Part 15

The duchy of Aquitaine, or Guyenne, as held by Eleanor’s predecessors, consisted, roughly speaking, of the territory between the Loire and the Garonne. More exactly, it was bounded on the north by Anjou and Touraine, on the east by Berry and Auvergne, on the south-east by the Quercy or county of Cahors, and on the south-west by Gascony, which had been united with it for the last hundred years. The old Karolingian kingdom of Aquitania had been of far greater extent; it had in fact included the whole country between the Loire, the Pyrenees, the Rhône and the ocean. Over all this vast territory the counts of Poitou asserted a theoretical claim of overlordship by virtue of their ducal title; they had, however, a formidable rival in the house of the counts of Toulouse. These represented an earlier line of dukes of Aquitaine, successors of the dukes of Gothia or Septimania, under whom the capital of southern Gaul had been not Poitiers but Toulouse, Poitou itself counting as a mere underfief. In the latter half of the tenth century these dukes of Gothia or _Aquitania Prima_, as the Latin chroniclers sometimes called them from the old Roman name of their country, had seen their ducal title transferred to the Poitevin lords of _Aquitania Secunda_--the dukes of Aquitaine with whom we have had to deal. But the Poitevin overlordship was never fully acknowledged by the house of Toulouse; and this latter in the course of the following century again rose to great importance and distinction, which reached its height in the person of Count Raymond IV., better known as Raymond of St. Gilles, from the name of the little county which had been his earliest possession. From that small centre his rule gradually spread over the whole territory of the ancient dukes of Septimania. In the year of the Norman conquest of England Rouergue, which was held by a younger branch of the house of Toulouse, lapsed to the elder line; in the year after the Conqueror’s death Raymond came into possession of Toulouse itself; in 1094 he became, in right of his wife, owner of half the Burgundian county of Provence. His territorial influence was doubled by that of his personal fame; he was one of the chief heroes of the first Crusade; and when he died in 1105 he left to his son Bertrand, over and above his Aquitanian heritage, the Syrian county of Tripoli. On Bertrand’s death in 1112 these possessions were divided, his son Pontius succeeding him as count of Tripoli, and surrendering his claims upon Toulouse to his uncle Alfonso Jordan, a younger son of Raymond of St. Gilles.[1448] Those claims, however, were disputed. Raymond’s elder brother, Count William IV., had left an only daughter who, after a childless marriage with King Sancho Ramirez of Aragon,[1449] became the wife of Count William VIII. of Poitou.[1450] From that time forth it became a moot point whether the lord of St. Gilles or the lord of Poitiers was the rightful count of Toulouse. Raymond unquestionably bore the title and exercised its functions for some six years before his brother’s death and his niece’s second marriage,[1451] and one historian asserts that he had acquired the county by purchase from his brother.[1452] Another story relates that William of Poitou having married the heiress of Toulouse after her father’s death,[1453] immediately entered upon her inheritance, but afterwards pledged it to Raymond in order to raise money for the Crusade.[1454] The reckless, spendthrift duke, whose whole energies were given up to verse-making, discreditable adventures, and either defying or eluding the ecclesiastical authorities who vainly strove to check the scandals of his life, never found means to redeem his pledge; neither did his son William IX.,[1455] although it appears that he did at some time or other contrive to obtain possession of Toulouse.[1456] On his death, however, it immediately passed back into the hands of Alfonso Jordan.

[1448] On the counts of Toulouse and St. Gilles see Vic and Vaissète, _Hist. du Languedoc_ (new ed., 1872), vol. iii.

[1449] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 48 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 304).

[1450] _Ibid._ Rob. Torigni, a. 1159. This second marriage took place in 1094: MS. Chron. quoted by Besly, _Comtes de Poitou, preuves_, p. 408.

[1451] Vic and Vaissète, _Hist. du Languedoc_, vol. iii. pp. 452, 453.

[1452] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iv. c. 388 (Hardy, p. 603).

[1453] William IV. of Toulouse died in 1093. Vic and Vaissète, _Hist. du Languedoc_, vol. iii. p. 465.

[1454] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 121, 122). It will be remembered that Duke William sought to pledge his own Poitou to the Red King for the same purpose.

[1455] Will. Newb. as above (p. 122).

[1456] Geoff. Vigeois, as above, describes Eleanor’s father as “Guillelmus dux Aquitaniæ filius Guillermi et filiæ comitis Tholosani, qui jure avi sui urbem Tholosanam possedit.” Besly (_Comtes de Poitou_, p. 132) has an account of the matter, but I cannot find his authorities.

With all these shiftings and changes of ownership the kings of France had never tried to interfere. Southern Gaul--“Aquitaine” in the wider sense--was a land whose internal concerns they found it wise to leave as far as possible untouched. It was, even yet, a land wholly distinct from the northern realm whose sovereign was its nominal overlord. The geographical barrier formed by the river Loire had indeed been long ago passed over, if not exactly by the French kings, at least by the Angevin counts. But a wider and deeper gulf than the blue stream of Loire stood fixed between France and Aquitaine. They were peopled by different races, they belonged to different worlds. There was little community of blood, there was less community of speech, thought and temper, of social habits or political traditions, between the Teutonized Celt of the north and the southern Celt who had been moulded by the influences of the Roman, the Goth and the Saracen. Steeped in memories of the Roman Empire in its palmiest days, and of the Gothic kingdom of Toulouse which had inherited so large a share of its power, its culture and its glory, Aquitania had never amalgamated either with the Teutonic empire of the Karolings or with the French kingdom of their Parisian supplanters. Her princes were nominal feudataries of both; but, save in a few exceptional cases, the personal and political relations between the northern lord paramount and his southern vassals began and ended with the formal ceremonies of investiture and homage. In the struggle of Anjou and Blois for command over the policy of the Crown, in the struggle of the Crown itself to maintain its independence and to hold the balance between Anjou and Normandy, the Aquitanian princes took no part; the balance of powers in northern Gaul was nothing to them; neither party ever seriously attempted to enroll them as allies; both seem to have considered them, as they considered themselves, totally unconcerned in the matter. Whatever external connexions and alliances they cultivated were in quite another direction--in the Burgundian provinces which lay around the mouth of the Rhône and the western foot of the Alps, and on the debateable ground of the Spanish March, the county of Barcelona, which formed a link between Gascony and Aragon. The marriage of Louis and Eleanor, however, altered the political position of Aquitaine with respect not only to the French Crown but to the world at large. She was suddenly dragged out of her isolation and brought into contact with the general political system of northern Europe, somewhat as England had been by its association with Normandy. The union of the king and the duchess was indeed dissolved before its full consequences had time to work themselves out. Its first and most obvious result was a change in the attitude of the Crown towards the internal concerns of Aquitaine. Whether the count of Toulouse paid homage to the count of Poitou, or both alike paid it immediately to the Crown--whether Toulouse and Poitiers were in the same or in different hands--mattered little or nothing to the earlier kings whose practical power over either fief was all bound up in the mere formal grant of investiture. But to Eleanor’s husband such questions wore a very different aspect. To him who was in his own person duke of Aquitaine as well as its overlord, they were matters of direct personal concern; the interests of the house of Poitou were identified with those of the house of France. For his own sake and for the sake of his posterity which he naturally hoped would succeed him in both kingdom and duchy, it was of the utmost importance that Louis should strive to make good every jot and tittle of the Poitevin claims throughout southern Gaul.

