Title: England under the Angevin Kings, Volumes I and II
Author: Norgate, Kate
Language: English
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KINGS, VOLUMES I AND II ***



Transcriber’s Note


This is a combination of the two volumes of “England Under the
Angevin Kings”. Volumes I and II of this book are also published

Words in italics are marked with _underscores_.

Words in small capitals are shown in UPPER CASE.

Please also see the note at the end of the book.



  ENGLAND
  UNDER
  THE ANGEVIN KINGS



[Illustration: Publisher’s colophon]



  ENGLAND
  UNDER
  THE ANGEVIN KINGS

  BY
  KATE NORGATE

  IN TWO VOLUMES--VOL. I.

  WITH MAPS AND PLANS

  London
  MACMILLAN AND CO.
  AND NEW YORK
  1887

  _All rights reserved_



  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
  WITH THE DEEPEST REVERENCE AND GRATITUDE
  TO THE MEMORY OF
  MY DEAR AND HONOURED MASTER
  JOHN RICHARD GREEN



PREFACE


This attempt to sketch the history of England under the Angevin kings
owes its existence to the master whose name I have ventured to place
at its beginning. It was undertaken at his suggestion; its progress
through those earliest stages which for an inexperienced writer are the
hardest of all was directed by his counsels, aided by his criticisms,
encouraged by his sympathy; and every step in my work during the past
eleven years has but led me to feel more deeply and to prize more
highly the constant help of his teaching and his example. Of the book
in its finished state he never saw a page. For its faults no one is
answerable but myself. I can only hope that, however great may be its
errors and its defects, it may yet shew at least some traces of that
influence which is so abidingly precious to me.

I desire respectfully to express my gratitude to the Lord Bishop of
Chester and to Mr. Freeman, who, for the sake of the friend who had
commended me to their kindness, have been good enough to help me with
information and advice on many occasions during my work.

A word of acknowledgement is due for some of the maps and plans. The
map of Gaul in the tenth century is founded upon one in Mr. Freeman’s
_Norman Conquest_. The plans of Bristol and Lincoln are adapted from
those in the _Proceedings of the Archæological Institute_; for Lincoln
I was further assisted by the local knowledge kindly placed at my
disposal by the Rev. Precentor Venables. For Oxford I have followed the
guidance of the Rev. Father F. Goldie, S.J. (_A Bygone Oxford_), and of
Mr. J. Parker (_Early History of Oxford_); and for London, that of its
historian the Rev. W. J. Loftie, whom I have especially to thank for
his help on some points of London topography.

My greatest help of all has been the constant personal kindness and
ever-ready sympathy of Mrs. Green. To her, as to my dear master
himself, I owe and feel a gratitude which cannot be put into words.

KATE NORGATE.

_January 1887._



CONTENTS


  CHAPTER I
                                                              PAGE
  THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I., 1100–1135                             1


  CHAPTER II

  THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU, 843–987                              97
    Note A.--The Sources of Angevin History                    126
    Note B.--The Palace of the Counts at Angers                132
    Note C.--The Marriages of Geoffrey Greygown                134
    Note D.--The Breton and Poitevin Wars of Geoffrey Greygown 136
    Note E.--The Grant of Maine to Geoffrey Greygown           140


  CHAPTER III

  ANJOU AND BLOIS, 987–1044                                    143
    Note A.--The Siege of Melun                                189
    Note B.--The Parents of Queen Constance                    190
    Note C.--The Pilgrimages of Fulk Nerra                     192
    Note D.--Geoffrey Martel and Poitou                        197


  CHAPTER IV

  ANJOU AND NORMANDY, 1044–1128                                200
    Note A.--The Houses of Anjou and Gâtinais                  249
    Note B.--The Heir of Geoffrey Martel                       251
    Note C.--The War of Saintonge                              252
    Note D.--The Descendants of Herbert Wake-dog               253
    Note E.--The Siege of La Flèche and Treaty of Blanchelande 256
    Note F.--The Marriage of Geoffrey and Matilda              258


  CHAPTER V

  GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET AND STEPHEN OF BLOIS, 1128–1139         261


  CHAPTER VI

  ENGLAND AND THE BARONS, 1139–1147                            308
    Note.--The Topography of the Battle of Lincoln             344


  CHAPTER VII

  THE ENGLISH CHURCH, 1136–1149                                347


  CHAPTER VIII

  HENRY DUKE OF THE NORMANS, 1149–1154                         372


  CHAPTER IX

  HENRY AND ENGLAND, 1154–1157                                 407


  CHAPTER X

  HENRY AND FRANCE, 1156–1161                                  440


  CHAPTER XI

  THE LAST YEARS OF ARCHBISHOP THEOBALD, 1156–1161             474



LIST OF MAPS


  I. GAUL _c._ 909–941                          _To face page_ 107

  II. GAUL _c._ 1027                                    ”      143



PLANS


  I. WINCHESTER. II. BRISTOL                    _To face page_ 31

  III. LINCOLN. IV. OXFORD                              ”      40

  V. LONDON                                             ”      44

  VI. ANGERS                                            ”     165



CHAPTER I.

THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I.

1100–1135.


“When the green tree, cut asunder in the midst and severed by the space
of three furlongs, shall be grafted in again and shall bring forth
flowers and fruit,--then at last may England hope to see the end of her
sorrows.”[1]

        [1] _Vita Edwardi_ (Luard), p. 431.

So closed the prophecy in which the dying king Eadward the Confessor
foretold the destiny in store for his country after his departure. His
words, mocked at by one of the listeners, incomprehensible to all,
found an easy interpretation a hundred years later. The green tree of
the West-Saxon monarchy had fallen beneath Duke William’s battle-axe;
three alien reigns had parted its surviving branch from the stem; the
marriage of Henry I. with a princess of the old English blood-royal
had grafted it in again.[2] One flower sprung from that union had
indeed bloomed only to die ere it reached its prime,[3] but another
had brought forth the promised fruit; and the dim ideal of national
prosperity and union which English and Normans alike associated with
the revered name of the Confessor was growing at last into a real and
living thing beneath the sceptre of Henry Fitz-Empress.

        [2] Æthelred of Rievaux, _Vita S. Edw. Regis_ (Twysden, _X.
        Scriptt._), col. 401.

        [3] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 652),
        notes that the fulfilment of the prophecy was looked for in
        William the Ætheling.

There are, at first glance, few stranger things in history than the
revival thus prefigured:--a national revival growing up, as it seems,
in the most adverse circumstances, under the pressure of an alien
government, of a race of kings who were strangers alike to the men of
old English blood and to the descendants of those who had come over
with the Conqueror: at a time when, in a merely political point of
view, England seemed to be not only conquered but altogether swallowed
up in the vast and varied dominions of the house of Anjou. It was
indeed not the first time that the island had become an appendage to a
foreign empire compared with which she was but a speck in the ocean.
Cnut the Dane was, like Henry of Anjou, not only king of England but
also ruler of a great continental monarchy far exceeding England in
extent, and forming together with her a dominion only to be equalled,
if equalled at all, by that of the Emperor. But the parallel goes no
farther. Cnut’s first kingdom, the prize of his youthful valour, was
his centre and his home, of which his Scandinavian realms, even his
native Denmark, were mere dependencies. Whatever he might be when
he revisited them, in his island-kingdom he was an Englishman among
Englishmen. The heir of Geoffrey of Anjou and Matilda of Normandy, on
the other hand, was virtually of no nationality, no country; but if he
could be said to have a home at all, it was certainly not on this side
of the sea--it was the little marchland of his fathers. In the case
of his sons, the southern blood of their mother Eleanor added a yet
more un-English element; and of Richard, indeed, it might almost be
said that the home of his choice was not in Europe at all, but in Holy
Land. Alike to him and to his father, England was simply the possession
which gave them their highest title, furnished them with resources
for prosecuting their schemes of continental policy, and secured to
them a safe refuge on which to fall back in moments of difficulty or
danger. It was not till the work of revival was completed, till it had
resulted in the creation of the new England which comes to light with
Edward I., that it could find a representative and a leader in the king
himself. The sovereign in whose reign the chief part of the work was
done stood utterly aloof from it in sympathy; yet he is in fact its
central figure and its most important actor. The story of England’s
developement from the break-down of the Norman system under Stephen
to the consolidation of a national monarchy under Edward I. is the
story of Henry of Anjou, of his work and of its results. But as the
story does not end with Henry, so neither does it begin with him. It
is impossible to understand Henry himself without knowing something of
the race from which he sprang; of those wonderful Angevin counts who,
beginning as rulers of a tiny under-fief of the duchy of France, grew
into a sovereign house extending its sway from one end of Christendom
to the other. It is impossible to understand his work without knowing
something of what England was, and how she came to be what she was,
when the young count of Anjou was called to wear her crown.

The project of an empire such as that which Henry II. actually wielded
had been the last dream of William Rufus. In the summer of 1100 the
duke of Aquitaine, about to join the Crusaders in Holy Land, offered
his dominions in pledge to the king of England. Rufus clutched at the
offer “like a lion at his prey.”[4] Five years before he had received
the Norman duchy on the same terms from his brother Robert; he had
bridled its restless people and brought them under control; he had won
back its southern dependency, his father’s first conquest, the county
of Maine. Had this new scheme been realized, nothing but the little
Angevin march would have broken the continuity of a Norman dominion
stretching from the Forth to the Pyrenees, and in all likelihood the
story of the Angevin kings would never have had to be told. Jesting
after his wont with his hunting-companions, William--so the story
goes--declared that he would keep his next Christmas feast at Poitiers,
if he should live so long.[5] But that same evening the Red King lay
dead in the New Forest, and his territories fell asunder at once.
Robert of Normandy came back from Palestine in triumph to resume
possession of his duchy; while the barons of England, without waiting
for his return, chose his English-born brother Henry for their king.

        [4] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 780.

        [5] Geoff. Gaimar, vv. 6296–6298 (Wright, p. 219).

Thirteen years before, at his father’s death, Henry, the only child
of William and Matilda who was actually born in the purple--the child
of a crowned king and queen, born on English soil, and thus by birth,
though not by descent, entitled to rank as an English Ætheling--had
been launched into the world at the age of nineteen without a foot of
land that he could call his own. The story went that he had complained
bitterly to the dying Conqueror of his exclusion from all share in the
family heritage. “Have patience, boy,” was William’s answer, “let thine
elder brothers go before thee; the day will come when thou shalt be
greater than either of them.” Henry was, however, not left

a penniless adventurer dependent on the bounty of his brothers; the
Conqueror gave him a legacy of ten thousand pounds as a solid provision
wherewith to begin his career. A year had scarcely passed before Duke
Robert, overwhelmed with troubles in Normandy, found himself at his
wits’ end with an empty treasury, and besought Henry to lend him some
money. The Ætheling, as cool and calculating as his brothers were
impetuous, refused; the duke in desperation offered to sell him any
territory he chose, and a bargain was struck whereby Henry received,
for the sum of three thousand pounds, the investiture of the Cotentin,
the Avranchin, and the Mont-St.-Michel--in a word, the whole western
end of the Norman duchy.[6] Next summer, while the duke was planning
an attempt on the English crown and vainly awaiting a fair wind to
enable him to cross the Channel, the count of the Cotentin managed
to get across without one, to claim the estates in Gloucestershire
formerly held by his mother and destined for him by his father’s
will. He was received by William Rufus only too graciously, for the
consequence was that some mischief-makers, always specially plentiful
at the Norman court, persuaded Duke Robert that his youngest brother
was plotting against him with the second, and when Henry returned in
the autumn he had no sooner landed than he was seized and cast into
prison.[7] Within a year he was free again, reinstated, if not in
the Cotentin, at least in the Avranchin and the Mont-St.-Michel,
and entrusted with the keeping of Rouen itself against the traitors
stirred up by the Red King. William, while his young brother was safe
in prison, had resumed the Gloucestershire estates and made them over
to his favourite Robert Fitz-Hamon. Henry in his natural resentment
threw himself with all his energies into the cause of the duke of
Normandy, acted as his trustiest and bravest supporter throughout the
war with Rufus which followed, and at the close of the year crowned
his services by the promptitude and valour with which he defeated a
conspiracy for betraying the Norman capital to the king of England.[8]
The struggle ended in a treaty between the elder brothers, in which
neither of them forgot the youngest. Their remembrance of him took
the shape of an agreement to drive him out of all his territories and
divide the spoil between themselves. Their joint attack soon brought
him to bay in his mightiest stronghold, the rock crowned by the abbey
of S. Michael-in-Peril-of-the-Sea, commonly called Mont-Saint-Michel.
Henry threw himself into the place with as many knights as were willing
to share the adventure; the brethren of the abbey did their utmost
to help, and for fifteen days the little garrison, perched on their
inaccessible rock, held out against their besiegers.[9] Then hunger
began to thin their ranks; nothing but the inconsistent generosity of
Robert saved them from the worse agonies of thirst;[10] one by one they
dropped away, till Henry saw that he must yield to fate, abide by his
father’s counsel, and wait patiently for better days. He surrendered;
he came down from the Mount, once again a landless and homeless man;
and save for one strange momentary appearance in England as a guest at
the Red King’s court,[11] he spent the greater part of the next two
years in France and the Vexin, wandering from one refuge to another
with a lowly train of one knight, three squires, and one chaplain.[12]
He was at length recalled by the townsmen of Domfront, who, goaded to
desperation by the oppressions of their lord Robert of Bellême, threw
off his yoke and besought Henry to come and take upon himself the
duty of defending them, their town and castle, against their former
tyrant. “By the help of God and the suffrages of his friends,” as his
admiring historian says,[13] Henry was thus placed in command of his
father’s earliest conquest, the key of Normandy and Maine, a fortress
scarcely less mighty and of far greater political importance than
that from which he had been driven. He naturally used his opportunity
for reprisals, not only upon Robert of Bellême, but also upon his own
brothers;[14] and by the end of two years he had made himself of so
much consequence in the duchy that William Rufus, again at war with the
duke, thought it time to secure his alliance. The two younger brothers
met in England, and when Henry returned in the spring of 1095 he came
as the liegeman of the English king, sworn to fight his battles and
further his interests in Normandy by every means in his power.[15]

        [6] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 665.

        [7] _Ib._ p. 672. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 392
        (Hardy, pp. 616, 617).

        [8] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 690. Will.
        Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 392 (Hardy, pp. 617, 618).

        [9] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 697.

        [10] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iv. c. 310 (Hardy, pp. 491,
        492).

        [11] See Freeman, _William Rufus_, vol. i. pp. 293, 295, 305;
        vol. ii. pp. 535, 536.

        [12] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 697.

        [13] _Ib._ p. 698.

        [14] _Ib._ pp. 698, 706, 722.

        [15] Eng. Chron. a. 1095.

William and Henry had both learned by experience that to work with
Robert for any political purpose was hopeless, and that their true
interest was to support each other--William’s, to enlist for his own
service Henry’s clear cool head and steady hand; Henry’s, to secure for
himself some kind of footing in the land where his ultimate ambitions
could not fail to be centred. He had learned in his wanderings to adapt
himself to all circumstances and all kinds of society; personally,
he and Rufus can have had little in common except their passion for
the chase. Lanfranc’s teaching, moral and intellectual, had been all
alike thrown away upon his pupil William the Red. Henry, carefully
educated according to his father’s special desire, had early shown a
remarkable aptitude for study, was a scholar of very fair attainments
as scholarship went among laymen in his day, and retained his literary
tastes not only through all his youthful trials but also through the
crowd of political and domestic cares which pressed upon his later
life. Yet such tastes seem almost as strange in Henry as they would in
William Rufus. The one prosaic element in the story of Henry’s youth
is the personality of its hero. No man had ever less of the romantic
or poetic temperament; if he had none of the follies or the faults
of chivalry, he had just as little of its nobler idealism. From his
first bargain with Robert for the purchase of the Cotentin to his
last bargain with Fulk of Anjou for the marriage of his heir, life
was to him simply a matter of business. The strongest points in his
character were precisely the two qualities which both his brothers
utterly lacked--self-control, and that “capacity for taking trouble”
which is sometimes said to be the chief element of genius. But of the
higher kind of genius, of the fire which kindles in the soul rather
than merely in the brain, Henry had not a spark. He was essentially
a man of business, in the widest and loftiest sense of the words.
His self-control was not, like his father’s, the curb forcibly put
by a noble mind upon its own natural impetuosity; it was the more
easily-practised calmness of a perfectly cold nature which could always
be reasonable because it had to fight with no impulse of passion, which
was never tempted to “follow wandering fires” because they lit in it no
responsive flame; a nature in which the head had complete mastery over
the heart, and that head was one which no misfortunes could disturb, no
successes turn, and no perplexities confuse.

The sudden vacancy of the English throne found every one else quite
unprepared for such an emergency. Henry was never unprepared. His
quickness and decision secured him the keys of the treasury and the
formal election of those barons and prelates who had been members of
the fatal hunting-party, or who hurried to Winchester at the tidings of
its tragic issue; and before opposition had time to come to a head, it
was checked by the coronation and unction which turned the king-elect
into full king.[16] Henry knew well, however, that opposition there was
certain to be. Robert of Normandy, just returned from the Crusade and
covered with glory, was sure to assert his claim, and as sure to be
upheld by a strong party among the barons, to whom a fresh severance
of England and Normandy was clearly not desirable. In anticipation of
the coming struggle, Henry threw himself at once on the support of his
subjects. In addition to the pledges of his coronation-oath--taken
almost in the words of Æthelred to Dunstan[17]--he issued on the same
day a charter in which he solemnly and specifically promised the
abolition of his brother’s evil customs in Church and state, and a
return to just government according to the law of the land. The details
were drawn up so as to touch all classes. The Church, as including
them all, of course stood first; its freedom was restored and all
sale or farming of benefices renounced by the king. The next clause
appealed specially to the feudal vassals: those who held their lands
“by the hauberk”--the tenants by knight-service--were exempted from all
other imposts on their demesne lands, that they might be the better
able to fulfil their own particular obligation. The tenants-in-chief
were exempted from all the unjust exactions with regard to wardships,
marriages, reliefs and forfeitures, which had been practised in the
last reign; but the redress was not confined to them; they were
distinctly required to exercise the same justice towards their own
under-tenants. The last clause covered all the rest: by it Henry
gave back to his people “the laws of King Eadward as amended by King
William.”[18] Like Cnut’s renewal of the law of Eadgar--like Eadward’s
own renewal of the law of Cnut--the charter was a proclamation of
general reunion and goodwill. As a pledge of its sincerity, the Red
King’s minister, Ralf Flambard, in popular estimation the author of all
the late misdoings, was at once cast into the Tower;[19] the exiled
primate was fetched home as speedily as possible; and in November the
king identified himself still more closely with the land of his birth
by taking to wife a maiden of the old English blood-royal, Eadgyth of
Scotland, great-granddaughter of Eadmund Ironside.[20]

        [16] Eng. Chron. a. 1100.

        [17] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 99 (3d ed.).

        [18] Charter of Henry I., _ib._ pp. 100–102.

        [19] Eng. Chron. a. 1100.

        [20] Eng. Chron. a. 1100.

His precautions were soon justified. Robert had refused the thorny
crown of Jerusalem, but the crown of England had far other charms;
and his movements were quickened by Ralf Flambard, who early in the
spring made his escape to Normandy.[21] It was probably through Ralf’s
management that the duke won over some of the sailors who guarded the
English coast and thus got ashore unexpectedly at Portsmouth while the
king was keeping watch for him at the old landing-place, Pevensey.[22]
At the first tidings of the intended invasion Henry, like Rufus in the
same case thirteen years before, had appealed to Witan and people,
and by a renewal of his charter gained a renewal of their fealty.
No sooner, however, was Robert actually in England than the great
majority of the barons prepared to go over to him in a body. But the
king born on English soil, married to a lady of the old kingly house,
had a stronger hold than ever Rufus could have had upon the English
people; and they, headed by their natural leader and representative,
the restored archbishop of Canterbury, clave to him with unswerving
loyalty.[23] The two armies met near Alton;[24] at the last moment,
the wisdom either of Anselm, of the few loyal barons, or of Henry
himself, turned the meeting into a peaceful one. The brothers came to
terms: Robert renounced his claim to the crown in consideration of a
yearly pension from England; Henry gave up all his Norman possessions
except Domfront, whose people he refused to forsake;[25] and, as in the
treaty made at Caen ten years before between Robert and William, it
was arranged that whichever brother lived longest should inherit the
other’s dominions, if the deceased left no lawful heirs.[26]

        [21] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 786, 787.

        [22] Eng. Chron. a. 1101.

        [23] Eadmer, _Hist. Novorum_ (Rule), p. 127.

        [24] See Freeman, _William Rufus_, vol. ii. p. 408.

        [25] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 788.

        [26] Eng. Chron. a. 1101.

The treaty was ratified at Winchester in the first days of August;[27]
and thus, almost on the anniversary of the Red King’s death, ended the
last Norman invasion of England. But the treaty of Winchester, like
that of Caen, failed to settle the real difficulty. That difficulty
was, how to control the barons. According to one version of the treaty,
it was stipulated that those who had incurred forfeiture in England
by their adherence to Robert and those who had done the same in
Normandy in Henry’s behalf should alike go unpunished;[28] according
to another, perhaps a more probable account, the brothers agreed to
co-operate in punishing traitors on both sides.[29] Henry set to work
to do his part methodically. One after another, at different times, in
various ways, by regular process of law, the offenders were brought to
justice in England: some heavily fined, some deprived of their honours
and exiled. It was treason not so much against himself as against
the peace and order of the realm that Henry was bent upon avenging;
Ivo of Grantmesnil was fined to the verge of ruin for the crime of
making war not upon the king in behalf of the duke, but upon his own
neighbours for his own personal gratification--a crime which was part
of the daily life of every baron in Normandy, but which had never been
seen in England before,[30] and never was seen there again as long
as King Henry lived. The most formidable of all the troublers of the
land was Henry’s old enemy at Domfront--Robert, lord of Bellême in
the border-land of Perche, earl of Shrewsbury and Arundel in England,
count of Alençon and lord of Montgomery in Normandy, and now by his
marriage count of Ponthieu. Robert was actually fortifying his castles
of Bridgenorth and Arundel in preparation for open revolt when he was
summoned to take his trial on forty-five charges of treason against
the king of England and the duke of Normandy. As he failed to answer,
Henry led his troops to the siege of Bridgenorth. In three weeks it
surrendered; Shrewsbury and Arundel did the same, and Robert of Bellême
was glad to purchase safety for life and limb at the cost of all his
English possessions.[31]

        [27] Sim. Durh. _Gesta Reg._ a. 1101.

        [28] Eng. Chron. a. 1101.

        [29] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 788.

        [30] _Ib._ p. 805.

        [31] _Ib._ pp. 807, 808. Eng. Chron. a. 1102.

From that moment Henry’s position in England was secured; but all his
remonstrances failed to make his indolent elder brother fulfil his part
of their compact. The traitors whom Henry expelled from England only
carried their treason over sea to a more congenial climate, and the
helpless, heedless duke looked passively on while Robert of Bellême,
William of Mortain the banished earl of Cornwall, and their fellows
slaked their thirst for vengeance upon King Henry by ravaging the
Norman lands of those who were faithful to him in England.[32] Their
victims, as well as Henry himself, began to see that his personal
intervention alone could re-establish order in the duchy. On his
appearance there in 1104 he was joined by all the more reasonable
among the barons. For the moment he was pacified by fresh promises of
amendment on Robert’s part, and by the cession of the county of Evreux;
but he knew that all compromise had become vain; and in the last week
of Lent 1105 he landed again at Barfleur in the full determination of
making himself master of Normandy. His Norman partisans rallied round
him at once,[33] and he was soon joined by two valuable allies, Elias
count of Maine and his intended son-in-law, the young count Geoffrey
of Anjou.[34] It was they who won for Henry his first success, the
capture of Bayeux.[35] Warned by the fate of this unhappy city, which
was burnt down, churches and all, Caen surrendered at once, and Henry
thus came into possession of the Norman treasury. A siege of Falaise
failed through the unexplained departure of Count Elias,[36] and the
war dragged slowly on till Henry, now busy in another quarter with
negotiations for the return of S. Anselm, went back at Michaelmas to
England. Thither he was followed first by Robert of Bellême, then by
Robert of Normandy,[37] both seeking for peace; but peace had become
impossible now. Next summer Henry was again in Normandy, reconciled to
S. Anselm, released from anxieties at home, free to concentrate all his
energies upon the final struggle. It was decided with one blow. As he
was besieging the castle of Tinchebray on Michaelmas Eve Duke Robert
at the head of all his forces approached and summoned him to raise the
siege. He refused, “preferring,” as he said, “to take the blame of a
more than civil war for the sake of future peace.” But when the two
hosts were drawn up face to face, the prospect of a battle seemed too
horrible to be endured, composed as they were of kinsmen and brothers,
fathers and sons, arrayed against each other. The clergy besought
Henry to stay his hand; he listened, pondered, and at length sent a
final message to his brother. He came, he said, not wishing to deprive
Robert of his duchy or to win territories for himself, but to answer
the cry of the distressed and deliver Normandy from the misrule of one
who was duke only in name. Here then was his last proposition: “Give
up to me half the land of Normandy, the castles and the administration
of justice and government throughout the whole, and receive the value
of the other half annually from my treasury in England. Thus you may
enjoy pleasure and feasting to your heart’s content, while I will take
upon me the labours of government, and guarantee the fulfilment of
my pledge, if you will but keep quiet.” Foolish to the last, Robert
declined the offer; and the two armies made themselves ready for
battle.[38] In point of numbers they seem to have been not unequally
matched, but they differed greatly in character. Robert was stronger
in footsoldiers, Henry in knights; the flower of the Norman nobility
was on his side now, besides his Angevin, Cenomannian and Breton
allies;[39] while of those who followed Robert some, as the issue
proved, were only half-hearted. Of Henry’s genuine English troops there
is no account, but the men of his own day looked upon his whole host
as English in contradistinction to Robert’s Normans, and the tactics
adopted in the battle were thoroughly English. The king of England
fought on foot with his whole army, and it seems that the duke of
Normandy followed his example.[40]

        [32] Eng. Chron. a. 1104. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c.
        397 (Hardy, p. 623).

        [33] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 814.

        [34] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1105 (Marchegay, _Eglises d’Anjou_, p.
        30).

        [35] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 818.
        Chron. S. Albin. a. 1105 (Marchegay, _Eglises d’Anjou_, p. 30).

        [36] “Helias a Normannis rogatus discessit,” says Orderic (as
        above). What can this mean?

        [37] Eng. Chron. a. 1106.

        [38] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 820.

        [39] _Ib._ p. 820. Hen. Huntingdon, l. vii. c. 25 (Arnold, p.
        235).

        [40] Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 25 (Arnold, p. 235).

The first line of the Norman or ducal host under William of Mortain
charged the English front under Ralf of Bayeux, and by the fury of
their onset compelled them to fall back, though without breaking their
ranks. The issue was still doubtful, when the only mounted division
of Henry’s troops, the Bretons and Cenomannians under Count Elias,
came up to the rescue, took the duke’s army in flank, and cut down
two hundred men in a single charge. Those Cenomannian swords which
William the Conqueror was so proud to have overcome now carried the
day for his youngest son. Robert of Bellême, as soon as he saw how
matters were going, fled with all his followers, and the duke’s army at
once dissolved.[41] In Henry’s own words, “the Divine Mercy gave into
my hands, without much slaughter on our side, the duke of Normandy,
the count of Mortain, William Crispin, William Ferrers, Robert of
Estouteville, some four hundred knights, ten thousand foot--and the
duchy of Normandy.”[42]

        [41] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 821. Eng.
        Chron. a. 1106. Hen. Hunt., as above.

        [42] Letter of Henry to S. Anselm in Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._
        (Rule), p. 184.

Forty years before, on the very same day, William the Conqueror had
landed at Pevensey to bring the English kingdom under the Norman
yoke. The work of Michaelmas Eve, 1066, was reversed on Michaelmas
Eve, 1106; the victory of Tinchebray made Normandy a dependency of
England.[43] Such was the view taken by one of the most clear-sighted
and unprejudiced historians of the time, a man of mingled Norman and
English blood. Such was evidently the view instinctively taken by all
parties, and the instinct was a true one, although at first glance it
seems somewhat hard to account for. The reign of Henry I., if judged
merely by the facts which strike the eye in the chronicles of the
time, looks like one continued course of foreign policy and foreign
warfare pursued by the king for his own personal ends at the expense
of his English subjects. But the real meaning of the facts lies deeper.
The comment of the archbishop of Rouen upon Henry’s death--“Peace be
to his soul, for he ever loved peace”[44]--was neither sarcasm nor
flattery. Henry did love peace, so well that he spent his life in
fighting for it. His early Norman campaigns are enough to prove that
without being a master of the art of war like his father, he was yet
a brave soldier and a skilful commander; and the complicated wars of
his later years, when over and over again he had to struggle almost
single-handed against France, Flanders and Anjou, amid the endless
treasons of his own barons, show still more clearly his superiority to
nearly all the other generals of his time. But his ambitions were not
those of the warrior. Some gleam of the old northman’s joy of battle
may have flashed across the wandering knight as he defied his besiegers
from the summit of his rock “in Peril of the Sea,” or swooped down
upon the turbulent lords of the Cenomannian border, like an eagle upon
lesser birds of prey, from his eyrie on the crest of Domfront; but the
victor of Tinchebray looked at his campaigns in another light. To him
they were simply a part of his general business as a king; they were
means to an end, and that end was not glory, nor even gain, but the
establishment of peace and order. In his thirteen years of wandering to
and fro between England, Normandy and France he had probably studied
all the phases of tyranny and anarchy which the three countries amply
displayed, and matured his own theory of government, which he practised
steadily to the end of his reign. That theory was not a very lofty or
noble one; the principle from which it started and the end at which
it aimed was the interest of the ruler rather than of the ruled; but
the form in which Henry conceived that end and the means whereby he
sought to compass it were at any rate more enlightened than those of
his predecessor. The Red King had reigned wholly by terror; Henry did
not aspire to rule by love; but he saw that, in a merely selfish point
of view, a sovereign gains nothing by making himself a terror to any
except evil-doers, that the surest basis for his authority is the
preservation of order, justice and peace, and that so far at least
the interests of king and people must be one. It is difficult to get
rid of a feeling that Henry enforced justice and order from motives
of expediency rather than of abstract righteousness. But, as a matter
of fact, he did enforce them all round, on earl and churl, clerk and
layman, Norman and Englishman, without distinction. And this steady,
equal government was rendered possible only by the determined struggle
which he waged with the Norman barons and their French allies. His
home policy and his foreign policy were inseparably connected; and the
lifelong battle which he fought with his continental foes was really
the battle of England’s freedom.

        [43] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 398 (Hardy, p. 625).

        [44] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 9 (Hardy, p. 702).

From the year 1103 onward the battle was fought wholly on the other
side of the Channel. In England Henry, as his English subjects joyfully
told him, became a free king on the day when he drove out Robert of
Bellême.[45] One great hindrance indeed still remained, hanging upon
him like a dead weight throughout his early struggles in Normandy; the
controversy concerning ecclesiastical investitures, with which the rest
of Europe had been aflame for a quarter of a century before it touched
England at all. The decree of the Lateran Council of 1075 forbidding
lay sovereigns to grant the investiture of any spiritual office with
ring and staff was completely ignored in practice by William the
Conqueror and Lanfranc. Their position on this and all other matters of
Church policy was summed up in their reply to Pope Gregory’s demand of
fealty: William would do what the English kings who went before him had
done, neither more nor less.[46] But the king and the primate were not
without perceiving that, as a necessary consequence of their own acts,
the English Church had entered upon a new and more complicated relation
both to the state and to the Apostolic see, and that the day must
shortly come when she would be dragged from her quiet anchorage into
the whirlpool of European controversies and strifes. Their forebodings
found expression in the three famous rules of ecclesiastical policy
which William laid down for the guidance of his successors rather than
himself:--that no Pope should be acknowledged in England and no letter
from him received there by any one without the king’s consent;--that
no Church council should put forth decrees without his permission
and approval;--and that no baron or servant of the crown should be
laid under ecclesiastical censure save at the king’s own command.[47]
These rules, famous in the two succeeding reigns under the name of
“paternal customs,” were never put to the test of practice as long as
William and Lanfranc lived. The Red King’s abuse of the two first, by
precipitating the crisis and driving S. Anselm to throw himself into
the arms of Rome, showed not so much their inadequacy as the justice
of the misgivings from which they had sprung. Henry at his accession
took his stand upon them in the true spirit of their author; but the
time was gone by; Anselm too had taken his stand upon ground whence
in honour and conscience he could not recede, and the very first
interview between king and primate threw open the whole question of
the investitures. But in England and in the Empire the question wore
two very different aspects. In England it never became a matter of
active interest or violent partisanship in the Church and the nation
at large. Only a few deep thinkers on either side--men such as Count
Robert of Meulan among the advisers of the king, perhaps such as the
devoted English secretary Eadmer among the intimate associates of
Anselm--ever understood or considered the principles involved in the
case, or its bearing upon the general system of Church and state.
Anselm himself stood throughout not upon the abstract wrongfulness of
lay investiture, but upon his own duty of obedience to the decree of
the Lateran Council; he strove not for the privileges of his order, but
for the duties of his conscience. The bishops who refused investiture
at Henry’s hands clearly acted in the same spirit; what held them
back was not so much loyalty to the Pope as loyalty to their own
metropolitan. The great mass of both clergy and laity cared nothing at
all how the investitures were given, and very little for papal decrees;
all they cared about was that they should not be again deprived of
their archbishop, and left, as they had already been left too long,
like sheep without a shepherd. In their eyes the dispute was a personal
one between king and primate, stirred up by Satan to keep the English
Church in misery.

        [45] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 808.

        [46] Lanfranc. Ep. x. (Giles, vol. i. p. 32).

        [47] Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), p. 10.

In the manner in which it was conducted on both sides, the case
compares no less favourably with its continental parallel and with
the later contest in England of which it was the forerunner, and for
which, in some respects, it unquestionably furnished a model, though
that model was very ill followed. For two years the dispute made
absolutely no difference in the general working of the Church; Anselm
was in full enjoyment of his canonical and constitutional rights as
primate of all Britain; he ruled his suffragans, held his councils,
superintended the restoration of his cathedral church, and laboured
at the reform of discipline, with Henry’s full concurrence; and the
clergy, with the archbishop at their head, were the life and soul
of the party whose loyalty saved the king in his struggle with the
barons. Even when Anselm’s position in England had become untenable,
he went over sea in full possession of his property, as the king’s
honoured friend and spiritual father. Not till Henry was provoked
by a papal excommunication of all the upholders of the obnoxious
“paternal customs” except himself, did he seize the temporalities
of the archbishopric; and even then Anselm, from his Burgundian
retreat, continued in active and unrestrained correspondence with his
chapter and suffragans, and in friendly communication not only with
Queen Matilda, but even with the king himself. And when at last the
archbishop who had gone down on his knees to the Pope to save William
Rufus from excommunication threatened to put forth that very sentence
against William’s far less guilty brother, he was only, like Henry
himself in Normandy at the same moment, preparing his most terrible
weapon of war as the surest means of obtaining peace. Henry’s tact
warned him, too, that the time for a settlement was come, and the
sincerity of his motives enabled him to strike out a line of compromise
which both parties could accept without sacrificing their own dignity
or the principles for which they were contending. The English king and
primate managed to attain in seven years of quiet decorous negotiation,
without disturbing the peace or tarnishing the honour of either Church
or crown, the end to which Pope and Emperor only came after half a
century of tumult, bloodshed and disgrace; the island-pontiff who
“loved righteousness and hated iniquity,” instead of “dying in exile”
like his Roman brother, came home to end his days in triumph on the
chair of S. Augustine. The settlement made little or no practical
difference as far as its immediate object was concerned. Henry ceased
to confer the spiritual insignia; but the elections, held as of old
in the royal court, were as much under his control as before. He
yielded the form and kept the substance; the definite concession of
the bishops’ homage for their temporalities fully compensated for the
renunciation of the ceremonial investiture. But the other side, too,
had gained something more than a mere form. It had won a great victory
for freedom by bringing Henry to admit that there were departments of
national life which lay beyond the sphere of his kingly despotism.
It had, moreover, gained a distinct practical acknowledgement of the
right of the Apostolic Curia to act as the supreme court of appeal
in ecclesiastical causes, like the Curia Regis in secular matters.
In a word, the settlement indicated plainly that the system of
William and Lanfranc was doomed to break down before long. It broke
down utterly when Anselm and Henry were gone; the complications of
legatine intervention, avoided only by careful management in Henry’s
later years, led to the most important results in the next reign;
and when the slumbering feud of sceptre and crozier broke out again,
the difference between the cool Norman temper and the fiery blood of
Anjou, between the saintly self-effacement of Anselm and the lofty
self-assertion of Thomas, was only one of the causes which gave it such
an increase of virulence as brought to nought the endeavours of king
and primate to tread in the steps of those whom they professed to have
taken for their examples.

Of more direct and wide-reaching importance, but less easy to trace, is
the working of Henry’s policy in the temporal government of England.
Like his Church policy, with which it was in strict accord, it was
grounded upon definite and consistent principles. At the outset of his
reign circumstances had at once compelled the king to throw himself
upon the support of his English subjects and enabled him to find in
them his surest source of strength. Personally, his sympathies were not
a whit more English or less despotic than those of his predecessor;
but, unlike Rufus, he fairly accepted his position with all its
consequences so far as he understood them, and throughout his reign
he never altogether forsook the standpoint which he had taken at its
beginning. That standpoint, as expressed in his coronation-charter, was
“the law of King Eadward as amended by King William.” In other words,
Henry pledged himself to carry out his father’s system of compromise
and amalgamation, to take up and continue his father’s work; and as
soon as his hands were free he set himself to fulfil the pledge. But
the scheme whose first outlines had been sketched by the Conqueror’s
master-hand had to be wrought out under conditions which had changed
considerably since his death and were changing yet farther every day.
The great ecclesiastical question was only the first and most prominent
among a crowd of social and political problems whose shadows William
had at the utmost only seen dimly looming in the future, but which
confronted Henry as present facts that he must grapple with as best he
could. At their theoretical, systematic solution he made little or no
attempt; the time was not yet ripe, nor was he the man for such work.
He was neither a great legislator nor an original political thinker,
but a clear-headed, sagacious, practical man of business. Such a man
was precisely the ruler needed at the moment. His reign is not one of
the marked eras of English history; compared with the age which had
gone before and that which came after it, the age of Henry I. looks
almost like a “day of small things.” That very phrase, which seems so
aptly to describe its outward aspect, warns us not to despise or pass
it over lightly. It is just one of those periods of transition without
which the marked eras would never be. Henry’s mission was to prepare
the way for the work of his grandson by completing that of his father.

The work was no longer where his father had left it. When the secular
side of the Norman government in England, somewhat obscured for a
while by the ecclesiastical conflict, comes into distinct view again
after the settlement of 1107, one is almost startled at the amount
of developement which has taken place in the twenty years since the
Conqueror’s death--a developement whose steps lie hidden beneath the
shadows of the Red King’s tyranny and of Henry’s early struggles. The
power of the crown had outgrown even the nominal restraints preserved
from the older system: the king’s authority was almost unlimited, even
in theory; the Great Council, the successor and representative of the
Witenagemot, had lost all share in the real work of legislation and
government; of the old formula--“counsel and consent”--the first half
had become an empty phrase and the second a mere matter of course.
The assembly was a court rather than a council, the qualification
of its members, whether earls, barons, or knights, being all alike
dependent on their position as tenants-in-chief of the crown; the
bishops alone kept their unaltered dignity as lineal successors of
the older spiritual Witan; but even the bishops had been compelled by
the compromise of 1107 to hold their temporalities on the baronial
tenure of homage and fealty to the king, a step which involved the
strict application of the same rule to the lay members of the assembly.
Moreover, the Witenagemot was being gradually supplanted in all its
more important functions by an inner circle of counsellors, forming
a permanent ministerial body which gathered into its own hands the
entire management of the financial and judicial administration of the
state. In one aspect it was the “Curia Regis” or King’s Court, the
supreme court of judicature which appropriated alike the judicial
powers of the Witenagemot, of the old court of the king’s thegns
or _theningmanna-gemot_, and of the feudal court of the Norman
tenants-in-chief. In another aspect it was the Exchequer, the court
which received the royal revenues from the sheriffs of the counties,
arranged and reviewed the taxation, transacted the whole fiscal
business of the crown, and in short had the supreme control and
management of the “ways and means” of the realm. The judicial, military
and social organization under the Norman kings rests so completely on a
fiscal basis that the working of the Exchequer furnishes the principal
means of studying that of the whole system; while the connexion between
the functions of the Exchequer and those of the Curia Regis is so close
that it is often difficult to draw a line accurately between them, and
all the more so, that they were made up of nearly the same constituent
elements. These were the great officers of the royal household:--the
justiciar, the treasurer, the chancellor, the constable, the marshal,
and their subordinates:--titles of various origin, some, as for example
the chancellor, being of comparatively recent origin, while others
seem to have existed almost from time immemorial;--but all titles
whose holders, from being mere personal attendants upon the sovereign,
had now become important officials of the state. Like a crowd of
other matters which first come distinctly to light under Henry, the
system seems to have grown up as it were in the dark during the reign
of William Rufus, no doubt under the hands of Ralf Flambard. At its
head stood the justiciar;--second in authority to the king in his
presence, his representative and vicegerent in his absence, officially
as well as actually his chief minister and the unquestioned executor
of his will. This office, of which the germs may perhaps be traced as
far back as the time of Ælfred, who acted as “secundarius” under his
brother Æthelred I., was directly derived from that which Æthelred
II. had instituted under the title of high-thegn or high-reeve, and
which grew into a permanent vice-royalty in the persons of Godwine
and Harold under Cnut and Eadward, and of Ralf Flambard under William
Rufus. Ralf himself, a clerk from Bayeux, who from the position of an
obscure dependent in the Conqueror’s household had made his way by
the intriguing, pushing, unscrupulous temper which had earned him his
nickname of the “Firebrand,” was an upstart whom the barons of the
Conquest may well have despised as much as the native English feared
and hated him. After an interval during which his office was held
by Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln--a former chancellor of the Red
King--it passed to a man who from beginnings almost as lowly as those
of Ralf rose to yet loftier and, it is but fair to add, purer fame.
Henry in his wandering youth, as he rode out from Caen one morning
with a few young companions, stopped to hear mass at a little wayside
chapel. The poor priest who served it, guessing by their looks the
temper of his unexpected congregation, rattled through the office with
a speed which delighted them; they all pronounced him just the man for
a soldier’s chaplain; Henry enlisted him as such, and soon found that
he had picked up a treasure. Roger became his steward, and discharged
his functions with such care, fidelity and good management as earned
him the entire confidence of his master.[48] Soon after Henry’s
accession he was appointed chancellor, a post whose duties involved,
besides the official custody of the royal seal, the superintendence
of the clerks of the king’s chapel or chancery, who were charged
with the keeping of the royal accounts, the conducting of the royal
correspondence, the drawing up of writs and other legal documents and
records, and who were now formed into a trained and organized body
serving as secretaries for all departments of state business. From 1101
to 1106 this office seems to have been held successively by Roger,
William Giffard, and Waldric; Roger probably resumed it in 1106 on
Waldric’s elevation to the bishopric of Laon, but if so he resigned it
again next year, to become bishop of Salisbury and justiciar.[49]

        [48] Will. Newburgh, l. i. c. 6 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 36).

        [49] Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 56.

Henry’s justiciar-bishop was the type of a class. The impossibility
of governing England securely by means of feudal machinery, even
with all the checks and safeguards which could be drawn from the old
English administrative system, had by this time become self-evident.
The conduct of the barons had at once proved to Henry the necessity
and given him the justification for superseding them in all the more
important functions of government, by carrying out, with a free and
strong hand, the scheme which Æthelred II. had originated under less
favourable circumstances--the organization of a distinct ministerial
body, directly dependent upon the crown. Of this body the model, as
well as the head, was the bishop of Salisbury. Under his direction
there grew up a trained body of administrators, most of them clerks
like himself, several being his own near relatives, and almost all
upstarts--_novi homines_, “new men” in the phrase of the time--compared
with the nobles whose fathers had come over with the Conqueror; forming
a sort of official caste, separate alike from the feudal nobility
and from the mass of the people, and no doubt equally obnoxious to
both, but very much better fitted than any instruments which either
could have furnished for managing the business of the state at that
particular crisis. Over and above the obloquy which naturally fell upon
them as the instruments of royal justice or royal extortion, there
was, however, another cause for the jealousy with which they were
generally regarded. Henry is charged with showing, more especially in
his later years, a preference for foreigners which was equally galling
to all his native subjects, whatever their descent might be.[50] It
was not that he set Normans over Englishmen, but that he set men of
continental birth over both alike. The words “Norman” and “English”
had in fact acquired a new meaning since the days of the Conquest. The
sons and grandsons of the men who had come over with Duke William never
lost one spark of their Norman pride of race; but the land of their
fathers was no longer their home; most of them were born in England,
some had English wives, and even English mothers; to nearly all, the
chief territorial, political and personal interests of their lives
were centred in the island. The constant wars between the Conqueror’s
successors tended still further to sever the Normans of the duchy from
those of the kingdom, and to drive the latter to unite themselves,
at least politically, with their English fellow-subjects. Already in
the wars of Rufus and Robert the change of feeling shows itself in
the altered use of names; the appellations “Norman” and “French” are
reserved exclusively for the duke and his allies, and the supporters
of the king of England are all counted together indiscriminately as
English. Tinchebray is distinctly reckoned as an English victory.
From that moment Normandy was regarded, both by its conquerors and
by its French neighbours, as a foreign dependency of the English
crown. Historians on both sides of the sea, as they narrate the wars
between Henry and Louis of France which arose out of that conquest,
unconsciously shadow forth the truth that the reunion of England and
Normandy really tended to widen the gulf between them. The greatest
French statesman of the day, Suger, abbot of S. Denis, sets the
relation between the two nationalities in the most striking light when
he justifies the efforts of his own sovereign Louis to drive Henry
out of the duchy on the express ground that “Englishmen ought not to
rule over Frenchmen, nor French over English.”[51] One of our best
authorities on the other side, the son of a Frenchman from Orléans who
had come in the train of Roger of Montgomery and married an English
wife--though he spent his whole life, from the age of ten years, in the
Norman monastery of Saint-Evroul, never ceased to regard his mother’s
country as his own, showed his love for it in the most touching
expressions of remembrance, and took care to send forth his history to
the world under the name of _Orderic the Englishman_. This last was no
doubt a somewhat extreme case. Still the fusion between the two races
had clearly begun; it was helped on directly by Henry’s whole policy,
by the impartial character of his internal administration, by the
nature and circumstances of his relations with his chief continental
neighbours, France and Anjou; indirectly it was helped on by the
sense of a common grievance in the promotion of “strangers”--men born
beyond sea--over the heads of both alike. Slight as were the bonds
between them at present, they were the first links of a chain which
grew stronger year by year; and the king’s last and grandest stroke
of policy, the marriage of his daughter and destined successor with
the count of Anjou, did more than anything else to quicken the fusion
of the two races by driving them to unite against sovereigns who were
equally aliens from both.

        [50] Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), p. 224.

        [51] Suger, _Vita Ludovici Grossi_, c. 1 (_Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 12).

Roger’s great work as justiciar was the organization of the Exchequer.
Twice every year the barons of the Exchequer met under his presidency
around the chequered table whence they derived their name, and
settled accounts with the sheriffs of the counties. As the sheriffs
were answerable for the entire revenue due to the crown from their
respective shires, the settlement amounted to a thorough review of the
financial condition of the realm. The profits of the demesne lands
and of the judicial proceedings in the shire-court, now commuted at a
fixed sum under the title of “ferm of the shire”; the land-tax, or as
it was still called, the Danegeld, also compounded for at a definite
rate; the so-called “aids” which in the case of the towns seem to have
corresponded to the Danegeld in the rural districts; the feudal sources
of income, reliefs, wardships, marriage-dues, escheats; the profits
arising out of the strict and cruel forest-law, the one grievance of
his predecessor’s rule which Henry had from the beginning refused to
redress; all these and many other items found their places in the
exhaustive proceedings of King Henry’s court of Exchequer. Hand in hand
with its financial work went the judicial work of the Curia Regis: a
court in theory comprehending the whole body of tenants-in-chief, but
in practice limited to the great officers of the household and others
specially appointed by the king, and acting under him, or under the
chief justiciar as his representative, as a supreme tribunal of appeal,
and also of first resort in suits between tenants-in-chief and in a
variety of other cases called up by special writ for its immediate
cognisance. It had moreover the power of acting directly upon the lower
courts in another way. The assessment of taxes was still based upon the
Domesday survey; but transfers of land, changes in cultivation, the
reclaiming of wastes on the one hand and the creation of new forests on
the other, necessarily raised questions which called for an occasional
revision and readjustment of taxation. This was effected by sending the
judges of the King’s Court--who were only the barons of the Exchequer
in another capacity--on judicial circuits throughout the country, to
hold the pleas of the crown and settle disputed points of assessment
and tenure in the several shires. As the justices thus employed held
their sittings in the shire-moot, the local and the central judicature
were thus brought into immediate connexion with each other, and the
first stepping-stone was laid towards bridging over the gap which
severed the lower from the higher organization.

