the second surviving son of Hermann I., landgrave of Thuringia, and
Sophia, daughter of Otto I., duke of Bavaria. When his brother the
landgrave Louis IV. died in Italy in September 1227, Henry seized the
government of Thuringia and expelled his brother's widow, St Elizabeth
of Hungary, and her son Hermann. With some trouble Henry made good his
position, although his nephew Hermann II. was nominally the landgrave,
and was declared of age in 1237. Henry, who governed with a zealous
regard for his own interests, remained loyal to the emperor Frederick
II. during his quarrel with the Lombards and the revolt of his son
Henry. In 1236 he accompanied the emperor on a campaign against
Frederick II., duke of Austria, and took part in the election of his son
Conrad as German king at Vienna in 1237. He appears, however, to have
become somewhat estranged from Frederick after this expedition, for he
did not appear at the diet of Verona in 1238; and it is not improbable
that he disliked the betrothal of his nephew Hermann to the emperor's
daughter Margaret. At all events, when the projected marriage had been
broken off the landgrave publicly showed his loyalty to the emperor in
1239 in opposition to a plan formed by various princes to elect an
anti-king. Henry, whose attitude at this time was very important to
Frederick, was probably kept loyal by the influence which his brother
Conrad, grand-master of the Teutonic Order, exercised over him, for
after the death of this brother in 1241 Henry's loyalty again wavered,
and he was himself mentioned as a possible anti-king. Frederick's visit
to Germany in 1242 was successful in preventing this step for a time,
and in May of that year the landgrave was appointed administrator of
Germany for King Conrad; and by the death of his nephew in this year he
became the nominal, as well as the actual, ruler of Thuringia. Again he
contemplated deserting the cause of Frederick, and in April 1246 Pope
Innocent IV. wrote to the German princes advising them to choose Henry
as their king in place of Frederick who had just been declared deposed.
Acting on these instructions, Henry was elected at Veitshochheim on the
22nd of May 1246, and owing to the part played by the spiritual princes
in this election was called the _Pfaffenkonig_, or parsons' king.
Collecting an army, he defeated King Conrad near Frankfort on the 5th of
August 1246, and then, after holding a diet at Nuremberg, undertook the
siege of Ulm. But he was soon compelled to give up this enterprise, and
returning to Thuringia died at the Wartburg on the 17th of February
1247. Henry married Gertrude, sister of Frederick II., duke of Austria,
but left no children, and on his death the male line of his family
became extinct.
See F. Reuss, _Die Wahl Heinrich Raspes_ (Ludenscheid, 1878); A.
Rubesamen, _Landgraf Heinrich Raspe von Thuringen_ (Halle, 1885); F.
W. Schirrmacher, _Die letzten Hohenstaufen_ (Gottingen, 1871); E.
Winkelmann, _Kaiser Friedrich II._ (Leipzig, 1889), and T.
Knochenhauer, _Geschichte Thuringens zur Zeit des ersten
Landgrafenhauses_ (Gotha, 1871).
HENRY (c. 1174-1216), emperor of Romania, or Constantinople, was a
younger son of Baldwin, count of Flanders and Hainaut (d. 1195). Having
joined the Fourth Crusade about 1201, he distinguished himself at the
siege of Constantinople in 1204 and elsewhere, and soon became prominent
among the princes of the new Latin empire of Constantinople. When his
brother, the emperor Baldwin I., was captured at the battle of
Adrianople in April 1205, Henry was chosen regent of the empire,
succeeding to the throne when the news of Baldwin's death arrived. He
was crowned on the 20th of August 1205. Henry was a wise ruler, whose
reign was largely passed in successful struggles with the Bulgarians and
with his rival, Theodore Lascaris I., emperor of Nicaea. Henry appears
to have been brave but not cruel, and tolerant but not weak; possessing
"the superior courage to oppose, in a superstitious age, the pride and
avarice of the clergy." The emperor died, poisoned, it is said, by his
Greek wife, on the 11th of June 1216.
See Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vol. vi. (ed. J.
