REVOLT OF THE BARONAGE
All hope of progress, of any wise and statesmanlike settlement of
Ireland, utterly died away when, on Easter night, 16th April 1172, Henry
sailed from Wexford. The next morning he landed near St. David's. He
entered its gates as a pilgrim, on foot and staff in hand, while the
monks came out in solemn procession to lead him to the ancient church on
the other side of the river. Suddenly a Welsh woman sprang out from
among the crowd, and striking her hands together wildly, threw
herself at his feet crying with a loud voice, "Avenge us to-day,
Lechlavar! Avenge the people of this land!" The woman's bitter cry told
the first thought of all the thronging multitudes of eager Welshmen that
day, how Merlin had prophesied that an English king, the conqueror of
Ireland, should die on Lechlavar, a great stone which formed a rude
natural bridge across the stream, and round which the pagan superstitions
of an immemorial past still clung. When the strange procession reached the
river, Henry stood for a moment looking steadily at the stone, then with a
courage which we can scarcely measure, he firmly set his foot on it and
slowly crossed over; and from the other side, in the face of all the
people he turned and flung his taunt at the prophet, "Who will ever again
believe the lies of Merlin?" As he passed through Cardiff another omen met
him; a white-robed monk stood before him as he came out of church. "God
hold thee, Cuning!" he cried in the English tongue, and broke out into
passionate warnings of evil to come unless the king would show more
reverence to the Sunday, a matter about which there was at this time a
great stirring of religious feeling. "Ask this rustic," said Henry in
French to a knight who held his rein, "whether he has dreamed this." The
monk turned from the interpreter to the king and spoke again: "Whether I
have dreamed this or no, mark this day, for unless thou amendest thy life,
before this year has passed thou shalt hear such news of those thou lovest
best, and shalt win such sorrow from them, that it shall not fail thee
till thy dying day!"
From Wales Henry struck across England, "turning neither to right nor
left, and marching at a double pace." In a few days he was at Portsmouth.
To hinder further mischief the younger Henry was ordered to join him and
carried over sea; and the first news that reached Louis was the king's
arrival in Normandy. "The King of England," Louis cried in his amazement,
"is now in Ireland, now in England, now in Normandy; he may rather be said
to fly than go by horse or boat!" Henry hastened on his landing to meet
the legates. Negotiations were opened in May. Submission was inevitable,
for fear of the rebellion which was then actually brewing left him in fact
no choice of action. He agreed unreservedly to their demands. As an
earnest of repentance and reformation he consented to a new coronation of
his son; and on the 27th of August the young king was crowned again, along
with his wife, at Winchester. Henry completed his submission at Avranches
on the 27th of September. He swore that he had not desired the death of
Thomas, but to make satisfaction for the anger he had shown, he promised
to take the cross, to give funds to the Knights Templars for the defence
of Jerusalem, and to found three religious houses. He renounced the
Constitutions of Clarendon. He swore allegiance to Alexander against the
anti-Pope. He promised that the possessions of Canterbury should be
given back as they were a year before the flight of Thomas, and that his
exiled friends should be restored to their possessions. No king of
England had ever suffered so deep a humiliation. It seemed as thought he
martyr were at last victorious. A year after the murder, in December
1172, Canterbury cathedral was once more solemnly opened, amid the cries
of a vast multitude of people, "Avenge, O Lord, the blood which has been
poured out!" On the anniversary of the Christmas Day when Thomas had
launched his last excommunications, the excited people noted "a great
thunder sudden and horrible in Ireland, in England, and in all the
kingdoms of the French." Very soon mighty miracles were wrought by the
name of the martyr throughout the whole of Europe. The metal phials
which hung from the necks of pilgrims to the shrine of Canterbury became
as famous as the shell and palm branch which marked the pilgrims to
Compostella and Jerusalem. Before ten years were passed the King of
France, the Count of Nevers, the Count of Boulogne, the Viscount of
Aosta, the Archbishop of Reims, had knelt at his shrine among English
prelates, nobles, knights, and beggars. The feast of the Trinity which
Thomas had appointed to be observed on the anniversary of his consecration
spread through the whole of Christendom. Henry, in fact, had to bear the
full storm of scorn and hatred that falls on every statesman who stands in
advance of the public opinion of his day. But his seeming surrender at
Avranches won for the politic king immediate and decisive advantages. All
fear of excommunication and interdict had passed away. The clergy were no
longer alienated from him. The ecclesiastical difficulties raised by the
coronation, and the jealousies of Louis, were set at rest. The alliance
of the Pope was secured. The conquest of Ireland was formally approved.
