Henry the Second

n thirteen revolts or wars. Aquitaine declared against the imperial system; loud complaints were raised of Henry's contempt of old franchises and liberties, and of the "officers of a strange

e leaders of the ecclesiastical party, the canon lawyers, such as John of Salisbury, or Master Herbert of Bosham, with whom he argued the point at his Easter Court at Angers. John of Salisbury flatly rejected the Constitutions, declaring that his first obedience was due to the Pope and the archbishop. Herbert was yet more defiant. "Look how this proud fellow comes!" said Henry, as the stately Herbert entered in his splendid dress of green cloth of Auxerre, with a richly trimmed cloak hanging after the German fashion to his heels. He was no true servant to the king, declared Herbert when he had seated himself, who would allow him to go astray. As for the customs, there were bad enough customs in other countries against the Church of God, but at least they were not written down either in the lands of

sober language than all this. "Ecclesiastical dignity," wrote Ralph of Diceto, later the Dean of St. Paul's, "rather advances than abolishes royal dignity, and the royal dignity is wont rather to preserve than to destroy ecclesiastical liberty, for kings have no salvation without the Church, nor can the Church obtain peace without the protection of the king." To the fiery zeal of the archbishop, on the other hand, the secular power was as "lead" compared to the fine "gold" of the spiritual dignity. Henry, he cried loudly, was a "tyrant"-a word which to medieval ears meant not an arbitrary or capricious ruler, since that was the admitted right of every ruler, but a king who governed without heeding the eternal maxims of the "law of nature," an idea which theologians had borrowed from the theories of the ancient law of Rome, and modified to mean the law of Scripture or of the Church. But in the arguments of Thomas this law took the narro

d the Cistercians in 1166, by threats of vengeance in England, to expel Thomas from Pontigny. When papal legates arrived in 1167 with proposals for mediation, he bluntly expressed his hope that he might never see any more cardinals. His political activity was unceasing. He completed the conquest of Britanny, and concluded a treaty of marriage between his son Geoffrey and its heiress Constance. The Count of Blois was won at a cost of ￡500 a year. Mortain was bought from the Count of Boulogne. "Broad and deep ditches were made between France and Normandy." A frontier castle was raised at Beauvoir. His second son Richard, then twelve years old, was betrothed to Louis's daughter Adela; and his daughter Eleanor to the King of Castile. He secured the friendship of Flanders. He was busy building up a plan of Italian alliances and securing the passes over the Alps. Milan, Parma, Bologna, Cremona, the Marquis of Montfe

taine, and Geoffrey was set over Britanny under his elder brother as overlord. This division of Henry's dominions by no means implied any intention on the king's part of giving up the administration of the provinces. It was but the first step towards the realization of his imperial system, by which he was to reign as supreme lord, surrounded by the sub-rulers of his various provinces. Harassed as he had been with ceaseless wars, from the Welsh mountains to the Pyrenees, he might well believe that such a system would best provide for the defence of his unwieldy states; "When he alone had the rule of his kingdom," as he said later, "he had let nothing go of his rights; and now, when many were joined in th

the boast of Thomas, at the excommunications. In vain the Pope sought to moderate his zeal. In the summer of 1169 two legates were sent to settle the dispute, of whom one was pledged to the king and the other to the archbishop. Henry, like every one else, saw the futility of their mission, and "led them for a week," as one of them complained, "through many windings both of road and speech." With a scornful taunt that "he did not care an egg for them and their excommunications," he finally mounted his horse to ride off from the conference. "I see, I see!" he said to the frightened bishops who hurried after him to call him back; "they will interdict my land, but surely I who can take the strongest of castles in any single day, shall I not avail to scotch a single clerk if he should interdict my land!" When a compromise seemed possible, he suddenly added to the form of peace he had proposed the words, "saving the dignity of my kingdom." This broke off all negotiations. "The dignity of the kingdom," said Thomas, "was only a softer name for the Constitutions o

