The visitations of the justices by whom this assize was carried into

effect were arranged upon a new plan, or rather upon a modified form

of the plan which had been adopted two years before for the assessment

of a tallage upon the royal demesnes, to meet the cost of the expected

war. It was at that terrible crisis, when most men in Henry’s place

would have had no thought to spare for anything save the military

necessities and perils of the moment, that he had first devised and

carried into effect the principle of judicial circuits which with some

slight changes in detail has remained in force until our own day. This

tallage was levied by nineteen barons of the Exchequer, distributed

into six companies, each company undertaking the assessment throughout

a certain district or group of shires.[862] The abandonment of

this scheme in the assizes of the two following years was probably

necessitated by the disturbed state of the country. But at the council

of Northampton the kingdom was again definitely mapped out into six

divisions, to each of which three justices were sent.[863] In the

report of their proceedings in the Pipe Roll of the year they are for

the first time since the Assize of Clarendon[864] officially described

by the title which they had long borne in common speech, “_justitiæ

itinerantes_” (or “_errantes_”), justices-in-eyre; and it is from this

time that the regular institution of itinerant judges is dated by

modern legal historians.[865]

[862] See the lists in Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii., pref. p.

lxv, note 5, and Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 176; from the Pipe

Roll 19 Hen. II. (a. 1173).

[863] See lists in _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 107, 108.

[864] Ass. Clar., c. 19 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 145).

[865] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. pref. pp. lxix, lxx and

notes.

This first distribution of circuits however was soon altered. In

the very next year the same eighteen officers made, in addition to

their judicial circuits, a general visitation of the realm for fiscal

purposes, in four companies instead of six;[866] and on Henry’s return

to England in the summer of 1178 he made what at first glance looks

like a sweeping change in the organization of the Curia Regis. “The

king,” we are told, “made inquiry concerning his justices whom he had

appointed in England, whether they treated the men of the realm with

righteousness and moderation; and when he learned that the country and

the people were sore oppressed by the great multitude of justices--for

they were eighteen in number--by the counsel of the wise men of the

realm he chose out five, two clerks and three laymen, who were all of

his private household; and he decreed that those five should hear all

the complaints of the realm, and do right, and that they should not

depart from the king’s court, but abide there to hear the complaints of

his men; so that if any question came up among them which they could

not bring to an end, it should be presented to the king’s hearing and

determined as might please him and the wise men of the realm.”[867]

From the mention of the number eighteen it appears that the persons

against whom were primarily directed both the complaint of the people

and the action of the king were the justices-in-eyre of the last two

years; and this is confirmed by the fact that of all these eighteen,

only six were among the judges who went on circuit in 1178 and 1179,

while from 1180 onwards only one of them reappears in that capacity,

though many of them retained their functions in the Exchequer. In 1178

and 1179 moreover the circuits were reduced from six to two, each

being served by four judges.[868] The enactment of 1178, however,

evidently touched the central as well as the provincial judicature,

and with more important results. It took the exercise of the highest

judicial functions out of the hands of the large body of officers who

made up the Curia Regis as constituted until that time, and restricted

it to a small chosen committee. This was apparently the origin of a

limited tribunal which, springing up thus within the Curia Regis, soon

afterwards appropriated its name, and in later days grew into the Court

of King’s Bench. At the same time the reservation of difficult cases

for the hearing of the king in council points to the creation, or

rather to the revival, of a yet higher court of justice, that of the

king himself in council with his “wise men”--a phrase which, while on

the one hand it carries us back to the very earliest form of the Curia

Regis, on the other points onward to its later developements in the

modern tribunals of equity or of appeal, the courts of Chancery and of

the Privy Council in its judicial capacity.[869]

[866] _Ib._ p. lxx and note 3.

[867] _Ib._ vol. i. pp. 207, 208.

[868] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii., pref. p. lxxi and note 2.

[869] Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 486, 487, 601–603;

_Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. pref. pp. lxxi, lxxiv–lxxvii.

All these changes in the circuits and in the Curia Regis had however

another motive. The chief obstacle to Henry’s judicial and legal

reforms was the difficulty of getting them administered according to

the intention of their author. It was to meet this difficulty that

Henry, as a contemporary writer says, “while never changing his mind,

was ever changing his ministers.”[870] He had employed men chosen

from every available class of society in turn, and none of his

experiments had altogether brought him satisfaction. Feudal nobles,

court officials, confidential servants and friends, had all alike

been tried and, sooner or later, found wanting.[871] There was only

one who had never yet failed him in a service of twenty-five years’

duration--Richard de Lucy “the loyal”; but in the summer of 1179

Richard de Lucy, to his master’s great regret, resigned his office of

justiciar and retired to end his days a few months later as a brother

of an Augustinian house which he had founded at Lesnes in Kent to

the honour of S. Thomas of Canterbury.[872] Henry in this extremity

fell back once more upon a precedent of his grandfather’s time and

determined to place the chief administration, for the moment at

least, again in clerical hands. Instead of a single justiciar-bishop,

however, he appointed three--the bishops of Winchester, Ely and

Norwich;[873] all of whom, under their earlier appellations of Richard

of Ilchester, Geoffrey Ridel and John of Oxford, had long ago acquired

ample experience and shewn ample capacity for the work of secular

administration.[874]

[870] “Sic animum a proposito non immutans, circa personas

mutabiles immutabilem semper sæpe mutavit sententiam.” R.

Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 434--part of a long passage which

sets forth very fully the motives and the general aims and

results of Henry’s administrative changes.

[871] R. Diceto as above, pp. 434–435.

[872] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 238. Cf. Rog. Howden

(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 190.

[873] R. Diceto as above, p. 435.

[874] Richard of Ilchester is well known as an active official

of the Exchequer; see below, pp. 193, 194. Geoffrey Ridel seems

to have acted as vice-chancellor throughout S. Thomas’s primacy

and exile; see Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 174, note 1. As for

John of Oxford, his diplomatic talents are only too notorious.

This arrangement was however only provisional. The number of judicial

circuits was again raised to four, and to each of the three southern

circuits was despatched one of the justiciar-bishops, with a royal

clerk and three laymen to act as his subordinate assistants. The fourth

circuit, which took in the whole district between the Trent and the

Scottish border, was intrusted to six justices, of whom only two were

clerks; one of these, Godfrey de Lucy the archdeacon of Richmond, a

brother of the late chief justiciar, stood nominally at the head

of the commission; but there can be little doubt that its real head

was one of his lay colleagues--Ralf de Glanville,[875] the faithful

sheriff of Lancashire and castellan of Richmond to whom William the

Lion had given up his sword at Alnwick in 1174;[876] and these six

were appointed to form the committee for hearing the complaints of the

people, apparently in succession to the five who had been selected in

the previous year.[877] All four bodies of judges brought up a report

of their proceedings to the king at Westminster on August 27,[878]

and it seems to have been the most satisfactory which he had yet

received. When he went over sea in the following April, he left Ralf de

Glanville to represent him in England as chief justiciar.[879] Ralf’s

business capacities proved to be at least as great, and his honesty as

stainless, as those of his predecessor; and from that time forth the

management of the entire legal and judicial administration was left in

his hands. Circuits, variously distributed, continued to be made from

year to year and for divers purposes by companies of judges, ranging

in total numbers from three to twenty-two;[880] while the King’s Court

and the Exchequer pursued their work on the lines already laid down,

without further interruption, till the end of Henry’s reign.

[875] See the lists in _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 238,

239; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 190, 191.

[876] Jordan Fantosme, v. 1811 (Michel, p. 82).

[877] “Isti sex sunt justitiæ in curiâ regis constituti ad

audiendum clamores populi.” _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 239. See

on this Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. pref. p. lxxiii, and

_Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 601, 602.

[878] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 436.

[879] Rog. Howden as above, p. 215.

[880] See notices of the circuits and of the sessions of the

Curia Regis and Exchequer in Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 236,

237, 243, 244, 247, 248, 249, 251, 253, 258, 259, 265, 272,

273, 281, 291.

The last of Henry’s great legal measures, with the exception of a

Forest Assize issued in 1184, was an ordinance published in the autumn

of 1181 and known as the Assize of Arms. Its object was to define more

fully and exactly the military obligations of the people at large in

the service of the king and the defence of the country;--in a word, to

put once again upon a more definite footing the old institution of the

“fyrd,” which was the only effective counterpoise to the military power

of the barons, and whose services in 1173 and 1174 had proved it to be

well worthy of the royal consideration and encouragement. The Assize

of 1181 declared the obligation of bearing arms at the king’s command

to be binding upon every free layman in the realm. The character of

the arms with which men of various ranks were required to provide

themselves was defined according to a graduated scale, from the full

equipment of the knight down to the mail-coat, steel-cap and spear of

the burgher and the simple freeman.[881] The justices were directed to

ascertain, through the “lawful men” of the hundreds and towns, what

persons fell under each category, to enroll their names, read out the

Assize in their presence, and make them swear to provide themselves

with the proper accoutrements before S. Hilary’s day.[882] Every man’s

arms were to be carefully kept and used solely for the royal service;

they were not to be taken out of the country, or alienated in any

way;[883] at their owner’s death they were to pass to his heir;[884] if

any man possessed other arms than those required of him by the Assize,

he was to dispose of them in such a manner that they might be used in

the king’s service;[885] and all this was enforced by a stern threat of

corporal punishment upon defaulters.[886]

[881] Ass. Arms, cc. 1–3 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 154;

from _Gesta Hen._, vol. i. pp. 278–280. The Assize is also

given by Rog. Howden, vol. ii. pp. 261, 262).

[882] _Ib._ cc. 9 and 4 (Stubbs as above, pp. 155, 156, 154).

[883] _Ib._ cc. 4, 8 (pp. 154, 155).

[884] _Ib._ c. 5 (p. 155).

[885] _Ib._ cc. 6, 7 (as above).

[886] _Ib._ c. 10 (p. 156).

The freemen who were armed under this Assize had little occasion

to use their weapons so long as King Henry lived. Within the four

seas of Britain there was almost unbroken peace till the end of his

reign. The treaty with Scotland was ratified by the public homage of

William the Lion to Henry and his son at York on August 10, 1175;[887]

and thenceforth Henry’s sole trouble from that quarter was the

necessity of arbitrating between William and his unruly vassals in

Galloway,[888] and of advising him in his ecclesiastical difficulties

with the Roman see. The western border of England was less secure than

the northern; yet even in Wales the authority of the English Crown

had made a considerable advance since Henry’s accession. His first

Welsh war, directed against the princes of North Wales in 1157, had

little practical result. A second expedition marched in 1163 against

Rees Ap-Griffith, prince of South Wales, and a lucky incident at the

outset insured its success. Directly in the king’s line of march from

Shrewsbury into South Wales, between Wenlock and Newport, there ran a

streamlet called Pencarn--a mountain-torrent passable only at certain

points. One of these was an ancient ford concerning which a prophecy

attributed to the enchanter Merlin declared: “When ye shall see a

strong man with a freckled face rush in upon the Britons, if he cross

the ford of Pencarn, then know ye that the might of Cambria shall

perish.” The Welsh guarded this ford with the utmost care to prevent

Henry from crossing it; he, ignorant of the prophecy, sent his troops

over by another passage, and was about to follow them himself, when a

loud blast from their trumpets on the opposite bank caused his horse

to rear so violently that he was obliged to turn away and seek a means

of crossing elsewhere. He found it at the fatal spot, and as the Welsh

saw him dash through the stream their hearts sank in despair.[889] He

marched unopposed from one end of South Wales to the other, through

Glamorgan and Carmarthen as far as Pencader;[890] here Rees made his

submission;[891] and Rees himself, Owen of North Wales, and several

other Welsh princes appeared and swore allegiance to King Henry and his

heir in that famous council of Woodstock where the first quarrel arose

between Henry and Thomas of Canterbury.[892]

[887] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 94–96. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),

vol. ii. p. 79. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 38 (Howlett, vol. i.

p. 198).

[888] On the Galloway affair see _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol.

i. pp. 67, 68, 79, 80, 99, 126, 313, 336, 339, 348, 349; Rog.

Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 63, 69, 105, 299, 309.

[889] Gir. Cambr. _Itin. Kambr._ l. i. c. 6 (Dimock, vol. vi.

pp. 62, 63).

[890] _Ib._ l. ii. c. 10 (p. 138).

[891] Ann. Cambr. a. 1164 (Williams, p. 49). _Brut y Tywys._,

a. 1162 (Williams, p. 199). Both dates are self-evidently

wrong; the only possible one is the intermediate year.

[892] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 311.

Next year Rees, provoked as he alleged by Henry’s non-fulfilment of his

promises and also by the shelter given to the slayer of his nephew by

Earl Roger of Clare, harried the whole border and roused all Wales to

fling off the yoke of the “Frenchmen,” as the Welsh still called their

Norman conquerors.[893] Henry was obliged to delay his vengeance till

the following summer, when it furnished him with an excellent pretext

for escaping from his ecclesiastical and political entanglements on

the continent.[894] He set out from Oswestry[895] at the head of a

vast army drawn from all parts of his dominions, both insular and

continental, and reinforced by Flemish and Scottish allies.[896]

All the princes of Wales were arrayed against him, and both parties

intended the campaign to be decisive. But the wet climate of the Welsh

hills proved a more dangerous foe than the mountaineers themselves; and

after remaining for some time encamped at Berwen, Henry was compelled

to beat an ignominious retreat, completely defeated by the ceaseless

rain,[897] and venting his baffled wrath against the Welsh in a savage

mutilation of their hostages.[898] For six years after this, as we

have seen, he never had time to visit his island realm at all, and

the daring “French” settlers in Wales or on its borders, such as the

Geraldines or the De Clares, were free to fight their own battles and

make their own alliances with the Welsh just as they chose; it was

not till Henry in 1171 followed them to their more distant settlement

in Ireland that he again entered South Wales. Then he used his

opportunity for a series of personal interviews with Rees,[899] which

ended in a lasting agreement. Rees was left, in the phrase of his

native chronicler, as the king’s “justice” over all South Wales.[900]

How far he maintained, along the border or within his own territories,

the peace and order whose preservation formed the main part of an

English justiciar’s duty, may be doubted; but in the rebellion of

1174 he shewed his personal loyalty to the king by marching all the

way into Staffordshire to besiege Tutbury for him, and some of his

followers did equally good service in the suppression of the Norman

revolt.[901] David of North Wales, too, if he did nothing to help the

king, at least resisted the temptation of joining his enemies; and

the war was no sooner fairly over than, anxious that some reflection

of the glories of English royalty should be cast over his own house,

he became an eager suitor for the hand of Henry’s half-sister Emma--a

suit which Henry found it politic to grant.[902] A few months later,

in June 1175, the king made an attempt to secure the tranquillity of

the border by binding all the barons of the district in a sworn mutual

alliance for its defence.[903] The attempt was not very successful; the

border-warfare went on in much the same way as of old; but it was not

till the summer of 1184 that it grew serious enough to call for Henry’s

personal intervention, and then a march to Worcester sufficed to bring

Rees of South Wales once more to his feet.[904]

[893] Ann. Cambr. a. 1165 (Williams, pp. 49, 50). _Brut y

Tywys._, a. 1163 (Williams, p. 199).

