tum, which had been nephew to Robert
Guiscard through the sister who is thought to have been wife to
Bagnamonte [Boemond], prince of Antioch; this man, opposing the
counsel of the others, appeased King William, that he should not cause
the innocent lady to be put to death; and so it came to pass that the
said Constance was preserved from death, and she, not of her own will,
but through fear of death, lived in the guise of a nun in a certain
convent of nuns. William being dead, the aforesaid Tancred succeeded
him in the kingdom, having taken it to himself against the will of the
Church of Rome to which pertained the right and property of that
kingdom. This Tancred, instructed by natural wit, was very full of
learning, and he had a wife more beautiful than the Sibyl, but as many
think without breasts, by whom he begat two sons and three daughters:
the first was called Roger, which in his father's lifetime was made
king, and he died; the second was William the younger, which in his
father's lifetime was made king, and after his father was dead he held
the kingdom for a time. During these things, Tancred being alive and
on the throne, Constance, sister to King William, already perhaps
fifty years old, was a nun in her body but not in her mind in the city
of Palermo. Discord then having arisen between King Tancred and the
archbishop of Palermo, perhaps for this cause, that Tancred was
usurping the rights of the Church, the archbishop then thought how he
might transfer the kingdom of Sicily to other lordship, and made a
secret treaty with the Pope, that Constance should be married to
Henry, duke of Suabia, son of the great Frederick; and Henry having
taken to wife her to whom the kingdom seemed to pertain by right, was
crowned emperor by Pope Celestine. This Henry, when Tancred was dead,
entered into the kingdom of Apulia, and punished many of them which
had held with Tancred, and had shown him favour, and which had done
injury to Queen Constance, and had done shame to the nobility of her
honour. This Constance was the mother--we shall not say of Frederick
II. who was long king of the Roman Empire,--but rather of Frederick
who brought the said Empire to destruction, as will appear fully in
his deeds. When Tancred was dead then, the kingdom passed to his son
William, young in years and in wisdom; but Henry having entered the
kingdom with his army the year of Christ 1197, made a false truce with
the young King William, and havin