to his elder son Robert, the English crown to his stronger
son, William, called Rufus, or the Red, and only a legacy of
£5,000 to his third son, Henry, called Beauclerc, or The
Scholar. The Conqueror's half-brother, Odo, soon began to
persuade the Norman barons in England to displace William
Rufus and plant Robert on the English throne. "The claim of
Robert to succeed his father in England, was supported by the
respected rights of primogeniture. But the Anglo-Saxon crown
had always been elective. ... Primogeniture ... gave at that
time no right to the crown of England, independent of the
election of its parliamentary assembly. Having secured this
title, the power of Rufus rested on the foundation most
congenial with the feelings and institutions of the nation,
and from their partiality received a popular support, which
was soon experienced to be impregnable. The danger compelled
the king to court his people by promises to diminish their
grievances; which drew 30,000 knights spontaneously to his
banners, happy to have got a sovereign distinct from hated
Normandy. The invasion of Robert, thus resisted by the English
people, effected nothing but some temporary devastations. ...
The state of Normandy, under Robert's administration, for some
time furnished an ample field for his ambitious uncle's
activity. It continued to exhibit a negligent government in
its most vicious form. ... Odo's politics only facilitated the
Reannexation of Normandy to England. But this event was not
completed in William's reign. When he retorted the attempt of
Robert, by an invasion of Normandy, the great barons of both
countries found themselves endangered by the conflict, and
combined their interest to persuade their respective
sovereigns to a fraternal pacification. The most important
article of their reconciliation provided, that if either
should die without issue, the survivor should inherit his
dominions. Hostilities were then abandoned; mutual courtesies
ensued; and Robert visited England as his brother's guest. The
mind of William the Red King, was cast in no common mould. It
had all the greatness and the defects of the chivalric
character, in its strong but rudest state. Impetuous, daring,
original, magnanimous, and munificent; it was also harsh,
tyrannical, and selfish; conceited of its own powers, loose in
its moral principles, and disdaining consequences. ... While
Lanfranc lived, William had a counsellor whom he respected,
and whose good opinion he was careful to preserve. ... The
death of Lanfranc removed the only man whose wisdom and
influence could have meliorated the king's ardent, but
undisciplined temper. It was his misfortune, on this event, to
choose for his favourite minister, an able, but an
unprincipled man. ... The minister advised the king, on the
death of every prelate, to seize all his temporal possessions.
... The great revenues obtained from this violent innovation,
tempted both the king and his minister to increase its
productiveness, by deferring the nomination of every new
prelate for an indefinite period. Thus he kept many
bishoprics, and among them the see of Canterbury, vacant for
some years; till a severe illness alarming his conscience, he
suddenly appointed Anselm to the dignity; ... His disagreement
with Anselm soon began. The prelate injudiciously began the
battle by asking the king to restore, not only the possessions
of his see, which were enjoyed by Lanfranc--a fair
request--but also the lands which had before that time
belonged to it; a demand that, after so many years alteration
of property, could not be complied with without great
disturbance of other persons. Anselm also exacted of the king
that in all things which concerned the church, his counsels
should be taken in preference to every other. ... Though
Anselm, as a literary man, was an honour and a benefit to his
age, yet his monastic and studious habits prevented him from
having that social wisdom, that knowledge of human nature,
that discreet use of his own virtuous firmness, and that mild
management of turbulent power, which might have enabled him to
have exerted much of the influence of Lanfranc over the mind
of his sovereign. ... Anselm, seeing the churches and abbeys
oppressed in their property, by the royal orders, resolved to
visit Rome, and to concert with the pope the measures most
adapted to overawe the king. ... William threatened, that if
he did go to Rome, he would seize all the possessions of the
archbishopric. Anselm declared, that he would rather travel
naked and on foot, than desist from his resolution; and he
went to Dover with his pilgrim's staff and wallet. He was
searched before his departure, that he might carry away no
money, and was at last allowed to sail. But the king
immediately executed his threat, and sequestered all his lands
and property. This was about three years before the end of the
reign. ... Anselm continued in Italy till William's death. The
possession of Normandy was a leading object of William's
ambition, and he gradually attained a preponderance in it. His
first invasion compelled Robert to make some cessions; these were
increased on his next attack: and when Robert determined to
join the Crusaders, he mortgaged the whole of Normandy to
William for three years, for 10,000 marks. He obtained the
usual success of a powerful invasion in Wales. The natives
were overpowered on the plains, but annoyed the invaders in
their mountains. He marched an army against Malcolm, king of
Scotland, to punish his incursions. Robert advised the
Scottish king to conciliate William; Malcolm yielded to his
counsel and accompanied Robert to the English court, but on
his return, was treacherously attacked by Mowbray, the earl of
Northumbria, and killed. William regretted the perfidious
cruelty of the action. ... The government of William appears
to have been beneficial, both to England and Normandy. To the
church it was oppressive. ... He had scarcely reigned twelve
years, when he fell by a violent death." He was hunting with a
few attendants in the New Forest. "It happened that, his friends
dispersing in pursuit of game, he was left alone, as some
authorities intimate, with Walter Tyrrel, a noble knight, whom
he had brought out of France, and admitted to his table, and
to whom he was much attached. As the sun was about to set, a
stag passed before the king, who discharged an arrow at it.
