478 MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER. Α.Β . 1283. sidy first of all a fifteenth, and afterwards a thirtieth part of all their property. Charles, king of Apulia, Sicily, and Calabria, on the day of the Ascension of the Lord, lost the greater part of the kingdom of Sicily, many thousands of his subjects being slain unexpectedly. The king of Arragon claimed those kingdoms for his heirs as being theirs by hereditary right, because he had married the daughter of Manfred, who had been robbed o f the aforesaid kingdoms by the Roman church ; therefore, in spite of the prohibition of the Apostolic See, the aforesaid kings agreed that two hundred knights should contend for the rights of each of them on the plain in front of Bourdeaux, assigning a day for the two parties to meet in battle. But when the day arrived, this agreement of the aforesaid princes was set at nought, because king Charles came to meet the king ef Arragon with a hundred thousand men, while the latter was attended by no more than a hundred knights. Of the building of the cosile of Aberconway, and of the miserable death of David, brother of Llewellyn. A.D. 1283. King Edward caused a strong castle to be built at Aberconway, at the foot of the mountain of Snowdon. David, the brother of prince Llewellyn, who had been beheaded as has been related above, being a deviser of evil, and most crnel persecutor of England, a deluder of his own nation, a most ungrateful traitor, and the author of the war, was taken prisoner with his wife and two eons and seven daughters by the faithful subjects of the king, and was afterwards tried by the nobles of England. Alas ! for the miserable death of the traitor ! he was 'dragged at the tail of a horse through the town of Shrewsbury, and then hanged, and afterwards beheaded ; after that, his body was divided into four parts, and at last his heart and his bowels were burnt, his head was carried to London, and erected on a pole on the top of the Tower of London, opposite to that of his brother. The four portions of his headless trunk were sent to Bristol, Northampton, York, and Winchester. A large portion of the cross of the Lord, which, in the language of the Welch, is called Croizneth, was given up, with many other famous relics, to the lord Edward, king of England. The body of that great prince, the father of the noble emperor Constantine, was discovered at Caernarvon, near Snow