nm

When Henry Plantagenet came to the English

throne in 1154 as Henry II, it had been eighty-
eight years since the Norman invaders had
overthrown the Saxon dynasty. Many of the
Saxon ruling class had suffered the confiscation
of their property, but by the mid-tweflth cen¬
tury the lines between the new Norman nobil¬
ity and the old Saxon one had become blurred.
The feudal system and the Roman Church gave
English society a large degree of hierarchy and
stability. There was relatively little warfare, but
what there was occurred largely in the Holy
Land on crusades against the Saracens. Within
Europe the great game was the constant
attempt to further dynastic aims through suit¬
able, strategic marriage alliances.

Against this background of inherited power

and unrelieved intrigue, Richard Barber sets his
biography of the first great English king. Hmry
Plantagenet is the history of both a man and a
nation in the making. Claiming the English
throne through his mother, Henry succeeded
King Stephen in 1154. Through his father Henry
already ruled half the area of present-day
France. The long struggle to restore royal
authority, which had withered under Stephen's
reign, led Henry into conflict with the church,
embodied by Thomas Becket, whom Henry
himself had made Archbishop of Canterbury
in 1162. This famous battle between friends
ended with a formal agreement on the funda¬
mental powers of church and state. It also
ended with the murder of Becket in 1170, for
which Henry was indirectly responsible.

In some ways a more formidable adversary was

Henry's wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Her three

(continued on back flap)

HENRY PLANTAGENET
«
RICHARD BARBER

Henry
Plantagenet
A Biography

Barnes
ILNoble
BOOKS
NEW YORK
Copyright © 1964 by Richard Barber.
All rights reserved.

This edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.,

by arrangement with author.

1993 Barnes & Noble Books

ISBN 1-56619-363-X

Printed and bound in the United States of America

«
M987654321
CONTENTS

Prologue I

I. The Troubled Land

l9
2. The Winning of a Kingdom 37

3- A Prince Among Princes 56

4- The New Order 81

5- The Central Problem 100

6. This Low-horn Clerk 124

7- The Western Edge of the World 146

8. The Great Rebellion 160

9- The Years of Peace 185

IO. Absalom 200

ii. They that take the Sword... 212

Epilogue 236
Appendices 242
Bibliography 250
✓ ~
Notes 261
Index 274
PREFACE

Many people and many libraries, both in France and England, have
been of assistance in the preparation of this book. I should like to
put on record the particularly valuable help of Mr Edward Miller,
of St John’s College, Cambridge, who spared much of his time
to read the manuscript and to correct many errors, both of concept
and detail. Such mistakes as remain are entirely my own. It would
be rank ingratitude not to acknowledge my debt to my teachers at
Cambridge, especially Dr Richard Vaughan, to whom I owe such
sense of historical values as may appear in the pages following.

Richard Barber
«
HENRY PLANTAGENET

The earth goeth on the earth

Glistening like gold;
The earth goeth to the earth
Sooner then it wold.

The earth buildeth on the earth

Castles and towers;
The earth saith to the earth:
‘All shall be ours!’

From an epitaph at Melrose Abbey.

«
 Prologue

E IGHT centuries separate us from the age of Henry II. With each
year’s passing our links with the Plantagenet’s times grow fewer
and more slender, and the obstacles to understanding the thoughts
and ways of a man living in his circumstances becomes correspond-
ingly greater. Nor are the scattered remnants of his legacy sure
guides; for if we still honour the system of trial by jury, the
modern jurymen are not witnesses but assessors, and if we still count
in pennies, a penny is no longer a day’s wage. The institution of
monarchy itself and the figure of the king have a wholly different
aura: the royal personage in Henry’s days had an element of the
•* divine, a relic of the days not long before, when the king was
magical in his power, priest as well as ruler, and on occasions the
sacrifice for his people’s well-being. Attitudes of mind are yet
harder to recapture, and here lies the greatest difference of all; for
logic, to a twelfth-century statesman, was a scholar’s technical
term, and cold reasoning was apt to be called craft. Instinct and
emotion played a much more obvious part in men’s deeds and
decisions, and the specious excuses with which acts of doubtful
legality are now invested were only just beginning to play a part
in international politics.
Even those elements of life that seem easiest to compre¬
hend at strch a'distance may well elude us. When in some remote
part of England’s countryside, the scene seems changeless under
an unchanging sky, the sense of timelessness is false. Both the
English weather and the English landscape have changed. In
Henry’s day, the winters were harsher, the summers drier; when
the Thames at Oxford was frozen in the first days of December of
1142, none of the chroniclers noted the frosts as exceptionally early
or severe. Droughts figure more sharply and frequently in the
annals than we would expect, although this is partly because a dry
2 HENRY PLANTAGENET

season in a community dependent on the land was an overwhelm¬

ing disaster and not, as now, a mere inconvenience.
The familiar patchwork of England’s landscape—its alter¬
nating squares of corn, pasture and roots, even its broad grazing
lands flecked with sheep—would have been strange to twelfth-
century eyes. Only the wild places, moor and forest, have re¬
mained the same, and their extent is greatly diminished. Forests
which were vast reserves for the game which the Norman kings
loved to hunt covered much of southern England; their fragments
can be seen in the New Forest and in Epping Forest. In them, he
who dared to fell trees to make a clearing, to take game—whether
deer, or hare, or lesser fry—was liable to the harsh penalties of the
special forest law designed to protect the royal pastime. Outside
the wild and forbidding confines of the forest, where the occasional
wolf and the fugitive from justice lurked alike, the countryside
was divided into minute patterns by the village lands, farmed by
lord and villein alike on the strip principle. Huge unfenced fields
were divided into lengths, each no more than twenty or thirty
yards wide, and varying numbers of these strips were allotted to
each farmer. A narrow grass balk, or more often only an open
drain, divided the holdings, and one man’s strips were usually
scattered around the village lands. The whole of each field was
surrounded by movable hurdles to keep wild beasts and stray
cattle off the crops, and once in every two or three years, the field
would be left to lie fallow. After harvest, the animals of the
village would be put to graze on it for a short while. In some parts
of the country—notably the south-east, which had been tilled and
enclosed long before the manor and village came to play so great a
part in society, and the wilder west and north—other systems pre¬
vailed; but the feudal law of service and bond which made the serf’s
life proverbially hard was universal.
Relief from the day’s work, from the endless succession of
toil from dawn to sunset, was as rare for many of the lesser lords
as for their serfs. Only the great men of the realm journeyed.to
any extent, along the rough tracks and remains of Roman roads
which were the only means of communication. Movement from
place to place was slow; an express courier on royal business, able
to change horses as and when required, might cover forty to fifty
 PROLOGUE 3
miles a day in good country. At one of the most dramatic moments
of Henry II’s reign, a courier rode from Alnwick to London in five
days and four nights with the news of the capture of the king of
Scotland. Where the land was wild, or many streams had to be
forded—bridges were few and far between—life was correspond¬
ingly more isolated and travel slower. The pattern of villages
across the face of England was much as we know it now; but those
little hamlets of a few rough wattle houses lacked the network of
connecting paths and roads which have slowly developed in the
intervening centuries.
In sharp contrast to the static nature of the society he ruled,
the king was a quicksilver figure, without a permanent base. A
number of royal residences were the nearest to a home that he knew;
Clarendon, Woodstock, Westminster and Winchester were Henry's
favourites. Most often he was a guest in some baron’s hall, and if
travel proved difficult, he might find himself at nightfall in such
shelter as he could find, while his court fought over the possession
of a hovel unfit for pigs. All his requirements, from the chancery
j where the royal documents were written out, to the royal chapel,
had to have a place in the train of carts which followed him on his
travels, even if they had permanent bases elsewhere. The Norman
king was no stranger to discomfort and even danger; but they were
different from the hardships of his people’s everyday life, oppres¬
sion, injustice and endless toil.
Nor did the cities offer any escape from the less pleasant
aspects of the countryman’s existence. Their narrow streets were
busy, trade flourished, but their buildings were for the most part of
timber, their roads fetid with refuse in summer, miry and treach¬
erous in winter. The citizens enjoyed a little freedom, but were
suspecteckby the lords as a result, and the king kept a strict control
on any organisations within the towns which might challenge his
authority in the least degree. The rise of the urban centres was a
slow one, hampered by many setbacks: Henry II himself was no
friend to London, whose charter he suspended for the latter years
of his reign. Only when Richard I found himself in need of money
for the Crusade were the citizens able to regain it, by making a
large contributien to the treasury. Nevertheless, the London of
those days, as portrayed by a biographer of Thomas Becket in about
 4 HENRY PLANTAGENET
1172, may still sound to modem ears a paradise of simplicity and
spaciousness:

‘Among the noble cities of the world that are celebrated by fame,
the city of London, seat of the monarchy of England, is one that
spreads its fame wider, sends its wealth and wares further, and
lifts its head higher than all others. It is blest in the wholesome¬
ness of its air, in its reverence for the Christian faith, in the strength
of its bulwarks, the nature of its situation, the honour of its citi¬
zens, and the chastity of its matrons. It is likewise most merry in
its sports and fruitful of noble men. ... On the east stands the
Tower, exceeding great and strong, whose walls and bailey rise from
very deep foundations, their mortar being mixed with the blood of
beasts. On the west are two strongly fortified castles, while from
them there runs a great continuous wall, very high, with seven
double gates, and towers at intervals along its north side. On the
south, London once had similar walls and towers; but the Thames,
that mighty river teeming with fish, which runs on that side and
ebbs and flows with the sea, has in the passage of time washed
those bulwarks away, undermining them and bringing them down.
Upstream, to the west, the royal palace rises high above the river,
an incomparable building ringed by an outwork and bastions, two
miles from the city and joined to it by a populous suburb.
On all sides, beyond the houses, lie the gardens of the
citizens that live in the suburbs, planted with trees, spacious and
fair, laid out beside each other.
‘To the north are pasture lands and pleasant open spaces of
level meadow, intersected by running waters, which turn mill¬
wheels with a cheerful sound. Nearby lies a great forest with
wooded glades full of lairs of wild beasts, red and fallow deer,
boars and bulls. The corn-fields are no barren gravel, but rich
Asian plains such as “make glad the crops” and fill the bams of
their farmers “with sheaves of Ceres’ stalk”.
There are also around London in its suburbs excellent
wells, with sweet, wholesome and clear water, whose “runnels
ripple amid pebbles bright”. Among these Holywell, Clerkenwell
and St Clement’s Well are most famous and are visited by thicker
throngs and greater multitudes of students from the schools and
 PROLOGUE 5
of the young men of the city, who go out on summer evenings to
take the air. This is indeed a good city, when it has a good lord!’
The writer, William Fitzstephen, goes on to describe several
lively scenes from the life of the city, of which the most vivid are
the scholars’ debates, the throng at the public cook-shop, and the
citizens’ sports at Smithfield.
‘On holy days the masters of the schools assemble their
pupils at the churches whose feast day it is. The scholars dispute,
some in demonstrative rhetoric, others in dialectic. . . . Sophists
who produce fictitious arguments are accounted happy in the
profusion and deluge of their words; others seek to trick their
opponents by the use of fallacies. Some speakers occasionally try
to make persuasive harangues in rhetorical style, taking pains to
observe the precepts of their art and to omit nothing concerned
with it. Boys of different schools compete in verse or argue the
principles of the art of grammar or the rules about the past and
future tenses. There are others who employ the old wit of the
cross-roads in epigrams, rhymes and metre; with “Fescennine
^ license”, they lacerate their comrades in outspoken lines, though
no names are mentioned; they hurl abuse and gibes, ridicule the
foibles of their comrades, perchance even of their elders. . . .
‘Moreover there is in London on the river-bank, amid the
wine sold from ships and wine-cellars, a public cook-shop. There
daily you can find the seasonal foods, dishes roast, fried and boiled,
fish of every size, coarse meat for the poor and delicate for the
rich, such as venison and various kinds of birds. If travel-weary
friends should suddenly call on any of the citizens, and do not
wish to wait until fresh food is bought and cooked and ‘‘till
servants bring water for hands and bread”, they hasten to the
river-bank, where everything that they could want is ready and
waiting. . . . Those who desire to fare delicately need not search
to find sturgeon or guinea-fowl or Ionian francolin, since every
sort of delicacy is set out for them here.
‘Every Sunday in Lent after dinner a ‘‘fresh swarm of young
gentlemen” goes forth on war-horses, ‘‘steeds skilled in the con¬
test”, . . . armed with lance and shield, the younger with shafts
forked at the end and blunted. ‘‘They wake war’s semblance”
and in mimic contest exercise their skill at arms. Many courtiers
 6 HENRY PLANTAGENET

come too, when the king is in residence; and from the households
of earls and barons come young men not yet knights, to compete
there. Each is fired with the hope of victory. The fierce horses
neigh, their limbs tremble; champing the bit, impatient of delay,
they cannot stand still. When at length the “hooves of trampling
steeds career along”, the young riders divide their hosts, some
pursuing those that take flight, unable to overtake them; others
unhorse their comrades and gallop on.
‘At Easter, they make sport with tournaments on the river.
A shield is firmly tied to a stout pole in midstream, and a small
boat, rowed with the current by many oarsmen, carries a young
man standing in the bows, who has to strike the shield with his
lance. His object is to break the lance by striking the shield and
keeping his footing. But if he strikes it and does not splinter the
lance, he falls into the river, and the boat goes on without him.
‘When the great marsh along the northern walls of the city
is frozen, crowds of young men go out to amuse themselves on the
ice. Some run to gather speed, and slide along the ice with feet
apart, covering great distances. Others make seats of ice shaped
like millstones and get a group of others who run in front of them
holding hands to drag them along. Sometimes they go too fast,
and all fall flat on their faces. Others more skilled in ice-sports
fit the shin-bones of beasts to their feet, lashing them to their
ankles, and use an iron shod pole to propel themselves, pushing
against the ice; they are borne along as swiftly as a bird in flight or
a bolt from a mangonel. Many of the citizens delight in taking
their sport with birds of the air, merlins and falcons and such¬
like, and with hunting dogs. The inhabitants of the city have the
special privilege of hunting in Middlesex, Hertfordshire, the
Chiiterns, and in Kent as far as the river Cray.'1

Against such a background as this the people of London lived and

worked. But what were the larger configurations of race and tradi¬
tion in which they shared? When Henry II came to the throne, *it
was eighty-eight years since the Norman invaders had overthrown
the Saxon dynasty and ruling class, and Normans had figured
among the great men of the country for almost a century. How
sharp the division between Norman and Saxon was immediately
 PROLOGUE 7
after the Conquest is almost impossible to determine. But by the
mid-twelfth century, the line had become blurred to a great extent.
True, Saxon names figure rarely among the lords; so much so that
a French historian of the nineteenth century could portray Becket
as champion of the Saxons against the Norman invaders. It would
be nearer the mark to see the question as one of property. If
Saxons had managed to retain their lands, they would probably
have intermarried with the newcomers, and their names would have
become Anglo-French; if they had been deprived of their in¬
heritance, they would have sunk to the level of serfs. Because the
higher stratum of society was chiefly Norman, and the lower stra¬
tum predominantly Saxon, this did not make ipso facto for dissen¬
sions. Society’s order was part of God’s natural order, and a Nor¬
man lord was hardly distinguishable from a Saxon one after a
century.
On the European level, nationality and language were not
problems of the same magnitude as they are today. The contrast
lay between the local, uneducated communities, and the inter¬
national group of men who could speak Anglo-French (and hence
feel at home on both sides of the English Channel), or Latin,
which was understood from one end of western Christendom to the
other. Even the few signs of national feeling were curiously local
in flavour: more reminiscent of the tales told about the men of one
region by the inhabitants of another than of the heat of rival
loyalties. The picture of English students as hearty drinkers,
lovers, and eaters, in the poem Burnel the Ass, and the story that
Englishmen had tails, do not sound like the insults hurled by one
nation at another, but smack of local legend and gossip. Only with
the rise of the popular languages to the status of Latin, which
meant that the literature and business dealings of different peoples
were no longer mutually understood, and with the weakening of
the feudal structure of society in favour of an embryonic State,
did a man’s birthplace come to acquire a new importance. Even the
Jews were no exception to this international attitude, for their
French origins made them share the attitudes of the Anglo-
Norman barons and clergy. Their society stood somewhat apart,
but their different customs were viewed with tolerance, and only
their skill in finance aroused envy.
8 HENRY PLANTAGENET

This unity was in the main due to the great institution of

the Roman Church, and the great system of feudalism. Both were
ubiquitous, albeit in varying forms, in western Europe. The
church’s universality was plain for all to see. The pope’s decree
ran almost as widely as that of the Roman emperor before him. In
the Church, a man could rise from English monk to French abbot,
and thence to pope by way of an Italian archbishopric and an
embassy to Sweden, as Adrian IV had done. A traveller could go
into any church in Latin Christendom, from Jerusalem to Glas¬
gow, and find essentially the same service in use. And the pope
could curb a defiant monarch to his will by excommunicating his
servants or laying an interdict on his domains. These weapons, so
deadly in their time, seem strange to us now, when the two swords
of spiritual and temporal power are entirely separated and heresy
is more orthodox than orthodoxy itself. To be put beyond the pale
of the faith was as fierce a penalty as outlawry. No good Christian
was supposed to have truck with the excommunicate, whether in
everyday life, in matters of state, or in personal contact. However,
the Church could not impose its sentence as zealously as the royal
officers, and in practice, excommunication did not make life im¬
possible: the members of the king's household so sentenced by
Becket were able to carry out their tasks efficiently. Interdict was
another matter: a general ban on all church services affected every¬
one in so devout an age. And if those who paid only lip-service
found this no hardship in the ordinary way, the withdrawal of all
sacraments included baptisms, marriages and funerals. The mere
threat of interdict was enough to turn the most obstinate king
aside; yet it was not the pope’s last weapon. The sovereign himself
could be excommunicated and his subjects released from their oaths
to him: an authorised incitement to revolt. Although only recog¬
nised as a legitimate procedure in the previous century, the inter¬
dict was no mere threat, but a reality: it was used in Scotland in
1181, France in 1200, and England in 1209.
Feudalism worked in a less positive way towards an inter¬
national attitude. Instead of a basis of territorial sovereignty, a
lordship over land which could be changed only by conquest or
gift, feudalism gave the medieval state a structure which made the
king more responsible to his subjects, and which, by dual allegi-
PROLOGUE 9
ances, rendered borders less hard and fast. The feudal bond could
be dissolved, at least in theory, if the lord to whom allegiance was
rendered failed to do justice to his vassal or to protect him ade¬
quately. Nor—again in theory—was allegiance passed from father
to son by inheritance. Hence the lands of any one man, be he
emperor or minor baron, were linked only by a series of personal
agreements subject to definite provisos. From this foundation, no
ruler could hope to build a permanent state, and hence certain
vital areas, notably in eastern and southern France, remained
permanent buffers between the personal ambitions of neighbour¬
ing princes. Militant nationalism could not emerge while such con¬
ditions prevailed, and it was only when the kings of France and
England had discovered how to render the feudal element in their
states unimportant by exploiting to the full royal prerogatives and
privileges, especially in legal and fiscal matters, that the first
modem states emerged.
The corollary of this was that kings fought not to aggrandise
their countries, but to enlarge the power of their dynasty. Henry
Plantagenet fought to build an empire for himself and his sons;
and his dealings with the latter have a double irony as a result.
Philip Augustus opposed Henry, not as ruler of France against the
ruler of England and Normandy, but in order to break down the
Angevin walls which enclosed the Capetians’ personal ambitions.
The politics of the age were manoeuvres restricted by very few but
very powerful vested interests, aimed at securing largely personal
ends.
In these circumstances, Henry’s genuine concern for his
subjects’ welfare is at once praiseworthy and a hallmark of his
farsightedness. Royal government relied on two rather ambiguous
positions: the king as the most powerful of all barons, and the
king as a leader and special delegate of God. The main revenue
came from the first element: the vast royal estates; and the main
expenditure went on the second: the administration of law and the
maintenance of internal and external order. This may seem over¬
simplified as, in tracing the course of Henry’s career, the sophisti¬
cation of much of his governmental machinery becomes apparent;
yet beneath the new-found efficiency and formality, the old bases
of power remain.
IO HENRY PLANTAGENET

The means by which the twelfth-century ruler attained his ends

varied from the very subtle to the brutal. In the absence of a
standing army, the baronial feudal host was a substitute of limited
usefulness. Liable by feudal law to serve for only forty days, the
barons were reluctant to undertake great expeditions overseas or
far from their own lands; and for each occasion that they were per¬
suaded to oblige the king, there was another when they either
refused outright or made difficulties. As a result, the suppression
of local revolts within his own domains was a major problem
for Hehry. While he could unite his vassals against a common
enemy, internal troubles might mean that the only troops avail¬
able were in fact the barons who were in revolt. He solved this
difficulty at a very early stage by the extensive use of mercenary
troops; but even these never constituted anything approaching a
permanent army. As for naval forces, these were non-existent. He
could call on the men of the Cinque Ports to provide service in
the form of fifty-seven ships for forty days, but these were used as
transports only. For his Irish expedition, he had to hire or com¬
mandeer merchant vessels from the south and west coasts. The
royal navy consisted in effect of Henry’s personal galley, the Esnecca
or ‘Sea-snake’—probably a long, low craft designed for swift cross¬
ings of the channel—which was kept at Southampton. It was not
until John’s reign that the navy was formed, and, almost at once,
won its first great victory against the French at Damme.
The armed forces were of little help in an expansive and
aggressive policy: the defenders had a better chance of success in
wars in which geography played so large a part. So the ambitious
prince had to turn to other means. Marriage alliances were his
foremost weapon: a procedure that now seems totally alien to us.
The basic difference between royal marriages then and now was the
dowry. Today, a royal princess can expect much less in the way of
settlement than a millionaire’s daughter. Then a king might give
several counties with his daughter’s hand if the suitor seemed likely
to prove a valuable ally. The counts of Anjou were past master^
at this game, and often secured the richest of all prizes: the sole
heiress. Such was Matilda of England, Henry’s mother; such was
to be Eleanor of Aquitaine, his wife. By their scheming, their
house grew within three centuries from an unimportant domain
PROLOGUE IX

around Angers to a central power, both geographically and politic¬

ally, in France. Maine was added to Anjou in the early twelfth
century, and the union of the house with that of Normandy made
them partners in an alliance which dominated the lordship of the
king of France. The decisive point in Louis’ relations with Henry
was to come when the French sovereign divorced Eleanor of
Aquitaine and left her wide lands at the mercy of the man who
succeeded in gaining her hand. Only with the advent of Philip
Augustus, a king prepared to exploit any weakness and to prefer
force to the letter of the law, was the Angevin stranglehold
broken.

These methods of diplomacy were subtle, the rules which governed

international politics intricate: and in many ways this was a reflec¬
tion of the mood of the twelfth century. The chivalrous, empty
heroics of the later medieval period, the underlying brutishness of
the earlier centuries, were absent; instead, men’s minds probed the
practical applications of their new-found intellectual powers. More
than any other century in western civilisation, this was the age of
the mind; crude though the achievements may seem, both art and
thought created in this time masterpieces of unsurpassed beauty7, as
in the great Romanesque churches and cathedrals and the epic
romances, and also laid the seeds which yielded a rich harvest in
future generations. It was a time of fervour and activity; and if it
has bequeathed fewer great names to grace our records than later
centuries, the unknown masters and artists paved the way for the
soaring majesty of Gothic art; for the rise of the universities; for
the rich flowering of medieval philosophy with Albert and Aquinas;
for the new legal and scientific learning—all of which came to full
splendour in the next century. From humbler beginnings, the
e of the people attained an expressiveness which Latin had
not known for five centuries.
In some measure, this came about because the Christian
lands were for the first time free from the threat of barbarian incur¬
sions. The Vikings had become peaceable and accepted settlers, the
Magyars no longer disturbed Germany’s eastern borders, and the
only challenge tp the existing order was that of another civilisation:
Islam. The Saracens and Turks of later legend might be uncouth
12 HENRY PLANTAGENET

and savage, but in reality their way of life was far more refined
than that of the Christian west.
The rivalry with Islam found its sharpest expression in the
circumstances of the Crusades. To the Mohammedan princes, the
Holy Land was a useful political asset and they were rarely interested
in hindering travellers from the west: to the Christian warriors
it was sacred terrain, not to be sullied by infidel rule, even if these
infidels sometimes permitted the free passage of pilgrims. Hence
when Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Seljuk Turks in 1076,
it was not long before Christendom was roused to action. But,
suffering from all the disadvantages of a hard-pressed outpost
which was difficult to garrison and supply, the Kingdom of
Jerusalem did not last long. Passing from Godfrey de Bouillon ‘that
illustrious hero whose kingly rule seems to have corresponded with
the very ideal of perfection in the social order’, to his descendants
and thence to the house of Anjou, the kingdom slowly diminished.
Saladin’s attacks and the faults and difficulties of its defenders led
in 1187 to the second capture of Jerusalem, an event foreseen
throughout the previous decade, FJelp came too late; and the later
crusades failed in their declared object.
In the process, however, the Christian knights and rulers
who fought in Palestine were made aware of two things: the fact
that Christendom was a political and limited entity, and that the
culture and virtues of Islam were not dissimilar from their own.
If the main importance of the crusades in Henry’s day was their
role as a political issue and a distraction from local affairs, this
level must also be recognised. Furthermore, the crusading armies
were the only sign of Christian feudalism acting in common pur¬
pose and allegiance. It was the Church’s first taming of the knight’s
innate ferocity, evidence of the new value set on high ideas and
deeds, which, if it existed side by .side with atrocious barbarism
and lawlessness, was nonetheless playing a greater part in men’s
lives.
Now that the preoccupation of mere existence had vanisheS,
scholarship flourished at the beginning of the century. The settled
schools of the cloister, narrow in outlook and restricted in their
contact with the outside world, were overshadowed by the
cathedral teachers. These secular clergy knew the hard realities of
PROLOGUE *3
political life, and their pupils came from among the townsfolk as
well as from those intending to enter the church. A new audience
coincided with fresh discoveries in the field of Greek learning; and
the two fused to produce a school of radical thinkers who were
prepared to use the new logical arguments to discuss theological
questions. For logic, a commonplace to us today, was then a
dramatic new concept, as far-reaching for the Church as the theory
of relativity for scientists today. Since the Church was the largest
and most powerful organisation in western Europe, this was no
rarified academic diatribe, but an argument which threatened the
established authority on which society’s structure rested. Abelard,
when he discussed the Trinity in terms of dialectic, was almost a
political agitator, and his enthusiastic, devoted and unruly follow¬
ing of students were a danger to the peace. In eastern Christendom,
wars had been fought over differing doctrines of the Trinity, and
this could yet happen in the west. But the authority of the Church
had quickly overawed the individual conscience, and the dissen¬
sions had been healed before the middle of the twelfth century.
The intellectual energy which impelled the new learning
and its great leaders was turned into safer, more constructive
channels in the latter half of the century. The universities of Paris,
Bologna, Salerno and Oxford took shape. At Bologna, juris¬
prudence was studied again, and the lawbooks of Rome were
eagerly sought out, examined and discussed, to lay the foundations
of modem legal science. Until now, the real basis of law had been
practical rather than theoretical, a constant revision of traditional
methods of punishing the criminal and of keeping the peace. The
abstract concepts of justice, citizenship and law were forgotten;
and when the ancient laws proved inadequate, it was the ruler’s
task to ^interpret’ them and provide a new means to the new end.
Much of Henry’s work was of this nature; and always at those
moments when his methods were most controversial, his insistence
on the hallowed authority behind them was loudest. The more we
learn of the preceding decades, the more this claim becomes justi¬
fied; but that it had to be made at all shows how different the
twelfth century’s ideas about the true basis of laws were from ours
today. Henry ^vas only slightly influenced by the new7 work on
Justinian’s great code, and the effect was restricted to questions
14 HENRY PLANTAGENET

of church law. His attitude was strictly practical; he sought to

dispense justice to his subjects, preferably adding to his revenue
while doing so. The only real new development in which he was
involved came about more by chance than from conscious design.
This was the arbitration between the kings of Castile and Navarre
in 1177. Such settlements of international disputes by outside
authority were to grow in frequency in the succeeding centuries,
but this early and successful instance was settled by nothing more
than Henry’s personal opinion. There was no recourse to principles
of Roman or Christian law; nor was the concept of papal superi¬
ority to monarchs, as used in later years, invoked.
Another source of the new learning of these times was the
Mohammedan civilisation. Through the many translations from
Arabic made during the century, much of its intellectual wealth
came to the west, particularly its heritage from Greece. In the Latin
west, Greek had been almost forgotten, and the great masters of
the schools were only partially known. The Fathers of the Church
were the dominant figures in philosophy; and philosophy was in
turn limited to a narrow theological field. With the rediscovery of
Greek learning through Arabic translations of its literature, scholars
in the twelfth century were able to continue in a Christian con¬
text the work of the schools of Athens. Spain was the centre of this
commerce of the intellect; here the conflict of Moor and Christian
brought Arabic and Latin into contact.
From this there sprang a revival of science. Observation and
experiment allied to logic were used to explore the physical world
again, in a way unknown since Aristotle’s time. The wonders of
the universe were no longer a magnificent but unfathomable dis¬
play of God’s power, but a machine whose workings could be ex¬
plored and reduced to comprehensible terms. Such was the next
insidious threat to the Church’s supremacy in matters of belief
that began to develop during these years. It was not until 1210
that Aristotle’s work was first attacked, the provincial synod of
Paris putting them under ban as tending to heresy. The suspect
texts were not Aristotle’s own, but had been mingled with the
commentaries of Avicenna, whose Islamic doctrine it was that
caused the trouble. Greek science had therefore this added taint
of pagan theology acquired by its transmission through Arabic
PROLOGUE 15

scholars, which made its assimilation into western culture yet more
difficult.
A less spectacular but more vital development was taking
place between the realms of high philosophy and high fantasy:
the emergence of an educated class active in lay affairs, owing their
pre-eminence neither to rank nor to clerical preferment, although
the latter was often their reward. No better illustration of their
attitude and pretensions to learning can be found than in Richard
Fitz-Neale’s introduction to his account of the workings of the
exchequer. He relates how ‘in the twenty-third year of the reign
of king Henry II, as I was sitting at a turret window overlooking
the Thames’ (presumably in the palace of Westminster), a fellow-
official had come to him and suggested that he write a treatise on
the royal exchequer. He demurred at first, saying that he was not a
literary man, and that such things were too commonplace for a
literary work. The other replied:
‘Writers on the liberal arts have compiled large treatises and
wrapped them up in obscure language, to conceal their
ignorance and to make the arts more difficult. You are not
undertaking a book on philosophy, but on the customs and
laws of the exchequer, a commonplace subject, in which you
must use appropriate and therefore commonplace language.
Moreover, though it is generally permissible to invent new
terms, I beg you not to be ashamed to employ the common
and conventional words for the objects described, so that no
additional difficulty may be created by the unusual language.’2
This new class of men were essentially practical in outlook,
knowing such book-craft as was necessary to their occupation, but
skilled ip. everyday problems rather than in the by-ways of dialectic
and rhetoric. Scholarship per se was not for them. Although some
of them became churchmen or scholars, their distinctive feature
as a class was that they did not hold their positions as a result of
training for other professions, but had their own particular culture
and outlook, tempered by the fact that the Church had a monopoly
of education. Richard Fitz-Neale is a case in point: he served in the
king’s entourage from 1158 until 1184 without rising higher in
the church hierarchy than archdeacon. If in his later years, from
i6 HENRY PLANTAGENET

1189-98, he was bishop of London, this was a reward for, rather

than a cause or corollary of, his success.
At the opposite pole of learning, the languages of the
common people were developing into literary media throughout
Europe. Only the insular Saxons had made their tongue a real
vehicle for poetic thought, and their efforts had vanished into
obscurity with the Norman conquest. Now poets appeared in
every country of Europe who could not only, like their forebears,
compose vast epics, but could also write them down for posterity,
and give them some sort of literary shape. This flowering was
rapid; for example, the earliest recorded fragments of Arthurian
poetry in French of about 1130 are separated from the great cycles
of romance by less than a century. Henry’s wife, Eleanor of
Aquitaine, seems to have had connections with this development,
and Henry himself showed great interest in both Arthur’s legends
and the work of the new poets.
Hence the intellectual background of Henry’s lifetime was
one of turmoil, of new beginnings and of disturbing challenges to
the existing order. Of this, little reached the king except the new
alertness of men’s minds, and a new respect for order and system.
The practical effects of the new learning did, however, cast some
reflections in his ambit. As Gratian had summed up the laws of
the Roman Church in his Decretum of 1151, so Glanville, albeit
less critically, was to record the practice of the English courts in a
systematic work on English law. Both Henry and his adversary,
Thomas Becket, were to find use for the Decretum in their argu¬
ments over the way the English church should be governed. Even
in the king’s pastimes, learning had a place, for a treatise on
falconry, one of the first to contain something more than in¬
herited lore, was dedicated to Henry.

What problems confronted Henry in this multifarious age? Most

of them stemmed from his early winning of a great kingdom and
a greater empire. He had to impose his authority on most of France
and all of England, and to maintain his lands in peace and justice
against his enemies, both within and without. Nor was this a
matter of routine government. Over much of his lands, the
machinery by which the king or lord ruled was either in decay or
PROLOGUE 17

had never existed, or was only newly re-established. He had to

weld the disparate elements of his realms into some sort of unity
and conformity to a manageable ideal; nor was this an idealist’s
self-appointed task for posterity’s benefit, but a stark necessity.
For Henry was only twenty-one when he came into this vast power,
and even by the short-lived standards of his time, he could expect
to rule for a quarter or even half-century. Hence it was in his
own direct interest to seek solutions of wider range and implica¬
tion than those used by statesmen who only achieved such mighty
heights towards their lives’ ends.
Henry’s authority in his various realms depended on varying
titles and different statuses. In England, he was undisputed king.
Across the Channel, in Normandy, he was duke; in Anjou and
Maine, count; in Aquitaine duke by virtue of his marriage: for all
these French domains he owed homage to the king of France.
Hence he himself benefited from the inherent strength of two of
the three ruling orders of the time: the monarchy and the baron¬
age. If he undermined the English barons, to a limited extent he
undermined his own position in France; if he defied the French
king, he set a bad example for his English barons. Only in his
opposition to the Church’s claims to temporal power could he
be—and was—consistent and resolute in his stand.
Once the first stage of establishing his authority was
accomplished, he was confronted by the task of maintaining it, a
task in his days more unusual, for brief power and rapid decline
were commonplace. This was typefied in the literary image of the
Wheel of Fortune, on which in twelve great chairs sat the rulers of
the world, rising slowly to the top of the circle, only to be dashed
from their seats just as they topped the height of their ambition.
Merely to maintain his position, Henry had to carry out an im¬
mense series of diplomatic manoeuvres throughout his life. Every¬
where he was faced by forces which, whether secretly or openly,
were opposed to his power. The barons resented their loss of inde¬
pendence under his strong hand; the king of France was made
suspicious and uneasy by his powerful vassal; his own sons were
eager for greater power and chafed under his harsh bit. Henry
never embarked on a policy aimed directly at curbing the power of
the barons or at breaking that of the king of France, for he was too
i8 HENRY PLANTAGENET

dependent on both in various ways; at best he obtained fruitful

co-operation against a common enemy, at worst an uneasy modus
vivendi degenerating on occasions into open revolt. On the other
hand, he was quite prepared, where his sons were concerned, to
‘chastise them with scorpions’. All of them had grounds for com¬
plaint in their father’s treatment of them, save John; yet each of
them in turn had provoked Henry into action. The Angevin family
were genuinely fond of each other, but family ties were subordinated
to their fierce individual pride and ambition. It was on this rock
that Henry’s fortunes finally foundered. He could not understand
or tolerate in others that which was all too plainly his own ruling
trait: love of power. It was not something inherited from his father,
who had yielded Normandy to him without a murmur: and it was
perhaps only the insistence of his eldest son on claiming his birth¬
right that made Henry so stubborn—not because he refused to
yield, but because he was too proud to seem to yield.
In one sphere Henry never reached the position he desired:
in his relations with the Church; and his undoubted involvement
in the events leading to Becket’s murder rendered him unable to
dictate his own terms of settlement afterwards. He was first faced
by an opponent whose resolution outstripped even his own,
Thomas Becket. Henry’s demands were not unreasonable, and in
the event defeat was not so very different in its results from victory.
The development of the episode to cataclysmic proportions was
less due to the opposition of two unrelenting men of principle
than to the tensions resulting from a duel between two powerful
characters. Henry was expert at picking hardworking and loyal
servants for himself, but he was inclined to underestimate his
opponents: thus he refused to see in their true light not only
Becket and Philip Augustus of France, but also his own sons.
So Henry’s problems were partly created by his own charac¬
ter: on the one hand his ambition led him to become ruler of wide
realms, and to desire the greatest possible power within them,
while on the other he failed to appreciate the resistance he Md
aroused. But he had also inherited a still greater number of diffi¬
culties from his predecessors arising from the dramatic events
which form the prelude to Henry’s reign, the background to our
sixty years’ story.
 I
The Troubled Land

O N DECEMBER i, 1135, a small group of the most illus¬

trious men of England and Normandy gathered at a hunting-
lodge in the forest of Lyons, not far from the Norman capital,
Rouen. Grave and anxious, they awaited there a great event: the
passing of a king. Henry I, master of wide lands on both sides of
the Channel, had been taken ill a week earlier, as he pursued his
favourite sport in the beech-woods above the Seine valley.1 Feeling
-< the approach of death, he had sent for the archbishop of Rouen,
and his bastard son, the earl of Gloucester, stood at his side. For
three days now they had been there, and the end was not far
off.
As Henry lay there, he could look back on a peaceful reign
of thirty-four years in England. The common people might call
him tyrant; but law and order reigned throughout the land, and it
was said that a man might carry a sack of gold the length and
breadth of it without being molested. If he had oppressed them
with his strict enforcement of forest laws, he had protected them
from the harsher lawlessness of barons great and small. In Nor¬
mandy too, since the death of his brother, Duke Robert, and his
nephew, William Clito, the only serious rival to his power, the
government had been secure and prosperous. Yet present peace and
prosperity vgere overshadowed by a future that held no such
promise. Since the tragic and untimely death of Henry’s only son
and heir, Prince William, in the disastrous sinking of the White
Ship fifteen years earlier, the internal politics of the realm had been
dominated by one problem: who would succeed to the throne?
William’s twin sister,2 Matilda, survived him. But she was
20 HENRY PLANTAGENET

the wife of the German emperor, Henry V, and it was unlikely

that either the German or English barons would accept a ruler
who united the two realms, or that the empress of Germany should
become queen of England. So, although the possibility of such a
union had to be considered in Henry’s policy, he preferred to
marry again and hope for a new heir. Unfortunately, his match
with Adela, daughter of the count of Louvain, had proved child¬
less; and when the German emperor died in 1125, Henry I sum¬
moned Matilda to the homeland she had not seen since her child¬
hood, and over which he intended her to rule. She came, reluc¬
tantly: German by education and adoption, she had made herself
beloved in Germany, and the German people are said to have
begged her to remain. In December of that year, she reached
Normandy and joined her father for Christmas. On New Year’s
Day of 1127, the barons of England swore a solemn oath to recog¬
nise her claim to the throne as ‘Lady of England’. Although she
had been empress for fifteen years, she was only twenty-four, and
there was little delay in finding a new husband for her. The choice
was soon made: Henry arranged a match between her and the
heir to the county of Anjou and Maine, Geoffrey Plantagenet.
Geoffrey was betrothed to her at Rouen at the Whitsuntide of
1127, and the marriage took place a year later in Maine.3 He
was eleven years Matilda’s junior; but this was far from unusual
in political marriages of tne time; her first husband had been
many years older than her, and Geoffrey was, like his descendants,
precocious for his age.
The following year, he was given the chance to prove his
mettle; for his father, Fulk V, married the heiress to the kingdom
of Jerusalem, and set out to claim his new land. He resigned Anjou
to Geoffrey,4 who was already experienced in the workings of a
state and well used to subduing recalcitrant vassals. His skill was
at once put to the test by the revolt of the lords of Amboise and
Sabl£, to whom his brother H<flie had allied himself; and war was
to remain his chief occupation for the rest of his life. The very
purpose of his father-in-law in arranging his marriage was likely
to involve him in conflict, for Henry I needed an alliance with
Normandy’s traditional enemy in order to counter-balance the
league which Louis VII of France had arranged with Flanders, and
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22 HENRY PLANTAGENET

which supported the efforts of Henry's rebellious nephew, William

Clito.
However, either from personal reasons, or because Geoffrey
was preoccupied with suppressing the rebellion, the pair separated
in July 1129, and Matilda went to Rouen leaving her husband to
his own devices. Two years later, she crossed to England with her
father, but Geoffrey, unwilling to let her become too involved else¬
where, demanded her return, and a council held by Henry on
September 8, 1129, decided that she should be sent back to
Anjou. Henry’s desire for an heir from the match doubtless played
some part in this decision; but he had to wait another eighteen
months before his wish was fulfilled. The eldest son of Matilda and
Geoffrey was born while his mother was at Le Mans, capital of
Geoffrey’s smaller domain, on March 5, 1133, and named after
his Norman grandfather.

In an age of dramatic characters, the young prince Henry’s ancestry

had more than its share of them. Matilda, his mother, who had
been mistress of the Holy Roman Empire at the age of nine,
had hardly reconciled herself to being a mere countess, and re¬
tained the title of empress for the remainder of her life; her son
was frequently called Fitzempress by his contemporaries. Hard
and masterful, she must have been the dominant partner in the
early years of their marriage. The birth of her three children and
her preoccupation with England meant that she and her husband
were later separated for long periods. Even after her final departure
from her father’s kingdom in 1147, and retirement from politics,
she saw little of the count. She came from a line of warriors on
both sides; on her father’s side, both her father and grandfather
had won their kingdoms by force of arms, and her great-grand¬
father on her mother’s side, Edmund Ironside, had fought off the
Danes with considerable success. So it was only natural that she
should lead her own forces in England until her son was old enough
to take affairs into his own hands. It seems that she regarded her-'
self as guardian of Henry’s rights rather than as fighting for her
own, and that her partisans recognised Henry as the real heir. She
never adopted the title of queen, but continued to call herself
‘domina Angliae’, partly because she was never formally crowned,
 THE TROUBLED LAND 23
and partly , perhaps, because of this feeling that she represented her
son.
From the surviving, perhaps slightly conventional portrait,
of Geoffrey Plantagenet,* Henry’s father,6 we can form some idea
of the man: tall, fair and lean, with quick eyes, his appearance
betrays to some extent the impetuous nature which written records
reveal; fiercely energetic, always on horseback, and skilled from
boyhood in the arts of war, he also shared with his father-in-law a
reputation for learning unusual for their days. But while Henry I,
as youngest of the Conqueror’s three sons, had received a more than
usually thorough education, being at one moment destined for the
church, Geoffrey, possessor of a superb memory and fond of dis¬
putes and lawsuits, had a ready rather than a polished mind, most
at home in the rough politics and diplomacy of the age. His fore¬
bears had created the state of Anjou by force and craft, starting
with Fulk the Red’s viscounty of Angers. From this town, rising
black-stoned above the river Maine, five miles from its confluence
with the Loire, the Angevins had built up their county by slowly
extending their power eastwards along the Loire valley to include
Tours and, to die south, the fortresses of Chinon, Loches and
Montrichard, until further expansion would have led to conflict
with the counts of Blois. To the north lay the county of Maine,
caught between the enmity of the Normans and their new southern
rivals; this land had been acquired by Geoffrey’s father, Fulk the
Black, as the dowry of Geoffrey’s mother. Westwards, the Breton
frontier remained unsettled until the beginning of Fulk’s reign,
when the Loire for some fifty miles from its mouth, as far as the
castle of Montrelais, was acknowledged as Breton territory. The
southern limit of Anjou was determined by the power of the counts
of Poitou; and nowhere did the Angevin influence reach more than
thirty miles south of the Loire.
But within these lands, over which the counts ruled as feudal
suzerains, several magnates hardly inferior to the Angevin house
held sway. The lord of Mayenne, whose relatives held wide lands
in Brittany and Normandy, was the most powerful in Maine;
while in Anjou itself, the lords of Sabl6, Craon, Montreuil-
* He was reputedly known as ‘Plantagenet’ from the sprig of broom (planta
genesta) which he wore when riding.
24 HENRY PLANTAGENET

Bellay and Montsoreau (the last on the Loire) were all capable of
causing considerable difficulties for the count, as well as barons
who held land primarily from another lord, such as the masters of
Parthenay in the south who owed allegiance to Poitou.6 The count’s
power depended on little more than an efficient exploitation of his
own resources, of which the chief were the demesne lands, which
were directly under his control, and such use as he could make of
his legal claim to suzerainty and the many benefits, both in terms
of money and property, attached to it.
It had taken two hundred and fifty years of marriage alli¬
ances, ransoms and wars to assemble the domains over which
Geoffrey Plantagenet ruled, and the early counts had receded into
the mists of legend by his day. Epics had grown up around the
figure of Geoffrey Greygown, his great-great-great-grandfather, and
his son, Fulk Nerra, ‘the Black’, who was perhaps the most striking
of the family. Fulk’s mother, so it was said, had brought demon
blood into the house of Anjou. Famed for her beauty, but of
unknown race, the count of Anjou had married her solely for the
fairness of her body. She came but rarely to mass, an unusual habit
in an age when regular attendance was the chief yardstick of piety.
Nor, when she came, did she pay much attention to the service, but
always left after the gospel and before the elevation of the Host.
The count, remarking this, one day ordered four men to hold
her back when she made to leave the church. As usual, once the
gospel had been read, she started to go, but the men seized her
cloak to restrain her; on which she slipped out of her cloak and flew
out of the window, never to be seen again.7 From this mysterious
ancestress the house of Anjou was said to have inherited its fero¬
cious temper—which was certainly true of Fulk V, Geoffrey the
Fair, and, as we shall see, Henry II himself—and its family tur¬
moils, apparent in the revolt of H£lie against Geoffrey, and of
which Henry was to have more than his fair share. Even though
the idea of the count marrying for love rang false, since the Ange-
vins were the greatest exponents of the art of dynastic marriage of
their day, the traits of the demon countess were plain to see in
her supposed descendants, and the legend enjoyed wide currency.
Referring to this story, St Bernard once said of Henry Plantagenet
and his race: ‘From the devil they came, to the devil they will go’,
THE TROUBLED LAND 25
a grim prophecy which in Henry's latter years sometimes seemed
very close to fulfilment.8

If the past of the young prince's family was fable, its future was
dominated by harsh reality. Although Henry’s succession seemed
assured, for the oath sworn by the English barons to Matilda had
specifically included any sons she might bear, there were other
considerations. The death of William Clito, her cousin, in 1128,
had not assured to her eldest child the inheritance of England,
Normandy, Anjou and Maine, for one other rival to the Anglo-
Norman share remained: Stephen, count of Blois, who had been
the first to swear homage to Matilda in 1127. Grandson of the
Conqueror, his claim derived through his mother; and if the law
was doubtful in regard to his right of inheritance, it was no clearer
in regard to Matilda’s, for neither England nor Normandy had
had a woman for their ruler. The problem was further complicated
by the uncertainty of the method by which the heir could claim
the throne. The usual practice was to ensure recognition of a suc¬
cessor, sometimes by coronation, before the previous ruler died;
but the English monarchy retained vestiges of the Saxon elective
system, and might tended to be the final arbiter. Henry I had only
obtained the English throne by moving rapidly on the death of
William Rufus; and Normandy had been won from Duke Robert,
who in laying claim to England lost both territories to his youngest
brother. Hence if Stephen kept his oath, there was no difficulty;
but if he chose to break it, it would be easy enough to obtain a
papal dispensation for having done so, once he had become defacto
king. So, even though Matilda was the official heir, and another
oath tQ her and to Prince Henry was exacted in 1133, those now
standing^arourid the old king’s deathbed could not be certain to
whom the prize would finally fall.
The Anglo-Norman domains offered rich prospects to their
ruler. Wide in extent, the English realm was the more important
of the two, being independent of any feudal overlordship, whereas
Normandy’s dukes had still to do homage to the king of France.
Scotland was still friendly towards England, and the Scottish king
did homage to the English ruler for his estates in England. Wales
and Ireland remained unsubdued, in spite of Henry I’s forays into
26 HENRY PLANTAGENET

the former: but the Welsh marches were peaceful compared with
the endless petty warfare on the other side of the Channel. No
barons had yet succeeded in amassing sufficient territorial power
during the seventy years following the Conquest to constitute a
serious challenge to the Crown, unless they could lay claim to the
Crown itself. England was more firmly in the king’s power than
any lands outside the royal domain on the continent; for franchises,
areas where the local lord enjoyed almost regal powers, were only
beginning to develop. William I, in his original apportioning of
England among his companions, had been careful to retain the
strategic towns and castles in his own hands, and the royal lands
formed a systematic group quite unlike the haphazard products of
gradual accumulation abroad.
Normandy offered a less secure possession, at least on its
boundaries, where France, Anjou-Maine, and Brittany were all to
some degree hostile, with opposing territorial aims. Without natural
frontiers, the marches of Normandy created perpetual problems.
Within the duchy, which had been founded by the invasions of
the Northmen two centuries earlier, the lands belonging directly
to the duke were rivalled only by those of the Church, for both
in the first nucleus of the duchy and in the later acquisitions to
south and west, a large portion of lands had been retained by the
duke. Only the barons closely related to the ducal house, and
whose possessions lay chiefly on the borders, were of any real im¬
portance: these comprised the counts of Eu and Aumale to the
east, and of Mortain to the west. Almost all the Norman barons
held fiefs in England, which lent further stability to the Anglo-
Norman realm, since except in the case of a general revolt, any
trouble-making baron could easily be coerced into submission by
the confiscation of his fiefs in one or other half of the realm.

But the young prince Henry was as yet unaware of these political
complications which were to determine in so many ways the course
of his life’s work. He would have been more closely affected l~>y
the birth of his two younger brothers, Geoffrey in 1134, and
William in 1136. The first years of his life were spent with his
mother: in the spring of 1134 he was taken to Argentan with her,
where his grandfather saw the long-awaited heir for the first time.
THE TROUBLED LAND 27
time. On June 1, Geoffrey was born there, a second surety for the
Angevin and Norman line. But a quarrel between Matilda and her
father led to Henry and his brother being moved south to Angers
in the summer of 1135.* their mother followed shortly afterwards,
and it was probably at the Angevin capital that William, her
youngest son, was born in the following August.
By then, the storm had broken: Henry I was dead, and
Stephen of Blois had broken his oath, seizing the English crown.
Matilda was faced by a long, hard struggle to regain her rights. It
was not until 1139 that she departed for England, leaving Henry
with his father. We know that Henry did not remain exclusively
at Angers, but sometimes moved round his father’s domains as
the count and his entourage carried out the business of govern¬
ment; but which particular regions of his father’s territories were
the background of his childhood days remains unknown; only one
charter specifically records his presence, at Carrouges on the Nor¬
man border, in 1138, when he was aged five.
We know more about his education. At some time during
this period, the young prince was put in the charge of Peter of
Saintes, his first teacher, a man renowned for his knowledge of
poetry; and Henry and his brothers seem to have received a more
than usually thorough education. Perhaps their father regretted the
lost opportunities of his own youth; Matilda never showed any
great interest in such matters, although both her father and half-
brother, Earl Robert of Gloucester, were learned by the standards
of the age. Under Peter’s tuition Henry remained until 1142,
learning the rudiments of Latin and of reading, and possibly also
of writing, although the latter was regarded as a skill more ap¬
propriate to clerks and clergymen than to kings and princes.

Meanwhile, Henry’s parents had both been active in defence of

his rights. .Matilda’s departure had been occasioned by Earl
Robert of Gloucester’s repudiation of his oath to Stephen at the
end of May 1138, and the formation of an Angevin party in open
opposition to the king. Stephen did not improve his position by
choosing this rhoment to attempt to rescind the liberties granted
to the Church in 1136 at the council of Winchester. He also
28 HENRY PLANTAGENET

seized the castles of various barons whom he did not trust but
whose loyalty he might otherwise have retained, when Matilda's
impending arrival was rumoured in 1139. She came both as a
claimant to the throne herself, and as guardian of her son’s rights.
Taking advantage of Stephen’s excesses against the Church and
his use of brutal mercenary troops, which had antagonised many
of his erstwhile sympathisers, she rallied the forces of rebellion
which Stephen had to some degree checked. The Scots had been
defeated at the Battle of the Standard at Northallerton in 1138,
and her uncle, David of Scotland, had been forced to withdraw
from England; although he lent valuable support to his niece’s
cause, Scottish arms produced no decisive effect in the conflict
after this reverse. A revolt in the fenlands had been suppressed by
Stephen, and only Earl Robert held out for his half-sister at
Bristol.
Within eighteen months, the situation had been dramatic¬
ally reversed. At Christmas 1140, Stephen laid siege to Ranulf of
Chester’s castle at Lincoln, the latter having allied himself to
Matilda. After a fruitless blockade until February 1141, he had
to face the earl of Gloucester’s relief force in a battle outside the
town. His army, weary from the long winter siege, broke at the
first charge of Robert’s troops, superior in both numbers and con¬
dition; Stephen himself was captured and sent to be imprisoned at
Bristol. Matilda found a favourable reception at Winchester on
March 3; proceeding to London, whose citizens claimed to have
elected Stephen to the throne, she was acclaimed in the capital as
well. Even Stephen’s brother, Henry, bishop of Winchester and
the greatest of the lords of England, acknowledged her as ruler.
The empress seemed to have secured the upper hand, and for
some months ruled England as its uncrowned queen. But her
arrogant ways fatally damaged her cause, arousing the temper of
the Londoners against her. When she was expelled from the chief
city of the realm, an angry mob at her heels, her fortunes decline^!
once more. Henry of Winchester’s uneasy allegiance was broken,
and in a skirmish outside his cathedral city his troops captured
Robert of Gloucester. Only at the price of the king’s own liberty
could the chief supporter of the Angevin cause be freed. Stephen’s
captivity had lasted a bare nine months when he was released.
THE TROUBLED LAND 29
Now that the civil war was plainly going to be a matter of years,
not months, the accompanying lawlessness, already serious, rose to
its full height. The monks, who are the only historians of these
dark days, have left a grim picture of the ravages of war and famine,
without parallel save in the days of the Black Death two centuries
later. From the comparative peace of a monastery, the situation
may have seemed little short of the days of Antichrist; yet there is
no excess of exaggeration* in the chroniclers’ words when they
describe the stark realities of the hard world outside. The Fens
suffered from a particularly ruthless and arrogant baronage. To
them almost all the devastation there during Stephen’s reign can
be ascribed; and their cruelties, as depicted by the monks of Peter¬
borough, have become classic in the annals of medieval warfare;

For every powerful man built his castles . . . and they filled
the country full of castles. When the castles were built, they
filled them with devils and wicked men. Then, both by night
and day, they took those people that they thought had any
goods—men and women—and put them in prison and tortured
them with indescribable tortures to extort gold and silver;
for no martyrs were ever so tortured as they were. They were
hung by the thumbs or by the head, and corselets were hung
on their feet. Knotted ropes were put round their heads and
twisted until they penetrated to the brains. They put them in
prisons where there were adders and snakes and toads, and
killed them like that. Some they put in a torture chamber—
that is in a chest that was short, narrow and shallow, and
they put sharp stones in it and pressed the man in it so that
he had all his limbs broken. In many of the castles was a
‘nodSe-and-trap’—consisting of chains of such a kind that
two or three men had enough to do to carry one. It was so
made that it was fastened to a beam, and they used to put a
sharp iron around the man’s throat and his neck, so that he
could not in any direction either sit or lie or sleep, but had to
carry all that iron. Many thousands they killed by starvation.
* Except in the implication that local conditions were universal, whereas only
small areas were 'seriously affected; cf. the extract from the Peterborough
Chronicle.
30 HENRY PLANTAGENET

. . . When the wretched people had no more to give, they

robbed and burned all the villages, so that you could easily
go a whole day’s journey and never find anyone occupying a
village, nor land tilled. Then corn was dear, and meat and
butter and cheese, because there was none in the country.
Wretched people died of starvation; some lived by begging
for alms, who had once been rich men; some fled the country.8

England was in desperate state, and likely to remain so for

some time as far as the Angevins were concerned. Matters were only
slightly better in Normandy. The position had been complicated
for Matilda from the outset, because her husband had had recourse
to arms in the autumn of 1135 in order to claim her dowry from
her father. This incursion had proved abortive, chiefly because the
Angevin invaders could not be restrained from wanton violence.
On the death of Henry I, the Norman barons had formed a kind
of regency, and only minor lords had recognised Matilda. For a
while, a project of inviting Theobald of Blois to become duke
was mooted, but this was abandoned on Stephen’s accession to the
English throne; for many barons were inclined to favour his cause,
if only from fear of losing their English lands. Stephen was form¬
ally recognised on December 22, 1135, only three weeks after
Henry’s death.10

Geoffrey thereupon began his efforts to conquer Normandy by

main force, which was to cost ten years’ warfare. In this he acted
purely as his son’s representative and never as an actual claimant.
The first raid was launched the following autumn at Michaelmas,
and although an initial success was scored with the capture of
Carrouges, he was forced to withdraw within a fortnight, and no
other lasting results were achieved. Stephen arrived in Normandy
in March 1137; and in May of that year, Eustace, Stephen’s son,
did homage to Louis for Normandy: an act which meant th^t
Louis of France, Geoffrey’s feudal overlord, would openly sup¬
port the claims of the house of Blois. Nonetheless, civil disturb¬
ances continued within Normandy, without Geoffrey's inter¬
vention; neither these, nor four more minor raids by the Angevin
count in 1137-8, materially changed the situation. Geoffrey bided
THE TROUBLED LAND
3i
his time, waiting for suitable opportunity; either an unpopular
act of strong government or evidence of Stephen's incompetence
would be equally favourable to his purpose. Throughout the next
three years, it became apparent that Stephen had less of the Con¬
queror’s blood in his veins than Matilda. When Stephen’s slight
attempts at government were entirely stopped by his capture at
Lincoln, Geoffrey bestirred himself to action again. He issued a
formal summons to the barons to surrender their castles to him¬
self as representative of the rightful heir. A last appeal went to
Theobald of Blois from the Norman barons; but none expected this
move, of doubtful legality, to be successful, and by the end of
1141 all eastern Normandy, except Rouen, lay in the hands of the
Angevin, including the important towns of Caen, Lisieux, Bay-
eux and Falaise, peacefully surrendered in face of inevitable con¬
quest.
So far the two campaigns to win the lands that were one
day to be Henry Plantagenet’s had been conducted almost inde¬
pendently by his parents. Matilda and the Angevin party in
England had suffered a sharp decline in their standing, and the
high hopes of the spring of 1141 had vanished with the loss of
not only her royal captive but London as well. It seemed to the
empress that Geoffrey’s recent and easily won success might allow
him to send support to her, and to this end she sent the earl of
Gloucester to ask his assistance. A more distinguished emissary
could not have been chosen among her supporters; the most im¬
portant of Matilda’s English party, he had been largely responsible
for her successes, while she had only herself to blame for most of
her disasters. Earl Robert knew better than anyone what was
needed from Normandy: a force large enough to end the strife in
one swift, dedsive campaign, and if possible, Geoffrey himself to
lead it. The empress lacked both means and men, while Stephen
was more likely to win a war of attrition, since he held the rich
counties of die south-east. Matilda drew her support chiefly from
Somerset, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and
Monmouthshire: the area in which the war had been fought for
the most part, and which even in peacetime was poorer in resources
than her rival’s territory.
When Robert arrived, about June 24, Geoffrey was busy
32 HENRY PLANTAGENET

reducing such Norman castles as still resisted him. These lay chiefly
in the west of Normandy, in the Bessin and Stephen's own county
of Mortain. During the course of the summer of 1142, at least
ten of them fell before his onslaughts, including the important
strongholds of Vire, Tinchebray and Mortain itself. In this mood
of activity and success he was not in the least inclined to abandon
good prospects of a complete and rapid conquest of Normandy for
uncertain hopes in England, and he needed all the men and money
at his disposal for his own purposes. Yet he could not abandon
Matilda, lest this should encourage her enemies to new attacks
which she could ill withstand. By treating the problem as one of
morale rather than financial or military need, Geoffrey found a
ready solution which would not entail any reduction of his own
resources, by sending the young prince with a small force. The
presence of the boy regarded by many of Matilda’s adherents as
the rightful heir would both satisfy the empress, and discourage
her enemies.

Thus it came about that one day in September 1142, Henry of

Anjou, aged nine years and six months, landed in England for the
first time. He disembarked on the Dorset coast near Wareham in
the company of his uncle and a handful of knights. The voyage
had been prosperous; and the earl of Gloucester immediately set
about the siege of the neighbouring castles of Wareham, Portland
and Lulworth, giving the young Henry his first taste of warfare.
These were in his hands by the beginning of November. But
meanwhile, Stephen had returned to the offensive. Within a
month of the young prince’s landing, he had succeeded in besieg¬
ing Matilda in Oxford. Hence Robert, once he had achieved his
immediate object and made the coast secure for a possible retreat,
moved north to Cirencester with Henry, and assembled forces with
which to march to the relief of Oxford. But Matilda decided that
more urgent action was required, and took advantage of the onset
of winter to make a dramatic escape with four soldiers through tfie
snow and frost at the beginning of December. She was lowered
from the walls in a basket and, going through the enemy lines jn
a white mantle, crossed the frozen Thames on foot. At Abingdon,
the empress found horses, and rode to Wallingford. Although
THE TROUBLED LAND 33
Oxford, after a three months’ siege was in urgent need of relief, the
risks of defeat were considered too high for any attempt to be
made, and the bad weather hindered military operations. On
December 20 the city surrendered.
Robert and Henry had gone straight to Wallingford on
hearing of the empress’ flight, and there mother and son were
reunited for the first time in more than three years. It was a brief
meeting; soon afterwards, perhaps in the first weeks of 1143,
Henry was sent to Bristol, where his uncle’s court, similar to those
of the lesser counts of France in scale, was established. It was
distinguished by the men attached to it. Geoffrey of Monmouth
might be found there, author of the Historia Regum Britanniae: the
most popular of the mythical histories of the period, and a major
landmark in the development of the legend of King Arthur, to
delight future generations. Adelard of Bath was another man of
great learning attached to this circle; he had been studying Islamic
science since the first decade of the century, his chief interest being
astronomy. His work On the Astrolabe was dedicated to the young
Henry about the time that the prince was at Bristol.11 Henry’s
actual teacher was Master Matthew, who may have been Matilda’s
chancellor, under whom he continued his education, with the earl
of Gloucester’s son Roger as his fellow-pupil. It was now that he
laid the foundations of his great skill as a linguist in later years.
He remained at Bristol for less than two years, but Master
Matthew may have gone with him on his return to Normandy. He
crossed the Channel again, perhaps in answer to a summons from
his father, in 1144. Later, the English teacher was replaced by
William of Conches, one of the most distinguished thinkers of
the school of Chartres; and under his tutelage Henry completed his
education.
During Henry’s visit, the situation had changed little in
England; the only major undertaking on either side had been an
abortive attempt by Stephen to capture Lincoln. The power and
depredations of the independent barons was steadily increasing;
men like Geoffrey de Mandeville, earl of Essex, and William of
Aumale, succeeded in doing much damage to the kingdom before
they met the ijntimely deaths recorded with such heartfelt and
pious moralisings by the chroniclers. In Normandy, however, the
34 HENRY PLANTAGENET

fall of the city of Rouen on January 20, 1144, and the surrender
of its castle on April 23 meant that very little of Normandy re¬
mained outside Geoffrey’s power, since Avranches and the south¬
west had been subdued in the previous year. The only evidence of
Henry’s presence on the continent at the time is a single charter
which shows that he was at Angers in the early part of 1144,12
but whether he arrived in time to see the end of the operations at
Rouen, his father’s greatest hour of triumph, is doubtful. He was
probably with him when the last strongholds of the north-east
were overthrown during the next two years. Driencourt, on the
border, was taken with the help of a newly formed alliance with
Louis VII of France and count Thierry of Flanders. Under the
terms of this- Geoffrey did homage for Normandy, and hence¬
forward assumed the ducal title. With the fall of Arques the next
year, none remained to dispute his rule. He had already begun the
series of administrative reforms for which he and his son were to
become famous, and had added to his new territories a precious
piece of land on the French border known as the Vexin, com¬
prising the towns of Gisors, Neaufles and Dangu, given to him by
Louis under the treaty of 1144. The king of France was to have
cause to regret this later, when Henry made of it a key position in
the border strategy of Normandy against France.

During these years of exceptional activity, Henry was at an im¬

pressionable age. His father’s work was one important element in
the formation of his own ideas of the functions of a ruler. Geoffrey’s
entourage might lack models of piety or even men as expert at
combining religion and statesmanship as Suger, abbot of St Denis,
and Bernard of Cluny, later canonised, both of whom were to be
found at the French court, but the Angevin household was no
place for the indolent or luxury-loving. Geoffrey had given Anjou
an efficient governmental machine,13 and did much towards the
establishment of a similar regime in Normandy during his six years
as duke.14
In Anjou, he had established the power of the count’s
tribunal in such a way that it dealt not merely with cases that fell
within the scope of the ordinary feudal overlord, but also dis-
THE TROUBLED LAND 35
pensed justice directly; any plaintiff with good cause could apply
to it for redress. Normandy had already enjoyed a system of ducal
courts, but these had lapsed in the years of anarchy, and had to be
revived. This was done under a new form, called the assize. Royal
justice had previously been dispensed by the king’s agents, charged
equally with the administration of his lands and other aspects of
government, and whose titles and functions were varied and con¬
fusing in the extreme. The other duties were now separated, and
justice was transferred to special courts held once or twice a year in
each of the twenty-two ‘vicomfos’.
The finances of Normandy were also in disorder. Geoffrey
saw the need for a sound coinage, and to this end he seems to have
abolished the mint at Rouen, allowing only the Angevin coin and
the English sterling to be used, and issuing no new Norman cur¬
rency. Efficient and direct administration was needed, and the old
divisions, ‘vicomtes’, were for this purpose largely superseded by
bailiwicks under the care of their officials, the bailiffs. It was left
to Henry in later years to define the exact functions of these
officers. As to the recovery of the many royal estates which had
been purloined, Geoffrey was too dependent on the barons’ good¬
will to undertake this necessary step towards restoring the ducal
authority.

