ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE,

THE WIFE OF KING HENRY THE SECOND.

ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE was the eldest daughter of William, tenth Duke of Guienne, and Count of Poitou, and of Alienor or Eleanor, of Châtelherault. When Eleanor was but ten years old, her father died in the Holy Land, and from this circumstance, as well as from being a prince of great piety, he was called by his subjects St. William. His father, then living, was William, ninth Duke of Aquitaine, the most distinguished of the troubadours, and one of the most elegant scholars of the age.

The father of Eleanor left no son, and she, being the eldest of his two daughters, became heir to the noble possessions of her grandfather, consisting of Guienne and Gascony, Poitou, Biscay, and other territories, from the mouth of the Loire to the foot of the Pyrenees. Her grandfather, at this time approaching seventy, took the singular resolution of abdicating in favour of his grand-daughter, then in the fourteenth year of her age, and of passing the remainder of his days in penitence and seclusion, as an atonement for the crimes and sins of his youth. Having made the conditions of his abdication agreeable to the lords of Aquitaine, the duke further proposed that his grand-daughter should be united in marriage to Louis le Jeune, son of Louis le Gros, to which also the barons agreed. Accordingly, the marriage was solemnised with great pomp at Bourdeaux, in 1137; and the same day Duke William, laying down his insignia of sovereignty in favour of his grand-daughter, assumed the weeds of the penitent, and departed on pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella, in Spain, where he died soon afterwards.

By this marriage, the north and south of France were united under one sovereignty; and, as if fortune would complete the auspicious event, scarcely were the nuptial festivities over, when the young couple were summoned to the death-bed of King Louis the Sixth, and the undivided sway of France was thus at once consigned to their hands.