Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II Part 23

_Emperor of Germany_.

1152. Friedrich I.

_Popes of Rome_.

1154. Adrian IV.

1159. Alexander III.

1181. Lucius III.

1185. Urban III.

1187. Gregory VIII.

"The G.o.ds are just, and of our pleasant sins make whips to scourge us."

This saying tells the history of the reign of Henry of the Court Mantle.

Ambition and ill faith were the crimes of Henry from his youth upward, and he was a man of sufficiently warm affections to suffer severely from the retribution they brought on him, when, through his children, they recoiled upon his head. "When once he loveth, scarcely will he ever hate; when once he hateth, scarcely ever receiveth he into grace," was written of him by his tutor, Peter of Blois, and his life proved that it was a true estimate of his character.

The root of his misfortunes may be traced to his ambitious marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, twelve years older than himself, and divorced by Louis VII. of France on account of her flagrant misconduct in Palestine, in the course of the miserable expedition called the Second Crusade. For her broad lands, he deserted the woman whom he loved, and who had left her home and duty for his sake, and on his promise of marriage.

Fair Rosamond Clifford was the daughter of a Herefordshire baron, with whom Henry became acquainted in his seventeenth year, when he came to England, in 1149, to dispute the crown with Stephen. He lodged her at Woodstock, in the tower built, according to ballad lore, "most curiously of stone and timber strong," and with such a labyrinth leading to it that "none, but with a clue of thread, could enter in or out." There Rosamond remained while he returned to France to receive Normandy and Anjou, on the death of his father, and on going to pay homage to Louis VII., ingratiated himself with Queen Eleanor, whose divorce was then impending. Eleanor and her sister Petronella were joint heiresses of the great duchy of Aquitaine, their father having died on pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago de Compostella, and the desire of the fairest and wealthiest provinces of the south of France led the young prince to forget his ties to Rosamond and her infant son William, and never take into consideration what the woman must be of whom her present husband was resolved to rid himself at the risk of seeing half his kingdom in the hands of his most formidable enemy.

For some time Rosamond seems to have been kept in ignorance of Henry's unfaithfulness; but in 1152, the year of his coronation, and of the birth of her second child, Geoffrey, she quitted Woodstock, and retired into the nunnery of G.o.dstow, which the King richly endowed. It has been one of the favorite legends of English history, that the Queen traced her out in her retreat by a ball of silk that had entangled itself in Henry's spurs, and that she offered her the choice of death by the dagger or by poison; but this tale has been refuted by sober proof; there is no reason to believe that Eleanor was a murderess; and it is certain that Rosamond, on learning how she had been deceived, took refuge in the nunnery, where she ended her days twenty years after, in penitence and peace, far happier than her betrayer. Her sons, William and Geoffrey, were honorably brought up, and her remains were placed in the choir, under a silken canopy, with tapers burning round, while the Sisters of the convent prayed for mercy on her soul and King Henry's.

Even King John paid the costs of this supposed expiation; but St. Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, not thinking it well that her history should be before the minds of the nuns, ordered the corpse to be interred in the ordinary burial-place of the convent.

During most of these twenty years of Rosamond's repentance, all apparently prospered with Henry. The rigorous justice administered by his excellent chancellor, Ranulf de Glanville, had restored order to England; the only man bold enough to gainsay him had been driven from the kingdom. Ireland was in course of conquest, and his astute policy was continually overreaching the simple-minded Louis VI., who, having derived the surname of _le jeune_ from his age at his accession, was so boyish a character all his life as never to lose it.

Four sons and three daughters were born to Henry and Eleanor, and in their infancy he arranged such alliances as might obtain a still wider power for them--nay, even the kingdom of France. Louis VI. had married again, but his second wife died, leaving two infant girls, named Margaret and Alice, and to them Henry betrothed his two eldest sons, Henry and Richard. It was to ask the hand of Margaret for the prince that Becket took his celebrated journey to Paris, and the young pair, Henry and Margaret, were committed to his care for education; but the disputes with the King prevented their being sufficiently long in his hands for the correction of the evil spirit of the Angevin princes.

By threats of war, Henry obtained for Geoffrey, his third son, Constance, the only child of Conan, Duke of Brittany; though the Bretons, who hated Normans, Angevins, and English with equal bitterness, were extremely angry at finding themselves thus connected with all three. On Conan's death, Geoffrey, then ten years old, was called Duke of Brittany, but his father took the whole government into his hands, and made it a heavy yoke.

John, Count of Mortagne, for whom no heiress had been obtained, was gayly called by his father Lackland--a name which his after-life fitted to him but too well. Richard was intended to be the inheritor of his mother's beautiful duchy of Aquitaine, where he spent most of his early years. It was a strange country, where the ordinary events of life partook so much of romance that we can hardly believe them real.

