Part 19

Three years before, he had wrung from the Pope--then blockaded in Rome by the Imperial troops, and in the last extremity of peril--a brief authorizing young Henry’s coronation by the archbishop of York, in default of the absent primate of all England.[300] In face of a mass of earlier and later rescripts from Alexander’s predecessors and Alexander himself, all strenuously confirming the exclusive privileges of Canterbury, Henry had never yet ventured to make use of this document; like Adrian’s bull for the conquest of Ireland, it had been kept in reserve for a future day; and that day had now come. In vain did Thomas proclaim his threatened interdict;[301] in vain did the Pope ratify it;[302] in vain did both alike issue prohibitions to all the English bishops against the act which they knew to be in contemplation.[303] The vigilance of the justiciars, quickened by a fresh set of stringent injunctions sent over by the king in the previous autumn,[304] made the delivery of letters from either primate or Pope so difficult that Thomas at last could intrust it to no one but a nun, Idonea, whom he solemnly charged with the duty of presenting to Roger of York the papal brief in which the coronation was forbidden.[305] The ceremony was fixed for Sunday, June 14. A week before that date young Henry, who with his girl-bride Margaret of France had been left at Caen under the care of his mother and Richard of Hommet the constable of Normandy, was summoned to join his father in England.[306] On S. Barnabas’s day the bishops and barons assembled at Westminster in obedience to the royal summons;[307] on Saturday, the 13th, the Pope’s letter was at last forced upon the archbishop of York;[308] but none the less did he on the following morning crown and anoint young Henry in Westminster abbey; while Gilbert of London, who had managed to extort conditional absolution in the Pope’s name from Archbishop Rotrou of Rouen,[309] once more stood openly by his side in the foremost rank of the English bishops.[310]

[300] Ep. cccx. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi. pp. 206, 207). See the editor’s note as to the date.

[301] Epp. dclxxviii.–dclxxxiii. (_ib._ vol. vii. pp. 320–325).

[302] Epp. dcxxviii.–dcxxx. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. pp. 210–214).

[303] Epp. dcxxxii., dcxxxiii., dcxlviii.–dcli. (_ib._ pp. 216, 217, 256–264). Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 462, puts this interdict too late.

[304] The “ten ordinances”; Ep. dxcix. (_ib._ vol. vii. pp. 147–149); Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), pp. 53–55; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 214–216; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 231–236; on the date see Bishop Stubbs’s note at last reference.

[305] Ep. dclxxii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. pp. 307–309). See the editor’s note.

[306] Ep. dclxxiii. (_ibid._), pp. 309, 312.

[307] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 5.

[308] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 103.

[309] _Ibid._ Epp. dclviii.–dclx. (_ib._ vol. vii. pp. 275–277).

[310] Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above), p. 103; _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 5; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs) vol. i. p. 219. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 338, Chron. Mailros, a. 1170, Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 4, Chron. S. Serg. a. 1169 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 150), all give different dates, and all wrong.

The elder king only waited to see the tenants-in-chief, with the king of Scots at their head, swear fealty to his new-made colleague ere he hurried back to Normandy to meet the fast-gathering storm.[311] Louis, incensed that his daughter’s husband should have been crowned without her, was already threatening war;[312] Thomas, seeing in the king’s action nothing but the climax of Canterbury’s wrongs, was overwhelming the Pope with complaints, reproaches, and intreaties for summary vengeance upon all who had taken part in the coronation; and the majority of the cardinals strongly supported his demands.[313] Henry saw that he must make peace at any price. Two days before the feast of S. Mary Magdalene he held a conference with Louis near Fréteval, on the borders of the Vendômois and the county of Chartres;[314] they were reconciled, and as they parted Henry said jestingly to the French king: “That rascal of yours, too, shall have his peace to-morrow; and a right good peace shall it be.”[315] At dawn on S. Mary Magalene’s day[316] he met Thomas in the “Traitor’s Meadow,”[317] close to Fréteval; they rode apart together, and remained in conference so long that the patience of their followers was all but exhausted, when at last Thomas was seen to dismount and throw himself at the king’s feet. Henry sprang from his horse, raised the archbishop from the ground, held his stirrup while he remounted, and rode back to tell his followers that peace was made, on terms which practically amounted to a complete mutual amnesty and a return to the state of affairs which had existed before the quarrel.[318]

[311] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 6. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 220. Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 83. Henry landed at Barfleur about Midsummer; _Gesta Hen._ as above.

[312] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

[313] Ep. dccvii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. pp. 373, 374).

[314] “In limitibus suis inter Firmitatem, oppidum scilicet in pago Carnotensi, et Fretivalle, castrum videlicet in territorio Turonensi.” Ep. dclxxxv. (_ibid._), p. 339. This _Firmitas_ must be La Ferté-Villeneuil, and _Turonensi_ should be _Vindocinensi_. Herb. Bosh., who lays the scene “in confinio Carnotusiæ et _Cenomanniæ_, inter duo castella quorum unum nominatur Viefui” [Viévy-le-Rayé] “et alterum Freteval” (_ib._ vol. iii. p. 466), is no nearer to the true geography.

[315] “Et crastinâ die habebit pacem suam latro vester; et quidem bonam habebit.” Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 108.

[316] Ep. dclxxxv. (_ib._ vol. vii.), p. 340.

[317] Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 466. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 461.

[318] Epp. dclxxxiv., dclxxxv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.), pp. 326–334, 340–342. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 108–111. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 466. Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 150, 151. _Thomas Saga_ (as above), pp. 461–465.

Henry had no sooner returned to Normandy than he fell sick almost to death; on his recovery he went on a pilgrimage to the shrine of our Lady at Rocamadour in the Quercy,[319] and it was not until October that Thomas again saw him at Tours, on his way to a conference with Count Theobald of Blois at Amboise.[320] A difficulty had arisen about the restitution of the confiscated Church property and the absolution of the persons whom Thomas had excommunicated, each party insisting that the other should make the first step in conciliation.[321] There was also a difficulty about the kiss of peace, which Thomas required as pledge of Henry’s sincerity, but which Henry seemed desirous of postponing indefinitely.[322] Nevertheless, a letter from Henry to his son, announcing the reconciliation and bidding the young king enforce the restoration of the archiepiscopal estates, was drawn up in Thomas’s presence at Amboise and sent over to England by the hands of two of his clerks,[323] who presented it at Westminster on October 5.[324] The restoration was, however, not effected until Martinmas, and then it comprised little more than empty garners and ruined houses.[325] Thomas saw the king once more, at Chaumont,[326] and Henry promised to meet him again at Rouen, thence to proceed with him to England in person.[327] Before the appointed time came, however, fresh complications had arisen with the king of France; Henry was obliged to give up all thought of going not only to England but even to Normandy, and delegated the archbishop of Rouen and the dean of Salisbury to escort Thomas in his stead.

[319] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 6, 7.

[320] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.) pp. 468, 469. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 114. Garnier (Hippeau), p. 154. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 469. The writer of the _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 8) gives the date of this meeting as Tuesday, October 12. But this must be quite ten days too late, for we shall see that a letter drawn up after the meeting was received in England on October 5.

[321] Ep. dclxxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.), pp. 333–337.

[322] Henry alleged that he had publicly sworn never to give Thomas the kiss of peace, and could not face the shame of breaking his oath. Garnier (Hippeau), p. 150; Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 450; Ep. dcxxiii. (_ib._ vol. vii.) pp. 198, 199; _Thomas Saga_, as above, p. 449. See in Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 469, Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 115, and _Thomas Saga_ (as above), p. 469, the contrivance by which he avoided it at Tours--or Amboise, in William’s version.

[323] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 156, 157. The letter, of which Garnier gives a translation, is Ep. dcxc. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.) pp. 346, 347; also in Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 85; Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 112; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 221; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 339.

[324] Ep. dccxv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.), p. 389.

[325] Ep. dccxxxiii. (_ibid._), p. 402.

[326] Chaumont on the Loire, seemingly. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 470. Cf. _Thomas Saga_, as above, pp. 471–473.

[327] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp. 115, 116.

