by every one of his vassals.  The last forty years had been marked by continual disaster.  The armies of the Moslem were closing in fast on every side.  A passion of sympathy was everywhere roused by the sorrows of the Holy City.  All England, it was said, desired the crusade, and Henry’s prudent counting of the cost struck coldly on the excited temper of the time.  Gerald of Wales officiously took on himself, in the middle of a hunting party, to congratulate the king on the honour done to him and his kingdom, since the patriarch had passed by the lands of emperors and kings to seek out the English sovereign.  Talk of this kind before all the court at such a critical moment much displeased the prudent king, and he answered in his biting way, “If the patriarch, or any other men come to me, they seek rather their own than my gain.”  The unabashed Gerald still went on, “Thou shouldst think it thy highest gain and honour, king, that thou alone art chosen before all the sovereigns of the earth for so great a service to Christ.”  “Thus bravely,” retorted Henry, “the clergy provoke us to arms and dangers, since they themselves receive no blow in the battle, nor bear any burden which they may avoid!”

Henry’s council, however, held firm against the general tide of romantic enthusiasm.  In the weighty question of the eastern crown the king had formally and openly pledged himself to act by the advice of his wise men, as no king before him since the Conquest had ever done.  An assembly was summoned at Clerkenwell on the 18th of March.  No councillors were called from Anjou or Normandy or Aquitaine; the decision was made solely by the advice of the prelates and barons of England.  “It seemed to all,” declared the council, “to be more fitting, and more for the safety of his soul, that he should govern his kingdom with moderation and preserve it from the irruptions of barbarians and from foreign nations, than that he should in his own person provide for the safety of the eastern nations.”  The verdict showed the new ideal of kingship which had grown up during Henry’s reign, and which made itself deeply felt over the whole land when in the days of his successor the duties of righteous government were thrown aside for the vainglories of religious chivalry.  But the patriarch heard the answer with bitter disappointment, and was not appeased by promises of money and forces for the war.  “Not thus will you save your soul nor the heritage of Christ,” he declared.  “We come to seek a king, not money; for every corner of the world sends us money, but not one a prince.”  And in open court he flung his fierce prophecy at the king, that as till now he had been greatest among the kings of the earth, so henceforth, forsaken by God and destitute of His grace, until his latest breath his glory should be turned into disaster and his honour into shame.  Henry, as he rode with the patriarch back to Dover, listened with his strange habitual forbearance while Heraclius poured