HENRY AND HIS SONS--HIS DOWNFALL AND DEATH
The economic effects of the rebellion were far-reaching. Those who had
been involved in it returned, it is true, nominally to the position in
which they had been before the outbreak, but their lands had been
systematically ravaged, their castles given to the flames, and blackened
ruins told for a generation the tale of their disastrous failure. So far
as England was concerned these effects were more localised and less
extensive. During the war Mowbray’s castles of Kirkby Malzeard and
Axholme had been destroyed, and at its close the same fate befell
Thirsk. Thetford and Brackley and the two Kentish castles of Allington
and Saltwood had been dismantled before the end of 1174, and so had
Geoffrey de Turville’s castle of Weston. Next year saw the overthrow of
Groby and Tutbury; Dudley, the castle of Earl Ferrers’ son-in-law,
Gervase Painel, was razed and its owner fined 500 marks for his share in
the revolt, his neighbour and comrade in arms, Hamo de Masci, being at
the same time fined 300 marks. The strongholds of Huntingdon and
Leicester were rendered incapable of again resisting the king’s forces,
and the great English military architect and engineer, Ælnoth, came down
to supervise the levelling of the walls of Framlingham Castle and the
filling of its fosse. For strategic reasons the fort at Walton, which
had successfully resisted the Flemish invaders, was destroyed in 1176,
and also the keep of Bennington, and the Bishop of Durham only saved his
castle of Northallerton by a payment of 2000 marks. What other castles
disappeared we do not know, but such as remained were taken into the
king’s hands, the Earl of Gloucester yielding Bristol and Gloucester
with great reluctance.
The expenses of the war must have strained Henry’s finances severely.
For the expeditions on the Scottish border alone we know that Ranulph de
Glanville and Robert de Stuteville paid over £2000 to their troops, and
the cost of the mercenaries employed on the Continent must have been
very heavy. A large but quite uncertain sum must have been obtained from
the ransom of the many important prisoners taken, and further
contributions were levied in the form of fines. The Earl of Leicester
was impleaded by Bertram de Verdon, Sheriff of Leicestershire, for
injuries done by his men and fined 500 marks. Nine citizens of York who
had sided with the rebels were fined 1300 marks between them, several of
them being also fined smaller sums for receiving goods belonging to
Flemings. These latter had been banished from England, saving their
lives at the expense of their property, and the township of Selby was
fined £5 for allowing Flemings to carry away their goods, William of
Selby 5 marks for not detaining Flemings whom he saw pass through the
town, and Fulk of Selby £10 for hiring his ship to the Flemings. For the
most part these foreigners were clothworkers, and their forfeited
property, consisting chiefly of wool, did not yield any great sum. A
more fruitful source of income arose from the estates of the Earl of
Leicester and his companions during the time that they were in arms
against the king, and from these only about £300 were obtained between
September 1174 and the restoration of the estates to their owners. Apart
from the 2600 marks assessed upon the citizens of York, the Earl of
Leicester, Gervase Painel, and Hamo de Masci, £500 was raised by smaller
fines upon persons who had sold horses or armour or given other
assistance to the rebels. Even adding in Earl Hugh’s fine of 700 marks
and the 500 marks which Gospatric was fined for the surrender of
Appleby, the total amount accounted for at the exchequer as wrung from
the vanquished party seems to have fallen far short of £4000. Searching
for some device to fill his empty coffers Henry hit upon the idea of
vigorously punishing all offences against the Forest Laws which had been
committed during the time of the disturbances. Accordingly, in August
1175, he held pleas of the forest at Nottingham and afterwards at York
in person and sent special commissioners to hold similar pleas in other
counties. The baronage protested, and Richard de Luci produced the
king’s own writ issued at the time of the war, apparently suspending the
Forest Laws and authorising any person to take wood and venison in the
royal forests. It is as difficult to understand why Henry issued such a
writ as it is to see upon what grounds he set it aside. Possibly a writ
intended to apply to certain special cases, such as the taking of
venison for the provisioning of the royal troops or of timber for
military works, had by a misunderstanding or error of wording been made
to apply generally, and Henry declined to accept responsibility for the
mistake. However this may be, it is clear that his action in pressing
these pleas was at least a piece of sharp practice, and the heavy fines
exacted can hardly be regarded in the circumstances as anything but
extortion. The sum of the fines inflicted appears to have been £13,450,
and although much of this was not paid at once and some was in the end
remitted, the eventual yield seems to have been quite £10,000. About
1700 persons were amerced; and when it is remembered that to these must
be added a large number of cases in which whole townships were fined, it
is clear that the total number of persons affected must have been very
large. A few fortunate counties, such as Kent, Sussex, Norfolk, and
Suffolk, contained no royal forests, but elsewhere every class of man
was swept into the legal net, from the great baron to the villein and
including the clergy. Henry had indeed succeeded in wringing from the
papal legate, Cardinal Ugoccione, the concession that the clergy should
be subject to the Forest Laws.
