Romance of biography, illustrated in the lives of historic personages

Preface

This volume is intended (should the undertaking meet witc the approbation of the public) as the first of a series, to bo prepared by different gentlemen, and designed more particularly for the instruction and improvement of the young.

In its preparation, the following works have been consulted : Hume's History of England ; Lingard's ; Knight's Pictorial History; Aytoun's Life and Times of Richard the First; the old romance, the Gests of Richard Coeur de Lion ; and the German History of the Assassins, by Von Hammer. The object of the author has been to make his work as personally biographical as possible, and to avoid the details of general history, except when they directly illustrated the life and character of Richard. The reader will find the adventures of the Lion-Hearted King sufficiently wondrous, though authentically recorded, to justify their being chronicled in a series of " Romantic Biographies."

Chapter I

liTO braver man ever sat upon a throne than Richard ±\ the First of England, as the history of his adventurous life we are about to relate will show. He was called Coeur de Lion, the Lion-hearted King, in consequence of his great spirit and courage. He was a man well suited to the times in which he lived, when war was the occupation of mankind, and personal courage was thought the highest virtue.

Richard was born seven hundred years ago. He was the third son of Henry the Second, one of England's greatest kings. His father had eight children by Queen Eleanor : William, who died while an infant; Henry ; Richard, the subject of our history ; Geoffrey ; John, afterwards king ; and three daughters. Henry the Second, though a great monarch, and in many respects a good man, was a bad husband, and formed an improper alliance with Rosamond de Clifford, by whom he had also several child ren. This was the " fair Rosamond," of whom the romantic story is told of her having been shut up in a labyrinth, which was called Rosamond's Bower, to keep her safe from the jealous rage of Eleanor, who was the only true wife of King Henry. The story runs that this " bower" was so ingeniously contrived, with its winding paths and complicated turnings, that no one could find his way, in or out, without being provided with some clue to its intricacy. Eleanor was very jealous of the fair Rosamond, who was beautiful beyond compare, and was wickedly loved by the ardent king, and the queen hated her with a deadly hatred. She accordingly determined to destroy her rival in the affections of her husband, and hit upon an ingenious contrivance to pounce upon Rosamond in her cage, (for it was but a cage, though a garden, rich with verdure and beautiful with flowers,) where Henry had shut her up, to secure her from the jealousy of his wife. Eleanor provided herself one day with a bowl of deadly poison and a long clew of silken thread, and entered the bower in search of her victim. She dropped the clew, holding to one end as she proceeded, and it unravelled at every step she took. She thus wound her way through the winding passage and many turnings of the labyrinth, the thread behind her upon the ground showing where she had already been. She never retraced her steps without her knowledge, and could tell at every moment whether she was making progress or not ; and thus, bearing the fatal poison and trailing

Married in Infancy. 15

the thread after her, she wound her way, like a venomous serpent, to the unsuspecting Rosamond. The jealous queen, with a dagger to the poor lady's heart and the howl of poison to her lips, forced the fair Rosamond to drink the deadly draught to its dregs. This interesting story of the labyrinth is only a romance, but it is one of the prettiest connected with English history, and though a fiction, has its use, as an illustration of the truth. There was no bower, with winding passages and endless turnings ; but there was a fair Rosamond, beloved by King Henry, and hated by his wife Eleanor ; but the latter, though jealous — for being which, poor woman, her wicked husband had given her too much occasion— never allowed her passion to get so much the better of her as to murder her rival, or even, so far as is known, to desire to do so.

Of the boyhood of Richard we know hardly any thing. The only fact recorded of it is, curiously enough, his betrothal, at the early age of twelve, to Alice or Adelais, daughter of Louis VII., King of France. For a boy at this early age to be engaged to be married seems very strange. Strange, however, as it may appear, it was no uncommon thing for princes and princesses to be affianced by their parents while children, or even infants. The eldest brother of Richard, Prince Henry, was betrothed to a French princess while they were both infants in arms ; and more than this, the father of the prince was in so much haste to have the matter settled, that he proposed that the ceremony of marriage between the royal babes should be performed at once. Marriage is considered by royal persons an affair of state only, and as it is not the happiness of the husband and wife, but the gratification of the ambition of princes which is sought, royal match-making is generally guided by policy, and not by love. So King Henry of England and Louis VII. of France only thought of their own advantage when they affianced their children, who, in the innocence of infancy, plotted no guile in the present, and looked to no consequences in the future.

