Page:The Queens of England.djvu/73

ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE. 59 and sons fought against each other. "It is the fate of our fami- ly," said Geoffrey, who held Limoges in the name of his mother, "that none shall love rest ; hatred is our rightful heritage, and none will ever deprive us of it." Soon after this, Geoffrey, being at a tournament in Paris, was flung from his horse, and killed on the spot. Like his brother Henry, he was remarkable for his beauty and his fine person, and his death was a severe affliction to his mother, who loved him with unspeakable tenderness. He had been brought up in her own province, and had ever warmly resented the unkind usage which she had received from his father. Speaking of this event many years afterward, when writing to the pope on the captivity of Richard, she says, "The younger king and the Count of Bretagne both sleep in the dust, while their most wretched mother is still compelled to live on, tormented by irremediable recollections of the dead." Scarcely was Geoffrey dead, when a fresh circumstance added indignation to Eleanor's grief, — this was the scandal occasioned by the attentions paid by her son John to Con- stance, the young widow of Geoffrey. Constance gave birth to a posthumous child, a son, who was called Arthur, that very Prince Arthur, who in after years, as the son of John's elder brother, disputed with him the crown, but whose life John did not dare to take until after the death of his mother. The whole of Aquitaine was now in the hands of Richard, and Henry, as the only means of depriving him of sovereign authority, released Queen Eleanor, and even conveyed her as far as Normandy, on her way to reclaim it. Once more, there- fore, Eleanor was at Bourdeaux with her beloved son, who, quickly resigning his authority into her hands, made his peace with his father. But peace could not long exist in this de- voted family. Richard, who had now become attached to the daughter of the King of Navarre, desired to make an end of his engage- ment with Alice, his long-withheld wife, and the fruitful cause of so much sin and sorrow; but even in this reasonable desire he was again thwarted by his father. Again a quarrel ensued, in which Eleanor, naturally taking part with her ill-used son, found herself once more a prisoner at Winchester. And thus in never-ending strife King Henry's days wore to an end. The last wrong which Henry did to his son Richard, was an attempt to crown John during his lifetime, as King of