The legate had been sent over to settle the rival claims of the sees of
Canterbury and York, but his arrival only tended to aggravate matters.
At a synod held at Westminster on 18th March 1176, the endeavours of
Archbishop Roger of York to oust Richard of Canterbury from his seat of
honour on the legate’s right hand led to a disgraceful scuffle, in which
Archbishop Roger was attacked by the supporters of the southern primate,
knocked down, and in the end ignominiously ejected from the chapel. The
legate indignantly dismissed the synod and was with difficulty persuaded
to retain his official position. In July he left England, having
accomplished practically nothing in the matter of the rival sees. If
popular rumour was correct in believing that he had been sounded by
Henry on the question of a divorce from Queen Eleanor, in this matter
also there had been no result. The one important result of his visit had
been that the clergy were for the future to be subject to the Forest
Laws and also to plead in the king’s court in matters touching lay fees.
It is said that by way of compensation Henry recognised their exemption
from lay jurisdiction in all other matters, agreed not to make a
practice of retaining vacant bishoprics and abbeys in his hands, and
granted that the murder of a clerk should be punished by forfeiture.
Even if these concessions were made they were far from reconciling those
of the clerical party who still held Becket’s ideal of the supremacy of
the Church.
Restored to favour with the pope and victorious over as formidable a
combination of his enemies as could well be formed against him, Henry
was now at the height of his power, recognised throughout Europe as a
prince whose friendship was worth seeking. In his court at Westminster
on 12th November 1176, might have been seen ambassadors from the Emperor
Manuel of Constantinople, the Emperor Frederic, the Duke of Saxony, the
Count of Flanders, and the Archbishop of Rheims. About the same time
also came a joint mission from the Kings of Castile and Navarre asking
Henry to arbitrate between them in a dispute about certain castles and
other territory. Accordingly, in the following March Henry heard the
arguments of the rival embassies and gave his decision after
consultation with the peers of his court, sentencing each side to make
restitution to the other and further condemning the King of Castile to
pay to Navarre 3000 maravedis a year for the next ten years. This King
Alphonso of Castile had married Henry’s daughter Eleanor in 1170, and
about the time that the subject of this arbitration was first broached,
at the end of 1176, another of Henry’s daughters, Joan, was on her way
to marry King William of Sicily. Negotiations for the marriage had been
opened earlier in the year, and after her
[Illustration: SEALS OF JOAN, DAUGHTER OF HENRY II (1/1)
(Silver Matrix in B.M.)]
trousseaux had been bought in London, at a cost of over £100 (say £2500
of modern money), she travelled through France with a brilliant retinue
to St. Gilles, where she found awaiting her the Sicilian nobles and the
Bishop of Norwich. The unfortunate bishop had been sent on ahead earlier
in the year to Sicily to make final arrangements and had had a very
rough time; the country through which he passed was suffering from
famine and he could hardly get provisions for himself or his horse;
accommodation sometimes failed completely, so that he had to sleep on
the rocks or sand of the seashore, and when he had a roof over his head
he found that the fleas had no reverence for his episcopal or
ambassadorial dignity, so that he was very pleased to complete his
mission by handing the princess over to the Sicilians and to hurry back
to England in time for the Christmas festivities at the court at
Nottingham.