B. Bury, 1898).
HENRY I. (1068-1135), king of England, nicknamed Beauclerk, the fourth
and youngest son of William I. by his queen Matilda of Flanders, was
born in 1068 on English soil. Of his life before 1086, when he was
solemnly knighted by his father at Westminster, we know little. He was
his mother's favourite, and she bequeathed to him her English estates,
which, however, he was not permitted to hold in his father's lifetime.
Henry received a good education, of which in later life he was proud; he
is credited with the saying that an unlettered king is only a crowned
ass. His attainments included Latin, which he could both read and write;
he knew something of the English laws and language, and it may have been
from an interest in natural history that he collected, during his reign,
the Woodstock menagerie which was the admiration of his subjects. But
from 1087 his life was one of action and vicissitudes which left him
little leisure. Receiving, under the Conqueror's last dispositions, a
legacy of five thousand pounds of silver, but no land, he traded upon
the pecuniary needs of Duke Robert of Normandy, from whom he purchased,
for the small sum of L3000, the district of the Cotentin. He negotiated
with Rufus to obtain the possession of their mother's inheritance, but
only incurred thereby the suspicions of the duke, who threw him into
prison. In 1090 the prince vindicated his loyalty by suppressing, on
Robert's behalf, a revolt of the citizens of Rouen which Rufus had
fomented. But when his elder brothers were reconciled in the next year
they combined to evict Henry from the Cotentin. He dissembled his
resentment for a time, and lived for nearly two years in the French
Vexin in great poverty. He then accepted from the citizens of Domfront
an invitation to defend them against Robert of Belleme; and
subsequently, coming to an agreement with Rufus, assisted the king in
making war on their elder brother Robert. When Robert's departure for
the First Crusade left Normandy in the hands of Rufus (1096) Henry took
service under the latter, and he was in the royal hunting train on the
day of Rufus's death (August 2nd, 1100). Had Robert been in Normandy the
claim of Henry to the English crown might have been effectually opposed.
But Robert only returned to the duchy a month after Henry's coronation.
In the meantime the new king, by issuing his famous charter, by
recalling Anselm, and by choosing the Anglo-Scottish princess
Edith-Matilda, daughter of Malcolm III., king of the Scots, as his
future queen, had cemented that alliance with the church and with the
native English which was the foundation of his greatness. Anselm
preached in his favour, English levies marched under the royal banner
both to repel Robert's invasion (1101) and to crush the revolt of the
Montgomeries headed by Robert of Belleme (1102). The alliance of crown
and church was subsequently imperilled by the question of Investitures
(1103-1106). Henry was sharply criticized for his ingratitude to Anselm
(q.v.), in spite of the marked respect which he showed to the
archbishop. At this juncture a sentence of excommunication would have
been a dangerous blow to Henry's power in England. But the king's
diplomatic skill enabled him to satisfy the church without surrendering
any rights of consequence (1106); and he skilfully threw the blame of
his previous conduct upon his counsellor, Robert of Meulan. Although the
Peterborough Chronicle accuses Henry of oppression in his early years,
the nation soon learned to regard him with respect. William of
Malmesbury, about 1125, already treats Tinchebrai (1106) as an English
victory and the revenge for Hastings. Henry was disliked but feared by
the baronage, towards whom he showed gross bad faith in his disregard of
his coronation promises. In 1110 he banished the more conspicuous
malcontents, and from that date was safe against the plots of his
English feudatories.
