Little Arthur's history of England

by Lady Maria Callcott

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Tower of London	[Frontispiece.]
Gregory and Angles	Page [17]
King Ethelbert declares himself a Christian	[19]
Alfred learning to read	[25]
Alfred in Neatherd’s Cottage	[27]
King Alfred building his Navy	[30]
King Edward stabbed by Order of Elfrida	[37]
William rallies the Normans at Hastings	[46]
Battle of Hastings	[47]
Dermot, King of Leinster, doing Homage to Henry II.	[61]
King Richard I. made Prisoner by the Duke of Austria	[71]
Prince Arthur and Hubert	[74]
King John granting Magna Charta	[77]
Death of Llewellyn, last of the Welsh Princes	[86]
Edward the Black Prince waiting on John, King of France	[100]
Death of Wat Tyler	[103]
Henry of Hereford claiming the Crown of England	[106]
Escape of Queen Margaret	[123]
Death of the Little Princes in the Tower	[129]
Marriage of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York	[134]
Henry VIII. embarking for France	[140]
Wolsey entering Leicester Abbey	[143]
The Protector Somerset accusing his Brother before King Edward VI.	[160]
Lady Jane Grey refusing the Crown	[165]
The Spanish Armada	[182]
Queen Elizabeth reviewing her Army at Tilbury	[183]
King James I. with Steenie and Baby Charles	[193]
Strafford going to Execution	[200]
Parting of King Charles and his Children	[206]
King Charles I. on the Scaffold	[207]
Cromwell turns out the Parliament	[213]
King Charles II. enters London at his Restoration	[217]
Marlborough at Blenheim	[235]
The Pretender at Holyrood House	[244]
Farmhouse of Hougoumont on the Field of Waterloo	[250]
The Marriage of Queen Victoria	[261]

LITTLE ARTHUR’S

History of England.

CHAPTER I.
The ancient Britons: their houses—clothes—and food.

You know, my dear little Arthur, that the country you live in is called England. It is joined to another country called Scotland, and the two together are called Great Britain.

Now, a very long time ago, Britain was so full of trees, that there was very little room for houses, and still less for corn-fields, and there were no gardens.

The houses were made of wicker-work; that is, of sticks put together like baskets, and plastered over with mud, to keep out the wind and rain; and the people, who were called Britons, used to build a good many together, and make a fence round them, to keep the bears, and the wolves, and the foxes, which lived in their woods, from coming in the night to steal their sheep, or perhaps to kill their children, while they were asleep.

These fences were made of great piles of wood and trunks of trees, laid one upon another till they were as high as a wall; for at that time the Britons did not know how to build walls of stone or bricks with mortar.

Several houses, with a fence round them, made a town; and the Britons had their towns either in the middle of the woods, where they could hardly be found out, or else on the tops of high hills, from which they could see everything and everybody that was coming near them.

I do not think the insides of their houses could have been very comfortable. They had possibly wooden stools to sit on, and wooden benches for bedsteads, and their beds were made of skins of wild beasts, spread over dry grass and leaves. In some places they used the pretty heath that grows upon the commons for beds, and, in others, nothing but dry leaves spread upon the ground. They had great wooden bowls to hold their meat, and wooden cups to drink out of; and in some parts of the country they had coarse earthern, earthen bowls and pitchers, some of which you may now see in museums.

They had very few tools to make the things they wanted; and yet, by taking great pains, they made them very neatly. Their boats were very curious; they were nicely made, of basket-work covered over with leather; they were called coracles.

You may think that, as the Britons had such poor houses and beds, they were not much better off for clothes.

In the winter they used to wrap themselves up in the skins of the beasts they could shoot with their bows and arrows. In the summer they were naked, and instead of clothes they put paint upon their bodies. They were very fond of a fine blue color, made out of a plant, called Woad, which they found in their woods. They squeezed out the juice of the Woad, and then stained themselves all over with it, so that in summer they looked as if they were dressed in tight blue clothes.

They were as ill off for eating as for clothes. Only a few of the very richest Britons could get bread; the rest of the people ate acorns and berries, which they found in the woods, instead of bread. They had beef, mutton, and deer, and hares, and wild birds. They drank milk, and knew how to make cheese; but most of them were forced to spend a good deal of time in hunting for wild animals in the woods, and often went without their dinners when they could not get near enough to a beast or bird to shoot it with their arrows.

In time, however, the Britons in the south learned how to grow corn, to work in metal, and other useful things. They traded with the nearest part of Europe, which is now called France, but was then named Gaul. They were very brave in war, and fought from chariots, with blades like scythes sticking out to cut down their enemies.

CHAPTER II.
Religion of the ancient Britons—the Druids—the misletoe—the Druids’ songs.

I am sorry to say that the old Britons had no churches; and they did not know anything about the true God. Their oldest and cleverest men only thought God must be somewhere, and because they saw that oaks were the largest, and oldest, and best trees in the woods, they told the people that God must be where the oaks grew; but they were mistaken, you know, for God is in heaven, and He made the oaks, and everything else that you can see, and everything that you can think of. But as these poor people did not know any better, they chose some of the oldest and wisest men to be their priests, and to say prayers for them, under the shade of the oaks. These priests they call Druids. They had long white beards, and wore better clothes than the other people, for they had white linen robes. They knew how to cure sick people, by giving them different parts of the plants that grew in the woods; and if they were burnt, or cut, they made salves to heal them; and they would not teach the common people how to use these things of themselves, so everybody was obliged to go to them for help. And the people gave the Druids a part of what they had, whether it was corn, or warm skins to make beds of, or paint, or tin, or copper, or silver, that they found among the mountains, for curing them.

One of the things they used to cure the sick people with, was a plant called misletoe. It does not grow on the ground, but on the branches of trees; sometimes, but rarely, on the oak. The Druids knew the time of year when its berries were ripe, and made a great feast, and all the people came to it; and the oldest Druid, dressed in white, and with a white band round his head, used to take a golden sickle, and go up into the trees where the misletoe grew, and cut it while the others sang songs, and said some prayers to their false gods, because they did not know the true God.

These Druids used to advise the kings what to do, and what rules to give the people; and because nobody in England could write, the Druids made songs and verses about everything that happened, and taught them to the young people, that they might teach them again to their children. Those who made these songs were called Bards.

Now you know that, though it is a very good thing to be able to repeat fine verses about things that happened long ago, it is much better to have them written down; because people might forget some of the verses, and then their children would not know what had happened in their country before they lived themselves.

And so it was with the Druids. People began to forget the oldest verses, when something happened that I will tell you about in the next chapter, by means of which the Britons learned not only to write and read, but to know the true God.

CHAPTER III.
How the Romans came and conquered the Britons, and made them work.

There is a city called Rome, a good way from England, and the people belonging to it are called Romans.

Now, at the time I told you of, when the poor Britons were so ill off for almost everything, the Romans were the cleverest and bravest people in the world. By their bravery they had conquered all the countries between Rome and England, which you know was then called Britain; and by being able to write better than any other people at that time, they made books, in which they set down everything that happened to them and to the people they conquered.

One of their bravest and cleverest men, called Julius Cæsar, wrote what I have told you about Britain, and some more that I am going to tell you. When the Romans had found out that there was such a country as Britain, some sailors and merchants came here to see what the country and the people were like.

And they saw that the people were very strong and well made, and found that they were clever, and good tempered, and they wished to have some of them for servants, and some for soldiers. And they saw too that the country was very pretty, and that if anybody who knew how to build nice houses, and to make proper fields, were to live here, it would be a very pleasant place indeed.

Besides all this, they found that some of the best tin and copper in the world was found in one part of England, and sometimes the people found gold and silver too. Then they saw among the shells by the sea-side, and in some of the rivers, some of those beautiful round white things called pearls, which ladies have always been fond of stringing and making necklaces of.

So when they went to Rome, they told everybody of all the good things they had seen in Britain; and the great men in Rome determined to go and conquer the whole country, that they might make servants of the people, and take their land, and make corn-fields for themselves, and get all the tin, and copper, and silver, and gold, and pearls, and take them to Rome.

The Romans had sent some very brave soldiers, with their great captain, the same Julius Cæsar who wrote down these things, to conquer Gaul; and they crossed the sea in order to conquer Britain; but they did not find it so easy to do as they had hoped it would be. Although the poor Britons were almost naked, and had very bad swords, and very weak spears and bows and arrows, and small shields, made of basket work covered with leather, they were so brave, that they fought a great many battles against the Romans, who had everything they could want to fight with, before they would give up any part of their country to them.

At last, when the Romans had gotten a part of Britain, they were obliged to build very strong walls all about their houses. And their houses and walls were made of good stone and brick, instead of the trunks and branches of trees such as the Britons used. And the Roman soldiers were obliged to keep watch always, because the Britons were trying every day to drive them away; and they kept good swords and spears, and great shields, covered with plates of iron; and they put pieces of iron on their backs and their breasts, and their arms and legs, and called it armour, so the bad swords of the Britons could hardly ever hurt a Roman; but their bows and arrows, which they managed very well, killed a good many.

However, the Romans remained masters at last, and they made the Britons cut down many of their woods, and turn the ground into corn-fields and gardens for them; and they forced them to dig the tin and copper out of the earth for them, and to fish in the seas and rivers, to find pearls for the Roman ladies; and the poor Britons were very unhappy, because they had lost their freedom, and could never do as they liked.

But I must end this long chapter. In the next I will tell you how God turned the unhappiness of the poor Britons into everything good for them.

CHAPTER IV.
How the Romans taught the Britons many things, and how some of them became Christians.

You remember, I hope, what you read in the first chapter, about the uncomfortable houses of the Britons, how badly they were dressed, and how often they were obliged to be hungry when they could not catch the birds or beasts in the woods.

Now when God allowed the Romans to come and take part of the country of the Britons, and to make servants of the people, He put it into the hearts of the Romans to teach the Britons most of the things they knew themselves; and the Romans who came to Britain wrote books, from which we learn the way in which these things were done.

