Letters. 1192. Letter VI. [his mother] Eleanor of Aquitaine Queen Consort Franks and England (age 70) to Pope Celestine.

To the reverend father and lord Celestine, by God's grace highest pontiff, Eleanora the miserable, and I would I could add the commiserated, queen of England, duchess of Normandy, countess of Anjou, entreating him to shew himself a father of mercy to a miserable mother.

I am prevented, O holiest pope, by the great distance which parts us, from addressing you personally$1 yet I must bewail my grief a little, and who shall assist me to write my words?.

I am all anxiety, internally and externally, whence my very words are full of grief. Without are fears, within contentions; nor have I a moment wherein to breathe freely from the tribulation of evils, and the grief occasioned by the troubles which ever find me out. I am all defiled with grief, and my bones cleave to my skin, for my flesh is wasted away. My years pass away in groanings, and 1 would they were altogether passed away. O that the whole blood of my body would now die, that the brain of my head and the marrow of my bones were so dissolved into tears that I might melt away in weeping! My very bowels are torn away from me; I have lost the light of my eyes, the staff of my old age: and, would God accede to my wishes, he would condemn me to perpetual blindness, that my wretched eyes might no longer behold the woes of my people. Who will grant me the boon of dying for thee, my son? O mother of mercy! look upon a mother so wretched; or if thy Son, the inexhausted fount of mercy, is avenging the sins of the mother on the son, let him exact vengeance from her who has alone sinned: let him punish me, the wicked one, and not amuse himself with the punishment of an innocent person. Let him who hath begun the task, who now bruises me, take away his hand and slay me; and this shall be my consolation, that, afflicting me with grief, he spares me not. O wretched me, yet pitied by none! why have I, the mistress of two kingdoms, the mother of two kings, reached the ignominy of a detested old age?.

My bowels are torn away, my very race is destroyed and passing away from me. The [his brother] young king and the [his brother] Earl of Bretagne sleep in the dust, and their most unhappy mother is compelled to live that she may be ever tortured with the memory of the dead. Two sons yet survived to my solace, who now survive only to distress me, a miserable and condemned creature: King Richard (age 34) is detained in bonds, and [his brother] John (age 25), his brother, depopulates the captive's kingdom with the sword, and lays it waste with fire. In all things the Lord is become cruel towards me, and opposes me with a heavy hand. Truly his anger fights against me, when my very sons fight against each other, if, indeed, that can be called a fight in which one party languishes in bonds, and the other, adding grief to grief, tries, by cruel tyranny to usurp the exile's kingdom to himself.

O good Jesus! who will grant me thy protection, and hide me in hell itself till thy fury passes away, and till thy arrows whiqh are in me, by whose vehemence my very spirit is drunk up, shall cease? I long for death, I am weary of life; and though I thus die incessantly, I yet desire to die more fally; I am reluctantly compelled to live, that my life may be the food of death and a means of torture. O happy ye who pass away by a fortunate abortion, without experiencing the waywardness of this life and the unexpected events of an uncertain condition! What do I? why do I remain? why do I wretched, delay? why do I not go, that I may see him whom my soul loves, bound in beggary and irons? as though, at such a time, a mother could forget the son of her womb! Affection to their young softens tigers, nay, even the fiercer sorceresses.

Yet I fluctuate in doubt: for, if I go away, deserting my son's kingdom, which is laid waste on all sides with fierce hostility, it will in my absence be destitute of all counsel and solace; again, if I stay, I shall not see the face of my son, that face which I so long for. There will be none who will study to procure the liberation of my son, and, what 1 fear still more, the most delicate youth (age 34) will be tormented for an impossible quantity of money, and, impatient of so much affliction, will easily be brought to the agonies of death. Oh, impious, cruel, and dreadful tyrant! who hast not feared to lay sacrilegious hands on the anointed of the Lord! nor has the royal unction, nor the reverence due to a holy life, nor the fear of God, restrained thee from such inhumanity!