[894] See above, p. 56, note 3{223}.

[895] Ann. Cambr. a. 1166 (_i.e._ 1165; Williams, p. 50). _Brut

y Tywys._, a. 1164 (Williams, p. 201). Gir. Cambr. _Itin.

Kambr._, l. ii. c. 10 (Dimock, vol. vi. p. 138). According to

the _Brut_ (as above) Henry first “moved an army with extreme

haste, and came to Rhuddlan, and purposed to erect a castle

there, and stayed there three nights. After that he returned

into England, and collected a vast army,” etc. Following this,

Mr. Bridgeman (_Princes of S. Wales_, p. 48) and Mr. Eyton

(_Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 79, 82) divide the Welsh campaign of

1165 into two, one in May and the other in July. Neither the

Ann. Cambr. nor Gerald, however, make any mention of the

Rhuddlan expedition.

[896] Ann. Cambr. and _Brut y Tywys._ as above.

[897] _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1164 (Williams, pp. 201, 203).

[898] _Ibid._ (p. 203). Chron. Mailros a. 1165.

[899] See _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1171, 1172 (Williams, pp.

213–219).

[900] _Ib._ a. 1172 (p. 219).

[901] See above, p. 164.

[902] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 397, 398.

[903] At the council held at Gloucester on June 29. _Gesta

Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 92.

[904] _Ib._ p. 314.

It was the latest-won dependency of the English crown which during

these years gave the most trouble to its wearer. If Henry found it hard

to secure fit instruments for the work of government and administration

in England, he found it harder still to secure them for the same work

in Ireland. At the outbreak of the barons’ revolt he had at once

guarded against all danger of the rebels finding support in Ireland by

recalling the garrisons which he had left in the Irish coast-towns and

summoning the chief men of the new vassal state, particularly Richard

of Striguil and Hugh de Lacy, to join him personally in Normandy.[905]

Richard served him well in the war as commandant of the important

border-fortress of Gisors;[906] and it may have been as a reward for

these services that he was sent back to Ireland as governor in Hugh’s

stead[907] at the close of the year. For the next two years, while the

king had his hands full in Normandy and England, matters in Ireland

went much as they had gone before his visit there; the Norman-English

settlers pursued their strifes and their alliances with their Irish

neighbours or with each other, and granted out to their followers

the lands which they won, entirely at their own pleasure.[908] But

the lesson which Henry was meanwhile teaching their brethren in

England was not thrown away upon them; and at the close of 1175 it

was brought home to them in another way. Roderic O’Conor, moved as it

seems by the fame of Henry’s successes, and also perhaps by two papal

bulls--Adrian’s famous “Laudabiliter,” and another from the reigning

Pope Alexander--which Henry had lately caused to be published at

Waterford,[909] at last bent his stubborn independence to send three

envoys to the English king with overtures for a treaty of peace. The

treaty was signed at Windsor on October 6. Roderic submitted to become

Henry’s liegeman, and to pay him a yearly tribute of one hide “pleasing

to the merchants” for every ten head of cattle throughout Ireland; on

these conditions he was confirmed in the government and administration

of justice over the whole island, except Leinster, Meath and Waterford,

and authorized to reckon upon the help of the royal constables in

compelling the obedience of his vassals and collecting from them their

share of the tribute.[910]

[905] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 136–141. Cf. above, p. 145.

[906] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 137.

[907] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 44 (Dimock, vol.

v. p. 298).

[908] For the history of these years in Ireland see Four

Masters, a. 1173–1175 (O’Donovan, vol. iii. pp. 9–23); Gir.

Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. cc. 1–4 (Dimock, vol. v. pp.

308–314); Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 142 to end.

[909] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 5 (pp. 315–319).

[910] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 101–103. Rog. Howden

(Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 83, 84.

This scheme might perhaps have answered at least as well as a similar

plan had answered during a few years in South Wales, had it not been

for the disturbed condition of the English settlement. The death of

Richard of Striguil in 1176[911] left the command in the hands of his

brother-in-law and constable, Raymond the Fat, who for some years had

been not only the leader of his forces, but also his chief adviser and

most indispensable agent in all matters political and military.[912]

A jealous rival, however, had already brought Raymond into ill repute

at court,[913] and the king’s seneschal William Fitz-Aldhelm was sent

to supersede him.[914] William appears to have been a loyal servant of

the king, but his tact and wisdom did not equal his loyalty. At the

moment of landing his suspicions were aroused by the imposing display

of armed followers with which Raymond came to meet him; the muttered

words which he incautiously suffered to escape his lips--“I will soon

put an end to all this!”--were enough to set all the Geraldines against

him at once; and the impolitic haste and severity with which he acted

upon his suspicions, without waiting to prove their justice,[915] drove

the whole body of the earlier settlers into such a state of irritation

that early in the next year Henry found it necessary to recall

him.[916] Meanwhile the aggressive spirit of the English settlers had

made Henry’s treaty with Roderic almost a dead letter. In defiance of

the rights which that treaty reserved to the Irish monarch, they had

profited by the mutual dissensions of the lesser native chieftains to

extend their own power far beyond the limits therein laid down. A civil

war in Munster had ended in its virtual subjugation by Raymond and his

Geraldine kinsfolk;[917] a like pretext had served for an invasion of

Connaught itself by Miles Cogan;[918] John de Courcy was in full career

of conquest in Ulster.[919] Henry could scarcely have put a stop to

all this, even had he really wished to do so; and by this time he was

probably more inclined to encourage any extension of English power in

Ireland, for he had devised a new scheme for the government of that

country.

[911] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 14 (Dimock, vol.

v. p. 332). R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 407. Four Masters,

a. 1176 (O’Donovan, vol. iii. p. 25). _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs),

vol. i. p. 125.

[912] Gir. Cambr. as above, cc. 1–3 (pp. 308–313).

[913] _Ib._ cc. 10, 11 (pp. 327, 328).

[914] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.

100.

[915] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 15 (pp. 334–337).

[916] _Ib._ c. 20 (p. 347). Gerald gives no date for the recall

of William; but it seems to have been before the nomination of

John as king of Ireland in May 1177; see below, p. 184.

[917] Gir. Cambr. as above, cc. 7, 12, 13 (pp. 320–323,

329–332).

[918] Four Masters, a. 1177 (O’Donovan, vol. iii. p. 35).

Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1177 (Hennessy, vol. i. p. 155). Gir. Cambr.

_Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 19 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 346).

[919] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 17 (pp. 338–343). Four Masters,

as above, pp. 29–33. Ann. Loch Cé, as above, pp. 155–157.

_Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 137, 138. Rog. Howden

(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 120.

The bride of John “Lackland,” Alice of Maurienne, had died within a

year of her betrothal.[920] The marriage-contract indeed provided that

in case of such an event her sister should take her place; but the

connexion had begun too inauspiciously for either Henry or Humbert to

have any desire of renewing it; and Henry now saw a possibility of more

than repairing within his insular dominions the ill-luck which had

befallen his plans of advancement on the continent for his favourite

child. In the autumn of 1176 John was betrothed to his cousin Avice,

the youngest of the three daughters of Earl William of Gloucester, and

Avice was made heiress to the whole of the vast estates in the west

of England and South Wales which her father had inherited from his

parents, Earl Robert of Gloucester and Mabel of Glamorgan.[921] But

a mere English earldom, however important, was not enough to satisfy

Henry’s ambition for his darling. In his scheme Avice’s wealth was to

furnish her bridegroom with the means of supporting a loftier dignity.

He had now, it was said, obtained Pope Alexander’s leave to make king

of Ireland whichever of his sons he might choose. On the strength of

this permission he seems to have reverted to his original scheme of

conquering the whole island.[922] In May 1177 he publicly announced

his intention of bestowing the realm of Ireland upon his youngest son

John, and parcelled out the southern half of the country among a

number of feudal tenants, who did homage for their new fiefs to him

and John in a great council at Oxford.[923] As however John was too

young to undertake the government in person, his father was again

compelled to choose a viceroy. He fell back upon his earliest choice

and re-appointed Hugh de Lacy;[924] and with the exception of a

temporary disgrace in 1181,[925] it was Hugh who occupied this somewhat

thankless office during the next seven years. With the internal history

of Ireland during his administration and throughout the rest of Henry’s

reign we are not called upon to deal here; for important as are its

bearings upon the history of England, their importance did not become

apparent till a much later time than that of the Angevin kings.

[920] _Art de vérifier les Dates_, vol. xvii. p. 165.

[921] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 124. Rog. Howden as above, p.

100. Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 415.

[922] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 161.

[923] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 162–165. Rog. Howden

(Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 133–135.

[924] The _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 161, seem to imply that

the appointment was given to Hugh of Chester. After relating

the earl’s restoration to his lands and honours, they add: “Et

postea præcepit ei [rex] ut iret in Hiberniam ad subjiciendum

eam sibi et Johanni filio suo ... et præcepit prædicto comiti

ut debellaret reges et potentes Hiberniæ qui subjectionem ei

facere noluerunt.” Hugh de Lacy is named simply in the general

list of those who were to accompany him. But Gerald (_Expugn.

Hibern._, l. ii. c. 20, Dimock, vol. v. p. 347), says that Hugh

de Lacy was re-appointed viceroy at this time. That he acted as

such for the next seven years is certain, while there is, as

far as I know, no indication that his namesake of Chester ever

was in Ireland at all. It seems therefore that either the earl

refused the office--or the king changed his mind--or the author

of the _Gesta_, confused by the identity of Christian names,

has substituted one Hugh for another.

[925] When he was superseded for about half a year by John

de Vesci (the constable of Chester) and Richard de Pec. Gir.

Cambr. as above, c. 23 (pp. 355, 356). _Gesta Hen._ as above,

p. 270.

[Illustration: Map V.

FRANCE & BURGUNDY cir. 1180.

Shewing the growth of the Angevin Empire from the time of Fulk the

Black.

_Anjou 987, Touraine 1044, Maine 1111, Normandy 1144, Aquitaine and

Gascony 1152, England 1154, Nantes 1158, Quercy 1160, Britanny 1169,

Overlordship of Toulouse 1173._

Key: _Royal Domain (France)_

_House of St. Gilles (Toulouse)_

_Aragon_

_Provence_ _Maurienne_

Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic. London, Macmillan & Co.

]

It is during these years of prosperity and peace that we are able to

get the clearest view of the scope and aims of Henry’s general scheme

of home and foreign policy. That policy, when fully matured in its

author’s mind, formed a consistent whole; it was however made up of two

distinct parts, originating in the twofold position of Henry himself.

His empire extended from the western shores of Ireland to the Cévennes,

and from the northernmost point of the mainland of Britain to the

Pyrenees. But this empire was composed of a number of separate members

over which his authority differed greatly in character and degree.

These members, again, fell into two well-marked groups. Over the one

group Henry ruled as supreme head; no other sovereign had ever claimed

to be his superior, none now claimed to be even his equal, within the

British Isles. In the other group, however, he had at least a nominal

superior in the king of France. It was impossible to deal with these

two groups of states on one and the same principle; and Henry had

never attempted to do so. The one group had its centre in England, the

other in Anjou. As a necessary consequence, Henry’s policy had also

two centres throughout his reign. The key to it as a whole lies in

its blending of two characters united in one person, yet essentially

distinct: the character of the king of England and supreme lord of the

British Isles, and the character of the head of the house of Anjou.

Henry himself evidently kept the two characters distinct in his own

mind. His policy as king of England, however little it may have been

consciously aimed at such a result--and we should surely be doing a

great injustice to Henry’s sagacity if we doubted that it was so aimed,

at least in some degree--certainly tended to make England a strong

and independent national state, with its vassal states, Scotland,

Wales and Ireland, standing around it as dependent allies. If he had

ever for a moment dreamed of reducing his insular dominions to a mere

subject-province of the empire which he was building up in Gaul, when

he thought of intrusting their government to his boy-heir under the

guardianship of Thomas, that dream had been broken at once and for ever

by the quarrel which deprived the child of his guardian and the king

of his friend. But, on the other hand, Henry certainly never at any

time contemplated making his continental empire a mere dependency of

the English crown. It was distinctly an Angevin empire, with its centre

in the spot whence an Angevin count had been promised of old that the

sway of his descendants should spread to the ends of the earth. Henry

in short had another work to carry on besides that of Cnut and William

and Henry I. He had to carry on also the work of Fulk the Black and

Geoffrey Martel and Fulk V.; and although to us who know how speedy was

to be its overthrow that work looks a comparatively small matter, yet

at the time it may well have seemed equally important with the other

in the eyes both of Henry and of his contemporaries. While what may be

called the English thread in the somewhat tangled skein of Henry’s life

runs smoothly and uneventfully on from the year 1175 to the end, it is

this Angevin thread which forms the clue to the political and personal,

as distinguished from the social and constitutional, interest of all

the remaining years of his reign. And from this interest, although its

centre is at Angers, England is not excluded. For the whole continental

relations of Henry were coloured by his position as an English king;

and the whole foreign relations of England, from his day to our own,

have been coloured by the fact that her second King Henry was also

head of the Angevin house when that house was at the height of its

continental power and glory.

