Besides this, Henry, partly by inheritance from his father and mother, and partly by his marriage, ruled over the western part of France from the English Channel to the Pyrenees. From Anjou, which he had from his father, he and his sons are known as the Angevin kings. He had great trouble with his own sons. The elder ones rebelled against him from time to time, and he trusted the youngest, John, more than all. At last there was a war between Henry and the King of France. When peace was made, Henry asked to know who were those of his own subjects who had promised to help the French against him. The list was shown him, and the first name on the list was that of John. He could not bear the revelation. He fell sick and died in a few days. Shame, shame, on a conquered king,' were the last words that he spoke. He was

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succeeded by his son Richard.

CHAPTER IX.

THE SONS OF HENRY II., AND THE GREAT CHARTER.

RICHARD I., 1189. JOHN, 1199.

1. The Crusades.-Richard I. was hardly an English king. He only visited England twice during his reign, and that was only to get as much money as he could. Early in his reign he went on a crusade. The Crusades had begun in the time of William

Rufus. Christian pilgrims had long been in the habit of visiting Jerusalem to pray at the spots where Our Lord was born, was crucified, and was buried. The Arabs, who before the time of William Rufus, governed Jerusalem, allowed these pilgrims to come and go in peace. Then Jerusalem was conquered by the Turks, who came from the middle of Asia, and did not then rule at Constantinople. These Turks were much more brutal than the Arabs, and ill-treated the pilgrims. A man, called Peter the Hermit, went about Western Europe, calling on all men to take arms and to rescue Jerusalem from the Turks, who as well as the Arabs were Mahometans, or believers in a religion which had been preached by Mahomet. The pope gave his approval, and crowds of men poured out of Western Europe to conquer the Holy Land. The enterprise was called a crusade, because those who went fixed a cross to their dress, as a sign that they counted themselves as the warriors of Christ. Large numbers were starved or killed on the way, but a smaller body of well-armed knights and noblemen followed and conquered Jerusalem. There was a strange mixture of brutality and humility in these men. When Jerusalem was taken there was a horrible massacre of the inhabitants. Not only were grown men and women butchered in cold blood, but innocent children were dashed to death against the walls. The Crusaders set up a Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, and chose one of their number, Godfrey of Bouillor, as the first king. He ruled as king, but he refused to be crowned. He would not, he said, wear a crown of gold where his Saviour had worn a crown of thorns.

2. Richard I. goes on a Crusade.-The Christian kingdom of Jerusalem lasted almost to the end of the reign of Henry II. Then Jerusalem was again conquered by the Mahometans. Before this, very few English had taken part in the crusades. Richard now determined to set out to recover Jerusalem. He was an excellent warrior, fond of adventure, and loving fighting for the sake of excitement and amusement. But he was quarrelsome, and determined not only to do more than any one else, but to make men acknowledge that he did more than any one else. Men like this never succeed. Before he reached the Holy Land he had quarrelled with the King of France. After he reached the Holy Land he quarrelled with the Duke of Austria. He fought bravely and won renown against Saladin, the Mahometan leader. But the men of other nations would not join heartily with him. He could not retake Jerusalem. Once, indeed, he came within sight of it. But he turned proudly and sadly away, and refused to look on the place where a mosque, or building for Mahometan worship, rose on the site which had once been occupied by the temples of Solomon, of Zerubbabel, and of Herod. If he was not worthy, he said, to regain the Holy City, he was not worthy even to look on it.

3. Richard I.returns home. Having accomplished nothing he returned home. He attempted to pass overland through Austria, but he was recognised and detained. The Duke of Austria handed him over to the Emperor, Henry VI., who ruled over Germany and a great part of Italy, and the Emperor kept him in prison till his mother and his friends

ransomed him with a large sum of money. The rest of his life was spent by him in fighting in France. At last he was shot down by a man who aimed at him from a castle wall. The castle was taken before he died, and he ordered his attendants to spare the man to whom he owed his death. There was a nobleness in him besides the bravery, which made him long remembered as Coeur de Lion, or the Lion-Hearted. But he had no thought of making the people over whom he ruled better or happier, and England has no cause to be grateful to him.

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4. John loses Normandy. In 1199, Richard's youngest brother John was chosen king in preference to the boy Arthur, who was the son of another brother, Geoffrey, who was dead, and who was younger than Richard, but older than John. John therefore came to the throne in the same way as Alfred and Stephen, and it is only by mistake that some people call him an usurper. John was as wicked as William Rufus, utterly selfish and rapacious. He feared not God nor regarded man.' He could be very mean and very cruel. At the beginning of his reign he was afraid lest Arthur, when he grew up, should be too strong for him, and Arthur disappeared. No one told how Arthur was murdered. Some said that John had drowned him with his own hands, but it is not known whether this is true. The King of France at once ordered John, who was Duke of Normandy as well as King of England, to come to Paris to be tried for murder, and when he refused to come, took from him a great part of his lands in France. The lands between the English Channel

and the Loire which John had from his father were lost. Only the lands south of the Loire, which John had from his mother, were kept.

5. John's Tyranny in England.-In England John tried to enrich himself by heavy taxes, which he laid on at his own pleasure, and by plundering rich persons. It is said that he threw into prison a rich Jew who refused to give him an enormous sum of money, and pulled out one of the Jew's teeth every day till he paid what was asked. Wealthy noblemen were treated in much the same way. In Stephen's time the great landowners oppressed the people, and the people had therefore supported Henry II., and had made him strong that he might reduce the great landowners to order. John oppressed both great and small, and made them join together against himself. Ready as all classes were to resist the tyrant, it was a long time before they dared to rebel. He brought into England large bodies of foreign mercenaries, or hired soldiers, thoroughly trained for fighting, who would do anything that John ordered them to do as long as they received money from him.

6. John and the Monks of Canterbury.-John fancied that no one could resist him. The monks of Canterbury had the right of electing the archbishop, but as they had always chosen the man whom the king asked them to choose, they had not hitherto had an important part to play in the matter. When the archbishop died, John ordered them to elect his treasurer, the Bishop of Norwich. They chose instead one of themselves, a certain Reginald,