that many of the evils which marked her life were the result of her avarice and ambitious scheming for the aggrandizement of her first husband's children. The perseverance which she manifested in matching her sons and brothers with every great heiress in the realm, disgusted the ancient nobility, who were galled to see the comparatively obscure family of the Woodvilles grasping at every appointment or great alliance which could bring honor and profit.

This disgust led to Lord Hastings, one of the most devoted partisans of her late husband, rejecting her proposal to call out the hardy militia of Wales to escort her son to London, and indirectly led to the murder and deposition of both her sons. The wily Gloucester had not so many friends to assist him in his ambitious scheme of usurping the crown, as his unfortunate sister-inlaw had enemies.

Of her family, two of her brothers seem to have been worthy of her affection. Rivers patronized Caxton, who first introduced the art of printing into England; and "The Game of Chess," the first book ever printed, was done under his protection.

Anthony Woodville, an accomplished scholar, translated the works of Christine of Pisa, which were printed at the same press in the Almonry-the last vestige of which is fast disappearing before the advance of modern improvement.

Her present majesty is descended in a direct line from Elizabeth Woodville.

ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE,

QUEEN CONSORT OF HENRY II.

CHAPTER I.

Doff the red, and don the gray;

To the cloister hence-away!

WALTER SCOTT.

ELEANORA OF AQUITAINE, who wore successively the crowns matrimonial of France and England, was born about the year 1122, and was not only one of the most beautiful, but one of the most accomplished women of her time. She was the daughter of William, Count of Poitou, eldest son of William, the ninth Duke of Aquitaine, a country which comprised not only the provinces of Guienne and Gascony, but the most fertile portions of the south of France.

The father of the subject of our present memoir, led by the adventurous spirit of the age, quitted Aquitaine, accompanied by his younger brother, Raymond, in 1132, to join the crusaders in the defence of Antioch against the Saracens. William fell; but Raymond, by his marriage with the daughter of Conrad, succeeded to the sovereignty of that important principality.

Eleanora and her sister Petronilla were left to the guardianship of their grandfather, who was not only one of the most powerful and wealthy inces of his time, but a sovereign of enlarged views and great rudence, a poet, and a patron of learning-qualities which his h ress seems to have inherited from

him.

The great object of Duke William's life, after the loss of his eldest son, seems to have been the uniting of his dominions with the crown of France, by the marriage of Eleanora with Louis le Jeune, son of Louis VI., the lawgiver and father of his people; one of the few monarchs who studied the happiness and interests of the nations they were called upon to reign over.

Directly after the marriage of Eleanora with the heir of France, Duke William, in the presence of an assembly of the nobles of Aquitaine, which was held at Bordeaux, resigned the ducal mantle and crown, and retired to a hermitage in Spain, where he passed the remainder of his days in penitence and prayer.

Shortly after her union with Louis, by the death of her fatherin-law, the youthful duchess became Queen of France, and passed her time alternately in Paris and in the capital of her own dominions, where she was much beloved. Aquitaine was not united to France, but continued to be governed as a separate state by its hereditary sovereign.

In an evil hour for the prosperity of France, its new monarch, Louis VII., took the cross from the hands of St. Bernard. Eleanora resolved to accompany him on his mad expedition, and appeared in public, dressed as an Amazon, surrounded by the ladies of her court, in the same masculine costume-the fair bevy of female warriors styling themselves the queen's body-guard.

It would be foreign to the purpose of our. present work to trace the life of Eleanora as Queen of France. It is as Queen of England that we have to do with her. Certain it is, that the levity of her conduct during the mad crusade, caused great uneasiness to Louis VII., whose rigid piety and cold manners rendered him anything but suited to be the husband of the poetical, romantic Eleanora.

At Antioch, she was suspected of an intrigue with her own uncle, Raymond, and of listening with too favorable an ear to the suit of a Saracen emir of high rank. Letters written by Louis, during his absence from France, still exist, in which he declares his intention of procuring a divorce on his return.

On the arrival of the ill-assorted pair in Paris, after their unfortunate expedition to the East, Louis kept his queen in great personal restraint. Although treated with the honors due to her high rank, she was not permitted to visit her hereditary dominions.

But the circumstance which completed the disgust of Eleanora for her husband, was his cutting off his long hair and shaving his head, at the demand of the clergy, who preached against the vanity and sinfulness of such ornaments, with as much zeal as they had employed in urging the crusade.

About two years after her return, Goeffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, who had married the Empress Maud, daughter and heiress of Henry I., King of England, appeared at the court of France, accompanied by his son, Henry, the recognized heir of the English crown, which he was to inherit on the death of Stephen.

The fine person of this young prince, then only seventeen, made a deep impression on the heart of the licentious queen. On the death of his father, two years later, when he returned to Paris to do homage for Normandy and Anjou, there is little doubt but that great intimacy took place between them.

It is from the date of her second acquaintance with Henry Plantagenet, that we shall enter more particularly into the history of Eleanora.

In an apartment of the royal palace, whose windows looked upon the Seine, was seated the beautiful Queen of France. Her long hair, after the fashion of the Provençale dames, fell in curls down her back; a small circlet of fleur-de-lis confined a veil of lawn upon her head, which was sufficiently transparent to permit her tresses to be seen through it. Over her gown and kirtle, which fitted tightly to her throat with a jewelled clasp, she wore a flowing robe with wide sleeves, lined with ermine. It was made of purple silk, damasked with flowers in needlework. Alternately between these flowers, a leopard and ducal crown were wrought in gold thread: the former was the armorial bearing of her house.

At her feet knelt a young noble, in the first pride and vigor of manhood. Close-fitting hose, of the finest cloth of Flanders, dis

played to advantage his well-knit limbs; a short tunic of quilted silk gave a breadth to his tall but slight figure; whilst from his shoulders hung a long sleeveless mantle, embroidered on the left side with the arms of Normandy and Anjou.

The first of our Plantagenet princes possessed a countenance such as women love to look upon. Blue, expressive eyes; a high forehead, over which his hair, of a deep auburn color, fell in ringlets on either side; an Antinous-like mouth, the upper lip shaded by a full moustache, and a pointed beard;-in short, the very reverse of the shaven, monk-like Louis, whose bigoted compliance with the decrees of the clergy against long hair and beards had so disgusted his queen.

"And will you persevere ?" demanded Henry, gazing with real or well-affected passion upon the countenance of the woman through whose instrumentality he trusted to recover his maternal inheritance-the crown of England.

"Persevere !" repeated Eleanora; "ay, to the death! I am weary of this thraldom, and still more weary of the priest-ridden idiot who commands it. Had I but reached my own dominions in the sunny south, long ere this I would have appealed to the Roman Pontiff for a divorce; which Louis," she added, "will scarcely oppose."

"Impossible!" exclaimed her lover.

'Why so?" demanded the queen, thoughtfully; "for years the bond between us has been one of misery-not love. Louis is more like a shaven monk than a crowned king--prefers the mass to a tourney, penance to a feast; evil construction is placed upon my most innocent pleasures. Had he one spark of love remaining for me, this would not be !"

"He is like a miser," replied the artful Henry, "who buries a priceless pearl in obscurity, instead of wearing it proudly; but he will mourn the loss."

"Of Aquitaine, perhaps," returned Eleanora, with a bitter smile; "but not of its duchess !"

"And you, beautiful being !" said the duke, passionately kissing her hand," will you not regret the crown of the fair realm of