ready to meet his various enemies at every point. Hostilities commenced both on the continent, whither Henry proceeded in person, and on the Scottish borders, the summer of this same year. Occasionally suspended, and again renewed, the war continued for about two years.]

King Henry's natural sons had all along supported the cause of their father, and one of them, Geoffrey, bishop of Lincoln, carried on the war with great spirit, besieging the castles and fortresses of the barons of the opposite party. Meanwhile Richard fortified the towns and castles of Poictou and Angoumois in his own cause, and it was against him that the king first marched with his faithful Brabanions, leaving Normandy, in which he had the greatest number of friends, to defend itself against the king of France. He laid siege to the town of Saintes, which was then defended by two castles, one of which bore the name of the Capitol, a relic of the memory of ancient Rome, which was preserved in many of the cities of southern Gaul. After having taken the strongholds of Saintes, Henry II. attacked with his engines of war the two large towers of the cathedral, in which Richard's partisans had taken up their quarters. He took this as well as the fort of Taillebury and several other castles, and, on his way back to Anjou, he devastated all the frontiers of the country of the Poitevins, burning the towns, and uprooting the vines and fruit-trees. He had scarcely arrived in Normandy when he learnt that his eldest son and the Earl of Flanders, having collected a great naval armament, were preparing to make a descent on England. This news determined him to embark for that country; he carried with him, as prisoners, his wife Eleanor, and his son's wife Margaret, daughter of the French king.

From Southampton, where he disembarked, the king proceeded towards Canterbury, and as soon as he came in sight of the metropolitan church, that is to say, at three miles distance from the town, he descended from his horse, laid aside his silk apparel, took off his boots, and set off walking barefoot along the flinty and muddy road. When he arrived in the church which contained the tomb of Thomas à Becket, he prostrated himself, with his face

to the earth, crying and weeping, in presence of all the people of the town, who had been assembled by the sound of the bells. The bishop of London, that same Gilbert Foliot, who had persecuted Thomas throughout his whole life, and who, after his death, had wished that his corpse might be thrown into a ditch, mounted the pulpit, and addressing himself to the congregation, said: "All you here present, know that Henry, king of England, calling on God and the holy martyr for the salvation of his soul, protests before you, that he neither commanded, nor willed, nor willingly caused, nor desired in his heart the death of the martyr. But as it is possible that the murderers may have taken advantage of some words imprudently uttered by him, he declares that he implores his penance from the bishops here assembled, and consents to submit his naked flesh to the discipline of rods."

Accordingly the king, accompanied by a great number of Norman bishops and abbots, and by all the Norman and Saxon monks of the chapter of Canterbury, descended to the crypt, where, two years before, they had been obliged to shut up the corpse of the archbishop as in a fort, to defend it from the insults of the royal officers and soldiers. There, kneeling on the stone of the tomb, and divesting himself of all his clothing, he placed himself, with his back bare, in the same attitude in which his justiciaries had on a former occasion caused those Englishmen to be placed, who had been publicly flogged for having welcomed Thomas on his return from exile, or for having honoured him as a saint. Each of the bishops, whose part in the ceremony had been arranged beforehand, took one of the whips with several lashes which were used in monasteries to inflict ecclesiastical corrections, and which were therefore called disciplines: each one gave three or four stripes with this upon the shoulders of the prostrate king, saying: "As the Redeemer was scourged for the sins of men, so be thou for thy own sins." From the hands of the bishops the discipline passed into that of the monks, who were very numerous, and for the most part of the English race. These sons of those who had been made seris by the conquest, imprinted the stripes of a whip upon the flesh of the Conqueror's grandson, and this

was not without a secret joy, as is betrayed by some bitter pleasantries which we meet with in the recitals of that time.