By employing the Britons to help them to build their houses and walls, of stone or brick, they taught them how to make good ones for themselves; then by making them learn to spin and weave the wool that grew upon their sheep, they gave them means to make better clothes, both for winter and summer, than they had thought of before; and they left off staining their skins with the juice of plants, and began to wash themselves, and to keep their hair neat, and even to put on ornaments like the Romans.

When they saw how the Romans ploughed the fields, and made corn enough grow to make bread for everybody, as well as for the rich people, they began to do the same; and they began to like to have gardens for cabbages and onions, and apples and roses, all four of which the Romans taught them to plant, besides some other useful things which I have forgotten.

But, what was much better than all the rest, the Romans built some schools, and had school-masters to teach their children to read and write, and the little Britons were allowed to go to these schools as well as the little Romans; and, as the Britons were very clever, you may think how soon they learned to read and write, and how glad their fathers and mothers were to see them so improved.

You see, therefore, that when God allowed the Romans to conquer the Britons, He made them the means of teaching them a great many useful things; above all, how to read.

Many years after the Romans first took the country for themselves, there came some very good men, who brought the Bible with them, and began to teach both the Romans and the Britons, who could read, all about the true God, and how they ought to serve Him and love Him. And they told them to love one another, instead of fighting. And by degrees, they made the Britons forget the Druids, and leave off praying under the oaks. And they built several churches, and a great many Britons became Christians, and learned to thank God for sending the Romans to their country to teach them to be wiser and better and happier than they were before.

You may suppose that all these things took a good deal of time to do; indeed, they took a great many years, and in that time there were many different Roman governors. And when you are a little older, and know more about England, you will read something about them in the large History of England, and in some other books.

CHAPTER V.
How the Romans made a market in London, and used money, and built a wall; and how they improved Bath, and many other towns.

I told you what poor and small places the British towns were, before the Romans came here. They soon taught the Britons to make them better. London was one of their towns; it was so hid among trees that it could hardly be seen; but the Romans soon cut down a good many of the trees round it, and built large houses there to live in. And they made a market, which you know is a place where people go to sell what they do not want themselves, and to buy other things. At first they only changed one thing for another; I mean, that if one man wanted a pair of shoes, he went to the shoemaker, and said, Give me a pair of shoes and I will give you a shirt, or some chickens, or something that I have and do not want myself, if you will give me the shoes. But this was troublesome, because people could not easily carry enough things about to make exchanges with. So, when the Romans came, they began to use money to buy the things they wanted, and the money was made of the silver and copper found in England.

Well, besides the good houses and the market the Romans made in London, they built a good wall round it, made of stone and brick mixed, and a tower. Now a tower is a very high and strong building; and it was used long ago to put money and other things into to keep them safe. And if any enemies came to fight the people of the country, they used to put the women and children into their towers, while the strong men went to fight their enemies and drive them away. Towers have not these uses now-a-days, when by God’s blessing we enjoy peace and safety in our open houses and the police protect us from thieves; while towers and castles fall into ruin and are looked at as curiosities. Another sort of tower, you know, is built by the side, or at the end, of a church, to hang the bells in, that people may know it is time to go to prayers, when they hear the bells ring.

Though the Romans took so much pains with London, they did not forget the other towns of the Britons, but made them all much better. I will tell you the names of some they did most good to. First there was Bath, where the Britons showed them some springs of warm water, which were used to cure sick people. Drinking the water was good for some, and bathing in it for others. Now, Bath was a very pretty place, and the Romans made it prettier, by building beautiful houses to bathe in, and making fine gardens to their own houses; and many of the great men, and some Roman ladies, loved to live there. And the Britons followed their example, and began to have fine houses, and to plant beautiful gardens, and some of them went to Rome to learn more than they could learn in Britain; and, when they came back, they taught others what they had learned.

Then there was York, the largest town next to London, of those that the Romans took the trouble to make much better than the old Britons had done.

Besides houses, and towers, and walls, the Romans built some good schools in York, and I have even heard that there was a library in York, in the time of the Romans; but I am not quite sure of this.

But I should never finish my chapter, and you would be very tired, if I were to try to tell you every one of the names of the British towns that the Romans improved; in all, I dare say, they are more than a hundred.

They also made good roads throughout the country, some of which remain in use to this day.

CHAPTER VI.
How the Romans left Britain; and how the Angles and Saxons came and conquered the country, and behaved cruelly to the people.

Everything seemed to be going on well with the Britons and Romans, when a great misfortune happened, which I must tell you about.

Most of the great men in Rome had grown very idle and careless, because they had become so rich and strong that they could do what they pleased, and make everybody else obey them. And they let the soldiers in Rome be quite idle, instead of keeping them busy about useful things. So they forgot how to fight properly, and when a great many enemies came to fight against Rome, the soldiers there could not drive them away, and they sent, in a hurry, to Britain, for all the good Roman soldiers that were there, as well as the strongest and best Britons, to go and defend them; so Britain was left without enough men to take care of the towns, and the old men, and the women, and the children.

It happened that very soon after the best Britons had gone away to Rome, a number of people, called Angles and Saxons, came in ships to Britain, and landed. You will remember the Angles, because these were the people who changed the name of half of Britain into Englaland, which we now call England.

At first they took all the gold and silver and clothes and food they could find, and even some of the little children to make servants of, and carried them off in their ships to their own country.

Afterwards the Britons sent to ask their help against some fierce enemies, called the Picts and Scots, who had invaded South Britain from the northern part, which we now call Scotland. So two brothers came over first, who were called Hengist and Horsa; Horsa was slain in battle at Aylesford in Kent, but Hengist made himself king over a part of Britain.

And when the other Saxons and Angles saw what good and useful things were to be had in Britain, they determined to go there too. Some of them said they would only rob the Britons, and some said they would try to conquer the whole country, and take it for their own; and so, after a great deal of fighting, they did. But although a great many of the bravest Britons had been taken to Rome, some of the others joined together, to try and defend their country.

One of the first of them was King Arthur, who was one of the bravest men in the world, and he had some friends who were called his knights. They helped him to fight the Saxons, but the Saxons were too strong for them; so after fighting a long time, King Arthur was obliged to give up a good deal of his land to them. Yet he beat them at last in a great battle, and was able to keep the rest of his kingdom from them for many years. You will read many pretty stories about King Arthur and his knights, when you are older.

I have heard that they were all so good and so brave that nobody could tell who was the best, and the king himself did not know which to like best, so he had a large round table made, that they might all sit at it and be equal; because you know that at a round table the places are all alike, but at a long table one place may seem better than another. But I cannot tell you more about the knights now, for we must think about the Angles and Saxons.

By little and little, the Saxons and Angles drove the natives out of almost all Britain. The greatest number of those who remained went into that part called Wales, where there were high mountains and thick woods, where they could hide themselves. You will read in some books that some went with King Arthur to a part of France, which was called Brittany because Britons were living there already. But we cannot be sure of this.

Now the Angles and Saxons were fierce and cruel, for they had not yet learned anything about the true God; but instead of loving and serving Him, they made a great many figures of stone and wood, in the shape of men and women, and called them by different names, such as Woden, and Thor, and fancied they could help them and bless them, if they prayed to them; but you know this was both foolish and wicked. It was foolish, because stones and wood cannot hear or understand; and wicked, because we ought to pray to the true God only.

The Britons, who had all become Christians before the Angles and Saxons came to Britain, were very ill treated by their new masters, because they would not leave off loving and serving the true God. Their churches were pulled down, and the clergymen either killed or driven away. And the people of England (as Britain now began to be called) were almost in as bad a state as before the Romans came; for although the Angles and Saxons were glad enough to make them build houses, and plough the corn-fields, and take care of sheep for them, they would not let them read—they spoilt their schools, and burnt the books, besides pulling down the churches, as I told you before.

At length, however, these bad times ended, and the conquerors themselves left off being cruel, and did more good to the country than ever the Romans did, as I will tell you in another chapter.

CHAPTER VII.
How there were seven chief kingdoms in England; how Augustine and his friends came from Rome and made the people Christians; and how some of the young men went to Rome to be taught.

I told you, in the last chapter, that Hengist made himself king over part of Britain. His kingdom was Kent.

Soon afterwards other brave captains of the Angles and Saxons made themselves kings. So there were seven chief kingdoms in England, besides many petty kings. As soon as they were settled, they and their people began to like the houses and gardens and bathing places the Romans had left in the country, though they destroyed the most of them. But there were few, if any, of the Christian clergymen left among them, to teach them to know the true God. The Angles and Saxons lived as heathens in their new country for more than a hundred years. And now I will tell you how God gave them the word of life, and turned them from their false gods to the faith of Jesus Christ.

Soon after the Anglian and Saxon kings had settled themselves quietly in Britain, a good many boys were taken from Britain to be made servants at Rome. Most of these were Angles, and it happened that as they were standing together an Abbot named Gregory saw them, and he thought they were very beautiful, and asked where they came from and who they were. He was told they were Angles from Britain, but that they were not Christians. He was sorry for this, and said if they were Christians they would be Angels, not Angles.

Now Gregory did not go away and forget this; but, when he was made Bishop of Rome, he sent for a good man named Augustine, and asked him if he would go to Britain and teach these people to be Christians; and Augustine said he would, and he chose some other good men to help him to teach them.

Gregory and Angles.

When Augustine and his friends got to England, they went to Ethelbert, the king of the part they reached first, and asked leave to teach the people; and the king gave them leave, and gave them a church in the town of Canterbury, and learned a great deal from them himself. But some of the other kings did not like to be Christians, nor to let their people learn, and were very angry with those who listened to Augustine, and killed some of his friends. But at last, when they saw that the Christians behaved better than those who served the wooden and stone false gods they brought with them from their own country, they allowed their people to learn, and so by degrees they all became Christians.

King Ethelbert declares himself a Christian.

