Chapter 14
Part 14
[1297] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 17. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 327. Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 3. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 29.
[1298] Herb. Bosh. as above.
[1299] Will. Fitz-Steph., Herb. Bosh., and _Thomas Saga_, as above.
[1300] Herb. Bosh. as above.
[1301] _Ib._ p. 229.
[1302] Will. Cant., Will. Fitz-Steph., and _Thomas Saga_, as above.
[1303] Anon. II. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 84.
[1304] Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 327.
[1305] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp. 20, 21. Joh. Salisb., _Entheticus in Polycraticum_ (Giles, vol. iii.) p. 3.
[1306] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above, p. 29.
[1307] _Ib._ pp. 20, 21.
[1308] Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 13.
[1309] Pet. Blois, Ep. xiv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 49).
[1310] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 229.
[1311] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 22.
[1312] E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 363. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 13.
Henry might have been jealous of his minister; but there was no thought of jealousy in his mind. He was constantly in and out at the chancellor’s house; half in sheer fun, half to see for himself the truth of the wonderful stories which he heard about it, he would come uninvited to dinner, riding up suddenly--often bow in hand, on his way to or from the chase--when Thomas was seated at table; sometimes he would take a stirrup-cup, nod to his friend and ride away; sometimes he would leap over the table, sit down and eat. When their work was over, king and chancellor played together like a couple of schoolboys, and whether it was in their private apartments, in the public streets, in the palace, or in church, made no difference at all. It was a favourite tale among their associates how as they rode together through the streets of London one winter’s day, the king, seeing a ragged shivering beggar, snatched at the chancellor’s handsome new mantle of scarlet cloth lined with vair, crying--“You shall have the merit of clothing the naked this time!” and after a struggle in which both combatants nearly fell off their horses, sent the poor man away rejoicing in his new and strangely acquired garment, while with shouts of applause and laughter the bystanders crowded round Thomas, playfully offering him their cloaks and capes in compensation for his loss.[1313]
[1313] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp. 24, 25.
It is hardly possible to deny that such enormous wealth as passed through Thomas’s hands during his tenure of the chancellorship must have been acquired, in part at least, by means which in the case of a minister of the Crown in our own day would be accounted little less than scandalous. But in the twelfth century there was no scandal about the matter. Costly gifts of all kinds were showered at the feet of kings and great men openly and as matter of course, and kings and great men received them as openly, often without any idea of bribery on either side. Moreover it is to be remembered that Thomas’s position as chancellor gave him command over a considerable portion of the royal revenues, and that he was left free to draw upon them at his own discretion to meet an expenditure of which part was incurred directly in the king’s behalf, while the whole of it might be regarded as indirectly tending to the king’s glorification and benefit. The two friends in fact seem to have had but one purse as well as “one mind and one heart,” and not till many years later was there any thought of disentangling their accounts. Amid all the chancellor’s wild magnificence, there is no evidence of corruption; and there was certainly no arrogance. Thomas had nothing of the upstart in him; he never ignored his burgher-origin, he never dropped the friends of his boyhood; his filial submission to the primate remained unchanged;[1314] his gratitude to his early teachers at Merton was proved by his choice of a confessor from among them,[1315] and by his successful efforts to bring their house under the special patronage of the king.[1316] His tastes were those of the most refined aristocrat, but his sympathies were with the people from whose ranks he had sprung; his boundless almsgiving was doubled in value by the gracious considerateness with which it was bestowed; his tenderness for the poor was as genuine and as delicate as that of his mother the good dame Rohese, and he was quick alike to supply their needs and to vindicate their cause.[1317]
[1314] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Beckett_, vol. iv.) p. 11.
[1315] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 21. This confessor, Robert by name, was with him all through his exile; see Garnier (Hippeau), p. 137.
[1316] Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above), p. 23.
[1317] Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 13. Cf. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 49, 55–57.
Like the king himself, Thomas was a standing marvel to his contemporaries; the strict stood aghast at his unclerical mode of life; the simple were half inclined to take him for a wizard.[1318] But his witchery was universal and irresistible; and after all it was only the magic of a winning personality, a vivid imagination, a dauntless spirit and a guileless heart. For the chancellor’s frivolity was all on the surface of his life; its inner depths were pure. Amid the countless temptations of a corrupt court, no stain ever rested upon his personal honour. He shared in all the king’s pursuits, except the evil ones; into them Henry tried to entrap him night and day, but in vain.[1319] The one thing he would not do, the one thing he would not tolerate, was evil; the one species of human being to whom his doors were inexorably closed was a man of known bad character.[1320] Coarseness, immorality, dishonesty, in word or deed, met with summary and condign punishment at his hands.[1321] Above all things, “lying lips and a deceitful tongue were an abomination unto him.”[1322] When in after-days a biographer of the martyred archbishop copied from the Epistle to the Ephesians the description of the spiritual armour in which his hero was supposed to have clothed himself at his consecration, he significantly omitted the first piece of the panoply;[1323] Thomas had no need then to put on the girdle of truth, for he had worn it all his life.
[1318] Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 5.
[1319] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 21. Cf. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._) p. 166; Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 303; Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), pp. 5, 6; Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 12, 13; _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 53–55.
[1320] “Nota domus cunctis, vitio non cognita soli.” “Huic, quæ sola placet, solâ virtute placebis.”
Joh. Salisb., _Enthet. in Polycrat._ (Giles, vol. iii.) pp. 2, 3.
[1321] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 8. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 21.
[1322] Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 166.
[1323] _Ib._ p. 198.
His position at court was no easy one; for a while envy, hatred and malice assailed him from all sides, and their attacks, added to an immense load of work, so overwhelmed him that he more than once declared to his friends and to the primate that he was weary of his life and would be thankful to end it, or at any rate to break away from the bondage of the court, if only he could do so with honour. But he was not the man to forsake a task which he had once undertaken;[1324] his nature was rather to do it, like the king himself, with all his might. In the after-years, when friends and foes alike could hardly look back upon any period of Thomas’s career save in the light of the martyr’s aureole, more than half the credit of Henry’s early reforms was bestowed upon the chancellor.[1325] Even at the time, he was described by no mean authority as the champion of all liberty,[1326] the defender of all rights, the redresser of all wrongs, the restorer of peace,[1327] the mediator who stood between king and people to soften the inflexibility of law and prevent justice from degenerating into legal wrong.[1328] It is certain that the brightest and happiest years of Henry’s reign were those during which Thomas held the foremost rank and took the foremost part in the administration of government. For the successful execution of Henry’s policy, therefore, Thomas is entitled to a large share of credit. But that he in any serious degree influenced and moulded the general scope of that policy is a theory opposed both to the evidence of actual events and to the inferences which must be drawn from the characters of the two men, as developed in their after-careers. Thomas may have suggested individual measures--we shall see that he did suggest one of very great importance;--he may have contrived modifications in detail; but Henry’s policy, as a whole, bears the clear stamp of one mind--his own. The chancellor’s true merit lies in this, that he was Henry’s best and most thorough fellow-worker--not so much his counsellor or minister as his second self. It is not hard to see why they were friends; nor to see, too, why they were to quarrel so fatally. The same characteristics which drew them together were fated to part them in the end. The king found in the burgher’s son a temper as energetic, a spirit as versatile and impetuous, a tongue as quick and sharp,[1329] a determination as resolute, dauntless and thorough as his own, with a much less subtle brain, a much more excitable imagination, and much more sensitive feelings. While they moved side by side in the same sphere, they had “but one heart and one soul”; when once their spheres became opposed, the friends could only change into bitter antagonists.
[1324] Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 305. Cf. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 12; and _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 59.
[1325] See Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 19.
[1326] Joh. Salisb., _Entheticus_, v. 1357 (Giles, vol. v. p. 282).
