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 ilclass="underline" 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.