tests against the declining ideals of the Benedictine and the Cluniac. Chief among these reformed orders was that of the Cistercians. Simplicity and austerity were its ideals, garments were of the plainest and coarsest sort, church ornaments were made of simple brass, iron, and painted wood, and its houses were to be in lonely and desolate places. The professed brethren were to devote themselves to study, while lay brothers were to do all the manual labor. In 1128 the Cistercians came to England, and, in the succeeding years, established many houses, chiefly in the north. Every one has heard of Melrose Abbey in Scotland and Fountains in Yorkshire. By the middle of the twelfth century there were fifty Cistercian houses in England. Their chief industrial pursuit was cattle and sheep raising, and the wool of the Cistercians became a famous article of export. Among others, military-religious orders founded as a result of the crusading movement also made their way into England, the Knights Hospitallers, who furnished succor to sick and needy pilgrims on their way to the Holy City, and the Knights Templars, who guarded the roads to the Holy Land. Altogether, well over two hundred new houses were established in the reigns of Henry and his two successors. With increasing wealth abuses crept in among these reformers in their turn. The Cistercians, for instance, are accused of avarice, idleness, luxury, but we must not forget the services they rendered in reclaiming waste lands, furthering useful arts and trades, preserving and spreading learning, in administering charity, and in setting up standards of living which, even if not always observed, were a protest against the brutality and coarseness which they saw about them.

Stephen Received as King of England (1135). On the death of Henry I the two chief candidates for the throne were Matilda, his daughter, and Stephen of Boulogne, his nephew. Matilda had unquestionably the better title, but her sex told against her, as did her marriage with the representative of the House of Anjou, long the declared enemy of Englishman and Norman. Stephen, who hastened to England, was promptly accepted by the citizens of London in return for his promises to maintain and to respect the liberties and privileges of the city. At Winchester, of which his brother was Bishop, he came to terms with the Church, granting concessions in the matter of elections and jurisdiction greater than it had ever enjoyed on English soil. Then, by promises equally lavish, he sought the alliance of the King of Scotland, and of Robert, Earl of Gloucester, Matilda's half brother.

His Character and Problems. - Personally Stephen was a man of the most engaging qualities, but totally incompetent to deal with

the problems which confronted him. He was unable to fulfill the promises which he had so rashly made, he was not keen and foreseeing enough to anticipate the opposition which the nobility, turbulent and self-seeking as ever, were bound to manifest. He excited animosity by bringing mercenaries into the land, and he weakened his position by creating new Earls and allowing them to build castles. "The more he gave them, the worse they always carried themselves toward him." Moreover, in the very first revolts directed against him he showed himself too easy to punish disaffections even after he had put them down.

His Attacks on Roger of Salisbury and His Family (1139). - Like many mild men he was capable of sudden acts of violence and rashness. Such a blunder he committed by a foolhardy attack on Roger of Salisbury and his family, who between them controlled the financial and judicial business of the Government. Suddenly Stephen ordered them to surrender their castles into his hands, and when they refused, eventually arrested them all. He may have feared that they were combining against him in favor of Matilda, he may have been merely jealous of their increasing power and pretensions, which were truly regal, but his action was disastrous in its consequences. It threw the financial and judicial system into a confusion from which it did not recover till the next reign and it alienated most of the King's supporters in the Church. Even his own brother Bishop Henry declared against him. The situation was particularly critical. In 1138 an invasion of the Scots was only turned back by the dauntless efforts of the Archbishop of York, and, meanwhile, the southwestern counties had risen, at the instigation of Robert of Gloucester, who had thrown off his allegiance and fled abroad, alleging that Stephen was a usurper and had not kept his promises to him.

Such was

The Coming of Matilda and the Civil War (1139-1148). the situation when, in the autumn of 1139, Robert and Matilda appeared in person. Their arrival converted the unrest, already manifest, into a civil war, which lasted for fourteen years. The disputed succession was only a pretext which the barons seized to foster disorder and thereby to gain power and profit for themselves. They built castles; they "greatly oppressed the wretched people," and, to extort their property from them, tortured them "with pains unspeakable." Many fled and many starved, "The earth bare no corn, you might as well have tilled the sea, for the land was all ruined by such deeds, and it was said openly that Christ and his saints slept." The years following the arrival of Robert of Gloucester and Matilda were marked by a bewildering series of raids, sieges, and ravaging of towns,

with the balance swaying first on one side and then on the other. At length, however, Matilda began to lose ground; the death of Robert, in 1147, deprived her of her chief support, and in the following year she retired to Anjou and gave up the struggle. Yet her retirement gave neither peace to England nor a clear title to Stephen; for her son Henry, now fifteen years old, was soon to take up the fight for his heritage. Moreover, the barons, in their own interests, were determined to continue the carnival of misrule: "every lord of a castle was a petty king, ruling his own tenants, coining his own money, administering his own justice." One great source of encouragement to the party opposed to Stephen was the conquest of Normandy in 1144 by Geoffrey of Anjou who, steadily refusing to take any part in the English complications, had been persistent in his attacks in the Duchy since the death of Henry I. Louis VII, King of France, recognized his victory by investing him with the Dukedom, and before the close of another year, he had stamped out the last embers of resistance.

