Enkidoodle

In the middle of the night of July 17 a courier from the north came knocking wildly for admittance at the palace-gate. The porters remonstrated with him in vain; he bore, he said, good news which the king must hear that very night. He hurried to the door of the king’s chamber, and, despite the expostulations of the chamberlains, made his way to the bedside and woke the king from his sleep. “Who art thou?” demanded Henry. “A servant of your faithful Ralf de Glanville, and the bearer of good tidings from him to you.” “Is he well?” “He is well; and lo! he holds your enemy the king of Scots in chains at Richmond castle.” Not till he had seen Ralf’s own letters could Henry believe the tidings; then he burst into thanksgivings for the crowning triumph which had come to him, as he now learned, almost at the moment when his voluntary humiliation at Canterbury was completed.[798] The garrison of Carlisle had pledged themselves to surrender to the Scot king at Michaelmas if not previously relieved. In the interval William laid siege to Odelin de Umfraville’s castle of Prudhoe on the Tyne.[799] Here he was rejoined by Roger de Mowbray, who came to intreat the Scot king’s aid in the recovery of his lost castles.[800] Meanwhile, however, the king’s return had apparently brought with it the return of the sheriff of Yorkshire, Robert de Stuteville. Under his leadership and that of his son William the whole military forces of the shire, with those of William de Vesci, Ralf de Glanville, Bernard de Balliol and Odelin de Umfraville, and Archbishop Roger’s men under his constable Ralf de Tilly, gathered and marched northward to oppose the Scots.[801] They reached Newcastle on July 12[802]--the day of Henry’s penitential entry into Canterbury--but only to find that on the rumour of their approach William the Lion had retired from Prudhoe, and was gone to besiege Alnwick with his own picked followers, while the bulk of his host, under the earls of Fife and Angus and the English traitor Richard de Morville, dispersed over all Northumberland to burn, plunder and slay in the old barbarous Scottish fashion which seems hardly to have softened since the days of Malcolm Canmore.[803] The English leaders now held a council of war. Their forces consisted only of a few hundred knights, all wearied and spent with their long and hurried march, in which the foot had been unable to keep up with them at all. The more cautious argued that enough had been done in driving back the Scots thus far, and that it would be madness for a band of four hundred men to advance against a host of eighty thousand. Bolder spirits, however, urged that the justice of their cause must suffice to prevail against any odds; and it was decided to continue the march to Alnwick. They set out next morning before sunrise; the further they rode, the thicker grew the mist; some proposed to turn back. “Turn back who will,” cried Bernard de Balliol, “if no man will follow me, I will go on alone, rather than bear the stain of cowardice for ever!” Every one of them followed him; and when at last the mist cleared away, the first sight that met their eyes was the friendly castle of Alnwick. Close beside it lay the king of Scots, carelessly playing with a little band of some sixty knights. Never dreaming that the English host would dare to pursue him thus far, he had sent out all the rest of his troops on a plundering expedition, and at the first appearance of the enemy he took them for his own followers returning with their spoils. When they unfurled their banners he saw at once that his fate was sealed. The Scottish Lion, however, proved worthy of his name, and his followers proved worthy of their leader. Seizing his arms and shouting, “Now it shall be seen who are true knights!” he rushed upon the English; his horse was killed, he himself was surrounded and made prisoner, and so were all his men.[804] Roger de Mowbray and Adam de Port, an English baron who had been outlawed two years before for an attempt on King Henry’s life, alone fled away into Scotland;[805] not one Scot tried to escape, and some even who were not on the spot, when they heard the noise of the fray, rode hastily up and almost forced themselves into the hands of their captors, deeming it a knightly duty to share their sovereign’s fate.[806]

[798] _Ib._ (pp. 189, 190). On the coincidence of time see Mr. Howlett’s note 3, p. 188. Cf. the more detailed, but far less vivid version of the story in Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1956–2029 (Michel, pp. 88–92). In the _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 72, Henry is said to have received the news on July 18. Taken in conjunction with the story given above, this must mean the night of July 17–18.

[799] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 65. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 60. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 32 (as above, p. 182); and Jordan Fantosme, vv., 1640–1650 (Michel, p. 74).

[800] Will. Newb. as above.

[801] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 65, 66. Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 60.

[802] “Sexta Sabbati.” Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 33 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 183).

[803] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 66. Cf. Rog. Howden as above; Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 32 (as above, pp. 182, 183), and Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1671–1729 (Michel, pp. 76–78). On the Scottish misdoings see also R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 376; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 247; and _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 64; this latter writer can find no better way of describing them than by copying Henry of Huntingdon’s account of the Scottish invaders of 1138 (Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 6, Arnold, p. 261).

[804] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 33 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 183–185). Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1731–1839 (Michel, pp. 78–84). Cf. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 67; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 63; and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 249.

[805] Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1841–1849 (Michel, p. 84). Will. Newb. as above (p. 185). On Adam de Port (whose presence on this occasion is mentioned by Jordan only) see _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 35 and note 2, and Stapleton, _Magn. Rot. Sacc. Norm._ (Soc. Antiq.), vol. i., _Observ._, p. clxi.

[806] Will. Newb. as above.

The capture of William the Lion almost put an end to the rebellion. A body of Flemings summoned by Bishop Hugh of Durham landed the same day at Hartlepool; but at the tidings of the Scottish disaster, Hugh thought it safest to pay them their forty days’ wages and send them home again at once.[807] On the same day, too, the young king, weary of waiting for a wind at Gravelines, left the count of Flanders there alone and proceeded to Wissant with a body of troops whom he succeeded in despatching from thence into England, under the command of Ralf of La Haye, to the assistance of Hugh Bigod.[808] In London, meanwhile, the news brought by Ralf de Glanville’s courier raised to the highest pitch the spirits both of Henry and of his troops. On that very day he set out for Huntingdon,[809] whose titular earl had already fled back to Scotland;[810] at Huntingdon Geoffrey of Lincoln came to meet him with a force of seven hundred knights;[811] and three days later the garrison surrendered at discretion.[812] The king then marched to S. Edmund’s; here he divided his host, sending half against Hugh Bigod’s castle of Bungay, while he himself led the other half to Framlingham, where Hugh was entrenched with five hundred knights and his Flemish men-at-arms. The number of these, however, had dwindled greatly; when the royal host encamped on July 24 at Sileham, close to Framlingham, Hugh felt himself unable to cope with it; and next morning he surrendered.[813] By the end of the month the whole struggle was over. One by one the king’s foes came to his feet as he held his court at Northampton. The king of Scots was brought, with his feet tied together under his horse’s body, from his prison[814] at Richmond.[815] On the last day of July Bishop Hugh of Durham came to give up his castles of Durham, Norham and Northallerton. On the same day the earl of Leicester’s three fortresses were surrendered by his constables;[816] and Thirsk was given up by Roger of Mowbray.[817] Earl Robert de Ferrers yielded up Tutbury and Duffield;[818] the earl of Gloucester and his son-in-law Richard de Clare, who were suspected of intriguing with the rebels, came to offer their services and their obedience to the king;[819] and a like offer came from far-off Galloway, whose native princes, Uhtred and Gilbert, long unwilling vassals of the king of Scots, had seized their opportunity to call home their men, drive out William’s bailiffs, destroy his castles and slaughter his garrisons, and now besought his victorious English cousin to become their protector and overlord.[820] In three weeks from Henry’s landing in England all the royal fortresses were again in his hands, and the country was once more at peace.[821]

[807] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 67.

[808] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 381. Cf. _ib._ p. 385.