[1327] Joh. Salisb. _Enthet. in Polycrat._ (Giles, vol. iii.) p. 3.
[1328] “Hic est qui regni leges cancellat iniquas, Et mandata pii principis æqua facit.”
Joh. Salisb., _Enthet. in Polycrat._ (Giles, vol. iii.) p. 2. This seems to be the earliest version of the jest about law and equity, and sums up, in a playful shape, the chancellor’s relation to both.
[1329] Although Thomas was “slightly stuttering in his talk.” _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 29. The statement occurs in none of the extant Latin lives, but from its very strangeness can hardly be anything but a touch of genuine tradition. The impediment however can only have been a very slight one, and was most likely nothing more than the effect of his extreme impetuosity. It certainly did not hinder him speaking his mind fully and forcibly upon any important occasion when his feelings were deeply stirred.
Henry’s first manifesto was published before Thomas entered his service. Immediately after his coronation he issued a charter setting forth the broad principles of his intended policy:--the restoration and confirmation of all liberties and customs in Church and state as settled by his grandfather.[1330] The actual wording of the charter was hardly more explicit than that of Stephen’s; but the marked omission of all reference to Stephen was in itself a significant indication that the return to an earlier and better order of things was intended to be something more than a phrase. On Christmas-day the king held his court at Bermondsey, and with the counsel of the assembled barons set himself to enforce at once the provisions of the treaty of Wallingford which Stephen had proved incapable of executing. Peremptory orders were issued for the expulsion of the Flemish mercenaries and the demolition of the unlicensed castles.[1331] The effect was magical. The Flemings saw at once that their day was over, and vanished like an army of spectres, so suddenly that folk marvelled whither they could have gone.[1332] The razing of the castles was necessarily a less rapid process, but it was accomplished without delay and without disturbance.[1333] These preliminary obstacles being cleared out of the way, the next step was to re-assert the rights of the Crown by abolishing the fiscal earldoms[1334] and reclaiming the demesne lands and fortresses which had passed into private hands during the anarchy. Henry proclaimed his determination clearly and firmly; all alienations of royal revenue and royal property made during the late reign were declared null and void; all occupiers of crown lands and castles were summoned to surrender them at once, and the charters of donation from Stephen whereby they attempted to justify their occupation were treated simply as waste paper.[1335] There was one at least of the usurping barons to whom Henry knew that he must carry his summons in person if he meant it to be obeyed: William of Aumale, the lord of Holderness, whose father had once aspired to the crown, whom Stephen had made earl of York, and who ruled like an almost independent chieftain in Yorkshire, where he held the royal castle of Scarborough and was in no mind to give it up. As soon as the festival season was over Henry began to move northward; by the end of January he was at York, and William of Aumale was at his feet, making complete surrender of Scarborough and of all his other castles.[1336] Another great northern baron, William Peverel of the Peak, had been scared into a monastery by the mere rumour of the king’s approach;[1337] he had been concerned two years before in an attempt to poison Henry’s earliest English ally, Earl Ralf of Chester; he knew that he was a doomed man,[1338] and when the king turned southward again after receiving the surrender of Scarborough, he dared not trust even his monastic tonsure to save him from his doom, but fled the country and left all his fiefs to his sovereign’s mercy.[1339]
[1330] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 135.
[1331] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 160.
[1332] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 1 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 101, 102).
[1333] _Ib._ p. 102. Gerv. Cant. as above.
[1334] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155.
[1335] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 2 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 103).
[1336] _Ib._ cc. 2 and 3 (pp. 103, 104).
[1337] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 161.
[1338] See a charter of Henry, duke of the Normans, promising Peverel’s fief to Ralf on proof of the former’s guilt; Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 16. Ralf of Chester died in 1153; Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 171. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 155. See above, p. 399.
[1339] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 161.
After such an exhibition of Henry’s powers of coercion on the two chief nobles of the north, lesser men were not likely to venture upon defiance; the occupiers of crown lands passed from rage to terror and dismay, and began sullenly to make restitution.[1340] The grantees of Stephen, however, soon proved to be the least part of the difficulty. Several of the royal fortresses were held by partizans of the Empress, who had won them either while warring against Stephen in her behalf, or by a grant from their imperial mistress in her brief day of power; and they not unnaturally resented the king’s attempt to deprive them of what they looked upon as the well-earned rewards of their service to his mother and himself. Henry, however, had made up his mind that there must be no distinction of parties or of persons; all irregularities, no matter whence they proceeded, must be suppressed; every root of rebellion must be cut off, and every ground of suspicion removed.[1341] Early in March he called another council in London,[1342] confirmed the peace and renewed the old customs of the realm,[1343] and again summoned all holders of royal castles to give an account of their usurpations.[1344] The two mightiest barons of the west revolted at once; Roger of Hereford, the son of Matilda’s faithful Miles, hurried away from court to fortify his castles of Hereford and Gloucester against the king, and made common cause with Hugh of Mortemer, the lord of Cleobury and Wigmore, who held the royal fortress of Bridgenorth. Roger was brought to reason in little more than a week by the persuasions of his kinsman Bishop Gilbert of Hereford;[1345] Hugh was suffered to complete his preparations for defiance while Henry kept the Easter feast and held a great council at Wallingford to settle the succession to the throne, first upon his eldest child William, and, in case of William’s death, upon the infant Henry, who was scarcely six weeks old.[1346] That done, the king marched with all his forces against Hugh of Mortemer. He divided his host into three parts; one division laid siege to Cleobury, another to Wigmore,[1347] and the third, commanded by Henry himself, sat down before Bridgenorth.[1348] On the spot where the spirit of feudal insubordination, incarnate in Robert of Bellême, had fought its last fight against Henry I., the same spirit, represented by Hugh of Mortemer, now fought against Henry II. The fight had been useless fifty years ago; it was equally useless now. One after another the three castles were taken, and on July 7 a great council met beneath the walls of Bridgenorth to witness Hugh’s surrender.[1349]
[1340] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 2 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 103).
[1341] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 161.
[1342] _Ibid._ Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 72.
[1343] Chron. de Bello as above.
[1344] Gerv. Cant. as above.
[1345] _Ib._ p. 162.
[1346] _Ibid._ Rob. Torigni, a. 1155, giving the date--Sunday after Easter, _i.e._ April 10.
[1347] Gerv. Cant. as above.
[1348] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 105).
[1349] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155. Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 75.
At the opposite side of the kingdom two great barons still remained to be dealt with. One was Hugh Bigod, the veteran turncoat who had been seneschal to Henry I., and who had (as the Angevin party believed) perjured himself to oust Matilda from her rights, yet whose hereditary and territorial influence had, it seems, been great enough to win from the young king a confirmation of his earldom of Norfolk,[1350] as well as to procure him a long day of grace before he was called upon to give up his many unlawfully-acquired castles. The other was William of Blois, Stephen’s eldest surviving son, by marriage earl of Warren and Surrey, to whom the treaty of Wallingford had assigned two royal castles, Pevensey and Norwich. The danger of leaving these important fortresses in William’s hands was increased by the position of Norwich, in the very midst of Hugh Bigod’s earldom; and after a year’s delay Henry determined to put an end to this state of things in East Anglia. Contrary to all precedent, he summoned the Whitsuntide council of 1157 to meet at Bury S. Edmund’s.[1351] This peaceful invasion of their territories sufficed to bring both earls to submission. William contentedly gave up his castles in exchange for the private estates which his father had held before he became king; Hugh surrendered in like manner,[1352] and was likewise taken back into favour, to have another opportunity of proving his ingratitude sixteen years later. This settlement of East Anglia completed the pacification of the realm. Even before this, however, as early as the autumn of 1155, peace and order were so far secured that Henry could venture to think of leaving the country. At Michaelmas in that year he laid before his barons a scheme for conquering Ireland as a provision for his brother William.[1353] The Pope, who was traditionally held to be the natural owner of all islands which had no other sovereign, had granted a bull authorizing the expedition;[1354] but the Empress, whose counsel was always deferentially sought by her royal son, disapproved of his project;[1355] and when he went over sea in January 1156 it was not to win a kingdom for his youngest brother in Ireland, but to put down a rebellion of the second in Anjou.[1356]
[1350] Granted by Stephen before 1153; Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 18. In the Pipe Roll of 1157 there is a charge “in tercio denario comitatûs comiti Hugoni l. libras de anno et dimidio,” among the accounts “de veteri firmâ” of Norfolk, rendered by Hugh himself as ex-sheriff (Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II., Hunter, p. 75). As his successor in the sheriffdom renders an account “de firmâ dimidii anni” (_ib._ p. 76), the year and half above mentioned takes us back to the autumn of 1155. In the Pipe Roll of 1156, however, Hugh does not appear at all.
