The History of England From the Norman Conquest to the Death of John Henry And His Sons byAdams, George Burton
For England peace was now established. The insurrection was suppressed,
the castles were in the king's hands, even the leaders of the revolted
barons were soon reconciled with him. The age of Henry I returned, an age
not so long in years as his, but yet long for any medieval state, of
internal peace, of slow but sure upbuilding in public and private wealth,
and, even more important, of the steady growth of law and institutions
and of the clearness with which they were understood, an indispensable
preparation for the great thirteenth century so soon to begin--the crisis
of English constitutional history. For Henry personally there was no age
of peace. England gave him no further trouble; but in his unruly southern
dominions, and from his restless and discontented sons, the respite from
rebellion was short, and it was filled with labours.
In 1175 the two kings crossed together to England, though the young king,
who was still listening to the suggestions of France and who professed to
be suspicious of his father's intentions, was with some difficulty
persuaded to go. He also seems to have been troubled by his father's
refusal to receive his homage at the same time with his brothers'; at any
rate when he finally joined the king on April 1, he begged with tears for
permission to do homage as a mark of his father's love, and Henry
consented. At the end of the first week in May they crossed the channel
for a longer stay in England than usual, of more than two years, and one
that was crowded with work both political and administrative. The king's
first act marks the new era of peace with the Church, his attendance at a
council of the English Church held at London by Archbishop Richard of
Canterbury; and his second was a pilgrimage with his son to the tomb of
St. Thomas. Soon after the work of filling long-vacant sees and abbacies
was begun. At the same time matters growing out of the insurrection
received attention. William, Earl of Gloucester, was compelled to give up
Bristol castle which he had kept until now. Those who had been opposed to
the king were forbidden to come to court unless ordered to do so by him.
The bearing of arms in England was prohibited by a temporary regulation,
and the affairs of Wales were considered in a great council at
Gloucester.
One of the few acts of severity which Henry permitted himself after the
rebellion seems to have struck friend and foe alike, and suggests a
situation of much interest to us which would be likely to give us a good
deal of insight into the methods and ideas of the time if we understood
it in detail. Unfortunately we are left with only a bare statement of the
facts, with no explanation of the circumstances or of the motives of the
king. Apparently at the Whitsuntide court held at Reading on the first
day of June, Henry ordered the beginning of a series of prosecutions
against high and low, churchmen and laymen alike, for violations of the
forest laws committed during the war. At Nottingham, at the beginning of
August, these prosecutions were carried further, and there the incident
occurred which gives peculiar interest to the proceedings. Richard of
Lucy, the king's faithful minister and justiciar, produced before the
king his own writ ordering him to proclaim the suspension of the laws in
regard to hunting and fishing during the war. This Richard testified that
he had done as he was commanded, and that the defendants trusting to this
writ had fearlessly taken the king's venison. We are simply told in
addition that this writ and Richard's testimony had no effect against the
king's will. It is impossible to doubt that this incident occurred or
that such a writ had been sent to the justiciar, but it seems certain
that some essential detail of the situation is omitted. To guess what it
was is hardly worth while, and we can safely use the facts only as an
illustration of the arbitrary power of the Norman and Angevin kings,
which on the whole they certainly exercised for the general justice.
From Nottingham the two kings went on to York, where they were met by
William of Scotland with the nobles and bishops of his kingdom, prepared
to carry out the agreement which was made at Falaise when he was released
from imprisonment. Whatever may have been true of earlier instances, the
king of Scotland now clearly and beyond the possibility of controversy
became the liege-man of the king of England for Scotland and all that
pertained to it, and for Galloway as if it were a separate state. The
homage was repeated to the young king, saving the allegiance due to the
father. According to the English chroniclers all the free tenants of the
kingdom of Scotland were also present and did homage in the same way to
the two kings for their lands. Some were certainly there, though hardly
all; but the statement shows that it was plainly intended to apply to
Scotland the Norman law which had been in force in England from the time
of the Conquest, by which every vassal became also the king's vassal with
an allegiance paramount to all other feudal obligations. The bishops of
Scotland as vassals also did homage, and as bishops they swore to be
subject to the Church of England to the same extent as their predecessors
had been and as they ought to be. The treaty of Falaise was again
publicly read and confirmed anew by the seals of William and his brother
David. There is nothing to show that King William did not enter into this
relationship with every intention of being faithful to it, nor did he
endeavour to free himself from it so long as Henry lived. The Norman
influence in Scotland was strong and might easily increase. It is quite
possible that a succession of kings of England who made that realm and
its interests the primary objects of their policy might have created from
this beginning a permanent connexion growing constantly closer, and have
saved these two nations, related in so many ways, the almost civil wars
of later years.