The prophecy said to have been made to Fulk the Good was now literally

fulfilled. The dominions of his posterity reached to the uttermost ends

of the known world. In the far east, one grandson of Fulk V. ruled over

the little strip of Holy Land which formed the boundary of Christendom

against the outer darkness of unexplored heathendom. In the far west,

another of Fulk’s grandsons was, formally at least, acknowledged

overlord of the island beyond which, in the belief of those days, lay

nothing but a sea without a shore. Scarcely less remarkable, however,

was the fulfilment of the prediction in a narrower sense. The whole

breadth of Europe and the whole length of the Mediterranean sea parted

the western from the eastern branch of the Angevin house. But in Gaul

itself, the Angevin dominion now stretched without a break from one

end of the land to the other. The Good Count’s heir held in his own

hands the whole Gaulish coast-line from the mouth of the Somme to

that of the Bidassoa, and he could almost touch the Mediterranean Sea

through his vassal the count of Toulouse. Step by step the lords of

the little Angevin march had enlarged their borders till they enclosed

more than two-thirds of the kingdom of France. Fulk Nerra and Geoffrey

Martel had doubled their possessions by the conquest of Touraine to

the south-east; Fulk V. had tripled them by the annexation of Maine

to the northward; Geoffrey Plantagenet’s marriage with the heiress of

Normandy had brought him to the shores of the English Channel. The

whole series of annexations and conquests whereby his son expanded his

continental dominions to the extent which they covered thirty years

after Geoffrey’s death resulted simply from a continuation of the same

policy which, a century and a half before, had laid the foundations of

the Angevin empire. Count Henry Fitz-Empress stood in a figure, like

Count Fulk the Black, upon the rock of Angers, looked around over his

marchland and its borders, noted every point at which those borders

might be strengthened, rounded off or enlarged, and set himself to

the pursuit of Fulk Nerra’s work in Fulk Nerra’s own spirit. For such

a survey indeed he needed a more wide-reaching vision than even that

of the Black Falcon. The work had altered vastly in scale since it

left the “great builder’s” hands; but it had not changed in character.

Henry’s policy in Gaul was essentially the same as Fulk’s--a policy of

consolidation, rather than of conquest. He clearly never dreamed, as

a man of less cautious ambition might well have done in his place, of

pitting the whole strength of his continental and insular dominions

against that of the French Crown in a struggle for the mastery of Gaul;

he seems never to have dreamed even of trying to free himself from his

feudal obedience to a sovereign far inferior to him in territorial

wealth and power; he never, so far as we can see, aspired to stand in

any other relation to the French king than that which had been held by

his forefathers. He aimed in fact simply at compacting and securing his

own territories in Gaul, and maintaining the rank of the head of the

Angevin house, as the most influential vassal of the Crown. If he ever

saw, on a distant horizon, a vision of something greater than this, he

kept his dream to himself and, like Fulk of old, left his successors to

attempt its fulfilment.

[Illustration: Map VI.

MAP OF EUROPE cir. 1180.

Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic. London, Macmillan & Co.

]

An ambition so moderate as this entailed no very complicated schemes

of foreign diplomacy. As a matter of fact, Henry was at some time or

other in his reign in diplomatic relations with every state and every

ruler in Christendom, from Portugal to Norway, and from the count

of Montferrat to the Eastern and Western Emperors. But these relations

sprang for the most part from his insular rather than from his

continental position; or, more exactly, they arose from his position

as a king of England, but a king far mightier than any who had gone

before him. It was the knowledge that Henry had at his back all the

forces of the island-crown which roused in Louis VII. such a restless

jealousy of his power in Gaul; and it was the jealousy of Louis which

drove Henry into a labyrinth of diplomacy and of war, neither of which

was a natural result of Henry’s own policy. A very brief glance at

Henry’s foreign relations will suffice to shew that they concerned

England far more than Anjou. A considerable part of them arose directly

out of his quarrel with the English primate. Such was the case with

his German and Italian alliances, designed to counterbalance the

French king’s league with the Pope. The alliances formed through the

marriages of his daughters were all strictly alliances made by the

English Crown. The immediate occasion of Matilda’s marriage with Henry

of Saxony was her father’s quarrel with S. Thomas; in another point

of view, this union was only a natural continuation of a policy which

may be traced through the wedding of her grandmother with Henry V. and

that of Gunhild with Henry III. back to the wedding of Æthelstan’s

sister Eadgifu with Charles the Simple. The marriages of Eleanor and

Jane were first planned during the same troubled time; in each case

the definite proposal came from the bridegroom, and came in the shape

of an humble suit to the king of England for his daughter’s hand;

and in the case of all three sisters, the proposal was laid before a

great council of the bishops and barons of England, and only accepted

after formal deliberation upon it with them, as upon a matter which

concerned the interests of England as a state.[926] When Jane went to

be married to the king of Sicily in 1176, the details of her journey

to her new home and of the honours which she received on her arrival

there were recorded in England as matters of national interest and

national pride.[927] When in the following year her sister Eleanor’s

husband, Alfonso of Castille, submitted a quarrel between himself and

his kinsman the king of Navarre to his father-in-law’s arbitration, the

case was heard in an assembly of the English barons and wise men at

Westminster.[928] Henry’s daughters in short were instruments of his

regal, his national, his English policy; for the carrying out of his

Angevin, his family policy, he looked to his sons.

[926] On the marriages of Matilda and Eleanor see above, pp.

55, 59, 60, and the references there given; on that of Jane,

_Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 116, 117; Rog. Howden

(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 94; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 408;

Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 32.

[927] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 414, 415, 418; _Gesta

Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 120, 127, 157, 158, 169–172; Rog.

Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 95–98; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol.

i. pp. 263–265.

[928] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 139–154; Rog. Howden as above,

pp. 120, 131.

The arrangement by which he endeavoured to make them carry it out is

however not very easy to understand or to account for. He had long

since abandoned his early scheme of devoting himself entirely to

continental politics and making England over to the hands of his eldest

son. That scheme, indeed, had been frustrated in the first instance by

his quarrel with Thomas; although it seemed to have been revived in

1170, it was as a mere temporary expedient to meet a temporary need;

and the revolt of 1173 put an end to it altogether, by proving clearly

to Henry that he must never again venture to delegate his kingly power

and authority to any one, even for a season. But, on the other hand,

it is not easy at once to see why, during the years which followed, he

persistently refused to give to his eldest son as much real, though

subordinate, power on the continent as he was willing to give to the

younger ones--why young Henry was not suffered to govern Anjou and

Normandy as Richard was suffered to govern Aquitaine and Geoffrey to

govern Britanny, so soon as they were old enough, under the control

of their father as overlord. So far as we can venture to guess at the

king’s motives, the most probable reason seems to be that he could

not part with any share of authority over his ancestral dominions

without parting at the same time with his ancestral dignities. From a

strictly Angevin or Cenomannian point of view, Aquitaine and Britanny

were both simply appendages, diversely acquired, to the hereditary

Angevin and Cenomannian dominions. Nay, from a strictly Norman point

of view, England itself was but an addition to the heritage of the

Norman ducal house. Henry might make over all these to his sons as

under-fiefs to govern in subjection to him, and yet retain intact his

position as head of the sovereign houses of Normandy and Anjou. But to

place his mother’s duchy and his father’s counties in other hands--to

reduce them to the rank of under-fiefs, keeping for himself no closer

connexion with them than a mere general overlordship--would have

been, in principle, to renounce his birthright; while in practice, it

would probably have been equivalent to complete abdication, as far as

his continental empire was concerned. Henry would have had as little

chance of enforcing his claim to overlordship without a territorial

basis on which to rest it, as a German Emperor without his hereditary

duchy of Saxony or Franconia or Suabia, or a French king without his

royal domain. In short, when Henry found it impossible to give England

to his eldest son, he had nothing else to give him, unless he gave

him all; and Henry Fitz-Empress was no more inclined than William the

Conqueror had been to “take off his clothes before he was ready to

go to bed.” All his schemes for the distribution of his territories,

therefore, from 1175 onwards, were intended solely to insure a fair

partition among his sons after his own death; his general aim being

that young Henry should step into exactly his own position as king of

England, duke of Normandy and count of Anjou, and overlord of Britanny,

Aquitaine, and all other dependencies of the Angevin and Norman

coronets or of the English crown.

None of the holders of these dependencies, however, had as yet entered

into full enjoyment of their possessions. At the close of their first

revolt, in 1175, the young king was but just entering his twentieth

year; Richard was in his eighteenth and Geoffrey in his seventeenth

year; and although the one had been titular duke of Aquitaine and the

other titular duke of Britanny since 1169, the real government of

both duchies, as well as that of Normandy and Anjou, had been until

now in the hands of their father. For the purposes of our story there

is only one part of these continental possessions of our Angevin

king into whose internal concerns we need enter at any great length;

a very slight sketch may suffice for the others. The part which lay

nearest to England, and which politically was most closely connected

with it--the duchy of Normandy--was also associated with it in many of

Henry’s legal, constitutional and administrative reforms. A comparison

of dates indeed would almost suggest that Henry, when contemplating

a great legal or administrative experiment in England, usually tried

it first in Normandy in order to test its working there upon a small

scale before he ventured on applying it to his island realm. An edict

issued at Falaise in the Christmas-tide of 1159–1160, ordaining “that

no dean should accuse any man without the evidence of neighbours who

bore a good character, and that in the treatment of all causes, the

magistrates of the several districts at their monthly courts should

determine nothing without the witness of the neighbours, should do

injustice to no man and inflict nothing to the prejudice of any, should

maintain the peace, and should punish all robbers summarily,”[929]

seems to contain a foreshadowing at once of some of the Constitutions

of Clarendon which created such excitement in England four years

afterwards, and of the Assize which followed two years later still. A

commission of inquiry into the administration of the Norman episcopal

sees and viscounties in 1162[930] was a sort of forerunner of the

great inquest into the conduct of the English sheriffs in 1170. This

again was followed next year, as we have seen, by an inquiry into the

state of the ducal forests and demesnes,[931] which has its English

parallels in the great forest assize of 1176 and in an inquest into the

condition of the royal demesnes ordered in the spring of 1177.[932]

On the other hand, a roll of the Norman tenants-in-chivalry compiled

in 1172 seems to have been modelled upon the English “Black Book” of

1168;[933] and when Henry determined to institute a thorough reform in

the whole Norman administration, it was at the English exchequer-table

that he found his instrument for the work. In 1176 William de Courcy,

the seneschal of Normandy, died. In his stead the king appointed

Richard of Ilchester. Richard, to judge by his surname, must have

been an Englishman by birth; from the second year of Henry’s reign

he was employed as a “writer” in the royal treasury;[934] about 1163

he was made archdeacon of Poitiers, but his archidiaconal functions

sat as lightly upon him as upon a contemporary whose name is often

associated with his, Geoffrey Ridel, archdeacon of Canterbury and

vice-chancellor; and throughout the struggle with Archbishop Thomas he

was one of the most active agents of Henry’s foreign diplomacy.[935]

Unlike his colleagues Geoffrey Ridel and John of Oxford, he contrived,

notwithstanding the ecclesiastical disgrace in which he became

involved through his dealings with the schismatic Emperor and the

antipope, to retain the general respect of all parties among his

fellow-countrymen.[936] Throughout the same period, when not absent

from England on some diplomatic mission, he frequently appears as an

acting justice of the King’s Court and baron of the Exchequer.[937]

He continued to fulfil the same duties after his elevation to the

see of Winchester in 1174; and the estimation in which he was held

is shewn by the fact that on his return from Normandy, where he was

replaced at the end of two years by William Fitz-Ralf,[938] a special

seat was assigned to him at the exchequer-table between the presiding

justiciar and the treasurer, “that he might diligently examine what

was written on the roll.”[939] He was evidently invested with far

more authority in Normandy than that which usually appertained to a

Norman seneschal--authority, in fact, more like that of an English

justiciar; indeed, he is actually called justiciar, and not seneschal,

by contemporary English writers.[940] His work in the duchy seems to

have been moreover specially connected with finance;[941] and we may

perhaps venture to see a trace of his hand in the organization of

the Norman Court of Exchequer, which first comes distinctly to light

in Henry’s latter years, its earliest extant roll being that of the

year 1180.[942] The earlier stages of the legal and administrative

organization of Normandy are, however, so lost in obscurity that

neither constitutional lawyers in Henry’s day nor constitutional

historians in our own have been able to determine the exact historical

relation of the Norman system to that of England;[943] and the

speedy severance of the political connexion between them makes the

determination of the question, after all, of little practical moment.

[929] Contin. Becc. (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. p. 180).

Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 459, 460.

[930] Rob. Torigni, a. 1162.

[931] Rob. Torigni, a. 1171. See above, p. 128.

[932] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 138.

[933] See above, p. 125.

[934] Pipe Roll 2 Hen. II., pp. 30, 31; 4 Hen. II., pp. 121,

122 (Hunter); 5 Hen. II., p. 20; 6 Hen. II., p. 57; 7 Hen. II.,

p. 48; 8 Hen. II., p. 21 (Pipe Roll Soc.)

[935] See the Becket correspondence, _passim_.

[936] Except, of course, the immediate personal friends of the

archbishop, to whom he seems to have been even more obnoxious

than the “_archidiabolus_” Geoffrey Ridel--that is, supposing

Mr. Eyton to be right in his theory that Richard of Ilchester

is the person designated in the private letters of Thomas

and his friends as “Luscus.” Canon Robertson, however, took

“Luscus” to mean Richard de Lucy; but the other interpretation

seems on the whole more probable.

[937] Madox, _Formulare Anglic._, p. xix (a. 1165). Eyton,

_Itin. Hen. II._, p. 130 (a. 1168, 1169). He was one of two

custodians of the temporalities of the see of Lincoln during

the vacancy caused by Bishop Robert’s death in 1167; _ib._ p.

99, note 5, from Pipe Roll 12 Hen. II.

[938] See Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 100, and the

editor’s note 3.

[939] _Dialog. de Scacc._, Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 178;

cf. _ib._ p. 184.

[940] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 124. “Curiâ sibi totius

Normanniæ deputatâ” says R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 415.

[941] R. Diceto as above.

[942] Edited by Mr. Stapleton for the Society of

Antiquaries--_Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniæ_, vol. i.

[943] _Dial. de Scacc._ as above, p. 176. Stubbs, _Constit.

Hist._, vol. i. p. 438.

