Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/103

Rh He had four sons. , now aged eighteen—his secret crowning of whom had given such offence to Thomas à Becket;, aged sixteen; , fifteen; and his favorite, a young boy whom the courtiers named , because he had no inheritance, but to whom the King meant to give the Lordship of Ireland. All these misguided boys, in their turn, were unnatural sons to him, and unnatural brothers to each other. Prince Henry, stimulated by the French King, and by his bad mother, Queen Eleanor, began the undutiful history.

First, he demanded that his young wife,, the French King's daughter, should be crowned as well as he. His father, the King, consented, and it was done. It was no sooner done, than he demanded to have a part of his father's dominions, during his father's life. This being refused, he made off from his father in the night, with his bad heart full of bitterness, and took refuge at the French King's Court. Within a day or two, his brothers Richard and Geoffrey followed. Their mother tried to join them—escaping in men's clothes—but she was seized by King Henry's men and immured in prison, where she lay, deservedly, for sixteen years. Every day, however, some grasping English nobleman, to whom the King's protection of his people from their avarice and oppression had given offence, deserted him and joined the Princes. Every day, he heard some fresh intelligence of the Princes levying armies against him; of Prince Henry's wearing a crown before his own ambassadors at the French Court, and being called the Junior King of England; of all the Princes swearing never to make peace with him their father, without the consent and approval of the Barons of France. But with his fortitude and energy unshaken, King Henry met the shock of these disasters with a resolved and cheerful face. He called upon all Royal fathers, who had sons, to help him, for his cause was theirs; he hired, out of his riches, twenty thousand men to fight the false French King, who stirred his own blood against him; and he carried on the war with such vigor, that Louis soon proposed a conference to treat for peace.

The conference was held beneath an old wide-spreading green elm-tree, upon a plain in France. It led to