Roger of Salisbury died in 1139. The Bishop of Winchester demanded
the See for his nephew. Again Waleram of Mellent thwarted the
Church, and his request was refused. At the Whitsuntide festival
(1141) held in London, but one bishop,[18] and that a foreign one,
was with the court. The state of uncertain anarchy was becoming
highly distasteful to Robert of Gloucester. An opportunity occurred
of bringing matters to a crisis. Ranulph, the Earl of Chester, had
hitherto played fast and loose with both parties, and the King had
parted from him at Lincoln, which he possessed in right of his
mother Lucia, believing him to be his partisan. But, a few days
after his departure, Ranulph and his brother William of Roumare,
surprised the castle, on which the King, who was a good soldier and
very rapid in his movements, suddenly came back and besieged it.
Ranulph escaped from the castle to Robert of Gloucester, who seized
the occasion to bring on a pitched battle. With Ranulph, his own
partisans, and the Welsh, he reached the Trent, passed it with some
difficulty, and appeared suddenly before Lincoln. A great battle
ensued, in which the victory fell to Gloucester, and Stephen was
himself taken prisoner.
[Sidenote: Matilda seeks help of the Church, and becomes Queen.]
[Sidenote: Importance of the Londoners. 1141.]
Of course this defeat somewhat changed the balance of affairs.
Cornwall was regained for the Empress, and her influence reached
eastward as far as Bedford and Nottingham. But she could not hope
in any true sense to obtain the crown without the consent of the
all-powerful Church. At once therefore negotiations were opened
with Henry of Winchester. Having won his adherence, and with it
that of the greater part of the bishops, she went from Gloucester,
accompanied by the Bishop of Ely and other supporters, to
Winchester. In an open plain without the city she swore to follow
the advice of the Legate on Church matters. Her oath was attested
by Milo, afterwards Earl of Hereford, Earl Gloucester, Brian
Fitz-Count, and others. A council of the Church was held a few days
after. The Legate addressed the assembly, and declared his adhesion
to Matilda. It is to be observed that he waited a day to receive
the citizens of London, who were “as it were nobles by reason of
the magnitude of the city.” Both the Londoners and many of the
nobility besought for the release of Stephen, but their request was
refused, and many of the royal party executed. Having obtained the
castle of Oxford from Robert of Oilli, Matilda proceeded to London;
but there the haughtiness of her behaviour soon produced the ruin
of her cause.
[Sidenote: Matilda’s opportunity, but she offends both Church and
Londoners.]
[Sidenote: Consequent revolution of affairs.]
[Sidenote: Gloucester taken prisoner, and exchanged for Stephen.
1142.]
It seems as though, if he could only have regained his liberty,
Stephen himself and his partisans would have been willing now
to retire from the contest. The Earls of Leicester and Mellent,
hitherto staunch supporters of the King, together with his old
friend Hugh, the Bishop of Rouen, went so far as to offer the
crown to Stephen’s brother Theobald. But that prince declined
to receive it, and even advised them to transfer their offer to
Geoffrey of Anjou, on the sole condition that Stephen should
be liberated. Taking advantage of such an opportunity as this,
while supported by the friendship of Henry of Winchester and the
Londoners, Matilda might have made her throne secure, but she at
once took steps which alienated both. To Henry of Winchester,
who must naturally have felt the ties of relationship towards
his brother, she refused the natural request that Stephen’s son
Eustace might be placed in possession of his father’s foreign
fiefs. From the Londoners she demanded a heavy tallage, in spite of
their complaints that they had been already stripped by taxations.
King Stephen’s Queen, to whom many of the fugitives from Lincoln
had betaken themselves, made use of the discontent thus excited
to advance against London. The inhabitants rose, and the Empress
barely escaped with a few followers to Oxford. The insurgents
demanded the liberation of Stephen. In this demand the Bishop of
Winchester now joined, and the Empress besieged him in his castle
outside the town of Winchester. But her besieging army was soon
itself besieged, its communications and means of subsistence
cut off, and she found herself obliged to retire. The Earl of
Gloucester therefore despatched her before him to Devizes, while
he himself covered her retreat. But he was hotly pursued and taken
prisoner. This neutralized all his previous successes. After some
negotiations the great prisoners were exchanged, and the state of
parties fell back very much to its position before the battle of
Lincoln.