Yet the prince of the apostles still rules and reigns in the apostolic seat, and his judicial rigour is set up as a means of resort: this one thing remains, that you, O father, draw against these evildoers the sword of Peter, which for this purpose is set over people and kingdoms. The cross of Christ excels the eagles of Ceasar, the sword of Peter the sword of Constantine, and the apostolic seat is placed above the imperial power. Is your power of God or of men? Has not the God of gods spoken to you by the Apostle Peter, that whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven? Wherefore, then, do you so long negligently, nay, cruelly, delay to free my son (age 34), or rather do not dare to do it? You will, perhaps, say that this power is given to you over souls, not over bodies: be it so; it will certainly suffice me if you will bind their souls who hold my son bound in prison. It is your province to loose my son, unless the fear of God has given way to human fear. Restore my son to me, then, O man of God, if indeed thou art a man of God and not a man of blood; for know that, if thou art sluggish in the liberation of my son, from thy hand will the Most High require his blood. Alas, alas for us, when the chief shepherd has become a mercenary, when he flies from the face of the wolf, when he leaves the little sheep committed to him, or rather the elect ram, the leader of the Lord's flock, in the jaws of the bloody beast of prey! The good Shepherd instructs and informs other shepherds not to fly when they see the wolf coming, but to lay down their lives for the sheep. Save, therefore, I entreat thee, thine own soul, whilst, by urgent embassies, by salutary advice, by the thunders of excommunication, by general interdicts, by terrible sentences, thou endeavourest to procure the liberation, I will not say of thy sheep merely, but of thy son. Though late, you ought to give your life for him, for whom, as yet, you have refused to write or speak a single word. The Son of God, as testifies the prophet, came down from heaven that he might bring up them that were bound from the pit in which was no water. Now, would not that which was fitting for God to do become the servant of God? My son is tormented in bonds, yet you go not down to him, nor send, nor are moved by the sorrow of Joseph. Christ sees this and is silent; yet at the last there shall be fearful retribution for those who do the work of God negligently. Ambassadors have been promised to us three times, but never sent; so that« to speak the truth, they are bound rather than sent. If my son were in prosperity, they would eagerly hasten at his lightest call, because they would expect rich handfuls for their embassy from his great munificence and the public profit of the kingdom. But what profit could be more glorious to them than to liberate a captive king, to restore peace to the people, quiet to the religious, and joy to all? Now, truly, the sons of Ephraim, who bent and sent forth the bow, have turned round in the day of battle; and in the time of distress when the wolf comes upon the prey, they are dumb dogs who either cannot or will not bark. Is this the promise you made me at the castle of Ralph with such protestations of favour and good faith? What availed it to give words only to my simplicity, and to illude by a fond trust the wishes of the innocent? So, in olden time, was King Ahab forbidden to make alliance with Ben-hadad, and we have heard the fatal issue of their mutual love.*^ A heavenly providence prospered the wars of Judas, John, and Simon, the Maccabsean brothers, under happy auspices; but when they sent an embassy to secure the friendship of the Romans, they lost the help of God, and, not once alone, but often was their venal intimacy cause of bitter regret.* You alone, who were my hope after God, and the trust of my people, force me to despair. Cursed be he who trusteth in man. Where is now my refuge?.

Thou, O Lord my God. To thee, O Lord, who considerest my distress, are the eyes of thine handmaid lifted up. Thou, O King of kings and Lord of lords, look upon the face of thine Anointed, give empire to thy Son, and save the son of thine handmaid, nor visit upon him the crimes of his father or the wickedness of his mother!

We know by certain and public relation that the emperor, after the death of the Bishop of Liege (age 26) (whom he is said to have slain with a fiital sword, though wielded by a remote hand (age 42)), miserably imprisoned the Bishop of Ostia and four other provincials, the Bishop of Salerno, and the Archbishop of Treves; and the apostolic authority cannot deny that, to the perpetual prejudice of the Roman church, he has, in spite of embassies, supplications, and threats of the apostolic seat, taken possession of Sicily, which from the times of Constantine has been the patrimony of St. Peter. Yet with all this his fury is not yet turned away, but yet is his hand stretched forth. Fearful things he has already done, but worse are still certainly to be expected; for those who ought to be the Pillars of the church are swayed with reed-like lightness by every wind. Oh, would they but remember that it was through the negligence of Eli, the priest ministering in Shiloh, that the glory of the Lord passed away from Israel I. Nor is that a mere parable of the past, but of the present. For the Lord drove from Shiloh the tabernacle, his tabernacle, where he had dwelt amongst men, and gave their strength into captivity and, their beauty into the hands of the enemy.

