From A. D.

to

History. and from the very season at which he had gathered the full harvest of ambition, the declining years of his existence began to be harassed by machinations of foreign hostility, and by the more cruel persecution of filial in1066. gratitude. The natural jealousy with which the perponderance of his vast possessions, and his personal A. D. talents and prosperity, were regarded by other Princes, 1189. caused an extensive confederacy to be organized against Extensive confederacy him, with closer concert and greater secrecy than was against him, usual in the loose combinations of that rude state of political society. The French Monarch was the principal mover of the plot; the assistance of the King of Scots, William the Lion, was engaged, partly through alarm at the increasing power of a formidable neighbour, partly by the hope of obtaining Northumbria for his share of the spoil; and the Earls of Flanders, Boulogne, and Blois were tempted by similar views, the first of receiving the County of Kent, and the two latter of dismembering the Continental Provinces of a common enemy.*

A. D.

1173.

Rebellion of his sons,

But the confederates relied less on their own united arms, than on their success in dividing the power and breaking the spirit of the English King, by the agency of the unnatural foes whom they stirred up in the bosom of his own family. Whatever political motives had mingled with his parental affection, Henry had deserved the gratitude of his children by the splendid establishments which he had fondly prepared for them even during his own life. Henry Courtmantel, the eldest, he had caused to be crowned as his successor to the English throne; Richard, the second, he had invested with the great Fief of Aquitaine; and for Geoffrey, the third, he had secured the Duchy of Bretany by betrothing him to his Ward Constance, the heiress of that Province. The first practices of the French Monarch were tried upon Courtmantel, as his son-in-law; and the young Prince was easily instigated, first, to demand Louis VII. from his father the complete possession either of Normandy or of England for enabling him to maintain the dignity of his nominal Crown, and on meeting with a refusal, to throw himself into the arms of the confederates. But the bitterest enemy of Henry was his own Queen Eleanor, whose affections he had long alienated by his numerous infidelities; and who had learned to

instigated

and sup ported by

of France.

* Gervas. p. 1424. Hoveden, p. 532.

The Family alliance which the policy of Henry had led him to contract with the King of France, produced no other fruits than dissension and misery: but he concluded a marriage for Maud, one of his daughters, which, though probably less regarded at the time and not unclouded with vicissitudes, was endowed with more auspicious fortune, in commingling the blood of the Plantagenets and Guelphs. To Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, the chief of the latter House, which was then in the plenitude of its original pride and power, the Princess Maud was married in the year 1165; and, by a singular chance, the Duke, in his subsequent reverses, twice found an asylum in a Country, over which his posterity by Maud, after an interval of above five Centuries of comparative obscurity, were fated to reign with glory and happiness. It is from William, the fourth son of Henry the Lion, whom Mand bore to him during his exile in England, that the present Royal family of Great Britain deduces the right line of its illustrious descent.

The most celebrated among the rivals who are supposed to have provoked the jealousy of Eleanor, was Rosamond, daughter of Lord Clifford, the "Fair Rosamond" of our Romances, by whom the King had two natural sons. But the tale of the deadly revenge of Eleanor, and the tragical fate of her victim, appears to be wholly fabulous; and it may be learned from Hoveden, (p 712.) that Rosamond died peaceably in the Convent of Godstow, whither she had retired to expiate, by the penances of her latter years, the errors of her youth. The King, says the Chronicler, was kind for her sake

From
A. D.

1066.

to

A. D.

Successful

regard him with all the hatred, which the sense of injury England. could inspire in a passionate and unprincipled woman. She it was, who not only encouraged the rebellion of her eldest son, but induced his two younger brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, then mere boys, to imitate his example, and herself fled from her husband's Court.* Henry was more heart-stricken by this unnatural combination against him in his own House, than appalled 1189. by the formidable array of his foreign and domestic ene- resistance of mies. On his very Vassals he could place no depend- Henry. ence for they had been seduced from their allegiance by his wife and children. But with the courage and activity which always distinguished him, he immediately by. his gold levied a great army of the Flemish mercenaries, or Brabançons, and soon made head against all his Continental opponents. The person of Eleanor, by a lucky chance, fell into his hands at the commencement of hostilities; his rebellious children were thus deprived of her evil counsels; and he detained her in captivity, with one short interval, during the remainder of his life. Without any single action of importance, his forces were every where victorious in the Continental war: but in England the confederates had succeeded in throwing the whole Kingdom into confusion; and while malecontent Barons appeared in arms in every quarter upon pretence of supporting the cause of Henry Courtmantel, that young Prince himself was preparing an invasion from the French ports; and the Scottish King had poured his barbarous forces into the Northern Counties.†

