but that no doubt his son, the Etheling, and his companions, would
gladly make the passage with him. The King then sailed, taking with him
the little bride, but leaving behind no less than eighteen ladies of the
highest rank--among them his niece, Lucy de Blois, Countess of Chester,
and his illegitimate daughter, Marie, Countess de Perche--also another
illegitimate son, named Richard, and all the gayest young nobles, who
were in attendance on the prince. Including the crew, the Blanche Nef
was expected to carry full three hundred persons across the Channel. All
were in high spirits, in that reckless state of mirth which the grave
Scots deem as the absolute presage of a fearful catastrophe, as well as
often its cause; and the young Etheling, with open-hearted, imprudent
good-nature, presented the crew with three casks of wine to drink to his
health and the success of the voyage. Such feasting took place, that all
the rest of the fleet had sailed; but Fitzstephen boasted that he would
overtake and outstrip every ship before they reached England. Some
prudent persons--among them young Stephen de Blois--left the ship; but
no one else had any fears; and though the night came on, there was a
bright moon, and the water was calm. Every sail was set; the rowers
plied their utmost strength, and thus it was with great violence that
the ship ran foul of the rocks called the Ras de Catte. A lamentable cry
reached the ships of the King’s fleet; but no one guessed the cause. A
boat was lowered; Fitzstephen handed in the prince and a few rowers, and
bade them make for the shore; but just as they had pushed off, William
heard the agonized calls of his sister, the Countess de Perche, and
commanded the rowers to put back and save her. The masterless, terrified
multitude no sooner saw the boat approach, than they all flung
themselves headlong into it; down it went under them, and the whole
freight perished. The ship itself soon likewise foundered, and there
only remained, clinging to the mast, a young baron, named Godfrey de
l’Aigle, and a butcher of Rouen. Fitzstephen, however, swam up, and
called out to ask if the King’s son had got off safe. When he heard
their answer, he cried aloud, “Woe is me!” and sank like a stone. It was
a cold night, and, after some hours, young Godfrey became benumbed, lost
his hold, and likewise sank; but the butcher, in his sheepskin coat,
held on till daylight, when he was picked up by some fishermen, and told
his piteous tale.
Next day the news came to England, and every one knew it but the King.
For some days no one could summon up resolution to inform him of this
surpassing calamity; but at last a little boy was sent to fall at his
feet, and, weeping bitterly, to tell him all. The stern heart was wrung:
Henry fell senseless on the ground; and he, whose gayety had once almost
hidden his hard, selfish nature, never smiled again.
The Count of Anjou sent for his daughter and her dowry. The daughter
came, and afterward became a nun at Fontevraud; but no dowry was sent
with her: and Foulques returned to the cause he had deserted, gave her
sister Sybil to William Clito, and held with him till his early death.
On the death of his countess, Foulques vowed to go on a crusade. His
eldest son Geoffrey was but seven years old, and before setting out, he
solemnly placed the boy on the altar of St. Julian at Angers, saying,
“Great Saint, I offer thee my son and my lands; be the protector of
both!”
Foulques maintained a hundred men-at-arms in Palestine for a year, at
his own expense, and signalized himself greatly. Baldwin I., King of
Jerusalem, the brother of Godfrey, had survived his brother eighteen
years, when, in 1118, the crown passed to Baldwin du Bourg, Count of
Essex, who, according to the usual fate of the Defenders of the Holy
Sepulchre, felt his health fast giving way under the influence of toil,
anxiety, and climate. He had been twice a prisoner, and had spent seven
years in captivity among the Infidels; but his kingdom had been bravely
defended by the knights of the Temple and Hospital, aided by Crusaders
from the West. Of these armed pilgrims the Count of Anjou was so much
the most distinguished, that, after his return, a knight was sent to
him by King Baldwin, to propose to give him the hand of Melisende, the
eldest princess of Jerusalem, and with it that crown of care and toil.
The crusading spirit was, however, strong in the house of Anjou, and
so continued for full three hundred years: and though Foulques was
considerably past forty, he accepted the offer, gave up his country to
his son Geoffrey, and set forth in 1127, married Melisende, and, four
years after, became King of Jerusalem. It was an unloving marriage; but
he was much respected and beloved, and his biographer observes that,
though he had red hair, he had not the faults common in men of that
complexion. He was continually in the field at the head of his knights,
and won several victories, one of which gained the town of Caesarea
Philippi. He was killed by a fall from his horse, near Acre, in 1142;
and left two sons by Melisende--Baldwin and Amaury, who afterward both
reigned at Jerusalem.
