Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/147

Rh rival John, who, fearing to lose all, hastened to propose an accommodation, of which the chief article was the marriage of his niece, Blanche of Castile, to the son of Philip. Eleanor of Aquitain, mother of John and grandmother of Blanche, went herself to Spain to demand the young princess; and the nuptials were celebrated in 1900. In 1216, Lewis was invited to England by the discontented barons, who offered him the crown of that kingdom, in right of his wife. Soon afterwards the death of her brother, the only son of Alphonso IX. gave Blanche an undoubted claim to the kingdom of Castile; but her younger sister, Berengaria, already regent of the kingdom, and queen of Leon, assumed the sovereignty, which Lewis, who thought himself secure of the crown of England, neglected to secure. When the death of John raised a competitor less obnoxious to the people, and obliged him to return, it was too late to assert her right to a throne already filled and recognised by the Spaniards.

During all the reign of Philip, Lewis and Blanche were much at court, where the beauty and fine qualities of the latter made her equally loved and admired. In 1223, they mounted the throne. She was a tender friend and counsellor to her husband, and the dispenser of his rewards and pardons. Pope Honorius III. the next year, engaged the zealous monarch to begin anew the war against the Albigenses, which his father had prosecuted with so much success; and while engaged in it, he died after a reign of three years, in 1226, after appointing Blanche regent of the kingdom and guardian to her son. Some would not believe that he died a natural death: they remarked, that Thibaud, count of Champagne, who had followed him to the crusade against the Albigenses, had quitted him without taking leave