[Sidenote: Renewal of the old anarchy. 1146.]
[Sidenote: Appearance of Prince Henry.]
[Sidenote: Death of Robert of Gloucester. 1148.]
Of decided successes on either side there were none. In 1142, the
Empress, hard pressed at Oxford, barely made her escape with two
knights, all clothed in white, across the snow. In the following
year Stephen, on the other hand, suffered a defeat at Wilton. The
same struggle for individual liberty on the part of the barons was
apparent everywhere. Thus the Cathedral of Coventry was changed
into a fortress by a baron of the name of Marmion, the Abbey of
Ramsey by Mandeville. Nor did the retirement of several of the
hotter spirits from the contest to join in a crusade which St.
Bernard was then preaching materially change the aspect of affairs.
But, in 1147, new actors begin to appear upon the scene. Wearied
with the long useless struggle, Matilda withdrew to France. But
to take her place her son Prince Henry came over to England. As
it were to match him, Stephen brought his son Eustace prominently
forward. This change of persons is still more clearly marked by
the death of the great Earl of Gloucester, a man to whom many acts
of cruelty in accordance with the temper of the time could be
attributed, but who, if we may judge from the testimony of William
of Malmesbury, was far superior in character and civilization to
most of those by whom he was surrounded.
[Sidenote: Henry’s marriage and increased power.]
[Sidenote: Church sides with him.]
The withdrawal of the Empress and the appearance of Henry made a
considerable difference in the views of those barons in England
who were not wholly selfish. Stephen had been tried and failed.
They had no longer to fear the rule of a woman. And thus we find
Robert of Leicester, second son of the great Earl of Mellent, who
had hitherto served Stephen and done him good service in Normandy
against the Angevins, giving in his adherence to the young prince.
In company with his cousin Roger of Warwick, he held the town and
castle of Worcester for him, and succeeded in driving off the
royal army. Henry’s accession to the county of Anjou upon the
death of his father Geoffrey, in 1151, and still more his marriage
with Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis, heiress of Poitiers and
Guienne, changed the character of the war. He was no longer a
poor claimant, at best the son of a count, but had been suddenly
transformed into one of the most powerful princes in Europe. In
addition to this, since the death of Pope Innocent in 1144, the
Papal See had been taking a more decided course against Stephen.
The legatine authority had been withdrawn from Henry of Winchester,
whose relationship with Stephen made his action always doubtful,
and been given to Theobald the Archbishop, but Stephen, with his
usual want of address, contrived to quarrel with him, and he
therefore threw his whole weight upon the side of Henry.
[Sidenote: Meeting of the armies at Wallingford. 1153.]
[Sidenote: Church mediates a compromise. 1153.]
[Sidenote: Death of Stephen. 1154.]
Thus, when Henry contrived to form a truce with his rival the
French King, and to enter England with a considerable army, the
country was much disposed to receive him. Many of the nobility
began to declare for him. The Beaumonts, as we have seen, were
already his friends. The Countess of Warwick placed her castle in
his hands. Robert of Leicester supplied him with provisions, and
he marched in good hope to relieve Wallingford, which, defended
by Brian Fitz-Count, Stephen was now besieging. There the two
armies met; but the desire for peace was so general, that they both
demanded that negotiations should be opened. Nothing was then
settled, but the armies separated. Stephen proceeded to besiege
Ipswich, where Bigot had declared for Henry, and Henry, taking
Nottingham on the way, was marching to relieve it, when the heads
of the Church saw their opportunity, and Theobald and Henry of
Winchester combined to mediate a peace. This was the more easy on
account of the death of the young Prince Eustace. On the 7th of
November the Treaty of Pacification was concluded at Winchester.
It was a compromise. Stephen was to remain King of England during
his life; Henry was to be accepted as his son and heir; Stephen’s
son William was to do homage to Henry for all his large possessions
in England and in Normandy. There then followed an arrangement for
restoring the administration which the war had ruined. The castles
were to be razed, the coinage reformed, the sheriffs replaced, the
crown lands resumed, the new earldoms extinguished, foreigners
banished, and administration of justice restored.[19] After this
treaty Henry’s duties summoned him chiefly to France; and Stephen,
for the short remnant of his life, remained undisputed King of
England. He died on the 25th of October 1154.