From these ceremonies at York Henry returned to London, and there, before
Michaelmas, envoys came to him to announce and to put into legal form
another significant addition to his empire, significant certainly of its
imposing power though the reasons which led to this particular step are
not known to us. These envoys were from Roderick, king of Connaught, who,
when Henry was in Ireland, had refused all acknowledgment of him, and
they now came to make known his submission. In a great council held at
Windsor the new arrangement was put into formal shape. In the document
there drawn up Roderick was made to acknowledge himself the liege-man of
Henry and to agree to pay a tribute of hides from all Ireland except that
part which was directly subject to the English invaders. On his side
Henry agreed to recognize Roderick as king under himself as long as he
should remain faithful, and also the holdings of all other men who
remained in his fealty. Roderick should rule all Ireland outside the
English settlement, at least for the purposes of the tribute, and should
have the right to claim help from the English in enforcing his authority
if it should seem necessary. Such an arrangement would have in all
probability only so much force as Roderick might be willing to allow it
at any given time, and yet the mere making of it is a sign of
considerable progress in Ireland and the promise of more. At the same
council Henry appointed a bishop of Waterford, who was sent over with the
envoys on their return to be consecrated.
At York the king had gone on with his forest prosecutions, and there as
before against clergy as well as laity. Apparently the martyrdom of
Archbishop Thomas had secured for the Church nothing in the matter of
these offences. The bishops did not interfere to protect the clergy, says
one chronicler; and very likely in these cases the Church acknowledged
the power rather than the right of the king. At the end of October a
papal legate, Cardinal Hugo, arrived in England, but his mission
accomplished nothing of importance that we know of, unless it be his
agreement that Henry should have the right to try the clergy in his own
courts for violations of the forest law. This agreement at any rate
excited the especial anger of the monastic chroniclers who wrote him down
a limb of Satan, a robber instead of a shepherd, who seeing the wolf
coming abandoned his sheep. In a letter to the pope which the legate took
with him on his return to Rome, Henry agreed not to bring the clergy in
person before his courts except for forest offences and in cases
concerning the lay services due from their fiefs. On January 25, 1176, a
great council met at Northampton, and there Henry took up again the
judicial and administrative reforms which had been interrupted by the
conflict with Becket and by the war with his sons.
The task of preserving order in the medieval state was in the main the
task of repressing and punishing crimes of violence. Murder and assault,
robbery and burglary, fill the earliest court records, and on the civil
side a large proportion of the cases, like those under the assizes of
Mort d'Ancestor and Novel Disseisin, concerned attacks on property not
very different in character. The problem of the ruler in this department
of government was so to perfect the judicial machinery and procedure as
to protect peaceable citizens from bodily harm and property from violent
entry and from fraud closely akin to violence. An additional and
immediate incentive to the improvement of the judicial system arose from
the income which was derived from fines and confiscations, both heavier
and more common punishments for crime than in the modern state. It would
be unfair to a king like Henry II, however, to convey the impression that
an increase of income was the only, or indeed the main, thing sought in
the reform of the courts. Order and security for land and people were
always in his mind to be sought for themselves, as a chief part of the
duty of a king, and certainly this was the case with his ministers who
must have had more to do than he with the determining and perfecting of
details.
This is not the place to describe the judicial reforms of the reign in
technical minuteness or from the point of view of the student of
constitutional history. The activity of a great king, the effect on
people and government are the subjects of interest here. The series of
formal documents in which Henry's reforming efforts are embodied opens
with the Constitutions of Clarendon in 1164. Of the king's purpose in
this--not new legislation, but an effort to bring the clergy under
responsibility to the state for their criminal acts according to the
ancient practice,--and of its results, we have already had the story. The
second in the series, the Assize of Clarendon, the first that concerns
the civil judicial system, though we have good reason to suspect that it
was not actually Henry's first attempt at reform, dates from early in the
year 1166. It dealt with the detection and punishment of crime, and
greatly improved the means at the command of the state for these
purposes. In 1170, to check the independence of the sheriffs and their
abuse of power for private ends, of which there were loud complaints, he
ordered strict inquiry to be made, by barons appointed for the purpose,
into the conduct of the sheriffs and the abuses complained of, and
removed a large number of them, appointing others less subject to the
temptations which the local magnate was not likely to resist. This was a
blow at the hold of the feudal baronage on the office, and a step in its
transformation into a subordinate executive office, which was rapidly
going on during the reign. In 1176, in the Assize of Northampton, the
provisions of the Assize of Clarendon for the enforcement of criminal
justice were made more severe, and new enactments were added. In 1181 the
Assize of Arms made it compulsory on knights and freemen alike to keep in
their possession weapons proportionate to their income for the defence of
king and realm. In 1184 the Assize of the Forest enforced the vexatious
forest law and decreed severe penalties for its violation. In the year
before the king's death, in 1188, the Ordinance of the Saladin Tithe
regulated the collection of this new tax intended to pay the expenses of
Henry's proposed crusade.