The duty finally devolved solely upon the dean, who was no other than Thomas’s old opponent John of Oxford.[328] Naturally enough, the primate was deeply hurt at being thus sent back to his see under the protection of a man who, as he truly said, ought to have been thankful for the privilege of travelling in his suite.[329] Thomas, however, was in haste to be gone, although fully persuaded that he was going to his death. He seems indeed to have been weary of life; the tone of his letters and of his parting words to the friends whom he was leaving in France indicates not so much a morbid presentiment of his fate as a passionate longing for it. Yet it can hardly have been from him alone that the foreboding communicated itself to so many other minds. Warnings came to him from all quarters; one voice after another, from the king of France[330] down to the very pilot of the ship in which he took his passage, implored him not to go; Herbert of Bosham alone upheld his resolution to the end.[331]

[328] _Ib._ p. 116. Epp. dccxxii., dccxxiii. (_ib._ vol. vii.), pp. 400, 403. Garnier (Hippeau), p. 160.

[329] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

[330] _Ib._ p. 113.

[331] Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 472–476.

We may put aside at once all the wild talk of the archbishop’s biographers about plots against his life in which the king had a share. Even if Henry’s sudden willingness for his return was really suggested by words said to have been uttered by one of his counsellors--“Why keep the archbishop out of England? It would be far better to keep him in it”--there is no need to assume that those words bore even in the speaker’s mind, far less in that of the king, the horrible meaning which they were afterwards supposed to have covered;[332] for they were true in the most literal sense. The quarrel of king and primate would have mattered little had it been fought out on English ground; it was the archbishop’s exile which rendered him so dangerous. Thomas had dealt his most fatal blow at Henry by flying from him, and Henry, as he now perceived, had made his worst blunder in driving Thomas into France. Of the infinitely greater blunder involved in the archbishop’s murder--setting the criminal aspect of the deed altogether aside--it is enough to say that Henry was wholly incapable. The same may be said of Roger of York and Gilbert of London, although, like the king himself, they were urged by dread of the archbishop into making common cause with men of a very different stamp:--men who hated the primate with a far more intense personal hatred, and who were restrained by no considerations either of policy or of morality:--men such as Ralf de Broc, a ruffian adventurer who had served as the tool of Henry’s vengeance upon the archbishop’s kinsfolk, had resumed the custody of the archiepiscopal estates when it was resigned by Gilbert Foliot, had been for the last four years at once fattening upon the property of Thomas and smarting under his excommunication, and was ready to commit any crime rather than disgorge his ill-gotten gains.[333] It was known that Thomas had letters from the Pope suspending all those bishops who had taken part in the coronation of the young king, and replacing Gilbert of London, Jocelyn of Salisbury, and all whom Thomas had excommunicated under the sentences from which they had been irregularly released by some of the Papal envoys.[334] Gilbert, Jocelyn and Roger of York now hurried to Canterbury, intending to proceed to Normandy as soon as Thomas set foot in England; while Ralf de Broc, Reginald de Warren and Gervase of Cornhill the sheriff of Kent undertook to catch him at the moment of landing, ransack his baggage, search his person, and seize any Papal letters which he might bring with him. Thomas, however was warned; he sent the letters over before him, and the three prelates at Canterbury read their condemnation before their judge quitted Gaul.[335] Next day he sailed from Wissant, and on the morning of December 1 he landed at Sandwich.[336] His enemies were ready to receive him; but at the sight of John of Oxford they stopped short, and John in the king’s name forbade all interference with the primate.[337] Amid the rapturous greetings of the people who thronged to welcome their chief pastor, he rode on to Canterbury; there some of the royal officials came to him in the king’s name, demanding the absolution of the suspended and excommunicate bishops. Thomas at first answered that he could not annul a Papal sentence; but he afterwards offered to take the risk of doing so, if the culprits would abjure their errors in the form prescribed by the Church. Gilbert and Jocelyn were inclined to yield; but Roger refused, and they ended by despatching Geoffrey Ridel to enlist the sympathies of the young king in their behalf, while they themselves carried their protest to his father in Normandy.[338]

[332] Will Fitz-Steph. as above, pp. 106, 107.

[333] On Ralf de Broc see Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 75; Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 360; Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.) p. 65; E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 404; Epp. lxxviii. (_ib._ vol. v. p. 152), cccxli., ccccxcviii. (_ib._ vol. vi. pp. 278, 582), dccxviii., dccxxiii. (_ib._ vol. vii. pp. 394, 402). In the last place Thomas says that Ralf “in ecclesiam Dei ... per septem annos licentius debacchatus est”; and the writer of the _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 321, seems to have understood this as meaning that Ralf had had the stewardship of the Canterbury property throughout the archbishop’s exile. This, however, does not appear to have been the case. Ralf certainly had the stewardship for a short time at first; but it was, as we have seen, soon transferred to Gilbert Foliot, and only restored to Ralf when Gilbert resigned it early in 1167.

[334] Epp. dccxx., dccxxii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. pp. 397–399).

[335] Ep. dccxxiii., dccxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.), pp. 403, 410. Cf. Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), pp. 87–89; Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 117; Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 471, 472; Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 68; Anon. II. (_ibid._), p. 123; Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 161, 163. The version in _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 483, seems founded on a confusion between the delivery of these Papal letters and that which Berengar delivered in S. Paul’s on the Ascension-day of the previous year.

[336] Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above), p. 118. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._) p. 476. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 68. Garnier (Hippeau), p. 164. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 339. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 222. _Thomas Saga_ (as above), pp. 489–491. The date is from Will. Fitz-Steph., R. Diceto and the Saga; Gervase makes it November 30, and Herbert “two or three days after the feast of S. Andrew.”

[337] Will. Fitz-Steph. and Garnier, as above. Ep. dccxxiii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.), pp. 403, 404. _Thomas Saga_ (as above), p. 491.

[338] Ep. dccxxiii., dccxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.), pp. 404–406, 411, 412. Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), pp. 102–105. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 120, 121. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 480. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 497–501. Garnier (Hippeau), p. 172, erroneously thinks the censures on the bishops were not issued till Christmas-day.

The young king was preparing to hold his Christmas court at Winchester.[339] Thomas proposed to join it, but was stopped in London by a peremptory command to “go back and mind his own business at Canterbury.”[340] He obeyed under protest, and on Christmas-day again excommunicated the De Brocs and their fellow-robbers.[341] The elder king was keeping the feast at his hunting-seat of Bures near Bayeux.[342] There the three bishops threw themselves at his feet; Roger of York spoke in the name of all, and presented the Papal letters;[343] the courtiers burst into a confused storm of indignation, but not one had any counsel to offer. In his impatience and disappointment Henry uttered the fatal words which he was to rue all his life: “What a parcel of fools and dastards have I nourished in my house, that none of them can be found to avenge me of this one upstart clerk!”[344]

[339] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 166. Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 106. Anon. II. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 126. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 342, says the young king was at Woodstock when Thomas sought for an interview; he was, however, certainly at Winchester at Christmas.

[340] “Fère vostre mestier à Cantorbire alez.” Garnier (Hippeau), p. 171. Cf. Ep. dccxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.), p. 412; Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.) pp. 106–113; Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 121–123; Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 482, 483; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 13; _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 505–507.

[341] Will. Cant. (as above), p. 120. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 428. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 130. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 484, 485. R. Diceto (as above), p. 342. _Thomas Saga_ (as above), pp. 511–513.

[342] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 481. Garnier (Hippeau), p. 175. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 11. Rob. Torigni, a. 1171.

[343] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 175–177. Will. Cant. (as above), pp. 122, 123. Cf. _Thomas Saga_ (as above), pp. 501–503.

[344] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 175. Will. Cant. (as above), p. 121. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 429. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 487.

The words were hardly more than he had used at Chinon four years before, but they fell now upon other ears. Four knights--Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy, Reginald Fitz-Urse and Richard le Breton[345]--took them as a warrant for the primate’s death. That night--it was Christmas-eve[346]--they vowed to slay him, no matter how or where;[347] they left the court in secret, crossed to England by different routes,[348] and met again at Saltwood, a castle which the archbishop had been vainly endeavouring to recover from the clutches of Ralf de Broc, and where Ralf himself was dwelling amid a crowd of his kinsfolk and dependents. There the final plot was laid.[349] How it was executed is a tale which has been told so often that its details may well be spared here. On the evening of December 29, after a scene in his own hall scarcely less disgraceful than the last scene in the king’s hall at Northampton, the primate of all England was butchered at the altar’s foot in his own cathedral church.[350]

[345] In Will. Cant. (as above), pp. 128, 129, is a “descriptio spiculatorum,” in which the only point of interest is the English speech of Hugh de Morville’s mother.

