passionately thrown on the side of the martyr. The church of Canterbury
closed for a year. The ornaments were taken from the altar, the walls were
stripped, the sound of the bells ceased. Excitement was raised to its
utmost pitch as it became known that miracles were wrought at the tomb.
The clergy were forced into hostility; they dared no longer take Henry's
side. The barons saw the opportunity for which they had waited fifteen
years. Henry had himself provided them with a ready instrument to execute
their vengeance, and the boy-king, consecrated scarcely six months ago,
and already urged to revolt by his mother and the king of France, was
only too willing to hear the tale of their accumulated wrongs and
discontents. All Christendom had been watching the strife; all Christendom
was outraged at its close. The Pope shut himself up for eight days, and
refused to speak to his own servants. The king of France,--who had now a
cause more powerful than any he had ever dreamt of,--Theobald of Blois,
and William of Champagne, the Archbishop of Sens, wrote bitterly to Rome
that it was Henry himself who had given orders for the murder. The king's
messengers sent to plead with the Pope found matters almost desperate.
Alexander had determined to excommunicate him at Easter, and to lay an
interdiction on all his lands. In their despair, and not venturing to tell
their master what they had done, they swore on Henry's part an unreserved
submission to the Pope, and the excommunication was barely averted for a
few months, while a legation was sent to pronounce an interdiction on his
lands, and receive his submission. Henry, however, was quite determined
that he would neither hear the sentence nor repeat the oath taken by his
envoys at Rome. Orders were given to allow no traveller, who might intend
evil against the king, to cross into England; and before the legates could
arrive in Normandy Henry himself was safe beyond the sea. On the 6th of
August, as he passed through Winchester, he visited the dying Henry of
Blois, and heard the bishop's last words of bitter reproach as he
foretold the great adversities which the Divine vengeance held in store
for the true murderer of the archbishop. But England itself was no safe
refuge for the king in this great extremity. Hurrying on to Wales, he
rapidly settled the last details of a plan for the conquest of Ireland,
and hastened to set another sea between himself and the bearers of the
papal curse. A