about in the Holy Land without aim or purpose, the orphaned country was reduced to the brink of misery. “When we returned home from our expedition,” complained the king himself, in a letter addressed to the holy see, “we found that both the clergy and the laymen had been guilty of wickedness such as surpasses all imagination. All the treasure of the country we found squandered, and fifteen years will not suffice to restore our land to her former better condition.” The condition of the country must have been sad, indeed, if the state the king had left her in might be called good in comparison with it, and however heavily the responsibility of the fresh calamities rested upon the king, his truthfulness in this instance cannot be doubted. The gloomy rule of Andrew II. was relieved by one cheering event which contained the germ of a better future. The gentry, comprising in its ranks the largest part of the freeholders of the country, unable to bear longer the weak government of the king, the violence of the oligarchy, and the scourge of the army of extortionate gatherers of taxes and tolls, at last lifted their heads and asked the throne to listen to their complaints and to remedy their wrongs. Béla himself, the king’s son, whom Andrew II. had caused to be crowned before going to the Holy Land, was the leader and spokesman of the nobility, who had stood up in defence of the sacredness of the constitution, and who now urged the return to the rule of law in the land. Their wrongs, and the remedies exacted by the gentry were set forth in the following strain: The king should not, at the expense of the patriots, bestow favors upon foreigners, nor elevate them to dignities, and distribute among them the domains of the country; entire counties or dignities of state should not, as a practice, be granted in perpetuity, and he should not suffer avaricious nobles to grasp a greater number of offices than they could efficiently administer. He should guard the ancient immunities of the nobles, so that they might freely dispose of their property, and not be molested in their persons without lawful judgment, and should not be burdened with taxes or extortionate exactions of any kind. He should take care that the tax-and toll-gatherers and other officials be taken from the ranks of the gentry, and should remove from his service the Ishmaelites and the Jews. Every thing opposed to these requirements he should at once bring to an end. The county estates, granted away to the injury of the land or dishonestly obtained, should be taken back by the king, and he should, in pursuance of the ancient custom of the country, every year, on St. Stephen’s day, convoke the diet, whose duty it was to act upon the complaints of the nation and to defend her liberty when attacked.