Now it happened that Hugh, Count de la Marche, had not exactly been guilty of betraying “the noon of manhood to a laurel shade,” but he had refrained from taking a wife for better or for worse. He had, indeed, entered into a contract of marriage with one of Isabel’s daughters, but the princess was still an infant, and Count Hugh soon showed a decided preference for the mother. Accordingly, a marriage was speedily brought about, and Isabel, as wife of the Count de la Marche, lived many years, and wrought so much mischief that, when finally she fled to Fontrevaud and died penitent within that religious house, people said that she ought to be called Jezebel rather than Isabel for having sown the seeds of so many crimes; and she begged that she might not be laid in the choir with the second Henry and Eleanor of Guienne and Cœur-de-Lion, but buried in the common cemetery as a penance for her sins, which were many.

It was well, perhaps, for the young King of England and for the people which he was to rule under circumstances so difficult, that Isabel of Angoulême took her departure and left him to begin his reign under happier auspices. An intriguing and ambitious woman might have spoiled all. As it happened, Pembroke had his own way, and felt that he was equal to the crisis.

CHAPTER XXXIX
A CONQUEROR IN IMAGINATION

WHEN King John died at Newark, and when the boy Henry was crowned at Gloucester, Louis of France and the Anglo-Norman barons were still before Dover. But Hugh de Burgh held out gallantly; and Louis, wearying of an enterprise in which there was no prospect of success, swallowed the vow he had made never to move from before the castle till he had taken it and hanged the garrison, and resolved on withdrawing from the siege, and employing his energies to consolidate the conquests he had already achieved in England. Accordingly, he returned to London, which was still devoted to his cause, and on the 6th of November took possession of the Tower, which, doubtless, he considered a stronghold which would stand him in good stead, in case of the citizens becoming refractory, and requiring to be kept down with the strong hand.

So far the French prince, notwithstanding his check at Dover, saw no reason to despair of ultimate triumph over the obstacles which barred his way to the throne, and, looking upon young Henry’s coronation as a farce, he was already a conqueror in imagination. Moreover, he daily showed himself more and more indifferent to the opinions of his Anglo-Norman allies, bestowing all his confidence on the lords and knights who had accompanied him from France, and not scrupling to make Robert Fitzwalter and his confederates feel the full humiliation of their position. It is difficult to guess whether or not Fitzwalter believed the story which was current as to the death of his daughter, Maude the Fair, by the poisoned egg. But even if so, his conscience must sometimes have reproached him when he reflected that, in order to gratify his revenge for a private wrong, he had played a part similar to that of Count Julian of Spain, when, five hundred years earlier, he, in order to avenge the wrongs of his daughter, Caba, had invited the Moors to seize the kingdom of Roderick, overthrew the monarchy of the Goths, and placed his native land and its inhabitants at the mercy of foreign invaders. Probably, however, Fitzwalter seldom thought either of Count Julian’s country or of his own, but gave his whole attention to his own safety and his own interests, and troubled himself very lightly with the misery which he had been the means of bringing on England and on Englishmen.

At all events, when Louis, having taken possession of the Tower, again marched from the capital to pursue his career of conquest, Fitzwalter accompanied the French prince, and aided him in his various enterprises. His position, indeed, and that of the other Anglo-Normans who aided the foreigners to ravage the country, even if they were destitute of patriotism, could hardly have been very pleasant; for at that time there existed no love between the barons of England and the warriors of France; and it appears that the continental adventurers were in the habit of assuming airs of superiority, and treating the islanders with something very like contempt, vapouring about their own prowess, repeating the wretched joke about Englishmen being born with tails like horses as a punishment for somebody having cut off the tail of Thomas à Becket’s horse, and describing the islanders, without distinction of race, as “English tails.”

Now it must have been sufficiently mortifying to Fitzwalter, and De Quency, and De Roos to be supposed to have tails like horses, and perhaps still more mortifying to them as Normans to be treated as English. Nevertheless, they bore all taunts and insults as best they could, and fought side by side with their laughing allies—no doubt valiantly and well. First they besieged and took the castle of Hertford, and then the great castle of Berkhampstead, a place renowned in the history of the Norman Conquest. Elated by his successes, Louis proceeded to St. Albans, and threatened to burn the magnificent abbey which Offa, the Saxon king, had founded and dedicated to the proto-martyr of Britain, if the abbot did not come and do him homage. Trembling for the edifice, and trembling for his own safety, the abbot, nevertheless, declined to do what, as an Englishman, he could not do with honour. However, the holy man offered a large sum of money as a bribe, and Louis, having accepted the abbot’s gold instead of his homage, passed on. But ere this a serious misunderstanding had broken out in his camp, and threatened mischievous consequences. When Berkhampstead was taken by the French, Fitzwalter suggested that the castle, on which he pretended to have an hereditary claim, should be committed to his custody. Louis thereupon consulted the French knights who were with him whether or not he should do as Fitzwalter wished.

“No,” answered they, scornfully. “How can any confidence be placed in English tails, who are traitors to their own sovereign?”

Louis returned to Fitzwalter.

“You must wait patiently till the kingdom is conquered,” said he, “and I will then give every man what he has a right to possess.”