a-shore, which was overflowed at high water; and
not choosing the proper time for his journey, he lost in the inundation
all his carriages, treasure, baggage, and regalia. The affliction for
this disaster, and vexation from the distracted state of his affairs,
increased the sickness under which he then labored; and though he
reached the castle of Newark, he was obliged to halt there, and his
distemper soon after put an end to his life, in the forty-ninth year
of his age, and eighteenth of his reign; and freed the nation from
the dangers to which it was equally exposed by his success or by his
misfortunes.

The character of this prince is nothing but a complication of vices,
equally mean and odious; ruinous to himself and destructive to
his people. Cowardice, inactivity, folly, levity licentiousness,
ingratitude, treachery, tyranny, and cruelty all these qualities appear
too evidently in the several incidents of his life, to give us room to
suspect that the disagreeable picture has been anywise overcharged by
the prejudices of the ancient historians. It is hard to say whether his
conduct to his father, his brother, his nephew, or his subjects, was
most culpable; or whether his crimes, in these respects, were not even
exceeded by the baseness which appeared in his transactions with the
king of France, the pope, and the barons. His European dominions, when
they devolved to him by the death of his brother, were more extensive
than have ever, since his time, been ruled by any English monarch: but
he first lost by his misconduct the flourishing provinces in France, the
ancient patrimony of his family: he subjected his kingdom to a shameful
vassalage under the see of Rome: he saw the prerogatives of his crown
diminished by law, and still more reduced by faction; and he died at
last, when in danger of being totally expelled by a foreign power, and
of either ending his life miserably in prison, or seeking shelter as a
fugitive from the pursuit of his enemies.

The prejudices against this prince were so violent, that he was believed
to have sent an embassy to the Miramoulin, or emperor of Morocco, and
to have offered to change his religion and become Mahometan, in order to
purchase the protection of that monarch. But though this story is told
us, on plausible authority, by Matthew Paris,* it is in itself utterly
improbable; except that there is nothing so incredible but may be
believed to proceed from the folly and wickedness of