Success seemed to crown Henry's scheme for the building up of his empire.
Britanny had been secured for Geoffrey in 1171; in June 1172 Richard was
enthroned as Duke of Aquitaine; in the following August Henry was crowned
for the second time King of England. Only the youngest child, scarcely
five years old, was still "John Lackland," and in this same year Henry
provided a dominion for John by a treaty of marriage between him and the
heiress of the Count of Maurienne. Her inheritance stretched from the Lake
of Geneva almost to the Gulf of Genoa; and the marriage would carry the
Angevin dominions almost from the Atlantic to the Alps, and give into
Henry's control every pass into Italy from the Great St. Bernard to the
Col di Tenda, and all the highways by which travellers from Geneva and
German lands beyond it, from Burgundy or from Gaul, made their way to Rome.
To celebrate such a treaty Henry forgot his thrift. The two kings of
England travelled with ostentatious splendour to meet the Count of
Maurienne in Auvergne in January 1173. The King of Aragon and the Count of
Toulouse met them at Montferrand, and a peace which Henry concluded
between Toulouse and Aragon declared the height of his influence. Raymond
bent at last to do homage for Toulouse, an act of submission which brought
the dominion of Anjou to the very border of the Mediterranean.
There was a wild outbreak of alarm among all Henry's enemies as from his
late humiliation he suddenly rose to this new height of power. The young
king listened eagerly to those who plotted mischief, and one night in
mid-Lent he fled to the court of Louis. In an agony of apprehension
Henry sought to close the breach, and sent messages of conciliation to
the French king. "Who sends this message to me?" demanded Louis. "The
King of England," answered the messengers. "It is false," he said;
"behold the King of England is here, and he sends no message to me by
you; but if you so call his father who once was king, know ye that he
asking is dead." The Counts of Flanders, of Boulogne, and of Blois,
joined the young king in Paris, and did homage to him for fiefs which he
bestowed on them--Kent, Dover, Eochester, lands in Lincolnshire, and
domains and castles in Normandy--while he won the aid of the Scot king
by granting him all Northumberland to the Tyne. The rebellion was
organized in a month. Eleanor sent Richard, commander of the forces of
Aquitaine, and Geoffrey, lord of Britanny, to take their share in the
revolt; she herself was hastening after them when she was seized and
thrown into prison. In Aquitaine, where the people impartially hated
both French and Normans, the enthusiasm for independence was stirred by
songs such as those of the troubadour, Bertrand de Born, lord of a
fortress and a thousand men, who "was never content, save when the kings
of the North were at war." In Normandy old hatreds had deepened year by
year as Henry had gone on steadily seizing castles and lands which had
fallen out of the possession of the crown. In 1171 he had doubled the
revenue of the duchy by lands which the nobles had usurped. In 1172 he
had alarmed them by having a new return made of the feudal tenures for
purposes of taxation. The great lords of the duchy with one consent
declared against him. Britanny sprang to arms. If Maine and Anjou
remained fairly quiet, there was in both of them a powerful party of
nobles who joined the revolt. The rebel party was everywhere increased
by all who had joined the young king, "not because they thought his the
juster cause," but in fierce defiance of a rule intolerable for its
justice and its severity. England was no less ready for rebellion. The
popular imagination was still moved by the horror of the archbishop's
murder. The generation that remembered the miseries of the former
anarchy was now passing away, and to some of the feudal lords order
doubtless seemed the greater ill. The new king too had lavished promises
and threats to win the English nobles to his side. "There were few
barons in England who were not wavering in their allegiance to the king,
and ready to desert him at any time." The more reckless eagerly joined
the rebellion; the more prudent took refuge in France, that they might
watch how events would go; there was a timid and unstable party who held
outwardly to the king in vigilant uncertainty, haunted by fears that
they should be swept away by the possible victory of his son. Such
descendants of the Normans of the Conquest as had survived the rebellions
and confiscations of a hundred years were eager for revenge. The Earl of
Leicester and his wife were heirs of three great families, whose power had
been overthrown by the policy of the Conqueror and his sons. William of
Aumale was descended from the Count who had claimed the throne in the
Conqueror's days, and bitterly remembered the time before Henry's
accession, when he had reigned almost as king in Northern England.