This list of the formal documents in which Henry's reforms were
proclaimed is evidence of no slight activity, but it gives, nevertheless,
a very imperfect idea of his work as a whole. That was nothing less than
to start the judicial organization of the state along the lines it has
ever since followed. He did this by going forward with beginnings already
made and by opening to general and regular use institutions which, so far
as we know, had up to this time been only occasionally employed in
special cases. The changes which the reign made in the judicial system
may be grouped under two heads: the further differentiation and more
definite organization of the curia regis and the introduction of the
jury in its undeveloped form into the regular procedure of the courts
both in civil and criminal cases.
Under the reign of the first Henry we noticed the twofold form of the
king's court, the great curia regis, formed by the barons of the whole
kingdom and the smaller in practically permanent session, and the latter
also acting as a special court for financial cases--the exchequer. Now we
have the second Henry establishing, in 1178, what we may call another
small curia regis--apparently of a more professional character--to be
in permanent session for the trial of cases. The process of
differentiation, beginning in finding a way for the better doing of
financial business, now goes a step further, though to the men of that
time--if they had thought about it at all--it would have seemed a
classification of business, not a dividing up of the king's court. The
great curia regis, the exchequer, and the permanent trial court,
usually meeting at Westminster, were all the same king's court; but a
step had really been taken toward a specialized judicial system and an
official body of judges.
In the reign of Henry I we also noticed evidence which proved the
occasional, and led us to suspect the somewhat regular employment of
itinerant justices. This institution was put into definite and permanent
form by his grandson. The kingdom was at first divided into six circuits,
to each of which three justices were sent. Afterwards the number of
justices was reduced. These justices, though not all members of the small
court at Westminster, were all, it is likely, familiar with its work, and
to each circuit at least one justice of the Westminster court was
probably always assigned. What they carried into each county of the
kingdom as they went the round of their districts was not a new court and
not a local court; it was the curia regis itself, and that too in its
administrative as well as in its judicial functions indeed it is easy to
suspect that it was quite as much the administrative side of its
work,--the desire to check the abuses of the sheriffs by investigation on
the spot, and to improve the collection of money due to the crown, as its
judicial,--as the wish to render the operation of the law more convenient
by trying cases in the communities where they arose, that led to the
development of this side of the judicial system. Whatever led to it, this
is what had begun, a new branch of the judicial organization.
It was in these courts, these king's courts,--the trial court at
Westminster and the court of the itinerant justices in the different
counties,--that the institution began to be put into regular use that has
become so characteristic a distinction of the Anglo-Saxon judicial
system--the jury. The history of the jury cannot here be told. It is
sufficient to say that it existed in the Frankish empire of the early
ninth century in a form apparently as highly developed as in the Norman
kingdom of the early twelfth. From Charles the Great to Henry II it
remained in what was practically a stationary condition. It was only on
English soil, and after the impulse given to it by the broader uses in
which it was now employed that it began the marvellous development from
which our liberty has gained so much. At the beginning it was a process
belonging to the sovereign and used solely for his business, or employed
for the business of others only by his permission in the special case.
What Henry seems to have done was to generalize this use, to establish
certain classes of cases in which it might always be employed by his
subjects, but in his courts only. In essence it was a process for getting
local knowledge to bear on a doubtful question of fact of interest to the
government. Ought A to pay a certain tax? The question is usually to be
settled by answering another: Have his ancestors before him paid it, or
the land which he now holds? The memory of the neighbours can probably
determine this, and a certain number of the men likely to know are
summoned before the officer representing the king, put on oath, and
required to say what they know about it.
