his exemplary monarch's life were spent in wise
administration. He checked the zeal of the Pope's legate, and would
not countenance persecution about the double procession and other
controverted dogmas. He checked the pretensions of the clergy, by
placing his throne on the same level with that of the Patriarch,
whereas it had formerly been lower; and he prohibited the alienation
of fiefs, which would have handed over the patrimony of the knights to
the Church, and turned, as Gibbon says, a colony of soldiers into a
college of priests. When he died, childless, the next heir to the
empire was his sister Yolande, who had married Peter of Courtenay,
Count of Auxerre, a member of that princely house which still survives
in the line of the English earls of Devon.

It was an unfortunate day for that prince when he accepted the crown
which had already in ten years carried off two of his brothers. Yet
the chance was splendid. What count or duke or knight of these days
but would seize a crown thus offered, however great the peril? He
accepted the crown, then, and, to make a worthy appearance on entering
into possession, he either mortgaged or sold the best part of ten
estates, and raised, with the help of Philip Augustus, an army of one
hundred and forty knights and five thousand five hundred men-at-arms
and archers. He persuaded the pope Honorius III to crown him, it being
understood that, as Emperor of the East, he had no claim to
jurisdiction or right over Rome, and, following the example of
Baldwin, engaged the Venetians to convey him and his army to
Constantinople. They would do so on similar terms and for a
consideration--let him first recover for them the port of Durazzo from
the Despot of Epirus; this was no longer Michael, the founder of the
kingdom, but his brother Theodore. The Emperor delivered his assault
on Durazzo, and was unsuccessful. Then the Venetians refused the
transport. Peter thereupon made an agreement with the despot Theodore,
by which the latter undertook to convey him and his army safely to his
dominion overland. It is another story of Greek treachery. The
Emperor, with his troops, while in the mountains, was attacked by
Greeks of Theodore's army. Such of his men as did not surrender were
cut to pieces. He himself was taken prisoner, detained for two years,
and then put to death in some mysterious way.

Yolande, the Empress, while yet she was uncertain of the fate of her
lord, gave birth to a son, the