II. THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN MONARCHY (1066-1199)

William the Conqueror.

When William of Normandy was crowned at Westminster by Archbishop Aldred

of York and acknowledged as king by the witan, it is certain that few

Englishmen understood the full importance of the occasion. It is

probable that most men recalled the election of Canute, and supposed

that the accession of the one alien sovereign would have no more

permanent effect on the realm than that of the other. The rule of the

Danish king and his two short-lived sons had caused no break in the

social or constitutional history of England. Canute had become an

Englishman, had accepted all the old institutions of the nation, had

dismissed his host of vikings, and had ruled like a native king and for

the most part with native ministers. Within twenty years of his

accession the disasters and calamities which had preceded his triumph

had been forgotten, and the national life was running quietly in its old

channels. But the accession of William the Bastard meant something very

different. Canute had been an impressionable lad of eighteen or nineteen

when he was crowned; he was ready and eager to learn and to forget. He

had found himself confronted in England with a higher civilization and a

more advanced social organization than those which he had known in his

boyhood, and he accepted them with alacrity, feeling that he was thereby

getting advantage. With William the Norman all was different: he was a

man well on in middle age, too old to adapt himself easily to new

surroundings, even if he had been willing to do so. He never even learnt

the language of his English subjects, the first step to comprehending

their needs and their views. Moreover, unlike his Danish predecessor, he

looked down upon the English from the plane of a higher civilization;

the Normans regarded the conquered nation as barbarous and boorish. The

difference in customs and culture between the dwellers on the two sides

of the Channel was sufficient to make this possible; though it is hard

to discern any adequate justification for the Norman attitude. Probably

the bar of language was the most prominent cause of estrangement. In

five generations the viking settlers of Normandy had not only completely

forgotten their old Scandinavian tongue, but had come to look upon those

who spoke the kindred English idiom not only as aliens but as inferiors.

For three centuries French remained the court speech, and the mark of

civilization and gentility.

Progress of Norman Settlement.

Despite all this the Conquest would not have had its actual results if

William, like Canute, had been able to dismiss his conquering army, and

to refrain from a general policy of confiscation. But he had won his

crown not as duke of Normandy, but as the head of a band of cosmopolitan

adventurers, who had to be rewarded with land in England. Some few

received their pay in hard cash, and went off to other wars; but the

large majority, Breton and Angevin, French and Fleming, no less than

Norman, wanted land. William could only provide it by a wholesale

confiscation of the estates of all the thegnhood who had followed the

house of Godwine. Almost his first act was to seize on these lands, and

to distribute them among his followers. In the regions of the South,

which had supplied the army that fell at Hastings, at least four-fifths

of the soil passed to new masters. The dispossessed heirs of the old

owners had either to sink to the condition of peasants, or to throw

themselves upon the world and seek new homes. The friction and hatred

thus caused were bitter and long enduring. And this same system of

confiscation was gradually extended to the rest of England. At first the

English landowners who had not actually served in Harold's host were

permitted to "buy back their lands," by paying a heavy fine to the new

king and doing him homage. What would have happened supposing that

England had made no further stir, and had not vexed William by

rebellion, it is impossible to say. But, as a matter of fact, during the

first few years of his reign one district after another took up arms and

endeavoured to cast out the stranger. As it became gradually evident

that William's whole system of government was to be on new and

distasteful lines, the English of the Midlands, the North and the West

all went into rebellion. The risings were sporadic, ill-organized, badly

led, for each section of the realm fought for its own hand. In some

parts the insurrections were in favour of the sons of Harold, in others

Edgar AEtheling was acclaimed as king: and while the unwise earls Edwin

and Morcar fought for their own hand, the Anglo-Danes of the East sent

for Sweyn, king of Denmark, who proved of small help, for he abode but a

short space in England, and went off after sacking the great abbey of

Peterborough and committing other outrages. The rebels cut up several

Norman garrisons, and gave King William much trouble for some years, but

they could never face him in battle. Their last stronghold, the

marsh-fortress of Ely, surrendered in 1071, and not long after their

most stubborn chief, Hereward "the Wake," the leader of the fenmen, laid

down his arms and became King William's man (see HEREWARD).

The only result of the long series of insurrections was to provoke the

king to a cruelty which he had not at first shown, and to give him an

excuse for confiscating and dividing among his foreign knights and

barons the immense majority of the estates of the English thegnhood.

William could be pitiless when provoked; to punish the men of the North

for persistent rebellion and the destruction of his garrison at York, he

harried the whole countryside from the Aire to the Tees with such

remorseless ferocity that it did not recover its ancient prosperity for

centuries. The population was absolutely exterminated, and the great

Domesday survey, made nearly twenty years later, shows the greater part

of Yorkshire as "waste." This act was exceptional only in its extent:

the king was as cruel on a smaller scale elsewhere, and not contented

with the liberal use of the axe and the rope was wont to inflict his

favourite punishments of blinding and mutilation on a most reckless

scale.

The net result of the king's revenge on the rebellious English was that

by 1075 the old governing class had almost entirely disappeared, and

that their lands, from the Channel to the Tweed, had everywhere been

distributed to new holders. To a great extent the same horde of

continental adventurers who had obtained the first batch of grants in

Wessex and Kent were also the recipients of the later confiscations, so

that their newly acquired estates were scattered all over England. Many

of them came to own land in ten or a dozen counties remote from each

other, a fact which was of the greatest importance in determining the

character of English feudalism. While abroad the great vassals of the

crown generally held their property in compact blocks, in England their

power was weakened by the dispersion of their lands. This tendency was

assisted by the fact that even when the king, as was his custom,

transferred to a Norman the estates of an English landowner just as they

stood, those estates were already for the most part not conterminous.

Even before the Conquest the lands of the magnates were to a large

extent held in scattered units, not in solid patches. Only in two cases

did William establish lordships of compact strength, and these were

created for the special purpose of guarding the turbulent Welsh March.

The "palatine" earls of Chester and Shrewsbury were not only endowed

with special powers and rights of jurisdiction, but were almost the only

tenants-in-chief within their respective shires. These rare exceptions

prove the general rule: William probably foresaw the dangers of such

accumulation of territory in private hands. He made a complete end of

the old English system by which great earls ruled many shires: there

were to be no Godwines or Leofrics under the Norman rule. This

particular feudal danger was avoided: where earls were created, and they

were but few, their authority was usually restricted to a single shire.

Feudalism.

It remains to speak of the most important change which William's

rearrangements made in the polity of England. It is of course untrue to

say--as was so often done by early historians--that he "introduced the

feudal system into England." In some aspects feudalism was already in

the land before he arrived: in others it may be said that it was never

introduced at all. He did not introduce the practice by which the small

man commended himself to the great man, and in return for his protection

divested himself of the full ownership of his own land, and became a

customary tenant in what later ages called a "manor." That system was

already in full operation in England before the Conquest. In some

districts the wholly free small landowner had already disappeared,

though in the regions which had formed the Danelagh he was still to be

found in large numbers. Nor did William introduce the system of great

earldoms, passing from father to son, which gave over-great subjects a

hereditary grip on the countryside. On the contrary, as has been already

said, he did much to check that tendency, which had already developed in

England.

What he really did do was to reconstruct society on the essentially

feudal theory that the land was a gift from the king, held on conditions

of homage and military service. The duties which under the old system

were national obligations resting on the individual as a citizen, he

made into duties depending on the relation between the king as supreme

landowner and the subject as tenant of the land. Military service and

the paying of the feudal taxes--aids, reliefs, &c.--are incidents of the

bargain between the crown and the grantee to whom land has been given.

That grantee, the tenant-in-chief, has the right to demand from his

sub-tenants, to whom he has given out fractions of his estate, the same

dues that the king exacts from himself. As at least four-fifths of the

land of England had fallen into the king's hands between 1066 and 1074,

and had been actually regranted to new owners--foreigners to whom the

feudal system was the only conceivable organization of political

existence--the change was not only easy but natural. The few surviving

English landholders had to fall into line with the newcomers. England,

in short, was reorganized into a state of the continental type, but one

differing from France or Germany in that the crown had not lost so many

of its regalities as abroad, and that even the greater earls had less

power than the ordinary continental tenant-in-chief.

The English people became aware of this transformation in the "theory of

the state" mainly through the fact that the new tenants-in-chief,

bringing with them the ideas in which they had been reared, failed to

comprehend the rather complicated status of the rural population on this

side of the Channel. To the French or Norman knight all peasants on his

manor seemed to be villeins, and he failed to understand the distinction

between freemen who had personally commended themselves to his English

predecessor but still owned their land, and the mass of ordinary servile

tenants. There can be no doubt that the first effect of the Conquest was

that the upper strata of the agricultural classes lost the comparative

independence which they had hitherto enjoyed, and were in many cases

depressed to the level of their inferiors. The number of freemen began

to decrease, from the encroachments of the landowner, and continued to

dwindle for many years: even in districts where Domesday Book shows them

surviving in considerable numbers, it is clear that a generation or two

later they had largely disappeared, and became merged in the villein

class.

Domesday.

In this sense, therefore, England was turned into a feudal state by the

results of the work of William the Conqueror. But it would be wrong to

assert that all traces of the ancient social organization of the realm

were swept away. The old Saxon customs were not forgotten, though they

might in many cases be twisted to fit new surroundings. Indeed William

and his successors not infrequently caused them to be collected and put

on record. The famous Domesday Book (q.v.) of 1086 is in its essential

nature an inquiry into the state of England at the moment of the

Conquest, compiled in order that the king may have a full knowledge of

the rights that he possesses as the heir of King Edward. Being primarily

intended to facilitate the levy of taxation, it dwells more on the

details of the actual wealth and resources of the country in 1066 and

1086, and less on the laws and customs that governed the distribution of

that wealth, than could have been wished. But it is nevertheless a

monument of the permanence of the old English institutions, even after

the ownership of four-fifths of the soil has been changed. The king

inquires into the state of things in 1066 because it is on that state of

things that his rights of taxation depend. He does not claim to have

rearranged the whole realm on a new basis, or to be levying his revenue

on a new assessment made at his own pleasure. Nor is it in the sphere of

taxation alone that William's organization of the realm stands on the

old English customs. In the military sphere, though his normal army is

the feudal force composed of the tenants-in-chief and the knights whom

they have enfeoffed, he retains the power to call out the _fyrd_, the

old national _levee en masse_, without regard to whether its members are

freemen or villeins of some lord. And in judicial matters the higher

rights of royal justice remain intact, except in the few cases where

special privileges have been granted to one or two palatine earls. The

villein must sue in his lord's manorial courts, but he is also subject

to the royal courts of hundred and shire. The machinery of the local

courts survives for the most part intact.

Position of the Church.