By the establishment of a careful and elaborate administrative routine
Henry and Roger thus succeeded in binding together all branches of
public business and all classes of society in intimate connexion with
and entire dependence on the crown, through the medium of the Curia
Regis and the Exchequer. The system stands portrayed at full length
in the _Dialogue_ in which Bishop Roger’s great-nephew expounded the
constitution and functions of the fully developed Court of Exchequer;
its working in Roger’s own day is vividly illustrated in the one
surviving record which has come down to us from that time, the earliest
extant of the “Pipe Rolls” (so called from their shape) in which the
annual statement of accounts was embodied by the treasurer. The value
of this solitary roll of Henry I.--that of the year 1130--lies less in
the dry bones of the actual financial statement than in the mass of
personal detail with which they are clothed, and through which we get
such an insight as nothing else can afford into the social condition of
the time. The first impression likely to be produced by the document is
that under Henry I. and Roger of Salisbury--“the Lion of Justice” and
“the Sword of Righteousness”--every possible contingency of human life
was somehow turned into a matter of money for the benefit of the royal
treasury. It must, however, be remembered that except the Danegeld,
there was no direct taxation; the only means, therefore, of making up
a budget at all was by the feudal levies and miscellaneous incidents;
and these were no longer, as in the Red King’s days, instruments of
unlimited extortion, but were calculated according to a regular and
fairly equitable scale, subject to frequent modification under special
circumstances. Still the items look strange enough. We see men paying
to get into office and paying to get out of it; heirs paying for the
right to enter upon their inheritance; would-be guardians paying that
they may administer the estates of minors; suitors paying for leave
to marry heiresses or dowered widows; heiresses and widows paying for
freedom to wed the man of their own choice. The remittances are not
always in money; several of the king’s debtors sent coursing-dogs or
destriers; one has promised a number of falcons, and there are some
amusingly minute stipulations as to their colour.[52] There is an
endless string of land-owners, great and small, paying for all sorts
of privileges connected with their property; some for leave to make an
exchange of land with a neighbour, some to cancel an exchange already
made; some to procure the speedy determination of a suit with a rival
claimant of their estates, some on the contrary to delay or avoid
answering such a claim, and some for having themselves put forth claims
which they were unable to prove; the winner pays for his success, the
loser for failing to make good his case; the treasury gains both ways.
Jewish usurers pay for the king’s help in recovering their debts from
his Christian subjects.[53] The citizens of Gloucester promise thirty
marks of silver if the king’s justice can get back for them a sum of
money “which was taken away from them in Ireland.”[54] This last-quoted
entry brings us at once to another class of items, perhaps the most
interesting of all; those which relate to the growing liberties of the
towns.

        [52] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 111.

        [53] _Ib._ pp. 147, 148, 149.

        [54] _Ib._ p. 77.

The English towns differed completely in their origin and history
from those of the states which had arisen out of the ruins of the
Roman Empire. The great cities of Italy and Gaul were daughters of
Rome; they were the abiding depositaries of her social, municipal and
political traditions; as such, they had a vitality and a character
which, like their great mistress and model, they were able to
preserve through all the changes of barbarian conquest and feudal
reorganization. The English towns had no such imperial past; in their
origin and earliest constitution they were absolutely undistinguishable
from the general crowd of little rural settlements throughout the
country. Here and there, for one reason or another, some particular
spot attracted an unusually large concourse of inhabitants; but
whether sheltered within the walls of a Roman military encampment like
Winchester and York, or planted on the top of an almost immemorial
hill-fort like Old Sarum, or gathered in later days round some fortress
raised for defence against the Welsh or the Danes like Taunton or
Warwick, or round some venerated shrine like Beverley or Malmesbury
or Oxford, still the settlement differed in nothing but its size
from the most insignificant little group of rustic homesteads which
sent its reeve and four men to the court of the hundred and the
shire. The borough was nothing more than an unusually large township,
generally provided with a dyke and palisade, or sometimes even a
wall, instead of the ordinary quickset hedge; or it was a cluster of
townships which had somehow coalesced, but without in any way forming
an organic whole. Each unit of the group had its own parish church
and parochial machinery for both spiritual and temporal purposes,
its own assembly for transacting its own internal affairs; while the
general borough-moot, in a town of this kind, answered roughly to
the hundred-court of the rural districts, and the character of the
borough-constitution itself resembled that of the hundred rather
than that of the single township. The earlier and greater towns
must have been originally free; a few still retain in their common
lands a vestige of their early freedom. But the later towns which
grew up around the hall of a powerful noble, or a great and wealthy
monastery, were dependent from the first upon the lord of the soil
on which they stood; their inhabitants owed suit and service to the
earl, the bishop, or the abbot, whichever he might chance to be, and
their reeve was appointed by him. On the other hand, when it became
a recognized principle that everybody must have a lord, and that all
folkland belonged to the king, it followed as a natural inference that
all towns which had no other lord were counted as royal demesnes,
and their chief magistrate was an officer of the crown. In the great
cities he usually bore the title of _port-reeve_, a word whose first
syllable, though here used to represent the town in general, refers
in strict etymology to the _porta_, or place where the market was
held, and thus at once points to the element in the life of the towns
which gave them their chief consequence and their most distinctive
character. The Norman conquest had led to a great increase of their
trading importance; a sense of corporate life and unity grew up within
them; their political position became more clearly defined; they began
to recognize themselves, and to win their recognition at the hands of
the ruling powers, as a separate element in the state. The distinction
was definitely marked by the severance of their financial interests
from those of the shires in which they stood; a fixed “aid,” varying
according to their size and wealth, was substituted in their case
for the theoretically even, but practically very unfair pressure of
the Danegeld; and to avoid all risk of extortion on the part of the
sheriff, their contribution to the ferm of the shire was settled at a
fixed round sum deducted from the total and accounted for as a separate
item, under the name of _firma burgi_, either by the sheriff or, in
some cases where the privilege had been specially conferred, by the
towns themselves. At the same time the voluntary institution of the
gilds, which had long acted as a supplement to the loose territorial
and legal constitution of the boroughs, forced its way into greater
prominence; the merchant-gilds made their appearance no longer as
mere private associations, but as legally organized bodies endowed
with authority over all matters connected with trade in the great
mercantile cities; the recognition of their legal status--generally
expressed by the confirmation of the right to possess a “gild-hall”
(or, as it was called in the north, a “hans-house”)--became a main
point in the struggles of the towns for privileges and charters. The
handicraftsmen, fired with the same spirit of association, banded
themselves together in like manner; the weavers of London, Huntingdon
and Lincoln, the leather-sellers and weavers of Oxford, bought of
the crown in 1130 a formal confirmation of the customs of their
respective gilds.[55] The lesser towns followed, as well as they
could, the example of the great cities; they too won from their lords
a formal assurance of their privileges; Archbishop Thurstan’s charter
to Beverley was expressly modelled on that granted by King Henry to
York.[56]

        [55] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), Oxford, pp. 2 and 5;
        Huntingdon, p. 48; Lincoln, pp. 109, 114; London, p. 144.

        [56] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 109, 110 (3d ed.).

[Illustration: Plan I.

  WINCHESTER in the XII century.

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

We may glance at some of the towns of southern England in company
with some travellers from Gaul who visited them in the later years
of Henry’s reign. The cathedral church of Laon had been burnt down
and its bishop Waldric slain in a civic tumult in 1112. Waldric had
once been chancellor to King Henry,[57] and the reports which he
and others had brought to Laon of the wealth and prosperity of the
island[58] led some of the canons, after perambulating northern Gaul
to collect donations for the restoration of their church, to venture
beyond sea for the same object. They set sail from Wissant--seemingly
in an English ship, for its captain bore the English-sounding name of
Coldistan--in company with some Flemish merchants who were going to
buy wool in England, and they landed at Dover after a narrow escape
from some pirates who chased their vessel in the hope of seizing the
money which it was known to contain.[59] They naturally made their
way to Canterbury first, to enlist the sympathies of the archbishop
and his chapter, as well as those of the scarcely less wealthy and
powerful abbey of S. Augustine.[60] Thence they apparently proceeded
to Winchester.[61] The old West-Saxon capital had lost its ancient
rank; London, which had long surpassed it in commercial and political
importance, had now superseded it as the crowning-place and abode of
kings. But its connexion with the crown was far from being broken.
Its proximity to the New Forest made it a favourite residence of the
Conqueror and his sons; William himself had built not only a castle on
the high ground at the western end of the city, just below the west
gate of the Roman enclosure, but also a palace in its south-eastern
quarter, hard by the cathedral and the New Minster; it was here that
he usually held his Easter court, and his successors continued the
practice. One very important department of the royal administration,
moreover, was still permanently centred at Winchester--the Treasury,
which under its English title of the “Hoard” had been settled there
by Eadward the Confessor, and which seems not to have been finally
transferred to Westminster till late in the reign of Henry II.[62]
Of the two great religious foundations, one, the “Old Minster,” or
cathedral church of S. Swithun, the crowning-place and burial-place of
our native kings, assumed under the hands of its first Norman bishop
the aspect which, outwardly at least, it still retains. The other,
the “New Minster,” so strangely placed by Ælfred close beside the old
one, had incurred William’s wrath by the deeds of its abbot and some
of its monks who fought and fell at Senlac; to punish the brotherhood,
he planted his palace close against the west front of their church;
and they found their position so intolerable that in 1111, by Henry’s
leave, they migrated outside the northern boundary of Winchester to a
new abode which grew into a wealthy and flourishing house under the
name of Hyde Abbey, leaving their old home to fall into decay and to
be represented in modern days by a quiet graveyard.[63] As a trading
centre Winchester ranked in Henry’s day, and long after, second to
London alone; the yearly fair which within living memory was held on S.
Giles’s day upon the great hill to the east of the city[64] preserved a
faint reminiscence of the vast crowds of buyers and sellers who flocked
thither from all parts of the country throughout the middle ages.

        [57] On Waldric (or Gualdric) and Laon see Guibert of Nogent,
        _De Vitâ suâ_, l. iii. c. 4, _et seq._ (D’Achéry, _Guib.
        Noviog. Opp._, p. 498, _et seq._). Cf. above, p. 22.

        [58] “Quæ [sc. Anglia] tunc temporis magnâ divitiarum florebat
        opulentiâ pro pace et justitiâ quam rex ejus Henricus ... in
        eâ faciebat.” Herman. Mon. _De Mirac. S. Mariæ_, l. ii. c. 1
        (D’Achéry, _Guib. Noviog. Opp._, p. 534).

        [59] _Ib._ c. 4 (pp. 535, 536).

        [60] _Ib._ c. 6 (p. 536).

        [61] Herman. Mon., l. ii. c. 7 (D’Achéry, _Guib. Noviog. Opp._,
        p. 536).

        [62] At the date of the _Dialogus de Scaccario_ (A.D. 1178)
        its headquarters seem to have fluctuated between London and
        Winchester, and to have been quite recently, if they were
        not even yet, most frequently at the latter place. See the
        payments to the accountants: “Quisque iii denarios si Londoniæ
        fuerint; si Wintoniæ, quia inde solent assumi, duos quisque
        habet.”--_Dial. de Scacc._, l. i. c. 3 (Stubbs, _Select
        Charters_, p. 175, 3d ed.).

        [63] Flor. Worc. (Thorpe) vol. ii. p. 64. Ann. Waverl. a.
        1111. The king’s charter confirming the removal is dated 1114;
        Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. ii. p. 444.

        [64] It is mentioned in Henry’s charter to Hyde; Dugdale, as
        above.

At the opposite end of the New Forest the little town of Twinham,
or Christchurch as it was beginning to be called from its great
ecclesiastical establishment, whose church had been rebuilt on a grand
scale by Ralf Flambard, had, on the octave of Pentecost, a fair which
the travellers took care to attend, much to the disgust of the dean,
who was anxious to secure all the offerings of the assembled crowd
for the improvement of his own church, and had no mind to share them
with our Lady of Laon.[65] They met with a warmer welcome at Exeter at
the hands of its archdeacon and future bishop Robert.[66] In the next
reign Exeter was counted as the fourth city in the kingdom.[67] Natural
wealth of its own it had none; the bare rocky soil of the south coast
of Devon produced nothing but a few oats, and those of the poorest
quality;[68] but the mouth of the Exe furnished a safe and convenient
anchorage for small merchant vessels either from Gaul or from Ireland,
and though Bristol was fast drawing away this latter branch of her
trade, Exeter could still boast of “such an abundance of merchandise
that nothing required for the use of man could ever be asked for
there in vain.”[69] It was far otherwise with Salisbury, to which the
travellers were probably drawn chiefly by the fame of its bishop;[70]
the Salisbury of those days was not the city in the plain which now
spreads itself around the most perfect of English Gothic minsters,
but the city whose traces, in a very dry summer, may still now and
then be seen in the fields which cover the hill of Old Sarum. Crowded
as it was into that narrow circle--narrow, and without possibility
of enlargement--Bishop Roger’s Salisbury was an excellent post for
military security, but it had no chance of attaining industrial or
commercial importance, although he did not disdain to accept the
grant of its market tolls, which till 1130 formed part of the ferm of
Wilton.[71] Wilton was apparently still the chief town of the shire to
which it had originally given its name; like Christchurch it had its
fair, but, like Christchurch too, its importance was mainly derived
from its abbey, where the memory of S. Eadgyth or Edith, a daughter
of Eadgar, was venerated by English and Normans alike, by none more
than the queen who shared Eadgyth’s royal blood and had once borne
her name.[72] The visitors from Laon, however, seem to have been more
impressed by another name which one is somewhat startled to meet in
this southern region--that of Bæda, whose tomb was shown them in the
abbey church of Wilton, and was believed to be the scene of miraculous
cures.[73] They retraced their steps into Devonshire, where they found
the legends of Arthur as rife among the people as they were among the
Bretons of Gaul; they were shown the chair and oven of the “blameless
king,” and a tumult nearly arose at Bodmin out of a dispute between one
of their party and a man who persisted in asserting that Arthur was
still alive.[74] After visiting Barnstaple and Totnes[75] they turned
northward towards the greatest seaport of the west, and indeed, with
one exception, of all England: Bristol.

        [65] Herman. Mon., l. ii. cc. 10, 11 (D’Achéry, _Guib. Noviog.
        Opp._, pp. 537, 538).

        [66] _Ib._ l. ii. c. 12 (p. 539).

        [67] _Gesta Stephani_ (Sewell), p. 21.

        [68] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. ii. c. 94 (Hamilton, p.
        201).

        [69] _Ibid._

        [70] Herman. Mon., l. ii. c. 13 (p. 539).

        [71] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 13.

        [72] _Ibid._

        [73] Herman. Mon., l. ii. c. 14 (D’Achéry, _Guib. Noviog.
        Opp._, p. 539).

        [74] _Ib._ l. ii. cc. 15, 16 (pp. 539, 540).

        [75] _Ib._ l. ii. cc. 17–19 (p. 540).

[Illustration: Plan  II.

  BRISTOL in the XII century.

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

To trace out the Bristol of the twelfth century in the Bristol of
to-day is a matter of difficulty not only from the enormous growth of
the town, but from the changes which have taken place in the physical
conformation of its site. Nominally, it still stands on the peninsula
formed by the junction of the Frome and the Avon; but the courses of
both rivers have been so altered and disguised that the earlier aspect
of the place is very hard to realize. The original Bristol stood wholly
upon the high ground which now forms the neck of the peninsula, then a
small tongue of land surrounded on the south-east by the Avon, on the
north, west and south by the Frome, which flowed round it almost in
the form of a horse-shoe and fell into the Avon on the southern side
of the town, just below the present Bristol Bridge.[76] Before the
Norman conquest, it seems, the lower course of the Frome had already
been diverted from its natural bed;[77] its present channel was not dug
till the middle of the thirteenth century, across a wide expanse of
marsh stretching all along the right bank of both rivers, and flooded
every day by the tide which came rushing up the estuary of Severn
almost to the walls of the town, and made it seem like an island in the
sea.[78] Within its comparatively narrow limits Bristol must have been
in general character and aspect not unlike what it is to-day--a busy,
bustling, closely-packed city, full of the eager, active, surging life
of commercial enterprise. Ostmen from Waterford and Dublin, Northmen
from the Western Isles and the more distant Orkneys, and even from
Norway itself, had long ago learnt to avoid the shock of the “Higra,”
the mighty current which still kept its heathen name derived from the
sea-god of their forefathers,[79] and make it serve to float them into
the safe and commodious harbour of Bristol, where a thousand ships
could ride at anchor.[80] As the great trading centre of the west
Bristol ranked as the third city in the kingdom,[81] surpassed in
importance only by Winchester and London. The most lucrative branch
of its trade, however, reflects no credit on its burghers. All the
eloquence of S. Wulfstan and all the sternness of the Conqueror had
barely availed to check for a while their practice of kidnapping men
for the Irish slave-market; and that the traffic was again in full
career in the latter years of Henry I. we learn from the experiences
of the canons of Laon. They eagerly went on board some of the vessels
in the harbour to buy some clothes, and to inspect the strange wares
brought from lands which can have had little or no intercourse with the
inland cities of Gaul. On their return they were solemnly implored by
their friends in the city not to run such a risk again, as they would
most likely find the ships suddenly put to sea and themselves sold into
bondage in a foreign land.[82]

        [76] See the description of Bristol in _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell),
        p. 37.

        [77] Seyer, _Memoirs of Bristol_, vol. ii. pp. 18–27.

        [78] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 37.

        [79] See the description of the “Higra,” and of Bristol, in
        Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. iv. cc. 153, 154 (Hamilton, p.
        292).

        [80] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 37.

        [81] In _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 21, Exeter is called the
        fourth city in the realm. As London and Winchester are always
        counted first and second, the third can only be Bristol.

        [82] Herman. Mon., l. ii. c. 21 (D’Achéry, _Guib. Noviog.
        Opp._, p. 541).

No such dangers awaited them at Bath. With their reception there by the
bishop[83]--whom the healing virtues of its waters had induced first
to remove his bishopstool thither from its lowlier seat at Wells, and
then to buy the whole city of King Henry for the sum of five hundred
pounds[84]--their itinerary comes to an abrupt end. If they penetrated
no further up the Severn valley than Bristol they turned back from the
gates of a region which was then reckoned the fairest and wealthiest
in England. The vale of Gloucester is described as a sort of earthly
paradise, where the soil brought forth of its own accord the most
abundant and choicest fruits, where from one year’s end to another
the trees were never bare, where the apples hung within reach of the
traveller’s hand as he walked along the roads;--above all, where the
fruit of the vine, which in other parts of England was mostly sour,
yielded a juice scarcely inferior to the wines of Gaul. Another source
of wealth was supplied by the fisheries of the great river, the
fertilizer as well as the highway of this favoured district. Religion
and industry, abbeys and towns, grew and flourished by Severn-side.[85]
Worcester was still the head of the diocese; but in political rank it
had had to give way to Gloucester. Standing lower down the river,
Gloucester was more accessible for trade, while its special importance
as the key of the South-Welsh border had made it one of the recognized
places for assemblies of the court from the time of the Danish kings.
The chief town of the neighbouring valley of the Wye, Hereford, had
once been a border-post of yet greater importance; but despite its
castle and its bishop’s see, it was now a city “of no great size,”
whose broken-down ramparts told the story of a greatness which had
passed away.[86]

        [83] _Ib._ l. ii. c. 22 (p. 541).

        [84] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontiff._, l. ii. c. 90 (Hamilton, p.
        194). The grant of the city is in Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. pt.
        i. p. 8; date, August 1111.

        [85] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontiff._, l. iv. c. 153 (Hamilton, pp.
        291, 292).

        [86] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontiff._, l. iv. c. 163 (Hamilton, p.
        298).

Far different was the case of Chester. What the estuary of the Severn
was to the southern part of western England, that of the Dee was to its
northern part; Chester was at once the Bristol and the Gloucester of
the north-west coast--the centre of its trade and its bulwark against
the Welsh. Beyond the Dee there was as yet little sign of industrial
life. Cultivation had made little or no progress among the moorland and
forest-tracts of western Yorkshire, and its eastern half had not yet
recovered from the harrying with which the Conqueror had avenged its
revolt in 1068. For more than sixty miles around York the ground still
lay perfectly bare. “Cities whose walls once rose up to heaven--tracts
that were once well watered, smiling meadows--if a stranger sees them
now, he groans; if a former inhabitant could see them, he would not
recognize his home.” The one thing which had survived this ruin was, as
ever, the work of the Roman.[87] York still kept its unbroken life, its
ecclesiastical primacy, its commercial greatness; the privileges of its
merchants were secured by a charter from the king; they had their gild
with its “alderman” at its head,[88] their “hans-house” for the making
of bye-laws and the transaction of all gild business; and they were
freed from all tolls throughout the shire.[89] Far to the north-west,
on the Scottish border, Carlisle, after more than two centuries of
ruin, had been restored and repeopled by William Rufus. The city had
been destroyed by the Danes in 875, and its site remained utterly
desolate till in 1092 the Red King drove out an English thegn who
occupied it under the protection of Malcolm of Scotland, and reunited
it to the English realm.[90] The place still kept some material relics
of its earlier past; fragments of its Roman walls were still there,
to be used up again in the new fortifications with which the Red King
encircled his conquest; and some years later the _triclinium_ of one
of its Roman houses called forth the admiring wonder of a southern
visitor, William of Malmesbury.[91] But the city and the surrounding
country lay almost void of inhabitants, and only the expedient of a
colony sent by Rufus from southern England, “to dwell in the land and
till it,”[92] brought the beginnings of a new life. Yet before the end
of Henry’s reign, that life had grown so vigorous that the archbishop
of York found himself unable to make adequate provision for its
spiritual needs, and was glad to sanction the formation of Carlisle and
its district into a separate diocese.

        [87] _Ib._ l. ii. c. 99 (Hamilton, pp. 208, 209).

        [88] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 34.

        [89] Charter of Beverley, Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 109,
        110 (3d ed.).

        [90] Eng. Chron. a. 1092.

        [91] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. ii. c. 99 (Hamilton, p.
        208).

        [92] Eng. Chron. a. 1092.

The chief importance of Carlisle was in its military character, as an
outpost of defence against the Scots. On the opposite coast we see
springing up, around a fortress originally built for the same purpose,
the beginning of an industrial community at Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
The “customs” of the town contain provisions for the regulation of
both inland and outland trade; if a merchant vessel put in at the
mouth of the Tyne, the burghers may buy what they will; if a dispute
arise between one of them and a foreign merchant, it must be settled
before the tide has ebbed thrice; the foreign trader may carry his
wares ashore for sale, except salt and herrings, which must be sold
on board the ship. No merchant, save a burgher, may buy wool, hides,
or any other merchandise outside the town, nor within it, except
from burghers; and no one but a burgher may buy, make, or cut cloth
for dyeing.[93] Round the minster of S. John of Beverley, on the
marshy flats of Holderness, there had grown up a town of sufficient
consequence to win from the lord of the soil, Archbishop Thurstan
of York, a charter whose privileges were copied from those of the
metropolitan city itself. As a whole, however, the north was still
a wild region, speaking a tongue of which, as William of Malmesbury
complained, “we southrons could make nothing,” and living a life so
unconnected with that of southern England that even King Henry still
thought it needful to reinforce his ordinary body-guard with a troop of
auxiliaries whenever he crossed the Humber.[94]

        [93] Customs of Newcastle, Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 111,
        112.

        [94] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. ii. c. 99 (Hamilton, p.
        209).

This isolation was in great part due to physical causes. What is now
the busy West Riding was then mainly a vast tract of moor and woodland,
stretching from Wakefield to the Peak and from the Westmoreland hills
to the sources of the Don; while further east, the district between
the lower course of the Don and that of the Trent was one wide morass.
Such obstacles were still strong enough to hinder, though not to bar,
the intercourse of Yorkshire with mid-England. The only safe line of
communication was the Foss Way, which struck across the central plain
and along the eastern side of the Trent valley to Lincoln, and thence
turned north-westward to cross the Trent and wind round between forest
and fen to York. Lincoln was thus the chief station on the highway
between York and the south. Under the Norman rule the city had risen to
a new importance. Two of its quarters had been entirely transformed;
the south-western was now covered by a castle, and the south-eastern
by a cathedral church. Neither building was the first of its kind
which had occupied the spot. Few sites in England could have been
more attractive to a soldier’s eye than the crest of the limestone
ridge descending abruptly to the south into a shallow sort of basin,
watered by the little river Witham, and on the west sloping gradually
down to a broad alluvial swamp extending as far as the bank of the
Trent. The hundred and sixty-six houses which the Conqueror swept away
to make room for his castle[95] were but encroachments on an earlier
fortification, a “work” of mounds and earthen ramparts of the usual
old English type, which now served as a foundation for his walls of
stone.[96] To the ardent imagination of the medieval Church, on the
other hand, the rocky brow of Lincoln might well seem to cry out for
a holier crown, and a church of S. Mary was already in existence[97]
on the site where Bishop Remigius of Dorchester, forsaking his lowly
home in the valley of the Thames, reared his bishopstool amid the
foundations of that great minster of our Lady whose noble group of
towers now rises on the crest of the hill as a beacon to all the
country round.[98] But there were other reasons for the translation
of the bishopric than those of sentiment or of personal taste. Of
the vast Mid-Anglian diocese, which stretched from the Thames to the
Humber, Lincoln was beyond all comparison the most important town.
Even in Roman times the original quadrangular enclosure of Lindum
Colonia had been found too small, and a fortified suburb had spread
down to the left bank of the Witham. During the years of peace which
lasted from the accession of Cnut to that of William, the needs of an
increasing population, as we have seen, covered the site of the older
fortress with dwellings: when these were cleared away at William’s
bidding, their exiled inhabitants found a new home on a plot of
hitherto waste ground beyond the river; and a new town, untrammelled
by the physical obstacles which had cramped the growth of the city
on the hill, sprang up around the two churches of S. Mary-le-Wigford
and S. Peter-at-Gowts.[99] Some fifty years later Lincoln was counted
one of the most populous and flourishing cities in England.[100] The
roads which met on the crest of its hill to branch off again in all
directions formed only one of the ways by which trade poured into its
market. Not only had the now dirty little stream of Witham a tide
strong enough to bring the small merchant vessels of the day quite
up to the bridge: it was connected with the Trent at Torksey by a
canal, probably of Roman origin, known as the Foss Dyke; this after
centuries of neglect was cleared out and again made navigable by order
of Henry I.,[101] and through it there flowed into Lincoln a still more
extensive trade from the lower Trent Valley and the Humber. The “men of
the city and the merchants of the shire” were already banded together
in a merchant-gild;[102] and it is doubtless this gild which is
represented by the “citizens of Lincoln” who in 1130 paid two hundred
marks of silver and four marks of gold for the privilege of holding
their city in chief of the king.[103]

        [95] Domesday, vol. i. p. 336 b.

        [96] G. T. Clark, _Lincoln Castle_ (_Archæol. Journal_, vol.
        xxxiii. pp. 215–217).

        [97] “Sancta Maria de Lincoliâ in quâ nunc est episcopatus,”
        Domesday, vol. i. p. 336. The patron saint of this older
        church, however, was the Magdalene, not the Virgin. See John
        de Schalby’s _Life of Remigius_, in Appendix E. to Gir. Cambr.
        (Dimock), vol. vii. p. 194, and Mr. Freeman’s remarks in
        preface, _ib._ pp. lxxx., lxxxii.

        [98] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. iv. c. 177 (Hamilton, p.
        312). Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 30.

        [99] See Domesday, vol. i. p. 336 b, and Mr. Freeman’s remarks
        in _Norm. Conq._, vol. iv. pp. 218, 219.

        [100] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. iv. c. 177 (Hamilton, p.
        312).

        [101] Sim. Durh. _Gesta Reg._ a. 1121.

        [102] Said to date from the time of Eadward; Stubbs, _Select
        Charters_, p. 166.

        [103] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 114.

[Illustration: Plan III.

  LINCOLN in the XII century.

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

The removal of Bishop Remigius from Dorchester to Lincoln was in
accordance with a new practice, which had come in since the Norman
conquest, of placing the episcopal see in the chief town of the
diocese. The same motive had prompted a translation of the old Mercian
bishopric from Lichfield, now described as “a little town in the
woodland, with a rivulet flowing by it, far away from the throng of
cities,”[104] to Chester, whence, however, it was soon removed again to
the great abbey of Coventry.[105] The same reason, too, caused Norwich
to succeed Thetford as the seat of the bishopric of East-Anglia. It was
but very recently that Lincoln had outstripped Norwich as the chief
city of eastern England. The mouth of the Yare, which had a tideway
navigation quite up to the point where the Wensum falls into it, was
no less conveniently placed than that of the Witham for intercourse
with northern Europe; and the Scandinavian traders and settlers in the
first half of the eleventh century had raised Norwich to such a pitch
of prosperity that at the coming of the Norman it contained twenty-four
churches, and its burghers seem to have been more numerous than those
of any town in the realm except London and York.[106] Twenty years
later their number was indeed greatly diminished; the consequences of
Earl Ralf’s rebellion had wrought havoc in the city. But if its native
population had decreased, a colony of Norman burghers was growing up
and flourishing in a “new borough,” now represented by the parishes
of S. Peter Mancroft and S. Giles; the number of churches and chapels
had risen to forty-four,[107] and in the Red King’s last years the
foundations of the cathedral were laid by Bishop Herbert Lozinga,
whose grave may still be seen before its high altar.[108] Once in the
next reign Norwich supplanted Gloucester as the scene of the Midwinter
Council; King Henry kept Christmas there in 1121.[109] It may have been
on this occasion that the citizens won from him their first charter;
but the charter itself is lost, and we only learn the bare fact of its
existence from the words of Henry II., confirming to the burghers of
Norwich “all the customs, liberties and acquittances which they had in
the time of my grandfather.”[110]

        [104] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. iv. c. 172 (Hamilton, p.
        307).

        [105] _Ib._ cc. 172–175 (pp. 307–311).

        [106] Domesday, vol. ii. pp. 116, 117.

        [107] _Ib._ pp. 116–118.

        [108] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. ii. c. 74 (Hamilton, p.
        151).

        [109] Eng. Chron. a. 1122.

        [110] Charter printed in Blomefield, _Hist. of Norfolk_, vol.
        iii. p. 34.

[Illustration: Plan IV.

  OXFORD in the XII century.

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

It was, however, in the valley of the Thames that English town-life was
growing up most vigorously. Tried by the test of statistics, indeed,
Oxford was still but a small place; in the time of the Confessor
it had only contained about a thousand dwellings, and before the
Domesday survey was made the town had, through some unexplained cause,
suffered such decay that more than half of these were waste.[111] But
the “waste” was quickly repaired under the wise government of Robert
of Oilly, to whom the chief command at Oxford was entrusted by the
Conqueror, and of his nephew and namesake who succeeded to his office.
Before the close of Henry’s reign every side of that marvellously
varied life of Oxford which makes its history seem like an epitome of
the history of all England was already in existence, though only in
germ. The military capabilities of the site, recognized long ago by
Eadward the Elder, had been carefully strengthened; within the natural
protection of its encircling rivers, the town was “closely girt about
with rampart and ditch,”[112] and the mound, raised probably by Eadward
himself, at its western end had been made the nucleus of a mighty
fortress which was soon to become famous in the struggle of Stephen
and Matilda.[113] Nor was fortification the sole care of the D’Oillys;
within and without the city, works of piety and of public utility
sprang up under their direction. The ancient ford which had given the
town a name was no longer the sole means of crossing the network of
streams which fenced it in on every side save one; the High Bridge of
our own day represents one built by the first Robert of Oilly.[114]
Of the sixteen churches and chapels which Oxford now contained,[115]
S. George’s-in-the-Castle was certainly and S. Peter’s-in-the-East
probably founded by him;[116] several of the older parish churches
which had fallen into decay were restored at his expense;[117] and
those of S. Michael and S. Mary the Virgin, as well as that of S.
Mary Magdalene without the walls, were all founded in his time or in
that of his nephew, if not actually by their munificence.[118] One of
these, S. Mary the Virgin, was to become famous in after-days as the
University church. As yet, the centre of intellectual life at Oxford
was the ancient monastery of S. Fritheswith or Frideswide, which after
many vicissitudes had finally passed into the hands of the Austin
canons,[119] and entered upon a new career of prosperity under its
learned prior Guimund, the builder of the beautiful church which now
stands hidden away beneath the later splendours of Christ Church, like
a buried and yet living relic of an earlier and simpler age. Even S.
Frideswide’s, however, had a formidable rival in the priory of Oseney
which the younger Robert of Oilly founded, also for Austin canons, in
the island-meadow overlooked by his castle-tower.[120] The Augustinians
were a new order whose rise was closely associated with the revival of
intellectual and social culture; their houses were the best schools
of the time--schools in which the scholars were trained for secular
no less than for clerical careers--and their presence at Oseney and
S. Frideswide’s was already preparing the intellectual soil of Oxford
to receive, at the close of Henry’s reign, the seeds of the first
English University in the divinity lectures of Robert Pulein.[121]
The burgher-life of the city had long gathered round the church of S.
Martin; in its churchyard was held the portmannimot or general assembly
of the citizens; they had their merchant-gild and their gild-hall;[122]
they had their common pasture-land,[123] the wide green “Port-meadow”
beyond the Isis; and we see the growth of a local industry in the
appearance of the leather-sellers’ and weavers’ gilds. Shortly before
Henry’s death, there were indications that Oxford was soon to regain
the political position which it had held under the old English and
Danish kings, but had entirely lost since their time. A strange legacy
of awe had been left to the city by its virgin patroness. The story
went that Fritheswith, flying from the pursuit of her royal lover,
sank down exhausted at the gate, and, despairing of further escape,
called upon Heaven itself to check him; as he entered the town he was
struck blind, and though her prayers afterwards restored his sight,
no king after him dared set foot within the boundaries of Oxford for
fear of incurring some similar punishment.[124] It must be supposed
that the councils held at Oxford under Æthelred and Cnut met outside
the walls; we cannot tell whether any countenance was given to the
legend by the circumstances of Harald Harefoot’s death; but from that
time forth we hear of no more royal visits to Oxford till 1133--the
very year of Robert Pulein’s lectures. Then we find that Henry I.,
whose favourite country residence was at Woodstock, had been so drawn
to the neighbouring town as to build himself a “new hall” there,[125]
just outside the northern wall, on the ground afterwards known as
Beaumont-fields. He held but one festival there, the last Easter which
he ever spent in England; but each in turn of the rival candidates for
the throne left vacant by his death found Oxford ready to become a
political as well as a military centre of scarcely less importance than
London itself.

        [111] Domesday, vol. i. p. 154. Mr. Parker, in his _Early Hist.
        of Oxford_ (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), pp. 200, 201, suggests that the
        damage was done by the army of Eadwine and Morkere on their
        southward march in 1065.

        [112] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 88.

        [113] The chief stronghold of the new fortress, however, was
        not on the mound; it was a lofty tower--still standing--on the
        western side of the enclosure. It was built by the first Robert
        of Oilly, in 1071; Ann. Osen. ad ann. See Parker, _Early Hist.
        Oxf._, pp. 202–204.

        [114] _Hist. Monast. de Abingdon_ (Stevenson), vol. ii. pp. 15,
        284. See also Parker, _Early Hist. Oxf._, p. 219.

        [115] See lists in Parker as above, pp. 284–286.

        [116] He founded S. George’s in 1074; Ann. Osen. ad ann. On S.
        Peter’s see Parker as above, pp. 250–254.

        [117] _Hist. Abingdon_ (Stevenson), vol. ii. p. 15.

        [118] See the evidence in Parker’s _Early Hist. of Oxford_, pp.
        209, 223, 258–261.

        [119] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. iv. c. 178 (Hamilton, pp.
        315, 316). Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. ii. pp. 143, 144. The
        Augustinians came there in 1111, according to the chronicle
        of Tynemouth, quoted in _Monast._ (as above), p. 143; but the
        local record in p. 144 gives 1121.

        [120] Ann. Osen. a. 1129.

        [121] _Ib._ a. 1133.

        [122] Charter of Henry II., Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 167.

        [123] Domesday, vol. i. p. 154.

        [124] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. iv. c. 178 (Hamilton p.
        315).

        [125] “Ad Pascha fuit rex apud Oxineford in novâ aulâ.” Rob. of
        Torigni, a. 1133.

[Illustration: Plan V.

  LONDON in the XII century.

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

Our great picture of medieval London belongs in all its completeness
to a somewhat later date; it was painted in the closing years of the
twelfth century. But, as in the case of so many other things which only
come out into full light under Henry II., although the colouring and
the details may belong more especially to his time, the main features
were already there in the time of his grandfather. The outline of
the city was a sort of irregular half-ellipse, fenced in upon the
northern or land side by a girdle of massive walls pierced with gates
and fortified with lofty towers; the wall on the south side, being
built close upon the river bank, was gradually washed away by the ebb
and flow of the tide constantly beating upon its foundations. On this
side the river itself was an all-sufficient protection. The eastern
extremity of the city, where the wall came down towards the water’s
edge, was guarded by a mighty fortress, founded by King William in the
earliest days of his conquest to hold his newly-won capital in check,
and always known by the emphatic name of “the Tower.” The western
end was protected by two lesser fortresses,[126]--Castle Baynard and
Montfichet, whose sokes filled up the space between the cathedral
precincts and the city wall. Another, which must have stood in the
same neighbourhood, seems to have been partly destroyed by the fire
which ravaged London a few months before the Conqueror’s death, and
in which the cathedral of S. Paul entirely perished.[127] Part of the
ditch of this fortress was surrendered by King Henry to make room for
a wall with which Bishop Richard was now enclosing his precincts;[128]
while within this enclosure a new church, gorgeous with all the latest
developements of Norman architectural skill, was now fast approaching
completion.[129] S. Paul’s was the rallying-point, as it had been the
nucleus, of municipal life in London. In time of peace the folkmoot
assembled at the eastern end of its churchyard at the summons of its
great bell; in time of war the armed burghers gathered at its west door
and beneath its banner, with the lord of Baynard’s castle as their
standard-bearer.[130] The internal constitution of London, however, was
scarcely a town-constitution of any kind; it was more like an epitome
of the organization of all England. The ordinary system of the parish
and the township, the special franchises and jurisdictions of the
great individual landowners, of the churches, of the gilds--all these
were loosely bundled together under the general headship of the bishop
and the port-reeve, to whom King William addressed his one surviving
English writ, just as he would have addressed the bishop and sheriff
of a county. The writ itself merely confirmed to the citizens “all the
law whereof they had been worthy in King Eadward’s day”;[131] but by
the end of Henry I.’s reign the Londoners had got far beyond this. By
virtue of a royal charter, they had exchanged their regally-appointed
port-reeve for a sheriff of their own choice, and this officer served
at once for the city and for the shire of Middlesex, which was granted
in ferm to the citizens for ever, as the other shires were granted
year by year to their respective sheriffs; they were exempted from
all tolls and mercantile dues throughout the realm, and from suit and
service to all courts outside their own walls, even the pleas of the
crown being intrusted to a special justiciar elected by themselves. Yet
there was no complete civic organization; the charter confirmed all the
old separate jurisdictions and franchises, the various “sokens” and
“customs” of churches, barons and burghers, the wardmoots or assemblies
of the different parishes or townships, as well as the husting or
folkmoot in which all were gathered together,[132]--and left London as
it found it, not a compact, symmetrical municipality, but, as it has
been truly called, simply “a shire covered with houses.”

        [126] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Memorials of Becket_, vol.
        iii.), p. 3.

        [127] Eng. Chron. a. 1087.

        [128] Dugdale, _Hist. of S. Paul’s_, app. xxiv. (Ellis), p.
        305. Stow (_London_, ed. Thoms, p. 26) says that this fortress
        “stood, as it may seem, where now standeth the house called
        Bridewell.” But this is impossible; for the later palace of
        Bridewell stood on the right bank of the Fleet, separated from
        S. Paul’s by the course of that river and the whole width of
        the soke of Castle Baynard, so that the gift of the ditch of a
        castle on its site would have been perfectly useless for the
        enlargement of the precincts.

        [129] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. ii. c. 73 (Hamilton, p.
        146).

        [130] Stow, _London_ (Thoms, p. 121). For the rights and duties
        of the lord of Castle Baynard, see _ib._ p. 24.

        [131] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 82, 83.

        [132] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 108.

This mass of growing life lay chiefly north-east of S. Paul’s, where
a crowd of lesser churches, conventual and parochial, rose out of a
network of close-packed streets and alleys thronged with busy craftsmen
and noisy, chaffering traders. Through the heart of it flowed the
“Wall-brook,” on whose bank there lingered, long after the stream
itself was buried and built over, a tradition of the barges laden with
merchandise which were towed up from the Thames to a landing-place
at the eastern end of the Cheap.[133] Beyond the Walbrook lay the
East-Cheap, almost busier and more crowded still; while to the
north, along the upper course of the Walbrook, was a thriving Jewish
quarter.[134] Population was spreading, too, beyond the walls. Many of
the wealthier citizens dwelt in pleasant suburban houses, surrounded
with bright gardens and shady trees.[135] Some two miles higher up the
river, the populous suburb of Westminster clustered round the famous
abbey built in honour of S. Peter by the last Old-English king, and
the palace of William Rufus, a splendid edifice with a breast-work
and bastion stretching down to the water’s edge.[136] North-west of
the city, just outside the wall, lay the plain of Smithfield, where
a great horse-fair was held every Friday.[137] Beyond was an expanse
of fruitful tillage-lands and rich pastures, watered by running
streams and made merry with the rush of countless watermills;[138]
and this tract was sheltered by a wide belt of woodland stretching
away across the northern part of Middlesex to the foot of the Chiltern
Hills. Here the stag and the fallow-deer, the boar and the wild bull,
had their coverts, beside a multitude of lesser game; all of which
the citizens were by a special privilege entitled to hunt at their
pleasure.[139] Such quasi-regal sport was doubtless only enjoyed by the
greater and wealthier among them; the mass of the young burghers were
content, in the summer evenings when their day’s work was done, with
a saunter among the shady gardens and fresh springs which enlivened
the northern suburbs; while in winter their favourite resort was a
tract of low-lying moor or marsh--the Moorfields of later times--on
whose frozen surface they could enjoy to their heart’s content the
exercises of sliding, sledging and skating.[140] Business, pleasure,
piety, intellectual culture, all had their places in the vigorous life
of the great city. Each of the two great minsters, S. Paul’s and S.
Peter’s, had a school attached to it, and so had the abbey of our Lady
at Bermondsey, just over the water.[141] Money-getting did not absorb
all the energies of the burghers; “they were respected and noted above
all other citizens for their manners, dress, table and discourse.”[142]
“Moreover, almost all the bishops, abbots and great men of England
are, in a manner, citizens and freemen of London; as they have
magnificent houses there, to which they resort, spending large sums of
money, whenever they are summoned thither to councils and assemblies
by the king or their metropolitan, or are compelled to go there by
their own business.”[143] And between these visitors and the resident
citizens there was no hard and fast line of demarcation. Neither the
knight-errant’s blind contempt for practical industry nor the still
blinder contempt of the merely practical man for everything which has
not its value in hard cash had as yet come into existence. Under the
old English system the merchant who had made three long voyages over
sea on his own account was entitled to rank as a thegn, and to take
his place among the nobles of the land. Under the Norman system a link
between the two classes was supplied by the citizens of Norman origin,
to whom London in no small measure owed the marked importance which
it attained under Henry I. The Norman knights had no monopoly of the
enterprizing spirit of their race; the victorious host had scarcely
settled down upon the conquered soil when it was followed by a second
invasion of a very different character. Merchants, traders, craftsmen
of all sorts, came flocking to seek their fortunes in their sovereign’s
newly-acquired dominions, not by forcible spoliation of the native
people, but by fair traffic and honest labour in their midst. The
fusion of races in this class, the class of which the town population
chiefly consisted, began almost from the first years of the conquest.
The process was very likely more helped than hindered by the grinding
tyranny which united all the Red King’s victims in a community of
suffering; but its great working-out was in the reign of Henry I. His
restoration of law and order, his administrative and judicial reforms,
gave scope for a great outburst of industrial and commercial energy.
England under him had her heavy burthens and her cruel grievances; they
stand out plainly enough in the complaints of her native chronicler.
But to men who lived amidst the endless strife of the French kingdom
or the Flemish border-land, or of the Norman duchy under the nominal
government of Robert Curthose, a country where “no man durst misdo with
other,” and where the sovereign “made peace for man and deer,”[144]
may well have looked like a sort of earthly paradise. It is no wonder
that peaceable citizens who only wanted to be quiet and get an honest
living came across the sea to find shelter and security in the rich
and prosperous island. For settlers of this kind it was easy enough to
make a home. No gulf of hatred and suspicion, no ever-present sense
of wrong suffered and wrong done, stood fixed between them and their
English fellow-burghers. Even before the Conqueror’s reign had closed,
English and Normans were living contentedly side by side in all the
chief cities of England: sometimes, as we have noticed in the case of
Norwich, the new-comers dwelt apart in a suburb or quarter of their
own, but the distinction was one of locality only; the intercourse was
perfectly free and perfectly amicable; Norman refinement, Norman taste,
Norman fashions, especially in dress, made their way rapidly among the
English burghers; and intermarriages soon became frequent.[145] In the
great cities, where the sight of foreign traders was nothing new or
strange, and the barriers of prejudice and ignorance of each other’s
languages had been worn away by years of commercial intercourse,
the fusion was naturally more easy; in London, whither the “men of
Rouen” had come in their “great ships,” with their cargoes of wine or
sturgeons,[146] long before their countrymen came with bow and spear
and sword, it was easiest of all. The great commercial centre to which
the Norman merchants had long been attracted as visitors attracted them
as settlers now that it had become the capital of their own sovereign;
and the attraction grew still stronger during the unquiet times in
Normandy which followed the Conqueror’s death. “Many natives of the
chief Norman cities, Rouen and Caen, removed to London, and chose them
out a dwelling there, because it was a fitter place for their trade,
and better stored with the goods in which they were wont to deal.”[147]

        [133] Stow, _London_ (Thoms), p. 97.

        [134] The only body of Jews who appear in the Pipe Roll of 31
        Hen. I are those of London.

        [135] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.) p. 3.

        [136] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.) p. 3.

        [137] _Ib._ p. 6.

        [138] _Ib._ p. 3.

        [139] _Ib._ p. 12.

        [140] _Ib._ p. 11.

        [141] _Ib._ p. 4.

        [142] _Ibid._

        [143] _Ib._ p. 8.

        [144] Eng. Chron. a. 1135.

        [145] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 520.

        [146] _De Institutis Lundoniæ_, Thorpe, _Anc. Laws_, p. 127
        (folio ed.).

        [147] _Vita S. Thomæ_, Anon. II. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol.
        iv.) p. 81.