[346] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 177. Will. Cant. (as above), p. 123.

[347] Garnier, as above. Will. Cant. (as above), p. 124. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 429. Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 128. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 487. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 517.

[348] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 177. Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.) p. 124, Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 130. _Thomas Saga_ as above.

[349] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above; cf. _ib._ p. 126. _Thomas Saga_, as above, pp. 517–519. Saltwood was mentioned, as a special subject for inquiry and restitution, in the king’s letter commending Thomas to his son.

[350] Will. Cant. (as above), pp. 131–135. Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), pp. 319, 320. E. Grim (_ibid._), pp. 430–438. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 132–142. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 488 _et seq._ Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 70–77. Anon. II. (_ibid._), pp. 128–132. Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 179–195. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 343, 344. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 224–227. _Thomas Saga_ as above, pp. 523–549.

The ill news travelled fast. It fell like a thunderbolt upon the Norman court still gathered round the king at Argentan,[351] whither the assembly had adjourned after the Christmas feast at Bures. Henry stood for a moment speechless with horror, then burst into a frenzy of despair, and shut himself up in his own rooms, refusing to eat or drink or to see any one.[352] In a few days more, as he anticipated, all Christendom was ringing with execration of the murder and clamouring for vengeance upon the king who was universally regarded as its instigator. The Pope ordered an interdict upon Henry’s continental dominions, excommunicated the murderers and all who had given or should henceforth give them aid, shelter or support, and was only restrained from pronouncing a like sentence upon the king himself by a promise that he would make compurgation and submit to penance.[353] Two cardinal-legates charged with the enforcement of these decrees were at once despatched to Normandy;[354] but when they arrived there, Henry was out of their reach. The death of Duke Conan in February had thrown Britanny completely into his hands; he only stayed to secure Geoffrey’s final establishment there as duke[355] before he called a council at Argentan and announced that he was going to Ireland.[356] He quitted Normandy just as the legates reached it,[357] leaving strict orders that the ports should be closed to all clerks and papal envoys, and that no one should dare to follow him without special permission.[358] Landing at Portsmouth in the first days of August,[359] he hurried to Winchester for a last interview with the dying Bishop Henry,[360] closed the English ports as he had closed those of Normandy,[361] then plunged once more into the depths of South Wales, and on October 16 sailed from Milford Haven for Waterford.[362]

[351] R. Diceto (as above), p. 345. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 14.

[352] Ep. dccxxxviii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.), p. 438. Cf. MS. Lansdown. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 159, 160, and _Gesta Hen._ as above.

[353] Epp. dccl., dccli. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. pp. 471–478).

[354] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 233. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 346. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 24.

[355] Rob. Torigni, a. 1171. Conan died February 20; Chron. Kemperleg. _ad ann._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 563). The Chron. S. Serg. a. 1169 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 150), places the event two years too early. Cf. Chron. Britann. a. 1170, 1171 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 560; Morice, _Hist. Bretagne, preuves_, vol. i. col. 104).

[356] Rob. Torigni, a. 1171.

[357] MS. Lansdown. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 169. Gerv. Cant. (as above), pp. 233, 234. The _Gesta Hen._ (as above), and Rog. Howden (Stubbs, vol. ii. pp. 28, 29) seem to imply that they arrived just before Henry left; but they are rather confused about these legates. They make two pairs of them come to Normandy this summer--first, Vivian and Gratian, who come with hostile intent, and from whom Henry runs away (_Gesta Hen._, Stubbs, vol. i. p. 24; Rog. Howden, Stubbs, vol. ii. p. 29); and secondly, Albert and Theodwine, who apparently supersede them later in the year, and whom Henry hurries to meet (_Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 29; Rog. Howden as above, p. 34). But the MS. Lansdown. (which is the fullest account of all), Gerv. Cant. and R. Diceto distinctly make only one pair of legates, Albert and Theodwine. The confusion in _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. ii. pp. 31–33, is greater still.

[358] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 24. Cf. Rog. Howden (as above), p. 29.

[359] _Gesta Hen._ as above, and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 234, say August 3; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 347, says August 6.

[360] R. Diceto as above. Bishop Henry died on August 8; _ibid._

[361] Gerv. Cant., _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden, as above.

[362] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 25.

The elements favoured his escape; for five months a persistent contrary wind hindered all communication to Ireland from any part of his dominions.[363] The bishops and the ministers were left to fight their own battles and make their own peace with the legates in Normandy until May 1172, when the king suddenly reappeared[364] to claim the papal absolution and offer in return not only his own spiritual obedience and that of his English and continental realms, but also that of Ireland, which he had secured for Rome as her share in the spoils of a conquest won with Adrian’s bull in his hand.[365] The bargain was soon struck. On Sunday May 21 Henry met the legates at Avranches, made his purgation for the primate’s death, promised the required expiation, and abjured his obnoxious “customs,” his eldest son joining in the abjuration.[366] To pacify Louis, young Henry and Margaret were sent over sea with the archbishop of Rouen and by him crowned together at Winchester on August 27;[367] and the Norman primate returned to join a great council of the Norman clergy assembled at Avranches to witness there, two days before Michaelmas, a public repetition of their sovereign’s purgation and his final absolution by the legates.[368]

[363] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 350. Gir. Cambr., _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 36 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 284).

[364] R. Diceto (as above), p. 351.

[365] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 28.

[366] Ep. dcclxxi.–dcclxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. pp. 513–522). MS. Lansdown. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 173, 174.

[367] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 31; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 34; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 237. R. Diceto (as above), p. 352, makes it August 21.

[368] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 32, 33. Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 35–37. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 238. These three are the only writers who mention this purgation in September, and they say nothing of the one in May. That it took place is however clear from the letter of the legates themselves (Ep. dcclxxiv. Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. p. 521), giving its date, “_Vocem jucunditatis_,” _i.e._ Rogation-Sunday. On the other hand, the MS. Lansdown. (_ib._ vol. iv. pp. 173, 174) mentions only one purgation, and this clearly is the earlier one, for it is placed before the re-crowning of young Henry. The explanation seems to be that this was a private ceremony between the king and the legates, with a few chosen witnesses; the legates say in their letter that Henry promised to repeat it publicly at Caen; he probably did so at Avranches instead. On the other hand, Rob. Torigni (a. 1172) says: “Locutus est cum eis primo Savigneii, postea Abrincis, tercio Cadomi, ubi causa illa finita est;” and seems to make the Michaelmas council at Avranches a mere ordinary Church synod, where moreover “obsistente regis infirmitate parum profecerunt.” To add to the confusion, Gir. Cambr. (_Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 39; Dimock, vol. v. p. 289) says the purgation was made at Coutances.

CHAPTER III.

THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND.

795–1172.

[Illustration: Map III.

IRELAND A. D. 1172.

_Ostmen’s settlements marked thus: Dublin._

Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic. London, Macmillan & Co. ]

It is in the history of the settlements formed on the Irish coast by the northern pirates in the ninth century that we must seek for the origin of those relations between England and Ireland which led to an English invasion of the latter country in the reign of Henry II. The earliest intercourse between the two islands had been of a wholly peaceful character; but it had come utterly to an end when Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne sailed back to his old home at Iona after the synod of Whitby in 664. From the hour when her missionary work was done, Ireland sank more and more into the isolation which was a natural consequence of her geographical position, and from which she was only roused at the opening of the ninth century by the coming of the wikings. In the early days of the northmen’s attack upon the British isles it was the tradition of Ireland’s material prosperity and wealth, and the fame of the treasures stored in her religious houses, that chiefly tempted the “white strangers” from the Norwegian fiords across the unknown perils of the western sea; and the settlement of Thorgils in Ulster and those of his fellow-wikings along the eastern and southern coasts of Ireland formed a chief basis for the operations of the northmen upon Britain itself. The desperate fighting of the Irish succeeded in freeing Ulster after Thorgils’s death; but by the middle of the ninth century the wikings were firmly established at four points on the Irish coast, Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick.[369] Under the leadership of Olaf the Fair, Dublin became the head of a confederacy which served as a starting-point and furnished a constant supply of forces for the Danish conquests in England;[370] and for a hundred years afterwards, throughout the struggle of the house of Ælfred for the recovery of the Danelaw, the support given by the Ostmen or wikings of Ireland to their brethren across the channel was at once the main strength of the Northumbrian Danes and the standing difficulty of the English kings.[371]

[369] On Thorgils and the wiking settlements in Ireland see _Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill_ (Todd), and Green, _Conquest of England_, pp. 66, 67, 74, 76.