The early English kings, subsequent to the Norman conquest, held large territories in France, in allegiance to the kings of that country. Henry the Second was a very large holder, through his own personal interest and that of his wife, and as possessor of the crown of England and Normandy. These rights, held by an English king on French soil, were the cause of constant contention between King Henry and Louis of France. The chief object of the alliance by marriage, between the English and French crowns, was to reconcile these discords, of which both for a while seemed tired. The French king, in consequence of the betrothal of his daughters with the English princes, prevailed upon the king of England to yield up to Prince Henry, the eldest, the fair provinces of Anjou and Maine, and to Richard the rich possession

Prince Henry's Ambition. 17

of Aquitaine. The French king was wily enough to insist upon the princes holding their French possessions directly from him, to which the English king unwisely assented. Though Henry, in his wicked love for the fair Rosamond, showed himself a bad husband, he was a very kind and generous father to the children of his wife Eleanor. It was from the fullness of his paternal heart that he bestowed upon his children the rich bounty of some of the fairest portions of the French dominions. He was outwitted by the French king in the stipulation that the princes should do allegiance to the latter for their possessions in France. It seems clear that Louis was more guided by a secret state policy, and Henry by a frank, paternal love, in this arrangement, which turned out, as the sequel will prove, greatly to the disadvantage of the king of England.

The eldest son of Henry the Second, Prince Henry, was an aspiring youth, and not satisfied with the indulgence of his father, as shown by his generous gifts of two noble provinces in France, insisted upon further possessions, and had the unparalleled audacity to ask for the whole of Normandy, or the -kingdom of England itself. His father had allowed him, as he was his eldest son and heir, to be crowned, and now the latter made that indulgent concession a ground for his inordinate claim, pretending that it was beneath the dignity of a crowned head to bow in submission as a subject, Prince Henry was young, and though spirited and brave, he was easily influenced where his vanity might be worked upon ; and there is no doubt that the French king, availing himself of this weakness, induced the young prince, to which he was easily led by his vain love of power, to make this demand upon his father. King Henry refused this outrageous recraest at once, and being greatly incensed, accused his son of ingratitude. The prince then abruptly left his father, whose court was in Normandy, and fled to the court of Louis VII. In spite of a letter from King Henry to the latter, in which the French king was urged not to countenance a son in the unholy disobedience to his father, the French king was wicked and cruel enough to write back to that father, justifying the ingratitude of the child, and declaring that his son had a right to the English throne, and he (Louis VII.) would sustain it. The French king thus boldly announced this wicked outrage upon the rights of a royal brother, and his concurrence in the awful wickedness of a son in open rebellion against his father. King Henry was dreadfully afflicted by the ingratitude and willful disobedience of his child ; and how much greater must have been the poignancy of his grief when he learned that his wife Eleanor and his two younger sons, Richard and Geoffrey, had also fled his kingdom, to join his enemy, the king of France. The shock would have broken the heart of an equally loving father, but less energetic king. The sons sue-

Sons Against Father. 19

ceecled in escaping the active pursuit of their royal father ; but the queen, who had attempted flight in the disguise of a man, was overtaken and lodged in prison, where she suffered the long captivity of fifteen years. Richard was only fifteen years of age at this time, and it is hardly fair to hold him responsible for this audacious disobedience to his father's will, nor can it be deemed very unnatural that he should have yielded to his mother's influence. The queen had been long enraged with her royal husband, in consequence of his devotion to the fair Rosamond, and feeling deeply the wrong that she had suffered, was determined to revenge herself. She accordingly instigated her children to this rebellion against the king, and connived with Louis of France in this attempt to dismember the dominion of her husband. The queen, moreover, had brought with her as her dower seven provinces, and would have governed them herself, but as King Henry would brook no division of his power, she was desirous of securing to her children what she failed to obtain for herself. The English king strove with all his might to avoid the terrible emergency of being forced into open conflict with his own children, and accordingly sent an ambassador to the French king, with the purpose of coming to a friendly arrangement. All his overtures, which were evidently dictated by a father's heart, were flatly rejected. Moreover, on Easter-day, in the year 1173, Louis convened a great assembly of the barons of France, at which Prince Henry was present, together with Philip, Earl of Flanders, and William the Lion, King of Scotland. These all pledged themselves by a solemn oath to aid the English prince in prosecuting what was termed his rights, which meant waging an unjust war against his father, Henry the Second ; while the son engaged himself never to agree to peace without the consent of France. Prince Henry justified his unnatural conduct in thus taking arms against his father, on the score of religion. Pie hypocritically pretended that King Henry was wrathful towards him for having done reverence to the tomb of Thomas a Beckct, who since his murder had been put high upon the list of the saints of the Church. '• I fear not," said the youthful hypocrite, " to offend a father when the cause of Christ is concerned." He knew very well that his father was guiltless, beyond having uttered a hasty word, of the murder of the pestilent Archbishop of Canterbury ; and in pretending that in revenging his death he was doing violence to his father's wishes, he was falsely accusing his parent of an impiety of which he Avas innocent.