With Normandy he had more trouble, and the military skill which he had
displayed at Tinchebrai was more than once put to the test against
Norman rebels. His Norman, like his English administration, was popular
with the non-feudal classes, but doubtless oppressive towards the
barons. The latter had abandoned the cause of Duke Robert, who remained
a prisoner in England till his death (1134); but they embraced that of
Robert's son William the Clito, whom Henry in a fit of generosity had
allowed to go free after Tinchebrai. The Norman conspiracies of 1112,
1118, and 1123-24 were all formed in the Clito's interest. Both France
and Anjou supported this pretender's cause from time to time; he was
always a thorn in Henry's side till his untimely death at Alost (1128),
but more especially after the catastrophe of the White Ship (1120)
deprived the king of his only lawful son. But Henry emerged from these
complications with enhanced prestige. His campaigns had been uneventful,
his chief victory (Bremule, 1119) was little more than a skirmish. But
he had held his own as a general, and as a diplomatist he had shown
surpassing skill. The chief triumphs of his foreign policy were the
marriage of his daughter Matilda to the emperor Henry V. (1114) which
saved Normandy in 1124; the detachment of the pope, Calixtus II., from
the side of France and the Clito (1119), and the Angevin marriages which
he arranged for his son William Aetheling (1119) and for the widowed
empress Matilda (1129) after her brother's death. This latter match,
though unpopular in England and Normandy, was a fatal blow to the
designs of Louis VI., and prepared the way for the expansion of English
power beyond the Loire. After 1124 the disaffection of Normandy was
crushed. The severity with which Henry treated the last rebels was
regarded as a blot upon his fame; but the only case of merely vindictive
punishment was that of the poet Luke de la Barre, who was sentenced to
lose his eyes for a lampoon upon the king, and only escaped the sentence
by committing suicide.
Henry's English government was severe and grasping; but he "kept good
peace" and honourably distinguished himself among contemporary statesmen
in an age when administrative reform was in the air. He spent more time
in Normandy than in England. But he showed admirable judgment in his
choice of subordinates; Robert of Meulan, who died in 1118, and Roger of
Salisbury, who survived his master, were statesmen of no common order;
and Henry was free from the mania of attending in person to every
detail, which was the besetting sin of medieval sovereigns. As a
legislator Henry was conservative. He issued few ordinances; the
unofficial compilation known as the _Leges Henrici_ shows that, like the
Conqueror, he made it his ideal to maintain the "law of Edward." His
itinerant justices were not altogether a novelty in England or Normandy.
It is characteristic of the man that the exchequer should be the chief
institution created in his reign. The eulogies of the last _Peterborough
Chronicle_ on his government were written after the anarchy of Stephen's
reign had invested his predecessor's "good peace" with the glamour of a
golden age. Henry was respected and not tyrannous. He showed a lofty
indifference to criticism such as that of Eadmer in the _Historia
novorum_, which was published early in the reign. He showed, on some
occasions, great deference to the opinions of the magnates. But dark
stories, some certainly unfounded, were told of his prison-houses. Men
thought him more cruel and more despotic than he actually was.
Henry was twice married. After the death of his first wife, Matilda
(1080-1118), he took to wife Adelaide, daughter of Godfrey, count of
Louvain (1121), in the hope of male issue. But the marriage proved
childless, and the empress Matilda was designated as her father's
successor, the English baronage being compelled to do her homage both in
1126, and again, after the Angevin marriage, in 1131. He had many
illegitimate sons and daughters by various mistresses. Of these bastards
the most important is Robert, earl of Gloucester, upon whom fell the
main burden of defending Matilda's title against Stephen.
Henry died near Gisors on the 1st of December, 1135, in the thirty-sixth
year of his reign, and was buried in the abbey of Reading which he
himself had founded.
ORIGINAL AUTHORITIES.--_The Peterborough Chronicle_ (ed. Plummer,
Oxford, 1882-1889); _Florence of Worcester_ and his first continuator
(ed. B. Thorpe, 1848-1849); Eadmer, _Historia novorum_ (ed. Rule,
Rolls Series, 1884); William of Malmesbury, _Gesta regum_ and
_Historia novella_ (ed. Stubbs, Rolls Series, 1887-1889); Henry of
Huntingdon, _Historia Anglorum_ (ed. Arnold, Rolls Series, 1879);
Simeon of Durham (ed. Arnold, Rolls Series, 1882-1885); Orderic
Vitalis, _Historia ecclesiastica_ (ed. le Prevost, Paris, 1838-1855);
