ELEANOR OF PROVENCE, SURNAMED LA BELLE, QUEEN OF HENRY III. ELEANOR of Provence was perhaps the most unpopular queen that ever presided over the court of England. She was unfortunately called to share the crown and royal dignity of a feeble-minded sovereign, at an earlier age than any of her predecessors; for, at the time of her marriage with king Henry, she had scarcely completed her fourteenth year, a period of life when her education was imperfect, her judgment unformed, and her character precisely that of a spoiled child, of precocious beauty and genius-perilous gifts! which in her case served but to foster vanity and self-sufficiency. From her accomplished parents the youthful Eleanor inherited both a natural taste, and a practical talent for poetry, which the very air she breathed tended to foster and encourage. Almost before she entered her teens, she had composed an heroic poem in her native Provençal tongue. This work is still in existence, and is to be found in MS., in the royal library at Turin. The composition of this romance was the primary cause, to which the princess, or (as she was then styled) the infanta of Provence, owed her elevation to the crown-matrimonial of England. Her father's major-domo and confidant, Romeo, was the person to whose able management count Berenger was indebted for his success in matching his portionless daughters, with the principal potentates of Europe. No doubt, to Romeo's sagacious advice the following steps taken by young Eleanor may be attributed. She sent to Richard, earl of Cornwall, Henry the Third's brother, a fine Provençal romance of her own inditing, on the adventures of Blandin of Cornwall, and Guillaume of Miremas, his companion, who undertook great perils for the love of the princess Briende and her sister Irlonde (probably Britain and Ireland), dames of incomparable beauty. Richard of Cornwall, to whom the young infanta sent, by way of a courtly compliment, a poem so appropriately furnished with a paladin of Cornwall for a hero, was then at Poitou, preparing for a crusade, in which he hoped to emulate his royal uncle and namesake, Richard I. He was highly flattered by the attention of the young princess, who was so celebrated for her personal charms that she was called Eleanor la Belle; but as it was out of his power to testify his grateful sense of the honor, by offering his hand and heart to the royal Provençal beauty in return for her romantic rhymes, he being already the husband of one good lady (the daughter of the great earl protector Pembroke) he obligingly recommended her to his brother Henry III. for a queen. Henry discreetly made choice of three sober priests, for his procurators at the court of count Berenger. The bishops of Ely and Lincoln, and the prior of Hurle; to these were added the master of the Temple. Though Henry's age more than doubled that of the fair maid of Provence, of whose charms and accomplishments he had received such favorable reports, and he was aware that the poverty of the generous count her father was almost proverbial, yet the king's constitutional covetousness impelled him to demand the enormous portion of twenty thousand marks, with this fairest flower of the land of roses and sweet song. Count Berenger, in reply, objected on the part of his daughter, to the very inadequate dower Henry would be able to settle upon her during the life of his mother queen Isabella. Henry, on this, proceeded to lower his demands from one sum to another, till finding that the im |