the election of anyone else.”  Tancred was and wished to be only the first of knights.  Godfrey de Bouillon the more easily united votes in that he did not seek them.  He was valiant, discreet, worthy, and modest; and his own servants, being privately sounded, testified to his possession of the virtues which are put in practice without any show.  He was elected King of Jerusalem, and he accepted the burden whilst refusing the insignia.  “I will never wear a crown of gold,” he said, “in the place where the Saviour of the world was crowned with thorns.”  And he assumed only the title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre.

It is a common belief amongst historians that after the capture of Jerusalem, and the election of her king, Peter the Hermit entirely disappeared from history.  It is true that he no longer played an active part, and that, on returning to Europe, he went into retirement near Huy, in the diocese of Lige, where he founded a monastery, and where he died on the 11th of July, 1115.  But William of Tyre bears witness that Peter’s contemporaries were not ungrateful to him, and did not forget him when he had done his work.  “The faithful,” says he, “dwellers at Jerusalem, who, four or five years before had seen the venerable Peter there, recognizing at that time in the same city him to whom the patriarch had committed letters invoking the aid of the princes of the West, bent the knee before him, and offered him their respects in all humility.  They recalled to mind the circumstances of his first voyage; and they praised the Lord who had endowed him with effectual power of speech and with strength to rouse up nations and kings to bear so many and such long toils for love of the name of Christ.  Both in private and in public all the faithful at Jerusalem exerted themselves to render to Peter the Hermit the highest honors, and attributed to him alone, after God, their happiness in having escaped from the hard servitude under which they had been for so many years groaning, and in seeing the holy city recovering her ancient freedom.”

END OF VOLUME I.