Tales of English Minsters: St. Paul's

Tales of English Minsters: St. Paul's is a book by Elizabeth W. Grierson. Grierson was a Scottish author. Excerpt: «I think that it will be much more interesting to talk of some of the scenes that took place there in these far-off days. Let us go back, for instance, almost eight hundred years, to the day when the news arrived in London that the King of England, Henry I., lay dead in France. He and his brother, William Rufus, were, as you know, sons of the great Norman Conqueror, and during their reigns the country had been well governed and prosperous. But when Henry died, no one quite knew what to do next. For the rightful heir to the throne was Henry's daughter Maud, who had married a French Count of Anjou, who, as you remember, was the first of his race to be called 'Plantagenet,' because he was in the habit, as he rode along, of plucking a piece of broom (Planta genista) and sticking it in the front of his cap. Now, the English people did not love this Geoffry of Anjou, who was a greedy and selfish man, and they had no wish to have him for their King, as they would certainly have to do if his wife became Queen. So their thoughts turned to Maud's cousin, Count Stephen of Blois, who, although his father was a Frenchman, had an English mother, and who had been brought up in England at his uncle's Court. Most people wished to have him as their King; but no one dare suggest it until the citizens of London took matters into their own hands.»