Page:The Queens of England.djvu/68

54 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. himself into the city just as the English monarch approached it with his forces ; and whilst Henry was thus employed, Eleanor acted as queen regent in England. In 1160 Eleanor went over to Normandy to her husband, taking with her her son, Prince Henry, and her daughter, in consequence of a marriage being proposed between Marguerite, the daughter of her former husband, Louis VII., by his second wife, Alice of Champagne, and her young son Henry. This marriage having been contracted, the young couple were placed under the care of Chancellor a Becket, afterwards the cele- brated Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom their education was entrusted. Nor could a better choice have been made ; the children were singularly happy, and the attachment which he inspired in their youthful breasts towards him ended only with their lives. Nor was this the only marriage between these two families, the last families under ordinary circumstances who might have been expected to seek each other's alliance. A dispute having arisen between the two royal fathers respecting the dower of the young Marguerite, it was settled by a second family union. The King of France had yet another daughter, the Princess Alice, and the King of England had yet another son, Prince Richard ; therefore these two were affianced, Prince Richard being four years old and the young bride three, the age at which, two years before, her sister Marguerite had been contracted in marriage to Prince Henry ; and to make the union still more agreeable to the King of England, the little princess was placed in his hands, to be brought up under his charge. Unhappy was this alliance, most mischievous the confidence that was placed in the king. In the person of the young prin- cess an element of after discord, guilt and misery was intro- duced into the royal house. The eldest daughter of Queen Eleanor, by the King of France, was married to the Count of Champagne, and her sec- ond daughter, three years later, to the Count of Blois, who was made by Louis high seneschal of France, an office which Henry of England claimed as his right as Count of Anjou, and which, being given to another, he made into a cause of quarrel. At this time Henry's troubles were at their height with Thomas a Becket, his former beloved friend and prime minis- ter. Becket, much against his will — and, as he foretold, to the ruin of his friendship with his royal master — was made, solely