the shrine

A. D. 1174.

On the report of these complicated dangers, Henry His pilflew from Normandy to England; and his presence grimage to alone sufficed to overawe the rebels and paralyze the of Becket. designs of the invaders. The first act of the King after landing at Southampton may be received as a striking proof of the degree, to which the strongest minds of that Age were the slaves of a grovelling superstition. Instead of attributing the ingratitude of his children to his own false indulgence and crooked policies, or the hostility of his revengeful Queen to the provocation of his dissolute life; instead of seeking in his own ambition and misconduct for the seeds of all the retributive evil which had fallen upon him; he imagined that the wrath of Heaven had been kindled by an involuntary offence. He believed that his misfortunes were judgments of God against him for the rash exclamation by which he had unconsciously instigated the murderers of Becket. To expiate this guilt, he hastened to make a pilgrimage to the tomb of the Archbishop, whom the Pope had lately canonized; and the greatest Sovereign of Europe, barefooted and in the garb of a penitent, before the shrine of his ancient enemy, after publicly and solemnly appealing to Heaven that he was innocent of having designed the murder of the Saint, implored pardon for his unintentional fault, and submitted his naked back to be scourged by the Monks of Canterbury. At the con

to the Nuns of Godstow, who buried her in their choir; and he sent them a silken pall to hang over her tomb, as well as costly lamps to illuminate it. But it seems that the Bishop of Lincoln was scandalized by these honours to the memory of one "as frail as beau teous ;" and obliged the Nuns to exhume her body and cast it into the common cemetery, telling them that the mistress of a King was no better than the mistress of a humbler man: which indeed was true, though the justice of the sentiment will hardly excuse the indecent and uncharitable insult against the mortal remains of the fair penitent, by which it was accompanied. *Hoveden, p. 536. Neubrig. lib. ii. p. 27

t Gervas. p. 1424. Hoveden, p. 536-538. Neubrig. lib. ii. p. 28-33.

From A. D.

History. clusion of this edifying scene of Royal degradation, which the Clergy were careful to improve by a Sermon to the congregation assembled in the Cathedral, Henry resumed the more dignified courage and bearing of his natural character, and prepared to encounter every peril with his usual promptness and energy.†

1066. to

Scots.

A. D. The capture of his dangerous enemy, the King of 1189. Scots, who had already commenced his invasion and Capture of the King of was surprised by Ralph de Granville, while tilting with a few Knights under the castle of Alnwick, was the first auspicious event which raised the hopes of Henry; and the alleged coincidence of this success with the late pilgrimage to Canterbury failed not to confirm the superstitious confidence of the English Monarch and his party, that his atonement at the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket had been accepted by Heaven. Perhaps this belief was as serviceable to the King, as the Clergy of Canterbury found it conducive to the reputation of their Saint. for from the same period the forces of his enemies melted away in every direction. The Scotch army on learning the captivity of their Sovereign immediately dispersed; the rebel English Barons laid down their arms and submitted to the Royal clemency; and Henry was enabled to despatch into Normandy the levies which he had collected to repel the threatened descent of his own son from France. The war which was thus diverted anew into his Continental States produced no signal event; and both Louis VII. of France and Henry, as they now found themselves advancing in years, having become sincerely desirous of a pacification, the Peace of Montlouis. Montlouis, of which we have elsewhere related the circumstances, § was concluded without difficulty. The King of Scots was the chief sufferer by the war: for he was compelled to purchase his release by the humiliation, not only of renewing in his own person the homage which he had formerly paid to the English Crown, but also of summoning his Vassals to swear fealty to Henry as their lord paramount, and of surrendering several Castles and hostages as pledges of his good faith. Henry en- After this pacification, Henry was at length permitted joys a period for some years to enjoy an unusual interval of repose.¶ of tranquil But as his sons grew up into full manhood, they discolity.

