CORONATION OF THE BOY HENRY
Among the provincial cities of England at the opening of the thirteenth
century, Gloucester was accounted one of the strongest, fairest, and
most stoutly loyal. It had long, indeed, been of importance, and boasted
of historical associations which connected it with the ancient world.
Occupied by the Romans, sacked by the sea-kings, and known to fame as
the scene of the memorable single combat between Edmund Ironside and
Canute the Great--the crown of England being the stake--and a favourite
residence of Edward the Confessor, its importance as a barrier against
the Welsh had been recognised by William the Conqueror, who selected its
castle as his winter palace, and strongly fortified the city on the
north and south with strong gates and stone walls, surmounted by
frowning battlements. The town consisted of four streets forming a
cross, and named Northgate and Southgate, Eastgate and Westgate, and
boasted of a royal castle, with a chase or park, and a grand Gothic
abbey, with lofty tower and oriel window, surrounded by its fish-ponds,
or “vivaries,” and physic garden, and vineyards, and all “the means and
appliances” for making monastic life comfortable and pleasant. The
strength and wealth of the place were such that while England was
ringing with arms and the shouts of “Montjoie St. Denis!” Queen Isabel
and her son Henry had remained within its walls in thorough security;
and while towns had been besieged and fortresses taken, Gloucester had
neither been taken nor besieged up to the hour when King John died, in
misery, at Newark-on-the-Trent.
It was Friday, the 28th of October, 1216, the Feast of St. Simon and St.
Jude, and Gloucester presented a scene of considerable excitement,
though the weather was the reverse of exhilarating. Not a glimpse was
there of the “merry sunshine, which makes the heart so gay.” The sky was
obscured with a drizzling mist; gloom hung over the whole city; the
Severn, swollen with recent rain, threatened to overflow its sedgy
banks; the orchards and woodlands around were soddened with wet; and the
deer in the king’s park crouched together, sought shelter under the
dripping branches of the trees, looking for all the world as if they had
some instinctive dread of a return of the flood of Deucalion--
“Piscium cum summâ genus hæsit ulmo,
Nota quæ sedes fuerat columbis,
Et superjecto pavidæ natarunt
Æquore damæ.”
Nevertheless Gloucester was excited. Men with white crosses on their
breasts strode hither and thither, gossiping citizens ventured forth
into the wet streets to hear the latest news, and laughing nymphs with
fair faces gazed watchfully from basement and loophole, as if impatient
for some spectacle to gratify their curiosity; for on that day, in spite
of Louis of France and the Anglo-Norman barons who had brought him into
England, Henry, the son of John, was to be crowned king, and the place
appointed for the ceremony was the abbey of Gloucester--that abbey to
which, more than a hundred years later, the remains of his murdered
grandson were to be brought by Abbot Thokey from Berkeley Castle, under
circumstances so melancholy.
At this time Henry of Winchester was in his tenth year. He was a strong,
healthy boy, and good-looking, with the fair hair and fair complexion of
the Plantagenets. But one unfortunate defect there was in his
countenance. Part of one of his eyelids hung down in such a way as
partly to cover the eyeball, and thus gave an unpleasant expression to a
face which would otherwise have been handsome. Such as the boy was,
William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, took him by the hand, led him to the
castle hall in which were assembled Neville, William Ferrars, Earl of
Derby, and the few magnates who had come at his invitation to
Gloucester, and, placing him in the midst of them, said--
“Behold your king!”
The nobles, who had been accustomed to the second Henry, and Richard,
and John, and who had never pictured to themselves a monarch of ten,
scarcely knew how to act. Never, indeed, save in the case of Edgar
Atheling, had a child figured as King of England, and how he was to deal
with the difficulties that beset the throne was more than they could
imagine. For a time they remained silent. But Pembroke again spoke,
pointed out the degradation of a foreign prince being in possession of
the kingdom, and asked them earnestly to crown the rightful heir and
drive out the foreigner and his myrmidons. Suddenly, as if by
inspiration, they all threw off their reserve, and cried with one
voice--
“So let it be: let the boy be king. Long live King Henry!”