[370] Green, _Conquest of England_, pp. 90, 91, 107.

[371] _Ib._ pp. 213, 242, 252–254, 270–272.

To Ireland itself the results of the wiking invasions were far more disastrous than either to Britain or to Gaul. Owing to the peculiar physical character of their country, to their geographical remoteness from the rest of Europe, and to the political and social isolation which was a consequence of these, the Irish people had never advanced beyond the primitive tribal mode of life which had once been common to the whole Aryan race, but which every European branch of that race, except the Irish, had long since outgrown. In the time of Ecgberht and of Charles the Great Ireland was still, as at the very dawn of history, peopled by a number of separate tribes or septs whose sole bond of internal cohesion was formed by community of blood;--whose social and political institutions had remained purely patriarchal in character, unaffected by local and external influences such as had helped to mould the life of England or of Gaul:--who had never yet coalesced into any definite territorial organization, far less risen into national unity under a national sovereign. The provincial kings of Ulster, Connaught, Leinster and Munster were merely the foremost chieftains among the various groups of tribes over whom they exercised an ever-shifting sway; while the supremacy of the _Ard-Righ_ or chief monarch, to whom in theory was assigned the overlordship of the whole island, was practically little more than a sort of honorary pre-eminence attached to certain chosen descendants of an early hero-king, Niall “of the Nine Hostages”; it carried with it little effective authority, and no territorial power; for the monarch’s traditional seat at Tara had long been a heap of ruins, and a tribal under-king had ousted him from the plain of Meath which in legal theory formed his royal domain.[372] Neither in the monarch himself nor in the provincial chieftains of a state thus constituted could there be found, when the storm-cloud from the north burst upon Ireland, a centre of unity even such as the peoples of Gaul found in their Karolingian sovereigns, far less such as the West-Franks found in the dukes of the French, or such as the English found in their kings of the house of Ecgberht. The stress of the northmen’s attack, which elsewhere gave a fresh impulse to the upgrowth of national life, crushed out all hope of its developement in Ireland. The learning and the civilization of ages perished when Columba’s Bangor, Bridget’s Kildare, Ciaran’s Clonmacnoise, Patrick’s own Armagh, shared the fate of Bæda’s Jarrow and Hild’s Streoneshealh, of Cuthbert’s Melrose and Aidan’s Lindisfarne; and in Ireland there was no Wessex and no Ælfred.

[372] Maine, _Early Hist. of Institutions_, lect. i.–x.; O’Donovan, Introd. to _Book of Rights_; Lynch, _Cambrensis Eversus_, with Mr. Kelly’s notes; O’Donovan, notes to Four Masters, vols. i. and ii.

On the other hand, the concentration of the wiking forces upon Britain had given to the Irish an advantage which enabled them to check the spread of wiking settlements in their country; and the failure of all attempts to establish a Scandinavian dominion in Britain destroyed all chance of a Scandinavian conquest of Ireland. The Ostmen never even gained such a footing in Ireland as the followers of Hrolf gained in Frankland: their presence never received the sanction of any Ard-Righ; they were not a compact body occupying the whole of an extensive and well-defined territory, but a number of separate groups settled here and there along the coast, and holding their ground only by sheer hard fighting against a ring of implacable foes. The long struggle may be said to have ended in a defeat of both parties. The Irish kings of Munster succeeded in establishing a more or less effective overlordship over the Scandinavian communities of Limerick and Waterford; and in 989 Malachi II., supreme monarch of Ireland, reaped his reward for nine years of desperate fighting in the submission of the Ostmen of Dublin. The city was blockaded and starved into surrender, and a yearly tribute was promised to Malachi and his successors.[373] Six years later “the ring of Tomar and the sword of Carl”--two heathen relics probably of ancient heroes, which seem to have been treasured as sacred emblems of sovereignty by the Ostmen[374]--were carried off by Malachi as trophies of another victory;[375] and in 999 or 1000 a renewal of the strife ended in a rout of the Ostmen and a great slaughter of their leaders, and Dublin was sacked and burnt by the victorious Irish.[376]

[373] Tighernach, a. 989 (O’Conor, _Rer. Hibern. Scriptt._, vol. ii. pp. 264, 265).

[374] See O’Donovan’s introduction to the _Book of Rights_, pp. xxxviii, xxxix.

[375] Tighernach, a. 995 (as above, p. 267).

[376] _Ib._ a. 998, 999 (p. 268). _Wars of Gaedhil with Gaill_ (Todd), pp. 109–117.

Malachi’s triumph, however, was gained at the cost of a disruption of the monarchy. Malachi himself was displaced by a king of the rival house of Munster, his colleague in the sack of Dublin, the famous Brian Boroimhe;[377] Brian’s career of conquest ended in 1014 on the field of Clontarf, where he was slain in battle with the men of Leinster and the Ostmen;[378] and when Malachi, who now resumed his place, died in 1022,[379] the downfall of the Irish monarchy was complete.[380] The tradition which had so long linked it to the house of Niall had been shattered by Brian’s successes; and Brian had not lived to consolidate in his own house the forces which had begun to gather around himself. Thenceforth the Scandinavian colonies simply furnished an additional element to the strife of the Irish chieftains, and to the rivalry between the O’Briens of Munster and the O’Neills of Ulster for the possession of a shadowy supremacy, claimed by the one house as descendants of Brian Boroimhe and by the other as heirs of Malachi II. and of his great ancestor Niall.

[377] Tighernach, a. 1000, 1001 (as above, pp. 269, 270). _Wars of Gaedhil with Gaill_ (Todd), p. 119. Brian’s victory was won by the help of the Ostmen, with whom he stooped to ally himself for the sake of overcoming his rival; but the alliance was only momentary. On Brian’s reign see _Wars of Gaedhil with Gaill_, pp. 119–155.

[378] _Wars of Gaedhil with Gaill_ (Todd), pp. 155–211. Four Masters, a. 1013 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp. 773–781). Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1014 (Hennessy, vol. i. pp. 1–13).

[379] Tighernach, a. 1022 (as above, p. 274). Four Masters, a. 1022 (as above, p. 800). Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1022 (as above, p. 23).

[380] “From the death of Maelseachlainn II. the legitimate monarchy of all Ireland departed from all families during seventy-two years, until the joint reigns of Muircheartach O’Briain and Domhnall MacLochlainn; during that time no Feis or general assembly, so agreeable to the people, was held, because Ireland had no supreme king.” Quoted by Mr. Kelly, note to _Cambrensis Eversus_, vol. ii. p. 38, from Gilla-Modud, an Irish poet of the twelfth century.