[809] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 72.

[810] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 37 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 195).

[811] See Henry’s remark at their meeting in Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. i. c. 3 (Dimock, vol. iv. p. 368).

[812] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 73. Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 384.

[813] _Gesta Hen._ as above. R. Diceto as above, pp. 384, 385.

[814] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 64.

[815] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 33 (as above, p. 185).

[816] _Gesta Hen._ as above. R. Diceto as above, p. 384, dates the surrender of these three castles July 22--_i.e._ just as Henry was leaving Huntingdon for Suffolk. The chronology of the _Gesta_ seems much more probable. See in Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 37 (as above, pp. 194, 195), how Henry frightened the constables into submission. Jordan Fantosme, vv. 2039–2046 (Michel, p. 92), has a different story about Leicester. He makes David of Huntingdon its commandant, and says that as soon as Henry received the news of the Scot king’s capture, he forwarded it to David with a summons to surrender; whereupon David gave up Leicester castle and himself both at once.

[817] _Gesta Hen._ as above. R. Diceto (as above), p. 385.

[818] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Tutbury was being besieged by a host of Welshmen under Rees Ap-Griffith; R. Diceto (as above), p. 384.

[819] R. Diceto as above, p. 385.

[820] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 63.

[821] _Ib._ p. 65. Rob. Torigni, a. 1174.

When England was secured, it was comparatively a light matter to secure the rest. Louis of France was so dismayed at the sudden collapse of the rebellion in England--a collapse which necessarily entailed a like fate upon the rebellion in Normandy, since the leaders were the same men in both cases--that he at once recalled the young king and the count of Flanders from their project of invasion. As a last resource, all three concentrated their forces upon the siege of Rouen.[822] Its garrison held out gallantly until Henry had time to recross the sea with his Brabantines and a thousand Welshmen[823] who had already done good service under Rees Ap-Griffith at the siege of Tutbury.[824] On August 11, three days after landing, he entered Rouen;[825] a successful raid of his Welshmen upon some French convoys, followed by an equally successful sally of Henry himself against the besieging forces, sufficed to make Louis ask for a truce, under cover of which he fled with his whole host back into his own dominions.[826] Some three weeks later[827] he and Henry met in conference at Gisors and arranged a suspension of hostilities until Michaelmas on all sides, except between Henry and his son Richard, who was fighting independently against his father’s loyal subjects in Poitou.[828] Henry marched southward at once; Richard fled before him from place to place, leaving his conquests to fall back one by one into the hands of their rightful owner; at last he suddenly returned to throw himself at his father’s feet, and a few days before Michaelmas Henry concluded his war in Poitou[829] by entering Poitiers in triumph with Richard, penitent and forgiven, at his side.[830]

[822] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 73. Rog. Howden as above, p. 64. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 36 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 190). Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 249. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 386.

[823] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 74.

[824] See R. Diceto as above, p. 384. It seems most likely that these were the same. The Pipe Roll of 1174 (Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 183) has a charge of £4: 18: 11 “in corredio Reis et aliorum Walensium qui venerunt ad regem in expedicionem.”

[825] R. Diceto as above, p. 385. _Gesta Hen._ as above. Rog. Howden as above, p. 65.

[826] See the details of Louis’s disgraceful conduct in _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 74–76, Rog. Howden as above, pp. 65, 66, R. Diceto as above, pp. 386, 387, Gerv. Cant. as above, p. 250, and Will. Newb., l. ii. cc. 36 and 37 (as above, pp. 192–196).

[827] On September 8. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 76.

[828] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 76. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 66. Rob. Torigni, a. 1174.

[829] “Et sic finivit rex gwerram suam in Pictaviâ,” comments the writer of the _Gesta Hen._ (as above) on the reconciliation.

[830] Rog. Howden as above, p. 67.

On the last day of September the two kings and all the princes met in conference between Tours and Amboise.[831] Henry’s three elder sons accepted the endowments which he offered them; in return, the young king gave his assent to a provision for John. A general amnesty was agreed upon; all prisoners on both sides, except the king of Scots, the earls of Leicester and Chester and Ralf of Fougères, were released at once; all the rebels returned to their allegiance, and were fully forgiven; Henry claimed nothing from any of them save the restoration of their castles to the condition in which they had been before the war, and the right of taking such hostages and other security as he might choose.[832] These terms of course did not apply to England; while, on the other hand, the king of Scots and his fellow-captives, whom Henry had brought back with him to Normandy and replaced in confinement at Falaise,[833] were excluded from them as prisoners of war. It was at Falaise, on October 11, that Henry and his sons embodied their agreement in a written document.[834] A few weeks later William of Scotland, with the formal assent of the bishops and barons of his realm, who had been allowed free access to him during his captivity, submitted to pay the price which Henry demanded for his ransom. The legal relations between the crowns of England and Scotland had been doubtful ever since the days of William the Conqueror and Malcolm Canmore, if not since the days of Eadward the Elder and Constantine; henceforth they were to be doubtful no longer. William the Lion became the liegeman of the English king and of his son for Scotland and for all his other lands, and agreed that their heirs should be entitled to a like homage and fealty from all future kings of Scots. The castles of Roxburgh, Jedburgh, Berwick, Edinburgh and Stirling were required by Henry as security; and as soon as the treaty had been ratified at Valognes[835] William was sent over sea in a sort of honourable custody to enforce their surrender and thereby complete his own release.[836]

[831] _Ibid._ _Gesta Hen._ as above. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 250. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 394. On the date given by this last see below, note 7{834}.

[832] Treaty given at length in _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 77–79, and Rog. Howden as above, pp. 67–69; abridged in R. Diceto as above, pp. 394, 395.

[833] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 74.

[834] The treaty, as given in _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden (see above, note 5{832}), is printed also in Rymer’s _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 30, with the addition of a date--Falaise--and the signatures of twenty-eight witnesses. Among the latter is Geoffrey, bishop elect of Lincoln. Now we know from R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 393, that Geoffrey came over from England to Normandy on October 8. R. Diceto (_ib._ p. 394) gives the date of the meeting at which the treaty was made as October 11. Is it not probable that he has substituted for the date of the making of the treaty that of its formal ratification at Falaise?

[835] This treaty, as given in _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 96–99, and Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 80–82 (and from them in Rymer’s _Fœdera_, vol. i. pp. 30, 31), is dated at Falaise. R. Diceto, however (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 396), who gives an abridgement of it, says it was made at Valognes, on December 8. Now there is in Hearne’s _Liber Niger_, vol. i. pp. 36–40, a copy of the treaty, differing from the former ones in having eighteen more witnesses (one cannot help noting the name of the last--“Roger Bacun”) and in its date, which is “Valognes.” No doubt the Falaise copy was made first, and this is the ratification of it.

[836] R. Diceto as above, p. 398.

By the terms of Henry’s treaty with France, all the English barons who held lands on both sides of the sea were to be at once re-instated in their continental possessions, except the castles over which the king resumed his ancient rights of garrison or of demolition. Their English estates however were wholly at his mercy; but he made a very gentle use of his power over them. He took in fact no personal vengeance at all; he exacted simply what was necessary for securing his own authority and the peace of the realm--the instant departure of the Flemish mercenaries[837] and the demolition of unlicensed fortifications--and for defraying the expenses of the war. This was done by a tax levied partly on the royal demesnes, partly on the estates of the rebels throughout the country, on the basis of an assessment made for that purpose during the past summer by the sheriffs of the several counties, assisted by some officers of the Exchequer.[838] No ruinous sums were demanded; even Hugh Bigod escaped with a fine of a thousand marks, and lost none of the revenues of his earldom save for the time that he was actually in open rebellion; the third penny of Norfolk was reckoned as due to him again from the third day after his surrender, and its amount for two months was paid to him accordingly at Michaelmas.[839] Even the earls of Leicester and Chester seem to have been at once set free;[840] and in little more than two years they were restored to all their lands and honours, except their castles, which were either razed or retained in the king’s hands.[841]

[837] Hugh Bigod’s Flemings and the knights sent over by the young king were all sent out of the country immediately after Hugh’s surrender, and the former were made to swear that they would never set a hostile foot in England again. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 385.

