ther, enter into a new conspiracy. In the midst of
these motions the young king dies, and showed at his death such signs of
a sincere repentance as served to revive the old king's tenderness, and
to take away all comfort for his loss. The death of his third son,
Geoffrey, followed close upon the heels of this funeral. He died at
Paris, whither he had gone to concert measures against his father.
Richard and John remained. Richard, fiery, restless, ambitious, openly
took up arms, and pursued the war with implacable rancor, and such
success as drove the king, in the decline of his life, to a dishonorable
treaty; nor was he then content, but excited new troubles. John was his
youngest and favorite child; in him he reposed all his hopes, and
consoled himself for the undutifulness of his other sons; but after
concluding the treaty with the King of France and Richard, he found too
soon that John had been as deep as any in the conspiracy. This was his
last wound: afflicted by his children in their deaths and harassed in
their lives, mortified as a father and a king, worn down with cares and
sorrows more than with years, he died, cursing his fortune, his
children, and the hour of his birth. When he perceived that death
approached him, by his own desire he was carried into a church and laid
at the altar's foot. Hardly had he expired, when he was stripped, then
forsaken by his attendants, and left a long time a naked and unheeded
body in an empty church: affording a just consolation for the obscurity
of a mean fortune, and an instructive lesson how little an outward
greatness and enjoyments foreign to the mind contribute towards a solid
felicity, in the example of one who was the greatest of kings and the
unhappiest of mankind.

FOOTNOTES:

[78] Seld. Tithes, p. 482.

[79] LL. Ethelred. Si presbyter homicida fieret, &c.

[80] LL. Cnuti, 38, De Ministro Altaris Homicida. Idem, 40, De Ordinato
Capitis reo.

[81] LL. H.I. 57, De Querela Vicinorum; and 56 [66?]. De Ordinato qui
Vitam forisfaciat, in Foed. Alured. et Guthurn., apud Spel. Concil.
376, 1st vol.; LL. Edw. et Guthurn., 3, De Correctione Ordinatorum.

CHAPTER VII.

REIGN OF RICHARD I.

[Sidenote: Richard I. A.D. 1189]

Whilst Henry lived, the King of France had always an effectual means of
breaking his power by the divisions in his family. But now Richard
succeeded to all the power of his father, with an equal ambition to
extend it, with a temper infinit