The social and political system of Ireland was powerless either to expel or to absorb the foreign element thus introduced within its borders. Not only was such an union of the two peoples as had at last been effected in England simply impossible in Ireland; the Irish Danelaw was parted from its Celtic surroundings by barriers of race and speech, of law and custom and institutions, far more insuperable than those which parted the settlers in the “northman’s land” at the mouth of Seine from their West-Frankish neighbours. Even the Irish Church, which three hundred years before had won half England--one might add half Europe--to the Faith, had as yet failed to convert these pagans seated at her door. At the close of the tenth century the Ostmen were still for the most part heathens in fact if not in name, aliens from whatever culture or civilization might still remain in the nation around them. Meanwhile their relations with England had wholly altered in character. The final submission of the English Danelaw to Eadred carried with it the alliance of the Irish Danelaw; it seems that the Ostmen in their turn endeavoured to strengthen themselves against the attacks of the Irish princes by securing a good understanding with the English king, if not actually by putting themselves under his protection; for the fact that Eadgar coined money in Dublin[381] indicates that his authority must have been in some way or other acknowledged there. The years of the Ostmen’s struggle with Malachi and Brian Boroimhe were the years of England’s struggle with Swein and Cnut; but the two strifes seem to have been wholly unconnected; and throughout the long peace which lasted from Cnut’s final triumph until the coming of the Normans, new ties sprang up between the Ostmen and the sister-isle. Owing to their position on the sea-coast and to the spirit of merchant enterprise which was, quite as much as the spirit of military enterprise, a part of the wiking-heritage of their inhabitants, the towns of the Irish Danelaw rose fast into importance as seats of a flourishing trade with northern Europe, and above all with England through its chief seaports in the west, Bristol and Chester. The traffic was chiefly in slaves, bought or kidnapped in England to be sold to the merchants of Dublin or Waterford, and by these again to their Irish neighbours or to traders from yet more distant lands.[382] Horrible as this traffic was, however, even while filling the Irish coast-towns with English slaves it helped to foster a more frequent intercourse and a closer relation between Ostmen and Englishmen; and the shelter and aid given to Harold and Leofwine in 1151 by Dermot Mac-Maelnambo,[383] a prince of the royal house of Leinster who had acquired the sovereignty over both Leinstermen and Danes, shews that the political alliance established in Eadgar’s day had been carefully renewed by Godwine.

[381] Green, _Conquest of England_, p. 323.

[382] Green, _Conquest of England_, pp. 440, 443, 444.

[383] See Freeman, _Norm. Conq._, vol. ii. pp. 154.

To these commercial and political relations was added soon afterwards an ecclesiastical tie. The conversion of the Ostmen to Christianity, completed in the early years of the eleventh century, was probably due to intercourse with their Christianized brethren in England rather than to the influence of the Irish clergy, whose very speech was strange to them; and their adoption of their neighbours’ creed, instead of drawing together the hostile races, soon introduced a fresh element into their strife. About the year 1040 the Ostmen of Dublin set up a bishopric of their own. Their first bishop, Donatus, was probably Irish by consecration if not by birth.[384] But when he died, in 1074,[385] the Ostmen turned instinctively towards the neighbouring island with which they had long been on peaceful terms, where the fruits of the warfare waged by generation after generation of wikings upon the shores of Britain were being reaped at last by Norman hands, where William of Normandy was entering upon the inheritance alike of Ælfred and of Cnut, and where Lanfranc was infusing a new spirit of discipline and activity into the Church of Odo and Dunstan. The last wiking-fleet that ever sailed from Dublin to attack the English coast--a fleet which Dermot Mac-Maelnambo, true to his alliance with their father, had furnished to the sons of Harold--had been beaten back six years before.[386] Since then Dermot himself was dead;[387] the Ostmen were once more free, subject to no ruler save one of their own choice and their own blood; with the consent of their king, Godred,[388] they chose a priest named Patrick to fill Donatus’s place, and sent him to be consecrated in England by the archbishop of Canterbury.[389] No scruples about infringing the rights of the Irish bishops were likely to make Lanfranc withhold his hand. At the very moment when the Ostmen’s request reached him, he had just been putting forth against the archbishop of York a claim to metropolitical jurisdiction over the whole of the British isles, founded on the words of S. Gregory committing “all the bishops of the Britains” to S. Augustine’s charge.[390] He therefore gladly welcomed an opportunity of securing for the authority of his see a footing in the neighbour-isle. He consecrated Patrick of Dublin and received his profession of obedience;[391] and for the next seventy-eight years the bishops of Dublin were suffragans not of Armagh but of Canterbury. When in 1096 the Ostmen of Waterford also chose for themselves a bishop, they too sought him beyond the sea; an Irishman, or more probably an Ostman by birth, a monk of Winchester by profession, Malchus by name, he was consecrated by S. Anselm and professed obedience to him as metropolitan.[392]

[384] That is, he was certainly not consecrated in England; Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iii. pp. 433–436. But might he not have been consecrated by some of the bishops in Scotland and the Isles, with which the Ostmen were in constant intercourse and alliance?

[385] Tighernach, a. 1074 (O’Conor, _Rer. Hibern. Scriptt._), vol. ii. p. 309. Four Masters, a. 1074 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 907).

[386] Eng. Chron. (Worc.) a. 1067, 1068; Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 2; Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 513; Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 41 (_ib._ p. 290); Freeman, _Norm. Conq._, vol. iv. pp. 225–227, 243–245, 788–790.

[387] He fell in battle with the king of Meath in 1072, according to the Four Masters _ad ann._ (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp. 901–903), and the Ann. Loch Cé (Hennessy, vol. i. p. 67). The Chron. Scot. (Hennessy, p. 291) places his death in 1069; Mr. Freeman (as above, p. 245) adopts this date.

[388] At the time of Donatus’s appointment in 1040, one Sihtric ruled in Dublin (see Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iii. pp. 434, 435)--doubtless under the overlordship of Dermot. On Dermot’s death the Ostmen flung off the Irish supremacy and took for their king, first a jarl named Godred, who died in 1072, and then another of the same name, who seems to have been already king of Man. (Freeman, as above, p. 528 and note 5). Lanfranc addresses this Godred as “King of Ireland” (Lanfranc, Ep. 43, Giles, vol. i. p. 61); and no other prince is mentioned in connexion with Patrick’s consecration. But it is plain from Lanfranc’s correspondence, if from nothing else, that Terence O’Brien was acknowledged overlord of Dublin for some time before his death (see Lanfranc, Ep. 44, _ib._ p. 62; and Lanigan, as above, p. 474 _et seq._); and he died in 1086.

[389] Lanfranc, Ep. 43 (as above, p. 61). Eng. Chron. Winch., Appendix (Thorpe, vol. i. p. 387). Cf. Lanigan, as above, pp. 457, 458.

[390] Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iii. pp. 464–466.

[391] _Ib._ p. 458. Eng. Chron. Winch., Appendix (Thorpe, vol. i. p. 387).

[392] Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), pp. 76, 77. Cf. Lanigan, as above, vol. iv. pp. 15, 16.

Through the medium of these Irish suffragans the archbishops of Canterbury endeavoured to gain a hold upon the Irish Church by cultivating the friendship of the different Irish princes who from time to time succeeded in winning from the Ostmen an acknowledgement of their overlordship. In the struggles of the provincial kings for the supreme monarchy of Ireland it was always the Ostmen who turned the scale; their submission was the real test of sovereignty. The power which had been wielded by Dermot Mac-Maelnambo passed after his death first to Terence or Turlogh O’Brien, king of Munster,[393] a grandson of Brian Boroimhe, and then to Terence’s son Murtogh.[394] Both were in correspondence with the successive English primates, Lanfranc and Anselm,[395] and both were recognized as protectors and patrons, in ecclesiastical matters at least, by the Ostmen,[396] whose adherence during these years enabled the O’Briens to hold their ground against the advancing power of Donnell O’Lochlainn, king of Aileach or western Ulster,[397] a representative of the old royal house of the O’Neills which had fallen with Malachi II. On Murtogh’s death in 1119[398] a new aspirant to the monarchy appeared in the person of the young king of Connaught, Terence or Turlogh O’Conor. A year before, Terence had won the submission of the Ostmen of Dublin;[399] in 1120 he celebrated the fair of Telltown,[400] a special prerogative of the Irish monarchs; and from the death of Donnell O’Lochlainn next year[401] Terence was undisputed monarch till 1127, when a joint rising of Ostmen and Leinstermen enabled both to throw off his yoke.[402] Meanwhile Murtogh O’Lochlainn, a grandson of Donnell, was again building up a formidable power in Ulster; at last, in 1150, all the provincial kings, including Terence, gave him hostages for peace;[403] and Terence’s throne seems to have been only saved by a sudden change in the policy of the Ostmen, whose independent action enabled them for a moment to hold the balance and act as arbitrators between northern and southern Ireland.[404] Four years later, however, they accepted Murtogh as their king,[405] and two years later still he was left sole monarch by the death of Terence O’Conor.[406]

[393] Four Masters, a. 1073–1086 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp. 905–927).

