Page:The Queens of England.djvu/72

58 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. Among the singular circumstances of Eleanor's singular life, the one that perhaps strikes us most is the good understanding that existed between the English and the French courts ; not only did the two kings, the former and present husband of Eleanor, seek a closer alliance through the marriage of their children, but behaved towards each other in the most friendly manner. When in 1179 Louis made a pilgrimage to the shrine of the new saint of Canterbury, Henry proceeded from London to meet him with the utmost respect at Dover, and after the performance of his religious vow, took him to the palace at Winchester, where Eleanor was confined ; but whether, to com- plete the strangeness of the whole, these two had an interview, we are not informed. Long years of strife and disunion between Henry and his sons and among the brothers themselves now succeeded, Henry being as unwisely partial to his eldest and youngest sons, Henry and John, as Eleanor had been to Richard and Geoffrey. This family feud was augmented by the troubadours of Aqui- taine, who, resenting the abduction and captivity of their be- loved princess, incited her favorite sons to open rebellion by their songs of war and lamentation. But a severer grief than the king had yet experienced was now at hand, in the death of his son Henry. This great sorrow, for the time, reconciled the alienated parents. Eleanor was restored to freedom, and during the time that their daughter Matilda, wife of Henry of Saxony, passed in England, regained even her rank as queen. But this amicable state of affairs could not last long. Rich- ard, now seven-and-twenty, had become heir to the throne, on the death of his brother, and again he demanded from his father his wife. But the father was obdurate ; it was even rumored that he intended to marry her himself, if he could succeed in obtaining a divorce from his queen or free himself from her by any other means. Such being the determination of his father, Richard, highly incensed, withdrew to Aquitaine, where he was soon in arms against him, and Eleanor was again returned to her captivity, where the songs of the Provencal poets, sympathizing in her sorrows, and vowing vengeance for all her wrongs, reached her heart, if not her ear. The king also had his partisans even in Aquitaine, and, to add still greater poignancy to Eleanor's sorrows, the whole of her beautiful country was for two years convulsed by civil war. Father