"Had the knight looked up to the page's face,
No smile the word had won;
Had the knight looked up to the page's face,
I ween he had never gone:
Had the knight looked back to the page's geste,
I ween he had turned anon,--
For dread was the woe in the face so young,
And wild was the silent geste that flung
Casque, sword, to earth as the boy down-sprung,
And stood--alone, alone!"

_Elizabeth Barrett Browning_.

Nobody enjoyed the spring of the year 1236. Rain poured down, day after
day, as if it were the prelude to a second Deluge. The Thames
overflowed its banks to such an extent that the lawyers had to return
home in boats, floated by the tide into Westminster Hall. There was no
progress, except by boat or horse, through the streets of the royal
borough.

Perhaps the physical atmosphere slightly affected the moral and
political, for men's minds were much unsettled, and their tempers very
captious. The King, with his usual fickleness and love of novelty, had
thrown himself completely into the arms of the horde of poor relations
whom the new Queen brought over with her, particularly of her uncle,
Guglielmo of Savoy, the Bishop of Valentia, whom he constituted his
prime minister. By his advice new laws were promulgated which extremely
angered the English nobles, who complained that they were held of no
account in the royal councils. The storms were especially violent in
the North, and there people took to seeing prophetic visions of dreadful
import. Beside all this, France was in a very disturbed state, which
boded ill to the English provinces across the sea. The Counts of
Champagne, Bretagne, and La Marche, used strong language concerning the
disgraceful fact that "France, the kingdom of kingdoms, was governed by
a woman," Queen Blanche of Castilla being Regent during the minority of
her son, Saint Louis. It is a singular fact that while the name of
Blanche has descended to posterity as that of a woman of remarkable
wisdom, discretion, and propriety of life, the popular estimate of her
during her regency was almost exactly the reverse.

Meanwhile, the royal marriage festivities went on uproariously at
Canterbury. There was not a peacock-pie the less on account either of
the black looks of the English nobles, or of the very shallow condition
of the royal treasury. To King Henry, who had no intention of paying
any bills that he could help, what did it signify how much things cost,
or