It had never been so peopled by the Franks as to lose either the language or the cultivation left by the Romans. The _langue d'oc_ had much resemblance to the Latin, and was beautifully soft and adapted to poetry; and when the n.o.bles adopted chivalry, they ornamented it with all the graces of their superior education. The talent of improvising verses was common among them; and to be a minstrel, or, as they called it, a troubadour (a finder of verses), was essential to the character of a complete gentleman.

Courts of beauty and love took place, where arguments were held on cases of allegiance of a knight to his lady-love, and compet.i.tions in poetry, in which the reward was a golden violet. Each troubadour thought it needful to be dedicated to the service of some lady, in whose honor all his exploits in arms or achievements in minstrelsy were performed. To what an extravagant length this devotion was carried, is shown in the story of Jauffred Rudel, Lord of Blieux, who, having heard from some Crusaders a glowing account of the beauty and courtesy of the Countess of Tripoli, on their report made her the object of his affections, and wrote poem after poem upon her, of which one has come down to our times:

"No other love shall e'er be mine, None save my love so far away; For one more fair I'll never know, In region near, or far away."

Thus his last verse may be translated, and his "_amour luench_," or love far away, occurs in every other line. He embarked for Palestine for the sole purpose of seeing his _amour luench_, but fell sick on the voyage, and was speechless when he arrived. The countess, hearing to what a condition his admiration had brought him, came on board the vessel to see him; the sight of her so charmed him, that he was able to say a few words to her before he expired. She caused him to be buried with great splendor, and erected a porphyry tomb over him, with an Arabic inscription.

The romance of the Languedocians was unhappily not accompanied by purity of manners, and much of Queen Eleanor's misconduct may be ascribed to the tone prevalent in her native duchy, to which she was much attached.

Her brave son, Richard, growing up in this land of minstrelsy, became a thorough troubadour, and loved no portion of his father's domains as well as the sunny south; and his two brothers, Henry and Geoffrey, likewise fell much under the influence of the poetical knights of Aquitaine, especially Bertrand de Born, Viscount de Hautefort, an accomplished n.o.ble, who was the intimate friend of all the princes.

The King's first disappointment was when, at length, a son was born to Louis VI., who had hitherto, to use his own words, "been afflicted with a mult.i.tude of daughters." This son of his old age was christened "Philippe _Dieu donne_," and the servant who brought the welcome tidings of his birth was rewarded with a grant of three measures of wheat yearly from the royal farm of Gonesse. Soon after, Louis dreamt that he saw his son holding a goblet of blood in his hand, from which his valor was predicted, and he did indeed seem born to visit the offences of the Plantagenets on their own heads. Even while quite a child, when present at a conference between the two kings under the Elm of Gisors, he was shrewd enough to perceive that Henry was unjustly overreaching his father, and surprised all present by exclaiming, "Sir, you do my father wrong. I perceive that you always gain the advantage over him. I cannot hinder you now, but I give you notice that, when I am grown up, I will take back all of which you now deprive us." And, by fair means and foul, he kept his word.

Next Henry began to find that the Church would not allow him to remain in peace while he kept the Archbishop in exile, and the dread of excommunication caused him to obviate the danger of his subjects being released from their oaths of allegiance, by causing his eldest son to be crowned, and receive their homage. The Princess Margaret was in Aquitaine with Queen Eleanor; and when she found that the rights of her former tutor, Becket, were neglected, and the ceremony to be performed by the Archbishop of York, she refused to come to England, and her husband was crowned alone. It was then that his father carved at his banquet, and he made the arrogant speech respecting the son of a count and the son of a king.

That year was marked by the murder of the Archbishop, and soon after the storm began to burst. Young Henry, now nineteen years of age, went with his wife to pay a visit to her father at Paris, and returned full of discontent, complaining that he was a king only in name, since he had not even a house to himself, and insisting on his father's giving up to him at once either England, Normandy, or Anjou.

His complaints were echoed by Richard and Geoffrey, who were with their mother in Aquitaine. Richard had received invest.i.ture of the county of Poitiers, but the entire authority was in the hands of Castellanes, appointed by his father, and the proud natives were stirring up the young prince to shake off the bondage in which he, like them, was held.

