murderer; and some of the chronicles relate that from the moment when Richard entered the church, until he had again passed the threshold, blood flowed without ceasing from the nostrils of the dead king. Thus it is evident that contemporary writers regarded the conduct of the sons as having accelerated, if not caused, the death of their father.
Henry II. died on the 6th of July, a d. 1189, at the age of fifty-six, having reigned nearly thirty-five years. Of the king's personal character, very different estimates have been formed by different historians. Those who look at a many-sided character from their own narrow stand-point, will, necessarily, paint that side only which is presented to them, leaving the rest in shadow; and thus we find Henry II. described on the one hand as a man almost without blemish, and, on the other, as utterly destitute of public or private virtue. It appears probable that he had little abstract regard for the welfare of the people, but he was fully alive to his own interests, and he perceived those interests to be bound up in the national prosperity. He therefore laboured to promote the well-being of his subjects, as absolute monarchs, in later times, have done from a similar motive. He was inordinately ambitious, and was heard to say, in moments of triumph, that the whole world was a portion little enough for a great man. He was skilled in the arts of diplomacy, and accustomed to use dissimulation and falsehood whenever an advantage was to be gained thereby.
Instances have been given of the ungovernable fits of passion to which Henry in his younger days was subject; these appear to have been much less frequent as he grew past middle age. Without any self-control in moments of anger, he was at other times remarkable for acting with calm judgment and calculation. In his relations with women he was extremely licentious. Among his mistresses was one who has been celebrated in various romantic tales, most of which are without any foundation in truth. "Fair Rosamond" was the daughter of Walter Clifford, a baron of Herefordshire, whose castle was situated on one of the heights overlooking the valley of the Wye, between the Welsh Hay and Hereford. Henry fell in love with her before ho ascended the throne, and she bore to him two sons, who have been already mentioned as aiding their father at the time of the partial rebellion in England. One of these was William, called Longsword, from the size of the weapon which he carried, who married the daughter of the Earl of Salisbury, and succeeded to his estates; the other was Geoffrey, Bishop of Lincoln, and subsequently Archbishop of York. "While Henry was still a young man, Rosamond retired to the convent of Godestow, near to Oxford, where, after a few years, she died. During her residence there, Henry bestowed many valuable presents upon the convent for her sake, and the nuns, who seem to have been actuated by a personal regard for her, as well as by a recollection of the benefits she had conferred upon them, buried her in their choir, burning tapers round her tomb, and showing to her remains other marks of honour. Henry, Bishop of Lincoln, disapproved of these proceedings, and gave the nuns to understand that one who had led an impure life, even though the mistress of a king, was not worthy to lie in the sacred edifice. The repentance of Rosamond, which appears to have been sincere, was not permitted to wipe away the shame of the past, and her body was removed and buried in the common cemetery. The nuns, however, feared no contamination from the poor remains of their frail sister, and they secretly collected her bones, strewed perfumes over them, and buried them once more in the church. The story of the bower of Rosamond and of the poisoned bowl forced upon her by the jealousy of Eleanor, cannot be traced to any contemporary source and must be rejected as devoid of truth.
Whatever may be the view we take of the character of Henry as a man, there can be no doubt that, as a king, he deserves a high place in English history. In the stormy times of the Middle Ages, better were the wrongs inflicted by an ambitious monarch, than the national corruption and decay which attended the reign of a weak one. Under the rule of Henry Plantagenet, the country made rapid strides in power and influence, and reached that high position among the nations of Europe, which it was destined to maintain in later times.
CHAPTER XLV.
Norman Architecture.
Edward the Confessor, who was more a Norman than a Saxon, and more a churchman than a king, had been brought up at the Norman court; and, having had his ideas and tastes formed there, on his accession to the English throne introduced the Norman fashions and manners, filled his court with Norman ecclesiastics, and adopted the Norman style of architecture for his ecclesiastical buildings. Shortly before his death he built the abbey church of Westminster, which is described by William of Malmesbury[1] as being constructed in a "new style," and he also says that it served for a model for many subsequent buildings. This edifice, which has long since disappeared, was doubtless in the style he had imported from abroad, and, though built by a Saxon monarch, was, there can be no doubt, a genuine Norman building. Numerous churches and monasteries, formed on this model, are said to have sprung up in towns and villages in all directions, and thus we see that the Norman style was established even before the Norman Conquest. That great event confirmed the changes which the Confessor had begun, and the rude Saxon churches were swept away and replaced by the more finished Norman edifices.
The Normans were essentially a building people, and no building seems to have been good enough for them, if they had the means of erecting a better. Hence we see a continued change—a constant pulling down and rebuilding on a larger scale; and to this must be ascribed the disappearance of the buildings which had been erected before the Conquest. It is chiefly in remote places, which were too poor to enlarge their churches, that we still find remains of the original Saxon work. In many of the smaller churches, which were erected soon after the Conquest, the Saxon ideas still linger; the towers have the same proportions, and the same general appearance prevails, but the workmanship is better; the baluster disappears, and is replaced by a shaft, and the capitals assume more of the Norman
- ↑ His words are: "King Edward the Confessor commanded the church at Westminster to be dedicated on Innocents' Day. He was buried on the day of the Epiphany, in the said church, which he first in England had erected after that kind of style, which almost all attempt to rival, at enormous expense."
