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less than he ought to have done. He trusted to the oath taken by the king as well as by Prince Louis, by the terms of which the friends and partisans of one or the other were to be left in peace. The justiciar, hearing this avowal of Constantine, detained him and two of his abettors, without exciting any disturbance. The next morning he sent Fawkes de Breaute (known to him as a man ready for any cruelty) with an armed force to carry Constantine by way of the Thames to be hanged at The Elms. Quickly and secretly they carried him thither, and when Constantine had the rope round his neck, he offered fifteen thousand marks silver if his life might be spared. To whom answer was made that never more should he get up a riot in the king’s city. Hanged therefore he was, together with Constantine, his nephew, and a certain Geoffrey, who had proclaimed the order in the City. Thus was the sentence on Constantine carried out unknown to the citizens, and without disorder. That done, the justiciar made his entry into London, with Fawkes and the armed men who had gone with him. He arrested all known to have taken part in the riot, threw them into prison, and let them out only when he had caused their feet or hands to be lopped off. Numbers fled and never returned. The king took sixty citizens as hostages, and deposed the magistrates and put others in their room. Moreover, he ordered that a great gallows should be set up.
    1236 About this time some bold but rash nobles in England, seduced by we know not what spirit, conspired together, and entered into an execrable alliance to ravage England like robbers and night-thieves. Their design, however, became known, and the chief of the conspiracy to wit, Peter de Buffer, one of the king’s doorkeepers was taken prisoner, and by him others were accused. In order to whose execution a dreadful machine, commonly called a gibbet, was set up in London, and on it two of the chief conspirators were hanged, after having engaged in single combat. One of them was killed in the fight, and was hanged with his head cleft open, and the other, hanged alive, breathed forth his wretched life on the same gibbet amid the lamentations of the assembled multitude.
    1239 A certain messenger of the king, named William, had been convicted of manifold crimes, and lay in prison under sentence of death. He brought accusations of treason against several nobles; he also made a criminal charge against Ralph Briton, a priest and canon of the Church of St Paul’s, London, who had for some time been a familiar friend of the king, and had held the office of treasurer. On this coming to the king’s ears he by letter ordered the Mayor of London, William Gromer (or Gerard Batt), to seize Ralph and imprison him in the Tower of London, and the Mayor obeying the king rather than God, at once carried the king’s orders into effect. He dragged the said Ralph with violence from his house near St Paul’s, and imprisoned him in the Tower, securing him with chains, commonly called rings. The Dean of London, Master G. de Lucy, informed of this, took counsel with his fellow canons (the bishop being absent), and pronounced a general sentence of excommunication against all the presumptuous perpetrators of this enormity, and placed St Paul’s Church under an interdict. The king, however, although warned by the bishop, did not amend his faults, but continued with threats to heap evils on evils, so that the bishop was about to place the whole of the City of London, which was subject to him, under an interdict : but when the archbishop of Canterbury, as well as the legate, the bishop of London, and many other prelates, were prepared to lay a heavy hand on the City, the king, although unwillingly, ordered the said Ralph to be released, and allowed to depart in peace. But when the king sought to add the condition that Ralph should be so kept as to be ready to give an explanation when the king required it, the churchmen replied that they would not