Four years after his marriage, therefore, Louis summoned his host for an expedition against the count of Toulouse.[1457] It tells very strongly against the justice of the Poitevin claims in that quarter that one of his best advisers--Theobald of Blois--so greatly disapproved of the enterprize that he refused to take any part in it at all;[1458] and it may be that his refusal led to its abandonment, for we have no record of its issue, beyond the fact that Alfonso Jordan kept Toulouse for the rest of his life, and dying in 1148 was succeeded without disturbance by his son Raymond V.[1459] Four years later the duchy of Aquitaine passed with Eleanor’s hand from Louis VII. to Henry Fitz-Empress. Once again the king of France became its overlord and nothing more:--his chance of enforcing his supremacy fainter than ever, yet his need to enforce it greater than ever, since Aquitaine, far from sinking back into her old isolation, was now linked together with Anjou and Normandy in a chain which encircled his own royal domain as with a girdle of iron. In these circumstances the obvious policy of France and Toulouse was a mutual alliance which might enable them both to stand against the power of Henry. It was cemented in 1154 by the marriage of Raymond V. with Constance, widow of Eustace of Blois and sister of Louis VII.[1460] Four more years passed away; Henry’s energies were still tasked to the uttermost by more important work than the prosecution of a doubtful claim of his wife against the brother-in-law of her overlord and former husband. Whether the suggestion at last came from Eleanor herself, during the Christmas-tide of 1158, we cannot tell; we only know that early in 1159 Henry determined to undertake the recovery of Toulouse.

[1457] At Midsummer 1141. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 923.

[1458] _Alterius Roberti App. ad Sigebertum_, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xiii. p. 331.

[1459] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1460] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 122).

A summons to Raymond to give back the county to its heiress was of course met with a refusal.[1461] It was a mere formal preliminary, and so was also a conference between Henry and Louis at Tours, where they discussed the matter and failed to agree upon it,[1462] but parted, it seems, without coming to any actual breach; Henry indeed was evidently left under the impression that his undertaking would meet with no opposition on the part of France.[1463] Early in Lent he went to Poitiers and there held council with the barons of Aquitaine. The upshot of their deliberations was an order for his forces to meet him at Poitiers on Midsummer-day, ready to march against the count of Toulouse.[1464]

[1461] _Ib._ (p. 123).

[1462] Contin. Becc. a. 1159 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. p. 171).

[1463] “Inde graves inimicitiæ inter ipsum” [sc. Ludovicum] “et regem Anglorum ortæ sunt, cum videret sibi regem Francorum nocere, de cujus auxilio plurimum confidebat” remarks Rob. Torigni on Louis’s arrival at Toulouse (a. 1159).

[1464] Contin. Becc. a. 1159 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. pp. 171, 172).

A question now arose of what those forces were to consist. The feudal levies of Eleanor’s duchy might fairly be called upon to fight for the supposed rights of their mistress; those of Anjou and Maine might perhaps be expected to do as much for the aggrandizement of their count; but to demand the services of the Norman knighthood for an obscure dynastic quarrel in southern Gaul--still more, to drag the English tenants-in-chivalry across sea and land for such a purpose--would have been both unjust and impolitic, if not absolutely impracticable. On the other hand, the knights of Aquitaine were of all Henry’s feudal troops those on whom he could least depend; and they would be moreover, even with the addition of those whom he could muster in his paternal dominions, quite insufficient for an expedition which was certain to require a large and powerful host, and whose duration it was impossible to calculate. In these circumstances the expedient which had been tentatively and in part adopted three years before was repeated, and its application this time was sweeping and universal. The king gave out that in consideration of the length and hardship of the way which lay before him, and desiring to spare the country-knights, citizens and yeomen, he would receive instead of their personal services a certain sum to be levied as he saw fit upon every knight’s fee in Normandy and his other territories.[1465] This impost, which afterwards came to be known in English history as the “Great Scutage,” was, as regards England, the most important matter connected with the war of Toulouse. It marks a turning-point in the history of military tenure. It broke down the old exemption of “fiefs of the hauberk” from pecuniary taxation, in such a way as to make the encroachment upon their privilege assume the shape of a favour. To the bulk of the English knighthood the boon was a real one; military service beyond sea was a burthen from which they would be only too glad to purchase their release; the experiment, so far as it concerned them, succeeded perfectly, and made a precedent which was steadily followed in after-years. From that time forth the word “scutage” acquired its recognized meaning of a sum paid to the Crown in commutation of personal attendance in the host; and the specially cherished privilege of the tenants-in-chivalry came to be not as formerly exemption from money-payment on their demesne lands, but, by virtue of their payment, exemption from service beyond sea.

[1465] “Rex igitur Henricus ... considerans longitudinem et difficultatem viæ, nolens vexare agrarios milites nec burgensium nec rusticorum multitudinem, sumptis LX. solidis Andegavensium in Normanniâ de feudo uniuscujusque loricæ et de reliquis omnibus tam in Normanniâ quam in Angliâ, sive etiam aliis terris suis, secundum hoc quod ei visum fuit,” etc. Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

The sums thus raised in 1159 are however entered in the Pipe Roll of the year not as scutage but under the vaguer and more comprehensive title of _donum_. The reason doubtless is that they were assessed, as the historians tell us and as the roll itself shews, not only upon those estates from which services of the shield were explicitly due, but also upon all lands held in chief of the Crown, and all Church lands without distinction of tenure:[1466]--the basis of assessment in all cases being the knight’s fee, in its secondary sense of a parcel of land worth twenty pounds a year. Whatever the laity might think of this arrangement, the indignation of the clergy was bitter and deep. The wrong inflicted on them by the scutage of 1156 was as nothing compared with this, which set at naught all ancient precedents of ecclesiastical immunity, and actually wrung from the Church lands even more than from the lay fiefs.[1467] Their wrath however was not directed solely or even chiefly against the king. A large share of the blame was laid at the chancellor’s door; for the scheme had his active support, if it was not actually of his contriving. Its effects on English constitutional developement were for later generations to trace; the men of the time saw, or thought they saw, its disastrous consequences in the after-lives of its originators. In the hour of Thomas’s agony Gilbert Foliot raked up as one of the heaviest charges against him the story of the “sword which his hand had plunged into the bosom of his mother the Church, when he spoiled her of so many thousand marks for the army of Toulouse”;[1468] and his own best and wisest friend, John of Salisbury, who had excused the scutage of 1156, sorrowfully avowed his belief that the scutage of 1159 was the beginning of all Henry’s misdoings against the Church, and that the chancellor’s share in it was the fatal sin which the primate had to expiate so bitterly.[1469]

[1466] “Secundum ejus scutagium assisum pro eodem exercitu Walliæ” [this writer assigns a like object to the scutage of 1156, but in both cases he is contradicted by chronology and contemporary evidence] “reperies in rotulo anni quinti regis ejusdem inferius. Fuitque assisum ad duas marcas pro quolibet feodo, non solum super prælatos, verum tam super ipsos quam super milites suos, secundum numerum feodorum, qui tenuerunt de rege in capite; necnon et super residuos milites singulorum comitatuum in communi.” [Cf. Rob. Torigni as quoted above, p. 459, note 2.] “Intitulaturque illud scutagium, _De Dono_. Eâ quidem, ut credo, ratione, quod non solum prælati qui tenentur ad servicia militaria sed etiam alii, abbates utpote de Bello et de Salopesbirie et alii, tunc temporis dederunt auxilium.” Alex. Swereford (_Liber Ruber Scacc._) quoted in Madox, _Hist. Exchequer_, vol. i. p. 626. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167, calls it a scutage: “Scotagium sive scuagium de Angliâ accepit.” The references to it are in almost every page of the Pipe Roll 5 Hen. II. (Pipe Roll Soc.); the most important are collected by Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp. 626, 627. There are also a few notices in the next year; Pipe Roll 6 Hen. II. (Pipe Roll Soc.), pp. 3, 6, 24, 29, 30, 32, 51. There are a few entries of “scutage” by that name--from the abbot of Westminster (Pipe Roll 5 Hen. II., pp. 6, 24, 27; 6 Hen. II., pp. 11, 24, 28), the bishop of Worcester (5 Hen. II., p. 24), William of Cardiff (_ibid._), the abbot of Evesham (_ib._ p. 25), and the earl of Warwick (_ib._ p. 26). Some of these pay “donum” as well. In reference to this matter some of the Northumbrian tenants-in-chivalry are designated by a title which is somewhat startling in the middle of the twelfth century: the sheriff of Northumberland renders an account “de dono militum et _tainorum_” (Pipe Roll 5 Hen. II., p. 14). What was the distinction between them?