Geoffrey might have accomplished the first part of his task by

1146, but Matilda was no nearer her goal. She asked for help
from Geoffrey once again at the end of the year. He offered little
more encouragement than on the previous occasion; her son, in
nominal command of a small force, arrived in England at the
beginning of 1147. In spite of wild rumours about the enormous
size of the force and the huge resources of treasure brought over by
the Angevin expedition, the small number of his band of knights
soon became known. Furthermore, these had been hired on a
promise of^payment and not for ready cash: and when success
failed to materialise at the first castles that resisted them, at
Cricklade and Black Bourton, the prince’s army soon abandoned
him, leaving him in such desperate straits that he had to appeal
to his mother for money. She, unfortunately, was in a like predica¬
ment, and left England about Lent, never to return. Henry was
36 HENRY PLANTAGENET
now master of his own fortunes as far as claiming the English
throne was concerned. For the moment, however, there was little
he could do. He stayed on for some months, raising such funds as
he could. The death of Robert of Gloucester, his uncle and the
mainstay of the Angevin cause, was the final blow to his hopes;15
for when he applied to the new earl of Gloucester, his request for
money was met with a curt refusal. Surrender seemed dangerously
near; but, as a last hope, knowing something of his opponent’s
temperament, Henry sent an envoy in secret to the very king
whose throne he was attempting to claim, asking Stephen, as his
kinsman, to relieve his plight. He was rewarded for his boldness
with a sum sufficient to enable him to leave for France; nor do
any conditions seem to have been attached. Arriving at Bee on
Ascension Day, May 29, 1147, he was received by a solemn
procession of clergy and people. His first attempt to claim his
rightful kingdom had been a dismal failure; but Henry was only
fourteen, and such a reverse did little to damp his youthful hopes.
 2

The Winning of a Kingdom

T WO YEARS passed before Henry was allowed to make

another attempt to invade England: years of peace on both
sides of the Channel. In the meanwhile, his mother withdrew
from an active part in political affairs—a decision perhaps taken
before she returned from England. She was now forty-seven, and
her remaining years were darkened by prolonged illness. Her
husband showed no great interest in pressing her claim to the
English throne, and Henry was left to look after his own fortunes.
< Before he could take any positive action and lead an army in his
own right, he would have to become a knight; and it seems that
his father may have even tried to discourage him, for he could
quite well have performed the ceremony. Henry was obliged to
seek this honour, the twelfth-century equivalent of coming of age,
at the hands of his great-uncle, David of Scotland.1
Preparations for the expedition began in the spring of 1149,
and were rapidly completed, for at the end of March, Henry
landed on the south coast. By April 13 he was at Salisbury, where
he issued a charter founding an abbey at Lockswell ‘for the health
and salvation of Geoffrey, duke of Normandy, and count of Anjou’.
He then moved northwards by way of Gloucester, and reached
Carlisle just before Whitsun in the company of Roger, earl of
Hereford. Here he was received with great respect and sumptuous
preparations by David, his cousin Henry of Huntingdon, and the
earl of Chester. On the feast-day itself, May 22, the king of Scot¬
land ceremonially dubbed Henry knight. The young Plantagenet
could now claim his inheritance, and set out at once to do so.
Stephen immediately replied to this piece of propaganda by ar¬
ranging that his own son, Eustace, should be knighted.
?8 HENRY PLANTAGENET

David had brought with him a large army of Scots, and

with this force he and Henry moved south, intending to besiege
York and then join the earl of Chester at Lancaster.2 This cam¬
paign came to little,* the appearance of Stephen outside York
with a well equipped force caused the invaders to abandon their
designs on that city, and when Ranulf of Chester failed to arrive
as planned at Lancaster, the Scots returned home. Henry, in little
better case than on his previous expedition, was left to make his
way to the counties which remained true to his cause, in the south¬
west of England. His companions were a small body of knights
including the earl of Hereford; using wild and lonely paths, they
avoided capture and arrived at Hereford exhausted but reasonably
safe. Word of the Plantagenet’s arrival there reached Stephen, and
Eustace was sent to intercept Henry on his way to Bristol. How¬
ever, Henry was warned of this, and by leaving Dursley castle at
midnight, he stole a march on his would-be captors and succeeded
in eluding them.
Although Henry had failed to achieve any great exploits on
this expedition, this did not mean that his adherents were in¬
active or dispirited. Stephen himself was kept well occupied by
the hostile movements of the earls of Chester and Norfolk, and
by the garrison at Bedford. Henry now took advantage of Stephen’s
commitment elsewhere to enter Devon, where the latter’s party
were causing a considerable disturbance. The prince, with the
support of a large force assembled by the earls of Gloucester and
Hereford at Devizes, took the castle and town of Bridport.3 This
was his first personal military success, and although he was
certainly helped by more experienced soldiers, the boldness of the
undertaking bears the hallmark of Henry’s own character. He then
proceeded to ravage de Tracy’s lands, but the latter withdrew to
his castles, and before Henry could begin a siege, news came of an
impending attack on Wiltshire by Eustace. He at once sent on a
body of troops to reinforce the garrison of Devizes, and followed i^i
good order with the remainder. But Stephen’s son arrived before
the reinforcements could get inside the castle, and pillaged the
town. However, the garrison, encouraged by the arrival of their
friends, put up a spirited resistance, and the attackers had to beat
a hasty retreat to avoid serious losses.
THE WINNING OF A KINGDOM 39

In spite of these minor successes, it was nonetheless evident that

the Angevin partisans had neither the resources nor the deter¬
mination to bring matters to a head. Stephen’s forces were well
organised, and both the king and his son were commanders of
some ability. So Henry decided to return to his father’s lands, and
there to raise a more imposing force of Normans and Angevins
with which he could bring the conflict to a speedy and favourable
end. He arrived in Normandy in January 1150, and rejoined his
father in Anjou. Perhaps on the strength of reports of his prowess
in England, but more probably as part of an arrangement made
before the prince left in 1149, Geoffrey made over the duchy of
Normandy in a ceremony at Rouen. Henry now assumed the title
of ‘dux Normannorum’, duke of the Normans, which replaced
his previous epithet, ‘son of the duke of Normandy and count of
Anjou’ on all his official documents, which were issued on his
authority in ever-increasing numbers. He also acquired his own
chancellor, William de Vere, who had served his mother in this
capacity.4 For the most part, the men who had served and advised
his father in the duchy remained in their places; and there is no
evidence of changes in the inner circle of government. Reginald
de St Valery, Robert de Courcy, Robert de Neufbourg and
Richard de la Haye, who appear as seneschals, at the head of
the local administration, are all known to have served
Geoffrey. Some names occur for the first time: Humphrey de
Bohun, Richard du Hommet, and Warin Fitzgerald; but the
records of this period are so few that their earlier careers must
remain a mystery.
It was a generous gesture on Geoffrey’s part to surrender the
duchy,, having spent ten years and much energy on its conquest.
Although his claim to Normandy as Matilda’s husband was far
from universally recognised, he had done homage for it to Louis,
and was undisputedly its rightful ruler in feudal law; nor was he
under any obligation to give it up to his son, unless this was an
unrecorded condition made when he did homage. It may be that
Louis had laid down that the duchy was to be transferred when
Henry was knighted, which would explain Geoffrey’s apparent
reluctance to krfignt his son. But there is no trace of the rift be¬
tween father and son which such a situation would imply. In the
40 HENRY PLANTAGENET

event Henry was to prove less open-handed in similar circum¬

stances than his father, to his own detriment.
Under feudal law, any new vassal coming into possession of
a fief was supposed to do homage to his lord as soon as possible;
but it suited both Henry and Geoffrey to take advantage of the
weakness of Louis VTI, and delay the ceremony for as long as they
could, using it as a counter in their diplomatic manoeuvres. The
chief reason for this, from Geoffrey’s point of view, was a quarrel
with one of the lords on the southern border of Anjou. The castle
and town of Montreuil-Bellay, between Saumur and Thouars, was
in the hands of the Berlai family, who had been particularly
troublesome vassals. Geoffrey decided to make an example of
them, and laid siege to the castle. Unfortunately, the fortress
proved its reputation for exceptional strength by withstanding
him for three years, by which time its lord had invoked the aid
of Louis. The latter, however, was in no hurry to intervene, and
it was only in 1151, after Geofffey had at last taken Montreuil-
Bellay; that the French king invaded Normandy with the help of
Stephen’s son, Eustace. Henry was besieging a rebellious lord at
Torigny, near Caen, but on Louis’ appearance in the north-east, he
hastened to Arques, where, with a small army, he resisted the first
onslaught of the invaders. Meanwhile, Louis’ brother took La
Nue, belonging to an Angevin ally, only to have Geoffrey appear
and retake it. Louis then proceeded to burn S£ez, but in August
was confronted by the Angevin army across the Seine before he
could do any more damage. Neither side was prepared to risk open
battle, for there was the risk of total defeat; and hence the inter¬
vention of the clergy to make peace was welcomed. By the terms
of the truce, Geoffrey and Henry were to go to Paris to submit to
the arbitration of Bernard of Clairvaux.

When in August 1151 Henry rode into Paris at his father’s side,
it was his first visit to the chief city of Europe; for such was the
reputation enjoyed by the French capital. Distinguished intel¬
lectually by the presence of the most famous thinkers of the day,
it was also the home of the greatest contemporary theologians; for
all philosophical thought at this time was aimed at the furtherance
THE WINNING OF A KINGDOM 4i

of religion. Students flocked here from all western Christendom;

and about this time, the first organised courses of higher educa¬
tion since Roman days were beginning. Paris was the arbiter of
taste in other matters too; for even if Louis himself and his advisers
were of a pious turn of mind, his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, was
a champion of the new literature in the tongue of the common
people which was coming to the fore in tales of chivalry and rom¬
ance and in secular love-lyrics. What Paris lacked in wealth by
comparison with London, it made up for by its cosmopolitan out¬
look and population. If Rome was the heart of Christendom, Paris
was its head, containing all its intellectual ferment. All this could
not fail to make a deep impression on Henry, and it was rumoured
years later that he had fallen in love with Eleanor during this
visit; but the chronicler was probably indulging in a little wisdom
after the event.
The negotiations opened with Geoffrey in intransigent
mood. At first, he refused to consider the release of Gerald Berlai.
Braving threats of excommunication, he prayed instead that God
would never pardon his sin,6 following this by an abrupt with¬
drawal from the talks. However, he returned, and took a more
conciliatory line; in this change, we may detect Henry’s hand, for
the younger Plantagenet was thinking of his projects against
Stephen. For these, he needed peace in Normandy, even at a price.
There were special reasons for haste, since the hard winter of
1150-1 had added greatly to the distress and discontent in Eng¬
land, and this advatage would be lost with the new harvest. As
a result, Louis managed to extract a confirmation of the cession
of Gisors on the Franco-Norman border,* and the addition to this
of most of the rest of the Vexin. Henry had to perform a solemn
ceremony of homage to Louis for Normandy.
Peace had been made; and if the price was high, Louis
expected some reward for deserting his erstwhile ally Eustace by
making the pact. Henry might not rejoice over the outcome of the
negotiations, but he was now free to pursue his plans of conquest.
Now that Geofffey had at last settled the problem of his rebellious
vassal, he may have been prepared to offer his son some assistance
at last. The two retired to Maine on their departure from Paris,
* This reversed the terms of the treaty of 1144.
42 HENRY PLANTAGENET

and went their separate ways, having sent orders into Normandy
for an assembly of the barons at Lisieux on September 14, to take
council about the projected invasion of England.

Stephen’s position beyond the Channel was to remain unchal¬

lenged for another two years. As Geoffrey rode back with his en¬
tourage through the wooded hills of Maine, the heat of the late
summer became intolerable, and he halted to bathe in a wayside
pool on the road leading to Le Mans. But the cool inviting water
proved fatal; for soon afterwards, on September 7, the count of
Anjou died of a chill at the nearby castle of Chateau du Loir, aged
only thirty-eight. Henry hastened south, to find the nobles and
prelates awaiting his arrival before they took any steps to bury the
body of his father. Geoffrey knew the ambitious temper of his
eldest son, and had his own ideas as to the disposition of his lands
among Henry and his brothers on his death. He had required his
magnates to swear that they would not allow his body to be buried
until Henry had promised to obey the provisions of his will, with¬
out its being read. Henry hesitated, naturally enough, to take an
oath binding him to unknown provisions; but at the urgent in¬
sistence of his father’s closest companions, he did so, albeit with
bad grace. Then the count’s body was taken north to Le Mans,
twenty miles distant, where it was buried in the cathedral with all
due honour.
Once the funeral was over, Henry hastened to discover the
conditions to which he was bound. For the present, they were not
as irksome as he might have feared; his brother Geoffrey was to
have the three castles of Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau, in the
south-east of Anjou. These fortresses, a strategically important
group not thirty miles apart, were given by Henry to his brother
shortly afterwards. As to the second condition laid down by his
father, he had no intention of complying with it, since it was in
direct opposition to his own aims. By this clause, Geoffrey was rp
have Anjou and Maine, his father’s lands, as soon as Henry was
recognised as king of England, thus depriving Henry of half his
continental domains. Perhaps Geoffrey had in mind the long¬
standing enmity of Angevin and Norman and felt that the dissen¬
sions that might arise from such a union would be to the advantage
THE WINNING OF A KINGDOM 43
of neither land. He may not have expected Henry to regain Eng¬
land, or may have hoped to deter him from ventures beyond the
Channel; or finally, he may have been concerned to prevent trouble¬
some rivalry between brothers—all too frequent elsewhere at the
time—by providing each with an adequate territory. If Henry
ever contemplated carrying out the clause, he was to find further
cogent reasons for not doing so before the time came to fulfil its
terms.
For the moment, Henry made his way south from Le Mans
to Angers, where he was formally recognised by the barons of
Anjou as their rightful ruler. He spent the winter in Anjou and
Normandy, presumably consolidating his position and making new
arrangements for the attack on Stephen: a project he had by no
means abandoned. A council was arranged at Lisieux, on April 6,
1152; but greater matters intervened yet again, of an even more
unexpected nature.

In July 1137, when Henry was a mere four years old, Louis VII
of France had married the orphan heiress of Aquitaine, the fifteen-
year-old Duchess Eleanor. Eleanor’s father had placed her in the
ward of Louis VI; and since the latter was an astute politician, he
had secured her vast inheritance in central and southern France
for the royal house by marrying her to his son. Like so many
political marriages, no account was taken of the temperaments of
the pair. Eleanor belonged to a race of troubadours and warriors.
Her grandfather, William IX, had been one of the first of the new
southern poets. The Poitevin barons were renowned for their inde¬
pendent turn of mind, and peace was rare for their lords; even
when a\r rare' intervals their vassals were quiet, the dukes of
Aquitaine devoted the respite to expansion rather than to internal
affairs: crusades against the infidel in Spain, such as that under¬
taken by Eleanor’s grandfather in 1120, or the conquest of new
territory; William IX took the county of Toulouse, only to lose
it again, leaving a long-standing claim which succeeding masters
of his duchy tried to enforce.
The queen of France had inherited in full measure the
character and energy of her predecessors, and perhaps their inclina-
44 HENRY PLANTAGENET

tion for the sports of love as well. She made a remarkable im¬
pression on her contemporaries in days when queens appeared in
history only at their marriages, at the birth of heirs, and at their
pious deaths. Only Matilda enjoyed comparable attention, and
then only for a much briefer period. Both were held up by
rhetorical chroniclers as warning examples: Matilda for her in¬
solent pride and Eleanor for her lasciviousness. Around the latter
judgement a fierce controversy has raged; but since the evidence is
little more than a series of opinions by men hardly qualified to
judge, the verdict is now generally agreed to be one of acquittal
for lack of adequate grounds. It is only in contrast with her hus¬
band, Louis, that she might fairly be called wanton; for Louis’
gentle and pious nature was more suited to the religious than to the
royal life. Eleanor’s reputed reaction after fifteen years of bore¬
dom is perhaps just: ‘I have married a monk, not a king!’6 Her
conduct had only once occasioned specific reproach: during her
journey to Palestine with Louis on the Second Crusade, her in¬
trigues with Raymond of Antioch, who wished to divert the
French army to his own ends, had led to an accusation of mis¬
conduct with him. Since he was her uncle, and the indictment was
made forty years later by a chronicler who disliked this prince, the
foundation for the judgement is very slender. It can be explained
by the natural pleasure of Eleanor at finding congenial company
after two months of hardship on the journey from Constantinople,
which may have led her to commit some slight indiscretion. Besides,
her lack of high intent compared unfavourably with Louis’ stead¬
fast earnest. Other calumnies of this sort are counterbalanced by
the testimony of John of Salisbury, who was at the papal court
when the French king and queen passed through Tusculum on their
return from the East on October 9 and 10, 1149.’ He explicitly
tells us that it was one of Eleanor’s enemies who enjoyed the king’s
confidence and had been responsible for nurturing Louis’ suspicions.
Eleanor had deeply wounded the king by pointing out that they
were related within the prohibited degrees for marriage, and that
since there was no son it would be proper to dissolve the union.
Louis was torn between his religious feelings and his undoubted
love for his wife.8 In spite of the pope’s attempt to reconcile the
pair, and his anathema against anyone who mentioned their rela-
THE WINNING OF A KINGDOM 45
tionship, religion prevailed over a passionate, ‘almost childish’,
feeling for Eleanor in Louis’ mind.
Politically the situation was more difficult still. After
fifteen years, Eleanor had only produced two daughters, instead of
the son that the king’s councillors so urgently desired. Divorce,
as the queen had perhaps suggested, was the proper remedy for
this situation; but if she went her own way, more than half the
French kingdom—her inheritance of Aquitaine—would have to be
surrendered with her. Hence the decision was no easy one: on the
one hand, the kingdom’s future stability, on the other its very
character and existence, were in the balance. Even if the king had
had genuine cause to complain about the queen’s behaviour on
the crusade, his most trusted adviser, Suger, the abbot of St
Denis, would certainly have refused to allow him to initiate the
necessary proceedings.9 But on Suger’s death, in January 1151,10
the counsels of Bernard of Clairvaux prevailed, and, chiefly on
religious grounds, but relying also on dynastic and personal argu¬
ments, the king decided on separation. When the two Angevin
rulers arrived in Paris in August of that year, Louis’ mind may
have been made up already; but the romantic accounts of Henry
and Eleanor’s first meeting have no other foundation than specula¬
tion. The possibility of their marriage could not have entered into
the calculations of the most far-sighted political observer. Al¬
though they were two of the most fascinating figures of their age
to their contemporaries, there is no reason why, a generation apart
(Henry was eighteen and Eleanor twenty-nine), they should have
been attracted to each other, and even less evidence of it in their
subsequent career. The idea that Eleanor asked for the divorce,11
whether to marry Henry or for any other reason, is equally a pro¬
duct of fahtasy; she may not have been averse to the project, and
may have taunted Louis with the suggestion, but the final decision
remained entirely in Louis’ hands.
So at the beginning of 1152, Louis left for Aquitaine with
Eleanor, demolished the fortifications he had erected, and with¬
drew the officials he had sent from his own court to run Eleanor’s
lands as part of his domains.12 On March 11, a solemn council
of all the prelates of France assembled at Beaugency under the
presidency of the archbishop of Sens. Having heard evidence as
46 HENRY PLANTAGENET

to the relationship of Eleanor and Louis, which was proved to be

within the fourth degree according to canon law, this body pro¬
nounced the marriage null and void on March 21. The sentence
was of doubtful validity, ‘arranged with much toil and by specious
oath’. Although no formal endorsement of the marriage had been
issued by the pope, strong verbal prohibitions had been laid by him
on any attempt to dissolve it.13

Eleanor left at once for Blois, intending to make her way to

Poitiers. But she was now a rich prize for any lord who could
capture her and marry her. Louis, by a fatal oversight, had failed
to make any definite arrangement by which he could retain con¬
trol over her remarrying or over her lands, holding that the usual
right of feudal wardship would be adequate. She had to leave
Blois hurriedly when the attentions of count Theobald became too
pressing, and reached Tours in safety. Henry’s younger brother,
Geoffrey heard of her arrival and decided to try his luck. Fortun¬
ately, Eleanor was warned of the ambush laid for her by the
seventeen-year-old adventurer; and instead of leaving on the usual
road southwards from the Porte des Piles, eluded him by going
another way. Avoiding Geoffrey’s three castles, she covered the
last fifty miles to her capital, Poitiers, in safety.
Once she reached Poitou, she set about putting her domains
in order; but there could be no security until she had found a new
husband capable of maintaining her authority. Of the eligible
lords, one stood out above all others as a fitting match. His
domains bordered those of Aquitaine, and as a potential rival he
was more dangerous than any other. Although much younger than
herself, his skill in warfare and government were already well
known. It was these reasons, and not her personal emotions, which
made Henry, count of Anjou, duke of Normandy, and rightful
heir to England, the obvious choice for Eleanor’s point of view.
An alliance in marriage with him would create a formidable
empire, in whose government Eleanor might expect to play a paft,
If Henry had been inactive until now, and had not joined
in the attempts to waylay Eleanor, it was neither from ignorance
of the situation nor from collusion between him and the mistress
of Aquitaine. That she secretly sent messengers to him to offer
 GENEALOGY OF THE HOUSE OF CAPET

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48 HENRY PLANTAGENET

her hand to the duke of Normandy and count of Anjou, is most un¬
likely;14 if such a mission arrived, it was almost certainly in order
to bring an acceptance of an offer made by him. As to his inaction:
he had been a hundred miles north of the duchess’ route, and
could have done no good by a sudden pursuit. The council of
barons at Lisieux, originally intended to discuss military prepara¬
tions, was now asked to approve the duke’s scheme for marriage
instead. Arrangements were soon completed. Although in strict
feudal law, Louis’ permission as overlord was needed, and in
strict canon law a papal dispensation because of their relationship
should have been obtained, no notice was.taken of these potential
hindrances. The rule that vassals about to marry required the con¬
sent of their lord was respected more often in the breach than in
the observance, although Eleanor, who was an heiress and tech¬
nically Louis’ ward, was more open to criticism than Henry on this
point.15 As for the papal dispensation: Louis had not troubled to
obtain one when he married Eleanor, and Henry stood in exactly
the same relationship to her as her former husband had done. A
project of marriage between Eleanor’s daughter Marie and Henry
had been rejected in 1146, six years before, on precisely these
grounds; but Bernard of Clairvaux was responsible for this, and
he was particularly scrupulous over such matters. The other pos¬
sible objection to the marriage was pure scandal: it was rumoured
that Geoffrey had prohibited his son from marrying Eleanor
because she had become his mistress while he was at the French
court as seneschal of France.16 But the story assumes incredible
foresight on Geoffrey’s part, and merely shows how ready the
chroniclers were to believe the worst of Eleanor.
The Norman duke hastened southwards to Poitiers, where
the marriage was celebrated on May 18, 1152. At a single stroke,
he had extended his sway southwards to the foot of the Pyrenees,
and westwards to the Atlantic coast—the edge of the known world;
and he could lay claim to the lands running down to the Mediter¬
ranean shore: in all, an empire such as had not been seen in dhe
West since the death of Charlemagne three centuries before.
Besides this, one of the most celebrated beauties of the age, whose
charms he was more likely to appreciate than the monkish Louts,
was now his wife. A little of her loveliness survives in four por-
THE WINNING OF A KINGDOM 49

traits of her in stone and in glass that have come down to us; but
she lives on more vividly in the troubadour’s verses:

Waer diu werlt alliu min If all the lands were mine,
von dem mere unz an den Rin, From sea’s edge to the Rhine,
des wolt ih mih darben, I’d gladly lose them all
daz diu kiinegin von Engellant To have the queen of England
ltege an minen armen. Lying in my arms.

There was only one cloud on the horizon: the immediate and active
response of Louis to the situation. He summoned Henry to his
court to answer for his disobedience, a command with which the
Plantagenet could hardly be expected to comply. When his vassal
failed to appear, Louis formed a coalition with Geoffrey (Henry’s
brother) and Theobald of Blois—Henry’s unsuccessful rivals—and
with a group of rebellious Angevin barons. When this news reached
him, Henry was once more on the point of leaving for England;
this time he had actually assembled his forces at Barfleur, and was
about to embark.
Swift action was needed, and Henry provided it. He first
marched to the relief of Neufmarch£, on the eastern border of
Normandy. This fortress surrendered before his arrival, and he
turned south instead, ravaging the Vexin en route, to meet Louis,
who had crossed the border fifty miles north of Paris and was
threatening Pacy. On the appearance of the Norman troops, the
French king retreated within his domains, to Mantes, and Henry,
after invading Dreux and burning Moulins, garrisoned the Norman
frontier. Feeling that the situation in the north was now safe
enough for him to turn to the suppression of Geoffrey’s revolt in
Anjou, lje first won over his brother’s chief allies, who surrendered
Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau. He then took Montsoreau, where
he captured many important rebels, including Geoffrey himself.
This success dissolved the French coalition; Louis had fallen ill,
and a truce’was made soon afterwards, leaving Henry, who had
spent barely two months in dealing with the rebels, free to turn to
other affairs.17
He speyt part of the winter making a progress through
Aquitaine with Eleanor, of which only one incident has been
50 HENRY PLANTAGENET

recorded. While at Limoges, he demanded the maintenance

customarily given to the ruler of Poitou when he visited the town
by the monastery of St Martial. The monks refused, on the grounds
that he was not resident in the castle, but living in a tent pitched
outside the walls; whereupon, in a fit of Angevin temper, he gave
orders that the outer walls, recently erected for the defence of
monastery and town, should be thrown down. The rest of the
journey was probably occupied by more constructive work, its
aim being the establishment of a stable regime, loyal to Henry and
Eleanor, among her notoriously independent vassals.
Journeying northwards once more, Henry arrived at Bar-
fleur about the turn of the year, to resume his interrupted plans.
The situation in England had in the interval become even more
favourable to his cause. During the previous year, Stephen had
attempted to obtain papal permission to have his son crowned
during his own lifetime as heir to England; but the promise of
Eustace’s earlier years, when he and Henry had been rivals in
military exploits, had not been fulfilled. The pope, perhaps in¬
fluenced by an emissary from Theobald, archbishop of Canter¬
bury, one Thomas Becket, who described Eustace’s brutality and
lack of statesmanship, refused to allow the coronation. Thus the
pope tacitly favoured Henry’s claims. Stephen’s party were further
disheartened by Henry’s success abroad; his youth, energy and
skill in war and politics contrasted sharply with the king’s reputa¬
tion.

Henry’s host sailed from Barfleur in thirty-six ships, and landed

in England somewhere on the Hampshire or Dorset coast on
January 6, 1153.18 His forces numbered perhaps 140 knights and
ten times as many foot. The duke’s first action was to enter a
nearby chapel, where mass was being said, and the opening words
of the lesson, it being Epiphany, gave him as favourable an augury
as he could have wished: ‘Behold the Lord our governor, and thfe
kingdom in his hand.’ His first objective was to besiege Malmes¬
bury, which while it was held by Stephen’s supporters threatened
the communications between his two centres of support, Bristol
and Gloucester. His troops soon took the surrounding town, but
THE WINNING OF A KINGDOM 51
in so doing entered the church, which they pillaged, and, murder¬
ing several monks and priests, committed sacrilege. Henry, horri¬
fied by this and fearing possible reactions of opinion, at once
sent the chief offenders back across the Channel; and their ship¬
wreck was regarded as a divine judgement on their sin. Stephen
had meanwhile heard of the predicament of his garrison, and
hastened to their relief; he drew up his army outside the town in a
fierce storm, which was blowing in the faces of his men, but before
a pitched battle ensued, the terms of a truce were agreed by which
the castle was to be demolished.19 However, the agent sent by
King Stephen to supervise the demolition decided that the duke’s
party offered better prospects, and in return for the restoration of
his lands, handed over the castle intact. Stephen, discomfited,
withdrew; and Henry’s men, exhausted by the long siege, rested
for a while before resuming the campaign.
Henry himself made a tour of the west, perhaps to obtain
further support, visiting Devizes, Evesham and Gloucester, before
he made renewed attempts on castles held by Stephen. He was
successful in raising a small number of new followers, of whom
the most important was Robert, earl of Leicester, whose thirty
castles in the Midlands were a valuable asset, his support being
won in return for a charter of rights. He then moved to the Mid¬
lands, where, after visiting Leicester on June 7, he laid siege to
earl Ferrers’ castle of Tutbury, on the advice of Robert of Leicester.
This well-fortified stronghold withstood a long siege, but Henry
brought it to a successful conclusion when the earl and his
followers joined the Angevin party. Meanwhile, another force
had taken Warwick, and his position in central England was
almost unchallenged. Bedford was pillaged, but the castle still
held out* Going on to Stamford, where he was encamped on
August 31, Henry met with more success, taking town and castle;
but at Nottingham, the castle garrison fired the town and he was
forced to retreat.20 The king was hampered during this time by
Hugh Bigod, earl of Norfolk, who kept him under constant pres¬
sure, and hindered him from sending help to any of the castles
which Henry besieged.
But the important fortress which the duke had intended to
relieve after Malmesbury still remained under siege; this was the
52 HENRY PLANTAGENET

castle of Wallingford, commanding the Thames valley above

Reading. Stephen had built Crowmarsh castle just across the
river, with the object of preventing access and starving out the
garrison, and it was this that Henry attacked. He was at first
repulsed by Stephen’s men, who kept themselves hidden until
the last moment and succeeded in surprising their enemies; but
gathering a large force, he returned, undeterred, to the attack.
Stephen countered by sending an advance guard of 300 horse into
Oxfordshire to harass the duke while the main royal army
assembled, and at some time in October, the two armies faced
each other in their encampments on opposite sides of the Thames.
Stephen barricaded the bridge, but Henry, by an act of great
daring, took this and pitched his tents less than half a mile from
those of Stephen’s troops. As usual in such circumstances, the
consequences of a pitched battle seemed too fraught with danger
for either side to risk its fortunes, and parleys were begun on the
suggestion of the earl of Arundel. Henry and Stephen held a
long private discussion alone on horseback in the plain between
their armies, at the end of which a truce and the razing of Crow-
marsh within a few days were ordered, and negotiations for a
permanent peace begun. It was not until November 6, however,
that Henry went to Winchester to meet Stephen, at the instiga¬
tion of the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of Win¬
chester. Here the parties concerned agreed on terms: terms which
were greatly affected by events during the late summer and autumn.
For Eustace had ravaged Cambridgeshire and the land round
Bury St Edmunds at the beginning of August, committing fresh
acts of sacrilege: in apparent retribution, he was stricken by a
sudden illness which carried him off on the tenth of the month.
The earl of Northampton and the earl of Chester, ‘whose hand,
like Ishmael’s, was against every man’, also died about this time;
and prospects for a final peace were greatly improved thereby.
William of Warenne, Stephen’s illegitimate son, was neither inter¬
ested in nor fitted for the crown, and hence Henry was now tfi&
only serious contender for his grandfather’s inheritance.

The treaty of Winchester, agreed in November 1153, marked the

end of eighteen years’ sporadic warfare in which neither side had
THE WINNING OF A KINGDOM 53
decisively defeated the other, in spite of circumstances which had
strongly favoured Henry during the last months of the struggle.
The result was a compromise, and not a particularly workable one
at that, couched in general terms. No complete and reliable copy
of its text survives, but its conditions can be reconstructed. Henry
was accepted by Stephen as his heir, and Henry’s heirs after him,
and surety was given for the succession; in return for which the
duke did homage to Stephen as king. Henry was to have some
share in the government of England, although whether it was as
adviser or as co-ruler remains doubtful. William of Warenne was
to have the lands held by his father before he became king, which
were very carefully specified, and to do homage to Henry for
them. Stephen was to ensure that none of his castles or fortresses
should be a hindrance to Henry’s succession to the throne: a clause
which perhaps included instructions for the demolition of all such
strongholds erected since 1135. Mercenaries were to be expelled,
the disinherited restored to their lands, the laws universally en¬
forced, and ancient privileges renewed. Each of the articles was
sound in itself, but no account was taken of possible obstacles
and objections, nor were any tangible suggestions for their im¬
plementation included.21 Barons on both sides would resist the
destruction of their castles, and both king and duke would have
difficulty in subjecting their faithful supporters to such terms,
which would not seem the best reward for long service in the face
of adversity, particularly when it came to depriving them of lands
which, however wrongfully obtained, had been theirs for fifteen
years.
Duke and king proceeded from Winchester to London to¬
gether, where the terms were solemnly confirmed amid general
rejoicing^and at a great council at Oxford about January 13,1154,
the barons did homage to Henry as their future king. Stephen
and Henry returned to London. The difficulties which the treaty
involved now became apparent: the country was still under two
administrations, as it had been for so many years, and even the
small efforts towards improving the situation envisaged at Win¬
chester caused dissension. Soon afterwards, at Dunstable, an argu¬
ment developed? over the demolition of the ‘adulterine’ castles,
which almost led to a renewed rupture in relations. Nonetheless,
54 HENRY PLANTAGENET

at the beginning of Lent the king and duke still went together to
Canterbury and thence to Dover to meet count Thierry of Flanders.
They finally parted company at Rochester. Unaware of plots by
Flemish mercenaries, who had good reason to fear the peace that
he might bring, Henry returned safely to Normandy after a visit
to London, in April 1154.

In spite of raids on the Norman border by Louis in July 1152,

who burnt Verneuil and unsuccessfully attacked Vernon, little
had happened since Henry’s departure for England. Louis was in¬
capable of taking a properly garrisoned and provisioned castle,
and Henry had made all the necessary defensive arrangements
before crossing the Channel. Only one event of importance had
occurred: Eleanor had borne Henry a son, William, on August 17
of the previous year (1153), thus ensuring the Plantagenet suc¬
cession, and adding insult to Louis’ injury, since in fifteen years
she had given him only two daughters.
Henry could now turn aside from military matters to the
problem of securing his authority in Normandy. This he did by
gradually revoking the grants made by his father, a matter for
extreme caution and prudence, which he carried out without
meeting serious resistance. He then suppressed a minor revolt in
Aquitaine, and followed this by making peace with Louis; by this
he regained Verneuil and Neufmarch6 for a cash payment, and
obtained Louis’ formal renunciation of the title of duke of Aqui¬
taine, which he had continued to use after his divorce from
Eleanor. At some time in September, Henry was forced by a serious
illness to curb his activity, but he had recovered by October, when
he helped Louis to suppress a revolt in the Vexin. The rift between
Plantagenet and Capetian was always purely one of policy, and the
two men seem to have liked each other, in spite of the great differ¬
ences between their respective characters. When they parted,
Henry went to deal with the rebellious lord of Torigny, whose
castle he had besieged without success three years earlier; and It-
was here that the news of Stephen’s death reached him.
The last month of his rival’s reign had been spent besieging
and destroying castles in the north, the last being that of Drax m
Yorkshire. He had then come south again to Dover for a second
THE WINNING OF A KINGDOM 55

meeting with the count of Flanders, probably over a projected

crusade. Not long after this, he caught a slight chill and died at
Faversham on October 25, where he was buried. Messengers left
at once to inform the archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald, and
Henry. Thanks to the former, although ‘England was without a
king for almost six weeks . . . the peace was not disturbed, by
God’s grace, either for love or fear of the new ruler’.
Henry had waited to take the castle at Torigny before going
to Barfleur, where contrary winds delayed him for a month. He
landed in his new kingdom on December 8, 1154, accompanied by
Eleanor and his brothers, Geoffrey and William, and hastened to
London. There, on the Sunday before Christmas, December 19,
he was crowned by Archbishop Theobald according to the ancient
ritual of the realm. At twenty-one, Henry Plantagenet was king of
England, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, count of Anjou and
Maine, and the greatest ruler in the western world.
3
A Prince Among Princes

T HE SURVIVING portraits of Henry bear little resemblance

in their conventional glibness to the striking figure preserved
for us in the verbal descriptions of his contemporaries. A little
over medium height, his stocky, well-built figure proclaimed his
great physical strength, his slightly bowed legs his incessant
journeying on horseback. His face, square and leonine, with a
freckled complexion, flame-red hair and beard, and prominent grey
eyes, reflected his rapidly changing moods and fierce energy;
when in a good temper, his expression was soft and gentle, but in
the storm of his quick anger, his eyes became bloodshot and his
handsome features flushed dark red, his voice grew more harsh and
cracked than usual. His clothes were always becoming. In his
early years he never dressed extravagantly; it seems that towards
the end of his reign, the sums spent on royal robes figured as a
considerable item in the exchequer accounts.1 He shunned the
long hair and carefully kept hands of his more luxurious courtiers,
wearing gloves only when hawking and keeping his head close-
cropped, because, it was rumoured, he feared baldness.2 Among
his Anglo-Norman barons, he always wore the short Angevin
cloak, which by contrast with their long robes earned him the
nickname of Curtmantle.3
His habits were at once the wonder and despair of those
around him. Frugal in both eating and drinking from fear <5f
corpulence, he was no lover of comforts; restless to a fault, he
never sat down except to eat—much to the annoyance of his
courtiers, who had to stand also. He would hear state business
even at mass, and was always travelling, ‘moving in intolerable
A PRINCE AMONG PRINCES 57

stages like a courier’. On one occasion, he rode sixteen miles

through blinding rain at night across the mountains from St
Davids to Pembroke;4 and his followers made this their chief
complaint against him. To the four things that Solomon called
hard to discern—‘the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a
serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea,
and the way of a man with a maid’—this age had added a fifth,
or so they were accustomed to say: the way of king Henry on his
joumeyings.6

‘If the king had promised to remain in a place for that day—
and especially when he has announced his intention publicly
by the mouth of a herald—he is sure to upset all the arrange¬
ments by departing early in the morning. As a result, you see
men dashing around as if they were mad, beating their pack-
horses, running their carts into one another—in short, giving
a lively imitation of Hell. If, on the other hand, the king
orders an early start, he is certain to change his mind, and
you can take it for granted that he will sleep until mid-day.
Then you will see the packhorses loaded and waiting, the
carts prepared, the courtiers dozing, traders fretting, and
everyone grumbling. . . . When our couriers had gone ahead
almost the whole day’s ride, the king would turn aside to
some other place where he had, it might be, just a single house
with accommodation for himself and no one else. I hardly
dare say it, but I believe that in truth he took a delight in
seeing what a fix he put us in. After wandering some three or
four miles in an unknown wood, and often in the dark, we
thought ourselves lucky if we stumbled upon some filthy
little* hovel. There was often a sharp and bitter argument
about a mere hut, and swords were drawn for possession of a
lodging that pigs would have shunned.'6

Even his pleasures were active and energetic; hunting was his chief
delight, and the only reason for which he would abandon affairs
of state was for the enjoyment of the chase. For instance, when
he was due to meet Thomas Becket at Northampton in the most
dramatic of the many crises of his reign, he turned aside instead
58 HENRY PLANTAGENET

to spend the day hawking on the rivers and streams that lay along
his route.7 When he had planned a day’s hunting, he would be
up and in the saddle at crack of dawn, riding across the wildest
terrain, over moor and waste land, through forest depths, into the
heart of mountain ranges, in pursuit of his quarry. His skill as
huntsman and falconer was renowned, and his name is connected
with one of the earliest scientific treatises on falcons, drawn from
older Norman and Anglo-Saxon lore on the subject.8 Through¬
out his reign, the Exchequer accounts are full of records of hawks
and falcons bought for the king’s use; on one occasion, Henry
spent over £56 on sending a ship to Norway to buy falcons there,
and some tenants paid for their lands at the rate of so many falcons
per year.9 Men who wished to obtain a speedy hearing of their
lawsuits knew that a good falcon was the gift most acceptable to
the king.10
It was during his reign that the royal forests probably
reached their greatest extent, covering, according to one estimate,
one third of the whole country. Inside their boundaries, red and
fallow deer and boar were the chief game; roe deer were less
prized since they tended to drive away the other species. The
royal huntsmen used a mixed pack of hounds in the pursuit of their
quarry; liam hounds started the beast, greyhounds pursued it by
sight, and brachets followed its scent. When a boar was being
hunted, the object was to kill as quickly as possible; the hounds
would hold it at bay until it charged, when the hunter would
spear it, often a dangerous task since the spear had to be held
rigidly and at the correct angle if the beast’s impetus was to be
stopped before the slashing tusks could reach the man. Then the
ritual of venery, the correct cutting of the carcass, would begin.
With deer, on the other hand, the quarry was run by the hounds
until they brought it down and the huntsman’s falchion dispatched
it.
Hawking was a less energetic and more skilful pursuit, and
one in which ladies were allowed to join. Many kinds of birds <3f
prey were used; in later years, legislation was to reserve their use to
different ranks of men according to the esteem in which they were
held. The great jerfalcons of Greenland, Iceland and Norway were
reserved for royalty; and Henry certainly used these birds and
A PRINCE AMONG PRINCES 59
prized them highly. On one occasion, just before he crossed to
Ireland, his Norway falcon was set upon by a Welsh merlin and
killed, an event which aroused some ominous comment. The more
common peregrine was, under the same statute, deemed appropri¬
ate for earls, the goshawk for the yeoman, the sparrow-hawk for
priests. Merlins were allotted to knights, being between the fal¬
cons and hawks in size and power. Whichever bird was used, it
had to be carefully trained and cared for; but the time spent on
this was repaid by superb sport. The usual practice was to either
fly the bird ‘out of the hood’, that is, take off its hood and release
it from the wrist when the game was sighted, or to make it ‘wait
on’, hovering above its master until beaters or dogs on the ground
flushed the game from cover; birds of all sizes, from herons down¬
wards, were the quarry.

Such were Henry’s favourite recreations; but beside the primitive

energy which he devoted to them, he was also the possessor of an
acute mind that delighted in quick wit or in eloquence, as illustra¬
ted by an incident from the life of St Hugh of Lincoln. The bishop
had incurred his displeasure for excommunicating a royal servant.
When he came in answer to the king’s summons, he found him
and his court resting in a forest clearing. No one moved or greeted
him, knowing how matters stood between him and the king; and
Henry ignored him, asking instead after a few minutes’ silence for
needle and thread, with which he began to stitch up a leather
bandage on one of his fingers. The bishop realised that this was all
for his benefit, to intimidate him and make him withdraw his ex-
communication and plead for pardon; but, knowing Henry, he
merely bided his time, and at last said: ‘How like your cousins of
Falaise you are.’ Henry dissolved into helpless laughter, and finally
explained to his amazed courtiers that the jest referred to his great¬
grandfather William, reputedly the son of a tanner’s daughter
from Falaise. The bishop was at once restored to the royal favour.11
Nor, in an age when the idea that kings should be literate
was a novel one, was Henry daunted by scholarship; he had re¬
ceived a particularly good education, and enjoyed arguing with the
learned men wflp frequented his court. He read a great deal when
affairs of state permitted, and it was said that he knew every
6o HENRY PLANTAGENET

language from the coasts of France to the river Jordan. Perhaps

this was an exaggeration, since very few of the most learned men
of his day knew Greek or Hebrew: but that he continued the
family tradition for wide culture, best represented by his great-
uncle and cousin, Baldwin III and Amalric I of Jerusalem, is un¬
questionable.
The king was equally accessible to scholars and to the
meanest of his subjects, and if he knew how to delay affairs that
he did not wish to settle, he could not be accused of being difficult
of approach. As soon as he left his residence, he might be assailed
by a crowd of noisy suitors, shouting their pleas and complaints,
and dragging the king along with them; yet he would hear each
man out, and bear no anger for the almost physical violence
offered to his person, although, if too hard pressed, he would
withdraw again to more peaceful places.12

Apart from the work of government, Henry’s major legacy to his

successors was his great series of buildings, both for war and peace.
To him many English castles owe their existence, most notably
the great keep at Dover, guarding the gateway to England. The
stone building that looks out over the Channel today has only once
fallen into foreign hands, and the £6,000 that Henry spent on
replacing the wooden structure left by the Conqueror has proved a
good investment. At Orford, an experimental design was used for
the keep of the castle that was to deter both the Flemish in¬
vader from landing there and the ambitions of Hugh Bigod; and
although now ruined, the polygonal tower still stands by the
peaceful Suffolk estuary. Other fortresses at Newcastle and Bowes
were constructed on the more conventional square keep design.
Elsewhere, the old wooden motte and bailey design, providing
little more than a fortified enclosure, was replaced by stonework.
With peaceful ends in mind, the castles at Winchester, Windsor
and Nottingham were converted into residences in keeping with
the royal dignity, combining for the first time some degree of coni--
fort with the more austere demands of defence,13 although lesser
castles such as Marlborough and Arundel had their gardens and
other amenities.14 Less of Henry’s military building remains
abroad; Gisors, now ruined, Chinon, of which parts survive be-
 A PRINCE AMONG PRINCES 61

neath later work, and Niort in Poitou were the chief products of
his activity, besides large-scale rebuilding at Arques, Neaufles and
Neufmarch£ in the eastern part of Normandy.15
As to Henry’s secular residences, these fall into two classes:
the humbler houses and lodges associated with the royal forests,
and the great residences at which he held court.16 Most of the first
type lay well within the boundaries of the royal hunting-grounds,
and were no more than adequate resting-places, with a hall,
kitchen, chamber and chapel and separate gatehouse inside a
moated palisade. The king was rarely likely to use these lodges for
long periods, and no large retinue had to be provided for. The
palaces—no other word describes their spacious proportions and
luxurious details—at Westminster, Woodstock and Clarendon
were a different matter.17 Westminster was not only the chief
royal residence in Britain, but also the home of the exchequer and
the king’s court. Although the main treasury remained at Win¬
chester, Henry set up a subsidiary branch here and established the
palace by the Thames as the centre of his administration. With
, two great halls, a great chamber and wardrobe for the king’s use,
apartments for the queen, besides the usual domestic offices and a
quay on the river, it was so complex a cluster of buildings that a
resident engineer, Ailnoth, was needed to supervise repairs and
construction there throughout Henry’s reign. The internal decora¬
tions and finish were still primitive, however, in spite of the use
of glass windows in some parts of the building.18 Panelling may
also have been used: but the rush-strewn floor and central open
fire, the smoke from which escaped through a vent in the roof, were
to be found in the meanest baron’s hall and in the king’s most
magnificent dwelling alike.
Clarendon and Woodstock were similar in that they both
developed from hunting-lodges of earlier days. By the end of
Henry’s reign, Clarendon boasted a great hall with pillared arcades
and a dais at one end; a chapel with marble columns; and a variety
of chambers, kitchens and other domestic offices, including a vast
wine-cellar. Woodstock, though it could not rival Clarendon's
situation overlooking the valley where Salisbury now lies, was a
more interesting place. The house itself was on the same lines as
Clarendon, but had fascinating associations. Here it was that
6z HENRY PLANTAGENET

Henry’s amours with Rosamund were reputed to have taken place;

and it seems that a small group of buildings not far from the
palace itself formed a rural retreat which was the setting of this
dalliance. The nearest parallel to this pavilion was to be found in
Sicily, where the Norman kings took their ease in such ornamental
summer-houses as this. Everswell, as these buildings were called,
was grouped round three pools, the plan of which John Aubrey
drew in the seventeenth century; and it is curious that the whole
setting of a particular episode in the legend of Tristram and Iseult
was re-created here. ‘In this poem the lovers were accustomed to
meet in an orchard near the royal castle in which Isolde lived.
This orchard was surrounded by a strong palisade, and at one end
of it there was a spring from which water first tilled a marble
pool, and then continued in a narrow channel which ran through
Isolde’s apartments in such a way that Tristan was able to com¬
municate with her by dropping twigs into the stream. Whether at
Woodstock the channel actually passed through Rosamund’s
chamber is not clear, but the chamber and the running water were
undoubtedly in close proximity. Everswell, in fact, provided the
complete tnise en scene of the poetic episode: the enclosed orchard;
the spring with the stream flowing first into an artificial pool
and then into a narrow channel; the chamber or “bower”; and
finally the lovers, in the persons of Henry and Rosamund.’19
Since the poem was certainly known to Henry, and one version
may even have been written for him, it is far from impossible that,
once he had decided on the building of such a pavilion—which,
if we might hazard a not improbable conjecture, may well have
been planned for Eleanor in the first place—he should model it
on the poet’s fancy.
Henry left no Other monuments' in England. There is no
English parallel to the great hospitals at Angers (1173) and Le
Mans (1180) which still survive, although put to different use;
the great hall of the former is one of the remaining glories of the
secular architecture of the period. A similar foundation at CaSn
(1159) no longer exists, and the park of Qu^villy, originally made
for Henry's own pleasure but later turned by him to charitable
uses, has also vanished. More impressive than any of these monu¬
ments to the Angevin’s activity in ordinary building is the great
A PRINCE AMONG PRINCES 63
dyke that runs the length of the Loire and holds its floodwaters
in check from Ponts-de-C6 thirty miles upstream to Bourgueil,
making the road along the valley safe even when the river is in full
spate.
If the military works of Henry outweigh those for peaceful
purposes, the king regarded the former as an insurance for peace
rather than in an aggressive light; although he was continually at
war, and always involved in fighting, he had a deep horror of
bloodshed, and held peace to be the greatest good that a king could
bestow on his people. This was not hypocrisy, for in twelfth-
century warfare very little loss of life occurred, especially since
anyone of higher rank than a footsoldier would be held to ransom
rather than killed. The chroniclers always have a long list of
prisoners to record after a siege or skirmish, but deaths rarely
appear in their pages. Pitched battles were avoided almost as
studiously as nuclear conflict today; the attempts to break the
enemy’s nerve by drawing up an army in full battle order, and the
hasty negotiations to prevent the unleashing of the holocaust, have
a familiar ring. War on the fullest scale was not the standard in¬
strument of foreign policy that it was to become two centuries
later. Hence, although Henry spent much time in sieges and in
the field, the picture of his grief, ‘far greater than the love he bore
the living’,20 over those who fell in war, nonetheless rings true.
Nor did he prefer armed combat to diplomacy, using the latter
until either his patience or his skill was exhausted.

But there was a darker side to this picture of high ideals and in¬
dustry, this concern for his people’s welfare energetically trans¬
muted into realities, which was at its most evident in the out¬
bursts of rage, inherited from his Norman grandfather, the first
Henry. On these occasions he would tear his hair and clothes,
throwing off his shoes and any loose garments, hurling objects on
the floor, perhaps the precious silk covers of the couches, and
finally, sprawling on the ground, he would begin to chew the
rushes spread on it. Today such behaviour would betoken madness;
but in Henry’s day, there were fewer restraints on the display of
emotion. Although the king’s temper became a byword for its
violence, his actions were never regarded as an eccentricity. He
64 HENRY PLANTAGENET

usually recovered rapidly enough from these paroxysms of anger,

and only once did a remark made in fury lead to disaster.21
In similar vein was his elemental response, at rare moments,
to the divine portents beloved of the age. Neither devout nor as
inclined to scepticism as his contemporary, Frederick Barbarossa,
the Holy Roman Emperor, he would occasionally be struck by
one of the strange warnings which the religious fanatics of the age
directed at him, and which he normally brushed aside with a jest
or an absent-minded silence. Once, when a knight from Lincoln¬
shire came to him with seven commandments which the king was
to obey, and which had been dictated by a voice from heaven,
Henry sat up all night dealing with cases of justice which he had
delayed too long, but at daybreak thought better of it and dis¬
charged the remaining suitors.
Yet if Henry was not devout, he was certainly as free with
the royal bounty as his predecessors.22 The religious order which
most benefited from his gifts was that of the Knights Templar,
who received wide lands in England, chiefly in London, Essex,
and the Midlands and a regular income from alms paid by every
sheriff in England throughout his reign.23 Two of his close com¬
panions were Templars, Richard of Hastings and Tostes de St
Omer, and the Templars helped him in a political manoeuvre in
1161, which perhaps explains their predominance in his favour.
Regular orders received little from him except charters of con¬
firmation and minor grants of rights. The three monasteries which
he promised to found in redemption of a vow to go to Jerusalem in
expiation of Becket’s death, were an evasion of the spirit of the
promise, for he refounded existing houses at Waltham and Ames-
bury; though reform was in both cases badly needed and the work
valuable. Only at Witham did he create a new house; its prior,
Hugh, was later that bishop of Lincoln whose quick wit won him
the king s grace. To this monastery he was more generous; but
Hugh still had to brave the royal wrath on several occasions and
ask outright for support in cash or land. Once he had to return orfe
of Henry’s gifts in secret to its rightful owners; for the king,
hearing that the monks of Winchester had prepared a beautiful
new illuminated Bible for use in their refectory at meal times,
asked them to give it to him. They could hardly refuse; but when
A PRINCE AMONG PRINCES 65
Hugh received it and discovered how it had reached him, he lost no
time in sending it back.24 In France, we have fewer records of his
gifts; such as survive are often confirmations with added con¬
cessions, and the Chartreuse (Carthusian monastery) at Liget in the
forest of Loches was his only foundation, again in expiation of
Becket’s death, and dating from c. 1176. He gave extensively to lay
charities, supporting the leper houses he had built at Angers and
Caen with gifts of land and money; and in time of famine he
looked after the poor, keeping ten poor men in each diocese during
the spring of 1176 from April 1 until August 22 and making
similar arrangements in Anjou and Maine, on which he spent all
the produce from his lands there.25

Nor, in spite of wild popular rumours about his relations with

his wife, did Henry have more to atone for than his predecessors.
Eleanor had once been accused of infidelity to Louis; and if all
the stories of Henry’s misdemeanours were true, she was amply
punished by her second husband’s behaviour. But most of the
stories about the king, even those current in his lifetime, had
the same political motive behind them as those told about Eleanor.
During the conquest of Brittany, he took many hostages for the
good behaviour of the lords, and in the revolt of 1166 it was
alleged that he had seduced and made pregnant a girl thus com¬
mitted to his care;26 but this is too obvious a rallying-cry for rebel¬
lion to be believed, especially since no supporting evidence was
produced. More serious, on the face of it, was the affair of Alice,
sister to Philip of France and fiancee of Henry’s son, Richard.
His refusal to allow Richard to marry the girl naturally gave rise
to every kind of story. It was said that he had called Cardinal
Huguezem to England in 1176 in order to procure a divorce from
Eleanor and marry the princess himself. After his death, Richard,
not wishing to fulfil the engagement, produced witnesses to show
that HenryJaad had a child by Alice, whose evidence Philip
accepted and released Richard from his obligation. But Henry’s
action was more probably due to Richard’s value to him as an un¬
attached and eligible candidate for marriage alliances; nor were his
attempts to maintain the status quo, neither implementing nor re¬
pudiating the agreement, well concealed. In 1191, the marriage was
66 HENRY PLANTAGENET

no longer of advantage for either Philip or Richard, and a good

political excuse was needed.27
With Eleanor’s imprisonment in 1173, Henry almost
certainly grew unfaithful. Before this, he is reputed to have been
passionately in love with the sister of the earl of Clare and with
Avice de Stafford;28 but it is in this year that the most famous of
his mistresses makes her appearance: the ‘fair Rosamond’ of so
much literature and legend. One of six children of Walter de
Clifford, a knight with lands in Shropshire, she was openly
acknowledged as the king’s paramour only a little while before her
death as a nun at Godstow in 1176, where she was buried. So
much is within the bounds of history; but the stories of the maze
at Woodstock which Eleanor penetrated in Henry’s absence to
offer her rival the choice between poison and the dagger, and of
the wondrous casket kept there, are so much embroidery on a
slender groundwork of reality. Although she may have lived at
Everswell, Henry’s pavilion near Woodstock, the chamber at
Winchester named after her eighty years later is unlikely to have
existed in her day. By then ‘camera Rosamunda’ had become the
euphemism for the royal mistress’s quarters. Even the grim epi¬
taph quoted as adorning her grave at Godstow was borrowed; it
really belonged to a sixth century Lombard queen of the same
name, in spite of its strange appropriateness:

Hie jacet in tumba Rosa mundi non rosa munda;

Non redolet sed olet quae redolere solet.

(Here lieth in tombe the rose of the world, nought a clene rose;
It smelleth nought swete, but stinketh, that was wont to smelle
ful swete.)29

Yet it was this of all Henry’s exploits that caught the imagina¬
tion of the ballad writers of a later age; Becket was almost for¬
gotten, and a whole series of poems and plays from the sixteenth
to the early nineteenth century were centred on this passion. Even
when the perspective of history was corrected, and Tennyson wrote
his play on the struggle between king and archbishop, Rosamund”
remained a central character; Rosamund figures as Becket’s ward,
 A PRINCE AMONG PRINCES 67
and is saved by him from the avenging queen, to appear, disguised
as a monk, at his murder. The play ends with Rosamund kneeling
over the martyr’s body.
Thus a later age cast Henry in the part of romantic lover,
at as far a remove from reality as could be imagined. A very
different theme recurs in the last years of his reign, reflected in the
dispute over Alice: that of dissension between father and sons.
Henry was undoubtedly fond of his children; but once they were
of an age when they might expect a share in the government, in
those days about seventeen or eighteen, he made a series of political
and psychological blunders in his handling of them. On the one
hand, he was reluctant to part with the least shadow of power or
sum of money to his heir, and on the other hand was too soft¬
hearted to follow through this policy consistently. Rebellion was
followed by tearful reunion—and fresh rebellion. Even if the
problem was largely political, it was complicated by Henry’s
personal feelings, and the family habit of internecine quarrels.
Henry I had imprisoned his elder brother Robert for many years,
4 and Matilda had quarrelled with him over her dowry; the Plantage-
net himself had had to suppress several revolts on the part of his
brother Geoffrey, and no tradition of loyalty existed. Henry’s love
or friendship could be strong: ‘whom he once loved he hardly ever
hated’:30 yet that was no reason for his sons to reciprocate it. Of
his children, the young Henry occupied a special position as heir
to the greater part of his father’s domains, Richard always re¬
mained close to his mother, Geoffrey earned no special love or
hate, and John was always his father’s favourite. Hence between
the varying loyalties of their father and the sons’ self-interest
conflict was inevitable and frequent.
Tha same clash between the interests of state and the king’s
personal position arose in the matter of Thomas Becket. In the
early days of Henry’s reign, while Thomas was still chancellor, the
two were firm friends. When Thomas, as archbishop, opposed
Henry over religious matters, the bond was weakened; but the days
of friendship show Henry at his best, gay and tolerant, yet never
abandoning statecraft for luxury and dissipation. One day, as they
rode together through the wintry London streets, the king sug¬
gested that it would be a worthy act of charity to give a poor by-
68 HENRY PLANTAGENET

stander a warm cloak, and offered the chancellor this opportunity

to gain merit. When Thomas hesitated, Henry tugged at the
splendid cloak his friend was wearing, and a friendly tussle en¬
sued in which the chancellor eventually had to give in, much to
the poor man s delight. Henry would often join Thomas at table,
riding into the hall, dismounting and vaulting over the trestle to
sit beside his friend, where he would complain in jest that the
chancellor had such a brilliant household that the court itself was
almost empty.31 But when it came to the question of the crucial
appointment to the archbishopric, Henry grossly miscalculated,
although to all outward appearances he should have known Thomas’
character better than any man living. If he could not be expected
to notice Thomas’ abstinence and self-discipline as a dominant
trait of character, or to anticipate his sudden asceticism, he
should have remarked the high ambition and determination of
his closest helper. On these his plans eventually foundered.
If Henry lacked the skill to tame those who were born
leaders of men and whose aims conflicted with his own, it would
be mistaken to brand him as a poor judge of character, since he
chose his ministers and subordinates with almost unerring skill.
Men like Richard de Lucy, Richard du Hommet, Robert de
Neufbourg, Earl Robert of Leicester, Ranulf Glanville, William
the Marshal and many others were of high character and untiring
energy, who built under the king’s direction a system of govern¬
ment unrivalled in its time; and charges of corruption were far from
common among great officials. From the moment that he refused
to cede Anjou to his brother when he gained the English throne,
Henry had made it clear that he would brook no equal in his
domains. Yet the disasters of his latter years were the direct con¬
sequence of his failure to deal with the one man in his realms who
could claim to be exactly his equal; his heir, crowned king of
England in his father’s lifetime. After the younger Henry’s death,
Richard, although without the same advantage of coronation, re¬
belled chiefly against the repetition of the treatment accorded, td
his elder brother.

With a king of such character at its centre, who added to his other
A PRINCE AMONG PRINCES 69

traits of energy and determination a wide learning and varied

interests, the Anglo-Norman court could hardly fail to be dis¬
tinguished in many ways. The culture of the twelfth century
knew none of the boundaries imposed by the later concept of
nationalism. Through the universal medium of Latin, the intel¬
lectual activity of a scholar in Spain or Sicily reached his fellows
in England without any hindrance save that of distance; and if
travel was not as easy as it had been a thousand years earlier,
political affairs had little effect on it, for pilgrims, students and
clergy flocked along the great highways of Europe to St James'
shrine at Compostella in Spain, the universities at Paris, Bologna
and Salerno, and to the Eternal City itself. Diplomatic missions
contributed to these exchanges; to Henry’s court came the emis¬
saries of Norway, Germany, the Eastern Empire, Castile,
Navarre, Sicily and Jerusalem; and English embassies made their
way to the various countries in return.
Foreigners were welcomed not only as guests but as residents
at the English court. France was hardly a strange country, and
numerous Frenchmen, both from Henry's own domains, and
from those of Louis, made their careers in England. Thence came
Hugh de Puiset, bishop of Durham; Peter of Blois, archdeacon of
Bath and a great writer of letters to whom we owe much of our
knowledge of Henry; Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, whom Henry
summoned to England to become prior of Witham; from Italy,
the great civil lawyer, Vacarius, who arrived in 1149 and remained
to teach at Lincoln; from the Sicilian court, Master Thomas
Brown, the royal almoner—such are a few examples of immigra¬
tion to England. In the opposite direction, we find John of Bel-
meis and Gervase of Tilbury, having made their mark at the
English <ourt,' going to Sicily;32 and Henry’s daughters, married
respectively to the kings of Sicily and Navarre and to the duke of
Saxony, took English retinues with them, just as Eleanor had
introduced troubadours from southern France to the unappreci¬
ative Londoners. Not all the exiles were happy in their new homes;
Bemart de Ventadom’s complaint at being left in London when
Eleanor had gone south, finding the chill, dank English autumn
little to his liking, showed another side of the picture of inter¬
national movement.33
70 HENRY PLANTAGENET

Most of the important officials in church or state had re¬

ceived some degree of training abroad. Eight of fourteen English
bishops in 1166 had been to foreign schools of canon law;34
Thomas Becket had been to Paris and perhaps also to Bologna to
complete his studies, like many of his contemporaries. Paris was
the intellectual heart of western Europe at the time, and even a
satirist’s account of, it underlines its importance. In his poem
Burnel the Ass, Nigel Wireker relates the adventures of an ass who
seeks a means of lengthening his tail at all the great schools of
Europe, by magic, medicine or pure learning; here is the descrip¬
tion of his arrival at Paris and what befell him there:

While of such things still wayfaring they speak,

They come to Paris and there a hostel seek.
Weariness by repose is there made good,
And diet scant by lavish cups and food.
Tired bones, soiled skin, strained sinews, worn with toil
Of the long journey, are by baths and oil
Refreshed; and newly bled and with trimmed hair
Burnel, all combed and washed and dressed with care.
Goes forth into the town; he prays in church
Then for which school will suit him best makes search.
And there with careful thought considering
The Englishmen, to them he fain would cling;
In wit and counsel shrewd, in courtliness
Pre-eminent, handsome, charming in address,
They rain their money on the folk, and hate
The skinflints; many a course in lordly state
Adorns their tables, wine abundant flows;
All this attracts, only three faults he knows;
But for these three he would all else commend;
They are ‘Wassail’, ‘Drink health!’ and ‘Lady friend'.
Nor yet are these so reprehensible
That in due time and place they serve not well; *
For two are banishers of grief and care,
And open wide the way to glad good cheer;
While the third takes the harm from violent passion
(Which, so we’re told, in France is all the fashion).
 A PRINCE AMONG PRINCES 71

So with the English would he comrade be,

And live like them in their own company;
Which he desires the more for having heard
In public talk of them a certain word;
Company alters manners, and if so
Could not their company make something grow?
Nature to them past nature has been kind,
Why not to him—in front or else behind?
So with all zeal he buckles down to work,
To learn correctly and with taste to talk.
Alas his wits are dull, his headpiece tough;
Tis all in vain, he cannot learn the stuff.
Year after year passed by, the seventh now
Was near complete, but nothing yet, although
To teach him friends and masters laboured sore,
He had contrived to say except hee-haw.35

England could offer no rival to the city on the Seine, and although
-• Englishmen were some of the brightest individual stars in the
intellectual firmament, it was not until the following century that
Oxford became a centre of learning of any repute, after the politic¬
al bonds with the continent had been loosened. In Henry’s day,
western Christendom was to all appearances a single unit with
local differences. The intellectual life was not the only universal
element; besides the Church, a common language was shared by
all men who could read, and common pursuits by the noble
warriors who contested the rich prizes of jousts and tourneys. Com¬
ing from distant parts of Europe to compete in Flanders, they
found the count an ardent enthusiast for such pastimes at a time
when other rulers frowned on them. As a result, he gathered a
brilliant group of knights about him, and for some five years after
1175, made his lands the home of chivalry.
Even the central institution of western civilisation was in
Henry’s day more truly international than it had been or was to be
for many centuries. Furthermore, at the beginning of his reign,
the Church had as its head the only Englishman ever to wear the
Fisherman’s Ring: Nicholas Breakspear, otherwise Pope Adrian
IV. His career is a good illustration of the absence of national
72 HENRY PLANTAGENET

divisions within the Church at this time. Son of a minor land-

owner in Hertfordshire, he went to Paris on being refused entry
to St Albans monastery, where his father had become a monk.
Having risen to the position of abbot in a house near Avignon, the
canons complained of his harsh discipline and tried to get rid of
him. The litigation involved took him to Rome, where Eugenius
III realised his ability, appointed a new abbot, and kept Nicholas
at the papal curia, as cardinal-bishop of Albano. He was sent on a
mission to Norway to establish a metropolitan see in 1152, and
scored a considerable diplomatic success. On Eugenius’ death he
was elected Supreme Pontiff on December 4, 1154—a mere fort¬
night before Henry was crowned king of England. His period of
office was brief, but he proved a statesman of ability, improving
the Church’s temporal position. Nicholas’ course had a host of
lesser contemporary parallels; Becket’s close friend, John of
Salisbury, is another good example. After twelve years at the
schools of Paris and of Chartres, he was at the papal court from
1148 until 1154, leaving a vivid memoir of events there. Between
1154 and 1160, he returned three times to Rome, before be¬
coming Becket’s most valuable supporter during his controversy
with Henry, and sharing his exile in France. After his friend’s
death, he became bishop of Chartres, and ended his days there.38

Fed by this free currency of men and ideas, learning and literature
flourished at Henry’s court. Some fifteen literary works have sur¬
vived with evidence of dedications to Henry himself. Apart from
the works presented to him by his masters, Adelard of Bath and
William of Conches, and minor poems celebrating his accession,
four major chronicles bear his name: Henry of Huntingdon’s
Historia Anglorum, Jordan Fantosme’s account of the Scottish war in
1 x73-4> J°hn of Marmoutier’s history of the Angevin counts, and
Robert of Torigni’s chronicle. In an age when historical writing
became as exact a science as could be hoped for under the circum¬
stances and something more than a literary exercise, it was fitting
that some of the resulting works should be connected with their
central figure and inspiration. Men closely associated with the
government of Henry’s realms left records which are invaluable
today: one, Roger Howden, writing as a historian, and two others
 A PRINCE AMONG PRINCES 73
portraying the state of their particular branch of activity. The
treatises on the exchequer and on the legal system, attributed to
Richard Fitz-Neale and Ranulf Glanville respectively, are both
dedicated to Henry, who had devoted much energy to both fields.
But besides the expected works of statesmanship, several, purely
literary efforts figure in the list. Peter of Blois was a close friend of
Henry, and it is hardly surprising to find his Collected Letters and
Commentary on the Book of Job dedicated to the king. Even
Gerald of Wales, usually hostile to the ruler, who, he believed, had
unjustly hindered his promotion, offered his Topographia Hibernica
to the king, perhaps in hopes of reconciliation; but his over-effusive
final eulogy of Henry was hardly likely to be to the latter’s taste.
It is the French works connected with the king that show the extent
of his interest. The Roman de Rou, the long poem on Normandy in¬
spired by Geoffrey of Monmouth’s great inventions about the early
history of Britain, was given jointly to Henry and Eleanor by its
author, Wace. Eleanor, a noted patron of literature, had already
received the dedication of his earlier verse translation of Geoffrey
4 of Monmouth, the Roman de Brut, which was one of the first
French versions of the Arthurian legend; and Henry, who may
have heard the Welshman’s tales in his uncle’s household at
Bristol in his boyhood, commissioned the new work from Wace.
But the dedication was not an entirely happy one, for by the time
the poem was finished, Henry had withdrawn his support because
Wace was making such slow progress and had asked another
writer to complete it. Turning from the epic to the fresh blossom¬
ing of lyric poetry, the poems of Marie de France may be con¬
nected with Henry, if the identification of the elusive figure of
their writer with the abbess of Shaftesbury, a relative of the king,
is correct^7 and a version of ‘the fair tale of love and death’,
of Tristan and Isolde, was perhaps dedicated to him.38
Much more literature connected with Henry must have
vanished; nor have we the least idea of the size or contents of the
royal library, in contrast to that of Becket, although Henry was
certainly a voracious reader. The slender list above, which coin¬
cides well with the known traits of his character, must serve to out¬
line his tastes. Theology plays no great part; scholarship and epic
works of days gone by predominate, while the two greatest works
74 HENRY PLANTAGENET

are treatises on the state. It is as well to remember that the prime

purpose of the king’s attendant company of knights and clerks
was to direct the government of the country. Anything else was
mere recreation for minds busied with the vital interests of their
lord; and John of Salisbury levels every charge at the hangers-on of
the court except that of indolence:

Who, pray, are these in such gorgeous attire, who haughtily

strut about surrounded by a retinue of footmen, accompanied
by a band of companions and messmates, saluted first in the
market place, sitting in the first places at feasts, their ears
tickled by the sound of their first names and by such words
as have power to reach the sensitive ears of nobles, raised on
high and held there by the oarage of fortune’s wings, setting
the style and changing the fashions of every house? Flatterers
to be sure, who are ready to live at the beck and call of others,
provided that they may swindle them out of everything.39

Even entertainers were rare at the Plantagenet’s court; other

than wandering minstrels and harpers of whom no record remains,
in all Henry’s reign payments were only once made officially to a
Tabulator’, one Maurice, in 1166; but a solitary royal harper
drew a regular salary from 1176 to the king’s death.40 Henry also
kept bears for some time, doubtless of the performing variety.41
Other diversions may have been of a quieter kind; chess and
draughts were certainly known to him. But the ladies of the court
were usually the chief patrons and encouragers of these diversions,
their only other occupations being domestic: embroidery, sew¬
ing and weaving, and occasionally falconry, using the smaller kinds
of hawk. The jongleur would find in them a ready and appreciative
audience. To their patronage much of the code of courtly love was
due; but even though Eleanor was interested in this cult, and gave
judgement in several cases put to so-called courts of love, tlje
temperament of the king and his northern companions did not
encourage its introduction to his court. Blended into the romances
of Chretien de Troyes and others, it may have come to the kingls
ears; but the cult never gained a following in England such as it
enjoyed in Poitou.
 A PRINCE AMONG PRINCES 75
The king’s closest friends were drawn almost exclusively from
administrative circles, and were concerned with the business of
government which occupied Henry’s days, whether as judges,
diplomats or warriors. Thomas Becket was his chancellor; Richard
du Hommet, Richard de Lucy and Robert of Leicester his great
officers of justice; Simon of Apulia, after spending many years in
the service of the Sicilian kings, became dean of York and finally
bishop of Exeter in reward for his discharge of various offices;
Master Thomas Brown, also trained in Sicily, was a financial
expert; Walter of Coutances, his last chancellor, had worked his
way up from humble beginnings, and was typical of the new
men who had made their names through an administrative career;
Richard of Ilchester acted as his chief envoy to Germany and
Italy. The only men who enjoyed Henry’s confidence outside this
circle were the princes of the Church in his domains. Many of
these held their posts as rewards for years spent in the royal ser¬
vice; but there were others who had had a purely clerical career
and yet were cherished by Henry: Amulf of Lisieux, Gilbert Foliot,
4 and Rotrou of Rouen—all of whom played a large part in the royal
council as advisers on ecclesiastical affairs.
It might seem from this that Henry made his appointments
purely on a basis of favouritism. Yet the reverse is true. He chose
his officials for their qualities, and, unless he actually disliked them,
personal matters were irrelevant. It was only because these were
the men among whom he spent the greater portion of his time that
his closest friends came from their ranks. Visitors to the court were
rare enough, and were usually foreign missions or persistent plain¬
tiffs disappointed in their lawsuits, such as Richard Anesty, who
has left us the accounts of his expensive pursuit of royal justice in
the matter of an inheritance.42 Although the king was readily
accessible to all comers, his circle of friends was a closed one.