... At the same moment, another stag crossing, Walter Tyrrel
discharged an arrow at it. At this precise juncture, a shaft
struck the king, and buried itself in his breast. He fell,
without a word, upon the arrow, and expired on the spot. ...
It seems to be a questionable point, whether Walter Tyrrel
actually shot the king. That opinion was certainly the most
prevalent at the time, both here and in France. ...
{797}
None of the authorities intimate a belief of a purposed
assassination; and, therefore, it would be unjust now to
impute it to anyone. ... Henry was hunting in a different part
of the New Forest when Rufus fell. ... He left the body to the
casual charity of the passing rustic, and rode precipitately
to Winchester, to seize the royal treasure. ... He obtained
the treasure, and proceeding hastily to London, was on the
following Sunday, the third day after William's death, elected
king, and crowned. ... He began his reign by removing the
unpopular agents of his unfortunate brother. He recalled
Anselm, and conciliated the clergy. He gratified the nation,
by abolishing the oppressive exactions of the previous reign.
He assured many benefits to the barons, and by a charter,
signed on the day of his coronation, restored to the people
their Anglo-Saxon laws and privileges, as amended by his
father; a measure which ended the pecuniary oppressions of his
brother, and which favoured the growing liberties of the
nation. The Conqueror had noticed Henry's expanding intellect
very early; had given him the best education which the age
could supply. ... He became the most learned monarch of his
day, and acquired and deserved the surname of Beauclerc, or
fine scholar. No wars, no cares of state, could afterwards
deprive him of his love of literature. The nation soon felt
the impulse and the benefit of their sovereign's intellectual
taste. He acceded at the age of 32, and gratified the nation
by marrying and crowning Mathilda, daughter of the sister of
Edgar Etheling by Malcolm the king of Scotland, who had been
waylaid and killed."
_S. Turner,
History of England during the Middle Ages,
volume 1, chapters 5-6._
The Norman lords, hating the "English ways" of Henry, were
soon in rebellion, undertaking to put Robert of Normandy (who
had returned from the Crusade) in his place. The quarrel went
on till the battle of Tenchebray, 1106, in which Robert was
defeated and taken prisoner. He was imprisoned for life. The
duchy and the kingdom were again united. The war in Normandy
led to a war with Louis king of France, who had espoused
Robert's cause. It was ended by the battle of Brêmule, 1119,
where the French suffered a bad defeat. In Henry's reign all
south Wales was conquered; but the north Welsh princes held
out. Another expedition against them was preparing, when, in
1135, Henry fell ill at the Castle of Lions in Normandy, and
died.
_E. A. Freeman,
The Reign of William Rufus and accession of Henry I._
ALSO IN:
_Sir F. Palgrave,
History of Normandy and England,
volume 4._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1135-1154.
The miserable reign of Stephen.
Civil war, anarchy and wretchedness in England.
The transition to hereditary monarchy.
