however, had not been by any means inactive during the spring; for leaving all those nobles whom he could best trust to defend his Norman territories, he had hastened to quell some insurrectionary movements in the south. He entered Maine on the last day of April, and his presence proved quite sufficient to overthrow all the schemes of the disaffected. The same was the case in Anjou, where the people and the nobles flocked to him from all quarters, and submitted to him readily. But a more difficult task lay before him in Poitou. His son Richard was already in that province; and although it would appear that he was but feebly supported by the King of France, the military population of Poitou and Aquitaine had given the young prince every encouragement and support. From the terms used by the historian, it would appear that Saintonge was not so well disposed towards Richard as the neighbouring country; but to ensure the submission of that district, a body of his troops took possession of the strong and important town of Sainctes;* and not contented with

* The words of Diceto, which do not at all bear the interpretation given to them by Lord Lyttleton, namely, "some of the rebels," leave not a doubt upon my mind, that Richard was at this time in the south of France, where he is proved to have been a very short time afterwards. Diceto calls the persons who took possession of Sainctes, "militiam filii sui Ricardi," the forces of his son Richard, not "some of the rebels." The resistance made by these forces seems to have been very great; and it is clear that, without the excessive rapidity of his movements,

two towers and the castle, which were already strongly fortified, they seized upon the cathedral, and converted it into a fortress. All the All the preparations of the insurgents however were not completed, when the King, hearing of what had taken place, hastened across Poitou, with that almost incredible rapidity which characterised all his movements; and attacking the strong towers and fortified cathedral of Sainctes, he reduced them one by one, taking in the whole about sixty knights and four hundred archers. Having completed this enterprise, he left six of the most faithful nobles of Aquitaine to govern the provinces in his name, and taking measures for the security of Anjou and Maine, hurried back to Normandy, in order to oppose the King of France wherever that prince might attack his territories.

It was on his return from Sainctes that he was met by the Bishop-elect of Winchester, who communicated to him the terrible state of affairs in England. Henry had not been ignorant of the difficulties that surrounded his friends in this island, nor of the preparations made by his son and the Count of Flanders for invading his British dominions. He had felt the necessity of his presence in this country long before, and had prepared a large fleet and considerable forces, in order to pass the sea as soon as the state of his continental

Henry could not have captured Sainctes before the great blow of the war was struck in Normandy.

territories permitted him to leave them without very great danger. The representations of the Bishop of Winchester, and the knowledge that his son was only waiting for a fair wind, now decided the King's conduct at once, though perhaps he had already erred in judgment in not returning to his kingdom at an earlier period. He now however hastened to Barfleur, where his fleet had been collected; and taking with him the two Queens, Eleanor and Margaret, the Earls of Leicester and Chester, and several noblemen, all more or less in a state of captivity, he embarked for England with a large force of Brabançois, on the 8th of July. The wind was at first directly contrary, and blowing fiercely; but it changed in a moment, and became fair for his voyage to England, though still blowing furiously, when, raising his eyes to heaven, he prayed that if his return was for the good of his people, God would give him a prosperous voyage, but if not, that he might never reach the shores of his kingdom.* We find from Hoveden, that the attendants of the monarch attributed the change of the wind to a direct exercise

* This appears to me to be a correct interpretation of the various accounts given of this celebrated prayer of Henry the Second, though it is but right to say, that Lord Lyttleton has read his authorities otherwise, and makes Henry pronounce it in the midst of a storm at sea. The wind is certainly represented as blowing violently, and the waves high; but the words seem to me, to have been spoken on the occasion of the sudden change of wind from foul to fair.

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of divine power in his favor; and certainly his prayer was well calculated to impress the minds of those who heard him, with a conviction of the integrity of his purposes and the justice of his cause. His voyage was prosperous and rapid, and he arrived at Southampton in the evening of the same day.

The speed with which he accomplished his voyage to England, secured to him one of the greatest advantages which could be gained; for the Count of Flanders and the younger Henry had only been detained by contrary winds, and were looking anxiously for an opportunity of embarking, in the hope of reaching England while the royal rights were yet undefended by any one of sufficient authority to overawe the wavering and disaffected. Henry, however, did not employ to the best effect the advantage he had gained; but, instead of putting himself at the head of his troops, unsheathing his sword against the rebels, and endeavouring to crush insurrection before the formidable force collected on the Flemish coast could appear in the field against him, he stripped his feet for a pilgrimage to the shrine of the martyr of Canterbury, and caused himself to be publicly scourged at the tomb of Thomas à Becket. It is needless here to enter into the particulars of the degrading penance which Henry now voluntarily performed, nor can I consider at large the motives which could induce him to expose himself in such an extraor

dinary situation. by remorse and real devotion, the monarch sought to expiate the share that he had taken in Becket's death, by this humiliation at his tomb. Others have thought that he was actuated solely by political views, and that he imagined the tide of popular feeling would turn in his favor, as soon as he had offered full atonement to the spirit of the departed saint.

Some have believed that, moved

Admitting to the fullest extent Henry's tendency to superstition, it is scarcely possible to suppose that he could believe the proud and treacherous man, with whom he had struggled for so many years, was capable of performing miracles after his death; nor can we well suppose that he was weak enough to imagine that his people would reverence him the more for such unseemly humiliation at the tomb of one, for whose acts and conduct he had never ceased to show the most marked reprobation. We can very well conceive, however, that Henry, conscious of having uttered words which prompted the assassination of the prelate, and knowing that in his inmost heart his feelings had taken part with the murderers, even though he tried to stay them when it was too late, should now feel almost as much remorse as if his own hand had struck the blow, and that he should yield his mind entirely to the superstitious belief, that penances enjoined by his confessor could clear away his guilt; although he neither believed that the