Hence the character of the court was chiefly determined by the

structure of the governmental hierarchy. In England, the functions
of the royal officials were far more easily distinguished than those
of their Normap or Aquitanian counterparts. It is a reasonable
generalisation to say that governmental authority and system de-
76 HENRY PLANTAGENET

dined as Henry’s realms extended southwards, England being the

best governed and Aquitaine the least indined to obedience. But
even Henry’s English ‘civil service’ cannot be represented as a
rationalised organisation divided into well-defined departments. A
royal official was concerned, except in a few cases where special
skills were involved, with everything that touched the crown’s
interest; finance, justice, military duty, administration of the royal
lands. The most important single class of officials was that of
the sheriffs, each of whom was responsible for one or two shires.
This office went back to Anglo-Saxon times, and in the hands of
the great lord of the shire could be seriously misused. Henry was
aware of this, and took care, as soon as he was sure of his position,
to replace such men by others of lesser influence. However, the
sheriffs spent most of their time in the country as the chief royal
agents in their various localities, and rarely earned promotion to the
king’s immediate circle; it is unusual to find them appearing at
court except on special business, and their annual journey to report
to the exchequer in London at Michaelmas more often than not
found the king absent.
The real link between central and local government was
formed not by the sheriffs but by the itinerant justices, whose
office had been devised partly to make good the lacunae of the
legal ability of the sheriffs and county courts, and partly as a
check and supplement to the sheriff himself. Henry himself on
his incessant wanderings was really attempting to do the tasks he
delegated to them, but even with his enormous energy, efficiency
could not be achieved by one man alone. Commissions were there¬
fore issued for the holding of so-called ‘pleas of the crown’—
trials involving legal questions reserved for the royal judgement;
but the itinerant justice was usually responsible for finances and
military arrangements as well, his range of work being much
wider than the name implied and almost as great as that of the
sheriff. Nor were the justices a special class of men devoted to this
one task, but men of importance at court. Almost every majbr
figure closely associated with Henry performed this function at
some time, including the financiers of the exchequer, who were
the only true specialists among Henry’s servants.
In view of this versatility, the lack of precise definition of
A PRINCE AMONG PRINCES 77
function within the court is not surprising. Great offices did
exist—chancellor, chamberlain, butler and marshal—but these had
originally belonged to the household of the king in the strictest
sense of the word, and extended their influence to other matters in
varying degrees. The brilliance of Thomas Becket’s chancellorship
was exceptional, and even as guardian of the great seal the chancel¬
lor did not necessarily have political influence. The seneschals and
constables enjoyed traditional perquisites and duties rather than
fulfilling a vital role in government, and the only regular officer
of purely administrative importance was that of grand justiciar.
This was at first what it had been in Henry I’s day: a kind of
permanent regency. The two justiciars could represent the king
whenever necessary, but no real initiative power went with the
title until it was held by one man, Richard de Lucy, during the
revolt of Henry Plantagenet’s eldest son in 1173-4. Under him and
his successor, Ranulf Glanville, it became a position almost equal
to that of chief minister, with wide powers and competence.43

In addition to the English great officers, Henry was also accom¬

panied by their continental counterparts. The composition of the
court varied from day to day and depended largely on which part
of his realms he was resident in. The most important function
of the royal officials was to continue the process of government in
the king’s absence, and hence only a very few men are found in
constant attendance on him—a group that varies from year to year.
All the continental fiefs had their seneschal, Poitou and Anjou
having constables as well, while Normandy had a similar arrange¬
ment of great officers to that in England. It is not always easy to
identify the holders of these titles, since many lesser men held
offices'similarly named, but one man from each region can usually
be found as its representative in the framework of the household.
Their functions varied considerably. In Aquitaine, the real power
lay in the king’s hands alone. On two occasions, governors were
used to control the unruly lords of the south, and little permanent
organisation existed other than that of the provosts: personal
agents common to all landowners from the least baron to the
duke himself. /The Angevin homelands enjoyed better govern¬
ment; under seneschal and constable, and later seneschal alone, the
78 HENRY PLANTAGENET

royal provosts worked effectively, and the king’s demesne lands

yielded rich revenue. In both regions, the chief officers were
always great barons, powerful enough to enforce the king’s will
with their own resources: a system adequate enough except in times
of general discontent.
Normandy presented a much closer parallel to England.
The same division into local and central officers appeared, and the
intermediaries between the two worked on a similar basis. Local
government was less well arranged, however; here there was a
multiplicity of agents whose titles varied more than their tasks:
bailiffs, provosts, vicomtes and others. Part of Henry’s work was
to reorganise these often conflicting elements, as a result of which
the bailiff emerged as the most important. Itinerant justices were
also introduced on a basis akin to that across the Channel, the
personnel being important figures at court. At the highest level,
regional differences ceased to matter; once accepted as part of the
central organisation, a man might be appointed to office on either
side of the Channel; Ranulf Glanville, Robert of Leicester and
Richard of Ilchester all played important parts in Norman affairs,
the latter two exercising powers equivalent to those of the English
justiciars. A small core of Normans formed the more permanent
element of the administration, however; Richard du Hommet and
his son William as constables, Robert de Neufbourg, Rotrou of
Evreux and William Fitz-Ralph as seneschals, were exclusively
Norman figures.44

If the picture given of Henry and his court must remain a sketch,
without depth or colour, it is because Henry himself is the only
person who can be clearly characterised. Few anecdotes are re¬
corded of his companions, and these more often than not shed
light on the king rather than his friends. Yet, even in the dry
records of the exchequer or the law courts, something of the
activity and enthusiasm of Henry and his helpers comes down t?o
us, and in the chronicles and literary scrapbooks of the time, we
can begin to make out a figure which is more than a royal effigy or a
flatterer’s colossus, whose vices and virtues, foibles and traits are
those of a remarkable individual. But to appreciate the true
A PRINCE AMONG PRINCES 79
quality of the man, we must turn from the static picture of the
king in his court to the active side, and watch his character emerg¬
ing in the challenges of his mature life.
 4
The New Order

T HE EXTENSIVE domains over which Henry now ruled

contained a variety of language, law and tradition within their
borders, in contrast to the more universal outlook of the educated
men who ruled them. The southern boundary of his continental
domains lay along the valley of the Dordogne and the foothills
beyond the Gascon plain; in the south-east it reached into the
heart of the Auvergne mountains, while the Atlantic coast from
a Bayonne almost to the mouth of the Loire was in his hands. In the
north, Eu, on the Flemish border, marked the limit both of the
French king's overlordship and of the Norman state, a fixed and
ancient division: but the western boundary with Brittany was
uncertain and fluctuating. Across the channel, England and south
Wales acknowledged him as ruler, although Cumberland and
Westmorland remained in Scottish hands. Four languages were
spoken by the common people of these lands: English, Welsh,
Provencal and northern French, besides the ubiquitous Latin of
educated men. A variety of customary laws prevailed: in England,
the Anglo-Saxon system had been infused with the feudal custom
of Normandy, while overseas, Norman, Angevin and Poitevin each
had their own traditions in spite of the common base of Charle¬
magne’s codes. Their feudal law, which formed the bulk of civil
as distinct from criminal law, was for the most part the same,
since they all acknowledged the kings of France as overlords.
Henry’s task was formidable enough without these added
obstacles. Four years’ work in Normandy and Anjou was only just
beginning to produce tangible rewards. England, where the royal
power had partially disintegrated in Stephen’s reign, was at once
82 HENRY PLANTAGENET

the richest and potentially best governed of his four major terri¬
tories, followed by Normandy. Henry had relied on the strength
of his power in the latter to gain his new crown; now that he had
achieved his object, he found some of the machinery of govern¬
ment built up by his mother’s father still in reasonable condition.
There was less need to reconstruct than to set in motion again the
processes of administration and to make them effective. This was
speedily done. Within a few months of Henry’s accession, the
English exchequer was again in full operation, and once more
presented a model of financial organisation to the rest of Europe.
From the accounts of the third year of Henry’s reign, we can
estimate the damage done to the royal finances in England by the
warring factions and turbulent barons, since the payment of taxes
was excused if the land was too ravaged to bear the burden, and
such sums were accounted for as waste. In the south-east, the
area formerly under Stephen’s control, bounded by Hampshire,
Buckinghamshire and Cambridgeshire, had a waste percentage of
one quarter of the anticipated revenue, Cambridgeshire, Hunting¬
donshire and Oxfordshire being the worst affected, while Kent and
Sussex were almost unscathed. Similar damage is recorded for the
counties most loyal to the Angevins: Somerset, Gloucestershire,
Worcestershire and Herefordshire. The Midlands, which, to all
outward appearances had enjoyed the normal feudal government
of their lords,* were in the worst condition, almost half their
quota being unpaid. Most of the serious military action had taken
place there, and the tyranny of their lords had often proved worse
than lack of defence. Yet for all this dismal record of devastation,
the revenues of England were still worth, on average, £12,000 per
annum.1

The first action of Henry as king of England was to issue a

coronation charter, as Stephen and Henry I had done before
him.2 But whereas his grandfather’s charter had been a list, of
specific promises to the Church and to the barons, and that of
Stephen had defined the royal duties towards the Church, the new
* The chief of these were all related—Robert of Leicester, Waleran of Meulan,
the earl of Northampton and Roger of Warwick.
 THE NEW ORDER 83
charter was much less explicit, and instead of offering concessions,
set a strict legal basis for the beginning of the work of reorganisa¬
tion. Henry did not include the expected clause confirming the
grants of lands and liberties made by his predecessors. Instead he
chose to promise a return to the status quo at his grandfather’s death
in 1135* This was calculated both to dismay the many barons who
had profited from the late king’s weak political position to extort
concessions, and also to bring the Church to order, which had in
the interval tacitly assumed many exemptions from royal surveil¬
lance, besides those formally recognised. All such gains were now
subject to Henry’s good will and the issue of a new charter; and he
could revoke any grants of crown land made by Stephen. However,
he proceeded circumspectly and treated the matter to a great extent
as propaganda designed to show Stephen as a usurper, rather than
as a means of regaining the lost lands and privileges. No murmur
of organised revolt was heard for the moment, although the king
had only just assumed his new dignity. Henry had too secure a
hold on Normandy, where he had been able to revoke his father’s
^ grants three years earlier; most of the important English barons
held lands there which they were loth to risk. His personal prestige,
combined with the powerful backing of the Church under Arch¬
bishop Theobald’s leadership, also played its part in preventing
trouble.
The king spent Christmas and the New Year (1155) at
Bermondsey, where he promulgated the first measures towards the
execution of his plans. Before any action could be taken he re¬
quired a reliable central group of officials. Stephen, from the few
traces of his government that remain, seems to have lacked this
nucleus, so essential to good organisation, and to have worked
largely according to the needs of the moment, Hence there was no
body of experienced men on whom Henry could rely, and with the
youthful king, a largely youthful body of men took charge. The
most important nomination at the beginning of 1155 was that of
Thomas Becket as chancellor. As archdeacon of Canterbury, he
had been of great service to his archbishop, and Theobald strongly
recommended him to Henry for this post. He had taken Becket
with him on an important mission to Rome in 1143, when he
was attempting to solve the problem of the papal legation for
84
HENRY PLANTAGENET

England. This appointment carried with it authority almost as

great as that of the pope himself, and was usually held by the
archbishops of Canterbury, if it was granted at all. Henry of
Winchester, however, had succeeded in obtaining it in 1139* an<^
was using it to undermine Theobald s position. Theobald and
Becket failed to regain it for Canterbury, but in 1145 the new
pope, Eugenius III, granted the request.3 Becket had accompanied
Theobald, in spite of Stephen’s prohibition, to the council of
Rheims in 1148, where questions of a political nature had been
discussed. Finally, he may have been instrumental in persuading
the pope to refuse Stephen’s request for permission to have his son
Eustace crowned in 1152,4 in which he would have helped not
only Theobald, but Henry as well. His training in the arch¬
bishop’s household had fitted him admirably for the chancellor¬
ship and although fourteen years the king’s senior, he could share
Henry’s enthusiasm for new ideas and radical solutions.
Two other men were closely connected with the king’s
plans. These were Robert, earl of Leicester, and Richard de Lucy,
both of whom had been partisans of Stephen until Henry’s cam¬
paign of 1153. Robert of Leicester was a man of great influence
whether he held royal office or not; he had enjoyed the king’s con¬
fidence since he first joined the Angevin party, for it was on his
advice that the siege of Tutbury, which had led to earl Ferrers’
surrender, was undertaken. With de Lucy, who had risen from
being a knight of no great standing to become one of Stephen’s
great officers, he was responsible for royal justice from the earliest
days of the reign. Richard de Lucy appeared for Henry in lawsuits
at Abingdon and York, as well as in a protracted case over charters
granted by William the Conqueror to Battle Abbey which in¬
volved most of Henry’s principal officers.5 Both were probably
older than the king by several years.
Henry wasted no time in carrying out the implications of
his coronation charter. In a week’s hard work, before he went fo
Oxford on January 6, 1155, he issued orders establishing his own
sovereign authority and completing the execution of the treaty of
Winchester. Stephen had made little headway with the destruc¬
tion of illegal castles, and Henry repeated instructions for this
work and for the expulsion of mercenaries. He commanded the
 THE NEW ORDER 85
return to the crown of all castles, towns and lands which had been
seized or granted away during his predecessor’s reign. In addition
he abolished all the earldoms given by Stephen to his partisans,
and took back the portions of the royal demesne which had gone
with them. Henry also profited from the death of the earl of
Chester, whose lands lay in his wardship until the heir came of
age, and from the detention of his murderer, William Peverel,
whose lands fell to the crown.
This was a beginning to the restoration of the royal position.
It helped the royal finances; and the king was beginning to over¬
awe the major barons by sheer territorial power once again. Much
depended on how these enactments were interpreted by those
carrying them out. There could be no doubt as to the question of
the castles and mercenaries. Attempts to buy or beg exemption
from the general demolition were rarely successful: Henry fully
realised the dangers of too many fortresses in the barons’ hands,
and although the figure of 1,115 given for the castles destroyed is
ridiculous,6 a year or so later there were only 217 baronial castles
4 as opposed to 52 with royal garrisons: one in every five castles
thus belonged to the king.7 The mercenaries, with the exception
of their leader, William of Ypres, and a small number who went
to join a settlement of Flemings on the Welsh border, had left the
country within three months, and this major threat to civil peace
removed.
The evidence as to the confiscation of former royal property
is slender, and opinions drawn from it conflicting. The proclama¬
tion may have been intended only to ensure that irregular grants
and seizures were easily detected when the exchequer officials
came to draw up the list of royal lands. Alternatively, Henry may
have wished to'enlarge the royal revenue either by retaining it or
by regranting it to its occupier for a fee. Judging by the reactions
to the measure, it cannot have been a very radical or unexpected
step, since no one raised any serious opposition to it, while the
order regarding castles provoked only one open revolt. William
of Aumale, a baron so wealthy as to be the uncrowned king of
Yorkshire, had to be compelled to surrender his lands, but it was
the loss of the c&stle at Scarborough which was the real cause of
his reluctance. Furthermore, Henry certainly regranted a large
86 HENRY PLANTAGENET

amount of the disputed territories, and for this we have the evid¬
ence of charters. The earldoms were also granted again to their
former holders, and hence Henry’s intention must have been less
to deprive the barons than to ensure that they owed their position,
like the newly created earl of Norfolk, to his personal sovereignty.
He even went so far as to ignore charters which he himself had
issued during the anarchy, giving new titles instead of the con¬
firmations that one would expect.8 The black years of Stephen’s
usurpation were to disappear from administrative records, and his
reign was to begin as prosperously as his grandfather’s had
ended.
Only among the Welsh marcher lords did resistance to the
new order of firm government appear. They had always regarded
themselves as semi-independent, and free from the strict letter of
feudal law as applied elsewhere, because of their essential part
they played in the defence of the realm. Roger of Hereford, who
had been a loyal supporter of the prince in 1149 and 1153, refused
to give up the castles at Gloucester and Hereford, but was per¬
suaded by his cousin, Gilbert Foliot, bishop of Hereford, to
surrender them peacefully. This he did on March 13, receiving
wide lands in exchange. The bishop of Winchester also quarrelled
with Henry over the surrender of his six fortresses, and chose
voluntary exile rather than hand them over to him, whereupon the
latter seized them and turned them to his own ends. Alone among
the barons, Hugh of Mortimer preferred open revolt. Henry was
forced to launch a campaign in May to deal with this problem,
which involved three castles in the Midlands: Bridgnorth, Cleo-
bury and Wigmore. Matters did not go so easily as the king might
have hoped, and it was not until July 7 that Hugh was reconciled
with Henry by formally making surrender of the castles at a
council at Bridgnorth. During the siege, Henry had a narrow escape
when an arrow aimed at him was intercepted by a knight of his
bodyguard, Hubert de St Clair, who died of the wound. The king
evidently did not feel his position to be strong enough to take
drastic measures against Mortimer, who retained his lands.

The summer of 1155 was passed in the south of England in com-

 THE NEW ORDER 87
parative peace. Henry could now appreciate the pleasures as well as
the cares brought to him by his new realms, and indulge his
passion for the chase in the huge forests created by his grandfather
and great-uncle. Not until Michaelmas did he return to major
affairs of state. About September 29, another great council was
held, at which the project of conquering Ireland was mooted. Such
an idea, new to English politics, was inspired partly by the internal
disturbances across the sea, and partly by the young king’s in¬
satiable ambition. He had already obtained permission from the
pope, to whom Ireland was held to belong under a spurious eighth-
century document, purporting to be a donation to the Church from
the Emperor Constantine, all islands formed part of the ‘patrimony
of Peter'. Hence Henry, imitating William, his great-grandfather,
when the latter set out to conquer England, sought papal leave to
convert Ireland: a process which gave him some sort of title for
what was otherwise naked aggression. The exact form of the grant
does not survive, but John of Salisbury records how he used his
influence at the papal curia to obtain it, and how he brought the
* document back to England together with a precious ring, both of
which were deposited in the treasury at Winchester.8 Nothing in
the political situation appeared unfavourable, and Henry even pro¬
posed to give the intended conquest to his brother William; but
the queen-mother, Matilda, opposed the scheme nonetheless, and
her opposition carried sufficient weight with Henry for him to
postpone the idea indefinitely.

Matilda’s caution was perhaps justified; for at Christmas, disturb¬

ing news came from France, where the situation had been potenti¬
ally dangerous ever since Henry’s accession in England. The promise
made in -accordance with his father’s will, that Geoffrey should
have Anjou and Maine, had not been carried out. Henry now had
additional reasons for avoiding the fulfilment of this, since as ruler
of Aquitaine, they were vital to communications between his
northern and southern domains. He left England from Dover on
January 10, 1156, having waited eight days for a fair wind, and
landed at Wissant, near Calais. On February 2, he was at Rouen,
where the count? and countess of Flanders visited him, to arrange
details of Henry's wardship of Flanders when count Thierry went
88 HENRY PLANTAGENET

on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the following year. A treaty was also

made between the two rulers by which Thierry was to receive
certain lands in return for the services of 1,000 soldiers in England
or Normandy, or 500 in Anjou, whenever Henry should require
them. Whether Henry was thinking of the immediate situation
or of long-term policy, the investment was a good insurance against
future troubles.
A week later, he was better able to appreciate how matters
stood. At a conference on the French border, at which Thierry,
Louis of France and Geoffrey were present, Geoffrey rejected his
brother’s compensatory offers, although Henry had already taken
the precaution of obtaining papal absolution from his oath on the
grounds that it had been exacted under duress (a normal procedure
in such circumstances). He further strengthened his hand by doing
homage to Louis for all his continental domains, including those
under dispute. Outmanoeuvred by his elder brother, Geoffrey left
for Anjou, and Henry returned to Rouen. Civil war was plainly
imminent.
The position of 1152 was now repeated, but Geoffrey
lacked the support of Louis, and Henry could concentrate on the
reduction of his brother’s three fortresses. By July, Chinon and
Mirebeau had fallen, and Geoffrey preferred to accept an offer of
£1,000 in sterling and £2,000 Angevin to be paid annually. Later
in the year, his position as potential rival to Henry was resolved
when the citizens of Nantes ejected their duke, and offered
Geoffrey the lordship. This thus provided him with a sufficient
domain of his own, an arrangement which could hardly have been
better from Henry’s standpoint, since it also meant that the
mouth of the Loire was now in friendly hands.
After this success in Anjou, Henry went briefly to Norm¬
andy and then south with Eleanor in October to Aquitaine—a
part of his domains he had scarcely entered since he became its
lord on his marriage. He had never received homage from it$
barons, and used this opportunity of so doing, making sure of his
position by taking hostages as well. On November 11, at Limoges,
he ordered the razing of the castle fortifications, and made peace
between the town and the castle garrison. Christmas was passed at
Bordeaux before his return north. One year had sufficed to settle
THE NEW ORDER 89

his lands oversea, and the future seemed to offer peaceful

prospects.

Henry sailed from Barfleur in early April 1157 and landed at

Southampton. If the lords of France were quiet, or at least quies¬
cent, there were still difficulties to be faced in England. One of
these, the problem of the two northern counties of Westmorland
and Cumberland—which he had given to David of Scotland in
return for his support before his accession—had been simplified by
the latter’s death in 1153. But no action had yet been taken, and
a council was summoned at Northampton on July 17, at which
Malcolm, the new king, was required to surrender the lands.
Simultaneously, William of Warenne and Hugh Bigod had to
appear and give account of their actions. Threats proved enough.
Malcolm received Huntingdon—a fief far less valuable to him—
in return for the two northern counties; William of Warenne duly
surrendered his lands and castles and was given back those held by
his father in 1135, in direct contravention of the provisions made
for him at Winchester. Hugh Bigod placed his castles in the king’s
hands. From these manoeuvres, Henry gained twelve castles, the
most important being Norwich and Framlingham from Bigod,
and Pevensey and Lancaster from William.
The same council also served to assemble forces for a
campaign against the Welsh, for which knights were summoned
from all parts of England. Henry had high hopes of success, and a
formidable invasion was launched by land and sea. Events proved
otherwise. Near Basingwerk, Owain of Gwyneth’s levies under his
son’s command ambushed half Henry’s force. The king himself
was believed dead when the standard was dropped in a moment of
confusion by the bearer, Henry of Essex. A disordered retreat en¬
sued. The other part of the English forces, however, compelled
Owain himself to retreat to his mountain fastnesses, and Henry—
furious at the reverse—withdrew to Rhuddlan when he found
pursuit impossible through the wilds of Snowdonia. Matters were
made worse by the fleet’s behaviour. The sailors had landed at
Anglesey, but <!after pillaging two churches, were also forced to
retire. The king, hampered by the oncoming harvest for which his
90 HENRY PLANTAGENET

troops, officially on forty days’ service, would have to be released,

deemed it prudent to withdraw. He made peace with Owain and
managed to recover some of the lands which the latter had seized
during Stephen’s reign.

Political stability was now almost complete; but financial matters

required attention. The revenues of 1156-7 were the lowest of the
reign, and Henry took in hand minor reforms of the collecting
system, besides ordering the levy of the first of a series of extra¬
ordinary taxes listed in the accounts as gifts. Furthermore, the
coinage was reissued, in the form of new pennies of a higher
purity, with almost ten per cent more silver in them. These ‘short-
cross’ pennies were to be the standard coin of the realm for twenty
years, and one of the best issues of coinage England had seen until
then. This business, and a tour of northern and central England,
occupied Henry until the Whitsun of 1158, when the court
assembled at Worcester. Here the customary ceremony of crown-
wearing was performed, as it had been at Bury St Edmunds the
previous year and outside Lincoln the Christmas before. At the
end of the ceremony, Henry and Eleanor laid their crowns on the
altar of the cathedral and vowed never to wear them again. No
reason is recorded for this decision, strange in an age when the out¬
ward pomp of majesty counted for much. Perhaps Henry’s active
temperament disdained such charades that served no apparent pur¬
pose and wasted valuable time. At the same time, Henry of Win¬
chester came to make his peace with the king, and to renounce the
will-o’-the-wisp of political power which he had so single-
mindedly pursued for two decades; once the greatest man in the
realm, although unable to build himself a stable position, he now
devoted himself to his see, occasionally appearing in public life as
an elder statesman, beyond the heat of partisan views of the
moment.10
From Worcester, the progress round his kingdom continued
for Henry, interrupted only by a Welsh attack on Gloucester
while he was in the west country. In reprisal for this he invaded
south Wales and obtained the submission of Rhys, the most inv
portant of the Welsh princes. However, the following year brought
renewed troubles, since Rhys was dissatisfied with the settlement
THE NEW ORDER 91
made by Henry. Wales continued to be a problem which, although
small compared with other tasks facing Henry, proved more in¬
tractable than any other.

When, in August 1158, Henry crossed the Channel once again

his goal was again that consolidation of his lands which had occu¬
pied much of his time in England. Having received from Scot¬
land the lost English counties, he now planned to recover the lost
castles of the Norman Vexin from Louis. To this end he arranged
that his son Henry—who had been heir apparent since his elder
brother William’s death in 1156—should marry Louis’ eldest
daughter, Margaret, and that the dowry should consist of the
castles of Gisors, Neaufles and Neufchatel: exactly those which he
had surrendered six years earlier. Such a triumph of diplomacy was
not achieved without considerable effort. A preliminary mission
led by the chancellor, Thomas Becket, departed for Paris before
Henry himself had reached France. Its pomp and splendour, re¬
flecting a certain theatrical streak in Becket’s nature, made a deep
impression on the French. An escort of more than two hundred rode
with him, knights, squires and pages, with vast supplies of
every kind of luxury to be distributed to the French court: silk,
fur, cloaks and carpets, skins and ermine, ‘such as are usually
found adorning a bishop’s chamber and bed’. Eight large waggons
held these treasures, as well as Thomas’ own wardrobe which in¬
cluded twenty-four changes of silk robes, his provisions, a portable
chapel and kitchen, and equipment for his clerks. Two of the
waggons carried nothing but ale, which was distributed to the
populace, who found it vastly superior to their native wine. Twelve
packhorses bore the rest of his equipment, treasure, plate and
books. The passage of this procession was as impressive as the
riches packed in its chests. First came two hundred and fifty foot¬
men, hounds and greyhounds with their keepers, the great wag¬
gons with their hide covers, and the packhorses. Then the squires
followed on foot, bearing their masters’ shields and leading their
horses, and then the falconers and the officials of the chancellor’s
household. Last of all, the knights rode two by two before the
chancellor himself and his close friends. So vast was the company
92 HENRY PLANTAGENET

that it caused a shortage of food as it passed on its way, huge prices

being paid for a single dish of eels. ‘The king of England must be a
marvellous man if his chancellor travels with such great display1,
murmured the French as the carefully staged pageant moved
slowly into Paris.11
But the lavish outlay was well repaid, for Thomas seemed
to have little difficulty in securing Louis’ assent to Henry’s plans.
In addition to the marriage treaty, he obtained a free hand for his
master in Brittany where the death of duke Geoffrey in July 1158
had caused new confusion. As seneschal of France, the hereditary
post of the counts of Anjou, Henry was to judge between the rival
claimants. This was really licence to create an Angevin puppet-
state without any threat of interference from his overlord. Louis
could do little else, for Brittany was surrounded for hundreds of miles
by Henry’s domains. When Henry himself appeared, he travelled
in striking simplicity. This, after Becket’s display, made an even
deeper impression than a second lavish pageant would have done.
His chancellor had indeed done his work well, for the final terms
were quickly settled. At Neufmarch£ on August 31, he met Louis.
The details, although simple, were the vital part of the marriage
agreement, and although Henry might have hoped for more, they
could have been far less favourable. Prince Henry was amply pro¬
vided for, being given the city of Lincoln, £1,000 revenue and a
fief owing three hundred knights’ service in England and a slightly
smaller endowment in France, to ensure that the couple could live
in appropriate style. The castles were to be put into the custody of
the Knights Templar until the marriage took place. Arrangements
were also made for Henry to visit Paris and take back with him
his son’s fiancee, which he did shortly afterwards. He was lodged
with the canons of Notre-Dame and splendidly entertained by Louis.
On his return to Normandy, the three-year-old Margaret was placed
in the care of Robert of Neufbourg, the viceroy, to await either the
day when she came of age or when Henry felt the acquisition of the
dowry, and hence the marriage, to be imperative. That day was to
come sooner than Louis had expected.

Meanwhile, preparations had begun for a campaign in Brittany*

After Geoffrey s death on July 26, 1158, Conan IV, nephew of the
THE NEW ORDER 93
duke whom the Plantagenet had replaced, had seized Nantes. Henry
accordingly sent orders for his forces to assemble at Avranches to
besiege the disputed town unless Conan previously surrendered it,
and confiscated the English revenues enjoyed by the latter as earl of
Richmond. This and the news of Henry’s successful negotiations
with Louis were enough to overawe the interloper. Formal surrender
was made on September 29, 1158, the date on which the Angevin
forces were to have foregathered. Relieved of the need for military
action, Henry went instead on pilgrimage to Mont St Michel,
where he heard mass at the high altar and dined in the monks’
refectory with his barons. From there he proceeded to inspect his
newly acquired city, valuable both for its high revenue and strategic
position on the mouth of the Loire.
Throughout Henry’s reign, his domains, taken by and large,
were usually at peace. The moments were nonetheless rare when
some minor disturbance was not taking place, especially among
the unruly lords of the south, though not always on a scale to
require the king’s personal attention. Henry normally preferred
to wage his own wars and to leave the less exciting administrative
side of his duties to his deputies when the choice arose. His next
expedition made a great impression on his contemporaries. We
know little of the details except that it was aimed against the lord
of the reputedly impregnable castle of Thouars on the borders of
Poitou and Anjou. Henry seems to have used a force of mercenar¬
ies, for the Norman knights would not have served so far from
home, and there is no evidence of a summons to the men of
Anjou or Poitou. In any case, the dramatic speed with which the
castle fell—its resistance lasted a mere three days—implied some
new method or a higher than usual standard of military efficiency.
The mefcenafies were no new institution, for Stephen had used
them, and others before him. Henry, however, succeeded in
changing them from an ill-organised treacherous rabble to a highly
effective force, loyal and well-disciplined, under recognised cap¬
tains. With, the fortress fell one of the key factors in twelfth-
century strategy: the assumption that impregnable castles situated
at vital positions were an adequate defence, and that no major
field forces wer6 needed for a successful campaign. If such fortresses
could be taken in a mere three days, whole regions might fall
94 HENRY PLANTAGENET

within a few weeks now that siegework no longer involved long

delays. Nor was this success a mere flash in the pan. His mercen¬
aries and siegecraft were Henry’s great asset for the next fifteen
years, and not until the French began to play at his own game did
they present a serious challenge to his military superiority.12
When Louis met Henry again soon afterwards, he was in
no way to quarrel with his successful vassal. A warm display of
friendship marked a joint pilgrimage to Mont St Michel, where
they heard mass together. Returning by Avranches and Caen, they
parted on the best of terms at Rouen. Louis had during this time
reconciled Henry with his old enemy, Theobald of Blois, and a
treaty fixing the eastern border of Anjou was made soon after¬
wards. Theobald gave up the Loire castles of Amboise and
Fr6teval, and an exchange was arranged with his brother-in-law,
Rotrou of Mortain, by which Henry gave up Belleme on the
Norman border for Moulins nearer the centre of Normandy:
another step towards making his domains compact and well-
organised.

Eleanor, who had been acting as regent, joined Henry for Christ¬
mas at Cherbourg. After the festival, he began to plan a new ex¬
pansion of his effective domains, perhaps with her encourage¬
ment. Eleanor’s forebears, the lords of Aquitaine, had at one time
been lords of Toulouse; but the counts of Toulouse claimed that
William VIII, Eleanor’s grandfather, had given them full lord-
ship in bond for a loan made to him when he went on crusade in
the early years of the twelfth century. Since the money had not
been repaid, they now regarded themselves as independent. Louis,
when he was married to Eleanor, had planned an expedition to re¬
establish her rights, but this never materialised. He had chosen
instead to make an alliance with the count of Toulouse by marry¬
ing his sister Constance to him. Henry decided to revive the claim,
and began his plans accordingly. The campaign would be fought
far from the lands of his trusted northern knights, and he placecf
little reliance on the men of Gascony and Poitou. Therefore, on
Thomas Becket’s advice, he turned to a form of taxation, first used
in the early years of the century, which would enable him to raise’
the army of mercenaries he needed and would relieve his knights
 THE NEW ORDER 95
of irksome duty in the far south. By this system, each knight paid
a specific sum—five shillings—for the service he owed. If a baron
held lands for which the service of twenty knights was due, in¬
stead of raising the contingent himself, he paid the appropriate
assessment of £5 to the king, who then organised the levy and
wages of the army himself. Henry furthermore made an alliance
with Count Raymond of Barcelona, by which his third son,
Richard, now aged eighteen months, was (in due course) to marry
the count’s daughter.
Only one possible danger threatened: that of Louis’ inter¬
vention on behalf of his brother-in-law. Henry hoped to avoid
this. Yet the French king could hardly afford to allow his already
overpowerful vassal to appropriate more lands. A meeting at Tours
proved unsuccessful from the Angevin’s point of view, since Louis
refused to make any promises not to intervene. Plans were none¬
theless continued, and a general summons for the army issued on
March 22, 1159; the meeting place was to be Poitiers, on June 23,
for those knights who chose to do their service in person. A fresh
< attempt to appease Louis was made at Heudicourt three weeks
before the expedition was due to depart, but once again the French
king refused to give Henry a carte blanche similar to that granted for
Brittany in the previous year.
Henry had been active in other diplomatic fields. A mission
was sent to win over the German emperor, Frederick Barbarossa,
to his side; but his envoys arrived at the Imperial court at the
same time as those of Louis and embassies from Greece and
Hungary. Even the goodwill gained on a previous embassy in
September 1157, when a huge tent of marvellous workmanship
had been presented to Frederick, was insufficient to extract more
than the prudent words and royal gifts’ distributed to all alike.13
Frederick, already involved in Italy and at home, had no desire to
assist Henry in his ambitions, which, if nourished, might one
day cross witk his own; from Toulouse, it was not far to the dis¬
contented cities of northern Italy, which lay uneasily under the
emperor’s yoke, ready allies for ambitious interlopers.14

The army that left Poitiers on June 24, 1159, was of impressive
size. Only a few knights came with the barons of England,
96 HENRY PLANTAGENET

Normandy and Anjou; but Scottish and Welsh contingents, forces

raised by the count of Barcelona, and an innumerable host of
mercenaries gave Henry reason to hope for swift success. At first
all went well. Sweeping southwards, minor castles on the road to
the city of Toulouse fell rapidly before him. Malcolm of Scotland
was knighted by Henry at P6rigueux on the last day of June,
perhaps in token of some special feat. A week later, the host lay
encamped before the walls of Toulouse itself. Most of the count's
lands, including the important stronghold of Cahors, lay in
Henry’s hands by early August through Becket’s exertions at the
head of a separate squadron. But the defence had been strength¬
ened by Louis’ presence within the city; he had moved south to
resist his vassal’s ambitions, and now encouraged the defenders.
In addition, the besiegers were hampered by long supply lines,
their nearest base being forty miles distant. When an epidemic
attacked his troops, Henry deemed it wise to withdraw, giving as
his excuse his wish to avoid attacking his overlord in person.
To have Louis as his prisoner would certainly have placed Henry
in an awkward situation, but he had not hesitated to run this risk
on earlier occasions. Leaving garrisons in the castles that had been
taken, and giving Thomas the command of the rearguard, Henry
withdrew northwards via Uzerche and Limoges at the end of
September, cutting Louis’ line of retreat. He reached Normandy
in October, where Louis’ brothers had attempted to create a
diversion by ravaging the border; Henry retaliated by laying waste
the lands round Beauvais and burning many towns. The count of
Evreux surrendered three castles between Evreux and Paris to
Henry as the price of peace, with the result that Louis could no
longer travel in safety to Chartres from his capital, and the blow
was aggravated when the count did homage for all his lands to
Henry, not excluding those he should have held from Louis. A
truce was the only solution for the French king, and in December
1159 a truce was made until Whitsun following.
Henry spent this seven months’ respite in reorganising the
internal affairs of Normandy. Two important changes had taken
place during 1159. William of Warenne, Stephen’s heir, had diecl
on the Toulouse expedition, and Henry had retained his posses¬
sions, which included the county of Mortain on the western border
THE NEW ORDER 97
of Normandy. He had also lost a much-valued servant, Robert
de Neufbourg, who had been seneschal and viceroy for several
years; feeling that his days were drawing to a close, Robert
became a monk at Bee in July, and died there at the end of August.
Hence new arrangements were needed, and Henry took the oppor¬
tunity to add certain reforms, promulgated at his Christmas court
at Faiaise. The tenor of these was that judgements, whether ecclesi¬
astical or civil, should not be made without evidence from wit¬
nesses and persons who knew the defendant. These ‘honest neigh¬
bours’ were in effect the same system of sworn inquest instituted
by Geoffrey Plantagenet, but the procedure had never been applied
so extensively until now. As to replacing Robert, Henry did not
act until he left for England four years later; while he himself was
present, no viceroy was required.
The end of the truce was approaching by the time Henry
had inspected his Norman domains, but both sides desired a
permanent peace, which was arranged at Whitsun 1160. It in¬
volved a return to the position before the war began; the count of
Evreux was to go back to Louis, and all other conquests, except
certain castles in the south, were to be returned. Thus the Toulouse
expedition—Henry’s one attempt at extending his rule by force of
arms—ultimately proved little better than a fiasco, and a costly
one at that. Henry knew that he could not repeat the effort im¬
mediately, and hence had to make such terms as he could, although
he had made a much better military showing than the French
king. The terms of the treaty were confirmed in October, when
Prince Henry did homage to Louis as heir to Normandy.

Frederick Barbarossa had stood aside from this quarrel in the west.
This did not mean that his actions were to occupy a wholly
separate sphere, and the attention of Louis and Henry was now
occupied by repercussions of the emperor’s schemes in Italy.
Adrian IV, the English pope, had died the previous year, and a
successor hostile to the emperor elected, under the name Alex¬
ander III. Frederick’s influence was great enough to secure the
election of an anti-pope, Victor IV. Both now claimed recognition
as rightful pope, and synods of the clergy were accordingly held
98 HENRY PLANTAGENET

to deal with the problem. A council in London in June 1160

decided for Alexander, presumably with Henry’s approval, for
the Norman kings claimed the choice between pope and anti-pope
as a matter for royal discretion. A similar decision was taken at
the council of Norman prelates at Neufmarch£ in July, and a
joint council with Louis at Beauvais ratified this. Louis left the
actual announcement to be made at Henry’s discretion, evidently
failing to realise that this gave him an excellent means of ex¬
tracting concessions from Alexander if he chose to delay it.*16
Another death, that of Louis’ queen, Constance, in the
summer of 1160 produced disproportionate political reactions.
Louis, anxious for an heir, married again within a fortnight in
almost indecent haste, choosing this time the sister of the count of
Blois. This meant that Margaret, Prince Henry’s fiancee, was less
likely to inherit her father’s domains or a portion of them; and
if an heir were born, Louis would be reluctant to let her dowry
be paid. Henry moved swiftly, for he could not reckon on one
convenient factor for very long, namely the presence of papal
legates in Normandy. Using the threat of a delay in the announce¬
ment of the recognition of Alexander, he obtained permission for
the marriage of Henry and Margaret, in spite of their youth, and
on November 2, 1160, the legates themselves performed the
ceremony. The castles of Gisors, Neaufles, and Neufmarchi were
handed over by the Templars who had acted as custodians, and
Henry rewarded their complicity with considerable gifts to them¬
selves and to their order in England.
The expected consequences followed: Louis and his brother-
in-law, Theobald of Blois, attacked Henry. But Henry reacted
swiftly and seized Theobald’s newly-fortified castle at Chaumont,
strengthened Amboise and Fr^teval on the border. He then
retired to winter at Le Mans. From here, he ordered the garrisoning
by royal officers of all Norman castles, and put Gisors in a state

* The decree of the council of Pavia, recognising Victor IV, in February Il6<$,
had had Henry’s name among the list of approving sovereigns; his acquiescence
was said to have been signified ‘by letter and by his legate’.« Perhaps this was
also used by Henry in persuading Alexander’s legates. That some diplomatic use
of the situation was envisaged is implied by his anger with those bishops who
recognised Alexander after Beauvais but before his announcement.
THE NEW ORDER 99
of defence. Anjou, too, was put on a war footing, and when hostilities
broke out again in the spring of 1161, nothing more than skirmishes
ensued. Peace was made about midsummer; Henry retained the
dowry since he had both legal and military arguments on his side.
This time there was to be no renewal of the conflict for six years,
and the borderlands were able to recover from the annual deva¬
stations of the past. The profits of Henry’s military campaigns
since his accession were far overshadowed by his diplomatic gains.
In France, he had an unofficial protectorate over Brittany, and
had acquired the Vexin and Nantes, besides which the conquered
castles in the south won by force of arms were unimportant. In
England, the recovery of the northern provinces was of more value
than the minor successes in Wales, and he had gained possession
of almost all the baronial castles that he required.
The latter half of 1161 was occupied with lesser matters.
Among these were a building programme for peaceful purposes
in Normandy, including a park near Rouen and a leper-house at
Caen. In August 1161, he reduced a strong fortress in Gascony at
Castillon, to the amazement and terror of the local lords. Christ¬
mas was spent at Bayeux with Eleanor, and the New Year of 1162
saw a consolidation of Henry’s position in Brittany. An old enemy
of the Norman dukes, Geoffrey of Mayenne, surrendered three
castles on the Breton border which his father had usurped from
Henry I thirty years before. In the same area, the death of the lord
of Dol in June gave Henry a chance to exercise his rights of ward¬
ship over the heiress, a normal perquisite of feudal lords, once he
had retrieved the girl from her uncle, Ralph of Fougfres. The
latter had hoped to keep her—and the disposition of her marriage
—in his own hands.
Henry had felt for some time that he should return to
England, and at a council at Rouen, in February 1162, he began
to put matters in order. He rebuked the viscomtes for their
maladministration, and adjusted certain fiscal matters. It was not
until the following December, however, that he was able to finish
his arrangements, and he was then detained by contrary winds.
After spending Christmas at Cherbourg, he landed at South¬
ampton on January 25, 1163. He had been absent for four years
and five months, and there was much to be done.
 The Central Problem

H ENRY’S FIRST decade as ruler of England had been in the

nature of a prelude to greater things. Now that the time of
preparations was over, sweeping changes, transforming the English
political scene, were to ensue in the next six years. The first of
these had already come about when Henry reached England. After
a long and controversial primacy of twenty-two years, Theobald,
archbishop of Canterbury, had died in April 1161. When he was
elected to the see, Stephen’s brother, Henry of Winchester, held
the office of papal legate, and the archbishop of York was trying to
assert his independence from Canterbury’s jurisdiction. The arch¬
bishop’s position could hardly have been more beset by difficulties;
but, avoiding all the diplomatic pitfalls presented by the imme¬
diate situation and by the transfer to the Angevin dynasty later on,
he had restored the see of Augustine to its ancient influence. His
part in negotiating the settlement with Stephen had earned for
Theobald Henry’s highest confidence.
Henry did not hasten to fill the vacancy, although he seems
to have had no doubt in his own mind as to whom Theobald’s
successor would be. His enemies accused him of prolonging the
interregnum because during that period the rich revenues of the
see fell to the treasury. Weightier matters brought about the
delay. In the course of the various diplomatic missions Henry had
exchanged with the Holy Roman Empire, it could hardly hay£
escaped his notice that the emperor had resolved the problem of
relations between Church and State by giving the office of chancel¬
lor to the archbishop of Mainz, his foremost prelate. Henry now
had an opportunity of copying this pattern; and there were other
THE CENTRAL PROBLEM IOI

good grounds for choosing Thomas Becket. He had been closely

associated with Theobald, as member of his household and later as
archdeacon of Canterbury. One of the archbishop’s last acts had
been to write to him demanding that he return to see him before
his death. Furthermore, Henry felt that Becket, his closest friend,
was completely loyal to him and could safely be entrusted with
the great power attached to the office of archbishop; and that,
knowing the royal will in such matters, would readily comply in
carrying it out. With Church and State in the hands of himself
and of Becket, whose ability to work in complete accordance with
his plans was already proven by seven years of diplomatic, admini¬
strative and military success, Henry could make himself master of
England to a degree beyond the most secret ambitions of his
predecessors. The dangers of the Church as an opponent had been
starkly demonstrated by Stephen’s troubles: when he had tried to
imprison cantankerous bishops, he almost lost his throne, and the
pope’s refusal to assent to his son’s coronation during his lifetime
had given fresh impetus to his rival. Henry, like every other mon¬
arch of the day, was only too conscious of the potential of the
Church’s weapons of excommunication and interdict, and he had
no intention of finding himself threatened by them. On the other
hand, he realised that he was liable to arouse the Church’s en¬
mity, in the course of his schemes for establishing strong govern¬
ment. To make Becket primate would not only dissolve this ever¬
present threat; it almost seemed to place those very weapons in the
king’s own hands.
'The chancellor was leaving for England to deal with such
matters of state as could not wait the king’s return, when Henry
broached the subject to him in private. Thomas’ response was per¬
haps the>only- one possible in the circumstances. Knowing that
Henry’s will was as good as law, even if the law of the Church
demanded a free election, he answered, smiling and indicating his
rich and colourful clothing: ‘How religious and saintly is the man
you want to appoint to that holy see!’ He went on to point out
that he might not always see eye to eye with the king, and that he
did not want to lose Henry’s friendship.1 It seems certain that
Becket was already aware that, once he had accepted such high
office in the Church, his sense of vocation and dedication to the
102 HENRY PLANTAGENET

task in hand would prevent him from taking a complaisant view

of Henry’s ecclesiastical policy as he had done until now: to serve
God and Mammon would become impossible for him. Just as
Henry failed to assess this trait in Becket’s character correctly, so
Becket failed to appreciate the degree to which Henry felt that he
might legitimately interfere in Church affairs. Becket was trained
in canon law, the code of the Church, which had only been
properly worked out in the previous two decades.2 The tenets
which forbad excessive interference by the secular powers were
commonplace to him but far less familiar to Henry. The king
was either ignorant or contemptuous of these edicts and of the
idea of Church independence. The chancellor had, it was true,
applied scutage to Church lands nominally exempt from tax as well
as to those of the lay magnates; but the Church owed feudal service
on this type of property; scutage was paid in lieu of feudal service,
and the point was certainly debatable. Otherwise, there had been
few occasions on which Becket would have discussed ecclesiastical
affairs with the king. Theobald had usually had his own way, and
nothing more than minor details had found Henry and the pre¬
vious archbishop at cross-purposes. That Becket should have taken
up the archbishopric fully conscious of the dangers ahead and pur¬
sued a single-minded course of resistance is most unlikely in the
light of subsequent events; his resolve hardened with the course of
time, and for the moment the problem of relations with the king
seemed to him ‘a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand’, and before
he left for England he accepted the king’s choice.
Soon afterwards, Henry sent two bishops and Richard de
Lucy to England to make the necessary arrangements for the
election, taking with them writs directing the monks of Canter¬
bury, on whom the duty of choosing the new archbishop fell,
to put Thomas forward. Before de Lucy left, Henry, apparently
doubting his zeal in the mission, called him aside in private and
asked him: ‘If I were lying dead on my bier, would you do every¬
thing in your power to put my son Henry on the throne?’ De Lu<?y
answered: ‘All I could.’ ‘I want you to do as much to get the
chancellor elected to the see of Canterbury’, was Henry’s in¬
junction.3 Yet before the royal wish was realised, there were many
pitfalls to be avoided. The king enlisted the papal legate, Henry of
 THE CENTRAL PROBLEM 103

Pisa, and Bishop Henry of Winchester, to overcome any last

doubts in Becket’s mind. At the election itself, one influential
prelate, the ascetic Gilbert Foliot of Hereford, opposed the choice
of Thomas, whether from personal aspirations or from a genuine
concern from the church’s welfare. Certainly Thomas’ ostentation
in public and lack of apparent concern for ecclesiastical matters
hardly made him seem the ideal candidate. In May 1162, the
desired election was made. On June 2 Thomas the archdeacon
became Thomas the priest; on June 3 he was consecrated arch¬
bishop in the old cathedral of Canterbury. Almost at once, he
made his own independent will felt; and his first action as arch¬
bishop held in it the germ of much of the controversy that was to
follow. Instead of executing Henry’s designs, he sent the king his
resignation from the secular offices he held. In so doing, he may
have felt that he was justified; for when he was elected, Prince
Henry, acting for his father, had released him from lay obligations
at the request of Henry of Winchester.
Whatever dismay Henry may have felt on receiving the
( news, his next meeting with Becket was full of the old cordiality.
All the same, in the six months’ interval he must have learnt of
the change that had come over the archbishop; of his rejection of
the splendid show in which he had once delighted; of his zeal in
pious works; and of his humble and ascetic way of life which in
its way was almost as ostentatious, though more sincere.4 When
the king landed at Southampton in January 1163, the archbishop
and Prince Henry, his pupil, awaited him; and Henry displayed
as much joy in seeing Thomas as over his own son. After the
tumult of the first meeting, they rode together to the royal lodg¬
ings. Soon afterwards, Thomas, seeing that the king was weary
from the^ journey, discreetly withdrew until the following day,
when they continued on their way together. Henry may have had
doubts about his decision in the interval; but in the presence of his
friend and reassured by the appearance of complete loyalty these
quickly vanished.

A formal councjl and court were held at London on March 3, at

which plans for the work of the next months were laid. A long
104 HENRY PLANTAGENET

overdue ceremony of homage to Prince Henry was performed by

the English barons; he had been heir apparent since the death of
his brother William in 1156, but the formal recognition had
never been made. It is possible that Henry was thinking of crown-
ning his eldest son at this time, since a crown was prepared for
him;5 but the necessary permission from the pope does not even seem
to have been requested. Measures were approved for an expedition
against the Welsh to attempt to settle the border troubles which had
continued intermittently since Henry's last incursion into Wales.
At the same time two great inquiries into the state of the
realm were set in motion. The first, concerned with the feudal
tenure of land throughout England, was designed to assert royal
rights which had lapsed during Stephen's reign, and to discover
how far the increase in military power commanded by the barons
had led to an increase in the number of knights’ fiefs. Three
questions were put to the barons: How many knights' fees had
they under Henry I? How many knights did they owe in service
to the king? To how many additional knights had they given fees
since Henry I’s death? The results of this inquiry were recorded at
the exchequer when the findings were completed three years later.
Whether the actual changes that arose from it were important or
not—there is very little evidence on this—it marks a departure
from Henry’s political theme up to this point—that of reversion
to his grandfather’s day—and a change to the beginning of a
programme of clarification and reorganisation. But first a word of
warning: we must not speak of Henry’s ‘reforms’, for the establish¬
ed order was sacrosanct to both laymen and to the Church; the
king had sworn to uphold it at his coronation. Any changes had to
be justified as a revival of old customs, as was sometimes genuinely
the case, or as extensions of arrangements which were no longer
adequate in changing circumstances.6 The idea of a fixed society,
governed by laws which reflected in their immutability God’s un¬
changing order in which each individual had his appropriate place,
was to persist for many years to come. *
A further inquiry by the archbishop of York and Reginald
de St Valery overhauled the nation’s finances. The regular annual
revenue, as showing by surviving records, declined by nearly
£4,000 in the year ending at Michaelmas 1163:3 sum representing
THE CENTRAL PROBLEM 105

almost one-third of the average total. This regular income was

raised for the most part by the sheriffs, who paid a fixed sum into
the exchequer for the various levies due to them. Hence, if increased
prosperity meant an increase in the sheriff’s revenue, the king drew
no benefit; and eight years of peace had restored the economy of
the kingdom. So the most important and simplest measure result¬
ing from the inquiry was the raising of these fixed totals or ‘farms’
to a level closer to the new financial conditions. However, the king
could not do this except when the occupant of the sheriff’s office
was changed, and by 1165 only four counties had been raised, the
increase being about a quarter. Even more important, however,
Henry seems to have managed to reduce the costs of government
and to pay off some of the debts to moneylenders outstanding since
the early days of his reign.7

Thomas had meanwhile crossed the Channel to represent the

English Church at the council of Tours, where many decrees affect¬
ing the state of the Church as a whole were passed; and on his
return he carried out a review of his new diocese, setting right
some of the matters to which he should have attended as arch¬
deacon. If he had changed his way of life from courtier to monk, he
had lost none of the business acumen which had distinguished him
as chancellor. Much of the property of Canterbury had been se¬
questered during Stephen’s reign and among the more important
items not returned were the castles of Rochester, Saltwood, Hythe
and Tonbridge—the last being of vital strategic importance and
in the hands of the powerful earl of Clare. To these the archbishop
laid claim, reinforced by the canons of the council of Tours against
those who held land usurped from the Church. In so doing, he
aroused jhe king’s anger. Nor was his action in excommunicating
an important baron, William of Eynsford, over the right to appoint
the vicar of Eynsford, calculated to please Henry. Since William
I’s day, it had been the custom that no man who held lands
directly from the king, a tenant-in-chief, could be excommuni¬
cated without the king’s permission, since the sentence might
impede them in the execution of their royal duties; but this
Thomas refuse^! to acknowledge, saying that the Church alone
was arbiter in such matters.
io6 HENRY PLANTAGENET

These were still minor matters such as might be expected to

arise while the archbishop was settling in to his new office. A little
goodwill could render them harmless. But the first opportunity for
so doing—at a council assembled at Woodstock on July 17, 1163
—led only to further quarrels. In the course of the financial in¬
quiry, a reform in the payment of certain taxes had been proposed,
whereby the money traditionally paid direct to the sheriff to de¬
fray the costs of local government and defence of the shires should
now be paid into the exchequer. This scheme would have given
Henry further means of controlling his local officials, besides pre¬
venting extortion by them. The archbishop, however, took offence
at the idea, declaring it to be an arbitrary innovation, and said
that he would refuse to pay anything from the Canterbury estates.
Why Becket chose to act thus is mysterious; there may have been
aspects of the scheme which were genuinely harmful, but at
moments the archbishop’s conduct seemed to border on megalo¬
mania, in which he saw himself as the self-appointed champion of
the liberties of England, often without much real cause or follow¬
ing. At best, his stand on a purely constitutional issue, which
could hardly be regarded as an especial threat to the Church, was
tactless in the extreme. Henry had to abandon the scheme under
this pressure, which undoubtedly rankled in his mind. Some
bishops were alienated by Becket’s action; his old opponent Gilbert
Foliot, newly translated from Hereford to London, refused to
renew his oath of allegiance to the truculent archbishop.

Events during the spring and summer brought to the fore a much
more important issue between king and Church. There were in
England two separate systems of jurisdiction, covering the entire
country: the royal courts, and the ecclesiastical courts. The latter
were responsible for all men in holy orders and other matters
ranging from Church property to marriage contracts, oaths and
wills. If a man who was no more than a deacon or clerk corrt1-
mitted an offence, it was to this court that he had to answer.
Henry s complaint was not against the competence of the Church
courts, but their lack of punitive powers. A layman committing
murder would be heavily fined, mutilated or imprisoned; a cleric
 THE CENTRAL PROBLEM 107

guilty of the same offence would be deprived of his orders and go

scot-free, defrocking being the greatest punishment that the
ecclesiastical court could impose. Henry, seeking to give his sub¬
jects a more equitable system of justice, was made all the more
conscious of this loophole when one Philip de Brois was accused of
homicide in the bishop of Lincoln’s court, and secured a some¬
what dubious acquittal. The sheriff of Bedfordshire had the case re¬
opened, but failed to get any further, and was reviled by Philip in
open court. This was brought to the king’s notice since it consti¬
tuted l£se-majest£; but even the king could only obtain a sentence
in the ecclesiastical courts of a year’s exile. When a further case of
seduction and murder by a clerk at Worcester came up, Henry
demanded a trial in the lay court, but found that he was directly
opposed by Thomas, who managed to thwart the king’s designs.
The same happened in the case of a clerk who had stolen a silver
chalice from a London church, although the archbishop decided
that some conciliation was needed, and ordered that the man
should be branded, a punishment forbidden by canon law. Yet
( another case occurred in the diocese of Salisbury, where a priest was
accused of murder by the victim’s relatives, and failed to clear
himself by oath. On the archbishop's orders, the man was deprived
of his benefice and condemned to perpetual penance in a monastery.
Nor were such cases isolated incidents. According to the royal
justices, more than a hundred had occurred since the beginning of
the reign. The offences had included theft, rape and murder—
all of which had gone unpunished by the lay courts.
Despite Thomas’ placatory gesture, Henry had by now de¬
termined to treat the question as one of principle, relying on the
practices of his forebears and the phrase in canon law regarding
criminous clerks: ‘Let them be handed over to the secular court.’
He demanded that the bishop’s court should degrade the offender,
thus laying him open to royal judgement, and then hand him
over to the lay courts for punishment. But both his arguments
were doubtful. There is little evidence that the ‘benefit of clergy’
had not been applied in his grandfather’s time, and it had been so
widespread in Stephen’s reign as to constitute a major scandal. The
latest collection of canon law to be made—the great and authori¬
tative work of Gratian of Bologna—preferred the principle ‘God
108 HENRY PLANTAGENET

judges no man twice in the same matter’. On this Thomas based

his counter-argument: degradation, according to him, was sufficient,
and he could not permit any second punishment to be imposed. The
weakness in Becket’s argument lay in its disregard of Henry’s careful
proposal that no second trial should be held. The ecclesiastical
courts could still acquit a man and have their sentence respected;
but if they found the accused guilty, their powers would be strength¬
ened by those of the lay courts. The decree that Becket quoted
applied only to double trials and judgements. Yet Henry’s canon-
law case had a similar flaw; for the phrase on which it rested was
intended only as a measure to ensure that the accused was properly
identified as entitled to benefit of clergy. Once this was done, and
the lay court satisfied, the accused was returned to the ecclesi¬
astical court. So neither side had a clear-cut case, and the issue
degenerated, as arguments from dubious premises always will, into
a clash of personalities.8

The first public demand for the punishment of clerks guilty of

felony in the secular courts was made by Henry at a council held at
Westminster on October i, 1163. Originally, this assembly had
been summoned to deal with a very different, but equally em¬
bittered problem: that of the claim of Canterbury to authority as
primate over the see of York. The king announced his new object
as soon as the notables had gathered, and in a forceful speech which
showed how near to his heart the issue stood, argued that the threat
of losing holy orders was hardly likely to act as a deterrent to any
cleric capable of committing such crimes; that clergy deserved a
greater punishment since their guilt was the greater; and that
canon law sanctioned his proposal. Thomas replied with a long
oration pointing out the precedents for clerical immunity, and
begged the king not to make this innovation which might threat¬
en his kingdom’s stability if he was forced to oppose it. His fellow-
prelates, heartened by his example, supported him against the king.
Thomas should have known better than they that Henry’S
reaction to direct opposition was not to yield but to redouble his
attack. The king now phrased his request differently, asking the
prelates to swear to obey the royal customs. Refusal carried with it
more than a taint of treason, while acceptance of the undefined
 THE CENTRAL PROBLEM 109

‘royal customs’ left them at the king’s mercy. Thomas saw through
the manoeuvre, and replied with a similar piece of verbal chic¬
anery, promising that he and his brother bishops would observe
the custom ‘saving their order’: a reservation which entirely de¬
feated Henry’s particular object. The king then attempted to break
down this united front, but only succeeded in getting the bishop of
Chichester to alter his reservation to ‘in good faith’ which did not
placate him in the least. He roundly declared that they were using
poisonous phrases and sophistry to evade his reasonable demands,
and insisted on an unqualified oath. Thomas fell back on another
line of defence, saying that their oath of fealty to him ‘in life and
limb and earthly honour saving their order’ was already sufficient,
since earthly honour included the customs, and that they could
not make any new promises. At this Henry withdrew in one of his
royal rages, without taking leave of the prelates, who vented their
feelings on the unfortunate bishop of Chichester for his alteration
of the formula. It was Henry’s first serious reverse in the execution
of his ambitions.
, The following day, Henry had decided that he could make
no further headway. After forcing the archbishop to hand over the
various castles of which he had been given the custody when
chancellor, he broke off the negotiations without any settlement.
Without announcing his departure to the gathering, he rode off to
the city of London. Before the end of the month, however, he
summoned the archbishop to Northampton for a further inter¬
view, hoping that if he could persuade his erstwhile friend to
comply, the remaining bishops would follow. The meeting took
place outside the town, since there was not room for both the
king’s and the primate’s retinues within. The king drew the arch¬
bishop aside, and reproached him with ingratitude; to which
Thomas replied that the Church could not obey its secular rulers
in defiance of divine laws, and offered to take the oath with the
clause ‘saving his order’. This once more proved unacceptable to
the king. A new course was now adopted by Henry, who, knowing
the foibles of his prelates, worked on Roger of York and Gilbert
Foliot to arouse their old jealousy of Becket.9 In this he was
successful: at Gloucester, they promised to obey the customs, in
return for the king’s promise that he would make no demands on
no HENRY PLANTAGENET

them which ran counter to the privileges of their order—verbally,

a small difference, but one which left Henry ample room to
manoeuvre. Soon afterwards the bishop of Chichester joined the
royal party, and the Norman prelates began to take a hand: indeed,
it was Arnulf of Lisieux who had advised Henry to adopt these
new tactics.