After the death of William the Conqueror, the English throne
was occupied in succession by two of his sons, William II., or
William Rufus (1087-1100), and Henry I., or Henry Beauclerk
(1100-1135). The latter outlived his one legitimate son, and
bequeathed the crown at his death to his daughter, Matilda,
widow of the Emperor Henry V. of Germany and now wife of
Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. This latter marriage had been very
unpopular, both in England and Normandy, and a strong party
refused to recognize the Empress Matilda, as she was commonly
called. This party maintained the superior claims of the
family of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, who had
married the Earl of Blois. Naturally their choice would have
fallen upon Theobald of Blois, the eldest of Adela's sons; but
his more enterprising younger brother Stephen supplanted him.
Hastening to England, and winning the favour of the citizens
of London, Stephen secured the royal treasure and persuaded a
council of peers to elect him king. A most grievous civil war
ensued, which lasted for nineteen terrible years, during which
long period there was anarchy and great wretchedness in
England. "The land was filled with castles, and the castles
with armed banditti, who seem to have carried on their
extortions under colour of the military commands bestowed by
Stephen on every petty castellan. Often the very belfries of
churches were fortified. On the poor lay the burden of
building these strongholds; the rich suffered in their
donjeons. Many were starved to death, and these were the
happiest. Others were flung into cellars filled with reptiles,
or hung up by the thumbs till they told where their treasures
were concealed, or crippled in frames which did not suffer
them to move, or held just resting on the ground by sharp iron
collars round the neck. The Earl of Essex used to send out
spies who begged from door to door, and then reported in what
houses wealth was still left; the alms-givers were presently
seized and imprisoned. The towns that could no longer pay the
blackmail demanded from them were burned. ... Sometimes the
peasants, maddened by misery, crowded to the roads that led
from a field of battle, and smote down the fugitives without
any distinction of sides. The bishops cursed vainly, when the
very churches were burned and monks robbed. 'To till the
ground was to plough the sea; the earth bare no corn, for the
land was all laid waste by such deeds, and men said openly
that Christ slept, and his saints. Such things, and more than
we can say, suffered we nineteen winters for our sins' (A. S.
Chronicle). ... Many soldiers, sickened with the unnatural
war, put on the white cross and sailed for a nobler
battle-field in the East." As Matilda's son Henry--afterwards
Henry II.--grew to manhood, the feeling in his favor gained
strength and his party made head against the weak and
incompetent Stephen. Finally, in 1153, peace was brought about
under an agreement "that Stephen should wear the crown till
his death, and Henry receive the homage of the lords and towns
of the realm as heir apparent." Stephen died the next year and
Henry came to the throne with little further dispute.
_C. H. Pearson,
History of England During the Early and Middle Ages,
chapter 28._
"Stephen, as a king, was an admitted failure. I cannot,
however, but view with suspicion the causes assigned to his
failure by often unfriendly chroniclers. That their criticisms
had some foundation it would not be possible to deny. But in
the first place, had he enjoyed better fortune, we should have
heard less of his incapacity, and in the second, these writers,
not enjoying the same stand-point as ourselves, were, I think,
somewhat inclined to mistake effects for causes. ... His
weakness throughout his reign ... was due to two causes, each
supplementing the other.
{798}
These were--(1) the essentially unsatisfactory character of
his position, as resting, virtually, on a compact that he
should be king so long only as he gave satisfaction to those
who had placed him on the throne; (2) the existence of a rival
claim, hanging over him from the first, like the sword of
Damocles, and affording a lever by which the malcontents could
compel him to adhere to the original understanding, or even to
submit to further demands. ... The position of his opponents
throughout his reign would seem to have rested on two
assumptions. The first, that a breach, on his part, of the
'contract' justified ipso facto revolt on theirs; the second,
that their allegiance to the king was a purely feudal
relation, and, as such, could be thrown off at any moment by
performing the famous diffidatio. This essential feature of
continental feudalism had been rigidly excluded by the
Conqueror. He had taken advantage, as is well known, of his
position as an English king, to extort an allegiance from his
Norman followers more absolute than he could have claimed as
their feudal lord. It was to Stephen's peculiar position that
was due the introduction for a time of this pernicious
principle into England. ... Passing now to the other point,
the existence of a rival claim, we approach a subject of great
interest, the theory of the succession to the English Crown at
what may be termed the crisis of transition from the principle
of election (within the royal house) to that of hereditary
right according to feudal rules. For the right view on this
subject, we turn, as ever, to Dr. Stubbs, who, with his usual
sound judgment, writes thus of the Norman period:--'The crown
then continued to be elective. ... But whilst the elective
principle was maintained in its fulness where it was necessary
or possible to maintain it, it is quite certain that the right
of inheritance, and inheritance as primogeniture, was
recognized as coordinate. ... The measures taken by Henry I.