In its beginning that is all the jury was. But it was a process of easy
application to other questions than those which interested the king. The
question of fact that arose in a suit at law--was the land in dispute
between A and B actually held by the ancestor of B?--could be settled in
the same way by the memory of the neighbours, and in a way much more
satisfactory to the party whose cause was just than by an appeal to the
judgment of heaven in the wager of battle. If the king would allow the
private man the use of this process, he was willing to pay for the
privilege. Such privilege had been granted since the Conquest in
particular cases. A tendency at least in Normandy had existed before
Henry II to render it more regular. This tendency Henry followed in
granting the use of the primitive jury generally to his subjects in
certain classes of cases, to defendants in the Great Assize to protect
their freehold, to plaintiffs in the three assizes of Mort d'Ancestor,
Novel Disseisin, and Darrein Presentment to protect their threatened
seisin. As a process of his own, as a means of preserving order, he again
broadened its use in another way in the Assize of Clarendon, finding in
it a method of bringing local knowledge to the assistance of the
government in the detection of crime, the function of the modern grand
jury and its origin as an institution.
The result of Henry's activities in this direction--changes we may call
them, but hardly innovations, following as they do earlier precedents and
lying directly in line with the less conscious tendencies of his
predecessors,--this work of Henry's was nothing less than to create our
judicial system and to determine the character and direction of its
growth to the present day. In the beginning of these three things, of a
specialized and official court system, of a national judiciary bringing
its influence to bear on every part of the land, and of a most effective
process for introducing local knowledge into the trial of cases, Henry
had accomplished great results, and the only ones that he directly
sought. But two others plainly seen after the lapse of time are of quite
equal importance. One of these was the growth at an early date of a
national common law.
Almost the only source of medieval law before the fourteenth century was
custom, and the strong tendency of customary law was to break into local
fragments, each differing in more or less important points from the rest.
Beaumanoir in the thirteenth century laments the fact that every
castellany in France had a differing law of its own, and Glanville still
earlier makes a similar complaint of England. But the day was rapidly
approaching in both lands when the rise of national consciousness under
settled governments, and especially the growth of a broader and more
active commerce, was to create a strong demand for a uniform national
law. What influences affected the forming constitutions of the states of
Europe because this demand had to be met by recourse to the imperial law
of Rome, the law of a highly centralized absolutism, cannot here be
recounted. From these influences, whether large or small, from the
necessity of seeking uniformity in any ready-made foreign law, England
was saved by the consequences of Henry's action. The king's court rapidly
created a body of clear, consistent, and formulated law. The itinerant
justice as he went from county to county carried with him this law and
made it the law of the entire nation. From these beginnings arose the
common law, the product of as high an order of political genius as the
constitution itself, and now the law of wider areas and of more millions
of men than ever obeyed the law of Rome.
One technical work, at once product and monument of the legal activity of
this generation, deserves to be remembered in this connexion, the
Treatise on the Laws of England. Ascribed with some probability to
Ranulf Glanvill, Henry's chief justiciar during his last years, it was
certainly written by some one thoroughly familiar with the law of the
time and closely in touch with its enforcement in the king's court. To us
it declares what that law was at the opening of its far-reaching history,
and in its definiteness and certainty as well as in its arrangement it
reveals the great progress that had been made since the law books of the
reign of Henry I. That progress continued so rapid that within a hundred
years Glanvill's book had become obsolete, but by that time it had been
succeeded by others in the long series of great books on our common law.
Nor ought we perhaps entirely to overlook another book, as interesting in
its way, the Dialogue of the Exchequer. Written probably by Richard
Fitz Neal, of the third generation of that great administration family
founded by Roger of Salisbury and restored to office by Henry II, the
book gives us a view from within of the financial organization of the
reign as enlightening as is Glanvill's treatise on the common law.
But besides the growth of the common law, these reforms involved and
carried with them as a second consequence a great change in the machinery
of government and in the point of view from which it was regarded. We
have already seen how in the feudal state government functions were
undifferentiated and were exercised without consciousness of
inconsistency by a single organ, the curia regia, in which, as in all
public activities, the leading operative element was the feudal baronage.
The changes in the judicial system which were accomplished in the reign
of Henry, especially the giving of a more fixed and permanent character
to the courts, the development of legal procedure into more complicated
and technical forms, and the growth of the law itself in definiteness and
body,--these changes meant the necessity of a trained official class and
the decline of the importance of the purely feudal baronage in the
carrying on of government. This was the effect also of the gradual
transformation of the sheriff into a more strictly ministerial officer
and the diminished value of feudal levies in war as indicated by the
extension of scutage. In truth, at a date relatively as early for this
transformation as for the growth of a national law, the English state was
becoming independent of feudalism. The strong Anglo-Norman monarchy was
attacking the feudal baron not merely with the iron hand by which
disorder and local independence were repressed, but by finding out better
ways of doing the business of government and so destroying practically
the whole foundation on which political feudalism rested. Of the
threatening results of these reforms the baronage was vaguely conscious,
and this feeling enters as no inconsiderable element into the troubles
that filled the reign of Henry's youngest son and led to the first step
towards constitutional government.