William's dealings with the Church of England were no less important

than his dealings with social organization. In the earlier years of his

reign he set himself to get rid of the whole of the upper hierarchy, in

order to replace them by Normans. In 1070 Archbishop Stigand was deposed

as having been uncanonically chosen, and six or seven other bishops

after him. All the vacancies, as well as those which kept occurring

during the next few years, were immediately filled up with foreigners.

By the time that William had been ten years on the throne there were

only three English bishops left. At his death there was only one--the

saintly Wulfstan of Worcester. The same process was carried out with

regard to abbacies, and indeed with all important places of

ecclesiastical preferment. By 1080 the English Church was officered

entirely by aliens. Just as with the lay landholders, the change of

_personnel_ made a vast difference, not so much in the legal position of

the new-comers as in the way in which they regarded their office. The

outlook of a Norman bishop was as unlike that of his English predecessor

as that of a Norman baron. The English Church had got out of touch with

the ideals and the spiritual movements of the other Western churches. In

especial the great monastic revival which had started from the abbey of

Cluny and spread all over France, Italy and Germany had hardly touched

this island. The continental churchmen of the 11th century were brimming

over with ascetic zeal and militant energy, while the majority of the

English hierarchy were slack and easy-going. The typical faults of the

dark ages, pluralism, simony, lax observation of the clerical rules,

contented ignorance, worldliness in every aspect, were all too prevalent

in England. There can be no doubt that the greater part of William's

nominees were better men than those who preceded them; his great

archbishop, Lanfranc, though a busy statesman, was also an energetic

reformer and a man of holy life. Osmund, Remigius and others of the

first post-Conquest bishops have left a good name behind them. The

condition of the church alike in the matter of spiritual zeal, of hard

work and of learning was much improved. But there was a danger behind

this revival; for the reformers of the 11th century, in their zeal for

establishing the Kingdom of God on earth, were not content with raising

the moral and intellectual standards prevailing in Christendom, but

sought to bring the whole scheme of life under the church, by asserting

the absolute supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal power,

wherever the two came in contact or overlapped. The result, since the

feudal and ecclesiastical systems had become closely interwoven, and the

frontier between the religious and secular spheres must ever be vague

and undefined, was the conflict between the spiritual and temporal

powers which, for two centuries to come, was to tear Europe into warring

factions (see the articles CHURCH HISTORY; PAPACY; INVESTITURE). The

Norman Conquest of England was contemporaneous with the supreme

influence of the greatest exponent of the theory of ecclesiastical

supremacy, the archdeacon Hildebrand, who in 1073 mounted the papal

throne as Gregory VII. (q.v.). William, despite all his personal faults,

was a sincerely pious man, but it could not be expected that he would

acquiesce in these new developments of the religious reformation which

he had done his best to forward. Hence we find a divided purpose in the

policy which he pursued with regard to church affairs. He endeavoured to

keep on the best terms with the papacy: he welcomed legates and

frequently consulted the pope on purely spiritual matters. He even took

the hazardous step of separating ecclesiastical courts and lay courts,

giving the church leave to establish separate tribunals of her own, a

right which she had never possessed in Saxon England. The spiritual

jurisdiction of the bishop had hitherto been exercised in the ordinary

national courts, with lay assessors frequently taking part in the

proceedings, and mixing their dooms with the clergy's canonical

decisions. William in 1076 granted the church a completely independent

set of courts, a step which his successors were to regret for many a

generation.

At the same time, however, he was not blind to the possibilities of

papal interference in domestic matters, and of the danger of conflict

between the crown and the recently-strengthened clerical order. To guard

against them he laid down three general rules: (1) that no one should be

recognized as pope in England till he had himself taken cognizance of

the papal election, and that no papal letters should be brought into the

realm without his leave; (2) that no decisions of the English

ecclesiastical synods should be held valid till he had examined and

sanctioned them; (3) that none of his barons or ministers should be

excommunicated unless he approved of such punishment being inflicted on

them. These rules seem to argue a deeply rooted distrust of the possible

encroachments of the papacy on the power of the state. The question of

ecclesiastic patronage, which was to be the source of the first great

quarrel between the crown and the church in the next generation, is not

touched upon. William retained in his own hands the choice of bishops

and abbots, and Alexander II. and Gregory VII. seem to have made no

objection to his doing so, in spite of the claim that free election was

the only canonical way of filling vacancies. The Conqueror was allowed

for his lifetime to do as he pleased, since he was recognized as a true

friend of the church. But the question was only deferred and not

settled.

William's later reign.

The political history of William's later years is unimportant; his main

energy was absorbed in the task of holding down and organizing his new

kingdom. His rather precarious conquest of the county of Maine, his long

quarrels with Philip I. of France, who suborned against him his

undutiful and rebellious eldest son Robert, his negotiation with

Flanders and Germany, deserve no more than a mention. It is more

necessary to point out that he reasserted on at least one occasion (when

King Malcolm Canmore did him homage) the old suzerainty of the English

kings over Scotland. He also began that encroachment on the borders of

Wales which was to continue with small interruptions for the next two

centuries. The advance was begun by his great vassals, the earls of

Chester, Shrewsbury and Hereford, all of whom occupied new districts on

the edge of the mountains of Powys and Gwynedd. William himself led an

expedition as far as St Davids in 1081, and founded Cardiff Castle to

mark the boundary of his realm north of the Bristol Channel.

Perhaps the most noteworthy event of the second portion of the

Conqueror's reign was a rebellion which, though it made no head and was

easily suppressed, marks the commencement of that feudal danger which

was to be the constant trouble of the English kings for the next three

generations. Two of the greatest of his foreign magnates, Roger, earl of

Hereford, and Ralph, earl of Norfolk, rose against him in 1075, with no

better cause than personal grievances and ambitions. He put them down

with ease; the one was imprisoned for life, the other driven into exile,

while Waltheof, the last of the English earls, who had dabbled in a

hesitating way in this plot, was executed. There was never any serious

danger, but the fact that under the new regime baronial rebellion was

possible, despite of all William's advantages over other feudal kings,

and despite of the fact that the rebels were hardly yet settled firmly

into their new estates, had a sinister import for the future of England.

With the new monarchy there had come into England the anarchic spirit of

continental feudalism. If such a man as the Conqueror did not overawe

it, what was to be expected in the reigns of his successors? William had

introduced into his new realm alike the barons, with their personal

ambition, and the clerics of the school of Hildebrand, with their

intense jealousy for the rights of the church. The tale of the dealings

of his descendants with these two classes of opponents constitutes the

greater part of English history for a full century.

William Rufus.

William died at Rouen on the 7th of September 1087; on his death-bed he

expressed his wish that Normandy should pass to his elder son, Robert,

in spite of all his rebellions, but gave his second son William (known

by the nickname of Rufus) the crown of England, and sent him thither

with commendatory letters to archbishop Lanfranc and his other

ministers. There was at first no sign of opposition to the will of the

late king, and William Rufus was crowned within three weeks of his

father's decease. But the results of the Conquest had made it hard to

tear England and Normandy apart. Almost every baron in the duchy was now

the possessor of a smaller or a greater grant of lands in the kingdom,

and the possibility of serving two masters was as small in 1087 as at

any other period of the world's history. By dividing his two states

between his sons the Conqueror undid his own work, and left to his

subjects the certainty of civil war. For the brothers Robert and William

were, and always had been, enemies, and every intriguing baron had

before him the tempting prospect of aggrandizing himself, by making his

allegiance to one of the brothers serve as an excuse for betraying the

other. Robert was thriftless, volatile and easy-going, a good knight but

a most incompetent sovereign. These very facts commended him to the more

turbulent section of the baronage; if he succeeded to the whole of the

Conqueror's heritage they would have every opportunity of enjoying

freedom from all governance. William's private character was detestable:

he was cruel, lascivious, greedy of gain, a habitual breaker of oaths

and promises, ungrateful and irreligious. But he was cunning,

strong-handed and energetic; clearly the "Red King" would be an

undesirable master to those who loved feudal anarchy. Hence every

turbulent baron in England soon came to the conclusion that Robert was

the sovereign whom his heart desired.

The greater part of the reign of William II. was taken up with his fight

against the feudal danger. Before he had been six months on the throne

he was attacked by a league comprising more than half the baronage, and

headed by his uncles, bishop Odo of Bayeux and Robert of Mortain. They

used the name of the duke of Normandy and had secured his promise to

cross the Channel for their assistance. A less capable and unscrupulous

king than Rufus might have been swept away, for the rising burst out

simultaneously in nearly every corner of the realm. But he made head

against it with the aid of mercenary bands, the loyal minority of the

barons, and the shire-levies of his English subjects. When he summoned

out the fyrd they came in great force to his aid, not so much because

they trusted in the promises of good governance and reduced taxation

which he made, but because they saw that a horde of greedy barons would

be worse to serve than a single king, however hard and selfish he might

be. With their assistance William fought down the rebels, expelled his

uncle Odo and several other leaders from the realm, confiscated a

certain amount of estates, and then pardoned the remainder of the

rebels. Such mercy, as he was to discover, was misplaced. In 1095 the

same body of barons made a second and a more formidable rising, headed

by the earls of Shrewsbury, Eu and Northumberland. It was put down with

the same decisive energy that William had shown in 1088, and this time

he was merciless; he blinded and mutilated William of Eu, shut up

Mowbray of Northumberland for life in a monastery, and hanged many men

of lesser rank. Of the other rebels some were deprived of their English

estates altogether, others restored to part of them after paying

crushing fines. This second feudal rebellion was only a distraction to

William from his war with his brother Robert, which continued

intermittently all through the earlier years of his reign. It was raging

from 1088 to 1091, and again from 1093 to 1096, when Robert tired of the

losing game, pawned his duchy to his brother and went off on the First

Crusade. Down to this moment William's position had been somewhat

precarious; with the Norman war generally on hand, feudal rebellion

always imminent, and Scottish invasions occasionally to be repelled, he

had no easy life. But he fought through his troubles, conquered

Cumberland from the Scots (1092), in dealing with his domestic enemies

used cunning where force failed, and generally got his will in the end.

His rule was expensive, and he made himself hated by every class of his

subjects, baronage, clergy and people alike, by his ingenious and

oppressive taxation. His chosen instrument, a clerical lawyer named

Ranulf Flambard (q.v.), whom he presently made bishop of Durham, was

shameless in his methods of twisting feudal or national law to the

detriment of the taxpayer. William supported him in every device,

however unjust, with a cynical frankness which was the distinguishing

trait of his character; for he loved to display openly all the vices and

meannesses which most men take care to disguise. In dealing with the

baronage Ranulf and his master extorted excessive and arbitrary

"reliefs" whenever land passed in succession to heirs. When the church

was a landholder their conduct was even more unwarrantable; every clerk

installed in a new preferment was forced to pay a large sum down--which

in that age was considered a clear case of simony by all conscientious

men. But in addition the king kept all wealthy posts, such as

bishoprics and abbacies, vacant for years at a time and appropriated the

revenue meanwhile.