for securing the crown to his own children, whilst they prove
the acceptance of the hereditary principle, prove also the
importance of strengthening it by the recognition of the
elective theory.' Mr. Freeman, though writing with a strong
bias in favour of the elective theory, is fully justified in
his main argument, namely, that Stephen 'was no usurper in the
sense in which the word is vulgarly used.' He urges,
apparently with perfect truth, that Stephen's offence, in the
eyes of his contemporaries, lay in his breaking his solemn
oath, and not in his supplanting a rightful heir. And he aptly
suggests that the wretchedness of his reign may have hastened
the growth of that new belief in the divine right of the heir
to the throne, which first appears under Henry II., and in the
pages of William of Newburgh. So far as Stephen is concerned the
case is clear enough. But we have also to consider the
Empress. On what did she base her claim? I think that, as
implied in Dr. Stubbs' words, she based it on a double, not a
single, ground. She claimed the kingdom as King Henry's
daughter ('regis Henrici filia '), but she claimed it further
because the succession had been assured to her by oath ('sibi
juratum') as such. It is important to observe that the oath in
question can in no way be regarded in the light of an
election. ... The Empress and her partisans must have largely,
to say the least, based their claim on her right to the throne
as her father's heir, and ... she and they appealed to the
oath as the admission and recognition of that right, rather
than as partaking in any way whatever of the character of a
free election. ... The sex of the Empress was the drawback to
her claim. Had her brother lived, there can be little question
that he would, as a matter of course, have succeeded his
father at his death. Or again, had Henry II. been old enough
to succeed his grandfather, he would, we may be sure, have
done so. ... Broadly speaking, to sum up the evidence here
collected, it tends to the belief that the obsolescence of the
right of election to the English crown presents considerable
analogy to that of canonical election in the case of English
bishoprics. In both cases a free election degenerated into a
mere assent to a choice already made. We see the process of
change already in full operation when Henry I. endeavours to
extort beforehand from the magnates their assent to his
daughter's succession, and when they subsequently complain of
this attempt to dictate to them on the subject. We catch sight
of it again when his daughter bases her claim to the crown,
not on any free election, but on her rights as her father's
heir, confirmed by the above assent. We see it, lastly, when
Stephen, though owing his crown to election, claims to rule by
Divine right ('Dei gratia'), and attempts to reduce that
election to nothing more than a national 'assent' to his
succession. Obviously, the whole question turned on whether
the election was to be held first, or was to be a mere
ratification of a choice already made. ... In comparing
Stephen with his successor the difference between their
circumstances has been insufficiently allowed for. At
Stephen's accession, thirty years of legal and financial
oppression had rendered unpopular the power of the Crown, and
had led to an impatience of official restraint which opened
the path to a feudal reaction: at the accession of Henry, on
the contrary, the evils of an enfeebled administration and of
feudalism run mad had made all men eager for the advent of a
strong king, and had prepared them to welcome the introduction
of his centralizing administrative reforms. He anticipated the
position of the house of Tudor at the close of the Wars of the
Roses, and combined with it the advantages which Charles II.
derived from the Puritan tyranny. Again, Stephen was hampered
from the first by his weak position as a king on sufferance,
whereas Henry came to his work unhampered by compact or
concession. Lastly, Stephen was confronted throughout by a
rival claimant, who formed a splendid rallying-point for all
the discontent in his realm: but Henry reigned for as long as
Stephen without a rival to trouble him; and when he found at
length a rival in his own son, a claim far weaker than that
which had threatened his predecessor seemed likely for a time
to break his power as effectually as the followers of the
Empress had broken that of Stephen. He may only, indeed, have
owed his escape to that efficient administration which years
of strength and safety had given him the time to construct. It
in no way follows from these considerations that Henry was not
superior to Stephen; but it does, surely, suggest itself that
Stephen's disadvantages were great, and that had he enjoyed
better fortune, we might have heard less of his defects."