Ina, who was one of the kings of that part of England which was then called Wessex (but now contains Berkshire, Hampshire, and other counties) was very fond of learning, and old books tell us that he collected a penny from every house where the master could spare it, and sent all these pennies to Rome to pay for a school that he might send the young men to, because they could get better masters in Rome than in England at that time. These pennies were called Peter’s Pence, and were sent to Rome for a great many years; but learned men now think that it was not Ina, but a later English king, called Offa, who first began to send them.

Now I must tell you what the young men at that time learned in the school. First of all to read, and to write, and to count; then to paint pictures in books, and to build beautiful churches, and to plant gardens, and to take care of fruit trees, and to sing well in church. And they taught all these things to their friends when they came back to England.

I should have told you that it was only the clergymen who went to school in Rome; and when they came home, though some of them lived in houses of their own, yet most went and lived in large houses, called convents, big enough to hold a great many of them, besides having schools in them for teaching children, and rooms where they allowed poor people, who were travelling, to sleep; and they were very good to the poor and took great care of people who were sick.

And because these clergymen did so much good, the kings and the people gave them money, and some land fit for corn-fields and gardens, that they might have plenty for themselves, and the schoolboys, and the poor.

CHAPTER VIII.
How the Angles and Saxons loved freedom, but made laws to punish those who did wrong.

I am sure you wish to hear something more about the Angles and Saxons, now that I have told you that they had become Christians like the Britons, and had left off fighting with them.

There was one thing that, they loved above all others, and that was freedom; that is, they liked that every man should do what he pleased as long as he did not hurt any body else. And they liked that when a man went into his own house and shut the door he should be safe, and that nobody should go into his house without his leave. Besides that, they liked wicked people to be punished; but if a man killed another, on purpose, they did not always kill him too, as we do, for fear he should do more mischief; they only made him give money to the relations of the man he had killed, or perhaps they put him in prison for a little while, to teach him to be more careful. And the Saxons and Angles liked that when a thief stole anything, he should be made to give it back, and that he should be punished.

Rules like these are called laws, and they are needful, to keep men from doing wrong. All laws are meant to do good; and the Saxons and Angles would not let anybody be punished without taking time to find out what was right, as it would not be right to let anybody who saw a man killed go and kill the man who had done it directly, because he would not have time to ask whether it was done on purpose; and he would be very sorry afterwards if he found out that he had punished another person when he ought not to have done so.

So there were noblemen set over different parts of each kingdom—called Aldermen (which means the same as Elder)—to hold courts with the bishop and the lesser nobles, who were called the king’s Thanes (that is, servants). These courts tried to find out the truth in all disputes, and also before any one was punished for any crime. When the crime was not made out clearly, the man was let off, if he could bring his neighbours to bear witness to his good character. And, in deciding disputes, the judge sometimes took the opinion of twelve men who knew the facts. This was not quite like our trial by jury; but you see that the people had a share in judging one another.

Sometimes the kings wanted to change their old laws, or to make new ones. But the free people said it was not right or fair to make laws for them without telling them first what they were to be. So when the king wanted to make a new law, he called together his Aldermen and Bishops and Thanes to hear what the new law was to be, and if they liked it they said so, and it was made into a law, and then the people obeyed it, and the judges punished those who did not; but if they did not like what the king wished, they all said so, and then it was not made into a law. And, besides the Noblemen and Bishops, the people of the towns were called by the king, to hear what the new law was to be.

But it would have been very troublesome for all the men to go to the king every time he wanted to make a new law, or to change an old one, so the men in one town said, It will be better to send three or four of the cleverest of our neighbours to the king, and they can let us know about the new law, and we will tell them what to say for us, and we will stay at home, and plough the fields, and mind our shops; and so they did; and the men that were sent by their neighbours went to the king, but they had no share in making the laws.

And when the king, and the nobles and bishops, and the men who were sent by their neighbours, met all together in one place to talk about the laws, they called it a Witena-gemot, which means, in the old English of those times, a Meeting of Wise Men. It was something like what we call a Parliament, which means a talking place, because they talk about the best way of making laws before they make them.

By these means you see the Angles and Saxons were ruled by laws that they helped to make themselves. And when they did wrong, they were not punished till some of their own wisest men found out that they really deserved punishment; and this is what I mean when I tell you that they were a free people, and that they loved freedom.

CHAPTER IX.
How Egbert became the first king over all England; how the Danes did great mischief to the people; how Alfred after much trouble drove them away, and how he built ships and did many other good things.

You have not forgotten, I hope, that there were seven chief kingdoms of the Angles and Saxons in England. Now, there were many and long wars between these kingdoms; and also with the Britons who were left in the land. Sometimes one king, and sometimes another, made himself more powerful than all the rest. He was then called Bretwalda, which means “Ruler over Britain”; for the English still called the whole island Britain. At last, 827 years after our Saviour’s birth, the king of Wessex (that is, of the West Saxons) got himself the power over all the other kings. He was called Egbert. He was very wise, and very brave, and very handsome; so the people loved him very much, and were very sorry when he died. His son and then three of his grandsons reigned after him, whose names you will learn another time.

While these men were kings, some very strong and cruel heathens, called Danes, came to England, in larger and better ships than the first Saxons came in, and they robbed the people, and burnt the towns, and did more mischief than I can tell you.

I do not know what would have become of England, if a very wise and good king had not begun to rule England about that time. His name was Alfred. He was the grandson of King Egbert, and was as handsome and as brave as Egbert.

But I must tell you a great deal about King Alfred, which I am sure you will like to hear.

When he was a very little boy, his mother wished him to learn to read, and she used to show him beautiful pictures in a book of Saxon poems, and to tell him what the pictures were about. Little Alfred was always pleased when the time came for seeing the book; and one day, when his mother was talking to him, she said that she would give him the book for his own, to keep, as soon as he could read it. Then he went to his teacher, and very soon learned to read the book, and his mother gave him the beautiful book. When he grew bigger he learned the old Saxon songs by heart, and sang them to his mother, who loved to hear Alfred sing, and play the harp.

But when Alfred grew up he had other things to do than reading and singing, for a long time. I told you that the Danes had done a great deal of mischief before Alfred was king; and indeed at the beginning of his reign they went on doing quite as much, and he had more than fifty battles to fight, before he could drive them away from his kingdom.

Alfred learning to read.

For some years after he was made king he had not one town where the people dared to obey him, for fear of the Danes; and he was obliged to disguise himself in poor clothes, and to live with one of his own neatherds, whose wife did not know the king.

This neatherd lived in a part of Somersetshire, called the Isle of Athelney. While Alfred was there, some of his best friends used to go and tell him how the country was going on, and take messages to him from other friends; and they all begged him to stay where he was till they could collect English soldiers enough to fight the Danes in that neighbourhood.

While he was staying at the neatherd’s house, I have heard that the man’s wife scolded him one day very heartily. I will tell you how it happened.

She had just made some very nice cakes for supper, and laid them on the hearth to toast, and seeing Alfred sitting in the house doing something to his bow and arrows, she desired him to look after her cakes, and to turn them when they were toasted enough on one side, that they might not be burnt. But Alfred could think of nothing but making ready his bow and arrows to fight against the Danes; he forgot all about the cakes, and they became very much burnt. When the neatherd’s wife came into the house again, she soon saw the cakes on the hearth, quite black and burnt, and began scolding Alfred very severely.

Just then her husband came in with some of Alfred’s friends, who told him that they had beaten the Danes, and driven them out of that part of the country, and the people were asking for him, and it was time to appear as their king. You may think how surprised the neatherd’s wife was, and how she asked the king’s pardon for scolding him.

He only smiled, and said, if she forgave him for burning her cakes, he would forgive her for the scolding. Then he thanked her and the neatherd heartily for letting him live so quietly with them, and went with his friends to find the Danes, with whom he had a great deal of trouble before he could drive them away. Their king Guthorm agreed to be a Christian; and Alfred divided England with him.

At last, when Alfred had overcome the Danes, and when England was at peace, he thought of the great pleasure he had in reading, and he determined to encourage all the young people in England to love learning. So he inquired for what learned men there were in England, and sent for more to come from other countries, and paid them for teaching the young men; and he built several schools.

That he might encourage all his subjects to read, he took the trouble to translate several books for them out of Latin into English; and, besides that, he wrote several himself for their instruction.

Alfred was never idle. One part of every day was spent in praying, reading, and writing; one part in seeing that justice was done to his subjects, in making good laws, and in teaching the English how to keep away the Danes from their country. He allowed himself very little time indeed for sleeping, eating, and walking about.

One of the very best things King Alfred did for England, was to build a great many ships. He wisely thought that the best means of keeping away the Danes, or any other enemy that could reach England by sea, was to have ships as good as theirs, and go and meet them on the water, and fight them there, instead of allowing them to land and do mischief, and carry away the goods, and sometimes even the children of the people on the sea-coast; so he built more than a hundred vessels, and he was the first king of England who had good ships of his own.

King Alfred building his navy.

Besides fighting the Danes, Alfred made other good uses of his ships. He sent some to Italy and France, to get books, and many things that the English did not then know how to make at home. And other vessels he sent to distant countries, even as far as Russia, to see what the people were like, and if they had anything in their country that it would be useful to England to buy. I have read an account of one of the voyages made by a friend of Alfred’s, which the king wrote himself, after his friend had told him what he had seen, and when you are old enough to read it, I dare say it will please you as much as it pleased me.

Alfred died when he had been king twenty-nine years. He was ill for a long time before he died, but he was very patient and bore great pain without complaining.

Just before he died he spoke to his son Edward, and gave him good advice about taking care of the people when he came to be king.

But besides the words he spoke, Alfred wrote many good and true words. I will tell you some of them. Pray, remember these now; when you are a man you will love to think of them, and to recollect that they were the very words of the best and wisest king we have ever had. They are about the Supreme Good. “This blessedness is then God. He is the beginning and end of every good, and He is the highest happiness.”