Church in maintaining the rigid rule of law as opposed to arbitrary government, and its large sense that general order was to be preferred to private good. He laid down that an archbishop's spiritual rights are indestructible; that in all cases submission to law was the highest duty; and that it was better humbly to accept even a harsh sentence than to set an evil example of disobedience by which others might be led to their ruin. In 1167 the clergy had been called to London to swear fealty to the anti-Pope; but "as the bishops refused to take so detestable an oath against God and the Pope, this unlawful and wicked business came to an end." The bishops had obeyed the exco

hter, and a terrible list of fines levied under the Assize of Clarendon. The sums raised told, in fact, of the general increase of wealth. The national income, which at the beginning of Henry's reign had been but ￡22,000, was raised in the last year to ￡48,000, and an enormous treasure had been accumulated said to be equal to 100,000 marks, or, by another account, to be worth ￡900,000. The increase of trade was shown by the growing numbers of Jews, the bankers and usurers of the time.

tion, under whom they could manage their own judicial and political affairs in their own Parliament. Winchester, Northampton, Norwich, Ipswich, Doncaster, Carlisle, Lincoln, Scarborough, York, won their charters at the same time-bought by the wealth which had been stored up in the busy years while Henry reigned. A chance notice of Gloucester shows us its two gaols-the city gaol which the citizens were bound to watch, and the castle prison of the king. The royal officers marked by their exactions the growth of the town's prosperity, and no longer limited themselves to time-honoured privileges of extortion. Bristol could claim its own coroners; it could assert its right to be free of frank-pledge; its burghers were in 1164 taken under the king's special patronage and protection; in 1172 he granted them the right of colonizing Dublin and holding it with all the liberties with which they held Bristol itself, to the wrath of the men of Chester who had long been rivals of the Bristol men, and who hastened to secure a royal writ ordering that they should be as free to trade with Dublin as they had ever been, for all the privileges of Bristol. Its merchants were fast lining the banks of the Severn with quays, and a later attempt to hinder them by law was successfully resisted. The new commercial spirit soon quickened alike the wits of royal officers and burghers. The weavers did not keep to the legal measure for the width of cloth. The woad-sellers no longer heaped up their measures, as of old, above the brim. The constable

the starving survivors the "murder-fine" ordained by law to be paid for every dead body found when the murderer was not produced. The system of cultivation was ignorant and primitive. Rendered timid by the repeated failure of crops, the poor people would set aside a part of their land to sow together oats, barley, and wheat, in the hope that whatever were the season something would come up which might serve for the rough black bread which was their main food. The low wet grounds were still undrained, and the number of cases of eye-disease which we find in the legends of miraculous cures point to the prevalence of ophthalmia brought on by damp and low living, as the army of lepers points to the filth and misery of the poor .The "common fields" and pastures of the villages must have lain on the higher grounds which were not mere swamps during half the year. But to these a dry season brought ruin. In ti

effect of the new administration of justice, as it told on the poor, began early to show itself in the growth of an "outlaw" class. Crimes of violence were surprisingly common. Dead bodies were found in the wood, in the field, in the fold, in the barn. In an extraordinary number of cases the judges' records of a little later time tell of houses broken into by night and robbed, and every living thing within them slain, and no clue was ever found to the plunderers. There were stories in Henry's days of a new crime-of men wearing religious dress who joined themselves to wayfarers, and in such a case the traveller was never seen again alive. Tales of Robin Hood began to take shape. The by-ways and thickets were peopled with men, innocent or guilty, but all alike desperate. One Richard, we read, whose fellow at the plough fell dead in an epileptic fit, fled in terror of the judges to the woods, and so did many a worse man than Richard. We find constantly th

ons, the priors, the important abbots of the shires-and they were all men who had no connection with the Exchequer or the Curia Regis. Their work was done, and their report presented within the time allowed; but the king, practical, businesslike, impatient of abuses, like every vigorous autocratic ruler, had no mind to wait two months to redress the grievances of his people. The barons who had been appointed as sheriffs at the opening of his reign had governed after the old corrupt traditions, or perhaps themselves suffering under the ruthless pressure of the barons of the Exchequer, had been driven to a like severity of extortion. By an edict of the king every sheriff throughout the country was struck from his post; of the twenty-seven only sev

