the _vassal_ of Henry, where was either the policy or the necessity of the _latter_ bringing _his_ right of homage into question, by making it again a subject of negociation? and if it was not for “A FORMAL RECOGNITION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF SCOTLAND” that William paid the _ten thousand pounds_ (merks) to Richard, _for what purpose was that sum paid_? Henry extorted no money from William for his “RANSOM;” his vanity being amply gratified by the deed of homage. Richard had no claim to 10,000_l._ from William, without granting him what he considered an equivalent. This equivalent could _not_ have been the _independence of the Scottish church_; for even during the reign of Henry, we find, by a note appended by the learned author to his work, (vol. ii. p. 397, 3d Edit.), that when the obedience of the Scottish church was demanded by the Archbishop of York, “it was answered that none was due; and the answer, after a long controversy, was confirmed by Pope Clement III. in 1188.” How “_Salvis dignitatibus suis_” can be explained so as _not_ to _include_ the _independence_ of the _monarch’s crown_, we are much at a loss to perceive. One thing, however, is sufficiently apparent, that the sophistry we have quoted ought not to have found a place in a publication of such acknowledged merit as that of Dr Lingard. As he has evidently allowed the prejudices of the old English chroniclers to warp his judgment in this affair, we may be permitted, in order to place the question on its proper basis, to quote the following short passage from his own work, by which it will be seen that the LION of England, showed as little _pluck_ as HE of Scotland, when placed in a similar situation.--“In an assembly of the German Princes and English envoys, by the delivery of the cap from his head, he [Richard I.] resigned his crown into the hands of Henry; who restored it to him again to be held as a fief of the empire, with the obligation of a yearly payment of five thousand pounds.”[31] Had this claim been prosecuted against England with the same pertinacity as England advanced her absurd pretensions against Scotland, it is presumed they would have been repelled with similar scorn and derision. Though the generosity of Richard towards William in the above transaction appears sufficiently conspicuous, yet there was that in the situation of his affairs which rendered it a matter of political expediency. From the arrangements necessarily connected with the crusade, in which he and his barons were about to embark, it became a matter of necessity, before he left Britain, to do something towards smoothing down the mane of the chafed Lion of Scotland. The gracious manner in which the boon was conferred, fixed its proper value in the estimation of the Scots, and “converted an impatient vassal and implacable enemy into a faithful and affectionate ally.”