[Sidenote: Quotations from chroniclers. The miseries of this reign.]
Two short extracts from chroniclers give a more complete view
of the misery which attended this lawless period than any fresh
description could do. William of Newbury says: “Wounded and
drained of blood by civil misery, England lay plague-stricken.
It is written of an ancient people, ‘In those days there was no
king in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own
eyes;’ but in England, under King Stephen, the case was worse. For,
because at that time the King was powerless, and the law languished
because the King was powerless, though some indeed did what seemed
right in their own eyes, many because all fear of King and law was
taken off them, did all the more greedily what by their natural
instincts they knew to be wrong.... Neither King nor Empress was
able to act in a masterful way, or show vigorous discipline. But
each kept their own followers in good temper by refusing them
nothing lest they should desert them.... And because they were worn
out by daily strife, and acted less vigorously, local disturbances
of hostile lords grew the more vehement. Castles too rose in great
numbers in the several districts, and there were in England, so
to speak, as many kings, or rather tyrants, as lords of castles.
Individuals took the right of coining their private money, and of
private jurisdiction.” We have here the effects of the loosened
hold of the crown,--castles, private war, private coinage, private
justice. The Saxon Chronicle supplies us with a picture of the
effect of these feudal usurpations upon the lower ranks of the
people:--
“When the traitors perceived that Stephen was a mild man, and
soft and good, and did no justice, then did they all wonder. They
had done homage to him and sworn oaths, but held no faith; for
every powerful man made his castles and held them against him, and
they filled the land full of castles. They cruelly oppressed the
wretched men of the land with castle works. When the castles were
made, they filled them with devils and evil men. Then they took
those men that they imagined had any property, both by night and
by day, peasant men and women, and put them in prison for their
gold and silver, and tortured them with unutterable torture; for
never were martyrs so tortured as they were. They hanged them up by
the feet and smoked them with foul smoke; they hanged them up by
the thumbs or by the head, and hung fires on their feet; they put
knotted strings about their heads, and writhed them so that it went
to the brain. They put them in dungeons, in which were adders, and
snakes, and toads, and killed them so. Some they put in a ‘cruset
hûs,’ that is in a chest that was short and narrow and shallow,
and put sharp stones therein, and pressed the man therein, so that
they brake all his limbs. In many of the castles were instruments
called a ‘lāŏ (loathly) and grim;’ these were neck-bonds, of which
two or three men had enough to bear one. It was so made, that is,
it was fastened to a beam, and they put a sharp iron about the
man’s throat and his neck, so that he could not in any direction
sit, or lie, or sleep, but must bear all that iron. Many thousands
they killed with hunger; I neither can nor may tell all the wounds
or all the tortures which they inflicted on wretched men in this
land; and that lasted the nineteen winters while Stephen was King;
and ever it was worse and worse. They laid imposts on the towns
continually; and when the wretched men had no more to give, they
robbed and burned all the towns, so that thou mightest well go all
a day’s journey, and thou shouldest never find a man sitting in a
town, or the land tilled. Then was corn dear, and flesh and cheese
and butter; for there was none in the land. Wretched men died of
hunger; some went seeking alms who at one while were rich men;
some fled out of the land. Never yet had more wretchedness been in
the land, nor did heathen men ever do worse than they did; for
everywhere at times they forbore neither church nor churchyard, but
took all the property that was therein, and then burned the church
and altogether. Nor forbore they a bishop’s land, nor an abbot’s,
nor a priest’s, but robbed monks and clerks, and every man another
who anywhere could. If two or three men came riding to a town, all
the township fled before them, imagining them to be robbers. The
bishops and clergy constantly cursed them, but nothing came of it,
for they were all accursed, and forsworn, and lost. However a man
tilled, the earth bare no corn; for the land was all foredone by
such deeds, and they said openly that Christ and His saints slept.
Such, and more than we can say, we endured nineteen winters for our
sins.”
A people who had suffered these things must certainly have sighed
for a strong government, by whatever hand it should be wielded;
and miserable though the reign had been, it tended towards the
consolidation of nationality.
HENRY II.
1154-1189.
