Pope; an alliance which made him master of Poitou, Aquitaine, and Gascony and therewith of two-thirds of France. Apart from certain adjustments in central France, the only addition to these territories made during Henry's reign was the conquest of eastern Ireland in the years following 1169. Into these Irish campaigns and their consequences for the whole later history of the island we cannot attempt to go. Let me only point out that the leading spirits were Norman, except so far as they were Irish exiles, and that the names which now make their appearance in Irish annals are Norman names—the Lacys and the Clares, the Fitzgeralds and the de Courcys, as Irish before long as the Irish themselves.
Substantially, then, the empire of Henry II remained in extent as he found it at his accession to the English throne at the age of twenty-one; it was not created by him but inherited or annexed by marriage. Accordingly it is not as a conqueror but as a ruler that he can lay claim to greatness. But although Henry attempted little in the way of acquiring new territory, he did much to consolidate his possessions and to extend his European power and influence. His daughters were married to the greatest princes of their time, Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, King Alphonso VIII of Castile, King William II of Sicily. He made an alliance with the ruler of Provence and planned a marriage with the house of Savoy that would have given him control of the passes