Anselm.

This policy, when pursued with regard to the archbishopric of

Canterbury, brought on Rufus the most troublesome of his quarrels. When

the wise primate Lanfranc, his father's friend, died in 1089, he made no

appointment till 1093, extracting meanwhile great plunder from the see.

In a moment of sickness, when his conscience was for a space troubling

him or his will was weak, he nominated the saintly Anselm (q.v.) to the

archbishopric. When enthroned the new primate refused to make the

enormous gift which the king expected from every recipient of

preferment. Soon after he began to press for leave to hold a national

synod, and when it was denied him, spoke out boldly on the personal

vices as well as the immoral policy of the king. From this time William

and Anselm became open enemies. They fought first upon the question of

acknowledging Urban II. as pope--for the king, taking advantage of the

fact that there was an antipope in existence, refused to allow that

there was any certain and legitimate head of the Western church at the

moment. Then, after William had reluctantly yielded on this point, the

far more important question of lay investitures cropped up. The council

of Clermont (Nov. 1095) had just issued its famous decree to the effect

that bishops must be chosen by free election, and not invested with

their spiritual insignia or enfeoffed with their estates by the hands of

a secular prince. Anselm felt himself obliged to accept this decision,

and refused to accept his own pallium from William when Urban sent it

across the sea by the hands of a legate. The king replied by harrying

him on charges of having failed in his feudal obligation to provide

well-equipped knights for a Welsh expedition, and imposed ruinous fines

on him. It was even said that his life was threatened, and he fled to

Rome in 1097, not to return till his adversary was dead. There was much

to be said for the theory of the king as to the relations between church

and state; he was indeed only carrying on in a harsh form his father's

old policy. But the fact that he was a tyrant and an evil-liver, while

Anselm was a saint, so much influenced public opinion that William was

universally regarded as in the wrong, and the sympathy of the laity no

less than the clergy was with the archbishop. For the remaining three

years of his life the Red King was considered to be in a state of

reprobation and at open strife with righteousness.

Yet so far as secular affairs went William seemed prosperous enough.

Since his brother had pawned the duchy of Normandy to him, so that he

reigned at Rouen no less than at London, the danger of rebellion was

almost removed. His foreign policy was successful: he installed a

nominee of his own, Edgar, the son of Malcolm Canmore, on the throne of

Scotland (1097); he reconquered Maine, which his brother Robert had

lost; he made successful war upon King Philip of France. His barons

subdued much of South Wales, though his own expeditions into North

Wales, which he had designed to conquer and annex, had a less fortunate

ending. He dreamed, we are told, of attacking Ireland, even of crowning

himself king at Paris. But on the 2nd of August 1100 he was suddenly cut

off in the midst of his sins. While hunting with some of his godless

companions in the New Forest, he was struck by an arrow, unskilfully

shot by one of the party. The knight Walter Tyrrell, who was

persistently accused of being the author of his master's death, as

persistently denied his responsibility for it; and whether the arrow was

his or no, it was not alleged that malice guided it. William's

favourites had all to lose by his death.

Succession of Henry I.

The king's death was unexpected: he was only in his fortieth year, and

men's minds had not even begun to ponder over the question of who would

succeed him. The crown of England was left vacant for the boldest

kinsman to snatch at, if he dared. William had two surviving brothers,

beside several nephews. Robert's claim seemed the more likely to

succeed, for not only was he the elder, but England was full of barons

who desired his accession, and had already taken up arms for him in 1087

or 1095. But he was far away--being at the moment on his return journey

from Jerusalem--while on the spot was his brother Henry, an ambitious

prince, whose previous efforts to secure himself a territorial

endowment had failed more from ill-luck than from want of enterprise or

ability. Seeing his opportunity, Henry left his brother's body unburied,

rode straight off to Winchester with a handful of companions, and seized

the royal treasure. This and his ready tongue were the main arguments by

which he convinced the few magnates present, and persuaded them to back

him, despite the protests of some supporters of Robert. There was hardly

the semblance of an election, and the earl of Warwick and the chancellor

William Giffard were almost the only persons of importance on the spot.

But Henry, once hailed as king, rode hard for London and persuaded

bishop Maurice to crown him without delay at Westminster, since the

primate Anselm was absent beyond seas. He certainly lost no time: Rufus

was shot on Thursday, the 2nd of August--his successor was crowned on

Sunday the 5th of August! The realm heard almost by the same messengers

that it had lost one king and that it had gained another.

Henry at once issued a proclamation and charter promising the redress of

all the grievances with which his brother had afflicted his feudal

tenants, the clergy and the whole nation. He would keep the ancient laws

of King Edward, as amended by his father the Conqueror, and give all men

good justice. These promises he observed more faithfully than Norman

kings were wont to do; if the pledge was not redeemed in every detail,

he yet kept England free from anarchy, abandoned the arbitrary and

unjust taxation of his brother, and set up a government that worked by

rule and order, not by the fits and starts of tyrannical caprice. He was

a man of a cold and hard disposition, but full of practical wisdom, and

conscious that his precarious claim to the crown must be secured by

winning the confidence of his subjects. Almost the first and quite the

wisest of his inspirations was to wed a princess of the old English

line--Edith,[1] the niece of Edgar AEtheling, the child of his sister

Margaret of Scotland and Malcolm Canmore. The match, though his Norman

barons sneered at it, gave him the hearts of all his English subjects,

who supported him with enthusiasm, and not merely (as had been the case

with Rufus) because they saw that a strong king would oppress them less

than a factious and turbulent baronage. Henry won much applause at the

same time by filling up all the bishoprics and abbacies which his

brother had kept so long vacant, by inviting the exiled Anselm to return

to England, and by imprisoning William's odious minister Ranulf

Flambard. He had just time to create a favourable impression by his

first proceedings, when his brother Robert, who had returned from

Palestine and resumed possession of Normandy, landed at Portsmouth to

claim the crown and to rouse his partisans among the English baronage.

Henry bought him off, before the would-be rebels had time to join him,

by promising him an annual tribute of 3000 marks and surrendering to him

all his estates in Normandy (1101). His policy seemed tame and cautious,

but was entirely justifiable, for within a few months of Robert's

departure the inevitable feudal rebellion broke out. If the duke and his

army had been on the spot to support it, things might have gone hardly

with the king. The rising was led by Robert of Belesme, earl of

Shrewsbury, a petty tyrant of the most ruffianly type, the terror of the

Welsh marches. He was backed by his kinsmen and many other barons, but

proved unable to stand before the king, who was loyally supported by the

English shire levies. After taking the strong castles of Arundel,

Tickhill, Bridgnorth and Shrewsbury, Henry forced the rebels to submit.

He confiscated their estates and drove them out of the realm; they fled

for the most part to Normandy, to spur on duke Robert to make another

bid for the English crown. From the broad lands which they forfeited

Henry made haste to reward his own servants, new men who owed all to him

and served him faithfully. From them he chose the sheriffs, castellans

and councillors through whom he administered the realm during the rest

of his long reign.

This minor official nobility was the strength of the crown, and was

sharply divided in spirit and ambition from the older feudal aristocracy

which descended from the original adventurers who had followed William

the Conqueror. Yet the latter still remained strong enough to constitute

a danger to the crown whenever it should fall to a king less wary and

resolute than Henry himself.

Henry was by nature more of an administrator and organizer than of a

fighting man. He was a competent soldier, but his wish was rather to be

a strong king at home than a great conqueror abroad. Nevertheless he was

driven by the logic of events to attack Normandy, for as long as his

brother reigned there, and as long as many English barons retained great

holdings on both sides of the Channel and were subjects of the duke as

well as of the king, intrigues and plots never ceased. The Norman war

ended in the battle of Tenchebrai (Sept. 28, 1106), where Duke Robert

was taken prisoner. His brother shut him up in honourable confinement

for the rest of his life, though otherwise he was not ill-treated. For

the rest of his reign Henry was ruler of all the old dominions of the

Conqueror, and none of his subjects could cloak disloyalty by the

pretence of owing a divided allegiance to two masters. With this he was

content, and made no great effort to extend his dominions farther; his

desire was to reign as a true king in England and Normandy, rather than

to build up a loosely compacted empire around them.

Henry's difficulties with the church.

Throughout the time of Henry's Norman war, he was engaged in a tiresome

controversy with the primate on the question of lay investitures, the

continuation of the struggle which had begun in his brother's reign.

Every English king for five generations had to face the danger from the

church, no less than the danger from the barons. Anselm had come back

from Rome confirmed in the theories for which he had contended with

Rufus--nay, taught to extend them to a further extreme. He now

maintained not only that it was a sin that kings should invest prelates

with their spiritual insignia, the pallium, the staff, the ring, but

claimed that no clerk ought to do homage to the king for the lands of

his benefice, though he himself seven years before had not scrupled to

make his oath to his earlier master. He now refused to swear allegiance

to the new monarch, though he had recalled him and had restored him to

the possession of his see. He also refused to consecrate Henry's

nominees to certain bishoprics and abbacies on the ground that they had

not been chosen by free election by their chapters or their monks. The

king was loath to take up the quarrel, for he highly respected the

archbishop; yet he was still more loath to surrender the ancient claims

and privileges of the crown. Anselm was equally reluctant to force

matters to an open breach, yet would not shift from his position. There

followed an interminable series of arguments, interrupted by truces,

till at last Anselm, at the king's suggestion, went to Rome to see if

the pope could arrange some _modus vivendi_. Paschal II. for some time

refused to withdraw from his fixed theory of the relation of church and

state, and Anselm, in despair, preferred to remain abroad rather than to

press matters to the rupture that seemed the only logical issue of the

controversy. But in 1107 the pope consented to a compromise, which

satisfied the king, and yet was acceptable to the church. Bishops and

abbots were for the future to be canonically elected by the clergy, and

were no longer to receive the ring and staff from lay hands. But they

were to do homage to the king for their lands, and since they thus

acknowledged him as their temporal lord Henry was content. Moreover, he

retained in practice, if not in theory, his power to nominate to the

vacant offices; chapters and monasteries seldom dared to resist the

pressure which the sovereign could bring to bear upon them in favour of

the candidate whom he had selected. The arrangement was satisfactory,

and served as the model for the similar compromise arrived at between

Pope Calixtus II. and the emperor Henry V. fifteen years later.

From 1107 onward Henry was freed from both the dangers which had

threatened him in his earlier years, and was free to develop his policy

as he pleased. He had yet twenty-eight years to reign, for he survived

to the age of sixty-seven, an age unparalleled by any of his

predecessors, and by all his successors till Edward I.

