Page:The Queens of England.djvu/75

ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE. 61 mere pageantry, but on a royal progress of mercy. She at once set free all who were imprisoned for the breach of the forest-laws alone, — all who were outlawed for the same she invited back to their homes and families ; all who had been seized by the king's arbitrary commands, but were not accused by their hundred or county, she set free. Those alone she retained in prison who were proved malefactors on good and lawful grounds. Furthermore, in order to establish her be- loved son firmly on the throne of England, she commanded that every freeman of the kingdom should solemnly swear alle- giance and fealty to him; and this having been done, she returned to her palace of Winchester, her prison no longer, where she awaited his arrival. Three days after her arrival, Richard visited his mother, and at her representations and desire liberated the imprisoned Glanville, and even took him into favor, by which we infer, either that Eleanor was the most magnanimous of women, or that Glanville had not been a very harsh gaoler ; and both indeed may exist together. Richard settled a noble dower on his mother, and then pre- pared for his coronation, at which no women were allowed to be present, because his mother, on account of her recent widowhood, was obliged to be absent. Every circumstance indeed of his behavior to his mother evinced his deep affection and delicate consideration for her. He was anxious by un- bounded love and respect to compensate for her long years of sorrow and humiliation. The only person who appears to have been treated with severity by Eleanor was the unhappy Princess Alice, the cause of so much guilt and misery. From the time of Eleanor's enlargement Alice became a captive. To her, no doubt, the queen attributed, not only her own sufferings, but those of her son. Richard, in the following spring, set forth on his long-med- itated crusade, and his mother was dispatched to claim for him the hand of the beautiful and long-loved Berengaria of Navarre, whom she was then to conduct to Messina, to join him on his way to the East. Eleanor gladly undertook the office, which she faithfully performed ; Richard, in the mean- time, being engaged in Sicily in adjusting the affairs of his second sister, Joanna, — all which business was happily con- cluded, when the beloved mother and the no less beloved bride arrived. It was many vears since Eleanor had seen her