proper prison, he requested the citizens to lend the aforesaid prison to him for the confinement of the said clerk, who, after having been placed there, escaped ; and they urged that " such an escape, made through the fact of two guards of the bishop having been deceived, ought not to be imputed to us." But though they thus excused themselves, they could not obtain a remission of the fine from the king. Hernald de Bosco, one of the prime foresters of England, died on the sixth of February, and was buried at Bethelesdene, before the great altar. Moreover, the king exacted from the Jews eight thousand marks, which they were to pay in a short time, on pain of being hanged. But they (as has been already mentioned) requested leave of the king, and desired to leave England, never to return. But the king delivered them over to earl Richard to punish them, and to extract the money from them ; and in consequence, the earl lent the king, on sufficient security, a very considerable sum of gold. Violent storms of wind, with heavy rain, lasting from the feast of Saint Valentine into the following month, day and night, caused an unprecedented confusion. In the diocese of Norwich, the sea cast up a beast of a very monstrous character, which had been much injured, and killed by the tempests and the waves ; it was called a very huge whale, yet it was not a whale, but a monster, and it enriched the whole of the neighbouring district ; an elephant, too, was sent into England, having been given as a present by the king of France to the king of England when he was in the country of France, and we believe that no other elephant was at any time seen in England. Besides this, the queen of France gave the king of England a peacock, being a stone bath of marvellous work