[527] Albert of Aix; Fulcher; Robertus Monachus. [528] Fulcher; William of Tyre; Albert. [529] Ducange. [530] Assizes par Thaumassiere. [531] William of Tyre, lib. xviii. [532] Vertot. [533] Hist. Hierosol., Jacob. Vitri. [534] Vertot Preuves. [535] Vertot. [536] Jacob Vitriaci in Hist. Hierosol. [537] William of Tyre. [538] Jac. Vitriaci; Hist. Hierosol. [539] Will. Tyrensis, lib. xxii.; Jacob. Vit. [540] William of Tyre. [541] William of Tyre marks precisely, that the particular rules to which they were subjected, and the dress to which they were restricted, were regularly fixed by the church at the council of Troyes, in the course of the ninth year after their first institution. Now the council of Troyes took place in 1128, and Baldwin du Bourg ascended the throne of Jerusalem on the 2d or April, 1118, ten years previously. Their first institution, therefore, could not be in the reign of Baldwin I., as Mills has stated it, without a gross error on the part of the Archbishop of Tyre, who wrote in the year 1184, and therefore was not likely to be mistaken on a subject so near his own days. [542] Hist. Hierosol.; Jacob. Vitriaci. [543] The Templars founded many charitable institutions, but attendance on the sick was not a part of their profession. [544] For a more particular and correct account of the armour of the crusades, I must refer to the invaluable work of Dr. Meyrick, which I regret much not to have had by me while writing this book. My sources of information have been alone the historians of the day, in consulting whom the ambiguity of language is very often likely to induce error in matters which, like armour, are difficult to describe. [545] Mills says, "The news of the loss of the eastern frontier of the Latin kingdom reached France at a time peculiarly favourable for foreign war." It will be seen that I have taken up a position as exactly the reverse of that assumed by that excellent author as can well be conceived; but I have not done so without much investigation, and the more I consider the subject, the more I am convinced that the moment when the feudal power was checked by the king and assailed by the communes, was not the most propitious to call the nobility to foreign lands--that the moment in which the burghers were labouring up hill for independence, was not a time for them to abandon the scene of their hopes and endeavours--and that the moment when a kingdom was torn by conflicting powers, when the royal authority was unconfirmed, and the nobility only irritated at its exertion, was not the period that a monarch should have chosen to quit his dominions.