QJnrneU Uttiuerattg ffiihrarg 
 
 atljaca, Jfem fork 
 
 Miaa Anne McCormick 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIB['IA'J\ 
 
 3 1924 087 994 095 
 
The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924087994095 
 
LIVES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
VICTORIA EDITION 
 
 OF WHICH ONLY 
 
 ONE THOUSAND COMPLETE COPIES ARE PRINTED 
 
 FOR SALE 
 
 COPY NUMBER- 
 
 620 
 
 BOUND FOR 
 
 ANNE McCORMICK 
 
Stepljen 
 
 From an Ancient Painting in Hampton Court 
 
LIVES OF THE 
 
 QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST 
 
 COMPILED FROM OFFICIAL RECORDS AND OTHER AUTHENTIC 
 DOCUMENTS, PRIVATE AS WELL AS PUBLIC, BY 
 
 PRECEDED BY A BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION BY 
 IN SIXTEEN VOLUMES, WITH PLATES 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 $)i)ilai)elpt)ia 
 
 PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY BY 
 
 GEORGE BARRIE & SONS 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY GEORGE BARRIE i SON 
 
ffinccn bictorio 
 
 From the Painting by Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant 
 
-?^,^A^t^^ ^903,^&'^M'U«' ^J^**^ 
 
TO 
 
 HER MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY 
 OUR SOVEREIGN LADY QUEEN VICTORIA, 
 
 Ei)( ILibes 
 
 of 
 
 Ef)t (©ue^ns of IBnglanJj 
 
 ARE. BY GRACIOUS PERMISSION. 
 
 3n3txibeb, 
 
 WITH FEELINGS OF PROFOUND RESPECT AND LOYAL AFFECTION. 
 
 BY HER MAJESTY'S FAITHFUL SUBJECT AND 
 
 DEVOTED SERVANT. 
 
 AGNES STRICKLAND. 
 
iSiograpf)ical introtiuction 
 
 Few historical works liave ever acquired a popularity so 
 iminediate and continuous as that of the "Lives of the 
 Queens of England." Published originally in twelve 
 volumes (London, 1840-48), it ran quickly through several 
 editions, of one of which alone, that of 1864-5, ia six 
 volumes, more than eleven thousand copies were sold. 
 The first American reprint appeared in Philadelphia 
 almost simultaneously with the original publication in 
 England. Subsequent issues have conformed to the text 
 of the revised editions, published in 1853, 1854, and 
 subsequently, in eight volumes, and illustrated with por- 
 traits of all the queens. On both sides of the Atlautic 
 the book has still a steady sale, and copies in public libra- 
 ries are in frequent request. The attractiveness of the 
 subject, as well as of the treatment, has always commended 
 it to a far wider class of readers than those who take a 
 special interest in historical studies; while the fulness of 
 its details and the labor expended in its preparation have 
 ensured it against rivalry in the field which it was the 
 first to occupy. 
 
 The work destined to attain to this fortunate position 
 was the composition of two maiden ladies, daughters of 
 Thomas Strickland, of Eeydon Hall, near Southwold, Suf- 
 folk, and of his second wife, Elizabeth Homer. The 
 elder sister, born in 1794, and named after her mother, 
 had an equal share with the younger in the execution of 
 the work; but her invincible aversion to pubHcity led her, 
 in this, as in other instances, to refuse to allow her name 
 
\dii BIOGKAPHIOAL INTKODUCTION". 
 
 to appear om the title page.^ Henoe the credit and re- 
 sponsibility of the achievement have been usually assigned 
 to Agnes, despite her own. acknowledgment of her sister's 
 collaboration. She is the "Miss Strickland" who is com- 
 monly spoken of as the author of the work, and this is, in 
 a measure, justified by the fact that it owed its inception 
 to her, and that she took the more active part in securing 
 the opportunities for research necessary for its successful 
 accomplishment. 
 
 Bom in London on the 19th of August, 1796, Agnes 
 Strickland was the second of a family of nine children, 
 four of whom, besides Elizabeth and herself, became 
 known as authors.^ Their eariy taste for literature was 
 derived from and encouraged by their father, who took 
 the chief part in the education of his elder daughters, 
 and incited and directed them especially in the pursuit 
 of historical and antiquarian studies. Unhappily, he did 
 not live to witness the fruit of his labors. He died in 1818 
 of gout — a disease from which he had long suffered at 
 intervals, and the final attacks of which were aggravated 
 
 ' The biographies written by Elizabeth occupy somewhat less 
 space than those by Agnes, but exceed them In number. They are 
 those of Adelicla of Louvalne, Bleanora of Agultaine, Berengaria of 
 Navarre, Isabella of AngoulSme, Marguerite of France, Philippa of 
 Hainault, Anne of Bohemia, Bleanora of Castile, Isabella of Valois, 
 Katherine of Valois, Elizabeth Woodville, Anne of Warwick, Elizabeth 
 of York, Katharine of Arragon, Jane Seym-our, Mary Tudor, Anne 
 of Denmark, Henrietta Maria, Mary II., Queen Regnant, and Anne, 
 Queen Regnant. 
 
 ^ These were Jane Margaret (1800-1888) who, besides some books 
 for children, wrote the "Life of Agnes Strickland," and "Rome 
 Republican and Eegal: a Family History of Rome;" Mrs. Susanna 
 Moodle (1803-1885) who published several novels, but is better known 
 by the spirited account of her Canadian life entitled "Roughing 
 it in the Bush;" Samuel (1809-1867), whose "Twenty-seven Years 
 In Canada West" embodied much information vfiluable to Intending 
 colonists; and Mrs. Catharine Parr Traill (b. 1802) and still living 
 In 1899) the list of whose publications includes juvenile and other 
 stories, descriptions of Canadian life and scenery, and an illustrated 
 work entitled "Studies of Plant Life; or, Floral Gleanings by Forest, 
 Lake, and Plain," Ottawa, 1885. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. ix 
 
 by mental distress arising from the loss of the greater 
 paxt of his fortune. 
 
 "We are told that this chajige of circnmstanees led the 
 two sisters to engage in literature as a means of support. 
 They were not, however, without independent resources, 
 and their joint career of authorship did not begin till 
 many years later, after Agnes had made some not very 
 successful attempts in poetry, the first that appeared in 
 book form being a metrical romance entitled "Worcester 
 Field, or the Cavalier," published in 1827, which was 
 followed in the same year by "The Seven Ages of Woman 
 and other Poems." Better fortune attended the first 
 ventures in prose of the sisters working in conjunction, 
 though then, as always afterwards, under a single name. 
 These were some books for the young, two of which, "His- 
 torical Tales of Illustrious British Children" (1833), and 
 "Tales and Stories from History" (two volumes, 1836), 
 passed through several editions, and were reprinted in 
 America. Two works by Agnes, "Demetrius," a poem, 
 and "The Pilgrims of Walsingham," a series of tales of 
 the Middle Ages, in three volumes, were published respec- 
 tively in 1833 and 1835; but neither of these brought any 
 increase of reputation, nor did her productions or those 
 of her sister at this period indicate the power to grapple 
 with important themes or to win the ear of the general 
 public. 
 
 But now a happy inspiration, favored by circumstances, 
 opened the way to a sudden and great success. In 1837, 
 Elizabeth Strickland was editing the "Court Journal," to 
 which she contributed some short biographies of female 
 sovereigns. Agnes thereupon conceived the idea of an 
 elaborate work, to bear the title of "Memoirs of the Queens 
 of England from the Norman Conquest." The moment 
 was propitious. The accession to the throne of a youthful 
 princess had just taken place, and had been hailed 
 
X BIOGEAPHICAL INTEODUCTION". 
 
 throughout the British dominions with demonstrations of 
 sympathy and attachment far exceeding the ordinary pro- 
 fessions of loyalty on such occasions. Application was 
 made for permission to dedicate the intended work to the 
 Queen, and this having been graciously accorded, the fact 
 was ann.ouneed when, in 1839, the first volume was ready 
 for the press. The title thus prematurely made public was 
 immediately appropriated by another writer, whose "His- 
 torical Memoirs of the . Queens of England from the 
 Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century," in two volumes, ap- 
 peared in December of the same year. The Stricklands 
 were at first dismayed on seeing their project apparently 
 forestalled, and Agnes was incHned to abandon it. Eliza- 
 beth, however, insisted on its prosecution, while suggesting 
 the change of title to one that was an obvious improve- 
 ment on that which had been originally adopted. Nor 
 was there, in fact, any occasion for discouragement. The 
 work of their would-be rivals attracted little attention; it 
 never reached a second edition, and the name of the au- 
 thor, Miss Hannah Lawrance, is now chiefly noticeable 
 for her lon,g life, which extended from 1795 to 1895. 
 
 The task to which the sisters had devoted themselves 
 was undertaken with a full comprehension of the labor it 
 involved, and their plan was formed in a true historical 
 spirit suHiciently rare at that tame. Their early training 
 had habituated them to the work of investigation, and 
 the conspicuous characters and events of English history 
 in particular had filled their memories and excited their 
 imaginations. Agnes, while still in her teens, had read 
 and re-read the ponderous folios of Eapin and similar 
 now forgotten works; and, less propitiously for the proper 
 execution of their present task, both sisters had imbibed 
 from their reading a passionate sentiment in favor of the 
 House of Stewart, despite the opposite opinion of their 
 father, who was a strong admirer of William III. ajid the 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 Eevolution. But in this respect they shared the common 
 feeling of a time when Jacobitism, though extinct as a 
 practical political piinciple, had been revived as a senti- 
 mental creed through the popularity of the "Waverley 
 novels. 
 
 It was on Agnes, as already mentioned, that the duty 
 devolved of obtaining access to the depositaries, public 
 and private, where materials of tho kind required might 
 be found; and for this she was the better fitted by her 
 social instincts and personal attractiveness. She was tall, 
 finely formed and singularly graceful, with a face, which 
 if not beautiful, was handsome and expressive.^ The 
 poet Campbell, with whom she had an interview during a 
 short stay in London, in 1837 (when she had also the 
 pleasure of shaking hands with Sir "Walter Scott), de- 
 scribed her to his friends as "a lovely, interesting creature, 
 full of genius and sensibility." From the time when she 
 became generally known, she was a welcome guest in high 
 social circles, and a frequent visitor at country houses, 
 while the regard ia which she was held is further attested 
 by her many close and enduring friendships with persons 
 of culture and distinction. The relations thus formed did 
 much to facilitate the prosecution of her historical re- 
 searches. When a first application for permission to ex- 
 amine the manuscripts in the State Paper Office was re- 
 jected by Lord John Eussell, powerful influence was 
 brought to bear, with the result that the sisters obtained 
 separate orders granting them all the facilities they re- 
 quired. Among the private archives and collections 
 
 » There are two portraits of her— one painted In 1846, which la 
 now in the National Portrait Gallery, the other of a much later date. 
 The former was engraved In London in 1850, and in Philadelphia, 
 by Sartain, in 1857, and forms the frontispiece to the standard 
 editions of the "Lives of the Qneens." It confirms the description 
 of her by her sister as having a pale complexion and black eyes 
 and hair. 
 
XU BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 which were promptly and freely opened to their inspection 
 were those of the Duke of Devonshire, of Sir Thomas 
 Phillips, of Middle Hill, of the Howards of Corby Castle, 
 and of the Stricklands of Sizergh, an ancient family with 
 which their own claimed a connection which seems to have 
 been admitted, though it is said to be unsupported by di- 
 rect documentary evidence. 
 
 A reception not less favorable was accorded to them in 
 France, which they visited together in 1844, for the pur- 
 pose of consulting and transcribing unpublished docu- 
 ments, especially in reference to Mary of Modena, the 
 wife of James II., whose years of exile with her husband 
 were passed at St. Germains. The interest of Guizot, then 
 premier, had already been enlisted by the high opinion he 
 had formed of their work from the volumes already pub- 
 lished. He granted them a long interview, and furnished 
 them with introductions which procured them admission 
 to the Archives du Eoyaume and the Archives des Affaires 
 Etrang^res. Other distinguished persons, archivists and 
 scholars, among them Miguet, Miehelet, ChampoUion, and 
 Dumont, gave them valuable assistance, especially by caus- 
 ing search to be made for documents connected with the 
 subject of their investigation. A letter from Agnes gives 
 this account of their first visit to Miehelet at the H6tel 
 Soubise, where the national archives are preserved: 
 
 "We were received by him with great courtesy; and he 
 told us that the employees in the Archives had succeeded 
 in finding a little regarding our purpose. We were then 
 introduced to a room adjoining his own, and presented 
 with three packets, all in the well-known hand of the 
 Queen of James II. These letters were ostensibly sup- 
 posed only to consist of her correspondence with Madame 
 Priolo, the Superior of the Convent of Chaillot, but they 
 really contained other matters of great interest. Soon 
 after, a considerable manuscript was brought to us eon- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xiii 
 
 taining anecdotes of her life. Then within the packets 
 we found not only the will of this princess, but a most 
 precious narrative of her escape, and the names of the 
 ladies who quitted England with her and shared her exile 
 — Lady Strickland being the one first mentioned by her 
 royal mistress. I showed the name to M. Michelet, who 
 made us a low bow, partly to us and partly to the name 
 of our relative, and said, 'C'est une circonstanee tr^s in- 
 teressante/ as indeed it was. We set to work for two 
 hours in good earnest, to the evident surprise of the 
 French ofiicials." 
 
 Before the completion of the 'lives of the Queens of 
 England," the Stricklands were already planning another 
 work, demanding almost an equal amount of labor, the 
 chief part of which was undertaken by Agnes. At an 
 early period she had become deeply interested in the story 
 of that Scottish Queen around whose name and fateful 
 career has raged a more heated and prolonged controversy, 
 with stronger manifestations of sympathy and admiration 
 on the one side and of aversion and execration on the 
 other, than can be paralleled in the case of any other 
 woman. On which side Miss Strickland would array her- 
 self could not be a matter of doubt, and the further she 
 extended her researches the more ardent became her 
 championship of the ill-starred queen. She began by 
 collecting, translating and editing, with an historical in- 
 troduction and notes, "Letters of Mary, Queen of Scots, 
 illustrative of her Personal History, now first pubhshed 
 from the Originals." The first edition, in three volumes, 
 appeared in 1843-3; the second, in two volumes, in the 
 latter year; while a complete and final one, in five volumes, 
 was issued in 1864. The labor connected with this work 
 was preparatory to a fuller biography of Mary than any 
 that existed, while the success of the "Queens of England" 
 naturally suggested the preparation of a companion series. 
 
XIV BIOGEAPHICAL IKTRODUCTION. 
 
 The -work, however, took a range beyond the limits orig- 
 inally intended, being entitled "Lives of the Qneens of 
 Scotland and English Princesses connected with the Eoyal 
 Succession of Great Britain." It was published in 1851- 
 59, in eight volumes, five of which were devoted to Mary 
 Stuart, and were, with some of the minor biographies, 
 the work of Agnes alone.'- 
 
 Three other joint productions remain to be mentioned 
 — "Lives of the Bachelor Kings of England," "Lives of 
 the Seven Bishops who were committed to the Tower in 
 1688," and Lives of the Tudor Princesses, including Lady 
 Jane Grey and her Sisters" — published respectively, each 
 in one volume, in 1861, 1866, and 1868. Another book 
 of the same character, "Lives of the Last Pour Princesses 
 of the Eoyal House of Stuart," published in 1872, was 
 the work of Agnes alone, and was the last production of 
 her prolific pen. In the intervals between her more im- 
 portant publications she had issued three which require 
 to be mentioned merely as completing the list. These 
 are, "Historic Scenes and Poetic Pancies," 1850; "Old 
 Friends and ITew Acquaintances" (two series), 1860, and 
 "How Will It End?" a novel in three volumes, which ap- 
 peared in 1865 and came to a second edition in the same 
 year. 
 
 The merit and attractiveness of the 'TLives of the 
 Queens of England" do not consist in the features which, 
 singly or in combination, characterize the works of highly 
 accomplished historians, such as grace or distinction of 
 style, vigor of thought, or brilliant expositions of the 
 causes and course of great political movements. On the 
 other hand, in respect to wide and minute research, the 
 Strieklands stand on a level with, or above, most of the 
 
 > Elizabeth's share In this series comprised the lives of Margaret 
 Tudor, Countess of Lenox, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bavaria, and 
 Sophia, ElectresB of Hanover. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 distinguished writers who have dealt with the same periods 
 of English history; and the result is a wealth of detail, 
 illustratiYe of character and manners, lying for the most 
 part outside the compass or the scope of ordinary histories. 
 Often, no doubt, the incidents seem trivial, partaking of 
 the character of aneodotical gossip. But even these have 
 an interest for all but the severer class of readers, while 
 the total effect is a reproduction of the life of the past, 
 the early lack of which in strictly historical narratives 
 gave rise to that hybrid, though often highly attractive, 
 form of literature, the historical romance. 
 
 It must be admitted that this effect is gained less by 
 any graphic power in the presentation of the facts than 
 by the copious extracts from letters, reported conversa- 
 tions, and other contemporaneous documents, so continu- 
 ously interwoven with the narrative. This method of 
 writing is sometimes objected to as inartistic, being incom- 
 patible with the harmonious impression to be derived 
 from a mode of treatment by which the material is so re- 
 moulded as to preserve a continuity of style. But, after 
 all, the proper object of a narrative of historical events 
 is to inspire the reader with a sense of their reality, and it 
 is undeniable that this is often impaired by a process of 
 modelUng which excites admiration by its uniform bril- 
 liancy and sMU. Thus the stately periods of Gibbon, 
 abounding as they do in information and unfolding in 
 their weU-ordered sequence the progressive development 
 of his momentous theme, leave us nevertheless conscious 
 of a lack, the nature of which will be better apprehended 
 if we turn to the less ambitious work of Mr. Hodgkin, 
 "Italy and its Invaders," which, largely by means of its 
 excerpts from the original sources, enables us to get a 
 vivid idea of many a personage and scene that on the pages 
 of the more famous historian makes no such appeal to 
 our imagination. So, too, when Macaulay, in rhetorically 
 
XVI BIOGRAPHICAL INTEODUCTION. 
 
 balanced sentences, reports the arguments of different 
 speakers at the Council-board or in Parliament, the con- 
 summate art with which this is done does not disguise 
 the fact that the utterances have undergone a transmuta- 
 tion, that their characteristic form has been effaced, that 
 we are listening, not to Halifax or Shrewsbury, but to 
 Maeaulay himself. However much we may admire, we 
 are under no illusion. Though the hand be that of Esau, 
 the voice is clearly that of Jacob. 
 
 The method adopted by the Strieklands was the only 
 one by which they, at least, could have accomplished work 
 of real utility and established a solid reputation. They 
 would never have achieved this success if they had clothed 
 all the material they so industriously collected in their 
 own language — in a form, that is to say, requiring 
 weightier qualities than they possessed to gain acceptance 
 either from the student or from the general reader. On 
 the other hand it was not by the mere accumulation and 
 reproduction of original material, such as a Dryasdust 
 might have made, that they won the approbation of either 
 class. Whatever their demerits in other respects, they 
 were guided in the selection of their extracts by a true 
 and fine perception of what would best illustrate the char- 
 acters, actions and surroundings of their heroines; while 
 the connecting links of the narrative are not in general 
 such as to detract from the effect. 
 
 Of contemporaneous testimonies to the interest and 
 value of the work, it is sufficient to cite those of three 
 historians, of different nations, each eminent in his own 
 field. Guizot, in acknowledging the reception of the first 
 two volumes of the "Lives of the Queens of England," 
 writes to Agnes in 1840, "I have read them. Mademoi- 
 selle, with Uvely pleasure. It is a charming work. You 
 have studied from the source, and presented your facts 
 singularly exempt from dryness. My perusal being fin- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL INTBODUCTION. Xvii 
 
 ished, I have sent your book to my daughters . . . 
 who will read them in their turn with the lively pleasure 
 natural to their age." Lingard, who was then engaged in 
 the revision of his "History of England," wrote about the 
 same time to Mr. Howard, of Corby, "I have snatched a 
 few moments now and then to read Miss Strickland's 
 work, which you have had the kindness to send me. It 
 afforded me great pleasure, bringing to my recollection 
 many anecdotes which I had forgotten, and making me 
 acquainted with many that I had never met with — at 
 least as far as I can recollect. ... I should say that 
 Miss Strickland's promises to be a very favourite book, 
 particularly among the ladies. ... I am happy that 
 she has become a sister of the craft, and that she will do 
 honour to the body." Several years later, in the preface 
 to the new edition of his work, after acknowledging his 
 indebtedness to the editors of various documentary collec- 
 tions recently issued, he adds: "There remains, however, 
 one name that shall not be passed over in silence, — that 
 of a female writer. Miss Agnes Strickland, whose claim to 
 the distinction is of a difEerent kind, and peculiarly her 
 own, — the discovery of a new mine of historic lore pre- 
 viously unexplored; a mine which she has also worked 
 with great success in those attractive volumes, her "lives 
 of the Queens of England." Finally, Prescott, in a note 
 in his "History of Philip the Second," writes," Miss Strick- 
 land's interesting volumes are particularly valuable to the 
 historian for the copious extracts they contain from cu- 
 rious unpublished documents, which had escaped the 
 notice of writers too exclusively occupied with pohtical 
 events to give much heed to details of a domestic and 
 personal nature." Prescott had, in fact, listened with 
 avidity to the reading of the volumes comprising the lives 
 of Mary Tudor and Elizabeth, finding in them abundant 
 matter of a kind that gratified a taste which he shared 
 
Xviii BIOGRAPHICAL INTEODUCTION. 
 
 with the authors and with the general mass of readers, 
 as well as aids in the special study in which he was then 
 engaged. It was not his way to leave such a service un- 
 acknowledged, or to speak condescendingly of iihose who 
 had rendered it. In 1850, when visiting the tombs in 
 Westminster Abbey, in company with Dean Milman, the 
 historian Hallam, Lady Lyell, and others, he cited Miss 
 Strickland as an authority in regard to facts connected 
 with the subject of one of the monuments, turning to 
 the present writer to confirm his recollection; and, when 
 Lady Lyell smilingly demurred to his estimation of an 
 authoress whom probably no one else in the company 
 ranked quite so high, he repeated it with at least as much 
 warmth as he was in the habit of showing in the defence 
 of his opinions. 
 
 The diligence of the Stricklands in their search for and 
 examination of historical manuscripts is the worthier of 
 commemoration from the fact that, at the time when they 
 entered the field, little had been done in England by the 
 government or by learned societies to smooth the path of 
 the explorer. The first volume of the Camden Society's 
 publications appeared in 1838, and it was not till thirty 
 years later that the printing began of the great series of 
 state papers and other documents stiU in course of issue 
 under the supervision of the Master of the Rolls. More- 
 over, the public repositories of historical manuscripts were 
 often in a state of confusion, and few students, except 
 mere antiquarians and genealogists sought access to them. 
 In short, as regarded English history, the era of investi- 
 gation which has since had so active a reign, can scarcely 
 be said to have commenced. Hume, whose History of 
 England was still the standard work on the subject, had 
 been notoriously indolent in the matter of research. 
 Lingard, though as superior to his predecessor in learning 
 and industry as he was his inferior in literary skill, made 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL IKTRODUCTION. Xix 
 
 no personal explorations in public or priTate archives, con- 
 tenting himself with such transcripts of manuscripts as 
 were furnished him hy others, chiefly from the Library of 
 the Vatican. One person, indeed, Sir James Mackintosh, 
 had projected a History of England based on thorough re- 
 search, and partly by his own labor, partly through the 
 contributions of a great number of representatives of his- 
 torical families, had accumulated a mass of manuscript 
 material filling, when arranged, fifty volumes, of which 
 Maeaulay has written, "I have never seen, and I do not 
 believe that there anywhere exists, within the same com- 
 pass, so noble a collection of extracts from public and 
 private archives." But it was not Mackintosh, but Ma- 
 eaulay himself who ultimately utilized this collection, and 
 the first fruits of his labor did not appear till after the 
 publication of the "Lives of the Queens of England." It 
 need scarcely be added that the names of Froude, Free- 
 man, Green, and Gardiner were at that time unknown in 
 connection with the study of English history. 
 
 The Stricklands are therefore justly to be ranked among 
 the earliest pioneers in a field which has since been so 
 extensively cultivated. It seems, indeed, not too much to 
 say that they were the first writers on Enghsh history 
 having in view the general mass of readers who recognized 
 the necessity of going to the primary sources of informa- 
 tion, and bringing the greatest possible amount of light 
 to bear upon the subject which they had undertaken to 
 treat. And besides working assiduously in the State 
 Paper Office, the library of the British Museum, the Bod- 
 leian library at Oxford, and the muniment rooms of pri- 
 vate castles, they availed themselves in a greater degree 
 than was then common of opportunities to visit localities 
 associated with the scenes and events they were to describe. 
 Agnes, especially, spent much time in this way, and her 
 enthusiasm in the pursuit reached its acme when she 
 
XX BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 turned from the study of the English queens to that of 
 Mary Stuart. In repeated visits to Scotland and the north 
 of England she seems to have traversed all the ground 
 which her heroine had passed over, explored the palaces 
 and castles where she had resided as a sovereign or lan- 
 guished as a captive, and mused with reverence and pity 
 over the extant relics of her grandeur and her misfortunes. 
 Everywhere she met not only with the guidance and assis- 
 tance she required, hut with the most hospitajble enter- 
 tainment, and the fatigues of travel and research were 
 exceeded by those of social festivities. In a letter from 
 Lenmoxlove, the abode of her friend Lady Blantyre, she 
 speaks of an interval of '"blessed rest" — "for," she adds, 
 "though there has been company all the week, and more 
 are coming next, I have been able to work my difficult 
 chapters, and to nurse my bad cold. I write, too, in my 
 own room, by a good fire, till one. Then take a long stroll 
 in the lovely gardens and park, then work again after 
 lunch-time." 
 
 Her way of life was, it must be owned, very difEerent 
 from that of the student who, wholly absorbed in his work, 
 shuts himself up in seclusion. She had herself an oppor- 
 tunity of observing the contrast when she passed a few 
 days at Brougham Castle, where the famous ex-chancellor, 
 then immersed in scientific researches, seldom left his own 
 apartment till dinner time, when he showed himself morose 
 and irritable. "With Agnes Strickland, a frequent partici- 
 pation in the functions and gayeties of society, instead of 
 being a mere distraction or even a necessary stimulant to 
 her work, was its natural accompaniment. Her tastes in 
 this direction and her fondness for witnessing scenes of 
 pageantry and pomp might be reckoned among her quali- 
 fications for depicting the ceremonial life of former agea. 
 What more natural or legitimate than that she who had to 
 describe so many coronations should eagerly avail herself 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xxl 
 
 of an opportunity to be present at that of the youthful 
 Victoria? After her presentation at court, she was a regu- 
 lar attendant at the "drawing-roomfi," whether held by 
 the queen in person or by one of the princesses. At a 
 ball at the vice-regal lodge in Dublin, in 1861, the Prince 
 of Wales, in whose honor it was given, desired that she 
 should be introduced to him, and expressed the pleasure 
 he had derived from her books, though, speaking of the 
 "Bachelor Kings," he assured her he "did not mean to be 
 one." Nor was the recognition of her role as the historiog- 
 rapher of female royalty confined to persons of exalted 
 station. When, in 1865, she was present at the Oxford 
 "Commemoration," in the Sheldonian Theatre, the under- 
 graduates saluted her on her entrance, with shouts of "The 
 Queens! The Queens! Three cheers for the Queens!" 
 But it is time to turn from the record of the praises 
 and honors thus lavished upon her to the adverse criticism 
 of which she was also the object. Some of this may be 
 dismissed without scrutiny, as obviously dictated by the 
 jealousy and spite provoked by her sudden access of popu- 
 larity. It is different with the charge most frequently 
 brought against her, that of a lack of impartiality — a 
 strong and prevailing bias in favor of the House of Stuart, 
 and an unfair treatment of its opponents. There are, 
 it is true, few historical writers who have not been subject 
 to similar imputations, and the spirit of partizanship has, 
 in the common opinion, betrayed itself as clearly on the 
 opposite side in the works of Macaulay and Froude. Nor 
 has the censure in her case been altogether unqualified. 
 In an elaborate article on the 'TLives of the Queens of 
 England," in the "Edinburgh Eeview," the writer, after 
 remarking that "to all the princes of the unhappy house 
 of Stuart, Miss Strickland bears true and indiscriminate 
 allegiance," and that "not even the coarse absurdities of 
 James I. can exhaust her benevolent interest for his 
 
xxii BIOGEAPHICAL IKTEODTTCTION. 
 
 credit," goes on to obserre: "Her love and veneration for 
 Ms unfortunate son [Charles I.] are more intelUgible feel- 
 ings; and we are bound to say that she has but rarely suf- 
 fered them to betray her into approbation or defence of 
 his political misconduct." 
 
 It was, however, in her Life of the Queen of Scots that 
 she revealed herself completely as an impassioned advocate 
 and eulogist. Mary is, with her, simply a victim,^ the 
 innocent, pitiable, adorable victim of Scottish conspiracy 
 and English statecraft. Apart from Miss Strickland's 
 political prepossessions, all her feminine instincts were 
 aroused in defense of a woman so beautiful, so accom- 
 pHshed, at once so high-spirited and so full of graciousness 
 and charm, who in a time of settled order and tranquillity 
 might have reigned a very queen of hearts, but who, placed 
 by fate in a centre of turbulence and fierce conflicting fac- 
 tions, walked ever among pitfalls, and after an unparalleled 
 series of adventures and calamities, throughout which she 
 bore herself, if not wisely, yet courageously, received at 
 last her death-warrant from the royal kinswoman to whom 
 she had fled for protection. There are not many persons 
 at the present day who take this one-sided view of Mary's 
 career, regarding all her misfortunes as unmerited and all 
 her adversaries as criminals. Yet there are probably still 
 fewer who are content to abide by the harsh verdict of 
 Froude, who, pursues her with obloquy and contempt 
 down to her death upon the scafEold, and dismisses her at 
 last with the curt and summary pronouncement that "she 
 was a bad woman." That she was accessory to the murder 
 of Damley and that she plotted against Elizabeth are 
 points that seem no longer to admit of dispute. But when 
 one remembers the circumstances of her education, the 
 character of the age, the perils and the temptations that 
 surrounded her, and the insults and outrages that were 
 heaped upon her, it seems to need the robust conscience 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. Xxiil 
 
 of the wholesale apologist of Henry the Eighth to cast 
 unmeasured condemnation on poor Mary Stuart. It re- 
 mains only to add that from an imputation which is often 
 coupled with the charge of partizanship, that of suppress- 
 ing or garbling evidence, the Stricklands are entirely 
 exempt. 
 
 During the most active period of their joint authorship^ 
 the sisters, though they passed much of their time in 
 London or the neighborhood for the convenience of their 
 work, had their permanent home with their mother, at 
 Eeydon Hall. But in 1865, Mrs. Strickland having died, 
 in her ninety-second year, Agnes leased a house, "Park 
 Lane Cottage," in Southwold — a pleasant little town on 
 the coast of Suffolk — while Elizabeth went to reside at 
 Bayswater, near Kensington Gardens, removing some 
 years later to a small property which she had purchased, 
 ''Abbot's Lodge," near Tilford, Surrey. At the outset of 
 their career they had been very inadequately remunerated 
 for their labors, owing to an unfortunate contract with 
 Colbum, the original publisher of the 'Tiives of the 
 Queens of England." After his death, in 1863, Agnes 
 repurchased the copyright for £1863 15s. 6d. — a somewhat 
 larger sum than he had paid for it — and her subsequent ar- 
 rangements with other publishers — ^the Longmans, Bell 
 and Daldy, and the Blackwoods, who published the 
 'Tjives of the Queens of Scotland" — seem to have been mu- 
 tually satisfactory. In 1870, having met with some pecu- 
 niary losses, she received from Mr. Gladstone a notice that 
 she had been granted a pension of £100 a year. At this 
 period, though now seventy-four years old, her literary 
 activity had sufiered little or no abatement, and her visits 
 to different places, whether for historical investigation or 
 for social purposes were still not infrequent. In 1869 she 
 went to the Hague, to examine the archives in connection 
 with her work on the Stuart princesses, and while there 
 
XXIV BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 had a long interview with the queen (Sophia Frederica) 
 of Holland, one of the most accomplished women of her 
 time and especially versed in the study of history. After 
 the completion of this book she prepared a revised edition 
 of her life of Mary Stuart, which appeared, in two vol- 
 umes, in 1873. But her labors had already been cut short 
 by a disastrous accident. In June, 1872, while descending 
 a staircase, she fell and fractured her right leg just above 
 the ankle. Paralysis supervened; and though she recov- 
 ered sufficiently to be able to take short walks supported 
 by her maid and by a stick, her speech remained impaired, 
 her handwriting became almost illegible, and her intel- 
 lectual faculties were perceptibly clouded. She lingered 
 for over two years, dying serenely, after an apparent clear- 
 ing of her mind, on the 13th of July, 1874, when she had 
 nearly completed her seventy-eighth year. The sister who 
 had been the companion of her labors did not long survive 
 her; she died at the age of eighty, on the 30th of April, 
 1875. 
 
 The career of these two women was useful and honor- 
 able, and their lives were, on the whole, singularly happy, 
 made so chiefly by absorption in a pursuit well-suited to 
 their tastes, and, in all essential respects, to their powers. 
 Whatever deduction may be made on grounds already 
 mentioned, the value and interest of their most important 
 work are such as to entitle it to a high place among 
 similar productions — ^we may even say a unique place 
 among those of writers of the same sex. If we detect in 
 it the same lack of breadth and grasp of thought which is 
 characteristic of the works of earlier and contemporaneous 
 female historians, it is Hfted far above them by its constant 
 display of fresh and conscientious research, and if, on the 
 other hand, there are some histories by female writers of 
 the present day that bear the stamp of a trained scholar- 
 ship, comprehensive study, and masculine vigor of treat- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XXV 
 
 ment, these are works which only select readers can be 
 expected to appreciate. The works of the Stricklands fill 
 a niche of their own, of which they are not likely to be 
 dispossessed. As a recent, not too friendly critic, remarks, 
 they "contain pictures of the court, of society, and of 
 domestic life not to be found elsewhere."^ Another living 
 writer, whose own admirable studies in English history 
 add weight to his judgment, says, in reference to Queen 
 Elizabeth, "Miss Strickland's Life, with all its shortcom- 
 ings, is the best personal memoir of the queen that has 
 yet appeared."^ The statement would be equally true if 
 extended to the other Lives in the same series. The work 
 it may be safely said, will long continue to be read with 
 pleasure and profit. 
 
 John Fostee Kihk. 
 
 ' Article by Miss Elizabeth Lee, in the Dictionary of National 
 Biography, vol. 59, p. 50. 
 
 ' Article by Rev. Augnstus Jessop, Ibid., vol. 17, p. 231. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 Miss Strickland's text refers in places to illustrations 
 which have been omitted in this edition, for the reason 
 that the aim of the artist seems to have been to make a 
 pretty drawing rather than an exact one. 
 
^Preface 
 
 tolf)e 
 
 fSithmXi, Complete iSirition 
 
 Many years have elapsed since the first voliune of these 
 royal biographies issued from, the press: fresh impressions 
 of every successive volume have been repeatedly required, 
 yet it was not till the completion of the undertaking that 
 the work could be reprinted with perfect uniformity as a 
 whole. 
 
 A revised edition, emibodying the collections which have 
 been broug'ht to light since the appearance of earlier im- 
 pressions, is now offered to the world. Whatever im- 
 provements, however, may have been effected in the ex- 
 ternal form and fashion of our Queens, we never can 
 contemplate them in their new costume with the same 
 feelings with which we have been wont to recognize the 
 well-thumbed copies of the first familiax editions, in the 
 hands of gentle readers of all ages and degrees, on the 
 decks of steamboats, in railroad carriages, and other places 
 of general resort, where stranger links of the great chain 
 of life and intelligence are accidentally drawn together for 
 the journey of a day, never perchance to meet again. Not 
 unfrequently on such occasions have we been obligingly 
 offered a peep into "the new volume" by courteous fellow- 
 travellers, unknown to us, who suspected not how inti- 
 mately we were acquainted with its contents, far less how 
 
XXVIH PREFACE. 
 
 many a toilsome day and sleepless night it had cost us to 
 trace out the actions and characteristics of many of the 
 royal heroines of these biographies, of whom little beyond 
 their names was previously known. 
 
 The personal histories of the Anglo-Norman, several of 
 the Plantagenet, and even two or three of the Tudor and 
 Stuart queen-consorts, were involved in scarcely less ob- 
 scurity than those of their British and Anglo-Saxon prede- 
 cessors. Dimly, however, as their memorials floated over 
 the surface of general history, they afforded indubitable 
 evidence that substantial matter connected with those 
 shadows would, on diligent search, be discovered, as, in- 
 deed, the result has proved. Documentary historians alone 
 can appreciate the difficulties, the expense, the injury to 
 health, to say nothing of the sacrifice of more profitable 
 literary pursuits, that have been involved in this under- 
 taking. The hope that the Lives of the Queens of England 
 might be regarded as a national undertaking, honorable to 
 the female character, and generally useful to society, en- 
 couraged us to the completion of the task. 
 
 The historical biographer's business, however zealously 
 and carefully performed in the first instance, when break- 
 ing unwrought ground, must be often repeated before all the 
 widely-scattered and deeply-buried treasures of the past 
 can be collected together. Truth lies not on the substra^ 
 turn, but, as the wisdom of ages bears testimony, in a well, 
 which only those who will take the trouble of digging deeply 
 can find, although it be easy enough to draw when once the 
 sealed-up fountain has been discovered and opened. This 
 observation is peculiarly applicable to those documents 
 which, after slumbering forgotten for centuries in their 
 secret depositories, are at last brought forward, like in- 
 corruptible witnesses in a perplexing trial, to conftite the 
 subtleties of some specious barrister who has exerted the 
 persuasive powers of eloquent language to establish false- 
 hood. "Facts, not opinions," should be the historian's 
 motto ; and every person who engages in that difficult and 
 responsible department of literature ought to bear in mind 
 the charge which prefaces the juryman's oath : — " You shall 
 
PEEFACE. XXIX 
 
 truly and justly try this cause, you shall present no one 
 from malice, you shall excuse no one from favor," etc., etc. 
 
 To such a height have some prejudices been carried, that 
 it has been regarded as a species of heresy to record the evil 
 as well as the good of persons who are usually made subjects 
 of popular panegyric, and authors have actually feared in 
 some cases to reveal the base metal which has been hidden 
 beneath a meretricious gilding, lest they should provoke a 
 host of assailants. It was not thus that the historians of 
 Holy Writ performed their office. The sins of David and 
 Solomon are recorded by them with stern fidelity and 
 merited censure, for with the sacred annalists there is no 
 compromise between truth and expediency. Expediency! 
 perish the word, if guilt be covered and moral justice sacri- 
 ficed to such considerations ! 
 
 Nothing has been more fatal to the cause of truth than 
 the school of historical essay, which, instead of communi- 
 cating information, makes everything subservient to a 
 political system, repudiates inconvenient facts as gossip, 
 and imposes upon the defrauded reader declarations about 
 the dignity of history, instead of laying before him a digest 
 of its evidences. But take the proceedings in a court of 
 justice, — a trial for murder, for example, — how minutely is 
 every circumstance investigated, what trifles tend to the 
 conviction of guilt and the establishment of innocence. 
 How attentive is the judge to the evidence, how indifferent 
 to the eloquence of the advocate. He listens to the deposi- 
 tions of the witnesses, he jots them down, he collates them 
 in his tablets, he compares the first statements with the 
 cross-examinations, he detects discrepancies, he cuts short 
 verbiage, he allows no quibbles or prevarication, but keeps 
 every one to the point. In summing up, he proves that all 
 depends on the evidence, nothing on the pleadings ; if he 
 condescend to notice the arguments of the rival counsel, it 
 is only to caution the jury against being unduly biassed by 
 mere elocution, — words, not facts. The duty of the his- 
 torian, like that of the judge, is to keep to the facts, and 
 not to go one tittle beyond the evidences, far less to suppress 
 or pervert them. 
 
XXX PEEFACE. 
 
 Our Introduction contains brief notices of the ancient 
 British and Saxon queens. Their records are, indeed, too 
 scanty to admit of any other arrangement. 
 
 This series of royal biographies is, however, confined to 
 the lives of our medieval queens, commencuig, with the 
 consort of WiUiam the Conqueror, occupying that most in- 
 teresting and important period of our national chronology, 
 from the death of the last monarch of the Anglo-Saxon line, 
 :gdward the Confessor, in the year 1066, to the demise of 
 the' last sovereign "of the royal house of Stuart, Queen 
 Anne, in 1714^ In this series of queens, thirty have worn 
 the crown-matrimonial, and four the regal diadem of this 
 realm^. 
 
 What changes — what revolutions — what scenes of civil 
 and religious strife — what exciting tragedies are not in- 
 volved in the details of those four-and-thirty lives I They 
 extend over six hundred and fifty-two years, such as the 
 world will never see again, — the ages of feudality, of chiv- 
 alry, and romance — ages of splendor and misery, that wit- 
 nessed the brilliant chimera of crusades, the more fatal 
 triumphs of our Edwards and Henrys, in their reiterated 
 attempts to annex the crown of France to that of England, 
 and the national destitution and domestic woe that followed 
 the lavish expenditure of English blood and treasure ia a 
 foreign land — the deadly feud of the rival Eoses of York 
 and Lancaster, which ended iu the extinction of the name 
 and male line of Plantagenet — ^the stupendous changes of 
 public opinion that followed the accession of the house of 
 Tudor to the throne, effecting first the overthrow of the 
 feudal system, then of the Eomish theocracy, leaving royalty 
 to revel unchecked in a century of absolute despotism. 
 After the crisis of the Eeformation and the emancipation of 
 England from the papal yoke, came the struggle of the 
 middle classes for the assertion of their political rights, 
 overpowering royalty for a time, and establishing a democ- 
 racy under the name of a Commonwealth ; which ended, as 
 all democracies sooner or later must, in a military dictator- 
 ship, followed by the restoration of the monarchical gov- 
 ernment and a fever of loyal affection for the restored 
 
PEEPACE. XXXI 
 
 sovereign. Then came the slow but sure reaction of democ- 
 racy and dissent against royalty and the established church, 
 assisted by a no-popery panic — ^the Orange intrigues, en- 
 couraged by a pope, against the Eoman Catholic sovereign 
 James II. — the conflicting passions of the revolution of 
 1688 — the expulsion of the male line of Stuart — the triumph 
 of an oligarchy — ^the Dutch reign, the era of continental 
 wars, standing armies, national debt, and universal taxa- 
 tion — the contests between selfish parties and rival interests 
 during the reign of Anne — and, finally, the happy establish- 
 ment of a Protestant succession, in the peaceful accession 
 of the illustrious House of Brunswick to the throne of the 
 United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 With this progressive chain of national events and changes 
 have the royal ladies in our series of queenly biographies 
 been inextricably linked. To use the words of Guizot, 
 "Great events have acted on them, and they have acted 
 according to the events." Such as they were in life we have 
 endeavored to portray them, both in good and ill, without 
 regard to any other considerations than the development of 
 the facts. Their sayings, their doings, their manners, their 
 costume, wUl be found faithfully chronicled in this work, 
 which also includes the most interesting of their letters : 
 the orthography of these, as well as the extracts from 
 ancient documents, have been modernized for the sake of 
 perspicuity. 
 
 The materials for the lives of the Tudor and Stuart 
 queens are of a more copious and important nature than the 
 records of the consorts of our Anglo-Norman and Plantage- 
 net sovereigns. We miss, indeed, the illuminated pages, 
 and the no less picturesque details of the historians of the 
 age of chivalry, rich in their quaint simplicity, for the last 
 of the monastic chroniclers, John Rous, of Warwick, closed 
 his labors with the blood-stained annals of the last of the 
 Plantagenet kings. 
 
 A new school of history commences with sir Thomas 
 More's Life of Eichard III. ; and we revel in the gorgeous 
 descriptions of Hall and Holingshed, the characteristic anec- 
 dotes of the faithful Cavendish, the circumstantial narratives 
 
XXXll PREFACE. 
 
 of Stowe and Speed, and other annalists of less distin- 
 guished names. It is, however, from the acts of the Privy- 
 Council, the Parliamentary Journals, and the unpublished 
 Eegal Eecords and M.SS. in the State Paper Office, as well 
 as from the treasures preserved in the Bibliotheque du Moi, 
 at Paris, and the private MS. collections of historical fami- 
 lies and gentlemen of antiquarian research, that our most 
 important facts are gathered. State papers, autograph let- 
 ters, and other important documents, which the antiquarian 
 taste of the present age has drawn forth from the reposi- 
 tories where they have slumbered among the dust of cen- 
 turies, have afforded their silent but incontrovertible evidence 
 on matters illustrative of the private history of royalty, to 
 enable writers who, unbiassed by the leaven of party spirit, 
 deal in facts, not opinions, to unravel the tangled web of 
 falsehood. Every person who has referred to original 
 documents is aware that it is a work of time and patience 
 to read the MSS. of the Tudor era. Those in the State 
 Paper Office and the Cottonian Library have suffered much 
 from accidents and from the injuries of time. Water, and 
 even fire, have partially passed over some ; in others, the 
 mildew has swept whole sentences from the page, leaving 
 historical mysteries in provoking obscurity, and occasionally 
 baffling the attempts of the most persevering antiquary to 
 raise the shadowy curtain of the past. 
 
 The records of the Tudor queens are replete with cu'cum- 
 stanees of powerful interest, and rich in the picturesque 
 costume of an age of pageantry and romance. Yet of some 
 of these ladies so little beyond the general outline is known, 
 that the lives of Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, and Katha- 
 rine Howard were for the first time opened to the public in 
 this work. 
 
 Our earlier queens were necessarily members of the church 
 of Eome, and there are only the biographies of five avowedly 
 Protestant queens in this series. Anne Boleyn, Jane Sey- 
 mour, and Anne of Cleves died in communion with the 
 church of Eome. Katharine Parr is, therefore, our first 
 Protestant queen, and the nursing mother of the Eeforraa- 
 tion. There is only another Protestant queen-consort, Anne 
 
PREFACE. XXXlll 
 
 of Denmark, in this series, and our three queens-regnant, Eliz- 
 abeth, Mary II., and Anne. Undoubtedly these princesses 
 would have been better women if their actions had been 
 more conformable to the principles inculcated by the pure 
 and apostolic doctrines of the church of England. Sincere 
 friends of that church will not blame those who transfer 
 the reproach, which political ereedists have brought on their 
 profession, from her to the individuals who have violated 
 her precepts under the pretext of defending her interests. 
 
 The queens of England were not the shadowy queens of 
 tragedy or romance, to whom imaginary words and deeds 
 could be imputed to suit a purpose. They were the queens 
 of real life, who exercised their own free will in the words 
 they spoke, the parts they performed, the influence they 
 exercised, the letters they wrote. They have left mute but 
 irrefragable witnesses of what they were in their own deeds, 
 for which they, and not their biographers, must stand ac- 
 countable. To tamper with truth, for the sake of conven- 
 tional views, is an imbecility not to be expected of historians. 
 Events spring out of each other : therefore, either to sup- 
 press or give a false version of one leads the reader into a 
 complicated mass of errors, having the same effect as the 
 spurious figure with which a dishonestly disposed school- 
 boy endeavors to prove a sum that baffles his feeble powers 
 of calculation. Ay, and it is as easily detected by those 
 who are accustomed to verify history by the tests of dates 
 and documents. It is, however, the doom of every writer 
 who has had the fidelity to bring forward suppressed evi- 
 dences, or the courage to confute long-established false- 
 hoods, to be assailed, not only by the false but by the 
 deluded, in the same spirit of ignorant prejudice with which 
 Galileo was persecuted by the bigots of a darker age, for 
 having ventured to demonstrate a scientific truth. 
 
 What was the result as regarded Galileo and his discov- 
 eries ? Why, truly, the poor philosopher was compelled to 
 ask pardon for having been the first to call attention to a 
 fact which it would now be regarded as the extreme of 
 folly to doubt ! Neither the clamor of the angry supporters 
 of the old opinion, nor the forced submission of the person 
 
XXXIV PEEFACE. 
 
 who had exposed its fallacy, had in the least affected the 
 fact, any more than the assertion that black is white can 
 make evil good or good evil. Opinions have their date, and 
 change with circumstances, but facts are immutable. We 
 have endeavored to develop those connected with the biog- 
 raphies of the queens of England with uncompromising 
 fidelity, without succumbing to the passions and prejudices 
 of either sects or parties, the peevish ephemerides of a day, 
 who fret and buzz out their brief term of existence, and are 
 forgotten. It is not for such we write : we labor in a high 
 vocation, even that of enabling the lovers of truth and moral 
 justice to judge of our queens and their attributes, — not 
 according to conventional censure or praise, but according 
 to that unerring test, prescribed not by " carnal wisdom, 
 but by heavenly wisdom coming down from above," which 
 has said, " By their fruits ye shall know them." 
 
 We have related the parentage of every queen, described 
 her education, traced the influence of family connections and 
 national habits on her conduct, both public and private, and 
 given a concise outline of the domestic, as well as the gen- 
 eral history of her times, and its effects on her character, 
 and we have done so with singleness of heart, unbiassed by 
 selfish interests or narrow views. If we have borne false 
 witness in any instance, let those who bring accusations 
 bring also proofs of their assertions. A queen is no ordinary 
 woman, to be condemned on hearsay evidence ; she is the 
 type of the heavenly bride in the beautiful 45th Psalm : — 
 " Whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are holy, 
 whatsoever things are pure, and of good report" in the 
 female character, ought to be found in her. A queen-reg- 
 nant occupies a still higher position, — she is God's vicegerent 
 upon earth, and is therefore to be held in reverence by his 
 people. In proportion to her power, so are her responsibili- 
 ties. Of the four queens-regnant, whose lives are narrated 
 in this series of biographies, one only, queen Elizabeth, was 
 possessed of absolute power. Her sister Mary I. had placed 
 herself under the control of a cruel and tyrannical husband, 
 who filled her council and her palace with his creatures, 
 and rendered her the miserable tool of his constitutional 
 
PREFACE. XXXV 
 
 bigotry. The case of the second Mary was not unlike that 
 of the first, as regarded the marital tutelage under which 
 she was crushed. Anne, when she designated herself " a 
 crowned slave," described her position only too accurately. 
 
 The Lives of the Tudor and Stuart female sovereigns form 
 an important portion of this work ; there is much that is 
 new to the general reader in each, in the shape of original 
 anecdotes and inedited letters, especially in those of the 
 royal Stuart sisters, Mary 11. and queen Anne. The biog- 
 raphies of those princesses have hitherto been written either 
 in profound ignorance of their conduct on the part of the 
 writer, or else the better to work out general principles, in 
 the form of vague outlines full of high-sounding eulogiums, 
 in which all personal facts were omitted. We have endeav- 
 ored to supply the blanks, by tracing out their actions, 
 and compelling them to bear witness of themselves by their 
 letters, — such letters as they permitted to survive them. 
 Strange mysteries might have been unfolded if biographers 
 had been permitted to glance over the contents of those 
 papers which queen Mary spent a lonely vigil in her closet 
 in destroying, when she felt the dread fiat had gone forth : — 
 " Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live." 
 The great marvel regarding the secret correspondence of 
 royalty at such epochs is not that so much is destroyed, but 
 that any should survive. 
 
 The materials for the biography of Mary Beatrice of 
 Modena, the consort of James II., are chiefly derived from 
 the unpublished documents of the period. Many of these, 
 and indeed the most important, are locked up in the secret 
 archives of France, papers that are guarded with such 
 extreme jealousy from the curiosity of foreigners that 
 nothing less than the powerful introduction of M. Guizot, 
 when premier of France, could have procured access to that 
 collection. Through the kindness and liberality of that ac- 
 complished statesman-historian, every facility for research 
 and transcription was granted during our residence in Paris 
 in J.844. The result was fortunate beyond our most san- 
 guine expectations, in the discovery of a very important 
 mass of inedited royal letters and contemporary records 
 
XXXVl PEEFACE. 
 
 connected with the personal history of the expatriated 
 Stuarts. Not the least curious of these are the disjointed 
 fragments of a quaint circumstantial diary kept by one of 
 the nuns of Chaillot, in the years 1711, 1712, 1713, and 1714, 
 who, with minuteness and simplicity worthy of Samuel 
 Pepys himself, has recorded the proceedings and table-talk 
 of the exiled queen during her occasional abode in that 
 nunnery. This "convent log-book," as it has been pleas- 
 antly termed by one of our talented reviewers, was, of 
 course, never intended for Protestant eyes, for it admits us 
 fully within the grate, and puts us in possession of things 
 that were never intended to be whispered without the walls 
 of that mysterious little world ; and though, as a whole, it 
 would be somewhat weary work to go through the detail 
 of the devotional exercises, fasts, and other observances 
 practised by the sisters of St. Marie de Chaillot and their 
 royal visitor, it abounds in characteristic traits and anec- 
 dotes. Much additional light is thrown on the personal 
 history of the exiled royal family by the incidents that 
 have been there chronicled from the queen's' own lips. The 
 fidelity of the statements is verified by their strict agree- 
 ment with other inedited documents, of the existence of 
 which the sister of Chaillot could not have been aware. 
 Besides these treasures, we were permitted to take tran- 
 scripts of upwards of two hundred original autograph letters 
 of this queen, being her confidential correspondence for the 
 last thirty years of her life, with her friend Pran5oi8e An- 
 gelique Priolo, and others of the nuns of Chaillot. To this 
 correspondence we are indebted for many touching pictures 
 of the domestic life of the fallen queen and her children 
 during their residence in the chateau of St. Germains. 
 Some of the letters have been literally steeped in the tears 
 of the royal writer, especially those which she wrote after 
 the battle of La Hogue, during the absence of King James, 
 when she was in hourly expectation of the birth of her 
 youngest child, and, finally, in her last utter desolation. 
 
 The friendly assistance rendered by M. Michelet, in the 
 prosecution of our researches in the Archives of the King- 
 dom of France, demands our grateful acknowledgments. 
 
PREFACE. XXXvii 
 
 We are also indebted, through the favor of M. Guizot, and 
 the courtesy of M. Mignet and M. Dumont, for inedited 
 documents and royal letters from the Archives des Affaires 
 Mrangeres ; nor must the great kindness of M. Champol- 
 lion, in facilitating our researches in the Bibliotheque du Boi, 
 be forgotten, nor the service rendered by him in the dis- 
 covery and communication of a large portfolio of inedited 
 Stuart papers, from the archives of St. Germain's. 
 
 The lives of the queens of England necessarily close with 
 that of queen Anne. She is the last queen of Great Britain 
 of whom historical biography can be written, — at least, con- 
 sistently with the plan of a work based on documents, and 
 illustrated by original letters. 
 
 Grateful acknowledgments are herewith oifered to the 
 noble and learned friends who have assisted us in the prog- 
 ress of the Lives of the Queens of England, by granting 
 us access to national and family archives, and favoring us 
 with the loan of docum^ents and rare books, besides many 
 other courtesies, which have been continued with unwearied 
 kindness to the conclusion of the work. Among these we 
 wish to notice in particular the names of our departed friends, 
 the late sir Harris Ificolas, the historian of The Orders of 
 EJiighthood ; Henry Howard, Esq., of Corby ; the late sir 
 "William Wood, Garter king-of-arms ; Mr. Beltz, Lancaster 
 Herald ; Sidney Taylor, Esq. ; and Monsieur Buchon, the 
 learned editor of the Burgundian Chronicles ; sir Cuthbert 
 Sharp ; Alexander Macdonald, Esq., of the Eegister House, 
 Edinburgh ; E. K. Porter, and Miss Jane Porter. 
 
 Of those who happily still adorn society, we have the 
 honor to acknowledge our obligations in various ways con- 
 nected with the documentary portion of this work to the 
 baroness Willoughby de Bresby, the dukes of Devonshire 
 and Somerset, lady Mary Christopher, the countess of 
 Stradbroke, sir John and lady Matilda Maxwell, of PoUoc ; 
 lady Georgiana Bathurst, the lady Petre, dowager lady 
 Bedingfield, sir Thomas Phillipps, Bart., of Middlehill ; D, 
 E. Davey, Esq., of UfPord ; Dr. Liagard ; the Eev. G. C. 
 Tomlinson, the Eev. Joseph Hunter ; John Adey Eepton, 
 Esq., James Orchard Halliwell, Esq., John Bruce, Esq., 
 
XXXVlll PREFACE, 
 
 Thomas Saunders, Esq., City Comptroller ; Eev. H. Symonds ; 
 Thomas Garrard, Esq., Town Clerk of Bristol; Madame 
 Colmache ; C. H. Howard, Esq., M.P. ; John Eiddell, Esq., of 
 the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh; Francis Home, Esq., 
 Deputy Sheriff of Linlithgow; Miss Mary Home; Fred- 
 erick Devon, Esq., of the Chapter-house ; J. H. Glover, Esq., 
 her Majesty's librarian at Windsor castle ; sir F. Madden ; 
 sir Charles Young, Garter king-of-arms ; W. Courthope, 
 Esq. ; and the Eev. Eccles Carter, of Bristol cathedral. 
 
 Nor must we omit this opportunity of returning thanks 
 to our unknown or anonymous correspondents, who have 
 favored us with transcripts and references, which have, oc- 
 casionally, proved very usefiil; and if they have not, in 
 every instance, been either new to us, or available in the 
 course of the work, have always been duly appreciated as 
 friendly attentions and tokens of good-will. 
 
 We cannot take our leave of the gentle readers who have 
 kindly cheered us on our toilsome track by the unqualified 
 approbation with which they have greeted every fresh vol- 
 ume without expressing the satisfaction it has given us to 
 have been able to afford mingled pleasure and instruction 
 to so extensive a circle of friends, — friends who, though 
 personally unknown to us, have loved us, confided in our 
 integrity, brought our Queens into their domestic circles, 
 associated them with the sacred joys of home, and sent them 
 as pledges of affection to their dear ones far away, even to 
 the remotest corners of the world. We should be undeserv- 
 ing of the popularity with which this work has been hon- 
 ored if we could look upon it with apathy ; but we regard it 
 as God's blessing on our labors and their sweetest reward. 
 
 P.S. — I have used the plural we, because I speak not only 
 in my own name, but in that of my sister, whose share in 
 this work I am especially desirous to notice to the world, 
 although she refuses to allow her name to appear on the 
 title-page with that of 
 
 Agnes Strickland. 
 
 Ketdon Hall, Suffolk, 
 June. 1851, 
 
Contents 
 
 VOLUME 1 
 
 PAGB 
 
 BlOGBAPHICAL InTKODUCTION yU 
 
 Pbepace xxvii 
 
 InTKODUCTION j 
 
 Matilda of Flandees, Queen of William the Conqueror . 21 
 
 Matilda of Scotland, Queen of Henry 1 108 
 
 Adelicia of LouvAiNF, surnamed the Fair Maid of Brabant, 
 
 Second Queen of Henry 1 170 
 
 Matilda of Boulogne, Queen of Stephen 204 
 
 Eleanoea of Aquitainb, Queen of Henry II 242 
 
 Beeengakia of Navaebe, Queen of Richard I. ..... . 300 
 
LIVES 
 
 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 " The queen of England," says that learned commentator 
 on the laws and constitution of this country, Blackstone, " is 
 either queen-regnant, queen-consort, or queen-dowager." 
 The first of these is a female sovereign reigning in her own 
 right, and exercising all the ftmctions of regal authority in 
 her own person, — as in the case of her present majesty 
 queen Yietoria, who ascended the throne, not only by right- 
 ful inheritance and the consent of the people, but also in 
 full accordance with the ancient British custom, noticed by 
 Tacitus in these remarkable words : " Solent foaminarum 
 ductu bellare, et sexum in imperils non discernere." ' 
 
 No other princess has, however, been enthroned in this 
 land under such auspicious circumstances as our present 
 sovereign lady. Mary I. was not recognized without blood- 
 shed. Elizabeth's title was disputed. Mary II. was only a 
 sovereign in name, and as much dependent on the will of her 
 royal husband as a queen-consort. The archbishop of Can- 
 terbury forfeited the primacy of England for declining either 
 to assist at her coronation, or to take the oaths. The same 
 scruples of conscience withheld the nonjuring bishops and 
 clergy, and many of the nobility and gentry of England, from 
 performing their homage either to her, or to queen Anne. 
 Not one of those four queens, therefore, was crowned with 
 
 • Life of Agrioola. 
 
2 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the unanimous consent of her people. But the rapturous 
 acclamations that drowned the pealing of the bells and the 
 thunders of the artillery, at the recognition of our beloved 
 liege lady queen Victoria, in "Westminster abbey, can never 
 be forgotten by those who then heard the voices of a united 
 nation uplifted in assent. I was present, and felt the massy 
 walls of the abbey thrill, from base to tower, with the mighty 
 sound, as the burst of loyal enthusiasm, within that august 
 sanctuary, was echoed by the thronging multitude without, 
 hailing her queen by universal suffrage. 
 
 A queen-consort has many exemptions and minute pre- 
 rogatives. For instance, she pays no toll, nor is she liable to 
 any amercement in any court. In all cases, however, where 
 the law has not expressly declared her exempted, she is upon 
 the same footing with other subjects, being to all intents and 
 purposes the king's subject, and not his equal.' The royal 
 charters, in ancient times, were frequently signed by the 
 queen as well as by the king ; yet this was not in the quality 
 of a coadjutor in the authority by which the grant was made, 
 but evidently in the capacity of a witness only, and on ac- 
 count of her high rank she was doubtless a most important 
 one. In point of security of her life and person, the queen- 
 consort is put on the same footing with the king. It is 
 equally treason (by the statute of the 25th Edward III.) " to 
 compass or imagine the death of our lady the king's com- 
 panion, as of the king himself" ' 
 
 "The queen is entitled to some pecuniary advantages, 
 which form her a distinct revenue," continues Blackstone, 
 " one of which, and formerly the most important, was the 
 aurum regince, or queen-gold, a royal revenue belonging to 
 every queen-consort during her marriage with the king, and 
 due from every person who hath made a voluntary offering 
 or fine to the king amounting to ten marks or upwards ; and 
 it is due in the proportion of one-tenth part more, over and 
 above the entire offering or fine made to the king,' and 
 becomes an actual debt of record to the queen's majesty by 
 the mere recording of the fine. Thus, if an hundred marks 
 
 I Blackstone's Commentaries : Rights of Persons. 
 
 ' Ibid, book i. chap. iv. » Prynne's Aurum Reginw. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 of silver be given to the king to take in mortmain, or to have 
 a fair, market, park, chase, or free-warren, then the queen 
 was entitled to ten marks in silver, or rather its equivalent, 
 — one mark in gold, by the name of queen-gold, or aurum 
 regince." 
 
 Another very ancient perquisite of the queen-consort, as 
 mentioned by old writers and quoted by the learned round- 
 head Prynne' (who after the Eestoration became, when 
 keeper of the Tower records, a most zealous stickler for the 
 privileges of the queens of England), is, that on the taking 
 of a whale on the coasts, which is a royal fish, it shall be 
 divided between the king and queen ; the head only being the 
 king's property, and the tail the queen's. The reason of this 
 whimsical division, as assigned by our ancient records, was 
 to furnish the queen's wardrobe with whalebone.' Now, this 
 shrewd conjecture of the learned civilian quoted by Black- 
 stone may be considered as sufficient authority by barristers 
 and judges to settle the point, but as it relates to matters 
 on which ladies, generally speaking, possess more critical 
 knowledge than lawyers or antiquaries, we beg to observe 
 that the royal garments-feminine would be poorly provided 
 with the article alluded to if her majesty depended on this 
 contingency alone for her supply, as the peculiar kind of 
 whalebone used in a lady's dress grows in the head of thfi- 
 fish, which, as we have seen, falls'tO'the share of the king. 
 ""It is well known that the ward of Queenhithe derives its 
 name from the circumstance of vessels unlading at that little 
 harbor paying tolls to the queen of JLenrj^LJI^Eleajaor of 
 Provence. The covetous disposition of this princess induced 
 her to use her influence with the king, in order to compel 
 every vessel freighted with corn, or other valuable lading, to 
 land at her quay, to increase the revenue she drew from this 
 source. It is well for the interests of trade and commerce 
 that our latter queens have been actuated by very different 
 feelings towards the subjects of their royal husbands, than 
 the sordid selfishness practised by this princess. 
 
 The queen-regnant, in addition to the cares of government, 
 has to preside over all the arrangements connected with 
 
 1 Aurum Reginae. ' Biacton. Britton. 
 
4 INTKODUCTION. 
 
 female royalty, which, in the reign of a married king, de- 
 volve on the queen-consort; she has, therefore, more to 
 occupy her time and attention than a king, for whom the 
 laws of England expressly provide that he is not to be 
 troubled with his wife's affairs, like an ordinary husband. 
 There have been but three unmarried kings of England, — 
 
 ..^^^lliaiaJRu^s, Edward V., and Edward YI. The two last 
 died at tender ages ; but the ' Eed King' was a determined 
 bachelor, and his court, unrestrained by the presence and 
 beneficial influence of a queen, was the focus of profaneness 
 and profligacy. 
 
 The earliest British queen named in history is Cartisman- 
 dua, who, though a married woman, appears to have been 
 the sovereign of the Brigantes, reigning in her own right. 
 This was about the year 50. 
 
 __£Qa4icea, or Bodva, the warrior queen of the Iceni, suc- 
 ceeded her deceased lord, king Prasutagus, in the regal office. 
 Speed gives us a curious print of one of her coins in his 
 Chronicle. The description of her dress and appearance 
 on the morning of the battle that ended so disastrously for 
 the royal Amazon and her country, quoted from a Eoman 
 historian, is remarkably picturesque : — " After she had dis- 
 mounted from her chariot, in which she had been driving 
 from rank to rank to encourage her troops, attended by her 
 daughters and her numerous army she proceeded to a throne 
 of marshy turfs, apparelled, after the fashion of the Eomans, 
 in a loose gown of changeable colors, under which she wore 
 a kirtle very thickly plaited, jfiie tresses of her yellow hair 
 hanging to the skirts of her^re8S>| About her neck she 
 wore a chain of gold, and bore a light spear in her hand, 
 being of person tall, and of a comely, cheerftil, and modest 
 countenance ; and so awhile she stood, pausing to survey 
 her army, and being regarded with reverential silence, she 
 addressed to them an impassioned and eloquent speech on 
 the wrongs of her country." The overthrow and death of 
 this heroic princess took place in the year 60. 
 
 There is every reason to suppose that the noble code of 
 laws called the Common Law of England, usually attributed 
 to Alfred, were by him derived from the laws first established 
 
INTEODUCTION. 5 
 
 by a British queen. " Martia," says Holinshed,' " surnamed 
 Proba, or the Just, was the widow of Gutiline king of the 
 Britons, and was left protectress of the realm during the 
 minority of her son. Perceiving much in the conduct of 
 her subjects which needed reformation, she devised sundry 
 wholesome laws, which the Britons, after her death, named 
 the Martian statutes. Alfred caused the laws of this excel- 
 lently learned princess, whom all commended for her knowl- 
 edge of the Greek tongue, to be established in the realm." 
 These laws, embracing trial by jury and the just descent of 
 property, were afterwards collated and still farther improved 
 by Edward the Confessor, and were as pertinaciously de- 
 manded ft-om the successors of William the Conqueror by 
 the Anglo-Normans, as by their Anglo-Saxon subjects. 
 
 Eowena, the wily Saxon princess, who, in an evil hour for 
 the unhappy people of the land, became the consort of Vorti- 
 gern in the year 450, is the next queen whose name occurs 
 in our early annals. GuiniveTj, the golden-haired queen of 
 Arthur, and her f aithIe88~ Buccessor and namesake, have 
 been so mixed up wTHi tEe tales of the romance poets and 
 troubadours, that it would be diflScult to verify a single fact 
 connected with either. < 
 
 Among the queens of the Saxon Heptarchy we hail the 
 nursing mothers of the Christian faith in this island, who 
 firmly established the good work begun by the British lady 
 Claudia, and the empress Helena. The first and most illus- 
 trious of these queens was Bertha, the daughter of Cherebert 
 king of Paris, who had the glory of converting her pagan hus- 
 band, Ethelbert, the king of Kent, to that faith of which she 
 was so bright an ornament, and of planting the first Christian 
 church at Canterbury. Her daughter, Ethelburga, was in 
 like manner the means of inducing her vaKahf lord, Edwin 
 king of Northumbria, to embrace the Christian faith. ^Ean^ 
 fled, the daughter of this illustrious pair, afterwards the 
 consort of Oswy king of Mercia, was the first individual 
 who received the sacrament of baptism in Northumbria. 
 
 In the eighth century, the consorts of the Saxon kings 
 were excluded, by a solemn law, from sharing in the honors 
 
 1 Holinshed's Description of England, vol. i. p. 298 ; 4to ed. 
 
6 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 of royalty, on account of the crimes of the queen Edb ^g a, 
 -■who. had poisoned her husband, Brihtric king of "V'^Sss^p 
 and even when Egbert consolidated the kingdoms of the Hep- 
 tarchy into an empire, of which he became the Bretwalda, or 
 sovereign, his queen Eedburga was not permitted to partici- 
 pate in his coronation. Osburga, the first wife of Ethelwulph, 
 and the mother of thegreat Alfred, was also debarred from 
 this distinction; but w£en;'on~her' death, or, as some histo- 
 rians say, her divorce, Ethelwulph espoused the beautiful and 
 accomplished Judith, the sister of the emperor of the Pranks, 
 he violated this law by placing her beside him on the King's- 
 bench, and allowing her a chair of state, and all the other dis- 
 tinctions to which her high birth entitled her. This afforded 
 a pretence to his ungallant subjects for a general revolt, 
 headed by his eldest son Ethelbald, by whom he was de- 
 prived of half his dominions. Yet Ethelbald, on his father's/ 
 death, was so captivated by the charms of the fair causa 
 of his parricidal rebellion, that he outraged all C^ktiaii 
 
 decency by marrying her. ^ ,---'- '-..,.', --""'" ' ! 
 
 The beautiful and unfortunate Elgiva, the consort of Edwy, 
 has afforded a favorite theme for poetry and romance ; but 
 the partisans of her great enemy, Dunstan, have so mystified 
 her history, that it would be no easy matter to give an au- 
 thentic account of her life. Elfrida, the fair and false queen 
 of Edgar, has acquired an infamous celebrity for her remorse- 
 less hardness of heart. She did not possess the talents neces- 
 sary to the accomplishment of her design of seizing the reins 
 of government after she had assassinated her unfortunate 
 step-son at Corfe castle, for in this she was entirely circum- 
 vented by the political genius of Dunstan, the master-spirit 
 of the age. 
 
 Emma of Normandy, the beautiful queen of Ethelred, and 
 afterwards of Canute, plays a conspicuous part in the Saxon 
 annals. There is a Latin treatise, written in her praise by a 
 contemporary historian, entitled, ^^ Encomium Emvioe-^' but, 
 
 1 Although this infamous woman escaped the vengeance of human justice by 
 fleeing to the continent, she was reduced to such abject destitution, that Asser 
 declares she was seen begging her bread at Pavia, where she died. — Note to 
 Malmesbury, by Br. Giles. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 notwithstanding the florid commendations there bestowed 
 upon her, the character of this queen must be considered 
 a doubtful one. The manner in which she sacrificed the 
 interests of her children by her first husband, Ethelred, to 
 those by her second unnatural marriage with the Danish 
 conqueror, is little to her credit, and was certainly never 
 forgiven by her son, Edward the Confessor; though that 
 monarch, after he had witnessed the triumphant manner in 
 which she cleared herself of the charges brought against her 
 by her foes, by passing through the ordeal of walking bare- 
 foot, unscathed, over the nine red-hot ploughshares in Win- 
 chester cathedral, threw himself at her feet in a transport 
 of filial penitence, implored her pardon with tears, and sub- 
 mitted to the discipline at the high altar, as a penance for 
 having exposed her to such a test of her innocence.' 
 
 Bditha, the consort of Edward the Confessor, was not only 
 an amiable, but a learned lady. The Saxon historian, Ingul- 
 phus, himself a scholar at "Westminster monastery, close by 
 Editha's palace, affirms that the queen used frequently to 
 intercept him and his school-fellows in her walks, and ask 
 them questions on their progress in Latin, or, in the words 
 of his translator, " moot points of grammar with them, in 
 which she oftentimes posed them." Sometimes she gave 
 them a piece of silver or two out of her own purse, and sent 
 them to the palace buttery to breakfast. She was skilful in 
 the works of the n?eaie, and with her own hands she em- 
 broidered the garments of her royal husband, Edward the 
 Confessor. But well as the acquirements and tastes of Editha 
 qualified her to be the companion of that learned prince, he 
 never treated her with the affection of a husband, or ceased 
 to remember that her father had supported the Danish usur- 
 pation, and imbrued his hands in the blood of the royal line. 
 
 The last Anglo-Saxon queen, Edith, or Alfgith, surnamed 
 the Fair, the faithful consort of the unfortunate Harold, was 
 the sister of the earls Morcar and Edwin, so celebrated in 
 the Saxon annals, and the widow of Griffin, prince of North 
 Wales. The researches of sir Henry Ellis, and other anti- 
 quaries of the present day, lead to the conclusion that the 
 
 ' Mllner's Winchester. 
 
8 INTKODUCTION. 
 
 touching instance of woman's tender and devoted love, — 
 the verification of Harold's mangled body among the slain 
 at Hastings, generally attributed to his paramour, belongs 
 rather to queen Edith, his disconsolate widow. 
 
 Such is the brief summary of our early British and Anglo- 
 Saxon queens. A far more important position on the pro- 
 gressive tableau of history is occupied by the royal ladies 
 who form the series of our medieval queens, commencing 
 with Matilda of Flanders, the wife olT'VCllliam tlie Conqueror, 
 the mother of a mighty line of kings, whose august repre- 
 sentative, our liege lady queen Victoria, at present wears 
 the crown of this realm. The spirit of chivalry, bora in 
 the poetic South, was not understood by the matter-of-fact 
 Saxons, who regarded women as a very subordinate link of 
 the social chain. The Normans, having attained to a higher 
 grade of civilizationTIEJroughtwith them the refined notion, 
 inculcated by the troubadours and minstrels of Prance and 
 Italy, that the softer sex was entitled, not only to the pro- 
 tection and tenderness, but to the homage and service of all 
 true knights. The revolution in popular opinion eifected by 
 this generous sentiment elevated the character of woman, and 
 rendered the consort of an Anglo-Norman or Plantagenet 
 king a personage of scarcely less importance than her lord. 
 
 " There is something," observes an eloquent contemporary, 
 " very peculiar in the view which we obtain of history in 
 tracing the lives of queens-consort. The great world is never 
 entirely shut out : the chariot of state is always to be seen, — 
 the sound of its wheels is ever in our ears. We observe that 
 the thoughts, the feelings, the actions of her whose course we 
 are tracing are at no time entirely disconnected with him by 
 whose hand the reins are guided, and we not unfrequently 
 detect the impulse of her finger by the direction in which it 
 moves." Whether beloved or not, the influence on society 
 of the wife and companion of the sovereign must always be 
 considerable ; and for the honor of womankind be it remem- 
 bered, that it has, generally speaking, been exerted for 
 worthy purposes. Our queens have been instruments, in the 
 hands of God, for the advancement of civilization, and the ex- 
 ercise of moral and religious influence ; many of them have 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 been brought from foreign climes to plant the flowers and re- 
 finements of a more polished state of society in our own, and 
 well have they, for the most part, performed their mission. 
 
 William the Conqueror brought the sword and the feudal 
 tenure. He burned villages, and turned populous districts 
 into his hunting-grounds. His consort, Matilda, introduced 
 her Flemish artisans, to teach the useful anTprofitable man- 
 ufactures of her native land to a starving population : she 
 brought her architects, and set them to build the stately 
 fanes, which gave employment to another class of her sub- 
 jects, and encouraged the fine arts, — sculpture, painting, and 
 needle-work. Above all, she bestowed especial regard and 
 honors on the poets and chroniclers of her era. 
 
 The consort of Henry I., Matilda of Scotland, familiarly 
 designated by her subjects "Maude, the gode queue," not 
 only excelled in personal works of piety and charity, and in 
 refining the morals and manners of the licentious Norman 
 court, but exerted her influence with her royal husband to 
 obtain the precious boon of a charter for the people, which 
 secured to them the privilege of being governed by the right- 
 eous laws of Edward the Confessor. Her graceful successor, 
 Adelicia of Louvaine, was, like herself, a patroness of poetry 
 and history, and did much to improve the spirit of the age by 
 affording a bright example of purity of conduct. 
 
 Our third M atilda, the consort of Stephen, was the founder 
 of ehiircLes and hospitals, and the friend of the poor. It is 
 certain that her virtues, talents, and conjugal heroism did 
 more to preserve the crown to her husband than the swords 
 of the warlike barons who espoused his cause. Eleanora of 
 Aquitaine, though defective in her moral conduct, was a 
 usefiil queen in her statistic and commercial regulations. 
 
 Berengaria, the crusading queen, of whom so much has 
 been said and so little known, before the publication of her 
 biography in the first edition of this work, was only influ- 
 ential through her mild virtues, her learning, and her piety ; 
 but she never held her state in England, which, during the 
 greater portion of her warlike husband's reign, was suffer- 
 ing from the evils of absenteeism. 
 
 Isabella of Angouleme, the consort of John, was one of the 
 
10 INTEODDCTION. 
 
 few queens who have left no honorable memorials, either on 
 the page of history or the statistics of this country. Neither 
 can anything be said in praise of Eleanor of Provence, the 
 consort of Henry III., whose selfishness, avarice, and reck- 
 less extravagance oifended all ranks of the people, espe- 
 cially the citizens of London, and precipitated the realm 
 into the horrors of civil war. 
 
 The moral beauty of the character of Eleanor of Castile, 
 the consort of Edward I., her wisdom, prudence, and femi- 
 nine virtues, did much to correct the evils which the follies 
 of her predecessors had caused, and restored the queenly 
 office to its proper estimation. Her amiable successor. Mar- 
 guerite of France, has left no other records than those of 
 compassion and kindliness of heart. 
 
 For the honor of female royalty be it noticed, that Isa- 
 bdlaofFrance is the only instance of a queen of Englaml ~ 
 acting in open and shameless violation of the duties of her 
 high vocation, allying herself with traitors and foreign agi- 
 tators against her king and husband, and staining her name 
 with the combined crimes of treason, adultery, murder, and 
 regicide. It would, indeed, be difficult to parallel, in the his- 
 tory of any other country, so many beautiful examples of 
 conjugal devotedness as are to be found in the annals of 
 the queens of England. Much of the statistic prosperity of \, 
 England during the long, glorious reign of Edward III. may 1 
 with justice be attributed to the admirable qualities and pop- .' 
 ular government of queen Philippa, who had the wisdom to / 
 establish, and the good taste to encourage, home manufac- / 
 tures, and never failed to exert her influence in a good cause. / 
 
 Under the auspices and protection of the blameless Anne 
 of Bohemia, the first queen of Eiehard II., we hail the first 
 dawn of the principles of the Eeformation. The seeds that 
 were then sown under her gentle influence, though ajipar- 
 ently crushed in the succeeding reigns, took deeper root than 
 shallow observers suspected, and were destined to spring up 
 in the sixteenth century, and to produce fruits that should 
 extend to the ends of the earth, when, in the fulness of time, 
 the gospel should be preached by English missionaries to 
 nations, of whose existence neither Wickliflfe nor his royal 
 
INTEODUCTION. 11 
 
 patroness, queen Anne of England, in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, were aware. Isabella of Valois, the virgin widow of 
 Eichard II., whose eventful history has been for the first 
 time recorded in this work, had no scope for queenly in- 
 fluence in this country, being recalled at so tender an age to 
 her own. 
 
 Rapin has been betrayed by his vindictive hatred of his 
 own country to assert, that every king of England who mar- 
 ried a French princess was unfortunate, and came to an 
 untimely end ; but how far this assertion is borne out by 
 facts, let the triumphant career of Henry V., the husband 
 of Katherine of Valois, daughter of Charles YI. of France, 
 answer. The calamitous fate of Henry VI. resulted, not 
 from his marriage with Margaret of Anjou, but was brought 
 about by a concatenation of circumstances, which inevitably 
 prepared the way for the miseries of his reign long before 
 that unfortunate princess was born. The fatal deviation 
 from the regular line of the regal succession in the elevation 
 of Henry IV. to the throne, insured a civil war as soon as 
 the representative of the elder line should see a favorable 
 opportunity for asserting his claims. The French wars, by 
 exhausting the resources of the crown, compelled the minis- 
 ters of Henry VI. to resort to excessive taxation, and the 
 yet more unpopular expedient of debasing the silver coin- 
 age ; and thus the aifections of the people were alienated. 
 The military talents of the duke of York, his wealth, and 
 family alliance with the most powerful and popular noble- 
 man in England, — ^the earl of Warwick, — must necessarily 
 have turned the scale against the impoverished sovereign, 
 even if he had been better fitted by nature and education 
 to maintain a contest. The energies of Henry's queen, in 
 truth, supported his cause long after any other person would 
 have regarded it as hopeless. Her courage and firmness 
 delayed a catastrophe which nothing could avert. 
 
 It is a curious study to trace the effect of the political 
 changes of those unquiet times on the consorts of Henry 
 VI., Edward IV., and Eichard III. Three women more 
 essentially opposite in their characteristics and conduct than 
 the three contemporary, but not hostile, queens of the rival 
 
12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 roses,— Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville, and Anne 
 Neville,— it would be difficult to find. ?The first, of royal 
 birth and foreign education, schooled in adversTEy from her 
 cradle, lion-like and indomitable under every vicissitude ; the 
 second, the daughter of one English knight and the widow ] 
 of another, fair, insinuating, full of self-love and world-craft, | 
 inflated by sudden elevation, yet vacillating and submitting '[ 
 to become the tool of her enemies in her reverse of fortune ; ] 
 the third, the type of the timid dove, who is transferred ^ 
 withouTa struggle from the talons of the stricken eagle who 
 had first seized her, to the grasp of the wily kite. How 
 strangely were the destinies of these three unfortunate 
 queens allied in calamity by the political changes of an 
 era, which is thus briefly defined by the masterly pen of 
 Guizot : — 
 
 " The history of England in the fifteenth century consists 
 of two great epochs, — the French wars without, those of 
 the roses within, — the wars abroad and the wars at home. 
 Scarcely was the foreign war terminated when the civil war 
 commenced ; long and fatally was it continued while the 
 houses of York and Lancaster contested the throne. When 
 those sanguinary disputes were ended, the high English 
 aristocracy found themselves ruined, decimated, and de- 
 prived of the power they had formerly exercised. The 
 associated barons could no longer control the throne when 
 it was ascended by the Tudors ; and with Henry VII., in 
 1485, the era of centralization and the triumph of royalty 
 commenced." The sovereign and the great body of the 
 people from that time made common cause to prevent the 
 re-establishment of an oligarchy, which had been found 
 equally inimical to the rights of the commons and the dig- 
 nity of the crown. 
 
 Having thus briefly traced the history and influence of 
 the queens of England from the establishment of the feudal 
 system to its close, commencing with the first Anglo-Norman ' 
 queen, Matilda the wife of William the Conqueror, and con- 
 cluding with Anne of Warwick, the last Plantagenet queen, 
 herself the sad representative of the mightiest of all the 
 aristocratic dictators of the fifteenth century, — the earl of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 Warwick, sumamed ' the king-maker,' — we proceed to con- 
 sider those of the new epoch. 
 
 Elizabeth of York, the consort of Henry VII., is the 
 connecting link between the royal houses of Plantagenet 
 and Tudor. According to the legitimate order of succession 
 she was the rightful sovereign of the realm, and though she 
 condescended to accept the crown-matrimonial, she might 
 have contested the regal garland. She chose the nobler dis- 
 tinction of giving peace to her bleeding country by tacitly 
 investing her victorious champion with her rights, and 
 blending the rival roses of York and Lancaster in her bridal- 
 wreath. It was thus that Henry VII., unimpeded by con- 
 jugal rivalry, was enabled to work out his enlightened plans, 
 by breaking down the barriers with which the pride and 
 power of the aristocracy had closed the avenues to prefer- 
 ment against the unprivileged classes. The people, tired of 
 the evils of an oligarchy, looked to the sovereign for pro- 
 tection, and the first stone in the altar of civil and religious 
 liberty was planted on the ruins of feudality. The effects 
 of the new system were so rapid, that in the succeeding 
 reign we behold, to use the forcible language of a popular 
 French writer, " two of Henry the Eighth's most powerful 
 ministers of state, Wolsey and Cromwell, emanating, the 
 one from the butcher's shambles, the other from the black- 
 smith's forge." Extremes, however, are dangerous, and the 
 despotism which these and other of Henry's parvenu states- 
 men contrived to establish was, while it lasted, more cruel 
 and oppressive than the tyranny and exclusiveness of the 
 feudal magnates ; but it had only an ephemeral existence. 
 The art of printing had become general, and the spirit of 
 freedom was progressing on the wings of knowledge through 
 the land. The emancipation of England from the papal 
 domination followed so immediately, that it appears futile 
 to attribute that mighty change to any other cause. The 
 stormy passions of Henry VIII., the charms and genius of 
 Anne Boleyn, the virtues and eloquence of Katharine Parr, 
 all had, to a certain degree, an effect in hastening the crisis ; 
 but the Reformation was cradled in the printing-press, and 
 established by no other instrument. 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In detailing the successive historic tragedies of the queens 
 of Henry VIII., we enter upon perilous ground. The lapse 
 of three centuries has done so little to calm the excited feel- 
 ings caused by the theological disputes with which their 
 names are blended, that it is scarcely possible to state facts 
 impartially without displeasing those readers, whose opin- 
 ions have been biassed by party writers on one side or the 
 other, i Henry VIII. was married six times, and d ivorced 
 thrice : he beheaded two of his wives, and left two surviving 
 vHdows, — Anne of Cleves and Katharine Parr. '^As long as 
 the virtuous influence of his first consort, Katharine of 
 -Arragon, lasted, he was a good king, and, if not a'goodman, 
 the evil passions which rendered the history of the latter 
 years of his life one continuous chronology of crime, were 
 kept within bounds. Four of his queens claimed no higher 
 rank than the daughters of knights : of these, Anne Boleyn 
 and Katharine Howard were cousins-german ; both were 
 married by Henry during the life of a previously wedded 
 consort of royal birth, and were alike doomed by the re- 
 morseless tyrant to perish on a scaffold as soon as the 
 ephemeral passion which led to their fatal elevation to a 
 throne had subsided. We know of no tragedy so full of 
 circumstances of painful interest as the lives of those un- 
 happy ladies. It ought never to be forgotten, that it was 
 to the wisdom and moral courage of his last queen, the learned 
 and amiable Katharine Parr, that England is indebted for 
 the preservation of her universities from the general plunder 
 of ecclesiastical property. 
 
 The daughters of Henry VIII., Mary and Elizabeth, 
 occupy more important places than any other ladies in this 
 series of royal biographies. They were not only queens but 
 sovereigns, girded with the sword of state and invested with 
 the spurs of knighthood at their respective inaugurations, 
 in token that they represented their male predecessors in 
 the regal oflSce, not merely as legislators, but, if necessary, 
 as military leaders. Mary virtually abdicated her high ofiice 
 when she became, in evil hour both for herself and her sub- 
 jects, the consort, and finally the miserable state-tool and 
 victim, of the despotic bigot, Philip the Second of Spain. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 16 
 
 Purely English in her descent, both on the father's and 
 mother's side for many generations, Elizabeth, notwithstand- 
 ing the regal blood of the Plantagenets, which she derived 
 from her royal grandmother, Elizabeth of York, was, liter- 
 ally speaking, a daughter of the people, acquainted inti- 
 mately with the manners, customs, and even the prejudices 
 of those over whom she reigned. This nationality, which 
 never could be acquired by the foreign consorts of the Stuart 
 kings, endeared her to her subjects as the last of a line of 
 native sovereigns, while her great regnal talents rendered 
 her reign prosperous at home and glorious abroad, and 
 caused the sway of female monarchs to be regarded as 
 auspicious for the time to come. 
 
 The life of every queen of England whose name has been 
 involved with the conflicting parties and passions excited by 
 revolutions or differences of religious opinions, has always 
 been a task of extreme diflflculty. More peculiarly so with 
 regard to the consorts of Charles I., Charles II., and James 
 II., since, for upwards of a century after the revolution of 
 1688, it was considered a test of loyalty to the reigning 
 family and attachment to the church of England to revile 
 the sovereigns of the house of Stuart, root and branch, and 
 to consign them, their wives and children, their friends and 
 servants, and every one who would not unite in desecrating 
 their tombs, to the reprobation of all posterity. Every one 
 who attempted to write history at that period was, to use 
 the metaphor of the witty author of JEothen, " subjected to 
 the immutable law, which compels a man with a pen in his 
 hand to be uttering now and then some sentiment not his 
 own, as though, like a French peasant under the old regime, 
 he were bound to perform a certain amount of work on the 
 public highways." Happily the necessity, if it ever existed, 
 of warping the web of truth to fit the exigencies of a po- 
 litical crisis, exists no longer. The title of the present 
 illustrious occupant of the throne of Great Britain to the 
 crown she wears is founded on the soundest principles, both 
 of constitutional freedom of choice in the people, and legiti- 
 mate descent from the ancient monarchs of the realm. The 
 tombs of the last princes of the male line of the royal house 
 
16 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of Stuart were erected at the expense of their august kins- 
 man George IV. That generous prince set a noble example 
 of liberal feeling in the sympathy which he was the first to 
 accord to that unfortunate family. He did more ; he checked 
 the hackneyed system of basing modern history on the 
 abuse of James II. and his consort, by authorizing the pub- 
 lication of a portion of the Stuart papers, and employing 
 his librarian and historiographer to arrange the life of that 
 prince from his journals and correspondence. 
 
 The consort of James II., Mary Beatrice of Modena, 
 played an important rather than a conspicuous part in the 
 historic drama of the stirring times in which her lot was 
 cast. The tender age at which she was reluctantly torn from 
 a convent to become the wife of a prince whose years nearly 
 trebled her own, and the feminine tone of her mind, deterred 
 her from interfering in affairs of state during the sixteen 
 years of her residence in England. The ascetic habits and 
 premature superannuation of her unfortunate consort com- 
 pelled her, for the sake of her son, to emerge at length from 
 the sanctuary of the domestic altar to enter upon the stormy 
 arena of public life, when she became, and continued for 
 many years after, the rallying point of the Jacobites. All 
 the plots and secret correspondence of that party were 
 carried on under her auspices. There are epochs in her life 
 when she comes before us in her beauty, her misfortunes, 
 her conjugal tenderness, and passionate maternity, like one 
 of the distressed queens of Greek tragedy struggling against 
 the decrees of adverse destiny. The slight mention of her 
 that appears on the surface of English history has been 
 penned by chroniclers of a different spirit from " Grif&th," 
 — men whose hearts were either hardened by strong politi- 
 cal and polemic animosities, or who, as a matter of business 
 or expediency, did their utmost to defame her, because she 
 was the wife of James II. and the mother of his unfortunate 
 son. The bitterest of her unprovoked enemies, Burnet, was 
 reduced to the paltry expedients of vituperation and calumny 
 in the attacks he constantly makes on her. The first, like 
 swearing, is only an imbecile abuse of words, and the last 
 vanishes before the slightest examination. History is 
 
INTKODUCTION. 17 
 
 happily written on different principles in the present age. 
 " "We have now,'' says Guizot, " to control our assertions by 
 the facts ;'' in plain English, to say nothing either in the 
 way of praise or censure which cannot be substantiated by 
 sound evidence. 
 
 It was the personal influence of Mary Beatrice with 
 Louis XIV., the dauphin, and the duke of Burgundy, that 
 led to the infraction of the peace of Eyswick by the courts 
 of France and Spain, through their recognition of her son's 
 claims to an empty title : to please her, Louis XIV. allowed 
 the dependent on his bounty to be proclaimed at the gates 
 of one of his own royal palaces as James III., king not only 
 of Great Britain and Ireland, but even of France, and to 
 quarter the fleur-de-lis unmolested. The situation of the 
 royal widow and her son, when abandoned by their pro- 
 tector Louis XIV. at the peace of Utrecht, closely resembles 
 that of Constance of Bretagne and her son Arthur after 
 the recognition of the title of king John by their allies ; but 
 Mary Beatrice exhibits none of the fierce maternity at- 
 tributed by Shakspeare to the mother of the rejected claim- 
 ant of the English throne : her feelings were subdued by a 
 long acquaintance with adversity and the fever of disap- 
 pointed hope. 
 
 Our Dutch king, William III., is supposed to have inti- 
 mated his contempt for the fair sex in general, and his 
 jealousy of his illustrious consort's superior title in particu- 
 lar, when it was proposed to confer the sovereignty of Great 
 Britain on her, by his coarse declaration that " he would 
 not hold the crown by apron-strings." But the fact was, 
 that Mary, though two degrees nearer in blood to the regai 
 succesiiofi, had no more right to the crown than himself as 
 the law then stood ; and if the order of legitimacy were to 
 be violated by setting aside the male heir, William saw no 
 reason why it should be done in Mary's favor rather than 
 his own. The conventional assembly adjusted this delicate 
 point by deciding that the prince and princess of Orange 
 should reign as joint sovereigns, to which William outwardly 
 consented ; yet the household-books furnish abundant proofs 
 that, as far as he durst, he deprived his queen of the 
 
18 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 dignity which the will of the people had conferred upon 
 her. The warrants were for a considerable time issued in 
 hia name singly, and dated in the first or second years of 
 his, instead of their majesties' reign. It is also observable, 
 that he never allowed her to participate with himself in the 
 ceremonial of opening or proroguing parliament, on which 
 occasions he occupied the throne solus, and arrogated ex- 
 clusively to himself the regal office of sceptering or rejecting 
 bills, which ought to have been submitted to her at the same 
 time. 
 
