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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. II. A.D. 1066 to A.D. I307.
page 243
snake in one's bosom ; and that they would not permit two great luminaries to appear in their country, lest, if one swallowed up the other, an eclipse should take place ; nor was all the elegance of language, which was so carefully studied in the pope's letter, nor the example which was derived from pope Alexander, of blessed memory, of any avail to soften the resolution of the French. For they said, " How unlike is that man to this boy." But on the day after the feast of All Souls, all the nobles of England came together, because they had been so often injured and deceived by the king, and contradicted him to his face, when he entreated most earnestly that a pecuniary aid might be granted to him.
The same year, the lord the emperor signified to the king of England and his nobles, by a special ambassador and councillor of his own, by name Peter de Vinea, that they ought not to suffer the kingdom of England to be pauperised any more, and stripped of its riches, and the pope to be fattened on it to no purpose, and to offer on the part of the lord the emperor to deliver England from this tribute. And the aforesaid Peter asserted that all the money which England had lavished for the pope's use, had been seized by the emperor for his own purposes, in order that the money which had been given for the object of injuring the emperor might aid in procuring his success. Therefore, the king, who was cherishing a design of marching his expedition into Wales, extorted no small sum of money from his subjects, as from slaves of the lowest condition ; and from the Jews, inventing a pretext against those before-mentioned subjects, that they had cherished an outlawed and banished man, William Buketel, who, however, had obtained a reversal of his outlawry, through the entreaties and presents of his brother Andrew.
On Saint Hugo's day, Margaret, sister of the king of Scotland, and the relict of Gilbert, earl of Mareschal, died in London ; she was rejected by the king of England, and was buried in the church of the Preacher Brothers. The same year, at the Advent of the Lord, Louis, king of France, being very ill from the remains of a disease which he had contracted in Guienne, being seized with a mortal attack, lay for some days as if he were dead, and indeed, according to the assertion of the bystanders, he was actually dead. And there were standing by him while he was lying in this condition, bis mother, the noble lady Blanche, and his brother Richard,
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