Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward IIYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Great Britain -- History -- Anecdotes
His complaints were echoed by Richard and Geoffrey, who were with their
mother in Aquitaine. Richard had received investiture of the county of
Poitiers, but the entire authority was in the hands of Castellanes,
appointed by his father, and the proud natives were stirring up the
young prince to shake off the bondage in which he, like them, was held.
Geoffrey, though only fifteen, thought himself aggrieved by not having
yet received his wife’s duchy of Brittany, and positively refused to pay
homage for it to his eldest brother, when newly crowned to repair the
irregularity of his first coronation, and for this opposition the
high-spirited Bretons forgave his Angevin blood, and looked on him as
their champion. The boys’ discontents were aggravated by their mother,
and the state of feeling was so well known in the South, that when
Henry and his eldest son came to Limoges to receive the homage of Count
Raymond of Toulouse, that noble, on coming to the part of the oath of
fealty where he was engaged to counsel his lord against his enemies,
added, “I should warn you to secure your castles of Poitou and
Aquitaine, and to mistrust your wife and sons.”
Henry, who was aware of the danger, under pretext of hunting, visited
his principal fortresses, and, to guard against the evil designs of his
son Henry, caused him to sleep in his own bedroom. At Chinon, however,
the youth contrived to elude his vigilance, stole away, and escaped to
Paris, where he was received in a manner that reflects great discredit
on the French monarch.
When the elder Henry sent to Paris to desire the restoration of the
fugitive, the messengers found him royally robed, and seated by the side
of the French King, who received them, asking from whom they came.
“From Henry, King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of
Anjou and Maine.”
“That is not true. Here sits Henry, King of England, who has no message
to send me by you. But if you mean his father, the late King of England,
he has been dead ever since his son has worn the crown; and if he still
pretends to be a king, I will soon find a cure.”
Young Henry adopted a great seal, and wrote letters to the Pope, his
mother, and brothers, exciting them against his father, and putting
forth a manifesto declaring that he could not leave unpunished the death
of “his foster-father, the glorious martyr St. Thomas of Canterbury,
whose blood was crying out for vengeance.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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