That the influence of these Norman burghers was dominant in the city
there can be little doubt; but they seem to have won their predominance
by fair means and to have used it fairly. If they, as individuals,
prospered in the English capital, they contributed their full share
to its corporate prosperity, and indirectly to that of the nation at
large. They brought a great deal more than mere wealth; they brought
enterprize, vigour, refinement, culture, social as well as political
progress. In their pleasant, cheerful, well-ordered dwellings many a
noble knight or baron may have been glad to accept a hospitality such
as his own stately but comfortless and desolate castle could never
afford; many a learned and dignified ecclesiastic may have enjoyed a
refinement of society such as he could rarely hope to meet among the
rough and reckless swordsmen with whom the ranks of the high-born
laity were filled. We are not dependent on mere general statements;
we can do as did these barons and prelates themselves; we can go
with them to visit the home of a typical London citizen of the early
twelfth century. In the heart of the busiest trading quarter, on the
spot where Mercer’s Hall now stands in Cheapside, under the shadow of
S. Mary Colechurch, and well within sound of the bells of the more
famous S. Mary-at-Bow, was the house of Gilbert Becket and Rohesia his
wife. When their son, grown to manhood and high in office, was asked
of his origin and extraction, he answered simply that his parents
were citizens of London, dwelling blameless and respected among their
fellow-burghers.[148] Had not the inquisitive zeal of his biographers
led them to search more closely into his pedigree, we might never have
known that his father and mother were foreigners--Gilbert, born at
Rouen, of a respectable burgher family; Rohesia, sprung from the same
rank of life at Caen.[149] Gilbert once filled the office of port-reeve
of London,[150] and bore a high character for intelligence, industry
and upright dealing. Rohesia was the pattern of wives and mothers. Her
domestic affections and her wider Christian sympathies, her motherly
love and her charity to the needy, are seen exquisitely blended
together in her habit of weighing her little son at stated intervals
against money, clothes and food which she gave to the poor, trusting
thereby to bring a blessing on the child.[151] As soon as he was old
enough, he was sent to school at Merton Priory in Surrey,[152] where
his father seems to have been treated as a friend by the prior; and
when the boy came home for his holidays, it was to spend them in riding
and hawking with Richer de L’Aigle, a young knight sprung from one of
the noblest families of Normandy, and a constant visitor and intimate
friend of the little household in Cheapside.[153] It is plain from the
simple, matter-of-fact way in which that household is described that
it in nowise differed from the generality of burgher-households around
it. Its head was wealthy, but not to such a degree as to excite special
notice or envy; he and his wife lived in comfort and affluence, but
only such as befitted their station; they seem to have been in no way
distinguished from the bulk of respectable, well-to-do, middle-class
citizens of their day. The one peculiarity of their home was the
circumstance to which we owe our knowledge of its character and its
history:--that in it had been born a child who was to begin his career
as Thomas of London the burgher’s son, and to end it as Thomas of
Canterbury, archbishop, saint and martyr.

        [148] _S. Thomæ Ep._ cxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. p.
        515).

        [149] Anon. II. _Vita S. Thomæ_ (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 81.

        [150] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii. p. 14) calls him
        _vicecomes_, which in relation to London at this period can
        only mean port-reeve; and a constant tradition of later days
        pointed to the father of S. Thomas as the most venerated
        predecessor of the mayor.

        [151] Anon. I. _Vita S. Thomæ_ (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.),
        p. 7.

        [152] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 14.

        [153] E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 359. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol.
        iv.), p. 6. Garnier, _Vie de S. Thomas_ (Hippeau), p. 3.

The Norman settlers were not the only new element in the population
of the English towns. Flanders, the border-land of Normandy, France
and the Empire, the immediate neighbour of the Norman dukes, the ally
of the English kings, had been for ages associated with the destinies
of England. The relation between the two countries was primarily a
political one; but kindred blood, kindred speech and kindred temper
drew Fleming and Englishman together in the bonds of a natural sympathy
which grew with the growth of both nations. The merchants of Bruges
were even more familiar visitors in London than those of Rouen and
Caen. The trade with Flanders was the most important part of the trade
of eastern England. Not only was the estuary of the Scheld a high-way
of communication with the more distant regions of central Europe,
but Flanders herself was the head-quarters of a flourishing industry
for which the raw material was in great part furnished by England.
The cloth which all Europe flocked to buy at the great yearly fairs
of Bruges and Ghent was made chiefly from the wool of English sheep.
Dover was the chief mart for this export; in the itinerary of the
canons of Laon we see Flemish merchants dispersing to buy wool all over
the country and bringing it up to Dover in great bales, which were
deposited in a warehouse built for that special purpose till they could
be shipped over sea.[154] As yet the Flemings had almost a monopoly
of this weaving trade, although the appearance of weavers’ gilds at
Huntingdon, Lincoln, Oxford and London may show that Englishmen were
already beginning to emulate their example; it may, on the other hand,
point to a Flemish element in the population of these towns. In the
time of William the Conqueror some fellow-countrymen of his Flemish
queen had come not merely to traffic but to dwell in England; in the
time of Henry I. they seem to have become numerous and prosperous
enough to excite the jealousy of both Normans and English. It may have
been partly to allay this jealousy, but it was surely, nevertheless,
a marked testimony to their character as active and trustworthy
members of the state, that in 1111 Henry, casting about for a means of
holding in check the turbulent Welsh whose restlessness was the one
remaining element of disturbance in his realm, planted a colony of
these Flemings in the extremity of South Wales, the southern part of
our Pembrokeshire.[155] The experiment was a daring one; cut off as
they were from all direct communication with England, there must have
seemed little chance that these colonists could hold their own against
the Welsh. The success of the experiment is matter not of history but
of present fact; South Pembrokeshire remains to this day a Teutonic
land, a “little England beyond Wales.” But the true significance of
the Flemish settlements under Henry I. is for England rather than
for Wales. They are the first links of a social and industrial, as
distinguished from a merely political, connexion between England and
the Low Countries, which in later days was to exercise an important
influence on the life of both peoples. They are the forerunners
of two greater settlements--one under Edward III. and one under
Elizabeth--which were to work a revolution in English industry.

        [154] Herman. Mon., l. ii. c. 5 (D’Achéry, _Guib. Noviog.
        Opp._, p. 536).

        [155] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 401 (Hardy, p. 628).
        Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 64; Ann. Camb. a. 1107; Brut
        y Tywysogion, a. 1105.

A third class of foreign settlers stood in a totally different position
from both the Fleming and the Norman. These were the Jews. Their first
appearance in England is said to have been due to the Conqueror, who
brought over a Jewish colony from Rouen to London.[156] They were
special favourites of William Rufus; under Henry they play a less
conspicuous part; but in the next reign we find them at Lincoln,
Oxford, and elsewhere, and there can be no doubt that they were already
established in most of the chief English towns. They formed, however,
no part of the townsfolk. The Jew was not a member of the state; he
was the king’s chattel, not to be meddled with, for good or for evil,
save at the king’s own bidding. Exempt from toll and tax and from the
fines of justice, he had the means of accumulating a hoard of wealth
which might indeed be seized at any moment by an arbitrary act of
the king, but which the king’s protection guarded with jealous care
against all other interference. The capacity in which the Jew usually
appears is that of a money-lender--an occupation in which the scruples
of the Church forbade Christians to engage, lest they should be
contaminated with the sin of usury. Fettered by no such scruples, the
Hebrew money-lenders drove a thriving trade; and their loans doubtless
contributed to the material benefit of the country, by furnishing means
for a greater extension of commercial enterprize than would have been
possible without such aid. But, except in this indirect way, their
presence contributed nothing to the political developement of the
towns; and in their social developement the Jewry, a distinct quarter
exempt from the jurisdiction of merchant-gild or port-reeve as well as
from that of sheriff or bishop, shut off by impassable barriers from
the Christian community around it, had no part at all.

        [156] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iv. c. 317 (Hardy, p. 500,
        note).

Outside this little separate world of the Jewry the general manner
of life was much the same in all ranks of society. The domestic
arrangements of the castle or manor-house differed little from those
of the citizen’s dwelling. In both the accommodation usually consisted
merely of a hall, a “solar” or upper chamber raised on a substructure
of cellars, and a kitchen with its appendant offices.[157] The hall
was the general living, eating, and sleeping-apartment for the whole
household. Its floor was of wood, strewn with hay or rushes;[158] a
fire blazed upon a great stone hearth in its centre, or in a wide
recess at one end; and round the fire were ranged in due order the
tables and benches at which the family, guests and servants all
assembled for meals. In the higher ranks of society the king’s friend
Count Robert of Meulan had set a fashion of taking but one daily
repast--the mid-day dinner--and those who wished to ape courtly manners
followed his example; the practice, however, found little favour with
the mass of the people, who attributed it to aristocratic stinginess,
and preferred their four meals a day according to ancient English
custom.[159] It was in the hall that noble or merchant transacted
his business or conversed with his friends; and it was in the hall
too that at nightfall, when the tables were cleared and the wooden
shutters which closed the unglazed windows safely barred,[160] guests
and servants, divided at most by a curtain drawn across the room, lay
down to sleep in the glow of the dying fire.[161] The solar was used
at once as bedroom and private sitting-room by the master and mistress
of the house;[162] a curtainless bed and an oaken chest,[163] serving
as a wardrobe and fastened with lock and hinges often of elaborate
ironwork,[164] made up its ordinary furniture; in the story of S.
Thomas we catch a glimpse, too, of the cradle in which a burgher-mother
rocked her baby to sleep, wrapped in a dainty silken coverlet.[165] The
whole house, whether in town or country, was commonly of wood.[166]
With open hearths and chimneys ill-constructed, or more probably
altogether lacking, the natural consequence was that fires in towns
were of constant occurrence and disastrous extent; Gilbert Becket’s
house was burnt over his head several times, and in each case a large
part of London shared in the destruction.[167] But the buildings thus
easily destroyed were as easily replaced; while the cost of a stone
house was beyond the means of any but the great nobles, unless it
were here and there some exceptionally wealthy Jew; and there was
no other building material to be had except wood or rubble, for the
nearest approach to a brick which had yet come into general use was
a tile;[168] and although these were sometimes used for roofing, the
majority of houses, even in great cities like London, were covered with
thatch.[169] All the architectural energy of the time spent itself in
two channels--military and ecclesiastical; and even the castle was
as yet a very simple edifice. The various buildings which occupied
its outer ward were mere huts of wood or rubble; and the stone wall
of the keep itself, though of enormous thickness and solidity, was
often nothing more than a shell, the space inside it being divided by
wooden partitions into rooms covered with lean-to roofs of thatch. Even
where the keep was entirely of stone, all thought of accommodation or
elegance was completely subordinated to the one simple, all-important
purpose of defence. It is this stern simplicity which gives to the
remains of our early castles a grandeur of their own, and strikes the
imagination far more impressively than the elaborate fortifications
of later times. But it left no scope to the finer fancies of the
architect. His feeling for artistic decoration, his love of beauty,
of harmonious light and shade, had free play only in his work for the
Church; while the more general taste for personal luxury and elegance
had to find expression chiefly in minor matters, and especially in
dress. During the last reign the extravagance of attire among the
nobles had been carried to a pitch which called forth the energetic
remonstrances of serious men; prelate after prelate thundered against
the unseemly fashions--the long hair curled and scented like a woman’s,
the feminine ornaments, the long pointed shoes and loose flowing
garments which rendered all manly exercises impossible.[170] After
the Red King’s death a reforming party, headed by the new sovereign
and his friend Robert of Meulan,[171] succeeded in effecting a return
to the more rational attire of the ordinary Norman knighthood; a
close-fitting tunic with a long cloak, reaching almost to the feet,
thrown over it for riding or walking.[172] The English townsfolk, then
as now, endeavoured to copy the dress of their neighbours from beyond
the Channel. Among the rural population, however, foreign fashions
were slow to penetrate; and the English countryman went on tilling his
fields clad in the linen smock-frock which had once been the ordinary
costume of all classes of men among his forefathers, and which has
scarcely yet gone out of use among his descendants.

        [157] Turner, _Domestic Architecture_, vol. i. pp. 2, 5.

        [158] _Ib._ p. 16.

        [159] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 407 (Hardy, p. 636).

        [160] Turner, _Domestic Architecture_, vol. i. p. 13.

        [161] _Ib._ pp. 2, 15.

        [162] _Ib._ p. 5.

        [163] _Ib._ p. 16.

        [164] _Ib._ p. 10.

        [165] Ed. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 357. Anon.
        I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 4.

        [166] Turner, _Domestic Architecture_, pp. 8, 17, 18.

        [167] According to Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. iii. p. 8), fires and drunkenness were the two plagues of
        London.

        [168] Turner, _Domestic Architecture_, p. xxvii. (introduction).

        [169] _Ib._ p. 18.

        [170] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 816.
        Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iv. c. 314 (Hardy, p. 498).

        [171] Will. Malm. as above, and l. v. c. 407 (p. 636).

        [172] We see this long cloak in a story of Robert of Bellême
        (Hen. Hunt. _De Contemptu Mundi_, ed. Arnold, p. 310), and in
        that of Henry “Curt-Mantel” (Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._,
        dist. iii. c. 28., ed. Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 157).

The life of the English country folk had changed since the first days
of the Norman settlement almost as little as their dress. The final
transformation, now everywhere complete, of the ancient township into
the feudal manor was but the last step in a process which had begun
at least as far back as the time of Eadgar. The castle or manor-house
of the baron or lord, into which the thegn’s hall had now developed,
was the centre of rural life. Around it lay the home-farm, the lord’s
demesne land, cultivated partly by free tenants, partly by the
customary labour due from the villeins whose cottages clustered on
its border, and whose holdings, with a tract of common pasture and
common woodland, made up the remainder of the estate. In the portion
thus held in villenage, the arable land was distributed in large
open fields in strips of an acre or half an acre in extent, each man
holding a certain number of strips scattered one in one field and one
in another; while in proportion to the total amount of land which he
thus held he contributed one ox or more to the team that drew the
heavy plough wherewith each whole field was ploughed in common. On the
estates of the great abbey of Peterborough the holdings were mostly of
virgates or half-virgates--that is, land to the extent of some thirty
or fifteen acres, and furnishing in the former case two oxen, in the
latter one ox, to the common plough team, which usually consisted of
four; those belonging to the demesne were usually of six or eight.
Each tenant had, besides his land, a right to his share of the common
pasture and the common hay-meadow, as well as of the common woodland
where he fed his pigs on the oak-mast, and cut turf and brushwood for
fuel and other household uses. Some of the lesser tenants had no land,
but were merely “cottiers,” occupying their little cottage with or
without a garden. Whatever the extent and character of their holding,
they held it in consideration of certain services due to the lord,
discharged partly by labour upon his demesne land, partly by customary
payments in money or in kind, partly in work for specified purposes
on particular occasions, known as “boon” or “bene-work.”[173] The
superintendence of all these matters was in the hands of the reeve
or bailiff of the manor, who was charged with the regulation of its
labour, the maintenance of its farming-stock, the ingathering of its
dues, the letting of its unoccupied land, and the general account of
its revenues. Under his orders every villein was bound to do a certain
amount of “week-work”--to plough, sow, or reap, or otherwise labour
on the demesne land a certain number of days every week; generally
the obligation, on every virgate held in villenage, was for two or
three days a week throughout the year, sometimes with an extra day at
harvest-tide. The customary dues and services varied with the special
custom of each manor; they consisted partly of payments either in kind
or money, or both, and partly of services such as hewing, carting,
and drying wood, cutting turf, making thatch, making malt, mowing and
carrying hay, putting up fences, providing ploughs and labour for a
specified length of time at particular seasons, ploughing, sowing,
harrowing and reaping a given extent of the demesne land. Some of the
rents were paid by the discharge of a special duty; the cowherds,
oxherds, shepherds, swineherds, usually held a piece of land “by their
service,” that is, in consideration of their charge over the flocks
and herds of the lord; sometimes we find a further labour-rent paid
by their wives, who winnow and reap so much corn on the demesne.[174]
Many of the cotters doubtless held their little dwellings on a similar
tenure, by virtue of their offices as the indispensable craftsmen of
the village community, such as the blacksmith, the carpenter, or the
wheelwright. The mill, too, an important institution on every large
manor, paid a fixed money rent, and sometimes a tribute of fish from
the mill-stream.[175]

        [173] “Præcaria” or “præcationes.”

        [174] _Liber Niger_ (App. to Chron. Petroburgense, ed.
        Stapleton, Camden Soc.), pp. 158, 163, 164, 165.

        [175] _Liber Niger Petrob._ (Stapleton), p. 158, “i molendinus
        cum i virgâ terræ reddit xl solidos et cc anguillas.”

We may draw some illustrations of the life of these rural communities
from the “Black Book” of Peterborough, in which the manors belonging
to the abbey were described about the year 1125. On the manor of Thorp
there were twelve “full villeins” holding eleven acres each, and
working on the demesne three days a week; there were also six half
villeins who did the like in proportion to their holdings. All these
paid of custom ten shillings annually, besides five sheep for eating,
ten ells of linen cloth, ten porringers, and two hundred loaves for
the love-feast of S. Peter; moreover they all ploughed sixteen acres
and a half for their lord. Six _bordarii_ paid seven shillings a year;
and they all rendered twenty-two bushels of oats for their share of
the dead wood, twenty-two loaves, sixty-four hens, and one hundred and
sixty eggs.[176] At Colingham twenty villeins worked each one day a
week, and three boon-days in August; they brought sixty waggon-loads
of wood to the manor-house, dug and carried twenty loads of turf and
twenty of thatch, harrowed all the winter-ploughing, and paid annually
four pounds in money. There were also fifty sokemen who paid twelve
pounds a year, ploughed, harrowed and reaped eighteen acres, besides
ploughing with their own ploughs three times in Lent; each of them
worked three days in August, and served of custom six times a year in
driving the deer for the abbot’s hunting.[177] At Easton twenty-one
villeins holding a virgate each worked twice a week throughout the
year and three boon-days in August; they had twelve ploughs with which
they worked once in winter and once in spring, and then harrowed; they
ploughed fifteen acres and three roods, whereof five acres and one
rood were to be sown with their own seed; in spring they had to plough
ten acres and a half and sow twenty and a half with their own seed; in
summer, for fifteen days, they had to do whatsoever the lord commanded.
They also made seventy-three bushels of malt from the lord’s barley;
and they paid seventeen shillings and sixpence a year. A man named Toli
held one virgate at a rent of five shillings a year; and eleven sokemen
held thirteen virgates and a half by a payment of twelve shillings,
two days’ work in summer and winter, and fifteen days in summer at the
lord’s bidding. The miller, with a holding of six acres of arable land
and two of meadow, rendered one mark of silver to the lord.[178]

        [176] _Liber Niger Petrob._ (Stapleton), pp. 158, 159.

        [177] _Liber Niger Petrob._ (Stapleton), p. 159.

        [178] _Ib._ pp. 159, 160.

Fisherton, again, supplies illustrations of a great variety of
services. On this manor there were twenty-six “full villeins,” twelve
“half villeins,” one “cotsetus” and three “bordarii.” The full villeins
worked two days a week, the half villeins one day, throughout the year;
the four cottagers worked one day a week in August, their food being
supplied by the lord. The villeins had among them nine ploughs, which
were all brought into requisition once in winter and three times in
spring. The full villeins carted a load of wood, the half villeins
in proportion; the full villeins moreover ploughed and harrowed of
custom an acre in spring, and half an acre in winter; they also lent
their ploughs once in summer for fallowing. At Pentecost the lord
received one penny for every villein plough-ox. Each full villein paid
twopence at Martinmas and thirty-two pence on the four quarter-days;
the half villeins paid half the sum. Every one of them gave a hen at
Christmas. The mill brought three shillings a year, the fishing five
shillings. Land enough for twelve full villeins lay unoccupied; the
reeve had to discharge its dues out of his own purse, and hire it out
at the best rent he could get. There were twenty sokemen, holding three
ploughlands, and lending their ploughs once in winter, twice in spring,
and once for fallowing; each of them reaped one acre, and did two days
bene-work in August; at hay-harvest they gave of custom three days’
work, one for mowing, one for turning the hay, and one for carrying it;
each gave a hen at Christmas, and they all paid four pounds a quarter.
On the demesne were three ploughs, each with a team of eight oxen;
these were under the care of five ox-herds, who held five acres each,
and whose wives reaped one day a week in August, the lord supplying
their food.[179] At Oundle we get a glimpse not only of the rural
township, but of the little dependent town growing up on it. “In Oundle
are four hides paying geld to the king. Of these hides, twenty-five
men hold twenty virgates, and pay of custom twenty shillings a year,
forty hens, and two hundred eggs. The men of the township have nine
ploughs; from Michaelmas to Martinmas they find ploughs for the lord’s
use once a week, and from Martinmas to Easter once a fortnight, and
ten acres fallow. Each virgate owes three days’ work a week. There are
ten _bordarii_, who work one day a week; and fifteen burghers, who pay
thirty shillings. The market of the township renders four pounds and
three shillings. A mill with one virgate renders forty shillings and
two hundred eels. The abbot holds the wood in his own hand. The men of
the township, with six herdsmen, pay five shillings a year poll-tax.
The church of this township belongs to the altar of the abbey of
Borough.”[180]

        [179] _Liber Niger Petrob._ (Stapleton), p. 164.

        [180] _Ib._ p. 158.

Services such as these were doubtless an irksome and a heavy burthen;
to modern ideas of independence, the life of the rural population was
the degraded life of serfdom. But there was another side to the system.
The lord had his duties as well as the villein; the villein had his
rights as well as the lord. When their work for the lord was done and
their customary dues were paid, the villagers were free to make their
own arrangements one with another for the yoking of their oxen to the
common ploughs and the tillage of the common fields; and the rest
of their time and produce of their labour was theirs to do with as
they would, subject merely to such restrictions as to grinding at the
lord’s mill, or obtaining his license for the sale of cattle, as were
necessary for maintaining the integrity of the estate. While they owed
suit and service to their lord, he was bound by his own interest as
well as by law and duty to guard them against external interference,
oppression, or injury; the extent of his rights over them, no less
than of their duties to him, was defined by a strict and minute code
of custom to which long prescription gave all and more than all the
force of law, and law itself could occasionally step in to avenge the
wronged villein even upon his lord; Alfred of Cheaffword is recorded in
the Pipe Roll as having paid a fine of forty shillings for scourging
a rustic of his own.[181] The villein’s life was not harder than that
of the poor free man; it was quite as secure from wrong, and far more
secure from want. The majority of the cultivators were indeed tied to
their land; but their land was equally tied to them; the lord was bound
to furnish each little bundle of acre-strips with its proper outfit of
plough-oxen, to provide each tenant with his little cottage, and to
see that the heritage passed on to the next generation, just as the
manor itself, and with it the tenants and their services, passed from
father to son in the case of a lay proprietor, or from one generation
of monks to another in a case like that of Peterborough. Even if a
villein failed in his dues, the worst punishment that could befall him
was the seizure of his little household goods; eviction was out of the
question. The serfdom of the villein was after all only the lowest
link in a chain of feudal interdependence which ended only with the
king himself. If the “rustics” possessed their homesteads only on
condition of work done at the lord’s bidding and for his benefit, the
knight held his “fee” and the baron his “honour” only on condition
of a service to the king, less laborious indeed, but more dangerous,
and in reality not a whit more morally elevating. If they had to ask
their lord’s leave for giving a daughter in marriage, the first baron
of the realm had to ask a like permission of the king, and to pay for
it too. If their persons and their services could be transferred by
the lord to another owner together with the soil which they tilled,
the same principle really applied to every grade of feudal society;
Count William of Evreux only stated a simple fact in grotesque language
when he complained that his homage and his services had been made
over together with the overlordship of his county by Robert Curthose
to Henry I., with no more regard to his own will than if he had been
a horse or an ox.[182] The mere gift of personal freedom, when it
meant the uprooting of all local and social ties and the withdrawal
of all accustomed means of sustenance, would have been in itself but
a doubtful boon. There were, however, at least three ways in which
freedom might be attained. Sometimes the lord on his death-bed, or in
penance for some great sin, would be moved by the Church’s influence
to enfranchise some of his serfs. Sometimes a rustic might flee to one
of the chartered towns, and if for the space of a year and a day he
could find shelter under its protecting customs from the pursuit of
his lord’s justice, he was thenceforth a free burgher. And there was a
greater city of refuge whose protection was readier and surer still.
The Church had but to lay her consecrating hands upon a man, and he was
free at once. To ordain a villein or admit him as a monk without his
lord’s consent was indeed forbidden; but the consecration once bestowed
was valid nevertheless; and the storm of indignation which met the
endeavour of Henry II. to enforce the prohibition shows that it had
long been almost a dead letter.

        [181] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 55.

        [182] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 814.

If the spiritual life of the English Church in the time of Henry I.
were to be judged solely from her highest official representatives, it
would certainly appear to have been at a low ebb. S. Anselm had lived
just long enough to accomplish the settlement of the investitures,
but not to direct its working or experience its results. On his death
early in 1109 Henry so far fell back into his brother’s evil ways as to
keep the metropolitan see vacant for five years. The supreme direction
of affairs in the Church as well as in the state was thus left in the
hands of the party represented by Roger of Salisbury. Roger’s policy
and that of his master was indeed less flagrantly insulting to religion
than that of Rufus and Flambard; but it was hardly less injurious in
a moral and spiritual point of view. The most important sees were
no longer farmed by Jewish usurers for the king’s benefit; the most
sacred offices of the Church were no longer openly sold to the highest
bidder; but they were made appendages to the great offices of the
state; the Church herself was practically turned into a mere handmaid
of the state, and her ministers into tools for the purposes of secular
government. The system had undoubted advantages in a worldly point of
view. A great deal of the most important political and administrative
work was of a nature which, in the condition of society then existing,
required the services of a clerk rather than of a layman; moreover,
a man in holy orders, incapable of founding a family, and standing,
so to say, alone in the world, was less exposed to the temptations
and corruptions of place and power than a layman surrounded with
personal and social ties and open to all sorts of personal and social
ambitions, and could thus be safely intrusted with a freedom of action
and authority such as in the hands of a lay baron with territorial
and family influence might have led to the most dangerous results. On
these and similar grounds Henry made a practice of choosing his chief
ministers from the ranks of the clergy, and bestowing vacant bishoprics
upon them, by way either of rewarding their past labours or of insuring
a continuance of their zeal and devotion in the discharge of their
temporal functions. Thereby he undoubtedly secured to the state the
services of a more able, vigorous and honest set of administrators than
could have been obtained by any other means; but from another side
the system lay open to grave objection. The men whom it set over the
dioceses of England were, beyond all question, men of very superior
intelligence and energy, and, on the whole, of fair moral character,
men whom it would be most unjust to compare for a moment with the
hirelings who bought their sees of William Rufus. But they were
essentially of the world, worldly; their minds and their hearts were
both alike fixed on their thoroughly well fulfilled duties as treasurer
or justiciar, not on their too often neglected duties as bishop of Ely
or Salisbury. And as were the bishops, so were the priests. When once
it became clear that the main road to ecclesiastical preferment lay
through the temporal service of the crown, the whole body of secular
clergy turned into a nursery of statesmen, and while they rose to their
highest point of worldly importance the little spiritual influence
which they still retained passed altogether away. But the Church’s life
was not in her bishops and her priests; it was in her humble, faithful
laity. Down below the dull utilitarianism, the “faithless coldness of
the times,” the finer sympathies and higher instincts of the soul lay
buried but not dead; ready to spring to the surface with a burst of
enthusiasm at the touch first of the Austin canons, and then of the
monks of Citeaux.

Of the two religious movements which at this time stirred the depths
of English society, the earlier, that of the Austin canons, was in
its origin not monastic but secular. It arose, in fact, out of a
protest against monasticism. About the middle of the eleventh century
an attempt had been made to redress the balance between the regular
and secular clergy, and restore to the latter the influence and
consideration in spiritual matters which they had, partly by their own
fault, already to a great extent lost. Some earnest and thoughtful
spirits, distressed at once by the abuse of monastic privileges and by
the general decay of ecclesiastical order, sought to effect a reform
by the establishment of a stricter and better organized discipline in
those cathedral and other churches which were served by colleges of
secular priests. For this end a rule composed in the eighth century by
Archbishop Chrodegang of Metz for the members of his own chapter, and
generally followed in the collegiate churches of Gaul, was the model
adopted by cathedral reformers in England in the reigns of Eadward
the Confessor and William the Conqueror. Bishops Gisa of Wells and
Leofric of Exeter under the former king, Archbishop Thomas of York
under the latter, severally attempted to enforce it upon their canons,
but without success. The English clergy were accustomed to the full
enjoyment not only of their separate property but of their separate
houses; many were even yet, in spite of Pope Gregory, married men
and fathers of families; and the new rule, which required them to
break up their homes and submit to community of table and dwelling,
was naturally resented as an attempt to curtail their liberty and
bring them under monastic restraint. Lanfranc soon found that the
only way to get rid of the old lax system was to get rid of the
canons altogether; accordingly, from some few cathedrals the secular
clerks were once again, as in Eadgar’s days, driven out and replaced
by monks, this time to return no more till the great secularization
in the sixteenth century. But in the greater number of churches the
canons were influential enough to resist expulsion as well as reform,
and to maintain the old fashion with its merits and its abuses, its
good and evil sides, all alike undisturbed and unrestrained. On the
Continent, too, the rule of Chrodegang proved unequal to the needs
of the time. Those who had the attainment of its object really at
heart ended by taking a lesson from their rivals and challenging the
monks with their own weapons. Towards the beginning of the twelfth
century the attempts at canonical reform issued in the foundation of
what was virtually a new religious order, that of the Augustinians
or Canons Regular of the order of S. Augustine. Like the monks and
unlike the secular canons, from whom they were carefully distinguished,
they had not only their table and dwelling but all things in common,
and were bound by a vow to the observance of their rule, grounded
upon a passage in one of the letters of that great father of the
Latin Church from whom they took their name.[183] Their scheme was a
compromise between the old-fashioned system of canons and that of the
monastic confraternities; but a compromise leaning strongly towards
the monastic side, tending more and more towards it with every fresh
developement, and distinguished from it chiefly by a certain simplicity
and elasticity of organization which gave scope for an almost unlimited
variety in the adjustment of the relations between the active and
the contemplative life of the members of the order, thus enabling it
to adapt itself to the most dissimilar temperaments and to the most
diverse spheres of religious activity.

        [183] On Austin canons see Mosheim, _Eccles. Hist._ (Eng.
        trans. ed. Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 47; on canons in general, _ib._
        vol. i. pp. 494, 495, 538; Stubbs, pref. to _Tract. de Inv. S.
        Crucis_; and Freeman, _Norm. Conq._, vol. ii. pp. 84, 85, 452,
        453, and vol. iv. p. 374.

The Austin canons, as they were commonly called, made their way across
the Channel at the beginning of Henry’s reign. The circumstances of
their earliest settlement illustrate the intimate connexion between the
religious and the national revival in England. Their first priory was
founded in 1108 by the English queen Matilda--“Maude the good queen,”
as they gratefully called her--in the soke of Aldgate, just within the
eastern wall of London. Part of its endowment was furnished by the
estates of an old English cnihtengild whose members surrendered their
property for the benefit of the new community. The house was dedicated
to the Holy Trinity; its first prior, Norman by name, was a native of
Kent who had studied in Gaul under S. Anselm; through Anselm he was
enabled to bring the Augustinian order under the notice of Matilda,
whose confessor he afterwards became. How he lavished all his funds on
the furnishing of his church and the stocking of his library; how the
starving brotherhood set out a row of empty plates in the refectory
to attract the sympathy of the citizens who were taking their Sunday
stroll round the suburb and peeping curiously in at the windows of
the new building; how the pitying burgher-wives vowed each to bring
a loaf every Sunday; and how the plates in the refectory were never
empty again[184]--is a story which need not be repeated in detail.
Some fifteen years later Rahere the king’s minstrel threw up his post
at court to become the head of an Austin priory which he built on a
plot of waste marshy ground along the eastern border of Smithfield. He
dedicated his establishment to S. Bartholomew and attached to it an
hospital for the relief of the sick and needy. Every day--so tradition
told--Alfhun, the master of the hospital, went about the city as the
Little Sisters of the Poor do to this day, begging in the shops and
markets for help towards the support of the sick folk under his care.
Most likely he was himself a London citizen; his name is enough to
prove him of genuine English birth.[185] Another famous Augustinian
house was that of Merton in Surrey. There the brotherhood devoted
themselves to educational work. Their most illustrious scholar--born
in the very year in which their house was founded, 1117--is known to
us already as Thomas the son of Gilbert Becket. At the other end of
England, Walter Lespec, the noblest character among the lay barons of
the time, found comfort for the loss of an only son in “making Christ
his heir”--devoting to God’s service the heritage which had been
destined for his boy, and founding the priory of Kirkham in Yorkshire
on the spot where the lad had expired.[186] Before the close of
Henry’s reign the Austin canons had acquired such importance that two
of their order were raised to the episcopate, one even to the primacy
of all Britain. After five years of vacancy the metropolitan chair of
Canterbury was still too vividly haunted by memories of S. Anselm for
Henry and Roger to venture on trying to fill it from the ranks of the
latter’s party; they gave it to Anselm’s old friend and suffragan,
Ralf, bishop of Rochester.[187] But when Ralf, who at the time of his
election was already an aged man, died in 1122, the seculars, headed by
Roger of Salisbury, made a successful effort to secure a non-monastic
primate. Not daring, however, to go the full length of appointing one
of themselves, they took a middle course and chose a canon regular,
William of Corbeil, prior of S. Osyth’s at Chiche in Essex.[188] The
strict monastic party counted the new sort of canons very little better
than the old ones. William himself, however, was a perfectly blameless
churchman, whose worst fault was a constitutional timidity and
shrinking from political responsibilities which made him powerless to
stem the tide of worldliness among his suffragans, though he at least
kept the metropolitan chair itself safe from contaminating influences.
The case of the other Augustinian prelate is a specially interesting
one. Henry, who so irritated both his English and Norman subjects by
his general preference for foreign churchmen, had nevertheless chosen
for his own spiritual adviser a priest whose name, Eadwulf, shows him
to have been of English origin, and who was prior of an Augustinian
house at Nostell in Yorkshire. The king’s last act before he left
England in 1133, never to return, was to promote his confessor to a
bishopric. Twenty-three years before, following out a cherished plan
of S. Anselm’s, he had caused the overworked bishop of Lincoln to be
relieved of part of his enormous diocese by the establishment of a new
see with the great abbey of Ely for its cathedral and the monks for its
chapter.[189] He now lightened the cares of the archbishop of York
in like manner by giving him a new suffragan whose see was fixed at
Carlisle. Eadwulf was appointed bishop; naturally enough he constituted
his chapter on the principles of his own order; and Carlisle, the last
English bishopric founded before the Reformation, was also the only one
whose cathedral church was served by canons regular of the order of S.
Augustine.[190]

        [184] The history of H. Trinity, Aldgate, is printed in the
        appendix to Hearne’s edition of William of Newburgh, vol. iii.
        pp. 688–709.

        [185] The story of S. Bartholomew’s and its founder comes from
        “Liber fundacionis ecclesiæ S. Bartholomæi Londoniarum,” a MS.
        of Henry II.’s time, part of which is printed in Dugdale’s
        _Monast. Angl._, vol. vi. pt. i. pp. 292–295. The remainder is
        as yet unprinted; but Dr. Norman Moore has published in the _S.
        Bartholomew’s Hospital Reports_, vol. xxi. pp. xxxix.–cix., a
        translation made about A.D. 1400; the 22d chapter of this (pp.
        lxix., lxx.) contains the account of Alfhun.

        [186] The stories of all these Austin priories are in Dugdale,
        _Monast. Angl._, vol. vi. pts. i. and ii. Merton is in pt. i.
        pp. 245–247; Kirkham, _ib._ pp. 207–209.

        [187] Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), pp. 221–223; Will. Malm.,
        _Gesta Pontif._, l. i. c. 67 (Hamilton, p. 126). The king
        wanted to appoint Faricius, abbot of Abingdon; his choice was
        opposed by the seculars, who wanted one of their own party.
        This the monks of Christ Church resisted, but, as Faricius was
        obnoxious because he was an Italian, they finally all agreed
        upon Ralf, and the king confirmed their choice.

        [188] Eng. Chron. a. 1123; Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol.
        ii. p. 7; Gerv. Cant., _Actus Pontif._ (Stubbs, vol. ii.), p.
        380. On S. Osyth’s see Will. Malm., _Gesta Pontif._, l. ii. c.
        731 (Hamilton, p. 146).

        [189] Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), pp. 195, 211; Flor. Worc.
        (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 60; Will. Malm., _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c.
        445 (Hardy, p. 680); _Gesta Pontif._, l. iv. c. 185 (Hamilton,
        p. 325).

        [190] On Carlisle and Eadwulf (or Æthelwulf) see Joh. Hexham,
        a. 1133 (Raine, vol. i. pp. 109, 110); and Dugdale, _Monast.
        Angl._, vol. vi. pt. i. pp. 141–145.

Meanwhile a mightier influence than theirs was regenerating all the
Churches of the West--our own among the number. Its root was in a
Burgundian wilderness; but the seed from which it sprang was of English
birth. Harding was an Englishman who spent his boyhood in the monastery
of Sherborne in Dorset, till he was seized with a passion for wandering
and for study which led him first to Scotland, then to Gaul, and at
last to Rome. It chanced that on his return thence, passing through
the duchy of Burgundy, he stopped at the abbey of Molêmes. As he saw
the ways and habits familiar to his childhood reproduced in those of
the monks, the wanderer’s heart yearned for the peaceful life which he
had forsaken; he took the vows, and became a brother of the house. But
when, with the zeal of a convert, he began to look more closely into
his monastic obligations, he perceived that the practice of Molêmes,
and indeed of most other monasteries, fell very far short of the strict
rule of S. Benedict. He remonstrated with his brethren till they had
no rest in their minds. At last, after long and anxious debates in
the chapter, the abbot determined to go to the root of the matter,
and appointed two brethren, whose learning was equalled by their
piety, to examine diligently the original rule and declare what they
found in it. The result of their investigations justified Harding’s
reproaches and caused a schism in the convent. The majority refused
to alter their accustomed ways; finding they were not to be reformed,
the zealous minority, consisting of Robert the abbot, Harding himself
(or Stephen, as he was called in religion), and sixteen others equally
“stiff-necked in their holy obstinacy,” left Molêmes, and sought a new
abode in the wilderness. The site which they chose--in the diocese of
Chalon-sur-Saône, not far from Dijon--was no happy valley, no “green
retreat” such as the earlier Benedictine founders had been wont to
select. It was a dismal swamp overgrown with brushwood, a forlorn,
dreary, unhealthy spot, from whose marshy character the new house took
its name of “the Cistern”--_Cistellum_, commonly called Citeaux. There
the little band set to work in 1098 to carry into practice their views
of monastic duty. The brotherhood of Molêmes, left without a head
by their abbot’s desertion, presently appealed to the archbishop of
Lyons and the Pope, and after some negotiation Robert, willingly or
unwillingly, returned to his former post. His departure gave a shock
to the foundations of the new community; zeal was already growing
cold, and of those who had followed him out from Molêmes all save
eight followed him back again. Those eight--“few in number, but a host
in merit”--at once chose their prior Alberic to be abbot in Robert’s
stead, while the true founder, Stephen Harding, undertook the duties of
prior. Upon Alberic’s death in 1110 Stephen became abbot in his turn,
and under him the little cistern in the wilderness became a fountain
whose waters flowed out far and wide through the land. Three-and-twenty
daughter-houses were brought to completion during his life-time. One of
the earliest was Pontigny, founded in 1114, and destined in after-days
to become inseparably associated with the name of another English
saint. Next year there went forth another Cistercian colony, whose
glory was soon to eclipse that of the mother-house itself. Its leader
was a young monk called Bernard, and the place of its settlement was
named Clairvaux.[191]

        [191] For the Life of S. Stephen Harding, and the early history
        of Citeaux and its order, see Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iv.
        cc. 334–337 (Hardy, pp. 511–517); Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 711–714; and _Gallia Christiana_, vol.
        iv. pp. 980–984.

From Burgundy and Champagne the “White Monks,” as the Cistercians were
called from the colour of their habit, soon spread over France and
Normandy. In 1128 they crossed the sea and made an entrance into their
founder’s native land; William Giffard, bishop of Winchester, founded
the abbey of Waverley in Surrey for twelve monks from the Cistercian
house of Aumône in Normandy.[192] The movement spread rapidly in all
directions. In 1131 Walter Lespec the founder of Kirkham, zealous
in every good work, established in the heart of the Yorkshire wolds
a “daughter of S. Bernard,” the abbey of Rievaux;[193] far away on
the Welsh border, in the valley of the Wye, Tintern was founded in
the same year by Walter de Clare.[194] The story of another famous
Yorkshire house, Fountains, is a curious repetition of that of Citeaux
itself. Thirteen monks of the Benedictine convent of S. Mary at York,
fired by the example of the newly-established brotherhood at Rievaux,
determined, like Stephen Harding and his friends at Molêmes, to go
forth into the wilderness where they might follow the Cistercian rule
in freedom. But when they asked their abbot’s leave to depart it
was sternly refused. Archbishop Thurstan, to whom they appealed for
support, came in person to plead their cause with the abbot, and was
so insolently received that after a stormy scene in the chapter-house
he laid the convent under interdict, and walked out followed by the
zealous thirteen “with nothing but the clothes on their backs.” The
warmly-sympathizing primate gave them a temporary shelter in his own
home; at Christmas he bestowed upon them for their dwelling a lonely
valley called Skeldale, near Ripon, “full of thorns and enclosed by
rocks,” and for their maintenance the little township of Sutton. They
at once chose one of their number, Richard by name, as abbot, and
went forth under his guidance to settle in their new abode, although
the cold of a Yorkshire winter was at its bitterest, and they had not
where to lay their heads. In the middle of the valley stood a great
elm--“thick and leafy as elms are wont to be.”[195] That tree was the
original abbey of our Lady of Fountains. Its spreading branches formed
a roof to shelter the little band of monks; “their bread was supplied
to them by the archbishop, their drink by the streamlet which ran
through the valley,” and which, as in the case of Citeaux, suggested a
name for the future house. In this primitive dwelling they fulfilled
their religious exercises in peace and contentment till the winter
was past, when they began to think of constructing a more substantial
abode. They had no mind to follow their own inspirations and set up an
independent rule of their own; in all humility they wrote to S. Bernard
(who since the death of S. Stephen Harding was universally looked up
to as the head of the Cistercian order), telling him all their story,
and beseeching him to receive them as his children. Bernard answered
by sending to them, with a letter full of joyous welcome and hearty
sympathy, his friend and confidant, Godfrey, to instruct them in
the Cistercian rule. They had now been joined by ten more brethren.
But the elm-tree was still their only shelter, and their means of
subsistence were as slender as at the first. Presently there came a
famine in the land; they were reduced to eke out their scanty store
of bread with leaves and stewed herbs. When they had just given away
their two last loaves--one to the workmen engaged on the building,
the other to a passing pilgrim--this supreme act of charity and faith
was rewarded with a supply sent them by the lord of Knaresborough,
Eustace Fitz-John. At last, after struggling on bravely for two years,
they found it impossible to continue where they were, with numbers
constantly increasing and means at a standstill; so the abbot went to
Clairvaux and begged that some place might be assigned to them there.
S. Bernard granted the request; but when Abbot Richard came back to
fetch the rest of the brotherhood he found that all was changed. Hugh,
dean of York, had just made over himself and all his property to
Fountains. It was the turn of the tide; other donations began to flow
in; soon they poured. Five years after its own rise the “Fountain”
sent out a rivulet to Newminster; after that her descendants speedily
covered the land. Justly did the brotherhood cherish their beloved
elm-tree as a witness to the lowly beginnings whence had sprung the
mightiest Cistercian house in England. It bore a yet more touching
witness four centuries later, when it still stood in its green old
age, the one remnant of the glory of Fountains which the sacrilegious
spoiler had not thought it worth his while to touch.[196]

        [192] Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. v. pp. 237, 241.

        [193] _Ib._ pp. 274, 280, 281.

        [194] _Ib._ pp. 265, 267, 270.

        [195] So says the historian of Fountains. How this can have
        been, in Yorkshire and at Christmas-time, I cannot pretend to
        explain.

        [196] The story of Fountains is in the _Narratio_ of Hugh of
        Kirkstall, in _Memorials of Fountains_ (Walbran, Surtees Soc.),
        and Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. v. pp. 292 _et seq._ See
        also Will. Newb., l. i. c. 14 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 50). The elm
        was standing in Leland’s day.

The influence of the Cistercians was different in kind from that of the
earlier monasticism. The life of the Benedictines was, so to say, in
the world though not of it. They sought tranquillity and retirement,
but not solitude; the site of an abbey was chosen with a careful eye
to the natural resources of the place, its accessibility, and the
advantages which it offered for cultivation and production of all
kinds. A Benedictine house almost invariably became, and indeed was
intended to become, the nucleus of a flourishing lay population, either
a cluster of rural settlements, or, not unfrequently, a busy, thriving
town. But by the close of the tenth century, although the palmy days
of the Benedictine fathers as the guardians of art and literature were
in part still to come, the work in which they had been unrivalled for
five hundred years, as the missionaries, cultivators and civilizers of
Europe, was well-nigh accomplished; and the position into which they
had unavoidably drifted as owners of vast landed property protected by
special privileges was beginning to show its dangerous side. On the
one hand, the secularizing spirit which had made such inroads upon the
Church in general was creeping even into the cloister. On the other,
the monasteries were growing rich and powerful at the expense of the
parochial and diocesan organization. The laity were too apt, while
showering their pious gifts upon the altars of the religious houses, to
leave those of their own parish churches naked and uncared-for; and the
growing habit of diverting the tithes of various estates and districts
to the endowment of some abbey with which they were quite unconnected
was already becoming a distinct abuse. Against all this the scheme of
the Cistercians was a direct protest. They refused to have anything to
do with tithes in any shape, saying that monks had no right to them;
their houses were of the plainest possible construction: even in their
churches scarcely an ornament was admitted to soften the stern grandeur
of the architecture; there were no broidered hangings, no delicate
paintings, no gold and silver vessels, no crucifixes glittering with
enamel and precious gems; they hardly allowed, even for the most
solemn rite, the use of any vestment more ornate than the simple white
surplice or alb; and their ordinary habit, made from the wool of their
flocks, was not black like that of the Benedictines, but the natural
white or gray, for they looked upon dyeing as a refinement useless to
men who had renounced the cares and pleasures of this life as well as
the deceitfulness of riches.[197] Their aim was to be simply voices
crying in the wilderness--a wilderness wherein they were resolved to
dwell, as much as possible, alone. Their rule absolutely forbade the
erection of a house even of their own order within a certain distance
of another. But the cry that came forth from the depth of their
solitude thrilled through the very hearts of men, and their influence
spread far beyond the number of those who actually joined the order. It
was the leaven of that influence, more than all others, which worked
on and on through the nineteen years of anarchy that followed Henry’s
death till it had leavened the whole lump, regenerated the Church,
and made her ready to become in her turn the regenerator of the state
and the nation. Already, before the order of Citeaux had been half a
century in existence, William of Malmesbury, himself a member of one
of the most ancient and famous of English Benedictine abbeys, could
describe it as the unanimously acknowledged type of the monastic
profession, the ideal which served as a mirror to the diligent, a goad
to the negligent, and a model to all.[198]

        [197] See abstract of rule in Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. v.
        pp. 224, 225.

        [198] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iv. c. 337 (Hardy, p. 517).