[1351] Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 85. In the Winchester accounts for the year (Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II., Hunter, p. 107) is a charge of 22s. “pro portandis coronis regis ad S. Ædmundum.” “Coronis” looks as if Eleanor wore her crown also.
[1352] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157.
[1353] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155.
[1354] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. pp. 205, 206).
[1355] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155.
[1356] _Ib._ a. 1156.
In England the year of his absence was a year without a history. Not a single event of any consequence is recorded by the chroniclers save the death of Henry’s eldest son, shortly before Christmas;[1357] and even this was a matter of no political moment; for, as we have seen, there was another infant to take his place as heir-apparent. The blank in the chronicles has to be filled up from the Pipe Roll which once again makes its appearance at Michaelmas 1156, and which has a special value and interest as being the most authoritative witness to the character of the young king’s efforts for the reorganization of the government, and to the results which they had already produced. The record itself is a mere skeleton, and a very imperfect one; the carefulness of arrangement, the fulness of detail, the innumerable touches of local and personal colour which make the one surviving Pipe Roll of Henry I. so precious and so interesting, are sadly wanting in this roll of the second year of Henry II.; yet between its meagre lines may be read a suggestive, almost a pathetic story. Its very imperfections, its lack of order and symmetry, its scantiness of information, its brief, irregular, confused entries, help us to realize as perhaps nothing else could how disastrous had been the break-down of the administrative machinery which we saw working so methodically five-and-twenty years ago, and how laborious must have been the task of restoration. Three whole shires, Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmoreland, send in no account at all, for they were still in the hands of the king of Scots; in almost every shire there are significant notices of “waste,” and a scarcely less significant charge for repair of the royal manors. The old items reappear--the Danegeld, the aids from the towns, the proceeds of justice, the feudal incidents; but the total product amounts to little more than a third part of the sum raised in 1130; and even this diminished revenue was only made up with the help of sundry “aids” and “gifts” (as they were technically called), and of a new impost specially levied upon some of the ecclesiastical estates under the name of _scutage_.
[1357] Mat. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ (Madden), vol. i. p. 307.
The origin of this tax is implied in its title; it was derived from the “service of the shield” (_scutum_)--one of the distinguishing marks of feudal tenure--whereby the holder of a certain quantity of land was bound to furnish to his lord the services of a fully-armed horseman for forty days in the year. The portion of land charged with this service constituted a “knight’s fee,” and was usually reckoned at the extent of five hides, or the value of twenty pounds annually. The gradual establishment of this military tenure throughout the kingdom was a process which had been going on ever since the Norman conquest; the use of the word “scutage,” implying an assessment of taxation based on the knight’s fee instead of the old rating division of the hide, indicates that it was now very generally completed. The scutage of 1156 was levied, as we learn from another source,[1358] specially to meet the expenses of a war which Henry was carrying on with his rebel brother in Anjou. For such a purpose the feudal host itself was obviously not a desirable instrument. Ralf Flambard’s famous device of 1093, when he took a money compensation from the English levies and sent it over sea to pay the wages of the Red King’s foreign mercenaries, suggested a precedent which might be applied to the feudal knighthood as well as to the national host. Its universal application might be hindered at present by a clause in the charter of Henry I., which exempted the tenants by knight-service from all pecuniary charges on their demesne lands. It was, however, possible to make a beginning with the Church lands. These habitually claimed, with more or less success, immunity from military service except in the actual defence of the country; on the other hand, now that the bishops and abbots had been made to accept their temporalities on the same tenure as the lay baronies, there was a fair shew of reason for compelling them to compromise their claim by a money contribution assessed on the same basis as the personal service for which it was a substitute.[1359]
[1358] Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 178).
[1359] On scutage and knight’s fees see Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 431–433, 581, 582, 590.
Such, it seems, was the origin of the great institution of scutage. Its full developement, which it only attained three years later, was avowedly the work of Thomas the chancellor; whether or not its first suggestion came from him is not so clear. At the moment no resentment seems to have been provoked by the measure; its ultimate tendency was not foreseen, the sum actually demanded was not great, and the innovation was condoned on the ground of the king’s lawful need and in the belief that it was only an isolated demand.[1360] A greater matter might well have been condoned in consideration of Henry’s loyal redemption of his coronation-pledges, to which the Pipe Roll bears testimony. If the king had been prompt in resuming his kingly rights, he had been no less prompt in striving to fulfil his kingly duties. The work of necessary destruction was no sooner accomplished than the work of reconstruction began in all departments of state administration. The machinery of justice was set in motion once again; the provincial visitations of the judges of the king’s court were revived; thirteen shires were visited by some one or more of them between Michaelmas 1155 and Michaelmas 1156. The person most extensively employed in this capacity was the constable, Henry of Essex:[1361] the chancellor also appears in the like character, twice in Henry’s company[1362] and once in that of the earl of Leicester.[1363] Nay, the supreme “fount of justice” itself was always open to any suitor who could be at the trouble and expense of tracking its ever-shifting whereabouts; not only was the chancellor, as the king’s special representative, constantly employed in hearing causes, but Henry himself was always ready to fulfil the duty in person; at the most inconvenient moments--in the middle of the siege of Bridgenorth, at the crisis of his struggle with the Angevin rebels--he found time and patience to give attentive hearing to a wearisome suit which had been going on at intervals for nearly six years between Bishop Hilary of Chichester and Walter de Lucy the abbot of Battle.[1364] Hand in hand with the revival of order and law went the revival of material prosperity. In the dry, laconic prose of the financial record we can find enough to bear out, almost to the letter, the historians’ poetical version of the work of Henry’s first two years. The wolves had fled or become changed into peaceable sheep; the swords had been beaten into ploughshares and the spears into pruning-hooks;[1365] and the merchants again went forth to pursue their business, the Jews to seek their creditors, in peace and safety as of old.[1366]
[1360] Such was apparently the state of mind of John of Salisbury: “Interim scutagium remittere non potest [rex], et a quibusdam exactionibus abstinere, quoniam fratris gratia male sarta nequicquam coiit.” Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 178).
[1361] Pipe Roll 2 Hen. II. (Hunter), pp. 17, 31, 32, 47, 54, 57, 60, 65.
[1362] _Ibid._ pp. 17, 65.
[1363] _Ibid._ p. 26.
[1364] Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), pp. 75, 76.
[1365] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.) p. 19. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 1 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 102).
[1366] “Exeunt securi ab urbibus et castris ad nundinas negotiatores, ad creditores repetendos Judæi.” Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.