Geoffrey, though only fifteen, thought himself aggrieved by not having yet received his wife's duchy of Brittany, and positively refused to pay homage for it to his eldest brother, when newly crowned to repair the irregularity of his first coronation, and for this opposition the high-spirited Bretons forgave his Angevin blood, and looked on him as their champion. The boys' discontents were aggravated by their mother, and the state of feeling was so well known in the South, that when Henry and his eldest son came to Limoges to receive the homage of Count Raymond of Toulouse, that n.o.ble, on coming to the part of the oath of fealty where he was engaged to counsel his lord against his enemies, added, "I should warn you to secure your castles of Poitou and Aquitaine, and to mistrust your wife and sons."

Henry, who was aware of the danger, under pretext of hunting, visited his princ.i.p.al fortresses, and, to guard against the evil designs of his son Henry, caused him to sleep in his own bedroom. At Chinon, however, the youth contrived to elude his vigilance, stole away, and escaped to Paris, where he was received in a manner that reflects great discredit on the French monarch.

When the elder Henry sent to Paris to desire the restoration of the fugitive, the messengers found him royally robed, and seated by the side of the French King, who received them, asking from whom they came.

"From Henry, King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Anjou and Maine."

"That is not true. Here sits Henry, King of England, who has no message to send me by you. But if you mean his father, the late King of England, he has been dead ever since his son has worn the crown; and if he still pretends to be a king, I will soon find a cure."

Young Henry adopted a great seal, and wrote letters to the Pope, his mother, and brothers, exciting them against his father, and putting forth a manifesto declaring that he could not leave unpunished the death of "his foster-father, the glorious martyr St. Thomas of Canterbury, whose blood was crying out for vengeance."

On receiving these letters, Richard and Geoffrey hurried to meet him at Paris, and Queen Eleanor was following in male attire, when she was seized and made prisoner. Louis caused the two boys to swear that they would never conclude a peace with their father without his consent, and they were joined by great numbers of the Norman and Poitevin n.o.bility, even from among the King's immediate attendants. Each morning some one was missed from his court, and known to be gone over to the enemy, but still Henry outwardly kept up his spirits, conversed gaily, and hunted as usual.

Only once did he give way. Geoffrey, the son of Rosamond, was devotedly attached to him, and had at his own expense raised an army of Brabancons, or mercenary soldiers, and defeated an inroad of the Scots, and he now brought his victorious force to the aid of his father.

Rosamond was just dead in her nunnery, and at his first meeting with her son, Henry embraced him with tears, exclaiming, "Thou art my true and lawful son!" The bishopric of Lincoln was destined to Geoffrey, but he was only twenty, and was unwilling to take orders, thinking himself better able to help his father as a layman.

The Brabancons were the only troops on whom the King could rely, and with them he marched against the Bretons, who had been encouraged by Louis and their young Duke to rebel. They were defeated, and Louis, not wishing to run further risks, brought the three youths to the Elm of Gisors, and held a conference with them, where Henry showed himself far more ready to forgive than his sons to ask pardon.

Afterward young Henry and Geoffrey returned to Paris, and Richard to Poitou, whence he soon came to the French court, to receive the order of knighthood from Louis--another insult to his father. The two queens, Eleanor and Margaret, were in the old King's hands, and kept in close captivity; the younger, who seems to have been a gentle and innocent lady, was soon allowed to join her husband, but Eleanor was retained in confinement at Winchester. As long as his mother, whom he tenderly loved, was imprisoned, Richard thought his resistance justified, and Aquitaine echoed with laments for the Lady of the South in the dungeon of her cruel husband. Bertrand de Born, who had chosen her daughter Eleanor, Queen of Castile, as the object of his songs, was especially ardent in his lamentations.

The elder King's grief at the continued misconduct of his sons led him to humble himself at the tomb of Becket, and the penance he underwent brought on a fever. He thought, however, that he had received a token of pardon, when news was brought that his faithful son Geoffrey of Lincoln, and his chancellor, Ranulf de Glanville, had defeated the King of Scots, William the Lion, and made him prisoner at Prudhoe Castle. But King Henry had far more to suffer!

His eldest son was invading Normandy, and he was forced to march against him. After a battle at Rouen, the princes were reduced to obedience; Richard was the last of all to be reconciled, believing, as he did, that his cause was his mother's, but he kept his oaths better than either of the others.

A time of greater quiet succeeded, during which young Henry set out as a knight-errant, going from one country to another in search of opportunities of performing deeds of arms. He came, in 1180, to attend the coronation of young Philippe II., who had just succeeded his father, in his fifteenth year, and had, or pretended to have, a great friendship for Geoffrey of Brittany.

Richard had in the meantime affronted Bertrand de Born, by a.s.sisting his brother Constantine, whom he had deprived of his inheritance. Bertrand rebelled with other Poitevins, proceeded to lash up, by verses, young Henry, to join them against Richard, rousing him to be no more a mere king of cowards, who had no lands, and never would have any.

