Philip succeeded Louis, King of France. He followed closely the plan of his predecessor, to reduce the great vassals, and the King of England, who was the greatest of them; but he followed it with far more skill and vigor, though he made use of the same instruments in the work. He revived the spirit of rebellion in the princes, Henry's sons. These young princes were never in harmony with each other but in a confederacy against their father, and the father had no recourse but in the melancholy safety derived from the disunion of his children. This he thought it expedient to increase; but such policy, when discovered, has always a dangerous effect. The sons, having just quarrelled enough to give room for an explanation of each other's designs, and to display those of their father, enter into a new conspiracy. In the midst of these motions the young king dies, and showed at his death such signs of a sincere repentance as served to revive the old king's tenderness, and to take away all comfort for his loss. The death of his third son, Geoffrey, followed close upon the heels of this funeral. He died at Paris, whither he had gone to concert measures against his father. Richard and John remained. Richard, fiery, restless, ambitious, openly took up arms, and pursued the war with implacable rancor, and such success as drove the king, in the decline of his life, to a dishonorable treaty; nor was he then content, but excited new troubles. John was his youngest and favorite child; in him he reposed all his hopes, and consoled himself for the undutifulness of his other sons; but after concluding the treaty with the King of France and Richard, he found too soon that John had been as deep as any in the conspiracy. This was his last wound: afflicted by his children in their deaths and harassed in their lives, mortified as a father and a king, worn down with cares and sorrows more than with years, he died, cursing his fortune, his children, and the hour of his birth. When he perceived that death approached him, by his own desire he was carried into a church and laid at the altar's foot. Hardly had he expired, when he was stripped, then forsaken by his attendants, and left a long time a naked and unheeded body in an empty church: affording a just consolation for the obscurity of a mean fortune, and an instructive lesson how little an outward greatness and enjoyments foreign to the mind contribute towards a solid felicity, in the example of one who was the greatest of kings and the unhappiest of mankind. FOOTNOTES: [78] Seld. Tithes, p. 482. [79] LL. Ethelred. Si presbyter homicida fieret, &c. [80] LL. Cnuti, 38, De Ministro Altaris Homicida. Idem, 40, De Ordinato Capitis reo. [81] LL. H.I. 57, De Querela Vicinorum; and 56 [66?]. De Ordinato qui Vitam forisfaciat, in Fœd. Alured. et Guthurn., apud Spel. Concil. 376, 1st vol.; LL. Edw. et Guthurn., 3, De Correctione Ordinatorum. CHAPTER VII. REIGN OF RICHARD I. [Sidenote: Richard I. A.D. 1189]