[394] _Ib._ a. 1087–1119 (pp. 929–1009).

[395] Lanfranc, Ep. 44 (Giles, vol. i. pp. 62–64); Anselm, Epp. l. iii., Epp. cxlii., cxlvii. (Migne, _Patrol._, vol. clix., cols. 173, 174, 178–180); Lanigan, as above, vol. iii. pp. 474 _et seq._, vol. iv. pp. 15, 19, 20.

[396] Samuel of Dublin in 1095 and Malchus of Waterford in 1096 were both elected under Murtogh’s sanction and sent to England for consecration with letters of commendation from him. Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), pp. 73–76; Lanigan, as above, vol. iv. pp. 12–15.

[397] Four Masters, a. 1083–1119 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp. 921–1009). Cf. Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1083–1119 (Hennessy, vol. i. pp. 73–111).

[398] Four Masters, a. 1119 (as above, p. 1009). Ann. Loch. Cé, a. 1119 (as above, p. 111).

[399] Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. p. 48, says: “The Annals of Innisfallen have at _A._ 1118, ‘Turlogh O’Conor became king of the Danes of Dublin.’” (This passage does not occur in either of the two editions of Ann. Inisfal. printed by O’Conor.) The Four Masters, a. 1118 (as above, p. 1007), say that Terence took hostages from the Ostmen in that year. He was, at any rate, acknowledged as their overlord by 1121, for it was he who in that year sent Gregory, bishop-elect of Dublin, to England for consecration. Lanigan, as above, p. 47.

[400] Four Masters _ad ann._ (as above, p. 1011).

[401] _Ib._ a. 1121 (p. 1013). Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1121 (as above, p. 113).

[402] Ann Loch Cé, a. 1127 (p. 123).

[403] Four Masters, a. 1150 (as above, p. 1093).

[404] Something of this kind must be meant by the phrase of the Four Masters (_ib._ p. 1095): “The foreigners made a year’s peace between Leath-Chuinn and Leath-Mhogha.” This is in 1150, after Murtogh’s appearance as “King of Ireland” and the Ostmen’s submission to Terence (II.) O’Brien, whom his namesake of Connaught had set up as king in Munster.

[405] Four Masters, a. 1154 (as above, p. 1113).

[406] Four Masters, a. 1156 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1119).

The anarchy of the Irish state was reflected in that of the Church. If Lanfranc, when he consecrated Patrick of Dublin, knew anything at all of the ecclesiastical condition of Ireland, he may well have thought that it stood in far greater need of his reforming care than England itself. The Irish Church had never felt the organizing hand of a Theodore; its diocesan and parochial system was quite undeveloped; it had in fact scarcely advanced beyond the primitive missionary stage. Six centuries after S. Patrick’s death, the Irish clergy were still nothing but a band of mission-priests scattered over the country or gathered together in vast monastic establishments like Bangor or Durrow or Clonmacnoise; the bishops were for the most part merely heads of ever-shifting mission-stations, to whose number there was no limit; destitute of political rank, they were almost equally destitute of ecclesiastical authority, and differed from the ordinary priesthood by little else than their power of ordination. At the head of the whole hierarchy stood, as successor and representative of S. Patrick, the archbishop of Armagh. But since the death of Archbishop Maelbrigid in 927 the see of Armagh had been in the hands of a family of local chieftains who occupied its estate, usurped its revenues, handed on its title from father to son, and were bishops only in name.[407] The inferior members of the ecclesiastical body could not escape the evil which paralyzed their head. The bishops and priests of the Irish Church furnished a long roll of names to the catalogue of saints; but they contributed little or nothing to the political developement of the nation, and scarcely more to its social developement. The growth of a class of lay-impropriators ousted them from the management and the revenues of their church-lands, reduced them to subsist almost wholly upon the fees which they received for the performance of their spiritual functions, stripped them of all political influence, and left them dependent solely upon their spiritual powers and their personal holiness for whatever share of social influence they might still contrive to retain.[408] The Irish Church, in fact, while stedfastly adhering in doctrinal matters to the rest of the Latin Church, had fallen far behind it in discipline; to the monastic reforms of the tenth century, to the struggle for clerical celibacy and for freedom of investiture in the eleventh, she had remained an utter stranger. The long-continued stress of the northern invasions had cut off the lonely island in the west from all intercourse with the world at large, so completely that even the tie which bound her to Rome had sunk into a mere vague tradition of spiritual loyalty, and Rome herself knew nothing of the actual condition of a Church which had once been her most illustrious daughter.

[407] S. Bernard, _Vita S. Malach._, c. 10 (Mabillon, vol. i. col. 667). Cf. Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iii. p. 382.

[408] On these lay impropriators, “comorbas” and “erenachs,” see Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 79–86.

But it was the northmen, too, who were now to become the means of knitting up again the ties which had been severed by their fathers’ swords. The state of things in Ireland, as reported to Canterbury from Dublin and Waterford, might well seem to reforming churchmen like Lanfranc and Anselm too grievous to be endured. Lanfranc had urged upon Terence O’Brien the removal of two of its worst scandals, the neglect of canonical restraints upon marriage and the existence of a crowd of titular bishops without fixed sees;[409] Anselm used all his influence with Murtogh O’Brien for the same end;[410] at last, finding his efforts unavailing, he seems to have laid his complaints before the Pope. The result was that, for the first time, a papal legate was appointed for Ireland. The person chosen was Gilbert, who some two or three years before Anselm’s death became the first bishop of the Ostmen of Limerick. Gilbert seems, like the first Donatus of Dublin, to have been himself an Irish prelate; he lost no time, however, in putting himself in communication with Canterbury,[411] and displayed an almost exaggerated zeal for the Roman discipline and ritual.[412] In 1118 he presided over a synod held at Rathbreasil, where an attempt was made to map out the dioceses of Ireland on a definite plan.[413] Little, however, could be done till the metropolitan see was delivered from the usurpers who had so long held it in bondage; and it was not until 1134 that the evil tradition was broken by the election of S. Malachi.

[409] Lanfranc, Ep. 44 (Giles, vol. i. p. 63).

[410] Anselm, Epp. l. iii., Epp. cxlii., cxlvii. (Migne, _Patrol._, vol. clix., cols. 173, 174, 178–180).

[411] On Gilbert’s relations with Anselm see Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 23–26.

[412] _Ib._ pp. 26–29.

[413] _Ib._ pp. 38, 40–43.

Malachi was the wisest and most enlightened as well as the most saintly Irish prelate of his time; he had already been labouring for nearly ten years at the reform of the diocese of Connor; in that of Armagh itself he had earlier still, as vicar to Archbishop Celsus, laid the foundations of a similar work which he now took up again as primate.[414] After a successful pontificate of three years he again retired to the humbler position of a diocesan bishop at Down;[415] but he still continued to watch over the interests of the whole Irish Church; and in 1139 he went to Rome specially to lay its necessities before the Pope, and if possible to obtain from him the gift of a pallium for the archbishop of Armagh, and another for the bishop of Cashel as metropolitan of southern Ireland.[416] The pallium was now generally regarded as an indispensable note of metropolitical rank, but it had never been possessed by the successors of S. Patrick.[417] Innocent II. refused to grant it save at the request of the Irish clergy and people in council assembled; he sanctioned, however, the recognition of Cashel as metropolis of southern Ireland, and moreover he transferred to Malachi himself the legatine commission which Gilbert of Limerick had just resigned.[418] Gilbert seems to have died shortly afterwards: his successor in the see of Limerick went to Theobald of Canterbury for consecration; but his profession of obedience was the last ever made by an Irish bishop to an English metropolitan.[419] In 1148 a synod held at Inispatrick by Archbishop Gelasius of Armagh, with Malachi as papal legate, decided upon sending Malachi himself to the Pope once more, charged with a formal request for the two palls, in the name of the whole Irish Church. Malachi died on the way, at Clairvaux;[420] but he left his commission in safe hands. Nine years before, when on his first journey to Rome he had passed through the “bright valley,” its abbot had recognized in him a kindred spirit.[421] From that moment S. Bernard’s care of all the churches extended itself even to the far-off Church of Ireland; and if it was not he who actually forwarded his dying friend’s petition to Eugene III., there can be little doubt that Eugene’s favourable reception of it was chiefly owing to his influence. The result was the mission of John Paparo as special legate to Ireland. Stephen’s refusal to let John pass through his dominions caused another year’s delay;[422] but at the close of 1151 John made his way through Scotland safe to his destination.[423] In March 1152 he held a synod at Kells, in which the diocesan and provincial system of the Irish Church was organized upon lines which remained unaltered till the sixteenth century. The episcopal sees were definitely fixed, and grouped under not two but four archbishoprics. The primacy of all Ireland, with metropolitical authority over Ulster and Meath, was assigned to Armagh; Tuam became the metropolis of Connaught, Cashel of Munster; while the rivalry of Armagh and Canterbury for the spiritual obedience of the Ostmen was settled by the grant of a fourth pallium, with metropolitical jurisdiction over the whole of Leinster, to Bishop Gregory of Dublin himself.[424]

