CHAPTER XVI.

HENRY I.-1100 to 1135.

How Henry the First married the Saxon Princess Maude; how his son William was drowned; and how he desired that his daughter Maude should be Queen after his own death.

As soon as the nobles and bishops knew that William Rufus was dead, they determined that his younger brother, Henry, should be king, because Robert, the eldest, was too busy about the wars in Syria, which I mentioned before.

Now Henry was brave and clever, like his father, but he was not quite so cruel.

He was very fond of books, and encouraged learned men, and his subjects gave him the name of Beauclerc, which means fine scholar. He married Maude, whose uncle was Edgar Atheling, who ought to have been King of England after Edward the Confessor. The English people were pleased to have her for their queen, because they hoped she would make Henry more kind to them than his brother and father had been. She had two children, Prince William, and Princess Maude, who is sometimes called Matilda ; but Prince William was not at all like his good and kind mother, who died when he was a boy. He loved to drink wine, and was very quarrelsome; and used to say, that if ever he became king, he would treat the Saxon English worse than they had ever been treated before: so nobody but the Normans cared for him. But he never came to be king, as I will tell you.

He had been with his father into Normandy, and

D

when they were to return, instead of coming in the same ship with his father, he chose to come in one where there were a number of foolish young people like himself. They amused themselves so long ashore, drinking before they set off, that they were a great way behind the king, who got safe to England. The prince and his companions had drank so much wine, that they did not know what they were about, so that the ship ran on a rock, and, not being able to manage the vessel properly, they were all drowned. I have read that Prince William might have been saved, but he tried to save a lady, who was his near relation, and in trying to save her he was drowned himself; and this is the only good thing I know about Prince William. You may think how sorry King Henry was to hear that his only son was drowned.

Indeed, I have read that nobody ever saw him smile afterwards. He had lost his good wife, and his only son, and now he had nobody to love but his daughter Maude.

When Maude was very young, she was married to the Emperor of Germany, called Henry the Fifth ; but he died very soon: however, people always called her the Empress Maude. And then her father made her marry a gentleman, named Geoffrey, who was Count or Earl of Anjou; and she had three sons, after which Count Geoffrey died.

Now I told you King Henry Beauclerc was very fond of his daughter. Her eldest son was named Henry, after him, and he meant that his daughter Maude should be Queen of England after he died, and that her little Henry should be the next king.

But he was afraid that the Norman barons would not like to obey either a woman or a little child, and that they would make his nephew Stephen, who was

a grown-up man, king instead; and he did everything in his power to make all the barons promise to make Maude queen after his death. But they would not all promise; and I am sorry to say that some of those who did forgot it as soon as he was dead, and took the part of Stephen, as I will tell you by and bye.

While Henry was busy, doing all he could to make his daughter queen, he died.

I must tell you the cause of his death; for I think it is a good lesson to all of us. He had been told by the physicians that he ought not to eat too much, but one day that a favourite dish, I have read that it was potted lampreys, came to table, he ate such a quantity that it made him ill, and so he died, after he had been king thirty-five years.

CHAPTER XVII.

STEPHEN.-1135 to 1154.

How Stephen was made king; and of the civil wars in his reign.

As soon as King Henry the First was dead, his nephew Stephen, who was very handsome, and brave, and good-natured, was made king. A great many Norman barons, and English lords and bishops, went with him to Westminster Abbey, and there the Archbishop of Canterbury put a crown upon his head, and they all promised to obey him as their king. But the other barons, and lords, and bishops, who, as I told you before, had promised to obey the Empress Maude

as Queen of England, and to keep the kingdom for her young son Henry, sent to fetch them from Anjou, which was their own country, and tried to make her queen. I am sorry to say that the friends of Stephen and the friends of Maude began to fight, and never ceased for fifteen years.

This fighting was very mischievous to the country; whole towns were destroyed by it; and while the war between Stephen and Maude lasted, the corn-fields were laid waste, so that many people died for want of bread; the flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were killed, or died for want of care; the trees were cut down, and nobody planted young ones; and there was nothing but misery from one end of the kingdom to the other. This sort of war between two parties in the same country is called civil war, and it is the most dreadful of all.

If strangers come to fight, and all the people of a country join to drive them away, the mischief they may have done is soon repaired; and the people of a country love one another the better because they have been defending one another.

But in a civil war, when people in the same country fight, it is not so. The very next door neighbours may take different sides, and then the mischief they may do one another will be always remembered, and they will dislike one another even after peace is made.

I have heard things so dreadful about civil wars, you would hardly believe them. It is said even that two brothers have taken different parts in a civil war, and that when there was a battle, it has happened that one brother has killed the other, and when he found out what he had done, he was ready to kill himself

with grief. Only think how dreadful such a thing is, and how sorry the father and mother of those brothers must have been!

These sad wars lasted more than fifteen years: at last everybody got tired of them, and it was settled by some of the wisest of the barons and bishops that Stephen should be king as long as he lived; that Maude should go to her own country; and that when Stephen died, her son Henry should be king of England.

Stephen did not live very long after this agreement was made. He had some very good qualities, but the wars, which troubled all England while he reigned, prevented their being of much use. He was King of England for nineteen years.

CHAPTER XVIII.

HENRY II.-1154 to 1189.

How Henry the Second did many good things for England; how the gentry went hawking; how Strongbow conquered a great part of Ireland; and how the kings of Scotland became underkings to the kings of England.

WE have so much to learn about King Henry the Second, that I think I must divide the account of his reign into two chapters.

In the first, I will write all the best things I remember; and in the last, all the bad. Some things that are middling will be at the end of the good, and some at the end of the bad chapter.

It was a glad day for England when young Henry,