[838] This is the “Assiza super dominica regis et super terras eorum qui recesserunt.” Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 184, 185.

[839] See extract from Pipe Roll 20 Hen. II. [a. 1174], and Mr. Eyton’s comment upon it, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 181, note 2.

[840] Hugh of Chester was probably released at the same time with the king of Scots, for he signs among the witnesses to the treaty of Falaise. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 99. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 82.

[841] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 134, 135. Rog. Howden as above, p. 118.

This very clemency was in itself at once the strongest proof of the completeness of Henry’s victory and the surest means of retaining the hold which he had now gained over the barons. The struggle whose course we have been trying to follow has a special significance: it was the last struggle in English history in which the barons were arrayed against the united interests of the Crown and the people. That feudal pride which had revolted so often and so fiercely against the determination of William the Conqueror and Henry I. to enforce justice and order throughout their realm stooped at last to acknowledge its master in Henry II. In the unbroken tranquillity, the uninterrupted developement of reform in law and administration, the unchecked growth of the material and social prosperity of England during the remaining fifteen years of his reign, Henry and his people reaped the first-fruits of the anti-feudal policy which he and his predecessors had so long and so steadily maintained. Its full harvest was to be reaped after he was gone, not by the sovereign, but by the barons themselves, to whom his strong hand had at last taught their true mission as leaders and champions of the English people against a king who had fallen away from the traditions alike of the Norman and of the Angevin Henry.

CHAPTER V.

THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE.

1175–1183.

In the seven years which followed the suppression of the barons’ revolt Henry’s prosperity reached its height. The rising in which all his enemies had united for his destruction had ended in leaving him seated more firmly than ever upon the most securely-established throne in Europe. Within the four seas of Britain he was master as no king had ever been master before him. The English people had been with him from the first, and was learning year by year to identify its interests more closely with his; the Church, alienated for nearly ten years, was reconciled by his penance; feudalism was beaten at last, and for ever. The Welsh princes were his obedient and serviceable vassals; the Scot king had been humbled to accept a like position; a new subject-realm was growing up on the coast of Ireland. The great external peril which had dogged Henry’s footsteps through life, the hostility of France, was for a while paralyzed by his success. Other external foes he had none; the kings of Spain and of Sicily, the princes of the Western and even of the Eastern Empire, vied with each other in seeking the friendship, one might almost say the patronage, of the one sovereign in Europe who, safe on his sea-girt throne, could afford to be independent of them all. Within and without, on either side of the sea, all hindrances to the full and free developement of Henry’s policy for the government of his whole dominions were thus completely removed.

In England itself the succeeding period was one of unbroken tranquillity and steady prosperous growth, social, intellectual, political, constitutional. Henry used his opportunity to make a longer stay in the island than he had ever made there before, save at the very beginning of his reign. He was there from May 1175 to August 1177; in the following July he returned, and stayed till April 1180; he came back again in July 1181, and remained till March 1182. Each of these visits was marked by some further step towards the completion of his judicial and administrative reforms. Almost as soon as he set foot in the country, indeed, he took up his work as if it had never been interrupted. The king and his eldest son went to England together on May 9, 1175;[842] on Rogation Sunday they publicly sealed their reconciliation with each other and with the Church in a great council which met at Westminster[843] under the presidence of a new archbishop of Canterbury, Richard, formerly prior of Dover, who after countless troubles and delays had been chosen just before the outbreak of the rebellion to fill S. Thomas’s place,[844] and had come back from Rome in triumph, with his pallium and a commission as legate for all England, just as Henry was returning to Normandy from his success against Hugh Bigod.[845] From the council the two kings and the primate went all together on a pilgrimage to the martyr’s tomb at Canterbury;[846] at Whitsuntide the kings held a court at Reading,[847] and on S. Peter’s day they met the Welsh princes in a great council at Gloucester.[848] Two days later the process, begun two years before, of filling up the vacant bishoprics and abbacies which had been accumulating during Thomas’s exile was completed in another council at Woodstock.[849] Thence, too, was issued an edict for the better securing of order throughout the realm, and particularly around the person of the king; all his opponents in the late war were forbidden, on pain of arrest as traitors, to come to the court without special summons, and, under any circumstances, to come before sunrise or stay over night; and all wearing of arms, knife, bow and arrows, was forbidden on the English side of the Severn. These prohibitions however were only temporary;[850] and they were, with one exception, the only measure of general severity taken by Henry in consequence of the rebellion. That exception was a great forest-visitation, begun by Henry in person during the summer of 1175 and not completed by his ministers, it seems, till Michaelmas 1177, and from which scarcely a man throughout the kingdom, baron or villein, layman or priest, was altogether exempt. In vain did Richard de Lucy, as loyal to the people as to the king, shew Henry his own royal writ authorizing the justiciars to throw open the forests and give up the royal fish-ponds to public use during the war, and protest against the injustice of punishing the people at large for a trespass to which he had himself invited them in the king’s name and in accordance, as he had understood it, with the king’s expressed will. The license had probably been used to a far wider extent than Henry had intended; the general excitement had perhaps vented itself in some such outburst of wanton destructiveness as had occurred after the death of Henry I.; at any rate, the Norman and the Angevin blood in Henry II. was all alike stirred into wrath at sight of damage done to vert and venison; the transgressors were placed, in technical phrase, “at the king’s mercy,” and their fines constituted an important item in the Pipe Roll of 1176.[851]

[842] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 83, 84. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 399.

[843] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 84. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 250. R. Diceto as above, pp. 399–401.

[844] On the Canterbury troubles and Richard’s election see Gerv. Cant. as above, pp. 239–242, 243–245, 247.

[845] _Ib._ p. 249. R. Diceto as above, p. 391. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 74.

[846] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 91. Gerv. Cant. as above, p. 256. R. Diceto as above, p. 399.

[847] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

[848] _Ib._ p. 92.

[849] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 93. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 78, 79.

[850] _Gesta Hen._ as above. “Sed hæc præcepta parvo tempore custodita sunt.”

[851] On the “misericordia regis pro forestâ,” as it is called in the Pipe Rolls, see _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 92, 94; Rog. Howden as above, p. 79; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 402; Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 483; and the extracts from the Pipe Rolls 22 and 23 Hen. II. (_i.e._ 1176 and 1177) in Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp. 541, 542.

