class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 6]"/> large enough for all, so he told the people to build and repair churches all over his land.

Now Augustine could not preach to all these many people, and he wanted to make new priests to help him. But this he could not do till he was made a bishop himself. So he went to an archbishop in the south of France, and was made a bishop with the Pope’s leave. Very soon after he was made Archbishop of Canterbury, and ever since his time there has been an Archbishop of Canterbury, who is not only head of all the clergy, but the highest subject in the queen’s realm. Augustine was allowed to ordain twelve bishops to work under him, and to send to York a very trusty bishop, who might ordain twelve more.

Now the old Britons or Welsh were, many of them, already Christians, and Augustine and Ethelbert thought it would be a good plan to make friends with the Welsh bishops. So they all met under a great oak on the border land, but unhappily the Welsh bishops could not agree with them; for, although they were Christians, they did not do everything as Augustine had been used to do at Rome. So they could not help in preaching to the heathen, and Augustine went home again. He began to repair an old church in Canterbury, which is the present Canterbury Cathedral.

He died in 605, and the last time we hear of Queen Bertha is at the opening of a great monastery dedicated to St. Augustine. The king and queen and their son took part in the solemn meeting.

About the rest of Queen Bertha’s life history is silent. Her death is supposed to have taken place the same year, but we have no record of the event. She died as quietly as she had lived, leaving us little more to know her by than her influence on the times in which she lived. She was buried in a church named after St. Peter and St. Paul, in a corner called St. Martin’s porch, beside St. Augustine, and twelve years later King Ethelbert was laid beside her.

MAUDE THE GOOD (1080-1118).

“Maude, the good queen;” “Dame Maude, a kind woman and true;” “The good queen Maude;” “Queen Maude, that’s right well loved England through.” When these are the terms used by the people of her time there is little need to say more about her character.

Born in 1080, she was christened Edith, but as her name was changed to Maude or Matilda, on her marriage, out of compliment to the mother of Henry I., we will call her Maude throughout. Her mother was Margaret, the gentle Queen of Scotland, her father the well-known Malcolm, of whom Shakspere has written, a mighty king, but a man who could neither read nor write.

When Maude was quite a little girl, she was sent with her sister Mary to live with her aunt Christina, the Abbess of Romsey. Now, although she had no intention of making Maude a nun, her aunt compelled her to wear the nun’s veil; this made the little girl not only very unhappy, but angry, and, whenever her aunt’s back was turned, Maude tore the veil from her head and trampled upon it. One day her father came to the abbey to see his daughters, and he saw Maude wearing the nun’s veil. He was very angry, and, tearing it off her head, he declared that his fair-haired Maude should never be a nun, but that she was to marry Count Alan. It is probable that Malcolm took his two children back to Scotland with him, for the next mention of Maude is beside her mother’s death-bed.

Malcolm had invaded England for the fifth time, when he was slain, together with his eldest son Edward. This was heavy news for Prince Edgar to break to his mother.

“How fares it with the king and my Edward?” asked the dying queen, as her son Edgar entered the room. The young prince was silent, but his sad face spoke more than words.

“I know all—I know all,” sobbed his mother; “but speak the worst.”

“Then your husband and son are both slain!” replied Edgar.

The widowed queen lifted up her hands and eyes to heaven and prayed, and, as the last words were uttered, she died.

Then Maude and Mary were sent back to their aunt Christina to complete their education.

While they were there, the news suddenly burst upon England that William Rufus, the Red King, had been shot by an arrow while hunting in the New Forest, and that his brother Henry intended to be King of England, as Robert the elder brother was away fighting in the Holy Land. Henry said, if the people would only make him king, he would do everything they wished; and, when they at last consented, he pleased them all by marrying Maude, the daughter of good Queen Margaret, and descended from Alfred the Great, whose memory all England loved.

At first Christina the abbess refused to allow her niece to marry the king, and, knowing what a bad man Henry was, Maude refused too. But at last, commanded by her brother Edgar, urged by the people, entreated by the king, she consented. So they were married on November 11th, in 1100, and Archbishop Anselm preached a very celebrated sermon to the crowds who had come to see the royal wedding. Then Maude was crowned Queen of England, to the joy of the people.

She was very kind to the poor and to all around her; every day in Lent she went barefoot, clothed in haircloth, to wash the feet of the poorest people, after the custom of her mother. She had hospitals built, new roads made, and bridges over the rivers.

One day she was riding on horseback through a ford on the river Lea, with her train of attendants. The river was flooded, and the current sweeping along so fast, that they were in danger of perishing, and out of gratitude for her life, Queen Maude caused the first arched bridge ever known in England to be built.

In 1102, a little son was born, and named William, after his grandfather William the Conqueror.

Now Robert, the Duke of Normandy, Henry’s elder brother, had returned from his wars in the Holy Land, and finding it useless to try and assert his rights in England, he settled in Normandy. But he was very idle; he had spent all his money; it is even said that he had to lie in bed sometimes, for want of clothes to put on, and the Norman people were so unhappy, that they sent for Henry to come and help them. So leaving his wife Maude to govern England, Henry took an army to Normandy, and a battle was fought in which Duke Robert and his little son were taken prisoners.

It was just forty years after the battle of Hastings; then the Normans came over and conquered the English; now the English went over, and Normandy was conquered. Of course Henry had to spend a good deal of time over there, to reform laws and make peace, but Queen Maude was quite capable of reigning in England, and keeping the people peaceful and happy.

In the summer of 1109 Henry returned to England, and kept court in great splendour at the new palace at Windsor. His little daughter Matilda was just five years old, when the Emperor of Germany, a man of forty-five, begged to be allowed to marry her. The proposal was eagerly accepted by her father, for the union would secure peace between Germany and England, so the little princess was solemnly married. The child could not stand under the weight of jewels with which she was adorned as bride, and had to be carried; she was allowed to live with her mother in England till she was twelve, when she was sent over in great state to her royal husband.

When Prince William was twelve, he was taken over to Normandy, for the Norman barons to swear fealty to him and acknowledge him as their future king. But he was never their king, because he was drowned when he was only eighteen.

A revolt in Normandy to set