It is imputed to your pusillanimity that the church is trampled upon, the faith perilled, liberty oppressed, deceit encouraged by patience, iniquity by impunity. Where is the promise of God when be said to his church, 'Thou shalt suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breasts of kings? I will make thee the pride of ages, and a joy from generation to generation. Once the church, by its own strength, trod upon the necks of the proud and the lofty, and the laws of emperors obeyed the' sacred canons. But things are changed, and not only the canons, but the very formers of the canons, are restrained by base laws and execrable customs. The detestable crimes of the powerful are borne with. None dare murmur, and canonical rigour falls on the sins of the poor alone. Therefore, not without reason did Anachar^is the philosopher compare laws and canons to spiders' webs, which reti^in weaker animals but let the stronger go. ^* The kings of the earth have set themselves, and the rulers have taken counsel together/*^ against my son, the anointed of the Lord. One binds him in chains, another devastates his lands with cruel hostility, or, to use a vulgar phrase. One clips and another plunders; one holds the foot and another skins it. The highest pontiff sees these things, and yet bids the sword of Peter slumber in its scabbard; so he adds boldness to the sinner, his silence being presumed to indicate consent. He who corrects^ not when he can and ought seems even to consent, and his dissimulating patience shall not want the scruple of hidden companionship.'* The time of dissension predicted by the apostle draws on, when the son of perdition shall be revealed; dangerous times are at hand, when the seamless garment of Christ is cut, the net of Peter is broken, and the solidity of Catholic unity dissolved. These are the beginnings of sorrows. We feel bad things; we fear worse. I am no prophetess, nor the daughter of a prophet, but grief has suggested many things about future disturbances; yet it steals away the very words which it suggests. A sob intercepts my breath, and absorbing grief shutS' up by its anxieties the vocal passages of my soul. Farewell.

Effigy of King Richard I. THIS chivalrous monarch, the fame of whose personal courage has been handed down to posterity in his surname, Coeur de Lion, was the third son of Henry the Second, by Eleanor de Guienne, his queen, and was born at Oxford, at the royal palace there, in the year 1157. He was created Earl of Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine by his father, during his lifetime, and at his death in 1181 succeeded to the Crown of England. In his childhood he was contracted in marriage to Alice, daughter of Henry the Seventh, King of France [Note. A mistake for Louis VII]. This engagement was, however, never completed; her chastity lying under an imputation with his own father, he refused to ratify it, and gave £100,000. to King Philip, her brother, as a compensation for its non-performance. She became the wife of William Earl of Ponthieu, by whom she had issue Joan of Castile, mother of Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward the First. [Note. A mistake. William and Alice were the parent of Marie Montgomery Countess Ponthieu who was the mother of Joan Dammartin Queen Consort Castile and Leon who was the mother of Eleanor of Castile Queen Consort England]

His second wife [Note. A mistake? His first wife - he and Alice were only betrothed?] was Berengaria, or Berenquelle, daughter of Sanchez the Fourth, King of Navarre. She was married to Richard in 1190, at the Island of Cyprus, when on his way to the Holy Land, whither she accompanied him.