Henry was worked upon to go to his father, and insist on receiving Richard's homage; and as he threatened to take the Cross and go to Palestine, the old King, who doted on him, consented. Richard declared this would be giving up the rights of his mother; and though he consented, at his father's entreaty, for the sake of peace, Henry was now affronted, would not receive it, and, with Geoffrey, placed himself at the head of the rebels of Poitou, and a fresh war broke out, and their father was obliged to come to Richard's aid. It seems to have been about this time that the unhappy King caused a picture to be painted of four eaglets tearing their father's breast. "It is an emblem of my children," he said. "If John has not yet acted like his brethren, it is only because he is not yet old enough!"

Henry and Geoffrey invited their father to a conference in Limoges, which he was besieging; but as he entered the town, a flight of arrows was discharged from the battlements, some of which rattled against his armor, and one pierced his horse's neck. The King held one of them up, saying, "Ah, Geoffrey! what has thine unhappy father done that thou shouldest make him a mark for thine arrows?"

Geoffrey treated the matter lightly. His brother was, however, so much shocked, that for a little while he joined his father, swearing he would never again rebel.

Only a few days had pa.s.sed, before, on some trifling dispute, he again quitted his father, and, vowing he would take the Cross, joined Geoffrey and the rebel Poitevins. But this was indeed his last rebellion. He had scarcely entered the town of Limoges, before a violent fever came on, and in terror of death he sent to entreat his father to come and give his blessing and forgiveness. It was too late. After that last treason, the King could not trust himself in the rebel camp, and only sent the Archbishop of Bordeaux to carry his signet ring, and a.s.sure his son of his pardon. He found the unhappy young man in the agonies of death, lying on a bed of ashes, accusing himself of having been a "wicked, undutiful son, and bitterly disappointed at not seeing his father, to receive the blessing he had once cast from him, and which in vain he now sought earnestly and with tears." He died, fervently pressing the ring to his lips. Surely his remorse might have served for a warning to his brothers; but when the sorrowful father sent a priest to entreat Geoffrey to make peace over his grave, the fierce youth only answered that it was vain. "Our grandmother, the Witch, has left us a doom that none of us shall ever love the rest. It is our heirloom, and the only one of which we can never be deprived!"

However, Limoges was taken, and in it Bertrand de Born, who was led before the King to receive the punishment he deserved, and there he stood silent and dejected. "Hast thou nothing to say for thyself?" said the King. "Where is all thy ready flow of fine words? I think thou hast lost thy wits!"

"Ah, sire!" said Bertrand, "I lost them the day the brave young King died!"

The father burst into tears, and exclaimed, "Sir Bertrand, thou mightest well lose thy senses with grief for my son. He loved thee more than any man on earth; and I, for love of him, give thee back thy castles and lands."

Geoffrey still held aloof, and spent his time with his friend Philippe of France. At Paris, in 1186, he who called hatred his inheritance, and spurned his father's forgiveness, died without s.p.a.ce for asking it, leaving, indeed, his chosen heirloom to his innocent children. He was in his twenty-fifth year, and the handsomest and the most expert in chivalrous exercises of all his brothers; but in the midst of a great tournament he was thrown from his horse, and trampled to death in the throng before his squires could extricate him.

Richard, the second son, inheriting the "lyonnous visage" that Peter de Blois ascribes to King Henry, and with it the Lion-heart, that gained him his surname, had far more feeling and generosity than his brothers, and, but for King Henry's own crimes, he might have been his blessing and glory. When Henry had provoked him, by desiring him, as being now heir of Normandy and England, to yield up Poitou to his brother John, Richard had refused; but on the King bringing his mother to Aquitaine, and reinstating her in her duchy, he instantly laid down his arms, joyfully came to her, and continued perfectly peaceable and dutiful whilst she still held her rights.

But after all these warnings, Henry was sinning grievously against his wife and son. Richard had been, in his infancy, betrothed to Alice of France, who had been placed in his father's keeping; but he had reached his twenty-seventh year without having been allowed to see her, and there was but too much reason to believe that the old King had wickedly betrayed his trust, and corrupted her innocence. Richard had, in the meantime, become attached to a modest, gentle maiden, Berengaria, sister to King Sancho of Navarre, and was anxious to know on what ground he stood with Alice; but the consequence of his first demonstration was, that Henry sent Eleanor back to her prison at Winchester.

This broke the tie that held him to obedience, and he went to Paris to consult with Philippe, Alice's brother, on the best measures for breaking off his unfortunate engagement, as well as on securing the succession to the crown, which he suspected his father of wishing to leave to his brother John. Philippe received him most affectionately; so that it is said they shared the same cup, the same plate, and the same bed.