FOREIGN AFFAIRS
After the ingloriously successful Welsh campaign of 1157 Henry seems to
have returned to Woodstock and there rejoined the queen, who had given
birth on 8th September to a third son, Richard. The remainder of the
autumn was no doubt spent in hunting, but at the end of the year the
court moved northwards to Lincoln, where Christmas was kept. A local
tradition, or superstition, forbade the wearing of the royal crown
within the city walls. Stephen, it is true, had defied this tradition in
1146, but the fortunes of Stephen were not such as to make his action an
encouraging precedent, and Henry, preferring to be on the safe side,
caused the ceremonial of coronation to take place in the church of St.
Mary of Wigford outside the walls. From Lincoln the king moved on, at
the beginning of 1158, to Carlisle to meet Malcolm of Scotland. The
result of the meeting was unsatisfactory, and Henry abandoned his
original intention of bestowing upon the young king that honour of
knighthood which he had himself once received at the hands of Malcolm’s
predecessor, David.
Easter in that year fell on 20th April, when the
[Illustration: Map illustrating the Campaigns of Henry II in FRANCE
(_The portion of France under Henry’s sovereignty is tinted._)]
court was at Worcester, and Henry and Eleanor celebrated the festival by
observing, for the last time, the elaborate ritual of coronation. When
the service was over they laid their crowns upon the altar and vowed to
wear them no more. There would seem to have been no deeper reason for
this renunciation than Henry’s dislike of ceremony. To the restless
king, who never sat except on the saddle and who whispered and scribbled
notes to relieve the boredom of Mass, the elaborate ceremonial of the
crown-wearing must have been distasteful and wearisome. The outward pomp
and circumstance of royalty were nothing to the man whose rule extended
from the Pennines to the Pyrenees, and the glitter of a crown was no
enhancement to the clearest head in Europe, throbbing full with
political problems, national and international. The kings of Wales and
Scotland had done homage; Godred, King of Man and the Isles, was in
attendance at Worcester; embassies had been received or were on their
way from the kings of Norway, the King of Jerusalem, and the Emperor
Frederic; and Henry was scheming for the further aggrandisement of his
family and the extension of his continental dominions.
Louis VII. had by his second wife, Constance of Castille, a daughter
Margaret, at this time a baby of a few months old, and Henry determined
to forestall other possible aspirants for the hand of this very youthful
heiress. Accordingly, in the summer of 1158, he despatched his
chancellor, Thomas Becket, to demand the hand of Margaret for his
eldest surviving son, Henry, who was now rather more than two years old.
If the king was inclined to underrate the value of display and outward
magnificence, his chancellor was very far from falling into the same
error. Becket, the king’s trusted minister and most intimate friend,
presented a curious contrast in every way to his royal master. He was
tall, of commanding presence, with clean-cut features and shapely hands;
in his splendour he was a prototype of Cardinal Wolsey, but stood out
the more prominently, as the sober court of Henry II. made a better foil
than the magnificence of Henry VIII. Intensely self-centred, whatever he
took up he threw himself into heart and soul, and as he was to prove the
most ecclesiastical of ecclesiastics, so now that he was the greatest
officer in the land he saw to it that his dignity was becomingly
supported. Lavish in his expenditure, he kept open house and enriched
his friends with open-handed generosity. Yet, though luxury and
ostentation formed the note of his household, it is to his honour that
in an age when views on morals were more than lax he was known
pre-eminently as a man of clean life.
