A.D.1260. THE EARL OF LEICESTER RETURNS TO ENGLAND. 375 that diocèse» asking them to cause diligent enquiry if any distinct assertion was to be found in their documents or books, which, having been made by any one of his predecessors, might be of service to his side of the question as to this point, and enable him to bridle the opposite party. So, when a diligent scrutiny had taken place at Saint Alban's, nothing was found that made for either one side or the other, but the answers given by the other convents is not known to us. As sometimes good fortune is Wont to be mingled with bad, and sorrow with joy, an event took place at Christmas in this year which caused great grief and mourning in France. For Louis, the son and heir of the king of France, a man of great personal strength and stature, and loved by all the kingdom, and by every individual who had access to him, and who, in accordance with the arrangements made by his father, was, the next summer, to marry the daughter of the king of Castile, and to be crowned as king of France, went the way of all flesh. And when the king of England, who was still tarrying beyond the sea, heard this news, though he was actually on his way back towards England, he, being struck with grief, immediately returned to Paris, and honoured the funeral of so noble a person with his presence. And about the time of the Purification of the blessed Virgin Mary, there emanated from the chancellor's court a mandate of the lord the king, though he himself was absent from the kingdom, addressed to all the viscounts in whose bailiwicks danger was in the habit of attending on travellers, charging them to take care that all the dangerous passes, or out-of-the-way places, and hollows, and copses, and hedges, which gave any opportunity for any disturbance of the king's peace, should be examined, and immediately mended, either by the owners of the ground or by themselves ; and the full tenor of this commission will be shown at length among other briefs, to those who wish to see it. About this time, the lord Simon, earl of Leicester, returned into England, which had long been deprived of his presence ; and coming on the day of the holy virgin Scholastica to Saint Alban's for the sake of visiting the martyr and the convent, he offered a most precious vestment of cloth of gold at the tomb, and early in the morning proceeded on the journey which he had commenced. On the morrow of Saint Valentine the Martyr, the lord Henry de Wengham was consecrated bishop of London by Boniface, archbishop of Canterbury, in