THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE.
1175–1183.
In the seven years which followed the suppression of the barons’ revolt
Henry’s prosperity reached its height. The rising in which all his
enemies had united for his destruction had ended in leaving him seated
more firmly than ever upon the most securely-established throne in
Europe. Within the four seas of Britain he was master as no king had
ever been master before him. The English people had been with him from
the first, and was learning year by year to identify its interests
more closely with his; the Church, alienated for nearly ten years, was
reconciled by his penance; feudalism was beaten at last, and for ever.
The Welsh princes were his obedient and serviceable vassals; the Scot
king had been humbled to accept a like position; a new subject-realm
was growing up on the coast of Ireland. The great external peril which
had dogged Henry’s footsteps through life, the hostility of France, was
for a while paralyzed by his success. Other external foes he had none;
the kings of Spain and of Sicily, the princes of the Western and even
of the Eastern Empire, vied with each other in seeking the friendship,
one might almost say the patronage, of the one sovereign in Europe who,
safe on his sea-girt throne, could afford to be independent of them
all. Within and without, on either side of the sea, all hindrances to
the full and free developement of Henry’s policy for the government of
his whole dominions were thus completely removed.
In England itself the succeeding period was one of unbroken
tranquillity and steady prosperous growth, social, intellectual,
political, constitutional. Henry used his opportunity to make a longer
stay in the island than he had ever made there before, save at the
very beginning of his reign. He was there from May 1175 to August
1177; in the following July he returned, and stayed till April 1180;
he came back again in July 1181, and remained till March 1182. Each of
these visits was marked by some further step towards the completion
of his judicial and administrative reforms. Almost as soon as he
set foot in the country, indeed, he took up his work as if it had
never been interrupted. The king and his eldest son went to England
together on May 9, 1175;[842] on Rogation Sunday they publicly sealed
their reconciliation with each other and with the Church in a great
council which met at Westminster[843] under the presidence of a new
archbishop of Canterbury, Richard, formerly prior of Dover, who
after countless troubles and delays had been chosen just before the
outbreak of the rebellion to fill S. Thomas’s place,[844] and had
come back from Rome in triumph, with his pallium and a commission as
legate for all England, just as Henry was returning to Normandy from
his success against Hugh Bigod.[845] From the council the two kings
and the primate went all together on a pilgrimage to the martyr’s
tomb at Canterbury;[846] at Whitsuntide the kings held a court at
Reading,[847] and on S. Peter’s day they met the Welsh princes in a
great council at Gloucester.[848] Two days later the process, begun
two years before, of filling up the vacant bishoprics and abbacies
which had been accumulating during Thomas’s exile was completed in
another council at Woodstock.[849] Thence, too, was issued an edict for
the better securing of order throughout the realm, and particularly
around the person of the king; all his opponents in the late war were
forbidden, on pain of arrest as traitors, to come to the court without
special summons, and, under any circumstances, to come before sunrise
or stay over night; and all wearing of arms, knife, bow and arrows,
was forbidden on the English side of the Severn. These prohibitions
however were only temporary;[850] and they were, with one exception,
the only measure of general severity taken by Henry in consequence of
the rebellion. That exception was a great forest-visitation, begun by
Henry in person during the summer of 1175 and not completed by his
ministers, it seems, till Michaelmas 1177, and from which scarcely
a man throughout the kingdom, baron or villein, layman or priest,
was altogether exempt. In vain did Richard de Lucy, as loyal to the
people as to the king, shew Henry his own royal writ authorizing the
justiciars to throw open the forests and give up the royal fish-ponds
to public use during the war, and protest against the injustice of
punishing the people at large for a trespass to which he had himself
invited them in the king’s name and in accordance, as he had understood
it, with the king’s expressed will. The license had probably been
used to a far wider extent than Henry had intended; the general
excitement had perhaps vented itself in some such outburst of wanton
destructiveness as had occurred after the death of Henry I.; at any
rate, the Norman and the Angevin blood in Henry II. was all alike
stirred into wrath at sight of damage done to vert and venison; the
transgressors were placed, in technical phrase, “at the king’s mercy,”
and their fines constituted an important item in the Pipe Roll of
1176.[851]
[842] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 83, 84. R. Diceto
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 399.
[843] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 84. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol.
i. p. 250. R. Diceto as above, pp. 399–401.