The embassy to the French court presented Becket with an admirable
opportunity for gratifying his taste for pageantry, and the splendour of
his cavalcade struck amazement into the minds of the natives and
impressed them with the greatness of the English king. In front of the
procession came the serving men and lackeys on foot in groups of ten or
a dozen singing English songs, and some way behind them came huntsmen
leading dogs and with their greyhounds in leash; then there rattled over
the stones six great covered waggons containing the baggage of the
chancellor’s household, and two other waggons loaded solely with the
very best English ale as a present for the French. Each of these carts
was drawn by five magnificent horses, each attended by its own groom,
and as guard to each cart was a great mastiff. Next came the pack horses
with their drivers, and as a picturesque touch there sat upon the back
of each horse an ape or monkey. After these came the squires, some
carrying the shields of their masters and leading their chargers, others
bearing hawks and falcons; then the officers of the household, and the
knights and clerks riding two and two, and finally the chancellor
himself with his friends. Becket did not allow the effect of his arrival
to be diminished by any failure to maintain his state during his stay in
Paris, and the extravagance and luxury of his household at the Temple,
which had been assigned for his accommodation, became proverbial. And
when the business of his mission had been successfully settled he
distributed all his gold and silver plate, his furs and gorgeous robes,
horses and the other magnificent appointments of his establishment in
lavish largesse.
Henry followed close on the heels of his splendid ambassador to complete
the negotiations for the proposed matrimonial alliance. The two kings
met first on the borders of France and Normandy, near Gisors, and Henry
then paid a formal visit to Louis in Paris, where his unassuming
courtesy and refusal of all ceremonial honours made an impression quite
as favourable as the magnificence of his chancellor had done. Not only
did Louis fall in with the suggestion for the betrothal of Margaret to
the young Henry, but he also agreed to assist the English king in his
claim on the territory of Nantes and Lower Brittany. Geoffrey, Henry’s
younger brother, had held this province for life by the election of the
inhabitants, but upon his death in July 1158, Conan, Count of Brittany,
claimed that it should revert to him. In face of the united forces of
England and France Conan could only submit, surrendering Nantes in
return for a confirmation of his rights in the remainder of Brittany.
After taking over Nantes Henry led a brilliant little expedition against
Thouars, in Poitou, capturing that strong position and its rebellious
lord with surprising rapidity, and then, turning north, met King Louis
at Le Mans, accompanied him on a pilgrimage to St. Michael’s Mount, and
entertained him for some time at Rouen. Thanks to the French king’s good
offices several favourable arrangements were made for the surrender of
border castles to Henry, and it was with satisfaction that Henry could
look back upon the recent results of his diplomacy when he celebrated
the feast of Christmas that year at Cherbourg with Queen Eleanor, who
[Illustration: SEAL OF LOUIS VII (1/1)]
had given birth to her fourth son, Geoffrey, in the previous September.
His policy having so far met with such remarkable success Henry now
decided to revive his wife’s ancient and shadowy claim to the important
province of Toulouse. This province had been sold by one of Queen
Eleanor’s ancestors to his brother, Raymond of St. Gilles, but the
legality of the sale had been questioned on more than one occasion, and
Louis VII., at the time that Eleanor was his wife, had prepared to
enforce his claim, but had come to an amicable agreement with the Count
of St. Gilles, giving him to wife his sister Constance, widow of King
Stephen’s son Eustace. Henry now made warlike preparations on an
unprecedented scale, securing as an ally Raymond Berenger, virtual King
of Arragon and Duke of Provence but proudly content to be known by his
humbler ancestral title of Count of Barcelona, and calling on all his
fiefs, English and continental, for aids of men and money. In the
imposing army which marched upon Toulouse in July 1159, practically all
the great barons of England and Normandy were present with their
retinues, the chancellor as usual outshining his peers in the number and
splendour of his knights. Malcolm of Scotland came with a band of his
young nobles, and was rewarded by Henry with the coveted honour of
knighthood, and there was one of the Welsh princes; but the main body of
the troops consisted of Welsh and other mercenaries, hired with the
money wrung from the great prelates, the larger towns, and the Jews and
other wealthy non-combatants. Such a force could easily have captured
Toulouse, but King Louis had hastened to the aid of his brother-in-law
and was within the town. For Henry to attack would therefore mean a
direct assault upon the man who, as King of France, was technically his
over-lord and suzerain, a breach of feudal law which Henry, to the
disgust of Becket and other less scrupulous men, refused to commit. The
only alternative was a blockade, and this proving futile and ineffectual
the great army withdrew at the end of September, having achieved
practically nothing but the capture of Cahors. On his way north,
however, Henry was able to induce the Count of Evreux to hand over the
castles of Montfort, Epernon, and Rochfort, and Louis, finding his lines
of communication thus cut, hastily concluded peace.