For a moment serious business was now interrupted by a bit of comedy, at
least it seems comedy to us, though no doubt it was a matter serious
enough to the actors. For many years there had been a succession of
bitter disputes between the Archbishops of Canterbury and York over
questions of precedence and various ceremonial rights, or to state it
more accurately the Archbishops of York had been for a long time trying
to enforce an exact equality in such matters with the Archbishops of
Canterbury. At mid-Lent, 1776 Cardinal Hugo, the legate, held a council
of the English Church in London, and at its opening the dispute led to
actual violence. The cardinal took the seat of the presiding officer, and
Richard of Canterbury seated himself on his right hand. The Archbishop of
York on entering found the seat of honour occupied by his rival, and
unwilling to yield, tried to force himself in between Richard and the
cardinal. One account says that he sat down in Richard's lap. Instantly
there was a tumult. The partisans of Canterbury seized the offending
archbishop, bishops we are told even leading the attack, dragged him
away, threw him to the floor, and misused him seriously. The legate
showed a proper indignation at the disorder caused by the defenders of
the rights of Canterbury, but found himself unable to go on with the
council.
For a year past the young king had been constantly with his father, kept
almost a prisoner, as his immediate household felt and as we may well
believe. Now he began to beg permission to go on a pilgrimage to the
famous shrine of St. James of Compostella, and Henry at last gave his
consent, though he knew the pilgrimage was a mere pretext to escape to
the continent. But the younger Henry was detained at Portchester some
time, waiting for a fair wind; and Easter coming on, he returned to
Winchester, at his father's request, to keep the festival with him. In
the meantime, Richard and Geoffrey had landed at Southampton, coming to
their father with troubles of their own, and reached Winchester the day
before Easter Sunday. Henry and his sons were thus together for the
feast, much to his joy we are told; but it is not said that Queen
Eleanor, who was then imprisoned in England, very likely in Winchester
itself, was allowed any part in the celebration. Richard's visit to
England was due to a dangerous insurrection in his duchy, and he had come
to ask his father's help. Henry persuaded the young king to postpone his
pilgrimage until he should have assisted his brother to re-establish
peace in Aquitaine, and with this understanding they both crossed to the
continent about a fortnight after Easter, but young Henry on landing at
once set off with his wife to visit the king of France. Richard was now
nearly nineteen years old, and in the campaign that followed he displayed
great energy and vigour and the skill as a fighter for which he was
afterwards so famous, putting down the insurrection almost without
assistance from his brother, who showed very little interest in any
troubles but his own. The young king, indeed, seemed to be making ready
for a new breach with his father. He was collecting around him King
Henry's enemies and those who had helped him in the last war, and was
openly displaying his discontent. An incident which occurred at this time
illustrates his spirit. His vice-chancellor, Adam, who thought he owed
much to the elder king, attempted to send him a report of his son's
doings; but when he was detected, the young Henry, finding that he could
not put him to death as he would have liked to do because the Bishop of
Poitiers claimed him as a clerk, ordered him to be sent to imprisonment
in Argentan and to be scourged as a traitor in all the towns through
which he passed on the way.
About the same time an embassy appeared in England from the Norman court
of Sicily to arrange for a marriage between William II of that kingdom
and Henry's youngest daughter, Joanna. The marriages of each of Henry's
daughters had some influence on the history of England before the death
of his youngest son. His eldest daughter Matilda had been married in 1168
to Henry the Lion, head of the house of Guelf in Germany, and his second
daughter, Eleanor, to Alphonso III of Castile, in 1169 or 1170. The
ambassadors of King William found themselves pleased with the little
princess whom they had come to see, and sent back a favourable report,
signifying also the consent of King Henry. In the following February she
was married and crowned queen at Palermo, being then a little more than
twelve years old. Before the close of this year, 1176, Henry arranged for
another marriage to provide for his youngest son John, now ten years old.
The infant heiress of Maurienne, to whom he had been years before
betrothed, had died soon after, and no other suitable heiress had since
been found whose wealth might be given him. The inheritance which his
father had now in mind was that of the great Earl Robert of Gloucester,
brother and supporter of the Empress Matilda, his father's mother.
Robert's son William had only daughters. Of these two were already
married, Mabel to Amaury, Count of Evreux, and Amice to Richard of Clare,
Earl of Hertford. Henry undertook to provide for these by pensions on the
understanding that all the lands of the earldom should go to John on his
marriage with the youngest daughter Isabel. To this plan Earl William
agreed. The marriage itself did not take place until after the death of
King Henry.