King Richard received the scrip and staff of pilgrimage from the Archbishop of Tours, and proceeding to Marseilles, embarked on the 7th August 1190, on his expedition to the Holy Land. His first exploit in his way was the capture of the city of Messina, in Sicily, in order to release his sister Joan, widow of William the Good, the late king of that island, then kept in confinement by Tancred, the bastard and usurper. Richard enforced his demands of remuneration for his sister's claims, by keeping possession of Messina until they were satisfied. These were, that Tancred should permit her to enjoy the dower settled on her by the late King her husband; that she should have, according to the custom of Sicilian queens, a chair of gold, a table of gold twelve feet in length and a foot and a half in breadth, two golden tressels to support the same, a silk tent in which two hundred knights might be entertained, twenty-four silver cups and as many dishes, six thousand measures of wheat, a proportionate quantity of barley and wine, an hundred armed galleys, properly appointed, and victualled for two years. Tancred compounded for these dues by the payment of twenty thousand ounces of gold to Richard as his sisters dower, twenty thousand more to Richard himself, to be quit of any further claims, besides a gift to him of four large ships and fifteen galleys. Setting sail from Sicily, accompanied by his mother Eleanor and his betrothed wife, his fleet was scattered in a tempest between the islands of Rhodes and Cyprus. The ship which contained his sister Joan and his intended bride, was barbarously excluded from sheltering in Cyprus by Isaac Comnenus, the reigning prince, who held it under the Greek emperors. Richard promptly avenged this affront, by subduing the island, taking Isaac prisoner, and ultimately transferring the sovereignty of Cyprus to Guy de Lusignan. Here Richard espoused his queen Berengaria. In the beginning of April 1191 Richard proceeded to the relief of the Christian army encamped before Acre. In his voyage he fell in with a Saracen dromond, or huge argosie, sent by Saladin, the brother of Saladin the Soldan of Babylon, laden with immense treasure, military stores, and provisions, and fifteen hundred warriors, for the succour of the Infidels besieged in Acre. Among the articles for offensive warfare were a quantity of the celebrated Greek fire, and vessels full of venomous serpents. This unwieldy vessel was promptly assailed on all sides by the King's light galleys; her bottom was pierced with holes by the augers of certain dextrous divers, and she was soon filled with water to her upper works. Thirteen hundred of her crew were consigned by the King's order to the waves; two hundred remained his prisoners. Richard arrived at Acre in the middle of June, with his gallant fleet of two hundred and fifty ships and sixty galleys, and aided so vigorously the combined forces of Christendom in the prosecution of the siege, that on the twelfth of the following July the city surrendered. The defection of Philip King of France did not damp the ardour of Richard: he marched against Jerusalem, and in sight of that city attacked and overthrew the caravan of Saladin, which came laden from Babylon, under an escort of ten thousand men. A truce being concluded with Saladin, Richard bent his steps homeward, to regulate the domestic concerns of his Realm, and to procure reinforcement for his crusading host. In his way he was shipwrecked near Aquileia, but getting safely to land he disguised himself as a merchant, and assuming the name of Hugh, was making his way through the Austrian dominions, when he was discovered and made prisoner by Leopold Duke of Austria, who owed him an old grudge for an indignity offered to his banner at Acre. Richard was given up by him to the Emperor of Germany, of whom he was obliged to purchase his liberty by a heavy ransom, 130,000 marks of silver. The old disagreement between Richard and Philip of France continuing unallayed, a war between them was the consequence, and Richard gave him a signal overthrow at the famous battle of Gisors, in Normandy, where the French king narrowly escaped with his life. The lion-hearted Richard on this occasion eminently displayed his intrepid character, and exclaimed after the held was won, "Not we but 'God and our Right' have vanquished France at Gisors;" the same emphatic words were by one of his successors coupled with the armorial ensigns of the British Crown.

