Jews by their dispersion; it was not for man to punish them by murder.

15. The kings on the whole protected the Jews, not at all out of kindness or Christian charity, but because they could get more money out of them than out of anybody else. Being in general better educated than other men, and spending their lives in peaceful occupations, they gained and saved great wealth. In particular, they were the best physicians and the best merchants of the time, and "as rich as a Jew" was a true proverb even then. It was they who lent the money (getting a good interest for it) to build the grand castles and cathedrals about which we have heard so much. They are said to have been the first people in England who built stone houses for themselves, and set the example of it to others. For before they came into the country all the houses were built of wood, and towns and cities were continually being burnt down.

16. The Jews had been made to contribute very handsomely to the Crusade now about to start, no doubt much against their will; but the kings, whenever milder means failed, had recourse to torture and imprisonment for extorting money from them. But before each Crusade there had been a massacre of the Jews, and so there was now. First in London, on the day of Richard's coronation; then a still worse one in York, where the Jews were besieged in the castle, and, knowing the horrors that would. befall them if they fell into the hands of their enemies, they chose rather to kill themselves, their wives and children, and to burn up all their treasures.

1192.

17. It does not appear that Richard himself was guilty of these massacres; he even punished, though not half severely enough, some of the murderers. Having got all the money he could collect together, Richard started on the Crusade, where he was very brave, and gained great fame, but was also so overbearing and quarrelsome that very little was achieved. Jerusalem could not be won back from the Saracens, and Richard was so bitterly grieved at this disappointment, that when he was led up a hill from which the Holy City could be seen he refused to look at it, saying he was unworthy. But as this is not part of the history of England we must not concern ourselves with his adventures in the Holy Land. Things went on fairly quietly in England, and though the people were heavily taxed, they were perhaps none the worse off for their warlike king and his followers being so far away. Prince John, to whom his brother had shown much kindness, but who was treacherous by

nature, endeavoured to rebel, but was kept in some kind of restraint by his mother, who helped to govern while Richard was absent.

Richard a

prisoner.

18. As the king was returning home from the Crusade he got separated by a storm at sea from most of his followers, and at length found himself attended by only one man and a boy as he was attempting to reach his dominions by land. In this strait he fell into the hands of the Duke of Austria, who was one of the princes whom he had affronted and quarrelled with during the Crusade, and who soon made him over as a captive to the Emperor of Germany. For a time no one knew what had become of him, and there is a pretty story told of how his friend and minstrel, Blondel, wandered about seeking his master, singing a favourite air which the two had often sung together in happier days, for Richard was a musician and a poet, as a good knight should be. At last, after singing it in vain under many gloomy castle walls, he heard it taken up by a voice he knew from within a fortress, and thus he found his master. This tale, unfortunately, is not told by any one living at the time, and therefore we cannot feel much confidence in its being true; but it was certainly known ere long to Richard's people that he was a prisoner in the power of the Emperor of Germany.

19. Though Richard had done so little for the English, except take their money, still they were proud of him. His courage made both him and his kingdom famous, and they were much troubled at his captivity. Two people, however, were very glad of it; these were his own brother John, and his former dear friend the King of France. John had given out that his brother was dead during the many months in which he had not been heard of, and was very anxious to be made king himself. The French king, whom Richard had insulted in Palestine, and who had his eye upon Normandy, was also desirous of keeping him out of the way. He accused him of many crimes which he had never committed; while John, on his part, offered to pay the emperor £20,000 a month if he would keep his brother in prison. But it was all in vain; Richard cleared himself from the accusations of the King of France, and the emperor, after demanding and receiving a very heavy ransom, set him at liberty.

1194.

His

release.

20. After his release Richard came to England for the second time, where he was crowned again with great ceremony, to wipe out the stain of his imprisonment, and soon after left England for ever. He very soon forgave John; indeed, he never showed

a vindictive spirit, though he was so proud and fiery. The rest of his life was principally spent in wars with France.

1199.

His death.

21. His death showed the same mingling of cruelty and generosity which his life had done. He was besieging the castle of one of his own vassals who had displeased him, when, almost in the hour of victory, he received a mortal wound from a soldier on the ramparts. After the final assault, and when the castle was taken, the king gave the savage order that every one of the men who had defended it should be put to death, only excepting the archer whose arrow had pierced him. This man was brought before him, and spoke out boldly and fearlessly, telling Richard that his father and his two brothers had been slain by him, and that now, having taken his revenge, he was ready and willing to bear any punishment the conqueror might inflict. Richard's brave heart could admire the bravery of another, even of his enemy. He freely forgave the man, ordering his attendants to reward him and send him away in safety. Thus, with his last thought one of pity and pardon, died the Lion-hearted king.

