with his sons he was no longer the same man as when he fought with French king or rebel barons.  His political sagacity and his passionate love of his children fought an unequal battle.  Duped by every show of affection, he was at their mercy in intrigue.  Twice peaceful embassies, which he sent to Henry and Geoffrey, were slain before their eyes without protest.  As he himself talked with them they coolly saw one of their archers shoot at him and wound his horse.  The younger Henry pretended to make peace with his father, sitting at meat with him, and eating out of the same dish, that Geoffrey might have time to ravage the land unhindered.  Geoffrey successfully adopted the same device in order to plunder the churches of Limoges.  The wretched strife was only closed at last by the death of the younger Henry in 1183.

His death, however, only opened new anxieties.  Richard now claimed to take his brother’s place as heir to the imperial dignity, while at the same time he exercised undivided lordship over an important state a position which the king had again and again refused to Henry.  Geoffrey, whose over-lord the young king had been, sought to rule Britanny as a dependent of Philip, and his plots in Paris with the French king were only ended by his death in 1185.  Philip, on his part, demanded, at the death of the young king, the restoration of Margaret’s dowry, the Vexin and Gisors; when Geoffrey died he claimed to be formally recognized as suzerain of Britanny, and guardian of his infant; he demanded that Richard should do homage directly to him as sovereign lord of Aquitaine, and determined to assert his rights over the lands so long debated of Berri and Auvergne.  For the last years of Henry’s reign disputes raged round these points, and more than once war was only averted by the excitement which swept over Europe at the disastrous news from the Holy Land.

After the death of the young king a precarious peace was established in Aquitaine, and Henry returned to England.  In March 1185 he received at Reading the patriarch of Jerusalem and the master of the Hospital, bearing the standard of the kings of the Holy Land, with the keys of the Holy Sepulchre, of the tower of David, and of the city of Jerusalem.  “Behold the keys of the kingdom,” said the patriarch Heracles with a burst of tears, “which the king and princes of the land have ordered me to give to thee, because it is in thee alone, after God, that they have hope and confidence of salvation.”  The king reverently received them before the weeping assembly, but handed them back to the safekeeping of the patriarch till he could consult with his barons.  He had long been pledged to join the holy war; he had renewed his vow in 1177 and 1181.  But it was a heavy burden to be now charged with the crown of Jerusalem.  Since the days of his grandfather, Fulk of Anjou, the last strong king of Jerusalem, there had been swift decay.  Three of his successors were minors; Antone was a leper; the fifth was repudiated