Diceto, p. 560. Brompton, p. 1080. Chron.
Gerv. p. 1421. Trivet, p. 58. It appears from Madox's History of the
Exchequer, that silk garments were then known in England, and that the
coronation robes of the young king and queen cost eighty-seven pounds
ten shillings and four pence, money of that age. [w] Girald. Camb. p.
782.]

While Henry was alarmed at this incident, and had the prospect of
dangerous intrigues, or even of a war, which, whether successful or
not, must be extremely calamitous and disagreeable to him, he received
intelligence of new misfortunes, which must have affected him in the
most sensible manner. Queen Eleanor, who had disgusted her first
husband by her gallantries, was no less offensive to her second by her
jealousy; and after this manner carried to extremity, in the different
periods of her life, every circumstance of female weakness. She
communicated her discontents against Henry to her two younger sons,
Geoffrey and Richard; persuaded them that they were also entitled to
present possession of the territories assigned to them; engaged them
to fly secretly to the court of France; and was meditating, herself,
an escape to the same court, and had even put on man's apparel for
that purpose; when she was seized by orders from her husband, and
thrown into confinement. Thus, Europe saw with astonishment the best
and most indulgent of parents at war with his whole family; three
boys, scarcely arrived at the age of puberty, required a great
monarch, in the full vigour of his age and height of his reputation,
to dethrone himself in their favour; and several princes not ashamed
to support them in these unnatural and absurd pretensions.

Henry, reduced to this perilous and disagreeable situation, had
recourse to the court of Rome: though sensible of the danger attending
the interposition of ecclesiastical authority in temporal disputes, he
applied to the pope, as his superior lord, to excommunicate his
enemies, and by these censures to reduce to obedience his undutiful
children, whom he found such reluctance to punish by the sword of the
magistrate [x]. Alexander, well pleased to exert his power in so
justifiable a cause, issued the bulls required of him; but it was soon
found that these spiritual weapons had not the same force as when
employed in a spiritual controversy; and that the clergy were very
negligent in supporting a sentence which was nowise calculated to
promote the immediate interest