Matt. Paris, v. 347). On his way back to England Richard paid a second pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Edmund at Pontigny, and visited the abbey of Saint-Denis. From the latter he bought the priory at Deerhurst in Gloucestershire, with its estates, where he aimed at building a castle to protect the Severn. On 25 April he returned to England (Koch, pp. 104–6).
Richard's political attitude was still regarded as doubtful. Though he was essentially on his brother's side, the people, mindful of his past, still looked up to him for protection against the king. Thus, in 1250, the Londoners, aggrieved by some aggressions of the abbot of Westminster, Richard Crokesley [q. v.], took their grievances before the earls of Cornwall and Leicester, who successfully interceded with Henry (Matt. Paris, v. 128). When Henry III began to quarrel with Simon of Montfort about the government of Gascony, Richard took Leicester's side. But Richard, who was still sore about his early failures in Gascony, bitterly resented the grant of Gascony to his nephew, the future Edward I, which finally shattered his hope of dominion in Southern France (ib. v. 291, 313). But in August 1253, when Henry III went to Gascony, Richard of Cornwall and Queen Eleanor were appointed regents of England (ib. v. 383; Fœdera, i. 291; Royal Letters, ii. 99). After Eleanor, who was but regent in name, joined her husband in May 1254, Richard became sole regent. His main care was to furnish the king with supplies. In January 1254 a great council met, in which Earl Richard declared that, as he was more powerful than the other magnates, he was bound to set a good example, and promised to equip three hundred knights at his own expense (Matt. Paris, v. 424). He failed to persuade many nobles to do likewise. He again assembled them after Easter, but they persisted in offering only conditional help (ib. v. 440). The regent had to fall back on plundering the Jews. He also lent large sums to Henry from his own resources (ib. v. 458). He had a fierce conflict with the Londoners, and amerced them severely for refusing to appear before him to obtain his confirmation of their mayor (Liber de Antiquis Legibus, p. 621).
Henry III returned home at the end of 1254, with his financial embarrassments greater than ever. During 1255 and 1256 the long purse of Earl Richard alone enabled him to make some show of satisfying his creditors. As a pledge for the sums advanced by him, Richard received from his brother a grant of the royal rights over all the Jews in England. This was an enormous addition to his already vast resources. But the Jews were already reduced to such distress that Richard treated them with some consideration, which they acknowledged in kind. When his nephew, Edward, was unable to make headway against his Welsh subjects, he visited his uncle at Wallingford, and got four thousand marks and sound advice from him (ib. v. 593). Richard, courted on every side, assumed a lofty and independent attitude. He posed as a neutral in the quarrels between the barons and the king's foreign favourites (ib. v. 514). In the parliament of October 1255, when urged by the king to set an example of loyalty by granting a liberal aid, he firmly refused. While thus standing proudly above English parties, he received the great opportunity of his life—the offer of the German crown.
Since his crusade and his redemption of Frankish captives Richard had been a personage of European importance. He had already twice declined the pope's offer of a foreign throne in Sicily and Germany respectively, owing to scruples due to his friendship for Frederick II. But the latter's death in 1250 altered the situation. When, in November 1252, the papal notary Albert came to England, charged to renew Innocent's offer of the Sicilian throne, Richard entered into long negotiations with him, but, distrusting the pope's terms, rejected the offer (Sternfeld, Karl von Anjou als Graf von Provence, p. 83; Ann. Burton, p. 339). Richard was, however, annoyed when Henry III during his Gascon expedition of 1254 accepted the Sicilian throne for his son Edmund without asking Richard's advice. The death of Henry, Frederick II's son by Isabella of England, in December 1253, meanwhile loosened the dynastic connection between England and the empire. In May 1254 Conrad IV, Frederick's eldest son, died, and his papal rival, William of Holland, thereupon ruled Germany without a rival until his death in January 1256. Nearly a year elapsed before a new king of the Romans was elected. The German princes were divided into partisans of the Hohenstaufen and of the pope. Pope Alexander IV, who had just succeeded Innocent IV, perceived that a strong German king, a partisan of the Hohenstaufen, might well ruin papal predominance in Italy as well as Germany. Henry III watched German affairs with no less interest. Now that he was pledged to Edmund's Sicilian candidature, he was anxious that the next German king should not stand in his son's way. It was soon felt that Richard's candidature would meet many difficulties. He was friendly to the papal policy, and yet no extreme man, and long closely attached to the