 Mary, though naturally ambitious and fond of pageantry, 
 endured these ungallant curtailments of her royal preroga- 
 tives and personal dignity with a submission which her 
 foreign spouse could never have ventured to exact from her 
 if she had succeeded to the Britannic empire on the demise 
 of the crown. In that ease, William of Orange would have 
 been indebted to her favor for the empty title of king, and 
 such ceremonial honors and dignity as it might have pleased 
 her to confer on him. Circumstances were, however, widely 
 different. William's Dutch troops had rudely expelled 
 Mary's royal father from his palace, forced him to vacate his 
 regal office by driving him from the seat of government, and 
 causing him to flee for refuge to a foreign land. William 
 remaining thus undisputed master of the metropolis and ex- 
 chequer, considered that Mary was indebted to him, not he 
 to her, for a crown ; and although the suffrages of the people 
 invested her with the dignity of queen-regnant, she was, 
 in all things, as subservient to his authority as if she had 
 been merely a queen-consort. The conjugal apron-strings 
 were, nevertheless, William's strongest hold on the crown 
 of England. Nothing but Mary's popular and able govern- 
 ment at home could have enabled him to overcome the diffi- 
 culties of his position during the revolt of Ireland and the 
 insurrection in Scotland. 
 
 The mild sway of Anne, her tenderness of the lives of 
 her subjects, her munificent charities to the poor, her royal 
 bounties to that meritorious portion of the church, the indi- 
 gent working clergy, caused her to be regarded, while living, 
 with loyal affection by the great body of her subjects, and 
 
INTEODUCTION. 19 
 
 endeared her memory to succeeding generations. Anne is 
 the last queen of Great Britain of whom a personal history- 
 can be written, till Time, the great mother of truth, shall 
 raise the curtain of a recent but doubtful past, and by the 
 publication of letters and domestic state-papers now inac- 
 cessible, enable those who may undertake the biographies 
 of the queens of the reigning family to perform their task 
 with fidelity. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS, 
 
 QUEEN OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 Title of Queen — Regina — Matilda first so called — Her descent from Alfred — 
 Parents — Education — Learning — Beauty — Character — Skill in Embroidery — 
 Sought in marriage by William of Normandy — His passionate love — Unsuc- 
 cessful courtship — Brihtric Meaw, the English envoy — Matilda's love for him 
 — Perseverance of William of Normandy — Furious conduct of William to 
 Matilda — Their marriage — Rich apparel — William's early life — William and 
 Matilda excommunicated — Dispensation — Matilda's taste for architecture — 
 Matilda's sister married to Tostig — Birth of Matilda's eldest son — Harold's 
 visit — Betrothed to Matilda's daughter — William's invasion of England — 
 Letter to Matilda's brother — Matilda appointed regent of Normandy — Her 
 son Robert — Happy arrival of Matilda in the Mora — Ship presented by her — 
 William sails in it to England — Matilda's delineations — Battle of Hastings — • 
 News of victory brought to Matilda — Our Lady of Good Tidings. 
 
 Matilda, the wife of "William the Conqueror, was the first 
 consort of a king of England who was called regina} This 
 was an innovation in the ancient customs of the land, for 
 the Saxons simply styled the wife of the king ' the lady his 
 companion,' ' and to them it was displeasing to hear the 
 
 ^ Asser, in his life of Alfred, whose contemporary and friend he was, and must 
 therefore be regarded as a very important authority, expressly states the 
 Anglo-Saxons did not " suffer the queen to sit near the king, nor to be called 
 regina, but merely the king's wife :" that is, quen, or companion. It ought 
 to be noted, that the Saxon historians writing in Latin, use, in both instances, 
 the Latin word regina, to signify queen, being ashamed of introducing a bar- 
 barous word into the Latin text ; but the meaning is evident. 
 
 ' Hlafdige se cwene is the Saxon phrase. Hlafdige, or lady, means the ' giver 
 of bread ;' cwene, or quen, was anciently used as a term of equality, indiscrim- 
 inately applied to both sexes. In the old Norman chronicles and poems, instead 
 
 21 
 
22 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 Normans speak of Matilda as la Boyne, as if she were a 
 female sovereign, reigning in her own right ; — so distinct in 
 those days was the meaning attached in this country to the 
 lofty title of reine, or regina, from that of queen, which, 
 though at present the highest female title of honor used in 
 England, then only signified companion. The people of the 
 land murmured among themselves at this unprecedented 
 assumption of dignity in the wife of their Norman sovereign ; 
 yet ' the strange woman,' as they called Matilda, could boast 
 of royal Saxon blood. She was, in fact, the direct descend- 
 ant of the best and noblest of their monarchs, Alfred, 
 through the marriage of his daughter Blstrith with Bald- 
 win II. of Flanders, whose son, Arnold the Great, was the 
 immediate ancestor of Matilda, — an interesting circum- 
 stance, which history passes over in silence.' Few of the 
 queens of England, indeed, can claim a more illustrious de- 
 scent than this princess. Her father, Baldwin V., surnamed 
 the Gentle, earl of Flanders, was the son of Baldwin IV. 
 by Eleanora, daughter of duke Eichard II. of Normandy ; 
 and her mother was Adelais, daughter of Eobert king of 
 Prance, and sister to Henry, the reigning sovereign of that 
 country. She was nearly related to the emperor of Germany, 
 and to most of the royal families in Europe. " If any one," 
 says "William of Poitou, " inquires who was Matilda's mother, 
 he will learn that she was the daughter of Robert king of 
 Gaul, the eon and the nephew of kings from royal kings 
 descended." 
 
 of the duke of Normandy and his peers, the phrase used is the duke of Normandy 
 and his quens. " The word ' quen,' signifying companion," says Eapin, vol. i. 
 p. 148, " was common both to men and women." So late as the thirteenth 
 century a collection of poems, written by Charles of Argon and his courtiers, is 
 quoted as the Songs of the Quens of Anjou. Also in a chant of the twelfth 
 century, enumerating the war-cries of the French provinces, we find 
 And the quena of Thibaut 
 " Champagne and passavant ! * cry, 
 
 > See Matilda's pedigree in Ducarel's Norman Antiquities. She was also 
 descended from Judith, daughter of the emperor of the Franks, who after the 
 death of Ethelwolf married the earl of Flanders. One of the aunotators on 
 William of Malmesbury asserts, that Judith, the widow of Ethelwolf, was the 
 mother of Matilda the wife of the Conqueror ; but if so, Matilda must have been 
 150 years old at the time of her marriage. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 23 
 
 Matilda was born about the year 1031, and was very 
 carefully educated. She was possessed of fine natural tal- 
 ents, and was no less celebrated for her learning than for her 
 great beauty. William of Malmesbury, when speaking of 
 this princess, says, " She was a singular mirror of prudence 
 in our days, and the perfection of virtue.'' Among her 
 other acquirements, Matilda was particularly famed for 
 her skill in ornamental needlework, which, in that age, was 
 considered one of the most important and desirable accom- 
 plishments which princesses and ladies of high rank could 
 possess. We are told by a worthy chronicler,' "that the 
 proficiency of the four sisters of king Athelstane in spin- 
 ning, weaving, and embroidery, procured those royal 
 spinsters the addresses of the greatest princes in Europe." 
 The fame of this excellent stitchery is, however, all the 
 memorial that remains of the industry of Matilda's Saxon 
 cousins ; but her own great work, the Bayeux tapestry, is 
 still in existence, and is, beyond all competition, the most 
 wonderful achievement, in the gentle craft of needlework, 
 that ever was executed by fair and royal hands. But of this 
 we shall have to speak more fully, in its proper place, as a 
 pictorial chronicle of the conquest of England. 
 
 The earl of Flanders, Matilda's father, was a rich, powerfiil, 
 and politic prince, equally skilled in the arts of war and of 
 peace. It was to him that the town of Lille, which he re- 
 built and greatly beautified, owed its subsequent greatness ; 
 and the home manufactures of his native country, through 
 his judicious encouragement, became a source of wealth and 
 prosperity to Flanders. His family connection with the king 
 of France, his suzerain and ally, and his intimate relation- 
 ship to most of the royal houses in Europe, rendered his 
 alliance very desirable to several of the reigning princes, his 
 neighbors, who became suitors for the hand of his daughter. 
 Matilda had, however, bestowed her first affections on a 
 young Saxon nobleman named Brihtric, and sumamed, 
 from the fairness of his complexion, "Meaw," or "Snaw," 
 who had visited her father's court on a mission from Ed- 
 ward the Confessor. Brihtric Meaw was the son of Algar, 
 
 1 Malmesbury, vol. i. book ii. p. 26. 
 
24 MATILDA OF FLANDEBS. 
 
 lord of the honor of Gloucester, and was possessed of bo 
 fair a heritage in that fruitful part of England, that he 
 would not have been esteemed an unsuitable consort for the 
 Flemish princess if their love had been reciprocal, but, for 
 some reason, he was insensible to her regard.' The dark 
 sequel of this tale, which will be related in its proper place, 
 is one of those strange facts which occasionally tinge the 
 page of history with the colors of romance. 
 
 Whilst Matilda was wasting her morning bloom of life in 
 unrequited love for the youthful envoy, whose affection was 
 probably already pledged to one of his fair countrywomen, 
 the report of her charms and noble qualities attracted the 
 attention of the most accomplished sovereign in Christen- 
 dom. " Duke William of Normandy," says William of Ju- 
 mieges, " having learned that Baldwin earl of Flanders had 
 a daughter named Matilda, very beautiful in person and of 
 a generous disposition, sent deputies, by the advice of his 
 peers, to ask her of her father in marriage, who gladly con- 
 sented, and gave her a large portion." Wace, also, tells us 
 " that Matilda was very fair and graceful, and that her father 
 gave her joyfully to duke William, with large store of wealth 
 and very rich appareilement." Seven long years, however, 
 of stormy debate intervened before the courtship of William 
 of Normandy was brought to this happy conclusion. Con- 
 temporary chroniclers, indeed, afford us reason to suspect, 
 that the subsequent conquest of England proved a less diflBL- 
 cult achievement to the valiant duke than the wooing and 
 winning of Matilda of Flanders. He had to contend against 
 the opposition of the courts of France and Burgundy, the 
 intrigues of his rival kinsmen of the race of Eollo, the ob- 
 jections of the church, and, worse than all, the reluctance 
 and disdain of the lady. The chronicler Ingerius declares, 
 " that William was so infuriated by the scorn with which 
 Matilda treated him, that he waylaid her in the streets of 
 Bruges, as she was returning with her ladies from mass, beat 
 her, rolled her in the mud, spoiled her rich array, and then 
 
 1 Chronicle of Tewkesbury. Cotton MSS. Cleopatra, o. Ill, 220. Leland's 
 Collectanea, Tol. i. p. 78. Monasticon, 111, 69. Palgrave's Rise and Progress, 
 vol. i. p. 294. Thierry's Anglo-Normans, vol. i. p. 335. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 25 
 
 rode oif at full speed." This Teutonic mode of courtship, 
 according to the above authority, brought the matter to a 
 favorable crisis ; for Matilda, being convinced of the strength 
 of "William's passion by the violence of his behavior, or afraid 
 of encountering a second beating, consented to become his 
 wife.^ 
 
 A different version of this strange episode in a royal 
 wooing is given by Baudoin d'Avesnes, who shows that the 
 provocation which duke William had received from his fair 
 cousin was not merely a rejection of his matrimonial over- 
 tures, but an insulting allusion to the defect in his birth. 
 According to this writer, the earl of Flanders received the 
 Norman envoys who came to treat for a marriage between 
 their duke and Matilda very courteously, and expressed 
 great satisfaction at the proposed alliance; but when he 
 spoke of it to the damsel his daughter, she replied, with 
 infinite disdain, that " she would not have a bastard for her 
 husband." 
 
 The earl softened the coarse terms in which Matilda had 
 signified her rejection of duke "William, and excused her as 
 well as he could to the Norman deputies. Her passion for 
 Brihtric Meaw had, probably, more to do with her rude 
 refusal of William than the defect in his birth on which she 
 grounded her objection. It was not long, however, before 
 William was informed of what Matilda had really said. He 
 was peculiarly sensitive on the painful subject of his illegiti- 
 macy, and no one had ever taunted him with it unpunished. 
 Neither the high rank nor the soft sex of the fair offender 
 availed to protect her from his vengeance. In a transport of 
 fury he mounted his horse, and, attended by only a few of 
 his people, rode privately to Lille, where the court of Flan- 
 ders then was. He alighted at the palace gates, entered the 
 hall of presence alone, passed boldly through it, strode un- 
 questioned through the state apartments of the earl of Flan- 
 ders, and burst into the countess's chamber, where he found 
 the damsel her daughter, whom he seized by her long tresses, 
 and as she, of course, struggled to escape from his ruflSan 
 
 1 Chronicle of Inger, likewise called Ingerius. The anecdote has been trans- 
 lated by J. P. Andrews. 
 
26 MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 
 
 grasp, dragged her by them about the chamber, struck her 
 repeatedly, and flung her on the ground at his feet. After 
 the perpetration of these outrages, he made his way back 
 to the spot where his squire held his horse in readiness, 
 sprang to the saddle, and setting spurs to the good steed, 
 distanced all pursuit. Although the Norman, French, and 
 Flemish chroniclers differ as to the place where William the 
 Conqueror perpetrated this rude personal assault on his fair 
 cousin, and relate the manner of it with some few varia- 
 tions, they all agree as to the fact that he felled her to the 
 ground by the violence of his blows. This incident is 
 quoted by one of the most learned of modern historians, 
 Michelet, in his History of France, and authenticated by 
 the author of L'Art de Verifier les Dates, from a curious 
 contemporary MS. Vatout also records the circumstance in 
 his History of the Chateau d'Bu ; and refers the antiquary 
 for further particulars to an ancient MS. chronicle in the 
 Ecclesiastical library at St. Germains-au-Pres, Paris. 
 
 When earl Baldwin heard of the unprecedented affront 
 that had been offered to his daughter, he was highly incensed, 
 made a hostile attack on duke William's territories to avenge 
 it, did a great deal of damage, and suffered not a little in 
 return, for William was never slack at retaliation. After a 
 long series of aggressive warfare in this unprofitable quarrel, 
 they found it expedient to enter into pacific negotiation, by 
 the advice of all their wise and prudent counsellors. A 
 meeting took place between the belligerent parties for the 
 ratification of the treaty, when, to the surprise of every one, 
 duke William renewed his suit for Matilda's hand; and, to 
 the still greater astonishment of all her friends, when the 
 proposal was named to the said damsel, she replied, that " it 
 pleased her well." * Her father, who had not anticipated so 
 favorable an answer, was much delighted at forming a bond 
 of strong family alliance with his formidable neighbor, lost 
 no time in concluding the matrimonial treaty, and gave his 
 daughter, as before said, a large portion in lands and money, 
 with abundance of jewels and rich array.' The castle of 
 Augi — no other, gentle reader, than the chateau d'Bu, so 
 
 • Baudoin d'Aveanes. ' Ibid. Vatout's History of Bu. 
 
MATILDA OP PLANDEES. 27 
 
 much celebrated in our own times as the family residence of 
 Louis Philippe of Orleans, late king of the French, and his 
 queen — was the place appointed for the solemnization of the 
 marriage of Matilda of Flanders and William Of Normandy. 
 This castle was conveniently situated for the purpose, being 
 at the extreme frontier of William's territories. He had 
 recently taken it, after a fierce siege, from a party of his 
 rebellious nobles, headed by Busac, the half-brother of Eobert 
 count of Eu ; which Busac, being the grandson in the female 
 line of Eichard I., duke of Normandy, had set up a rival 
 claim to the duchy in the year 1047. His claims had been 
 supported by Henry king of France, and the disaffected 
 portion of William's baronage. Eobert count of Bu had not 
 taken an active part in the rebellion, but had allowed his 
 castle to be made the stronghold of Busac and his confed- 
 erates.' 
 
 After the reduction of this fortress by the victorious duke 
 in the year 1049, the count of Eu remained as a sort of state- 
 prisoner in his own castle, which was garrisoned by duke 
 WiDiam's soldiers. Such was the position of affairs at 
 chateau d'Bu when the two courts of Normandy and Flan- 
 ders met there, in the year 1052, for the celebration of the 
 marriage between William and Matilda.' The duke arrived 
 first, attended by his valiant quens, to await the advent of 
 the haughty bride, whom he had wooed after so strange a 
 fashion. Matilda came, accompanied by both her parents 
 and a splendid train of nobles and ladies ; and there, in the 
 cathedral church of Notre Dame d'Eu, the spousal rites 
 were solemnized, and the marriage blessed, in the presence 
 of both courts. 
 
 In the midst of the rejoicings at the nuptial feast, the earl 
 of Flanders, waxing merry, asked his daughter, laughingly, 
 how it happened that she had so easily been brought to con- 
 sent at last to a marriage, which she had so scornfully refused 
 in the first instance. " Because,' ' replied Matilda, pleasantly, 
 
 1 Benoit's Chronicles of Normandy. Vatout's History of Eu. 
 
 ' The chronicle of Paris places the date of Matilda's marriage in the year 
 1056 ■ but all other writers of the period affirm that this event took place in the 
 year 1050. 
 
28 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 " I did not know the duke so well then as I do now ; for," 
 continued she, " he must be a man of great courage and high 
 daring who could venture to come and beat me in my own 
 father's palace." ' How the valiant duke ever ventured into 
 her presence again, after such a manifestation of his bold 
 spirit, we are at a loss to imagine ; and that she should like 
 him the better for his ruffianly behavior appears more 
 unaccountable still, affording at the same time a curious 
 instance of the rude manners of the period and of the 
 inconsistencies of the human heart. 
 
 The lively answer of the young duchess was of course much 
 applauded by her new lord and his vassal peers. The dis- 
 graced count of Eu, seeing his victorious suzerain in such high 
 good humor, took the opportunity of the general rejoicings to 
 sue for pardon ; and that so successfully, that William restored 
 his lands and castle, and, becoming thoroughly reconciled to 
 him, from that day took him into favor, of which he never 
 had the slightest cause to repent; for, bound to him by 
 gratitude, Eobert of Eu became thenceforth one of his most 
 attached adherents, and greatly assisted by his valor and 
 good counsel in the conquest of England." The presence of 
 so many illustrious personages, the splendor of the nuptial 
 fetes, and the quantity of money which the influx of the 
 numerous strangers.who flocked to Eu to witness this re- 
 markable marriage caused to be circulated in that town, 
 made the inhabitants forget their late sufferings during the 
 siege. 
 
 The royal mantle, garnished with jewels, in which Matilda 
 was arrayed on the day of her espousals, and also that worn 
 by her mighty lord on the same occasion, together with his 
 helmet, were long preserved in the treasury of the cathedral 
 of Bayeux. Lancelot mentions an inventory of precious 
 effects belonging to the church, dated 1476, in which these 
 costly bridal garments are enumerated. 
 
 From Eu, William conducted his newly wedded duchess to 
 Eouen, where she made her public entry as his bride, still 
 accompanied by her parents, who were invited by William to 
 participate in the rejoicings and festivities with which his 
 
 1 Baudoin d'Avesnea. " Vatout's History of Chateau d'Eu. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 29 
 
 marriage was commemorated in the capital of his dominions. 
 The earl and countess of Flanders remained with the duke 
 and duchess several days, to witness the pageantry and all 
 the popular indications of satisfaction with which Matilda 
 was received.' When all the tourneys and fetes were ended, 
 the earl and countess of Flanders took leaveof their daughter, 
 and returned to their own country. William consoled 
 Matilda for the loss of their society by taking her on a royal 
 progress through Normandy, to show her the principal 
 towns, and to make her acquainted with the manners and 
 customs of the mighty people over whose court she was to 
 preside. He was, of course, proud of displaying a consort 
 of such surpassing beauty and majestic grace to his subjects. 
 Everywhere she came she was received with demonstrations 
 of delight and admiration. It was more than half a century 
 since there had been a duchess of Normandy ; and as bache- 
 lor sovereigns seldom conduce to the domestic happiness or 
 prosperity of a nation, all ranks of people were prepared to 
 welcome Matilda with joy, and to anticipate great political 
 and social advantages from the auspicious alliance their duke 
 had formed. 
 
 Nothing could be more perilous than the position of Wil- 
 liam's affairs at the period of his marriage with Matilda 
 of Flanders. He was menaced on every side by powerful 
 neighbors, who were eager to appropriate and parcel out the 
 fertile fields of Normandy, to the enlargement of their re- 
 spective borders ; and at the same time a formidable party 
 was arraying itself against him within his own dominions in 
 favor of Guy of Burgundy, the eldest son of his aunt Alice. 
 This prince was the nearest legitimate male descendant of 
 duke Eichard the Second of Normandy ; and as the direct 
 line had failed with duke Eobert, the late sovereign, he was, 
 notwithstanding the operation of the Salic law, considered 
 by many to possess a better right to the dukedom than the 
 son of duke Eichard by Arlotta, the skinner's daughter of 
 Falaise. The particulars of William's birth are too well 
 known to require recapitulation ; but it is proper to notice 
 that there are historians who maintain that Arlotta was the 
 
 • William of JumiSgea. Chronicle of Nonnandy. 
 
30 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 wife of duke Eobert, though not of rank or breeding fit to 
 be acknowledged as his duchess.' This we are disposed to 
 regard as a mere paradox, since William, who would have 
 been only too happy to avail himself of the plea of even a 
 contract or promise of marriage between his parents, in order 
 to strengthen his defective title by a pretence of legitimacy, 
 never made any such assertion. On the contrary, not only 
 before his victorious sword had purchased for him a more 
 honorable surname, but even afterwards, he 'submitted to 
 the use of the one derived from his mother's shame ; and in 
 the charter of the lands which he bestowed on his son-in-law, 
 Alan duke of Bretagne, in Yorkshire, he subscribed himself 
 " William, surnamed Bastardus." ' It is a general opinion 
 that Arlotta was married to Herlewin of Conteville during 
 the lifetime of duke Eobert, and that this circumstance 
 prevented any possibility of William attempting to assert 
 that he was the legitimate offspring of his royal sire.' 
 
 William was, from the very moment of his birth, regarded 
 as a child of the most singular promise. The manful grasp 
 with which his baby hand detained the rushes of which he 
 had ' taken seizin' * the moment after his entrance into life, 
 when, in consequence of the danger of his mother, he was 
 permitted to lie unheeded on the floor of his chamber where 
 he first saw the light,' gave occasion to the oracular gossips 
 in attendance on Arlotta to predict " that the child would 
 become a mighty man, ready to acquire everything within 
 his reach ; and that which he acquired, he would with a strong 
 
 ' William of Malmesbury. Ingulphns. ' Leiand. 
 
 ' After the accession of Henry II. to the throne, a Saxon pedigree was in- 
 geniously invented for Arlotta, which is too great a curiosity to be omitted. 
 '* Edmund Ironside," says the Saxon genealogist, " had two sons, Edwin and 
 Edward, and an only daughter, whose name does not appear in history because 
 of her bad conduct, seeing that she formed a most imprudent alliance with the 
 king's skinner. The king, in his anger, banished the skinner from England, 
 together with his daughter. They both went to Normandy, where they lived on 
 public charity, and had successively three daughters. Having one day come to 
 Falaise to beg at duke Kiohard's door, the duke, struck with the beauty of the 
 woman and her children, asked who she was? 'I am an Englishwoman,' she 
 said, ' and of the royaJ blood.' The duke, on this answer, treated her with honor, 
 took the skinner into his service, and had one of his daughters brought up in the 
 palace. She was Arlotte, or Charlotte, the mother of the Conqueror." — Thierry. 
 
 • The feudal term for taking possession. ' William of Malmesbury. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDEHS. 31 
 
 hand steadfastly maintain against all challengers." — " When 
 William was a year old, he was introduced into the presence 
 of his father, duke Eobert, who seeing what a goodly and 
 fair child he was, and how closely he resembled the royal 
 line of Normandy, embraced him, acknowledged him to be 
 his son, and caused him to receive princely nurture in his 
 own palace. When William was five years old, a battalion 
 of boys, of his own age, was placed under his command, 
 with whom he practised the military exercise according to 
 the custom of those days. Over these infant followers Wil- 
 liam assumed the authority of a sovereign in miniature ; 
 and if dissensions arose among them, they always referred 
 to his decision, and his judgments are said to have been re- 
 markable for their acuteness and equity." ' Thus early in 
 life did the mighty Norman learn to enact the character of 
 a leader and legislator. Nature had, indeed, eminently fitted 
 him for the lofty station which he was afterwards destined 
 to fill ; and his powerftd talents were strengthened and im- 
 proved by an education such as few princes in that rude, 
 unlettered age were so fortunate as to receive. At the age 
 of eight years he was able to read and explain Caesar's 
 Commentaries.' 
 
 The beauty and early promise of this boy caused him to 
 be regarded with peculiar interest by the Normans ; but as 
 a child of illegitimate birth, William possessed no legal claim 
 to the succession. His title was simply founded on the ap- 
 pointment of the duke, his father. That prince, having no 
 other issue, before he set out on his mysterious pilgrimage 
 for the Holy Land, called the peers of Normandy together, 
 in the hotel de Ville, and required them to swear fealty to 
 the young William as his successor. When the princely 
 boy, then a child of seven years old, was brought in to re- 
 ceive the homage of the assembled nobles, duke Eobert took 
 him in his arms, and, after kissing and passionately em- 
 bracing him, he presented him to his valiant ' quens,' as their 
 
 ' Henderson's Life of the Conqueror. 
 
 ' According to William of Malmesbury, the importance which the Conqueror 
 placed on mental culture was great. Throughout life he was used to say, " that 
 an illiterate king was a crowned ass." 
 
32 MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 
 
 future sovereign, with this remark, " He is little, but he will 
 grow." ' The peers of ISTormandy having consented to rec- 
 ognize William,' the duke appointed his vassal kinsman and 
 friend, Alan duke of Bretagne, seneschal of his dominions 
 in his absence. Then he carried his son to Paris, and de- 
 livered him into the hands of the king of France, his 
 suzerain, or paramount lord ; and having received his prom- 
 ise of protecting and cherishing the boy with a loving care, 
 he made William perform the same homage to that monarch 
 as if he were already the reigning duke of Normandy, by 
 which he secured his sovereign's recognition of his son's 
 title to the ducal crown. After these arrangements, duke 
 Eobert departed on that expedition, from which he never 
 again returned to his own dominions.' 
 
 At the court of his sovereign, Henry I. of France, the 
 uncle of his future spouse, Matilda of Flanders, William 
 completed his education, and learned the science of diplo- 
 macy, secure from all the factions and intrigues with which 
 Normandy was convulsed. The states, true to the fealty 
 they had sworn to the son of their deceased lord, sent am- 
 
 1 '' II est petit, mais il croitera.'' — Wace. 
 
 2 Chronicle of Normandy. Malmesbury. 
 
 * It was whispered by some, that duke Robert undertook his pilgrimage to 
 Jerusalem as an expiatory penance for the death of his elder brother and sovereign, 
 duke Richard III., which he was suspected of having hastened ; while others 
 believed he was impelled from motives of piety alone to pay his vows at the holy 
 grave, according to a new but prevailing spirit of misdirected devotion, which 
 manifested itself among the princes and nobles of that age of superstition and 
 romance. Whether duke Robert ever reached the place of his destination is 
 uncertain. The last authentic tidings respecting him that reached his capital 
 were brought by Pirou, a returned pilgrim from the Holy Land, who reported 
 that he met his lord, the duke of Normandy, on his way to the holy city, borne 
 in a litter on the shoulders of four stout Saracens, being then too ill to proceed on 
 his journey on foot. When the royal pilgrim recognized his vassal, he exclaimed, 
 with great animation, " Tell my valiant peers that you have seen your sovereign 
 carried towards heaven on the backs of fiends." — William of Malmesbury. 
 Whether this uncourteous allusion to the spiritual darkness of his pagan bearers 
 was sufficiently intelligible to them to have the effect of provoking them into 
 shortening his journey thither, we know not. Some chronicles, indeed, assert 
 that he died at Nioea, in Bithynia, on his return ; but there is a strange uncer- 
 tainty connected with his fate, and it appears that the Norman nobles long ex- 
 pected his return, — an expectation that was probably most favorable to the cause 
 of his youthful successor, whose title might otherwise have been more effectually 
 disputed by the heirs of the sisters and aunts of duke Robert. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 33 
 
 bassadors to Paris to claim their young duke.' The king 
 of Prance resigned him to the deputies, but soon after in- 
 vaded his dominions. Eaoul de Gace and Eoger de Beau- 
 mont stoutly maintained the cause of their young duke, both 
 in the court and in the camp. They were his tutors in the 
 art of war, and through their assistance and advice he was 
 enabled to maintain the dignity of a sovereign and military 
 chief, at a period of life when princes are generally occupied 
 in childish amusements or the pleasures of the chase.' 
 
 One by one, almost every Norman noble who could boast 
 any portion of the blood of Eollo, the founder of the ducal 
 line of Normandy, was incited by king Henry of France to 
 stir up an insurrection as a rival claimant of the crown. On 
 one occasion, William would in all probability have fallen a 
 victim to the plot which his cousin Guy of Burgundy had 
 laid to surprise him, when he was on a hunting excursion, 
 and was to pass the night without any of his military reti- 
 nue at the castle of Valognes ; but from this peril he was 
 preserved by the fidelity of his fool, who, happening to over- 
 hear the conspirators arranging their plan, travelled all 
 night at full speed to give the duke notice of his danger ; 
 and finding means to make an entrance into the castle at 
 four o'clock in the morning, he struck violently with the 
 handle of his whip at the chamber door of his sleeping sov- 
 ereign, and shouted, "Levez, levez, seigneur!" till he suc- 
 ceeded in rousing him. So close at hand, however, were 
 Guy of Burgundy and his confederates, that it was only by 
 mounting his swiftest steed, half-dressed, and riding with 
 fiery speed for many hours, that William could effect his 
 escape from his pursuers ; and even then he must have fallen 
 into their hands, if he had not encountered a gentleman on 
 the road with whom he changed horses, his own being thor- 
 oughly spent. Guy of Burgundy was afterwards taken 
 prisoner by the young duke ; but having been on affection- 
 ate terms with him in his childhood, he generously forgave 
 him all the trouble he had occasioned him, and his many 
 attempts against his life.' 
 
 1 Chronicle of Normandy. ' Ibid. Malmeabury. Waco. 
 
 ' Ibid. Mezerai. Wace. 
 I. — e 
 
34 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 The king of France was preparing to invade Normandy 
 again, but William's fortunate marriage with Matilda, who 
 was a legitimate descendant of the royal line, strengthened 
 his defective title to the throne of Normandy, and gained 
 for him a powerful ally in the person of his father-in-law, 
 the earl of Flanders. The death of Henry averted the storm 
 that still lowered over Normandy ; and the young Philip of 
 France, his son and successor, having been left during his 
 minority under the guardianship of his aunt's husband, Bald- 
 win of Flanders, Matilda's father, William found himself 
 entirely relieved from all present fears of hostility on the 
 part of France.' Scarcely, however, was he preparing him- 
 self to enjoy the happiness of wedded life, when a fresh 
 cause of annoyance arose. 
 
 Mauger, the archbishop of Eouen, an illegitimate uncle of 
 the young duke, who had taken great pains to prevent his 
 marriage with Matilda of Flanders, finding all the obstacles 
 which he had raised against it were unavailing, proceeded to 
 pronounce sentence of excommunication against the newly 
 wedded pair, under the plea of its being a marriage within 
 the forbidden degrees of consanguinity.' William indig' 
 nantly appealed to the pope against this sentence, who, on 
 the parties submitting to the usual fines, nullified the arch- 
 bishop's ecclesiastical censures, and granted the dispensa- 
 tion for the marriage, on condition of the young duke and 
 duchess each building and endowing an abbey at Caen, 
 and an hospital for the blind. Lanfranc, afterwards the 
 celebrated archbishop of Canterbury, but at that time an 
 obscure individual, to whom William had extended his pro- 
 tection and patronage, was intrusted with this negotiation, 
 which he conducted with such ability as to secure to him- 
 self the favor and confidence both of William and Matilda, 
 by whom he was, in after years, advanced to the ofllce of 
 tutor to their royal offspring, and finally to the highest 
 ecclesiastical rank and power. 
 
 William and Matilda submitted to the conditions on 
 
 • St. Marthe. Waoe. 
 
 ' Chronicle of Normandy. Matilda was the grand-daughter of Kleanor of 
 Normandy, William's aunt. 
 
MATILDA OP FLANDERS. 35 
 
 which the dispensation for their marriage had been granted, 
 by founding the sister abbeys of St. Stephen and the Holy 
 Trinity. That of St. Stephen was built and endowed by 
 William for a fraternity of monks, of which he made Lan- 
 franc abbot. Matilda founded and endowed that of the 
 Holy Trinity, for nuns. It should appear that the ground 
 on which these holy edifices were erected was not very hon- 
 estly obtained, as we shall have occasion to show hereafter.* 
 William, highly exasperated at the archbishop's attempt to 
 separate him from his bride, retaliated upon him by calling 
 a convocation of all the bishops of JNormandy, at Lisieux, 
 before whom he caused Mauger to be accused of several 
 crimes and misdemeanors, especially of selling consecrated 
 chalices, and other articles of church-plate, to supply his 
 luxury.* Mauger, being convicted of these mal-practices, 
 was deposed from his office. The disgrace of the archbishop 
 has been attributed to the resentment Matilda conceived 
 against him on account of his impertinent attempt to inval- 
 idate her marriage ; and that William, being roused by her 
 complaints, sought out an occasion to degrade him from his 
 see. 
 
 Tranquillity being established, William proceeded to build 
 a royal palace within the precincts of St. Stephen's abbey, 
 for his own residence and that of his young duchess. The 
 great hall, or council-chamber, of this palace was one of the 
 most magnificent apartments at that time in Europe. 
 
 Matilda, inheriting from her father, Baldwin of Lille, a 
 taste for architecture, took great delight in the progress of 
 these stately buildings ; and her foundations are among the 
 most splendid relics of Norman grandeur. She was a mu- 
 nificent patroness of the arts, and afforded great encourage- 
 ment to men of learning, co-operating with her husband 
 most actively in all his paternal plans for the advancement 
 of trade, the extension of commerce, and the general hap- 
 piness of the people committed to their charge. In this 
 they were most successful. Normandy, so long torn with 
 contending factions, and impoverished with foreign warfare, 
 began to taste the blessings of repose ; and, under the wise 
 
 ' Montfaucon. Malmesbury. * William of Malmesbury. 
 
36 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 government of her energetic sovereign, soon experienced 
 the good effects of his enlightened policy. At his own ex- 
 pense, "William built the first pier that ever was constructed, 
 at Cherbourg.' He superintended the building and organi- 
 zation of fleets, traced out commodious harbors for his ships, 
 and in a comparatively short time rendered Normandy a 
 very considerable maritime power, and finally the mistress 
 of the Channel. 
 
 The domestic happiness which William enjoyed with his 
 beautiful duchess appears to have been very great. All his- 
 torians have agreed that they were a most attached pair, 
 and that whatever might have been the previous state of 
 Matilda's affections they were unalterably and faithfully 
 fixed upon him from the hour she became his wife; and 
 with reason, for William was the most devoted of husbands, 
 and always allowed her to take the ascendant in the matri- 
 monial scale. The confidence he reposed in her was un- 
 bounded, and very shortly after their marriage he intrusted 
 the reins of government to her care, when he crossed over 
 to England to pay a visit to his friend and kinsman, Ed- 
 ward the Confessor. By his marriage with Matilda, Wil- 
 liam had added a nearer tie of relationship to the English 
 sovereign ; and he was, perhaps, willing to remind the child- 
 less monarch of that circumstance, and to recall to his mem- 
 ory the hospitality he had received, both at the Flemish and 
 the ISTorman courts, during the period of his adversity.' 
 Edward " received him very honorably, and presented him 
 with hawks and hounds, and many other fair and goodly 
 gifts," says Wace, " as tokens of his love." Duke William 
 paid this visit during the exile of Godwin and his sons ; it is 
 probable that he availed himself of their absence to obtain 
 from Edward the promise of being adopted as his successor 
 to the English throne, and also to commence a series of po- 
 litical intrigues connected with that mighty project, which, 
 fourteen years afterwards, he carried into effect. 
 
 In pursuing the broad stream of history, how few writers 
 take the trouble of tracing the under-currents by which the 
 tide of events is influenced! The marriage of Tostig, the 
 
 ' Henderson's Life of William the Conqueror. » Higdon, Polychronicon. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 37 
 
 Bon of Godwin, with Judith of Flanders, the sister of Ma- 
 tilda, wife of William of Normandy, was one great cause of 
 the treacherous and unnatural conduct, on his part, which 
 decided the fate of Harold, and transferred the crown of 
 England to the Norman line. During the period of their 
 exile from England, Godwin and his family sought refuge 
 at the court of the earl of Flanders, Tostig's father-in-law, 
 from whom they received friendly and hospitable entertain- 
 ment, and were treated by the duke and duchess of Nor- 
 mandy with all the marks of friendship that might reason- 
 ably be expected, in consideration of the family connection 
 to which we have alluded.' 
 
 Nine months after her marriage, Matilda gave birth to a 
 son, whom William named Eobert, after his father, thinking 
 that the name of a prince whose memory was dear to Nor- 
 mandy, would insure the popularity of his heir.' The hap- 
 piness of the royal pair was greatly increased by this event. 
 They were at that period reckoned the handsomest and most 
 tenderly united couple in Europe. The fine natural talents 
 of both had been improved by a degree of mental cultivation 
 very unusual in that age ; there was a similarity in their 
 tastes and pursuits which rendered their companionship de- 
 lightful to each other in private hours, and gave to all their 
 public acts that graceful unanimity which could not fail of 
 producing the happiest eifects on the minds of their subjects. 
 The birth of Eobert was followed in quick succession by 
 that of Eichard, William Eufus, Cecilia, Agatha, Constance, 
 Adela, Adelaide, and Gundred. During several years of 
 peace and national prosperity, Matilda and her husband 
 employed themselves in superintending the education of 
 their lovely and numerous family, several of whom, accord- 
 ing to the report of contemporary chronicles, were children 
 of great promise.' 
 
 No very remarkable event occurs in the records of Ma- 
 tilda's court, till the arrival of Harold in the year 1065. 
 Harold, having undertaken a voyage to Normandy in an 
 open fishing-boat, was driven by stress of weather into the 
 
 1 Waoe. Ingulphas. Badmer. ' Malmesbury. Wace. 
 
 ' Malmesbury. Ordericus Vitalis 
 
38 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 river Maye, in the territories of the earl of Ponthieu, by 
 ■whom, with the intention of extorting a large ransom, he 
 was seized, and immured in the dungeons of Beaurain. The 
 duke of Normandy, however, demanded the illustrious cap- 
 tive, and the earl of Ponthieu, understanding that Harold's 
 brother was husband to the duchess of Normandy's sister, 
 thought it most prudent to resign his prey to the family 
 connection by whom it was claimed. Harold was treated 
 with apparent friendship by William and Matilda. They 
 even offered to bestow one of their daughters upon him in 
 marriage, — a young lady whose age did not exceed seven 
 years ; and to her Harold permitted himself to be affianced, 
 though without any intention of keeping his plight. 
 
 William then confided to his reluctant guest the tale of his 
 own adoption by Edward the Confessor, for his successor, 
 and proceeded to extort from him a solemn oath to render 
 him all the assistance in his power, in furtherance of his 
 designs on the crown of England.' Harold, on his return to 
 England, came to an open rupture with his brother Tostig. 
 Probably he had, during his late visit to Normandy, dis- 
 covered how entirely the latter was in the interest of his 
 Flemish wife's connections. Tostig then fled, with his wife 
 and children, to the court of his father-in-law, the earl of 
 Flanders, and devoted himself entirely to the cause of 
 William of Normandy. 
 
 At this perilous crisis, when so dark a storm was slowly 
 but surely gathering over England, a wofal deterioration 
 had taken place in the national character of the people, es- 
 pecially among the higher classes, who had given way to 
 every species of luxury and licentious folly. William of 
 Malmesbury draws the following quaint picture of their 
 manners and proceedings at this period. "Englishmen," 
 says he, " had then transformed themselves into the strange 
 manners of the French, not only in their speech and be- 
 havior, but in their deeds and characters. Their fashion in 
 dress was to go fantastically appointed, with garments short- 
 ened to the knee. Their heads shorn, and their beards shaven 
 ftll but the upper lip, on which they wore long moustaches. 
 
 • Wace. Malmesbury. Thierry. 
 
MATILDA OF PLANDEES. 39 
 
 Their arms they loaded with massive bracelets of gold, carry- 
 ing withal pictured marks upon their skins, pounced in with 
 divers colors ;" by which it is evident that the Anglo-Saxons 
 had adopted the barbarous practice of tattooing their per- 
 sons, like the rude aborigines of the island eleven centuries 
 previous. " They were," continues our author, " accustomed 
 to eat to repletion, and to drink to excess ; while the clergy 
 wholly addicted themselves to light and trivial literature, 
 and could scarcely read their own breviaries." In a word, 
 they had, according to the witness of their own chronicles, 
 arrived at that pass of sensuality and folly which is gener- 
 ally supposed to provoke a national visitation in the shape 
 of pestilence or the sword. 
 
 "The Normans of that period," says Malmesbury, "were 
 proudly apparelled, delicate in their food, but not glutton- 
 ous ; a race inured to war, which they could scarcely live 
 without ; fierce in rushing upon the foe, and, when unequal 
 in force, ready to use stratagem or bribery to gain their ends. 
 They live in large houses with economy ; they wish to rival 
 their superiors ; they envy their equals, and plunder their 
 inferiors, but not unfrequently intermarry with their vas- 
 sals." Such were the general characteristics of the men 
 whom "William had rendered veterans in the art of war, 
 and, both by precept and example, stimulated to habits of 
 frugaUty, temperance, and self-control. A mighty sovereign 
 and a mighty people, possessing within themselves the ele- 
 ments of every requisite that might insure the success of 
 an undertaking, which, by every other nation in Europe, 
 must have been considered as little short of madness. 
 
 When the intelligence of king Edward's death, coupled 
 with the news of Harold's assumption of the regal dignity, 
 reached the court of N'ormandy, William was struck speech- 
 less with indignation and surprise, and is said to have un- 
 consciously tied and untied the rich cordon that fastened 
 his cloak several times, in the first tumults of his agitation 
 and anger. He then gave vent to his wrath, in fierce ani- 
 madversions on Harold's broken faith in causing himself to 
 be crowned king of England, in defiance of the solemn oath 
 he had sworn to him to support his claims. William also 
 
40 MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 
 
 complained of the affront that had been offered to his 
 daughter by the faithless Saxon, who, regardless of his con- 
 tract to the little Norman princess, just before king Edward's 
 death strengthened his interest with the English nobles by 
 marrying Edith or Algitha, sister to the powerful earls 
 Morcar and Edwin, and widow to Griffith, prince of Wales. 
 This circumstance is mentioned with great bitterness in all 
 William's proclamations and reproachful messages to Harold, 
 and appears to have been considered by him to the full as 
 great a villany as the assumption of the crown of England. 
 When William first made known to his Norman peers his 
 positive intention of asserting, by force of arms, his claims 
 to the crown of England, on the plea of Edward the Con- 
 fessor's verbal adoption of himself as successor to that realm, 
 there were stormy debates among them on the subject. They 
 were then assembled in the hall of Lillebon, where they re- 
 mained long in council, but chiefly employed in complaining 
 to one another of the warlike temper of their lord. There 
 were, however, great differences of opinion among them, 
 and they separated themselves into several distinct groups, 
 because many chose to speak at once, and no one could ob- 
 tain the attention of the whole assembly, but harangued as 
 many hearers as could be prevailed on to listen to him. The 
 majority were opposed to the idea of the expedition to Eng- 
 land ; they said, " they had already been grievously taxed to 
 support the duke's foreign wars," and that "they were not 
 only poor, but in debt ;'' while others were no less vehement 
 in advocating their sovereign's project, and spoke " of the 
 propriety of contributing ships and men, and crossing the 
 sea with him." Some said " they would," others, " that they 
 would not ;" and at last the contention among them became 
 so fierce, that Fitz-Q|bo^;^. of B.iieteuil, surnamed the Proud 
 Spirit, stood forth and harangued the malcontent portion 
 of the assembly in these words : — " Why should you go on 
 wrangling with your natural lord, who seeks to gain honor ? 
 You owe him service for your fiefs, and you ought to render 
 it with all readiness. Instead of waiting for him to entreat 
 you, you ought to hasten to him and offer your assistance, 
 that he may not hereafter complain that his design has failed 
 
MATILDA OP FLANDERS. 41 
 
 through your delays." — " Sir," replied they, " wo fear the 
 sea, and we are not bound to serve beyond it. But do you 
 speak to the duke for us, for we do not seem to know our 
 own minds, and we think you will decide better for us than 
 we can do for ourselves." ' 
 
 Fitz-Osborn, thus empowered to act as their deputy, went 
 to the duke at their head, and in their names made him the 
 most unconditional proffers of their assistance and co-opera- 
 tion. " Behold," said Fitz-Osborn, " the loving loyalty of 
 your lieges, my lord, and their zeal for your service. They 
 will pass with you over sea, and double their accustomed 
 service. He who is bound to furnish twenty knights, will 
 bring forty ; he who should serve you with thirty, will now 
 serve you with sixty ; and he who owes one hundred, will 
 cheerfully pay two hundred.' For myself, I will, in good 
 love to my sovereign in his need, contribute sixty well-ap- 
 pointed ships charged with fighting men." Here the dis- 
 sentient barons interrupted him with a clamor of disap- 
 probation, exclaiming, " That he might give as much as he 
 pleased himself, but they had never empowered him to prom- 
 ise such unheard-of aids for them ;" ' and they would submit 
 to no such exactions from their sovereign, since if they once 
 performed double service, it would henceforth be demanded 
 of them as a right. 
 
 "In short," continues the lively chronicler, "they raised 
 such an uproar that no one could hear another speak, — no 
 one could either listen to reason, or render it for himself 
 Then the duke, being greatly perplexed with the noise, with- 
 drew, and sending for the barons one by one, exerted all his 
 powers of persuasion to induce them to accede to his wishes, 
 promising ' to reward them richly with Saxon spoils for the 
 assistance he now required at their hands ; and if they felt 
 disposed to make good Fitz-Osborn's offer of double service 
 at that time, he should receive it as a proof of their loyal 
 affection, and never think of demanding it as a right on any 
 future occasion.' " The nobles, on this conciliatory address, 
 were pacified ; and feeling that it was a much easier thing 
 to maintain their opposition to their sovereign's wishes in 
 
 1 Wace. ' Wace's Chronicle of Normandy. ' Ibid. 
 
42 MATILDA OF PLANDEES. 
 
 the council than in the presence-chamber, began to assume a 
 different tone, and even expressed their willingness to oblige 
 him as far as it lay in their power. 
 
 William next invited his neighbors, the Bretons, the 
 Angevins, and men of Boulogne, to join his banners, bribing 
 them with promises of good pay, and a share in the spoils 
 of merrie England. He even proposed to take the king of 
 Prance into the alliance, offering, if he would assist him with 
 the quota of money, men, and ships which he required, to 
 own him for the suzerain or paramount lord of England, as 
 well as Normandy, and to render him a liegeman's homage 
 for that island as well as for his continental dominions. 
 Philip treated the idea of William's annexing England to 
 Normandy as an extravagant chimera,* and asked him, " Who 
 would take care of his duchy while he was running after a 
 kingdom ?" To this sarcastic query, William replied, " That 
 is a care that shall not need to trouble our neighbors ; by 
 the grace of God we are blessed with a prudent wife and 
 loving subjects, who will keep our border securely during 
 our absence. " ' 
 
 William entreated the young count Baldwin of Flanders, 
 the brother of his duchess, to accompany him as a friendly 
 ally ; but the wily Fleming, with whom the family connection 
 seems to have had but little weight, replied by asking William, 
 " What share of England he intended to bestow on him by 
 way of recompense ?" ' The duke, surprised at this demand, 
 told his brother-in-law, " That he could not satisfy him on 
 that point till he had consulted with his barons on the sub- 
 ject ;" but instead of naming the matter to them he took a 
 piece of fair parchment, and having folded it in the form of 
 a letter, he superscribed it to count Baldwin of Flanders, 
 sealed it with the ducal seal, and wrote the following distich 
 on the label that surrounded the scroll : — 
 
 " Beau fr6re, en Angleterre vous aurez 
 Ce qui dedans escript vous trouverez j" * 
 
 which is to say, " Brother-in-law, I give you such a share of 
 England as you shall find within this letter." 
 * Waoe's Chronicle of Normandy. 'Ibid. 'Wace. * Henderson. Waoe. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 43 
 
 He sent the letter to the young count by a shrewd-witted 
 page, who was much in his confidence. When Baldwin had 
 read this promising endorsement, he broke the seal, full of 
 expectation ; but finding the parchment blank, he showed it 
 to the bearer, and asked what was the duke's meaning? 
 "Nought is written here," replied the messenger, "and 
 nought shalt thou receive ; therefore look for nothing. The 
 honor that the duke seeks will be for the advantage of your 
 sister and her children, and their greatness will be the ad- 
 vancement of yourself, and the benefit will be felt by your 
 country ; but if you refuse your aid, then, with the bless- 
 ing of God, my lord will conquer England without your 
 help." ' 
 
 But though "William ventured, by means of this sarcastic 
 device, to reprove the selfish feelings manifested by his 
 brother-in-law, he was fain to subscribe to the only terms on 
 which the aid of Matilda's father could be obtained ; which 
 was, by securing to him and his successors a perpetual pen- 
 sion of 300 marks of silver annually, in the event of his 
 succeeding in establishing himself as king of England.' 
 ,'/ According to the Flemish historians, this pension was actu- 
 i ally paid during the life of Baldwin V. and his son Baldwin 
 I VI., but afterwards discontinued. It is certain that Ma- 
 tilda's family connections rendered the most important as- 
 sistance to WiUiam in the conquest of England, and her 
 countrymen were among his bravest auxiliaries." The earl 
 of Flanders was, in fact, the first person to commence hos- 
 tilities against Harold, by furnishing the traitor Tostig with 
 ships and a military force to make a descent on England. 
 Tostig executed his mission more like a pirate brigand than 
 an accredited leader. The brave earls Morcar and Edwin 
 drove him into Scotland, whence he passed into Norway, 
 where he succeeded in persuading king Harfager to invade 
 
 1 Wace. 
 
 ' Wil. Gemeteoensis, p. 665, and Daniel's Histoire de France, vol. lii. p. 90. 
 Baldwin earl of Flanders furnished Tostig with sixty ships. — Malmesbary. — 
 Saxon Annals. 
 
 ' Tradition makes the famous Robin Hood a descendant of Matilda's nephew, 
 Gilbert de Gant, who attended the Conqueror to England.— Hist, of Sleaford by 
 Dr. Yerborough. 
 
44 MATILDA OF FLANDEK8. 
 
 England at one point, simultaneously with William of Nor- 
 mandy's attack in another quarter of the island." 
 
 The minds of the people of England in general were, at 
 this momentous crisis, laboring under a superstitious depres- 
 sion, occasioned by the appearance of the splendid three- 
 tailed comet, which became visible in their horizon at the 
 commencement of the memorable year 1066, a few days 
 before the death of king Edward. The''"amrologer8 who 
 foretold the approach of this comet had thought proper to 
 announce that it was ominous of a great national calamity 
 in an oracular Latin distich, of which the following rude 
 couplet is a literal translation : — 
 
 " In the year one thousand and sixty-six, 
 Comets to England's sons an end shall fix." ' 
 
 "About this time," says Malmesbury, "a comet or star, 
 denoting, as they say, a change in kingdoms, appeared trail- 
 ing its extended and fiery train along the sky ; wherefore a 
 certain monk of our monastery named Elmer, bowing down 
 with terror when the bright star first became visible to his 
 eye, prophetically exclaimed, ' Thou art come ! a matter of 
 great lamentation to many a mother art thou come ! I have 
 seen thee long before ; but now I behold thee in thy terrors, 
 threatening destruction to this country.' " Wace, whom we 
 may almost regard in the light of a contemporary chronicler, 
 in still quainter language describes the appearance of this 
 comet, and the impression it made on the unphilosophical 
 star-gazers of the eleventh century. "This year a great 
 star appeared in the heavens, shining for fourteen days, 
 with three long rays streaming towards the south. Such a 
 star as is wont to be seen when a kingdom is about to change 
 its ruler. I have seen men who saw it, — men who were of 
 full age at the time of its appearance, and who lived many 
 years afterwards." 
 
 The descriptions which I have just quoted from the pen 
 of the Norman poet and the monastic chronicler, fall far 
 short of the marvellousness of Matilda's delineation of this 
 comet in the Bayeux tapestry, where the royal needle has 
 
 ' Brompton, Saxon Annals. ' Henderson. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 45 
 
 represented it of dimensions that might well have justified 
 the alarm of the terror-stricken group of Saxon princes, 
 priests, and ladies, who appear to be rushing out of their 
 pigmy dwellings, and pointing to it with unequivocal signs 
 of horror ; for, independently of the fact that it looks near 
 enough to singe all their noses, it would inevitably have 
 whisked the world and all its sister planets out of their 
 orbits, if it had been of a hundredth part proportionable to 
 the magnitude there portrayed.' Some allowance, however, 
 ought to be made for the exaggeration of feminine remi- 
 niscences of an object, which we can scarcely suppose to 
 have been transferred to the embroidered chronicle of the 
 conquest of England till after the triumphant termination 
 of William of Normandy's enterprise afforded his queen- 
 duchess so magnificent a subject for the employment of the 
 skill and ingenuity of herself and the ladies of her court, in 
 recording his achievements on canvas by dint of needlework. 
 But, on the eve of this adventurous expedition, we may 
 naturally conclude that Matilda's time and thoughts were 
 more importantly occupied than in the labors of the loom, 
 or the fabrication of worsted pictures ; when, in addition to 
 all her fears and anxieties in parting with her lord, we doubt 
 not but she had, at least, as much trouble in reconciling the 
 Norman ladies to the absence of their husbands and lovers,' 
 as the duke had to prevail on these his valiant quens to 
 accompany him on an expedition so full of peril to all parties 
 concerned in it. 
 
 Previously to his departure to join his ships and forces 
 assembled at the port of St. Vallery, "William solemnly in- 
 vested Matilda with the regency of Normandy, and en- 
 treated, " that he and his companions in arms might have 
 the benefit of her prayers, and the prayers of her ladies, for 
 the success of their expedition." He appointed for her 
 council some of the wisest and most experienced men among 
 the prelates and elder nobles of Normandy.' The most 
 celebrated of these, for courage, ability, and wisdom, was 
 Eoger de Beaumont, and by him William recommended the 
 
 1 Bayeux tapestry. ' Waoe. 
 
 ' William of Poitou. Wace. Malmesbury. 
 
46 MATILDA OP FLANDEBS. 
 
 duchess to be advised in all matters of domestic policy. ] 
 also associated with the duchess in the regency their eld* 
 son, Eobert ; and this youth, who had just completed 1 
 
 I thirteenth year, was nominally the military chief of Nc 
 
 "\ mandy during the absence of his sire. 
 
 The invasion of England was by no means a popul 
 measure with any class of William's subjects ; and durii 
 the time that his armament remained wind-bound at i 
 Yallery, the common soldiers began to murmur in their ten 
 "The man must be mad," they said, "to persist in going 
 subjugate a foreign country, since God, who withheld t' 
 wind, opposed him; that his father, who was surnam 
 
 — Eobert le Diable, purposed something of the kind, and w 
 in like manner frustrated ; and that it was the fate of th 
 family to aspire to things beyond them, and to find God tht 
 adversary." ' When the duke heard of these disheartenh 
 reports, he called a council of his chiefs, at which it w 
 agreed that the body of St. Vallery should be brought fort 
 to receive the offerings and vows of those who should ft 
 disposed to implore his intercession for a favorable wini 
 Thus artfully did he, instead of interposing the authority i 
 a sovereign and a military leader to punish the language ( 
 sedition and mutiny among his troops, oppose superstiti 
 to superstition, to amuse the short-sighted instruments of 1 
 ambition. The bones of the patron saint of the port we 
 accordingly brought forth, with great solemnity, and expos 
 in their shrine on the green turf beneath the canopy ' 
 heaven, for the double purpose of receiving the prayers i 
 the pious and the contributions of the charitable.' T 
 Norman chroniclers affirm that the shrine was half buri 
 in the heaps of gold, silver, and precious things which we 
 showered upon it by the crowds of votaries who came 
 pay their respects to the saints. Thus were the malcontei 
 amused till the wind changed. 
 
 In the mean time William was agreeably surprised by t 
 arrival of his duchess at the port in a splendid vessel of ws 
 called the Mora,* which she had caused to be built unkno-v 
 
 1 Malmeabury. Waoe. 2 Ibid. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 47 
 
 to him, and adorned in the most royal style of magnificence 
 for his acceptance. The efiigy of their youngest son (Wil- 
 liam), formed of gilded bronze, some writers say of gold, was 
 placed at the prow of this vessel, with his face turned towards 
 England, holding a trumpet to his lips with one hand, and 
 bearing in the other a bow, with the arrow aimed at England. 
 It seemed as if the wind had only delayed in order to enable 
 Matilda to offer this gratifying and auspicious gift to her 
 departing lord; for scarcely had the acclamations with 
 which it was greeted by the admiring host died away, when 
 the long-desired breeze sprang up, " and a joyful clamor," 
 says Malmesbury, " then arising, summoned every one to the 
 ships." The duke himself, first launching from the continent 
 into the deep, led the way in the Mora, which by day was 
 distinguished by a blood-red flag,' and, as soon as it was 
 dark, carried a light at the mast-head, as a beacon to guide 
 the other ships. The first night, the royal leader so far out- 
 sailed his followers, that when morning dawned the Mora 
 was in the mid-seas alone, without a single sail of her con- 
 voy in sight, though these were a thousand in number. 
 Somewhat disturbed at this circumstance, William ordered 
 the master of the Mora to go to the topmast and look out, 
 and bring him word what he had seen. 
 
 The reply was, " K"othing but sea and sky." — " Go up 
 again," said the duke, " and look out." The man cried out, 
 " That he saw four specks in the distance, like the sails of 
 ships." — " Look once again," cried William : then the master 
 exclaimed, " I see a forest of tall masts and a press of sails 
 bearing gallantly towards us." ' 
 
 Bough weather occurred during the voyage, but it is re- 
 markable that, out of so numerous a fleet, only two vessels 
 were lost. In one of these was a noted astrologer, who had 
 taken upon himself to predict that the expedition would be 
 entirely successful, for that Harold would resign England 
 to the duke without a battle. William neither believed in 
 omens nor encouraged fortune-telling, and when he heard 
 the catastrophe of the unfortunate soothsayer who had 
 thought proper to join himself to the armament, shrewdly 
 
 ' Thierry's Anglo-Normans. ' Ibid. 
 
48 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 observed, " Little could he have known of the fate of others, 
 who could not foresee his own." ^ 
 
 ■ On the 28th of September, 1066, the Norman fleet made 
 the port of Pevensey, on the coast of Sussex. Wace's 
 chronicle of the Norman conquest affords a graphic picture 
 of the disembarkation of the duke and his armament. The 
 knights and archers landed first.' After the soldiers, came 
 the carpenters, armorers, and masons, with their tools in 
 their hands, planes, saws, axes, and other implements slung 
 to their sides. Last of all came the duke, who, stumbling 
 as he leaped to shore, measured his majestic height upon the 
 beach. Forthwith all raised a cry of distress. " An evil 
 sign is here I" exclaimed the superstitious Normans ; but the 
 duke, who in recovering himself had filled his hands with 
 sand, cried out in a loud and cheerful voice, " See I seigneurs ; 
 by the splendor of God I have seized England with my two 
 hands.' Without challenge no prize can be made, and that 
 which I have grasped I will, by your good help, maintain." 
 On this, one of his followers ran forward, and snatching 
 a handful of thatch from the roof of a hut, brought it to 
 the duke, exclaiming, merrily, " Sire, come forward, and re- 
 ceive seizin* I give you seizin, in token that this realm is 
 yours." " I accept it," replied the duke, " and may God be 
 
 ' Waoe. Henderson. 
 
 ' There is a tradition in the north of England, that the foremost man of this 
 eompany to touch the land of promise was the ancestor of the Stricklands of 
 Sizergh castle, in Westmoreland, who derive their name and arms from this 
 circumstance. They show the sword in the ancient banqueting-room in the 
 D'Eyncourt tower of Sizergh castle, with which it is asserted by that venerable 
 gossip, tradition, that the redoubted chief first struck the land at Pevensey. The 
 weapon, which appears formed for a giant's grasp, is not, however, we imagine, 
 of earlier date than the days of Edward III,, and greatly resembles the sword of 
 state belonging to that monarch which is shown in Westminster abbey. It is 
 more probable that it pertained to sir Thomas Strickland, who attended the 
 victorious Edward in his French campaigns, than to the Norman founder of his 
 lineage, who was indebted, not to his foreign comrades, but to the English 
 spectators of the disembarkation for his Saxon surname. 
 
 ' Wace. Ordericus Vitalis. 
 
 * Waoe. Simeon Dunelm. Matthew of Westminster, This ceremony is still 
 observed in the transfer of some copyhold estates. Formerly a turf from a field, 
 and a piece of thatch from the roof of a tenement, were all the conveyance 
 required to give the purchaser a legal title of possession. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 49 
 
 with U8 !" ' They then sat down and dined together on the 
 beach ; afterwards, they sought for a spot whereon to rear 
 a wooden fort, which they had brought in disjointed pieces 
 in their ships from Normandy. 
 
 Matilda has, in a curious section of the Bayeux tapestry, 
 shown us the manner in which the trusty followers of her 
 lord carried the disjointed frame-work of this timber fortress 
 to the shore. The soldiers assisted the carpenters and other 
 craftsmen in this arduous undertaking, and the duke en- 
 couraged and stimulated them in this union of labor to such 
 good purpose, that before even-fall they had finished their 
 building, fortified it, and supped merrily therein. Here the 
 duke tarried four days. William had, through the agency 
 of Matilda's brother-in-law, Tostig, arranged measures with 
 Harfager, king of Norway, that their attacks upon England 
 should be simultaneous ; but the contrary winds which had 
 detained his fleets so long at St. Vallery, had speeded the 
 sails of his northern ally, so that Harfager and Tostig entered 
 the Tyne with three hundred ships, and commenced their 
 work of rapine and devastation a full fortnight before the 
 arrival of the Norman armament. Harold was thus at 
 liberty to direct his whole strength against his fraternal foe 
 and Harfager. The intelligence that both Tostig and Har- 
 fager were defeated and slain at Stanford bridge reached 
 William four days after his landing at Pevensey,' while he 
 lay intrenched in his wooden citadel, waiting for a com- 
 munication from his confederates before he ventured to 
 advance farther up the country. On receiving this unfavor- 
 able news, William manifested no consternation or surprise, 
 but turning to his nobles, said, "You see the astrologer's 
 prediction was false. We cannot win the land without a 
 battle ; and here I vow, that, if it shall please God to give 
 me the victory, on whatever spot it shall befall, I wiU there 
 build a church to be consecrated to the blessed Trinity, and 
 to St. Martin, where perpetual prayers shall be off'ered for 
 thfe rfns of Edward the Confessor, for my own sins, the 
 sins of Matilda my spouse, and the sins of such as have 
 
 > Wace. 
 
 ' Saxon Annals. Malmesbury. S. Dunelm. Henry Huntingdon. Wace. 
 
50 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 attended me in this expedition, but more particularly for the 
 sins of such as may fall in the battle." ' This tow greatly 
 reassured his followers, and appears to have been considered 
 by the valiant Normans as a very comfortable arrangement. 
 Hard work, however, it must have prepared for the priests, 
 who had to sing and pray away the sins of all the parties 
 specified, if we take into consideration who and what man- 
 ner of people they were. 
 
 Harold, meantime, was far beyond the Humber, and in 
 high spirits at the signal victory he had obtained at Stan- 
 ford bridge, and the delusive idea that the duke of Nor- 
 mandy had delayed his threatened invasion till the spring,' 
 as the father of Matilda had deceitfiilly informed him. But 
 the intelligence of the arrival of these unwelcome guests 
 was too soon conveyed to him by a knight from the neigh- 
 borhood of Pevensey, who had heard the outcry of the 
 peasants on the coast of Sussex when they saw the great 
 fleet arrive ; and being aware of the project of the Norman 
 duke, had posted himself behind a hill, where, unseen him- 
 self, he had watched the disembarkation of this mighty host 
 and their proceedings on the shore till they had built up and 
 intrenched their wooden fortress, which, being done with 
 such inconceivable rapidity, appeared to him like the work 
 of enchantment. Sorely troubled at what he had seen, the 
 knight girded on his sword, and taking lance in hand, 
 mounted his fleetest steed, and tarried not by the way, either 
 for rest or refreshment, till he had found Harold, to whom 
 he communicated his alarming tidings in these words : " The 
 Normans have come. They have landed at Hastings, and 
 built up a fort, which they have enclosed with a foss and 
 palisades ; and they will rend the land from thee and thine, 
 unless thou defend it weU." ' 
 
 In the forlorn hope of ridding himself of his formidable 
 invader, Harold offered to purchase the departure of the 
 Norman duke, telling him " that if silver or gold were his 
 object, he, who had enriched himself with the spoils of the 
 defeated king of Norway, would give him enough to satisfy- 
 both himself and his followers." — " Thanks for Harold's fair 
 
 • Waoe. a Speed. » Waoe. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 51 
 
 words," replied William ; " but I did not bring so many ecus 
 into this country to change them for his esterlins} My pur- 
 pose in coming is to claim this realm, which is mine accord- 
 ing to the gift of king Edward, which was confirmed by 
 Harold's oath." — " Nay, but you ask too much of us, sire," 
 returned the messenger, by whom the pacific offer had been 
 made ; " my lord is not so pressed that he should resign his 
 kingdom at your desire. Harold will give you nothing but 
 what you can take from him, unless in a friendly way, as a 
 condition for your departure, which he is willing to purchase 
 with large store of silver and gold and fine garments ; but 
 if you accept not his offer, know that he is ready to give you 
 battle on Saturday next, if you be in the field on that day." ' 
 
 The duke accepted this challenge ; and on the Friday 
 evening preceding that fatal day for the Saxon cause, 
 Harold planted his gonfanon on the very spot where Battle 
 abbey now stands. The Normans and English being equally 
 apprehensive of attack during the season of darkness, kept 
 watch and ward that night, but employed their vigils in a 
 very different manner. The English, according to the report 
 of contemporary chroniclers, kept up their spirits with a 
 riotous carouse, crying "Wassail!" and "Drink heal!"' 
 dancing, laughing, and gambling all night. The Normans, 
 on the contrary, being in a devout frame of mind, made 
 confessions of their sins, and employed the precious mo- 
 ments in recommending themselves to the care of God. 
 
 The battle joined on the 14th of October, Harold's birth- 
 day, on a spot about seven miles from Hastings, called 
 Heathfield, where the town of Battle now stands. When 
 William was arming for the encounter, in his haste and 
 agitation he unwittingly put on his hauberk the hind part 
 before.* He quickly changed it ; but perceiving, from the 
 looks of consternation among the by-standers that his mis- 
 take had been noticed, and construed into an omen of ill. 
 
 ^ Wace. A play on words, meaning crowns and ehillinga ; (cu meaning a 
 shield, as well as the coin called a crown. 
 
 * Malmesbury. Matthew of Westminster. Wace. 
 3 Meaning, " Wish health," and " Drink health." 
 
 * Malmesbury. Wace. William of Poitou. 
 
52 MATILDA OP FLANDEES. 
 
 he smilingly observed, " I have seen many a man who, if 
 such a thing had happened to him, would not have entered 
 the battle-field ; but I never believed in omens, nor have I 
 ever put my faith in fortune-tellers or divinations of any 
 kind, for my trust is in God. Let not this mischance dis- 
 courage you, for if this change import aught, it is that the 
 power of my dukedom shall be turned into a kingdom, — 
 yea, a king shall I be, who have hitherto been but a duke." ' 
 Then the duke called for the good steed which had been 
 presented to him as a token of friendship by the king of 
 Spain. 
 
 Matilda has done justice to this noble charger in her 
 Bayeux tapestry. It is represented as caparisoned for the 
 battle, and led by Gualtier GiflFart, the duke's squire. There 
 is in the same group the figure of a knight armed cap-a-pie, 
 in the close fitting ring-armor and nasal conical helmet worn 
 by the Norman chivalry of that era, with a gonfanon 
 attached to his lance something after the fashion of the 
 streamer which forms part of the paraphernalia of the 
 modern lancer, with this difference only, that the gonfanon 
 of the ancient knight was adorned with his device or 
 armorial bearing, and served the purpose of a banner or 
 general rallying point for his followers. The knightly 
 figure in the Bayeux tapestry which I have just described 
 is generally believed to have been designed for the veritable 
 effigies of the redoubtable conqueror of this realm, or at 
 any rate as correct a resemblance of him as his loving 
 spouse Matilda could produce in cross-stitch. He is deline- 
 ated in the act of extending his hand to greet his favorite 
 steed. 
 
 "The duke," says Wace, "took the reins, put foot in 
 stirrup, and mounted ; and the good horse pawed, pranced, 
 reared himself up, and curvetted." The viscount of Toazay, 
 who stood by, thus expressed to those around him his ad- 
 miration of the duke's fine appearance and noble horseman- 
 ship : * " Never," said he, " have I seen a man so fairly armed, 
 nor one who rode so gallantly, and became his hauberk so 
 well, or bore his lance so gracefully. There is no other 
 
 ' Wace. J Ibid. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 53 
 
 such knight under heaven ! A fair count he is, and a fair 
 king he will be. Let him fight, and he will overcome ; and 
 shame be to him who shall fail him !" " 
 
 The Normans were drawn up in three bodies. Mont- 
 gomery and Pitz-Osborn led the first, Geofi'rey Martel led 
 the second, and the duke himself headed the third, which 
 was composed of the flower of Normandy, and kept in re- 
 serve till the proper moment for its effective advance should 
 be ascertained by its skilful and puissant leader. Taillefer, 
 the warrior minstrel of Normandy, rode gallantly at the 
 head of the chivalry of his native land, singing the war-song 
 of Eollo.' William had that day three horses killed under 
 him, without losing a drop of his own blood ; finding, how- 
 ever, that Harold had succeeded in rallying a strong body of 
 men around him on one of the heights, with the evident in- 
 tention of keeping possession of that vantage ground till 
 the approaching night should favor the Saxons' retreat, he 
 made his last desperate charge upon the people of the land. 
 In this attack it is supposed that Harold was slain by a 
 random arrow, which was shot through the left eye into his 
 brain. 
 
 The victorious duke pitched his tent that night in the field 
 of the dead, which, in memory of the dreadful slaughter that 
 had dyed the earth to crimson, was ever after called by him 
 the vale of Sanguelac? This fiercely contested battle cost 
 William the Hves of six thousand of his bravest followers ; 
 but Malmesbury, and other accredited historians of that 
 time, rate the loss of the Saxons at threescore thousand men.* 
 
 ^ Wace. Chronicle of the Dukes of Normandy. 
 
 ' Malmesbury. Matthew of Westminster. Henry of Huntingdon. Speed 
 Bapin. Chron. de Bello Wil. Gremet. 
 
 ' Saxon Annals. Speed. Ordericus says it was called so long before this battle. 
 
 * The following day was devoted by the Norman conquerors to the interment 
 of their dead ; and William gave leave and license to the Saxon peasants to per- 
 form the like charitable office to the remains of their unfortunate countrymen. 
 Search was made for the body of Harold, but at first in vain. The spoilers had 
 stripped and gashed the victims of the fight, so that it was difficult to distinguish 
 between the mortal remains of the leader and the serf. Githa, the mother of 
 Harold, had been herself unable to identify the body of her beloved son ; but 
 there was one whose fond eye no change in the object of her affection could 
 deceive ; this was a Saxon lady of great beauty, Edith, surnamed Swans-Hala, or 
 
54 MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 
 
 When the duchess-regent of Normandy, Matilda, received 
 the joyful tidings of the victory which her lord had obtained 
 at Hastings, she was engaged in her devotions in the chapel 
 of the Benedictine priory of Notre Dame, in the fields near 
 the suburbs of St. Sever ; and after returning her thanks- 
 givings to the God of battles for the success of her consort's 
 arms, she ordered that the priory should henceforth be 
 called, in memory of that circumstance, Notre Dame de 
 Bonnes Nouvelles. And by that name it is distinguished to 
 this day.' 
 
 The coronation of the mighty forefather of our present 
 line of sovereigns took place at Westminster, on Monday 
 the 25th of December, being Christmas-day, called by our 
 Saxon ancestors, Midwinter-day. Splendid preparations 
 were made in the sister cities of London and Westminster 
 for the celebration of the twofold festival of the Nativity 
 of our Lord and the inauguration of the new sovereign. 
 On the afternoon of Christmas-eve, William of Normandy 
 entered the city on horseback with his victorious followers. 
 He took up his lodgings that night at the palace in Black- 
 friars, where Bridewell now stands. Early in the morning 
 he went by water to London bridge, where he landed and 
 proceeded to a house near London stone ; after reposing 
 awhile, he set forth with a stately cavalcade gallantly 
 mounted, and rode to Westminster amidst the shouts of 
 a prodigious multitude, who were reconciled by the excite- 
 ment of the pageant to the idea of receiving for their sov- 
 ereign a man whom nature had so admirably qualified to 
 set off the trappings of royalty.' Next to his person rode 
 the nobility of England, and those of Normandy followed. 
 
 the Swan-neoked. She had formerly been on those terms with Harold which had 
 rendered her only too familiar with his personal characteristics, and by her his 
 corpse was recognized. Githa, it is said, offered to purchase it of William at the 
 price of its weight in gold ; but he yielded it without a ransom to the afflicted 
 mother, either through a generous impulse of compassion, or with a view of 
 conciliating the kindred of the deceased. He also cashiered a Norman soldier, 
 who boasted of having gashed the leg of the royal Saxon after he had fallen. 
 The mother of Harold buried her son in Waltham abbey, placing over his tomb 
 the simple but expressive sentence, haeold infelix. — Thierry. Chronicle of 
 Waltham. Malmesbury. 
 1 Duoarel's Norman Antiquities. > Ingulphus. Orderious Vitalis. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 55 
 
 In consequence of the dispute between Stigand, arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, and the pope, William chose to be 
 crowned and consecrated by the hand of Aldred, archbishop 
 of York,' to avoid the possibility of the ceremony being 
 questioned at any future time. He took not the crown, 
 however, as a right of conquest, but by consent of the 
 people ; for the archbishop, before he placed the royal circlet 
 on his head, paused, and turning to the English nobles, 
 asked them " if they were willing to have the duke of Nor- 
 mandy for their king ?" to which they replied with such 
 continuous acclamations of assent, that the vehemence of 
 their loyalty, more noisy than sincere, had nearly been pro- 
 ductive of the most fatal consequences. William had sur- 
 rounded the abbey and guarded its approaches with a large 
 body of Norman soldiers, as a prudential measure, in case 
 any attempt upon his life should be made by his new vassals ; 
 and those trusty guards without the abbey, mistaking the 
 clamorous applause within for a seditious rising among 
 the Saxons, with intent to massacre their lord and his Nor- 
 man followers, in the first emotions of surprise and rage 
 set fire to the adjoining houses by way of reprisals. The 
 flames rapidly communicating to the wooden buildings 
 round about, produced great consternation, and occasioned 
 the loss of many lives. William and the pale and trem- 
 bling assistant prelates and priests within the church were 
 dismayed, and faltered in the midst of the ceremonial, and 
 with good cause ; for if great exertions had not been used 
 by the more sober-minded portion of the Norman guards 
 to extinguish the conflagration, which presently extended 
 to the abbey, that magnificent edifice, with all the illustrious 
 company within its walls, must have been consumed to- 
 gether. Some persons have considered this fire as the work 
 of the Saxon populace, with intent to destroy at one blow 
 the Norman conqueror and his followers, with such of their 
 
 1 " Then, on Midwinter-day, archbishop Aldred hallowed him to king at 
 Westminster, and gare him possession with the books of Christ ; and also swore 
 him, ere that he would set the crown upon his head, that he would so well 
 govern this nation as any king before him best did, if they would be faithful to 
 him." — Saxon Chronicle. 
 
56 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 own countrymen as had forgotten their honor so far as to 
 become, not only witnesses, but assistants, at the coronation 
 of their foe. And this indeed is not improbable, if the 
 Anglo-Saxons of that period had evinced a spirit capable 
 of conceiving and carrying into execution a design of such 
 terrific grandeur for the deliverance of their country. The 
 Norman soldiery could by no means be appeased till their 
 beloved chief came out of the abbey, and showed himself 
 to them in his coronation-robes and diadem.' 
 
 ' William of Foitou. Lingard. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS, 
 
 QUEEN OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 CHAPTBE II. 
 
 Matilda assumes the title of queen of England in Normandy — Her regency there 
 — Patronage of learning — Charities — Her vengeance on Brihtric Meaw — 
 Obtains his lands — His imprisonment — Death in prison — "William's court at 
 Berkhamstead — Triumphant return to Normandy — Matilda awaits his landing 
 — Triumphal Norman progresses — Revolts in England — William reappoints 
 Matilda regent — Embarks for England in a storm — William sends for Matilda 
 — She arrives in England with her children— Her coronation at Winchester — 
 Champion at her coronation — Birth of her son Henry — Bayeux tapestry — The 
 dwarf artist, Turold — Matilda's daughter — Revolt of the English — Queen 
 Matilda's return to Normandy — Regent there the third time — Her passionate 
 love for her eldest son — Death of her father — Dissensions of her brothers — 111 
 effects of her absence — Separate governments of William and Matilda — King 
 of France attacks Matilda— Her able government — Discontent of Norman 
 ladies — Scandalous reports — ^William's supposed conjugal infidelity — Ma- 
 tilda's cruelty to her rival — Duke of Bretagne invades Normandy — Marriage 
 with Matilda's second daughter — Dissensions in the royal family — Matilda's 
 partiality to her son Robert — Her second son, prince Richard — His death — 
 New Forest. 
 
 " Our mistress Matilda," says William of Poitou,' the chap- 
 lain of the Conqueror, " had already assumed the name of 
 queen, though she was not yet crowned. She had governed 
 Normandy during the absence of her lord with great pru- 
 dence and skill." So firmly, indeed, had that authority been 
 
 1 This elegant author, who is also called Pictaviensis, was archdeacon of Li- 
 sieux. His chronicle of the Conquest of England is written in very flowing 
 language, greatly resembling in style an heroic poem. It abounds with eulogiums 
 on his royal patron, but is extremely valuable on account of the personal his- 
 tory which it contains. It is sometimes called the Domestic Chronicle of William 
 of Normandy. 
 
 57 
 
58 MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 
 
 sustained that, though the whole flower and strength of Nor- 
 mandy had followed the fortunes of their warlike duke to 
 the shores of England, not one of the neighboring princes 
 had ventured to molest the duchess-regent. Her kinsman, 
 the emperor Henry, had engaged, in event of any aggression 
 on the part of Prance or Bretagne, to defend Normandy 
 with the whole strength of Germany, and she also had a 
 powerful neighbor and protector in the earl of Flanders, her 
 father ; but great credit was certainly due to her own politi- 
 cal conduct, in keeping the duchy free, both from external 
 embroilments and internal strife at such a momentous period. 
 Her government was very popular as well as prosperous in 
 Normandy, where, surrounded by the most learned men of 
 the age, she advanced in no slight degree the progress of civ- 
 ilization and refinement. The encouragement she afforded 
 to arts and letters has won for this princess golden reports 
 in the chronicle lore of that age.* 
 
 Well aware was Matilda of the importance it is to princes 
 to enlist in their service the pens of those who possess 
 the power of defending or undermining thrones, and whose 
 influence continues to bias the minds of men after the lapse 
 of ages. "This princess," says Ordericus Vitalis, "who 
 derived her descent from the kings of France and emperors 
 of Germany, was even more distinguished for the purity of 
 her mind and manners than for her illustrious lineage. As 
 a queen she was munificent, and liberal of her gifts. She 
 united beauty with gentle breeding and all the graces of 
 Christian holiness. While the victorious arms of her il- 
 lustrious spouse subdued all things before him, she was 
 indefatigable in alleviating distress in every shape, and 
 redoubled her alms. In a word, she exceeded all commen- 
 dations, and won the love of all hearts." 
 
 Such is the character which one of the most eloquent and 
 circumstantial historians- of the eleventh century has given 
 of Matilda. Yet Ordericus Vitalis, as a contemporary wit- 
 ness, could scarcely have been ignorant of the dark stain 
 which the first exercise of her newly-acquired power in 
 England has left upon her memory. The Chronicle of 
 
 ' Ordericus Vitalis. William of Poitou. 
 
MATILDA OP FLANDEES. 
 
 59 
 
 Tewkesbury, which states that Brihtric Meaw, the lord of 
 the honor of Gloucester, when he resided at her father's 
 court as ambassador from Edward the Confessor had re- 
 fused to marry Matilda, adds, that in the first year of the 
 reign of William the Conqueror, Matilda obtained from her 
 lord the grant of all Brihtric's lands and honors, and that 
 she then caused the unfortunate Saxon to be seized at his 
 manor of Hanelye, and conveyed to "Winchester, where he 
 died in prison and was privately buried.' 
 
 Thus, then, does it appear that Matilda, after having 
 enjoyed for fourteen years the greatest happiness as a wife 
 and mother, had secretly brooded over the bitter memory 
 of the slight that had been offered to her in early youth, for 
 the purpose of inflicting the deadliest vengeance in return 
 on the man who had rejected the love she had once conde- 
 scended to offer. This circumstance is briefly related, not 
 only in a general, but a topographical history, without com- 
 ment, and it is in no slight degree confirmed by the records 
 of the Domesday-book, where it appears that Avening, 
 Tewkesbury, Fairford, Thornbury, Whitenhurst, and various 
 other possessions in Gloucestershire, belonging to Brihtric, 
 the son of Algar, were granted to Matilda by the Con- 
 queror ; and after her death, reverting to the crown, were by 
 William again bestowed on their second son, William Eufus.' 
 
 Matilda, moreover, deprived Gloucester of its charter and 
 civic liberties, merely because it was the city of the unfortu- 
 nate Brihtric, — perhaps for showing some sign of resent- 
 
 1 Chron. Tewkesbury, Bib. Cottonian MSS. Cleopatra, e. 111. Monaatioon, 
 vol. iii. p. 59. Leland's Coll., vol. 1. p. 78. The author of the continuation of 
 Brut, bom in the same age, and written in the reign of Henry I., son of this 
 queen, thus alludes to this circumstance : 
 
 ' La quele jadis, quant fu pucelle, 
 Ama un conte d*Angleterre, 
 Brihtric Mau, le oi nomer, 
 Apres le roi ki fu riohe ber. 
 A lui la pucell envoeia messager, 
 Pur sa amour a lui procurer : 
 Mais Brihtric Maude refusa." 
 
 ' Who, when she was maiden, 
 Loved a count of England, 
 Brihtric Mau he was named, 
 Except the king was no richer man. 
 To him the virgin sent a messenger, 
 His love for her to obtain : 
 But Brihtric refused Maude.' 
 
 ' " Infra acriptaa terras tenuit Brihtric, et post Regina Matilda." — Domes- 
 day-book, tom. ii. p. 100. History of Gloucester. 
 
60 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 ment for his fate. We fear that the first of our Norman 
 queens must, on this evidence, stand convicted of the crime 
 of wrong and robbery, if not of absolute murder ; and if it 
 had been possible to make a post-mortem examination on 
 the body of the unfortunate son of Algar, sufficient reason 
 might have been seen, perhaps, for the private nature of 
 his interment. All this wrong was done by agency; for, 
 if dates be correct, Matilda had not yet entered England.* 
 
 A few days after his coronation, "William, feeling some 
 reason to distrust the Londoners, withdrew to his old quar- 
 ters at Berkhamstead, where he kept his court, and succeeded 
 in drawing round him many of the most influential of the 
 Saxon princes and thanes, to whom, in return for their oaths 
 of allegiance, he restored their estates and honors. His next 
 step, for the mutual satisfaction of his Norman followers 
 and Saxon subjects, was to lay the foundation of the church 
 and abbey of St. Martin, now called Battle abbey, where 
 perpetual prayers were directed to be offered up for the 
 repose of the souls of all who had fallen in that sanguinary 
 conflict. 
 
 William having been now six months separated from his 
 wife and family, his desire to embrace them once more, and 
 to display to his Norman subjects his newly acquired gran- 
 deur, induced him to spend the Easter festival in Normandy 
 with Matilda. Previous to his departure, he placed strong 
 Norman garrisons in all his castles, and carried with him 
 to Normandy all the leading men among the Anglo-Saxons. 
 Among these were Edgar Atheling, Morcar, Edwin, and 
 Waltheof ' He re-embarked in the Mora, in the month of 
 March, 1067, and, with the most splendid company that ever 
 
 * In addition to our numerous ancient authorities regarding Brihtrie Meaw, 
 we subjoin this important extract from a work by one of our most learned 
 antiquarian historians of the age : " Brihtrie, the son of Algar, a Saxon thane, 
 is stated in Domesday to have held this manor in the reign of Edward the 
 Confessor ; but having given offence to Maud, the daughter of Baldwin count of 
 Flanders, previous to her marriage with William duke of Normandy, by re- 
 fusing to marry her himself, his property was seized by that monarch on the 
 conquest, and bestowed, seemingly in revenge, upon the queen." — Ellis's His- 
 tory of Thornbury Castle. Bristol, 1839. 
 
 ' William of Poitou. Malmesbury. S. Dunelm. Walsingham. 
 
MATILDA OF FliANDEBS. 61 
 
 sailed from England, crossed the seas, and landed on his 
 native shore, a little below the abbey of Fescamp. Matilda 
 was there, with her children,' in readiness to receive and 
 welcome her illustrious lord, who was greeted with the most 
 enthusiastic rapture by all classes of his subjects. For joy 
 of William's return the solemn fast of Lent was this year 
 kept as a festival ; all labor was suspended, and nothing but j 
 m.irth and pleasure prevailed in his native Normandy.' 
 
 William appears to have had infinite pleasure in display- 
 ing, not only to his wife and family, but to the foreign am- 
 bassadors, the costly spoils which he had brought over from 
 England.' The quantity and exquisite workmanship of the 
 gold and silver plate, and, withal, the richness of the em- 
 broidered garments wrought by the skilful hands of the 
 Anglo-Saxon ladies (then esteemed so inestimably precious 
 in all parts of Europe, that they were called, by distinction, 
 Anglicum opus*'), excited the admiration and astonishment 
 of all beholders; but more particularly did the splendid 
 dress of his guards, and the magnificence and beauty of the 
 long-haired and moustached Anglo-Saxon nobles by whom 
 he was attended, attract the wonder of the foreign princes 
 and peers. 
 
 On the 18th of June, Matilda's newly erected abbey -church 
 of the Holy Trinity, being now completed, was consecrated 
 with great pomp, in the presence of the royal foundress and 
 her victorious lord. On the same day, duke William pre- 
 sented at the altar their infant daughter Cecilia, and devoted 
 her to the service of God.' A grand, yet painfully exciting 
 pageant that scene must have been, for who could then 
 answer how far the heart of the unconscious babe, who was 
 thus devoted to a life of religious celibacy, obedience, hu- 
 mility, poverty, and seclusion from the world, might here- 
 after acquiesce in the sacrifice to which her parents were 
 devoting her? But what a subject for the pencil of the 
 historic painter, that church in its fresh glorious beauty I — 
 thronged with a venerating congregation of nobles, ladies, 
 
 1 William of Poitou. Henderson. 
 
 ' William of Poitou. ' Ibid. * English work. 
 
 ' Hardy's Notes on AVilliam of Malmesbary. 
 
62 MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 
 
 burghers, soldiers, peasants, mariners, and craftsmen, clad 
 in the picturesque costumes of their various ranks and call- 
 ings, interspersed with the victorious Norman and van- 
 quished Saxon chiefs, whose descendants are now blended 
 into one mighty people, — the beautiful duchess Matilda, in- 
 vested with the regal insignia of the queenly rank to which 
 her warlike consort's late achievements had elevated her, 
 surrounded with all her blooming progeny, yet looking with 
 fonder maternal interest on the chosen lamb which had just 
 been separated from that fair flock, to be presented by the 
 conqueror of England as a thank-offering to the God of 
 battles, who had prospered him in his late enterprise, and 
 given him a name greater than that of his far-famed pred- 
 ecessor, Eollo.' 
 
 The whole summer was spent by William in a series of 
 triumphant progresses, through the towns and cities of Nor- 
 mandy, with his queen-duchess.' Meanwhile, the spirit of 
 freedom was crushed, but not extinguished, among the 
 people of England, and the absence of the Conqueror was 
 regarded as a favorable opportunity for expelling the un- 
 welcome locusts who had fastened upon the land, and were 
 devouring its fatness. A secret plot was organized for a 
 simultaneous rising throughout England, and a general 
 massacre of the Normans.' But though the terror of Wil- 
 liam's actual presence was withdrawn for a season, he kept 
 up a strict espionage on the proceedings of the English. 
 The first rumor of what was going on among them, roused 
 him from the career of pleasure which he had been pur- 
 suing. Eelinquishing the idea of keeping a splendid Christ- 
 mas with his beloved family, he reappointed Matilda and 
 
 ^ Matilda's foundation possesses a strong historical interest, even as connected 
 with recent events in France. M. de Lamartine, in his beautiful work on the 
 Gironde, when relating the occurrences of the youth of Charlotte Corday, who 
 was brought up in that abbey, gives us this information on its modem destina- 
 tion : " These vast cloisters and chapel of Norman architecture, built in 1066 by 
 Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, after having been deserted, degraded, 
 and forgotten in its ruins until 17.30, was then magnificently restored; at this 
 day it forms one of the finest hospitals in France, and one of the most splendid 
 public buildings in the city of Caen." — Vol. iii. p. 57. 1848. 
 
 ' OrdericuB Vitalis. Saxon Chronicle. * W. Poitou. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 63 
 
 his son Eobert regents of Normandy, and embarking on a ^ 
 stormy sea, he sailed from Dieppe on the 6th of December.' 
 On the 7th he arrived at Winchelsea, and proceeded imme- 
 diately to London, to the cohissefnataon of the malcontents, 
 who thought they were sure of him for the winter season. 
 After the suppression of the revolt, William, perceiving 
 the disadvantages attendant on a queenless court, and feel- 
 ing withal the greatest desire to enjoy the society of his 
 beautiful consort, despatched a noble company into Nor- 
 mandy, to conduct Matilda and her children to England.' 
 She joyfully obeyed the welcome mandate of her lord, and 
 crossed the sea with a stately cortege of nobles, knights, and 
 ladies.' Among the learned clerks by whom she was at- 
 tended was the celebrated Gui, bishop of Amiens, who had 
 distinguished himself by an heroic poem on the defeat and 
 fall of Harold. 
 
 Matilda arrived in England soon after Easter, in the 
 month of April, 1068, and proceeding immediately to Win- 
 chester, was received with great joy by her lord ; prepara^ 
 tions were instantly commenced for her coronation, which 
 was appointed to take place in that city on WhiJrSunday.' 
 The great festivals of the church appear in the middle ages 
 to have been considered by the English as peculiarly au- 
 spicious days for the solemnization of coronations and mar- 
 riages, if we may judge by the frequency of their occur- 
 rence at those seasons. Sunday was generally chosen for a 
 coronation-day. William, who had been exceedingly anx- 
 ious to share his newly-acquired honors with Matilda, chose 
 to be re-crowned at the same time, to render the pageant 
 of her consecration more imposing ; and farther to con- 
 ciliate the aifections of his English subjects, he repeated for 
 the second time the oath by which he engaged to govern 
 with justice and moderation, and to preserve inviolate that 
 great palladium of English liberty, trial by jury." 
 
 This coronation was far more splendid than that which 
 had preceded it in Westminster abbey, at William's first in- 
 
 > Orderious Vitalis. » Ibid. » Ibid. 
 
 ♦ Florence of Worcester. S. Dunelm. M. Westminster. 
 ' S. Dunelm. Saxon Chronicle. 
 
64 MATILDA OF FLANDEBS. 
 
 auguration, where the absence of the queen and her ladies 
 deprived the ceremony of much of its brilliancy, and the 
 alarming conflagration by which it was interrupted must 
 have greatly abridged the pomp and festivities that had 
 been anticipated on that occasion. Here everything went 
 off auspiciously. It was in the smiling season of the year, 
 when the days were long and bright, without having at- 
 tained to the oppressiveness of summer heat. The com- 
 pany, according to the report of contemporary historians, 
 was exceedingly numerous and noble ; and the Conqueror, 
 who appears to have been in a wonderfully gracious mood 
 that day, was very sprightly and facetious on the occa- 
 sion, and conferred favors on all who solicited. The grace- 
 ful and majestic person of queen Matilda, and the number 
 and beauty of her fine children, charmed the populace, and 
 every one present was delighted with the order and regu- 
 larity with which this attractive pageant was conducted.' 
 The nobles of Normandy attended their duchess to the 
 church; but after the crown was placed on her head by 
 Aldred, archbishop of York, she was served by her new 
 subjects, the English. 
 
 The first occasion on which the office of champion was 
 instituted, is said to have been at this splendid coronation 
 at Winchester, where William caused his consort to be asso- 
 ciated with' himself in all the honors of royalty.' The cere- 
 monial of Matilda's inauguration-banquet afforded prece- 
 dents for most of the grand feudal offices at subsequent 
 coronations.* Among these, the office of ' grand pannetier' 
 has been for some time extinct. His service was to bear 
 the salt and the carving-knives from the pantry to the king's 
 dining-table, and his fees were the salt-cellars, spoons, and 
 k^jyes laid on the royal table. " Forks were not among the 
 royal luxuries at the board of the mighty William and his 
 fair Matilda, who both, in feeding themselves, verified the 
 jDroverb which says ' that fingers were made before forks.' " 
 — "The grand pannetier likewise served the bread to the 
 sovereign, and received, in addition to the rest of his fees, 
 the bread-cover, called the coverpane. For this service the 
 
 1 Henderson. ' Ibid. ' Glories of Regality. 
 
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MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 65 
 
 Beauehamps held the manor of Beauchamp Kibworth. The 
 manor of Addington was likewise granted by the Conqueror 
 to Tezelin, his cook, for composing a dish of white soup 
 called dillegrout, which especially pleased the royal palate." 
 