Treaty of Wallingford (1153). — Geoffrey died in 1151. Already, some months before, he had handed over the Duchy of Normandy to his young son Henry, and his death added to Henry's possessions the lands of Anjou and Maine. By marrying, 1152, Eleanor, heiress of Aquitaine, he acquired a vast addition of territory. Soon after his marriage Henry set out for England. Stephen fought doggedly for a time, but, in 1153, the Treaty of Wallingford was arranged, by which Stephen was to continue as King during his lifetime, while Henry was recognized as his heir in order to put an end to the disorders which had so long prevailed. Crown lands were to be resumed, foreign mercenaries were to be banished, all castles built since the death of Henry I were to be destroyed and Stephen was to consult his prospective heir in all important acts. Stephen died in 1154, and it was left to a young man of twenty-one to mend the evils which had come upon the land during the nineteen years' rule of a man who was as generous and kindly as he was weak.

Results of Stephen's Reign. — At first sight the reign of Stephen appears to be nothing more than a period of anarchy and suffering, but it brought the people a useful lesson, or reënforced an old one, that the rule of a strong King, harsh and despotic though he might be, was to be preferred to the unrestricted sway of local magnates. Viewed in this light, the reign contributed as much to strengthen the central government against feudal independence as the work of a William the Conqueror or a Henry Beauclerk. On the other hand, the barons were not the only force that threatened the unity and security

of the land. The prevailing uncertainty, and the aim of the contending parties to secure the support of a powerful and influential institution brought the Church into a position of prominence that later Kings had to reckon with.

FOR ADDITIONAL READING

Freeman's Norman Conquest, IV, V, is still valuable for an exhaustive account of the events from 1060 to 1154, though Freeman was inclined to minimize the effects of the Conquest and many of his findings have been reversed by recent investigators. Briefer and more modern narratives are to be found in Ramsay, Foundations of England, II; H. W. C. Davis, England under the Normans and Angevins (1905), and G. B. Adams, Political History of England (1905). Both of the latter works embody the results of recent scholarship; and Davis pays much attention to the nonpolitical aspects of the period, presenting an interesting picture of conditions under the Anglo-Norman kings.

For brief accounts of the constitutional aspects of the subject, see works already cited. A more detailed treatment will be found in Stubbs' Constitutional History, I. Good brief accounts of feudalism are given in E. Emerton, Introduction to the Middle Ages (1891); G. B. Adams, Civilization during the Middle Ages (1898) ch. IX, especially valuable; Seignobos (tr. E. W. Dow), Feudal Régime; and J. H. Robinson, History of Western Europe (1902). The feudal incidents are discussed in detail in Pollock and Maitland, English Law, I, bk. II, ch. I, and J. S. McKechnie, Magna Carta (1913), pp. 52-77. Pollock and Maitland treat Norman and AngloNorman Law in I, bk. I, chs. III, IV.

For the Church see Wakeman, Makower, and W. R. Stephens, English Church (1901).

For social and industrial conditions, in addition to works already referred to, see Mary Bateson, Mediaeval England (1904); R. E. Prothero, English Farming Past and Present (1913), the most recent and authoritative work covering the whole period of English agriculture. References to sources and for further reading, Davis, 534-544; Adams, Political History, 448-458; and White, XXVI.

Selections from the sources, Adams and Stephens, Select Documents of English Constitutional History, nos. 1-11, especially 1 and 7.

CHAPTER VII

HENRY II (1154-1189). THE RESTORATION OF THE ROYAL POWER AND THE RISE OF THE ENGLISH COMMON LAW

Henry II, Founder of the Angevin or Plantagenet Line.1 - Henry II, a boy barely turned twenty-one, was the first representative of a new line which continued in unbroken succession for two hundred and forty-five years. Of feverish energy and uncommon endurance, he was, when not engaged in war or State business, either hunting or hawking or deep in a book or in conversation with some of the learned men whom he delighted to gather about him. Subject at times to ungovernable fits of passion, he was generally good-humored and easy of access. Resuming forthwith the good work begun by his grandfather, Henry I, which had been all undone by nineteen years of anarchy, it was his aim to subdue the barons, to check the growing power of the Church, to bring its members within the control of the State in worldly things, and to attach the people to their Sovereign by protecting them from oppression and by advancing their welfare. If he did not reach his goal he took the right road and set the course for the future.

His Original Interests not Primarily English. - Henry came to the throne practically a foreigner and apparently never learned to speak the English language. Indeed, England was only a part of the numerous territories which he ruled. At first his only interest in the land was to use it as a source of supply in defending and rounding out his possessions across the Channel; but, after he had undertaken the task of developing his English resources, he became more and more interested in the undertaking for its own sake. Nevertheless, circumstances kept him abroad more than half his reign, which makes it all the more notable that his most enduring work was done in England.

1 It is sometimes known as the Angevin dynasty, from the fact that Henry on his father's side descended from the Counts of Anjou, sometimes as the Plantagenet, possibly from the emblem of Geoffrey of Anjou, a sprig of broom (Latinplanta genesta) which he wore in his hat.