; he was anointed and crowned by Roger of York. From this moment a new era opened in Henry's reign. The young king was now lord of England, in the view of the whole medieval world, by a right as absolute and sacred as that of his father. All who were discontented and restless had henceforth a leader ordained by law, consecrated by the Church, round whom they might rally. Delicate questions had to be solved as to the claims and powers of the new king, which never in fact found their answer so long as he lived. Meanwhile Henry had raised up for himself a host of new difficulties. The archbishop had a fresh grievance in the king's reckless contempt of the rights of Canterbury. The Church party both in England and in Europe was outraged at the wrong done to him. Many who had before wavered, like Henry of Blois, now threw themselves passionately on the side of Thomas. In the fierce contention that soon raged round the right of the archbishop to crown the king, and to deal as he chose with any prelate who might infringe his privileges, all other questions were forgotten. Not only the zealots for religious tradition, but all who clung loyally to established law and custom, were thrown into opposition. The French king was bitterly angry that his daughter had not been crowned with her husband. All Henry's enemies banded themselves together in a frenzy of rage. So immediate and formidable was the outburst of indignation that ten days after the coronation the king no longer ventured to remain in England; and on the 24th of June he hastily crossed the Channel. Near Falaise he was met by the bishop of Worcester, who had supported him at Northampton. The king turned upon him passionately, and broke out in angry words, "Now it is plain that thou art a traitor! I ordered thee to attend the coronation of my son, and since thou didst not choose to be there, thou hast shown that thou hast no love for me nor for my son's advancement. It is plain that thou favourest my enemy and hatest me. I will

enry, rivalling him in courtesy, dismounted to hold the Primate's stirrup, with the words, "It is fit the less should serve the greater!" But if there was a show of peace "the whole substance of it consisted only in hope," as Thomas wrote. Each side was full of distrust. Thomas demanded immediate restitution of his see, and liberty to excommunicate the bishops who had shared in the coronation. Henry wanted first to see "how Thomas would behave in the affairs of the kingdom." The king and Primate met for the last time in October 1170 at Chaumont with seeming friendliness, but any real peace was as far off as ever. "My lord," said Thomas, as he bade farewell, "my heart tells me that I part from you as

l officers demanded absolution for the bishops. Thomas flatly refused unless they would swear to appear at his court for justice, an oath which the bishops in their terror of the king dared not take. They fled to Henry's court in Normandy; while on the 1st of December Thomas passed on to Canterbury. The men of Kent were stout defenders of their customary rights; they clung tenaciously to their special privileges; they had their own views of inheritance, their fixed standard of fines, their belief that the Crown had no right to the property of thief or murderer, who had been hanged-"the father to the bough, the son to the plough," said they, in Kent at least. They were a very mixed population, constantly recruited from the neighbouring coasts. They held the outposts of the country as the advanced guard formally charged with the defence of its shores from foreign invasion, which was a very present terror in those days. Lying near the Continent they caught every rumour of the liberties won by the Flemish towns or French communes; comme

t beyond himself by one of his mad storms of passion. "What a pack of fools and cowards," he shouted aloud in his wrath, "I have nourished in my house, that not one of them will avenge me of this one upstart clerk!" A council was at once summoned. Thomas, the king said, had entered as a tyrant into his land, had excommunicated the bishops for obedience to the king, had troubled the whole realm, had purposed to take away the royal crown from his son, had begged for a legation aga

. Henry had himself provided them with a ready instrument to execute their vengeance, and the boy-king, consecrated scarcely six months ago, and already urged to revolt by his mother and the king of France, was only too willing to hear the tale of their accumulated wrongs and discontents. All Christendom had been watching the strife; all Christendom was outraged at its close. The Pope shut himself up for eight days, and refused to speak to his own servants. The king of France,-who had now a cause more powerful than any he had ever dreamt of,-Theobald of Blois, and William of Champagne, the Archbishop of Sens, wrote bitterly to Rome that it was Henry himself who had given orders for the murder. The king's messengers sent to plead with the Pope found matters almost desperate. Alexander had determined to excommunicate him at Easter, and to lay an interdiction on all his lands. In their despair, and not venturing to tell their master what they had done, they swore on Henry's part an unreserved submission to the Pope, and the excommunication was barely averted for a few months, while a legation was sent to pronounce an interdiction on his lands, and receive his submission. Henry, however, was quite determined that he would neither hear the sentence nor repeat the oath taken by his envoys a