Hugh of Puiset, Bishop of Durham, whose diocese stretched across
Northumberland, and who ruled as Earl Palatine of the marchland between
England and Scotland; the Earl of Huntingdon, brother of the Scot king;
Roger Mowbray, lord of the castles of Thirsk and Malessart north of York,
and of a strong castle in the Isle of Axholm; Earl Ferrers, master of
fortresses in Derby and Stafford; Hugh, Earl of Chester and Lord of Bayeux
and Avranches, joined the rebellion. So did the old Hugh Bigod, Earl of
Norfolk, who had already fought and schemed against Henry in vain twenty
years before. The Earls of Clare and Gloucester on the Welsh border were
of very doubtful loyalty. Half of England was in revolt, and north
of a line drawn from Huntingdon to Chester the king only held a few
castles--York, Richmond, Carlisle, Newcastle, and some fortresses of
Northumberland. The land beyond Sherwood and the Trent, shut off by an
almost continuous barrier of marsh and forest from the south, was still
far behind the rest of England in civilization. The new industrial
activity of Yorkshire was not yet forty years old; in a great part of
the North money-rents had scarcely crept in, and the serfs were still
toiling on under the burden of labour-dues which had been found
intolerable elsewhere. The fines, the taxes, the attempt to bring its
people under a more advanced system of government must have pressed very
hardly on this great district which was not yet ready for it; and to the
fierce anger of the barons, and the ready hostility of the monasteries,
was perhaps added the exasperation of freeholder and serf.
Henry, however, was absolute master of the whole central administration
of the realm. Moreover, by his decree of the year before he had set over
every shire a sheriff who was wholly under his own control, trained in
his court, pledged to his obedience, and who had firm hold of the
courts, the local forces, and the finances. The king now hastened to
appoint bishops whom he could trust to the vacant sees. Geoffrey, an
illegitimate son who had been born to him very early, probably about the
time when he visited England to receive knighthood, was sent to Lincoln;
and friends of the king were consecrated to Winchester, Ely, Bath,
Hereford, and Chichester. Prior Richard of Dover, a man "laudably
inoffensive who prudently kept within his own sphere," was made Archbishop
of Canterbury. Richard de Lucy remained in charge of the whole kingdom as
justiciar. The towns and trading classes were steadfast in loyalty, and
the baronage was again driven, as it had been before, to depend on foreign
mercenaries.
War first broke out in France in the early summer of 1173. Normandy and
Anjou were badly defended, and their nobles were already half in revolt,
while the forces of France, Flanders, Boulogne, Chartres, Champagne,
Poitou, and Britanny were allied against Henry. The counts of Flanders
and Boulogne invaded Normandy from the north-east, and the traitor Count
of Aumale, the guardian of the Norman border, gave into their hands his
castles and lands. Louis and Henry's sons besieged Verneuil in the
south-west. To westward the Earl of Chester and Ralph of Fougères
organized a rising in Britanny. In "extreme perplexity," utterly unable
to meet his enemies in the field, Henry could only fortify his frontier,
and hastily recall the garrison which he had left in Ireland, while he
poured out his treasure in gathering an army of hired soldiers. Meanwhile
he himself waited at Rouen, "that he might be seen by all the people,
bearing with an even mind whatever happened, hunting oftener than usual,
showing himself with a cheerful face to all who came, answering patiently
those who wished to gain anything from him; while those whom he had
nourished from days of childhood, those whom he had knighted, those who
had been his servants and his most familiar counsellors, night by night
stole away from him, expecting his speedy destruction and thinking the
dominion of his son at once about to be established." Never did the kings
show such resource and courage as in the campaign that followed. The Count
of Boulogne was killed in battle, and the invading army in the north-east
hesitated at the unlucky omen and fell back. Instantly Henry seized his
opportunity. He rode at full speed to Verneuil with his army, a hastily
collected mob of chance soldiers so dissatisfied and divided in allegiance
that he dared not risk a battle. An audacious boast saved the crafty king.