_J. H. Round,
Geoffrey de Mandeville,
chapter. 1._
ALSO IN:
_Mrs. J. R. Green,
Henry the Second,
chapter 1._
See, also,
STANDARD, BATTLE OF THE (A. D. 1137).
{799}
ENGLAND: A. D. 1154-1189.
Henry II., the first of the Angevin kings (Plantagenets)
and his empire.
Henry II., who came to the English throne on Stephen's death,
was already, by the death of his father, Geoffrey, Count of
Anjou, the head of the great house of Anjou, in France. From
his father he inherited Anjou, Touraine and Maine; through his
mother, Matilda, daughter of Henry I., he received the dukedom
of Normandy as well as the kingdom of England; by marriage
with Eleanor, of Aquitaine, or Guienne, he added to his empire
the princely domain which included Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge,
Perigord, Limousin, Angoumois, with claims of suzerainty over
Auvergne and Toulouse. "Henry found himself at twenty-one
ruler of dominions such as no king before him had ever dreamed
of uniting. He was master of both sides of the English
Channel, and by his alliance with his uncle, the Count of
Flanders, he had command of the French coast from the Scheldt
to the Pyrenees, while his claims on Toulouse would carry him
to the shores of the Mediterranean. His subjects told with
pride how 'his empire reached from the Arctic Ocean to the
Pyrenees'; there was no monarch save the Emperor himself who
ruled over such vast domains. ... His aim [a few years Inter]
seems to have been to rival in some sort the Empire of the
West, and to reign as an over-king, with sub-kings of his
various provinces, and England as one of them, around him. He
was connected with all the great ruling houses. ... England
was forced out of her old isolation; her interest in the world
without was suddenly awakened. English scholars thronged the
foreign universities; English chroniclers questioned
travellers, scholars, ambassadors, as to what was passing
abroad.' The influence of English learning and English
statecraft made itself felt all over Europe. Never, perhaps,
in all the history of England was there a time when Englishmen
played so great a part abroad." The king who gathered this
wide, incongruous empire under his sceptre, by mere
circumstances of birth and marriage, proved strangely equal,
in many respects, to its greatness. "He was a foreign king who
never spoke the English tongue, who lived and moved for the
most part in a foreign camp, surrounded with a motley host of
Brabançons and hirelings. ... It was under the rule of a
foreigner such as this, however, that the races of conquerors
and conquered in England first learnt to feel that they were
one. It was by his power that England, Scotland and Ireland
were brought to some vague acknowledgement of a common
suzerain lord, and the foundations laid of the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland. It was he who abolished
feudalism as a system of government, and left it little more
than a system of land tenure. It was he who defined the
relations established between Church and State, and decreed
that in England churchman as well as baron was to be held
under the Common Law. ... His reforms established the judicial
system whose main outlines have been preserved to our own day.
It was through his 'Constitutions' and his 'Assizes' that it
came to pass that over all the world the English-speaking
races are governed by English and not by Roman law. It was by
his genius for government that the servants of the royal
household became transformed into Ministers of State. It was
he who gave England a foreign policy which decided our
continental relations for seven hundred years. The impress
which the personality of Henry II. left upon his time meets us
wherever we turn."
_Mrs. J. R. Green,
Henry the Second,
chapters 1-2._
Henry II. and his two sons, Richard I. (Cœur de Lion), and
John, are distinguished, sometimes, as the Angevin kings, or
kings of the House of Anjou, and sometimes as the
Plantagenets, the latter name being derived from a boyish
habit ascribed to Henry's father, Count Geoffrey, of "adorning
his cap with a sprig of 'plantagenista,' the broom which in
early summer makes the open country of Anjou and Maine a blaze
of living gold." Richard retained and ruled the great realm of
his father; but John lost most of his foreign inheritance,
including Normandy, and became the unwilling benefactor of
England by stripping her kings of alien interests and alien
powers and bending their necks to Magna Charta.
_K. Norgate,
England under the Angevin Kings._
ALSO IN:
_W. Stubbs,
The Early Plantagenets._
See, also,
AQUITAINE (GUIENNE): A. D. 1137-1152;
IRELAND: A. D. 1169-1175.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1162-1170.
Conflict of King and Church.
The Constitutions of Clarendon.
Murder of Archbishop Becket.