231

SALADIN'S PRESENT 294

CASTLE AND TOWN OF TIERNSTEIGN 321

KING RICHARD I.

CHAPTER I.

KING RICHARD'S MOTHER.

1137-1154

Richard the Crusader.--A quarrelsome king.--Richard's
kingdom.--Union of England and Normandy.--England was a
possession of Normandy.--Eleanora of Aquitaine.--The
contemporaries of Eleanora.--Royal match-making.--The
conditions of the marriage.--Apparent prosperity of
leanora.--Eleanora's accomplishments.--The Crusades.--A monk
preaching the Crusades.--The reasons why Louis and Eleanora
undertook a crusade.--Amazons.--The power of ridicule.--The
plans and purposes of the female Crusaders.--Antioch.--Meeting
the Saracens.--Choosing an encampment.--The result of the queen's
generalship.--A quarrel.--The queen at Jerusalem.--A divorce
proposed.--The failure of the crusade.--Returning to France.--The
queen's new lover.--A divorce again proposed.--The motives of
Henry.--Controversy among historians.--The real motives in the
divorce.--A violent courtship and a narrow escape.--Geoffrey's
designs upon Eleanora.--Customs of old times.--Eleanora eluded
Geoffrey.--She is married to Henry.--Henry's expedition to
England.--His final coronation.--Eleanora Queen of England.

King Richard the First, the Crusader, was a boisterous, reckless, and
desperate man, and he made a great deal of noise in the world in his
day. He began his career very early in life by quarreling with his
father. Indeed, his father, his mother, and all his brothers and
sisters were engaged, as long as the father lived, in perpetual wars
against each other, which were waged with the most desperate
fierceness on all sides. The subject of these quarrels was the
different possessions which the various branches of the family held or
claimed in France and in England, each endeavoring to dispossess the
others. In order to understand the nature of these difficulties, and
also to comprehend fully what sort of a woman Richard's mother was, we
must first pay a little attention to the map of the countries over
which these royal personages held sway.

[Illustration: MAP]

We have already seen, in another volume of this series,[A] how the two
countries of Normandy on the Continent, and of England, became united
under one government. England, however, did not conquer and hold
Normandy; it was Normandy that conquered and held England.