"With a fierce countenance and terrible voice" he cried to the French
messengers who had hurried out to see if the astounding news of his
arrival were true, "Go tell your king I am at hand as you see!" At the
news of the ferocity and resolution of the enemy, Louis, "knowing him to
be fierce and of a most bitter temper, as a bear robbed of its whelps
rages in the forest," hastily retreated, and Henry, as wise a general
as he was excellent an actor, fell back to Rouen. Meanwhile he sent to
Britanny a force of Brabantines, whom alone he could trust. They
surrounded the rebels at Dol; and before Henry, "forgetting food and
sleep" and riding "as though he had flown," could reach the place, most
of his foes were slain. The castle where the rest had taken refuge
surrendered, and he counted among his prisoners the Earl of Chester,
Ralph of Fougères, and a hundred other nobles. The battle of Dol
practically decided the war. It seemed vain to fight against Henry's
good luck. A few Flemings once crossed the Norman border, and were
defeated and drowned in retreat by the bridge breaking. "The very
elements fight for the Normans!" cried the baffled and disheartened
Louis. "When I entered Normandy my army perished for want of water, now
this one is destroyed by too much water." In despair he sought to save
himself by playing the part of mediator; and in September Henry met his
sons at Gisors to discuss terms of peace. His terms were refused and the
meeting broke up; but Henry remained practically master of the situation.
Meanwhile in England the rebellion had broken out in July. The Scottish
army ravaged the north; the Earl of Leicester, with an army of Flemings
which he had collected by the help of Louis and the younger Henry,
landed on the coast of Suffolk, where Hugh Bigod was ready to welcome
him. De Lucy and Bohun hurried from the north to meet this formidable
danger, and with the help of the Earls of Cornwall, Arundel, and
Gloucester, they defeated Leicester in a great battle at Fornham on the
17th of October. The earl himself was taken prisoner, and 10,000 of his
foreign troops were slain. He and his wife were sent by Henry's orders
to Normandy, and there thrown into prison. A truce was made with
Scotland till the end of March. The king of France and the younger Henry
abandoned hope, "for they saw that God was with the king;" and there
was a general pause in the war.
With the spring of 1174, however, the strife raged again on all sides.
Ireland rose in rebellion. William of Scotland marched into England
supported by a Flemish force. Roger Mowbray, and probably the Bishop of
Durham, were in league with him. Earl Ferrers fortified his castles in
Derby and Stafford; Leicester Castle was still held by the Earl of
Leicester's knights; Huntingdon by the Scot king's brother; and the Earl
of Norfolk was joined in June by a picked body of Flemings. The king's
castles at Norwich, Northampton, and Nottingham, were taken by the rebels,
and a formidable line of enemies stretched right across mid-England.
At the same time France and Flanders threatened invasion with a strong
fleet, and "so great an army as had not been seen for many years." Count
Philip, who had set his heart on the promised Kent, and on winning
entrance into the lands of the Cistercian wool-growers of Lincolnshire,
swore before Louis and his nobles that within fifteen days he would attack
England; the younger Henry joined him at Gravelines in June, and they only
waited for a fair wind to cross the Channel.
The justiciars were in an extremity of despair. "Seeing the evil that
was done in the land," they anxiously sent messenger after messenger to
the king. But Henry had little time to heed English complaints. Richard
had declared war in Aquitaine; Maine and Anjou were half in revolt;
Louis was on the point of invading Normandy. As a last resource his
hard-pressed ministers sent Richard of Ilchester, the bishop-elect of
Winchester, whom they knew to be favoured by the king beyond all others,
to tell him again of "the hatred of the barons, the infidelity of the
citizens, the clamour of the crowd always growing worse, the greed of
the 'new men,' the difficulty of holding down the insurrection." "The
English have sent their messengers before, and here comes even this
man!" laughed the Normans; "what will be left in England to send after
the king save the Tower of London!" Richard reached Henry on the 24th of
June, and on the same day Henry abandoned Normandy to Louis' attack, and
made ready for return. "He saw that while he was absent, and as it were
not in existence, no one in England would offer any opposition to him
who was expected to be his successor;" and he "preferred that his lands
beyond the sea should be in peril rather than his own realm of England."