[414] For S. Malachi see his _Life_ by S. Bernard, and Lanigan, as above, pp. 59 _et seq._

[415] S. Bern., _Vita S. Malach._, c. 14 (Mabillon, vol. i. cols. 671–672).

[416] _Ib._ c. 15 (col. 672).

[417] _Ibid._ Cf. Lanigan’s note, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 110, 111.

[418] S. Bern., _Vita S. Malach._, c. 16 (as above, col. 674). Lanigan, as above, p. 112.

[419] Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 114, 115, 116.

[420] S. Bern., _Vita S. Malach._, cc. 30, 31 (Mabillon, vol. i. cols. 687–692). Lanigan, as above, pp. 129, 130.

[421] S. Bern., _Vita S. Malach._, c. 16 (as above, cols. 673, 674).

[422] See above, vol. i. p. 380.

[423] Four Masters, a. 1151 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1095).

[424] On the synod of Kells see Four Masters, a. 1152 (as above, p. 1101); Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 212; and Lanigan, as above, pp. 139–151.

It is plain that Bernard and Eugene aimed at applying to Ireland’s troubles the same remedy which they were at that very time applying to those of England. They hoped to build up an united nation and a strong national government on the basis of a free and united national Church. But the foundation-stone of their work for Ireland was scarcely laid at Kells when both the wise master-builders were called away. On the other hand, their labours for England were crowned by the accession of the young Angevin king, whose restless temper, before he had been nine months on his throne, was already seeking for another sphere of activity still further beyond the sea; overwhelming the newly-crowned, English-born Pope with suggestions of work and offers of co-operation in every quarter of Christendom,[425] and proposing to begin at once with the reduction of Ireland to political, ecclesiastical and social order after the pattern of England and Normandy.[426] Adrian IV. would have needed a wisdom and a foresight greater than those of S. Bernard himself to enable him to resist the attractions of such an offer. The so-called “Donation of Constantine”--a donation which is now known to be forged, but whose genuineness no one in Adrian’s day had ever thought of doubting--vested the ultimate sovereignty of all islands in the Papacy.[427] The best and greatest Popes, from S. Gregory down to Adrian himself, seem to have interpreted this as making them in a special way responsible for the welfare of such outlying portions of Christendom, and bound to leave no means untried for providing them with a secure and orderly Christian government.[428] The action of Alexander II. in sanctioning the Norman conquest of England was a logical outcome of this principle, applied, however unwisely or unjustly, to a particular case. But there was infinitely greater justification for applying the same principle, in the same manner, to the case of Ireland. Neither the labours of S. Malachi, nor the brief visit of John Paparo, nor the stringent decrees passed at the synod of Kells, could suffice to reform the inveterate evils of Ireland’s ecclesiastical system, the yet more inveterate evils of her political system, or the intellectual and moral decay which was the unavoidable consequence of both. On the Pope, according to the view of the time, lay the responsibility of bringing order out of this chaos--a chaos of whose very existence he had but just become fully conscious, and which no doubt looked to him far more hopeless than it really was. In such circumstances Henry’s proposal must have sounded to Adrian like an offer to relieve him of a great weight of care--to cut at one stroke a knot which he was powerless to untie--to clear a path for him through a jungle-growth of difficulties which he himself saw no way to penetrate or overcome. John of Salisbury set forth the plan at Rome, in Henry’s name, in the summer of 1155; he carried back a bull which satisfied all Henry’s demands. Adrian bade the king go forth to his conquest “for the enlargement of the Church’s borders, for the restraint of vice, the correction of morals and the planting of virtue, the increase of the Christian religion, and whatsoever may tend to God’s glory and the well-being of that land;”[429] and he sent with the bull a gold ring, adorned with an emerald of great price, as a symbol of investiture with the government of Ireland.[430]

[425] Pet. Blois, Ep. clxviii. (Giles, vol. ii. pp. 116–118). See above, vol. i. p. 497.

[426] “Significâsti siquidem nobis, fili in Christo carissime, te Hiberniæ insulam, ad subdendum illum populum legibus et vitiorum plantaria inde exstirpanda, velle intrare; et de singulis domibus annuam unius denarii beato Petro velle solvere pensionem; et jura ecclesiarum illius terræ illibata et integra conservare.” Bull of Adrian IV. to Henry (“Laudabiliter”), in Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 5 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 317), etc.

[427] “Nam omnes insulæ, de jure antiquo, ex donatione Constantini qui eam fundavit et dotavit, dicuntur ad Romanam ecclesiam pertinere.” Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. p. 206).

[428] “Sane Hiberniam et omnes insulas, quibus sol justitiæ Christus illuxit, et quæ documenta fidei Christianæ ceperunt, ad jus beati Petri et sacrosanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ, quod tua etiam nobilitas recognoscit, non est dubium pertinere. Unde tanto in eis libentius plantationem fidelem et germen gratum Deo inserimus quanto id a nobis interno examine districtius prospicimus exigendum.” Bull “Laudabiliter,” Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 5 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 317).

[429] Bull “Laudabiliter,” Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 5 (Dimock, vol. v. pp. 317, 318); R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 300, 301; Pet. Blois, Ep. ccxxxi. (Giles, vol. ii. pp. 201, 202); Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 19; etc. Its authenticity has been fiercely disputed, but is now admitted by all Irish scholars. See proofs in Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 165, 166, and O’Callaghan’s edition of _Macariæ Excidium_ (Irish Archæol. Soc.), pp. 242, 245, where it is reprinted from Baronius’s copy, found by him in the Vatican archives.

[430] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. p. 206).

This strange crusade was postponed for the moment, as we have seen, in deference to objections made by the Empress Matilda.[431] Adrian’s bull and ring were stored up in the English chancery, and there, long after Adrian was dead, they still lay,[432] unused and, as it seemed, forgotten amid an ever-increasing throng of more urgent cares and labours which even Henry found to be quite as much as he was capable of sustaining. At last, however, the course of political events in Ireland itself took a turn which led almost irresistibly to a revival of his long-forsaken project. Two years before Henry’s accession Dermot Mac-Murrough, king of Leinster, had made a raid upon the district of Breffny in Connaught, on the borders of Ulster and Meath, and carried off Dervorgil, the wife of its chieftain Tighernan O’Ruark.[433] From that hour Tighernan’s vengeance never slept. During the next fourteen years, while Murtogh O’Lochlainn was striving for the mastery first against the veteran Terence O’Conor and after Terence’s death with his son Rory or Roderic, the swords of the men of Breffny were thrown alternately into either scale, as their chieftain saw a hope of securing the aid of either monarch to avenge him of his enemy.[434] In 1166 the crisis came. Murtogh drew upon himself the wrath of his people by blinding the king of Uladh, for whose safety he was pledged to the archbishop of Armagh; Ulster, Meath, Leinster and Dublin rose against him all at once; he was defeated and slain in a great battle at the Fews; the Ostmen of Dublin acknowledged Roderic as their king, and all the princes of southern Ireland followed their example. Dermot’s submission, however, was in vain; the first act of the new monarch was to banish him from the realm.[435] The Leinstermen forsook him at once, for their loyalty had long been alienated by his harsh government and evil deeds.[436] Left alone to the justice of Roderic and the vengeance of O’Ruark, he fled to Cork and thence took ship to Bristol. Here he found shelter for a while in the priory of S. Augustine, under the protection of its founder Robert Fitz-Harding;[437] at the close of the year he made his way to Normandy, and thence, with some difficulty, tracked Henry’s restless movements into the depths of Aquitaine,[438] where he at last laid his appeal for succour at the feet of the English king.

