all the discipline of battle to the Irish, that they beat them
against immense superiority of numbers. In one fight, early in the
war, they cut off three hundred heads, and laid them before Mac
Murrough; who turned them every one up with his hands, rejoicing,
and, coming to one which was the head of a man whom he had much
disliked, grasped it by the hair and ears, and tore off the nose
and lips with his teeth. You may judge from this, what kind of a
gentleman an Irish King in those times was. The captives, all
through this war, were horribly treated; the victorious party
making nothing of breaking their limbs, and casting them into the
sea from the tops of high rocks. It was in the midst of the
miseries and cruelties attendant on the taking of Waterford, where
the dead lay piled in the streets, and the filthy gutters ran with
blood, that Strongbow married Eva. An odious marriage-company
those mounds of corpse’s must have made, I think, and one quite
worthy of the young lady’s father.
He died, after Waterford and Dublin had been taken, and various
successes achieved; and Strongbow became King of Leinster. Now
came King Henry’s opportunity. To restrain the growing power of
Strongbow, he himself repaired to Dublin, as Strongbow’s Royal
Master, and deprived him of his kingdom, but confirmed him in the
enjoyment of great possessions. The King, then, holding state in
Dublin, received the homage of nearly all the Irish Kings and
Chiefs, and so came home again with a great addition to his
reputation as Lord of Ireland, and with a new claim on the favour
of the Pope. And now, their reconciliation was completed – more
easily and mildly by the Pope, than the King might have expected, I
think.
At this period of his reign, when his troubles seemed so few and
his prospects so bright, those domestic miseries began which
gradually made the King the most unhappy of men, reduced his great
spirit, wore away his health, and broke his heart.
He had four sons. HENRY, now aged eighteen – his secret crowning
of whom had given such offence to Thomas a Becket. RICHARD, aged
sixteen; GEOFFREY, fifteen; and JOHN, his favourite, a young boy
whom the courtiers named LACKLAND, because he had no inheritance,
but to whom the King meant to give the Lordship of Ireland. All
these misguided boys, in their turn, were unnatural sons to him,
and unnatural brothers to each other. Prince Henry, stimulated by
the French King, and by his bad mother, Queen Eleanor, began the
undutiful history,
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Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England
First, he demanded that his young wife, MARGARET, the French King’s
daughter, should be crowned as well as he. His father, the King,
consented, and it was done. It was no sooner done, than he
demanded to have a part of his father’s dominions, during his
father’s life. This being refused, he made off from his father in
the night, with his bad heart full of bitterness, and took refuge
at the French King’s Court. Within a day or two, his brothers
Richard and Geoffrey followed. 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 resolved 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