Page:The Queens of England.djvu/30

i8 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. the broad lands of the conquered at their will. Now, the Saxon nobles were of equal importance in the state with themselves, and the foreign lords no longer held supreme sway at the court at Westminster. The Normans tried every means to separate Henry from his Saxon wife ; but the wedded love between the young pair resisted all wily snares, and at last the barons tried outward aggression to drive Henry from the throne. They urged Robert of Normandy to come over and claim his father's crown ; and the prince, who seems to have had a tolerable share of the Conqueror's warlike and grasping nature, readily con- sented. He landed at Portsmouth, with all the troops that his own small dominions could muster, and immediately the Anglo- Norman barons flocked to his standard. Robert might probably have t soon become King of England, but for a fatality which shows how in this world small things often influence great events. Queen Matilda chanced to be at Winchester at the very time of Robert's assault on the place. They brought news to the besieger that a mother's pains had come upon her, and that her first-born child had just seen the light. No sooner did the generous-hearted Robert hear these tidings of his god-daughter and favorite, than he remembered no longer she was the wife of the brother whom he sought to dethrone; he withdrew his troops from Winchester, saying that "no man could ever besiege a woman at such a time." By this delay Robert lost his advantage ; for it gave Henry time to collect his devoted Saxon adherents, and make ready to defend his throne. But ere the brothers came to open war, there rose up a gentle mediator between them. This was no other than Matilda the queen. Touched by the personal kind- ness of her brother-in-law, she strove with all her power to soften Henry's anger, and the husband could not resist her influence. Perhaps Henry felt more kindly disposed towards Robert, when he looked at his eldest born, Prince William,, and remembered what a generous action had prevented the child's birth being surrounded by the horrors of war. Matilda then tried her power with her godfather, and with equal success. Robert was of a temper the very reverse of persevering, and was easily persuaded to relinquish his claim ; Henry agreeing to pay him a sum of money yearly out of the royal treasury, pro- vided that neither he nor his son William ever asserted the right of the elder line to the English crown.