intelligence of the Princes levying armies
against him; of Prince Henry's wearing a crown before his own ambassadors
at the French Court, and being called the Junior King of England; of all
the Princes swearing never to make peace with him, their father, without
the consent and approval of the Barons of France. But, with his
fortitude and energy unshaken, King Henry met the shock of these
disasters with a resolved and cheerful face. He called upon all Royal
fathers who had sons, to help him, for his cause was theirs; he hired,
out of his riches, twenty thousand men to fight the false French King,
who stirred his own blood against him; and he carried on the war with
such vigour, that Louis soon proposed a conference to treat for peace.

The conference was held beneath an old wide-spreading green elm-tree,
upon a plain in France. It led to nothing. The war recommenced. Prince
Richard began his fighting career, by leading an army against his father;
but his father beat him and his army back; and thousands of his men would
have rued the day in which they fought in such a wicked cause, had not
the King received news of an invasion of England by the Scots, and
promptly come home through a great storm to repress it. And whether he
really began to fear that he suffered these troubles because a Becket had
been murdered; or whether he wished to rise in the favour of the Pope,
who had now declared a Becket to be a saint, or in the favour of his own
people, of whom many believed that even a Becket's senseless tomb could
work miracles, I don't know: but the King no sooner landed in England
than he went straight to Canterbury; and when he came within sight of the
distant Cathedral, he dismounted from his horse, took off his shoes, and
walked with bare and bleeding feet to a Becket's grave. There, he lay
down on the ground, lamenting, in the presence of many people; and by-and-
by he went into the Chapter House, and, removing his clothes from his
back and shoulders, submitted himself to be beaten with knotted cords
(not beaten very hard, I dare say though) by eighty Priests, one after
another. It chanced that on the very day when the King made this curious
exhibition of himself, a complete victory was obtained over the Scots;
which very much delighted the Priests, who said that it was won because
of his great example of repentance. For the Priests in general had found
out, since a Becket's death, that they admired him of all t