Constitutional machinery.

It is to Henry, aided by his great justiciar, Roger, bishop of

Salisbury, that England owed the institution of the machinery of

government by which it was to be ruled during the earlier middle ages.

This may be described as a primitive kind of bureaucracy, which

gradually developed into a much more complicated system of courts and

offices. Around the sovereign was his _Curia Regis_ or body of

councillors, of whom the most important were the justiciar, the

chancellor and the treasurer, though the feudal officers, the constable

and marshal, were also to be found there. The bulk of the council,

however, was composed of knights and clerks selected by the king for

their administrative or financial ability. The Curia, besides advising

the king on ordinary matters of state, had two special functions. It

sat, or certain members of it sat, under the presidency of the king or

the justiciar, as the supreme court of justice of the realm. In this

capacity it tried the suits of tenants-in-chief, and all appeals from

the local courts. But Henry, not contented with this, adopted the custom

of sending forth certain members of the Curia throughout the realm at

intervals, to sit in the shire court, along with or in place of the

sheriff, and to hear and judge all the cases of which the court had

cognizance. From these itinerant commissioners (justices in eyre)

descend the modern justices of assize. The sheriff, the original

president of the shire court, was gradually extruded by them from all

important business.

But there were other developments of the Curia. The justiciar,

chancellor and treasurer sat with certain other members of the council

as the court of exchequer, not only to receive and audit the accounts of

the royal revenue, but to give legal decisions on all questions

connected with finance. Twice in every year the sheriffs and other royal

officials came up to the exchequer court, which originally sat at

Winchester, with their bags of money and their sheaves of accounts.

Their figures were subjected to a severe scrutiny, and the law was laid

down on all points in which the interests of the sheriff and the king,

or the sheriff and the taxpayer, came into conflict. In this way the

exchequer grew into a law court of primary importance, instead of

remaining merely a court of receipt. Though its members were originally

the same men who sat in the Curia Regis, the character of the question

to be tried settled the capacity in which they should sit, and two

separate courts were evolved. (See EXCHEQUER.)

Under the superintendence of the Curia Regis and the exchequer, the

sheriff still remained the king's factotum in local affairs. He led the

shire-levies, collected the royal revenues both feudal and non-feudal,

and presided in the shire-court as judge, till in the course of years

his functions in that sphere were gradually taken over by the itinerant

justices. On his fidelity the king had to rely both for military aid in

times of baronial revolt and for the collection of the money which

formed the sinews of war. Hence the position was one of the highest

importance, and Henry's new nobility, the men of ability whom he

selected and promoted, found their special occupation in holding the

office of sheriff. It was they who had to see that the shire court, and

in minor affairs the hundred court, did not allow cases to slip away

into the jurisdiction of the feudal courts of the baronage.

Henry I. must count not merely as the father of the English bureaucracy,

but as a fosterer of the municipal independence of the towns. He gave

charters of a very liberal character to many places, and in especial to

London, where the citizens were allowed to choose their own sheriff, and

to deal directly with the exchequer in matters of revenue. He even

farmed out to them the charge of the taxes of the whole shire of

Middlesex, outside the city walls. Such a grant was exceptional--though

Lincoln also seems to have been granted the privilege of dealing

directly with the exchequer. But in many other smaller towns the first

grants--the smaller beginnings of autonomy--may be traced back to this

period (see BOROUGH).

Though Henry was an autocrat, and governed through bureaucratic

officials who were entirely under his hand, yet a reign of law and order

such as his was indirectly favourable to the growth of constitutional

liberty. It was equally favourable to the growth of national unity: it

was in his time that Norman and English began to melt together:

intermarriage in all classes became common, and only thirty years after

his death a contemporary writer could remark that it was hard for any

man to call himself either Norman or English, so much had blood been

intermingled.

It is unnecessary to go into the very uninteresting and unimportant

history of Henry's later years. A long war with France, prosecuted

without much energy, led to no results, for the French king's attempts

to stir up rebellions in the name of William the Clito (q.v.), the son

of Duke Robert, came to an end with that prince's death in 1129. But the

extension of the English borders in South Wales by the conquests of the

lords marcher as far as Pembroke and Cardigan deserves a word of notice.

Henry's heir.

The question of the succession was the main thing which occupied the

mind of the king and the whole nation in Henry's later years. It had a

real interest for every man in an age when any doubt as to the heir

meant the outbreak of civil war such as had occurred at the death of the

Conqueror and of Rufus. There was now a problem of some difficulty to be

solved. Henry's only son William had been drowned at sea in 1120. He had

no other child born in wedlock save a daughter, Matilda, who married the

emperor Henry V., but had no issue by him. On the emperor's decease she

wedded as her second husband Geoffrey of Anjou (1127), to whom during

her father's last years she bore two sons. But the succession of a woman

to the crown was as unfamiliar to English as to Norman ideas, nor did it

seem natural to either to place a young child on the throne. Moreover,

Matilda's husband Geoffrey was unpopular among the Normans; the Angevins

had been the chief enemies of the duchy for several generations, and the

idea that one of them might become its practical ruler was deeply

resented. The old king, as was but natural, had determined that his

daughter should be his successor; he made the great council do homage to

her in 1126, and always kept her before the eyes of his people as his

destined heir. But though he had forced or cajoled every leading man in

England and Normandy to take his oath to serve her, he must have been

conscious that there was a large chance that such pledges would be

forgotten at his death. The prejudice against a female heir was strong,

and there were too many turbulent magnates to whom the anarchy that

would follow a disputed succession presented temptations which could not

be resisted.

Matilda, and Stephen.

Henry died suddenly on the 25th of November 1135, while he was on a

visit to his duchy of Normandy. The moment that his death was reported

the futility of oaths became apparent. A majority of the Norman barons

appealed to Theobald, count of Blois, son of the Conqueror's daughter

Adela, to be their duke, and to save them from the yoke of the hated

Angevin. His supporters and those of Matilda were soon at blows all

along the frontier of Normandy. Meanwhile in England another pretender

had appeared. Stephen, count of Boulogne, the younger brother of

Theobald, had landed at Dover within a few days of Henry's death,

determined to make a snatch at the crown, though he had been one of the

first who had taken the oath to his cousin a few years before. The

citizens of London welcomed him, but he was not secure of his success

till by a swift swoop on Winchester he obtained possession of the royal

treasure--an all-important factor in a crisis, as Henry I. had shown in

1100. At Winchester he was acknowledged as king by the bishop, his own

brother Henry of Blois, and by the great justiciar, Roger, bishop of

Salisbury, and the archbishop, William of Corbeil. The allegiance of

these prelates was bought by an unwise promise to grant all the demands

of the church party, which his predecessor had denied, or conceded only

in part. He would permit free election to all benefices, and free

legislation by ecclesiastical synods, and would surrender any claims of

the royal courts to have jurisdiction over clerks or the property of

clerks. It then remained necessary to buy the baronage, of which only a

few members had as yet committed themselves to his side. It was done by

grants of lands and privileges, the first instalment of a never-ending

crop of ruinous concessions which Stephen continued to make from the day

of his accession down to the day of his death.

The pretender was crowned at Westminster on the 22nd of December

1135--less than a month after his uncle's death. No one yet openly

withstood him, but he was well aware that his position was precarious,

and that the claims of Matilda would be brought forward ere long by the

section of the baronage which had not yet got from him all they desired.

Meanwhile, however, he was encouraged to persevere by the fact that his

brother Theobald had withdrawn his claim to the duchy of Normandy, and

retired in his favour. For a space he was to be duke as well as king;

but this meant merely that he would have two wars, not one, in hand ere

long. Matilda's adherents were already in the field in Normandy; in

England their rising was only delayed for a few months.

Civil war.

Stephen, though he had shown some enterprise and capacity in his

successful snatch at the crown, was a man far below his three

predecessors on the throne in the matter of perseverance and foresight.

He was a good fighter, a liberal giver, and a faithful friend, but he

lacked wisdom, caution and the power to organize. Starting his career as

a perjurer, it is curious that he was singularly slow to suspect perjury

in others; he was the most systematically betrayed of all English kings,

because he was the least suspicious, and the most ready to buy off and

to forgive rebels. His troubles began in 1136, when sporadic rebellions,

raised in the name of Matilda, began to appear; they grew steadily

worse, though Stephen showed no lack of energy, posting about his realm

with a band of mercenary knights whenever trouble broke out. But in 1138

the crisis came; the baronage had tried the capacity of their new master

and found him wanting. The outbreak was now widespread and

systematic--caused not by the turbulence of a few wild spirits, but by

the deliberate conspiracy of all who saw their advantage in anarchy.

Matilda had a few genuine partisans, such as her half-brother Robert,

earl of Gloucester, the illegitimate son of Henry I., but the large

majority of those who took arms in her name were ready to sell their

allegiance to either candidate in return for lands, or grants of rank or

privilege. A long list of doubly and triply forsworn nobles, led by

Geoffrey de Mandeville, Aubrey de Vere and Ralph of Chester, made the

balance of war sway alternately from side to side, as they transferred

themselves to the camp of the highest bidder. It is hard to trace any

meaning in the civil war--it was not a contest between the principle of

hereditary succession and the principle of elective kingship, as might

be supposed. It was rather, if some explanation must be found for it, a

strife between the kingly power and feudal anarchy. Unfortunately for

England the kingly power was in the hands of an incapable holder, and

feudal anarchy found a plausible mask by adopting the disguise of

loyalty to the rightful heiress.

The civil war was not Stephen's only trouble; foreign invasion was

added. David I., king of Scotland, was the uncle of Matilda, and used

her wrongs as the plea for thrice invading northern England, which he

ravaged with great cruelty. His most formidable raid was checked by the

Yorkshire shire levies, at the battle of the Standard (Aug. 22, 1138).

Yet in the following year he had to be bought off by the grant of all

Northumberland (save Newcastle and Bamborough) to his son Earl Henry.

Carlisle and Cumberland were already in his hands. Some years later the

Scottish prince also got possession of the great "Honour of Lancaster."

It was not Stephen's fault that the boundary of England did not

permanently recede from the Tweed and the Solway to the Tyne and the

Ribble.

But the affairs of the North attracted little attention while the civil

war was at its height in the South. In 1139 Stephen had wrought himself

fatal damage by quarrelling with the ecclesiastical bureaucrats, the

kinsmen and allies of Roger of Salisbury, who had been among his

earliest adherents. Jealous of their power and their arrogance, and

doubting their loyalty, he imprisoned them and confiscated their lands.

This threw the whole church party on to the side of Matilda; even Henry,

bishop of Winchester, the king's own brother, disowned him and passed

over to the other side. Moreover, the whole machinery of local

government in the realm fell out of gear, when the experienced ministers

who were wont to control it were removed from power.

