*

phen's. Of that very large class, the villeins, we have even less information; as, however, we shall have again to refer to the general state of the people before the close of this century, their condition will then be considered.

Whither the fair Adelais retired on the death of the king, and how long she remained in widowhood, are equally unknown. When we next meet her name, we find her the wife of William de Albini, lord of Beckenham, in Norfolk, and hereditary cupbearer to the king. Although unallied to royalty, William de Albini ranked high among the barons of the land. His grandfather was one of those Norman adventurers who won his lands by his prowess, at Hastings; his father married the daughter of the powerful de Bigod; and himself, from his early valour, had already acquired the title of "Strong Arm." The occasion which gave him the right to this name, is with ludicrous sobriety related by Dugdale; and although the story is sufficiently apocryphal, it yet deserves notice as the foundation of one of the most favourite incidents in our popular traditions.

About this time there was a queen dowager of France, young and very beautiful, who, for the love that she bore to a knight of her court, caused proclamation to be made for a tournament to be held at Paris. Thither came many a knight, and among them William de Albini; and marvellous was the prowess he displayed, vanquishing many, and mortally wounding one with a lance. The reader of

* Vide Sir F. Palgrave's "English Commonwealth."

the romances of chivalry will not be surprised to learn, that the stroke which mortally wounded his opponent, was, in a figurative sense, no less "mortal" to the queen. She invited the victor knight to a splendid banquet, presented him rich jewels, and made known to him her preference. But William de Albini refused her gifts, telling her that he was already engaged to another queen dowager, the fair Adelais. "Whereat," says Dugdale in his own matter-of-fact way, "she grew so discontented, that she enticed him into a garden where there was a cave, and in it a fierce lion, unto which she descended, under colour of shewing him the beast; when, having him there, by advantage of a folding door, she thrust him in to the lion." But the valiant knight, though in this sore jeopardy, was not daunted. For his lady-love he had vowed to encounter giants and even dragons, and therefore was not to be turned aside by a "lion in the way." He drew back, folded his arm in his mantle, and as the ferocious beast rushed open-mouthed upon him, he thrust his hand down the throat, and thus "robbed the lion of his heart." Then quietly departing, he presented the lion's heart to one of the queen's maidens as a parting token, and quitted Paris to receive the hand of the fairer and gentler Adelais. "And therefore,” says Dugdale," did he take for his bearing the white lion rampant on a red shield;"* a bearing which, even to the present day, keeps its place among the many quarterings of the ducal shield of the Howards. It is amusing to trace the progress of this very

Vide Dugdale's Baronage.

popular story. Ere the close of the following century the tale, fabricated probably by some grateful trouvère, in return for the patronage of de Albini and the fair Adelais, was nearly forgotten; for in the blaze of Coeur de Lion's exploits, the fame of earlier knights waxed dim: and then the tale of de Albini was appropriated to the hero of Ascalon; and in the curious metrical romance which bears his name, we find precisely the same deed assigned to him. But in the lapse of years even Cœur de Lion's memory faded from remembrance, and then a third time was the story told ;-but now neither knight nor monarch was the hero; but the valiant London 'prentice was chief actor in the less chivalrous days of the Stuarts; and the tale, according to its latest "reading" long exiled from the hall, still, with so many other remains of our popular literature, keeps its place in the nursery.

More authentic history represents William de Albini as a wise, as well as valiant baron. At the battle of Lincoln he is reported to have behaved with unexampled bravery; and to his powerful arguments and vigorous efforts England owed her final release from the miseries of civil war; since it was he who conducted the final negotiations between Stephen and young Plantagenet. On his marriage he took possession of the castle and honour of Arundel, which formed part of Adelais' dower, and assumed the title of its earl. In this castle Adelais seems chiefly to have resided during the troublous period which succeeded; and there, in August 1139, she received the empress Maude, who with her half

brother, the earl of Gloster, and a few trusty followers, had landed on the Sussex coast. According to Malmsbury, this asylum, so kindly proffered at first to the empress, was soon after, "through female inconstancy, withheld; " and he charges Adelais with having broken "the faith which she, by messengers, had repeatedly pledged." This assertion is utterly unsupported by any other chronicler; most of whom relate the circumstances in a way highly honourable to Stephen, and which seem to prove that the empress only took up a temporary abode at the castle of Arundel. According to them, Stephen, when at Marlborough, learning that the empress had landed, set out to Arundel castle, and there demanded her as his prisoner. ever, so pleaded the rights of relationship-and, what was even more in those days, the rights of hospitality -that the generous monarch is reported not only to have permitted the empress to depart, but to have actually provided her with an escort to Bristol.

Adelais, how

This is the only instance in which the name of Adelais, after Henry's death, appears in the pages of the chronicler: from the Monasticon we however learn, that she founded the small priory of Pyneham in Sussex, and that she contributed very liberally toward the building of Chichester cathedral. Leland, in addition, mentions a hospital at Wilton, which it was said was founded by her, and where she was buried; but this is erroneous.

How many years passed over the head of the fair Adelais after she had unbound the crown from her brow, no historian relates. By her second marriage

she became the mother of seven children, all of whom, it is believed, survived her. William, the eldest, succeeded his father in the earldom, and became greatly distinguished as a statesman in the reign of Plantagenet; Adelais, the next, became the wife of the earl of Auger: of the other five, only their names have been handed down, and these were, Reyner, Henry, Godfrey, Oliva, and Agatha. As the latest notice respecting her occurs in a deed of gift dated 1150, her death has been generally placed about 1151; but this is wholly conjectural : "her time of death I find not," says Sandford; "but she was certainly buried at Reading."