A.r. 1227.j DEATH 0Γ FALCASI!'*. 4SÓ when, a short time after this at Bedford, his brothers and friends having been already hung, he was himself sent into exile a poor man, and now closed his life by a wretched death. In the same year too died the bishops, Benedict of Rochester, and Pandulph of Norwich : I'andulpb was succeeded by Thomas de Blundcville, a clerk of the king's treasury, who was consecrated by Stephen archbishop of Canterbury, on the Sunday next before Christmas. Of the extortion of money by the English king. A.I). 1227. King Henry kept Christmas at Reading, and in the same Christmas week, to the grief of many, died William earl of Essex, a brave young man, and one lavish in his generosity. The king then went to London and accused the citizens of having, to his loss, given five thousand marks" of silver to Louis the lately deceased French king, on his departure from England; he therefore, by the advice of quarrelsome counsellors, compelled them to pay him the like amount. lie moreover took from them the fifteenth part of their moveables as well as of their whole substance, the same as had been formerly granted to him by all throughout England. He also took from the inhabitants of Peterborough and the Northumbrians twelve hundred pounds, besides the fifteenth part, which all paid throughout the kingdom in general. Even the religious men and beneficed clergy were obliged to give up the fifteenth part of all their goods, as well of ecclesiastic as lay property ; and an appeal to the pope was of no use, for, the order of things being changed, archbishops and bishops, by authority of the pope and the church's censure, compelled those to pay whom the lay power could not, and they were thus deprived of all relief. /loie tlic king annulled the charters of liberties, at a council held at Oxford. In the month of February in the same year, the king assembled a council at Oxford, and before all present he dedeath. And oh, that that formidable stone in hell may not still crush him ! He died poisoned, having surfeited himself with stronitly poisoned tisli ; after taking his supper he lay down to sleep, and was discovered dead, black, stinking, and rotten, and without receiving the viaticum, or any rites, and was at once ignobly buried ; and thus reaping the fruits of hie works, he miserably closed his sinful life, unlanicnted; or, if any tears were shed for him, they were dry ones.