How deeply the spirit of religious enthusiasm had penetrated among
the people we see in the story of S. Godric. Godric was born in the
last years of the Conqueror or the earliest years of the Red King at
Walpole, a village in the north-western marshlands of Norfolk; thence
his parents, Ælward and Ædwen, seem to have removed to a place on the
river Welland, near Spalding in Lincolnshire. They were apparently free
rustics of the poorest class, simple, unlearned, upright folk, who
taught their three children to say the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, and
brought them up in the fear of God; other education they could give
them none, and of worldly goods just as little. In the dreary fenland
round the shores of the Wash agriculture and industry were almost
unknown, and the population subsisted chiefly on whatever they found
left behind by the waves on the long reaches of shining sand that lay
exposed whenever the tide was out. As a boy Godric once wandered thus
nearly three miles out to sea in search of food for himself and his
parents; as he was retracing his steps, laden with part of a large fish
which he had at length found dead upon the sand, he was overtaken by
the returning tide; press onward as he might, the waves came surging
higher and higher, first to his knees, then to his waist, then to his
shoulders, till to the boy’s excited fancy their gurgling rose even
above his head, and when at last he struggled to land with his burthen,
it seemed to him that only a miracle had brought him through the waters
in safety. Presently he began an independent life as a wandering
chapman, trudging from village to village and selling small wares to
country-folk as poor as himself. The lad was gifted with a wisdom and
seriousness beyond his age; after some four years of this life he
became associated with some merchants in the neighbouring towns; with
them he visited the castles of the local nobles, the markets and fairs
of the local trading centres, and at length made his way as far as S.
Andrews in Scotland, and after that to Rome. He next, entering into
partnership with some other young men, acquired a fourth share in the
profits of one trading-vessel and half the ownership of another. Very
soon his partners made him captain of the ship. In the long, blank
days of his boyhood by the shore of the Wash he had learned to discern
the face of both sea and sky; and his sturdy frame, steady hand, and
keen observant eye, as well as his stedfast thoughtful temper, fitted
him for a skilful seaman no less than for a successful merchant. The
young sailor’s heart, however, was not wholly set upon money-getting.
As he tramped over the fens with his pack upon his back he had been
wont to soothe his weariness with the holy words of prayer and creed
learnt at his mother’s knee; as he guided his bark through the storm,
or outran the pirates who were ever on the look-out for such prey, he
did not miss the lesson specially addressed to those who “go down to
the sea in ships.” Wherever his business took him--Scotland, Britanny,
Flanders, Denmark--he sought out the holy places of the land and
made his offerings there. One of the places he visited most frequently
was S. Andrews; and on his way back from thence he rarely failed to
turn aside to S. Cuthbert’s old home at Holy Isle and his yet more
lonely retreat at Farne, there to spend hours in ecstatic meditation
upon the hermit-life which he was already longing to imitate. At last
he took the cross and went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On his return,
weary of independence, he became steward to a rich man who intrusted
him with the whole management of his household; soon, however, he grew
so disgusted with the thievery among the servants, which he saw but
could not prevent, and with the master’s indifference to it, that he
threw up his situation and went off on another pilgrimage, first to S.
Gilles in Provence and then to Rome. He came home to his parents, but
he could not stay; he must go back yet a third time, he told them, to
the threshold of the Apostles; and this time his mother accompanied
him. At a period when religious men of greater experience in this
world’s affairs were pouring out heart-rending lamentations over
the corruptions of Rome, it is touching to see that she still cast
over this simple English rustic the spell which she had cast of old
over Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop. It was in the land of Wilfrid and
Benedict, in the wild Northumbria, with its long reaches of trackless
moor and its mighty forests, scarcely penetrated save by the wild
beasts, that Godric at last found refuge from the world. He sought it
first at Carlisle, then a lonely outpost on the western borders of the
moors, just beginning a new life after its conquest by William Rufus.
His hopes of remaining there in obscurity were, however, defeated
by the recognition of a kinsman, doubtless one of the Red King’s
colonists, and he fled yet further into the wilderness. Weeks and
months of lonely wandering through the forest brought him unexpectedly
to an aged hermit at Wolsingham; there he remained nearly three years,
tending the old man until his death; then a vision of S. Cuthbert sent
Godric off again, first on another journey to Holy Land, and then to
a hermitage in Eskdale near Whitby. Thence the persecution of the
lord of the soil drove him to a surer refuge in the territory of S.
Cuthbert. He settled for a while in Durham and there gave himself up to
practical works of piety, frequenting the offices of devotion, giving
alms out of his penury to those who were yet poorer than himself, and
constantly sitting as a scholar among the children in the church of
S. Mary. His kinsman at Carlisle had given him a Psalm-book; whether
he ever learned actually to read it is not clear; but he already knew
by heart a considerable part of the Psalter; at Durham he learned the
whole; and the little book, which he had carried in all his wanderings,
was to the end of his life his most cherished possession. When asked in
later years how one of his fingers had grown crooked, he answered with
a smile that it had become cramped with constantly grasping this book.
Meanwhile he was seeking a place of retirement within easy distance
of the chief object of his devotion--S. Cuthbert’s shrine. His choice
was decided by the chance words of a shepherd to his comrade: “Let
us go water our flocks at Finchale!” Godric offered the man his sole
remaining coin--a farthing--to lead him to the spot, and saw at once
that he had reached the end of his wanderings.

Even to-day the scene is wild and solemn enough, to the traveller who,
making his way from Durham over the lonely country-side, suddenly dips
down into a secluded hollow where the ruins of Finchale Priory stand on
a low grassy ledge pressed close between the rushing stream of Wear and
the dark wooded hills which, owing to the sharp bend made by the river,
seem to close round it on every side. But in Godric’s day the place
was wilder still. The road which now leads through the wood was a mere
sheep-track worn by the feet of the flocks as they made their way down
to the river; the site of the priory was a thicket of briars, thorns
and nettles, and it was only on a narrow strip of rocky soil hanging
over the water’s edge and thinly covered with scant herbage that the
sheep could find a foothold and the hermit a place for his dwelling.
His first abode was a cave scooped in the rock; later on he seems to
have built himself a little hut with an oratory attached. A large stone
served him at once for table and pillow; but only when utterly worn
out with a long day’s toil in clearing away the thickets and preparing
the soil for cultivation would he lie down for a few hours of quiet
vigil rather than of sleep; and on moonlight nights the rustics of the
country-side woke with a start at the ring of the hermit’s axe, echoing
for miles through the woodland. The spirit of the earlier Northumbrian
saints seems to breathe again in Godric’s ceaseless labour, his stern
self-mortification, his rigid fasts, his nightly plunges into the Wear,
where he would stand in the hollow of the rocks, up to his neck in the
stream, singing Psalms all through the winter nights, while the snow
fell thick on his head or the waters froze around him. With the fervour
of the older asceticism he had caught too its poetic tenderness. As
he wandered through forest after forest from Carlisle to the Tees
he had found like S. Guthlac of old that “he who denies himself the
converse of men wins the converse of birds and beasts and the company
of angels.” Noxious reptiles lay passive beneath his feet as he walked
along and crawled harmlessly about him as he lay on the bare ground at
night; “the hissing of a viper scared him no more than the crowing of
a cock.” The woods of Finchale were thronged with wild beasts of every
kind; on his first arrival he was confronted by a wolf of such enormous
size that he took it for a fiend in wolf’s shape, and the impression
was confirmed when at the sign of the Cross the animal lay down for a
moment at his feet and then slunk quietly away. The toads and vipers
which swarmed along the river-side played harmlessly about the floor
of his hut, and basked in the glow of his fire or nestled between his
feet, till finding that they disturbed his devotions he gently bade
them depart, and was at once obeyed. A stag browsing upon the young
shoots of the trees in his little orchard suffered him to put a halter
about its neck and lead it away into the forest. In the long hard
frosts of the northern winter he would roam about seeking for frozen
or starving animals, carry them home in his arms and restore them to
warmth and animation at his fire. Bird and beast sought shelter from
the huntsman in the hermit’s cell; one stag which he had hidden from
the followers of Bishop Ralf came back day after day to be petted and
caressed. Amid the silence of the valley, broken only by the rustling
of the wind through the trees, the ripple of the stream over its rocky
bed, and the chirping of the birds who had probably given their name to
the “Finches-haugh,” strains of angel-harps and angel-voices sounded
in the hermit’s ears; and the Virgin-Mother came down to teach him how
to sing to her in his own English tongue. As the years went on Godric
ceased to shrink from his fellow-men; his mother, his sister, came to
dwell near him in religious retirement; a little nephew was admitted
to tend his cow. Some of the younger monks of Durham, among them the
one to whom we owe the record of Godric’s life, were the devoted
attendants of his extreme age; while from the most distant quarters
men of all ranks flocked to seek counsel and guidance in every variety
of circumstances, temporal and spiritual, from one whom not only all
Durham but almost all England looked upon as a saint and a prophet.[199]

        [199] The story of S. Godric is in _Libellus de Vitâ S.
        Godrici_, by Reginald of Durham (Surtees Society).

It was in 1122--two years after the wreck of the _White Ship_--that
Godric settled at Finchale, and he dwelt there sixty years. He is the
last of the old English saints; his long life, beginning probably
before the Conqueror’s death and ending only seven years before that
of Henry II., is a link between the religious life of the earlier
England which had passed away and that of the newer England which was
arising in its place. The spiritual side of the revival was in truth
closely connected with its national side. All the foreign influences
which the Norman conquest had brought to bear upon the English Church
had failed to stamp out her intensely national character; nay, rather,
she was already beginning to lead captive her conquerors. One of the
most striking signs of the times was the renewal of reverence for
those older English saints whose latest successor was striving to
bury himself in the woodlands of S. Cuthbert’s patrimony. Normans and
English hushed their differences before the grave of the Confessor;
Lanfranc was forced to acknowledge the sanctity of Ælfheah. At
Canterbury itself the memory not only of Lanfranc but even of Anselm
was still eclipsed by that of Dunstan. The very changes introduced by
Norman prelates or Norman patrons, their zeal for discipline or their
passion for architectural display, worked in the same direction. It
was in the old minster of S. Werburg that Earl Hugh of Chester had
placed the Benedictine colony whose settlement helped to bring about
the appointment of Anselm as primate; it was in honour of another
early Mercian saint, Milburg, that Roger of Shrewsbury reared his
abbey at Wenlock. Bishop Richard of London planted the Austin canons
at Chiche over the shrine of S. Osyth; Bishop Roger of Salisbury
planted them at Oxford over that of S. Frideswide. The foundation
of a bishop’s see at Ely brought a fresh lustre to the glory of S.
Etheldreda; and the matchless church at Durham on which two of the
very worldliest and worst of Norman prelates, William of S. Calais and
Ralf Flambard, lavished all the splendour that art could devise or
wealth procure, was one vast monument to the honour of S. Cuthbert.
Literary activity was re-awakened by a like impulse. Two successive
precentors of Canterbury, Osbern and Eadmer, had already worked up into
more elaborate biographies the early memorials of S. Dunstan. Eadmer’s
best inspiration came to him indeed from a nearer source; his most
valuable work is the history of his own time, which he grouped, as in
a picture, around the central figure of his own master, Anselm. It was
doubtless from that master that he had learnt a breadth of sympathy
which extended far beyond his local associations at Canterbury. The
saints of the rival archbishopric, Wilfrid and Oswald, found in him a
new biographer. In the northern province, Simeon and his fellow-monks
were busy at Durham with the story of their own church and its
patron, Cuthbert. In the south, again, Faricius, the Italian abbot
of Abingdon, was writing a life of S. Ealdhelm; while almost every
church of importance in central and southern England was throwing open
its archives to the eager researches, and contributing its memorials
of early Mercian and West-Saxon saints to swell the hagiological
collections of a young monk at Ealdhelm’s own Malmesbury.

There was one cathedral monastery in the west of England where
the traditions of a larger historical sentiment had never died
out. The scriptorium at Worcester had been for more than a century
the depository of the sole contemporary edition of the English
Chronicle;[200] and there alone the national history continued to be
recorded in the national tongue down to the early years of Henry I.
In the middle of his reign the monks of Peterborough, probably in
consequence of the loss of their own records in a fire which destroyed
their abbey in 1116, borrowed a copy of the Chronicle from Worcester,
and wrote it out afresh for their own use, with additions from local
history and other sources. It is only in their version that the
earliest Chronicle of Worcester has been preserved to us. But they
did more than transcribe the story of the past. When the copyist had
brought his work down to the latest event of his own day--the sinking
of the _White Ship_ in 1120--another scribe carried on the annals of
Peterborough and of England for ten more years, in the native speech of
the land; and when he laid down his pen it was taken up by yet another
English writer whose notices of contemporary history, irregular and
fragmentary though they are, still cast a gleam of light across the
darkness of the “nineteen winters” which lie between the death of the
first King Henry and the coming of the second.[201]

        [200] In strictness, we must except the years 1043–1066, when
        the Abingdon Chronicle is also contemporary.

        [201] On the school of Worcester and its later influence,
        and the relations between the Chronicles of Worcester and
        Peterborough, see Green, _Conquest of England_, pp. 341,
        342 and notes, and p. 370, note 2; and Earle, _Parallel
        Chronicles_, Introd.

Precious as it is to us, however, this English chronicle-work at
Peterborough was a mere survival. Half its pathetic interest indeed
springs from the fact that it stands utterly alone; save in that one
abbey in the Fens, English had ceased to be a written tongue; the
vernacular literature of England was dead. If the reviving national
sentiment was to find a literary expression which could exercise any
lasting and widespread influence, the vehicle must be not English but
Latin. This was the work now taken up by the historical school of
Worcester. Early in the twelfth century a Worcester monk named Florence
made a Latin version of the Chronicle. Unhappily, he infused into his
work a violent party spirit, and overlaid the plain brief statements of
the annals with a mass of interpolations, additions and alterations,
whose source it is impossible to trace, and which, adopted only too
readily by later writers, have gone far to bring our early history into
what until a very recent time seemed well-nigh hopeless confusion.
But the very extent of his influence proves how true was the instinct
which led him--patriot of the most narrow, insular, exaggerated type,
as the whole tone of his work shows him to have been--to clothe the
ancient vernacular annals in a Latin dress, in the hope of increasing
their popularity. If English history has in one way suffered severely
at his hands, it owes him a debt of gratitude nevertheless upon another
ground. While the last English chronicle lay isolated and buried in
the scriptorium at Peterborough, it was through the Latin version
of Florence that the national and literary tradition of the school
of Worcester made its way throughout the length and breadth of the
land, and inspired a new generation of English historians. Simeon of
Durham, copying out and piecing together the old Northumbrian annals
which had gone on growing ever since Bæda’s death, no sooner met with
the chronicle of Florence than he made it the foundation of his own
work for the whole space of time between Ælfred’s birth in 848 and
Florence’s own death in 1118; and from Simeon it was handed down,
through the work of another local historian, to be incorporated in the
great compilation of Roger of Howden.[202] Henry of Huntingdon, who
soon after 1125, at the instigation of Bishop Alexander of Lincoln,
began to collect materials for a history of the English, may have
learnt from the same source his method of dealing with the English
Chronicle, though he seems, naturally enough, to have chiefly used the
copy which lay nearest to his own hand at Peterborough. Meanwhile, at
the opposite end of England, a finer and subtler intellect than that of
either Florence or Simeon or Henry had caught the historical impulse in
an old West-Saxon monastery.

        [202] On Simeon, see Bishop Stubbs’s preface to Roger of
        Howden, vol. i. (Rolls ed.); Mr. Arnold’s prefaces to Simeon,
        vol. i., and Henry of Huntingdon (_ibid._); and Mr. Hodgson
        Hinde’s preface to Simeon (Surtees Soc.).

William of Malmesbury was born some three or four years before the
Conqueror’s death,[203] in or near the little town in Wiltshire from
which his surname was derived. One of his parents seems to have been
Norman, the other English.[204] They early destined their son to a
literary career; “My father,” he says, “impressed upon me that if
I turned aside to other pursuits, I should but waste my life and
imperil my good name. So, remembering the recommendation to make a
virtue of necessity, I persuaded myself, young as I was, to acquire
a willing taste for that to which I could not in honour show myself
disinclined.” It is plain that submission to the father’s wishes cost
no great effort to the boy. As he tells us himself, “Reading was the
pleasure whose charms won me in my boyhood and grew with my growing
years.”[205] His lot was cast in a pleasant place for one of such a
disposition. Fallen though it was from its ancient greatness, some
remnants of its earlier culture still hung about Malmesbury abbey. The
place owed its rise to an Irish recluse, Maidulf, who, in the seventh
century sought retirement from the world in the forest which at that
time covered all the northern part of Wiltshire. Maidulf, however, was
a scholar as well as a saint; and in those days, when Ireland was the
light of the whole western world, no forest, were it never so gloomy
and impenetrable, could long hide an Irish scholar from the eagerness
of the disciples who flocked to profit by his teaching. The hermitage
grew into a school, and the school into a religious community. Its
second abbot, Ealdhelm, is one of the most brilliant figures in the
history of early West-Saxon learning and culture. The architecture
of Wessex owed its birth to the churches which he reared along the
edge of the forest-tract of Dorset and Wiltshire, from the seat of
his later bishopric at Sherborne to his early home at Malmesbury;
its Latin literature was moulded by the learning which he brought
back from Archbishop Theodore’s school at Canterbury; and the whole
ballad literature of southern England sprang from his English songs.
The West-Saxon kings, from Ine to Eadgar, showered their benefactions
upon the house of one whom they were proud to call their kinsman.
It escaped as by a miracle from the destruction of the Danish wars;
and in the Confessor’s reign its wealth and fame were great enough
to tempt the diocesan bishop, Herman of Ramsbury, into a project for
making it the seat of his bishopric. Darker times began with the
coming of the first Norman abbot, Turold, whose stern and warlike
character, more befitting a soldier than a monk, soon induced the king
to transfer him to Peterborough, as a check upon the English outlaws
and their Danish allies in the camp of refuge at Ely. His successor
at Malmesbury, Warin, alienated for his own profit the lands and the
treasures which earlier benefactors had lavished upon the abbey, and
showed his contempt for the old English abbots by turning the bones
of every one of them, except Ealdhelm, out of their resting-places on
either side the high altar, and thrusting them into a corner of one of
the lesser churches of the town, with the mocking comment: “Whosoever
is mightiest among them may help the rest!” William’s boyhood, however,
fell in happier days. About the time of his birth Warin died, and
the next abbot, Godfrey, set himself to a vigorous work of material,
moral and intellectual reform which must have been in full career when
William entered the abbey-school.[206] The bent of the lad’s mind
showed itself in the subjects which he chose for special study out of
the general course taught in the school. “Logic, which serves to give
point to our discourse, I tasted only with my ears; to physic, which
cures the diseases of our bodies, I paid somewhat closer heed. But I
searched deeply into the various branches of moral philosophy, whose
dignity I hold in reverence, because it is self-evident to those who
study it, and disposes our minds to virtuous living;--and especially
into history, which, preserving in a pleasing record the manners of
times gone by, by example excites its readers to follow that which is
good and shun that which is evil.”[207] Young as he was, his studious
habits gained him the confidence of the abbot. Godfrey’s darling scheme
was the formation of a library; and when at length he found time and
means to attempt its execution, it was William who became his most
energetic assistant. “Methinks I have a right to speak of this work,”
he tells us with pardonable pride, “for herein I came behind none of my
elders, nay, if it be not boastful to say so, I far outstripped them
all. I rivalled the good abbot’s own diligence in collecting that pile
of books; I did my utmost to help in his praiseworthy undertaking. May
those who now enter into our labours duly cherish their fruits!”[208]

        [203] This conclusion, which seems the only one possible, as to
        the date of William’s birth is that of Mr. W. de Gray Birch,
        _On the Life and Writings of Will. of Malmesbury_, pp. 3, 4
        (from _Trans. R. Soc. of Lit._, vol. x., new series).

        [204] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, prolog. l. iii. (Hardy, p. 389).

        [205] _Ib._ prolog. l. ii. (Hardy, p. 143).

        [206] The history of Malmesbury is in Will. Malm.’s _Vita S.
        Aldhelmi_, i.e. _Gesta Pontif._, l. v. (Hamilton, pp. 332 _et
        seq._)

        [207] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, prolog. l. ii. (Hardy, p. 143).

        [208] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. v. c. 271 (Hamilton, p.
        431).

It is not difficult to guess in what department of the library William
took the deepest interest. Half Norman as he was by descent, the
chosen literary assistant of a Norman abbot,[209] it was natural that
his first endeavour should be to “collect, at his own expense, some
histories of foreign nations.” As he pondered over them in the quiet
cloisters of the old English monastery which by this time had become
his home, the question arose--could nothing be found among our own
people worthy of the remembrance of posterity?[210] He had but to
look around him, and the question answered itself. To the antiquary
and the scholar Malmesbury was already classic ground, where every
step brought him face to face with some memory of the glories of
Wessex under the old royal house from which Ealdhelm sprang. To
Ealdhelm’s own fame indeed even the prejudices of Abbot Warin had
been forced to yield, and a new translation of the saint’s relics in
1078 had been followed by a fresh outburst of popular devotion and
a fresh influx of pilgrims to his shrine. Every year his festival
brought together a crowd of devotees, of sick folk seeking the aid of
his miraculous powers, and--as generally happened in such cases--of
low jesters seeking only to make their profit out of the amusement
which they afforded to the gaping multitude. The punishment of one of
these, who was smitten with frenzy and only cured after three days’
intercession on the part of the monks, during which he lay chained
before the shrine, was one of the most vivid recollections of William’s
childhood.[211] In the vestiary of the abbey-church he beheld with
wonder and awe the chasuble which, as a quaint legend told, the saint
in his pious abstraction of mind had once hung upon a sunbeam, and
whose unusual length helped to furnish a mental picture of his tall
stately form.[212] Among the older literary treasures which served as a
nucleus for the new library, he gazed with scarcely less reverence on
a Bible which Ealdhelm had bought of some foreign merchants at Dover
when he visited Kent for his consecration.[213] The muniment-chest was
full of charters granted by famous kings of old, Ceadwalla and Ine,
Ælfred and Eadward, Æthelstan and Eadgar. In the church itself a golden
crucifix, a fragment of the wood of the Cross, and several reliquaries
containing the bones of early Gaulish saints were shown as Æthelstan’s
gifts, and the king himself lay buried beneath the tower.[214] On the
left of the high altar, facing S. Ealdhelm’s shrine, stood a tomb
which in William’s day was believed to cover the remains of a scholar
of wider though less happy fame than Ealdhelm himself--John Scotus,
who, flying from his persecutors in Gaul, was said to have established
a school under Ælfred’s protection at Malmesbury, and to have been
there pricked to death by his pupils with their styles in the little
church of S. Laurence.[215] The scanty traces of a vineyard on the
hill-side which sheltered the abbey to the north were associated with a
visitor from a yet more distant land. In the time of the Danish kings
there came seeking for admission at Malmesbury a stranger of whom the
brotherhood knew no more than that he was a Greek and a monk, and that
his name was Constantine. His gentle disposition, abstemious habits,
and quiet retiring ways won him general esteem and love; his whole time
was spent in prayer and in the cultivation of the vineyard which he
planted with his own hands for the benefit of the community; and only
when at the point of death he arrayed himself in a pallium drawn from
the scrip which he always carried at his side, was it revealed to the
astonished Englishmen that he had been an archbishop in his Eastern
home.[216]

        [209] Godfrey was a monk of Jumièges; Will. Malm. _Gesta
        Pontif._, l. v. c. 271 (Hamilton, p. 431).

        [210] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, prolog. l. ii. (Hardy, p. 142).

        [211] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. v. c. 275 (Hamilton, pp.
        438, 439).

        [212] _Ib._ c. 218 (p. 365).

        [213] _Ib._ c. 224 (pp. 376–378).

        [214] _Ib._ c. 246 (p. 397).

        [215] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. v. c. 240 (Hamilton, p.
        394), and _Gesta Reg._, l. ii. c. 122 (Hardy, p. 190). The
        story seems however to be false. It probably originated in a
        confusion, first between John Scotus and John the Old-Saxon,
        who was nearly murdered by the monks of Athelney; and secondly,
        between both these Johns and a third scholar bearing the same
        name, who is mentioned by Gotselin of Canterbury as buried
        at Malmesbury, but whose real history seems to be lost. See
        Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. of Ireland_, vol. iii. pp. 300, 301,
        315, 316, 318–320.

        [216] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. v. c. 260 (Hamilton, p.
        415).

Under the influence of surroundings such as these William began his
studies in English history. But he was brought to a standstill at the
very threshold for lack of a guide. From the death of Bæda to his own
day, he could not by the most diligent researches discover a single
English writer worthy of the name of historian. “There are indeed
certain records of antiquity in the native tongue, arranged according
to the years of our Lord after the manner of a chronicle, whereby the
times which have gone by since that great man (Bæda) have been rescued
from complete oblivion. For of Æthelweard, a noble and illustrious man
who set himself to expound those chronicles in Latin, it is better
to say nothing; his aim indeed would be quite to my mind, if his
style were not unbearable to my taste.”[217] The work of Florence
was probably as yet altogether unpublished; it was certainly not yet
finished, nor does it appear to have been heard of at Malmesbury. That
of Eadmer, whose first edition--ending at the death of Anselm--must
have been the last new book of the day, received from William a just
tribute of praise, both as to its subject-matter and its style; but it
was essentially what its title imported, a _History of Recent Events_;
the introductory sketch prefixed to it was a mere outline, and,
starting as it did only from Eadgar’s accession, still left between its
beginning and Bæda’s death a yawning chasm of more than two centuries
which the young student at Malmesbury saw no means of bridging over
save by his own labour.[218] “So, as I could not be satisfied with what
I found written of old, I began to scribble myself.”[219]

        [217] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, prolog. l. i. (Hardy, pp. 1, 2).

        [218] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, prolog. l. i. (Hardy, p. 2).

        [219] _Ib._ prolog. l. ii. (Hardy, pp. 143, 144).

Such, as related by the author himself, was the origin of William’s
first historical work, the _Gesta Regum Anglorum_ or _Acts of the
English Kings_, followed a few years later by a companion volume
devoted to the acts of the bishops. He was stirred by the same impulse
of revived national sentiment which stirred Florence of Worcester to
undertake his version of the Chronicle. But the impulse acted very
differently on two different minds. William’s _Gesta Regum_ were first
published in 1120, two years after the death of Florence. The work
of Florence, although he never mentions it, had doubtless reached
him by this time, and must certainly have been well known to him
before he issued his revised edition in 1128. To William, indeed, the
Chronicle had no need of a Latin interpreter; and he probably looked
upon Florence in no other light. He set before himself a loftier aim.
In his own acceptation of the word, he is the first English historian
since Bæda; he is in truth the founder of a new school of historical
composition. William’s temper, as displayed in his works, might form
the subject of a curious psychological study. It is a temper which,
in many respects, seems to belong rather to a man of the world in our
own day than to a monk of the twelfth century. He has none of the
narrowness of the cloister; he has little of the prejudices common
to his profession or his age; he has still less prejudice of race.
The Norman and the English blood in his veins seem completely to
neutralize each other; while Florence colours the whole story not only
of the Norman but even of the Danish conquest with his violent English
sympathies, William calmly balances the one side against the other,
and criticizes them both with the judicial impartiality of a spectator
to whom the matter has a purely philosophical interest. The whole bent
of his mind indeed is philosophical, literary, artistic, rather than
political. With him the study of history is a scientific study, and its
composition a work of art. His aim is to entertain his readers quite as
much as to instruct them. He utterly discards the old arrangement of
events “by the years of our Lord,” and groups his materials in defiance
of chronology on whatever plan seems to him best adapted to set them
in the most striking and effective light. He never loses sight of
his reader; he is always in dread of wearying him with dry political
details, always seizing an opportunity to break in upon their monotony
with some curious illustration, some romantic episode, some quaint
legend, or--when he reaches his own time--some personal scandal which
he tells with all the zest of a modern newspaper-writer. His love of
story-telling, his habit of flying off at a tangent in the midst of
his narrative and dragging in a string of irrelevant tales, sometimes
of the most frivolous kind, is positively irritating to a student bent
only upon following the main thread of the history. But in William of
Malmesbury the main thread is often of less real value than the mass of
varied adornment and illustration with which it is overlaid. William is
no Bæda; but, Bæda excepted, there are few of our medieval historians
who can vie with him in the telling of a story. His long and frequent
digressions into foreign affairs are often of great intrinsic value,
and they show a depth of insight into the history of other nations and
a cosmopolitan breadth of thought and feeling quite without parallel
in his time. His penetration into individual characters, his power of
seizing upon their main features and sketching them to the life in a
few rapid skilful strokes--as in his pictures of the Norman kings or
of the Angevin counts--has perhaps not many rivals at any time. Even
when his stories are most utterly worthless in themselves, there is a
value in the light which they throw upon the writer’s own temper or on
that of the age in which he lived. Not a few of them have a further
interest as fragments saved from the wreck of a popular literature
whose very existence, but for William and his fellow-historians, we
might never have known. The Norman conquest had doomed to gradual
extinction a vast growth of unwritten popular verse which, making
its way with the wandering gleeman into palace and minster, hall and
cottage, had coloured the whole social life and thought of England for
four hundred years. The gleeman’s days were numbered. He had managed to
hold his ground against the growing hostility of the Church; but the
coming of the stranger had fatally narrowed his sphere of influence.
His very language was unintelligible to the nobles who sat in the seat
of his former patrons; _jongleur_ and _ménestrel_ from over sea had
taken in the king’s court and the baron’s castle the place which the
gleeman had once filled in the halls of ealdorman and thegn, and only
the common people still hailed his appearance as a welcome break in
the monotonous drudgery of their daily life. Before his day was quite
over, however, the new school of patriotic historians had arisen; and
they plunged into the mass of traditional and romantic lore of which
he was the depositary as into a treasure-house from whose stores they
might fill up the gaps and deck the bare outlines of the structure
which they were building up on the meagre foundations of the Chronicle.
Florence was the first to enter upon this somewhat dangerous process.
William drank more deeply of a stream whose source lay at his own door:
a simple English ballad which the country-folk around Malmesbury in
his day still chanted as they went about their work was the spell by
which S. Ealdhelm had drawn their forefathers to listen, first to his
singing and then to his preaching, four hundred years before.[220]
The same spell of song, handed on from generation to generation, and
passing from the gleeman’s lips into the pages of the twelfth century
historians with William at their head, has transformed the story of
the later royal house of Wessex into a romance that too often only
serves to darken the true character of the period which it professes to
illustrate. What it does illustrate is not the tenth century but the
twelfth. It helps us to learn something of the attitude of the national
revival towards the national past, by showing us the England of
Æthelstan and Eadmund, of Eadgar and Dunstan, not as it actually was,
but as it appeared to the England of Henry I. and Roger of Sarum,--to
the England of Florence of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon and William
of Malmesbury.

        [220] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. v. c. 190 (Hamilton, p.
        336).

We must not take William as an average specimen of the monastic culture
and intelligence of his day. In any age and in any circumstances he
would probably have been a man of exceptional genius. But his outward
life and surroundings were those of the ordinary monk of his time;
and those surroundings are set in a very striking light by the fact,
abundantly evident from his writings, that such a man as William could
feel himself thoroughly at home in them, and could find in them full
scope for the developement of his powers. It was in truth precisely
his monastic profession which gave him opportunities of acquiring by
personal experience, even more than by wide reading, such a varied and
extensive knowledge of the world as could hardly be obtained in any
other circumstances. A very slight acquaintance with William is enough
to dispel all notions of the medieval monk as a solitary student, a
mere bookworm, knowing no more of the world and of mankind than he
could learn from the beatings of his own heart and within the narrow
circle of the brotherhood among whom he dwelt. A community like that
of Malmesbury was in active and constant relations with every rank
and class of society all over the kingdom. Its guest-hall stood open
alike to king and bishop, to Norman baron or English yeoman, to the
high-born pilgrim who came back from a distant shore laden with relics
and with tales of the splendours of Byzantium or the marvels of Holy
Land, to the merchant who came to sell his curious foreign wares at
the local fair and to pay his devotions, like S. Godric, at the local
shrine, as well as to the monk of another house who came, perhaps,
to borrow a book from the library, to compare notes with the local
history, or to submit some literary question to the judgement of the
great local scholar, whoever he might happen to be. All the political
news, all the latest intellectual speculations, all the social
gossip of the day, found its way thither by one or other of these
channels, and was discussed within the safe shelter of the inviolable
convent-walls with a boldness and freedom impossible amid the society
of the outside world, fettered by countless bonds of custom, interest,
and mutual dependence. The abbot ranked as a great noble who sat among
earls and bishops in the meetings of the Great Council, whom they
treated almost as an equal, and whom they came, with a train of secular
clerks and lay followers, to visit and consult on matters of Church or
state or of their own personal interests. If the king himself chanced
to pass that way, it was matter of course that he should lodge in the
monastery. William’s vivid portraits of all the three Norman kings
were doubtless drawn, if not from the observation of his own eyes,
at any rate from that of his friend Abbot Godfrey; his portrait of
Henry I. was in all likelihood painted from life as the king paid his
devotions before S. Ealdhelm’s shrine or feasted at the abbot’s table
in the refectory, or--quite as probably--as William, in his turn, sat
in the royal hall discussing some literary question with his friend and
patron, the king’s son Earl Robert of Gloucester, if not actually with
the king himself. The hospitality of the abbey was repaid by that which
greeted its brethren wherever they went, on business for their house or
for themselves. The monk went in and out of castle or town, court or
camp, as a privileged person. Such a man as William, indeed, might be
sure of a welcome anywhere; and William, indefatigable as a student,
was almost equally so as a traveller. The little sketches of town and
country which illustrate his survey of the dioceses of England in the
_Gesta Pontificum_ must have been made on the spot. He had seen the
marvels of Glastonbury;[221] he had probably taken down the legend
of S. Eadmund of East-Anglia on the very site of the martyrdom;[222]
he had seen with his own eyes the Roman walls of Carlisle, and heard
with his own ears the rough Yorkshire speech, of which, puzzling as
it was to a southerner, he yet learned enough to catch from some
northern gleeman the echo of Northumbria’s last heroic lay, the lay of
Waltheof at the gate of York;[223] he had, we cannot doubt, wandered
with delight up that vale of Severn which he paints in such glowing
colours, and been drawn to write the life of S. Wulfstan by a sight of
his church and his tomb at Worcester. His own cell at Malmesbury was
the garner in which treasures new and old, of every kind, gathered from
one end of England to the other, were stored up to be sifted and set in
order at leisure amid that perfect tranquillity, that absolute security
from outward disturbance and worldly care, which to the modern student
is but a hopeless dream.

        [221] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. ii. c. 91 (Hamilton, pp.
        196–198); _Gesta Reg._, l. i. c. 20 (Hardy, pp. 32–34); _Antiq.
        Glaston._, _passim_.

        [222] _Gesta Pontif._, l. ii. c. 74 (Hamilton, pp. 152–155);
        _Gesta Reg._, l. ii. c. 213 (Hardy, p. 366).

        [223] _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 253 (Hardy, p. 427).

The new intellectual movement, however, was by no means confined to
the cloister. Clerk and layman had their share in it; king and queen
encouraged it warmly, and their sympathy with the patriotic revival
which animated it was marked enough to excite the mockery of their
Norman courtiers, who nicknamed them “Godric and Godgifu.”[224]
Learning and culture of every kind found a ready welcome at the
court; Henry never forgot the favourite maxim of his youth, that “an
unlettered king is but a crowned ass.”[225] His tastes were shared by
his good queen Maude, who had received in her aunt’s convent at Romsey
such an education as was probably given to few women of her time; and
in her later years, when the king’s manifold occupations beyond sea
left her alone in her palace at Westminster, the crowd of poor and
sick folk on whom she bestowed her boundless charities was almost
equalled by that of the scholars and poets who vied with each other to
gain her ear by some new feat of melody or of rime.[226] Her stepson
Earl Robert of Gloucester was renowned as a scholar no less than as a
warrior and a statesman; to him William of Malmesbury dedicated his
chief historical works, as to a comrade and an equal in the world of
letters; it may even be that the “Robert” of whom we once catch a
glimpse, sitting in the library at Malmesbury, eagerly turning over
its treasures, and suggesting plans of work to the willing friend at
his side, is no other than the king’s son.[227] The secular clergy
had no mind to be outstripped by the regulars in literary activity;
Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, a nephew of the justiciar, urged his
archdeacon Henry of Huntingdon to compose a _History of the English_
in emulation of the _Gesta Regum_. Nor did history alone absorb the
intellectual energy of the time. Natural science had its followers,
among them the king himself, who studied it in characteristically
practical fashion at Woodstock, where he kept a menagerie full of
lions, leopards, camels, lynxes and other strange beasts collected from
all parts of the world;[228] and the “Bestiary” of an Anglo-Norman
poet, Philip de Thaun, found a patroness in his second queen, Adeliza
of Louvain. A scholar of old English race, Adelard of Bath, carried
his researches into a wider field. Towards the close of the eleventh
century he had crossed the sea to study in the schools of Tours and
Laon. At the latter place he set up a school of his own, but he soon
quitted it to enter upon a long course of wandering in distant lands.
He crossed the Alps, made his way to the great medical school at
Salerno, thence into Greece and Asia Minor, and finally, it seems,
to the great centre of Arab culture and learning at Bagdad, or what
we now call Cairo. Thence, after seven years’ absence, he returned
to England soon after the accession of Henry I., and published his
first book, a philosophical allegory dedicated to Bishop William of
Syracuse, whose acquaintance he had made in his travels. He next opened
a school, apparently in Normandy, for the diffusion of the scientific
lore which he had acquired in the East. He had picked up, among other
things, an Arabic version of Euclid, and the Latin translation which
he made of this became the text-book of all succeeding mathematicians
for centuries after. But his teaching of the physical science of the
East was vehemently opposed by western scholars; his own nephew, who
had been one of his pupils at Laon, was among his opponents, and it was
in the shape of a discussion with this nephew that Adelard put forth,
under the title of _Quæstiones Naturales_, a plea for a more free
inquiry into the principles of natural science, instead of the blind
following of old authorities which had hitherto contented the scholars
of the West.[229] In the last years of Henry’s reign he seems to have
returned once more to settle in his native land.[230] His career shows
how daring was the spirit of enterprize now stirring among Englishmen,
and how vast was the range of study and experience now thrown open to
English scholars. We see that England was already within reach of that
wider world of which her Angevin kings were soon to make her a part.

        [224] _Ib._ l. v. c. 394 (p. 620).

        [225] _Ib._ c. 390 (p. 616).

        [226] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 418 (Hardy, p. 650).

        [227] “In historicis nos narrationibus occupatos detorsit
        a proposito tua, Rodberte, voluntas. Nuper enim cum in
        bibliothecâ nostrâ sederemus, et quisque pro suo studio libros
        evolveret, impegisti in Amalarium de Ecclesiasticis Officiis.
        Cujus cum materiam ex primâ statim tituli fronte cognosceris,
        amplexus es occasionem quâ rudimenta novæ professionis
        animares. Sed quia confestim animi tui alacritatem turbavit
        testimoniorum perplexitas et sermonum asperitas, rogasti ut
        eum abbreviarem. Ego autem ... munus injunctum non aspernanter
        accepi.” ... (Will. Malm. _Abbreviatio Amalarii_, prolog.) Mr.
        Birch (_Will. Malm._, p. 43) takes this Robert to be the earl.
        But does not the phrase about “nova professio” rather suggest a
        new-made monk of the house?

        [228] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 409 (Hardy, p. 638).

        [229] On Adelard, see Wright, _Biog. Britt. Litt._, vol. ii.
        pp. 94–100.

        [230] “In Perdonis ... Adelardo de Bada, 4s. et 6d.” Pipe Roll,
        31 Hen. I. (Hunter) p. 22--among the “Nova placita et novæ
        conventiones” of Wiltshire. Mr. Hunter (_ib._, pref. p. xxi.)
        takes this to be the traveller, but Mr. Wright doubts it.

What gave scope for all this social, moral and intellectual
developement was, to borrow a phrase from the Peterborough Chronicler,
“the good peace” that Henry, like his father, “made in this land.”[231]
The foundations of the political and administrative system by which
that peace was preserved inviolate to the end of his reign were laid
in the three years succeeding the battle of Tinchebray--the brightest
period of Henry’s prosperity, and the only time in his life when he
himself could enjoy, on both sides of the sea, the tranquillity which
he fought to secure. In England, indeed, from the day when he drove out
Robert of Bellême in 1103 to his own death in 1135, the peace was never
broken save by an occasional disturbance on the Welsh border. Even in
Wales, however, the settlement of the Flemings and the appointment of
a “Saxon” bishop to the see of St. David’s[232] were doing their work;
and though in Henry’s later years the restlessness of the Welsh princes
and people twice provoked him to march into their country, the danger
from them was never great enough to mar the general security of the
realm. From Scotland there was still less to fear; its three successive
kings, Eadgar, Alexander and David, were the brothers of the good queen
Maude and the faithful allies of her husband. But in Henry’s dominions
beyond the sea, the state of things was very different. In the duchy of
Normandy the year 1110 saw the opening of a new phase of politics, the
beginning of a train of complications in which England seemed at the
moment less directly concerned than in the earlier struggles between
the king and the barons, but which in the end exercised an important
influence on the course of her after history by bringing her into
contact with the power of Anjou. Before we can trace the steps whereby
this came to pass, we must change our line of thought and study. We
must turn aside from the well-worn track of English history to travel
awhile in less familiar paths; we must leave our own land and make our
way into the depths of Gaul; we must go back from the broad daylight of
the twelfth century into the dim dawn of the ninth, there to seek out
the beginnings and thence to follow the romantic story of the house of
Anjou.

        [231] Eng. Chron. a. 1087.

        [232] Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 68.



CHAPTER II.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU.

843–987.


The cradle-land of our Angevin kings, the original county of Anjou,
was a small territory in central Gaul, lying about the lower course of
the river Loire and that of its affluent the Mayenne[233] or Maine.
Its chief portion consisted of a wedge-shaped tract hemmed in between
the right bank of the Loire, which bounded it on the south, and the
streams of Loir, Sarthe and Mayenne, which flowed round it on the north
and west; along its southern border stretched a belt of alluvial soil
which in winter and in rainy seasons became a vast flood-drowned fen,
swallowed up by the overflowing waters of the Loire; to the northward,
the country consisted chiefly of level uplands broken here and there by
patches of forest and tiny river-valleys, and rising in the west into
a range of low hills, which again died down into a fringe of swampy
meadow-land along the eastern bank of the Mayenne. A narrow strip of
ground on the southern bank of the Loire, with a somewhat wider strip
of hilly and wooded country beyond the Mayenne, completed the district
to which its earliest known inhabitants, a Gallic tribe called Andes
or Andegavi, have left their name. A few miles above the angle formed
by the confluence of the two rivers, a lofty mass of black slate rock
thrown out from the upland furnished a ready-made fortress important
alike by its natural strength and by its geographical position,
commanding the main lines of communication with central, northern and
southern Gaul through the valleys of the Loire and its tributaries.
Under the Roman conquerors of Gaul the place was called Juliomagus;
the hill was crowned by a lofty citadel, and strengthened by a circuit
of rampart walls; while from its crest a road struck eastward along
Loire-side into the heart of central Gaul, another followed the
westward course of the river to its junction with the sea, and others
struck southward and northward into Aquitania and across the upland
into the basin of the Seine. In the middle of the fourth century a
Christian bishop, probably one of a band of mission-preachers who
shared with the famous S. Martin of Tours the work of evangelizing
central Gaul, laid beside the citadel of Juliomagus the foundations of
a church, which in after-time grew into the cathedral of S. Maurice;
and it is from the extent of the diocese over which his successors
ruled that we learn the extent of the civil jurisdiction of Juliomagus.
A later bishop, Albinus, left his name to the great abbey of S. Aubin,
founded in Merovingian days on the slope of the hill just outside the
city wall; a monastery dedicated to S. Sergius grew up to the north,
in a low-lying marshy meadow by the river-side; while the place of
the Roman prefects was taken by a succession of Frankish counts, the
delegates first of the Merovingian kings of Neustria and then of the
Karolingian emperors; and the Roman name of Juliomagus itself gave way
to a native appellation cognate with that of the district of which it
was the head--“Andegavis,” Angers.[234]

        [233] From the point where the Sarthe joins it, this river is
        now called the Maine. In the middle ages it had but one name,
        _Meduana_, from its source to its junction with the Loire. The
        old nomenclature is far more convenient for historical purposes.

        [234] The ecclesiastical history of Angers is in _Gallia
        Christiana_, vol. xiv. col. 543 _et seq._

City and county acquired a new importance through the political
arrangements by which the Karolingian realms were divided between the
three sons of the Emperor Louis the Gentle. By a treaty made at Verdun
in 843, the original Frankish kingdom and its Saxon dependencies,
answering roughly to what we call Germany now-a-days, fell to the
second brother Louis; the Gallic conquests of the Franks, between the
Moselle, the Rhone, the Pyrenees and the ocean, were the share of the
youngest, Charles the Bald; while the necessity that the eldest brother
Lothar, as Emperor, should hold the two capitals, Rome and Aachen,
involved the creation in his favour of a middle kingdom consisting of
a long narrow string of countries reaching from the Frisian to the
Pontine marshes. Although the limits thus fixed were afterwards altered
more than once, the main lines of this treaty left indelible traces,
and from that day we may date the beginning of modern France and modern
Germany. The tripartite division, however, was soon overthrown by the
extinction of the elder or Lotharingian line; the incongruous middle
kingdom fell asunder and became a bone of furious contention between
its two neighbours, and the imperial crown itself was soon an object
of rivalry no less fierce. On the other hand, the extent of territory
actually subject to Charles the Bald fell far short of the limits
assigned to him by the treaty. Even Charles the Great had scarcely been
able to maintain more than a nominal sway over the vast region which
stretched from the southern shores of the Loire to the Pyrenees and the
Mediterranean Sea, and was known by the general name of Aquitania; its
princes and its people, wrapped in the traditions of Roman culture and
Roman greatness, held disdainfully aloof from the barbarian conquerors
of the north, and remained utterly indifferent to claims of supremacy
which each succeeding Karolingian found it more and more hopeless to
enforce. To the west, again, in the peninsula of Britanny or Armorica,
the ancient Celtic race preserved, as in the Welsh hills of our own
island, its native tongue, its primitive laws and customs, and its
separate political organization under a dynasty of native princes who
owed, indeed, a nominal allegiance to the West-Frankish overlord at
Laon, but whose subjection to him was scarcely more real than that of
the princes of Aquitania, while their disaffection was far more active
and far more threatening; for the pirate fleets of the northmen were
now hovering about the coast of Gaul as about that of Britain; and
the Celts of the Breton peninsula, like the West-Welsh of Cornwall,
were ever ready to make common cause with these marauders against the
Teutonic conquerors of the land.

The work of the northmen in West-Frankland was a work both of union and
disunion. There, as in England, the need for organization and defence
against their attacks produced a new upgrowth of national life; but
while in England this life was moulded by the consolidation of the
earlier Engle and Saxon realms into a single state under the leadership
of the West-Saxon kings, in Frankland it was created through the
forcible breaking-up of an outward unity already threatened with the
doom which never fails sooner or later to overtake a kingdom divided
against itself. The West-Frankish king was not, like the king of
Wessex, the leader, the natural exponent, the impersonation almost, of
the dawning national consciousness; it was not he who led and organized
the struggle for existence against the northern foe; the nation had
to fight for itself, with but little help from its sovereign. This
difference was caused partly by the political circumstances of the
Karolingian realms, partly by geographical conditions. The brunt of
the battle necessarily fell, not upon the royal domains lying far from
the sea around the inland fortress of Laon, but on the coast, and
especially on the districts around the great river-inlets by which the
pirates made their entrance into the country. Of these, the estuary of
the Seine lay nearest to them, and was their first point of attack.
Between it and the other great inlet, the mouth of the Loire, lay the
Breton peninsula; once round that, and the broad lands of Aquitania,
rich with the natural wealth of a southern soil and with the remains
of a luxury and splendour in which its cities had almost outdone Rome
herself, would tempt the northmen with a fairer harvest of spoil than
they could find on the shores of the Channel. The desolate rocky coast
and barren moorlands of the intervening peninsula offered little
chance of booty; but if the pirates could secure the alliance or even
the neutrality of the Bretons, they had but to force an entrance
into the Loire, and not only Aquitaine, but the inmost heart of the
West-Frankish realm would be laid open to their attacks. Two barriers,
however, would have to be overcome before such an entrance could be
gained. The first was the city of Nantes, which stood on the northern
bank of the Loire, some thirty miles above its mouth. Politically,
Nantes was the extreme western outpost of the Karolingian power, for
its count held his fief directly of the king at Laon, not of the nearer
Breton under-king at Rennes; but by its geographical position and the
character of its people it was far more Breton than Frankish. The true
corner-stone of the West-Frankish realm lay on the other side of the
Mayenne. The county of Anjou or “Angevin march,” the border-land of
Neustria and Aquitaine, was for all practical purposes the border-land
also of Neustria and of Britanny. Angers, with its Roman citadel and
its Roman walls, perched on the crest of its black slate-rock, at once
guarding and guarded by the two rivers which flowed round its foot, was
a far mightier fortress than Nantes; Angers, rather than Nantes, was
the true key of the Loire valley, and the stronghold of the Neustrian
border against all attacks from the west, whether by land or by sea.

In the first days of Charles the Bald, when the new king was struggling
with his brothers, and the pirate ships were beginning again to strike
terror into the coasts of Gaul, Lambert, a Breton-born count of the
Angevin march, sought from Charles the investiture of the neighbouring
and recently-vacated county of Nantes. On the refusal of his demand,
he threw off his allegiance, offered his services to the Breton king
Nomenoë, and on failing to obtain the coveted prize by his help,
called in that of a pirate fleet which was cruising about the shores
of Britanny. It was thus at the invitation and under the guidance
of a man who had been specially intrusted with its defence that the
northmen made their first entrance into the hitherto peaceful estuary
of the Loire. Nantes was stormed and sacked;[235] the desolate city
was left in the hands of Lambert and the Bretons, and the ravagers
sailed away, probably to swell the forces and share the spoil of a
fleet which in the following year made its way to the estuary of the
Garonne, and pushed inland as far as Toulouse. Nearly ten years passed
away before the northmen repeated their dash upon central Gaul. The
valley of the Seine and the city of Paris were the victims of their
next great expedition, in 845; and a series of plundering raids upon
the Aquitanian coast were crowned in 848 by the conquest of Bordeaux.
For a moment, in 851, the fury of the pirates’ attack seemed to be
turning away from Gaul to spend itself on Britain; but a great victory
of the West-Saxons under Æthelwulf at Aclea threw them back upon
their old field of operations across the Channel, and in the terror
of their threatened onset Charles sought to detach the Bretons from
their alliance by a formal cession of the counties of Rennes and Nantes
and the district west of the Mayenne, which had passed into Breton
hands by the treason of Count Lambert.[236] His precautions failed to
avert the blow which he dreaded. Next year the pirates made their way
back again round the Armorican coast, up the mouth of the Loire, past
Nantes, and through the Angevin march--now shrunk to a little corner of
territory wedged in between the Mayenne and the Loire--as far inland as
Tours, where they sacked and burned the abbey of S. Martin and drove
its canons into exile with the hardly-rescued body of their patron
saint.[237]

        [235] Chron. Namnet. in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. vii. pp.
        217, 218; Chronn. Rainald. Andeg., S. Serg., Vindoc., a. 843
        (Marchegay, _Eglises d’Anjou_, pp. 5, 129–132, 158).