The sum charged on the knight’s fee in Normandy was sixty shillings Angevin;[1470] in England it seems to have been two marks.[1471] The proceeds, with those of a similar tax levied upon Henry’s other dominions,[1472] amounted to some hundred and eighty thousand pounds,[1473] with which he hired an immense force of mercenaries.[1474] But his host did not consist of these alone. The great barons of Normandy and England, no less than those of Anjou, Aquitaine and Gascony, were eager to display their prowess under the leadership of such a mighty king. The muster at Poitiers was a brilliant gathering of Henry’s court, headed by the chancellor with a picked band of seven hundred knights of his own personal following,[1475] and by the first vassal of the English Crown, King Malcolm of Scotland,[1476] who came, it seems, to win the spurs which his cousin had refused to grant him twelve months ago, when they met at Carlisle just before Henry left England in June 1158.[1477] The other vassal state was represented by an unnamed Welsh prince;[1478] and the host was further reinforced by several important allies. One of these was Raymond Trencavel, viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne, a baron whom the count of Toulouse had despoiled, and who gladly seized the opportunity of vengeance.[1479] Another was William of Montpellier.[1480] The most valuable of all was the count of Barcelona, a potentate who ranked on an equality with kings.[1481] His county of Barcelona was simply the province which in Karolingian times had been known as the Spanish March--a strip of land with the Pyrenees for its backbone, which lay between Toulouse, Aragon, Gascony and the Mediterranean sea. It was a fief of the West-Frankish realm; but the facilities which every marchland in some degree possesses for attaching itself to whichever neighbour it may prefer, and so holding the balance between them as to keep itself virtually independent of them all, were specially great in the case of the Spanish March, whose rulers, as masters of the eastern passes of the Pyrenees, held the keys of both Gaul and Spain. During the last half-century they had, like the lords of another marchland, enormously strengthened their position by three politic marriages. Dulcia of Gévaudan, the wife of Raymond-Berengar III. of Barcelona, was heiress not only to her father’s county of Gévaudan, but also, through her mother, to the southern half of Provence, whose northern half fell to the share of Raymond of St.-Gilles. Her dower-lands were settled upon her younger son. He, in his turn, married an heiress, Beatrice of Melgueil, whose county lay between Gévaudan and the sea; and the dominions of the house of St.-Gilles were thus completely cut in twain, and their eastern half surrounded on two sides, by the territories of his son, the present count of Provence, Gévaudan and Melgueil.[1482] The elder son of Dulcia, having succeeded his father as Count Raymond-Berengar IV. of Barcelona, was chosen by the nobles of Aragon to wed their youthful queen Petronilla, the only child of King Ramirez the Monk. He had thus all the power of Aragon at his command, although, clinging with a generous pride to the old title which had come down to him from his fathers, he refused to share his wife’s crown, declaring that the count of Barcelona had no equal in his own degree, and that he would rather be first among counts than last among kings.[1483] A man with such a spirit, added to such territorial advantages, was an ally to be eagerly sought after and carefully secured. Henry therefore invited him to a meeting at Blaye in Gascony, and secured his co-operation against Toulouse on the understanding that the infant daughter of Raymond and Petronilla should in due time be married to Henry’s son Richard, and that the duchy of Aquitaine should then be ceded to the young couple.[1484]

[1467] Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxlv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 223; Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. Ep. cxciv., p. 378).

[1468] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxciv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 269; Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. Ep. ccxxv., p. 525).

[1469] Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxlv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 223, 224).

[1470] See above, p. 459, note 2{1465}.

[1471] So says Alex. Swereford. See above, p. 460 note{1466}.

[1472] “De aliis vero terris sibi subjectis inauditam similiter censûs fecit exactionem.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167. Cf. above, p. 459, note 2{1465}.

[1473] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167. He makes this to be the proceeds of the scutage in England alone, but see Bishop Stubbs’s explanation, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 457, note 4, and his remarks in the preface to _Gesta Hen. Reg._ (“Benedict of Peterborough”), vol. ii. pp. xciv–xcvi.

[1474] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1475] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 33.

[1476] Gerv. Cant. as above. Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1477] Chron. Mailros, a. 1158.

[1478] “Quidam rex Gualiæ.” Gerv. Cant. as above.

[1479] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 125). He miscalls him _William_ Trencavel.

[1480] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1481] “Vir magnus et potens, nec infra reges consistens.” Will. Newb. as above (p. 123).

[1482] On these marriages, etc., see Vic and Vaissète, _Hist. du Languedoc_, vol. iii.

[1483] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 123–125). Raymond’s speech, and the whole story of Raymond, Ramirez and Petronilla, as given in this chapter, form a charming romance, whose main facts are fully borne out by the more prosaic version of Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1484] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

A last attempt to avert the coming struggle was made early in June; the two kings met near the Norman border, but again without any result.[1485] Immediately after midsummer, therefore, Henry and his host set out from Poitiers and marched down to Périgueux. There, in “the Bishop’s Meadow,” Henry knighted his Scottish cousin, and Malcolm in his turn bestowed the same honour upon thirty noble youths of his suite.[1486] The expedition then advanced straight into the enemy’s country. The first place taken was Cahors; its dependent territory was speedily overrun;[1487] and while in the south Raymond Trencavel was winning back the castles of which the other Raymond had despoiled him, Henry led his main force towards the city of Toulouse itself.[1488] Count and people saw the net closing round them; they had seen it drawing near for months past, and one and all--bishop, nobles and citizens--had been writing passionate appeals to the king of France, imploring him, if not for the love of his sister, at least for the honour of his crown, to come and save one of its fairest jewels from the greedy grasp of the Angevin.[1489] Louis wavered till it was all but too late; he was evidently, and naturally, most unwilling to quarrel with the king of England. He began to move southward, but apparently without any definite aim; and it was not till after another fruitless conference with Henry in the beginning of July[1490] that he at last, for very shame, answered his brother-in-law’s appeal by throwing himself into Toulouse almost alone, as if to encourage its defenders by his presence, but without giving them any substantial aid.[1491] Perhaps he foresaw the result. Henry, on the point of laying siege to the city, paused when he heard that his overlord was within it. Dread of Louis’s military capacity he could have none; personal reverence for him he could have just as little. But he reverenced in a fellow-king the dignity of kingship; he reverenced in his own overlord the right to that feudal obedience which he exacted from his own vassals. He took counsel with his barons; they agreed with him that the siege should be postponed till Louis was out of the city--a decision which was equivalent to giving it up altogether.[1492] The soldiers grumbled loudly, and the chancellor loudest of all. Thomas had now completely “put off the deacon,” and flung himself with all his might into the pursuit of arms. His knights were the flower of the host, foremost in every fight, the bravest of the brave; and the life and soul of all their valour was the chancellor himself.[1493] The prospect of retreat filled him with dismay. He protested that Louis had forfeited his claim to Henry’s obedience by breaking his compact with him and joining his enemies, and he entreated his master to seize the opportunity of capturing Toulouse, city, count, king and all, before reinforcements could arrive.[1494] Henry however turned a deaf ear to his impetuous friend. Accompanied by the king of Scots and all his host, he retreated towards his own dominions just as a body of French troops were entering Toulouse.[1495]

[1485] Contin. Becc. a. 1159 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. p. 172).

[1486] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 58 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 310). The Chron. Mailros, a. 1159, says Malcolm was knighted at Tours on the way back from Toulouse; Geoff. Vigeois implies that it was on the way out.

