244 THE HISTORY OE THE ORDER OF (BOOK II.

call the knights of every age and rank, who in-stantly renouncing everything else, hurried downinto the various ports of Christendom with mostlaudable ardour, young or old, in health or not,no delay, no excuse, but each one striving to befirst, and embarking in any ship to be found, andall these put into Cyprus, so that not a day passedbut some Hospitallers arrived from Europe. All ofthem might be bound for Acre, but Cyprus was ontheir road, and there, alas! learned they had to gono further. The nearly exterminated order reducedto half-a-dozen wounded men, without money, andin proportion, to perfect beggary; this Europeanflow made it revive. The same of the Templars.

Nor in this island, within forty leagues fromPalestine, had they not both some property already.Henry II., descended from Guy de Lusignan, wasthen its king, and so of Norman blood . 1 Nor didhe not show it, by the cordiality with which he re-ceived the rest of the Templars and Hospitallers aftertheir irreparable loss, and placed them in Limisso,one of his chief towns . 2 Perhaps it was from purecompassion, or that it was the advice of some evil-wisher, for Pope Nicholas IV. had the repute ofloving those peerless knights; but he appears tohave taken a most undue advantage of their miser-

1 Bosio.—Yertot: iv. 4.

a Yertot: iv. 2.—Bosio.