Matilda had landed in England in the winter of 1139-1140; for a year her

partisans made steady progress against the king, and on the 2nd of

February 1141 Stephen was defeated and taken prisoner at the battle of

Lincoln. All England, save the county of Kent and a few isolated castles

elsewhere, submitted to Matilda. She was hailed as a sovereign by a

great assembly at Winchester, over which Stephen's own brother Bishop

Henry presided (April 7, 1141) and entered London in triumph in June. It

is doubtful whether she would have obtained complete possession of the

realm if she had played her cards well, for there were too many powerful

personages who were interested in the perpetuation of the civil war. But

she certainly did her best to ruin her own chances by showing an unwise

arrogance, and a determination to resume at once all the powers that her

father had possessed. When she annulled all the royal acts of the last

six years, declared charters forfeited and lands confiscated, and began

to raise heavy and arbitrary taxes, she made the partisans of Stephen

desperate, and estranged many of her own supporters. A sudden rising of

the citizens drove her out of London, while she was making preparations

for her coronation. The party of the imprisoned king rallied under the

wise guidance of his wife Matilda of Boulogne and his brother Henry, and

many other of the late deserters adhered to it. Their army drove the

lately triumphant party out of Winchester, and captured its military

chief, Robert, earl of Gloucester. So much was his loss felt that his

sister exchanged him a few months later for King Stephen.

After this the war went on interminably, without complete advantage to

either side, Stephen for the most part dominating the eastern and

Matilda the western shires. It was the zenith of the power of the

baronial anarchists, who moved from camp to camp with shameless

rapidity, wresting from one or other of the two rival sovereigns some

royal castle, or some dangerous grant of financial or judicial rights,

at each change of allegiance. The kingdom was in the desperate state

described in the last melancholy pages of the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_,

when life and property were nowhere safe from the objectless ferocity of

feudal tyrants--when "every shire was full of castles and every castle

filled with devils and evil men," and the people murmured that "Christ

and his saints slept."

Such was England's fate till 1153, when Matilda had retired from the

strife in favour of her son, Henry of Anjou, and Stephen was grown an

old man, and had just lost his heir, Eustace, to whom he had desired to

pass on the crown. Both parties were exhausted, both were sick of the

incessant treachery of their more unscrupulous barons, and at last they

came to the compromise of Wallingford (October 1153), by which it was

agreed that Stephen should reign for the remainder of his life, but that

on his death the crown should pass to Henry. Both sides promised to lay

down their arms, to dismiss their mercenaries, and to acquiesce in the

destruction of unlicensed castles, of which it is said, with no very

great exaggeration, that there were at the moment over 1000 in the

realm. Henry then returned to Normandy, of which his mother had been in

possession since 1145, while Stephen turned his small remaining strength

to the weary task of endeavouring to restore the foundations of law and

order. But he had accomplished little when he died in October 1154. The

task of reconstruction was to be left to Henry of Anjou: his predecessor

was only remembered as an example of the evil that may be done by a weak

man who has been reckless enough to seize a throne which he is incapable

of defending. England has had many worse kings, but never one who

wrought her more harm. If his successor had been like him, feudal

anarchy might have become as permanent in England as in Poland.

Henry II.

Fortunately the young king to whom Stephen's battered crown now fell was

energetic and capable, if somewhat self-willed and hasty. He was

inferior in caution and self-control to his grandfather Henry I., though

he resembled him in his love of strong and systematic governance. From

the point of view of his English subjects his main achievement was that

he restored in almost every detail the well-organized bureaucracy which

his ancestor had created, and with it the law and order that had

disappeared during Stephen's unhappy reign. But there was this essential

difference between the position of the two Henries, that the elder

aspired to be no more than king of England and duke of Normandy, while

the younger strove all his life for an imperial position in western

Europe. Such an ambition was almost forced upon him by the consequences

of his descent and his marriage. Besides his grandfather's Anglo-Norman

inheritance, he had received from his father Geoffrey the counties of

Anjou and Touraine, and the predominance in the valley of the Lower

Loire. But it was his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, two years before

his accession to the English throne, which gave him the right to dream

of greatness such as his Norman forbears had never enjoyed. This lady,

the divorced wife of Louis VII. of France, brought to her second husband

the whole of the lands from Poitou to the Pyrenees, the accumulated

gains of many warlike ancestors. In wealth and fighting strength the

duchy of Aquitaine was a full third of France. Added to Anjou and

Normandy it made a realm far more important than England. Hence it came

that Henry's ambitions and interests were continental more than English.

Unlike his grandfather he dwelt for the greater part of his time beyond

seas. It must be remembered, too, that his youth had been spent abroad,

and that England only came to him when he was already a grown man. The

concerns of his island realm were a matter of high importance to him,

but only formed a part of his cares. Essentially he was an Angevin,

neither a Norman nor an Englishman, and his primary ambition was to make

the house of Anjou supreme in France. Nor did this seem impossible; he

owned a far broader and wealthier domain beyond the Channel than did his

nominal suzerain King Louis VII., and--what was of more importance--he

far excelled that prince both in vigour and in capacity.

On succeeding to the English crown, however, he came over at once to

take possession of the realm, and abode there for over a year,

displaying the most restless energy in setting to rights the governance

of the realm. He expelled all Stephen's mercenaries, took back into his

hands the royal lands and castles which his predecessor had granted

away, and destroyed hundreds of the "adulterine" castles which the

barons and knights had built without leave during the years of the

anarchy. Hardly a single magnate dared to oppose him--Bridgnorth, now a

castle of the Mortimers, was the only place which he had to take by

force. His next care was to restore the bureaucracy by which Henry I.

had been wont to govern. He handed over the exchequer to Nigel, bishop

of Ely, the nephew of the old justiciar Roger of Salisbury, and the heir

of his traditions. His chancellor was a young clerk, Thomas Becket, who

was recommended to him by archbishop Theobald as the most capable

official in the realm. A short experience of his work convinced the king

that his merits had not been exaggerated. He proved a zealous and

capable minister, and such a strong exponent of the claims of the crown

that no one could have foreseen the later developments by which he was

to become their greatest enemy.

The machine of government was beginning to work in a satisfactory

fashion, and the realm was already settling down into order, when Henry

was called abroad by a rebellion raised in Anjou by his brother

Geoffrey--the first of the innumerable dynastic troubles abroad which

continued throughout his reign to distract his attention from his duties

as an English king. He did not return for fifteen months; but when he

did reappear it was to complete the work which he had begun in 1155, to

extort from the greater barons the last of the royal fortresses which

still remained in their hands, and to restore the northern boundaries of

the realm. Malcolm IV., the young king of Scotland, was compelled to

give up the earldoms of Northumberland and Cumberland, which his father

Henry had received from Stephen. He received instead only the earldom of

Huntingdon, too far from the border to be a dangerous possession, to

which he had a hereditary right as descending from Earl Waltheof. He did

homage to the king of England, and actually followed him with a great

retinue on his next continental expedition. In the same year (1157)

Henry made an expedition into North Wales, and forced its prince Owen to

become his vassal, not without some fighting, in which the English army

received several sharp checks at the commencement of the campaign.

Yet once more Henry's stay on the English side of the Channel was but

for a year. In 1158 he again departed to plunge into schemes of

continental conquest. This time it was an attempt to annex the great

county of Toulouse, and so to carry the borders of Aquitaine to the

Mediterranean, which distracted him. Naturally Louis of France was

unwilling to see his great vassal striding all across his realm, and did

what he could to hinder him. Into the endless skirmishes and

negotiations which followed the raising of the question of Toulouse it

would be fruitless to enter. Henry did not achieve his purpose, indeed

he seems to have failed to use his strength to its best advantage, and

allowed himself to be bought off by a futile marriage treaty by which

his eldest son was to marry the French king's daughter (1160). This was

to be but the first of many disappointments in this direction; there was

apparently some fatal scruple, both in Henry's own mind and in that of

his continental subjects, as to pressing their suzerain too hard. But it

must also be remembered that a feudal army was an inefficient weapon for

long wars, and that the mercenaries, by whom alone it could be replaced,

were both expensive and untrustworthy. Henry developed as far as he was

able the system of "scutage" (q.v.) which his grandfather had apparently

invented; by this the vassal compounded for his forty days' personal

service by paying money, with which the king could hire professional

soldiers. But even with this help he could never keep a large enough

army together.

Quarrel with the church.

Becket.

Meanwhile England, though somewhat heavily taxed, was at least enjoying

quiet and strong governance. There is every sign that Henry's early

years were a time of returning prosperity. But there was also much

friction between the crown and its subjects. The more turbulent part of

the baronage, looking back to the boisterous times of Stephen with

regret, was reserving itself for a favourable opportunity. The danger of

feudal rebellion was not yet past, as was to be shown ten years later.

The towns did not find Henry an easy master. He took away from London

some of the exceptional privileges which his grandfather had granted,

such as the free election of sheriffs of Middlesex, and the right of

farming the shire at a fixed rent. He asserted his power to raise

"tallages"--arbitrary taxation--from the citizens on occasion. Yet he

left the foundations of municipal liberty untouched, and he was fairly

liberal in granting charters which contained moderate privileges to

smaller towns. His most difficult task, however, was to come to a

settlement with the Church. The lavish grants of Stephen had made an end

of the old authority which the Conqueror and Henry I. had exercised over

the clergy. Their successor was well aware of the fact, and was resolved

to put back the clock, so far as it was in his power. It was not,

however, on the old problems of free election, of lay investiture, that

his quarrel with the clerical body broke out, but on the comparatively

new question of the conflicting claims of ecclesiastical and secular

courts. The separate tribunals of the church, whose erection William I.

had favoured, had been developing in power ever since, and had begun to

encroach on the sphere of the courts of the state. This was more than

ever the case since Stephen had formally granted them jurisdiction over

all suits concerning clerics and clerical property. During the first few

years of his reign Henry had already been in collision with the

ecclesiastical authorities over several such cases; he had chafed at

seeing two clerks accused of murder and blackmailing claimed by and

acquitted in the church courts; and most of all at the frequency of

unlicensed appeals to Rome--a flagrant breach of one of the three rules

laid down by William the Conqueror. Being comparatively at leisure after

the pacification with France, he resolved to turn his whole attention to

the arrangement of a new _modus vivendi_ with the church. As a

preliminary move he appointed his able chancellor Thomas Becket to the

archbishopric of Canterbury, which fell vacant in 1162. This was the

greatest mistake of his reign. Becket was one of those men who, without

being either hypocrites or consciously ambitious, live only to magnify

their office. While chancellor he was the most zealous servant of the

crown, and had seemed rather secular than clerical in his habits and his

outlook on life. But no sooner had he been promoted to the archbishopric

than he put away his former manners, became the most formal and austere

of men, and set himself to be the champion of the church party in all

its claims, reasonable or unreasonable, against the state. The king's

astonishment was even greater than his indignation when he saw the late

chancellor setting himself to oppose him in all things. Their first

quarrel was about a proposed change in some details of taxation, which

seems to have had no specially ecclesiastical bearing at all. But Becket

vehemently opposed it, and got so much support when the great council

met at Woodstock that Henry withdrew his schemes. This was only a

preliminary skirmish; the main battle opened in the following year, when

the king, quite aware that he must for the future look on Thomas as his

enemy, brought forward the famous _Constitutions of Clarendon_, of which

the main purport was to assert the jurisdiction of the state over

clerical offenders by a rather complicated procedure, while other

clauses provided that appeals to Rome must not be made without the

king's leave, that suits about land or the presentation to benefices, in

which clerics were concerned, should be tried before the royal courts,

and that bishops should not quit the realm unless they had obtained

permission to do so from the king (see CLARENDON, CONSTITUTIONS OF).

