spirits. The gay, luxurious daughter of the South was occupied with her pleasures, and heeded not the miseries which the king's sequestrations of benefices brought on the destitute part of the population. Becket appealed to the empress Matilda, the king's mother, whe haughtily repulsed his suit. Becket was the son of a London citizen, who had followed Edgar Atheling on his crusading expedition, and was made prisoner in Syria; he obtained his liberty through the affection of a Syrian lady, an emir's daughter, who followed her lover after his departure, and succeeded in finding him in London, although she knew but two European words, "London and "Gilbert," the place of abode and Christian name of her lover. The pagan maiden was baptized, by the favourite Norman name of Matilda, and from this romantic union sprang Thomas à-Becket, who was remarkable for his learning and brilliant talents, and his fine stature and beauty, The love which Gilbert Becket bore to the race and blood of Alfred, which had sent him crusading with prince Edgar, rendered him the firm partisan of his niece, the empress Matilda. Young Becket had taken the only road to distinction open to an Anglo-Saxon: yet he was of the church, but not in it; for he was neither priest nor monk, being rather a church-lawyer than a clergyman. Henry II. had distinguished this Anglo-Saxon with peculiar favour to the indignation of his wife and mother, who warned him against feeling friendship for an Anglo-Saxon serf with the loathing that the daughters of rajahs might feel for a pariah. The see of Canterbury having remained vacant a year and a half, Henry urged his favourite to accept it. in hopes that he would connive at his plans of diverting the revenues of the church to enrich those of the crown, for this was simply the whole cause of the perpetual contest between the Anglo-Norman kings and the archbishops of Canterbury since the Conquest; but as the church sup ported the destitute poor, it is not difficult to decide which had the moral right. Archdeacon Becket protested that if he were once a bishop, he must uphold the rights of the church; but the king still insisted on investing him with the archbishopric. The night before his consecration, at supper, he told the king, "that this archbishopric would place an eternal barrier between their friendship." Henry would not believe it. Becket was consecrated priest one day, and was invested as archbishop of Canterbury the next. To the annoyance of the king be instantly resigned his chancellorship, and became a firm champion for the rights of his see. For seven years the contest between Becket and Henry continued, during which time we have several events to note, and to conclude the history of the empress Matilda. She was left 1 regent of Normandy by her son, which country she governed with great wisdom and kept in a peaceful state, but she never returned to England. 1 Rog. Hov. Gervase. Newberry. 1 1165.] Death of the Empress Matilda. 185 In the year 1165 king Louis VII. gave the princess Alice (his youngest daughter by queen Eleanora) in marriage to the count of Blois, and at the same time endowed him with the office of high-seneschal of France, which was the feudal right of Henry II., as count of Anjou. Henry violently resented this disposal of his office; and the empress, his mother, who foresaw the rising storm, wrote to pope Alexander III., begging him to meet her, to mediate between the angry kings. The pope obeyed the summons of the royal matron, and the kings met Matilda and the pontiff at Gisors. The differences between Becket and Henry II. had then risen to a fearful height. It appears that Matilda was charged by the pope with a commission of peace-making between Becket and his royal master. Emboldened by the mandate of the pope, Becket once more referred to the empress Matilda as the mediator between the church and her son, and no more met with repulse. We have seen the disgust with which Matilda recoiled from any communication with Becket, as the son of a Saxon villein; nevertheless, this great man, by means of his eloquent epistles, was beginning to exercise the same dominion over the mind of the haughty empress that he did over every living creature with whom he communicated. Henry II., alarmed at his progress, sent to his mother a priest named John of Oxford, who was charged to inform her of many particulars derogatory to Becket's moral character,-events, probably, that happened during his gay and magnificent career as chancellor and archdeacon. The The demise of the duke of Bretagne had called Henry II. to take possession of that duchy, in the name of the infant duchess Constance and her betrothed lord, his son Geoffrey, when the news arrived of the death of the empress