By now, the rift between king and archbishop, although only a

few months old, had attracted attention abroad. Pope Alexander
III was prevented by his political situation from taking a firm
stand on such matters, but sent letters by the abbot of l’Aumone
urging Becket to comply with Henry's wishes.10 Threatened by
the existence of the anti-pope Victor IV, Alexander feared that
any resistance by him might lead to the transference of the allegi¬
ance of the English king to his rival. In face of such persuasion,
there was only one course open to Becket, whatever his conscience
dictated. Soon after receiving the papal messengers at Harrow, he
went to the king at Woodstock, seemingly of his own accord,
and offered to submit unconditionally to the customs. Henry
accepted this, with the proviso that the agreement should be
ratified at a great council at Clarendon the following month, in the
presence of the magnates of the realm. Since the archbishop’s
resistance had been public, his agreement should also be made in
public.
On January 25, 1164, the magnates and prelates assembled
at the royal hunting-lodge near Salisbury to witness Thomas'
public profession of obedience. It seemed that the storms of the
Westminster council had at last blown themselves to calm. But
Thomas had had time to ponder his decision, and knowing the
king’s habits, to consider the ways in which Henry might take
advantage of his promise. Hence he hesitated for a day or more
after the council opened from making the agreement. Only by the
persuasion of the bishops of Salisbury and Norwich, the earls of
Cornwall and Leicester, and two distinguished Templars, was .fte
induced to perform the ceremony. The promise was made; and all
retired for the night, feeling that the six-month-old quarrel was
now over.
The following morning was to prove otherwise. Thomas’
 THE CENTRAL PROBLEM in

worst suspicions were confirmed. The king ordered—probably in

accordance with a prearranged plan—that the ancient customs of
the realm as practised by his forbears should be recorded by those
of his barons old enough to remember his grandfather’s days. The
finished document was presented to Thomas on the following day
in the form of a chirograph.*11 The archbishop read the docu¬
ment. Apparently taken completely by surprise, he refused point-
blank to seal the document, protesting that these were not prac¬
tices that had ever obtained in England but ‘pernicious innova¬
tions’ and furthermore that his position forbad him to assent to
such breaches of canon law. Nor could Henry’s threats, his barons’
efforts at persuasion, and the bishops’ fears, move him to do more
than assent to the document verbally, with much reluctance. The
final record of the agreement, now known as the Constitutions of
Clarendon, could only claim that the ‘aforesaid customs and privi¬
leges of the Crown’ were ‘confirmed by the archbishops, bishops,
earls, barons, nobles and elders of the realm at Clarendon’. Henry
had won a Pyrrhic victory; for the struggle between him and the
4 archbishop had begun in earnest. No quarter was to be shown by
either side from now on. Behind the high phrases and solemn argu¬
ments of law and theology, the clash of proud wills could be dis¬
cerned, now veiled by principles and doctrines, now degenerating
into open stubbornness. Faced with a determined opponent, Henry
resolved that the archbishop’s downfall was the only solution. It
was only a question of finding the right opportunity. Thomas fully
realised that peace was even further off than at the end of Decem¬
ber 1163, and resolved equally that he would not bow to the king,
cost what it might.

j, -
The Constitutions of Clarendon have for so long been one of the
great landmarks in English history that to consider them afresh
would seem superfluous, if it were not for the lesson that they
contain about Henry’s personal attitude to law and order, and the
means by which he was prepared to enforce it. Moreover, recent
* Two copies of the text written on one piece of parchment. When the agree¬
ment was made, thfe parchment was tom in half, and the irregular edges tallied
to prove the authenticity of the copies.
112 HENRY PLANTAGENET

work has clarified the legality of Henry’s position in canon law,

and shown that Becket was less justified than had been thought
hitherto. Even at the time, the most impartial judge among
contemporary historians and the most fervent of the archbishop’s
admirers alike admit that the Constitutions are part of a larger
scheme of undoubted value to the kingdom and politically reason¬
able. Henry aimed at establishing a written and clearly recorded
definition of the laws of England, which could not be disputed
or suffer from the absence of central authority, as had happened to
his grandfather’s customs during the reign of Stephen. He had as a
basis the treatise Quadripartitus, a summary of Old English Law,
and a supplement to it, outlining—but neither in clear terms nor as
an official document—those customs prevailing in Henry I’s day.
Many essential questions of jurisdiction were not recorded in it,
or had arisen since the time of writing,* and the king was deter¬
mined to improve the standard of justice.
It was perhaps unfortunate that he chose to start by trying
to define the position of the most powerful single interest in the
feudal structure of England: the Church. Having once formed
such a far-reaching scheme—and it is probable that it was in his
mind before Theobald’s death—Henry was bent on seizing any
opportunity of making it reality. Hence the Constitutions of
Clarendon should be considered not as an attempt by an angry
ruler to break the opposition to his schemes, contrary to canon
law, but as a reasonable interpretation of the part that the Church
might play in a feudal state, and especially of the dual position of
the bishops, at once ecclesiastics and feudal barons. The problem
was no new one: the so-called ‘Investiture Contest’ over the re¬
spective rights of pope and emperor, as spiritual and feudal lords,
had long been a major factor in European politics. Henry was
once again unfortunate in that his efforts came at a time when the
Church had begun to gain the upper hand elsewhere, strengthened
by internal reforms. That his conception of the customs had a
strong basis in feudal law becomes clear when the ‘Constitution^’
are analysed.12
Of the sixteen clauses, thirteen define the position of the
Church in the feudal structure of England, as regards ownership,
jurisdiction, services owed, and rights of other landowners. The
 THE CENTRAL PROBLEM “3

most important group are those seven clauses which deal with
jurisdiction, the issue which had originally aroused the contro¬
versy. Under William the Conqueror, ecclesiastical and royal
courts had been carefully separated, and the bishops’ application of
canon law carefully separated from the administration of royal
justice. Four clauses reinforce this arrangement and provide the
church courts with effective means of implementing justice. Two
clauses deal with minor matters, confiscation of goods and cases of
debt. Other non-controversial clauses prevent the loss of feudal
services due to the king when land was given to the Church; nor are
villeins allowed to evade their masters by taking holy orders. The
compromise reached on the matter of investiture which had else¬
where provoked such difficulties is recorded in another clause.
Henry I and Anselm, then archbishop of Canterbury, had agreed
that royal assent was required for the election, and the oath to be
taken to the king was ‘for life and limbs and earthly service, saving
the order’: a phrase all too familiar after the Westminster council.
There were, however, besides these stipulations which
t Becket accepted with more or less good grace, five articles which
aroused his unconditional opposition. The first clause of the docu¬
ment declared that questions of the right to appoint vicars and
curates, which often belonged to lay lords, should be treated in the
royal court as though affecting lay property. Becket claimed that
this was, on the contrary, a matter of the care of souls; and that in
Stephen’s reign the ecclesiastical courts had dealt with such
matters. A similar provision declared that the question of whether
disputed holdings of lands were free of military obligations
(frankalmoign) or owed such duties (lay fee), should first be
decided in the king’s court by a jury which would give a sworn
opinion; and any further question as to ownership would then be
referred to the appropriate body, lay or ecclesiastical. This the
church’s lawyers held to be a breach of clerical privilege, and
Becket protested against the encroachment. Two other clauses
dealt with appeals and communication with Rome. Henry, wish¬
ing to safeguard his sovereign rights, attempted in these to prohibit
all movements of native clergy outside England, and all appeals
beyond the archbishop’s court (i.e. to Rome) without his express
permission; and there was undoubtedly some basis in custom for
114 HENRY PLANTAGENET

this. Although the arrangement favoured the archbishop, Becket

could not allow this, trained as he was in the continental tradition
of the papal supremacy; especially as his authority over York was
none too secure, needing reinforcement from Rome at intervals.
Finally, the vexed question of the criminous clerks was raised
once more in the following terms:

Clerks cited and accused of any matter shall, when sum¬

moned by the king’s justice, come before the king’s court to
answer there concerning matters which shall seem to the
king’s court to be answerable there, and before the ecclesiastic¬
al court for what shall seem to be answerable there, but in
such a way that the justice of the king shall send to the court
of holy Church to see how the case is there tried. And if the
clerk shall be convicted or shall confess, the Church ought no
longer to protect him.

The procedure envisaged was therefore this. The clerk

accused of a serious crime should be brought before the lay court,
where he could plead ‘benefit of clergy’. Once his right to this was
established, the case was to be transferred to the bishop’s court,
and only if he were found guilty and reduced to a layman’s status
was he to be returned to the secular authorities, as the last sentence
implies, for mutilation or death. The presence of the royal officer
was intended merely as a precaution to prevent the escape of the
accused. This clause has provoked more argument than any other
of the proposed customs. Henry appealed to canon law in justifi¬
cation of his demand. Certainly the procedure of identification in
the lay court was reasonable, and there was never any suggestion
that the trial should take place in the lay courts. It was the last
sentence that caused the real difficulty. The closest parallel is to be
found in Roman law, which had been introduced into England in
the previous decades. Canon law was more specific: the authority
of the secular court was only to be invoked in the case of a cleric
who defied the bishop or the bishop’s court, but this nonetheless
constituted a precedent for a double sentence. The distinguished
contemporary canonists, Rufinus and Stephen of Tournai, sup¬
ported Henry’s reading of ‘Let him be handed over to the secular
 THE CENTRAL PROBLEM ii5

court’ against Becket’s reliance on a clause forbidding any appear¬

ance whatsoever by a cleric in a lay court, and it was recognised
practice in northern Europe. Becket’s quotation, ‘God does not
judge twice for the same offence’, came not from canon law, but
from St Jerome, and hence lacked the same force. In the absence of
any clear authority, Henry was making a reasonable and equitable
claim, which Thomas resisted as a matter of conscience rather than
because an established tradition was being brushed aside.

The archbishop’s immediate reaction to events at Clarendon was to

abstain from celebrating mass until a letter requesting the pope to
absolve him from the oath to obey the Constitutions had been
answered. However, Alexander directed him to resume his priest’s
office without giving the absolution, evidently realising the con¬
sequences of the latter. After a vain effort to see the king at Wood-
stock, which only led to the park gates being shut in his face, the
archbishop tried to escape abroad, where three rulers, Louis of
( France, the count of Soissons and the count of Blois had already
offered him refuge. The first attempt was repelled by a contrary
wind; and on the second the sailors recognised him and put back
for fear of the king. Even flight seemed to be impossible; so
Thomas resolved to seek another interview with the king, who had
meanwhile remained impassive, waiting for the archbishop’s nerve
to break. Although Henry feared the archbishop’s escape, which
might entail a papal interdict and immense political advantage for
Louis of France, more than his presence at the interview, he
received Thomas coldly. Only once did he refer to the quarrel
asking, half in jest, whether he wanted to leave the country because
it was hop big enough for both of them.
Henry’s only action in the interval had been to seek another
diplomatic advantage. Sending messengers to the pope, he re¬
quested a legation or delegation of papal powers to be conferred on
Becket's implacable enemy, the archbishop of York. The pope was
willing to grant a legation, but not disposed to grant him powers
against Becket. Although this might have been of some use, it was
not what the kffig wanted; the letters conferring the office were
politely returned.
Il6 HENRY PLANTAGENET

The initiative now lay with the archbishop’s enemies, all too
numerous at court. Jealous of his rise to power, and irritated by his
resistance to the king, they gained Henry’s ear without difficulty.
The position of Becket was made worse by the death of the king’s
youngest brother, William of Anjou, on January 3 1164.
Rumour had it that he was heartbroken because Becket had
forbidden him to marry the widowed countess of Warenne on the
grounds that they were related within the prohibited degrees. The
king had no lack of arguments presented to him for dealing sum¬
marily with the archbishop. His attempts at flight, contrary to the
Constitutions, rendered his lands forfeit, some claimed; while
a certain John the Marshal, having a suit in process at the arch¬
bishop’s court, made use of one of Henry’s new rules of procedure
to make difficulties for Thomas. Under this provision, any vassal
failing to obtain justice at his lord’s court could swear with two
witnesses to that effect and have the case transferred to the royal
court. John took this course, perhaps with Henry’s encourage¬
ment, and Thomas was duly cited to answer the complaint on
September 14, 1164. He was too ill to appear, but sent two knights
to make excuse for him and to deliver a protest in which he ac¬
cused John of having sworn a false oath on a hymnbook instead of
a bible. Henry was in no mood for excuses; here was the moment
for which he had been waiting. He treated Thomas’ absence as
contempt, and ordered that a general council of the realm be
summoned at Northampton on Tuesday, October 6, at which the
archbishop should be arraigned. This was quite without precedent.
Archbishops might threaten kings with spiritual penalties, but
never before in England had a king invoked the full force of
secular law against a prelate of Canterbury. Exile had been the
fate of Anselm, one of Thomas’ predecessors, but it was obvious
that the king, besides the penalty, intended public humiliation as
well.18

Men could not remember such a magnificent concourse of the

great men of the kingdom since Henry’s coronation. Only one of
the bishops was absent from the proceedings, and almost all the
lay magnates were assembled. But this was no festive occasion. All
the notables save one had been summoned by personal writ, as was
 THE CENTRAL PROBLEM 117

the custom; and all knew who the exception was. The gratuitous
insult of summoning Becket through the sheriff of Kent as though
he were a private person of no importance was perhaps a blunder
on Henry’s part, insistent as he was on the proper observance of
the letter of the law. The king again showed his mood by arriving
late at night on the appointed day. He had passed the time by
pursuing his favourite sport of hawking along every stream and
river on the way.
It was not until after mass on Wednesday morning that
Thomas was able to see him. First, one of the minor disputes
which always seemed to recur at crucial moments to exacerbate the
quarrel, over one of the lodgings allotted to the archbishop which
a baron had occupied, was settled. Then the king listened to the
archbishop’s case, a rdsum£ of events so far, in which Thomas
reiterated the charge of falsehood against John, and complained of
the lack of personal summons. Henry, when John’s absence was
remarked, explained casually that his duties as marshal had kept
him at the exchequer, but that he would appear the next day, and
,that he, the king, would hear the matter personally. Meanwhile,
the archbishop was to return to his lodgings.
The following day, in the presence of the full assembly,
Henry calmly and deliberately set about the work of humbling the
stubborn spirit of Becket. He acted now as if performing an un¬
pleasant but necessary task, without anger but with a far more
threatening cold determination to undo the mistake of having
appointed Thomas at all. The archbishop was formally accused of
contempt of court in the case of John, having neither appeared nor
sent a valid excuse. Thomas’ defence—that the matter lay within
his jurisdiction and that John’s oath was void—was rejected out of
hand. In view of the oath taken by Thomas to the king at his con¬
secration, ‘in life and limb and earthly honour’, the court held
that he should forfeit all his goods and movables at the king’s
mercy. After some dispute as to who should pronounce sentence,
the aged bishop of Winchester was finally compelled to do so.
Thomas’ reaction was forceful: ‘Even if I were to remain silent at
such a sentence, future ages will not.’ He denied the competence
of the court to /judge him, their spiritual father. Only at the
bishops’ insistence did he let his fury subside and make submission;
118 HENRY PLANTAGENET

ivith the notable exception of Gilbert Foliot, they all stood bail
for him.
So far the anger had been on Thomas' part; Henry had
remained calm. The king had not finished with his victim yet.
Later that day, Becket was sued for £300 that he had received for
work on the castles of Eye and Berkhampstead when he was chan¬
cellor. Thomas pleaded that it had been spent on the castles in
question and on the Tower of London. But Henry remained
inexorable, saying that it was done without his authority, and
Thomas, for the sake of peace, agreed to find the sum, for which
several laymen stood surety: a sign that Henry was beginning to
alienate the opinion of some influential barons.
Friday brought new demands, conveyed to the archbishop by
royal messengers. All concerned details of his work as chancellor:
accounts for 5 00 marks spent on the Toulouse campaign; 500
marks raised on royal security on another occasion; the proceeds of
the archbishopric and other bishoprics and abbacies he had held in
ward as chancellor—in all perhaps £20,000, a sum he could never
hope to raise. He returned the answer that these charges were not
the reason for the summons to Northampton, and that he would
make satisfaction if due time and place were named for the hear¬
ing. Henry replied by demanding sureties for his appearance. No
one was in the least doubt by now as to the king’s intentions; and
barons and knights were careful to avoid visiting the archbishop,
lest the association might lose them the king’s favour.
The weekend of October 10-11 was occupied by consulta¬
tions among the clergy and the archbishop, while Henry waited
patiently for Becket’s will to break. The bishop of Winchester
suggested that the king might be pacified by an indemnity of
2,000 marks; but this was a sad misreading of Henry’s objective.
Other clerks of Becket’s household urged him to rely on the formal
quittance he had obtained when consecrated, which released him
from all secular obligations. His opponents among the bishops,
notably Hilary of Chichester, hinted that he should resign, or*at
least throw himself on the king’s mercy, to avoid rash action by
Henry. They argued that he knew the royal mind much better
than they did, and must see the dangers. Nothing could have
pleased the king better than resignation or an appeal for mercy,
 THE CENTRAL PROBLEM n9
and the suggestion may have been made at Henry's instigation in
the hope that the archbishop might choose the easiest way out of
his difficulties. What Thomas answered to this is not recorded:
perhaps he was already ill, for on the Monday he sent his mes¬
sengers to the court to say that he was suffering from a fever and
could not attend. Henry, who was himself rarely ill, regarded this
as an evasion, and replied with a demand to know whether
Thomas would offer security for the money demanded. The latter
promised to appear in court on the next day, October 13.

As the fateful Tuesday dawned, some of the king's followers

accompanied the archbishop to mass, which he celebrated at an
altar dedicated to St Stephen. Instead of the customary service,
Thomas used the Mass for St Stephen’s day, with its Introit,
‘Princes sate and spake against me’. This liturgical irregularity was
at once reported to the king; the bishop of London later accused
Becket of sorcery for so doing. Henry was thus forewarned that
defiance might be expected. When the archbishop dismounted at
t the castle where the court was to be held, he took his cross from
the bearer and, to the horror of the assembled bishops, strode into
the council chamber with it held before him; nor could he be
persuaded to relinquish it. Roger of York, evidently warned of
Becket’s move, had his cross borne before him when he entered a
few moments later, although he was not strictly entitled to do so
outside his own diocese. By the time the bishops were summoned
before the king, the talk among Becket’s entourage was of what
should be done in face of violence. Herbert of Bosham was all
for immediate excommunication; but William Fitzstephen coun¬
selled moderation. Meanwhile, the bishops told the king how
Thomas ffiad reproached them with excessive severity in their
sentence, reminding them that the customary fine for forfeiture of
movables in Kent was only forty shillings, and that a single ab¬
sence was in any case inadequate cause for such a sentence. Further,
he had appealed to the pope and forbidden the bishops to judge
him on any secular charge concerning his chancellorship.
For the first time during the proceedings, Henry lost his
temper. He senp the earls and barons to find out if this prohibition
had been made, in defiance of the provision at Clarendon that
120 HENRY PLANTAGENET

bishops should sit in the royal court except when sentences of

blood were being heard; and if the archbishop would give pledges
for rendering account of his chancellorship. Thomas made an
eloquent answer, admitting the appeal and refusing to give
pledges; he questioned the court’s competence in anything apart
from the case of John the Marshal, and recalled the quittance from
secular obligations. Henry was not the only one to find himself in
check now. The bishops turned to him, pointing out the diffi¬
culty of their position, since Thomas might invoke ecclesiastical
censures were they to pass sentence, and obtained permission to
dissociate themselves from the judgement. While Henry deliber¬
ated with his barons, realising that it was now plainly a case of
State judging Church, the bishops rejoined the archbishop in the
outer chamber, where they complained of his attitude, but he
reaffirmed his belief that the Clarendon acts were null and void.
They withdrew once more to hear the lay lords passing judgement.
A bold stroke might yet win victory for Henry.
At last the dreaded moment came; the door of the inner
chamber opened once again, and Robert of Leicester, Richard of
Cornwall and other barons appeared to pronounce sentence. But
the earls hesitated and tried to delegate the task; at which Hilary
of Chichester declared that there was no doubt as to the arch¬
bishop’s treason. Becket took advantage of the confusion to speak:
‘What is this which you would do? Have you come to judge me?
You have no right to do so. Judgement is a sentence given after
trial, and today I have said nothing in a formal lawsuit. I have
only been summoned here for the case of John, who has not ap¬
peared to prove his charges. With respect to this, you cannot pass
sentence. Such as I am, I am your father, and you are magnates of
the household, lay powers, secular persons. I refuse to hear your
judgement.’
The sentence unspoken, his would-be judges retired abashed.
Before the king could make a further move, Becket rose and de¬
parted as he had come, carrying his cross, amidst the taunts of tffe
bystanders. Not one tried to bar his way; and what the sentence of
the court would have been remains unknown to this day.
Henry realised that he had been outwitted. Becket’s one
weapon was his refusal to acknowledge the court’s powers; and he
 THE CENTRAL PROBLEM 121

had used it skilfully. When the king heard of Becket’s withdrawal,

and of the insults offered to him by the onlookers, he issued a
proclamation forbidding such behaviour towards the archbishop,
knowing that reports of it would make a bad impression abroad.
He was also anxious that Becket should not be driven to flight.
After supper, three of the bishops arrived, asking for permission
for the archbishop to depart. Henry appeared cheerful, having
evidently found some new plan for dealing with the crisis, and
deferred his answer until the next day. This seemed ominous to
Becket, who, leaving the town under cover of darkness, made his
way secretly to the Channel coast. On November 2, 1164, he
landed in Flanders. The exile had begun.

Henry's immediate reaction to the news of Becket’s escape was not

the Angevin fury that might have been expected, but a calm ap¬
praisal of the situation. He saw that, in spite of the diplomatic
advantages which his continental enemies might gain, exile was
now perhaps a simpler solution than any that he might impose.
^ Hence, officially in view of the appeal by both sides to the author¬
ity of Rome, the archbishop’s lands were left in peace, and a
mission sent to the pope to plead the king's case.14 The hearings
opened on November 26, at Sens where Alexander himself was in
exile, since emperor and anti-pope held Rome. Alexander sup¬
ported Thomas, refusing his proffered resignation, but took no
active measures against Henry. Thomas withdrew to the Cister¬
cian abbey at Pontigny, where he remained until May 1166. He
was soon joined by his kinsfolk. Henry, having failed to gain his
object with the pope, had expelled them at Christmas, besides
taking in hand the revenues of Canterbury. This was an unneces¬
sary provocation, and only served to arouse sympathy with
Thomas; Henry’s patience, already strained by the archbishop’s
successful defiance, was near exhaustion.
Yet noyr that the archbishop was outside his power, Henry
had to quell his irritation and play a waiting game until some new
opportunity arose. Diplomatic exchanges followed for the next
two years. Alexander annulled the Northampton sentence in June
1165, and sent a series of warnings to Henry. But, even though
the papal exile ended and he returned to Rome in November that
122 HENRY PLANTAGENET

year, he did not feel secure enough to support Becket with any
more radical action. Indeed, the emperor had succeeded in winning
the support of two English envoys at a great assembly at Wurz¬
burg in May 1165, when Alexander was publicly abjured and the
new anti-pope, Paschal, formally recognised. However, Henry did
not ratify their action, although no official denial was issued. The
incident was arranged to provide a precedent or excuse if and when
a change of loyalties seemed necessary. Besides, opinion in England
seemed hostile; the earl of Leicester, the chief justiciar, had even
refused the kiss of peace to the schismatic archbishop of Cologne
when he came to England in April to arrange for the marriage of
the Duke of Saxony and Henry’s daughter Matilda.
The archbishop himself was engaged in working out the
theoretical grounds from which he could continue his argument,
and in winning support at the French court. An attempt to win
over Matilda, the queen-mother, produced little result. In
England, the ‘royalist’ group of bishops grew stronger under the
leadership of Gilbert Foliot of London, who had become Henry’s
chief spokesman and adviser in the quarrel.

The fire of controversy had died down by the Christmas of 1164,

and Henry was free to turn to other matters. In Lent 1165, he
crossed to Normandy for a conference at Gisors with Louis on
April 11. This was to have included the pope, but Henry refused
to allow him to bring Thomas, and the discussions were mainly
on feudal questions. At the beginning of May, Henry was joined
by Eleanor and three of the children; but barely a fortnight later,
he had to return in haste to deal with troubles in Wales.
It was not until the beginning of the following year that the
work of legal reform could be continued. An inquiry into the
feudal service due to the king had been in process since 1163; but
the events of Clarendon and Northampton had hindered the
execution of any further plans the king may have had. The next
great project was likewise promulgated at the hunting-lodge near
Salisbury, in the first months of 1166. Attended by no dramatic
scenes, it is known to historians of governmental institutions
rather than to the general chronicler, yet its implications were in
THE CENTRAL PROBLEM 123

many ways wider in effect than those of the Constitutions. The

assembly was a sitting of the royal court, and the resulting docu¬
ment was called the Assize of Clarendon.15 In it, Henry laid down
his provisions for the maintenance of public order in a fashion
hitherto unknown in England. His problem was to prevent crimin¬
als from escaping justice by taking advantage of the dual nature of
the English system. At the local level it was often in baronial
hands, while the national courts were under the royal aegis. Fur¬
thermore, justice and its administration brought with it certain
profits, which the local lords would have been loath to lose; on the
other hand, the efficiency of their courts was questionable. A care¬
ful course had to be steered between the conflicting interests.
Henry’s objective was not a single unified system of royal
justice, as has sometimes been implied, but the repression of law¬
lessness. In doing this, he was more interested in repairing the
failures of the existing system than in building afresh; the archi¬
tecture of his legal structure was that bequeathed by tradition, and
Henry’s work on it was aimed at renewing its defective parts. He
<was less the builder of the medieval English legal system than the
preserver of an older tradition. To do this, he had to extend the
powers of the itinerant justices by declaring them his representa¬
tives, so that the court held by them was equivalent to hisper sonal
sessions; and he had to give the sheriffs adequate means of en¬
forcing his intentions. But the result was the filling of a vacuum
rather than any diminishing of baronial rights. Had Henry
attempted the latter, we might know more about the proceedings
of the council, which seems to have passed off without controversy.
Immediately after the end of the council, Henry left for
Southampton, and on March 23, 1166, crossed to Falaise. In
spite of the difficulties with Becket the preceding five years had
been a time of prosperity and peace. He left the kingdom in good
order, and with every hope that the future was secure. Free from
doubts about phe state of England, he could turn again to the
diplomatic problems presented by the archbishop’s exile.
6
This Low-born Clerk

T HE INTERVAL of three years since Henry had last spent

any length of time abroad had seen a gradual extension of his
power and prestige everywhere. His work on the Norman and
Angevin administration had stood the crucial test of a long absence
well, and even Poitou, where his authority was much less secure,
had remained quiet. On the diplomatic front, the German emperor
had sent an embassy seeking the hand of his daughter Matilda for
Henry the Lion of Saxony, and the subsequent betrothal streng¬
thened the king’s hand against Louis of France and the pope simul¬
taneously. Only one event had gone against his hopes: the birth
of a son, Philip Augustus, ‘Dieu-donn£’, to Louis. Margaret,
Henry’s daughter-in-law, was no longer heiress to France, and one
of his deeper schemes had gone astray. However, the possibility of
a heir to France had perforce entered into his plans when Louis re¬
married in 1160.
Brittany was the only place where problems had arisen in
connection with the Plantagenet's ambitions, and it was to these
that he turned first. The intransigent lords who had resisted him
in 11621 had now risen in open revolt. Although the fortress of
Combourg had fallen to the seneschal of Normandy, Richard du
Hommet, in August 1164, the revolt had only become serious in
the following year, when the conduct of operations was entrusted
to Eleanor with instructions to use negotiations as well as force;
The nobles of Maine and Brittany proceeded to form a sworn
confederation against anyone who might attack them. In answer |o
this dangerous threat, which seemed liable to extend the revolt
into the heart of his domains, Henry took over the command as
THIS LOW-BORN CLERK 125

soon as he arrived. With his habitual swiftness, he summoned

men from as many of his continental lands as possible, and struck
at the heart of the rebellion. The retreat of most of the rebels on
the arrival of his army, and the absence of help from France, en¬
abled him to seize Foug&res, whose lord had been the leading
spirit of the resistance, and to raze the castle to the ground. This
exemplary punishment, combined with a diplomatic marriage
between his fourth son Geoffrey and the daughter of Conan, claim¬
ant to the ducal title, brought about the submission of almost all
the Breton barons. Homage was done to Henry at Thouars, and he
set out on a progress through his new dominions: at Rennes, he took
formal possession of the duchy, and proceeded to Combourg, Dol,
and Mont St Michel. Here he offered his prayers in the abbey
church, and received William the Lion, who had just succeeded
Malcolm on the Scottish throne, and had come to perform the re¬
quired homage for his English lands to Henry.2

If success crowned Henry’s military efforts, he had fared worse

during the summer in the negotiations with Becket. There had
been an attempt to arrange a meeting between Henry, Louis and
Pope Alexander on April 19, 1166, at Pontoise. Henry still refused
to negotiate in the archbishop’s presence, and he met Louis alone
on April 24 at Nogent-le-Rotrou. The conference was amicable,
but almost fruitless; the only tangible result was an agreement to
send financial help to Palestine, where the Saracens had made
fresh inroads.
Becket had restricted himself to intrigue during the first eigh¬
teen months of his exile, but without much result. He had attemp¬
ted to enlist the Empress Matilda to support him; but she had com¬
plained that Henry no longer consulted her on such matters, and
had been unable to make any headway with her son. Alexander had
annulled the sentence of Northampton, and generally furthered
Thomas’ cause with such authority as he could afford to exert. On
the other hand, the negotiations at Wurzburg had weakened his
position, Henry having shown that he was quite aware of the
possibilities of A change of allegiance. Alexander urged moderation
on Becket, forbidding him to take active measures for a while.
126 HENRY PLANTAGENET

Henry’s first move in the summer was to profess himself

willing to allow appeals to Rome subject to royal permission and
to hold a council on the matter if the pope felt that it infringed
his rights. This adoption of a conciliatory attitude may have been
merely to gain a temporary respite, since Becket had returned to
the attack. In three letters sent to Henry between January and
May 1166, he reproves the king for his attitude.3 The first is
brief, requesting that the heavy hand of oppression be lifted from
the Church, and that the king meet him soon for a conference. In
the next, Thomas’ severity grows; he sets out his concept of
priestly and royal power, a matter which he had pondered at his
retreat at Pontigny, and ends with an exhortation to the king to
repent. The third would seem to have been written after the arch¬
bishop’s unsuccessful efforts to meet the king in April, for he
begins: ‘I have long desired to see your face and to speak to you;
much for my own sake, but even more for yours . . . for three
reasons: because you are my lord, my king and my spiritual son.’
The tone of the letter is set by the lack of formal salutation. With
passionate eloquence, Thomas urges the superiority of the priest¬
hood to the secular power, and repeats his previous commands to
set the Church free, listing those parts of the Constitutions of
Clarendon to which he objected. Finally, he sets out his demands.
The king must not communicate with the schismatics to the dis¬
advantage of Rome; he must restore the rights and property of the
see of Canterbury; and ‘if it be your pleasure’ he himself is to
return, to serve the king ‘faithfully and devotedly . .. with all our
strength, in whatever ways we can, saving God’s honour and that
of the Roman Church, and saving our order also’. The archbishop
concludes menacingly: ‘Otherwise you know for certain that you
will incur the vengeance of Almighty God.’
Henry now feared that the archbishop would use his dreaded
spiritual weapons. The last letter implied that such action was not
far off. Becket had been encouraged to adopt a stern tone jpy
Alexander’s authorisation of censures against those who had -in¬
vaded the property of Canterbury. These were issued in April, and
a papal warning to Roger of York that only the archbishop .of
Canterbury could perform the English coronation rites had fol¬
lowed, since it was suspected that Henry was considering the
 THIS LOW-BORN CLERK 127

crowning of his eldest son. On April 24, 1166, Alexander ap¬

pointed Thomas legate for England, and a week later reiterated
the need for censures on the Church’s despoilers. In May, how¬
ever, he warned Thomas to deal gently with the bishop of Salis¬
bury, in spite of the latter’s obduracy in refusing to carry out
Thomas’ commands.

Although Henry had not deigned to answer Thomas’ letters, he

was fully aware of the danger of his position. He held a confer¬
ence at Chinon, at which he displayed violent agitation, calling
Thomas’ supporters traitors, and asking for suggestions as to how
he should deal with the rebellious power of the Church. Arnulf of
Lisieux suggested that the interdict and excommunication which
everyone felt to be impending might be forestalled by an appeal,
and this was set in motion. Henry wrote to Alexander complain¬
ing of his machinations against him, and to the Cistercian abbots
blaming them for having sheltered Thomas in one of their houses,
threatening that he would take action against their English branch.
-1 Arnulf of Lisieux, the archbishop of Rouen, and the bishop of
S£ez, were sent to try to appease Becket, but failed to find him at
Pontigny and had to return empty-handed.
Disaster seemed imminent and, had it not been for the
king’s illness, Thomas might well have used the most powerful
spiritual weapon at his disposal: that of excommunication. Instead,
while Henry lay sick at Chinon, the archbishop waited until Pente¬
cost. Then, on June 12 at V&zelay, he fulminated against John
of Oxford, who ‘had fallen into a damnable heresy in taking a
sacrilegious oath to the emperor’ and against the other envoy to
the Wurzburg council, Richard of Ilchester. As despoilers of the
Church, die excommunicated Richard de Lucy, the justiciar of
England, Jocelyn de Balliol, Ranulf de Broc, Hugh de St Clair,
and Thomas FitzBernard. Finally, he called upon die king, under
pain of anathema, to make amends for his actions against the
Church, condemning the Constitutions of Clarendon once again.
The thunder had been loosed, and the situation was far less
desperate than it might have been for Henry. Alexander confirmed
the sentences; but the king was able to enlist the support of the
English bishops and clergy against Thomas, who, they felt, had
128 HENRY PLANTAGENET

taken too extreme a course. The matter now degenerated into a

battle of propaganda. On June 24, the clergy of England appealed
to Alexander against the archbishop’s high-handed behaviour,
protesting that Henry was eager for reforms, an upholder of peace
and order, a just and energetic ruler; his apparent infringement of
clerical immunities stemmed only from a desire to preserve peace.
A remonstrance in similar terms was sent to Thomas himself.
Although some of Thomas’ more fanatical supporters were hoping
for a sentence against the king on July 24, the war continued to be
one of letters. Becket’s partisans produced lengthy answers to the
appeal; the archbishop himself did no more than send a stem
letter to Foliot reprimanding him for opposing his primate’s will.
The bishop of London replied with a lengthy defence of his
actions and of his disinterested status. He denied that he had
ever sought the archbishopric for himself, and recommend gentle
dealings, for the king could not let it seem that any concessions had
been extorted from him by use of force.4
Tempers were rising on both sides. Thomas, attempting to
establish his control over the English clergy, summoned various of
them to appear, and used their failure to do so as a pretext for
threatening them with sentences. He denounced Henry before the
pope once again, and called Foliot a ‘tumour’. It was murmured
that the marquis of Montferrat had sent an embassy requesting the
hand of one of Henry’s daughters as a bride for his son, in return
for which he would use his influence among the cardinals to
procure Thomas’ deposition, and that the mission had been well
received. Nothing came of the supposed plan, and it may have
been an invention of Henry’s enemies. On the other hand, an
English mission was sent to Rome at this period, consisting of a
group of important officials—among them the excommunicated
John of Oxford—to put the king’s case to the pope once again.
Diplomatic intrigues continued to be Henry’s chief weapon.
In the autumn he conferred with the count of Flanders, and
received a papal envoy at Rouen. He protested his goodwill -to¬
wards the pope so volubly that the messenger was unable to
deliver the reproaches he had been commanded to deliver over the
treatment of another envoy who had been imprisoned. About this
time, Arnulf of Lisieux, who was suspected by Henry of playing a
 THIS LOW-BORN CLERK 129

double game in the dispute, attempted to leave the king on the

ground of poverty; but Henry forestalled this by paying off his
debts. The bishops of Worcester and Hereford, who inclined to
the archbishop’s views, were given permission to join Thomas
provided that they did not return.
In December 1166, Henry’s envoys at Rome were success¬
ful in obtaining the appointment of commissioners to arbitrate
between the king and the archbishop: the first positive move of
the year. William of Pavia and Otho, the cardinals chosen, were
more acceptable to Henry than Becket: William had a bad reputa¬
tion of corruption, although Otho was said to be fair-minded,
‘but a Roman and a cardinal’—in other words, open to secular
persuasion. The Empress Matilda and Archbishop Rotrou of
Rouen were also asked to mediate. John of Oxford was absolved
and—most important of all—Becket’s powers as metropolitan of
the English bishops were suspended. He was now unable to take
action without the pope’s permission. The news was greeted with
rejoicing by Gilbert Foliot and his party, Thomas’ inveterate
-> enemies; but even a cooling in French hospitality failed to dis¬
courage Becket. He had had to leave Pontigny for a new refuge at
Sens on November 11 because Henry had threatened the Cister¬
cians who sheltered him at Pontigny with action against their
English brethren and property.5
The papal legates did not reach France until October of
1167, and until then little change in the positions of either side
occurred. Henry gained another advantage over his adversary
through his emissaries at Rome, when he secured a papal mandate
for Roger of York6 to crown his son, Prince Henry: a step which
he wished to take as soon as possible in order to secure the suc¬
cession tcfthe English throne.

The political situation nonetheless kept the king fully occupied.

Henry’s authority south of Poitou had never been very secure, and
in March 1167 a revolt broke out under the leadership of William
Taillefer, Eleanor’s uncle. Fortunately, Henry’s officers were able
to suppress this rapidly, and to strengthen their position. At a
conference at Gtammont during Lent, he was able to follow this
up by securing the overlordship of Toulouse, which the count now
130 HENRY PLANTAGENET

offered him, thus achieving the object of his war eight years before.
This aroused Louis’ enmity, and when the count of Auvergne
started to create difficulties the latter was able to repudiate his
homage to Henry, and make an alliance with Louis. Henry
retaliated by invading his lands after Easter, realising that the
good relations which he had enjoyed with Paris for the last six
years were now at an end. A dispute over the collection of the
subsidy for Palestine from the bishopric of Tours, which lay with¬
in Henry’s domains but belonged to the hierarchy of the French
Church, aggravated the differences. A conference was arranged for
June 4 at the traditional meeting-place at Gisors. Both sides
arrived with armies, and no results were possible. The familiar
pattern of Norman-French warfare was set in motion: castles were
provisioned, and the French made an attack near Mantes, while
Henry replied with an attack on Chaumont-en-Vexin, where the
French supplies were stored. The defenders made a sally, but the
Welsh troops swam the river and set fire to the town. Count
Theobald of Champagne was captured, Louis* brother Henry was
besieged in the citadel, most of the French army’s supplies were
either burnt or seized by the Normans. Louis could only devastate
the unimportant towns of Gasny and les Andelys before beating a
retreat. To add insult to injury, he lost many of his men in the
exceptional summer heat as they withdrew, large numbers dying
of thirst. A threatened invasion of England by Matthew of
Boulogne came to nothing, although Richard de Lucy had to make
hasty preparations for the defence of the coast. The French, ex¬
hausted, had to agree to a truce from August 1167 until the fol¬
lowing Easter.
Henry had reason to seek an interval of peace, for fresh
troubles had arisen in Brittany, and he had no desire for action on
both fronts simultaneously. Eudo of Porhoet and his father-in-law,
Guiomarc’h, had raised the standard of rebellion, and Henry
launched a campaign against them in September. Once again, jpe
was able to reduce his enemy by a few bold strokes, penetrating
for the first time in his Breton campaigns to the distant county
of Lyonesse, and damping the rebels’ ardour by destroying many
of their castles. Yet, though the campaigning season ended with
the Angevin arms everywhere triumphant, the disadvantage of the
 THIS LOW-BORN CLERK
I3i
breach with France and the prospect of renewed conflict in the
following year remained.
A personal sorrow was the only misfortune to befall Henry
during these months: the death of his mother, the Empress
Matilda, at Rouen on September 10, 1167.7 Her latter years had
been devoted to good works, for her health, impaired by an illness
contracted after the birth of her youngest son, had prevented her
from leading the more active life to which she had been accus¬
tomed. She had been Henry’s mentor in much of his political
training, in compensation for the lack of attention during his early
years, when she was fighting in England and he was with his father
in France. She it was who taught him to keep all men dependent on
himself, protracting their business, making no gifts on other men’s
recommendation, and to retain everything that fell into his ward¬
ship for as long as possible. Walter Map, recorder of many details
of Henry’s court, says that she illustrated such advice with a
parable: ‘An untamed hawk, when raw meat is frequently offered
to it, and then snatched away or hidden, becomes more greedy
, and obedient, and will hold fast to its master’; and Map con¬
fidently imputes all Henry’s unattractive qualities to her teach¬
ing.8 This is perhaps unfair; but the harsh school in which the
empress had learnt the ways of power—the civil strife in England
—justified her cynical opinions of royal followers. Henry was in
Brittany at the time of her death, and does not seem to have
attended her burial at the abbey of Bee; on his return, he piously
distributed large sums to churches, monasteries, leper-houses and
the poor, in memory of her.

Towards fhe end of October 1167 the legates, whose arrival had
been so long expected, reached Normandy after a brief conference
with Becket at Sens. Henry met them, but had no wish to come
to an immediate settlement, since the archbishop’s demands re¬
mained unchanged. He realised that the legates were unlikely to
hasten back with nothing accomplished, and therefore used their
presence to shield himself from any censures Becket might wish
to launch, since,he knew that the latter’s powers would not be
restored until the results of the mission were known.
132 HENRY PLANTAGENET

Having discovered what was in the king’s mind, the cardi¬

nals summoned Becket to meet them near Gisors on November 11.
Becket, albeit protesting at the unnecessary distance and his lack
of sufficient horses, went to meet them. Henry’s terms were not
specified; but the legates recommended that he should make peace
with the king without mentioning the customs, because if the king
accepted this, the archbishop could then regard them as null and
void, and it would save Henry the embarrassment of retracting
something enacted in his full council. Becket, supported by the
French king, saw the matter differently. He felt that he had no
alternative but to press for this retraction, and the conference
proved fruitless.
The two cardinals returned at once to Argentan to confer
again with Henry. Although the king knew them to be favourable
to his cause, he was in stormy mood when they arrived on Sunday,
November 26. After two hours of consultations on the Monday,
the king was reported to have said as the legates departed, ‘I
hope to God I never set eyes on a cardinal again’, threatening to
turn Mohammedan to avoid them.9 He dismissed them before
their horses had been brought, so that they had to borrow what
mounts they could find to get back to their lodgings, while Henry
continued the discussions with his own clergy. The following day,
the clergy acted as intermediaries; and on Wednesday, the king
went hunting, leaving them to confer and to announce their deci¬
sion to the legates; a lengthy attack on Becket, a protestation of
complete obedience to the cardinals, and a repetition of Henry’s
willingness to waive the clause about appeals. This was of little
effect, and the negotiations ended on December 5. The king en¬
treated the legates as they left to persuade the pope to rid him of
Becket altogether, and wept publicly. William of Pavia was seen
to do likewise, but Otho, less favourably inclined to Henry, and
perhaps remembering the king’s words on the first day of the
meeting, could scarcely restrain his laughter. But the year eroded
unfavourably for Becket; he was restrained from laying an inter¬
dict on England, and the bishops of Norwich and Chester were
given power to absolve those excommunicated at V^zelay.10
Furthermore, plans were being made to secure Thomas’ trans¬
lation to another post. Only a new legation or a change in Alex-
 THIS LOW-BORN CLERK 135

ander’s political position could lead to a turn for the better; and
since the pope was again hard pressed by Frederick, the outlook
seemed bleak for the archbishop.

Henry’s stalling tactics had proved very successful, and in view of

the increasing poverty of the archbishop, every month that passed
without action favoured the king. But a tacit truce with Becket was
also needed to keep him free to deal with the increasing hostility
of France. At Christmas, he held a great court at Argentan with
Eleanor in the newly-built hall. In January 1168, Henry had to
leave in haste for the south, where the counts of Marche and
Angouleme, and the Lusignan family had renewed the troubles of
the previous spring. The castle of Lusignan fell rapidly, and Henry
destroyed many of their towns and fortresses, leaving garrisons
under the queen’s charge, and giving her Patrick, earl of Salisbury,
to assist her as governor. He then returned north to prepare for the
expiry of the truce with the French at Easter. Hardly had he gone
when Patrick and a few attendants were ambushed by the Lusig-
1 nans; the unarmed earl was felled by a blow from behind, and one
of the squires, William the Marshal, taken by the Poitevin rebels.
Eleanor ransomed the latter,11 and continued to manage affairs
alone. The Poitevin malcontents exchanged hostages with Louis,
and succeeded in preventing a permanent agreement at the meeting
between Henry and the French at Pacy on April 7, 1168. Only the
nobles were present to meet Henry, and in Louis’ absence all that
was arranged was an extension of the truce to July 1, for war was
renewed however, not in France but in Brittany; and Henry wel¬
comed the three months’ respite. He was able to secure successes
over the Bretons which rendered them incapable of causing him
embarrassment'during his dealings with France.
The new negotiations were no more successful. Louis had
promised not to make peace unless the Bretons and Poitevins were
included. The leader of the former, Eudo, complained not only of
military injuries, but also that Henry had seduced his daughter,
who had been given as a hostage, while the Poitevins demanded
restitution of their lands. Long discussions followed, which ended
with Henry offering to settle the latter claim, except in the case
of the abbey of Clairvaux, which was not French, as the abbot
134 HENRY PLANTAGENET

claimed, but his and the pope’s. This was not good enough for
Louis, who demanded restitution of Clairvaux on principle, and
summoned Henry to appear within two days at a named rendez¬
vous. Henry remained six miles away, and only approached at
nightfall of the second day, with his entire army. Both sides
retired, and war began afresh. The results were even more futile
than the previous year’s skirmishes. Neither side wished to risk a
decisive pitched battle, a fear that shaped the pattern of all Henry’s
campaigns. In the course of the manoeuvres that followed, Henry
scored a diplomatic victory by gaining Matthew of Boulogne to his
side by paying him a large sum for his claim to the county of
Mortain in Normandy. Otherwise, Louis burnt Chenbrun in
Normandy, and Henry ravaged the counties of Perche and Le
Vimieu, the latter because its lord had tried to prevent Matthew
of Boulogne from coming to help him. The campaign petered out
about the beginning of December, and Henry retired to Argentan
to hold his Christmas court.

Immediately after Christmas, two new legates began work. These

were Simon, prior of Mont Dieu, and a monk of Grammont,
Bernard de la Coudre, appointed by Alexander on May 25. A con¬
ference between them, the two kings and Becket, was held at
Montmirail in Maine on January 6, 1169.12 It was the first occa¬
sion on which king and archbishop had met since Northampton
and the beginning of Becket’s exile. For once we know nothing of
their personal reactions, which seem to have been concealed under
a diplomatic show of sang-froid. The business of the conference
opened with negotiations for peace between Louis and Henry,
which was rapidly attained. Prince Henry did homage for Anjou
and Brittany, and Richard for Aquitaine, while the king himself
did homage for all his dominions overseas. Richard’s marriage to
Alice, Louis’ daughter, was also arranged,13 although the English
prince was already engaged to the daughter of Raymond of
Barcelona; either Henry had abandoned this alliance, or the couht
had taken advantage of the troubles in the south to join Henry’s
enemies. Full restitution was to be made to the Breton and
Poitevin barons.
A few days later, Henry received papal letters from the
THIS LOW-BORN CLERK *35
legates, commanding him to do his utmost to make peace with
Thomas. The most difficult part of the discussions now began.
There had never been any question of the desire for an end to the
archbishop’s exile on both sides; on the other hand, the price
demanded by each meant that concessions would have to be made.
There was a general feeling that Becket had perhaps been a little
too obstinate in his stand, and almost everyone present urged him
to submit unconditionally to the king’s mercy. This course had
much to recommend it. Henry could scarcely exact dire punish¬
ment; but on the other hand, Thomas would probably have to
comply with the Constitutions of Clarendon, excepting only the
clause about appeals which the king had already offered to with¬
draw. To avoid the extremes of obstinacy and compliance, Thomas
took refuge in the old expedient of making the offer of surrender
‘saving God’s honour’; but the mediators were quite aware of
Henry’s probable reaction to this, and at length virtually suc¬
ceeded in persuading him to abandon the clause. However, as the
archbishop was on his way to face the two kings, one of his more
extreme followers, Herbert of Bosham, warned him that he would
only repeat the difficulties he had encountered when at Clarendon
he omitted the phrase ‘saving his order’. Thomas took heed, and
went on his way. Coming into the kings’ presence, he threw him¬
self at their feet. Henry, touched by this gesture, raised him
gently. Becket then put forward a very moderate view of the events
of the-quarrel, and declared himself ready to submit and throw
himself on the king’s mercy and judgement. Just as the bystanders
felt that peace had come at last, he added ‘saving the honour due to
God’. Henry, who had evidently believed with the rest that victory
was in sight, was seized with anger, and abused Becket roundly.
Thelatterwas unperturbed, and even Louis’ support of Henry failed
to trouble him. ‘My lord, do you seek to be more than a saint?’
asked Louis sarcastically. It was evident that the negotiations had
failed, and jffiough the argument ranged long and heated, the
archbishop was unmoved.14 Dismayed, the prelates and princes
went their various ways: Louis to Paris, Henry to Normandy.

Peace with France was now secured.* But Becket was moving to
* This had been finalised at a conference between the two kings at St Germain-
D6 HENRY PLANTAGENET

more active measures again, in spite of Alexander’s appointment

of a new legatine commission at the end of February, consisting
of the cardinals Vivian and Gratian.15 On Palm Sunday, April 13,
1169, the archbishop issued from his residence at Sens the most
drastic series of excommunications yet. At the head of the list
stood Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London; and the nine other victims
of Thomas’ wrath included Jocelin bishop of Salisbury, Hugh
Bigod, earl of Norfolk, and Richard of Hastings, head of the
English Templars and an intimate friend of the king. Besides this,
Geoffrey, archdeacon of Canterbury, Richard of Chester, Richard
de Lucy and two others were threatened with like penalties on
Ascension Day unless they mended their ways.16 The blow was not
unexpected, for both Gilbert and Jocelin of Salisbury had appealed
in advance against the censure. It nonetheless presented a new and
almost insuperable obstacle to reconciliation. Henry could hardly
swallow this fresh insult; equally, Becket was unlikely to retract
the sentences.
Henry was occupied during the following months in quell¬
ing a revolt in Gascony; but he kept in touch with developments,
writing to Alexander in protest against Thomas’ action, which,
he said, touched him as closely as if it had affected his own
person.17 In correspondence with Gilbert Foliot, he was more
vehement: he advised the bishop of London to disregard the ex-
communication—‘the outrage which that traitor and enemy of
mine, Thomas, has inflicted upon you and other subjects of my
realm’—and encouraged him to appeal to Rome. As a further
measure to obtain support, Henry began to intrigue with the
Italian cities, who might assist him against the pope, and paid
large sums to Milan, Cremona, Pavia, Parma and the nobles of
Rome in return for their influence with the pope to obtain
Thomas’ deposition or translation.
en-Laye at the beginning of March 1169, and was concerned with the fulfilment
of the political agreement of Montmirail. Prince Henry had been to Paris on
February 2, where he formally did the duties of the count of Anjou as seneschal
at the king of France’s table, and did homage to Louis’ son Philip, now four
years old, for Anjou and Brittany. In March, Geoffrey, Henry’s third son, did
homage to the young Henry, in obedience to his father and with Louis’ approval.
Finally, Louis and Henry swore an alliance against their enemies, the only con¬
dition being that no dowry should be given to Richard with the princess Alice.
 THIS LOW-BORN CLERK 137

Alexander was still not prepared to support Becket to the

full, as is shown by a letter of his in June, regretting the censures.
However, the cardinals Vivian and Gratian, when they arrived in
July, gave Becket to believe that the pope was favourable to his
cause, and the third series of negotiations began with both sides
still firmly entrenched in their respective positions. Thomas’ close
friend, the philosopher John of Salisbury, met the legates at
Wzelay on July 22. A month later, they saw the king at Dorn-
front.18 The meeting opened inauspiciously, since the cardinals
had to withdraw to avoid two of the excommunicates, Geoffrey of
Canterbury and Nigel de Sackville, who arrived at the same time.
The king arrived towards evening with Prince Henry; the latter
gave Vivian and Gratian the spoils of his days’ hunting, and his
father entertained them. A long and unsuccessful discussion until
late at night ensued on the next day. The king retired from it
angrily, swearing: ‘By God's eyes, I would act differently if I
were you.’ Gratian answered: ‘Do not threaten us, my lord, for
we fear no threats, coming from a court used to ruling emperors
j and kings.’
A further meeting at Bur-le-Roi on September 1, at which
Henry conferred alone with the legates, enabled him to extract the
absolution of the excommunicates, and late in the evening, Henry
offered the archbishop peace, tenure of his office and return of his
possessions if he would go back. But a further demand, that one of
the legates should go to England to perform the absolutions, led
to a violent scene. Vivian and Gratian refused, whereupon Henry
—saying: ‘Do what you like; I could not care less for you or your
excommunications’—strode out and mounted his horse as if to
ride off. Fortunately he was persuaded to return by the bishops
present, and to-write to the pope offering terms for Becket. Im¬
patient of the delay in making out the document, he withdrew
again, and when told that the legates were authorised to take
action againstJiim, answered: ‘I know, I know; they will put an
interdict on my lands. But if I can capture the strongest of castles
in a day, can’t I take one cleric who puts an interdict on me?’ At
last the king was pacified, and agreed to the document drawn up.
The next day, however, he again raised the question of the
excommunicates, which was a real problem to him in that it
138 HENRY PLANTAGENET
hindered several of his officers from doing their work, since an ex¬
communicate was technically cut off from the society of all fellow-
believers, and anyone wishing to evade one of these men could
take advantage of the fact. New negotiations began; and, tired after
two exhausting days, Henry insisted on the inclusion of the phrase
‘saving the dignity of his kingdom’ in the peace offer, which
Gratian refused, knowing it to be unacceptable to Thomas. Al¬
though continued debates led eventually to a settlement over the
excommunicates, the king’s insistence on the new clause con¬
tinued at renewals of the discussions in Caen and Rouen, and no
agreement was reached. Expecting the storm to burst about him,
he took what precautions he could, ordering that after October 9
anyone found carrying letters from the pope or from Thomas into
England was to be treated as a traitor. Any clergy obeying an
interdict issued by Becket were to forfeit all their property; and
any of them outside England were to return by January 14, 1170.
All appeals to Thomas or the pope were forbidden. All laymen and
clerks coming from abroad were to be searched, and clerks who
had no royal permission to enter were to be sent back. Finally,
everyone was to swear to obey the articles, and all men over the
age of twelve were to abjure Thomas and the pope on oath.19 This
was an open declaration to all involved in the quarrel between king
and archbishop that Henry was going to do all he could to defy
the pope and his powers.
Thomas now felt himself justified in taking the action that
Henry feared. He sent letters to England threatening an inter¬
dict on February 2 of the next year, 1170, unless the king repented.
One of the legates, Gratian, returned to Rome to report on the
situation, feeling that deadlock had been reached. But soon after
his departure, Vivian held a conference at Montmartre, on
November 18, which opened in very hopeful circumstances.20
Henry, having got wind of the archbishop’s proposed censure,
offered full restitution to the archbishop, withdrawal of those
customs to which Becket objected, and the submission of the out¬
standing differences to Louis, the French clergy, or the scholars of
Paris. Becket, on his side, withdrew the clause ‘saving God’s
honour’, and agreed to go back to England at once. Peace seemed
certain. But Henry, because he had once sworn never to give
 THIS LOW-BORN CLERK 139

Becket the kiss of peace, refused this vital condition of pacifi¬

cation, for the kiss ratified any agreement and indicated the good
faith of both parties. It was a guarantee of royal protection, with¬
out which Becket could ill afford to face his many enemies in
England. Once again, talks dragged on late into the night, and no
solution was reached. Henry, who had to ride twenty miles to his
quarters at Mantes, retired furious. The third legation had failed;
but Vivian and Gratian had left a good basis for future negotia¬
tions, and had brought the two sides closer than at any time since
1164.

Even if Becket was his predominant political problem, Henry

could not abandon his other work. He kept Christmas at Nantes in
Brittany with his son Geoffrey, and afterwards made a solemn
circuit of the Breton castles, taking oaths of fealty from the
Breton barons. He finally settled his score with Eudo of Porhoet
by confiscating his estates, and returned to Normandy, having
assured his son’s position and given a definite shape to his re-
4 organisation of Brittany. On March 2, 1170, he crossed to Eng¬
land in a violent storm, during which one ship sank with the loss
of some four hundred men, and the rest were dispersed, making
their way to various ports along the south coast. The French were
firmly convinced that Henry had been drowned; but he reached
Portsmouth safely the following day, and at once set about the
variety of business which awaited him. He had received letters
from the pope informing him of yet another commission to
negotiate between him and Becket, consisting this time of Rotrou
archbishop of Rouen, and Bernard bishop of Nevers; and he knew
that he had only a short while in which to carry out much work.
Soon after Easter, which he kept at Winchester with King William
of Scotland and the latter’s brother David of Huntingdon, a
council was summoned at London. For once, Henry had been
seriously let jdown by his servants: the sheriffs had profited by his
absence to indulge in a variety of malpractices—a risk always in¬
herent in the essentially personal nature of Angevin government.
A detailed edict ordered an inquiry into the behaviour of both
them and othei? royal officers: a complete r£sum£ of almost all
business transacted by them since 1166 was demanded, to be
140 HENRY PLANTAGENET

presented on June 14 at London. It was ‘a wonderful inquisition’,21

and the time allowed for its execution very short.
At the same time, plans were made for a political move,
which, although actuated by other motives, was bound to vitiate
relations with Becket: the coronation of Prince Henry. Plans had
been made for this perhaps as early as 1161-2, as a means of en¬
suring a peaceful succession; these were revived in 1167, but laid
aside. The prerogative of crowning the kings of England belonged
traditionally to the archbishops of Canterbury, but Henry was
relying on the letters authorising the archbishop of York to per¬
form the ceremony, issued by Alexander when the idea was last
mooted.
Becket could not allow this affront to his authority to go
unchallenged, especially since the long-standing dispute about the
primacy of Canterbury over York remained unsettled. He there¬
fore wrote to the bishops of England forbidding them to take
part in the ceremony, and to Roger of York—an old rival from
their days together in Theobald’s household—prohibiting his per¬
formance of the rite. These messages reached their destination in
spite of Henry’s orders that anyone bearing such instructions
should be arrested. But the king was close at hand and impatient
to proceed, and Becket’s threats seemed less real a menace than the
royal wrath. Accordingly, the prince was crowned at Westminster
Abbey on June 14, 1170, with all due pomp. Henry himself was
in defiant mood, for a notable absentee was Margaret, the prince’s
wife. He must have foreseen that this insult to his daughter would
provoke Louis; for by right she should have been crowned with her
husband. After the rite, so the story runs, the king served the
prince, henceforward called the ‘young king’, at table; and when
the archbishop of York remarked that no prince in the world
enjoyed such distinguished service, the young king retorted: ‘Why
are you astonished? Should not my father do this? He is lower in
rank than I, the son of a queen and a duke, while I come from
royal blood on both sides.’22 ,* •

There was not much time for feasting, however, for matters in
France were rapidly coming to a head. Henry had only prevented
 THIS LOW-BORN CLERK 141

the archbishop of Rouen from crossing the Channel by promising

peace, and the new commissioners, reinforced by William, arch¬
bishop of Sens, were active in France. On landing, Henry was
met by the bishop of Worcester, who although ordered by the king
to attend the coronation, had been restrained from crossing by the
queen and the constable of Normandy, Richard du Hommet, since
they had learned that the bishop would do all he could to prevent
the ceremony. Henry refused to believe this story, and called him
a traitor, only later being persuaded of the truth of the explanation.
His temper was not improved by the bishop's reproaches, and
knights of the king’s entourage remarked that it was lucky he was
a priest; yet when one of them reviled the bishop openly, Henry’s
anger turned against the knight instead, and later he and the
bishop talked amicably about a reconciliation. Henry might be
quick of temper: he was rarely in the long run unjust or untrue to
his purpose as a result.
The tide had now turned against Henry. Alexander author¬
ised the legates to use an interdict against Henry’s continental
4 domains if no results were reached, and no such measures as
those in force in England could protect Henry against this.
Becket could pose as the injured party, a prelate suffering under a
tyrant’s rule, now that these royal prohibitions were generally
known and the coronation had taken place. The legates were
disturbed by the challenge to their authority, and Louis was
offended by the insult to his family. Henry must have considered
either that his opponents were weaker than they actually were,
or alternatively that reconciliation was impossible. At the begin¬
ning of July, he began to realise his miscalculation. On July 16,
Becket agreed to attend a conference with Louis and Henry on
July 20 at Fr^teval. The meeting opened with a parley between
the kings, perhaps following up Henry’s talks with Theobald of
Blois on July 6, at which he had promised to mediate between
Louis and th? count.23 The real business began on July 22. The
same terms as at Montmartre were offered and accepted by
Thomas: peace and security publicly granted and withdrawal of the
offending customs. Thomas made no mention of the kiss of peace,
and at long last agreement was reached. It was nearly six years since
the archbishop had set foot in England and as long since he had
142 HENRY PLANTAGENET

talked alone with the king, his erstwhile friend and companion.
At the end of the parley, Henry and Thomas turned their horses
aside and rode alone across the meadow. Thomas asked the king for
permission to act against the bishops who had taken part in the
coronation, and received consent. Gratefully, Thomas dismounted
and knelt before the king; but Henry held his stirrup for him to
remount, saying with tears in his eyes: ‘My lord archbishop, let us
return to our old friendship, and each show the other what good
he can; and let us forget our hatred completely.’ Reactions among
the courtiers to the new situation were varied: some were over¬
joyed, while others who had used the quarrel to their own ad¬
vantage were less pleased. A few felt that the peace could not last
and was not really sincere.24

The work of restitution began at once; its progress was slow, but
this was due to the complexity of the task rather than lack of good
will. The financial side of Canterbury’s affairs proved particularly
intractable. Henry passed the next month in Normandy, and
about August 10 fell seriously ill at Mote de Ger, near Domffont.
The French believed him dead, and he himself was moved to
provide for the division of his lands.25 The young king was to
have England, Normandy, Anjou and Maine, out of which he
was to provide for his youngest brother, John. Richard was to
hold Aquitaine directly from the French king, while Geoffrey’s
marriage to Duke Conan's daughter was to be celebrated and he
was to hold Brittany on similar terms. This was the first attempt
to solve one of the crucial problems of Henry’s later years. He had
recognised that some form of division was essential in his agree¬
ment with Louis at Montmirail in January 1169, but the precise
terms were not worked out. It is remarkable that Richard and
Geoffrey were to be independent of their elder brother; perhaps
Henry's own experiences with his brothers as vassals led him to
this solution. Finally, the king stipulated that he was to be buried
in the chapterhouse at Grammont, at the feet of the master of tke
house. His fears were unfounded: towards the end of the month he
recovered, and about Michaelmas made a pilgrimage to the shrine of
Rocamadour in the south of Poitou, accompanied by a large pro¬
tective escort, before resuming the negotiations with Thomas.
 THIS LOW-BORN CLERK 143

The delays had led William of Sens to obtain letters

threatening the king with excommunication unless the settle¬
ment was rapidly made final, and the pope had demonstrated his
support of Thomas by suspending the bishops who had crowned
the young king. Henry avoided further troubles at a meeting at
Amboise on October 12, 1170. He arrived with a large following,
and was met by Thomas, William of Sens and Theobald of Blois.
A full reconciliation took place next day. The archbishop ‘was
received into the king’s grace and friendship; and he and all who
had been exiled with him were pardoned’.26 When Thomas came
to mass, however, in hope of gaining the kiss of peace, Henry once
again evaded the ceremony by ordering that a requiem mass should
be said (in which the kiss is not exchanged), and he remained ob¬
durate in face of an open demand by Thomas. A day or two later,
Becket took leave of the king at Chaumont, and to Henry’s ex¬
pression of good wishes, replied: ‘My lord, something tells me
that I take leave of you now never to see you again in this life.’
Henry bridled at this: ‘Do you think me a traitor?’ and the arch-
j bishop’s swift denial hardly pacified him.27
Henry had promised to escort Becket to England; but he
wrote to say that affairs in the south prevented him from coming
to Rouen as planned. So king and archbishop went their separate
ways: Thomas to England, where, due to Henry’s poor prepara¬
tions and tactless choice of the once excommunicate John of Ox¬
ford as escort, he landed with foreboding in his heart; Henry to
prepare for a campaign in Berry. This area had long been disputed
between the men of Aquitaine and France, and Henry now laid
claim to the presentment of the archbishopric of Bourges in
opposition to Louis. By November 23 he was at Montlucon with
his army,-and tried to reach Bourges itself, but Louis appeared
with rival forces. In view of the oncoming winter, a truce was
reached.