In the beginning of that year the king assembled a great council at Northampton,[852] and thence issued an Assize which forms another link in the series of legal enactments begun at Clarendon just ten years before. The first three clauses and the twelfth clause of the Assize of Northampton are substantially a re-issue of those articles of the Assize of Clarendon which regulated the presentment, detention and punishment of criminals and the treatment of strangers and vagabonds.[853] The experience of the past ten years had however led to some modifications in the details of the procedure. The recognition by twelve lawful men of every hundred and four of every township, to be followed by ordeal of water, was re-enacted; but the presentment was now to be made not to the sheriff, but direct to the king’s justices. The punishments, too, were more severe than before; the forger, robber, murderer or incendiary who under the former system would have suffered the loss of a foot was now to lose a hand as well, and to quit the realm within forty days.[854] The remaining articles dealt with quite other matters. The fourth declared the legal order of proceeding with regard to the estate of a deceased freeholder, in such a manner as to secure the rights of his heir and of his widow before the usual relief could be exacted by the lord; and it referred all disputes between the lord and the heir touching the latter’s right of inheritance to the decision of the king’s justices, on the recognition of twelve lawful men[855]--a process which, under the name of the assize of _mort d’ancester_, soon became a regular part of the business transacted before the justices-in-eyre. Some of the other clauses had a more political significance. They directed the justices to take an oath of homage and fealty to the king from every man in the realm, earl, baron, knight, freeholder or villein, before the octave of Whit-Sunday at latest, and to arrest as traitors all who refused it:[856]--to investigate and strictly enforce the demolition of the condemned castles;[857] to ascertain and report by whom, how and where the duty of castle-guard was owed to the king;[858] to inquire what persons had fled from justice and incurred the penalty of outlawry by failing to give themselves up at the appointed time, and to send in a list of all such persons to the Exchequer at Easter and Michaelmas for transmission to the king.[859] The tenth article was aimed at the bailiffs of the royal demesnes, requiring them to give an account of their stewardship before the Exchequer;[860] and two others defined the justices’ authority, as extending, in judicial matters, over all pleas of the Crown, both in criminal causes and in civil actions concerning half a knight’s fee or less; and in fiscal matters, over escheats, wardships, and lands and churches in royal demesne.[861]

[852] On January 26. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 404. Cf. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 107, and Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 87. The _Gesta_ date it merely “circa festum Conversionis S. Pauli”; Roger turns this into “in festo,” etc., and adopts the reading “Nottingham” instead of “Northampton.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 257, 258, confounds the Assize of Clarendon with the Constitutions.

[853] Cf. articles 1–3, 12 of Ass. Northampton (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 150, 151, 152), with Ass. Clarendon, cc. 1–4, 13, 15, 16 (_ib._ pp. 143, 144, 145). The Assize of Northampton is given in the _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 108–110, and by Rog. Howden as above, pp. 89–91.

[854] Ass. North., c. 1 (Stubbs, as above, p. 151).

[855] _Ib._ c. 4 (pp. 151, 152).

[856] Ass. North., c. 6 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 152).

[857] _Ib._ c. 8 (as above).

[858] _Ib._ c. 11 (_ibid._)

[859] _Ib._ c. 13 (pp. 152, 153).

[860] _Ib._ c. 10 (p. 152).

[861] _Ib._ cc. 7 and 9 (_ibid._).

The visitations of the justices by whom this assize was carried into effect were arranged upon a new plan, or rather upon a modified form of the plan which had been adopted two years before for the assessment of a tallage upon the royal demesnes, to meet the cost of the expected war. It was at that terrible crisis, when most men in Henry’s place would have had no thought to spare for anything save the military necessities and perils of the moment, that he had first devised and carried into effect the principle of judicial circuits which with some slight changes in detail has remained in force until our own day. This tallage was levied by nineteen barons of the Exchequer, distributed into six companies, each company undertaking the assessment throughout a certain district or group of shires.[862] The abandonment of this scheme in the assizes of the two following years was probably necessitated by the disturbed state of the country. But at the council of Northampton the kingdom was again definitely mapped out into six divisions, to each of which three justices were sent.[863] In the report of their proceedings in the Pipe Roll of the year they are for the first time since the Assize of Clarendon[864] officially described by the title which they had long borne in common speech, “_justitiæ itinerantes_” (or “_errantes_”), justices-in-eyre; and it is from this time that the regular institution of itinerant judges is dated by modern legal historians.[865]

[862] See the lists in Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii., pref. p. lxv, note 5, and Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 176; from the Pipe Roll 19 Hen. II. (a. 1173).

[863] See lists in _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 107, 108.

[864] Ass. Clar., c. 19 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 145).

[865] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. pref. pp. lxix, lxx and notes.

This first distribution of circuits however was soon altered. In the very next year the same eighteen officers made, in addition to their judicial circuits, a general visitation of the realm for fiscal purposes, in four companies instead of six;[866] and on Henry’s return to England in the summer of 1178 he made what at first glance looks like a sweeping change in the organization of the Curia Regis. “The king,” we are told, “made inquiry concerning his justices whom he had appointed in England, whether they treated the men of the realm with righteousness and moderation; and when he learned that the country and the people were sore oppressed by the great multitude of justices--for they were eighteen in number--by the counsel of the wise men of the realm he chose out five, two clerks and three laymen, who were all of his private household; and he decreed that those five should hear all the complaints of the realm, and do right, and that they should not depart from the king’s court, but abide there to hear the complaints of his men; so that if any question came up among them which they could not bring to an end, it should be presented to the king’s hearing and determined as might please him and the wise men of the realm.”[867] From the mention of the number eighteen it appears that the persons against whom were primarily directed both the complaint of the people and the action of the king were the justices-in-eyre of the last two years; and this is confirmed by the fact that of all these eighteen, only six were among the judges who went on circuit in 1178 and 1179, while from 1180 onwards only one of them reappears in that capacity, though many of them retained their functions in the Exchequer. In 1178 and 1179 moreover the circuits were reduced from six to two, each being served by four judges.[868] The enactment of 1178, however, evidently touched the central as well as the provincial judicature, and with more important results. It took the exercise of the highest judicial functions out of the hands of the large body of officers who made up the Curia Regis as constituted until that time, and restricted it to a small chosen committee. This was apparently the origin of a limited tribunal which, springing up thus within the Curia Regis, soon afterwards appropriated its name, and in later days grew into the Court of King’s Bench. At the same time the reservation of difficult cases for the hearing of the king in council points to the creation, or rather to the revival, of a yet higher court of justice, that of the king himself in council with his “wise men”--a phrase which, while on the one hand it carries us back to the very earliest form of the Curia Regis, on the other points onward to its later developements in the modern tribunals of equity or of appeal, the courts of Chancery and of the Privy Council in its judicial capacity.[869]

[866] _Ib._ p. lxx and note 3.

[867] _Ib._ vol. i. pp. 207, 208.

[868] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii., pref. p. lxxi and note 2.

[869] Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 486, 487, 601–603; _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. pref. pp. lxxi, lxxiv–lxxvii.

All these changes in the circuits and in the Curia Regis had however another motive. The chief obstacle to Henry’s judicial and legal reforms was the difficulty of getting them administered according to the intention of their author. It was to meet this difficulty that Henry, as a contemporary writer says, “while never changing his mind, was ever changing his ministers.”[870] He had employed men chosen from every available class of society in turn, and none of his experiments had altogether brought him satisfaction. Feudal nobles, court officials, confidential servants and friends, had all alike been tried and, sooner or later, found wanting.[871] There was only one who had never yet failed him in a service of twenty-five years’ duration--Richard de Lucy “the loyal”; but in the summer of 1179 Richard de Lucy, to his master’s great regret, resigned his office of justiciar and retired to end his days a few months later as a brother of an Augustinian house which he had founded at Lesnes in Kent to the honour of S. Thomas of Canterbury.[872] Henry in this extremity fell back once more upon a precedent of his grandfather’s time and determined to place the chief administration, for the moment at least, again in clerical hands. Instead of a single justiciar-bishop, however, he appointed three--the bishops of Winchester, Ely and Norwich;[873] all of whom, under their earlier appellations of Richard of Ilchester, Geoffrey Ridel and John of Oxford, had long ago acquired ample experience and shewn ample capacity for the work of secular administration.[874]

[870] “Sic animum a proposito non immutans, circa personas mutabiles immutabilem semper sæpe mutavit sententiam.” R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 434--part of a long passage which sets forth very fully the motives and the general aims and results of Henry’s administrative changes.

