an agent in the ultimate realisation of his own views, and which was not altogether insincere, so far as the feelings themselves were concerned) failed in restraining Becket from an arrogant and inconsiderate parade and abuse of his temporary triumph, the passion of the King broke forth, and he uttered the fatal words which brought on the murder of the Archbishop. Finally, when, although he had disarmed the anger of the Church by earnest disclaimers of the authorship of the crime, fortune seemed to have suddenly deserted him in all his enterprises, his superstition effected what his principles had failed to do. Not content with making the fullest pecuniary atonement, he hurried to Canterbury, and subjected himself to the most ascetic penances at the Archbishop's tomb. The penance seemed to work, for the first news after it which greeted him was the unexpected capture of the King of Scots; and Henry, relieved in conscience, and a man seemingly pardoned by Heaven, proceeded once more with renewed spirit to undo the work of the martyr whom he had just acknowledged as a saint, and to consolidate and extend those 'Constitutions of Clarendon,' to his opposition to which the Archbishop had virtually sacrificed his life! For, a true Angevin, though Henry crouched, he gave up no spoils.

Historians are divided as to his capability of forgiving offences. The probability is, that as he never abandoned a friend, he also never forgot an injury, though he did not often think it worth his while to

be unforgiving. He could often frankly ignore the past, but in some cases he could neither forget nor forgive. He had much to forgive in his own domestic circle, and the cause of his misunderstandings with his sons has been matter of much speculation. Giraldus, however, tells us that though an overindulgent parent to them when young children, he was a step-father, making no allowances for them, when they grew up. This is not an uncommon parental feature, and seems to arise from an excessive pleasure in the helplessness and necessary dependence and trustfulness of the young child, and in disappointment and distrust at the rising independence and alien interests of the growing youth. In Henry's case it led to the final catastrophe of his life. All his sons had disappointed and defied him, but he still clung to the idea of the loyal devotion of the youngest, about whom his loving delusions as to his young children still lingered. But when, in the very agony of his humiliation before his eldest surviving son, and his hereditary enemy, Philip of France, the name of 'Earl John' appeared at the head of the list of rebellious barons whom he was required to pardon, the heart of the Father and of the King broke at the same moment, and he bade farewell to the world and to policy, and, in the bitter despair of his whole nature, cursing all his legitimate sons, died refusing to recall that curse, attended and consoled only by the untiring affection of one base-born child.

71

RICHARD THE FIRST.

IN one respect, if in no other, Richard Coeur de Lion has experienced the same fortune as his father. Both are among the most bepraised and best abused Kings in history, and in each instance in the estimates for evil and for good there is a considerable foundation of truth. Neither of them, though stained with not a few crimes, can be pronounced justly an absolutely bad man; and, on the other hand, each of them, though endowed with commanding qualities, leaves on the mind a certain impression of incompleteness. As the statesmanship of Henry, so the personal ascendancy of Richard stopped short of that impressive grandeur which marked the character of the Conqueror, and of one at least of their own descendants. Yet the nature of Richard of Aquitaine or Poitou, as he was for some time called, was not poor, purposeless, and fickle, as some modern historians, following too implicitly the statements of his enemies, have depicted it; and if less complex and less interesting as a study of character than that of his father, it is sufficiently unusual to be worthy of more than passing attention.

That modern writers should have been led to adopt this error of the earlier chroniclers respecting Richard has probably arisen from a previous false conception on their own part of his character as a whole, owing to the delusive position in which that prince presents himself to our eyes in the early part of his career. He was called ' of Aquitaine,' which was handed over to his rule, and he appears before us as the favourite son of his mother, the heiress of Southern France, and as the especial hero of the Troubadours of that old land of the Celtiberians, the Romans, and the Visi-Goths. He was not only the companion-in-arms of the Knights of Aquitaine, but was himself a poet-warrior, after the true Provençal fashion. Historians have, therefore, naturally enough, leapt to the conclusion that he derived his nature as well as the fashion of his life from this fiery, impulsive, southern population, and have drawn his character on the assumption that such was its essential structure. Arriving at this conclusion, they have adopted without much investigation those statements respecting his personal characteristics which seemed to harmonise with this general conception. But I cannot but think that although the outward fashion of his education and early training were doubtless derived from the lands south of the Loire, and though he himself spoke and wrote his Sirventes in the soft Langue d'Oc, the main outlines of his organisation were derived from a very differ

ent source.

His analogues are to be found rather in the pages of the Eddas and Sagas of the North, and it was as a Scandinavian Viking that he thought and acted. I do not deny that this Scandinavian type may have been modified in some of its component parts, as well as in its outward garb, by the blood which he derived from Eleanor of Aquitaine; but while I cannot reconcile the leading features of Richard's character with the Aquitanian type, I do recognise in them most distinctly some of the most striking traits of those Scandinavian rovers from whom, through his Norman ancestors, he more remotely sprang. There was the commanding presence which overawed opposition, and seemed to stamp him as a natural leader of men; there was the chivalrous yet somewhat stern courtesy; there was the uncompromising pride; there was the adventurous spirit in which the love of fame and the lawless greed of acquisition seemed to be blended in almost equal proportions; there was the devotion to a great purpose of an enthusiast, often distracted for the moment by the temptation of immediate adventure and gain, but using even these distractions as new instruments in its further prosecution; there was the thirst for battle, and the delight in the mere physical contest, befitting a wild animal rather than an intelligent being, and yet the common sense and shrewdness of perception which could see the limits of acquisition and of fame, and could turn away