CHAPTER X.
King Edward—King Athelstane: how he beat the Danes in battle, and took some prisoners; how he invited his prisoners to supper, and afterwards let them go free.

As soon as King Alfred died, his son Edward was made king; and he had soon a great deal to do, for the Danes thought they could conquer all England, now Alfred was dead, and that there would be nobody to fight them.

But they were mistaken, for King Edward was a brave man and a wise king, although he was not so clever and good as his father, and he kept down the Danes while he was king. He had a sister who helped him in everything. Her husband was dead, and she had no son, so she lived with her brother, and gave him good advice, and took care of one part of the country while he was fighting the Danes in another. You may think how sorry the king was when she died, and how sorry the people were too, for she was very good and kind to everybody; but they were still more sorry when King Edward died soon after, for they were afraid the Danes would get the upper hand again.

The next king was called Athelstane; he was Edward’s eldest son: he was very clever and very brave. He knew that it was good for England to have a great many ships, both to keep away the Danes and to fetch cloth and silk from other countries, for the English did not make any of these things then. So he made a law that every man who built a ship and went to sea three times should be a Thane, which means that he would be in the same rank and be shown the same respect as one of the landed gentry.

Once I was reading a very old book, and I found something in it about this Athelstane that I will tell you. A king of the Danes and three other kings, who all lived in very cold poor countries, agreed that they would come to England, which was a much better country than their own, and take part of it for themselves; and they got a great many soldiers to come with them in their ships; and they watched till King Athelstane’s ships were gone out of sight, and then landed, and began to take a part of the country. But Athelstane soon heard of their coming, and called his soldiers together, and went to meet these kings at a place called Brunanburgh, and fought with them, and conquered them, and took some of them prisoners.

One of the prisoners was called Egill, and he told the man who wrote the old book I mentioned to you, that King Athelstane behaved very kindly to all the people after the battle, and would not let even the enemies that were beaten be killed or vexed in any manner, and that he invited him and some of the other prisoners to supper at a large house which he had near the place where the battle was fought.

When they went to supper, they found that the house was very long and very broad, but not high, for it had no rooms up stairs, and there was no fire anywhere but in the kitchen and the great hall.

In the other rooms they had no carpets, but the floors were strewed over with rushes, and there were only wooden benches and high stools to sit upon.

The supper was in the great hall. I do not know what they had to eat, but after supper the king asked the company to go and sit round the fire, and drink ale and mead. Now they had no fireplace like ours at the side of the hall; but there was a great stone hearth in the very middle of the floor, and a large fire was made on it of logs of wood bigger than one man could lift, and there was no chimney, but the smoke went out at a hole in the roof of the hall.

When the company came to the fire, King Athelstane made King Egill sit on a high stool face to face with him, and King Athelstane had a very long and broad sword, and he laid it across his knees, that if any of the company behaved ill he might punish them. And they all drank a great deal of ale, and while they drank there were several men, called minstrels, singing to them about the great battles they had fought, and the great men who were dead; and the kings sang in their turn, and so they passed the evening very pleasantly.

The next morning, when Egill and his friends expected to be sent to prison, King Athelstane went to them, and told them he liked such brave and clever men as they were, and that if they would promise not to come to England to plague the people any more, they might go home unharmed. They promised they would not come any more, and then Athelstane let them go home, and gave them some handsome presents.

CHAPTER XI.
How King Edmund was killed by a robber; how Bishop Dunstan ill-used King Edwy; how Archbishop Odo murdered the Queen; what Dunstan did to please the people; how King Edgar caused the wolves to be destroyed; and how his son, King Edward, was murdered by Queen Elfrida.

King Athelstane died soon after the battle of Brunanburgh.

His brother Edmund began his reign very well, and the English people were in hopes that they should be at peace, and have time enough to keep their fields in order, and improve their houses, and make themselves as comfortable as they were when Alfred was king. But Edmund was killed by a robber before he had been king quite six years; and his brother Edred, who was made king when he died, was neither so brave nor so wise as Edmund or Athelstane, and did not manage the people nearly so well.

I am very sorry for the next king, whose name was Edwy. He was young and good-natured, and so was his beautiful wife, whom he loved very much; but they could not agree with a bishop called Dunstan, who was a very clever and a very bold man, and wanted everybody in England, even the king, to follow his advice in everything. Now the king and queen did not like this, and would not do everything Dunstan wished, and banished him from the country. But the friends whom he had left behind him rose up against the poor king, and, in order to punish him for not obeying Dunstan, one of them, the Archbishop Odo, was so very wicked as to take the beautiful young queen, and beat her, and burned her face all over with hot irons, to make her look ugly, and then sent her away to Ireland. When she came back, she was so cruelly treated that she died in great agony. The men who did this even took away a part of his kingdom from Edwy, and gave it to his brother, Edgar. Soon afterwards Edwy died, and Edgar became king of the whole of England.

When Edgar grew up, he was a good king; but he was obliged to make friends with Dunstan, who was very clever, and used to please and amuse the people when he wanted them to do anything for him. He could play on the harp very well; and he used to make a great many things of iron and brass, which the people wanted very much, and gave them to them; and as there were no bells to the churches before this time, Dunstan had a great many made, and hung up in the church-steeples. And the people began to forget how cruel he had been to King Edwy, when he did so many things to please them.

I must tell you a little about King Edgar now. He went to every part of the country to see if the people were taken care of. He saw that all the ships that King Alfred and King Athelstane had built were properly repaired, and built a great many new ones. There was so little fighting in his time that he was called “The Peaceful”; yet he made the kings of Scotland and the kings of Wales obey him; but instead of taking money from them, as other kings used to do at that time, he ordered them to send hunters into the woods, to catch and kill the wolves and other wild beasts, which, as I told you before, used to do a great deal of mischief in England. I have heard that he made these kings send him three hundred wolves’ heads every year; so at last all the wolves in England were killed, and the farmers could sleep comfortably in the country, without being afraid that wild beasts would come and kill them or their children in the night.

This was a very good thing; and Edgar did many other useful things for England, but I am sorry to say, he did not always do what was right, as you will know when you are old enough to read the large History of England.

King Edward stabbed by order of Elfrida.

When Edgar died, his eldest son, Edward, became king. Now the queen, who was Edward’s stepmother, hated him, because she wanted her own little son to be king. She therefore determined to have Edward killed; and I will tell you how the wicked woman did it. Edward was very fond of hunting; one day he was returning alone from the chase, and being very hot and thirsty, he rode up to the gate of his stepmother’s house at Corfe, and asked for some wine. The queen, whose name was Elfrida, brought him some herself; and while he was drinking it, she made a sign to one of her servants who stabbed Edward in the back, so that he died almost directly. This cruel murder of the young king, when he was off his guard, drinking his wine, is said to have given rise to the custom among noblemen and gentlemen of “pledging” each other, while drinking at feasts. One about to drink would call on the guest next him, or on some friend at the table, to pledge himself to protect him while in the act of drinking, and he in turn would pledge himself to protect his friend when the cup came to him. I need not tell you, I am sure, that after such a wicked action Elfrida was very unhappy all her life, and everybody hated her. The murdered young king was called Edward the Martyr.

CHAPTER XII.
Why King Ethelred was called the Unready; how the Danes drove away the English princes, and made Canute king; how Canute rebuked his courtiers and improved the people, and how the Danes and Saxons made slaves of their prisoners and of the poor.

The son of the wicked Elfrida was king after his brother Edward. His name was Ethelred, and he was king a great many years, but never did anything wise or good. The Danes came again to England, when they found out how foolish King Ethelred was, and that he was never ready, either with his ships or his soldiers, or with good counsel; for which reason he was called Ethelred the Unready. I should be quite tired if I were to tell you all the foolish and wicked things that were done, either by this king, or by the great lords who were his friends.

He allowed the Danes to get the better of the English everywhere, so they robbed them of their gold and silver, and sheep and cattle, and took their houses to live in, and turned them out. They burnt some of the English towns, and altered the names of others; they killed the people, even the little children; till at last you would have thought the whole country belonged to them, and that there was no king of England at all. You may think how unhappy the people were then, the cruel Danes robbing and murdering them when they pleased. The king was so idle, that he did nothing to save his people. There was no punishment for bad men, and nobody obeyed the laws.

When Ethelred died, the English hoped they would be happier; for his son, Edmund Ironsides, was a brave and wise prince, and was made king after his father; but I am sorry to tell you that he died in a very short time, and then the Danes drove all the princes of England away, and made one of their own princes king of England.

The princes of Alfred’s family were forced to go into foreign countries; some went to a part of France called Normandy, and some to a very distant country indeed, called Hungary.

It is well for England that the Danish king was good and wise. His name was Canute. When he saw how unhappy the people of England were, and how ill the Danes treated them, he was very sorry, and made laws to prevent the Danes from doing any more mischief in England, and to help the English to make themselves comfortable again. And because some of King Alfred’s good laws had been forgotten, while the wars were going on, he inquired of the old judges and the wise men how he could establish those laws again, and he made the people use them. Besides this, he restored some of the schools which had been destroyed in the wars, and even sent young men to the English College at Rome to study. So that he did more good to England than any king since Athelstane’s time, except King Edgar.

Have you ever heard the pretty story about Canute and his flatterers?—I will tell it you; but first you must remember that flattering is praising anybody more than he deserves, or even when he does not deserve it at all. One day, when Canute was walking with the lords of the court by the sea side, some of them, thinking to please him by flattery, began to praise him very much indeed, and to call him great, and wise, and good, and then foolishly talked of his power, and said they were sure he could do everything he chose, and that even the waves of the sea would do what he bade them.

Canute did not answer these foolish men for some time. At last he said, “I am tired, bring me a chair.” And they brought him one; and he made them set it close to the water: and he said to the sea, “I command you not to let your waves wet my feet!” The flattering lords looked at one another, and thought King Canute must be mad, to think the sea would really obey him, although they had been so wicked as to tell him it would, the moment before. Of course the sea rose as it does every day, and Canute sat still, till it wetted him, and all the lords who had flattered him so foolishly. Then he rose up, and said to them, “Learn from what you see now, that there is no being really great and powerful but GOD! He only, who made the sea, can tell it where and when to stop.” The flatterers were ashamed, and saw that King Canute was too good and wise to believe their false praise.

