Note 412 — Chapter II · THE REGENCY OF WILLIAM THE MARSHAL 1216–1219

The various accounts of the money paid (or promised) to Louis are extremely puzzling. The Chronicle of Melrose, a. 1217, p. 131, gives the total as ten thousand pounds. The Dunstable Annals, p. 51, say that Louis left his Marshal in England “pro quindecim millibus marcarum recipiendo, quas pro reragiis tenseriarum et expensis quas fecerat promiserunt”—this verb has no nominative, but the king’s guardians seem to be meant. The Hist. Ducs, p. 204, after summarizing the treaty, says Louis was to have “deseure tout chou, x m. marcs d’estrelins por l’arierage de ses rentes que il n’ot pas euues, et pour la desconfiture de Nicole vii m. mars; che fu xvii m. mars par tout.” (For the first marcs the MS. followed in the printed text has livres, but the other has marcs, which is obviously the right reading; see the editor’s note 1, l.c.). M. Petit-Dutaillis, Vie de Louis VIII, p. 176, note 2, takes the marks promised to Louis as marks sterling. But the document on which he relies for this interpretation of the sum (ib. p. 512) is a statement of the king’s debt to Florence of S. Omer, not of his debt to Louis. The letter of 6th November, 1218, which does specify the sum due to Louis, says nothing about marks sterling; it calls them simply “marks.” Reading the Dunstable Annals and the Hist. Ducs by the light of the king’s letter, one is led to think that the monk’s “fifteen thousand marks” are made up of the king’s ten thousand marks “pro bono pacis” (= “pro expensis quas fecerat [Ludovicus]” = “pour la desconfiture de Nicole”), and five (instead of seven) thousand “pro reragiis,” “pour l’arierage de ses rentes,” the amounts given for the indemnity and for the arrears having been reversed (and the latter perhaps exaggerated) by the Flemish historian.