Henry, whose spirit and enterprise were equal to any emergency, prepared to make head against the formidable conspiracy arrayed against him, and enrolled twenty thousand of the men of Brabant, who were always ready to serve any one who paid them. Louis of France, with the young English prince, laid siege to Vemeuil, and reduced it by famine, and

The Conference. 21

when the English king had reached it, ready to relieve his subjects, he found it a prey to the flames. He, however, attacked the rear-guard of the French and routed them, and overcame a numerous body of insurgents, who had become possessed of the town of Dol. This success led to a conference near Gisors which was held in a plain between the latter place and Trie, beneath the wide-spreading shade of an ancient elm, a place where the French kings and Norman dukes were wont to hold parleys for truce or peace. The English king showed his usual parental generosity by offering to Henry and Richard half the revenues of the territories they demanded, together with a number of castles, while to Geoffrey, the youngest, he promised the estates of Earl Caran in Bretagne. The young princes, if they had been allowed to have acted according to the natural dictates of their hearts, would have gratefully accepted these generous offers ; but the French king, who had his own purposes to serve, interfered and prevented the filial instincts of the royal children, while the Earl of Leicester, a rebel, insulting his lord and master, King Henry, to his teeth, drew his sword and threatened to kill him. The conference then dissolved in turmoil and confusion.

This rupture led to a continuance of hostilities, with a father arrayed on one side and his rebellious sons, encouraged by the wily policy of King Louis, on the other.

Prince Richard, who was now about seventeen years old, commenced his military career, sad to relate, by taking up arms in open rebellion against his royal father. Richard headed a formidable insurrection in the French provinces of Poictou and Aquitaine. King Henry, with Ins accustomed vigour, marched against the rebels, took the town of Saintes and the formidable fortress of Tailleburg, and partially quieted the country.

Another success on the part of the English king, before the city of Rouen, the capital of Normandy, which was besieged by Louis of France and King Henry's sons, brought the enemy to a parley. Propositions for peace were offered, to which the princes Henry and Geoffrey were ready to assent, birt which their hot-headed, rebellious brother, Richard, fiercely rejected. His blood and spirit were stirred by his first experience of the savage delights of battle, and he longed to continue the conflict. The rash youth therefore persisted in his rebellion, but in spite of the aid of the restless barons of his province of Aquitaine, was forced to yield castle after castle to the energetic warfare of King Henry, and was fain to come to terms at the end of six weeks. The father was now at peace with his children, and with his usual generosity and fatherly kindness bestowed upon them the most liberal gifts of territory, estates, castles, and money. To his son Richard he gave two castles in Poictou, and half the revenue of its

Reconciliation. 23

earldom. To his other sons he made equally liberal presents. The boys now professed to be perfectly satisfied, and promised hereafter to love, honor, and ohej their father. It was, however, in spite of this generosity of gifts on the one side, and liberality of promises on the other, not many weeks before the eldest son was ready to pick a quarrel with his father ; but it did not fortunately lead to any serious consequences, and the two were again on such affectionate, terms that, according to an old writer, they not only fed at the same table, but slept in the same bed.

Henry now enjoyed an interval of peace for eight years, a long time for those warlike days. The king's restless disposition and active spirit would not, however, allow him to remain at rest. He travelled rapidly from one part of his kingdom to another, from Normandy to England and back again, directing his energies to the administration of every department of his dominions. Old Peter of Blois, an active, spirited man himself, a great traveller, who had scaled the mountains of the Alps, amid storms and avalanches, and was always on the alert, at the bidding of King Henry, to go from one end of the world to the other, was perfectly astounded at the restless activity of his master, as appears in a letter addressed to King Henry. Peter of Blois had been on a mission to King Louis, and wished to report the result to King Henry ; but not being able to find him, writes, that " he had been hunting after him, up and down, all over England, but in vain, and that when Solomon set down four things as too hard to discover, he ought to have added a fifth, and that was the path of the king of England." And King Louis said of him : " The king of England neither rides on land nor sails on water, hut flies through the air like a bird. In a moment he flies from Ireland to England— in another from England into France."

