with quill pens, and if
the authorities did not like what was said, the author could be made to
suppress the entire edition for a week's board, or for a bumper of
Rhenish wine with a touch of pepper-sauce in it he would change the
objectionable part by means of an eraser.

[Illustration: THE AUTHORS' CLUB AT THIS TIME.]

It was under these circumstances that the Plantagenets became leaders in
society, and added their valuable real estate in France to the English
dominions. In 1154, Henry Plantagenet was thus the most powerful monarch
in Europe, and by wedding his son Geoffrey to the daughter of the Duke
of Brittany, soon scooped in that valuable property also.

He broke up the custom of issuing pickpocket and felony licenses to his
nobles, seized the royal stone-piles and other nests for common sneak
thieves, and resolved to give the people a chance to pay taxes and die
natural deaths. The disorderly nobles were reduced to the ranks or sent
away to institutions for inebriates, and people began to permit their
daughters to go about the place unarmed.

Foreign mercenaries who had so long infested the country were ordered to
leave it under penalty of having their personal possessions confiscated,
and their own carcasses dissected and fed to the wild boars.

[Illustration: FOREIGN MERCENARIES LEAVE ENGLAND.]

Henry next gave his attention to the ecclesiastic power. He chose Thomas
a Becket to the vacant portfolio as Archbishop of Canterbury, hoping
thus to secure him as an ally; but a Becket, though accustomed to ride
after a four-in-hand and assume a style equal to the king himself,
suddenly became extremely devout, and austerity characterized this child
of fortune, insomuch that each day on bended knees he bathed the chapped
and soiled feet of thirteen beggars. Why thirteen beggars should come
around every morning to the archbishop's study to have their feet
manicured, or how that could possibly mollify an outraged God, the
historian does not claim to state, and, in fact, is not able to throw
any light upon it at the price agreed upon for this book.

[Illustration: A COOLNESS BETWEEN THE KING AND THE ARCHBISHOP.]

Trouble now arose between the king and the archbishop; a protracted
coolness, during which the king's pew grew gray with dust, and he had to
baptize and confirm his own children in addition to his other work.

The king now summoned the prelates; but they excused themselves from
coming on the grounds of