Effigy of Henry II. THE destruction of our royal effigies at Fontevraud [Map] during the Revolution had been so confidently asserted, that the known devastation of antiquities of this character in France, did not appear to be a sufficient reason to warrant the assertion; but on investigation, by every inquiry it was found to rest on no better foundation, and still wanted confirmation. As the addition of these, to commence our series appeared so desirable an acquisition, and the reflection at the same time presenting itself that by some fortunate chance they might stili be preserved, no other inducements were wanting for hazarding a journey to ascertain their fate. An indiscriminate destruction, which on every side presented itself in a track of three hundred miles, left little to hope on arriving at the Abbey of Fontevraud; but still less, when this celebrated depository of our early kings was found to be but a ruin. Contrary, however, to such an unpromising appearance, the whole of the effigies were discovered in a cellar of one of the buildings adjoining the abbey. For amidst the total annihilation of every thing that immediately surrounded them, these effigies alone were saved; not a vestige of the tomb, and chapel which contained them, remaining. Fortunately, there is nothing destroyed for us to regret. When the fury of the Revolution had ceased, it appears that the veneration these memorials of royalty had for ages excited, led to their removal from the ruined church to a place of more security. They were accordingly conveyed to an octangular isolated building, called the Tour d'Evraud, where they remained safe and undisturbed for eighteen years; but the church having been very lately converted to a prison, and this receptacle being found convenient for some purposes of the new establishment, they were again removed to their present situation, where they are subject daily to be wantonly defaced by the lowest class of prisoners, and where, if they are suffered to remain, they must soon be destroyed.

The effigies are four in number: — [his father] Henry II.; his Queen, Eleanor de Guienne; Richard I.; and Isabel d'Angouleme, the Queen of John. Considering their age, and the vicissitudes they have undergone, they are in excellent preservation. They have all been painted and gilt three or four times; and from the style of the last painting, it is probable it was executed when the effigies were removed from their original situation in the choir^a. It is this painting which Montfaucon has described, and it has consequently misled him^b.

Our present subject, Henry II., the son of the Empress Matilda, and Geoffrey Plantagenet, Earl of Anjou, died at the Castle of Chinon [Map], nigh Fontevraud, October, 1189, in the 57th year of his age, and 35th of his reign. A modern French writer, who states as his authorities MSS. preserved in the ecclesiastical archives, says "the body of the unfortunate monarch, vested in his royal habits, the crown of gold on his head, and the sceptre in his hand, was placed on a bier richly ornamented, and borne in great state to the celebrated Abbey of Fontevraud, which he had chosen as the place of his interment, and there set in the nave of the great church, where he was buried." This account partly agrees with that given by Matthew Paris, who says, "But on the morrow, until he should be carried to be buried, he was arrayed in the royal investments, having a golden crown on the head, and gloves on the hands, boots wrought with gold on the feet, and spurs, a great ring on the finger, and a sceptre in the hand, and girt with a sword, he lay with his face uncovered." When we examine the effigy, we cannot fail of remarking that it is already described by these two accounts; the only variation being in the sword, which is not girt, but lies on the bier on the left side, with the belt twisted round it. It therefore appears, that the tomb was literally a representation of the deceased king, as if he still lay in state. Nor can we, without supposing such was the custom, otherwise account for the singular coincidences between the effigy of King John on the lid of his coffin and his body within it, when discovered a few years since.

The crown on the head of Henry II. has been probably many years broken, as appears from some remains of an injudicious attempt to restore it with plaister of Paris. It is represented without those clumsy additions in the etchings. The right hand, on which was the great ring, is also broken; but still contains a portion of the sceptre, which, if we may judge from its stays on the breast, must have been remarkably short. The character of the face is strongly marked by high cheek-bones and projecting lips and chin; the beard is painted, and penciled like a miniature, to represent its being close shaven; the mantle is fastened by a fibula on the right shoulder, its colour has been, like the cushion under the head, of a deep reddish chocolate; the dalmatic is crimson, and appears to have been starred or flowered with gold. The mantle probably was originally ornamented in a similar manner. The boots are green, ornamented with gold, on which are fastened with red leathers the gold spurs. The whole is executed in free stone, and in a style much resembling the seals of the time, but infinitely superior to what we should expect, judging by the effigy of King John, which in comparison with this is a very inferior production. We are told that Henry II. had on his tomb these lines:

Rex Henricus eram, mihi plurima Regna subegi [I was King Henry, and I subjugated many kingdoms]

Multiplicique modo, Duxque Comesque fui [In many ways, I was Duke and Count]

Cui satis ad votum non essent omnia terrae [All the earth would not be enough for him to make a wish]

Climata, terra modo sufficit octo pedum. [In the (current?) climate, only eight feet of earth is sufficient]

Qui legis hæc, pensa discrimina mortis, & in me [He who reads these things, let the judgments of death be weighed upon me]

Humanse speculum conditions habe [Have humane mirror conditions]

Sulhcit hie Tumulus, cui non sulbceret orbis. [Here lies a mound, for which the world would not mourn]

Res brevis ampla mihi, cui fuit ampla brevis. [A brief matter is ample for me, to whom it was a large brief]

Note a. By Jeanne Baptiste de Bourbon, natural daughter of Henry IV. in 1638, who at the same time erected a tomb to contain the whole of them.