At Christmas, Henry was at Argentan in Normandy, gloomy and

disturbed; reports arriving from England showed that Thomas was
in no mood for compromise. His last act on French soil had been
to send ahead letters excommunicating the bishops who had taken
144 HENRY PLANTAGENET

part in the young king’s coronation. Even if he had authority from

Henry to proceed against them, it was probably on the under¬
standing that the sentence should be mild. This action by the arch¬
bishop questioned the validity of the ceremony itself, one thing
that Henry certainly did not intend to happen. The bishops had
arrived shortly afterwards at his court in Normandy and protested
strongly against the archbishop, calling his action treasonable.
Wild rumours of armed mobs at large in England led by Thomas
followed this complaint. At the Christmas court, the king asked
the bishops what he should do, and they referred him to his barons.
The council was assembled, and the argument was indecisive until
one of them burst out: ‘My lord, while Thomas lives, you will
have no peace, nor quiet, nor prosperity.’ The king’s anger was
.apparent to everyone; and he finally exclaimed: ‘What idle and
miserable men I have encouraged and promoted in my kingdom,
faithless to their lord, who let me be mocked by a low-born
clerk!’28 At this, four knights slipped quietly out of the company,
mounted horse, and rode to the coast. Their absence was only
noticed some time afterwards. Henry at once guessed their pur¬
pose. He gave orders that they should be stopped at all costs, and
that Becket should be arrested. This done, he could only wait
anxiously for news.
On January 1, 1171, the messenger, who remains as
anonymous as his counterpart in Greek tragedy, reached Argen-
tan.29 He did not go straight to the king. His tidings would fall
ill on the royal ears; and the courtiers endeavoured to postpone
the evil hour. But at length Henry was told: was told how the
knights had eluded their pursuers and, taking ship for England,
had hastened to Canterbury; how they had demanded that Becket
should absolve the excommunicated bishops and stand judgement
in the king’s court; of Becket’s refusal; of the last desperate scenes
in the cathedral: how the archbishop had stood firm and, realising
the truth of his last words to the king, had found death at sacrilegi¬
ous hands in his own church. Hardly was the grim tale ended
than the king gave way to a paroxysm of grief, more violent than
his anger had ever been. For three days he remained shut up in his
chamber, neither eating nor speaking to anyone, pondering not
only the blame that was bound to be attached to him and the
THIS LOW-BORN CLERK 145
desperate nature of his position, but also the days of friendship
long ago, when he and Thomas had ridden and hunted and planned
together for a new order in England: the new order of Church and
State now for ever made impossible by the man who had once been
his friend. Thomas the archbishop had lost and won.
7
The Western Edge of the World

H ENRY REMAINED at Argentan for a month, doing what

he could to forestall any immediate action on the part of the
Church. William of Sens was now the chief agent in the negotia¬
tions; supported by Louis and Theobald of Blois, he was im¬
placably hostile. His messengers returned from Rome with papal
instructions—issued before Becket’s death was known—to use an
interdict on Henry’s French domains if peace was not made; and
in view of the circumstances, William felt justified in launching
this sentence, in spite of the entreaties of Archbishop Rotrou of
Rouen. Henry’s only comfort was the firm support of this pre¬
late, who with Arnulf of Lisieux, Giles of Evreux and other
bishops and clergy appealed to Rome, and soon afterwards set out
for the Eternal City. These men had been with Henry at the
fatal council and when the messenger from Canterbury arrived;
and none of them doubted the king’s innocence of complicity in
the murder. Rotrou, because of his great age, had to turn back,
and the others, when they arrived in Rome, were at first refused all
audience by the pope. Eventually two of them gained admittance
and succeeded in obtaining a promise that papal legates would be
sent to Normandy: cardinals Gratian and Vivian. More important,
they averted the excommunication of the king, which had been
planned for Maundy Thursday, the traditional time for announc¬
ing such sentences. ,* •
Meanwhile the king, accompanied by a large force, had
gone into Brittany, and at Pontorson received the homage of
Guiomarc’h of Lyonesse, who had just caused further trouble by
murdering the local bishop. Duke Conan, who still held Guin-
 THE WESTERN EDGE OF THE WORLD *47
gamp and the honour of Richmond in Yorkshire, had died, and
the lands had passed via his daughter to his son-in-law, Geoffrey.
Henry could now unite the Breton peninsula under his son’s
lordship, and this was done without much difficulty, only Eudo of
Porhoet resisting. With the latter’s exile to Wales and the burn¬
ing of his castle, the Breton settlement was at last complete.1

Returning to Normandy, Henry received an embassy from the

south of France, coming from Humbert of Maurienne. This
count’s lands lay on the Alpine borders of Dauphin^ and Lom¬
bardy, and compensated in strategic importance for their small
size, since with them went control of the passes from France to
Italy. Humbert was an old enemy of the count of Toulouse, and
having recently antagonised his other neighbour, the German
emperor, he was in search of a powerful ally. He therefore offered
his daughter’s hand and the inheritance of his lands to Henry for
his son, John. Henry’s ambitions in this area, from the borders of
Toulouse into northern Italy, remain mysterious; it is possible
( that, with the defeat of Frederick Barbarossa in 1166, he had
begun to think of expansion in that direction, and the payments of
1169 to the Italian cities of the Lombard League who were hostile
to the emperor would support this idea. But the Angevin king was
essentially practical, and must have realised the huge dangers and
difficulties involved in such an extension of his empire. It is more
likely that he preferred to make as many allies as he could, as
befitted so great a prince; and the Italians might have been useful
in his negotiations with the pope. Besides, it was Humbert who
approached Henry, rather than the other way round: an indication
that the two events were only tenuously connected. More import¬
ant, this and the visit of the ambassadors of the Greek emperor,
Manuel Comnenus, on a similar errand of match-making in the
same year, show that Henry’s prestige in western Christendom
was hardly affected by the murder of Becket. The Greek terms, if
our information is correct, were most flattering: John’s hand was
sought for the princess Maria, and on the emperor’s death, he was
to become ruler of Byzantium, for Manuel had no son. Henry
received the ambassadors at Angers, and promised to reply within
fifteen days; but evidently he felt the proposals of the count of
148 HENRY PLANTAGENET

Maurienne to be more practical and likely to succeed, since no

more was done about the Greek offer.2
Henry’s lands on the continent had now reached their
greatest extent, and the year 1171 marks a turning-point in his
work abroad. There was very little room for further expansion; to
the south-east lay Frederick Barbarossa’s domains, to the east
those of Louis, to the north-east those of the count of Flanders.
The problem that faced him was that of maintaining the existing
equilibrium, and avoiding the possibility of the formation of any
powerful alliance against him. By themselves, none of his neigh¬
bours was likely to cause Henry trouble, and his object was to
secure such alliances as might be useful to him. The increase in
diplomatic business at the Angevin court after 1170 is no accident,
and the machinations which henceforward occupy Henry reflect
the new position in which he found himself, which made equally
exacting if less exciting demands on his skill in government. From
the great schemes of his earlier years and the grim confrontation
of powers in the struggle with the Church, he turned now to the
problem of maintaining a vast established empire—a problem
which few European rulers before him had faced at all, and even
fewer successfully, since the Roman sway had ended. The minu¬
tiae of these manoeuvres must bulk large in the history of Henry’s
later life; but no portrait of him can be complete without them.
The constant headache of raising enough revenue led, in the
summer, to an order for an inquest into the revenues of Normandy.
This was aimed at discovering the extent of his grandfather’s
estates, and what lands had been alienated since then. Anything
that could be recovered went to swell the treasury’s income.
Henry’s next great scheme, however, concerned his island realm,
and was his last attempt to expand his realm. At a council at
Argentan, he outlined the project: the conquest of Ireland. The
king had two good reasons for departing for the western edge of
the known world: he wished to avoid the legates, who had arrived
about this time, and had tried to enforce an interdict; and he Me
that events in Ireland meant that the moment was ripe at last to
carry out a long-standing project. The attitude of the pope also
played a part in his considerations. Alexander seems to have
wavered between yielding to pressure from French and Roman
 THE WESTERN EDGE OF THE WORLD 149

circles to take drastic action, and temporising until the furore had
died down. By putting himself out of reach in Ireland, Henry
could hope to influence his choice in the latter direction. On
August 1, the king left Normandy.

After a mere four weeks of hectic activity in England, Henry went

to south Wales to wait for a fair wind. He had allowed himself
time only to gather an army. He does not seem to have been eager
to remain in England, where Becket was already worshipped as a
martyr, and rumours of miracles connected with the dead arch¬
bishop flew thick and fast. Even so, he had one unpleasant
moment. Almost as soon as he landed, he went to see the dying
bishop of Winchester, Henry of Blois, the same who, sixteen
years before, had done much to gain him the throne. The old man
bitterly reproached him for Becket’s death, and this sincere con¬
viction that the king was to blame from one who knew the facts of
the dispute intimately must have disturbed Henry. Others even
better informed might exonerate him: the words of a man near
< death could not have failed to make a deep impression.3
The king had to spend a month in south Wales before he
could cross to Ireland, and used the enforced delay to improve
his relations with the Welsh princes. Wales and Ireland were the
only two lands which he subdued by main force and held; the
closest parallel abroad was Brittany, another Celtic territory, where
he had a legitimate title which took him many years to secure.4
The Welsh expeditions of 1156 and 1157 had not settled the
question by any means; there had been trouble from Rhys ap
Griffith in 1158, when Henry was elsewhere. If the prince eluded
him, he had on one of these expeditions greatly discomfited the
Welsh prophets, whose sayings enjoyed wide popularity. In pur¬
suit of Rhys, he came to the ford of Red Pencarn, of which it was
said that if a conqueror came and crossed it, the men of Wales
would have become effeminate. The Welsh waited at a safe dis¬
tance to see whether he would cross there or at another, newer ford
nearby; when he chose the latter, they blew their trumpets in cele¬
bration, to their undoing. For this frightened the king’s horse; it
turned and bolted towards the old crossing-place, where Henry
then went across.5
15° HENRY PLANTAGENET

But success was none the nearer for such episodes. Five
years later, he had to invade again, in April 1163, but made no
more than a show of arms, although he received hostages from
Rhys at Pencader. The next year more serious trouble broke out;
Rhys invaded Cardigan and ravaged Roger de Clare’s lands, while
David, son of Owain Gwyneth, carried out devastations in the
north as part of a concerted campaign against the English. Henry
appeared in July 1163 and first went to forestall an attack on
Rhuddlan castle which failed to occur; then, collecting reinforce¬
ments, he moved to Oswestry, where a united Welsh force
opposed him. Neither side dared attack; but the king, knowing
from bitter experience what the Welsh tactics were likely to be,
had the surrounding forests cut down, and proceeded, undeterred
by skirmishes, into the interior. His precautions proved vain, for
he was defeated by weather: his provisions failed when the paths
were made impassable by torrential rain. Enraged at the resistance
of the Welsh, he gave orders for the hostages taken the previous
year to be blinded. This was one of his rare acts of cruelty; but under
the laws of the time, he would have been justified in ordering
their execution when the rebellion started. He then encamped at
Caerleon, where Irish ships came to meet him. The numbers of the
fleet were inadequate, and with the abandonment of this scheme,
the campaign petered out. The ensuing years had seen constant
warfare along the marches, with castle burning and ravaging of
lands. A major defeat for Henry had been the destruction of the
fortresses at Rhuddlan and Prestatyn in the north after a three
months’ siege in 1166. Owain Gwyneth’s death, however, removed
one of the leading agitators.
When, in 1171, Henry reappeared in Wales, Rhys came to
him and offered him 300 horses, 4,000 oxen and 24 hostages in
token of friendship. In return for this, he was given wide lands in
south Wales, including Cardigan. The next day, Sunday Septem¬
ber 23, Rhys sent eighty-six of the horses to the king. Henry hajl
gone on pilgrimage to St David’s, where he offered two velvet
choristers’ caps and a handful of silver. The bishop invited Henry
to dinner, but the king refused an elaborate meal, wishing to spar/
the bishop the expense, and he dined standing as did his escort of
three hundred men. Soon after dinner, Henry mounted and rode
THE WESTERN EDGE OF THE WORLD 151

sixteen miles over the mountains through heavy rain to Pembroke

in the darkness, much to the discomfort of his attendants. On
finding the horses sent by Rhys, he returned all but thirty-six out
of friendship for him. Henry frequently had to endure such periods
of waiting, usually when trying to cross the English channel; he
beguiled the time with occupations which he did not normally
indulge in, such as going on pilgrimage, as well as his more usual
pastimes of hunting and hawking.6

During these early autumn days, Henry had plenty of time to think
over his plans for the conquest of Ireland. These went back to
September 1155, the first year of his reign, when messengers sent
to Rome had obtained the grant of Ireland for him;7 only his
mother’s opposition had prevented him from going then. The
island seemed to present an easy prey, for organisation of any kind
was almost totally lacking. The political structure—a loose feder¬
ation of tribes and their rulers under the High King, or ard-ri—
was continually tom by civil war over minor disputes. The Norse¬
men in the ninth and tenth centuries had had no difficulty in
securing bases in the island, which they continued to use; Dublin
was the most important of these. The last concerted action of the
Irish had been a century and a half earlier, when the expansion of
the Norse had been halted at the battle of Clontarf in 1014; since
then, the cycle of assassinations, abductions, cattle-raids and
resultant hostilities had been unhindered by any such outside
threat. Within the Irish Church, matters were only a little better.
In 1139, reforms had been carried out, under which the bishoprics
had been defined and the primacy of the archbishop of Armagh
recognised. The monasteries continued to be Ireland’s chief glory,
and sheltered hef culture; but the secular clergy and the laity were
scarcely distinguishable from pagans, so bad was their behaviour
and so strong the traditions of the older gods. The pope had little
authority in Ireland; it was indeed one of his major problems as
far as proper discipline was concerned, for the rules by which the
clergy were governed throughout the rest of western Europe were
scarcely known in the island. Hence Adrian IV had good cause to
encourage Henry cb impose political order, so that order within the
Church might follow.
152 HENRY PLANTAGENET

It was an episode in one of the civil wars between petty

princes that first revived Henry’s interest in possible conquest.
Dermot MacMurrough, prince of Leinster, had begun to expand
his kingdom in the early 1150s through a judicious alliance with
two other strong princes, but had found himself at war with
Tiernan O’Rourke. In the course of hostilities, Dermot abducted
Dervorgil, Tiernan’s wife, an action which is said to have earned
him Tiernan’s implacable hatred, and which led to a coalition of
Dermot’s most powerful neighbours expelling him. This was in
1166. Instead of intriguing with his own countrymen, he decided
to apply to Henry for aid, having perhaps heard of the king’s
interest. He found him in France, and was given licence to seek
assistance from any of the king’s barons with royal approval.
However, it was not until he approached Richard, earl of Clare,
nicknamed ‘Strongbow’, one of the great lords of the Welsh
marches, that he found the support he needed.
About May 1, 1169, the first company of Normans, under
Robert FitzStephen, numbering 30 knights, 60 mailed horsemen
and 300 archers, landed at Bannow Bay near Wexford. Richard
himself had preferred to wait for Henry’s permission before
coming himself. With the aid of the Normans, Dermot easily won
back Wexford, and went on to harry his neighbours, who were
impotent against the minute force of cavalry. Further reinforce¬
ments came over during the following year, and Strongbow him¬
self arrived in August 1170. By this time Dermot had set his
heart on wresting the High Kingship from its holder, Rory
O’Connor. In return for additional aid, he offered Strongbow the
kingdom of Leinster and his daughter’s hand. The high adventure
of the early days of conquest culminated in the capture of Dublin
in September 1170; although the official capital was at Ferns,
Dublin was both Ireland’s political centre and its richest town.
Henry was disturbed at these successes by men who were
bound to him as their liege lord. The marcher lords were renowned
for their independence and he feared that this spirit might move
Strongbow to set up as a prince in his own right. He therefore
determined to put a stop to their enterprise by recalling them
under pain of forfeiting their English estates. Naturally enough,
the invaders were loath to lose their advantages, especially since
 THE WESTERN EDGE OF THE WORLD 153
they were now threatened by an alliance between the Irish and the
Norse who had formerly held Dublin. One of their number was
therefore sent to Henry, while the rest defended the city against
a strong onslaught. A daring sortie turned the tide in their favour,
and in the ensuing carnage the Irish army was shattered. By the
summer of 1171, Strongbow was master of the eastern seaboard,
including Dublin, Wexford and Waterford. A further messenger
sent to Henry reached Argentan while the council making plans
for his expedition to Ireland was in session. An offer of the
surrender of the three towns was accepted; in return, Strongbow
was to keep his other conquests and his lands in Henry’s domains.
This settlement was made final in September, when the earl crossed
to meet Henry at Newnham in Gloucestershire. In spite of
slanderous reports as to his conduct, Henry received Strongbow
well. Although the king took the most valuable part of his con¬
quests, the earl of Clare was assured of royal support in his tenure
of the rest of his Irish lands.
While Henry waited at Pembroke, twelve Irishmen, landing
-> below the castle, came and offered to hand over Robert Fitz-
Stephen, a knight who had fallen into their hands, as a token of
good will, since he had betrayed Henry. This accusation was un¬
true; but, feigning anger against FitzStephen, Henry accepted the
offer on the condition that he should decide on his sentence. The
king wished to appear friendly towards the native Irish, and to
arrive as upholder of their liberties against the over-powerful
barons.8

Soon afterwards, the westerly wind at last died down, and on

October 16 Henry left Pembroke to set sail from Milford Haven.
He diserrfbarked two days later, at Croch near Waterford, accom¬
panied by 400 knights and a total force of perhaps 4,000 men.
Strongbow surrendered the town, and the first of the Irish kings to
bow to his new lord also appeared, Dermot MacCarthy of Des¬
mond, who agreed to give hostages and pay tribute. Henry moved
northwards to Lismore where he met the papal legate for Ireland,
Christian O’Conarchy, and arranged for a great council of the
Irish Church to' be held. At Cashel, Donnell O’Brien, king of
Thomond, submitted, and Henry sent officials to the chief towns
154 HENRY PLANTAGENET

of the two provinces now in his hands, Cork and Limerick.9 The
king went back to Waterford—where FitzStephen was released on
confiscation of his lands—and then along the coast to Dublin,
which he reached on November n, having left Robert Fitz-
Bemard and a garrison at Waterford. By now all the southern
kings except the ard-ri, Rory O’Connor, had submitted to Henry
in the course of what had been a triumphal progress rather than a
campaign. Rory may have acknowledged Henry as overlord, but
did not do homage. The latter does not seem to have intended to
take military action and emphasised that the Irish had accepted
him voluntarily. The northern kings, which he left undisturbed,
were in any case too occupied with tribal affairs to interfere in the
politics of the south, and Henry was not prepared to risk needless
dangers in a strange land, especially as there had been some deaths
among his troops because of the poor diet. He therefore spent the
next three months at Dublin, in a palace built of clay and wattles
in the native style. Here he kept his Christmas court with due
splendour, much to the amazement of the Irish princes who were
present.
The winter of 1171-2 proved stormy; wide stretches of the
Welsh forests across the sea were blown down. Henry was forced
to find occupation in organising the government of his newly
acquired land and in dealing with the council of Cashel, and to lay
aside all thought of contact with England. At the Cashel assembly
which began on February 2, 1172, he gathered all the bishops of
Ireland, save only the primate of Ireland, an aged and saintly man
who lived entirely on milk, and could not come on account of his
years. The remainder of the clergy favoured the reforms proposed
by Nicholas, the king’s chaplain, and Ralph, archdeacon of
Llandaff. The resulting Constitutions brought the practices of the
Irish Church into line with those of the rest of western Christen¬
dom on such matters as tithes, baptisms and marriage. By granting
the clergy certain immunities and privileges, and showing theyi
the papal letters issued seventeen years earlier, Henry secured their
assent to his overlordship of Ireland, and the prelates swore an oath
of fealty to him. The final clause of the Constitution drawn up
at Cashel provided that all other matters should, when in doubt,
be conducted according to the usage of the English Church: a
 THE WESTERN EDGE OF THE WORLD 155
further opening for English influence.10 As the one stable in¬
fluential element in Irish politics, the priesthood’s allegiance was
more valuable than that of the warring kings. By persuading the
Irish clergy to accept reforms, Henry also gained badly-needed
credit with the papacy. The council of Cashel was the most
important achievement of Henry’s stay in Ireland. The other
major task—the transfer of baronial power to royal hands—might
have proved difficult in his absence, but his most persuasive
weapon was the confiscation of the barons’ estates in his other
dominions, which could be done from the other side of the Irish
Sea without difficulty.
The barons were nonetheless the mainstay of Anglo-Norman
power in Ireland, and Henry could not afford to alienate them.
Hence his solution was to accept their lands in formal surrender
and regrant them to be held from him on conditions similar
to those on the Welsh marches, where the perpetual warfare
with the Welsh meant that the local lords had to be given a
certain degree of independence and freedom from feudal duties.
■< The only danger inherent in the system was that when the common
threat receded, civil war usually replaced it. Therefore Henry did
not rely entirely on the adventurers who had begun the settlement.
Dublin was placed in the care of Hugh de Lacy and a garrison of
twenty knights. Wexford and Waterford, more important
strategically as the ports for crossing to England, were garrisoned
by thirty and forty knights respectively. Their governors, William
FitzAudelin and Robert FitzBernard, were also members of
Henry’s entourage. On the other hand, several members of Strong-
bow's circle were attached to the royal household and withdrawn
from Ireland.
✓

The spring brought no change in the weather; the easterly winds

continued, and while messengers could easily come from England,
Henry was held powerless in Ireland. Nor was the news that
was brought such as to encourage him to stay longer than he had to.
Rumours of a conspiracy among his sons reached him, and there
was increasing pressure from the papal legates that he should re¬
turn and answer the charges against him in connection with
Becket’s murder. He had moved to Wexford about the beginning
156 HENRY PLANTAGENET

of March 1172, but it was six weeks before his sailors were pre¬
pared to attempt the crossing. On Easter Monday, April 17, he
embarked at sunrise, the main body of his companions having left
the previous day. He landed the same day at Porth’stimian, about
a mile from St David’s and made a pilgrimage to the cathedral. On
his way, he had to cross the river Alun; and there was a prophecy
attributed to Merlin that ‘the king of England, conqueror of
Ireland, wounded by a man with a red hand in Ireland, would die
on Lechlavar’. As Henry was about to cross by the smooth stone so
named, a Welshwoman threw herself at his feet, crying: ‘Revenge
us today, Lechlavar, revenge our race.’ Henry, with his usual
contempt for such pure superstition, looked calmly down at the
stone as he crossed; and when he reached the other side, remarked:
‘Who will believe that liar Merlin now?’ But national prophets
are not to be discredited so easily: a bystander at once said that
Henry could not be the conqueror of Ireland.11
Perhaps this was in a sense true; and it would have been rash
to predict that Henry’s peaceful solution of the problems pre¬
sented there was to outlast many of his most bitterly contested
achievements. Without striking a blow, he had established his
overlordship in three-quarters of Ireland, and the men of Ulster
whom he had left alone were unlikely to prove a serious threat. He
had prevented the establishment of an independent Irish king¬
dom under Strongbow. The Irish clergy had recognised him, and
incidentally provided him with a good opportunity of showing his
devotion to Rome. Between the three elements of Irish native
chieftains, Norman invaders and royal authority, he had created a
sound balance of power, and even in the darkest moments of
rebellion and disloyalty, Ireland always remained steadfast. Since
Henry was never again to visit the island, the history of subsequent
events form a suitable epilogue to the settlement of 1172.

The rebellion of 1173 in his other territories might have had reper¬
cussions there if Henry had not made Strongbow governor.of
Ireland when he recalled the garrisons of the coastal towns. By
ensuring that the royal authority was in the hands of a man with
adequate resources of his own, he had guaranteed the security of
the country, the one risk being that Strongbow might attempt to
THE WESTERN EDGE OF THE WORLD 157

secede. But he proved loyal, and Henry left him in charge until
his death there three years later. Meanwhile, Rory O’Connor,
whose fealty to Henry in 1171 seems very doubtful, if made at all,
had revised his judgement of the English king in face of his con¬
tinued success, and sent his envoys to come to terms with Henry.
The result was a treaty signed at Windsor on October 6, 1175. In
return for formal allegiance and one hide for every ten cattle in
Ireland as yearly tribute, Rory was given power over all the lands
not already granted to Norman lords, and was empowered to ask
the royal constables for help. This settlement, modelled on the
position of Prince Rhys in south Wales, seemed a reasonable and
indeed mutually advantageous solution.
Events were to prove that it was unworkable. Strongbow’s
death led to troubles among the Norman settlers, chiefly because
they preferred Strongbow’s lieutenant, Raymond le Gros, to the
governor whom Henry wished to impose on them, William
FitzAudelin. Henry distrusted Raymond and had attempted to
recall him on his lord’s death. But the following year, it was Fitz-
, Audelin who was recalled; Henry’s plans had changed, and the
restrictive policy of his governor, who attempted to hinder all
further expansion by the barons, was no longer favoured. At a
great council at Oxford in May 1177, the king set out his new
arrangements for Wales and Ireland.12 Whereas the Welsh princes
had shown that they had effective control of their subjects, it had
become apparent that the Norman barons were too powerful for
O’Connor, whose regime would have to be supported if it was to
survive. Hence, while David and Rhys of Wales were given new
fiefs, the lands previously under the Irish prince’s government
were divided among the settlers. Meath went to Hugh de Lacy,
Limerick -to Herbert FitzHerbert and others, Cork to Robert
FitzStephen and Milo de Cogan; although none of these lands
were yet conquered, exact details of tenure were given. Most
important of §11, Prince John was made ‘Lord of Ireland’, holding
it from his father, and the earl of Chester was sent across to
prepare for the complete conquest of the land. Henceforward
Wales and Ireland were no longer to be treated on the same
principles; the former was to remain partially independent, but
the latter was to become one of the major fiefs of the English crown,
158 HENRY PLANTAGENET

destined eventually to provide for Henry’s youngest and favourite

son.
The final conquest did not go as smoothly as the king might
have hoped, for Irish resistance proved more stubborn than had
been expected. But it was John himself who finally brought an end
to Henry’s plans. In the summer of 1184, Hugh de Lacy—who
had shown signs of too much independence—was finally replaced
as governor of Dublin by Philip of Worcester, with instructions to
prepare for the arrival of John. The nineteen-year-old prince
landed on April 25, 1185, lavishly equipped, with a considerable
retinue and a large treasure at his disposal.13 But John lacked the
precocious skill of his brothers in handling men and affairs. Em¬
barking on an indiscriminate aggression which scarcely disting¬
uished between friend and foe, he deprived friendly Irishmen of
their lands and insulted local chieftains who were not in the least
hostile, even pulling their beards and openly mocking their un¬
couth manners. His only military operation—a raid into north
Munster—was disastrous, and he lost many of his mercenaries.
Fortunately, news of his conduct reached Henry, and a messenger
was sent to recall him in September. John left just before Christ¬
mas 1185. In eight short months he had destroyed Henry’s best
diplomatic weapon: the idea that royal authority would replace
the oppressive rule of the barons by a just impartiality. He had
estranged the otherwise friendly Norman settlers and he had
wasted the resources entrusted to him for the conquest.
The troubles of the last years of Henry’s reign left him no
time to reshape his plans after the disappointment of John’s mis¬
behaviour. John de Courcy was left as chief governor after the
latter’s departure, and the expansion of power became slower as
the Irish adopted Norman tactics to withstand the barons. Hugh
de Lacy was killed in 1186, and Prince John was sent to Ireland to
seize his great estates, only to be prevented from crossing by news
of his brother Geoffrey’s death. Henry was still bent on giving the
land to him, and even made arrangements with the pope, Urban
III—who claimed the superior lordship of Ireland—to have him
crowned. Messengers arrived later in the year, bearing the mandate
and a crown of peacock’s feathers, and legates were sent in 1187 to
perform the ceremony. Matters came to a head in France in the
THE WESTERN EDGE OF THE WORLD 159
meanwhile, and prevented Henry from persisting with one of his
graver misjudgements. John’s virtues may have been underestim¬
ated by later generations but they certainly did not include those
required for a successful conquest and settlement of Ireland.

In 1172 all this still lay in the future. Fresh from his success,
Henry spent no time in making his way to France; he met Rhys
briefly at Talacharn on April 24, and then left for Winchester.
About May 12, having decided that English affairs were in
reasonable order, he embarked at Portsmouth for Barfleur. Four
days later he was at Gorron in Maine, where he met the legates.
Once again the rapidity of his movements astonished his contem¬
poraries: to cover two sea-crossings and eight hundred miles in a
month seemed little short of miraculous—or diabolic. The king of
England seemed to fly rather than ride. Henry himself cannot
have found it comfortable or easy, but such considerations weighed
little against the advantages of taking his enemies unawares. Even
(when his opponents were cardinals, to be fought with weapons of
the mind, there was much to be gained from speed.
6
The Great Rebellion

T HE THREAT of excommunication or interdict on his

English lands had hung over Henry like a sword of Damocles
throughout his visit to Ireland. During his absence, his position
regarding the Church had hardly changed. The papal confirmation
of the interdict on his continental domains pronounced by William
of Sens and the arrival of the legates had both occurred before he
left for Ireland. In the interval, the archbishop of York and the
other bishops concerned in the coronation of the young king had
succeeded in obtaining absolution and restoration to their sees.1
The problem was now Henry’s personal situation; and this was too
delicate a matter to be entrusted to intermediaries, although there
must have been some discussions before the first meeting between
king and legates at Gorron. Here the kiss of peace was exchanged,
and next day, Wednesday May 17, 1172, the negotiations began
in earnest at Savigny in the presence of the archbishop of Rouen
and many dignitaries of Church and State. However, although
both sides were evidently prepared for a reconciliation, the king
refused to give the legates an absolute mandate, mistrustful as ever
of the dangers of another power beside his in his own domains. He
left the assembly, angrily protesting that his long absence had
been quite justified, and that the legates could go anywhere in
his domains that they pleased in order to carry out their mission.
The cardinals were undismayed. Henry’s tactics were by
now well-known to them, and they succeeded in arranging a
further meeting for Friday, at Avranches in Brittany. One day
apparently sufficed to reach the terms of reconciliation; but much
had obviously been done at Savigny before the gathering there dis-
 THE GREAT REBELLION 161

persed.2 The absence of the young king was now the only obstacle
to the completion of the concordat. When he arrived, two days
later the ceremony of public exculpation and penance was per¬
formed.
Thus it was that on Sunday May 21, before the north door¬
way of the cathedral of Avranches, Henry came to face the legates.
With one hand on the Gospels, he swore that he had neither
ordered nor desired the murder of the archbishop of Canterbury,
and that the news of it had caused him more grief than joy, adding
—besides the prepared oath—that he had mourned neither the
death of his father nor his mother so much. He would carry out
whatever penance or satisfaction the cardinals ordered, for he
realised that he had unintentionally by his display of irritation and
anger caused the archbishop’s death.3 The legates then pronounced
their terms: Henry was to send 200 knights at his own expense to
the Holy Land with full equipment as approved by the Templars.
All evil customs introduced in his reign, especially the Constitu¬
tions of Clarendon, were to be withdrawn and earlier abuses
( moderated; those clauses of the Constitutions to which the pope
had objected were particularly specified. The possessions of the see
of Canterbury were to be restored and due amends made for any
losses. Finally, if the pope thought it necessary, Henry was to go
to Spain to fight the Saracens. These conditions were announced in
public; secret clauses enjoined various fasts and alms on the king,
and an oath of fidelity from himself and his son to Alexander and
his successors.4 For political reasons, Henry did not wish to include
these conditions in the general terms. He had once again averted
a major conflict by alternating hard words and soft answers. The
concordat of Avranches was a compromise between equal powers,
rather than terms imposed on a defeated opponent of the Church.
The king had every reason to be pleased with the conditions and
cheerfully told the legates: ‘My lords legate, my body is in your
hands; I am prepared to go wherever you command, to Jerusalem,
Rome or Compostella if you wish.' At the king's own desire, he
was then led to the doorway of the cathedral, where he knelt to
receive the absolution (though without the usual ceremony of
stripping and flpgging, because he had never been formally ex¬
communicated). He then entered the cathedral to hear mass. On
i62 HENRY PLANTAGENET

May 30, at Caen, he repeated before a council of clergy and mag¬

nates the promises made at Avranches.
Louis had not been idle while Henry had been hard pressed
by the Church, and Henry had to meet him soon afterwards to
appease his claims. Now that the Plantagenet was once more in
harmony with Rome, Louis saw no real advantage in pressing
home his quarrel, and was prepared to make his peace. His chief
grievance was that his daughter Margaret had not been crowned at
the same time as her husband, even though he regarded the 1170
coronation as illicit. The diplomatic insult still rankled. Henry
mended matters by ordering a new ceremony on August 27, 1172,
at Winchester, this time with the legates’ blessing and performed
by Rotrou of Rouen. Although Henry himself seems to have con¬
templated returning to England in June,5 the legates required yet
another expiatory ceremony, again at Avranches, on September 28,
and the interval was spent in Brittany. Meanwhile, the papal bull
setting out the terms of the reconciliation had been issued on
September 2. With the final formality before a synod of the
Norman clergy at Michaelmas, the political settlement of the con¬
flict between Henry’s attempt to impose a universal standard of
justice and the Church’s claim to immunity was complete.

To draw up an accurate balance-sheet of the gains and losses on

each side is very difficult. One thing becomes clear: that the com¬
promise finally reached was nearer to Henry's aims than to those
of the pope. This was a major achievement on the king’s part, if
hardly a triumph. The wave of hostility that had swept through
Europe on the first news of the murder had seemed to unite forces
against the Plantagenet that were bent on his total humiliation.
That Henry could make his side of the case heard in face of this
shows the great prestige which he enjoyed. He was helped by the
general loyalty of his subjects, who might make Becket a saint,
but did not turn his death into a political issue. The crucial poiht
—Maundy Thursday of 1171—once safely past, the passage'of
time favoured the king. The reconciliation of the bishops and the
gradual return of the exiles meant that much of the rancour on
both sides had ebbed by the time that the negotiations with the
 THE GREAT REBELLION 163

legates began. By May 1172, the legates had been in Normandy

for nearly a year, and had accomplished nothing; they were
all the more ready for a speedy solution when Henry at last
appeared.
Henry had yet another weapon at his disposal once the treaty
was made. The exact interpretation of the conditions left him a
great deal of room to manoeuvre. He was helped by the probability
that the pope would not go to extremes to enforce them. He suc¬
ceeded in changing the first provision very soon afterwards, and in¬
stead of providing the 200 knights, he was to found three religious
houses. His enemies accused him of keeping to the letter but not
to the spirit of this: he had, they said, driven the nuns of Ames-
bury out because of their laxness and replaced them by a colony
from Font^vrault, while at Witham he had replaced secular canons
by regulars, and had done nothing about the third house.6 Such
evidence as there is shows that Henry kept his word more closely:
Newstead in the forest of Sherwood and Vaubourg in Normandy
were both founded about this time, the latter being a commandery
, of Knights Templar. Either Witham or the other Carthusian house
founded by Henry, Le Liget (1175), may have been the third. The
importance of Witham compensates in some degree for its being a
refoundation: its first prior, Hugh, was later to become one of
Henry’s closer friends, bishop of Lincoln, and a saint.
The possible evasion of the cardinals’ intentions over the
first clause was a slight matter compared with Henry’s treatment of
the rescinding of the new customs. The king wrote to Bartholomew
of Exeter within a week of the agreement, telling him of the terms,
including the stipulation ‘that I shall abolish all new customs intro¬
duced in my reign against the churches of my land (which I con¬
sider to be-fewor none)’.7 He had reverted to the old argument that
the Constitutions were no more than a record of existing usage;
and there was no Becket to oppose him. Even if the clause was
interpreted in the papacy’s favour, he retained his jurisdiction over
questions of patronage and presentment, and over all Church lands
held as ordinary feudal tenements.
The practice concerning the disputed rights after 1173 is
not always easy to determine. In the question of episcopal elections,
greater freedom did prevail for a while. Although the election of
164 HENRY PLANTAGENET

Richard of Dover to Canterbury was unhampered by royal sug¬

gestions,8 there was on the other hand the Winchester election to
which Henry sent peremptory letters requiring the choice of one
candidate, Richard of Poitiers. In 1214, the archbishop of Canter¬
bury felt that a renewed promise of freedom of election was worth
a struggle to attain, but it proved a hollow victory.
On the other hand, the most hotly contested issue, that of
the immunity of the clergy, was definitely a victory for the papacy.
Henry’s action in codifying the law had in fact helped to crystallise
Roman thinking on this. Alexander, before becoming pope, had
written a commentary on the great law-book of the Church, Grat-
ian’s Decretum, in which he appeared to justify the double trial; but
after Becket’s death, he issued a decretal on this point explicitly
precluding the secular inquiry. The legate Hugh Pierleone, sent in
1175, allowed one exception to this rule—arising from the great in¬
quest into forest offences carried out at that time by the king—
in that clerics were summoned to answer before the forest courts
like any other offenders, and this formed a precedent for later
years. The practice of citing clerks to the secular courts continued
in parts of France until the following century, so that Becket’s
victory in England on this point was a real one.9
More vital to the papacy was the question of appeals. Here
Henry had to yield and allow the free passage of all those who
wished to carry their pleas to the supreme authority; but it is
noteworthy that the ban was never, even in the most bitter days of
controversy, put into complete effect, since the king himself found
that appeals against his recalcitrant archbishop were one of his best
weapons. There had never been any questions of a complete ces¬
sation of appeals, but only of royal assent. Since anything which
Henry refused to allow to go abroad remained in the hands of the
primate, the king found himself no better off. Perhaps a more im¬
portant objective behind the clause was to restrict the growing in¬
fluence of canon law, from which so many of the difficulties had
arisen. Frequently, the reply to an appeal would involve the cfri-
tion of canon law, which might be in conflict with the existing
usage approved by the king; and if canon law gave no guidance, a
decretal from the pope would settle the matter, without the kingrs
being able to exert influence over his decision.10
THE GREAT REBELLION 165

During the remaining seventeen years of Henry's reign, a more

moderate and conciliatory attitude prevailed between Church and
State. The two major issues which came into dispute were both
concerned with jurisdiction over property. Because the Church
courts had the right to decide on legitimacy, and the results of such
an inquiry were accepted by the royal courts, a direct conflict arose
on a point of procedure. Canon law required that anyone whose
land had been taken away by force should have it restored before
the case began; but the reverse was true in the royal courts. The
solution was reached when Henry obtained papal confirmation in
1178 that the ecclesiastical courts could only deal with legitimacy
and not with actual possession.11
The more involved problem of right of presentation was also
decided as Henry hoped, but without open recognition from the
Church. Here the difficulty was that the right to nominate a parish
priest was regarded as a property rather than a right, since it often
proved a useful way of providing for younger sons or other depen¬
dents. The Church, naturally enough, felt that it should be allowed
fo settle disputes involving its own personnel. Furthermore, it was
not always easy to distinguish between two clerks arguing over the
possession of a benefice and two patrons claiming the rights to
present: the former came under ecclesiastical jurisdiction, while
the latter were answerable to the king's court. The decretal issued
by Alexander III in 1179 did not take adequate account of the
realities of the situation, while the Clarendon clause of 1166 also
suffered from imprecise definition. What in practice happened
seems to have been that the king’s claims prevailed: the church
council at Westminster in 1175 prevented one difficulty from oc¬
curring by forbidding that such rights should be given as dowries.12
Herufy had retreated from his original aim of uniform justice
in face of strong opposition; but it had scarcely been a dishonour¬
able failure. Becket was not only a determined and sincere man,
but he was also supported by a papacy long used to over-ruling the
ideas of princes and armed with the new weapon of canon law. The
English king, in trying to write down and clarify the laws of his
land, was unknowingly taking part in a wider movement of which
his opponents were the chief representatives: the change from
traditional, local, remembered laws to a centrally administered
 166 HENRY PLANTAGENET

body of recorded if not created law. In the later years of his reign,
increasing quantities of papal decretals were directed to England;
of 424 such mandates issued by Alexander III, just over half were
specifically addressed to Henry’s domains.13 It was now impossible
to resist this growing centralisation, even if Henry had had the
desire or the time so to do.

- The Plantagenet empire, to anyone present at the splendid gather¬

ing at Caen during the Christmas of 1172, seemed more firmly
grounded and impressive than ever. The king enjoyed complete
power, carrying out his plans through loyal officials whose degree of
initiative and independence was entirely in his control. Even his
own sons were thus employed. His lands were rich, prosperous and
peaceful; no external enemies threatened their security.
Yet the first signs of the upheavals of years to come were
already there for skilful minds to read. There had been rumours of
conspiracy while Henry was in Ireland, and the young king, his
eldest son Henry, had been growing increasingly dissatisfied with
the emptiness of his title since his second coronation. With the
glory of kingship, his father had given him no corresponding power.
He and his wife had returned to Normandy on their father’s in¬
structions at the beginning of November, but under the pretext
that Louis wished to see his daughter, they had gone almost at
once to France.14 Louis had advised his son-in-law, in a meeting at
Gisors, to demand either the whole of England or the whole of
Normandy to govern as soon as he returned to his father. If he was
refused this, he was to come back to Paris. Henry had suspected
that such plots might be laid, and at once recalled his son. The
two kings kept their courts separately, the elder at Caen, the younger
at Bonneville, although no public quarrel had occurred.
Early in January 1173, Henry summoned his son once
more and they went together southwards into Auvergne to meet
Humbert, count of Maurienne, at Montferrand-le-Fort on Febru¬
ary 2. The counts of Vienne and Toulouse and the king of Aragon
were also present. Two questions were to be settled: that of the
marriage of Prince John to Humbert’s daughter, first planned’in
1171; and the quarrel between Raymond of Toulouse and the king
 THE GREAT REBELLION 167

of Aragon. The discussions started at Montferrand and were

brought to a successful conclusion at Limoges. The settlement of
the Aragon-Toulouse dispute—the first of several such achieve¬
ments by Henry in diplomatic spheres where he held no direct
interest—added considerably to his prestige and ensured friendly
relations with neighbouring rulers. This time he secured a tangible
gain in the shape of the homage of Raymond of Toulouse, on the
usual terms of forty days service at the king’s summons. He also
agreed to come at the behest of Richard as count of Poitou, but any
service beyond forty days was to be paid for. Henry was to receive
from him 100 marks of silver or ten good warhorses annually.
The proposed alliance between the Plantagenet line and that
of Maurienne seemed at first destined to similar success. Humbert
offered either the succession to his lands or, should a son be born
to him, twelve towns and castles, the city of Turin and many fiefs.
In the event of his eldest daughter’s death, the terms would hold
good for his second daughter. For his part, Henry was to pay the
count 5,000 marks. But one more point was raised by the count:
4 John had no share in his father’s domains. When would he receive
this share, and what would it be? Henry suggested the three castles
on the Loire: Chinon, Mirebeau and Loudun—the same that his
own brother had held many years earlier. He cannot have been com¬
pletely surprised by the reaction of his eldest son, who flatly refused
to ratify the agreement as Henry’s heir, and repeated his demand
that he should govern England, Normandy or Anjou. He was en¬
couraged in this by the barons on both sides of the Channel, who
had begun to yearn for their old freedom and were finding Henry’s
hand too heavy for their liking.
Humbert accepted Henry’s guarantee that John would re¬
ceive the castles*, and the young king’s obstinacy made no difference
to the settlement reached at Limoges. Henry realised all the same
that action would have to be taken to prevent his son from be¬
coming the focus of all potential discontent. At first he considered
putting him in safe custody,16 but finally decided that the dis¬
missal of several of his intimates who seemed to be exerting a bad
influence on him would be adequate; and Hasculf de St Hilary
and other young knights were ordered to leave his company. At the
end of the talks at Limoges, the two kings had returned to Nor-
i68 HENRY PLANTAGENET

mandy, and it was here that the father’s decision was enforced. The
reaction was immediate: the young Henry slipped quietly past the
castle guards at Chinon the same night, having made them drunk
beforehand, and rode post-haste to Alencon, a hundred miles away.
His father discovered his absence the following morning, and set
out in pursuit with equal speed. However, the fugitive had six
hours’ advantage, and when the old king reached Alencon, his son
was at Argentan, forty miles north. It seems that his original ob¬
jective had been to cross the Channel and to raise the standard of
rebellion in England; but he now turned and headed eastwards for
the lands of the count of Dreux, brother of Louis, crossing the
border near Mortagne on March 8. Had the young king originally
planned to make for Paris, he could have gone by a more direct
route, up the Loire valley, or at least have crossed from Alencon
into French territory.

There was no doubt now that the younger Henry would ally him¬
self with Louis in an attack on his father’s domains in order to ex¬
tract the powers he demanded from him. The old king at once went
to Gisors to supervise the strengthening of the Norman border
defences. News soon began to reach him of further defections to
France: Robert of Melun, who left his castles abandoned at Henry's
mercy; Hugh of Chester, returning from Compostella; William
Patrick, earl of Salisbury, and his sons. Worse was to follow, for
Richard and Geoffrey joined their brother shortly afterwards, ap¬
parently at the instigation of the queen and her uncle, Ralph de
Faye.16 Eleanor herself attempted to reach French territory and,
disguised as a man, made her way towards Paris. Henry’s guards
proved too alert for her; she was discovered and brought back. If
her life with Henry had allowed her too little freedom, this rash
action cost her what liberty she enjoyed, for the king no longer
trusted her and feared her influence with his sons. Here lay the one
great weakness in his statesmanship: in subordinating all matters
of state to his own control, he had deprived his family, who *in
other circumstances would have shared the power as well as the
glory, of their part. Eleanor had been allowed an occasional and
rather nominal role, as head of the English or Norman government
in Henry s absence; Richard and Geoffrey, although by title en,-
THE GREAT REBELLION 169

crusted with Aquitaine17 and Brittany respectively, were influenced

by her and by their own proud ambitions to seek absolute power
in those areas by joining their brother; while the young king him¬
self had discovered that his new-found glory did not entail any
practical outlet for his ambition.
The men who followed the king’s sons on their rebellious
path had similar reasons for finding Henry’s rule displeasing. The
movement towards centralisation of government and repression of
baronial independence where the latter formed a threat to the state
or to just rule was far from complete; yet enough had been done to
provoke a reaction among those who had exploited the absence of
a strong hand as Ralph de Diceto tells us:

These men who for just and provable causes the king had con¬
demned to forfeiture, joined the party of his son, not because
they regarded his as the juster cause, but because the father,
with a view to increasing the royal dignity, was trampling on
the necks of the proud and haughty, overthrowing the sus¬
pected castles of the country, or bringing them under his own
power; because he ordered and even compelled the persons who
were occupying the properties belonging to his own house and
to the exchequer to be content with their own patrimony;
because he condemned traitors to exile, punished robbers with
death, terrified thieves with the gallows and mulcted the op¬
pressors of the poor with the loss of their own money.18

This revolt seemed the opportunity to reverse the trend; the future
undoubtedly lay with the young king, and if he owed his position
to the great lords, so much the better. Knowing the elder Henry’s
temper, the barons never envisaged complete reconciliation, and
were prepared to exploit the situation for their own ends as best
they could.
Henry was nonetheless reluctant to face the reality of the
revolt at once, even though he had taken the necessary precautions,
and still hoped for a way of escape. When the young king’s house¬
hold servants returned to him, bringing his seal and personal equip¬
ment, Henry received them kindly and then sent them back to his
son. The latter, however, remained firm in his intentions, and
 X7o HENRY PLANTAGENET

made them swear an oath to himself to the exclusion of his father.

Those who refused were sent back; and Henry could now do no
more than wait for his opponents’ first move.19
Meanwhile, Louis had strengthened his prot£g£’s position
by persuading him to make extensive grants of land to his allies
at a formal court at Paris. First of all, the French magnates took
an oath to support the young Henry in his warfare; and then with
due pomp and ceremony, using a new seal specially made for the
occasion, the young king distributed great fiefs in England and
Normandy. Philip of Flanders was to have lands yielding £1,000 a
year in England, the whole of Kent, and Dover and Rochester
castles; Matthew of Boulogne was allotted Mortain, once the
property of his father-in-law, Stephen; Theobald of Blois received
the disputed castle of Amboise; William of Scotland all the lands
north of the Tyne; his brother David was allotted Cambridgeshire,
and Hugh Bigod additions to his lands in Norfolk. In return, all
the recipients swore fealty to the young king, and offered him
assistance. If it might seem dearly bought to an outside observer,
the predominant influence of Louis must be remembered. He did
not wish the new ruler merely to replace the old: he was chiefly
interested in weakening the towering edifice of authority built by
Henry which now overshadowed his own small territories. Parti¬
tion was suggested, Henry to have Normandy and the young king
England. Louis would have most liked to see a weak ruler, unable
to hold his barons in check, ruling all the Angevin territories.

A week after Easter, 1173, with this impressive list of supporters

and at least sixty-five lesser barons, chiefly from the ranks of the
ever-turbulent lords of Aquitaine, the young king went to war.
His father had spent the festival at Alenfon, and was fully ex¬
pecting the attack. For two months little happened, beyond further
defections to the rebels and the capture of Aumale castle on the
Flemish border. Normandy remained the stronghold of the old
king, while Aquitaine and Anjou were for the most part in revolt-,
as was Brittany. Events in England were more serious; there the
earl of Leicester and the earl of Chester had joined the English
rebels, who now constituted a formidable party, and there was' a
distinct possibility of a Scottish invasion. The young king had also
THE GREAT REBELLION 171
prevented the election of a new archbishop of Canterbury to suc¬
ceed Becket. He wrote to the pope lodging an appeal, claiming
that this election was invalid without his approval. In another
letter, he promised to allow the English Church full liberty and to
repeal the Consitutions of Clarendon.
Henry seemed to take very little action to counter this
variety of threats. In contrast to his usual energetic movement in
summertime, he remained at Rouen until the beginning of July,
with the exception of a brief visit to England, of which nothing is
known save for a journey to Northampton by way of South¬
ampton and Winchester. He publicly showed his lack of concern
by frequent hunting expeditions; but he was undoubtedly well in¬
formed as to the state of affairs. Louis had been before the walls of
Verneuil for a month when Henry was moved to retaliate at last.
Almost at once, the first piece of good news for many a long day
reached the elder Plantagenet. Having taken Driencourt, the young
king, with Philip of Flanders and Matthew of Boulogne, pro¬
ceeded to Arques, where, on July 25, Matthew was mortally
(wounded. It was five years to the day since Matthew had sworn
fealty to the elder Henry, the oath which he had just broken by
his rebellion. Stricken with grief at his brother's death, perhaps
also seeking an excuse to abandon a none too prosperous campaign,
Philip took this omen seriously and withdrew to his native Flan¬
ders. This was a grave blow to the young king’s prospects; it would
be almost impossible, without Philip’s help, to reduce the basis of
his father’s power in Normandy and bring him to the point of
surrender.
Henry arrived at Conches, thirty miles south of Rouen, on
August 7, 1173, bringing a large army of mercenaries. Although he
knew that jhe inhabitants of Verneuil had agreed to surrender on
August 9 unless relief came, he waited for part of his army, and only
proceeded to within seven miles of Verneuil on August 8. Here, at
Breteuil, he drew up his forces in battle order, prepared but not
actively seeking to engage in a pitched battle. Louis was not en¬
thusiastic about such an event, his troops being tired from the long
siege and probably inferior both in quality and numbers. He there¬
fore sent three errjjssaries—the archbishop of Sens, his own brother
Robert and Theobald of Blois—to propose a truce until the next
 172 HENRY PLANTAGENET

day and a conference to establish peace. It seemed as though the

great rebellion might peter out as a minor border raid, such as
Louis had made at intervals on much slighter pretexts. Henry
retired to Conches to await his enemy’s arrival. However, the
French king had other plans. In Henry’s absence, he demanded the
surrender of Verneuil, since relief had not arrived. This was grant¬
ed, and the town opened its gates. Louis’ treachery went further:
against all his promises, he sacked the town and took its inhabitants
into captivity in France. Henry had by then seen the flames and
realised the deceit of which he was victim. Setting out in hot
pursuit of Louis, he was in time to harass the retreating French
army and take many prisoners, as well as the equipment left in the
abandoned camp. Having repaired the walls of Verneuil, he fore¬
bore to raid the French king’s lands by way of reprisal, but turned
north, reducing the rebellious garrison of Damville on his way back
to Rouen.
A second army had been fighting for Henry in Brittany
while the king dealt with the besiegers of Verneuil; composed of
mercenaries, its object was the suppression of the revolt raised
there by earl Hugh of Chester and Henry’s perennial opponent,
Ralph de Foug^res. This force had suffered a heavy defeat at the
latter s hands when surprised during foraging. Henry is said to
have come secretly to Brittany during the summer to attack Ralph,
but finding his opponent too strong, to have retreated again.20
Within ten days of returning to the Norman capital, Henry had
fresh encouragement from this quarter. In an engagement at Dol,
which Ralph had obtained by bribingthecastellans, the Brabantine
mercenaries revenged their earlier reverse, driving Ralph and the earl
into the castle, and capturing several other leaders of the revolt,
including Hasculf de St Hilary and William Patrick, earl of Salis¬
bury. The news reached Rouen on Tuesday, August 21, Henry left
that evening; travelling at incredible speed, he arrived at Dol on
the Thursday, August 23, having covered some two hundred miles
in two days. Three days later the castle surrendered in face of .the
siege-engines which had been rapidly erected on the king’s arrival.
This was a major victory, for besides Hugh of Chester and Ralph,
sixty-seven other notables fell into Henry’s hands, and there was
no question of any further serious revolt in Brittany. Henry had
THE GREAT REBELLION 173

showed the best side of his military genius in the episode: the em¬
ployment of mercenaries under their own commanders—a system
he had brought to the point where they could be entrusted with an
important mission independently; his gift for immediate and un¬
expected action; and his skill in reducing strongholds in the short¬
est possible space of time.

It was now evident that the revolt would not bring easy success to
its leaders. Henry had no desire to prolong the war, and a con¬
ference was soon arranged at Gisors, on September 25, 1173.
Henry spent some of the intervening time at Le Mans, and met
Louis and his own sons on the French border at the arranged date.
In view of his son’s conduct, the Angevin’s offers were generous
to the point of foolishness; but as his heirs, it was essential to
satisfy them in order to ensure the peace of the realm. The young
king was to have half the royal revenues in either England or
Normandy, with either four English castles or three in Normandy
and the revenues of Anjou. Richard was to have half the royal
^revenues in Aquitaine and four castles there; Geoffrey was to
marry the heiress of the duke of Brittany and to have the lands
which formed her inheritance. Any doubtful points were to be
settled by the archbishop of Tarento and papal legates.
But Henry’s generosity was more apparent than real, for in
no circumstances would he part with the powers of government.
Thanks to his financial reforms he had money to spare, although
his offers would have laid a heavy burden on the exchequers. This
was not what his sons wanted, and they regarded it as an attempt
to buy off their political ambitions. Henry had never been con¬
spicuously mean with his allowances to them, and this had not
been one o£,their. complaints. They were far more concerned with
their father’s apparent intention of retaining as much political
control as possible until his dying day. Henry was only forty:
the situation of the young king and his brothers threatened to re¬
main static for another twenty years or more; and what was money
without power? Such considerations as these, persuasively sup¬
ported by Louis, prevailed in the young Plantagenets minds, and
the conference brqjce up with nothing accomplished. Further talks
the next day ended in a skirmish between English and French
FRANCE IN 1189
Q
3

O
•o
Parthenay
176 HENRY PLANTAGENET

troops, in which a French knight was captured, and both sides

withdrew.

The scene of the fighting now moved to England. The young king
and his supporters had had little encouragement from the results of
their continental efforts, and therefore sent the earl of Leicester
with a body of Flemish troops to invade England. So far the only
serious episode in England itself had been the siege of Leicester,
o.n July 3. The town had been taken by Richard de Lucy and
Reginald of Cornwall, after much of it had been accidentally burnt;
but the castle held out. There had been trouble in the north:
William of Scotland, while refusing the young king’s offer of the
lands north of Tyne for his help, had entered the war on his own
account. He claimed Northumberland as his, on the grounds that
it had been given to his grandfather by Matilda, and had been un¬
justly seized by Henry. With a large army, including many spear¬
men from Galway, he crossed the border from Caldenlea and
besieged Wark castle. Meeting a spirited resistance from the
castellan, Roger d’Estuteville, he made a forty-day truce and
moved on to Alnwick, which likewise resisted. His first success
was at Warkworth castle; but Newcastle held out, because William
had no siege-engines—perhaps the reason for his first two failures.
He next turned west and settled down to reduce Carlisle by star¬
vation; yet even here fortune was against him, for by now an
English force under Humphrey de Bohun and Richard de Lucy
had been raised to drive out the invaders. William deemed it
prudent to retire, and was followed north by the English. They had
burnt Berwick and were preparing to devastate as much of Scot¬
land as they could, when news of Leicester’s invasion reached
them. It was now Richard de Lucy’s turn to be cautious, and he
arranged a truce with the Scottish king until January 13, 1174.
The young king had achieved his planned effect, and the Scots
were saved from probable defeat.
Robert of Leicester had landed in Suffolk, at Walton, oft
September 29, and had at once been joined by Hugh Bigod, earl
of Norfolk. Having dismissed the ships, they set about the siege
of Walton castle, which successfully resisted them. Robert there-
 THE GREAT REBELLION 177

fore moved to Haughley, which he took on October 13, and

went from there to Framlingham. Here his Flemish troops did
considerable damage to the Bigod lands, and he himself quarrelled
with Bigod’s wife. As a result, he was forced to move off towards
Leicester, which he hoped to relieve, without waiting the few
weeks necessary for contingents to arrive from other parts of
England to reinforce him. He did not get far with his plans, for the
royal officers had gathered a new army at Bury St Edmunds, where
Lucy and Bohun had been joined by the earls of Cornwall, Glouc¬
ester and Arundel. Henry himself considered that his English
supporters were perfectly capable of dealing with the situation, and
did not stir from Normandy.21
His trust proved fully justified: for in a battle near Forn-
ham, on October 17, the earl of Leicester’s army was completely
shattered. The English feudal cavalry overcame the smaller con¬
tingent of horse opposing them, and the Flemish footsoldiers,
who had marched through Norfolk so boldly and full of con¬
fidence, singing: ’Hop, Hop, Willekin, England is mine and
thine,’ were powerless against the mounted knights. Scattering in
, confusion, they were slaughtered by the local peasantry wielding
scythes and pitchforks. This was the first pitched battle on English
or Norman soil in Henry’s reign; and its decisive results show why
the full hosts of France and the Angevin empire, although fre¬
quently drawn up in preparation, never dared to fight. The out¬
come was certain only in one respect: that one side would gain
almost total victory. Both the earl and countess of Leicester, and
all the knights accompanying them, were taken prisoner; any
surviving Flemings were drowned in the Fen dykes, although their
army had far outnumbered the English host. The victors of
Fomham followed up their success by assembling forces to hold
the earl of Norfolk in check at Colchester, Bury St Edmunds and
Ipswich. Bigod, feeling that resistance was vain, bought a truce
until June 4, 1174, with the added condition that his Flemish
troops be dismissed. The south of England was once again secure,
and although the rebels were strong in the north and midlands,
there was no immediate danger, since they were unable to find an
army. The garrisons of the earl of Leicester’s castles were the only
forces of any serious military value in the field. Hence prepara-
178 HENRY PLANTAGENET

tions could be made against the day when the Scottish truce was
due to expire.22

The next year, 1174, opened peacefully: a truce was arranged with
the French until the end of March. Neither side was interested in
a winter campaign, and this arrangement merely regulated the
length of the interval. A similar truce, also to the end of March,
was negotiated with the Scots by Bishop Hugh of Durham. Henry
remained in Normandy during this time, intending to continue
his defensive policy on the renewal of hostilities. There he re¬
ceived the archbishop of Tarento, who had been sent by the pope to
attempt to arrange a peace. Louis still resisted such overtures, and
the legate had to return with nothing to show for his labours.
The first attack of the spring campaign came from the
Scots, who descended once more on the border castles, only to
meet the same successful resistance at Wark. At the suggestion of
Roger de Mowbray, who was now assisting him with a band of
Flemish soldiers, William then moved west to Carlisle. Robert de
Vaux was in charge of this garrison, and the Scots at first attempted
to bribe or intimidate him. Failing in both these methods, part of
the army was left to starve out the town, while the remainder, led
by William, took Liddell, Appleby,23 Warkworth and Harbottle
before rejoining the siege. Finding himself short of provisions,
Vaux was forced to promise to surrender at Michaelmas if help
did not come by then. William withdrew satisfied, having taken
the necessary hostages, and set about the siege of Prudhoe. How¬
ever, the northern magnates had by this time organised an army;
William was forced to retreat to avoid a battle, and tried his hand
at Alnwick instead. Here again, he sent part of the army under
Duncan of Angus and Richard de Morville to ravage the country,
while the rest carried on the siege. Warkworth town was sacked
and its inhabitants massacred; but before more damage was done,
a dramatic stroke of fortune ended the Scottish invasion. The
army from Yorkshire had followed William northwards. Some of
the knights, perhaps impatient of the slow progress of the foot¬
men, rode on ahead to Alnwick in a small band. Among the four
hundred or so knights were Odinel d’Umffaville, William
THE GREAT REBELLION *79
d’Estuteville, William de Vescy, and Ranulf Glanville, the
leaders of the expedition. When they arrived near Alnwick, they
decided to make a reconnaissance of the situation. A sudden mist
descended; and they wandered helplessly all night, only to find
themselves, at dawn on July 13, before the very walls of Alnwick.
William and his knights were enjoying a leisurely breakfast and
preparing for the day ahead. The Scottish king, noticing the small
group approaching, assumed that it was Duncan and his band of
raiders returning. Only when the English raised their war-cry did
he discover his mistake. By then the attack was launched. In the
ensuing struggle, William’s horse was killed under him, and he
surrendered to Ranulf Glanville. Roger de Mowbray fled; and the
remaining Scottish nobles were either killed or, like their king,
taken captive to Newcastle.24
Three hundred miles to the south, the same dawn broke on
the kneeling figure of Henry before Becket’s tomb in Canterbury
Cathedral, and slowly brought light to the gloom of the crypt
where he had passed the night in prayer and fast, smarting from
' the scourging he had undergone at the hands of the monks on the
previous days. He had been in England for four days, since the
focus of the war had moved there. There had been some desultory
fighting in France: he had taken Saintes in Poitou in May, and re¬
duced Ancenis in Anjou about June 11. The young king had
decided to attempt a more general revolt in England, sending
support to the king of Scotland.* His followers continued to do
what they could: Bigod had burnt Norwich, Ansketill Malory had
carried out a successful raid on Northampton, and earl Ferrers had
taken Nottingham. On the other side, Henry’s bastard son,
Geoffrey, had dealt severely with Roger de Mowbray's castles, and
Richard de Lucy had laid siege to Huntingdon. Hence the young
king decided that his personal presence was required in England,
and on June 24, 1174, he arrived at Gravelines to cross the Channel.
This came to his father’s notice, who at once left for Barfleur with
the more important of his prisoners and a force of Brabantines. A
westerly wind enabled him to cross, while his son was forced to
remain inactive at Gravelines, hoping for a change in the weather.
* This arrived too late, and the 500 Flemings were dispersed by Hugh of
Durham.
i8o HENRY PLANTAGENET

Landing at Southampton, he went to Canterbury where he offered

his prayers for the first time before the shrine of his dead friend
and opponent, doing due penance for his part in Thomas’ death,
who was now a fully recognised saint.
The news of William the Lion’s capture was not long in
coming, and the coincidence between the actual occurrence of
this momentous event and Henry’s night of prayer was soon re¬
marked, and the two events firmly linked as cause and effect. Five
days later, Henry was in London, at the palace of Westminster. It
was evening, and the king, suffering from a slight fever, had gone
to bed early, when a messenger arrived. The chamberlain was un¬
willing to admit the man, although his news seemed urgent. The
noise of arrival had been heard by the king, who presently asked
who it was. On being told that the messenger came from Ranulf
Glanville, Henry at once feared the worst and ordered his im¬
mediate admittance. The news quickly proved to be of a very
different kind. Henry was naturally delighted; rewarding the
messenger for his hard ride south, he roused his barons to share his
rejoicing.25
The following day he took action against the remaining
rebels, moving first to Huntingdon, which fell on July 21, and
thence to Seleham, near Framlingham, where four days later he
received Hugh Bigod’s surrender of the castles there and at Bungay
on condition that the Flemish mercenaries were given safe-conduct
home. This event was marred for Henry by a personal mishap: the
horse of one of his close companions, the Templar Tostes de St
Omer, grew restive and kicked the king on the shin, causing a
painful wound which later gave trouble.26
Thereafter the revolt collapsed as quickly as it had sprung
up. At Northampton, Bishop Hugh of Durham, who although
otherwise loyal, had been compromised by the arrival of his
nephew in the north with a Flemish force, took the precaution of
surrendering his castles to the king in order to obtain his nephew,’s
safe return home. The earl of Leicester’s castellans at Leicester,
Mountsorel and Groby surrendered the strongholds from which
they had continued to defy the king even after their mastep-’s
imprisonment. Roger de Mowbray and earl Ferrers likewise sought
the king’s mercy. When Henry sailed for Normandy on August
 THE GREAT REBELLION 181

7—just under a month after his arrival in an atmosphere of im¬

pending disaster and intense crisis—he left England completely at
peace. Even the riots in London, a by-product of the breakdown
of public order, had been quelled, and there was no question of
further trouble from the barons.

The young king was still at Gravelines when the news of his
father’s arrival and of the capture of William of Scotland reached
him. Realising that there was now little point in carrying out his
plans, even though it meant abandoning all his costly preparations,
he joined Louis again, and with him proceeded to the siege of
Rouen in a desperate attempt to strike a serious blow at his father’s
position by seizing the Norman capital. This city, lying in the
protection of the Seine and the hills, was too well protected to
offer an easy prize, especially as one bridge remained in the citizens’
hands. The French army watched impotently as victuals were
brought into the city each day. Louis’ only hope was a frontal
assault, but a month’s endeavours brought him no nearer to success.
•* In accordance with the custom of the times, on St Lawrence’s day,
August io, 1174, a truce was proclaimed for twenty-four hours.
The citizens naturally took advantage of this to leave the city in
which they had been confined for so long, and on the bank oppo¬
site to Louis’ camp held all manner of sports, including a tourna¬
ment. This was too much of a temptation for Louis’ magnates, who
urged a surprise attack. The king was unwilling to commit such
treachery, but his nobles answered: ‘With an enemy there can be
no question of deceit or valour.’ At last he yielded and the army
was ordered to assemble in strict silence. However, this movement
was observed by a monk within the town, who at once rang the
great belKof the church to recall his fellow-citizens. When Louis'
army reached the walls, they were repulsed with heavy losses, and
the French king retired disheartened both by this defeat and by the
unnecessary stain on his honour. The following day, Henry reached
Rouen, and on August 12 sent his Welsh troops into the sur¬
rounding forests to cut off the French provision trains. He pre¬
pared for an attack on the French from within the city, filling a
ditch which had* been dug between the French camp and the walls
so that two hundred men could advance abreast over it. At this,
182 HENRY PLANTAGENET

Louis ordered his siege-engines to be burnt to prevent them from

falling into English hands. A skirmish ensued, and a truce was pro¬
posed bp the archbishop of Sens and Theobald of Blois on the fol¬
lowing dap. That night, however, Louis judged discretion the best
course, and retired with his armp, not halting until he reached
French soil. Once more, fear of a pitched battle was all too evident
in his actions.
On the following dap, the French envops returned to pro¬
pose a meeting on the understanding that Henrp in the mean¬
while was free to proceed against his son Richard in Poitou. This
was agreed, and the English king went southwards. Richard was in
no mood to resist his father, who was now triumphant everpwhere.
The expedition became a pursuit; castle after castle was abandoned
as Henrp advanced. Eventuallp, on September 23, having heard of
the truce between Louis and the poung king on one side and Henrp
on the other, Richard came to his father, in guise of deepest
penitence, and submitted to him. Henrp, who could never find it
in his heart to be angrp with his sons for long, forgave him, and
peace was made.

The outcome of the conference between Henrp, Louis, and the

poung king, held between Tours and Amboise on September 29,
1174, was now scarcelp in doubt. It remained for Henrp to be as
generous or as harsh as he wished, within certain limits. He gave
nothing that he had not been prepared to give earlier; and the final
settlement was less favourable to his sons than the terms offered a
pear before. A general amnestp and restitution was the first pro¬
vision of the treaty, William of Scotland and the earls of Chester
and Leicester being the only exceptions. All oaths taken in the
course of the revolt were annulled, and homage was done bp the
sons as before the rising, only the younger Henrp being excused
because of his royal status. The benefits conferred on the three
sons were less than his former offer: the poung king received twp
castles in Normandy and £15,000 in Angevin currency annually;
Richard was awarded two Poitevin castles ‘which could not harm
the king’, and half the revenues of Poitou; and Geoffrey received
half the dowry of Conan’s daughter. The question which had
THE GREAT REBELLION 183
originally sparked off the revolt was settled in Henry’s favour:
the young king was to allow John to have Nottingham, Marl¬
borough, and estates in Normandy and Anjou to the value of
£2,000 annually, with five castles. Finally, all estates forfeited by
the rebels were to be returned by the king. Of Eleanor, nothing
was said. Henry, by his treatment of her, showed that he felt her to
be largely responsible for the rebellion: she was to remain under
close surveillance for several years to come. The king’s sons had
not gained the essential element of political power which really
interested them, and Louis had gained nothing for a costly war.
After all, Henry was the victor, and could hardly be expected to
increase the price he had to pay in the very hour of triumph as
insurance against the possibility of further troubles. Besides, he
had lost much for his part as well: the drain on the exchequer had
been considerable, and the disruption of the administration would
take some time to repair. He had had to abandon all external
diplomacy and any designs he may have had for the extension of
his empire. To this extent, Louis had gained a costly respite from
the threatening growth of Angevin power.
The settlement with William of Scotland proved harsh.
The Scottish king was still at Falaise when terms were arranged.27
He had to do homage for Scotland to Henry, and all his vassals
made a direct oath to the English king. In addition to giving his
brother David as a hostage, he had to surrender the five main
castles of Scotland—Edinburgh, Jedburgh, Roxburgh, Stirling and
Berwick—and the Scottish Church was to be subject to the juris¬
diction of that of England. Henry seems to have been chiefly con¬
cerned to prevent further trouble from this quarter, and was in no
mood to remember assistance in the past from William’s grand¬
father, .David.
The great rebellion was at an end. Its causes, however, re¬
mained as sources of irritation which produced a continuous sore
on the body politic. As an isolated episode, the events of 1173-4
are striking enough. Yet they have never earned a place in the
popular memory, for the simple reason that they are paralleled
several times in the remaining years of Henry’s reign on a smaller
scale. Henry paid dear for his one failing: his inability either to
apply ruthlessly'to his sons a policy which was intrinsically reason-
184 HENRY PLANTAGENET

able, or to make adequate terms with them. It was essential for the
Angevin empire to be ruled by one absolute monarch if it was to
survive the machinations of its enemies. Henry could neither bring
himself to delegate that power in an efficient and equitable manner,
nor to encourage the princes’ interest in affairs other than high
politics.
 9
The Years of Peace

Easter again! The time of year that I like best;

Its flowers and showers and birdsong in the leafy woods
Rejoice my heart; but better still the gay pavilions,
The sward bedecked with glistening shields and polished arms,
The keen-edged swords and lances flashing in the fray!