Even more obscure than the internal history of Normandy under Henry

II. is that of Anjou and of the two dependencies which may now be

reckoned as one with it, Touraine and Maine. There is in his time

throughout the whole of his dominions, with the marked exception of

England, a dearth of historical records. Normandy cannot boast of a

single historian such as those of the preceding generation, Orderic or

William of Jumièges; the only Norman chronicle of any importance is

that of Robert of Torigny, commonly known as “Robert _de Monte_,” from

the Mont-St.-Michel of which he was abbot; and even his work is nothing

more than a tolerably full and accurate chronicle of the old-fashioned

type, arranged on the annalistic plan “according to the years of our

Lord” which William of Malmesbury had condemned long ago. The Breton

chronicles, always meagre, grow more meagre still as the years pass

on; the same may be said of the chronicles of Tours; the “Acts of the

bishops of Le Mans,” our sole native authority for the history of

Maine, cease to record anything save purely ecclesiastical details. In

Anjou itself the recent aggrandizement of the Angevin house stirred up

in Henry’s early years a spirit of patriotic loyalty which led more

than one of his subjects to collect the floating popular traditions of

his race, as the ballads and tales of old England had been collected

by Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury, and weave them into

a narrative which passed for a history of the Angevin counts; and one

of these writers supplemented his work with a special memoir of Henry’s

father, Geoffrey duke of the Normans. But the reign of Henry himself

found no historian in the Marchland; and indeed the half-blank pages

of the few monastic chronicles which still dragged out a lingering

existence in one or two of the great Angevin abbeys shew us that under

Count Henry Fitz-Empress Anjou was once more, as of old under Count

Fulk the Good, happy in having no history.

Yet it is there, and there alone, that we can catch a glimpse of one

side of his character which, if we saw him only in England or in

Normandy, we should hardly have discerned at all. Strange as it seems

to us who know him in his northern realms only as the enterprising and

somewhat unscrupulous politician, the stern and vigorous ruler, the

hard-headed statesman, the uncompromising opponent of the Church’s

claims, Henry is yet the one Angevin count who completely reproduced

in his Marchland, as a living reality, the ideal which was represented

there by the name of the good count-canon of Tours. Fulk the Black and

Fulk the Fifth had both tried to reproduce it, each according to his

lights, during those few years when the pressure of external politics

and warfare left them free to devote their energies for a while to

their country’s internal welfare. But Henry’s whole reign was, for his

paternal dominions, a reign of peace. If we drew our ideas of him

solely from the traces and traditions which he has left behind him

there, we could never have guessed that he was a greater warrior than

Fulk Nerra; we should rather have taken him for a quiet prince who,

like Fulk the Good, “waged no wars.” These traces and traditions lie

scattered over the soil of Anjou, Touraine and Maine as thickly as the

traces and the traditions of the Black Count himself. Henry is in fact

the only one of the later Angevin counts who made upon the imagination

of his people an impression even approaching in vividness to that

left by Fulk the Black, and of whose material works there remains

anything which can be compared with those of the “great builder” of the

preceding century. But the memory which Anjou has retained of Henry

differs much in character from that which she has kept of Fulk; and

it differs more widely still from that which Henry himself has left

in his island-realm. In English popular tradition he appears simply

as the hero of a foolish and discreditable romance, or as the man

who first caused the murder of S. Thomas and then did penance at his

grave; and material traces of him there are literally none, for of his

English dwelling-places not one stone is left upon another, and not a

single surviving monument of public utility, secular or ecclesiastical,

is connected with his name. In the valley of the Loire it was far

otherwise. There the two great Angevin builders share between them the

credit of well-nigh all the more important monuments which give life to

the medieval history of the land--except the military constructions,

which belong to Fulk alone. It is not in donjons such as that of Loches

or Montrichard, but in palaces and hospitals, bridges and embankments,

that we see our Angevin king’s handiwork in his own home-lands. Almost

every one of his many local capitals was adorned during his reign with

a palace of regal dimensions and magnificence, reared by him in place

of the lowlier “halls” which had served for the dwelling of the merely

local rulers whom he succeeded. The rebuilding of the ducal palace

at Rouen was begun in 1161;[944] that of Caen was nearly finished

in 1180; its hall, which still exists, is the traditional seat of

the Norman Exchequer.[945] At Tours a round tower which still stands

in the barrack-yard is the sole surviving fragment of a castle which

Henry is said to have built. His favourite abode in Touraine, however,

was not at Tours but at Chinon, where the little fortress above the

Vienne which had been the last conquest of Fulk Nerra and the lifelong

prison of Geoffrey the Bearded grew under Henry’s hands into a royal

retreat of exquisite beauty and splendour--a gem, even now in its ruin,

worthy of its setting in the lovely valley of the Vienne, with the

background of good greenwood which to Henry was probably its greatest

charm. Angers, again, almost put on a new face in the course of Henry’s

lifetime. In the year before his birth it had been visited by a fire

which reduced to almost total ruin its whole south-western quarter,

including the palace of the counts,[946] of which nothing but the

great hall seems to have remained. The work of reconstruction, begun

no doubt by Geoffrey Plantagenet, was completed on a regal scale by

his son, and before the close of Henry’s reign a visitor from England,

Ralf de Diceto, could gaze in admiration at the “vast palace,” with

its “newly-built apartments, adorned with splendour befitting a king,”

which rose at the foot of the vine-clad hills above the purple stream

of Mayenne.[947]

[944] Rob. Torigni, a. 1161.

[945] _Mag. Rot. Scacc. Norm._ (Stapleton), vol. i. p. 56.

_Ib._ Observ. pp. xxvii–xxviii.

[946] Chron. S. Serg. a. 1132 (Marchegay, _Eglises d’Anjou_, p.

144).

[947] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 292 (_Hist. Com. Andeg._,

Marchegay, _Comtes d’Anjou_, p. 337).

But the count-king did not build for himself alone. It was, above

all, with works of public usefulness that he delighted to adorn his

realms. His beneficence indeed took a different shape from that of

his predecessors. Church-building and abbey-founding met with little

sympathy from him; throughout his whole dominions, only six religious

houses, in the strict sense, could claim him as their founder; and

even one of these was as much military as religious, for it was a

commandery of knights Templars.[948] But no sovereign was ever more

munificent in providing for the sick and needy. Not only do the Norman

Exchequer-rolls contain frequent mention of sums set apart out of the

ducal revenues for the support of lazar-houses and hospitals in the

chief towns of the several bailiwicks;[949] nineteen years before the

completion of his own palace at Caen, he had founded an hospital for

lepers outside the walls of the town;[950] and a park and hunting-lodge

which he had made for himself in the same year, 1161, at Quévilly by

Rouen[951] were shortly afterwards given up by him to a colony of

monks from Grandmont in Aquitaine, to be converted under their care

into another great asylum for victims of the same disease.[952] At

his own native Le Mans, the great hall of an almshouse or hospital

outside the north-eastern boundary of the city, said to have been

reared by him for the reception of its poor and sick folk, is still

to be seen, though long since perverted to other uses. At Angers,

on the other hand, it is only within the last half-century that the

sick and disabled poor have exchanged for a more modern dwelling the

shelter provided for them by Henry Fitz-Empress. Some time in the quiet

years which followed the barons’ revolt, Stephen,[953] the seneschal

of Anjou, bought of the abbess and convent of our Lady of Charity at

Angers a plot of ground which lay between their abbey and the river,

and on which he designed to build an hospice for the poor. In the

last days of 1180 or the first days of 1181 the count-king took under

his own care the work which his seneschal had begun, granted to the

new hospital a rich endowment in lands and revenues, exempted it from

secular charges and imposts, and won from Pope Alexander a confirmation

of its spiritual independence.[954] Four priests were appointed to

minister to the spiritual needs of its inmates; the care of their

bodies was undertaken at first, it seems, by some pious laymen bound

by no special rule; some years later, however, the hospital became,

like most other establishments of the kind, affiliated to the Order of

S. Augustine.[955] The pretty little chapel--dedicated to S. John the

Baptist, and still standing,--the cloisters and the domestic offices

were all finished before Henry’s death;[956] while of the two great

pillared halls which now form the chief architectural glory of the

suburb, one, the smaller and simpler, is clearly of his building;

and the other, more vast and beautiful, is in all probability the

last legacy of his sons to the home which was soon to be theirs no

longer.[957]

[948] Founded in 1173, at Vaubourg in the forest of Roumare--an

old hunting-seat of his Norman grandfather; Stapleton, _Mag.

Rot. Scacc. Norm._, vol. i., Observ., p. cxli. Of the other

houses, three were Austin priories: S. Laurence at Beauvoir

in the forest of Lions, founded while Henry was still only

duke of Normandy (_ib._ p. cxiv); Newstead, in Sherwood

Forest, founded before 1174 (its foundation-charter, dated at

Clarendon, has no mention of day or year, but is witnessed

by “Geoffrey archdeacon of Canterbury,” who in 1174 became a

bishop; Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. vi. pt. i. p. 474); and

the priory “B. Mariæ Mellinensis,” near La Flèche, founded in

1180 (_Gall. Christ._, vol. xiv. col. 600. I cannot identify

this place). The other two were Carthusian houses, Witham

in the forest of Selwood and Le Liget in that of Loches,

founded respectively in 1174 and 1175. (The date of Le Liget

is traditional; I cannot find any mention of the place in

_Gall. Christ._) Of all these, Witham is the only one of any

consequence; and the importance of even Witham lies chiefly in

its connexion with S. Hugh. (For its history see _Magna Vita

S. Hugonis_, Dimock, pp. 52 _et seq._) The insignificance of

the others is shewn by Gerald’s account of Henry’s religious

foundations, in _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 7 (Angl.

Christ. Soc., pp. 27, 28)--an account, however, which is by

no means fair. Henry on his absolution for S. Thomas’s death,

in 1172, promised to go on a crusade of three years’ duration

(Rog. Howden, Stubbs, vol. ii. p. 37); this undertaking he was

afterwards allowed to exchange for a promise that he would

build three religious houses in his dominions. According to

Gerald, he managed one of these by turning the nuns out of

Amesbury and putting a colony from Fontevraud in their place

(see _Gesta Hen._, Stubbs, vol. i. pp. 134–136, 165), and

another by turning the secular canons out of Waltham and

putting regulars in their place (_ib._ pp. 134, 135, 173, 174,

316, 317. Both these transactions took place in 1177.) “Tertium

vero,” says Gerald (as above) “vel nullum, vel simile prioribus

sibique prorsus inutile fecit; nisi forte domum conventualem

ordinis Cartusiensis de Witham, s. modicis sumptibus et exilem,

ad hoc fecisse dicatur.” No doubt Witham was one of the three.

But the other two are easily found; they were Newstead and

Vaubourg or Le Liget. R. Niger (Anstruther, p. 168) is as

unjust to Henry in this matter as Gerald; but so he is on most

others also.

[949] See Stapleton, _Mag. Rot. Scacc. Norm._, vol. i.,

Observ., pp. lix., lxi., lxvii.

[950] _Ib._ p. ci. Rob. Torigni, a. 1161.

[951] Rob. Torigni, a. 1161.

[952] See Stapleton as above, pp. cxlvi–cxlvii.

[953] Of Marçay--or Matha--or Turnham; authorities differ so

much as to his identity that I dare not venture upon adopting

either surname.

[954] C. Port, _Cartulaire de l’Hopital St. Jean d’Angers_, pp.

2–10, ii–vi.

[955] _Ib._ pp. 11–13.

[956] _Ib._ p. xiv.

[957] On the hospital-buildings see an article by M. D’Espinay

in _Revue de l’Anjou_, vol. xii. (1874), pp. 264–273.

This Hospice of S. John formed a third with Fulk Nerra’s abbey of S.

Nicolas and Hildegard’s nunnery of our Lady of Charity in the group of

pious and charitable foundations round which there gathered, on the

meadows that bordered the right bank of the Mayenne, the suburb now

known as Ronceray or La Doutre,--a suburb which even before the close

of Henry’s reign had grown almost as populous as Angers itself, and

was actually preferred to it as a residence by Ralf de Diceto.[958]

Twice in Henry’s reign the bridge which linked it to the city was

destroyed by fire;[959] the present “Grand-Pont” probably owes its

erection to him. Fire was, however, by no means the most destructive

element in the valleys of the Loire and its tributaries. “Well-nigh

disappearing in summer, choked within their sandy beds,” these streams

were all too apt, as Ralf de Diceto says of the Mayenne, to “rage and

swell in winter like the sea;”[960] and the greatest and most lasting

of all Henry’s material benefactions to Anjou was the embankment or

“_Levée_”--a work which he seems characteristically to have planned and

executed in the very midst of his struggle with the Church[961]--which

stretches along Loire-side, from Ponts-de-Cé, just above the junction

of the Mayenne and the Loire, some thirty miles eastward to Bourgueil.

Further south, in the valley of the Vienne, the legend of the “Pont de

l’Annonain” illustrates the curious but not altogether unaccountable

confusion which grew up in popular imagination between the two great

builders of Anjou. The “bridge,” a long viaduct which stretched from

Chinon across river and meadow south-westward to the village of

Rivière, was in reality built by Henry to secure a safe transit from

Chinon into Poitou across the low ground on the south bank of the

Vienne, which in rainy seasons was an all but impassable swamp. Later

ages, however, connected it with a dim tradition, which still lingered

in the district, of the wonderful night-ride across Loire and Vienne

whereby Fulk Nerra had won Saumur, and in the belief of the peasantry

the Pont de l’Annonain became a “devil’s bridge,” built in a single

night by the Black Count’s familiar demon[962]--a demon who is but

a popular personification of that spirit of dauntless enterprise

and ceaseless activity which, alike in their material and in their

political workmanship, was the secret of Henry’s success no less than

of Fulk’s.

[958] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 292 (_Hist. Com. Andeg._,

Marchegay, _Comtes d’Anjou_, p. 337).

[959] In 1167 and 1177. Chron. S. Serg. a. 1167 and 1177,

Chron. S. Albin. a. 1177 (Marchegay, _Eglises d’Anjou_, pp.

149, 151, 44).

[960] R. Diceto as above.

[961] It was certainly made before 1169; see Rob. Torigni _ad

ann._

[962] See Salies, _Foulques-Nerra_, note civ., pp. 429, 430.

One portion, however, of Henry’s continental dominions has during

these years a political and military history of its own, which is not

without a bearing upon that of our own land. Geographically remote

as it was from England, still more remote in the character of both

country and people, Aquitaine yet concerns us more than any other part

of Henry’s Gaulish possessions. For not only was it a chief source of

the political complications which filled the closing years of his life;

it was the only one of those possessions whose connexion with England

survived the fall of the Angevin house. The heritages of Geoffrey and

Matilda were lost by their grandson; the heritage of Eleanor remained,

in part at least, in the hands of her descendants for more than two

hundred years.