[1487] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 34. Rob. Torigni, a. 1159. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 126), who however has got the sequence of events wrong.

[1488] Will. Newb. as above.

[1489] Letters of Peter archbishop of Narbonne:--Hermengard viscountess of Narbonne:--“commune consilium urbis Tolosæ et suburbii”--Epp. xxxiii., xxxiv., ccccxiv., Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv. pp. 574, 575, 713. The archbishop curiously describes the threatening invader as “Dux Normanniæ.” The citizens make a pitiful appeal; the viscountess makes a spirited one, and wishes the king “Karoli regis magnanimitatem.”

[1490] Contin. Becc. a. 1159 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. pp. 173, 174).

[1491] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 33. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 125).

[1492] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 33, Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 58 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 310), Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 125), the _Draco Norm._, l. i. c. 12, vv. 437–464 (_ib._ vol. ii. pp. 608, 609), and R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303, attribute the retreat to Henry’s reverence for his overlord; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167, seems to look upon it as a measure of necessity; but considering that Louis had brought almost nothing but himself to Raymond’s aid, one does not see what necessity there could be in the case. The _Draco_ alone mentions Henry’s consultation with the barons--unless there is some allusion to it in the words of Will. Fitz-Steph., who describes Henry as “vanâ superstitione et reverentiâ tentus consilio aliorum.”

[1493] The English archdeacon’s unclerical doings in this war were however quite eclipsed by those of the archbishop of Bordeaux. See a letter from the citizens of Toulouse to King Louis; Ep. ccccxxv., Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv. p. 718.

[1494] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 34.

[1495] _Ibid._

He had, however, conquered the greater part of the county,[1496] and had no intention of abandoning his conquests; but the task of protecting them against Raymond and Louis together, without the support of Henry’s own presence, was a responsibility which all his great barons declined. Two faithful ministers accepted the duty: Thomas the chancellor and Henry of Essex the constable.[1497] Thomas fixed his head-quarters at Cahors;[1498] thence, with the constable’s aid, he undertook to hold the country by means of his own personal followers,[1499] backed by Raymond of Barcelona, Trencavel, and William of Montpellier.[1500] He ruled with a high hand, putting down by proscription and even with the sword every attempt at a rising against Henry’s authority storming towns and burning manors without mercy in his master’s service;[1501] in helm and hauberk he rode forth at the head of his troops to the capture of three castles which had hitherto been considered impregnable.[1502] Henry’s “superstition” (as it was called by a follower of Thomas)[1503] about bearing arms against his overlord applied only to a personal encounter in circumstances of special delicacy; he had no scruples in making war upon Louis indirectly, as he had done more than once before, and was now doing not only through Thomas but also at the opposite end of France. The English and Scottish kings had retired from Toulouse to Limoges, where they arrived about Michaelmas.[1504] Meanwhile Count Theobald of Blois, now an ally of Henry, was despatched by him “to disquiet the realm of France”--that is, doubtless, to make a diversion which should draw off the attention of the French from Toulouse and leave a clear field to the operations of Thomas. The French king’s brothers, Henry, bishop of Beauvais, and Robert, count of Dreux, retaliated by attacking the Norman frontier with fire and sword.[1505] Thomas, having chased away the enemies across the Garonne and secured the obedience of the conquered territory, hurried northward to join his sovereign, whom he apparently followed into Normandy. There he undertook the defence of the frontier. Besides his seven hundred picked knights, he maintained at his own cost for the space of forty days twelve hundred paid horsemen and four thousand foot in his master’s service against the king of France on the marches between Gisors, Trie and Courcelles; he not only headed his troops in person, but also met in single combat a valiant French knight of Trie, Engelram by name; and the layman went down before the lance of the warlike archdeacon, who carried off his opponent’s destrier as the trophy of his victory.[1506] The king himself marched into the Beauvaisis, stormed Gerberoi, and harried the surrounding country till he gained a valuable assistant in Count Simon of Montfort, who surrendered to him all his French possessions, including the castles of Montfort, Rochefort and Epernon. As these places lay directly in the way from Paris to Etampes and Orléans, Louis found himself completely cut off from the southern part of his domain, and was compelled to ask for a truce. It was made in December, to last till the octave of Pentecost.[1507] Henry’s wife had now joined him; they kept Christmas together at Falaise,[1508] and Henry used the interval of tranquillity to make some reforms in the Norman judicature.[1509] When the truce expired the two kings made a treaty of peace,[1510] negotiated as usual by the indefatigable chancellor;[1511] the betrothal of little Henry and Margaret was confirmed, and the Vexin was settled upon the infant couple. As for the Aquitanian quarrel, Louis formally restored to Henry all the rights and holdings of the count of Poitou, except Toulouse itself; Henry and Raymond making a truce for a year, during which both were to keep their present possessions, and complete freedom of action was left to their respective allies.[1512]

[1496] _Ibid._ Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1497] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 34.

[1498] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1499] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

[1500] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1501] E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 365. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 175, 176.

[1502] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 34.

[1503] _Ib._ p. 33. See above, p. 465, note 1{1485}.

[1504] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 58 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 310).

[1505] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1506] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp. 34, 35.

[1507] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1508] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

[1509] Contin. Becc. a. 1160 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. p. 180).

[1510] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

[1511] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 24 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 159).

[1512] The treaty is printed in Lyttelton’s _Hen. II._, vol. iv. pp. 173, 174. It has no date; we have to get that from Rob. Torigni--May 1160. The terms of the treaty are summarized by Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 218, who places it a year too late. He also introduces a second betrothal, between Richard and Adela, the second daughter of Louis and Constance. But the treaty printed by Lyttelton says nothing of this; and if it be the treaty mentioned by Rob. Torigni the clause is impossible, for Adela was not born till the autumn of 1160.

This imperfect settlement, as far as Toulouse was concerned, advanced no further towards completion during the next thirteen years. Henry’s expedition could hardly be called a success; and whatever advantage he had gained over Raymond was dearly purchased at the cost of a quarrel with Louis. There can be little doubt that Henry had fallen into a trap; Louis had misled him into lighting the torch of war, and then turned against him in such a way as to cast upon him the blame of the subsequent conflagration. The elements of strife between the two kings could hardly have failed to burst sooner or later into a blaze; the question was whose hand should kindle it. In spite of Henry’s Angevin wariness, Louis had contrived to shift upon him the fatal responsibility; and for the rest of his life the fire went smouldering on, breaking out at intervals in various directions, smothered now and then for a moment, but never thoroughly quenched; consuming the plans and hopes of its involuntary originator, while the real incendiary sheltered himself to the last behind his mask of injured innocence.

For six months all was quiet. In October the two kings held another meeting; the treaty was ratified, and little Henry, who had lately come over from England with his mother, was made to do homage to Louis for the duchy of Normandy.[1513] About the same time the queen of France died, leaving to her husband another infant daughter.[1514] Disappointed for the fourth time in his hopes of a son, Louis in his impatience set decency at defiance; before Constance had been a fortnight in her grave he married a third wife, Adela of Blois, daughter of Theobald the Great, and sister of the two young counts who were betrothed to the king’s own elder daughters.[1515] His subjects, sharing his anxiety for an heir, easily forgave his unseemly haste and welcomed the new queen, who in birth, mind and person was all that could be desired.[1516] It would, however, have been scarcely possible to find a choice more irritating to Henry of Anjou. On either side of the sea, the house of Blois seemed to be always in some way or other crossing his path; in their lives or in their deaths, they were perpetually giving him trouble. At that very time the death of Stephen’s last surviving son, Earl William of Warren,[1517] had led to a quarrel between the king and his dearest friend. William was childless, and the sole heir to his county of Boulogne was his sister Mary, abbess of Romsey. This lady was now brought out of her convent to be married by Papal dispensation to Matthew, second son of the count of Flanders.[1518] The scheme, devised by King Henry,[1519] was strongly opposed by the bridegroom’s father,[1520] and also by Henry’s own chancellor. Thomas, somewhat unexpectedly perhaps, started up as a vindicator of monastic discipline, remonstrated vehemently against the marriage of a nun, and used all his influence at Rome to hinder the dispensation; he gained, however, nothing save the enmity of Matthew, and a foretaste of that kingly wrath[1521] which was to burst upon him with all its fury three years later. Even without allowing for Henry’s probable frame of mind in consequence of this affair, the French king’s triple alliance with the hereditary rivals of the Angevin house would naturally appear to him in the light of a provocation and a menace. The chancellor seems to have made his peace by suggesting an answer to it.

