England under the Angevin Kings, Volume IINorgate, Kate
History
England under the Angevin Kings, Volume II
Norgate, Kate
Anjou, House of; England -- Civilization -- 1066-1485; Great Britain -- History -- Angevin period, 1154-1216
of Angoulême himself to give up his capital city and his castle of
Montignac in Périgord;[1011] and at Whitsuntide Richard went to report
his success with his own lips to his delighted father in England.[1012]
[1006] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 206, 207. R. Diceto as above,
p. 426.
[1007] R. Diceto as above.
[1008] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 207.
[1009] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 212, 213.
[1010] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 431, 432. Cf. _Gesta
Hen._ as above, p. 213, and Rob. Torigni, a. 1179.
[1011] _Gesta Hen._ as above.
[1012] _Ibid._ R. Diceto as above, p. 432.
He returned shortly before Michaelmas,[1013] to witness the opening
of a new phase in the relations between the Angevin house and the
French Crown. Philip of France, the only son of Louis VII., was now
fourteen years old, and his father was desirous to have him crowned
king. Before the appointed day arrived, however, he fell sick almost to
death.[1014] Louis, half wild with anxiety, dreamed that the martyr
of Canterbury required him to visit his shrine as a condition of the
boy’s recovery.[1015] He hurried across the Channel; Henry met him at
Dover and conducted him to Canterbury, where they both spent three days
in fasting and prayer before the shrine; and on the fourth day after
his landing Louis re-entered his own country, to find that his prayers
were answered.[1016] His brief visit was long remembered in England,
where no king of France had ever been seen before,[1017] or was ever
seen again save when John the Good was brought there as a prisoner in
the days of Edward III. Scarcely, however, had Philip recovered when
Louis himself was stricken down by paralysis.[1018] This calamity made
him all the more anxious for his son’s coronation, which took place at
Reims on All Saints’ day. The archbishop of the province--a brother of
Queen Adela--performed the rite, assisted by nearly all the bishops of
Gaul; all the great vassals of the kingdom were present, among them
the young King Henry, who in his capacity of duke of Normandy carried
the crown before his youthful overlord in the procession to and from
the cathedral church, as Count Philip of Flanders carried the sword of
state.[1019] Like the crowning of young Henry himself, the crowning
of Philip Augustus proved to be a beginning of troubles. His father’s
helpless condition left the boy-king to fall under the influence of
whatever counsellor could first get at his ear. That one happened to be
his godfather, Philip of Flanders; and the policy of Flanders was to
get the boy entirely under his own control by setting him against all
his father’s old friends,[1020] and even against his mother, whom he
tried to rob of her dower-lands and persecuted to such a degree that
she was compelled to leave his domains and fly to her brothers for
the protection which her husband was powerless to give her.[1021] The
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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