"Eleanor, the daughter and heiress of William duke of Guienne, and count of Poictou, had been married sixteen years to Louis VII. king of France, and had attended him in a croisade, which that monarch commanded against the infidels; but having lost the affections of her husband, and even fallen under some suspicions of gallantry with a handsome Saracen, Louis, more delicate than politic, procured a divorce from her, and restored her those rich provinces, which by her marriage she had annexed to the crown of France. The young count of Anjou, afterwards Henry II. king of England, tho' at that time but in his nineteenth year, neither discouraged by the disparity of age, nor by the reports of Eleanor's gallantry, made such successful courtship to that princess, that he married her six weeks after her divorce, and got possession of all her dominions as a dowery. A marriage thus founded upon interest was not likely to be very happy: it happened accordingly, Eleanor, who had disgusted her first husband by her gallantries, was no less offensive to her second by her jealousy: thus carrying to extremity, in the different parts of her life, every circumstance of female weakness. She had several sons by Henry, whom she spirited up to rebel against him; and endeavouring to escape to them disguised in man's apparel in 1173, she was discovered and thrown into a confinement, which seems to have continued till the death of her husband in 1189. She however survived him many years: dying in 1204, in the sixth year of the reign of her youngest son, John." See Hume's Hist. 4to. vol. i. pp. 260, 307. Speed, Stow, &c.
It is needless to observe, that the following ballad (given, with some corrections, from an old printed copy) is altogether fabulous; whatever gallantries Eleanor encouraged in the time of her first husband, none are imputed to her in that of her second.
[The idea of the unlucky shrift exhibited in the following ballad is taken from some old story-teller. It occurs among the tales of Boccaccio, Bandello, Barbazan, La Fontaine, and several other writers.
A copy of this ballad, differing very considerably from the present version, is to be found in Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads. The first stanza is as follows:—
"The queen fell sick, and very, very sick
She was sick and like to dee
And she sent for a frier oure frae France
Her confessour to be."
The last stanza but four reads:—
"And do you see yon pretty little girl
That's a beclad in green?
She's a friar's daughter oure in France
And I hoped to see her a queen."
And the end as follows:—