[1513] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

[1514] _Ibid._ R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303. _Hist. Ludov._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv.), p. 415. Constance died on October 4; Lamb. Waterloo, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xiii. p. 517.

[1515] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167, and Rob. Torigni, a. 1160. Adela was crowned at Paris with her husband on S. Brice’s day (November 13); _Hist. Ludov._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv.), p. 416.

[1516] _Hist. Ludov._ as above.

[1517] He died in October 1159, on the way home from Toulouse; Rob. Torigni, _ad ann._

[1518] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160. Lamb. Waterloo (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xiii.), p. 517. According to Matthew Paris, _Hist. Angl._ (Madden), vol. i. p. 314, the marriage took place in 1161.

[1519] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 328.

[1520] Lamb. Waterloo as above.

[1521] Herb. Bosh. as above. Mat. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ (Madden), vol. i. pp. 314, 315.

One of Henry’s great desires was to recover the Vexin, which at his father’s suggestion he had ceded to Louis in 1151 as the price of the investiture of Normandy. By the last treaty between the two kings it had been settled that this territory should form the dowry of little Margaret; her father was to retain possession of it, and to place its chief fortresses in the custody of the Knights Templars, for the next three years, until she should be wedded to young Henry with the consent of Holy Church; whenever that should take place, Henry’s father was to receive back the Vexin. In other words, the dowry was not to be paid till the bride was married; and there was evidently a tacit understanding, at any rate on the French side, that this was not to be for three years at least.[1522] Later in the summer two cardinal-legates visited France and Normandy on business connected with a recent Papal election.[1523] Henry, apparently at the instigation of Thomas,[1524] persuaded them to solemnize the marriage of the two children on November 2 at Neubourg.[1525] The written conditions of the treaty were fulfilled to the letter--the babes were wedded with the consent of Holy Church, represented by the Pope’s own legates; and the castles of the Vexin were at once made over to Henry by the Templars,[1526] three of whom were present at the wedding.[1527] Louis found himself thoroughly outwitted. His first step was to banish the three Templars, who were cordially received by Henry;[1528] his next was to concert with the brothers of his new queen a plan of retaliation in Anjou. The house of Blois naturally resented a curtailment of the possessions of the crown which they now hoped one day to see worn by a prince of their own blood. Louis and Theobald accordingly set to work to fortify Chaumont, a castle which Gelduin of Saumur had long ago planted on the bank of the Loire as a special thorn in the side of the Angevin counts. Henry flew to the spot, put king and count to flight, besieged and took the castle of Chaumont together with thirty-five picked knights and eighty men-at-arms whom Theobald had sent to reinforce its garrison; he then fortified Fréteval and Amboise, and, secure from all further molestation, went to keep Christmas with Eleanor in his native city of Le Mans.[1529]

[1522] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 24 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 159), distinctly states that the children were not to be married till they were of a fit age; and such was no doubt the intention of Louis; but it was by no means expressed in the treaty:--“Totum remanens Wilcassini” [_i.e._ all except three of its fiefs which were specially reserved to Henry] “regi Francie; hoc modo, quod ipse illud remanens dedit et concessit maritagium cum filiâ suâ filio regis Anglie habendum. Et eum unde seisiendum ab Assumptione B. Marie proximâ post pacem factam in tres annos, et si infra hunc terminum filia regis Francie filio regis Anglie desponsata fuerit, assensu et consensu Sancte Ecclesie, tunc erit rex Anglie seysitus de toto Wilcassino, et de castellis Wilcassini, ad opus filii sui.” Treaty in Lyttelton, _Hen. II._, vol. iv. p. 173. The question turned on the construing of “_tunc_.” Louis intended it to mean “then, when the three years are expired, if the children shall be wedded”; Henry and his friends the Templars made it mean “then, when the children are wedded, whether the three years are expired or not.”

[1523] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxlviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 197). Of their business we shall see more later.

[1524] This must surely be the meaning of Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 175: “Quam industrie munitiones quinque munitissimas, in Franciæ et Normanniæ sitas confinio, domino suo regi, ad cujus tamen jus ab antiquo spectare dignoscebantur, a rege Francorum per matrimonium, sine ferro, sine gladio, absque lanceâ, absque pugnâ, in omni regum dilectione et pace revocaverit, Gizortium scilicet, castrum munitissimum, et alia quatuor.” Cf. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 57, which seems however to refer rather to the drawing-up of the treaty.

[1525] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 304. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 168, Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 218, and Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

[1526] Rog. Howden and Rob. Torigni, as above. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 24 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 159).

[1527] Roger of Pirou, Tostig of S. Omer and Richard of Hastings; Rog. Howden as above.

[1528] _Ibid._

[1529] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

A year of peace followed: Henry spent the greater part of it in Normandy, garrisoning the castles of the duchy, strengthening its newly-recovered border-fortresses, providing for the restoration of the old royal strongholds and the erection of new ones in all parts of his dominions, and superintending the repair of his palace at Rouen, the making of a park at Quévilly, and the foundation of an hospital for lepers at Caen.[1530] The chancellor was still at his side, and had lately, as a crowning mark of his confidence, been intrusted with the entire charge of his eldest son. Thomas received the child into his own household, to educate him with the other boys of noble birth who came to learn courtly manners and knightly prowess in that excellent school; he playfully called him his adoptive son, and treated him as such in every respect.[1531] Little Henry was now in his seventh year, and his father was already anxious to secure his succession to the throne. The conditional homage which he had received as an infant was, as Henry knew by personal experience, a very insufficient security. Indeed, the results of every attempt to regulate the descent of the crown since the Norman conquest tended to prove that the succession of the heir could be really secured by nothing short of his actual recognition and coronation as king during his father’s life-time. This was now becoming an established practice in France and Germany. In England, where the older constitutional theory of national election to the throne had never died out, such a step had never been attempted but once; and that attempt, made by Stephen in behalf of his son Eustace, had ended in signal failure. Discouraging as the precedent was, however, Henry had made up his mind to follow it; and in the spring of 1162 he sent his boy over sea and called upon the barons of England to do him homage and fealty, as a preliminary to his coronation as king.[1532]

[1530] _Ibid._ a. 1161.

[1531] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 22. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 176, 177.

[1532] E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 366. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 13.

A matter so important and so delicate could be intrusted to no one but the chancellor. He managed it, like everything else that he took in hand, with a calm facility which astonished every one. He brought the child to England, presented him to the bishops and barons of the realm in a great council summoned for the purpose,[1533] knelt at his feet and swore to be his faithful subject in all things, reserving only the fealty due to the elder king so long as he lived and reigned;[1534] the whole assembly followed his example, and thus a measure which it was believed that Henry’s personal presence would hardly have availed to carry through without disturbance was accomplished at once and without a word of protest,[1535] save from the little king himself, who with childish imperiousness, it is said, refused to admit any reservation in the oath of his adoptive father.[1536] Henry probably intended that the boy’s recognition as heir to the crown should be speedily followed by his coronation.[1537] This, however, was a rite which could only be performed by the primate of all England; and the chair of S. Augustine was vacant. Once again it was to Thomas that Henry looked for aid; but this time he looked in vain. Thomas had done his last act in the service of his royal friend. The year which had passed away since Archbishop Theobald’s death had been, on both sides of the sea, a year of almost ominous tranquillity. It was in truth the forerunner of a storm which was to shatter Henry’s peace and to cost Thomas his life.