[871] R. Diceto as above, pp. 434–435.

[872] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 238. Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 190.

[873] R. Diceto as above, p. 435.

[874] Richard of Ilchester is well known as an active official of the Exchequer; see below, pp. 193, 194. Geoffrey Ridel seems to have acted as vice-chancellor throughout S. Thomas’s primacy and exile; see Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 174, note 1. As for John of Oxford, his diplomatic talents are only too notorious.

This arrangement was however only provisional. The number of judicial circuits was again raised to four, and to each of the three southern circuits was despatched one of the justiciar-bishops, with a royal clerk and three laymen to act as his subordinate assistants. The fourth circuit, which took in the whole district between the Trent and the Scottish border, was intrusted to six justices, of whom only two were clerks; one of these, Godfrey de Lucy the archdeacon of Richmond, a brother of the late chief justiciar, stood nominally at the head of the commission; but there can be little doubt that its real head was one of his lay colleagues--Ralf de Glanville,[875] the faithful sheriff of Lancashire and castellan of Richmond to whom William the Lion had given up his sword at Alnwick in 1174;[876] and these six were appointed to form the committee for hearing the complaints of the people, apparently in succession to the five who had been selected in the previous year.[877] All four bodies of judges brought up a report of their proceedings to the king at Westminster on August 27,[878] and it seems to have been the most satisfactory which he had yet received. When he went over sea in the following April, he left Ralf de Glanville to represent him in England as chief justiciar.[879] Ralf’s business capacities proved to be at least as great, and his honesty as stainless, as those of his predecessor; and from that time forth the management of the entire legal and judicial administration was left in his hands. Circuits, variously distributed, continued to be made from year to year and for divers purposes by companies of judges, ranging in total numbers from three to twenty-two;[880] while the King’s Court and the Exchequer pursued their work on the lines already laid down, without further interruption, till the end of Henry’s reign.

[875] See the lists in _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 238, 239; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 190, 191.

[876] Jordan Fantosme, v. 1811 (Michel, p. 82).

[877] “Isti sex sunt justitiæ in curiâ regis constituti ad audiendum clamores populi.” _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 239. See on this Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. pref. p. lxxiii, and _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 601, 602.

[878] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 436.

[879] Rog. Howden as above, p. 215.

[880] See notices of the circuits and of the sessions of the Curia Regis and Exchequer in Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 236, 237, 243, 244, 247, 248, 249, 251, 253, 258, 259, 265, 272, 273, 281, 291.

The last of Henry’s great legal measures, with the exception of a Forest Assize issued in 1184, was an ordinance published in the autumn of 1181 and known as the Assize of Arms. Its object was to define more fully and exactly the military obligations of the people at large in the service of the king and the defence of the country;--in a word, to put once again upon a more definite footing the old institution of the “fyrd,” which was the only effective counterpoise to the military power of the barons, and whose services in 1173 and 1174 had proved it to be well worthy of the royal consideration and encouragement. The Assize of 1181 declared the obligation of bearing arms at the king’s command to be binding upon every free layman in the realm. The character of the arms with which men of various ranks were required to provide themselves was defined according to a graduated scale, from the full equipment of the knight down to the mail-coat, steel-cap and spear of the burgher and the simple freeman.[881] The justices were directed to ascertain, through the “lawful men” of the hundreds and towns, what persons fell under each category, to enroll their names, read out the Assize in their presence, and make them swear to provide themselves with the proper accoutrements before S. Hilary’s day.[882] Every man’s arms were to be carefully kept and used solely for the royal service; they were not to be taken out of the country, or alienated in any way;[883] at their owner’s death they were to pass to his heir;[884] if any man possessed other arms than those required of him by the Assize, he was to dispose of them in such a manner that they might be used in the king’s service;[885] and all this was enforced by a stern threat of corporal punishment upon defaulters.[886]

[881] Ass. Arms, cc. 1–3 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 154; from _Gesta Hen._, vol. i. pp. 278–280. The Assize is also given by Rog. Howden, vol. ii. pp. 261, 262).

[882] _Ib._ cc. 9 and 4 (Stubbs as above, pp. 155, 156, 154).

[883] _Ib._ cc. 4, 8 (pp. 154, 155).

[884] _Ib._ c. 5 (p. 155).

[885] _Ib._ cc. 6, 7 (as above).

[886] _Ib._ c. 10 (p. 156).

The freemen who were armed under this Assize had little occasion to use their weapons so long as King Henry lived. Within the four seas of Britain there was almost unbroken peace till the end of his reign. The treaty with Scotland was ratified by the public homage of William the Lion to Henry and his son at York on August 10, 1175;[887] and thenceforth Henry’s sole trouble from that quarter was the necessity of arbitrating between William and his unruly vassals in Galloway,[888] and of advising him in his ecclesiastical difficulties with the Roman see. The western border of England was less secure than the northern; yet even in Wales the authority of the English Crown had made a considerable advance since Henry’s accession. His first Welsh war, directed against the princes of North Wales in 1157, had little practical result. A second expedition marched in 1163 against Rees Ap-Griffith, prince of South Wales, and a lucky incident at the outset insured its success. Directly in the king’s line of march from Shrewsbury into South Wales, between Wenlock and Newport, there ran a streamlet called Pencarn--a mountain-torrent passable only at certain points. One of these was an ancient ford concerning which a prophecy attributed to the enchanter Merlin declared: “When ye shall see a strong man with a freckled face rush in upon the Britons, if he cross the ford of Pencarn, then know ye that the might of Cambria shall perish.” The Welsh guarded this ford with the utmost care to prevent Henry from crossing it; he, ignorant of the prophecy, sent his troops over by another passage, and was about to follow them himself, when a loud blast from their trumpets on the opposite bank caused his horse to rear so violently that he was obliged to turn away and seek a means of crossing elsewhere. He found it at the fatal spot, and as the Welsh saw him dash through the stream their hearts sank in despair.[889] He marched unopposed from one end of South Wales to the other, through Glamorgan and Carmarthen as far as Pencader;[890] here Rees made his submission;[891] and Rees himself, Owen of North Wales, and several other Welsh princes appeared and swore allegiance to King Henry and his heir in that famous council of Woodstock where the first quarrel arose between Henry and Thomas of Canterbury.[892]

[887] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 94–96. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 79. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 38 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 198).

[888] On the Galloway affair see _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 67, 68, 79, 80, 99, 126, 313, 336, 339, 348, 349; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 63, 69, 105, 299, 309.

[889] Gir. Cambr. _Itin. Kambr._ l. i. c. 6 (Dimock, vol. vi. pp. 62, 63).

[890] _Ib._ l. ii. c. 10 (p. 138).

[891] Ann. Cambr. a. 1164 (Williams, p. 49). _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1162 (Williams, p. 199). Both dates are self-evidently wrong; the only possible one is the intermediate year.

[892] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 311.