[431] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155. See above, vol. i. p. 431.

[432] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. p. 206).

[433] Four Masters, a. 1152 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1103). Cf. Gir. Cambr., _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 1 (Dimock, vol. v. pp. 225, 226), and the elaborately romantic account in the Anglo-Norman Poem on the Conquest of Ireland, edited by M. Francisque Michel, pp. 2–6. The two last-named authorities represent this affair as the _immediate_ cause of Dermot’s overthrow, and of all the consequent troubles. Chronology shews this to be mere romance; yet, notwithstanding the criticisms of some modern writers, there still seems to be some ground for the earlier view which looked upon Dervorgil as a sort of Irish Helen. If we follow carefully the thread of the story in the Four Masters from 1153 to 1166 we can hardly avoid the conclusion that throughout those years the most important personage in Irish politics, the man whose action turned the scale in nearly all the ups and downs of fortune between Murtogh of Ulster and the kings of Connaught, was the border-chieftain whose position made him the most dangerous of foes and the most indispensable of allies--Tighernan O’Ruark; and we can hardly help seeing in Dermot’s banishment the vengeance less of Roderic O’Conor himself than of a supporter whom Roderic could not afford to leave unsatisfied. On the other hand, it is perfectly true that the opportunity for executing that vengeance was given by the disaffection of Dermot’s own subjects--and, as usual, more especially by the rising of the Ostmen of Dublin.

[434] See Four Masters, a. 1153–1166 (as above, pp. 1107–1159).

[435] Four Masters, a. 1166 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1159–1163).

[436] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 1 (Dimock, vol. v. pp. 225, 226). For specimens of his misdeeds see Four Masters, a. 1141 (as above, p. 1065), and Ann. Clonmacnoise, a. 1135 (_ib._ p. 1051, note _f_).

[437] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 12.

[438] “In remotis et transmarinis Aquitannicæ Galliæ partibus.” Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 227). Henry was in Aquitaine from December 1166 till May 1167; see Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 103–106. The chase which he characteristically led the Irish king is amusingly described in the Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 13:

“Bien est, seignurs, ke jo vus die Cum Dermod va par Normandie; Li rei Henri va dunc quere, A munt, à val, avant, arere; Tant ad mandé et enquis Que trové ad li rei Henris, A une cité l’ad trové, Que seignur esteit clamé.”

On the last line the editor (notes, p. 168) remarks: “_Seignur_ (seigñ, MS.)? Is it not: of which he was called lord?” One feels tempted to suggest that it might be meant for the name of the place; but if so, what can it be? Saintes?

At the crisis of his struggles with Thomas of Canterbury, with Louis of France and with the rebel barons of Poitou, all that Henry could do was to accept Dermot’s offer of homage and fealty,[439] promise to send him help as soon as possible,[440] and furnish him with a letter authorizing any loyal English, Norman, Welsh, Scottish or Angevin subjects who might be so disposed to join the standard of the Irish prince, as of a faithful vassal of their sovereign.[441] Another stay of some weeks in Bristol[442] convinced Dermot that his best chance of aid lay beyond the Severn. Wales was still in the main a Celtic land, ruled in primeval Celtic fashion by native princes under little more than nominal subjection to the king of England. The Norman conquest of Wales, so far as Wales could be said to have been conquered at all, had been effected not by the royal power but by the daring and prowess of individual adventurers who did, indeed, seek the royal sanction for their tenure of the lands which they had won, but who were scarcely more amenable to the royal authority than their Welsh neighbours, with whom they not unfrequently made common cause against it. It was Robert of Bellême’s connexion with Wales, through his border-earldom of Shrewsbury and his brother’s lordship of Pembroke, which had made him so formidable to Henry I.; it was Robert of Gloucester’s tenure of the great Welsh lordship of Glamorgan, even more than his English honours, which had enabled him to act as an independent potentate against Stephen. Another border-chieftain who played some part in the civil war was Gilbert de Clare, whose father had received a grant of Cardigan from Henry I. in 1107,[443] and upon whom Stephen in 1138 conferred the title of earl of Pembroke.[444] His son Richard appears under the same title among the witnesses to Stephen’s proclamation of the treaty of Wallingford in 1153;[445] the writers of the time, however, usually describe him as earl of Striguil, a fortress which seems to have occupied the site whence the ruins of Chepstow castle now look down upon the Wye. His earldom of Pembroke, indeed, as one of Stephen’s fictitious creations, must have been forfeited on Henry’s accession; but the lord of Striguil was still a mighty man on the South-Welsh border when in the spring of 1167 he promised to bring all the forces which he could muster to aid in restoring Dermot, who in return offered him his daughter’s hand, together with the succession to his kingdom.[446] A promise of the town of Wexford and its adjoining territory won a like assurance of aid from two half-brothers in whose veins the blood of Norman adventurers was mingled with the ancient royal blood of South-Wales: Maurice Fitz-Gerald, a son of Gerald constable of Pembroke by his marriage with Nest, aunt of the reigning prince Rees Ap-Griffith, and Robert Fitz-Stephen, son of the same Nest by her second husband, Stephen constable of Cardigan.[447] Another Pembrokeshire knight, Richard Fitz-Godoberd, volunteered to accompany Dermot at once with a little band of Norman-Welsh followers.[448] With these Dermot returned to Ireland in August 1167;[449] he was defeated in a pitched battle with Roderic O’Conor and Tighernan O’Ruark;[450] but in his own hereditary principality of Kinsellagh[451] he was safe; there throughout the winter he lay hid at Ferns,[452] and thence, when spring returned, he sent his bard Maurice Regan to claim from his Welsh allies the fulfilment of their promises.[453]

[439] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 1 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 227). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 15.

[440] Anglo-Norm. Poem, as above.

[441] Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 227, 228).

[442] _Ib._ c. 2 (p. 228). He was at Bristol “quinzein u un meins”; Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 16.

[443] _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1107 (Williams, p. 105).

[444] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 917.

[445] Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 18. Richard de Clare became known to later generations by the nickname of “Strongbow.” Its use is convenient, as helping to avoid confusion with the other Richards of the period; but it seems to have no contemporary authority. See Mr. Dimock’s note, _Gir. Cambr._, vol. v. p. 228, note 4.

[446] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 2 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 228). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 17.

[447] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 229). The circumstances of Fitz-Stephen’s enlistment illustrate the condition of South-Wales at this time. He had been cast into prison three years before by his cousin Rees, and at the moment of Dermot’s arrival had just been released on condition of joining Rees in an attack upon England. His Norman blood, however, was loyal enough to revolt against the fulfilment of the condition; and Rees, who had warmly espoused Dermot’s interest, was persuaded to allow its exchange for service in Ireland. _Ibid._; cf. Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 19, 20. For pedigree of Nest’s descendants see Mr. Dimock’s edition of _Gir. Cambr. Opp._, vol. v. App. B. to pref., pp. c, ci.

[448] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 21.

[449] About August 1, according to Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 2 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 229).

[450] Four Masters, a. 1167 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp. 1165–1167). Among the slain they mention “the son of the king of Britain, who was the battle-prop of the island of Britain, who had come across the sea in the army of Mac Murchadha.” This can only mean a son or brother of Rees; but neither Gerald nor the Welsh chronicles make any mention of such a person in Ireland.

[451] The modern county of Wexford, or rather the diocese of Ferns. The Four Masters (as above, p. 1165) say that Dermot “returned from England with a force of Galls, and he took the kingdom of Ui-Ceinnsealaigh.”

[452] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 2 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 230).

[453] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 21.