A Child's History of England.35

The other two clung to the yard for some hours. At length the young noble said faintly, 'I am exhausted, and chilled with the cold, and can hold no longer. Farewell, good friend! God preserve you!' So, he dropped and sunk; and of all the brilliant [glorious; magnificent] crowd, the poor Butcher of Rouen alone was saved. In the morning, some fishermen saw him floating in his sheep-skin [hide: animal skin] coat, and got him into their boat - the sole relater of the dismal tale.

yard: [牛津] long pole-like piece of wood fastened to a mast [桅杆] for supporting and spreading a sail 帆桁(heng2). The word "yard" is a homonym [同形同音异义词] of "yard" in the sense of an enclosed area of land.

For three days, no one dared to carry the intelligence to the King. At length, they sent into his presence a little boy, who, weeping bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told him that The White Ship was lost with all on board. The King fell to the ground like a dead man, and never, never afterwards, was seen to smile. [虎毒不食子]

六级/考研单词: cling, noble, faint, exhaust, chill, farewell, float, tale, fasten, sail, enclose, dare, intellect, weep, kneel

But he plotted again, and promised again, and bribed and bought again, in his old deceitful way. Having no son to succeed him, after all his pains ('The Prince will never yoke us to the plough, now!' said the English people), he took a second wife - Adelais or Alice, a duke's daughter, and the Pope's niece. Having no more children, however, he proposed to the Barons [姓] to swear that they would recognise as his successor, his daughter Matilda, whom, as she was now a widow, he married to the eldest son of the Count of Anjou, Geoffrey, surnamed Plantagenet, from a custom he had of wearing a sprig of flowering broom (called Genêt in French) in his cap for a feather. As one false man usually makes many, and as a false King, in particular, is pretty certain to make a false Court [朝廷。上梁不正下梁歪], the Barons took the oath about the succession of Matilda (and her children after her), twice over, without in the least intending to keep it. The King was now relieved from any remaining fears of William Fitz-Robert, by his death in the Monastery of St. Omer, in France, at twenty-six years old, of a pike-wound in the hand. [26岁死的不是国王] And as Matilda gave birth to three sons, he thought the succession to the throne secure.

he proposed to the Barons [姓] to swear that they would recognise as his successor, his daughter Matilda... 试着解释下。propose: 提出计划/动议。the Barons和to swear...都是宾语。他向the Barons提出计划，啥样的计划呢？the Barons要swear。要swear啥呢？recognise Matilda as his successor. BBC的《The Adventure of English》里讲过英文的词序，以前国王给他的人马（把马给他手下的人:-))和给他的马人都行，give A B和give B A意思一样，不带to. 后来才趋于固定。狄大人这么写叫最短进程优先，要不然recognise (此处略去40词) as his successor，那不也是最后才明白一句话啥意思 Aooooooo？He proposed to the Barons that they ... 和He proposed that ...意思不一样，后者没说明向谁提出，前者是我编的，不知道that子句里该不该用动词原型。

六级/考研单词: cling, noble, faint, exhaust, chill, farewell, float, tale, fasten, sail, enclose, dare, intellect, weep, kneel, plot, bribe, princess, plough, niece, successor, widow, elder, surname, broom, relieve, throne

He spent most of the latter part of his life, which was troubled by family quarrels, in Normandy, to be near Matilda. When he had reigned upward of thirty-five years, and was sixty-seven years old, he died of an indigestion and fever, brought on by eating, when he was far from well, of a fish called Lamprey [著名的七鳃八目鳗。肉生火，鱼生痰，白菜豆腐保平安], against which he had often been cautioned by his physicians. His remains were brought over to Reading Abbey to be buried.

You may perhaps hear the cunning and promise-breaking of King Henry the First, called 'policy' by some people, and 'diplomacy' by others. Neither of these fine words will in the least mean that it was true; and nothing that is not true can possibly be good.

His greatest merit, that I know of, was his love of learning - I should have given him greater credit even for that, if it had been [虚拟语气] strong enough to induce him to spare [饶恕] the eyes of a certain poet he once took prisoner, who was a knight besides [also]. But he ordered the poet's eyes to be torn from his head, because he had laughed at him in his verses; and the poet, in the pain of that torture, dashed out his own brains against his prison wall. King Henry the First was avaricious [greedy], revengeful, and so false, that I suppose a man never lived whose word was less to be relied upon.

六级/考研单词: cunning, diplomat, merit, induce, poet, knight, besides, verse, torture, dash, jail, revenge

Barons可以当姓，但the Barons是全体贵族的可能性更大。baron - a lord or nobleman. 肯定不是全体男爵。