Born 1133 = Eleanor.
|
|
+-------+-------+--+------------------+-----+------------------+
| | | | | |
Henry. | Geoffrey = Constance John Matilda = Henry |
d.1182. | | of Brittany. the Lion |
Richard. | of Saxony. |
Arthur. |
|
+------------------------------------+
|
+-----------+-----------+
| |
Eleanor = Alphonso IX. Joanna = William II.,
King of Sicily.
CONTEMPORARY PRINCES.
_Scotland._ | _France._ | _Germany._ | _Spain._
| | |
Malcolm IV., | Louis VII., 1137. | Frederic I., | Alphonso VIII., 1134.
1153. | Philip Augustus, | 1152. | Sancho III., 1157.
William, 1165. | 1180. | | Alphonso IX., 1158.
POPES.--Adrian IV., 1154. Alexander III., 1159. Lucius III., 1181.
Urban III., 1185. Gregory VIII., 1187. Clement III., 1187.
_Archbishops._ | _Chief-Justices._ | _Chancellors._
| |
Theobald, 1139-1161. | Robert, Earl of | Thomas à Becket,
Thomas à Becket, | Leicester, 1154-1167. | 1154-1162.
1162-1170. | Richard de Lucy, | Ralph de Warneville,
Richard, 1174-1184. | 1154-1179. | 1173-1181.
Baldwin, 1185-1190. | Ranulf Glanville, | Geoffrey, the King’s
| 1180-1189. | son, 1181-1189.
[Sidenote: Main objects of Henry’s reign.]
[Sidenote: First acts of his reign.]
The consolidation of the nation was the great work of Henry of
Anjou. He brought to it great gifts, sagacity, masterful courage,
a legal and judicial mind; while his training, as the prince of
widely extending countries, prevented the intrusion of petty local
interests into his views for his people’s good. The lessons of the
last reign were not lost on him. Before all things he desired a
strong government and good order. In pursuing these objects he took
for his model his grandfather and great-grandfather, and worked out
in greater and more systematic detail the policy they had begun.
And though in his efforts to subordinate the Church he may seem to
have run counter to the legislation of his great-grandfather, it
will be seen that in many points his policy was really the same.
In the earlier part of his reign work lay ready to his hand, and
the compromise at Winchester had already marked out his line of
action. He could not immediately come to England, being detained
by an insurrection in Guienne. But when he had settled this, and,
by a humility of bearing he knew well how to feign, secured the
friendship of Louis VII., he crossed the Channel, and at once
proceeded with his reforms.
[Sidenote: He restores order in the State.]
He renewed the charter of the City of London; fixed a short period
during which the Flemish auxiliaries, who had already probably
begun to return home, should leave the country; recalled grants
of the royal domains which had been made in Stephen’s reign;
re-established the old number of limited earldoms; and proceeded
to lay hands on both the royal castles which individual barons had
appropriated and those private fastnesses with which the country
had become covered. Their number is variously estimated, by some
it is put as high as 1150. It was not without some opposition
that he carried out this work. It was chiefly in the North and
West that difficulty occurred. Before the year was over he had
received the submission of William of Albemarle, who was nearly
independent in Yorkshire. In February of the next year he expelled
Peveril, who had been guilty among other things of poisoning the
great Earl of Chester, from his Earldom of Nottingham. He followed
up his success by compelling the border barons, Roger, son of
Milo, Earl of Hereford, and Hugh Mortimer, a descendant of the
same family as Robert de Belesme, to surrender their fastnesses.
To complete his dominion at home he marched against Malcolm of
Scotland, who was occupying the three Northern counties. These he
compelled him to resign, obliging him to do homage for the county
of Huntingdon, which he claimed as a descendant of the old Earl
Waltheof. Throughout all the earlier part of the reign the Scotch
King appears as a great English baron, following the King to his
wars.
[Sidenote: Friendship of Adrian IV.]
Henry even thus early began to think of curbing the overgrown
power of the Church; and Henry of Winchester, in fear of what
might happen, thought it better to lay aside his episcopal robes
and retire for a time to Clugny, from which, however, he was soon
induced to return. An event, indeed, soon occurred which rendered
the King’s position with the Church peculiarly strong. In 1154
Nicolas Breakspear ascended the Papal throne, the only Englishman
who ever attained that honour. The connection between England and
the Papal See, always close since the Conquest, was drawn even
closer, and the Pope made a grant of the schismatical country
Ireland to the English King; a grant the enjoyment of which Henry
postponed till a more convenient season. Henry’s widely spread
dominions kept him constantly moving, and in 1156 the affairs of
his native county summoned him to France. He left his kingdom in
charge of Robert of Leicester, his great justiciary.
