queen

versation arose no one could give a satisfactory answer to this question. And yet Alice of Louvain fills no unimportant niche in English history, was beloved and popular as a queen, and inspired, perhaps, more praise from contemporary poets and chroniclers than any other consort of England. Her life is conscientiously related by Miss Strickland in the "Queens of England," but with some errors of detail. The Belgian authorities are more critical, and therefore more accurate; it is to them that the present writer is indebted for the principal facts of her life. Alice, whose name is variously written in the Chronicles as Alix, Aleis, Adelaida, Adeliza, Adèle, and even Eliza, was the second daughter of Godefroid le Barbu, Count of Louvain and Duke of Brabant. Her mother was Ida, daughter of Count Albert of Namur. Alice of Louvain was born about 1105, and was a girl of seventeen only when she became the second wife of our Henry I. To this stern, elderly, and, in many respects, vicious monarch, the young queen, in the beauty of her person and the graces of her character, presented a remarkable contrast. All the chroniclers and many contemporary poets agree in describing her as endowed alike with conspicuous beauty and a rare intelligence. The king, who had been throughout his life sensual and dissolute, was not too old to be indifferent to her numerous charms, but it was not only, as Henry of Huntingdon asserts, causa pulchritudinis,1 that he selected her for his second queen. The king possessed the gift of prudence in an eminent degree; he showed this quality to perfection in the choice of both his wives. His first marriage was with Matilda of Scotland, who belonged to the old Anglo-Saxon royal race; an alliance which could not fail to conciliate his English subjects and to strengthen his throne. In other respects the wisdom of this choice was justified by the conduct of Matilda, who was so much beloved for her learning and benevolence that she was styled emphatically, "the good Maud." In Alice of Louvain, Matilda had no unworthy successor. The king acted wisely in the choice of a second consort "sprung from those lands kindred in blood and speech with England, and close connection with which, if it was a part of the policy of William, had been equally the policy of Godwin." And she also justified the wisdom of his choice by her prudent and queenly life.

Matilda died in 1118, and in little more than two years William, the heir to the throne, was drowned, in the White Ship, near Barfleur.

1 Matthew Paris adds, "et excellentis decoris sui.”

2 Freeman's Norman Conquest, IV., p. 229.

The king had only one other lawful child, Maud, the childless wife of the Emperor of Germany. It was, therefore, as the chroniclers1 expressly say, in the hope of further male issue, by the advice of the Archbishop and great men of the realm, he determined to marry again. The marriage would seem to have been brought about greatly by the intervention of Pope Calixtus II., Guy de Bourgoyne, the uncle of Alice. This pope, who settled amicably for a time the dispute between the secular and ecclesiastical authorities on the question of episcopal investitures, was well disposed to Henry as a better friend to the Church than either the Red King or the Conqueror. The preliminaries of the marriage being settled, Henry brought his betrothed to England in person, accompanied by a numerous retinue, at the head of which was Franco, Abbot of Afflighem, in January, 1122. The nuptials were celebrated at Windsor, immediately after Candlemas Day, and the young queen received for dowry the County of Arundel, in Sussex. At Pentecost, in the same year, she was solemnly crowned at Westminster by Ralph, Archbishop of Canterbury, amidst many tokens of joy.2 The king treated his bride with every respect, and shortly added to her dowry the County of Shrewsbury; but the marriage of a mere girl of seventeen to an elderly lover of fifty-two, who had never proved constant in his attachments, was not calculated to ensure complete satisfaction; certainly not to the youthful bride. The queen seems to have accepted her lot with resignation, and to have preserved her reputation for prudence and virtue in the household of a king who was both morose and immoral. Like her predecessor, Matilda, she was an enthusiastic patroness of literature. Her court was the favourite resort of minstrels and troubadours, and the development of Anglo-Norman poetry was greatly due to her encouragement. Her beauty and intelligence were the favourite theme of many writers of song. Henry of Huntingdons quotes an anonymous Latin poem in elegiacs, which speaks of her as dimming the lustre of her crown and jewels by her native unadorned beauty, and of the "wonder" with which the sight of her charms "stops the muse's tongue." The same poem is quoted in the Chronicle of John of Peterborough, Anno mexxi. Other chroniclers delight in de

1 Gervase of Canterbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and others.

2 For the story of the dispute between the Archbishop and the Bishop of Salisbury respecting the right to marry and crown the queen, the reader is referred to Hook's Lives of the Archbishops, Vol. II.,

p.

299.

3 Historia Anglorum, VII., A.D. 1121.

scribing her as the "Fair Maid of Brabant," and another anonymous poet, writing in Norman-French, expresses himself thus:

"Donna Aaliz la roine,

Par qui valdrat lei divine,
Par qui creistrat lei de terre,
Et remandrat tante guerre
Par les armes Henri le rei ;"

adding, that she herself intended to put into verse the mysterious legend of S. Brandon, the Irish monk,1 called from the strange narrative of his wanderings, the "Christian Ulysses." Amongst the Cottonian MSS. in the library of the British Museum, there is a metrical version of the legend of S. Brandon, in Norman-French, which is dedicated to

this queen.

