Now Robert, the Duke of Normandy, Henry’s elder brother, had returned from his wars in the Holy Land, and finding it useless to try and assert his rights in England, he settled in Normandy. But he was very idle; he had spent all his money; it is even said that he had to lie in bed sometimes, for want of clothes to put on, and the Norman people were so unhappy, that they sent for Henry to come and help them. So leaving his wife Maude to govern England, Henry took an army to Normandy, and a battle was fought in which Duke Robert and his little son were taken prisoners.
It was just forty years after the battle of Hastings; then the Normans came over and conquered the English; now the English went over, and Normandy was conquered. Of course Henry had to spend a good deal of time over there, to reform laws and make peace, but Queen Maude was quite capable of reigning in England, and keeping the people peaceful and happy.
In the summer of 1109 Henry returned to England, and kept court in great splendour at the new palace at Windsor. His little daughter Matilda was just five years old, when the Emperor of Germany, a man of forty-five, begged to be allowed to marry her. The proposal was eagerly accepted by her father, for the union would secure peace between Germany and England, so the little princess was solemnly married. The child could not stand under the weight of jewels with which she was adorned as bride, and had to be carried; she was allowed to live with her mother in England till she was twelve, when she was sent over in great state to her royal husband.
When Prince William was twelve, he was taken over to Normandy, for the Norman barons to swear fealty to him and acknowledge him as their future king. But he was never their king, because he was drowned when he was only eighteen.
A revolt in Normandy to set Robert’s little son upon the throne, took Henry and his son away from England again, and the queen was left alone. She was in failing health, and Henry returned to spend Christmas with her, but he could not stay long. He had left Prince William as a pledge that he would return; so he left the queen, and they never met again. Maude lived on in her palace at Westminster, very lonely in heart, although she was surrounded with all the splendour of royalty; her two children were gone, her husband was across the sea. Her only pleasure lay in caring for the poor around her, and making them happy. For five months she lived on in her solitude, and in May, 1118, she died, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. She was spared the blow of hearing that her only boy, Prince William, was drowned in the White Ship crossing over to England; spared the misery of knowing that her daughter Matilda, left a widow at twenty-one, was obliged to fight for the crown of England, and spared witnessing the bitter grief of her husband Henry, who, after the loss of his son, never “smiled again.”
ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE (1122-1204).
Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wife of Henry II., has been handed down to us by popular tradition, as a tyrannical woman, with a great many bad faults and very few good traits of character. This is not entirely the case. Although her early life was marked by wild and reckless freaks, and though we must blame her for helping her sons against their father, yet we must recognize her, as one whose masterful power in ruling the kingdom kept the country at peace, whose last years were marked by very merciful acts, who never spared herself any trouble for her son, even when bowed down with fourscore years—as a great and illustrious woman.
Her energy from early youth to old age was unrivalled; at the age of twenty-five, she went on a crusade, dressed as a pilgrim, with her husband; at the age of seventy she had the energy to go to Italy with a wife for her son, and to Germany with the ransom she had raised to release him from prison.