第40章 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SECOND-PART THE FIRST(8)

Three years afterwards,Prince Geoffrey,being unhorsed at a tournament,had his brains trampled out by a crowd of horses passing over him.So,there only remained Prince Richard,and Prince John-who had grown to be a young man now,and had solemnly sworn to be faithful to his father.Richard soon rebelled again,encouraged by his friend the French King,PHILIP THE SECOND (son of Louis,who was dead);and soon submitted and was again forgiven,swearing on the New Testament never to rebel again;and in another year or so,rebelled again;and,in the presence of his father,knelt down on his knee before the King of France;and did the French King homage:and declared that with his aid he would possess himself,by force,of all his father's French dominions.

And yet this Richard called himself a soldier of Our Saviour!And yet this Richard wore the Cross,which the Kings of France and England had both taken,in the previous year,at a brotherly meeting underneath the old wide-spreading elm-tree on the plain,when they had sworn (like him)to devote themselves to a new Crusade,for the love and honour of the Truth!

Sick at heart,wearied out by the falsehood of his sons,and almost ready to lie down and die,the unhappy King who had so long stood firm,began to fail.But the Pope,to his honour,supported him;

And obliged the French King and Richard,though successful in fight,to treat for peace.Richard wanted to be Crowned King of England,and pretended that he wanted to be married (which he really did not)to the French King's sister,his promised wife,whom King Henry detained in England.King Henry wanted,on the other hand,that the French King's sister should be married to his favourite son,John:the only one of his sons (he said)who had never rebelled against him.At last King Henry,deserted by his nobles one by one,distressed,exhausted,broken-hearted,consented to establish peace.

One final heavy sorrow was reserved for him,even yet.When they brought him the proposed treaty of peace,in writing,as he lay very ill in bed,they brought him also the list of the deserters from their allegiance,whom he was required to pardon.The first name upon this list was John,his favourite son,in whom he had trusted to the last.

'O John!child of my heart!'exclaimed the King,in a great agony of mind.'O John,whom I have loved the best!O John,for whom I have contended through these many troubles!Have you betrayed me too!'And then he lay down with a heavy groan,and said,'Now let the world go as it will.I care for nothing more!'

After a time,he told his attendants to take him to the French town of Chinon-a town he had been fond of,during many years.But he was fond of no place now;it was too true that he could care for nothing more upon this earth.He wildly cursed the hour when he was born,and cursed the children whom he left behind him;and expired.

As,one hundred years before,the servile followers of the Court had abandoned the Conqueror in the hour of his death,so they now abandoned his descendant.The very body was stripped,in the plunder of the Royal chamber;and it was not easy to find the means of carrying it for burial to the abbey church of Fontevraud.

Richard was said in after years,by way of flattery,to have the heart of a Lion.It would have been far better,I think,to have had the heart of a Man.His heart,whatever it was,had cause to beat remorsefully within his breast,when he came-as he did-into the solemn abbey,and looked on his dead father's uncovered face.His heart,whatever it was,had been a black and perjured heart,in all its dealings with the deceased King,and more deficient in a single touch of tenderness than any wild beast's in the forest.

There is a pretty story told of this Reign,called the story of FAIR ROSAMOND.It relates how the King doted on Fair Rosamond,who was the loveliest girl in all the world;and how he had a beautiful Bower built for her in a Park at Woodstock;and how it was erected in a labyrinth,and could only be found by a clue of silk.How the bad Queen Eleanor,becoming jealous of Fair Rosamond,found out the secret of the clue,and one day,appeared before her,with a dagger and a cup of poison,and left her to the choice between those deaths.How Fair Rosamond,after shedding many piteous tears and offering many useless prayers to the cruel Queen,took the poison,and fell dead in the midst of the beautiful bower,while the unconscious birds sang gaily all around her.

Now,there WAS a fair Rosamond,and she was (I dare say)the loveliest girl in all the world,and the King was certainly very fond of her,and the bad Queen Eleanor was certainly made jealous.

But I am afraid-I say afraid,because I like the story so much-that there was no bower,no labyrinth,no silken clue,no dagger,no poison.I am afraid fair Rosamond retired to a nunnery near Oxford,and died there,peaceably;her sister-nuns hanging a silken drapery over her tomb,and often dressing it with flowers,in remembrance of the youth and beauty that had enchanted the King when he too was young,and when his life lay fair before him.

It was dark and ended now;faded and gone.Henry Plantagenet lay quiet in the abbey church of Fontevraud,in the fifty-seventh year of his age-never to be completed-after governing England well,for nearly thirty-five years.