press received from the religious orders in the city of Rouen, and the grateful affection with which her munificent gifts inspired the inhabitants, laid the foundation of that strong attachment to the capital of Normandy, which thenceforward, even to the day of her death, the empress cherished. During the whole period of her residence there, we find no account of any overtures of reconciliation, either on her side or on the part of her husband; and, on her recovery, she appears to have visited England. In the September of the following year a council was held at Northampton; and Henry a second time caused his barons to swear fealty to the empress; he also acquainted them that at length the young earl had sent messengers to solicit the return of his wife. To this request the king and his council assented, and Maude took her departure to Mans, after more than two years' absence.

From this time to the year 1138, when she revisited England to contest the crown with her cousin Stephen, very little information can be obtained. In March, 1133, her eldest son Henry Plantagenet was born; in the following year her second son Geoffrey; and in the subsequent year, not long before the death of her father, her third and youngest son William. During these years Henry continued much displeased with Geoffrey, although open hostility never broke out between them. The young earl was irritated at being still kept from the possession of Normandy; and he is accused, by writers favourable to Henry, of taking every opportunity to sow dissentions and sedition there. Henry, on the

other hand, is accused of having violated his solemn promise of yielding up Normandy; and the empress is charged with having fomented and encouraged these differences, instead of acting as mediatrix. On the correctness of these accusations, at so distant a period as the present day, it is difficult to decide. Not improbably the greater part were true; for (judging from the character of these three celebrated persons, in each of whom indomitable pride and most determinate self-will were so conspicuous), the conduct assigned to each, in the pages of the chronicle, is at least perfectly consistent.

A third time, on the birth of his first grandchild, did Henry, in the fulness of his joy, demand an oath of allegiance from his barons to his daughter; and in this instance he associated the name of the infant with that of his mother, and swore them to be faithful to Maude and her son. The same oath he caused his Norman subjects to take; and on his death-bed he bequeathed his dominions to his daughter and his darling grandson.

In all these arrangements the husband and the father saw himself contemptuously thrust aside. No wonder was it therefore that when the death of Beauclerc offered to the empress the vacant throne, Plantagenet evinced no anxiety to secure it to her; and we may well pardon the pride of the irritated count, which refused to set lance in rest to place a sceptre denied to him in the baby-hand of his son ; or to bind a diadem on the brow of his wife, while he remained content with a mere earl's coronet. For the Norman possessions of Beauclerc, Plan

tagenet felt a strong desire; and rather as an enemy (determined to win the land" by his own good sword," than as the husband of the rightful heir,) did he on the death of his father-in-law enter Normandy. But the Norman barons were bold and brave; they drove him back with great loss, and immediately sent over to Stephen offers of allegiance and aid.

A vigorous effort to secure Normandy for the empress was made by her devoted brother, Robert of Gloster, immediately upon the decease of the king; and in prosecution of this object he scattered profusely among the various towns the money which had been hoarded up by the late king at the place of his decease. But even golden arguments were in this instance employed in vain. The descendants of the fierce Northmen, accustomed to behold a warrior king, refused to submit to female sway, and demanded a sovereign who could poise the lance, wield the ponderous battle axe, and, superior in strength as well as station, lead them on against their foemen.

The absolute impracticability of maintaining the cause of the empress in Normandy, no less than in England, at length became evident to the mind of her devoted half-brother; and he "earnestly considered," says Malmsbury, "what course he should pursue. If he became subject to Stephen it was contrary to his oath; if opposed to him, he saw that he could in nothing benefit his sister or his nephews, though he must grievously injure himself;" strong proof, and from a most competent witness,

a

of the attachment of the great body of the people to their chosen, though not hereditary king. Gloster therefore passed over to England, and did homage to Stephen for his numerous important fiefs; and retiring to his castle at Bristol, awaited, in a kind of armed neutrality, the appearance of a re-action in favour of the empress and her heirs. The following year Lisieux was attacked by Geoffrey Plantagenet and William duke of Acquitaine; and the Bretons, who were the garrison, seeing no hope of rescue, burned the town;-an act which contributed greatly to strengthen that hostility which the Normans had heretofore borne to the house of Anjou. On the arrival of Stephen in Normandy the enemy was driven back; but so anxious was the English king to preserve the peace of Normandy, that he offered a pecuniary compensation to his opponent,—a compensation which a valiant knight, and representative of the proudest family in Europe, did not consider degrading to receive. From this event to the time of his death, Geoffrey Plantagenet seems to have given up all thoughts of reclaiming his wife's hereditary dominions, and to have devoted himself wholly to his native subjects, "whom," whom," says his before-quoted eulogist, "he ruled with a rod of equity."

But however apparently the empress Maude, by her two years' silent acquiescence in the choice of Stephen, might seem to have given up her claim to the throne, ambition was still active in her mind; and on the first indications of a re-action in her favour, at the summons and under the protection of

her half brother Gloster, she set sail for England. The subsequent events, up to the decisive battle of Lincoln, have been already detailed in the preceding memoir, and we have now to trace her triumphant journey (after the captive monarch had been introduced to her presence) from Lincoln to Winchester; and from thence, after some delay, to the metropolis of her newly-gained kingdom.

On the second of March the victorious empress met the bishop of Winchester, by arrangement, on a plain near the city; and there, ere permitted to take possession of the castle and the royal treasures, she swore that he should have direction of all the great affairs of the kingdom, and especially all church patronage; the earl of Gloster and the chief lords of her party, after the old Saxon form, becoming pledges for the due performance of her oath. The bishop, in like manner, on his side swore fidelity to the queen, with that excellent saving clause, "so long as she should fulfil her part of the contract."

The following morning the exulting empress, now placed at the very summit of her wishes, was received with royal honours at the castle of Winchester; when she caused herself to be instantly proclaimed queen in the market-place; and then set out in solemn procession to the cathedral, supported on the one hand by the bishop of Winchester (who, as legate, in the absence of the archbishop of Canterbury, occupied his place,) and on the left hand by the bishop of St. David's, as primate of Wales. There, amid the acclamations of her followers, she was solemnly crowned by the own bro