Henry returned to England soon after Easter 1157.[1367] His first step, as we have seen, was to secure the obedience of East-Anglia. Having thus fully established his authority throughout his immediate realm, his next aim was to assert the rights of his crown over its Scottish and Welsh dependencies. The princes of Wales, who had long been acknowledged vassals of England, must be made to do homage to its new sovereign; the king of Scots owed homage no less, if not for his crown, at any rate for his English fiefs; moreover, his title to these was in itself a disputed question. Three English shires, Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmoreland, had been conquered by David, nominally in behalf of his niece the Empress Matilda, in the early years of Stephen’s reign; Stephen, making a virtue of necessity, had formally granted their investiture to David’s son Henry;[1368] and they were now in the hands of Henry’s son, the young king Malcolm IV. The story went that old King David, before he knighted his grand-nephew Henry Fitz-Empress in 1149, had made him swear that if ever he came to the English throne he would suffer the king of Scots to keep these shires in peace for ever.[1369] Henry does not seem to have denied his oath; he simply refused to keep it, on the ground that it ran counter to his duty as king. Acting on what his enemies declared to be his habitual principle, of choosing to do penance for a word rather than for a deed,[1370] he declared that the crown of England must not suffer such mutilation, and summoned his Scottish cousin to give back to him the territory which had been acquired in his name.[1371]
[1367] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157. Cf. Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 84.
[1368] Cumberland was granted to Henry of Scotland by Stephen in 1136 and Northumberland in 1139; see above, pp. 282, 300. Westmoreland seems to have counted as a dependency of Cumberland.
[1369] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 211. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 105).
[1370] “Quoties res in arctum devenerat, de dicto malens quam de facto pœnitere, verbumque facilius quam factum irritum habere.” Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._ dist. ii. c. 24 (Angl. Christ. Soc. p. 72).
[1371] Will. Newb. as above.
Meanwhile, without waiting for Malcolm’s answer, Henry prepared for his first Welsh war. The domestic quarrels of the Welsh princes furnished him with an excellent pretext. Owen, prince of North-Wales, had confiscated the estates of his brother Cadwallader and banished him from the country; Cadwallader appealed to King Henry, and of course found a gracious reception.[1372] A council was held at Northampton on July 17,[1373] and thence orders were issued for an expedition into North-Wales. The force employed was the feudal levy, but in a new form; instead of calling out the whole body of knights to serve their legal term of forty days, Henry required every two knights throughout England to join in equipping a third[1374]--no doubt for a threefold term of service. By this expedient he obtained a force quite sufficient for his purpose, guarded against the risk of its breaking up before its task was accomplished--a frequent drawback in medieval warfare--and made the first innovation upon the strict rule of feudal custom in such a manner as to avoid all offence.
[1372] Caradoc of Llancarvan (Llwyd), p. 159. Some grants of land in Shropshire to Cadwallader appear in the Pipe Rolls of 1156 and 1157 (Hunter, pp. 43 and 88).
[1373] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 163.
[1374] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157. See Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 455, 589.
The invasion was to be twofold, by land and sea.[1375] The host assembled near Chester,[1376] on Saltney marsh,[1377] and was joined by Madoc Ap Meredith, prince of Powys. Owen of North-Wales, with his three sons and all his forces, entrenched himself at Basingwerk.[1378] The king, with his youthful daring,[1379] set off at once by way of the sea-coast, hoping to fall upon the Welsh at unawares; Owen’s sons however were on the watch,[1380] and in the narrow pass of Consilt[1381] the English suddenly found themselves face to face with the foe. Entangled in the woody, marshy ground, they were easily routed by the nimble light-armed Welsh;[1382] and a cry that the king himself had fallen caused the constable, Henry of Essex, to drop the royal standard and fly in despair. Henry of Anjou soon shewed himself alive, rallied his troops, and almost, like his ancestor Fulk at Conquereux, turned the defeat into a victory;[1383] for he cut his way through the Welsh ambushes with such vigour that Owen judged it prudent to withdraw from Basingwerk and seek a more inaccessible retreat.[1384] Cutting down the woods and clearing the roads before him, Henry pushed on to Rhuddlan, and there fortified the castle.[1385] Meanwhile the fleet had sailed[1386] under the command of Madoc Ap Meredith.[1387] It touched at Anglesey and there landed a few troops whose sacrilegious behaviour brought upon them such vengeance from the outraged islanders[1388] that their terrified comrades sailed back at once to Chester, where they learned that the war was ended.[1389] Owen, in terror of being hemmed in between the royal army and the fleet, sent proposals for peace, reinstated his banished brother,[1390] performed his own homage to King Henry,[1391] and gave hostages for his loyalty in the future.[1392] As the South-Welsh princes were all vassals of North-Wales, Owen’s submission was equivalent to a formal acknowledgement of Henry’s rights as lord paramount over the whole country, and the young king was technically justified in boasting that he had subdued all the Welsh to his will.[1393]
[1375] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157. A charge in the year’s Pipe Roll--“In locandâ unâ nave ad portandum corredium regis usque Pembroc” (Winchester accounts, Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II., Hunter, p. 108)--looks as if Henry had meditated an attempt upon South as well as North Wales. But it also seems to imply that the attempt was not actually made.
[1376] Ann. Cambr. a. 1158. _Brut y Tywysogion_, a. 1156. (The chronology of these Welsh chronicles is hopelessly wrong).
[1377] Caradoc (Llwyd), p. 159.
[1378] Ann. Cambr., _Brut y Tywys._, and Caradoc as above.
[1379] Gir. Cambr. _Itin. Kambr._, l. ii. c. 10 (_Opera_, Dimock, vol. vi. p. 137), and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 165, make no scruple of calling it rashness.
[1380] Ann. Cambr. and Caradoc as above.
[1381] “In arcto silvestri apud Coleshulle, id est, Carbonis collem” (Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 7, p. 130)--that is, Consilt, near Flint. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 5 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 107).
[1382] Will. Newb. as above (pp. 107, 108). _Brut y Tywys._ a. 1156. Caradoc (Llwyd), p. 160. Gir. Cambr. _Itin. Kambr._, l. ii. c. 7 (Dimock, vol. vi. p. 130) and c. 10 (p. 137).
[1383] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 5 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 108). Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 165. Caradoc (Llwyd, p. 160) has a totally different version of the battle, but it is incompatible with the undoubted facts about Henry of Essex.
[1384] Ann. Cambr. a. 1158. Caradoc (Llwyd), p. 160. _Brut y Tywys._ a. 1156.
[1385] _Ibid._
[1386] Ann. Cambr. and _Brut y Tywys._ as above.
[1387] So says Caradoc (as above); but is it possible that Madoc, a Welsh prince and one whose territory lay wholly inland, should have been put in command of the English fleet?
[1388] Ann. Cambr. a. 1158. _Brut y Tywys._ a. 1158. Caradoc (Llwyd), p. 160. Gir. Cambr. _Itin. Kambr._, l. ii. c. 7 (Dimock, vol. vi. p. 130).
[1389] Caradoc as above.
[1390] Ann. Cambr., _Brut y Tywys._, and Caradoc, as above.
[1391] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 5 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 108, 109). Mat. Paris (_Hist. Angl._, Luard, vol. i. p. 308) says the homage was done at Snowdon; how could this be?
[1392] See reference to the hostages in Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 114.
[1393] “Subjectis ad libitum Walensibus,” Rob. Torigni, a. 1157. The only entries in this year’s Pipe Roll visibly relating to the Welsh war are: “Pro thesauro conducendo ad Waliam xxxi s. et viii d.” (Oxfordshire, Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II., Hunter, p. 82), and a payment of two marks of silver by the abbot of Abbotsbury “de Exercitu Wal.” (Dorset, _ib._ p. 99). In the next year’s roll there are several references to the matter; Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter) pp. 114, 170, 175. The first relates to the hostages, the second to payments made to Henry’s Welsh allies, and the last is a payment made to Ralf “_vitulus_” (cf. Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 73, Hardy, p. 767) of Winchester “de Itinere de Waliâ”--_i.e._ for the fleet.
