contest; but although he inflicted a terrible defeat on the Saracens, captured many fortified places, and came within sight of the holy city, he was ultimately compelled by famine, disease, and desertion, to relinquish the enterprise and conclude a treaty with Saladin. In October 1192, he quitted the Holy Land, and proceeded in disguise through Styria and Germany. Near Vienna his thoughtless prodigality betrayed him, and he fell into the power of his deadliest enemy, Leopold duke of Austria, by whom he was confined in the castle of Tyernsteign. The Emperor Henry VI., however, claimed the prisoner, who was transferred to one of the imperial fortresses, and suffered a captivity of fourteen months duration. He at last purchased his liberty by the payment of an immense ransom, and returning to England, after an absence of more than four years, was received by his subjects with transports of joy.

13. At his departure for the crusade, Richard had confided the care of his kingdom to William of Longchamp, bishop of Ely, with the title of chancellor and grand-justiciary of England. Longchamp has been accused of exercising the duties of his office with great tyranny; but though undoubtedly vain of his authority, he was faithful to the interests of his absent master. John, the king's brother, then Count of Moretain, was envious of the bishop's authority, and endeavoured to effect his ruin. In this he at length succeeded, and began to take steps for securing the crown. At the same time, Philip, who had returned to France, meditated the invasion of Richard's Norman dominions. The English king's captivity being favourable to their views, they did every thing in their power to render it perpetual; but their treachery failed in its object, and Richard returned burning with revenge against his unnatural brother and his false ally.

Richard immediately marched against Nottingham Castle, the head-quarters of the disaffected, and which belonged to his brother John, who had escaped. The fortress surrendered, and a few days after, the king held a council within its walls, by which it was resolved that if John did not appear within forty days, his estates should be forfeited. At the beginning of the next year, Richard turned his arms against Philip. The French everywhere retired before the impetuous Cœur de Lion, and Prince John, losing heart, resolved to desert his allies and seek forgiveness from his injured brother. This new act of treachery he accompanied by an atrocious crime,— the murder of all the officers of the garrison of Evreux, whom

he had invited to an entertainment. At the intercession of his mother Eleanor, Richard was prevailed upon to take him once more into favour, saying, "I forgive him, and hope I shall as easily forget his injuries as he will forget my pardon." Philip, after being successively driven from the Norman cities he had captured, was forced to conclude a truce, which allowed the English king to turn his arms against the insurgents of Aquitaine. It was here that he met his death before an obscure fortress. Vidomar, count of Limoges, having discovered a treasure on his estate, sent a portion to Richard, who, however, demanded the whole, and to enforce his claim besieged the count's castle of Chaluz. The garrison offered to surrender if their lives were spared, but the king replied that he would take the place by storm, and hang every one of them upon the battlements. As he rode round the walls to see where the assault could best be made, he was recognised by a young man, Bertrand de Gurdun, who discharged an arrow and wounded him in the shoulder. The castle was soon after taken and its defenders executed, with the exception of Bertrand. Though not in itself dangerous, the wound was rendered mortal by the unskilfulness of the surgeon, and feeling his end approach, Richard ordered the archer into his presence, and sternly asked him why he had sought his life. "With your own hands," replied Gurdun, "you killed my father and my two brothers, and now I am content to die since I have avenged them and freed the world from an oppressor." It was one of the principles of the crusaders to perform acts of strange and peculiar generosity. The person who had slain the king, and acknowledged that he did so in revenge, was the last who could expect mercy. Richard, however, ordered him to be set at liberty and presented with a sum of money; but he was secretly detained, and flayed alive after the king's death. Richard expired on the 6th of April 1199, in the forty-second year of his age, and was buried at the feet of his father in the abbey of Fontevraud. He had reigned nearly ten years, not one of which was passed in England, and left no children to succeed him.

14. Though Richard spent little of his time in England, he nevertheless oppressed it through his ministers, and regarded it as an estate whence he could draw money at pleasure. Archbishop Hubert, his justiciary, declared that he had sent over to him in France in less than two years the enormous sum of eleven hundred thousand marks weight of silver; and

some idea of the value of this mass of metal may be formed by recollecting that at this period the hide or caracute of 100 acres was rented for twenty shillings; that an ox, a cow, and a draught horse were generally valued at four shillings each, a swine at twelve pence, and a sheep at ten pence.

Richard's character and person have been celebrated by a crowd of panegyrists, whose pictures have not always been coloured with truth and soberness. He possessed enormous muscular strength, which was of great importance at a time when kings engaged in personal conflict. No knight could surpass him in the tournament or in battle, no perils daunted him, and fortune generally favoured his most dangerous enterprises. But he was proud, cruel, and implacable, although occasionally frank and generous. By the fair sex he was esteemed a courteous knight, a tender and witty, if not a faithful troubadour. Several poems ascribed to him are still extant in the Langue d'Oc. The fine arts, particularly music, began to flourish during his reign, and curious pictures, models, and architectural drawings were imported from Italy, Greece, and Egypt, which prepared the way for the advancement of succeeding ages.

