The Comic History of England - Gilbert Abbott À Beckett

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be a capital thing for the two countries, if she would consent to the match; and as it is one of the penalties of royalty to wed for patriotism instead of from choice, she was soon persuaded to agree to the union.

      Such instances of devotion are, however, only found among royal families; for we doubt whether a fair Jemima Jenkins, or a bewitching Beatina Brown, would consent to become the wife of young Johnson in an adjacent street, for the sake of healing a parochial feud, or curing the heartburn of an entire neighbourhood.

      The marriage between Maud and Henry was very nearly being prevented by a report that the young lady had formerly been a nun; but it was proved that her aunt had been in the habit of throwing over her head something in the shape of a veil or a pinafore, to prevent the Normans from staring at her when she went out walking. Miss Matilda had the candour to acknowledge that she always took off the unbecoming covering directly she got a little way from home, and it is evident she was not unwilling to have a sly peep at the Normans, when her aunt was not watching her. Her marriage was celebrated on the 11th of November; but Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who officiated, came out of the Abbey before the ceremony, and in order to answer all false reports, stuck an enormous poster on the door, intimating that Maud was "No Nun," in tremendous capitals.

      Henry also obtained some popularity by expelling all the improper characters that his brother had patronised; but it does not seem that they were replaced by persons of a much more reputable order. Henry, however, affecting the estimable qualities of a new broom, began by sweeping clean, and scavenged the court of all his brother's minions. Ralph le Flambard, the late king's tax-gatherer, was sent to the Tower, where he became one of the lions of the place, and by his wit captivated the keepers who were charged with his captivity. Henry on being urged to get rid of him, happened to say accidentally, "No, no, give the fellow sufficient rope and he will hang himself," upon which one of the courtiers taking his majesty at his word, sent an enormous quantity of stout cord to the prisoner. Flambard having reduced the guards to the state in which tipplers wish to be who love their bottles, took the rope, and hanging himself by the waist, lowered himself into the moat beneath, from which he escaped to Normandy.

      Robert Curt-hose, who had turned crusader a year or two before, came back (a.d. 1101) with a perfect shrubbery of laurels from Palestine. The Normans, delighted at seeing their chief smothered in the evergreens of glory, were easily persuaded to join him in an attack upon England. The followers of Curt-hose, however, soon began to waver, and after having received several terrific stripes, their leader agreed to take 3000 marks, by way of annuity, as a compromise for all his claims upon England. Robert was true to his part of the engagement, but Henry, under various pretexts, soon discontinued his payments to Socks, who nevertheless lived in a style of great extravagance. He filled his court with bad characters, who not only emptied his pockets, but sold or pawned his clothes; and he is represented as often lying in bed for want of the necessary articles of attire to enable him to get up to breakfast. With the crown on his toilet table, and the regal robe hanging across the back of a chair—for these insignia of royalty were always left to him—he was still without the minor but indispensable articles of dress; and he often observed to his minister, "I can't very well go about with nothing on but that scanty robe and that hollow bauble." We can imagine him being reduced to the necessity of offering to pledge his crown, and being met by the depreciatory observation, "that the article was second-hand, had been a good deal worn, and seemed very much tarnished."

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      At length, in the year 1105, Henry, taking advantage of Robert's reduced circumstances, made an attack upon Normandy. The troops of Curt-hose were ill-paid, ill-clad, ill-conditioned, and ill-tempered. In vain did Curt-hose attempt to rally them; for they only rallied him on his poverty, and many of them deserted, leaving him to fight his own battles. His personal valour served him for a short time; he struck out right and left with enormous vigour, but his almost solitary efforts became at length absolutely absurd, and he was ultimately "removed in custody." He was subsequently committed to Cardiff Castle, where he died, in the year 1134, at the advanced age of nearly eighty; and it was said by a wag of the day, that Curt-hose had such a facility of running into debt that he ran up four scores with Time before the debt of Nature was satisfied.

      Henry was now master of Normandy, whither he on one occasion took his son and heir, William, a lad of eighteen, to receive the homage of the barons. This was an idle ceremony, for the barons seldom kept their words; and homage, or hummage, was frequently a mere hum on the part of those who promised it. The English king was about returning from the port of Barfleur, when Thomas Fitz-Stephen, a sailor, originated the disgraceful touting system, by thrusting his card into Henry's hands, and offering to take the royal party over cheap, in a well-appointed vessel. His majesty replied, "I have already taken my own passage in another ship, but the prince and his suite have to be conveyed, and I shall be happy to hear what you will undertake it for, per head, provisions, of course, included." The terms were soon arranged, and the dangerous practice of overcrowding having, even at that time, prevailed among mercenary speculators, three hundred people were packed into a craft which might have comfortably accommodated about twenty. The prince and his gay companions insisted on having a party on board the night previous to starting, and the crew, as well as the captain, were more than half-seas-over before they started from the shore of Normandy. Fitz-Stephen was in such a state at the wheel, that it seemed to him continually turning round, and the men employed in looking-out thought the Bas de Catte—a well-known rock—had been doubled, when in fact the vessel was driving rapidly on to it. This recklessness soon led to a wreck, and the sole survivor was one Berold, a butcher of Rouen, who has reported the catastrophe with so much accurate minuteness as to have deserved, though he never got it until now, the proud title of the father of the penny-a-liners. When Henry heard the news he fainted away, and never "smiled as he was wont to smile" from that day to the present. Being deprived of his only legitimate son, he became anxious to secure the throne to his daughter, the widow Maud, or Matilda, relict of the Emperor Henry the Fifth; and on Christmas-day, 1126, the bishops, abbots and barons were assembled at Windsor Castle to swear to maintain her succession. These parties—the respectable families that "came in with the Conqueror"—were all guilty of the grossest perjury; which, a few years ago, would have rendered them all liable to the pillory, and would in the present day expose them to serious punishment. A quarrel arose between Stephen, Earl of Boulogne, the king's legitimate nephew, and Robert, Earl of Gloucester, his illegitimate son, as to which was entitled to swear first; the real object being to decide which, upon breaking their oaths as they both fully intended to do—would take precedence as the successor of Henry. After a good deal of desultory discussion, a division settled the point in the nephew's favour. Anxious to see his daughter settled in life, Henry got her married, rather against her will, to Geoffrey, Earl of Anjou; who, from an odd custom he had of wearing a piece of broom in his cap, instead of a feather, acquired the nickname of Plantagenet. The marriage was celebrated at Rouen, and Henry issued a proclamation ordering everybody to be merry. Long faces were thus entirely prohibited, there was a penalty on black looks, and persons unable to laugh on the right side of their mouths were made to laugh upon the other.

      Some anxiety was, however, occasioned to Henry by the existence of his nephew, William Fitz-Robert, the son of Curt-hose, who had pretensions to the throne through Matilda, his grandmother, which of course gave him a claim on the friendship of the house of Baldwin, between whom and the grandmother there was a close relationship. The apprehensions of Henry were aroused by William Fitz-Henry being made Earl of Flanders, but the young man was unfortunately killed by receiving a poke from a pike; and though the wound was only in the finger, it grew worse from being placed in the hands of ignorant practitioners. Finding it did not get better, he observed that it was "really very mortifying," and so it was, for mortification ensued almost immediately. He died at St. Omer, on the 27th of July, 1128, in the twenty-sixth year of his age; and if his epitaph had been written, it would have run thus:

      "Here lies a young prince, whose life was cut short

      By medical quacks overturning the sand of it;

      His finger was wounded, but who could have thought

      The

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