It was doubtless on his triumphant return that the king of Scots came to meet him at Chester.[1394] Whichever of the royal kinsmen might have the better cause, Malcolm now clearly perceived that the power to maintain it was all on Henry’s side. He therefore surrendered the three disputed shires,[1395] with the fortresses of Newcastle, Bamborough and Carlisle,[1396] and acknowledged himself the vassal of the English king “in the same manner as his grandfather had been the man of King Henry the Elder.”[1397] The precise import of this formula is uncertain, and was probably not much less so at the time; the exact nature and grounds of the Scottish homage to England formed a question which both parties usually found it convenient to leave undetermined.[1398] For Henry’s present purpose it sufficed that, on some ground or other, the homage was done.
[1394] Chron. Mailros, a. 1157.
[1395] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 105, 106).
[1396] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157.
[1397] Chron. Mailros, a. 1157.
[1398] The Scottish theory seems to be that Malcolm did homage for the earldom of Huntingdon, which had lapsed on his father’s death, and which Will. Newb. (as above, p. 106) and Rob. Torigni (a. 1157) say was now granted afresh to him. But, on the one hand, the treatise “De Judithâ uxore Waldevi comitis” in _Chroniques Anglo-Normandes_ (Francisque Michel, vol. ii. p. 128) says that Huntingdon was not granted to Malcolm till 1159; and on the other, the terms of homage as stated by the Chron. Mailros exclude Huntingdon, which was granted to Henry of Scotland not by Henry I. but by Stephen. The truth probably lurks in another phrase of Rob. Torigni (a. 1157), which says that Malcolm surrendered, besides the three fortresses above-named, Edinburgh “et comitatum Lodonensem.” This can only mean that he made a surrender of Lothian, to receive its investiture again on the same terms as his forefathers--_i.e._ as a fief of the English Crown. Huntingdon appears in the Pipe Rolls of 1156, 1157 and 1158, but without mention of its third penny.
The closing feast of the year was celebrated with a brilliant gathering of the court at Lincoln. More cautious than his predecessor, Henry did not venture to defy local tradition by appearing in his regal insignia within the city itself; he wore his crown on Christmas day, not in the great minster on the hill-top, but in the lesser church of S. Mary in the suburb of Wigford beyond the river.[1399] Next Easter the king and queen went through this ancient solemnity of the “crown-wearing” together, and for the last time, in Worcester cathedral. When the moment came for making their oblations, they laid their crowns upon the altar and vowed never to wear them again.[1400] The motive for this renunciation was probably nothing more than Henry’s impatience of court pageantry; but the practice thus solemnly forsaken was not revived, save once under very exceptional circumstances in the middle of the next reign, till the connexion between England and Anjou was on the eve of dissolution; and as it happens, the abandonment of this custom of Old-English royalty marks off one of the lesser epochs in Henry’s career. He was about to plunge into a sea of continental politics and wars which kept him altogether away from his island-realm for six years, and from which he never again thoroughly emerged. This last crown-wearing at Worcester serves as a fitting point at which we may leave our own country for a while and glance once more at the history of the lands united with her beneath the sceptre of the Angevin king.
[1399] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 9 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 117, 118). Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216; it is he who gives the name of the suburb, “Wikeford.” Will. Newb. has a wrong date; the Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 136, settles that point.
[1400] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216; more briefly, R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 302; both with very confused dates, but again they are set right by the Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 175.
CHAPTER X.
HENRY AND FRANCE.
1156–1161.
Formidable as was the task of England’s internal reorganization, it was but a small part of the work which lay before Henry Fitz-Empress. His accession brought the English Crown into an entirely new relation with the world at large. The realm which for ages had been counted almost as a separate sphere, whose insularity had been strong enough to survive even the Norman conquest and to turn the conqueror’s own native land into a dependency of the conquered island, suddenly became an unit in a vast group of states gathered into the hands of a single ruler, and making up altogether the most extensive and important empire in Christendom. Among the earlier kings of England Cnut is the only one whose dominions were at all comparable in extent to those of Henry II. But the empire of Cnut and that of Henry differed widely in character and circumstances. Cnut’s northern empire was to a certain extent homogeneous; its members had at least one thing in common besides their common allegiance--they were all, geographically and politically, almost as completely severed from the rest of Europe as England herself. It was only as an indirect consequence partly of his territorial power, but still more of his personal greatness, that Cnut and his realms came into connexion with central and southern Europe. In Henry’s case, on the contrary, such a connexion was rendered inevitable by the geographical position of his continental territories. They lay in the very heart of western Christendom; they covered the largest and some of the fairest regions of Gaul; they positively surrounded on two sides the domains of the French Crown to which they owed a nominal homage; they touched the borders of Spain, and they went very near to those old Burgundian lands which formed the south-western march of Germany and the north-western march of Italy. Again, Cnut’s territories were all perfectly independent of any ruler save himself; no rival power disputed his claims to any one of them; no other sovereign had any pretension to receive homage from him. Henry, on the other hand, was by the possession of his Gaulish fiefs placed in direct personal connexion with the French king who was not merely his neighbour but also his overlord. A like connexion had indeed existed between the Norman kings of England and the French kings as overlords of Normandy. But Henry’s relations with France were far more complex and fraught with far weightier political consequences than those of his Norman predecessors. He held under the king of France not a single outlying province, but--at the lowest reckoning--not less than five separate fiefs, all by different titles and upon different tenures, which were yet further complicated by the intricate feudal and political relations of these fiefs one with another.
Normandy was the least puzzling member of the group; Henry had inherited it from his mother, and held it on the same tenure as all her ancestors from Hrolf downwards. About Anjou, again--the original patrimony of the heirs of Fulk the Red--there could hardly be any question; and the old dispute whether Maine should count as an independent fief of the Crown or as an underfief of Normandy or of Anjou was not likely to be of any practical consequence when the immediate ruler of all three counties was one and the same. Yet all these had to be treated as separate states; each must have its special mention in the homage done by Henry to Louis; each must be governed according to its own special customs and institutions. So, too, must the other appendage of Anjou--Touraine, for which homage was still owed to the count of Blois, and where he still possessed a few outlying lands which might easily be turned into bones of contention should he choose to revive the ancient feud. Lastly, over and above all this bundle of family estates inherited from his father and his mother, Henry’s marriage had brought him the duchy of Aquitaine:--that is, the immediate possession of the counties of Poitou and Bordeaux; the overlordship of a crowd of lesser counties and baronies which filled up the remaining territory between the Loire and the Pyrenees; and a variety of more or less shadowy claims over all the other lands which had formed part of the old Aquitanian kingdom, and whose feudal relations with each other, with Poitou and with the Crown of France were in a state of inextricable confusion:--added to which, there was a personal complication caused by the two marriages of Eleanor, whereby her second husband owed homage to the first for the territories which he held in her name. Without going further into the details of the situation, we can easily see that it was crowded with difficulties and dangers, and that it would require the utmost care, foresight and self-restraint on the part of both Henry and Louis to avoid firing, at some point or other, a train which might produce an explosion disastrous to both alike.
