Note 889 — Chapter V · THE ADVANCE ON JERUSALEM 1191-1192.

Livre d’Eracle, Rec. Hist. Croisades, Hist. Occid., ii. 190-3. William of Newburgh, lib. v. c. 16, and Roger of Wendover, ed. Coxe, iii. 74, 75, give a letter purporting to have been written by the “Old Man” to exculpate Richard from the charge of having contrived Conrad’s death. In William’s version the letter is addressed “principibus et omni populo Christianae religionis,” and professes to have been written spontaneously; in Roger’s version it is addressed to Duke Leopold of Austria, and Roger says (though the letter itself does not say) that it was written at the request of Richard during his imprisonment in Germany. William says, “Has [literas] nimirum se vidisse atque legisse vir fide dignus mihi protestatus est cum regi Francorum Parisius constituto solemniter fuissent oblatae”; he adds that Philip formally accepted the document as proof of Richard’s innocence; and he dates this transaction 1195. The contents of the letter differ slightly in the two versions, but both are substantially in agreement with the accounts in Ernoul and Eracle of the circumstances which led to Conrad’s death. The letter is unquestionably a forgery. It may have been circulated in the East as well as in the West, and the “ultramarine” chroniclers may have taken their story from it; there is, however, also a possibility that both they and the composers of the letter—whoever these may have been—all alike derived their information from a genuine source.