Α.υ. 1190. FAMINE AMONG THOSE WHO BESIEGED ACBE. 171 the salvation of his soul, abandoned all claims whatsoever on his part for ever to wreck throughout the whole of his territories, and enacted that every shipwrecked person who should reach shore alive should freely and quietly have all his property. And if a person should die on board ship, then his sons or daughters, or brothers or sisters, were to have his property, according to the degree in which they should be able to prove themselves his nearest heirs. But if the person so dying should have neither sons nor daughters, nor brothers nor sisters, then the king was to have his chattels. This release of right to wreck, Eichard, king of England, made and confirmed by his charter in the second year of his reign, at Messina, in the month of October, in the presence of Walter, archbishop of Eouen, Gerard, archbishop of Auxienne, John, bishop of Evreux, Bernard, bishop of Bayonne, and many others of the clergy and laity of the household of the king of England, and the charter was deBvered by the hand of Master Eoger Malchien, the king's vice-chanceBor. In the same year, more than a hundred thousand pagans who were in the kingdom of SicBy, and servants of king WiBiam, after his death indignantly refused to serve under king Tancred, both because Henry, king of the Germans, had laid claim to the throne of SicBy, as also because Eichard, king of England, entering the kingdom of SicBy, had taken possession of a great part thereof. They consequently retired to the mountainous parts with their wives, sons, daughters, and cattle, and there lived, attacking the Christians, and doing them considerable injury. However, when they heard that a treaty of peace and a final reconcBiation had been made between the king of England and king Tancred, they returned into the service of king Tancred, and after giving him hostages as sureties that they would keep the peace, came back to their homes, and cultivated the land as they had cultivated it in the time of king WBBam, and so became the servants of king Tancred. In the same year, after his father, Frederic, emperor of the Romans, had lost his Bfe by drowning, Conrad, duke of Suabia, was made king of the Germans and Alemannians, and the other nations subject to his father, and repaired to the siege of Acre with a great army ; immediately on which a great famine arose among those besieging Acre, and increased to such a degree, that a loaf of bread which used to be sold before