truth seems to be that Henry the Third, who at the time of
Margaret's marriage was only a lad of thirteen years, had cherished for
her a fervent boyish passion, and that she was the only woman whom he
ever really loved. Hubert, at that time Regent, probably never imagined
any thing of the kind: while to Margaret, a stately maiden of some
twenty years, if not more, the sentimental courtship of a schoolboy of
thirteen would probably be a source of amusement rather than sympathy.
But at every turn in his after life, Henry showed that he had never
forgiven this slight put on his affections. It is true that his
affection was of a somewhat odd type, presenting no obstacle to his
aspersing the character of his lady-love, when he found it convenient to
point a moral by so doing. But of all men who ever lived, surely one of
the most consistently inconsistent was Henry the Third. In most
instances he was "constant to one thing--his inconstancy." Like his
father, he possessed two virtues: but they were not the same. Henry was
not a lover of cruelty for its own sake--which John was: and he was not
personally a libertine. Of his father's virtues, bravery and honesty,
there was not a trace in him. He covered his sins with an embroidered
cloak of exquisite piety. The bad qualities of both parents were
inherited by him. To his mother's covetous acquisitiveness and
ingrained falsehood, he joined his father's unscrupulous exactions and
wild extravagance.

I have said that Henry was not a lover of cruelty in itself: but he
could be fearfully and recklessly cruel when he had a point to gain, as
we shall see too well before the story is ended. It may be true that
John murdered his nephew Arthur with his own hands; but it was reserved
for Henry, out of the public sight and away from his own eyes, to
perpetrate a more cruel murder upon Arthur's hapless sister, "the Pearl
of Bretagne," by one of the slowest and most dreadful deaths possible to
humanity, and without any offence on her part beyond her very existence.
Stow tells us that poor Alianora was slowly starved to death; and that
she died by royal order the Issue Roll gives evidence, since one hundred
pounds were delivered to John Fitz Geoffrey as his fee for the execution
of Alianora the King's kinswoman. [Note 3.]

It is not easy to say whether John or Henry would have made the more
clever vivisector. But assuredly, while John would have kept his
laboratory door open, and