Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/188

 Palestine; the poor barons clung to a straw; they accepted her, and she named her third husband, Ralph of Soissons, bailiff of Jerusalem. No sooner was he appointed than he left his post and went back to France. Jerusalem had already fallen to the Sultan of Damascus in 1239; after a brief restoration in 1243,it fell to the Kharismians in 1244; to the Sultan of Egypt in the same year. The crown became a derelict; the title was borne after Conrad by his half-brother Henry, the son of Isabella of England; and subsequently by a number of ruling houses, who seem to have clung to the name far more faithfully than they had ever clung to the reality of the dominion. The remains of substantive power devolved with the title on Hugh the Great, King of Cyprus in 1269.

The rest of the history of King Henry is soon told. He came of age in 1233, married a daughter of the house of Montferrat, and lost her the same year; a second wife, Stephanie of Armenia, died in 1250, and he then married Placentia of Antioch. Henry took a subordinate part in the Crusade of the middle of the century. His action is obscure, as are all the details of the period. In the expedition of 1 340 he seems to have borne no part: Richard of Cornwall does not mention a visit to Cyprus either going or returning; but Henry seems to have, in 1246, asserted his right to Jerusalem on the death of his mother, and to have been recognised as king by Innocent IV, who included King Conrad in his father's doom. In the Crusade of S. Lewis, Henry is said by the Cypriot historians to have shared both perils and glories; he certainly received the French king, and entertained him at Nicosia during the winter of 1248, which was so fatal to many of the French nobles. We are not told that King Henry furnished any part of the supplies that S. Lewis collected in Cyprus, the mountains of corn or the towers of wine casks; all these were furnished by the emperor and the Venetians. The King of Cyprus entered Damietta with the French king in triumph in 1249; but he did not, as has been asserted, share his captivity. After this we read no more of him; he died early in 1253, having been the sport of fortune all his