of the pope; secondly, because they understood, or some of them even saw, that swords were unsheathed around them. The contention was no longer of mere words, but nearly for life and for blood. The legate and the archbishop still, however, were anxiously observant of their duty. They humbly prostrated themselves before the king in his chamber, entreating him to take pity on the church, and to consider his soul and his reputation, and that he would not suffer a schism to be made between the empire and the priesthood. Although he in some measure removed the odium of his former conduct, by condescendingly rising to them, yet, prevented by ill advice, he carried none of his fair promises into effect.
The council broke up on the kalends of September; and on the day previous to the kalends of October, earl Robert, having at length surmounted every cause of delay, arrived with the empress his sister in England, relying on the protection of God and the observance of his lawful oath; but with a much smaller military force than any other person would have required for so perilous an enterprise; for he had not with him, at that time, more than one hundred and forty horsemen. My assertion is supported by persons of veracity; and did it not look like flattery, I would say that he was not inferior to Julius Csesar, at least in resolution, whom Livy[1] relates to have had but five cohorts when he began the civil war, with which he attacked the world; though the comparison between Julius and Robert is invidious. For Julius, an alien to the true faith, reposed his hope on his good fortune, as he used to say, and the valour of his legions; Robert, celebrated for Christian piety, rehed only on the assistance of the Holy Spirit and the lady St. Mary. The former had partizans in Gaul, in part of Germany, and Brittany, and had attached to him by means of presents all the Roman people with the exception of the senate; the latter, bating a very few who regarded their plighted oath, found the nobility in England either opposing or affording him no assistance. He landed, then, at Arundel, and for a time delivered his sister into the safe keeping, as he supposed, of her mother-in-law, whom Henry, as I have before related,
- ↑ It would seem from this passage that he had seen Livy in a more complete state than it exists at present.
