CONQUEST AND REBELLION
The martyrdom of Thomas Becket served his cause better than his
continuance in life could have done. Even if his murderers foolishly
thought to serve the king by their deed, Henry himself was under no
delusion as to its effect. He was thunderstruck at the news, and, in a
frenzy of horror which was no doubt genuine, as well as to mark his
repudiation of all share in the deed, he fasted and shut himself from
communication with the court for days. But the public opinion of Europe
would not acquit Henry of the guilt. Letters poured in upon the pope
denouncing him and demanding his punishment. The interdict of his Norman
dominions which had been threatened was proclaimed by the Archbishop of
Sens, but suspended again by an appeal to the pope. Events moved slowly
in the twelfth century, and before the pope could take any active steps
in the case, an embassy which left Normandy almost immediately had time
to reach him and to promise on the part of the king his complete
submission to whatever the pope should decree after examination of the
facts. Immediate punishment of any severity was thus avoided, and the
embassy of two cardinals to Normandy which the pope announced could act
only after some delay.
In the meanwhile in England Thomas the archbishop was being rapidly
transformed into Thomas the saint. Miracles were reported almost at once,
and the legend of his saintship took its rise and began to throw a new
light over the events of his earlier life. The preparation of his body
for the grave had revealed his secret asceticism,--the hair garments next
his skin and long unchanged. The people believed him to be a true martyr,
and his popular canonization preceded by some time the official, though
this followed with unusual quickness even for the middle ages. It was
pronounced by the pope in whose reign he had died on February 21, 1173.
For generations he remained the favourite saint of England, and his
popularity in foreign lands is surprising, though it must be remembered
that he was a great and most conspicuous martyr of the official Church,
of the new Hildebrandine Church, of the spirit and ideas which were by
that date everywhere in command.
This long and bitter struggle between Church and State, unworthy of both
the combatants, was now over except for the consequences which were
lasting, and the interest of Henry's reign flows back into the political
channel. The king did not wait in seclusion the report of the pope's
mission. It may have been, as was suggested even at the time, that he was
glad of an excuse to escape from Normandy before the envoys' coming and
to avoid a meeting with them until time had done something to soften the
feeling against him. Before his departure his hold on Britanny was
strengthened by the death, in February, 1171, of Conan the candidate whom
he had recognized as count. Since 1166 the administration of the country
had been practically in his hands; and in that year his son Geoffrey had
been betrothed to Constance, the daughter and heiress of Conan. Geoffrey
would now succeed to the countship, but he was still a child; and
Britanny was virtually incorporated in Henry's continental empire.
The refuge which the repentant Henry may have sought from the necessity
of giving an answer to the pope at once, or a kind of preliminary penance
for his sin, he found in Ireland. Since he received so early in his reign
the sanction of Pope Hadrian IV of his plan of conquest, he had done
nothing himself towards that end, but others had. The adventurous barons
of the Welsh marches, who were used to the idea of carving out lordships
for themselves from the lands of their Celtic enemies, were easily
persuaded to extend their civilizing operations to the neighbouring
island, where even richer results seemed to be promised. In 1166 Dermot,
the dispossessed king of Leinster, who had found King Henry too busily
occupied with affairs in France to aid him, had secured with the royal
permission the help he needed in Wales, and thus had connected with the
future history of Ireland the names of "Strongbow" and Fitzgerald. The
native Irish, though the bravest of warriors, were without armour, and
their weapons, of an earlier stage of military history, were no match for
the Norman; especially had they no defence against the Norman archers.
The conquest of Leinster, from Waterford to Dublin, and including those
two cities, occupied some years, but was accomplished by a few men.
"Strongbow" himself, Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, did not cross
over till the end of August, 1170, when the work was almost completed. He
married the daughter of Dermot and was recognized as his heir, but the
death of his father-in-law in the next spring was followed by a general
insurrection against the new rulers, and this was hardly under control
when the earl was summoned to England to meet the king.
