HENRY IL,(OF ENGLAND). 



HENRY II. (OP ENGLAND). 



358 



to be still more powerful than had been his living voice. In 1174 

 Henry performed an abject penance at his tomb for having been the 

 unintentional instigator of hia slaughter; and two years after, the 

 famous constitutions of Clarendon, passed in 1164, by which the 

 clergy had been made amenable to the civil courts, and the church in 

 other respects subjected to the royal authority, were, after having 

 been long practically disregarded, at last formally repealed in a great 

 council held at Northampton. 



Meanwhile two formidable insurrections of the Weigh in 1163 and 

 1165 had been repressed with great devastation of their country, and, 

 in the second instance especially, with unusual cruelty. In 1166 a 

 revolt of the people of Brittany against their duke Conan afforded 

 Henry, after putting it down with his customary promptitude and 

 vigour, a pretext for taking the government of the country out of the 

 hands of that feeble dependent, and assuming to himself the direct 

 administration of affairs in the name of hia son Geoffrey and Conan's 

 daughter Constantia, between whom, young as they both still were, 

 the marriage - ceremony was now solemnised for the sake of this 

 arrangement. On the 10th of September 1167, Henry's mother, the 

 ex-empress Matilda, died at Rouen. Some further hostilities in which 

 he now became involved with the French king were, before producing 

 any important result, terminated by a new peace concluded at Mont- 

 mirail, 6th of January 1169. By this treaty it was arranged that 

 Henry, the king of England's eldest son, should do homage to Louis 

 for the earldoms of Anjou and Maine, and that his second son Richard 

 should in like manner hold the duchy of Aquitaiue of the French 

 king, and espouse Adelais, or Alice, the youngett daughter of Louis. 

 But the greatest event which divided the manifold activity of king 

 Henry with the affairs of Eecket wan the conquest of Ireland, which 

 was begun in 1160 by a body of private adventurers, headed by 

 Kichard de Clare, earl of Pembroke, the celebrated Strongbow, and 

 completed by Henry in person, who crossed over from Milford to 

 Wattrford with a powerful armament, 18th of October 1171, and 

 :>!' r making an unresisted progress through the country, during 

 which he received the submission of the princes of all parts of it 

 except Ulster, and holding his court or assembling councils at Dublin, 

 C'ashel, and elsewhere, tailed back from Wexford to Portfinau iu 

 Wales, on Easter Monday, the 17th of April 1172. The national 

 (pint however recovered itself after this first prostration, and a pro- 

 tracted struggle ensued between tho people and their invaders ; but 

 the acquisition of Ireland was finally sealed by a formal treaty con- 

 cludid in 1175 with Roderick O'Connor, considered the head king of 

 the country, in which he consented to become Henry's liegeman, 

 to | ay an annual tribute, and, although he was still to retain his 

 nominal royalty for hia life, to hold his crown in subjection to the 

 English king. 



Much of the remaining portion of Henry's life and reign presents 

 an involved and deplorable scene of family discord and contention ; 

 sons against tin ir futhi r, wife against husband, brother against brother. 

 HU eldest son Henry had not only been invested, as mentioned above, 

 with the earldoms of Maine and Anjou, but, being then sixteen years 

 of age, had, after the custom which prevailed in the French monarchy, 

 been, as heir-apparent, solemnly crowned in Westminster Abbey on 

 Sunday, U.tu of June 1170. On this account that prince is in old 

 writings sometimes styled Henry III., and his common title during 

 his life was from this date the junior or younger king; that of the 

 senior or elder king being given to his father. In 1172 the ceremony 

 of his coronation was repeated, his wife Margaret of France being this 

 time crowned along with him. Soon after this, at the instigation, it is 

 said, of his father-in-law King Louis, the prince advanced the extiaor- 

 dinary pretension that he had become entitled actually to share the 

 royal power with his father, and he demanded that Henry should 

 resign to him either England or Normandy. His refusal was speedily 

 followed (in March 1173) by the flight first of tho prince, then of his 

 younger brothers Richard and Geoffrey, to the French court. Richard 

 profeued to consider himself entitled to Aquitniue in virtue of the 

 homage he l.ad performed to Louis for that duchy after the peaco of 

 Montuiirail, and Geoffrey founded on his marriage and his investiture 

 some yean before with the principality of Brittany a similar claim 

 to the immediate possession of that territory. About the same time 

 Queen Eleanor also left her husband to associate herself openly with 

 the rebellion of her sons, of which she had in fait been the prime 

 mover; for Henry's infidelities and neglect the appropriate retri- 

 bution of the indecent precipitancy with which she had thrown 

 herself into bis arms had long changed this woman's love into 

 bitter hatred and thirst of revenge. She was also making her way 

 for the French court, nothing perplexed, as it would seem, by the 

 awkwardnera of seeking the protection of her former husband, when 

 she was aught dressed in man's clothes and brought back to Henry, 

 during the rest of whose life the remained in confinement. Her 

 capture however did not break up the unnatural confederacy of her 

 sons. We can only notice the leading incidents of the confused and 

 revolting drama that ensued. The cause of young Henry was sup- 

 ported not only by Louis, but also by William of Scotland, and by 

 some of tho most powerful both of the Norman and the English 

 barons. With his characteristic energy and activity however the 

 English king made ready to meet hi) various enemies at every point. 