Somewhat to the king's surprise, Becket yielded for a moment to his

pressure, and declared his assent to the constitutions. But he had no

sooner left the court than he proclaimed that he had grievously sinned

in giving way, suspended himself from his archiepiscopal functions, and

wrote to the pope to beg for pardon and absolution. He then made a

clandestine attempt to escape from the realm, but was detected on the

seashore and forced to return.

Incensed with Becket for his repudiation of his original submission,

Henry proceeded to open a campaign of lawsuits against him, in order to

force him to plead in secular courts. He also took the very mean step of

declaring that he should call him to account for all the moneys that had

passed through his hands when he was chancellor, though Becket had been

given a quittance for them when he resigned the office more than two

years before. The business came up at the council of Northampton

(October 1164), when the archbishop was tried for refusing to recognize

the jurisdiction of the king's courts, and declared to have forfeited

his movable goods. The sentence was passed by the lay members of the

Curia Regis alone, the bishops having been forbidden to sit, and

threatened with excommunication if they did so, by the accused primate.

When Becket was visited by the justiciar who came to rehearse the

judgment, he started to his feet, refused to listen to a word, declared

his repudiation of all lay courts and left the hall. That same night he

made a second attempt to escape from England and this time succeeded in

getting off to Flanders. From thence he fled to the court of the pope,

where he received less support than he had expected. Alexander III.

privately approved of all that he had done, and regarded him as the

champion of the Church, but he did not wish to quarrel with King Henry.

He had lately been driven from Rome by the emperor Frederick I., who had

installed an antipope in his place, and had been forced to retire to

France. If he sided with Becket and thundered against his persecutor,

there was small doubt that the king of England would adhere to the

schism. Accordingly he endeavoured to temporize and to avoid a rupture,

to the archbishop's great disgust. But since he also declared the

Constitutions of Clarendon uncanonical and invalid, Henry was equally

offended, and opened negotiations with the emperor and the antipope.

This conduct forced Alexander's hand, and he gave Becket leave to

excommunicate his enemies. The exile, who had taken refuge in a French

abbey, placed the justiciar and six other of the king's chief

councillors under the ban of the Church, and intimated that he should

add Henry himself to the list unless he showed speedy signs of

repentance (April 1166).

Thus the quarrel had come to a head. Church and State were at open war.

Henry soon found that Becket's threats had more effect than he liked.

Many of the English clergy were naturally on the side of the primate in

a dispute which touched their loyalty to the Church and their class

feeling. Several bishops declared to the king that, since his ministers

had been duly excommunicated, they did not see how they could avoid

regarding them as men placed outside the pale of Christendom.

Fortunately the pope interfered for a moment to lighten the friction;

being threatened with a new invasion by the emperor Frederick, he

suspended the sentences and sent legates to patch up a peace. They

failed, for neither the king nor the archbishop would give way. At this

juncture Henry was desirous of getting his eldest son and namesake

crowned as his colleague, the best mode that he could devise for

avoiding the dangers of a disputed succession at his death. He induced

the archbishop of York, assisted by the bishops of London and Salisbury,

to perform the ceremony. This was a clear invasion of the ancient rights

of the primate, and Becket took it more to heart than any other of his

grievances.

Yet the next move in the struggle was a hollow reconciliation between

the combatants--a most inexplicable act on both sides. The king offered

to allow Becket to return from exile, and to restore him to his

possessions, without exacting from him any promise of submission, or

even a pledge that he would not reopen the dispute on his return.

Apparently he had made a wrong interpretation of the primate's mental

attitude, and thought him desirous of a truce, if not ready for a

compromise. He had wholly misjudged the situation; Becket made neither

promises nor threats, but three weeks after he reached Canterbury

publicly excommunicated the bishops of London and Salisbury for the part

that they had taken in the coronation of the young king, and suspended

from their functions the other prelates who had been present at the

ceremony. He then proceeded to excommunicate a number of his minor lay

enemies.

Becket's murder.

The news was carried overseas to Henry, who was then in Normandy. It

roused one of the fits of wild rage to which he was not unfrequently

liable; he burst out into ejaculations of wrath, and cursed "the

cowardly idle servants who suffered their master to be made the

laughing-stock of a low-born priest." Among those who stood about him

were four knights, some of whom had personal grudges against Becket, and

all of whom were reckless ruffians, who were eager to win their master's

favour by fair means or foul. They crossed the Channel with astonishing

speed; two days after the king's outburst they stood before Becket at

Canterbury and threatened him with death unless he should remove the

excommunications and submit to his master. The archbishop answered with

words as scornful as their own, and took his way to the minster to

attend vespers. The knights went out to seek their weapons, and when

armed followed him into the north transept, where they fell upon him and

brutally slew him with many sword-strokes (December 29, 1170). Thomas

had been given time to fly, and his followers had endeavoured to

persuade him to do so. It seems that he deliberately courted martyrdom,

anxious apparently that his death should deal the king the bitterest

blow that it was in his power to inflict (see BECKET).

Its results.

Nothing could have put Henry in such an evil plight; the whole world

held him responsible for the murder, and he was forced to buy pardon for

it by surrendering many of the advantages over the Church which he had

hoped to gain by enforcing the Constitutions of Clarendon. Especially

the immunity of clerical offenders from the jurisdiction of lay courts

had to be conceded; for the rest of the middle ages the clerk guilty of

theft or assault, riot or murder, could plead his orders, and escape

from the harsh justice of the king's officers to the milder penalties of

the bishop's tribunal. "Benefit of clergy" became an intolerable

anomaly, all the more so because the privilege was extended in practice

not only to all persons actually in minor orders, but to all who claimed

them; any criminal who could read had a fair chance of being reckoned a

clerk. Another concession which Henry was forced to make was that the

appeals to Rome of litigants in ecclesiastical suits should be freely

permitted, provided that they made an oath that they were not

contemplating any wrong to the English crown or the English church, a

sufficiently easy condition. Such appeals became, and remained,

innumerable and vexatious. Pope Alexander also extorted from the king a

pledge that he would relinquish any customs prejudicial to the rights of

the Church which had been introduced since his accession. To the pope

this meant that the Constitutions of Clarendon were disavowed; to the

king, who maintained that they were in the main a mere restatement of

the customs of William I., it bore no such general interpretation. The

points were fought out in detail, and not settled for many years.

Practically it became the rule to regard suits regarding land, or

presentations to benefices, as pertaining to the king's court, while

those regarding probate, marriage and divorce fell to the ecclesiastical

tribunal. The question of election to bishoprics and abbacies went back

to the stage which it had reached in the time of Henry I.; the choice

was made in canonical form, by the chapters or the monasteries, but the

king's recommendation was a primary factor in that choice. When the

electors disregarded it, as was sometimes the case, there was friction;

a weak king was sometimes overruled; a strong one generally got his way

in the end.

Becket's death, then, gave a qualified triumph to the church party, and

he was rightly regarded as the successful champion of his caste. Hence

they held his death in grateful remembrance; the pope canonized him in

1173, and more churches were dedicated to him during the next two

centuries than to any other English saint. In the eyes of most men his

martyrdom had put the king so much in the wrong that the obstinacy and

provocative conduct which had brought it about passed out of memory. His

life of ostentatious austerity, and the courage with which he met his

death, had caused all his faults to be forgotten. Henry himself felt so

much the invidious position in which he was placed that even after

making his submission to the pope's legates at Avranches in 1172, he

thought it necessary to do penance before Becket's tomb in 1174, on

which occasion he allowed himself to be publicly scourged by the monks

of Canterbury, who inflicted on him three cuts apiece.

Between the outbreak of the king's quarrel with Becket at the council of

Woodstock and the compromise of Avranches no less than ten years had

elapsed--the best years of Henry's manhood. During this period his

struggle with the Church had been but one of his distractions. His

policy of imperial aggrandisement had been in progress. In 1163 he had

completed the conquest of South Wales; the marcher lords were now in

possession of the greater part of the land; the surviving Welsh princes

did homage for the rest. In 1166 Henry got practical possession of the

duchy of Brittany, the only remaining large district of western France

which was not already in his hands. Conan, the last prince of the old

Breton house, recognized him as his lord, and gave the hand of his

heiress Constance to Geoffrey, the king's third son. When the count died

in 1171 Henry did not transfer the administration of the land to the

young pair, who were still but children, but retained it for himself,

and clung to it jealously long after his son came of age. Intermittent

wars with France during these years were of small importance; Henry

never pushed his suzerain to extremity. But the Angevin dominions were

extended in a new direction, where no English king had yet made his

power felt.

Conquest of Ireland.

The distressful island of Ireland was at this moment enjoying the

anarchy which had reigned therein since the dawn of history. Its state

had grown even more unhappy than before since the Danish invasions of

the 10th century, which had not welded the native kingdoms into unity

by pressure from without--as had been the case in England--but had

simply complicated affairs, by setting up two or three alien

principalities on the coastline. As in England, the vikings had

destroyed much of the old civilization; but they had neither succeeded

in occupying the whole country nor had they been absorbed by the

natives. The state of the island was much like that of England in the

days of the Heptarchy: occasionally a "High King" succeeded in forcing

his rivals into a precarious submission; more usually there was not even

a pretence of a central authority in the island, and the annals of

objectless tribal wars formed its sole history. King Henry's eyes had

been fixed on the faction-ridden land since the first years of his

reign. As early as 1155 he had asked and obtained the approval of Pope

Adrian IV., the only Englishman who ever sat upon the papal throne, for

a scheme for the conquest of Ireland. The Holy See had always regarded

with distaste the existence in the West of a nation who repudiated the

Roman obedience, and lived in schismatical independence, under local

ecclesiastical customs which dated back to the 5th century, and had

never been brought into line with those of the rest of Christendom.