Two other marriages occupied the king’s attention about this time. The
young daughter of Count Hubert of Maurienne having died, Henry had to
find another heiress as bride for his favourite son John, and ultimately
decided that the great estates of the Earl of Gloucester would make a
suitable endowment for the landless prince. The earl had three
daughters, of whom two were already married to the Earl of Hertford and
the Count of Evreux, and Henry now prevailed upon the earl to agree that
all his estates should be settled upon the remaining daughter, Isabel,
and that she should be betrothed to John, for whom the king had also
reserved the great estates of his uncle, Earl Reynold of Cornwall, upon
the latter’s death in 1175, with similar disregard for the rights of his
daughters and lawful heirs. Having settled this matter to his
satisfaction Henry next found himself confronted with the question of
Richard’s matrimonial affairs. Richard had long been pledged to marry
Alais, daughter of King Louis, and she had been, in accordance with the
usual practice of the time, brought up at the court of her intended
father-in-law. She was now about twenty and the King of France was
pressing for the marriage to be performed, and in 1177 a papal legate
was despatched from Rome with instructions to lay Henry’s dominions
under an interdict if he should refuse to carry out the agreement. In
August of that year Henry crossed to Normandy and next month met the
legate at Rouen, and on 21st September held a conference with King Louis
at Ivry. At this conference the promise that Richard should marry Alais
seems to have been renewed in an informal way, but Henry had no
intention of fulfilling it, and indeed it seems probable that he was at
this time himself the lover of the princess, who had succeeded the
famous Rosamund Clifford in his affections when that beautiful favourite
died.[35]
A more important effect of the conference at Ivry was the treaty then
drawn up between the two kings, composing their differences and agreeing
to submit such points as still remained in dispute to arbitration, and
also agreeing to go together on crusade to the Holy Land. Henry probably
never had the slightest intention of going to Jerusalem; indeed to have
done so, leaving behind him such disloyal and unprincipled young
scoundrels as his sons had proved themselves to be, would have been
madness, even if he had felt any particular interest in the fate of the
Holy Land. It will be remembered that the terms upon which Henry was
absolved from the guilt of the murder of Becket had included the payment
of a large sum for the support of the warriors in Palestine and his
personal participation in a crusade for three years. The first of these
obligations he would seem to have discharged early in 1177, when the
Earl of Essex and other English knights went with Count Philip of
Flanders to the East, as William de Braose was sent “to carry the king’s
alms to the Templars.” The three years’ crusade was commuted for the
foundation of three monasteries, and Henry, whose partiality for
monastic establishments was by no means marked, contrived to interpret
this obligation in a way consistent with the strictest economy. Finding
that the secular canons of Waltham had become remiss in the performance
of their duties, he ejected them from their collegiate church, with the
connivance of their dean, Guy Rufus, and replaced them by canons
regular of the Augustinian order. In the same way, finding the lives of
the nuns at Amesbury far from satisfactory, he turned them out,
pensioning off the abbess, and put in their place other nuns from the
Norman abbey of Fontevrault. Both of these transformations took place in
the latter half of 1177, and for the next few years the work of
rebuilding and enlarging at Waltham and Amesbury were carried on at the
king’s expense on a fairly generous scale. The third monastery was a new
foundation, a small priory of Carthusians established at Witham in
Somerset. It would seem that Henry brought over a few brethren from the
famous monastery of Chartreuse early in 1175, but gave them no
assistance and took no further steps towards establishing them in
permanent buildings. The first prior abandoned his post in despair and
the next died soon after his arrival at Witham; Henry then succeeded
with much difficulty in persuading the Prior of Chartreuse to send Hugh
of Avalon, a monk of equal ability and piety; but when he came he had to
endure the same heartbreaking round of delays, evasions, and unfulfilled
promises, and it was not until about 1180, when Henry discovered the
true worth and charm of his personality and became his close friend,
that the king made any endeavour to complete the priory of Witham. It
was characteristic of Henry that when the prior expressed his wish for a
copy of the Holy Scriptures for the use of his brethren, the king
compelled the monks of Winchester to give up an elaborately written
copy, which they had just completed for their own use, and presented it
to the grateful monks of Witham. It was equally characteristic of Hugh
that, when he learnt how the precious volume had been provided, he
insisted upon returning it to its rightful owners.
The warm affection which the king lavished upon Hugh led many people to
believe that the latter was Henry’s son, a belief strengthened by a
certain likeness observable between the two. And indeed the likeness was
not confined to physical traits, for Hugh, with all his piety and
austerity, was quick-tempered and quick-witted and had as keen
appreciation for a joke as had Henry himself, and fully realised that a
witty as well as a soft answer may turn away wrath. On one occasion,
having incurred the king’s wrath by excommunicating one of his
foresters, he was summoned to Woodstock and found Henry and his
courtiers sitting in a circle on the grass. To intimate his displeasure
the king ignored Hugh’s salutation and maintained a sulky silence, the
attendant nobles following his example; Hugh calmly pushed aside an earl
and sat down next to the king, who, incapable of resting idle, called
for a needle and thread and began to stitch a torn leather finger-stall
which he was wearing on his left hand. Hugh watched him for a minute and
then said dryly, “How like you are now to your cousins of Falaise!” The
impudence of the remark appealed to Henry, who lay back and roared with
laughter, and then himself explained to such of his courtiers as had not
grasped the point that the allusion was to his descent, through William
the Conqueror, from the peasant girl of Falaise, a town famous for its
skinners and leatherworkers. This incident occurred after Hugh had been
promoted, in 1186, from the priory of Witham to the bishopric of
Lincoln, which had been held from 1173 to 1182 by the king’s
acknowledged bastard, Geoffrey, who, however, preferring rather to
fleece than to tend his sheep, had never been consecrated to the see.
