times, and whilst the principles of succession were unsettled, he secured the crown to his posterity.  Henry gladly imitated a policy enforced no less by paternal affection than its utility to public peace.  He had, during his troubles with Becket, crowned his son Henry, then no more than sixteen years old.  But the young king, even on the day of his coronation, discovered an haughtiness which threatened not to content itself with the share of authority to which the inexperience of his youth and the nature of a provisional crown confined him.  The name of a king continually reminded him that he only possessed the name.  The King of France, whose daughter he had espoused, fomented a discontent which grew with his years.  Geoffrey, who had married the heiress of Bretagne, on the death of her father claimed to no purpose the entire sovereignty of his wife’s inheritance, which Henry, under a pretence of guardianship to a son of full age, still retained in his hands.  Richard had not the same plausible pretences, but he had yet greater ambition.  He contended for the Duchy of Guienne before his mother’s death, which, alone could give him the color of a title to it.  The queen, his mother, hurried on by her own unquiet spirit, or, as some think, stimulated by jealousy, encouraged their rebellion against her husband.  The King of France, who moved all the other engines, engaged the King of Scotland, the Earl of Flanders, then a powerful prince, the Earl of Blois, and the Earl of Boulogne in the conspiracy.  The barons in Bretagne, in Guienne, and even in England, were ready to take up arms in the same cause; whether it was that they perceived the uniform plan the king had pursued in order to their reduction, or were solely instigated by the natural fierceness and levity of their minds, fond of every dangerous novelty.  The historians of that time seldom afford us a tolerable insight into the causes of the transactions they relate; but whatever were the causes of so extraordinary a conspiracy, it was not discovered until the moment it was ready for execution.  The first token of it appeared in the young king’s demand to have either England or Normandy given up to him.  The refusal of this demand served as a signal to all parties to put themselves in motion.  The younger Henry fled into France; Louis entered Normandy with a vast army; the barons of Bretagne under Geoffrey, and those of Guienne under Richard, rose in arms; the King of Scotland pierced into England; and the Earl of Leicester, at the head of fourteen thousand Flemings, landed in Suffolk.

[Sidenote:  A.D. 1173]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 1174]