 " When the noble company had retired from the church, 
 and were seated at dinner in the banqueting hall," says Hen- 
 derson, in his Life of the Conqueror, " a bold cavalier called 
 Marmion,' completely armed, rode into the hall, and did 
 at three several times repeat this challenge : — ' If any per- 
 son denies that our most gracious sovereign, lord William, 
 and his spouse Matilda, are not'king and queen of England, 
 he is a false-hearted traitor and a liar ; and here I, as cham- 
 pion, do challenge him to single combat.' " No person ac- 
 cepted the challenge, and Matilda was called la reine ever 
 after. 
 
 The same year, Matilda brought into the world her fourth 
 son, Henry, surnamed Beauclere. This event took place at 
 Selby, in Yorkshire, and was productive of some degree of 
 satisfaction to the people, who considered the English-born 
 prince with far more complacency than his three Norman 
 brethren, Eobert, Eichard, and William Eufus. Matilda 
 settled upon her new-born son all the lands she possessed in 
 England and Normandy ; they were to revert to him after 
 her death. Tranquillity now appeared to be completely re- 
 stored ; and Matilda, enjoying every happiness as a wife, a 
 mother, and a queen, seemed to be placed at the very sum- 
 mit of earthly prosperity. 
 
 Whether it be by accident, or owing to a close attention to 
 the reality he saw before him, it is certain that the antique 
 limner who drew Matilda's portrait has represented the 
 organ of constructiveness in her head as very decidedly 
 developed. She afforded remarkable instances of this pro- 
 
 1 Henderson inaccurately says " Dymock ;" it was Marmion. This ceremony, 
 unknown among the Saxon monarchs, was of Norman origin. The lands of 
 Fontenaye, In Normandy, were held by Marmion, one of the followers of William 
 the Conqueror, on the tenure of championship. The office was hereditary in the 
 family of Marmion, and from them, by heirship, descended to the Dymooks of 
 Serivelsbye. — See Dugdale. The armorial bearings of the Marmions, from the 
 performance of this great service, were,^8able, an arming sword the point in 
 chief, argent. — Glories of Eegality. 
 I. — e 
 
66 MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 
 
 pensity in tho noble ecclesiastical buildings of which she 
 was the foundress, also in her ingenious and curious ex- 
 ample of industry in the Baycux tapestry, wherein she has \ 
 wrought the epic of her husband's exploits, from Harold's \ 
 first landing in Normandy to his fall at Hastings. It is, in j 
 fact, a most important historical document, in which the 
 events and costume of that momentous period are faithfully 
 presented to us, by the indefatigable fingers of the first of 
 our JSTorman queens and her ladies, and certainly deserves 
 a particular description. 
 
 This curious monument of antiquity is still preserved in 
 the cathedral of Bayeux, where it is distinguished by the 
 name of " la Tapissiere de la Eeine Matilde :" it is also called 
 "the duke of Normandy's toilette,'' which simply means the 
 duke's great cloth. It is a piece of canvas, about nineteen 
 inches in breadth, but upwards of sixty-seven yards*' in 
 length, on which, as we have said, is emte)idered the his- 
 tory of the conquest of England by William of Normandy, 
 commencing with the visit of Harold to the Norman court, 
 and ending with his death at the battle of Hastings, 1066. 
 
 The leading transactions of those eventful years, the death 
 of Edward the Confessor, and the coronation of Harold in 
 the chamber of the royal dead, are represented in the clearest 
 and most regular order in this piece of needlework, which 
 contains many hundred figures of men, horses, birds, beasts, 
 trees, houses, castles, churches, and ships, all executed in their 
 proper colors, with names and inscriptions in Latin, explana- 
 tory of the subject of every section.^ This pictorial chronicle 
 
 * The Bayeux tapestry has lately been maoh the eabject of controversy among 
 some learned indiriduals, who are determined to depriTe Matilda of her tradi- 
 tionary fame as the person from whom this specimen of female skill and industry 
 emanated. Montfaucon^ Thierry, Flanche, Ducarel, Taylor, and many other 
 important authorities, may be quoted in support of the historical tradition that 
 it was the work of Matilda and her ladies. The brief limits to which we are 
 confined in these biographies, will not admit of our entering into the arguments 
 of those who dispute the fact, though we hare carefully examined them ; and, 
 with due deference to the judgment of the lords of the creation on all subjects 
 connected with policy and science, we venture to think that our learned friends, 
 the archaeologists and antiquaries, would do well to direct their intellectual powers 
 to more masculine objects of inquiry, and leave the question of the Bayeux tapes- 
 try (with all other matters allied to needle-craft) to the decision of the ladies, to 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 67 
 
 of her mighty consort's achievements appears to have been, 
 in part at least, designed for Matilda by Turold, a dwarf 
 artist, who, moved by a natural desire of claiming his share 
 in the celebrity which he foresaw would attach to the work, 
 has cunningly introduced his own effigies and name, — ^thus 
 authenticating the Norman tradition, that he was the person 
 who illuminated the canvas with the proper outlines and 
 colors.' It is probable that the wife of the Conqueror and 
 her Iforman ladies were materially assisted in this stupen- 
 dous work of feminine skill and patience by some of the 
 hapless daughters of the land, who, like the Grecian captives 
 described by Homer, were employed in recording the story 
 of their own reverses, and the triumphs of their haughty 
 foes.' 
 
 About this period William laid the foundation of that 
 mighty fortress and royal residence, the Tower of London, 
 which was erected by a priestly architect and engineer, Gun- 
 dulph bishop of Eochester. He also built the castle of 
 Hurstmonceaux, on the spot which had, in the first instance, 
 been occupied by the wooden fort he brought over from N"or- 
 mandy ; and, for the better security of his government, built 
 and strongly garrisoned many other strong fortresses, form- 
 ing a regular chain of military stations from one end of Eng- 
 
 whose province it peculiarly belongs. It is matter of doubt to us whether one 
 out of the many gentlemen who have disputed Matilda's claims to that work, if 
 called upon to execute a copy of either of the figures on canvas, would know 
 how to put in the first stitch. The whole of the Bayeux tapestry has been 
 engraved, and colored like the original, by the Society of Antiquaries, who, 
 if they had done nothing else to merit the approbation of the historical world, 
 would have deserved it for this alone. 
 
 ^ Thierry's History of the Anglo-Normans. The figures were, in fact, always 
 prepared for tapestry work by some skilful artist, who designed and traced them 
 out in the same colors that were to be used in silk or woollen by the embroider- 
 ess ; and we are told in the life of St. Dunstan, that " a certain religious lady, 
 being moved with a desire of embroidering a sacerdotal vestment, earnestly en- 
 treated the future chancellor of England, who was then a young man in an 
 obscure station of life, but creeping into notice through his excellent taste in 
 such delineations, to draw the flowers and figures, which she afterwards formed 
 with threads of gold." 
 
 « When Napoleon was preparing to invade England, he brought the Bayeux 
 tapestry forward in a very pompous manner, to revive the recollection of the 
 conquest of this island by William of Normandy. 
 
68 MATILDA OF FLA2^DERS. 
 
 land to the other.' These proceedings excited the jealou8 dis- 
 pleasure of such of the Anglo-Saxon nobles as had hitherto 
 maintained a sort of passive amity with their Norman sov- 
 ereign, and they began gradually to desert his court. Among 
 the first to withdraw from the royal circle were the darlings 
 of the people, Edwin and Morcar. William had in the first 
 instance, by the most insidious caresses, and the promise 
 even of giving him one of his daughters in marriage, en- 
 deavored to conciliate Edwin, who was the youngest of the 
 two chieftains, and remarkable for the beauty of his person. 
 The promised bride of Edwin, was, however, withheld from 
 him, which exasperated him so much that he retired with 
 his brother into the north, where they organized a plan with 
 the kings of Scotland and Denmark, and the "Welsh princes, 
 for separate but simultaneous attacks upon William, in which 
 the disaffected Saxons were to join. 
 
 The repeated and formidable revolts of the English, in 
 1069, compelled William to provide for the safety of Matilda 
 and her children in Normandy." The presence of the queen- 
 duchess was, indeed, no less required there than that of her 
 warlike lord in England. She was greatly beloved in the 
 duchy, where her government was considered exceedingly 
 able, and the people were beginning to murmur at the 
 absence of the court and the nobility, which, after the states 
 of Normandy had been so severely taxed to support the 
 expense of the English wars, was regarded as a national 
 calamity. It was, therefore, a measure of great political 
 expediency on the part of William to reappoint Matilda, for 
 the third time, to the regency of Normandy. The name of 
 his eldest son, Eobert, was, as before, associated with that of 
 Matilda in the regency ; and at parting, the Conqueror en- 
 treated his spouse " to pray for the speedy termination of 
 the English troubles, to encourage the arts of peace in 
 Normandy, and to take care of the interests of their youthful 
 heir." ' The latter injunction was somewhat superfluous ; for 
 Matilda's fondness for her first-born betrayed her into the 
 
 , ..j,._J At Norwich, Warwick, Lincoln, York, Nottingham, etc., etc. 
 ' Ordericus Vitalis. Henry Huntingdon. 
 ' Ordericus Vitalis. Malmesbury. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 69 
 
 most injudicious acts of partiality in his favor, and in all 
 probability was the primary cause of the dissensions between 
 him and his brothers, and the subsequent rupture between 
 that wrong-headed prince and his royal father. The death 
 of the earl of Flanders, Matilda's father, and the unsettled 
 state of her native country, owing to the strife between her 
 brothers and nephews, greatly troubled her, and added in 
 no slight degree to the anxious cares with which her return 
 to Normandy was clouded, after the brief splendor of her 
 residence in England as queen.' 
 
 The breaking up of the court at Winchester, and the 
 departure of queen Matilda and her children for Normandy, 
 cast a deep gloom on the aspect of William's affairs, while it 
 was felt as a serious evil by the industrious classes, whose 
 prosperity depended on the encouragement extended to their 
 handiworks by the demands of the rich and powerful for 
 those articles of adornment and luxury, in the fabrication of 
 which naany hands are profitably employed, — employment 
 being equivalent to wealth with those whose time, ingenuity, 
 or strength can be brought into the market in any tangible 
 form. But where there is no custom, it is useless to tax the 
 powers of the craftsman or artisan to produce articles 
 which are no longer required. This was the case in England 
 from the year 1069, when, the queen and ladies of the court 
 having quitted the country, trade languished, employment 
 ceased, and the horrors of civil war were aggravated by the 
 distress of a starving population. 
 
 It was, according to most accounts, in this year, 1069, that 
 William, to prevent the people of the land from confederating 
 together in nocturnal assemblies, for the purpose of discuss- 
 ing their grievances and stimulating each other to revolt, 
 compelled them to couvre feu, that is to extinguish the lights 
 and fires in their dwellings at eight o'clock every evening at 
 the tolling of a bell, called from ffiaFcircumstance the curfew, 
 or couvre feu. ^ Such, at any rate, has been the popular tra- 
 dition of ages, and traces of the custom in many places still 
 
 ' Orderious Vitalis. 
 
 ' Speed. It was first established at Winchester. — Cassan's Lives of the 
 Bishops of Winchester. 
 
70 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 remain. William had adopted the same measure, in his early 
 career as duke of Normandy, to secure the better observance 
 of his famous edict for the suppression of brawls and mur- 
 ders in his dominions, called emphatically ' God's peace.' ' 
 
 When William took the field after Matilda's departure, 
 and commenced one of his rapid marches towards York, 
 where Waltheof had encouraged the Danish army to winter, 
 he swore " by the splendor of God," his usual oath, that ha 
 would not leave one living soul in Northumberland. As soon 
 as he entered Yorkshire, he began to execute his terrible 
 threats of vengeance, laying the whole country waste with 
 fire and sword. After he had bribed the Danish chief to with- 
 draw, and the long-defended city of York was surrendered 
 at discretion by Waltheof, he won that powerful Saxon 
 leader to his cause by bestowing upon him in marriage his 
 beautiful niece, Judith. These fatal nuptials were solemnized 
 among the ruins of the vanquished city of York, where the 
 Conqueror kept his Christmas amidst the desolation he had 
 wrought. ' 
 
 The melancholy details of William's work of devastation 
 in the north of England are pathetically recorded by the 
 Saxon chronicle, and we will close the brief annals of the 
 direful years 1070 and 1071 with the death of earl Edwin, 
 the affianced husband of one of the daughters of the Con- 
 queror and Matilda. He was proceeding from Ely to Scot- 
 land, charged, as was supposed, with a secret mission from 
 his disinherited kinsman, Edgar, to the king of Scots, when 
 he was intercepted and slain, after a valiant defence against 
 a band of Normans. His death was passionately bewailed 
 by the English, and even the stern nature of the Conqueror 
 was melted into compassion ; and he is said to have shed 
 tears when the bleeding head of the young Saxon, with its 
 long flowing hair, was presented to him by the traitors who 
 had beguiled him into the Norman ambush, and instead of 
 conferring the expected reward on the murderers, he con- 
 demned them to perpetual exile.' 
 
 1 Orderious Vitalie. The curfew ia atill tolled in some districts of Normandy, 
 where it is called La Retraite. — Duearel. 
 
 2 Matthew Paris. ^ Ordericus Vitalis, p. 521. J. Brompton. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 71 
 
 The Saxon bishops had stood forth as champions for the 
 rights and ancient laws of the people, and William, finding 
 it impossible to awe or silence these true patriots, proceeded 
 to deprive them of their benefices. It was in vain for the 
 English clergy to appeal to the Eoman pontiif for protec- 
 tion, for William was supported by the authority of the new 
 system of church government adopted by the Norman 
 bishops, which was to deprive the people of the use of the 
 Scriptures in the Saxon tongue ; thereby rendering one of 
 the best and noblest legacies bequeathed to them by that 
 royal reformer, king Alfred — the translation commenced by 
 him of the Word of God — a dead letter. It was the earnest 
 desire of our Korman sovereigns to silence the Saxon tongue 
 forever, by substituting in its place the Norman dialect, 
 which was a mixture of French and Danish. It was, how- 
 ever, found to be a more easy thing to subjugate the land 
 than to suppress the natural language of the people. A 
 change was all that could be effected, by the amalgamation 
 of the two languages, the Normans gradually acquiring as 
 many of the Saxon words and idioms as the Anglo-Saxons 
 were compelled to use of theirs. Latin was used by the 
 learned, as a general medium of communication, and thus 
 became, in a slight degree, mingled with the parlance of 
 the more refined portion of society. From these mingled 
 elements our own copious and expressive language was in 
 process of time formed. 
 
 Matilda returned to England in the year 1072 : she kept 
 her Easter festival that spring at Winchester with her lord, 
 and her Whitsuntide at Windsor. A fierce controversy 
 between the primates of Canterbury and York, on the nice 
 point of ecclesiastical precedency, which first commenced in 
 the chapel-royal within Winchester castle, was then termi- 
 nated in the presence of the king and queen; and an 
 amicable instrument, acknowledging the supremacy of the 
 archbishop of Canterbury was drawn up and witnessed by 
 the signature of William the king, the signature of Matilda 
 the queen,^ that of the pope's legate, and all the hierarchy 
 
 1 William of Malmeebury ; Dr. Giles's translation. See, alao, Lajifrano'S 
 Letters, edited by the same learned gentleman. 
 
72 MATILDA OP FLANDERS. 
 
 and mitred abbots present, who had assembled in convoca- 
 tion on this important matter. 
 
 The unsettled state of England had the effect of again 
 dividing "William from his beloved queen, and forced them 
 for a considerable time to reign separately, — he in England, 
 and she in Normandy. Matilda, who possessed no incon- 
 siderable talents in the art of government, conducted the 
 regency of Normandy, during all the troubles in which her 
 lord was involved, with great prudence and address. She 
 was placed in a position of peculiar difficulty, in consequence 
 of the revolt of the province of Maine, and the combined 
 hostilities of the king of Prance and the duke of Bretagne, 
 who had taken advantage of the manner in which William 
 was occupied with the Scotch invasion and the Saxon revolt 
 to attack his continental dominions, and Matilda was com- 
 pelled to apply to her absent lord for succor. William 
 immediately despatched the son of Fitz-Osborn to assist his 
 fair regent in her military arrangements for the defence of 
 Normandy, and expedited a peace with the king of Scot- 
 land, that he might the sooner come to her aid in person 
 with his veteran troops. 
 
 The Norman ladies were at that period extremely malcon- 
 tent at the long-protracted absence of their lords.' The wife 
 of Hugh Grantmesnil, the governor of Winchester, had 
 caused them great uneasiness by the reports which she had 
 circulated of the infidelities of their husbands. These rep- 
 resentations had induced the indignant dames to send per- 
 emptory messages for the immediate return of their lords. 
 In some instances the warlike Normans had yielded obe- 
 dience to these conjugal mandates, and returned home, 
 greatly to the prejudice of William's affairs in England. 
 This was the aim of the lady of Grantmesnil, who had for 
 some reason conceived a particular ill-will against her sov- 
 ereign; and not content with doing everything in her 
 power to incite his Norman subjects to revolt, she had 
 thought proper to cast the most injurious aspersions on his 
 character as a husband, and insinuated that he had made 
 an attempt on her virtue.' 
 
 1 Ordericus Vitalis. Malmesbury. 'Henderson. Orderious Vitalis. 
 
, MATILDA OP FLANDEKS. 73 
 
 Githa, the mothor of Harold, eagerly caught at these 
 reports, which she took great pleasure in circulating. She 
 communicated them to Sweno, king of Denmark, and added, 
 that the reason why Merleswen, a Kentish noble of some 
 importance, had joined the late revolt in England was, be- 
 cause the Norman tyrant had dishonored his fair niece, the 
 daughter of one of the canons of Canterbury.* This tale, 
 whether false or true, came in due course to Matilda's ears, 
 and caused the first conjugal difference that had ever arisen 
 between her and her lord. She was by no means of a tem- 
 per to take any affront of the kind patiently, and it is said 
 that she caused the unfortunate damsel to be put to death, 
 with circumstances of great cruelty.' Hearne, in his notes 
 to Eobert of Gloucester, furnishes us with a curious sequel 
 to this tale, extracted from a very ancient chronicle among 
 the Cottonian MSS., which, after relating " that the priest's 
 daughter was privily slain by a confidential servant of Ma^ j 
 tilda, the queen," adds, " that the Conqueror was so enraged j 
 at the barbarous revenge taken by his consort, that, on his j 
 return to Normandy, he beat her with his bridle so severely j 
 that she soon after died." Now, it is certain Matilda lived i 
 full ten years after the period at which this matrimonial \ 
 discipline is said to have been inflicted upon her by the * 
 strong arm of the Conqueror ; and the worthy chronicler 
 himself merely relates it as one of the current rumors of 
 the day. We are willing to hope that the story altogether 
 has originated from the scandalous reports of that malign 
 busy-body of the eleventh century, the lady Grantmesnil ; 
 though, at the same time, it is to be feared tliat'The woman 
 who was capable of inflicting such deadly vengeance on the 
 unfortunate Saxon nobleman who had been the object of 
 her earliest affections would not have been very scrupulous 
 in her dealings with a female whom she suspected of having 
 rivalled her in her husband's regard. William of Malmes- 
 
 1 Henderson's Life of the Conqueror. It must be remembered that the mar- 
 riages of the English clergy were allowed by the Anglo-Saxon catholic church 
 till near a quarter of a century afterwards. 
 
 » She caused her to be hamstrung.— Rapin. Henderson says Matilda ordered 
 her jaws to be slit. 
 
74 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 bury bears testimony to the conjugal affection which sub- 
 sisted between the Conqueror and Matilda, "whose obe- 
 dience to her husband, and fruitfulness in bringing him so 
 many children," he says, " excited in his mind the tenderest 
 regard towards her." If any cause of anger or mistrust 
 had occurred, during their long separation, to interrupt the 
 conjugal happiness of Matilda and her husband, it was but 
 a passing cloud, for historians all agree that they were living 
 together in a state of the most affectionate union during the 
 year 1074, great part of which was spent by the Conqueror 
 with his family in Normandy.' 
 
 It was at this period that Edgar Atheling came to the 
 court at Caen, to make a voluntary submission to the Norman 
 sovereign, and to entreat his forgiveness for the several in- 
 surrections in which he had been engaged. The Conqueror 
 freely accorded an amnesty, treated him with great kind- 
 ness, and pensioned him with a daily allowance of a pound 
 of silver,' in the hope that this amicable arrangement would 
 secure his government in England from all future disturb- 
 ances. He was mistaken : fresh troubles had already broken 
 out in that quarter, but this time they proceeded from his 
 own turbulent Norman chiefs ; one of them, withal, was the 
 son of his great favorite and trusty kinsman, Fitz-Osborn, 
 who was defeated and taken prisoner ' by the nobles and 
 prelates of Worcester. The Danish fleet, which had vainly 
 hovered on the coast, waiting for a signal to land troops to 
 assist the conspirators, was fain to retreat without effecting 
 its object. As for the great Saxon earl, "Waltheof, who had 
 been drawn into the plot and betrayed by his Norman wife, 
 
 ' Orderious Vitalis. Malmesbury. Saxon Annals. 
 
 ' Saxon annals. Malmesbury. Brompton. 
 
 * Fitz-Osbom was a relation of his sovereign, and, before tbis act of contumacy, 
 stood high in his favor. He was only punished with imprisonment for his share 
 in the conspiracy. After a time his royal master, as a token that he was disposed 
 to pardon him, sent him a costly suit of clothes ; but Fitz-Osbom, instead of 
 tendering his grateful acknowledgments for this present, ordered a large fire to 
 be made, and, in the presence of the messenger, liurned the rich garments, one 
 by one, with the most insolent expressions of contempt. William was very 
 angry at the j^manner in which his unwonted graciousness was received by his 
 vassal kinsman, but inflicted no severer punishment than a lengthened term of 
 imprisonment. — Henderson. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 75 
 
 Judith, to her uncle the Conqueror, he was, after a long sus- 
 pense, beheaded on a rising ground just without the gates 
 of "Winchester ; being the first English nobleman who had 
 died by the hand of a public executioner.' 
 
 William next pursued his Norman traitor, Ealph de Gua- 
 der, to the continent, and besieged him in the city of Dol, 
 where he had taken refuge. The young duke of Bretagne, 
 Alan Pergeant, assisted by the king of France, came with a 
 powerful army to the succor of the besieged earl ; and "Wil- 
 liam was not only compelled to raise the siege, but to abandon 
 his tents and baggage, to the value of fifteen thousand pounds. 
 His diplomatic talents, however, enabled him to extricate 
 himself from the embarrassing strait in which he had been 
 placed, by a marriage between Alan and his daughter Con- 
 stance. This alliance was no less advantageous to the 
 princely bridegroom than agreeable to "William and Matilda. 
 The nuptials were celebrated with great pomp, and the bride 
 was dowered with all the lands of Chester, once the posses- 
 sions of the unfortunate earl Edwin, who had formerly been 
 contracted to one of her sisters.' 
 
 At the close of this year died Edith, the widow of Edward 
 the Confessor. She had retired to a convent, but was treated 
 with the respect and honor of a queen-dowager, and was 
 buried in "Westminster abbey. She was long survived by 
 her unfortunate sister-in-law, Edith or Algitha, the widow 
 of Harold, the other Saxon queen-dowager, who, having had 
 woful experience of the calamities of greatness and the 
 vanity of earthly distinctions, voluntarily resigned her royal 
 title, and passed the residue of her days in obscurity. 
 
 In the year 1075, "William and Matilda, with their family, 
 kept the festival of Easter with great pomp at Eescamp, and 
 attended in person the profession of their eldest daughter 
 Cecilia, who was there veiled a nun by the archbishop John.' 
 " This royal maid," says Ordericus Vitalis, " had been edu- 
 cated with great care in the convent of Caen, where she 
 was instructed in all the learning of the age, and several 
 sciences. She was consecrated to the holy and indivisible 
 
 ' Ordericus Vitalis. 
 
 ' Saxon Annals. S. Dunelm. Malmesbury . • Orderieus Vitalis. Malmesbury. 
 
76 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 Trinity, took the veil under the venerable abbess Matilda, 
 and faithfully conformed to all the rules of conventual dis- 
 cipline. Cecilia succeeded this abbess in her oflBce, having, 
 for fourteen years, maintained the highest reputation for 
 sanctity and wisdom. From the moment that she was dedi- 
 cated to God by her father, she became a true servant of the 
 Most High, and continued a pure and holy virgin, attending 
 to the pious rules of her order for a period of fifty-two years." 
 Soon after the profession of the lady Cecilia^'tlidseTatal 
 divisions began to appear in the royal family, of which Ma- 
 tilda is accused of having sown the seeds by the injurious 
 partiality she had shown for Eobert, her first-born. This 
 prince, having been associated with his royal mother in the 
 regency of Normandy from the age of fourteen, had been 
 brought more into public than was perhaps desirable at a 
 period of life when presumptuous ideas of self-importance 
 are only too apt to inflate the mind. Eobert, during his 
 father's long absence, was not only emancipated from all 
 control, but had accustomed himself to exercise the func- 
 tions of a sovereign in Normandy by anticipation, and to 
 receive the homage and flattery of all ranks of people in 
 the dominions to which he was the heir. The Conqueror, 
 it seems, had promised that he would one day bestow the 
 duchy of Normandy on him ; and Eobert, having repre- 
 sented the ducal majesty for nearly eight years, considered 
 himself an injured person when his royal father took the 
 power into his own hands once more, and exacted from him 
 the obedience of a subject, and the duty of a son.^ There 
 was also a jealous rivalry between Eobert and his two 
 younger brothers, William Eufus and Henry. William 
 Eufus, notwithstanding his rude, boisterous manners, and 
 the apparent recklessness of his disposition, had an abundant 
 share of world-craft, and well knew how to adapt himself 
 to his father's humor, so that he was no less a favorite with 
 the Conqueror than Eobert was with Matilda. Eobert had 
 been in his infancy espoused to Margaret, the heiress of 
 Herbert, the last earl of that province. The little countess 
 died while they were yet children, and William of Nor- 
 
 ' Orderioua Vitalis. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 77 
 
 mandy, who had taken her lands under his wardship, an- 
 nexed them to his own dominions after her death. When 
 the juvenile widower became of age, he considered himself 
 entitled to the earldom and lands of Maine in right of his 
 deceased wife, and claimed them of his father, who put him 
 off with fair words, but withheld the territory ; though the 
 people of Maine demanded Robert for their lord, and, at the 
 surrender of the revolted city of Mans, it was among the 
 articles of capitulation that he should receive the investiture 
 of the earldom. This condition was violated by the Con- 
 queror, who had no mind to part with any portion of his 
 acquisitions during hia life ; verifying in this, as in every 
 other action, the predictions of the gossips at his birth, " that 
 he would grasp everything within his reach, and that which 
 he had once grasped he would keep." ' This was a perpetual 
 source of discontent to Eobert, who, though recklessly 
 generous, was of a proud and irritable temperament. 
 
 In the year 1076, while Matilda and William were with 
 their family at the castle of 1' Aigle, their two younger sons, 
 William and Henry, in wanton play, threw some dirty water 
 from the balcony of an upper apartment on Eobert and 
 some of his partisans, who were walking in the court below. 
 The fiery heir of Normandy construed this act of boyish 
 folly into an act of studied contempt ; and being just then 
 in an irritable and excited frame of mind, he drew his sword 
 and rushed up-stairs, with a threat of taking deadly ven- 
 geance on the youthful transgressors who had offered this 
 insult to him before the whole court. This occasioned a 
 prodigious tumult and uproar in the castle, and nothing but 
 the presence and stern authority of the king, who, hearing 
 the alarm, burst into the room with his drawn sword in his 
 hand, could have prevented fatal consequences.' Eobert, 
 not obtaining the satisfaction he expected for the affront he 
 had received, privately retired from the court that very 
 evening, followed by a party of the young nobility whom 
 he had attached to his cause.' 
 
 Eichard, the second son of William, and Matilda, does not 
 appear to have taken any part in these quarrels. He was 
 
 > Ordericus Vitalis. ' Ibid. » Malmesbury. 
 
78 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 the pupil of the learned Lanfranc, and was probably occu- 
 pied with studious pursuits, as he is said to have been a 
 prince of great promise, and of an amiable disposition.' 
 He died in England, in the flower of his youth. According 
 to popular tradition, he was gored by a stag, while hunting 
 in the New Forest, which caused his death ; but some his- 
 torians record that he died of a fever, occasioned by the 
 malaria in the depopulated district of Hampshire, at the 
 time when so many thousands of the unfortunate Saxons 
 perished by famine, in consequence of having been driven 
 from their homes when the Conqueror converted that once 
 fertile part of England into a chase, for the enjoyment of 
 his favorite amusement of hunting. Prince Eichard was 
 buried in Winchester cathedral: a slab of stone, marked 
 with his name, is stilf seen there. 
 
 Drayton gives a political reason for the depopulation of 
 the shore of Hampshire, occasioned by the enclosure of the 
 New Forest, which is well worth the consideration of the 
 historical reader : 
 
 " Clear Avon, coming in, her sister Stour doth call, 
 And at New Forest's foot into the sea doth fall ; 
 That forest now, whose site e'en boundless seems to lie, 
 Its being erst received from William's tyranny, 
 Who framed laws to keep those beasts he planted then, 
 His lawless will from hence before had driven men ; 
 That where the earth was warmed with Winter's festal fires, 
 The melancholic hare now forms in tangled brakes and briers ; 
 And on sites of churches, grown with nettles, fern, and weeds, 
 Stands now the aged ranpick trunk, where ploughmen cast their seeds. 
 The people were by William here cut off from every trade, 
 That on this spot the Norman still might enter to invade ; 
 And on this desolated place and unfrequented shore, 
 New forces evermore might land to aid those here before." 
 
 The Saxon chronicle comments on the oppressive statutes 
 enacted by the Norman conqueror for the preservation of 
 game in an eloquent strain of indignant irony, and says, " he 
 loved the tall deer as if he had been their father." That 
 game-laws were in existence at a much earlier period is most 
 certain ; but it was during this reign that they were rendered 
 a grievance to the people, and assumed the character of a 
 
 1 Camden. Saxon Chronicle. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 79 
 
 moral wrong in the legislature of the country. The more 
 enlightened policy of modern jurisprudence has in some 
 degree ameliorated the rigorous penalties enacted by our 
 Norman line of sovereigns against poaching in its various 
 departments, but the bitterness engendered by the spirit of 
 those laws remains in full force in the hearts of those classes 
 against whom the statutes are supposed to point, and is 
 constantly acted upon by persons assuming the oflSce of 
 political agitators, for the purpose of creating divisions 
 between the people and their rulers. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS, 
 
 QUEEN OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Matilda mediates between lier husband and son — Robert's insolence and rebellion 
 — Matilda supplies him with money — Conqueror seizes Matilda's agent — 
 Conqueror's reproaches — Queen's answer — Robert's military prowess — Field 
 of Archembraye — Robert wounds the Conqueror — His penitence — Matilda 
 intercedes — Conqueror writes to his son — Robert pardoned — Conqueror's 
 legislation in England — Domesday-book — Royal revenue — Queen of England's 
 perquisites and privileges — Her dues at Queenhithe — Officers of royal house- 
 hold — Matilda's court the model of succeeding ones — She continues to govern 
 Normandy — Her visit to the monastery of Ouche — Illness and death of her 
 second daughter — Fresh cause of sorrow to the queen — Robert's dissensions 
 with his father — Matilda's distress — Applies to a hermit — His vision, and 
 message to the queen — Her grief and lingering illness — Dying of a broken 
 heart — The Conqueror hastens from England — She dies — Her obsequies — Her 
 alms — Tomb — Epitaph — -Will — Articles of dress named therein — Portrait {see 
 frontispiece) — Her children — The Conqueror's deep affliction — Disquiets after 
 the death of the queen — Fatal accident to the Conqueror — Death — His body 
 plundered — Accidents and interruptions at his funeral — Monument — Portrait 
 — Destruction of his tomb — Of Matilda's tomb — Her sapphire ring — Their 
 bodies reinterred — Matilda's tomb restored — Final destruction at French 
 revolution. 
 
 The feud between her royal husband and her first-born 
 was very painful to Matilda, whose anxious attempts to effect 
 a reconciliation were unavailing. When Eobert's passion 
 was somewhat cooled, he consented to see his father, but the 
 interview was anything but friendly. Ordericus Vitalis 
 gives the following particulars of the conference. 
 
 Robert assumed a very high tone, ancj repeated his demand 
 of being invested with the duchies of Normandy and Maine. 
 This was, of course, refused by the Conqueror, who sternly 
 bade his ambitious heir " remember the fate of Absalom, 
 and the misfortunes of Eehoboam, and not to listen to the 
 80 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 81 
 
 evil counsellors who wished to seduce him from the paths 
 of duty." On which Robert insolently replied, " That he did 
 not come there to listen to sermons, with which he had been 
 nauseated by his tutors when he was learning grammar, but 
 to claim the investiture which had been promised to him. 
 Answer me positively,'' continued he ; " are not these things 
 my right? Have you not promised to bestow them on 
 me ?" ' — " It is not my custom to strip till I go to bed," 
 replied the Conqueror ; " and as long as I live 1 will not 
 deprive myself of my native realm, Normandy; neither 
 will I divide it with another, for it is written in the holy 
 evangelists, ' Every kingdom that is divided against itself 
 shall become desolate.' ' I won England by mine own good 
 sword ; the vicars of Christ placed the diadem of its ancient 
 kings on my brow and the sceptre in mine hand, and I swear 
 that all the world combined shall not compel me to delegate 
 my power to another. It is not to be borne, that he who 
 owes his existence to me should aspire to be my rival in mine 
 own dominions." But Robert scornfully rejoined, with equal 
 pride and disrespect, " If it be inconvenient for you to keep 
 your word, I will withdraw from Normandy and seek justice 
 from strangers, for here I will not remain as a subject." ' 
 
 With these words he quitted the royal presence, and, with 
 a party of disaffected nobles, took refuge with Matilda's 
 brother, Robert earl of Flanders, surnamed ' le Prison,' from 
 his having married the countess of Friesland. From this 
 uncle Robert received very bad advice, and the king of 
 France endeavored, by all the means in his power, to widen 
 the breach between the undutiful heir of Normandy and his 
 father. Encouraged by these evil counsellors, Robert busied 
 himself in fomenting discontents and organizing a formida- 
 ble faction in his father's dominions, whence he drew large 
 sums, in the shape of presents and loans, from many of the 
 vassals of the ducal crown, who were willing to ingratiate 
 themselves with the heir-apparent, and to conciliate the 
 favor of the queen-duchess, whose partial fondness for her 
 eldest son was well known. 
 
 1 Orderions Vitalis. Hemmingford. Walsingham. 
 
 ' Ordericna Vitalis. S. Dunelm. P. Daniel. ' Orderious Vitalis. 
 
82 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 The supplies thus obtained Eobert improvidently lavished 
 among his dissolute companions, both male and female. In 
 consequence of this extravagance, he was occasionally re- 
 duced to the greatest inconvenience. "When under the press- 
 ure of those pecuniary embarrassments, which could not 
 fail to expose him to the contempt of the foreign princes 
 who espoused his quarrel against his father, he was wont to 
 apply to his too indulgent mother, Matilda, by whom he was 
 BO passionately beloved that she could refuse him nothing ; 
 from her private coffers she secretly supplied him with large 
 sums of silver and gold, and when these resources were ex- 
 hausted by the increasing demands of her prodigal son, 
 Matilda had the weakness to strip herself of her jewels and 
 rich garments for the same purpose.' This system continued 
 even when Eobert had taken up arms against his father and 
 sovereign. Eoger de Beaumont — that faithful minister 
 whom William had, previous to his first embarkation on the 
 memorable expedition from St. Vallery, appointed as the 
 premier of Normandy, and who had ever since assisted his 
 royal mistress, not only with his counsels in the adminis- 
 tration of affairs of state, but even in the education of 
 her children — felt it his duty to inform his sovereign of 
 the underhand proceedings of Matilda in favor of her rebel 
 son.' 
 
 William was in England when the startling intelligence 
 reached him of the unnatural rebellion of his first-born, and 
 the treachery of his beloved consort, in whom he had 
 ever reposed the most unbounded confidence. He appears 
 scarcely to have given credence to the representations of 
 Eoger de Beaumont relating to the conduct of his queen, 
 till, on his return to Normandy, he intercepted one of Ma- 
 tilda's private agents, named Sampson, who was charged 
 with communications from the queen to Eobert, which left 
 no doubt on William's mind of the identity of the secret 
 friend by whom his undutiful son had been supplied with 
 the means of carrying on his plots and hostile measures 
 against his government.' There was a stern grandeur, not 
 unmixed with tenderness, in the reproof which he addressed 
 
 • Malmeabury. Ordericus VitaliB. ' Malmesbury. ' OrdericuB Vitalis. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 83 
 
 to his offending consort on this occasion. " The observation 
 of a certain philosopher is true," said he, " and I have only 
 too much cause to admit the force of his words, — 
 
 ' Naufragium rerum est mulier mulefida marito :' 
 
 " ' The woman who deceives her husband is the destruc- 
 tion of her own house.' Where in all the world could you 
 have found a companion so faithful and devoted in his affec- 
 tion ?" continued he, passionately. " Behold my wife, she 
 whom I have loved as my own soul, to whom I have con- 
 fided the government of my realms, my treasure, and all 
 that I possessed in the world of power and greatness, — she 
 hath supported mine adversary against me, — she hath 
 strengthened and enriched him from the wealth which I 
 confided to her keeping, — she hath secretly employed her 
 zeal and subtlety in his cause, and done everything she 
 could to encourage him against me !" ' 
 
 Matilda's reply to this indignant but touching appeal, 
 which her royal husband, more it should appear in sorrow 
 than in anger, addressed to her, is no less remarkable for 
 its impassioned eloquence than the subtlety with which she 
 evades the principal point on which she is pressed, and 
 intrenches herself on the strong ground of maternal love. 
 " My lord," said she, " I pray you not to be surprised if I 
 feel a mother's tenderness for my first-born son. By the 
 virtue of the Most High, I protest that if my son Eobert 
 were dead, and hidden far from the sight of the living, seven 
 feet deep in the earth, and that the price of my blood could 
 restore him to life, I would cheerfully bid it flow. For his 
 sake I would endure any suffering, yea, things from which, 
 on any other occasion, the feebleness of my sex would shrink 
 with terror. How, then, can you suppose that I could enjoy 
 the pomp and luxuries with which I was surrounded, when 
 I knew that he was pining in want and misery ? Par from 
 my heart be such hardness, nor ought your authority to 
 impose such insensibility on a mother." ' 
 
 William is reported to have tiu-ned pale with anger at this 
 rejoinder. It was not, however, on Matilda, the object of 
 
 • Orderieus Vitalis. * Ibid. 
 
84 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 his adoring and constant affection, that he prepared to in- 
 flict the measure of vengeance which her transgression 
 against him had provoked. Sampson, the comparatively 
 innocent agent whom she had employed in this transaction, 
 was doomed to pay the dreadful penalty of the offence__with 
 the loss of sight, by the order of his enraged sovereign.' 
 In such cases it is usual for the instrument to be the sacri- 
 fice, and persons of the kind are generally yielded up as a 
 sort of scapegoat, or expiatory victim. But Matilda did not 
 abandon her terrified agent in his distress ; she contrived to 
 convey a hasty intimation of his peril, and her desire of 
 preserving him, to some of the persons who were devoted 
 to her service ; and Sampson, more fortunate than his illus- 
 trious namesake of yore, was enabled to escape the cruel 
 sentence of his lord by taking sanctuary in the monastery 
 of Ouche, of which Matilda was a munificent patroness. 
 Nevertheless, as it was a serious thing to oppose the wrath 
 of such a prince as "William, the abbot Manier found no 
 other way of securing the trembling fugitive from his ven- 
 geance, than that of causing him to be shorn, shaven, and 
 professed a monk of Ouche the same day he entered the 
 convent, " in happy hour both for his body and soul," ob- 
 serves the contemporary chronicler who relates this cir- 
 cumstance." 
 
 It does not appear that "William's affection for Matilda 
 suffered any material diminution in consequence of these 
 transactions, neither would he permit any one to censure 
 her conduct in his presence.' She was the love of his youth, 
 the solace of his meridian hours of life, and she preserved 
 her empire over his mighty heart to the last hour of her 
 life. But though the attachment of the Conqueror to his 
 consort remained unaltered, the happiness of the royal pair 
 was materially impaired. Eobert, their first-born, was in 
 arms against his father and sovereign, and at the head of a 
 numerous army, — supported by the hostile power of France 
 on the one hand, and the disaffected portion of William's 
 subjects on the other. He had made a formidable attack on 
 Eouen, and in several instances obtained successes which at 
 
 1 OrderiouB Vitalis. ' Ibid. • Ibid. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 85 
 
 first astonished his indignant parent, who had certainly 
 greatly underrated the military talents of his heir. When, 
 however, the Conqueror perceived that the filial foe who 
 had thus audaciously displayed his rebel banner against him 
 inherited the martial genius of his race, and was by no means 
 unlikely to prove a match for himself in the art of war, he 
 advanced with a mighty army to give him battle. The 
 royals chiefs of Normandy met in hostile encounter on the 
 plain of Archembraye, near the castle of Gerberg. William 
 Eufus, the Conqueror's favorite son, was in close attendance 
 on his father's person that day. This prince had already 
 received the honor of knighthood from Lanfranc, arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, his tutor, and he was eager to assist 
 in humbling the pride of his elder brother, over whom the 
 Conqueror anticipated a signal triumph.' 
 
 The battle was fought with no common fury on both sides, 
 but Eobert, who headed a choice body of cavalry, decided 
 the fortune of the day by his impetuous charge upon the 
 rearward of his foes, where his royal father commanded, 
 whose utmost endeavors to preserve order in his ranks were 
 ineffectual. It was in this charge that Eobert, unconscious 
 who the doughty champion was against whom he tilted, ran 
 his father through the arm with his lance, and unhorsed 
 him.' This was the first time that William had ever been 
 overcome in single combat, for he was one of the strongest 
 men and most approved knights of the age in which he 
 lived ; and it is a singular fact, that in all the battles in 
 which he had been engaged, he had never lost a drop of 
 blood, till it was in this field drawn by the lance of his first- 
 born. Transported with rage at the disgrace of the over- 
 throw, he called so loudly and angrily for rescue, that Eobert 
 recognized him, either by his voice or some of his favorite 
 expletives, and hastily alighting, raised him from the ground 
 in his arms with much tenderness and respect, expressed 
 the deepest concern at the unintentional crime of which he 
 had been guilty, for which he most humbly entreated his 
 forgiveness, and then placing him on his own horse, he 
 
 1 Hoveden. S. Dunelm. M. Paris. Polydore Vergil. 
 ' S. Dunelm. Malmesbury. Hoveden. M. Paris. 
 
86 MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 
 
 brought him safely out of the press.' According to some 
 of the historians of that period, William, instead of meet- 
 ing this generous burst of feeling on the part of his peni- 
 tent son with answering emotions of paternal tenderness, 
 was so infuriated at the humiliation he had received, that 
 he uttered a malediction against him, which all the after 
 submissions of Eobert could not induce him to retract ; while 
 others, equally deserving of credit, assert that he was so 
 moved with the proof of Eobert's dutiful reverence for his 
 person, and the anxiety he had manifested for his safety, 
 that he presently forgave him, and ever after held him in 
 better respect. Both accounts may be true in part ; for it 
 is very possible, that when the conqueror of England found 
 himself defeated by his rebel subjects on his native soil, and 
 his hitherto invincible arm overcome by the prowess of his 
 son (whose person he had been accustomed to mention with 
 a contemptuous allusion to his inferiority in stature), he 
 might, while a smart of his wound lasted, have indulged in 
 a strong ebullition of wrathful reproach, not unmixed with 
 execrations, of which it appears that he, in common with 
 all Normans of that era, had an evil habit. But after his 
 passion was abated, it is certain that he did, in compliance 
 with the entreaties of his queen, consent to receive the sub- 
 mission of his victorious but penitent son.' 
 
 In this battle William Eufus was severely wounded, as 
 well as his father, and there was a considerable slaughter 
 of the English troops, of which the Conqueror's army was 
 chiefly composed ; for Eobert had stolen the hearts of the 
 Normans while associated in the regency with his mother 
 MatUda, and his father considered it unsafe to oppose him 
 with his native troops. As it was, Eobert remained the 
 master of the field, having that day given indubitable proofs 
 of able generalship and great personal valor ; but the peril- 
 ous chance that had nearly rendered him the murderer of 
 his father made so deep an impression on his mind, that he 
 remained for a time conscience-stricken, which caused him 
 to endeavor, by employing the intercession of his mother, 
 to obtain a reconciliation with his offended sire.' 
 
 ' S. Dunelm. M. Paris. ' Ordericus Vitalis. ' Ibid. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 87 
 
 Matilda had suffered greatly in mind during the unnatural 
 warfare between her husband and her first-born, especially 
 after the frightful circumstance of their personal encounter 
 in the field of Archembraye, which was fought in the year 
 1077. Some feelings of self-reproach might possibly mingle 
 with her uneasiness on this occasion. Her health began to 
 decline, and William was at length moved by her incessant 
 pleading, and the sight of her tears, to write a letter with 
 his own hand to Eobert, inviting him " to repair to Eouen, 
 and receive a full pardon for his late rebellion, promising at 
 the same time to grant him everything that he could expect 
 from the affection of a father, consistently with the duty of 
 a king." On the receipt of this welcome letter, Eobert de- 
 layed not a moment to obey the summons. He came to 
 Eouen, attended only by three servants ; he was received 
 by his parents in the most affectionate manner, and a tem- 
 porary reconciliation was effected between him and his 
 brethren.' 
 
 Matilda did not long enjoy the society of this beloved son ; 
 for the Conqueror's affairs in England demanding his pres- 
 ence, he thought proper to carry Eobert with him, under 
 the pretence that he required his services in a military ca- 
 pacity to defend the northern counties against the aggres- 
 sion of Malcolm king of Scotland, who had once more vio- 
 lated the treaty of peace. William's real motive for making 
 Eobert the companion of his voyage was, because he con- 
 sidered MatUda was too much devoted to the interest of her 
 first-born to render it expedient for him to remain with her 
 in Normandy. 
 
 The year 1078 ' was remarkable in this country for the 
 great national survey, which was instituted by the Con- 
 queror for the purpose of ascertaining the precise nature 
 of the lands and tangible property throughout England ; so 
 that, says Ingulphus, " there was not a hide of land, water, 
 or waste, but he knew the valuation, the owners and pos- 
 sessors, together with the rents and profits thereof; as also 
 
 1 Ordericus Vitalis. Henderson. 
 
 * According to some historians, the survey was not generally begun till 1080. 
 It waa not fully completed till 1086. — Tindal's Notes on Rapln. 
 
88 MATILDA OF PLANDEES. 
 
 of all cities, towns, villages, hamlets, monasteries, and re- 
 ligious houses ; causing, also, all the people in England to 
 he numbered, their names to be taken, with notice what 
 any one might dispend by the year ; their substance, money, 
 and bondmen recorded, with their cattle, and what service 
 they owed to him who held of him in fee : all which was 
 certified upon the oaths of commissioners." ' 
 
 Such is the account given by the learned abbot of Croy- 
 land of the particulars of William's " Great Terrar," or 
 "Domesday-book," as it was called by the Saxons. The 
 proceedings of the commissioners were inquisitorial enough, 
 no doubt, since they extended to ascertaining how much 
 money every man had in his house, and what was owing to 
 him. That in some instances, too, they were partial in their 
 returns is evident, by the acknowledgment of Ingulphus, 
 when, speaking of his own monastery of Croyland, he says, 
 " The commissioners were so kind and civil that they did 
 not give in the true value of it:" we may therefore con- 
 clude that, whenever the proprietors made it worth their 
 while, they were equally obliging elsewhere. Yet it was at 
 the risk of severe punishment that any fraud, favor, con- 
 nivance, or concealment was practised, by either the owners 
 of the property or the commissioners. Robert of Glouces- 
 ter, in his rhyming chronicle, gives the following quaint 
 description of the Domesday-book : 
 
 *' Then king William, to learn the worth of his land, 
 Let enquiry stretch throughout all England, 
 How many plough land, and hiden also, 
 Were in every shire, and what they were worth thereto ; 
 And the rents of each town, and the waters each one, 
 The worth, and woods eke, and wastes where lived none : 
 By that he wist what he were worth of all England, 
 And set it clearly forth that all might understand. 
 And had it clearly written, and that script he put, I wis. 
 In the treasury of Westminster, where it still is." ' 
 
 The description or survey of England was written in two 
 books, the Great and Little Domesday-book ; ° and when 
 finished, they were carefully laid up in the king's treasury 
 
 ' Ingulphus. 2 gee the Chapter-house, Westminster. 
 
 ' The little book contains only Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 89 
 
 or exchequer, to be consulted on occasion, or, as Polydoro 
 Vergil shrewdly observes, " when it was required to know 
 of how much more wool the English flocks might be 
 fleeced." 
 
 Matilda, though residing chiefly in Normandy, had her 
 distinct revenues, perquisites, and privileges as queen of 
 England. She was allowed to claim her aurum regince, or 
 queen-gold ; that is, the tenth part of every fine voluntary 
 that was paid to the crown.' She received from the city of 
 London sums to furnish oil for her lamp, wood for her 
 hearth, and tolls or imposts on goods landed at Queenhithe ; 
 with many other immunities, which the queen-consorts in 
 latter days have not ventured to claim. The table at which 
 the queen herself sat was furnished with viands at the daily 
 expenditure of forty shillings. Twelve pence each was 
 allowed for the sustenance of her hundred attendants.' 
 
 The royal revenues were never richer than in this reign, 
 and they were not charged with any of the expenses attend- 
 ing on the maintenance of the military force of the country, 
 for the king had taken care to impose that burden on such 
 persons among his followers as had been enriched with the 
 forfeited lands of the Anglo-Saxons. Almost every landed 
 proprietor then held his estates on the tenure of performing 
 crown-service, and furnishing a quota of men-at-arms at the 
 king's need or pleasure. The principal or supreme court 
 of judicature in ordinary was called curia regis, or ' king's 
 court,' which was always at the royal residence. There 
 councils were held, and all affairs of state transacted ; there 
 the throne was placed, and there justice was administered 
 to the subjects by the king, as chief magistrate.' 
 
 We must now return to the personal history of Matilda. 
 The latter years of this queen were spent in Normandy, 
 where she continued to exercise the functions of government 
 for her royal husband.* Ordericus Vitalis relates the par- 
 ticulars of a visit which she paid to the monastery of Ouche, 
 
 ' Prynne's Aurum Reginae. 
 
 ' The household-book of Edward IV., called the " Black Book," which cites 
 precedents from extreme antiquity. 
 
 ' Madox's History of the E-xchequer. * Ordericus Vitalis. 
 
90 MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 
 
 to entreat the prayers of the abbot Manier, and his monks, 
 in behalf of her second daughter, the lady Constance, the wife 
 of Alan Pergeant, duke of Bretagne. This princess, who 
 was passionately desirous of bringing an heir to Bretagne, 
 was childless, and, to the grief of her mother, had fallen 
 into a declining state of health. Matilda, in the hope of 
 averting the apprehended death of the youthful duchess, 
 sought the shrine of St. Eurole, the patron of the monks of 
 Ouche, with prayers and offerings. She was most honor- 
 ably received by the learned abbot Manier and his monks, 
 who conducted her into the church. She offered a mark of 
 gold on the altar there, and presented to the shrine of St. 
 Eurole a costly ornament, adorned with precious stones, 
 and she vowed many other godly gifts in case the saint were 
 propitious. After this the queen-duchess dined in the com- 
 mon refectory, behaving at the same time with the most 
 edifying humility, so as to leave an agreeable remembrance 
 of her Arisit on the minds of the brethren, of whom the 
 worthy chronicler (who relates this circumstance to the 
 honor and glory of his convent) was one.^ 
 
 The visit and offerings of Matilda to the shrine of St. 
 Eurole were unavailing to prolong the life of her daughter, 
 for the duchess Constance died in the flower of her age, 
 after an unfruitful marriage of seven years. Her remains 
 were conveyed to England, and interred in the abbey of 
 St. Edmund's Bury. Like all the children of William and 
 Matilda she had been carefully educated, and is said to have 
 been a princess possessed of great mental acquirements. 
 After her death, Alan duke of Bretagne married again, and 
 had a family by his second wife ; but the rich grant of 
 
 ' Orderious Vitalis, the most eloquent of all the historians of that period, and 
 the most minute and faithful in his personal records of the Conqueror, his queen 
 and family, was, nevertheless, born in England, and of Anglo-Saxon parentage. 
 He was ten years old at the epoch of the Norman invasion, when for better 
 security he was, to use his own language, " conveyed with weeping eyes from his 
 native country, to be educated in Normandy at the convent of Ouche," which 
 finally became so dear to him, that all the affections of his heart appear to have 
 been centred within its bounds. In his Chronicle of the Norman Sovereigns, he 
 sometimes makes digressions of a hundred pages to descant on St. Eurole and 
 the merits of the brethren of Ouche. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 91 
 
 English lands, with which the Conqueror had dowered his 
 daughter Constance, he was permitted to retain, together 
 with the title of earl of Eichmond, which was long borne 
 by the dukes of Bretagne, his successors. 
 
 The grief which the early death of her daughter caused 
 Matilda, was succeeded by feelings of a more painful nature, 
 in consequence of a fresh difference between her royal hus- 
 band and her beloved son, Eobert. Some historians • assert 
 that this was occasioned by the refusal of the prince to marry 
 the young and lovely heiress of earl "Waltheof, which greatly 
 displeased his father, who was desirous of conciliating his 
 English subjects by such an alliance, and, at the same time, 
 of making some atonement for the murder of the unfor- 
 tunate Saxon chief, which always appears to have been a 
 painful subject of reflection to him. 
 
 About this time, Matilda, hearing that a German hermit, 
 of great sanctity, was possessed of the gift of prophecy, sent 
 to entreat his prayers for her jarring son and husband, and 
 requested his opinion as to what would be the result.' The 
 hermit gave a very affectionate reception to the envoys of 
 the queen, but demanded three days before he delivered his 
 reply to her questions. On the third day he sent for the 
 messengers, and gave his answer in the following strain of 
 oracular allegory. " Eeturn to your mistress," said he, " and 
 tell her I have prayed to God in her behalf, and the Most 
 High has made known to me in a dream the things she 
 desires to learn. I saw in my vision a beautiful pasture, 
 covered with grass and flowers, and a noble charger feeding 
 therein. A numerous herd gathered round about, eager to 
 enter and share the feast, but the fiery charger would not 
 permit them to approach near enough to crop the flowers 
 and herbage. But, alas ! the majestic steed, in the midst of 
 his pride and courage, died, his terror departed with him, 
 and a poor silly steer appeared in his place, as the guardian 
 
 1 Henderson, in his Life of the Conqueror, states that Robert was much taken 
 with the beauty of the young Saxon lady, but that his regard was by no means 
 of an honorable nature; and his conduct to her displeased the Conqueror so 
 much, that, to punish his son for insults offered to his beautifal ward, he forbade 
 him the court. 
 
 ' Ordericus Vitalis. 
 
92 MATILDA OF FLAJfDEES. 
 
 of the pasture. Then the throng of meaner animals, who 
 had hitherto feared to approach, rushed in, and trampled 
 the flowers and grass beneath their feet, and that which they 
 could not devour they defiled and destroyed. I will explain 
 the mystery couched in this parable. The steed is William 
 of Normandy, the conqueror of England, who, by his wisdom, 
 courage, and power, keeps the surrounding foes of Normandy 
 in awe. Eobert is the dull, inactive beast who will succeed 
 him; and then those baser sort of animals, the envious 
 princes, who have long watched for the opportunity of at- 
 tacking this fair, fruitful pasture, Normandy, will overrun 
 the land, and destroy all the prosperity which its present 
 sovereign has established. Illustrious lady, if, after hearing 
 the words of the vision in which the Lord has vouchsafed to 
 reply to my prayers, you do not labor to restore the peace of 
 Normandy, you will henceforth behold nothing but misery, 
 the death of your royal spouse, the ruin of all your race, and 
 the desolation of your beloved country." ' This clever apo- 
 logue, in which some sagacious advice was implied, Matilda 
 took for a prediction ; and this idea, together with the in- 
 creasing dissensions in her family, pressed heavily on her 
 mind, and is supj)osed to have occasioned the lingering ill- 
 ness which slowly, but surely, conducted her to the tomb. 
 
 The evidence of a charter signed by William king of 
 England, Matildis the queen, earl Eobert, son of the king, 
 earl William, son of the king, and earl Henry, son of the 
 king, proves that a meeting had taken place between these 
 illustrious personages in the year 1082. The charter recites 
 that " William, king of England and Normandy, and his wife 
 Matildis, daughter of Baldwin duke of Flanders, and niece 
 of Henry king of France, conceded to the church of the Holy 
 Trinity at Caen, for the good of their souls, the manors of 
 Nailsworth, Felstede, Pinbury, and other lands in England." ' 
 The restitution of the said lands to their lawful owners or 
 their heirs, would certainly have been a more acceptable 
 work in the sight of the God of mercy and justice, than the 
 oblation of wrong and robbery which was thus dedicated to 
 his service by the mighty Norman conqueror and his dying 
 
 ' Ordericue Vitalis. ' A copy of this charter is in the Biblioth^que, Paris. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 93 
 
 consort. Nailsworth being part of the manor of Minching- 
 hampton, in Gloucestersliire, was a portion of the spoils of 
 the unfortunate Brihtric Meaw, which Matilda, in the last 
 year of her life, thus transferred to the church, in the delu- 
 sive idea of atoning for the crime by which she obtained the 
 temporal goods of him who had rejected her youthful love. 
 
 Matilda's last illness was attended with great depression 
 of spirits. She endeavored to obtain comfort by redoubling 
 her devotional exercises and alms. She confessed her sins 
 frequently, and with bitter tears. It is to be hoped that a 
 feeling of true penitence was mingled with the affliction of 
 the queen, who, at the highest pinnacle of earthly grandeur, 
 afforded a melancholy exemplification of the vanity and in- 
 sufficiency of the envied distinctions with which she was 
 surrounded, and was dying of a broken heart.' As soon as 
 William, who was in England, was informed of the danger 
 of his beloved consort, he hastily embarked for Normandy, 
 and arrived at Caen in time to receive her last farewell." 
 
 After Matilda had received the consolations of religion, 
 she expired on the 2nd of November, or, according to some 
 historians, the 3rd of that month, anno 1083, in the fifty- 
 second year of her age, having borne the title of queen of 
 England seventeen years, and duchess of Normandy up- 
 wards of thirty-one. Her body was carried to the convent 
 of the Holy Trinity at Caen, which she had built and mu- 
 nificently endowed. The corpse of the queen-duchess was 
 reverentially received, at the portal of the chiu-ch, by a 
 numerous procession of bishops and abbots, conducted with- 
 in the choir, and deposited before the high altar. Her ob- 
 sequies were celebrated with great pomp and solemnity by 
 the monks and clerks, and attended by a vast concourse of 
 the poor, to whom she had been throughout life a generous 
 benefactress, "and frequently," says Ordericus Vitalis, "re- 
 lieved with bounteous alms, in the name of her Eedeemer." 
 
 A magnificent tomb was raised to her memory by her 
 sorrowing lord, adorned with precious stones and elaborate 
 sculpture ; and her epitaph, in Latin verse, was emblazoned 
 
 ' Ordericus Vitalis. 
 
 2 Malmesbury. Hoveden. Ingulphns. Ordericus Vitalis. 
 
94 MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 
 
 thereon in letters of gold, setting forth in pompous language 
 the lofty birth and noble qualities of the illustrious dead. 
 The following is a translation of the quaint monkish rhymes, 
 which defy the imitative powers of modern poetry : — 
 
 " Here rests within this fair and stately tomb, 
 Matilda, scion of a regal line ; 
 The Flemish duke her sire,! ^^4 Adelais 
 Her mother, to great Robert king of France 
 Daughter, and sister to his royal heir. 
 In wedlock to our mighty William joined, 
 She built this holy temple, and endowed 
 With lands and goodly gifts. She, the true friend 
 Of piety and soother of distress. 
 Enriching others, indigent herself. 
 Reserving all her treasures for the poor ; 
 And, by such deeds as these, she merited 
 To be partaker of eternal life : 
 To which she pass'd November 2, 1083." 
 
 Matilda's will, which is in the register of the abbey of the 
 Holy Trinity of Caen,' fully bears out the assertion of her 
 epitaph touching her poverty ; since, from the items in this 
 curious and interesting record, it is plain that the first of 
 our Anglo-Norman queens had little to leave in the way of 
 personal property : the bulk of her landed possessions was 
 already settled on her son Henry. " I give," says the royal 
 testatrix, "to the abbey of the Holy Trinity my tunic, 
 worked at "Winchester by Alderet's wife ; and the mantle 
 embroidered with gold, which is in my chamber, to make a 
 cope. Of my two golden girdles, I give that which is orna- 
 mented with emblems, for the purpose of suspending the 
 lamp before the great altar. I give my large candelabra, 
 made at St. Lo, my crown, my sceptre, my cups in their 
 cases, another cup made in England, with all my horse- 
 trappings, and all my vessels ; and lastly, I give the lands 
 of Quetchou and Cotentin, except those which I may already 
 have disposed of in my lifetime, with two dwellings in Eng- 
 land ; and I have made all these bequests with the consent 
 of my husband." 
 
 ! Baldwin, Matilda's father, was the descendant of * the six foresters,* aa the 
 first sovereigns of Flanders were called. 
 ' Duoarel's Norman Antiquities. 
 
MATIIxDA OF FLANDERS. 95 
 
 It is amusing to trace the feminine feeling with regard to 
 dress and bijouterie which has led the dying queen to enu- 
 merate, in her last will and testament, her embroidered 
 tunic, girdle, and mantle, with sundry other personal deco- 
 rations, before she mentions the lands of Quetchou and 
 Cotentin, and her two dwellings in England, — objects evi- 
 dently of far less importance, in her opinion, than her rich ; 
 array. Duearel tells us that among the records preserved 
 in the archives of the Holy Trinity at Caen, there is a 
 curious MS. containing an account of Matilda the royal 
 foundress's wardrobe, jewels, and toilette ; but he was unable 
 to obtain a sight of this precious document, because of the 
 jealous care with which it was guarded by those holy ladies, 
 the abbess and nuns of that convent.' 
 
 Matilda did not live long enough to complete her em- 
 broidered chronicle of the conquest of England. The outline 
 of the Dattern traced on the bare canvas in several places, 
 in readiness for her patient needle, affords, after the lapse of 
 nearly eight centuries, a moral comment on the uncertainty 
 of human life, — ^the vanity of human undertakings, which, in 
 the aggregate, are arrested in fiill career by the hand of 
 death, and remain, like the Bayeux tapestry, unfinished 
 fragments. 
 
 Till the middle of the seventeenth century, the portraits 
 of Matilda and "William were carefully preserved on the walls 
 of St. Stephen's chapel at Caen. The queen had caused these 
 portraits to be painted when this magnificent endowment 
 was founded.' We have seen, by the Bayeux tapestry, that 
 Matilda took great delight in pictorial memorials ; and if we 
 may judge by the engraving from this portrait, preserved in 
 Montfaucon, it were a pity that so much grace and beauty 
 should fade from the earth without remembrance. Her 
 costume is singularly dignified and becoming. The robe 
 simply gathered round the throat, a flowing veil falling from 
 the back of the head on the shoulders, is confined by an 
 elegant circlet of gems. The face is beautiful and delicate ; 
 the hair falls in waving tresses round her throat ; with one 
 
 • Duoarel's Norman Antiquities. 
 
 ' Montfaucon's Monumens de la Monarchie Franpoise. 
 
96 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 hand she confines her drapery, and holds a book ; she extends 
 her sceptre with the other, in an attitude full of grace and 
 dignity. Montfaucon declares that this painting was actu- 
 ally copied from the wall, before the room in which it was 
 preserved was pulled down. The elegance of the design and 
 costume ought not to raise doubts of its authenticity, for it 
 is well known that all remains of art were much better exe- 
 cuted before the destruction of Constantinople than after 
 that period. Female costume, with the exception of some 
 tasteless attire which crept into the uproarious court of 
 William Eufus, was extremely graceful ; the noble circlet, 
 the flowing transparent veil, the natural curls parted on 
 each side of the brow, the vestal stole, drawn just round the 
 neck in regular folds, the falling sleeves, the gemmed zone, 
 confining the plaits of a garment that swept the ground in 
 rich fulness, altogether formed a costume which would not 
 have disgraced a Grecian statue. We shall see this elegant 
 style of dress superseded in time by the monstrous Syrian 
 conical caps, or by horned head-tire, and the heraldic tabards 
 and surcoats, seemingly made of patchwork, which deformed 
 the female figure in succeeding ages ; but we must not look 
 for these barbarisms at the date of Matilda's portrait. 
 
 Matilda bore ten children lo her royal spouse, — namely, 
 four sons andls^ daughters^ Eobert, surnamed Courthose, 
 her eldest son, lucceeded Tiis father as duke of Normandy. 
 This darling son of Matilda's heart is thus described in the 
 old chronicler's lines : — 
 
 " He was y-wox [grown] ere his fader to England came, 
 Thick man he was enow, but not well long; 
 Square was he, and well made for to be strong. 
 Before his fader, once on a time he did sturdy deed, 
 When he was young, who beheld him, and these words said : 
 ' By the uprising of God, Robelyn me sail see. 
 The Courthose, my young son, a stalwart knight sail be ;' — 
 For he was somewhat short, so he named him Courthose, 
 And he might never after this name lose. 
 He was quiet of counsel and speech, and of body strong, 
 Never yet man of might in Christendom, ne in Paynim, 
 In battail from his steed could bring him down." 
 
 After the death of Matilda, Eobert broke out into open revolt 
 against his royal father once more ; and the Conqueror, in 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 97 
 
 his famous death-bed speech and confession, alluded to this 
 conduct with great bitterness, when he spoke of the dis- 
 position of his dominions. These were the words of the 
 djdng monarch: "The dukedom of Normandy, before I 
 fought in the vale Sanguelac, with Harold, I granted unto 
 my son Eobert, for that he is my first begotten ; and having 
 received the homage of his baronage, that honor given can- 
 not be revoked. Yet I know that it will be a miserable 
 reign which is subject to the rule of his goverment, for he 
 is a foolish, proud knave, and is to be punished with cruel 
 fortune." • Eobert acquired the additional cognomen of the 
 Unready, from the circumstance of being always out of 
 the way when the golden opportunity of improving his 
 fortunes occurred. 
 
 Eobert, though an indifferent politician, was a gallant 
 knight and a skilflil general. He joined the crusade under 
 Godfrey of Boulogne, and so greatly distinguished himself 
 at the taking of the holy city, that of all the Christian 
 princes, his fellow-crusaders, he was judged most deserving 
 of the crown of Jerusalem. This election was made on the 
 Easter-eve as they all stood at the high altar in the temple, 
 each holding an unlighted wax-taper in his hand, and be- 
 seeching God to direct their choice ; when the taper which 
 duke Eobert held becoming ignited without any visible 
 agency, it was regarded by the rest of the Croises as a 
 miraculous intimation in his favor, and he was entreated to 
 accept the kingdom,' but he declined it, under the idea that 
 he should obtain the crown of England. 
 
 Eichard, the second son of William the Conqueror and 
 Matilda, died in England in the lifetime of his parents, as we 
 have already stated. William, their third son, surnamed 
 Eufus, or Eous,' from the color of his hair, and called by 
 the Saxon historians ' the red king,' succeeded to the crown 
 of England after his father's death. Henry, the fourth and 
 youngest son of William and Matilda, won the surname of 
 Beauclerc by his scholastic attainments, and succeeded to 
 
 ' See death-bed speech of the Conqueror, in Speed's Chronicle. 
 
 ' Matthew Paris. 
 
 ' " Apr6s William Bastardus regna Will, le Rous." — Fitz-Stephen's Chronicle. 
 
98 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 the throne of England after the death of "William Eufus. 
 The personal history of this prince will be found in the 
 memoirs of his two queens, Matilda of Scotland, and Adelicia 
 of Louvaine. 
 
 There is great confusion among historians and genealo- 
 gists respecting the names of the daughters of Matilda and 
 the Conqueror, and the order of their birth. William of 
 Malmesbury, who wrote in the reign of Henry I., when 
 enumerating the daughters of the Conqueror, says, " Cecilia 
 the abbess of Caen still survives." The generality of 
 historians mention Constance, the wife of Alan duke of 
 Bretagne, as the second daughter of this illustrious pair. 
 Ordericus Vitalis, a contemporary, calls her the third,' and 
 Agatha the second daughter. Of Agatha he relates the 
 following interesting particulars : " This princess, who had 
 been formerly aflSanced to Harold, was demanded of her 
 father in marriage by Alphonso king of Galicia, but mani- 
 fested the greatest repugnance to this alliance." She told 
 her father " that her heart was devoted to her first spouse, 
 and that she should consider it an abomination if she gave 
 her hand to another. She had seen and loved her Saxon 
 betrothed, and she revolted from a union with the foreign 
 monarch whom she had never seen;" and bursting into 
 tears, she added, with passionate emotion, " that she prayed 
 that the Most High would rather take her to himself than 
 allow her ever to be transported into Spain." Her prayer 
 was granted, and the reluctant bride died on her journey to 
 her unknown lord. Her remains were conveyed to her 
 native land, and interred at Bayeux, in the church of St. 
 Mary the perpetual Virgin.' 
 
 Sandford calls this princess the sixth daughter. If so, she 
 could not have been the betrothed of Harold, but of earl 
 Edwin ; and, indeed, if we reflect on the great disparity in 
 age between Harold and the younger daughters of William 
 of Normandy, and take into consideration the circumstances 
 of his breach of contract with the little Norman lady by 
 wedding Algitha, it is scarcely probable that his memory 
 could have been cherished with the passionate fondness 
 
 ' Ordericus Vitalis. William of Malmesbury. " Ordericus Vitalis. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 99 
 
 Ordericus Vitalis attributes to the lady Agatha ; whereas 
 Edwin was young, and, remarkable for his beauty, had, in 
 all probability, been privileged with some intimacy with the 
 princess, whom the Conqueror had promised to bestow on 
 him in marriage. The breach of this promise on the part 
 of "William, too, was the cause of Edwin's revolt, which 
 implies that the youthful thane was deeply wounded at the 
 refusal of the Norman ; and it is at least probable, that to 
 the princess who had innocently been made a snare to him 
 by her guileful sire, he might have become an object of the 
 tenderest affection. Malmesbtiry, speaking of this princess, 
 says, " Agatha, to whom Grod granted a virgin death, was so 
 devoted to the exercises of religion, that after her decease 
 it was discovered that her knees had become hard, like horn, 
 with constant kneeling." ' Perhaps this is the same prin- 
 cess whom Ordericus Vitalis mentions as their fourth 
 daughter, of whom he says, " Adelaide, very fair and very 
 noble, recommended herself entirely to a life of devotion, 
 and made a holy end, under the direction of Eoger de 
 Beaumont." 
 
 Adela, or Adelicia, generally classed as the fourth daugh- 
 ter of William and Matilda, Ordericus Vitalis places as the 
 fifth, and says, " She was sought in marriage by Stephen earl 
 of Blois, who was desirous of allying himself with the 
 aspiring family of the Conqueror, and by the advice of Wil- 
 liam's councillors she was united to him. The marriage took 
 place at Breteuil, and the marriage fites were celebrated at 
 Chartres. This princess was a learned woman, and pos- 
 sessed of considerable diplomatic talents. She had four 
 sons : William, an idiot ; Thibaut, surnamed the great earl 
 of Champagne; Stephen de Blois, who succeeded to the 
 English throne after the death of Henry I. ; and Henry 
 bishop of Winchester. After the death of the count de Blois, 
 her husband, the countess Adela took the veil at Marigney.' 
 
 Gundred, or Gundreda, the sixth and youngest daughter 
 of the Conqueror and Matilda, was married to William de 
 Warren, a powerful Norman noble, and the first earl of 
 Surrey in England. By him the lady Gundred had two 
 
 1 Ordericus Vitalia. Malmesbury. * Ordericus Vitalis. 
 
100 MATILDA OF FLANDEKS. 
 
 sons : William, the successor of his father and the progeni- 
 tor of a mighty line of earls of that family, and Eainold, 
 who died without issue. Gundred only survived her royal 
 mother two years. She died, anno 1085, in child-bed at 
 Castleacre in Norfolk, and is buried in the chapter-house of 
 St. Paneras church, within the priory, at Lewes in Sussex.' 
 The death of his beloved queen Matilda afflicted the Con- 
 queror very deeply. He wept excessively for many days 
 after her decease ; and to testify how keenly he felt her loss, 
 he renounced his favorite amusement of hunting, and all the 
 boisterous sports in which he formerly delighted.' After 
 this event his temper became melancholy and irritable, to 
 which, indeed, a train of public calamities and domestic 
 vexations might in a great measure have contributed. To 
 
 ' Sandford. St. Paneras church and monastery had been founded and munifi- 
 cently endowed by her lord, for the health (as his charter recites) of his soul, 
 and the soul of Gundred his wife, and for the soul of king William, who brought 
 him into England ... for the health also of queen Maud, mother of his wife, 
 and for the health of king William her son, who made him earl of Surrey. — 
 Horsfield's Hist, of the Antiquities of Sussex, p. 232. Warren, though one of 
 the most ferocious and rapacious of William's followers, was tenderly attached to 
 his wife, whom he scarcely survived three years. The remains of both were 
 discovered, October 28th, 1845, by the workmen in forming a cutting for the 
 Lewes and Brighton railnsSffthrongh the grounds of St. Paneras priory, in two 
 leaden coffins, with the simple inscription of Guhdeada on the one, and Wil- 
 HELMTJS on the other. They are now deposited in Southover church, together 
 with a tablet, previously discovered, which preserves part of the mutilated mo- 
 nastic verses that commemorated her virtues. They have been thus beautifully 
 translated into modem English rhymes by the learned historian of Lewes : — 
 
 " Gundred, illustrious branch of princely race. 
 Brought into England's church balsamic grace ; 
 Pious as Mary, and as Martha kind, 
 To generous deeds she gave her virtuous mind. 
 Though the cold tomb her Martha's part receives. 
 Her Mary's better part forever lives. 
 holy Paneras ! keep, with gracious care, 
 A mother who has made thy sons her heir. 
 On the sixth calend of June's fatal mom. 
 The marble . . ." 
 
 One of the most remarkable tokens of the interest excited by the discovery of 
 these remains of the youngest daughter of the Conqueror and queen Matilda 
 may be considered the fact, that an eloquent sermon was preached by the Rev. 
 J. Wood, to a Uojtarian congregation at Westgate, on the occasion. 
 
 ' Orderious Vftalfer "- • ■ ■ ...-.^ 
 
MATILDA OP FLANDEBS. 101 
 
 the honor of Matilda, it has been asserted by some of the 
 historians of the period, that she used her influence over the 
 mind of her mighty lord for the mitigation of the suffer- 
 ings of the people whom he had subjugated to his yoke. 
 Thomas Eudborne, the author of the Annals of Winton, 
 says, " King William, by the advice of Matilda, treated the 
 English kindly as long as she lived, but after her death he 
 became a thorough tyrant." ' It is certainly true, that after 
 Matilda left England in 1070, the condition of the people 
 became infinitely worse, and it is possible that it might have 
 been aggravated by her death. Not only the happiness, but 
 the worldly prosperity of "William appeared sensibly dimin- 
 ished during his widowed state. In the course of the four 
 years that he survived his consort, he experienced nothing 
 but trouble and disquiet.' 
 
 William met with the accident which caused his death at 
 the storming of the city of Mantes. He had roused him- 
 self from a sick bed to execute a terrible vengeance on the 
 French border, for the ribald joke which his old antagonist, 
 the king of France, had passed on his malady ; and in pur- 
 suance of his declaration " that he would set all France in 
 a blaze at his uprising," he had ordered the city to be fired. 
 While he was, with savage fury, encouraging his soldiers to 
 pursue the work of destruction to which he had incited 
 them, his horse, chancing to set his foot on a piece of burn- 
 ing timber, started, and occasioned his lord so severe an 
 injury from the pummel of the saddle, as to bring on a 
 violent access of fever.' Being unable to remount his horse, 
 after an accident which must have appeared to him like a 
 retributive chastisement for the barbarous deed in which he 
 was engaged, he was conveyed in a litter to Eouen, where, 
 perceiving he drew near his end, he began to experience 
 some compunctious visitings of conscience for the crimes 
 and oppressions of which he had been guilty, and endeavored 
 to make some self-deceiving reparation for his wrongs. 
 
 In the first place, he ordered large sums to be distributed 
 to the poor, and likewise for the building of churches, espe- 
 
 1 Thomas Rudbome, Hist. Major. 
 
 2 Malmesbury. Ordericus Vitalis. ' Malmesbury. 
 
102 MATILDA OP FLANDBES. 
 
 cially those which he had recently burnt at Mantes ; next he 
 set all the Saxon prisoners at liberty whom he had detained 
 in his Norman prisons ; among them were Morcar, and 
 Ulnoth the brother of Harold, who had remained in cap- 
 tivity from his childhood, when he was given in hostage by 
 earl Godwin to Edward the Confessor. The heart of the 
 dying monarch being deeply touched with remorse, he con- 
 fessed that he had done Morcar much wrong : he bitterly 
 bewailed the blood he had shed in England, and the desola- 
 tion and woe he had caused in Hampshire for the sake of 
 planting the New Forest, protesting " that having so mis- 
 used that fair and beautiful land, he dared not appoint a 
 successor to it, but left the disposal of that matter in the 
 hands of God." ' He had, however, taken some pains, by 
 writing a letter to Lanfranc expressive of his earnest wish 
 that Williajn Eufvis should succeed him in his regal dignity, 
 and to secure the crown of England to this his favorite son, 
 — for whom he called as soon as he had concluded his death- 
 bed confessions, — and sealing the letter with his own seal, 
 he put it into the hands of the prince, bidding him hasten 
 to England with all speed, and deliver it to the archbishop, 
 blessed him with a farewell kiss, and dismissed him. 
 
 When the conqueror had settled his temporal affairs, he 
 caused himself to be removed to Hermentrude, a pleasant 
 village near Eouen,' that he might be more at liberty to 
 prepare himself for death. On the 9th of September the 
 awful change which he awaited took place. Hearing the 
 sound of the great bell in the metropolitan church of St. 
 Gervase, near Eouen, William, raising his exhausted frame 
 from the supporting pillows, asked "What it meant?"' 
 One of his attendants replying " that it then rang prime to 
 Our Lady," the dying monarch, lifting his eyes to heaven, 
 and spreading abroad his hands, exclaimed, "I commend 
 myself to that blessed lady, Mary the mother of God, that 
 she by her holy intercession may reconcile me to her most 
 dear son, our Lord Jesus Christ ;" and with these words he 
 expired, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, 1087, after a 
 
 ' See William's death-bed confession in Speed. "^admer. 
 
 s OrderiouB Vitalis. Malmesburj. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 103 
 
 reign of fifty-two years in Normandy, and twenty-one in 
 England. 
 
 His eldest son, Eobert, was absent in Germany at the time 
 of his death;' William was on his voyage to England; 
 Henry, who had taken charge of his obsequies, suddenly 
 departed on some self-interested business ; and all the great 
 officers of the court having dispersed themselves, some to 
 offer their homage to Eobert, and others to William, the 
 inferior servants of the household, with some of their rapa- 
 cious confederates, took the opportunity of plundering the 
 house where their sovereign had just breathed his last of 
 all the money, plate, wearing apparel, hangings, and precious 
 furniture f" they even stripped the person of the royal dead, 
 and left hft body naked upon the floor.' 
 
 Every one appeared struck with consternation and dis- 
 may, and neither the proper officers of state nor the sons of 
 the deceased king issuing the necessary orders respecting 
 the funeral, the remains of the Conqueror were left wholly 
 neglected, till Herlewin, a poor country knight, — but in all 
 probability the same Herlewin who married his mother 
 Arlotta, — undertook to convey the royal corpse to Caen, at 
 his own cost, for interment in the abbey of St. Stephen, 
 where it was met by prince Henry and a procession of 
 monks.' Scarcely, however, had the burial rites commenced, 
 when there was a terrible alarm of fire in that quarter of 
 the town ; and as there was great danger of the devouring 
 element communicating to the cloisters of St. Stephen, the 
 monks, who were far more concerned for the preservation 
 of their stately abbey than for the lifeless remains of the 
 munificent founder, scampered out of the church, without 
 the slightest regard to decency or the remonstrances of 
 prince Henry and the faithful Herlewin. The example of 
 the ecclesiastics was followed by the secular attendants, so 
 that the hearse of the mighty William was in a manner 
 whoUy deserted till the conflagration was suppressed.* The 
 monks then re-entered the holy fane and proceeded with 
 
 1 Ordericus Vitalis. Brompton. 
 
 » Ordericus Vitalis. Brompton. Malmesbury. Speed. 
 
 s Ibid. * Ibid. 
 
104 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 the solemnity, if so it might be called ; but the inteiTup- 
 tions and accidents with which it had been marked were 
 not yet ended, for when the funeral sermon was finished, 
 the stone cofSn set in the grave which had been dug in the 
 chancel between the choir and the altar, and the body ready 
 to be laid therein,' Anselm Fitz-Arthur, a Norman gentle- 
 man, stood forth and forbade the interment : " This spot," 
 said he, " was the site of my father's house, which this dead 
 duke took violently from him, and here, upon part of mine 
 inheritance, founded this church. This ground I therefore 
 challenge, and I charge ye all, as ye shall answer it at the 
 great and dreadful day of judgment, that ye lay not the 
 bones of the despoiler on the hearth of my fathers." " 
 
 The effect of this bold appeal of a solitary individual, was 
 an instant pause in the burial rite of the deceased sovereign. 
 The claims of Anselm Fitz-Arthur were examined and his 
 rights recognized by prince Henry, who prevailed upon him 
 to accept sixty shillings as the price of the grave, and to 
 ; suffer the interment of his royal father to proceed, on the 
 I condition of his pledging himself to pay the full value of the 
 ; rest of the land.' The compensation was stipulated between 
 Anselm Fitz-Arthur and prince Henry, standing on either 
 side the grave, on the verge of which the unburied remains 
 of the Conqueror rested, while the agreement was ratified 
 in the presence of the mourners and assistant priests and 
 monks, whereby Henry promised to pay, and Fitz-Arthur 
 to receive, one hundred pounds of silver, as the purchase of 
 the ground on which William had, thirty-five years pre- 
 viously, wrongfully founded the abbey of St. Stephen's, to 
 purchase a dispensation from the pope for his marriage 
 with his cousin, Matilda of Flanders. The bargain having 
 been struek'j and the payment of the sixty shillings earnest- 
 money (for the occupation of the seven feet of earth re- 
 quired as the last abode of the conqueror of England) being 
 tendered by the prince and received by Fitz-Arthur, — 
 strange interlude as it was in a royal funeral, — the obse- 
 quies were suffered to proceed. The Saxon chroniclers have 
 
 ' Speed. * Eadmer. Malmeabury. Orderious Vitalis. 
 
 ' Orderious Vitalis. M. Paris. 
 
MATILDA OF FLANDEES. 105 
 
 taken evident pleasure in enlarging on all the mischances 
 and humiliations which befell the unconscious clay of their ^ 
 great national adversary in its passage to the tomb ; yet, \ 
 surely, so singular a chapter of accidents was never yet / 
 recorded as occurred to the corpse of this mighty sovereign, j 
 who died in the plenitude of his power. 
 
 William of Normandy was remarkable for his personal 
 strength, and for the majestic beauty of his countenance. 
 It has been said of him, that no one but himself could bend 
 his bow, and that he could, when riding at full speed, dis- 
 charge either arblast or long-bow with unerring aim." His 
 forehead was high and bald, his aspect stern and command- 
 ing; yet he could, when it pleased him to do so, assume 
 such winning sweetness in his looks and manner as could 
 scarcely be resisted, but when in anger, no man could meet 
 the terror of his eye.' Like Saul, he was, from the shoulders 
 upwards, taller than the rest of his subjects ; before he be- 
 came too corpulent, his figure was finely proportioned. 
 
 The loftiness of stature which contemporary chroniclers 
 have ascribed to William the Conqueror was fully confirmed 
 by the post-mortem examination of his body, which was made 
 by the bishop of Bayeux in the year 1542, when, prompted 
 by a strong desire to behold the remains of this great sover- 
 eign, he obtained leave to open his tomb." On removing the 
 stone cover, the body, which was corpulent, and exceeding 
 in stature the tallest man then known, appeared as entire as 
 when it was first buried. Within the tomb lay a plate of 
 copper gilt, on which was engraved an inscription in Latin 
 verse.* 
 
 1 Robert of Gloucester. W. Malmesbury. 
 
 ' W. Malmesbury. ' Ducarel's Norman Antiquities. 
 
 * Thomas, archbishop of York, was the author of the Latin verse, of which the 
 following lines present a close translation, not unpoetical in its antique simplicity : 
 " He who the sturdy Normans ruled, and oyer England reigned, 
 
 And stoutly won and strongly kept what he had so obtained ; 
 
 And did the swords of those of Maine by force bring under awe, 
 
 And made them under his command live subject to his law ; 
 
 This great king William lieth here entombed in little grave, — 
 
 So great a lord so small a house sufficeth him to have. 
 
 When Phoebus in the Virgin's lap his circled course applied. 
 
 And twenty-three degrees had past, e'en at that time he died." 
 
106 MATILDA OF FLANDERS. 
 
 The bishop, who was greatly surprised at finding the body 
 in such perfect preservation, caused a painting to be ex- 
 ecuted of the royal remains, in the state in which they then 
 appeared, by the best artist in Caen, and caused it to be 
 hung up on the abbey wall, opposite to the monument. 
 The tomb was then carefully closed, but in 1562, when the 
 Calvinists under ChastiUon took Caen, a party of the rapa- 
 cious soldiers forced it open, in hope of meeting with a 
 treasure ; but finding nothing more than the bones of the 
 Conqueror wrapped in red taffeta, they threw them about 
 the church in great derision. Viscount Falaise, having ob- 
 tained from the rioters one of the thigh-bones, it was by 
 him deposited in the royal grave. Monsieur le Bras, who 
 saw this bone, testified that it was longer by the breadth of 
 his four fingers than that of the tallest man he had ever 
 seen.' The fanatic spoilers also entered the church of the 
 Holy Trinity, threatening the same violence to the remains 
 of Matilda. The entreaties and tears of the abbess and her 
 nuns had no effect on men, who considered the destruction 
 of church ornaments and monumental sculptiu'e a service 
 to God quite sufficient to atone for the sacrilegious violence 
 of defacing a temple consecrated to his worship, and rifling 
 the sepulchres of the dead. They threw down the monu- 
 ment, and broke the efiigies of the queen which lay thereon. 
 On opening the grave in which the royal corpse was de- 
 posited, one of the party observing that there was a gold 
 ring set with a fine sapphire on one of the queen's fingers, 
 took it off, and, with more gallantry than might have been 
 expected from such a person, presented it to the abbess, 
 madame Anna de Montmorenci, who afterwards gave it to 
 her father, the constable of France, when he attended 
 Charles IX. to Caen, in the year 1563." _,.-' — 
 
 ' The picture of the remains, which had been painted by the order of the 
 bishop of Bayeux, fell into the hands of Peter Ildo, the jailer of Caen, who 
 was one of the spoilers, and he converted one part into a table, and the other 
 into a cupboard door; which proves that this portrait was not painted on 
 canvas, but, as usual, on wood. Some years after, these curious relics were 
 discovered and reclaimed by M. le Bras, in whose possession they remained till 
 his death. — Ducarel's Norman Antiquities. 
 
 ' Ducarel. 
 
MATILDA OP PLANDEES. 107 
 
 / In 1642 the monks of St. Stephen collected the bones of 
 
 I their royal patron, William of Normandy, and built a plain 
 
 i jaltar-shaped tomb over them, on the spot where the original 
 
 \ / monument stood in the chancel. The nuns of the Holy 
 
 ' Trinity, with equal zeal, caused the broken fragments of 
 
 Matilda's statue and monument to be restored, and placed 
 
 ,-G-verlrer grave, near the middle of the choir, on a tomb of 
 
 i black and white marble, three feet high and six long, in the 
 
 \ shape of a coffin, surrounded with iron spikes, and hung 
 
 ^ \ with ancient tapestry.^ 
 
 -!\ The restored monument of Matilda remained undisturbed 
 \ till nearly the close of the last century, when the French 
 I republicans paid one of their destructive visits to the church 
 S lof the Holy Trinity at Caen, and, among other out- 
 rages against taste and feeling, swept away this memorial 
 ^ pf its royal foundress ; ' but while a single arch of that | 
 inajestic and time-honored fane, the church of the Holy | 
 Trinity, survives, the first of our Anglo-Norman queens, | 
 ilatUda of Flanders, will require no other monument. \ 
 
 \ I Ducarel. « Ibid. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 QUEEN OF HENRY I. 
 
 CHAPTBE I. 
 
 Ancestry of Matilda — Direct descent from Alfred — Margaret Atheling her 
 mother — ^Marries the king of Scotland — Matilda's birth — Her godfather- 
 Education — First suitor — Her father invades England — His death — Her 
 mother's grief — Pious death — Revolution in Scotland — Edgar Atheling car- 
 ries the royal family to England — Princesses Matilda and Mary — Placed in 
 Eomsey abbey — Their aunt, abbess Christina — Matilda's brother Edgar — Re- 
 stored to the throne of Scotland — The Atheling a crusader — Matilda at Wilton 
 abbey — Her literary education — Attachment between Matilda and Henry 
 Beauclerc — Her other suitors — Early life of Henry — Education at Cambridge 
 — Surname — Literary work by him — Legacy at the Conqueror's death — 
 Poverty of Henry — Affronted by Matilda's suitor, earl Warren — Courtship of 
 Matilda — Harsh rule of lady Christina — Henry seizes the English throne^ 
 Asks Matilda's hand — Opposition of her aunt — Council of the church — Ma- 
 tilda's evidence — Her scruples — Importuned by Anglo-Saxons — Consents — ■ 
 Address to her by Anselm — Consent of the people — Her marriage and corona- 
 tion — Saxon laws restored. 
 
 When we consider the perils to which the representatives 
 of our ancient line of sovereigns, Edgar Atheling and his 
 sisters, were exposed during the unsurpation of Harold and 
 the Korman reigns of terror, it almost appears as if an 
 overruling Providence had guarded these descendants of the 
 great Alfred, for the purpose of continuing the lineage of 
 that patriot king on the throne of these realms, through the 
 marriage of Henry I. with the daughter of Margaret Athel- 
 ing, Matilda of Scotland. This princess, the subject of our 
 present biography, is distinguished among the many illus- 
 trious females that have worn the crown-matrimonial of 
 England by the title of " the good queen ;" a title which, 
 108 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 109 
 
 eloquent in its simplicity, briefly implies that she possessed 
 not only the great and shining qualities calculated to add 
 lustre to a throne, but that she employed them in promoting 
 the happiness of all classes of her subjects, affording at the 
 same time a bright example of the lovely and endearing 
 attributes which should adorn the female character. 
 
 Some historians call this princess Matilda Atheling, and 
 by these she is almost invested with the dignity of a queen- 
 regnant, as the heiress of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs. In 
 the same spirit, her grandson and representative, Henry II., 
 is designated ' the restorer of the English royal line.' This 
 is, however, as Blackstone justly observes, " a great error, 
 for the rights of Margaret Atheling to the English succes- 
 sion were vested in her sons, and not in her daughter." ^ 
 James I., on his accession to the throne of England, failed 
 not to set forth that important leaf in his pedigree, and laid 
 du-i stress on the circumstance of his descent from the 
 ancient line of English sovereigns by the elder blood. Alex- 
 ander, the archdeacon of Salisbury (who wrote the Tracts 
 of the Exchequer, quoted by Gervase of Tilbury in his 
 celebrated Dialogues of the Exchequer), has gravely set 
 forth, in his red-book, a pedigree of Matilda of Scotland, 
 tracing her descent in an unbroken line up to Adam. There 
 is a strange medley of Christian kings and pagan sinners, 
 such as Woden and Balder, with the Jewish patriarchs of 
 holy writ, in this royal genealogy.' 
 
 Matilda is the only princess of Scotland who ever shared 
 the throne of a king of England. It is, however, from her 
 maternal ancestry that she derives her great interest as con- 
 nected with the annals of this country. Her mother, Mar- 
 garet Atheling, was the grand-daughter of Edmund Ironside, 
 and the daughter of Edward Atheling, surnamed the Out- 
 law, by a German princess, erroneously stated by English 
 historians to have been Agatha, daughter of the emperor 
 Henry II. of Germany." Her brother, Edgar Athehng, so 
 
 ' Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. i. ' Lib. Rud. fol. notata 4. 
 
 » The most authentic account of the maternal pedigree of Margaret Atheling 
 will be found in Drummond's Noble Families of England and Scotland, — 
 article, Bruce. 
 
110 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 often mentioned in the preceding biography, feeling some 
 reason to mistrust the apparent friendship of William the 
 Conqueror, privately withdrew from his court, and in the 
 year 1068 (the same year in which Henry I. was born), 
 took shipping with Margaret, and their younger sister 
 Christina and their mother, intending to seek a refuge in 
 Hungary with their royal kindred ; but, by stress of weather, 
 the vessel in which they, with many other English exiles, 
 were embarked, was driven into the Firth of Forth. 'MaJ.- 
 ' cobn Canmore, the young unmarried king of Scotland, who 
 had jusf'regained his dominions from the usurper Macbeth, 
 happened to be present when the royal fugitives landed, 
 and was so struck with the beauty of the lady Margaret 
 Atheling, that in a few days he asked her in marriage of 
 her brother. Edgar joyfully gave the hand of the dowerless 
 princess to the young and handsome sovereign, who had 
 received the exiled English in the most generous and honor- 
 able manner, and whose disinterested affection was sufficient 
 testimony of the nobleness of his disposition. The spot 
 where Margaret first set her foot on the Scottish land was, 
 in memory of that circumstance, called Queen's Ferry, the 
 name it bears to this day. 
 
