Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/85

Rh fine words will in the least mean that it was time; and nothing that is not true can possibly be good.

His greatest merit, that I know of, was his love of learning. I should have given him greater credit even for that, if it had been strong enough to induce him to spare the eyes of a certain poet he once took prisoner, who was a knight besides. But he ordered the poet's eyes to be torn from his head, because he had laughed at him in his verses; and the poet, in the pain of that torture, dashed out his own brains against his prison-wall. King Henry the First was avaricious, revengeful, and so false, that I suppose a man never lived whose word was less to be relied upon.

King was no sooner dead, than all the plans and schemes he had labored at so long, and lied so much for, crumbled away like a hollow heap of sand. , a grandson of the Conqueror, whom he had never mistrusted or suspected, started up to claim the throne.

Stephen was the son of, the Conqueror's daughter, married to the Count of Blois. To Stephen, and to his brother, the late King had been liberal; making Henry Bishop of Winchester, and finding a good marriage for Stephen, and much enriching him. This did not prevent Stephen from hastily producing a false witness, a servant of the late King, to swear that the King had named him for his heir upon his death-bed. On this evidence the Archbishop of Canterbury crowned him. The new King, so suddenly made, lost not a moment in seizing the Royal treasure, and hiring foreign soldiers with some of it to protect his throne.

If the dead King had even done as the false witness said, he would have had small right to will away the English people, like so many sheep or oxen, without their consent. But he had, in fact, bequeathed all his territory to Matilda; who, supported by her brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester, soon began to dispute the crown. Some of