Sending forward a body of Brabantines, he followed with his train of
prisoners--Queen Eleanor, Queen Margaret and her sister Adela, the
Earls of Chester and of Leicester, and various governors of castles whom
he carried with him in chains. In an agony of anxiety the king watched
for a fair wind till the 7th of July. At last the sails were spread; but
of a sudden the waves began to rise, and the storm to grow ominously.
Those who watched the face of the king saw him to be in doubt; then he
lifted his eyes to heaven and prayed before them all, "If I have set
before my eyes the things which make for the peace of clergy and people,
if the King of heaven has ordained that peace shall be restored by my
arrival, then let Him in His mercy bring me to a safe port; but if He is
against me, and has decreed to visit my kingdom with a rod, then let me
never touch the shores of the land."
A good omen was granted, and he safely reached Southampton. Refusing
even to enter the city, and eating but bread and water, he pressed
forward to Canterbury. At its gates he dismounted and put away from him
the royal majesty, and with bare feet, in the garb of a pilgrim and
penitent, his footsteps marked with blood, he passed on to the church.
There he sought the martyr's sepulchre, and lying prostrate with
outstretched hands, he remained long in prayer, with abundance of tears
and bitter groanings. After a sermon by Foliot the king filled up the
measure of humiliation. He made public oath that he was guiltless of the
death of the archbishop, but in penitence of his hasty words he prayed
absolution of the bishops, and gave his body to the discipline of rods,
receiving three or five strokes from each one of the seventy monks. That
night he prayed and fasted before the shrine, and the next day rode
still fasting to London, which he reached on the 14th. Three days later
a messenger rode at midnight to the gate of the palace where the king
lay ill, worn out by suffering and fatigue for which the doctors had
applied their usual remedy of bleeding. He forced his way to the door of
the king's bedchamber. "Who art thou?" cried the king, suddenly startled
from sleep. "I am the servant of Ranulf de Glanville, and I come to
bring good tidings."--"Ranulf our friend, is he well?"--"He is well, my
lord, and behold he holds your enemy, the King of Scots, captive in
chains at Richmond." The king was half stunned by the news, but as the
messenger produced Glanville's letter, he sprang from his bed, and in a
transport of emotion and tears, gave thanks to God, while the joyful
ringing of bells told the good news to the London citizens.
Two great dangers, in fact, had passed away while the king knelt before
the shrine at Canterbury. On that very day the Scottish army had been
broken to pieces. In the south the fleet which lay off the coast of
Flanders had dispersed. On the 18th of July, the day after the good news
had come, Henry himself marched north with the army that had been
gathered while he lay ill. Before a week was over Hugh Bigod had yielded
up his castles and banished his Flemish soldiers. The Bishop of Durham
secretly sent away his nephew, the Count of Bar, who had landed with
foreign troops. Henry's Welsh allies attacked Tutbury, a castle of the
Earl of Ferrers. Geoffrey, the bishop-elect of Lincoln, had before
Henry's landing waged vigorous war on Mowbray. By the end of July the
whole resistance was at an end. On the last day of the month the king
held a council at Northampton, at which William of Scotland stood before
him a prisoner, while Hugh of Durham, Mowbray, Ferrers, and the officers
of the Earl of Leicester came to give up their fortresses. The castles
of Huntingdon and Norfolk were already secured. The suspected Earls of
Gloucester and of Clare swore fidelity at the King's Court. Scotland was
helpless. A treaty was made with the Irish kings. Wales was secured by a
marriage between the prince of North Wales and Henry's sister.
But there was still danger over sea, where the armies of the French and
the Flemings had closed round Rouen. On the 8th of August, exactly a
month after his landing at Southampton, Henry again crossed the Channel
with his unwieldy train of prisoners. As he stood under the walls of
Rouen, the besieging armies fled by night. Louis' fancy already showed
him the English host in the heart of France, and in his terror he sought
for peace. The two kings concluded a treaty at Gisors, and on the 30th
of September the conspiracy against Henry was finally dissolved. His
sons did homage to him, and bound themselves in strange medieval fashion
by the feudal tie which was the supreme obligation of that day; he was
now "not only their father, but their liege lord." The Count of Flanders
gave up into Henry's hands the charter given him by the young king. The
King of Scotland made absolute submission in December 1174, and was sent
back to his own land. Eleanor alone remained a close prisoner for years
to come.
