ast
threw many additional difficulties in the way of the accomplishment of
this hope; and very shortly afterwards King Henry the Second went to
make up in the next world his quarrel with Thomas-a-Becket; and Richard
Coeur de Lion made all England resound with preparations for the
crusade, to the great delight of many zealous adventurers, who eagerly
flocked under his banner in the hope of enriching themselves with
Saracen spoil, which they called fighting the battles of God. Richard,
who was not remarkably scrupulous in his financial operations, was
not likely to overlook the lands and castle of Locksley, which he
appropriated immediately to his own purposes, and sold to the highest
bidder. Now, as the repeal of the outlawry would involve the restitution
of the estates to the rightful owner, it was obvious that it could never
be expected from that most legitimate and most Christian king,
Richard the First of England, the arch-crusader and anti-jacobin by
excellence,--the very type, flower, cream, pink, symbol, and mirror of
all the Holy Alliances that have ever existed on earth, excepting
that he seasoned his superstition and love of conquest with a certain
condiment of romantic generosity and chivalrous self-devotion, with
which his imitators in all other points have found it convenient to
dispense. To give freely to one man what he had taken forcibly from
another, was generosity of which he was very capable; but to restore
what he had taken to the man from whom he had taken it, was something
that wore too much of the cool physiognomy of justice to be easily
reconcileable to his kingly feelings. He had, besides, not only sent
all King Henry's saints about their business, or rather about their
no-business--their faineantise--but he had laid them under rigorous
contribution for the purposes of his holy war; and having made them
refund to the piety of the successor what they had extracted from the
piety of the precursor, he compelled them, in addition, to give
him their blessing for nothing. Matilda, therefore, from all these
circumstances, felt little hope that her lover would be any thing but an
outlaw for life.

The departure of King Richard from England was succeeded by the
episcopal regency of the bishops of Ely and Durham. Longchamp, bishop
of Ely, proceeded to show his sense of Christian fellowship by arresting
his brother bishop, and despoiling him of his share in the government;
and to set forth his humility and