An income suitable for his position had now certainly been secured for
the king's youngest son, for in addition to the Gloucester inheritance
that of another of the sons of Henry I, Reginald, Earl of Cornwall who
had died in 1175, leaving only daughters, was held by Henry for his use,
and still earlier the earldom of Nottingham had been assigned him. At
this time, however, or very soon after, a new plan suggested itself to
his father for conferring upon him a rank and authority proportionate to
his brothers'. Ireland was giving more and more promise of shaping itself
before long into a fairly well-organized feudal state. If it seems to us
a turbulent realm, where a central authority was likely to secure little
obedience, we must remember that this was still the twelfth century, the
height of the feudal age, and that to the ruler of Aquitaine Ireland
might seem to be progressing more rapidly to a condition of what passed
as settled order than to us. Since his visit to the island, Henry had
kept a close watch on the doings of his Norman vassals there and had held
them under a firm hand. During the rebellion of 1173 he had had no
trouble from them. Indeed, they had served him faithfully in that
struggle and had been rewarded for their fidelity. In the interval since
the close of the war some advance in the Norman occupation had been made.
There seemed to be a prospect that both the south-west and the
north-east--the southern coast of Munster and the eastern coast of
Ulster--might be acquired. Limerick had been temporarily occupied, and it
was hoped to gain it permanently. Even Connaught had been successfully
invaded. Possibly it was the hope of securing himself against attacks of
this sort which he may have foreseen that led Roderick of Connaught to
acknowledge himself Henry's vassal by formal treaty. If he had any
expectation of this sort, he was disappointed; for the invaders of
Ireland paid no attention to the new relationship, nor did Henry himself
any longer than suited his purpose.
We are now told that Henry had formed the plan of erecting Ireland into a
kingdom, and that he had obtained from Alexander III permission to crown
whichever of his sons he pleased and to make him king of the island. Very
possibly the relationship with Scotland, which he had lately put into
exact feudal form, suggested the possibility of another subordinate
kingdom and of raising John in this way to an equality with Richard and
Geoffrey. At a great council held at Oxford in May, 1177, the preliminary
steps were taken towards putting this plan into operation. Some
regulation of Irish affairs was necessary. Richard "Strongbow," Earl of
Pembroke and Lord of Leinster, who had been made justiciar after the
rebellion, had died early in 1176, and his successor in office, William
Fitz Adelin, had not proved the right man in the place. There were also
new conquests to be considered and new homages to be rendered, if the
plan of a kingdom was to be carried out. His purpose Henry announced to
the council, and the Norman barons, some for the lordships originally
assigned them, some for new ones like Cork and Limerick, did homage in
turn to John and to his father, as had been the rule in all similar
cases. Hugh of Lacy, Henry's first justiciar, was reappointed to that
office, but there was as yet no thought of sending John, who was then
eleven years old, to occupy his future kingdom.
It was a crowded two years which Henry spent in England. Only the most
important of the things that occupied his attention have we been able to
notice, but the minor activities which filled his days make up a great
sum of work accomplished. Great councils were frequently held; the
judicial reforms and the working of the administrative machinery demanded
constant attention; the question of the treatment to be accorded to one
after another of the chief barons who had taken part in the rebellion had
to be decided; fines and confiscations were meted out, and finally the
terms on which the offenders were to be restored to the royal favour were
settled. The castles occasioned the king much anxiety, and of those that
were allowed to stand the custodians were more than once changed. The
affairs of Wales were frequently considered, and at last the king seemed
to have arranged permanent relations of friendship with the princes of
both north and south Wales. In March, 1177, a great council decided a
question of a kind not often coming before an English court. The kings of
Castile and Navarre submitted an important dispute between them to the
arbitration of King Henry, and the case was heard and decided in a great
council in London--no slight indication of the position of the English
king in the eyes of the world.
Ever since early February, 1177, Henry had been planning to cross over to
Normandy with all the feudal levies of England. There were reasons enough
for his presence there, and with a strong hand. Richard's troubles were
not yet over, though he had already proved his ability to deal with them
alone. Britanny was much disturbed, and Geoffrey had not gone home with
Richard, but was still with his father. The king of France was pressing
for the promised marriage of Adela and Richard, and it was understood
that the legate, Cardinal Peter of Pavia, had authority to lay all
Henry's dominions under an interdict if he did not consent to an
immediate marriage. The attitude of the young Henry was also one to cause
anxiety, and his answers to his father's messages were unsatisfactory.
