others who followed mercantile pursuits, received dwellings within the city, in the open market, which the kings' servants allotted to them, on the understanding that they were to pay, yearly, the customary and proper rents for the same. On the nineteenth day of the month of July, the earls and barons, who had been now staying there nearly two years besieging Acre, seeing that the kings had put every thing that had been taken upon the surrender of the city into their own purses, and were willing to give them no share thereof, had a meeting beyond the outer trenches, and holding a conference there, sent word to the kings that they would no longer continue with them, unless they were sharers in the gain as they had been in the labour ; on which the kings made answer, that they would satisfy their wishes ; but as they delayed so doing, many, being compelled by poverty so to do, left them. On the twentieth day of the month of July, being the feast of Saint Margaret the Virgin, Eichard, king of England, made a proposal to the king of France that they should both make oath that they would remain with their armies three years in the land of Jerusalem, for the purpose of sub jugating the land ; to which the king of France made answer, that he would make no oath about the matter. On the twenty-first day of the month of July, the king of England first entered the city of Acre ; on which he and his wife and sister took up their abode in the king's palace, while the king of France was lodged in the mansion of the Templars. On the twenty-second day of the month of July, being the feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, the king of France sent to the king of England Eobert, bishop of Beauvais, Hugh, duke of Burgundy, Drogo de Amiens, and "WiBiam de Merlou, and through them asked his sanction to his return to his own country ; on which the king of England made this answer to them : " It wiB be a shame and a disgrace for my lord if he goes away without having completed the business on which he came hither. But stiB, if he finds himself aBing, or in bad health, and is afraid lest he should die here, his will be done." On the twenty-third day of the month, when it was spread through the army that the king of France was about to depart, the principal men of his army camo to him, and besought him with tears not in this shameless manner to desert the service of God. On the twenty-sixth day of the month of July, by the advice pf the king of France, Conrad came to the king