During these piping times of peace, King Henry's children lived mostly in France, amusing themselves, as the young nobles in those days were wont, with the mimic war of the tournament. Tilts and jousts succeeded each other in rapid succession, and none were more conspicuous for their skill in these knightly accomplishments than the youthful princes. Kichard, who was remarkably tall, vigorous, and active for his age, and of indomitable courage, shone above all his noble competitors. The prowess of these princes was the theme of the song of the minstrels, who travelled from castle to castle, relating in verse the deeds and the renown of the noble and brave. King Henry always listened with delight to the minstrel's song, which, as it recorded passing events, may be considered to have been a kind of newspaper, done in verse, which was circulated from court to court and castle to castle, very much as the morning papers are dropped at our doors in these matter-of-fact days. King Henry would probably have been a great newspaper reader if he had lived

Renewed Discord. 25

in our time, for his mind was of that active kind that it was not contented to remain ignorant of any thing that was stirring. His affection as a father also made him a delighted listener to the minstrel's song, for the burthen of it was often the knightly deeds of his own spirited children.

Richard was the first to disturb this family harmony by sounding the discordant note of war. On this occasion it was, however, against his brothers, and not his father, that the prince took up arms. The king had called upon Richard to do homage to his elder brother, Henry, for the duchy of Acmitaine. This he refused to do, and the consequence was that Prince Henry, allying himself with his younger brother, Geoffrey, marched an army into Aquitaine, to compel Richard to obedience. The father hastened to prevent this unnatural conflict, and succeeded so far in conciliating the brothers that they met and promised, in presence of King Henry, to live together as brothers should. Concord, however, was always of short duration in that royal family, and it was openly confessed by its members that they could not live in harmony. Geoffrey was sinful and irreverent enough to declare that the only possible bond of agreement among the children was opposition to the father. Prince Richard, referring to some early traditions (which superstition connected with diabolical agency) of the Plantagenet family, to which he belonged, used to say, " it was not astonishing that he and his brothers, issuing from such a stock, should be so fierce and lawless, for it was quite natural that what came from the devil should go to the devil."

Aquiiaine and Poictou, which were destined for the inheritance of Richard, and of which he enjoyed in part the rule and revenues, were a portion of the dominions brought by Queen Eleanor as her dower to King Henry. The people of these provinces were devoted to their mistress ; they beheld in her the representative of their old princely stock ; she was their chieftain, and nothing could alienate the attachment of those ardent and poetical people from the traditional associations connected with the descendant of their great chiefs. The imprisonment of Queen Eleanor by her husband was of course bitterly grieved at by her people, and they fiercely sought to revenge this injury to their beloved mistress, and insult to their loyalty. All means were considered by them just in retribution of this wrong, and they did not hesitate even to stir up disaffection in the family of the king of England, that they might array the sons against the father, in order to revenge the mother and the wrongs of Poictou and Aquitaine.

The troubadours sang, in mingled strains of sorrow and anger, the captivity of Eleanor. " Thou wast carried from thine own land" is the lament of one of those early poets, " and transported to a land thou knowest not of. Thou wast brought" up in all abundance and delicacy, and in a royal liberty, living in

His FHial Love. 27

the lap of riches, enjoying the sports of thy maidens and their pleasant songs, to the soft accomjjaniment of the lute and tabor ; and now thou weopest and Iamentest, consuming thy days in grief. Eeturn, poor prisoner, return to thy faithful cities ! "Where is now thy court ? Where are thy young companions 1 Where thy counsellors V And then the poet rises from these low sobbing words of mourning and lament to high, inspiriting trumpet-tones of war and revenge. " Thou criest, and no one hears thee, for the northern king keeps thee shut up like a besieged town ; but still cry aloud, and tire not of crying. Raise thy voice like a trumpet, that thy sons may hear thee ; for the day is at hand when thy sons shall deliver thee, and when thou shalt see thy native land again. "Woe to the traitors that are in Aquitaine, for the day of vengeance is near. Fly before the face of bold Richard, Duke of Aquitaine, for he will overthrow the vain-glorious, break their chariots and those that ride in them. Yea, he will annihilate all who oppose, from the greatest to the least !"

