office of mayor of his household. On which account, some gallant knights, formerly his friends, being vehemently indignant, having made a confederacy with all those who had at any time been offended by any exercise of the royal power, endeavoured to re-kindle the old coals, and recalled the earl o f Leicester back into England ; who immediately after his entrance into the kingdom, having united himself with the Welch, the deadly enemies of the aforesaid king and kingdom, and with many of the nobles of England, aU of whom he caused to shave their heads in token of the folly which was thus begun by them, he caused the lord bishop of Hereford, whom his conduct in laying the churches and monasteries of England under obligation for the sake of the kingdom of Apulia, and the oppression of his subjects, had made odious to all Englishmen, to be dragged from his church by some nobles of the marches who were at that time his adherents, and to be committed to confinement in prison ; and the bishop and all the rest, both native English and foreigners, who were the familiar friends of the aforesaid king, were plundered of all their property by his different armies. In all these preliminary deeds of great presumption, he was consulting his own interest by subtle cunning, so that the people adhered to him out of hatred to the aforesaid bishop, and all his adherents he maintained in pay derived from the property of which he had despoiled him ; so that necessity infaUibly compelled ail transgressors of this sort to become his adherents, as they despaired of grace either from the pope or the king. Afterwards, having collected a numerous army, he entered the city of London, and compelled the king of England, by his oppression, to surrender to him the castle of Dover, the Tower of London, and all his other strong castles, and in all things to submit to his will ; the aforesaid eldest son of the king being compelled to deliver up to this earl the castle of Windsor, from which all his friends who came from foreign countries had been expelled, and they were afterwards banished from the kingdom. And John Mansel, provost of Beverlac, the principal counsellor of the aforesaid king, was compelled, on account of the violence of the persecution, to return into the country of France. But the lord the king of Germany, and the eldest son of the king of England, and the other counsellors and friends of the king of England, seeing the rapine and depredations of this kind which were committed on the prelates