The Grand Master, Arnold de Torroge, who died on his journey to England, as before mentioned, was succeeded by Brother Gerard de Riderfort.[179] On the tenth of the calends of April, a month after the consecration by the patriarch Heraclius of the Temple church, the grand council or parliament of the kingdom, composed of the bishops, earls, and barons, assembled in the house of the Hospitallers at Clerkenwell in London. It was attended by William king of Scotland and David his brother, and many of the counts and barons of that distant land.[180] The august assembly was acquainted, in the king's name, with the object of the solemn embassy just sent to him from Jerusalem, and with the desire of the royal penitent to fulfil his vow and perform his penance; but the barons were at the same time reminded of the old age of their sovereign, of the bad state of his health, and of the necessity of his presence in England. They accordingly represented to King Henry that the solemn oath taken by him on his coronation was an obligation antecedent to the penance imposed on him by the pope; that by that oath he was bound to stay at home and govern his dominions, and that, in their opinion, it was more wholesome for the king's soul to defend his own country against the barbarous French, than to desert it for the purpose of protecting the distant kingdom of Jerusalem. They, however, offered to raise the sum of fifty thousand marks for the levying of troops to be sent into Asia, and recommended that all such prelates and nobles as desired to take the cross should be permitted freely to leave the kingdom on so pious an enterprise.[181]