Henry could not afford to let the dominion of Ireland, to which he had
looked forward for himself, slip from his hands, nor to risk the danger
that an independent state might be formed so close to England by his own
vassals. Already the Earl of Pembroke was out of favour; it was said that
his lands had been forfeited, and he might easily become a rebel
difficult to subdue in his new possessions. At the moment he certainly
had no thought of rebellion, and he at once obeyed the summons to
England. Henry had crossed from Normandy early in September, 1171, had
paid a brief visit to Winchester, where Henry of Blois, once so powerful
in Church and State, was now dying, and then advanced with his army
through southern Wales into Pembrokeshire whence he crossed to Ireland in
the middle of October. As he passed from Waterford to Cashel, and then
again from Waterford to Dublin, chiefs came in from all sides, many of
whom had never submitted to the Norman invaders, and acknowledged his
overlordship. Only in the remoter parts of the west and north did they
remain away, except Roderick of Connaught, the most powerful of the Irish
kings, who was not yet ready to own himself a vassal, but claimed the
whole of Ireland for himself. The Christmas feast Henry kept in Dublin,
and there entertained his new subjects who were astonished at the
splendour of his court.
A few weeks later a council of the Irish Church was held at Cashel, and
attended by all the prelates of the island except the Archbishop of
Armagh whose age prevented his coming. The bishops swore allegiance to
Henry, and each of them is said to have made a formal declaration,
written and sealed, recognizing the right of Henry and his heirs to the
kingdom of Ireland. The canons adopted by the council, putting into force
rules of marriage and morals long established in practice in the greater
part of Christendom, reveal the reasons that probably led the Church to
favour the English conquest and even to consider it an especially pious
act of the king. A report of Henry's acceptance by the Irish kings and of
the acts of the council was sent at once to the pope, who replied in
three letters under date of September 20, 1172, addressed to Henry, to
the Irish bishops, and to the Irish kings, approving fully of all that
had been done.
It is not clear that Henry had in mind any definite plan for the
political government of the conquest which he had made. The allegiance of
those princes who were outside the territories occupied by the Norman
adventurers could have been no more than nominal, and no attempt seems to
have been made to rule them. Meath was granted as a fief to Hugh of Lacy
on the service of fifty knights. He was also made governor of Dublin and
justiciar of Ireland, but this title is the only evidence that he was to
be regarded as the representative of the king. Waterford and Wexford were
made domain towns, as well as Dublin, and the earl of Pembroke, who gave
up the royal rights which he might inherit from King Dermot, was
enfeoffed with Leinster on the service of a hundred knights. Plainly the
part of Ireland which was actually occupied was not treated in practice
as a separate kingdom, whatever may have been the theory, but as a
transplanted part of England under a very vague relationship. As a matter
of fact, it was a purely feudal colony, under but the slightest control
by a distant overlord, and doomed both from its situation in the midst of
an alien, only partly civilized, and largely unconquered race, and from
its own organization or lack of organization, to speedy troubles.
Henry returned to England at Easter time, and went on almost at once to
meet the papal legates in Normandy. By the end of May his reconciliation
with the Church was completed. First, Henry purged himself by solemn oath
in the cathedral at Avranches of any share in the guilt of Thomas's
assassination, and then the conditions of reconciliation were sworn to by
himself and by the young king. These conditions are a very fair
compromise, though Becket could never have agreed to them nor probably
would Henry have done so but for the murder. The Church insisted on the
one thing which was most essential to its real interests, the freedom of
appeals to the pope. The point most important to the State, which had led
originally to the quarrel--the question of the punishment of criminous
clerks by the lay courts--was passed over in silence, a way out of the
difficulty being found by requiring of the king a promise which he could
readily make, that he would wholly do away with any customs which had
been introduced against the churches of the land in his time. This would
not be to his mind renouncing the Constitution of Clarendon. The
temporalities of Canterbury and the exiled friends of the archbishop were
to be restored as before the quarrel, and Henry promised not to withdraw
his obedience from the catholic pope or his successors. The other
conditions were of the nature of penance. The king promised to assume the
cross at the next Christmas for a crusade of three years, and in the
meantime to provide the Templars with a sum of money which in their
judgment would be sufficient to maintain 200 knights in the Holy Land for
a year.
Henry no doubt felt that he had lost much, but in truth he had every
reason to congratulate himself on the lightness of his punishment for the
crime to which his passionate words had led. He did not get all which he
had set out to recover from the Church, but his gains were large and
substantial. The agreement is a starting-point of some importance in the
legal history of England. It may be taken as the beginning, with more
full consciousness of field and boundaries, of the development of two
long lines of law and jurisdiction, running side by side for many
generations, each encroaching somewhat on the occupied or natural ground
of the other, but with no other conflict of so serious a character as
this. The criminal jurisdiction of the state did not recover quite all
that the Constitutions of Clarendon had demanded. Clerks accused of the
worst offences, of felonies, except high treason, were tried and punished
by the Church courts, and from this arose the privilege known as benefit
of clergy with all its abuses, but in all minor offences no distinction
was made between clerk and layman. In civil cases also, suits which
involved the right of property, even the right of presentation to
livings, the state courts had their way. Two large fields of law, on the
other hand,--marriage, and wills,--the Church, much to its profit, had
entirely to itself.
