644 



HENRY I. -II. OF ENGLAND 



strictly withheld from men of English blood ; 

 yet it was on the native English support that 

 the king relied ; and in 1101, when the nobles con- 

 spired to bring in Robert, who had now returned 

 home, the English stuck faithfully by the king 

 born in their own land, and the Normans were 

 powerless. Without a battle Robert was induced 

 to resign his claims, and Henry then established 

 his power so securely that there was peace in Eng- 

 land to the end of his reign. On the Scottish 

 border also there was peace, and only twice (1114 

 and 1121) did Henry feel compelled to make expe- 

 ditions into Wales. His controversy with Anselm 

 (q.v. ) regarding investiture, too, was conducted 

 without bitterness on either side, and resulted in 

 a compromise ; while a later dispute with the papal 

 see was ended in 1119 by Calixtus solemnly con- 

 firming the ancient customs of England. 



Robert had received a pension of 3000 marks, 

 but in 1105-6 Henry made war upon his badly- 

 governed duchy ; Robert was defeated in a bloody 

 battle beneath the walls of Tinchebrai, on Sep- 

 tember 28, 1106, and was kept a prisoner during 

 the remaining twenty-eight years of his life. 

 The acquisition of Normandy, the ancient patri- 

 mony or his family, had been a point of ambi- 

 tion with Henry ; to hold it he was obliged to 

 spend long periods away from his kingdom, and 

 to wage a nearly constant warfare, supported 

 largely by English arms and by subsidies wrung 

 from his English subjects. The French king, 

 Louis the Fat, and the Counts of Anjou and 

 Flanders took part with William, Robert's youth- 

 ful son ; but the first war ended in the peace of 

 Gisors (1113), on terms favourable to Henry; and 

 in the following year his daughter Matilda was 

 married to the Emperor Henry V. of Germany, 

 and a new alliance thus formed. The second war 

 (1116-20) was marked by the defeat of the French 

 king at Noyon in 1119 ; and in the same year he 

 presented a formal complaint to Calixtus II. at 

 the Council of Rlieims. Henry, however, was 

 able in a personal interview to satisfy the pope, 

 who succeeded in bringing about a peace. In 11 19, 

 also, Henry's only son, William, was married to 

 the daughter of the Count of Anjou; but in 1120 

 he was drowned by the sinking of the White Ship 

 on his way from Normandy to England, and 

 Henry's successes in arms and intrigue were 

 darkened for life. A fresh rebellion in Normandy 

 ended in the battle of Bourgtheroulde (1124), and 

 in cruel punishments inflicted on the principal 

 prisoners taken. In 1126 Matilda, now a widow, 

 came back from Germany ; in the same year Henry 

 induced the Witan to swear to receive her as Lady 

 of England and Normandy if he should die without 

 heirs- male ; and before the year was out she was 

 married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, the son of the 

 Count of Anjou. In 1127 Robert's son William 

 was put in possession of the vacant countship of 

 Flanders; but in 1128 he died, and the wars be- 

 tween Henry and Louis ceased. Henry himself 

 died on December 1, 1135, and the crown was 

 seized by his sister Adela's son, Stephen of Blois. 



Henry I. was styled Beauclerc, or the Scholar, 

 in honour of his learning, which, for a king in his 

 age, was not undeserving of distinction. Able he 

 was, but crafty, passionless in his policy, and often 

 guilty of acts of cold-blooded cruelty ; yet he was 

 at least consistent in his severity, unmoved by 

 impulses such as, generally evil but sometimes 

 good, had governed Rufus ; and even his licen- 

 tiousness was judged lightly after the foul vices of 

 the Red King. Law was administered during his 

 reign with strictness, and generally with fairness ; 

 the innocent might now and then be confounded 

 with the guilty, and the penalties were often severe 

 and barbarous enough, but, at the worst, only 



individuals suffered from his cruelty, while the 

 great mass of his subjects reaped the blessings of 

 his firm rule. Moreover, under the equal weight of 

 his heavy hand, Normans and English were slowly 

 compressed into one nation ; and after the land- 

 ing of Robert at Portsmouth in 1101, never again 

 did the two races meet in arms face to face on 

 English soil. ' Good man he was,' writes the 

 chronicler, 'and mickle awe was of him. Durst 

 none man misdo with other on his time. Peace he 

 made for man and deer.' 



See Freeman's Norman Conquest, vol. v. ( 1876 ) ; also 

 Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vol. i. (1874) ; 

 and Dean Church's Saint Anselm (1870). 



Henry II. of England, the first of the An- 

 gevin kings, was the son of Matilda, daughter of 

 Henry I., and her second husband, Geoffrey Plan- 

 tagenet, and was born at Le Mans, March 5, 1133. 

 His mother, assisted by her illegitimate brother 

 the Earl of Gloucester, had carried on a bitter war 

 against Stephen, as a usurper, from 1139 to 1148. 

 Henry himself, unable after his uncle's death to 

 secure any powerful following, joined his father in 

 Normandy. At eighteen he was invested with 

 this duchy, his mother's heritage, and within a 

 year after became also, by his father's death, 

 Count of Anjou; while in 1152 his marriage 

 with Eleanor of Aquitaine, the divorced wife of 

 Louis VII., added Poitou and Guienne to his 

 dominions, which now embraced nearly the whole 

 of western France. In January 1153 he landed 

 in England ; and, after his and Stephen's armies 

 had twice been face to face, a treaty was finally 

 agreed to in November, whereby Henry was 

 declared the successor of Stephen, whose son 

 Eustace had died during the negotiations. Stephen 

 died the next year ; Henry was crowned on 19th 

 December 1154, and issued a charter confirming his 

 grandfather's laws. He at once re-established the 

 machinery of the exchequer, banished the foreign 

 mercenaries, demolished the hundreds of castles 

 erected in Stephen's reign, and recovered the royal 

 estates. The whole of the year 1156 the king 

 spent in France, where he was employed until 

 July in effecting the submission of his brother, 

 Geoffrey of Nantes. Geoffrey died in 1158, and 

 Henry, having secured his territories, spent five 

 years warring and organising his possessions on 

 the Continent, whence he returned in January 1163 

 to enter on the disastrous quarrel with the church 

 that fills the second period of his reign. 



Henry, like his grandfather, had come to the 

 crown after an evil time of misgovernment and 

 of anarchy, and his fame too is that of a 

 lawgiver, the restorer of peace and order. His 

 object was that of all the Norman kings to 

 build up the royal power at the expense of the 

 feudal barons and of the church ; but his policy, 

 while selfish in its aim, was beneficent in result, 

 inasmuch as he was wise enough to recognise that 

 his . power could be securely founded only on the 

 well-being of the people. From the barons them- 

 selves his reforms met at the time with little serious 

 opposition ; with the clergy he was less successful. 

 Not only could they use their weapon of excom- 

 munication with terrible effect, but, being tried by 

 their own courts, they were not amenable to the 

 common laws of the realm, and were protected 

 from the punishment due to their crimes ; so that 

 thieves and murderers, calling themselves clerks, 

 would for a first offence escape with penances and 

 deprivation of orders. To aid him in reducing the 

 church to subjection to the civil power he appointed 

 his trusted chancellor, Becket, to the see of Can- 

 terbury. This was the great mistake of his life, 

 for with his archbishop's pall Becket put on the 

 spirit of the high ecclesiastic, and abandoned the 

 king's service for the pope's. Henry compelled 



