THE Κ NIGHT» TEMPLARS. 115 On the tenth of the calends of April, a month after the con- GIRARD M secretion by the patriarch Heraclius of the Temple church, the ^'""neT grand council or parliament of the kingdom, composed of the bishops, earls, and barons, assembled in the house of the Hospitallers at Clcrkenwell in London. It was attended by William king of Scotland and David his brother, and many of the counts and barons of that distant land.* The august assembly was acquainted, in the king's name, with the objeet of the solemn embassy just sent to him from Jerusalem, and with the desire of the royal penitent to fulfil his vow and perform his penance ; but the barons were at the same time reminded of the old age of their sovereign, of the bad state of his health, and of the necessity of his presence in England. They accordingly represented to King Henry that the solemn oath taken by him on his coronation was an obligation antecedent to the penance imposed on him by the pope ; that by that oath he was bound to stay at home and govern his dominions, and that, in their opinion, it was more wholesome for the king's soul to defend his own country against the barbarous French, than to desert it for the purpose of protecting the distant kingdom of Jerusalem. They, however, offered to raise the sum of fifty thousand marks for the levying of troops to be sent into Asia, and recommended that all such prelates and nobles as desired to take the cross should be permitted freely to leave the kingdom on so pious an enterprise.f Fabian gives the following quaint account of the king's answer to the patriarch, from the Chron. Joan Bromton: " Lasteley, the kynge gaue answere, and sayde that he myghte not leue hys lande wythoute kepynge, nor yet leue yt to the praye and robbery of Frenchemen. But he wolde gyue largely of hys owne to * ttaditlph de Dìceto, ut tup. p. 626. Mat!. Par. ad ann. 118.1. + fïowden annal, apud rcr. Augi, script, pest Ucdam, p. 636, 637. i2