Henry’s chief assistant in the management of his continental affairs was his mother, the Empress Matilda. Still closer to his side, indeed, stood one who in after-years shewed herself gifted with far greater administrative sagacity, and who had already acquired considerable political experience as queen of France and duchess of Aquitaine. As yet, however, Henry was likely to derive less assistance from the somewhat dangerously quick wit of his wife than from the mature wisdom of his mother. Matilda had been a harsh, violent, impracticable woman; but there was in her character an element of moral and intellectual grandeur which even in her worst days had won and kept for her the devotion of men like Miles of Hereford and Brian Fitz-Count, and which now in her latter years had fairly gained the mastery over her less admirable qualities. She had inherited a considerable share of her father’s talents for government; she had indeed failed to use them in her own behalf, but she had learned from her failure a lesson which enabled her to contribute not a little, by warnings and suggestions, to the success of her son. In England, where the haughtiness of her conduct had never been forgiven, whatever was found amiss in Henry’s seems to have been popularly laid to her charge.[1401] In Normandy, however, she was esteemed far otherwise. From the time of her son’s accession to the English crown she lived quietly in a palace which her father had built hard by the minster of Notre-Dame-des-Prés, outside the walls of Rouen;[1402] taking no direct share in politics, but universally held in profound respect by reason of her dignified and pious life, and of the influence which she was known to exercise upon the mind and policy of the young duke. His first step on the tidings of Stephen’s death had been to hold a consultation with her; so long as she lived, her opinions and her wishes were an element never absent from his calculations before entering upon any serious undertaking; and if he did not formally leave her as regent of the Norman duchy, yet he trusted in great measure to her for the maintenance of its tranquillity and order during his own absence beyond the sea.
[1401] “Nos autem illi doctrinæ [sc. maternæ] fidenter imputamus omnia quibus erat tædiosus” [rex]. W. Map. _De Nug. Cur._, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).
[1402] _Draco Norm._, l. iii. cc. 1, 2, vv. 37–66 (Howlett, _Will. Newb._, vol. ii. pp. 712–714).
A personal visit was, however, necessary to make sure of his ground with the king of France. As soon, therefore, as matters in England were sufficiently composed, early in 1156 Henry went to Normandy;[1403] Louis came to meet him on the border, and shortly afterwards, at a second meeting, received a repetition of his homage for all his French fiefs, including the duchy of Aquitaine.[1404] It was time; for to every one of those fiefs, except Aquitaine and Normandy, there was a rival claimant in the person of his brother. The story went that Geoffrey Plantagenet as he lay dying at Château-du-Loir had made the bishops and barons around his bed promise that they would not suffer him to be laid in the grave till his eldest son had sworn to abide by the contents of a will which he had just executed. When they called upon Henry to take the oath, he hesitated a long while; at last, seeing no other means of getting his father buried in peace, with a burst of tears he swore as he was required. After the funeral the will was read; and Henry found himself thereby pledged to make over the whole of his patrimonial territories--Anjou, Touraine and Maine--to his brother Geoffrey, as soon as the addition of the English crown to his Norman coronet should put him in complete possession of his mother’s heritage. Till then Geoffrey was to be content with three castles, Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau. For the moment Henry dissembled his vexation; the contingency contemplated in the will was still in the unknown future. But before it came to pass Geoffrey, as we have seen, provoked his brother’s ill-will by using his three castles as a basis of rebellion. Henry on his part sought and obtained a papal absolution from the extorted oath, and flatly refused to keep it.[1405] Hereupon Geoffrey again began stirring up a revolt whose suppression was one of the chief objects of Henry’s visit to the continent in 1156. The brothers met at Rouen, but they could not agree; Geoffrey hurried back to fortify his three castles, and Henry followed to besiege them.[1406] The troops which he employed were, as we have already seen, mercenaries paid out of the proceeds of a scutage levied in England; and if the chancellor’s share in the matter amounted to nothing more than the suggestion of this contrivance, its perfect success in every way would be enough to justify the statement of a contemporary, that Henry “profited greatly by his assistance.”[1407] Loudun and Mirebeau were successively besieged and taken;[1408] and in July the fall of Geoffrey’s last and mightiest fortress, Chinon, brought him to complete surrender of all his claims, for which he accepted a compensation in money from his brother.[1409] Next month Queen Eleanor came over to share her husband’s triumph;[1410] she doubtless accompanied him in a progress through Aquitaine, where he received homage from the vassals of the duchy, took hostages for their fidelity,[1411] and kept Christmas at Bordeaux.[1412] Every part of his continental dominions was thus thoroughly secured before he returned to England in the spring of 1157.[1413]
[1403] He was at Rouen on Candlemas day. Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.
[1404] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 215. Between the two meetings with Louis came one with the count and countess of Flanders at Rouen. Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.
[1405] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 112, 113).
[1406] Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.
[1407] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 162, says that Henry won his success “Thomæ cancellarii sui magno fretus auxilio.” It is not quite clear whether Thomas was with him in person; he was certainly in England part of this year, witness the Pipe Roll.
[1408] Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.
[1409] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 114). Rob. Torigni, a. 1156. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1156 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 38). The first states the compensation as “terram planam ex quo fructuum utilitas proveniret”; the second as a thousand pounds sterling and two thousand Angevin _per annum_. All say Geoffrey lost his castles, except Loudun, which Henry restored to him (Chron. S. Albin. as above). The date is from Rob. Torigni.
[1410] She and Richard de Lucy were both with Henry at Saumur on August 29. Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 76.
[1411] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 215.
[1412] Anon. Chron., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 121.
[1413] Eleanor went back independently before Easter. “In corredio reginæ quando venit de Normanniâ” appears among the accounts “de veteri firmâ” of Hampshire, Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 107.
Henry and Eleanor had now two children living. The eldest, born in London on February 28, 1155,[1414] and baptized by his father’s name, had already been recognized as his heir; the second was a girl, born in 1156,[1415] and named after her grandmother the Empress Matilda. A third, Richard, was born at Oxford[1416] on September 8, 1157.[1417] Eleanor had moreover by her former marriage with Louis of France two daughters, Mary and Adela, betrothed to the brother-counts of Champagne and Blois;[1418] while the second marriage of Louis with Constance of Castille had given him one child, the infant princess Margaret.[1419] Early in 1158 Henry resolved to secure the hand of this little girl for his eldest son, and he sent his chancellor over sea to make the proposal to Louis.[1420]
[1414] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1155 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 38).
[1415] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 302.
[1416] _Ibid._
[1417] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1157 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 39).
[1418] _Gesta Ludov._, c. 29 (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv. p. 411). _Hist. Ludov._ (_ibid._) p. 415. Mary had once been proposed as wife for Henry Fitz-Empress, but S. Bernard put a stop to the scheme on the ground of consanguinity (see above, p. 393, note 2{1161})--an objection which, however, applied still more strongly to Henry’s marriage with her mother. Mary was betrothed to Henry of Champagne before the Crusade (_Gesta Ludov._, c. 18, as above, pp. 403, 404). Adela was born in 1149 or 1150, and apparently betrothed to Theobald of Blois in 1152 or soon after (_ib._ cc. 27, 29, as above, pp. 410, 411; _Hist. Ludov._, _ib._ pp. 414, 415). Neither couple was married till 1164.
[1419] _Gesta Ludov._, c. 29 (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv.), p. 411. _Hist. Ludov._ (_ibid._), p. 415.
[1420] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 29. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 302.