CAMEO XVI. VISITORS OF HENRY I. (1120-1134.)
Henry Beauclerc was really a great King. His abilities were high even
for one of the acute Normans, and he studied at every leisure moment. He
translated Aesop’s fables, not from Latin into French--which would not
have been wonderful--but from Greek to English. He seems to have had
a real attachment to the English, feeling that, in their sturdy
independence, he had the best preservative from the “outre cuidance” of
the Normans. Indeed, the English mind viewed Brenville as making up for
Hastings. He wrote a book of maxims, even on etiquette; and though his
heart was almost as hard as those of his brothers, his demeanor was far
more gracious: moreover, he felt remorse, as his brothers never did, nor
his father till his death. After he lost his son he had many a night of
anguish; when all the men of his kingdom seemed to come and reproach
him with their sufferings. But his reign, on the whole, was a
breathing-time, when he carried out his father’s policy, restrained the
barons, and raised the condition of the English. He was also greatly
respected in other countries, and had many royal visitors, among the
chief of whom may be reckoned his brother-in-law, David of Scotland, and
Louis _l’éveillé_, the prince of France. In the Conqueror’s lifetime
Henry and Louis had met at the court of France, where they had
quarrelled at chess, and Henry, in a passion, had struck Louis a violent
blow. His elder brother, Robert, then in exile in Paris, came in at the
moment, and was so alarmed for the consequences, that he dragged Henry
down stairs, called for their horses, and galloped away, never resting
till he had seen the youth safely on the bounds of Normandy, where
Robert himself might not enter. King Philippe’s anger is said to have
been one of the causes of the war in which William I. met with his
death.
Now, however, Louis was a fugitive from the persecution of the wicked
Bertrade, and found shelter and protection in England till his father
became reconciled to him.
Another royal visitor was Sigurd the Crusader, king of part of Norway.
Eystein, Sigurd, and Olaf had been left orphans by the death of their
father, King Magnus, when Eystein, the eldest, was only fifteen.
According to the law of Norway, they all possessed an equal right to the
kingdom; but this led to no disputes, and they lived together on the
most friendly terms. Eystein was peaceably disposed and thoughtful,
though lively; Sigurd, though enterprising and spirited, had a strain of
melancholy which affected him when he was not actively employed: and one
morning, Eystein, observing that his looks were gloomy, drew from him
that he had had a dream. “I thought,” he said, “that we brothers were
all sitting on a bench in front of Christ Church in Drontheim, and our
kinsman, Olaf the Saint, came out in royal robes, glancing and splendid,
and his face bright and joyous. He took our brother Olaf by the hand,
saying, ‘Come with me, friend,’ and led him into the Church. Soon after,
King Olaf the Saint came forth again, but not so bright as before. He
came to thee, brother, and led thee with him into the church. Then I
looked for him to come to me and meet me; but it was not so: and I was
seized with great sorrow, and was altogether without strength; so that I
awoke.”
Eystein interpreted the dream to mean that Olaf would die young and
innocent; that the Saint was less radiant in coming for himself, because
of his sins; and that Sigurd would be the longest-lived of the three. It
fell out much as the dream had presaged, for Olaf died in early youth.
Sigurd had the restless spirit of the Sea-kings, and became a Crusader.
He spent the first winter in England, the second in aiding the
Christians of Spain against the Moors: he visited the Normans in Sicily,
and, as the King of the whole Northern race, conferred on Count Roger de
Hauteville the title of King of Sicily, and then proceeded to Jerusalem.
Baldwin I. received him splendidly, and availed himself of his aid to
capture the town of Zidon. He left the Holy Land, taking as his reward
a piece of the wood of the True Cross, and returned through
Constantinople. There Alexius Comnenus gave him a magnificent reception,
which he tried to requite by equal Ostentation, repeating Robert of
Normandy’s invention of the golden horse-shoes. He was entertained with
grand games in the Hippodrome, where the ancient Greek statues were much
admired by his followers and their Vaeringer brethren, who took them for
their own ancient Asagods. On his departure, he gave Alexius all his
ships, the figure-heads of which were made ornaments for one of the
churches at Constantinople; and some of the presents which he brought
away are still extant in Norway. In one little remote church there has
lately been found a curious Byzantine picture, representing the rescue
of the True Cross from the Persians by the Emperor Heraclius.
In the meantime, Eystein was leading a wise, beneficent, peaceable, and
pious life in Norway. But their different dispositions are best shown
in a discussion that the old Norwegian chronicle has recorded as taking
place soon after Sigurd’s return. The two brothers were, in the ancient
fashion, sojourning in the house of one of their bonders, and keeping
open table, when, one evening the ale was not good, Sigurd fell into one
of his moods of gloomy depression, and the guests sat round silent.
