R.)GI:II OK WENDOVER. [A.D . 122* of Rome rose in sedition against pope Gregory, and drove nim from the city : they then pursued him to his castle of Viterbo, and there increasing in strength they drove him to Perusium. The pope, having no other means of punishing them, excommunicated them all. In the same year the French king sent a large military expedition into Provence against the count of Toulouse, to drive that noble from those districts. They, hearing that the count was then at a Saracen castle belonging to his domain, determined to besiege him there ; he, however, was forewarned of their approach, and prepared an ambuscade against their arrival, and with a large force hid himself in a wood, by which the French would pass, and there awaited the arrival of his enemies. When the French arrived at the place of ambuscade the count with his troops rushed on them, and a severe conflict took place, in which five hundred French knights were taken prisoners and a great many were slain. About two thousand soldiers were taken prisoners, and after they had been all stripped to the skin, the count ordered the eyes of some to be torn out, the ears and noses of others to be slit, and the feet and hands of others to be cut oft', and, after thus shamefully mutilating them, he sent them to their homes, a deformed spectacle to their fellow Frenchmen ; and the captive knights he committed to close custody, after stripping them of all their property. This battle was fought on the 18th of May at the Saracen castle. And to speak briefly, expeditions were sent three times during that summer, and in each case the French were put to flight, or taken and imorisoncd by the said count. ttf the death of Stephen archbishop of Canterbury. On the ninth of July in the same year. Stephen archbishop of Canterbury closed his life at his manor of Slindon, and was buried at Canterbury on the βίίι of the same month.* After he was buried, the monks of Canterbury obtained the king's permission, and on the third of August elected master Walter de Hcincsham, a monk of their church ; but, when they presented him to the king, he, after long deliberation, refused to receive him on certain grounds. The first objection which he stated to the monks was that * I leave the reader to explain this absurd unaihron'sm in the best Kaj he can.