First, he demanded that his young wife, Margaret, the French King’s
daughter, should be crowned as well as he. His father, the King,
consented, and it was done. It was no sooner done, than he demanded to
have a part of his father’s dominions, during his father’s life. This
being refused, he made off from his father in the night, with his bad
heart full of bitterness, and took refuge at the French King’s Court.
Within a day or two, his brothers Richard and Geoffrey followed. Their
mother tried to join them—escaping in man’s clothes—but she was seized
by King Henry’s men, and immured in prison, where she lay, deservedly,
for sixteen years. Every day, however, some grasping English noblemen,
to whom the King’s protection of his people from their avarice and
oppression had given offence, deserted him and joined the Princes.
Every day he heard some fresh intelligence of the Princes levying
armies against him; of Prince Henry’s wearing a crown before his own
ambassadors at the French Court, and being called the Junior King of
England; of all the Princes swearing never to make peace with him,
their father, without the consent and approval of the Barons of France.
But, with his fortitude and energy unshaken, King Henry met the shock
of these disasters with a resolved and cheerful face. He called upon
all Royal fathers who had sons, to help him, for his cause was theirs;
he hired, out of his riches, twenty thousand men to fight the false
French King, who stirred his own blood against him; and he carried on
the war with such vigour, that Louis soon proposed a conference to
treat for peace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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