[1533] Anon. I. as above. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 306.

[1534] R. Diceto as above.

[1535] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 13.

[1536] Mat. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ (Madden), vol. i. p. 316.

[1537] Such an intention is distinctly stated by E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 366: ... “filio suo, jam tunc coronando in regem.”

CHAPTER XI.

THE LAST YEARS OF ARCHBISHOP THEOBALD.

1156–1161.

All Henry’s endeavours for the material and political revival of his kingdom had been regulated thus far by one simple, definite principle:--the restoration of the state of things which had existed under his grandfather. In his own eyes and in those of his subjects the duty which lay before him at his accession, and which he had faithfully and successfully fulfilled, was to take up the work of government and administration not at the point where he found it, but at the point where it had been left by Henry I. and Roger of Salisbury: to pull down and sweep away all the innovations and irregularities with which their work had been overlaid during the last nineteen years, and bring the old foundations to light once more, that they might receive a legitimate superstructure planned upon their own lines and built upon their own principles. In law, in finance, in general administration, there was one universal standard of reference:--“the time of my grandfather King Henry.”

But there was one side of the national revival, and that the most important of all, to which this standard could not apply. The religious and intellectual movement which had begun under Henry I., far from coming to a standstill at his death, had gone on gathering energy and strength during the years of anarchy till it had become the one truly living power in the land, the power which in the end placed Henry II. on his throne. It looked to find in him a friend, a fellow-worker, a protector perhaps; but it had no need to go back to a stage which it had long since overpassed and make a new departure thence under the guidance of a king who was almost its own creation. At the very moment of Henry’s accession, the hopes of the English Church were raised to their highest pitch by the elevation of an Englishman to the Papal chair. Nicolas Breakspear was the only man of English birth who ever attained that lofty seat; and the adventures which brought him thither, so far as they can be made out from two somewhat contradictory accounts, form a romantic chapter in the clerical history of the time. Nicolas was the son of a poor English clerk[1538] at Langley, a little township belonging to the abbey of S. Alban’s.[1539] The father retired into the abbey,[1540] leaving his boy, according to one version of the story, too poor to go to school and too young and ignorant to earn his bread; he therefore came every day to get a dole at the abbey-gate, till his father grew ashamed and bade him come no more; whereupon the lad, “blushing either to dig or to beg in his own country,” made his way across the sea.[1541] Another version asserts that Nicolas, being “a youth of graceful appearance, but somewhat lacking in clerkly acquirements,” sued to the abbot of S. Alban’s for admission as a monk; the abbot examined him, found him insufficiently instructed, and dismissed him with a gentle admonition: “Wait awhile, my son, and go to school that you may become better fitted for the cloister.”[1542] Whether stung by the abbot’s hint or by his father’s reproofs, young Nicolas found his way to Paris and into its schools, where he worked so hard that he out-did all his fellow-students.[1543] But the life there wearied him as it had wearied Thomas Becket; he rambled on across Gaul into Provence, and there found hospitality in the Austin priory of S. Rufus. His graceful figure, pleasant face, sensible talk and obliging temper so charmed the brotherhood that they grew eager to keep him in their midst,[1544] and on their persuasion he joined the order.[1545] It seems that he was even made superior of the house, but the canons afterwards regretted having set a stranger to rule over them, and after persecuting him in various ways appealed to the Pope to get rid of him. The Pope--Eugene III.--at first refused to hear them; but on second consideration he decided to give them over to their own evil devices and offer their rejected superior a more agreeable post in his own court.[1546] Nicolas, who had already twice visited Rome, proceeded thither a third time and was made cardinal[1547] and bishop of Albano.[1548] Shortly afterwards he was appointed legate to Norway and Denmark, an office which he filled with prudence and energy during some years.[1549] Returning to Rome about 1150, he apparently acted as secretary to Eugene III. until the latter’s death in July 1153.[1550] The next Pope, Anastasius III., reigned only sixteen months, and dying on December 2, 1154, was succeeded by the bishop of Albano, who took the name of Adrian IV.[1551]

[1538] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 6 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 109).

[1539] _Gesta Abbat. S. Albani_ (Riley), vol. i. p. 112.

[1540] Will. Newb. as above. Probably he separated from his wife in consequence of some of the decrees against clerical marriage passed under Henry I.; that she was not dead is plain from John of Salisbury’s mention of her as still living in the days of his friendship with Nicolas. Joh. Salisb., _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. p. 205).

[1541] Will. Newb. as above (pp. 109, 110).

[1542] _Gesta Abbat._ as above. The abbot’s name is there given as Robert, but this must be wrong, as Robert did not become abbot till 1151, and by 1150, as we shall see, Nicolas was at Rome.

[1543] _Gesta Abbat._ (as above), pp. 112, 113.

[1544] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 6 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 110).

[1545] _Ibid._ _Gesta Abbat._ (Riley), vol. i. p. 113.

[1546] Will. Newb. as above (pp. 110, 111). The church of S. Rufus (diocese Valence) had between 1145 and 1151 an abbot named N.... The editors of _Gall. Christ._ (vol. xvi. cols. 359, 360) will not allow that this N. was Nicolas Breakspear, and of course the date will not agree with the version of his history in the _Gesta Abbat._; but it agrees perfectly with that of Will. Newb.; while the _Gesta’s_ dates are confuted by Nicolas’s undoubted signatures at Rome.

[1547] _Gesta Abbat._ as above.

[1548] Will. Newb. as above (p. 111). Rob. Torigni, a. 1154.

[1549] Will. Newb. as above.

[1550] “A partir de l’année 1150, on trouve la souscription de _Nicolaus episcopus Albanensis_ au bas des bulles d’Eugène III.” Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. i. p. 288, note 2.

[1551] Will. Newb. as above (p. 111). Date from Cod. Vatic., Baronius, _Annales_ (Pagi), vol. xix. p. 77.

The English Church naturally hailed with delight the accession of a pontiff who was at once one of her own sons and a disciple of Eugene, whom the leaders of the intellectual and spiritual revival in England had come to regard almost as their patron saint.[1552] Adrian indeed shared all their highest and most cherished aspirations far more deeply and intimately than Eugene himself could have done. It was in the cloisters of Canterbury that these aspirations were gradually taking definite shape under the guidance of Archbishop Theobald. There, beneath the shadow of the cathedral begun by Lanfranc and completed by S. Anselm, their worthy successor had been throughout the last ten or twelve years of the anarchy watching over a little sanctuary where all that was noblest, highest, most full of hope and promise in the dawning intellectual life of the day found a peaceful shelter and a congenial home. The _Curia Theobaldi_, the household of Archbishop Theobald, was a sort of little school of the prophets, a seminary into which the vigilant primate drew the choicest spirits among the rising generation, to be trained up under his own eyes in his own modes of thought and views of life, till they were fitted to become first the sharers and then the continuators of his work for the English Church and the English nation. Through his scholars had come the revival of legal and ecclesiastical learning in England; through them had come the renewal of intercourse and sympathy with the sister-Churches of the west; through them had been conducted the negotiations with Rome which had led to the restoration of order and peace; and in them, as Theobald hoped, the Church, having saved the state, would find her most fitting instruments for the work of reform and revival which still remained to be done within her own borders. One by one, as the occasion presented itself, he began to send them forth to take independent positions in the Church or in the world. Of the chosen three whom he specially trusted, the first who thus left his side was John of Canterbury, who in 1153 succeeded Hugh of Puiset as treasurer of York. Next year Theobald was able to place another of his disciples in the northern metropolis in a far more important capacity: he succeeded in obtaining the royal assent to the appointment of Roger of Pont-l’Evêque as archbishop of York, in succession to S. William, who had been restored by Pope Anastasius after Henry Murdac’s death, but died six weeks after his restoration.[1553]

[1552] John of Salisbury frequently writes of him as “Sanctus Eugenius.”