ROBIN HOOD. The famous Robin Hood, the hero of many an old English ballad, lived in the reign of Richard, who is said to have visited the outlaw in Sherwood Forest,—a tradition which the great novelist of modern times has adopted in his tale of Ivanhoe. He was the most distinguished of those freebooters whom the tyranny of the Norman kings had driven to band together in the large forests, and we are told that he had a hundred archers under his command. He was the especial favourite of the common people, on account of his skill in archery, his humanity, and his practice of sparing the goods of the poor, and even supplying their necessities out of the spoils of the rich. It has, however, been believed that this leader had higher and more important claims on the affections of the people, that he was a Saxon chief of noble family, who kept up the old national spirit among his followers, and assembled them not for robbery, but to resist the oppres sions of the Normans. In this view, instead of being considered a freebooter, he is represented as a patriot like Alfred or Wallace.

John, A. D. 1199-1216.

15. JOHN, surnamed Lackland, ascended the vacant throne.

He had many of his brother's vices, but none of his redeeming qualities. He was the fourth son of Henry II., and consequently not the heir according to the modern principles of hereditary descent, by which the crown would have devolved on Prince Arthur, son of Geoffrey, Henry's third son, and duke of Brittany.

Geoffrey, who had married Constance, duchess of Brittany, and daughter of Conan, the last of the Breton dukes, was killed in a tourney at the court of France, leaving one daughter and a pregnant wife. Geoffrey had become very popular among the Bretons, and on his posthumous offspring they founded a hope of independence. The joy of the people when Constance gave birth to a boy was excessive: prayers for his safety were offered up in every church, and the images of the saints were decorated with flowers. His grandfather, Henry II., desired to give his own name to Geoffrey's heir; but the Breton lords preferred that of Arthur.

Richard Cœur de Lion had entertained a great affection for his nephew Arthur, and even declared him heir to the throne. But on his return from Palestine, he cast an avaricious eye on his nephew's possessions, and endeavoured to get the young duke into his hands. After many adventures, Arthur took refuge at the court of Philip Augustus, where he was residing at the time of Richard's death. Queen Eleanor had experienced little difficulty in persuading Cœur de Lion to adopt John as his heir. She herself transferred to him the principalities of Aquitaine and Poitou, and repaired in person to these states to engage the barons and prelates to swear fidelity to him. Normandy also submitted to his authority; but Anjou, Maine, and Touraine declared for Arthur. John, who was in Normandy when Richard died, hastily crossed to England, where the people were divided between Arthur and himself. At a grand council held in Northampton, John was acknowledged sovereign of England on condition of his respecting the laws and privileges of the country. Immediately after this formal recognition, the king returned to the continent to punish the Angevines and others for their disaffection. Philip also had taken up arms to defend Arthur, whose interests, however, he did not scruple to sacrifice to his own advantage. At last the young prince fell into the hands of his uncle, by whom he was confined in the strong castle of Falaise, while, of two hundred knights who were taken prisoners at the same time, twenty-two were sent to Corfe Castle

in Dorsetshire, and starved to death. The unfortunate Arthur was soon afterwards removed from Falaise to the castle of Rouen, and there basely murdered. This atrocity excited such horror among all classes, that the authority of the king was endangered; but it was particularly in Brittany, where the young prince had been born and brought up, that it threatened disastrous consequences to the cause of John. The prelates and barons of that principality declared war against him, and adopted the infant Alice, Arthur's sister, as their sovereign. At the same time they sent a deputation to the French monarch, who eagerly seized the opportunity of humiliating a rival, and summoned him to appear before the nobles of France, as vassal of the French crown, to answer a charge of murder brought against him by the knights of Brittany and Anjou. John refused to appear, and was condemned by default to lose all property he held in fief of the King of France. In pursuance of this sentence, his continental dominions were immediately attacked by the French and Bretons, who, in a short time, wrested from him Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Poitou, and Berry. When these reverses were announced to him, he merely replied, "Let them go on; I shall recover in a day more than they can take from me in a year."

16. DISPUTE WITH THE POPE.-While he was thus losing his possessions on the continent, alienating the people by his exactions, the barons by his cowardice, and all England by the licentiousness of his private life and by the dishonour he brought upon the noblest families, he quarrelled with the church, at the head of which was Innocent III. A double election to the primacy having been made by the monks of Canterbury, the pope quashed the election and appointed the virtuous Stephen Langton. But John protested against this nomination; and insisting that his favourite, the Bishop of Norwich, should have the vacant see, he expelled the monks, and by his violence drew upon himself an ecclesiastical censure. In March 1208, Innocent laid the whole kingdom under an interdict; and in the following year John was formally excommunicated. All the churches were closed; no sound of bells was heard summoning the faithful to prayers; the dead were buried in silence and in unconsecrated ground; the statues and pictures of the saints were covered with black cloth, and their relics laid upon ashes; no religious ceremonies were performed, save baptism to infants