the French king attempted such an insult upon
him, he should not succeed but by the utmost effusion of blood.
Philip, content with this species of haughty submission, recalled his
orders [o]; the difference was seemingly accommodated; but still left
the remains of rancour and jealousy in the breasts of the two
monarchs.
[FN [k] Bened. Abb. p. 580. [1] Hoveden, p. 663. [m] Hoveden, p.
676, 677. Bened Abb. p. 615. [n] Bened. Abb. p. 608. [o] Hoveden,
p. 674.]

Tancred, who, for his own security, desired to inflame their mutual
hatred, employed an artifice which might have been attended with
consequences still more fatal. [MN 1191.] He showed Richard a
letter, signed by the French king, and delivered to him, as he
pretended, by the Duke of Burgundy; in which that monarch desired
Tancred to fall upon the quarters of the English, and promised to
assist him in putting them to the sword, as common enemies. The
unwary Richard gave credit to the information; but was too candid not
to betray his discontent to Philip, who absolutely denied the letter,
and charged the Sicilian prince with forgery and falsehood. Richard
either was, or pretended to be, entirely satisfied [p].
[FN [p] Ibid. p. 688. Bened. Abb. p. 642, 643. Brompton, p. 1195.]

Lest these jealousies and complaints should multiply between them, it
was proposed, that they should, by a solemn treaty, obviate all future
differences, and adjust every point that could possibly hereafter
become a controversy between them. But this expedient started a new
dispute, which might have proved more dangerous than any of the
foregoing, and which deeply concerned the honour of Philip's family.
When Richard, in every treaty with the late king, insisted so
strenuously on being allowed to marry Alice of France, he had only
sought a pretence for quarrelling; and never meant to take to his bed
a princess suspected of a criminal amour with his own father. After
he became master, he no longer spake of that alliance: he even took
measures for espousing Berengaria, daughter of Sanchez, King of
Navarre, with whom he had become enamoured during his abode in Guienne
[q]; Queen Eleanor was daily expected with that princess at Messina
[r] and when Philip renewed to him his applications for espousing his
sister Alice, Richard was obliged to give him an absolute refusal. It
is pretended by Hoveden and other historians [s], that he was able to
produce such convincing proofs of Alice's