he might defray the expenses of his wedding as best he could. It would be difficult to say whether the king, the queen, or the royal relations, proved the greatest scourges to Brit-ain during the long and impotent reign of Henry III. One of Eleanor's uncles became prime minister ; to an-other was given the rich Earldom of Warrenne, and a.third was made Archbishop of Canterbury, and numerous j'oung lady friends of the romantic queen were imported from Provence and married to the king's wealthy wards. Henry's mother, not content with sending over all her younger children to be provided for by the impoverished monarch, involved him in a war with Louis IX., which ended disastrously for the English arms, in the loss of a great part of the rich southern fiefs and the military chest8 and costly ornaments of the king's chapel. Henry's ambition for his children brought still greater difficulties upon the realm. His eldest son, Edward, was appointed viceroy of the disputed possessions in Aquitaine, and being too young to discharge his important trusts with discretion, so mismanaged affairs as greatly to increase the discontent of his father's French subjects. His eldest daughter Margaret, married to her cousin Alexander III., the young King of Scotland, was taken prisoner by Sir John Baliol, and subjected to the most rig-orous confinement, thus making it necessary for Henry to undertake a Northern campaign for the rescue of his child. But his second son, Edmund, proved more expensive to "the British nation, and innocently did more to project the civil war than any other member of the royal family ; for the pope, having conferred the crown of Sicily upon the young prince, the delighted father eagerly engaged in a' prospective war, and promised to defray the whole expense of substantiating the claim. Again the barons resisted the onerous tax which this new attempt at family aggrandizement would impose upon them, and the first subsidy was raised from the benefices of the church only by the exercise of spiritual authority. ELEANOEA. 343