under no sort of control; they would enter the houses of the farmers and peasants, without any permission, to eat and drink whatever they could find, never offering to pay for it, and insulting the owners and their wives and daughters in every shameful way. Out of mere insolence and cruelty, whatever they could not eat they would carry off and sell, or even burn, and what remained of the liquor which they could not drink they would wash their horses' legs with. Henry, at any rate, after a time, put a stop to this, and punished some of the offenders very severely; but it appears the country people were still compelled to furnish certain things for the court without being paid for them.

tion of the

32. Still, on the whole, the English people were decidedly better off now than they had been under the two former kings. They began to be of more importance, and to feel Improvement that they were so. Besides their having learnt to in the condi- fight and to stand their ground against the French, English. there was another thing which helped them. This was, that the towns began to be larger, and richer, and of more consequence. Almost all the people in the towns were English, and by degrees they got a great many privileges, London especially; they were free from many of the taxes and the oppressions of the country, and they were allowed in many ways to govern themselves, as they are now. So that though there were still many troubles, things were improving, and if Henry had left behind him a son as strong and sensible as himself, England would have begun to hold up her head again.

ous.

33. But a bitter misfortune befell the king. His wife Matilda, who died in 1118, had left him but one son and one daughter. The young prince, her son, was gay and wild, but he 1120. had in him the germs of something brave and generDeath of the king's son. He was but nineteen, and might, it was to be hoped, grow into a wise man under his father's training and example. But in crossing over from France into England his vessel was wrecked. He with his young and jovial companions, and his half-sister, in trying to save whom he gave up his own life, all perished together. Only one poor man of all the gallant ship-load reached the land in safety. The king's happy days. were all over now; they say he never smiled again. Though he afterwards married another lady, he had no second son.

34. He now tried to make his daughter Matilda or Maude his heir. This would have been very difficult in any case, as it was

Maude.

an unheard-of thing, either in England or France, for a woman to reign; and what in the end made it The Empress really impossible was, that Maude was a very proud, arrogant, and unpopular woman, not at all like her mother. She had been married to the Emperor of Germany, but was now a widow. Her father next made her marry a French prince, the Count of Anjou. He then caused all the barons to swear that she should be queen, and they would be faithful to her after her father's death. The first who swore the oath was her cousin Stephen, son of Henry's sister Adela.

35. Soon after these things were fairly settled, as he hoped, Henry died in France, but was brought to England to be buried. That year there had been an eclipse of the sun. "Men were greatly wonder-stricken and affrighted, and said that a great thing should come thereafter. So it did, for that same year the king died."

1135. Death of

Henry.

No sooner was he dead than his strong hand was missed. "Every man that could," says the 'Chronicle," "forthwith robbed another." And if people had thought him stern, and complained of the taxes in his time, they very soon wished him back again. For now came a time of such dreadful misery and trouble as had never yet been known.

36. First of all, instead of peace, came war. Though all the lords had sworn that they would support Matilda, many of them at once deserted her. Her cousin Stephen, in spite

Stephen.

She was haughty

He was ready to

of his oaths, came forward as a candidate for the throne. He was a great contrast to Matilda. and overbearing; he was gay and pleasant. joke and feast with anybody, even quite low people, and to make kind promises to any one, though he very seldom fulfilled them. In fact, he must have been rather like his uncle Robert. But a great many people in England took his part, among others, the men of London, who were grown so important now as to be looked upon almost as nobles.

Civil war.

37. Matilda, on her side, had her uncle the King of Scotland, her half-brother the Earl of Gloucester (an illegitimate. son of Henry), and a great many nobles. The Scotch army was soon beaten, but the Earl of Gloucester was not so easily put down. He seems to have been a very courageous and clever man, and most faithful to his sister's cause. But as Stephen was first in the field, he was crowned king, and Matilda could never get herself crowned queen. So this is called the reign of Stephen, though it was hardly a reign really, but a constant war.

38. Like the other kings, he made good promises of justice, mercy, and favour to the Church, and, in particular, he promised to the people the laws of Edward the Confessor. Though Edward the Confessor had not made any special laws, his reign was always looked back to by the English people as the last one when they had been peaceably governed by their own old national law, and they always wished their new kings to be like Edward, whose weak points were now quite forgotten. But Stephen never kept these promises; perhaps he could not. The misery of the people reached its height while he was called king.