Peace of

A. D. 1175.

*The reader may find all its particulars related with singular complacency and dramatic skill by the Roman Catholic Historian of England. Lingard, History of England, vol. ii. p. 388-393.

Gervas. p. 1427. Hoveden, p. 538, 539. Neubrig. lib. ii. p. 35. Dr. Lingard rebukes Lord Hailes for denying that the King of Scots' capture took place "on the very morning on which Henry arose repentant and reconciled from the shrine of St. Thomas." It would seem almost an insult to the understanding of the reader to point out the utter futility of the whole question, which turns on the fact of a mere accidental coincidence of dates: but it is amusing to observe the earnestness of the zeal which is employed in elaborating and maintaining a point of so deep concernment to the honour of a Romish Saint.

§ Vide p. 621 of this volume.

Rymer, Foedera, vol. i. p. 39. Matt. Paris, p. 91.

It was during this period of Henry's reign that Alfonso, King of Castile, and his uncle, Sancho, King of Navarre, paid a high tribute to the reputation for judicial integrity, which the firmness and equity of his domestic administration had obtained for him, by choosing him for their umpire in a destructive contest in which they had long been engaged; and the confidence expressed in his impartiality by the King of Navarre was the more striking, because his rival Alfonso had married a daughter of Henry. Both Princes having agreed to request his judgment between them, swore by their Ambassadors to accept and observe its provisions; and Henry (A. D. 1177) having summoned a solemn Court of his Barons and Prelates, and taken their opinion on the case, pronounced sentence, that the two Kings should mutually restore the lands belonging to each other which they had seized, and that the King of Castile should satisfy his uncle's claims by a pecuniary payment. It ap

to

A. D.

1189.

his sons.

A. D.

1183.

years.

vered tempers equally incapable of filial obedience to him, England. or of fraternal agreement among themselves. Henry, the eldest, was foremost in exciting new family convul. From sions by an attempt to exact homage for Aquitaine AD. from his next brother, Richard. On the refusal of 1066. Richard, Henry, in concert with Geoffrey, the third brother, invaded that Duchy with an army of Brabançons; and the efforts of the old King to reconcile his sons being resented as injuries by the two latter, they turned their arms against their father also. It would, Second rehowever, serve little purpose to trace the alternations of bellion of hostility and agreement, by which these disgraceful family feuds were varied. They were only suspended for a time by the premature death of young Henry, the agonized remorse of whose last hours offered but a feeble atonement for the sorrows which his unduteous life had inflicted upon his parent.* Geoffrey did not long sur Afflictions vive his elder brother; but his death only produced of his last new contentions: for Richard, now become heir apparent to the English Crown, and jealous of his father's affection for John, his only surviving brother, found or feigned several pretences for flying into open rebellion. The chief ostensible cause of dispute was the Princess Adelais, daughter of Louis VII. of France; and the same who formerly when a child had been betrothed to Richard, and consigned to the care of his father: but the King, from some jealousy of his son's designs, had ever since kept her immured in one of his Castles, and now refused to allow the nuptials to be concluded.† Richard immediately leagued himself with Philippe Auguste, the successor of Louis VII.; who had for some years filled the throne of France, and who, from the commencement of his Reign, seems to have formed that insidious policy of fomenting the family discords of the Plantagenets, through which he finally succeeded in possessing himself of the greater portion of their ample Continental inheritance. Aided by this young and vigorous Monarch, Richard, at the head of the malecontent Barons of Normandy, experienced little trouble in driving his father before him through that Duchy; and Henry, enfeebled by bodily infirmities, and oppressed by a sense of the weakness of his age, was glad to conclude a Peace on almost any terms with his enemies. His health had long been declining; but his heart was broken by a discovery which he made in the course of his negotiations with Philippe, that his favourite son, John, had basely entered into the conspiracy against him. From that hour he fell into a settled melancholy, which was followed by a mortal fever; and in a few days he breathed his last, deserted by all his family His deat but an illegitimate son, at the Castle of Chinon, near Saumur.‡

pears that no resistance was made by either party to the justice this award. Rymer, vol. iv. p. 43-50.

