hed to find at the head of them
the name of his second son John [z]; who had always been his
favourite, whose interests he had ever anxiously at heart, and who had
even, on account of his ascendant over him, often excited the jealousy
of Richard [a]. The unhappy father, already overloaded with cares and
sorrows, finding this last disappointment in his domestic tenderness,
broke out into expressions of the utmost despair, cursed the day in
which he received his miserable being, and bestowed on his ungrateful
and undutiful children a malediction which he never could be prevailed
on to retract [b]. The more his heart was disposed to friendship and
affection, the more he resented the barbarous return which his four
sons had successively made to his parental care; and this finishing
blow, by depriving him of every comfort in life, quite broke his
spirit and threw him into a lingering fever, of which he expired at
the Castle of Chinon, near Saumur. [MN 1189. 6th July. Death,] His
natural son Geoffrey, who alone had behaved dutifully towards him,
attended his corpse to the nunnery of Fontevrault; where it lay in
state in the abbey church. Next day Richard, who came to visit the
dead body of his father, and who, notwithstanding his criminal
conduct, was not wholly destitute of generosity, was struck with
horror and remorse at the sight; and as the attendants observed, that,
at that very instant, blood gushed from the mouth and nostrils of the
corpse [c], he exclaimed, agreeably to a vulgar superstition, that he
was his father's murderer; and he expressed a deep sense, though too
late, of that undutiful behaviour which had brought his parent to an
untimely grave [d].
[FN [z] Hoveden. p. 654. [a] Bened. Abb. p. 541. [b] Hoveden, p.
654. [c] Bened. Abb. p. 547. Brompton, p. 1151. [d] M. Paris, p.
107.]

[MN and character of Henry.] Thus died, in the fifty-eighth year of
his age, and thirty-fifth of his reign, the greatest prince of his
time, for wisdom, virtue, and abilities, and the most powerful in
extent of dominion of all those that had ever filled the throne of
England. His character, in private as well as in public life, is
almost without a blemish; and he seems to have possessed every
accomplishment, both of body and mind, which makes a man either
estimable or amiable. He was of a middle stature, strong and well
proportioned; his countenance was lively and engaging; his
conversation affable and entertaining