It is curious that Henry, himself careless of religion and actively
antagonistic to the Church, should have lavished his warmest affection
upon two men destined after their death to rank in the calendar of
saints. The intimate friend of his early years became St. Thomas of
Canterbury, and the chosen associate of the closing years of his reign
was destined to become St. Hugh of Lincoln. The claims to saintship of
the two men were singularly different; Thomas was one of those arrogant,
fighting ecclesiastics who identify the cause of the Church with
themselves and “take the kingdom of heaven by violence,” while Hugh was
a man of peace, one of those who identify themselves with the cause of
God, to whom beatification comes as the natural reward for the blessings
they have themselves bestowed upon their flocks. Of the two St. Thomas
inevitably made the greater impression upon the
[Illustration: SEAL OF THOMAS BECKET ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY (1/1)]
[Illustration: SEAL OF HUGH BISHOP OF LINCOLN (1/1)]
popular imagination, and his shrine was a centre of pilgrimage long
before St. Hugh had even left his obscure priory for the great bishopric
of Lincoln. A great impulse was no doubt given to the adoration of St.
Thomas by the events of 1174, when the capture of the King of Scotland
followed so immediately upon Henry’s penance at Canterbury. In the
twelfth century people did not talk of coincidence or propound elaborate
theories that the concentration of Henry’s mind upon the desire for
victory had acted upon the brain centres of Ranulph de Glanville’s
subconsciousness and spurred him on to action. They simply accepted as a
fact the personal intervention of St. Thomas, and Henry himself
countenanced that view by going with his royal son on a pilgrimage of
thanksgiving to Canterbury on 28th May 1175. Later in that year the
young Queen Margaret visited the shrine “for the sake of prayer,” and it
is not improbable that we have the partial fulfilment of her petitions
in the birth of a son at Paris in June 1177; but if so the answer to her
prayers was only partial, for the child lived barely long enough to be
christened William, and died within three days of his birth. A still
more remarkable tribute to the fame of St. Thomas was paid in 1179. At
that time King Louis was arranging for the coronation of his son Philip,
then fourteen years old, but just before the date fixed for the ceremony
the boy fell ill as the result of a hunting misadventure. Casting about
in his mind for a suitable spiritual advocate it was not unnatural that
the king’s choice should fall upon Thomas of Canterbury; if he had come
so effectually to the help of his old adversary Henry he might surely be
relied upon to assist his old supporter Louis. King Henry readily
acceded to the French king’s request for a safe conduct and met him in
person at Dover on 22nd August, whence the two kings went next day to
Canterbury. Here King Louis offered his petition at the tomb of the
saint and enriched the convent with the grant of a yearly render of wine
and exemption from customs for goods exported for their use from France.
On his return to France the king found his son convalescent, and in
November the postponed coronation took place, the younger Henry being
amongst those present. But before this date King Louis himself had been
struck down with paralysis, and after nine months’ illness he died on
18th September 1180. Death was busy about this time; Richard de Luci,
the great justiciar, had died in July 1179 at the priory of Lesnes,
which he had founded; Pope Alexander III. died in August 1181, and
Roger, Archbishop of York, in the following November. In Louis, Henry
lost an old antagonist, but one whose weakness and incompetence had been
a source of strength to the English king. Henry had never pursued an
aggressive policy towards France and had never attempted to crush Louis
or even to throw off his nominal suzerainty; when their claims clashed,
as they frequently had done, he was content to defeat the attack or
outwit the diplomacy of the French king, but in the young Philip there
was growing up a far more formidable adversary and one who could neither
be hoodwinked nor driven from the field without difficulty. For the
time, however, Henry’s relations with the young French king were almost
paternal. In the spring of 1180 Henry intervened to reconcile Philip and
his uncles of the house of Blois, and in July of the following year he
patched up a peace between Philip and his wife’s uncle, Count Philip of
Flanders. This peace was broken before the end of the year, when Count
Philip formed a coalition against the King of France, and he might have
fared badly if the younger Henry, who had remained in Normandy after his
father had gone back to England, had not come to the rescue. Peace was
again patched up between France and Flanders by Henry in March 1182, and
the two Philips united with Henry in intervening on behalf of the
latter’s son-in-law, Henry the Lion of Saxony, who had incurred the
enmity of the Emperor Frederic and had been sentenced to seven years’
banishment. As a result of this intervention the duke’s sentence was
substantially reduced, and when he came to Normandy with his wife and
children he was warmly welcomed and liberally provided for by Henry.