Next year Rees, provoked as he alleged by Henry’s non-fulfilment of his promises and also by the shelter given to the slayer of his nephew by Earl Roger of Clare, harried the whole border and roused all Wales to fling off the yoke of the “Frenchmen,” as the Welsh still called their Norman conquerors.[893] Henry was obliged to delay his vengeance till the following summer, when it furnished him with an excellent pretext for escaping from his ecclesiastical and political entanglements on the continent.[894] He set out from Oswestry[895] at the head of a vast army drawn from all parts of his dominions, both insular and continental, and reinforced by Flemish and Scottish allies.[896] All the princes of Wales were arrayed against him, and both parties intended the campaign to be decisive. But the wet climate of the Welsh hills proved a more dangerous foe than the mountaineers themselves; and after remaining for some time encamped at Berwen, Henry was compelled to beat an ignominious retreat, completely defeated by the ceaseless rain,[897] and venting his baffled wrath against the Welsh in a savage mutilation of their hostages.[898] For six years after this, as we have seen, he never had time to visit his island realm at all, and the daring “French” settlers in Wales or on its borders, such as the Geraldines or the De Clares, were free to fight their own battles and make their own alliances with the Welsh just as they chose; it was not till Henry in 1171 followed them to their more distant settlement in Ireland that he again entered South Wales. Then he used his opportunity for a series of personal interviews with Rees,[899] which ended in a lasting agreement. Rees was left, in the phrase of his native chronicler, as the king’s “justice” over all South Wales.[900] How far he maintained, along the border or within his own territories, the peace and order whose preservation formed the main part of an English justiciar’s duty, may be doubted; but in the rebellion of 1174 he shewed his personal loyalty to the king by marching all the way into Staffordshire to besiege Tutbury for him, and some of his followers did equally good service in the suppression of the Norman revolt.[901] David of North Wales, too, if he did nothing to help the king, at least resisted the temptation of joining his enemies; and the war was no sooner fairly over than, anxious that some reflection of the glories of English royalty should be cast over his own house, he became an eager suitor for the hand of Henry’s half-sister Emma--a suit which Henry found it politic to grant.[902] A few months later, in June 1175, the king made an attempt to secure the tranquillity of the border by binding all the barons of the district in a sworn mutual alliance for its defence.[903] The attempt was not very successful; the border-warfare went on in much the same way as of old; but it was not till the summer of 1184 that it grew serious enough to call for Henry’s personal intervention, and then a march to Worcester sufficed to bring Rees of South Wales once more to his feet.[904]

[893] Ann. Cambr. a. 1165 (Williams, pp. 49, 50). _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1163 (Williams, p. 199).

[894] See above, p. 56, note 3{223}.

[895] Ann. Cambr. a. 1166 (_i.e._ 1165; Williams, p. 50). _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1164 (Williams, p. 201). Gir. Cambr. _Itin. Kambr._, l. ii. c. 10 (Dimock, vol. vi. p. 138). According to the _Brut_ (as above) Henry first “moved an army with extreme haste, and came to Rhuddlan, and purposed to erect a castle there, and stayed there three nights. After that he returned into England, and collected a vast army,” etc. Following this, Mr. Bridgeman (_Princes of S. Wales_, p. 48) and Mr. Eyton (_Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 79, 82) divide the Welsh campaign of 1165 into two, one in May and the other in July. Neither the Ann. Cambr. nor Gerald, however, make any mention of the Rhuddlan expedition.

[896] Ann. Cambr. and _Brut y Tywys._ as above.

[897] _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1164 (Williams, pp. 201, 203).

[898] _Ibid._ (p. 203). Chron. Mailros a. 1165.

[899] See _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1171, 1172 (Williams, pp. 213–219).

[900] _Ib._ a. 1172 (p. 219).

[901] See above, p. 164.

[902] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 397, 398.

[903] At the council held at Gloucester on June 29. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 92.

[904] _Ib._ p. 314.

It was the latest-won dependency of the English crown which during these years gave the most trouble to its wearer. If Henry found it hard to secure fit instruments for the work of government and administration in England, he found it harder still to secure them for the same work in Ireland. At the outbreak of the barons’ revolt he had at once guarded against all danger of the rebels finding support in Ireland by recalling the garrisons which he had left in the Irish coast-towns and summoning the chief men of the new vassal state, particularly Richard of Striguil and Hugh de Lacy, to join him personally in Normandy.[905] Richard served him well in the war as commandant of the important border-fortress of Gisors;[906] and it may have been as a reward for these services that he was sent back to Ireland as governor in Hugh’s stead[907] at the close of the year. For the next two years, while the king had his hands full in Normandy and England, matters in Ireland went much as they had gone before his visit there; the Norman-English settlers pursued their strifes and their alliances with their Irish neighbours or with each other, and granted out to their followers the lands which they won, entirely at their own pleasure.[908] But the lesson which Henry was meanwhile teaching their brethren in England was not thrown away upon them; and at the close of 1175 it was brought home to them in another way. Roderic O’Conor, moved as it seems by the fame of Henry’s successes, and also perhaps by two papal bulls--Adrian’s famous “Laudabiliter,” and another from the reigning Pope Alexander--which Henry had lately caused to be published at Waterford,[909] at last bent his stubborn independence to send three envoys to the English king with overtures for a treaty of peace. The treaty was signed at Windsor on October 6. Roderic submitted to become Henry’s liegeman, and to pay him a yearly tribute of one hide “pleasing to the merchants” for every ten head of cattle throughout Ireland; on these conditions he was confirmed in the government and administration of justice over the whole island, except Leinster, Meath and Waterford, and authorized to reckon upon the help of the royal constables in compelling the obedience of his vassals and collecting from them their share of the tribute.[910]

[905] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 136–141. Cf. above, p. 145.

[906] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 137.

[907] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 44 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 298).

[908] For the history of these years in Ireland see Four Masters, a. 1173–1175 (O’Donovan, vol. iii. pp. 9–23); Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. cc. 1–4 (Dimock, vol. v. pp. 308–314); Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 142 to end.

[909] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 5 (pp. 315–319).

[910] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 101–103. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 83, 84.

This scheme might perhaps have answered at least as well as a similar plan had answered during a few years in South Wales, had it not been for the disturbed condition of the English settlement. The death of Richard of Striguil in 1176[911] left the command in the hands of his brother-in-law and constable, Raymond the Fat, who for some years had been not only the leader of his forces, but also his chief adviser and most indispensable agent in all matters political and military.[912] A jealous rival, however, had already brought Raymond into ill repute at court,[913] and the king’s seneschal William Fitz-Aldhelm was sent to supersede him.[914] William appears to have been a loyal servant of the king, but his tact and wisdom did not equal his loyalty. At the moment of landing his suspicions were aroused by the imposing display of armed followers with which Raymond came to meet him; the muttered words which he incautiously suffered to escape his lips--“I will soon put an end to all this!”--were enough to set all the Geraldines against him at once; and the impolitic haste and severity with which he acted upon his suspicions, without waiting to prove their justice,[915] drove the whole body of the earlier settlers into such a state of irritation that early in the next year Henry found it necessary to recall him.[916] Meanwhile the aggressive spirit of the English settlers had made Henry’s treaty with Roderic almost a dead letter. In defiance of the rights which that treaty reserved to the Irish monarch, they had profited by the mutual dissensions of the lesser native chieftains to extend their own power far beyond the limits therein laid down. A civil war in Munster had ended in its virtual subjugation by Raymond and his Geraldine kinsfolk;[917] a like pretext had served for an invasion of Connaught itself by Miles Cogan;[918] John de Courcy was in full career of conquest in Ulster.[919] Henry could scarcely have put a stop to all this, even had he really wished to do so; and by this time he was probably more inclined to encourage any extension of English power in Ireland, for he had devised a new scheme for the government of that country.