 The Saxon chronicler, of whom this lady is an especial 
 favorite, indulges in a most edifying homily on the provi- 
 dence which led the holy Margaret to become the spouse of 
 the king of Scotland, who is evidently regarded by the 
 cowled historian as little better than a pagan. Certain it is 
 that the mighty son of ' the gracious Duncan' could neither 
 ^ read nor write. \ After her marriage, the Saxon princess 
 ^ecanie"T3re°Eappy instrument of diffusing the blessings of 
 Christianity throughout her husband's dominions, com- 
 mencing the work of conversion in the proper place, — her 
 own household and the court. The influence which her 
 personal charms had in the first instance won over the heart 
 of her royal husband her virtues and mental powers in- 
 creased and retained to the last hour of Malcolm's existence. 
 He reposed the most unbounded confidence, not only in the 
 principles, but the judgment of his English consort, who 
 became the domestic legislator of the realm. She dismissed 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. Ill 
 
 from the palace all persons who were convicted of leading 
 immoral lives, or who were guilty of fraud or injustice, and j 
 allowed no persons to hold offices in the royal household ( 
 unless thej^ conducted themselves in a sober and discreet I 
 manner ; |bbserving, moreover, that the Scotch nobles had < 
 an irreverent habit of rising from table before grace could \ 
 be pronounced'by her p'lotlS' Chaplaiu Turgotj'sfie rewarded | 
 those of the more civilized chiefs who could be induced to | 
 attend the performance of that edifying ceremony, with a \ 
 cup of the choicest wine. The temptation of such a bribe ' 
 was too powerful to Be resisted by the hitherto perverse and 
 graceless peers, and by degrees the custom became so popu- 
 lar, that every guest was eager to claim his ' grace-cup ;' the 
 fashion spread from the palace to the castles of the nobility, 
 and thence descending to the dwellings of their humbler , 
 neighbors, became an established usage in the land. 
 
 Many deeply interesting, as well as amusing particulars, | 
 connected with the parents of Matilda of Scotland, the sub- \ 
 ject of our present memoir, have been preserved by the 
 learned Turgot, the historian of this royal family, who, in ; 
 his capacity of confessor to queen Margaret, and preceptor to , 
 her chifeeH,' enjoyed opportunities of becoming acquainted 
 not only with all personal particulars respecting these illus- 
 trious individuals, but of learning their most private thoughts , 
 
 ' Target was a Saxon of good family, bom in Lincolnshire. He was delivered 
 as a hostage to William the Conqueror, and shut up by him in Lincoln cattle. 
 From thence he escaped to Norway. Returning from that country, he was ship- 
 wrecked on the English coast, and having lost everything he possessed in the 
 world, he became a priest, and distinguished himself so much by his learning and 
 piety, that he was promoted to be prior of Durham. When Margaret Atheling 
 became queen of Scotland, she preferred him to the office of her confessor. He 
 followed the fortunes of his royal pupil Matilda, the daughter of his illustrious 
 patroness, after her marriage with Henry I. ; and we find that the English 
 monarch, who possibly wished to remove him from the queen, in 1107 warmly 
 recommended him to his royal brother-in-law, Edgar of Scotland, as a fit person 
 to be appointed to the bishopric of St. Andrew's. Turgot, however, died prior 
 of Durham. He is said to have been the author of the chronicle of Durham 
 which goes by the name of " Simeon of Durham," and has been appropriated by 
 a contemporary monk of that name. Turgot's Chronicle of the lives of his royal 
 mistress Margaret Atheling, and her consort Malcolm Canmore, king of Scot- 
 land, has been preserved by Fordnn, and is frequently cited by sir David 
 Dalrymple. — Nicholson. Henry. 
 
112 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 and feelings. Turgot gives great commendation to his royal 
 / mistress for the conscientious care she bestowed on the 
 / education of her children, whose preceptors she enjoined to/ 
 [ punish them as often as their faults required correction. J" 
 Matilda, the subject of this memoir, was her eldest daugh- 
 ter, and was probably born in the year 1079. This we infer 
 from the remarkable circumstance of the elder brother of 
 her future husband, Eobert Courthose, being'her godfather.' 
 Malcolm Canmore, her -father^TnvaSed England in that 
 year, and Eobert of Normandy was, on his reconciliation 
 with his father, William the Conqueror, sent with a military 
 force to repel this northern attack. Robert, finding his 
 forces inadequate to maintain successfully a war of aggres- 
 sion, entered into a negotiation with the Scottish monarch, 
 which ended in a friendly treaty. Malcolm renewed his 
 homage for Cumberland; and Eobert, who, whatever his 
 faults might be as a private character, was one of the most 
 courteous knights and polished gentlemen of the age in 
 which he lived, finally cemented the auspicious amity which 
 he had established between his royal sire and the warlike 
 husband of the heiress presumptive of the Saxon line of 
 kings, by becoming the sponsor of the infant princess 
 Matilda. Some historians assert that the name of the little 
 princess was originally Bditha, and that it was, out of 
 compliment to the Norman prince her godfather, changed 
 to Matilda, the name of his beloved mother ; the contem- 
 porary chronicler, Ordericus Vitalis, says, Matildem, quce 
 prius dicta est Editha : " Matilda, whose first name was 
 Edith." ' 
 
 Matilda the Good received her earliest lessons of virtue 
 and piety from her illustrious mother, and of learning from 
 the worthy Turgot, the preceptor of the royal children of 
 Scotland. While Matilda was very young, there appears to 
 have been an attempt on the part either of the queen her 
 mother, or her aunt Christina Atheling, the celebrated 
 abbess of Eomsey, to consecrate her to the church, or at 
 least to give her tender mind a conventual bias, greatly to 
 
 ' Sir J. Hayward. William of Malmesbury. 
 
 ' See Dr. Lingard's learned note, p. 126, vol. ii. ed. 4. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 113 
 
 the displeasure of the king her father ; who once, as Matilda 
 herself testified, when she was brought into his presence 
 dressed in a nun's veil, snatched it from her head in a great 
 passion, and indignantly tore it in pieces, observing at the 
 same time to Alan duke of Bretagne, who stood by, " that 
 he intended to bestow her in marriage, and not to devote 
 her to a cloister." ' This circumstance, young as she was, 
 appears to have made a very deep impression on the mind 
 of the little princess, and probably assisted in strengthening 
 her determination, in after years, never to complete the 
 profession of which she was, at one period of her life, com- 
 pelled to assume the semblance. Alan duke of Bretagne, 
 to whom king Malcolm addressed this observation, was the 
 widower of William the Conqueror's daughter Constance ; 
 and though there was a great disparity of years between 
 him and Matilda, it appears certain that the object of his 
 visit to the Scottish court was to obtain her for his second 
 wife ; ' and that was one of the unsuitable matches to which 
 we shall find that Matilda afterwards alluded. 
 
 Matilda's uncle, Edgar Atheling, became resident at the 
 court of her father and mother for some time, in the year 
 1091 ; and it is a remarkable fact, that William Rufus and 
 Malcolm joined in appointing him as arbiter of peace be- 
 tween England and Scotland, which were then engaged in 
 a furious and devastating war.' Thus placed in the most 
 singular and romantic position that ever was sustained by 
 a disinherited heir, Edgar conducted himself with such zeal 
 and impartiality as to give satisfaction to both parties, and 
 a pacification was concluded, which afforded a breathing 
 time of two years to the harassed people of this island. 
 After a reconciliation with William Rufus, which was never 
 afterwards broken by the most trying circumstances, Edgar 
 returned to the court of his favorite friend and companion, 
 Robert of Normandy. The dangerous illness of William 
 Rufus, at Gloucester, tempted king Malcolm Canmore to 
 invade his dominions, in the year 1093, for the purpose, as 
 he said, of revenging the insults he had received from the 
 
 1 Eadmer. ^ Eadmer. Gem. 
 
 ' Brompton. Horcden. T-Podigma of Neustria. 
 
114 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Anglo-Norman sovereign ; his real object was, probably, to 
 take advantage of Eufus's unpopularity with all classes, and 
 to assert the rival title of the descendants of the great 
 Alfred, with whom he was now so closely united. Accord- 
 ing to Hector Boethius and Buchanan, Malcolm was killed 
 at the siege of Alnwick castle, by the treachery of the be- 
 sieged, who, being reduced to the last extremity, offered to 
 surrender, if the Scottish king would receive the keys in 
 person. Malcolm of course acceded to this condition,^ and 
 coming to the gates, was there met by a knight bearing the 
 keys on the point of a lance, which he offered to the king 
 on his knee ; but when Malcolm stooped to receive them, 
 he treacherously thrust the point of the lance through the 
 bars of his vizor into his eye, and gave him a mortal wound. 
 
 This was heavy news to pour into the anxious ear of the 
 widowed queen, who then lay on her death-bed, attended by 
 her daughters Matilda and Mary. The particulars of this 
 sad scene are thus related by an eye-witness, the faithfiil 
 Turgot. During a short interval of ease, queen Margaret 
 devoutly received the communion. Soon after, her anguish 
 of body returned with redoubled violence ; she stretched 
 herself on the couch, and calmly awaited the moment of 
 her dissolution. Cold, and in the agonies of death, she 
 ceased not to put up her supplications to Heaven in the 
 touching words of the Miserere : '' Have mercy upon me, O 
 God, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies ; blot 
 out mine iniquities ; make me to hear joy and gladness, that 
 the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Cast me 
 not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy Spirit 
 from me ; restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. The 
 sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ; a broken and a con- 
 trite heart, God, thou wilt not despise." ' 
 
 At that moment her young son, prince Edgar, returned 
 from the disastrous English expedition, and approached her 
 couch. " How fares it with the king and my Edward ?" 
 asked the dying queen. The youthful prince stood mourn- 
 fully silent. " I know all — I know all," cried his mother ; 
 " yet, by this holy cross I adjure you speak out the worst." 
 
 1 Malmesbury. 2 Turgot. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 115 
 
 As she spoke she presented to the view of her son that cele- 
 brated ' black cross' which she had brought with her from 
 England, as the most precious possession she derived from 
 her royal Saxon ancestors.' 
 
 " Your husband and eldest son are both slain," replied the 
 prince. Lifting her eyes and hands towards heaven, she 
 said, " Praise and blessing be to thee. Almighty God, that 
 thou hast been pleased to make me endure so bitter anguish 
 in the hour of my departure, thereby, as I trust, to purify 
 me in some measure from the corruption of my sins. And 
 thou, O Lord Jesus Christ ! who, through the will of the 
 Father, hast given life to the world by thy death, oh, deliver 
 me!" "While pronouncing the words "deliver me," she 
 expired. 
 
 The reputation of her virtues, and the report that miracles 
 had been wrought at her tomb, caused her name to be 
 enrolled in the catalogue of saints by the church of Eome. 
 Whatever may be thought of the miracles, it is a pleasure 
 to find the following enlightened passage, from the pen of 
 an ecclesiastic of the eleventh century : — " Others," says 
 Turgot, "may admire the indications of sanctity which 
 miracles afford. I much more admire in Margaret the 
 works of mercy. Such signs (namely, miracles) are common 
 to the evil and the good ; but the works of true piety and 
 charity are peculiar to the good. With better reason, there- 
 fore, ought we to admire the deeds of Margaret, which made 
 her saintly, than her miracles, had she performed any." 
 
 To this great and good man did the dying Margaret con- 
 sign the spiritual guardianship of her two young daughters, 
 the princesses Matilda and Mary, and her younger sons. 
 
 5 Carruthers'a History of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 312-363. The English viewed the 
 possession of this jewel by the royal family of Scotland with great displeasure ; 
 it was enclosed in a black case from whence it waa called the black croaa. The 
 cross itself was of gold and set with large diamonds. The figure of the Saviour 
 was exquisitely carved in ivory. After the death of Margaret it was deposited 
 on the high altar of Dunfermline. When Edward I. kept court there, he seized 
 on this cross as one of the English crown-jewels, and carried it into England, 
 Robert Bruce so vehemently insisted on its restoration, that queen Isabella 
 yielded it on the pacification during her regency in 1327 ; but its surrender 
 exasperated the English more than the most flagrant of her misdeeds. — See her 
 biography. 
 
116 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Turgot has preserved the words with which she gave him 
 this important charge ; they will strike an answering chord 
 on the heart of every mother. " Farewell !" she said ; " my 
 life draws to a close, but you may survive me long. To you 
 I commit the charge of my children. Teach them, above 
 all things, to love and fear God ; and if any of them should 
 be permitted to attain to the height of earthly grandeur, 
 oh I then, in an especial manner, be to them a father and a 
 guide. Admonish, and if need be, reprove them, lest they 
 should be swelled with the pride of momentary glory, and 
 through covetousness, or by reason of the prosperity of this 
 world, offend their Creator, and forfeit eternal life. This, 
 in the presence of Him who is now our only witness, I 
 beseech you to promise and perform." * 
 
 Adversity was soon to try these youthful scions of royalty 
 with her touchstone ; and of the princess Matilda, as well as 
 her saintly mother, it may justly be said, — 
 
 *' Stem, rugged nurse, thy rigid lore 
 With patience many a year she bore." 
 
 Donald Bane, (the brother of Malcolm Canmore,) soon after 
 the disastrous defeat and death of Matilda's father and 
 eldest brother, seized the throne of Scotland, and commanded 
 all the English exiles, of whatsoever degree, to quit the 
 kingdom, under pain of death.' Edgar Atheling, Matilda's 
 uncle, then conveyed to England the orphan family of his 
 sister, the queen of Scotland, consisting of five young princes 
 and two princesses.' 
 
 ' Queen Margaret was buried at Dunfermline. Her body was disinterred at 
 the Reformation, and the head is now preserved in a silver case at Douay, where 
 the historian Carruthers declares he saw it, at the Scotch college. It was in 
 extraordinary preservation, with a quantity of fine hair, fair in color, still upon 
 it. This was in 1785. — History of Scotland, vol. i. p. 313. 
 
 * Carruthers's History of Scotland, vol. i. p. 316. 
 
 ' Hardyng, in his rhyming Chronicle, thus quaintly enumerates the posterity 
 of Margaret Atheling (see sir Henry Ellis's edition) : — 
 
 " Edward, Dunkan, Edgar, Alixander the gay, 
 And David also (that kings were all they say, 
 Eaohe after other of Scotlande throughout), 
 Whose mother is now St. Margrete without doubt, 
 At Dunfermly n shrined and canonized ; 
 
MATILDA OP SCOTLAND. 117 
 
 He supported Matilda, her sister and brothers, who were 
 all minors, privately, from his own means. They were in 
 considerable personal danger, from the accusation of one of 
 the knights at the English court, who told William Eufus 
 that the Saxon prince had brought into England, and was 
 raising up, a family of competitors for the English crown. 
 A friend of Edgar, named Godwin, challenged and slew the 
 calumniator ; and William Eufus, supposing Providence had 
 decided in favor of the innocent, treated Edgar and his 
 adopted family with kindness and friendship. The prin- 
 cesses Matilda and Mary were placed by their uncle in the 
 nunnery of Eomsey, of which his surviving sister, Christina, 
 was abbess ; for the princes he obtained an honorable recep- 
 tion at the court of William Eufus, who eventually sent him 
 at the head of an army to Scotland, with which the Atheling 
 succeeded in re-establishing the young king Edgar, eldest 
 brother of Matilda, on the throne of his ancestors. 
 
 Ordericus Vitalis confirms, in a great measiire, the state- 
 ments of Turgot ; and, after relating the death of queen 
 Margaret, adds, " She had sent her two daughters, Edith 
 (Matilda) and Mary, to Christina her sister, who was a re- 
 ligieuse of the abbey of Eomsey, to be instructed by her in 
 holy writ. These princesses were a long time pupils among 
 the nuns. They were instructed by them, not only in the 
 art of reading, but in the observance of good manners; 
 and these devoted maidens, as they approached the age of 
 womanhood, waited for the consolation of God. As we have 
 said, they were orphans, deprived of both their parents, 
 separated from their brothers, and far from the protecting 
 care of kindred or friends. They had no home nor hope but 
 the cloister, and yet, by the mercy of God, they were not 
 professed as nuns. They were destined by the Disposer of 
 all earthly events for better things." 
 
 Camden proves that the abbey of Wilton, ever since the 
 
 By whom Malcolyn a daughter had also, 
 
 King Henry's wife the first, full well avised 
 
 Queen Maude, that's right well loved England through. 
 
 Those crosses fair and royal, as men go 
 
 Through all England, she made at her expense. 
 
 And divers good orders through her providence." 
 
118 MATILDA OP SCOTLAND. 
 
 profession of the royal saint Editha,' was the place of nur- 
 ture and education for the princesses of the Anglo-Saxon 
 reigning family. This abbey of black Benedictine nuns was 
 founded by king Alfred, and since his days it had been usual 
 to elect a superior of his lineage. Wilton abbey had been 
 refounded by the queen Bditha, consort to Edward the 
 Confessor.' While that monarch was building Westminster- 
 abbey, his queen employed her revenues in changing the 
 nunnery of Wilton from a wooden edifice into one of stone. 
 
 The abbey of Eomsey was likewise a royal foundation, 
 generally governed by an abbess of the blood-royal. Chris- 
 tina is first mentioned as abbess of Eomsey in Hampshire, 
 and afterwards as superior of the Wilton convent. As both 
 belonged to the order of black Benedictines, this transfer 
 was not difficult ; but chroniclers do not mention when it 
 was effected, simply stating the fact that the Scottish prin- 
 cess first dwelt at Eomsey, yet when she grew up she was 
 resident at Wilton abbey, under the superintendence of the 
 abbess Christina her aunt. Matilda thus became an inhabi- 
 tant of the same abode where the royal virgins of her race 
 had always received their education.' It was the express 
 desire of the queen, her mother, who survived that request 
 but a few hours, that she should be placed under the care 
 of the lady Christina at Eomsey. 
 
 While in these English convents, the royal maid was com- 
 pelled to assume the thick black veil of a votaress,* as a 
 protection from the insults of the lawless Norman nobles. 
 The abbess Christina, her aunt, who was exceedingly de- 
 sirous of seeing her beautiful niece become a nun professed, 
 treated her very harshly if she removed this cumbrous and 
 inconvenient envelope, which was composed of coarse black 
 cloth or serge ; some say it was a tissue of horse-hair. The 
 imposition of this veil was considered by Matilda as an in- 
 tolerable grievance. She wore it,^ as she herself acknowl- 
 edged, with sighs and tears in the presence of her stern 
 aunt ; and the moment she found herself alone, she flung it 
 on the ground, and stamped it under her feet. During the 
 
 1 Daughter of Edgar the Peaceable. * Camden. 
 
 3 Orderious Vitalis. * Eadmer. 5 ibid. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 119 
 
 seven years that Matilda resided in this dreary asylum, she 
 was carefully instructed in all the learning of the age. 
 Ordericus Vitalis says she was taught the ' literatoriam 
 artem,' of which she afterwards became, like her prede- 
 cessor, Matilda of Flanders, a most munificent patroness. 
 She was also greatly skilled in music, for which her love 
 amounted almost to a passion. When queen, we shall find 
 her sometimes censured for the too great liberality she 
 showed in rewarding, with costly presents, the monks who 
 sang skilfully in the church service.' 
 
 The superior education which this illustrious princess 
 received during these years of conventual seclusion, emi- 
 nently fitted her to become the consort of so accomplished 
 a prince as Henry le Beauclere. Eobert of Gloucester, and 
 Piers of Langtoft, and, above all, Badmer, a contemporary, 
 assert that the royal pair had been lovers before circum- 
 stances admitted of their union. These are the words of 
 old quaint Eobin on the subject : — 
 
 ** Special love there had ere been, as I understand, 
 Between him and the king's fair daughter, Maud of Scotland. 
 So that he willed her to wife, and the bishops also. 
 And the high men of the land radde ^ him thereto." 
 
 Matilda received two proposals of marriage while she was 
 in the nunnery at Eomsey ; one from Alan duke of Bretagne, 
 the mature suitor before mentioned, who demanded her in 
 marriage of his brother-in-law, William Rufus, and obtained 
 his consent ; but he was prevented by death from fulfilling his 
 engagement. Had it been otherwise, Matilda's only refuge 
 from this ill-assorted union would have been the irrevocable 
 assumption of the black veil, of which she had testified such 
 unqualified abhorrence. The other candidate for the hand 
 of the exiled princess, was the young and handsome William 
 Warren, earl of Surrey, the son of the Conqueror's youngest 
 daughter Gundred, the favorite nephew of William Rufus, 
 and one of the richest and most powerful of the baronage of 
 England and Normandy. The profession of Matilda was de- 
 layed for a time by the addresses of these princes. ' " But," 
 continues the chronicler, "she was, by the grace of God, 
 
 ' Tyrrell. ' Radde, advised. ' Ordericus Vitalis. 
 
120 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 reserved for a higher destiny, and through his permission 
 contracted a more illustrious marriage." ' It is remarkable 
 that of the three lovers by whom Matilda vs^as sought in mar- 
 riage, one should have been the son-in-law, another the grand- 
 son, and the third the son, of that Norman conqueror who had 
 established a rival dynasty on the throne of her ancestors. 
 Matilda pleaded devotion to a religious life, as an excuse 
 for declining the addresses of Warren. It seems strange that 
 she should have preferred a lengthened sojourn in a gloomy 
 cloister, to a union with a young, handsome, and wealthy 
 prince of the reigning family of England, unless her refusal 
 of Warren may be regarded as a confirmation of the state- 
 ments of Eadmer, Eobert of Gloucester, William of Malmes 
 bury, and others of the ancient chroniclers, as to ' the special 
 love' that existed between Henry Beauclerc and Matilda, 
 during the season of their mutual adversity. The nunnery 
 of Wilton was not far from Winchester, the principal seat 
 of the Norman sovereign ; and when we reflect on the great 
 intimacy which subsisted between Matilda's uncle, Edgar 
 Atheling, and the sons of the Conqueror, it appears by no 
 means improbable that prince Henry might have accompa- 
 nied him in some of his visits to his royal kinswoman, and 
 perhaps been admitted, under the sanction of his presence, 
 to converse with the princesses, and even to have enjoyed the 
 opportunity of seeing Matilda without her veil ; which, we 
 learn from her own confession, she took every opportunity 
 of throwing aside. Nor was this to be wondered at, since, 
 if we may credit the testimony of contemporary writers, 
 her face was well worth the looking upon. The learned 
 Hildebert,' her friend and correspondent, has celebrated her 
 personal charms in the eloquent Latin poems which he ad- 
 dressed to her, both before and after her marriage. The 
 Norman chronicle declares that she was a lady of great 
 beauty, and much beloved by king Henry ; and Matthew 
 Paris says she was "very fair, and elegant in person, as 
 well as learned, holy, and wise." These qualities, com- 
 bined with her high lineage, rendered her, doubtless, an 
 object of attraction to the Norman princes. 
 
 ' Ordericus Vitalis. ' Afterwards archbishop of Mans. — See Opera Hildeberti. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 121 
 
 Henry Beauclerc was ten years the senior of his nephew 
 Warren ; but his high mental acquirements and accomplish- 
 ments were, to a mind like that of Matilda of Scotland, far 
 beyond the meretricious advantages which his more youthful 
 rival could boast. Eobert of Gloucester, in his rhyming 
 Chronicle, gives this quaint summary of the birth, education, 
 and characteristics of Henry : — 
 
 " In England was he born, Henri, this nobleman, 
 In the third year that his father England wan ; 
 He was, of all his sons, best fitted king to be, 
 Of fairest form and manners, and most gentle and free ; 
 For that he was the youngest, to book his father him drew, 
 And he became as it befel a good clerk enow. 
 One time when he was young, his brother smote him, I wis. 
 And he wept while his father stood by and beheld all this ; 
 ' Ne weep now,' he said, * loving son, for it shall come to be. 
 That thou shalt yet be king, and that thou shalt see.' 
 His father made him, at Westminster, knight of his own hand, 
 In the nineteenth year of his age, &o. &c. 
 Taller he was some deal than his brethren were, 
 Fair man and stout enow, with brown hair." 
 
 Henry was regarded by the people of the land with a 
 greater degree of complacency than the elder sons of the 
 Conqueror, from the circumstance of his being an English- 
 born prince. While yet a tender infant, his mighty sire 
 named hipa as a witness (the only male witness) of the fol- 
 lowing curious charter to one of his followers, the founder 
 of the family of Hunter of Hopton : — 
 
 " I, William the king, the third year of my reign. 
 Give to thee, Norman Hunter, to me that art both liefe • and dear, 
 The Hop and the Hopton, and all the bounds up and down, 
 Under the earth to hell, above the earth to heaven. 
 From me and mine to thee and thine. 
 As good and as fair as ever they mine were. 
 To witnesse that this is sooth, 
 I bite the white waxe with my tooth. 
 Before Jugge,* Maude, and Margery, 
 And my young Sonne Henry, 
 For a bowe and a broad arrowe. 
 When I sail come to hunt on Yarrowe."' 
 
 1 Liefe, loving. 
 
 ' Pronounced Juey, which rhymes to Margery ; the rhymes, it will be ob- 
 served, recur in the middle of the line. 
 ' Stowe. 
 
122 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 The rhymes of this quaint feudal grant are undoubtedly 
 far more agreeable to the ear than the halting heroics of 
 honest Eobert of Gloucester, previously quoted, though com- 
 pounded more than a century before his jingling chronicle 
 was written. Several of the charters of William the Con- 
 queror are in this form, and with the names of the same 
 members of his family. It is probable that they were ex- 
 ecuted in the presence of his queen "Maud;" "Jugge" 
 (sometimes used as an abbreviation for Judith) must have 
 been his niece Judith, afterwards the wife of Waltheof; 
 and Margery, a daughter, who is sometimes enumerated in 
 his family by the chroniclers ; and to these the name of 
 that notable witness, the baby Henry, was doubtless added 
 as a joke by the royal sire. Biting the white wax was sup- 
 posed to give particular authenticity to conveyances from 
 the crown, which formerly were each duly furnished with a 
 proof impression of that primitive substitute for the great 
 seal of England the royal eye-tooth, sometimes familiarly 
 specified by the monarch as his " fang-tooth." This custom, 
 which took its rise from very remote antiquity, was need- 
 lessly adopted by the Anglo-Norman line of sovereigns, 
 whose broad seals are of peculiarly fine workmanship, bear- 
 ing their veritable effigies, crowned, sceptred, and in royal 
 robes, seated on the king's stone bench ; and on the reverse 
 of the seal the same monarch is figured, armed cap-a-pie, 
 and mounted on a war-charger, gallantly appointed.^ Such 
 are the impressions affixed to all their charters. 
 
 It is among the boasts of Cambridge ' that Henry, so cele- 
 brated for his learning, received his education there. The 
 ancient annals of St. Austin's, Canterbury, however, affirm 
 " that he was instructed in philosophy beyond seas, where, 
 lor his knowledge in the liberal sciences, he was by the 
 French surnamed Beauclerc." ' 
 
 The following dialogue took place between Henry and his 
 
 ^ Speed. 2 j^ Caius Cantabrig. 
 
 ' St. Austin's Lib. MSS. A learned writer in the Arehaeologia supposes that 
 this appellation was won by Henry's " English Fables" in the ^sopian style ; 
 adding that the celebrated troubadour poetess, Marie of France, who flourished 
 in the reign of our Henry III., has translated the English monarch's work into 
 Norman French. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. / 
 
 royal sire, when the latter lay on his death-bed at HeriUK.. 
 trude,^ and was concluding his elaborate confession of his 
 past deeds of oppression and cruelty with the verbal bequest 
 of his dominions to his two eldest sons. "And what do 
 you give to me, father?" interrupted Henry, who stood 
 weeping at the bedside, less touched, we fear, at the awful 
 list of sins and wickednesses of which his dying sire had 
 just disburdened his conscience, than at the tenor of a 
 last will and testament in which he appeared to have no 
 share. " Five thousand pounds in silver, out of my treasury, 
 do I give thee,'' replied the Conqueror. " But what shall I 
 do with treasure, if I have neither castle nor domain ?" de- 
 manded the disappointed prince. " Be patient, my son, and 
 comfort thyself in God," rejoined the expiring monarch ; 
 " thy elder brothers do but go before thee. Eobert shall 
 have Normandy, and William England ; but thou shalt be 
 the inheritor of all my honors, and shall excel both thy 
 brethren in riches and power." This oracular speech, 
 though far enough from proving satisfactory at the time to 
 the landless Henry, was afterwards magnified into a pro- 
 phetic annunciation of his accession to the united domin- 
 ions of England and Normandy. 
 
 Discontented as Henry was with the paternal legacy, he 
 was in such haste to secure its payment, that he left the 
 last duties to the remains of his royal sire to the care of 
 strangers, while he flew to make his claim upon the treasury 
 of the departed sovereign ; rightly judging, that unless he 
 forestalled his elder brethren in taking possession of the 
 bequest, his chance of receiving it would be but small. In 
 fact, Eobert, whose extravagance had exhausted all his re- 
 sources before he succeeded to the dukedom of Normandy, 
 besought his youngest brother to assist him with a loan 
 of at least part of the money. Henry, who had all the 
 worldly wisdom of a premature statesman, complied, on 
 condition of being put in possession of his mother's bequest 
 of the Cotentin. Eobert agreed ; but, after he had been 
 foiled in his attempt to dethrone Eufus, he returned to 
 Normandy with exhausted coffers, and wrongfully repos- 
 
124 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 sessed himself of the Cotentin. Henry, greatly enraged at 
 this treatment, was preparing to take up arms against 
 Eobert, when the latter, finding himself attacked by Wil- 
 liam, and abandoned by his false ally, Philip of SS-ance, 
 thought proper to make the most earnest solicitations to 
 Henry for assistance, and forgiveness for the late outrage 
 of which he had been guilty. Henry, being mollified by 
 the submission of his elder brother, and understanding that 
 a plot was in agitation to deliver Bouen to William, suddenly 
 entered the city, and seizing Conon, the head of the con- 
 spirators, charged him with his treason to the duke, and 
 caused him to be flung headlong from one of the highest 
 towers. By this decisive step Henry preserved the capital 
 for Eobert. 
 
 Eobert and William soon after came to an amicable agree- 
 ment, and conceiving a sudden affection for each other, they 
 terminated their quarrel by making their wills in each 
 other's favor, without any mention of Henry. Henry re- 
 garded this as a great afiront, especially on the part of 
 Eobert, to whom he had rendered such signal services, and 
 demanded of him either a restitution of his silver, or to be 
 put in possession of the Cotentin. On Eobert's refusal, he 
 seized on Mount St. Michael, where he strongly intrenched 
 himself. 
 
 The youthful adventurer maintained his rocky fortress 
 with obstinate valor against the united efforts of his august 
 brothers of England and !N^ormandy, till he was reduced to 
 the greatest straits for want of water. He represented his 
 distress to Eobert in a moving message, and obtained leave 
 to supply his garrison with water, and a present of wine 
 for his own use. Eufus upbraided Eobert with his compli- 
 ance, which he called " an act of folly." — " What I" replied 
 Eobert, with a sudden burst of that generous warmth of 
 feeling which formed the redeeming trait of his character, 
 " is the quarrel between us and our brother of that impor- 
 tance, that we should make him die of thirst ? We may 
 have occasion for a brother hereafter, but where shall we 
 find another if we destroy this ?" After Eobert had be- 
 sieged St. Michael's mount during the whole of Lent, he 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 125 
 
 brought Henry to terms ; who, weary, perhaps, of keeping 
 a stricter fast than even the church of Rome enjoined at 
 that season, surrendered the fortress ; and having permis- 
 sion to go whither he pleased, wandered about Germany 
 and Trance for some time, forsaken of every one save four 
 faithful domestics, by whom he was attended. 
 
 In the year 1094 we find, from Matthew Paris, that Henry 
 was in England, and employed by William Eufus in assisting 
 to quell the formidable rebellion of Robert Mowbray, the 
 lord of Northumberland. Prince Henry's poverty, and 
 dependence on the caprices of his brother the ' red king,' 
 subjected him occasionally to the sneers of the wealthy 
 Norman barons, but more especially of his kinsman and 
 rival Warren,' who took occasion, from his swiftness in pur- 
 suit of the forest game, " which ofttimes,'' says the chronicle 
 of Normandy, " he, for lack of horse or dog, followed on 
 foot, to bestow the name of ' Deer's-foot' on the landless 
 prince. This greatly troubled Henry, who hated Warren to 
 the death, but had no power to avenge himself, because 
 the ' red king' loved Warren greatly." ' It is possible that 
 Warren's courtship of Matilda of Scotland was one cause of 
 Henry's bitter animosity.' This courtship was sanctioned 
 by Rufiis, and some of the ancient chroniclers assert that 
 Matilda was contracted to him, but this appears without 
 foundation. 
 
 Henry was in his thirty-second year when the glancing 
 aside of Wat Tyrrel's arrow made him king of England. 
 The chroniclers of that era record that, from whatever 
 cause, omens, dreams, and predictions of the death of the 
 ' red king' were rife in the land immediately preceding that 
 event.* Prince Henry was at this fatal hunting party;' 
 and Wace, the minstrel chronicler of the Norman line of 
 princes, relates a most remarkable adventure that befell him 
 on this occasion.' "Prince Henry, being separated from 
 the royal party while pursuing his game in an adjoining 
 glen of the forest, chanced to snap the string of his cross- 
 bow, or ar blast, and repairing to the hut of a forester to 
 
 ' Waoe. ' Ibid. ' Chronicle of Normandy, by Wace. 
 
 * Malmesbury. Saxon Chron. ' S. Dunelm. • Wace. 
 
126 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 get it mended or replaced, he was, the moment he entered 
 this sylvan abode, saluted as king by an old woman whom 
 he found there," whose description is somewhat similar to 
 that of one of the witches in Macbeth.^ The following is a 
 literal version of her address, from the Norman French 
 rhymes of Wace : — 
 
 " Hasty news to thee I bring, 
 Henry, thou art now a king ; 
 Mark the words and heed them well. 
 Which to thee in sooth I tell, 
 And recall them in the hour 
 Of thy regal state and power." 
 
 Before Henry had recovered from the surprise with which 
 the weird woman's prediction had startled him, the cries of 
 the ' red king's' attendants proclaimed the fatal accident that 
 had befallen their royal master, and the hasty flight of the 
 unlucky marksman by whose erring shaft he had died. 
 Prince Henry acted as Eufus doubtless would have done in 
 his case : he sprang to his saddle, and made the best of his 
 way to Winchester, without bestowing a moment's care or 
 attention on the body of his deceased brother, which was 
 irreverently thrown into the cart of one Purkiss, a Saxon 
 charcoal-burner, that was passing through the forest, and, 
 on no gentler bier, was ignobly borne back to the city which 
 he had quitted that morning with such proud parade.^ 
 Eobert of Gloucester relates this circumstance, with his 
 usual quaint minuteness ; and among a number of his lame 
 and tame lines, the following graphic couplet occurs, which 
 we think our readers will consider worthy of quotation : — 
 
 *' To Winchester they bare him, all midst his green wound, 
 And ever as he lay, the blood well'd to ground." 
 
 William Breteuil," the royal treasurer, was also at this 
 memorable hunting party, and with him prince Henry 
 
 1 Waca. 
 
 ' Saxon Chronicle. The lineal descendants of the said charcoal-maker, by 
 name Purkiss, still live within the distance of a bow-shot from the spot where 
 Rufus fell, and continue to exercise the trade of their ancestor. — Milner's Win- 
 chester. 
 
 ' William Breteuil was the son of the Conqueror's great friend and counsellor, 
 Fitz-Osborn, sumamed 'the Proud Spirit.' — See the preceding biography. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 127 
 
 actually rode a race to Winchester, — -ay, and won it too ; 
 for when Breteuil arrived at the door of the treasury, ho 
 found prince Henry standing before it, who greeted him 
 with a demand of the keys. Breteuil boldly declared, 
 "That both treasure and crown belonged to the prince's 
 eldest brother, duke Eobert of Normandy, who was then 
 absent in the Holy Land, and for that prince he would 
 keep the treasures of the late king his master." Then 
 Henry drew his sword, and, backed by his powerful friend 
 Henry Bellomonte, afterwards earl of Leicester, and other 
 nobles of his party, forced the keys from his kinsman 
 Breteuil, and took possession of the treasure and regalia. 
 Breteuil loudly protested against the wrong that was done 
 to duke Eobert. 
 
 Some of the nobles who possessed large estates in Nor- 
 mandy sided with Breteuil in advocating the rights of the 
 royal crusader ; and the debate growing very stormy, it was 
 considered more expedient to argue the momentous question 
 in the council-chamber. Thither the nobles and prelates 
 adjourned; but while they were engaged in advocating, 
 according as interest or passion swayed, the rival claims of 
 Eobert and Henry to the vacant throne, the majority being 
 inclined for the elder brother (the brave but proverbially 
 unready Eobert), Henry had successfully pleaded his own 
 cause to the populace in the streets of Winchester ; and they, 
 strong in numbers, and animated with sudden affection for 
 the English-born prince, who had promised to bestow upon 
 them English laws and an English queen, gathered round 
 the palace, and quickened the decision of the divided peers 
 in council by making the name of Henry resound in their 
 ears ; and Henry, thus elected by the voice of the people, 
 was immediately proclaimed king at Winchester. The re- 
 mains of the luckless Eufus were hurried into the grave, 
 with a sort of hunter's mass, the following morning at an 
 early hour, in Winchester cathedral ; ' and Henry hastened 
 
 • The monument that Henry I. raised for his hrother Rufus, before the high 
 altar at Winchester, is still to be seen there ; he put himself to no great cost for 
 funeral expenses, for it is a plain gravestone of black marble, of that shape called 
 dos d'dne, to be seen, of brick or freestone, in country church-yards. 
 
128 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 to London, where, on Sunday, the nones of August, the 
 fourth day after his brother's death, he was crowned in 
 Westminster abbey, by Maurice, bishop of London. Before 
 the regal circlet was placed on his brow, " Henry, at the 
 high altar at' Westminster, promised to God and the people," 
 says the Saxon Chronicle, " to annul the unrighteous acts 
 that took place in his brother's reign, and he was crowned 
 on that condition." ' 
 
 Henry promised everything that could reasonably be de- 
 manded of him, and set about reforming the abuses and 
 corruptions that had prevailed during the licentious reign 
 of the bachelor king, and completely secured his popularity 
 with the English people by declaring his resolution of wed- 
 ding a princess of the blood of Alfred, who had been brought 
 up and educated among them. Accordingly he demanded 
 Matilda, the daughter of Malcolm king of Scotland, and 
 Margaret Atheling, of her brother, Edgar king of Scotland. 
 The proposal was exceedingly agreeable to the Scottish 
 monarch, but great difficulties were opposed to the comple- 
 tion of this marriage by those who were of opinion that 
 she had embraced a religious life.' The abbess Christina, 
 Matilda's aunt, in particular, whose Saxon prejudices could 
 not brook the idea that the throne of the Norman line of 
 sovereigns should be strengthened by an alliance with the 
 royal blood of Alfred, protested, "that her niece was a 
 veiled nun, and that it would be an act of sacrilege to re- 
 move her from her convent." 
 
 Henry's heart was set upon the marriage, but he would 
 not venture to outrage popular opmion by wedding a conse- 
 crated nun. In this dilemma, he wrote a pressing letter to 
 the learned Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, who had 
 been unjustly despoiled of his revenues by William Eufus, 
 and was then in exile at Lyons, entreating him to return, 
 and render him his advice and assistance in this affair. 
 When Anselm heard the particulars of the case, he declared 
 that it was too mighty for his single decision, and there- 
 fore summoned a council of the church at Lambeth, for the 
 purpose of entering more fully into this important ques- 
 
 1 Saxon Chronicle. • Eadmer. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 129 
 
 tion.* Matilda made her appearance before the synod, and 
 was closely interrogated by the primate Anselm, in the 
 presence of the whole hierarchy of England, as to the 
 reality of her alleged devotion to a religious life.' The 
 particulars of her examination have been preserved by 
 Eadmer, who, as the secretary of the archbishop Anselm, 
 was doubtless an eye-witness of this interesting scene, and, 
 in all probability, recorded the very words uttered by the 
 princess. 
 
 The archbishop commenced by stating the objections to 
 her marriage, grounded on the prevailing report that she 
 had embraced a religious life, and declared, " that no motive 
 whatever would induce him to dispense with her vow, if it 
 had already been given to Almighty God." The princess 
 denied that there had been any such engagement on her 
 part. She was asked, " If she had embraced a religious life, 
 either by her own choice or the vow of her parents ;" and 
 she replied, " Neither." Then she was examined as to the 
 fact of her having worn the black veil of a votaress in her 
 father's court, and subsequently in the nunneries of Eomsey 
 and Wilton. " I do not deny," said Matilda, " having worn 
 the veil in my father's court, for when I was a child, my 
 aunt Christina put a piece of black cloth over my head ; 
 but when my father saw me with it, he snatched it off in a 
 great rage, and execrated the person who had put it on me. 
 I afterwards made a pretence of wearing it, to excuse my- 
 self from unsuitable marriages ; and on one of these occa- 
 sions, my father tore the veil and threw it on the ground, 
 observing to Alan earl of Bretagne, who stood by, that it 
 was his intention to give me in marriage, not to devote me 
 to the church." ' She also admitted that she had assumed 
 the veil in the nunnery of Eomsey, as a protection from the 
 lawless violence of the Norman nobles, and that she had 
 continued to wear that badge of conventual devotion, against 
 
 ' Not long after the return of archbishop Anselm to England, the king, by 
 the advice of his friends, resolved to leave off his mistresses, and marry ; and 
 he, having a very great affection for Matilda, daughter to Malcolm, late king 
 of Scotland, resolved, if it might be lawful, to marry her. — Tyrrell. 
 
 2 Eadmer. Malmesbury. ' Eadmer. 
 
130 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 her own inclination, through the harsh compulsion of her 
 aunt, the abbess Christina. " If I attempted to remove it," 
 continued Matilda, " she would torment me with harsh blows 
 and sharp reproaches. Sighing and trembling, I wore it in 
 her presence ; but as soon as I withdrew from her sight, I 
 always threw it off and trampled upon it." '■ 
 
 This explanation was considered perfectly satisfactory by 
 the council at Lambeth, and they pronounced that " Matilda, 
 daughter of Malcolm king of Scotland, had proved that she 
 had not embraced a religious life, either by her own choice 
 or the vow of her parents, and she was therefore free to con- 
 tract marriage with the king." The council, in addition to 
 this declaration, thought proper to make public the most 
 cogent reason which the Scottish princess had given for her 
 assumption of the black veil on her coming to England; 
 which was done in the following remarkable words : " When 
 the great king William conquered this land, many of his 
 followers, elated by so great a victory, and thinking that 
 everything ought to be subservient to their will and 'pleas- 
 ure, not only seized the provisions of the conquered, but 
 invaded the honor of their matrons and virgins whenever 
 they had an opportunity. This obliged many young ladies, 
 who dreaded their violence, to put on the veil to preserve 
 their honor." * 
 
 According to the Saxon chroniclers, Matilda, notwith- 
 standing her repugnance to the consecrated veil, exhibited 
 a very maidenly reluctance to enter the holy pale of matri- 
 mony with a royal husband. It is possible that the report 
 of the immoral tenor of Henry's life before he ascended 
 the throne, which was evidenced by his acknowledging the 
 claims of twenty illegitimate children, might be regarded 
 by a princess of her purity of mind and manners as a very 
 serious objection ; and if, as many of the early chroniclers 
 intimate, there had been a previous engagement between 
 Henry and herself, she of course felt both displeasure and 
 disgust at his amours with the beautiful Nesta, daughter 
 of the prince of Wales, and other ladies too numerous to 
 particularize. It is certain that after the council at Lam- 
 
 1 Eadmer. » Ibid. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 131 
 
 beth had pronounced her free to marry, Matilda resisted for 
 a time the entreaties of the king, and the commands of her 
 royal brother and sovereign, to accept the brilliant destiny 
 which she was offered. 
 
 All who were connected with the Saxon royal line impor- 
 tuned Matilda, meantime, with such words as these : " 
 most noble and most gracious of women ! if thou wouldst, 
 thou couldst raise up the ancient honor of England ; thou 
 wouldst be a sign of alliance, a pledge of reconciliation. 
 But if thou persistest in thy refusal, the enmity between the 
 Saxon and Norman races will be eternal ; human blood will 
 never cease to flow." ' Thus urged, the royal recluse ceased 
 to object to a marriage, whereby she was to become the bond 
 of peace to a divided nation, and the dove of the newly- 
 sealed covenant between the Norman sovereign and her own 
 people. Henry promised to confirm to the English nation 
 their ancient laws and privileges, as established by Alfred, 
 and ratified by Edward the Confessor, — in short, to become 
 a constitutional monarch; and on those conditions the 
 daughter of the royal line of Alfred consented to share his 
 throne. 
 
 Matthew Paris says positively that Matilda was a pro- 
 fessed nun, and so averse to this marriage that she invoked 
 a curse upon all the descendants that might proceed from 
 her union with the Norman king. But this is contradicted 
 by all other historians ; and if any foundation existed for 
 the story, we think friend Matthew must, by a strange slip 
 of the pen, have written down the name of the meek and 
 saintly Matilda instead of that of the perverse virago the 
 abbess Christina, her aunt, who was so greatly opposed to 
 those auspicious nuptials, and, for aught we know, might 
 have been as much addicted to the evil habit of imprecation 
 as she was to scolding and fighting. Matilda's demurs, after 
 all, occasioned little delay, for the archbishop Anselm did 
 not return to England till October ; the council at Lambeth 
 was held in the latter end of that month, and her marriage 
 and coronation took place on Sunday, November 11th, being 
 St. Martin's day, just three months and six days after the 
 
 ' Saxon Chronicle. 
 
132 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 inauguration of her royal lord at Westminster, August 5th, 
 1100, — which we may consider quick work, for the despatch 
 of such important business and solemn ceremonials of state. 
 William of Malmesbury tells us that Henry's friends, es- 
 pecially bishops, having counselled him to reform his life 
 and contract lawful wedlock, he married, on St.. Martin's 
 day, Matilda, daughter of Malcolm king of Scotland, to whom 
 he had long been greatly attached, not regarding the mar- 
 riage-portion, provided he could possess her whom he had 
 so ardently desired ; for though she was of noble descent, 
 being great-niece of king Edward by his brother Edmund, 
 yet she possessed little fortune, being doubly an orphan. 
 This is surely a convincing testimony of the strength of 
 Henry's affection for Matilda. 
 
 The scene of their marriage is thus described by a con- 
 temporary, who was most probably an eye-witness : " At the 
 wedding of Matilda and Henry the First, there was a most 
 prodigious concourse of nobility and people assembled in 
 and about the church at Westminster, when, to prevent all 
 calumny and ill report that the king was about to marry a 
 nun, the archbishop Anselm mounted into a pulpit, and gave 
 the multitude a history of the events proved before the 
 synod, and its judgment, — that the lady Matilda of Scotland 
 was free from any religious vow, and might dispose of her- 
 self in marriage as she thought fit. The archbishop finished 
 by asking the people, in a loud voice, whether any one 
 there objected to this decision : upon which they answered 
 unanimously, with a loud shout, ' that the matter was 
 rightly settled.' Accordingly the lady was immediately 
 married to the king, and crowned before that vast assem- 
 bly." ' A more simple yet majestic appeal to the sense of 
 the people, in regard to a royal marriage, history records 
 not. 
 
 An exquisitely beautiflil epithalamium, in honor of these 
 auspicious nuptials, was written by Matilda's friend Hilde- 
 bert, in elegant Latin verse, wherein he congratulates both 
 England and Henry on the possession of the doubly royal 
 bride Matilda. He eulogizes her virtues, and describes her 
 
 ' £a,dmer. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 133 
 
 laodest and maidenly deportment as enhancing her youthful 
 charms when, with blushes that outvied the crimson of her 
 royal robe, she stood at the altar, invested with her royal 
 insignia, a virgin queen and bride, in whom the hopes 
 of England hailed the future mother of a mighty line of 
 kings.' 
 
 To this auspicious union of the Anglo-Norman sovereign 
 Henry I. with Matilda of Scotland, a princess of English 
 lineage, English education, and an English heart, we may 
 trace all the constitutional blessings which this free country 
 at present enjoys. It was through the influence of this 
 virtuous queen that Henry granted the important charter 
 which formed the model and precedent of that great palla- 
 dium of English liberty, Magna Charta ; and we call upon 
 our readers to observe, that it was the direct ancestress of 
 our present sovereign-lady who refused to quit her gloomy 
 conventual prison, and to give her hand to the handsomest 
 and most accomplished sovereign of his time, till she had 
 obtained just and merciful laws for her suffering country, 
 the repeal of the tyrannical imposition of the curfew, and, 
 in some slight degree, a recognition of the rights of the 
 commons. 
 
 When the marriage of Matilda of Scotland with Henry I. 
 took place, a hundred copies of this digest of the righteous 
 laws of Alfred and Edward the Confessor were made, and 
 committed to the keeping of the principal bishoprics and 
 monasteries in England ; but when these were sought for, in 
 the reign of John, to form a legal authority for the demands 
 of the people, Eapin says only one could be found, which was 
 exhibited to the barons by cardinal Langton. This was, in 
 fact, the simple model on which Magna Charta was framed. 
 It is supposed that Henry I., after Matilda's death, destroyed 
 all the copies (on which he could lay his hands) of a cove- 
 nant which, in the latter years of his reign, he scrupled not 
 to infringe whenever he felt disposed. 
 
 Hardyng, after recording the death of the 'red king,' 
 relates the accession of Henry I., and his marriage with 
 Matilda of Scotland, in the following rude stanzas : — 
 
 ' Opera Hildeberti, p. 1367. 
 
134 MATILDA OP SCOTLAND, 
 
 " Henry, his brother, the first king of that name, 
 Was crowned with all the honor that might be ; 
 He reconciled St. Anselm, who came home. 
 And crowned Maude his wife full fair and free, 
 That daughter was (full of benignite) 
 To king Malcolyne and St. Margrete the queen 
 Of Scotland, which afore that time had been } 
 
 Of whom he gat William, Richard, and Molde, 
 
 Whose goodness is yet spoken of full wide ; 
 
 If she were fair, her virtues many-fold 
 
 Exceeded far — all vice she set aside ; 
 
 Debates that were engendered of pride 
 
 She set at rest with all benevolence, 
 
 And visited the sick and poor with diligence. 
 
 The prisoners, and women eke with child. 
 
 Lying in abject misery aye about. 
 
 Clothes, meat, and bedding new and undefiled. 
 
 And wine and ale she gave withouten doubt j 
 
 When she saw need in countries all throughout, 
 
 Those crosses all that yet be most royal 
 
 In the highways, with gold she made them all." * 
 
 ■ Sir Henry Ellis's version. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 QUEEN OF HENRY I. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Popularity of Matilda's marriage — Called Matilda Atheling — Her charitiea — 
 Her brother, king Alexander the Fierce — Her works of utility — Equitable laws 
 of king Henry — Normans nickname the king and queen — Duke Robert's inva- 
 sion — Birth of Matilda's son — Robert's consideration for Matilda — ^Henry's 
 quarrels with archbishop Anselm — Matilda's letters — England threatened 
 with excommunication — Matilda writes to the pope — Duke Robert re-lands in 
 England — Matilda reconciles him to the king — Anselm's return to England — 
 Matilda's friendship for him — Birth of Princess Matilda — Robert regrets the 
 loss of his pension — Reviles Matilda — Battle of Tinohebray — Capture of Robert 
 and the queen's uncle Edgar — Pardoned through the queen's influence — Court 
 first kept at Windsor by Henry and Matilda — Princess Matilda betrothed to 
 the emperor — Court at Winchester — Marriage of prince William — Portrait of 
 queen Matilda — Departure of empress Matilda — Parliament held — Woodstock 
 palace completed — Revolt in Normandy — Illness of the queen — Her death — 
 King Henry's grief — Burial of Matilda — Inscription to her memory — Her 
 palace at Westminster — Present remains — Statue of Matilda — Her children. 
 
 Matilda's English ancestry and English education ren- 
 dered the new king's marriage with her a most popular 
 measure with the Anglo-Saxon people, of whom the great 
 bulk of his subjects was composed. By them the royal bride 
 was fondly styled Matilda^Atheling, and regarded as the 
 representative of their own regretted sovereigns. The alle- 
 giance which the mighty Norman conqueror, and his des- 
 potic son the "red king," had never been able to obtain, 
 except through the sternest measures of compulsion, and 
 which, in defiance of the dreadful penalties of loss of eyes, 
 limbs, and life, had been frequently withdrawn from these 
 powerful monarchs, was freely and faithfully accorded to 
 the husband of Matilda, Henry I., by the Saxon population. 
 All the reforms eifected by his enlightened government, and 
 all the good laws which his enlarged views of political 
 
 135 
 
/" 
 
 136 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 economy taught that wise monarch to adopt, were attrib- 
 uted, by his Anglo-Saxon subjects, to the beneficial influ- 
 ence of his young queen. Eobert of Gloucester was fully 
 impressed with these ideas, as we may plainly perceive in 
 the following lines in his rhyming Chronicle, in which he 
 speaks of Henry's marriage : — 
 
 " So that as soon as lie was king, on St. Martyn's day I ween, 
 He spoused her that was called Maude the good queen, 
 That was kind ' heir of England, as I have told before. 
 ****** 
 Many were the good laws that were made in England 
 Through Maude the good queen, as I understand." 
 
 The Londoners, whose prosperity had sensibly diminished 
 in consequence of the entire absence of female royalty, be- 
 held with unfeigned satisfaction the palace of Edward the 
 Confessor, at Westminster, once more graced by the presence 
 of a queen of the blood of Alfred, whose virtues, piety, and 
 learning rendered her a worthy successor of the last Saxon 
 queen who had held her court there, Editha, _,..„_--—"*"""' '" 
 
 " That gracious rose of Godwin's thorny stem." 
 
 Those to whom the memory of that illustrious lady was 
 justly dear were probably not unmindful of the fact that 
 the youthful queen, on whom the hopes of England were so 
 fondly fixed, had received that genuine Saxo'a.name at the 
 baptismal font ; and though, in compliment to her Norman 
 godfather, she was called Matilda, -she was also ^Editha. 
 
 Matilda fully verified the primitive title bestowed by the 
 Saxons on their queens, Hlafdige, or " the giver of bread." 
 Her charities were of a most extensive character, and her 
 tender compassion for the sufferings of the sick poor carried 
 her almost beyond the bounds of reason, to say nothing of 
 the restraints imposed on royalty. She imitated the example 
 of her mother St. Margaret, queen of Scotland, both in the 
 strictness of her devotional exercises, and in her personal 
 attentions to those who were laboring under bodily aflB^ic- 
 tions.'f*' She went every day in Lent to Westminster abbey, 
 barefoot, and clothed in a garment of haircloth ; and she 
 
 1 ' Kind' means, in ancient English, relationship ; ' next of kin,' a familiar 
 expression, is derived from it. 
 
 2 Weever. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 137 
 
 would wash and kiBS the feet of the poorest people, for 
 which, according to Eobert of Gloucester, she was once re- 
 proved, not without reason, by a courtier. He had his 
 answer, however, as our readers will perceive from the fol- 
 lowing curious dialogue : — 
 
 ** * Madam^ for (Jodde's love is this well ado, 
 To handle such unclean limbs, and to kiss so ? 
 Foul would the king think, if this thing he wist, 
 And right well arile him ere he your lips kist.' 
 ' Sir, sir !' quoth the queen, ' be still. Why say you so ? 
 Our Lord himself example gave for to do so.* " ^ 
 
 On another occasion, her brother, Alexander the Fierce, 
 king of Scotland, when on a visit to the court of her royal 
 husband, entering Matilda's apartments, found her on her 
 knees, engaged in washing the feet of some aged mendi- 
 cants ; on which she entreated him to avail himself of the 
 opportunity of performing a good and acceptable work of 
 charity and humiliation, by assisting her in this labor of 
 love, for the benefit of his soul. The warlike majesty of 
 Scotland smiled, and left the room without making any reply 
 to this invitation.' Perhaps he was conscious of his want 
 of skill as an assistant at a pediluvium party ; or it might 
 be, that he had seen too much of such scenes during the life 
 of his pious mother queen Margaret, and feared that his 
 sister would carry her works of benevolence to extremes 
 that might prove displeasing to the taste of so refined a 
 prince as Henry Beauclerc. 
 
 But to do Matilda justice, her good works in general bore 
 a character of more extended usefulness ; so much so, that 
 we even feel the benefit of them to this day, in the ancient 
 bridge she built over ' my lady Lea.' Once being, with her 
 train on horseback, in danger of perishing while fording the 
 river Lea at Oldford, during a high flood, in gratitude for 
 
 1 Robert of Gloucester. 
 
 > Wendover, Flowers of History, translated by Dr. Qilles, p. 459. The 
 chronicler attributes the anecdote to prince David, giving date 1105. David 
 was certainly conveniently at hand, as he lived in Scotland yard, close to West- 
 minster palace, having married the countess St. Lys, heiress of earl Waltheof ; 
 but David, who was afterwards canonized, would have given his aid right will- 
 ingly. It is Robert of Gloucester who says the brother to whom Matilda gave 
 the charitable lesson was Alexander. 
 
138 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 her preservation she built the first arched bridge ever known 
 in England, a little higher up the stream, called by the 
 Saxons Bow bridge,' still to be seen at Stratford-le-Bow, 
 "though the ancient and mighty London bridge has been ' 
 broken down." Bow-bridge she built at the head of the 
 town of Stratford ; likewise Channel's bridge, over a tribu- 
 tary stream of the Lea, the way between them being well 
 paved with gravel. She gave certain manors, and a mill 
 called Wiggin mill, forever, towards keeping in repair the 
 said bridges and way.' 
 
 Matilda founded the hospital at St. Giles-in-the-Pields, and 
 also Christ Church,' which stood on the very spot now called 
 Duke's place, noted as the resort of a low class of Jews. 
 This excellent queen also directed her attention to the im- 
 portant object of making new roads, and repairing the 
 ancient highways that had fallen into decay during the 
 stormy years which had succeeded the peaceful and prosper- 
 ous reign of her great-uncle, Edward the Confessor. By 
 this means, travellers and itinerant merchants were greatly 
 facilitated in their journeys through the then wild and 
 perilous country, which, with the exception of the four great 
 Eoman ways,* was only intersected by a few scattered cart- 
 tracks, through desolate moors, heaths, and uncultivated 
 wastes and woodlands. These public benefits, which Matilda 
 the Good conferred upon the people from whose patriotic 
 monarchs she derived her descent, were in all probability 
 the fruits of her regency during the absence of her royal 
 husband in Normandy ; for it is scarcely to be supposed 
 that such stupendous undertakings could have been effected 
 by the limited power and revenues of a mere queen-consort. 
 
 Henry the First, be it remembered, was placed on the 
 throne by the Saxon division of his subjects, who were the 
 commons of England, and by them he was supported in hia 
 
 ^ Bow, from hogen, an aroh, a word in tlie German language, pronounced with 
 the g sounded like y, which brings it close to the Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 ' Hayward's Three Norman Kings. » Pennant. 
 
 * Which mighty worlts were of infinite use to our ancestors in ages later than 
 the Norman era. Kobert of Gloucester speaks of their utility in his day, and 
 Bays, — 
 
 " Thilk ways by mony a town do wend." 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 139 
 
 regal authority against the Norman aristocracy, who formed 
 a powerful party in favor of his elder brother's pretensions 
 to the crown of England. The moral and political reforms 
 with which Henry commenced his reign, and, above all, the 
 even-handed measure of justice which he caused to be ob- 
 served towards all who presumed to infringe the laws, gave 
 great offence to many of those haughty nobles, who had 
 been accustomed to commit the most flagrant crimes with 
 impunity, and to oppress their humbler neighbors without 
 fear of being arraigned for their misdeeds. The establish- 
 ment of the equitable laws which protected the wives and 
 daughters of Englishmen from insult, the honest trader 
 from wrong and robbery, and the poor from violence, were 
 attributed to the influence of Matilda, whom they insultingly 
 styled " the Saxon woman," and murmured at the virtuous 
 restraints which her presence and authority imposed upon 
 the court.^ The conjugal affection which subsisted between 
 the royal pair excited, withal, the ridicule of those who had 
 been the profligate associates of the bachelor-king, William 
 Eufus ; and it was universally displeasing to the haughty 
 Norman peers to see the king's gracious demeanor towards 
 the hitherto oppressed and dispirited English portion of his 
 subjects, for whom his amiable consort was constantly labor- 
 ing to procure a recognition of their rights. " The malice 
 of certain evil-minded men," says Badmer, " busied itself in 
 inventing the most cutting raiUeries on king Henry, and his 
 wife of English blood. They nicknamed them Leofric and 
 Godiva, and always called them so when not in the royal 
 presence." ' According to William of Malmesbury, however, 
 duke Eobert's partisans were not always so polite as to 
 restrain their malapert language till the king and queen had 
 withdrawn. " They openly branded their lord with sar- 
 casms," says that quaint chronicler, " calling him Godric" 
 (which means ' godly governor),' " and his consort Goddiva. 
 Henry heard these taunts : with a terrific grin, indicative 
 of his inward wrath, he repressed the contemptuous expres- 
 sions aimed at him by the madness of fools by a studied 
 silence ; for he was a calm dissembler of his enmities, but 
 
 1 Eadmer. Thierry. » Ibid. 
 
140 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 in due season avenged himself with interest." It is probable 
 that Warren, the disappointed suitor of Matilda, and his kins- 
 man Mortimer, with others of the audacious Norman quens, 
 who had previously exercised their wit in bestowing an offen- 
 sive sobriquet on Henry before his accession to the throne, 
 were among the foremost of those invidious detractors, who 
 could not endure to witness the wedded happiness of their 
 sovereign, and the virtuous influence of his youthful queen. 
 
 The invasion of duke Eobert, Henry's eldest brother, on 
 his return from the Holy Land, took place in the second year 
 of Matilda's marriage. King Henry's fleet being manned 
 with Norman seamen, and, of course, under the influence of 
 Norman chiefs, revolted ; and instead of guarding the coasts 
 of England from the threatened invasion of the duke, swept 
 across the narrow seas, and brought him and his armament 
 in triumph to Portsmouth, where he was joined by the ma- 
 jority of the Anglo-Norman baronage.' Eobert had also his 
 partisans among the English ; for Edgar Atheling so far forgot 
 the interests of his royal niece, queen Matilda, as to espouse 
 the cause of his friend Eobert against the king her husband. 
 
 Eobert landed at Portsmouth, and marched direct to "Win- 
 chester, where queen Matilda then lay-in with her first-born 
 child, WUliam the Atheling. When this circumstance was 
 related to the duke, he relinquished his purpose of storming 
 the city, with the observation, " that it never should be said 
 he commenced the war by an assault on a woman in child- 
 bed, for that would be a base action." * Matilda duly appre- 
 ciated this generous consideration on the part of her royal 
 brother-in-law and godfather, and exerted all her influence 
 to negotiate a peace between him and her lord, in which she 
 was assisted by the good ofiices of the archbishop Anselm ; 
 and this formidable crisis passed over without the effusion 
 of a drop of blood.' These are Hardyng's words on the 
 subject : — 
 
 " But Anselm archbishop of Canterhury, 
 And queen Matilda, made them well accord ; 
 The king to pay three thousand marks yearly 
 To duke Robert, withouten more discord." 
 
 I Saxon Annals, a.d. UOl. « Chronique de Normandie. ' Ibid. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 141 
 
 After this happy pacification, Henry invited Eobert to 
 become his guest at the court, where the easy-tempered duke 
 was feasted and entertained, greatly to his satisfaction, by 
 his royal god-daughter Matilda,' who, in her love of music, 
 and the encouragement she bestowed on minstrels, or trou- 
 veres, quite coincided with the tastes of her sponsor and 
 brother-in-law. So much did Eobert enjoy his sojourn at 
 Henry's court, that he stayed there upwards of six months, 
 though his presence was greatly required in his own do- 
 minions.* 
 
 An unfortunate misunderstanding took place between 
 Henry and the archbishop Anselm, early in the year 1103. 
 This quarrel originated in an attempt made by the arch- 
 bishop to deprive the king of a privilege which had been 
 claimed by the Saxon monarchs, of appointing his own 
 bishops. Anselm wished to restore the nomination to the 
 chapters, which Henry resolutely opposed. Both appealed 
 to the pope, but Anselm went to Rome to plead his own 
 cause against the king's three advocates, and remained in 
 exile. The queen was much afflicted at the dissension be- 
 tween her royal husband and her old and valued spiritual 
 father. She had loved and revered Anselm from her child- 
 hood, and he had been mainly instrumental in rescuing her 
 from the joyless thraldom of the cloister, and securing to 
 her the elevated position she enjoyed. She had been accus- 
 tomed to correspond with Anselm, and she still continued to 
 do so, in the hope of composing the unhappy diiferences 
 which had driven him into exUe. Six of her letters have 
 been printed in the folio edition of Anselm's works ; but they 
 are rather curious than entertaining, as affording evidence 
 of the classical attainments of this accomplished princess, as 
 well as her knowledge of Scripture and her familiarity with 
 the writings of the ancient philosophers.' 
 
 The first letter in the series was apparently written before 
 king Henry's quarrel with Anselm, and for the purpose of 
 persuading him to relax from his ascetic habits, and to fol- 
 low St. Paul's comfortable advice to Timothy on the score 
 of water drinking, with many quotations from Greek and 
 
 ' M. Paris. ' Gem. ' Anselmi Opera. 
 
142 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Eoman philosophers, mingled with exhortations from holy- 
 writ; from which we gather that queen Matilda did not 
 approve of her sickly archbishop going beyond a moderate 
 temperance rule, and that she would not have patronized 
 teetotalism if she had lived in these days. Her other letters 
 to Anselm are full of lamentations for his absence, which 
 she regarded as highly injurious to the interests of the 
 church, and mourns over as if it were a severe personal 
 misfortune to herself 
 
 The pope addressed several letters to the king on the sub- 
 ject of the dispute. The first of these, which is in the tone 
 of a paternal remonstrance, alludes to the birth of the infant 
 Atheling in words which imply great respect for queen Ma- 
 tilda, and informs us how ardently Henry had wished for 
 a son. " We have heard, too, that you have had the male 
 issue you so much desired by your noble and religious con- 
 sort." Pascal, in the course of this letter, endeavors to 
 prevail on Henry to recall the primate, both by reasoning 
 and persuasion. He even offers to bribe him by promises 
 of indulgences and absolution for his sins and those of his 
 consort; and also to cherish the son the said noble and 
 exemplary lady had borne to him." * 
 
 Henry was insensible to all these sugared words, and re- 
 mained contumacious. He had fixed his affections, not on 
 the spiritual consolations, but the rich temporalities of the 
 church, and was determined to try how far he might go in 
 appropriating the revenues of Canterbury to himself, with- 
 out exciting an insurrectionary movement among his people. 
 He proceeded to such lengths, that pope Pascal threatened 
 to excommunicate him, and place the kingdom under an 
 interdict. At a period when all the kingdoms of Christen- 
 dom were supposed to be at the disposal of the Roman pon- 
 tiff, and the realm of England was not only challenged, but 
 threatened with an invasion by so formidable a competitor 
 as Robert of Normandy, this was no light threat to Henry. 
 It was well for him that his prudent consort Matilda enjoyed 
 the esteem of the pope, and was on such terms with Anselm, 
 that she could, without any sacrifice of his dignity, mediate 
 
 ' ChVonicle of William of Malmesburj. 
 
MATILDA OF SC»TLAKD. 143 
 
 a reconciliation with both. No one who considers the cor- 
 respondence of Matilda with these personages can doubt that 
 her politic lord availed himself of her powerful influence 
 with both to effect a pacification, when he had found he had 
 gone too far. Matilda's second letter to Anselm, whilst con- 
 taining an urgent entreaty for him to return, is accompanied 
 by one from Henry himself, promising to live with him on 
 the same amicable terms that his father the Conqueror did 
 with archbishop Lanfranc. Henry likewise permitted his 
 queen to compromise, in some degree, the perpetually dis- 
 puted point of conge d'elire, in regard to preferments. Ma- 
 tilda declares that, " as far as in her lay," she had bestowed 
 the appointment of Malmesbury abbey on Ulf, a monk of 
 Winchester ; but she had left the election open to his appro- 
 bation or reversal.' Ulf was, by his name, a Saxon com- 
 patriot, who had found favor with his gracious queen ; but 
 between the royal power and the will of the archbishop, the 
 monks of Malmesbury were meant to exercise small portion 
 of that liberty of choice with which the church had endowed 
 them. Independently of the perfect conjugal unity of pur- 
 pose which marks the wedded life of Matilda and her lord, 
 she neither could nor dared have intermeddled in such 
 weighty matters without his sanction, and those who cannot 
 perceive the diplomatic finesse with which she carries on 
 the treaty for her husband, understand little of the charac- 
 teristics of the royal pair. 
 
 In addressing the exiled primate, Matilda offers abundant 
 incense to his spiritual pride. She styles herself " Matilda, 
 by the grace of God queen of England, the lowliest of the 
 handmaidens of his holiness ;" ' and thanks him for having 
 condescended by his letters presented to show her his mind, 
 although he was absent. " I greet the little piece of parch- 
 ment sent by you as I would one from my father himself. 
 I place it in my bosom near my heart : I read over and over 
 again the words flowing from your kindness ; my mind 
 ponders them ; my heart considers them. Tet, while I prize 
 all you say, I marvel at what your wise excellency says 
 about your nephew." ' As the queen seems not very well 
 
 1 Sanoti Anselmi Epistolae. ' Ibid. lib. iii. ep. xevi. 'Ibid. 
 
144 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 to understand Anselm's allusion to his nephew, it is not pos- 
 sible for her biographer to explain it. However, Matilda 
 speaks with full confidence on the possibility of her lord 
 and master viewing ultimately the affairs of the church in 
 the same light as she did ; and she foretells, as the result of 
 some secret consultation of which she was cognizant, evi- 
 dently meaning the privy-councils of Henry the First, " that 
 the return of the pastor to his flock, of the father to his 
 daughter, would soon take place from the good will which," 
 says she, " by carefully examining, I find really to exist in 
 the heart of my lord. In truth, his mind has more friend- 
 ship towards you than men think. I cultivate it, promoting 
 whatsoever good feeling I can, in order that he may be 
 reconciled to you. "Whatsoever he may grant now in regard 
 to your return, will be followed by further concessions when, 
 in the future, you may see occasion to desire them. . . . 
 But if he should still persist in overstepping the bounds of 
 justice, I implore from the plentitude of your charity, as 
 the venom of rancor is not accustomed to be in you, that 
 you turn not from him the benignity of your regard ; but 
 piously intercede with God for him, for me, and for the chil- 
 dren that spring from us both ; likewise for the people of 
 our realm. May your holiness ever fare well." 
 
 In the hope of averting from England and her king the 
 threatened interdict, Matilda next addressed herself to the 
 angry pontiff. Her letter, though partaking too much of 
 the prolix formality of a state-paper for insertion, is very 
 ably written ; and though submissive on the whole, contains 
 certain proof that, whomsoever might be a believer in his 
 infallibility, she was not among the number. The very 
 terms of her salutation contain an admonition that the at- 
 tainment of the everlasting felicity she wishes him must 
 depend on the manner in which he discharges the duties of 
 his high vocation, for she says, " To the highest pontiff and 
 universal pope Pascal : Matilda, by God's grace queen of the 
 English, trusts that he will so dispense in this life the justice 
 of the apostolical see, that he may deserve to be numbered 
 among the apostolic conclave in the joys of perpetual peace 
 with the companies of the just." Saintly, yet no slave of 
 
MATILDA OP SCOTLAND. 145 
 
 Eome, Matilda displays the high spirit of an English 
 princess .under all the elaborate terms of ceremonial lowli- 
 ness in which her masterly letter is couched. She asks the 
 pope to suspend his threatened fulmination, to give the king 
 her lord time to effect a reconciliation with the archbishop ; 
 but follows up this prayer with an intimation that, if mat- 
 ters are driven to an extremity, it may cause a separation 
 between England and the Eoman see. 
 
 Duke Eobert took advantage of the crisis to enter Eng- 
 land, attended by only twelve gentlemen. Henry, having 
 speedy information of his landing, declared, if he fell into 
 his hands, he would keep him so closely imprisoned that he 
 should never give him any more trouble. " Not so, sire," 
 replied the count de Mellent ; " he is your brother, and God 
 forbid ' that you should do so great a villany. Let me meet 
 and talk with him, and I will take care that he shall return 
 quietly into Normandy, and give you acquittance of his 
 pension withal." — " By my faith," replied the king, " I will 
 make you do what you say." The count then mounted his 
 horse, and encountering duke Eobert on the road to South- 
 ampton, greeted him with these words : " St. Mary ! what 
 brings you into this country? Who has given you such 
 fatal counsel ? You know you have hitherto compelled the 
 king to pay you four thousand marks a year ; and for this 
 cause you will be taken and put to death, or detained in 
 prison for life. He is determined to be avenged on you, I 
 promise you." 
 
 When the duke heard this he was greatly disturbed, and 
 asked " if he could not return to Southampton ?" — " No," 
 replied Mellent, " the king will cause you to be intercepted ; 
 but even if you could reach that place, the wind is contrary 
 for your escape by sea." — " Counsel me," cried the duke, 
 " what I ought to do." — " Sire," replied the count, " the 
 queen is apprised of the news, and you know that you 
 showed her great kindness when you gave up the assault on 
 Winchester because she lay in childbed there. Hasten to 
 her, and commit yourself and your people to her care, and 
 I am sure she will guard you from all harm." Then duke 
 
 1 Chroniquc de Normandie. 
 
146 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Eobert went to the queen, and she received and reassured 
 him very amiably ; and by the sweet words she said to him, 
 and the fear he was in of being taken, he was induced to 
 sacrifice those pecuniary claims on the king his brother for 
 which he had resigned the realm of England. 
 
 When Henry heard that his brother had granted an ac- 
 quittance for this money to the queen, he requested her to 
 come to him with duke Eobert. Matilda, always happy to 
 act the blessed part of a peace-maker, having introduced 
 her brother-in-law into the presence of the king, duke Eobert 
 thus addressed him : " Fair sire, I am come to see you out 
 of afi'ection, and not to injure either you or yours. We are 
 brothers, born of one father and one mother. If I am the 
 eldest, you have the honor of a crown, which is a much 
 better thing. I love you well, and thus it ought to be. 
 Money and rents I seek not of you, nor ever will. I have 
 quitted to the queen all you owe me for this kingdom. Enter 
 we now together into perfect amity. We will exchange 
 gifts of jewels, dogs, and birds, with such things as ought to 
 be between brothers and friends." — " We will do as you say," 
 replied the king, " and thanks for what you have said." ' 
 
 The Saxon chronicler and some other historians affirm, 
 indeed, that he invaded England ; "but it is plain," says sir 
 John Hay-ward, " that he only came for disport and play ;" 
 that is, to recreate himself at the court of Henry Beauclerc, 
 and to enjoy the agreeable society of the queen his god- 
 daughter, with the music and minstrelsy in which they both 
 80 greatly delighted. Well would it have been for the luck- 
 less Eobert if all his tastes had been equally harmless and 
 refined ; but he had propensities disgraceful to his character 
 as an individual, and ruinous to his fortunes as a prince. 
 The chroniclers relate that he indulged in such excess of 
 revelry while he was at the English court, that he was often 
 in a state of inebriation for days together.' 
 
 From William of Malmesbury's version of the manner in 
 which Matilda obtained the resignation of Eobert's pension, 
 it should appear that she only made an indirect insinuation 
 of how acceptable such an addition to her queenly revenues 
 
 • Chronique de Normandie, 248-9. ' Eadmor. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 147 
 
 would be, and he bestowed it upon her without a word. 
 Our shrewd old monk, however, has very little appreciation 
 of such chivalric munificence to a royal lady, for he dryly ob- 
 serves, "And he, too, as if contending with Fortune whether 
 she should give or he squander most, discovering the mere 
 wish of the queen who silently desired it, kindly forgave 
 the payment of this immense sum forever, thinking it a 
 very great matter that female pride should condescend to 
 ask a favor, although he was her godfather." According 
 to another historian, Eobert resigned his pension to Matilda 
 at a carouse ; and when he became aware of the folly of 
 which he had been guilty, he was greatly exasperated, and 
 bitterly reproached his brother Henry " with having cheated 
 and despoiled him, by employing the queen to beguile him 
 with fair words out of his pension, when he was under the 
 influence of wine." ' It is certain that there was nothing 
 but animosity between the royal brothers after this affair. 
 In the year 1104, Henry left the government of England in 
 the prudent hands of Matilda, and embarked for JSTormandy. 
 While there, he consented to meet Anselm, the archbishop, 
 at the castle of I'Aigle, where, through the mediation of his 
 sister Adela, countess of Blois, a reconciliation was happily 
 effected. Anselm then returned to England, where he was 
 met at Dover by the queen Matilda, who received and wel- 
 comed him with the greatest demonstrations of satisfaction.' 
 As the venerable primate was in feeble health, the queen 
 took the precaution of preceding him on the road from 
 Dover to the metropolis, providing, as she went, for his 
 comforts and accommodation.' 
 
 The return of Anselm was attended with circumstances 
 which gave great pain to Matilda, as an English queen. 
 Both the king and archbishop, after their reconciliation, 
 united in enforcing inexorably the celibacy of the Anglo- 
 Saxon clergy, whose lower orders had previously been able 
 
 1 Eadmer. Gem. 
 
 ^ Pascal II. admitted Anselm, the favorite priest and prelate of Matilda, to a 
 seat near his right foot ; saying, "We admit this prelate into our circle, he being, 
 as it were, the pope of the farther hemisphere." — Godwin de Praes. 
 
 ' Eadmer. 
 
148 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 to obtain licenses to marry. Anselm now excommunicated 
 all the married clergy. Two hundred of these unfortunate 
 Saxons, barefoot, but clad in their clerical robes, encoun- 
 tered the king and queen in the streets of London. They 
 implored the king's compassion : he turned from them with 
 words of insult. They then supplicated the queen to inter- 
 cede for them, but Matilda, with tears in her eyes, assured 
 them " that she dared not interfere." ' 
 
 The year 1104 was marked by the birth of a princess, 
 who was first named Alice, or Adelais,' but whose name the 
 king afterwards changed to that of his beloved and popular 
 queen, Matilda. This princess was afterwards the celebrated 
 empress Matilda. " Satisfied with a child of either sex," says 
 William of Malmesbury, " she ceased having issue ; and en- 
 during with complacency the absence of the court when the 
 king was elsewhere employed, she continued many years at 
 Westminster. Yet was no part of royal magnificence want- 
 ing to her, but at all times crowds of visitants and raconteurs 
 came, and were entertained in her superb dwelling ; for this 
 the king's liberality commanded, this her own kindness and 
 affability enacted. She was singularly holy, by no means 
 despicable in point of beauty, a rival of her royal mother's 
 piety, blameless as regarded feminine propriety, and un- 
 sullied even by suspicion. She had a singular pleasure in 
 hearing the service of God, and on this account was thought- 
 lessly prodigal towards clerks of melodious voice, both in 
 gifts and promises. Her generosity becoming universally 
 known, crowds of scholars, equally famed for poetry and 
 music, came over, and happy did he account himself who 
 could soothe the ear of the queen by the novelty of his song." 
 
 Matilda's preference to foreigners in dispensing her pat- 
 ronage is censured by our worthy chronicler as one of her 
 few faults. This he imputes to vanity or love of ostentation 
 in the queen ; " for," says he, " the love of fame is so rooted 
 in the human mind, that scarcely any one is contented with 
 the precious fruits of a good conscience, but is desirous of 
 having their laudable actions blazed abroad. Hence it was 
 justly observed, that the inclination crept upon the queen to 
 
 ' Lingard. ' Ibid. 
 
MATILDA OP SCOTLAND. 149 
 
 reward all the foreigners she could, while the others were 
 kept in suspense, and though sometimes rewarded, oftener 
 tantalized with empty promises." Nor was this all ; for, 
 like a faithful annalist, Malmesbury chronicles the evil as 
 well as the good of this illustrious lady, who, he says, " fell 
 into an error incidental to prodigal queens by rack-renting 
 her tenants, and thus extorting from them unjustly the 
 means of supporting her liberality to others, who had less 
 claims to her bounty. But whoso," pursues he, "shall 
 judge rightly will impute this to her servants, who, harpy- 
 like, conveyed everything they could gripe into their own 
 purses, or wasted it in riotous living. Her ears being in- 
 fected with the base insinuations of these people, she induced 
 this stain on her noble mind, holy and meritorious in every 
 other respect." ' The profound tranquillity that subsisted 
 in her husband's dominions during his frequent absences in 
 Normandy is a proof that Matilda understood the art of 
 domestic government, and practised it with a happier effect 
 than the two first Anglo-Norman sovereigns, whose reigns 
 were so greatly disturbed by insurrections. 
 
 Henry, after his successful campaign in Normandy, re- 
 turned to England, in his personal appearance at least, an 
 altered man. The Anglo-Normans had adopted the pictu- 
 resque Saxon fashion — which, however, was confined to 
 persons of high rank — of wearing their hair long, and flow- 
 ing in ringlets on their shoulders ; and the king was re- 
 markable for the luxuriance and beauty of his love-locks, 
 which he cherished with peculiar care, no doubt out of a 
 laudable desire to conform to the tastes of his queen, the 
 daughter of a Saxon princess. His courtiers imitated the 
 royal example, which gave great scandal to the Norman 
 clergy. One day, while the king was in Normandy, he and 
 his train entered a church, where an ecclesiastic of the 
 name of Serlo, bishop of Seez, took up his parable on the 
 sinfulness of this new fashion, " which," he protested, " was 
 a device of the Evil one to bring souls into everlasting per- 
 dition ; compared the moustached, bearded, and long-haired 
 men of that age to filthy goats," ' and, in short, made so 
 
 • Giles's William of Malmesbury. ' Orderious Vitalis. 
 
150 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 moving a discourse on the unloveliness of their present 
 appearance, that the king of England and his courtiers 
 melted into tears ; on which Serlo, perceiving the impression 
 which his eloquence had made, drew a pair of scissors out 
 of his sleeve, and, instead of permitting their penitence to 
 evaporate in a few unmeaning drops, persuaded his royai 
 and noble auditors to prove the sincerity of their repentance 
 by submitting their ringlets to his discretion, and brought 
 his triumph to a climax by polling the king and congrega- 
 tion with his own hands. After Henry had thus submitted 
 his flowing ringlets to the reforming shears of Serlo, he 
 published an edict, commanding his subjects to follow his 
 example. 
 
 Henry was then courting popularity in the duchy of ISTor- 
 mandy, and well knew that the readiest way to effect his 
 object was to win the good report of the monks. He had 
 previously scandalized all piously disposed persons, by 
 choosing for his private chaplain a priest whose only merit 
 consisted in being able to hurry over matins and mass in 
 half an hour. This was Eoger le Poer,^ afterwards the rich 
 and potent bishop of Salisbury, whose hasty despatch of the 
 morning service so charmed Henry that he swore aloud in 
 the church " that he had at length met with a priest fit for 
 a soldier." Eoger, when he received this flattering com- 
 mendation from the lips of royalty, was only a poor curate 
 at Caen, but was advanced by Henry to the highest prefer- 
 ment in the church and state. 
 
 Queen Matilda did not long enjoy the society of her royal 
 husband in England, and during the brief period he spent 
 with her at Northampton, in the winter season, his whole 
 time and thoughts were employed in raising the means for 
 pursuing the war in Normandy. His unfortunate brother, 
 Eobert, finding himself sorely pressed on every side, and 
 left, by his own improvident folly, without resources for 
 continuing the contest, came over to England unattended, 
 and, repairing to the court at Northampton, forced an 
 interview with Henry ' (who was reluctant to admit 'him 
 into his presence), and earnestly besought his compassion ; 
 
 ' Godwin de Praes. ' M. Paris. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 151 
 
 telling him, at the same time, " he was ready to submit 
 everything to his brotherly love, if he would only permit 
 him to retain the appearance of a sovereign." As it by no 
 means suited Henry's policy to yield to the dictates of 
 natural affection, he coldly turned away, muttering some- 
 thing to himself that was unintelligible to the by-standers, 
 and which he could not be induced to explain. Eobert's 
 quick temper could not brook this contemptuous usage, and, 
 in a paroxysm of rage, he indignantly assailed his brother 
 with a storm of reproaches, mingled with abuse and men- 
 aces ; and without waiting to employ the good oflBces of 
 queen Matilda, through whose kindly influence it is possible 
 he might have obtained reasonable conditions of peace, he 
 departed from Northampton the same hour.^ 
 
 In the spring, Henry once more committed the domestic 
 affairs of his kingdom to the care of Matilda, and having 
 levied an enormous tax on his subjects, to support the 
 expenses of the war, embarked for Normandy. Matilda 
 was principally employed, during the king's absence, in 
 superintending the magnificent buildings at New Windsor, 
 which were founded by Henry, and in the completion of 
 the royal apartments in the Tower of London. She, as 
 well as Henry, patronized Gundulph, the episcopal architect, 
 to whom England is indebted for the most magnificent and 
 lasting of her public buildings. Many useful public works, 
 to which we have before alluded, furnished, under her 
 auspices, employment for the working classes, and unproved 
 the general condition of the people. 
 
 While civilization and the arts of peace were rapidly 
 progressing, through the beneficial influence of Matilda, at 
 home, the arms of her royal consort were universally tri- 
 umphant in Normandy. The unfortunate Eobert Courthose, 
 with his young son William (who was called Clito, or royal 
 heir), with the earl of Mortaigne and all the nobles of their 
 party, were taken prisoners at the decisive battle of Tinehe- 
 bray, which was fought on the vigil of St. Michael, exactly 
 forty years after the famous battle of Hastings. The Eng- 
 lish were much elated at this circumstance, whereby they 
 
 ' Saxon Annals. 
 
152 MATILDA OP SCOTLAND. 
 
 flattered their national pride with the idea that the husband 
 of their beloved queen, of Saxon lineage, had wiped away 
 the dishonor of the Norman conquest, by subjugating 
 Normandy to the yoke of England. Edgar Atheling, Ma- 
 tilda's uncle, was taken fighting for his friend Eobert of 
 Normandy, besides four hundred valiant knights.^ Henry 
 instantly released the aged prince, for love of the queen 
 his niece, say some of the chroniclers of that period, and 
 at her intercession settled a pension upon him for life. 
 
 Henry, now at the summit of his ambition, having verified 
 the death-bed prediction of his father the Conqueror that 
 he should unite in his own person the inheritance of both 
 his brothers, returned triumphantly to England with his un- 
 fortunate captives. Robert he sent to Cardiff castle, where 
 for a time his confinement was only a sort of honorable 
 restraint, if we may credit the account which Henry him- 
 self gives of it in a letter to the pope : " I have not," says 
 he, " imprisoned him as an enemy ; but I have placed him 
 in a royal castle, as a noble stranger broke down with many 
 troubles, and I supply him abundantly with every delicacy 
 and enjoyment." 
 
 Henry and Matilda kept their Easter this year at Bath, 
 and, during the summer, introduced the popular custom of 
 making a royal progress through different parts of England.' 
 They held their court the following year, for the first time, 
 at New Windsor, then called, from the picturesque winding 
 
 ***lOiiS»-ro6C,,,^^;JSS§v3^'^"*^^®®°^®" ^lii^ beautifuTr&Ereat 
 was originally used as a hunting-seat by William the Con- 
 queror, who, for better security of his person, converted it 
 into a fortress or castle ; but the extensive alterations and 
 improvements which the elegant tastes of the Beauclerc 
 sovereign and his accomplished consort Matilda of Scotland 
 eifected first gave to Windsor castle the magnificent and 
 august character, as a royal residence, which has rendered 
 it ever since a favorite abode with succeeding sovereigns. 
 
 In the year 1108, the afiairs of Normandy requiring the 
 presence of the king, another temporary separation took 
 place between Matilda and her royal lord. Indeed, from 
 
 ' W. Malmesbury. ' Saxon Chronicle. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 153 
 
 the time that the duchy of Normandy was subjected to his 
 sway, it became a matter of necessity, in order to preserve 
 his popularity with his continental subjects, to pass a con- 
 siderable portion of his time among them : meanwhile, the 
 peace and integral prosperity of England were best pro- 
 moted by the presence of Matilda, who formed the bond of 
 union between Henry of Normandy and the Saxon race. 
 Therefore it appears to have been a measure of political ex- 
 pediency for her to remain with her splendid court at West- 
 minster or London, endearing herself daily more and more 
 to the people by her works of princely charity and the 
 public benefits which she was constantly laboring to pro- 
 mote. Thus we see, on accurate examination, that, contrary 
 to the assertions of one or two paradoxical writers who have 
 assumed that Matilda was not treated with the affection and 
 respect that were her due in wedded life, she enjoyed a 
 degree of power and influence in the state perfectly un- 
 known to the Saxon queens. She was so nobly dowered, 
 withal, that in after reigns the highest demand ever made 
 on the part of a queen-consort was, that she should be en- 
 dowed with a dower equal to that of Matilda of Scotland.^ 
 By close examination of the earliest authorities, we find 
 that the first parliaments held by the Anglo-Norman dynasty 
 were the fruits of the virtuous influence of this excellent 
 queen over the mind of her husband. But as the fact 
 whether parliaments were ever held before the reigns of 
 Henry III. and Edward I. has been a point of great contest 
 among modern historians, we take leave to quote the fol- 
 lowing lines from Eobert of Gloucester in support of the 
 assertion, — first, that parliaments were held ; and next, that 
 they were held through the influence of Matilda : — ' 
 
 I ** When his daughter was ten years old, to council there he drew. 
 On a Whit-Sunday, a great parliament he name [held] 
 At Westminster, noble enow, that much folk came." ' 
 
 1 Tyrrell. ' Ibid. vol. ii. p. 430. The edition ia royal octavo. 
 
 • Robert of Gloucester died before he completed the reign of Henry III., 
 consequently, if the first parliament were held in that of Edward I., he could 
 not even have mentioned such legislative assemblies without possessing the gift 
 of prophecy. 
 
154 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 Piers of Langtoft diatinotly points out the classes of whom 
 Matilda advised Henry to take counsel, — viz., barons, lords 
 of towns, and burgesses. Here are the lines : — 
 
 " Maid the good queen gave him in council 
 To love all his folk and leave all his turpeile [disputing], 
 To bear him with his barons that held of him their fees [feo6]. 
 And to lords of towns and burgesses of cities : 
 Through council of dame Maid, a kind woman and true. 
 Instead of hatred old, there now was love all new ; 
 Now love they full well the barons and the king. 
 The king does ilk a deal at their bidding." 
 
 Eobert of Gloucester, from first to last, speaks of queen 
 Matilda as an active agent in the government of England, 
 and the restorer and upholder of the Saxon form of legis- 
 lature, whose system was that of a representative constitu- 
 tion. He says, — 
 
 " The goodness that king Henry and the good queen Mold 
 Did to this land ne may never be told." 
 
 The year 1109 must have been an era of eventful interest 
 to Matilda. Her royal husband, having spent the winter 
 and spring in Normandy,' returned to England in the sum- 
 mer, to visit her and their infant family, and kept court 
 with uncommon splendor in his new palace at Windsor, 
 which had been completed in his absence. It was there that 
 he received the ambassadors who came to solicit the hand 
 of the princess Matilda for the emperor Henry Y.' The 
 proposal was eagerly accepted by Henry Beauclerc ; and 
 the princess, then just turned of five years old, was solemnly 
 espoused by proxy to hef royal suitor, wto was forty years 
 her senior ; but, on account of her tender age, tEe infant 
 bride was allowed for the present to remain under the care 
 of the queen her mother.' The fact that Henry's numer- 
 ous illegitimate children were many of them adults at this 
 period, proves that they were born in his youth, and at all 
 events before his marriage with Matilda of Scotland. 
 
 In the year 1109, the mighty Norman chief Fitz-Haymon, 
 lord of Glamorgan, dying without sons, left the lady Aima- 
 bel, his young heiress, to the guardianship of the king. 
 
 1 Saxon Annals. a M. Paris. Huntingdon. ' M. Paris. 
 
MATILDA OP SCOTLAND. 155 
 
 Henry, wishing to secure so rich a prize for his eldest natu- 
 ral son Eobert, proposed him to his fair ward, as a suitable 
 husband for her. But the haughty Norman damsel, though 
 only sixteen, intrepidly replied, "That the ladies of her 
 house were not accustomed to wed nameless persons." Then 
 the king answered, " Neither shalt thou, damsel ; for I will 
 give my son a fair name, by which he and his sons shall be 
 called. Eobert Fitzroy shall be his name henceforth." — 
 " But," objected the prudent heiress of Glamorgan, " a name 
 so given is nothing. Where are the lands, and what the 
 lordship, of the man you will me to wed, sire ?" — " Truly," 
 responded the king, with a smile, " thy question is a shrewd 
 one, damsel : I will endow my son Eobert with the lands 
 and honors of Gloucester, and by that title shall he hence- 
 forth be called." '-"••—- 
 
 The lady Aimabel made no further demur, we are told, 
 but wedded the king's son without delay. The fact was, the 
 king was generously bestowing upon his son Eobert the 
 lands and honors which had been granted or sold to Fitz- 
 Haymon, her deceased father, by William Eufus, once the 
 patrimony of the luckless Brihtric Meaw ; ' and the young 
 lady, who seems to have been gifted with no ordinary share 
 of worldly wisdom, thought, no doubt, that she had better 
 hold the lands and honors of Gloucester on the tenure of 
 wife-service to the king's son, than lose them altogether. 
 Such were the dealings of the Anglo-Norman sovereigns 
 with their wards. The high-spirited heiress of Fitz-Hay- 
 mon was, however, fortunate in the marriage that was thus 
 arranged for her by her royal guardian. Eobert Fitzroy 
 was the princely earl of Gloucester who so valiantly upheld 
 the title of his half-sister, the empress Matilda, to the Eng- 
 lish crown in the succeeding reign. 
 
 A tax of three shillings on every hide of land was levied 
 to pay the portion of the princess Matilda, by which the sum 
 of 824,000^. was raised ; atftft^TSfS^s was sent over to 
 her imperial husband with a magnificent retinue. She was 
 espoused to him in the cathedral of Mentz,'' and solemnly 
 
 1 See the preceding biography, and Domesday-boot. 
 ' Simeon of Durham. 
 
156 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 crowned by the archbishop of Cologne. Queen Matilda was 
 in the next year left to keep court alone, in consequence of 
 a formidable insurrection in Normandy in favor of William 
 Clito, son of the unfortunate Eobert Courthose, which was 
 privately fomented by the earl of Flanders. King Henry, 
 perceiving that all classes of his continental subjects were 
 averse to the yoke of an absent sovereign, considered it 
 expedient to forego the society of his queen and children 
 for a period of nearly two years, while he held his separate 
 state in Normandy. 
 