[1553] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 298, 299. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 158. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 26 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 80, 82). Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), pp. 10, 11.

Roger’s history before his entrance into the primate’s household is so completely lost that even the rendering of his surname is a matter of some doubt; it may have been derived from the English town of Bishopsbridge, and if so Roger was now going back as primate to his own native shire; it seems however more probable that he came from Pont-l’Evêque in Normandy.[1554] He was evidently some years older than Theobald’s other favourites, John of Canterbury and Thomas of London; for we find him and Gilbert Foliot quarrelling, apologizing, lecturing and forgiving each other with an outspoken freedom and familiarity possible only between two men of equal standing who have been friends from their youth.[1555] With Thomas Becket, on the other hand, Roger was never upon really friendly terms; jealous, no doubt, of the younger man who seemed likely to supersede him in the primate’s confidence, Roger lost no opportunity of teasing the “hatchet-clerk” (as he called Thomas, from the nickname of the man who had first introduced him to Theobald), and made his life so wretched that he was twice driven to quit the archbishop’s house and take refuge with Theobald’s brother, Walter, archdeacon of Canterbury, till the latter smoothed the way for his return.[1556] On Walter’s elevation to the see of Rochester in 1148 his archdeaconry was given to Roger;[1557] he also held some other preferments, all of which he was at one time in great danger of losing--most likely on account of his share in the famous “swimming-voyage” to Reims; but his friend Gilbert Foliot secured him the protection of the Pope;[1558] and the restoration of the archbishop would naturally involve that of the archdeacon. After six years’ tenure of his office at Canterbury Roger was called to go up higher. Theobald had more than one reason for desiring his archdeacon’s elevation. He wished it for Roger’s own sake; he wished it still more for the sake of his younger favourite, whom he longed to establish in a position of dignity and importance, yet close to his own side; above all, he wished it for the sake of the Church;[1559] for he naturally hoped that in leaving one of his own foremost disciples seated on the metropolitan chair of York, he would be leaving at least one prelate of the highest rank firmly pledged to those schemes of ecclesiastical policy and organization which he himself had most at heart. His confidence in Roger was over-great. After all the disputes about the canonical relations between Canterbury and York which had wasted the energies of Lanfranc and embittered the last days of S. Anselm, Theobald missed his opportunity of securing at last a full acknowledgement of Canterbury’s superior rights, and was rash enough to consecrate Roger without requiring from him a profession of obedience.[1560] The large-hearted primate evidently never dreamed that any question of obedience could arise between himself and one of his spiritual sons, or that Roger’s loyalty to him could fail to be extended to his successor. He never discovered his mistake; it was Roger’s old rival, and with him the English Church, who ultimately had to bear its unhappy consequences.

[1554] There is a bit of evidence on this side in _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 40, where the writer calls him “Rogerum Nevstriensem.”

[1555] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. cix.–cxi. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 135–145). This was after Roger became archbishop; the quarrel went so far that Roger appealed to Rome about it, and carried his appeal in person. (What can be the date of this?) Gilbert owns that he had let his sharp tongue run away with him; Roger lectures him soundly, but ends with “ecce jam in occursum vestrum vetus festinat amicus,” and a proposal to kill the fatted calf in celebration of his repentance (Ep. cx. p. 141).

[1556] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 16. Cf. Anon I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 9, 10; E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 362; and Gamier (Hippeau), p. 10.

[1557] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 133.

[1558] “Clericus ... dilecti filii vestri domini Cantuariensis archiepiscopi Magister R. de Ponte Episcopi vestrum adit urgente necessitate præsidium ut ad tuenda ea quæ canonice possidet a vestrâ imploret serenitate patrocinium.” Gilb. Foliot, Ep. xvii (Giles, vol. i. p. 30). The salutation of the letter runs “Summo Dei gratiâ Pontifici E., frater G. Glocestriæ dictus abbas”; it looks very much as if written in the interval between the council of Reims and Gilbert’s consecration.

[1559] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 10.

[1560] “Sed professionem non fecit” [Roger], significantly remarks R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 298. Roger was consecrated at Westminster on October 10, 1154; _ibid._ Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 158.

Immediately after Roger’s consecration Thomas was raised by his primate to deacon’s orders and made archdeacon of Canterbury.[1561] A few months later the accession of Henry II. opened the way for his advancement in another direction. His appointment to the chancellorship involved a great self-sacrifice on the part of Theobald; for the chancellor’s duties--at least as conceived by Thomas, and as Theobald had intended him to conceive them--took him not only quite away from those of his archdeaconry and from his primate’s side, but very often out of the country altogether; so that Theobald in giving him up to the king had condemned himself to pass his declining years apart from the object of his warmest earthly affections. But the _Curia Theobaldi_ was by no means deserted; though it had lost its most brilliant star, there was no lack of lesser lights to brighten the primate’s home-circle; there was one whose soft mild radiance, less dazzling than the glory of Thomas, was a far truer and steadier reflex of Theobald’s own calm and gentle spirit. Yet John of Salisbury had entered the archbishop’s household within a comparatively recent period. His father’s name seems to have been Reinfred;[1562] his family connexions were all in or around the city whence his surname was derived;[1563] but there is some indication that John himself may have been born in London.[1564] In the year after the death of Henry I. he went to study in Paris, and there received his first lessons in dialectics from the greatest scholar of the day--sitting at the feet of Peter Abelard, and eagerly drinking in, to the utmost capacity of his young mind, every word that fell from the master’s lips. Abelard departed all too soon, and John pursued his studies for about two years under his successors Alberic and Robert, of whom the latter, although commonly called “Robert of Melun” from having taught with distinction in that place, was an Englishman by birth, and will come before us again in later days as Gilbert Foliot’s successor in the bishopric of Hereford. It must have been precisely during those two years that Thomas of London also was in Paris for the first time, striving for his mother’s sake to overcome his dislike of books; and it was possibly there that the two young Englishmen, who must have been of nearly the same age, began to form an acquaintance which afterwards ripened into a lifelong friendship. And it can only have been about the same time, and in that same wonderful meeting-place where so many of the happiest and most fruitful associations of the time had their beginnings, that John of Salisbury first met with Nicolas of Langley.

[1561] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 17. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 168. Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 4. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 11. Garnier (Hippeau), p. 10. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 159. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 213, where he is called “Thomas Beket”--apparently for the first time.

[1562] “Magister B. filius Reinfred peccator, fraterculus meus,” is named by Joh. Salisb. Ep. xc. (Giles, vol. i. p. 135).

[1563] See his correspondence _passim_.

[1564] There is among John’s letters a most enigmatical one--Ep. cxxx. (Giles, vol. i. p. 109)--without date, address, or writer’s name, but very much in the tone and style of John’s familiar letters--in which a Londoner, or rather a man who tried to make himself out to be such, is described as “concivis noster.” It looks very much as if written by John to Thomas.

