THE COURT, LADY'S MAGAZINE,

MONTHLY CRITIC AND MUSEUM.

A Family Journal

OF ORIGINAL TALES, REVIEWS OF LITERATURE, THE FINE ARTS, MUSIC, DRAMA, FASHIONS, &c., &c.

UNDER THE DISTINGUISHED PATRONAGE OF

HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUCHESS OF KENT.

MEMOIR OF

ELEONORA OF ACQUITAINE,

QUEEN-CONSORT OF HENRY II., OF ENGLAND (PLANTAGENET), AND MOTHER OF RICHARD Coeur de Lion.

Embellished with a full-length Authentic Portrait, taken from the Effigy at Fontevraud, (No. 98 of the Series of full-length Authentic Ancient Portraits.)

FROM the varied and changeful incidents which chequered the long life of Eleonora of Acquitaine-whose high destiny it was to become, successively, queen of France and of England-it is doubtful whether to pronounce that fair Provençal princess as most illustrious or most unfortunate: for, whilst her earlier days passed in her own sunny land, or with the Crusaders, in the glowing regions of Palestine, are deeply tinctured with romance, her maturer years and lengthened old age were darkened by domestic discord, imprisonment, remorse and repentance.

History, indeed, presents no epoch more remarkable for great events than from the birth of Eleonora, early in the twelfth, to her death at the commencement of the following century. In France, England, Europe or Asia, never were there witnessed revolutions more sudden or extensive. The kingdoms of Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem were conquered by France and England. The Normans (with whose ducal circlet of golden roses William the Conqueror had enwreathed the crown of England) founded the two first, and, inspired by that religious mania which characterised the age, the A-JULY, 1841.

French and English, binding on their shoulders the holy badge of the cross, maintained that of Jerusalem with mail-clad hosts, oftentimes headed by their own monarchs.

Guyenne called by the Romans, Acquitaine, from the beauty and abundance of the streams and rivers which intersect it formed in the time of Julius Cæsar that large portion of Gaul which extended from the banks of the Loire to the foot of the Pyrenees, From the dismemberment of the ancient kingdom of Provençe (as it was termed during the middle ages, and by which name it is better known in modern history), under Charlemagne, Guyenne and Gascony, erected into a dukedom, were governed by its dukes upwards of three hundred years, until the will of William IX. annexed them to the French crown as the dower of his daughter Eleonora, whose lineage was amongst the noblest of which Europe could boast--the same whence sprung Charlemagne. Her grandfather, William, VIII. duke of Poictou and Acquitaine was celebrated as a warrior and the first of Provençal poets: and the troubadours of the south framed upon the models of the minstrel hero those lais, tensons and sirventes which long formed the delight and admiration of Europe. He was succeeded by his son, William IX., Eleonora's father, a dissipated prince, who, in right of his mother the countess Philippa, for ten years feebly contended against his uncle, count Raymond de St. Gilles, for the territory and earldom of Toulouse, dismembered from ancient Acquitaine. By his first wife, Eleonora of Châtellerault, he had two daughters, the elder, Eleonora, born in 1124, at the early age of fourteen years was constituted by her father sole heiress of his vast dominions. In 1137, debilitated by sensual indulgences and sorely oppressed by family misfortunes which the duke of Acquitaine regarded as so many chastisements from Heaven, conformably with the superstitious opinions of those days, anxious to propitiate the Divine wrath, he resolved upon a pilgrimage to Compostella. He was scarcely thirty-eight, yet his shattered constitution left him little hope of a return from so arduous a journey; before his departure, therefore, he appointed his elder daughter, Eleonora, his successor, and settled her marriage with a sovereign prince. The portion bequeathed to his younger daughter, Petronilla, was exceedingly small, for, unwilling to dismember his provinces, he resolved that they should devolve on his beloved Eleonora, and purchase for her a regal European diadem. He had, indeed, only to select; for, amongst all the monarchs of Christendom, there was none but would have willingly allied himself with a prince who, by descent and extent of dominions, ranked equal with the greatest potentate in Europe.

The kings of France and England were the monarchs towards whom Eleonora's father first directed his favorable regards,-rightly judging that those powerful princes, being his nearest neighbours, could more readily than other powers attack or defend his daughter's possessions; and that it was absolutely necessary to court some such alliance, successfully to oppose encroachment. England, distant from Acquitaine only two or three days' sail, could easily anchor her fleets in the ports of Saintonge and Guyenne, and, her sovereign, as count of Boulogne, possessed a port in France adjacent to his own territories. The then distracted state of England, however, forbade the duke from thinking of an alliance with an English prince, whose father sat so insecurely on his throne, since Stephen of Blois, heir, in right of his wife Maude, to the feudal sovereignty of Boulogne, had seized upon the English crown to the pre

judice of Geoffrey Plantagenet, earl of Anjou. The title of the former being thus questionable, and the recovery of the latter's right doubtful, a marriage with either house was equally dangerous; for, whomsoever she espoused, it would awaken the vengeance of the opposite party, and, if vanquished, Eleonora might not only be an outcast, but run great risk of losing her own duchy of Acquitaine. An alliance with France seemed, therefore, more advisable. The kingdom was at that time governed by a wise and valiant prince, who, notwithstanding the obesity which procured for him the unenviable epithet of le Gros, possessed most surprising activity, energy and perseverance. Louis-le-Gros had successively subjugated all the turbulent barons, who, by confederating, had long set the royal authority at defiance. He had likewise successfully opposed the united efforts of Henry I. of England and his kinsman the emperor Henry V., until they concluded with him an advantageous peace. In the following year, the death of Henry V., and the consequent extinction of the house of Franconia relieved France from all apprehension of any undue aggrandizement of the empire by devise from the king of England. The widowed empress Matilda, at the sacrifice of her domestic peace, was, then, compelled by her father to intermarry with Geoffrey Plantagenet, son of Foulques of Anjou, which alliance blessed England with some of her most illustrious princes.

