HENRYSON. 781 HENRY THE NAVIGATOR. and liumor. Consult: the selections in Ward, ijiiglish Poets (London, 1880-83), and I'ocins and Fables of Heiirysoit, edited by Laing (Edinburgh, 1805). HENRY THE DEACON. See Henricians. HENRY THE LION (1129-95). Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. He was the son of Duke Henry" the Proud. When only ten years of age he lo'st his father, who had engaged in a war with the Emperor Conrad III. uf the House of Hohenstaufen, and who had been stripped of his Bavarian possessions. For seven years the young prince's mother, Gertrude, and his grandmother, Richenza, ruled his paternal dominions in Sax- on_y. In 1140 Henry assumed the reins of gov- ernment, and at the Diet of Frankfort, in the following year, he demanded of the Emperor Conrad the' restoration of the Duchy of Bavaria, which had been wrested from his father. This was refused, and Henry, in concert with his uncle Welf (Guelph), had recourse to arms; but his efforts were crushed by the energetic measures of Conrad. After the death of this Emperor, hoAvever. Bavaria was given up to him by his cousin, the Emperor Frederick Barba- rossa, who formed with him a close friendship (1156). Henry's possessions now extended (not continuously, however) from the North Sea and the Baltic to the shores of the Adriatic (includ- ing some territories in Italy), and he was by far the nio.5t powerful prince in the Empire, rivaling in influence the Emperor himself. In 1166 a league comprising the Archbishops of Bremen and Magdeburg, the Bishops of Halber- stadt and Hildesheim, the Margrave of Branden- burg, and the Landgrave of Thuringia, was formed against him. He triumphed only after two years of hard fighting. About this time he separated from his first wife, and married Matilda, daugh- ter of Henry II. of England, soon after which event he imdertook an expedition to Palestine (1172). Henry broke his alliance with the Emperor by refusing to join in the Italian ex- pedition of 1170. causing Frederick's defeat at Legnano. (See Italy.) The wrath of the Em- peror was kindled, and the numerous enemies of Henry the Lion again combined against him ; he w-as sunuiioned to appear at three different diets, and, refusing, was put under the ban of the Empire in 1180. By 1181 his fortunes were at so low an ebb that he was forced to ask mercy of the Emperor at Erfurt; but all that he could get was permission to retain his heredi- tary territories of Brunswick and Liineberg. and even this was on the condition of his going into exile for three years. Henry, in consequence, went with his family to England ; but returned to Brunswick in 1185, where he lived quietly. On the departure of Frederick for Palestine in 1189 Henry again was obliged to withdraw to England, but he soon returned, and engaged once more in wars with the petty princes of the North, achieving little, however. A little later he took up anus against the Emperor Henry VI., but was finally reconciled with the Hohenstaufen. He died at Brunswick. August 6, 1195. Consult: Prutz, Hcinrich der hfiwe (Leipzig, 1865) ; Phil- ippson, Geschichte Heinrichs des Lowen (ib., 1867-68). HENRY THE MINSTREL, or Blind Harry. A Scottish p<x!t. who flourished about 1490. Scarcely anything is known of him beyond what is told by John Major in his Latin History of /Scotland (1521). "When 1 was a child," he says, "Henry, a man blind from his birth, who lived by telling tales before princes and peers, wrote a book of William Wallace, weaving the common stories (which I, for (jne, <inly partly believe) into vernacular poetry, in which he was skilled." In 1490-92 Blind Harry is found at the Court of King James IV., receiving occasional gratuities of 5, 9, and 18 shillings. The poem attributed to him. The Life of that Noble Cham- pion of Scotland, Sir ^Villiam Wallace, Knight, was completed before the end of 1488, when it was copied by John Ramsay. This copy, the old- est manuscript of the work now known to exist, does not ascribe it to Blind Harry, nor is his name given to it in the earlier printed editions. The poem, which contains 11.861 lines, composed in the heroic couplet, is altogether a wonderful performance, for the blind minstrel must have carried it all in his memory. The style is simple and vigorous, and at times eloquent. The author makes repeated appeals to two Latin lives of Wallace, one by his schoolfellow, John Blair, another by Sir Thomas Gray, parson of Liber- ton. While the poem undoubtedly has a basis in fact, it is to be regarded mainly as a fiction woven out of popular traditions and written in the spirit of the metrical romances, with which the author wag well acquainted. The poem was probably printed earlier, but the first extant edition is dated 1570. Immensely popular in Scotland for two hundred years, the poem fell into neglect, owing to the fact that its language naturally ceased to be understood. Its place was supplied in 1722 by the poor modernized version of William Hamilton, of Gilbertfield. Consult: Moir, A Critical Stud;/ of Blind Harry (Aber- deen, 1888), and a critical edition of the original poem, edited by Moir for the Scottish Text So- ciety (Edinburgh, 1885-87). HENRY THE NAVIGATOR (1.3941400). A Portuguese prince, celebrated as a munificent patron of voyagers and exjilorcrs. He was the fourth son of" John L. King of Portugal, and was born at Oporto, JIarch 4, 1394. He first distin- guished himself at the conquest of Ceuta, in 1415. As early as 1420 he took up his residence at the town of Sagres, not far from Cape Saint Vin- cent, and while prosecuting the war against the floors of Africa exerted himself in every way to decii)her the mystery of the great continent upon which the Portuguese had but recently set foot. Under his inspiration Portuguese sailors reached parts of the ocean which the navigators of the time had long supposed to be inaccessible. The grand ambition of Henry was the discovery of unknown regions of the world. At Sagres he founded an observatory, to which he attached a school for the instruction of youthful scions of the nobility in the sciences necessary to naviga- ti(m. Subsequently he dispatched some of his pupils on voyages of discovery along the western coast of Africa. Creeping down the coast by .short and steady stages, these expeditions during Prince Henry's lifetime succeeded in unraveling the unknown shore line of Africa to within fifteen degrees of the equator. The Madeira Islands had been reached in 1419; in 1434 Cape Bojador was discovered; in 1441 Cape Blanco was reached; in 1445 Cape Verde, in Senegambia, was doubled: and in 1455 Cadamostn reached the mouth of the Gambia. Prince Henry died