One occasion of delay after another, however, postponed Henry's crossing,
and it was the middle of August before he landed in Normandy. We hear
much less of the army that actually went with him than of the summons of
the feudal levies for the purpose, but it is evident that a strong force
accompanied him. The difficulty with the king of France first demanded
attention. The legate consented to postpone action until Henry, who had
determined to try the effect of a personal interview, should have a
conference with Louis. This took place on September 21, near Nonancourt,
and resulted in a treaty to the advantage of Henry. He agreed in the
conference that the marriage should take place on the original
conditions, but nothing was said about it in the treaty. This concerned
chiefly a crusade, which the two kings were to undertake in close
alliance, and a dispute with regard to the allegiance of the county of
Auvergne, which was to be settled by arbitrators named in the treaty,
After this success Henry found no need of a strong military force.
Various minor matters detained him in France for nearly a year, the most
important of which was an expedition into Berri to force the surrender to
him of the heiress of Déols under the feudal right of wardship. July 15,
1178, Henry landed again in England for another long stay of nearly two
years. As in his previous sojourn this time was occupied chiefly in a
further development of the judicial reforms already described.
While Henry was occupied with these affairs, events in France were
rapidly bringing on a change which was destined to be of the utmost
importance to England and the Angevin house. Louis VII had now reigned in
France for more than forty years. His only son Philip, to be known in
history as Philip Augustus, born in the summer of 1165, was now nearly
fifteen years old, but his father had not yet followed the example of his
ancestors and had him crowned, despite the wishes of his family and the
advice of the pope. Even so unassertive a king as Louis VII was conscious
of the security and strength which had come to the Capetian house with
the progress of the last hundred years. Now he was growing ill and felt
himself an old man, though he was not yet quite sixty, and he determined
to make the succession secure before it should be too late. This decision
was announced to a great council of the realm at the end of April, 1179,
and was received with universal applause. August 15 was appointed as the
day for the coronation, but before that day came the young prince was
seriously ill, and his father was once more deeply anxious for the
future. Carried away by the ardour of the chase in the woods of
Compiegne, Philip had been separated from his attendants and had wandered
all one night alone in the forest, unable to find his way. A
charcoal-burner had brought him back to his father on the second day, but
the strain of the unaccustomed dread had been too much for the boy, and
he had been thrown into what threatened to be a dangerous illness. To
Louis's troubled mind occurred naturally the efficacy of the new and
mighty saint, Thomas of Canterbury, who might be expected to recall with
gratitude the favours which the king of France had shown him while he was
an exile. The plan of a pilgrimage to his shrine, putting the king
practically at the mercy of a powerful rival, was looked upon by many of
Louis's advisers with great misgiving, but there need have been no fear.
Henry could always be counted upon to respond in the spirit of chivalry
to demands of this sort having in them something of an element of
romance. He met the royal pilgrim on his landing, and attended him during
his short stay at Canterbury and back to Dover. This first visit of a
crowned king of France to England, coming in his distress to seek the aid
of her most popular saint, was long remembered there, as was also his
generosity to the monks of the cathedral church. The intercession of St.
Thomas availed. The future king of France recovered, selected to
become--it was believed that a vision of the saint himself so
declared--the avenger of the martyr against the house from which he had
suffered death.
Philip recovered, but Louis fell ill with his last illness. As he drew
near to Paris on his return a sudden shock of paralysis smote him. His
whole right side was affected, and he was unable to be present at the
coronation of his son which had been postponed to November 1. At this
ceremony the house of Anjou was represented by the young King Henry, who
as Duke of Normandy bore the royal crown, and who made a marked
impression on the assembly by his brilliant retinue, by the liberal scale
of his expenditure and the fact that he paid freely for everything that
he took, and by the generosity of the gifts which he brought from his
father to the new king of France. The coronation of Philip II opens a new
era in the history both of France and England, but the real change did
not declare itself at once. What seemed at the moment the most noteworthy
difference was made by the sudden decline in influence of the house of
Blois and Champagne, which was attached to Louis VII by so many ties, and
which had held so high a position at his court, and by the rise of Count
Philip of Flanders to the place of most influential counsellor, almost to
that of guardian of the young king. With the crowning of his son, Louis's
actual exercise of authority came to an end; the condition of his health
would have made this necessary in any case, and Philip II was in fact
sole king. His first important step was his marriage in April, 1180, to
the niece of the Count of Flanders, Isabel of Hainault, the childless
count promising an important cession of the territory of south-western
Flanders to France to take place on his own death, and hoping no doubt to
secure a permanent influence through the queen, while Philip probably
intended by this act to proclaim his independence of his mother's family.
