knight. He caught up a wooden cross, and made brave resistance, and so
did his two nephews, sons of Sir Almeric, who were with him; but they
had no weapon, and were both slain, while De Courcy was overpowered, and
carried a prisoner to London. The two traitors begged De Lacy to give
them passports to go to England; on which he gave them a sealed paper,
on condition of their not opening it themselves, nor returning on pain
of death. Now, the paper set forth that they were traitors no better
than Judas, and exhorted every true man to spit in their faces, and
drive them away. However, these letters were never delivered; for the
wretched men were driven, by stress of weather, back on the coast of
Ireland, and De Lacy had them hanged.
De Courcy continued in captivity till one of the many disputes between
John and Philippe Auguste was to be decided by the ordeal of battle.
The most stalwart of all John’s subjects was his prisoner, and he
immediately sent to release him from the Tower, offering him immense
rewards if he would become his champion. The old knight answered that
King John himself was not worthy to have one drop of blood shed for him;
and as to rewards, he could never requite the wrongs he had done him,
nor restore the heart’s ease he had robbed him of. For John Lackland he
would never fight, nor for such as him, but for the honor of the Crown,
and of England, he undertook the cause. The old warrior, wasted with
imprisonment, was prepared by good feeding, and received his weapons:
the Frenchman fled at once, and De Courcy prepared to return to Ireland.
He made fifteen attempts to cross, and each time was forced to put back.
At length, as old chronicles relate, he was warned in a dream to make
the trial no more: for, said the voice, “Thou hast done ill: thou hast
pulled down the master, and set up the servant.”
This was thought to refer to his having newly dedicated the cathedral of
Downe in the name of St. Patrick, whereas before it had been the Church
of the Holy Trinity. He took blame to himself, submitted, and going to
France, there died at an advanced age. For his championship, the right
of wearing the head covered in the presence of royalty was granted to
him and his heirs, and it is still the privilege of his descendants, the
Earls of Kinsale;
“For when every head is unbonneted
They walk in cap and plume.”
CAMEO XXIII. THE REBELLIOUS EAGLETS. (1149-1189.)
_King of England_.
1154. Henry II.
_King of Scotland_.
1165. William.
_Kings of France_.
1137. Louis VII.
1180. Philippe II.
_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 gods 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 Godstow, 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 nobles 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 competitions 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 Languedoçians 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 noble, 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 multitude of daughters.” This son of his old age was christened
“Philippe _Dieu donné_,” 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 investiture 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 noble, 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 principal 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 nobility,
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
Brabançons, 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 Brabançons 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 assisting 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 passed, 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 assure 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 space 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.