*Gervas. p. 1480-1483. Hoveden, p. 620, 621.

There appears to have been no foundation for the contemporary scandal, which attributed Henry's seclusion of Adelais to a passion he had himself conceived for her. See p. 624 of this volume.

Gervas. p. 1545. Hoveden, p. 622-654. Gul. Neubrig. lib. iii. p. 25. The reign of Henry II. presents a remarkable epoch in the History of English Law, by several changes and improvements which that Monarch introduced or prosecuted in the internal admi nistration of the Kingdom: especially by the regular appointment of itinerant Justices; the gradual substitution of Trial by Grand Assize for the Wager of Battle; and the commutation of Feudal military service for a scutage or pecuniary payment. But the progress of these important measures may be more appropriately traced in a distinct inquiry into the growth of the Legal and Constitutional Institutions of our Country.

History.

From

A. D. 1066. to

A. D. 1189.

Cœur de

Lion.)

A. D. 1189.

On his decease, the Crown of England, with the possession of all his extensive Continental Fiefs, was peaceably assumed by Richard as his eldest surviving son. From the unfeeling and furious disposition which that Prince had already exhibited in his rebellion against his father, his new subjects might draw the most ominous expectations of a tyrannical reign; and they had asAccession of suredly full reason to dread the accession of a youthful Richard I. Monarch of so fiery a temperament, while all his impulses were still unbridled, and his passions unchastened. It was, therefore, not without general satisfaction that men observed, in his first acts after his father's decease, that his nature was not inaccessible to some compunctious emotions. As soon as he saw the lifeless remains of the parent whom he had harassed to the grave, he burst into tears, called himself a parricide, and uttered many bitter self-reproaches. Nor did he fail to give a signal indication, that this was no momentary ebullition of remorse. For, dismissing from his service all the evil advisers who had counselled and encouraged his rebellion, he replaced them by those Ministers who had remained faithful to his father. At the same time, as if to expiate his misconduct to one parent by his honour of the other, he caused his mother Eleanor to be immediately released from durance, and intrusted her with the government of England until his own arrival from Normandy.*

Iis Coro

ation.

Lassacre

As soon as he had settled with his former ally and future rival, Philippe Auguste of France, the differences between their two Kingdoms which had been recently made the pretext of hostilities against his father, Richard embarked for England, and celebrated his Coronation with a magnificence which has been deemed worthy by the Chroniclers of particular description.† The ceremony was, however, disturbed by a transaction so horrid, as strikingly to expose, amidst a display of Religious solemnities and Royal splendour, the revolting superstition and sanguinary barbarism of the times. Some wealthy Jews had the imprudence, despite of a the Jews Proclamation forbidding the presence of any of their England. race at the Coronation, to intrude themselves into the Palace with rich offerings to the new King: apparently hoping to conciliate his favour, and to obtain a renewal of the protection which, in the late Reign, it had been one of the most enlightened and equitable acts of Henry's government to extend to their nation. But they were no sooner perceived in the crowd, than they were driven back with blows and insults; the savage bigotry of the bystanders was kindled by the very sight of unbelievers so hateful; and the popular thirst for their blood being artfully assisted by a wicked rumour, which it was the

From

A. D.

1066. to

A. D.

1189.

interest of their numerous debtors to spread, that the England, King had ordered a massacre of the whole race, this imaginary command was too gladly obeyed. The houses of all the Jews in London were attacked, plundered, and fired, and the unhappy inmates, after a desperate defence, were remorselessly slaughtered or driven into the flames. The cupidity of the mob being once excited, the conflagration and pillage were extended until so many of the rich Christian citizens suffered equally with the Jews, that the King was at length compelled to interpose the Royal authority for the restoration of order: though only three of the ringleaders received condign punishment; and they on the charge, not of the murder of the Jews, but of having fired the houses of Christians. But the cruel persecution of the Jews was not confined to the Capital; and at York in particular, where some hundreds of them had sought refuge in the Castle, a still more appalling tragedy was enacted. For finding themselves unequal to the defence of the place, these devoted people slew their wives and children with their own hands, to prevent them from falling into the power of their merciless enemies, and then finished the work of immolation by stabbing each other. The few trembling survivors who had wanted courage to share the general fate, surrendered to the mercy of their persecutors, only to encounter a more cruel death. The real instigation and object of these cruelties are discoverable in the fact, that the murderers immediately repaired to the Cathedral, and burned all the bonds of Christian debtors which the Jews had there deposited.*