[911] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 14 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 332). R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 407. Four Masters, a. 1176 (O’Donovan, vol. iii. p. 25). _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 125.

[912] Gir. Cambr. as above, cc. 1–3 (pp. 308–313).

[913] _Ib._ cc. 10, 11 (pp. 327, 328).

[914] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 100.

[915] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 15 (pp. 334–337).

[916] _Ib._ c. 20 (p. 347). Gerald gives no date for the recall of William; but it seems to have been before the nomination of John as king of Ireland in May 1177; see below, p. 184.

[917] Gir. Cambr. as above, cc. 7, 12, 13 (pp. 320–323, 329–332).

[918] Four Masters, a. 1177 (O’Donovan, vol. iii. p. 35). Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1177 (Hennessy, vol. i. p. 155). Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 19 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 346).

[919] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 17 (pp. 338–343). Four Masters, as above, pp. 29–33. Ann. Loch Cé, as above, pp. 155–157. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 137, 138. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 120.

The bride of John “Lackland,” Alice of Maurienne, had died within a year of her betrothal.[920] The marriage-contract indeed provided that in case of such an event her sister should take her place; but the connexion had begun too inauspiciously for either Henry or Humbert to have any desire of renewing it; and Henry now saw a possibility of more than repairing within his insular dominions the ill-luck which had befallen his plans of advancement on the continent for his favourite child. In the autumn of 1176 John was betrothed to his cousin Avice, the youngest of the three daughters of Earl William of Gloucester, and Avice was made heiress to the whole of the vast estates in the west of England and South Wales which her father had inherited from his parents, Earl Robert of Gloucester and Mabel of Glamorgan.[921] But a mere English earldom, however important, was not enough to satisfy Henry’s ambition for his darling. In his scheme Avice’s wealth was to furnish her bridegroom with the means of supporting a loftier dignity. He had now, it was said, obtained Pope Alexander’s leave to make king of Ireland whichever of his sons he might choose. On the strength of this permission he seems to have reverted to his original scheme of conquering the whole island.[922] In May 1177 he publicly announced his intention of bestowing the realm of Ireland upon his youngest son John, and parcelled out the southern half of the country among a number of feudal tenants, who did homage for their new fiefs to him and John in a great council at Oxford.[923] As however John was too young to undertake the government in person, his father was again compelled to choose a viceroy. He fell back upon his earliest choice and re-appointed Hugh de Lacy;[924] and with the exception of a temporary disgrace in 1181,[925] it was Hugh who occupied this somewhat thankless office during the next seven years. With the internal history of Ireland during his administration and throughout the rest of Henry’s reign we are not called upon to deal here; for important as are its bearings upon the history of England, their importance did not become apparent till a much later time than that of the Angevin kings.

[920] _Art de vérifier les Dates_, vol. xvii. p. 165.

[921] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 124. Rog. Howden as above, p. 100. Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 415.

[922] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 161.

[923] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 162–165. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 133–135.

[924] The _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 161, seem to imply that the appointment was given to Hugh of Chester. After relating the earl’s restoration to his lands and honours, they add: “Et postea præcepit ei [rex] ut iret in Hiberniam ad subjiciendum eam sibi et Johanni filio suo ... et præcepit prædicto comiti ut debellaret reges et potentes Hiberniæ qui subjectionem ei facere noluerunt.” Hugh de Lacy is named simply in the general list of those who were to accompany him. But Gerald (_Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 20, Dimock, vol. v. p. 347), says that Hugh de Lacy was re-appointed viceroy at this time. That he acted as such for the next seven years is certain, while there is, as far as I know, no indication that his namesake of Chester ever was in Ireland at all. It seems therefore that either the earl refused the office--or the king changed his mind--or the author of the _Gesta_, confused by the identity of Christian names, has substituted one Hugh for another.

[925] When he was superseded for about half a year by John de Vesci (the constable of Chester) and Richard de Pec. Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 23 (pp. 355, 356). _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 270.

[Illustration: Map V.

FRANCE & BURGUNDY cir. 1180.

Shewing the growth of the Angevin Empire from the time of Fulk the Black.

_Anjou 987, Touraine 1044, Maine 1111, Normandy 1144, Aquitaine and Gascony 1152, England 1154, Nantes 1158, Quercy 1160, Britanny 1169, Overlordship of Toulouse 1173._

Key: _Royal Domain (France)_ _House of St. Gilles (Toulouse)_ _Aragon_ _Provence_ _Maurienne_

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

It is during these years of prosperity and peace that we are able to get the clearest view of the scope and aims of Henry’s general scheme of home and foreign policy. That policy, when fully matured in its author’s mind, formed a consistent whole; it was however made up of two distinct parts, originating in the twofold position of Henry himself. His empire extended from the western shores of Ireland to the Cévennes, and from the northernmost point of the mainland of Britain to the Pyrenees. But this empire was composed of a number of separate members over which his authority differed greatly in character and degree. These members, again, fell into two well-marked groups. Over the one group Henry ruled as supreme head; no other sovereign had ever claimed to be his superior, none now claimed to be even his equal, within the British Isles. In the other group, however, he had at least a nominal superior in the king of France. It was impossible to deal with these two groups of states on one and the same principle; and Henry had never attempted to do so. The one group had its centre in England, the other in Anjou. As a necessary consequence, Henry’s policy had also two centres throughout his reign. The key to it as a whole lies in its blending of two characters united in one person, yet essentially distinct: the character of the king of England and supreme lord of the British Isles, and the character of the head of the house of Anjou. Henry himself evidently kept the two characters distinct in his own mind. His policy as king of England, however little it may have been consciously aimed at such a result--and we should surely be doing a great injustice to Henry’s sagacity if we doubted that it was so aimed, at least in some degree--certainly tended to make England a strong and independent national state, with its vassal states, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, standing around it as dependent allies. If he had ever for a moment dreamed of reducing his insular dominions to a mere subject-province of the empire which he was building up in Gaul, when he thought of intrusting their government to his boy-heir under the guardianship of Thomas, that dream had been broken at once and for ever by the quarrel which deprived the child of his guardian and the king of his friend. But, on the other hand, Henry certainly never at any time contemplated making his continental empire a mere dependency of the English crown. It was distinctly an Angevin empire, with its centre in the spot whence an Angevin count had been promised of old that the sway of his descendants should spread to the ends of the earth. Henry in short had another work to carry on besides that of Cnut and William and Henry I. He had to carry on also the work of Fulk the Black and Geoffrey Martel and Fulk V.; and although to us who know how speedy was to be its overthrow that work looks a comparatively small matter, yet at the time it may well have seemed equally important with the other in the eyes both of Henry and of his contemporaries. While what may be called the English thread in the somewhat tangled skein of Henry’s life runs smoothly and uneventfully on from the year 1175 to the end, it is this Angevin thread which forms the clue to the political and personal, as distinguished from the social and constitutional, interest of all the remaining years of his reign. And from this interest, although its centre is at Angers, England is not excluded. For the whole continental relations of Henry were coloured by his position as an English king; and the whole foreign relations of England, from his day to our own, have been coloured by the fact that her second King Henry was also head of the Angevin house when that house was at the height of its continental power and glory.

