the widowed empress Matilda (1129) after her brother’s death. This latter match, though unpopular in England and Normandy, was a fatal blow to the designs of Louis VI., and prepared the way for the expansion of English power beyond the Loire. After 1124 the disaffection of Normandy was crushed. The severity with which Henry treated the last rebels was regarded as a blot upon his fame; but the only case of merely vindictive punishment was that of the poet Luke de la Barre, who was sentenced to lose his eyes for a lampoon upon the king, and only escaped the sentence by committing suicide.
Henry’s English government was severe and grasping; but he “kept good peace” and honourably distinguished himself among contemporary statesmen in an age when administrative reform was in the air. He spent more time in Normandy than in England. But he showed admirable judgment in his choice of subordinates; Robert of Meulan, who died in 1118, and Roger of Salisbury, who survived his master, were statesmen of no common order; and Henry was free from the mania of attending in person to every detail, which was the besetting sin of medieval sovereigns. As a legislator Henry was conservative. He issued few ordinances; the unofficial compilation known as the Leges Henrici shows that, like the Conqueror, he made it his ideal to maintain the “law of Edward.” His itinerant justices were not altogether a novelty in England or Normandy. It is characteristic of the man that the exchequer should be the chief institution created in his reign. The eulogies of the last Peterborough Chronicle on his government were written after the anarchy of Stephen’s reign had invested his predecessor’s “good peace” with the glamour of a golden age. Henry was respected and not tyrannous. He showed a lofty indifference to criticism such as that of Eadmer in the Historia novorum, which was published early in the reign. He showed, on some occasions, great deference to the opinions of the magnates. But dark stories, some certainly unfounded, were told of his prison-houses. Men thought him more cruel and more despotic than he actually was.
Henry was twice married. After the death of his first wife, Matilda (1080–1118), he took to wife Adelaide, daughter of Godfrey, count of Louvain (1121), in the hope of male issue. But the marriage proved childless, and the empress Matilda was designated as her father’s successor, the English baronage being compelled to do her homage both in 1126, and again, after the Angevin marriage, in 1131. He had many illegitimate sons and daughters by various mistresses. Of these bastards the most important is Robert, earl of Gloucester, upon whom fell the main burden of defending Matilda’s title against Stephen.
Henry died near Gisors on the 1st of December, 1135, in the thirty-sixth year of his reign, and was buried in the abbey of Reading which he himself had founded.
Original Authorities.—The Peterborough Chronicle (ed. Plummer, Oxford, 1882–1889); Florence of Worcester and his first continuator (ed. B. Thorpe, 1848–1849); Eadmer, Historia novorum (ed. Rule, Rolls Series, 1884); William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum and Historia novella (ed. Stubbs, Rolls Series, 1887–1889); Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum (ed. Arnold, Rolls Series, 1879); Simeon of Durham (ed. Arnold, Rolls Series, 1882–1885); Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica (ed. le Prévost, Paris, 1838–1855); Robert of Torigni, Chronica (ed. Howlett, Rolls Series, 1889), and Continuatio Willelmi Gemmeticensis (ed. Duchesne, Hist. Normannorum scriptores, pp. 215–317, Paris, 1619). See also the Pipe Roll of 31 H. I. (ed. Hunter, Record Commission, 1833); the documents in W. Stubbs’s Select Chapters (Oxford, 1895); the Leges Henrici in Liebermann’s Gesetze der Angel-Sachsen (Halle, 1898, &c.); and the same author’s monograph, Leges Henrici (Halle, 1901); the treaties, &c., in the Record Commission edition of Thomas Rymer’s Foedera, vol. i. (1816).
Modern authorities.—E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, vol. v.; J. M. Lappenberg, History of England under the Norman Kings (tr. Thorpe, Oxford, 1857); Kate Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, vol. i. (1887); Sir James Ramsay, Foundations of England, vol. ii.; W. Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. i.; H. W. C. Davis, England under the Normans and Angevins; Hunt and Poole, Political History of England, vol. ii. (H. W. C. D.)
