and proceedings might not improbably, if he had had his own
historian, have assumed a very different complexion from what has been
given to him. Longbeard, who acquired the names of the Advocate and King
of the Poor, is affirmed to have had above fifty thousand of the lower
orders associated with him by oaths which bound them to follow
whithersoever he led. When an attempt was made to apprehend him by two
of the wealthier citizens, he drew his knife and stabbed one of them,
named Geoffrey, to the heart, and then took refuge in the church of St
Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside, the tower of which he and his followers
fortified, and held for three days, when they were at last (April 7,
1196), dislodged by fire being set to the building. Fitz-Osbert was
first dragged at a horse's tail to the Tower, and then to the Elms in
West Smithfield, where he was hanged, with nine of his followers. The
people, however, long continued to regard him as a martyr.

The war between Richard and Philip broke out again in 1197, and in the
course of this campaign Richard had the gratification of capturing the
Bishop of Beauvais, a personage whom he had reason to regard as a main
instigator of the severities and indignities which he had sustained at
the hands of the emperor. The bishop was taken armed cap-a-pie and
fighting, and when Pope Celestine recommended him to the clemency of
Richard as his son, the English king sent his holiness the bishop's coat
of mail, with the following verse of Scripture attached to it: "This
have we found; know now whether it be thy son's coat, or no." This same
year, too, finished the career of the Emperor Henry, who, in his last
moments, is said to have expressed the extremest remorse for the manner
in which he had treated the great champion of the Cross. Richard's other
enemy, Leopold, Duke of Austria, had been killed by a fall from his
horse two years before.

A truce, as usual, at the end of the year, again suspended hostilities
for a space. The war was renewed on its termination, and in this
campaign (of the year 1198) Richard gained one of his greatest victories
near Gisors, when Philip in his flight fell into the river Epte, and was
nearly drowned. After this, by the intercession of the Pope's legate, a
truce was concluded between the two kings for five years, and they never
met again in fight; although they probably would, notwithstanding the
truce, if both had lived. But on March 26th in the following year, 1199