tions of

Richard to

While these dreadful scenes disgraced his Kingdom, PreparaRichard was eagerly employed in preparations for embarking in the IIId Crusade, in which he had engaged join the in concert with the King of France. To regulate the IIid Cruadministration of England during his absence, he called sade. a great Council of the Realm; appointed William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, and his Justiciary, Hugh Pudsey, Bishop of Durham, Co-Regents in his absence; invested his mother with an ample dower; and impru dently bestowed no less than one-third of the lands of the Kingdom on his worthless brother John. Having made these arrangements, and exhausted every tyrannical and unbecoming expedient to accumulate a vast treasure for the wants of his enterprise, he finally sailed from the English shores to join his Royal confederate His depar in France. But his departure will naturally divert ture on that enterprise. our attention to a new theatre of action; and many of the succeeding events of his chivalrous but disorderly Reign must be related in the continued History of the Crusades.

Hoveden, p. 659. Neubrig, lib. iv. p. 7-11. Matt. Paris, p. 109. Hoveden, p. 662.

From

A. D. 1199

to

A. D.

1314.

I. FRANCE. Arthur of Bretagne oppressed by John Lackland, April 25.

History. I. ON the death of Richard I. of England, the succession to both his English and Continental dominions was contested between Arthur, son of Geoffroi of Bretany, his third brother, and John Lackland, his fourth brother. Not a doubt could exist that the claim of the former was the more legitimate of the two. But the youth had as yet attained no more than his thirteenth year, while John, in the full vigour of manhood, derived strong support from his active and ambitious mother Eleanor, and advanced a pretended Will of the late King in his favour. By rapid movements, he overran the greater part of Normandy, possessed himself of the treasures of that Duchy deposited in the Castle of Chinon, and was invested with its Crown and Sword at Rouen, by the hands of the Archbishop. Arthur, with his widowed mother Constance, unable to make head against claims pro- the usurper, sought protection from Philippe Auguste; tection from who first placed his illustrious clients in security at Paris, Philippe and then occupied with French garrisons the strong Auguste. holds of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, which still preserved fidelity to their rightful master.

A. D.

1199.

Aug. 16.

The King of France immediately notified to John that he by no means considered the Treaty concluded with his deceased brother as binding towards a successor, and he accordingly proceeded to demonstrations of hostility. In an interview between the two Princes held after John's return from his Coronation in London, Philippe assumed and maintained a haughty tone of Duplicity of superiority; but it was soon manifest that in espousing Philippe. the cause of Arthur, he consulted his own interests more than those of the injured youth. Scarcely had Guillaume des Roches, Seneschal of Anjou, one of the most active of the young Duke's Vassals,* recovered for him the Castle of Balun, before he received instructions from Philippe to raze it to the ground. It was in vain that Des Roches remonstrated against this most inequitable and unexpected order, representing that it was not for the destruction of their own Country, and for the overthrow of its surest defences, that the Bretons had taken arms: and when he too plainly perceived that it was to subjugate the inheritance of Arthur to his own sway, not to restore it to its legitimate Sovereign, that this false friend had assumed his protection, he sought a reconciliation with John; deeming that, in a choice between the two parties who equally coveted his dominions, the young Prince might hope for safety from a near kinsman, rather than from a stranger in blood. On the

*Nevertheless Guillaume des Roches afterwards fought under John's banners against Arthur at the siege of Mirabeau, and the cause of his change of sides is unexplained by Historians. Daru, Hist. de Bretagne, liv. iii. tom. i. p. 411.

A. D.

1314.

Treaty with

The King of France now claimed for Arthur no more than the restoration of the single Duchy of Bretany; and upon receiving for himself the County of Eagand. Evreux, he permitted the King of England to enter into possession of the Vexin and the rest of Normandy. A more advantageous clause in this Treaty stipulated that on the marriage of Louis of France, Philippe's eldest son, with Blanche of Castile, daughter of Alphonso VIII. and of Eleanor, sister of the King of England, all the possessions of John in Berri, and twenty thousand marks May 23. of silver should be paid as the dower of the Bride. The A. D. Infanta, although not yet beyond her fourteenth year, is 1200. recognised by the general voice of contemporary writers as preeminent in beauty, in accomplishments, and in intellect; a reputation which will be fully avouched in the course of our succeeding narrative.

