LECTURE XX.-THE SONS OF HENRY.

Henry's family troubles. His death. Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Chivalry. Richard's absence from England. John Sans-terre. Prince Arthur. Loss of Normandy.

Henry

prospers.

1. AFTER the strange events of his day of penance Henry's spirit revived; he felt that he was pardoned; his health returned; and he put himself at the head of an army. The English people gathered round him, and the revolt of the barons was put down without a blow. The truth was that the nation was really faithful, and attached to the king's government. It was only some of the older nobility, who had lands in Normandy, and still felt like Normans, who rebelled. The other barons, who felt like Englishmen, nearly all the bishops, and the great towns stood firm on the king's side now that he was no longer fighting in a matter which touched their religion, Thus after his pressing danger he rose stronger than ever.

2. Nor did he entirely give up his schemes for the control of the Church and the clergy; he carried out many of his principles still, though the "Constitutions of Clarendon" had been renounced; and matters were left, as they so often were and are in England, somewhat undecided, each party having to give and take in turn.

troubles.

3. But this great king's troubles were not over yet. All the later years of his life were made miserable by the ingratitude and rebellion of his sons. Considering what his marriage had been, it is not wonderful that his family life Family was so unhappy. One son rebelled after another; he forgave them again and again; but they broke his heart at last. As all this was mostly in France, we cannot enter into the details. Henry, who was to have been King of England, died young, before his father. Geoffrey, the second, who had been married to the heiress of Brittany, also died. Richard, the third, was as undutiful as his brothers. The worst and youngest, John, was his father's favourite; Henry said he was the only one who

had never rebelled against him. When, at last, the forlorn and aged king found that John too was a traitor, and had sided with his enemies, it was his death-blow. He cared for nothing more in the world, and died. One of his illegitimate children was alone faithful to him, and tended his last hours.

His death.

4. The next king of England reigned for ten years. In all that time he was only in England twice, and then but for a few months. He could hardly be looked on as an Eng

1189.

lishman at all. Yet he is even to this day a popular

Richard I. king. Every one likes the name of Richard the

Lion-hearted. When we come to look at his life and character this seems strange. He was a very fierce and quarrelsome man; he had been an undutiful son; so much so, that it was said and believed that when he went to meet his father's funeral the blood flowed from the dead body; showing, according to the old superstition, that Richard was in some sense his murderer. As to his government of England, all he ever seemed to care about was to wring out of the nation all the money he could. And, as has been truly said, it may be all very well to have the heart of a lion, but it would have been far better to have the heart of a man. Yet we all know he is a popular hero and favourite to this day. Why can this be?

5. The truth seems to be, that though we cannot look on Richard as a good, or great, or wise king, he was in many ways the very model of a knight. In these days we do Chivalry. not think very much of a knight. It is only a title of no great honour. But we think still a good deal of the word "chivalrous." That is the French or Romance word for "knightly." The French word for knight was "chevalier," which means one who rides on horseback. The German word for knight means the same thing, a rider (reiter, litter), and it came to be a title of some honour, because those who could afford to ride on horseback were the richer and more high-born people.

6. Gradually other ideas grew up about the name; and in the days of Richard I., and some time both before and after, the one thing which was thought of and desired was to be a good knight. Even a great king was not satisfied with being wise, clever, honest, and brave unless he were also a good knight-chivalrous. Sɔ that we cannot at all enter into the spirit of that age without trying to understand a little of what chivalry meant.

7. We will first look at its good side. We cannot fail

to have observed that the one great occupation of a gentleman's life in those days was fighting, and we have had to notice over and over again how fierce and savage some of the barons and warriors were, for this constant fighting and killing men was sure to harden their nature and to make them brutal. The very

heart of chivalry was a yearning to rise out of this savagery and brutality. If we use the word "chivalrous even to-day we mean something courteous and delicately honourable, above the common level of civility and honesty. A good knight was bound to be that. He was bound to be gentle towards ladies, to be generous towards even his enemies, to be full of courtesy towards a fallen foe, and of reverence towards age and authority. Perhaps the truest description of the "ideal" of chivalry is that by Tennyson in the 'Idylls of the King,' which, though they are about King Arthur, who lived ages before chivalry was invented, give a perfect picture of what knighthood would have been had Arthur, as Tennyson paints him, been living in the middle ages. He says he drew the knights around him

"In that fair order of my Table Round,
A glorious company, the flower of men,
To serve as model for the mighty world,
And be the fair beginning of a time.

I made them lay their hands in mine and swear
To reverence the king, as if he were

Their conscience, and their conscience as their king.