 In the year 1112, we find the king and queen' were together 
 at Winchester, with their court, where they personally as- 
 sisted at the removal of the bodies of Alfred the Great and 
 his queen Alswitha from the ruinous chapel of Newminster, 
 close to Winchester cathedral, TolEe'TtHagntfrcretiraBbey'of 
 Hyde," founHed an'3'^dowed by Henry and Matilda, as a 
 more suitable shrine for the relics of their illustrious pro 
 genitor, — from whom, be it remembered, Henry, as well as 
 his Saxon queen, was descended in the eighth generation, 
 through the marriage of Elstrith, the daughter of Alfred, 
 with an earl of Flanders, his maternal ancestor. Here, too, 
 the bones of Edward the Elder and his queen, the immediate 
 ancestors of Matilda, were at the same time translated.' 
 The following year Henry was again in Normandy, where 
 he entered into an amicable treaty with one of his most 
 troublesome enemies, Fulk earl of Anjou, by a matrimonial 
 alliance between his heir, prince William, and Alice, the 
 daughter of that earl. 
 
 The education of Matilda's eldest daughter being con- 
 sidered as completed in 1114, the marriage was fully solem- 
 nized between her and the emperor Henry V., and they 
 were both crowned a second time, with great pomp, in the 
 cathedral at Mentz. y^The young empress was then only 
 in her twelfth year. ^^ Notwithstanding this great disparity 
 
 ' ArohsBologia. 
 
 ' Henry VIII. brutally desecrated the place where reposed the remains of 
 these patriot sovereigns. Englishmen of the eighteenth century, more barbarous 
 still, converted the holy fane into a bridewell, and the bones of Alfred were by 
 felon hands exhumed and dispersed. 
 
 ' Archsieologia. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 157 
 
 in age, it appears that the youthful bride enjoyed a rea- 
 sonable share of happiness with her mature consort, by 
 whom she was treated with the greatest indulgence, while 
 her great beauty and majestic carriage won the hearts 
 of the German princes, and obtained for her unbounded 
 popularity. 
 
 Matilda's eldest son, prince "William (or the Atheling, as 
 he was more generally styled by the English), was, in the 
 year 1115, conducted by the king his father with great pomp 
 mto Normandy, where he was presented to the states as the 
 heir of the duchy, and fealty was sworn to him by the barons 
 and freemen. This prince was then only twelve years old. 
 He returned with his royal father to England in July, and 
 the following year Henry summoned that memorable par- 
 liament, mentioned by Holinshed as the first held since the 
 Norman conquest, to meet at Salisbury, and there appointed 
 the young prince as his successor. William of Malmesbury 
 says, " Every freeman of England and Normandy, of what- 
 soever degree, or to whatsoever lord his vassal service was 
 due, was made to perform homage, and swear fealty to 
 William, son of king Henry and queen Matilda." The 
 Easter festival was kept this year by the royal family at 
 Odiham castle, in Hampshire. 
 
 Matilda passed the Christmas festival of the same year, in 
 the company of her royal husband, at the abbey of St. 
 Alban's.' They were the guests of abbot Richard, who had 
 then brought to a happy conclusion the building of that 
 magnificent fabric. He invited the queen, who was one of 
 its benefactresses, the king, and the archbishop of Eouen, 
 and many prelates and nobles, to assist at the consecration 
 of the abbey, which took place Christmas-day, 1115. The 
 royal pair, with their suite of nobles and ladies, were lodged 
 in the abbey, and entertained from December 25th to Jan- 
 uary 6th. The queen, sanctioned by Henry, gave, by char- 
 ter, two manors to St. Alban's. The existence of a portrait 
 of queen Matilda is certainly owing to this visit ; for in a 
 rich illuminated volume, called the Golden Book of St. 
 Alban's (now in the British Museum), may still be seen a 
 
 1 Newcome's History of St. Alban's, pp. 52, 93. 
 
158 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 miniature of the royal benefactress.^ The queen is attired 
 in the royal mantle of scarlet, lined with white fur ; it covers 
 the knees, and is very long. The mantle is square to the 
 bust. A cordon of scarlet and gold, with a large tassel, 
 passes through two gold knobs : she holds the cordon in her 
 left hand. She wears a tight kirtle of dark blue, buttoned 
 down the front with gold. Her sleeves fit close to the arms, 
 and are scarlet like the mantle. A white veil is arranged 
 in a square form on the brow, and is surmounted by a gold 
 crown, formed of three large trefoils, and gold oreillettes 
 appear beneath the veil on each side of the cheeks. The 
 veil flows behind her shoulders with lappets. Matilda is 
 very fair in complexion : she has a long throat, and elegant 
 form of tall proportions. She displays with her right hand 
 the charter she gave the abbey, from which hangs a very 
 large red seal, whereon, without doubt, was impressed her 
 eflSgy in grand relief She sits on a carved stone bench, on 
 which is a scarlet cushion figured with gold leaves. This 
 
 > Cottonian MSS. Nero, D, 7. A beautiful and accurate copy from the original 
 has been drawn by M. Kearney at the expense of Henry Howard, Esq., of Corby, 
 the descendant of Matilda, and presented by him to the authors of this work. 
 It corrects, in many particulars, the errors of an engraving published by Strutt. 
 We have the opportunity, in this new edition, of describing Matilda's portrait 
 from an examination of the Golden Book itself, from which Mr. Harding, the 
 celebrated antiquarian artist, has made our accompanying illustration. The 
 Golden Book of St. Alban's is a sort of conventual album, in which were entered 
 the portraits of all the benefactors of the abbey, together with an abstract of 
 their donations. Five different artists, of various degrees of merit, may be 
 traced in this collection. Some of the miniatures are exquisitely designed and 
 colored, others are barbarous and puerile in their execution ; some of the por- 
 traits are represented holding well-filled purses, others displaying the charters, 
 with large pendant seals, which secured broad lands to church and poor. It is 
 true that Matilda's portrait was not entered till the fourteenth century, when 
 the book was first commenced ; but the style of dress, together with the form of 
 the throne on which the queen is seated, prove that the original design was 
 drawn in the queen's own day ; for the artists of the middle ages drew only 
 what they saw, and had the limner been inclined to give a supposititious por- 
 trait of queen Matilda, he would have designed her figure clad in the costume 
 of Edward the Third's era, and seated in the high-backed gothic chair of state 
 on which royal persons were enthroned since the days of Edward I., as may be 
 seen by reference to any collection of engravings from regal seals ; instead of 
 which, Matilda is seen seated on the primitive stone bench of Anglo-Saxon 
 royalty, represented on the seals of the Anglo-Norman and early Plantagenet 
 monarchs. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 159 
 
 cushion is in the form of a wool-pack, but has four tassels 
 of gold and scarlet. A piece of figured cloth is hung at the 
 back of her seat. There are no armorial bearings, — one 
 proof of the authenticity of the portrait. " Queen Matildis 
 gave us Bell wick and Lilleburn," is the notation appended 
 by the monks of St. Alban's to this portrait. 
 
 About this period, the stately new palace at Woodstock 
 being completed, and the noble park, reckoned the finest at 
 that time in England, having been walled round, Henry 
 stocked it with a curious menagerie of wild beasts, the first 
 zoological collection ever seen in this country. It is de- 
 scribed in very quaint terms by Stowe, who says, "The 
 king craved from other kings lions, leopards, lynxes, and 
 camels, and other curious beasts, of which England hath 
 none. Among others, there was a strange animal called a 
 stryx, or porcupine, sent him by William of Montpelier ; 
 which beast," says the worthy chronicler, " is, among the 
 Africans, counted as a kind of hedgehog, covered with 
 pricking bristles, which they shoot out naturally on the 
 dogs that pursue them." 
 
 Unbounded hospitality was one of the social virtues of 
 this peaceful reign,' especially at this peculiar era, when the 
 benignant example of the good queen had, for a period of 
 nearly seventeen years, produced the happiest effect in 
 softening the manners of the haughty and powerful chief- 
 tains who were at that time the magnates of the land. The 
 Norman families, at this period, were beginning to practise 
 some of the peacefiil pursuits of the Anglo-Saxons, and 
 ladies of high rank considered it no infringement on the 
 dignity of their station to attend to the profitable concerns 
 of the poultry-yard and the dairy. The countess Constance 
 
 ^ The following verses from an ancient MS., quoted by Collins, affords an in- 
 teresting witness of this fact. They were inscribed by sir William Fitz- 
 William, the lord of Sprotborough, on an ancient cross^ which was demolished 
 at the Reformation : — 
 
 " Whoso is hungry, and lists well to eat, 
 Let him come to Sprotborough to his meat ; 
 And for a night and a day 
 His horse shall have both com and hay. 
 And no one shall ask him, ' when he goeth away ?' " 
 
160 MATH^DA OF SCOTLAND. i 
 
 of Chester, though the wife of Hugh Lupus, the king's first I 
 cousin, kept a herd of kine, and made good Cheshire cheeses, | 
 three of which she presented to the archbishop of Canter- 
 bury. Giraldus Cambriensis bears honorable testimony to 
 the excellence of the produce of the ' cheese-shire' in that 
 day. 
 
 A fresh revolt in Normandy' deprived Matilda of the 
 society of her husband and son in 1117. The king, accord- 
 ing to Eadmer, returned and spent Christmas with her, as 
 she was at that time in a declining state of health ; ' leaving 
 prince William with his Norman baronage, as a pledge for 
 his return.' His sojourn was, of necessity, very brief. He 
 was compelled by the distracted state of affairs in Normandy 
 to rejoin his army there, — Matilda never saw either her 
 husband or her son again. 
 
 Eesigned and perfect in all the duties of her high calling, 
 the dying queen remained, during this trying season, in her 
 palace at "Westminster,* lonely though surrounded with all 
 the splendor of royalty ; enduring with patience the separa- 
 tion from her beloved consort and children, and affording, 
 to the last hour of her life, a beautiful example of piety 
 and self-denial. She expired on the Ist of May, 1118,^ pas- 
 sionately lamented by every class of the people," to'^whom 
 her virtues and wisdom had rendered her inexpressibly 
 dear. 
 
 According to the most ancient chroniclers, the king her 
 husband was much afflicted when the intelligence of Ma- 
 tilda's death reached him, amidst the turmoil of battle and 
 siege in Normandy.' Piers of Langtoft alludes to the grief 
 felt by the royal widower, at the loss of his amiable consort, 
 in terms of the most homely simplicity : — 
 
 "Now is the king sorry, her death doth him gram" [grieve]. 
 
 Hardyng's rhyming Chronicle produces the following 
 quaint stanzas on the death of Matilda, and the sorrow of 
 king Henry for her loss : — 
 
 • OrderiouB Vitalis. s Saxon Annals. 
 > Eadmer, p. 118 ; see Rapin, vol. i. 199. * William of Malmesbury. 
 .? Saxon Annals. s Robert of Gloucester. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 161 
 
 " The year of Christ a thousand was full clear, 
 One hundred eke and therewithal eighteen, 
 When good queen Maude was dead and laid on bier, 
 At Westminster buryed, as well was seen ; 
 For heaviness of which the king, I ween. 
 To Normandy then went with his son 
 The duke William, And there with him did won." 
 
 Hardjmg is, however, mistaken in supposing that Henry was 
 with his beloved consort at the time of her decease. The 
 same chronicler gives us another stanza on the death of 
 Henry, in which he, in yet more positive terms, speaks of 
 the conjugal affection which united the Norman sovereign 
 to his Saxon queen : — 
 
 ** Of Christe's date was there a thousand year. 
 One hundred also, and nine and thirty mo. 
 Buried at Kedynge, as well it doth appear. 
 In the abbye which there he founded so. 
 Of monkes black, whenever they ride or go. 
 That pray for him and queen Maude his wife. 
 Who either other loved withouten strife." 
 
 Another chronicler says, " Nothing happened to trouble the 
 king, save the death of his queen Matilda, the very mirror 
 of piety, humility, and princely bounty." ' 
 
 The same causes that had withheld the king from attend- 
 ing Matilda in her dying illness prevented him from honor- 
 ing her obsequies with his presence. Matilda was buried on 
 St. Philip's day in Westminster abbey, on the right side of 
 her royal uncle, Edward the Confessor.' Great disputes, 
 iiowever, have existed as to the place of her interment,' 
 which has been contested with almost as much zeal as was 
 displayed by the seven cities of Greece in claiming the 
 honor of having given birth to Homer. The monks of Bead- 
 ing averred that their royal patroness was buried in her own 
 stately abbey there, where her illustrious consort was after- 
 wards interred. The rhyming chroniclers insist that she 
 was buried in St. Paul's cathedral, and that her epitaph was 
 placed in "Westminster abbey. These are the words of Piers 
 of Langtoft : — 
 
 > Florence of Worcester. 
 
 ' Pennant's London. Kobert of Gloucester. 
 
 ' According to Stowe, her grave was in the vestry of the abbey. 
 
162 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 " At London, in St. Paul, in tomb she is laid, 
 Christ, then, of her soul have meroie ; 
 If any one will mitten [know] of her storie, 
 At Westminster it is written readily ;" 
 
 that is to say, so that it may be plainly read. Tyrrell de- 
 clares that she was buried at "Winchester, but that tablets 
 to her memory were set up in many churches, — an honor 
 which she shares with queen Elizabeth. The following 
 passage from Weever testifies that the mortal remains of 
 Matilda, ' the good queen,' repose near the relics of her royal 
 uncle, Edward the Confessor, in the solemn temple founded 
 by that last Saxon monarch, and which had been completed 
 under her careful superintendence. " Here lieth in West- 
 minster abbey, without any tomb, Matilda or Maud, daugh- 
 ter of Malcolm Canmore, king of Scots, and wife of Henry 
 I. of England, who brought to him children, William, Eich- 
 ard, and Mary, who perished by shipwreck, and likewise 
 Maud, who was wife to Henry, the fifth emperor. She died 
 the first day of May, 1118."' She had an excellent epi- 
 taph made to her commendation, whereof four lines only 
 remain : — 
 
 *' Prospera non laetam fecere, nee aspera tristem, 
 Aspera risus erant, prospera terror erant ; 
 Non decor efficit fragilem, non sceptra superbam, 
 Sola potens humilis, sola pudioa deeens." 
 
 Henry of Huntingdon, the chronicler, no mean poet, was 
 the author of these Latin lines, of which the following is a 
 faithful version : — 
 
 " Prosperity could not inflate her mind, 
 Lowly in greatness, as in ills resigned : 
 Beauty deceived not, nor did crowns efface 
 Her best adornment, woman's modest grace." 
 
 William of Malmesbury, speaking of the death of Matilda 
 of Scotland, says, " She was snatched away from her country, 
 to the great loss of her people, but to her own advantage ; 
 for her funeral being splendidly solemnized at Westminster, 
 she entered into her rest, and her spirit manifested, by no 
 trifling indications, that she was a resident in heaven." 
 
 1 Weever's Funeral Monuments. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 163 
 
 Some attempts, we suppose, therefore, must have been made 
 by the monks ofWestminster to establish for this great and 
 good queen a deceptive posthumous fame, by the testimony 
 of miracles performed at her tomb, or pretended revelations 
 from her spirit to her contemporaries in the flesh. Our 
 marvellous chronicler, however, confines himself to the 
 above significant hints, and takes his leave of Matilda in 
 these words : " She died willingly, leaving the throne after 
 a reign of seventeen years and six months, experiencing 
 the fate of her family, who all died in the flower of their 
 age." 
 
 Many curious remains still exist of the old palace in West- 
 minster, where Matilda kept state as queen, and ended her 
 life. This venerable abode of our early sovereigns was 
 originally built by Canute, and, being devastated by fire, was 
 rebuilt by Edward the Confessor with such enduring solidity, 
 that antiquaries still point out different portions which were 
 indubitably the work of the royal Saxon, and therefore must 
 have formed part of the residence of his niece. Part of the 
 old palace of Westminster is still to be seen in the buildings 
 near Cotton-garden, and the lancet-shaped windows about 
 Old Palace-yard are declared to appertain to it.' Cotton- 
 garden was the private garden of the ancient palace, and 
 therefore belonged especially to queen Matilda. It would 
 be idle to dwell on Westminster hall and Westminister 
 abbey, though the original sites of both were included in 
 the precincts of this''parace,becaii8e"bne'wa,s rebuilt from 
 the ground by Eichard II., and the other by Henry III. 
 Great devastation was made in the royal abode of the Anglo- 
 Saxon queen by the late disastrous conflagration of the 
 house of lords and its adjacent apartments, which all be- 
 longed to it. 
 
 The house of lords was an antique oblong room ; it was 
 the hall of state of Matilda's palace, and called the white- 
 hall, but without any reference to the vast palace of White- 
 hall, to which the seat of English royalty was transferred 
 in the reign of Henry VIII. As the Painted-chamber, still 
 entire, is well known to have been the bedchamber of 
 
 ' Pennant. 
 
164 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Edward the Confessor, and the apartment in which he 
 expired,^ there can be no doubt but that it was the state 
 bedchamber of his niece. A curious room in Cotton-house 
 was the private oratory of the Confessor, and was assuredly 
 used by Matilda for the same purpose ; while at the south 
 end of the court of Eequests are to be seen two mighty 
 arches, the zigzag work of which ranks its architecture 
 among the most ancient existing in our country. This was 
 once a deserted state-chamber ^ of the royal Saxon palace, 
 but it has been used lately by the house of commons. 
 
 There is a statue of Matilda in Eochester cathedral, which 
 forms the pilaster to the west door ; that of king Henry, 
 her husband, forms another. The hair of the queen de- 
 pends over either shoulder, in two long plaits, below the 
 knees. Her garments are long and flowing, and she holds 
 an open scroll of parchment in her hand. Her features are 
 defaced, and indeed so completely broken away, that no 
 idea of what manner of countenance she had can be gath- 
 ered from the remains. 
 
 King Henry proved the sincerity of his regard for Matilda 
 by confirming all her charters after her death. Madox, in 
 his history of the Exchequer, quotes one of that monarch's 
 charters, reciting " that he had confirmed to the priory of 
 the Holy Trinity in London the grant of his queen Matilda, 
 for the good of her soul, of 25?. on the farm of the city of 
 Exeter, and commands his chief justiciar and the barons of 
 his exchequer to constrain the sheriff of Devonshire to pay 
 the same to the said canons." ' 
 
 Matilda's household was chiefly composed of Saxon ladies, 
 if we may trust the evidence of Christian names. The 
 maids of honor were Emma, Gunilda, and Christina, pious 
 ladies and full of alms-deeds, like their royal mistress. 
 After the death of the queen, these ladies retired to the 
 hermitage of Kilburn, near London, where there was a holy 
 
 1 Howell. 
 
 ' The appellation of court of Requests has no reference to modem legal pro- 
 ceedings. It was the feudal court of the high steward of England. It was 
 used by the house of commons after the destruction of St. Stephen's chapel, 
 while the lords obtained possession of the Painted-chamber. 
 
 » Charter Antiq. Nn. 16. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 165 
 
 "well, or medicinal spring. This was changed into a priory ' 
 in 1128, as the deed says, " for the reception of these three 
 virgins of God, sacred damsels who had belonged to the 
 chamber of Matilda, the good queen-consort to Henry I." ' 
 
 History only particularizes two surviving children of 
 Matilda of Scotland and Henry I. ; but Gervase, the monk of 
 Canterbury, says she had, besides William and the empress 
 Matilda, a son named Eichard. Hector Boethius mentions 
 a daughter of hers, named Euphemia. The Saxon Chronicle 
 and Eobert of Gloucester both speak of her second son 
 Richard, and Piers of Langtoft says, " The two princes, her 
 sons, were both in Normandy when Matilda died." Prince 
 William the Atheling was destined to see England no more. 
 During the remainder of the year 1118 he was fighting, by 
 his father's side, against the invading force of the king of 
 France and the partisans of his cousin William Clito. On 
 one occasion, when the noble war-horse and its rich capar- 
 isons belonging to that gallant but unfortunate prince, hav- 
 ing been abandoned during a hasty retreat, were captured, 
 and Henry presented this prize to his darling heir, the noble 
 youth generously sent them back, with a courteous message, 
 to his rival kinsman and namesake.' His royal father, 
 king Henry, did not disdain to imitate the magnanimous 
 conduct of his youthful son after the memorable battle in 
 which the standard of France was taken : when the favorite 
 charger of Louis le Gros fell into his hands, he returned it 
 to the French monarch the next day. 
 
 The king of France, as suzerain of Normandy, at the 
 general pacification required of Henry the customary 
 homage for his feof This the victorious monarch considered 
 derogatory to the dignity of a king of England to perform, 
 and therefore deputed the office to prince William, who was 
 then invested with the duchy, and received the oath of 
 fealty from the states.* The prince solemnly espoused his 
 
 I On its site are a public-house and tea-gardens, now called Kilbum- Wells. 
 
 ' The original deed, preserved in the Oottonian MSS. Claudius. The appel- 
 lation given to their office, domicella, proves their rank was noble, as this word 
 will be seen applied even to the daughters of emperors. 
 
 ' Holinshed. * Orderious Vitalis. Tyrrell. 
 
166 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 betrothed bride Alice, the daughter of Fulk earl of Anjou, 
 June, 1119. King Henry changed her name to Matilda, out 
 of respect, it is said, for the memory of his mother ; but 
 more probably from a tender regard for his deceased consort, 
 Matilda of Scotland, the love of his youth, and the mother 
 of his children. The marriage was celebrated at Lisieux,' 
 in the county of Burgundy ; and the prince remained in 
 Normandy with his young bride, attended by all the youth- 
 ful nobility of England and the duchy, passing the time 
 gayly with feasts and pageants till the 25th of November, in 
 the year 1120 ; when king Henry (who had been nearly 
 two years absent from his kingdom) proceeded with him 
 and an illustrious retinue to Barfleur,^ where the king and 
 his heir embarked for England the same night, in separate 
 ships. 
 
 Fitz-Stephen, the captain of the ' Blanche Nef ' (the finest 
 vessel in the Norman navy), demanded the honor of con- 
 veying the heir of England home, because his father had 
 commanded the Mora, the ship which brought William the 
 Conqueror to the shores of England. His petition was 
 granted; and the prince, with his gay and splendid com- 
 pany, entered the fatal bark with light hearts, and com- 
 menced their voyage with mirth and minstrelsy. The prince 
 incautiously ordered three casks of wine to be given to the 
 ship's crew ; and the mariners were, in consequence, for the 
 most part intoxicated when they sailed, about the close of 
 day. Prince William, who was desirous of overtaking the 
 rest of the fleet, pressed Fitz-Stephen to crowd his sails and 
 put out his sweeps. Fitz-Stephen, having named the ' white 
 ship' as the swiftest galley in the world, to make good his 
 boast and oblige his royal passenger, caused his men to 
 stretch with all their might to the oars, and did everything 
 to accelerate the speed of his light bark. While the ' Blanche 
 Nef ' was rushing through the water with the most danger- 
 ous velocity, she suddenly struck on a rock, called the ' Catte- 
 raze,' with such impetuosity that she started several planks, 
 and began to sink. All was instant horror and confusion. 
 The boat was, however, let down, and the young heir of 
 
 ' Saxon Annals. 2 Ordericus Vitalis. 
 
MATILBA OF SCOTLAND. 167 
 
 England, with several of his youthful companions, got into 
 it, and having cleared the ship, might have reached the Nor- 
 man shore in safety ; but the cries of his illegitimate sister, 
 Matilda countess of Perche, who distinctly called on him by 
 name for succor, moving him with a tender impulse of com- 
 passion, he commanded the boat back to take her in. Unfor- 
 tunately, the moment it neared the ship such numbers sprang 
 into it that it instantly sank with its precious freight ; all on 
 board perished, and of the three hundred persons who em- 
 barked in the ' white ship,' but one soul escaped to tell the 
 dismal tale. This person was a poor butcher of Eouen, 
 named Berthould, who climbed to the top of the mast, and 
 was the next morning rescued by some fishermen. Fitz- 
 Stephen, the master of the luckless ' white ship,' was a strong 
 mariner, and stoutly supported himself for some hours in 
 the water, till he saw Berthould on the mast, and calling to 
 him, asked if the boat with the heir of England had escaped ; 
 but when the butcher, who had witnessed the whole catas- 
 trophe, replied " that all were drowned and dead," the strong 
 man's force failed him ; he ceased to battle with the waves, 
 and sank to rise no more.' 
 
 The report of this disaster reached England the next day. 
 Theobald of Blois, the king's nephew, was the first who heard 
 it ; but he dared not inform his uncle of the calamity which 
 had rendered his house desolate. The Saxon chronicler says, 
 there perished another son of Henry and Matilda, named 
 Richard, and also Richard, a natural son of the king ; Ma- 
 tilda, his natural daughter, countess of Perche ; Eichard earl 
 of Chester, his cousin, with his bride, the young lady Lucy 
 of Blois, daughter of Henry's sister Adela, and the flower of 
 the juvenile nobility, who are mentioned by the Saxon 
 chronicler as a multitude of " incomparable folk." 
 
 King Henry had reached England with his fleet in safety, 
 and for three days was permitted to remain in a state of the 
 most agonizing suspense and uncertainty respecting the fate 
 of his children. No one choosing to become the bearer of 
 such evil tidings, at length Theobald de Blois, finding it could 
 no longer be concealed, instructed a favorite little page to 
 
 1 Thierry's Anglo-Nonnans. 
 
168 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 commimicate the mournful news to the bereaved father ; and 
 the child, entering the royal presence with a sorrowful step, 
 knelt down at Henry's feet, and told him that the prince and 
 all on board the ' white ship' were lost. The great Henry 
 was so thunderstruck with this dreadful news that he stag- 
 gered and sank upon the floor in a deep swoon, in which 
 state he remained for many hours. When he recovered, he 
 broke into the bitterest lamentations, magnifying at the same 
 time the great qualities of his heir and the loss he had sus- 
 tained ; and the chroniclers all agree that he was never again 
 seen to smile.' The body of Prince William was never 
 found, though diligent search was made for it along the 
 shores. It was regarded as an augmentation of the calamity, 
 that his delicate form, instead of receiving Christian burial, 
 became a prey to the monsters of the deep.^ 
 
 It is Henry of Huntingdon who exults so uncharitably 
 over the catastrophe of the ' white ship,' in the following 
 burst of poetic eloquence : — " The proud youth ! he thought 
 of his future reign, when he said ' he would yoke the Saxons 
 like oxen.' But God said, 'It shall not be, thou impious 
 one ; it shall not be.' And so it has come to pass : that 
 brow has worn no crown of gold, but has been dashed 
 against the rocks of the ocean. It was God himself who 
 would not that the son of the Norman should again see 
 England." » 
 
 ' King Henry's grief for the loss of Ms heir did not prevent him from en- 
 deavoring to malce some advantage of it in a worldly point of view, by wrong- 
 fully detaining the dower of his young widow, who had escaped the fate of the 
 unfortunate prince, by sailing in the king's ship instead of the fatal * Blanche 
 Nef.' She returned to her father, Fulk earl of Anjou, and remaining constant to 
 the memory of William the Atheling, was veiled a nun in the abbey of Fonte- 
 vraud. The earl of Anjou was so highly exasperated at the detention of her 
 appanage, that he immediately gave her sister in marriage to William Clito, 
 the son of Robert of Normandy, and assisted him to assert his claims against 
 Henry. — Malmesbury's Chronicles. 
 
 ' William of Malmesbury. 
 
 3 Brompton also speaks unfavorably of this unfortunate young prince; but it 
 should be remembered that England was a divided nation at that period, and 
 that the Saxon chroniclers wrote in the very gall of bitterness against those 
 whom the Norman historians commended. Implicit credence is not to be given 
 to the assertions of either. It is only by reading both, and carefully weighing 
 and collating facts, that the truth is to be elicited. 
 
MATILDA OF SCOTLAND. 169 
 
 In the last act of his life, William Atheling manifested a 
 spirit so noble, so tenderly compassionate, and forgetful of 
 selfish considerations, that we can only say it was worthy 
 of the son of Matilda, the good queen.' 
 
 ^ Matilda's only surviving child, the empress Matilda, thus became king 
 Henry's heiresa-presumptive. She was the ^tfemale who claimed the regal 
 office in England. The events of her life are^»'o!^eli^nterwoven with those 
 of the two succeeding queens, Adelicia, and Matilda of Boulogne, her royal 
 contemporaries, that to avoid the tedium of repetition, and also to preserve the 
 chronological stream of history in unbroken unity, which is an important ob- 
 ject, we must refer our readers to the lives of those queens for the personal 
 history of this princess, from whom her present majesty queen Victoria derives 
 her title to the crown of England. -<?i»!-sw,u,~°""'"'*^ ■"■■'•-^-,„.,~.,^.i»^"'"" 
 
ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE, 
 
 SURNAMED THE FAIR MAID OF BRABANT 
 
 SECOND QUEtN OF HENRY I. 
 
 Adelioia'a beauty — Imperial descent from Charlemagne — Standard embroidered 
 by Adelioia — Preserved at Liege — Adelioia sought in marriage by Henry I. — 
 Richly dowered — Embarks for England with Henry — King and queen parish- 
 ioners of archbishop of Canterbury — Violence of archbishop — He crowns 
 Adelicia — Eulogies on her beauty — Her prudence — Encouragement of litera- 
 ture — Empress Matilda — Adelioia childless — Empress Matilda kept in Ade- 
 licia's chamber — Difficult position of the queen — Friendship with her step- 
 daughter — Second marriage of the empress — Adelicia's conjugal virtues — 
 Matilda returns to England — Kemains with the queen — Birth of prince Henry 
 — Death of king Henry — Adelicia's respect for his memory — Her troubadour 
 writes king Henry's life — Her second marriage — William Albini — Her dowry 
 — Palace — Receives empress Matilda — Message to king Stephen — Conjugal 
 happiness of Adelicia — Her charter — Her portrait — Her children — Charitable 
 foundations at Arundel — Her younger brother abbot of Affligham — Adelicia 
 retires to AflBigham nunnery, in Flanders — Dies there — Record of her death 
 — Buried — Her issue by Albini — Adelicia ancestor of two of our queens. 
 
 This princess, to whom contemporary chroniclers have 
 given the name of " the fair Maid of Brabant," is one of the 
 most obscure characters in the illustrious catalogue of Eng- 
 lish queens. Tradition, and her handmaid Poetry, have, 
 however, spoken bright things of her ; and the surviving 
 historical records of her life, though brief, are all of a nature 
 tending to confirm the good report which the verses of the 
 Provencals have preserved of her virtues and accomplish- 
 ments. 
 
 Descended, through both her parents, from the imperial 
 Carlovingian line,' Adelicia boasted the most illustrious 
 blood in Christendom. She was the eldest daughter of 
 Godfrey of Louvaine, duke of Brabant and Lotheir (or 
 
 ' Howard Memorials. 
 170 
 
ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 171 
 
 Lower Lorraine), and Ida countess of ISTamur.' Her father, 
 as the great-grandson of Charles, brother to Lothaire of 
 Prance, was the lawful representative of Charlemagne. 
 The male posterity of the unfortunate Charles having been 
 cut off by Hugh Capet, the rights of his house became 
 vested in the descendants of his eldest daughter, Gerberga.' 
 Lambert, the son of Gerberga, by her marriage with Eob- 
 ert of Louvaine, was the father of Godfrey. Ermengarde, 
 the second daughter of Charles, married Albert, the third 
 count of Namur : and their sole daughter and heiress, Ida 
 (the mother of Adelicia), became the wife of her cousin, 
 Godfrey of Louvaine, surnamed Barbatus, or ' the bearded,' 
 because he had made a vow never to shave his beard till he 
 had recovered Lower Lorraine, the patrimony of his an- 
 cestors. In this he succeeded in the year 1107, after which 
 he triumphantly displayed a smooth chin, in token that he 
 had fulfilled his obligation. He finally obtained from his 
 subjects and contemporaries the more honorable appellation 
 of Godfrey the Great.' The dominions of this prince were 
 somewhat more extensive than the modern kingdom of 
 Belgium, and were governed by him with the greatest wis- 
 dom and ability. 
 
 From this illustrious lineage Adelicia inherited the dis- 
 tinguished beauty and fine talents for which the Lorraine 
 branch of the house of Charlemagne has ever been cele- 
 brated. She was also remarkable for her proficiency in 
 feminine acquirements. A standard which she embroidered 
 in silk and gold for her father, during the arduous contest 
 in which he was engaged for the recovery of his patrimony, 
 was celebrated throughout Europe for the exquisite taste 
 and skill displayed by the royal Adelicia in the design and 
 execution of her patriotic achievement.* This standard was 
 unfortunately captured at a battle near the castle of Duras, 
 in the year 1129, by the bishop of Liege and the earl of 
 Limbourg, the old competitor of Godfrey for Lower Lor- 
 raine : it was placed by them, as a memorial of their tri- 
 
 1 Betham's Genealogical Tables. Buknet, or Bukein's, Trophies du Brabant. 
 Howard's Memorials of the Howard Family. 
 " Ibid. ' Buknet's Trophies. Howard Memorials. * Ibid. 
 
172 ADELICIA OP LOUVAINE. 
 
 umph, in the great church of St. Lambert, at Liege, and was 
 for centuries carried in procession on Eogation-days through 
 the streets of that city. The church of St. Lambert was 
 destroyed during the French revolution ; yet the learned 
 editor of the Howard Memorials fondly indulges in the hope 
 that this interesting relic of his royal ancestress's industry 
 and patriotic feelings may yet exist, destined, perhaps, here- 
 after to be brought to light, like the long-forgatteaJBayeiix 
 tapestry. The plain, where this memOTaBK^Ir^pEy was 
 taken, is still called " the field of the Standard." ' 
 
 The fame of the fair maid of Brabant's charms and ac- 
 complishments, it is said, induced the confidential advisers 
 of Henry I. of England to recommend their sorrow-stricken 
 lord to wed her, in hopes of dissipating that corroding 
 melancholy which, since the loss of his children in the fatal 
 ' white ship,' had become constitutional to him. The tem- 
 per of this monarch had, in fact, grown so irascible, that 
 his greatest nobles feared to enter his presence, and it is 
 said that, in his causeless transports of rage, he indulged 
 himself in the use of the most unkingly terms of vitupera- 
 tion to all who approached him ; ' which made his peers the 
 more earnest in their counsels for him to take a second wife. 
 Adelicia of Louvaine was the object of his choice. Henry's 
 ostensible motive in contracting this marriage was the hope 
 of male posterity, to inherit the united realms of England 
 and Normandy.' He had been a widower two years when 
 he entered into a treaty with Godfrey of Louvaine for the 
 hand of his beautiful daughter. Eobert of Gloucester, when 
 recording the fact in his rhyming Chronicle, says, — 
 
 " He knew no woman so fair as she 
 Was seen on middle earth." 
 
 The name of this princess has been variously written by 
 the chroniclers of England, Normandy, Germany, and Bra- 
 bant, as Adeliza, Alicia^ Adelaide, Aleyda or Adelheite, which 
 
 ' Bnitsholme. s Speed. Rapin. 
 
 ' " It was the death of this youth," says William of Malmesbury, speaking 
 of the death of the Atheling, " whioh induced king Henry to renounce the 
 celibacy he had cherished since Matilda's death, in the hope of fiiture heirs by 
 a new consort." 
 
ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 173 
 
 means ' most noble.' In the Saxon Chronicle she is called 
 iEthelice, or Alice. Mr. Howard of Corby castle, the im- 
 mediate descendant of this queen, in his Memorials of the 
 Howard Family,' calls her Adelicia, for the best of reasons, 
 — her name is so written in an original charter of the Slst 
 of Henry I., confirming her grant of lands for the founda- 
 tion of an hq^pi.tgl o£ lepers ^at Fugglestone, near Wilton, 
 dedicated tb*'St. GiJes ; wbich deed, with part of the seal- 
 appendant, is still preserved in the corporation chest at 
 Wilton. 
 
 The Provencal and Walloon poets, of whom this queen was 
 a munificent patroness, style her Alix la Belle, Adelais, and 
 Alise, varying the syllables according to the structure of the 
 verses which they composed in her honor, — a license always 
 allowed to poetical writers ; therefore the rhymes of the trou- 
 badours ought not to be regarded as the slightest authority 
 in settling the point. Modern historians generally speak of 
 this princess by her Latinized name of AdeKza, but her 
 learned descendant's version of her name is that which ought 
 to be adopted by her biographer. There is no authentic 
 record of the date of Adelicia's birth. Mr. Howard sup- 
 poses she was about eighteen years old at the period of her 
 marriage with Henry I., and it is certain that she was in 
 the bloom of her beauty at the time he sought her hand. 
 
 In proportion to the estimation in which the charms of 
 Adelicia were held did Henry fix her dower, which was so 
 munificent that the duke of Louvaine, her father, scrupled 
 not to consign her to her aflSanced lord, as soon as the con- 
 tract of marriage was signed. The ceremony took place on 
 the 16th of April, 1120, but the nuptials were not celebrated 
 till some months after this period. King Henry, in person, 
 conducted his betrothed bride to England in the autumn of 
 this year.' They landed about Michaelmas. Some histo- 
 rians afiirm that the royal pair were married at Ely, soon 
 
 1 Through the courtesy of his grace the late duke of Norfolk, I have been 
 favored with a copy of this inestimable volume, which, as it is printed for 
 private use, is inaccessible to the public, but is most important as a book of 
 reference to the writers of royal and noble biographies. 
 
 ' Henry of Huntingdon. White Kennet. 
 
174 ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 
 
 after their arrival ; but if so, it must have been a private 
 arrangement, for the nuptials were publicly solemnized at 
 Windsor on the 24th of January, 1121 ; ' having been delayed 
 in consequence of a singular dispute between the archbishop 
 of Canterbury and the bishop of Salisbury, which established 
 a point too important to be omitted in a history embracing, 
 in a peculiar manner, the habits and customs of royalty. 
 Eoger le Poer, the bishop of Salisbury, that notable preacher 
 of short sermons, claimed the right to marry the royal pair 
 because the fortress of Windsor was within his diocese. 
 This right was disputed by the aged Ralph, archbishop of 
 Canterbury, who was a great stickler for the prerogatives 
 of his oflSce ; and an ecclesiastical council was called, in which 
 it was decided, that wherever the king and queen might be 
 within the realm of England, they were the parishioners of 
 the archbishop of Canterbury. Accordingly, the ceremony 
 was triumphantly performed by the venerable primate, 
 though bowed down by so many infirmities that he appeared 
 like one tottering on the verge of the grave. 
 
 This afforded Henry an excuse for deputing the honor of 
 crowning him and his bride on the following day, at West- 
 minster, to his favorite prelate Eoger le Poer, the bishop 
 of Salisbury above named, to console him for his disappoint- 
 ment with regard to the hymeneal office. But the archbishop 
 was not to be thus put off. The right of crowning the king 
 and queen he considered a still more important branch of 
 his archiepiscopal prerogatives than that of marrying them, 
 and, malgre his age and paralysis, he hastened to the abbey, 
 where the ceremonial had commenced at an unusually early 
 hour. Eoger le Poer, his rival, having, according to his old 
 custom, made unprecedented expedition in the performance 
 of his office, had already placed the royal diadem on the 
 monarch's brow, when archbishop Ealph sternly approached 
 the royal chair, and asked Henry, " Who had put the crown 
 on his head?"^ The king evasively replied, "If the cere- 
 mony had not been properly performed, it could be done 
 again.'' On which, as some chroniclers assert, the choleric 
 old primate gave the king such a smart blow with his crosier, 
 
 ' Eadmer. ' Eadmer. Speed. 
 
ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 175 
 
 that he smote the crown from his head ; ' but Eadmer says 
 he only raised it up by the strap which passed under the 
 chin, and so turned it off his head. He then proceeded to 
 replace it with all due form, and afterwards crowned the 
 fair young queen. This most extraordinary coronation took 
 place on Sunday, January 30th, 1121. 
 
 The beauty of the royal bride, whom Piers of Langtoft 
 calls 
 
 " The May withouten vice," 
 
 made a great impression on the minds of the people, which 
 the sweetness of her manners, her prudence, and mild virtues 
 strengthened in no slight degree. It was on the occasion of 
 her bridal coronation that Henry of Huntingdon, the chron- 
 icler, addressed to Adelicia those celebrated Latin verses 
 of which Camden has given us the following translation : — ' 
 
 ** When Adeliza's name should grace my song, 
 A sudden wonder stops the Muse's tongue ; 
 Your crown and jewels, when compared to you, 
 How poor your crown, how pale your jewels show! 
 Take off your robes, your rich attire remove, 
 Such pomps may load you, but can ne'er improve; 
 In vain your costly ornaments are worn, 
 You they obscure, while others they adorn. 
 Ah ! what new lustres can these trifles give. 
 Which all their beauty from your charms receive 7 
 Thus I your lofty praise, your vast renown. 
 In lowly verse am not ashamed to have shown. 
 Oh, be you not ashamed my services to own '." 
 
 The wisdom of this lovely girl-queen early manifested 
 itself in the graceftil manner by which she endeavored to 
 conform herself to the tastes of her royal lord, in the en- 
 
 1 Speed. 
 
 ' " Anglorum regina, tuos Adelida, decores. 
 
 Ipsa referre parans Musa stupor riget. 
 
 Quid diadema tibi pulcherrima ? quid tibi ge mm m ? 
 
 Pallet gemma tibi, nee diadema nitet. 
 
 Deme tibi cultus, cultum natura ministrat 
 
 Non exomari forma beata potest 
 
 Omamenta cave, neo quicquam luminis inde 
 
 Accipis ; ilia micant lumine clara tuo, 
 
 Non puduit modicas de magnis dicere laudes 
 
 Ne pudeat dominam, te precor, esse meam." 
 
176 ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 
 
 couragement of the polished arts and the patronage of litera- 
 ture. Henry's love for animals had induced him to create 
 an extensive menagerie at Woodstock, as we have seen, 
 during the life of his first queen, Matilda of Scotland, who 
 was probably well acquainted with natural history. The 
 youthful Adelicia evidently knew nothing of zoology previ- 
 ously to her marriage with Henry Beauclerc ; but like a good 
 wife, in order to adapt herself to his pursuits, she turned her 
 attention to that study, for we find Philippe de Thuan wrote 
 a work on the nature of animals for her especial instruction. 
 The poetical naturalist did not forget to allude to the personal 
 charms of his royal patroness in his courtier-like dedica- 
 tion : — 
 
 " Philippe de Thuan, en Franceise raisnn, 
 Ad estrait bestaire un livre de grammaire, 
 Pour lour d'une feme ki mult est belle, 
 Alix est namge, reine est corun^e, 
 Keine est d'Engleterre, sa ame nait ja guere." 
 
 " Philippe de Thuan, in plain French, 
 Has written an elementary book of animals, 
 For the praise and instruction of a good and beauteous woman, 
 Who is the crowned queen of England, and named Alix." 
 
 One of the most approved historians of her day, the author 
 of the Waltham abbey MSS.,' states that he was appointed 
 a canon of Waltham abbey through the patronage of queen 
 Adelicia. This chronicler is the same person who has so 
 eloquently described the dismal search made for Harold's 
 body, after the battle of Hastings. 
 
 Adelicia was deprived of the society of her royal husband 
 a few weeks after their marriage, in consequence of a formi- 
 dable inbreak of the Welsh, who had entered Cheshire, and 
 committed great ravages. Henry went in person to the 
 defence of his border counties, and having defeated the in- 
 vaders, pursued them far into the country. During this 
 campaign his life was in some peril : while separated from 
 the main body of his troops, in a narrow defile among the 
 mountains, he fell into an ambush, and at the same time an 
 arrow, which was aimed at him from the heights above, 
 
 1 See Cottonian MSS. Julius, D. 
 
ADELICIA OP LOUVAINE. 177 
 
 struck him on the breast, but rebounded from his armor of 
 proof. Henry, who probably did not give his Cambrian foes 
 credit for that skill in archery for which his Norman fol- 
 lowers were famed, intimated his suspicions of treachery 
 among his own people by exclaiming, " By our Lord's death I 
 it was no Welsh hand that shot that arrow." ' This narrow 
 escape, or perhaps a wish of rejoining Adelicia at West- 
 minster, induced the king to conclude a peace with the 
 Welsh. A very brief season of domestic intercourse was, 
 however, permitted to the royal pair. Fulk earl of Anjou 
 having espoused his younger daughter Sybil to William Clito, 
 the earls of Mellent and Montfort, with a considerable party 
 of the baronage of Normandy, openly declared themselves 
 in favor of that prince, the heir of their lawful duke, Eobert 
 Courthose. 
 
 Henry I. was keeping the Easter festival, with his beauti- 
 ful young queen, at Winchester, when the news that Fulk 
 of Anjou had joined this formidable confederacy reached 
 him. He sailed for Normandy in April, 1123 ; and Adelicia 
 was left, as his former queen, Matilda of Scotland, had often 
 been before her, to hold her lonely courts during the pro- 
 tracted absence of her royal consort, and to exert herself 
 for the preservation of the internal peace of England, 
 while war or state policy detained the king in Normandy. 
 Adelicia, following the example of her popular predecessor 
 Matilda, "the good queen," in all that was deserving of 
 imitation, conducted herself in a manner calculated to win 
 the esteem and love of the nation, — ^using her queenly in- 
 fluence for the establishment of good order, religion, and 
 refinement, and the encouragement of learning and the arts. 
 
 When Henry had defeated his enemies at the battle of 
 Terroude, near Eouen, he sent for his young queen to come 
 to him. Adelicia obeyed the summons, and sailed for Nor- 
 mandy. She arrived in the midst of scenes of horror, for 
 Henry took a merciless vengeance on the revolted vassals 
 of Normandy who were so unfortunate as to fall into his 
 hands. His treatment of the luckless troubadour knight, 
 Luke de Barre,' though the circumstances are almost too 
 
 1 Chron. 'ffalli. ' Sismondi. 
 
178 ADELICIA OF LOUVAINB. 
 
 dreadful for repetition, bears too strongly on the manners 
 and customs of the twelfth century to be omitted. Luke de^^j,, 
 - ,^arre had, according to the testimony of Ordericus VTtalis, 
 be§fi' "Sn terms of the greatest familiarity with Henry Beau- 
 clerc in the days of their youth, but, from some cause, had 
 joined the revolt of the earl of Mellent in the late insuirection ; 
 and the said earl, and all the confederate peers allied against 
 Henry's government in Normandy, had been wonderfully 
 comforted and encouraged by the sirventes, or war-songs, of 
 Luke. These songs were provokingly satirical ; and, being 
 personally levelled against Henry, contained, we should sup- 
 pose, some passages which involved a betrayal of confidence, 
 for Henry was so bitterly incensed, that, forgetful of their 
 former intimacy, he barbarously condemned the luckless 
 poet to lose his eyes on a scaffold, by the hands of the 
 public executioner. This sentence was greatly lamented 
 by the court, for Luke de Barre was not only a pleasant and 
 jocose companion, but a gentleman of courage and honor. 
 
 The earl of Tlanders interceded with his royal kinsman 
 for the wretched victim.' "No, sir, no," replied Henry; 
 " for this man, being a wit, a bard, and a minstrel, forsooth ! 
 hath composed many ribald songs against me, and sung them 
 to raise the horse-laughs of mine enemies. Now it hath 
 pleased God to deliver him into mine hands, punished he 
 shall be, to deter others from the like petulance." The 
 sentence therefore took place, and the hapless poet died of 
 the wounds he received in struggling with the executioner. 
 The Provengal annalists, however, declare that the gallant 
 troubadour avoided the execution of Henry's sentence by 
 dashing his head against the wall, which caused his death.' 
 So much for the punishment of libels in the twelfth century ! 
 
 Queen Adelicia returned to England September, 1126, ac- 
 companied by king Henry and his daughter, the empress 
 Matilda, the heiress-presumptive of England, then a widow 
 in her twenty-fourth year. Matilda, after the funeral of 
 her august spouse, took possession of his imperial diadem, 
 which she brought to England, together with a treasure 
 which, in those days, was by some considered of even 
 
 1 Ordericus Vitalis. » Ibid. Sismondi. 
 
ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 179 
 
 greater importance, — the hand of St. James. Matilda was 
 reluctant to leave Germany, where she was splendidly- 
 dowered, and enjoyed a remarkable share of popularity. 
 The princes of the empire were so much charmed at her 
 prudent conduct and stately demeanor, that they entreated 
 the king, her father, to permit her to choose a second con- 
 sort from among their august body, promising to elect for 
 their emperor the person on whom her choice might fall' 
 
 King Henry, however, despairing of a male heir, as he 
 had been married to Adelicia six years, reclaimed his 
 widowed daughter from the admiring subjects of her late 
 consort, and carried her with him to England. Soon after 
 their arrival, Henry summoned a parliament for the purpose 
 of cau8ing_the empress Matilda to be acknowledged as the 
 — " '■ it cl y g'ss-presumptive't'o the crown. This was the first in- 
 stance that had occurred, since the consolidation of the 
 Heptarchy under one supreme head, of a female standing 
 in that important position with regard to the succession of 
 the English crown. There was, however, neither law nor 
 precept to forbid a female from holding the regal office, and 
 Henry failed not to set forth to the representatives of the 
 great body of the people, who had been summoned on this 
 important business, his daughter's descent from their ancient 
 line of sovereigns ; telling them, " That through her, who 
 was now his only heir, they should come to be governed 
 again by the royal English blood, if they would make oath 
 to secure to her, after his death, the succession as queen of 
 England, in case of his decease without a male heir." ' It 
 is, doubtless, on the authority of this remarkable passage in 
 Henry's speech that historians have called his first wife, 
 Matilda of Scotland, the heiress of the Saxon line. 
 
 The people of England joyfiilly acceded to Henry's prop- 
 osition, and the nobles and prelates of the Norman aristoc- 
 racy, assembled in council on this occasion, swore fealty to 
 the high and mighty lady Matilda as their future sovereign. / 
 Stephen, earl of Mortagne, the king's favorite nephew / 
 (being the third son of the Conqueror's fourth daughter, ! 
 
 \ 
 
 1 Gem. W. Malmesbury. Sir John Hayward. Speed. 
 
 2 Henry of Huntingdon. W. Malmesbury. Gem. 
 
180 ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 
 
 Adela countess of Blois), was the first who bent his knee in 
 
 homage to the daughter of his liege lord as the heiress of 
 
 England, and swore to maintain her righteous title to the 
 
 I throne of her royal father. Stephen was the handsomest 
 
 I man in Europe, and remarkable for his fine carriage and 
 
 I knightly prowess. He bore great sway in the councils of 
 
 ' his royal uncle, and was a general favorite of the nobles of 
 
 England and Normandy. It has been said, withal, that his 
 
 fine person and graceful manners made a deep impression 
 
 on the heart of the widowed heiress of England. 
 
 The royal family kept their Christmas this year at Wind- 
 sor,' at which time king Henry, in token of his esteem for 
 queen Adelicia, gave her the whole county of Salop. The 
 empress Matilda did not grace the festivities by her presence, 
 but remained in the deepest seclusion, " abiding continually," 
 says Matthew Paris, " in the chamber of Adelicia ;" by which 
 it appears that, notwithstanding her high rank and matronly 
 dignity as the widow of an emperor, the heiress of England 
 had no establishment of her own. This retirement, lasting 
 for several months, gave rise to mysterious rumors as to the 
 cause of her being hidden from the people, who had so 
 recently been required to swear fealty to her as their future 
 sovereign. By some it was said " that the king, her father, 
 suspected her of having accelerated the death of her late 
 husband, the emperor, or of causing him to be spirited away 
 from his palace." ' But that was evidently a groundless 
 surmise ; for W. Gemeticiensis, a contemporary chronicler, 
 bears testimony to " her prudent and gracious behavior to 
 her imperial spouse, which," he observes, " was one of the 
 
 ; ^ Saxon Annals. 
 
 V ' Ever since the miserable death of his unhappy father, Henry IV., the em- 
 
 ] peror Henry V. had been subject to great mental disquiet, from the remorse 
 
 which perpetually deprived him of rest. " One night he rose up from the side 
 
 ; of the empress, and taking his staff in hand, with naked feet he wandered forth 
 
 into the darkness, clad only in a woollen garment, and was never again seen in 
 
 his own palace." This wild tale is related by Hoveden, Giraldus, and Higden, 
 
 and various ancient manuscript chronicles, to say nothing of Trevisa, who adds, 
 
 /■ by way of sequel to the legend, that "the conscience-stricken emperor fled 
 
 f; to England, where at Westchester he became a hermit, changing his name to 
 
 J 'God's-oall,' or the called of God. He lived in daily penance for the apace of 
 
 ; ten years, and was buried in the cathedral church of St. Werburga the Virgin." 
 
ADELICIA OF LOOVAINE. 181 
 
 causes which won the esteem of the German princes, who 
 were urgent in their entreaties to her royal father for her 
 restoration." This Henry pertinaciously refused, repeating, 
 " that she was his only heir, and must dwell among her own 
 people.'' Yet, early in the following year, he again bestowed 
 her in marriage, without the consent of his subjects in Eng- 
 land, and decidedly against her own inclination, on a foreign 
 prince, whom she regarded with the most ineffable scorn as 
 her inferior in every point of view. 
 
 We have seen that, in her tender infancy, Matilda was 
 used as a political puppet by her parent to advance his own 
 interest, without the slightest consideration for her happi- 
 ness. Then the victim was led a smiling sacrifice to the 
 altar, unconscious of the joyless destiny to which parental 
 ambition had doomed her. Now the case was different ; it 
 was no meek infant, but a royal matron, who had shared 
 the imperial throne of a Kaiser, and received for years the 
 homage of vassal princes. Moreover, she whom Henry 
 endeavored to compel to an abhorrent marriage of state 
 possessed a mind as inflexible as his own. The disputes be- 
 tween the king and his daughter must have arisen to a very 
 serious height before he took the unpopular step of subject- 
 ing her to personal restraint, by confining her to the apart- 
 ments of his queen. Matthew Paris, indeed, labors to 
 convince us that there was nothing unreasonable in this 
 circumstance. " Where," says he, " should an empress live 
 rather than with a queen, a daughter than with a mother, 
 a fair lady, a widow and the heir of a great nation, than 
 where her person might be safest from danger, and her 
 conduct from suspicion ?" The historian, however, forgets 
 that Matilda was the step-daughter of the queen; that 
 Adelicia was not older than herself, and, from the acknowl- 
 edged gentleness of her disposition, unlikely to assume the 
 slightest maternal control over the haughty heiress of 
 England. Adelicia must have felt herself very delicately 
 situated in this business ; and it appears probable that she 
 acted as a mediator between the contending parties, con- 
 ducting herself rather as a loving sister than an ambitious 
 step-dame. The accomplished editor of the Howard Memo- 
 
182 ADELICIA OP LOUVAINE. 
 
 rials infers that a very tender friendship existed between 
 the empress Matilda and Adelicia through life, which prob- 
 ably had commenced before 'the fair maid of Brabant' 
 was selected from among the princesses of Europe to share 
 the crown of England with Henry I. ; for Matilda's imperial 
 spouse, the emperor Henry V., had been actively instru- 
 mental in assisting Godfrey Barbatus, the father of Adelicia, 
 in the recovery of Lower Lorraine, — an obligation which 
 the Louvaine princess certainly endeavored to repay to his 
 widow.' Adelicia's uncle, Wido of Louvaine, afterwards 
 pope Calixtus II., was at one period archbishop of Vienne, 
 and it is even possible that Henry's attention was first at- 
 tracted to the fair maid of Brabant at the court of his daugh- 
 ter ; and the previous intimacy between the ladies may , 
 account for the fact that the haughty Matilda lived on such 
 good terms with her step-mother, for Adelicia appears to • 
 have been the only person with whom she did not quarrel. ' 
 
 The prince to whom Henry I. had pledged the hand of 
 his perverse heiress was GeoflPrey Plantagenet, the eldest 
 son of his old antagonist, Fulk earl of Anjou, and brother 
 to the widowed princess who had been espoused to Matilda's 
 brother, William the AtheUng. Geoffrey had been the fa- 
 vorite companion of king Henry I. when on the continent. 
 His fine person, his elegant manners, great bravery, and, 
 above all, his learning, made his society very agreeable to a 
 monarch who still possessed these excellences in great 
 perfection.* Some of the French chroniclers declare this f 
 Geoffrey to be the first person that bore the name of Plan- 
 tagenet, from putting in his helmet a plume of the flowering 
 broom when he went to hunt in the woods. 
 
 Motives of policy inclined Henry to this alliance. Fulk 
 of Anjou, who had hitherto supported the claims of his 
 gallant young son-in-law, William Clito, to the dukedom, 
 was willing to abandon his cause, provided Henry would 
 marry Matilda to his heir. This Henry had engaged to do, 
 without the slightest attention to his daughter's feelings. 
 His favorite nephew, Stephen of Blois, is said to have 
 
 ' Howard Memorials. Chronicles of Brabant. 
 
 ' 1126 to 1127. Chron. de Normand. and Script. Rer. France. 
 
ADELICIA OF LOTJVAINE. 183 
 
 rendered himself only too dear to the imperial widow, 
 although at that time a married man. The ceremony of 
 betrothment between Geoffrey of Anjou and the reluctant 
 Matilda took place on Whit-Sunday, 1127, and she was, 
 after the festivities of Whitsuntide were over, conducted 
 into Normandy by her half-brother, Eobprt earl of Glouces- 
 ter, and Brian, son of Alan Fergeant, earl of Eiehmond, 
 with great pomp. 
 
 The feasts and pageants that attended her arrival in Kor- 
 mandy were prolonged during three weeks. On the first 
 day, heralds in grand costume went through the streets and 
 squares of Rouen, shouting at every crossway this singular 
 proclamation : — 
 
 "Thus saith King Henry! 
 
 " Let no man here present, whether native or foreigner, 
 rich or poor, high or low, warrior or rustic, be so bold as to 
 stay away from the royal rejoicings ; for whosoever shall 
 not take part in the games and diversions, shall be con- 
 sidered guilty of an offence to our lord the king." ' 
 
 King Henry had given positive commands to Matilda and 
 her illustrious escort that the nuptials should be solemnized 
 by the archbishop of Eouen immediately on her arrival ; '■' 
 but he was himself compelled to undertake a voyage to 
 Normandy, in August, to see the marriage concluded, which 
 did not take place till the 26th of that month;' from which 
 we may reasonably infer that the reluctant bride paid very 
 little attention to his directions. The affair was at length, 
 however, accomplished to Henry's satisfaction, more espe- 
 cially as Fulk of Anjou, being called to the throne of Jeru- 
 salem by the death of Baldwin II., his father-in-law, resigned 
 his patrimonial territories to his heir. Yet there were many 
 circumstances that rendered this alliance a fruitful source 
 of annoyance to Henry. The Anglo-Norman barons and 
 prelates were highly offended in the first place, that the 
 king should have presumed to marry the heiress of the realm 
 
 1 Brompton. Malmesbury. Script. Rer. France. 
 
 ' Saxon Annals. S. Dunelm. Malmesbury. Huntingdon. 
 
 ' Saxon Annals. 
 
184 ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 
 
 without consulting them on the subject ; and the English 
 were no less displeased at the open violence that had been 
 put on the inclinations of the descendant of their ancient 
 sovereigns in this foreign marriage. As for Matilda, it 
 should seem that she did not consider herself by any means 
 bound to practise the duty of obedience, or even of common 
 courtesy, to a husband who had thus been forced upon her 
 against her own will ; and while she exacted the most un- 
 qualified submissions from her luckless helpmate, she per- 
 petually wearied her father with complaints of his conduct. 
 
 Queen Adelicia was rejoined by king Henry in the au- 
 tumn, and they kept their Christmas together in London. 
 Early in the following spring, 1128, he was again compelled 
 to embark for Normandy, to defeat the enterprising designs 
 of his nephew, William Clito, who, having succeeded to the 
 earldom of Flanders, in right of his grandmother Matilda, 
 the wife of William the Conqueror, was enabled to assume 
 a more formidable attitude than he had yet done. But this 
 gallant and unfortunate prince met with his death in con- 
 sequence of a slight wound in the thumb, which he took in 
 disarming a mutinous soldier of his lance. He died six 
 days after,' in the monastery of St. Bertin, July 27th, 1128. 
 This formidable rival being now removed, Henry appeared 
 at the summit of his ambition, and was considered the 
 mightiest monarch of the West. He was the husband, 
 withal, of one of the most beautiful and amiable princesses 
 in Europe. 
 
 Whether the fair Adelicia loved her royal spouse, history 
 has not recorded ; but her conduct as a wife, a queen, and 
 even as a step-mother, was irreproachable. When all cir- 
 cumstances are considered, it can scarcely be imagined, 
 however, that her splendid marriage was productive of 
 happiness to the youthful wife of Henry I. To say nothing 
 of the disparity in years between this illustrious pair, the 
 morbid sorrow of which Henry was the perpetual prey after 
 
 1 His captive father, Robert Courthose, it is said, one morning surprised Iiis 
 attendants by weeping piteously, and exclaiming, *'My son is dead! my son is 
 dead \" and related, *' that he had in his dreams, that night, seen him mortally 
 wounded with a lance."— Orderious Yitalis. 
 
ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 185 
 
 the loss of his children in the ' white ship,' the irascibility 
 of temper to which he gave way in his old age, and his 
 bitter disappointment at the want of offspring from his 
 second marriage, must have been most distressing to the 
 feelings of his gentle consort. Then the stormy disputes 
 between Henry and his only daughter Matilda could not 
 have been otherwise than very painful to her. Whatever, 
 however, were the trials with which Adelicia had to contend, 
 she evidently supported them with silent magnanimity, and 
 at the same time endeavored to soothe and cheer the gloom 
 of her wayward lord by attracting to the court the most 
 distinguished poets and minstrels of the age, who repaid her 
 liberal patronage by celebrating her virtues and her charms. 
 Adelicia frequently attended her royal husband on his prog- 
 resses. Her presence was, doubtless, of medicinal influence 
 in those fearful hours when the pangs of troubled conscience 
 brought the visitations of an evil spirit upon Henry, and sleep 
 either forsook his pillow or brought visionary horrors in its 
 train. " In the year 1130, the king complained to Grimbald, 
 his Saxon physician, that he was sore disquieted of nights, 
 and that he seemed to see a great number of husbandmen 
 with their rustical tools stand about him, threatening him for 
 wrongs done against them. Sometimes he appeared to see 
 his knights and soldiers threatening him ; which sight so 
 feared him in his sleep, that ofttimes he rose undrest out 
 of his bed, took weapon in hand, and sought to kill them he 
 could not find. Grimbald, his physician, being a notably 
 wise man, expounded his dreams by true conjecture, and 
 willed him to reform himself by alms and prayer, as Nebu- 
 chadnezzar did by the counsel of Daniel." ' It is probable 
 that the unfortunate troubadour knight, Luke de Barre, was 
 not forgotten by the conscience-stricken monarch, though 
 historians have not recorded that his mangled form was 
 among the ghastly dramatis personce that, in his latter years, 
 made king Henry's nights horrible. Malmesbury tells us, 
 moreover, that Henry had an inveterate habit of snoring : 
 " his sleep was heavy, but interrupted with loud and per- 
 petual snoring." Sergei adds, that he was so haunted with 
 
 I Stfliire. H. Huntingdon. 
 
186 ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 
 
 the fear of assassination, that he frequently changed his bed, 
 increased his guards, and caused a sword and shield to be 
 constantly placed near him at night, — no enviable state of 
 companionship, we should imagine, for the young and inno- 
 cent being whose fate was indissolubly linked with his. It 
 must have been a relief at all times to Adelicia when her 
 royal husband's presence was required in Normandy. 
 
 On the death of Adelicia's uncle, pope Calixtus II., a dis- 
 pute occurring in the election of two rival pontiffs as suc- 
 cessors to the papal chair, Henry proceeded to the continent 
 in the year 1130, in the hope of reaping some political ad- 
 vantage from the candidate whose cause he espoused. His 
 arrangements were perfectly satisfactory as to that matter, 
 but he was to the last degree harassed by the quarrels be- 
 tween his daughter and her unbeloved spouse, Geoffrey of 
 Anjou. After he had thrice adjusted their differences, Ma^ 
 tilda, on some fresh offence which she either gave or took, 
 abjured her husband's company, departed from his court, 
 and claimed the protection of the king her father, with whom 
 she once more returned to England,' having, by the eloquence 
 of tears and complaints, succeeded in exciting his indigna- 
 tion against her husband, and persuading him that she was' 
 an injured person. The oath of fealty to Matilda, as the 
 heiress of England, was again renewed by the general estates 
 of the nation at Northampton, September, 1131.'' The count 
 of Anjou then sent an humble entreaty to his haughty con- 
 sort to return to. him j the king and parliament seconded 
 his request, and -all due submissions having been made by 
 Geofirey, Matilda was at length .induced to obey him.' 
 
 ' Roger Hoveden. H. Huntingdon. 
 
 ' Malmesbury. H. Huntingdon. 
 
 ' A passage from Mezerai casts some light on the separation that took place 
 between the widowed empress and her new spouse. After the nuptials of this 
 pair, a monk came to Matilda, and declared that her late lord, the emperor 
 Henry, had not died at Utrecht, as she and all the world supposed, but that he 
 finished his days as a servant in an hospital, which severe penance he had sworn 
 to inflict on himself for his heavy sins. When dying at Angers, the disguised 
 emperor discovered himself to this monk, his confessor, who came to Matilda 
 with the news. In conclusion, it is said the empress attended the death-bed 
 of Henry V., and recognized and acknowledged him as the emperor, her first 
 husband. •■■ ' 
 
f , ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 187 
 
 The following year was remarkable for a destructive fire, 
 which consumed the greatest part of London ; ' but soon after 
 this national calamity, the joyful news that the empress 
 Matilda had given birth to a prince' diverted the attention 
 of the royal family from the contemplation of this misfor- 
 tune, and east the last gleam of brightness on the declining 
 years of the king. The young prince was named Henry, 
 after his royal grandfather, the king of England. The 
 Normans called him Fitz-Bmpress, but king Henry proudly 
 styled the boy Fitz-Conqueror, in token of his illustrious 
 descent from the mightiest monarch of the line." 
 
 King Henry summoned his last parliament in 1133, for 
 the purpose of causing this precious child to be included in 
 the oath of fealty, by which the succession to the throne 
 was for the third time secured to his daughter, the empress 
 Matilda. If queen'^A-delieia had brought him a son, after 
 these repeated acts in favor of his daughter (by a princess 
 whom the majority of the people regarded as the heiress of 
 the royal English line), a civil war respecting the succession 
 m^ust have occurred. The childless state of the beautiful 
 young queen, though so deeply lamented by her royal hus- 
 band, was one of the causes of the amity and confidence that 
 subsisted bct'veen her and her haughty step-daughter. 
 
 Towards the latter end of this summer, king Henry em- 
 barked on his last voyage for Normandy. The day was 
 remarkable for a total eclipse of the sun, accompanied with 
 storms and violent commotions of the deep.' It was so dark, 
 say the annalists of that era, " that on board the royal ship 
 no man might see another's face for some hours." The 
 eclipse was followed by an earthquake ; and these two phe- 
 nomena were, according to the spirit of the age, regarded as 
 portents of horror and woe, and it was predicted that the 
 king would never return from Normandy.' On a former 
 occasion, when Henry had embarked for England, in June, 
 1131, he was so dismayed by the bursting of a water-spout 
 over the vessel, and the fury of the wind and waves, that, 
 believing his last hour was at hand, he made a penitent 
 
 1 H. Huntingdon. ' R. Diceto. M. Paris. ^ M. Westminster. 
 
 * Saxon Annals. * W. Malmesbury. 
 
188 ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 
 
 acknowledgment of his sins, promising to lead a new life if 
 it should please God to preserve him from the peril of death, 
 and, above all, he vowed to repeal the oppressive impost of 
 ' danegelt' for seven years, if he were permitted to reach 
 the English shore in safety.^ From this incident we may 
 infer that Henry I. was by no means impressed with his 
 brother Eufus's bold idea, of the security of a king of Eng- 
 land from a watery grave ; but the catastrophe of his chil- 
 dren in the fatal ' white ship' had no doubt some eflfect on 
 his mind during these perils on the deep. 
 
 The summer of 1133 he spent in Normandy, in feasts and 
 rejoicings for the birth of his infant grandson. That event 
 was, however, only the precursor of fresh dissensions be- 
 tween that ill-assorted pair^the empress Matilda and her 
 husband Geoffrey Plantagenet. Her late visit to England 
 had renewed the scandalous reports respecting her partial- 
 ity for her cousin, Stephen of Blois ; while the birth of a son 
 in the sixth year of her marriage, proved anything but a 
 bond of union between her and her consort." 
 
 There is no reason to suppose that Adelicia was with the 
 king her husband at the time of his death, which took place 
 in Normandy, in the year 1135, at the castle of Lyons, near 
 Eouen, a place in which he much delighted. It is said, that 
 having over-fatigued himself in hunting in the forest of 
 Lyons, he returned much heated, and, contrary to the advice 
 of his courtiers and physicians, made too full a meal on a 
 dish of stewed lampreys, his favorite food, which brought on 
 a violent fit of indigestion (called by the chroniclers a sur- 
 feit), ending in a fever, of which he died, after an illness of 
 seven days, at midnight, December 1st, in the sixty-seventh 
 year of his age. He appears to have been perfectly con- 
 scious of his approaching dissolution, for he gave particular 
 directions respecting his obsequies to his natural son, Eobert 
 earl of Gloucester, whom he charged to take 60,000 marks 
 out of his treasure-chest at Falaise, for the expenses of his 
 funeral and the payment of his mercenary troops.' He 
 solemnly bequeathed his dominions to his daughter the em- 
 press, not without some indignant mention of her luckless 
 
 1 Saxon Annals. ' Saxon Chronicle. ' Orderious Vitalis. W. Malmeebury. 
 
ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 189 
 
 spouse, Geoffrey of Anjou, his former eleve and bel ami. He 
 absolutely excluded him from any share in his bequests, and 
 ■with much earnestness constituted his beloved son, earl 
 Eobert, the protector of his daughter's rights. 
 
 Eobert of Gloucester gives the following serio-comic ac- 
 count of the royal wilfulness, in partaking of the interdicted 
 food which caused his death : — 
 
 " When he came home, he willed him a lamprey to eat, 
 Though his leeches him forbade, for it was a feeble meat; 
 But he would not then believe, for he loved it well enow, 
 And ate in evil case, for the lamprey it him slew j 
 For right soon after it into anguish him drew. 
 And he died for his lamprey, unto his own woe." 
 
 The noble earls who surrounded the death-bed of king 
 Henry, and listened to his last instructions respecting his 
 funeral, attended his remains from the town of St. Denis le 
 Torment (where he breathed his last) to Eouen ; and when 
 they entered that city, they reverently bore the bier, on 
 which the royal corpse was laid, on their shoulders by turns.' 
 
 Two illuminated portraits of Henry I. are in existence : 
 both represent him as advanced in life, and in a melancholy 
 attitude, — supposed to be after the loss of his children. His 
 face is handsome, with high and regular features, his hair 
 curling, but not long. His figure is emaciated in one ; he is 
 clad in a very close dress, with his regal mantle folded about 
 him ; his shoe and stocking all of a piece, and the toe pointed ; 
 his crown is ornamented with three trefoils ; his sceptre is a 
 staff with an ornamented head ; he is seated on a stone bench, 
 carved in an architectural design. He is represented in the 
 other in therobes he wore at the bridal coronation of Adelicia.' 
 
 * Henry of Huntingdon. 
 
 ' Tliese portraits exactly agree with the descriptions of the costume from the 
 monastic chronicles : — " They wore close breeches and stockings, all of a piece, 
 made of fine cloth." The pointed shoes were brought in by William Kufus, but 
 were first invented by Folque le Rechin (whose surname means ' the quarreller*) 
 count of Anjou, to hide his corns and bunions. The queen and women of rank 
 wore gowns and mantles trailing on the ground. The married women wore an 
 additional robe over the gown, not unlike the sacerdotal garment ; to the girdle 
 a large pouch or purse was suspended, called an aumonQre. The men wore 
 their hair in long curls, which provoked the wrath of popular preachers ; the 
 married women braided theirs very closely to the side of the face, or hid it. 
 
190 ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 
 
 Henry received from his subjects the title of ' the Lion 
 of Justice.' This appellation was drawn from the prophe- 
 cies of Merlin, then very popular in England. On the ac- 
 cession of every sovereign to the English throne, all his 
 subjects consulted these rigmaroles, as naturally as we con- 
 sult an almanac to know when there is a new moon. " After 
 two dragons,'' says Merlin, " the lion of Justice shall come, 
 at whose roaring the Gallic towers and island serpents shall 
 tremble." 
 
 This ' lion of Justice' certainly suffered no one to break 
 the laws but himself. If he is accountable for the villanies 
 of his purveyors, his standard of justice was not very high : 
 " The king's servants, and a multitude following the royal 
 retinue, took and spoiled everything the way the king went, 
 there being no discipline or good order taken.' When they 
 could not consume what they found in the house they had 
 broken into, they made the owners carry it to market and 
 sell it for them ; they burned the provisions, or washed their 
 horses' feet with the ale or mead, or poured the drink on the 
 ground, or otherwise wasted it, so that every one hearing 
 of the king's coming would run away from their houses." 
 Whenever Henry I. was under any apprehensions from his 
 brother Eobert, he regulated his household somewhat better, 
 and kept the lawlessness of his purveyors within bounds.'' 
 
 Henry carried the art of dissimulation to such a pitch, 
 that his grand justiciary started when he heard the king 
 had praised him, and exclaimed, " God defend me ! The 
 king praises no one but him whom he means to destroy." ' 
 The result proved the deep knowledge which the minister 
 had of his royal master's character, as Henry of Hunting- 
 don, his archdeacon, details at length. 
 
 The removal of Henry's body for interment was delayed 
 for several weeks by tempestuous weather ; but the seas be- 
 coming calmer after Christmas, it was put on shipboard, 
 and safely transported to England. His obsequies were 
 celebrated with great magnificence in the abbey-church of 
 Eeading, which he had built and endowed for that purpose. 
 His nephew and successor, Stephen, assisted at the funeral. 
 
 1 Eadmer. 2 Malmesbury. -' Henry of Huntingdon. 
 
ADBLICIA OF LOUVAINE. 191 
 
 Queen Adelieia gave one hundred shillings annually out of 
 her wharf at London, called Queenhythe, for the expenses 
 of a lamp to burn perpetually before his tomb. 
 
 On the first anniversary of king Henry's death, the royal 
 widow, accompanied by her brother Josceline of Louvaine, 
 and attended by her almoners, chaplains, and the ofiicers 
 of her household, entered the abbey-church of Eeading, 
 where, being received with all due ceremonials of respect 
 by a numerous train of abbots, priors, and priests, she pro- 
 ceeded in solemn pomp up the aisle, supported by the bishops 
 of Salisbury and "Worcester, and gave public testimonial of 
 her regard for the memory of her late consort, by placing 
 with her own hand a rich pall on the altar, in tolien that she 
 made an oblation to God and the monks of St. Mary, Eead- 
 ing, of her manor of Eastone,^ in Hertfordshire (formerly 
 
 ' The original charter is still in excellent preservation, in the possession of 
 Abel Smith, esquire, M.P. Having been favored with a translation of this 
 curious document, through the kindness of my learned friend, Rouge Croix, I 
 subjoin it, in illustration of the customs of that era, and as affording evidence of 
 the disputed fact, that Josceline of Louvaine joined his royal sister in England : — 
 
 "QuEEif Adelid's Charter. 
 " Be it known to all the faithful of Holy Church of all England and Nor- 
 mandy, that I, queen Adelidis, wife of the most noble king Henry, and daughter 
 of Godefry duke of Lorraine, have granted and given forever to God and the 
 church of St, Mary of Reading, for the health and redemption of the soul of my 
 lord the most noble king Henry, and of mine own ; and also for the health of 
 my lord Stephen, by the grace of God king of the English, and of queen Maud 
 his wife, and all the offspring of the most noble king Henry, and of my father 
 and mother and relations, as well living as dead, my manor of Eaatone, which my 
 lord the most noble king Henry gave to me as his queen and wife, in Hertford- 
 shire, with all its appurtenances, to be held as freely and quietly as ever I myself 
 held it best in demesne by the gift of my lord the most noble king Henry ; that 
 is, with sac and see, and toll and team, and infangthef with the church and 
 the demesne land, with men free and villains, with wood and plain, with meadow 
 and pasture, with waters and mills, with roads and ways, with all the customs 
 and liberties with which my lord held it in demesne, and gave it to me. And 
 this gift I have made on the first anniversary of my lord the most noble king 
 Henry in the same church, by the offering of a pall which I placed on the altar, 
 in presence of the subscribed ; that is, of Roger bishop of Salisbury, Simon bishop 
 of Worcester, Ingulf abbot of Abingdon, Walter abbot of Eynesham, Bernard 
 abbot of St. Michael's mount, Warine prior of Worcester, Nicholas prior of St. 
 Martin's of Battle, Ralf prior of Osney, Herman chaplain to the queen, master 
 Serlo the queen's clerk, Adam and Robin Fitzwalter, canons of Waltham, Ralf, 
 Theobald, and Roger, clerks of the bishop of Salisbury, Simon, nephew of the 
 
192 ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 
 
 given to her by her said lord king Henry), in order to obtain 
 their prayers for the benefit of his soul, her own soul, the 
 souls of her father and mother, and also for the health of 
 the reigning sovereign king Stephen, and queen Maud his 
 wife. By a second charter, commencing " Ego Adalid 
 regina," she also gave the manor of Stanton Harcourt, in 
 Oxfordshire, etc., etc., for the expenses of a solemn service 
 for the repose of her royal husband's soul.' 
 
 What degree of happiness Adelicia the Fair enjoyed 
 during the fifteen years of queenly splendor which she 
 passed as the consort of Henry Beauclerc, no surviving 
 records tell ; but that she was very proud of his achieve- 
 ments and brilliant talents, we have the testimony of the 
 poetical chronicler who continued the history of Brut, from 
 William the Conqueror through the reign of William Eufus. 
 It appears, moreover, that the royal dowager employed her- 
 self during her widowhood in collecting materials for the 
 history of her mighty lord ; for Gaimar, the author of the 
 History of the Angles, observes, " that if he had chosen to 
 have written of king Henry, he had a thousand things to 
 say, which the troubadour called David, employed by queen 
 Adelicia, knew nought about ; neither had he written, nor 
 was the Louvaine queen herself in possession of them." If 
 the collection of queen Adelicia should ever be brought to 
 light, it would no doubt afford a curious specimen of the 
 biographical powers of the illustrious widow and her assist- 
 ant, troubadour David, whose name has only been rescued 
 from oblivion by the jealousy of a disappointed rival in the 
 art of historical poetry. 
 
 Adelicia is much eulogized in the songs of the poets she 
 patronized. A third trouvere or troubadour, in his dedication 
 of the wondrous voyage of St. Brandon, a sort of spiritual 
 
 bishop of Worcester, Gervase and Bertram, clerks of the bishop of Worcester, 
 Josceline, brother to the same queen, Peverel of Beauchamp, Milo of Beauchamp, 
 Stephen of Beauchamp, Hugo of Cramonville, Maurice of Windsor and his 
 brother Reginald, Geoffrey of Tresgoz, Robert of Tresgoz, John de Falaise, 
 Robert of Calz, Franco of Bruscella, Gozo the queen's constable, Engelbert of 
 the hall, William of Harfleot, Vi^illiam of Berokeley, Walter of Dene, Baldwin 
 Despenser, Vical thewaterman, Warineof Blancbuisson. AtBading [Reading]." 
 • Howard Memorials. 
 
ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 193 
 
 Sindbad, praises her for the good laws she had instituted. 
 But the second queen-consort of Henry I. could have had 
 little opportunity for the exercise of her legislatorial talents, 
 save in the gentle influence of her refined and virtuous ex- 
 ample, and the establishment of civilizing etiquette. It was 
 one of Adelicia's best points, that she sedulously trod in the 
 steps of her popular predecessor, Matilda of Scotland, and 
 thus won the following elegant tribute from the author of 
 St. Brandon's voyage : — 
 
 ** Lady Adelais, who queen i 
 By the grace of heaven hath been 
 Y-crowned, — who this land hath blest 
 With peace and wholesome laws and rest, 
 Both by king Henry's stalwart might, 
 And by thy counsels mild and right. 
 For this their holy benisons, 
 May the apostles shed, each one, 
 A thousand thousandfold on thee ! 
 And since thy mild command hath won me. 
 To turn this goodly history 
 Into romaunt, and carefully 
 To write it out, and soothly tell 
 What to St. Brandon erst befell,— 
 At thy command I undertake 
 The task right gladly." 
 
 The poem is full of beauty, and reflects no little credit on the 
 taste of the queen. 
 
 During the life of the king her husband, Adelicia had 
 founded and endowed the hospital and conventual establish- 
 ment of St. Giles, near Wilton ; ' and, according to a Wiltshire 
 tradition, she resided there during some part of her widow- 
 hood, in the house which is still called by her name.' She 
 was likewise dowered by her late husband, king Henry, in 
 the fair domain of Arundel castle and its rich dependencies, 
 the forfeit inheritance* of the brutal Eobert, earl of Belesme ; 
 and here, no doubt, the royal widow held her state at the 
 
 ' Cottonian MSS. Vespasian, b. x. Such is the reference for the original, but 
 we have gladly availed ourselves of the editorial labors of a learned contributor 
 to Blackwood's Magazine, 1836, p. 807. 
 
 ' Howard Memorials. ' Sir Richard Hoare's Modern Wiltshire. 
 
 * Tiemey's Arundel. 
 
194 ADELICIA OP LOUVAINE. 
 
 expiration of the first year of cloistered seclusion after the 
 death of her illustrious spouse. 
 
 Camden thus describes the spot, which the magnificent 
 taste of the late duke of Norfolk has, within the last century, 
 rendered one of the most splendid objects of attraction in 
 England : — " Beyond Selsey, the shore breaks, and makes 
 way for a river that runs out of St. Leonard's forest, and 
 then by Arundel, seated on a hill, over a vale of the river 
 Arun." At this Saxon castle, built and strengthened on the 
 hill above the waters, Adelicia was residing when she con- 
 sented to become the wife of WiUiam de Albini ' of the Strong 
 Hand,' the lord of Buckenham in Norfolk, and one of the 
 most chivalrous peers in Europe. According to Mr. Howard's 
 computation, Adelicia was in her thirty-second year at the 
 time of king Henry's death, in the very pride of her beauty ; 
 and she contracted her second marriage in the third year of 
 her widowhood, a.d. 1138.' 
 
 Her second spouse, William de Albini with the Strong 
 Arm, was the son of William de Albini, who was called Pin- 
 cerna,' being the chief butler or cup-bearer of the duchy of 
 Normandy. William the Conqueror appointed him to the 
 same oflSce in England, at his coronation in Wesminister 
 abbey ; which honor has descended by hereditary custom to 
 the duke of Norfolk, his rightful representative and heir ; , 
 and when there is a coronation-banquet, the golden cup, out f 
 of which the sovereign drinks to the healflTSf "Eis or her t 
 loving subjects, becomes his perquisite.' It appears that ^ 
 Adelicia and AtbtHFwWB^fflaficed some time previous to i 
 their marriage ; for when he won the prize at the tourna- 
 ment held at Bourges in 1137, in honor of the nuptials of 
 Louis VII. of Prance and Eleanora of Aquitaine, Adelicia or 
 Adelaide, the gay queen-dowager of Prance, fell passionately 
 in love with him, and wooed him to become her husband ; 
 but he replied, " that his troth was pledged to Adelicia, the 
 queen of England." * 
 
 Although it may be considered somewhat remarkable that 
 two queen-dowagers of similar names should have fixed their 
 affections on the same gentleman, there is every reason to 
 
 ' Howard Memorials. ' Ibid. ' Ibid. * Ibid. Dugdale. 
 
ADELICIA OP LOUVAINE. 195 
 
 believe that such was the fact ; but the marvellous legend bo 
 gravely related by Dugdale,' containing the sequel of the tale, 
 namely, the unlady-like conduct of the rejected dowager of -. 
 France, in pushing the strong-handed Albini into a cave in -* 
 her garden, where she had secreted a fierce lion to become / 
 the minister^ of her jealous vengeance, together with the I 
 knight's redoubtable exploit in tearing out the lion's heart, \ 
 which he must have found conveniently situated at the bot- 
 tom of his throat (a place where no anatomist would have 
 thought of feeling for it), must be regarded as one of the 
 popular romances of the age of chivalry. We have seen 
 another version of the story, in which the hero is said to 
 have deprived the lion, not of his heart, but his tongue ; and i^ 
 this is doubtless the tradition relating to "William of the 
 Strong Hand, since the Albini lion on the ancient armorial 
 bearings of that house is tongueless, and is, by the bye, one 
 of the most good-tempered-looking beasts ever seen. "' 
 
 Eomance and ideality out of the question, "William de 
 Albini was not only a knight sans peur et sans reproche, stout 
 in combat, and constant in loyalty and love, but history 
 proves him to have been one of the greatest and best men 
 of that age. His virtues and talents sufficiently justified the 
 widow of the mighty sovereign of England and Normandy 
 in bestowing her hand upon him ; nor was Adelicia's second 
 marriage in the slightest degree ofi'ensive to the subjects of 
 her late husband, or considered derogatory to the dignity of 
 a queen-dowager of England. Adelicia, by her union with , 
 Albini, conveyed to him a life-interest in her rich dowry of i; 
 Arundel, and he accordingly assumed the title of earl of 1 
 Arundel, in her right, as the possessor of Arundel castle.' '^ 
 It was at this feudal fortress, on the then solitary coast of | 
 Sussex, that the royal beauty, who had for fifteen years i 
 presided over the splendid court of Henry Beauclerc, volun- 
 tarily resided with her second husband — the husband, doubt- 
 less, of her heart — in the peaceful obscurity of domestic 
 happiness, far remote from the scenes of her former great- 
 ness. 
 
 Adelicia's wisdom in avoiding all the snares of party, by 
 
 1 Bugdale's Baronage. ' Howard Memorials. Tierney's Hist. Arundel. 
 
196 ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 
 
 retiring from j)iiblie life at a period so full of perilous excite- 
 ment as the early part of Stephen's reign, cannot be disputed. 
 Her gentle disposition, her good taste, and feminine feelings 
 fitted her for the enjoyments of private life, and she made 
 them her choice. There was, however, nothing of a selfish 
 character in the conduct of the royal matron in declining to 
 exert such influence as she possessed in advocating the claims 
 of her step-daughter, Matilda, to the throne of England. 
 As a queen-dowager, Adelicia had no voice in the choice of 
 a sovereign ; as a female, she would have departed from her 
 province had she intermeddled with intrigues of state, even 
 for the purpose of assisting the lawful heir to the crown. 
 She left the question to be decided by the peers and people 
 of England, and as they did not oppose the coronation of 
 Stephen, she had no pretence for interfering ; but she never 
 sanctioned the usurpation of the successful rival of her 
 step-daughter's right, by appearing at his court. And when 
 the empress Matilda landed in England to dispute the crown 
 with Stephen, the gates of Arundel castle were thrown open, 
 to receive her and her train, by the royal Adelicia and her 
 high-minded husband, Albini.' It was in the year 1139 
 when this perilous guest claimed the hospitality, and finally 
 the protection, of the noble pair, whose wedded happiness 
 had been rendered more perfect by the birth of a son, 
 probably very little before that period, for it was only in the 
 second year of their marriage. And she, over whose barren- 
 ness, as the consort of the mightiest monarch of the West, 
 both sovereign and people had lamented for nearly fifteen 
 years, became, when the wife of a subject, the mother of a 
 numerous progeny, the ancestress of an illustrious line of 
 English nobles, in whose veins her royal blood has been 
 preserved in uninterrupted course to the present day. 
 
 According to Malmesbury, and many other historians, the 
 empress Matilda was only attended by her brother, the earl 
 of Gloucester, and a hundred and forty followers, when 
 she landed at Portsmouth in the latter end of September. 
 Grervase and Brompton aver that she came with a numerous 
 army ; but the general bearings of history prove that this 
 
 1 Malmesbury. Speed. Rapin. 
 
ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 197 
 
 was not the fact, since Matilda was evidently in a state of 
 absolute peril when her generous step-mother afforded her 
 an asylum within the walls of Arundel castle ; for we find 
 that her devoted friend and brother, Eobert earl of Glouces- 
 ter, when he saw that she was honorably received there, 
 considered her in a place of safety, and, attended by only 
 twelve persons, proceeded to Bristol. 
 
 No sooner was Stephen informed that the empress Matilda 
 was in Arundel castle, than he raised the siege of Marlbor- 
 ough, and commenced a rapid march towards Arundel, in 
 order to attack her in her retreat. The spirit with which 
 he pushed his operations alarmed the royal ladies.' Adelicia 
 dreaded the destruction of her castle, the loss of her beloved 
 husband, and the breaking up of all the domestic happiness 
 she had enjoyed since her retirement from public life. The 
 empress Matilda suffered some apprehension, lest her gentle 
 step-mother should be induced to deliver her into the hands 
 of her foe. There was, however, no less firmness than gentle- 
 ness in the character of AdeHcia ; and the moment Stephen 
 approached her walls, she sent messengers to entreat his 
 forbearance, assuring him " that she had admitted Matilda, 
 not as his enemy, but as her daughter-in-law and early 
 friend, who had claimed her hospitality, which respect for 
 the memory of her late royal lord, king Henry, forbade her 
 to refuse; and these considerations would compel her to 
 protect her imperial guest while she remained beneath the 
 shelter of her roof ^ That if he came in hostile array against 
 her castle of Arundel with intent to make Matilda his pris- 
 oner, she must frankly say she was resolved to defend her 
 to the last extremity, not only because she was the daughter 
 of her late dear lord, king Henry, but as the widow of the 
 emperor Henry and her guest ;" and she besought Stephen, 
 " by aU the laws of courtesy and the ties of kindred, not to 
 place her in such a painful strait as to compel her to do any- 
 thing against her conscience." In conclusion, she requested, 
 with much earnestness, " that Matilda might be allowed to 
 leave the castle, and retire to her brother." Stephen acceded 
 
 ' Gervase. M. Paris. H. Huntingdon. 
 ' Gervase. Malmesbury. Rapin. 
 
198 ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 
 
 to the proposal, the siege was raised, and the empress pro- 
 ceeded to join her adherents at Bristol. 
 
 We are inclined to regard Stephen's courteous compliance 
 with the somewhat unreasonable prayer of the queen-dow- 
 ager as a proof of the high respect in which she was held, 
 and the great influence over the minds of her royal hus- 
 band's kindred which her virtues and winning qualities had 
 obtained while she wore the crown-matrimonial of England. 
 William of Malmesbury, the only writer who speaks un- 
 kiadly of Adelicia, intimates that a suspicion of treachery 
 on her part caused the empress Matilda to quit Arundel ; 
 "for," says he, "her mother-in-law, through female incon- 
 stancy, had broken the faith she had repeatedly pledged by 
 messages sent into Normandy." It is scarcely probable that 
 Adelicia, who took the utmost care to maintain a strict neu- 
 trality at this embarrassing crisis, had ever used any flatter- 
 ing professions to persuade the empress Matilda to assert 
 her claims to the throne of England. Her sole offence ap- 
 pears to have been inflexible determination not to engage 
 herself in the struggle by espousing her imperial step- 
 daughter's cause. Our chronicler, whose book is dedicated 
 to his patron and pupil the earl of Grloucester, gives of 
 course a prejudiced view of conduct which, however politic, 
 was opposed to the interests of their party. Adelicia con- 
 ducted herself with equal prudence and magnanimity in 
 the defence and deliverance of her step-daughter, exhibiting' 
 a very laudable mixture of the wisdom of the serpent with 
 the innocence of the dove and the courage of the lion. The 
 lion was the cognizance of the royal house of Louvaine ; ■ 
 and Mr. Howard is of opinion that this proud bearing was 
 assumed by the family of Albini in token of descent from 
 ' the fair maid of Brabant,' ^ rather than with any reference 
 to the fabled exploit of her second husband, related in Dug- 
 dale's Baronage. A grateful remembrance of the generous 
 conduct of Stephen, in all probability, withheld AdeHcia and 
 Albini from taking part with the empress Matilda against 
 him in the long and disastrous civil war which desolated 
 the ravaged plains of England with kindred blood during 
 
 ^ Howard Memorials. 
 
ADELICIA OP LOUVAINE. 199 
 
 SO many years of that inauspicious reign. They appear to 
 have maintained a strict neutrality, and to have preserved 
 their vassals and neighbors from the evils attendant upon 
 the contest between the empress and the king. 
 
 Adelicia, after her happy marriage with the husband of 
 her choice, was not forgetful of the respect which she con- 
 sidered due to the memory of her late royal lord, king 
 Henry ; for, by a third charter, she granted to his favor- 
 ite abbey of Eeading the church of Berkeley-Harness, in 
 Gloucestershire,' with suitable endowments, " to pray for the 
 soul of king Henry, and duke Godfrey her father ; and also 
 for the health of her present lord," whom she styles " Wil- 
 liam earl of Chichester, and for her own health, and the 
 health of her children." Thus we observe that this amiable 
 princess unites the departed objects of her veneration in the 
 devotional oflSces which she fondly caused the monks of 
 Eeading to offer up for the welfare of her living husband, 
 her beloved children, and herself To her third son, Adeli- 
 cia gave the name of her deceased lord, king Henry. Her 
 fourth was named Godfrey, after her father and elder 
 brother, the reigning duke of Brabant. 
 
 Adelicia chiefly resided at Arundel castle after her mar- 
 riage with William de Albini, but there is also traditional 
 evidence that she occasionally lived with him in the noble 
 feudal castle which he built, after his marriage with her, at 
 Buckenham in Norfolk. It is still designated in that county 
 as New Buckenham, though the mound, part of the moat, 
 and a few mouldering fragments of the walls, are all that 
 remain of the once stately hall that was at times graced 
 with the dowager-court of Alix la Belle. 
 