Look there! A splendid sight! The common soldiers hunt

^ The frightened peasants fleeing with their precious goods,
While just beyond, see now, a castle’s strength assayed,
Its palisades destroyed, a host camps by its moat!
The walls are battered down with rams and mangonels,
Besiegers scale the breach, the ramparts swarm with life
As helms are broken by the axes’ blows, swords cleave
Through painted shields! A sortie issues down below,
A charge! Knights falling, horses running riderless,
And death to all! No prisoners now, no quarter shown!

Ah, such a life’s the kind of life I’d lead;

No wind? no food, no sleep for me, if I can fight
And watch death walk with fire and sword in hand.1

T HUS BfiRTRAN de Born, lord of Altaforte, soon after the

great rebellion. His fame and influence were magnified by
Dante, who put him in the Inferno as a sower of sedition and
schism.2 His ny>od was that of many of the barons of Aquitaine.
Because they preferred Henry’s distant authority to the presence
186 HENRY PLANTAGENET

of Richard, they had for the most part remained loyal to the king.
When the elder Plantagenet was victorious, he still found there
was much to be done. Many castles had been strengthened for
war and, whether they belonged to his own supporters or not,
constituted a grave menace to the peace. Richard was sent back
to the south, with a mandate from his father to the Poitevins
commanding them to obey his son in all things, and Henry at
once set about the task of reducing all those castles—probably the
majority—whose owners refused to comply with the king’s
orders that they should be returned to the state they were in
fifteen days before the outbreak of war.
The aftermath of war brought problems of different kinds
elsewhere. In Normandy, the disruption of the administration
during the two previous years kept Henry and the young king
occupied. On February 24, 1175, they held a conference with
Louis at Gisors, and visited Rouen two days later; from there
Henry went south to Anjou, having destroyed the fortifications
added to the barons' castles, and received renewed homage from
Geoffrey and Richard. Soon after March 23, Henry returned
north to Caen and summoned his eldest son, who was still at
Rouen, to go with him to England. Louis’ agents, however, had
been at work; they had advised the young king against going to
England, because, so they said, his father intended to imprison
him there. They were believed, and the king’s order was met with
a curt refusal. Henry grasped the source of his suspicions and
adopted a conciliatory tone, which achieved the desired effect. In
another of the theatrical scenes of repentance which are the only
glimpse of Henry’s family life during these years, the young king
was reconciled with his father at Bur-le-Roi on April 1, weeping
and protesting his innocence and loyalty as he did homage for his
lands in England and France. Henry allowed him to go to see Louis
immediately afterwards, while he himself stayed at Valognes, per¬
haps to give Geoffrey his instructions for the government of
Brittany. At Easter, the two kings were together at Cherbourg.
Here they were visited by count Philip of Flanders, who had
taken the cross on Good Friday, and who wished to settle his
affairs before departing for the Holy Land. A gift of £1,000
revenue from lands in England was confirmed by the two kings,
THE YEARS OF PEACE 187
and in return Philip surrendered the charter he had received from
the young king at the outset of the rebellion.

Whatever Henry had been doing during these months, he now

felt that matters were sufficiently well organised for him to leave
for England. The two kings finally left Normandy from Barfleur
on May 8, 1175, and landed at Portsmouth the next day. It was to
be Henry’s longest visit to the island since his coronation, and one
of the most fruitful. Within ten days of landing, a council of the
clergy was assembled at Westminster to regulate the condition of
the Church under the king’s aegis. Peace had at last been achieved
for England’s clergy with the election of Richard of Dover to the
see of Canterbury, confirmation of this having been obtained
from the pope in April 1174. A gentle and saintly man, Richard
of Dover was able to work out the implications of the settlement
of Avranches without crossing Henry’s path. This particular
council was chiefly concerned with the moral state of the clergy,
and attempted to deal with the English practice of married priests.
The old quarrel between York and Canterbury flared up again to
mar an otherwise peaceful and successful piece of work; but al¬
though the kings remained throughout the council they do not
seem to have taken a direct hand in its business. On May 28,
Henry left for a second pilgrimage to Canterbury, accompanied by
his son, to give thanks to the saint for his intervention against the
rebels. This was the young king’s first visit to the tomb of the
man who had once been his mentor, and it is interesting to reflect
that he had never attempted to use Becket’s martyrdom as a rally-
ing-cry against his father; partly for this reason it was now the
king and.not his son who could offer thanks.
As always in Henry’s lands, the general peace was disturbed
by minor troubles. The great lords might be quiet, but lesser
barons found new quarrels. At Gloucester on June 3°> H75» the
two kings held a council on Welsh affairs with Rhys ap Griffith
and other Welsh princes. Now that the border was fairly peaceful,
the marcher barons had taken to calling in the Welsh to fight in
their own private quarrels, or inciting them to attack others; a
weakness inherent in the system. Henry could only warn them and
188 HENRY PLANTAGENET

require them to cease this civil war; to weaken them would lay the
western counties open to renewed Welsh attacks. The earl of
Gloucester and William de Braose, particular offenders in this
respect, were especially bound over to observe the settlement, the
former having already been required to surrender Bristol castle.
Immediately afterwards, the two kings returned to Wood-
stock where a further council was held. Apart from a great deal of
ecclesiastical business, Henry announced some political decisions,
aimed at preserving the newly established peace. Although a
general amnesty had been proclaimed, the king forbade any of his
former enemies to come to court without being personally sum¬
moned, and they were not to remain there longer than required,
or arrive by night. He was as much concerned to keep away those
who had been a bad influence on his son as to prevent quarrels at
court. A general edict was issued that no one living east of the
Severn should wear arms, neither bows nor pointed knives, and
that anyone so doing should be arrested. This was intended to
prevent any kind of violence; but since such weapons were used in
hunting and could also be carried in self-defence, the edict soon
became a dead letter.3 As a warning to malefactors and to em¬
phasise his determination to stamp out lawlessness, Henry ordered
that four knights who had murdered a forester should be hanged,
instead of paying the usual fines.
At the beginning of August 1175, the king was at North¬
ampton, attending to a different aspect of the same question.
During the revolt, the forest laws had been disregarded on a large
scale, sometimes on the king’s orders, but more often by private
individuals. Henry wanted both to reassert his foresters' authority
and to also use this as a source of lucrative fines. He therefore
instituted a series of sworn inquests by jury into all crimes against
the forest law committed during the anarchy of the two previous
years. Even the justiciar, Richard de Lucy, protested against this,
saying that he himself had been ordered to take game in the royal
forests by the king, but his intervention was without result. The
financial yields recorded by the exchequer were not remarkable,
about 100 offenders paying £2,093 in 1176.4 Yet Henry was in a
sense justified by his obstinacy. There was a large backlog of ex¬
penses to be paid off from the rebellion, and forest fines were a
THE YEARS OF PEACE 189

legitimate part of the royal revenue. The king was quite prepared
to court unpopularity if fiscal considerations made it necessary.
The last echoes of the rebellion were dispersed at a great
ceremony at York on August 10, when the two kings met William
of Scotland to implement the terms of the treaty of Falaise. In
York minster, the procession of notables of Scotland came to the
two kings and made formal profession of obedience and allegiance,*
among them were king William and his brother David, all the
Scottish bishops and abbots, and many Scottish barons. The
bishops swore in addition to be responsible for king William’s
keeping of his oath, and to render obedience to the English
Church. For the rest of Henry’s reign, the northern border was to
enjoy an almost complete peace, and no serious contest between
English and Scots was to occur for more than a century. As in
Ireland Henry’s political settlement proved durable. His successors
had a just pretext for retaliating against any Scottish disturbances
to the extent of total conquest, since full homage had been duly
paid. He ensured that so long as the English had no major military
commitments elsewhere, that threat alone would be sufficient to
hold them in check.
Henry returned south to continue the series of administra¬
tive assemblies, holding a council at Windsor on October 6.
Messengers from France had brought good reports of the progress
of both Richard and Geoffrey in the reduction of rebellious castles:
Richard had taken Chatillon in the Dordogne after an eight weeks’
siege. Envoys also arrived from the king of Connaught, who
wished to make peace with Henry. This was satisfactorily reached,
and the king could now turn, for the first time in nearly twelve
years, to consider possible reforms in English finance and justice.
This he did during the autumn, amusing himself in the intervals
by hunting in Savernake forest and in Gloucestershire, and only
coming east to receive the legate Hugh Pierleone at Winchester on
October 31. Rumour had it that the king was considering a divorce,
and that this was the reason for the legate’s visit. It seems out of
character for Henry even to have entertained the idea. A politician
of his skill would not lose a quarter of his domains in the way that
Louis of Franc© had done, for had he divorced Eleanor, she would
have become once again independent ruler of Aquitaine. He may
190 HENRY PLANTAGENET

have hoped to arrange a settlement which would allow him to

retain the lands that formed her dowry, leaving her a specified
revenue from them. The story is probably no more than a popular
conjecture from the all too apparent rift between king and queen.
The legate would probably have complied with any of Henry’s
requests; for his reputation for being more interested in bribes
than spiritual welfare was universal.5 Henry obtained one im¬
portant concession, already mentioned, from him: that the clergy
should be tried for offences against the forest law in secular courts.

After Christmas, which he spent with his eldest son at Windsor,

Henry had his scheme for revising the judicial machinery ready,
and on January 25, 1176, he put it before a great council at North¬
ampton. Ever since the last decade of his grandfather’s reign,
travelling justices had supplemented the normal county courts by
hearing cases in which the king had a direct interest, either finan¬
cial or deriving from prerogative. But these justices in eyre had
held their commissions occasionally and without any systematic
organisation; some counties may never have known the institution,
and others had been visited only at long intervals, quite often
because there was very little business to be done there. The in¬
stitution was primarily a temporary measure when pressure on the
royal court became too great, and it was being used with increasing
frequency. Henry’s proposals were simple. In view of the larger
volume of business, the office of itinerant justice was to become a
regular feature of the administration, six groups of three justices
being responsible for between four and eight counties each.
This change was the result rather than a concomitant of a
new promulgation of the Assize made at Clarendon ten years
earlier.® A similar system had been used to enforce it when it was
originally issued. There had, however, been no continuous series
of visits such as is found after 1176. The reissue of the Assize was
a substantial enough undertaking to require new machinery, and
it was considerably expanded both in substance and detail in the
light of experience and new circumstances; indeed, it falls into
three separate parts.
The new Assizes are set out as instructions to the itinerant
justices; but they involve a great deal more than mere rules for
THE YEARS OF PEACE 191

procedure or even than the duties laid down at Clarendon. The

repression of crime with which the 1166 document was chiefly
concerned remained the main object of the operation. The justices
were to make inquiry of local communities whether any crimes
had gone unpunished since the king came to the throne, and the
procedure to be followed in such cases when discovered was laid
down. Each community was to appoint representatives who would
give evidence on oath as to crimes committed: an institution known
as the ‘jury of presentment’. All such cases fell within the king’s
justice, and he was to have all profits. Nor were any franchises
{exempted areas) to escape this visitation. Detailed provisions
were made for dealing with those known to have a bad record,
with fugitives and with vagabonds. A general review of the system
of frankpledge, under which groups of men stood surety for the
good behaviour of individual members of a community, was to be
carried out, and for this and for the pursuit of criminals the sheriffs
were again authorised to enter franchises.
Some of this had been enacted in 1166. In addition, the
justices were to carry out what amounted to a general survey of the
realm; they were to inquire into escheats, church revenues, forfeit
lands and wardships, which were due to the crown; they were to
deal with all revenues due, castle guard duties, outlaws and
arguments over fiefs; they were to take the barons’ homage on the
king’s behalf. Thev were furthermore required to enforce two
legal procedures relating to the land law not mentioned earlier,
which became known as the assizes of novel disseisin and mort
d’ancestor. Both were aimed at settling disputes over property
which might arise between lord and tenant, and could not reason¬
ably be tried in the lord’s court, or between tenants of two differ¬
ent lords. Only now did these contingencies warrant special
machinery. Novel disseisin was a method of dealing with recent
seizures of land, on whatever pretext; it was to apply to all such
incidents since the king had made peace with his son. It ensured
that the possessor of the disputed lands was not deprived of them
before judgement was given, and was probably first enacted in
1166, for in that year the first fines for the offence were paid to the
exchequer. The^other assize was completely new, and concerned
the rights of heirs. The legal heir was to take possession of the
192 HENRY PLANTAGENET

land, even if the inheritance was for any reason contested by the
lord or by any other, under the maxim that a dead man surrenders
his seisin to the living man (le mort saisit le vif). Once again,
Henry was using his rights as overlord to clarify matters otherwise
all too liable to local influences and inconclusive lawsuits.
The council ended with an attempt to deal with the thorny
problem of the subjection of the Scottish Church. Henry desired
this for political reasons, but the two English archbishops dis¬
puted as to which archdiocese should hold this obedience. This
quarrel degenerated, at a later church council in March, into an
open fight between the retainers of York and Canterbury, in which
the archbishop of York was hurt. Henry was not interested in
interfering in such squabbles so long as they remained internal,
and in August the archbishops finally declared a five-year truce.

Family matters once more came to a head in March, when the

young king applied to his father for permission to go on pilgrim¬
age to the shrine of St James at Compostella in north-west Spain.7
The king saw that this rather uncharacteristic request was
prompted by impatience with his company—the two kings had
been together for the best part of two years—and by the schemes
of the young king’s intimates to remove him from his father’s side.
The young king obtained his request in part only, for he was not
allowed to go further than Normandy. He departed about March
22, but was delayed for some days at Porchester. As a result, he
was still in England for Easter, and spent the feast with his father
at Winchester. Richard and Geoffrey had landed two days before
and joined the gathering. Richard had much to discuss with his
father, for a new revolt, headed by Wulfgrim of Angouleme and
his brothers, had broken out in Poitou. Henry saw an opportunity
of dissuading his eldest son from his pilgrimage and the latter
agreed to go to his brother’s aid instead. Even so, the young king,
when he landed in France at Barfleur on April 20, 1176, went at
once to see Louis of France and did not reach Poitou until the end
of the following month. One other family problem had been
settled since Christmas: the death of Henry’s uncle, Reginald qf
Cornwall, had at long last enabled him to provide suitably for
 THE YEARS OF PEACE 193
John and, later in the year, a marriage was arranged for him with
the eldest daughter of the earl of Gloucester, which improved his
position considerably.
Soon afterwards Henry himself publicly announced his in¬
tention of going on crusade to the Holy Land. He accordingly sent
messengers to Philip of Flanders, who was about to make his way
there, asking him to put off his departure until he could join him.
Informed circles, however, suggested that his real motive was a
fear that Philip had designs on the crown of Jerusalem, which
was in the hands of the Angevins.8 Henry would have a strong
claim to it on the death of the ruling king, and was unwilling to
see it go elsewhere. In other matters, his foreign politics flourished:
envoys arrived from William of Sicily seeking the hand of Henry’s
third daughter Joanna, and, the princess being to the Sicilians’
liking, the match was arranged. Joanna was sent south on July 27,
suitably escorted and with appropriate gifts, to the young king in
Normandy, who conducted her to Poitiers, where they joined
Richard for the journey through Aquitaine. After a long and
arduous journey through Italy, the princess reached Sicily before
-1 the end of the year, and the marriage was solemnised on February
13. 1177.9
Richard had meanwhile been active in Poitou in the sup¬
pression of the revolt of the count of Angouleme. He succeeded in
defeating his opponents about May 23, but it was not until after
midsummer and with his eldest brother’s help that the rising was
completely crushed. Hostages were taken from the count for his
future good behaviour. Pleasure in this victory was marred for
Henry by news of the behaviour of the young king, who, as soon
as the war was over, began to make friends with his father’s
enemies. When the vice-chancellor of the young Henry informed
his fatherf he was at first condemned to death as a traitor by his
master, and only the intervention of the bishop of Poitiers miti¬
gated the sentence. It was this threat of renewed hostilities with
his son that moved Henry at a council at Windsor on September
25, 1176, to replace the baronial castellans throughout England by
his own men, taking all the castles into his own hands for the
moment. Even Richard de Lucy, his closest collaborator, was not
exempted and had to hand over his castle at Ongar.10 Similar
194 HENRY PLANTAGENET

measures were taken in Normandy, and the bishop of Winchester

was sent there as justiciar to enforce this. Furthermore, the castles
of the earl of Leicester, of Roger de Mowbray, and of Hugh Bigod,
the ringleaders of the rebellion of 1173 in England, were dis¬
mantled; these included the fortresses at Leicester, Groby, Thirsk,
Malzeard, Framlingham and Bungay.

At the beginning of November, more by coincidence than design,

fresh tribute was paid to Henry’s great prestige in Europe by the
presence at Westminster, on the twelfth of the month, of em¬
bassies from Manuel Comnenus, the Greek emperor; from
Frederick Barbarossa, the German emperor; from Henry of
Saxony; from the archbishop of Rheims; from Philip of Flanders;
and from the kings of Castile and Navarre. All of these appeared
at a formal gathering, before which the ambassadors from Spain
made a request which showed the esteem in which Henry’s learn¬
ing and statecraft were held. The two kings of Castile and Navarre
had decided to refer a longstanding quarrel over their boundaries to
the judgement of the king of England: a proposal to which Henry
agreed.11 Both the emperors had probably sent envoys in search of
assistance, since they had each suffered severe military reverses,
Manuel at Myrokephalon, and Barbarossa at Legnano, but Henry
was loath to commit himself.12
If at the end of a busy year, Henry found himself at Not¬
tingham with only Geoffrey and John, there was very little to give
him cause for concern. Richard was master of Aquitaine, and
Geoffrey had done well in Brittany, although there was a hint of
trouble ahead in a dispute over the wardship of an important heiress,
niece of Ralph de D£ols, since the latter refused to surrender his
guardianship of her and her lands. He himself had ordained well
for England, and in the course of the year had journeyed widely
throughout the realm enforcing the forest laws and inspecting the
state of the land. At a council at Northampton on January 15 pf
the following year (1177), no great enactments seemed necessary:
a few minor problems were despatched, and a messenger from
Philip of Flanders was received. The count demanded the promised
support for the crusade, and sought advice over Louis’ suggestion
of marrying his son and nephew to Philip’s nieces. Henry answered
 THE YEARS OF PEACE 195
the latter request by advising a delay until he himself could find
suitable bridegrooms for them. The only major administrative
operation of the year was an inquiry into the extent of the feudal
services owed to the king, which was carried out by the sheriffs in
accordance with instructions issued in council at Winchester on
February 22.
At the same gathering, Henry issued orders for all his
tenants-in-chief to be at London by May 8 to go on active service
in Normandy. Matters had not been going entirely in his favour
during the winter. Richard continued to be successful; but Ralph
de D£ols persisted in refusing to transfer his niece into the king’s
wardship, and the young king had been ordered to seize his estates.
Since this involved the invasion of Berry and the taking of
Chateauroux—lands to which Louis laid claim—renewed war with
France seemed imminent. Henry actively encouraged this later in
the year by laying claim to the dowry of Louis’ daughters, the
Vexin and Bourges, which, he said, had not yet been fully paid,
ignoring his own failure to marry Richard to Alice as had been
•* agreed.
Meanwhile, on March 13, 1177, the proceedings between
Castile and Navarre opened in London. Before a huge crowd of
noble envoys from both realms and most of his own magnates,
Henry sat in Westminster Hall to hear the case. The envoys, un¬
fortunately, spoke with a strong accent, which rendered their
Latin difficult to northern ears, and Henry was obliged to request
that their claims be put in writing. When this was done, the king
pronounced judgement, finding both Sancho of Navarre and
Alfonso of Castile* to some degree in the wrong, and commanding
that restitution be made. The case was perhaps of little legal
difficulty jlDut the choice of Henry as arbiter, and the execution of the
judgement, added greatly to his stature among European rulers.13
Another foreign embassy arrived in Easter week, in the
person of thercount of Flanders, who sought leave from Henry at
Canterbury to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem without him. Henry,
who seems to have had no real intention of going to the East at
this period, readily granted the request, and gave him a small sub¬
sidy that he had'asked for at the end of the previous year. Various
* Alfonso was Henry’s son-in-law, having married Eleanor, his second daughter.
196 HENRY PLANTAGENET

English barons, including the earl of Essex and Hugh de Lacy,

joined him. The date of the assembly of the army for the expedi¬
tion across the Channel was deferred until June 2, while Henry
travelled to Wye for Easter. At a council at Winchester on his
return, he once again changed the guardians of the English castles,
replacing the holders by trusted members of his own household.
Arrangements for a visit to Ireland by John were made, and this
was followed up by the conference at Oxford at which John was
made lord of Ireland and the administration was revised. Just as
Henry was about to leave for France with the forces gathered at
Winchester, news came of the return of Joanna’s escort from Sicily.
Wishing to hear from their own lips an account of their journey,
Henry again postponed the departure of the army until July 1, and
went to meet them. Meanwhile, Queen Margaret, who was expect¬
ing a child, was sent to Normandy to join her husband. However,
she made her way, without Henry’s permission, to her father at
Paris. Here she gave birth to a son on June 19. The child, heir to
the English throne after the young king, died three days later; there
were no more offspring of the match.

It was not until August 17, 1177, that Henry finally embarked. A
further council at Winchester on July 1 had agreed to wait for
Louis’ answer, and had taken special precautions against the
castles of Hugh of Durham, who was suspected of an intrigue with
Scotland. The king had then gone to Stansted near Portsmouth to
spend a few days hawking on the Sussex downs.14 But an old
wound in his leg gave him trouble,16 and he had returned to
Winchester for treatment. Eventually, hearing nothing from
Louis, he embarked and joined his eldest son in Normandy, reach¬
ing Rouen on September 11, in his company. Here they met
Cardinal Peter, the papal legate, who threatened an interdict on
Henry’s whole empire unless Richard married Alice. A conference
was rapidly arranged with Louis, and at Nonancourt on September
25 agreement was reached under the shadow of the cardinal’s
threat. The French and English kings agreed to go on a joint
crusade and to become allies. The disputes over the Auvergne and
Berry were reserved for arbitration, and elaborate arrangements
 THE YEARS OF PEACE 197

for the mutual safety of the two kingdoms were made. Richard
was to marry Alice, although no date was fixed for the ceremony.
Although the Berry question was sub judice, Henry was still
free to pursue the kinsmen of Ralph de Deols who were illegally
detaining the heiress. The young king was despatched to take
immediate action. Henry, summoning the Norman host to
Argentan on October 9, followed soon afterwards and rapidly dis¬
posed of the resistance, taking Chateauroux, capturing the heiress,
and advancing into the Limousin to deal the final blow to the
rebellion. Soon afterwards a conference was held at Gracay over
the Auvergne question, which referred the matter to the tribunal
on Berry appointed at Nonancourt. Henry then returned to Anjou,
where he negotiated with the count of La Marche for the purchase
of the latter’s lands, since the count had no heir and wished to
raise money to go on crusade. The agreement did not take full
effect, since half the country was already in the hands of Henry’s
old opponents from Poitou, the Lusignans, and Henry had no
opportunity of enforcing his rights. To round off this series of
4 negotiations, Geoffrey and Richard contributed successes in Brit¬
tany and Aquitaine respectively. At the huge feast held at Angers
that Christmas, Henry and his three sons could feel satisfied with
the condition of the Angevin lands: internal order was secure, and
all the domains were prosperous. A remarkable instance of the
solidarity of Henry’s empire was the issue of a general edict con¬
cerning forfeiture, applicable with equal force in Normandy, Anjou,
Brittany and Aquitaine. No king since Charlemagne could have
issued such a decree and seen that it was everywhere observed.

The year 1178 was the least eventful in the whole of Henry’s
reign. Apart from the sending, in conjunction with Louis, of a
joint commission to suppress the Cathar heresy in Toulouse, and
the appointment of new personnel in Normandy, little occurred in
France before he left on July 15. The only major occasion during
the rest of the year was a formal court at Woodstock on August 6,
for the knighting of his son Geoffrey. The latter was the first to
receive the honour from his father’s hand, since the young king
had been knighted by William the Marshal, his master-in-arms,
and Richard by Louis, both during the rebellion of 1173-4. One
198 HENRY PLANTAGENET

reform was promulgated during the autumn, reducing the number

of justices from eighteen itinerant officials to five permanently
resident at court; experience had shown that too many hands at
such work tended to lead to confusion and excessive severity. Any
cases that were too difficult for the new tribunal could be referred
immediately to the king. The itinerant justices, however, con¬
tinued to visit the counties, but with lesser standing, and per¬
forming more administrative than legal work.
Christmas 1178 found the king and his sons apart once
more; the young king was in Normandy, and Richard in Poitou
where he continued to find rebels to suppress. The Poitevin barons
were notoriously dissident, but their numerous revolts in face of
Richard’s continued success in the field suggest that his rule was
harsh. The young king returned to England about March 11,1179,
and was with his father at Easter. Soon afterwards, a council was
held at Windsor, an event noteworthy for the absence of Richard
de Lucy, Henry’s great collaborator. Feeling that his end was near,
de Lucy had retired to the monastery of Lesnes, which he had
founded in memory of Becket. At the council a new solution to
problem of the administration of justice was put forward, by
which England was divided into four circuits, each with five judges,
an increase over the 1176 arrangement. Of the immediate fate of
the central tribunal of 1178 little is known; it survived in some
form both as a fixed court at Westminster, and as a body which
assisted the justiciar during the king’s absences. The chief catalyst
in producing the change was the misbehaviour of the sheriffs, and
it therefore seems that the judges were chiefly concerned with
inquiries into their affairs, especially since three bishops (Win¬
chester, Ely and Bath) were among those appointed, and clergy
were not allowed to hear cases involving a blood-sentence (maiming
or hanging) which a normal circuit would have involved.
The young king left his father to go into Normandy soon
after May 20, in answer to a summons to die coronation of the son
of Louis of France, Philip Augustus, now fifteen. Louis had
cherished an ambition of securing the succession by having his §8n
crowned during his own lifetime since 1172; and this was about to
be fulfilled. But a little before the appointed date, Philip had lost
his way out hunting, and wandered all night in the forest, catching
 THE YEARS OF PEACE 199
a chill which became a dangerous fever. Louis, distraught with
anxiety, hastened to the shrine of St Thomas, postponing the
coronation. He landed at Dover on August 22 with a magnificent
retinue, and was met by Henry. Together, the kings knelt before
the tomb of Becket, who had been the central figure in both their
lives for so many years. Louis made rich offerings and returned as
swiftly as he had come, to find the prince well on his way to re¬
covery. He accordingly fixed a new date, November 1, 1179, for
the ceremony; but before this, he himself was paralysed by a stroke,
and was absent on the day of the coronation. Henry’s eldest son,
himself a king, attending as the equal and not the vassal of the new
ruler of France, held the crown over the head of Philip Augustus.
Richard and Geoffrey were also present,16 and the count of
Flanders acted as swordbearer. In effect, Philip’s reign began from
the day he was crowned, for his father never recovered sufficiently
to take an active part in the government again. Henry had perhaps
been told by Gerald the Welshman of the prophecy made to him,
then a student in Paris, on the night of Philip’s birth in 1165:
‘Tonight a child is born to us who will surely be a hammer to your
4 king and curtail his power and lands.’17 If he had remembered the
saying, he might not have prayed so earnestly with Louis at Canter¬
bury; for the new king was indeed to open a new era for France.
10

Absalom

T HE FIRST action of the new king of France, in the early

months of 1180, was to dismiss his father’s councillors. Louis,
paralysed and in no condition to take part in affairs of state, lay
helpless while his son followed the advice of Philip of Flanders,
who had returned from crusade, and had turned to diplomatic
affairs in earnest. However, the men thus deprived of their in¬
fluence and position appealed to Henry for help against the count's
machinations. By the end of the winter the situation was such, in
spite of a conciliatory embassy which reached Paris on March 5,
1180, that preparations for war were necessary. The young king,
who had come to England to take an oath of obedience to his
father, returned to Normandy with Henry within a fortnight of
landing. Here they met the uncle of the new French king, Theo¬
bald of Blois, and other dissident French nobles who wished them to
intervene, and about the beginning of May both sides summoned
their forces. Philip Augustus did not improve chances of a recon¬
ciliation by going to Flanders just after Easter where he married
Isabella of Hainault, niece of the count of Flanders, despite the
latter’s promise to Henry to take his advice over finding her a
husband. The count then designated Philip Augustus as his heir in
Flanders, with the result that Henry now had very real cause for
concern. Although no formal agreement had been made, the under¬
standing of 1176, that the Flemish ruler, as an ally of Henry’s,
would consult him on all major issues, was still regarded by tfie
Angevin as binding.
No actual fighting occurred, yet the tension continued up-
relaxed. Philip Augustus had arranged for the coronation of him-
 ABSALOM 201

self and his wife at Sens on June 8, Whit Sunday; but the count
of Flanders, fearing that something might intervene to prevent
this, persuaded his son-in-law to move the date forward to May 29
at Montmartre. In so doing, Philip Augustus offended another
French magnate, the archbishop of Rheims, for he had the cere¬
mony performed by Guy of Sens. This added to the dissatisfaction
within his own realm, which was aggravated by a quarrel between
the young French king and his mother over the guardianship of the
castles which had formed her dowry. Louis had by now formally
transferred his powers to his son and surrendered his seal, and
could play no part in all this.
Henry was anxious to settle these difficulties, for he saw no
benefit to be gained by war which could not be equally well at¬
tained by diplomacy. At a conference at Gisors on June 28, 1180,
he acted as mediator between Philip Augustus and his relatives,
arranging a settlement with the queen-mother in face of opposition
from the count of Flanders and the marshal of France. To ensure
peace, the count did homage to Henry in return for a subsidy of
1,000 marks per annum, promising to provide 500 knights to
4 serve for forty days when so required. Furthermore the treaty made
between Louis and Henry at Nonancourt was renewed, with
Philip Augustus’ name in place of his father’s, but omitting all
mention of the projected crusade. Shortly afterwards, on Septem¬
ber 18, Louis died, and his son was now full master of France in
title as well as deed.
The remainder of the year was spent by Henry in Normandy;
a brief interview with Philip Augustus at Gisors to confirm the
peace took place on September 29. Otherwise, the Angevin
domains continued to reap the benefits of peace; even Poitou and
Brittany were relatively quiet. In the early part of 1180, at a
council at> Oxford in March, Henry had ordered a reform of the
English coinage, both to encourage trade and to provide revenue
for the royal treasury. A moneyer from Tours was appointed to
carry it out by November 11. The resulting coins contained 95 per
cent of silver as opposed to 90 per cent in the old ‘Tealby’ pennies,
and the profits derived from coining them and exchanging the old
coins were put into the hands of royal officials, whereas previously
there had beent numerous independent mints throughout the
202 HENRY PLANTAGENET

country authorised to strike coinage.1 The short cross pennies re¬

mained the only coins in circulation until 1247; once more, even
in minor matters, Henry’s work proved durable, and sterling began
to assume increasing importance as a currency of international re¬
pute. Whether this entirely solved his financial problems seems
doubtful, for the seizure of Roger of York’s property on his death
the following year can only be interpreted as a fiscal measure. The
excuse given—that wills leaving goods to charity made by bishops
after they fell ill were invalid—was pure cynicism on Henry’s
part.2
Just before the end of the year, further bad news arrived
from Flanders. The count, having until now played a negative role,
usually following Henry's advice, was beginning to grow restive, as
events in the spring had shown, and he now broke yet again the
agreement over the marriage of his nieces by giving the last two
to the counts of Gelders and Louvain. After spending Christmas at
Le Mans, Henry gave orders for a general assize of arms—a survey
of equipment possessed by feudal tenants—throughout his conti¬
nental domains. This was in preparation for measures against
Flanders. All landowners whose property yielded more than £100
Angevin per annum were to equip themselves with horse and arms,
the latter comprising a mailed tunic, shield, sword and lance. All
other men were to accoutre themselves with leather jerkin, helmet
and either lance or sword or bow and arrows; and all such equip¬
ment was to be passed from father to son.3 These measures were at
once imitated by Philip Augustus and Philip of Flanders; both
realised that with so skilled an adversary their only hope was to
hold him in check by copying his devices, rather than attempt to
outmanoeuvre him. Louis had never seriously tried to compete
with his mighty vassal, being a gentle and peace-loving man by
nature; his son was of different mettle, and initiated a general
policy in administration and finance based on that of Henry.
Neither side, however, was prepared for war. A conference
at Gu£ St Remy on April 27, 1181, settled matters between France
and England for the moment and even produced a closer under¬
standing than before. Henry intended to leave for England im¬
mediately after this, going to Barfleur at once; but trouble *in
Flanders detained him. The count had quarrelled with the lord of
ABSALOM 20}

Clermont over the possession of a castle, and proceeded to besiege

it in spite of the French king’s prohibition. The latter appealed to
Henry for advice. Acting once again as mediator, the English king
succeeded in making a temporary peace at Gisors before sailing for
England on July 26.
On landing, he at once made for Canterbury, where he paid
the by now customary visit to Becket’s shrine. He then set out on a
comprehensive tour of the island, in the course of which he issued
an assize of arms on very similar lines to that in force in France, re¬
quiring in addition a general oath of loyalty.4 This act withdrew
some military power and responsibility from the barons, and
broadened the scope of the king’s claims on his subjects in this
sphere.

The increase of English influence, which threatened to develop

into an alliance which might cherish ambitions outside France,
still displeased Count Philip of Flanders. He therefore attempted
( to persuade the German emperor to form an alliance with him.
This came to nothing, but did not damp the count’s determina¬
tion for action, and in November he proceeded to attack the eastern
borders of the French king’s lands, obtaining the homage of the
count of Sancerre and the support of the duke of Burgundy and the
countess of Champagne. All that resulted was an apparent strength¬
ening of the dreaded alliance; for Henry’s three sons went to the
aid of the king of France and in a rapid winter campaign reduced
the count and his accomplices to submission.
Henry, who spent the Christmas of 1181 at Winchester,
tried to cross to France as soon as this news reached him. Contrary
winds, however, delayed him until March 3, when he was able to
cross from Portsmouth to Barfleur. Before leaving, he made his will.
His realms were at peace, his health unimpaired, so the reasons for
this were best known to himself. In it he made charitable bequests
to the religious causes and orders in which he had been especially
interested. Ten thousand pounds went to the crusaders; and general
gifts to all the religious houses of England and Normandy were
accompanied by, special bequests to the abbeys of Cluny, Mar-
moutier, Marcilli/Premontfr and Arroaise. An unusual clause was
204 HENRY PLANTAGENET

the provision of sums to provide dowries for poor women; one is

half-inclined to suspect that Henry had in mind the ‘washerwomen’
who had always attended his court on its travels, ministering to
the king’s amours rather than his linen.6
Although the king probably did not foresee it, he could
hardly have chosen a more apt moment to make his testament, for
the long years of peace were drawing to a close, and he was not to
see England again with an easy mind. At first events were favour¬
able: a permanent treaty was reached between France and Flanders
at a conference on April 4, 1182. The count of Flanders had to
surrender Amiens and the claim to the count of Clermont’s hom¬
age, and renounce once more all alliances with Henry’s sons dating
from the time of the great rebellion. Otherwise matters were to
remain as before the outbreak of hostilities.6
Henry then turned to deal with a problem which had been
on his mind for some time. The emperor of Germany, Frederick
Barbarossa, had long distrusted the king of England’s son-in-law,
Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, and in 1179 had accused him of
neglecting his duty during an invasion of Italy, with the result
that Lombardy had been lost. Further, he had engaged in private
war against the archbishop of Cologne, and had plotted against
Frederick with the Byzantine emperor. The Saxon duke realised
that he could not escape conviction at the royal court, and chose
not to appear. As a result, on January 6, 1180, a sentence of forfeit¬
ure of his domains was pronounced against him. This was followed
in November 1181 by a decree of seven years’ banishment, since
he refused to swear obedience to the emperor’s son in the event of
Barbarossa’s death on crusade; Duke Henry held that the Holy
Roman Emperor was chosen by election and not by the rules of
hereditary succession. Henry Plantagenet had been unable to
intervene in the previous sentence, but he now sent the earl of
Aumale to plead for the duke, and was successful in obtaining the
reduction of the sentence from seven years to one. The duke left
Germany in July, bringing with him Matilda and his sons LotHar
and Otto; the latter, in a strange reversal of fate, was to become
emperor in 1198, He arrived in Normandy about the end of
August, when he met Henry at Chinon, and here the Saxons re¬
mained, for their sentence of exile was renewed the next year. Only
 ABSALOM 205

in 1185, after the pope had intervened on their behalf, did they
return. Matilda came to England briefly in 1184, visiting her
mother in her semi-confinement at Berkhamstead.7

Minor rebellions in Poitou and Brittany broke out in the latter

part of the year. Ranulf Glanville, since 1180 justiciar of England
and Henry’s chief officer, conducted the campaign to suppress
them. At the great court held at Caen at Christmas 1182, Henry’s
chief concern was not these minor troubles, but a recurrence of the
old quarrel with his heir over the latter’s part in the government.
The young king had spent four years, between 1176-80, in a
series of great tournaments in northern France, with no thought of
politics, while his brothers Richard and Geoffrey were serving a
hard apprenticeship in real warfare. His nature was better suited to
such diversions than to more serious work. Universally popular, he
was on the other hand too easily swayed by flatterers and bad
counsellors.8 During these years, the presence of William the
Marshal—a man of no particular position but outstanding in
4 character—had prevented him from getting into too much trouble.
He had been the leading spirit of a chivalric movement reflected
by the new romances of Chretien de Troyes and the lais of Marie
de France. In later days, William, telling his story to a poet who
recorded it for us in vivid words, was to look back on these days as
a high summer of knightly ideals, in contrast with the troubles of
Henry Ill’s reign:

It was the young king who revived chivalry, for she was
dead, or almost so. He was the door through which she entered,
her standard-bearer. In those days, the magnates did nothing
for. young men; he set an example and kept men of worth
abou^him.’ And when the men of high rank saw how he as¬
sembled all men of worth, they were astonished at his wisdom,
and copied his example. The count of Flanders did likewise,
and so horses and arms, lands and money were distributed to
young men of valour. Nowadays the great have put chivalry
and largesse in prison once more; the life of knights-errants
and tourneys is abandoned in favour of lawsuits.9

The younger sons of great families had little share in their

2o6 HENRY PLANTAGENET

lands or wealth and, apart from a career in the Church, they could
make their own way in the world only by such means as tourna¬
ments, with the accompanying profits from ransoms. The Marshal
himself was in that position; and this was the positive contribution
of chivalry, encouraged especially by the generosity of the count of
Flanders. From this period also dates the evolution of formal rules
for jousting (which survived into the sixteenth century), the use of
enclosed lists, and the widespread employment of shields and
devices. But this make-believe world also encouraged spendthrifts
and loose living, and was no substitute for the harder training of
real warfare. Here individual prowess and personal charm were
more important than clear thinking and foresight; and here the
young king was at home.
On his accession to the French throne, Philip Augustus dis¬
couraged tournaments in his realms, as Henry had done in his.
With the count of Flanders now intent on playing politics seriously,
the devotees of jousting found times difficult. The young king re¬
turned to real warfare for a time in 1181, helping the French
against his erstwhile patron of Flanders; but by the end of the
following year he was once more restive, given to visiting the court
of France where the new king encouraged his dissatisfaction. Al¬
though Henry had all his sons with him at that glittering court
held at Christmas 1182, storms were plainly brewing. The young
king’s return from France had cost Henry the promise of a large
pension, but no mention had been made of any fief. William the
Marshal had fallen into his master’s disfavour; he was unable to
win sympathy from either the young king or his father when he
appeared and offered to do trial by battle at odds of three to one to
disprove the slanders alleged against him. All he could obtain was
a safe-conduct to the borders of Henry’s lands.10
On New Year’s Day, 1183, Henry attempted a new method
of appeasement. Reversing his earlier policy, perhaps with hopes of
appealing to his son’s vanity, he made Geoffrey do homage to his
elder brother. Richard was also asked to do so, but refused, be¬
cause of a quarrel over a castle which he had built at Clairvaux.
The young king claimed that this stood on land belonging to him,
and Richard as strenuously denied the charge. The meeting broke
up inconclusively, and Richard returned to Poitou, where he
ABSALOM 207

fortified his castles in readiness for the now expected civil war.
Sent by Henry to quell Richard’s pride, the young king found
allies in the Poitevin barons, who, always ready to stir up difficul¬
ties, accused Richard of misgovernment and encouraged his eldest
brother to invade Poitou on their behalf. This he did, assisted by
Geoffrey, and bitter fighting ensued. Even before this broke out,
Bertran de Born had written a political attack on both the young
king for not acting against Richard, and on the latter for mis-
govemment.11 Although de Bom is not quite accurate about the
reasons for the war, the contrasting characters of the brothers are
sharply drawn:

A new sirventes, singer! Music ho!

I’ll cry abroad the young king’s latest deed:
His father ordered him to quit at once
His claim against his brother Richard’s lands,
And he obeyed him! Henry, landless king,
For it I crown you king of cowards!
A

A coward surely, now you live like this

On paid and promised money; not the peer
Of heroes such as fought in other years.
And, men of Poitou, he betrays your trust;
He lies to ycu and leaves you penniless.

Sir Richard may not want my good advice;

But, heed it or not, I’ll tell him this:
Although your brother is no threat to you,
You ought to treat your loyal liegemen well,
And stop the pillage of their lands and crops,
Don’t take their castles on the least excuse!

And then, for all I care, the younger king

Can stay and joust at Flemish tournaments!
If only Geoffrey, noble duke of Brittany,
Had beep the eldest of the English princes;
For he’s a better ruler than you both!
208 HENRY PLANTAGENET

Henry, as he assessed reports reaching him in Normandy,

realised that things were not likely to go well for Richard. He was
unwilling to let the young king and Geoffrey make their own
terms, and therefore came with a large army to Limoges which was
the centre of his eldest son’s operations. Arriving at Easter, he en¬
camped for a protracted siege, blockading the town. A fierce con¬
test ensued,* Henry himself was twice shot at, and the young king
did not scruple to use deceit to keep his father from aiding Richard
against the rest of Poitou. Although Henry received him warmly
when he came to offer submission, the young king, who had
pretended to assume the cross, threw off this guise, attacked the
party sent by his father to receive hostages, and declared openly
for the Poitevin barons. Further attempts by Henry to win him
back met with no success: the next mission sent to the young king
under temporary truce were either killed or wounded in his pre¬
sence by his partisans. Geoffrey behaved similarly; and soon after¬
wards, when he came to Henry to propose peace, this proved to
be no more than a feint by which he was able, as he returned
through the town, to plunder the abbey of St Martial of its most
precious treasures in order to pay his Brabantine mercenaries.12
Both brothers then left the town and carried fire and sword into
other parts of Aquitaine, while Henry, fearing lest the revolt
should spread to Normandy and England, ordered that the ring¬
leaders of the 1173 rebellion should be placed under close sur¬
veillance. He himself remained before Limoges, which still held
out.
The young king took Aixe on May 23. Undeterred by an
excommunication issued against all disturbers of the peace by the
Norman bishops on May 26—which in any case exempted him
personally—he continued southwards in search of booty but fell
sick at Uzerche. Recovering quickly, he found himself critically
short of money, and made for the nearest shrine of importance,
that of St Amadour at Rocamadour, which he plundered system¬
atically, even replacing the sword of the Frankish hero Roland by
his own. However, the sickness that had attacked him proved to be
more than the passing effect of the summer heat. Retracing "his
steps, he was forced to halt again at Martel, where his condition
grew so serious that he recognised the approach of death. Sending
ABSALOM 209

for his father, he lay in a fever of body and conscience. Henry was
dissuaded from obeying his instinctive grief as a father and hasten¬
ing to his son’s side, lest the message prove to be a trick. Instead a
bishop was sent, with a precious ring that had once belonged to
Henry I as token of his mission. The prelate arrived just in time.
On June 7, the young king, at last in earnest, made his confession,
first in private and later before his assembled followers. For an¬
other four days he lingered on. He sent a messenger to his father
to crave mercy for his supporters, for his mother, Queen Eleanor,
and for his wife, Queen Margaret; and to request that his body be
buried at Rouen. On June 11, lying on a bed of ashes with stones
at his head and feet in token of deep repentance, he asked that the
crusader’s cloak he had once so lightly assumed should be put on
him in high seriousness, and within a few hours he was dead.13
At his side stood William the Marshal, who had received his
master’s forgiveness a few days before, and was now charged with
accomplishing the vow to go on Crusade which death had prevented
the young king from carrying out.14

‘Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it’; and with the
news of the younger Henry’s death, the memory of his treacheries
and sacrileges yielded in men’s minds to the nobler image of his
few virtues: his chivalry, charm and generosity. Even Bertran de
Bom laid aside his wonted vitriol to write an elegant and moving
‘planh’ in his memory:16

Now every grief and woe and bitterness,

The sum of tears that this sad century’s shed,
‘Seem light against the death of the young king,
And prowess mourns, youth stands sorrowful;
No man rejoices in these bitter days.

All pifide in battle, skill in song and rhyme

Must yield to sorrow’s humble threnody,
For cruel death, that mortal warrior,
Has harshly taken from us the best of knights:
Beside Him charity itself was mean,
And in him every noble virtue shone.
210 HENRY PLANTAGENET

So pray we all that God in his great grace

May grant His pardon to the young English king,
Who yesterday was most valiant knight;
Now he is fallen to the great lord Death
And leaves us naught but chagrin and despair.

Stories of the young Henry’s last hours began to circulate; he was

soon revered as blessed; it was said that such was the strength of
his filial repentance that, when a bishop remonstrated with him
for wearing a jewel in the hour of death, the one ring on his hand,
that sent by his father, could not be removed. Cures were reputed¬
ly wrought by his relics, and a church was built in memory of one
of these miracles. By the time the funeral cortege reached Le Mans,
the young king’s reputation was such that the citizens seized the
body and forcibly interred it in the church of St Julian where his
grandfather Geoffrey lay. Henry had to order its disinterment to
comply with his son’s wish to be buried at Rouen. The ceremony
took place on June 22, 1183.16 Whether Henry was present is not
recorded; but if he were, his emotions must have been tempered
by political considerations. If the speech reported to have been
made by him to his son’s followers is genuine, he was not afraid to
say that his son’s death was a cause for rejoicing as far as the good
of his realm was concerned; but his private grief was deep.17
When William the Marshal came to him and told him the news,
he had said simply: ‘I trust in God for his salvation’; and on being
asked to pay his son’s debts, he did so, commenting: ‘He has cost
me enough, but I wish he had lived to cost me more.'18 The An-
gevins loved and hated with equal fervour, and Henry had been as
full of kindness as his son had been of hatred. But both father and
son knew well that public policy came before private quarrels, and
hence Henry had seemed to be the one who lacked affection until
the last’weeks of his son’s life. None of those close to the king
could find much good to say of his son as a statesman, and sujh
praise as they bestowed was for his manner rather than his deeds.
‘Then the world became quiet “with the passing of Python’ ’. ’19
Limoges fell on June 24; Richard dispatched his brother’s fleeing
mercenaries with the aid of the king of Aragon. Geoffrey made his
peace with the king and the new heir at Angers on July 3. The im-
ABSALOM 211

plications of the new situation had yet to be worked out. Henry

showed at once, however, that he trusted Richard no more than
his dead brother by confiscating all his castles in Poitou. That
Henry now had a chance to remedy his earlier mistakes of policy
regarding his heir was plain; it only remained to see how he used
it. Richard was very different from his brother; a leader by force of
character rather than charm, schooled in the harsh arena of the
Poitevin revolts, he was at once more obstinate and a more skilled
and clear-thinking opponent, almost a match for his father in
energy and cunning. Peace might cost more than a few promises
and a tearful reconciliation next time.
11
They that take the Sword . . .

F OLLOWING HIS eldest son’s death, Henry put forward the

new solution for the disposal of the Angevin empire after his own
death at a meeting with his sons in Normandy in September 1183.
Ranulf Glanville and John were summoned from England; Eleanor
was released from custody for the first time in a decade, although
she arrived too late for the gathering. Henry’s response to the new
situation was simple. Richard should hold the lands intended for
his eldest brother—Normandy, Anjou and England—and be
suzerain of Brittany, Aquitaine, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
Geoffrey should continue to hold Brittany, but with Richard as
overlord; and John, previously without a major portion, should
hold Aquitaine from Richard. No attempt was to be made to have
Richard crowned.1 Henry felt that this had been the root of much
of the trouble with the young king, and now preferred to associate
his heir with him in the government of his realms without a
definite position and title, since coronation, as the young king had
argued, could be regarded as a surrender of his own rights.
Unfortunately, Henry had failed to consult with Richard as
to whether the arrangements suited him. There were powerful
arguments in favour of Henry’s disposition of his lands. Richard
would hold the central block of territory, through which all com¬
munications to the outlying parts must pass, and would be in, a
strong position to crush any attempts at concerted revolt by John
and Geoffrey. However, Richard did not see matters in this way.
Less farsighted than his father, he considered only the immediate
past and future. He was being asked to surrender his duchy of
Aquitaine in exchange for a position with even less opportunities
THEY THAT TAKE THE SWORD ... 2x3

for action than that of the young king. Aquitaine had been his own
preoccupation for the past ten years. However unpopular he was,
all his restless energy had been directed towards the settlement of
the duchy, whether suppressing the continual internecine wars
between the barons, putting down rebellions against his own
authority, or arranging more peaceful matters of finance and
government. He felt an affection for these warm southern lands
which the north could never replace for him; although Norman in
physical appearance, with no trace of his mother’s southern blood,
at heart he was far closer to her and her country than to his father.
It was this irrational feeling that Henry could not appreciate; his
cold and calculating intellect was readier to find enthusiasm for an
abstract justice than for the living people of his lands.
Richard, when faced with his father’s demand, asked for
three days’ grace to consider the matter. He used this respite to
escape to Poitou and gather forces to resist his father, sending a
messenger to say that he would never surrender Aquitaine. This
alone was serious enough. Richard appeared to be the young king’s
heir in rebellion as well as in lands and titles. But in addition there
were difficulties with the French king as well. As soon as the news
of the death of Henry’s eldest son reached him, Philip Augustus at
once reclaimed the dowry of Margaret, his half-sister, and widow
of the young king. This comprised the vital border area known as
the Norman Vexin, and Gisors, which Henry had held for twenty-
three years. Henry replied by claiming that the Vexin had come to
him through Eleanor, and sent her to visit this area in support of
his argument. As for Gisors, it was bis in any case, and Louis had
quitclaimed him of all French rights over it except overlordship.
He declared himself ready to take the matter to Philip’s own
court.
In the course of the autumn, however, both questions were
settled without renewed cataclysms. Henry did not press the
demand for the surrender of Aquitaine when he heard of Richard’s
action, and allowed him to retain the duchy for the meanwhile.
But John had always been his favourite son, and it seemed in¬
evitable that some provision would have to be made for him from
the lands eithei'' ruled by Richard or to which he was heir. The
Vexin problem was settled peacefully, at a conference near Gisors
214 HENRY PLANTAGENET

on December 6, 1183. In return for Henry’s actual homage to the

French king, which, although admitted in treaties, the English
king had never ceremonially performed, and an allowance of
£2,700 Angevin for Philip Augustus’ half-sister, Henry was
allowed to retain these lands. As for Gisors, Philip, by an ingen¬
ious move, used this as a source of future attacks on Henry by
making it the dowry of his other half-sister, Alice, to whom
Richard was betrothed. This match had been arranged at Nonan-
court in 1177, but there had been no move on Richard’s part to
solemnise the marriage. Alice had remained in the custody of her
prospective father-in-law at Winchester.

Henry’s satisfaction with his great work in the sphere of govern¬

ment became evident during the two years of relative peace that
followed. In the hands of such experts in law and finance as Ranulf
Glanville, Walter of Coutances, and Richard Fitz-Neale in Eng¬
land, William Fitz-Ralph and William du Hommet in Nor¬
mandy, and Stephen of Tours in Anjou—a group of administrators
without parallel in the western world—the government was efficient
and strong. The system by which they ruled was no stereotyped,
formal machinery, but could be adapted by its creator to the needs
of the moment. Now Henry felt that there was little more he
could do, and no major legislation appeared for the rest of his
reign. The Forest Assize of November 1184 was little more than
a reiteration of existing usages for the benefit of commissions of
inspection.2 Otherwise, these last years were notable for two great
works (perhaps officially encouraged but inspired elsewhere) on the
government of England written by senior royal officials as a record
of legal and financial practice as they had known it: De Legibus
Angliae (On the Laws of England) attributed to the justiciar,
Ranulf Glanville, and Dialogus de Scaccario (Dialogue on the Ex¬
chequer) composed by Richard Fitz-Neal. From these two books
there emerges the first reasonably complete picture of the workings
of medieval secular government. Much of the structure had been
inherited by Henry, and his work had been to remove the an¬
omalies and make good the defects. Nowhere in either book-is
there any doubt as to the procedure in any particular case. The
regulations are laid down with a precision previously impossible,
THEY THAT TAKE THE SWORD ... 215

and show a striking advance from the first systematic attempts at

recording law made under Henry’s grandftaher.

Reverting to his old role as mediator, Henry once again settled a

dispute between Philip Augustus and the count of Flanders, at a
conference at Choisy on June 5, 1184. The French king had mar¬
ried Isabella of Hainault on the understanding that he was to in¬
herit the Vermandois if Philip of Flanders died without a male
heir. But the countess of Flanders had died, and the count wished
to marry the princess of Portugal. This revived his hope of a son
and successor, and no provision had been made in the marriage
treaty for this contingency. The French king therefore claimed
that the count should hand over the Vermandois before he re¬
married. Although Henry had been responsible for arranging the
match, he upheld the French claim and declared a truce for one
year from midsummer.
Returning to England, events in Wales claimed his atten¬
tion. Rhys ap Griffith was proving troublesome once more, and it
was doubtful how long he would remain loyal to Henry, who
therefore demanded his homage and assembled an army to bring
him to submission. The mere threat proved enough, and Rhys
appeared at Worcester in July 1184, where he did fealty and
promised hostages, which however failed to appear. A further sum¬
mons later in the year was no more effective. Henry was too pre¬
occupied to take action for the moment, and let the matter rest.
Various embassies arrived at this time seeking Henry’s
favour. From Scotland, William the Lion sent to ask for the hand
of Henry’s granddaughter, Matilda of Saxony, a request which
Henry granted subject to the pope’s permission, because the two
were related within the prohibited degrees. The archbishop of
Cologne and Philip of Flanders came in August on pilgrimage
to Canterbury, where Henry reconciled the archbishop with his
son-in-law, Henry of Saxony. He arranged through the archbishop
the betrothal of Richard to the emperor’s daughter, completely
disregarding the match with Alice confirmed at the end of the
previous year. He perhaps intended that John should marry Alice,
and was more interested in the possible alliance with the emperor
than worried by repercussions which were bound to arise with
2l6 HENRY PLANTAGENET

France. The matter was resolved by the death of Richard’s new

fiancee later in the year. About the same time, Henry was success¬
ful in obtaining the emperor’s pardon for Henry the Lion, through
an embassy headed by the archdeacon of Lisieux. The duke re¬
turned to Germany in the following year, taking Matilda and his
eldest son, but leaving his younger children with their grandfather.
The chief events of the remainder of the year were con¬
nected with ecclesiastical affairs. Both the sees of Canterbury and
York were vacant and, towards the end of November, Henry sum¬
moned an elective assembly to his court. In addition to the bishops,
the canons of York and die monks of Canterbury, this splendid
gathering included Richard, Geoffrey and John, Eleanor and
Matilda and her husband. Matters did not go smoothly with the
Canterbury election, the prior and monks claiming that the right
of election was theirs alone, and that the bishops had no business
to express an opinion. The result of the first meeting was a double
election, the prior and monks choosing Theobald of Ostia, the
bishops Baldwin of Worcester; and Henry had to apply some co¬
ercion to obtain, a fortnight later, the unanimous choice of the
latter.3 Meanwhile, formal peace had been made between his sons,
and Geoffrey left for Normandy with those responsible for its
defence. Henry evidently hoped that Richard and John, left with
their mother, might reach some agreement over her southern duchy.
But after another court at Windsor at Christmas 1184, at which
many magnates were present, Richard obtained leave to go back to
Poitou. No solution had been reached.
Early in the New Year, Henry received an important and
not entirely unexpected visitor from Palestine. The Angevin house
ruled there as well, Henry’s grandfather Fulk having abdicated and
spent the last years of his life on crusade in the Holy Land, win¬
ning the crown of Jerusalem by marrying the only daughter of the
previous ruler. Hence in the crisis following Saladin’s new in¬
vasions and the accession of Baldwin V, who was a leper, it v^as
natural that an appeal for help should be made to Henry. Heraclius,
patriarch of Jerusalem, and the grand master of the Knights
Hospitaller reached England in March 1185. Henry went to meet
them in Reading, where they presented him with letters from Pope
Lucius III urging a new crusade, and the patriarch made a moving
THEY THAT TAKE THE SWORD ... 217

appeal for help against the infidels. At the end of his speech, he
presented Henry with the keys and standard of Jerusalem, and the
keys to the Holy Sepulchre. The king, however, declined to give
an answer until he had taken the advice of his barons on the matter,
which he did at a great council at Clerkenwell on March 18. The
barons were doubtful about the project, advising him to stay at
home, since this alone would provide for ‘the safety of the realm’
which he had sworn to preserve at his coronation. The king made
no definite acceptance of this, but remained non-committal, leav¬
ing for France shortly afterwards.4 He performed one important
ceremony before his departure: the knighting of John at Windsor
on March 31, before the latter went to Ireland.

In Henry’s absence in England there had been fresh trouble on the

eastern border of France between Philip Augustus and the count of
Hainault, but this had been settled at the beginning of the year.
The immediate problem was to suppress Richard’s new disturb¬
ances. The Poitevin castles had been fortified by him; he had
quarrelled with his brother Geoffrey, perhaps over the government
of Normandy, and was carrying on a spasmodic civil war. As soon
as Henry landed, he gathered an army to suppress this. Before the
end of April, he had sent messengers to Richard, ordering him to
surrender Aquitaine to his mother, who had just arrived in
Normandy. This solution was an astute one; Eleanor, after the
long emptiness of her years of captivity, was eager to take some
part in the government even at her son’s expense, and she still re¬
tained the affection of the barons of Aquitaine. Richard, on the
other hand, had expected his mother’s support. Knowing his own
unpopularity, he realised that resistance was impossible. In May
he yielded to His father’s demand without opposition, transferring
affairs to Eleanor and joining his father in Normandy. Henry,
content with this triumph, at this point repeated his fatal mistake
by failing to give Richard a position of responsibility, thereby re¬
ducing him to the inactivity which had finally so galled his eldest
brother. Admittedly, Richard’s conduct towards his father during
the last year had revealed a lack of mutual trust and understanding
hardly calculated to inspire Henry with confidence. But the king,
for his part, must surely have seen that his son had been accustomed
218 HENRY PLANTAGENET

for the past ten years to an active and energetic life, and was un¬
likely to remain quietly at his father’s side. Nor can there be any
question that Henry was thinking of leaving Richard in charge
while he was on crusade. In an interview with Philip Augustus and
Heraclius, he had agreed to send men and money to Jerusalem, but
had refused to allow any of his sons, even John, to go as leader of
the expedition.
Uneasy peace prevailed throughout the summer. Henry
thought of returning to England at the beginning of the winter, a
ship being sent for him on November i.6 But after a conference at
Aumale on November 7, he felt that the situation was too pre¬
carious for him to depart. Peace had been made between France
and Flanders on a permanent basis, with the adherence of the arch¬
bishops of Rheims and Cologne (who had taken part in the quarrel)
subject to the emperor s ratification. Although the emperor seemed
favourably inclined, the quarrel over Hainault had been settled at
the beginning of 1185 only to break out afresh. It was an area in
which four princes had an interest: Philip Augustus of France and
Philip of Flanders as claimants and immediate neighbours, Henry
and the emperor as being influenced by the outcome. Henry was
further hindered in his plans by an illness two days later, which
kept him at Belvoir castle for some weeks. Here Philip Augustus
came to visit him: a sign of the continuing friendliness between
the two kings, which had been apparent from Henry’s several
successful mediations between the French monarch and his en¬
emies. However, there still remained some outstanding obligation
which Henry had not yet settled. Perhaps because of these, perhaps
convalescing from his illness, Henry remained in Normandy all
winter, spending the Christmas of 1185 at Domfront. On March
10, 1186, at Gisors, the old questions of Queen Margaret’s dower-
lands and Richard s betrothal to Alice were raised, and Henry re¬
peated his promises of June 1183. The French king for his part
agreed to make no claims against Henry or his heirs over Gisors,
on the castle of which Henry had just spent £2,500 to make* it
defensible.6
Before crossing the Channel, Henry provided against further
trouble on Richard’s part by garrisoning Aquitaine with reliable
officers, and sending Richard himself to settle a new quarrel with
THEY THAT TAKE THE SWORD ... 219

the count of Toulouse, giving him large sums of money for the
purpose. Richard carried out a successful campaign, the count’s
appeals to France falling on deaf ears. For the moment, Philip
Augustus was unwilling to interfere against Henry or his sons.

Henry landed at Southampton with Eleanor, on April 27, 1186,

and spent almost a year in England. It was the last time of peace he
was to enjoy. There was little business to occupy his attention: a
large number of vacant bishoprics meant that a council had to be
called at Woodstock in May to make elections, seven bishops and
an archbishop for York being required. Some of the sees had not
been filled for some time: York had been vacant since the death in
1181 of Roger Pont L’Eveque, Becket’s old opponent; while
Carlisle had had no bishop since 1157. The difficulties over the
Canterbury election in 1184 had prevented the other archbishop¬
ric from being filled; and Carlisle remained vacant after this
council, in fact until 1204.
Scottish affairs also came before the council. William the
Lion had been having difficulty over a revolt in Galloway, and
came south to seek Henry’s aid. Henry first arranged a marriage
alliance with him, by which William was to marry Henry’s second
cousin Ermengarde, the fate of Matilda of Saxony, his previous
fiancee, not being recorded. Henry followed this by preparations
at the beginning or July for an expedition to Galloway, the first
military action in the north that he had led in person. However,
the leader of the rebellion, Roland thought better of his conduct
on hearing of the king’s approach, and coming to Carlisle, made
due submission.7 By July 15, Henry was back in Worcestershire at
his hunting-lodge at Feckenham. On September 5, 1186, the
marriage'of William and Ermengarde was celebrated at Woodstock.
The rare event of a royal wedding between adults was commemo¬
rated with great splendour, the feasting lasting for four days.8
The autumn brought news which made Henry’s peace un¬
easy. In August, Geoffrey of Brittany had visited Philip Augustus
in Paris. There he had begun to plot against his father: the first
sign that Philip was preparing to return to Louis’ old policy of ex¬
ploiting the innumerable petty quarrels that arose among the
Angevins. But this threat vanished with Geoffrey’s death on
220 HENRY PLANTAGENET

August 19. Involved in a mel£e at a tournament, he had fallen

from his horse. Refusing to surrender, he was trampled on and
died from internal injuries. Philip Augustus had sent for all the
best doctors in Paris, but their skill was of no avail, and it was
given out that the prince had died of a fever similar to that which
had carried off his elder brother.9 He was buried with all the out¬
ward signs of deep mourning before the altar of Notre Dame. The
French king was the only person who really seemed to care for
him; and it was said that he had to be restrained from leaping into
the grave.10 Henry was not deeply moved by the news, and it
caused no great stir. Geoffrey, though skilled in military affairs,
eloquent and astute, never won men’s hearts or admiration as his
elder brothers had done; he took after his Angevin grandfather, in
whose dry and ambitious nature these three qualities predomin¬
ated.
Geoffrey’s death appeared at first to solve more problems
than it created. As a precaution, John was recalled from a proposed
expedition to Ireland, but the matter was not formally discussed
at Marlborough on September 14 when the prelates and some
magnates gathered to make elections to the sees of York, Salisbury
and Exeter, which had not been filled in March. Philip Augustus
was not going to be baulked of his opportunity to make trouble,
and demanded as overlord the wardship of the heiress of Brittany,
Geoffrey’s daughter. Henry’s ambassadors, Ranulf Glanville,
Walter of Coutances and the earl of Essex, succeeded in obtaining
a truce until January 18, 1187. Before they returned Henry
decided in council at Reading on October 9 to try to prolong the
truce until Easter.
However, at the end of November, a small incident on the
Norman frontier provoked a major crisis. The constable of Gisors,
inspecting the state of the border in the course of his duties, came
across workmen on Philip’s orders building a castle at Vaux near
Gisors. When the constable took an armed force to stop the work,
a riot ensued and the lord of Vaux was killed. The constable, feel¬
ing his position unsafe, transferred the custody of the castle to
reliable officers and took refuge with Richard. Philip was furious,
and ordered the imprisonment of all English and Normans to be
found within his domains. Henry retaliated in like manner, and
 THEY THAT TAKE THE SWORD ... 221

started to levy Welsh troops. Neither side was quite ready for war,
and soon afterwards reparation was made. A further embassy was
now sent to France, consisting of Glanville, the bishop of
Rochester, and two k nights, who were told by Philip Augustus that
Normandy would only be safe if Richard desisted from harrying
the count of Toulouse. The French king was now bent on attack¬
ing and reducing the Angevin power, as his subsequent actions
showed, and the outbreak of hostilities was now only a question of
time.

