This was not due to any disinclination on his part for the state of matrimony. On the contrary, he had been anxious to have a wife and had striven hard to find one. As a boy he seems to have admired the Scottish princesses who were held at Corfe Castle as hostages, and his first thought when old enough to take a mate was that he would wed Marion, the younger of the two, even though she was a number of years older than he was. As Princess Margaret, the elder, had married Hubert de Burgh, the Council refused to sanction this plan, holding that it would be derogatory to the royal dignity to have one of his own subjects as a brother-in-law. Disappointed in his first choice, Henry sought a bride in three different European courts in turn. It was considered wise to cement relations with Germany, and the Bishop of Carlisle was sent to Vienna to propose a marriage between Henry and a daughter of Leopold of Austria. A son of Henry of Germany carried off the lady, however, under the very nose of the discomfited bishop.