The interval of peace for Henry was not a long one. Hardly was he freed
from one desperate struggle when he found himself by degrees involved in
another from which he was never to find relief. The policy which he was
to follow towards his sons had been already foreshadowed in the
coronation of the young Henry in 1170, but we do not find it easy to
account for it or to reconcile it with other lines of policy which he was
as clearly following. The conflict of ideas, the subtle contradictions of
the age in which he lived, must have been reflected in the mind of the
king whose dominions themselves were an empire of contrasts. Of all the
middle ages there is perhaps no period that saw the ideal which chivalry
had created of the wholly "courteous" king and prince more nearly
realized in practice than the last half of the twelfth century--the brave
warrior and great ruler, of course, but always also the generous giver,
who considered "largesse" one of the chiefest of virtues and first of
duties, and bestowed with lavish hand on all comers money and food, robes
and jewels, horses and arms, and even castles and fiefs, recognizing the
natural right of each one to the gift his rank would seem to claim. That
such an ideal was actually realized in any large number of cases it would
be absurd to maintain. It is not likely that any one ever sought to equal
in detail the extravagant squandering of wealth in gifts which figures in
the poetry of the age--the rich mantles which Arthur hung about the halls
at a coronation festival to be taken by any one, or the thirty bushels of
silver coins tumbled in a heap on the floor from which all might help
themselves. But these poems record the ideal, and probably no other age
saw more men, from kings down to simple knights, who tried to pattern
themselves on this model and to look on wealth as an exhaustless store of
things to be given away. But in the mind of kings who reigned in a world
more real than the romances of chivalry, this duty had always to contend
with natural ambition and with their responsibility for the welfare of
the lands they ruled. The last half of the twelfth century saw these
considerations grow rapidly stronger. The age that formed and applauded
the young Henry also gave birth to Philip Augustus.
The marriage with Eleanor added to the strange mixture of blood in the
Norman-Angevin house a new and warmer strain. It showed itself, careless,
luxurious, self-indulgent, restless at any control, in her sons. But the
marriage had also its effect on the husband and father. It gave a strong
impetus to the conquest, which had already begun, of the colder and
slower north by the ideals of duty and manners which had blossomed out
into a veritable theory of life in the more tropical south. Henry could
not keep himself from the spell of these influences, though they never
controlled him as they did his children. It seems impossible to doubt,
however, that he really believed it to be his duly to give his sons the
position that belonged to them as princes, where they could form courts
of their own, surrounded by their barons and knights, and display the
virtues which belonged to their station. They had a rightful claim to
this, which the ruling idea of conduct befitting a king would not allow
him to deny. The story of Henry's waiting on his son at table after his
coronation "as seneschal" and the reply of the young king to those who
spoke of the honour done him, that it was a proper thing for one who was
only the son of a count to wait on the son of a king, is significant of
deeper things than mere manners. But, though he might be under the spell
of these ideals, to partition his kingdom in very truth, to divest
himself of power, to make his sons actually independent in the provinces
which he gave them, was impossible to him. The power of his empire he
could not break up. The real control of the whole, and even the greater
part of the revenues, must remain in his hands. The conflict of ideas in
his mind, when he tried to be true to them all in practice, led
inevitably to a like conflict of facts and of physical force.
The coronation of the young Henry as king of England, considered by
itself, seems an unaccountable act. Stephen had tried to secure the
coronation of his son Eustace in his own lifetime, but there was a clear
reason of policy in his case. The Capetian kings of France had long
followed the practice, but for them also it had plainly been for many
generations of the utmost importance for the security of the house. There
had never been any reason in Henry's reign why extraordinary steps should
seem necessary to secure the succession, and there certainly was none
fifteen years after its beginning. No explanation is given us in any
contemporary account of the motives which led to this coronation, and it
is not likely that they were motives of policy. It is probable that it
was done in imitation of the French custom, under the influence of the
ideas of chivalry. But even if the king looked on this as chiefly a
family matter, affecting not much more than the arrangements of the
court, he could not keep it within those limits. His view of the position
to which his sons were entitled was the most decisive influence shaping
the latter half of his reign, and through its effect on their characters
almost as decisive for another generation.