Richard loved his mother with all the warmth of an affectionate son, and deeply felt her wrongs. "We may thus find some excuse for him, in his rebellion against his father, as he was led to believe that lie was fulfilling his duty to one parent while openly failing in that toward the other. The naturally turoulent disposition of the family had something to do with these family quarrels ; but the chief cause may be found in the unfortunate estrangement between the king and queen. These disagreements seemed never destined to cease. On one occasion, after a lengthened conflict, when Geoffrey was alone in arms against his father, an appointment was made for the purpose of conciliation. Limoges was the place selected for the meeting. King Henry, in the full confidence of a fiither's love, rode to the gates of the city, and was repulsed with a shower of arrows, some of which pierced his- armor and wounded a knight at his side. This looked treacherous, but the king was satisfied by the explanation that it was a mistake, and he was promised free entrance to the town. He accordingly entered, and met his son in the centre of the market-place, where he was again saluted with a discharge of arrows, one of which wounded the horse he rode, in the head. The king was overcome, and weeping bitterly, and taking the arrow, presented it to his son Geoffrey, and sobbed out, in tones of agonizing grief, " O son ! what hath thy unhappy father done to deserve that thou shouldest make him a mark for thine arrows ?" This wicked attempt to kill the king has been charged upon the son, although it is more natural or humane to suppose that he did not connive at it, but that it was done at the order of some one of the fierce barons of Aquitaine unknown to Geoffrey.

Soon after this, the eldest son of the king, Prince

Death of Prince Henry. 29

Henry, was taken dangerously ill at Chateau Martel, near Limoges. He sent for his father to visit him, that he might forgive him, as he "believed himself on the bed of death. The father was eager to hasten to his dying child, but his courtiers prevented him; believing that this sickness was a mere pretense — a trap set to inveigle the king into the power of his enemies. Henry, however, sent the Archbishop of Bordeaux to his son at once, and taking a ring from his finger, ordered the prelate to give it to his son as a token of his forgiveness. Shortly after, a messenger arrived, announcing the death of the prince. He was twenty-seven years old when he died. An early death, says an old historian, if you consider his age, but much too late a one if you regard his acts. His life was spent in violent disobedience to his father, and the young man, on his death-bed, felt all the horrors of remorse for his wicked conduct. King Henry's messenger, the archbishop, had arrived in time to assure him of his father's forgiveness, and administer the last rites of religion. The prince pressed, in the agonies of death, his father's ring to his fevered lips, and kissed this memorial of a parent's forgiveness with all the devotion of a penitent son. His dying words were of confession, remorse, and repentance. He openly acknowledged his undutifulness and the crimes of his wicked career, and in hopeless penance for his sins ordered his helpless, dying body to be dragged by a rope from his couch to a "bed of ashes, that he might suffer the last agonies of death in. humiliation.

His father was greatly moved when he learned that his eldest son was no more; but his deep sorrow as a bereaved parent did not weaken his sense of duty as a king. The very day after the funeral he was up in arms, and attacked, with unabated vigor, the rebels, to whose machinations he was disposed to attribute his son's rebellion. Limoges was taken by assault, castle after castle was stormed and taken, and the ringleaders captured. Bertrand de Blois, a noble of Aquitaine, a man of great courage and ability, was the chief of the captives. This baron was a man of high accomplishments for the age in which he lived, and was not only a gallant knight, hut a man of varied accomplishments, and a poet withal. His seductive maimers were such that few could resist their influence, and it was supposed that he had exercised his irresistible power upon the young princes and excited them to rebellion. " He must surely die !" said King Henry, when De Blois was dragged a captive into his presence. Taunting him with his boasted wit, which was said never to fail, the king said, " I think thou has lost thy wits." " Yes, sire," replied Bertrand, in a tone of deep sorrow, " I lost them the day the valiant young king died." This brought up the memory of his lost child, and completely overcame the father's equanimity; he burst into tears and nearly swooned. On recovering,

Reconciliation, of Royal Family. 31

his anger had gone, and. his heart was softened to mercy. " Sir Bertrand," said he, " Sir Bertrand, thou mightest well lose thy wits because of my son, for he loved thee more than any other man on earth ; and I, for love of him, give thee thy life, thy property, thy castle."

After the death of Prince Henry, Geoffrey asked his father's pardon, which the king's generous heart readily granted. The family were now, for a time, all reconciled, and poor Eleanor, the queen, was released from prison,- for a moment, that she might be present to witness the solemnization of this rare union of the kmg's discordant household. John, too, the youngest of the princes, whose youth, thus far, had saved him from the sin of rebellion, was also present. Geoffrey, however, soon forgot his promises, and was again in arms against his father, until his unnatural and violent career was brought to an appropriate close by his being thrown from his horse while engaged in a tournament, and trampled to death.

Louis VII. of France was now dead, and had been 6ucceeded by his son, Philip II., a young and spirited prince. He had his father's ambition to weaken the power and bend the pride of England, but had more than his father's capacity to cope with the brave and able Henry. Philip made a great show of honor to the memory of the wicked Geoffrey, and great was the pomp and display of the funereal ceremonies that the French king exhibited on the occasion.