Matilda, which occurred September 10, 1167. mother of Henry II. was deeply regretted in Normandy, where she was called "the lady of the English." She governed Normandy with discretion and moderation, applying her revenues wholly to the benefit of the common weal and many public works.1 While regent of Normandy, she applied her private revenues to building the magnificent stone bridge, of thirteen arches, over the Seine, called le Grand Pont. The construction of this bridge was one of the wonders of the age, being built with curved piers, to humour the rapid current of the river. The empress built and endowed three monasteries; among these was the magnificent structure of St. Ouen. She resided chiefly at the palace of Rouen, with occasional visits to the abbey of Bec. The empress was interred with royal honours, first in the convent of Bonnes Nouvelles: her body was afterwards transferred to the abbey of Bec, before the altar of the Virgin. Her son left his critical affairs in Bretagne, to attend her funeral. He raised a stately marble tomb 1 Ducarel's Normandy. to her memory; upon it was the following epitaph, whose clima tends rather to advance the glory of the surviving son than the defunc mother: "Great born, great married, greater brought to bed, In this grave her body remained till the year 1282, when the abbe church of Bec being rebuilt, the workmen discovered it, wrapped up i an ox-hide. The coffin was taken up, and, with great solemnity re interred in the middle of the chancel, before the high altar. The ancien tomb was removed to the same place, and, with the attention the churc of Rome ever showed to the memory of a foundress, erected over th new grave. This structure falling to decay in the seventeenth century its place was supplied by a fine monument of brass, with a pompou inscription. The character of this celebrated ancestress of our roya line was as much revered by the Normans as disliked by the English Besides Henry II. she was the mother of two sons, Geoffrey and William who both preceded her to the grave. queen Queen Eleanora was resident, during these events, at the palace o Woodstock, where prince John was born, in the year 1166. Henry completed the noble hall of the palace of Rouen, begun by Henry I and nearly finished by the empress Matilda. He sent for Eleanora from England, to bring her daughter, the princess Matilda, that she might be married to her affianced lord, Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, The nuptial feast was celebrated in the newly-finished hall of Rouenpalace, first opened for this stately banquet, 1167. Queen Eleanora was left regent of Normandy by her royal lord; but the people, discontented at the loss of the empress Matilda, rebelled against her authority; which insurrection obliged Henry to come to the aid of his wife. was Guienne and Poitou became in a state of revolt soon after. The people, who earnestly desired Eleanora, their native princess, to govern them, would not be pacified till Henry brought her, and left her at Bourdeaux with her son Richard. Henry, the heir of England, entitled the duke of Guienne; Eleanora's favourite son, Richard, was promised the county of Poitou, subject to vassalage to his brother and father. The princess Marguerite, the young wife of prince Henry, was left in Guienne with her mother-in-law, while Henry II. and his heir proceeded to England, then convulsed with the disputes between 1 "Ortu magna, viro major, sed maxima partu, Hic jacet Henrici filia, sponsa, parens." humed, for the fourth time, January 1847, with an inscription affirming that the chest 2 Her remains were discovered and ex- fragments of bones and silver lace, was found, when the ruins of the Benedictine church of contained the bones of the illustrious empress Bec (Hellouin) were demolished. According Matilda, &c. to the Moniteur, a leaden coffin, containing 3 Thierry. Tyrrell 70.] Governs her own dominions. 187 urch and state carried on by Becket. Queen Eleanora and prince chard remained at Bourdeaux, to the satisfaction of the people of the uth, who were delighted with the presence of their reigning family, though the Norman deputies of king Henry still continued to exercise 1 the real power of the government. The heart of Henry's son and heir still yearned to his old tutor, ecket,—an affection which the king beheld with jealousy. In order › wean his son from this attachment, in which the young princess [arguerite fully shared, Henry II. resolved, in imitation of the Capetian yal family, to have him crowned king in his lifetime. "Be glad, y son," said Henry II. to him, when he set the first dish on the table the coronation banquet in Westminster-hall; "there is no prince in urope has such a sewer 2 at his table!”