In the following year the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin roused the wrath of all Christendom, and the kings of England and France, with the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, pledged themselves to a new crusade, 1188. The funds were raised by an oppressive tax, called the tithe of Saladin." But a quarrel arose between Henry and Philip Augustus about prince Richard's claims to be declared heir to all his father's dominions; and Richard, even to his father's face, professed his allegiance to the French king, and did him. homage for the English provinces in France, Nov. 18, 1188. The war which ensued was ended by a peace disadvantageous to Henry, 1189; but the last drop in his cup of bitterness was added by the discovery that his favourite son, John, had been in the league against him. The broken-hearted father cursed his children and the day of his own birth. His health yielded to his sorrows, and he died of a lingering fever at the castle of Chinon, near Saumur, in the 58th year of his age and the 34th of his reign. His natural son, Geoffrey, attended his corpse to the abbey of Fontevraud, and, as it lay there in state, Richard came to gaze upon his father's remains. The old chronicler Matthew of Paris tells how a flow of blood from the nostrils of the corpse was taken as a sign of indignation by Richard, who expressed the deepest remorse for the undutiful conduct which had brought his father to the grave.

Henry was one of the greatest of the English kings. He was richly gifted in person and in mind, and he used his gifts with energy. Though not free from the vices of his race, violence and dissimulation, he governed justly, and carried England a great step onward towards the settlement of her constitution.

He had five sons by his wife Eleanor; William, who died in 1156; Henry, who died in 1183; RICHARD; Geoffrey, who died in 1186; and JOHN. Only Richard and John survived him, and occupied, in succession, the throne of England. He had several natural children; and his intrigue with "the Fair Rosamond gave rise afterwards to the fabulous story of her concealment in the labyrinth of Woodstock, and her discovery and murder by the jealous Eleanor. Of Rosamond's two sons, the elder, William, surnamed Longsword, married the daughter of the earl of Salisbury; and Geoffrey, the younger, became bishop of Lincoln and archbishop of York.

THE HOUSE OF PLANTAGENET-continued.

RICHARD I.; JOHN. A.D. 1189-1216.

RICHARD I. (1189-1199), surnamed CŒUR-DE-LION (the Lionhearted), was born at Oxford, Sept. 13, 1157. He had possessed his mother's duchy of Aquitaine and county of Poitou for several years before the death of Henry II. called him to the throne of England. The sincerity of the grief which he showed at his father's tomb was proved by his retaining his trusted counsellors; while he showed his respect for his mother by releasing her from captivity, and his affection for his brother John by the gift, afterwards so ill-requited, of honours and estates.

The ten years' reign of Richard was divided into two nearly

equal parts, during the first of which he was absent in the East, and during the second he was chiefly engaged in war on the Continent.

The day of his coronation, Sept. 3, 1189, was marked by a great massacre of the Jews, who had presumed to show themselves in public contrary to the king's orders. There were similar massacres in the following year, especially at York, and the king took severe measures to repress such outrages; but the persecution of the Jews was constantly renewed under the Plantagenet kings. Richard returned to Normandy in December, after filling up some bishoprics and appointing his mother regent.

His whole mind was now given to the Crusade, into which he had been one of the first to enter, and to which Henry had been pledged. Such an enterprise suited him far better than the cares of government. His prodigious strength, his dauntless courage, his military capacity, and his poetic devotion to the honours of chivalry, all combined with the generous enthusiasm of his temper to make him the pattern of a chevalier rather than of a king. From the very first the welfare of his kingdom was sacrificed to this enterprise. Funds were raised by the sale of high offices, as well as of the revenues of the crown; and he even gave up to the king of Scotland, for the small sum of 10,000 marks, the claim of homage which Henry had exacted from him, and the fortresses of Berwick and Roxburgh, the keys of the kingdom.

In April, 1190, he set sail from Dartmouth to meet Philip Augustus at the rendezvous of Vezelay, on the borders of Burgundy, where the united forces amounted to 100,000 men. Rejoining his fleet at Marseilles, he was driven by stress of weather to winter at Messina, where he was joined by Berengaria, the daughter of the king of Navarre, who accompanied him to Palestine, after their marriage on May 12, 1191. On his voyage he took Cyprus, to avenge an insult from its sovereign.

The story of the THIRD CRUSADE (1191-1192) belongs rather to the romance of Richard's life than to the history of England. To him was chiefly due the capture of Acre, which had been besieged for two years in vain (July 12, 1191). But in the very hour of victory he gave duke Leopold of Austria the affront which was afterwards so meanly avenged; and Philip Augustus, jealous of being eclipsed by Richard, set sail from Acre homewards on July 31st. Amidst tremendous losses Richard marched along the coast to Ascalon, which he took; and he had twice advanced towards Jerusalem, when he found that his unaided efforts were not equal to the enterprise. He made a truce with Saladin, on the terms that Acre, Joppa, and a portion of the sea-coast should belong

to the Christians, and that pilgrims to Jerusalem should be unmolested, Aug. 1192.