Canute was King of Denmark and Norway as well as England; and he was one of the richest and most powerful kings, as well as the best, that lived at that time. He reigned in England for nineteen years; and all that time there was peace, and the people improved very much. They built better houses, and wore better clothes, and ate better food. Besides they had more schools, and were much better brought up. Canute was very kind to learned men, and encouraged the English in everything good and useful.

I am sorry to say, however, that they still had many slaves instead of servants to wait upon them and to help to till the ground for them.

By slaves, I mean men and women who are the property of others, who buy and sell them, as they would horses.

Formerly there were white slaves in almost every country: afterwards, when white slaves were not allowed by law, people went and stole black men, from their homes and families, and carried them to places so far from their homes, that they could never get back again, and made them work for them. And it is very lately that a law has been made that there shall be no more slavery.

The reason I tell you about slavery in this place is, that the Danes had a great many English slaves, and the rich English had a great many Britons, and even poor English, for their slaves; for, although the Danes and English loved to be free themselves, they thought there was no harm in making slaves of the prisoners they took in battle, or even of the poor people of their own country, whom they forced to sell themselves or their children for slaves, before they would give them clothes or food to keep them from starving. By degrees, however, these wicked customs were left off, and now we are all free.

After wise King Canute’s death, there were two more Danish kings in England, one called Harold Harefoot, and the other Hardicanute; but they reigned a very short time, and did little worth remembering: so I shall say nothing more about them. In the next chapter we shall have a good deal to learn.

CHAPTER XIII.
How King Edward the Confessor suffered his courtiers to rule him and the kingdom, and promised that the Duke of Normandy should be king; how some of his wise men made a book of laws; how Harold, the son of Earl Godwin, was made king; how he was killed in the battle of Hastings, and the Duke of Normandy became king.

I told you that when the Danes got so much the better of the English as to make one of their own princes king, they drove away the princes of Alfred’s family; and I told you, at the same time, that some of these princes went to Normandy, which was governed by a duke instead of a king. The duke at that time was brave and generous, and was kind to the princes, and protected them from their enemies, and allowed them to live at his court. One of the English princes was called Edward; and, after the three Danish kings were dead, this Edward was made king of England.

The people were all delighted to have a prince of Alfred’s family once more to reign over them, for although Canute had been good to them, they could not forget that he was one of the cruel Danes who had so long oppressed the English; and, as to his sons, they never did anything good, as I told you before; and the people suspected them of having murdered a favorite young prince, called Alfred.

King Edward was very much liked at first; but he was idle, and allowed sometimes one great man, and sometimes another, to govern him and the kingdom, while he was saying his prayers, or looking over the workmen while they were building new churches.

Now it is very right in everybody to say prayers; but when God appoints us other duties to do, we should do them carefully. A king’s duty is to govern his people well; he must not only see that good laws are made, but he must also take care that everybody obeys them.

A bishop’s duty is to pray and preach, and see that all the clergymen who are under him do their duty, and instruct the people properly.

A soldier’s duty is to fight the enemies of his country in war, and to obey the king, and to live quietly in peace. A judge’s duty is to tell what the law is, to order the punishment of bad people, and to prevent wickedness. A physician’s duty is to cure sick people; and it is everybody’s duty to take care of their own families, and teach them what is right and set them good examples.

It has pleased God to make all these things duties, and He requires us to do them; and He has given us all quite time enough to pray rightly, if we really and truly love God enough to do our duties to please Him. So King Edward, if he had loved God the right way, would have attended to his kingdom himself, instead of letting other people rule it.

However, in King Edward’s time, people thought that everybody who prayed so much must be very holy, and therefore after his death he received the name of Edward the Confessor, or Saint.

One of the great men who ruled England in Edward’s time was Godwin Earl of Wessex. He was very clever, and very powerful. After his death, his son Harold became Earl of Wessex, and did all the king ought to have done himself, and tried to keep strangers out of the country.

But King Edward, who had been kindly treated in Normandy, when the Danes drove him out of England, had brought a great many Normans home with him; and when they saw how pleasant England was, and what plenty of corn, and cattle, and deer there was in it, and how healthy and strong the people grew, they determined to try and get the kingdom for their duke as soon as Edward was dead. And they told the duke what they thought of, and he came from Normandy to see King Edward, and to get him to promise that he should be king of England, as King Edward had no son.

Now I think this was not right, because Edward had a relation who ought to have been king, and his name was Edgar, and he was called the Atheling, which means the Prince.

Perhaps if Edward the Confessor had taken pains to get the great men in England to promise to take care of Edgar Atheling, and make him king, they would have done so; but as they found he wanted to give England to the Duke of Normandy, a great many of them thought it would be better to have an English earl for a king, because the English earl would be glad to protect his own countrymen, but that a Duke of Normandy would most likely take their houses and lands and give them to the Normans. So they were willing that Harold, the son of Earl Godwin, who already acted as if he were under-king, should be the real king after Edward’s death.

In the meantime King Edward was busy in building Westminster Abbey, and encouraging Norman bishops and soldiers to come to England, where he gave them some of the best places to live in.

I must tell you, however, of one very useful thing that was done in the reign of Edward. He found that some part of England was ruled by laws made by King Alfred or other English kings, before his time, and some parts by laws made by the Danes, and that the people could not agree about these laws; so he ordered some wise men to collect all these laws together, and to read them over, and to take the best English laws, and the best Danish laws, and put them into one book, that all the people might be governed by the same law.

King Edward died after he had reigned twenty-two years in England, and the English gave the kingdom to Harold the under-king. But he had a very short reign. As soon as it was known in the North of England that Edward was dead, Harold’s brother, Tostig, who had been driven out of his earldom over that part of the country, came back with the King of Norway to fight against Harold. But the other English people joined Harold, and went to battle against Tostig, who was soon killed, and Harold might have been king of all England.

But while Harold was in the North the Duke of Normandy came over to England with a great number of ships full of soldiers, and landed in Sussex. As soon as Harold heard of this, he went with his army to drive the Normans away; but he was too late; they had got into the country, and in a great battle fought near Hastings, Harold, the English king, was killed, and the Duke of Normandy made himself king of England.

I do not think the English would have allowed Duke William to be king so easily, if he had not told them that Edward the Confessor had promised that he should be king, and persuaded them that the prince Edgar Atheling, who, as I told you, ought to have been king after Edward, was too silly ever to govern the kingdom well.

William rallies the Normans at Hastings.

But after the English Harold was killed, and Edgar Atheling, with his sister, had gone to Scotland, to escape from the Normans, the English thought it better to submit to William, who had ruled his own country so wisely, that they hoped he would be a good king in England.

Battle of Hastings.

CHAPTER XIV.
WILLIAM I.—1066 to 1087.
How William the First made cruel and oppressive laws; how he took the land from the English and gave it to the Norman barons, and how he caused Domesday Book to be written.

A great change was made in England after the Duke of Normandy became king.

All the Normans spoke French, and the English spoke their own language; so at first they could not understand one another. By degrees the Normans learnt English; and some of their French words got into our language; but the old English was for the most part the same as that which you and I speak and write now.

The Normans were used to live in finer and larger houses than the English. So when they came to England they laughed at the long low wooden houses they found, and built high castles of stone for themselves, and made chimneys in their rooms, with the hearth on one side, instead of in the middle of the floor, as I told you the English had it in King Athelstane’s time.

There was one law the Normans made, which vexed the English very much.

In the old times, anybody who found a wild animal, such as a deer, or a hare, or a partridge, or pheasant, in his fields or garden, or even in the woods, might kill it, and bring it home for his family to eat. But when the Normans came, they would not allow anybody but themselves, or some of the English noblemen, to hunt and kill wild animals; and if they found a poor person doing so, they used either to put out his eyes, to cut off his hand, or to make him pay a great deal of money; and this they called “The Forest Law.” I must say I think the new King William behaved very cruelly about this.

He was so fond of hunting himself, although he would not let the poor Saxons hunt, that he turned the people out of a great many villages in Hampshire, and pulled down their houses, and spoilt their gardens, to make a great forest for himself and the Norman barons to hunt in, and that part of the country is still called “The New Forest.”

There was another rule which William made, and which the English did not like, but I am not sure whether it was wrong; and as he made the Normans obey it, as well as the English, it was fair at least.

I must tell you what it was; he made everybody put out their fires at eight o’clock at night, at the ringing of a church bell, which was called the Curfew Bell. Now, though it might have been of use to some people to keep a fire later, yet, as almost all the houses, both in the towns and the country, were built of wood, it was much safer for everybody to put out the fire early.

I should never have done, if I were to tell you all the changes that were made in dear old England by the Normans. But there is one I must try to explain to you, because it will help you to understand the rest of our history. When William was quite settled in England, which was not till after seven years, when the poor English were tired of trying to drive him and his Normans away, he took the houses and lands from the English thanes and earls, and gave them to the Norman noblemen, who were called barons.

This was unjust. But as the Normans had conquered the English, they were obliged to submit even to this. But William made an agreement with the barons to whom he gave the lands of the old thanes, that when he went to war they should go with him; that they should have those lands for themselves and their children, instead of being paid for fighting, as soldiers and their officers are now, and that they should bring with them horses and arms for themselves, and common men to fight also.

Some of the barons who had very large shares of land given to them, were bound to take a hundred men or more to the wars; some, who had less land, took fifty, or even twenty. The greatest barons had sometimes so much land, that it would have been troublesome to them to manage it all themselves; so they divided it among gentlemen whom they knew, and made them promise to go with them to the wars, and bring their servants, in the same manner as the great barons themselves did to the king.

