messengers who brought him intelligence of the King’s death.
Hearing that all was quiet at home, he made no haste to return to
his own dominions, but paid a visit to the Pope, and went in state
through various Italian Towns, where he was welcomed with
acclamations as a mighty champion of the Cross from the Holy Land,
and where he received presents of purple mantles and prancing
horses, and went along in great triumph. The shouting people
little knew that he was the last English monarch who would ever
embark in a crusade, or that within twenty years every conquest
which the Christians had made in the Holy Land at the cost of so
much blood, would be won back by the Turks. But all this came to
pass.
There was, and there is, an old town standing in a plain in France,
called Chƒlons. When the King was coming towards this place on his
way to England, a wily French Lord, called the Count of Chƒlons,
sent him a polite challenge to come with his knights and hold a
fair tournament with the Count and HIS knights, and make a day of
it with sword and lance. It was represented to the King that the
Count of Chƒlons was not to be trusted, and that, instead of a
holiday fight for mere show and in good humour, he secretly meant a
real battle, in which the English should be defeated by superior
force.
The King, however, nothing afraid, went to the appointed place on
the appointed day with a thousand followers. When the Count came
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with two thousand and attacked the English in earnest, the English
rushed at them with such valour that the Count’s men and the
Count’s horses soon began to be tumbled down all over the field.
The Count himself seized the King round the neck, but the King
tumbled HIM out of his saddle in return for the compliment, and,
jumping from his own horse, and standing over him, beat away at his
iron armour like a blacksmith hammering on his anvil. Even when
the Count owned himself defeated and offered his sword, the King
would not do him the honour to take it, but made him yield it up to
a common soldier. There had been such fury shown in this fight,
that it was afterwards called the little Battle of Chƒlons.
The English were very well disposed to be proud of their King after
these adventures; so, when he landed at Dover in the year one
thousand two hundred and seventy-four (being then thirty-six years
old), and went on to Westminster where he and his good Queen were
crowned with great magnificence, splendid rejoicings took place.
For the coronation-feast there were provided, among other eatables,
four hundred oxen, four hundred sheep, four hundred and fifty pigs,
eighteen wild boars, three hundred flitches of bacon, and twenty
thousand fowls. The fountains and conduits in the street flowed
with red and white wine instead of water; the rich citizens hung
silks and cloths of the brightest colours out of their windows to
increase the beauty of the show, and threw out gold and silver by
whole handfuls to make scrambles for the crowd. In short, there
was such eating and drinking, such music and capering, such a
ringing of bells and tossing of caps, such a shouting, and singing,
and revelling, as the narrow overhanging streets of old London City
had not witnessed for many a long day. All the people were merry
except the poor Jews, who, trembling within their houses, and
scarcely daring to peep out, began to foresee that they would have
to find the money for this joviality sooner or later.
To dismiss this sad subject of the Jews for the present, I am sorry
to add that in this reign they were most unmercifully pillaged.
They were hanged in great numbers, on accusations of having clipped
the King’s coin – which all kinds of people had done. They were
heavily taxed; they were disgracefully badged; they were, on one
day, thirteen years after the coronation, taken up with their wives