The difficulty in Anjou arose from the claim raised by his younger
brother Godfrey to that province. This claim rested upon a doubtful
will, by which his father was said to have intended Anjou for
Godfrey if Henry was called to the throne of England. By force
of arms Henry reduced the country; and his brother withdrew on
the receipt of certain payments, being shortly after called by
the burghers of Nantes to become lord of their town. This affair
was scarcely settled when Henry hurried back to England, there
to complete his conquest of the Scotch King, by obliging him to
surrender his strong castles of Bamborough, Newcastle and Carlisle,
and again to do homage for Huntingdon, on which occasion, however,
the clause “Salvis omnibus dignitatibus suis” was introduced into
his oath. This, with the surrender of castles by Hugh Bigod in
Norfolk, and of William, called of Warrenne, son of the late King,
and Earl of Surrey, completed the subjugation of the feudal nobles,
and rendered him absolute master of England.
[Sidenote: Master of England, Henry attacks Wales.]
[Sidenote: Rise of Thomas à Becket.]
[Sidenote: He is employed in foreign negotiation. 1158.]
Wales alone gave him further trouble. Thither, in 1157, he led
an army against Owen Gwynneth at the instigation of his fugitive
brother Cadwallader. The expedition was not successful; on this, as
on subsequent occasions, Henry found it impossible to reduce the
Welsh in their mountain strongholds. It is noteworthy, as affording
the first instance of scutage, or money payment in exchange for
personal service, which was in this instance demanded of knights
holding from the clergy; and for the shameful flight of Henry de
Essex, the royal standard-bearer, which gave rise afterwards to
a remarkable judicial duel. In the year 1163 Robert de Montfort
impeached Henry de Essex for cowardice and treachery. The matter
came to the ordeal of battle, and Essex being conquered, forfeited
all his lands, and retired as a monk to the Abbey of Reading. This,
and the confiscation of the property of Peveril, already mentioned,
are the only two instances of confiscation during the reign.
It was during this prosperous period of the King’s reign that
Thomas à Becket becomes prominent. The son of a citizen of
London, his talents had been early seen and employed by Archbishop
Theobald. In 1143 he had succeeded in getting for his patron the
legatine authority over England, and afterwards that Papal bull
which prevented the crowning of King Stephen’s son Eustace. He
was richly rewarded by livings in the Dioceses of Oxford, London,
and Lincoln, and, in 1154, with the position of Archdeacon of
Canterbury. The recommendation of the Primate soon placed him
about Henry’s court. He was appointed chancellor, and as such was
the chief clerk of the Curia Regis, kept the King’s seal, and had
the management of vacant ecclesiastical benefices. He was further
intrusted with the guardianship of the Tower of London, and with
the castle of Eye in Berkhampstead, thus occupying a position
partly secular, partly ecclesiastical. In this situation he
exhibited all the splendour of a great noble; kept a magnificent
table, followed the sports of the field, and was a proficient in
knightly exercises. Henry found much pleasure in his society, and
employed him in delicate negotiations. Thus, in the year 1158,
he was sent to arrange a match between Margaret of France and
Henry’s son Henry. His magnificent embassy dazzled the eyes of
the Frenchmen and was completely successful. The object of the
arrangement was to win the friendship of Louis, and prevent him
from interfering with the King’s plans on Nantes, where he meant to
make good his claim as successor to his brother Godfrey, who had
lately died. A meeting with Louis was effected on the river Epte.
Henry accompanied him back to Paris, and received from him the
child princess, whom he intrusted to the care of Robert of Neuburg,
Justiciary of Normandy. Strong in this new-formed friendship, Henry
found no difficulty in securing Nantes, and thereby a hold upon
Brittany.
[Sidenote: Nevertheless there is war with France. 1159.]
[Sidenote: Interesting points in it.]
[Sidenote: Scotch King serves him.]
[Sidenote: Introduction of scutage.]