        [236] Ann. Bertin. a. 851 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. vii. p.
        68) mention the cession of Nantes, etc. That the Mayenne was
        made the boundary of the two kingdoms appears from a charter
        of the Breton king Herispoë, dated August 23, 852; “Erispoë
        princeps Britanniæ provinciæ et usque ad Medanum fluvium....
        Dominante Erispoë ... in totam Britanniam et usque ad Medanum
        fluvium.” Lobineau, _Hist. de Bretagne_, vol. ii. p. 55.

        [237] Ann. Bertin. a. 853 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. vii. p.
        70).

In a breathing-space which followed upon this last attack, Charles
received from Æthelwulf of Wessex a personal visit and an overture of
mutual alliance against the common foe. The scheme was shattered by
a political revolution in Wessex which followed Æthelwulf’s return;
and meanwhile a new danger to the Karolingian power arose in the
threatening attitude of Robert the Brave, a warrior of obscure birth
who was now count of the Angevin march. Under pretext, as it seems, of
securing their aid against the northmen, Robert leagued himself with
the foes of the monarchy beyond his two frontier rivers, and made a
triple alliance with the revolted Bretons and the king’s rebel nephew,
Pepin of Aquitaine.[238] Charles, more and more hard pressed every year
by domestic and political difficulties, and haunted by the perpetual
horror of the pirate ships always in the background, felt that this
second wavering lord of the marchland must be won back at any cost. Two
years later, therefore, the count of the Angevin march was invested
with a vast duchy comprising the whole territory between Seine and
Loire as far as the sea and the Breton border; and with this grant the
special work of keeping out both Bretons and northmen was distinctly
laid upon his shoulders.[239]

        [238] Ann. Bertin. a. 859 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._ vol. vii. p.
        75).

        [239] Regino a. 861 (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. i. p.
        571). Ann. Mettens. a. 861 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. vii. p.
        190).

Robert fulfilled his trust gallantly and successfully till he fell
in a Scandinavian ambush at Brissarthe in 866.[240] His territories
were given to a cousin of the king, Hugh of Burgundy, who was either
so incapable or so careless of their defence that before six years
had passed he suffered the very corner-stone of his duchy, the most
important point in the whole scheme of operations against the northmen
in central Gaul, to fall into the enemies’ hands. A band of pirates,
sailing unopposed up the Loire and the Mayenne after Robert’s death,
found Angers deserted and defenceless, and settling there with their
families, used it as a centre from which they could securely harry
all the country round. The bulk of the pirate forces, however, was
now concentrated upon a great effort for the conquest of Britain, and
while the invaders of Angers lay thus isolated from their brethren
across the Channel, Charles the Bald seized his opportunity to attempt
the recovery of the city. In concert with the Breton king, Solomon, he
gathered his forces for a siege; the Franks encamped on the eastern
side of the Mayenne, the Bretons on the opposite shore. Their joint
blockade proved unavailing, till one of the Bretons conceived the bold
idea of turning the course of the Mayenne, so as to leave the pirate
ships stranded and useless. The whole Breton army at once set to work
and dug such an enormous trench that the northmen saw their retreat
would be hopelessly cut off. In dismay they offered to purchase, at
a heavy price, a free withdrawal from Angers and its district; their
offer was accepted, and Angers was evacuated accordingly.[241]

        [240] Ann. Bertin. a. 866 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. vii. p.
        94).

        [241] Regino, a. 873 (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. i. pp.
        585, 586). Ann. Bertin. and Mettens. and Chron. Namnet. a. 873
        (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. vii. pp. 117, 200, 220, 221).
        Chron. Sigebert. a. 875 (_ib._ p. 252). Chron. S. Serg., a.
        873. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 132, 133).

But the long keels sailed away only to return again. Amid the gathering
troubles of the Karolingian house, as years passed on, the cry rose up
ever louder and louder from the desolated banks of Seine, and at last
even from the inland cities of Reims and Soissons, perilously near the
royal abode at Laon itself: “From the fury of the northmen, good Lord,
deliver us!” It was not from Laon that deliverance was to come. The
success of Charles the Bald at Angers, the more brilliant victory of
his grandson Louis III. over Guthrum at Saucourt, were but isolated
triumphs which produced no lasting results. At the very moment when the
Karolingian empire was reunited under the sceptre of Charles the Fat
came the crisis of the struggle with the northmen in West-Frankland;
and the true national leader shewed himself not in the heir of Charles
the Great, but in Count Odo of Paris, the son of Robert the Brave. It
was Odo who saved Paris from the northmen when they besieged it with
all their forces throughout the winter of 885; and by saving Paris he
saved the kingdom. Before the siege was raised the possessions which
his father had held as duke of the French were restored to him by the
death of Hugh of Burgundy. A few months later the common consent of
all the Karolingian realms deposed their unworthy Emperor, and the
acclamations of a grateful people raised their deliverer Odo to the
West-Frankish throne.

The times, however, were not yet ripe for a change of dynasty, and the
revolution was followed by a reaction which on Odo’s death in 898 again
set a Karolingian, Charles the Simple, upon the throne; but though
the monarchy of Laon lingered on till the race of Charles the Great
became extinct, it was being gradually undermined and supplanted by the
dukes of the French, the rulers of the great duchy between Seine and
Loire. Paris was now, since the siege of 885, the chief seat of the
ducal power; and in the new feudal organization which grew up around
this centre, the cradle of the ducal house, the border-stronghold
of Angers, sank to a secondary position. The fiefs which the dukes
parcelled out among their followers fell to the share of men of the
most diverse origin and condition. In some cases, as at Chartres and
Tours, the Scandinavian settler was turned into a peaceful lieutenant
of the Frankish chief against whom he had fought. In others the reward
of valour was justly bestowed on men who had earned it by their prowess
against the invaders. It may be that the old alliance of Count Robert
the Brave with the Bretons had sowed the seeds of a mighty tree. In the
depths of a gloomy forest-belt which ran along the Breton border at the
foot of a range of hills that shelter the western side of the valley
of the Mayenne, there dwelt in Robert’s day--so the story went--a
valiant forester, Tortulf. He quitted the hardy, hazardous borderer’s
life--half hunter, half bandit--to throw himself into the struggle of
Charles the Bald and Robert the Brave against the northmen: Charles
set him to keep the pirates out of Touraine, and gave him a congenial
post as forester of a wooded district known as the “Nid-de-Merle”--the
Blackbird’s Nest. In its wild fastnesses Tortulf lay in wait for the
approach of the marauders, and sprang forth to meet them with a daring
and a success which earned him his sovereign’s favour and the alliance
of the duke of the French. His son, Ingelger, followed in his steps;
marriage came to the help of arms, and with the hand of Ælendis, niece
of the archbishop of Tours, Ingelger acquired her lands at Amboise.
The dowry was a valuable one; Amboise stood in the midst of one of the
most rich and fertile districts of central France, half way between
Tours and Blois, on the south bank of the Loire, which was spanned at
this point by a bridge said to have been built by Julius Cæsar; two
centuries later tradition still pointed out the site of Cæsar’s palace
on the banks of the little river Amasse, at the western end of the
town; while opposite the bridge a rocky brow, crowned to-day by the
shell of a magnificent castle of the Renascence, probably still kept
in Ingelger’s days some traces of a fortress built there by a Roman
governor in the reign of the Emperor Valens. A mightier stronghold
than Amboise, however, was to be the home of Ingelger’s race. His son,
a ruddy youth named Fulk, early entered the service of Count Odo of
Paris and remained firmly attached to him and his house; and one of
the earliest acts of Odo’s brother Robert, who succeeded him as duke
of the French--if indeed it was not rather one of the last acts of
King Odo himself--was to intrust the city of Angers to Fulk the Red
as viscount.[242] The choice was a wise one; for Fulk was gifted with
a sound political instinct which found and kept the clue to guide him
through all the revolutions and counter-revolutions of the next forty
years. He never swerved from his adherence to the dukes of the French;
and by his quiet tenacity he, like them, laid the foundation of his
house’s greatness. Preferments civil and ecclesiastical--the abbacies
of S. Aubin and S. Licinius at Angers, the viscounty of Tours, though
this was but a momentary honour--were all so many stepping-stones to
his final investiture, shortly before the death of Charles the Simple,
as count of the Angevin March.

        [242] On the whole story of Tortulf, Ingelger and Fulk, see
        note A at end of chapter.

[Illustration: Map I.

  GAUL c. 909–941.

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

This little county of Anjou, of which Fulk thus became the first
hereditary count, ended by overshadowing in political importance
all the other divisions which made up the duchy of France. In point
of territorial extent Anjou, at its present stage, was one of the
smallest of the under-fiefs of the duchy. The dominions of Theobald
the Trickster, the first count of Blois and Chartres, were far larger
than those of Fulk; and so was the county of Maine or Cenomannia,
which lay to the north of Anjou on the right bank of the Loire. Yet in
a few generations Blois and Maine were both alike outstripped by the
little Angevin march. The proud independence of Maine proved her ruin
as well as her glory. She too was a border-land; her western frontier
marched with that of Britanny, her northern with that of a great
Scandinavian settlement which was growing into the duchy of Normandy.
But her political status was altogether undefined and insecure. France
and Normandy alike claimed the overlordship of Maine; Maine herself
acknowledged the claims of neither; and this uncertain condition placed
her at the mercy of her neighbours to north and south, and made her a
bone of contention between them and a battle-ground for their quarrels
till the day when all three were united. Blois and Chartres, on the
other hand, with their dependency Touraine, stood like Anjou on a
perfectly definite footing as recognised under-fiefs of the duchy of
France. In the extent of their territory, and in the natural resources
derived from the fertility of its soil and the number and wealth of
its towns, the counts of Blois had at starting a very considerable
advantage over the Angevins. But this seeming advantage proved in a
few years to be a disadvantage. The house of Blois grew too fast, and
soon outgrew its strength; its dominions became straggling; and when
they straggled out eastward into Champagne, what was gained at one end
was lost at the other, and Touraine, the most precious possession of
the counts of Blois, was absorbed in the gradual steady advance of the
Angevins.

Anjou’s position as a marchland marked her out for a special career.
Forming the extreme south-western corner of France properly so called,
divided from Aquitania by the Loire, from Britanny by the Mayenne,
she had the advantage of a strong and compact geographical situation
to start with. Her political position was equally favourable; she was
neither hindered and isolated like Maine by a desperate endeavour
to reclaim a lost independence, nor led astray by a multiplicity of
scattered interests like Blois. She had simply to take her choice
between the two alternatives which lie before every marchland. Such a
land must either submit to be swallowed up piecemeal by its neighbours,
or it must in sheer self-defence swallow up some of them; to keep
what it has got, it must get more. Anjou, as represented by Fulk the
Red and his successors, strongly embraced this latter alternative.
The growth of the Angevin power during the next two centuries was due
chiefly to the character of its rulers, working in a sphere which gave
exceptional scope for the exercise of their peculiar gifts. Whoever
Fulk’s real ancestors may have been, there can be no question that his
descendants were a very remarkable race. From first to last there is
a strong family likeness among them all. The first thing that strikes
one about them is their thoroughness; whatsoever their hands found to
do, whether it were good or evil, they did it with all their might.
Nearly all of them were men of great and varied natural powers, gifted
with a lofty military capacity and a deep political insight, and with
a taste and a talent for all kinds of pursuits, into which they threw
themselves with the full ardour of their stirring, restless temper.
Daring, but not rash; persevering, watchful, tenacious; sometimes
seeming utterly unscrupulous, yet with an odd vein of irregular
piety running through the characters of many of them, and coming to
light in the strangest shapes and at the most unexpected moments;
passionate almost as madmen, but with a method in their madness--the
Angevin counts were patriots in their way; for their chief aim was
aggrandizement, but it was the aggrandizement of Anjou as well as of
themselves. They were not to be led away, like their rivals of Blois,
by visionary schemes of merely personal promotion involving neglect of
their own little home-county; they were proud and fond of their “black
Angers” on its steep above the Mayenne, and never forgot that there was
the centre whence their power was to spread to the ends of the earth.
It is easy to see how exactly such a race as this was fitted for its
post in Anjou. Given such men in such a place, we can scarcely wonder
at what they made of it.

The Angers in which Fulk came to rule as count, about the time when
Æthelstan succeeded Eadward the Elder as king of Wessex, was a town
not of dark slate walls as it is chiefly now, but of red flintstone
and redder brick, such as the medieval builders long copied from the
works of their Roman masters, and such as may still be found embedded
in the outer walls of the bishop’s palace and half hidden behind the
mighty black bastions of the later castle. That castle covers, or
rather encloses, the site of a hall which Count Odo, the successor of
the traitor Lambert, had built about the year 851 on ground acquired
by exchange with Bishop Dodo. For some time after Frankish counts
had been substituted for Roman prefects, the spiritual and temporal
rulers of Angers had continued to dwell side by side on the hill-top;
Odo, however, instead of again occupying the palace which Lambert had
deserted, made it over to the bishop in return for a plot of ground
lying just outside the south-west corner of the city wall. There he
built himself a house, with the river at its feet and a vine-clad hill
at its back; and there from that time forth was the dwelling-place of
the Angevin counts.[243] Fulk the Red took up his abode there in the
early days of a great political transition which was to change the
kingdom of the West-Franks into a kingdom of Parisian France. Half
a century had yet to elapse before the transition was accomplished;
at its present stage indeed few could foresee its ultimate issue. If
the ducal house of Paris had many friends, it had also many foes. The
old Karolingian nobility was slowly dying out or sinking into the
background before the new nobility of the sword; the great house of
Vermandois had thrown its weight into the scale with the advancing
power; but there were still many who looked with contempt and disgust
on the new order of things, on the house of Paris and all its
connexions. The count of Anjou was wedged in between powers anything
but favourably disposed towards him and his patrons. The princes of
Aquitania looked scornfully across the Loire at the upstarts on its
northern bank; little as they recked of any authority beyond their
river-barrier, the only one which they acknowledged at all was that
of the Karolingian king at Laon. The Bretons beyond the Mayenne were
as far from being subdued as ever. Within the duchy of France itself,
one little corner was equally scornful of the dukes and of their
partisans; Maine, although from its geographical position necessarily
reckoned part of the duchy “between Seine and Loire,” still refused to
acknowledge any such reckoning; its ruling house, as well as the great
nobles of the South, claimed to have inherited the traditions of the
Roman Empire and the blood of its Frankish conquerors. In the eyes of
the Cenomannian counts, who traced their pedigree from a nephew of
Charles the Great, the heirs of Tortulf the Forester were nothing but
upstart barbarians.

        [243] See note B at end of chapter.

Their disdain, however, mattered little to Fulk. In those critical
times, he who had the keenest sword, the strongest arm, the clearest
head and the boldest heart, had the best title to nobility--a title
whose validity all were sooner or later compelled to acknowledge. Fulk
held Anjou by the grace of God, the favour of his lord the duke, and
the might of his own good sword. He was, however, no mere man of war;
he was quite willing to strengthen his position by peaceful means. One
method of so doing was suggested by his father’s example; it was one
which in all ages finds favour with ambitious men of obscure origin,
and which was to be specially characteristic of the Angevin house. As
Ingelger had married Ælendis of Amboise, so Fulk sought and won the
hand of another maiden of Touraine, Roscilla, the daughter of Warner,
lord of Loches, Villentras and Haye. It can only have been as the dowry
of his wife that Fulk came into possession of the most valuable portion
of her father’s lands, the township of Loches.[244] It lay some twenty
miles south of Amboise, on the left bank of the Indre, a little river
which takes its rise in the plains of Berry and winds along a wooded
valley, through some of the most romantic scenery of southern Touraine,
to fall into the Loire about half way between Amboise and Angers. In
a loop of the river, sheltered on the south and west by a belt of
woodland which for centuries to come was a favourite hunting-ground of
Roscilla’s descendants, rose a pyramidal height of rock on whose steep
sides the houses of the little township clustered round a church said
to have been built in the sixth century by a holy man from southern
Gaul, named Ursus, the “S. Ours” whom Loches still venerates as its
patron saint.[245] By the acquisition of Loches Fulk had gained in the
heart of southern Touraine a foot-hold which, coupled with that which
he already possessed at Amboise, might one day serve as a basis for the
conquest of the whole district.

        [244] _Gesta Cons. Andeg._ (Marchegay, _Comtes d’Anjou_), pp.
        65, 66. The pedigree there given to Roscilla is impossible.

        [245] The life of S. Ours is in Gregory of Tours, _Vitæ
        Patrum_, c. xviii.

A few years before Fulk’s investiture as count of Anjou, the relations
between the West-Frankish kingdom and its northern foes had entered
upon a new phase. In 912 King Charles the Simple and Duke Hugh of
Paris, finding themselves unable to wrest back from a pirate leader
called Hrolf the Ganger the lands which he had won around the mouth
of the Seine, made a virtue of necessity, and by a treaty concluded
at St.-Clair-sur-Epte granted to Hrolf a formal investiture of his
conquest, on condition of homage to the king and conversion to the
Christian faith. Tradition told how a rough Danish soldier, bidden to
perform the homage in Hrolf’s stead, kissed indeed the foot of Charles
the Simple, but upset him and his throne in doing so; and although to
the declining Karolingian monarchy the new power thus established at
the mouth of the Seine was useful as a counterpoise to that of the
Parisian dukes, yet the story is not altogether an inapt parable of
the relations between the duchy of Normandy and its royal overlord
during several generations. The homage and the conversion of Hrolf and
his comrades were alike little more than nominal. His son, William
Longsword, strove hard to force upon his people the manners, the
tongue, the outward civilization of their French neighbours; but to
those neighbours even he was still only a “leader of the pirates.” The
plundering, burning, slaughtering raids did indeed become less frequent
and less horrible under him than they had been in his father’s heathen
days; but they were far from having ceased. Politically indeed it was
William’s support alone that enabled Charles the Simple to carry on
to his life’s end a fairly successful struggle with a rival claimant
of his crown, Rudolf of Burgundy, a brother-in-law of Hugh, duke of
the French. No sooner was Charles dead and Rudolf seated on his throne
than the hostility of the northmen to the new king broke out afresh
in a pirate-raid which swept across the Norman border, past Orléans
and through the Gâtinais, into the very heart of the kingdom, to the
abbey of S. Benedict at Fleury on the Loire. It was not the first time
the monastery had been ravaged by pirates; the abbot was now evidently
expecting their attack, for he had called to his aid Count Gilbald of
Auxerre and Ingelger of Anjou, Fulk’s eldest son, who, young as he was,
had already made himself a name in battle with the northmen. The fight
was a stubborn one; the defenders of Fleury had resolved to maintain
it to their last gasp, and when at length all was over there was
scarcely a man of them left to tell the tale. The young heir of Anjou,
taken prisoner by the pirates, was slaughtered beneath the shadow of
S. Benet’s abbey as Count Robert the Brave had been slaughtered long
ago at the bridge of Sarthe.[246] Fortunately, however, the future
of the Angevin house did not depend solely on the life thus cut off
in its promise. Two sons yet remained to Fulk. The duty of stepping
into Ingelger’s place fell upon the youngest, for the second, Guy, was
already in holy orders. Eight years later, in 937, Duke Hugh of Paris,
the great maker of kings and bishops, who had just restored Louis
From-over-sea to the throne of his father Charles the Simple, procured
Guy’s elevation to the see of Soissons.[247] The son’s promotion was
doubtless owed to the long and steady service of the father; but the
young bishop soon shewed himself worthy of consideration on his own
account. He played a conspicuous part in the politics of his time, both
ecclesiastical and secular; he adhered firmly to the party of Duke Hugh
and his brother-in-law Herbert of Vermandois, and even carried his
devotion to them so far as to consecrate Herbert’s little son Hugh, a
child six years old, to the archbishopric of Reims in 940;[248] and
through all the scandals and censures which naturally resulted from
this glaringly uncanonical appointment Guy stuck to his boy-archbishop
with a courage worthy of a better cause. He could, however, shew
zeal for the Karolingian king as well as for the Parisian duke. When
in 945 Louis From-beyond-sea fell a prisoner into the hands of the
Normans, they demanded as the condition of his release that his two
sons should be given them as hostages. On Queen Gerberga’s refusal to
trust them with her eldest boy, the bishop of Soissons offered himself
in the child’s stead, and the Normans, well knowing his importance in
the realm, willingly accepted the substitution.[249] The dauntless
Angevin was possibly more at home in the custody of valiant enemies
than amid the ecclesiastical censures which fell thick upon him for
his proceedings in connexion with Hugh of Reims, and from which he was
only absolved in 948 by the synod of Trier.[250] His father was then no
longer count of Anjou. A year after Hugh’s consecration, in the winter
of 941 or the early spring of 942, Fulk the Red died “in a good old
age,” leaving the marchland which his sword had won and guarded so well
to his youngest son, Fulk the Good.[251]

        [246] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 239.
        The true date is shewn by a charter of Fulk, in Mabille’s
        Introd. to _Comtes d’Anjou, pièces justif._ no. vi., p. ci.

        [247] Chron. Frodoard, a. 937 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        viii. p. 192).

        [248] Richer, l. ii. c. 82.

        [249] Richer, l. ii. c. 48; _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay,
        _Comtes_), p. 66, where the king is miscalled Charles the
        Simple.

        [250] Chron. Frodoard, a. 948 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        viii. p. 204). Richer, l. ii. c. 82.

        [251] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 67. The date is
        proved by two charters, one dated August 941, signed by “Fulco
        comes” and “Fulco filius ejus” (Mabille, _ibid._, introd.,
        _pièces justif._, no. viii. p. cv); the other, dated May 942,
        and signed by one Fulk only (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. ix. p.
        723).

The reign of the second Count Fulk is the traditional golden age of
Anjou. Under him, she is the proverbially happy land which has no
history. While the name of the bishop of Soissons is conspicuous in
court and camp, that of his brother the count is never once heard; he
waged no wars,[252] he took no share in politics; the annalists of the
time find nothing to record of him. But if there is no history, there
is plenty of tradition and legend to set before us a charming picture
of the Good Count’s manner of life. The arts he cultivated were those
of peace; his gentle disposition and refined taste led him to pursuits
and habits which in those rough days were almost wholly associated
with the clerical profession. His favourite place of retirement,
the special object of his reverence and care, was the church of S.
Martin at Châteauneuf by Tours. There were enshrined the relics of the
“Apostle of the Gauls”; after many a journey to and fro, many a narrow
escape from the sacrilegious hands of the northmen, they had been
finally brought back to their home, so local tradition said, under the
care of Fulk’s grandfather Ingelger. The church was now a collegiate
foundation, served by a body of secular canons under the joint control
of a dean and--according to an evil usage of the period--a lay-abbot
who had only to enjoy his revenues on pretence of watching over the
temporal interests of the church. Since the time of Hugh of Burgundy
the abbacy of S. Martin’s had always been held by the head of the ducal
house of France; and it was doubtless their influence which procured
a canonry in their church for Fulk of Anjou. His greatest delight was
to escape from the cares of government and go to keep the festival
of S. Martin with the chapter of Châteauneuf; there he would lodge
in the house of one or other of the clergy, living in every respect
just as they did, and refusing to be called by his worldly title; not
till after he was gone did the count take care to make up for whatever
little expense his host might have incurred in receiving the honorary
canon.[253] While there he diligently fulfilled the duties of his
office, never failing to take his part in the sacred services. He was
not only a scholar, he was a poet, and had himself composed anthems in
honour of S. Martin.[254] One Martinmas eve King Louis From-beyond-sea
came to pay his devotions at the shrine of the patron saint of Tours.
As he and his suite entered the church at evensong, there they saw
Fulk, in his canon’s robe, sitting in his usual place next the dean,
and chanting the Psalms, book in hand. The courtiers pointed at him
mockingly--“See, the count of Anjou has turned clerk!” and the king
joined in their mockery. The letter which the “clerk” wrote to Louis,
when their jesting came round to his ears, has passed into a proverb:
“Know, my lord, that an unlettered king is but a crowned ass.”[255]
Fulk was indeed a living proof that it is possible to make the
contemplative life of the scholar a help and not a hindrance to the
active life of the statesman. The poet-canon was no mere dreamer; he
was a practical, energetic ruler, who worked hard at the improvement
and cultivation, material as well as intellectual, of his little
marchland, rebuilding the churches and the towns that had been laid
waste by the northmen, and striving to make up for the losses sustained
during the long years of war. The struggle was completely over now; a
great victory of King Rudolf, in the year after Ingelger’s death,[256]
had finally driven the pirates from the Loire; and there was nothing
to hinder Fulk’s work of peace. The soil had grown rich during the
years it had lain fallow, and now repaid with an abundant harvest the
labours of the husbandman; the report of its fertility and the fame of
Fulk’s wise government soon spread into the neighbouring districts; and
settlers from all the country round came to help in re-peopling and
cultivating the marchland.[257] This idyl of peace lasted for twenty
years, and ended only with the life of Fulk. In his last years he
became involved in the intricacies of Breton politics, and storm-clouds
began to gather on his western border; but they never broke over Anjou
itself till the Good Count was gone.

        [252] “Iste Fulco nulla bella gessit.” _Gesta Cons._
        (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 69.

        [253] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 70.

        [254] _Ib._ pp. 71, 72.

        [255] “Scitote, domine, quod rex illitteratus est asinus
        coronatus.” _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 71. It
        is curious that John of Salisbury, writing at the court of
        Henry of Anjou some years before the compilation of the _Gesta
        Consulum_, quotes the saying as coming from “literis quas
        _Regem Romanorum_ ad Francorum regem transmisisse recolo”
        (_Polycraticus_, l. iv. c. 6; Giles, vol. iii. p. 237). The
        proverb was well known in the time of Henry I.; see Will. Malm.
        _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 390 (Hardy, p. 616).

        [256] _Fragm. Hist. Franc._ in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        viii. p. 298.

        [257] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 74, 75.

The old Breton kingdom had now sunk into a duchy which was constantly
a prey to civil war. The ruling house of the counts of Nantes were at
perpetual strife with their rivals of Rennes. Alan Barbetorte, count
of Nantes, had been compelled to flee the country and take shelter in
England, at the general refuge of all exiles, the court of Æthelstan,
till a treaty between Æthelstan’s successor Eadmund and Louis
From-over-sea restored him to the dukedom of Britanny for the rest of
his life. He died in 952, leaving his duchy and his infant son Drogo to
the care of his wife’s brother, Theobald, count of Blois and Chartres,
a wily, unscrupulous politician known by the well-deserved epithet
of “the Trickster,” who at once resolved to turn his brother-in-law’s
dying charge to account for purposes of his own. But between his own
territories and the Breton duchy lay the Angevin march; his first step
therefore must be to make a friend of its ruler. For this end a very
simple means presented itself. Fulk’s wife had left him a widower with
one son;[258] Theobald offered him the hand of his sister, the widow
of Alan, and with it half the city and county of Nantes, to have and
to hold during Drogo’s minority; while he gave the other half to the
rival claimant of the duchy, Juhel Berenger of Rennes, under promise of
obedience to himself as overlord.[259] Unhappily, the re-marriage of
Alan’s widow was soon followed by the death of her child. In later days
Breton suspicion laid the blame upon his step-father; but the story has
come down to us in a shape so extremely improbable that it can leave no
stain on the memory of the Good Count.[260] Two sons of Alan, both much
older than Drogo, still remained. But they were not sons of Drogo’s
mother; Fulk therefore might justly think himself entitled to dispute
their claims to the succession, and hold that, in default of lawful
heirs, the heritage of Duke Alan should pass, as the dowry of the
widow, to her second husband--a practice very common in that age. And
Fulk would naturally feel his case strengthened by the fact that part
at least of the debateable land--that is, nearly half the territory
between the Mayenne and Nantes itself--had once been Angevin ground.

        [258] Her name was Gerberga, as appears by a charter of her
        son, Geoffrey Greygown, quoted in _Art de vérifier les Dates_,
        vol. xiii. p. 47.

        [259] Chron. Brioc. in Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol. i.
        cols. 29, 30. Chron. Namnet., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. viii.
        p. 277.

        [260] The Chron. Brioc. (Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol.
        i. col. 30) tells how “ille comes Fulco Andegavensis, vir
        diabolicus et maledictus,” bribed the child’s nurse to kill him
        by pouring boiling water on his head when she was giving him
        a bath. The fact that the Angevin count is further described
        as “Fulco Rufus” (_ib._ col. 29), would alone throw some doubt
        on the accuracy of the writer. Moreover, this Chronicle of S.
        Brieuc is a late compilation, and such a circumstantial account
        of a matter which, if it really happened, must have been
        carefully hushed up at the time, is open to grave suspicion
        when unconfirmed by any other testimony. The Angevin accounts
        of Fulk’s character may fairly be set against it: they rest on
        quite as good authority. But the sequel of the story furnishes
        a yet stronger argument, for it shows that the murder would
        have been what most of the Angevin counts looked upon as much
        worse than a crime--a great blunder for Fulk’s own interest.

Just at this crisis the Normans made a raid upon Britanny, of which
their dukes claimed the overlordship. They captured the bishop of
Nantes, and the citizens, thus left without a leader of any kind, and
in hourly fear of being attacked by the “pirates,” sent an urgent
appeal to Fulk for help. Fulk promised to send them succour, but some
delay occurred; at the end of a week’s waiting the people of Nantes
acted for themselves, and succeeded in putting the invaders to flight.
Indignant at the Angevin count’s failure to help, they threw off all
allegiance to him and chose for their ruler Hoel, one of the sons of
Alan Barbetorte.[261]

        [261] Chron. Brioc., Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol. i.
        cols. 30, 31. Chron. Namnet., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. viii.
        p. 277.

These clouds on the western horizon did not trouble the peace of Fulk’s
last hour. As he knelt to receive the holy communion in S. Martin’s
church on one of the feasts of the patron saint, a slight feeling of
illness came over him; he returned to his place in the choir, and
there, in the arms of his brother-canons, passed quietly away.[262]
We cannot doubt that they laid him to rest in the church he had loved
so well.[263] With him was buried the peace of the Marchland. Never
again was it to have a ruler who “waged no wars”; never again, till
the title of count of Anjou was on the eve of being merged in loftier
appellations, was that title to be borne by one whose character might
give him some claim to share the epithet of “the Good,” although
circumstances caused him to lead a very different life. Fulk the
Second stands all alone as the ideal Angevin count, and it is in this
point of view that the legends of his life--for we cannot call them
history--have a value of their own. The most famous of them all
is, in its original shape, a charming bit of pure Christian poetry.
One day--so the tradition ran--the count, on his way to Tours, was
accosted by a leper desiring to be carried to S. Martin’s. All shrank
in horror from the wretched being except Fulk, who at once took him on
his shoulders and carried him to the church-door. There his burthen
suddenly vanished; and at the midnight service, as the count-canon sat
in his stall, he beheld in a trance S. Martin, who told him that in
his charity he had, like another S. Christopher, unwittingly carried
the Lord Himself.[264] Later generations added a sequel to the story.
Fulk, they said, after his return to Angers, was further rewarded by a
second vision; an angel came to him and foretold that his successors to
the ninth generation should extend their power even to the ends of the
earth.[265] At the time when this prophecy appears in history, it had
already reached its fulfilment. In all likelihood it was then a recent
invention; in the legend to which it was attached it has obviously no
natural place. But its introduction into the story of Fulk the Good
was prompted by a significant instinct. At the height of their power
and their glory, the reckless, ruthless house of Anjou still did not
scorn to believe that their greatness had been foretold not to the
warrior-founder, not to the bravest of his descendants, but to the good
count who sought after righteousness and peace. Even they were willing,
in theory at least, to accept the dominion of the earth as the promised
reward not of valour but of charity.

        [262] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 75. According to
        _Gallia Christiana_ (vol. xiv. col. 808) the Norman attack on
        Nantes took place about 960. It is probable that Fulk died soon
        after; but no charters of his successor are forthcoming until
        966.

        [263] The _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 67, 75) say
        that Ingelger, Fulk the Red and Fulk the Good were all buried
        in S. Martin’s. Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 376) says
        the place of their burial is unknown to him. The statement of
        the later writers therefore is mere guess-work or invention;
        but in the case of Fulk the Good it is probably right.

        [264] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 73, 74.

        [265] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 149.

Whatever may be the origin of the prophecy, however, it was in the
reign of Fulk’s son and successor Geoffrey Greygown that the first
steps were taken towards its realization. Legend has been as busy with
the first Geoffrey of Anjou as with his father; but it is legend of
a very different kind. The epic bards of the marchland singled out
Geoffrey for their special favourite; in their hands he became the hero
of marvellous combats, of impossible deeds of knightly prowess and
strategical skill, of marvellous stories utterly unhistoric in form,
but significant as indications of the character popularly attributed
to him--a character quite borne out by those parts of his career which
are attested by authentic history. Whatever share of Fulk’s more
refined tastes may have been inherited by either of his sons seems to
have fallen to the second, Guy, who early passed into the quiet life of
the monk in the abbey of S. Paul at Corméri in Touraine.[266] The elder
was little more than a rough, dashing soldier, whose careless temper
shewed itself in his very dress. Clad in the coarse grey woollen tunic
of the Angevin peasantry,[267] Geoffrey Greygown made himself alike by
his simple attire and by his daring valour a conspicuous figure in the
courts and camps of King Lothar and Duke Hugh.

        [266] _Gall. Christ._, vol. xiv. col. 258.

        [267] “Indutus tunicâ illius panni quem Franci Grisetum vocant,
        nos Andegavi Buretum.” _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p.
        81.

The receiver of Fulk’s famous letter had gone before him to the grave;
Louis From-over-sea, the grandson of Eadward the Elder, the last
Karolingian worthy of his race, had died in 954. His death brought the
house of France a step nearer to the throne; but it was still only one
step. Lothar, the son of Louis, was crowned in his father’s stead; two
years later the king-maker followed the king; and thenceforth his son,
the new duke of the French, Hugh Capet, steadily prepared to exchange
his ducal cap for a crown which nevertheless he was too prudent to
seize before the time. In the face of countless difficulties, Louis in
his eighteen years’ reign had contrived to restore the monarchy of Laon
to a very real kingship. His greatest support in this task had been his
wife’s brother, the Emperor Otto the Great. The two brothers-in-law,
who had come to their thrones in the same year, were fast friends
in life and death; and Otto remained the faithful guardian of his
widowed sister and her son. So long as he lived, Hugh’s best policy
was peace; and while Hugh remained quiet, there was little scope for
military or political action on the part of his adherent Geoffrey of
Anjou. In 973, however, the great Emperor died; and soon after he was
gone the alliance between the Eastern and Western Franks began to shew
signs of breaking. Lothar and Otto II. were brothers-in-law as well
as cousins, but they were not friends as their fathers had been. In
an evil hour Lothar was seized with a wild longing to regain the land
which bore his name,--that fragment of the old “Middle Kingdom,” known
as the duchy of Lotharingia or Lorraine, which after long fluctuating
between its attachment to the imperial crown and its loyalty to the
Karolingian house had finally cast in its lot with the Empire, with the
full assent of Louis From-over-sea. Lothar brooded over its loss till
in 978, when Otto and his queen were holding their court at Aachen,
his jealousy could no longer endure the sight of his rival so near
the border, and he summoned the nobles of his realm to an expedition
into Lorraine.[268] Nothing could better fall in with the plans of
Hugh Capet than a breach between Lothar and Otto; the call to arms was
readily answered by the duke and his followers, and the grey tunic of
the Angevin count was conspicuous at the muster.[269] The suddenness
of Lothar’s march compelled Otto to make a hasty retreat from Aachen;
but all that the West-Franks gained was a mass of plunder, and the
vain glory of turning the great bronze eagle on the palace of Charles
the Great towards the east instead of the west.[270] While they were
plundering Aachen Otto was preparing a counter-invasion.[271] Bursting
upon the western realm, he drove the king to cross the Seine and seek
help of the duke, and before Hugh could gather troops enough to stop
him he had made his way to the gates of Paris. For a while the French
and the Germans lay encamped on opposite banks of the river, the duke
waiting till his troops came up, and beguiling the time with skirmishes
and trials of individual valour.[272] But as soon as Otto perceived
that his adversaries were becoming dangerous he struck his tents and
marched rapidly homewards, satisfied with having inflicted on his rash
cousin a far greater alarm and more serious damage than he had himself
suffered from Lothar’s wild raid.[273]

        [268] Richer, l. iii. c. 68.

        [269] Chron. Vindoc. a. 954 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 163).

        [270] Richer, l. iii. c. 71.

        [271] The exact date of Lothar’s attack on Lotharingia seems to
        be nowhere stated. That of Otto’s invasion of Gaul, however,
        which clearly followed it immediately, is variously given as
        977 (Chronn. S. Albin. and Vindoc., Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp.
        21, 163) and 978 (Chronn. S. Flor. Salm. and S. Maxent., _ib._
        pp. 186, 381). The later date is adopted by Mr. Freeman, _Norm.
        Conq._, vol. i. p. 264.

        [272] Among these the Angevin writers (_Gesta Cons._,
        Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 79, 80) introduce Geoffrey Greygown’s
        fight with a gigantic Dane, Æthelwulf. It seems to be only
        another version, adorned with reminiscences of David and
        Goliath, of Richer’s account (l. iii. c. 76) of a fight between
        a German champion and a man named Ivo; and the whole story of
        this war in the _Gesta_ is full of hopeless confusions and
        anachronisms.

        [273] Richer, l. iii. cc. 72–77.

From that time forth, at least, Geoffrey Greygown’s life was a busy and
a stirring one. It seems to have been in the year of the Lotharingian
raid that he married his second wife, Adela, countess in her own right
of Chalon-sur-Saône, and now the widow of Count Lambert of Autun.[274]
By his first marriage, with another Adela, he seems to have had only
a daughter, Hermengard, who had been married as early as 970[275] to
Conan the Crooked, count of Rennes. There can be little doubt that
this marriage was a stroke of policy on Geoffrey’s part, intended to
pave the way for Angevin intervention in the affairs of Britanny. The
claims of Fulk the Good to the overlordship of Nantes had of course
expired with him; whatever rights the widow of Duke Alan might carry
to her second husband, they could not pass to her stepson. Still
Geoffrey could hardly fail to cherish designs upon, at least, the
debateable ground which lay between the Mayenne and the original county
of Nantes. Meanwhile the house of Rennes had managed to establish,
by the right of the stronger, its claim to the dukedom of Britanny.
Hoel, a son of Alan Barbetorte, remained count of Nantes for nearly
twenty years after Fulk’s death; his career was ended at last by the
hand of an assassin;[276] and as his only child was an infant, his
brother Guerech, already bishop of Nantes, was called upon to succeed
him, as the only surviving descendant of Alan who was capable of
defending the state. Guerech was far better fitted for a secular than
for an ecclesiastical ruler; as bishop, his chief care was to restore
or rebuild his cathedral, and for this object he was so eager in
collecting contributions that he made a journey to the court of Lothar
to ask help of the king in person. His way home lay directly through
Anjou. Geoffrey felt that his opportunity had come; and he set the
first example of a mode of action which thenceforth became a settled
practice of the Angevin counts. He laid traps in all directions to
catch the unwary traveller, took him captive, and only let him go after
extorting homage not merely for the debateable land, but also for
Nantes itself; in a word, for all that part of Britanny which had been
held or claimed by Fulk as Drogo’s guardian.[277]

        [274] See note C at end of chapter.

        [275] Morice, _Hist. Bret._, vol. i. p. 63. See note C at end
        of chapter.

        [276] Chron. Brioc., Morice, _preuves_, vol. i., p. 31. Chron.
        Namnet., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. viii. p. 278. “C. 980,”
        notes the editor in the margin.

        [277] Chron. Brioc., Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol. i.
        col. 32.

Geoffrey had gained his hold over Nantes; but in so doing he had
brought upon himself the wrath of his son-in-law. Conan, as duke of
Britanny, claimed for himself the overlordship of Nantes, and regarded
Guerech’s enforced homage to Geoffrey as an infringement of his own
rights. His elder sons set out to attack their step-mother’s father,
made a raid upon Anjou, and were only turned back from the very gates
of Angers by a vigorous sally of Geoffrey himself.[278] Conan next
turned his vengeance upon the unlucky count-bishop of Nantes. The
Angevin and his unwilling vassal made common cause against their common
enemy, who marched against their united forces, bringing with him a
contingent of the old ravagers of Nantes--the Normans.[279] The rivals
met not far from Nantes, on the _lande_ of Conquereux, one of those
soft, boggy heaths so common in Britanny; and the issue of the fight
was recorded in an Angevin proverb--“Like the battle of Conquereux,
where the crooked overcame the straight.”[280] Conan was, however,
severely wounded, and does not appear to have followed up his victory;
and the Nantes question was left to be fought out ten years later, on
the very same ground, by Geoffrey’s youthful successor.

        [278] See note D at end of chapter.

        [279] Chron. Brioc., as above.

        [280] See note D at end of chapter.

The death of Lothar, early in March 986, brought Hugh Capet within
one step of the throne. The king’s last years had been spent in
endeavouring to secure the succession to his son by obtaining for him
the homage of the princes of Aquitaine and the support of the duke
of the French--two objects not very easy to combine, for the great
duchies north and south of the Loire were divided by an irreconcileable
antipathy. In 956 William “Tête-d’Etoupe,” or the “Shockhead,” strong
in his triple power as count of Poitou, count of Auvergne and duke
of Aquitaine--strong, too, in his alliance with Normandy, for he had
married a sister of his namesake of the Long Sword--had bidden defiance
not unsuccessfully to Lothar and Hugh the Great both at once.[281] In
961 Lothar granted the county of Poitiers to Hugh;[282] but all he
could give was an empty title; when William Shockhead died in 963,[283]
his son William Fierabras stepped into his place as count of Poitou,
duke of Aquitaine, and leader of the opposition to Hugh Capet.

        [281] Richer, l. iii. cc. 3–5.

        [282] _Ib._ c. 13.

        [283] Chron. S. Maxent. ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 381).

It was now evident that the line of Charles the Great was about
to expire in a worthless boy. While the young King Louis, as the
chroniclers say, “did nothing,”[284] the duke of the French and his
followers were almost openly preparing for the last step of all. The
count of Anjou, following as ever closely in the wake of his overlord,
now ventured on a bold aggression. Half by force, half by fraud, he
had already carried his power beyond the Mayenne; he now crossed the
Loire and attacked his southern neighbour the count of Poitou. Marching
boldly down the road which led from Angers to Poitiers, he took Loudun,
and was met at Les Roches by William Fierabras, whom he defeated in
a pitched battle and pursued as far as a place which in the next
generation was marked by the castle of Mirebeau. Of the subsequent
details of the war we know nothing; it ended however in a compromise;
Geoffrey kept the lands which he had won, but he kept them as the “man”
of Duke William.[285] They seem to have consisted of a series of small
fiefs scattered along the valleys of the little rivers Layon, Argenton,
Thouet and Dive, which furrow the surface of northern Poitou.[286] The
most important was Loudun, a little town some eighteen miles north-west
of Poitiers. Even to-day its gloomy, crooked, rough-paved streets,
its curious old houses, its quaintly-attired people, have a strangely
old-world look; lines within lines of broken wall wind round the hill
on whose slope the town is built, and in their midst stands a great
square keep, the work of Geoffrey’s successors. He had won a footing
in Poitou; they learned to use it for ends of which, perhaps, he could
as yet scarcely dream. Loudun looked southward to Poitiers, but it
looked northward and eastward too, up the valley of the Thouet which
led straight up to Saumur, the border-fortress of Touraine and Anjou,
and across the valley of the Vienne which led from the Angevin frontier
into the heart of southern Touraine. Precious as it might be in itself,
Loudun was soon to be far more precious as a point of vantage not so
much against the lord of Poitiers as against the lord of Chinon, Saumur
and Tours.

        [284] “Ludovicus qui nihil fecit” is the original form of the
        nickname usually rendered by “le Fainéant.”

        [285] See note D at end of chapter.

        [286] Fulk Nerra’s Poitevin castles, Maulévrier, Thouars, etc.,
        must have been built on the ground won by Geoffrey.

The little marchland had thus openly begun her career of aggression on
the west and on the south. It seems that a further promise of extension
to the northward was now held by Hugh Capet before the eyes of his
faithful Angevin friend. Geoffrey’s northern neighbour was as little
disposed as the southern to welcome the coming king. The overlordship
of Maine was claimed by the duke of the Normans on the strength of a
grant made to Hrolf in 924 by King Rudolf; it was claimed by the duke
of the French on the strength of another grant made earlier in the same
year by Charles the Simple to Hugh the Great,[287] as well as in virtue
of the original definition of their duchy “between Seine and Loire”;
but the Cenomannian counts owned no allegiance save to the heirs of
Charles the Great, and firmly refused all obedience to the house of
France. Hugh Capet, now king in all but name, laid upon the lord of
the Angevin march the task of reducing them to submission. He granted
Maine to Geoffrey Greygown[288]--a merely nominal gift at the moment,
for Hugh (or David) of Maine was in full and independent possession
of his county; and generation after generation had to pass away before
the remote consequences of that grant were fully worked out to their
wonderful end. Geoffrey himself had no time to take any steps towards
enforcing his claim. Events came thick and fast in the early summer of
987. King Louis V. was seized at Senlis with one of those sudden and
violent sicknesses so common in that age, and died on May 22. The last
Karolingian king was laid in his grave at Compiègne; the nobles of
the realm came together in a hurried meeting; on the proposal of the
archbishop of Reims they swore to the duke of the French a solemn oath
that they would take no steps towards choosing a ruler till a second
assembly should be held, for which a day was fixed.[289] Hugh knew
now that he had only a few days more to wait. He spent the interval
in besieging a certain Odo, called “Rufinus”--in all likelihood a
rebellious vassal--who was holding out against him at Marson in
Champagne; and with him went his constant adherent Geoffrey of Anjou.
At the end of the month the appointed assembly was held at Senlis.
Passing over the claims of Charles of Lorraine, the only surviving
descendant of the great Emperor, the nobles with one consent offered
the crown to the duke of the French. From his camp before Marson Hugh
went to receive, at Noyon on the 1st of June,[290] the crown for which
he had been waiting all his life. Geoffrey, whom he had left to finish
the siege, fell sick and died before the place, seven weeks after his
patron’s coronation;[291] and his body was carried back from distant
Champagne to be laid by his father’s side in the church of S. Martin at
Tours.[292]

        [287] Chron. Frodoard, a. 924 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        viii. p. 181).

        [288] See note E at end of chapter.

        [289] Richer, l. iv. cc. 5 and 8.

        [290] Richer, l. iv. c. 12. On this Kalckstein (_Geschichte
        des französischen Königthums unter den ersten Capetingern_,
        vol. i. p. 380, note 2), remarks: “Aus Rich. iv. 12 wäre zu
        schliessen, dass Hugo in Noyon gekrönt wurde ... aber eine
        gleichzeitige Urkunde von Fleury entscheidet für Reims. Richer
        gibt wohl in Folge eines Gedächtnissfehlers den 1 Juli (wie für
        Juni zu verbessern seine wird) als Krönungstag. Hist. Francica
        um 1108 verfasst, Aimoin Mirac. S. Bened. ii. 2 (Bouq., x. 210
        u. 341).” The _Hist. Franc. Fragm._ here referred to places
        the crowning at Reims on July 3. Aimoin, however, places it at
        Noyon and gives no date. The question therefore lies really
        between Richer and the Fleury record referred to, but not
        quoted, by Kalckstein; for the two twelfth century writers
        are of no authority at all in comparison with contemporaries.
        We must suppose that the Fleury charter gives the same date
        as the _Hist. Franc. Fragm._ But is it not possible that Hugh
        was really crowned first at Noyon on 1st June, and afterwards
        recrowned with fuller state at Reims a month later?

        [291] Chronn. S. Albin., S. Serg., and Vindoc., a. 987; Rain.
        Andeg. a. 985; S. Maxent. a. 986 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 21,
        134, 164, 9, 382). Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 376.