The good-natured Eystein said, “Let us fall on some jest to amuse
people; for surely, brother Sigurd, all people are well pleased when we
converse cheerfully.”
“Do you talk as much as you please, but let me be silent,” returned
Sigurd.
“Nay,” said Eystein, “let us follow the old custom over the ale-table
of making comparisons. I will soon make it appear that, different as we
are, we are both equal, and one has no advantage over the other.”
He succeeded in drawing his brother into the game; and Sigurd, who was
the taller and stronger, answered, “Do you remember that I was always
able to break your back, if I had pleased, though you are a year older?”
“Yes,” said Eystein; “but you were not so good at games that need
agility.”
“Do you remember that I could drag you under water, when we swam
together, as often as I pleased?”
“Yes,” returned Eystein; “but I could swim as far as you, and dive as
well; and I could run on snow skates so well that no one could beat me,
and you could no more do it than an ox.”
“I think,” said Sigurd, “you could hardly draw my bow, even if you took
your foot to help.”
“I am not so strong at the bow, but there is less difference in our
shooting near.”
“Beside,” continued the tall Sigurd, “a chief ought to be taller than
other men, easily seen and distinguished.”
“Nay,” said Eystein, who was the handsomest man in Norway, “good looks
may be an equal distinction. Besides, I am more knowing in the law, and
my words flow more easily.”
“Well, you may know more law quirks. I have had something else to do,”
said the rough warrior. “No one can deny you a smooth tongue; and some
say you do not keep to what you promise--which is not kingly.”
“Yes, I promise satisfaction to one party before I have heard the other,
and then am forced to take something back. It would be easy to do like
you--promise evil to all. I never hear any complaint of your not keeping
this promise to them.”
“Ay, and while I made a princely voyage, you sat at home like my
father’s daughter.”
“There you take up the cudgel,” said Eystein, merrily; “but I know how
to answer. If I did sit at home, like my father’s daughter, you cannot
deny that, like a sister, I furnished you forth.”
Sigurd continued: “I was in many a battle in the Saracens’ land, and
always came off conqueror; I won many precious goods, the like of which
were never seen here before; and I was always the most highly esteemed
where brave men met: while yours is but a home-bred renown. I went to
Palestine, I came to Apulia; but I did not see you there, brother. I
gave Roger the Great the title of King. I won seven battles; but you
were in none of them. I was at our Lord’s grave; but I did not see you
there, brother. I went to Jordan, where our Lord was baptized. I swam
across the river; but I did not see you there. A willow grew on the
bank, and I twisted the boughs into a knot, which is waiting there for
you; for I said that you should untie it, and fulfil the vow that is
bound up in it.”
“I have little to set against this,” said Eystein; “but if you fought
abroad, I strove to be of use at home. In the north of Vaage I built
fish-houses, so as to enable the poor people there to earn a livelihood.
I built a priest’s house, and endowed a Church, where before all the
people were heathen; and therefore I think they will recollect that
Eystein was once King of Norway. The road from Drontheim goes over the
Dofrefield, and often travellers had to sleep in the open air; but
I built inns, and supported them with money, and thus wayfarers may
remember that Eystein has been King of Norway. Agdaness was a bare
waste, and no harbor, and many a ship was lost. Now, there is a good
harbor, and a Church. I raised beacons on the high ground; I built a
royal hall in Bergen, and the Church of the Apostles; I built Michael’s
Church, and a Convent beside. I settled the laws, so that all may obtain
justice. The Jemteland people are again joined to our realm, and more by
kind words than by war. Now, though all these are but small doings, yet
I am not sure if the people of our land have not been better served by
them than by your killing blue men in the land of the Saracens. Your
deeds were great; yet I hope what I have done for the servants of God
may serve me no less for my soul’s salvation. So, if you did tie a knot
for me, I will not go to untie it; and if I had been tying a knot for
you, you would not have been King of Norway, when with a single ship you
came into my fleet.”
Eystein conferred many more benefits on his country, and on individuals
many acts of kindness--such as his undertaking by his conversation to
cheer and console one of his friends who had been disappointed in love.
This excellent King died at thirty-five, and it was said that there was
never so much mourning in Norway. Sigurd’s fate was sad; the shadow
predicted in his dream fell on him. His moodiness increased to
distraction, and nothing could be more wretched in those early times
than the condition of an insane king or of his country. He grew
extremely violent, and often did fearful mischief; but he still
preserved his generous spirit, and could always, even at the worst, be
tamed by any one who would boldly resist his fury. Happily, this only
lasted six years, for he died in 1330, at the age of forty.