22. Richard, leaving no children, was succeeded by his brother John, who was already known as having rebelled against his indulgent father and betrayed his confiding brother. John. He afterwards showed himself one of the worst men and kings of whom any history speaks. All the good we can find about him will go into a very few words. He is said by some to have been clever and handsome, and to have had His good agreeable manners, though another account is that "he was stupid, fat, and sour-looking." He was, however, beyond doubt, a good general and soldier. And one of the men who wrote at the time, after telling of his death and his wickedness, and trying to find a good word for him, says that he founded a monastery at Beaulieu, and, when dying, gave to the monastery of Croxton lands worth ten pounds. His evil deeds will take up more space.

deeds.

23. Scarcely had he become king, his character being already so unfavourably known, when he put himself farther in the wrong by a crime which roused everybody's hatred and indignation, and marked him out clearly for the cruel, wicked, pitiless wretch he was.

His evil deeds.

24. He was the only son of Henry II. now living, and he was made King of England without any difficulty. Though the law of the succession to the crown was not yet clearly settled as it is now, yet the descent from the eldest son of a king had now

Arthur.

begun to be thought more of than it used to be, especially on the Continent. John's eldest brother had no children; but the second, Geoffrey, had left a young son, Arthur. Though he was still a child, it was thought on the Continent that, as Geoffrey was older than John, his son ought now to be King of England, Duke of Normandy, and, in short, the heir of his grandfather Henry II. So it certainly would be now, but as yet these things were hardly settled.

25. At one time, indeed, during Richard's life there had been a plan for making Arthur his heir; and now his mother, Constance of Brittany, stirred up all the friends she could for him. A strong party took up his cause, with the French king at their head, and there was some disputing and fighting in France. At last John, who could fight well and was a skilful general, gained a victory, and made his young nephew prisoner.

26. The rest of that poor young prince's story, as it was either known or guessed at, is told in Shakespeare's play of King John. In that play are some of the most pathetic words which even Shakespeare ever wrote-the lament of his mother Constance over her boy

"And I shall never see my pretty Arthur more."

She never did. Shakespeare tells how his keeper Hubert was ordered to burn out the poor boy's eyes; and how his uncle darkly hinted, though hardly daring to speak the words, that he should put him to death. Such dreadful deeds are, of course, done in darkness, and no one ever quite knew the exact truth about Arthur's death. The historian, a monk of St. Alban's abbey, who lived at this time, and wrote a very long and interesting account of this most interesting reign, says that John sent him close prisoner to Rouen, "but shortly afterwards the said Arthur suddenly disappeared." If a prince suddenly disappeared at such a time, and in such circumstances, it opened a door to grave suspicions; and, accordingly, it was universally believed that John slew him with his own hand; "for which reason," says the same historian, the monk Roger, "many turned their affections from the king, and entertained the deepest enmity against him."

1203.

27. This horrible crime (for if he did not murder the boy with his own hands, which perhaps he did, there is no reasonable doubt that he did it by the hands of others) was the beginning of John's misfortunes. It not only turned men's hearts against him, but King Philip of France seized on it as a pretext for

taking possession of Normandy and a great part of John's other French dominions. It must be remembered that though, as King of England, he was independent of France or any other over-lord, yet he held Normandy and his other French provinces as vassal of the King of France.

28. Philip accordingly summoned John to appear before him and the great lords of France to answer for the crime of which he was accused. John would not come; upon which Philip declared that he had forfeited his duchy, and marched into Normandy with an army. If John had been a different man, if his nobles, French and English, had loved or respected him, things would have turned out very differently. If it had been William the Conqueror, or Henry I., or Henry II., 1204. they would never have let Normandy go, we may be But John was already so hated and despised that Philip got Normandy and most of his other French possessions with hardly any trouble.

Loss of Normandy.

sure.

29. So, after being united for about 150 years, England and Normandy were separated again. Of all the French possessions of the Conqueror, there only remained to England the Channel Islands, which had belonged to Normandy, where the poorer people still talk an old-fashioned French, and are governed by something like the old Norman laws, and who still boast "that they rather conquered England than England conquered them."

30. But though this was a great loss to King John, and he acquired the ignominious surname of "Sans-terre," or "Lackland," it was in the end all the better for England. As long as the King of England was also lord of a great part of France, he was more a foreigner than an Englishman, and the English often had to pay money and to fight in quarrels with which they had nothing to do. Some of the great lords, it appears, still had lands both in Normandy and England, as they had soon after the Conquest; but they now lost them and became entirely English, unless they chose to give up their English estates and settle in France as Frenchmen. The provinces in the south of France, which had belonged to Henry II.'s wife Eleanor, were looked on now as a distant dependency of England, instead of England being only a dependency or province of the great French dominions of the king. From this time forward England was England, with an English king, lords, and people.

31. Just at this time, too, the English language broke silence again. The Anglo-Saxon 'Chronicle,' as we saw, came to an end