Never, since Haroun-al-Raschid sent his envoys to Charles the Great, had such an embassy been seen in western Europe. Thomas made up his mind to display before the eyes of astonished France all the luxury and splendour which the wealth of the island-realm could procure, that King Henry might be glorified in his representative.[1421] The six ships with which he habitually crossed the Channel[1422]--the king himself had but one for this purpose, till his chancellor presented him with three more[1423]--can hardly have sufficed for the enormous train which he took with him on this occasion. It comprized, in the first place, some two hundred members of his household, knights, clerks, stewards, servants, squires, and young pages of noble blood, all provided with horses and fitted out with new and gay attire as beseemed their several degrees. Thomas himself had twenty-four changes of raiment, most of which he gave away in the course of his journey; besides a quantity of rich silks, rare furs, and costly cloths and carpets, “fit to adorn the sleeping-chamber of a bishop.” He had a right royal train of coursing-dogs and hawks of all kinds. Above all, he had eight mighty chariots, each drawn by five horses equal to war-chargers in beauty and strength; beside each horse ran a stalwart and gaily-clad youth, and each chariot had its special conductor. Two of these vehicles were laden with casks of ale, to be given to the French, who marvelled at the beverage, strange to them, which the English thought superior to wine. The other chariots bore the furniture of the chancellor’s chapel, of his private chamber, and of his kitchen; others again contained treasure, provisions for the journey, necessaries of the toilet, trappings and baggage of all kinds. Next, there were twelve sumpter-horses, of which eight were loaded with coffers containing the gold and silver vessels of the chancellor’s household, vases, ewers, goblets, bowls, cups, flagons, basins, salt-cellars, spoons, plates and dishes. Other chests and packages held the money for daily expenses and gifts, the chancellor’s own clothes, and his books. One pack-horse, which always went first, bore the sacred vessels, altar-ornaments and books belonging to the chapel. To each horse there was a well-trained groom; to each chariot was fastened a dog, large, strong and “terrible as a lion or a bear”; and on the top of every chariot sat a monkey. The procession travelled along the road in regular order; first came the foot-pages, to the number of about two hundred and fifty, in groups of six, ten or more, “singing together in their native tongue, after the manner of their country.” They were followed at a little distance by the coursing-dogs and hounds coupled and in leashes under the charge of their respective keepers. Next, the great chariots covered with hides came heavily rolling and rattling along; after them trotted the pack-horses, each with a groom; these again were followed by the squires, bearing the shields and leading the chargers of the knights; then came a crowd of other attendants, pages, and those who had charge of the hawks; then the sewers and other servants of the chancellor’s household; then his knights and his clerks, all riding two and two; and lastly, amid a select group of friends, the chancellor himself. In every town and village along the road the French rushed out to inquire the meaning of such a startling procession, and when told that it was the chancellor of the king of England coming on a mission to the king of France, exclaimed: “If this is the chancellor, what must his master be?”
[1421] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.
[1422] Partly, it seems, for the sake of giving a free passage to any one who wanted to go. _Ib._ p. 23.
[1423] _Ibid._ p. 26.
Immediately after landing Thomas notified his arrival to Louis; at Meulan he received an answer, fixing a day for an audience in Paris. It was the custom of the French kings to provide at their own expense for every man who came to their court during his sojourn there; Louis therefore issued a proclamation in Paris forbidding the sale of any article whatsoever to the chancellor or his attendants. Thomas however was resolved to decline the royal hospitality; he sent his caterers in disguise and under feigned names to all the fairs round about--Lagny, Corbeil, Pontoise, S. Denys--where they bought up such an abundance of bread, meat, fish and wine that when he reached his lodging at the Temple he found it stocked with three days’ provisions for a thousand men. One dish of eels, which had cost a hundred shillings sterling, was long remembered as an instance of the English chancellor’s prodigality. Every possible courtesy was interchanged between him and the French king. Every member of the court, were he count, baron, knight or serving-man, received some token of insular wealth and generosity; Thomas gave away all his gold and silver plate, all his costly raiment; to one a cloak, to another a fur cape, to another a pelisse, to another a palfrey or a destrier.[1424] The masters and scholars of the university came in for their share; the chancellor’s gracious reception of them, and of the citizens with whom the English scholars lodged,[1425] was a marked feature in his visit to Paris.[1426] The embassy was successful; Louis promised his daughter’s hand to the heir of England, and Thomas went home in triumph, having finished up his expedition by capturing and casting into prison at Neufmarché a certain Guy of Laval whose lawless depredations were a continual insult to King Henry and a continual terror to his subjects.[1427] Henry himself soon afterwards went over sea, partly, no doubt, to confirm the family alliance thus concluded with Louis. But there was also another reason which urgently required his presence in Gaul.
[1424] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp. 29–33.
[1425] “Cives scholarium Angligenarum creditores”(_ib._ p. 32) must mean something like this.
[1426] _Ibid._
[1427] _Ibid._ p. 33.
A fresh opening had presented itself to the ambition of the Angevin house in a quarter where they seem to have had no dealings since the time of Geoffrey Martel, but which was intimately associated with their earliest traditions and with the very foundations of their power. The long rivalry between the counts of Nantes and of Rennes had ended, like that between the dukes of Normandy and the counts of Anjou, in a marriage, and for eighty-two years all Britanny had been united beneath the immediate and undisputed sway of the one ducal house, when in 1148 Duke Conan III. on his death-bed disavowed the young Hoel who had hitherto passed as his son and heir.[1428] The duchy split up into factions once again; the greater part accepted the rule of Count Eudo of Porhoët, who was married to Conan’s only daughter Bertha; the people of Nantes alone, fired with their old spirit of independence and opposition, opened their gates to Hoel and acknowledged him as their count. Hoel however proved unable to cope with the superior forces of his rival; at the end of eight years his people grew hopeless of maintaining their independence under him. Rather than give it up once more to those whom they looked upon as representatives of the hated supremacy of Rennes, they fell back upon their old traditional alliance with Anjou, and having driven out the unfortunate Hoel, offered themselves and their country to young Geoffrey Plantagenet.[1429] Geoffrey, smarting under the defeat which he had just sustained at his brother’s hands in Anjou, was naturally delighted with this new acquisition, and all the more as he had a fair prospect of enjoying it in peace; for Eudo at that very moment was suddenly confronted by another rival. Earl Conan of Richmond, Bertha’s son by a former marriage, being now grown to manhood, came over from England in this same summer of 1156 to claim the heritage which his stepfather had usurped;[1430] and during the struggle which ensued between them neither party had time or energy to spare for dislodging the Angevin intruder from Nantes, where he remained undisputed master for nearly two years.
[1428] Chron. Britann. _ad ann._ (Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol. i. col. 103).
[1429] _Ib._ a. 1148, 1156, 1157 (as above). Chron. Brioc. (_ibid._), col. 37.
[1430] Chron. Brioc. as above. Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.
On July 26, 1158, Geoffrey died.[1431] The county of Nantes was at once seized by Conan and claimed by the king of England as heir to his childless brother;[1432] and on the eve of the Assumption Henry landed in Normandy to enforce his claim. Before resorting to arms, however, he deemed it prudent to secure the assent of the lord paramount of Britanny, King Louis of France, to his intended proceedings. The negotiations were again intrusted to the chancellor, and again with marked success. At a conference held on the last day of August[1433] Louis did far more than sanction Henry’s claim upon Nantes; he granted him a formal commission to arbitrate between the competitors for the dukedom of Britanny and settle the whole question in dispute as he might think good, in virtue of his office as grand seneschal of France.[1434] This office was now little more than honorary, and was held throughout the greater part of the reign of Louis VII. by the count of Blois; but the rival house of Anjou seems to have also put forth a claim to it, which Louis admitted for a moment, as on the present occasion, whenever it suited his own purposes.[1435] From Argentan, on September 8, Henry issued a summons to the whole feudal host of Normandy to assemble at Avranches on Michaelmas-day for an expedition into Britanny. He himself spent the interval in a visit to Paris, where he was entertained by Louis with the highest honours; the betrothal of little Henry and Margaret was ratified, and the baby-bride was handed over to the care of her future father-in-law, who intrusted her for education to a faithful Norman baron, Robert of Neubourg.[1436] The host gathered at Avranches on the appointed day, but only to witness Conan’s submission. He knew that he was no match for the king of England with the king of France at his back; so he put himself into Henry’s hands, and received his confirmation in the dukedom of Britanny in return for the surrender of Nantes.[1437] Henry, after a visit to the Mont-S.-Michel and a brief halt at Pontorson to restore the castle, proceeded to take formal possession of Nantes; he then went to besiege Thouars,[1438] whose lord was in rebellion against him. In November he met Louis at Le Mans,[1439] and thence conducted him on a triumphal progress through Normandy. After going through Pacy and Evreux to Neubourg, that the French king might see his little daughter, they were received with a solemn procession at Bec; they then visited the abbey of Mont-S.-Michel, where Louis had a vow to pay, and from Avranches Henry escorted his guest by way of Bayeux, Caen and Rouen safely and honourably back to his own dominions.[1440]
[1431] Contin. Becc. a. 1158 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. p. 166). Chron. S. Albin. a. 1158 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 39).
