ABSTRACT
The chapter presents editions and translations of two letters written in French by the English military confraternity of St Edward the Confessor in Acre to King Edward I of England, asking for his help in acquiring and providing a priest to serve in the chapel that he had built for them while in Acre on Crusade in 1271–1272. They appear to date between 1282/3 and 1286 and suggest that the chapel itself lay in a property belonging to the abbey of St Mary in Jehoshaphat and that, by the time of writing, it was partly held by the Hospitallers on account of the abbey’s impoverishment. It had initially been served by a priest of the order of penitents known as the Friars of the Sack, but the order was now virtually defunct and its sole surviving priest too old to say Mass. Although many details and the final outcome remain unclear, the letters give a vivid impression of the state of Acre in its final decade as a Frankish city.
