Page:The Queens of England.djvu/70

56 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. she, also, might be crowned queen. Marguerite, however, learning that her beloved friend and guardian, a Becket, was not to officiate at the august ceremony, refused to come, and therefore the young king was crowned without her. The ob- stinacy of Marguerite on this occasion, as well as the cause of it, were highly displeasing to King Henry ; whilst her father, the King of France, was equally displeased, believing that a slight had been shown to his daughter, and that it had not been the wish of Henry that she should particioate in the honors he had bestowed upon his son. Troubles and vexations were now tnickening around Henry, and the old friendship for a Becket, which had turned to bit- terness, together with other causes of grief and annoyance, produced the most fatal effects on his temper and character. His fits of rage were like the frenzy of a madman, and it was during one of these paroxysms that he asked reproachfully, from the nobles who surrounded him, if there was no one who would free him from an insolent priest. The reproach needed no repetition; a Becket was killed - on the steps of the altar at Canterbury, but equanimity was not restored to the breast of the king. Queen Eleanor, during these events, remained in Aquitaine Her daughter, Matilda, was married to Henry, the Lion of Saxony. Her sons Richard and Geoffrey had been crowned, the one Count of Poitou, the other of Guienne, after the man- ner of their ancestors, and in accordance with the wishes of their respective subjects. But though King Henry had asso- ciated his eldest son with him on the throne of England, and had permitted his sons Richard and Geoffrey to remain with their mother during the regency of Aquitaine, he had no inten- tion of resigning out of his own hands the sovereign rule of that country. Eleanor, on the contrary, resolved that they should be independent of their father — that the sovereignty of those countries should pass into the hands of her sons, and that they should, as their Provencal forefathers had done before them, pay homage — if homage was to be paid at all — to the King of France. Eleanor probably was still more induced to take this hostile step from the reports which were now current of Henry's intrigues with the Princess Alice, the affianced wife of her favorite son, Richard, whom it was said he had seduced, and now kept in almost regal state at Woodstock. The tid- ings of this family revolt roused the angry king; and, accom-