Or lett mee, in your royal tent, Prepare your bed at nighte, And with sweete baths refresh your grace, At your returne from fighte. So I your presence may enjoye No toil I will refuse : But wanting you, my life is death; 100 "Content thy self, my dearest love; 105 Thy rest at home shall bee In Englandes sweet and pleasant isle; For travell fits not thee. Faire ladies brooke not bloodye warres : 'Not rugged campes, but courtlye bowers; My Rose shall safely here abide, My foes seeke far awaye. My Rose shall shine in pearle, and golde, Gay galliards here my love shall dance, Whilst I my foes goe fighte. 110 115 120 And you, sir Thomas, whom I truste To bee my loves defence; Be carefull of my gallant Rose When I am parted hence." And forth she calls this trustye knighte, In an unhappy houre; Who with his clue of twined thread, Came from this famous bower. And when that they had wounded him, 140 But when the queene with stedfast eye 145 Beheld her beauteous face, She was amazed in her minde At her exceeding grace. Cast off from thee those robes, she said, That riche and costlye bee; And drinke thou up this deadlye draught, 150 And lett mee not with poison stronge 160 I will renounce my sinfull life, And in some cloyster bide; And for the fault which I have done, 165 And with these words, her lillie handes She wrunge full often there; 170 And downe along her lovely face Did trickle many a teare. But nothing could this furious queene Therewith appeased bee; The cup of deadlye poyson stronge, 175 As she knelt on her knee, Shee gave this comelye dame to drinke; Who tooke it in her hand, And from her bended knee arose, And on her feet did stand: And casting up her eyes to heaven, Shee did for mercye calle; And drinking up the poison stronge, Her life she lost withalle. And when that death through everye limbe Had showde its greatest spite, Her chiefest foes did plaine confesse Shee was a glorious wight. 180 185 Her body then they did entomb, When life was fled away, At Godstowe, neare to Oxford towne, As may be seene this day. 190 VIII. Queen Eleanor's Confession. Eleanor, the daughter and heiress of William Duke of Guienne, and Count of Poictou, 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 dowery. 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, Stow, &c. |