CHAPTER XIII.

HENRY II.

Henry of Anjou (1)—Thomas of London; Constitutions of Clarendon; flight, return, and murder of Thomas (2)-rebellion of Henry's sons; Henry's penance; capture of William the Lion (3)—further rebellions of Henry's sons; death of Henry; his government; trial by jury (4)-conquest of Ireland; Strongbow and his comrades; Henry acknowledged by the native chieftains; condition of the country (5).

1. House of Anjou. Henry II., 1154-1189. -Even before he succeeded, at the age of twenty-one, to the English Crown, Henry was a powerful prince. He was a vassal of the King of France, but had got so many fiefs into his hands that he was stronger than his lord and all the other great vassals of the French Crown put together. Anjou and Maine he had from his father, Normandy from his mother, and the County of Poitou and Duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony he had gained by marrying their heiress Eleanor a few weeks after her divorce from Louis VII. of France. Energetic, hard-headed, and strong-willed, he was well fitted for the task of bringing England into order; and under the firm rule of a foreigner who had no national prejudices of his own, the distinction between Norman and Englishman faded away. He had been well educated, and took pleasure in the company of learned men; but his literary refinement had not taught him to curb his fierce temper, and in his fits of passion he behaved like a madman, striking and tearing at whatever came within his reach. He was a stout and strongly-built man, with close-cut reddish hair and prominent grey eyes; careless about dress, a

great hunter and hawker, and so active and restless that he hardly ever sat down except to meals. His private life was not creditable; his marriage, on his side one of policy, was unhappy; and the well-known tale of "Fair Rosamund," though a mere legend, preserves the name of one of his favourites. In spite of his faults, the country at once felt the benefit of his rule; the foreign mercenaries were sent off; all castles built since the death of Henry I. were razed; the barons were again brought under authority, and the Scots gave back the northern counties of England. 2. The Constitutions of Clarendon. In 1162 Henry procured the election of his intimate friend, the Chancellor Thomas Becket, to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. Thomas was the son of a wealthy London citizen of Norman descent; and though an ecclesiastic, he, like many of his class in that age, busied himself wholly in secular matters. At the head of a body of knights equipped and maintained by himself, he served in one of his master's foreign wars, and displayed his prowess by unhorsing a French knight. At another time he went on an embassy to Paris, and dazzled the French by the splendour of his retinue—all at his own cost, for he had a large income from various preferments and offices, and spent it magnificently. As soon however as Thomas became Archbishop, he gave up his former pomp, resigned the Chancellorship, and led an austere life. Henry was offended, and the two were already at variance when they came to a downright quarrel on the subject of the Church courts. The Conqueror had made the Bishops hold courts of their own for the trial of cases in which clerks or ecclesiastics were concerned. Not merely those in holy orders, but all who had received the tonsure—that is, had had their heads shorn in the manner which distinguished the clergy from the laity-and discharged the smallest offices in the Church, were sent before the eccle

siastical courts, which by the law of the Church could not inflict loss of life or limb; and thus thieves and murderers, if they could call themselves clergymen, got off comparatively easily, when, if they had been tried as laymen, blinding or hanging would have been their lot. Henry wished to bring the clergy under the criminal jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, and this Thomas strongly opposed; but the King to a great extent carried his point by means of "the Constitutions of Clarendon," so called because they were drawn up and confirmed in a great council of prelates and barons, held in January 1164 at the King's palace of Clarendon in Wiltshire. Thomas at first gave his assent to the Constitutions, but soon drew back, saying he had sinned in accepting them. At this Henry grew more angry than ever, till at last the Archbishop, declaring that his life was in danger, appealed to the Pope and fled to foreign parts. The quarrel, kept up for six years, was embittered in 1170 by a dispute about the coronation of the King's eldest son, whom he designed for his viceroy in England. No one but the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Thomas maintained, had a right to crown the King; but Henry nevertheless got Roger, Archbishop of York, to perform the ceremony. Through fear of the Pope's anger, and of King Louis VII. of France, who took up the exiled Archbishop's cause, Henry soon afterwards consented to a reconciliation, and Thomas returned amid the rejoicing of the people, who looked upon him as an oppressed man. Haughty and unyielding as ever, he despatched letters from the Pope, Alexander III., suspending the Archbishop of York from his office, and excommunicating two other Bishops. Henry flew into one of his fits of passion : "What cowards have I brought up in my court!" he exclaimed, not one will deliver me from this lowborn priest!" Four knights, taking him at his word, at once proceeded to Canterbury, and failing to frighten

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the Archbishop into submission, slew him on the pavement of his own cathedral church, in which he had taken refuge, Dec. 29th, 1170. Henry, horror-struck at this result, cleared himself with the Pope by making oath that he had had no complicity in the murder, and by renouncing the Constitutions of Clarendon.

3. Henry's Penance.-Henry's life was clouded by quarrels with his sons, among whom he intended to divide his dominions at his death. Besides Henry, "the Younger King," who was to have England, Normandy, and Anjou, there was Richard, who had already received his mother's inheritance of Aquitaine and Poitou; and Geoffrey, for whom the King had obtained the succession to the Duchy of Britanny by betrothing him to its heiress Constance. There was also John, to provide for whom the King wanted the other sons to give up some castles out of their promised shares of his dominions. Young Henry refused, and the King's ill-wishers-Louis of France, and his own neglected wife Eleanor-stirred up the three elder youths to rebel against their father. Round the revolted sons there gathered in 1173 a strong league of discontented barons, English and foreign, aided by the Kings of France and Scotland. Thinking that these calamities were caused by the Divine wrath for the murder of St. Thomas, as the late Archbishop was styled, Henry did penance and let himself be scourged before the Saint's tomb. Soon he learned that on or about the day on which, having completed his penance, he had left Canterbury, the King of Scots, William the Lion, had been captured at Alnwick, July, 1174. By the King's own promptness and energy, and the fidelity of the people and of the new nobles whom he had raised up, the rebellion was soon brought to an end, and no one concerned met with hard usage except the King of Scots, who was constrained to enter into more complete and galling vassalage to England, even to admit English garrisons

into the castles of the Lowlands. He was however by Henry's successor permitted to buy back the rights he had lost, England only retaining a vague claim to lordship over Scotland.

4. Death of Henry; his Government.-In 1183 Henry's two elder sons were again at war with him; but that same year the Younger King, who was a mere tool of the discontented nobles, died, imploring his father's forgiveness. Geoffrey was pardoned, became again estranged, and died in 1186. Richard, after remaining faithful for some time, in 1188 sought the protection of Philip Augustus, King of France, and proceeded to invade his father's foreign dominions. Henry, whose health was failing, submitted, after a feeble resistance, to the demands of his enemies. He asked for a list of the barons who had joined Richard against him, and the first name he heard was that of his favourite son John. He turned his face to the wall-for he was lying down to restand groaned :--"Now," said he, "let all things go what way they may; I care no more for myself nor for the world." Already stricken with fever, he sank under this cruel blow, ever and anon crying, "Shame, shame on a conquered King," and died at Chinon, July 6, 1189. Historians often speak of him and the Kings of his line as the Plantagenets, the surname borne by his father--probably because his device was a sprig of planta genista or broom-and adopted in the fifteenth century by his descendants. Henry II. laid the foundations of good government in England, arranging the administration of justice, and taking pains to appoint faithful judges, who made circuits to assess the taxes, hear suits, and try criminals, as had been done before under Henry I. Trusting the people more than the barons, he re-organized the militia, and every freeman was bound to provide himself with arms according to his position. In foreign warfare Henry usually employed soldiers hired with