        [292] Fulk Rechin, as above, and _Gesta Cons._ (_ib._), p. 89,
        say he was buried in S. Martin’s. R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p.
        165) buries him in S. Aubin’s at Angers.

The century of preparation and transition was over; the great change
was accomplished, not to be undone again for eight hundred years.
The first period of strictly French history and the first period of
Angevin history close together. The rulers of the marchland had begun
to shew that they were not to be confined within the limits which
nature itself might seem to have fixed for them; they had stretched
a hand beyond their two river-boundaries, and they had begun to cast
their eyes northward and dream of a claim which was to have yet more
momentous results. In the last years of Geoffrey Greygown we trace a
foreshadowing of the wonderful career which his successor is to begin.
From the shadow we pass to its realization; with the new king and the
new count we enter upon a new era.


NOTE A.

ON THE SOURCES AND AUTHENTICITY OF EARLY ANGEVIN HISTORY.

Our only detailed account of the early Angevins, down to Geoffrey
Greygown, is contained in two books: the _Gesta Consulum
Andegavensium_, by John, monk of Marmoutier, and the _Historia Comitum
Andegavensium_, which goes under the name of Thomas Pactius, prior of
Loches. Both these works were written in the latter part of the twelfth
century; and they may be practically regarded as one, for the latter
is in reality only an abridgement of the former, with a few slight
variations. The _Gesta Consulum_ is avowedly a piece of patchwork. The
author in his “Proœmium” tells us that it is founded on the work of a
certain Abbot Odo which had been recast by Thomas Pactius, prior of
Loches, and to which he himself, John of Marmoutier, had made further
additions from sundry other sources which he enumerates (Marchegay,
_Comtes d’Anjou_, p. 353. This “Proœmium” is there printed at the
head of the _Historia Abbreviata_ instead of the _Gesta Consulum_,
to which, however, it really belongs; see M. Mabille’s introduction,
_ib._ p. xxxi.). The _Historia Comitum Andegavensium_ (_ib._ p. 320)
bears the name of Thomas of Loches, and thus professes to be the
earlier version on which John worked. But it is now known that the work
of Thomas, which still exists in MS., is totally distinct from that
published under his name (see M. Mabille’s introduction to _Comtes
d’Anjou_, pp. xviii., xix.), and, moreover, that the printed _Historia
Comitum_ is really a copy of a series of extracts from Ralf de Diceto’s
_Abbreviationes Chronicorum_--extracts which Ralf himself had taken
from the _Gesta Consulum_ (see Bishop Stubbs’ preface to R. Diceto,
vol. ii. pp. xxiii.–xxix). There is, however, one other source of
information about the early Angevins which, if its author was really
what he professed to be, is of somewhat earlier date and far higher
value, although of very small extent. This is the fragment of the
_Angevin History_ which goes under the name of Count Fulk Rechin. Its
authorship has been questioned, but it has never been disproved; and
one thing at least is certain--the writer, whoever he may have been,
had some notion of historical and chronological possibilities, whereas
John of Marmoutier had none. Fulk Rechin (as we must for the present
call him, without stopping to decide whether he has a right to the
name) gives a negative testimony against all John’s stories about the
earlier members of the Angevin house. He pointedly states that he knows
nothing about the first three counts (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 376),
and he makes no mention of anybody before Ingelger. Now, supposing he
really was Count Fulk IV. of Anjou, it is fairly safe to assume that if
anything had been known about his own forefathers he would have been
more likely to know it than a monk who wrote nearly a hundred years
later. On the other hand, if he was a twelfth-century forger, such a
daring avowal of ignorance, put into the mouth of such a personage,
shews the writer’s disregard of the tales told by the monk, and can
only have been intended to give them the lie direct.

The two first members of the Angevin house, then--Tortulf of Rennes
and his son Tertullus--rest solely on the evidence of these two late
writers. Their accounts are not recommended by intrinsic probability.
We are roused to suspicion by the very first sentence of the _Gesta
Consulum_:--“Fuit vir quidam de Armoricâ Galliâ, nomine Torquatius.
Iste a Britonibus, proprietatem vetusti ac Romani nominis ignorantibus,
corrupto vocabulo Tortulfus dictus fuit” (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 35).
When one finds that his son is called Tertullus, it is impossible not
to suspect that “Torquatius” and “Tertullus” are only two different
attempts to Latinize a genuine Teutonic “Tortulf.” For the lives of
these personages John of Marmoutier gives no distinct dates; but he
tells us that Torquatius was made Forester of Nid-de-Merle by Charles
the Bald, “eo anno quo ab Andegavis et a toto suo regno Normannos
expulit” (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 35). Now this is rather vague, but it
looks as if the date intended were 873. We are next told that Tertullus
went to seek his fortune in France “circa id temporis quo Karolus
Calvus ... ex triarcho monarchus factus, non longo regnavit spatio”
(_ib._ pp. 36, 37), whatever that may mean. The next chronological
landmark is that of the “reversion” of S. Martin, which John copies
from the Cluny treatise _De Reversione B. Martini_, and copies wrong.
Then comes Fulk the Red, on whom he says the whole county of Anjou was
conferred by Duke Hugh of Burgundy, guardian of Charles the Simple, the
county having until then been divided in two parts; and he also says
that Fulk was related to Hugh through his grandmother (_ib._ pp. 64,
65).

There are several unmanageable points in this story. 1. The pedigree
cannot be right. It is clear that John took Hugh the Great (“Hugh
of Burgundy,” as he calls him) to be a son of the earlier Hugh of
Burgundy (one copy of the _Gesta_, that printed by D’Achéry in his
_Spicilegium_, vol. iii. p. 243, actually adds “filius alterius
Hugonis”), and this latter to have been the father of Petronilla, wife
of Tertullus.

The chronology of the life of Fulk the Red, long a matter of mingled
tradition and guess-work, has now been fairly established by the
investigations of M. E. Mabille. This gentleman has examined the
subject in his introduction to MM. Marchegay and Salmon’s edition of
the _Chroniques des Comtes d’Anjou_, and in an article entitled “Les
Invasions normandes dans la Loire,” in the _Bibliothèque de l’Ecole
des Chartes_, series vi. vol. v. pp. 149–194; to each of these works
is appended by way of _pièces justificatives_ a series of charters of
the highest importance for establishing the facts of the early history
of Anjou and Touraine. The first appearance of Fulk is as witness to a
charter given at Tours by Odo, as abbot of S. Martin’s, in April 886.
(Mabille, introd. _Comtes_, p. lxix. note). Now if Fulk the Red was
old enough to be signing charters in 886, his parents must have been
married long before the days of Louis the Stammerer--in 870 at the very
latest, and more likely several years earlier still. His grandparents
therefore (_i.e._ Tertullus and Petronilla) must have been married
before 850. It is possible that Hugh the Abbot who died in 887 may have
had a daughter married as early as this; but it does not seem very
likely.

2. The story of Ingelger’s investiture with Orleans and the Gâtinais
is suspicious. His championship of the slandered countess of Gâtinais
(Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 40–45) is one of those ubiquitous tales which
are past confuting. Still the statement that he somehow acquired lands
in the Gâtinais is in itself not impossible. But the coupling together
of Gâtinais and Orléans is very suspicious. Not one of the historical
descendants of Ingelger had, as far as is known, anything to do with
either place for nearly two hundred years. There is documentary proof
(see the signatures to a charter printed in Mabille’s introd. _Comtes_,
p. lxiv, note 1; the reference there given to Salmon is wrong) that in
942, the year after the death of Fulk the Red, the viscount of Orléans
was one Geoffrey; and he belonged to a totally different family--but
a family which, it seems, did in time acquire the county of Gâtinais,
and in the end became merged in the house of Anjou, when the son of
Geoffrey of Gâtinais and Hermengard of Anjou succeeded his uncle
Geoffrey Martel in 1061. It is impossible not to suspect that the late
Angevin writers took up this story at the wrong end and moved it back
two hundred years.

3. Comes the great question of Ingelger’s investiture with half the
county of Anjou.

In not one of the known documents of the period does Ingelger’s name
appear. The only persons who do appear as rulers of the Angevin march
are Hugh the Abbot and his successor Odo, till we get to Fulk the
Viscount. Fulk’s first appearance in this capacity is in September 898,
when “Fulco vicecomes” signs a charter of Ardradus, brother of Atto,
viscount of Tours (Mabille, Introd. _Comtes_, p. xciii). He witnesses,
by the same title, several charters of Robert the Abbot-Count during
the next two years. In July 905 we have “signum Fulconis Turonorum et
Andecavorum vicecomitis” (_ib._ p. xcv); in October 909 “signum domni
Fulconis Andecavorum comitis” (_ib._ p. xcviii); and in October 912
he again signs among the counts (_ib._ p. lxi, note 4). But in May
914, and again as late as August 924, he resumes the title of viscount
(_ib._ pp. c and lxii, note 2). Five years later, in the seventh year
of King Rudolf, we find a charter granted by Fulk himself, “count of
the Angevins and abbot of S. Aubin and S. Licinius” (_ib._ p. ci); and
thenceforth this is his established title.

These dates at once dispose of R. Diceto’s statement (Stubbs, vol. i.
p. 143) that Fulk succeeded his father Ingelger as second count in
912. They leave us in doubt as to the real date of his appointment as
count; but whether we adopt the earlier date, in or before 909, or the
later one, between 924 and 929, as that of his definite investiture, we
cannot accept the _Gesta’s_ story that it was granted by Hugh the Great
on behalf of Charles the Simple. For in 909 the duke of the French
was not Hugh, but his father Robert; and in 924–929 the king was not
Charles, but Rudolf of Burgundy.

But the chronology is not the only difficulty in the tale of Count
Ingelger. The _Gesta_-writers admit that “another count” (_i.e._ the
former count, Duke Hugh) went on ruling beyond the Mayenne. This at
once raises a question, very important yet very simple--Did the Angevin
March, the March of Robert the Brave and his successors, extend on both
sides of the Mayenne? For the assumption that it did is the ground of
the whole argument for the “bipartite” county.

The old territory of the Andes certainly spread on both sides of
the river. So also, it seems, did the march of Count Lambert. The
commission of a lord marcher is of necessity indefinite; it implies
holding the border-land and extending it into the enemy’s country if
possible. It appears to me that when Lambert turned traitor he carried
out this principle from the other side; when Nantes became Breton,
the whole land up to the Mayenne became Breton too. This view is
distinctly supported by a charter in which Herispoë, in August 852,
styles himself ruler of Britanny and up to the river Mayenne (Lobineau,
_Hist. Bretagne_, vol. ii. col. 55); and it gives the most rational
explanation of the Breton wars of Fulk the Good, Geoffrey Greygown and
Fulk Nerra, which ended in Anjou’s recovery of the debateable ground.
If it is correct, there is an end at once of the “bipartite county”
and of Count Ingelger; “the other count” cannot have ruled west of the
Mayenne, therefore he must have ruled east of it, and there is no room
for any one else.

The one writer whose testimony seems to lend some countenance to that
of the _Gesta_ need not trouble us much. Fulk Rechin (Marchegay,
_Comtes_, p. 374) does call Ingelger the first count; but his own
confession that he knew nothing about his first five ancestors beyond
their names gives us a right to think, in the absence of confirmatory
evidence, that he may have been mistaken in using the title. He says
nothing about the county having ever been bipartite, and his statement
that his forefathers received their honours from Charles the Bald,
not from the house of Paris (_ib._ p. 376), may be due to the same
misconception, strengthened by a desire, which in Fulk Rechin would
be extremely natural, to disclaim all connexion with the “genus impii
Philippi,” or even by an indistinct idea of the investiture of Fulk I.
For, if this is regarded as having taken place between 905 and 909, it
must fall in the reign of Charles the Simple, and might be technically
ascribed to him, though there can be no doubt that it was really owing
to the duke of the French. Every step of Fulk’s life, as we can trace
it in the charters, shows him following closely in the wake of Odo,
Robert and Hugh; and the dependance of Anjou on the duchy of France is
distinctly acknowledged by his grandson.

The latter part of the account of Ingelger in the _Gesta_ (Marchegay,
_Comtes_, pp. 47–62) is copied bodily from the _Tractatus de reversione
B. Martini a Burgundiâ_, which professes to have been written by S. Odo
of Cluny at the request of his foster-brother, Count Fulk the Good.
The wild anachronisms of this treatise have been thoroughly exposed by
its latest editor, M. A. Salmon (_Supplément au Recueil des Chroniques
de Touraine_, pp. xi–xxviii), and M. Mabille (“Les Invasions normandes
dans la Loire et les pérégrinations du corps de S. Martin,” in _Bibl.
de l’Ecole des Chartes_, ser. vi. vol. v. pp. 149–194). It is certain,
from the statement of S. Odo’s own biographer John, that the saint was
born in 879 and entered religion in 898; at which time it is evident
that Fulk the Good, the Red Count’s youngest son, must have been quite
a child, if even he was in existence at all. The letters in which he
and the abbot address each other as foster-brothers are therefore
forgeries; and the treatise which these letters introduce is no better.
The only part of it which directly concerns our present subject is
the end, recounting how the body of the Apostle of the Gauls, after a
thirty years’ exile at Auxerre, whither it had been carried to keep it
safe from the sacrilegious hands of Hrolf and his northmen when they
were ravaging Touraine, was brought back in triumph to its home at
Tours on December 13, 887, by Ingelger, count of Gâtinais and Anjou,
and grandson of Hugh, duke of Burgundy. Now there is no doubt at all
that the relics of S. Martin were carried into Burgundy and afterwards
brought back again, and that the feast of the Reversion of S. Martin
on December 13 was regularly celebrated at Tours in commemoration of
the event; but the whole history of the adventures of the relics as
given in this treatise is manifestly wrong in its details; _e.g._ the
statements about Hrolf are ludicrous--the “reversion” is said to have
taken place after his conversion. M. Salmon has gone carefully through
the whole story: M. Mabille has sifted it still more thoroughly. These
two writers have shewn that the body of S. Martin really went through
a great many more “peregrinations” than those recounted in the Cluny
treatise, that the real date of the reversion is 885, and in short that
the treatise is wrong in every one of its dates and every one of the
names of the bishops whom it mentions as concerned in the reversion,
save those of Archbishop Adaland of Tours and his brother Raino, who,
however, was bishop of Angers, not of Orléans as the treatise says. The
passages in the Tours chronicle where Ingelger is described as count of
Anjou are all derived from this source, and therefore prove nothing,
except the writer’s ignorance about counts and bishops alike.

The mention of Archbishop Adaland brings us to another
subject--Ingelger’s marriage. Ralf de Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 139)
says that he married Ælendis, niece of Archbishop Adaland and of Raino,
bishop of Angers, and that these two prelates gave to the young
couple their own hereditary estates at Amboise, in Touraine and in the
Orléanais. The _Gesta Consulum_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 45) say the
same, but afterwards make Raino bishop of Orléans. This story seems to
be a bit of truth which has found its way into a mass of fiction; at
any rate it is neither impossible nor improbable. The author of the
_De Reversione_ is quite right in saying that Archbishop Adaland died
shortly after the return of the relics; his statement, and those of the
Tours Chronicle, that Adaland was consecrated in 870 and died in 887,
are borne out by the same charters which enable us to track the career
of Fulk the Red. As to Raino--there was a Raino ordained bishop of
Angers in 881 (Chron. Vindoc. ad ann. in Marchegay, _Eglises d’Anjou_,
p. 160). The version which makes Orléans his see is derived from the
false Cluny treatise.

Fulk the Red was witnessing charters in 886 and died in 941 or 942. He
must have been born somewhere between 865 and 870; as the traditional
writers say he died “senex et plenus dierum, in bonâ senectute,” it
may have been nearer the earlier date. There is thus no chronological
reason why these two prelates should not have been his mother’s uncles;
and as the house of Anjou certainly acquired Amboise somehow, it may
just as well have been in this way as in any other.


NOTE B.

THE PALACE OF THE COUNTS AT ANGERS.

Not only ordinary English tourists, but English historical scholars
have been led astray in the topography of early Angers by an obstinate
local tradition which long persisted in asserting that the counts and
the bishops of Angers had at some time or other made an exchange of
dwellings; that the old ruined hall within the castle enclosure was
a piece of Roman work, and had served, before this exchange, as the
synodal hall of the bishops. The date adopted for this exchange, when
I visited Angers in 1877 (I have no knowledge of the place since that
time) was “the ninth century”; some years before it was the twelfth
or thirteenth century, and the synodal hall of the present bishop’s
palace, with its undercroft, was shown and accepted as the home of
all the Angevin counts down to Geoffrey Plantagenet at least. The
whole history of the two palaces--that of the counts and that of the
bishops--has, however, been cleared up by two local archæologists, M.
de Beauregard (“Le Palais épiscopal et l’Eglise cathédrale d’Angers,”
in _Revue de l’Anjou et de Maine-et-Loire_, 1855, vol. i. pp. 246–256),
and M. d’Espinay, president of the Archæological Commission of
Maine-et-Loire (“Le Palais des Comtes d’Anjou,” _Revue historique de
l’Anjou_, 1872, vol. viii. pp. 153–170; “L’Evêché d’Angers,” _ib._ pp.
185–201). The foundation and result of their arguments may be briefly
summed up. The first bit of evidence on the subject is a charter
(printed by M. de Beauregard, _Revue de l’Anjou et de Maine-et-Loire_,
as above, vol. i. pp. 248, 249; also in _Gallia Christiana_, vol.
xiv. instr. cols. 145, 146) of Charles the Bald, dated July 2,
851, and ratifying an exchange of lands between “Dodo venerabilis
Andegavorum Episcopus et Odo illustris comes.” The exchange is thus
described:--“Dedit itaque præfatus Dodo episcopus antedicto Odoni
comiti, ex rebus matris ecclesiæ S. Mauricii, æquis mensuris funibusque
determinatam paginam terræ juxta murum civitatis Andegavensis, in quâ
opportunitas jam dicti comitis mansuræ sedis suorumque successorum
esse cognoscitur. Et, e contra, in compensatione hujus rei, dedit idem
Odo comes ex comitatu suo terram S. Mauricio æquis mensuris similiter
funibus determinatam prænominato Dodoni episcopo successoribusque suis
habendam in quâ predecessorum suorum comitum sedes fuisse memoratur.”
As M. de Beauregard points out, the traditionary version--whether
placing the exchange in the ninth century or in the twelfth--is based
on a misunderstanding of this charter. The charter says not a word of
the bishop giving up his own actual abode to the count; it says he gave
a plot of ground near the city wall, and suitable for the count to
build himself a house upon. Moreover the words “sedes fuisse memoratur”
seem to imply that what the count gave was not his own present dwelling
either, but only that which had been occupied by his predecessors.
There can be little doubt that the Merovingian counts dwelt on the site
of the Roman citadel of Juliomagus; and this was unquestionably where
the bishop’s palace now stands. That it already stood there in the
closing years of the eleventh century is proved by a charter, quoted by
M. d’Espinay (_Revue historique de l’Anjou_, vol. viii. p. 200, note 2)
from the cartulary of S. Aubin’s Abbey, giving an account of a meeting
held “in domibus episcopalibus _juxta S. Mauricium Andegavorum matrem
ecclesiam_,” in A.D. 1098.

So much for the position of the bishop’s dwelling from 851 downwards.
Of the position of the count’s palace--the abode of Odo and his
successors, built on the piece of land near the city wall--the first
indication is in an account of a great fire at Angers in 1132: “Flante
Aquilone, accensus est in mediâ civitate ignis, videlicet apud S.
Anianum; et tanto incendio grassatus est ut ecclesiam S. Laudi et
omnes officinas, deinde comitis aulam et omnes cameras miserabiliter
combureret et in cinerem redigeret. Sicque per Aquariam descendens,”
etc. (Chron. S. Serg. a. 1132, Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 144). The
church of S. Laud was the old chapel of S. Geneviève,--“capella B.
Genovefæ virginis, infra muros civitatis Andegavæ, ante forum videlicet
comitalis aulæ posita,” as it is described in a charter of Geoffrey
Martel (_Revue Hist. de l’Anjou_, 1872, vol. viii. p. 161)--the exact
position of a ruined chapel which was still visible, some twenty years
ago, within the castle enclosure, not far from the hall which still
remains. A fire beginning in the middle of the city and carried by a
north-east wind down to S. Laud and the Evière would not touch the
present bishop’s palace, but could not fail to pass over the site of
the castle. The last witness is Ralf de Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. pp.
291, 292), who distinctly places the palace of the counts in his own
day--the day of Count Henry Fitz-Empress--in the south-west corner
of the city, with the river at its feet and the vine-clad hills at
its back; and his description of the “thalami noviter constructi”
just fits in with the account of the fire, the destruction thereby
wrought having doubtless been followed by a rebuilding on a more regal
scale. It seems impossible to doubt the conclusion of these Angevin
archæologists, that the dwelling of the bishops and the palace of the
counts have occupied their present sites ever since the ninth century.
In that case the present synodal hall, an undoubted work of the early
twelfth century, must have been originally built for none other than
its present use; and to a student of the history of the Angevin
counts and kings the most precious relic in all Angers is the ruined
hall looking out upon the Mayenne from over the castle ramparts. M.
d’Espinay denies its Roman origin; he considers it to be a work of the
tenth century or beginning of the eleventh--the one fragment, in fact,
of the dwelling-place of Geoffrey Greygown and Fulk the Black which has
survived, not only the fire of 1132, but also the later destruction in
which the apartments built by Henry have perished.


NOTE C.

THE MARRIAGES OF GEOFFREY GREYGOWN.

The marriages of Geoffrey Greygown form a subject at once of some
importance and of considerable difficulty. It seems plain that Geoffrey
was twice married, that both his wives bore the same name, Adela
or Adelaide, and that the second was in her own right countess of
Chalon-sur-Saône, and widow of Lambert, count of Autun. There is no
doubt about this second marriage, for we have documentary evidence
that a certain Count Maurice (about whom the Angevin writers make
great blunders, and of whom we shall hear more later on) was brother
at once to Hugh of Chalon, son of Lambert and Adela, and to Fulk, son
of Geoffrey Greygown, and must therefore have been a son of Geoffrey
and Adela. A charter, dated between 992 and 998 (see Mabille, Introd.
_Comtes_, pp. lxx–lxxi), wherein Hugh, count of Chalon, describes
himself as “son of Adelaide and Lambert who was count of Chalon in
right of his wife,” is approved by “Adelaide his mother and Maurice his
brother.” Now as R. Glaber (l. iii. c. 2; _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
x. p. 27) declares that Hugh had no brother, Maurice must have been his
half-brother, _i.e._ son of his mother and her second husband; and that
that second husband was Geoffrey Greygown appears by several charters
in which Maurice is named as brother of Fulk Nerra.

It is by no means clear who this Adela or Adelaide of Chalon was. Perry
(_Hist. de Chalon-sur-Saône_, p. 86) and Arbois de Jubainville (_Comtes
de Champagne_, vol. i. p. 140) say she was daughter of Robert of
Vermandois, count of Troyes, and Vera, daughter of Gilbert of Burgundy
and heiress of Chalon, which at her death passed to Adela as her only
child. But the only authority for this Vera, Odorannus the monk of S.
Peter of Sens, says she was married in 956, and Lambert called himself
count of Chalon in 960 (Perry, _Hist. Chalon, preuves_, p. 35. See
also Arbois de Jubainville as above), so that if he married Vera’s
daughter he must have married a child only three years old. And to
add to the confusion, Robert of Troyes’s wife in 959 signs a charter
by the name of “Adelais” (Duchesne, _Maison de Vergy, preuves_, p.
36). What concerns us most, however, is not Adela’s parentage, but the
date of her marriage with Geoffrey Greygown; or, which comes to much
the same thing, the date of her first husband’s death. The cartulary
of Paray-le-Monial (Lambert’s foundation) gives the date of his death
as February 22, 988. If that were correct, Geoffrey, who died in July
987, could not have married Adela at all, unless she was divorced and
remarried during Lambert’s life. This idea is excluded by a charter
of her grandson Theobald, which distinctly says that Geoffrey married
her after Lambert’s death (Perry, _Hist. Chalon, preuves_, p. 39);
therefore the _Art de vérifier les Dates_ (vol. xi. p. 129) proposes
to omit an x and read 978. Adela and Geoffrey, then, cannot have
married earlier than the end of 978. Geoffrey, however, must have been
married long before this, if his daughter Hermengard was married in
970 to Conan of Britanny (Morice, _Hist. Bret._, vol. i. p. 63. His
authority seems to be a passage in the Chron. S. Michael. a. 970,
printed in Labbe’s _Bibl. Nova MSS. Librorum_, vol. i. p. 350, where,
however, the bride is absurdly made a daughter of Fulk Nerra instead
of Geoffrey Greygown). And in Duchesne’s _Maison de Vergy, preuves_,
p. 39, is the will, dated March 6, 974, of a Countess Adela, wife of a
Count Geoffrey, whereby she bequeathes some lands to S. Aubin’s Abbey
at Angers; and as the Chron. S. Albin. a. 974 (Marchegay, _Eglises_,
p. 20) also mentions these donations, there can be little doubt that
she was the wife of Geoffrey of Anjou. M. Mabille (Introd. _Comtes_,
p. lxx) asserts that this Adela, Geoffrey Greygown’s first wife, was
Adela of Vermandois, sister of Robert of Troyes, and appeals to the
will above referred to in proof of his assertion; the will, however,
says nothing of the sort. He also makes the second Adela sister-in-law
instead of daughter to Robert (_ib._ p. lxxi). It seems indeed hopeless
to decide on the parentage of either of these ladies; that of their
children is, however, the only question really important for us.
Hermengard, married in 970 to the duke of Britanny, was clearly a child
of Geoffrey’s first wife; Maurice was as clearly a child of the second;
but whose child was Fulk the Black? Not only is it a matter of some
interest to know who was the mother of the greatest of the Angevins,
but it is a question on whose solution may depend the solution of
another difficulty:--the supposed, but as yet unascertained, kindred
between Fulk’s son Geoffrey Martel and his wife Agnes of Burgundy. If
Fulk was the son of Geoffrey Greygown and Adela of Chalon, the whole
pedigree is clear, and stands thus:

              1                      2
           Lambert  =  Adela  =  Geoffrey
                    |         |
     Adalbert = Gerberga     Fulk
  of Lombardy |               |
              |               |
        Otto William          |
              |               |
             Agnes    =    Geoffrey.

The two last would thus be cousins in the third degree of kindred
according to the canon law. The only apparent difficulty of this
theory is that it makes Fulk so very young. The first child of Adela
of Chalon and Geoffrey cannot have been born earlier than 979, even if
Adela remarried before her first year of widowhood was out; and we find
Fulk Nerra heading his troops in 992, if not before. But the thing is
not impossible. Such precocity would not be much greater than that of
Richard the Fearless, or of Fulk’s own rival Odo of Blois; and such a
wonderful man as Fulk the Black may well have been a wonderful boy.


NOTE D.

THE BRETON AND POITEVIN WARS OF GEOFFREY GREYGOWN.

The acts of Geoffrey Greygown in the _Gesta Consulum_ are a mass of
fable. The fight with the Dane Æthelwulf and that with the Saxon
Æthelred are mythical on the face of them, and the writer’s habitual
defiance of chronology is carried to its highest point in this
chapter. From him we turn to the story of Fulk Rechin. “Ille igitur
Gosfridus Grisa Gonella, pater avi mei Fulconis, cujus probitates
enumerare non possumus, excussit Laudunum de manu Pictavensis comitis,
et in prœlio superavit eum super Rupes, et persecutus est eum usque ad
Mirebellum. Et fugavit Britones, qui venerant Andegavim cum prædatorio
exercitu, quorum duces erant filii Isoani (Conani). Et postea fuit cum
duce Hugone in obsidione apud Marsonum, ubi arripuit eum infirmitas
quâ exspiravit; et corpus illius allatum est Turonum et sepultum in
ecclesiâ B. Martini” (Fulk Rechin, Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 376).

Whoever was the author of this account, he clearly knew or cared
nothing about the stories of the monkish writers, but had a perfectly
distinct source of information unknown to them. For their legends he
substitutes two things: a war with the count of Poitou, and a war with
the duke of Britanny. On each of these wars we get some information
from one other authority; the question is how to make this other
authority tally with Fulk.

1. As to the Breton war, which seems to be the earlier in date.

No one but Fulk mentions the raid of Conan’s sons upon Angers; and M.
Mabille (Introd. _Comtes_, p. xlviii) objects to it on the ground that
Conan’s sons were not contemporaries of Geoffrey.

Conan of Rennes was killed in 992 in a battle with Geoffrey’s son. He
had been married in 970 to Geoffrey’s daughter Hermengard (see above,
pp. 121, 135). Now a daughter of Geoffrey in 970 must have been almost
a child, but it by no means follows that her husband was equally young.
On the contrary, he seems to have been sufficiently grown up to take
a part in politics twenty years before (Morice, _Hist. Bret._ vol. i.
p. 62). It is certain that he had several sons; it is certain that two
at least of them were not Hermengard’s; it is likely that none of them
were, except his successor Geoffrey. Supposing Conan was somewhat over
fifty when killed (and he may have been older still) that would make
him about thirty when he married Hermengard; he might have had sons ten
years before that, and those sons might very easily head an attack upon
their stepmother’s father in 980 or thereabouts. Surely M. Mabille here
makes a needless stumbling-block of the chronology.

If no other writer confirms Fulk’s story, neither does any contradict
it. But in the _Gesta Consulum_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 91–93) an
exactly similar tale is told, only in much more detail and with this
one difference, that Fulk Nerra is substituted for Geoffrey Greygown,
and the raid is made to take place just before that other battle of
Conquereux, in 992, in which Conan perished. The only question now is,
which date is the likeliest, Fulk’s or John’s? in other words, which of
these two writers is the better to be trusted? Surely there can be no
doubt about the choice, and we must conclude that, for once, the monk
who credits Greygown with so many exploits that he never performed has
denied him the honour of one to which he is really entitled.

Fulk Rechin’s account of Geoffrey’s Breton war ends here. The Breton
chroniclers ignore this part of the affair altogether; they seem
to take up the thread of the story where the Angevin drops it. It
is they who tell us of the homage of Guerech, and of the battle of
Conquereux; and their accounts of the latter are somewhat puzzling.
The Chron. Britann. in Lobineau (_Hist. Bret._, vol. ii. col. 32)
says: “982. Primum bellum Britannorum et Andegavorum in Concruz.”
The Chron. S. Michael. (Labbe, _Bibl. Nova_, vol. i. p. 350; _Rer.
Gall. Scriptt._, vol. ix. p. 98) says: “981. Conanus Curvus contra
Andegavenses in Concurrum optime pugnavit.” But in the other two
Breton chronicles the Angevins do not appear. The Chron. Namnetense
(_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. viii. p. 278) describes the battle as
one between Conan and Guerech; the Chron. Briocense (Morice, _Hist.
Bret., preuves_, vol. i. col. 32) does the same, and moreover adds
that Conan was severely wounded in the right arm and fled defeated.
This last is the only distinct record of the issue of the battle;
nevertheless there are some little indications which, taken together,
give some ground for thinking its record is wrong. 1st. There is the
negative evidence of the silence of the Angevin writers about the whole
affair; they ignore the first battle of Conquereux as completely as
the Bretons ignore the unsuccessful raid of Conan’s sons. This looks
as if each party chronicled its own successes, and carefully avoided
mentioning those of its adversaries. 2d. In the _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._
(Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 260) is a proverb “Bellum Conquerentium quo
tortum superavit rectum”--an obvious pun on Conan’s nickname, “Tortus”
or “Curvus.” It is there quoted as having arisen from the battle of
Conquereux in 992--the only one which it suits the Angevin writers
to admit. But this is nonsense, for the writer has himself just told
us that in that battle Conan was defeated and slain. Therefore “the
crooked overcame the straight,” _i.e._ Conan won the victory, in an
earlier battle of Conquereux.

But how then are we to account for the Chronicle of St. Brieuc’s very
circumstantial statement of Conan’s defeat?--This chronicle--a late
compilation--is our only authority for all the details of the war; for
Guerech’s capture and homage, and in short for all matters specially
relating to Nantes. The tone of all this part of it shews plainly
that its compiler, or more likely the earlier writer whom he was here
copying, was a violently patriotic man of Nantes, who hated the Rennes
party and the Angevins about equally, and whose chief aim was to
depreciate them both and exalt the house of Nantes in the person of
Guerech. So great is his spite against the Angevins that he will not
even allow them the credit of having slain Conan at the second battle
of Conquereux, but says Conan fell in a fight with some rebel subjects
of his own! He therefore still more naturally ignores the Angevin share
in the first battle of Conquereux, and makes his hero Guerech into a
triumphant victor. The cause of his hatred to Anjou is of course the
mean trick whereby Geoffrey obtained Guerech’s homage. There can be
little doubt that the battle was after this homage--was in fact caused
by it; but the facts are quite enough to account for the Nantes writer
putting, as he does, the battle first, before he brings the Angevins in
at all, and giving all the glory to Guerech.

2. As to the Poitevin war. “Excussit Laudunum,” etc. (Fulk Rechin,
Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 376. See above, p. 137).

The only other mention of this war is in the Chron. S. Maxent.
(Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 384), which says: “Eo tempore gravissimum
bellum inter Willelmum ducem et Gofridum Andegavensem comitem peractum
est. Sed Gaufridus, necessitatibus actus, Willelmo duci se subdidit
seque in manibus præbuit, et ab eo Lausdunum castrum cum nonnullis
aliis in Pictavensi pago beneficio accepit.” M. Mabille pronounces
these two accounts incompatible; but are they? The Poitevin account,
taken literally and alone, looks rather odd. William and Geoffrey
fight; Geoffrey is “compelled by necessity” to make submission to
William--but he is invested by his conqueror with Loudun and other
fiefs. That is, the practical gain is on the side of the beaten party.
On the other hand, Fulk Rechin, taken literally and alone, gives no
hint of any submission on Geoffrey’s part. But why cannot the two
accounts be made to supplement and correct each other, as in the case
of the Breton war? The story would then stand thus: Geoffrey takes
Loudun and defeats William at Les Roches, as Fulk says. Subsequent
reverses compel him to agree to terms so far that he holds his
conquests as fiefs of the count of Poitou.

The case is nearly parallel to that of the Breton war; again the
Angevin count and the hostile chronicler tell the story between them,
each telling the half most agreeable to himself, and the two halves fit
into a whole.

M. Mabille’s last objection is that the real Fulk Rechin would have
known better than to say that Geoffrey pursued William as far as
Mirebeau, a place which had no existence till the castle was built by
Fulk Nerra in 1000. Why should he not have meant simply “the place
where Mirebeau now stands”? And even if he did think the name existed
in Greygown’s day, what does that prove against his identity? Why
should not Count Fulk make slips as well as other people?

The date of the war is matter of guess-work. The S. Maxentian
chronicler’s “eo tempore” comes between 989 and 996, _i.e._ after
Geoffrey’s death. One can only conjecture that it should have come just
at the close of his life.


NOTE E.

THE GRANT OF MAINE TO GEOFFREY GREYGOWN.

That a grant of the county of Maine was made by Hugh Capet to a count
of Anjou is pretty clear from the later history; that the grant was
made to Geoffrey Greygown is not so certain. The story comes only from
the Angevin historians; and they seem to have systematically carried
back to the time of Greygown all the claims afterwards put forth by
the counts of Anjou to what did not belong to them. They evidently
knew nothing of his real history, so they used him as a convenient lay
figure on which to hang all pretensions that wanted a foundation and
all stories that wanted a hero, in total defiance of facts and dates.
They have transferred to him one exploit whose hero, if he was an
Angevin count at all, could only have been Fulk Nerra--the capture of
Melun in 999. An examination of this story will be more in place when
we come to the next count; but it rouses a suspicion that after all
Geoffrey may have had no more to do with Maine than with Melun.--The
story of the grant of Maine in the _Gesta Consulum_ (Marchegay,
_Comtes_, pp. 77, 78) stands thus: David, count of Maine, and Geoffrey,
count of Corbon, refuse homage to king Robert. The king summons his
barons to help him, among them the count of Anjou. The loyal Geoffrey
takes his rebel namesake’s castle of Mortagne and compels him to submit
to the king; David still holds out, whereupon Robert makes a formal
grant of “him and his Cenomannia” to Greygown and his heirs for ever.

On this M. l’abbé Voisin (_Les Cénomans anciens et modernes_, p. 337)
remarks: “Cette chronique renferme avec un fonds de vérité des détails
évidemment érronés; le Geoffroy d’Anjou, dont il est ici question,
n’est pas suffisamment connu. C’est à lui que Guillaume de Normandie
fait rendre hommage par son fils Robert; c’est lui, sans doute, qui,
suivant les historiens de Mayenne, fut seigneur de cette ville et
commanda quelque temps dans le Maine et l’Anjou, sous Louis d’Outremer;
au milieu d’une assemblée des comtes et des barons de son parti, Robert
l’aurait investi de ce qu’il possédait alors dans ces deux provinces.”

The Abbé’s story is quite as puzzling as the monk’s. His mention of
Robert of Normandy is inexplicable, for it can refer to nothing but
the homage of Robert Curthose to Geoffrey the Bearded in 1063. His
meaning, however, seems to be that the Geoffrey in question was not
Greygown at all, but another Geoffrey of whom he says in p. 353 that
he was son of Aubert of Lesser Maine, and “gouverneur d’Anjou et du
Maine, sous Louis IV. roi de France; il avait épousé une dame de la
maison de Bretagne, dont on ignore le nom; il eu eut trois fils; Juhel,
Aubert et Guérin; il mourut l’an 890.” This passage M. Voisin gives
as a quotation, but without a reference. He then goes on: “Nous avons
cherché précédemment à expliquer de quelle manière ce Geoffroi se
serait posé en rival de Hugues-David;” and he adds a note: “D’autres
aimeront peut-être mieux supposer une erreur de nom et de date dans la
Chronique” [what chronicle?] “et dire qu’il s’agit de Foulques-le-Bon.”
There is no need to “suppose”; a man who died in 890 could not be
count of anything under Louis IV. But where did M. Voisin find this
other Geoffrey, and how does his appearance mend the matter? He seems
to think the Gesta-writers have transferred this man’s doings to
their own hero Greygown, by restoring them to what he considers their
rightful owner he finds no difficulty in accepting the date, _temp._
King Robert. But the Abbé’s King Robert is not the Gesta-writers’ King
Robert. _He_ means Robert I., in 923; _they_ mean Robert II., though
no doubt they have confused the two. In default of evidence for M.
Voisin’s story we must take that of the _Gesta_ as it stands and see
what can be made of it.

In 923, the time of Robert I., Geoffrey Greygown was not born, and
Anjou was held by his grandfather Fulk the Red. In 996–1031, the time
of Robert II., Geoffrey was dead, and Anjou was held by his son Fulk
the Black. Moreover, according to M. Voisin, David of Maine died at
latest in 970, and Geoffrey of Corbon lived 1026–1040.

From all this it results:

1. If Maine was granted to a count of Anjou by Robert I., it was not to
Geoffrey Greygown.

2. If it was granted by Robert II., it was also not to Geoffrey.

3. If it was granted to Geoffrey, it can only have been by Hugh Capet.

There is one writer who does bring Hugh into the affair: “Electo
autem a Francis communi consilio, post obitum Lotharii, Hugone
Capet in regem ... cum regnum suum circuiret, Turonisque descendens
_Cenomannensibusque consulem imponeret_,” etc. (_Gesta Ambaz. Domin._,
Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 160). He does not say who this new count was,
but there can be little doubt it was the reigning count of Anjou; and
this, just after Hugh’s accession, would be Fulk Nerra. On the other
hand, the writer ignores Louis V. and makes Hugh succeed Lothar. Did
he mean to place these events in that year, 986–7, when Hugh was king
_de facto_ but not _de jure_? In that case the count would be Geoffrey
Greygown.

The compilers of the _Gesta_, however, simplify all these old claims
by stating that the king (_i.e._ the duke) gave Geoffrey a sort
of carte-blanche to take and keep anything he could get: “dedit
Gosfrido comiti quidquid Rex Lotarius in episcopatibus suis habuerat,
Andegavensi scilicet et Cenomannensi. Si qua vero alia ipse vel
successores sui adquirere poterant, eâ libertate quâ ipse tenebat sibi
commendata concessit.” _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 76.

[Illustration: Map II.

  GAUL c. 1027.

  Key: _Fulk the Black_
       _Odo II._
       _Royal Domain_

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]



CHAPTER III.

ANJOU AND BLOIS.

987–1044.


One of the wildest of the legends which have gathered round the Angevin
house tells how a count of Anjou had wedded a lady of unknown origin
and more than earthly beauty, who excited the suspicions of those
around her by her marked dislike to entering a church, and her absolute
refusal to be present at the consecration of the Host. At last her
husband, urged by his friends, resolved to compel her to stay. By his
order, when the Gospel was ended and she was about to leave the church
as usual, she was stopped by four armed men. As they laid hold of her
mantle she shook it from her shoulders; two of her little children
stood beneath its folds at her right hand, two at her left. The two
former she left behind, the latter she caught up in her arms, and,
floating away through a window of the church, she was seen on earth no
more. “What wonder,” was the comment of Richard Cœur-de-Lion upon this
story; “what wonder if we lack the natural affections of mankind--we
who come from the devil, and must needs go back to the devil?”[293]

        [293] Girald. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 27
        (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 154).

One is tempted to think that the excited brains of the closing tenth
century, filled with dim presages of horror that were floating about
in expectation of the speedy end of the world, must have wrought
out this strange tale by way of explaining the career of Fulk the
Black.[294] His contemporaries may well have reckoned him among the
phenomena of the time; they may well have had recourse to a theory of
supernatural agency or demoniac possession to account for the rapid
developement of talents and passions which both alike seemed almost
more than human. When the county of Anjou was left to him by the death
of his father Geoffrey Greygown, Fulk was a child scarce eight years
old.[295] Surrounded by powerful foes whom Geoffrey’s aggressions had
provoked rather than checked--without an ally or protector unless
it were the new king--Fulk began life with everything against him.
Yet before he has reached the years of manhood the young count meets
us at every turn, and always in triumph. Throughout the fifty-three
years of his reign Fulk is one of the most conspicuous and brilliant
figures in French history. His character seems at times strangely
self-contradictory. Mad bursts of passion, which would have been the
ruin of an ordinary man, but which seem scarcely to have made a break
in his cool, calculating, far-seeing policy; a rapid and unerring
perception of his own ends, a relentless obstinacy in pursuing them, an
utter disregard of the wrong and suffering which their pursuit might
involve; and then ever and anon fits of vehement repentance, ignorant,
blind, fruitless as far as any lasting amendment was concerned, yet
at once awe-striking and touching in its short-lived, wrong-headed
earnestness--all these seeming contradictions yet make up, not a
puzzling abstraction, but an intensely living character--the character,
in a word, of the typical Angevin count.

        [294] “Fulco Nerra” or “Niger,” “Palmerius” and
        “Hierosolymitanus” are his historical surnames. I can find no
        hint whether the first was derived from his complexion or from
        the colour of the armour which he usually wore (as in the case
        of the “Black Prince”); the origin of the two last will be seen
        later.

        [295] This is on the supposition that Adela of Chalon was his
        mother; see note C to chap. ii. above.

For more than a hundred years after the accession of Hugh Capet,
the history of the kingdom which he founded consists chiefly of the
struggles of the great feudataries among themselves to get and to
keep control over the action of the crown. The duke of the French had
gained little save in name by his royal coronation and unction. He
was no nearer than his Karolingian predecessors had been to actual
supremacy over the Norman duchy, the Breton peninsula, and the whole
of southern Gaul. Aquitaine indeed passed from cold contempt to open
aggression. When one of her princes, the count of Poitou, had at
length made unwilling submission to the northern king, a champion of
southern independence issued from far Périgord to punish him, stormed
Poitiers, marched up to the Loire, and sat down in triumph before
Tours, whose count, Odo of Blois, was powerless to relieve it. The king
himself could find no more practical remonstrance than the indignant
question, “Who made thee count?” and the sole reply vouchsafed by
Adalbert of Périgord was the fair retort, “Who made thee king?” Tours
fell into his hands, and was made over, perhaps in mockery, to the
youthful count of Anjou. The loyalty of its governor and citizens,
however, soon restored it to its lawful owner, and Adalbert’s dreams of
conquest ended in failure and retreat.[296] Still, Aquitaine remained
independent as of old; Hugh’s real kingdom took in little more than
the old duchy of France “between Seine and Loire”; and even within
these limits it almost seemed that in grasping at the shadow of the
crown he had loosened his hold on the substance of his ducal power.
The regal authority was virtually a tool in the hands of whichever
feudatary could secure its exercise for his own ends. As yet Aquitaine
and Britanny stood aloof from the struggle; Normandy had not yet
entered upon it; at present therefore it lay between the vassals of
the duchy of France. Foremost among them in power, wealth, and extent
of territory was the count of Blois, Chartres and Tours. His dominions
pressed close against the eastern border of Anjou, and it was on her
ability to cope with him that her fate chiefly depended. Was the house
of Anjou or the house of Blois to win the pre-eminence in central
Gaul? This was the problem which confronted Fulk the Black, and to
whose solution he devoted his life. His whole course was governed
by one fixed principle and directed to one paramount object--the
consolidation of his marchland. To that object everything else was
made subservient. Every advantage thrown in his way by circumstances,
by the misfortunes, mistakes or weaknesses of foes or friends--for he
used the one as unscrupulously as the other--was caught up and pursued
with relentless vigour. One thread of settled policy ran through the
seemingly tangled skein of his life, a thread never broken even by the
wildest outbursts of his almost demoniac temper or his superstitious
alarms. While he seemed to be throwing his whole energies into the
occupation of the moment--whether it were the building or the besieging
of a fortress, the browbeating of bishop or king, the cajoling of an
ally or the crushing of a rival on the battle-field--that work was in
reality only a part of a much greater work. Every town mirrored in
the clear streams that water the “garden of France”--as the people of
Touraine call their beautiful country--has its tale of the Black Count,
the “great builder” beneath whose hands the whole lower course of the
Loire gradually came to bristle with fortresses; but far above all his
castles of stone and mortar there towered a castle in the air, the plan
of a mighty political edifice. Every act of his life was a step towards
its realization; every fresh success in his long career of triumph was
another stone added to the gradual building up of Angevin dominion and
greatness.

        [296] Ademar of Chabanais, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
        146. The date seems to be about 990; but Ademar has confused
        Odo I. of Blois with his son Odo of Champagne.

Fulk’s first victory was won before he was fourteen, over a veteran
commander who had been more than a match for his father ten years
earlier. The death of Geoffrey Greygown was soon followed by that of
Count Guerech of Nantes; he, too, left only a young son, Alan; and
when Alan also died in 990, Conan of Rennes, already master of all the
rest of Britanny, seized his opportunity to take forcible possession
of Nantes,[297] little dreaming of a possible rival in his young
brother-in-law beyond the Mayenne. While his back was turned and he
was busy assembling troops at Bruerech, at the other end of Britanny,
the Angevin worked upon the old hatred of the Nantes people to the
house of Rennes; with the craft of his race he won over some of the
guards, by fair words and solid bribes, till he gained admittance into
the city and received oaths and hostages from its inhabitants. He
then returned home to collect troops for an attack upon the citadel,
which was held by Conan’s men. Conan, as soon as he heard the tidings,
marched upon Nantes with all his forces; as before, he brought with
him a body of Norman auxiliaries, likely to be of no small use in
assaulting a place such as Nantes, whose best defence is its broad
river--for the “Pirates” had not yet forgotten the days when the water
was their natural element and the long keels were their most familiar
home. While the Norman ships blocked the river, Conan’s troops beset
the town by land, and thus, with the garrison shooting down at them
from the citadel, the townsfolk of Nantes were between three fires when
Fulk advanced to their rescue.[298] Conan at once sent the audacious
boy a challenge to meet him, on such a day, in a pitched battle on the
field of Conquereux, where ten years before a doubtful fight had been
waged between Conan and Fulk’s father. This time the Bretons trusted
to lure their enemies to complete destruction by a device which, in
days long after, was successfully employed by Robert Bruce against
the English army at Bannockburn; they dug a series of trenches right
across the swampy moor, covered them with bushes, branches, leaves and
thatch, supported by uprights stuck into the ditches, and strewed the
surface with ferns till it was indistinguishable from the surrounding
moorland. Behind this line of hidden pitfalls Conan drew up his host,
making a feint of unwillingness to begin the attack. Fulk, panting for
his first battle with all the ardour of youth, urged his men to the
onset; the flower of the Angevin troops charged right into the Breton
pitfalls; men and horses became hopelessly entangled; two thousand
went down in the swampy abyss and were drowned, slaughtered or crushed
to death.[299] The rest fled in disorder; Fulk himself was thrown
from his horse and fell to the ground, weighed down by his armour,
perhaps too heavy for his boyish frame. In an instant he was up again,
wild with rage, burning to avenge his overthrow, calling furiously
upon his troops. The clear, young voice of their leader revived the
courage of the Angevins; “as the storm-wind sweeps down upon the thick
corn-rigs”[300]--so their historian tells--they rushed upon the foe;
and their momentary panic was avenged by the death of Conan and the
almost total destruction of his host.[301] The blow overthrew the power
of Rennes; the new duke Geoffrey, the son of Conan and Hermengard, was
far indeed from being a match for his young uncle. In the flush of
victory Fulk marched into Nantes; the citizens received him with open
arms; the dismayed garrison speedily surrendered, and swore fealty to
the conqueror; the titular bishop, Judicaël, a young son of Count Hoel,
was set up as count under the guardianship of Aimeric of Thouars, a
kinsman of the Angevin house, who ruled solely in Fulk’s interest;[302]
while the territory on the right bank of the Mayenne, lost a century
and a half before by the treason of Count Lambert, seems to have been
reunited to the Angevin dominions.