The revolt of 1173-74 was the final ruin of the old party of the Norman
baronage. The Earl of Chester got back his lands, but lost his castles,
and was sent out of the way to the Irish war; he died before the king in
1181. Leicester humbly admitted "that he and all his holdings were at
the mercy of the king," and Henry "restored to him Leicester, and the
forest which by common oath of the country had been sworn to belong to
the king's own domain, for he knew that this had been done for envy, and
also because it was known that the king hated the earl;" but Henry had a
long memory, and the walls of Leicester were in course of time thrown
down and its fortifications levelled. The Bishop of Durham had to pay
200 marks of silver for the king's pardon, and give up Durham Castle. At
the death of Hugh Bigod in 1177 Henry seized the earl's treasure. The
Earls of Clare and Gloucester died within two years, and the king's son
John was made Gloucester's heir. The rebel Count of Aumale died in 1179,
and his heiress married the faithful Earl of Essex, who took the title
of Aumale with all the lands on both sides of the water. In 1186 Roger
Mowbray went on crusade. The king took into his own hands all castles,
even those of "his most familiar friend," the justiciar De Lucy. The
work of dismantling dangerous fortresses which he had begun twenty years
before was at last completed, and no armed revolt of the feudal baronage
was ever again possible in England.
But the rebellion had wakened in the king's mind a deep alarm, which
showed itself in a new severity of temper. Famine and plague had fallen
on the country; the treasury was well nigh empty; law and order were
endangered. Henry hastened to return as soon as his foreign campaign was
over, and in May 1175 "the two kings of England, whom a year before the
breadth of the kingdom could not contain, now crossed in one ship, sat
at one table, and slept in one bed." In token of reconciliation with the
Church they attended a synod at Westminster, and went together on solemn
pilgrimage to the martyr's tomb. Then they made a complete visitation of
the whole kingdom. Starting from Reading on the 1st of June, they went
by Oxford to Gloucester, then along the Welsh border to Shrewsbury,
through the midland counties by Lichfield and Nottingham to York, and
then back to London, having spent on their journey two months and a few
days; and in autumn they made a progress through the south-western
provinces. At every halt some weighty business was taken in hand. The
Church was made to feel anew the royal power. Twelve of the great abbeys
were now without heads, and the king, justly fearing lest the monks
should elect abbots from their own body, "and thus the royal authority
should be shaken, and they should follow another guidance than his own,"
sent orders that on a certain day chosen men should be sent to elect
acceptable prelates at his court and in his presence. The safety of the
Welsh marches was assured. The castle of Bristol was given up to the
king, and border barons and Welsh princes swore fidelity at Gloucester.
An edict given at Woodstock ordered that no man who during the war had
been in arms against the king should come to his court without a special
order; that no man should remain in his court after the setting of the
sun, or should come to it before the sun rising; in the England that lay
west of the Severn, none might carry bow and arrow or pointed knife. In
this wild border district the checks which prevailed elsewhere against
violent crime were unknown. The outlaw or stranger who fled to forest or
moorland for hiding, might lawfully be slain by any man who met him. No
"murder-fine" was known there. The king, not daring perhaps to interfere
with the "liberties" of the west, may have sought to check crime by this
order against arms; but such a law was practically a dead letter, for in
a land where every man was the guardian of his own life it was far more
perilous to obey the new edict than to disregard it.
The king's harsh mood was marked too by the cruel prosecutions of
offences against forest law which had been committed in the time of the
war. The severe punishments were perhaps a means of chastizing is affected
landowners; they were certainly useful in filling the empty treasury.
Nobles and barons everywhere were sued for hunting or cutting wood or
owning dogs, and were fined sometimes more than their whole possessions
were worth. In vain the justiciar, De Lucy, pleaded for justice to men
who had done these things by express orders of the king given to De Lucy
himself; "his testimony could prevail nothing against the royal will."
Even the clergy were dragged before the civil courts, "neither archbishop
nor bishop daring to make any protest." The king's triumph over the
rebellion was visibly complete when at York the treaty which had been made
the previous year with the King of Scotland was finally concluded, and
William and his brother did homage to the English sovereigns. A few weeks
later Henry and his son received at Windsor the envoys of the King of
Connaught, the only one of the Irish princes who had till now refused
homage.