Now these lands were called feuds, and the king was called the feudal lord of the barons, because they received the feud or piece of land from him, and they in return promised to serve him; and the great barons were called the feudal lords of the small barons, or gentlemen, for the same reason. And when these feuds were given by the king to the great baron, or by a great baron to another, the person to whom it was given knelt down before his feudal lord, and kissed his hand, and promised to serve him. This was called homage.

There is only one more thing that I shall tell you about William. He sent people to all parts of England, to see what towns and villages there were, and how many houses and people in them; and he had all the names written in a book called “Domesday Book.” Domesday means the day of judging, and this book enabled him to judge how much land he had, and how many men he could raise to fight for him.

At last King William died. He received a hurt from his horse being startled at the flames of a small town in France, which his soldiers had set on fire, and was carried to the Abbey of St. Gervase, near Rouen, where he died. He was Duke of Normandy and afterwards King of England, and is sometimes called William the Conqueror, because he conquered English Harold at the battle of Hastings. He was very cruel and very passionate; he took money and land from every one who offended him; and, as I have told you, vexed the English, and indeed all the poor, very much. And this is being a tyrant, rather than a king.

He had a very good wife, whose name was Matilda, but his sons were more like him than like their mother; however, you shall read about the two youngest of them, who came to be kings of England.

CHAPTER XV.
WILLIAM II.—1087 to 1100.
How William the Second and Robert of Normandy besieged their brother Henry in his castle; how William was killed in the New Forest, and how London Bridge and Westminster Hall were built in his reign.

As soon as William the Conqueror’s death was known in England, his second son, William, who was called Rufus, which means the Red, persuaded the noblemen in England to make him king, instead of his elder brother, Robert. I dare say the noblemen were soon sorry they did so; for although none of William the Conqueror’s sons were very good, this William Rufus was the worst of all. Robert became Duke of Normandy, but his brother William gave him a great deal of money, to let him govern the dukedom, while he went to fight in the Holy Land, where a great many warriors went to rescue Jerusalem from the Mahometans. These were called Crusaders, which means “soldiers of the Cross,” and their wars were called the Crusades.

King William Rufus then ruled over Normandy and England too, and behaved as a much worse tyrant than his father.

I must tell you a story about William and his two brothers, Robert and Henry. Robert, the eldest, as I told you, became Duke of Normandy, when William made himself King of England, but they neither of them thought of giving anything to Henry; so he got a good many soldiers together, and went to live in a castle on the top of a high rock, called St. Michael’s Mount, close to the sea-shore of Normandy, and he and his soldiers used to come out and plunder the fields of both Robert and William, whenever they had an opportunity. This was wrong in Henry in every way, but chiefly because he robbed and frightened people who had never done him any harm, and had nothing to do with the unkindness of his brothers.

Well, Robert and William collected an army, and went to his castle, to drive him out, and they contrived to keep him so closely confined, that neither he nor his people could get out to fetch water. Robert and William heard of this, and that the people in the castle were dying of thirst. William was very glad, because he said they would soon get the castle; but Robert, who was much more generous, immediately gave his brother Henry leave to send and get as much water as he wanted; and besides that, Robert sent him some of the best of his own wine. Henry soon after gave up the castle.

This story shows you how cruel William was to his own brother; so you may think he did not behave better to his subjects, and that they were not very sorry when he was killed by accident. Some tell the story of his death in this manner:—One day when he was hunting in the New Forest, made by his father, which you read about in the last chapter, he had a gentleman named Walter Tyrrel with him, who was reckoned skilful in shooting with a bow and arrow. This gentleman, seeing a fine deer run by, wished to show the king how well he could shoot; but he was a little too eager, and his arrow, instead of going straight to the deer, touched a tree, which turned it aside, and it killed the king, who was standing near the tree. But the truth is that it was never known who shot the arrow that killed the wicked king.

Some poor men found William’s body lying in the forest, and carried it to Winchester, where it was buried.

William Rufus does not deserve to be remembered for many things, yet we must not forget that he built a good bridge over the river Thames, just where the old London bridge stood, till it was taken down, when the fine new bridge was finished; besides that, he built Westminster Hall, very near the Abbey, and when you walk to Westminster you will see part of the very wall raised by him. But its large and beautiful roof was built three hundred years later by Richard II.

CHAPTER XVI.
HENRY I.—1100 to 1135.
How Henry the First married the English Princess Maude; how his son William was drowned, and how he desired that his daughter Maude should be Queen after his own death.

As soon as the nobles and bishops knew that William Rufus was dead, they determined that his younger brother, Henry, should be king, because Robert, the eldest, was too busy about the wars in the Holy Land, which I mentioned before.

Now Henry was brave and clever, like his father, but he was not quite so cruel.

He was very fond of books, and encouraged learned men, and his subjects gave him the name of Beauclerk, which means fine scholar. He married Matilda, whose uncle was Edgar Atheling, who ought to have been King of England after Edward the Confessor. The English people were pleased to have her for their queen, because they hoped she would make Henry more kind to them than his brother and father had been; and they called her “the good queen Maude” (which is short for Matilda). She had two children, William and Maude; but William was not at all like his good and kind mother, who died when he was a boy. He loved to drink wine, and was very quarrelsome; and he used to say that, if ever he became king, he would treat the English worse than they had ever been treated before: so nobody but the Normans cared for him. But he never came to be king, as I will tell you.

He had been with his father into Normandy, and when they were to return, instead of coming in the same ship with his father, he chose to come in one called the White Ship, where there were a number of foolish young people like himself. They amused themselves so long ashore, drinking before they set off, that they were a great way behind the king, who got safe to England. The prince and his companions had drunk so much wine, that they did not know what they were about, so that the White Ship ran on a rock, and, not being able to manage the vessel properly, they were all drowned. I have read that Prince William might have been saved, but he tried to save a lady who was his near relation, and in trying to save her he was drowned himself; and this is the only good thing I know about Prince William. You may think how sorry King Henry was to hear that his only son was drowned.

Indeed, I have read that nobody ever saw him smile afterwards. He had lost his good wife, and his only son, and now he had nobody to love but his daughter Maude.

When Maude was very young, she was married to the German Emperor, Henry the Fifth; but he died very soon; however, people always called her the Empress Maude. And then her father made her marry a nobleman, named Geoffrey, who was Count or Earl of Anjou; and she had three sons, the eldest of whom came to be one of the greatest of our kings.

Now I told you King Henry Beauclerk was very fond of his daughter. Her eldest son was named Henry after him; and he meant that his daughter Maude should be Queen of England after he died, and that her little Henry should be the next king.

But he was afraid that the Norman barons would not like to obey either a woman or a little child, and that they would make some grown-up man of the royal line king instead; and he did everything in his power to make all the barons promise to make Maude queen after his death. But they would not all promise; and I am sorry to say that some of those who did forgot their promise as soon as he was dead, and took the part of Stephen, as I will tell you by and by.

While Henry was busy, doing all he could to make his daughter queen, he died.

I must tell you the cause of his death; for I think it is a good lesson to all of us. He had been told by the physicians that he ought not to eat too much, but one day a favorite dish was brought to his table (I have read that it was potted lampreys), and he ate such a quantity that it made him ill, and so he died, after he had been king thirty-five years.

CHAPTER XVII.
STEPHEN.—1135 to 1154.
How Stephen was made king; and of the civil wars in his reign.

As soon as King Henry was dead, his nephew Stephen, who was very handsome, and brave, and good-natured, was made king. A great many Norman barons, and English lords and bishops, went with him to Westminster Abbey, and there the Archbishop of Canterbury put a crown upon his head, and they all promised to obey him as their king. But the other barons, and lords, and bishops, who, as I told you before, had promised to obey the Empress Maude as Queen of England, and to keep the kingdom for her young son Henry, sent to fetch them from Anjou, which was their own country, and tried to make her queen. I am sorry to say that the friends of Stephen and the friends of Maude began to fight, and never ceased for fifteen years.

This fighting was very mischievous to the country; whole towns were destroyed by it; and while the war between Stephen and Maude lasted, the corn-fields were laid waste, so that many people died for want of bread; the flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were killed, or died for want of care; the trees were cut down, and nobody planted young ones; and there was nothing but misery from one end of the kingdom to the other. This sort of war between two parties of the people of the same country is called civil war, and it is the most dreadful of all warfare.

If strangers come to fight, and all the people of a country join to drive them away, the mischief they may have done is soon repaired; and the people of a country love one another the better because they have been defending one another.

But in a civil war, when people in the same country fight, it is not so. The very next door neighbours may take different sides, and then the mischief they may do one another will be always remembered, and they will dislike one another even after peace is made.

I have heard things so dreadful about civil wars, you would hardly believe them. It is said even that two brothers have taken different sides in a civil war, and that when there was a battle it has happened that one brother has killed the other, and when he found out what he had done, he was ready to kill himself with grief. Only think how dreadful such a thing is, and how sorry the father and mother of those brothers must have been!

These sad wars lasted more than fifteen years: at last everybody got tired of them, and it was settled by some of the wisest of the barons and bishops that Stephen should be king as long as he lived; that Maude should live in Anjou; and that when Stephen died, her son Henry should be king of England.

Stephen did not live very long after this agreement was made. He had some very good qualities, but the wars, which troubled all England while he reigned, prevented their being of much use. He was King of England for nineteen years.

CHAPTER XVIII.
HENRY II.—1154 to 1189.
How Henry the Second did many good things for England; how the gentry went hawking; how Strongbow conquered a great part of Ireland; and how the kings of Scotland became under-kings to the kings of England.

We have so much to learn about King Henry the Second, that I think I must divide the account of his reign into two chapters.

In the first, I will write all the best things I remember; and in the second, all the bad. Some things that are middling will be at the end of the first, and some at the end of the second chapter.

It was a glad day for England when young Henry, the son of Maude, was made king. He was wise and learned, and brave and handsome, besides being the richest king of his time, and having the largest estates.

