Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/101

Rh hated by the people, and by this prince in particular, whose continual enemies they had been.

After the expulsion of these foreigners, and forcing a few refractory lords to a surrender of their castles, king Henry, like a wise prince, began to consider that a time of settled peace was the fittest juncture to recover the rights of the crown, which had been lost by the war. He therefore resumed, by his royal authority, all crown lands that had been alienated by his predecessor; alleging, that they were unalienable in themselves; and besides, that the grants were void, as coming from a usurper. Whether such proceedings are agreeable with justice, I shall not examine; but certainly a prince cannot better consult his own safety, than by disabling those whom he renders discontent; which is effectually done no other way but by depriving them of their possessions.

1156. While the king was thus employed at home, intelligence came that his brother Geoffry was endeavouring by force to possess himself of the earldom of Anjou, to which he had fair pretensions: for their father, considering what vast dominions would fall to his eldest son, bequeathed that earldom to the second in his last sickness, and commanded his nobles then about him to take an oath that they would not suffer his body to be buried, until Henry (who was then absent) should swear to observe his will. The duke of Normandy, when he came to assist at his father's obsequies, and found that without his compliance he must draw upon himself the scandal of keeping a father unburied, took the oath that was exacted for observance of his will, though very much against his own. But after he was in possession of England, whether it were that his