HENRY II. (1133–1189), king of England, son of Geoffrey
Plantagenet, count of Anjou, by Matilda, daughter of Henry
I., was born at Le Mans on the 25th of March 1133. He was
brought to England during his mother’s conflict with Stephen
(1142), and was placed under the charge of a tutor at Bristol.
He returned to Normandy in 1146. He next appeared on English
soil in 1149[1] when he came to court the help of Scotland and the
English baronage against King Stephen. The second visit was of
short duration. In 1150 he was invested with Normandy by his
father, whose death in the next year made him also count of
Anjou. In 1152 by a marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, the
divorced wife of the French king Louis VII., he acquired
Poitou, Guienne and Gascony; but in doing so incurred the
ill-will of his suzerain from which he suffered not a little in the
future. Lastly in 1153 he was able, through the aid of the
Church and his mother’s partisans, to extort from Stephen the
recognition of his claim to the English succession; and this
claim was asserted without opposition immediately after Stephen’s
death (25th of October 1154). Matilda retired into seclusion,
although she possessed, until her death (1167), great influence
with her son.
The first years of the reign were largely spent in restoring the public peace and recovering for the crown the lands and prerogatives which Stephen had bartered away. Amongst the older partisans of the Angevin house the most influential were Archbishop Theobald, whose good will guaranteed to Henry the support of the Church, and Nigel, bishop of Ely, who presided at the exchequer. But Thomas Becket, archdeacon of Canterbury, a younger statesman whom Theobald had discovered and promoted, soon became all-powerful. Becket lent himself entirely to his master’s ambitions, which at this time centred round schemes of territorial aggrandizement. In 1155 Henry asked and obtained from Adrian IV. a licence to invade Ireland, which the king contemplated bestowing upon his brother, William of Anjou. This plan was dropped; but Malcolm of Scotland was forced to restore the northern counties which had been ceded to David; North Wales was invaded in 1157; and in 1159 Henry made an attempt, which was foiled by the intervention of Louis VII., to assert his wife’s claims upon Toulouse. After vainly invoking the aid of the emperor Frederick I., the young king came to terms with Louis (1160), whose daughter was betrothed to Henry’s namesake and heir. The peace proved unstable, and there was desultory skirmishing in 1161. The following year was chiefly spent in reforming the government of the continental provinces. In 1163 Henry returned to England, and almost immediately embarked on that quarrel with the Church which is the keynote to the middle period of the reign.
Henry had good cause to complain of the ecclesiastical courts, and had only awaited a convenient season to correct abuses which were admitted by all reasonable men. But he allowed the question to be complicated by personal issues. He was bitterly disappointed that Becket, on whom he bestowed the primacy, left vacant by the death of Theobald (1162), at once became the champion of clerical privilege; he and the archbishop were no longer on speaking terms when the Constitutions of Clarendon came up for debate. The king’s demands were not intrinsically irreconcilable with the canon law, and the papacy would probably have allowed them to take effect sub silentio, if Becket (q.v.) had not been goaded to extremity by persecution in the forms of law. After Becket’s flight (1164), the king put himself still further in the wrong by impounding the revenues of Canterbury and banishing at one stroke a number of the archbishop’s friends and connexions. He showed, however, considerable dexterity in playing off the emperor against Alexander III. and Louis VII., and contrived for five years, partly by these means, partly by insincere negotiations with Becket, to stave off a papal interdict upon his dominions. When, in July 1170, he was forced by Alexander’s threats to make terms with Becket, the king contrived that not a word should be said of the Constitutions. He undoubtedly hoped that in this matter he would have his way when Becket should be more in England and within his grasp. For the murder of Becket (Dec. 29, 1170) the king cannot be held responsible, though the
- ↑ For a supposed visit in 1147, see J. H. Round in English Historical Review, v. 747.
