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nearly wrecked. The monarch's reception in England, however, was quite sufficient to obliterate all recollections of the discomforts of the sea. At Winchester, to which he immediately turned his steps, the nobles and prelates of the land gathered round him from every part of the kingdom. All men felt that they were delivered from an intolerable yoke all but those who had plunged deeply into the rapine and corruptions of the times, rejoiced at the prospect of restored tranquillity; and all, either sincerely or hypocritically, hailed Henry as a benefactor and deliverer. His journey from Winchester to London was a continual triumph, of the most glorious, because of the most bloodless kind. The citizens of the capital received him with joy and acclamations; and on the nineteenth of December, 1154, Henry and Eleanor were crowned in the Abbey of Westminster, without any condition being presented to the monarch, or any terms being wrung from him, but simply upon his taking the oath usually administered to the ancient Kings of England.

Thus was raised to the throne of this country, Henry the Second, not only the first of the Plantagenet line of our kings, but the first who really looked upon himself as King of the English people, since the overthrow of Harold. He had many

advantages on ascending the throne: he was a direct descendant both of the Saxon and Norman kings of England, but he was neither a Norman

nor a Saxon, and was without the peculiar prejudice of either. William the First, with the exception of a short period at the commencement of his reign, governed England as a foreign conqueror, and we can only regard as his people, those Norman nobles whose swords upheld him. William Rufus was even more distinguished than any of his race as a Norman tyrant; and Henry the First, though a wise and politic prince, and far superior to his predecessor, still treated England as a tributary country, to be drained of its treasures, and to contribute its forces of all kinds to augment the possessions of his family on the continent. He was still merely King of the Normans in England, like all his predecessors; and as I have before said, the race of the English Kings may be looked upon as commencing with Henry the Second; for the turbulent reign of Stephen can hardly be considered as affording any means of judging in what way his affections might have turned, had he been left free to act the monarch of a united land. As it was, he seldom if ever reigned over more than one half of the country at once; and where he did reign, he was a king of foreign mercenaries, and not of the English nation.

I have now given a brief, and very imperfect view of the state of this country, just before the birth of Richard the First, and of the events which through a long series of changing fortunes, placed the family of Plantagenet upon the throne of Eng

land. I must next proceed to speak of what followed immediately after the birth of that monarch, though of course his own individual acts can form no part of the tale during those years of infancy, in the course of which the lives of few men afford any matter of interest, and respecting which authentic records are in almost all cases extremely scanty. It may be well therefore to continue this sketch of the general history of the country, and of the provinces then joined with it under one sceptre, till such time as Richard began to take an active part in the affairs of life, when it will be time to relate all that we know of his younger days.

We have seen that Eleanor had borne her husband one son in France, who was named William; and shortly after his accession to the throne, the Queen, who was pregnant at the time of their tempestuous voyage to England, was delivered in the city of London of a second son, named Henry, in March 1155. Amongst the first proceedings of Henry the Second, was to settle the succession of the crown upon these two sons; and the lay and spiritual Barons assembled in Parliament at Wallingford, took the oath of fealty accordingly. Not the slightest difficulty was made on the part of the Barons to the performance of this act; for Henry, since his accession, had fully maintained his popularity, even while he had taken measures for correcting abuses and remedying evils, which struck

many a severe blow at those who had unjustly profited by the disturbances of the last reign.

The most popular of these measures he began with first; namely, the dismissal of all the mercenaries; which was carried through with the consent and approbation of Parliament as then constituted. There were great murmurs, and apparently some indecent threatenings on the part of the foreign troops; but the King's order for them to quit the country was obeyed without resistance, though to the leaders Stephen had granted immense possessions, especially to William of Ipres, whom he had created Earl of Kent. All these grants were now resumed; and stripped of every thing but their moveable wealth, which their dissolute habits probably rendered comparatively small, the mercenary captains quitted a country which they had desolated, and more than one retired in despair to a monastery.

The demolition of the fortresses which had been left by Stephen, remained to be accomplished, and this was also done without any serious difficulty or resistance: but a more dangerous task was next undertaken by Henry, which was, the resumption of those crown lands which had been alienated both by Stephen and Matilda. It was held to be a fundamental principle of the monarchy, that all the ancient demesne lands of the crown were inalienable, and consequently all these grants were contrary to law. No length of possession could render them

valid, and the maintenance of the royal dignity required a revenue which could not be supplied without them. But still Henry had to consider that there was scarcely a great Baron in the empire who would not be more or less damaged by their resumption, and he might very well expect opposition, from first to last, in the council and in the field.

He was prompted to undertake the resumption, however, not only by the duty of vindicating the law, but by the necessities of the crown, and by his own disposition, which was of a grasping nature; and upon the whole, the resistance that he met with was very much less than might have been expected. His first step in the proceeding was to lay the matter before the great council of the nation; and although in this council sat a great many persons who were to suffer from the measure he proposed, yet he succeeded in obtaining the consent of that assembly. In conducting this proceeding, however, Henry shewed a much greater acquaintance with human nature, and the springs which moved the politics of that day, than Stephen ever displayed. In resuming the grants he proposed to make an exception in favour of the clergy. The superstitious devotion of the times prevented the lay Barons from murmuring at this as an act of unlawful partiality, and the Clergy were all eager and desirous that a proceeding should take place, marked by an exception in their favour, which confirmed in the strongest manner a principle

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