The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863. Various
whom to quarrel, but while Prince Regent he did his worst to make his daughter unhappy, as we find established in Miss Knight's Memoirs. The good-natured and kind-hearted William IV. had no legitimate children, but he was strongly attached to the Fitzclarences, who were borne to him by Mrs. Jordan. Indeed, monarchs have often been as full of love for their offspring born out of wedlock as of hate for their children born in that holy state. Being men, they must love something, and what so natural as that they should love their natural children, whose helpless condition appeals so strongly to all their better feelings, and who never can become their rivals?
Queen Victoria is the first sovereign of the House of Hanover who, having children, has not pained the world by quarrelling with them. A model sovereign, she has not allowed an infirmity supposed to be peculiar to her illustrious House to control her clear and just mind, so that her career as a mother is as pleasing as her career as a sovereign is splendid. About the time of the death of Prince Albert, a leading British journal published some articles in which it was insinuated, not asserted, that there had been trouble in the Royal Family, and that that quarrelling between parent and child which had been so common in that family in former times was about to be exhibited again. It was even said that domestic peace was an impossibility in the House of Hanover, which was but an indorsement of Earl Granville's remark, in George II.'s reign. "This family," said that eccentric peer, "always has quarrelled, and always will quarrel, from generation to generation"; and he did not live to see the ill feeling that existed between George III. and his eldest son.
There is no reason for saying that the Hanover family is more quarrelsome than most other royal lines; and the domestic dissensions of great houses are more noted than those of lesser houses only because kings and nobles are so placed as to live in sight of the world. When a king falls out with his eldest son, the entertainment is one to which all men go as spectators, and historians consider it to be the first of their duties to give full details of that entertainment. Since the Hanoverians have reigned over the English, the world has been a writing and a reading world, and nothing has more interested writers and readers than the dissensions of sovereigns and their sons. If we extend our observation to those days when German sovereigns were unthought of in England, we shall find that kings and princes did not always agree; and if we go farther, and scan the histories of other royal houses, we shall learn that it is not in Britain alone that the wearers of crowns have looked with aversion upon their heirs, and have had sons who have loved them so well and truly as to wish to witness their promotion to heavenly crowns. The Hanoverian monarchs of England, and their sons, have shared only the common lot of those who reign and those who wish to reign.
The Norman kings of England did not always live on good terms with their sons. William the Conqueror had a very quarrelsome family. His children quarrelled with one another, and the King quarrelled with his wife. The oldest son of William and Matilda was Robert, afterward Duke of Normandy,—and a very trying time this young man caused his father to have; while the mother favored the son, probably out of revenge for the beatings she had received, with fists and bridles, from her royal husband, who used to swear "By the Splendor of God!"—his favorite oath, and one that has as much merit as can belong to any piece of blasphemy,—that he never would be governed by a woman. The father and son went to war, and they actually met in battle, when the son ran the old gentleman through the arm with his lance, and dropped him out of the saddle with the utmost dexterity. This was the first time that the Conqueror was ever conquered, and perhaps it was not altogether without complacency that "the governor" saw what a clever fellow his eldest son was with his tools. At the time of William's death Robert was on bad terms with him, and is believed to have been bearing arms against him. Henry I. lost his sons before he could well quarrel with them, the wreck of the White Ship causing the death of his heir-apparent, and also of his natural son Richard. He compensated for this omission by quarrelling with his daughter Matilda, and with her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou. He made war on his brother Robert, took from him the Duchy of Normandy, and shut him up for life; but the story, long believed, that he put out Robert's eyes, has been called in question by modern writers. King Stephen, who bought his breeches at so low a figure, had a falling-out with his son Eustace, when he and Henry Plantagenet sought to restore peace to England, and nothing but Eustace's death made a settlement possible. William Rufus, the Red King, who was the second of the Norman sovereigns of England, had no legitimate children, for he was never married. He was a jolly bachelor, and as such he has had the honor of having his history written by one of the ablest literary ladies of our time, Miss Agnes Strickland. He was the only king of England, who arrived at years of indiscretion, who did not marry. The other bachelor kings were Edward V. and Edward VI., whose united ages were short of thirty years. His character does not tend to make the single state of man respected. "Never did a ruler die less regretted than William Rufus," says Dr. Lappenberg, "although still young, being little above forty, not a usurper, and successful in his undertakings. He was never married, and, besides the crafty and officious tools of his power, was surrounded only by a few Normans of quality, and harlots. In his last struggle with the clergy, the most shameless rapacity is especially prominent, and so glaring, that, notwithstanding some exaggerations and errors that may be pointed out in the Chronicles, he still appears in the same light. Effeminacy, drunkenness, gluttony, dissoluteness, and unnatural crimes were the distinguishing characteristics of his court. He was himself an example of incontinence." This is a nice character to travel with down the page of history. He quarrelled with his brothers, and with his uncle, and kept up the family character in an exceedingly satisfactory manner, considering that he was unmarried. The statement that he was slain by Walter Tirel, accidentally, in the New Forest, is now disregarded. Our theory of his death is, that he fell a victim to the ambition of his brother, Henry I., who succeeded him, and who certainly had good information as to his fall, and made good use of it, like a sensible fellow.
Of all the royal races of the Middle Ages, no one stands out more boldly on the historic page than the Plantagenets, who ruled over England from 1154 to 1485, the line of descent being frequently broken, and family quarrels constantly occurring. They were a bold and an able race, and if they had possessed a closer resemblance to the Hapsburgs, they would have become masters of Western Europe; but their quarrelsome disposition more than undid all that they could effect through the exercise of their talents. On the female side they were descended from the Conqueror; and, as we have seen, the Conqueror's family was one in which sons rebelled against the fathers, and brother fought with brother. Matilda, daughter of Henry I., became the wife of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, and from their union came Henry II., first of the royal Plantagenets. Now the Angevine Plantagenets were "a hard set," as we should say in these days. Dissensions were common enough in the family, and they descended to the offspring of Geoffrey and Matilda, being in fact intensified by the elevation of the House to a throne. Henry II. married Eleanora of Aquitaine, one of the greatest matches of those days, a marriage which has had great effect on modern history. The Aquitanian House was as little distinguished for the practice of the moral virtues as were the lines of Anjou and Normandy. One of the Countesses of Anjou was reported to be a demon, which probably meant only that her husband had caught a Tartar in marrying her; but the story was enough to satisfy the credulous people of those times, who, very naturally, considering their conduct, believed that the Devil was constant in his attention to their affairs. It was to this lady that Richard Cocur de Lion referred, when he said, speaking of the family contentions, "Is it to be wondered at, that, coming from such a source, we live ill with one another? What comes from the Devil must to the Devil return." With such an origin on his father's side, crossing the fierce character of his mother, Henry II. thought he could not do better than marry Eleanora, whose origin was almost as bad as his own. Her grandfather had been a "fast man" in his youth and middle life, and it was not until he had got nigh to seventy that he began to think that it was time to repent. He had taken Eleanora's grandmother from her husband, and a pious priest had said to them, "Nothing good will be born to you," which prediction the event justified. The old gentleman resigned his rich dominions, supposed to be the best in Europe, to his grand-daughter, and she married Louis VII., King of France, and accompanied him in the crusade that he was so foolish as to take part in. She had women-warriors, who did their cause immense mischief; and unless she has been greatly scandalized, she made her husband fit for heaven in a manner approved neither by the law nor the gospel. The Provençal ladies had no prejudices against Saracens. After her return to Europe, she got herself divorced from Louis, and married Henry Plantagenet, who was much her junior,