“6. Item, a thiefe or felon that hath stollen being lawfully convicted, shal have his head shorne and boyling pitch powred upon his head, and feathers or downe strawed upon the same, whereby he may be knowen, and so at the first landing place they shall come to, there to be cast up.” In the Crusades of the thirteenth century we have notes on the expeditions of the “Knights of Jerusalem” against the Saracens: in brief recitals of the voyages of Ranulph, earl of Chester, sent out by Henry the third in 1218, with “Saer de Quincy, earl of Winchester, William de Albanie, earl of Arundel, besides divers barons,” and “a goodly company of soldiers and men at arms”; and of Richard, earl of Cornwall, Henry the third’s brother (and afterward king of the Romans), accompanied by William Longespee, earl of “Sarisburie” (Salisbury) and other nobles “for their valiancy greatly renowned,” and “a great number of Christian soldiers,” in 1240, beginning the Seventh Crusade. In 1248 Longespee—or Longsword, as his fellow-knights called him for his prowess—made a second voyage and lost his life in a battle with the Saracens. Finally, in 1270, Henry the third’s son, Prince Edward, and other young nobles, having “taken upon them the cross,” at the hand of the Pope’s legate then in England, “to the relief of the Holy Land and the subversion of the enemies of Christ,” sailed out with a gallant war fleet. They landed at Acre, and thence the prince, with an army of six or seven thousand soldiers, marched upon Nazareth. This he took, and “those that he found there he slew.” Other victories followed with much slaughter of Saracens. At length the triumphant prince fell ill at Acre, and during his sickness a plot was concocted by the emir of Joppa to remove him by assassination. This failed, the prince thwarting the scheme by himself killing the emir’s messenger just as the treacherous dagger was to be thrust into his bosom. Shortly after he concluded a peace for ten years and returned to England, to be crowned king upon his father’s death. Edward’s was the last exploit of Englishmen in the Crusades, and it closed the last one. Attempts were made at subsequent periods to revive the flame, but these resulted only in flares of short duration. A shining one for a moment was kindled by King Henry the fourth in 1413. It flashed out with his sudden death at Westminster while the ships and galleys for the proposed voyage were building. [Illustration: “THE GREAT HARRY,” AN ENGLISH SHIP OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.]