VIII. Queen Eleanor's Confession. ............................................................................
"Eleanor, the daughter and heiress of William Duke of Guienne, and Count of
Poicton, had been married sixteen years to Louis VII. King of France, and had
attended him in a croisade, which that monarch commanded against the infidels: but
having lost the affections of her husband, and even fallen under some suspicions of
gallantry with a handsome Saracen, Louis, more delicate than politic, procured a
divorce from her, and restored her those rich provinces, which by her marriage she
had annexed to the crown of France. The young Count of Anjou, afterwards Henry II.
King of England, though at that time but in his nineteenth year, neither discouraged
by the disparity of age, nor by the reports of Eleanor's gallantry, made such successful
courtship to that princess, that he married her six weeks after her divorce, and got
possession of all her dominions as a dowry. A marriage thus founded upon interest
was not likely to be very happy: it happened accordingly. Eleanor, who had disgusted
her first husband by her gallantries, was no less offensive to her second by her
jealousy: thus carrying to extremity, in the different parts of her life, every
circumstance of female weakness. She had several sons by Henry, whom she spirited
up to rebel against him; and endeavouring to escape to them disguised in man's
apparel in 1173, she was discovered and thrown into a confinement, which seems to
have continued till the death of her husband in 1189. She however survived him many
years: dying in 1204, in the sixth year of the reign of her youngest son, John."-- See
Hume's History, 4to. vol. i. pp. 260, 307. Speed, Stowe, &c.
It is needless to observe, that the following ballad (given, with some
corrections, from an old printed copy) is altogether fabulous; whatever gallantries
Eleanor encouraged in the time of her first husband, none are imputed to her in that of
her second.
QUEENE Elianor was a sicke womàn,
And afraid that she should dye:
Then she sent for two fryars of France
To speke with her speedilye.
The king calld downe his nobles all,
By one, by two, by three;
"Earl marshall, Ile goe shrive the queene,
And thou shalt wend with mee."
"A boone, a boone;" quoth Earl Marshàll,
And fell on his bended knee;
"That whatsoever Queene Elianor saye,
No harme therof may bee."
"Ile pawne my landes," the king then cryd,
"My sceptre, crowne, and all,
That whatsoere Queen Elianor sayes
No harme thereof shall fall.
"Do thou put on a fryars coat,
And Ile put on another;
And we will to Queen Eleanor goe
Like fryar and his brother."