Not long after his brother's coronation Richard received his mother's
inheritance, Aquitaine and Poitou; Geoffrey was to be Count of Britanny
by his marriage with the heiress; Normandy, Maine, and Anjou were
assigned to the young king; while the little John, youngest of the
children of Henry and Eleanor, received from his father only the name
"Lackland" which expresses well enough Henry's idea that his position was
not what it ought to be so long as he had no lordship of his own. Trouble
of one kind had begun with the young king's coronation, for Louis of
France had been deeply offended because his daughter Margaret had not
been crowned queen of England at the same time. This omission was
rectified in August, 1172, at Winchester, when Henry was again crowned,
and Margaret with him. But more serious troubles than this were now
beginning.
Already while Henry was in Ireland, the discontent of the young king had
been noticed and reported to him. It had been speedily discovered that
the coronation carried with it no power, though the young Henry was of an
age to rule according to the ideas of the time,--of the age, indeed, at
which his father had begun the actual government of Normandy. But he
found himself, as a contemporary called him, "our new king who has
nothing to reign over." It is probable, however, that the scantiness of
the revenues supplied him to support his new dignity and to maintain his
court had more to do with his discontent than the lack of political
power. The courtly virtue of "largesse," which his father followed with
some restraint where money was concerned, was with him a more controlling
ideal of conduct. A brilliant court, joyous and gay, given up to
minstrelsy and tournaments, seemed to him a necessity of life, and it
could not be had without much money. Contemporary literature shows that
the young king had all those genial gifts of manner, person, and spirit,
which make their possessors universally popular. He was of more than
average manly beauty, warm-hearted, cordial, and generous. He won the
personal love of all men, even of his enemies, and his early death seemed
to many, besides the father whom he had so sorely tried, to leave the
world darker. Clearly he belongs in the list of those descendants of the
Norman house, with the Roberts and the Stephens, who had the gifts which
attract the admiration and affection of men, but at the same time the
weakness of character which makes them fatal to themselves and to their
friends. To a man of that type, even without the incentive of the spirit
of the time, no amount of money could be enough. It is hardly possible to
doubt that the emptiness of his political title troubled the mind of the
young Henry far less than the emptiness of his purse.[47]
There was no lack of persons, whose word would have great influence with
the young king, to encourage him in his discontent and even in plans of
rebellion. His father-in-law, Louis VII, would have every reason to urge
him on to extremes, those of policy because of the danger which
threatened the Capetian house from the undivided Angevin power, those of
personal feeling because of the seemingly intentional slights which his
daughter Margaret had suffered. Eleanor, at once wife and mother, born
probably in 1122, had now reached an age when she must have felt that she
had lost some at least of the sources of earlier influence and
consideration. Proud and imperious of spirit, she would bitterly resent
any lack of attention on her husband's part, and she had worse things
than neglect to excite her anger. From the beginning, we are told, while
Henry was still in Ireland, she had encouraged her son to believe himself
badly treated by his father. The barons, many of them at least, through
all the provinces of Henry's empire, were restless under his strong
control and excited by the evidence, constantly increasing as the
judicial and administrative reforms of the reign went on, that the king
was determined to confine their independence within narrower and narrower
limits. Flattering offers of support no doubt came in at any sign that
the young king would head resistance to his father.
The final step of appealing directly to armed force the young Henry did
not take till the spring of 1173. A few weeks after his second coronation
he was recalled to Normandy, but was allowed to go off at once to visit
his father-in-law, ostensibly on a family visit. Louis was anxious to see
his daughter. Apparently it was soon after his return that he made the
first formal request of his father to be given an independent position in
some one of the lands which had been assigned to him, urged, it was said,
by the advice of the king of France and of the barons of England and
Normandy. The request was refused, and he then made up his mind to rebel
as soon as a proper opportunity and excuse should offer. These he found
in the course of the negotiations for the marriage of his brother John
about the beginning of Lent, 1173.
