the king pretended to be reconciled to him, but still, when they met, would not give him the kiss of peace.  The archbishop knew that this showed that the king still hated him; but his flock had been so long without a shepherd that he thought it his duty to go back to them.  Just after his return, he laid under censure some persons who had given offence.  They went and complained to the king, and Henry exclaimed in passion, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Four of his knights who heard these words set forth to Canterbury.  The archbishop guessed why they were come; but he would not flee again, and waited for them by the altar in the cathedral, not even letting the doors be shut.  There they slew him; and thither, in great grief at the effect of his own words, the king came—­three years later—­to show his penitence by entering barefoot, kneeling before Thomas’s tomb, and causing every priest or monk in turn to strike him with a rod.  We should not exactly call Thomas a martyr now, but he was thought so then, because he died for upholding the privileges of the Church, and he was held to be a very great saint.

While this dispute was going on, the Earl of Pembroke, called Strongbow, one of Henry’s nobles, had gone over to Ireland and obtained a little kingdom there, which he professed to hold of Henry; and thus the Kings of England became Lords of Ireland, though for a long time they only had the Province of Leinster, and were always at war with the Irish around.

Henry was a most powerful king; but his latter years were very unhappy.  His wife was not a good woman, and her sons were all disobedient and rebellious.  Once all the three eldest, Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey, and their mother, ran away together from his court, and began to make war upon him.  He was much stronger and wiser than they so he soon forced them to submit; and he sent Queen Eleanor away, and shut her up in a strong castle in England as long as he lived.  Here sons were much more fond of her than of their father, and they thought this usage so hard, that they were all the more ready to break out against him.  The eldest son, Henry, was leading an army against his father, when he was taken ill, and felt himself dying.  He sent an entreaty that his father would forgive him, and come to see him; but the young man had so often been false and treacherous, that Henry feared it was only a trick to get him as a prisoner, and only sent his ring and a message of pardon; and young Henry died, pressing the ring to his lips, and longing to hear his father’s voice.

Geoffrey, the third son, was killed by a fall from his horse, and there were only two left alive, Richard and John.  Just at this time, news came that the Mahommedans in the Holy Land had won Jerusalem back again; and the Pope called on all Christian princes to leave off quarreling, and go on a crusade to recover the Holy Sepulchre.