Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

had been left upon the wreck, the hopes of saving their lives, numbers leaped in, and the whole went to the bottom. Above a hundred and forty young noblemen of the principal families of England and Normandy were lost on this occasion. A butcher of Rouen was the only person on board who escaped; he clung to the mast, and was taken up the next morning by some fishermen. Fitz-Stephen, the captain, while the butcher was thus buffeting the waves for his life, swam up to him, and enquired if the prince was yet living; when being told that he had perished, Then I will not out-live him, said the captain, and immediately sunk to the bottom. The shrieks of these unfortunate people were heard on the shore; and the noise even reached the king's ship, but the cause was then unknown. Henry entertained hopes for three days that his son had put into some distant port in England; but when certain intelligence of the calamity was brought him, he fainted away, and was never seen to smile from that moment to the day of his death, which followed some time after at St. Dennis, a little town in Normandy, from eating too plentifully of Lampreys, a dish he was particularly fond of. He died in the sixty-seventh year of his age, and the thirtyfifth of his reign, leaving by will his daughter Matilda heiress of all his dominions.

CHAP. VII..

STEPHEN

A. D. 1135-1154.

O sooner was the king known to be dead, than Stephen, son of Adela, the king's sister, and the count of Blois, conscious of his own power and influence, resolved to secure to himself the possession of what he so long desired. He, therefore, hastened from Normandy, and arriving at London, was immediately saluted king by all the lower ranks of people. Being thus secure of the people, his next step was to gain ́ over the clergy, and for that purpose, his brother, the bishop of Winchester, exerted all his influence among them with good success. Thus was Stephen made king by one of those speedy revolutions, which ever mark the barbarity of a state in which they are customary.

The first acts of an usurper are always popular. Stephen, in order to secure his tottering throne, passed a charter, granting several privileges to the different orders of the state. To the nobility, a permission to hunt in their own forests; to the

clergy, a speedy filling of all vacant benefices; and to the people, restoration of the laws of Edward the Confessor. To fix himself still more securely, he took possession of the royal treasures at Winchester, and had his title ratified by the pope with a part of the money.

It was not long, however, that Matilda delayed asserting her claim to the crown. She landed upon the coast of Sussex, assisted by Robert, earl of Gloucester, natural son of the late king. The whole of Matilda's retinue, upon this occasion, amounted to no more than an hundred and forty knights, who immediately took possession of Arundel castle; but the nature of her claim soon increased the number of her partizans, and her forces every day seemed to gain ground upon those of her antagonist. Meantime Stephen, being assured of her arrival, flew to besiege Arundel, where she had taken refuge, and where she was protected by the queen dowager, who se cretly favoured her pretensions. This fortress was too feeble to promise a long defence, and would have been soon taken, had it not been represented to the king, that, as it was a castle belonging to the queen dowager, it would be an infringement on the respect due to her to attempt taking it by force. There was a spirit of generosity mixed with the rudeness of the times, that unaccountably prevailed in many transactions; Stephen permitted Matilda to come forth in safety, and had her conveyed with security to Bristol, another fortress equally strong with that from whence he permitted her to retire. It would be tedious to relate the various skirmishes on either side, in pursuance of their respective pretensions; it will suffice to say, that Matilda's forces increased every day, while her antagonist seemed every hour to become weaker; and a victory gained by the queen threw Stephen from the throne, and exalted Matilda in his room. Matilda was crowned at

Winchester with all imaginable solemnity.

Matilda, however, was unfit for government. She affected to treat the nobility with a degree of disdain, to which they had long been unaccustomed; so that the fickle nation once more began to pity their deposed king, and to repent the steps they had taken in her favour. The bishop of Winchester was not remiss in fomenting these discontents; and when he found the people ripe for a tumult, detached a party of his friends and vassals to block up the city of London, where the queen then resided. At the same time, measures were taken to instigate the Londoners to a revolt, and to seize her person. Matilda having timely notice of this conspiracy, fled to Win chester, whither the bishop, still her secret enemy, followed her, watching an opportunity to ruin her cause. His party

was soon sufficiently strong to bid the queen open defiance; and to besiege her in the very place where she first received his benediction. There she continued for some time, but the town being pressed by famine, she was obliged to escape, while her brother, the earl of Gloucester, endeavouring to follow, was taken prisoner, and exchanged for Stephen, who still continued a captive. Thus a sudden revolution once more took place; Matilda was deposed, and obliged to seek for safety in Oxford. Stephen was again recognized as king, and taken from his dungeon to be replaced on the throne.

But he was now to enter the lists with a new opposer, who was every day coming to maturity, and growing more formidable. This was Henry, the son of Matilda, who had now reached his sixteenth year, and gave the greatest hopes of being one day a valiant leader and a consummate politician.

