214. [r] M.
Paris, p. 460.]

This check, received at the council of Lyons, was not able to stop the
court of Rome in its rapacity; Innocent exacted the revenues of all
vacant benefices, the twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues without
exception; the third of such as exceeded a hundred marks a year, and
the half of such as were possessed by non-residents [s]. He claimed
the goods of all intestate clergymen [t]; he pretended a title to
inherit all money gotten by usury; he levied benevolences upon the
people; and when the king, contrary to his usual practice, prohibited
these exactions, he threatened to pronounce against him the same
censures which he had emitted against the Emperor Frederic [u].
[FN [s] Ibid. p. 480. Ann. Burt. p. 305, 373. [t] M. Paris, p. 474.
[u] Ibid. p. 476.]

[MN 1255.] But the most oppressive expedient employed by the pope was
the embarking of Henry in a project for the conquest of Naples or
Sicily on this side the Fare, as it was called; an enterprise, which
threw much dishonour on the king, and involved him, during some years,
in great trouble and expense. The Romish church, taking advantage of
favourable incidents, had reduced the kingdom of Sicily to the same
state of feudal vassalage which she pretended to extend over England,
and which, by reason of the distance, as well as high spirit of this
latter kingdom, she was not able to maintain. After the death of the
Emperor Frederic II., the succession of Sicily devolved to Conradine,
grandson of that monarch; and Mainfroy, his natural son, under
pretence of governing the kingdom during the minority of the prince,
had formed a scheme of establishing his own authority. Pope Innocent,
who had carried on violent war against the Emperor Frederic, and had
endeavoured to dispossess him of his Italian dominions, still
continued hostilities against his grandson; but being disappointed in
all his schemes by the activity and artifices of Mainfroy, he found
that his own force alone was not sufficient to bring to a happy issue
so great an enterprise. He pretended to dispose of the Sicilian
crown, both as superior lord of that particular kingdom, and as vicar
of Christ, to whom all kingdoms of the earth were subjected; and he
made a tender of it to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, whose immense
riches, he flattered himself, would be able to support the military
operations against Mainfroy. As Richard had the prudence to refuse
the present [w], he