        [297] Morice, _Hist. de Bret._, vol. i. p. 64 (from a seemingly
        lost bit of the Chron. Namnet.).

        [298] Richer, l. iv. c. 81.

        [299] _Ib._ cc. 82–85. Rudolf Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (_Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 15).

        [300] R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
        15).

        [301] Richer, l. iv. c. 86. R. Glaber (as above) says that
        Conan was not slain, but only taken prisoner with the loss
        of his right hand--a confusion with the first battle of
        Conquereux. Conan’s death appears in all the chief Breton
        chronicles, especially Chron. S. Michael. a. 992 (_Rer.
        Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 175), etc. See also Fulk Rechin
        (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 377. The _Gesta Cons._ copy R. Glaber.

        [302] Richer, l. iv. c. 86. The first viscount of Thouars,
        a brother of Ebles, count of Poitou, had married Roscilla,
        daughter of Fulk the Red. Chron. Com. Pictaviæ in _Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 294, 295.

The boy count had well won his spurs on the field of Conquereux. With
the control over Nantes he had secured the control over the whole
course of the Loire from his own capital down to the sea--a most
important advantage in an age when the water-ways were the principal
channels of communication, whether for peace or war. The upper part of
the Loire valley, its richest and most fertile part, was in the hands
of the count of Blois. But his sway was not unbroken. Midway between
his two capitals, Blois and Tours, stood Amboise, the heritage of the
Red Count’s mother; farther south, in the valley of the Indre, stood
Loches, the heritage of his wife. It was not in human nature--certainly
not in Angevin nature--that the owner of Amboise and Loches should
not seek to extend his power a little further at the expense of his
neighbour in Touraine; and no great provocation on the part of Odo
of Blois was needed to make the fiery young Angevin dash into his
territories, and ride plundering, wasting and burning to the outskirts
of Blois itself.[303] Raid and counter-raid went on almost without
ceasing, and once it seems that King Hugh himself came to help his
Angevin ally.[304] In 995 Odo died, and his widow, Bertha, shortly
afterwards married Robert of France, who next year became king on the
death of his father Hugh Capet. Robert and Bertha were cousins; the
Church pronounced their marriage illegal, and punished it with an
interdict on the realm; amid the general confusion which followed, Fulk
carried on a desultory warfare with Odo’s two elder sons, Thierry and
Theobald, till the death of the latter in 1004 brought him face to face
with his lifelong antagonist, Odo II. The contest made inevitable by
circumstances was to be rendered all the more bitter by the character
of the two men who were now to engage in it. Odo, indeed, was even
yet scarcely more than a boy;[305] but, like Fulk, he had begun his
public career at a very early age. His beginning was as characteristic
as Fulk’s beginning at Conquereux. In 999 he openly insulted his
royal step-father by wresting the castle of Melun from Robert’s most
trusty counsellor, Count Burchard of Vendôme; and no might short of
that of the Norman duke, who had now grown from a “leader of the
Pirates” into the king’s most valued supporter, sufficed to avenge
the outrage.[306] The boy’s hasty, unprovoked spoliation of Burchard,
his insolent defiance of the king, his overweening self-confidence,
ending suddenly in ignominious flight, were typical of his whole
after-career. Odo’s life was as busy and active as Fulk’s, but his
activity produced no lasting effects. His insatiable ambition lacked
the restraint and regulation of the Angevin practical sagacity, and
ran hopelessly to seed without bringing forth any lasting fruit. There
was no fixed purpose in his life. New ideas, daring schemes, sprang
up in his brain almost as quickly as in that of Fulk; but he never
waited till they were matured; he never stopped to count their cost;
and instead of working together to one common end, they only drove him
into a multiplicity of irreconcileable and often visionary undertakings
which never came to perfection. He was entirely a creature of impulse;
always ready to throw himself into a new project, but generally lacking
patience and perseverance enough to carry it through; harassed by
numberless conflicting cares;[307] breaking every engagement as soon as
made, not from any deep-laid policy, but simply from sheer inability to
keep long to anything. “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,” might
have been the burthen of Odo and of Odo’s whole race. The house of
Blois failed through their utter lack of the quality which was the main
strength of their rivals: thoroughness. The rivalry and the characters
of the two houses have a bearing upon English history; for the quarrel
that began between them for the possession of Touraine was to be fought
out at last on English ground, and for no less a stake than the crown
of England. The rivalry of Odo and Fulk was a foreshadowing of the
rivalry between Stephen of Blois and Henry of Anjou. The end was the
same in both cases. With every advantage on their side, in the eleventh
century as in the twelfth, in Gaul as in England, the aimless activity
of the house of Blois only spent itself against the indomitable
steadiness, determination and persistency of the Angevins, as vainly
as the storm-wind might beat upon the rocky foundations of Black Angers.

        [303] Richer, l. iv. c. 79.

        [304] Richer, l. iv. cc. 90–94. His account of the war, and
        indeed his whole account of Fulk and of Odo, is extremely
        strange and confused; it has been examined by M. Léon Aubineau
        in a “Notice sur Thibaut-le-Tricheur et Eudes I.” in the _Mém.
        de la Soc. Archéol. de Touraine_, vol. iii. (1845–1847), pp.
        41–94, but the result is far from convincing.

        [305] He is called “puerulus” at the time of his mother’s
        second marriage, _i.e._ in 995–996. _Hist. Franc. Fragm._ in
        _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 211. But considering the date
        of the Melun affair, this can hardly be taken literally.

        [306] _Vita Burchardi_, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp.
        354, 355. Will. Jumièges, l. v. c. 14 (_ib._ p. 189; Duchesne,
        _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 255). Richer, l. iv. cc. 74–78. See
        note A at the end of chapter.

        [307] See the character given of him by R. Glaber, l. iii. cc.
        2, 9 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 27, 40).

In the ten years of misery and confusion which followed the death
of Odo I. and the re-marriage of his widow, Fulk had time nearly to
complete a chain of fortresses which, starting from Angers and sweeping
along the line of Geoffrey Greygown’s Poitevin conquests in a wide
irregular half-circle up again to Amboise, served the double purpose of
linking his own outlying possessions in Touraine with his head-quarters
in Anjou, and of cutting in halves the dominions of his neighbour.
The towers of Montreuil, Passavant and Maulévrier, of Loudun and the
more remote Mirebeau, were a standing menace to Saumur and Chinon.
Sᵗᵉ·-Maure was an eyesore to the garrison of Ile-Bouchard.[308] Farther
east, on a pile of rock with the little blue Indre winding round its
foot, rose, as it rises still in ruined majesty, the mighty keep of
Loches; and on the banks of the Indrois that of Montrésor, whose lord,
Roger, rejoiced in the surname of “the devil.”[309] To Roger Fulk also
intrusted the command of another great fortress, Montrichard, whose
dark donjon frowned down upon the Cher from a plot of ground stolen
from the metropolitan see of Tours.[310] At Amboise itself, the site
of the Roman governor’s palace--now crowned by the modern castle--was
occupied by a strong _domicilium_ of the Angevin count,[311] and the
place was a perpetual obstacle between the archiepiscopal city of S.
Martin and the secular capital of its rulers. Langeais and Montbazon,
which for a while threatened Tours more closely still, were soon
wrested from their daring builder;[312] but the whole course of the
Indre above Montbazon was none the less in Fulk’s hands, for either by
force or guile, the lords of all the castles on its banks had been
won over to his cause; he had gained a foothold on every one of the
affluents of the Loire upon its southern side; while on the north, in
the valley of the Loir, Hugh of Alluye, the lord of Château-la-Vallière
and St.-Christophe, was so devoted to the Angevin interest that the
count’s usual route to and from Amboise lay through his lands.[313]

        [308] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 377.

        [309] _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), p. 107; _Gesta Amb. Domin._
        (_ibid._), p. 167.

        [310] _Gesta Cons._, as above.

        [311] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (as above), p. 175.

        [312] That Montbazon was built by Fulk appears by a charter of
        King Robert (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 577, 578), date
        seemingly about A.D. 1000. It had, however, passed into Odo’s
        hands. Langeais, whose building is recorded by Fulk Rechin (as
        above), was probably taken by Odo I. in 995; there is a charter
        of his dated “at the siege of Langeais” in that year. Mabillon,
        _Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. p. 96.

        [313] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 91. _Gesta Amb.
        Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 164.

The early part of the eleventh century was an age of castle-building;
Fulk, however, had begun his line of fortifications before the century
dawned, in those gloomy years of interdict when the royal power was at
its lowest ebb, when the people, cut off from the helps and comforts
of religion, lay in hopeless anarchy and misery, and half in terror,
half in longing, men whispered to each other that the end of the world
was near. The superstitious terrors which paralyzed gentler souls only
goaded Fulk into more restless activity and inflamed his fierce temper
almost to madness. He had married the heiress of Vendôme, the daughter
of Count Burchard;[314] but this union came to a terrible end while its
only child was still in her cradle. In the very dawn of the dreaded
year 1000 Countess Elizabeth expiated her real or supposed sins as a
wife by death at the stake; and a conflagration which destroyed a large
part of the city of Angers immediately after her execution may well
have caused the horror-stricken subjects of her husband to deem that
judgement was indeed at their gates.[315]

        [314] They were already married in 990; see a charter in
        Mabillon, _Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. p. 59.

        [315] This, or something like it, must be the meaning of the
        not very intelligible accounts given in the Angevin chronicles
        of the death of Elizabeth and the fire which followed it.
        “Incensa est urbs Andegavensis post incensionem Comitissæ
        Elizabeth.” Chron. S. Michael. in Peric. Maris, a. 1000 (_Rer.
        Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 175). “Prima incensio urbis
        Andegavæ, quæ evenit paucis diebus post combustionem comitissæ
        Helisabeth.” Chron. S. Albin., a. 1000 (Marchegay, _Eglises_,
        p. 22). “Urbs Andecava incensa est post combustionem comitissæ
        Elisabeth.” Breve Chron. S. Flor. Salm. a. 999 (_ib._ p.
        187). “Fulco ... cum Elysabeth conjugem suam Andegavis, post
        immane præcipitium salvatam, occidisset, ipsamque urbem paucis
        defendentibus flammarum incendiis concremâsset.” _Hist. S.
        Flor. Salm._ (_ibid._), p. 273. Cf. _ib._ p. 260.

After the paroxysm came the reaction. When the dreaded year had passed
over and the world found itself still alive; when the king had at
last consented to purchase relief from the interdict by parting from
his beloved Bertha, and the nation was rousing itself to welcome the
new queen who stepped into Bertha’s place; then the blood which he had
shed at Conquereux and elsewhere--one may surely add, the ashes of
his wife--began to weigh heavily on the Black Count’s soul; “the fear
of Gehenna” took possession of him, and leaving the marchland to the
care of his brother Maurice he set out for the Holy Sepulchre.[316]
This journey was the first link in a chain which, through the later
pilgrimages of Fulk Nerra himself and those of his great-grandson Fulk
V., brought the counts of Anjou into a specially intimate relation with
the Holy Land and led to the establishment of an Angevin dynasty upon
its throne. Legend has not been slack to furnish Fulk the Palmer with
characteristic adventures, to tell how his craft outwitted that of the
Turks who tried to exclude him from the Sepulchre, and how he not only
procured a piece of the true Cross, but while kissing the sacred stone
in the fervour of his devotion, detected a loose fragment which he
managed to bite off and bring home as the most precious trophy of his
journey.[317] His first care on his return was to build an abbey for
the reception of this relic. From the rocky angle by the winding Indre
where the great “Square Tower”--as the natives emphatically call the
keep of Loches--was rising in picturesque contrast to a church reared
by Geoffrey Greygown in honour of our Lady,[318] the land which the
wife of the first count of Anjou had transmitted to her descendants
stretched a mile eastward beyond the river in a broad expanse of
green meadow to a waste plot of ground full of broom, belonging to a
man named Ingelger. From its original Latin name, _Belli-locus_, now
corrupted into Beaulieu, it seems possible that the place was set apart
for trials by ordeal of battle.[319]

        [316] R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
        15). On the regency of Maurice see note C at end of chapter,
        and Mabille, Introd. _Comtes d’Anjou_, p. lxxvi.

        [317] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 102, 103.
        There is a versified account of the pious theft in the
        Beaulieu office of the Holy Sepulchre, Salies, _Hist. de
        Foulques-Nerra_, p. 529.

        [318] In 963; Chron. Turon. Abbrev. ad ann. (Salmon, _Chron.
        de Touraine_, p. 185). From the foundation-charter, cited
        by M. l’abbé Bardet (_La Collégiale de Loches_, p. 8), it
        seems that Geoffrey founded the church on his return from a
        pilgrimage to Rome. A fragment of his work possibly remains in
        the present church (now called S. Ours), which was built by the
        historian-prior, Thomas Pactius, in the time of Henry II.

        [319] This is a remark quoted by M. de Salies
        (_Foulques-Nerra_, pp. 115, 361) from Dufour, “Dict. hist. de
        l’arrond. de Loches,” and grounded on the fact that while the
        many other Beaulieus, in France and in England, all appear in
        Latin as “_Bellus_-locus,” this one is “_Belli_-locus” in its
        foundation charter. See a similar case of verbal corruption
        below, p. 187.

This field Fulk determined to purchase for the site of his abbey. A
bargain was struck; the count paid down the stipulated sum, carried the
former owner on his shoulders from the middle of the field to the foot
of the bridge, and there set him down, saying, “A man without wit his
freehold must quit”--by which ceremony the contract was completed.[320]
Despite his fiery haste, Fulk did all things with due method,[321] and
his next anxiety was to decide upon the dedication of his intended
minster. He found his best counsellor in his newly-married wife, the
Lady Hildegard, and by her advice the church was placed under the
direct invocation, not of saint or angel, but of the most Holy Trinity
Itself.[322] By the time it stood ready for consecration the son of
Fulk and Hildegard was nearly three years old:[323] he had been nursed
by a blacksmith’s wife at Loches;[324] and many a time, as the count
and countess went to inspect the progress of architect and builder in
the meadow beyond the river, they must have lingered beside the forge
to mark the growth of their little Geoffrey, the future conqueror
of Tours. The consecration of the church proved a difficulty; the
archbishop of Tours refused to perform it unless Fulk would restore to
his see the stolen land of Montrichard.[325] Fulk swore--doubtless
his customary oath, “by God’s souls”[326]--that he would get the
better of the primate, and went straight off to Rome to lay his case
before the Pope. After several years’ wrangling it was decided in his
favour,[327] and one morning in May 1012 the abbey-church of the Holy
Trinity at Beaulieu was hallowed with all due pomp and solemnity by a
Roman cardinal-legate. But though Rome had spoken, the case was not
ended yet. That very afternoon a sudden storm of wind blew up from the
south, whirled round the church, and swept the whole roof completely
off. Clergy and laity alike seized on the prodigy as an evident token
of Heaven’s wrath against the insolence and presumption of Fulk;[328]
not so the Black Count himself, who simply replaced the roof and
pushed on the completion of the monastic buildings as if nothing had
happened.[329] He had successfully defied the Church; he next ventured
to defy the king and the count of Blois both at once. The divorced
queen Bertha, mother of young Odo of Blois, still lived and was still
loved by the king; Fulk, if he was not actually, as tradition relates,
a kinsman of the new Queen Constance,[330] was at any rate fully alive
to the policy of making common cause with her against their common
rivals of Blois. He crushed King Robert’s last hope of reunion with
Bertha by sending twelve armed men to assassinate at a hunting-party,
before his royal master’s eyes, the king’s seneschal or _comes palatii_
Hugh of Beauvais who was the confidant of his cherished scheme.[331]
It is a striking proof not only of the royal helplessness but also
of the independence and security which Fulk had already attained
that his crime went altogether unpunished and even uncensured save
by one bishop,[332] and almost immediately after its commission he
could again venture on leaving his dominions under the regency of his
brother Maurice, while he set off upon another long journey which the
legendary writers of Anjou, by some strange confusion between their own
hero and the Emperor Otto III., make into a mission of knight-errantry
to deliver the Pope from a tyrant named Crescentius, but which seems
really to have been a second pilgrimage to Holy Land.[333] He came
back to find the storm which had so long been gathering on his eastern
border on the point of breaking at last.

        [320] 11th lesson of the Beaulieu Office, Salies,
        _Foulques-Nerra_, p. 528. “Stultus a proprio expellitur alodo.”

        [321] “Ut semper curiose agebat,” R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 4 (_Rer.
        Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 15).

        [322] _Ibid._ (pp. 15, 16).

        [323] He was born October 14, 1006, according to Chronn.
        Vindoc. and S. Flor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp.
        164, 187). The Chron. S. Serg. (_ib._ p. 134) gives the same
        day, but makes the year 1007; the Chron. S. Maxent. (_ib._ p.
        387) places the event on April 12, 1005. The Chron. S. Albin.
        (_ib._ p. 22) gives no day, but confirms the two first-named
        authorities for the year, 1006.

        [324] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 260.

        [325] R. Glaber, as above (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
        16). Cf. _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 107).

        [326] “Fulco Nerra, cui consuetudo fuit Animas Dei jurare,”
        begins his history in the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_),
        p. 89.

        [327] R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 4 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        x. p. 17). See also a bull of Pope John XVIII. in Migne’s
        _Patrologia_, vol. cxxxix., cols. 1491, 1492; and two of
        Sergius IV., _ib._ cols. 1525–1527.

        [328] R. Glaber, as above (p. 16).

        [329] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 99. This writer
        copies the whole story of Beaulieu from R. Glaber.

        [330] See note B at end of chapter.

        [331] R. Glaber, l. iii. c. 2 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x.
        p. 27).

        [332] Fulbert of Chartres; see his letter to Fulk, _Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 476, 477.

        [333] See note C at end of chapter.

The adherents of the count of Blois, headed by Landry of Châteaudun,
had profited by Fulk’s absence to concert a scheme for the expulsion
of the Angevins from Touraine. In spite of a vigorous resistance made
by Fulk’s lieutenant at Amboise, Sulpice, treasurer of S. Martin’s at
Tours, they seemed in a fair way to succeed, when Fulk himself dropped
like a thunderbolt in their midst, dashed right through the county of
Blois into that of Chartres, punished Landry by sacking Châteaudun
and harrying the surrounding district, and marched home in triumph
to Amboise.[334] A raid such as this was a distinct declaration of
war, not upon Landry, but upon Landry’s lord. Fulk had intended it
as such, and he went home to set in action every possible means that
could gain him help and support in a fight to the uttermost with
Odo for the possession of Touraine. At that very moment the county
of Maine was thrown virtually into his hands by the death of its
aged count Hugh; with the alliance of Hugh’s youthful successor he
secured the northern frontier of Touraine and the support of a body
of valiant fighting-men whose co-operation soon proved to be of the
highest value and importance. The rapid insight which singled out at
a glance the most fitting instruments for his purpose, the gifts of
attraction and persuasion by which he knew how to attach men to his
service, and seemed almost to inspire them with some faint reflex of
his own spirit, while making them devoted creatures of his will,
were all brought into play as he cast about in all directions for
aid in the coming struggle, and were strikingly shown in his choice
of a lieutenant. The instinct of genius told him that he had found
the man he wanted in young Lisoy, lord of the castle of Bazogers, in
Maine. As prudent in counsel as he was daring in fight, Lisoy was a
man after Fulk’s own heart; they understood each other at once; Lisoy
was appointed to share with the now aged Sulpice the supreme command
of Loches and Amboise; and while Sulpice provided for the defence of
Amboise by building on his own land there a lofty tower of stone,[335]
the burned and plundered districts of St.-Aignan, Chaumont and Blois
soon had cause to know that the “pride of Cenomannian knighthood”
had thrown himself heart and soul into the service of the count of
Anjou.[336]

        [334] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 88, 89–91.

        [335] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 169.

        [336] _Ib._ pp. 160–164.

The crisis came in the summer of 1016, when Odo of Blois gathered all
his forces for an attack upon Montrichard. His rival was fully prepared
to meet him. Before he set out from Blois, the allied hosts of Anjou
and Maine had assembled at Amboise, and thence separated again to post
themselves in such a manner as to render a battle unavoidable. Fulk
turned eastward, and took up a position close to Pontlevoy, seemingly
in a wood now known as the Bois-Royal, which in that day was skirted
by the high road from Blois to Montrichard. Herbert of Maine rode down
to the banks of the Cher, and pitched his camp just above Montrichard,
at Bourré.[337] If Odo followed the high road he would be met by the
Angevins; if he contrived to turn their position by taking a less
direct route to the eastward, he must encounter the Cenomannians, with
the garrison of Montrichard at their back; while whichever engaged him
first, the distance between the two bodies of troops was so slight
that either could easily come to the other’s assistance. It was well
for Anjou and for her count that his strategical arrangements were so
perfect, and so faithfully carried out by his young ally; for never in
all his long life, save in the panic at Conquereux, was Fulk the Black
so near to complete overthrow as on that Friday morning in July 1016,
when he met Odo of Blois face to face in the battle-field.

        [337] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 107. The
        topography of the battle of Pontlevoy is cleared up by Salies,
        _Foulques-Nerra_, p. 175 _et seq._

Odo, who always trusted to be saved by the multitude of an host,[338]
was greatly astonished, on arriving with all his forces opposite
Pontlevoy, to find the Angevins drawn up against him in battle array.
With a few hurried words he urged his men to the onset. Fortune seemed
for a while to favour the stronger side; Fulk and his troops were sore
bested; Fulk himself was thrown from his horse and severely stunned,
and the fate of Anjou hung trembling in the balance, when the scale was
turned by the sword of Herbert of Maine. A messenger hurried off to
tell the Cenomannian count that his friend was defeated, nay, captured.
Herbert and his knights flew to the rescue; they charged the left
wing of the enemies with a vigour which changed the whole position of
affairs, and snatched from the count of Blois the victory he had all
but won; the chivalry of Blois fled in confusion, leaving the foot
to be cut to pieces at will, and their camp to be plundered by the
victorious allies, who returned in triumph to Amboise, laden with rich
spoils and valuable prisoners.[339]

        [338] “More suo, nimiâ multitudine confisus.” _Gesta Cons._
        (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 107.

        [339] _Ib._ pp. 107, 108. The date--July 6--is given in Chronn.
        S. Serg., Vindoc. and S. Flor. Salm., a. 1016 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 134, 164, 187). There is an account of the
        battle in _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (_ib._), p. 274, but it has a
        very impossible look.

The victory of Pontlevoy was the turning-point of Fulk’s career.
Nine years passed away before Odo recovered from the check enough
to make any attempt to avenge it. It seems at first glance strange
that Fulk did not employ the interval in pushing forward his conquest
of Touraine. But in the eyes of both Fulk and Odo the possession of
Touraine was in reality a means rather than an end; and a sort of
armed truce, so long as Odo did not provoke him to break it, suited
Fulk’s purpose better than a continued war. His western frontier had
been secured by his first victory at Conquereux; his eastern frontier
was now secured, at any rate for a time, by his victory at Pontlevoy;
from the south there was nothing to fear, for the duke of Aquitaine,
to whom he owed homage for Loudun, was his staunch friend, and
presently gave proof of his friendship by bestowing on him the city of
Saintes.[340] Fulk at once made use of the gift as a means of extorting
something yet more valuable from a neighbour to whom he owed a far
deeper obligation--Herbert of Maine. It may be that they had quarrelled
since the days of Pontlevoy; it may be that Herbert had begun that
career of nocturnal raids against the fortified towns of Anjou which
scared men and beasts from their rest, and gained him his unclassical
but expressive surname of “Wake-the-dog.”[341] If so, the wily Angevin
took effectual measures to stop them. He enticed the count of Maine
to pay him a visit at Saintes, proposing to grant him the investiture
of that city. Suddenly, in the midst of conversation, Herbert was
seized by Fulk’s servants and flung into prison, whence he was only
released at the end of two years, and on submission to such conditions
as Fulk chose to dictate.[342] What those conditions were history
does not tell; but there can be little doubt that they included some
acknowledgment of the suzerain rights of Anjou over Maine, with which
Geoffrey Greygown had been invested by Hugh Capet, but which he had not
had time to make good, and which Fulk had only enforced for a moment,
at the sword’s point, when the aged count Hugh was dying.[343] Fulk’s
dealings with Maine are only an episode in his life; but they led even
more directly than his struggle with the house of Blois to consequences
of the utmost importance. They paved the way for an Angevin conquest of
Maine which extended the Angevin power to the Norman border, brought it
into contact and collision with the Norman ducal house, and originated
the long wars which were ended at last by the marriage of Geoffrey
Plantagenet and the Empress Matilda. The imprisonment of Herbert is
really the first step in the path which leads from Anjou to England.

        [340] Ademar of Chabanais, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
        149.

        [341] “Vulgo, sed parum Latine, cognominari Evigilans-canem
        pro ingenti probitate promeruit. Nam ... in eundem [sc.
        Fulconem] arma levans nocturnas expeditiones crebro agebat, et
        Andegavenses homines et canes in ipsâ urbe, vel in munitioribus
        oppidis terrebat, et horrendis assultibus pavidos vigilare
        cogebat.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._) p.
        532. It is however only fair to add that in another place
        (_ib._ p. 487) Orderic says Herbert “vulgo Evigilans-canem
        cognominabatur, propter gravissimas infestationes quas
        a perfidis affinibus suis Andegavensibus incessanter
        patiebatur”--as if he kept the Cenomannian dogs awake to give
        notice of the enemy’s approach, we must suppose.

        [342] Ademar of Chabanais (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x.),
        p. 161; Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
        189; Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, p. 401).
        Ademar says Herbert’s imprisonment lasted two years; and the
        Chronn. S. Albin. and Vindoc. a. 1027 (Marchegay, _Eglises_,
        pp. 22, 167), give us the date of his release, by giving that
        of the Breton invasion which followed it.

        [343] “Hugonis ... quem Fulco senior sibi violentur
        subjugârat.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._),
        p. 532. The terms of Herbert’s submission to Fulk are matter
        of inference from what followed his release. He at once
        began to quarrel with Avesgaud, the bishop of Le Mans, and
        being by him defied and excommunicated, called in the help
        of Duke Alan of Britanny (_Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 30, in
        Mabillon, _Vet. Analecta_, p. 304). Alan, when he had helped
        to defeat the bishop, marched down to besiege Le Lude, one
        of the chief Angevin fortresses on the Cenomannian border,
        and only desisted when he had extorted from Fulk the hostages
        given him by Herbert on his release; Chron. Vindoc. a. 1027
        (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 166). It is not hard to see why the
        rival overlord of Nantes should be ready to make war, on any
        pretext, upon the count of Anjou; but, making due allowance
        for Fulk’s possible difficulties--Odo’s last attack occurred
        in this year--still it is very hard to see why Fulk, “the
        ingenious Fulk,” as the writer of the _Gesta Amb. Domin._
        calls him (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 165), could find no better
        way of raising the siege of a petty border-fortress than by
        making restitution to Herbert at the bidding of Alan, unless
        he felt so sure of his hold over Herbert as not to think the
        hostages worth keeping. The striking resemblance between Fulk’s
        treatment of Herbert and his father’s treatment of Guerech also
        suggests that there was probably a like resemblance in the
        terms of release.

But the step could never have been followed up as it was by Fulk’s
successor had not Fulk himself at once turned back to his special work
of clearing away the obstacle to Angevin progress formed by the rivalry
of Blois, which once again threatened to become a serious danger in the
very year of Herbert’s capture. Odo had lately[344] succeeded to the
inheritance of his cousin Stephen, count of Champagne, an acquisition
which doubled his wealth and power, and gave him a position of such
importance in the French kingdom as enabled him to overawe the crown
and cause a complete change in its policy. In 1025 King Robert, “or
rather his queen Constance,” as the chroniclers significantly add,
made peace with Count Odo who had hitherto been their enemy, and
left their old friend Fulk of Anjou to carry on alone the struggle
which he had begun with their good will, and, ostensibly at least,
partly in their interest.[345] Odo thought his hour was come; “with
all his might he set upon” Fulk;[346] and his might now included all
the forces of Touraine, Blois, Chartres and Champagne, aided, it
seems, by a contingent from the Royal Domain itself.[347] With this
formidable host Odo laid siege to a great fortified camp known as
the Montboyau, which Fulk had reared some ten years before on the
northern bank of the Loire almost opposite Tours, as a standing menace
to the city and a standing defiance to its ruler.[348] Fulk, to whom
the besieged garrison appealed for succour, had advanced[349] as far
as Brain-sur-Alonnes when he was met by tidings which induced him to
change his course.[350] Nearly over against the spot where he stood,
a ridge of white chalk-cliff rising sheer above the southern bank of
the Loire was crowned by the fortress of Saumur, the south-western
key of Touraine, close to the Angevin border. It had belonged to the
counts of Tours since the days of Theobald the Trickster at least;
but in an earlier time it had probably formed a part of the Angevin
March, as it still formed a part of the diocese of Angers. Its lord,
Gelduin, was the sole human being whom the Black Count feared; “Let
us flee that devil of Saumur!” was his cry, “I seem always to see him
before me.”[351] But now he learned that Gelduin had joined his count
at the siege of the Montboyau. A hurried night-ride across Loire and
Vienne brought Fulk at break of day to the gates of Saumur,[352] and
before sunset he was master of the place, although its inhabitants,
with a spirit worthy of their absent leader, fired the town before they
surrendered, and only admitted the victors into a heap of ashes. Not
the least valiant of its defenders had been the monks of S. Florence, a
little community who dwelt within the castle-enclosure, keeping guard
over the relics of a famous local saint. As they came forth with their
patron’s body from the blazing ruins, the Black Count’s voice rose
above the din: “Let the fire burn, holy Florence! I will build thee a
better dwelling at Angers.” The relics were placed in a boat and rowed
down the stream till they reached the limit of the lands of Saumur,
at Trèves. Once the boundary had been further west, at Gennes; till
Fulk, despite his terror of the “devil,” had taken courage to march
against him, doubtless at a moment when Gelduin was unprepared for
defence, for he at once asked a truce. It was granted, but not exactly
as he desired; on the spot where Gelduin’s envoy met him Fulk planted
a castle and called it mockingly “Treva,” _truce_. Opposite this
alien fortress the boat which carried the relics of S. Florence now
stuck fast in one of the sandbanks of treacherous Loire, and all the
efforts of the rowers failed to move it. The saint--said the monks--was
evidently determined not to be carried beyond his own territory. Fulk,
who was superintending the voyage in person, began to rail at him as
“an impious rustic who would not allow himself to be well treated”: but
there was a grain of humour in the Black Count’s composition, and he
was probably as much amused as angered at the saint’s obstinacy; at any
rate he suffered the monks to push off in the opposite direction--which
they did without difficulty--and deposit their charge in the church
of S. Hilary, an old dependency of their house, till he should find
them a suitable place for a new monastery.[353] Thus far Odo’s grand
expedition had brought him nothing but the loss of the best stronghold
he possessed on the Angevin border. There was apparently nothing to
prevent Fulk from marching in triumph up the valley of the Vienne,
where Chinon and Ile-Bouchard now held out alone for the count of
Blois amid a ring of Angevin fortresses. His present object, however,
was to relieve the Montboyau; and turning northward he laid siege
to a castle of his own building which had somehow passed into the
enemy’s hands, Montbazon[354] on the Indre, only three leagues distant
from Tours. Odo, whose siege operations had proved a most disastrous
failure,[355] at once broke up his camp and marched to the relief of
Montbazon. To dislodge him from the siege of Montboyau was all that
Fulk wanted; simulating flight, he retreated up the valley to Loches
and thence retired gradually upon Amboise.[356] A month later Odo
made an ineffectual attempt to regain Saumur. Some time afterwards he
tried again, pitching his tents among the vineyards on the banks of
the Thouet, hard by the rising walls of the new abbey of S. Florence;
the monks acted as mediators between their former lord and their new
patron, and peace was made, Odo definitely relinquishing Saumur, and
Fulk agreeing to raze the Montboyau[357]--that is, to raze the keep on
its summit; for the white chalky slopes of the mighty earthwork itself
rise gleaming above the river to this day. The struggle between Fulk
and Odo was virtually over. Once again, in the following year, the
count of Blois attempted to surprise Amboise, in company with the young
King Henry, Robert’s son and recently crowned colleague. The attack
failed;[358] it was Odo’s last effort to stem the tide of Angevin
progress. Fulk had done more than beat his rival in the battle-field;
he had out-generalled him in every way, and won a triumph which made
the final issue of their rivalry a foregone conclusion. That issue he
never sought to hasten, for with all his fiery vehemence Fulk knew how
to wait; unlike Odo, he could look beyond the immediate future, beyond
the horizon of his own life, and having sown and watered his seed he
could be content to leave others to gather its fruit, rather than risk
the frustration of his labours by plucking at it before the time.

        [344] Stephen seems to have died in 1019; _Art de vérifier les
        dates_, vol. xi. p. 347.

        [345] Chron. Rain. Andeg. a. 1026 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p.
        10); Chron. Vindoc. a. 1025 (_ib._ p. 165). This last is
        probably the right date, as the Angevin capture of Saumur,
        which follows, is dated in 1026 by the Chronn. S. Albin. and S.
        Serg. (_ib._ pp. 22, 134), and in 1025 by the Chronn. S. Flor.
        Salm. and S. Maxent. (_ib._ pp. 187, 388).

        [346] “Totis nisibus adorsus est.” Chronn. Rain. Andeg. and
        Vindoc. as above.

        [347] “Cum _Francis_,” says the _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._
        (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 276). This writer afterwards speaks
        of Odo’s whole host as “Franci.” He has already done the same
        at Pontlevoy (_ib._ p. 274); but surely there cannot have been
        any royal vassals fighting under Odo there. What can be the
        writer’s real meaning?

        [348] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 108. _Gesta Amb.
        Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 165. See, for dates, Chron. Rain. Andeg.
        a. 1026 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 10).

        [349] The _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (as above), p. 165, say that Fulk
        was accompanied by Herbert of Maine. But, on calculating dates,
        it seems that Herbert must have been by this time in prison.
        It is however highly probable that Cenomannian troops would be
        supplied to Fulk by Bishop Avesgaud.

        [350] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 276.

        [351] _Ib._ p. 275.

        [352] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p.
        276.--“Ligerique _ac Vigennâ_ transvadatis.” The writer, living
        close to the spot, can hardly have mistaken its topography; but
        unless he has done so, the confluence of the Vienne and the
        Loire must at that time have been considerably farther west
        than at present; it is now at Candes, some distance to the east
        of Saumur and Brain.

        [353] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), pp.
        276–278.

        [354] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 109. _Gesta Amb.
        Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 165.

        [355] Chron. Rain. Andeg. a. 1026 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 10).

        [356] _Gesta Cons._ and _Gesta Amb. Domin._ as above.

        [357] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 280.

        [358] Chron. Vindoc. a. 1027 (_ib._ p. 165). Cf. Chron. S.
        Albin. a. 1027 (_ib._ p. 22).

[Illustration: Plan VI.

  MEDIEVAL ANGERS.

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

Fulk was now at the height of his prosperity. He had been count of
Anjou for forty years, and his reign had been one of unbroken success.
Each in turn of the greater neighbours who had stood, a threatening
ring, around Geoffrey Greygown’s boy-heir had been successfully dealt
with in some way or other, till the little Marchland had grown to be a
power in the realm second only to Normandy and perhaps to Aquitaine;
and before Fulk’s reign closed, even Aquitaine, the only one of
Anjou’s immediate neighbours which had not had to bow before him, fell
prostrate at the feet of his son. Fulk’s last years were to be years
of peace. Only once again did he take part in the general affairs of
the French kingdom; and then, as ever, his action was in strict accord
with the policy which he had begun and which his descendants followed
consistently down to the time of Henry Fitz-Empress: a policy of steady
loyalty to the lawful authority of the French Crown, against which the
counts of Blois lived in perpetual opposition. After Robert’s death,
in 1031, Fulk appeared in the unexpected character of peace-maker
between Queen Constance and her son, the young King Henry, whom she
was trying to oust from his throne;[359] and he afterwards accompanied
Henry on an expedition to dislodge Odo of Champagne from Sens, which
however succeeded no better than the attempt once made by Odo and
Henry to dislodge Fulk himself from Amboise.[360] But peace or war,
it mattered not to the Black Count; he was never at a loss for work.
When there was no enemy to fight or to outwit, his versatile energies
flung themselves just as readily into the encouragement of piety or the
improvement and embellishment of his capital. Over the black bastions
of the castle with which the French King Philip Augustus, when he had
wrested Angers from a degenerate descendant of its ancient counts,
found it needful to secure his hold on “this contemptuous city,” there
still looks out upon the river a fragment of a ruined hall, chiefly
of red flintstone; it is the sole remains of the dwelling-place of
Fulk Nerra--in all likelihood, his own work.[361] A poetic legend
shows him to us for once quietly at home, standing in that hall and
gazing at the view from its windows. At his feet flowed the purple
Mayenne between its flat but green meadows--for the great suburb
beyond the river did not yet exist--winding down beneath a bridge of
his own building to join the Loire beyond the rising hills to the
south-west. His eyes, keen as those of the “Falcon” whose name he
bore, reached across river and meadow to the slope of a hill directly
opposite him, where he descried a dove flying to and fro, picking up
fragments of earth and depositing them in a cavity which it seemed to
be trying to fill. Struck by the bird’s action, he carefully marked
the spot, and the work of the dove was made the foundation-stone of a
great abbey in honour of S. Nicolas, which he had vowed to build as a
thank-offering for deliverance from a storm at sea on his return from
his second pilgrimage.[362] This abbey, with a nunnery founded near
it eight years later--in 1128--by his countess Hildegard, on the site
of an ancient church dedicated to our Lady of Charity,[363] became
the nucleus round which gathered in after-years a suburb known as
Ronceray, scarcely less important than the city itself. These tranquil
home-occupations, however, could not long satisfy the restless temper
of Fulk. The irresistible charm exercised by the Holy Land over so many
of the more imaginative spirits of the age drew him to revisit it in
1035. One interesting event of the journey is recorded: his meeting
at Constantinople with Duke Robert of Normandy, father of William
the Conqueror.[364] The old and the young penitent completed their
pilgrimage together; but only the former lived to see his home again;
and when he reached it, he found the gates of Angers shut in his face
by his own son. The rebellion was soon quelled. Saddled and bridled
like a beast of burthen, Geoffrey came crawling to his father’s feet.
“Conquered art thou--conquered, conquered!” shouted the old count,
kicking his prostrate son. “Aye, conquered by thee, for thou art my
father; but unconquered by all beside!” The spirited answer touched
Fulk’s paternal pride, and Geoffrey arose forgiven.[365] The power
which he had thus undutifully tried to usurp was soon to be his by
right; not, however, till the Black Count had given one last proof
that neither his hand nor his brain had yet forgotten its cunning. Odo
of Champagne had long ago left Touraine to its fate, and for the last
four years he had been absorbed in a visionary attempt to wrest from
the Emperor Conrad II., first the kingdom of Burgundy, then that of
Italy, and at last the imperial crown itself; while Fulk’s conquests
of the valleys of the Indre and the Cher had been completed by the
acquisition of Montbazon and St.-Aignan.[366] When at the close of
1037 tidings came that Odo had been defeated and slain in a battle with
the imperial forces at Bar, the Angevin at once laid siege to Langeais,
and took it.[367] One more stronghold still remained to be won in the
valley of the Vienne. From the right bank of the little river, winding
down silvery-blue between soft green meadows to join the Loire beyond
the circle of the distant hills to the north-west, the mighty steep of
Chinon rises abruptly, as an old writer says, “straight up to heaven”;
range upon range of narrow streets climb like the steps of a terrace up
its rocky sides; acacias wave their bright foliage from every nook; and
on the crest of the ridge a long line of white ruins, the remains of a
stately castle, stand out against the sky. A dense woodland of oaks and
larches and firs, stretching north-eastward almost to the valley of the
Indre, and crowded with game of every kind, formed probably no small
part of the attractions which were to make Chinon the favourite retreat
of Fulk Nerra’s greatest descendant. In those ruined halls, where a
rich growth of moss and creepers has replaced the tapestried hangings,
earlier and later memories--memories of the Black Count or of the Maid
of Orleans--seem to an English visitor only to flit like shadows around
the death-bed of Henry Fitz-Empress. But it was Fulk who won Chinon
for the Angevins. The persuasion of his tongue, as keen as his sword,
sufficed now to gain its surrender.[368] The Great Builder’s work was
all but finished; only the keystone remained to be dropped into its
place. Tours itself stood out alone against the conqueror of Touraine.
One more blow, and the count of Anjou would be master of the whole
valley of the Loire from Amboise to the sea.

        [359] R. Glaber, l. iii. c. 9 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x.
        p. 40). Fulk’s mediation was done in characteristic fashion; he
        asked Constance “cur bestialem vesaniam erga filios exerceret.”
        It took effect, however.

        [360] Chron. S. Petr. Senon. and Chronolog. S. Marian.
        Autissiod. a. 1032 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi. pp. 196,
        308).

        [361] See note B to chapter ii. above.

        [362] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_) p. 275. The
        church was consecrated December 1, 1020; Chronn. S. Serg. ad
        ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 134.) The foundation-charter is
        in Le Pelletier’s _Breviculum S. Nicolai_, p. 4.

        [363] The foundation-charter, dated July 14, 1128, is in Hiret,
        _Antiquitez d’Anjou_, pp. 100, 101. The whole history of the
        church is fully discussed by M. d’Espinay, in the _Revue
        Historique de l’Anjou_, vol. xii. (1874), pp. 49–64, 143–155.
        A grotesque legend, which yet has a somewhat characteristic
        ring, was told of the origin of this nunnery. Fulk one day,
        watching a potter at his work, was seized with a desire to try
        his hand. He succeeded in producing a well-shaped pan, which
        he carried home in triumph and gave to his wife, telling her
        that it was made by the man whom she loved best. Hildegard,
        mistaking the jest for a serious charge, vowed to disprove it
        at once by undergoing the ordeal of water, and flung herself
        out of the window and into the river, before her husband could
        stop her. The spot where she came to land was marked by the
        abbey of our Lady (_Revue hist. de l’Anjou_, as above, pp. 54,
        55, and note 1; Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 279 note.) Its later
        name of “Ronceray” was derived from a bramble-bush (_ronce_)
        which forced its way through the pavement of the choir, despite
        all attempts to uproot it. This however was in the sixteenth
        century.

        [364] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 101. See note C
        at end of chapter.

        [365] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, pp. 401,
        402).

        [366] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 116.

        [367] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 168.

        [368] _Ibid._

Strangely, yet characteristically, that final blow Fulk left to be
struck by his successor. As his life drew to its close the ghostly
terrors of his youth came back to him with redoubled force; and the
world which had marvelled at his exploits and his crimes marvelled no
less at his last penance. For the fourth time he went out to Jerusalem,
and there caused two servants, bound by an oath to do whatsoever
he should bid them, to drag him round the Holy City in the sight of
all the Turks, one holding him by a halter round his neck, the other
scourging his naked back, while he cried aloud for Heaven’s mercy on
his soul as a perjured and miserable sinner.[369] He made his way
homeward as far as Metz.[370] There, on June 21st, 1040, the Black
Count’s soul passed away;[371] and his body was embalmed, carried home
to Beaulieu, and buried in the chapter-house of the abbey which had
been the monument of his earliest pilgrimage, the first-fruits of his
youthful devotion and daring.[372]

        [369] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, p. 402).

        [370] “Metensem urbem,” _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_)
        p. 117. From the last word one would imagine this could only
        mean Metz in Lorraine; but there is another Metz in the
        Gâtinais; and although it is, and clearly always has been,
        an insignificant little town, quite undeserving the title
        of “urbs,” it seems more likely than its greater namesake
        to be the place really meant. For Metz in Lorraine would be
        completely out of the way of a traveller from Palestine to
        Anjou, while Metz in the Gâtinais was not merely close to
        Fulk’s home, but was actually in the territory of his own
        son-in-law (of whom we shall hear again later). It would
        be as natural for him to stop there on his way as it would
        be unnatural for him to fetch a compass through the remote
        dominions of the duke of Lorraine; and, on the other hand, the
        place is so insignificant that a careless and ignorant writer,
        such as John of Marmoutier, even though dwelling at no great
        distance, might easily forget its existence.

        [371] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1040 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 24, 135). Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p.
        377. _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), p. 117.

        [372] Fulk Rechin and _Gesta Cons._, as above.

From Beaulieu, at least, he had deserved nothing but gratitude, and
Beaulieu never forgot the debt. For seven centuries the anniversary of
his death was solemnly observed in the abbey; so was that of his widow,
who as a bride had helped to the dedication of the church, and who now,
following her husband’s last steps, went out to die at Jerusalem.[373]
For seven centuries, as the monks gathered in the church to keep their
yearly festival in honour of his gift, the fragment of sacred stone,
they read over in the office of the day the story of his pilgrimage,
and chanted the praise of his pious theft.[374] Next to that trophy,
his tomb was their pride; it vanished in the general wreck of 1793; but
research within the last few years has happily succeeded in bringing
the Black Count’s earthly resting-place to light once more.[375] But
it was not Beaulieu alone that kept his memory green. His own little
Angevin marchland, his fairer conquest Touraine, are sown thick with
memorials of him. So strong was the impression made by his activity
in one direction that after-generations have persisted in attributing
to him almost every important architectural work in his dominions,
and transferred the credit of several constructions even of Henry
Fitz-Empress to the first “great builder” of Anjou, who was believed to
have had command over more than mortal artificers. Popular imagination,
with its unerring instinct, rightly seized upon the Black Count as the
embodiment of Angevin glory and greatness. The credit of the astute
politician, the valiant warrior, the consummate general, the strenuous
ruler--all this is his due, and something more; the credit of having,
by the initiative force of genius, launched Anjou upon her career
with an impetus such as no opposing power could thenceforth avail to
check. One is tempted to wonder how far into the future of his house
those keen eyes of the Black Falcon really saw; whether he saw it or
not, that future was in a great measure of his own making; for his
fifty-three years of work and warfare had been spent in settling the
question on which that future depended--the question whether Anjou or
Blois was to be the chief power of central Gaul. When his place was
taken by Geoffrey Martel, there could no longer be any doubt of the
answer.

        [373] See extract from Martyrology of Ronceray in Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, p. 395, note 3.