Pembroke having succeeded so far, lost no time in bringing the business
to a conclusion. On Friday, the 28th of October, Henry was ceremoniously
conducted by the barons and prelates to the abbey church, placed upon a
throne, and consecrated; and the crown of St. Edward not being within
reach, he was crowned with the golden collar which his mother was in the
habit of wearing round her neck. In the absence of Langton, the bishop
of Bath performed the ceremony, and the royal boy, having taken the
oaths usually taken by the kings of England at their coronation, “to
bear reverence and honour to God and to his Holy Church, and to do right
and justice to all his people,” did homage besides to the Church of
Rome, for his kingdom of England and Ireland.
But so utterly had the public mind been poisoned against King John and
all related to him, that even in Gloucester, the stronghold of royalty,
popular opinion was divided, and the partisans of the young king, who
were known by the white cross of Guienne which they wore on their
breasts, had frays in the streets with the adherents of Prince Louis.
“By my faith,” remarked the Earl of Derby to Pembroke as they returned
from the abbey to the castle, riding on either hand of the royal boy, “I
much marvel to see that even in this city of Gloucester many faces
frown sullenly on King Henry’s state.”
“Even so,” replied Pembroke, thoughtfully, “and the sky is dull and
dismal. A little while, and the clouds will clear away and the sun shine
as of yore.”
“May God and the saints so order it!” said Derby.
A few days later, Henry, at the suggestion of the papal legate, took the
cross, that his cause might appear the more sacred in the eyes of both
friends and foes; and Pembroke, having been appointed Protector, with
the title of “Rector regis et regia,” during Henry’s minority, appointed
Henry de Marisco Keeper of the Great Seal, gave notice of the coronation
to continental countries, and issued a proclamation of pardon to all
offenders who should make their submission within a reasonable time. In
consequence, Salisbury, Warren, Arundel, Roger Merley de Merley, and
William Marshal, eldest son of the Protector, broke with Louis and swore
allegiance to Henry. But still the aspect of affairs appeared most
gloomy, for Louis was in possession of a large portion of England, and
Robert Fitzwalter and the confederate barons were still, in spite of his
coldness and affronts, bent on placing the heir of France on the English
throne.
And what did Isabel of Angoulême do in this emergency? Not certainly
what a woman with a fine sense of duty would have thought of doing, nor
what she would have done if she could have foreseen the future. But at
that time clouds and darkness rested on the house of Plantagenet, and if
a magician could have shown Isabel her future and that of the royal race
of England in one of those magic mirrors in which Catherine de Medici
was in the habit of seeing the fortunes of her descendants, she would,
doubtless, either have deemed the whole a delusion or shrunk from the
fate that awaited her new venture in life.
However, she consulted no mirror except that in which she had been in
the habit of surveying the fair oval face and the regular majestic
features which had won her so much fame throughout Christendom as “the
Helen of the Middle Ages,” and she had no difficulty in learning that
she still retained the charms necessary to fascinate the hearts of men.
In England, indeed, she could not cherish the hope of any great
matrimonial success, but there were countries beyond the narrow seas
where she might yet achieve conquests, so she thought of her native
land, with its sparkling rivers and its beautiful climate, and a few
months after John’s death, leaving the boy-king and his infant brother
Richard and his three sisters to their fate, she embarked for the
Continent and repaired to Angoulême.
Now it happened that Hugh, Count de la Marche, had not exactly been
guilty of betraying “the noon of manhood to a laurel shade,” but he had
refrained from taking a wife for better or for worse. He had, indeed,
entered into a contract of marriage with one of Isabel’s daughters, but
the princess was still an infant, and Count Hugh soon showed a decided
preference for the mother. Accordingly, a marriage was speedily brought
about, and Isabel, as wife of the Count de la Marche, lived many years,
and wrought so much mischief that, when finally she fled to Fontrevaud
and died penitent within that religious house, people said that she
ought to be called Jezebel rather than Isabel for having sown the seeds
of so many crimes; and she begged that she might not be laid in the
choir with the second Henry and Eleanor of Guienne and Cœur-de-Lion,
but buried in the common cemetery as a penance for her sins, which were
many.
It was well, perhaps, for the young King of England and for the people
which he was to rule under circumstances so difficult, that Isabel of
Angoulême took her departure and left him to begin his reign under
happier auspices. An intriguing and ambitious woman might have spoiled
all. As it happened, Pembroke had his own way, and felt that he was
equal to the crisis.