The first thing he did when he was king was to send away all Norman and French soldiers, who had been brought to England to fight either for Stephen or for Maude. He paid them their wages, and sent them to their own homes, along with their captains, because he thought English soldiers were best to defend England, and that foreign soldiers were not likely to be kind to the poor English people.

He next made the barons, whether Norman or English, pull down a great many of their castles, because robbers used to live in them, and, after they had robbed the farmers of their cattle or corn, they used to hide themselves in these castles, and the judges could not get at them to punish them.

Then King Henry built up the towns that had been burnt in the wars of Stephen, and sent judges to do justice all through the land, and the people began to feel safe, and to build their cottages, and plough the fields; and the country was once more fit to be called dear merry England.

Instead of fighting and quarrelling with one another, the young men used to make parties together, and ride out with their dogs, to hunt the foxes and deer in the forests, and sometimes the ladies went with them, to see a kind of sport that was very pretty, but it is not used now. Instead of dogs, to catch wild animals, they used a bird called a hawk to catch partridges and pigeons for them. It took a great deal of trouble to teach the hawks, and the man who taught them and took care of them was called a Falconer, because the best kind of hawk is the falcon.

When the ladies and gentlemen went hawking the falcons used to sit upon their left wrists while they held a little chain in their hands; and there was a hood over the falcon’s heads, that their eyes might be kept clear. As soon as the party got into the fields they took the hood off the birds’ eyes, and as soon as they saw any game they loosed the little chain they held in their hands, and then the falcons flew after the game; and the ladies and gentlemen rode up after them to receive the game when the falcon had caught it.

King Henry loved hunting very well, but he was too wise to hunt much. He spent most of his time in going about to see what wanted mending after the sad civil war we read of in the last chapter; and he employed the cleverest men he could find to put everything in order, and made the wisest men judges; and he got some learned men to seek out all the best laws that had ever been made in England; and, as the long wars had made the people forget the laws, he ordered the judges to go to all the towns by turns several times a year, and do justice among all the English.

King Henry was very fond of learning, and gave money to learned men and to those who made verses, or as we call them poets; and by and by I dare say you will read about one that Henry was kind to, named Wace, who wrote a poem about the ancient Britons, and another about the ancient Normans.

Before I can tell you of a thing that was partly good and partly bad for England in this King Henry’s reign, I must put you in mind that I have told you nothing yet about Ireland, the sister-island of Great Britain. It was never conquered by the Romans; and the people were as ignorant as the Britons before the Romans came, with just the same sort of houses and clothes. They might have been in the same state for many years if a very good man, whom the Irish called Saint Patrick, had not gone from Britain to Ireland and taught the people to be Christians; and he and some of his companions also taught them to read; and the Irish people began to be a little more like those in other parts of the world.

Dermot, King of Leinster, doing homage to Henry II.

Ireland was divided into several kingdoms; and, in King Henry’s time, their kings quarrelled sadly with one another. And one of them came to Henry, and begged him to go to help him against his enemies. But Henry had too much to do at home. However, he said that, if any of his barons liked to go and help the Irish king, they might. And the Irish king, whose name was Dermot, promised that if they could punish or kill his enemies, he would call the King of England Lord over Ireland, and that he and the rest of the Irish kings should be his servants.

Then the Earl of Strigul, who was called Strongbow, and some other noblemen, gathered all their followers together, and went to Ireland to help Dermot; and, after a great deal of fighting, they conquered that part of Ireland opposite to England, and drove the people over to the other side; just as the English had driven the Britons to Wales. From that time Ireland has always been under the same king with England.

You remember, I am sure, that one part of Britain is called Scotland. Now, at the time I am writing about, Scotland had kings of its own, and was more like England than any other country; but it was much poorer, and the people were ruder and wilder.

The king of Scotland, named William the Lion, having heard that King Henry was in Normandy, thought it would be a good opportunity to take an army into England, to rob the towns and carry away the corn and cattle; and so he did. But several of the noblemen and bishops got together a number of English soldiers and marched to the North, and fought King William and took him prisoner.

William was sent to London, and King Henry would not set him free till he had promised that, for the future, the kings of Scotland should be only under-kings to the kings of England; and from that time the kings of England always said Scotland was theirs; but it was long before England and Scotland became one kingdom.

I do not think this was quite good for England, though the English drove the Scots home again, because it made many quarrels and wars between England and Scotland. As I have now mentioned the best part of Henry the Second’s reign, we must end our long chapter.

CHAPTER XIX.
How the Popes wanted to be masters in England; how that led to the murder of Becket; how Queen Eleanor made her sons rebel against their father; why Henry the Second was called Plantagenet.

It is a pity that we must think of the bad things belonging to Henry’s reign.

I dare say you remember the chapter in which I told you how the Angles and Saxons became Christians, and that a bishop of Rome sent Augustine and some companions to teach the people. Now the bishops of Rome called themselves popes, to distinguish themselves from other bishops; and, as most of the good men who taught the different nations to be Christians had been sent from Rome, the popes said they ought to be chief of all the bishops and clergymen in every country.

This might have been right, perhaps, if they had only wanted to know that everybody was well taught. But they said that the clergymen were their servants, and that neither the kings nor judges of any country should punish them, or do them good, without the pope’s leave. This was foolish and wrong. Although clergymen are in general good men, because they are always reading and studying what is good, yet some of them are as wicked as other men, and ought to be judged and punished for their wickedness in the same manner.

And so King Henry thought.

But the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose name was Thomas Becket, thought differently.

This Becket wanted to be as great a man as the king, and tried to prevent the proper judges from punishing wicked clergymen, and wanted to be their judge himself. And there were sad quarrels between the king and Becket on that account.

At last, one day, after a very great dispute, Henry fell into a violent passion, and said he wished Becket was dead. Four of his servants, who heard him, and wished to please him, went directly to Canterbury, and, finding Archbishop Becket in church, they killed him with great cruelty.

You may think how sorry King Henry was that he had been in such a passion; for, if he had not, his servants would never have thought of killing Becket. It gave the king a great deal of trouble before he could make the people forgive the murder of the archbishop. And this was one of the very bad things in Henry’s life.

There was another bad thing, which perhaps caused the king more pain than the killing of Becket. It was owing, mostly, to something wrong which the king had been persuaded to do when he was very young.

You shall hear. I told you how very rich King Henry was; the thing that first made him so was his early marriage to one of the richest ladies in the world, although she was very ill-tempered, and in all ways a bad woman. It is said that she was handsome; but I am sure she must have been wicked, for she was once married to a French king, who found her out in such wicked actions, that he sent her away, and gave her back all her money and estates, as he did not choose to have so bad a wife.

Now Henry, instead of choosing a good wife, when only nineteen years old married this bad woman for her riches.

Her name was Eleanor of Aquitaine, and she had four sons, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, and John. She brought up these children very badly, and, instead of teaching them to love their father, who was very kind to them, she encouraged them to disobey him in everything. When her son Henry was only sixteen, she told him he would make a good king, and never rested till his good-natured father caused him to be crowned king, and trusted a great deal more to him than was right; till at last young Henry became so conceited that he wanted to be king altogether, and, by the help of this wicked mother, and of the King of France, he got an army and made war against his father.

However, he did not gain anything by his bad behaviour, and soon afterwards he became very ill, and died without seeing his father; and, when he was dying, he begged his servants to go and say to the king his father that he was very sorry indeed for his wickedness, and very unhappy to think of his undutiful behaviour. The king was even more unhappy than the prince had been, for he loved his son dearly.

I am sorry to say the other three sons of Henry and Eleanor did not behave much better. Richard was as violent in temper as his mother, but he had some good qualities, which made his father hope he might become a good king when he himself was dead. But Queen Eleanor, with the help of the King of France, contrived to make Richard and his brother Geoffrey fight against their father. As for John, though he was too young to do much harm himself while King Henry lived, yet he became as wicked as the rest when he grew up. Geoffrey married Constance, Princess of Brittany, but he died soon after. He had only one son, named Arthur about whom I will tell you more in a short time.

Now Henry’s great fault, in marrying a bad woman because she was rich, brought the greatest punishment with it, for she taught her children to be wicked, and to rebel against their father. And there is nothing in the world so unhappy as a family where the children behave ill to their parents.

I beg now, my dear little Arthur, that you will take notice, that all the good belonging to Henry’s reign concerns the country. While he was doing his duty, being kind to his subjects, repairing the mischief done in the civil wars, and taking care that justice was done, and that learning and learned men were encouraged, he was happy.

His bad actions always hurt himself. If he had not given way to his passion, Thomas à Becket would not have been killed by his servants, and he would not have suffered so much sorrow and vexation.

And if he had not married a woman whom he knew to be wicked, his children might have been comforts to him instead of making war upon him; and they might have been better kings for England after his death.

Henry the Second has often been called Henry Plantagenet. His father was the first person in his family to whom that name was given, and I will tell you why.

When people went to battle long ago, to keep their heads from being wounded, they covered them with iron caps, called helmets; and there were bars like cages over their faces, so that their best friends did not always know them with their helmets on. Therefore, they used to stick something into their caps, by which they might be known; and Henry’s father used to wear in his helmet a branch of broom, called planta genista, or shortly Plantagenet; and so he got his name from it.

CHAPTER XX.
RICHARD I.—1189 to 1199.
How Richard the First went to fight in foreign countries, and the evil things that happened in his absence; how the Jews were ill-treated; how King Richard was taken prisoner; how he was discovered and set at liberty, and how he was killed in battle.

You remember that Henry the Second’s eldest son, Henry, died before his father; his second son, Richard, therefore, became king of England. He was called Richard of the Lion’s Heart, because he was very brave.

Now, in the time when King Richard lived, people thought a great deal more of kings who fought and conquered large kingdoms, than of those who tried to make their own people happy at home in a small kingdom. And so it was in England. People really began to forget all the good their late wise king, Henry Plantagenet, had done, and to like Richard Plantagenet better, because he told them he would go to war, and do great feats of arms at a great distance, and that he would not only make his own name famous, but that their dear England should be heard of all over the world; and that, when he, and the English gentlemen and soldiers who would go with him, came back, they would bring great riches, as well as a great deal of fame. By fame, I mean that sort of praise which is given to men for bravery, or wisdom, or learning, or goodness, when they are a great deal braver, or wiser, or more learned, or better than other people.

