His mother mourned as for
his death, his counsellors remonstrated, his people entreated; but
nothing could outweigh such a summons, and his resolution was fixed.
The Bishop of Paris saying that the vow was made while he was not fully
master of his senses, he laid the Cross aside, but only to resume it, so
as to be beyond all such suspicion.
The Crusade was preached, but it had now become a frequent practice, of
which Henry III. was a lamentable example, lightly and hastily to
assume the Cross in a moment of excitement, or even as a means of being
disembarrassed from troublesome claims by the privileges of a Crusader,
and then to purchase from the Pope absolution from the vow. It had
become such an actual matter of traffic, that Richard of Cornwall
positively obtained from Gregory IX. a grant of the money thus raised
from recreant Crusaders. The landless William of Salisbury, going to the
Pope, who was then at Lyons, thus addressed him: "Your Holiness sees
that I am signed with the Cross. My name is great and well known: it is
William Longespee. But my fortune does not match it. The King of England
has bereft me of my earldom, but as this was done judicially, not out of
personal ill-will, I blame him not. Yet, poor as I am, I have undertaken
the pilgrimage. Now, since Prince Richard, the King's brother, who has
not taken the Cross, has obtained from you a grant to take money from
such as lay it aside, surely I may beg for the like--I, who am signed,
and yet without resource.
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