and they were constantly acquiring new territories. We may have very little doubt that it was the question of tithes on the knights’ lands which caused all the quarrel. But it is very remarkable to note the way in which the historian speaks of interdicts and excommunications. In the West an interdict was a great and solemn thing. In England only one interdict, at the memory of which the people shuddered for many years to come, was ever laid upon the country, while, though English kings have been excommunicated, it has happened rarely. In Palestine the custom of debarring offenders, whether towns or individuals, from the privileges of the Church, is spoken of as quite a common practice. The thing, evidently, was often happening. The patriarch was handy with his interdicts, and it must have galled him to the very soul to find that the people cared nothing for them, because they could get their consolations of the Church just as well from the knights. One cannot, however, defend the manner in which the knights vexed the heart of the patriarch in other ways. For whenever he went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the knights, who had a great building opposite (in what is now called the Muristàn), began to ring all their bells at once, and made so great a noise that he could not be heard. And once, though one can hardly believe this, they went to the doors of the church and shot arrows at the people who were praying. Probably they pretended to shoot them in order to frighten the priests. Such a practical joke, and its effect in the skurrying away of people and priests, would be quite in accordance with the spirit of the times. The patriarch, though now nearly a hundred years of age, went himself to Rome, but got no satisfaction. He had with him six bishops and a band of lawyers to plead his cause; but he was badly received by the pope and badly treated by the cardinals. And after being put off from day to day, finding that he could get no redress, he retired in shame and confusion, and probably patched up some sort of peace with his enemies the knights.