Now, of all these qualities, bravery is the least useful for kings; yet I believe that their people as well as themselves often like it the best—at least it was so with Richard. He had no sooner invited the English to go to the wars with him, than the nobles who had the large feuds, or fiefs, that I told you of in the chapter about William the Conqueror, and the gentlemen who had the small fiefs under the nobles, and all their servants, made ready to go.

And they went to the same wars that William the Conqueror’s son, Robert, went to; for those wars, which were called Crusades, lasted a long time, but I cannot give you an account of them now. So I will tell you what happened in England when Richard and the best noblemen and soldiers were gone.

First of all, many of the wise rules of King Henry were broken, as soon as the people found there was no king in England to watch over them. Then, as the barons had taken away not only all their own money, but also that of the farmers and townspeople, from whom they could borrow any, everybody was poor, and some people were really starved. Many of those who could not find any employment turned robbers, and plundered the people; and the judges were not able to punish them, because the king had taken all the good soldiers with him, and there was nobody to catch the robbers and bring them before the judges.

There was a very famous robber in those times, called Robin Hood. He had his hiding-place in the great forest of Sherwood, in the very middle of England. He only robbed rich lords or bishops, and was kind to the common people, who liked him, and made merry songs about him, and his three friends, Friar Tuck, Little John, and Allan-a-Dale.

Then there was another bad thing owing to Richard’s being in the wars so far off. He was often wanting money to pay his soldiers, and the English, who were proud of their brave king, in spite of all they suffered from his being so far away, used to sell anything they had for the sake of sending the king what he wanted. This was very right, while they only sent their own money. But there happened at that time to be a great many Jews in England: these unfortunate people, who have no country of their own, lived at least in peace while wise Henry was king. They were very industrious, and taught the English many useful things. They were the best physicians and the best merchants in the country. But the people were jealous of them for their riches, and they did not like their strange dress, nor their strange language. So now, when there was no king in England to protect these poor Jews, they fell upon them, and robbed them of their money and goods, which they pretended they meant to send to Richard. But most of the money was kept by Prince John and some of the worst of the barons, who had stayed at home; and they encouraged the people to treat the Jews very cruelly, besides robbing them, and they killed a great many. I am sure that, when you are old enough to read of the bad treatment of the Jews at York, you will be ashamed to think such cruel things could have been done in England.

There was one person less to blame for the bad things done at this time than anybody else; I mean Queen Eleanor.

She behaved as well to her son Richard as she had behaved ill to her husband, and while he was at the wars she tried hard to persuade her youngest son, John, not to rebel against Richard, as he was striving to do. All the foolish and all the wicked barons, both Norman and English, followed Prince John; but there were enough good barons to defend Richard, though he was so far off; and a good many bishops joined them, and prevented John from making himself king.

When Richard of the Lion’s heart, as he was called on account of his great courage, heard how much the people of England were suffering, he resolved to come home; but as he was coming the shortest way, one of his enemies contrived to take him prisoner, and to shut him up in a castle, so that it was a long time before anybody knew what had become of the King of England.

That enemy was Leopold, Duke of Austria, with whom Richard had quarrelled when they were at the Crusade. Now Richard, who was really good-natured, although he quarrelled now and then, had forgotten all about it; but Leopold was of a revengeful temper, and as soon as he had an opportunity he took him, as I have told you, to a castle in his country; but he had soon to give him up to his lord, the Emperor, who imprisoned him in a strong tower.

King Richard I. made prisoner by the Duke of Austria.

In old times a beautiful story was told about the way the English found out where Richard was. It was this. Richard had a servant called Blondel, who loved his master much. When Richard did not come home, Blondel became very anxious, and went in search of him. He travelled from one castle to another for some time, without finding his master. At last one evening, when he was very tired, he sat down near the castle of Trifels to rest, and while he was there he heard somebody singing, and fancied the voice was like the king’s. After listening a little longer, he felt sure it was, and then he began to sing himself, to let the king know he was there; and the song he sang was one the king loved. Some say the king made it. Then Richard was glad, for he found he could send to England, and let his people know where he was.

This is the old story. But it was in another way that the people in England heard of the captivity of their king. The moment they did so, they determined to do everything they could to get him home. They sent to the Emperor to beg him to set Richard at liberty; but he said that the English should not have their king until they gave him a great deal of money; and when they heard that, they all gave what they could; the ladies even gave their gold necklaces, and ornaments of all kinds, to send to the Emperor that he might set Richard free.

At length the king came home; but he found that while he was away, Philip, King of France, had been making war on his subjects in Normandy; and, besides that, helping his brother John to disturb the peace in England; so he went to Normandy to punish Philip very soon afterwards, and was killed by an arrow shot from a castle called Chaluz, when he had only been king ten years.

Many people praise and admire Richard of the Lion’s heart, because he was so brave and hardy in war. For my part, I should have liked him better if he had thought a little more about taking care of his country; and if he had stayed in it and done justice to his people, and encouraged them to be good and industrious, as his wise father did.

CHAPTER XXI.
JOHN.—1199 to 1216.
Why King John was called Lackland; how he killed his nephew Arthur, and how the barons rebelled against him, and made him sign the Great Charter.

John, the youngest son of Henry Plantagenet, became king after the death of his brother Richard.

His reign was a bad one for England, for John was neither so wise as his father, nor so brave as his brother. Besides, he was very cruel.

At first he had been called John Lackland, because his father had died before he was old enough to get possession of the lands that his father wished to give him. And not long after he became king he lost Normandy and all the lands that had belonged to his grandfather, Geoffrey of Anjou. He did not know how to govern England so as to repair the ill it had suffered while Richard was absent at the wars, so that the Pope called upon the King of France to go to England, and drive John away and make himself king instead; and then John was so base that he went to a priest called a Nuncio, or Ambassador, who came from Rome, and really gave him the crown of England, and promised that England should belong to the Pope, if the Pope would only keep him safe.

You cannot wonder that John was disliked; but when I have told you how he treated a nephew of his, called Prince Arthur, you will, I am sure, dislike him as much as I do. Some people thought that this Prince Arthur ought to have been King of England, because he was the son of John’s elder brother, Geoffrey. And John was afraid that the barons and other great men would choose Arthur to be king, so he contrived to get Arthur into his power.

Prince Arthur and Hubert.

He wished very much to kill him at once; but then he was afraid lest Arthur’s mother should persuade the King of France and the other princes to make war upon him to avenge Arthur’s death. Then he thought that, if he put out his eyes, he would be so unfit for a king, that he should be allowed to keep him a prisoner all his life; and he actually gave orders to a man named Hubert de Burgh to put his eyes out, and Hubert hired two wicked men to do it.

But when they came with their hot irons to burn his eyes out, Arthur knelt down and begged hard that they would do anything but blind him; he hung about Hubert’s neck, and kissed and fondled him so much, and cried so bitterly, that neither Hubert nor the men hired to do it could think any more of putting out his eyes, and so they left him.

But his cruel uncle, John, was determined Arthur should not escape. He took him away from Hubert, and carried him to a tower at Rouen, the chief town of Normandy, and shut him up there.

One night, soon afterwards, it is said that Arthur heard a knocking at the gate; and when it was opened, you may think how frightened he was to see his cruel uncle standing there, with a servant as bad as himself, whose name was Maluc; and he was frightened with reason: for the wicked Maluc seized him by the arm, and stabbed him in the breast with his dagger, and then threw his body into the river Seine, which was close to the tower, while King John stood by to see it done.

It was for this wicked action that his grandfather’s estates in France, as well as the Dukedom of Normandy, were taken away from King John.

For his faults in governing England so badly, he had a different punishment. All his subjects agreed that, as he was so cruel as to put some people in prison, and to kill others, without any reason, instead of letting the proper judges find out whether they deserved punishment or not, they must try to force him to govern better. And for this purpose the great barons and the bishops, and gentlemen, from all parts of England, joined together, and they sent word to John, that, if he wished to be king any longer, he must promise to do justice, and to let the English people be free, as the English kings had made them before the Conquest.

At first, John would not listen to the message sent by the barons, and would have made a civil war in the country; but he found that only seven of the barons were his friends, and there were more than a hundred against him. Then he said, that if the greatest barons and bishops would meet him at a place called Runnymede, near Windsor, he would do what they wished for the good of England. And they met the king there; and, after some disputing, they showed him a sheet of parchment, on which they had written down a great many good laws, to prevent the kings of England from being cruel and unjust, and to oblige them to let the people be free.[1] King John was very much vexed when he read what they had written; but as he could not prevail upon them to let him be their king, if he did not agree to do what they wished, he put his seal at the end of the writing, and so he was obliged to do as the barons desired him to do.

This parchment is called the Great Charter, in English. Most people call it by its Latin name, which is Magna Charta. Now you must remember this name, and that King John put his seal upon it at Runnymede—because it is of great consequence, even to us who live now, that our king should keep the promises John made to the English people at Runnymede.

A good king would have been glad to promise these things to his people, and would have liked to keep his word. But as John was passionate and greedy, it vexed him very much not to be allowed to put people in prison, or to rob them of their money or their houses, when he pleased.

King John granting Magna Charta.

If John had been honest, and had tried to keep his word, he might have lived happily in England, although he had lost Normandy. But he was always trying to cheat the people and the barons, and did not keep the promises he made in Magna Charta; and he made everybody in England so angry, that they allowed the King of France’s son to come to England, and make war upon John. So that all the rest of his reign was very unhappy; for although many of the barons helped him to defend himself from the French prince, when the Pope, who now thought that England belonged to him, ordered them to do so, they never could trust him, and he died very miserable, knowing that he was disliked by everybody.