Having now gained his opportunity, both as to place and occasion, the King, the son, left his father, and proceeded to the King of France. However, Richard Barre, his chancellor, Walter, his chaplain, Ailward, his chamberlain, and William Blund, his apparitor, left him, and returned to the King, his father. Thus did the king's son lose both his feelings and his senses: he repulsed the innocent, persecuted a father, usurped authority, seized upon a kingdom; he alone was the guilty one, and yet a whole army conspired against his father. "So does the madness of one make many mad." For he it was who thirsted for the blood of a father, the gore of a parent!
In the meantime, Louis, King of the Franks, held a great council at Paris, at which he and all the principal men of France made oath to the son of the King of England that they would assist him in every way in expelling his father from the kingdom if he should not accede to his wishes: on which he swore to them that he would not make peace with his father, except with their sanction and consent. After this, he swore that he would give to Philip, Earl of Flanders, for his homage, a thousand pounds of yearly revenues in England, and the whole of Kent, together with Dover Castle, and Rochester Castle; to Matthew, Earl of Boulogne, for his homage, the Soke of Kirketon in Lindsey, and the earldom of Mortaigue, with the honour of Hay; and to Theobald, Earl of Blois, for his homage, two hundred pounds of yearly revenues in Anjou, and the Castle of Amboise, with all the jurisdiction which he had claimed to hold in Touraine; and he also quitted claim to him of all right that the King his father and himself had claimed in Chateau Regnaud. All these gifts, and many besides, that he had made to other persons, he confirmed under his new seal, which the King of France had ordered to be made for him.
Besides these, he made other gifts, which, under the same seal, he confirmed: namely, to William, King of Scotland, for his assistance, the whole of Northumberland as far as the river Tyne. To the brother of the same king, he gave, for his services, the Earldom of Huntingdon and of Cambridgeshire, and to Earl Hugh Bigot, for his services, the Castle of Norwich.
TROUBLE WITH SCOTLAND (1174).
Source.—Roger de Hoveden, Part 2, Vol. I., p. 377. Bohn's Libraries. G. Bell & Sons.
In the meantime, William, King of the Scots, came into Northumberland with a large force, and there with his Scotch and Galloway men committed execrable deeds. Infants, children, youths, aged men, all of both sexes, from the highest to the lowest, they slew alike without mercy or ransom. The priests and clergy they murdered in the very churches upon the altars. Consequently, wherever the Scots and the Galloway men came, horror and carnage prevailed. Shortly after, the King of the Scots sent his brother David to Leicester; but before he arrived there, Reginald, Earl of Cornwall, and Richard de Lacy, Justiciary of England, had burned the City of Leicester to the ground, together with its churches and buildings, with the exception of the castle.
THE PENANCE OF HENRY (1174).
Source.—Roger de Hoveden, Part 2, Vol. I., p. 383. Bohn's Libraries. G. Bell & Sons.
On the day after this, he[5] set out on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Thomas the Martyr, Archbishop of Canterbury. On his approach, as soon as he was in sight of the church, in which the body of the blessed martyr lay buried, he dismounted from the horse on which he rode, took off his shoes, and, barefoot, clad in woollen garments, walked three miles to the tomb of the martyr, with such humility and compunction of heart, that it may be believed beyond a doubt to have been the work of Him who looketh down on the earth, and maketh it to tremble. To those who beheld them, his footsteps along the road on which he walked, seemed to be covered with blood, and really were so; for his tender feet being cut by the hard stones, a great quantity of blood flowed from them on to the ground. When he had arrived at the tomb, it was a holy thing to see the affliction which he suffered, with sobs and tears, and the discipline to which he submitted at the hands of the bishops and a great number of priests and monks. Here, also, aided by the prayers of many holy men, he passed the night, before the sepulchre of the blessed martyr, in prayer, fasting, and lamentations. As for the gifts and revenues, which, for the remission of his sins, he bestowed on this church, they can never under any circumstance be obliterated from the remembrance thereof. In the morning of the following day, after hearing mass, he departed thence, on the third day before the ides of July, being Saturday, with the intention of proceeding to London. And inasmuch as he was mindful of the Lord in his entire heart, the Lord granted unto him the victory over his enemies, and delivered them captive into his hands. For on the very same Saturday on which the King left Canterbury, William, King of the Scots, was taken prisoner at Alnwick by the above-named knights of Yorkshire, who pursued him after his retreat from Prudhoe. On the following day, namely on the seventh day before the calends of August, the King departed from Seleham, and proceeded to Northampton; on his arrival at which place, William, King of the Scots, was brought to him, with his feet fastened beneath a horse's belly.
[5] The King of England, the father.