Robert of Torigni, _Chronica_ (ed. Howlett, Rolls Series, 1889), and
_Continuatio Willelmi Gemmeticensis_ (ed. Duchesne, _Hist. Normannorum
scriptores_, pp. 215-317, Paris, 1619). See also the Pipe Roll of 31
H. I. (ed. Hunter, _Record Commission_, 1833); the documents in W.
Stubbs's _Select Chapters_ (Oxford, 1895); the _Leges Henrici_ in
Liebermann's _Gesetze der Angel-Sachsen_ (Halle, 1898, &c.); and the
same author's monograph, _Leges Henrici_ (Halle, 1901); the treaties,
&c., in the Record Commission edition of Thomas Rymer's _Foedera_,
vol. i. (1816).
MODERN AUTHORITIES.--E. A. Freeman, _History of the Norman Conquest_,
vol. v.; J. M. Lappenberg, _History of England under the Norman Kings_
(tr. Thorpe, Oxford, 1857); Kate Norgate, _England under the Angevin
Kings_, vol. i. (1887); Sir James Ramsay, _Foundations of England_,
vol. ii.; W. Stubbs, _Constitutional History_, vol. i.; H. W. C.
Davis, _England under the Normans and Angevins_; Hunt and Poole,
_Political History of England_, vol. ii. (H. W. C. D.)
HENRY II. (1133-1189), king of England, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet,
count of Anjou, by Matilda, daughter of Henry I., was born at Le Mans on
the 25th of March 1133. He was brought to England during his mother's
conflict with Stephen (1142), and was placed under the charge of a tutor
at Bristol. He returned to Normandy in 1146. He next appeared on English
soil in 1149[1] when he came to court the help of Scotland and the
English baronage against King Stephen. The second visit was of short
duration. In 1150 he was invested with Normandy by his father, whose
death in the next year made him also count of Anjou. In 1152 by a
marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, the divorced wife of the French king
Louis VII., he acquired Poitou, Guienne and Gascony; but in doing so
incurred the ill-will of his suzerain from which he suffered not a
little in the future. Lastly in 1153 he was able, through the aid of the
Church and his mother's partisans, to extort from Stephen the
recognition of his claim to the English succession; and this claim was
asserted without opposition immediately after Stephen's death (25th of
October 1154). Matilda retired into seclusion, although she possessed,
until her death (1167), great influence with her son.
The first years of the reign were largely spent in restoring the public
peace and recovering for the crown the lands and prerogatives which
Stephen had bartered away. Amongst the older partisans of the Angevin
house the most influential were Archbishop Theobald, whose good will
guaranteed to Henry the support of the Church, and Nigel, bishop of Ely,
who presided at the exchequer. But Thomas Becket, archdeacon of
Canterbury, a younger statesman whom Theobald had discovered and
promoted, soon became all-powerful. Becket lent himself entirely to his
master's ambitions, which at this time centred round schemes of
territorial aggrandizement. In 1155 Henry asked and obtained from Adrian
IV. a licence to invade Ireland, which the king contemplated bestowing
upon his brother, William of Anjou. This plan was dropped; but Malcolm
of Scotland was forced to restore the northern counties which had been
ceded to David; North Wales was invaded in 1157; and in 1159 Henry made
an attempt, which was foiled by the intervention of Louis VII., to
assert his wife's claims upon Toulouse. After vainly invoking the aid of
the emperor Frederick I., the young king came to terms with Louis
(1160), whose daughter was betrothed to Henry's namesake and heir. The
peace proved unstable, and there was desultory skirmishing in 1161. The
following year was chiefly spent in reforming the government of the
continental provinces. In 1163 Henry returned to England, and almost
immediately embarked on that quarrel with the Church which is the
keynote to the middle period of the reign.