Conspicuous as was Henry’s success in dealing with foreign princes, his
failure when dealing with his own sons was equally conspicuous. He
could act as peacemaker between France and Flanders, but from 1176
onwards his sons were continually at war, sometimes assisting one
another to suppress rebellious vassals, at other times quarrelling among
themselves. Richard in particular was continually fighting in Poitou,
where his arrogance and licentiousness had made him extremely unpopular
with his subjects. Matters came to a crisis early in 1183, when, upon
Richard’s refusing to do homage for Poitou to the younger Henry, the
latter with his brother Geoffrey joined the discontented Poitevins and
made war upon Richard. King Henry came to the help of Richard and
advanced to Limoges, where he had a narrow escape from being shot by his
sons’ soldiers. The rebellious princes, relying upon their father’s
affection, obtained a succession of truces which they broke without
compunction whenever it suited their purpose, ill-treating his
messengers and plundering his supporters. Geoffrey stripped the shrine
of St. Martial at Limoges in order to pay his mercenaries, and the young
king, finding his plans going astray, took an oath at that same shrine
to go on crusade. His father endeavoured to persuade him to renounce the
rash vow, but when he found him apparently intent upon the project
generously promised to equip him. He repaid the generous offer by
abandoning the scheme and indulging in a plundering foray, stripping the
monastery of Grammont, the one religious house for which his father had
displayed an affection. Towards the end of May 1183 the young king fell
ill, but this did not deter him from sacking the famous shrine of
Roquemadour. On his way back from this sacrilegious exploit he was
obliged to stop at Martel, as his fever had much increased and soon
developed into dysentery. Realising that it was likely to end in death
he sent for his father, but Henry, naturally suspecting a trap, would
not come, though he sent a sapphire ring to his son as a token of his
affection, and possibly with the hope that the mystic curative qualities
of that precious stone might prove beneficial. On 11th June the young
man died, expressing a pious penitence which would have been more
edifying had it been displayed earlier, and commissioning the faithful
William Marshal, who had just been recalled to his court after an
undeserved period of exile, to perform for him the two years’ crusade
which he had sworn to undertake.
The death of the unfilial and unprincipled Henry had followed so close
upon his sacrilegious spoliation of St. Amadour that it might well have
been considered a divine judgment, and it is almost incredible that even
his most devoted partisans could have proclaimed him a saint; yet such
was the case, and a few audacious and imaginative adherents even
asserted that miracles had been wrought by him. His liberality, good
fellowship, and manly courage, which showed itself in his addiction to
the tournament, a form of sport so far from saintly that it was under
the papal ban, had made him friends who mourned his loss; a still larger
number regretted the removal of a tool so useful for undermining the
influence of the hated King of England. The one man who sorrowed for him
most sincerely was the father against whom he had sinned so
persistently.
Within a month of the young king’s death the rebellion which he had
fomented was at an end. During the latter half of 1183 Henry appears to
have made an uneventful tour through his continental dominions, but in
the spring of 1184 we find him negotiating for the re-marriage of the
Count of Flanders, sending his own royal yacht to fetch the bride, a
daughter of the King of Portugal, and conducting her from La Rochelle to
the Flemish border. And, more or less as the result of this marriage, we
find him called upon to interfere once more between the King of France
and the Count of Flanders to procure peace. Immediately afterwards, on
10th June 1184, Henry crossed once more to England, after an absence of
two years. The next six months were largely taken up with the choice of
a successor to Archbishop Richard, who had died in the preceding
February. At last, after several names had been suggested by the
Canterbury monks only to be rejected by the king, Bishop Baldwin of
Worcester was elected on 16th December.
The year 1185 opened with the arrival at Canterbury of Heraclius,
Patriarch of Jerusalem, charged by Baldwin, the head of the tottering
kingdom of Jerusalem, with an appeal to Henry for help. On 18th March
Henry gave formal audience to Heraclius, who offered him the keys of the
Holy Sepulchre and the crown of Jerusalem, and produced a letter from
the pope urging a new crusade. By the advice of his council Henry
declared his inability to go in person, and he also declined to accept
the crown for any of his sons, but he promised assistance in men and
money, and large numbers of his nobles took the cross. A month later the
king and the patriarch passed over together into Normandy, and on 1st
May they had an interview with King Philip of France, who took up the
same line as Henry had done, so that Heraclius had to return to his
master with the promise indeed of assistance, but disappointed in his
hopes of obtaining an influential leader. As soon as the interview was
over Henry had to turn his attention to his quarrelsome son Richard.