Marriage was the only way by which Henry could provide for his youngest
son a position equal to that which he had given to the others, and this
he was now planning to do by a marriage which would at the same time
greatly increase his own power. The Counts of Maurienne in the kingdom of
Burgundy had collected in their hands a variety of fiefs east of the
Rhone extending from Geneva on the north over into the borders of Italy
to Turin on the south until they commanded all the best passes of the
western Alps. The reigning count, Humbert, had as yet no son. His elder
daughter, a child a little younger than John, would be the heiress of his
desirable lands. The situation seems naturally to have suggested to him
the advantage of a close alliance with one whose influence and alliances
were already so widely extended in the Rhone valley as Henry's. It needed
no argument to persuade Henry of the advantage to himself of such a
relationship. He undoubtedly looked forward to ruling the lands his son
would acquire by the marriage as he ruled the lands of Geoffrey and of
his other sons; and to command the western Alps would mean not merely a
clear road into Italy if he should wish one, but also, of more immediate
value, a strategic position on the east from which he might hope to cut
off the king of France from any further interference in the south like
that which earlier in his reign had compelled him to drop his plans
against Toulouse. Belley, which would pass into his possession when this
treaty was carried out, was not very far from the eastern edge of his
duchy of Aquitaine. South-eastern France would be almost surrounded by
his possessions, and it was not likely that anything could prevent it
from passing into his actual or virtual control. Whether Henry dreamed of
still wider dominion, of interference even in Italy and possibly of
contending for the empire itself with Frederick Barbarossa, as some
suspected at the time and as a few facts tend to show, we may leave
unsettled, since the time never came when he could attempt seriously to
realize such a dream.
The more probable and reasonable objects of his diplomacy seemed about to
be attained at once. At Montferrand in Auvergne in February he met the
Count of Maurienne, who brought his daughter with him, and there the
treaty between them was drawn up and sworn to. At the same place appeared
his former ally the king of Aragon and his former opponent the Count of
Toulouse. Between them a few days later at Limoges peace was made; any
further war would be against Henry's interests. The Count of Toulouse
also frankly recognized the inevitable, and did homage and swore fealty
to Henry, to the young Henry, and to his immediate lord, Richard, Duke of
Aquitaine. From the moment of apparent triumph, however, dates the
beginning of Henry's failure. Humbert of Maurienne, who was making so
magnificent a provision for the young couple, naturally inquired what
Henry proposed to do for John. He was told that three of the more
important Angevin castles with their lands would be granted him. But the
nominal lord of these castles was the young king, and his consent was
required. This he indignantly refused, and his anger was so great that
peaceable conference with him was no longer possible. He was now brought
to the pitch of rebellion, and as they reached Chinon on their return to
Normandy, he rode off from his father and joined the king of France. On
the news Eleanor sent Richard and Geoffrey to join their brother, but was
herself arrested soon after and held in custody.
Both sides prepared at once for war. Henry strengthened his frontier
castles, and Louis called a great council of his kingdom, to which came
his chief vassals, including the Counts of Flanders and Boulogne, whose
long alliance with England made their action almost one of rebellion.
There it was decided to join the war against the elder king of England.
The long list of Henry's vassals who took his son's side, even if we
deduct the names of some whose wavering inclination may have been fixed
by the promises of lands or office which the younger Henry distributed
with reckless freedom, reveals a widespread discontent in the feudal
baronage. The turbulent lords of Aquitaine might perhaps be expected to
revolt on every occasion, but the list includes the oldest names and
leading houses of England and Normandy. Out of the trouble the king of
Scotland hoped to recover what had been held of the last English king,
and it may very well have seemed for a moment that the days of Stephen
were going to return for all. The Church almost to a man stood by the
king who had so recently tried to invade its privileges, and Henry
hastened to strengthen himself with this ally by filling numerous
bishoprics which had for a long time been in his hands. Canterbury was
with some difficulty included among them. An earlier attempt to fill the
primacy had failed because of a dispute about the method of choice, and
now another failed because the archbishop selected refused to take
office. At last in June Richard, prior of St. Martin's at Dover, was
chosen, but his consecration was delayed for nearly a year by an appeal
of the young king to the pope against a choice which disregarded his
rights. The elder Henry had on his side also a goodly list of English
earls: the illegitimate members of his house, Hamelin of Surrey, Reginald
of Cornwall, and William of Gloucester; the earls of Arundel, Pembroke,
Salisbury, Hertford, and Northampton; the son of the traitor of his
mother's time, William de Mandeville, Earl of Essex; and William of
Beaumont, Earl of Warwick, whose cousins of Leicester and Meulan were of
the young king's party. The new men of his grandfather's making were also
with him and the mass of the middle class.