With the wishes of the people in his favour, young Henry was resolved to reclaim his hereditary kingdom, and to dispute once more Stephen's usurped pretensions; and accordingly made an invasion on England, where he was immediately joined by almost all the barons of the kingdom. Stephen, alarmed at the power and popularity of his young rival, tried every method to anticipate the purpose of his invasion; but finding it impossible to turn the torrent, he was obliged to have recourse to treaty. It was therefore agreed, by all parties, that Stephen should reign during his life; and that justice should be administered in his name: That Henry should, on Stephen's death, succeed to the kingdom; and William, Stephen's son, should inherit Boulogne, and his patrimonial estate. After all the Barons had sworn to this treaty, which filled the whole kingdom with joy, Henry evacuated England; and Stephen returned to the peaceable enjoyment of his throne. His reign, however, was soon after terminated by his death, which happened about a year after the treaty, at Canterbury, where he was interred.

CHAP. VIII.

HENRY II.

A. D. 1154-1189.

HE first act of Henry's government gave the people a

vise administration.

scious of his power, he began to correct those abuses, and to resume those privileges, which had been extorted from the weakness or the credulity of his predecessors. He immediate

.

ly dismissed all those mercenary soldiers who committed infinite disorders in the nation. He resumed many of those benefactions which had been made to churches and monasteries in the former reigns. He gave charters to several towns, by which the citizens claimed the freedom and privileges, independent of any superior but himself. These charters were the ground-work of English liberty. The struggles which had before this time been, whether the king, or the barons, or the clergy, should be despotic over the people, now began to assume a new aspect; and a fourth order, namely, that of the more opulent of the people, began to claim a share in administration. Thus was the feudal government at first impaired; and liberty began to be more equally diffused throughout the nation.

Henry being thus become the most powerful prince of his age, the undisputed monarch of England, possessed of more than a third of France, and having humbled the barons who would circumscribe his power, he might naturally be expected to reign with very little opposition for the future. But it happened otherwise: He found the severest mortifications from a quarter where he least expected resistance.

The famous Thomas à Becket, the first man of English extraction who had, since the Norman conquest, risen to any share of power, was the son of a citizen of London. Having received his early education in the schools of that metropolis, he resided some time at Paris; and on his return became clerk in the sheriff's office. From that humble station he rose through the gradations of office, until at last he was made archbishop of Canterbury. No sooner was he fixed in this high station, which rendered him for life the second person in the kingdom, than he endeavoured to retrieve the character of sanctity, which his former levities might have appeared to oppose.. He was in his person the most mortified man that could be seen. He wore sackcloth next his skin. He changed it so seldom that it was filled with dirt and vermin. His usual diet was bread, his drink water; which he rendered farther unpalatable by the mixture of unsavoury herbs. His back was mangled by frequent discipline. He every day washed on his knees the feet of thirteen beggars. Thus pretending to sanctity, he set up for being a defender of the privileges of the clergy, which had for a long time become enormous, and which it was Henry's aim to abridge.

An opportunity soon offered, that gave him a popular pretext for beginning his intended reformation. A man in holy orders had debauched the daughter of a gentleman in Worcestershire and then murdered the father to prevent the ef

fects of his resentment. duced a spirit of indignation among the people: and the king insisted that the assassin should be tried by the civil magistrate. This Becket opposed, alledging the privileges of the church.

The atrociousness of the crime pro

In order to determine this matter, the king summoned a general council of the nobility and prelates at Clarendon, to whom he submitted this great and important affair, and desired their concurrence. These councils seem at that time convened rather to give authenticity to the king's decrees, than to enact laws that were to bind their posterity. A number of regulations were there drawn up, which were afterwards well known under the title of the Constitutions of Clarendon, and were then voted without opposition. By these regulations it was enacted, that clergymen accused of any crime should be tried in the civil courts; that laymen should not be tried in the spiritual courts, except by legal reputable witnesses. These, with some others of less consequence, or implied in the above, to the number of sixteen, were readily subscribed to by all the bishops present; Becket himself, who at first shewed some reluctance, added his name to the number. But Alexander, who was then pope, condemned them in the strongest terms, and annulled them.

This produced a contest between the king and Becket, who having attained the highest honours the monarch could bestow, took part with his holiness. In the midst of this dispute Becket, with an intrepidity peculiar to himself, arraying himself in his episcopal vestments, and with a cross in his hand, went forward to the king's palace, and entering the royal apartments, sat down, holding up the cross as his banner of protection. There he put himself, in the most solemn manner, under the protection of the supreme pontiff; and upon receiving a refusal to leave the kingdom, he secretly withdrew in disguise, and at last found means to pass over to the continent, where his intrepidity, joined to his apparent sanctity, gained him a very favourable reception both from the people and their governors.

The pope and he were not remiss to retort their fulminations, and to shake the very foundation of the king's authority Becket compared himself to Christ, who had been condemned by a lay tribunal; and who was crucified anew in the present oppressions under which the church laboured. But he did not rest in complaints only; he issued out a censure, excommunicating the king's chief ministers by name, all that were concerned in sequestering the revenues of his see, and all who obeyed or favoured the constitutions of Clarendon. Frequent attempts, indeed, were made towards an accommo

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »