policy of his father rather than of his brother. He meant to be at
once a friend and master of the Church, and a national sovereign of
the English, a character which became a prince who had been born in
that country. That position implied a power much more centralized
than that of a feudal suzerain; and in England his chief policy
was directed throughout his reign to upholding his mastery over
the Church and over refractory barons who aimed at more perfect
feudalism. He was in heart however a Norman, and, in pursuit of his
objects, did not shrink from using his English subjects with great
severity. Similarly, his chief foreign difficulties were produced
by his wish to win the Duchy of Normandy, and having won it to rule
it in the same masterful spirit in which he ruled England. We find
then in his reign ecclesiastical disputes, disputes with the feudal
barons of both England and Normandy, wars for the conquest of the
duchy, and consequent complications with his suzerain the King of
France. Mixed with these are stories, chiefly from Saxon sources,
of cruel and unjust exactions and acts of injustice, tolerated, if
not ordered, against his Saxon subjects.
[Sidenote: His supporters.]
[Sidenote: His opponents.]
His views found supporters in the two sons of that Roger de
Beaumont, to whom his father had left the regency of Normandy when
he first came to England. These were the two great Earls, Robert,
Count of Mellent,[6] afterwards Earl Leicester, and his younger
brother Henry, Earl of Warwick, the elder of whom had received no
less than ninety-one manors from the Conqueror, and was the most
influential and wisest statesman of the day. On the other hand, he
was constantly opposed by his brother Robert, a military prince of
the feudal type, and Robert de Belesme of the House of Montgomery,
possessor of the Earldoms of Alençon in France and of Shrewsbury in
England, and by right of marriage of the county of Ponthieu.
[Sidenote: Robert of Normandy seeks the English Crown. 1101.]
Robert heard of his brother’s accession to the throne while on
his journey home from the Holy Land. He had served with credit
throughout the first crusade, especially at Dorylæum and at
Ascalon. He had declined the offer of the crown of Jerusalem, and
on his return home had married Sibylla, the daughter of Geoffrey
of Conversana. He was a man of extravagant and profligate habits,
and speedily squandered the fortune which his wife had brought him,
but the entreaties of English exiles, and of those discontented
nobles who longed for an easier rule than they could expect from
Henry, roused him to assert his claim to the English crown. Robert
of Belesme and his brothers, Walter Giffard, Robert Malet, Ivo of
Grantmesnil, even William of Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, closely
connected with the royal house, joined his party.
[Sidenote: Withdraws without bloodshed.]
[Sidenote: Henry attacks his partisans.]
[Sidenote: Defeat of Belesme. Establishment of royal power in
England.]
But the English were true to the King. Fitz-Hamon, Bigot, and
the Earl of Mellent, added their influence to the same side. It
was probably chiefly the talents of Mellent, and the threat of
excommunication from Archbishop Anselm, which brought about a
peaceful solution of the difficulty. A treaty was arranged by which
Robert renounced his claims in exchange for the Cotentin and 3000
marks a year. It was also stipulated that a complete amnesty should
be extended to the partisans of either prince in his brother’s
country. It was not Henry’s intention however to carry out this
part of the stipulation, and no sooner had Robert left the country
than the King proceeded to take steps against the two leaders of
his brother’s faction, Ivo of Grantmesnil and Robert of Belesme.
Ivo had been a crusader, and was one of those who had fled from
the siege of Antioch, being let down the wall with a rope. He had
thus earned the title among the witty Normans of the “Rope-dancer,”
and finding his credit gone he withdrew from England. His share
in the earldom of Leicester was given to Robert of Mellent, who
subsequently acquired the rest of the earldom. Alarmed by these
measures of the King, William de Warrenne induced Robert foolishly
to come over to England to negotiate for the safety of his
partisans. His position there was one of great jeopardy, and he
was glad to retire, having renounced his money payment, but having
secured the restitution of William in his Earldom of Surrey, of
which he had been deprived. The withdrawal of Robert from the
contest allowed Henry to turn his undivided attention to the
destruction of Robert de Belesme, the head of the Norman party in
England. From him he won the castles of Nottingham and Tickhill,
and subsequently that of Bridgenorth, to which he had retreated.
When many of the barons combined to seek his pardon, Henry, still
resting on the support of the English, refused to listen to them,
and proceeded to win from him his last stronghold, the Castle of
Shrewsbury. Upon this Belesme withdrew with his two brothers into
Normandy, and the disaffection of the aristocracy was permanently
checked.
[Sidenote: Belesme received in Normandy. Consequent invasion of the
Duchy. 1105.]
[Sidenote: Battle of Tenchebray. 1106.]
It had been stipulated that the brothers should not receive each
other’s exiles. In spite of this Robert of Normandy, enraged
at the persecution of his partisans, restored to Belesme his
continental property. Henry consequently on his side continued his
measures against Robert’s partisans. He first banished the Count
of Mortain, Earl of Cornwall, who claimed also the Earldom of Kent
in succession to Odo of Bayeux, the possession of which would have
rendered him the most powerful noble in England, and then proceeded
to Normandy to continue his attacks upon Belesme. He alleged not
only the reception of his exiles, but the general misgovernment of
Robert, as an excuse for his proceedings; and in truth, under that
Prince, Normandy had become a scene of anarchy. As an instance of
this it is mentioned, that on his arrival a church was pointed out
to him full of property sent there for safety from the hands of the
marauding barons. He captured the towns of Caen and Bayeux, and
found allies in the persistent enemies of the Dukes of Normandy,
Fulk Count of Anjou, and Hélie de la Fléche, who had succeeded in
regaining the County of Maine. With Count Robert of Flanders also
he renewed friendly relations. With such support he proved too
strong for the Norman Duke, and before the Castle of Tenchebray a
battle was fought, on the anniversary of the battle of Hastings,
which ended in favour of the King. Duke Robert himself, the Count
of Mortain, and Eadgar Ætheling, who had been serving with the
Duke, were taken prisoners. Eadgar was liberated, and died in peace
in England some years after; but Duke Robert and the Count of
Mortain were imprisoned for the rest of their lives. Normandy and
England were thus again united.
[Sidenote: Wars with France. 1107.]
[Sidenote: Louis upholds William Clito as claimant to the Duchy.]
[Sidenote: End of the war. Treaty of Gisors. 1113.]
The possession of Normandy brought Henry into more immediate
contact with France. Louis VI. was upon the throne of that kingdom,
the first of those great kings to whom the monarchy owed its
ultimate triumph over feudalism. It was natural that he should
look with jealousy on the vast strength of his great vassal, and
should attempt to curtail that power which the supineness of his
predecessor had allowed to accumulate. A constant border warfare
was the consequence, rendered the more possible by the doubtful
position of such counties as Maine, Evreux, the Vexin, Blois,
and Alençon, the counts of which were for ever changing their
allegiance. Louis had no difficulty in finding a pretender to
the Norman Duchy whom he might use as his instrument in opposing
the English King. William, the son of Robert, had fallen into
Henry’s hands, and had been by him intrusted to the care of Hélie
de St. Saen. In 1110, in connection apparently with a movement of
disaffected nobility (for Braiose, Malet, and Bainard are mentioned
as being exiled at that time), Hélie fled with the young Prince,
and sought to raise all the neighbouring princes in his cause.
Their efforts were not successful. Henry’s arch-enemy, Robert of
Belesme, fell into the King’s hands at Bonneville, where he had
presented himself with extraordinary effrontery, trusting that a
message with which he was charged from the King of France would
give him the security due to an ambassador. The same year Theobald
of Blois, acting for Henry, defeated the French King at Puysac.
And when Henry himself succeeded in capturing the town of Alençon,
and in attaching the Count of Anjou to his interests, by giving
him his heir, William the Ætheling, as a husband for his daughter,
Louis found it desirable to conclude a peace at Gisors, by which he
resigned his claim of suzerainty over Maine, Belesme, and Brittany,
and left entirely unmentioned the rights of William, son of Robert.
There followed a period of some years, during which Henry was able
to live in tolerable peace in England.
[Sidenote: Prince William acknowledged heir.]
His position was, indeed, unusually strong. His son was contracted
to the daughter of the Earl of Anjou; his natural daughter to
Conan, son of Alan Fergant of Brittany; and, in the following year,
his daughter Adelaide or Matilda was married to the German Emperor
Henry V. He took this opportunity of securing the succession to
his son William, to whom, in the years 1115-1116, he succeeded in
inducing the barons both of England and Normandy to promise their
allegiance. But this cessation of hostilities was not of long
duration.
[Sidenote: Renewal of the war.]
[Sidenote: Depression of Henry.]
[Sidenote: Battle of Brenneville, and complete prosperity. 1119.]
The causes of war had not been removed. There was still chronic
disaffection among the Norman barons, who disliked the firmness
of Henry’s rule; constant jealousy upon the part of the French
King; and the Pretender William, the Clito as he is called, was an
ever-ready instrument for their hands. Thus the border warfare was
renewed, and we hear of the disaffection, not only of the King’s
great barons, but of his allies, both Robert of Flanders and Fulk
of Anjou adopting William’s cause. Other distresses likewise came
upon Henry. He lost his wife Matilda, and his firm and sagacious
minister, Robert of Mellent. But, in 1118, prosperity again
returned to him. The Count of Flanders was killed in an attack upon
the Count of Eu. Money or negotiation won back the friendship of
Fulk, and in the following year a battle between a few knights at
Brenneville, at which both Henry and Louis were present in person,
was regarded as so decisive a victory for the English, that, by
the mediation of Pope Calixtus, a new Treaty was arranged, and
William’s interest completely disregarded. Thus was triumphantly
closed the second of Henry’s wars in France.
[Sidenote: Death of Prince William and its consequences. 1120.]
At this period of his greatest prosperity a blow fell upon Henry
from which he is said never to have recovered. He was returning
in triumph to England, when a certain Thomas Fitz-Stephen, whose
father had conveyed the Conqueror to England, claimed the privilege
of conveying the royal party. To gratify him, Prince William,
with the king’s natural daughter Matilda, the Countess of Perche,
and other young nobles, consented to embark in his ship called
the “Blanche Nef.” They remained behind the rest of the fleet
and celebrated the occasion in festivity, which ended in the
drunkenness of the crew. As they rode upon the harbour of Barfleur
in the moonlight they suddenly struck upon the rocks of the Ras de
Catte, and there was barely time for the young Prince to escape in
a boat from the sinking ship. The cries of his sister are said to
have induced William to return towards the wreck, when the hurried
rush of the despairing crew capsized his boat, and all on board
were drowned. Of the whole crew of the ship one only, Berold, a
butcher of Rouen, survived, owing his safety to the warmth afforded
him by his rough garb of undressed sheepskins. With fear and
trembling the news was broken to Henry by the young son of Count
Theobald of Blois. Henry is said to have fallen fainting from his
seat, and from that time onwards never to have relaxed into a smile.
[Sidenote: Insurrection of the Duke of Anjou.]
[Sidenote: Death of William Clito.]
The death of Prince William was not only a domestic misfortune.
By it was broken also the tie which bound the Count of Anjou
to Henry’s interests. It was a natural jealousy of his great
neighbour, the Norman Duke, which had induced Fulk to act in
alliance with Henry. When Robert’s imprisonment put Henry on the
throne of Normandy, he in turn became the object of Fulk’s enmity.
The state of the Duchy, where a disaffected party constantly
existed, afforded him ample opportunity of giving effect to that
enmity. Thus, in 1124, Henry was again recalled to Normandy to
suppress a rebellion in favour of William Clito, who was supported
by Anjou. Not only Anjou but France was inclining to join the
rebels, and it was only by instigating his son-in-law the Emperor
to attack France that Henry could manage to make head against his
opponents. As it was, however, a fortunate surprise by which all
the leaders fell into his hands enabled him to crush the rebellion,
and again induced the foreign powers to desert William. The King
of France indeed did not wholly give him up; but in 1127, after
investing him with several important territories, he brought him
forward as a claimant to the throne of Flanders, to which he had a
claim through his grandmother, Matilda, the Conqueror’s wife, who
was a daughter of Baldwin, Count of Flanders. Against him Henry
supported the claims of Diederik or Dirk, Count of Alsace, the last
count’s nephew, and his rightful heir. The matter came to war, and
in July 1128, before Alost, Prince William was wounded, and died of
his wounds. Henry was thus rid of his most formidable opponent.
[Sidenote: Attempt to secure the succession to Matilda.]
It remained for him to secure the succession for his daughter
Matilda, and he induced all the great men of England to acknowledge
her, and swear to support her claims. The list of those who swore
was headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, followed by the King’s
nephew, Stephen of Boulogne, and his natural son, Robert of
Gloucester. They always declared that they accepted the oath on the
condition that she should not be married to a foreigner without
their consent, and therefore many of them held themselves absolved
from their oath, when she was betrothed and ultimately married to
Geoffrey, son of the Count of Anjou.
[Sidenote: Death of Henry.]
The close of his reign was chiefly occupied in arranging disputes
in consequence of this marriage. It was while still in Normandy on
this business, though his presence was imperatively demanded in
England to suppress an insurrection in Wales, that he died, as it
is said, of the effects of a hearty meal of lampreys on the 1st of
December 1135.
[Sidenote: Welsh held in check by colonies of Flemings.]
[Sidenote: Constant insurrections.]
Throughout the reign he had had considerable difficulties with
the Welsh, for although, as has been said, many Norman knights
and barons had established strongholds among them, they were by
no means subdued. They took part in the insurrection of Robert
of Belesme; and Henry, conscious that they would be difficult to
conquer, hit upon the plan of establishing among them colonies of
Flemings, many of whom had come over with the Conqueror, and still
more about the year 1106, driven from their country by inundations.
The land granted them was in the western part of Wales, near
Haverfordwest and Tenby, where they acted at once as a military
post, and, through their knowledge of manufacture and agriculture,
as an instrument of civilization. In 1114 the Welsh rose under
Gryffith. The occupation of Caermarthen and Cardigan, where
Gilbert Strongbow, Earl of Strigul, was at that time commanding,
separated the Flemings from the English, and Henry was compelled to
march to their rescue. This insurrection was suppressed by Robert
of Gloucester, himself the son of Gryffith’s sister.[7] Small
insurrections continued. In 1122 Henry again went in person to
Wales, but, on the whole, the inhabitants were kept in subjection
by the Flemings and by numerous Norman castles till 1134, when they
were provoked to a new outbreak, so important that the King was
preparing to cross from Normandy to suppress it, when he died.
[Sidenote: Henry’s Church policy.]
[Sidenote: Anselm refuses fealty.]
[Sidenote: Anselm has to leave England.]
[Sidenote: Unsupported by the Pope, makes compromise at Bec. 1106.]
[Sidenote: Synod of Westminster.]
At home the great points of Henry’s reign were those which form
the domestic history of all feudal monarchies, the relation of the
Church and State, and the maintenance of police. With regard to the
Church his views were those of his father. He was ready to support
and increase its influence; he was not ready to give up any of the
prerogatives which his predecessors had possessed. He thus reversed
all the action of his brother, recalled Anselm at once with marked
honour, and filled up the vacant benefices. But the Archbishop
during his exile had mixed in Continental politics, at that time
consisting almost entirely of the question of investitures. He
returned home determined to assert to the full the independence of
the Church. He therefore refused to swear fealty, and do homage to
the King, or to consecrate those bishops who had received their
investitures from him. Henry, supported by his lay counsellors,
was equally determined to uphold the rights of the crown. The
matter was referred to the Pope, Pascal II. The Papacy had enemies
enough already, and could not afford to drive to extremities a
Prince so powerful, and in the main so friendly, as Henry. The
reply which was returned was ambiguous. Henry again commanded the
Archbishop to perform his usual duties. A second application to
Rome produced no better result. Anselm was urged to perseverance.
Henry’s ambassadors were given to understand that, as long as his
appointments were good, the King should not be interfered with.