—“No great condescension for Le son of an earl to wait on the son of a king," replied young Henry, ide to the earl of Leicester. The princess Marguerite was not crowned the same time with her husband; she remained in Aquitaine, with r mother-in-law, queen Eleanora. Her father, the king of France, is enraged at this slight offered to his daughter, and flew to arms to enge the affront, Yet it was no fault of king Henry, who had made ery preparation for the coronation of the princess, even to ordering r royal robes to be in readiness; but when Marguerite found that ecket, the guardian of her youth, was not to crown her, she perversely fused to share the coronation of her husband. The character of Henry II., during the long strife that subsisted tween him and his former friend, had changed from the calm heroism rtrayed by Peter of Blois; he had given way to fits of violence, onizing to himself and dangerous to his health. It was said, that hen any tidings came of the contradiction of his will by Becket, he ould tear his hair, and roll on the ground with rage, grasping handsful f rushes in the paroxysms of his passion.3 It was soon after one of hese frenzies of rage that, in 1170, he fell ill at Dromfront in Maine: e then made his will, believing his end approaching. To his son Ienry he left England, Normandy, Maine, and Anjou; to Richard, the quitanian dominions; Geoffrey had Bretagne, in right of his wife; hile John was left dependent on his brothers. From this order of fairs John obtained the nickname of Lackland, first given him by enry himself, in jest, after his recovery. During a fit of penitence, when he thought himself near death, Henry ught reconciliation with Becket. When, however, fresh contradictions ose between them, Henry, in one of those violent accessions of fury 1 Rog. Hov. 2 This being one of the functions of the and seneschal of France, which Henry had perform, as his feudal service at the coroation of a king of France, as count of Anjou, led to his performing the same office at his son's banquet. 3 Rog. Hov. 4 Brompton, Gervase. Rog. Hov. described above, unfortunately demanded, before the knights who tended in his bedchamber,1 " Whether no man loved him enough revenge the affronts he perpetually received from an insolent priest On this hint, Fitz-Urse, Tracy, Britton, and Morville slaughtered Becke before the altar in his cathedral, the last day of the year 1171. CHAPTER II. FROM the time of the marriage of her daughter Matilda to the Lion Saxony, Eleanora had not visited England. The coronation of her elde son and the murder of Becket had occurred while she resided in b native province. She had seen her favourite son Richard crowned cou of Poitou, with all the ceremonies pertaining to the inauguration of h ancestors. But king Henry only meant his sons to superintend t state and pageantry of a court; he did not intend that they should exerci independent authority, and Richard's will was curbed by the faithf Norman veterans pertaining to his father. These castellans were real governors of Guienne; an order of affairs equally disapproved of b prince Richard, queen Eleanora, and their Aquitanian subjects. Th queen told her sons, Richard and Geoffrey, that Guienne and Poito owed no obedience to a king of England, or to his Normans: if they owed homage to any one, it was to the sovereign of France; they resolved to act as their Provençal forefathers of old, and pay no homage to a king of England. All these fermentations were approaching a violent crisis, when Henry II., in the summer of 1173, arrived, with his son, the young king, in Guienne, to receive the long-delayed homage of count Raymond of Thoulouse. Count Raymond, although supported against Eleanora by his former enemy, Louis VII., was forced to succumb to the warlike energy of the first Plantagenet king of England. The day when the count of Thoulouse tendered his long-delayed homage to Henry II. as sovereign of Aquitaine, he took the opportunity of his position to sow mischief between Henry and his wife and sons. It was part of the duty of a feudal vassal to give his sovereign advice in time of need; and when Raymond of Thoulouse came to this part of his oath of homage, as he knelt before Henry II., he interpolated it with these emphatic words:"Then I advise you, king, to beware of your wife and sons. That very night the young king, although he always slept in his father's bedroom, escaped to the protection of his father-in-law, Louis VII. Simultaneously with the flight of young Henry, bis brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, decamped for Paris. Richard's griev 1 Fitz-Stephen calls the four who murdered the archbishop, the barons or servants of the king's bedchamber. Script. Rer. Franc. 3 lbid. |