The war was slow in opening. Henry kept himself closely to the defensive
and waited to be attacked, appearing to be little troubled at the
prospect and spending his time mostly in hunting. Early in July young
Henry invaded Normandy with the Counts of Flanders and Boulogne, and
captured Aumale, Eu, and a few other places, but the Count of Boulogne
was wounded to the death, and the campaign came to an end. At the same
time King Louis entered southern Normandy and laid siege to Verneuil, one
ward of which he took and burnt by a trick that was considered
dishonourable, and from which he fled in haste on the approach of Henry
with his army. In the west, at the end of August, Henry's Brabantine
mercenaries, of whom he is said to have had several thousand in his
service, shut up a number of the rebel leaders in Dol. In a forced march
of two days the king came on from Rouen, and three days later compelled
the surrender of the castle. A long list is recorded of the barons and
knights who were made prisoners there, of whom the most important was the
Earl of Chester. A month later a conference was held at Gisors between
the two parties, to see if peace were possible. This conference was held,
it is said, at the request of the enemies of the king of England; but he
offered terms to his sons which surprise us by their liberality after
their failure in the war, and which show that he was more moved by his
feelings as a father than by military considerations. He offered to Henry
half the income of the royal domains in England, or if he preferred to
live in Normandy, half the revenues of that duchy and all those of his
father's lands in Anjou; to Richard half the revenues of Aquitaine; and
to Geoffrey the possession of Britanny on the celebration of his
marriage. Had he settled revenues like these on his sons when he
nominally divided his lands among them, there probably would have been no
rebellion; but now the king of France had much to say about the terms,
and he could be satisfied only by the parcelling out of Henry's political
power. To this the king of England would not listen, and the conference
was broken off without result.
In England the summer and autumn of 1173 passed with no more decisive
events than on the continent, but with the same general drift in favour
of the elder Henry. Richard of Lucy, the justiciar and special
representative of the king, and his uncle, Reginald of Cornwall, were the
chief leaders of his cause. In July they captured the town of Leicester,
but not the castle. Later the king of Scotland invaded Northumberland,
but fell back before the advance of Richard of Lucy, who in his turn laid
waste parts of Lothian and burned Berwick. In October the Earl of
Leicester landed in Norfolk with a body of foreign troops, but was
defeated by the justiciar and the Earl of Cornwall, who took him and his
wife prisoners. The year closed with truces in both England and France
running to near Easter time. The first half of the year 1174 passed in
the same indecisive way. In England there was greater suffering from the
disorders incident to such a war, and sieges and skirmishes were
constantly occurring through all the centre and north of the land.
By the middle of the year King Henry came to the conclusion that his
presence was more needed in the island than on the continent, and on July
8 he crossed to Southampton, invoking the protection of God on his voyage
if He would grant to his kingdom the peace which he himself was seeking.
He brought with him all his chief prisoners, including his own queen and
his son's. On the next day he set out for Canterbury. The penance of a
king imposed upon him by the Church for the murder of Thomas Becket he
might already have performed to the satisfaction of the pope, but the
penance of a private person, of a soul guilty in the sight of heaven, he
had still to take upon himself, in a measure to satisfy the world and
very likely his own conscience. For such a penance the time was fitting.
Whatever he may have himself felt, the friends of Thomas believed that
the troubles which had fallen upon the realm were a punishment for the
sins of the king. A personal reconciliation with the martyr, to be
obtained only as a suppliant at his tomb, was plainly what he should
seek.
As Henry drew near the city and came in sight of the cathedral church, he
dismounted from his horse, and bare-footed and humbly, forbidding any
sign that a king was present, walked the remainder of the way to the
tomb. Coming to the door of the church, he knelt and prayed; at the spot
where Thomas fell, he wept and kissed it. After reciting his confession
to the bishops who had come with him or gathered there, he went to the
tomb and, prostrate on the floor, remained a long time weeping and
praying. Then Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, made an address to those
present, declaring that not by command or knowledge was the king guilty
of the murder, but admitting the guilt of the hasty words which had
occasioned it. He proclaimed the restoration of all rights to the church
of Canterbury, and of the king's favour to all friends of the late
archbishop. Then followed the formal penance and absolution. Laying off
his outer clothes, with head and shoulders bowed at the tomb, the king
allowed himself to be scourged by the clergy present, said to have
numbered eighty, receiving five blows from each prelate and three from
each monk. The night that followed he spent in prayer in the church,
still fasting. Mass in the morning completed the religious ceremonies,
but on Henry's departure for London later in the day he was given, as a
mark of the reconciliation, some holy water to drink made sacred by the
relics of the martyr, and a little in a bottle to carry with him.