During this war Pope Adrian had died, and Cardinal Roland Bandinelli had
been elected by a majority of the electoral college, and, after a little
hesitation, had accepted the papacy under the title of Alexander III.;
the party of the Emperor Frederic, however, taking advantage of Roland’s
hesitation, had declared their candidate, Octavian, elected, and had
consecrated him pope as Victor III. The question of which pope should be
recognised was discussed at councils held by Henry at Neufmarché in
Normandy and by Louis at Beauvais, and in each case the decision was
given in favour of Alexander, Victor being renounced as schismatic.
This result was largely due to the eloquence of Alexander’s legate,
Cardinal William of Pavia. He, with Cardinal Henry of Pisa, was at the
English king’s court at the end of October 1160, when the news arrived
that Louis, within a fortnight of his wife’s death, had, in his
eagerness to obtain an heir to his throne, married a sister of Theobald,
Count of Blois. Henry at once persuaded the cardinals to celebrate the
marriage between his son Henry, not yet five years old, and the French
king’s daughter Margaret, then in her third year; the marriage having
thus been performed with the consent of the Church, as stipulated in his
treaty with Louis, Henry was entitled to demand as Margaret’s marriage
portion the surrender of the Norman Vexin and its castles of Gisors,
Néaufles, and Neufchâtel, which he accordingly received from the three
Templars who were acting as trustees of the settlement.
This piece of sharp practice roused the resentment of Louis, but Henry’s
defences were too strong for any effective military operations, and,
after some desultory skirmishing on the borders, peace was patched up in
the summer of 1162 and continued without actual breach for some five
years. At the end of that time, in June 1167, Henry’s interference in
the affairs of Auvergne afforded Louis excuse for a fresh campaign,
whose prospects of success were the greater from its coincidence, no
doubt designed, with a rising on an unusually large scale amongst the
unruly Breton nobles. The French accordingly ravaged the Norman border,
but Henry virtually brought the campaign to an end by a single brilliant
stroke. Knowing the provisions and munitions of the French army had been
stored at Chaumont, he marched against that town, and while his
men-at-arms engaged the garrison outside the walls his light-armed Welsh
levies swam down the river and, gaining access to the town by that
unexpected quarter, set it on fire. The whole town was destroyed, many
of its defenders slain or captured, and the rest driven into the castle,
where Henry left them unmolested, content with the destruction of the
stores. Although this practically put an end to hostilities, no peace
could be arranged until the French king’s impotent rage had been
appeased, and the brilliant suggestion was therefore made by the Empress
Maud that he should be allowed to burn some unfortified Norman town. Les
Andelys was selected as the victim; the inhabitants were duly warned by
Henry to leave the place, and the French army solemnly marched on the
deserted town and burnt it. Having cheaply regained his honour by this
puerile act of revenge, Louis agreed, in August 1168, to a six months’
truce. This gave Henry time to suppress the rising in Brittany and
another in Poitou, while the refractory counts of Ponthieu and Perche
received their chastisement during the ensuing negotiations, varied with
occasional fighting, which resulted at last in a definite treaty of
peace being concluded between the two kings in January 1169. By this
treaty it was agreed that Henry’s son, Richard, should be betrothed to
the French king’s daughter, Alais, and should hold Poitou and Guienne,
while Geoffrey, who had married Count Conan’s daughter in 1166, should
hold Brittany under his elder brother Henry.
Henry’s two eldest sons were thus married or betrothed to daughters of
King Louis and his third son married to the heiress of Brittany; the
youngest, John, having only been born on Christmas Eve, 1166, was not
yet provided for, but the king’s eldest daughter, Maud, had sailed from
Dover in the autumn of 1167, under the escort of the Archbishop-elect of
Cologne, the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, and such lesser lords as
Reynold de Warenne and William Cheyney, to marry Henry, Duke of Saxony.
Thus by the power of the sword and the bond of marriage did Henry
strengthen his position on the Continent