or priesthood.  He refused indeed to join in any fanatical outbreak of persecution of the Jews, such as Philip of France consented to; and when persecution raged against the Albigenses of the south he would have no part or lot in it, and kept his own dominions open as a refuge for the wandering outcasts; but this may well have been by the counsel of the wise churchmen about him.  To the last he looked on the clergy as his best advisers and supporters.  He never demanded tribute from churches or monasteries, a monkish historian tells us, as other princes were wont to do on plea of necessity; with religious care he preserved them from unjust burthens and public exactions.  By frequent acts of devotion he sought to win the favour of Heaven or to rouse the religious sympathies of England on his behalf.  In April 1177 he met at Canterbury his old enemy, the Archbishop of Reims, and laid on the shrine of St. Thomas a charter of privileges for the convent.  On the 1st of May he visited the shrine of St. Eadmund, and the next day that of St. Aetheldreda at Ely.  The bones of a saint stolen from Bodmin were restored by the king’s order, and on their journey were brought to Winchester that he might do them reverence.  Relics discovered by miraculous vision were buried with pomp at St. Albans.  Since his vow four years before at Avranches to build three monasteries for the remission of his sins, he had founded in Normandy and England four or five religious houses for the Templars, the Carthusians, and the Austin canons; he now brought nuns from Fontevraud, for whom he had a special reverence, and set them in the convent at Amesbury, whose former inhabitants were turned out to make way for them; while the canons of Waltham were replaced by a stricter order of Austin canons.  A templar was chosen to be his almoner, that he might carry to the king the complaints of the poor which could not come to his own ears, and distribute among the needy a tenth of all the food and drink that came into the house of the king.

It is true that on Henry himself the strife with the Church left deep traces.  He became imperious, violent, suspicious.  The darker sides of his character showed themselves, its defiance, its superstition, its cynical craft, its passionate pride, its ungoverned wrath.  His passions broke out with a reckless disregard of earlier restraints.  Eleanor was a prisoner and a traitor; she was nearly fifty when he himself was but forty-one.  From this time she practically disappeared out of Henry’s life.  The king had bitter enemies at court, and they busied themselves in spreading abroad dark tales; more friendly critics could only plead that he was “not as bad as his grandfather.”  After the rebellion of 1174 he openly avowed his connection with Rosamond Clifford, which seems to have begun some time before.  Eleanor was then in prison, and tales of the maze, the silken clue, the dagger, and the bowl, were the growth of later centuries.  But “fair Rosamond”