It was in truth a dower at once valuable and burdensome that Henry

had received with his Aquitanian wife. She had made him master

of a territory whose extent surpassed that of all his Norman and

Angevin dominions put together, and was scarcely equalled by that of

England--a territory containing every variety of soil and of natural

characteristics, from the flat, rich pastures of Berry and the

vineyards of Poitou and Saintonge to the rugged volcanic rocks and

dark chestnut-woods of Auvergne, the salt marshes, sandy dunes, barren

heaths and gloomy pine-forests of the Gascon coast, and the fertile

valleys which open between the feet of the Pyrenees:--a territory whose

population differed in blood and speech from their fellow-subjects

north of Loire almost as widely as Normans and Angevins differed

from Englishmen; while in temper and modes of thought and life they

stood so apart from the northern world that in contradistinction to

them Angevins and Normans and English might almost be counted, and

indeed were almost ready to count themselves, as one people. It

was a territory, too, whose political relations varied as much as

its physical character, and were full of dangers which all Henry’s

vigilance and wisdom were powerless to guard against or overcome.

Setting aside, for the moment, the internal difficulties of Aquitaine,

its whole eastern frontier, from the banks of the Cher to the Pyrenees,

was more or less in dispute throughout his reign. The question of

Toulouse, indeed, was settled in 1173; thenceforth the county of

Toulouse, with its northern dependencies Rouergue and Alby, became a

recognized underfief of the Poitevin duchy of Aquitaine, to which its

western dependency, Quercy or the county of Cahors, had been already

annexed after the war of 1160. The north-eastern portions of the older

Aquitania, Berry and Auvergne, were sources of more lasting trouble.

Berry had long ago been split into two unequal portions, of which

the larger had remained subject to the dukes of Aquitaine, while the

smaller northern division formed the viscounty of Bourges, and was an

immediate fief of the French Crown. Naturally, the king was disposed

to use every opportunity of thwarting the duke in the exercise of

his authority over southern Berry; and Henry was equally desirous to

lose no chance of re-asserting his ducal rights over Bourges.[963]

The feudal position of Auvergne was a standing puzzle which king and

duke, count, clergy and people, all in vain endeavoured to solve.

During the struggle for supremacy in southern Gaul between the houses

of Poitiers and Toulouse, Auvergne, after fluctuating for nearly a

hundred years between the rival dukedoms, had virtually succeeded in

freeing itself from the control of both, and in the reign of Louis

VI. it seems to have been regarded as an immediate fief of the French

Crown, to which however it proved a most unruly and troublesome

possession. But the dukes of Aquitaine had never relinquished their

claim to its overlordship; and when a quarrel broke out between two

rival claimants of the county, it was naturally followed by a quarrel

between Henry and Louis VII. as to their respective rights, as overlord

and as lord paramount, to act as arbiters in the strife.[964] During

five-and-twenty years it was a favourite device of Louis and of his

successor, at every adverse crisis in Henry’s fortune, to despatch

a body of troops into Auvergne to occupy that country and threaten

Aquitaine through its eastern marches,[965] just as they habitually

threatened Normandy through the marches of the Vexin.

[963] His first attempt to do so was made in 1170, when a

pretext was given him by the declaration said--whether truly

or falsely--to have been made by the dying archbishop Peter of

Bourges, that his see belonged of right to Aquitaine. Nothing,

however, came of the attempt. See _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol.

i. pp. 10, 11.

[964] See Rob. Torigni, a. 1167.

[965] _E.g._ in 1164 (Ep. lx., Robertson. _Becket_, vol. v.

p. 115), 1167 (above, p. 58; Rob. Torigni _ad ann._), 1170

(Will. Fitz-Steph., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii. p. 116; Ep.

dccxxii., _ib._ vol. vii. p. 400), and again in 1188.

Such a threat implied a far more serious danger in the south than

in the north. The Aquitanian border was guarded by no such chain of

strongly-fortified, stoutly-manned ducal castles as girt in the Norman

duchy from Gisors to Tillières; and Henry’s hold over his wife’s

dominions was very different from his grasp of the heritage of his

mother. Twenty years of Angevin rule, which for political purposes

had well-nigh bridged over the channel that parted England from Gaul,

seem to have done nothing towards bridging over the gulf that parted

Aquitaine from France and Anjou. If our Angevin king sometimes looks

like a stranger amongst us, he was never anything but a stranger

among the fellow-countrymen of his wife. Nowhere throughout his whole

dominions was a spirit of revolt and insubordination so rife as among

the nobles of Poitou and its dependencies; but it was a spirit utterly

unlike the feudal pride of the Norman baronage. The endless strife

of the Aquitanian nobles with their foreign duke and with each other

sprang less from political motives than from a love of strife for its

own sake; and their love of strife was only one phase of the passion

for adventure and excitement which ran through every fibre of their

nature and coloured every aspect of their social life. The men of

the south lived in a world where the most delicate poetry and the

fiercest savagery, the wildest moral and political disorder, and the

most refined intellectual culture, mingled together in a confusion as

picturesque as it was dangerous. The southern warrior was but half

a knight if the sword was his only weapon--if he could not sing his

battles as well as fight them. From raid and foray and siege he passed

to the “Court of Love,” where the fairest and noblest women of the

land, from the duchess herself downwards, presided over contests of

subtle wit, skilful rime and melodious song, conducted under rules

as stringent and with earnestness as deep as if life and death were

at stake upon the issue; and in truth they sometimes were at stake,

for song, love and war all mingled together in the troubadour’s

life in an inextricable coil which the less subtle intellects of

the north would have been powerless to unravel or comprehend. The

_sirvente_ or poetical satire with which he stung his enemies into

fury or roused the slumbering valour of his friends often wrought more

deadly mischief than sharp steel or blazing firebrand. The nature of

the men of the south was like that of their country: it was made up

of the most opposite characteristics--of the lightest fancies, the

stormiest passions, the most versatile capabilities of body and mind,

the most indolent love of ease and pleasure, the most restless and

daring valour, the highest intellectual refinement and the lowest

moral degradation. It was a nature which revolted instinctively from

constraint in any direction,--whose impetuosity burst all control of

law and order imposed from without upon its restless love of action and

adventure, just as it overflowed all conventional bounds of thought and

language with its exuberant play of feeling and imagination in speech

or song.[966] We may see a type of it in the portrait, drawn by almost

contemporary hands, of one who played an important part both in the

social and in the political history of Aquitaine throughout the closing

years of Henry II. and the reign of his successor. “Bertrand de Born

was of the Limousin, lord of a castle in the diocese of Périgueux, by

name Hautefort. He had at his command near a thousand men. And all his

time he was at war with all his neighbours, with the count of Périgord,

and the viscount of Limoges, and with his own brother Constantine--whom

he would have liked to disinherit, had it not been for the king of

England--and with Richard, while he was count of Poitou. He was a

good knight, and a good warrior, and a good servant of ladies, and a

good troubadour of _sirventes_; he never made but two songs, and the

king of Aragon assigned the songs of Guiraut de Borneil as wives to

his _sirventes_; and the man who sang them for him was named Papiol.

And he was a pleasant, courteous man, wise and well-spoken, and knew

how to deal with good and evil. And whenever he chose, he was master

of King Henry and his sons; but he always wanted them to be at war

among themselves, the father and the sons and the brothers one with

another; and he always wanted the king of France and King Henry to

be at war too. And if they made peace or a truce, he immediately set

to work to unmake it with his _sirventes_, and to shew how they were

all dishonoured in peace. And he gained much good by it, and much

harm.”[967]

[966] As John of Salisbury says--“auctor ad opus suum”:--

“De Pictavorum dices te gente creatum,

Nam licet his linguâ liberiore loqui.”

(_Enthet. ad Polycrat._, Giles, vol. iii. p. i.)

[967] From the two old Provençal sketches of the life of

Bertrand de Born, printed and translated into French by M. Léon

Clédat in his monograph _Du rôle historique de Bertrand de

Born_, pp. 99–101.

Until the dukedom of Aquitaine passed to a woman, as were the vassals,

so was their sovereign. Eleanor’s grandfather the crusader-duke William

VIII. and her father William IX. were simply the boldest knights, the

gayest troubadours and the most reckless adventurers in their duchy.

There can be no doubt that the submission of Aquitaine to Louis VII.,

so far as it ever did submit to him, was due to Eleanor’s influence;

and it was the same influence which chiefly contributed to preserve its

obedience to her second husband during those earlier years of their

married life when, at home and abroad, all things had seemed destined

to prosper in his hands. But at the first symptom of a turn in the

tide of his fortunes, southern Gaul at one rose against its northern

master. Eleanor’s tact and firmness, Henry’s wariness and vigour, were

all taxed to the uttermost in holding it down throughout the years of

his struggle with the Church; and when Eleanor herself turned against

him in 1173, the chances of a good understanding between her subjects

and her husband became very nearly desperate. Henry himself seems to

have long ago perceived that a duke of Aquitaine, to be thoroughly

sure of his ground, needed a different apprenticeship from that which

might befit a king of England, a duke of Normandy or Britanny, or a

count of Anjou. The very first step in his plans for the future of

his children--a step taken several years before he seems even to have

thought of crowning his eldest son--was the designation of the second

as his mother’s destined colleague and ultimate heir. Richard had been

trained up ever since he was two years old specially for the office of

duke of Aquitaine. After long diplomacy, and at the cost of a betrothal

which became the source of endless mischief and trouble, the French

king’s sanction to the arrangement had been won; and on Trinity-Sunday

1172 Richard, in his mother’s presence, had been formally enthroned

at Poitiers. He was probably intended to govern the duchy under her

direction and advice; if so, however, the plan was frustrated by

Eleanor’s own conduct and by the suspicions which it aroused in her

husband. She was one of the very few captives whom at the restoration

of peace in 1175 he still retained in confinement. Richard, on the

other hand, had been like his brothers fully and freely forgiven; and

while his father and eldest brother went to seal their reconciliation

in England, he was sent into Poitou charged with authority to employ

its forces at his own discretion, and to take upon himself the

suppression of all disturbance and disorder in Aquitaine.[968]

[968] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 81.

What had been the precise nature of Richard’s training for his

appointed work--what proportion of his seventeen years’ life had

been actually spent in Aquitaine, what opportunities he had had

of growing familiar with the people over whom he was now set to

rule--we have no means of determining. By his own natural temper,

however, he was probably of all Eleanor’s sons the one least fitted

to gain the goodwill of the south. The “Cœur-de-lion” of tradition,

indeed--the adventurous crusader, the mirror of knightly prowess and

knightly courtesy, the lavish patron of verse and song, the ideal

king of troubadours and knights-errant--looks at first glance like

the very incarnation of the spirit of the south. But it was only in

the intellectual part of his nature that his southern blood made

itself felt; the real groundwork of his character was made of sterner

stuff. The love of splendour and elegance, the delight in poetry and

music,[969] the lavish generosity, the passion for adventure, which

contrasted so vividly with his father’s practical businesslike temper,

came to him without doubt from his mother. The moral deficiencies

and evil tendencies of his nature he himself charged, somewhat too

exclusively, upon the demon-blood of the Angevin counts.[970] But we

need not look either to an ancestress so shadowy and so remote as the

demon-countess, nor to a land so far distant from us as Poitou, for

the source of Richard’s strongest characteristics both of body and

of mind. In him alone among Henry’s sons can we see a likeness to

the Norman forefathers of the Empress Matilda. His outward aspect,

his lofty stature, his gigantic strength--held in check though it

was by the constantly-recurring ague which “kept him, fearless, in a

tremor as continual as the tremor of fear in which he kept the rest

of the world”[971]--his blue eyes and golden hair, all proclaimed him

a child of the north. And although he spent the chief part of his

life elsewhere, the slender share of local and national sympathies

which he possessed seems to have lain in the same direction. The

“lion-heart” chose its own last earthly resting-place at Rouen, not

at Poitiers;[972] and the intimate friend and comrade whose name is

inseparably associated with his by a tradition which, whatever its

historical value, is as famous as it is beautiful, was no Poitevin

or Provençal troubadour, but a trouvère from northern France.[973]

The influence of his northman-blood shewed itself more vividly still

when on his voyage to Palestine, having lived to be more than

thirty years old without possessing a skiff that he could call his

own, or--unless indeed in early childhood he had gone a cruise round

his father’s island-realm--ever making a longer or more adventurous

voyage than that from Southampton to Barfleur or Wissant, he suddenly

developed not only a passionate love of the sea, but a consummate

seamanship which he certainly had had no opportunity of acquiring in

any way, and which can only have been born in him, as an inheritance

from his wiking forefathers. When scarcely more than a boy in years,

Richard was already one of the most serious and determined of men.

His sternness to those who “withstood his will” matched that of the

Conqueror himself; and Richard’s will, even at the age of seventeen,

was no mere caprice, but a fixed determination which overrode all

obstacles between itself and its object as unhesitatingly as the old

wiking-keels overrode the billows of the northern sea. He went down

into Aquitaine fully resolved that the country should be at once, and

once for all, reduced to submission and order. He set himself “to bring

the shapeless into shape, to reduce the irregular to rule, to cast

down the things that were mighty and level those that were rugged; to

restore the dukedom of Aquitaine to its ancient boundaries and its

ancient government.”[974] He did the work with all his might, but he

did it with a straightforward ruthlessness untempered by southern

craft or Angevin caution and tact. He would not conciliate; he could

not wait. “He thought nothing done while anything still remained to

do; and he cared for no success that was not reached by a path cut

by his own sword and stained with his opponent’s blood. Boiling over

with zeal for order and justice, he sought to quell the audacity of

this ungovernable people and to secure the safety of the innocent amid

these workers of mischief by at once proceeding against the evil-doers

with the utmost rigour which his ducal authority could enable him to

exercise upon them.”[975] In a word, before Richard had been six months

in their midst, the Aquitanians discovered that if their Angevin duke

had chastised them with whips, the son of their own duchess was minded

to chastise them with scorpions.

[969] See R. Coggeshall’s description of Richard’s love of

church music: “clericos sonorâ voce modulantes donis et

precibus ad cantandum festivius instimulabat, atque per chorum

huc illucque deambulando, voce ac manu ut altius concreparent

excitabat.” R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 97.