Thomas went home to the plodding life of a city merchant’s clerk; Nicolas set out on the long course of wandering which was to bring him at last to the Papal chair; John, having as he says “steeped himself to the finger-tips in dialectics, and moreover learned to think his knowledge greater than it really was,” applied himself for the next three years to the schools of the grammarians William of Conches and Richard l’Evêque, with whom he went over again the whole course of his previous studies, penetrated somewhat deeper into those of the _quadrivium_ which he had begun under the direction of a German named Hardwin, and improved some slight notions of rhetoric which he had acquired at the lectures of a certain Master Theodoric. His relatives were quite unable to maintain him all this while; like all poor students of the day, he earned his living and his college-fees by teaching others, and as he pleasantly says “What I learned was the better fixed in my mind, because I constantly had to bring it out for my pupils.” One of these pupils was William of Soissons, to whom he taught the elements of logic, “and who afterwards contrived, as his followers say, a method of breaking down the old strongholds of logic, producing unexpected consequences, and overthrowing the opinions of the ancients.” John however declined to believe in a “system of impossibilities,” for which he at any rate was clearly not responsible; for he had soon transferred his pupil to the care of one Master Adam, an English teacher deeply versed in Aristotelian lore. It seems just possible that this Master Adam, who was at this time helping John in his studies not as a teacher but as a friend,[1565] was the same who many years before had stood in a somewhat similar relation to Gilbert Foliot.[1566] He may, however, perhaps be more probably identified with Adam “du Petit-Pont”--so called from the place where he lectured in Paris--who in 1176 became bishop of S. Asaph’s.[1567] After a while John found that with all his efforts he could hardly earn enough to live upon in Paris; so by the advice of his friends he determined to set up a school elsewhere.[1568] While sitting at the feet of the “Peripatetic” doctors on the Mont-Ste.-Geneviève he had become acquainted with a young native of Champagne, Peter by name, who was studying in the school of S. Martin-des-Champs.[1569] The two friends, it seems, settled together at Provins in Peter’s native land, and there, under the protection of the good Count Theobald,[1570] laboured and prospered for three years.[1571] Long afterwards, from his anxious post at the side of the dying Archbishop Theobald, John’s thoughts strayed tenderly back to the days which he and his young comrade, with hearts as light as their purses, had spent among the roses of Champagne: “I am the same that ever I was,” he wrote to Peter, now abbot of Celle, “only I possess more than you and I had between us at Provins.”[1572] He returned to Paris, revisited his old haunts on the Mont-Ste.-Geneviève, and was amused to find his old school-companions just where and as he had left them. “They did not seem to have advanced an inch towards disposing of the old questions, nor to have added one new proposition.” He, in his three years of healthy meditation in the country, had discovered that their dialectics, however useful as a help to other studies, were in themselves but a fruitless and lifeless system; he therefore now gave himself up to the study of theology under a certain Master Gilbert, Robert “Pullus”--in whom one is tempted to recognize the Robert Pulein who had planted the seed of the first English University by his divinity-lectures at Oxford in 1133--and lastly, Simon of Poissy.

[1565] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. ii. c. 10 (Giles, vol. v. pp. 78–80). Adam’s nationality appears in l. iii. c. 3 (p. 129), where he is described as “noster ille Anglus Peripateticus Adam.”

[1566] See below, p. 492, 493.

[1567] Wright, _Biogr. Britt. Lit._, vol. ii. pp. 245, 246.

[1568] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. ii. c. 10 (Giles, vol. v. pp. 80, 81).

[1569] On Peter of Celle see Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. ccii. cols. 399, 400, and _Gall. Christ._, vol. xii. col. 543.

[1570] Cf. Joh. Salisb. Epp. lxxxii. and cxliii. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 114, 206); and see also Demimuid, _Jean de Salisbury_, pp. 26, 27.

[1571] “Reversus itaque in fine triennii.” Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._ as above (p. 81).

[1572] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxxii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 114).

John’s whole career in the schools, after occupying about twelve years,[1573] apparently came to an end shortly before the council of Reims. His old friend Peter had already retired into the peace of the cloister, and about this time became abbot of Celle, near Troyes. There John, who was utterly without means of living, found a shelter and a home, nominally, it seems, in the capacity of Peter’s “clerk” or secretary, but in reality as the recipient of a generous hospitality which sought for no return save the enjoyment of his presence and his friendship.[1574] Such a light as John’s, however, could not long remain thus hidden under a bushel. So felt Peter himself;[1575] and at that moment a better place for it was easily found. At the council of Reims, or during his exile after it, the archbishop of Canterbury probably met the abbot of Celle and his English “clerk”;[1576] he certainly must have met the abbot of Clairvaux; and S. Bernard, with his unerring instinct, had already discovered John’s merits. He named him to Theobald in terms of commendation; and it was he who furnished the letter of introduction,[1577] as it was Peter who furnished the means,[1578] wherewith John at last made his way to the archbishop’s court,[1579] of which he soon became one of the busiest and most valued members. So busy was he--so “distracted with diverse and adverse occupations,” as he himself said--that he complained of being scarce able to steal an hour for the literary and philosophical pursuits which he so dearly loved. Ten times in the next thirteen years[1580] did he cross the Alps, twice did he visit Apulia, on business with the Roman court for his superiors or his friends; besides travelling all over England and Gaul on a variety of errands, and fulfilling a crowd of home-duties which left him scarcely time to look after his own private affairs, much less to indulge in study.[1581] The greater part of the communications between Theobald and Eugene III. must have passed through his hands, either as messenger or as amanuensis; but his name never figures in their diplomatic history; his place therein was a subordinate one. It was not in his nature to take the foremost rank. Not that he was unfit for it:--with his gracious, genial temper; his calm clear judgement, generally sound because always disinterested; his delicate wit, his easy, elegant scholarship, and his wide practical experience of the world--John of Salisbury might have adorned far higher positions in either Church or state than any which he ever actually occupied. But his own position was a thing of which he seems never to have thought, save as a means of serving others. His apology for his unwilling neglect of literature--“I am a man under authority”[1582]--might have been the motto of his life. He left it to others to lead; if they led in the way of righteousness, they might be sure of one faithful adherent who would serve and follow them through good report and evil report, who would try to clear the path before them at any risk to himself; who would criticize their conduct and tell them of their errors with fearless simplicity, while striving to avert the consequence of those errors and to cover their retreat; who in poverty and exile, incurred for another’s sake, would make light of his own sufferings and be constantly endeavouring to relieve those of his fellow-sufferers, and who would always find or make a silver lining to the darkest cloud. This was what John did for the possible acquaintance of his early student-days whom he had now rejoined in the household of Archbishop Theobald. To the end of his life he was more than satisfied to count the friendship of Thomas Becket as his chief title of honour, and to let whatever share of lustre might have been his own go to brighten the aureole of his friend. It brightened it far more than he knew. When detractors and panegyrists have both done their worst, there remains this simple proof of the real worth of Thomas--that he inspired such devotion as this in a man such as John of Salisbury, and that he knew how to appreciate it as it deserved.

[1573] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. ii. c. 10 (Giles, vol. v. p. 81).

[1574] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxxv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 117). Pet. Cell. Epp. lxvii.–lxxv. (Migne, _Patrol._, vol. ccii. cols. 513–522).

[1575] Pet. Cell. Ep. lxx. (as above, col. 516).

[1576] The _Historia Pontificalis_, certainly the work of one who was present at this council, is attributed to John.

[1577] S. Bern. Ep. ccclxi. (Mabillon, vol. i. col. 325).

[1578] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxxv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 117).

[1579] From the Prologue to the _Polycraticus_, l. i. (_Joh. Salisb. Opp._, Giles, vol. iii. p. 13), it appears that at the time of writing it John had been twelve years at the court. As the _Polycraticus_ was written during the war of Toulouse, this takes us back to 1148. He must in fact have joined Theobald very soon after the council of Reims.

[1580] He himself makes it twenty years (Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, prolog. l. iii., Giles, vol. v. p. 113); but he cannot possibly have left Paris before 1147, and the _Metalogicus_ was finished before Theobald’s death in 1161. Either there is something wrong in John’s reckoning, or in his copyist’s reading of it, or this passage was added some years after the completion of the book.

[1581] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._ as above.

[1582] Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, prolog. l. vii. (Giles, vol. iv. p. 80).