deed was suggested by his impatient words. It was a misfortune to the royal cause; and Henry was compelled to purchase the papal absolution by a complete surrender on the question of criminous clerks (1172). When he heard of the murder he was panic-stricken; and his expedition to Ireland (1171), although so momentous for the future, was originally a mere pretext for placing himself beyond the reach of Alexander’s censures.
Becket’s fate, though it supplied an excuse, was certainly not the real cause of the troubles with his sons which disturbed the king’s later years (1173–1189). But Henry’s misfortunes were largely of his own making. Queen Eleanor, whom he alienated by his faithlessness, stirred up her sons to rebellion; and they had grievances enough to be easily persuaded. Henry was an affectionate but a suspicious and close-handed father. The titles which he bestowed on them carried little power, and served chiefly to denote the shares of the paternal inheritance which were to be theirs after his death. The excessive favour which he showed to John, his youngest-born, was another cause of heart-burning; and Louis, the old enemy, did his utmost to foment all discords. It must, however, be remembered in Henry’s favour, that the supporters of the princes, both in England and in the foreign provinces, were animated by resentment against the soundest features of the king’s administration; and that, in the rebellion of 1173, he received from the English commons such hearty support that any further attempt to raise a rebellion in England was considered hopeless. Henry, like his grandfather, gained in popularity with every year of his reign. In 1183 the death of Prince Henry, the heir-apparent, while engaged in a war against his brother Richard and their father, secured a short interval of peace. But in 1184 Geoffrey of Brittany and John combined with their father’s leave to make war upon Richard, now the heir-apparent. After Geoffrey’s death (1186) the feud between John and Richard drove the latter into an alliance with Philip Augustus of France. The ill-success of the old king in this war aggravated the disease from which he was suffering; and his heart was broken by the discovery that John, for whose sake he had alienated Richard, was in secret league with the victorious allies. Henry died at Chinon on the 6th of July 1189, and was buried at Fontevraud. By Eleanor of Aquitaine the king had five sons and three daughters. His eldest son, William, died young; his other sons, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey and John, are all mentioned above. His daughters were: Matilda (1156–1189), who became the wife of Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony; Eleanor (1162–1214), who married Alphonso III., king of Castile; and Joanna, who, after the death of William of Sicily in 1189, became the wife of Raymund VI., count of Toulouse, having previously accompanied her brother, Richard, to Palestine. He had also three illegitimate sons: Geoffrey, archbishop of York; Morgan; and William Longsword, earl of Salisbury.
Henry’s power impressed the imagination of his contemporaries, who credited him with aiming at the conquest of France and the acquisition of the imperial title. But his ambitions of conquest were comparatively moderate in his later years. He attempted to secure Maurienne and Savoy for John by a marriage-alliance, for which a treaty was signed in 1173. But the project failed through the death of the intended bride; nor did the marriage of his third daughter, the princess Joanna (1165–1199), with William II., king of Sicily (1177) lead to English intervention in Italian politics. Henry once declined an offer of the Empire, made by the opponents of Frederick Barbarossa; and he steadily supported the young Philip Augustus against the intrigues of French feudatories. The conquest of Ireland was carried out independently of his assistance, and perhaps against his wishes. He asserted his suzerainty over Scotland by the treaty of Falaise (1175), but not so stringently as to provoke Scottish hostility. This moderation was partly due to the embarrassments produced by the ecclesiastical question and the rebellions of the princes. But Henry, despite a violent and capricious temper, had a strong taste for the work of a legislator and administrator. He devoted infinite pains and thought to the reform of government both in England and Normandy. The legislation of his reign was probably in great part of his own contriving. His supervision of the law courts was close and jealous; he transacted a great amount of judicial business in his own person, even after he had formed a high court of justice which might sit without his personal presence. To these activities he devoted his scanty intervals of leisure. His government was stern; he over-rode the privileges of the baronage without regard to precedent; he persisted in keeping large districts under the arbitrary and vexatious jurisdiction of the forest-courts. But it is the general opinion of historians that he had a high sense of his responsibilities and a strong love of justice; despite the looseness of his personal morals, he commanded the affection and respect of Gilbert Foliot and Hugh of Lincoln, the most upright of the English bishops.
