Page:The Queens of England.djvu/41

 MATILDA 'THE EMPRESS." Matilda (or Maude), the only daughter of Henry the First and of Matilda "the Good," was born at the royal city of Win- chester, in 1 102. The name of Adelais, by which she is dis- tinguished in the Saxon annals, was pobably given her at the font, but she is generally known by that of Matilda, or Maude. The blood of the Norman and Saxon kings was blended in her veins, yet while she inherited her father's talents, she failed to exhibit the more resplendent virtues of her mother, from whom she was alienated at an early age, and like a tender plant trans- ferred to a foreign and ungenial soil. Matilda, "the Empress," was destined to be great, but hap- piness hardly seemed to come within the sphere of her fortunes ; yet she enjoyed the highest imperial rule and honors ever shared by woman, and was the foundress of a new dynasty in England, under which this country was raised to its highest pitch of martial glory. The eventful history of this princess may be said to have commenced with her cradle. It was at the time of her birth, that Duke Robert of Normandy, as already observed, landing to assert his claims to the crown, and hearing of the queen's ac- couchement, with the gallantry peculiar to him, withdrew from before the city of Winchester, leaving the good queen and her newly born infant in peace. Scarcely had the little princess commenced her education with her brother, Prince William, under the care of the learned Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom they had been entrusted by their mother, when an embassy arrived from Henry the Fifth, Emperor of Germany, to demand the hand of the young princess in marriage. Her father joyfully accepted these proposals, and the nuptials were celebrated, by proxy, in the year 1109, when Matilda had but just attained her seventh year. King Henry made every preparation to dismiss his daughter to her affianced husband in a truly regal style, and for this purpose 29