Henry had good cause to complain of the ecclesiastical courts, and had
only awaited a convenient season to correct abuses which were admitted
by all reasonable men. But he allowed the question to be complicated by
personal issues. He was bitterly disappointed that Becket, on whom he
bestowed the primacy, left vacant by the death of Theobald (1162), at
once became the champion of clerical privilege; he and the archbishop
were no longer on speaking terms when the Constitutions of Clarendon
came up for debate. The king's demands were not intrinsically
irreconcilable with the canon law, and the papacy would probably have
allowed them to take effect _sub silentio_, if Becket (q.v.) had not
been goaded to extremity by persecution in the forms of law. After
Becket's flight (1164), the king put himself still further in the wrong
by impounding the revenues of Canterbury and banishing at one stroke a
number of the archbishop's friends and connexions. He showed, however,
considerable dexterity in playing off the emperor against Alexander III.
and Louis VII., and contrived for five years, partly by these means,
partly by insincere negotiations with Becket, to stave off a papal
interdict upon his dominions. When, in July 1170, he was forced by
Alexander's threats to make terms with Becket, the king contrived that
not a word should be said of the Constitutions. He undoubtedly hoped
that in this matter he would have his way when Becket should be more in
England and within his grasp. For the murder of Becket (Dec. 29, 1170)
the king cannot be held responsible, though the deed was suggested by
his impatient words. It was a misfortune to the royal cause; and Henry
was compelled to purchase the papal absolution by a complete surrender
on the question of criminous clerks (1172). When he heard of the murder
he was panic-stricken; and his expedition to Ireland (1171), although so
momentous for the future, was originally a mere pretext for placing
himself beyond the reach of Alexander's censures.
Becket's fate, though it supplied an excuse, was certainly not the real
cause of the troubles with his sons which disturbed the king's later
years (1173-1189). But Henry's misfortunes were largely of his own
making. Queen Eleanor, whom he alienated by his faithlessness, stirred
up her sons to rebellion; and they had grievances enough to be easily
persuaded. Henry was an affectionate but a suspicious and close-handed
father. The titles which he bestowed on them carried little power, and
served chiefly to denote the shares of the paternal inheritance which
were to be theirs after his death. The excessive favour which he showed
to John, his youngest-born, was another cause of heart-burning; and
Louis, the old enemy, did his utmost to foment all discords. It must,
however, be remembered in Henry's favour, that the supporters of the
princes, both in England and in the foreign provinces, were animated by
resentment against the soundest features of the king's administration;
and that, in the rebellion of 1173, he received from the English commons
such hearty support that any further attempt to raise a rebellion in
England was considered hopeless. Henry, like his grandfather, gained in
popularity with every year of his reign. In 1183 the death of Prince
Henry, the heir-apparent, while engaged in a war against his brother
Richard and their father, secured a short interval of peace. But in 1184
Geoffrey of Brittany and John combined with their father's leave to make
war upon Richard, now the heir-apparent. After Geoffrey's death (1186)
the feud between John and Richard drove the latter into an alliance with
Philip Augustus of France. The ill-success of the old king in this war
aggravated the disease from which he was suffering; and his heart was
broken by the discovery that John, for whose sake he had alienated
Richard, was in secret league with the victorious allies. Henry died at
Chinon on the 6th of July 1189, and was buried at Fontevraud. By Eleanor
of Aquitaine the king had five sons and three daughters. His eldest son,
William, died young; his other sons, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey and John,
are all mentioned above. His daughters were: Matilda (1156-1189), who
became the wife of Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony; Eleanor (1162-1214),
who married Alphonso III., king of Castile; and Joanna, who, after the
death of William of Sicily in 1189, became the wife of Raymund VI.,
count of Toulouse, having previously accompanied her brother, Richard,
to Palestine. He had also three illegitimate sons: Geoffrey, archbishop
of York; Morgan; and William Longsword, earl of Salisbury.
Henry's power impressed the imagination of his contemporaries, who
credited him with aiming at the conquest of France and the acquisition
of the imperial title. But his ambitions of conquest were comparatively
moderate in his later years. He attempted to secure Maurienne and Savoy
for John by a marriage-alliance, for which a treaty was signed in 1173.