 The priory of St. Bartholomew, likewise called ' the priory 
 of the Causeway,' in the parish of Lyminster, near Arundel, 
 was established by queen Adelicia, after her marriage with 
 William de Albini, as a convent of Augustiuian canons.' It 
 was situated at the foot of the hiU which overlooks the town 
 from the south side of the river. The number of inmates 
 appears originally to have been limited by the royal foun- 
 
 1 Monasticon, charter ix. Howard Memorials. 
 ' Dugdale'B Monasticon, lib. epist. B, vol. xviii. 
 
200 ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 
 
 dress to two persons, whose principal business was to take 
 charge of the bridge, and to preserve the passage of the river. 
 All her gifts and charters were solemnly confirmed by her 
 husband, William Albini, who appears to have cherished the 
 deepest respect for his royal spouse, always speaking of her 
 as ' eximia regina,' — that is, inestimable or surpassingly excel- 
 lent queen.' We find, from the Monasticon, that Adelicia 
 gave in trust to the bishop of Chichester certain lands in 
 Arundel, to provide salaries for the payment of two chaplains 
 to celebrate divine service in that castle. The last recorded 
 act of Adelicia was the grant of the prebend of West Dean 
 to the cathedral of Chichester, in 1150. 
 
 In the year 1149, a younger brother of Adelicia, Henry of 
 Louvaine, was professed a monk in the monastery of AiHig- 
 ham, near Alost in Flanders, which had been founded by their 
 father Godfrey and his brother Henry of Louvaine ; and soon 
 after, the royal Adelicia herself,^ stimulated no doubt by his 
 example, withdrew not only from the pomps and parade of 
 earthly grandeur, but from the endearments of her adoring 
 husband and youthful progeny, and, crossing the sea, retired 
 to the nunnery in the same foundation, where she ended her 
 days,' and was likewise buried.* Mr. Howard, in his inter- 
 esting sketch of the life of his royal ancestress, states it to 
 be his opinion that Adelicia did not take this important step 
 without the full consent of her husband. Strange as it ap- 
 pears to us, that any one who was at the very summit of 
 earthly felicity should have broken through such fond ties of 
 conjugal and maternal love as those by which Adelicia was 
 surrounded to bury herself in cloistered seclusion, there is 
 indubitable evidence that such was the fact. 
 
 Sanderus, in his account of the abbeys and churches of 
 Brabant, relates that " Fulgentius, the abbot of Affligham, 
 visited queen Adelicia at the court of her royal husband, 
 Henry I., where he was received with especial honors.'' The 
 same author expressly states that Adelicia died in the con- 
 vent of Affligham, and was interred there on the 9th of the 
 calends of April. He does not give the date of the year. 
 
 1 Howard Memorials. « Buknet, Trophges du Brabant. 
 
 ' Ihid. * Sanderus, Abbeys and Churches in Brabant. 
 
ADELICIA OP LOUVAINE. 201 
 
 From the mortuary of the abbey he quotes the following 
 Latin record of the death of this queen : — 
 
 " Aleidem genuit oum barba dux GodefreduB, 
 Qui fuit Anglorum regina piissima morum." 
 
 The annals of Margan date this event in the year 1151. 
 There is a charter in Affligham, granted by Henry of Lou- 
 vaine, on condition that prayers may be said for the welfare 
 of his brother Godfrey, the reigning duke, his sister Aleyda 
 the queen, and Ida the countess of Cleves, and their parents.' 
 
 Adelicia must have been about forty-eight years old at the 
 time of her death. She had been married eleven years, or 
 thereabouts, to William de Albini, lord of Buckenham. At 
 his paternal domain of ISTew Buckenham, in Norfolk, a foun- 
 dation was granted by William de Albini ' of the Strong Arm,' 
 enjoining that prayers might be said for the departed spirit 
 of his ' eximia regina.' He survived her long enough to be 
 the happy means of composing, by an amicable treaty, the 
 death-strife which had convulsed England for fifteen years, 
 in consequence of the bloody succession-war between Stephen 
 and the empress Matilda.' This great and good man is buried 
 in Wymondham abbey, near the tomb of his father, the 
 Pincema of England and Normandy. 
 
 By her marriage with Albini, Adelicia became the mother 
 of seven surviving children. WUliam earl of Arundel, who 
 succeeded to the estates and honors ; Eeyner ; Henry ; God- 
 frey; Alice, married to the count d'Eu; Olivia; Agatha. 
 The two latter were bviried at Boxgrove, near Arundel. 
 Though Adelicia had so many children by her second mar- 
 riage, her tender affection for her father's family caused her 
 to send for her younger brother, Josceline of Louvaine, to 
 share in her prosperity and happiness. The munificent earl, 
 her husband, to enable this landless prince to marry advan- 
 tageously, gave him the fair domain of Petworth, on his 
 wedding Agnes, the heiress of the Percys : " since which," 
 says Camden, " the posterity of that Josceline, who took 
 the name of Percy, have ever possessed it, — a family cer- 
 tainly very ancient and noble, the male representatives of 
 
 i Howard Memorials. ' This will be detailed in the succeeding biography. 
 
202 ADELICIA OF LOUVAINB. 
 
 Charlemagne, more direct than the dukes of Guise, who 
 pride themselves on that account. Josceline, in a donation 
 of his which I have seen, uses this title : ' Josceline of Lou- 
 vaine, brother to queen Adelicia, castellaine of Arundel.' " 
 
 Two ducal peers of England are now the representatives 
 of the imperial Carlovingian line, namely, the duke of Nor- 
 folk, the heir of queen Adelicia ; and the duke of Northum- 
 berland, the lineal descendant of her brother Josceline of 
 Louvaine. The two most unfortunate of -ail the queens of 
 England, Anna Boleyn and Katharine Howard, were the 
 lineal descendants of Adelicia, by her second marriage with 
 William de Albini. 
 
 A curious tradition exists at Beading, that Henry I. was 
 buried there in a silver coflS^n, and that the utter demolition 
 of his monument may be attributed to the persevering zeal 
 of the destroyers of the stately abbey, in their search to 
 discover and appropriate the precious depository. Adelicia's 
 effigy is stated to have been placed at Reading by the side 
 of her husband Henry I., crowned and veiled, because she 
 had been both queen and professed nun.' No copy or vestige 
 of it remains. 
 
 The portrait of queen Adelicia illustrating this biography 
 has been drawn by Mr. Harding from her beautiful seal, 
 pendant to the charter she gave Eeading abbey. Although 
 she was then the wife of William de Albini, she is represented 
 in regal costume as queen of England, which in many points 
 varies from that of her predecessors. The transparent veil 
 of Matilda of Flanders is superseded by a drapery similar 
 to the haike of the Arabs, and like that celebrated mantle, 
 it is hooded over the head, and falling by each cheek is tied 
 in front of the throat ; then flowing in ample folds over the 
 arms, nearly covers the whole of the person. Adelicia's 
 crown confines this mantle to the head, by being fixed over 
 it. The crown is simple : a smooth band of gold with rims, 
 
 1 History of Reading, by John Man, p. 282 : published by Snare and Man, 
 Beading, 1816. This traditionary description of Adelicia's effigy appears more 
 I applicable to her predecessor Matilda, unless we may conjecture that Adelicia 
 wore the conventual dress of the nunnery where she died. Another place is 
 pointed out as the spot where her ashes repose, being the ohuroh of Fuggleaton, 
 where she founded an hospital. 
 
ADELICIA OF LOUVAINE. 203 
 
 in which circle three large gems are set ; three high points 
 rise from it, each terminated with a trefoil of pearls : a cap 
 of satin or velvet is seen just above the circlet. The sceptre 
 of mercy, surmoiinted with a dove and finished with a tre- 
 foil, is held in Adelicia's right hand, the orb of sovereignty 
 m her left, to which, excepting by the especial grace of her 
 royal lord, she could have no right. The queen's robe or 
 gown seems tight to her shape : it is elegantly worked in a 
 diamond pattern from the throat to the feet, over which it 
 flows. The figure is whole-length, standing ; and as the seal 
 is a pointed oval nearly three inches long, there was space 
 to give character not only to the costume, but the features, 
 of which the mediaeval artist has availed himself sufficiently 
 to present the only resemblance extant of Adelicia of 
 Louvaine. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE, 
 
 QUEEN OF STEPHEN. 
 
 Matilda's descent from Saxon kings — Her mother a Saxon princess — Her father 
 — Matilda espoused to Stephen of Blois — Residence at Tower- Royal — Matilda's 
 popularity in London — Stephen seizes the throne — Birth of prince Eustace — - 
 Coronation of Matilda — Queen left regent — Disasters — Queen besieges Dover 
 castle — Mediates peace with her uncle — Empress Matilda lands in England — ■ 
 Henry of Blois — Civil war — Queen goes to France — Marriage of her young 
 heir — Raises an army — Stephen captured — Arrogance of the empress — Queen's 
 grief — Exertions in Stephen's cause — Queen Matilda writes to bishop Blois — 
 Her supplication for Stephen's liberty — Obduracy of the empress — Queen 
 appeals to arms — Empress in Winchester — Her seal — Insults Londoners — 
 Driven from London — Successes of the queen — Takes Winchester — Escape 
 of the empress — Earl of Gloucester taken — Exchanged for Stephen — Illness 
 of king Stephen — Empress escapes from Oxford — Her son — Decline of the 
 empress's cause — Queen Matilda founds St. Katherine by the Tower — Death 
 of the queen — Burial — Tomb — Epitaph — Children — Eustace — Death of king 
 Stephen — Burial by his queen — Exhumation of their bodies. 
 
 Matilda of Boulogne, the last of our Anglo-iNorman 
 queens, was a princess of the ancient royal line of English 
 monarchs. Her mother, Mary of Scotland, was the second 
 daughter of Malcolm Canmore and Margaret Atheling, and 
 sister to Matilda the Good, the first queen of Henry Beau- 
 clerc. Mary of Scotland was educated, with her elder sister, 
 in the royal monasteries of Wilton and Eomsey, under the 
 stern tutelage of their aunt Christina ; and was doubtless, 
 like the princess Matilda, compelled to assume the habit of 
 a votaress. Whether the youthful Mary testified the same 
 lively antipathy to the consecrated black veil that was ex- 
 hibited by her elder sister, no gossiping monastic chronicler 
 has recorded ; but she certainly forsook the cloister for the 
 court of England, on Matilda's auspicious nuptials with 
 Henry I., and exchanged the badge of celibacy for the nup- 
 204 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 205 
 
 tial ring soon afterwards, when her royal brother-in-law 
 gave her in marriage to Eustace count of Boulogne. The 
 father of this nobleman was brother-in-law to Edward the 
 Confessor, having married Goda, the widowed countess of 
 Mantes, sister to that monarch ; both himself and his son 
 Eustace had been powerful supporters of the Saxon cause. 
 The enterprising spirit of the counts of Boulogne, and the 
 contiguity of their dominions to the English shores, had 
 rendered them troublesome neighbors to William the Con- 
 queror and his sons, till the chivalric spirit of crusading 
 attracted their energies to a loftier object, and converted 
 these pirates of the narrow seas into heroes of the Cross, 
 and liberators of the holy city. 
 
 Godfrey of Boulogne, the hero of Tasso's Gierusaleme 
 Xiiberata, and his brother Baldwin, who successively wore 
 the crown of Jerusalem, were the uncles of Matilda, Stephen's 
 queen. Her father, Eustace count of Boulogne, was also a 
 distiaguished crusader. He must have been a mature hus- 
 band for Mary of Scotland, since he was the companion in 
 arms of Eobert of l^ormandy, and her uncle Edgar Atheling. 
 Matilda, or, as she is sometimes called for brevity, Maud of 
 Boulogne, was the sole offspring of this marriage, and the 
 heiress of this illustrious house. There is every reason to 
 believe Matilda was educated in the abbey of Bermondsey, 
 to which the countess of Boulogne, her mother, was a mu- 
 nificent benefactress. The countess died in this abbey while 
 on a visit to England in the year 1115, and was buried there. 
 "We gather from the Latin verses on her tomb that she was 
 a lady of very noble qualities, and that her death was very 
 painful and unexpected.' 
 
 Young as Matilda was, she was certainly espoused to 
 Stephen de Blois before her mother's decease ; for this plain 
 reason, that the charter by which the countess of Boulogne, 
 in the year 1114, grants to the Cluniac monks of Bermondsey 
 her manor of Kynewardstone, is, in the year she died, con- 
 firmed by Eustace her husband, and Stephen her son-in-law.' 
 Stephen, the third son of a vassal peer of France, obtained 
 this great match through the favor of his royal uncle, 
 
 ' Annales Abbatae de Bermondsey. ' Ibid. 
 
206 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 Henry I. He inherited from the royal Adela, his mother, 
 the splendid talents, fine person, and enterprising spirit of 
 the mighty Norman line of sovereigns. A very tender 
 friendship had subsisted between Adela countess of Blois 
 and her brother Henry Beauclerc, who at different periods 
 of his life had been under important obligations to her ; and 
 when Adela sent her landless boy to seek his fortunes at the 
 court of England, Henry returned the friendly offices which 
 he had received from this faithful sister by lavishing wealth 
 and honor on her son. 
 
 Stephen received the spurs of knighthood from his uncle 
 king Henry, previous to the battle of Tinchebray, where he 
 took the count of Mortagne prisoner, and received the in- 
 vestiture of his lands. He was further rewarded by his 
 royal kinsman with the hand of Matilda, the heiress of 
 Boulogne.' " When Stephen was but an earl," says "Wil- 
 liam of Malmesbury, " he gained the affections of the people, 
 to a degree that can scarcely be imagined, by the affability 
 of his manners, and the wit and pleasantry of his conver- 
 sation, condescending to chat and joke with persons in the 
 humblest stations as well as with the nobles, who delighted 
 in his company, and attached themselves to his cause from 
 personal regard." ' 
 
 Stephen was count of Boulogne in Matilda's right, when, 
 as count of Mortagne, he swore fealty in 1126 to the empress 
 Matilda, as heiress to the Norman dominions of Henry I. 
 The London residence of Stephen and Matilda was Tower- 
 Eoyal, a palace built by king Henry, and presented by him 
 to his favored nephew on the occasion of his wedding the 
 niece of his queen, Matilda Atheling. The spot to which 
 this regal-sounding name is still appended is a close lane 
 between Cheapside and Watling street. Tower-Eoyal was a 
 fortress of prodigious strength ; for more than once, when 
 the Tower of London itself fell into the hands of the rebels, 
 this embattled palace of Stephen remained in security.* 
 
 It is a remarkable fact that Stephen had embarked on 
 board the ' Blanche Nef;' with his royal cousin, "William the 
 
 I Ordericus Vitalia. s W. Malmesbury. Orderious Vitalis. 
 
 • Stowe's Survey. Pennant's London. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 207 
 
 Atheling, and the rest of her fated crew; but with two 
 knights of his train, and a few others who prudently fol- 
 lowed his example, he left the vessel with the remark that 
 " she was too much crowded with foolish, headstrong young 
 people.'" After the death of prince William, Stephen's 
 influence with his royal uncle became unbounded, and he 
 was his constant companion in all his voyages to Normandy. 
 
 There are evidences of conjugal infidelity on the part of 
 this gay and gallant young prince about this period, proving 
 that Matilda's cup of happiness was not without some alloy 
 of bitterness. How far her peace was affected by the scan- 
 dalous reports of the passion which her haughty cousin the 
 empress Matilda, the acknowledged heiress of England and 
 Normandy, was said to cherish for her aspiring husband, 
 we cannot presume to say; but there was an angel-like 
 spirit in the princess which supported her under every trial, 
 and rendered her a beautiful example to every royal female 
 in the married state. 
 
 Two children, a son and a daughter, were bom to the 
 young earl and countess of Boulogne during king Henry's 
 reign. The boy was named Baldwin, after Matilda's uncle, 
 the kiag of Jerusalem, — a Saxon name, withal, and therefore 
 likely to sound pleasantly to the ears of the English, who, 
 no doubt, looked with complacency on the infant heir of 
 Boulogne, as the son of a princess of the royal Atheling 
 blood, born among them, and educated by his amiable mother 
 to venerate their ancient laws, and to speak their language. 
 Prince Baldwin, however, died in early childhood, and was 
 interred in the priory of the Holy Trinity, without Aldgate, 
 founded by his royal aunt, Matilda of Scotland. The second 
 child of Stephen and Matilda, a daughter named Maud, bom 
 also in the reign of Henry I., died young, and was buried 
 in the same church. Some historians aver that Maud sur- 
 vived long enough to be espoused to the earl of Milan. So 
 dear was the memory of these her buried hopes to the heart 
 of Matilda, that after she became queen of England, and 
 her loss was supplied by the birth of another son and daugh- 
 ter, she continued to lament for them ; and the church and 
 
 1 Ordericus Vitalis. 
 
208 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 hospital of St. Katherine by the Tower were founded and 
 endowed by her, that prayers might be perpetually said by 
 the pious sisterhood for the repose of the souls of her first- 
 born children. 
 
 In the latter days of king Henry, while Stephen was en- 
 gaged in stealing the hearts of the men of England, after the 
 fashion of Absalom, the mild virtues of his amiable consort 
 recalled to their remembrance her royal aunt and namesake, 
 Henry's first queen, and inspired them with a trembling hope 
 of seeing her place fiUed eventually by a princess so much 
 more resembling her than the haughty wife of Geoffrey of 
 Anjou. The ISTorman woman looked upon her mother's people 
 with scorn, and from her they had nothing to expect but the 
 iron yoke which her grandfather, the Conqueror, had laid 
 upon their necks, with, perhaps, an aggravation of their 
 miseries. But Stephen, the husband of her gentle cousin, 
 the English-hearted Matilda, had whispered in their ears of 
 the confirmation of the great charter of their liberties, which 
 Henry of Normandy had granted when he became the hus- 
 band of the descendant of their ancient kings, and broken 
 when her influence was destroyed by death and a foreign 
 marriage. 
 
 King Henry's daughter, the empress Matilda,' was the wife 
 of a foreign prince residing on the continent. Stephen and 
 his gentle princess were living in London, and daily endear- 
 ing themselves to the people by the most popular and affable 
 behavior. The public mind was certainly predisposed in 
 favor of Stephen's designs, when the sudden death of king 
 Henry in Normandy left the right of succession for the first 
 time to a female heir. Piers of Langtoft thus describes the 
 perplexity of the nation respecting the choice of the sover- 
 eign : — 
 
 " On bier lay king Henry, 
 On bier beyond the sea, 
 And no man migbt rightly know 
 Who hia heir suld be." 
 
 Stephen, following the example of the deceased monarch's 
 conduct at the time of his brother Eufus's death,^ left his 
 
 • The biography of the empress Matilda is continued through this life. 
 ^ Malmesbury. 
 

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MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 209 
 
 royal uncle and benefactor's obsequies to the care of Eobert 
 earl of Gloucester, and the other peers who were witnesses to 
 his last words ; and embarking at Whitesand, a small port in 
 Matilda's dominions, in a light vessel, on a wintry sea, he 
 landed at Dover in the midst of such a storm of thunder and 
 lightning, that, according to William of Malmesbury, every 
 one imagined the world was coming to an end. As soon as 
 he arrived in London, he convened an assembly of the Anglo- 
 Norman barons, before whom his confederate and friend, 
 Hugh Bigod, the steward of king Henry's household, swore 
 on the holy Evangelists, " that the deceased sovereign had 
 disinherited the empress Matilda on his death-bed, and 
 adopted his most dear nephew Stephen for his heir." ^ On 
 this bold affirmation, the archbishop of Canterbury absolved 
 the peers of the oaths of fealty they had twice sworn to the 
 daughter of their late sovereign, and declared " that those 
 oaths were nuU and void, and contrary, moreover, to the 
 laws and customs of the English, who had never permitted 
 a woman to reign over them." This was a futile argument, 
 as no female had ever stood in that important position, with 
 regard to the succession to the crown of England, in which 
 the empress Matilda was now placed ; therefore no prece- 
 dent had occurred for the establishment of a salic law in 
 England. 
 
 Stephen was crowned on the 26th of December, his name- 
 day, the feast of St. Stephen.' He swore to establish the 
 righteous laws of Edward the Confessor, for the general hap- 
 piness of all classes of his subjects.' The English regarded 
 Stephen's union with a princess of their race as the best 
 pledge of the sincerity of his professions in regard to the 
 amelioration of their condition. These hopes were, of course, 
 increased by the birth of prince Eustace, whom Matilda 
 brought into the world very soon after her husband's acces- 
 sion to the throne of England. It was, perhaps, this auspi- 
 cious event that prevented Matilda from being associated in 
 the coronation of her lord on St. Stephen's day, in West- 
 minster abbey. Her own coronation, according to Gervase, 
 
 1 Malmesbury. Rapin. 
 
 ' Sir Harris Nioolas's Chronology of History. ' Malmesbury. Brompton. 
 
210 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 took place March 22nd, 1136, being BaBter-Sunday, not quite 
 three months afterwards. Stephen was better enabled to 
 support the expenses of a splendid ceremonial in honor of 
 his beloved queen, having, immediately after his own hasty 
 inauguration, posted to Winchester and made himself master 
 of the treasury of his deceased uncle king Henry ; which 
 contained, says Malmesbury, " one hundred thousand pounds, 
 besides stores of plate and jewels." 
 
 The empress Matilda was in Anjou at the time of her 
 father's sudden demise. She was entirely occupied by the 
 grievous sickness of her husband, who was supposed to be on 
 his death-bed.' After the convalescence of her lord, as none 
 of her partisans in England made the slightest movement in 
 her favor, she remained quiescent for a season, well knowing 
 that the excessive popularity of a new monarch is seldom of 
 long continuance in England. Stephen had begun well by 
 abolishing ' danegelt,' and leaving the game in woods, forests, 
 and uncultivated wastes common to all his subjects ; but after 
 awhile he repented of his liberal policy, and called courts of 
 inquiry to make men give account of the damage and loss 
 he had sustained in his fallow-deer and other wild game ; he 
 likewise enforced the offensive system of the other Norman 
 monarchs for their preservation. Next he obtained the en- 
 mity of the clergy, by seizing the revenues of the see of 
 Canterbury ; and lastly, to the great alarm and detriment of 
 the peacefully disposed, he imprudently permitted his nobles 
 to build or fortify upwards of a thousand of those strongholds 
 of wrong and robbery called castles, which rendered their 
 owners in a great measure independent of the crown. 
 
 Baldwin de Eedvers, earl of Devonshire, was the first to 
 give Stephen a practical proof of his want of foresight in 
 this matter, by telling him, on some slight cause of offence, 
 " that he was not king of right, and he would obey him no 
 longer." Stephen proceeded in person to chastise him. In 
 the mean time, David king of Scotland invaded the northern 
 counties, under pretence of revenging the wrong that had 
 been done to his niece, the empress Matilda, by Stephen's 
 usurpation and perjury. Matilda of Boulogne, Stephen's 
 
 1 Carruthers's History of Scotland, pp. 327, 328. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 211 
 
 consort, stood in the same degree of relationship to the king 
 of Scotland as the empress Matilda, since her mother, Mary 
 of Scotland, was his sister, no less than Matilda, the queen 
 of Henry I. Stephen concluded a hasty peace with the 
 Welsh princes, and advanced to repel the invasion of king 
 David ; but when the hostile armies met near Carlisle, he 
 succeeded in adjusting all differences by means of an ami- 
 cable treaty, perhaps through the entreaties or mediation 
 of his queen. 
 
 Easter was kept at "Westminster this year, 1137, by Ste- 
 phen and Matilda, with greater splendor than had ever been 
 seen in the court of Henry Beauclerc, to celebrate the happy 
 termination of the storm that had so lately darkened the 
 political horizon ; but the rejoicings of the queen were fear- 
 fully interrupted by the alarming illness which suddenly 
 attacked the king in the midst of the festivities. This ill- 
 ness, the effect no doubt of the preternatural exertions of 
 both mental and corporeal powers, which Stephen had com- 
 pelled himself to use during the recent momentous crisis of 
 his fortunes, was a sort of stupor or lethargy so nearly re- 
 sembling death that it was reported in Normandy that he 
 had breathed his last ; on which the party of the empress 
 began to take active measures, both on the continent and in 
 England, for the recognition of her rights.^ The count of 
 Anjou entered Normandy at the head of an army, to assert 
 the claims of his wife and son, which were, however, dis- 
 puted by Stephen's elder brother, Theobald count of Blois, 
 not in behalf of Stephen, but himself; while the earl of 
 Gloucester openly declared in favor of his sister the em- 
 press, and delivered the keys of Falaise to her husband, 
 Geoffrey of Anjou.' 
 
 When Stephen recovered from his death-like sickness, he 
 found everything in confusion, — the attention of his faithful 
 queen, Matilda, having doubtless been absorbed in anxious 
 watchings by his sick bed during the protracted period of 
 his strange and alarming malady. She was now left to take 
 care of his interests in England as best she might ; for Ste- 
 phen, rousing himself from the pause of exhausted nature, 
 
 ' Hoveden. Brompton. Orderious Titalis. ' M. Paris, etc., etc. 
 
212 MATILDA OP BOULOGNE. 
 
 hastened to the continent with his infant heir Eustace, to 
 whom queen Matilda had resigned the earldom of Boulogne, 
 her own fair inheritance. Stephen, by the strong eloquence 
 of an immense bribe, prevailed on Louis VII. of France, as 
 suzerain of Normandy, to invest the unconscious babe with 
 the duchy, and to receive his liege homage for the same.' 
 
 Meantime, some portentous events occurred during Ma- 
 tilda's government. Sudden and mysterious conflagrations 
 then, as now, indicated the sullen discontent of the very 
 lower order of the English people. On the 3rd of June, 
 1137, Eochester cathedral was destroyed by fire ; the follow- 
 ing day, the whole city of York, with its cathedral and thirty 
 churches, was burnt to the ground ; soon after, the city of 
 Bath shared the same fate. Then conspiracies began to be 
 formed in favor of the empress Matilda in various parts of 
 England; and lastly, her uncle, David king of Scotland, 
 once more entered Northumberland, with banners displayed, 
 in support of his supplanted kinswoman's superior title to 
 the crown.^ Queen Matilda, with courage and energy suited 
 to this alarming crisis, went in person and besieged the in- 
 surgents, who had seized Dover castle ; and she sent orders 
 to the men of Boulogne, her loyal subjects, to attack the 
 rebels by sea. The Boulonnois obeyed the commands of 
 their beloved princess with alacrity, and to such good pur- 
 pose, by covering the Channel with their light-armed vessels, 
 that the besieged, not being able to receive the slightest 
 succor by sea, were forced to submit to the queen.' At this 
 juncture Stephen arrived : he succeeded in chastising the 
 leaders of the revolt, and drove the Scottish king over his 
 own border. Nevertheless, the empress Matilda's party, in 
 the year 1138, began to assume a formidable aspect. Every 
 day brought tidings to the court of Stephen of some fresh 
 revolt. William of Malmesbury relates, that when Stephen 
 was informed of these desertions, he passionately exclaimed, 
 " Why did they make me king, if they forsake me thus ? By 
 the birth of God ! * I will never be called an abdicated king." 
 
 ' Orderious Vitalis. H. Huntingdon. Brompton. M. Paris. Rapin. Speed. 
 ' Brompton. Rapin. Orderious Vitalis. ' Orderious Vitalis. 
 
 * TMs was Stephen's usual oath. — Malmeshury. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 213 
 
 The invaaion of queen Matilda's uncle, David of Scotland, 
 for the third time, increased the distraction of her royal 
 husband's affairs, especially as Stephen was too much occu- 
 pied with the internal troubles of his kingdom to be able to 
 proceed in person against him. David and his army were, 
 however, defeated with immense slaughter by the warlike 
 Thurstan, archbishop of York, at Cuton-Moor. The particu- 
 lars of this engagement, called ' the battle of the Standard,' 
 where the church-militant performed such notable service 
 for the crown, belong to general history, and are besides too 
 well known to require repetition in the biography of Ste- 
 phen's queen. Matilda^ was mainly instrumental in nego- 
 tiating the peace which was concluded this year between 
 her uncle and her lord. Prince Henry, the heir of Scotland, 
 having, at the same time, renewed his homage to Stephen 
 for the earldom of Huntingdon, was invited by the king to 
 his court. The attention with which the young prince was 
 treated by the king and queen was viewed with invidious 
 eyes by their iU-mannered courtiers ; and Eanulph, earl of 
 Chester, took such great offence at the royal stranger being 
 seated above him at dinner, that he made it an excuse for 
 joining the revolted barons, and persuaded a knot of equally 
 uncivilized nobles to follow his example on the same 
 pretence.' 
 
 The empress Matilda, taking advantage of the fierce con- 
 tention between Stephen and the hierarchy of England, 
 made her tardy appearance, in pursuance of her claims to 
 the crown, in the autumn of 1130. Like her uncle, Robert 
 the Unready, the empress allowed the critical moment to 
 slip when, by prompt and energetic measures, she might 
 have gained the prize for which she contended. But she did 
 not arrive till Stephen had made himself master of the 
 castles, and, what was of more importance to him, the great 
 wealth of his three refractory prelates, the bishops of Salis- 
 bury, Ely, and Lincoln. 
 
 1 " Through the mediation of Matilda, the wife of Stephen, and niece of 
 David, a peace was concluded at Durham between these two kings, equitable 
 in itself, and useful to both parties." — Carruthers's History of Scotland, vol. i. 
 p. 339. 2 Speed. 
 
214 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 When the empress was shut up within the walls of Arun- 
 del castle, Stephen might by one bold stroke have made her 
 his prisoner ; but he was prevailed upon to respect the ties 
 of consanguinity, and the high rank of the widow and of 
 the daughter of his benefactor, king Henry. It is possible, 
 too, that recollections of a tenderer nature, with regard to 
 his cousin the empress, might deter him from imperilling 
 her person by pushing the siege. According to some of the 
 chroniclers, the empress sent, with queen Adelicia's request 
 that she might be permitted to retire to Bristol, a guileful 
 letter or message to Stephen,' which induced him to promise, 
 on his word of honor, that he would grant her safe-conduct 
 to that city. Though the empress knew that Stephen had 
 violated the most solemn oaths in regard to her succession 
 to the crown, she relied upon his honor, put herself under 
 his protection, and was safely conducted to the castle of 
 Bristol. King Stephen gave to his brother, Henry of Blois, 
 bishop of Winchester, and to Walleran earl of Mellent, the 
 charge of escorting the empress to Bristol castle. This 
 bright trait of chivalry contrasts beautifully with the selfish- 
 ness and perfidy too prevalent at the era. It was during 
 this journey, in all probability, that Henry de Blois arranged 
 his plans with the empress Matilda for making her mistress 
 of the royal city of Winchester, which was entirely under 
 his influence. 
 
 While the earl of Gloucester, on behalf of his sister the 
 empress, was contesting with king Stephen the realm of 
 England at the sword's point, queen Matilda proceeded to 
 France with her son Eustace, to endeavor to strengthen 
 her husband's cause by the aid of her foreign connections ; 
 and while at the court of Prance, successMly exerted her 
 diplomatic powers in negotiating a marriage between the 
 princess Constance, sister of Louis VII., and prince Eustace, 
 then about four years old. The queen presided at this infant 
 marriage, which was celebrated with great splendor. In- 
 stead of receiving a dowry with the princess, queen Matilda 
 paid a large sum to purchase her son the bride ; Louis VII 
 in return solemnly invested his young brother-in-law with 
 
 ^ Gervase. Henry of Huntingdon. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 215 
 
 the duchy of Normandy, and lent his powerful aid to main- 
 tain him there as the nominal sovereign, under the direction 
 of the queen his mother. This alliance, which took place 
 in the year 1140,' greatly raised the hopes of Stephen's 
 party; but the bands of foreign mercenaries, which his 
 queen Matilda sent over from Boulogne and the ports of 
 Normandy to his succor, had an injurious effect on his 
 cause, and were beheld with jealous alarm by the people of 
 the land, " whose miseries were in no slight degree aggra^ 
 vated," says the chronicler Gervase, " by the arrival of 
 these hunger-starved wolves, who completed the destruction 
 of the land's felicity.'' 
 
 It was during the absence of queen Matilda and her son 
 prince Eustace that the battle, so disastrous to her hus- 
 band's cause, was fought beneath the walls of Lincoln, on 
 Candlemas-day, 1141. Stephen had shut up a great many 
 of the empress Matilda's partisans and their families in the 
 city of Lincoln, which he had been for some time besieging. 
 The earl of Gloucester's youngest daughter, lately married 
 to her cousin Eanulph, earl of Chester, was among the 
 besieged ; and so determined were the two earls, her father 
 and her husband, for her deliverance, that they encouraged 
 their followers to swim, or ford, the deep cold waters of the 
 river Trent,* behind which Stephen and his army were 
 encamped, and fiercely attacked him in their dripping gar- 
 ments, — and all for the relief of the fair ladies who were 
 trembling within the walls of Lincoln, and beginning to 
 suffer from lack of provisions. These were the days of 
 chivalry, be it remembered.' Speed gives us a descriptive 
 catalogue of some of the leading characters among our 
 valiant king Stephen's knights sans peur, which, if space 
 were allowed us, we woidd abstract from the animated 
 harangue with which the earl of Gloucester endeavored to 
 warm his shivering followers into a virtuous blaze of indig- 
 nation, after they had emerged from their cold bath.* His 
 satirical eloquence was received by the partisans of the 
 
 ' Florence of Worcester. Tyrrell. ^ Malmesbury. Kapin. Speed. 
 
 ' Polydore Vergil. Speed. Malmesbury. 
 
 * Roger Hoveden. H. Huntingdon. Polychronioon. 
 
216 MATILDA OP BOULOGNE. 
 
 empress with a tremendous shout of applause ; and Stephen, 
 not to be behindhand with his foes in bandying personal 
 abuse as a prelude to the fight, as his own powers of articu- 
 lation happened to be defective, deputed one Baldwin Pitz- 
 Gilbert, a knight who was blessed with a stentorian voice, 
 to thunder forth his recrimination on the earl of Gloucester 
 and his host in the ears of both armies. Fitz-Gilbert, in 
 his speech, laid scornful stress on the illegitimacy of the 
 empress's champion, whom he designated " Eobert, the 
 base-born general." ' 
 
 The battle, for which both parties had prepared them- 
 selves with such a sharp encounter of keen words, was, to 
 use the expression of contemporary chroniclers, "a very 
 sore one ;" but it seems as if Stephen had fought better than 
 his followers that day. " A very strange sight it was,'' says 
 Matthew Paris, " there to behold king Stephen, left almost 
 alone in the field, yet no man daring to approach him, while, 
 grinding his teeth and foaming like a furious wild boar, he 
 drove back with his battle-axe the assailing squadrons, slay- 
 ing the foremost of them, to the eternal renown of his 
 courage. If but a hundred like himself had been with him, 
 a whole army had never been able to capture his person ; 
 yet, single-handed as he was, he held out till first his battle- 
 axe brake, and afterwards his sword shivered in his grasp 
 with the force of his own resistless blows, though he was 
 borne backward to his knees by a great stone, which by 
 some ignoble person was flung at him. A stout knight, 
 William of Kames, then seized him by the helmet, and 
 holding the point of his sword to his throat called upon him 
 to surrender." ' Even in that extremity Stephen refused to 
 give up the fragment of his sword to any one but the earl 
 of Gloucester, his valiant kinsman, who, coming up, bade 
 his infuriated troops refrain from further violence, and con- 
 ducted his royal captive to the empress Matilda, at Glouces- 
 ter. The earl of Gloucester, it is said, treated Stephen 
 with some degree of courtesy; but the empress Matilda, 
 whose hatred appears to have emanated from a deeper root 
 
 ' Roger Hoveden. H. Huntingdon. Speed. 
 ' H. Huntingdon. Speed. Rapin. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 217 
 
 of bitterness than mere rivalry of power, loaded him with 
 indignities, and ordered him into the most rigorous confine- 
 ment in Bristol castle. According to general historians, she 
 caused him to be heavily ironed, and used the royal captive 
 as ignominiously as if he had been the lowest felon ; but 
 William of Malmesbury says, " this was not till after Stephen 
 had attempted to make his escape, or it was reported that 
 he had been seen several times beyond the bounds prescribed 
 for air and exercise." 
 
 The empress Matilda made her public and triumphant 
 entry into the city of Winchester February 7th, where she 
 was received with great state by Stephen's equally haughty 
 brother, Henry de Blois, bishop of Winchester and cardinal- 
 legate. He appeared at the head of all the clergy and 
 monks of the diocese ; and even the nuns of Winchester ' 
 (a thing before unheard of) walked unveiled in the proces- 
 sion, to receive and welcome the rightful heiress of the 
 realm, the daughter of the great and learned Henry Fitz- 
 Conqueror, and of Matilda the descendant of the Atheling. 
 The English had also the satisfaction of seeing the male 
 representative of their ancient monarchs on that occasion 
 within the walls of Winchester ; for David of Scotland, the 
 son of Margaret Atheling, was present to do honor to his 
 niece, — the victorious rival of Stephen's crown. Henry 
 de Blois resigned the regal ornaments, and the paltry resi- 
 due of her father's treasure, into the hands of the em- 
 press. The next day he received her with great pomp in 
 his cathedral-church, where he excommunicated all the 
 adherents of his unfortunate brother, and promised abso- 
 lution to all who should abandon his cause and join the 
 empress." 
 
 In this melancholy position did queen Matilda find her 
 husband's cause when she returned from her successful 
 negotiation of the marriage between the French king's 
 sister and her son the little count of Boulogne, whom she 
 had left, for the present, established as duke of Normandy. 
 The peers and clergy had alike abandoned the luckless 
 
 1 Rudbome's Hist, of Winchester. 
 
 2 Gesta Stephani. Gerrase. Malmesbury. Rapin. 
 
218 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 Stephen in his adversity ; ' and the archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, being a man of tender conscience, had actually visited 
 Stephen in his prison, to request his permission to transfer 
 his oath of allegiance to his victorious rival the empress 
 Matilda. In this predicament, the faithful consort of the 
 fallen monarch applied herself to the citizens of London, 
 with whom she had ever maintained a great share of popu- 
 larity. They knew her virtues, for she had lived among 
 them ; and her tender affection for her royal spouse in his 
 adversity was well pleasing to those who had witnessed the 
 domestic happiness of the princely pair, while they lived 
 in Tower-Eoyal as count and countess of Boulogne ; and the 
 remembrance of Stephen's free and pleasant conduct, and 
 affable association with all sorts and conditions of men, be- 
 fore he wore the thorny diadem of a doubtful title to the 
 sovereignty of England, disposed the magistracy of London 
 to render every assistance in their power to their unfortu- 
 nate king.' So powerfully, indeed, had the personal influ- 
 ence of queen Matilda operated in that quarter, that when 
 the magistrates of London were summoned to send their 
 deputies to a synod at Winchester, held by Henry de Blois, 
 which had j)redetermined the election of the empress Ma- 
 tilda to the throne, they instructed them to demand the 
 liberation of the king in the name of the barons and citizens 
 of London, as a preliminary to entering into any discussion 
 with the partisans of his enemy. Henry de Blois replied, 
 " That it did not become the Londoners to side with the 
 adherents of Stephen, whose object was to embroil the 
 kingdom in fresh troubles." ' 
 
 Queen Matilda, finding that the trusty citizens of London 
 were baffled by the priestly subtlety of her husband's 
 brother, Henry de Blois, took the decided, but at that time 
 unprecedented step, of writing in her own name an eloquent 
 letter to the synod, earnestly entreating those in whose hands 
 the government of England was vested to restore the king, 
 her husband, to liberty. This letter the queen's faithful 
 chaplain. Christian, delivered, in full synod, to the legate 
 
 1 Malmesbury. Huntingdon. Ger. Dor. 
 ^ Malmesbury. Rapin. ' Ibid. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 219 
 
 Henry de Blois. The prelate, after he had silently perused 
 the touching appeal of his royal sister-in-law, not only re- 
 fused to communicate its purport to the assembly, but, ex- 
 alting his voice to the highest pitch, proclaimed " that it was 
 illegal and improper to be recited in that great assembly, 
 composed as it was of ecclesiastics and dignitaries ; for, 
 among other objectionable points, it was witnessed by the 
 signature of a person who had at a former council used in- 
 sulting language to the bishops." Christian was not thus 
 to be baffled : he boldly took his royal mistress's letter out 
 of the imperious legate's hand, and exalting his voice in 
 turn, so as to be distinctly heard by all present, he read it 
 aloud to the astonished conclave, in spite of the anger and 
 opposition of him who was at that time virtually the ruling 
 power in the realm. The following brief abstract is all that 
 William of Malmesbury, who dedicates his history to the 
 leader of the adverse party, Eobert earl of Gloucester, thinks 
 proper to give of Matilda's letter : " The queen earnestly 
 entreats the whole clergy assembled, and especially the 
 bishop of Winchester, the brother of her lord the king, to 
 restore her said lord to his kingdom, whom abandoned per- 
 sons, even such as were under homage to him, have cast into 
 chains.'' 
 
 The legate endeavored to frustrate any good eifect which 
 this conjugal appeal from the faithful consort of his un- 
 fortunate brother might have produced, by dissolving the 
 assembly, having first excommunicated the leading members 
 of the royal party. He then declared " that the empress 
 Matilda was lawfully elected as the domina or sovereign 
 lady of England." The following are the words of the 
 formula in which the declaration was delivered : " Having 
 first, as is fit, invoked the aid of Almighty God, we elect as 
 lady of England and Normandy the daughter of the glorious, 
 the rich, the good, the peaceful king Henry, and to her we 
 promise fealty and support." ' No word is here of the good 
 old laws, — the lawsof Alfred and St. Edward, — or of thegreat 
 charter which Henry I. agreed to observe. The empress 
 was the leader of the Norman party, and the head of Nor- 
 
 ' Qesta Stephani Regis. 
 
220 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 man feudality, which, in many instances, was incompatible 
 with the Saxon constitution. The imperial " domina" bore her 
 honors with anything but meekness ; she refused to listen 
 to the counsel of her friends ; she treated those of her ad- 
 versaries whom misfortune drove to seek her clemency with 
 insolence and cruelty, stripping them of their possessions, 
 and rendering them perfectly desperate. The friends who 
 had contributed to her elevation frequently met with a harsh 
 refusal when they asked favors; "and," says an old his- 
 torian, " when they bowed themselves down before her, she 
 did not rise in return." ^ 
 
 Meantime, the sorrowful queen Matilda was unremitting 
 in her exertions for the liberation of her unfortunate lord, 
 who was at this time heavily ironed and ignominiously 
 treated, by order of the empress.^ JSTot only England, but 
 Normandy was now lost to the captive monarch her husband 
 and their young heir, prince Eustace ; for Geoffrey of Anjou, 
 as soon as he received intelligence of the decisive battle of 
 Lincoln, persuaded the Norman baronage to withdraw their 
 allegiance from their recently invested duke, and to transfer 
 it to his wife the empress and her son Henry, certainly the 
 rightful heirs of William the Conqueror. The loss of regal 
 state and sovereign power was, however, regarded by the 
 queen of Stephen as a matter of little moment. In the 
 season of adversity it was not the king, but the man, the 
 husband of her youth and the father of her children, to 
 whom the tender-hearted Matilda of Boulogne clung, with 
 a devotion not often to be miet with in the personal history 
 of royalty. It was for his sake that she condescended to 
 humble herself, by addressing the most lowly entreaties to 
 her haughty cousin, the empress Matilda, — to her who, if the 
 report of some contemporary chroniclers is to be credited, 
 had betrayed her husband into a breach of his marriage vow. 
 The insulting scorn with which the empress rejected every 
 petition which the wedded wife of Stephen presented to her 
 in behalf of her fallen foe looks like the vindictive spirit of 
 a jealous woman ; especially when we reflect that not only 
 the virtues of Matilda of Boulogne, but the closeness of her 
 
 ' Qesta Stephani Regis. Thierry. " Malmesbury. Speed. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 221 
 
 consanguinity to herself, required her to be treated with 
 some degree of consideration and respect. 
 
 There appears even to be a covert reference to the former 
 position in which these princesses had stood, as rivals in 
 Stephen's love, by the proposal made by his fond queen. 
 She proposed, if his life were but spared, to relinquish his 
 society, and that he should not only forever forego all claims 
 upon the crown and succession of England and Normandy, 
 but, taking upon himself the vows and habit of a monk, 
 devote himself to a religious life, either as a pilgrim or 
 a cloistered anchorite,' on condition that their son, prince 
 Eustace, might be permitted to enjoy, in her right, the earl- 
 dom of Boulogne, and his father's earldom of Mortagne, the 
 grant of Henry I. Her petition was rejected by the victori- 
 ous empress with no less contempt than all the others which 
 Stephen's queen had ventured to prefer, although her suit 
 in this instance was backed by the powerful mediation of 
 Henry de Blois. This prelate, who appears to have thought 
 more of peace than of brotherhood, was not only desirous of 
 settling public order on such easy terms for his new sover- 
 eign, but willing to secure to his nephew the natural inheri- 
 tance of his parents, of which the empress's party had ob- 
 tained possession. So blind, however, was this obdurate 
 princess in pursuing the headlong impulse of her vindictive 
 nature, that nothing could induce her to perceive how much 
 it was her interest to grant the prayer of her unhappy 
 cousin ; and she repulsed the suit of Henry de Blois so 
 rudely that, when next summoned to her presence, he re- 
 fused to come. Queen Matilda improved this difference be- 
 tween her haughty rival and her brother-in-law to her own 
 advantage ; and having obtained a private interview with 
 him at GuUdford, she prevailed on him, by the eloquence of 
 her tears and entreaties, to absolve all her husband's party 
 whom, as pope's legate, he had a few days before excom- 
 municated, and to enter into a negotiation with her for the 
 deliverance of his brother.' 
 
 Nor did queen Matilda rest here. In the name of her son, 
 prince Eustace, aided by William of Ypres, Stephen's able 
 
 1 Y-Podigma Neustria. Speed. Pepin. ' Speed. Tyrrell. 
 
222 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 but unpopular minister of state, she raised the standard of 
 her captive lord in Kent and Surrey, where a strong party- 
 was presently organized in his favor ; and finding that there 
 was nothing to be hoped for from her obdurate kinswoman, 
 the empress Matilda, on any other terms but the unreason- 
 able one of giving up her own fair inheritance, she, like a 
 true daughter of the heroic house of Boulogne, and the niece 
 of the illustrious Godfrey and Baldwin, prepared herself 
 for a struggle with such courageous energy of mind and 
 promptitude of action, that many a recreant baron was 
 shamed into quitting the inglorious shelter of his castle and 
 leading forth his vassals to strengthen the muster of the 
 royal heroine. 
 
 In the pages of superficially written histories, much is said 
 of the prowess and military skill displayed by prince Eustace 
 at this period ;fbut Eustace jas scarcely seven y gars old at 
 the time when these efforts were made for the deliverance of 
 his royal sire. It is therefore plain, to those who reflect on 
 the evidence of dates, that it was the high-minded and pru- 
 dent queen, his mother, who avoided all Amazonian display 
 by acting under the name of her son. Her feminine vir- 
 tues, endearing qualities, and conjugal devotion, had already 
 created the most powerful interest in her favor ; while re- 
 ports of the pride and hardness of heart of her stern relative 
 and namesake, the new domina, began to be industriously 
 circulated through the land by the offended legate, Henry 
 de Blois.' William of Malmesbury mentions, expressly, that 
 the empress Matilda never bore or received the title of 
 regina, or queen of England, but that of domina, or lady of 
 England. On her broad seal, which she caused to be made 
 for her royal use at Winchester, she entitles herself " Eo- 
 manorum Eegina Macthildis ;" and in a charter granted by 
 her, just after the death of her brother and champion, 
 Eobert earl of Gloucester, she styles herself '' Eegina Eo- 
 manorum, et Domina Anglorum." 
 
 The seal to which we have just alluded bears the figure of 
 the grand-daughter of the Norman conqueror, crowned and 
 seated on the King's bench, with a sceptre in her right hand, 
 
 1 Tyrrell. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 223 
 
 but bearing neither orb nor dove, the symbols of sovereign 
 power and mercy. She was not an anointed queen, neither 
 had the crown-royal ever been placed on her brow.' The 
 garland of fleurs-de-lis, by which the folds of her matronly 
 wimple are confined, is of a simpler form than the royal 
 diadems of the Anglo-Norman sovereigns, as shown on the 
 broad seals of William Eufus, Henry I., and Stephen. Prob- 
 ably an alteration would have been made if the coronation 
 of Matilda, as sovereign of England, had ever taken place. 
 But the consent of the city of London was an indispen- 
 sable preliminary to her inauguration ; and to London she 
 proceeded in person to obtain this important recognition. 
 Though the majority of the city authorities were disposed 
 to favor the cause of Stephen, for the sake of his popular 
 consort, Matilda of Boulogne, the Saxon citizens, when they 
 heard that "the daughter of Molde, their good queen," 
 claimed their homage, looked with reverence on her elder 
 claim, and threw open their gates to receive her with every 
 manifestation of affection. 
 
 The first sentence addressed to them by this haughty 
 claimant of the crown of St. Edward, was the demand of 
 an enormous subsidy. The citizens of London replied by 
 inquiring after the great charter granted by her father. 
 " Ye are very impudent to mention privileges and charters 
 to me, when ye have just been supporting my enemies,'' was 
 the gracious rejoinder.' Her wise and valiant brother, 
 Robert of Gloucester, who stood by her side, immediately 
 perceiving that the citizens of London were incensed at 
 this intimation of their new sovereign's intention to treat 
 them as a conquered people, endeavored to soothe their 
 offended pride by a conciliatory address, commencing, — 
 
 ' We are indebted for a drawing of the impression of another seal pertaining 
 to Matilda the empress to the kindness of Miss Mary Aglionby, who has ele- 
 gantly delineated it from a deed belonging to her family. The head-dress of 
 the empress is simpler than that above mentioned, the veil being confined by 
 a mere twisted fillet, such as we see beneath helmets and crests in heraldic 
 blazonry. The inscription, in Roman letters, is s* mathildis * dei • gratia * 
 ROM ANORUM • BEGiNA. The manner of sitting, and the arrangement of the 
 drapery on the knees, resemble the portrait of the mother of the empress 
 described in her biography. ^ J. P. Andrews. 
 
224 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 " Ye citizens of London, who of olden time were called 
 barons. . . ." 
 
 Although the heroic Eobert was a most complete and 
 graceful orator, his courteous language failed to atone to 
 the Londoners for the arrogance of their new liege lady. 
 Her uncle, king David, was present at this scene, and ear- 
 nestly persuaded the empress to adopt a more popular line 
 of conduct, but in vain.^ After a strong discussion, the 
 Londoners craved leave to retire to their hall of common 
 council, in order to provide the subsidy. 
 
 Meantime, the empress sat down to her mid-day meal in 
 the banqueting-hall of the new palace at Westminster, in 
 confident expectation that the civic 'authorities of London 
 would soon approach to offer, on their knees, the bags of 
 gold she had demanded.^ A dessert of a different kind 
 awaited her, for at that momentous crisis a band of horse- 
 men appeared on the other side of the river, and displayed 
 the banner of Stephen's consort, Matilda of Boulogne. The 
 bells of every church in London rang out a elaniorous toc- 
 sin, and from every house rushed forth, as had doubtless 
 been previously concerted, one champion at the least, and 
 in many instances several, armed with whatever weapons 
 were at hand, and sallied forth to do battle in defence of the 
 rights and liberties of the city; "just," says the old chroni- 
 cler, " like bees swarming about the hive when it is attacked." 
 The Norman and Angevin chevaliers, under the command of 
 the valiant earl of Gloucester, found they stood little chance 
 of withstanding this resolute muster of the London patriots 
 in their own narrow crooked streets. They therefore has- 
 tened to provide for the safety of their domina. She rose 
 in haste from table, mounted her horse, and fled with her 
 foreign retinue at full speed ; and she had urgent cause for 
 haste, for before she had well cleared the western suburb, the 
 populace had burst into the palace, and were plundering 
 her apartments.' The fugitives took the road to Oxford ; 
 but before the haughty domina arrived there, her train had 
 
 • Carruthers's Hist, of Scotland, p. 341. 
 ' Thierry. Speed. Stowo. Lingard. 
 ' Chronicle quoted in Knight's London. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 225 
 
 become so small with numerous desertions, that, with the 
 exception of Eobert of Gloucester, she entered it alone.' 
 
 A strong reaction of popular feeling in favor of Stephen, 
 or rather of Stephen's queen, followed this event. The 
 counties of Kent and Surrey were already her own, and 
 prepared to support her by force of arms ; and the citizens 
 of London joyfully received her within their walls once 
 more. Henry de Blois had been induced, more than once, 
 to meet his royal sister-in-law secretly at Guildford. Thither 
 she brought the young prince, her son,' to assist her in moving 
 his powerful uncle to lend his aid in replacing her husband 
 on the throne. Henry de Blois, touched by the tears and 
 entreaties of these interesting supplicants, and burning with 
 rage at the insolent treatment he had received from the im- 
 perial virago, whom Camden quaintly styles " a niggish old 
 wife," solemnly promised the queen to forsake the cause of 
 her rival. Immediately on his return to Winchester the 
 prelate fortified his castle, and having prepared all things 
 for declaring himself in favor of his brother, he sent messen- 
 gers to the queen, begging her to put herself at the head of 
 the Kentishmen and Londoners, and march with her son, 
 prince Eustace, to Winchester.' 
 
 The empress Matilda and the earl of Gloucester having 
 some intelligence of Henry de Blois's proceedings, advanced 
 from Oxford, accompanied by David king of Scotland, at the 
 head of an army, to overawe him. When they approached 
 the walls of Winchester, the empress sent a herald to the 
 legate, requesting a conference, as she had something of im- 
 portance to communicate ; but to this requisition Henry de 
 Blois only replied, " Pardbo me" * that is, " I will prepare 
 myself;" and finding that the Norman party in Winchester 
 was at present too strong for him, he left the city, and retired 
 to his strong castle in the suburbs, causing, at the same time, 
 so unexpected an attack to be made on the empress, that 
 she had a hard race to gain the shelter of the royal citadel. 
 " To comprise," says William of Malmesbury, " a long series 
 of events within narrow limits, the roads on every side of 
 
 1 Chronicle quoted in Knight's London. Thierry. Lingard. Stowe. 
 * Tyrrell. ' Malmesbury. fiervase. * Malmesbury. 
 
226 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 Winchester were watched by the queen, and the earls who 
 had come with her, lest supplies should be brought in to those 
 who had sworn fidelity to the empress. Andover was burned, 
 and the Londoners having assumed a martial attitude, lent 
 all the assistance they could to distress that princess." '■ 
 
 Queen Matilda, with her son and sir William Ypres, at the 
 head of the Londoners and the Kentishmen, was soon after 
 at the gates of Winchester. The empress, now closely block- 
 aded in her palace, had ample cause to repent of her vindic- 
 tive folly in rousing the energies of her royal cousin's ej)irit, 
 by repulsing the humble boon she had craved in her despair. 
 For nearly two months the most destructive warfare of 
 famine, fire, and sword was carried on in the streets of Win- 
 chester ; till the empress Matilda, dreading the balls of fire 
 which were nightly thrown from the legate's castle, and 
 which had already destroyed upwards of twenty stately 
 churches and several monasteries, prevailed on her gallant 
 brother to provide for her retreat. He and her uncle David 
 cut a passage for her through the besiegers at the sword's 
 point. She and her uncle David, king of Scotland, by dint 
 of hard riding escaped to Lutgershall ; while the earl of 
 Gloucester arrested the pursuit by battling with them by 
 the way, till, almost all his followers being slain, he was com- 
 pelled to surrender after a desperate defence. This skirmish 
 took place on the 14th of September. 1141. 
 
 When the earl of Gloucester was presented by his captors 
 to queen Matilda at Winchester, she was transported with 
 joy, beholding in him a security for her beloved consort's 
 safety. She received him courteously, and exerted all her 
 eloquence to persuade him to arrange an amicable treaty 
 for the king's release, in exchange for himself Gloucester 
 replied, " That would not be a fair equivalent, for," said he, 
 "twenty earls would not be of suflScient importance to 
 ransom a king; how then, lady, can you expect that I 
 should so far forget the interest of the empress, my sister, 
 as to propose that she should exchange him for only one ?" 
 Matilda then offered to restore him to all his forfeit honors, 
 and even to bestow the government of the realm on him, 
 
 ^ Malmesbury. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 227 
 
 provided he would conclude a peace, securing England to 
 Stephen, and Normandy to the empress. But nothing could 
 induce him to swerve in the slightest degree from what he 
 considered his duty to his sister. The queen, finding she 
 could not prevail on him to enter into any arrangement for 
 the restoration of his liberty, then committed him for safe 
 custody to the charge of William of Ypres ; " and though 
 she might have remembered," says William of Malmesbury, 
 " that her husband had been fettered by his command, yet 
 she never suffered a bond of any kind to be put upon him, 
 nor presumed on her dignity to treat him dishonorably; 
 and finally, when he was conducted to Eochester, he went 
 freely whenever he wished to the churches below the castle, 
 and conversed with whom he pleased, the queen only being 
 present. After her departure he was held in free custody 
 in the keep ; and so calm and serene was his mind, that, 
 receiving money from his vassals in Kent, he bought some 
 valuable horses, which were both serviceable and beneficial 
 to him hereafter." 
 
 This generous conduct of Matilda to the man who had 
 done so much injury to her husband and her cause, is im- 
 puted by William of Malmesbury to the dignity and merit 
 of the valiant earl, his patron, " whose high bearing," he 
 says, " impressed his enemies with such great respect, that 
 it was impossible to treat him otherwise." ' A less partial 
 writer would have given the queen due praise for the mag- 
 nanimity with which she acted, under circumstances that 
 might well have justified the sternest reprisals for his harsh 
 usage of her captive lord ; but the fact spoke for itself, and 
 won more hearts for the queen than the wealth of England 
 and Normandy combined could purchase for her haughty 
 namesake and rival. 
 
 Meantime the empress, whose safe retreat to Lutgershall 
 had been thus dearly purchased by the loss of her great 
 general's liberty, being hotly pursued by the queen's troops 
 to Devizes, only escaped their vigilance by personating a 
 corpse, wrapped in grave-clothes, and being placed in a 
 coflin, which was bound with cords, and borne on the 
 
 1 William of Malmesbury. Dr. Giles's edition. 
 
228 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 shoulders of some of her trusty partisans to Gloucester, the 
 stronghold of her valiant brother, where she arrived, faint 
 and weary with long fasting and mortal terror.^ 
 
 Her party was so dispirited by the loss of her approved 
 counsellor and trusty champion, the earl of Gloucester, that 
 she was compelled to make some overtures to the queen, her 
 cousin, for his release. But Matilda would hear of no other 
 terms than the restoration of her captive husband, king 
 Stephen, in exchange for him. This the empress peremp- 
 torily refused, in the first instance, though she offered a 
 large sum of gold, and twelve captive earls of Stephen's 
 party, as her brother's ransom. Queen Matilda was inflex- 
 ible in her determination never to resign this important 
 prisoner on any other condition than the release of her 
 royal husband. As this condition was rejected, she caused 
 the countess of Gloucester to be informed, that unless her 
 terms were accepted, and that speedily, she would send 
 Gloucester to one of her strong castles in Boulogne,' there 
 to be kept as rigorously as Stephen had been by the orders 
 of the empress and her party. JSTot that it was in the gentle 
 nature of the queen to have made these harsh reprisals on a 
 gaUant gentleman, whom the fortune of war had placed at 
 her disposal ; but as the captive king was incarcerated in 
 Bristol castle, of which the said countess of Gloucester was 
 the chatellaine, there was sound policy in exciting her con- 
 jugal fears. Had it not been for this threat, Stephen 
 would never have regained his liberty, for important as her 
 brother's presence was to the empress, she obdurately re- 
 fused to purchase his freedom by the release of the king. 
 Fortunately the person of Stephen was in the keeping, not 
 of the vindictive empress, but the countess of Gloucester ; 
 and her anxiety for the restoration of her lord led to the 
 arrangement of a sort of private treaty between her and 
 the queen for the exchange of their illustrious prisoners ; 
 by which it was agreed that Stephen should be enlarged 
 forthwith on condition that his queen and son, with two of 
 the leading nobles of his party, should be detained as host- 
 
 ' Brompton. John of Tinemouth. Gervase. Knighton. 
 * Malmesbury. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 229 
 
 ages in Bristol castle, to insure his keeping faith by liber- 
 ating the earl of Gloucester, whose son was to be left in the 
 king's possession at Winchester, as a surety for the release 
 of the queen and prince Eustace. 
 
 Matilda, the most tenderly devoted of conjugal heroines, 
 hesitated not to procure the enfranchisement of her lord by 
 putting herself and her boy into the hands of the countess 
 of Gloucester. This she did on the festival of All Saints,'! 
 November 1, 1141, on which day Stephen was liberated, and 1 
 departed from Bristol on his way to Winchester. The earl | 
 of Gloucester being brought to him there from Eoehester [ 
 castle, received his freedom, and on the third day after set 
 out for Bristol, leaving his son with Stephen as a pledge for 
 the release of the queen and prince. Matilda, who had re- 
 mained a voluntary, but of course a most anxious prisoner 
 in the stronghold of her foes, was emancipated as soon 
 as he arrived, and hastened to rejoin her husband at 
 Winchester, and to send the heir of Gloucester back to his 
 parents. Pew episodes in the personal history of royalty 
 are more interesting than this transaction, none better 
 authenticated, being narrated by William of Mahnes- 
 bury, whose book is dedicated to one of the principal 
 actors engaged in this drama, — his patron, Eobert earl of 
 Gloucester. 
 
 Queen Matilda was not long permitted to enjoy the re- 
 union which took place between her and her beloved consort, 
 after she had succeeded in procuring his deliverance from 
 the fetters of her vindictive rival ; for nothing could induce 
 the empress to Hsten to any terms of pacification, and the 
 year 1142 commenced with a mutual renewal of hostilities 
 between the belligerent parties. While Stephen was pur- 
 suing the war with the fury of a newly enfranchised lion, 
 he was seized with a dangerous malady at Northampton. 
 Matilda hastened to him on the first news of his sickness, 
 which was so sore that for some hours he was supposed to 
 be dead. In all probability, his illness was a return of the 
 lethargic complaint with which he had once or twice been 
 afiSicted at the commencement of the internal troubles of 
 his realm. 
 
230 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 Through the tender attentions of his queen Stephen was 
 recovered, and soon after able to take the field again ; which 
 he did with such success that the empress's party thought 
 it high time to claim the assistance of Geoffrey count of An- 
 jou, who was now exercising the functions of duke of Nor- 
 mandy. Geoffrey, who had certainly been treated by his 
 imperial spouse, her late father king Henry, and her English 
 partisans, as " a fellow of no reckoning," thought proper to 
 stand on ceremony, and required the formality of an invita- 
 tion, preferred by the earl of Gloucester in person, before he 
 would either come himself, or part with the precious heir 
 of England and Normandy, prince Henry. The empress, 
 impatient to embrace her first-born son, and to obtain the 
 Angevin and Norman succors to strengthen her party, pre- 
 vailed upon her brother to undertake this mission. 
 
 Gloucester left her, as he thought, safe in the almost im- 
 pregnable castle of Oxford, and embarked for Normandy. 
 As soon as he was gone, Stephen besieged the empress in 
 her stronghold. The want of provisions rendered its fall 
 inevitable, and there was then every hope of concluding the 
 war by the capture of the haughty domina. By a shrewd 
 exercise of female ingenuity, she eluded the vengeance of 
 her exasperated rival. One night she, with only four at- 
 tendants, clothed in white garments, stole through a postern 
 that opened upon the river Thames, which at that time was 
 thickly frozen over and covered with snow.^ The white 
 draperies in which the empress and her little train were 
 enveloped from head to foot prevented the sentinels from 
 distinguishing their persons, as they crept along with noise- 
 less steps under the snow-banks, till they were at a suflScient 
 distance from the castle to exert their speed. They then 
 fled with headlong haste, through the blinding storms that 
 drifted full in their faces, as they scampered over hedges 
 and ditches, and heaps of snow and ice, till they reached 
 Abingdon, a distance of six miles, where they took horse, 
 and arrived safely at Wallingford the same night.'' The 
 Saxon annals aver that the empress was let down from one 
 
 ^ M. Paris. W. Malmesbury. Sim. Dunelm. T-Podigma Neustria. 
 ^ Y-Podigma Neustria. Malmesbury. Speed. Rapin. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 231 
 
 of the towers of Oxford castle by a long rope, and that she 
 fled on foot all the long weary miles to Wallingford. On 
 her arrival there she was welcomed by her brother, Robert 
 of Gloucester, who had just returned from Normandy with 
 her son prince Henry ; " at the sight of whom," say the 
 chroniclers, " she was so greatly comforted that she forgot 
 all her troubles and mortifications for the joy she had of his 
 presence." ^ Thus we see that the sternest natures are 
 accessible to the tender influences of maternal love, power- 
 ful in the heart of an empress as in that of a peasant. 
 
 Geoffrey count of Anjou, having no great predilection for 
 the company of his Juno, thought proper to remain in 
 Normandy with his son, the younger GeofErey of Anjou. 
 After three years of civil strife, during which the youthful 
 Henry learned the science of arms under the auspices of 
 his redoubted uncle, the earl of Gloucester, Geofflrey re- 
 called his heir. Earl Eobert of Gloucester accompanied his 
 princely eleve to Wareham, where they parted," never to 
 meet again ; for the brave earl died of a fever at Gloucester, 
 October 31st, 1147, and was interred at Bristol. With this 
 great man and true-hearted brother died the hopes of the 
 empress Matilda's party for the present, and she soon after 
 quitted England, having alienated all her friends by the 
 ungovernable violence of her temper and her overweening 
 haughtiness. The great secret of government consists, 
 mainly, in an accurate knowledge of the human heart, by 
 which princes acquire the art of conciliating the affections 
 of those around them, and, by graceful condescensions, win 
 the regard of the lower orders, of whom the great body of 
 the nation, emphatically called 'the people,' is composed. 
 The German education and the self-sufiiciency of the em- 
 press prevented her from considering the importance of 
 these things, and, as a matter of course, she failed in obtaining 
 the great object for which she contended. 
 
 " Away vrith her !" was the cry of the English population ; 
 " we will not have this Norman woman to reign over us" ' 
 Yet this unpopular claimant of the throne was the only 
 
 1 Gervase. ' Chronicles of Chester, as cited by Tyrrell. 
 
 ' Thierry's Anglo-Norman History. 
 
232 MATILDA OF BOUL6gNE. 
 
 surviving child and representative of their adored queen 
 Matilda, the daughter of a Saxon princess, the descendant 
 of the great Alfred. But the virtues of Matilda of Scotland, 
 her holy spirit, and her graces of mind and manners had 
 been inherited, not by her daughter (who was removed in 
 her tender childhood from under the maternal influence), 
 but by her niece and name-child, Matilda of Boulogne, who 
 had been educated under her auspices. The younger queen 
 Matilda was, however, not only one of the best, but one of 
 the greatest women of the age in which she lived. So per- 
 fect was she in that most important of all royal accomplish- 
 ments, the art of pleasing, — that art in which her haughty 
 cousin the empress was entirely deficient, — that her win- 
 ning influence was acknowledged even by that diplomatic 
 statesman-priest, Henry de Blois ; and she was of more 
 effectual service in her husband's cause than the swords of 
 the foreign army which Stephen had rashly called to the 
 support of his tottering throne. 
 
 Stephen and Matilda kept their Christmas this year, 1147, 
 at Lincoln, with uncommon splendor, for joy of the depart- 
 ure of their unwelcome kinswoman, the empress Matilda, 
 and the re-establishment of the public peace ; and so com- 
 pletely did Stephen consider himself a king again, that, in 
 defiance of certain oracular denouncements of evil to any 
 monarch of England who should venture to wear his crown 
 in that city on Christmas-day, he attended mass in his royal 
 robes and diadem, against the advice of his sagest counsel- 
 lors, both temporal and spiritual." While at Lincoln, prince 
 .Ejistacg, the son of Stephen and Matilda (then in his thir- 
 teenth year ), received the oath of fealty from such of the 
 barons as could be prevailed upon to acknowledge him as 
 the heir-apparent to the throne. Stephen and Matilda were 
 desirous of his being crowned at Lincoln, in hopes of 
 securing to him the right of succession, but the nobles 
 would not consent. 
 
 The mind of queen Matilda appears, during the year 1148, 
 to have been chiefly directed to devotional matters. It was 
 in this year that she carried into execution her long-cherished 
 
 1 Geivase. Speed. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 233 
 
 design of founding and endowing the hospital and church of 
 S t. Kath erine by the Tower/ for the repose of the souls of 
 her dec'ease^'childrenTBalSwin and Maud. The same year 
 queen Matilda, jointly with Stephen, founded the royal abbey 
 of Feversham, in Kent, and personally superintended its 
 erection. For many months she resided in the nunnery of 
 St. Austin's, Canterbury, to watch the progress of the work," 
 it being her desire to be interred within that stately church, 
 which she had planned with such noble taste. There is 
 great probability that she was at this time in declining 
 health, having gone through many sore trials and fatigues, 
 both of mind and body, during the long protracted years 
 of civil war. 
 
 The care of this popular queen, that the humbler portion 
 of her subjects should be provided with proper accommo- 
 dation for their comfort during public worship, caused her 
 to found the noble church of St. Mary at Southampton, of 
 which that faithful antiquary, Leland, gives the following 
 quaint and characteristic particulars : — " There is a chapel 
 of St. Nicholas, a poor and small thing, yet standing, at the 
 east end of St. Marie's church, in the great cemetery, where 
 it is said the old parish church of Old Hampton stood. One 
 told me there, that the littleness of this church was the 
 cause of the erection of the great church of Our Ladye, 
 now standing, by this occasion : one Matilde, queen of Eng- 
 land, asked ' What it meant that a great number of people 
 walked about the church of St. Nicholas ?' and one answered, 
 ' It is for lack of room in the church.' Then she, ex voto, 
 promised to make them a new, and this was the original 
 of St. Marie church. This queen Matilde, or some other 
 good person following, thought to have this made a coUegiate 
 church, but this purpose succeed did not fiilly." ' 
 
 1 This royal institution, wMoh under the fostering protection of the queens of 
 England has survived the fall of every other monastic foundation of the olden 
 times, has been transplanted to the Regent's park, and affords a delightful 
 asylum and ample maintenance for a limited number of those favored ladies 
 who, preferring a life of maiden meditation and independence to the careworn 
 paths of matrimony, are fortunate enough to obtain sisterships. A nan of St. 
 Katherine may truly be considered in a state of single blessedness. 
 
 ' Stowe. ' Leland's Itinerary, vol. iii.; second edition. 
 
234 MATILDA OP BOULOGNE. 
 
 The repose of cloistered seclusion, and heavenward em- 
 ployment in works of piety and benevolence, whereby the 
 royal Matilda sought to charm away the excitement of the 
 late fierce struggle in which she had been forced to take so 
 active a part, were succeeded by fresh anxieties of a political 
 nature, caused by the return of the young Henry Pitz- 
 Empress in the following year (1149), and by the evident 
 intention of her uncle, David of Scotland, to support his 
 claims. The king her husband, apprehending that an attack 
 on the city of York was meditated, flew to arms once more, 
 on which David, after conferring knighthood on his youthful 
 kinsman, retired into Scotland, and prince Henry returned 
 to Normandy, not feeling himself strong enough to bide the 
 event of a battle with Stephen at that period.^ A brief 
 interval of tranquillity succeeded the departure of these 
 invading kinsmen ; but queen Matilda lived not long to 
 enjoy it. Worn out with cares and anxieties, this amiable 
 princess closed her earthly pilgrimage at Heningham castle 
 in Essex, the mansion of Alberie de Vere, where she died 
 of a fever. May 3, 1151, in the fifteenth year of her hus- 
 band's reign. Stephen was forty-seven years old at the 
 time of this his irreparable loss ; Matilda was probably 
 about the same age, or a little younger. 
 
 This lamented queen was interred in the newly-erected 
 abbey of Feversham, of which she had been so munificent 
 a patroness, having endowed it with her own royal manor 
 of Lillechurch, which she gave to William of Ypres for his 
 demesne of Feversham, the spot chosen by her as the site 
 of this noble monastic establishment, which was dedicated 
 to St. Saviour, and filled with black monks of Cluny. The 
 most valued of all the gifts presented by queen Matilda to 
 her favorite abbey was a portion of the holy cross, which 
 had been sent by her illustrious uncle, Godfrey of Boulogne, 
 from Jerusalem, and was, therefore, regarded as doubly 
 precious, none but heretics presuming to doubt -of its being 
 ' vera crux: '' "Here," says that indefatigable antiquary, 
 Weever, "lies interred Maud, wife of king Stephen, the 
 daughter of Eustace earl of Boulogne (brother of Godfrey 
 
 1 Roger Hoveden. a Robert of Gloucester. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 235 
 
 and Baldwin, kings of Jerusalem) by Mary Atheling (sister to 
 Matilda Atheling, wife to Henry, her husband's predecessor). 
 She died at Heningham castle in Essex, the 3d of May, 
 1151 ; whose epitaph I found in a nameless manuscript. 
 
 " Anno milleno C. quinquagenoque primo, 
 
 Quo sua non minuit, sed sibi nostra tulit, 
 MatMldis felix conjux Stephani quoque Kegis 
 
 Oooidit, insignis moribus et titulis ; 
 Cultrix vera Dei, cultrix et pauperiei. 
 
 Hie subnixa Deo, quo frueretur eo. 
 Femina si qua Polos conscendere queque meretur, 
 
 Angeliois manibus diva haec Begina tenetur." 
 
 The monastic Latin of this inscription may be thus ren- 
 dered : " In the year one thousand one hundred and fifty- 
 one, not to her own, but to our great loss, the happy Matilda, 
 the wife of king Stephen, died, ennobled by her virtues as 
 by her titles. She was a true worshipper of God, and a real 
 patroness of the poor. She lived submissive to God, that 
 she might afterwards enjoy his presence. If ever woman 
 deserved to be carried by the hands of angels to heaven, it 
 was this holy queen." 
 
 Queen Matilda left three surviving children by her mar- 
 riage with Stephen, — Eustace, William, and Mary. The 
 eldest, prince Eustace, was, after her death, despatched by 
 Stephen to the court of his royal brother-in-law, Louis VII., 
 to solicit his assistance in recovering the duchy of Nor- 
 mandy, which, on the death of Geoffrey of Anjou, had re- 
 verted to Henry Fitz-Empress, the rightful heir. Louis, 
 who had good reason for displeasure against Henry, rein- 
 vested Eustace with the duchy, and received his homage 
 once more. Stephen then, in the hope of securing this be- 
 loved son's succession to the English throne, endeavored to 
 prevail on the archbishop of Canterbury to crown him as 
 the acknowledged heir of England. But neither the arch- 
 bishop, nor any other prelate, could be induced to perform 
 this ceremony, lest, as they said, " they should be the means 
 of involving the kingdom once more in the horrors of civil 
 war." ' According to some historians, Stephen was so ex- 
 
 1 Rapin. 
 
236 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 asperated at this refusal that he shut all the bishops up in 
 one house, declaring his intention to keep them in ward till 
 one or other of them yielded obedience to his will. The 
 archbishop of Canterbury, however, succeeded in making 
 his escape to N^ormandy, and persuaded Henry Plantagenet, 
 who, by his marriage with Eleanor duchess of Aquitaine, 
 the divorced queen of France, had become a powerful prince, 
 to try his fortune once more in England. 
 
 Henry, who had now assumed the titles of duke of Nor- 
 mandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou, landed in Eng- 
 land, January, 1153, before preparations were made to oppose 
 his victorious progress. He marched directly to the relief 
 of his mother's friends at Wallingford, and arrived at a 
 time when Eustace was carrying on operations in the ab- 
 sence of the king his father, who had gone to London to 
 procure fresh supplies of men and money. Eustace main- 
 tained his position till the return of Stephen, when the hos- 
 tile armies drew up in battle-array, with the intention of 
 deciding the question between the rival claimants of the 
 crown at swords' points. An accidental circumstance pre- 
 vented the deadly effusion of kindred blood from staining 
 the snows of the wintry plain of Egilaw. "That day 
 Stephen's horse," says Matthew Paris, " reared furiously 
 thrice, as he advanced to the front to array his battle, and 
 thrice fell with his forefeet flat to the earth, and threw his 
 royal rider. The nobles exclaimed it was a portent of evil, 
 and the men murmured among themselves ; ^ on which the 
 great William de Albini, the widower of the late dowager- 
 queen Adelicia, took advantage of the pause which this 
 superstitious panic on the part of Stephen's adherents had 
 created to address the king on the horrors of civil war; 
 and, reminding him of the weakness of his cause, and the 
 justice of that of his opponent, implored him to avoid the 
 slaughter of his subjects, by entering into an amicable 
 arrangement with Henry Plantagenet." 
 
 Stephen and Henry accordingly met for a personal con- 
 ference in a meadow at "Wallingford, with the river Thames 
 flowing between their armies, and there settled the terms 
 
 1 Henry of Huntingdon, Lord Lyttelton. Speed. Tierney's Arundel. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 237 
 
 of pacification ; whereby Stephen was to enjoy the crown 
 during his life, on condition of solemnly guaranteeing the 
 succession to Henry Plantagenet, to the exclusion of his 
 own children.' Henry, on his part, swore to eonflrm to 
 them the earldom of Boulogne, the inheritance of their 
 mother, the late queen Matilda, and all the personal prop- 
 erty and possessions enjoyed by Stephen during the reign of 
 his uncle, Henry I. After the treaty was ratified, William 
 de Albini first afBxing his sign manual, as the head of the - 
 barons, by the style and title of William earl of Chichester,^ 
 Stephen unbraced his armor in token of peace, and Henry 
 saluted him as ' king,' adding the endearing name of' father,' 
 and if Polydore Vergil and other chroniclers who relate 
 this incident are to be believed, not without good reason. 
 
 Of a more romantic character, however, is the circum- 
 stantial account of the cause of this pacification, as related 
 by that courtly historian Matthew Paris, which, though he 
 only mentions it as a report, is of too remarkable a nature 
 to be omitted here. We give the passage in his own words : 
 " The empress, they say, who had rather have been Stephen's 
 paramour than his foe, when she saw him and her son ar- 
 rayed against each other, and their armies ready to engage 
 on Bgilaw Heath, caused king Stephen to be called aside, 
 and coming boldly up to him, she said, ' What mischievous 
 and tmnatural thing go ye about to do ? Is it meet the 
 father should destroy the son, or the son to kill the sire ? 
 For the love of the most high God, fling down your weapons 
 from your hands, sith that (as thou well knowest) he is 
 indeed thine own son : for you well know how we twain 
 were acquaint before I wedded Geoffrey !' The king knew 
 her words to be sooth, and so came the peace." ' 
 
 No other historian records that the empress was in Eng- 
 land at this period, much less that she was the author of the 
 pacification. Lord Lyttelton, however, in his history of 
 Henry II., says, " that at one of his interviews with Stephen, 
 previous to the settlement of the succession on Henry, that 
 prince is stated by an old author to have claimed the king 
 
 1 Tiemey'B Arundel. Matthew Paris. Speed. 
 
 2 Tiemey's Arundel. ' Matthew Paris. 
 
238 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 for his father, on the confession of the empress, when she 
 supposed herself to be on a death-bed." Eapin also mentions 
 the report. That which lends most color to the tale is the 
 fact that the empress Matilda's second son G-eoffrey, on the 
 death of his father, set up a claim to the earldom of Anjou, 
 grounded on the supposed illegitimacy of prince Henry. 
 The ungracious youth even went so far as to obtain the 
 testimony of the Angevin barons, who witnessed the last 
 moments of the count his father, to the assertion " that the 
 expiring Geoffrey named him as the successor to his domin- 
 ions, because he suspected his elder brother to be the son of 
 Stephen." ' 
 
 Prince Eustace was so much enraged at the manner in 
 which his interests had been compromised by the treaty of 
 "Wallingford, that he withdrew in a transport of indignation 
 from the field ; and gathering together a sort of free company 
 of the malcontent adherents of his father's party, he marched 
 towards Bury St. Edmund's, ravaging and laying under con- 
 tribution all the country through which he passed. The 
 monks of Bury received him honorably, and offered to re- 
 fresh his men ; but he sternly replied, " That he came not 
 for meat but money," and demanded a subsidy, which being 
 denied by the brethren of St. Edmund, — " they being unwill- 
 ing,'' they said, " to be the means of raising fresh civil wars, 
 which fell heavily on all peacefully disposed men, but heaviest 
 of all on the clergy," — Eustace, reckless of aU moral re- 
 straints, instantly plundered the monastery, and ordered all 
 the corn and other provisions belonging to these civil and 
 hospitable ecclesiastics to be carried to his own castle, near 
 the town ; and " then sitting down to dinner in a frenzy of 
 rage, the first morsel of meat he essayed to swallow choked 
 him," says the chronicler who relates this act of wrong and 
 violence. According to other historians, Eustace died of a 
 brain fever on the 10th of August, 1153.' His body was 
 conveyed to Peversham abbey, and was interred by the side 
 of his mother, queen Matilda. Eustace left no children by 
 his wife, Constance of Prance. 
 
 "William, the third son of Stephen and Matilda, inherited 
 
 1 Vita Gaufredi de Normandi. ~ ' Speed. 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 239 
 
 his mother's earldom of Boulogne, which, together with that 
 of Mortagne, and aU his father's private property, were se- 
 cured to him by the treaty of Wallingfor d. He is mentioned 
 in that treaty by name, as having done homage to Henry 
 of Anjou and Normandy. Shortly afterwards, however, 
 this prince, though of tender age, entered into a conspiracy 
 with some of the Flemish mercenaries, to surprise the per- 
 son of prince Henry on Barham downs, as he was riding 
 from Dover in company with the king. Stephen himself 
 is not wholly clear from a suspicion of being concerned in 
 this plot, which failed through an accident which befell 
 prince William ; for just before the assault should have taken 
 place, he was thrown by his mettlesome steed, and had the 
 ill luck to break his leg. Henry, on receiving a secret hint 
 of what was in agitation, took the opportunity of the con- 
 fusion created by "William's fall to ride off at full speed to 
 Canterbury, and soon after sailed for Normandy. It does 
 not appear that he bore any Ul-will against William de Blois 
 for his treacherous design, as he afterwards knighted him, 
 and confirmed to him his mother's earldom, and whatever 
 was possessed by Stephen before his accession to the throne. 
 This prince died in the year 1160, while attending Henry 
 II. on his return home from the siege of Thoulouse. 
 
 The lady Marie de Blois, the only surviving daughter of 
 Stephen and Matilda, took the veil, and was abbess of the 
 royal nunnery of Eomsey, ia which her grandmother, Mary 
 of Scotland, and her great-aunt, Matilda the good queen, 
 were educated. When her brother William count of Bou- 
 logne died without issue, the people of Boulogne, desiring to 
 have her for their countess, Matthew, the brother of Philip 
 count of Flanders, stole her from her convent, and marry- 
 ing her, became in her right count of Boulogne. She was 
 his wife ten years, when, by sentence of the pope, she was 
 divorced from him, and forced to return to her monastery.^ 
 She "Had^two daughters by this marriage, who were allowed 
 to be legitimate ; and Ida, the eldest, inherited the earldom 
 of Boulogne, in right of her grandmother Matilda, Stephen's 
 queen. 
 
 Stephen died at Dover, of the iliac passion, October 25, 
 
240 MATILDA OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 1154, in the fifty-first year of his age, and the nineteenth of 
 his reign. He was buried by the side of his beloved queen 
 Matilda, and their unfortunate son Eustace, in the abbey of 
 Peversham. "His body rested here in quietness," says 
 Stowe, " till the dissolution ; when, for the trifling gain of 
 the lead in which it was lapped, it was taken up, uncofflned, 
 and' plunged into the river, — so uncertain is man, yea, the 
 greatest princes, of any resFin this world, even in the mat- 
 ter of burial." Honest old Speed, by way of conclusion to 
 this quotation from his brother chronicler, adds this anath- 
 ema : " And restless may their bodies be also, who, for filthy 
 lucre, thus deny the dead the quiet of their graves !" 
 
 A noble monument of Stephen and Matilda still survives 
 the storms and changes of the last seven centuries, — 
 the ruins of F urnes s abijey. That choicest gem of the exqui- 
 site ecclesiasucal ar^itecture of the twelfth century was 
 founded, in conjugal unity of purpose, by them soon after 
 their marriage, July 1, 1127, when only earl and countess 
 of Boulogne. On acquiringT;he superior rank and power of 
 king and queen of England, they gave additional gifts and 
 immunities to this abbey. The transferred brotherhood 
 of St. Benedict, who were thus enabled by the munificence 
 of the royal pair to plant a church and monastic establish- 
 ment of unrivalled grandeur in the sequestered valley of 
 Bekansgill, or the vale of ' the deadly nightshade,' as that 
 spot was then called in Lancashire, were not occupied 
 merely in singing and praying for the souls of their august 
 founders and their children, although the customs of that 
 age rendered the performance of these offices an indispen- 
 sable obligation on the part of the community, in return for 
 endowments of lands, but the real objects for which the 
 monks of Furness were rendered recipients of the bounty of 
 Matilda and her lord were the civilization and cultivation of 
 the wildest district of England. Whatever evils might re- 
 sult in after ages from the abuses which a despotic theocracy 
 introduced into their practice, the statistic benefits conferred 
 by these English fathers of the desert on the country were 
 undeniable. They drained morasses, cleared jungles, — the 
 haunts of wild beasts and robbers, — and converted them into 
 
MATILDA OF BOULOGNE, 241 
 
 rich pastures and arable lands ; while they taught a barbar- 
 ous and predatory population to provide honestly for the 
 wants of life by the practice of agriculture and the various 
 handicrafts which a progressive state of society renders 
 necessary, and even instructed those who possessed capa- 
 bilities for higher pursuits in the arts and sciences, which 
 expand the intellect while they employ the mechanical 
 powers of men. 
 
 The extensive remains of Furness abbey, its clustered 
 columns, glorious arches, elaborately wrought corbels, deli- 
 cate traceries, sublime elevations, and harmonious propor- 
 tions, tell their own tale, not only of the perfection to 
 which architecture and sculpture were carried under the 
 auspices of the accomplished Matilda of Boulogne, but of 
 the employment afforded to numerous bands of workmen in 
 various branches during the erection of such a fabric. The 
 busts of the royal founder and foundress stUl remain on 
 either side the lofty chancel window. Noble works of 
 art they are, full of life-like individuality, and extremely 
 characteristic of the persons they represent. Stephen is a 
 model of manly beauty, with a bold and majestic aspect. 
 They both wear their royal diadems. There is a chaste 
 simplicity truly classical in Matilda's attitude and costume. 
 Her veil flows from beneath the royal circlet in graceful folds 
 on either side her softly-moulded oval face. Her dress fits 
 closely to her shape, and is ornamented in front with a 
 mullet-shaped brooch. Her features are delicate and femi- 
 nine, her expression sweet and modest, yet indicative of 
 conscious dignity, and sufficiently touched with melancholy 
 to remind us of the thorns which beset her queenly garland, 
 during her severe struggles to support the defective title of 
 her consort to the sovereignty of England. The portrait 
 of Matilda which illustrates this biography is engraved |rom 
 a drawing made expressly for that purpose from the bust at 
 Furness abbey which we have just described, being the only 
 contemporary memorial which preserves to posterity an 
 authentic representation of this most interesting queen and 
 admirable woman. 
 
ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE, 
 
 QUEEN OF HENRY 11. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 Provenjal queens— Country of Eleanora of Aquitaine — Her grandfather — Death 
 of her father — Her great inheritance — Marriage — Becomes queen of France — 
 Beauty— She joins the crusaders — Her guard of Amazons — Eleanora and 
 ladies encumber the army — Occasion defeat — Refuge with queen's uncle — 
 Eleanora's coquetries — Returns to France — Her disgusts — Taunts — Henry 
 Plantagenet— Scandals — Birth of infant princess — Eleanora falls in love with 
 Henry — Jealousies — She applies for divorce — Her marriage dissolved — Re- 
 turns to Aquitaine — Adventures on journey — Marries Henry Plantagenet — 
 Birth of her son — -Enables Henry to gain England — Henry's love for Rosa- 
 mond — Returns to Eleanora — Succeeds to the English throne — Eleanora 
 crowned at Westminster — Costume — Birth of prince Henry — Queen presents 
 her infanta to the barons — Death of her eldest son — Her court — Tragedy 
 played before her — Her husband — His character — Rosamond discovered by the 
 queen — Eleanora's children — Birth of prince Geoffrey — Eleanora regent of 
 England — Goes to Normandy — Conclusion of empress Matilda's memoir — 
 Matilda regent of Normandy — Mediates peace — Dies — Her tomb — Eleanora 
 Norman regent — She goes to Aquitaine. 
 
 Hereditary sovereign of Aquitaine, by her first marriage 
 queen of Prance, then queen-consort of Henry II., and sub- 
 sequently regent of his realms, — how many regalities did 
 Eleanora of Aquitaine unite in her own person ! England, 
 by means of the marriage of her king and Eleanora, formed 
 a close alliance with the most polished and civilized people 
 on the face of the earth, as the Provengals of the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries undoubtedly were. With the arts, 
 the idealities, and the refinements of life, Eleanora brought 
 acquisitions of more importance to the Anglo-Norman peo- 
 ple than even that " great Provence dower," on which Dante 
 dwells with such earnestness. 
 
 But before the sweet provinces of the South were united 
 
[ 
 
 ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 243 
 
 to England by the marriage of their heiress with the heir 
 of the Conqueror, a varied tissue of incidents had chequered 
 the life of the duchess of Aquitaine, and it is necessary to 
 trace them before we can describe her conduct as queen of 
 England. It would be in vain to search on a map for the 
 dominions of Bleanora, under the title of dukedom of 
 Aquitaine. In the eleventh century, the counties of Guieune 
 and Gaseony were erected into this dukedom, after the 
 ancient kingdom of Provence, established by a diet of 
 Charlemagne,' had been dismembered. Julius Csesar calls 
 the south of Gaul Aquitaine, from the numerous rivers and 
 fine ports belonging to it ; and the poetical population of 
 this district adopted the name for their dukedom from the 
 classics. 
 
 The language which prevailed all over the south of France 
 was called Provencal, from the kingdom of Provence ; and 
 it formed a bond of national union among the numerous 
 independent sovereigns under whose feudal sway this beau- 
 tiful country was divided. Throughout the whole tract of 
 country, from Navarre to the dominions of the dauphin of 
 Auvergne, and from sea to sea, the Proven5al language was 
 spoken, — a language which combined the best points of 
 French and Italian, and presented peculiar facilities for 
 poetical composition. It was called the langue d'oc, some- 
 times langue d'oc et no, the tongue of ' yes' and ' no ;' because, 
 instead of the oui and non of the rest of France, the affirm- 
 ative and negative were oc and no. The ancestors of Ele- 
 anora were called par excellence the lords of ' Oc' and - JVo.' 
 William IX., her grandfather, was one of the earliest pro- 
 fessors and most liFeral patrons of the art. His poems were 
 models of imitation for all the succeeding troubadours.' 
 
 The descendants of this minstrel hero were Eleanora and 
 her sister Petronilla : they were the daughters^f his son, 
 Wilham count de Poitou^ William of Poitou was a pious 
 princ^which, togetKer with his death in the Holy Land, 
 caused his father's subjects to call him St. William. The 
 mother of this'^rinee^was the great heiressThilippa ' of 
 
 ' Atlas Glographique. ' Sismondi's Literature of the South. 
 
 ' She is likewise called Matilda. — -Rer. Script, de Franc. 
 
244 ELEANORA OF AQTJITAINB. 
 
 Thoulouse, duchess of Guienne and Gascony, and countess 
 of Thoulouse in her own right. Before Philippa married, 
 her husband was William the seventh count of Poitou and 
 Saintonge ; afterwards he called himself "William IV. duke 
 of Aquitaine. He invested his eldest son with the county 
 of Poitou, who is termed William X. of Poitou. This prince, 
 the father of Eleanora, did not live to inherit the united 
 provinces of Poitou and Aquitaine, which comprised nearly 
 the whole of the south of France ; his wife, Eleanora of 
 Chatelherault, died in early life, in 1129. 
 
 The father of Eleanora left Aquitaine in 1132, with his 
 younger brother, Eaymond of Poitou, who was chosen by 
 the princes of the crusade that year to receive the hand of 
 the heiress of Conrad prince of Antioch, and maintain that 
 bulwark of the Holy Land against the assaults of pagans 
 and infidels. William fell, aiding his brother in this arduous 
 contest ; but Eaymond succeeded in establishing himself as 
 prince of Antioch. The rich inheritance of Thoulouse, part 
 of the dower of the duchess Philippa, had been pawned for 
 a sum of money to the count of St. Gilles, her cousin, which 
 enabled her son to undertake the expense of the crusade led 
 by Eobert of Normandy. The count St. Gilles took posses- 
 sion of Thoulouse, and withheld it, as a forfeited mortgage, 
 from Eleanora, who finally inherited her grandmother's 
 rights to this lovely province. 
 
 The grandfather of Eleanora had been gay, and even 
 licentious, in his youth ; and now, at the age of sixty-eight, 
 he wished to devote some time, before his death, to penitence 
 for the sins of his early life. When his grand-daughter had 
 attained her fourteenth year, he commenced his career of 
 self-denial, by summoning the baronage of Aquitaine and 
 communicating his intention of abdicating in favor of his 
 grand-daughter, to whom they all took the oath of alle- 
 giance.' He then opened his great project of uniting Aqui- 
 taine with France, by giving Eleanora in marriage to the 
 •, heir of Louis VI. The barons agreed to this proposal, on 
 N^ condition that the laws and customs of Aquitaine should be 
 / held inviolate, and that the consent of the young princess 
 
 ' Suger. Orderious Vitalis. 
 
 f 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 245 
 
 should be obtained. Bleanora had an interview with her 
 suitor, and professed herself pleased with the arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 It was abbot Suger,' the wise premier of France, who had 
 earnestly promoted the marriage of the crowned heir of his 
 royal master Louis VI. with Bleanora of Aquitaine, in hopes 
 of peacefully uniting the rich provinces of the South with 
 the rest of the Gallic empire. According to the custom of 
 the earlier Capetian monarchs, the peers of France recog- 
 nised the heir of France as their king just before the death 
 of his royal sire. From thence the spouse of Eleanora was 
 
 Csurnamed Louis le Jeune, to distinguish him frqjgjiis&thsf^ 
 as he was called LouisJVIL while Louis Vl/was not only., 
 in existence, "But reigning. 
 