Benoit, the chronicler of the Dukes of Normandy, describes her as "pucelle mult valliant;" Robert of Gloucester, in his "Rhyming Chronicle of England,” as "a woman of great fame and the most beautiful on earth;" John of Peterborough, as "puellam virginem vultu pulcherrimam et corpore decentissimam." To her Philippe de Thaun dedicated the French translation of his " Bestiarium," treating "sur les animaux, les oiseaux, et les pierres precieuses," the virtues and beauties of which he adroitly applies to the queen herself. The work begins thus:

"Philippe de Taun en française raisun

Ad estrait le Bestiare, un livre de grammaire,
Pur l'onur d'une gemme ki mult est bele femme,
Aliz est numée, Roine corunée

Roine d'Angleterre, sa ame n'ait ja guerre,
En ebreu en verité est Alix laus de Dé."

Gaimar, another Anglo-Norman poet, at the end of his "Estoire des Engles" expresses an intention to describe the reign of Henry I., referring to a similar work by David, which the queen held in great esteem, but which he blames as barren in details and in historical interest, advising David to revise and enlarge his work. He implies that much as the queen regarded the verse of David, she still desired Gaimar to write in praise of her lord the king.

The skill of this queen in needlework is also extolled by her contemporaries. A standard in silk and gold, worked by her own hands, was long preserved in the Church of S. Lambert, at Liege, and used to

1 Van Hasselt, Biographica Belgica, Vol. I., p. 223.

be carried through the streets of the city in the annual processions on Rogation days. It was captured in battle with the Liegois, when her father was defeated by the Bishop of Liege, in 1129.

Henry married Alice, as we have said, in the hope of having further male issue, a hope which was not gratified, and the young queen was still childless when, in 1125, the widowed Empress Maud came to England to be recognised as heir to the throne, and receive the fealty of the English and Norman barons in a solemn assembly convoked by the king. Shortly afterwards another husband was found for Maud in the person of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, and when a son was born of this marriage, in 1133, he also was brought to England to receive the oaths and homage of the barons as the future king of England and Duke of Normandy. These proceedings tended more and more to reduce the importance of Alice and her influence in the realm, till, in 1135, the death of Henry left her a widow after fifteen years of wedded life. She retired to her castle at Arundel, where, in 1139, she gave her hand in marriage, for the second time, to William D'Aubigni, Lord of Buckenham, in Norfolk, and cup-bearer (pincerna) to the king, who became, in right of his wife, Earl of Arundel. From this marriage, in which it is likely her heart had a far greater share than in her first espousal, the present noble family of Howard-Dukes of Norfolk and Earls of Arundel-is descended. It is in right of this illustrious descent that the Duke of Norfolk officiates as the cup-bearer to the sovereigns of England at their coronation.

William D'Aubigni was of Norman origin, and bore the surname of "Strong-Arm" on account of his bravery. He is said to have once torn out the tongue of a lion by sheer courage and strength. Queen Alice took no active part in the contest between Stephen and Maud for the possession of the crown, but her conscientious neutrality did not prevent her from offering an asylum to the fugitive ex-empress when she came to England to assert her rights and those of her son. This reaching the ears of Stephen, he hastened to Arundel and prepared to besiege the castle, but the address and prudence of Alice, who pleaded rights of relationship and hospitality, secured that Maud should be permitted to leave and join her natural brother Robert at Bristol. William D'Aubigni played an equally politic part in this struggle, and was one of the negociators who effected the arrangement by which it was concluded, Stephen retaining the crown for life on condition that he acknowledged the young Henry as his successor. When the latter

became king, the Earl of Arundel was his trusted friend and a warm partizan on the royal side against Thomas à Becket. Long ere this, however, the name of Alice of Louvain had disappeared from history. In 1148 she alienated some of her land in Sussex by deed of gift to the Benedictine Abbey of Afflighem in Brabant, which monastery had been founded by her uncle, Count Henry of Louvain. Here her father, her brother Henry, and also a sister were buried, and here she herself was laid to rest in 1151.

The Abbey of Afflighem, once the most renowned in all Belgium, was destroyed during the French Revolution. A few blocks of stone in the middle of a corn-field, the ruined wall of a church, and some of the outbuildings were all the relics that I could find of this once famous monastery during a recent visit, and it was in vain to seek for the site of the last resting-place of this illustrious English queen. Some English authorities assert that Alice was buried by the side of her first husband at the Abbey of Reading; others, at a hospital of her foundation near Wilton. There is, however, ample proof of her interment at Afflighem, where, by permission of the Earl, her husband, she spent the last years of her life, as others of her family had done.1

The religious zeal of this worthy queen was not less conspicuous than her patronage of letters. In accordance with the prevalent opinions and customs of the time, she founded a chantry at Reading for the repose of her first husband's soul, and for the souls of others of her family, endowing it with her manor of Easton, in Hertfordshire. She established another chantry for the souls of her two husbands and her father at Berkely Harness, in Gloucestershire, and in the lifetime of King Henry she founded the Hospital of S. Giles, at Fuggleston, near Wilton, which still exists as an almshouse for aged women. With the consent of her second husband she founded the Augustinian Priory of S. Bartholomew in the parish of Lyminster, and endowed two chaplaincies for the chapel of the Castle of Arundel.

Such are the principal facts in the life of Alice of Louvain, who merits, as much as her predecessor Matilda, the title of "the good queen.' Although there is neither monument nor epitaph to indicate the place of her sepulture, now surrendered to desecration and dishonour, her best memorial is the epithet applied to her by William

1 Pro variis casibus jactata, say the Chronicles of Brabant; perhaps by bodily infirmity, perhaps in consequence of the English civil war.