To break the heathen, and uphold the Christ;

To ride abroad, redressing human wrongs;

To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it;
To lead sweet lives, in purest chastity;
To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds
Until they won her; for indeed I know
Of no inore subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid;
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amiable words,
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,

And love of truth, and all that makes a man."

Of course this is only a beautiful picture (and very far was the lion-hearted Richard from being like it), but it gives us an idea of what they aimed at; and to have noble aims, even though we cannot reach them, makes life noble.

8. The knight, then, was to be brave, gallant, pure, faithful, loving, and courteous. A true knight also loved music, songs,

and poetry; romantic songs, perhaps, in praise of his lady. If he could make and sing them himself it was all the better.

9. But there were some drawbacks to all this. Sometimes we find that the knight, in his high admiration of exalted virtue, generosity, and magnanimity, undervalued and forgot the less ornamental and more homely groundwork of steady honesty, justice, and humanity. Again, in Tennyson's description, among the beautiful things which were to be taught, "high thought," "amiable words," &c., was one rather questionable virtue "love of fame." We must not stop to discuss the merits and demerits of this "last infirmity of noble minds;" but, for good or for ill, it was a strong influence in the knightly mind. The knight loved to be famous; to be seen, admired, and sung about was his great reward for his brave deeds.

10. After the Norman Conquest one great change had been introduced in the system of judgment. We all remember the trial by ordeal, which was the old way of appealing to God to declare the truth. The Normans had introduced another method, that of trial by battle. If two men disputed, if one brought a charge against another, and it was impossible to tell which spoke the truth, they would appeal to the wager of battle, that is, the two would fight, and it was believed that God would uphold the right, the innocent would conquer, and the guilty would be overthrown. We often read of this too in poems and tales; indeed, the custom has barely died out yet, though it has long been contrary to the laws of England. As the chivalrous spirit grew, not only would people fight for grave reasons and to find out the truth, but would also fight for the pleasure and the vanity of it. This was how the custom of tournaments began, which were very terrible little battles really, but which were considered by the knights as delightful opportunities for showing off their courage and skill, their fine arms and fine horses. Though both knights and horses often got killed and badly wounded, grand ladies, beautifully dressed, would sit on raised seats all round looking on, one of whom would be chosen queen of beauty, to give the prizes to the conquerors.

11. But the great blot and fault of all in the "ideal" of chivalry was that it was limited to a class. The knight was not to be faithful and pitiful to all, but only to his own equals, and to his own immediate dependants and servants. He had no idea that he owed anything of all that courtesy and generosity to those who were below him, to the poor and humbly born. He was, we may say, a gentleman when he was dealing with gentlemen and

with ladies, but he was still as savage and cruel as ever when he had to do with townspeople, tradespeople, and peasants. We shall see more of this later on, because, though Richard I. was before all things a knight, he was not such a perfect type of one as a prince who lived 200 years afterwards, the Black Prince.

Richard a

crusader.

12. A great part of Richard's reign was taken up in fighting the third Crusade. A short time before the death of Henry II. the Saracens had conquered back Jerusalem from the Christians, and another Crusade had been proclaimed to win it back again. People had tried hard to persuade Henry to join it. He at first very prudently said that he thought it more his duty to stay at home and govern and protect his own subjects than to go and fight the Saracens, though afterwards he consented to go. However, those great family troubles which embittered his last years prevented his ever doing so, and when he died, and Richard became king, his first determination was to become a crusader.

13. It is possible that he partly meant to atone for his undutiful conduct towards his father, for which he felt some remorse; and partly, too, that he had a sort of romantic and religious feeling about the Holy Land. But he loved war and fighting everywhere; and no doubt one of his main motives was his great longing to earn honour and distinction.

The Jews.

14. His reign began in a very dreadful way, by a horrible massacre of the Jews. There was a strong feeling in the people of that time that it was a good and religious act to persecute the Jews. They looked on them as the nation who had killed Christ, and felt as if they were in some sort avenging Him if they slew or tortured a Jew; so strangely were religion and cruelty mixed up together. The very spirit of the Crusades was full of ferocity. The people were taught even by bishops and saints that killing unbelievers was a holy and praiseworthy act. St. Bernard says, "The Christian who slays the unbeliever in the Holy War is sure of his reward. . . The Christian glories in the death of the pagan because Christ is glorified." There did not seem to people in those days much difference between a pagan, or a Turk, or a Jew. They thought

it glorified Christ, the Prince of Peace, to kill either of them, and priests or monks often hounded the mob on to destroy the Jews. We must say, however, in justice to St. Bernard (who, perhaps, like many other saints, was better than his theories), that he tried to protect the Jews when the Christians in Germany rose against them. He said God had punished the