[246] John of Brienne married, as his second wife, a daughter of the king of Arragon.
[247] “My lady lost, holy lady be my aid.”—Trans.
[248] See Raynold, Matthew Paris, Alberic, Richard of St. Germain, and the Ecclesiastical History of Fleury, regarding this circumstance.
[249] Upon the quarrels of the pope and the emperor, L’Italia Sacra, tom. viii., Richard de St. Germain, and particularly Matthew Paris, who reports the letters of Frederick, may be consulted.
[250] This is a mistake; Richard had no legitimate children. Richard, duke of Cornwall, who was likewise king of the Romans, was the son of John, Richard’s brother. In the same manner Gibbon calls Edward I. Richard’s nephew;—he was his great-nephew.—Trans.
[251] It appears to be almost incredible that our author should be so blind himself, or expect his readers to be so, to the lessons taught by his History! If the early Crusaders could not buy off their pilgrimages, more of them were attracted by what they might obtain on earth, than by “religion and its promises.”—Trans.
[252] Most of these questions may be found in the work of the Jesuit Greutzer, which bears for title De Cruce.
[253] Although this is very like “damning with faint praise,” I cannot see how the popes or their abuses are entitled to any mitigation of contempt or disapproval: the beneficial results were the work of Providence, and were never contemplated by the pontiffs.—Trans.
[254] King John was a bad prince: he inspired mistrust in his subjects, who demanded a pledge of him, and this pledge became the English constitution. If France, before the revolution of 1789, had never asked her kings for a pledge, it was because none of them had inspired mistrust in his people: the best eulogy that can be made upon the kings of France is, that the nation had never felt under their government the want of a written or guaranteed constitution, and that they were in all times considered as the safest guardians of the public liberty.
[It is scarcely conceivable how a writer of the nineteenth century could offer his readers such opinions as these (both text and note). Some of the best portions of British liberty were obtained from better kings than any France had, with the exception of Henry IV., from Louis IX. to the end of the monarchy. Our Charles I. and James II. had their faults, but they are as “unsunned snow” by the side of nine French monarchs out of ten.]—Trans.