Note (40) — Chapter II
Reading edition
The account of this most remarkable trial, held on June 11th, 1252, is given in a letter from Simon’s intimate friend the famous Franciscan Adam Marsh (de Marisco) to Bishop Robert Grosseteste. The Latin text is printed in Mr. Brewer’s Monumenta Franciscana, p. 122, and there is an English translation in the Appendix to Mrs. Green’s Life of Countess Eleanor, English Princesses, ii. 447. Simon’s witnesses, knights and citizens, come “muniti litteris patentibus communitatis Burdegalensis, in quâ quasi totum robur Vasconiæ ad distringendum hostiles et fideles protegendum consistere dignoscitur,” setting forth how good Simon’s government was in every way, and how those who brought charges against him did it only because his strict justice had put a check on their misdoings. We may compare the words of the great poetical manifesto (Political Songs, 76).
“Seductorem nominant S. atque fallacem, Facta sed examinant probantque veracem.”