Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies. Volume IAnonymous
History
Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies. Volume I
Anonymous
Great Britain -- Biography
feel most keenly was Henry's detention of Alice, the sister of the
French king, who many years before had been affianced to Richard, and
his refusal to allow their marriage to take place. He professed to wish
to marry her to his youngest son John; but it was suspected that he
loved the young and beautiful princess himself, and that her heart, too,
was his. Now, however, he offered to resign everything, Alice included;
he proposed that she should, in the meantime, be placed in such custody
as might be thought fittest, and delivered either to Richard or Philip,
on their return from their projected expedition to the Holy Land. The
French princess, we may mention, after all was not married to Richard.
Though he had demanded her so clamorously before, when he became king he
refused to have her; and she eventually became the wife of William Earl
of Aumale and Ponthieu, by whom she had a daughter, who married
Ferdinand III. King of Castile, and was the mother of Eleanor, the queen
of our Edward I. Henry and Philip met to arrange a peace on the 28th of
June, 1189, on a plain between Tours and Azay-sur-Cher. Henry agreed to
everything that was demanded of him. He became very ill before the
conference closed, and was carried from the place in a litter to his
quarters, where a few days after the articles of the treaty were sent to
him for his ratification. They were read to him one by one as he lay on
his bed; and when he had heard the one which secured from punishment all
who had been engaged on the side of Richard in the late war, either
openly or secretly, and allowed them, although they had hitherto been
his own subjects, liberty to continue the vassals of his son, he asked
how many and who were the persons whose faith and allegiance he would
thus have to lose. The first that was named to him was his youngest son
John, his favourite son, of whose affection and fidelity he had never
had a doubt, for whose sake, in great part, it had been that he had
resisted the demands of Richard, and brought himself to the state in
which he was. When he heard it pronounced he raised himself convulsively
half up in the bed, and, with a wild look, asked if it was true that
this son, whom he had so loved and trusted, for whom he had done and
suffered so much, had actually deserted him. He was assured that so it
was. He then fell back, and, turning his face to the wall, said, "Well,
then! henceforth let all things go as they may; I care nothing more
about myself or the world." A few days after he was removed to the
Castle of Chinon, and there, on the 6th of July, he breathed his last.
Geoffrey, his son by Rosamund Clifford, was with him to the end.
ROGER BACON
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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