Hence it was natural to sanction an invasion which might bring the Irish

within the fold. But Henry made no endeavour for many years to utilize

the papal grant of Ireland, which seems to have been made under the

preposterous "Donation of Constantine," the forged document which gave

the bishop of Rome authority over all islands. It was conveniently

forgotten that Ireland had never been in the Roman empire, and so had

not even been Constantine's to give away.

Not till 1168, thirteen years after the agreement with Pope Adrian, did

the interference of the English king in Ireland actually begin. Even

then he did not take the conquest in hand himself, but merely sanctioned

a private adventure of some of his subjects. Dermot MacMorrough, king of

Leinster, an unquiet Irish prince who for good reasons had been expelled

by his neighbours, came to Henry's court in Normandy, proffering his

allegiance in return for restoration to his lost dominions. The quarrel

with Becket, and the French war, were both distracting the English king

at the moment. He could not spare attention for the matter, but gave

Dermot leave to enlist auxiliaries among the turbulent barons of the

South Welsh Marches. The Irish exile enlisted first the services of

Maurice Fitzgerald and Robert Fitzstephen, two half-brothers, both noted

fighting men, and afterwards those of Richard de Clare, earl of

Pembroke, an ambitious and impecunious magnate of broken fortunes. The

two barons were promised lands, the earl a greater bribe--the hand of

Dermot's only daughter Eva and the inheritance of the kingdom of

Leinster. Fitzgerald and Fitzstephen crossed to Ireland in 1169 with a

mere handful of followers. But they achieved victories of an almost

incredible completeness over Dermot's enemies. The undisciplined hordes

of the king of Ossory and the Danes of Wexford could not stand before

the Anglo-Norman tactics--the charge of the knights and the arrow-flight

of the archers, skilfully combined by the adventurous invaders. Dermot

was triumphant, and sent for more auxiliaries, aspiring to evict Roderic

O'Connor of Connaught from the precarious throne of High King of

Ireland. In 1170 the earl of Pembroke came over with a larger force,

celebrated his marriage with Dermot's daughter, and commenced a series

of conquests. He took Waterford and Dublin from the Danes, and scattered

the hosts of the native princes. Early in the next spring Dermot died,

and Earl Richard, in virtue of his marriage, claimed the kingship of

Leinster. He held his own, despite the assaults of a great army gathered

by Roderic the High King, and of a viking fleet which came to help the

conquered jarls of Waterford and Dublin. At this moment King Henry

thought it necessary to interfere; if he let more time slip away, Earl

Richard would become a powerful king and forget his English allegiance.

Accordingly, with a large army at his back, he landed at Waterford in

1171 and marched on Dublin. Richard did him homage for Leinster,

engaging to hold it as a palatine earldom, and not to claim the name or

rights of a king. The other adventurers followed his example, as did,

after an interval, most of the native Irish princes. Only Roderic of

Connaught held aloof in his western solitudes, asserting his

independence. The clergy, almost without a murmur, submitted themselves

to the Roman Church.

Such was the first conquest of Ireland, a conquest too facile to be

secure. Four years later it appeared to be completed by the submission

of the king of Connaught, who did homage like the rest of the island

chiefs. But their oaths were as easily broken as made, and the real

subjection of the island was not to be completed for 400 years. What

happened was that the Anglo-Norman invaders pushed gradually west,

occupying the best of the land and holding it down by castles, but

leaving the profitless bogs and mountains to the local princes. The

king's writ only ran in and about Dublin and a few other harbour

fortresses. Inland, the intruding barons and the Irish chiefs fought

perpetually, with varying fortunes. The conquest hardly touched central

and western Ulster, and left half Connaught unsubdued: even in the

immediate vicinity of Dublin the tribes of the Wicklow Hills were never

properly tamed. The English conquest was incomplete; it failed to

introduce either unity or strong governance. After a century and a half

it began to recede rather than to advance. Many of the districts which

had been overrun in the time of the Angevin kings were lost; many of the

Anglo-Norman families intermarried with and became absorbed by the

Irish; they grew as careless of their allegiance to the crown as any of

the native chiefs. The "Lordship of Ireland" was never a reality till

the times of the Tudors. But as long as Henry II. lived this could not

have been foreseen. The first generation of the conquerors pushed their

advance with such vigour that it seemed likely that they would complete

the adventure. (See IRELAND: _History_.)

Rebellion of Henry's sons.

It was in 1173, the year after his return from Ireland and his

submission to the papal legates at Avranches, that King Henry became

involved in the first of a series of troubles which were to pursue him

for the rest of his life--the rebellions of his graceless sons. His wife

Eleanor of Aquitaine had borne him many children. Henry, the eldest

surviving son, had already been crowned in 1170 as his father's

colleague and successor; not only he, but Richard the second, and

Geoffrey the third son, were now old enough to chafe against the

restraints imposed upon them by an imperious and strong-willed father.

The old king very naturally preferred to keep his dominions united under

his own immediate government, but he had designated his eldest son as

his successor in England and Normandy, while Richard was to have his

mother's heritage of Aquitaine, and Geoffrey's wife's dowry, the duchy

of Brittany, was due to him, now that he had reached the verge of

manhood. The princes were shamelessly eager to enter on their

inheritance, the king was loath to understand that by conferring a

titular sovereignty on his sons he had given them a sort of right to

expect some share of real power. Their grudge against their father was

sedulously fostered by their mother Eleanor, a clever and revengeful

woman, who could never forgive her husband for keeping her in the

background in political matters and insulting her by his frequent

amours. Her old subjects in Aquitaine were secretly encouraged by her to

follow her son Richard against his father, whom the barons of the south

always regarded as an alien and an intruder. The Bretons were equally

willing to rise in the name of Geoffrey and Constance against the

guardian who was keeping their prince too long waiting for his

inheritance. In England the younger Henry had built himself up a party

among the more turbulent section of the baronage, who remembered with

regret and longing the carnival of licence which their fathers had

enjoyed under King Stephen. Secret agreements had also been made with

the kings of France and Scotland, who were eager to take advantage of

the troubles which were about to break out.

In 1173 the plot was complete, and Henry's three elder sons all took

arms against him, collecting Norman, Breton and Gascon rebels in great

numbers, and being backed by a French army. At the same moment the king

of Scots invaded Northumberland, and the earls of Norfolk, Chester and

Leicester rose in the name of the younger Henry. This was in all

essentials a feudal rebellion of the old type. The English barons were

simply desirous of getting rid of the strong and effective governance of

the king, and the alleged wrongs of his sons were an empty excuse. For

precisely the same reason all classes in England, save the more

turbulent section of the baronage, remained faithful to the elder king.

The bureaucracy, the minor landholders, the towns, and the clergy

refused to join in the rising, and lent their aid for its suppression,

because they were unwilling to see anarchy recommence. Hence, though the

rebellious princes made head for a time against their father abroad, the

insurrection of their partisans in England was suppressed without much

difficulty. The justiciar, Richard de Lucy, routed the army of the earl

of Leicester at Fornham in Suffolk, the castles of the rebel earls were

subdued one after another, and William of Scotland was surprised and

captured by a force of northern loyalists while he was besieging Alnwick

(1173-1174). The war lingered on for a space on the continent; but Henry

raised the siege of Rouen, which was being attacked by his eldest son

and the king of France, captured most of Richard's castles in Poitou,

and then received the submission of his undutiful children. Showing

considerable magnanimity, he promised to grant to each of them half the

revenues of the lands in which they were his destined heirs, and a

certain number of castles to hold as their own. Their allies fared less

well; the rebel earls were subjected to heavy fines, and their

strongholds were demolished. The king of Scots was forced to buy his

liberty by doing homage to Henry for the whole of his kingdom. Queen

Eleanor, whom her husband regarded as responsible for the whole

rebellion, was placed in a sort of honourable captivity, or retirement,

and denied her royal state.

Henry appeared completely triumphant; but the fourteen years which he

had yet to live were for the most part to be times of trouble and

frustrated hopes. He was growing old; the indomitable energy of his

early career was beginning to slacken; his dreams of extended empire

were vanishing. In the last period of his life he was more set on

defending what he already enjoyed, and perfecting the details of

administration in his realms, than on taking new adventures in hand.

Probably the consciousness that his dominions would be broken up among

his sons after his death had a disheartening effect upon him. At any

rate his later years bear a considerable resemblance to the

corresponding period of his grandfather's reign. The machinery of

government which the one had sketched out the other completed. Under

Henry II. the circuits of the itinerant justices became regular instead

of intermittent; the judicial functions of the Curia Regis were

delegated to a permanent committee of that body which took form as the

court of king's bench (_Curia Regis in Banco_). The sheriffs were kept

very tightly in hand, and under incessant supervision; once in 1170

nearly the whole body of them were dismissed for misuse of their office.

The shire levies which had served the king so well against the feudal

rebels of 1173 were reorganized, with uniformity of weapons and armour,

by the _Assize of Arms_ of 1181. There was also a considerable amount of

new legislation with the object of protecting the minor subjects of the

crown, and the system of trial by jurors was advanced to the detriment

of the absurd old practices of trial by ordeal and trial by wager of

battle. The 13th-century jury was a rough and primitive institution,

which acted at once as accuser, witness and judge--but it was at any

rate preferable to the chances of the red-hot iron, or the club of the

duellist.

The best proof that King Henry's orderly if autocratic regime was

appreciated at its true value by his English subjects, is that when the

second series of rebellions raised by his undutiful sons began in 1182,

there was no stir whatever in England, though in Normandy, Brittany and

Aquitaine the barons rose in full force to support the young princes,

whose success would mean the triumph of particularism and the

destruction of the Angevin empire. Among the many troubles which broke

down King Henry's strong will and great bodily vigour in those unhappy

years, rebellion in England was not one. For this reason he was almost

constantly abroad, leaving the administration of the one loyal section

of his realm to his great justiciar. Hence the story of the unnatural

war between father and sons has no part in English history. It is but

necessary to note that the younger Henry died in 1183, that Geoffrey

perished by accident at a tournament in 1186, and that in 1189, when the

old king's strength finally gave out, it was Richard who was leading the

rebellion, to which John, the youngest and least worthy of the four

undutiful sons, was giving secret countenance. It was the discovery of

the treachery of this one child whom he had deemed faithful, and loved

over well, that broke Henry's heart. "Let things go as they will; I have

nothing to care for in the world now," he murmured on his death-bed, and

turned his face to the wall to breathe his last.

Richard I.