Original Authorities.—Henry’s laws are printed in W. Stubb’s Select Charters (Oxford, 1895). The chief chroniclers of his reign are William of Newburgh, Ralph de Diceto, the so-called Benedict of Peterborough, Roger of Hoveden, Robert de Torigni (or de Monte), Jordan Fantosme, Giraldus Cambrensis, Gervase of Canterbury; all printed in the Rolls Series. The biographies and letters contained in the 7 vols. of Materials for the History of Thomas Becket (ed. J. C. Robertson, Rolls Series, 1875–1885) are valuable for the early and middle part of the reign. For Irish affairs the Song of Dermot (ed. Orpen, Oxford, 1892), for the rebellions of the princes the metrical Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal (ed. Paul Meyer, 3 vols., Paris, 1891, &c.) are of importance. Henry’s legal and administrative reforms are illustrated by the Tractatus de legibus attributed to Ranulph Glanville, his chief justiciar (ed. G. Phillips, Berlin, 1828); by the Dialogus de scaccario of Richard fitz Nigel (Oxford, 1902); the Pipe Rolls, printed by J. Hunter for the Record Commission (1844) and by the Pipe-Roll Society (London, 1884, &c.) supply valuable details. The works of John of Salisbury (ed. Giles, 1848), Peter of Blois (ed. Migne), Walter Map (Camden Society, 1841, 1850) and the letters of Gilbert Foliot (ed. J. A. Giles, Oxford, 1845) are useful for the social and Church history of the reign.
Modern Authorities.—R. W. Eyton, Itinerary of Henry II. (London, 1878); W. Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. i. (Oxford, 1893), Lectures on Medieval and Modern History (Oxford, 1886) and Early Plantagenets (London, 1876); the same author’s introduction to the Rolls editions of “Benedict,” Gervase, Diceto, Hoveden; Mrs J. R. Green, Henry II. (London, 1888); Miss K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings (2 vols., London, 1887); Sir J. H. Ramsay’s The Angevin Empire (London, 1893); H. W. C. Davis’s England under the Normans and Angevins (London, 1905); Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, History of English Law (2 vols., Cambridge, 1898); and F. Hardegen, Imperialpolitik König Heinrichs II. von England (Heidelberg, 1905). (H. W. C. D.)
HENRY III. (1207–1272), king of England, was the eldest son
of King John by Isabella of Angoulême. Born on the 1st of
October 1207, the prince was but nine years old at the time of
his father’s death. The greater part of eastern England being
in the hands of the French pretender, Prince Louis, afterwards
King Louis VIII., and the rebel barons, Henry was crowned by
his supporters at Gloucester, the western capital. John had
committed his son to the protection of the Holy See; and a
share in the government was accordingly allowed to the papal
legates, Gualo and Pandulf, both during the civil war and for
some time afterwards. But the title of regent was given by the
loyal barons to William Marshal, the aged earl of Pembroke;
and Peter des Roches, the Poitevin bishop of Winchester,
received the charge of the king’s person. The cause of the
young Henry was fully vindicated by the close of the year 1217.
Defeated both by land and sea, the French prince renounced his
pretensions and evacuated England, leaving the regency to deal
with the more difficult questions raised by the lawless insolence
of the royal partisans. Henry remained a passive spectator of
the measures by which William Marshal (d. 1219), and his
successor, the justiciar Hubert de Burgh, asserted the royal
prerogative against native barons and foreign mercenaries.
In 1223 Honorius III. declared the king of age, but this was a
mere formality, intended to justify the resumption of the royal
castles and demesnes which had passed into private hands during
the commotions of the civil war.
The personal rule of Henry III. began in 1227, when he was again proclaimed of age. Even then he remained for some time under the influence of Hubert de Burgh, whose chief rival, Peter des Roches, found it expedient to quit the kingdom for four years. But Henry was ambitions to recover the continental
