unparalleled by any of his predecessors, and by all his successors
till Edward I.
It is to Henry, aided by his great justiciar, Roger, bishop of Salisbury, that England owed the institution of the machinery of government by which it was to be ruled during the earlier middle ages. This may be described as a primitive kind of bureaucracy, which gradually developed Constitutional machinery. into a much more complicated system of courts and offices. Around the sovereign was his Curia Regis or body of councillors, of whom the most important were the justiciar, the chancellor and the treasurer, though the feudal officers, the constable and marshal, were also to be found there. The bulk of the council, however, was composed of knights and clerks selected by the king for their administrative or financial ability. The Curia, besides advising the king on ordinary matters of state, had two special functions. It sat, or certain members of it sat, under the presidency of the king or the justiciar, as the supreme court of justice of the realm. In this capacity it tried the suits of tenants-in-chief, and all appeals from the local courts. But Henry, not contented with this, adopted the custom of sending forth certain members of the Curia throughout the realm at intervals, to sit in the shire court, along with or in place of the sheriff, and to hear and judge all the cases of which the court had cognizance. From these itinerant commissioners (justices in eyre) descend the modern justices of assize. The sheriff, the original president of the shire court, was gradually extruded by them from all important business.
But there were other developments of the Curia. The justiciar, chancellor and treasurer sat with certain other members of the council as the court of exchequer, not only to receive and audit the accounts of the royal revenue, but to give legal decisions on all questions connected with finance. Twice in every year the sheriffs and other royal officials came up to the exchequer court, which originally sat at Winchester, with their bags of money and their sheaves of accounts. Their figures were subjected to a severe scrutiny, and the law was laid down on all points in which the interests of the sheriff and the king, or the sheriff and the taxpayer, came into conflict. In this way the exchequer grew into a law court of primary importance, instead of remaining merely a court of receipt. Though its members were originally the same men who sat in the Curia Regis, the character of the question to be tried settled the capacity in which they should sit, and two separate courts were evolved. (See Exchequer.)
Under the superintendence of the Curia Regis and the exchequer, the sheriff still remained the king’s factotum in local affairs. He led the shire-levies, collected the royal revenues both feudal and non-feudal, and presided in the shire-court as judge, till in the course of years his functions in that sphere were gradually taken over by the itinerant justices. On his fidelity the king had to rely both for military aid in times of baronial revolt and for the collection of the money which formed the sinews of war. Hence the position was one of the highest importance, and Henry’s new nobility, the men of ability whom he selected and promoted, found their special occupation in holding the office of sheriff. It was they who had to see that the shire court, and in minor affairs the hundred court, did not allow cases to slip away into the jurisdiction of the feudal courts of the baronage.
Henry I. must count not merely as the father of the English bureaucracy, but as a fosterer of the municipal independence of the towns. He gave charters of a very liberal character to many places, and in especial to London, where the citizens were allowed to choose their own sheriff, and to deal directly with the exchequer in matters of revenue. He even farmed out to them the charge of the taxes of the whole shire of Middlesex, outside the city walls. Such a grant was exceptional—though Lincoln also seems to have been granted the privilege of dealing directly with the exchequer. But in many other smaller towns the first grants—the smaller beginnings of autonomy—may be traced back to this period (see Borough).
Though Henry was an autocrat, and governed through bureaucratic officials who were entirely under his hand, yet a reign of law and order such as his was indirectly favourable to the growth of constitutional liberty. It was equally favourable to the growth of national unity: it was in his time that Norman and English began to melt together: intermarriage in all classes became common, and only thirty years after his death a contemporary writer could remark that it was hard for any man to call himself either Norman or English, so much had blood been intermingled.
It is unnecessary to go into the very uninteresting and unimportant history of Henry’s later years. A long war with France, prosecuted without much energy, led to no results, for the French king’s attempts to stir up rebellions in the name of William the Clito (q.v.), the son of Duke Robert, came to an end with that prince’s death in 1129. But the extension of the English borders in South Wales by the conquests of the lords marcher as far as Pembroke and Cardigan deserves a word of notice.
The question of the succession was the main thing which
occupied the mind of the king and the whole nation in Henry’s
later years. It had a real interest for every man in
an age when any doubt as to the heir meant the outbreak
of civil war such as had occurred at the death of
Henry’s
heir.
the Conqueror and of Rufus. There was now a problem of some
difficulty to be solved. Henry’s only son William had been
drowned at sea in 1120. He had no other child born in wedlock
save a daughter, Matilda, who married the emperor Henry V.,
but had no issue by him. On the emperor’s decease she wedded
as her second husband Geoffrey of Anjou (1127), to whom during
her father’s last years she bore two sons. But the succession of
a woman to the crown was as unfamiliar to English as to Norman
ideas, nor did it seem natural to either to place a young child on
the throne. Moreover, Matilda’s husband Geoffrey was unpopular
among the Normans; the Angevins had been the chief
enemies of the duchy for several generations, and the idea that
one of them might become its practical ruler was deeply resented.
The old king, as was but natural, had determined that his
daughter should be his successor; he made the great council
do homage to her in 1126, and always kept her before the eyes
of his people as his destined heir. But though he had forced or
cajoled every leading man in England and Normandy to take
his oath to serve her, he must have been conscious that there
was a large chance that such pledges would be forgotten at his
death. The prejudice against a female heir was strong, and
there were too many turbulent magnates to whom the anarchy
that would follow a disputed succession presented temptations
which could not be resisted.
Henry died suddenly on the 25th of November 1135, while
he was on a visit to his duchy of Normandy. The moment that
his death was reported the futility of oaths became
apparent. A majority of the Norman barons appealed
to Theobald, count of Blois, son of the Conqueror’s
Matilda,
and
Stephen.
daughter Adela, to be their duke, and to save
them from the yoke of the hated Angevin. His supporters and
those of Matilda were soon at blows all along the frontier of
Normandy. Meanwhile in England another pretender had
appeared. Stephen, count of Boulogne, the younger brother
of Theobald, had landed at Dover within a few days of Henry’s
death, determined to make a snatch at the crown, though he
had been one of the first who had taken the oath to his cousin
a few years before. The citizens of London welcomed him,
but he was not secure of his success till by a swift swoop on
Winchester he obtained possession of the royal treasure—an
all-important factor in a crisis, as Henry I. had shown in 1100.
At Winchester he was acknowledged as king by the bishop, his
own brother Henry of Blois, and by the great justiciar, Roger,
bishop of Salisbury, and the archbishop, William of Corbeil.
The allegiance of these prelates was bought by an unwise promise
to grant all the demands of the church party, which his predecessor
had denied, or conceded only in part. He would permit
free election to all benefices, and free legislation by ecclesiastical
synods, and would surrender any claims of the royal courts to