Untaught by experience, the king had continued to provoke his sons
against one another and against himself, striving to wrest Aquitaine
from Richard for the benefit of John and then setting John and Geoffrey
to fight their elder brother; this quarrel had been composed for a time,
but Richard was now attacking the lands of his brother Geoffrey, and in
order to quiet him Henry sent for Queen Eleanor, the rightful owner of
Poitou, and forced Richard to surrender the province into his mother’s
hands. This had the desired effect of restoring order, and in August
1186 Geoffrey was killed in a tournament at Paris, regretted by none
except his father and Philip of France.
In May 1186 Henry, who was an inveterate matchmaker, had arranged for
the marriage of King William of Scotland with his cousin Ermengarde,
daughter of Richard, Viscount of Beaumont. The marriage took place at
Woodstock on 5th September, Henry’s wedding present taking the shape of
the Castle of Edinburgh; but before it was celebrated the two kings had
marched north together, in July, and compelled Ronald, son of Uctred,
the usurping Lord of Galloway, to submit to Henry’s judgment. But while
Henry’s relations with his old adversary of Scotland were thus
satisfactory there was growing friction between him and Philip of
France. The questions of the dower due to the young king’s widow,
Margaret, and of the marriage of Philip’s other sister Alais to Richard,
had been debated with acrimony on several occasions, and the action of
the English Constable of Gisors in destroying a fortress in process of
erection on the French border and killing the son of the French knight
in charge of the work, in October 1186, had further exasperated Philip.
For the time the storm blew over, but in May 1187, after an ineffective
endeavour to come to terms with Philip, Henry prepared for war. The
French king besieged Richard and John at Châteauroux and Henry had to
come to their rescue, but a pitched battle was avoided by the
interposition of Pope Urban III., whose anxiety for the fate of
Palestine made him particularly desirous of peace in Europe, and a truce
for two years was agreed upon on 23rd June. Immediately afterwards
Philip began to cultivate Richard’s friendship, hoping to use him
against his father, as he had done young Henry and Geoffrey. Richard
swallowed the bait and went off with Philip, living for some time in the
closest intimacy with him, ignoring his father’s remonstrances, and even
plundering his treasury at Chinon; but after a while he came to a better
mind and returned to his allegiance.
In January 1188 Henry was preparing to return to England, when Philip
threatened to invade Normandy unless the marriage of his sister Alais
and Richard were celebrated at once and the fortress of Gisors
surrendered to France. Henry at once proceeded to meet him at the usual
place, a great elm standing on the borders of France and Normandy near
Gisors. Little progress was made in the negotiations until the arrival
of the Archbishop of Tyre, who preached a stirring sermon on the
misfortunes of Palestine, recounting the capture of King Guy and the
True Cross by Saladin in July 1187--a disaster which caused the death of
Pope Urban III.--and the fall of Jerusalem in the following October. His
hearers were so moved that almost with one accord they vowed to go upon
crusade, Henry and Philip setting the example and putting aside all
their differences. So great were the numbers of those that took the
cross that it was needful to adopt badges to distinguish the different
nationalities, the French wearing red crosses, the followers of the
English king white crosses, and the Flemings green. Henry at once issued
orders at Le Mans for the collection of a tithe to be levied throughout
all his continental dominions. All persons who did not go to the crusade
themselves were to give a tenth of their goods, and arrangements were
made for ensuring that none should evade his duty. Those who were
willing to serve in person might take the tithes of their men and lands
for their own equipment. As soon as this ordinance had been published
Henry hastened to England, landing at Winchester on 30th January. A
fortnight later a council was held at Geddington, when the ordinance for
the collection of the crusading tithe, usually known as the Saladin
tithe, was made applicable to England. The King of Scotland was urged to
follow his suzerain’s lead, and Archbishop Baldwin was sent to preach
the crusade in Wales, accompanied by Gerald de Barri, who has left an
account of the mission containing many interesting details of Welsh
topography and history and a very full appreciation of the services
rendered by Gerald himself.
Meanwhile Richard, who had taken the cross the previous year in
Brittany, was indulging in a little war with the Count of Toulouse with
considerable success. Philip, who appears to have incited Richard to
action in order to pick a further quarrel with Henry, now complained to
the latter of his son’s conduct, and in June invaded Berry, capturing
Châteauroux and other places. Henry crossed once more, for the last
time, to Normandy, to find that Richard had driven Philip out of Berry.