Firm in his own views, but uncertain as to the Pope’s wishes,
Anselm had no course open to him but to visit Rome in person. He
there met with but lukewarm support, and withdrew to Lyons, while
Henry laid hands upon all the revenues of the archbishopric. For
some time Anselm rejected all offers of compromise; but when, after
all his efforts, he could induce the Pope to go no further than the
excommunication, not of the King, but of some of his ministers,
he lost heart, and, in 1106, a compromise was arranged at Bec, by
which Henry retained the really important part of investiture,
the oaths of fealty and homage, while resigning the idle symbol
of the gift of ring and crozier. This compromise, which was the
same in effect as that made sixteen years afterwards at Worms
between Henry V. and Calixtus II., set at rest for the present that
rivalry between Church and State which the policy of the Conqueror
had introduced. The decrees of a Synod held at Westminster,
1102, by Anselm before going to Rome, show the abuses which the
ecclesiastical disputes of the last reign had introduced. They are
directed against such habits as simony, marriage of the clergy, the
assumption of lay dress by ecclesiastics, the holding of secular
courts by bishops, the adoration of unauthorized saints and relics,
and vindicate the claims of the Church to be considered as the
chief civilizing agent of the time by forbidding the selling of men
for slaves.
[Sidenote: Frequent unfit appointments in the Church. Henry
corrects them when possible.]
It was not always that the Church appeared in such an amiable
light. Henry no doubt, on the whole, attempted to make good
appointments, but interest or desire to reward an ardent partisan
sometimes put an unfit person into office. Thus Henry of Poitou was
given the Abbey of Peterborough, although he already held an abbey
in France, apparently as a reward for the support he gave the King
in upholding the illegality of the marriage between William Clito
and Sibylla of Anjou on the score of consanguinity. “He came like
a drone to a hive,” says the chronicler; “all that the bees draw
towards them the drones devour and draw from them, so did he.” It
is fair to say that Henry, when he found out how bad a person he
had appointed, had him removed. “It was not very long after that
that the King sent for him, and made him give up the Abbey of
Peterborough, and go out of the land.” Thus, again, after a great
distribution of abbeys in 1107, it is remarked “that the abbots
were rather wolves than shepherds.” Such complaints are however
usually uttered by English writers, and the plight of the conquered
people was evidently very miserable.
[Sidenote: Wretched condition of the people.]
[Sidenote: Extracts from old chroniclers.]
It was a time of great suffering on more accounts than one,
and the suffering was of a kind to fall chiefly upon the lower
orders. Agriculture was so rough that any little irregularity in
the seasons produced a failure of the crops, and the habits of
the people were such that any infectious disease was liable to
become a pestilence. The constant warfare, either against his
vassals or his enemies, which the King carried on, was the cause
of frequent taxation, against which no class in the State had it
in their power to remonstrate; while the natural and artificial
causes of suffering were further aggravated by the frequent issue
of false coin. Thus we find year after year such entries as these
in the chroniclers:--“The year 1105 was very miserable, because of
the failure of the crops, and the ceaseless taxation.” “The year
1110 was full of wretchedness, because of the bad season, and the
tribute the King demanded for his daughter’s dowry.” “In this year
(1124) were many failures in England in corn and all fruit, so
that between Christmas and Candlemas the acre seed of wheat was
sold for six shillings; and that of barley, that is three seedlips
for three shillings, the acre seed of oats for four shillings,
because there was little corn, and the penny was so bad that a
man who had at market a pound could by no means buy therewith
twelvepenny-worth.” “In this same year (1125) was so great a flood
on St. Lawrence’s mass day that many towns and men were drowned,
and bridges shattered; corn and meadows totally destroyed, and for
all fruits there was so bad a season as there had not been for many
years before.” “In that year (1131) there was so great a murrain of
cattle as never was in the memory of man.” This carried off neat,
swine, and domestic fowls alike. And when the harvest was good the
pestilence came. “This year (1112) was a very good year, and very
abundant in wood and field, but it was a very sorrowful one through
a most destructive pestilence.” Or again, the year 1104, “It is not
easy to recount all the miseries the country suffered this year
through various and manifold illegalities and imposts which never
ceased nor failed, and ever as the King went there was plundering
by his followers on his wretched people, and at the same time often
burnings and murders.”
[Sidenote: Their chief complaints.]
[Sidenote: Baronial tyranny.]