The reception of Elinor by king Baldwin the Third, is said to have been most honourable; but the haughty spirit of the queen was too deeply wounded to be soothed by outward shew. Her womanly feelings had been outraged by the precipitate step taken by Louis, which seemed to affix a stain on her character; and the towers of the holy and beautiful city, on which so many an eye was fixed with enraptured devotion, arose to her gaze but as the towers of her prison house."

With far different feelings did Louis enter that city, which he hoped would soon resound with songs of his triumph over the Paynim; and when the army of Conrad hailed him from afar as the deliverer of the Holy Land, and the whole population of Jerusalem poured out at the gates, with waving palm branches, and shouts of "blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord," it was indeed the proudest moment of his life.

The united army now commenced the siege of Damascus, and during its progress Louis, at the recommendation of Suger, endeavoured, but in vain, a reconciliation with the deeply offended Elinor. An outward reconciliation was however at length effected; but meanwhile the crusade languished; Damascus still held out, while, through the treachery of the Eastern Christians, convoys of provisions intended for the Croises were suffered to fall into the hands of the enemy, and the army was almost reduced to starvation. At length Conrad and Louis raised the siege; and, worn out with these repeated disappointments, they determined to return

to Europe. In little more than a twelvemonth from the arrival of these royal leaders, did the treacherous eastern Christians behold the monarchs who, at so much expense of wealth, and toil, and human life, had come thither to fight their battles, lay down the sword, and retire from a land where the atrocious perfidy of the Greek and Syrian Christians had proved far more fatal than the open hostility of the Paynim. Soon after, Louis and Elinor embarked at one of the Syrian ports, and, with the wasted remains of that once noble army, returned by the way of Rome, and across the Alps, to their own dominions.

The intrigues of his brother, the count of Dreux, and the death soon after of that most upright minister, abbot Suger, occupied the mind of Louis so wholly, that nearly two years elapsed after his return, ere he had leisure to prosecute that design, which probably he had long meditated, his divorce from the queen. At length, at the beginning of 1151, Louis, accompanied by Elinor, who had lately borne a second daughter, "inflamed by a spirit of jealousy," says the chronicle of Tours, "went into Aquitaine, where he destroyed several castles, and reduced their garrisons; and returning, was divorced from the queen on plea of consanguinity." The sentence was pronounced by an assembly of his bishops, on the ground that they were cousins in the fourth degree; and the king restored on this occasion, to Elinor, the seven provinces of Aquitaine, which on her marriage were appended to the crown of France.

Immediately as the sentence was ratified by the Pope, the fair and haughty Elinor, with feelings of

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exultation, in which, had she possessed the spirit of prophecy, she would have forborne to indulge, proceeded to Blois. But the beautiful heiress of Aquitaine was now a prize on which each eye was turned, and for whom each bold arm was stretched forth, and many a knight (for the age of chivalry had not yet arrived) stood ready with a well-armed company to seize her, and by a forced marriage possess himself of her dower. The bold count of Blois, in whose domains she sought refuge, formed a similar plan: it was discovered, and by a precipitate retreat by night from Blois, she evaded the meditated danger. Tours was her next place of refuge, from whence, ere long, Geoffrey Plantagenet, second son of the empress Maude, by aid of an armed company, planned to carry her away to the neighbouring seaport. Again, by timely notice of her danger, she was supplied with means of escape, and she fled from Tours, nor rested in her flight, until she found herself secure within her hereditary dominions. Immediately on her arrival in Aquitaine, negotiations between Henry Plantagenet and herself, through the agency, it has been stated, of his mother, were entered into; and Elinor, conducted by Arnulph, bishop of Lisieux, one of the prelates who had accompanied her to Palestine, again quitted Aquitaine; when being met by Henry at Lisieux, she was there married to him, by Arnulph, in his own cathedral, ere the sentence of divorce had been six weeks pronounced.

The indecorous haste of this marriage certainly affixes a stain on the memory of Elinor, although

much may be pleaded in extenuation of a fair and wealthy heiress, who, even during that short period, had been twice compelled to fly from a forced marriage. But the consternation of Louis, when the intelligence reached him, knew no bounds; for Henry Plantagenet, as duke of Normandy alone, was a formidable neighbour ;-what would he not be, when, in addition to the reversionary possession of Anjou, the seven fairest provinces of France-Guienne, Poitou, Saintonge, Auvergne, Perigord, Anjoumois, and Limousin, should own his sway? But Louis lived to see himself amply avenged-to behold the scorn wherewith the haughty Elinor, in the days of her youth and beauty, had treated him, well repaid to her by the ungrateful Plantagenet; and Plantagenet himself, to whom without stipulation she had yielded up her princely dower, receiving in that very gift a source of filial contentions and deadly hostilities, which sank him broken-hearted to the grave.

No sad forebodings arose in the breast of Elinor, for no prophet-hand was there to unveil the dark future, when taking up her residence in Normandy, Plantagenet and herself-for they were both munificent patrons of literature-summoned around them as gay, and almost as splendid, a court as that of France, a court to which the most celebrated knights, and the most renowned troubadours, all eagerly pressed. Ere three years passed, the death of Stephen placed the crown of England on the brow of young Plantagenet; and never, perhaps, did Elinor view with such exulting feelings the result of her divorce from Louis, as on that morning when

she was hailed duchess of Normandy and Aquitaine, and queen of England. Stephen died on the 25th of October, 1154: when the welcome intelligence was communicated to Henry, he was besieging a castle in Normandy; and so careless did he seem, that not until it had surrendered at discretion did he prepare for his voyage. for his voyage. He then proceeded to Rouen, confided the regency of Normandy to his mother; and then, with Elinor, their infant son, William (who soon after died), with his two brothers, and a splendid train of nobility, he repaired to Barbefleur. There they were detained a whole month by contrary winds, and when at length they were enabled to sail, the weather became so stormy, that the fleet was dispersed, and in danger of wreck. At last, on the 7th of December, the royal ship anchored near Hurst castle, in the New Forest, and the first of the proud line of Plantagenet set his foot as monarch on the shore of England. During the period which intervened between the death of Stephen and Henry's accession, the peace of the kingdom appears to have been singularly preserved. "When the king died," says the Saxon Chronicle, "there was the earl beyond seas; but no man durst do other than good, for the great fear of him." Other writers represent the prudent measures of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, as the cause of this tranquillity. From Hurst castle, the royal company proceeded to London, where Plantagenet "was received with great worship, and solemnly blessed as king, on the Sunday before Midwinter-day;" when, in the church of Westminster, archbishop Theobald placed the crowns on the