poison. I am afraid fair
Rosamond retired to a nunnery near Oxford, and died there, peaceably; her
sister-nuns hanging a silken drapery over her tomb, and often dressing it
with flowers, in remembrance of the youth and beauty that had enchanted
the King when he too was young, and when his life lay fair before him.

It was dark and ended now; faded and gone. Henry Plantagenet lay quiet
in the abbey church of Fontevraud, in the fifty-seventh year of his
age--never to be completed--after governing England well, for nearly
thirty-five years.

CHAPTER XIII--ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE FIRST, CALLED THE LION-HEART

In the year of our Lord one thousand one hundred and eighty-nine, Richard
of the Lion Heart succeeded to the throne of King Henry the Second, whose
paternal heart he had done so much to break. He had been, as we have
seen, a rebel from his boyhood; but, the moment he became a king against
whom others might rebel, he found out that rebellion was a great
wickedness. In the heat of this pious discovery, he punished all the
leading people who had befriended him against his father. He could
scarcely have done anything that would have been a better instance of his
real nature, or a better warning to fawners and parasites not to trust in
lion-hearted princes.

He likewise put his late father's treasurer in chains, and locked him up
in a dungeon from which he was not set free until he had relinquished,
not only all the Crown treasure, but all his own money too. So, Richard
certainly got the Lion's share of the wealth of this wretched treasurer,
whether he had a Lion's heart or not.

He was crowned King of England, with great pomp, at Westminster: walking
to the Cathedral under a silken canopy stretched on the tops of four
lances, each carried by a great lord. On the day of his coronation, a
dreadful murdering of the Jews took place, which seems to have given
great delight to numbers of savage persons calling themselves Christians.
The King had issued a proclamation forbidding the Jews (who were
generally hated, though they were the most useful merchants in England)
to appear at the ceremony; but as they had assembled in London from all
parts, bringing presents to show their respect for the new Sovereign,
some of them ventured down to Westminster Hall with their gifts; which
were very readily accepted. It is supposed, now, that some noisy fellow
in the crowd, pretending to be a very delicate Christian, se