Читать книгу Men Who Have Made the Empire онлайн

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William the Red has died, as he lived, in a somewhat ignoble and futile manner. Henry I. has done one good thing, wedding, as it were, in his own person and that of the Lady Matilda, the two races which were afterwards to be one.

Stephen and Matilda have settled their differences and died, after the shedding of much wasted blood. Henry II., by the hand of Strongbow and his licensed pirates, has done a piece of good work badly in beginning that conquest of Ireland which is not to be completed until the Battle of the Boyne is lost and won.

Richard Lionheart has won much glory to very small profit in the magnificent madness of the Third Crusade. The barons, recognising, however dimly and clumsily, that they are, in good truth, citizens of the infant State whose lusty, turbulent youth already gives promise of its future strength and greatness, have become law-lords as well as landlords, and with mailed hands have guided that unwilling pen of John’s along the bottom of the parchment on which the Great Charter is written.