“My comrades whom I loved and still do love— The neighbour-lords who were my friends of yore—[1092] Strange tales have reached me that are hard to prove; I ne’er was false to them; for evermore Vile would men count them, if their arms they bore ’Gainst me, a prisoner here! “And they, my knights of Anjou and Touraine— Well know they, who now sit at home at ease, That I, their lord, in far-off Allemaine Am captive. They should help to my release; But now their swords are sheathed, and rust in peace, While I am prisoner here.” Two other visitors besides the abbots seem to have found their way to Richard before his incarceration at Triffels; the English Bishop Hubert of Salisbury, who, learning in Sicily on his way home from Palestine what had befallen his sovereign, changed his own course and hurried to seek him out;[1093] and a Norman chaplain, William of Sainte-Mère-Eglise. This latter Richard, before his own removal from Spire, despatched to England on business connected with the arrangements for the fulfilment of his promises to Henry, and also for the elevation of Hubert to the see of Canterbury.[1094] Hubert followed about the middle of April.[1095] Meanwhile Bishop William of Ely had also come to the help of his royal master and friend. He had been exiled from England by the queen-mother and the justiciars in 1191 for misgovernment; but his personal loyalty to the king seems never to have failed, and was certainly not doubted by Richard, who had never deprived him of his office of chancellor. Through his diplomacy the Emperor was induced to let his prisoner be brought to meet [Sidenote: _April 19_] him at Hagenau. On April 19 Richard, writing thence to his mother and his lieges in England, related that the Emperor and Empress and their court had welcomed him with all honour and loaded him with gifts, and that “an indissoluble mutual bond of love” had been formed between him and Henry, each promising to help the other to obtain and retain his rights against all men; and that he was “staying with the Emperor”[1096] till some other matters should be settled between them and seventy thousand marks of the ransom paid. He urgently desired that this sum and hostages for the rest should be collected with all speed and sent over under the care of the bishop of Ely, whom he was apparently despatching to England for that purpose. “Know ye for certain,” he added, “that were we in England and free, we would give as great a sum, or a greater, to secure the conditions which by God’s grace we have obtained, and if we had not the money to our hand we would give our own person in pledge for it to the Emperor rather than leave uncompleted that which has been done.”[1097]