The death of the younger Henry had made Richard heir to all his father's

lands from the Tweed to the Bidassoa save Brittany, which had fallen to

Arthur, the infant son of the unlucky Geoffrey. John, the new king's

only surviving brother, had been declared "Lord of Ireland" by his

father in 1185, but Henry had been forced to remove him for persistent

misconduct, and had left him nothing more than a titular sovereignty in

the newly conquered island. In this Richard confirmed him at his

accession, and gave him a more tangible endowment by allowing him to

marry Isabella, the heiress of the earldom of Gloucester, and by

bestowing on him the honour of Lancaster and the shires of Derby, Devon,

Cornwall and Somerset. The gift was over-liberal and the recipient was

thankless; but John was distinctly treated as a vassal, not granted the

position of an independent sovereign.

Of all the medieval kings of England, Richard I. (known as Coeur de

Lion) cared least for his realm on the English side of the Channel, and

spent least time within it. Though he chanced to have been born in

Oxford, he was far more of a foreigner than his father; his soul was

that of a south French baron, not that of an English king. Indeed he

looked upon England more as a rich area for taxation than as the centre

of a possible empire. His ambitions were continental: so far as he had a

policy at all it was Angevin--he would gladly have increased his

dominions on the side of the upper Loire and Garonne, and was set on

keeping in check the young king of France, Philip Augustus, though the

latter had been his ally during his long struggle with his father.

Naturally the policy of Richard as a newly crowned king was bound to

differ from that which he had pursued as a rebellious prince. As regards

his personal character he has been described, not without truth, as a

typical man of his time and nothing more. He was at heart a chivalrous

adventurer delighting in war for war's sake; he was not destitute of a

conscience--his undutiful conduct to his father sat heavily on his soul

when that father was once dead; he had a strong sense of knightly honour

and a certain magnanimity of soul in times of crisis; but he was harsh,

thriftless, often cruel, generally lacking in firmness and continuity of

purpose, always careless of his subjects' welfare when it interfered

with his pleasure or his ambitions of the moment. If he had stayed long

in England he would have made himself hated; but he was nearly always

absent; it was only as a reckless and spasmodic extorter of taxation,

not as a personal tyrant, that he was known on the English side of the

Channel.

The Crusade.

At the opening of his reign Richard had one all-engrossing desire; he

was set on going forth to the Crusade for the recovery of Jerusalem

which had been proclaimed in 1187, partly from chivalrous instincts,

partly as a penance for his misconduct to his father. He visited England

in 1189 only in order to be crowned, and to raise as much money for the

expedition as he could procure. He obtained enormous sums, by the most

unwise and iniquitous expedients, mainly by selling to any buyer that he

could find valuable pieces of crown property, high offices and dangerous

rights and privileges. The king of Scotland bought for 15,000 marks a

release from the homage to the English crown which had been imposed upon

him by Henry II. The chancellorship, one of the two chief offices in

the realm, was sold to William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, for L3000,

though he was well known as a tactless, arrogant and incapable person.

The earldom of Northumberland, with palatine rights, was bought by Hugh

Puiset, bishop of Durham. Countless other instances of unwise bargains

could be quoted. Having raised every penny that he could procure by

legal or illegal means, Richard crossed the Channel, and embarked at

Marseilles with a great army on the 7th of August 1190. The only

security which he had for the safety of his dominions in his absence was

that his most dangerous neighbour, the king of France, was also setting

out on the Crusade, and that his brother John, whose shifty and

treacherous character gave sure promise of trouble, enjoyed a

well-merited unpopularity both in England and in the continental

dominions of the crown.

Richard's crusading exploits have no connexion with the history of

England. He showed himself a good knight and a capable general--the

capture of Acre and the victory of Arsuf were highly to his credit as a

soldier. But he quarrelled with all the other princes of the Crusade,

and showed himself as lacking in tact and diplomatic ability as he was

full of military capacity. The king of France departed in wrath, to

raise trouble at home; the army gradually melted away, the prospect of

recovering Jerusalem disappeared, and finally Richard must be reckoned

fortunate in that he obtained from Sultan Saladin a peace, by which the

coastland of Palestine was preserved for the Christians, while the Holy

City and the inland was sacrificed (Sept. 2, 1192). While returning to

his dominions by the way of the Adriatic, the king was shipwrecked, and

found himself obliged to enter the dominions of Leopold, duke of

Austria, a prince whom he had offended at Acre during the Crusade.

Though he disguised himself, he was detected by his old enemy and

imprisoned. The duke then sold him to the emperor Henry VI., who found

pretexts for forcing him to buy his freedom by the promise of a ransom

of 150,000 marks. It was not till February 1194 that he got loose, after

paying a considerable instalment of this vast sum. The main bulk of it,

as was to be expected, was never made over; indeed it could not have

been raised, as Richard was well aware. But, once free, he had no

scruple in cheating the imperial brigand of his blackmail.

John's treachery.

For five years Richard was away from his dominions as a crusader or a

captive. There was plenty of trouble during his absence, but less than

might have been expected. The strong governance set up by Henry II.

proved competent to maintain itself, even when Richard's ministers were

tactless and his brother treacherous. A generation before it is certain

that England would have been convulsed by a great feudal rising when

such an opportunity was granted to the barons. Nothing of the kind

happened between 1190 and 1194. The chancellor William Longchamp made

himself odious by his vanity and autocratic behaviour, and was

overthrown in 1191 by a general rising, which was headed by Prince John,

and approved by Walter, archbishop of Rouen, whom Richard had sent to

England with a commission to assume the justiciarship if William should

prove impossible as an administrator. Longchamp fled to the continent,

and John then hoped to seize on supreme power, even perhaps to grasp the

crown. But he was bitterly disappointed to find that he could gather few

supporters; the justiciar and the bureaucrats of the Curia Regis would

give him no assistance; they worked on honestly in the name of the

absent king. Among the baronage hardly a man would commit himself to

treason. In vain John hired foreign mercenaries, garrisoned his castles,

and leagued himself with the king of France when the latter returned

from the Crusade. It was only the news of his brother's captivity in

Austria which gave the intriguing prince a transient hope of success.

Boldly asserting that Richard would never be seen alive again he went to

France, and did homage to King Philip for Normandy and Aquitaine, as if

they were already his own. Then he crossed to England with a band of

mercenaries, and seized Windsor and Wallingford castles. But no one rose

to aid him, and his garrisons were soon being besieged by loyal levies,

headed by the justiciar and by Hubert Walter, the newly elected

archbishop of Canterbury. At the same time King Philip's invasion of

Normandy was repulsed by the barons of the duchy. Richard's faithful

ministers, despite of all their distractions, succeeded in raising the

first instalment of his ransom by grinding taxation--a fourth part of

the revenue of all lay persons, a tithe from ecclesiastical land, was

raised, and in addition much church plate was seized, though the

officials who exacted it were themselves prelates. John and Philip wrote

to the emperor to beg him to detain his captive at all costs, but Henry

VI. pocketed the ransom money and set Richard free. He reached England

in March 1194, just in time to receive the surrender of the last two

castles which were holding out in his treacherous brother's name. With

astonishing, and indeed misplaced, magnanimity, Richard pardoned his

brother, when he made a grovelling submission, and restored him to his

lordship of Ireland and to a great part of his English lands.

The king abode for no more than three months in England; he got himself

recrowned at Winchester, apparently to wipe out the stain of his German

captivity and of an enforced homage which the emperor had extorted from

him. Then he raised a heavy tax from his already impoverished subjects,

sold a number of official posts and departed to France--never to return,

though he had still five years to live. He left behind Archbishop Hubert

Walter as justiciar, a faithful if a somewhat high-handed minister.

Richard's one ruling passion was now to punish Philip of France for his

unfriendly conduct during his absence. He plunged into a war with this

clever and shifty prince, which lasted--with certain short breaks of

truces and treaties--till his death. He wasted his considerable military

talents in a series of skirmishes and sieges which had no great results,

and after spending countless treasures and harrying many regions,

perished obscurely by a wound from a cross-bow-bolt, received while

beleaguering Chalus, a castle of a rebellious lord of Aquitaine, the

viscount of Limoges (April 6, 1199).

English constitutional development.

During these years of petty strife England was only reminded at

intervals of her king's existence by his intermittent demands for money,

which his ministers did their best to satisfy. The machine of government

continued to work without his supervision. It has been observed that,

from one point of view, England's worst kings have been her best; that

is to say, a sovereign like Richard, who persistently neglected his

duties, was unconsciously the foster father of constitutional liberty.

For his ministers, bureaucrats of an orderly frame of mind, devised for

their own convenience rules and customs which became permanent, and

could be cited against those later kings who interfered more actively in

the details of domestic governance. We may trace back some small

beginnings of a constitution to the time of Henry II.--himself an

absentee though not on the scale of his son. But the ten years of

Richard's reign were much more fruitful in the growth of institutions

which were destined to curb the power of the crown. His justiciars, and

especially Hubert Walter, were responsible for several innovations which

were to have far-spreading results. The most important was an extension

of the use of juries into the province of taxation. When the government

employs committees chosen by the taxpayers to estimate and assess the

details of taxation, it will find it hard to go back to arbitrary

exactions. Such a practice had been first seen when Henry II., in his

last year, allowed the celebrated "Saladin Tithe" for the service of the

crusade to be assessed by local jurors. In Richard's reign the practice

became regular. In especial when England was measured out anew for the

great carucage of 1197--a tax on every ploughland which replaced the

rough calculation of Domesday Book--knights elected by the shires shared

in all the calculations then made for the new impost. Another

constitutional advance was that which substituted "coroners," knights

chosen by the county court, for the king's old factotum the sheriff in

the duty of holding the "pleas of the crown," i.e. in making the

preliminary investigations into such offences as riot, murder or injury

to the king's rights or property. The sheriff's natural impulse was to

indict every man from whom money could be got; the new coroners were

influenced by other motives than financial rapacity, and so were much

more likely to deal equitably with accusations. The towns also profited

in no small degree from Richard's absence and impecuniosity. One of the

most important charters to London, that which granted the city the right

of constituting itself a "commune" and choosing itself a mayor, goes

back to October 1191, the troubled month of Longchamp's expulsion from

England. It was given by Prince John and the ministers, who were then

supporting him against the arrogant chancellor, to secure the adherence

of London. Richard on his return seems to have allowed it to stand.

Lincoln was also given the right of electing its own magistrates in

1194, and many smaller places owe grants of more or less of municipal

privilege to Hubert Walter acting in the name of the absent king. The

English nation began to have some conception of a regime of fixed

custom, in which its rights depended on some other source than the

sovereign's personal caprice. The times, it may be remembered, were not

unprosperous. There had been no serious civil war since the baronial

rising of 1173. Prince John's turbulence had only affected the

neighbourhood of a few royal castles. Despite of the frequent and heavy

demands for money for the king's service, wealth seems to have been

increasing, and prosperity to have been widespread. Strong and regular

governance had on the whole prevailed ever since Henry II. triumphed

over baronial anarchy.