 Hostilities commenced both on the continent, whither Henry pro- 



ceeded iu person, and on the Scottish borders, in the summer of this 

 same year. Occasionally suspended, and again renewed, the war 

 continued for about two years, during which the most important 

 event that happened was the capture of king William of Scotland 

 at Alnwick Castle, by the famous chief-justiciary Glanville, 12th of 

 July 1174, which appears to have been the Saturday following the 

 Thursday on which Henry did penance before the tomb of Becket 

 at Canterbury. Soon after this Henry, who had throughout decidedly 

 the best of the contest, assented to the petition of hia sona for a 

 peace ; ho and King Louis restored whatever they had taken from 

 each other, and young Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey were gratified 

 with the possession of one or two castles each, and liberal allowances 

 from the revenues of the provinces to which they had severally laid 

 claim. A new quarrel broke out between Henry and his eldest son 

 the following year, but they were reconciled before they had time to 

 betake themselves to arms. Meanwhile in December 1174 a treaty 

 with Scotland had been signed at the castle of Falaise, in Normandy, 

 by which tho Scots agreed to make acknowledgment of the feudal 

 dependence of their crown on that of England, in return for the 

 liberation of King William. The period of seven or eight years that 

 followed was the most tranquil of Henry's reign, and that in which 

 his greatness stood at the highest. With his ancestral dominions of 

 England, Normandy, and Aujou undisturbed by any rival claimant, 

 his matrimonial acquisitions of Aquitaine and Poitou, bound in the 

 subjection of fear, if not of attachment, his conquest of Ireland securo, 

 the Welsh and the Scotch reduced to submission and to the acknow- 

 ledgment of his supremacy, he waa undoubtedly at this time the most 

 powerful of the European sovereigns. 



In 1183 however another outbreak of the fierce and turbulent spirit 

 of the princes led the way to a new succession of family wars. This 

 time Richard took up arms against Henry and Geoffrey, because his 

 father called upon him to do homage to Heni-y for Aquitaine. A 

 reconcilement between the brothers, effected by their father's inter- 

 ference, only suspended hostilities for a few months ; the old king and 

 his son Richard were then compelled to take tho field against the other 

 two. After deserting his father and his youngest brother alternately 

 about half a dozen times, Prince Henry was suddenly taken ill, and 

 died at Chateau-Martel, llth June 1183, iu the twenty-seventh year 

 of his age. Geoffrey still held out, supported by the chief nobility of 

 Aquitaine, where there was a strong feeling of the people against the 

 English king for his treatment of their hereditary chief taiuess Eleanor ; 

 but he too in a short time made his submission and implored his 

 father's pardon. A solemn family reconciliation then took place, at 

 which even Eleanor was released from her prison and allowed to be 

 present. But it did not last for more than a few moutha ; Geoffrey 

 then, in consequence of his father refusing to surrender to him the 

 earldom of Anjou, fled to the court of France, where Philip II. was 

 now king, and prepared for a new war; but before he could carry hU 

 design into execution he was, in August -1180, thrown from his horse 

 at a tournament, and so severely injured that he died in a few days 

 after. No sooner was Geoffrey thus removed than his brother Richard 

 hastened to the French court to take his place ; but after unsuccess- 

 fully attempting to excite a new revolt in Aquitaine, he was compelled 

 to throw himself upon his father's clemency. A project of a new 

 crusade, at the call of pope Clement III., in the beginning of 1188, 

 for a moment united Henry aud Philip ; the impetuous Richard 

 actually took the cross, carried away by the feeling which thrilled 

 all Europe on the arrival of the news of the capture of Jerusalem by 

 Saladin in the preceding September; but before the end of the same 

 year the unhappy father saw his son again bearing arms against him 

 in alliance with the French king. The pretext on the part of Philip 

 and of Richard for this new war was Henry's refusal to deliver up 

 the Princess Alice, the sister of Philip, aud the affianced bride of 

 Richard, whose person, as well as part of her dowry, he had for many 

 years had in his possession. Richard pretended to believe that his 

 father wished to marry the princess himself, and even asserted or 

 insinuated that her honour had already fallen a sacrifice to Henry's 

 passion ; it appears to be certain however that her restitution was 

 only made a demand of the two confederates for popular effect, and 

 was a very small part of their real object. Richard, having first done 

 homage to Philip for all his father's continental possessions, imme- 

 diately proceeded to wrest them from the old man by the sword. 

 Henry's spirit seems now to have given way at last, and the resistance 

 he offered to his son was feeble and ineffective. The pope made an 

 attempt to bring about a reconciliation, which failed; iu the end 

 Henry was compelled to sue for peace, on which he and Philip mot 

 on a plain between Tours and Azay-sur-Cher, when it was agreed, 

 among other humiliating conditions, that all Henry's vassals, both 

 continental and English, should do homage to Richard, in acknow- 

 ledgment of his rights as heir-apparent, aud that all those persons 

 who had taken his sido should from that time be considered as his 

 liegemen, unless they should of their own accord return to his father. 

 Henry waa stretched on a sick-bed when this treaty was read to him ; 

 but when he found in the list of those that had deserted him to join 

 Richard, his youngest and favourite son John, whose fidelity till now 

 he had never had cause to suspect, the discovery appears to have 

 broken his heart ; he turned himself to the wall, saying that all his 

 interest in the world was over. He was soon after removed to Chlnou, 