[970] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 27 (Angl.

Christ. Soc., p. 154).

[971] _Ib._ c. 8 (p. 105).

[972] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 84.

[973] That is, if the Blondel of tradition is to be identified

with Blondel of Nesle.

[974] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8 (Angl.

Christ. Soc., p. 104).

[975] _Ibid._ (p. 105).

He set off at once upon a furious campaign against the strongholds of

the unruly barons. “No mountain-side however steep and rugged, no tower

however lofty and impregnable, availed to check his advance, as skilful

as it was daring, as steady and persevering as it was impetuous.”[976]

By midsummer the castles of Poitou itself were mostly in his hands, and

the young conqueror was busy with the siege of Castillonnes-sur-Agen,

which surrendered to him in the middle of August.[977] Before the

winter was over he was master of Périgueux, and had, in the phrase of

a local writer, well-nigh “disinherited” the barons of Périgord, the

Quercy and the Limousin. But in the spring their smouldering resentment

was kindled into a blaze by the incitements of Bertrand de Born, whose

brother Constantine, expelled by him from the castle of Hautefort which

the two brothers had inherited in common, had appealed to Richard

for succour; the signal for revolt, given by Bertrand in a vigorous

_sirvente_, was answered by all the malcontents of the district,[978]

and at the opposite end of Poitou by the count of Angoulême; and at

Easter Richard found his position so difficult that he went to seek

advice and reinforcements from his father in England.[979] Geoffrey

of Britanny arrived at the same time on a like errand. Henry bade

his eldest son go to the help of the younger ones; the young king

complied,[980] somewhat unwillingly, and went to collect forces in

France while Richard hurried back into Poitou. The peril was urgent; in

his absence Count Vulgrin of Angoulême had invaded Poitou at the head

of a host of Brabantines. The invaders were however met and defeated

with great slaughter at Barbezieux by Richard’s constable Theobald

Chabot and Bishop John of Poitiers.[981] By Whitsuntide Richard had

gathered a sufficient force of loyal Poitevins and stipendiaries from

the neighbouring lands to march against Vulgrin and his Brabantines

and defeat them in a battle near the border of the Angoumois and

Saintonge. He then turned upon the viscount of Limoges, besieged

and took his castle of Aixe, and thence advanced to Limoges itself,

which he captured in like manner. At midsummer he was rejoined at

Poitiers by his elder brother, and the two led their combined forces

against Vulgrin of Angoulême.[982] A fortnight’s siege had however

scarcely made them masters of Châteauneuf on the Charente when the

young king--seduced, it was said, by some evil counsellor whom we may

probably suspect to have been Bertrand de Born[983]--suddenly abandoned

the campaign and withdrew again to France. Richard, undaunted by his

brother’s desertion, pushed on to Moulin-Neuf and thence to Angoulême

itself, where all the leaders of the rebellion were gathered together.

A six days’ siege sufficed to make Vulgrin surrender himself, his

fellow-rebels, his city and five of his castles to the mercy of the

duke and the English king. Richard sent over all his prisoners to his

father in England; Henry, however, sent them back again, and Richard

put them in prison to await their sentence till the king should return

to Gaul.[984]

[976] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8 (Angl.

Christ. Soc., p. 105).

[977] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 101.

[978] See Clédat, _Bertrand de Born_, pp. 29, 30.

[979] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 114, 115.

[980] _Ib._ p. 115. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 93.

[981] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 407. He adds: “Sicque

salus in manu clericorum data satis evidenter ostendit

plerisque non animos deesse sed arma.”

[982] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 120, 121.

[983] See Clédat, _Bertrand de Born_, p. 35.

[984] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 121.

Northern Aquitaine, or Guyenne, was now for the moment subdued. As

soon as Christmas was over Richard proceeded to the reduction of

Gascony. Dax, held against him by its viscount Peter and by the count

of Bigorre, and Bayonne, defended by its viscount Ernald Bertram,

submitted each after a ten days’ siege; S. Pierre-de-Cize, on the

Spanish frontier, fell in one day; the Basques and Navarrese were

compelled to promise peace; the plunderings habitually inflicted by

the border-folk upon pilgrims to the shrine of S. James at Compostella

were suppressed; and from his court at Poitiers on Candlemas-day

Richard triumphantly reported to his father that he had pacified the

whole country.[985] But the peace did not last long. Trouble was

already threatening at the opposite end of the duchy. Ralf of Déols,

the wealthiest baron in Berry, had lately died leaving as his heir

an infant daughter. She was of course, according to feudal law, a

ward of her overlord, King Henry; but her relatives seized both her

and her estates, and refused to give up either.[986] Henry, probably

feeling that the boy-duke of Aquitaine had already more than enough

upon his hands, charged his eldest son with the settlement of this

affair, bidding him take possession of all Ralf’s lands without delay,

and significantly adding: “While I governed my realms alone, I lost

none of my rightful possessions; it will be shame to us all if aught

of them be lost now that we are several to rule them.” The young king

took the hint, marched with all his Norman and Angevin forces into

Berry, and laid siege to Châteauroux;[987] but he seems to have had

no success;[988] and there was no chance of help from Richard, for

not only was the Limousin again plunged in civil war,[989] but all

southern Aquitaine was in danger of a like fate--an attempt of Count

Raymond of Toulouse to exert his authority as overlord of Narbonne

with greater stringency than its high-spirited viscountess Hermengard

was disposed to endure having stirred up against him a league of all

the princes of Septimania and the Spanish border, under the leadership

of Hermengard herself and of Raymond’s hereditary rivals, the king of

Aragon and his brothers.[990] The way in which Raymond prepared to meet

their attack supplies a vivid illustration of southern character and

manners. He sought an ally in Bertrand de Born, and he appealed to him

in his character not of knight but of troubadour. He sent a messenger

to Hautefort to state his cause and to ask Bertrand, not to fight for

it, but simply to publish it to the world in a _sirvente_. Bertrand

answered readily to the appeal; he was only too glad of any excuse for

a _sirvente_ which should “cause dints in a thousand shields, and rents

in a thousand helms and hauberks.” “I would fain have the great barons

ever wroth one with another!” is the characteristic exclamation with

which he ends his war-song.[991]

[985] _Ib._ pp. 131, 132.

[986] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 127.

[987] _Ib._ p. 132.

[988] The _Gesta Hen._, as above, say Châteauroux was

surrendered to him at once; but we hear nothing more of it till

the autumn, and then we find that the elder king has to besiege

it himself; so if the younger one ever did win it, he must have

lost it again as quickly.

[989] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. cc. lxix., lxx. (Labbe, _Nova

Biblioth._, vol. ii. pp. 322, 323).

[990] See Vic and Vaissète, _Hist. du Languedoc_ (new ed.),

vol. vi. pp. 69, 70; and the terms of the league, _ib._ vol.

viii. cols. 325, 326.

[991] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, pp. 38, 39.

The strife thus begun for the mastery in Septimania was continued at

intervals between the houses of Toulouse and Aragon for many years to

come. The overlord of Toulouse, however, seems to have taken no part in

it as yet; and indeed, it had scarcely more than begun when Richard was

summoned away to meet his father in Normandy. Three times in the course

of that spring and summer had King Henry collected his host in England

for the purpose of going over sea to the help of his sons; twice had he

remanded it,[992] for the sake, as it seems, of continuing his legal

and administrative work in England. By midsummer however the tidings

from Gaul were such that he dared not further prolong his absence.

Geoffrey wanted his help in Britanny; Richard wanted it almost as much

in Aquitaine; the young king’s unaccountable lack of vigour in their

support, and in the prosecution of the war in Berry, was justly raising

suspicions of his loyalty to the family cause; and the treaty made

with Louis of France at the close of the last war was proving, as such

treaties too often did prove, only a source of fresh disputes. Henry

summoned Louis to fulfil his part of the agreement by handing over

the Vexin to the young king and the viscounty of Bourges to Richard,

according to his promise, as the dowries of their brides;[993] Louis

insisted that Henry should first complete his share of the engagement

by allowing Adela, who had been in his custody ever since the treaty

was signed, to be wedded to her promised bridegroom, Richard. At last,

in July, he succeeded in bringing the matter to a crisis by extorting

from a papal legate who had been sent to deal with a heresy that had

arisen in southern Gaul a threat of laying all Henry’s dominions under

interdict unless Richard and Adela were married at once.[994] The

English bishops appealed against the threat;[995] while Henry hurried

over to Normandy,[996] met first his two elder sons,[997] then the

legate,[998] then the French king,[999] and once again contrived to

stave off the threatening peril. At Nonancourt, on September 25,

the two kings made a treaty containing not one word of marriages or

dowries, but consisting of an agreement to bury all their differences

under the cross. They pledged themselves to go on crusade together,

to submit to arbitration the questions in dispute between them about

Auvergne and Berry, and to lay aside all their other quarrels at once

and for ever.[1000] Such a treaty was in reality a mere temporary

expedient; but it served Henry’s purpose by securing him against

French interference while he marched against the rebels in Berry. As

usual, he carried all before him; Châteauroux surrendered without a

struggle; the lord of La Châtre, who had stolen the little heiress

of Déols and was keeping her fast in his own castle, hurried to make

his peace and give up his prize.[1001] Henry used his opportunity to

advance into the Limousin and exert his authority in punishing its

turbulent barons;[1002] soon after Martinmas he and Louis met at Graçay

and made another ineffectual attempt to settle the vexed question of

Auvergne;[1003] a month later he was again in Aquitaine, purchasing

the direct ownership of one of its under-fiefs, the county of La

Marche, from the childless Count Adalbert who was purposing to end his

days in Holy Land;[1004] and at Christmas he was back at Angers, where

he kept the feast with his three elder sons amid such a gathering of

knights as had never been seen at his court except at his own crowning

or that of the young king.[1005]

[992] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 138, 160, 167, 168.

[993] _Ib._ p. 168.

[994] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 180, 181. Rog. Howden

(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 143. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 271.

[995] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 181.

[996] In the night of August 17–18. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p.

190. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 421.

[997] Rob. Torigni, a. 1177.

[998] On September 11. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 190.

[999] September 21. _Ibid._ Cf. Rog. Howden and Gerv. Cant. as

above.

[1000] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 191–194. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),

vol. ii. pp. 144–146; Gerv. Cant. as above, pp. 272–274;

shorter in R. Diceto as above, pp. 421, 422. The place and date

are from this last authority.

[1001] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 195, 196. Cf. R. Diceto as

above, p. 425.

[1002] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 196.

[1003] The proceedings on this occasion are worth notice.

Henry, it seems, tried to substitute for the arbitration of

three prelates and three laymen on each side (which had been

agreed upon at Nonancourt) his own favourite plan of sworn

inquest. He called together the barons of Auvergne, and

required them to certify what rights his predecessors the dukes

of Aquitaine had enjoyed in their country. They answered that

by ancient right all Auvergne pertained to the ducal dominions,

except the bishopric (Clermont), which was dependent on the

French Crown. To this definition Louis would not agree; so

they fell back upon the former scheme of arbitration--which,

however, seems never to have got any further. _Gesta Hen._

(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 196. This was apparently the last meeting

(except the one in England; see below, p. 216) between Henry

and Louis, and must therefore be the one of which a curious

account is given by Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii.

c. 1 (Angl. Christ. Soc., pp. 85, 86).

[1004] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 197. Rog. Howden

(Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 147, 148. Rob. Torigni, a. 1177. R.

Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 425, under a wrong year. Geoff.

Vigeois, l. i. c. 70 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p.

324). Henry received the homage of the under-tenants of La

Marche (_Gesta Hen._ as above); but he did not really get what

he paid for, as will be seen later.

[1005] Rob. Torigni, a. 1178.

For six months there was peace, and in July the king ventured to

return to England.[1006] He knighted his son Geoffrey at Woodstock on

August 6,[1007] and when the lad hurried over sea, eager to flesh his

maiden sword and emulate the prowess of his brothers, he could find no

more serious field in which to exercise his warlike energies than a

succession of tournaments on the borders of France and Normandy.[1008]

Richard however was again busy with more earnest fighting. The rivalry

between the houses of Aragon and Toulouse had stirred up the petty

chieftains of southern Gascony, whom the king of Aragon was seeking

to enlist in his service; and Richard was obliged to undertake a

campaign against the count of Bigorre in particular, which seems to

have occupied him till the end of the year. The defiant attitude of the

nobles of Saintonge and the Angoumois, and especially of a powerful

baron, Geoffrey of Rancogne, called him back at Christmas to Saintes;

as soon as the feast was over he laid siege to Geoffrey’s castle of

Pons; after spending more than three months before the place, he left

his constables to continue the blockade while he himself went to

attack the other rebel castles. Five of them were taken and razed

between Easter and Rogation-tide,[1009] and then Richard gathered up

all his forces to assault Geoffrey of Rancogne’s mightiest stronghold,

Taillebourg. It stood a few miles north of Saintes, on the crest of a

lofty rock, three of whose sides were so steep as to defy any attempt

to scale them, while the fourth was guarded by a triple ditch and

rampart. Three lines of wall, built of hewn stone and strengthened

with towers and battlements, encircled the keep, which was stored

with provisions and arms offensive and defensive, and crowded with

picked men-at-arms who laughed to scorn the rashness of the young duke

in attempting to besiege a fortress which all his predecessors had

looked upon as well-nigh unapproachable. But he cleared its approaches

with a ruthless energy such as they little expected, cutting down

vineyards, burning houses, levelling every obstacle before him, till

he pitched his tents close to the castle walls under the eyes of the

astonished townsfolk. A sally of the latter only resulted in making

a way for Richard’s entrance into the town; three days later the

castle surrendered, and Geoffrey himself with it.[1010] Ten days’ more

fighting brought all the rebels to submission and reduced Vulgrin

of Angoulême himself to give up his capital city and his castle of

Montignac in Périgord;[1011] and at Whitsuntide Richard went to report

his success with his own lips to his delighted father in England.[1012]

[1006] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 206, 207. R. Diceto as above,

p. 426.

[1007] R. Diceto as above.

[1008] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 207.

[1009] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 212, 213.

[1010] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 431, 432. Cf. _Gesta

Hen._ as above, p. 213, and Rob. Torigni, a. 1179.

[1011] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

[1012] _Ibid._ R. Diceto as above, p. 432.