Richard's decision had been greatly influenced by the tidings that his brother John was plotting to seize his kingdom, with the support of Philip Augustus. He sailed from Acre on the 9th of October, and, to avoid passing through France, he took his route by the Adriatic, near the head of which sea he was shipwrecked. He set out on his journey through Germany as a pilgrim; but his disguise was discovered at Vienna, and his old enemy, Leopold duke of Austria, arrested him (Dec. 20, 1192), but gave him up on the demand of the emperor Henry VI., who imprisoned him in a castle in the Tyrol. The beautiful legend of his discovery by the minstrel Blondel belongs to a romance of the 13th century. Richard was brought by the emperor efore a diet at Worms (May 20, 1193), where the German princes condemned the conduct of the emperor, whom the pope threatened to excommunicate; and Richard recovered his liberty for a ransom of 150,000 marks.

Meanwhile the news had excited in England an indignation which extended to Richard's enemies at home. Having made a treaty to profit by the king's captivity, Philip Augustus and John began hostilities. The French king was repulsed in Normandy; while John was forced to conclude a truce with the justiciaries who governed England in Richard's absence. He was warned of his brother's return by a letter from Philip in these words: Take heed to yourself, the devil is broken loose. All his possessions in England were forfeited by a great council of the barons.

The king sailed from the Scheld, with a fleet sent from England to convoy him, just in time to escape the emissaries of the emperor, who had resolved to recapture him, and landed at Sandwich March 13, 1194. After being crowned a second time at Winchester 'April 17), and forgiving his brother John, he passed over into Normandy to avenge himself on the French king. The desultory war which followed was concluded by a truce for five years, Jan. 13, 1199. But three months had not elapsed when Richard ended his brilliant but comparatively useless career by an inglorious death. He was besieging a rebellious vassal in his castle of Chalus, in Poitou, when he was wounded by an arrow in the shoulder, and an unskilful surgeon made the hurt mortal. The castle being taken, the archer, Gourdon, was brought before the king, and defied him to do all that his revenge prompted. Pleased with his boldness, Richard ordered him to be set free, with a sum of money as a present; but the order was disobeyed, and Gourdon was flayed alive and then hanged. The king, who had no children, and who had always treated Arthur, the son of his brother Geoffrey,

as his heir, was induced by his mother to acknowledge John as his successor; and he died on the 8th of April, 1199, in the 10th year of his reign and the 42nd of his age. He was buried at Fontevraud.

Such a character as Richard's may well be surrendered to the romancer, in whose pages the almost savage grandeur of the warrior is softened by traits of generosity, and adorned by the graces of minstrelsy, in which Richard was a proficient. But history must not fail to record the miseries of the kingdom, abandoned to disorder, and ground down by the expenses of the king's wars and of his ransom. It was reserved for the following reign to reap the memorable fruits of this period of transition.

JOHN (1199-1216), the youngest son of Henry II., was surnamed LACKLAND (Sans Terre), from the circumstance of his having no share in those possessions of the crown with which his brothers were richly endowed; for he had lost the government of Ireland by his own folly. He was crowned at Westminster on the 27th of May, and he set out immediately for France, to resist a movement in favour of his nephew Arthur, duke of Brittany, who claimed the English crown as the son of his elder brother, Geoffrey. This illfated young prince was in the hands of Philip Augustus, who wished to use him as the means of weakening John and wresting from him his continental dominions. But Arthur's mother, Constance, being jealous of the designs of the French king, carried off her son from Paris, and caused him to submit to John, who was soon after acknowledged as king by Philip, May 23, 1200.

John now remained in England for more than a year, during which time he divorced his wife, the grand-daughter of the renowned Robert earl of Gloucester, and married Isabella of Angoulême, the betrothed bride of Hugh Lusignan, count of Marche. He also received the homage of the king of Scotland at Lincoln (Nov. 22, 1200).

In the following summer (1201) John visited the king of France, and tried in vain to induce him to give up the cause of Arthur. The English barons also, discontented with John's government, appealed to Philip as his suzerain. A fresh war broke out, in which Arthur openly joined the French, and was taken by John, with many of his principal adherents (July 31, 1202). Arthur was first imprisoned in the castle of Falaise, but afterwards removed to Rouen, where John is said to have stabbed him with his own hand, and then to have thrown his body into the Seine (1203).

The murder of Arthur ruined John in France. Neglecting the citation of Philip, as his suzerain, to answer for the crime, he was condemned as a traitor and parricide, and was adjudged to have