Henry was not anxious to engage Philip Augustus in war; more

ruthless by far than his father, the French king had adopted the
tactics which brought Henry such rich rewards: the use of larger
forces of mercenaries in swift campaigns striking at the enemy’s
weakest places instead of the gradual progresses from siege to
siege. Nor could Henry be sure of Richard’s loyalty. Still without
any great share in the government, the Toulouse expedition could
4 not occupy him for much longer. Hence, as soon as he could in the
New Year, 1187, Henry crossed to France. Leaving Dover on
February 14, he was within sight of the port of Wissant, when the
wind changed and forced him to return. On February 17, he man¬
aged the crossing, although many of his retinue were lost in a
storm on the voyage from Shoreham to Dieppe. He at once went
to Aumale, where Richard and John, Walter of Coutances and the
earl of Essex, met him to report on the situation. At Philip
Augustus’ suggestion the kings met at Gu6 St Remy on April 5.
The French demands proved too much for Henry. Philip was
clearly eager for war, and held diplomatic weapons which Henry
found hard to counter. He had also raised a revolt among the dis¬
contented Breton barons, and had high hopes of assistance from an
imperial army in Lombardy. Henry could only retaliate by ob¬
taining the service of the count of Flanders. On or about May 17,
1187, the dreaded conflict started. Henry had divided his army
into four parts: Richard, John and his bastard son Geoffrey of
Lincoln commanded three of these, and William earl of Essex the
fourth. The carhpaign opened with the French king seizing
Issoudun and Gracay, while Richard occupied Chateauroux. The
222 HENRY PLANTAGENET

headquarters of the latter’s army was at D£ols, which the mer¬

cenaries pillaged. Hearing of the French successes, Richard gave
orders to bum D6ols and the abbey, lest they should be used as a
base for an attack on Chateauroux. However, this sacrilege was
prevented by a strange incident that night. A group of frightened
townsfolk had gathered to pray before the statue of the Virgin
outside the south door, when mercenaries sacking the town before
it was burnt came and jeered at them in their habitual godless
fashion; for all who fought for pay were under formal sentence of
excommunication. One of them threw a stone at the statue, break-
ing the arm of the infant Jesus, which, to the terror of the on¬
lookers, began to flow with blood, while the impious soldier was
struck dead. News of this miracle reached Chateauroux, terrifying
Richard’s men. The prince countermanded his orders for the bum-
ing of town and abbey. The next evening, the statue was seen to
move and tear its veil. Richard himself, inspecting it afterwards,
was prepared to testify to this.11 Meanwhile, Philip Augustus had
encamped nearby, and Henry had joined his sons. In view of the
miracle, and—a weightier consideration—the danger of a pitched
battle, negotiations were opened. These dragged on for three
weeks, but at last, on June 23, two cardinals, who had come from
England with Henry, were able to persuade the kings to make a
truce for two years, Philip Augustus returning such conquests as
he had made.
Henry nonetheless returned home with a heavy heart. For
as soon as peace was made, Richard had gone to visit the French
king and had struck up a close friendship with him, ‘eating from
the same dish and sleeping in the same bed’,12 each taking keen
delight in the other s company. This bore a close resemblance to
the friendship of the young king and Louis, which, though less
ardent, had resulted in the same strong influence of the French
king over the English heir. Philip Augustus had further cause for
rejoicing, for on September 3 Queen Isabella gave birth to his first
son, named Louis after the child’s grandfather.
First efforts on Henry’s part to win back Richard only led
to the latter s arrival at Chinon in the king’s absence, from which
castle he carried off the treasure of Anjou before returning to
Philip Augustus. Besides this, he took a crusader’s oath and as-
THEY THAT TAKE THE SWORD... 223

sumed the cross, without his father’s consent. Rumours had

reached him that Henry was considering making John heir to all
his domains except Normandy and England. Although there was
no good reason whatever for such action, Richard may have be¬
lieved this in view of Henry’s fondness for his youngest son. Re¬
conciliation proved the rumours false. When Richard met his
father at Angers, he was well received and no demands were made
of him beyond renewing his homage. Either about this time or
before his expedition to Toulouse in 1185, he had been reinstated
in Aquitaine, for as soon as the meeting was over, he left for the
south to suppress a revolt by the Lusignan family, who had always
been among the leaders of the discontented barons. His father
meanwhile took two rebel castles in Brittany, and by marrying the
earl of Chester to his daughter-in-law, Constance (Geoffrey’s
widow), left the government of the province in strong hands.
The situation vis-h-vis France remained critical. The
Lusignan rebels were reputed to be subsidised by Philip Augustus
and after Christmas Henry had to meet him near Gisors to answer
repeated demands that the betrothal of Richard and Alice be ful¬
filled. They were joined by the archbishop of Tyre, bringing fresh
tidings of disaster from Palestine. Following a battle at Hattin,
Guy, king of Jerusalem, and many notables had been captured, and
the True Cross had fallen into the infidels’ hands. An urgent
appeal was made to both monarchs for immediate assistance. As a
result of the archbishop’s pleading and mediation, Henry and
Philip Augustus agreed to take the cross and to swear a truce until
they returned from crusade. Henry was the first to put on the
surcoat bearing a white cross borne by the English crusaders;
Philip assumed the red cross surcoat of the French contingent, and
shortly afterwards the count of Flanders followed their example
adopting a green cross for his men. It was arranged that a tithe
should be levied throughout England and France to pay for the
expedition. At last it seemed that the Third Crusade, so long ad¬
vocated, was about to set out.13
Henry soon demonstrated that his intentions were serious.
Two days later, on January 23, 1188, at Le Mans, he issued in¬
structions for the collection of the crusading tithe by the local
clergy as assessed by the Templars and Hospitallers, and an ordin-
 224 HENRY PLANTAGENET

ance relating to the property and debts of those taking the cross
followed. At the end of the month, he crossed to England, where,
at Geddington on February 11, a great assembly was held to dis¬
cuss the crusade. Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury opened the
proceedings with an eloquent exhortation to those present to join
the expedition, and this was followed by the promulgation of
measures similar to those taken in Normandy. The Jews were also
forced to make large contributions, and the richer merchants of
London, York and other great towns were taxed with particular
severity. The king remained in southern England until June, mak¬
ing arrangements for his departure.

Richard’s activities in Poitou had been successful in the previous

year, but he now had to take steps to crush a new rebellion by the
Lusignans, which he did with especial harshness, for a close friend
of his had been murdered at the beginning of the revolt. This was
scarcely over when the old quarrel with Toulouse broke out afresh.
Count Raymond had captured some Poitevin merchants in his
lands; he brutally blinded and castrated some, killed others and
imprisoned the rest, in revenge for Richard’s action in previous
years. Retaliation came swiftly: the prince soon had the whole
region of Quercy under his control, and took prisoner the count’s
minister Peter Seilun, on whose advice the outrages had been
committed. Raymond replied by seizing two English knights re¬
turning on pilgrimage from Compostela. Richard refused to sur¬
render Peter in exchange for them, nor would he ransom them,
knowing that the Church would take action against an attack on
pilgrims. Philip Augustus, however, had been watching events
closely, and ordered die count to return the knights for this reason.
The count refused, and Richard, without asking the French king,
at once invaded Toulouse itself.
Henry had been waiting for news with growing anxiety, bpt
hardly expected Philip Augustus’ reaction to the invasion to be so
strong. Messengers from the French king arrived in England com¬
plaining of Richard’s conduct, especially excesses in ravaging the
count s lands. Although the king realised that Philip was bent on
renewed war, he replied mildly, saying that Richard had acted
THEY THAT TAKE THE SWORD... 225

without his advice. This soft answer was not enough to turn away
Philip's wrath. Richard had meanwhile sent word to Henry by the
archbishop of Dublin that Philip had encouraged the invasion of
Toulouse because of the count’s resistance. Henry attempted
pacification by sending Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, to
mediate. All was to no avail, for on June 16, 1188, the French
king took Chateauroux in Berry, with other baronial castles. He
had now broken the truce and had no intention of going on crusade
until he had humbled the Angevins.
In so dangerous a crisis, Henry could not remain absent.
Accordingly he embarked at Portsea with a force of Welsh mercen¬
aries on July 10, landing at Barfleur the following day. He had
left England for the last time; but no such thought could have
entered his mind, for he had been far harder pressed on many
occasions before now; he was only fifty-six and his strong constitu¬
tion had stood up remarkably well to the incessant travelling and
restless activity of his life. Other thoughts occupied his mind. Al¬
though the crisis might not be uncommonly serious, he now faced
an adversary as resolute as himself and even more ruthless. For his
part, he had had no need to destroy the French kingdom to gain
his ends, and there were many good reasons for not doing so.
Philip Augustus found himself in a position where all his am¬
bitions were checked by Henry’s presence; and he had now deliber¬
ately set out to undermine the Angevin power, regardless of ethics
or dangers.

The war itself reflected the new nature of the rivalry of Angevin
and Capetian dynasties. Fought with the utmost vigour on both
sides, the talks which punctuated it were totally uninfluenced by
the persofial considerations of Henry’s old friendship with Philip
Augustus and his father, which until now had been evident even in
the bitterest moments of dispute. Richard drove the French king
out of Berry in August; but Normandy was invaded by another
French force under the bishop of Beauvais, which burnt the castle
of Aumale. The other combatants moved north to the borders of
Anjou, near Blois, where each gained minor successes. Henry made
a last effort to secure peace, asking for reparation and threatening
to renounce his homage to the French crown. The latter demanded
226 HENRY PLANTAGENET

the Vexin area and Berry in reply; the ambassadors, Walter of

Coutances and William the Marshal, returned empty-handed.
Henry thereupon invaded French territory from Normandy and
advanced to Mantes, burning various border towns in the hope of
finding Philip Augustus there, while Richard returned to Berry.
Threatened from both north and south, the French king in turn
made proposals for peace. From September 30 until October 2,
the two kings talked at the great elm-tree in the valley between
Gisors and Trie, where such meetings between the French and
Norman rulers traditionally took place. Henry and his men sat in
the tree’s shade while Philip Augustus and his party sweltered in
the full heat of the late summer sun. When the talks proved fruit¬
less and Henry had departed, the enraged French king gave orders
for the tree to be hewn down,14 in token of his determination that
any future parleys should only consist of dictation of terms to the
Angevins.
But Henry was able to score a major diplomatic triumph
before war could be resumed. Philip Augustus’ two chief allies,
the counts of Flanders and Blois, who had advised him against
making war, refused to bear arms against any Christian prince
until after the crusade. Philip Augustus had to seek peace again. A
conference at Chatillon on October 7 broke down when the French
king, having agreed to mutual restoration of conquests, suddenly
demanded the castle of Pacy-sur-Eure as a guarantee. He then re¬
opened hostilities by taking Palluau, near the mouth of the Loire.
But the costs of the campaign were growing heavy and the season
late; he therefore led his Brabantine and German mercenaries back
to Berry, where instead of paying them as promised, he confiscated
their equipment and dismissed them. Richard now decided to see
what he could gain by the dissensions between Philip Augustus
and his father, and turned his hand to diplomacy. He offered to
submit to the judgement of the king of France in the Toulouse
question, without consulting his father. This action, weakening
his hand in any bargaining, angered Henry greatly. Richard also
disbanded his mercenaries, saying it was for the sake of peace,
although cost was the real consideration.
The kings met again at Bonsmoulins on November 18, and
once again the proposal of mutual restitution was made. This time
 THEY THAT TAKE THE SWORD... 227

it was Richard who objected. In return for the valuable lands of

Quercy and Cahors, worth 1,000 marks a year, he was to receive
the two castles of Chateauroux and Issoudun held by the French
king, which were enfeoffed to vassals and brought in no revenue.
He turned to his father, and demanded that he be given Alice in
marriage. Persistent rumours, probably put about by Richard,
whispered that Henry had seduced the girl and was keeping her as
his mistress.15 These were given official status after Henry’s death
when Richard no longer wished to wed her, and used them as an
excuse, which was accepted by Philip Augustus. But Henry was too
astute to commit such a gross political blunder for the sake of a
passing whim, especially as the princess was reputedly ‘a very ugly
woman’.16 To make sure that his father would not give way,
Richard added a demand which Henry had refused to concede
when made earlier by Philip: that homage be done to him as the
Angevin’s heir. This Henry could not allow, lest he appear to be
yielding to French pressure.
Richard now conformed to the pattern of his family. Dis-
< daining ties of kinship and long-term prospects for the sake of
short-term political ambitions—although he did not imply any
transfer of allegiance from one lord to another—he did homage to
the king of France for all the lands his father held, excepting his
father’s tenure of those lands during his lifetime and the homage
which he owed to his father. In return, Philip Augustus restored
Chateauroux and Issoudun to him. Faced with this desertion—the
most serious rebuff since the revolt of 1173—Henry had no choice
but to make a truce until January 13, 1189, and prepare for the
worst. Richard’s move, although in itself little more than a man¬
oeuvre to retain the lands in Quercy whose return Philip Augustus
would otherwise have demanded, was made more damaging by his
departure with the French king at the end of the conference. Henry
sent William the Marshal and Bertrand de Verdun after his son, to
find out why he had left. Failing to overtake him at Amboise, they
learnt that Richard had just departed after spending the entire
night issuing letters of summons to his men. They could only
return and report his treason to the king.
*

Henry had two determined adversaries now, one attacking his

zz8 HENRY PLANTAGENET

empire with the object of fragmenting it, the other intent on ex¬
tracting as large a concession of power within it as he could get.
Their aims thus complemented each other. Richard, as heir to his
domains, had considerable support from those within Henry’s
lands who bore the king no particular affection and were anxious
to gain good standing with Richard as king-to-be. There were
some conspicuous absentees from the Christmas court at Saumur;
and when renewed fighting broke out in January, the Bretons went
over to Richard and Philip en masse.
One last hope for peace remained: the Church’s concern for
the crusade. A papal legate, John of Anagni, was despatched from
Rome with a commission to make peace between France and
England, so that the crusade might proceed. He was authorised to
use excommunication against all disturbers of the peace except the
kings themselves. Henry was forced to postpone two proposed
meetings because he had fallen ill during the winter, the first pro¬
longed illness he had suffered; but the parties concerned eventually
met in conference at La Fert£ Bernard. Here Philip Augustus,
Richard, Henry and the legate met about June 4, 1189, with
various prelates and magnates, four archbishops being there to
assist the legate. Neither side was prepared to give way. Philip
Augustus and Richard demanded the same terms as before, with
certain elaborations equally unacceptable to Henry. Richard was
to marry Alice at once, and to be recognised as his father’s successor
in England, a precaution against any attempt to leave the kingdom
to John. Both kings were to go on crusade, and Richard and John
were to come with them. Henry rejected the last two conditions.
John of Anagni used the ultimate weapon he possessed: threaten¬
ing Philip with an interdict. All he earned for his pains was a taunt
from the French king that he was in the pay of England. Henry
and the legate rode away with bitterness in their hearts, one know¬
ing that there was little to be done but trust in his Angevin luck
and cunning, the other aware that the failure of his mission ljad
postponed the crusade to an indefinite date. . '

Almost at once, the French forces swept into Maine and down
towards Anjou, taking castle after castle.17 La Fert6 Bernard itself
was the first to fall; and hardly any resistance was offered by the
THEY THAT TAKE THE SWORD... 229

castellans of Bonn^table, Beaumont and Ballon. Here, on June 9,

the invaders halted for three days. Henry was only fifteen miles
away at Le Mans. A mere handful of supporters were with him.
Even John was elsewhere. But Le Mans was his birthplace. If the
lords of Maine were prepared to betray him, he could still trust in
the citizens. Swearing never to leave them, he received in return
their assent to withstanding a siege if necessary. Henry had only a
few mercenaries to conduct the defence, and no immediate hope of
relief.
On Sunday, June 11, the French army advanced as expected.
Henry sent out William the Marshal and three other knights,
lightly armed, to reconnoitre. A thick mist lay on the river Huisne
below the town, and they were able to crouch behind a bank and
observe the large army passing by at close quarters. They returned
and reported to Henry, who made a sortie, broke down the only
bridge, and put stakes in all the fords. Feeling secure from attack,
he withdrew again to the citadel, while the French encamped near
the wood of Le Parc. After giving orders that if the French attacked
the suburbs outside the walls were to be burnt, the king retired
for the night. The following day, he rose and heard mass early;
then he rode our to inspect the situation. With a show of bravado,
he went unarmed, and ordered William the Marshal and other
knights to follow his example. The small party noticed that the
French were sounding the river beside the broken bridge. Henry's
luck had at last run out, for the enemy had discovered an old ford
which had not been blocked. The Angevin contingent hastily with¬
drew, hotly pursued by the French. William the Marshal had to
conduct a spirited defence of the east gate to cover their retreat,
and the suburbs were fired. Once again, Henry's plans went astray.
As he wefit back into the town, he saw that the wind had blown
the flames inside the walls, and three or four fires were soon raging.
Seeing no hope of extinguishing them, he decided on drastic action.
Recalling the earl of Essex and William the Marshal from beyond
the gate, he gave orders for a retreat towards Fresnay, twenty-four
miles to the north on the Alengon road, with about 700 knights.
Finding himself in flight for the first time in his life and over¬
whelmed by the' defeat, Henry looked back on the flames which
consumed his birthplace, and vented his despair in bitter bias-
230 HENRY PLANTAGENET

phemy: ‘Since thou, O God, to crown me with confusion and in¬

crease my dishonour, hast basely taken from me this day the city
I have loved best in all the world, wherein I was born and bred and
my father lies buried, and the body of St Julian lies entombed, I
also will surely recompense Thee as far as I am able, by withhold¬
ing from Thee that which Thou lovest best in me.’ Richard fol¬
lowed in hot pursuit of his father. William the Marshal turned
to cover Henry’s retreat for the second time that day, and found
himself face to face with the unarmed prince. Richard cried mercy:
‘By God, marshal, do not kill me; it would not be a good deed,
because I am unarmed.’ The marshal smiled grimly, and saying, ‘I
shall not kill you: I leave that to the devil’, plunged his spear into
Richard’s horse. Confusion ensued among the prince’s followers,
and the delay enabled Henry to reach Fresnay in safety, while the
rest of his men went on to Alen^on. Almost all the mercenaries
were killed save for a small band who held one of the towers of Le
Mans for another three days. But at Alengon the Norman host was
assembled, and Henry’s prospects seemed to have improved.
The Norman barons, however, were reluctant to attack, in
view of the size of Philip’s host and Henry’s losses at Le Mans.
The king had to change his plans. Racked once more by a recur¬
rence of his illness of the winter, he reached the little hill-top
town of Sainte-Suzanne on June 13, on his way to Anjou. Travel¬
ling south, he reached the castle of Chinon by the end of the
month. He relied now on his bastard son, Geoffrey, who had been
chancellor of England for the past six years, to see that his orders
were carried out. He had given instructions that the Norman
castles were only to be surrendered to John, and that a levy of
Welsh mercenaries was to be brought from England.
Philip Augustus, who had shown no interest in pursuing
the king, turned to secure the chief strongholds of Anjou. He
reached and captured Tours, defended by a handful of knights, on
July 3. Henry had apparently decided to leave Chinon for Ang<*s,
for on July 2 the count of Flanders and the duke of Burgundy
found him at Saumur. They had come to persuade him to make
terms. On his barons’ advice, he agreed to meet Philip Augustus
and painfully made his way east to Ballan, not far from Tours,
where, in the throes of fever caused by blood poisoning from a
THEY THAT TAKE THE SWORD... 231

wound in his heel, he sheltered in a commandery of the Knights

Templar. The French king arrived at Coulombi^res,* the agreed
meeting place. There he was told that Henry was seriously ill; but
Richard refused to believe this, and said openly that it was a feint.
His father was forced to go and meet them, although almost at the
end of his strength. As soon as he arrived, Philip saw that his
opponent was not in a fit state to sit on horseback, and offered
him a cape to sit on. Henry refused, and remained in the saddle.
The day was still and clear. As the two kings talked, a flash of
summer lightning struck near them, and thunder rolled and
echoed along the Loire valley. Henry reeled in his saddle and had
to be supported while he listened to his enemy’s demands. These
were similar to the terms advanced four weeks earlier. The full
humiliation of his situation penetrated to Henry’s dimmed senses.
He was to do homage to Philip Augustus; to surrender Alice; to
make his barons swear fealty to Richard; to join with the French
king the following Lent to go on crusade; to pay an indemnity of
20,000 marks; to surrender castles in pledge to Richard and
Philip Augustus. His adversaries had won. He was sick and tired
to death, in no mood to fight back against overwhelming odds as
he had done in the past, at the beginning of his career, and at its
height, when his sons rebelled. Even so, as he gave the kiss of
peace to Richard, he muttered: ‘God grant that I may not die until
I have had my revenge on you.’ He made only one request: that
lists of the allies of each party be drawn up and exchanged. Roger
Malchat, his sealkeeper, was sent to Tours to see to this, while
Henry wearily retraced his steps to Chinon.18

That night, in the castle high above the valley of the Vienne, over¬
looking the slate-roofed houses beneath and the forests beyond the
river in which he had so often hunted, Henry tossed and turned on
his sickbed, tended by his bastard son Geoffrey of Lincoln and by
William the Marshal. Sensing that he might not recover now, he
thanked Geoffrey for his services, saying that he had been the
most faithful of his sons: ‘If, God willing, I recover from this
sickness, I will ^certainly give you all that a father should, and
• Now Viliandry.
 232 HENRY PLANTAGENET

make you among the most powerful and greatest men in my

domains. What I cannot repay now, should I die, may God repay
you.’ He gave him a gold ring with the device of a panther, asking
him to send it, with another ring, to the king of Castile, his son-in-
law.19 Later Roger Malchat entered and Henry asked at once to
hear the names on the list of his enemies. The first name resounded
louder than the thunder earlier in the day. John, his favourite, for
whose share in the inheritance he had fought so long had joined
his brother and the French king. Turning his face to the wall, he
groaned, and cried: ‘Now let everything go as it will; I care no
longer for myself or anything else in the world.’20
The end came quickly, on the following day, July 6. Henry
had himself carried into the chapel, and laid before the altar,
where he received extreme unction. His last words, before speech
failed him, were ‘Shame, shame on a conquered king’.21 He lay in
a coma for some while. Then, when the few remaining barons had
gone elsewhere, he lost his last battle to death. The attendants,
knowing that his desperate state meant that there would be none
of the traditional rewards for them, stripped the body, plundered
all they could find, and left the despoiled corpse to be found by
William the Marshal soon afterwards. One of the knights, William
de Trihan, had to take off his cloak to cover the corpse, and even
the faithful marshal was hard put to it to arrange matters as be¬
fitted a royal funeral.22 Sceptre, ring and crown were hastily found
or made. The corpse was carried in state from the castle, down the
winding path into the town’s narrow streets and across the bridge
over the Vienne, quiet and cool in the sunlight. The cortege
moved slowly through the rolling forest south of the river, until,
in the heat of noon, they reached the abbey of Font£vrault, where
the nuns awaited their royal patron.
That night, Richard came there alone. He went straight to
the choir where his father lay in state, surrounded by the nuns
praying for the repose of his restless soul. His footsteps echoed
from the high walls as he strode down the aisle; then he stood
motionless and outwardly unmoved before the bier for a moment,
‘as long as it takes to say a paternoster’, before turning to look into
his father’s face for the last time: a face changed by illness and
marked by the bleeding that had accompanied death. He knelt
THEY THAT TAKE THE SWORD... 233

briefly, then rose and left the church as swiftly and silently as he
had come.23 Next day, Bishop Bartholomew of Tours laid the king
to rest before the altar. It was where the king had wished to be
buried, though he had once named Grammont as his resting-place.
Here in the cool air beneath the high domed roof of the granite
church among the Angevin hills he lies today.
Epilogue

T HE FIGURE of Henry in his last hours, a fallen prince, be¬

reft of outward majesty, alone with death, contrasts sharply
with the triumphs of his lifetime. Was he really a doomed fugitive,
or was the tide about to flood in his favour once more, when the fatal
illness struck him down? He had emerged victorious from desper¬
ate straits many times before, and the speculation is not an idle
one. The coalition of Philip Augustus and Richard which over¬
threw him was short-lived, and against the background of in¬
trigues between Henry’s sons and the French king which had gone
on for two decades, their sudden victory seems almost a political
accident. Henry had always been a match for each of them in¬
dividually; what overcame him was a swift and determined cam¬
paign which caught him not only unawares but also sick. The bare
fact of Henry's death in defeat must stand; but he was far from
vanquished. His work and much of what he had fought for sur¬
vived him. His legacy was not merely the empire he had created,
but also his government and laws, and the traditions he had helped
to foster.
Richard parted from Philip Augustus very shortly after his
father’s death, and the old dichotomy of Angevin and Capetian
began to revive. Henry’s empire survived the initial test of the
transfer of power to a new ruler, and it soon became clear that the
old king had succeeded in making a state, which unlike its con¬
temporaries, was to a great degree independent of the central
figure in it. Its structure could hardly have been put to severer
tests than those it was to experience in the next ten years. Wiah
Richard’s absence on crusade, the king was for the first time miss¬
ing from the governments on both sides of the Channel, beyond
easy recall, and it was left to his subordinates to rule in his name.
They remained loyal to him even in the days of his captivity in
Germany. This was due solely to the high degree of organisation
EPILOGUE 235

and to the concept of responsibility built up by Henry; and for

the same reason, Richard’s domains held out against Philip
Augustus’ continual erosions in his absence. The detailed history
of these years, however, is less a postscript to Henry’s reign than a
pointer forward to new developments. Only in the troubles with
the regency in England was there a reminder that absolute in¬
tegrity could not yet be secured without the personal presence of
the king to overawe his servants and subjects.
If at the end of Richard’s reign the empire was intact,
Henry’s successor had not treated his subjects lightly. William of
Newburgh recalled in this connection Rehoboam, Solomon’s son,
who, when the Israelites complained of the latter’s grievous yoke,
answered: ‘My father chastised you with whips, but I shall chastise
you with scorpions.’ Heavy taxation for the crusade, and then for
the king’s ransom, had raised discontent among rich and poor
alike. Nor had the alliance with France for the crusade endured.
Richard died at Chalus engaged in nothing more than a petty in¬
ternal quarrel over treasure trove, but he had been fighting Philip
‘Augustus at intervals for the previous five years. He had had to
deal with the rebelliousness of his brother as well; but that was
now past, and John had shown promising signs both in the council
chamber and on the field of battle of being a worthy heir to his
father’s talents.
Yet within six years of Richard’s death, by the spring of
1205, almost all the Angevin lands oversea lay within the power of
the French king, only Poitou holding out for John. Chateau
Gaillard, Richard’s proud fortress on the Seine, built to defy
French invaders v/ith great cost and much loving care, had fallen
the previous year. Rouen had succumbed to a bold venture by
Philip Augustus while John sat idle in England; and the Bretons
had risen to drive out their alien rulers. In the course of the latter
revolt, John had made a major error of judgement in ordering the
murder of Arthur of Brittany. This crime not only aroused the
Bretons and gave them a rallying-cry, but also provided Philip
Augustus with a legal pretext for seizing John’s lands. On the
slenderest of evidence, he summoned John, as his vassal, to answer
at his court for Arthur’s disappearance. John could not make out a
case—the only possible reply would have been to produce Arthur
 236 HENRY PLANTAGENET
alive—and chose not to answer, thereby incurring the customary
penalty of forfeiture of his lands. Why he then failed to resist the
French king’s attacks, but threw himself energetically into the
business of government in England, as the official records amply
attest, must remain a mystery. It seems that his fatal flaw was not
the infamy and cowardice attributed to him by Victorian historians
but a total inability to act in moments of crisis. Now that he was
faced with a threat of overwhelming proportions, his activities in
England smacked of a desperate optimism, with a blind eye turned
to events elsewhere. Nor could he inspire his men in the same way
as his elder brothers Henry and Richard, and there were no leaders
of sufficient stature among his men in Normandy capable of doing
that for him.
Once the crucial period from 1203 to the spring of 1205
was past, there was little left that could be done. John’s expedition
in 1205 to relieve the defenders of Poitou was impressive in its
preparations; but the loyalty of the barons was doubtful, and at
the last moment the king was dissuaded from going. Only in the
next year did he reach Poitou, where he regained most of his
mother’s inheritance; but the failure of an expedition in 1212 and
the defeat of a great coalition of Philip Augustus’ enemies at the
battle of Bouvines in 1214 meant that any hopes of reconquering
more than this small fragment of the lands which his father had
ruled were gone for good.

The fate of Henry s lands must be told to complement the history

of their acquisition. Since an empire created by one man rarely
outlasts his lifetime, especially when it is as disparate and lacking
in natural frontiers as that of Henry, it is not on this evidence that
judgement should be passed on Henry’s achievements—even if,
in passing, we note the fateful permanence of his work of conquest
in Ireland.
When Henry came to the English throne, disorder and
poverty prevailed throughout the kingdom. The barons had op¬
pressed the countryside, ravaging the crops, sacking the villages, m
order to maintain their private armies. Henry himself had connived
at this so long as it furthered his cause. As a result, almost a
 EPILOGUE *37
quarter of the country was in no fit state to pay the taxes due in the
first year of his reign. The conquest of England in 1066 had caused
far less damage than these internecine wars. ‘In every shire a part
of the inhabitants wasted away and died in large numbers from
famine, while others went with their wives and children into a
grim self-inflicted exile. Villages widely famed could be seen
standing empty, because the people of the countryside, men and
women, young and old, had left them; fields whitened with
harvest as the year drew on into autumn but those who should
have cultivated them had fallen prey to famine and its companion,
pestilence.’
Beyond the purview of the chronicler, matters were in still
worse case. The judicature organised by Henry I had fallen into
almost total decay; the general visitations of the kingdom on
which general good order depended had vanished, and local
justices struggled to keep what control they could, or became a law
unto themselves. The king’s central court might still function, ex¬
cept during the period of Stephen’s captivity, but its writs were all
* too often worthless. The exchequer’s old vigilance over the royal
finances was reduced to a task of raising what money it could,
while every baron in a position to do so had set up his own treasury,
whose officers were not bound to legal methods of gathering
wealth. No wonder men shouted ‘Long live the king’ with such
enthusiasm as Henry made his way to London to be crowned; for
he bore with him the promise of both past and future: a return to
the peace and safety of his grandfather’s time.
Thirty-five years later, these same men would for the most
part have agreed that the promise had been fulfilled beyond all
expectation. It was fifteen years since the barons’ swords had been
unsheathed against the king, and that brief revolt had quickly
succumbed to Henry’s loyal followers. For at Fornham and Aln¬
wick it was not the king himself, but his deputies, who had up¬
held law against the forces of chaos. In this lay the key to Henry’s
success. He had gathered about him a body of men prepared to
support him in face of revolt and unpopularity in carrying out his
business. His grandfather had created methods of maintaining
order, but had found only a few men to implement it, men who
aroused the barons’ enmity to far too great a degree, especially
 238 HENRY PLANTAGENET

since they were all churchmen. Henry, like every other medieval
ruler, had employed churchmen, but from the very beginning of
his reign had also found literate laymen to carry out his work: men
with no other qualifications save intelligence and loyalty to the
king’s aims.
By such means, Henry had revived and augmented his grand¬
father’s laws and institutions, and had developed them to a new
perfection. The exchequer and the courts had grown from rudi¬
mentary or dislocated systems to the most complex and efficient
of their kind in Europe: a secure basis for further evolution. Little
of Henry’s actual methods survive to the present day; but on the
other hand almost all our legal and fiscal institutions appear in their
first effective incarnation during his reign. An example is Henry’s
development of the jury: from a flexible device that could be
turned to various ends with varying success, he made it by the end
of his reign an exact instrument in the enforcement of law. It had
been used as a method of obtaining sworn evidence on anything
from murder to the extent of a freedman’s strip of land, and hence
as means of presenting a man for trial or of answering a royal in¬
quest on service owed. By 1189, a new function, that of hearing
and weighing evidence in cases where there was nothing conclusive
against the accused, had appeared. This system had distant origins in
Saxon procedure; Henry's genius brought it out when the need arose
and made it a permanent part of our legal code. He had enforced law
more strictly, while making the law itself more humane, by abol¬
ishing trial by ordeal, and forbidding the ancient custom of looting
shipwrecks.

With the restoration of order, England’s prosperity grew. Henry

never exploited this wealth for his own ends, taking no more than
was necessary, and practising a strict economy in the expenses of
government. ‘He never laid any grievous burden on his realm of
England or on his lands overseas, until the recent tithe for tfre
crusade, which was also levied on other countries’, wrote a chron¬
icler at the time of his death. ‘He never laid any tribute on churches
or monasteries on pretext of necessity like other monarchs, but
even preserved their immunity from tolls with religious fervour.
He abhorred bloodshed and the sacrifice of men’s lives, and strove
 EPILOGUE 239

diligently to keep the peace, whenever possible bv gifts of money

but with armed force if he could not secure it otherwise.’1 Under
his rule, England knew longer years of peace, fewer summonses to
the feudal host, than she was to enjoy for centuries to come; even
the turbulent Welsh respected Henry’s firm hand, and there had
been only one call to go overseas, compared with the crusades and
expeditions to recover lost lands of succeeding reigns. The local
lords could look after their estates undisturbed by the repercussions
of matters of state; the merchants could journey safely through the
land from fair to fair with their precious loads of spices, silk and
other luxuries from distant lands; the city-dwellers could ply their
trade free from wars and rumours of war.
A similar picture of prosperity, on a lower level, can be
drawn for Henry’s lands in France. The barons here had never
been tamed to the same degree as in England, and disturbances had
been almost continuous somewhere in his vast territories. Yet only
a few towns and castles had been seriously affected; any mercen¬
aries who got out of hand were quickly restrained by the king, or if
* not in his employ, were crushed by him or his barons. Henry s laws
and edicts held good over a far greater area than those of the French
king; he was the first ruler since the days of Charlemagne’s sons
who could issue and enforce general edicts throughout three-
quarters of what is now France. The first examples are the assizes
of 1177-80. Yet he was wise enough not to irritate local pride by
destroying the different customs of the various regions. Nor did
his work fail with the expulsion of the English power in the follow¬
ing century. Philip Augustus, realising its value, had already begun
to copy it in France, introducing an imitation of the Assize of
Arms shortly after its promulgation in Normandy in 1184; and
when he gained control of the Norman government, he not only
continued the system of local government built up by Henry and
his predecessors, but introduced more measures based on it into
his French domains.

Yet Henry’s reign was not all sweetness and light; and when the
ill-will and crowed ambitions of some of his subjects are dis¬
counted against his great reforms, there still remains a residue of
 240 HENRY PLANTAGENET

violence and hatred to be explained. Henry was the greatest

statesman of his age, and his failing was one common among
rulers. Accustomed to great power from his youth upwards, he
could brook no personal challenge to that authority: hence
stemmed the quarrel with Becket and the strife with his sons
which make up the darker side of the picture. This was the in¬
herited trait that gave his contemporaries their evidence of the
demonic origins of the house of Anjou. The Plantagenets and their
forebears had always stood first for their own power and then for
that of their family; and to this extent they were as selfish and
pernicious as any independent-minded baron in the wars of
Stephen’s reign. Henry had other weaknesses as well: a hasty
temper, a streak of impiety and cunning: but these scarcely affected
his course and purpose in affairs of state.
Henry was a lover of power, a miser when it came to parting
with a vestige of authority; and in the use of that power his great¬
ness lies. That he chose to devote both his power and his energy to
a better ordering of the affairs of his realm, rather than to frivolous
wars and crusades or to exploitation and tyranny, in an age which
knew no ethics of devotion to the state, and no concept of the wel¬
fare of the people, was his outstanding virtue. Those he had ruled
remembered him after his death with more affection than he had
enjoyed in his lifetime. Let us return to William of Newburgh:

Ungrateful men and those bent on evil courses talked

incessantly of the wickedness of their own monarch and would
not endure to hear good spoken of him. To such men in par¬
ticular the hardships of the days that followed alone brought
understanding. Indeed, the evils that we are now suffering
have revived the memory of his good deeds, and the man, who
in his own times was hated by many, is now declared every¬
where to have been an excellent and beneficial ruler.2

Richard rides in state outside Parliament, Becket was far

long Christendom’s most popular saint; Henry is remembered
only as their opponent. Such is the irony of popular history. How
they came to acquire these attributes is a matter for the gleaner of
myths and legends; but it is no reason for ignoring the achieve¬
ments of England’s greatest medieval statesman, one who earned
EPILOGUE 241

this simple epitaph from the same thoughtful historian who had
known his times:3

In his exalted position in the state, he was most diligent

in defending and promoting the peace of the realm; in wield¬
ing the sword for the punishment of evildoers, he was a true
servant of God.
APPENDICES

I. THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE COUNCIL OF CLARENDON, 1164

The chronology of the Council of Clarendon is not very clear. We have several
authorities, all of them imprecise. Two of them—Herbert of Bosham and Gilbert
Foliot—were definitely eye-witnesses, while both Ralph de Diceto and Gervase
of Canterbury were writing long after the event.
The information available is as follows:

OPENING DATE DURATION CLOSING DATE

Herbert of Bosham (Materials,
Hi 279)
Not given At least two days; constitutions Not given
prepared overnight.
Ralph of Diceto (i. J12)
January 25 Long negotiations. Not given
Gilbert Foliot (Materials,
v 517-?)
Not given Three days; then customs written Not given
down and signed.
Official copy of constitutions
(.Materials, v 71 -9)
Not given Not given. January 29
Gervase of Canterbury
(t. 176-do)
January 13 Not given. Not given

Miss Norgate ([England under the Angevins, ii 44-5) ingeniously incorporated

Gervase’s date, making the council run from January 13 to January 30, with an
adjournment from January 16 to 25; but to do so she had to ignore the remarks
of the two eye-witnesses about the writing down of the constitutions, which,
according to her, caused this hypothetical adjournment. It is far more probable
that Gervase is wrong, since the other statements resolve themselves to within a
day or so. The course of events would seem to have been thus:
January 25: Council assembles
January 26: 'fhomas gives his assent (or following day)
January 27: Henry orders writing out of the customs
244 HENRY PLANTAGENET
January 28: Customs presented to Thomas
January 29: Agreement in modified form without seal of archbishop
accepted by Henry.

Hence the three days referred to by Foliot would be the discussions from Jan¬
uary 26 to 28, and Ralph de Diceto’s opening date would harmonise with the
closing date on the official copy.

II. THE ASSIZE OF CLARENDON

In The Governance of Medieval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta,

Richardson and Sayles make some major criticisms of the accepted text of this
document (pp. 438-49). They argue that only three paragraphs of the document
formerly accepted in toto as the Assize of Clarendon are suited to the circum¬
stances of xi66, and give these in a reconstructed form. The old accepted text,
with its remarkable style, is, according to them, the work of a private writer,
which explains the curiously autocratic formula ‘the king wills’ with which
seven of the twenty-two clauses begin. There are hence three stages in the
evolution of the texts. Firstly, there was the original Clarendon text (recon¬
structed by Richardson and Sayles, p. 441); secondly, there was the expanded
Northampton assize of 1176 (in Roger-Benedict, i. 108-11); and thirdly came
the private memorandum of this latter text (in Roger-Benedict, ii clxix-cliv),
which derives from the Northampton text and is later than 1176. The new ver¬
sion of the enactment at Clarendon runs as follows:

If any man shall have been accused, by the oath of twelve knights of the
hundred (and if no knights are present by the oath of twelve lawful freemen)
and by the oath of four men from each vill of the hundred, of murder or
theft of robbery, or of sheltering men who have done any of these things, or
of forgery [or counterfeiting] or of arson, he will go to the ordeal by water
and, if he fails therein, he will lose one of his feet.
And if he is cleared by the ordeal by water, he shall find sureties for his con¬
duct and shall remain in the kingdom, unless he was accused of murder or
any other grave felony by the whole community of the county and the law¬
ful knights of the district, for which, if he was thus accused although he
endured trial by water safely, he shall nonetheless leave the kingdom within
forty days, and shall take his chattels with him, saving the right of his lords,
and shall forswear the kingdom subject to the king's mercy.
No one shall harbour in his house in town or vill any stranger for more than
one night if he is unwilling to be responsible for him at law, unless that
guest has a reasonable and valid excuse which the host shall show to "his
neighbours. And when he departs he will do so publicly in the presence of
his host’s neighbours and by light of day.
APPENDICES 245

The main point which Richardson and Sayles seek to make is well estab¬
lished by their arguments. On the other hand, it is debatable whether they have
not excised too much in order to re-create this approximation of the original
text. Some of the business allotted to the justices in 1176 (cf, the 1176 in¬
structions), and the lack of evidence for such business being carried out can be
explained by the various circumstances which curtailed the carrying out of the
visitation. As the 1176 text stands, the clauses of instruction would seem to have
undergone an internal rephrasing to suit new needs; bearing this in mind, the
clauses on jurisdiction over all cases involving half a knight’s fee or less, the
inquiries into escheats, churches, marriages, and custody of castles, and the in¬
structions to commit thieves to the sheriffs’ care might all be restored to the 1166
text without contravening any surviving evidence. What is quite certain is that
Henry’s legal reforms and attempt to introduce a greater degree of order were
not made as dramatically as it had hitherto seemed. The old picture of a radical
programme brought in with little preparation and then re-enacted as necessary
has been replaced by the idea of a gradual development strongly influenced by
the lessons of experience.

HI. THE CHRONOLOGY OF HENRY’S LAST DAYS

There are eleven nearly contemporary authorities who refer to the events of
June and July 1189. Their evidence, never comprehensive, is often conflicting;
and the course of the last days of Henry’s life can be reconstructed only by
piecing together fragments from various writers. The account given by each is
summarised below, and an attempt at resolving the discrepancies offered.

I. Three writers who may have been eye-witnesses of the events. William the
Marshal is known to have been present at the siege of LeMans and at Chinon,
and was responsible for Henry’s burial. His account was recorded by another
writer from his verbal reminiscences about thirty years later, and contains no
dates. It serves to establish a sequence of events.
»

Conference between La Ferte Bernard and Nogent le Rotrou; Henry goes to

Ballon (8345-60).
Philip takes La Ferte Bernard.
Henry goes to Le Mans (8361-8).
Philip takes Ballon and Montfort-le-Rotrou.
Philip attacks Te Mans; Henry retreats to Fresnay (8399-8887).
Henry leaves Fresnay for Alengon.
Henry leaves Alengon for Sainte-Suzanne, and then goes to Chinon (8888-
9012). .
Philip requests an interview, between Tours and Azay.
Henry arrives at Ballan; the interview takes place. (9013-78)
 246 HENRY PLANTAGENET

Henry goes to Chinon, and the list of rebels is brought that evening. (9078-
9112)
Fever grows worse, death follows rapidly.

On the other side, both Guillaume Lebreton and Rigord may have been with
Philip Augustus as he advanced through Henry’s lands. Guillaume Lebreton
wrote two versions of the story, one a prose chronicle, the other a poem in
praise of Philip, the Philippide.

In the prose chronicle (190), Philip takes La Ferte Bernard and Montfort-le-
Rotrou, then besieges and takes Le Mans. He goes on to take Tours, and has a
parley with Henry at Colombieres. A few days later, Henry dies at Chinon.

The Philippide differs in the addition of a few more details: Philip assembles
his army at Nogent-le-Rotrou in May (89), takes La Ferte Bernard and Le
Mans. Henry flees to Alenpan, pursued by Richard (90). Philip takes Tours
while Henry is at Chinon; the two kings meet at Colombieres, and Henry
dies three days later (93).

Rigord’s account was originally written thirteen years before Guillaume’s

first draft, in 1196, and was revised in 1206. It gives more dates, but these are
open to question.

Philip takes Nogent-le-Rotrou (94)* ha Ferte Bernard and four other castles,
and then Le Mans. Henry flees to Chinon. Philip is before Tours on June
23. Twelve days after the capture of Tours, Henry dies, on July 6. (Hence
Tours fell on June 25.)

2. The next group consists of writers who may have been eye-witnesses,
or who were definitely in close contact with the court at the time. The first of
these is Henry’s old enemy, Gerald of Wales, who has left two accounts. In his
book Be Principis Instruction, where the king’s fate is held up as a dreadful
example, the substance of his account is as follows:

Sunday June 4 marks the opening of hostilities. Philip invades Maine, and
Henry goes to Le Mans, which is burnt. Henry passes the following night at
Fresnay.
Philip invades Touraine and takes Tours.
On Friday (date unspecified), a conference takes place near Azay. Henry goes
to Chinon.
On Thursday, seven days after the beginning of the fever, Henry dies.

In the life of Henry s illegitimate son, Geoffrey, Gerald gives mt>re

details, but omits some of his previous statements.

On the day after the burning of Le Mans, Geoffrey goes to Alenfon with the
army (369). He rejoins Henry at Savigny, with a hundred knights. Tourf is
captured, and a conference takes place at Azay. Henry makes peace on the
following day, goes to Chinon, and dies on the seventh day of his illness (372).
APPENDICES 247
Gervase of Canterbury was certainly not present himself in France, but other
members of his convent had sought an interview with Henry over a protracted
lawsuit of theirs only a few days before his death, and were probably still in the
neighbourhood.
On Friday June 9, a conference was held near Le Mans (446), and within three
days, the town was burnt (Sunday June 11). About Thursday June 29,
Henry submits and makes peace. Soon afterwards, the Canterbury monks
find him at Azay (448), and on Thursday July 6 he dies at Chinon (449).

3. The last three writers all had connections with the court, and their
accounts may well be based on the experiences of those who had been with
Henry.
Roger of Howden is now known to have written not only the chronicle that
bears his own name, but also the anonymous document for long attributed to
Benedict of Peterborough, which is in many ways a draft for his other work. The
Roger-Benedict version, written about three years after the time of Henry’s death,
gives the following sequence:
Before Sunday May 28, a conference is held near La Ferte Bernard (ii. 66).
Later, Philip takes La Ferte Bernard, Montfort, Maletable, Beaumont and
Ballon, and waits for three days. On a Sunday, Philip arrives at Le Mans.
On Monday, Le Mans is burnt and Henry flees to Chinon. Philip takes a
series of castles, Montdoubleau, Les Roches, Montoire, Chartre, Chateau du
Loir, Chaumont, Amboise, Rochecorbon, arriving at Tours on Friday June
30. On Sunday July 2, the count of Flanders and the duke of Burgundy go to
Saumur to meet Henry. Monday July 3 marks Philip’s capture of Tours.
Peace is made with Henry, who dies at Chinon on Thursday July 6 (ii. 71).
The later version runs in almost identical terms, except that the con¬
ference between Tours and Azay is inserted about June 29. A list of the rebels is
given to Henry then, and he goes straight to Chinon thereafter.
Ralph de Diccto, dean of St Paul’s, was writing about the same time as
Howden, but his information seems to have been less detailed, and his chronol¬
ogy is always a little erratic.
On Monday June 12, Le Mans is burnt (ii. 63). About June 22, the tower near
the north gate, which had held out, surrenders (a detail also found in William
the Marshal). On Wednesday June 28, Henry submits, at a place between
Tours and Azay, and he dies at Chinon on Thursday July 6.

William of Newburgh has almost nothing to add in the way of detail. His
brief account describes Philip Augustus as laying siege to Angers, which seems
at best improbable, since it is not mentioned anywhere else, and would have en¬
tailed a march along the Loire passing within a few miles of Chinon.

Such are the recorded facts; what fixed points, generally agreed, can be
found? The most important is the exact date of Henry’s death, Thursday July
248 HENRY PLANTAGENET
6. At the other end, it is generally agreed that a conference was held at La Ferte
Bernard, and the date is given as between May 28 and June 9. The siege of Le
Mans is better documented, and the agreed date for its capture is June 12.
From this, we can obtain the following sequence by a process of selection
and rejection:

On June 4, a conference was held at La Ferte Bernard.

The three eye-witnesses agree that Philip’s campaign started immediately after
this conference, and to account for more than a week between La Ferte
Bernard and the siege of Le Mans is difficult. The time may have been even
shorter.
The conference breaks up without result, and Philip, in the course of the next
day or two, takes La Ferte Bernard, Montfort, Maletable, Ballon and Beau¬
mont.

On this Roger-Benedict, William the Marshal, Lebreton and Rigord agree.

Henry goes to Ballon and thence to Le Mans.

William Marshal provides the detail of Ballon; most authorities mention or

imply Henry’s presence at Le Mans before the siege.

Philip appears before Le Mans on Sunday June 11; the town is burnt on the
following day.

The date comes from Cervase of Canterbury, Roger-Benedict and Ralph de

Diceto; William the Marshal confirms that Philip arrived the day before the town
fell.

Henry flees to Fresnay; his army goes on to Alen^on. His son Geoffrey rejoins
him at Savigny.

William the Marshal, and Gerald of Wales name Fresnay; the former and
Lebreton say that Henry went on to Alengon, but Gerald of Wales gives a more
circumstantial account, which seems more probable, and which would explain
why the others were under the impression that the king had gone to Alengon.

Henry continues to Sainte-Suzanne, while Philip proceeds to the siege of

Tours.

The detail of Sainte-Suzanne is added by William the Marshal; the siege

of Tours is generally mentioned. There is a difficulty over the dating of its
capture, which is only satisfactorily resolved by Roger-Benedict, who places it on
Monday July 3. If we accept Rigord’s date of June 25, the French king’s activities
between then and the conference at Colombieres a few miles away, on July 4,
have to be explained.

Henry meets Philip at Colombieres, between Tours and Azay, on July 4,

having received the duke of Burgundy and count of Flanders at Saumur on
APPENDICES 249
William the Marshal, who was certainly at Chinon, is our most important
witness for the very last days of Henry’s life. He implies that the meeting at
Cclombieres—Lebreton names the place—took place not more than two days
before Henry’s death, since the list of rebels was brought that evening, and
Henry died very soon after reading the list, either the same day or the day after.
The exact interval is not precise, but would seem to preclude the interval of a
week implied by other writers, notably, Dieeto and Gervase. Lebreton agrees that
the interval was brief—he says three days; and Roger-Ben edict puts forward a
plausible sequence of events, dating the conference on the 4th, and Henry’s death
on the 6th. His later revision of the conference to June 29 was probably on the in¬
fluence of another writer, rather than an eye-witness. Gerald oj Wales gives no
definite help; but since Henry died on the seventh day of the fever, and he was
already very ill at Colombieres, the gap between the two events is again narrowed
to at most four days. Regarding Henry’s death, as we have observed, this vital
event is universally recorded as taking place on July 6.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

The bibliography that follows makes no claim to completeness, but

it is hoped that it will provide a useful guide to works on the
period, since there is no source where such information is readily
accessible. The section of the list on Art, Architecture and Military
Background is a selection only, and some purely technical authorities
have been omitted from the first part.

Names or titles printed in capitals indicate the abbreviation by which the

work is cited in the Notes.

SOURCES

ADAM OF EYNSHAM: The Life of St Hugh of Lincoln. Ed. and tr. D. L. Douie
andH. Farmer. London, 1961-2.
ANCIENT CHARTERS. Ed. J. H. Round. Pipe Roll Society Publications,
vol. 10. London, 1888.
BATTLE ABBEY: Chronicon Monasterii de Bello. Ed. J. S. Brewer. Anglia Christ¬
iana Society. London, 1846.
BERMONDSEY: Annales Monasterii de Bermundeseia. See Monastic Annals.
BRUT Y TYWYSOGION: The Chronicles of the Princes. Ed. and tr. Rev J. W.
ablthel. Rolls Series 17. London, i860.
BURTON: Annales Monasterii de Burton. See Monastic Annals.
CHRONIQUES de ST MARTIAL de Limoges. Ed. H. Dupl^s-Agier.
Societe de l’Histoire de France. Paris, 1874.
CHRONIQUES DES COMTES D’ANJOU et des Seigneurs d’Amboise. Ed.
L. Halphen et H. Houpardin. Paris, 1913.
DENHOLM YOUNG: Charters. See Translations. f
DUNSTABLE: Annales Prioratus de Dunstaplio. See Monastic Annals. • ’
ETIENNE DE ROUEN: Draco Normannicus.
In: Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, vol. II.
Ed. R. Howlett. Rolls Series 82. London, 1886.
FEET OF FINES 1182-96: Pipe Roll Society Publications, vol. 17. London,
1894.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 251

GERALD the Welshman (Giraldus Cambrensis): Opera. Ed. J. S. Brewer,

J. Dimock, and G. F. Warner. Rolls Series 26. London, 1861-97.
Vol. I: De Rebus a segestis, Invectionum libellus, Symbolum electorum, etc., 1861.
Vol. II: Gemma ecelesiastica, 1862.
Vol. IV: Speculum Ecclesiae, Vita Galfredi, 1873.
Vol. V: Topographica Hibemica, Expugnation Hibernia, 1867.
Vol. VI: Itinerarium Kambriae, Descriptio Kambriae, 1868.
Vol. VIII: De Principis Instruction Liber, 1891.
GERVASE OF CANTERBURY: The Historical Worh. Ed. W. Stubbs. Rolls
Series 73. London, 1879-80.
GESTA STEPHANI: The Deeds of Stephen. Ed. and tr. K. R. Potter. London,
1955*

GUERNES DE PONT-SAINTE-MAXENCE: La Vie de Saint Thomas le

Martyr, pobne historique du xiieme siecle. Ed. E. Walberg. Oxford, 1922.
GUILLAUME LE BRETON: Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton,
Historiens de Philippe Auguste. Ed. H.-F. Delaborde. Societe de l’Histoire de
France. Paris, 1885.
HEREFORDSHIRE DOOMSDAY 1160-70: Pipe Roll Society Publications.
HENRY OF HUNTINGDON: History oj the English. Ed. T. Arnold. Rolls
Series 74. London, 1879.
L’HISTOIRE DE GUILLAUME LE MARECHAL: Comte de Striguil et de
Pembroke, Regent d’Angleterre de 1216-19. hd. Paul Meyer. Society de
l’Histoire de France. Paris, 1901.
JOCELIN OF BRAKELOND: Chronicle concerning the acts of Samson, abbot of the
monastery of St. Edmunds. Ed. and tr. H. E. Butler. London, 1949.
Holyrood: A Scottish Chronicle known as the Chronicle of Holyrood. Ed. M. O.
Anderson. Scottish History Society. Edinburgh, 1938.
JOHN OF HEXHAM: Continuation of Simeon of Durham.
In: Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia: Historia Regum. Eadem historia ed quintum et
vicesimum annum continuata per Joannem Hagulstadensem. Ed. T. Arnold. Rolls
Series 83. London, 1885.
JOHN OF SALISBURY: The Letters of John of Salisbury. Ed. and tr. W. J.
Millor and H. E. Butler, rev. C. N. L. Brooke. London, 1955.
Memoirs of the Papal Court. Ed. and tr. M. Chibnall. London, 1956.
JORDAN PANTOSME: Metrical Chronicle.
In: Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry H and Richard I, vol. III. Ed. R.
Howlett. Rolls Series 82. London, 1886.
MARGAN: Annales de Margan: See Monastic Annals.
MATERIALS for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Ed. Rev. J. C. Robertson (vols. I-VI), J. B. Shephard (vol. VII). Rolls Series 67.
London, 1875-85.
Vol. I: William of Canterbury (life and miracles).
Vol. II: Benedict^cf Peterborough (miracles); John of Salisbury; Alan of Tewkes¬
bury; Edward Grim (lives).
Vol. HI: William Fitzftephen; Herbert of Bosham (lives).
252 HENRY PLANTAGENET
Vol. IV: Anonymous lives.
Vol. V-VTI: Letters.
MELROSE: The Chronicle of Melrose (facsimile edition). Ed. A. O. and M. O.
Anderson. London, 1936.
MONASTIC ANNALS: Ed. H. R. Luard. Rolls Series 36. London, 1864-9.
Vol. I: Annalcs dc Margan, Teokesberia, Burton.
Vol. II: Annales Monasterii de Wintonia, Waverleia.
Vol. Ill: Annales Prioratus de Dunstaplia, Annales Monasterii de Bermundeseia.
Vol. IV: Annales Monasterii de Oseneia, Chronicon Thomae Wykes, Annales
Prioratus de Wigornia.
NIGEL LONGCHAMP: See Translations.
OSENEY: Annales Monasterii de Oseneia. See Monastic Annals.
OTTO OF FREISING: See Translations.
PETER OF BLOIS: Epistolae. Ed. J. A. Giles. In: J. P. Migne, Patrologiae
Cursus Completus, vol. 266. Paris, 1855.
PIPE ROLLS:
The Great Rolls of the Pipe, ltjJ-8. Ed. Rev. J. Hunter. London, 1844.
The Great Roll of the Pipe, l lj8-88. Pipe Roll Society Publications, vols. 1-9,
11-13, 15-16, 18-19, 21-2, 25-34, 36-8. London, 1884-1925.
The Great Roll of the Pipe. 1189-90. Ed. J. Hunter. London, 1844.
POLYDORE VERGIL: Polydorii Vergillii Urbinatis Anglicae Historiae libri
vigintisex. Basle, 1455.
RALPH OF COGGESHALL: Chronicon Anglicanum. Ed. J. Stevenson. Rolls
Series 66. London, 1875.
With Thomas Agnellus: De morte et sepultura Henrici Regis Angliae Junioris, etc.
RALPH DE DICETO: Historical Works. Ed. W. Stubbs. Rolls Series 68.
London, 1876.
RALPH HIGDEN: Poly chronicon, with English translations of John Trevisa. Ed.
Rev. J. R. Lumby. Rolls Series 41. London, 1882-5.
RALPH NIGER: The Chronicles. Ed. R. Anstruther. Caxton Society. London,
1851.
RECUEIL D’ANNALES Angevins et Vendomoisis. Ed. L. Halphen. Paris,
1903.
Contains: Annales de St. Aubin, Annales de Vendome, Annales de St.
Serge d’Angers.
RECUEIL DES ACTES de Henri II Roi d’Angleterre et Due de Normandie
concernant les provinces ffancaises et les affaires de France. Ed. L. Delisle.
Paris, 1919.
RECUEIL DES CHRONIQUES de Touraine. Ed. A. Salmon. Tours, 1854.
RECUEIL DES HISTORIENS des Gaules et de la France (vols. xii, xiii, xviii).
Par des Religieux Benedictins de la congregation de St. Maur. Paris, 1764 ff.
RICHARD FITZ-NEALE: Dialogus de Scaccario. Ed. and tr. C. Johnson. Lon¬
don, 1950.
RIGORD: Oeuvres. See Guillaume Le Breton.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 253
ROBERT OF TORIGNI: Chronicle.
In: Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, vol. IV. Ed. R.
Howlett. Rolls Series 82. London, 1889.
ROGER-BENEDICT: Gesta Henrici Secundi Benedicti Ahhatis. The Chronicle of the
reigns of Henry II and Richard I, a.d. 1169-92, known commonly under the
name of Benedict of Peterborough. Ed. W. Stubbs. Rolls Series 49. London,
1867.
(Now attributed to Roger Howden. See Stenton, EHR LXVin 1953, 574-
82.)
ROGER HOWDEN: Chronica. Ed. W. Stubbs. Rolls Series 51. London,
1868-71.
ROGER WENDOVER: The Flowers of History. Ed. H. G. Howlett. Rolls
Series 84. London, 1887-9.
ROTULI NORMANNIAE: Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniae sub Regibus
Angliae. Ed. T. Stapleton. London, 1840.
The SONG OF DERMOT and the Earl. Ed. and tr. G. H. Orpen. Oxford,
1892.
SUGER: Vie de Louis le Gros. Ed. and tr. (into French) H. Waquet. Paris, 1929.
Vie de Louis le Gros sum de I’histoire du Roi Louis VII. Ed. H. Molinier. Paris,
1887.
THOMAS SAGA Erkibyskups: a life of Archbishop Thomas Bechet in Icelandic.
Ed. and tr. E. Magnusson. Rolls Series 65. London, 1875.
THOMAS AGNELLUS: De morte et sepultura Henrici Regis Angliae Junioris. See
RALPH OF COGGESHALL.
WALTER MAP: De Nugis Curialium. Ed. M. R. James. Anecdota Oxoniensia
xiv. Oxford, 1914.
WAVERLEY: Annales Monasterii de Waverleia: see Monastic Annals.
WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY: De Gestis Regum Anglorum; Historiae Novellae.
Ed. W. Stubbs. Rolls Series 82. London, 1887-9.
Historia Novella. Ed. and tr. K. R. Potter. London, 1955.
WILLIAM OF NEWBURGH: Historia rerum Anglicarum.
In: Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry H and Richard I, vol. I, 101-293.
Ed. R. Howlett. Rolls Series 82. London 1886.
WILLIAM OF TYRE: see Translations.
WORCESTER: Annales Prioratus de Wigomia: see Monastic Annals.

TRANSLATIONS

English Historical Documents (EHD) 1042-1189. Ed. D. C. Douglas and G.

Greenaway. London, 1953.
Gerald the Welshman: The Autobiography of Giraldus Cambrensis. Tr. H. E.
Butler. London, 19,37.
The First Version of the Topography of Ireland by Giraldus Cambrensis. Tr. J. J.
O’Meara. Dundalk, 1951.
254 HENRY PLANTAGENET
Concerning the Instruction of Princes. Tr. J. Stevenson. London, 1858. (Predates
the Rolls Series edition—not textually reliable.)
Greenaway, George, ed. and tr. The Life and Death of Thomas Bechet, Chancellor of
England and Archbishop of Canterbury, based on the account of William Fitz-
Stephen his clerk with additions from other contemporary sources. London,
1961.
Henry of Huntingdon: History of the English. Tr. T. Forester. London, 1853.
(Predates the Rolls Series edition—not textually reliable.)
Hutton, Rev. W. H., ed. and tr. S. Thomas of Canterbury: An account of his
* Life and Fame from The Contemporary Biographers and Other Chroniclers.
London, 1889. (Superseded by Greenaway.)
John of Salisbury: The Statesman’s Book: being the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth books,
and selections from the Seventh and Eighth books of the Policraticus. Ed. and
tr. J. Dickinson. New York, 1927.
Frivolities of Courtiers and Footprints of Philosophers: being a translation of the
First, Second and Third Books and selections from the Seventh and Eighth
Books of the Policraticus of John of Salisbury. Tr. J. Pike. Minnesota and
Oxford, 1938.
Melrose: The Chronicle of Melrose. Tr. J. Stevenson. (Church Historians of
England IV pt. I.) London, 1858. (Unreliable.)
Nigel Longchamp: A Mirror for Fools, or, The Book of Bumel the Ass. Tr. J. H.
Mozley. Oxford, 1961.
Otto of Freising: The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, by Otto of Freising and his
continuator Rahewin. Tr. C. C. Meirow. Columbia University Press, 1953.
Roger Howden: Annals. Tr. H. T. Riley. London, 1853. (Predates Rolls Series
edition—textually unreliable.)
Walter Map: De Nugis Curialium (Courtiers’ Trifles). English ed. Tr. F. Tupper
and M. Ogle. London, 1924.
William of Tyre: A History of Deeds done beyond the Sea. Tr. E. A. Babcock and
A. C. Krey. Columbia University Press, 1943.
There are also English translations in the following editions cited under Sources:
Adam of Eynsham, Brut y Tywysogion, Gesta Stephani, Jocelin of Brakelond,
John of Salisbury (Letters and Memoirs of the Papal Court), Jordon Fantosme,
Richard Fitzneale, Song of Dermot, Thomas Saga, William of Malmesbury.
 SECONDARY AUTHORITIES
A. GENERAL
BEMONT, Charles: La Built Laudabilitcr
In: Melanges d’Histoire du Moyen Age offerts a M. Ferdinand Lot, pp. 41-53.
Paris, 1925.
CHARTROU, Josephe: L’Anjou de l tog-jl: Foulque de Jerusalem et Geoffroi
Plantagenet. Paris, 1928.
DUGDALE, William, and DODSWORTH, Roger: Monasticon Anglicanum.
London, 1661.
DUGGAN, Charles: Twelfth-century Decretal Collections and their importance in
English history. University of London Historical Studies XII, London, 1963.
EYTON, Rev. R. W.: Court, Household and Itinerary of King Henry II, instancing
also the chief agents and adversaries of the king in his government diplomacy
and warfare. London, 1878.
HALL, Hubert: Court Life under the Plantagencts (Reign of Henry II). London,
1899.
* HALPHEN, Louis: Les entrevues des rois Louis VII et Henri II durant I’exil de
Thomas Bechet en France.
In: Melanges d’histoire ojferts d M. Charles Bemont. Paris, 1913.
HASKINS, Charles H.: Studies in the History of Medieval Science. London, i960.
Henry II as a Patron of Literature.
In: Essays in Medieval History presented to Thomas Frederick Tout. Ed. A. G.
Little and F. M. Powicke. Manchester, 1925.
HASSALL, Arthur ed: Historical Introductions to the Rolls Series by William Stubbs,
D.D. London, 1902.
LEBRETON, Charles: La Penitence de Henri II Roi d’Angleterre et le concile
d’Avranches en 1172. Saint-Brieuc, 1884.
LUCHAIRE, Achille: Histoire des institutions monarchiques sous les premiers
Capitiens. Paris, 1883.
MICHEL, Prancisque: Deux anne'es du regne d’Henri II Roi d’Angleterre (1173-4).
Poitiers, 1841.
NORGATE, Kate: England under the Angevin Kings. London, 1887.
ORPEN, Goddard H.: Ireland under the Normans 1/69-1216. Oxford, 1911.
POOLE, Austin L.: From Domesday Book to Magna Carta lo8j-lzl6. Oxford,
1951.
POOLE, Reginald L.: The Early Lives of Robert Pullen and Nicholas Breakspear.
In: Essays in Medieval History presented to T. F. Tout. Ed. A. G. Little and
F. M. Powicke. Jylanchester, 1925.
RAMSAY, Sir James H.: The Angevin Empire, or The Three Reigns of Henry II,
Richard I, and John. London, 1903.
 256 HENRY PLANTAGENET
RICHARD, Alfred: Histoire des Comtes de Poitou, 778-1204. Paris, 1903.
STENTON, F. M.: Norman London, An Essay, with a translation of William
FitzStephen’s description by H. E. Butler and a Map of London under
Henry II by M. B. Honeyboume, annotated by E. J. Davies. Historical
Association Leaflets 93-4, 1934.
STUBBS, William: Seventeen Lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and
kindred subjects. Oxford, 1886.
Historical Introductions: see Hassall, Arthur (above).

