Hitherto I have not been able to learn any thing concerning Henry's _Household_, or the internal disposition of his Family. He appears himself to have lived in a great degree of familiarity with his Courtiers, whom he honoured with his intimacy; and would frequently unbend, and lay aside the King, and was fond of the _desipere in loco_. But "his good humour and jocularity," says Lord Lyttelton, "seems to have been sometimes too _playful in the eye of the public_; and to have carried him into things that were _infra_ _dignitatem_[131]." In a note on this passage, his Lordship gives a pleasant story, which I shall relate, to relieve the Reader, and certainly cannot do it better than in his Lordship's own words, from Fitz-Stephen's Life of Archbishop Becket. "As the King and Becket, his Chancellor[132], were riding together through the streets of London, in cold and stormy weather, the King saw, coming towards them, a poor old man, in a thin coat, worn to tatters. Would it not be a great charity (said he to the Chancellor) to give this naked wretch, who is so needy and infirm, a good warm cloak? Certainly, answered that Minister; and you do the duty of a King, in turning your eyes and thoughts to such objects. While they were thus talking, the man came near; the King asked him if he wished to have a good cloak? and, turning to the Chancellor, said,--_You shall have the merit of this good deed of charity_; then suddenly laying hold on a fine new scarlet cloak, lined with fur, which Becket had on, he tried to pull it from him, and, after some struggle, in which they had both like to have fallen from their horses, prevailed. The poor man had the cloak, and the Courtiers laughed, like good Courtiers, at the pleasantry of the King[133]." [131] Life of Henry II. vol. iii. p. 40. [132] He was not then Archbishop. [133] Life of Henry II. vol. iii. p. 311. King Henry II. in the early part of his life, was in a very doubtful situation with regard to his accession to the Crown of England, which depended upon the success of his Mother, the Empress, against the Usurper, King Stephen. As soon, however, as he attained his _sixteenth_ year, A. D. 1149, he came over into England; and at Carlisle, where his Great Uncle David, King of Scots, then lay, was by him made a Knight, among several others of equal age, at the feast of Pentecost[134], and for which no _Aid_ could be demanded. [134] Gervas. Dorob. inter Decem Scriptores, col. 1366. His issue, which is all that concerns the matter before us, consisted of four Sons: Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, and John; and three Daughters, Maud, Alianor, and Joan.