ceiving great veneration for any being, he probably did not possess. His whole words and actions indeed show that such was the case. His various blasphemous expressions testify that he wanted respect for the Almighty himself; and he certainly was not likely to entertain any for a body of men, who were daily convicted, as were the English priests in those times, of all sorts of crime and wickedness. It was not probable, therefore, that he should pay any great respect to their pretended privileges; but this is a very different thing from being free from superstition; and in an age when Saints and Popes were supposed to work miracles, Henry might very well apprehend evil consequences arising to himself, ill success attending his arms, or danger threatening his kingdom, from the excited indignation of that representative of Saint Peter, whom he had acknowledged, and whose personal character, as well as holy office, rendered his authority more than usually impressive.

In the early part of Henry's reign, while visiting the town of Lincoln, he had resided in the suburbs, from a superstitious dread, it would appear, of the fulfilment of some old prophecy menacing to the king who should be crowned in that city; and in this very year, we have another instance both of how great was the superstition of the age, and how completely Henry shared therein. I allude to the apprehension of some unfortunate heretics, and the cruelties to which they were subjected.

These unfortunate beings are said by some writers to have fled from France into England,* where, it would appear, they remained some time unmolested. Their chief or leader, we are told, had some portion of learning, but the rest were rude and illiterate, and we are assured that they had only contrived to make one convert in the kingdom. Nevertheless their fame had spread abroad, for we find that it had reached the remote abbey of Margan, improved by the wonders with which the superstition of the age generally decorated every novelty in religion. The annalist of that abbey describes these heretics as praying often, preaching continually, going about with bare feet, refusing to receive money of any one, eating no meat, drinking no wine, and partaking but frugally of any other sort of sustenance. The same annalist tells us, that they imitated the Apostles; and they certainly met with the fate of many of those whom they had thus adopted as types. William of Newbury furnishes an account of the principal errors into which they had fallen. They were Christians, he says, venerating the doctrine of the Apostles; but they repudiated all the sacraments, baptism, the eucharist, and marriage, and entertained other notions

* The Annales de Margan say, they came "Petragorica regionis," but others again declare that they were Germans, and of the sect called Publicans. This is the name given to them by William of Newbury, who also says that they were Germans, though he implies that the sect had its origin in Gascony.

derogatory to the faith. They would not dispute upon their tenets, nor would they yield them either to admonition or to threats.

Having been examined before Henry at Oxford, these unhappy people were condemned as heretics, and delivered over to the secular arm. The mon

arch, without remorse, ordered each to be burnt in the forehead, their leader being burnt likewise in the chin; and then all but their English convert, who abandoned them, had their clothes cut down to their waist, and their backs scourged till the blood flowed. They were thus driven out of Oxford, bearing the horrible cruelty of their persecutors with the utmost fortitude, singing, "Blessed are ye, when men hate you," and rejoicing in their sufferings. Death of the cruellest kind, however, was to be their ultimate fate; for an express proclamation of the King forbade any one to receive them into a house or to give them support, and they perished miserably of cold and hunger, having no shelter but the open fields in the midst of an inclement winter. The annals of Margan indeed inform us that these heretics worked miracles, changed water into wine, and performed other wonderful feats, which the Saints of the Roman church had rendered somewhat too common in. those days.

We find the record of another prodigy about the same period in the chronicle of Mailros, which being made with perfect gravity, may serve to show

the general superstition of the age almost as strongly as Henry's treatment of these unfortunate persons, although it does not exactly bear upon the character of the monarch. A tremendous tempest took place in the province of York, "and the old enemy," the chronicler says, "was seen by many to go before the tempest on a black horse of immense size, and to fly still towards the sea; while the thunder, and the lightning, and the hail, destroying all things, pursued him with a horrid noise. Moreover, footsteps of an enormous size are remaining from the aforesaid horse of the wicked one." These were most plainly to be seen about Scarborough, we are told, where Satan took a spring into the sea from the hill.

In the same year 1165, two comets were seen, from which portent many evils were anticipated; but the apparition the most baneful to England which that year witnessed, was in the birth of a son to the King of France. He received the name of Philip at his baptism, to which was afterwards joined, not undeservedly, that of Augustus; and in him appeared one of the most successful enemies that the Kings of England ever encountered. Henry, indeed, could not anticipate the greatness of the future sovereign, nor the evils that he would inflict upon his posterity; but with his birth vanished the hope which it would seem the English Monarch entertained of seeing his son ascend the throne of France, by his marriage with

the daughter of Louis. As some compensation for this disappointment, however, about this time another great acquisition was made by Henry. This was no less than the Duchy of Britanny, which gave the King of England command of the whole French coast from the Pyrennees to a spot near the mouth of the Somme, with an extent of territory compact and united, which left the King of France scarcely an equal share of his own dominions. How this was brought about must now be related, especially as a very false view of the acquisition of Britanny has lately been put forth.

We have seen how Henry the Second acquired possession of the town and County of Nantes; and we must not forget that Britanny, as a fief, was claimed as a feudal dependance of Normandy. During the absence of the English monarch from his continental possessions, he had left the government of Maine and Aquitaine in the hands of Eleanor his queen; and although Louis of France did not think fit actually to attack the Queen of England in her husband's absence, yet there can be no doubt that he caballed with the nobility of Maine, prompted by that inimical spirit which he had conceived towards Henry, since that monarch's quarrel with Becket. Neither did he fail, it would appear, to promise the malcontents in that province assistance, and they had the weakness to trust to the assurances of a monarch so fickle and faithless. They had not actually taken arms against Eleanor,