But the momentary joy and triumph could not be productive of any good to the English population; on the contrary, this people was made the dupe of this ignoble scene of hypocrisy which was performed before them by the Angevin king. Henry II., finding almost all his continental subjects opposed to him, had felt his need of the support of the Anglo-Saxons; he thought that a few stripes of discipline would be a trifling thing if it would render him the same service with this people, whom he had depised in his fortunate days, as promises and false vows had formerly rendered his grandfather Henry I. Ever since the murder of Thomas à Becket, love for this pretended martyr had become the passion, or rather, the madness of the English people. The adoration of the memory of the archbishop had replaced that of the old laws, hitherto so much regretted! all recollections of ancient liberty were effaced by the more recent impression of the nine years during which a primate of the Saxon race had been the object of the hopes, the vows, and the conversation of every Saxon. A striking testimony of sympathy with this popular sentiment was then the best bait that the king could at that time hold out to the men of the English race, to attract them to his cause, and to render them, in the words of an old historian, manageable with curb and harness. Such was the true motive of Henry II.'s pilgrimage to the tomb of him whom he had first loved as his boon companion, and then mortally hated as his political enemy.

"After having been thus scourged by his own free-will," says the contemporary historian, "he continued his orisons before the holy martyr all the day and all night, took no nourishment, and did not leave the spot for any occasion whatever! but as he came so he remained, and did not allow any carpet, or anything of the kind, to be placed beneath his knees. After matins he made the circuit of the higher church, prayed before all the altars and all the relics, then returned to the vault of the saint. On Saturday, when the sun was risen, he asked for and heard mass, then having

drunk holy water of the martyr and having filled a flask with it, he departed joyfully from Canterbury."

This comedy was entirely successful; and there was great enthusiasm among the Anglo-Saxon serfs of the town and the neighbouring country, on the day when it was announced in the churches that the king had made his reconciliation with the blessed martyr by penitence and tears. It chanced, at this time, that William, king of Scotland, who had made a hostile incursion upon the English territory, was vanquished and made prisoner near Alnwick, in Northumberland. The Saxon population, enthusiastic for the honour of St. Thomas, believed that they saw in this victory an evident sign of the martyr's good-will and protection, and from this day they inclined to the cause of the king whom the new saint seemed to favour. In consequence of this superstitious impulse, the English enrolled themselves in crowds under the royal banner, and fought with ardour against the abettors of the revolt of Henry the younger and his two brothers. Poor and despised though they were, they formed the great mass of the inhabitants, and nothing can resist such a force when organised. The Norman malcontents were defeated in every county, their castles taken by assault, and a great number of earls and barons made prisoners. "So many were taken," says a contemporary, "that there was difficulty in finding cords sufficient to bind them, and prisons to contain them." This rapid train of successes put an end to the project of a descent upon England, formed by Henry the younger and the earl of Flanders.

The Conquest of Ireland.

BURKE.

Between the death of Becket and the king's absolution, he resolved on the execution of a design, by which he reduced under his dominion a country, not more separated from the rest of Europe by its situation, than by the laws, customs, and way of life

of the inhabitants; for the people of Ireland, with no difference but that of religion, still retained the native manners of the original Celtæ. The king had meditated this design from the very beginning of his reign, and had obtained a Bull from the then Pope, Adrian the Fourth, an Englishman, to authorize the attempt. He well knew, from the internal weakness, and advantageous situation of this noble island, the easiness and importance of such a conquest. But at this particular time he was strongly urged to his engaging personally in the enterprise by two other powerful motives. For, first, the murder of Becket had bred very ill humour in his subjects, the chief of whom, always impatient of a long peace, were glad of any pretence for rebellion; it was therefore expedient, and serviceable to the crown, to find an employment abroad for this spirit, which could not exert itself without being destructive at home. And, next, as he had obtained the grant of Ireland from the pope, upon condition of subjecting it to Peterpence, he knew that the speedy performance of this condition would greatly facilitate his recovering the good graces of the court of Rome. Before we give a short narrative of the reduction of Ireland, I propose to lay open to the reader the state of that kingdom, that we may see what grounds Henry had to hope for success in this expedition.

Ireland is about half as large as England. In the temperature of the climate there is little difference, other than that more rain falls; as the country is more mountainous and exposed full to the westerly wind, which blowing from the Atlantic Ocean prevails during the greater part of the year. This moisture, as it has enriched the country with large and frequent rivers, and spread out a number of fair and magnificent lakes, beyond the proportion of other places, has on the other hand encumbered the island with an uncommon multitude of bogs and morasses; so that in general, it is less praised for corn than pasturage, in which no soil is more rich and luxuriant. Whilst it possesses these internal means of wealth, it opens on all sides a great number of ports, spacious and secure, and by their advantageous situation inviting to universal commerce. But on these ports, better known than