The medieval mind overlooked the miracle of Henry's escape from the
sanitary dangers of this experience, but dwelt with satisfaction on
another which seemed the martyr's immediate response and declaration of
forgiveness. It was on Saturday that the king left Canterbury and went up
to London, and there he remained some days preparing his forces for the
war. On Wednesday night a messenger who had ridden without stopping from
the north arrived at the royal quarters and demanded immediate admittance
to the king. Henry had retired to rest, and his servants would not at
first allow him to be disturbed, but the messenger insisted: his news was
good, and the king must know it at once. At last his importunity
prevailed, and at the king's bedside he told him that he had come from
Ranulf Glanvill, his sheriff of Lancashire, and that the king of Scotland
had been overcome and taken prisoner. The news was confirmed by other
messengers who arrived the next day and was received by the king and his
barons with great rejoicing. The victory was unmistakably the answer of
St. Thomas to the penance of Henry, and a plain declaration of
reconciliation and forgiveness, for it soon became known that it was on
the very day when the penance at Canterbury was finished, perhaps at the
very hour, that this great success was granted to the arms of the
penitent king.
The two spots of danger in the English insurrection were the north, where
not merely was the king of Scotland prepared for invasion, but the Bishop
of Durham, Hugh of Puiset, a connexion of King Stephen, was ready to
assist him and had sent also for his nephew, another Hugh of Puiset,
Count of Bar, to come to his help with a foreign force; and the east,
where Hugh Bigod, the old earl of Norfolk, was again in rebellion and was
expecting the landing of the Count of Flanders with an army. It was in
the north that the fate of the insurrection was settled and without the
aid of the king. The king of Scotland, known in the annals of his country
as William the Lion, had begun his invasion in the spring after the
expiration of the truce of the previous year, and had raided almost the
whole north, capturing some castles and failing to take others such as
Bamborough and Carlisle. In the second week of July he attacked Prudhoe
castle in southern Northumberland. Encouraged perhaps by the landing of
King Henry in England, the local forces of the north now gathered to
check the raiding. No barons of high rank were among the leaders. They
were all Henry's own new men or the descendants of his grandfather's. Two
sheriffs, Robert of Stuteville of Yorkshire and Ranulf Glanvill of
Lancashire, probably had most to do with collecting the forces and
leading them. At the news of their arrival, William fell back toward the
north, dividing up his army and sending detachments off in various
directions to plunder the country. The English followed on, and at
Alnwick castle surprised the king with only a few knights, his personal
guard. Resistance was hopeless, but it was continued in the true fashion
of chivalry until all the Scottish force was captured.
This victory brought the rebellion in England to an end. On hearing the
news Henry marched against the castle of Huntingdon, which had been for
some time besieged, and it at once surrendered. There his natural son
Geoffrey, who had been made Bishop of Lincoln the summer before, joined
him with reinforcements, and he turned to the east against Hugh Bigod. A
part of the Flemish force which was expected had reached the earl, but he
did not venture to resist. He came in before he was attacked, and gave up
his castles, and with great difficulty persuaded the king to allow him to
send home his foreign troops. Henry then led his army to Northampton
where he received the submission of all the rebel leaders who were left.
The Bishop of Durham surrendered his castles and gained reluctant
permission for his nephew to return to France. The king of Scotland was
brought in a prisoner. The Earl of Leicester's castles were given up, and
the Earl of Derby and Roger Mowbray yielded theirs. This was on the last
day of July. In three weeks after Henry's landing, in little more than
two after his sincere penance for the murder of St. Thomas, the dangerous
insurrection in England was completely crushed,--crushed indeed for all
the remainder of Henry's reign. The king's right to the castles of his
barons was henceforth strictly enforced. Many were destroyed at the close
of the war, and others were put in the hands of royal officers who could
easily be changed. It was more than a generation after this date and
under very different conditions that a great civil war again broke out in
England between the king and his barons.