 Suger, by the desire of the elder king Louis, who was de- 
 clining in health, accompanied Louis le Jeune to Bourdeaux, 
 in order that this important marriage might be solemnized 
 as speedily as possible ; the heir of France was attended by 
 his two kinsmen, the warlike prince of Vermandois, and 
 Thibaut the poet, count of Champagne. 
 
 Louis and Eleanora were immediately married, with 
 great pomp, at Bourdeaux ; and, on the solemn resignation 
 
 ^ This great minister being intimately connected with the future destiny of 
 Eleanora of Aqmtaine, a sketch of his life is desirable for purposes of perspicuity. 
 Suger was, according to his own account, the son of indigent peasants, dependent 
 on the great abbwrf St. Denis, near Paris. Being a promising child, he served 
 at the altar as acolyte, and sbowing great aptness for the partial education given 
 to those servHors^liereceived further instruction from his benefactor, abbot Adam, 
 
 (and finally became one of thp most learned monks of the Benedictine order. 
 Philippe I, king of France, although at mortal feud with the church, on account 
 of its opposition to his tyrannical djyoroe from his, queen Bertha, confided the 
 education of his second son Louis to the Benedictines of St. Denis ; and here a 
 firm friendship was established between the son of the king and Suger son of 
 the serf. By a strange accident, the heir of Philippe I. was killed at the chase, 
 and the friend of Suger became Louis VI. king of France. Then he effected, 
 with the aid of his friend abbot Suger, those remarkable reforms in church and 
 state, which occasion historians to reckon his reign among those of the greatest 
 monarchs of France. Suger educated Louis VII., and after his accession gov- 
 erned France as prime-minister, and then as regent, and again as prime-min- 
 ister. Suger, although an ecclesiastic, had sufficient wisdom to moderate, rather 
 than encourage, the tendency to ascetic bigotry in the character and conduct of 
 the husband of Eleanora of Aquitaine, his royal pupil and master, Louis VII. — 
 Vie de Suger, par M. d'Auvigny. Paris, 1739. 
 
246 ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 of duke William, the youthful pair were crowned duke and 
 duchess of Aquitaine, August 1, 1137. On the conclusion 
 of this grand ceremony, duke William,' grandsire of the 
 bride, laid down his robes and insignia of sovereignty, and 
 took up the hermit's cowl and staff. He departed on a 
 pilgrimage to St. James's of Compostella in Spain, and died 
 soon after, very penitent, in one of the cells of that rocky 
 wilderness.'' 
 
 At the time when duke William resigned the dominions 
 of the South to his grand-daughter, he was the most power- 
 ful prince in Europe. His rich ports of Bourdeaux and 
 Saintonge supplied him with commercial wealth ; his mari- 
 time power was immense ; his court was the focus of learn- 
 ing and luxury ; and it must be owned that, at the acces- 
 sion of the fair Eleanora, this court had become not a little 
 licentious. 
 
 Louis and his bride obtained immediate possession of 
 Poitou, Gascony, Biscay, and a large territory extending 
 beyond the Pyrenees. The very day of the threefold so- , 
 lemnity of this abdication, and of the marriage and corona- ; 
 tion of Eleanora, the news arrived that the reigning sover- 
 eign of France was struck by death, and that Louis and 
 his young bride would be actually king and queen of Prance I 
 before the important day of August 1, 1137, came to a 
 
 ^ Montaigne, who speaks from his own local traditions of the South, asserts 
 that duke William lived in his hermitage at Montserrat ten or twelve years, 
 wearing, as a penance for his youthful sins, his armor under his hermit's weeds. 
 It is said by others, that he died as a hermit in a grotto at Florence, after having 
 macerated his body by tremendous penances, and established the severe order of 
 the Guillemines. Some historians call him St. William ; others give that holy 
 prefix to the name of his son, who died in the crusades eleven years before the 
 abdication of his sire. 
 
 ' To this great prince, the ancestor, through Eleanora of Aquitaine, of our 
 royal line, may be traced armorial bearings, and a war-cry whose origin has not 
 a little perplexed the readers of English history. The patron saint of England, 
 St. George, was adopted from the Aquitaine dukes, as we find, from the MS. of 
 the French herald Qilles de Bonnier, that the duke of Aquitaine's mot, or war- 
 cry, was " St. George for the puissant duke." His crest was a leopard, and his 
 descendants in England bore leopards on their shields till after the time of j 
 Edward I. Edward III. is called 'valiant pard' in his epitaphs; and thei 
 emperor of Germany sent Henry III. a present of three leopards, expressly 1 
 saying they were in compliment and allusion to his armorial bearings. | 
 
ELEAJSrOEA OF AQUITAINE. 247 
 
 close. The bride and bridegroom were urged by the min- 
 ister, Suger, to set off for Paris. They accordingly com- 
 menced their journey from Bourdeaux with all their court ; 
 they passed through Orleans, and calmed some emeutes of 
 the French people on the road.' The death of the reigning 
 king, Louis VI., is usually dated August Ist ; but that was, 
 in all probability, the day on which, simultaneously with 
 his contemporary, duke WiUiam of Aquitaine, he laid down 
 his royal power in favor of his successor. Louis VI. had, 
 however, but a few days to live: it is expressly declared 
 that he was alive at the time when the royal bride and 
 bridegroom arrived at the abbey of St. Denis. Here they 
 were admitted to the death-bed of this great sovereign, who 
 addressed them in these memorable words : " Eemember ! 
 royalty is a public trust, for the exercise of which a rigor- 
 ous account will be exacted by Him who has the sole dis- 
 posal of crowns and sceptres." So spoke the great legis- 
 lator of France to the youthful pair, whose wedlock had 
 united the north and south of France. On the consci- 
 entious mind of Louis VII. the words of his dying father 
 were strongly impressed, but it was late in life before his 
 thoughtless partner profited by them. 
 
 Louis VII. and queen Eleanora made a most magnificent 
 entry into Paris from St. Denis, after the funeral rites of 
 Louis VI. were performed. Probably the practice kept up 
 by the new-married queens of France, of always making a 
 public entry from St. Denis into the capital, originated at 
 this important crisis. The influence the young queen soon 
 acquired speedily plunged her husband and France into 
 bloody wars. She insisted on her relative, Eaymond count 
 of Thoulouse, being forced to acknowledge her sovereignty 
 over that province. The prime-minister of France, Suger, 
 examined into the justice of her claims, and then informed 
 her that her kinsman had fully proved that he held ' a good 
 bill of sale' for Thoulouse. Suger therefore advised his 
 royal master not to interfere ; as, if the justice of the case 
 had been on the side of queen Eleanora, it was unwise to 
 incur the expense of a war at the commencement of a new 
 
 1 Vie de Suger. 
 
248 ELEANORA OP AQUITAINE. 
 
 reign. Eleanora, however, prevailed with her royal lord : 
 the war was undertaken, and proved unsuccessful. 
 
 Eleanor was very beautiful ; she had been reared in all 
 the accomplishments of the South ; she was a fine musician, 
 and composed and sang the chansons and tensons of Pro- 
 vencal poetry. Her native troubadours expressly inform 
 us that she could both read and write. The government of 
 her dominions was in her own hands, and she frequently 
 resided in her native capital of Bourdeaux. She was per- 
 fectly adored by her southern subjects, who always wel- 
 comed her with joy, and bitterly mourned her absence 
 when she was obliged to return to her court at Paris, — a 
 court whose morals were severe ; where the rigid rule of 
 St. Bernard was observed by the king her husband, as if 
 his palace had been a convent. Far different was the rule 
 of Eleanora in the cities of the South. 
 
 The political sovereignty of her native dominions was 
 not the only authority exercised by Eleanora in 'gay 
 Guienne.' She was, by hereditary right, chief reviewer 
 and critic of the poets of Provence. At certain festivals 
 held by her, after the custom of her ancestors," called 
 Courts of Love, all new sirventes and chansons were sung or 
 recited before her by the troubadours. She then, assisted by 
 a conclave of her ladies, sat in judgment, and pronounced 
 sentence on their literary merits. She was herself a popular 
 troubadour poet. Her chansons were remembered long after 
 death had raised a barrier against flattery, and she is 
 reckoned among the authors of France.' The decisions of 
 the young duchess-queen in her troubadour Courts of Love 
 have met with the reprobation of modern French histo- 
 rians' on account of their immorality; they charge her with 
 avowing the startling opinion that no true love could exist 
 between married persons ; and it is certain that the encour- 
 agement she gave to her sister Petronilla ' and the count 
 
 " Sismondi. ' Nostradamus, History of Provence. Du Chesne. 
 
 ' Miohelet, History of France. 
 
 * This young princess is called Alice and Pernelle, as well as Petronilla. One 
 of these names was her poetical cognomen, by which her native poets, the 
 troubadours, celebrated her. The countess of Thoulouse, grandmother of 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 249 
 
 Eaoul of Vermandois offered too soon a practical illustration 
 of these evil principles. 
 
 The amusements of queen Eleanora seemed little suited to 
 the austere habits of Louis VII. ; yet she had the power of 
 influencing him to commit the only act of wilful injustice 
 which stains the annals of his reign. Petronilla had made 
 acquaintance with Eaoul count of Vermandois at the mag- 
 nificent festival at Bourdeaux, which comprised her royal 
 sister's marriage and coronation. The beauty of Petronilla 
 equalled that of queen Eleanora, but the young princess 
 carried into practice her sister's avowed principles, and 
 seduced Eaoul of Vermandois from his wife. This prince <■- * 
 had married a sister of the count of Champagne, whom he J/lir'"^'" 
 d ivorc ed for some frivolous pretext, and married, by queen -"' 
 
 Eleanora's connivance, Petronilla. The count of Cham- 
 pagne laid his sister's wrongs before the pop e, who __com- 
 manded Vermandois to put away Petronilla and totaEe"^ 
 back tne injured sister of Champagne?" Queen Eleanora, 
 enraged at the dishonor of Petronilla, prevailed on her hus- 
 band to punish the count of Champagne for his interference. 
 Louis VII., who already had cause of offence against the 
 count, invaded Champagne at the head of a large army, 
 and began a devastating war, in the course of which a most 
 dreadful occurrence happened at the storming of Vitry : 
 the cathedral, wherein thirteen himdred persons had taken 
 refuge, was burnt, and the poor people perished miserably. 
 Abbe Suger, having in the question of the Thoulouse war 
 experienced the evil influence of the young queen, had re- 
 signed his administration, and retired to his abbey of St. 
 Denis ; there he superintended the building of that beauti- 
 ful structure, which is still the admiration of Europe. But 
 when the dreadful slaughter at Vitry took place, Suger was 
 roused by the reproofs of his friend St. Bernard, who de- 
 clared him to be responsible for all the ill, since Louis VII. 
 had previously always acted by his advice. Suger in vain 
 pleaded that his king had now a bosom counsellor, who pri- 
 
 this frail damsel, had likewise two names, neither of them conventual or 
 saintly appellations, although she sought retirement in a convent after being 
 divorced. 
 
250 ELEANOKA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 vately traversed his beet advice ; that he had striven against 
 her influence to the verge of hostility with his king, and 
 had retired, when he found he could do no good, to his 
 duties as abbot, leaving the giddy Bleanora to reap the 
 fruit she had planted.' 
 
 It was at this juncture that St. Bernard preached the 
 crusade at Vezalai, in Burgundy. King Louis and queen 
 Eleanora, with all their court, came to hear the eloquent 
 saint ; and such crowds attended the royal auditors, that St. 
 Bernard was forced to preach in the market-place, for no 
 cathedral, however large, could contain them. St. Bernard 
 touched with so much eloquence on the murderous confla^ 
 gration at Vitry that the heart of the pious king Louis, 
 full of penitence for the sad effects of his destructiveness 
 on his own subjects, resolved to atone for it to the God of 
 mercy, by carrying sword and fire to destroy thousands of 
 his fellow-creatures, who had neither offended him nor even 
 heard of him. His queen, whose influence had led to the 
 misdeed at Vitry, likewise became penitent, and as sovereign 
 of Aquitaine vowed to accompany her lord to the Holy 
 Land, and lead the forces of the South to the relief of the 
 Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. The wise and excellent 
 Suger endeavored to prevail on his royal master to relin- 
 quish his mad expedition to Syria, assuring him that it 
 would bring ruin on his country ; he entreated him to stay 
 and govern his dominions, and if the crusade must be under- 
 taken, to permit the hot-headed young nobility to lead their , 
 vassals to the East without him. But the fanaticism of the | 
 king was proof against such persuasions; moreover, the t 
 romantic idea of becoming a female crusader had got into | 
 the light head of Bleanora his queen. Louis was dubious ' 
 whether to take his queen on this expedition ; but as Suger 
 was to be left regent of France during the crusade, he per- 
 suaded his royal master not to oppose her inclinations." 
 Nor can it excite wonder that, if Louis VII. would go cru- 
 sading against all reasonable advice, his wise prime-minister 
 should wish him to take his troublesome partner in regality 
 with him. Eleanora was sovereign of the South, with all its 
 
 1 Vie de Suger. s Ibid. 
 
ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE. 251 
 
 riches and maritime power ; and when the specimens she 
 had already given of her impracticable conduct are remem- 
 bered, it will be allowed that small chance had chancellor 
 Suger's regency of peace and quiet if the queen remained 
 at home. 
 
 When queen Eleanora received the cross from St. Bernard, 
 at Vezalai, she directly put on the dress of an Amazon ; and 
 her ladies, all actuated by the same frenzy, mounted on 
 horseback, and forming a lightly armed squadron, sur- 
 rounded the queen when she appeared in public, calling 
 themselves queen Eleanora's body-guard. They practised 
 Amazonian exercises, and performed a thousand follies in 
 public, to animate their zeal as practical crusaders. By the 
 suggestion of their young queen, this band of mad-women 
 sent their useless distaffs, as presents, to all the knights and 
 nobles who had the good sense to keep out of the crusading 
 expedition. This ingenious taunt had the effect of shaming 
 many wise men out of their better resolutions ; and to such 
 a degree was this mania of the crusade carried, that, as St. 
 Bernard himself owns, whole villages were deserted by their 
 male inhabitants, and the land left to be tilled by women 
 and children. It was on the Whit-Sunday of 1147 that, all 
 
 , matters being ready for marching to the south of France, 
 Louis VII. received the oriflamme ' from the hands of the 
 pope himself at the abbey of St. Denis, and set forward 
 
 - after the Whit-holidayson his ill-advised expedition. Such 
 fellow-soldiers as queen Eleanora and her Amazons would 
 have been quite sufficient to disconcert the plans and impede 
 the projects of Hannibal himself; and though king Louis 
 conducted himself with great ability and courage in his 
 difficult enterprise, no prudence could counteract the mis- 
 fortune of being encumbered with an army of fantastic 
 
 1 The place of this standard, so celebrated in the history of France, is over 
 the high altar of St. Denis, where its representative hangs now, or at lea«t it did 
 in the summer of 1844, then seen by the authors of this work. An older ori- 
 flamme, which is supposed to be coeval with the days of our Henry VI., is 
 shown in the treasury of St. Denis : the color is, or has been, a bright red, the 
 texture shot with gold. It is a horizontal flag, wedge-shaped, but cut into a 
 swallow-tail at the end. It appears to have hung on a cross-bar at the top of 
 the flag-staff, and haa rings to be attached at the broad end. 
 
252 ELEANOEA OF AQUITAIKE. 
 
 ■women. King Louis, following the course of the emperor 
 Conrad, whose army, roused by the eloquence of St. Ber- 
 nard, had just preceded them, sailed up the Bosphorus, and 
 landed in Thrace. 
 
 The freaks of queen Eleanora and her female warriors 
 were the cause of all the misfortunes that befell king Louis 
 and his army, especially in the defeat at Laodicea.' The 
 king had sent forward the queen and her ladies, escorted by 
 his choicest troops, under the guard of count Maurienne. 
 He charged them to choose for their camp the arid but com- 
 manding ground which gave them a view over the defiles of 
 the valley of Laodicea. While this detachment was en- 
 camping, he, at the distance of five miles, brought up the rear 
 and baggage, ever and anon turning to battle bravely with 
 the skirmishing Arab cavalry, who were harassing his 
 march. Queen Eleanora acted in direct opposition to his 
 rational directions. She insisted on her detachment of the 
 army halting in a lovely romantic valley, full of verdant 
 grass and gushing fountains. The king was encumbered by 
 the immense baggage which, William of Tyre declares, the 
 female warriors of queen Eleanora persisted in retaining in 
 the camp at all risks. Darkness began to fall as the king 
 of France approached the entrance to the valley ; and, to 
 his consternation, he found the heights above it unoccupied 
 by the advanced body of his troops. N'either the queen nor 
 her forces being encamped there, he was forced to enter 
 the valley in search of her, and was soon after attacked 
 from the heights by swarms of Arabs, who engaged him 
 in the passes among the rocks, close to the fatal spot where 
 the emperor Conrad and his heavy horse had been dis- 
 comfited but a few weeks before. King Louis, sorely 
 pressed in one part of this murderous engagement, only 
 saved his life by climbing a tree, whence he defended him- 
 self with the most desperate valor.'' At length, by efforts 
 of personal heroism, he succeeded in placing himself be- 
 tween the detachment of his ladies and the Saracens. But 
 it was not till the dawn of day that he discovered his ad- 
 
 1 William of Tyre and Suger, aa quoted in Giffard's History of France. 
 = William of Tyre. 
 
ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE. 253 
 
 vanced troops, encamped in the romantic valley cho8en by 
 his poetical queen. Seven thousand of the flower of French 
 chivalry paid with their lives the penalty of their queen's 
 inexperience in warlike tactics ; all the provision was cut 
 off; the baggage containing the fine array of the lady- 
 warriors, which had proved such an encumbrance to the 
 king, was plundered by the Arabs and Saracens •■ and the 
 whole army was reduced to great distress. Fortunately 
 Antioch was near, whose prince was the uncle of the cru- 
 sading queen of France. Prince Eaymond opened his 
 friendly gates to the distressed warriors of the cross, and by 
 the beautiful streams of the Orontes the defeated French 
 army rested and refreshed themselves after their recent 
 disasters. 
 
 Eaymond of Poitou was brother to the queen's father, the 
 saintly William of Poitou. There was, however, nothing of 
 the saint in the disposition of Eaymond, who was still young, 
 and was the handsomest man of his time. The uncle and 
 niece, who had never met before, were much charmed with 
 each other. It seems strange that the man who first 
 awakened the jealousy of king Louis should stand in such 
 very near relationship to his wife ; yet it is certain, that 
 as soon as queen Bleanora had recovered her beauty, some- 
 what sullied by the hardships she endured in the camp, she 
 commenced such a series of coquetries with her handsome 
 uncle, that king Louis, greatly scandalized and incensed, 
 hurried her out of Antioch one night, and decamped to 
 Jerusalem, with slight leave-taking of Eaymond, or none at 
 all. It is true, many authorities say that Eaymond's in- 
 trigues with his niece were wholly political, and that he 
 was persuading Bleanora to employ her power, as duchess 
 of Aquitaine, for the extension of his dominions, and his 
 own private advantage. It was at Antioch that Bleanora 
 first declared " that she would not live as the wife of a man 
 whom she had discovered was her cousin, too near by the 
 ordinance of the church." ' The Chronicle of Tours accuses 
 her of receiving presents from Saladin, and this accusation 
 was doubtless some recognition of her power as queen- 
 
 ' Guillaume de Nangls's Chronicle, quoted by Michelet. 
 
254 ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 regnant of tlie south of France. Eleanora, having taken 
 the cross as an independent sovereign, of course was treated 
 as such by the oriental powers. 
 
 Eleanora was enraged at her sudden removal from An- 
 tioch, which took place early in the spring of 1149 ; she en- 
 tered the holy city in a most indignant mood. Jerusalem, 
 the object of the ardent enthusiasm of every other crusader, 
 raised no religious ardor in her breast ; she was burning with 
 resentment at the unaccustomed harshness king Louis ex- 
 ercised towards her. In Jerusalem, king Baldwin received 
 Eleanora with the honors due both to her rank as queen of 
 France, and her power as a sovereign-ally of the crusading 
 league; but nothing could please her. It is not certain 
 whether her uneasiness proceeded from a consciousness of 
 guilt, or indignation at being the object of unfounded sus- 
 picions ; but it is indisputable that, after her forced depart- 
 ure from Antioch, all affection between Eleanora and her 
 husband was at an end. While the emperor of Germany 
 and the king of France laid an unsuccessful siege to Da- 
 mascus, Eleanora was detained at Jerusalem, in something 
 like personal restraint. 
 
 The great abilities of Sultan Noureddin rendered this 
 siege unavailing, and Louis was glad to withdraw, with the 
 wreck of his army, from Asia. There are letters ^ still ex- 
 tant from Suger, by which it appears that the king had 
 written to him complaints of the criminal attachment of 
 his queen to a young Saracen emir of great beauty, named 
 Sal-Addin. For this misconduct the king of France ex- 
 pressed his intention of disgracing her, and putting her 
 away as soon as he arrived in his dominions, but was dis- 
 suaded from this resolution by the suggestions of his saga- 
 cious minister, who pointed out to him the troubles which 
 would accrue to France by the relinquishment of the " great 
 Provence dower," and that his daughter, the princess Marie, 
 would be deprived, in all probability, of her mother's rich 
 inheritance, if the queen were at liberty to marry again. 
 This remonstrance so far prevailed on Louis, that he per- 
 
 ' In the collection of Du Chesne, which has fumiahed much of the information 
 in this narrative. 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 255 
 
 mitted his discontented spouse to accompany him to Paris, 
 November, 1149. The royal pair made a solemn entry into 
 the capital on their return from the crusade, with as much 
 triumphant pomp as if they had gained great victories 
 during an absence of two years and four months, instead 
 of having passed their time in a series of defeats and dis- 
 asters. Sugar then resigned his regency to the king, with 
 much more pleasure, as he said, than he took it. He had 
 governed France in a manner which obtained from the king 
 and people the appellation of " father of his country." ' 
 The dread that Suger felt at the separation of Eleanora's 
 southern provinces was the reason why the king continued 
 to live with her, and allowed her to retain the dignity of 
 queen of France. 
 
 Queen Eleanora therefore resided at Paris, with all her 
 usual state and dignity ; she was, however, closely watched, 
 and not permitted to visit her southern dominions, — a pro- 
 hibition which greatly disquieted her. She made many 
 complaints of the gloom of the northern Gallic capital and 
 the monkish manners of her devout husband. She was 
 particularly indignant at the plain and unostentatious 
 clothing of king Louis, who had likewise displeased her by 
 sacrificing, at the suggestion of the clergy, all his long curls, 
 besides shaving off his beard and moustaches. The giddy 
 queen made a constant mockery of her husband's appear- 
 ance, and vowed that his smooth face made him look more 
 like a cloistered priest than a valiant king. Thus two 
 years passed away in mutual discontent, till, in the year 
 1150, Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou,' appeared at 
 the court of Louis VII. Geoffrey did homage for Nor- 
 mandy, and presented to Louis his son, young Henry 
 Plantagenet, sumamed Fitz-Empress. This youth was 
 about seventeen, and was then first seen by queen Eleanora. 
 But the scandalous chroniclers of the day declare the queen 
 was much taken by the fine person and literary attain- 
 ments of Geoffrey, who was considered the most accom- 
 plished knight of this time. Geoffrey was a married man ; 
 but queen Eleanora as little regarded the marriage engage- 
 
 1 Vie de Snger. ' Vie de Gaufred, Due de Normand. 
 
256 ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 merits of the persons on whom she bestowed her attention 
 as she did her own conjugal ties. 
 
 About eighteen months after the departure of the An- 
 gevin princes, the queen of France gave birth to another 
 princess, named Alice. Soon after this event, Henry Plan- 
 tagenet once more visited Paris, to do homage for Nor- 
 mandy and Anjou, a pleuritic fever having suddenly carried 
 off his father. Queen Eleanora now transferred her former 
 partiality for the father to the son, who had become a noble, 
 martial-looking prince, full of energy, learned, valiant, and 
 enterprising, and ready to undertake any conquest, whether 
 of the heart of the gay queen of the South, or of the 
 kingdom from which he had been unjustly disinherited. 
 Eleanora acted with her usual disgusting levity in the ad- 
 vances she made to this youth. Her beauty was still unim- 
 paired, though her character was in low esteem with the 
 world. Motives of interest induced Henry to feign a return 
 to the passion of queen Eleanora : his mother's cause was 
 hopeless in England, and Eleanora assured him that, if she 
 could effect a divorce from Louis, her ships and treasures 
 should be at his command for the subjugation of king 
 Stephen. 
 
 The intimacy between Henry and Eleanora soon awak- 
 ened the displeasure of the king of France, consequently 
 the prince departed for Anjou. Queen Eleanora imme- 
 diately made an application for a divorce, under the plea 
 that king Louis was herTourtlTcousmr' It does not appear 
 that he opposed this separation, though it certainly origi- 
 nated from the queen. Notwithstanding the advice of 
 Suger, Louis seems to have accorded heartily with the 
 proposition, and the divorce was finally pronounced by a 
 council of the church at Baugenei,' March 18, 1152 ; where 
 the marriage was not dissolved on account of the queen's 
 adultery, as is commonly asserted, but declared invalid be- 
 cause of consanguinity. Eleanora and Louis, with most of 
 their relations, met at Baugenci, and were present when 
 the divorce was pronounced." Suger, who had so long op- 
 
 1 Sir Hurris Nioolas's Chronology of History. 
 ' Bouquet des Histoires. 
 
i^cnrs n 
 
 From the Painted and Gilded Stone Effigy on his Tomb 
 in the Abbey of Fontevraud, in France 
 
Copyright, iQOi, i>y George L 
 
ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE. 257 
 
 posed the separation of Bleanora from his king, died a few 
 days before that event took place.' 
 
 It is useless for modern historians either to blame or 
 praise Louis VII. for his scrupulous honesty in restoring to 
 Eleanora her patrimonial dominions ; he restored nothing 
 that he was able to keep, excepting her person. When the 
 divorce was first agitated, Louis VII. tried the experiment 
 of seizing several of the strongholds in G-uienne, but found 
 the power of the South was too strong for him. Giffard, 
 who never wrote a line without the guide of contemporary 
 chronicles, has made it fully apparent that the queen of the 
 South was a stronger potentate than the king of the North. 
 If the lady of ' Od and ' No,' and the lord of ' Oui' and 
 'Hon,' had tried for the mastery by force of arms, the 
 civilized, the warlike, and maritime Provengals would cer- 
 tainly have raised the banner of St. George and the golden 
 leopards far above the oriflamme of Prance, and rejoiced at 
 having such fair cause of quarrel with their suzerain as the 
 rescue of their princess. Moreover, Louis could not detain 
 Eleanora without defying the decree of the pope. 
 
 On her way southward to her own country," Eleanora 
 remained some time at Blois. The count of this province 
 was Thibaut, elder brother to king Stephen, one of the 
 handsomest and bravest men of his time. Much captivated 
 with the splendor of "the great Provence dower," Thibaut 
 offered his hand to his fair guest. He met with a refusal, 
 which by no means turned him from his purpose, as he 
 resolved to detain the lady, a prisoner in his fortress, till 
 she complied with his proposal. Eleanora suspected his 
 design, and departed by night, without the ceremony of 
 leave-taking. She embarked on the Loire, and went down 
 the stream tq_Toum which was then belonging to the 
 dominions of Anjou. 
 
 Here her good luck, or dexterous management, brought 
 her off clear from another mal-adventure. Young Geoffrey 
 Plantagenet, the next brother to the man she intended to 
 marry, had likewise a great inclination to be sovereign of 
 the South. He placed himself in ambush at a part of the 
 
 1 Vie de Suger. ' Script. Rer. Franc. 
 
258 ELEANOKA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 Loire called ' the Port of Piles,' with the intention of seizing 
 the duchess and her train, and carrying her off, and marry- 
 ing her. "But," says the chronicler, "Bleanora was pre- 
 warned by her good angel, and she suddenly turned down 
 a branch of the stream southwards, towards her own 
 country." Thither Henry Plantagenet, the elder brother 
 of Geoffrey, repaired, to claim the hand which had been 
 promised him months before the divorce. The celerity 
 with which the marriage of Eleanora followed her divorce 
 astonished all Europe, for she gave her hand to Henry 
 Plantagenet, duke of Normandy and count of Anjou, only 
 six weeks after the divorce was pronounced. Eleanora is 
 "supposed to have been in her thirty-second year, and the 
 bridegroom in his twentieth, — a disparity somewhat omi- 
 nous, in regard to their future matrimonial felicity. 
 
 The duchess of Aquitaine and the duke of Normandy were 
 married at Bourdeaux ' on May-day, with all the pomp that 
 the luxurious taste of Eleanora, aided by Provengal wealth, 
 could effect. If Henry and Eleanora could have been 
 married a few months earlier, it would have been better for 
 the reputation of the bride, since all chroniclers are very 
 positive in fixing the birth of her eldest son, William,'' on 
 the 17th of August, 1152, little more than four mon ths aftgr 
 their union on the first of May. The birth oFtEIs boy 
 accounts for the haste with which Eleanora was divorced. 
 Had king Louis detained his imfaithful wife, a dispute might 
 have arisen respecting the succession to the crown of France. 
 This child was born in Normandy, whither Henry conveyed 
 Bleanora directly after their marriage, leaving the garrisons 
 of Aquitaine commanded by Norman oflScers faithful to 
 his interest ; a step which was the commencement of his 
 unpopularity in his wife's dominions. 
 
 Louis VII. was much displeased at the marriage of his 
 divorced queen with Henry of Anjou. He viewed with 
 uneasiness the union of the fair provinces of the South with 
 
 ■^ * G-ervase. Brompton. 
 
 ' Toone's Chronological History gives this date : it is supported by Sandford 
 and Speed from chronicles, and the assertion of Robert of Gloucester in the fol- 
 lowing words, — " Henry was acquaint with the queen of France some deal too 
 much, as me weened,** 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 269 
 
 Anjou and Normandy; and, in order to invalidate it, he 
 actually forbade Henry to marry without his permission, 
 claiming that authority as his feudal lord. His measures, 
 we think, ought to acquit king Louis of the charge of too 
 much righteousness in his political dealings, for which he is 
 blamed by the superficial Voltaire. However, the hostility 
 of Louis, who entered into a league with king Stephen, 
 roused young Henry from the pleasures in which he was 
 spending the first year of his nuptials ; and breaking from 
 his wedded Circe, he obtained, from her fondness, a fleet for 
 the enforcement of his claims to his rightful inheritance. 
 Eleanora was sovereign of a wealthy maritime country, 
 whose ships were equally used for war and commerce, 
 Leaving his wife and son in Normandy, Henry embarked 
 from Harfleur with thirty-six ships, May, 1153. Without 
 the aid of this Provencal fleet, England would never have 
 reckoned the name of Plantagenet among her royal dynasties. 
 These circumstances are alluded to, with some dry humor, 
 in the following lines by Eobert of Gloucester : — 
 
 " In eleven hundred years of grace and forty -one, 
 Died Geofiiy of Plantagenet, the earl of Anjou. 
 Henry his son and heir, earl was made thorough 
 All Anjou, and duke of Normand : — much it was his mind 
 To come and win England, for he was next of kind [kin], 
 And to help his moder, who was ofl in feeble chance. 
 But he was much acquaint with the queen of France, 
 Some deal too muehy as me weened j so that in some thing 
 The queen loved him, as me trowed, more than her lord the king ; 
 So that it was forth put that the king and she 
 So sibbe were, that they must no longer together be. 
 The kindred was proved so near, that king Louis there 
 And Eleanor his queen by the pope departed were. 
 Some were glad enow, as might be truly seen. 
 For Henry the empress' son forthwith espoused the queen. 
 The queen riches enow had under her hand, 
 Which helped Henry then to war on England. 
 In the eleventh hundred year and fifty-two 
 After God on earth came, this spousing was ado ; 
 The next year after that, Henry his power nom [took], 
 And with six-and-thirty ships to England com." 
 
 There is reason to believe that at this period Henry se- 
 duced the heart and won the affections of the beautiful 
 
260" ' ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 Bosamo nd ClifFor d, under the promise of marriage, as the 
 birth dlTher eldest son corresponds with Henry's visit to 
 England atthis timef^Tor he left England the year before 
 Stephen's death, 1153.' Henry was busy laying siege to the 
 castle of one of his rebels in Normandy when the news of 
 Stephen's death reached him. Six weeks elapsed before he 
 sailed to take possession of his kingdom. His queen and 
 infant son accompanied him. They waited a month at 
 Barfleur for a favorable wind,' and after all they had a 
 dangerous passage, but landed safely at Osterham, Decem- 
 ber 8th. The king and queen waited at the port for some 
 days, while the fleet, dispersed by the wind, collected. They 
 then weat-tO-'SElnchester,' where they received the homage 
 of the southern barons. Theobald archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, and some of the chief nobles, came to hasten their 
 appearance in London, " where Henry was," say the Saxon 
 chroniclers, " received with great honor and worship, and 
 blessed to king the Sunday before Midwinter-day.' ' Eleanora 
 and Henry were crowned in Westminster abbey, December 
 19, 1154, " after England," to use the words of Henry of 
 Huntingdon, "had been without a king for six weeks." 
 Henry's security, during this interval, was owing to the 
 powerful fleet of his queen, which commanded the seas 
 between Normandy and England, and kept all rebels in 
 awe. 
 
 The coronation of the king of England and the luxurious 
 lady of the South was without parallel for magnificence. 
 Here were seen in profusion mantles of silk and brocade, 
 of a new fashion and splendid texture, brought by queen 
 Eleanora* ft-om Constantinople. In the illuminated por- 
 traits of this queen she wears a wimple, or close coif, with 
 a circlet of gems put over it ; her kirtle, or close gown, has 
 tight sleeves, and fastens with ftill gathers just below the 
 throat, confined with a rich collar of gems. Over this is 
 
 ' His proceedings in England have been detailed in the preceding biography. 
 " Brompton. 
 
 ' Sir Harris Nicolas's Chronology of History. 
 
 * It is said she introduced the growth of silk in her southern dominions, a 
 benefit attributed to Henry the Great. 
 
ELEANOEA OP AQUITAINB. 261 
 
 worn the elegant pelisson, or outer robe, bordered with fur, 
 with very full loose sleeves lined with ermine, showing grace- 
 fully the tight kirtle sleeves beneath. In some portraits 
 the queen is seen with her hair braided, and closely wound 
 round the head with jewelled bands. Over all was thrown 
 a square of fine lawn or gauze, which supplied the place of 
 a veil, and was worn precisely like the faziola, still the na- 
 tional costume of the lower orders of Venice. Sometimes 
 this coverchief, or kerchief, was drawn over the features 
 down below the chin ; it thus supplied the place of veil and 
 bonnet, when abroad ; sometimes it descended but to the 
 brow, just as the wearer was disposed to show or conceal 
 her face. Frequently the coverchief was confined, by the 
 bandeau, or circlet, being placed on the head, over it. Girls 
 before marriage wore their hair in ringlets or tresses on their 
 shoulders. The church was very earnest in preaching 
 against the public display of ladies' hair after marriage. 
 The long hair of the men likewise drew down the constant 
 fulminations of the church ; but after Henry I. had cut off 
 his curls, and forbidden long hair at court, his courtiers 
 adopted periwigs ; indeed, if we may judge by the queer 
 eflSgy on his coius, the handsome Stephen himself wore a 
 wig. Be this as it may, the thunder of the pulpit was 
 instantly levelled at wigs, which were forbidden by a 
 sumptuary law of king Henry. 
 
 Henry II. made his appearance, at his coronation, with 
 short hair, moustaches, and shaven chin ; he wore a doublet, 
 and short Angevin cloak, which immediately gained for him 
 from his subjects, l!forman and English, the sobriquet of 
 ' Court-mantle.' His dalmatica was of the richest brocade, 
 bordered with gold embroidery. At this coronation, ecclesi- 
 astics were first s een in E ngland dresse djn sumptuous robes 
 of silk andveivet, worked with gold. This was in imitation 
 of the luxury of the Greek chupch : the splendor of the 
 dresses seen by tBe'^een at'Constantinople occasioned the 
 introduction of this corruption in the western church. Such 
 was the costume of the court of Bleanora of Aquitaine, the 
 queen of England, in the year of her coronation, 1154. The 
 Christmas festivities were celebrated that year with great 
 
 1 
 
262 ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 pomp at Westminster palace ; but directly the coronation 
 was over, the king conducted his queen to the palace of 
 Bermondsey, where, after remaining some weeks in retire- 
 ment, she gave birth to her second son, the last day of 
 February, 1155. 
 
 Bermondsey, the first place of Eleanora's residence in 
 England, was, as delineated in its ancient plans, a pastoral 
 village nearly opposite to London, of a character decidedly 
 Flemish. Eich in well-cultivated gardens and wealthy velvet 
 meads, it possessed, likewise, an ancient Saxon palace,' and 
 a priory then newly built. Assuredly the metropolis must 
 have presented itself to the view of its foreign queen, from 
 the palace of Bermondsey, with much more picturesque 
 grandeur than it does at present, when its unwieldly size 
 and smoky atmosphere prevent an entire coup d'ceil. But 
 at one glance from the opposite bank of the river the eyes 
 of the fair Provencal could then behold London, h'er royal 
 city, situated on ground rising from the Thames. It was at 
 that time girdled with an embattled wall, which was studded 
 with gate-ways, both by water and land.' The new Tower 
 of London kept guard on the eastern extremity of the city, 
 and the lofty spire of the ancient cathedral presided over the 
 western side, just behind the antique gate-way of Ludgate. 
 This gate led to the pleasant road of the river's Strand, 
 ornamented with the old Temple, its fair gardens and wharf, 
 and interspersed with a few iwws,' or metropolitan dwellings 
 of the nobility, the cultivated grounds of which sloped down 
 to their water-stairs and boat-houses, the Thames being then 
 the highway of London. The Strand road terminated in 
 the majestic palace and abbey of Westminster, the old 
 palace, with its yard and gardens, once belonging to St. 
 Edward, and the new palace, its noble hall and water-stairs, 
 which owed their origin to the Norman dynasty. Such was 
 the metropolis when Henry II. succeeded to the English 
 crown. 
 
 ^ Annals of the Abbey of Bermondsey. 
 
 ^ Dowgate and Billingsgate. 
 
 ' Inn was not, in early times, a word used for a house of public entertain- 
 ment. Its original signification was a temporary abode in London, used by 
 abbot, bishop, or peer. 
 
ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE. 263 
 
 If the example and conduct of the first Provencal queen 
 was neither edifying nor pleasing to her subjects, yet, in a 
 commercial point of view, the connection of the merchants 
 of England with her Aquitanian dominions was highly ad- 
 vantageous. The wine trade with Bourdeaux became con- 
 siderable.' In a few months after the accession of Bleanora 
 as queen-consort of England, large fortunes were made by 
 the London traders, who imported the wines of Gascony 
 from the port of Bourdeaux ; ' and above all (by the example 
 of the maritime cities of Guienne), the shipping of England 
 was governed by the ancient code of laws, called the code 
 of Oleron. In compliment to his consort Eleanora, Henry 
 II. adopted for his plate-mark the cross of Aquitaine, with 
 the addition of his initial letter J^, An instance of this 
 curious fact is still to be seen in the grace-cup of Thomas 
 a Becket.' 
 
 The English chose to regard Henry II. solely as the 
 descendant of their ancient Saxon line. " Thou art son," • 
 said they, "to the most glorious empress Matilda, whose 
 mother was Matilda Atheling, daughter to Margaret, saint 
 and queen, whose father was Edward, son to kmg Edmund 
 Ironside, who was great-grandson to king Alfred.'*'* Such 
 were the expressions'of the English when Henry convened 
 a great meeting of the nobility and chief people at "Walling- 
 ford, in March, 1155 ; where, by the advice of his mother, 
 the -impress Matilda (who had learned wisdom from adver- 
 sity), he swore to confirm to the English the laws of Alfred 
 
 ' Anderson's History of Commerce. 
 
 3 ** The land," says one of the malcontent Saxon chroniclers, " became full of 
 drink and drunkards. Cla ret was 4rf. per gall on at this tim ff. Gascon wine in 
 general sold at 20s. per tunT" " -^^-'^ 
 
 ' This cup formerly belonged to the Arundel Collection, and was given by 
 £emard Edward, the late duke of Norfolk, to H. Howard, Esq., of Corby castle, 
 who thus became the possessor of this highly -prized relic of Eleanora's era. The 
 cross of Aquitaine somewhat resembles the Maltese cross ; the cup is of ivory 
 mounted with silver, which is studded on the summit and base with pearls and 
 precious stones. The inscription round the cup is, vinum tudm bibe odm 
 6AUDI0, — ' Drink thy wine with joy ;' but round the lid, deeply engraved, is the 
 restraining injunction, sobrii estotb, with the initials T. B. interlaced with a 
 mitre, the peculiarly low form of which stamps the antiquity of the whole. 
 
 * Allied Chronicle. 
 
264 ELEANOEA OP AQUITAINE. 
 
 and Edward the Confessor, as set forth in the great charter 
 of Henry I. At this grand convocation queen Eleanora 
 appeared with her eldest son, then in his fourth year, and 
 the infant Henry. The "baronage of EngEnJ tissed the 
 hands^'b'f the infants, and vowed to recognize them as the 
 heirs of the English monarchy. A few weeks after this 
 recognition the queen lost her eldest son, who was buried 
 at Eeading, at the feet of his great-grandfather, Henry I. 
 
 The principal residences of the court were Winchester 
 palace, Westminster palace, and the country palace of Wood^ 
 stock. The amusements most favored by queen Eleanora 
 ''were of a dramatic kind. Besides the Mysteries and Mir- 
 acles played by the parish-clerks and students of divinity, 
 the classic taste of the accomplished Eleanora patronized 
 representations nearly allied to the regular drama, since we 
 find that Peter of Blois,' in his epistles, congratulates his 
 brother William on his tragedy of Flaura and Marcus, 
 played before the queen. This William was an abbot, but 
 was master of the revels or amusements at court : he com- 
 posed all the Mysteries and Miracles performed before the 
 queen at Westminster and Winchester. 
 
 It is to Peter of Blois we owe a graphic description of 
 king Henry's person and manners ; likewise the picture of 
 his court setting out in progress. " When king Henry 'sets 
 out of a morning, you see multitudes of people running up 
 and down as if they were distracted ; horses rushing against 
 horses, carriages overturning carriages, players, gamesters, 
 cooks, confectioners, morris-dancers, barbers, courtesans, 
 and parasites, making so much noise, and, in a word, such 
 an intolerable tumultuous jumble of horse and foot, that 
 you imagine the great abyss hath opened, and that hell 
 hath poured forth all its inhabitants." We think this dis- 
 
 ' Or Petrus Bleaensis, who was born, 1120, at the city of Blois, of a noble 
 family. He was preceptor to William II. of Sicily, 1157, was invited to England 
 by Henry II., and made his chaplain, and archdeacon of Bath ; likewise private 
 secretary to the king. He spent some years at the court of England, and died 
 about the end of the twelfth century. He wrote about one hundred and thirty 
 letters, in the most lively and individualizing style. These he collected and 
 perpetuated, by making many copies, at the express desire of his royal master, 
 Henry II. 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 265 
 
 orderly crew must have belonged to the queen's court, for 
 the sketch given us by the same most amusing author of 
 king Henry himself, would lead us to suppose that he 
 countenanced no such riotous doings. The chaplain Peter ' 
 thus minutely describes king Henry, the husband of Elea- 
 nora of Aquitaine, in his letter to the archbishop of Panor- 
 mitan : — " In praising David the king, it is read that he 
 was ruddy, but you must understand that my lord the king 
 is sub-rufus, or pale-red ; his harness [armor] hath some- 
 what changed his color. Of middle stature he is so that 
 among little men seemeth he not much, nor among long 
 men seemeth he over little. His head is round, as in token 
 of great wit, and of special high counsel the treasury." 
 
 Our readers would scarcely expect phrenological observa- 
 tions in an epistle of the twelfth century, but we faithfully 
 write what we find therein : — " His head is of such quantity, 
 that to the neck, and to all the body, it accordeth by even 
 proportion. His een pykeled [fine], and clear as to colour 
 whUe he is of pleased will; but through disturbance of 
 heart, like sparkling fire or lightning with hastiness. His 
 head of curly hair, when clipped square in the forehead, 
 sheweth a lyonous visage, the nostrils even and comely, 
 according to all the other features. High vaulted feet, legs 
 able to riding, broad bust, and long champion arms, which 
 telleth him to be strong, light, and hardy. In a toe of his 
 foot the nail groweth into the flesh, and in harm to the foot 
 over waxeth. His hands, through their large size, sheweth 
 negligence, for he utterly leaveth the keeping of them; 
 never, but when he beareth hawks, weareth he gloves. 
 Each day at mass and council, and other open needs of the 
 realm, throughout the whole morning he standeth a foot, 
 and yet when he eateth he never sitteth down. In one day 
 he will, if need be, ride two or three journeys, and thus 
 hath he oft circumvented the plots of his enemies. A huge 
 lover of woods is he, so that when he ceaseth of war he 
 haunteth places of hawking and hunting. He useth boots 
 without folding caps, and homely and short clothes weareth 
 he. His flesh would have charged him with fatness, but 
 
 1 As edited by Heame. 
 
266 ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 with travel and fasting he adaunteth [keeps it down], and 
 in riding and going travaileth he mightily his youth. I^ot 
 as other kings lieth he in his palace, but travelling about by 
 his provinces espieth he the doings of all men. He doometh 
 those that he judges when they do wrong, and punisheth 
 them by stronger judgment than other men. No man 
 more wise in counsel, ne more dreadful in prosperity, ne 
 steadfaster in adversity. When once he loveth, scarcely 
 will he ever hate ; when once he hateth, scarcely ever re- 
 ceiveth he into grace. Oft holdeth he in hand swords, 
 bows, and hunting-gear, excepting he be at council or at 
 book. When he may rest from worldly business, privily he 
 oceupieth himself about learning and reading, and among 
 his clerks asketh he questions. For though your king' be 
 well y-lettered [learned], our king by far is more y-lettered. 
 I, forsooth, in science of letters, know the cunning of them 
 both, ye wotting well that my lord the king of Sicily a 
 whole year was my disciple, and though by you he had the 
 beginning of teaching, yet by me he had the benefit of more 
 full science.' And as soon as I went out of Sicily, your king 
 cast away his books, and gave himself up to palatine ' idle- 
 ness. But, forsooth, our lord the king of England has each 
 day a school for right well lettered men ; hence his conver- 
 sation, that he hath with them, is busy discussing of ques- 
 tions. None is more honest than our king in speaking ; ne 
 in alms largess. Therefore, as Holy Writ saith, we may 
 say of him, ' His name is a precious ointment, and the alms 
 of him all the church shall take.' " Such is the picture of 
 the first of our great Plantagenet monarchs, drawn in 
 minute pencilling by the man who had known him from his 
 childhood. 
 
 It is not a very easy task to reduce to anything like per- 
 spicuity the various traditions which float through the chron- 
 icles regarding queen Eleanora's unfortunate rival, the cele- 
 brated Eosamond Clifford. No one who studies history 
 
 1 The king of Sicily, William the Good, afterwards Henry II. '3 son-in-law. 
 » By this passage it appears that Peter Blois had been the tutor to Henry II. 
 and the king of Sicily. 
 
 ' The idleness and luxuries of the palace. 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 267 
 
 ought to despise tradition, for we shall find that tradition is 
 generally founded on fact, even when defective, or regard- 
 less of chronology. The learned and accurate Carte has not 
 thought it beneath him to examine carefully the testimony 
 that exists regarding Eosamond; and we find, from him, 
 that we must confine her connection with Henry to the two 
 years succeeding his marriage. He has proved that the 
 birth of her youngest son, and her profession as a nun at 
 Godstow, took place within that space of time, and he has 
 proved it from the irrefragable witness of existing charters, 
 of endowments of lands given by the Clifford family to bene- 
 fit the convent of Godstow, of provision made by Henry 
 II. for her son William Long-espee and his brother, and 
 of benefactions he bestowed on the nunnery of Godstow be- 
 cause Eosamond had become a votaress therein. It appears 
 that the acquaintance between Eosamond and Henry com- 
 menced in early youth, about the time of his knighthood 
 by his uncle the king of Scotland ; that it was renewed at 
 the time of his successful invasion of England, when he en- 
 tered privately into marriage contract ' with the unsuspect- 
 ing girl ; and before he lefb England, to return to his wife, 
 his noble boy WiUiam, surnamed Long-espee, was born. His 
 own words afterwards confirmed this report : " Thou art my 
 legitimate son," said he to one of the sons of Eosamond, who 
 met him at the head of an armed force at a time when the 
 rebellion of the princes had distressed him ; " and," con- 
 tinued he, "the rest are bastards." ' Perhaps these words 
 afibrd the truest explanation of the mysterious dissensions 
 which perpetually distracted the royal family. 
 
 How king Henry excused his perjury, both to Eosamond 
 and the queen, is not explained by chronicle ; he seems to 
 have endeavored, by futile expedients, to keep them both in 
 ignorance of his perfidy. As Eosamond was retained by him 
 as a prisoner, though not an unwilling one, it was easy to 
 conceal from her the facts, that he had wedded a queen and 
 brought her to England ; but his chief difiiculty was to con- 
 ceal Eosamond's existence from Eleanora, and yet to indulge 
 himself with frequent visits to the real object of his love. 
 
 ' Carte. Brompton. Boswell's Antiquities. ' Lingard. 
 
268 ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 Brompton says, " That one day queen Bleanora saw the 
 king walking in the pleasance of Woodstock, with the end 
 of a ball of floss silk attached to his spur ; coming near him 
 unperceived, she took up the ball, and the king walking on, 
 the silk unwound, and thus the queen traced him to a thicket 
 in the labyrinth or maze of the park, where he disappeared. 
 She kept the matter secret, often revolving in her own mind 
 in what company he could meet with balls of silk. Soon 
 after, the king left Woodstock for a distant journey ; then 
 queen Eleanora, bearing her discovery in mind, searched the 
 thicket in the park, and discovered a low door cunningly 
 concealed ; this door she had forced, and found it was the 
 entrance to a winding subterranean path, which led out at 
 a distance to a sylvan lodge in the most retired part of the 
 adjacent forest." Here the queen found, in a bower, a young 
 lady of incomparable beauty, busily engaged in embroidery. 
 Queen Bleanora then easily guessed how balls of silk at- 
 tached themselves to king Henry's spurs. Whatever was 
 the result of the interview between Eleanora and Eosamond, 
 it is certain that the queen did not destroy her rival either 
 by sword or poison, though in her rage it is possible that 
 she might threaten both. That Eosamond was not killed 
 may be ascertained by the charters before named, which 
 plainly show that she lived twenty years, in great penitence, 
 after her retirement from the king. It is extremely prob- 
 able that her interview with Eleanora led to her first knowl- 
 edge that Henry was a married man, and consequently to 
 her profession at Grodstow, which took place the second year 
 of Henry's reign. The grand error in the statements re- 
 garding Eosamond is the assertion that she was a young girl 
 seduced and concealed by the king when he was in advanced 
 life. Now the charters collated by Carte prove that the 
 acquaintance of Eosamond and Henry commenced in early 
 youth, that they were nearly of the same age, and that their 
 connection terminated soon after queen Eleanora came to 
 England. 
 
 Twenty years afterwards, when Eosamond's death really 
 occurred in her convent, it happened to coincide with Elea- 
 nora's imprisonment and disgrace. This coincidence revived 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 269 
 
 the memory of the romantic incidents connected with 
 Henry's love for Eosamond Cliiford. The high rank of the 
 real object of the queen's jealousy at that time, and the cir- 
 cumstances of horror regarding Henry's profligacy, as the 
 seducer of the princess Alice, his son's wife, occasioned a 
 mystery at court which no one dared to define. The com- 
 mon people, in their endeavors to guess this state secret, 
 combined the death of the poor penitent at Godstow with 
 Bleanora's imprisonment, and thus the report was raised 
 that Eleanora had killed Eosamond. To these causes we 
 trace the disarrangement of the chronology in the story of 
 Eosamond, which has cast doubts on the truth of her adven- 
 tures. In Brompton's narrative, we find the labjrrinth ' at 
 Woodstock, and the clue of silk, famous in the romance and 
 baUad. His chronology of the incidents is decidedly wrong, 
 but the actual events are confirmed by the most ancient 
 authorities. 
 
 Queen Eleanora brought her husband a princess in the 
 year 1156 ; this was the eldest daughter, the princess Matilda. 
 The next year the queen spent in England. Her celebrated 
 son, Eichard Cceur de Lion, was born September, 1157, at a 
 palace considered one of the finest in the kingdom, called the 
 
 1 As to the labyrinth or maze at Woodstock, it most likely existed before the 
 time of Rosamond, and remained after her death, since all pleasances or gardens 
 in the middle age were contrived with this adjunct. Traces of them exist to this 
 day, in the names of places near defunct royal palaces j witness ' Maze hill' at 
 Greenwich (near the site of the maze or labyrinth of G-reenwich palace), and 
 ' the Maze' in Southwark, once part of the garden of the princess Mary Tudor's 
 palace. We have evidence that Edward III. (between whom and the death of 
 Rosamond little more than a century intervened) familiarly called a structure 
 pertaining to Woodstock palace, ' Rosamond's chamber,' the locality of which he 
 minutely describes in a letter preserved in the Foedera, vol. iv. p. 629. In this 
 document he directs William de Montacnte *' to order various repairs at his 
 manor of Woodstock ; and that the house beyond the gate in the new wall be 
 built again, and that same chamber, called Rosamond's chamber, to be restored 
 as before, and crystal plates, and marble, and lead to be provided for it." Here 
 is indisputable proof that there was a structure called Rosamond's chamber, dis- 
 tinct from Woodstock palace yet belonging to its domain, being a building situ- 
 ated beyond the park wall. Edward III. passed the first years of his marriage 
 principally at Woodstock, therefore he well knew the localities of the place j 
 which will agree with the old chroniclers, if we suppose Rosamond's residence 
 was approached by a tunnel under the park wall. 
 
270 ELEANOEA OP AQUITAINE. 
 
 "Beau-Monte, in Oxford. Thus, that renowned university 
 claims the honor of being the birthplace of this -great war- 
 rior. This palace was afterwards turned into the White 
 Friars' church, and then to a workhouse. The chamber in 
 which Eichard was born still remains, a roofless ruin, with 
 some vestiges of a fireplace ; ' but such as it is, this fragment 
 is deeply interesting to the English, as the birthplace of a 
 hero of whom they are proud. 
 
 Bleanora of Aquitaine, in some passages of her life, appears 
 as one of the most prominent characters of her age : she was 
 very actively employed, either as sovereign of her own do- 
 minions or regent of Normandy, during the period from 
 1157 to 1172. Eleanora was crowned a second time at Wor- 
 cester, with the king, in 1159. When the royal pair came 
 to the oblation, they both took off their crowns, and, laying 
 them on the altar, vowed never to wear them more. 
 
 A son was born to Henry and Bleanora, September 23d, 
 after the Worcester coronation : this prince bore the name 
 of the king's father, Geoffrey Plantagenet. The same year 
 the king betrothed this boy to Constance, the heiress of 
 Conan, duke of Bretagne. The infant Constance was about 
 eighteen months older than the little prince Geoffrey. 
 Henry had made most unjust seizure of Bretagne, by way 
 of conquest ; he, however, soothed the independent Bretons, 
 by marrying their infant duchess to his son. His ambitious 
 thirst for extension of empire was not sated by the acquisi- 
 tion of this dukedom ; he immediately laid siege to Thoulouse, 
 and, in the name of queen Bleanora, claimed that sovereignty 
 of earl Raymond, who was in possession, and the ally of the 
 king of Prance. A year was occupied with skirmishing and 
 negotiation, during which time Bleanora acted as queen- 
 regent in England. 
 
 Henry sent for his queen to Normandy in 1160 ; she went 
 in great state, taking with her prince Henry and her eldest 
 daughter, to meet their father. The occasion of her presence 
 being required was the marriage of Marguerite, the daugh- 
 ter of her former husband Louis VII. by his second wife, 
 with her young son Henry. Chancellor Becket went with 
 
 • Boswell's Antiquities. 
 
ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE. 271 
 
 a magnificent retinue to Paris, and brought the little bride, 
 aged three years, to the queen at Eouen. Both bride and 
 bridegroom were given, after their marriage, to Becket ' for 
 education ; and this extraordinary person inspired in their 
 young bosoms an attachment to him that ended but with 
 their lives. Queen Eleanora kept her Christmas at Mans, 
 with the king, in great state and splendor, the year of this 
 betrothment. 
 
 After a sharp dispute between Henry II. and Louis VII., 
 relative to the portion of the princess Marguerite, the king 
 of France compromised the matter by giving the city of Gisors 
 as a portion with another infant princess of France, named 
 Alice, in 1162.' This child was in her third year when 
 wedded to prince Eichard, who was then seven years old. 
 The little princess was unfortunately consigned to the king 
 of England for education. Two marriages were thus con- 
 tracted between the daughters of Louis VII. and the sons 
 of his divorced queen, — connections which must seem most 
 extraordinary, when we consider that the father of the 
 brides and the mother of the bridegrooms had been married, 
 and were the parents of children who were sisters to both. 
 Louis VII' gave his eldest daughter by queen Eleanora in 
 marriage to Henry the Large, count of Champagne. It 
 was in this year that king Henry's troubles began with 
 Thomas a Becket, who had hitherto been his favorite, his 
 friend, and prime-minister. 
 
 The contest between the king and Becket, which fills so 
 many folio pages of modern history, must be briefly glanced 
 at here. It was the same quarrel which had agitated Eng- 
 land between Henry I. and Ansehn ; but England no longer 
 possessed a virtuous daughter of her royal race for a queen, 
 who, out of pity for the poor, deprived of their usual pro- 
 vision, mediated between these haughty spirits. The gay, 
 luxurious daughter of the South was occupied with her own 
 
 1 The secular education and support of the little princess was consigned to 
 Robert de Newburgh, one of Henry II. 's barons, who engaged to guard her 
 person, and bring up the princess Marguerite in a manner befitting her royal 
 birth. 
 
 ' Louis had two daughters of that name, — one by Eleanora, and this child by 
 his second c[ueen, Alice of Champagne. 
 
/ 
 
 272 ELEANOEA OP AQUITAINB. 
 
 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, who haughtily repulsed his suit. Becket 
 was the son of a London citizen, who had followed Edgar 
 Atheling on his crusading expedition, and was made pris- 
 oner 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, ' Lon- 
 don' and ' Gilbert,' — the place of abode and Christian name 
 of her lover.' The pagan maiden was baptized, by the fa- 
 vorite Norman name of Matilda, and from this romantic 
 union sprang Thomas a 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 favor, to the indignation of his 
 wife and mother, who warned him against feeling friend- 
 ship 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 favorite 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 supported the desti- 
 tute 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 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINB. 273 
 
 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 he instantly resigned his chancellorship, and be- 
 came 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, anjLJiB 
 conclude the history of the empres s Matilda. She was 
 leftTregentofNormandy by her son^ which country she 
 governed with great wisdom and kept in a peaceful state, 
 but she never returned to England. ""• 
 
 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 oflSee of high-seneschal of Prance, which was the feudal 
 right of Henry II., as count of Anjou. Henry violently 
 resented this disposal of his ofllce; and the empress his 
 mother, who foresaw the rising storm, and who had been 
 thoroughly satiated with the horrors of war in her youth, 
 wrote to pope Alexander, 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 
 
 1 Hoveden. Gervase. Newberry. 
 
274 ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 particulars derogatory to Becket's moral character, — events, 
 probably, that happened during his gay and magnificent 
 career as chancellor and archdeacon. 
 
 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. The 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.^ 
 "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 humor 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 Eouen, with occasional visits to the 
 abbey of Bee. 
 
 Matilda died the 10th of September, 1167. She was 
 interred with royal honors, first, in the convent of Bonnes 
 Nouvelles: her body was afterwards transferred to the 
 abbey of Bee, before the altar of the Virgin. Her son left 
 his critical affairs in Bretagne to attend her ftmeral. He 
 raised a stately marble tomb to her memory ; upon it was 
 the following epitaph, whose climax tends rather to advance 
 the glory of the surviving son than the deftmct mother : — 
 
 " Great born, great married, greater brought to bed, 
 Here Henry's daughter, wife, and mother's laid." ' 
 
 In this grave her body remained till the year 1282 , when 
 the abbey church of Bee being rebuilt, the worknTen dis- 
 covered it, wrapped up in an ox-hide. The coflSn was taken 
 up, and, with great solemnity, reinterred in the middle of 
 the chancel, before the high altar. The ancient tomb was 
 
 ^ Bucarel's Normandy. 
 
 ' " Ortu magna, viro major, sed maxima partu, 
 Hie jacet Honrici filia, sponsa, parens." 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 275 
 
 removed to the same place, and, witli the attention the 
 church of Eome ever showed to the memory of a foundress, 
 erected over the new grave. This structure falling to decay 
 in the seventeenth century, its place was supplied by a fine 
 monument of brass, with a pompous inscription.' The char- 
 acter of this celebrated ancestress of our royal line was as 
 much revered by the Normans as disliked by the English. 
 Besides Henry II. she was the mother of two sons, GeoflErey 
 and William, who both preceded her to the grave. 
 
 Queen Eleanora was resident, during these events, at the 
 palace of Woodstock, where prince John was born, in the 
 year 1166. Henry completed the noble hall of the palace 
 of Eouen,^ begun by Henry I. and nearly finished by the 
 empress Matilda. He sent for queen Eleanora from Eng- 
 land, 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 Eouen palace, 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. 
 
 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 his queen, and left her at Bourdeaux with 
 her son Eichard. Henry, the heir of England, was en- 
 titled the duke of Guienne ; but for Eleanora's favorite son, 
 Eichard, was intended the county of Poitou, subject to 
 vassalage to his brother and father. This arrangement 
 quieted the discontents of Aquitaine. The princess Mar- 
 guerite, the young wife of prince Henry, was left in Guienne 
 with her mother-in-law, while Henry II. and his heir pro- 
 
 1 Her remains were discovered and exhumed, for tlie fourth time, January, 
 1847, when the ruins of the Benedictine church of Bee (Hellouin) were demol- 
 ished. According to the Moniteur, a leaden coffin, containing fragments of 
 bones and silver lace, was found, with an inscription affirming that the chest 
 contained the illustrious bones of the empress Matilda, etc. 
 
 2 Thierry. ' Tyrrell. 
 
276 ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 ceeded to England, then convulsed with the disputes be- 
 tween church and state carried on by Becket. Queen 
 Eleanora and prince Eichard remained at Bourdeaux, to the 
 satisfaction of the people of the south, who were delighted 
 with the presence of their reigning family, although the 
 liTorman deputies of king Henry still continued to exercise 
 all the real power of the government. 
 
 The heart of Henry's son and heir still yearned to his old 
 tutor, Becket, — an aifection which the king beheld with 
 jealousy. In order to wean his son from this attachment, 
 in which the young princess Marguerite fully shared, Henry 
 II. resolved, in imitation of the Capetian royal family, to 
 have his son crowned king in his lifetime, and to associate 
 him in the government. " Be glad, my son," ' said Henry 
 II. to him, when he set the first dish on the table at the 
 coronation-banquet in "Westminster haU ; " there is no prince 
 in Europe has such a sewer ' at his table !" — " No great con- 
 descension for the son of an earl to wait on the son of a 
 king," replied young Henry, aside to the earl of Leicester. 
 The princess Maguerite was not crowned at the same time 
 with her husband; 'she remained in Aquitaine, with her 
 mother-in-law, queen Eleanora. Her father, the king of 
 France, was enraged at this slight offered to his daughter, 
 and flew to arms to avenge the affront. Yet it was no fault 
 of king Henry, who had made every preparation for the 
 coronation of the princess, even to ordering her royal robes 
 to be in readiness ; but when Marguerite found that Becket, 
 the guardian of her youth, was not to crown her, she per- 
 versely refused to share the coronation of her husband. 
 
 The character of Henry II., during the long strife that 
 subsisted between him and his former friend, had changed 
 from the calm heroism portrayed by Peter of Blois ; he had 
 given way to fits of violence, agonizing to himself and dan- 
 gerous to his health. It was said that when any tidings 
 
 ^ Hoveden. 
 
 ' This being one of the functions of the grand seneschal of France, which 
 Henry had to perform, as his feudal service at the coronation of a king of France, 
 as count of Anjou, led to his performing the same office at his son's banquet. 
 
 8 Peter of Blois. 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 277 
 
 came of the contradiction of his will by Becket, he would 
 tear his hair, and roll on the ground with rage, grasping 
 handfuls of rushes in the paroxysms of his passion.' It was 
 soon after one of these frenzies of rage that, in 1170, he fell 
 ill ' at Dromfront, in Maine : he then made his will, believing 
 his end approaching. To his son Henry he left England, 
 Normandy, Maine, and Anjou ; to Eichard he left the Aquita- 
 nian dominions ; Geoffrey had Bretagne, in right of his wife ; 
 while John was left dependent on his brothers. From this 
 order of affairs John obtained the nickname of Lackland, 
 first given him by Henry himself, in jest, after his recovery. 
 During a fit of penitence, when he thought himself near 
 death, Henry sought reconciliation with Becket. When, 
 however, fresh contradictions arose between them, Henry, 
 in one of those violent accessions of fury described above, 
 unfortunately demanded, before the knights who attended in 
 his bedchamber,' " Whether no man loved him enough to 
 revenge the affronts he perpetually received ft-om an insolent 
 priest ?" On this hint, Fitz-Urse, Tracy, Britton, and Mor- 
 ville slaughtered Becket, before the altar in his cathedral, 
 the last day of the year 1171. 
 
 1 Hoveden. 2 Brompton. Gervase. Hoveden. 
 
 ' Fitz-Stephen calls the four who murdered the archbishop the barons or 
 servants of the king's bedchamber. 
 
ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE, 
 
 QUEEN OF HENRY II. 
 
 CHAPTBE II. 
 
 Eleanora in Aquitaine — Controlled by Normans — Conspires with her sons — 
 Jealousy — Escapes in man's attire— Means to visit her former husband — 
 Seized — Carried prisoner to Bourdeaux — Queen Marguerite, her daughter-in- 
 law — The two queens in captivity — -Henry defeats his sons — Eleanora im- 
 prisoned in Winchester palace — Death of Kosamond — Turbulent sons of Henry 
 and Eleanora — Troubadour agitators — Death of the younger king — Tempo- 
 rary reconciliation of king and queen — Prince Richard's wrongs — Princess 
 Alice — Reports of divorce — Eleanora again imprisoned — Songs concerning 
 her — Her subjects' love — Death of Prince Geoffrey — Grief of Eleanora — She 
 is brought to Poitou — Claims her dominions of prince Richard — King Henry's 
 disquiets — Death — Burial — Queen in captivity — King Richard releases her 
 — Appoints her queen-regent — Her justice — Treasure-vault at Winchester — 
 Queen-mother's dower — Eleanora sets out for Navarre — Berengaria — Eleanora 
 arrives at Messina with Richard's bride — Departs — Mediates a dispute at 
 Rome — Eleanora's regency — Her toilsome age. 
 
 Prom the time of the marriage of her daughter Matilda 
 to the Lion of Saxony, Eleanora had not visited England. 
 The coronation of her eldest son and the murder of Becket 
 had occurred while she resided in her native province. She 
 had seen her son Eichard, in 1170, crowned count of Poitou, 
 with all the ceremonies pertaining to the inauguration of 
 her ancestors. But king Henry only meant his sons to 
 superintend the state and pageantry of a court ; he did not 
 intend that they should exercise independent authority, and 
 Eichard's will was curbed by the faithful Norman veterans 
 pertaining to his father. These castellans were the real 
 governors of Guienne ; in order of affairs equally disapproved 
 of by prince Eichard, queen Eleanora, and their Aquitanian 
 278 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 279 
 
 subjects. The queen told her sons ' Eiehard and Geoffrey 
 that Guienne and Poitou 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 ; and Eiehard and 
 Geoffrey resolved to act as their Provencal forefathers of 
 old, and pay no homage to a king of England. 
 
 AU 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 Eaymond of Thoulouse, and to inquire 
 into the meaning of some revolts in the south against his 
 Norman castellans, evidently encouraged by his wife and 
 prince Eiehard. The unsuccessful war waged by Eleanora's 
 first husband against her kinsman of Thoulouse, in order to 
 bring him into submission to her as his suzeraine, will be 
 remembered. Count Eaymond, although now supported 
 against Eleanora by his former enemy Louis VII., was forced 
 to succumb to the warlike energy of the first Plantagenet 
 king of England. Nevertheless, the last shadow of do- 
 mestic peace in the English royal family departed on 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 Eaymond of Thoulouse ' came to this part of his 
 oath of homage, as he knelt before Henry II., he interpo- 
 lated 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. From Paris, he made all manner of undutiful 
 demands on his father. Simultaneously with the flight of 
 young Henry, his brothers, Eiehard and Geoffrey, decamped 
 for Paris. Eichard's grievance was, that his wife, the 
 princess Alice of Prance, was withheld from him ; while 
 Geoffrey insisted, as he had arrived at the mature age of 
 sixteen, that the duchy of Bretagne, and his wife Con- 
 
 1 Script. Rer. Franc. ^ ibid. 
 
280 ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 stance, whose dower it was, should be given to his sole 
 control. 
 
 Henry II. has been taxed with atrocious misconduct in 
 regard to his daughter-in-law, the young duchess of Bre- 
 tagne, in addition to the crime he really committed against 
 young Alice of France, the spouse of his son Eichard. But 
 as the authority, John of Salisbury, calls the princess of 
 Bretagne Alice,'^ instead of her real name Constance, it is 
 evident that the same person is meant in both instances. 
 There is no occasion to aggravate the crimes of Henry II., 
 which were superabundant according to the most charitable 
 computation. They proved the punishment of Eleanora, 
 and at the same time first opened her eyes to her own 
 wickedness in her youth. Eumors had been brought to 
 Eleanora that her husband meditated a divorce ; for some 
 lady had been installed, with almost regal honors, in her 
 apartments at Woodstock. Court scandal pointed at her 
 daughter-in-law, the princess Alice, whose youthful charms, 
 it was said, had captivated her father-in-law, and for that 
 reason the damsel was detained from her affianced lord, 
 prince Eichard. Enraged at these reports, Eleanora re- 
 solved to seek the protection of the king of France ; but as 
 she was surrounded by Henry's Norman garrisons, she pos- 
 sessed so little power in her own domains as to be reduced 
 to quit them in disguise.^ She assumed male attire, and A 
 had travelled part of her way in this dress, when Henry's 1 
 ISTorman agents followed and seized her, before she could ] 
 reach the territories of her divorced husband. They ! 
 brought her back very rudely, in the disguise she had \ 
 adopted, and kept her prisoner in Bourdeaux till the arrival 
 
 1 M. Miohelet, Hist, de France, torn. iii. p. 206. This great historian suffers 
 his very natural aversion against the Anglo-Norman and Plantagenet kings of 
 England to carry him too far in his charges against them j at the same time, his 
 impartiality and deep research in regard to the good sovereigns of France in the 
 middle ages, renders his work the best general history regarding Louis VI., VII., 
 Philippe-Augustus, and Louis IX. His analysis of the history of Thomas ^; 
 3. Becket, of the war of the Albigenses, and the moral depravity of the south '■ 
 of France, will cause no little astonishment to the modern reader, and will at 
 the same time offer the best extenuation for Eleanora of Aquitaine, educated aa 
 she was in such a country. 
 
 ^ Gervase. 
 
 v-.\ 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 281 
 
 of her husband in that city. Her sons pursued their flight 
 safely to the court of the king of France. 
 
 Now commenced that long, dolorous, and mysterious in- 
 carceration, which may be considered the third era in the 
 life of Bleanora of Aquitaine. But while on the continent 
 the imprisonment of queen Eleanora was not stationary ; 
 we trace her carried, with her royal husband, in a state of 
 restraint to Barfleur, where he embarked for England. He 
 had another prisoner in company with Bleanora ; this was 
 his daughter-in-law, the young Marguerite, who had contu- 
 maciously defied him, left the royal robes he had had made 
 for her coronation unworn upon his hands, and scorned the 
 crown he had oifered to place on her brow if not consecrated 
 by Becket. With these royal captives Henry II. landed at 
 Southampton, some time in July, 1173.' Henry proceeded 
 directly to Canterbury, carrying the captive queens in his 
 train. Here he performed the celebrated penance, so often 
 described, at the tomb of Becket. We have no new light 
 to throw on this well-known occurrence, except the extreme 
 satisfaction that his daughter-in-law Marguerite (who was 
 in the city of Canterbury at the time) must have felt at the 
 sufferings and humiliation of the man who had caused the 
 death of her tutor and friend. 
 
 Scarcely had king Henry completed his penance, when 
 tidings were brought him that his high constable had de- 
 feated prince Eichard and the earl of Leicester, near Bury ; ' 
 and this news was followed by a messenger, announcing the 
 capture, at Alnwick, of William the Lion, king of Scotland, 
 and that the royal prisoner was approaching, with his legs 
 tied beneath his horse, — ^the most approved method of show- 
 ing contimiely to a captive in the middle ages. All this 
 manifested very clearly to the Anglo-Saxons that St. Thomas 
 had forgiven his royal friend, and was now exerting him- 
 self very actively in his behalf; but when, within a very 
 few hours, inteUigenee came that the fleet of young king 
 Henry, which had set sail to invade England, had been 
 
 • Diceto. Dr. Henry has likewise traced the progress of Henry with two 
 queens, from the contemporary chroniclers. 
 2 Brompton and Hoveden. 
 
282 ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 entirely demolished by a storm, public enthusiasm for the 
 saint knew no bounds. The king went to return thanks to 
 St. Thomas, at the shrine before which he had done penance, 
 and the peace of the kingdom was wholly restored. Then 
 was queen Bleanora consigned to confinement, which lasted, 
 with but short intervals, for sixteen years. Her prison was 
 no worse place than her own royal palace at Winchester,' 
 where she was well guarded by her husband's great justiciary 
 and general, Ranulph de Glanville, who likewise had the 
 charge of the royal treasury, at the same place. That 
 Glanville treated her with respect is evident from some 
 subsequent events. 
 
 The poor penitent at Godstow expired in the midst of 
 these troubles, — not cut off in her brilliant youth by queen 
 Bleanora, but " from slow decay by pining." She was nearly 
 forty, and was the mother of two sons, both of age. She 
 died, practising the severest penances, in the high odor of 
 sanctity, and may be considered the Magdalen of the middle 
 ages. Tradition says she declared on her death-bed that 
 when a certain tree ^ she named in the convent-garden was 
 
 ' Benedict Abbas, and many chronicles. Benedict was her prime-minister 
 during her long regency in the succeeding reign ; therefore he must have known 
 where his royal mistress resided for so long a period of her life. 
 
 2 The body of Rosamond was buried at Godstow, near Oxford, a little nunnery 
 among the rich meadows of Evenlod. — Camden. According to the peculiar 
 custom of the times the grave was not closed, but a sort of temporary tabernacle, 
 called in chronicle a hearse (of which the modem hatchment is a relic), waa 
 erected over the coffin ; this was raised before the high altar, covered with a pall 
 of fair white silk, tapers burnt around it, and banners with emblazonment waved 
 over it. Thus lying in state, it awaited the time for the erection of a monument. 
 Twenty years after, the stern moralist St. Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, in a course 
 of visitation of convents, came to Godstow, and demanded, " Who lay there in 
 such state under that rich hearse ?" And when the simple nuns replied, " It 
 was the corpse of their penitent sister, Rosamond Clifford," the reformer, perhaps 
 remembering she was the mother of his superior, the archbishop, declared " that 
 the hearse of a harlot was not a fit spectacle for a choir of virgins to contemplate, 
 nor was the front of God's altar a proper station for it." He then gave orders 
 for the expulsion of the coffin into the church-yard. The sisters of Godstow were 
 forced to obey at the time ; but after the death of St. Hugh they gathered the 
 bones of Rosamond into a perfumed bag of leather, which they enclosed in a 
 leaden case, and, with all the pertinacity of woman's affection, deposited them in 
 their original place of interment, pretending that the transformation of the tree 
 had taken place according to Rosamond's prophecy. Southey records a visit to 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 283 
 
 turned to stone, they would know the time she was received 
 into glory.' She died deeply venerated by the simple- 
 hearted nuns of Godstow, who would have been infinitely 
 scandalized had she received visits from Henry. Nor does 
 one of the many church manifestoes fulminated against 
 Henry charge him with such an aggravation of his offences 
 as the seduction of a nun ; an indubitable proof that the 
 conventual vows had effectually estranged Henry and 
 Eosamond. As the princess Alice was still the betrothed of 
 prince Eichard, no one dared to hint at anything so deeply 
 heinous as her seduction by her father-in-law, for the ven- 
 geance of the victorious Henry would have severely visited 
 the promulgators of such scandal. The public, finding that 
 the queen was imprisoned on account of her restless jealousy, 
 compared the circumstance with the death of Eosamond, 
 and revived the old story of Henry's passion for the peni- 
 tent of Godstow. Prom this accidental coincidence, of Elea- 
 nora's imprisonment and Eosamond's death, the memory of 
 the queen has been unjustly burdened with the murder of 
 her former rival. 
 
 Henry II. seems to have indulged his eldest and his 
 youngest son with the most ruinous fondness ; he always 
 kept them near him if possible, while prince Eichard and 
 prince Geoffrey, equally beloved by their mother, were 
 chiefly resident with her on the continent. Prince John 
 had entirely an English education, having for his tutor that 
 learned ecclesiastic, allied to the Welsh royal family, well 
 known to historians as the chronicler Giraldus Cambriensis. 
 But small profit, either to his country or to himself, accrued 
 from the English education of prince John. 
 
 the ruins of Godstow. The principal remnant serves for a cow-house. A nut-tree 
 grows out of the penitent's grave, which bears every year a profusion of nuts 
 without kernels. King John thought proper to raise a tomb to the memory of 
 Eosamond; it was embossed with fair brass, having an inscription about its 
 edges, in Latin, to this effect :, — 
 
 " This tomb doth here enclose 
 The world's most beauteous rose, — 
 Eose passing sweet erewhile, 
 Now nought but odor vile." 
 
 ' Boswell's Antiquities. 
 
284 ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 Through the mediation of the king of France, his father- 
 in-law, the young king Henry was reconciled to Henry II. 
 for a time, and his spouse Marguerite was restored to him. 
 King Louis himself visited England in 1179, for the purpose 
 of praying for the health of his son Philip Augustus at 
 the shrine of St. Thomas a Beeket. Notwithstanding the 
 singular relationship in which the kings of England and 
 France stood to each other, as the former and present hus- 
 band of the same queen, they appear to have frequently 
 met in friendly intercourse. Henry received Louis with 
 much respect, and rode all night, August 18th, with his train, 
 to meet Louis VII. at Dover, where the chroniclers relate 
 that Henry made many curious observations on a total 
 eclipse of the moon, which happened during his nocturnal 
 journey, — a fact reminding us of his fondness for scien- 
 tific questions, as recorded in his character by Peter of 
 Blois. 
 
 Henry II. afterwards took his royal guest to his "Win- 
 chester palace, where he showed him his treasure-vault, 
 and invited him to take anything he chose. Queen Eleanora 
 was then at Winchester, but whether she met her divorced 
 lord is not recorded. In the course of a few months Louis 
 VII. died, of a cold caught at his vigils near the tomb of 
 St. Thomas k Beeket. Such was the end of the first hus- 
 band of Eleanora of Aquitaine. 
 
 To enter into a minute detail of all the rebellions and 
 insurrections undertaken by the insurgent sons of Eleanora, 
 during their mother's imprisonment, were an endless, and 
 indeed an impracticable task. It must sufflce to hold up a 
 picture of the manners and temper of the people over whom 
 she was the hereditary sovereign, and who disdained the 
 rule of any stranger, however nearly connected with the 
 heiress of their country. All the elements of strife were 
 kept in a perpetual state of activity, by the combativeness 
 of the troubadours, whose tensons, or war-songs, perpetually 
 urged the sons of Eleanora to battle, when they were in- 
 clined to repose. Such, among many of inferior genius, 
 was Bertrand de Born, viscount de Hauteforte, whom Dante 
 has introduced with such terrific grandeur in his Inferno, as 
 
ELEANORA OP AQUITAINE. 285 
 
 the mischief-maker between Henry II. and prince John. 
 But he began this work with Henry's eldest and best beloved 
 son. Bertrand, and all the other troubadours, hated Henry 
 II., whom they considered as an interloper, and a persecutor 
 of their rightful princess, the duchess of Aquitaine, his 
 wife. It is said that Bertrand was in love with queen 
 Bleanora, for he addresses many covert declarations to a 
 "royal Bleanora" in his chansons, adding, exultingly, that 
 " they were not unknown to her, for she can read!" ' But 
 there is a mistake of the mother for the daughter, since 
 prince Eiehard, who was a brother troubadour, encouraged 
 Bertrand in a passion for his beautiful sister, Bleanora ; ■' and 
 to the daughter of the queen of Bngland, not to herself, 
 these passionate declarations were addressed. 
 
 In the midst of insurrection against his sire, the main- 
 spring of which was the incessant struggle to obtain an in- 
 dependent sovereignty, young Henry Plantagenet died, at 
 the castle of Martel, in Guienne, in his twenty-eighth year. 
 When he found his illneBS mortal, he was seized with deep 
 remorse for his frequent rebellions against his ever-indulgent 
 father. He sent to king Henry to implore his pardon for his 
 transgressions. Before he expired, he had the satisfaction 
 of receiving a ring from his sire, as a token of forgiveness. 
 On the receipt of this pledge of affection, the penitence of 
 the dying prince became passionate ; when expiring, he 
 caused himself to be taken out of bed, and died on sackcloth 
 and ashes, as an atonement for his sins. The death of their 
 heir for a short time reconciled queen Bleanora and her 
 royal husband. Henry mourned for the loss of this son 
 with the deep grief of David over Absalom. The contem- 
 porary chroniclers agree that from 1183 to 1184, when the 
 princess Matilda, with her husband Henry the Lion of 
 Saxony, sought refuge in Bngland, the captive queen was 
 restored to her rank at the English court.' 
 
 > Count Thierry. 
 
 ' The royal family considered the love of the noble troubadour as a mere 
 poetical passion, and the young princess was married very passively to Alphonso 
 king of Castile. It was no trifle in the eyes of Bertrand, and the cause, doubtless, 
 of the fierce restlessness with which he disturbed the royal family during the life 
 of Henry II.— Sismondi. ' Benedict Abbas. 
 
286 ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 Prince Eichard, now become the heir of Henry and Elea- 
 nora, remained some time quiet, in order to see how his 
 father would conduct himself towards him. Although he 
 had arrived at the age of twenty-seven, and the princess to 
 whom he was half married was twenty-three, she was still 
 detained from him. Eichard had formed at Guienne * an at- 
 tachment to a virtuous and beautiful princess, the daughter 
 of a neighboring potentate, and he was anxious that his 
 mysterious entanglement with the princess Alice should be 
 brought to a termination. 
 
 Eichard seems to have met with nought but injury from 
 his father ; nor was his brother Geoffrey much better treated. 
 The continual urgency of prince Eichard, in regard to the 
 princess Alice, was met with constant evasion. Eeports 
 were renewed of the king's intention to divorce queen Elea- 
 nora ; and the legate resident in England, cardinal Hugo, 
 was consulted on the practicability of this divorce, and 
 likewise on the possibility of obtaining a dispensation for the 
 king's marriage with some person nearly allied to him.^ The 
 consequence was that prince Eichard flew to arms, and got 
 possession of his mother's inheritance, while queen Eleanora 
 was again committed to some restraint in Winchester palace. 
 
 Meantime, the lengthened imprisonment of queen Elea- 
 nora infuriated her subjects in Aquitaine. The troubadours 
 roused the national spirit in favor of their native princess 
 by such strains as these, which were the war-songs that 
 animated the contest maintained by Eichard in the name of 
 his mother ; — " Daughter of Aquitania,' fair fruitful vine ! 
 thou hast been torn from thy country, and led into a strange 
 land. Thy harp is changed into the voice of mourning, 
 and thy songs into sounds of lamentation. Brought up in 
 delicacy and abundance, thou enjoyedst a royal liberty, 
 living in the bosom of wealth, delighting thyself with the 
 sports of thy women, with their songs, to the sound of the 
 lute and tabor : and now thou mournest, thou weepest, thou 
 consumest thyself with sorrow. Eeturn, poor prisoner — 
 return to thy cities, if thou canst : and if thou canst not, 
 
 1 Hoveden. Dr. Henry. 2 Gervase. 
 
 ' Cbronic. Ricardi Fictaviensis, ap. Script. Ker. Franc. 
 
ELEANOKA OF AQUITAINE. 287 
 
 weep, and say ' Alas ! how long is my exile !' "Weep, weep, 
 and say ' My tears are my bread, both day and night !' 
 "Where are thy guards, thy royal escort ? where thy maiden 
 train, thy councillors of state ? Some of them, dragged far 
 from thy country, have suffered an ignominous death ; others 
 have been deprived of sight ; others banished and wandering 
 in divers places. Thou criest, but no one hears thee ! — for 
 the king of the North keeps thee shut up like a town that is 
 besieged. Cry, then, — cease not to cry 1 Eaise thy voice 
 like a trumpet, that thy sons may hear it ; for the day is 
 approaching when thy sons shall deliver thee, and then shalt 
 thou see again thy native land!" These expressions of 
 tenderness for the daughter of the old national chiefs of 
 Aquitaine are followed by a cry of malediction against the 
 towns which, either from force or necessity, still adhered to 
 the king of the foreign race : — " Woe to the traitors which 
 are in Aquitaine, for the day of their chastisement is at hand ! 
 La EocheUe dreads that day. She doubles her trenches, she 
 girds herself all round with the sea, and the noise of her 
 great works is heard beyond the mountains. Fly before 
 Eichard, duke of Aquitaine, ye who inhabit the coast ! for 
 he shall overthrow the glorious of the land, — ^he shall annihi- 
 late, from the greatest to the least, all who deny him en- 
 trance into Saintonge !" The manner of Eleanora's imprison- 
 ment was as mysterious to her contemporaries and subjects 
 as it is to her modern historians, if we may take literally the 
 query propounded in one of her troubadour war-songs.' 
 " Tell me, double eagle, tell me where wast thou when thine 
 eaglets, flying from their paternal nest, dared to put forth 
 their claws against the king of the North ?" 
 
 For nearly two years the Angevin subjects of Henry II. 
 and the Aquitanian subjects of his captive queen gave battle 
 to each other ; and, from EocheUe to Bayonne, the dominions 
 of queen Eleanora were in a state of insurrection. The con- 
 temporary chroniclers, who beheld this contest of husband 
 against wife, and sons against father, instead of looking 
 
 1 Teneon quoted by M. Miohelet, in his History of France. Eleanora is desig- 
 nated in the prophecies of Merlin a^ the double eagle, on account of the double 
 sovereignty she had possessed, as queen of France and then of England. 
 
288 ELEAJSrOEA OF AQUITAINE, 
 
 upon it as the natural consequence of a divided rule in an ex- 
 tended empire, swayed by persons of great talents who had 
 received a corrupt education, considered it as the influence 
 of an evil destiny presiding over the race of Plantagenet, 
 and as the punishment of some great crime. 
 
 Many sinister stories, relating to the royal family, were 
 current. Queen Eleanora, when pursuing, in her early 
 days, her guilty career as queen of France,' it was whis- 
 pered, had been too intimate with Geoffrey Plantagenet, 
 her husband's father. Then the story of Fouike the Eed,' 
 the first that toot the name of Plantagenet, was revived, 
 and the murder of his brother discussed. Likewise, the 
 wonderful tale was remembered of the witch-countess of 
 Anjou, Henry II.'s great-grandmother, wife to Fouike le 
 Eechin, whose cognomen means ' the quarreller.' This count 
 having observed that his wife seldom went to church (and 
 when she did, quitted it always at the elevation of the Host), 
 thought proper not only to force her to mass, but made four 
 of his esquires hold her forcibly by the mantle when she 
 was there ; when, lo I at the moment of consecration, the 
 countess, untying the mantle by which she was held, left it 
 in the hands of the esquires, and flying through the window 
 of the chapel, was never heard of more. A great thunder- 
 storm happened at the moment of her departure ; a dread- 
 ful smell of brimstone remained, which " no singing of the 
 monks could allay." The truth of this marvellous tale prob- 
 ably is, that the countess was killed by lightning in a church 
 injured by a thunder-storm. Her ungracious descendant, 
 Richard Coeur de Lion, used to tell this tale with great glee 
 to his knights at Poitou ; and added, " Is it to be wondered 
 that, having sprung from such a stock, we live on bad terms 
 with each other ? From Satan we sprang, and to Satan we 
 must go." 
 
 Geoffrey held out Limoges, in his mother's name, with 
 great pertinacity. Among other envoys came a Norman 
 clerk, holding a cross in his hand, and supplicated Geoffrey 
 not to imitate the crime of Absalom. " What I" said Geof- 
 frey, " wouldst thou have me deprive myself of mine in- 
 
 • Brompton. ' Script. Her. Franc, 
 
ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE. 289 
 
 heritance? It is the fate of our family that none shall 
 love the rest. Hatred is our rightful heritage,'' added he, 
 bitterly, " and none will ever succeed in depriving us of it." 
 During a conference which prince Geoffrey soon after had 
 with his father, in the market-place at Limoges, for the 
 purpose of discussing peace, the Aquitanian soldiers and 
 supporters of Geoffrey, full of rage at the sight of the 
 monarch who kept their duchess imprisoned, broke the 
 truce, by aiming from the castle a shower of cross-bow 
 shafts at the person of the king, one of which came so close 
 as to shoot his horse through the ear. The king presented 
 the arrow to Geoffrey, saying, with tears, " Tell me, Geoffrey, 
 what has thy unhappy father done to thee to deserve that 
 thou, his son, shouldst make him a mark for thine archers ?" 
 Geoffrey was greatly shocked at this accident, of which he 
 declared he was wholly innocent. It was the outbreak of 
 popular fury in his mother's subjects. 
 
 When prince Eichard and prince Geoffrey were not com- 
 bating with their father's subjects, they employed them- 
 selves in making war on each other. Just before the death 
 of Geoffrey, his brother Eichard invaded his dominions in 
 Bretagne with fire and sword, on some unaccountable af- 
 front, blown into a blaze by the sirventes of the troubadours. 
 After this faction was pacified, Geoffrey went to assist at a 
 grand tournament at Paris, where he was flung from his 
 steed in the midst of the melee, and was trodden to death 
 beneath the feet of the coursers. He was buried at Notre 
 Dame. This was the second son queen Eleanora had lost 
 since her imprisonment, in the very flower of his youth and 
 strength. Like his brother Henry, this prince was remark- 
 able for his manly beauty, and the agile grace of his mar- 
 tial figure. His death afllicted his mother equally with that 
 of her first-born ; for Geoffrey had been brought up a Pro- 
 vencal, and had shown far more resentment for his mother's 
 imprisonment than the young king Henry. That Eleanora 
 loved both with all a mother's passionate tenderness we 
 have the evidence of her own most eloquent words. In one 
 of her letters to the pope, preserved in the collection of 
 Peter of Blois, she says :— " The younger king and the count 
 
290 ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 of Bretagne both sleep in dust, while their most wretched 
 mother is compelled to live on, though tortured by the irre- 
 mediable recollections of the dead." 
 
 The misfortunes of prince Arthur, duke of Bretagne, thus 
 began before his birth, and were strengthened by his bap- 
 tism, on the 29th of March, 1187. The duchess Constance 
 brought him into the world a few months after the death 
 of his father. Eleanora, the eldest child of Constance, had 
 been proclaimed heiress of Bretagne, but was disinherited 
 by the birth of her brother. " It was the pleasure of king 
 Henry and queen Eleanora that the Infant should be named 
 Henry; but the Bretons chose to indulge their natural 
 prejudices in favor of king Arthur, whom they claim as 
 their countryman ; and as they looked forward to the boy 
 as the possible heir of England, they insisted on giving the 
 last descendant of the Armorican princes that favorite 
 name. This was the first public displeasure given by Con- 
 stance to the parents of her husband: their enmity in- 
 creased with years." — " Great scandal arose after the death 
 of Geoffrey, regarding the duchess Constance and her 
 brother-in-law John : till his marriage with Isabella of An- 
 gouelme, he was constantly 'haunting her,' and on this 
 account, it is supposed, Henry II., after the birth of her 
 posthumous son Arthur, forced the duchess to marry the 
 earl of Chester, as prince John's attentions to his sister-in- 
 law caused considerable comment." ' 
 
 Prince Eichard having obtained possession of the whole 
 of Aquitaine, his father commanded him to surrender it to 
 his mother, queen Eleanora, whom he had brought as far 
 as Normandy to claim her right.' The moment the prince 
 received this mandate he gave up the territory, and hast- 
 ened to Normandy to welcome the queen, and congratulate 
 her on her restoration to freedom. This release is recorded 
 by the friend of the queen, abbot Benedict. From him we 
 learn that, during the year 1186, Eleanora exercised sover- 
 eign power at Bourdeaux, and then resigned it to her son 
 Eichard, who in the mean time had made his peace with 
 his father. Henry II. was with his queen during this 
 
 ' Carte. » Benedict Abbas. 
 
ELEANOBA OF AQUITAINE. 291 
 
 period ; for Benedict declares that, the following April, they 
 sailed jfrom Barfleur to England. Eleanora was again put 
 under some restraint at "Winchester palace, which she 
 quitted no more till the death of king Henry, three years 
 afterwards. 
 