These rapid changes could not take place without exciting the anxious
attention of the king of England. His family interests, possibly also his
prestige on the continent, had suffered to some extent in the complete
overthrow and exile of his son-in-law Henry the Lion by the Emperor
Frederick I, which had occurred in January, 1180, a few weeks before the
marriage of Philip II, though as yet the Emperor had not been able to
enforce the decision of the diet against the powerful duke. Henry of
England would have been glad to aid his son-in-law with a strong force
against the designs of Frederick, which threatened the revival of the
imperial power and might be dangerous to all the sovereigns of the west
if they succeeded, but he found himself between somewhat conflicting
interests and unable to declare himself with decision for either without
the risk of sacrificing the other. Already, before Philip's marriage, the
young Henry had gone over to England to give his father an account of the
situation in France, and together they had crossed to Normandy early in
April. But the marriage had taken place a little later, and May 29 Philip
and his bride were crowned at St. Denis by the Archbishop of Sens, an
intentional slight to William of Blois, the Archbishop of Reims. Troops
were called into the field on both sides and preparations made for war,
while the house of Blois formed a close alliance with Henry. But the
grandson of the great negotiator, Henry I, had no intention of appealing
to the sword until he had tried the effect of diplomacy. On June 28 Henry
and Philip met at Gisors under the old elm tree which had witnessed so
many personal interviews between the kings of England and France. Here
Henry won another success. Philip was reconciled with his mother's
family; an end was brought to the exclusive influence of the Count of
Flanders; and a treaty of peace and friendship was drawn up between the
two kings modelled closely on that lately made between Henry and Louis
VII, but containing only a general reference to a crusade. Henceforth,
for a time, the character of Henry exercised a strong influence over the
young king of France, and his practical statesmanship became a model for
Philip's imitation.
At the beginning of March, 1182, Henry II returned to Normandy. Events
which were taking place in two quarters required his presence. In France,
actual war had broken out in which the Count of Flanders was now in
alliance with the house of Blois against the tendency towards a strong
monarchy which was already plainly showing itself in the policy of young
Philip, Henry's sons had rendered loyal and indispensable assistance to
their French suzerain in this war, and now their father came to his aid
with his diplomatic skill. Before the close of April he had made peace to
the advantage of Philip. His other task was not so easily performed.
Troubles had broken out again in Richard's duchy. The young duke was as
determined to be master in his dominions as his father in his, but his
methods were harsh and violent; he was a fighter, not a diplomatist; the
immorality of his life gave rise to bitter complaints; and policy,
methods, and personal character combined with the character of the land
he ruled to make peace impossible for any length of time. Now the
troubadour baron, Bertran de Born, who delighted in war and found the
chosen field for his talents in stirring up strife between others, in a
ringing poem called on his brother barons to revolt. Henry, coming to aid
his son in May, 1182, found negotiation unsuccessful, and together in the
field they forced an apparent submission. But only for a few months.
In the next act of the constantly varied drama of the Angevin family in
this generation the leading part is taken by the young king. For some
time past the situation in France had almost forced him into harmony with
his father, but this was from no change of spirit. Again he began to
demand some part of the inheritance that was nominally his, and fled to
his customary refuge at Paris on a new refusal. With difficulty and by
making a new arrangement for his income, his father was able to persuade
him to return, and Henry had what satisfaction there could be to him in
spending the Christmas of 1182 at Caen with his three sons, Henry,
Richard, and Geoffrey, and with his daughter Matilda and her exiled
husband, the Duke of Saxony. This family concord was at once broken by
Richard's flat refusal to swear fealty to his elder brother for
Aquitaine. Already the Aquitanian rebels had begun to look to the young
Henry for help against his brother, and Bertran de Born had been busy
sowing strife between them. In the rebellion of the barons that followed,
young Henry and his brother Geoffrey acted an equivocal and most
dishonourable part. Really doing all they could to aid the rebels against
Richard, they repeatedly abused the patience and affection of their
father with pretended negotiations to gain time. Reduced to straits for
money, they took to plundering the monasteries and shrines of Aquitaine,
not sparing even the most holy and famous shrine of Rocamadour,
Immediately after one of the robberies, particularly heinous according to
the ideas of the time, the young king fell ill and grew rapidly worse.
His message, asking his father to come to him, was treated with the
suspicion that it deserved after his recent acts, and he died with only
his personal followers about him, striving to atone for his life of sin
at the last moment by repeated confession and partaking of the sacrament,
by laying on William Marshal the duty of carrying his crusader's cloak to
the Holy Land, and by ordering the clergy present to drag him with a rope
around his neck on to a bed of ashes where he expired.