This has been a long digression; but as Sigurd was the last of our
Northern visitors, we hope it may be pardoned for the sake of its
interest.
Henry I. gave his only daughter Maude in marriage to Henry V., Emperor
of Germany, a rebellious son, who had taken advantage of the sentence
of excommunication on his father, to strip him of his domains, and
absolutely reduce him to beggary. Maude was married to Henry V. at
eleven years old, when she was so small that she could not stand under
the weight of her robes, and the Archbishop of Cologne was obliged
to hold her in his arms during the celebration of the wedding. The
principal favorites of the King of England were at this time the sons
of his sister Adela, three in number: Theobald, Count de Blois and
Champagne; Stephen, Count de Mortagne, whom the King married to Matilda,
heiress, of Boulogne, the niece of good Queen Maude, and Henry, whom he
made Bishop of Winchester.
Henry was persuaded to marry again, and his queen was the beautiful and
gracious Alice of Louvaine, a fair young girl of eighteen. His daughter
Maude returned from Germany in 1125; but there were strange stories that
her husband, the Emperor, was not dead, but had fled in secret from his
court, to dwell as a hermit in penance for his crimes. His funeral had,
however, been performed with full solemnity. King Henry regarded her as
in truth a widow, and was very anxious to bestow her a second time in
marriage. He caused his vassals to take an oath of fealty to her as
his heiress, and foremost in making this promise were David, King of
Scotland--as Earl of Huntingdon, in right of his wife, Waltheof’s
daughter--and Stephen de Blois, Count de Mortagne and Boulogne; while
Henry engaged at the same time that she should not be married without
the consent of the Barons.
Very soon, however, he broke his word, with the desire of conciliating
those troublesome neighbors of Normandy, the counts of Anjou. Foulques
V. showed himself so much inclined to befriend the son of Robert, that
Henry resolved to attach him to his own party, and proposed to him to
give Maude to his son Geoffrey, whom he desired should be sent at
once to Rouen, that he might see him, and confer on him the order of
knighthood.
Young Geoffrey was only fifteen, but, unlike his ancestors, was very
tall, and had also inherited the beauty and grace of his grandmother
Bertrade. King Henry was delighted with him, and after examining him
closely on all the rules of chivalry, as well as on other points, to
which Geoffrey replied with much acuteness, showing himself a good
scholar even in Latin, resolved to make him his son-in-law. His
knighthood was conferred with the greatest splendor and all the
formalities of the time. The first day he entered the bath, the emblem
of purity, and then was arrayed in fine linen, a robe woven with gold,
and a purple mantle. A Spanish horse was presented to him, and he was
armed in polished steel, and with a helmet covered with precious stones;
his gilded spurs were buckled on, and his sword and lance given to him.
He sprung on horseback without putting his foot in the stirrup, and six
days were spent in jousting with twenty-nine young nobles, who were
knighted at the same time. At the close of the tourney, Henry conferred
on him the accolade, or sword-blow, which was the chief part of the
ceremony.
Henry had great difficulty in making his daughter consent to the
marriage. Whether she believed her husband to be alive, or whether it
was from pride, or dislike to take so mere a boy as her bridegroom, her
resistance was long; and it was not till 1127 that she was brought by
her father to Mans, where the wedding took place, just before Geoffrey’s
father departed for Palestine.
Maude was proud and disdainful, and treated her young husband in the
most contemptuous way; and Geoffrey avoided her in return, spending most
of his time in hunting in the woods, where he used to wear the spray of
broom that became the cognizance of his house, and caused their surname
of Plantagenet. Perhaps it was in contrast to his wife’s haughtiness
that he chose to adopt this plant, considered as the emblem of humility,
and reminding her that she had married the descendant of the woodman
Torquatus.
Geoffrey seems to have been of a gay, lively temper, associating freely
with all who came in his way, and often doing kind actions. Once, as on
Christmas-day he was entering the Church of St. Julian at Mans, he met a
poor priest, meanly clad.
“What tidings?” said the Count.
“Glad tidings,” returned the priest.
“What are they?”
“‘To us a Child is born, to us a Son is given,’” the clerk made answer;
and Geoffrey was so struck with his appropriate manner, that he gave him
a valuable canonry.
Geoffrey was hunting in a forest, when he lost his way, and was
benighted; and, meeting a charcoal-burner, asked the road to Loches. The
man offered to become his guide, and accordingly the Count took him up
on his horse, talking gayly, and asking what people said of the Count.