 The commission of moral wrong had involved Henry, 
 great and powerful as he was, in a net, within whose inex- 
 tricable folds he either vainly struggled, or awaited the 
 possibility of deliverance by the death of the queen. If 
 Eleanora had preceded him to the grave, as in the common 
 course of nature might have been expected, he would have 
 sued instantly for a dispensation to marry the affianced 
 bride of his son. While the queen lived, this could not be 
 done without an explosion of scandal which would have 
 dishonored him in the eyes of all Europe. Henry had only 
 two alternatives : either to permit his heir to marry the prin- 
 cess Alice, or to shorten the life of the queen Eleanora by 
 violent means. Although his principles were not sufficiently 
 firm to resist temptations to vice, yet he was not abandoned 
 enough to commit deliberately either atrocity. So time 
 wore uneasily on, till prince Eichard attained the age of 
 thirty-four, and Alice that of thirty ; while the king still 
 invented futile excuses to keep both in this miserable state 
 of entanglement, wherein Eichard could neither free him- 
 self from Alice nor give his hand to any other bride. Yet 
 Eichard, to ftirther his own ends, made the brother of Alice 
 believe that he was willing to complete his engagement. 
 " It was the wish of Henry II. to crown his son John king 
 of England during his lifetime, and to give Eichard all his 
 dominions that lay beyond the English sea. Eichard was 
 not content ; he came to the king of France, and cried for 
 aid, saying, ' Sire, for God's sake suffer me not to be disin- 
 herited thus by my sire. I am engaged to your sister Alice, 
 who ought by right to be my wife. Help me to maintain 
 my rights and hers.' " ' The king of France, after vainly 
 seeking for explanation of the reason why his sister was 
 not married to her betrothed, made, with prince Eichard, an 
 appeal to arms. King Philip contrived to induce prince 
 
 1 Bernard le TrSsorier. — Guizot's Chron. 
 
292 ELEANOEA OP AQUITAINE. 
 
 John to join in the rebellion. When Henry heard that this 
 idolized child of his old age had followed the insurgent ex- 
 ample of his brethren, he threw himself into a paroxysm of 
 rage, and invoked the bitterest curses on his head, and that 
 of prince Eichard : he cursed the day of his own birth ; and, 
 after giving orders to his painter at "Windsor to paint a 
 device, of a young eaglet pecking out the eyes of an eagle, 
 as a reproach to prince John, he set out for the continent 
 in an agonized state of mind. 
 
 After waging, for the first time in his life, an unsuccessful 
 war, king Henry agreed to meet his son Eichard and the 
 king of France at Vezalai. As the king was on his progress 
 to this congress, he fell ill at Chinon, after indulging in one 
 of his fits of violent passion.' Finding that his life was 
 departing, he caused himself to be carried before the high 
 altar of the cathedral, where he expired in the supporting 
 arms of Geoffrey, the youngest son of Eosamond, who was 
 the only one of his children from whom he received filial 
 attention in his last moments. Before he died, he spoke 
 earnestly to him, and gave him a ring of great value ; then 
 laying his head on the bosom of Geoffrey,^ his spirit departed, 
 leaving his features still convulsed with the agony of rage 
 which had hastened his end. 
 
 When the news was brought to Eichard that the crown 
 of England had devolved upon him by the sudden death of 
 his father, he was torn with remorse and regret. He went 
 to meet the royal corpse at Fontevraud, the place of inter- 
 ment pointed out by the will of the deceased monarch. 
 King Henry, when he was carried forth to be buried, was first 
 apparelled in his princely robes, having his crown on his 
 head, gloves on his hands, and shoes on his feet, wrought 
 with gold ; spurs on his heels, a ring of gold on his finger, a 
 sceptre in his hand, his sword by his side, and his face 
 uncovered. But this regalia was of a strange nature, for 
 the corpse of Henry, like that of the Conqueror, had been 
 stripped and plundered ; and when those who were charged 
 with the funeral demanded the ornaments in which Henry 
 
 ' Which Brompton declares was the immediate cause of death. 
 2 Lord Lyttelton. 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 293 
 
 was to lie in state, the treasurer, as a favor, sent a ring of 
 little value and an old sceptre. As for the crown with 
 which the warlike brow of Henry was encii-cled, it was but 
 the gold fringe from a lady's petticoat, torn off for the oc- 
 casion ; and in this odd attire the greatest monarch in the 
 world went down to his last abode." 
 
 Thus he was conveyed to the abbey of Fontevraud, where 
 he lay with his face uncovered, showing, by the contraction 
 of his features, the violent rage in which he departed. 
 When Richard entered the abbey he shuddered, and prayed 
 some moments before the altar, when the nose and mouth 
 of his father began to bleed so profusely that the monk in 
 attendance kept incessantly wiping the blood from his face. 
 Eichard testified the most poignant remorse at this sight. 
 He wept bitterly; and, prostrating himself, prayed ear- 
 nestly, under the mingled stimulus of grief and superstition, 
 and then rising, he departed, and looked on the face of his 
 sire no more.' Henry II. died July 6, 1189. 
 
 The first step taken by Eichard I. on his accession to the 
 English crown was to order his mother's release from her 
 constrained retirement at Winchester palace. From a cap- 
 tive, queen Bleanora in one moment became a sovereign ; 
 for the reins of the English government were placed in her 
 hands at the time of her release. She made a noble use of 
 her authority, according to a manuscript cited by Tyrrell : 
 — "Queen Eleanora, directly she was liberated from her 
 restraint at Winchester, was invested with fiill powers as 
 regent, which she most beneficially exercised, going in per- 
 son from city to city, setting free all those confined under 
 the Norman game-laws, which in the latter part of Henry's 
 life were cruelly enforced. When she released prisoners, it 
 was on condition that they prayed for the soul of her late 
 husband. She likewise declared she took this measiu-e for 
 the benefit of his soul." 
 
 Her son had given her full power, but, to her great honor, 
 Eleanora did not use it against those who had been her 
 jailers or enemies. Her regency was entirely spent in acts 
 of mercy and wisdom, and her discriminating acumen in 
 
 1 J. p. Andrews. ' Count Thierry, from Norman chronicles. 
 
294 ELEANORA OP AQUITAINE, 
 
 the prisoners she liberated may be judged by the following 
 list : — She liberated fully, — " all confined for breach of forest 
 laws, who were accused of no further crime. All who were 
 outlawed for the same she invited back to their homes and 
 families. All who had been seized by the king's arbitrary 
 commands, and were not accused by their hundred or 
 coimty, she set free. But all malefactors accused on good 
 and lawful evidence were to be kept in prison, without 
 bail." 
 
 When we consider Bleanora going from city to city, ex- 
 amining thus into the wrongs of a government that had 
 become arbitrary, and seeing justice done to the lowest, we 
 are apt to think that her imprisonment had improved her 
 disposition. The queen-regent next ordained that " every 
 freeman of the whole kingdom should swear that he would 
 bear faith to his lord, Eichard, son of king Henry and 
 queen Bleanora, for the preservation of life, limbs, and 
 terrene honor, as his liege lord, against all living ; and that 
 he would be obedient to his laws, and assist him in the 
 preservation of peace and justice." '■ 
 
 Eleanora showed so little distaste to the Winchester 
 palace, that she returned thither, after her justiciary prog- 
 ress, to await the arrival of her son from the coast of Nor- 
 mandy. It appears that king Eichard, when he gave 
 commands for his mother's release, ordered her castellan, 
 the keeper of the treasure-vault at Winchester, Eanulph de 
 Glanville, to be thrown into a dungeon in Winchester castle, 
 and loaded with fetters weighing a thousand pounds.' 
 
 Our ancient chroniclers, when laboring to reconcile the 
 prophecies of Merlin with the events of English history, 
 while hunting after the impossible, very often start some 
 particulars which would otherwise have slept shrouded in 
 the dust of the grave. Thus, speaking of the liberation of 
 Bleanora of Aquitaine by her son, Eichard I., Matthew 
 Paris says she is designated, by Merlin's sentence, Aquila 
 
 ' This is the first oath of allegiance erer taken in England to an uncrowned 
 king. 
 
 2 Tyrrell, to whose most learned and indefatigable research the elucidation of 
 many dark passages of Bleanora's life is owing. 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 295 
 
 rupti foederis tertid nidificatione gaudeUt: 'the destructive 
 eagle shall rejoice in her third nestling.'— " Eleanora," 
 pursues Matthew, « is the eagle, for she spreads her wings 
 over two nations, England and Aquitaine; also, by reason 
 of her excessive beauty, she destroyed or injured nations. 
 She was separated from the king of Prance by reason of 
 consanguinity, and from the king of England by divorce 
 upon suspicion, and kept in close confinement. She rejoiced 
 in her third nestling, since Eichard, her third son, honored 
 her with all reverence after releasing her from prison." If 
 Matthew would imply that Henry confined Eleanora for im- 
 propriety of conduct, he is not supported by other authors. 
 King Eichard I. landed at Portsmouth, August 12, 1189. 
 Three days after, he arrived at his mother's court at Win- 
 chester, where his first care was directed to his father's 
 treasure. After he had conferred with his mother, he 
 ordered before him Eanulph de Glanville, who gave him so 
 good an account of the secrets of the Winchester treasure- 
 vault that he set him at liberty, and ever after treated him 
 with confidence. Either Eanulph de Glanville had behaved 
 to the queen, when his prisoner, with all possible respect, or 
 Eleanora was of a very magnanimous disposition, and forbore 
 prejudicing her son against her late castellan. Glanville 
 gave up to the king the enormous sum of nine hundred thou- 
 sand pounds, besides valuable jewels. At his first seizure, 
 only 100,000 marks were found in the treasure-vault, which, 
 it seems, possessed some intricacies only known to Glanville.' 
 The king's next care was to settle the revenue of the mother 
 he so passionately loved, and whose wrongs he had so fiercely 
 
 ' Hoveden. Brompton. Tyrrell. Paris. The singular employment of war- 
 like barons as justiciaries, and the combination of the offices of general and of 
 lawyer in one man, are strange features in the Norman and Angevin domination 
 in England. This Kannlph de Glanville is an instance ; he was Henry's great 
 general, who defeated and took prisoner William the Lion of Scotland ; but he is 
 only known to our gentlemen of the bar as the author of ** Glanville's Insti- 
 tutes," — this steel-clad baron being the first who reduced the laws of England to 
 n written code. To make the contrast with modem times still stronger, the 
 great legalist died crusading, having, either to please Coeur de Lion, or to atone 
 for his sins both as lawyer and general, taken up the cross, for the purpose of 
 battling " Mahoun and Termagaunt." 
 
296 ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 resented. Her dower was rendered equal to those of the 
 queens Matilda Atheling and Matilda of Boulogne. 
 
 Eiehard returned to England with the full intention of 
 immediately joining the crusade, now warmly preached 
 throughout Christendom. In furtherance of this cherished 
 purpose, preparations were instantly made for his early 
 coronation, which took place on the 3d of September, 1189, 
 three weeks only after he reached the shores of his future 
 kingdom. As the etiquette of the queen-mother's recent 
 widowhood prevented her from sharing in this splendid 
 festival, all women were forbidden to be present at its cele- 
 bration. The chroniclers declare that Eiehard issued a proc- 
 lamation the day before, debarring all women ' and Jews 
 from entering the precincts of Westminster abbey at the 
 time of his inauguration, — a classification of persons greatly 
 impugning the gallantry of the lion-hearted king, when we 
 remember the odium attached to the name of a Jew. The 
 Proven5al alliance had produced a prodigious influx of this 
 usurious race into England. As they enjoyed high privi- 
 leges in the hereditary dominions of queen Eleanora, they 
 supposed they were secure under her son's government. 
 Believing money would buy a place everywhere, they flocked 
 to the abbey, bearing a rich present ; but the populace set 
 upon them and slaughtered them, being excited to a religious 
 mania by the preaching of the crusade. The massacre of 
 these unfortunate money-brokers was not perpetrated with 
 the connivance of either king Richard or the queen-mother, 
 since Brompton expressly declares that the ringleaders 
 were, by the king's orders, tried and put to death. Alice, 
 the long-betrothed bride of Eiehard, was neither married 
 nor crowned. On the contrary, she was committed to the 
 same species of restraint, by the orders of the queen, in 
 which she herself had been so long captive. The princess 
 Alice had been twenty-two years without leaving England ; 
 and as she was the only person on whom Eleanora retaliated 
 any part of her wrongs, the inference must be drawn that 
 she considered Alice as the cause of them. 
 
 Eleanora departed for Aquitaine as soon as her son had 
 
 • Hoveden. Brompton. M.Paris. The last says, all women of Sad character. 
 
ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE. 297 
 
 settled her Bnglisli dower, and Eichard embarked at Dover, 
 for Calais, to join the crusade, taking with him but ten 
 ships from the English ports. His troops were disem- 
 barked, and he marched across France to his mother's 
 dominions, where he formally resigned to her the power he 
 had exercised, during his father's lifetime, as her deputy. 
 Eichard appointed the rendezvous of the crusade at Messina, 
 and directing his mother to meet him there, he set sail from 
 Marseilles for Sicily ; while Bleanora undertook a journey 
 to JSTavarre, to claim for him the hand of Berengaria, the 
 daughter of king Sancho. 
 
 Eichard had much to effect at Messina before he com- 
 menced the crusade. Before he struck a blow for Christen- 
 dom he was obliged to right the wrongs of his sister, 
 Joanna, queen of Sicily, the youngest daughter of Eleanora 
 and Henry II. William the Good, through the recommenda- 
 tions of Peter of Blois (who had formerly been his tutor), 
 became the husband of Joanna Plantagenet. The Sicilian 
 ambassador granted Joanna an immense dower ; but when 
 the aged bridegroom found that his young queen was still 
 more beautiful and sweet-tempered than her father's chap- 
 lain Peter had set forth, he greatly augmented her jointure. 
 The king of Sicily died childless, leaving his young widow 
 immense riches in his will. King Tancred robbed her of 
 these, and of her dower ; and, to prevent her complaints, 
 enclosed her in prison at Messina. It was this outrage 
 Eichard hastened there to redress. But the list of goods 
 the fair widow directed her brother to claim of Tancred 
 could surely have only existed in a catalogue of Aladdin's 
 household furniture : — an arm chair of solid gold ;' footstools 
 of gold ; a table twelve feet long, with trestles of gold ; be- 
 sides urns and vases of the same precious metal. These 
 reasonable demands were enforced by the arm of the mighty 
 Eichard, who was as obstinate and wilful as Achilles himself. 
 
 Tancred deserves pity, when we consider the extraordi- 
 nary nature of the bequests of his predecessor. However, 
 he compounded for dower and legacy, at last, with the 
 
 1 Hoveden and Viniaauf ; likewise Piers of Langtoft, who mentions many 
 other curious articles. 
 
298 ELEANOKA OF AQUITAINE, 
 
 enormous payment of 40,000 ounces of gold. This treasure, 
 with the royal widow herself, was consigned to Eichard 
 forthwith. Thus was a companion provided for Eichard's 
 expected bride, the elegant and refined Berengaria, who, 
 under the conduct of Eleanora of Aquitaine, was daily ex- 
 pected. Eichard was so well pleased with the restoration 
 of his sister and her treasures, that he asked Tancred's 
 daughter in marriage for his then acknowledged heir, Ar- 
 thur of Bretagne.^ 
 
 During this negotiation Eleanora arrived in Messina,* 
 bringing with her the long-beloved Berengaria. Although 
 years had elapsed since Eleanora had seen her daughter 
 Joanna, she tarried but four days in her company, and then 
 sailed for Eome. There is reason to suppose that her errand 
 was to settle a dispute which had arisen between king 
 Eichard and his half-brother Geoffrey, the son of Eosamond, 
 whom the king had appointed archbishop of York according 
 to his father's dying request, but had required an enormous 
 sum from the revenues of the archbishopric." Queen Elea- 
 nora returned to England * with her friend the archbishop 
 of Eouen ; he was soon after appointed its governor, in place 
 of Longchamp, who had convulsed the country by his follies. 
 
 We have seen Eleanora taken from captivity by her son 
 Eichard and invested with the high authority of queen- 
 regent : there is no reason to suppose that that authority 
 was revoked; for, in every emergency during the king's 
 absence, she appears as the guiding power. For this pur- 
 pose she absented herself from Aquitaine, whose govern- 
 ment she placed in the hands of a deputy, her grandson 
 Otho of Saxony ; ° and at the end of the reign of Coeur de 
 Lion we find her, according to the words of Matthew Paris, 
 " governing England with great -wisdom and popularity." 
 Queen Eleanora, when thus arduously engaged in watching 
 over the interests of her best-beloved son, was approaching 
 her seventieth year, — an age when rest is imperiously de- 
 
 ' The documents pertaining to this contract prove that Arthur was then con- 
 sidered by his uncle as the heir of England. — Fcedera, vol. i. 
 2 See the succeeding biography. ' Eapin, vol. i. 248. 
 
 * Speed, 518. 6 Tyrrell. 
 
ELEANOEA OF AQUITAINE. 299 
 
 manded by the human frame. But years of toil still re- 
 mained before her ere death closed her weary pilgrimage 
 in 1204 ; and these years were laden with sorrows, which 
 drew from her that pathetic alteration of the regal style, 
 preserved in one of her letters to the pope on occasion of 
 the captivity of Coeur de Lion, where she declares herself — 
 
 " Bleanora,! by the wrath of God queen of England." 
 
 ISTot only in this instance, but in several others, traits of the 
 subdued spirit of Bleanora are to be discovered ; for the ex- 
 treme nobility of her spirits diifused itself even over the 
 cold records of state. When swayed by calmer feelings, she 
 styles herself " ^lienora, by the grace of God, humbly queen 
 of England." » 
 
 Eleanora of Aquitaine is among the very few women who 
 have atoned for an ill-spent youth by a wise and benevolent 
 old age. As a sovereign, she ranks among the greatest of 
 female rulers.' 
 
 1 Peter of Bloia's Epistles. ^ Rymer, vol. i. 
 
 ' To prevent repetition, the rest of her life is comprehended in the memoirs 
 of her daughters-in-law, Berengaria and Isabella. 
 
BERENGARIA OF NAVARRE, 
 
 QUEEN-CONSORT OF RICHARD I. 
 
 Mutual attachment of Berengaria and Eichard — Berengaria's descent — Beren- 
 garia demanded in marriage — Travels with queen Eleanora — Waits with her 
 at Brindisi — Is consigned to queen Joanna — Queen Eleanora's regency — 
 Kedeems, a3 her queen-gold, the cup of the monks of Bury — Embarks for 
 Palestine — Berengaria lands in a storm at Cyprus — Nuptials at Cyprus — 
 Costume of queen Berengaria — Crowned queen of England and Cyprus — 
 Berengaria sails for Palestine — Received by king Philip at Acre — Her resi- 
 dence there — Berengaria embarks with Joanna — Richard shipwrecked — Im- 
 prisoned — Berengaria at Rome — The queens escorted by count Raymond 
 St. Gilles — Queen Joanna married to him — -Misfortunes of king Richard — - 
 Eleanora's regency — Her letter to the pope — She again redeems the gold cup 
 of the monks of Bury — Berengaria resigns the captive Cypriot — Berengaria's 
 brother — Queen-mother returns with Richard to England — She remits her 
 queen-gold a third time to the monks of Bury — Berengaria forsaken — 
 Richard's penitence — Berengaria's goodness — Follows Richard to war — De- 
 voted love — King's death — Death of queen Joanna — Berengaria's dower — 
 Her pecuniary troubles — Builds abbey of Espan — Resides there — Dies there — 
 Buried — Effigy — Character. 
 
 Berengaria, the beautiful daughter of Saneho the Wise, 
 king of Navarre, was first seen by Eichard Coeur de Lion, 
 when count of Poitou,' at a grand tournament given by her 
 gallant brother at Pampeluna, her native city. Eichard was 
 then captivated by the beauty of Berengaria, but his engage- 
 ment to the fair and frail Alice of France prevented him 
 from offering her his hand. Berengaria may be considered 
 a Provencal princess by language and education, though she 
 was Spanish by descent. Her mighty sire, Saneho the Wise, 
 had for his immediate ancestor Saneho the Great, called the 
 emperor of all Spain, although he inherited but the little 
 kingdom of Navarre. He married Beatrice, daughter to 
 Alphonso king of Castile, by whom he had three children, 
 
 ' See the preceding biography. 
 300 
 
BERENGAEIA OF NAVAEEE. 301 
 
 — Berengaria, Blanche, and one Bon, Sancho, surnamed ' the 
 Strong,' a hero celebrated by the Provencal poets for his 
 gallant exploits against the Moors ; for he defeated the Mira- 
 molin, and broke with his battle-axe ' the chains that guarded 
 the camp of the infidel, which chains were afterwards trans- 
 ferred to the armorial bearings of Kavarre. 
 
 An ardent friendship had subsisted, from boyhood, be- 
 tween Eichard and Sancho the Strong, the gallant brother 
 of Berengaria. A similarity of pursuits strengthened the 
 intimacy of Eichard with the royal family of Navarre. 
 The father and brother of Berengaria were celebrated for 
 their skill and judgment in Provencal poetry.' Berengaria 
 was herself a learned princess ; and Eichard, who was not 
 only a troubadour poet, but, as acting sovereign of Aqui- 
 taine, was the prince and judge of all troubadours, became 
 naturally drawn into close bonds of amity with a family 
 whose tastes and pursuits were similar to his own. 
 
 JSTo one can marvel that the love of the ardent Eichard 
 should be strengthened when he met the beautiful, the cul- 
 tivated, and virtuous Berengaria in the familiar intercourse 
 which sprang from his friendship with her gallant brother ; " 
 but a long and secret engagement, replete with "hope 
 deferred," was the fate of Eichard the Lion-hearted and 
 the fair flower of Navarre. 
 
 Our early historians first mention the attachment of 
 Eichard and Berengaria about the year 1177. If we take 
 that event for a datum, even allowing the princess to 
 have been very young when she attracted the love of Eich- 
 ard, she must have been twenty-six, at least, before the 
 death of his father placed him at liberty to demand her 
 hand. Eichard had another motive for his extreme desire 
 for this alliance; he considered that his beloved mother, 
 queen Eleanora, was deeply indebted to king Sancho, the 
 father of Berengaria, because he had pleaded her cause 
 
 ' Atlas Historique. ' Chronicle of Navarre. 
 
 ^ Eicliard and his nephew, the troubadour count of Champagne, who after- 
 wards married Blanche, the younger sister of Berengaria, were, with Sancho 
 the Strong, on the most intimate terms of friendship, being fratres jurati, or 
 sworn brothers, according to a custom of the chivalrlc ages. 
 
302 BERENGAEIA OF NAVARRE. 
 
 with Henry II., and obtained some amelioration of her 
 imprisonment. 
 
 Soon after Eichard ascended the English throne, he sent 
 his mother, queen Bleanora, to the court of her friend Sancho 
 the Wise, to demand the princess Berengaria in marriage ; 
 "for," says Vinisauf, "he had long loved the elegant girl." 
 Sancho the Wise not only received the proposition with joy, 
 but intrusted Berengaria to the care of queen Eleanora. The 
 royal ladies travelled from the court of Navarre together, 
 across Italy to Naples,' where they found the ships belonging 
 to Eleanora had arrived in the bay. But etiquette forbade 
 Berengaria to approach her lover till he was free from the 
 claims of Alice ; therefore she sojourned with queen Eleanora 
 at Brindisi, in the spring of 1191, waiting the message from 
 king Eichard, announcing that he was free to receive the 
 hand of the princess of Navarre. 
 
 It was at Messina that the question of the engagement 
 between the princess Alice and the king of England was 
 debated with Philip Augustus, her brother ; and more than 
 once, the potentates assembled for the crusade expected that 
 the forces of Prance and England would be called into action, 
 to decide the right of king Eichard to give his hand to 
 another lady than the sister of the king of France. The 
 rhymes of Piers of Langtoft recapitulate these events with 
 brevity and quaintness : — 
 
 " Then spake king Philip, and in grief said, 
 ' My sister Alice is now forsaken, 
 
 Since one, of more riches, of Navarre hast thou taken.' 
 When king Eichard understood what king Philip had sworn, 
 Before clergy he stood, and proved on that mom, 
 That Alice to his father a child had borne. 
 Which his sire king Henry held for his own : 
 A maiden-child it was, and now dead it is. 
 ' This was a great trespass, and against mine own witte 
 If I Alice take.* " 
 
 King Philip contended that Eichard held in hand his sister's 
 dower, the good city of Gisors. Upon this, the king of 
 England brought the matter to a conclusion, in these words : 
 
 ' Roger of Wendover, Dr. Giles's translation ; vol. ii. p. 95. He says queen 
 Eleanora crossed " Mount Janus and the plains of Italy with Berengaria." 
 
BERENGAEIA OF NAVAEBE. 303 
 
 " ' Now,' said king Richard, ' that menace may not be. 
 For thou shalt have ward of Gisors thy oitfee, 
 
 And treasure ilk a deal.' 
 Richard yielded him hia right, his treasure and his town, 
 Before witness at sight (of clerk and eke baron). 
 His sister he might marry, wherever God might like. 
 And, to make certainty, Richard a quittance took." 
 
 The French contemporary chroniclers, who are exceed- 
 ingly indignant at the repudiation of their princess, attribute 
 it solely to Eleanora's influence. Bernard, the treasurer, 
 says, " The old queen could not endure that Eichard should 
 espouse Alice, but demanded the sister of the king of Na- 
 varre for a wife for her son. At this the king of Navarre 
 was right joyful, and she travelled with queen Eleanora to 
 Messina. When she arrived, Eichard was absent ; but queen 
 Joanna was there, preparing herself to embark next day. 
 The queen of England could not tarry, but said to Joanna, — 
 ' Fair daughter, take this damsel for me to the king your 
 brother, and tell him I command him to espouse her 
 speedily.' " ' Piers of Langtoft resumes : — 
 
 " She beleft Berengere, 
 At Richard's costage, 
 Qneen Joanne held her dear ; 
 They lived as doves in cage." 
 
 Eleanora commenced her journey to Italy, where she had 
 a conference with pope Celestine, at the castle of Eadulphi.' 
 The aged queen took upon herself the cares of regency for 
 her son Eichard. She was in England very soon after his 
 marriage with Berengaria was made public, for she there 
 claimed her share of queen-gold in the fines or aid con- 
 tributed by the feudal tenants of the crown on account of 
 that marriage ; which fact the following anecdote will au- 
 thenticate. The monks of Bury contrived to dispense with 
 their share of the payment ; for, pleading scarcity of coin, 
 they sent in, to make up their aid to the king's marriage, 
 a cup of gold, worth one hundred marks, which Henry II. 
 had given to the shrine of Edmund, martyr and king. The 
 queen-regent Eleanora recognized the cup, and taking it 
 
 1 Bernard le Tr^sorier. 
 
 ' Her letter to pope Celestine. — Epistles of Peter of Blois, cxlvi. 
 
304 BEEENGAEIA OF NAVAEEE. 
 
 from the heap of treasure sent into the royal treasury, she 
 said, " I claim this as my portion, being my queen-gold. It 
 was given to the monks of Bury by Henry, my late lord ; 
 and I give it back to them, on condition that they pray for 
 me and for his soul with increased fervency." ' 
 
 At the arrival of Berengaria in Sicily, king Eichard and 
 king Tancred were absent on a pilgrimage to the shrine of 
 St. Agatha, at Catania, where Tancred must have devoutly 
 prayed for the riddance of his guest. Eichard here pre- 
 sented the Sicilian king with a famous sword, pretending it 
 was Caliburn, the brand of king Arthur, lately found at 
 Glastonbury during his father's antiquarian researches for 
 the tomb of that king. Eichard then embarked in his 
 favorite galley, named by him ' Trenc-the-mere.' ^ He had 
 previously, in honor of his betrothment, instituted an order 
 of twenty-four knights, who pledged themselves in a fra- 
 ternity with the king to scale the walls of Acre ; and that 
 they might be known in the storming of that city, the king 
 appointed them to wear a blue band of leather on the left 
 leg, from which they were called 'knights of the Blue 
 Thong.' » 
 
 The season of Lent prevented the immediate marriage of 
 Eichard and his betrothed ; and, as etiquette did not permit 
 the unwedded maiden Berengaria to embark in the Trenc- 
 the-mere under the immediate protection of her lover, she 
 sailed, in company with queen Joanna, in one of the strong- 
 est ships, under the care of a brave knight, called Stephen 
 de Turnham. After these arrangements, Eichard led the 
 van of the fleet in the Trenc-the-mere, bearing a huge lantern 
 at her poop to rally the fleet in the darkness of night. Thus, 
 with a hundred and fifty ships and fifty galleys, and accom- 
 
 • Chronicle of Josceline of Brakelonde, monk of Bury St. Edmunds. 
 
 2 Literally, meaning cut-the-sea. It is Piers of Langtoft who preserves the 
 name of this vessel. 
 
 ^ Hoveden. Sir Egerton Bridges names Roger St. John as one of these early 
 knights of the Garter. St. George was the tutelary saint of Aquitaine; his 
 name was the war-cry of the dukedom. King Richard had a vision of St- 
 George when he undertook the crusade, and many indications throughout the 
 chroniclers show that St. George was considered the patron-saint of the expe- 
 dition. 
 
BEEENGAIIIA OF NAVAERB. 305 
 
 panied by his bride and his sister, did lion-hearted Eichard 
 hoist sail for Palestrae, where Philip Augustus had already 
 indolently commenced the siege of Acre. 
 
 " Syrian rirgins wail and weep, 
 English Richard ploughs the deep." 
 
 But we must turn a deaf ear to the bewitching metre of 
 polished verse, and quote details taken by Piers of Lang- 
 toft from the Provencal comrade of Eichard and Berenga- 
 ria's crusade voyage : — 
 
 " Till king Richard be forward he may hare no rest, 
 Acres then is his tryste upon Saracen fiends,! 
 To Tenge Jesu Christ hitherward he wends. 
 The king's sister Joanne, and lady Berengare, 
 Foremost sailed of Uk one ; next them his chancellor, 
 Roger Mancel. The chancellor so hight. 
 His tide fell not well ; a tempest on him light. 
 His ship was down borne, himself there to die ; 
 The king's seal was lost, with other gallies tway. 
 Lady Joanna she the Lord Jesn besought. 
 In Cyprus she might be to haven quickly brought : 
 The maiden Berengare, she was sore afright. 
 That neither far nor near, her king rode in sight." 
 
 Queen Joanna was alarmed for herself, but the maiden 
 Berengaria only thought of Eichard's safety. Bernard, the 
 treasurer, does not allow that Joanna was quite so much 
 frightened. "We translate his words : — " Queen Joanna's 
 gaUey sheltered in the harbor of Limoussa, when Isaac, the 
 lord of Cyprus, sent two boats, and demanded if the queen 
 would land ? She declined the offer, saying, ' All she wanted 
 was to know whether the king of England had passed ?' 
 They replied, ' They did not know.' At that juncture Isaac 
 approached with a great power ; upon which the chevaliers 
 who guarded the royal ladies got the galley in order, to be 
 rowed out of the harbor at the first indication of hostility. 
 Meantime Isaac, who saw Berengaria on board, demanded 
 ' What damsel that was with them ?' They declared, ' She 
 was the sister of the king of JSTavarre, whom the king of 
 England's mother had brought for him to espouse.' Isaac 
 
 ! Fiend means ' enemy' in German, and doubtless in Anglo-Saxon. 
 
306 BERENGAEIA OF NAVARRE. 
 
 seemed eo angry at this intelligence that Stephen de Turn- 
 ham gave signal to heave up the anchor, and the queen's 
 galley rowed with all speed into the offing." ' 
 
 When the gale had somewhat abated, king Eichard, after 
 mustering his navy, found not only that the ship was missing 
 wherein were drowned both the chancellor of England and 
 the great seal, but the galley that bore the precious freight 
 of his sister and his bride. He immediately sailed from a 
 friendly Cretan harbor in search of his lost ships. When 
 arrived off Cyprus, he entered the bay of Famagusta, and 
 beheld the galley that contained his princesses laboring 
 heavily and tossing in the offing. He became infuriated 
 with the thought that some wrong had been offered to them, 
 and leaped, armed as he was, into the first boat that could 
 be prepared. His anger increased on learning that the 
 queen's galley had put into the harbor in the storm, but 
 had been driven inhospitably from shelter by the threats 
 of the Greek despot.' 
 
 At the time of Eichard's landing, Isaac and all his island- 
 ers were busUy employed in plundering the wreck of the 
 chancellor's ship and two English transports, then stranded 
 on the Cypriot shore. As this self-styled emperor, though 
 in behavior worse than a pagan, professed to be a Christian, 
 Eichard, at his first landing, sent him a civil message, sug- 
 gesting the propriety of leaving off plundering his wrecks. 
 To this Isaac returned an impertinent answer, saying, 
 " That whatever goods the sea threw on his island he should 
 take, without asking leave of any one." 
 
 " They shall be bought full dear, by Jesu, heaven's king !" 
 
 With this saying, Eichard, battle-axe in hand, led his cru- 
 saders so boldly to the rescue that the mock emperor and 
 his Cypriots scampered into Limoussa, the capital of the 
 island, much faster than they had left it. Freed from the 
 presence of the inhospitable despot, king Eichard made 
 signals for Joanna's galley to enter the harbor. Berengaria, 
 
 1 Gulzot's edition of Bernard le Trfisorier. 
 
 ' Vinisauf and Piers Langtoft. ' Despot' was a title given to the petty Greek 
 
 potentates. 
 
BEEENGAEIA OF NAVAEHE. 307 
 
 half dead with fatigue and terror, was welcomed on shore 
 by the conquering king, when, says the chronicler, " there 
 was joy and love enow." 
 
 As soon as Isaac Comnenus was safe behind the walls of 
 his citadel, he sent a message to request a conference with 
 king Eichard, who expected that he had a little lowered the 
 despot's pride; but when they met, Isaac was so full of 
 vaporing and boasting, that he elicited from his illustrious 
 auditor an aside in English; and as Coeur de Lion then 
 uttered the only words in our language he ever was known 
 to speak, it is well they have been recorded by chronicle : — 
 "Ha, de debil!" exclaimed king Eichard; "he speke like a 
 fole Breton." ' 
 
 As Isaac and Eichard could not come to any terms of 
 pacification, the despot retreated to a stronghold in a neigh- 
 boring mountain ; while Eichard, after making a speech to 
 the Londoners (we hope in more choice English than the 
 above), instigating them to the storm of the Cypriot capital 
 with promise of plunder, led them on to the attack, axe in 
 hand. The Londoners easily captured Limoussa. 
 
 Directly the coast was clear of Isaac and his myrmidons, 
 magnificent preparations were made at Limoussa for the 
 nuptials and coronation of king Eichard and Berengaria. 
 We are able to describe the appearance made by these royal 
 personages at this high solemnity. King Eichard's costume, 
 we may suppose, varied little from that in which he gave 
 audience to the despot Isaac a day after the marriage had 
 taken place." " A satin tunic of rose-color was belted round 
 his waist ; his mantle was of striped silver tissue, brocaded 
 with silver half-moons ; his sword, of fine Damascus steel, 
 had a hilt of gold, and a silver-scaled sheath ; on his head 
 he wore a scarlet bonnet, brocaded in gold with figures of 
 animals. He bore a truncheon in his hand. His Spanish 
 steed was led before him, saddled and bitted with gold, and 
 
 • Piers of Langtoft. This speech implied no offence to the English, but was 
 meant as a reproach to the Bretons, who are to this day proverbial in France for 
 their wilfulness. Besides, Richard was bitter against the Bretons, who deprived 
 him of the society of his then acknowledged heir, Arthur, their young duke. — 
 Vinisauf. ' Vinisauf. 
 
308 BERBNGAEIA OF NAVARRE. 
 
 the saddle was inlaid with precious stones ; two little golden 
 lions were fixed on it, in the place of a crupper : they were 
 figured with their paws raised, in act to strike each other. 
 In this attire," Vinisauf adds, "Eiehard, who had yellow 
 curls, a bright complexion, and a figure like Mars himself, 
 appeared a perfect model of military and manly grace." 
 
 The efiigy of queen Berengaria, at Bspan, certainly 
 presents her as a bride, — a circumstance which is ascer- 
 tained by the flowing tresses, royal matrons always wear- 
 ing their hair covered, or else closely braided. Her hair is 
 parted, a la vierge, on the brow ; a transparent veil, open on 
 each side like the Spanish mantillas, hangs behind, and 
 covers the rich tresses at their length : the veil is confined 
 by a regal diadem, of peculiar splendor, studded with 
 several bands of gems, and surmounted by fleurs-de-lis, to 
 which so much foliage is added as to give it the appearance 
 of a double crown, — perhaps because she was crowned 
 queen of Cyprus as well as England. Our antiquaries 
 aflSrm that the peculiar character of Berengaria's elegant 
 but singular style of beauty brings conviction to every 
 one who looks on her effigy that it is a carefully finished 
 portrait.' 
 
 At his marriage, king Eiehard proclaimed a grand feast. 
 
 " To Limoussa the lady was led, his feast the king did cry, 
 Berengere will be wed, and sojourn thereby. 
 The third day of the feast, bishop Bernard of Bayonne 
 Renewed oft the geste, to the queen he gave the crown." ^ 
 
 "And there, in the joyous month of May, 1191," says an 
 ancient writer, " in the flourishing and spacious isle of 
 Cyprus, celebrated as the very abode of the goddess of love, 
 did king Eiehard solemnly take to wife his beloved lady 
 Berengaria." By the consent of the Cypriots, wearied of 
 Isaac's tyranny, and by the advice of the allied crusaders 
 who came to assist at his nuptials, Eiehard was crowned 
 king of Cyprus, and his bride, queen of England and 
 Cyprus. 
 
 Soon after, the fair heiress of Cyprus, daughter to the 
 
 ' See portrait. ^ May 12th : Howe's Chronicle, p. 194. 
 
BERENGAEIA OF NAVARRE. 309 
 
 despot Isaac, came and threw herself at the feet of Eiehard. 
 "Lord kmg," she said, "have mercy on me!" when the 
 king courteously put forth his hand to lift her from the 
 ground, and sent her to his wife and his sister Joanna. As 
 many historical scandals are afloat respecting the Cypriot 
 princess, implying that Eiehard, captivated by the dis- 
 tressed beauty, from that moment forsook his queen, it is 
 well to observe the words of an eye-witness, ' who declares 
 "that Eiehard sent the lady directly to his queen, from 
 whom she never parted till after their return to Europe." 
 The surrender of the Cypriot princess was followed by the 
 capture of her father, whom the king of England bound in 
 silver chains, richly gilt, and presented to queen Berengaria 
 as her captive.' 
 
 After the conclusion of the nuptials and coronation of 
 Berengaria, her royal bridegroom once more hoisted his flag 
 on his good galley Trenc-the-mere, and set sail, in beautiful 
 summer weather, for Palestine. Berengaria and her sister- 
 in-law again embarked under the protection of sir Stephen 
 de Turnham, such escort being safer than companionship 
 with the warlike Eiehard.' Their galley made the port of 
 Acre before the Trenc-the-mere. " On their arrival at Acre, 
 though," says Bernard le Tresorier, " it was very grievous 
 to the king of France to know that Eiehard was married to 
 any other than his sister ; yet he received Berengaria with 
 great courtesy, taking her in his arms, and lifting her on 
 shore himself from the boat to the beach." Eiehard ap- 
 
 • The Provenjal metrical historian, who is the guide of Piers of Langtoft. 
 
 2 l8aa<! afterwards entered among the Templars, and died in their order. 
 Kichard presented his island to Guy de Losignan, his friend, as a compensation 
 for the loss of Jerusalem. This dethronement of Isaac and the captivity of his 
 daughter was the origin of Richard's imprisonment in Germany, a£ we shall 
 presently see. 
 
 ' The king's arrival was delayed by a naval battle with a rich Saracen argosy, 
 which he captured with great plunder. The manoeuvres of the Trenc-the-mere 
 are thus described by the Provenjal ; likewise the casting of the Greek fire : — 
 
 " The king's own galley, he called it Trenc-the-mere ; 
 It was first under weigh, and came that ship full near, 
 Who threw her buckets out. The galley to her drew. 
 The king stood full stout, and many of them slew, 
 Though wild fire they cast." 
 
310 BEEENGAKIA OF NAVARRE. 
 
 peared before Acre on the long bright day of St. Barnabas, 
 when the whole allied army, elated by the naval victory he 
 had won by the way, marched to the beach to welcome 
 their champion. " The earth shook with footsteps of the 
 Christians, and the sound of their shouts." 
 
 When Acre was taken, Eiehard established his queen and 
 sister safely there. They remained at Acre with the Cypriot 
 princess during the whole of the Syrian campaign, under the 
 care of Richard's castellans, Bertrand de Verdun and Ste- 
 phen de Munchenis. To the left of the mosque at Acre are 
 the ruins of a palace, called to this day ' king Eiehard's 
 palace :' ' this was doubtless the abode of Berengaria. There 
 is not a more pleasant spot in history than the tender friend- 
 ship of Berengaria and Joanna, who formed an attachment 
 amidst the perils and terrors of storm and siege, ending 
 only with their lives.* How quaintly, yet expressively, is 
 their gentle and feminine love for each other marked by the 
 sweet simplicity of the words, — 
 
 *' They held each other dear, 
 And lived as doves in cage !" 
 
 noting, at the same time, the harem-like seclusion in which 
 the royal ladies dwelt while sharing the crusade campaign. 
 It was from the citadel of Acre that Richard tore down the 
 banner of Leopold archduke of Austria, who, by alliance with 
 the family of the Comneni, was related to the Cypriot lady. 
 Her captivity was the real matter of dispute, as the scandals 
 which connected her name with that of king Richard seemed 
 to touch the honor of the house of Austria. 
 
 We have little space to dwell on Richard's deeds of ro- 
 mantic valor in Palestine, on the capture of Ascalon, or 
 the battle of Jaffa, before which city was killed Richard's 
 good steed, named Fanuelle, whose feats in battle are nearly 
 
 ^ Dr. Clarke's Travels. The tradition is that Richard built the palace ; but 
 he had no time for any such work. The architecture is Saracenic, and it was 
 doubtless a palace of the resident emir of Acre. 
 
 ' Madame Cottin, in her celebrated but florid romance of Mathilde, has some 
 faint idea that a sister of Richard's shared his crusade with Berengaria ; but 
 neither that lady nor air Walter Scott seem aware which princess of England 
 was the person. 
 
BEEENGARIA OP NAVARRE. 311 
 
 as much celebrated by the troubadours as those of his mas- 
 ter.* After the death of Fanuelle, Eichard was obliged to 
 fight on foot. The courteous Saladin, who saw him thus 
 battling, was shocked that so accomplished a cavalier should 
 be dismounted, and sent him, as a present, a magnificent 
 Arab charger. Eichard had the precaution to order one of - 
 his knights to mount the charger first. The headstrong beast 
 no sooner found a stranger on his back, than he took the bit 
 between his teeth, and, refusing all control, galloped back 
 to his own quarters, carrying the Christian knight into the 
 midst of Saladin's camp. If king Eichard had ridden the 
 wilful animal, he would, in like manner, have been at the 
 mercy of the Saracens. Saladin was so much ashamed 
 of the misbehavior of his present that he could scarcely 
 look up while he apologized to the Christian knight, for it 
 appeared as if he had laid a trap for the liberty of king 
 Eichard. He sent back the knight mounted on a more 
 manageable steed, on which Eichard rode to the end of the 
 campaign.' 
 
 King Eichard, during his Syrian campaign, was once 
 within sight of Jerusalem, but never took it. While bis 
 queen Berengaria sojourned at Acre, an incident befeU him, 
 of which De Joinville, the companion in arms of St. Louis, 
 has thus preserved the memory : — " In those times, when 
 Hugh Duke of Burgundy' and king Eichard of England 
 were abiding at Acre, they received intelligence that they 
 might take Jerusalem if they chose, for its garrison had 
 gone to the assistance of Damascus. They accordingly 
 marched towards the holy city, the English king's battalions 
 leading the way, while Burgimdy's force brought up the 
 rear. But when Eichard drew near to Jerusalem, intelli- 
 gence was brought him that the duke of Burgundy had 
 
 1 By some called Farelle, probably Flavel, menmng yellow-colored. Vinisauf 
 declares this peerless charger was taken among the spoils of Cyprus, with another 
 named Lyard. The cavaliers in ancient times named their steeds from their 
 color, as Bayard, bay-color; Lyard, gray; Ferraunt, black a« iron; Flavel, 
 yellow, or very light sorrel. 
 
 ' Chronicle of Bernard Trgsorier. 
 
 ' Philip Augustus and the duke of Austria decamped from the crusade at 
 Cesarea. Hugh of Burgundy commanded the remnant of the French forces. 
 
312 BEEENGAEIA OP NAVABBE. 
 
 turned back with his division, out of pure envy, that it 
 might not be said that the king of England had taken 
 Jerusalem. As these tidings were being discussed, one of 
 the English knights cried out, — ' Sire, sire only come hither, 
 and I will show you Jerusalem.' But the king, throwing 
 down his weapons, said, with tears in his eyes and hands 
 uplifted to heaven, — 'Ah, Lord God! I pray thee that I 
 may never see thy holy city Jerusalem since things thus 
 happen, and since I cannot deliver it from the hands of 
 thine enemies !' Eichard could do nothing more than return 
 to his queen and sister at Acre. 
 
 " You must know that this king Eichard performed such 
 deeds of prowess when he was in the Holy Land that the 
 Saracens, on seeing their horses frightened at a shadow or 
 a bush, cried out to them, ' What ! dost think Melec-Eic is 
 there ?' This they were accustomed to say from the many 
 times he had vanquished them. In like manner, when the 
 children of Turks or Saracens cried, their mothers said to 
 them, ' Hush, hush ! or I will give you to king Eichard ;' and 
 from the terror of these words the babes were instantly 
 quiet."' The final truce between Eichard and Saladin was 
 concluded in a fair flowery meadow' near Mount Tabor, 
 where Eichard was so much charmed with the gallant 
 bearing of the ' prince of Miscreants,' as Saladin is civiUy 
 termed in the crusading treaties, that he declared he would 
 rather be the friend of that brave and honest pagan than 
 the ally of the crafty Philip or the brutal Leopold. It is a 
 tradition, often cited in modern romance, but without his- 
 torical foundation, that Eichard oifered the hand of his 
 sister, queen Joanna, to Saladin's brother. Melee Adhel. 
 
 The autumn of 1192 had commenced when king Eichard 
 concluded his peace with Saladin, and prepared to return, 
 covered with fruitless glory, to his native dominions. A 
 mysterious estrangement had, at this time, taken place 
 
 ' JoinTllle's words are thus paraphrased by Dryden : — 
 
 " No more Sebastian's formidable name 
 Is longer used to stiU the crying babe." 
 
 * Piers Langtoft. 
 
BEEENGARIA OF NAVAEEE. 313 
 
 between Lim and Berengaria; yet the chroniclers do not 
 mention that any rival had supplanted the queen, but merely 
 that accidents of war had divided him from her company. 
 As for the Cypriot princess, if he were estranged from his 
 queen, he must likewise have been separated from the fair 
 captive, since she always remained with Berengaria. The 
 king bade farewell to his queen and sister, and saw them 
 embark the very evening of his own departure. The queens, 
 accompanied by the Cypriot princess, sailed from Acre, un- 
 der the care of Stephen de Turnham, September 29th. 
 Eichard meant to return by a different route across Europe. 
 He travelled in the disguise of a Templar, and embarked in 
 a ship belonging to the master of the Temple. This vessel 
 was wrecked off the coast of Istria, which forced Eichard 
 to proceed homewards through the domains of his enemy, 
 Leopold of Austria. To his ignorance of geography is 
 attributed his near approach to Leopold's capital. After 
 several narrow escapes, a page, sent by Eichard to purchase 
 provisions at a village near Vienna, was recognized by an 
 oflSeer who had made the late crusade with Leopold. The 
 boy was seized, and, after enduring cruel torments, he con- 
 fessed where he had left his master. 
 
 When Leopold received certain intelligence where Eichard 
 harbored, the inn was searched, but not a soul found there 
 who bore any appearance of a king. " No," said the host, 
 " there is no one here Uke him whom you seek, without he 
 be the Templar in the kitchen, now turning the fowls which 
 are roasting for dinner." The officers of Leopold took the 
 hint and went into the kitchen, where, in fact, was seated a 
 Templar very busy turning the spit. The Austrian chev- 
 alier, who had served in the crusade, knew him, and said 
 quickly, "There he is: seize him!" Cceur de Lion started 
 from the spit, and did battle for his liberty right valiantly, 
 but was overborne by numbers. ' The revengeful Leopold 
 immediately imprisoned his gallant enemy, and immured 
 him so closely in a Styrian castle called Tenebreuse, that for 
 months no one knew whether the lion-hearted king was 
 alive or dead. Eichard, whose heroic name was the theme of 
 
 • Translated from Bernard le Tr^florier. — Guizot's Chronicles. 
 
314 BBRENGAKIA OF NAVAERE. 
 
 admiration in Europe and the burden of every song, seemed 
 vanished from the face of the earth. 
 
 Better fortune attended the vessel that bore the fair 
 freight of the three royal ladies. Stephen de Turnham's 
 galley arrived without accident at Naples, where Beren- 
 garia, Joanna, and the Cypriot princess landed safely, and, 
 under the care of sir Stephen, journeyed to Eome. The 
 Provencal traditions declare that here Berengaria first took 
 the alarm that some disaster had happened to her lord, from 
 seeing a belt of jewels offered for sale which she knew had 
 been on his person when she parted from him. At Eome 
 she likewise heard some vague reports of his shipwreck, 
 and of the enmity of the emperor Henry YI. ' 
 
 Berengaria was detained at Eome, with the princesses her 
 companions, by her fear of the emperor, for upwards of 
 half a year. At length the pope, moved by her distress and 
 earnest entreaties, sent them, under the care of messire 
 Mellar, one of the cardinals, to Pisa, whence they proceeded 
 to Genoa, where they took shipping to Marseilles. "At 
 Marseilles Berengaria was met by her friend and kinsman 
 the king of Arragon, who showed the royal ladies every 
 mark of reverence, gave them safe-conduct through his 
 Provengal domains, and sent them on, under the escort of 
 the count de Sancto Egidio." This Bgidio is doubtless the 
 crusader Eaymond count St. GiUes, who, travelling from 
 Eome with a strong escort, offered his protection to the 
 distressed queens of England and Sicily ; and though his 
 father, the count of Thoulouse, had during Eichard's crusade 
 invaded Guienne, and drawn on himself a severe chastise- 
 ment from Berengaria's faithful brother, Sancho the Strong, 
 yet the young count so well acquitted himself of his charge, 
 that he won the affections of the fair widow, queen Joanna, 
 on the journey.' The attachment of these lovers healed 
 the enmity that had long subsisted between the house of 
 Aquitaine and that of the counts of Thoulouse, on account 
 of the superior claims of queen Eleanora on that great fief 
 When Eleanora found the love that subsisted between her 
 youngest child and the heir of Thoulouse, she conciliated 
 
 ' Horeden's Chronicle. ' Roger Hoveden, fol. 447. 
 
BERENGAEIA OF NAVAERE. 315 
 
 his father by giving up her rights to her daughter, and 
 Berengaria had the satisfaction of seeing her two iriends 
 united after she arrived at Poitou. ' 
 
 JSTow queen Berengaria is left safely in her own dominions, 
 it is time to return to her unfortunate lord, who seems to 
 have been destined, by the malice of Leopold, to a life-long 
 incarceration. The royal prisoner almost despaired of 
 liberty when he wrote that pathetic passage in his well- 
 known Provengal tenson, saying, " Now know I for a cer- 
 tainty that there exists for me neither friend nor parent ; 
 or, for the lack of gold and silver, I should not so long re- 
 main a prisoner." He scarcely did justice to his affectionate 
 mother, who, directly she learned his captivity, never ceased 
 exerting herself for his release. Without giving any cre- 
 dence to the ballad story of king Eichard and the lion's 
 heart, which solely seems to have arisen from a metaphori- 
 cal epithet of the troubadour Peyrols,' and is not even 
 alluded to by the most imaginative of contemporary chron- 
 iclers, it really appears that Eiehard was ill-treated during 
 his German captivity. Matthew Paris declares he was 
 thrown into a dungeon from whence no other man ever 
 escaped with life, and was loaded with irons ; yet his coun- 
 tenance was ever serene, and his conversation pleasant and 
 facetious with the crowds of armed guards, who were 
 stationed at his dungeon-door day and night. It was a long 
 time before Eichard's friends could with any certainty make 
 out his locality. He was utterly lost for some months. 
 Blondel, a troubadour knight and poet, who had been ship- 
 wrecked with him on the coast of Istria, and who had 
 
 ' Piers of Langtoft saya that king Eichard betrothed his sister to the heroic 
 crusader St. Gilles in Palestine ; an assertion contradicted by the enmity sub- 
 sisting between the count, his father, and himself. 
 
 ' In the beautiful crusade sirvente extant by Peyrols, he calls the king " lion- 
 hearted Eichard." Peyrols was his fellow-soldier.— Sismondi. The earliest 
 chronicler who mentions the lion-legend is Eastall, the brother-in-law of sir 
 Thomas More, who had no better means of knowing the truth than we have. 
 Here are his quaint sayings on the subject : " It is said that a lyon was put to 
 king Eichard, being in prison, to have devoured him ; and when the lyon was 
 gaping, he put his arm in his mouth and pulled the lyon hy the heart so hard 
 that he slew the lyon, and therefore is called Coeur de Lyon ; while others say 
 he is called Coeur de Lyon because of his boldness and hardy stomach." 
 
316 BEKENGAEIA OF NAVAREB. 
 
 sought him through the cities of southern Germany, sang, 
 beneath the tower Tenebreuse, in which he was confined, 
 a tenson which Eichard and he had composed together. 
 Scarcely had he finished the first stanza,' when Eichard 
 replied with the second. Blondel directly went to queen 
 Eleanora, and gave her tidings of the existence of her son, 
 and she took measures for his release. 
 
 The letters which Eleanora of Aquitaine addressed to 
 pope Celestine on the subject of her son's captivity were 
 penned by the royal secretary, Peter of Blois.' Whether 
 the composition emanated from Peter, or from his royal 
 lady, is another question. There are many passages alluding 
 with passionate penitence to her own former criminality, 
 which no courtier dared to have indited; on the other 
 hand, the numerous scriptural narratives and analogies in- 
 dicate the ecclesiastic, while a tincture of pedantry, to say 
 nothing of punning, speaks strongly of the professional 
 scribe. The letters are written in Latin, but that language 
 presented few difiiculties to Eleanora, who could compose 
 in Provengal, a dialect far more Latinized than French : 
 likewise, she had been accustomed to the daily service of 
 the church. The tenor of the epistles, the strain of self- 
 condemnation, and the agonized maternity that runs 
 through them, give the idea that they were written from 
 her lips, or transcribed from passages which she had noted 
 down. What scribe, for instance, would have presumed 
 thus to express himself? — 
 
 " Mother of mercy ! look upon a wretched mother. If thy son, the fount 
 of mercy, avenges the sins of the mother on the son, let him launch his ven- 
 geance on her who has sinned ; let him punish me, the guilty, and not let his 
 wrath diverge on my unoffending son. Me, miserable yet unpitied as I am ! 
 why have I, the queen of two kingdoms, survived to endure the wretchedness 
 of calamitous old age? , . . 
 
 * Blondel'a tenaon is not preserved, but the poem Richard composed is still in 
 the BibliothSque Royale. There is no just reason for doubting this Provenjal 
 tradition of Blondel's agency in the discovery of Richard. Crescembini and 
 most foreign historians authenticate It. The Penny Cyclopaedia (not very 
 favorable to romance) looks on it as we do. In fact, it is consistent with the 
 manners and customs of the era. 
 
 * Letters of Peter of Blois, edited by Du Chesne. — Bib. du Roi, Paris. 
 
BEEENGAEIA OF NAVARRE. 317 
 
 " The young king and the count of Bretagne sleep in the dust, while their 
 hapless mother lives on, tortured with the remembrance of the dead. Two sons 
 were left for my consolation, but now they only survive fot my sorrow, condemned 
 and miserable wretch that 1 am ! Richard the king is in chains, while John 
 wastes and devastates his captive brother's realm with fire and sword. The 
 Lord's hand is heavy upon me ; truly his anger fights against me when my sons 
 strive together, if that may be called a strife where one person languishes in 
 prison, and his opponent, oh, grief of griefe ! lawlessly usurps the unfortunate 
 one's dominions." 
 
 The queen-mother here alludes to the strife raised by 
 prince John. He had obtained his brother's leave to abide 
 in England, on condition that he submitted to the govern- 
 ment established there. Queen Bleanora had intended to 
 fix her residence at Eouen, as a central situation between 
 her own dominions and those of king Eichard. But the 
 conftised state of affairs in England summoned her thither, 
 February 11, 1192. She found John in open rebellion ; for, 
 stimulated by messages from Philip Augustus, offering him 
 all Richard's continental provinces, and the hand of Alice, 
 rejected by Eichard, he aimed at nothing less than the 
 English crown. The arrival of his mother curbed his 
 turbulence : she told him to touch his brother's rights under 
 peril of her curse ; she forbade his disgraceful intention of 
 allying himself with Alice ; and, to render such mischievous 
 project impossible, she left that princess in close confine- 
 ment at Eouen, instead of delivering her to Philip Augustus, 
 as king Eichard had agreed, — so little truth is there in the 
 common assertion that the worthless character of John 
 might be attributed to the encouragement his vices received 
 from his mother ; but it was the doting affection of Henry 
 II. for his youngest son that had this effect, as he was the 
 child of his old age, and constantly near him, while the 
 queen was kept in confinement at a distance from her 
 family. 
 
 To proceed with Eleanora's letter. Her agonizing excla- 
 mations and self-reproaches are diversified by the scribe 
 Peter with interpolations from Job and Jeremiah, and the 
 penitential Psalms ; yet an earnest vein of personality runs 
 through the epistle, which is in many passages imbued with 
 historical truth. Eleanora, when meditating on a journey 
 
318 BEEENGAEIA OF NAVAEEE. 
 
 to visit, or rather to search for, the prison of her son, thus 
 expresses herself: — 
 
 **If I leave my son's dominions, invaded as they are on every side with 
 enemies, they will, on my departure, lose all counsel and solace ; if I remain, I 
 shall not behold my son, whose face I long to see. There will be none to labor 
 for his redemption, and, what I fear the most, he will be goaded for an exorbitant 
 ransom ; and unused as his generous youth is to such terrible calamities, he will 
 not survive all he has to endure." * 
 
 This remarkable letter then seems to enter into a strain of 
 reproach against the pope, which has caused some surprise 
 to those who are not imbued with the peculiar spirit of that 
 age ; but the object of Eleanora is clearly to excite the pope 
 into asserting his spiritual power against the usurpations 
 of the emperor and the house of Austria, — in short, the 
 same quarrel which is as undecided in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury as it was in 1192. 
 
 Eleanora invokes the thunders of the German pope Celes- 
 tine against the German encroacher, and strives to pique 
 him into becoming the advocate of her son : — 
 
 " Yet the prince of the apostles still fills the apostolic chair, and his judgment- 
 seat is a place of resort ; wherefore it remains that you, holy father ! draw 
 against these injurious ones the sword of Peter, which is for this purpose set over 
 people and kingdoms ; for the cross of Christ excels the eagles of Csesar, the 
 sword of Peter the weapon of Constantino, the apostolic see is above the imperial 
 power.2 . . . 
 
 " Wherefore, then, do you leave my son in bonds, delaying negligently ? or 
 rather, is it that you dare not free him ? . . . Woe for us when the shepherd 
 dreads the wolf! leaving not only the lambs, but the elect leader' of the flock 
 in the bloody fangs of the beast of prey." 
 
 After passionately reproaching Celestine for his abstinence 
 from the thunders of excommunication, from interdicts, 
 terrible sentences, and the whole arsenal of spiritual war- 
 fare, she reminds him of his promise " thrice to send legates, 
 which never were sent," — and here the genius of the age 
 availed itself of a pun, which conceit must be attributed to 
 Peter of Blois rather than to the agonized mother, for she 
 was too much in earnest to play on the sound of Latin 
 words, and say " that his messengers were tied, rather than 
 
 1 Letters of Peter of Blois, edited by Du Chesne. — Bib. du Roi, Paris. 
 
 ' Ibid. These are all axioms and sayings of the Suelphic party. 
 
 ' Richard, she thus reminds pope Celestine, was elected head of the crusade. 
 
BEEENGARIA OF NAVARRE. 319 
 
 speeded forward ;" in short, that they were men in ligatures 
 rather than legates. 
 
 " If my son were prosperous, they would hasten at hia summons, because they 
 would expect bountiful largess from his generosity and the great revenues of his 
 dominions. ... Is this the promise you made me at the oastle of Radulfi,' 
 with such protestations of aid and kindness ? What availed it to feed my sim'- 
 pllcity with mere words ?" 
 
 The passionate penitence of Eleanora broke forth in the 
 following exclamations, which, it will be allowed, were no 
 flowers of her scribe's rhetoric : — 
 
 " Oh, Lord ! to thee are the eyes of thy servant liBed up,— to thee : thou 
 lookest on my grief. Lord of lords, and King of kings ! consider the cause of 
 thine Anointed ; assert the empire of thine own Son, and at the same time save 
 the son of thine handmaid. Visit not on him the crimes of his father, or the 
 iniquities of his mother !" 
 
 Again Eleanora struggles to awake the jealousy of the 
 pope, whom she suspects of Ghibelline tendencies or German 
 partiality, by representing the cruelty of the emperor Henry 
 to churchmen. She acuses him of the assassination of the 
 bishop of Liege, and of the imprisonment of several Ger- 
 man and Italian prelates ; also of taking possession of Sicily, 
 which, since the time of Constantine, had ever been the 
 patrimony of St. Peter : — 
 
 " We feel evil : we dread more," concludes the queen. " I am no prophetess, 
 nor even a prophet*s daughter ; yet my sorrow foresees greater troubles for the 
 future ! That sorrow chokes the words I would utter : sobs impede my breath, 
 and close up the vocal utterance which would further express the thoughts of 
 my soul ! Farewell." 
 
 By the abruptness of the conclusion, it is by no means im- 
 probable that the passion of grief, which had been excited 
 by many passages in this letter, actually prevented the queen 
 from further dictation to Peter of Blois, who availed himself 
 of a circumstance, at once natural and interesting, for the 
 conclusion of his transcript. Those who read the whole of 
 the epistle will not wonder that a churchman, writing such 
 an epistle to the head of his church, should shrink from 
 adding one line, even the usual formula of conclusion, on 
 his own responsibility. 
 
 1 It will be remembered that Eleanora, on her voyage home from Messina, 
 visited the pope, to adjust some disputes concerning the archbishopric of York. 
 
320 BERENGAEIA OF NAVAEEB. 
 
 Throughout the whole of this exordium historians can per- 
 ceive that Eleanora, or her scribe, endeavors to put in strong 
 antagonism the disputes then in their utmost virulence 
 between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, or the party of the 
 church, or Italy, against the emperor of Germany. She 
 accuses the pope of politically temporizing with the might of 
 Germany, and strives to pique him into the assertion of his 
 spiritual power in behalf of her Eichard, who was by alliance 
 as well as principle an undoubted Guelphite,' or supporter of 
 the church against all temporal despotism, — excepting his 
 own. Queen Eleanora summoned her favorite grandson, 
 Otho of Guelph, the representative of that heroic line, and 
 withal her deputy in Aquitaine, to the aid of his uncle 
 Eichard ; and he hastened, nothing loath, to the German 
 congress, that he might give Cceur de Lion the aid of his 
 formidable name, and the sanction of his great office as 
 hereditary guardian of the liberties of the church. 
 
 When queen Eleanora and the chief justiciary ascertained 
 the place in which Eichard was detained, they sent two ab- 
 bots to confer with him in Germany. They met him, with 
 his guards, on the road to "Worms, where a diet of the em- 
 pire was soon to be held, and were received by him with his 
 usual spirit and animation. He inquired into the state of 
 his friends, his subjects, and his dominions, and particularly 
 after the health of the king of Scotland, on whose honor, 
 he said, he entirely relied ; and certainly he was not de- 
 ceived in his judgment of the character of that hero. On 
 
 • The office of the princes of the house of Guelph, the most civilized and 
 heroic among the German potentates, was to defend, by their occupation of 
 southern Germany, Italy, and the city of the pontiff, against the incursions of 
 the barbarian Germans. When the German empire became Christian, the war- 
 like Guelphs did not lose their party ; they defended the spiritual independence 
 of the pope against the temporal power of the empire, — a quarrel, although 
 carried on by other champions, not quite decided at the present day. The ex- 
 planation of the party terms, Guelph and its antithesis Ghibelline, is thus very 
 simple; but without such comprehension, Eleanora's reproaches of the pope 
 seem without aim or meaning, — nay, common sense would lead the reader to 
 suppose that the queen, by her scornful abuse, must have made an irreconcilable 
 enemy oT the pope. Eleanora, however, well knew her tactics : she knew that 
 pope Celestine dared not be identified with the Ghibelline or Germanic party 
 against the freedom of the church. 
 
tDilliam tt}c (JTonqucror ©ranting o (Eliarter to t\]c 
 diti^ens of £onbon 
 
 I^rom the painting iji the Royal Exchange by 
 Seymo2ir Lucas ^ R. A. 
 
 The scene represented is the moment when the Conqueror^ attended 
 by his Queen and surrounded by his bishops and nobles, is handing 
 the charter to Godfrey. The architecture is taken from the Chapel 
 of the Pyx at Westminster , which is generally accepted as having 
 been built before the N^orman Conquest ; the costume is f rain the 
 Bayeux Tapestry. 
 
Copyright, igog, hy George Barrie &^ Sons. 
 
BERENGARIA OF NAVAKBE. 321 
 
 hearing of the base conduct of his brother John, he was 
 shocked and looked grave ; but presently recovering his 
 cheerfulness, he said, with a smile, " My brother John was 
 never made for conquering kingdoms 1" ' Richard defended 
 himself before the diet with eloquence and pathos that drew 
 tears from most of his hearers ; and the mediation of the 
 princes of the empire induced the emperor to accept, as 
 ransom, one hundred thousand marks of silver. 
 
 Meantime, the ransom was collected in England, Nor- 
 mandy, and Aquitaine, to which queen Bleanora largely 
 contributed. She again received a tithe of queen-gold to a 
 large amount. She had taken one hundred marks out of 
 every thousand raised for her son's marriage, and now she 
 claimed the tenth of his ransom, although she certainly 
 gave it, with much more, as her contribution towards his 
 freedom. The monks of Bury, having obtained the restora- 
 tion of their gold cup through her generosity, resolved to 
 act the same part again, for they were amerced in the enor- 
 mous sum of a thousand marks as their quota for Eichard's 
 ransom. As they had no money, they sent in the whole of 
 their church plate in payment. Again it is recorded that 
 Eleanora, the queen-regent, was personally superintending 
 the registration of the money and valuables that came into 
 the treasury of her son. " Now," pursues the Bury chroni- 
 cler, " it was queen Eleanora's right, by the law of the land, 
 to receive a hundred marks whensoever the king is paid a 
 thousand. So she took up this gold cup and gave it back 
 to us once more, for the benefit of the soul of her dear lord, 
 king Henry II." ' The adventures of this gold cup (which 
 are not yet concluded) offer the most practical illustration 
 of the nature of the claims of the queens of England on 
 the aurum regince yet discovered. 
 
 When the first instalment of king Eichard's ransom was 
 ready, his affectionate mother and the chief justiciary set out 
 for Germany, a little before Christmas. She was accom- 
 panied by her grand-daughter Eleanora, surnamed 'the 
 Pearl of Brittany.' This young princess was promised, by 
 the ransom-treaty, in marriage to the heir of Leopold of 
 
 1 Hoyeden, ' Chronicle of Josceline de Brakelonde. 
 
322 BERENGAEIA OF NAVARRE. 
 
 Austria.' The Cypriot princess was likewise taken from 
 the keeping of queen Berengaria, on the demand of the em- 
 peror, and escorted by queen Eleanora to the German con- 
 gress, where she was surrendered to her Austrian relatives. 
 
 It was owing to the exertions of the gallant Guelphic 
 princes, his relations, that the actual liberation of Coeur de 
 Lion was at last effected. Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony,' 
 and his sons, appeared before the diet, and pleaded the cause 
 of the English hero with the most passionate eloquence; 
 they pledged their credit for the payment of the remainder 
 of his ransom, and actually left William of Winchester, the 
 youngest Guelphic prince, in pawn with the emperor for the 
 rest of the ransom. After an absence of four years, three 
 months, and nine days, king Eichard landed at Sandwich, in 
 April, the Sunday after St. George's day, in company with 
 his royal mother, who had the pleasure of surrendering to 
 him his dominions, both insular and continental, without 
 diminution. 
 
 Eleanora's detention of the princess Alice in Normandy 
 had drawn on that country a fierce invasion from Philip 
 Augustus, the residt of which would have been doubtful if the 
 tears of Berengaria, then newly arrived in Aquitaine, had 
 not prevailed on her noble brother, Sancho the Strong, to 
 traverse France with two hundred choice knights. By the 
 valor of this hero, and his chivalric reinforcement, Nor- 
 mandy was delivered from the king of France.' Berengaria, 
 during the imprisonment of her royal husband, lost her 
 father, Sancho the Wise, king of Navarre, who died in 
 1194,* after a glorious reign of forty-four years. 
 
 After a second coronation, Richard went in progress 
 throughout England, with his royal mother, to sit in judg- 
 ment on those castellans who had betrayed their fortresses 
 to his brother John : by the advice of his mother they were 
 treated with much lenity. At all these councils queen Elea- 
 
 ' The marriage-contract was afterwards broken. 
 
 ' Her majesty queen Victoria ia the representative of this great and generous 
 prince ; and at the same time, from his wife Matilda, eldest daughter of Henry 
 II., derives a second direct descent from the house of Plantagenet. 
 
 ' Tyrrell. * History of Navarre. 
 
BEEENGAEIA OF NAVAKEE. 323 
 
 nora assisted him, being regarded with the utmost reverence, 
 and sitting in state at his right hand. Probably in the same 
 progress king Eichard sold the manor of Mildenhall to the 
 monks of Bury St. Edmund's. Queen Bleanora made a claim 
 of her aurum regince, or queen-gold, on the sum paid to her 
 son. Once more the wily ecclesiastics, knowing the good 
 service the gold cup of Henry II. had done for them, sent it 
 in as part of payment, protesting their utter inability other- 
 wise to make up the price. Queen Eleanora was present, for 
 the purpose of asserting her claim on the tenth of the gold ; 
 but when she saw, for the third time, her old acquaintance 
 the gold cup, she was somewhat disturbed in spirit, deeming 
 that her generosity was played upon. It is true she re- 
 deemed the gift of her husband, but she required from the 
 monks of Bury a solemn promise " that, for the time to come, 
 the gold cup of Henry II. should be held sacred, and never 
 again be set for sale or laid in pledge." ^ 
 
 When the king, in the course of his progress, arrived 
 in Normandy, queen Eleanora introduced into his chamber 
 prince John, who knelt at his royal brother's feet for pardon. 
 Eichard raised him, with this magnanimous expression : — 
 " I forgive you, John ; and I wish I could as easily forget 
 your offence as you will my pardon." 
 
 King Eichard finished his progress by residing some 
 months in his Angevin territories. Although he was in the 
 vicinity of the loving and faithful Berengaria, he did not 
 return to her society. The reason of this estrangement 
 was, that the king had renewed his connection with a num- 
 ber of profligate and worthless associates, the companions 
 of his long bachelorhood in his father's lifetime. His con- 
 duet at this time scandalized all his subjects, as he aban- 
 doned himself to habitual inebriety and degrading vices ; 
 for which various virtuous churchmen reproved him boldly, 
 to their credit be it spoken. " The spring of 1195, Eichard 
 was hunting in one of his Norman forests,' when he was 
 
 I Josceline de Brakelonde. 
 
 ' Tyrrell, from a chronicle by Eigord. Maitre Rigord was originally a medical 
 man ; he was the contemporary of king Richard and king John. His chronicle 
 is, we think, among those edited by Guizot. 
 
324 BEKENGAEIA OF NAVARRE. 
 
 met by a hermit, who recognized him, and preached him a 
 very eloquent sermon on his irregular life, finishing by 
 prophesying that, unless he repented, his end and punish- 
 ment were close at hand. The king answered slightingly, 
 and went his way ; but the Easter following he was seized 
 with a most severe illness, which threatened to be fatal, 
 when he remembered the saying of the hermit-prophet, 
 and, greatly alarmed, began to repent of his sins." Eichard 
 sent for all the monks within ten miles round, and made 
 public confession of his iniquities, vowing, withal, that if 
 queen Berengaria would forgive him, he would send for her, 
 and never forsake her again. When he recovered, these 
 good resolutions were strengthened by an interview he had 
 with an English bishop. 
 
 When Eichard first parted from the queen, he quarrelled 
 with the virtuous St. Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, on the old 
 ground of exacting a simoniacal tribute on the installation 
 of the prelate into his see. Willing to evade the direct 
 charge of selling the see, king Eichard intimated that a 
 present of a fur mantle, worth a thousand marks, might be 
 the composition. St. Hugh said he was no judge of such 
 gauds, and therefore sent the k'ing a thousand marks, de- 
 claring, if he would devour the revenue devoted to the 
 poor, he must have his wilful way. Eichard pocketed the 
 money, but some time after sent for the fur mantle. St. 
 Hugh set out for Normandy, to remonstrate with the king 
 on this double extortion. His friends anticipated that he 
 would be killed ; but St. Hugh said, " I fear him not," and 
 boldly entered the chapel where Eichard was at mass, when 
 the following scene took place. " Give me the embrace of 
 peace, my son," said St. Hugh. " That you have not de- 
 served," repUed the king. " Indeed I have," said St. Hugh, 
 " for I have made a long journey on purpose to see my son." 
 So saying, he took hold of the king's sleeve, and drew him 
 on one side. Eichard smiled, and embraced the old man. 
 They withdrew to the recess behind the altar, and sat down. 
 "In what state is your conscience?" asked the bishop. 
 " Very easy," answered the king. " How can that be, my 
 son," said the bishop, "when you live apart from your 
 
BERENGAKIA OP NAVAKEE. 325 
 
 virtuous queen, and are faithless to her ? when you devour 
 the provision of the poor, and load your people with heavy 
 exactions ? Are these light transgressions, my son?" The 
 king owned his faults, and promised amendment ; and when 
 he related this conversation to his courtiers, he added : — 
 " Were all our prelates like Hugh of Lincoln, both king and 
 barons must submit to their righteous rebukes 1" ' Whether 
 the interview with St. Hugh took place before or after the 
 king's alarming illness, we have no data to declare ; but as 
 Eichard was evidently in a tamer state when St. Hugh 
 visited him than when he lawlessly demanded the fur man- 
 tle, we think the good bishop must have arrived opportunely, 
 just as Eichard was beginning to forget his sick-bed vows, 
 without quite relapsing into his original recklessness. 
 
 The final restoration of Berengaria to the affections of 
 her royal husband took place a few months after, when 
 Eichard proceeded to Poictiers,' where he was reconciled to 
 his queen, and kept Christmas and the new year of 1196 in 
 that city with princely state and hospitality. It was a 
 year of great scarcity and famine, and the beneficent queen 
 exerted her restored influence over the heart of the king 
 by persuading him to give all his superfluous money in 
 bountiful alms to the poor, and through her goodness many 
 were kept from perishing. From that time queen Berenga- 
 ria and king Eichard were never parted. She found it best 
 to accompany him in all his campaigns, and we find her 
 with him at the hour of his death. Higden, in the Poly- 
 chronicon, gives this testimony to the love that Berengaria 
 bore to Eichard : — " The king took home to him his queen 
 Berengaria, whose society he had for a long time neglected, 
 though she were a royal, eloquent, and beauteous lady, and 
 for his love had ventured with him through the world." 
 
 The same year the king, despairing of heirs by his consort, 
 sent for young Arthur, duke of Bretagne, that the boy might 
 be educated at his court as future king of England. His 
 mother Constance, out of enmity to queen Bleanora, un- 
 wisely refused this request, and she finished her folly by 
 declaring for the king of France, then waging a fierce war 
 
 1 Berrington. ' Rigord, French Chron. 
 
326 BERENGARIA OF NAVARRE. 
 
 against Eichard. This step cost her hapless child his in- 
 heritance, and finally his life. From this time Eichard 
 acknowledged his brother John as his heir. The remaining 
 three years of Eichard's life was spent in petty provincial 
 wars with the king of France. In one of his treaties the 
 princess Alice was at last surrendered to her brother, who 
 gave her, with a tarnished reputation and the dowry of the 
 county of Ponthieu, in marriage to the count of Aumerle, 
 when she had arrived at her thirty-fifth year. 
 
 After the reconciliation between Eichard and Berengaria, 
 the royal revenues arising from the tin-mines in Cornwall ' 
 and Devon, valued at two thousand marks per annum, were 
 confirmed to the queen for her dower. Her continental 
 dower was the whole county of Bigorre and the city of 
 Mans. 
 
 It was the lively imagination of Eichard, heated by the 
 splendid fictions of Arabian romance, that hurried him to 
 his end. A report was brought to him that a peasant, 
 ploughing in the fields of Vidomar, lord of Chaluz, in Aqui- 
 taine, had struck upon a trap-door, which concealed an 
 enchanted treasure;^ going down into a cave, he discov- 
 ered several golden statues, with vases full of diamonds, all 
 of which had been secured in the castle of Chaluz, for the 
 private use of the sieur de Vidomar. Eichard, when he 
 heard this fine tale, sent to Yidomar, demanding, as sov- 
 ereign of the country, his share of the golden statues. The 
 poor castellan declared that no such treasure had been 
 found ; nothing but a pot of Eoman coins had been discov- 
 ered, and those he was welcome to have. As Eichard had 
 set his mind upon golden statues and vases of diamonds, 
 and had thriven so well when he demanded the golden 
 furniture from king Tancred, it was not probable he could 
 lower his ideas to the reality stated by the unfortunate lord 
 of Vidomar. Accordingly, he marched to besiege the castle 
 of Chaluz, sending word to Vidomar either to deliver the 
 statues, or abide the storming of the castle. To this siege 
 queen Berengaria certainly accompanied the king. Here 
 Eichard met his death, being pierced from the walls by an 
 
 ' Rymer's Foedera. ' Brompton. Newbury. Hemmingford. Wikes. 
 
BEEENGARIA OF NAVARRE. 327 
 
 arrow from an arbalista, or cross-bow, aimed by tbe hand 
 of Bertrand de Gordon.' It was the unskilfulness of the 
 Burgeon, who mangled the king's shoulder in cutting out 
 the arrow, joined to Eichard's own wilfulness in neglecting 
 the regimen of his physicians, that caused the mortification 
 of a trifling wound and occasioned the death of a hero, 
 who to many faults joined a redeeming generosity that 
 showed itself in his last moments. After enduring great 
 agony from his wound, as he drew near to death the castle 
 of Chaluz was taken. He caused Bertrand de Gordon to be 
 brought before him, and telling him he was dying, asked 
 him whether he had discharged the fatal arrow with the 
 intention of slaying him. " Yes, tyrant," replied Gordon ; 
 " for to you I owe the deaths of my father and my brother, 
 and my first wish was to be revenged on you." Notwith- 
 standing the boldness of this avowal, the dying king com- 
 manded Gordon to be set at liberty, and it was not his fault 
 that his detestable mercenary general, the Fleming Marcade, 
 caused him to be put to a cruel death. 
 
 Eichard's death took place April 6, 1199. His queen un- 
 questionably was with him when he died.' She corroborated 
 the testimony that he left his dominions, and two-thirds of 
 his treasures, to his brother John. Eichard appears to have 
 borne some personal resemblance to his great-uncle, William 
 Eufus. Like him, his hair and complexion were warm in 
 color, and his eyes blue, and fiercely sparkling. Like 
 Euflis, his strength was prodigious, but he had the advan- 
 tage of a tall majestic figure.' There are some points of 
 resemblance in character between Eichard and his collateral 
 ancestor, though Eichard must be considered a more learned 
 and elegant prince, and susceptible, withal, of more frequent 
 impulses of generosity and penitence. They both seemed 
 to have excelled in the same species of wit and lively 
 repartee. At the time of king Eichard's death, Matthew 
 Paris declares queen Bleanora, his mother, was governing 
 England, "where," adds that historian, "she was exceed- 
 ingly respected and beloved." 
 
 > We find the name of Gordon among the lenentea of Bertrand de Born. 
 2 See Hemmingford. ' Vinisauf. 
 
328 BEEENGAEIA OF NAVAREE. 
 
 Before the body of Coexrr de Lion was committed to the 
 grave, an additional load of anguish assailed the heart of 
 his royal widow, through the calamities that befeU Joanna, 
 her friend, and Eichard's favorite sister. The same species 
 of persecution that afterwards visited Joanna's son, in the 
 well-known war against the Albigenses, had already been 
 incited against his father. Owing to the secret agitations 
 of the Catholic clergy, the barons of Thoulouse were in 
 arms against their sovereign Count Eaymond. Queen 
 Joanna, though in a state little consistent with such exer- 
 tions, flew to arms for the relief of her adored lord.' We 
 translate the following mournful passage from Guillaume 
 de Puy-Laurens : — ' 
 
 " Queen Joanna was a woman of great courage, and was 
 highly sensitive to the injuries of her husband. She laid 
 siege to the castle of Casser, but, owing to the treachery of 
 her attendants, her camp was fired ; she escaped with diflS^- 
 culty from the burning tents, much scorched and hurt. 
 Unsubdued by this accident, she hastened to lay her wrongs 
 before her beloved brother, king Richard. She found he 
 had just expired as she arrived. The pains of premature 
 childbirth seized her as she heard the dire intelligence, and 
 she sank under the double aflSiction of mental and corporeal 
 agony. With her last breath she begged to be laid near 
 her brother Richard." To Berengaria the request was 
 made, and the cold remains of the royal brother and sister, 
 the dearest objects of the sorrowing queen's affections, were 
 laid, by her pious care, side by side, in the stately abbey of 
 Pontevraud.' The heart of Eichard was bequeathed by 
 him to be buried in the cathedral of Eouen, where it has 
 lately been exhumed, in 1842. When the case was unclosed, 
 
 1 Unfortunately, M. Michelet has given good historical proof, not only that 
 qneen Joanna was the fourth wife of count Raymond, but that all his other 
 countesses were at that time alire. The low scale of morality on which Michelet 
 places the potentates of the south of France need not be attributed to any of his 
 prejudices against royalty, because he does better justice to the sovereigns of 
 France at this era than any other modem French historian for two centuries. 
 
 2 Guizot's Chronicles, vol. xv. p. 219. 
 
 ' The description of Richard's statue has been given by Miss L. S. Costello in 
 her charming work, entitled The Boocages and the Vines. It coincides well with 
 the descriptions we have given of his person, from his contemporary Vinisanf. 
 
BEEENGAKIA OF NAVARBE. 329 
 
 the lion-heart was found entire, but withered to the con- 
 sistency of a faded leaf.' 
 
 The deaths of Eichard and Joanna were immediately 
 succeeded by that of Berengaria's only sister, Blanche. 
 This princess had been given in marriage by Cceur de Lion 
 to his nephew and friend, the troubadour prince Thibaut of 
 Champagne. The princess Blanche died the day after the 
 birth of a son, who afterwards was the heir both of Sancho 
 and Berengaria, and finally king of Navarre. Thus, in the 
 course of a few short weeks, was the queen of England 
 bereft of all that were near and dear to her. The world 
 had become a desert to Berengaria before she left it for a 
 life of conventual seclusion. 
 
 Queen Berengaria fijxed her residence at Mans, where she 
 held a great part of her foreign dower. Here she founded 
 the noble abbey of Espan. Once Berengaria left her 
 widowed retirement, when she met her brother-in-law king 
 John, and his fair young bride, at Chinon, her husband's 
 treasure-city. Here she compounded with the English 
 monarch for the dower she held in England, for two thou- 
 sand marks per annum, to be paid half-yearly. After being 
 entertained with royal magnificence, and receiving every 
 m.ark of respect from the English court, the royal widow 
 bade farewell to public splendor, and retired to conventual 
 seclusion and the practice of constant charity. But no 
 sooner was John firmly fixed on the English throne than 
 he began to neglect the payment of the dower for which 
 his sister-in-law had compounded ; and, in 1206, there ap- 
 pears in the Foedera a passport for the queen-dowager to 
 come to England for the purpose of conferring with king 
 John. There exists no authority whereby we can prove 
 that she arrived in this country;' but in 1207 the pope 
 awarded her half the personal goods of her husband. 
 
 1 This Is from a most interesting description of the exhumation of Richard's 
 heart by Mr. Albert Way, in vol. xxix. Archseologia, p. 210 ; where may be found 
 a copy of the inscription identifying it as the heart of Richard, and likewise an 
 account of the discovery of a fine portrait-statue, raised by the men of Rouen 
 to the memory of their beloved hero. 
 
 2 Rymer's Foedera, vol. i. page 152. These passports, or safe-conducts, occur 
 very frequently in this collection, for the benefit of persons who never used them. 
 
330 BEEENGAEIA OF NAVARRE. 
 
 The records of 1209 present a most elaborate epistle from 
 pope Innocent, setting forth the wrongs and wants of his 
 dear daughter in Christ, Berengaria, who, he says, had ap- 
 pealed to him " with floods of tears streaming down her 
 cheeks, and with audible cries," — which we trust were 
 flowers of rhetoric of the pope's secretary. As pope Inno- 
 cent threatens John with an interdict, it is pretty certain 
 that the wrongs of Berengaria formed a clause in the sub- 
 sequent excommunication of the felon king. Bale, in his 
 coarse comedy of king Jehan (of which king John is the 
 very shabby hero), bestows a liberal portion of reviling on 
 Berengaria, because she was the cause of the papal inter- 
 dict in that reign ; but this abuse is levelled at her under 
 the name of queen Juliana. What connection there was 
 between the queen of Cceur de Lion and the name of Juliana 
 is difficult to ascertain, excepting that the cathedral of her 
 city of Mans is dedicated to St. Julian, and when she retired 
 from the world, she might have renounced her mundane 
 appellation, and become the name-daughter of the patron 
 saint of her city. However, Bale, who was an historical 
 antiquary, is certainly correct in the cause of the interdict, 
 which arose from the non-payment of Berengaria's dower. 
 By the theological speeches he puts into the mouth of king 
 John, he seems aware of his studies of Arian, and of the 
 Mahometan tendencies of the princes and nobles of the 
 south of France. 
 
 In 1214, when the excommunication was taken off, there 
 exists a letter from John to " his dear sister, the illustrious 
 Berengaria, praying that the pope's nuncio might arbitrate 
 what was due to her." The next year brings a piteous letter 
 from John, praying that his dearly beloved sister will ex- 
 cuse his delay of payment, seeing the " greatness of his 
 adversity by reason of the wickedness of his magnates and 
 barons," ' who had invited prince Louis of France to spoil 
 her estates ; " but when," says king John, " these clouds that 
 have overcast our serenity shall disperse, and our kingdom 
 be full of joyful tranquillity, then the pecuniary debt owed 
 
 ' Miohelet, in his Hist, of France, has given the most luminous information 
 relative to the cause of the eivil wars which raged there for more than a century. 
 
BEEENGARIA OF NAVAREE. 331 
 
 to our dear sister shall be paid joyfully and thankfully." 
 This precious epistle was penned July 8, 1216, by John ; but 
 he died the succeeding October, and Berengaria's debt was 
 added to the vast sum of his other trespasses, for "joyful 
 tranquillity" never came for him, nor of course her time of 
 payment. 
 
 King John being deprived of the duchy of Normandy, 
 Berengaria was forced to petition Philip Augustus, king of 
 France, concerning her rights of dower there ; as the widow 
 of his late feudatory, she was given the county of Maine in 
 compensation. A singular circumstance proves that Beren- 
 garia exercised sovereignty over this province. In the 
 year 1216 she presided in person, as countess of Maine, 
 August 23d, being the eve of St. Bartholomew, as judge of 
 a duel which took place between two champions ; one de- 
 fending the honor of a demoiselle, the other, who was the 
 brother of the poor girl, having assailed her reputation in 
 order to claim her portion.' The result of this interesting 
 appeal of battle we are unable to relate. 
 
 In the reign of Henry III. Berengaria had again to re- 
 quire the pope's assistance for the payment of her annuity. 
 Her arrears at that time amounted to 4040Z. sterling ; but 
 the Templars became guarantees and agents for her pay- 
 ments, and from that time the pecuniary troubles of Beren- 
 garia cease to form a feature in our national records. The 
 letters of Berengaria, claiming her arrears of dower from 
 Henry III., are probably from her own pen, as they are 
 in a very different style from those of her ecclesiastical 
 scribe, previously quoted. Contrary to the assumption of 
 royalty perpetually insisted on by her arrogant sister-in- 
 law Isabella, the dowager of John, Berengaria speaks of 
 her exaltation as a matter passed by, and terms herself 
 " the humble queen of England." Addressing herself to 
 the bishop, Peter de Roche, chancellor during Henry III.'s 
 minority, Berengaria says : — 
 
 " To our venerable father in Christ, and most cordial friend, Peter, by God's 
 grace bishop of Winchester, Berengaria, by the same grace formerly the humble 
 queen of England, wishes health and every good thing. 
 
 1 L'Art de Verifier les Dates, tome xiii. p. 102 ; from Courvoissier. 
 
332 . BBEENGAEIA OP NAVAEEE. 
 
 " We send to you our well-beloved friar Walter, of the Cistercian order, the 
 bearer of these presents, beseeching you humbly and devotedly, with all the 
 humility that we can, that in reference to this present feast of all Saints (as well 
 as to other terms now past), you will cause us to be satisfied about the money due 
 to us according to the composition of our dower, which by your mediation we 
 made with our brother John, of happy memory, formerly king of England. 
 Fare you well !" 
 
 The English regency had the jointures of two queen- 
 dowagers to pay, and certainly too much trouble was not 
 taken to satisfy either. Again friar Walter was despatched, 
 in 1225, to receive the dues of his royal mistress, and was 
 the bearer of another epistle, this time addressed to the 
 young king from his aunt : — 
 
 " To her lord and dearest nephew, by God's grace the illustrious king of 
 England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and earl of Anjou. 
 Serengaria, by the same grace formerly the humble queen of England, wishes 
 health and prosperous success to his utmost desires. 
 
 " We requested you by our letters-patent sent to you by friar Walter, de 
 persona, our chaplain of the Cistercian order, that you would send to us by the 
 said friar Walter and master Simon, our clerks, 1000 marks sterling, which you 
 owe U3 at this feast of All Saints,^ according to the composition of our dowry 
 solemnly drawn out between us and you. But since the said master Simon, 
 being detained by sickness, cannot come over to you, we send in his stead our 
 servant Martin, the bearer of these presents, earnestly requesting you to send us 
 the thousand marks by the said friar Walter and by this Martin, or by one of 
 them, if by any chance impediment both of them cannot come to you. In 
 testimony of which we send you our present letters-patent. 
 
 " Given at Mans, the Sunday next before the feast of the apostles Sunon and 
 Jude, in the month of October, in the year of our Lord 1225." ^ 
 
 Henry III. ordered his treasurer and chamberlains to deliver 
 from his treasury to friar Walter, chaplain to queen Beren- 
 garia, and to Martin her servant, one thousand marks, which 
 he owed to her at the term of the Ascension of our Lord.' 
 
 The date of Berengaria's death has generally been fixed 
 about the year 1230, but that was only the year of the com- 
 pletion of her abbey of Espan, and of her final retirement 
 from the world ; as from that time she took up her abode 
 within its walls, and finished there her blameless life, at an 
 advanced age, some years afterwards. In the High street 
 of Mans is an antique and curious structure, embellished 
 
 ' AU-Saints'-day is the 1st of November, which it would have been before a 
 letter dated at Mans, October 25th, could reach England. 
 '' Close Rolls. s Ibid. 
 
BEBENGAKIA OF NAVARRE. 333 
 
 with bas-reliefs : the people of the city call it, to this day, 
 queen Berengaria's house or palace. . The name is older 
 than the building itself, which is of the architecture of 
 the fifteenth century. Berengaria's dower-palace assuredly 
 stood on the site of this house. 
 
 Berengaria was interred in her own stately abbey. The 
 following most interesting particulars of her monument we 
 transcribe from the noble work of the late Mr. Stothard, 
 edited by his accomplished widow, now Mrs. Bray. " When 
 Mr. Stothard visited the abbey of Espan, near Mans, in 
 search of the eflSgy of Berengaria, he found the church con- 
 verted into a barn, and the object of his inquiry in a muti- 
 lated state, concealed under a quantity of wheat. It was in 
 excellent preservation, with the exception of the left arm. 
 By the effigy were lying the bones of the queen, the silent 
 witnesses of the sacrilegious demolition of the tomb. After 
 some search, a portion of the arm belongiag to the statue 
 was recovered." Three men, who had assisted in the work 
 of destruction, stated " that the monument, with the figure 
 upon it, stood in the centre of the aisle, at the east end of 
 the church ; that there was no coffin within it, but a small 
 square box, containing bones, pieces of linen, some stuff em- 
 broidered with gold, and a slate, on which was found an 
 inscription." The slate was found in possession of a canon 
 of the church of St. Julian, at Mans : upon it was engraven 
 an inscription, of which the following is a translation : — 
 " The tomb of the most serene Berengaria, queen of England, 
 the noble founder of this monastery, was restored and re- 
 moved to this more sacred place. In it were deposited the 
 bones which were found in the ancient sepulchre, on the 
 27th May, in the year of our Lord 1672." The sides of the 
 tomb are ornamented with deep quatrefoils. The effigy 
 which was upon it is in high relief. It represents the queen 
 with her hair unconfined, but partly concealed by the cover- 
 chief, over which is placed an elegant crown. Her mantle 
 is fastened by a narrow band crossing her breast ; a large 
 fermail, or brooch, richly set with stones, confines her tunic 
 at the neck. To an ornamental girdle, which encircles her 
 waist, is attached a small aumoniere, or purse. This greatly 
 
334 BEEENGAEIA OF NAVAKKB. 
 
 resembles a modern reticule, with a chain and clasped top. 
 " The queen holds in her hand a book, singular from the 
 circumstance of its having embossed on the cover a second 
 representation of herself, as lying on a bier, with waxen 
 torches burning in candlesticks on either side of her." 
 
 From early youth to her grave Berengaria manifested 
 devoted love for Eichard. Uncomplaining when deserted 
 by him, forgiving when he returned, and faithful to his 
 memory unto death, the royal Berengaria, queen of Eng- 
 land, though never in England, little deserves to be for- 
 • gotten by any admirer of feminine and conjugal virtue. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 STEPHEN, AFTER A PAINTING IN HAMPTON COURT . Fronts. 
 QUEEN VICTORIA . V 
 BATTLE ABBEY 64 
 KNIGHTS OF THE HOLY CROSS EMBARKING FOR THE CRU- 
 SADES . 208 
 HENRY II ... 256 
 WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR GRANTING A CHARTER ... 320 
 
 335