The prophecy said to have been made to Fulk the Good was now literally fulfilled. The dominions of his posterity reached to the uttermost ends of the known world. In the far east, one grandson of Fulk V. ruled over the little strip of Holy Land which formed the boundary of Christendom against the outer darkness of unexplored heathendom. In the far west, another of Fulk’s grandsons was, formally at least, acknowledged overlord of the island beyond which, in the belief of those days, lay nothing but a sea without a shore. Scarcely less remarkable, however, was the fulfilment of the prediction in a narrower sense. The whole breadth of Europe and the whole length of the Mediterranean sea parted the western from the eastern branch of the Angevin house. But in Gaul itself, the Angevin dominion now stretched without a break from one end of the land to the other. The Good Count’s heir held in his own hands the whole Gaulish coast-line from the mouth of the Somme to that of the Bidassoa, and he could almost touch the Mediterranean Sea through his vassal the count of Toulouse. Step by step the lords of the little Angevin march had enlarged their borders till they enclosed more than two-thirds of the kingdom of France. Fulk Nerra and Geoffrey Martel had doubled their possessions by the conquest of Touraine to the south-east; Fulk V. had tripled them by the annexation of Maine to the northward; Geoffrey Plantagenet’s marriage with the heiress of Normandy had brought him to the shores of the English Channel. The whole series of annexations and conquests whereby his son expanded his continental dominions to the extent which they covered thirty years after Geoffrey’s death resulted simply from a continuation of the same policy which, a century and a half before, had laid the foundations of the Angevin empire. Count Henry Fitz-Empress stood in a figure, like Count Fulk the Black, upon the rock of Angers, looked around over his marchland and its borders, noted every point at which those borders might be strengthened, rounded off or enlarged, and set himself to the pursuit of Fulk Nerra’s work in Fulk Nerra’s own spirit. For such a survey indeed he needed a more wide-reaching vision than even that of the Black Falcon. The work had altered vastly in scale since it left the “great builder’s” hands; but it had not changed in character. Henry’s policy in Gaul was essentially the same as Fulk’s--a policy of consolidation, rather than of conquest. He clearly never dreamed, as a man of less cautious ambition might well have done in his place, of pitting the whole strength of his continental and insular dominions against that of the French Crown in a struggle for the mastery of Gaul; he seems never to have dreamed even of trying to free himself from his feudal obedience to a sovereign far inferior to him in territorial wealth and power; he never, so far as we can see, aspired to stand in any other relation to the French king than that which had been held by his forefathers. He aimed in fact simply at compacting and securing his own territories in Gaul, and maintaining the rank of the head of the Angevin house, as the most influential vassal of the Crown. If he ever saw, on a distant horizon, a vision of something greater than this, he kept his dream to himself and, like Fulk of old, left his successors to attempt its fulfilment.

[Illustration: Map VI.

MAP OF EUROPE cir. 1180.

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

An ambition so moderate as this entailed no very complicated schemes of foreign diplomacy. As a matter of fact, Henry was at some time or other in his reign in diplomatic relations with every state and every ruler in Christendom, from Portugal to Norway, and from the count of Montferrat to the Eastern and Western Emperors. But these relations sprang for the most part from his insular rather than from his continental position; or, more exactly, they arose from his position as a king of England, but a king far mightier than any who had gone before him. It was the knowledge that Henry had at his back all the forces of the island-crown which roused in Louis VII. such a restless jealousy of his power in Gaul; and it was the jealousy of Louis which drove Henry into a labyrinth of diplomacy and of war, neither of which was a natural result of Henry’s own policy. A very brief glance at Henry’s foreign relations will suffice to shew that they concerned England far more than Anjou. A considerable part of them arose directly out of his quarrel with the English primate. Such was the case with his German and Italian alliances, designed to counterbalance the French king’s league with the Pope. The alliances formed through the marriages of his daughters were all strictly alliances made by the English Crown. The immediate occasion of Matilda’s marriage with Henry of Saxony was her father’s quarrel with S. Thomas; in another point of view, this union was only a natural continuation of a policy which may be traced through the wedding of her grandmother with Henry V. and that of Gunhild with Henry III. back to the wedding of Æthelstan’s sister Eadgifu with Charles the Simple. The marriages of Eleanor and Jane were first planned during the same troubled time; in each case the definite proposal came from the bridegroom, and came in the shape of an humble suit to the king of England for his daughter’s hand; and in the case of all three sisters, the proposal was laid before a great council of the bishops and barons of England, and only accepted after formal deliberation upon it with them, as upon a matter which concerned the interests of England as a state.[926] When Jane went to be married to the king of Sicily in 1176, the details of her journey to her new home and of the honours which she received on her arrival there were recorded in England as matters of national interest and national pride.[927] When in the following year her sister Eleanor’s husband, Alfonso of Castille, submitted a quarrel between himself and his kinsman the king of Navarre to his father-in-law’s arbitration, the case was heard in an assembly of the English barons and wise men at Westminster.[928] Henry’s daughters in short were instruments of his regal, his national, his English policy; for the carrying out of his Angevin, his family policy, he looked to his sons.

[926] On the marriages of Matilda and Eleanor see above, pp. 55, 59, 60, and the references there given; on that of Jane, _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 116, 117; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 94; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 408; Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 32.

[927] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 414, 415, 418; _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 120, 127, 157, 158, 169–172; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 95–98; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 263–265.

[928] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 139–154; Rog. Howden as above, pp. 120, 131.

The arrangement by which he endeavoured to make them carry it out is however not very easy to understand or to account for. He had long since abandoned his early scheme of devoting himself entirely to continental politics and making England over to the hands of his eldest son. That scheme, indeed, had been frustrated in the first instance by his quarrel with Thomas; although it seemed to have been revived in 1170, it was as a mere temporary expedient to meet a temporary need; and the revolt of 1173 put an end to it altogether, by proving clearly to Henry that he must never again venture to delegate his kingly power and authority to any one, even for a season. But, on the other hand, it is not easy at once to see why, during the years which followed, he persistently refused to give to his eldest son as much real, though subordinate, power on the continent as he was willing to give to the younger ones--why young Henry was not suffered to govern Anjou and Normandy as Richard was suffered to govern Aquitaine and Geoffrey to govern Britanny, so soon as they were old enough, under the control of their father as overlord. So far as we can venture to guess at the king’s motives, the most probable reason seems to be that he could not part with any share of authority over his ancestral dominions without parting at the same time with his ancestral dignities. From a strictly Angevin or Cenomannian point of view, Aquitaine and Britanny were both simply appendages, diversely acquired, to the hereditary Angevin and Cenomannian dominions. Nay, from a strictly Norman point of view, England itself was but an addition to the heritage of the Norman ducal house. Henry might make over all these to his sons as under-fiefs to govern in subjection to him, and yet retain intact his position as head of the sovereign houses of Normandy and Anjou. But to place his mother’s duchy and his father’s counties in other hands--to reduce them to the rank of under-fiefs, keeping for himself no closer connexion with them than a mere general overlordship--would have been, in principle, to renounce his birthright; while in practice, it would probably have been equivalent to complete abdication, as far as his continental empire was concerned. Henry would have had as little chance of enforcing his claim to overlordship without a territorial basis on which to rest it, as a German Emperor without his hereditary duchy of Saxony or Franconia or Suabia, or a French king without his royal domain. In short, when Henry found it impossible to give England to his eldest son, he had nothing else to give him, unless he gave him all; and Henry Fitz-Empress was no more inclined than William the Conqueror had been to “take off his clothes before he was ready to go to bed.” All his schemes for the distribution of his territories, therefore, from 1175 onwards, were intended solely to insure a fair partition among his sons after his own death; his general aim being that young Henry should step into exactly his own position as king of England, duke of Normandy and count of Anjou, and overlord of Britanny, Aquitaine, and all other dependencies of the Angevin and Norman coronets or of the English crown.