[844] On the Canterbury troubles and Richard’s election see
Gerv. Cant. as above, pp. 239–242, 243–245, 247.
[845] _Ib._ p. 249. R. Diceto as above, p. 391. _Gesta Hen._ as
above, p. 74.
[846] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 91. Gerv. Cant. as above, p.
256. R. Diceto as above, p. 399.
[847] _Gesta Hen._ as above.
[848] _Ib._ p. 92.
[849] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 93. Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 78, 79.
[850] _Gesta Hen._ as above. “Sed hæc præcepta parvo tempore
custodita sunt.”
[851] On the “misericordia regis pro forestâ,” as it is called
in the Pipe Rolls, see _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 92, 94; Rog.
Howden as above, p. 79; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 402;
Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 483; and the extracts from
the Pipe Rolls 22 and 23 Hen. II. (_i.e._ 1176 and 1177) in
Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp. 541, 542.
In the beginning of that year the king assembled a great council at
Northampton,[852] and thence issued an Assize which forms another
link in the series of legal enactments begun at Clarendon just ten
years before. The first three clauses and the twelfth clause of the
Assize of Northampton are substantially a re-issue of those articles
of the Assize of Clarendon which regulated the presentment, detention
and punishment of criminals and the treatment of strangers and
vagabonds.[853] The experience of the past ten years had however led to
some modifications in the details of the procedure. The recognition by
twelve lawful men of every hundred and four of every township, to be
followed by ordeal of water, was re-enacted; but the presentment was
now to be made not to the sheriff, but direct to the king’s justices.
The punishments, too, were more severe than before; the forger, robber,
murderer or incendiary who under the former system would have suffered
the loss of a foot was now to lose a hand as well, and to quit the
realm within forty days.[854] The remaining articles dealt with quite
other matters. The fourth declared the legal order of proceeding with
regard to the estate of a deceased freeholder, in such a manner as to
secure the rights of his heir and of his widow before the usual relief
could be exacted by the lord; and it referred all disputes between the
lord and the heir touching the latter’s right of inheritance to the
decision of the king’s justices, on the recognition of twelve lawful
men[855]--a process which, under the name of the assize of _mort
d’ancester_, soon became a regular part of the business transacted
before the justices-in-eyre. Some of the other clauses had a more
political significance. They directed the justices to take an oath
of homage and fealty to the king from every man in the realm, earl,
baron, knight, freeholder or villein, before the octave of Whit-Sunday
at latest, and to arrest as traitors all who refused it:[856]--to
investigate and strictly enforce the demolition of the condemned
castles;[857] to ascertain and report by whom, how and where the duty
of castle-guard was owed to the king;[858] to inquire what persons had
fled from justice and incurred the penalty of outlawry by failing to
give themselves up at the appointed time, and to send in a list of all
such persons to the Exchequer at Easter and Michaelmas for transmission
to the king.[859] The tenth article was aimed at the bailiffs of the
royal demesnes, requiring them to give an account of their stewardship
before the Exchequer;[860] and two others defined the justices’
authority, as extending, in judicial matters, over all pleas of the
Crown, both in criminal causes and in civil actions concerning half a
knight’s fee or less; and in fiscal matters, over escheats, wardships,
and lands and churches in royal demesne.[861]
[852] On January 26. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 404.
Cf. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 107, and Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 87. The _Gesta_ date it merely “circa
festum Conversionis S. Pauli”; Roger turns this into “in
festo,” etc., and adopts the reading “Nottingham” instead of
“Northampton.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 257, 258,
confounds the Assize of Clarendon with the Constitutions.
[853] Cf. articles 1–3, 12 of Ass. Northampton (Stubbs, _Select
Charters_, pp. 150, 151, 152), with Ass. Clarendon, cc. 1–4,
13, 15, 16 (_ib._ pp. 143, 144, 145). The Assize of Northampton
is given in the _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 108–110, and by Rog.
Howden as above, pp. 89–91.
[854] Ass. North., c. 1 (Stubbs, as above, p. 151).
[855] _Ib._ c. 4 (pp. 151, 152).
[856] Ass. North., c. 6 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 152).
[857] _Ib._ c. 8 (as above).
[858] _Ib._ c. 11 (_ibid._)
[859] _Ib._ c. 13 (pp. 152, 153).
[860] _Ib._ c. 10 (p. 152).
[861] _Ib._ cc. 7 and 9 (_ibid._).
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]