In the Church as in the State the royal power was unquestioned. A papal
legate arrived in October, who proved a tractable servant of the king;
"with the right hand and the left he took gifts, which he planted
together in his coffers". His coming gave Henry opportunity to carry out
at last through common action of Church and State his old scheme of
reforms. In the Assize of Northampton, held in January 1176, the king
confirmed and perfected the judicial legislation which he had begun ten
years before in the Assize of Clarendon. The kingdom was divided into
six circuits. The judges appointed to the circuits were given a more
full independence than they had before, and were no longer joined with
the sheriffs of the counties in their sessions, their powers were
extended beyond criminal jurisdiction to questions of property, of
inheritance, of wardship, of forfeiture of crown lands, of advowsons to
churches, and of the tenure of land. For the first time the name of
Justitiarii Itinerantes was given in the Pipe Roll to these travelling
justices, and the anxiety of the king to make the procedure of his
courts perfectly regular, instead of depending on oral tradition, was
shown by the law books which his ministers began at this time to draw
up. As a security against rebellion, a new oath of fealty was required
from every man, whether earl or villein, fugitives and outlaws were to
be more sharply sought after, and felons punished with harsher cruelty.
"Thinking more of the king than of his sheep," the legate admitted
Henry's right to bring the clergy before secular courts for crimes
against forest law, and in various questions of lay fiefs; and agreed
that murderers of clerks, who till then had been dealt with by the
ecclesiastical courts, should bear the same punishment as murderers of
laymen, and should be disinherited. Religious churchmen looked on with
helpless irritation at Henry's first formal victory over the principles
of Thomas; in the view of his own day he had "renewed the Assize of
Clarendon, and ordered to be observed the execrable decrees for which
the blessed martyr Thomas had borne exile for seven years, and been
crowned with the crown of martyrdom."
During the next two years Henry was in perpetual movement through the
land from Devon to Lincoln, and between March 1176 and August 1177 he
summoned eighteen great councils, besides many others of less consequence.
From 1178 to 1180 he paid his last long visit to England, and again with
the old laborious zeal he began his round of journeys through the
country. "The king inquired about the justices whom he had appointed, how
they treated the men of the kingdom; and when he learned that the land and
the subjects were too much burthened with the great number of justices,
because there were eighteen, he elected five--two clerks and three
laymen--all of his own household; and he ordered that they should hear
all appeals of the kingdom and should do justice, and that they should not
depart from the King's Court, but should remain there to hear appeals, so
that if any question should come to them they should present it to the
audience of the king, and that it should be decided by him and by the wise
men of the kingdom." The _Justices of the Bench_, as they were called,
took precedence of all other judges. The influence of their work was soon
felt. From this time written records began to be kept of the legal
compromises made before the King's Court to render possible the
transference of land. It seems that in 1181 the practice was for the
first time adopted of entering on rolls all the business which came to
the King's Court, the pleas of the Crown and common pleas between
subjects. Unlike in form to the great Roll of the Pipe, in which the
records of the Exchequer Court had long been kept, the Plea Rolls
consisted of strips of parchment filed together by their tops, on which,
in an uncertain and at first a blundering fashion, the clerks noted down
their records of judicial proceedings. But practice soon brought about an
orderly and mechanical method of work, and the system of procedure in the
Bench rapidly attained a scientific perfection. Before long the name of
the _Curia Regis_ was exclusively applied to the new court of appeal.
The work of legal reform had now practically come to an end. Henry
indeed still kept a jealous watch over his judges. Once more, on the
retirement of De Lucy in 1179, he divided the kingdom into new circuits,
and chose three bishops--Winchester, Ely, and Norwich--"as chief
justiciars, hoping that if he had failed before, the seat least he might
find steadfast in righteousness, turning neither to the right nor to the
left, not oppressing the poor, and not deciding the cause of the rich
for bribes." In the next year he set Glanville finally at the head of
the legal administration. After that he himself was called to other
cares. But he had really finished his task in England. The mere system
of routine which the wisdom of Henry I. had set to control the arbitrary
power of the king had given place to a large and noble conception of
government; and by the genius of Henry II. the law of the land was
finally established as the supreme guardian of the old English liberties
and the new administrative order.