Book account

Yet his
demands for the discharge of Henry's obligations had contributed not a
little towards focussing the gathering discontent.[1]
[1] For Edmund's Sicilian claims, see W.E. Rhodes' article on
_Edmund, Earl of Lancaster_, in the _English Historical
Review_, x. (1895), 20-27.
While Henry was seeking the Sicilian crown for his son, his brother
Richard was elected to the German throne. Since William of Holland's
death in January, 1256, the German magnates, divided between the
Hohenstaufen and the papalist parties, had hesitated for nearly a year
as to the choice of his successor. As neither party was able to secure
the election of its own partisan, a compromise was mooted. At last the
name of Richard of Cornwall was brought definitely forward. He was of
high rank and unblemished reputation; a friend of the pope yet a kinsman
of the Hohenstaufen; he was moderate and conciliatory; he had enough
money to bribe the electors handsomely, and he was never likely to be so
deeply rooted in Germany as to stand in the way of the princes of the
empire.


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