648.
**** Rymer, vol.i.p.

630.
The earl of Cornwall had now reason to value himself on his foresight, in refusing the fraudulent bargain with Rome, and in preferring the solid honors of an opulent and powerful prince of the blood of England, to the empty and precarious glory of a foreign dignity.

But he had not always firmness sufficient to adhere to this resolution: his vanity and ambition prevailed at last over his prudence and his avarice; and he was engaged in an enterprise no less expensive and vexatious than that of his brother, and not attended with much greater probability of success.
The immense opulence of Richard having made the German princes cast their eye on him as a candidate for the empire, he was tempted to expend vast sums of money on his election; and he succeeded so far as to be chosen king of the Romans, which seemed to render his succession infallible to the imperial throne.

He went over to Germany, and carried out of the kingdom no less a sum than seven hundred thousand marks, if we may credit the account given by some ancient authors,[*] which is probably much exaggerated.[**] His money, while it lasted, procured him friends and partisans; but it was soon drained from him by the avidity of the German princes; and, having no personal or family connections in that country, and no solid foundation of power, he found, at last, that he had lavished away the frugality of a whole life in order to procure a splendid title; and that his absence from England, joined to the weakness of his brother's government, gave reins to the factious and turbulent dispositions of the English barons, and involved his own country and family in great calamities.
* M.Paris, p.638.The same author, a few pages before, makes Richard's treasures amount to little more than half the sum, (p.

634.) The king's dissipations and expenses, throughout this whole reign, according to the same author, had amounted only to about nine hundred and forty thousand marks, (p.