He returned shortly before Michaelmas,[1013] to witness the opening

of a new phase in the relations between the Angevin house and the

French Crown. Philip of France, the only son of Louis VII., was now

fourteen years old, and his father was desirous to have him crowned

king. Before the appointed day arrived, however, he fell sick almost to

death.[1014] Louis, half wild with anxiety, dreamed that the martyr

of Canterbury required him to visit his shrine as a condition of the

boy’s recovery.[1015] He hurried across the Channel; Henry met him at

Dover and conducted him to Canterbury, where they both spent three days

in fasting and prayer before the shrine; and on the fourth day after

his landing Louis re-entered his own country, to find that his prayers

were answered.[1016] His brief visit was long remembered in England,

where no king of France had ever been seen before,[1017] or was ever

seen again save when John the Good was brought there as a prisoner in

the days of Edward III. Scarcely, however, had Philip recovered when

Louis himself was stricken down by paralysis.[1018] This calamity made

him all the more anxious for his son’s coronation, which took place at

Reims on All Saints’ day. The archbishop of the province--a brother of

Queen Adela--performed the rite, assisted by nearly all the bishops of

Gaul; all the great vassals of the kingdom were present, among them

the young King Henry, who in his capacity of duke of Normandy carried

the crown before his youthful overlord in the procession to and from

the cathedral church, as Count Philip of Flanders carried the sword of

state.[1019] Like the crowning of young Henry himself, the crowning

of Philip Augustus proved to be a beginning of troubles. His father’s

helpless condition left the boy-king to fall under the influence of

whatever counsellor could first get at his ear. That one happened to be

his godfather, Philip of Flanders; and the policy of Flanders was to

get the boy entirely under his own control by setting him against all

his father’s old friends,[1020] and even against his mother, whom he

tried to rob of her dower-lands and persecuted to such a degree that

she was compelled to leave his domains and fly to her brothers for

the protection which her husband was powerless to give her.[1021] The

united forces of Flanders and of the Crown--for the latter were now

wholly at Philip’s command[1022]--were, however, more than a match for

those of Champagne and Blois; and the house of Blois was driven to seek

help of the only power which seemed capable of giving it--the power of

their old rivals of Anjou.[1023]

[1013] So it appears from an entry in the Pipe Roll of 1179;

Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 227.

[1014] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 240. According to Rob.

Torigni, a. 1179, Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._,

vol. v. p. 5), and Will. Armor., _Philippis_, l. i. (_ib._ pp.

99, 100), the boy’s sickness was the effect of a fright caused

by an adventure in the forest of Compiègne, very like that of

Geoffrey Plantagenet at Loches.

[1015] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 240–241. Cf. Rog.

Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 192.

[1016] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 241, 242; Rog. Howden, as

above, pp. 192, 193; Will. Armor., _Philipp._, l. i. (Duchesne,

_Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.) pp. 100, 101. R. Diceto

(Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 432, 433, relates the pilgrimage without

any mention of its motive; while Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), p. 293,

seems to think Louis came for the benefit of his own health,

not his son’s.

[1017] R. Diceto, as above, p. 433.

[1018] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 243.

[1019] _Ib._ p. 242. Rog. Howden as above, pp. 193, 194. R.

Diceto as above, p. 438. It is Roger who says that Henry

bore the crown officially--“de jure ducatûs Normanniæ.”

Ralf explains away the matter as a mere act of courtesy and

friendship.

[1020] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 244. Rog. Howden as above, p.

196.

[1021] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 196. R. Diceto

(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 6. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.

294.

[1022] He had stolen his father’s royal seal, to prevent all

further exercise of authority on the part of Louis. R. Diceto,

as above.

[1023] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 244. Rog. Howden as

above.

The days were long gone by when it had been a chief part of the

Angevin interest and policy to set the French king and the house of

Blois at variance with each other. If Henry had needed any proof that

the rivalry of Blois was no longer to be feared, he would have found

it in the appeal for succour thus sent to him by Queen Adela and her

brothers, and supported by his own eldest son, who at Mid-Lent 1180

went over to England purposely to consult with him on the state of

affairs in France. Before Easter father and son both returned to

Normandy, and there held a personal meeting with the French queen,

her brothers Theobald of Blois and Stephen of Sancerre, and several

other victims of young Philip’s tyranny. Pledges of good faith were

exchanged, and summons were issued for a general levy of all Henry’s

forces, on both sides of the sea, ready to attack Philip after

Easter.[1024] Before the attack could be made, however, Philip had

got himself into such difficulties as to render it needless. As soon

as Lent was over he went into Flanders and there married a niece of

its count, Elizabeth, daughter of the count of Hainaut.[1025] He

then summoned all the princes of his realm to meet him at Sens on

Whit-Sunday for the coronation of himself and his queen. The marriage

had, however, given such offence that Philip of Flanders, in dread

of opposition to his niece’s crowning, persuaded the young king to

anticipate the ceremony and have her crowned together with himself at

S. Denis, early in the morning of Ascension-day, by the archbishop of

Sens.[1026] The wrath of the great vassals knew no bounds; and the

wrath of the archbishop of Reims was almost more formidable still,

for the exclusive right to crown the king of France was a special

prerogative of his see, and he at once forwarded to Rome an indignant

protest against the outrage done to him by his royal nephew.[1027]

Philip of France and Guy of Sens had in fact put themselves into a

position which might easily have become almost as full of peril as that

into which Henry of England and Roger of York had put themselves by

a somewhat similar proceeding ten years before. As, however, William

of Reims was not a Thomas of Canterbury, the consequences were less

tragic; and Henry himself must have been tempted to smile at the

turning of the tables which suddenly placed in his hands the task of

shielding Philip from the consequences of his rashness, and reconciling

him to the outraged Church and the offended people.

[1024] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 245. Rog. Howden as above.

[1025] _Ibid._ R. Diceto as above, p. 5. Gerv. Cant. as above.

Rob. Torigni, a. 1181 (a year too late). The bride is called

Elizabeth by her husband’s panegyrist, Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist.

Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 7), and Isabel by another of his

biographers (_ib._ p. 258). R. Diceto calls her Margaret.

[1026] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 245, 246. Rog. Howden

(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 197. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.

5. Rob. Torigni, a. 1181. This last writer, whose chronology

has now become extremely confused, puts the event a year too

late. So does Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._,

vol. v.), p. 7. Rigord indeed gives an account of the matter

so different from that of the English writers--_e.g._ he

represents it as taking place publicly, amid a great concourse

of spectators--that one might almost suppose he was relating a

second coronation, performed in the following year. But there

seems no other record of any such thing; and there are some

details in his story which point to a different conclusion.

Not only does he, too, name the archbishop of Sens as the

consecrator--an outrage upon Reims which could not possibly

have been repeated--but he betrays his own confusion by giving

the date as June 1, 1181, and then describing the day as

Ascension-day, which in 1181 fell on May 14, but which really

was the day of the crowning in 1180 (May 29). The truth is

that the panegyrists of Philip Augustus are obliged to slur

over this first disgraceful year of his reign as rapidly and

confusedly as they can.

[1027] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 246. Rog. Howden as above.

There was a story that young Henry of Anjou, standing close behind his

brother-in-law Philip on his first coronation-day in Reims cathedral,

had bent forward to hold the crown upon the boy’s head, and thus

relieve him of its weight and keep it safely in its place.[1028] The

little act of brotherly kindness and protecting care may be taken as

typical of the political attitude which Henry’s father actually assumed

towards the boy-king of the French, and which he faithfully maintained

until Philip himself rendered its maintenance impossible. It was in

truth no new thing for a count of Anjou to act as the protector of a

king of France. But we may fairly question whether this traditional

function of the Angevin house had ever been fulfilled so honestly

and unselfishly as it was by Henry during the first two years of

Philip’s reign. It was Henry alone who, by his personal influence and

tact, brought Philip himself to reason and the count of Flanders to

submission.[1029] Next year, when Philip had been left sole king of

France by the death of Louis VII.,[1030] it was Henry whose mediation

checked an attempt of the Flemish count to avenge by force of arms the

loss of his influence at court;[1031] and when a few months later the

house of Blois, with characteristic inconstancy, made common cause

with Flanders against France, it was the prompt and vigorous action

of Henry’s sons which alone saved the royal domain from invasion on

all sides at once, and enabled their young sovereign to hold out

against his assailants till Henry himself came over to patch up another

settlement in the spring of 1182.[1032]

[1028] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 439. Rigord (Duchesne,

_Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 5, tells the same story

more briefly, and it is amusing to see how differently he

colours it.

[1029] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 246, 247. R. Diceto

(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 6.

[1030] September 18, 1180; _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 250;

R. Diceto as above, p. 7; Will. Armor., _Gesta Phil. Aug._

(Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 72. Rigord

(_ib._), p. 7, makes a confusion about the year.

[1031] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 277. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),

vol. ii. p. 260.

[1032] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 284–286. R. Diceto as above,

pp. 9–11. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 297, 300. Gir.

Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. cc. 15, 16 (Angl. Christ.

Soc., pp. 42–47). Rob. Torigni, a. 1182.

Other needs, however, than those of the French Crown were once more

calling for Henry’s presence in Gaul. The condition of Aquitaine

only grew more unsatisfactory, in spite or in consequence of

Richard’s efforts to improve it. Henry’s bargain with Adalbert of

La Marche had failed to secure him the possession of that county;

the brother-lords of Lusignan claimed it as next-of-kin to Adalbert

as soon as the king’s back was turned, and made good their claim by

forcible occupation.[1033] The Limousin was again threatening revolt;

the town-walls of Limoges were razed by Richard’s order at midsummer

1181.[1034] Almost at the same moment the death of Count Vulgrin of

Angoulême opened a fresh source of strife; his two brothers laid claim

to his inheritance against his only daughter, whom Richard of course

took into wardship as a feudal heiress, and on Richard’s refusal to

admit their claims they made common cause with Ademar of Limoges.[1035]

The mischief however did not end here. Richard’s unbending resolve

to bridle Aquitaine had gradually stirred up against him the bitter

hatred of the whole people--a hatred for which his stern rule is quite

sufficient to account, without admitting the blacker charges brought

against him by the reckless tongues of the south.[1036] The voice of

Bertrand de Born had once more given the signal for a general rising.

A _sirvente_ which went forth from Hautefort in 1181 rang like a

trumpet-call in the ears of the lords of Ventadour and Comborn and

Périgord and Dax, of Angoulême and Pons and Taillebourg.[1037] But even

this was not all. Years before, it seems, there had flashed through

the troubadour’s quick brain a possibility of stirring up strife in

higher quarters than among the petty princes of his native land. Now he

distinctly saw the possibility of finding for the Aquitanian resistance

to Richard a rallying-point and a leader in Richard’s own brother.

[1033] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 70 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,

vol. ii. p. 324).

[1034] _Ib._ c. 72 (p. 326).

[1035] _Ibid._ He was their half-brother, the only son of their

mother’s first marriage.

[1036] Cf. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 292, with Gerv.

Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303, and Gir. Cambr., _De Instr.

Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 105).

[1037] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, pp. 44, 45.

One of the most puzzling figures in the history of the time is that of

the younger Henry of Anjou--the “young king,” as he is usually called.

From the day of his crowning to that of his death not one deed is

recorded of him save deeds of the meanest ingratitude, selfishness,

cowardliness and treachery. Yet this undutiful, rebellious son, this

corrupter and betrayer of his younger brothers, this weak and faithless

ally, was loved and admired by all men while he lived, and lamented

by all men after he was gone.[1038] The attraction exercised by him

over a man so far his superior as William the Marshal[1039] is indeed

well-nigh incomprehensible. But the panegyrics of the historians,

unaccountable as they look at first glance, do throw some light on

the secret of young Henry’s gift of general fascination. It was a

gift which indeed, in varying degrees, formed part of the hereditary

endowments of the Angevin house. But the character which it took in

Fulk Nerra or Henry Fitz-Empress was very different from that which it

assumed in Henry’s eldest son. The essence of the young king’s nature

was not Angevin. He had little either of the higher talents or of the

stronger and sterner qualities of the Angevin race; he had still less

of the characteristics of the Norman. It is by studying his portrait

as drawn in contrast to that of Richard by a hand equally favourable

to both that we can best see what he really was. “The first was

admired for his mildness and liberality; the second was esteemed for

his seriousness and firmness. One was commendable for graciousness,

the other for stateliness. One gained praise for his courtesy, the

other for his constancy. One was conspicuous for mercy, the other for

justice. One was the refuge and the shield of vagabonds and evil-doers,

the other was their scourge. One was devoted to the sports of war, the

other to war itself; one was gracious to strangers, the other to his

own friends--one to all men, the other only to good men.”[1040] Henry

in fact was at bottom what Richard never was but on the surface--a

careless, pleasure-loving, capricious, but withal most gracious and

winning child of the south. The most philosophic English historian of

the day was reduced to account for the young king’s popularity by the

simple and comprehensive explanation that “the number of fools is

infinite.”[1041] But it was not folly, it was a shrewd perception of

their own interest, which led the Aquitanians writhing under Richard’s

iron rule to see in his elder brother a prince after their own

hearts.[1042]

[1038] Except the ever-independent William of Newburgh; see his

l. iii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 233, 234).

[1039] See Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 279.

[1040] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8 (Angl.

Christ. Soc. p. 106).

[1041] “Quia ut scriptum est, Stultorum infinitus est numerus.”

Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 234). The

quotation is from the Vulgate version of Ecclesiastes i. 15;

the English A. V. conveys a wholly different idea.

[1042] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303. See also Gerald’s

other account of young Henry, _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c.

9 (Angl. Christ. Soc., pp. 31, 32).