This accommodation was perhaps hastened by the continued embroilment of Philippe with the Court of Rome, and the fierce denunciations in which Innocent III. persisted, in order to procure the reinstatement of the divorced Ingeburge in her conjugal rights. France was Interdict, visited with that most terrific of all Papal weapons, an Interdict; and it was not till after every Religious office and most of the functions of Civil life had been suspended during the greater part of a year, that the Pontiff re- removed lieved the offending Kingdom from its privations; on receiving assurance that Philippe would attend a Council summoned to meet at Soissons, and there plead his matrimonial Cause against Commissioners from Denmark. The Bull which convoked this Judicial Assembly named the time of its meeting with singular precision, at the expiration of six months, six weeks, six days, and six hours. On the gathering of this Council a long course of intrigue ensued, alike disgraceful to the Cardinals and to the King; till the latter, piqued at the haughty demeanour and the long delays of the Papal Commissioners, of his own accord, before the Legate could pronounce judgment, declared that he was reconciled with Ingeburge. That ill-fated Princess, however, notwithstanding this formal acknowledgment of her claims, experi- Ingeborge. enced little change in the harshness of her former treatment; and even when her rival, Marie of Merán, was

Nominal

reconcile

tion with

History. removed by death, before the close of the same year, the undisputed Queen of France continued to be little other than a captive.*

From A. D. 1199. to

A. D. 1314.

IVth Crusade.

Fresh out rage by John.

When the Preaching of Foulques de Neuilly once again summoned the bravest Knights of Europe to that singular expedition which, as an episode in the relief of the Holy Sepulchre, transferred the Greek Empire to a Latin dynasty, Philippe Auguste had derived sufficient wisdom from his experience in the IIId Crusade to decline association with the numerous warriors whom France poured forth anew to the hazardous enterprise. A war, indeed, nearer home soon engrossed his attention, and on a fresh outrage committed by John of England, the great Feudatories invoked their common Sovereign to punish the delinquency of their brother Vassal. Isabelle d'Angoulême, long betrothed to Hugues le Brun, Comte de la Marche, had been torn from him by the lawless passion of John; and the ravisher having divorced a blameless consort, Alvisia of Gloucester, became the husband of the French Noble's destined Bride.† Philippe temporized in the outset, perhaps from want of sufficient preparation. He held a conference with John at Andely, and afterwards entertained him at Paris with distinguished magnificence, abandoning his own Palace to his guest's use. But no sooner had he ascertained that the English Barons were disaffected from their King; that Anjou, Poitou, Maine, and Touraine still inviolably adhered to Arthur of Bretany; and that the Normans were well inclined to disembarrass themselves from the yoke of the usurper, than he threw off the mask, openly admitted the appeal of Hugues le Brun, and summoned John to attend his Court, during the fifteen days which succeeded the Festival of Easter, to perform homage for the Duchy of Aquitaine, and to "render sufficient answers to any charge which the King of France might adduce against him."§ Far from rejecting this summons as offensive to his dignity, John, in obedience to the spirit of Feudalism, promised to attend the Assembly of his Peers; and consented to the forfeiture of two Castles, the keys of Normandy, in case of failure. Whether a sense of kingly pride or of personal danger afterwards deterred him from repairing to Paris, cannot now be ascertained; but upon his non-appearance by himself or by proxy, and upon the refusal of his Governors to surPhilippe de render the pledged Castles, Philippe invested and forced clares War. them, reduced many other strong-holds in Normandy, and again declared himself the protector of Arthur of Bretany.

A. D. 1202.

He is sum moned be.

fere the Peers of France.

Sanguine opes of

Arthur.