Miseries.

Then they

39. Even had there not been the civil war, there was now no one who could keep the barons in order. Innumerable new castles were built, each a den of tyrants and robbers. The account of this period, given in the Chronicle,' is one of the most terrible pages in English history, and we must read it as it stands there if we wish to realize it. All other words would seem poor and cold in comparison. The iron had entered into the soul of the man who wrote this. "They filled the land full of castles. They greatly oppressed the wretched people by making them work at these castles; and when the castles were finished they filled them with devils and evil men. took those whom they suspected to have any goods, by night and by day, seizing both men and women, and they put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with pains unspeakable, for never were any martyrs tormented as these were." Then he gives a most piercing description of the horrible tortures that were invented to force these innocent prisoners to give up their goods. After that he adds, "Many thousands they exhausted with hunger. I cannot and I may not tell of all the wounds and all the tortures that they inflicted upon the wretched men of this land; and this state of things lasted the nineteen years that Stephen was king, and ever grew worse and worse. . . . Then was corn dear, and flesh, and cheese, and butter, for there was none in the land; wretched men starved with hunger; some lived on alms who had erewhile been rich; some fled the country; never was there more misery, and never acted heathens worse than these. At length they spared neither church nor churchyard, but they took all that was valuable therein, and then burned the church and all together. . . . The bishops and clergy were ever cursing them, but this to them was nothing, for they were all accursed and foresworn and reprobate. The earth bare no corn, you might as well have tilled the sea,-for the land was all ruined by such deeds; and it was said openly that Christ and His saints slept."

40. We must pass over the history of the battles and sieges. It is not of much interest which of the two parties got the better for the time. Once both Stephen and the Earl of Gloucester were in prison. Once Matilda herself was nearly made prisoner, and had to escape on foot through the snow, clad in white that she might not be seen. And so it went on through those wretched years, till at last every one was worn out, The peace. and through the exertions of the bishops and the Pope's legate a peace was made.

41. Stephen was to remain king for his life. Matilda was never to be made queen; but she received, what, probably, she valued more, the promise that her son should be king in his turn; for with all her faults she seems to have been a good mother. Stephen had lost his only son, and Matilda's son, who had been an infant when his grandfather died, was now a grown young man, and one of whom we have much to hear. For the present Stephen adopted him as his son and heir, and the land was at peace.

42. Great plans were now made for reform: the soldiers were to be sent home; the knights were to turn their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; the desolate country was to be cultivated again; oxen, cows, and sheep were to be given to the poor farmers; thieves and robbers were to be hanged, and many other good resolutions were made. Stephen did not live long enough to carry them out, even if he wished to do so. He died the next year.

1154.

But

LECTURE XVIII.-HENRY PLANTAGENET.

Character of Henry. His marriage. His dominions. Distinction between English and Normans disappears. Destruction of the castles. Condition of Ireland. The Conquest.

1. WE are at last about to lose the company of our faithful friend, the Anglo-Saxon 'Chronicle,' which has been our guide and teacher through so many centuries, but which now comes to an end suddenly. No one wrote any more English books of any sort, except a few sermons and such like, for fifty years, though there are very good ones in Latin.

We shall not easily forget the terrible description of the times of Stephen and Matilda, written by the last of the "chroniclers; " but it is a consolation to think that before he finally laid down his pen the dawn of better days had appeared. Some of the latest words in the 'Chronicle' are about Henry, the son of Matilda, who was to be the king after Stephen. "All folk loved him, for he did good justice and made peace." Thus England began to lift up her head in hope.

1154. Henry's character.

2. Henry II. had a long reign of thirty-five years, and many most important and interesting things happened in those years. The man himself is also very interesting. He was clever, like his grandfather, Henry I., and well brought up. His education had been looked after by his brave uncle, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, who was as good a scholar as he was a soldier, if we may believe what his learned friends, of whom William of Malmesbury was one, say of him. There is a curious letter written about Henry by a man who knew him very well, and who had been tutor to another king, the King of Sicily. He says this latter had learned a good deal, but as soon as his tutor went away "he threw away his books, and gave himself up to the usual idleness of palaces." Henry II. was very different from this. He never left off the habit of private reading, and he surrounded himself with learned men, and delighted in conversing with them on difficult and