It was not the first time that Bertrand de Born had sought to kindle in

the young king’s mind the sparks of jealousy and discontent which were

always latent there.[1043] Now, he fed the flames with an unsparing

hand. In words of bitter satire he ridicules the position of the young

king, who bears the titles of a great sovereign, but has no authority

in his own land, and cannot even claim the tolls upon the traffic along

its roads: “Barons of Aquitaine, are we not all of us better than a

carter who leaves his cart to go as it may, and counts his dues, if he

counts any at all, with trembling fingers?” “I prize a tiny tract of

land with honour above a great empire with disgrace!”[1044] Richard,

meanwhile, was playing into his enemies’s hands by an encroachment

upon territory which in name at least belonged to his brother. He had

built a castle at Clairvaux, between Loudun and Poitiers, but on the

Angevin side of the frontier. If the thought of resentment did not

occur to Henry, Bertrand took care to suggest it: “Between Poitiers and

Ile-Bouchard and Mirebeau and Loudun and Chinon some one has dared to

rear, at Clairvaux, a fair castle in the midst of the plain. I would

not have the young king see it or know of it, for it would not be to

his taste; but its walls are so white, I doubt he will catch sight of

their gleam from Mateflon!”[1045] The troubadour’s shafts were well

aimed, and they rankled. When King Henry returned to Normandy in the

spring of 1182 the Aquitanian rising was in full career; as soon as

he had composed matters in France he hurried to the help of Richard,

who was fighting the rebels in the Limousin; at Whitsuntide the counts

of Angoulême and Périgord and the viscount of Limoges came to confer

with him at Grandmont, but nothing came of the negotiations; Henry then

went to attack Pierre-Buffière, while Richard returned to the siege of

Excideuil. At midsummer the king was back at Grandmont, and Geoffrey

of Britanny with him; thence they went to rejoin Richard, who was now

busy with the siege of Périgueux.[1046] Matters were in this stage when

the young king at last made up his mind to advance into Aquitaine.

He was joyfully welcomed at Limoges on the festival of its patron S.

Martial--the last day of June. On the morrow, however, he joined his

father and brothers before Périgueux, and within a week peace was made;

Périgueux surrendered, its count and the viscount of Limoges submitted

to Richard, and only the brother-counts of Angoulême still remained in

arms against him.[1047]

[1043] See Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, p. 36.

[1044] _Ib._ p. 44.

[1045] _Ibid._

[1046] Strictly, of its suburb Puy-St.-Front.

[1047] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. cc. 1, 2 (Labbe, _Nova

Biblioth._, vol. ii. pp. 330, 331).

Peace, however, never lasted long either in Aquitaine or in King

Henry’s family. His eldest son now again grew importunate for a

definite and immediate share in the family heritage. When this was

refused, he fled to the court of France, and was only recalled by

a promise of an increased pecuniary allowance for himself and his

queen.[1048] Aquitaine, as soon as Henry had left it, drifted into

a state of anarchy more frightful than any that had ever been known

there before; the sudden conclusion of the war had let loose all over

the country a crowd of mercenaries--commonly known as “Brabantines,”

but really the off-scouring of every land from Flanders to Aragon--who

wrought, as a local writer says, such havoc as had never been seen

since the days of the heathen northmen.[1049] The evil in some measure

brought its own remedy with it, for it drove the common people to

take into their own hands the maintenance of peace and order. A poor

Auvergnat carpenter, urged by a vision of the Blessed Virgin, set

forth under the protection of the diocesan bishop to preach the cause

of peace in his native district of Le Puy. Those who were like-minded

with him, no matter what their rank or calling, enrolled themselves

in a society bound together by solemn pledges for mutual support in

adherence to right and resistance to wrong in every shape; and in a few

years these “_Caputii_,” as they were called from the linen capes or

hoods which they always wore in fight, proved more than a match for the

Brabantines.[1050]

[1048] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 289, 291. Cf. Rog.

Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 266, 267.

[1049] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 73 (as above, p. 328).

[1050] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 22 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,

vol. ii. p. 339). Rob. Torigni, a. 1183. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),

vol. i. pp. 300, 301. Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.

Scriptt._, vol. v.), pp. 11, 12.

Meanwhile, however, the warlike barons of Aquitaine were exasperated

at the failure of their league against Richard; and their anger

reached its height when at the conclusion of the Christmas festivities

held by King Henry and his sons at Caen, the young king of his own

accord renewed his oath of allegiance to his father, confessed his

secret alliance with Richard’s enemies, and offered to abandon it

and make peace with his brother if his father would but insist upon

the surrender of Clairvaux. Richard, after some hesitation, gave up

to his father the fortress in dispute.[1051] The incident apparently

opened Henry’s eyes to the necessity of clearly defining his sons’

political relations with each other; and while Bertrand de Born was

giving a voice to the wrath of his fellow-barons at the young king’s

desertion of their cause,[1052] Henry led his three sons back to

Angers, made them all take an oath of obedience to him and peace with

each other,[1053] and then called upon the two younger to do homage

to the eldest for their fiefs.[1054] Geoffrey obeyed;[1055] Richard

indignantly refused, declaring it was utterly unreasonable that there

should be any distinction of rank between children of the same parents,

and that if the father’s heritage belonged of right to the eldest son,

the mother’s was equally due to the second.[1056] The young king, on

the other hand, was on account of his entanglements with the Aquitanian

barons almost as unwilling to receive the homage as Richard was to

perform it.[1057] The end of the discussion was that Richard quitted

the court, “leaving behind him nothing but threats and insults,” and

hurried into Poitou to prepare for defence and defiance.[1058]

[1051] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 291, 294, 295.

[1052] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, p. 47.

[1053] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 295. Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs),

vol. ii. p. 18.

[1054] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 291. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),

vol. ii. p. 273.

[1055] _Ibid._ R. Diceto as above.

[1056] R. Diceto (as above), pp. 18, 19. _Gesta Hen._ (as

above), p. 292. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 303.

[1057] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 18. _Gesta Hen._

(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 292. The two accounts do not exactly

agree, Ralf placing at this point the young king’s confession

of his dealings in Aquitaine; while the story in the _Gesta_ is

extremely confused, because it is told twice over, in different

forms (pp. 291, 292 and 294, 295).

[1058] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 292.

In the first burst of his anger Henry bade the other two brothers

go and “subdue Richard’s pride” by force of arms.[1059] Immediately

afterwards, however, he summoned all three, together with the aggrieved

barons of Aquitaine, to meet him in conference at Mirebeau.[1060] But

the young king had already marched into Poitou and received a warm

welcome there;[1061] Geoffrey, to whom his father had intrusted his

summons to the barons, led a motley force of Bretons, Brabantines

and mercenaries of all kinds to Limoges;[1062] soon afterwards young

Henry joined him; with the viscount’s help they threw themselves into

the citadel,[1063] and set to work to raise the whole country against

Richard. He, in his extremity, appealed to his father;[1064] and Henry

at once hurried to the rescue. For six weeks he laid siege to the

citadel of Limoges;[1065] twice he was personally shot at, and narrowly

escaped with his life; twice the young king came to him with offers of

submission, and each time he was welcomed with open arms, but each time

the submission was a mere feint, designed to keep Henry quiet and give

the barons time to wreak their vengeance upon Richard.[1066] By Easter

matters were so far advanced that Bertrand de Born was openly calling

for aid upon Flanders, France and Normandy;[1067] and the dread of a

rising in this last-named quarter prompted Henry to send orders for the

arrest of those barons, both in Normandy and England, who had been most

conspicuous in the rebellion of 1173.[1068]

[1059] R. Diceto as above, p. 19.

[1060] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 295.

[1061] _Ib._ p. 292.

[1062] _Ib._ pp. 293, 295. Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 6 (Labbe,

_Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 332).

[1063] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 293, 296. Geoff. Vigeois as

above. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 304.

[1064] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 274.

[1065] From Shrove Tuesday--March 1--to Easter. Geoff. Vigeois,

l. ii. cc. 12, 16 (as above, pp. 334, 336).

[1066] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 296–298. Cf. Geoff. Vigeois,

l. ii. c. 7 (as above, pp. 332, 333).

[1067] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, p. 52.

[1068] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 294.

The young king at the same time quitted Limoges to make a diversion

at Angoulême. On his return, however, he found it impossible to

re-enter Limoges; its townsfolk had by this time so fully awakened to

his real character and to their own best interests that they drove

him from their walls with a volley of stones, shouting “We will not

have this man to reign over us!”[1069] He had already robbed them of

their wealth and stripped the shrine of their patron saint to provide

wages for his Brabantines;[1070] and the insult goaded him to yet more

unsparing plunder and yet more reckless sacrilege. From the castle

of Aixe, which he took on the Monday in Rogation-week, he advanced

to Grandmont, a religious house whose inmates enjoyed, amid the now

general decay of monastic sanctity, an almost unique reputation for

piety and virtue, and were known to be held by his father in especial

reverence and esteem. He wrung from them all the treasure they

possessed, and forcibly carried off a golden pyx, his father’s gift,

from the high altar itself. He then proceeded to Uzerches, where the

duke of Burgundy and the count of Toulouse met him with reinforcements

on Ascension-day; from Uzerches he moved southward to Donzenac and

Martel, and thence to Rocamadour.[1071] Rocamadour was the most famous

of the holy places of Aquitaine; besides the tomb of the hermit from

whom its name was derived, it boasted of a statue of the Virgin which

attracted as many pilgrims as the shrine of S. James at Compostella;

and among the treasures of its church, which was said to have been

founded by Zacchæus the publican, was a sword traditionally believed to

be the famous “Durandal”--the sword of the Paladin Roland, devoted by

him to the Blessed Virgin on the eve of his last campaign, and carried

to her shrine at Rocamadour after the disaster of Roncevaux. Heedless

alike of paladins and of saints, the young king stripped the shrine

of S. Amadour[1072] as he had stripped that of S. Martial; and local

tradition declares that he also carried off the hallowed sword, leaving

his own dishonoured brand in its place.

[1069] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 16 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,

vol. ii. p. 336). _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 299.

[1070] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. cc. 13, 14 (pp. 335, 336).

[1071] _Ib._ c. 16 (p. 336).

[1072] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 278.

He had been ailing ever since he left Uzerches;[1073] now, on his

return to Martel, his baffled rage threw him into a fever, to which

other complications were soon added.[1074] Conscience awoke as death

drew near. From the blacksmith’s cottage[1075] where he lay awaiting

his end he sent a message to Limoges, imploring his father to come and

speak with him once more.[1076] Henry would have gone, but his friends,

in their natural dread of another trick, prevented him;[1077] he sent,

however, a bishop charged with a message of love and pardon,[1078]

and as a token of the genuineness of the commission, a precious ring,

said to be an heirloom from Henry I.[1079] The messenger was only

just in time. On the Tuesday in Whitsun-week the young king called

together the bishops and religious men who had gathered round him at

the tidings of his sickness, confessed his sins first privately, then

publicly, before all his followers, was absolved and received the

Holy Communion.[1080] For three more days he lingered, long enough to

receive his father’s message of forgiveness and to dictate a letter to

him, pleading that the same clemency might be extended to his mother

the captive Queen Eleanor, to his own young Queen Margaret, and to

all his servants, friends, adherents and allies;[1081] beseeching also

that his father would make atonement in his stead for the sacrileges

which he had committed against the holy places of Aquitaine, and would

cause his body to be buried at Rouen in the cathedral church of our

Lady.[1082] In the early twilight of S. Barnabas’s day he repeated

his confession, after which he begged to be wrapped once more in his

cloak, marked with the cross which he had taken at Limoges in petulance

rather than in piety. Now, however, he was in earnest, and when the

sacred symbol had rested for a moment on his shoulder he gave it to

his best-beloved knight, William the Marshal, charging him to bear it

to the Holy Sepulchre and thus fulfil his vow in his stead.[1083] He

then caused his attendants to strip him of his soft raiment, clothe

him in a hair-shirt and put a rope round his neck; with this he bade

the assembled clergy drag him out of bed and lay him on a bed of ashes

strewed for the purpose. There, lying as if already in his grave, with

a stone at his head and another at his feet, he received the last

sacraments;[1084] and there, an hour after nones,[1085] kissing his

father’s ring he died.[1086]

[1073] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 16 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,

vol. ii. p. 336).

[1074] _Ibid._ _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 300. Will.

Newb., l. iii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 233, 234).

[1075] “In domo Stephani cognomine Fabri.” Geoff. Vigeois, l.

ii. c. 19 (as above, p. 337). Is this to be taken literally,

or can it be merely a punning nickname applied to the lord of

_Martel_?

[1076] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Will. Newb. as above (p. 234).

[1077] Will. Newb. as above. Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 17 (as

above, p. 337).

[1078] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

[1079] “Annulum preciosum ... qui Henrici munifici Regis

olim extitisse narratur.” Geoff. Vigeois as above. Cf. Will.

Newb. as above, and Th. Agnellus, _De Morte Hen. Reg. jun._

(Stevenson, _R. Coggeshall_), pp. 265, 266.

[1080] Geoff. Vigeois as above.

[1081] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 24 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,

vol. ii. p. 339). _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 300, 301.

[1082] Geoff. Vigeois as above.

[1083] _Ib._ c. 17 (p. 337). Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.

279. On young Henry’s vow of crusade see _Gesta Hen._ as above,

pp. 297, 298.

[1084] Rog. Howden as above.

[1085] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 19 (as above, p. 338).

[1086] Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 234).

CHAPTER VI.

THE LAST YEARS OF HENRY II.

1183–1189.

The unexpected death of the young king was a catastrophe almost

equally overwhelming to both parties in the war. Henry himself, when

the news was brought to him by the prior of Grandmont, whither the

body had been taken to be prepared for burial,[1087] went almost out

of his mind with grief.[1088] For a moment indeed friends and foes

alike seemed incapable of anything but mourning. Hero or saint could

scarcely have won a more universal tribute of affection and regret than

was showered upon this young king who, so far as we can see, had done

so little to deserve it. Stern voices like that of Bertrand de Born,

accustomed only to the bitterest tones of sarcasm, insult and angry

strife, melted suddenly into accents of the deepest tenderness and

lamentation.[1089] Sober-minded churchmen and worldly-wise courtiers,

though they could not deny or excuse the dead man’s sins, yet betrayed

with equal frankness their unreasoning attachment to his memory.[1090]

As his body, arrayed in the linen robe which he had worn at his

coronation--its white folds, hallowed by the consecrating oil, made to

serve for a winding-sheet--was borne on an open bier upon the shoulders

of his comrades-in-arms from Grandmont northward through Anjou, the

people streamed forth from every castle and town and village along the

road to meet it with demonstrations of mourning and tears;[1091] and at

Le Mans, where it was deposited for a night in the cathedral church,

the bishops and citizens forcibly took possession of it, refused to

give it up, and buried their beloved young king then and there by the

side of his grandfather Geoffrey Plantagenet.[1092].

[1087] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 20 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,

vol. ii. p. 338).

[1088] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 301. Cf. Rog. Howden

(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 279, and Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._,

dist. ii. c. 8 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 30).

[1089] See Bertrand de Born’s two elegies on the young king,

Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, pp. 53, 54.