But the war on the continent was not closed by Henry's success in
England. His sons were still in arms against him, and during his absence
the king of France with the young Henry and the Count of Flanders had
laid siege to Rouen. Though the blockade was incomplete, an attack on the
chief city of Normandy could not be disregarded. Evidently that was
Henry's opinion, for on August 6 he crossed the channel, taking with him
his Brabantine soldiers and a force of Welshmen, as well as his prisoners
including the king of Scotland. He entered Rouen without difficulty, and
by his vigorous measures immediately convinced the besiegers that all
hope of taking the city was over. King Louis, who was without military
genius or spirit, and not at all a match for Henry, gave up the
enterprise at once, burned his siege engines, and decamped ignominiously
in the night. Then came messengers to Henry and proposed a conference to
settle terms of peace, but at the meeting which was held on September 8
nothing could be agreed upon because of the absence of Richard who was in
Aquitaine still carrying on the war. The negotiations were accordingly
adjourned till Michaelmas on the understanding that Henry should subdue
his son and compel him to attend and that the other side should give the
young rebel no aid. Richard at first intended some resistance to his
father, but after losing some of the places that held for him and a
little experience of fleeing from one castle to another, he lost heart
and threw himself on his father's mercy, to be received with the easy
forgiveness which characterized Henry's attitude toward his children.
There was no obstacle now to peace. On September 30 the kings of England
and France and the three young princes met in the adjourned conference
and arranged the terms. Henry granted to his sons substantial revenues,
but not what he had offered them at the beginning of the war, nor did he
show any disposition to push his advantage to extremes against any of
those who had joined the alliance against him. The treaty in which the
agreement between father and sons was recorded may still be read. It
provides that Henry "the king, son of the king," and his brothers and all
the barons who have withdrawn from the allegiance of the father shall
return to it free and quit from all oaths and agreements which they may
have made in the meantime, and the king shall have all the rights over
them and their lands and castles that he had two weeks before the
beginning of the war. But they also shall receive back all their lands as
they had them at the same date, and the king will cherish no ill feeling
against them. To Henry his father promised to assign two castles in
Normandy suitable for his residence and an income of 15,000 Angevin
pounds a year; to Richard two suitable castles and half the revenue of
Poitou, but the interesting stipulation is added that Richard's castles
are to be of such a sort that his father shall take no injury from them;
to Geoffrey half the marriage portion of Constance of Britanny and the
income of the whole when the marriage is finally made with the sanction
of Rome. Prisoners who had made fine with the king before the peace were
expressly excluded from it, and this included the king of Scotland and
the Earls of Chester and Leicester. All castles were to be put back into
the condition in which they were before the war. The young king formally
agreed to the provision for his brother John, and this seems materially
larger than that originally proposed. The concluding provisions of the
treaty show the strong legal sense of King Henry. He was ready to pardon
the rebellion with great magnanimity, but crimes committed and laws
violated either against himself or others must be answered for in the
courts by all guilty persons. Richard and Geoffrey did homage to their
father for what was granted them, but this was excused the young Henry
because he was a king. In another treaty drawn up at about the same time
as Falaise the king of Scotland recognized in the clearest terms for
himself and his heirs the king of England as his liege lord for Scotland
and for all his lands, and agreed that his barons and men, lay and
ecclesiastic, should also render liege homage to Henry, according to the
Norman principle. On these conditions he was released. Of the king of
France practically nothing was demanded.
The treaty between the two kings of England established a peace which
lasted for some years, but it was not long before complaints of the
scantiness of his revenues and of his exclusion from all political
influence began again from the younger king and from his court. There was
undoubtedly much to justify these complaints from the point of view of
Henry the son. Whatever may have been the impelling motive, by
establishing his sons in nominal independence, Henry the father had
clearly put himself in an illogical position from which there was no
escape without a division of his power which he could not make when
brought to the test. The young king found his refuge in a way thoroughly
characteristic of himself and of the age, in the great athletic sport of
that period--the tournament, which differed from modern athletics in the
important particular that the gentleman, keeping of course the rules of
the game, could engage in it as a means of livelihood. The capturing of
horses and armour and the ransoming of prisoners made the tournament a
profitable business to the man who was a better fighter than other men,
and the young king enjoyed that fame. At the beginning of his independent
career his father had assigned to his service a man who was to serve the
house of Anjou through long years and in far higher capacity--William
Marshal, at that time a knight without lands or revenues but skilled in
arms, and under his tuition and example his pupil became a warrior of
renown. It was not exactly a business which seems to us becoming to a
king, but it was at least better than fighting his father, and the
opinion of the time found no fault with it.
[47] Robert of Torigni, Chronicles of Stephen, iv, 305; L'Histoire
de Guillaume le Maréchal, 11. 1935-5095.