After some desultory border raiding a conference was arranged between
the two kings at the historic elm by Gisors. Neither side would accede
to the demands of the other, and after a proposal to settle the dispute
by battle between four picked champions from either side had been
rejected, preparations were made to resume the campaign. Some of the
French troops, irritated at the sight of the English resting in comfort
in the shade of the elm while they themselves were out in the heat, cut
down the famous tree. Philip was annoyed at the spiteful vandalism, and
Henry vowed to revenge the elm.
For the moment no fighting took place; the Counts of Flanders and of
Blois and other French nobles declining to serve any longer against
Christians when their arms were so badly needed in Palestine, Philip was
obliged to disband his forces, and Henry did likewise, giving, however,
secret orders for their reassembly at Pacey. Thence he sent them across
the French border to ravage the district round Mantes, while Richard
operated further south from Châteauroux. King Henry took little active
part in this campaign, as he had been taken ill at Chinon early in the
autumn. A meeting of the kings at Châtillon in October came to nothing,
and Philip began to tamper with Richard’s unstable fidelity. A promise
that he should have Anjou, Touraine and Maine in reward for deserting
his father speedily brought Richard over to Philip’s side, and the
latter then arranged for a fresh conference with Henry at Bonmoulins on
18th November. Richard and Philip arrived together, and though the
former explained to his father that his meeting with the French king on
the way was quite accidental, Henry’s incredulity and alarm were soon
justified. Philip, after proposing a mutual retrocession of all
territories taken during the recent campaign, again demanded the
marriage of Richard and Alais, the cession to Richard of Anjou, Touraine
and Maine, and his acknowledgment as Henry’s heir. King Henry refused
these last demands, and Richard angrily flung down his sword and did
homage to Philip for the three provinces which his father had refused
him.
A truce had been agreed upon to last until 13th January 1189, but with
its expiration Philip and Richard renewed the attack. Henry, whose
health had completely broken down, was laid up at Le Mans during the
spring, and from there he sent William Marshal and the Archdeacon of
Hereford to Paris to negotiate with King Philip; but by the efforts of
Richard and his wily minister, William Longchamp, their endeavours were
brought to nought. A slight improvement in his health enabled Henry to
meet his opponents in person on 28th May at La Ferté Bernard, where
Richard’s demand that his brother John should go on crusade was met by
Henry not merely with a direct negative but with the suggestion that
John should marry Alais and have the provinces which Richard claimed.
This, while exasperating Richard still more completely, did not appeal
to Philip, and, in spite of the efforts of the legate, Cardinal John of
Anagni, who threatened to lay his dominions under an interdict if he did
not make peace, the French king resumed the campaign with vigour, and
after several smaller successes appeared before Le Mans on 12th June.
The bridges across the Sarthe had been broken down and the known fords
blocked with sharp stakes, but the French cavalry, sounding the river
with their spears, found a place where they could cross and caught the
English by surprise. During the sharp fighting that ensued outside the
town Stephen of Tours, the governor of the town, set fire to a suburb
whose buildings would have afforded dangerous cover for the assailants.
Unfortunately the wind suddenly shifted and, blowing strongly, drove the
flames into the city, which itself caught fire in several places.
Realising the desperate nature of their position King Henry and his
knights sought safety in flight. They were pursued by a force of cavalry
under the leadership of Richard, who was some way in advance of his
followers and rapidly overtaking the king when William Marshal turned
upon him. Count Richard had for some reason thrown aside his defensive
armour, and, seeing himself at the Marshal’s mercy, called to him not
to kill him. “Not I! the devil may kill you!” retorted the knight, and,
lowering his lance, he struck the count’s horse dead, bringing its rider
to the ground. Richard at once called off his men and abandoned the
pursuit, and Henry, pausing for a while on a little hill and looking
back upon his beloved native town in flames, burst into a flood of
furious blasphemy, vowing that as God had cheated him of the place which
he loved better than all others so he would cheat God of his soul.