But the project failed through the death of the intended bride; nor did
the marriage of his third daughter, the princess Joanna (1165-1199),
with William II., king of Sicily (1177) lead to English intervention in
Italian politics. Henry once declined an offer of the Empire, made by
the opponents of Frederick Barbarossa; and he steadily supported the
young Philip Augustus against the intrigues of French feudatories. The
conquest of Ireland was carried out independently of his assistance, and
perhaps against his wishes. He asserted his suzerainty over Scotland by
the treaty of Falaise (1175), but not so stringently as to provoke
Scottish hostility. This moderation was partly due to the embarrassments
produced by the ecclesiastical question and the rebellions of the
princes. But Henry, despite a violent and capricious temper, had a
strong taste for the work of a legislator and administrator. He devoted
infinite pains and thought to the reform of government both in England
and Normandy. The legislation of his reign was probably in great part
of his own contriving. His supervision of the law courts was close and
jealous; he transacted a great amount of judicial business in his own
person, even after he had formed a high court of justice which might sit
without his personal presence. To these activities he devoted his scanty
intervals of leisure. His government was stern; he over-rode the
privileges of the baronage without regard to precedent; he persisted in
keeping large districts under the arbitrary and vexatious jurisdiction
of the forest-courts. But it is the general opinion of historians that
he had a high sense of his responsibilities and a strong love of
justice; despite the looseness of his personal morals, he commanded the
affection and respect of Gilbert Foliot and Hugh of Lincoln, the most
upright of the English bishops.
ORIGINAL AUTHORITIES.--Henry's laws are printed in W. Stubb's _Select
Charters_ (Oxford, 1895). The chief chroniclers of his reign are
William of Newburgh, Ralph de Diceto, the so-called Benedict of
Peterborough, Roger of Hoveden, Robert de Torigni (or de Monte),
Jordan Fantosme, Giraldus Cambrensis, Gervase of Canterbury; all
printed in the Rolls Series. The biographies and letters contained in
the 7 vols. of _Materials for the History of Thomas Becket_ (ed. J. C.
Robertson, Rolls Series, 1875-1885) are valuable for the early and
middle part of the reign. For Irish affairs the _Song of Dermot_ (ed.
Orpen, Oxford, 1892), for the rebellions of the princes the metrical
_Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal_ (ed. Paul Meyer, 3 vols., Paris,
1891, &c.) are of importance. Henry's legal and administrative reforms
are illustrated by the _Tractatus de legibus_ attributed to Ranulph
Glanville, his chief justiciar (ed. G. Phillips, Berlin, 1828); by the
_Dialogus de scaccario_ of Richard fitz Nigel (Oxford, 1902); the
_Pipe Rolls_, printed by J. Hunter for the Record Commission (1844)
and by the Pipe-Roll Society (London, 1884, &c.) supply valuable
details. The works of John of Salisbury (ed. Giles, 1848), Peter of
Blois (ed. Migne), Walter Map (Camden Society, 1841, 1850) and the
letters of Gilbert Foliot (ed. J. A. Giles, Oxford, 1845) are useful
for the social and Church history of the reign.
MODERN AUTHORITIES.--R. W. Eyton, _Itinerary of Henry II._ (London,
1878); W. Stubbs, _Constitutional History_, vol. i. (Oxford, 1893),
_Lectures on Medieval and Modern History_ (Oxford, 1886) and _Early
Plantagenets_ (London, 1876); the same author's introduction to the
Rolls editions of "Benedict," Gervase, Diceto, Hoveden; Mrs J. R.
Green, Henry II. (London, 1888); Miss K. Norgate, _England under the
Angevin Kings_ (2 vols., London, 1887); Sir J. H. Ramsay's _The
Angevin Empire_ (London, 1893); H. W. C. Davis's _England under the
Normans and Angevins_ (London, 1905); Sir F. Pollock and F. W.
Maitland, _History of English Law_ (2 vols., Cambridge, 1898); and F.
Hardegen, _Imperialpolitik Konig Heinrichs II. von England_
(Heidelberg, 1905). (H. W. C. D.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] For a supposed visit in 1147, see J. H. Round in _English
Historical Review_, v. 747.