away before he had accomplished his forty-fifth
year. He was twice married; and, as the progress of the Latins in arms
and arts had softened the prejudices of the Byzantine court, his two
wives were chosen in the princely houses of Germany and Italy. The
first, Agnes at home, Irene in Greece, was daughter of the duke of
Brunswick. Her father [14] was a petty lord [15] in the poor and savage
regions of the north of Germany: [16] yet he derived some revenue from
his silver mines; [17] and his family is celebrated by the Greeks as the
most ancient and noble of the Teutonic name. [18] After the death of this
childish princess, Andronicus sought in marriage Jane, the sister of
the count of Savoy; [19] and his suit was preferred to that of the French
king. [20] The count respected in his sister the superior majesty of a
Roman empress: her retinue was composed of knights and ladies; she
was regenerated and crowned in St. Sophia, under the more orthodox
appellation of Anne; and, at the nuptial feast, the Greeks and Italians
vied with each other in the martial exercises of tilts and tournaments.

[Footnote 13: The sole reign of Andronicus the younger is described by
Cantacuzene (l. ii. c. 1--40, p. 191--339) and Nicephorus Gregoras, (l.
ix c. 7--l. xi. c. 11, p. 262--361.)]

[Footnote 14: Agnes, or Irene, was the daughter of Duke Henry the
Wonderful, the chief of the house of Brunswick, and the fourth in
descent from the famous Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria,
and conqueror of the Sclavi on the Baltic coast. Her brother Henry was
surnamed the _Greek_, from his two journeys into the East: but these
journeys were subsequent to his sister's marriage; and I am ignorant
_how_ Agnes was discovered in the heart of Germany, and recommended
to the Byzantine court. (Rimius, Memoirs of the House of Brunswick, p.
126--137.]

[Footnote 15: Henry the Wonderful was the founder of the branch of
Grubenhagen, extinct in the year 1596, (Rimius, p. 287.) He resided in
the castle of Wolfenbuttel, and possessed no more than a sixth part of
the allodial estates of Brunswick and Luneburgh, which the Guelph family
had saved from the confiscation of their great fiefs. The frequent
partitions among brothers had almost ruined the princely houses of
Germany, till that just, but pernicious, law was slowly superseded by
the right of primogeniture. The principality of Grubenhagen, one of
the last remains of the Hercynian forest, is a woody, mount