With Henry were his son John and his illegitimate son Geoffrey. This
Geoffrey, the only one of Henry’s sons worthy of the name, was born
about 1153, his mother being a woman of humble position;[36] he was
devoted to his father and, as bishop-elect of Lincoln, had taken a
vigorous part in the suppression of the rebellion of 1173-4. Resigning
the see of Lincoln in 1181 he became chancellor, in which office he was
in constant attendance upon the king. At Le Mans he fought valiantly
with fire and foe, and now that the fugitives had reached Fresnai he
proposed to spend the night outside the castle so as to bear the brunt
of any attack that might be made. To this Henry would not assent, and it
was Geoffrey’s cloak that covered the weary king when he flung himself
down, clothed as he was, for the night. Next day, refusing the advice of
his barons to fall back on
[Illustration: SEAL OF GEOFFREY THE BASTARD AS BISHOP ELECT OF LINCOLN
(1/1)]
[Illustration: SEAL OF JOHN AS COUNT OF MORTAIN (1/1)]
Normandy, Henry sent Geoffrey with almost all his forces to Alençon,
himself making his way towards Chinon. John now took the opportunity of
deserting his father, although Henry had just shown his partiality for
him by making the seneschal of Normandy and Earl William de Mandeville
swear that in the event of his death they would only give up the castles
of Normandy to John and to none other. Geoffrey, his brother, base in
birth but not in nature, as soon as he had discharged his commission
spurred back to join his royal father, whose illness, aggravated by the
strain and grief of the last few days, had entered upon its final stage.
Meanwhile Philip, carrying everything before him, had reached Tours on
30th June. There he received a mission from the Count of Flanders, the
Archbishop of Rheims, and the Duke of Burgundy, urging him to come to
terms with Henry. Tours was captured on 3rd July, and next day King
Henry agreed to a meeting at a house of Templars not far from Colombier,
near Azai, but when Henry reached the spot and dismounted he found that
his legs would not support him, and his agony was such that he was
obliged to lie down. King Philip and Richard on their arrival, not
finding Henry, denounced his illness as a feint, and it was not until
the king rode up, supported on his horse by his attendants, that they
realised that he was dying. Philip courteously spread a cloak upon the
ground and bade him be seated, but his indomitable spirit would not
allow him to display so much weakness. He had come prepared to accept
any terms, to make any concessions, but with the full intention, if he
lived, of winning all back by the power of the sword. Philip’s terms,
considering the hopeless position of his adversary, were not ungenerous.
Henry had to surrender all claims to Auvergne and to do homage to Philip
for his continental dominions; Alais was to be taken from his custody
and married to Richard, who was to be recognised as his father’s heir
and to receive the fealty of his barons. Moreover, all those who had
joined Richard during the war were to remain his men and not to return
to their allegiance to Henry. Finally, Henry was to pay 20,000 marks to
the French king, and the agreement for a common crusade was renewed,
Lent 1190 being named as the date and Vézelay as the rendezvous. At the
end of the interview Henry had to give his son the formal kiss of peace,
but as he did so he muttered, “May God grant that I live long enough to
take my revenge upon you,” a threat at which Richard openly jested to
his friends.
Henry returned from Colombier to Chinon, and as he lay upon his deathbed
the list of those who had deserted him and sworn allegiance to Richard
was brought in. He bade the bearer read out the names, but when the
first name of all proved to be his best-loved son, John, for whom he had
done so much, he stopped the reader, saying, “It is enough! Now let come
what may!” Broken-hearted and racked with pain the great king lingered
on for two days, muttering in his delirium “Shame on a conquered king!”
and cursing his sons. The sole redeeming feature of these last days was
the unremitting tenderness with which Geoffrey nursed his father, who
repaid his affectionate care with words of loving praise, giving him at
the last his royal signet ring engraved with his symbol, a leopard.[37]
Yet even Geoffrey seems to have been absent at the moment that his
father passed away, and the few servants who were there, seizing the
opportunity to lay hands on everything portable that was worth taking,
left the king’s body lying half naked and uncared for, till one William
Trihan, known only to history for this good act, placed over his royal
master his cloak, appropriately one of the short Angevin cloaks, the
introduction of which into England had earned Henry the nickname of
“Courtmantel.”
Thus, on 6th July 1189, died Henry II.
Next day the dead king was carried to Fontevrault, where, in the church
of the great nunnery, his body lay for a time in state. Hither came
Richard, now in his turn king; for a while he stood and gazed at the
stern uncovered face of his father, then, kneeling for a brief moment in
prayer, rose, and calling William Marshal and Maurice de Craon to him,
strode out of the church. In a few words he showed that he bore no
ill-will towards his father’s loyal adherents and then departed, to
return next day for the funeral. Henry had never cared much for the
outward pomp and circumstance of kings, and such emblems of royalty as
he may have had with him in his last days seem to have been either lost
at Le Mans or stolen at the time of his death. And so when he was being
robed for burial it was with difficulty that the royal insignia of
crown, ring and sceptre could be improvised, and he who had been the
greatest of the princes of Europe was laid to rest with less ceremonial
splendour than many an obscure vassal.
[Illustration:
_Neur dein, Photo._
TOMB OF HENRY II AT FONTEVRAULT]