The peasant answered that the Count himself was said to be friendly and
free-spoken, but his provost committed terrible exactions, of which he
gave a full account. Geoffrey listened, and in the morning rode into
the town of Loches with the charcoal-burner still _en croupe_ (if his
haughty empress was there, he must have enjoyed provoking her), and
there he summoned all his provosts, himself examined their accounts, put
an end to their exactions, and ended by making the charcoal-burner a
free man instead of a serf.
There is a report that Maude’s first husband came to Angers in his
penance-garb, and on his death-bed told his confessor who he was; that
the confessor fetched the empress; and that she attended him in secret
till his death; but the truth of this tale is very uncertain. Maude had
been six years married to Geoffrey when her first child was born, Henry,
called by the Normans Fitz-Empress.
This event in some degree cheered the latter years of his grandfather,
King Henry, whose sin had found him out, in bitter remorse and fearful
dreams. Nobles, peasants, and clergy seemed in turn to be standing round
his bed, calling him to account for his misdeeds toward them. Many other
victims of his ambition might have been conjured up by his remorse--such
as the citizen of Rouen, spared by Robert, whom Henry threw from the top
of a high tower, whither he had treacherously invited him; the Norman
barons, with whom he had broken his faith; his gallant, generous
brother, so cruelly betrayed and imprisoned; his persecuted nephew,
William Clito; the unhappy troubadour, Lucas de Barré, whom he had
blinded, for writing a satire on him, and who dashed out his brains
in despair on the prison wall; and--almost the worst of all--the poor
children of his illegitimate daughter Juliana, left to the ferocious
revenge of Raoul de Harenc, by whom their eyes were put out and their
noses cut off. With such recollections as these to haunt his later
years, no wonder Henry’s nights were times of agony and wakefulness.
He tried to lose the thought of these horrors in activity, and was
constantly passing between England and Normandy. It was in the latter
country that he made his fatal supper of lampreys, after he had been
fatigued with hunting all day. A violent fever came on at night, and he
died on the 1st of December, 1135.
The court of Scotland presented a far different scene. David, the
youngest of the children of St. Margaret, inherited the crown in 1124,
on the death of his brother Alexander, and was treading in the same
course as his mother, his sister Maude, and his brethren. He belonged,
indeed, to a family of saints, and brought piety, firmness, cultivation,
and a merciful temper to improve his rugged country. He was a brave
warrior: but he loved the arts of peace, and one of his favorite
amusements was gardening, budding and grafting trees.
He administered strict justice, but shed tears as he ordered an
execution; and was so tender-hearted and ready to hear the poor, that he
would take his foot out of the stirrup when just ready for the chase, to
listen to the humblest complaint. Though lively and social in temper, he
spent some hours every evening alone, in prayer and meditation.
His wife was Matilda, daughter of that Earl Waltheof who was executed by
William I. She had previously been married to a Norman knight, Simon de
St. Liz, who died on pilgrimage, leaving her with two sons, Simon and
Waltheof. Two sons were likewise born to David; but the eldest was
killed in his infancy by an accident: and shortly after David took home
as a companion to the little Henry, Aelred, the son of a Saxon priest at
Hexham.
These four boys were brought up “in the nurture of good learning,” and
in godliness; but their different tempers soon showed themselves. Simon,
the little Earl of Northampton, while a child, was always playing at
building castles, and bestriding the “truncheon of a spear,” as a
war-horse. Waltheof was a builder, too, but his were churches, and his
delight was in making the sign of the Cross and singing chants. It was
still the same as they grew older; Waltheof ever drew more apart, and
spent more time in reading and prayer. His stepfather, the King, would
take him to the chase, and tell him to bear his bow; but he often
found his bow in the hands of another, and, after a search, discovered
Waltheof reading or praying in a secret glade, or under a tree. “Your
boy,” he said to the Queen, “will either die young, or leave us for the
cloister.”
Aelred was Waltheof’s chief friend; but, though very pious, he was more
of a scholar, and read both romances of King Arthur and such works
of Cicero as had found their way to Scotland. He was lively in
conversation; David was fond of him, and used to tell him stories of his
own younger days; and Aelred became the loving chronicler of this happy
court.
Prince Henry had the same holy temper, coupled with a bold spirit, that
was needed by the heir of Scotland, and showed himself full of the noble
qualities of his father and uncles. He was the true knight of the party,
as bold as a lion, yet as strict and devout as a monk, even in the camp.
Simon was no more than a rough, bold, tyrannical earl, and soon took up
his abode in England.