Louis's health being greatly affected by his increasing corpulence, he resolved to secure the succession by settling his eldest son Philip on the throne. That prince was, however, killed by a fall from his horse two years after, and Louis-le-Jeune, his next brother, substituted in his place. The Sacre was celebrated with unusual magnificence, and the youth anointed and crowned by Innocent II. himself. The death of William Cliton, nephew of the English king, in 1128, removed the great pretext for dissension between France and England. But the heart of the French king was to be joyed by the marriage of his son with the heiress of Acquitaine. Her father too had so set his heart upon this alliance, that he not only solemnly enjoined it in his will, made when departing on his pilgrimage, but confirmed it, when attacked on the road by that illness which hurried him to the grave. Poictiers and Acquitaine were the bride's dower, domains far surpassing in extent those which young Louis would inherit a sovereignty stretching almost uninterruptedly from the banks of the Adour to the Loire, and comprising earldoms, viscounties and baronies in number sufficient to render the duke of Acquitaine, at least in power and territory, the king of France's equal. Though her father had selected a husband who could protect his daughter's rights, his ambition coveted for her dominion over a kingdom rather than a duchy. Sovereignty and titles seemed, with each generation in those days, to be more and more thirsted after, and her father yielded to that illusion, anxious to advance his daughter to the queenly dignity.

When the Acquitanians heard of their duke's death, they despatched his will with a deputation of nobles to Louis-le-Gros, then on his death-bed; having been attacked with a fatal sickness, after an expedition to Provençe against a band of robbers and mercenaries. Louis received the deputies in the Castle of Betisi in Valois, earnestly remarking that in the condition in which they found him, on the eve of closing his eyes in death, it afforded him the highest happiness that Heaven had anticipated

his desire in the important matter of the choice of a wife for his son, and that before quitting the world he should have the satisfaction of seeing the young prince as advantageously married as his fondest hopes could desire, that, joyfully receiving the proposed alliance, he wished his son immediately to set forth and claim his bride, with retinue befitting his rank and the important occasion.

Louis-le-Jeune prepared to depart with a brilliant train of five hundred noble knights most splendidly equipped. Taking affectionate leave of his royal father, and receiving his benediction, the dying king dismissed his son with words which deserve to be recorded in letters of gold :- "BEAR IN MIND THAT CROWNS ARE BESTOWED UPON US FOR THE BENEFIT OF OUR PEOPLE; and that he who dispenses them will demand a rigid account of their administration.”

On his arrival at Bourdeaux, June 30, 1137, he found the princess Eleonora awaiting him outside the city, on the bank of the sparkling Garonne, surrounded by a numerous and magnificent court, comprising all the principal nobility of Guyenne, Poitou, Saintonge and Gascony. On the following sunday, the marriage was celebrated in the cathedral, and that ceremony was immediately followed by the coronation of the youthful pair :-the bridegroom was scarcely eighteen, and his fair and richly-endowed bride only numbered thirteen summers. The assembled nobles of Provence, after accompanying the royal pair on a progress to Poictiers, were dismissed with costly tokens of the French prince's gratitude and liberality. The death, however, of his intended father-in-law, when he had scarcely entered his future dominions, and that of his father immediately after the celebration of their nuptials, cast an early gloom over the felicity of the youthful pair. Louis set out instantly for Paris, after confiding his newly-wedded bride to the Bishop of Chartres, who was deputed to follow him by easy journies in order, secretly, to afford time to ascertain the disposition of his new people. Profound tranquillity reigned, however, in Paris, and no sooner had Eleonora arrived, than all mourning for the late king was superseded by joyful welcoming from the citizens and nobility. Pompous as had been the celebration of their nuptials in Acquitaine, it was here renewed with increased magnificence; and banquets, tournaments and other diversions followed one another in endless succession, on a scale too of splendor unwitnessed in France since the downfall of the house of Charlemagne, reviving hopes that so auspicious a marriage might even surpass the good old times of that renowned monarch. Events, however, yet buried in the womb of time, were destined to dispel this flattering illusion, and little was that unhappy divorce anticipated which gave so effectual a death blow to the nation's hopes. Amidst those gorgeous fêtes and rejoicings, it is singular (and, from after events, it was ominous) that the coronation of the Provençal princess was unheeded : so undisturbed had been his accession, that the king thought, perhaps, a second Sacre unnecessary. He was, however, the first of his race who had ventured to deviate from the custom, strong evidence how secure he was on the throne; and if the remainder of a long reign had resembled the first eight years, in imitation of his father's sagacious government, his subjects would have blessed his memory.

In France as well as in Acquitaine, Louis resolutely subdued his restless vassals; and even fearlessly opposed the usurpations of the Holy see no small effort of moral