During the siege of Ascalon, the Lady Constance of Antioch, whom the king had been anxious to see married for a long time, chose, to everybody’s astonishment, a simple knight, one Renaud de Chatillon, as her husband. The king, anxious above all that a man should be at the head of Antioch, consented at once, and Renaud, of whom we shall have more to say, wedded the fair widow. Although the king approved of the marriage, it appeared that the Patriarch of Antioch did not, and trusting to the sacredness of his person went about the city spreading all sorts of stories about the fortunate young bridegroom. Renaud dissembled his resentment, and invited him to the citadel, and then, by way of giving the reverend bishop a lesson as to the punishment due to calumniators, set him in the sun all day, with his bald head covered with honey to attract the wasps. After this diabolical audacity, as William of Tyre calls it, there was nothing left for the patriarch but to pack up and get away to Jerusalem as fast as he could. The king reprimanded Renaud, but too late, for the mischief was done, and the head of the prelate already painfully stung. Internal troubles occupied the king for the next year or two. These were caused by the quarrels between the two military orders and the Church of Jerusalem. We hear only one side of the story, which throws the whole blame upon the knights. No doubt the clergy were also in some way to blame. By special permission of the pope, no interdict or excommunication could touch the Knights of St. John or the Knights Templars. They were free from all episcopal jurisdiction, and subject only to the pope. It pleased Raymond, Grand Master of the Hospitallers, for no reason given by the chronicler, to raise up all sorts of troubles against the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the prelates of the Church, on the subject of parochial jurisdiction and the tithes. The way they showed their enmity is very suggestive of many things. “All those whom the bishops had excommunicated, or interdicted, were freely welcomed by the Hospitallers, and admitted to the celebration of the divine offices. If they were ill, the brothers gave them the viaticum and extreme unction, and those who died received sepulture. If it happened that for some enormous crime”—probably the withholding of tithes—“the churches of the city were put under interdict, the brothers, ringing all their bells, and making a great clamouring, called the people to their own chapels, and _received the oblations themselves_; and as for their priests, they took them without any reference whatever to the bishops.” Obviously, therefore, the quarrel was entirely an ecclesiastical squabble, due to the desire of the Church to aggrandize and preserve its power. The knights, _ecclesia in ecclesiâ_, a church within a church, would not recognise in any way the authority of the patriarch. For this they had a special charter from the pope. But they would not pay tithes,