Their mother tried to join them—escaping
in man's clothes—but she was seized by
King Henry's men, and immured in prison,
where she lay, deservedly, for sixteen years.
Every day, however, some grasping English
noblemen, to whom the King's protection
of his people from their avarice and oppression
had given offence, deserted him
and joined the Princes. Every day, he heard
some fresh intelligence of the Princes levying
armies against him; of Prince Henry's wearing
a crown before his own ambassadors at
the French Court, and being called the Junior
King of England; of all the Princes swearing
never to make peace with him, their
father, without the consent and approval of
the Barons of France. But, with his fortitude
and energy unshaken, King Henry met the
shock of these disasters with a bold and cheerful
face. He called upon all Royal fathers
who had sons, to help him, for his cause was
theirs; he hired, out of his riches, twenty
thousand men to fight the false French King,
who stirred his own blood against him; and
he carried on the war with such vigor, that
Louis soon proposed a conference to treat for
peace.

The conference was held beneath an old
wide-spreading green elm-tree, upon a plain, in
France. It led to nothing. The war recommenced.
Prince Richard began his fighting
career, by leading an army against his father;
but his father beat him and his army back; and
thousands of his men would have rued the
day on which they fought in such a wicked
cause, had not the King received news of an
invasion of England by the Scots, and promptly
come home through a great storm to repress
it. And whether he really began to fear that
he suffered these troubles because à Becket
had been murdered, or whether he wished to
rise in the favor of the Pope who had now
declared a Becket to be a saint, or in the favor
of his own people of whom many believed
that even à Becket's senseless tomb could
work miracles, I don't know; but the King
no sooner landed in England than he went
straight to Canterbury; and when he came
within sight of the distant Cathedral, dismounted
from his horse, took off his shoes,
and walked with bare and bleeding feet to
à Becket's grave. There, he lay down on the
ground, lamenting, in the presence of many
people; and by-and-bye he went into the
Chapter House, and removing his clothes
from his back and shoulders, submitted himself
to be beaten with knotted cords (not
beaten very hard, I dare say, though) by
eighty Priests, one after another. It chanced
that on the very day when the King made
this strange exhibition of himself, a complete
victory was obtained over the Scots: which
very much delighted the Priests, who said
that it was won because of this great example
of repentance. For the Priests in general had
found out, since à Becket's death, that they
admired him of all things—though they had
hated him very cordially when he was
alive.

The Earl of Flanders, who was at the head
of the base conspiracy of the King's undutiful
sons and their foreign friends, took the opportunity
of the King being thus employed at
home, to lay siege to Rouen, the capital of
Normandy. But the King, who was extraordinarily
quick and active in all his movements,
was at Rouen too before it was supposed
possible that he could have left England;
and there he so defeated the said Earl of
Flanders, that the conspirators proposed peace,
and his bad sons Henry and Geoffrey submitted.
Richard resisted for six weeks, but,
being beaten out of castle after castle, he at
last submitted too, and his father forgave
him.

To forgive these unworthy princes was only
to afford them breathing-time for new faithlessness.
They were so false, disloyal, and
dishonourable, that they were no more to be
trusted than common thieves. In the very
next year, Prince Henry rebelled again, and
was again forgiven. In eight years more,
Prince Richard rebelled against his elder
brother; and Prince Geoffrey infamously said
that the brothers could never agree well
together, unless they were united against their
father. In the very next year after their reconciliation
by the King, Prince Henry again rebelled
against his father, and again submitted
swearing to be true, and was again forgiven,
and again rebelled with Geoffrey. But the
end of this perfidious Prince was come. He
fell sick at a French town; and his conscience
terribly reproaching him with his baseness,
he sent messengers to the King his father,
imploring him to come and see him, and
forgive him for the last time on his bed of
death. The generous King, who had a royal
and forgiving mind towards his children
always, would have gone; but this Prince
had been so unnatural, that the noblemen
about the King suspected treachery, and
represented to him that he could not safely
trust his life with such a traitor, though his
own eldest son. Therefore the King sent
him a ring from off his finger as a token of
forgiveness; and when the Prince had kissed
it, with much grief and many tears, and
had confessed to those around him how bad,
and wicked, and undutiful a son he had been,
he said to the attendant Priests: "O, tie a
rope about my body, and draw me out of bed,
and lay me down upon a bed of ashes, that I
may die with prayers to God in a repentant
manner! " And so he died, at twenty-seven
years old.

Three years afterwards, Prince Geoffrey,
being unhorsed at a tournament, had his
brains trampled out by a crowd of horses
passing over him. So, there only remained
Prince Richard and Prince John—who had
grown to be a young man, now, and had
solemnly sworn to be faithful to his father.
Richard soon rebelled again, encouraged by