The strangest history in that family appeared to be that of
Eleanor Plantagenet, the daughter of Henry II, who caused her to be
married when only four years old to the great Earl of Pembroke, who was
then forty, and who took her as a bride to his home when she was only
fourteen years old, leaving her a widow at sixteen. She was thrown into
such an agony of grief that she took a solemn vow in the presence of the
Archbishop of Canterbury never to marry again, but to become a bride of
Christ. Seven years afterwards, however, she returned to the Court of
her brother, who was then Henry III, and, meeting Simon de Montfort,
Earl of Leicester, the king's favourite, one of the most handsome and
accomplished of courtiers, to whom he had given Kenilworth Castle, the
widowed countess forgot her vow, and though solemnly warned by the
Archbishop of the peril of breaking her oath, Montfort easily persuaded
Henry to give him his sister in marriage. The king knew that both the
Church and the barons would be violently opposed to the match, and that
they could only be married secretly; so on one cold January morning in
1238 they were married in the king's private chapel at Windsor; but the
secret soon became known to the priests and the peers, and almost
provoked a civil war.
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