Note b. For the gloves having been ignorantly painted of a flesh colour instead of white. Montfaucon says, "Je ne sai que signifient les deux marques rondes quhl a sur les deux mains. [I don't know what the two round marks mean on the hands]" Not conceiving they were the jewels on the gloves, the marks of royalty.

Archaeologia Volume 29 Section XV. Effigy of King Richard, Ceur de Lion, in the Cathedral at Rouen. Communicated to the Society by Albert Way, Esq., M.A., F.S.A. in a Letter addressed to John Gage Rokewode, Esq., F.R.S., Director.

[Note. Two plates are missing from the text so I've added three photos of my own of the effigies at Fontevraud Abbey.]

Read 25th March 1841

Dear Sir, March 22, 1641.

THE announcement in the French journals of the month of August 1838, that by the researches of the distinguished antiquary of Normandy, M. Deville, the lost effigy of King Richard had been brought to light from beneath the pavement of the choir in Rouen Cathedral, induced me to take the earliest opportunity of visiting that city, with the special purpose of examining so interesting a memorial. During the last summer I had the occasion of correcting the observations previously made, and which I had reserved in the hope that no long interval would elapse, before a second similar investigation, conducted with the same enthusiasm, and rewarded by a like success, might enable me to add to this notice of the relics of the Lion-hearted Richard, some account of the Tomb of Henry his elder brother, whose remains were deposited near to the spot where the effigy of Richard has been discovered, and whose memorial shared the same fate, by which both tombs were barbarously condemned to be destroyed. Owing to unexpected circumstances no further researches have hitherto been permitted, and as I am not aware, that during the interval any accurate report of the discovery made in 1838, has been made public, I am induced to hope that a short notice on a subject so interesting both in relation to early art, and to monumental antiquities, may not be unacceptable to the Society.

There are many circumstances of interest connected with M. Deville's discovery, and communicated to me by him with the most friendly and obliging liberality, into which it is not my purpose to enter in detail, because he has signified an intention of giving a minute account from the notices drawn up by himself at the time, as a supplement to his valuable work on the monumental remains in Rouen Cathedral; this promised communication is, as I believe, withheld only in the expectation that further researches, which he still hopes to be permitted to undertake, may lead to the discovery of the other lost memorial to which I have alluded, namely, the effigy of Henry, the eldest son of Henry IInd. crowned King in his father's life-time, and interred in the choir of Rouen Cathedral in 1183.

Archaeologia Volume 29 Section XV. Richard having received his death wound under the walls of the castle of Chaluz in Limosin, directed that his body should be interred at Fontevrault [Map], at the foot of his father's tomb; his effigy is still preserved there, and has been accurately represented by Charles Stothard. His heart he bequeathed to the Canons of Rouen, to whom in his lifetime he had been a benefactor, and who gratefully enshrined the relic in a sumptuous receptacle, as we learn from a contemporary writer, Guillaume le Breton.

"Cujus cor Rotomagensis [Whose heart is Rouen]

Ecclesie clerus argento clausit et auro, [The clergy closed the church with silver and gold]

Sanctorumque inter sacra corpora, in æde sacratâ [And among the sacred bodies of the saints, in the sacred meal]

Compositum, nimio devotus honorat honore; [The compound, the most devout, honors with honor]

Ut tante ecclesia devotio tanta patenter [So much devotion to the church so openly]

Innuat in vita quantum dilexerit illum." [He hints in life how much he loves him] Putipripos, Lib. v.