B. GOVERNMENT

ADAMS, George B.: Council and Courts in Anglo-Norman England. Yale/Oxford,

1926.
BOUSSARD, Jacques.: Le Couvernement d’Henri U Plantagenet. Paris, 1956.
BROOKE, Z. N.: The English Church and the Papacy from the Conquest to the Reign
of King John. Cambridge, 1931.
CHENEY, C. R.: From Bechet to Langton: English Church Government t vjo-tztj.
Manchester, 1956.
FOREVILLE, Raymonde: L’Eglise et la Royaute en Angleterre sous Henri IL
Plantagenet (z ZJ4-89). Paris, 1943.
HARDEGEN, Friedrich.: Lmperialpolitik Konig Heinrichs IL von England. Heidel¬
berg, 1905.
HASKINS, Charles H.: Norman Institutions. London, i960 (reprint).
HOYT, Robert S.: The Royal Demesne in English Constitutional History 1066-
lzyz. New York, 1950.
PETIT-DUTAILLIS, Charles: The Feudal Monarchy in France and England from
the Tenth to the Thirteenth Century. London, 1936.
POWICKE, Sir Maurice. The Loss of Normandy V189-1204. Studies in the
history of the Angevin Empire. Manchester, i960 (reprint).
RICHARDSON, H. G., and SAYLES, G. O.: The Governance of Medieval
England from the Conquest to Magna Carta. Edinburgh, 1963.
ROUND, J. H.: Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth
Centuries. London, 1909.
Geoffrey de Mandeville: A study of the Anarchy. London, 1892.
The Commune of London and other studies. London, 1899.
TOUT, T. F.: Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England. Man¬
chester, 1920.
WOLFF, Ilse: Heinrich IL von England als Vassail Ludwigs VII von Frankreich.
Breslau, 1936.
« .
C. BIOGRAPHY and Literary Tradition
ABBOTT, E. A.: 5f Thomas of Canterbury. His Death and Miracles. London,
BERINGTON, Rev. J.: The History of the Reign of Henry the Second and of Richard
and John his Sons; With the Events of the Period, from l ljj to izi6. Dublin, 1790.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY *57
BROWN, Paul A.: The Development of the Legend of Thomas Bechet. Philadelphia,
1930.
CARTELLIERI, Alexander.: Philipp II August Konig von Frankreich. Leipzig and
Paris, 1899-1900.
DARK, Sidney.: St Thomas of Canterbury. London, 1927.
GREEN, Mrs J. R.: Henry the Second. London, 1892.
HELTZEL, Virgil B.: Fair Rosamond: A Study of the Development of a Literary
Theme. Evanston, 1947.
HENDERSON, Philip.: Richard Coeur de Lion, A Biography. London, 1957.
HODGSON, C. E.: Jung Heinrich, Konig von England, Sohn Konig Heinrichs II,
t tjj-8J. Jena, 1906.
HUTTON, W. H.: Thomas Bechet, Archbishop of Canterbury. London/New York,
1949-
KELLY, Amy: Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings. London/New York, 1952.
KNOWLES, Dom David: ‘Archbishop Thomas Becket—a character study.’
In: The Historian and Character. Oxford, 1963: 98-112.
The Episcopal Colleagues of Thomas Becket. Cambridge, 1961.
LABANDE, Edmond-Rene: Pour une image veridique d’Alienor d'Aquitaine.
Poitiers tgjz. (Offprint from Bulletin de la Society des Antiquaires de
l’Ouest (4e serie—tome II) 1952.)
LYTTELTON, Lord George: The History of the Life of King Henry the Second.
* Dublin, 1768-72.
MACKIE, J. Duncan.: Pope Adrian IV. Oxford and London, 1907.
MAY, Thomas: The Reigne of King Henry the Second, written in seaven boohes. Lon¬
don, 1633.
MOORE, Olin H.: The Young King, Henry Plantagenet (l 1 jj-<Sj) in History,
Literature, and Tradition. Ohio, 1925.
MORRIS, John: The Life and Martyrdom of Saint Thomas Bechet, Archbishop of
Canterbury. London and New York, 1885.
PAIN, Nesta: The King and Bechet, London/New York, 1964.
PAINTER, Sidney: William Marshal, Knight-Errant, Baron and Regent of England.
Oxford/Baltimore, 1933.
NORGATE, Kate: Richard the Lion Heart. London, 1924.
RADFORD, Lewis B.: Thomas of London before his Consecration. Cambridge, 1894.
ROBERTSON, J. C.: Bechet, Archbishop of Canterbury: A Biography. London, 1859.
ROSSLER, Oskar: Kaiserin Mathilde, Mutter Heinrichs von Anjou, und das Zeitalter
der Anarchic in England. Berlin, 1897.
SALZMANN, L. F.: Henry II. London, 1917.
SPEAIGHT, Robert: Thomas Bechet. London/New York, I9g9-
VOSS, Lena: Heinrich von Blois Bischof von Winchester lizg-jl. Berlin, 1932.
WALBERG, E.: La tradition hagiographique de Saint Thomas Bechet avant la fin
du Xlle siecle: itudes critiques. Paris, 1929.
WARREN, W. L.: Kingjohn. London, 1961.
WEBB, Clement C. J.: John of Salisbury. London, 1932.
258 HENRY PLANTAGENET

D. ART, LITERATURE AND MILITARY BACKGROUND

ARMITAGE, Ella S.: The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles. London, 1912.
BORENIUS, Tancred: St Thomas Becket in Art. London, 1932.
CLAPHAM, A. W.: Romanesque Architecture in Western Europe. Oxford, 1936.
HILL, R. T., and BERGIN, T. G.: Anthology of the Provencal Troubadours. Yale/
Oxford, 1941.
THE HISTORY OF THE KING’S WORKS, ed. R. A. Brown.
I, II: The Middle Ages, by H. M. Calvin and A. J. Taylor, HMSO, London/
New York, 1963.
-LOT, Ferdinand: L’Art Militaire et les Armies au moyen age. Paris, 1946.
OMAN, Sir Charles: A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages (2vv.). London,
1924.
(rev. BEELER, J. H.): The Art of War in the Middle Ages. New York/Oxford,
1953-
THOMAS, L.: Potsies Completes de Bertran de Born. Toulouse, 1888.
 ARTICLES
Abbreviations:
EHR English Historical Review
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
BEC Bibliotheque de l’Ecole des Chartes
DAGM Deutsches Archiv fur Geschichte des Mittelalters
Articles are cited by author and reference to journal, volume, year and page.
Barlow, Frank: ‘The English, Norman and French Councils called to deal with
the Papal schism of 1159.’ EHR LI, 1936: 264-8.
Boussard, Jacques: ‘Les Mercenaries au Xlle siecle: Henri Plantagenet et les
origines de l’armee du metier.’ BEC CVI, 1945-6: 189-224.
Brooke, Z. N.: ‘The effect of Becket’s murder on papal authority in England.’
Cambridge Historical Journal II, 1926-8:213-28.
and C. N. L. ‘Henry II, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine.’ EHR LXI,
1946: 81-9.
Brown, R. A.: ‘Royal Castle-Building in England 1154-1216.' EHR LXX,
-< 1955: 353-98.
‘A List of the Castles 1154-1216.’ EHR LXXLV, 1959: 249-80.
Cartellieri, Alexander: ‘Die Machtstellung Heinrichs II von England.’ Neue
Heidelberger Jahrbucher VIII, 1898: 269-83.
Cheney, Mary: ‘The Compromise of Avranches in 1172 and the spread of
Canon Law in England.’ EHR LVT, 1941: 177-97.
Davis, H. W. C.: ‘The Anarchy of Stephen’s Reign.’ EHR XVIII, 1903:
630-41.
‘Simonsfeld: Jahrbucher des Deutschen Reiches unter Friedrich I’ (Review).
EHR XXIV, 1909: 772.
‘The Chronicle of Battle Abbey.’ EHR XXIX, 1914: 426-34.
Davis, R. H. C.: ‘What happened in Stephen's reign, 1135-54.’ History, XLIX,
1964, 1-12.
‘Geoffrey de. Mandeville.’ EHR LXXIX, 1964.
Delisle, L.: La pretendue celebration d’un concile a Toulouse en 1160.' Journal
des Savants 1902: 45-51.
Duggan, Charles.: ‘Henry II and the Criminous Clerks.’ Bulletin of the Institute of
Historical Research, 1962, XXXV: 1-28.
Fawtier, R.: ‘L’histoire financiere de l'Angleterre au Moyen Age.’ Le Moyen Age,
1928:48-67.
Galbraith, V. H.: ‘A New Charter of Henry II to Battle Abbey.’ EHR LII,
1937:67-73- . , . . ,
‘The Literacy of the Medieval English Kings/ Proceedings of the British Academy
XXI, 1935: 213-15.
260 henry plantagenet

Gray, J. W.: ‘The Ins Praesentandi in England from Clarendon to Bracton.’

EHRLXVTl, 1952:481-509.
Grundmann, Herbert: ‘Rotten und Brabanzonen: Soldner-Heere im 12.
Jahrhundert.’ DACM 5, 1941-2: 419-92.
Haskins, Charles H.: ‘England and Sicily in the Twelfth Century.’ EHR XXVI,
1911:433-47,641-65.
Hubert, Jean: ‘Le Miracle de Deols et la treve conclue en 1187 entre les rois de
France et d’Angleterre.’ EEC XCVI, 1935: 285-300.
Hunt, R. W.: ‘English Learning in the Late Twelfth Century.’ TRHS XIX,
1936: 19-42.
Huygens, R. B. C.: ‘Dialogus inter Regem Henricum Secundum et abbatem
Bonnevallis: un £crit de Pierre de Blois reedite.’ Revue Benedictine 68, 1958:
87-112.
Johnson, Charles: ‘The Reconciliation of Henry II with the Papacy: A Missing
Document.’ EHR LII, 1937: 465-7.
JollifFe, J. E. A.: ‘The Camera Regis under Henry II.’ EHR LXVHI, 1953: 1-21,
337-62.
Lapsley, G. T.: ‘The Flemings in Eastern England in the Reign of Henry II.’
EHRXX1, 1906: 509-13.
Lillie, Rev. H. W. R.: ‘St Thomas of Canterbury’s Opposition to Henry II.'
Clergy Review VIII, 1934: 261-83.
Maitland, F. W.: ‘Henry II and the Criminous Clerks.' EHR VII, 1892:
224-34. .
Poole, Austin L.: ‘Henry Plantagenet’s Early Visits to England.’ EHR XLVTI,
1932:447-52.
‘Die Welfen in der Verbannung.’ DAGM 2, 1938: 129-48.
Poole, Reginald L.: ‘Henry II, Duke of Normandy.’ EHR XLII, 1927: 569-72.
Powicke, F. M. ‘The Angevin Administration of Normandy.’ EHR XXI, 1906:
625-49; XXII, ^907-15-42.
Ramsay, Sir J. H.: ‘Chroniclers’ Estimates of Numbers and Official Records ’
EHR XVIII, 1903:625-9.
Richardson, H. G.: ‘The Chamber under Henry II.’ EHR LXIX, 1954: 596-
611.
‘The Letters and Charters of Eleanor of Aquitaine.’ EHR LXXTV, 1959-
193-213.
‘Richard Fitzneal and the Dialogus de Scaccario.’ EHR XXIII, 1928: 161-
71, 321-40.
Stenton, Lady F. M.: ‘Roger of Howden and Benedict.’ EHR LXVIII, 1953-
574-82.
Vacandard, E.: Le divorce de Louis le Jeune.’ Revue des questions historiquest±7.
1890:408-32.
Vasiliev, A. A.: ‘Manuel Comnenus and Henry Plantagenet.’ Byzantinischer
Zeitschrift 29, 1929-30: 233 £f.
White, G. H.: ‘The Career of Waleran Count of Meulan and Earl of Worcester
(1104-66).’ TRHS XVII, 1934: 19-49.
 NOTES

Prologue
1 Stenton, 34-5.
2 Fitzneale, 6.

l: The Troubled Land

Sources: Gervase of Canterbury, i, 92-140 (usually in error on chronology: vide
EHR XLVm, 1952, 447-52); Gesta Stephani, i—137; Henry of Hunting¬
don, 243-80; Melrose, 33; Recueil d’Annales, 9—11; Robert of Torigni,
104-54; William of Malmesbury, ii, 527-96, or ed. Potter; William of
Newburgh, 29-60.
Secondary Authorities: Chartrou, 26-66; Delisle, 120-2; Green, 7-8; Norgate,
* England under the Angevins, i, 1-96, 261-377; A. L. Poole, From Domesday
Book to Magna Carta, 128-66; Rossler, 1-377; Round, Geoffrey de Mande-
ville; Salzmann, 1-5; Voss, 1-122.
Articles: Davis, EHR XVm, 1903, 630-41.

1 According to Henry of Huntingdon (254) he died of eating lampreys against

his doctors’ orders. The place was St Denis-le-Fermont.
2 Rossler, 417-20, discusses this at length. He produces considerable evidence
in favour of the two being twins; some of it is dubious in isolation, but it
amounts to a persuasive argument. On the other hand, the Handbook of
British Chronology places William’s birth after Matilda’s, without citing any
authority.
8 Norgate, I, 258-60.
4 Chartrou/’ 29. -
6 Now in the Musee du Tesse at Le Mans.
6 Boussard, 99-112.
7 Gerald, Opera, viii, 301.
8 Ibid., viii, 309.
9 EHD II, 199-200; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Peterborough) s.a., 1139.
10 Chartrou, 39.
11 Haskins, Studies in the History of Medieval Science, 20-42.
12 Poole, EHR XLVII, 1932, 447-52.
18 Chartrou, 224.
14 Boussard, 287, 298, 335.
262 HENRY PLANTAGENET

18 Margan, 14 gives the date as October 31, 1147, which would mean that
Henry made his request while Robert was still alive; but from what we know
of Robert’s character he is unlikely to have refused assistance, and the episode
probably refers to his son.

2: The Winning of a Kingdom

Sources: Arnulf of Lisieux, xxvii-xxix; Chroniques des Comtes d’Anjou, 130;
Gerald, Opera, viii, 160-1 (tr. EHD 382-3); Gervase of Canterbury, i,
140-60; Gesta Stephani, 137-54; Henry of Huntingdon, 280-92; John of
Hexham, 322-32; John of Salisbury, Memoirs, 52-3, 61-2; Meaux, 131;
Melrose, 33; Ralph of Diceto, i, 291-300; Recueil des Annales, 12-13, 97>
100; Recueil des Chroniques, 135; Robert of Torigni, 155-82; Roger of
Howden, 211-14; Suger ed. Molinier, 161-6; Suger ed. Waquet, 281-5;
Waverley, 234; William of Newburgh, 87-95; William of Tyre II, 180-96.
Secondary Authorities: Chartrou, 65-76, 244; Foreville, 3-79; Green, 9-14."
Haskins, Norman Institutions, 158-64; Kelly, 1—81; Labande; Luchaire II.
265-7; Norgate, England under the Angevins, i, 377-407; A. L. Poole.
From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 150-66; Richard, 90-115; Rossler,
377-434; Salzmann, 5-13.
Articles: Z. N. and C. N. L. Brooke, EHR LXI, 1946, 81-9; Davis, EHR XVffl,
1903, 630-41; R. L. Poole, EHR XLII, 1927, 569-72.

1 Gervase of Canterbury gives the correct date for this expedition, although he
does not mention that of 1147, unless his account of the recall of Henry dated
1146 (i. 131) belongs to 1147 rather than the end of the 1142 expedition.
2 John of Hexham, 323, Gesta Stephani,
3 Gesta Stephani, 147-8; this might have taken place at the beginning of the
expedition since Henry landed on the south coast, but there is no other reason
for rejecting the order of events given in the Gesta.
4 Z. N. and C. N. L. Brooke, EHR LXI, 1946, 89, give as Henry’s chancellors
for this period:
to XI50, Richard de Bohun (Geoffrey’s chancellor).
1150 to Sept, x 151, William de Vere or William Fitzgilbert (Henry as
duke of Normandy).
Sept, to Dec. 1151, Richard de Bohun (Henry as count of Anjou and duke
of Normandy).
Dec. 1151 to at least 1153, William de Vere or William Fitzgilbert.
8 Chartrou, 73.
6 William of Newburgh, 93. * •
7 John of Salisbury, Memoirs, 61-2; Gervase of Canterbury (i. 149) also com¬
mends silence as to rumours circulating about Eleanor’s conduct in the East.
8 But see Louis’ letter (Recueil des Historiens, xv, 514) to Abbot Suger, in
which he describes an incident in which Eleanor’s ship was separated by a
storm from the rest of his fleet, yet shows no feeling whatsoever.
 NOTES 263

9 Kelly, 74-5.
10 Labande, 17-18; Recueil des Historiens, xiv, 21.
11 Labande, 19-20.
12 Recueil des Chroniques, 135.
13 John of Salisbury, Memoirs, 52-3; Gervase of Canterbury, 149.
14 Gervase of Canterbury, i, 149.
18 Richard, 112.
16 Meaux, 131.
17 Details of the revolt are given in full in Robert of Torigni, 165-9; Richard,
113; Boussard, 11; Norgate, England under the Angevins, i, 395-4.
18 It seems unlikely that Henry would have made the long and arduous voyage
direct to Bristol, especially since the south coast was favourable to him. Hence
it is more plausible to suggest that he landed in the Weymouth Bay area as in
1142, and made his way overland to Bristol. But see Z. N. and C. N. L.
Brooke, art. cit.
19 On the other hand, Henry of Huntingdon (285-6) attributes Stephen’s
withdrawal to the weather and the flooded river.
20 Gesta Stephani, 155; Richardson and Sayles, 252, n. 5, for order of events.
21 Richardson and Sayles, 253-5.

3: A Prince among Princes

Sources: Adam of Eynsham, 62-3, 73-4, 85-6, 116—8; Amulf of Lisieux,
xxvii-lii, Gerald, Opera, i, 42, 52, 57; viii, 261, 312-3 (trs. in Autobio¬
graphy 60, 72, 81, 106, 110-11); v, 303-6, viii, 158-63, 214-15, 304,
(trs. in EHD 386-8, 380-6); Gerald, Topography, last chapter; John of
Salisbury, Letters, 31-2; Policraticus II, 21-2, 32, 166; Materials, iii, 2-13,
26-8, vi, 72, 455-6; Nigel Longchamp 45-8; Peter of Blois, ed. 197-202;
Ralph Higden, viii, 52-5, 58-9; Ralph Niger, 167-70 (for unfavourable
view); Walter (trs. Tupper, 297-9, 302-3); William Newburgh, 280-6.
Secondary Authorities: Berington, 445; Bloch, 42-2, 49, 54; Delisle, 351-505
(personnel of Henry’s court); Dugdale, 522, 532, 543, 546-7, 548, 551,
1008-9; Haskins-, Studies in the History of Medieval Science, 20-42;
113-29, and ‘Henry II as a patron of Literature,’ 71-7; Heltzel, 1-14,
Kelly, 150-1, 192-3; Knowles, Colleagues of Becket, 1-52; Mackie, passim;
A. L. Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 232-62; R. L. Poole,
Early lives of Robert Pullen and Nicholas Breakspear, 61-70; Stubbs,
Seventeen Lectures, 115-55; Webb, 6-21, 139-58.
Articles: Haskins, EHR XXVI, 1911, 433-47, 641-65; A. L. Poole, Deutsches
Archivfur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 2, 1938, 129-48.

1 See especially Pipe Roll 23 Henry II 1176-7, 198 and 201, where £500
was spent on furs,-robes and clothes for the king’s use.
 264 HENRY PLANTAGENET

2 Walter Map, 237(0:. Tupper, 297); Gerald, Opera, viii, 214-15; Peter ol
Blois, Ep. LXVI in Migne, Patrologia Latina, ccvii, 197-8.
8 Gerald, Opera, viii, 304(0:. EHD, 384).
4 Orpen, 254.
8 Walter Map, 237(0:. Tupper, 297).
• Peter of Blois, Ep. XIV, tr. W. L. Warren, p. 23-4.
7 Materials, III, 49 (tr. Greenaway, 76).
8 Haskins, ‘Henry II as patron of literature’, 76.
® PR 2 Henry II 1155-6, 46; 3 Henry II 1156-7, 84, 90, 102; and successive
. years.
10 PR 16 Henry II 1169-70, 146—‘Hamelin owes one Norway hawk and one
gerfalcon for having his suit heard.’
11 Adam of Eynsham, 116-8.
12 Walter Map, 241 (tr. Tupper, 302).
18 Brown, EHR LXX, 1955, 353-98, LXXIV 1959, 249-80; Armitage.
14 History of the King’s Works, 80.
18 Rotuli Normanniae, 110-11.
18 Map in History of the King’s Works, 85, text 81-7.
17 History of the King’s WorlS, 910-18 (Clarendon), 1009-17 (Woodstock),
491-3 (Westminster).
18 Pipe Roll, 25; Henry II, 1179-80, p. 125.
18 History of the King’s Works, 1015-16.
80 Gerald of Wales, Expugnatio Hiberniae 303, tr. EHD, 386.
21 Materials, vi, 72.
22 There is an interesting note of the king’s regular almsgiving in the Hereford¬
shire Doomsday 1160-70, probably compiled by Thomas Brown, the king’s
almoner.
23 Dugdale, Monasticon, 543, 546, 547, 548, 551; and Pipe Rolls, passim.
24 Adam of Eynsham, 35-6.
26 Ralph de Diceto, i. 407.
26 Materials, vi, 455-6.
27 Roger-Benedict, ii, 160-1.
28 Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, 11, 301-35.
29 Heltzel, 1-14; Ralph Higden, viii, 54.
80 Gerald of Wales, Opera viii, 214-51.
81 Materials, III, 24-5 (tr. Greenaway, 44-5).
82 Haskins, EHR XXVI, 1911, 433-47, 641-65.
88 Smythe, 39-40.
84 See biographies in Knowles, Colleagues of Becket; Cheney ch. x.
88 Nigel Longchamp, 45-8. *
86 See Mackie (Adrian IV), and Webb (John of Salisbury).
37 Haskins, ‘Henry II as Patron of Literature’.
R. S. Loomis, Tristram and the House of Anjou: Modem Languages Review,
xvii, 1922,24-30.
88 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, I, 166.
 NOTES 265

40 Pipe Roll, 12 Henry II, x 165-6 (£1 to Maurice Tabulator’ p. 32); 23

Henry II, 1176-7 (£3 per annum to Henry the harper, p. 165); 21 Henry II,
1174-5 (payments for bears and bearwards, p. 29).
41 Pipe Roll, 22 Henry II, 91.
4* Hall, Court Life under the Plantagenets, bases his reconstruction on this.
48 Richardson and Sayles, 156-70, 194-8, 221-8, 240-5.
44 Boussard, 285-308.

4: The New Order

Sources: Amulf of Lisieux, xxx-xxxi; Brut y Tywysogion, 185-95; Gerald, Opera
vi, 130, 137-8; Gervase of Canterbury, i, 161-9; Holyrood, 131; Monastic
Annals, i, 47, ii, 56, iv, 380; Otto of Freising, 178-9, 261, 324; Ralph de
Diceto, i, 300-5; Recueil d’Annales, 14-15, 71; Recueil des Historiens, xii,
121; Robert of Torigni, 183-211, 317-27; Roger Howden, 213-8; William
of Newburgh, i, 101-26 (tr. EHD, 322-30, 334) and 158-9 (1160 marriage
treaty confused with 1169 peace). Denholm Young (coronation charter).
Secondary Authorities: Boussard, 401-26; Eyton, 1-59; Foreville, 79-106; Green,
21-38; Haskins, Norman Institutions, 162-70; Hoyt, 95; Hutton, 1-50;
-1 Kelly, 91-112; Mackie, 109-18; Norgate, England under the Angevins, i,
407-506; Radford, 2-152; Richard, 121-33; Salzmann ,14-49; Voss, 123-4;
Wolff, 6-32.
Articles: Barlow, EHR LI, 1936, 264-8; Brown, EHR LXX, 1955, 353-98; EHR
LXXTV, 1959, 249-80; Davis, EHR XVIII, 1903, 630-41; Delisle, Journal
des Savants, 1902, 45-51; Ramsay, EHR XVIII, 1903, 625-9.

1 Davis, EHR XVIII, 1903, 630-41.

8 Translation in Denholm Young (pages not numbered).
8 Foreville, 55.
4 Morris, 23.
8 Chronicle of Battle Abbey, 72-127.
6 Robert of Torigni, 177, Ralph de Diceto, 297, i, 297.
7 Brown, EJiR LXXIV, 1959, 249 ff.
8 Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 418-9.
* Webb, 96-7; Mackie, 109-18; B6mont, 41-53. Gerald, Opera v, 316 (tr.
EHD, 776-7).
10 Voss, 123-4.
11 Materials III, 29-31 (tr. Greenaway, 45-7; Hutton, 23-5).
12 Boussard, Bibliotkeque de I’Ecole des Chartes CVI, 1945-6, 189-224.
18 Otto of Freising, 178-9, 261.
14 Hardegen, 20-2.
16 Barlow, EHR LI, "1936, 264-8; Delisle. Journal des Savants, 1902, 45-51.
18 Otto of Freising, 324.
266 HENRY PLANTAGENET

5: The Central Problem

Sources: Arnulf of Lisieux, xxxii-xlvii; Brut y Tywysogion, 199-207; Etienne de
Rouen, 725-42; Gerald, Opera vi, 143; Gervase of Canterbury, i, 169-203;
Holyrood, 141; Materials, I, 1-49,11,299-314,323-45, 353-406, III, 13-76,
155—357» IV, 1-64, 80-109, 186-90, 201-12, 266-352, V, 1-3x6 (II,
373, tr. EHD 708; IV, 299, tr. EHD, 716 and Greenaway, 63; IV, 27 tr.
EHD, 716-7 and Greenaway 64-5); Melrose, 36-7; Ralph de Diceto, i,
305-29; Robert of Torigni, 211-29; Roger Howden, 219-23; Thomas
Saga, i, 1-313; William of Newburgh, 131-47 (chs. XVI, XXIV, tr. in
EHD, 332-4).

Secondary Authorities: Adams, 127-78; Boussard, 427-50; Eyton, 59-91; Fore-

ville, 107-70; Green, 82-126; Halphen, 152-3, 159; Hodgson, 6-7;
Hutton, 51-140; Kelly, 113-29; Knowles, Colleagues of Becket, 53-96;
Salzmann, 50-64.

Articles: Davis, EHR XXIV, 1909, 772; Gray, EHR LXVII, 1952, 481-509;
Maitland, EHR VIT, 1892, 225-35! Duggan, Bulletin oj Institute of Historical
Research, XXXV, 1962, 1-28.

1 Materials, III, 181 (tr. Greenaway, 51; Hutton, 26-7).

2 Foreville, 19-22; Z. N. Brooke, The English Church and the Papacy, 59-
193.
3 Materials, III, 182.
4 Materials, III, 37-41 (tr. Greenaway, 55-7).
6 Pipe Roll 10 Henry II, 1163-4.
6 Boussard, 436-7; Richardson and Sayles, 66-8, 87-91.
7 Boussard, 535-40; Ramsay, 65 ff—but see Fawtier, Le Moyen Age, 1928,
48-56.
8 Maitland, EHR, VII, 1892, 224-34; Duggan, Bulletin of Institute for His¬
torical Research, 1962, XXXV, 1-28; Lillie, Clergy Review, VIII, 1934, 261-83;
Foreville, 136-51.
9 Roger of Pont-L’Eveque had been Becket’s rival in the household of Theo¬
bald and had preceded him as archdeacon of Canterbury; Gilbert Foliot had
opposed Becket’s election whether from disapproval of Thomas or disappoint¬
ment at not being chosen himself (cf. Materials, v, 512-20, 522-44).
10 The letters concerning the Becket controversy up to the archbishop’s flight
are in Materials, v, 1—133.
11 See Appendix x.
12 See note 8 above; and Greenaway, 68-72; EHD, 718-22; Hutton, 50-9,
for translations. Also: Richardson and Sayles, 306-10; Davis, EHR Xxfv,
I9°9< 772; Z. N. Brooke, English Church and the Papacy, 202-12.
13 The accounts of the Northampton council are reasonably straightforward:
William FitzStephen and Herbert of Bosham provide complementary eye¬
witness accounts (Materials, III, 49—70, 296—312; tr. Greenaway, 75—91,
EHD, 724-33; Hutton, 66-86).
 NOTES 267

11 The most important source for the years from 1166-9 are the letters: those
from October X164 until April 1166 are printed in Materials, V, 134-316.
16 See Appendix II.

6: This Low-born Clerk

Sources: Amulf of Lisieux, 72-3, 122-3 (tr. EHD, 741, 770-1); Etienne de
Rouen, 675-724, 753-6; Gervase of Canterbury, i, 203-32; Histoire de
Guillaume le Marechal, I, vv. 1636-1904, III, 25-8; Materials, I, 49-136,
II, 1-19, 314-22, 345-52, 406-50, III, 77-154. 357-534- IV> 65-79,
io9~44> 190-200, 352-408, V, 316-544, VI passim, VII, 1-470 (III
449, 465-7, tr. in EHD, 751-2, 755-6 and Greenaway, 129, 136-7);
Meaux, i, 191; Melrose, 37-8; Otto of Freising, 3 38; Polydore Vergil, 215-16;
Ralph de Diceto, i, 329-345; Ralph Niger, 92-5; Recueil d’Annales, 37, 103;
Recueil des Historiens, xii, 442, xiii, 679; Robert of Torigni, 229-49;
Roger-Benedict (from 1169), i, 3-14; Thomas Saga, i, 313, ii, 241; William
of Newburgh, 154-65 (tr. in part EHD, 3 34-42).
Secondary Authorities: Boussard, 427-35, 451-9; Eyton, 91-153; Green, 127-54;
Halphen, passim; Hardegen, 13-20; Hutton, 141-271; Kelly, 129-49;
Knowles, Colleagues of Becket, 96-139; and The Historian and Character,
98-128; Norgate, England under the Angevins, ii, 57-79, 120-8; Salzmann,
84-100.
4 See also Abbott, Brown, Dark, Morris, Robertson, Speaight and Walberg
for various views of Becket and the legends about him.
1 Boussard, 428-9.
8 Halphen, 159.
8 These letters, known from their opening words as ‘Loqui de Deo’, ‘Exspectans
expectavi’, and ‘Desiderio desideravi’, are given in Materials, v, 266-8,
269-78, and 278-82 (tr. Greenaway, 109-111; Hutton, 120-1).
4 Materials, v, 282-542 (parts tr, Hutton, 124-67).
8 Materials, vi, 82-162 (parts tr, Hutton, 176-9).
9 Materials, vi, 206-7 (tr, Hutton, 179-80); dated June 17, 1167. Alexander
had previously (April 5, 1166) warned the archbishop of York and the other
English bishops against usurping Canterbury’s rights of coronation (Materials,
v, 323). „
7 Etienne de Rouen, 711.
8 Walter Map, 238 (tr. Tupper, 298-9; EHD, 389).
8 Materials, vi, 269-70(tr. Hutton, 183-7).
10 Materials, vi, 306-7.
11 Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, I, 1636-1904, m, 25-8.
18 Materials, iii, 419-27 (Herbert of Bosham) (tr. Greenaway, 123-7; Hutton,
189-98), and ii, 506-13.
18 Gervase of Canterbury, i, 208.
14 Materials, vi, 537-9.
18 Materials, vi, 558-84.
268 HENRY PLANTAGENET

16 Materials, vi, 599 (tr. Hutton, 199-200).

17 Materials, vii, 23-32; Hardegen, 17-20.
18 Materials, vii, 70-5.
19 Gervase of Canterbury, i, 214-15.
20 Materials, iii, 448-51 (tr. Greenaway, 129-30; Hutton, 202-4), vii, 161-7.
21 Gervase of Canterbury, i, 219.
22 Polydore Vergil, 215-16.
23 Roger-Benedict, i, 6.
24 Materials, iii, 465-7 (tr. Greenaway, 136-7).
26 Roger-Benedict, i, 6-7.
26 Ibid, i, 9.
27 Materials, iii, 114(0:. Greenaway, 140).
28 Materials, ii, 429.
29 Arnulf of Lisieux, 122-3 (tr. EHD, 770-1, part in Greenaway, 161).

7; The Western Edge of the World

Sources: Brut y Tywysogion, 188-207, 210-19; Gerald, Opera, v, 227-88, 316
(tr. EHD, 776-7), vi, 62, 130, 137-43, 227; Gervase of Canterbury, i,
233-7; Materials, vii, 440-85; Ralph de Diceto, i, 346-53; Robert of
Torigni, 249-52; Roger-Benedict, i, 14-30; Roger Howden, ii, 18-35;
Song of Dermot, 19-203, 209-17; William of Newburgh, 165-9 (chronol¬
ogy confused).
Secondary Authorities: Boussard, 458-69; Eyton, 153-69; Green, 154-69;
Kelly, 176-7; Norgate, England under the Angevins, ii, 82-119, 12.8—34;
Orpen, i, 80 ff., ii, 1-110; A. L. Poole. From Domesday Book to Magna
Carta, ch. ix; Salzmann, 101-21; Warren, 33-7.

1 Robert of Torigni, 249; Boussard, 460.

2 Recueil des Historiens, xiii, 679; Vasiliev, Byzantinischer Zeitschrift, 29,
1929-30, 233 ff.
3 Voss, 130.
4 On the Welsh expeditions see Brut y Tywysogion, 188-207, 210-19 and
Gerald, Itinerarium and Descriptio Kambriae in Opera vi.
6 Gerald, Opera, vi, 62.
6 Brut y Tywysogion, 212-15.
7 See chapter IV, note 9.
8 Orpen, i, 254. *
9 Ibid., i, 261.
10 Gerald, Opera, v, 281-3, glves the text of the Constitutions.
11 Gerald, Opera, vi, 287-8.
12 Roger-Benedict, i, 162-5.
13 Ibid., i, 339.
 NOTES 269

<S: The Great Rebellion

Sources: Chroniques de St Martial, 58; Gerald, Opera, viii, 163-5; Gervase of
Canterbury, i, 237-51; Histoire de Guillaume le Marshal, i, 2079-384, iii,
30-5; Holyrood, 153, 156-8; Jordan Fantosme (part repeated in EHD,
374-6); Materials, vii, 471-516; Melrose, 40; Ralph de Diceto, 351-98;
Recueil des Chroniques, 139; Recueil des Historiens, xii, 442-3 (Geoffrey
of Vigeois); Robert of Torigni, 253-66; Roger-Benedict, i, 30-81; Roger
Howden, ii, 35-69; Williamof Newburgh, 170-98.
Secondary Authorities:Boussard, 469-88; Brooke, English Church and the
Papacy, 211, ff.; Eyton, 169-85; Foreville, 329-72, 389-401; Green, 170-
84; Hodgson, 21-49; Kelly, 178-88; Lebreton; Michel; Norgate, England
under the Angevins, ii, 79-81, 134-68; Richard the Lionheart, 13-17;
Painter, 30-6; Richard, 169-80; Richardson and Sayles, 309-12; Salzmann,
122-44; Wolf, 85.
Articles: Boussard, Bibliotheque de I’Ecole des Chartres CVI, 1945-6, 203-10.
Brooke, Cambridge Historical Journal, II, 1926-8, 213-28.
M. Cheney, EHR LVI, 1941, 177-97.
Gray, EHR LXVII, 1952, 481-509.
Johnson, EHR LU, 1937, 465-7.
Lapsley, EHR, XXI, 1906, 509-13.
4
1 Materials, vii, 481-2, 501-2, 506-8.
2 Materials, vii, 513-16 (De reconciliatione regis).
8 See Lebreton’s pamphlet for the exact details of the ceremony and the
evidence about it.
4 Johnson, EHR LU, 1937, 465-7.
8 Materials, vii, 519.
6 Gerald, Opera, vii, 170-2; Ralph Niger, 168.
7 Materials, vii, 519.
8 Foreville, 373-88; Richardson and Sayles, 294-5, 357-8. Gerald’s explana¬
tion (Opera, iv, 75-6), that Henry’s absence abroad was the real reason for his
inability to interfere, scarcely holds water.
9 Brooke, English Church and the Papacy, 211; M. Cheney, EHR LVI, 1941,
177-97- -
10 Richardson and Sayles, 295-8.
11 M. Cheney, EHR LVI, 1941, 189.
18 Ibid., 191; Gray, EHR LXVII, 1952, 481-509.
13 Brooke, English Church, 212: Cambridge Historical Journal, II, 1926, 2x3-28.
14 Robert of Torigni, 255.
18 Melrose, 40.
16 According to Geoffrey of Vigeois (Recueil des Historiens, xii, 442), Raymond
of Toulouse had also encouraged Richard and Eleanor to revolt against Henry.
17 Richard had held'Aquitaine since 1170, apparently at his mother’s wish
(Recueil des Historiens, xii, 442; Geoffrey of Vigeois).
270 HENRY PLANTAGENET

18 Ralph de Diceto, i, 371.

19 Michel’s pamphlet covers the events of these two years in good detail but
without valuations of evidence: Norgate, England under the Angevins, ii,
13 5 -67 is reliable on dubious points of chronology.
20 Robert of Torigni, 259.
21 Ralph de Diceto, i, 377-9 is the most reliable authority for the details of
this episode.
22 Jordan Fantosme gives a full description of the Scottish campaign.
28 Jordan Fantosme, 365-73; Williamof Newburgh, 188.
24 Roger Howden, ii, 64.
26 William of Newburgh, 198; Roger-Benedict, i, 96-9.
28 Gervase of Canterbury, i, 293.

9: The Years of Peace

Sources: Adam of Eynsham, 62-3, 73-4, 85-6; Chroniques de St Martial, 188;
Gerald, Opera, viii, 166-87, 293; Gervase of Canterbury, i, 251-95; Histoire
de Guillaume le Marshal, i, 2385-3424; Meaux, 209; Pound, 42; Ralph
de Diceto, i, 398-440, ii, 3-6, Hi, 35-44; Recueil des Historiens, xiii, 683
(Anonymous of Laudun); Robert of Torigni, 266-91; Roger-Benedict, i,
81-251, 263-6; Roger Howden, ii, 71-201; William of Newburgh, 203-23.
Secondary Authorities: Boussard, 489-583; Cartellieri, 1-36; Eyton, 185-237;
Green, 184-9; Haskins, Norman Institutions, 175 ff; Henderson, 39-45;
Hodgson, 49-58; Kelly, 189-202; Norgate, England under the Angevins,
ii, 169-119: Richard the Lionheart, 17-39; Painter, 36-46; Richard, 180-
202; Salzmann, 145-58.
Articles: Boussard, Bibliotheque de I’Ecole des Chartcs CVI, 1945-6, 210-12.
Haskins, EHRXXVI, 1911,433-47, 641-65.
Vasiliev, Byzantinischer Zeitschrift, 29, 1933.

1 Thomas, 133-5 (author’s translation).

2 Dante, Inferno, Canto, XXVffl, 118-42.
8 Roger-Benedict, i, 92-3.
4 A. L. Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 33-4.
6 Gervase of Canterbury, i, 256; Meaux, 209; Gerald, Opera, viii, 232.
6 Richardson and Sayles, 439“44- (See Appendix II.) The text is given in
Roger-Benedict, i, 108-11; Roger Howden, ii, 89-91. Other treatments of
the subject (e.g. Bousard, 494-510), while of value on details are unreliable
because they accept without question on the view put forward by Stubbs of
the relationship between the Clarendon and Northampton assizes. Even
though Richardson and Sayles may not have had the last word on the sub¬
ject, it is unlikely that the earlier theory will be reinstated.
7 Roger-Benedict, i, 114.
8 Ibid., i, 116.
9 Ibid., i, 116-17, 120, 127; Ralph de Diceto, i, 408, 414, 417-20.
10 Brown, EHR LXXIV, 1959,249-80.
NOTES 271
11 Ralph deDiceto, i, 415-16.
18 Vasiliev, Byzantinischer Zeitschrift, 29, 1929-30, 233 ff. News of Manuel
Comnenus’ defeat was probably brought by a second embassy in 1177.
13 Roger-Benedict, i, 139-54.
14 Robert of Torigni, 282-3; Rigord, 10-11.
18 Gervase of Canterbury, i, 293.
18 Recueil des Historiens, xiii, 683 (Anonymous of Laudun); ‘Henry' is of
course the young king.
17 Gerald, Opera, viii, 293.

10: Absalom
Sources: Chroniques de St Martial, 60, 190; Gerald, Opera, viii, 188-93;
Gervase of Canterbury, i, 295-305; Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, i,
3,425-7,174, iii, 44-84; Walter Map, 139-40 (tr. Tupper and Ogle, 178-80);
Melrose, 43; Monastic Annals, i, 52 (Tewkesbury); Pound, 43; Ralph de
Diceto, ii, 7-20; Recueil des Historiens, xviii, 212-18 (Geoffrey of Vigeois);
Rigord, 22-36; Robert of Torigni, 294-308; Roger-Benedict, i, 269-304;
Roger Howden, ii, 253-81; Smythe, 78-9; Thomas Agnellus.
Secondary Authorities: Boussard, 533-45; Cartellieri, 37-140, 190-218; Eyton,
237-52; Green, 209-10; Henderson, 45-51; Hodgson, 58—81; Kelly, 203-
23; Moore, 25-47; Norgate, England under the Angevins, 219-28: Richard
the Lionheart, 39-56; Painter, 46-56; Richard, 202-22; Salzmann, 158-61.
Articles: A. L. Poole, Deutsches Archiv fur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 2, 1938,
129-48.
1 Gervase of Canterbury, i, 294; Ralph de Diceto, ii, 7; Boussard, 535-6.
3 Ralph de Diceto, ii, 12; Roger-Benedict, i, 282-3.
8 Roger-Benedict, i, 269.
4 The exactness of Roger Howden’s text (Roger-Benedict, i, 278) and dating
has been questioned by Richardson and Sayles (439, n. 3) but without any
definite conclusion.
8 Gerald, Opera, viii, 190-3; Gervase of Canterbury, i, 298-9; Ralph de
Diceto, ii, 10.
6 Gerald, Opera, viii, 189-90.
7 A. L. Poole, Deutsches Archiv fur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 2, 1938,
129-38.
8 Walter Map, 139 (tr. Tupper and Ogle, 178-9).
9 Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, i, 2637-95, iii, 37 (tr. Powicke, EHR
XXn, 1906, 40).
10 Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, i, 5711-5848, iii, 70-2.
11 Thomas, 16-17 (author’s translation).
12 Recueil des Historiens, xviii, 212-8 (Geoffrey of Vigeois); Chroniques de
St Martial, 60, 190.
18 William of Newburgh, 233-4 0*- EHD, 360-1); Walter Map, 139 (tr.
Tupper and Ogle, 178-9); Thomas Agnellus, 265-7.
272 HENRY PLANTAGENET

14 Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, i, 6572-6984, iii, 80-1.

18 Thomas, 28-30 (author’s translation).
18 Thomas Agnellus, 267-73.
17 Roger-Benedict, i, 301.
18 Histoire de Guillaume le Marshal, i, 7038-7155, iii, 82-3.
19 Walter Map, 139 (tr. Tupper and Ogle, 179).

11: They that take the Sword . . .

Sources: Gerald, Opera, iv, 368-71, viii, 203-97 (part tr. EHD, 382-5), 304-9
(viii, 261, 312-13, tr. Autobiography, 106, 110-11); Gervase of Canterbury,
i, 308-449 (chiefly on Canterbury affairs); Guillaume Lebreton, i, 182-90,
ii, 59-94; Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, i, 7302-9432, iii, 85-120;
Holyrood, 170; Melrose, 45-9; Ralph de Diceto, ii, 21-65; Rigord, 40-
96; Robert of Torigni, 309-15 (ends 1186); Roger-Benedict, i, 304-61,
ii, 3-71 (ii, 67-71, tr. EHD, 377-9); Roger Howden, ii, 282-367; William
of Newburgh, 234-79 (chs. xiii-xiv, xxiii-xxvi, tr. EHD, 364-71).
Secondary Authorities: Boussard, 546-82; Cartellieri, 140-90, 219-315; Eyton,
253-298; Green, 210-224; Henderson, 51-74; Kelly, 224-46; Norgate,
England under the Angevins, ii, 229-72; Richard the Lionheart, 56-90;
Painter, 56-73; Richard, 223-53; Salzmann, 161-74.
Articles: Boussard, Bibliotheque de I’Ecole des Chartes CVI, 1945-6, 214-17;
Grundmann, Deutsches Archiv fur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 5, 1941-2,
472-80.
Hubert, Bibliotheque de I’Ecole des Chartes XCVI, 1935, 285-300.
1 Roger-Benedict, i, 304-5.
9 Richardson and Sayles (444-6) suggest that this assize was probably drafted
as early as 1166.
* Gervase of Canterbury, i, 3 x 3-25.
4 Gerald, Opera, viii, 200-12; Roger-Benedict, i, 328-33; 335-6, 338;
Ralph de Diceto, ii, 32-3; William of Newburgh, 244-7 (tr. EHD, 382).
5 Pipe Roll 32 Henry II, 1185-6.
* Rotuli Normanniae, no.
7 Melrose, 45.
* Holyrood, 170; Roger-Benedict, i, 351.
9 Roger-Benedict, i, 350; Ralph de Diceto, ii, 41; Rigord, 20.
10 Gerald, Opera, viii, 176.
11 Hubert, Bibliothlque de I’Ecole des Chartes XCVI, 1935, 285-300; Rigord,
79-80.
19 Gerald, Opera, viii, 233.
18 Roger-Benedict, ii, 30.
14 Guillaume Lebreton, 189.
18 Roger-Benedict, ii, 160.
NOTES *73
18 Anonymous of B^thune, quoted in J. Balteau, Dietionnairc de Biographic Franfaise
(Paris, 1936) 2, 64-5.
17 The chronology of Henry’s last days is perhaps more complex than that of
any other period of his life, and has therefore been treated in full in Appendix
m.
18 Gerald, Opera, viii, 296 (tr. BHD, 384).
19 Gerald, Opera, iv, 370-1.
20 Gerald, Opera, viii, 296 (tr. BHD, 384).
81 Ibid.
88 Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, i, 9x13-61.
88 Histoire de Guillaume le Marshal, i, 9244-9409; Gerald, Opera, viii,
304-5 (tr. BHD, 384).
INDEX
ABELARD, 13 Bernard of Clairvaux. 24, 34, 40, 45, 48
Adela of Louvain, wife of Henry I, 20 Bernard de la Coudre, 134-5
Adelard of Bath, 33, 72 Bemart de Ventadom, 69
Adrian IV, pope, 8, 71-2, 97, 151 Berry, 143, 195-7. 225-6
Alencon, 170, 172, 229-30 Bertran de Bom, 188, 201, 209
Alexander HI, pope, 97-8, no, 121-2, Berwick, 176
125-9, 134-43. 149. 160-5, 168 Bologna, 13, 69-70
Alfonso, king of Castile, 194-5, 232 Bordeaux, 88
Alice of France, 65, 67, 134, 195-7, 215, Bourges, 143, 195
223, 227-8, 231 Bristol, 28, 33, 50
Alnwick, 176, 178-9 Brittany, 65, 81, 92, 95,99,124,130,133-4,
Amalric I, king of Jerusalem, 60 139, 146, 170, 174, 186, 194, 197, 205
Amboise, 94, 98, 143, 172, 227 Bur-le-Roi, 137, 186
Amesbury, 64, 163 Bury St Edmunds, 52, 190
Angers, n, 23,27,34,62,65,147,210,222,
230
Anjou, 11,17, 22, 23, 25, 34, 39, 42-3, 65, CAEN, 62, 65, 94, 99, 138, 162, 168, 186,
68, 77, 81, 87-8, 99, 134, 172, 197, 212 205
Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, 113, 116 Cahors, 96, 227
Aquitaine, 17, 45, 54, 76-7, 87, 134, 170, Canon Law, 16, 69, 106-8, 164-5
172, 194, 218 Canterbury, 54, 103, 179, 195, 199, 203
Argentan, 26, 132-4, 143-5. 148, 153, 170, archbishops of, see Theobald, Thomas
197 Becket, Richard of Dover, Baldwin
Aristotle, 14 see of, 105, 121, 126, 142, 216
Arms, Assizes of, 202-3 Carlisle, 37, 176, 219
Amulf, bishop of Lisieux, 75, 110, 127-8, Carrouges, 27, 30
146 Cashel, Council of (1172), 154-5
Arques, 34, 40, 61, 173 Castile, 14, 69, 194, 195
Arthurian literature, 16, 33, 62, 73 Castillon, 99
Aumale, 26, 72, 218, 225 Chartres, 33, 72
Auvergne, 130, 196-7 Chateau du Loir, 42
Avice de Stafford, 66 Chateauroux, 221-2, 225, 227
Avicenna, 14 Chaumont-en-Vexin, 98, 130, 143
Avranches, 34, 93-4, 160-2, 187 Cherbourg, 94, 99, 186
Chinon, 23, 42, 49, 60, 88, 127, 169-70,
204, 222, 230-2
BALDWIN, archbishop of Canterbury, Chretien de Troyes, 74, 205
224-5 Church, Roman Catholic, 7-8, 17, 18,
Baldwin III, king of Jerusalem, 60 112-15
Baldwin V, king of Jerusalem, 216 Clairvaux, 133-4, 206
Barfleur, 49, 50, 89, 159, 187, 192, 202-3, Clarendon, 61
225 Assize of (1166), 122-3, 190, 244-5
Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter, 163 Constitutions of, 111-15, 120, 124,
Bartholomew, bishop of Tours, 232 127, 135. 161-5, 173
Basingwerk, 89 Council of (1164), 110-15, 1X9, i*43,
Battle Abbey, 84 244-5
Battle of the Standard, 28 Coinage, 90, 201-2
Bayeux, 89 Compostella, 69, 161, 170, 192, 224
Bee, 36, 99, 131 Conan IV, 92-3, 125, 146
Becket, Thomas, see Thomas Becket Constance, sister of Louis VII, 94
Bedford, 38, 51 Constance, wife of Louis VII, 98
Bedard, bishop ofNevers, 139 Criminous clerks, 106-8, 114-15
INDEX
275
Crowmarsh, 52 Geoffrey de Mandeville, 33
Crusades, 12 Geoffrey of Mayenne, 99
Second Crusade, 44 Geoffrey of Monmouth, writer, 33, 73
Third Crusade, 223-5 Geoffrey Plantagenet:
(i) the Fair, count of Anjou and Maine,
DAVID, king of Scotland, 28, 37-8, 89 father of Henry II, 20, 22, 23-4, 30-2,
34-6, 37-43, 48, 97, 209
David of Gwyneth, 150, 157
David of Huntingdon, 139, 172, 183,189 (ii) duke of Brittany, brother of Henry II,
26, 27, 42, 49, 55, 67, 87-8, 92
D6ols, 222
Dermot MacCarthy, 153 (iii) duke of Brittany, fourth son of Henry II,
Dermot MacMurrough, 152 67, 125, 139, 142, 147, 158, 170, 175,
182, 186, 189, 192, 194, 197, 199,
Devizes, 38, 51
205-8, 210-20
Dol, 99, 125, 174
Gerald of Wales, 73, 199
Domfront, 142, 218
Gervase of Tilbury, 69
Dover, 54, 60,172, 198, 221
Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, 75,86,103,
Driencourt, 34, 173
106, 109, 118, 122, 128-9, 136
Dublin, 152-5, 158
Gisors, 34, 41, 60, 91. 98, 122, 130, 132,
Dunstable, 53
168, 170, 174, 186, 201, 203, 213, 2x8,
Dursley Castle, 38
220, 223, 226
Gloucester, 37, 50-1, 86, 90, 109, 187
ELEANOR of Aquitaine, 10, 11, 16, 55, Grammont, 129, 172, 232
65-6, 69, 73, 74, 88, 90, 94, 99,122,141, Gratian, 16, 107-8, 136-9,146,164
170,183,189,205, 209, 212-13,217,219 Gravelines, 179, 181
character, 43-4 Guiomarc’h, 130,146
marriage to Louis VII, 43
divorce, 45-6
marriage to Henry II, 46-9 HASCULF de St Hilary, 169, 174
Esnecca, 10 Hawking, 58
Eu, 26, 81 Helie, uncle of Henry II, 20, 24
Eudo of Porhoet, 130,133,139,177 Henry I, 19, 20, 25, 67, 82, 113
Eugenius III, pope, 72, 84 HENRY II Plantagenet (Fitzempress,
Eustace, son of Stephen ofBlois, 30,37-8,40, Curtmantle)
50, 52 birth of, 22
Evreux, 96-7 expeditions to conquer England, 32-3,
Exchequer, 76-82 35-b, 37-9. 50-4
Dialogue on the, see Richard Fitzneale marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, 45-9
problems facing him on accession, 16-18
and Becket, chs 5-6 passim
FAIR ROSAMOND, see Rosamund
conquest of Ireland, ch 7
Clifford
and his sons, 8-11, chs 8-11 passim
Falaise, 59, 97, 123
last days of, 229-30,246-9
Treaty of (1174), 183, 189
appearance, 56
Font6vrault, 2^2-3
character and pursuits, 56-60, 63-8
Forests, 2, 58, 188-9, 214
building activities, 61-3
Fomham, battle of, 177
court of, 68-79
Foug&res, 125
Henry V, emperor of Germany, 20
Frederick Barbarossa, 64, 95, 97, 132, 147,
Henry ‘the young king’, second son of Henry
194, 203-4
II, 67, 68, 91, 92, 97-8. 103-4.129, 134,
Fr6teval, 94, 98, 141
137, 140, 142, 168-210
Fulk the Black, 23, 24
Henry (of Blois), bishop of Winchester, 28,
Fulk V, grandfather of Henry II, count of
52, 84, 86, 90,100, 103, 118-20, 149
Anjou, 20, 24 Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, 122, 194,
204, 215-16
GEOFFREY Greygown, count of Anjou, 24 Henry, earl of Essex, 89
Geoffrey of Lincoln, natural son of Henry Henry, earl of Huntingdon, 39
II, 221, 230-2 Henry of Huntingdon (historian), 72
276 HENRY PLANTAGENET

Henry of Pisa, 102 Leicester, 176, 180, 194

Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, 218 Limoges, 50, 88, 169, 208, 210
Herbert of Bosham, 119, 134 Lincoln, 28, 31, 33, 69, 92
Hilary, bishop of Chichester, 109, no, 118, Lisieux, 42-3, 48
120 Loches, 23, 65
Hubert de St Clair, 86 Loire, river, 23, 63, 81, 88, 93
Hugh Bigod, earl of Norfolk, 57, 86, 89,136, London, 3-6, 28, 31, 41, 53, 55, 64, 69, 76,
172, 176-7, 179-80, 194 103, 139, 181
Hugh (de Puiset), bishop of Durham, 69, Loudun, 42, 49, 169
178-80, 196 Louis VII, king of France, 11, 20, 30, 34,
Hugh, bishop of Lincoln (Saint), 64-5, 69, 40-1,43-6,69, 88, 91-8,115,122,124-5,
-163 130, 133-5, I4I-3, 146, 148, 162, 168,
Hugh, earl of Chester, 170, 172, 174, 182, 170-5, 180-3, 186, 192, 194-202
194. 223 Lusignan family, 133, 197, 223-4
Hugh de Lacy, 155,157-8,196
Hugh Mortimer, 86
Hugh Pierleone, cardinal, 164, 189 MAINE, n, 17, 41, 42, 65, 87, 124, 228
Hugh de St Clair, 127 Malcolm, king of Scotland, 89, 96, 125
Humbert, count of Maurienne, 147-8,168-9 Malmesbury, 50-1
Humphrey de Bohun, 39,176-7 Mantes, 49, 139, 226
Manuel Comnenus, 147, 194
Margaret of France, daughter-in-law of
INTERDICT, 8 Henry II, 91, 98, 124, 140, 196, 209, 213
Investiture contest, 112 Marie de France, 73, 205
Ireland, 10, 25, 87, 149, 151-9, 189, 196, Marlborough, 10, 183, 220
217, 220 Martel, 208-9
Isabella of Hainault, 200, 215, 222 Matilda, mother of Henry II, 10, 19, 22-3,
Islam, 11-12 27, 28, 30-3, 35, 37, 39, 44, 67, 87, 122,
Issoudun, 221, 227 125, 129, 131, 176
Italy, 69, 95, 97, 136, H7, 204 eldest daughter of Henry II, 122, 124,
Itinerant Justices, 76 204-5, 216
Matthew, Master, 33
JERUSALEM, 8, 12, 20, 64, 69, 87, 101, Matthew of Boulogne, 130, 134, 172-3
Mercenaries, 10, 31, 53, 54, 84, 93,177,226
193, 217-18, 223
Joanna, second daughter of Henry II, 193 Mirebeau, 42, 49, 88,169
Jocelin, bishop of Salisbury, no, 127, 136 Montferrand, 168-9
Jocelyn de Balliol, 127 Montferrat, 128
Montlucon, 143
John, fifth son of Henry II, 18, 67,142,147,
Montmartre, 138, 141, 199
157-9, 168-9, 183, 194. 215-17, 220-1,
229-21, 235-6 Montmirail, 134-5, 142
John of Anagni, 228 Montrelais, 23
John of Belmeis, 69 Montreuil-Bellay, 23-4, 40-1
John of Marmoutier, 72 Montrichard, 23
John of Oxford, 128, 143 Montsoreau, 24, 49
John of Salisbury, 44, 72, 74, 87 Mont St Michel, 93, 125
John the Marshal, 116, 120, 137 Mortain, 26, 32, 96, 133, 172
Jordan Fantosme, historian, 72 Moulins, 49, 94

KNIGHTS Hospitaller, 214, 223 NANTES, 88, 93, 99, 139

Knights Templar, 64,92,98, no, 161,163, Navarre, 14, 69, 194-5
223, 236 Neaufles, 34, 61, 91, 98
Neufmarch6, 49, 54, 61, 91-2, 98
Newcastle, 60, 176, 179
LE LIGET, 65,163 Newstead, 163
Le Mans, 22, 42-3, 62, 98, 174, 202, 209, Nicholas Breakspear, see Adrian IV
229-30 Niort, 61
INDEX
277
Normandy, n, 25-$, 30, 31-2, 34. 39, 54, Richard (of Poitiers), bishop of Winchester,
77, 81-3, 88, 149, 168, 197 164
Northampton, 57, 89,109,116,188,190-2 Richard (Strongbow), earl of Clare, 152-3,
Assize of, (1176), 190-2, 244-5 .155-6
Council of, (1164), 116-21, 125 Richard, earl of Chester, 136
Nottingham, 51, 60, 183 Richard Anesty, 75
Richard Fitz-Neale, 15, 73, 214
Richard of Hastings, 64,136
OTHO, cardinal, 129-32 Richard du Hommet, 39, 65, 75, 124, 141
Owain of Gwyneth, 88-9, 150 Richard of Ilchester, 75, 78, 127
Oxford, 1, 12, 32-3, 53, 71, 84, 157, 196, Richard de La Haye, 39
201 Richard de Lucy, 65, 75, 77, 84, 102, 127,
130, 136, 176-7, 179, 188, 193, 198
Robert, duke of Normandy, 19, 67
PACY, 49, 133, 226 Robert, earl of Gloucester, 19, 27, 28, 31-3,
Palestine, 125, 223 36
Paris, 13,14,40-1,69-71,92,138,172,196, Robert, earl of Leicester, 51, 65, 75, 78, 82,
199, 219-20 84, no, 120, 122
Paschal, anti-pope, 122 son of above, 172, 176-7, 180,193
Patrick, earl of Salisbury, 133 Robert de Courcy, 39
Pembroke, 151-3 Robert FitzBemard, 153,155
Peter of Blois, 73 Robert FitzStephen, 152-4, 157
Peter of Saintes, 27 Robert de Neufbourg, 39, 65, 78, 92, 97
Peter of Seilun, 224 Robert de Torigni, 72
Philip, count of Flanders, 172-3, 186-7, Rocamadour, 142, 208
193-5, 198-206, 215, 22i, 230 Rochester, 57, 105
Philip Augustus, king of France, 9, 11, 18, Roger (de Pont l’Evfeque), archbishop of
4 65, 124, 198-206, 213-31 York, 104, 109, 115, 119, 126, 129, 140,
Philip de Brois, 107 202, 219
Pleas of the crown, 76 Roger, earl of Gloucester, 33, 36,176,188-9
Poitiers, 46, 48, 95, 193 Roger, earl of Hereford, 37-8, 86
Poitou, 46,123,129,195,198, 201,205-10, Roger, earl of Warwick, 82
213 Roger Howden, historian, 72-3
Pontigny, 121, 26-7, 129 Roger de Mowbray, 178-80, 194
Portsmouth, 139, 159, 187, 203 Roger Malchat, 231-2
Rome, 41, 69, 85, 128-9,157, 161
Rory O’Connor, 152, 154, 157
RALPH de Deols, 195, 197 Rosamund Clifford (Fair Rosamond), 62,
Ralph de Diceto, historian, 171 66- 7
Ralph of Foug£res, 99, 174 Rotrou, archbishop of Rouen, 75, 127, 129,
Ranulf, earl of Chester, 28, 37-8, 52, 84 139, 141, 146, 160, 162
Ranulf de Broc, 127 Rotrou of Mortain, 94
Ranulf Glanville, 16, 65, 73, 77-8, 179-80, Rouen, 20, 22, 34-5, 39, 87-8, 94, 99,131,
205, 212, 214*, 220-r 138, 172-4, 181-2, 186, 196, 209
Raymond, count of Antioch, 44 Rufinus, 114
Raymond, count of Barcelona, 95-6, 134
Raymond, count 0 * Toulouse, 168-9
Raymond le Gros, 157 ST BERNARD, see Bernard of Clairvaux
Reginald, earl of Cornwall, 120,176-7,192 St Hugh, see Hugh, bishop of Lincoln
Reginald de St Valdry, 39, 104 St Davids, 150, 156
Rhuddlan, 89, 150 Saladin, 12, 216
Rhys ap Griffith, 90, 149-51,159,187, 215 Salerno, 13, 69
Richard, third son of Henry II, 65,67,68,95, Saracens, 125,161
134, 142, 169, 170, 1^5, 182, 186, 189, Saumur, 228, 230
192, 205-32, 234-5 Saxons, 6-7,16
Richard (of Dover), archbishop of Canter¬ Scutage, 94-5, 102
bury, 164, 187 Sens, 121, 129, 131
 278 HENRY PLANTAGENET
Sheriffs, 76, 105 Walter of Coutances, 75, 214, 220-1, 226
Sicily, 69, 196 Warin Fitzgerald, 39
Simon of Apulia, 75 Wark, 176, 178
Simon of Mont Dieu, 134-5 Warkworth, 176, 178
Southampton, 10, 89, 99,123, 180, 219 Waterford, 153-5
Spain, 14, 43, 69, 161 Westminster, 61, 108, no, 165, 180, 187,
Stephen, king of England, 25, 27, 28-33, 194-5, 198
36-7, 41-3, 50-5, 82-6, 93, 100-1, 107, Wexford, 152-5
112 White Ship, sinking of, 19
Stephen of Toumai, 114 William I, king of England, 26, 105, 113
Stephen of Tours, 214 William II, king of England, 25
Strongbow, see Richard, earl of Clare William, brother of Henry II, 26, 27, 55, 87,
Suger, abbot of St Denis, 34, 45 116
William, son of Flenry I, 19
William, eldest son of Henry II, 54, 91, 104
THAMES, river, 1, 4, 51-2 William, archbishop of Sens, 141, 143, 145,
Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, 50, 52, 160-2, 173, 182
55. 83-4. 99, 140 William VIII, duke of Aquitaine, 94
Theobald, count of Blois, 30, 31, 46, 49, William IX, duke of Aquitaine, 43
94-8, 115, 143, 146, 172-3, 182, 199 William (the Lion), king of Scotland, 125,
Theobald, count of Champagne, 130 139, 172, 176, 178-83, 189, 215, 219
Thierry, count of Flanders, 34, 54-5, 87-8, William, king of Sicily, 193
128 William of Aumale, 33, 85
Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, 7, William of Conches, 33, 72
16, 18, 50, 57, 64, 66-8, 70-4, 77, 83-4, William Clito, nephew of Henry II, 19, 22,
91-2, 94, 96,100-3, 105-45, 199, 203 25.
in exile, 121-43 William d’Estuteville, 179
murder of, 144, 147-8, 161 William of Eynsford, 106
Thomas Brown, 69, 74 William Fitzaudelin, 155, 157
Thomas FitzBemard, 127 William Fitzralph, 78, 2x4
Thouars, 93, 125 William Fitzstephen, 5, 1x9
Torigny, 40, 54-5 William the Marshal, 68, 133, 197, 205-6,
Tostes de St Omer, 64 209, 226-7, 229-32
Toulouse, 43,94-6,129,147,197,219,222, William of Newburgh, historian, 240-1
224, 226 William Patrick, earl of Salisbury, 170, 174
Tournaments, 71, 205-6 William of Pavia, cardinal, 129-32
Tours, 23, 46, 230-1 William Taillefer, 129
Tutbury, 51, 84 William of Trihan, 232
William de Vescy, 179
William de Vere, 39
URBAN Ul, pope, 158 William of Warenne, 52-3, 89, 96
William of Ypres, 85
Winchester, 28, 52,60,64, 87, 89,139,159,
VACARIUS, 69 189, 196, 203, 214
Vemeuil, 54, 173-4 Council of (1136), 27
Vernon, 54 Treaty of (1153), 52-3, 84
Vexin, 34, 41, 49, 54, 91, 99,213, 226 Windsor, 60, 157, 190, 193, 198, 216
V6zelay, 127, 137 Wissant, 87, 221
Victor IV, anti-pope, 97-8, 110 Witham, 64-5, 69, 163
Vivian, cardinal, 136-9, 146 Woodstock, 61—2, 66, 106, no, 188, 197,
219
Worcester, 90, 215
WACE, 73
Waleran of Meulan, 82
Wales, 25, 26, 81, 88-91, 104, 122, 149, YORK, 38
151, 157, 212, 215 see of, 100, 108
1
«
r

i
■I

*
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V
(continued from front flap)

sons by Henry were each given title to some of

Henry's huge holdings in France, but Henry
continually denied them any actual authority
over these lands. Eleanor encouraged her sons'
discontent, and supported their rebellion, ally¬
ing herself with her former husband—the
Capetian king, Louis VII. She spent twelve
years in confinement for her part in these failed
uprisings, but lived to see her third son, Richard
(later called The Lion-Hearted) succeed to the
throne upon Henry's death in 1189.

During the reign of Henry II, England was able

to wrest control of several of its northern coun¬
tries away from Scotland. In addition, Henry
widened the scope and fairness of royal justice
by creating a system of formal writ, and initi¬
ating trial by jury. These, plus his resolution of
church-state conflicts, must be seen as his pri¬
mary contributions to the growth of the English
nation-state. An equally enduring, if smaller,
contribution was his minting of a new coin—
the penny!

Richard Barber's Henry Plantagenet is a model

for all good biography. It combines a wealth of
informantion about its subject with a deep
knowledge of the political and social history of
the period. It is solid in its scholarship and
shrewd in its judgements. It is also, unlike many
other medieval histories, crisply and spirited¬
ly written.

Jacket art: Tomb slab ofGeoffroy Plantagenet, c.1150.

Le Mans, Musee de Tesse
By arrangement with Art Resource.

Barnes
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NEW YORK
 From

HENRY PLANTAGENET

"Henry had waited to take the cas¬

tle BEFORE GOING TO BARFLEUR,

WHERE CONTRARY WINDS DELAYED HIM

FOR A MONTH. He LANDED IN HIS NEW

KINGDOM ON DECEMBER 8, 1154,

ACCOMPANIED BY ELEANOR AND HIS

BROTHERS, GEOFFREY AND WILLIAM,

AND HASTENED TO LONDON. THERE, ON

the Sunday before. Christmas,

December 19, he was crowned by

Archbishop Theobald according to

THE ANCIENT RITUAL OF THE REALM. At

TWENTY-ONE, HENRY PLANTAGENET

was king of England, duke of

Normandy and Aquitaine, count of

Anjou and Maine, and the greatest

RULER IN THE WESTERN WORLD."

ISBN 1-56619-363-X
90000