[1432] Rob. Torigni, a. 1158. Chron. Brioc. (Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol. i.), col. 37. Chron. Britann. a. 1158 (_ib._ col. 103).
[1433] Contin. Becc. a. 1158 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. p. 167).
[1434] “Eo tempore, per industriam Thomæ cancellarii a Lundoniâ, rex Angliæ a rege Francorum Christianissimo, viro tamen nimis simplici, optinuit ut quasi senescallus regis Francorum intraret Britanniam, et quosdam ibidem inter se inquietos et funebre bellum exercentes coram se convocaret et pacificaret, et quem inveniret rebellum violenter coherceret.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166.
[1435] On the office of seneschal of France see A. Luchaire, _Hist. des Institutions Monarchiques sous les premiers Capétiens_, vol. i. pp. 173–181. The treatise of Hugh of Clères “De senescalciâ et majoratu regni Franciæ” (printed in Marchegay, _Comtes d’Anjou_, pp. 387–394), which sets forth the Angevin claim in detail, is shown by M. Mabille to be a forgery (Introd., pp. xlix–li); and so too, it seems, is the only charter in which Henry appears as seneschal (_ib._ p. li, note). The treatise was, however, written between 1150 and 1168 (_ib._ p. li), and must therefore have been intended to support a claim made at that time. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (_Comtes de Champagne_, vol. ii. pp. 270–274; vol. iii. pp. 96, 97) gives from charters a list of the seneschals of France from A.D. 1091 to A.D. 1163. No count of Anjou appears; and from 1154 to 1163 (inclusive) the seneschal each year is Theobald of Blois. That the Angevin claim was, however, not only made but occasionally admitted--doubtless for some special purpose--is shewn by the passage of Gerv. Cant. quoted above (note 3 {1434}), and also by two passages in Robert of Torigni, none of which are noticed by M. Luchaire. In A.D. 1169 Robert tells us that the younger Henry did homage to Louis at Montmirail for the county of Anjou, “et concessit ei rex Francorum ut esset senescallus Franciæ, quod pertinet ad feudum Andegavense;” and he adds that at Candlemas young Henry officiated as seneschal to the king in Paris; after which he proceeds to abridge from the pseudo-Hugh de Clères the story of the origin of the dignity. In A.D. 1164 he says: “Comes Carnotensis Tedbaudus despondit filiam Ludovici regis Franciæ, et ideo rex ei concessit dapiferatum Franciæ, quem comes Andegavensis antiquitus habebat.” M. de Jubainville’s list shews that Theobald had been seneschal long before this; but the words shew that the Angevin claim was well known, at any rate in the Angevin dominions.
[1436] Rob. Torigni, a. 1158.
[1437] _Ibid._ Contin. Becc. a. 1158 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. p. 169). Chron. Britann. (Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol. i.), col. 104. This last dates the surrender “circa festivitatem S. Dionysii” [Oct. 9]; the two former make it Michaelmas. According to Rob. Torigni the actual cession comprised the city of Nantes and the northern half of the county, said to be worth sixty thousand shillings Angevin.
[1438] Rob. Torigni and Contin. Becc. as above. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1158 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 39). Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166.
[1439] Gerv. Cant. as above.
[1440] Rob. Torigni, a. 1158. Contin. Becc. a. 1158 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. pp. 169, 170). Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166.
The county of Nantes was in itself a very trifling addition to the vast possessions of Henry Fitz-Empress; yet its acquisition was a more important matter than appears at first sight. Nantes, by its geographical position, commanded the mouth of the Loire; its political destinies were therefore of the highest consequence to the princes whose dominions lay along the course of that river. The carefully planned series of advances whereby Geoffrey Greygown and Fulk the Black had gradually turned the whole navigable extent of the Loire into a high-way through their own territories would have been almost useless had they not begun by securing the entrance-gate. To Henry, who as count of Poitou had command of the opposite shore of the estuary, there might have been less danger in the chance of hostility at Nantes; but the place was, for another reason, of greater value to him than it could ever have been to his ancestors. From the English Channel to the Pyrenees he was master of the entire western half--by far the larger half--of Gaul, with one exception: between his Norman and his Aquitanian duchy there jutted out the Breton peninsula. Britanny must have been in Henry’s eyes something like what Tours had been in those of Geoffrey Martel:--a perpetual temptation to his ambition, a fragment of alien ground which must have seemed to him destined almost by the fitness of things to become absorbed sooner or later into the surrounding mass from which it stood out in a sort of unnatural isolation. By his acquisition of Nantes he had gained a footing in the Breton duchy, somewhat as his forefathers had gained one in the city of Tours by their canonry at S. Martin’s; and as a grant of investiture from the French king had served as the final stepping-stone to Martel’s great conquest, so the privilege of arbitration conferred by Louis upon Henry might pave the way for more direct intervention in Britanny. The meaning of this autumn’s work is well summed up by Gervase of Canterbury: “This was Henry’s first step towards subduing the Bretons.”[1441] A week before the assembly at Avranches his fourth son had been born;[1442] the infant was baptized by the name of Geoffrey. It would indeed have been strange if the name made famous by Henry’s own father, as well as by so many of the earlier members of the family, had been allowed to drop out of use in the next generation. Yet by the light of after-events one may suspect that its revival at this particular moment had a special reference to the memory of the lately deceased Count Geoffrey of Nantes, and that the new-born child’s future destiny as duke of Britanny was already foreshadowed, however vaguely, in his father’s dreams.
[1441] “Hic fuit primus ingressus ejus super Britones edomandos.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166.
[1442] On September 23; Rob. Torigni, a. 1158.
The year closed amid general tranquillity. So cordial was, or seemed to be, the alliance of the two kings, that they planned a joint crusade against the Moors in Spain, and wrote to ask the Pope’s blessing upon their undertaking;[1443] and a long-standing dispute between Henry and Theobald of Blois was settled before Christmas by the mediation of Louis.[1444] In England the year is marked by nothing more important than a new issue of coinage.[1445] The administration of the country was directed by the two justiciars, assisted, formally at least, by the queen,[1446] until shortly before Christmas, when she went over sea to keep the feast with her husband at Cherbourg.[1447] Unhappily, the beginnings of strife followed in her train.
[1443] Letter of Adrian IV.--date, February 19 [1159]--in Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv. pp. 590, 591.
[1444] Rob. Torigni, a. 1158. The quarrel had originated in Henry’s refusal, when he succeeded his father as count of Anjou, to do homage for Touraine. To this was added a dispute about Fréteval and Amboise. See details in _Gesta Ambaz. Domin._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 216, 222, 223.
[1445] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 302. There are some references to this new coinage in the Pipe Roll of the year (4 Hen. II., Hunter, pp. 114, 181). Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 215, misdates it 1156.
[1446] Richard de Lucy and Eleanor seem to share the regency during her stay in England; see Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 42, 43, and Palgrave, _Eng. Commonwealth_, vol. ii. pp. v, vi. After her departure her place seems to be taken by Robert of Leicester.
[1447] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.