For a short period the hopes of that young Prince were keenly, and not unreasonably excited. He received Knighthood from the sword of Philippe, was betrothed to his daughter Mary, a child in her sixth year, and was invested with the actual possession of Bretany, the entire sovereignty of which had fallen to him by the recent decease of his mother Constance. Poitou, Anjou, Maine, and Touraine were to be his when conquered; and relinquishing the single title of King of England to his Uncle, he assumed that of Duke of Aquitaine. In return, he conceded many new privileges to the King of France in the Provinces for which he acknowledged himself his Vassal, and he wholly

Rigord, ap. Hist. des Gaules, xvii. 53.
Rog. Hoveden, ad ann.

Matt. Westminster, lib. ii. f. 58.

Super his quæ Rex Francorum adversus eum proponeret suffici. enter responsurus. Rigord, 54.

Gul. Armorici, Philippeis, vi. 260. ap. Hist. des Gaules, xvii.

From A. D. 1199.

to

A. D. 1314. He besieges

abandoned to him whatever portion of Normandy might France hereafter be won by his arms. Two hundred Knights of Poitou, headed by the chief Barons of that Province, and a proportionate number of inferior retainers, enabled him to besiege the Castle of Mirabeau, the residence of his grandame Eleanor. Upon her capture much of his ultimate success was thought to depend; for not only was she to be ranked among the most virulent of his enemies, but her stirring spirit had so greatly contributed the Castle to the elevation, and her extensive influence still so of Mirapowerfully assisted in the maintenance of John, that no beau. price, it was supposed, would be deemed too considerable for her ransom if she could once be taken. The little town in which she had fixed her Court was an easy conquest; but the Queen with obstinate and unbroken resolution defended a tower of her Castle till John arrived to her relief. The remainder of Arthur's He is taken Tragedy is differently related, and the version most prisoner, familiar to our ears, as that adopted by Shakspeare, with the exception of a strange mistake as to place, is not without both probability and competent authority in its support. In a surprise by night, as the French Chroniclers relate,* in an open battle by day, as is affirmed by the English,† the young Duke was so completely routed, that not one of his Knightly followers escaped captivity or the sword; and the fortresses of Normandy and of England were crowded with illustrious prisoners, many of whom were condemned to perish by the slow agonies of famine, In the dungeons of Corfe Castle alone, two and twenty gentlemen of birth are said to have encountered this barbarous fate. Arthur himself was transferred, in the first instance, to Falaise, and afterwards to Rouen; in both which places he was subjected to most rigorous confinement;§ and it is believed that John, unable to prevail upon the Governors|| of either of those strong-holds to lend themselves to a foul act of butchery, repaired by night in a small boat to and mur the foot of the tower in the latter City, in which his dered. nephew was imprisoned, poniarded him with his own hand, and threw his body into the Seine. A report was then diligently circulated that the youth had died of chagrin, or had been drowned in attempting to escape. The deed, be it what it may, perpetrated in darkness, was known only to those by whom it was actually committed, and who, of all others, therefore, were least likely to reveal its attendant circumstances. ¶

*Philippeis, vi. 432, &c. Daru has espoused this opinion. Arthur, he says, (in conformity with Gulielmus Armoricus above,) was taken in his bed by Guillaume des Roches, to whom John had given a promise that he would treat all his prisoners honourably, added, he did not scruple to violate. Hist. de Bretagne, lib. iii. and dismiss them without ransom: a promise which, it need not be tom. i. p. 411.

Matt. Paris. 207. Ed. Wats.

Sismondi, vi. 214. note 2. and the authorities there cited. Annal. de Marg. 13. cited by Lingard. § Triplices annulos circa pedes habens. Radulph. Coggleshaliæ Abbas, ap. Hist. des Gaules, xviii. 96.

One of these Governors was Hubert de Burgh, the King's Chamberlain, in the representation of whose conduct Shakspeare has not far deviated from the history as reported by Radulph of Coggleshall. (ut sup.) We know not from what cause the great Poet was deceived into laying the scene of Arthur's sad fate at Northampton.

The evidence of John's guilt in the death of Arthur is strongly stated, and acutely, although briefly, examined, to the conviction of the Tyrant, by Daru, Hist. de Bretagne, lib. iii. tom. i. p. 414. note. Matthew Paris has sufficiently expressed the belief which existed in England in his time, about half a century after the transaction. Arthurus subitò evanuit modo ferè omnibus ignoto: utinam non ut