        [374] See the office in Salies, _Foulques-Nerra_, pp. 499 _et
        seq._

        [375] See Salies, _Foulques-Nerra_, pp. 456 _et seq._

The new count of Anjou began his reign in circumstances very unlike
those of his father half a century before. Not only had Fulk wholly
changed the political position of Anjou, but Geoffrey’s own position
as an individual was totally different. He was no untried boy, left
to fight his own way with no weapons save the endowments which nature
had given him; he was a full-grown man, trained in the school of Fulk
Nerra, and already experienced in politics and war. In his own day
Geoffrey Martel was looked up to with as much respect as his father,
and with even more dread. His career is an illustration of the saying
that nothing succeeds like success. Till he came into collision with
the duke of Normandy, he carried all before him like chaff before the
wind. He crushed Aquitaine; he won Tours; he won Le Mans. It was no
wonder if he delighted to commemorate in the surname of Martel, “the
Hammer,” the victorious blows which laid opponent after opponent at
the feet of the blacksmith’s foster-son.[376] But Geoffrey was not
the artificer of his own fortune. He owed his pre-eminence among
the great vassals of the Crown to his extended possessions and his
military reputation; he owed his extended possessions more to his
father’s labours and to a series of favourable accidents than to his
own qualities as a statesman; and he owed his military reputation--as
one writer who understood the Angevins thoroughly has very plainly
hinted--more to luck than to real generalship.[377] Geoffrey stands at
a disadvantage thus far, that in contemplating him one cannot avoid
two very trying comparisons. It was as unlucky for his after-fame
as it was lucky for his material prosperity that he was the son of
Fulk the Black; it was unlucky for him in every way that he was the
rival of William the Conqueror. Neither as a statesman, a ruler, a
strategist, or a man was Geoffrey equal to his father. As a statesman
he showed no very lofty capacity; his designs on Aquitaine, sweeping
but pointless, came to nothing in the end: and with regard to Touraine
and Maine, politically, he had little to do but to reap the fruit of
Fulk’s labours and use the advantages which the favour of the king in
one case, the rashness of the bishop in the other, and the weakness of
the rival count in both, threw absolutely into his hands. As a ruler
he seems to have been looked up to with simple dread; there is little
trace of the intense personal following which others of his race knew
so well how to inspire;[378] the first time he was intrusted with the
government of Anjou his harshness and oppression roused the indignation
alike of his subjects and of his father; his neighbours looked on him
to the last as a tyrant,[379] and his own people seem to have feared
far more than they loved him. As a strategist there is really no proof
that he possessed any such overwhelming superiority as he himself
boasted, and as others were led to believe. His two great victories,
at Montcontour and Montlouis, dazzled the world because the one was
gained over a prince who by the tradition of ages counted as the first
potentate in the realm after the duke of Normandy, and the other led to
the acquisition of Tours; but the capture of William of Aquitaine was
really nothing more than the fortune of war; while in the case of the
victory over Theobald of Blois at Montlouis, a considerable part of the
credit is due to Geoffrey’s lieutenant Lisoy of Amboise; and moreover,
to have beaten the successor of Odo II. is after all no very wonderful
achievement for the successor of Fulk the Black. Twice in his life
Geoffrey met his master. The first time he owned it himself as he lay
at his father’s feet. The second time he evaded the risk of open defeat
by a tacit withdrawal far more shameful in a moral point of view. It
is small blame to Geoffrey Martel that he was no match for William the
Conqueror. Had he, in honest consciousness of his inferiority, done
his best to avoid a collision, and when it became inevitable stood to
face the consequences like a man, it would have been small shame to him
to be defeated by the future victor of Senlac. The real shame is that
after courting an encounter and loudly boasting of his desire to break
a lance with William, when the opportunity was given him he silently
declined to use it. It was but a mean pride and a poor courage that
looked upon defeat in fair fight as an unbearable humiliation, and
could not feel the deeper moral humiliation of shrinking from the mere
chance of that defeat. And it is just this bluntness of feeling, this
callousness to everything not visible and tangible to outward sense,
which sets Geoffrey as a man far below his father. There is in Fulk a
living warmth, a quickness of susceptibility, which breaks out in all
sorts of shapes, good and bad, in all the stories of the Black Count,
but which seems wholly lacking in Geoffrey. Fulk “sinned bravely,”
ardently, impulsively; Geoffrey sinned meanly, coldly, heartlessly.
His was altogether a coarser, lower nature. Fulk was truly the falcon
that wheels its swift and lofty flight ever closer and closer above the
doomed quarry till it strikes it down irresistibly with one unerring
swoop. Geoffrey rightly thought himself better represented by the
crashing blows of the insensible sledge-hammer.

        [376] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_) p. 379; cf. _Hist. S.
        Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 260, and Will. Malm.
        _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395).

        [377] “Gaufredus cognomento Martellus, quod ipse sibi
        usurpaverat, quia videbatur sibi _felicitate quâdam_ omnes
        obsistentes contundere.” Will. Malm. as above.

        [378] Even the devotion of Lisoy of Amboise seems to have been
        given to Geoffrey chiefly because he was his father’s son. Fulk
        was its real object.

        [379] See the Norman writers, Orderic and William of Poitiers.

Geoffrey had been an independent ruler in a small sphere for nearly ten
years before his father’s death. In 1030 or 1031 he became master of
the little county of Vendôme by purchase from his half-sister Adela,
the only child of Fulk’s ill-starred first marriage, and the heiress
of her maternal grandfather Count Burchard. After doing homage to King
Henry for the fief, Geoffrey’s first act was to found in the capital
of his new dominions an abbey dedicated to the Holy Trinity.[380] The
appointment of an abbot proved the occasion for the first recorded
outbreak of that latent discord between Fulk and his heir which, as we
have seen, culminated at last in open war. A monk named Reginald had
just been sent at Fulk’s request from the great abbey of Marmoutier
near Tours, to take the place of Baldwin, abbot of S. Nicolas at
Angers, who had fled to bury himself in a hermitage. Before the day
came for Reginald’s ordination, however, he deserted to a younger
patron, and accepted the abbotship of Geoffrey’s newly-founded abbey
at Vendôme. Fulk, thus disappointed by two abbots in succession,
“flew,” as he himself said, “into a mighty rage,” summarily ordered
the whole colony of monks whom he had brought from Marmoutier to S.
Nicolas back to their parent monastery, and replaced them with some
of the brethren of S. Aubin’s at Angers, with Hilduin, prior of that
convent, as their head.[381] Fulk’s wrath seems to have been directed
against the monks rather than against his son; but the incident serves
as an illustration of the tendency to opposition that was springing
up in Geoffrey’s mind. The quiet, waiting policy of Fulk’s latter
years was evidently irksome to the young man’s impatient spirit, and
he chose to strike out a path for himself in a direction which, it is
not surprising to learn, did not please the old count. The only one of
his neighbours with whom Fulk seems to have been always on peaceable
terms was the count of Poitou. William Fierabras, the count from whom
Geoffrey Greygown had wrested Loudun, died about two years after the
second battle of Conquereux.[382] His wife was a daughter of Theobald
the Trickster,[383] and his son and successor was therefore first
cousin to Odo II. of Blois; but William IV.--whom Aquitaine reckoned
as her “William the Great”--seems to have had little in common with
his erratic kinsman, and to have always, on the other hand, maintained
a friendly understanding with Anjou. Like Odo, he once received an
offer of the crown of Italy; Fulk appears in the negotiations as the
friendly advocate of the duke’s interests with King Robert,[384] and
though the project came to nothing, it may have been in return for
Fulk’s good offices on this occasion that William bestowed on him the
investiture of Saintes, a gift which was to form the pretext for more
than one war between their descendants. On January 31st, 1029, William
died,[385] leaving as his successor a son who bore the same name, and
whose mother seems to have been a sister of Queen Constance.[386]
It was this new duke of Aquitaine, known as William the Fat, whom
Geoffrey Martel selected as the first victim of his heavy hand. An
Angevin story attributes the origin of the war to a dispute about
Saintes or Saintonge,[387] but it will not bear examination. Geoffrey
Martel simply trod in the steps of Geoffrey Greygown, and with more
marked success. In the autumn of 1033 he started on an expedition
against the duke of Aquitaine; William encountered him on September
20th in a pitched battle near the abbey of S. Jouin-de-Marne, not far
from Montcontour in Poitou; the Poitevins were defeated, partly, it
seems, through treason in their own ranks, and their duke was taken
prisoner.[388] For three years the duke of Aquitaine, the second
great feudatary of the realm, was kept in a dungeon by the count
of Vendôme;[389] not till the whole district of Saintonge[390] and
several important towns were ceded to Geoffrey, and an annual tribute
promised, would he release his captive. From the execution of the
last humiliating condition William was delivered by death; the cruel
treatment he had suffered in prison had done its work; Geoffrey had
exacted the ransom for his prisoner just in time, and sent him home
only to die three days after his liberation.[391]

        [380] _Origo Com. Vindoc._, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi.
        p. 31. See also Mabillon, _Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. pp. 378, 379.

        [381] The whole story is told only by Fulk himself, in a
        charter to the abbey of S. Nicolas; _Breviculum S. Nicolai_ (Le
        Pelletier), quoted in Mabillon, _Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. p. 379.

        [382] See editor’s note to Peter of Maillezais, _Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 183, note _g_.

        [383] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 972 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 380).

        [384] Adem. Chabanais, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 161.
        Letters of William of Poitou, _ib._ pp. 483, 484; of Fulk to
        Robert, _ib._ pp. 500, 501.

        [385] Chron. S. Maxent. ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 390).

        [386] She was Adelmodia, widow of Boso, count of La Marche, and
        daughter of William count of Arles and “Candida,” otherwise
        Adelaide the White; see Pet. Maillezais, l. i. c. 6 (_Rer.
        Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 182), and note B at end of chapter.

        [387] See note C at end of chapter iv. below.

        [388] Chronn. S. Maxent. a. 1032, S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm.
        a. 1033 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 391, 392, 23, 188); S. Serg.
        a. 1028 (_ib._ p. 135). Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p.
        378. Cf. _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), pp. 128–130, and note C to
        chapter iv. below.

        [389] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1036 (as above, p. 392).

        [390] “Sanctonas cum toto pago.” Chron. Tur. Magn., Salmon,
        _Chron. de Touraine_, p. 122. (The date, “anno Henrici
        Imperatoris iv et Henrici regis xiii,” is of course absurd,
        like most of the dates in the Tours chronicle at this period,
        except those which relate to local matters). Cf. _Gesta Cons._
        (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 126, and note C to chapter iv. below.

        [391] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395).
        Cf. Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 182.

Then Geoffrey threw off the mask. William had no children; his next
heir was his half-brother Odo, the son of his father’s second marriage
with Brisca, heiress of Gascony.[392] But after Brisca’s death, William
the Great had married a third wife, whom he had left a still young
widow with three little children. Before William the Fat had been many
months dead, his stepmother the widowed Countess Agnes gave her hand
to Geoffrey of Vendôme.[393] Geoffrey’s motive is plain; he sought
to prevent the union of Poitou and Gascony and to get the former
practically into his own hands as stepfather and guardian to the young
sons of Agnes. But in Anjou the wedding gave great scandal; Geoffrey
and Agnes were denounced in the harshest terms as too near akin to
marry.[394] They seem in fact to have been, by the reckoning of the
canon law, cousins in the third degree, as being, one a grandson, the
other a great-granddaughter of Adela of Chalon, the second wife of
Geoffrey Greygown.[395] At any rate they were looked upon as sinners,
and by no one more than the bridegroom’s father. The whole scheme
of Geoffrey’s meddlings in Aquitaine was repugnant to Fulk Nerra’s
policy; he looked to his son to complete his own labours in Touraine
and Maine, and it was no good omen for the fulfilment of his hopes when
Geoffrey thus turned his back upon his appointed work for the love of
Countess Agnes or of her late husband’s possessions. The capture of
William the Fat had been the signal for the first outbreak of a “more
than civil war” between father and son;[396] Geoffrey’s misconduct
during his regency in Anjou brought matters to the crisis which ended
in his first and last public defeat. Nevertheless he obstinately
pursued his projects. The Poitevins, by the death of their count, were
left, as their own chronicler says, “as sheep having no shepherd”;
there was a party among them ready to support the claims of Agnes’s
sons against their elder half-brother Odo of Gascony; and one of the
leaders of this party, William of Parthenay, built with Angevin help
a fortress at Germont in which he held out successfully against the
besieging forces of Odo. The count of Gascony then proceeded to Mausé,
another stronghold of his enemies, and in assaulting this place he
was slain.[397] He left no children; the elder of Geoffrey Martel’s
stepsons was now therefore heir to Poitou. The boys were twins; the
third child of Agnes was a girl, who bore her mother’s name, and for
whom her mother and stepfather contrived in 1043 to arrange a marriage
with no less important a personage than the Emperor Henry III.,[398]
whose first wife had been a daughter of Cnut. It was not till the year
after this imperial wedding that the troubled affairs of Aquitaine were
definitely settled. In 1044 Countess Agnes came to Poitiers accompanied
by her two sons, Peter and Geoffrey, and her husband, their stepfather,
Geoffrey Martel; there they held with the chief nobles of Poitou a
council at which Peter, or William as he was thenceforth called, was
solemnly ordained as duke of Aquitaine, and his brother sent into
Gascony to become its count.[399] Agnes at least must now have attained
her object; whether Geoffrey Martel was equally satisfied with the
result of his schemes may be a question, for we do not clearly know
how wide the range of those schemes really was. If, as seems likely,
they included the hope of acquiring a lasting hold over Aquitaine,
then their issue was a failure. By the victory of Montcontour Geoffrey
had gained for himself at one blow a great military reputation; but
for Anjou the only solid gain was the acquisition of Saintonge, and
this, like some of the outlying possessions of the house of Blois, soon
proved more trouble than profit. If Martel expected that his stepsons
would hold themselves indebted to him for their coronets and remain his
grateful and dutiful miscalculation. The marriage of a duchess-dowager
of Aquitaine with Geoffrey Martel naturally suggests thoughts of the
marriage of a duchess-regnant with a later count of Anjou; but the
resemblance between the two cases is of the most superficial kind; the
earlier connexion between Anjou and Aquitaine did little or nothing
to pave the way for their later union. Geoffrey himself, indeed, had
already discovered that although the count of Vendôme might go seeking
adventures in the south, the duties and the interests of the count of
Anjou still lay to the north, or at the utmost no farther away than the
banks of the great frontier-river.

        [392] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1010 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 387,
        388).

        [393] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
        182. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395).
        Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1037 (as above, pp. 392, 393); Chronn. S.
        Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1032 (_ib._ pp. 23, 135). On the date
        see note D at end of chapter.

        [394] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1032 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 23, 135).

        [395] See note D at end of chapter.

        [396] Chronn. S. Albin. a. 1032, 1033 (Marchegay, _Eglises_,
        p. 23); S. Serg. a. 1028 (_ib._ p. 135); Rain. Andeg. a.
        1036, 1037 (_ib._ p. 11). The Chron. S. Albin. a. 1033, says:
        “Gaufridus ... Willelmum comitem Pictavorum sumpsit in bello;
        quare orta est discordia inter patrem et filium.” Labbe in his
        _Bibl. MSS. Librorum_ printed this “patrem et _matrem_,” and
        thereby originated a perfectly groundless story of a quarrel
        between Fulk and Hildegard.

        [397] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1037 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 392,
        393).

        [398] Hermann. Contract., a. 1043 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        xi. p. 19). Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. ad ann. (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 24, 135, 136). The Chron. S. Maxent. (_ib._ p.
        398) dates the marriage vaguely “per hæc tempora” under 1049.

        [399] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1044 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 394,
        395). It seems quite plain that the elder boy’s baptismal name
        was Peter, but he signs his charters “William” (see Besly,
        _Comtes de Poitou, preuves_, pp. 314, 317). The Chron. S.
        Maxent. a. 1058 (as above, p. 400) calls him “Willelmus qui et
        Petrus, cognomento Acer.” In recording the birth of the two
        boys (a. 1023, _ib._ p. 388) the same writer calls them “Petrum
        cognomine Acerrimum, et Gaufredum qui et Wido vocatus est”; and
        he afterwards speaks of the latter by both names indifferently.
        It seems however to have been an established rule that the
        reigning duke of Aquitaine must be officially called William;
        for Guy-Geoffrey also assumed the name when he succeeded his
        brother in 1058.

The visions of empire to which Odo of Champagne had sacrificed the
latter years of his life had perished with him on the field of Bar. Not
a foot of land outside the limits of the kingdom of France had he left
to his heirs. He had two sons, Theobald and Stephen, whose very names
seemed to mark out their destined shares in his dominions. Stephen,
the younger, became count of Champagne; to Theobald, the elder, fell
the original territories of his house--Blois, Chartres and Tours.[400]
Theobald’s heritage however was shorn of its fairest portion. The
county of Tours now comprised little more than the capital; all
Touraine south of the Loire--by far the most fertile and valuable
half--was in the power of the Angevin; Tours itself, once a secure
central post, had become a closely threatened border-city. Theobald’s
first duty was to protect it, but it seems to have been the last thing
he thought of. Odo’s sons had inherited all his wrongheadedness without
his quickness of thought and action. Shut in as they were on all sides
by powerful foes, the two young men began their career by rebelling
after the manner of their forefathers;[401] and the king’s youngest
brother Odo was lured, by a promise of dethroning Henry in his favour,
into joining in their rebellion. Odo, a youth of weak intellect, was
in himself no very formidable person, but he might for the very same
reason become a dangerous tool in the hands of his fellow-conspirators;
and a rebellious coalition of Blois and Champagne threatened to be a
serious difficulty for the king at a moment when there was scarcely one
of the great feudataries on whom he could reckon for support. The death
of Duke Robert of Normandy had plunged his duchy into confusion and
deprived Henry of all chance of help in the quarter which had hitherto
been his chief source of strength. The county of Burgundy was governed
by the king’s brother Robert, who had with difficulty been induced to
accept it as compensation for the failure of his hopes of the crown.
Flanders and Britanny were always indifferent to the troubles and
necessities of the king; the count of Vermandois was a kinsman and ally
of Champagne; Aquitaine was as powerless as Normandy. The one vassal to
whom Henry could look for aid was the count of Anjou. Had the rebels
possessed sense and spirit they might have given Henry quite as much
trouble as their father had given Robert; but they seem to have had no
well-concerted plan; each acted independently, and each was crushed
singly. Young Odo, their puppet pretender, was easily caught and
imprisoned at Orléans; Stephen of Champagne was defeated in a pitched
battle by the king himself;[402] Theobald of Blois was left to be dealt
with by other hands. With a master-stroke of policy, Henry proclaimed
the city of Tours forfeit by Theobald’s rebellion, and granted its
investiture to the count of Anjou.[403]

        [400] Hugh of Fleury, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi. p. 159.
        Chron. Fr. Andreæ, _ib._ p. 364.

        [401] Hugh of Fleury and Chron. Fr. Andreæ, as above. _Hist.
        Franc. Fragm._ (_ibid._), p. 160.

        [402] _Hist. Franc. Fragm._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi.),
        p. 160. Hugh of Fleury (_ibid._), p. 159.

        [403] Chron. Virdun. a. 1039 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi.
        p. 144). R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (_ib._ vol. x. p. 60), copied in
        _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 122, 123. Fulk Rechin
        (_ibid._), p. 378.

To understand the full importance of this grant and of the war which
followed it, we must know something of the history of Tours and of
the peculiar feelings and interests attached to it. The origin of
Tours as a city dates from the time of the Roman empire, when it
appears under the name of Cæsarodunum.[404] The Roman _castrum_ was
built in a broad, shallow sort of basin, watered on the north by the
Loire, on the south by the Cher; it probably occupied the site of some
village of those Turones or Turoni, who play a part in the Gallic wars
of Cæsar,[405] and whose name in the end superseded that which the
place received from its conqueror. The “city of the Turones” became
the central point of a network of roads connecting it with Poitiers,
Chartres, Bourges, Orléans, Le Mans and Angers;[406] and owing to the
convenience of its situation for military and administrative purposes
it was made the capital of the Third Lyonnese province.[407] But
its hold on the minds of men was due to another gift of Rome, more
precious than roads or fortifications or even political traditions.
It was the holy city of Gaul, the cradle of Gaulish Christianity. Its
first bishop, Gatian, was one of seven missionaries sent out from
Rome to evangelize the Gallic provinces in the days of the Decian
persecution.[408] S. Gatian’s episcopate of half a century fell in
one of the most distracted periods of the Empire; after his death the
Church which he had planted remained untended for nearly forty years,
and it was not till after the death of Constantine that Tours received
her second bishop in the person of Lidorius, one of her own sons, who
laid the foundations of a cathedral church.[409] But the fame of the
two first bishops of Tours was completely overshadowed by that of the
third. The work of S. Gatian and S. Lidorius was confined to their own
immediate flock; S. Martin was the apostle not only of Touraine but of
all central Gaul. Born at Sabaria[410] in the Upper Pannonia, in the
reign of the first Christian Emperor, but of heathen parents, Martin
rose to high military distinction under the Cæsar Julian, accompanied
him into Gaul, and enjoyed his utmost esteem and regard till he
forfeited them by renouncing the standard of the eagles for that of
the Cross. Neither the wrath of his commander nor the entreaties of
his fellow-soldiers, by whom he was greatly beloved, availed to shake
his resolution; he fled to Poitiers, and there found a friend and
counsellor in the holy bishop Hilary, from whom he received the minor
orders. After braving toil and peril by land and sea in a journey
to his native country for the conversion of his family, he returned
to a life of seclusion in Gaul, and acquired such a reputation for
holiness that on the death of Lidorius in 371 the people of Tours,
in spite of his strenuous resistance, actually forced him to become
their bishop.[411] From that moment Tours became a mission-centre
whence the light of the faith spread with marvellous rapidity over
all the surrounding country. Anjou and all the neighbouring lands
owed their conversion to S. Martin and the missionaries sent out by
him; everywhere paganism gave way before his eloquent preaching, his
dauntless courage, his almost apostolic endowments--above all, perhaps,
his good example. He was looked upon as the Thaumaturgus of Gaul, and
countless legends were told of his wonder-working powers; more famous
than all of them is a story of the saint in his soldier-days, when,
Christian already in feeling though not yet in profession, he stopped
his horse one cold winter’s night, drew his sword and cut his military
cloak in halves to share it with one whose necessity was greater than
his own. That night he dreamed that the Lord whom, not knowing, he yet
instinctively served, appeared to him wearing the half cloak which he
had thus given away; and it was this vision which determined him to
receive baptism.[412] Amid all his busy, active life he never lost the
love of solitary contemplation so characteristic of the early Christian
missionaries. His episcopal city lay on the south side of the Loire,
but had on the north or right bank a large suburb afterwards known
by the name of S. Symphorian; beyond this, farther to the eastward,
the bishop found for himself a “green retreat,” which has scarcely
yet lost its air of peaceful loneliness, and which, before the suburb
had spread to its present extent, must have been an ideal spot for
monastic retirement. A little wooden cell with its back against the
white limestone rock which shelters the northern side of the basin
of Tours--an expanse of green solitude in front, stretching down to
the broad calm river--such was the nest which S. Martin built him in
the wilderness; gathering round him a little band of men likeminded
with himself, he snatched every spare moment from his episcopal cares
to flee away thither and be at rest;[413] and the rock-hewn cells
of the brotherhood became the nucleus of a famous abbey, the “Great
Monastery,” as it was emphatically called--_Majus Monasterium_,
Marmoutier. Another minster, of almost greater fame, grew up over the
saint’s burial place outside the western wall of the city, on low-lying
ground which, before it was reclaimed by the energetic dyke-makers of
the ninth and tenth centuries, must have been not unfrequently under
water. It is within the episcopal city of S. Martin, in the writings
of Bishop Gregory of Tours, that West-Frankish history begins. An
English student feels a nearer interest in the abbey without the walls,
remembering that the abbot under whom it reached its highest glory and
became the very fount and source of all contemporary learning, human
and divine, was Alcuin of York.

        [404] Ptolem., l. ii. c. 8.

        [405] Cæsar, _De Bello Gallico_, l. ii. c. 35; l. vii. c. 75;
        l. viii. c. 46.

        [406] Article by M. E. Mabille on “Topographie de la Touraine,”
        in _Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes_, series v. vol. iv. pp. 413,
        414.

        [407] _Notitia Provinciarum Galliæ_, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._,
        vol. i. p. 122.

        [408] Greg. of Tours, _Hist. Franc._, l. i. c. 28.

        [409] Chron. Archiep. Turon., Salmon, _Chron. de Touraine_, p.
        201.

        [410] Now Stein-am-Angern.

        [411] Sulpitius Severus, _Vita B. Martini_, cc. 2–9. Greg.
        Tours., _Hist. Franc._, l. i. cc. 34, 36, 43.

        [412] Sulp. Severus, _Vita B. Martini_, c. 3.

        [413] Sulp. Severus, _Vita B. Martini_, c. 10.

When the great English scholar and the great Emperor who had brought
him into Gaul were gone, Tours underwent her full share of suffering
in the invasions of the northmen. City and abbey became to the valley
of the Loire something like what Paris and S. Denis were to that of
the Seine, the chief bulwark against the fresh tide of heathen force
which threatened to sweep away the footsteps of saints and scholars.
Once, indeed, Tours had been in danger from heathens of another
sort, and a body of Saracens had been turned back from her gates and
destroyed by Charles Martel.[414] There was no Martel to save her
from the northmen; her only defence consisted in the valour of her
citizens, and the fortifications left to her by her Roman governors and
carefully strengthened by her Karolingian sovereigns.[415] Over and
over again the pirates were driven back from the walls of Cæsarodunum;
over and over again S. Martin’s Abbey was burnt to the ground. For
years the canons, who in Alcuin’s days had taken the place of the
original monks,[416] lived in constant fear of desecration befalling
their patron’s body, and carried it from place to place, like the
body of our own S. Cuthbert, sometimes depositing it within the city
walls, sometimes removing it farther inland--once even to the far-off
Burgundian duchy--bringing it home whenever they dared, or whenever
they had a church fit to contain it. Two of these “reversions”--one on
December 13, 885, the other on May 12, 919--were annually celebrated
at Tours, in addition to two other feasts of S. Martin, his ordination
on July 4 and his “deposition” on November 11.[417] In the first
reversion Ingelger, the founder of the Angevin house, was said to
have borne a prominent part. The story of the second was afterwards
superseded by a famous legend known as that of the “subvention of
S. Martin.” Once, it was said, when the citizens of Tours were sore
pressed by the besieging hosts of the northmen, they resolved to
intrust their cause to a heavenly champion, and brought out upon the
walls the corpse of the saint, which had been deposited for safety
within the city. The living heathen fled at once before the dead
saint; they were pursued by the triumphant citizens, still carrying
their patron in their midst, and utterly routed at a spot which thence
received the name of “S. Martin of the Battle.”[418] This story seems
to belong to the siege of 903, when Marmoutier was destroyed, and
the abbey of S. Martin burnt to the ground for the third time. When
the canons again rebuilt it, they took the precaution of encircling
it with a wall, and procured from Charles the Simple a charter which
resulted in the creation of a new fortified borough, exempt from the
jurisdiction of both bishop and count, and subject only to its own
abbot--in other words, to the duke of the French, who from the middle
of the eighth century always held _in commendam_ the abbey of S. Martin
at Tours, as he did that of S. Denis at Paris.[419] Thus, side by side
with the old city of the Turones, Cæsarodunum with its Roman walls,
its count, its cathedral and its archbishop, there arose the “Castrum
Novum,” Châteauneuf, “Castellum S. Martini,” Martinopolis as it is
sometimes called, with its own walled enclosure, its collegiate church
and its abbot-duke. The counts of Anjou, who followed so steadily in
the train of the ducal house, were not blind to the means of gaining
a footing in such tempting neighbourhood to the walls of Tours; from
an early period they took care to connect themselves with the abbey
of which their patron was the head. The first count of Anjou and his
father play an important part in the legendary history of the two great
“reversions”; Fulk the Good is almost more familiar to us as canon than
as count, and the stall next to that of the dean of S. Martin’s, which
he so loved to occupy, whence he wrote his famous letter, and where
he saw his vision of the saint, seems to have become hereditary among
his descendants like the abbotship among those of Hugh the Great. Good
Canon Fulk prized it as a spiritual privilege; his successors probably
looked upon it rather in the light of a political wedge whereby they
might some day force an entrance into the greedily-coveted city itself.
Tours was the point towards which Fulk the Black had worked steadily
all his life long; and when he left his son to complete his labours,
that point was almost reached. But, with her broad river and her Roman
walls, Tours was still hard to win. To block the river was impossible;
to break down the walls would need nothing less than a regular siege,
and one which could not fail to be long, tedious and costly. Geoffrey
seems to have delayed the task until by the king’s grant of the
investiture it became a point of honour as well as a matter of the most
pressing interest to make good the claim thus placed in his hands.

        [414] Fredegar. Contin., l. ii. c. 108 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._,
        vol. ii. p. 454); Chron. Fontanell. a. 732 (_ib._ p. 660), etc.

        [415] See Ann. Bertin., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. vii. p. 107.

        [416] Chron. Petr. Fil. Bechin., in Salmon, _Chron. de
        Touraine_, p. 40. Chron. Tur. Magn. a. 991 (_ib._ p. 93). See
        _Gall. Christ._, vol. xiv. col. 154.

        [417] For the whole history of the wanderings and the festivals
        of S. Martin, and of the sieges of Tours by the northmen, see
        an article by M. Mabille, “Les Invasions normandes dans la
        Loire et les pérégrinations du corps de S. Martin,” in _Bibl.
        de l’Ecole des Chartes_, series vi. vol. v. pp. 149–194.

        [418] _Tract. de Revers. B. Martini_, in Salmon, _Supplément
        aux Chron. de Touraine_, pp. 14–34; copied in _Gesta Cons._
        (see note A to chapter ii. above). On the date, see Mabille,
        “Inv. Norm.” (_Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes_, series vi. vol.
        v. p. 190). This device of the citizens of Tours was several
        times imitated elsewhere; _e.g._ by the monks of Saumur with
        the body of S. Docelinus, when Fulk Nerra besieged the place
        in 1025 (_Hist. S. Flor. Salm._, Marchegay, _Eglises_, p.
        277); and by the monks of S. Peter at Sens, against the same
        opponent, in 1032 (Chron. S. Petr. Senon. ad ann., _Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. xi. p. 196). The former failed, the latter
        succeeded.

        [419] Charter of Charles the Simple, a. 918, in _Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. ix. p. 540. For the history of the “Castellum
        S. Martini,” and the topography of Tours and Châteauneuf, see
        “Topographie de la Touraine,” by M. E. Mabille, in _Bibl. de
        l’Ecole des Chartes_, series v. vol. v. pp. 321–366; and for
        the topography and history of the whole district from the
        earliest times see previous articles under the same title,
        series v. vol. iii. pp. 309–332, vol. iv. pp. 388–428, and vol.
        v. pp. 233–258.

He woke at once from his Aquitanian dreams, gathered his forces, and
led them out, probably not by the old Roman road from Juliomagus to
Cæsarodunum past the white steeps of his father’s Montboyau, but by
a safer though longer route, passing along the southern bank of the
Loire and across the valleys of the Vienne and the Indre, to lay siege
to Tours. With the royal sanction to his enterprise he had the great
advantage of being able to use Châteauneuf as a basis of operations.
The monastery of S. Julian, at the north-east corner of the town, close
against the city wall, was especially convenient for attacking the
latter; Geoffrey took possession of it and used it accordingly.[420]
The city, however, held out against him for a whole year, during
which its inhabitants seem to have been left by their count to defend
themselves as best they could. At last, in August 1044, Theobald
collected an army for its relief, in union with the forces of Champagne
under his brother Stephen.[421] Geoffrey, in expectation of this, had
detached from his main force a body of two hundred knights and fifteen
hundred foot, whom he posted at Amboise under Lisoy, to guard the road
against Theobald.[422] The services of Lisoy were a special legacy from
Fulk the Black to his son. Of all Fulk’s adherents, none had served
him so intelligently and so devotedly as this Cenomannian knight whom
he had chosen to be the colleague of the aged Sulpice in the defence of
Amboise and Loches. Fulk, when he felt his end approaching, had striven
hard to impress on his son the value of such a true and tried friend,
and at the same time to bind Lisoy yet more closely to him by arranging
his marriage with Hersendis, the niece and heiress of Sulpice, whereby
Lisoy came into possession of all Sulpice’s estates at Loches and
Amboise, including the famous tower of stone.[423] Lisoy proved as
true to the new count as to the old one. Theobald, not daring to come
within reach of Amboise, avoided the direct route from Blois to Tours
along the Loire,[424] and took the road by Pontlevoy to Montrichard.
The chief force of Montrichard, with its commander Roger, was no doubt
with Geoffrey before Tours, so the count of Blois pursued his way
unmolested, plundering as he went, down the valley of the Cher, till
he pitched his tents in the meadows of St.-Quentin opposite Bléré,
and there stayed a day and a night to rest.[425] All his movements
were known to the watchful lord of Amboise; and as soon as Lisoy had
fully ascertained the numbers and plans of the enemy, he hurried off
to seek his count in the army before Tours, and offer him some sound
military advice. He represented that it would be far better to raise
the siege, join the whole Angevin force with that which was already
at Amboise, and stake everything on a pitched battle. The enemy might
beat either Geoffrey or his lieutenant singly, but united they would be
irresistible; and whereas the siege must be long and tedious, and its
result uncertain, one victory in the field would lay all Touraine at
the victor’s feet. Only let the count be quick and not suffer his foe
to catch him at unawares.[426]

        [420] See _Gall. Christ._, vol. xiv. col. 243.

        [421] R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
        60).

        [422] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 118.

        [423] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 168, 169.

        [424] _Ib._ p. 170.

        [425] _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), p. 119.

        [426] _Ib._ pp. 118, 119.

Geoffrey, as he listened to this bold counsel, must have been reminded
of his father’s warning, that a true friend like Lisoy was a surer
source of strength than either hosts or treasures.[427] He took the
advice, and while Lisoy returned to Amboise to bring up his little
force to the trysting-place agreed upon between them, his count, after
diligent prayers and vows to S. Martin, took the consecrated banner of
the abbey from its place above the shrine, affixed it to his own spear,
and rode forth with it at the head of all his troops to do battle with
Theobald.[428] On the same day when Theobald encamped opposite Bléré
Geoffrey reached Montlouis, a hill on the south bank of the Loire,
about half way between Tours and Amboise. Next morning the men of Blois
resumed their march; turning in a north-westerly direction they were
met at a place called Noit by the Angevins coming down from Montlouis.
The Hammer of Anjou, ever foremost in fight, headed the attack on the
enemy’s centre; his faithful Lisoy came up, as he had promised, at the
head of his contingent, and threw himself on their right wing.[429]
What followed scarcely deserved the name of a battle. The army of the
brother-counts seemed spell-bound, and made no resistance at all;
Stephen took to flight at once and escaped with a few knights;[430] the
rest of the troops of Blois and Champagne were utterly defeated and
taken prisoners almost in a body. The men of Amboise were hottest in
pursuit of the fugitives, and they won the great prize of the day. They
drove Theobald with some five or six hundred knights into a wood called
Braye, whence it was impossible for horsemen to extricate themselves;
and thus Lisoy had the honour of bringing the count of Blois a captive
to the feet of Geoffrey Martel.[431] No one at the time doubted that
the Angevins owed their easy victory to the saint whose standard they
were following. The few soldiers of Theobald who escaped declared that
they had seen Geoffrey’s troops all clad in shining white raiment,
and fled in horror, believing themselves to be fighting against the
hosts of Heaven.[432] The village near which the fight took place was
called “burgum S. Martini Belli”[433]--S. Martin of the Battle, a name
derived from the “subvention of S. Martin,” supposed to have occurred
at the same place two hundred years before. Most curiously, neither
the well-known legend of the saint’s triumph over the northmen nor the
fame of Geoffrey’s triumph over the count of Blois availed to fix in
popular memory the true meaning of the name. While the English “Place
of Battle” at Senlac has long forgotten its dedication to S. Martin,
its namesake in Touraine has forgotten both its battles and become
“St.-Martin-le-Beau.”

        [427] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 168.

        [428] R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
        60); copied in _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 122.

        [429] _Gesta Cons._ (as above), p. 120.

        [430] R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
        61); copied in _Gesta Cons._ (as above), p. 122.

        [431] _Gesta Cons._ (as above), p. 121; _Gesta Amb. Domin._
        (_ibid._), p. 170.

        [432] R. Glaber, as above; _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_),
        p. 123.

        [433] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 120.

With very little bloodshed, the Angevins had gained over a thousand
prisoners.[434] The most valuable of them all was put in ward at
Loches;[435] but he took care not to stay there long. Theobald took
warning by the fate of William of Aquitaine;[436] he had no mind to run
the risk of dying in prison, and held his person far dearer than his
property.[437] Three days after his capture, finding that no amount
of silver or gold would avail to purchase his release, he yielded the
only ransom which Geoffrey would accept: the city of Tours and the
whole county of Touraine.[438] A nominal overlordship over the ceded
territory was reserved to Theobald, and Geoffrey had to go through
the formality of doing homage for it to him.[439] When the substance
was securely his own, the count of Anjou could well afford to leave
to his vanquished rival the shadowy consolation of an empty ceremony.
Moreover, the circumstances of the whole transaction and the account
of King Henry’s grant to Geoffrey clearly imply that Theobald’s rights
over the most important point of all, the capital itself, were
considered as entirely forfeited by his rebellion, so that with regard
to the city of Tours Geoffrey stepped into the exact place of its
former counts, holding it directly of the king alone.

        [434] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 378; R. Glaber, l.
        v. c. 2 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 61). For the date
        of the battle--August 21, 1044--see Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S.
        Albin., S. Serg., Vindoc., S. Flor. Salm., and S. Maxent. ad
        ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 11, 24, 136, 166, 188, 395).
        The _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 121, and _Gesta
        Amb. Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 170, make it 1042, but they cannot
        possibly be right.

        [435] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ as above.

        [436] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 182.

        [437] _Gesta Cons._, as above. See the comment of Will. Malm.
        _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 396).

        [438] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 18 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
        Scriptt._, p. 276); _Gesta Cons._ (as above), pp. 121, 122; the
        details of the treaty are in pp. 123, 124.

        [439] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ as above.

The acquisition of Tours closes the second stage in the career of the
house of Anjou. Looked at from a strictly Angevin point of view, the
period just passed through, although in one sense only preliminary,
is the most important of all, for it is that on which depended all
the later growth, nay, almost the very existence of Anjou. Had the
counts of Blois proved too strong for her in these her early years,
she would have been swallowed up altogether; had they merely proved
themselves her equals, the two states so closely bound together would
have neutralized each other so that neither of them could have risen to
any commanding eminence; till one or the other should sweep its rival
out of its path, both must be impeded in their developement. At the
opening of the struggle, in Fulk Nerra’s youth, Blois was distinctly in
the ascendant, and the chances of independent existence for the little
Marchland hung solely on the courage and statesmanship of its count.
His dauntless genius, helped by Odo’s folly, saved Anjou and turned
the tide completely in its favour. The treaty sworn, four years after
Fulk’s death, in his great castle by the Indre, was the crowning of his
life’s work, and left his son absolutely without a rival till he chose
to seek one beyond the debateable ground of Maine. The long struggle
of Fulk and Odo, completed by Geoffrey and Theobald, had made a clear
field for the future struggles of Geoffrey and William, of Fulk V. and
Henry I., and at last--by a strange turn of fate--for a renewal of the
old feud with the house of Blois itself, in a new form and for a far
higher stake, in the struggle of Stephen and Henry Fitz-Empress for the
English crown.


NOTE A.

THE SIEGE OF MELUN.

The fullest account of this Melun affair is in Richer, l. iv. cc.
74–78. Briefly, it comes to this: Odo (described simply by his name,
without title of any kind) “rerum suarum augmentum querebat,” and
especially the castle of Melun, partly for the convenience of getting
troops across the Seine, and partly because it had formerly belonged
to his grandfather and was now in the hands, not of the king, but of
“another” (not named). He managed to corrupt the officer in command
and to obtain possession of the place. As soon as the kings (_reges_)
heard of it, they gathered their forces to besiege him there: “et quia
castrum circumfluente Sequanâ ambiebatur, ipsi in litore primo castra
disponunt; in ulteriore, accitas piratarum acies ordinant.” These
“pirates” furnished a fleet which blockaded the place, and finally
discovered a secret entrance whereby they got into the town, surprised
the castle, and compelled it to surrender to the king (_regi_).

2. William of Jumièges (l. v. c. 14, Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._,
p. 255) tells the story more briefly, but to exactly the same effect.
He mentions however only _one_ king: he supplies the name of the “other
man” who held Melun--viz. Burchard: he clearly implies that “Odo” is
Odo II. of Blois (of whose doings with Normandy he has just given an
account in c. 12, _ib._ p. 254); and, of course, he gives the “pirates”
their proper name of Normans, and puts them under their proper leader,
Duke Richard [the Good].

3. Hugh of Fleury tells the same tale very concisely, but with all the
names, and gives a date, a. 999 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp.
220, 221). (He is copied by the Chron. S. Petr. Senon., _ib._ p. 222.)

4. The _Abbreviato Gestorum Franciæ Regum_ tells the same, but gives no
date beyond “eo tempore,” coming just after Hugh Capet’s death (_Rer.
Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 227).

5. The _Vita Burchardi Comitis_ gives no dates, does not identify Odo,
and does not mention the Normans, but makes Burchard himself the chief
actor in the regaining of the place (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp.
354, 355. In p. 350, note _a_, the editor makes Burchard a son of Fulk
the Good; but he gives no authority, and I can find none).

6. The Angevins have a version of their own. In the _Gesta Cons._
(Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 76, 77) the captor of Melun is “Herbert count
of Troyes”; in Hugh of Clères (_ib._ p. 388) he has the same title
but no name, and neither has the king, who in the _Gesta_ is called
Robert. The victim is not named at all; but the hero who plays a part
equivalent to that of the Normans in the other versions is Geoffrey
Greygown.

The main question is the date. One authority--Hugh of Fleury--gives
it distinctly as 999. Will. Jumièges clearly identifies the Odo in
question as Odo II. Now Odo II. was not count till 1004; but his father
died in 995, so William may have given him the title by anticipation
at any time after that date. The _Abbr. Gest. Franc. Reg._ would
seem to place it thereabouts, as its note of time is “eo tempore” in
reference to Hugh Capet’s death (which occurred in October 996). On the
other hand, Richer speaks of “the _kings_” in the plural; from which
Kalckstein, Waitz and Luchaire (_Hist. des Institutions monarchiques de
la France_, vol. ii. p. 7, note 1) conclude that it is Odo I. who is
concerned, and they date the affair 991. Why they fix upon this year,
in defiance of both William of Jumièges and Hugh of Fleury, I cannot
see. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (_Comtes de Champagne_, vol. i. p. 196)
adopts Hugh’s date, 999. Is it not possible, however, from a comparison
of the other authorities, that the right year is 996, just before
Hugh’s death, or even that he died while the siege was in progress?
for it is to be noticed that Richer mentions only _one_ king at the
surrender. Richer has made such a confusion about these Odos and their
doings that it is hardly fair to set him up as an infallible authority
on the subject against such writers as Hugh of Fleury and William of
Jumièges. Anyhow, the Angevin story cannot stand against any of them.


NOTE B.

THE PARENTS OF QUEEN CONSTANCE.

The parentage of Constance requires some notice here, as she is usually
called either a niece or a cousin of Fulk Nerra. The one point on which
all authorities are agreed is that her father’s name was William. It
was long disputed whether he was William III. (Taillefer) count of
Toulouse or William I. count of Arles and Provence. M. Mabille, in a
note to the latest edition of Vic and Vaissète’s _Hist. du Languedoc_
(Toulouse, 1872), vol. iv. pp. 157–161, has made it clear that he was
William of Arles; this conclusion is adopted by M. Luchaire (_Hist. des
Instit. Monarch._, vol. ii. p. 211, note 1).

M. Mabille however does not attempt to decide who was Constance’s
mother, through whom her kindred with the Angevins is said to have
come; and this is the question which we now have to investigate. The
evidence at present known is as follows:--

1. An unprinted MS. of R. Glaber’s history, l. iii. c. 2 (quoted by
Mabille, note to Vic and Vaissète, as above, p. 158; Marchegay,
_Comtes d’Anjou_, Introd., p. lxxiii. note 2), describes Constance as
“neptem prædicti Fulconis ... natam de Blancâ sorore ejus.” This is the
version adopted in _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 110).

2. A letter of Bishop Ivo of Chartres (Ep. ccxi., Migne, _Patrologia_,
vol. 162, cols. 215, 216), written about A.D. 1110, makes Constance’s
mother sister, not of Fulk, but of his father Geoffrey Greygown. So
does an anonymous chronicle ending in 1109, printed in Duchesne’s
_Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv. p. 96.

3. The Chron. S. Albin. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 21) has under date
987: “Hlotharius rex obiit.... In isto reges Francorum defecerunt. Hic
accepit uxorem Blanchiam filiam Fulconis Boni comitis Andegavensium,
patris Gaufredi Grisegonellæ, et habuit ex eâ filiam, Constantiam
nomine, quæ fuit data cum regno Roberti regis filio, scilicet Hugonis
Magni.” Wildly confused as this passage is, I believe that it really
contains a clue to the identity of Constance’s mother. Whoever she was,
she certainly must, at the time of Constance’s birth, have been wife
not of Louis the Lazy (who is evidently meant, instead of Lothar), but
of Count William I. of Arles. Now it is plain (see Vic and Vaissète as
above, pp. 62, 63) that William was twice married; first to Arsindis,
who was living 968–979; and secondly, to Adelaide, who appears in 986,
was mother of his successor William II., and apparently still living
in 1026. Of Arsindis nothing further is known; but with Adelaide the
case is otherwise. King Louis the Lazy, at some time between 978 and
981, married a lady “ab Aquitanis partibus” (R. Glaber, l. i. c. 3,
_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 5), whose name was Adelaide according
to Richer (l. iii. c. 92), but whom the Chron. S. Albin. (as we have
already seen) and the Chron. S. Maxent. (a. 986, Marchegay, _Eglises_,
p. 382) call _Blanche_. After two years of marriage with the young
king she divorced him, or was divorced by him, and married _William
of Arles_ (Richer, l. iii. cc. 94, 95). This is clearly the lady of
whom we are in search. The dates fit exactly; William’s first wife,
Arsindis, is dead; he marries the divorced queen, probably about
982–983, and they have a daughter who in 1000 will be, as Constance
evidently was at her marriage, in the prime of girlish beauty. The
probability is strengthened by the fact that Adelaide’s first husband
actually was what R. Glaber (l. iii. c. 2, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
x. p. 27) mistakenly calls Constance’s father, count of the “First
Aquitaine,” or Toulouse; for Richer (l. iii. c. 92) says she was widow
of Raymond “duke of the Goths,” _i.e._ of Septimania or Toulouse:--by
the name of “Candida,” the Latin equivalent for “Blanche,” given to
the wife of William of Arles by Peter of Maillezais (l. i. c. 6, _Rer.
Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 182; see above, p. 173, note 5{386});--and
even by the blundering Angevin chronicle which makes Constance a
daughter of “Blanche” and “Lothar,” meaning of course Blanche the wife
of Lothar’s son, and her third husband. This same Chron. S. Albin.,
however, adds that the said “Blanche” was a daughter of Fulk the Good.
Nobody else seems to have known her origin, and this very “perplexed
and perplexing” chronicler is a doubtful authority to build upon; but
as there is no intrinsic impossibility in this part of his statement,
and as there evidently was in the early twelfth century a tradition
that Constance was akin to the house of Anjou, he may be right. From
the dates, one would think she was more likely to have been Greygown’s
daughter than his sister. If she was his sister, it must surely have
been by the half-blood. She might be a daughter of Fulk the Good by his
second marriage with the widow of Alan Barbetorte.


NOTE C.

THE PILGRIMAGES OF FULK NERRA.

Of all the writers, ancient and modern, who have treated of Fulk Nerra,
scarcely any two are wholly agreed as to the number and dates of his
journeys to Holy Land. Some make out four journeys; some three; one,
his own grandson, makes only two (Fulk Rechin, Marchegay, _Comtes_,
p. 377). It is, however, abundantly evident that there were at least
three--one before the foundation of Beaulieu (_Gesta Cons._, _ib._ p.
117; _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._, Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 273); one after
the foundation of Beaulieu, and before that of S. Nicolas (_Hist. S.
Flor. Salm._ as above, p. 275); and one in returning from which he
died (see above, p. 168). It is admitted on all hands that his death
took place at Metz on June 21st, 1040; the date of the last pilgrimage
is therefore undisputed. That of the first is now fixed by a charter
quoted by M. Mabille (Marchegay, _Comtes_, Introd. p. lxxix) to 1003.
The points still remaining to be decided therefore are (1) the date of
the second journey; (2) the reality of the third.

The only real clue which our original authorities give us to the date
of the second journey is the statement of _Hist. S. Flor._ that it
was after the foundation of Beaulieu and before that of S. Nicolas
(Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 275). Now S. Nicolas was founded in 1020
(_ibid._). Beaulieu was consecrated in 1012, but all we know of its
foundation is that it cannot have been before Fulk’s return from his
first journey in 1004. Modern writers have proposed three different
dates for this second pilgrimage. The _Art de vérifier les dates_ (vol.
xiii. p. 50) places it in 1028; M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (_Hist. des
Comtes de Champagne_, vol. i. p. 245) in 1019–20; M. Mabille (Introd.
_Comtes_, pp. lxxviii, lxxx) and M. de Salies (_Foulques-Nerra_, pref.
pp. xxxii, xxxiii, 143) in 1010–11. The first date, founded on a too
literal reading of Ademar of Chabanais (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
x. p. 164), is disposed of at once by the History of S. Florence.
The theory of M. de Jubainville has a good deal of plausibility, but
there is no documentary evidence for it. M. Mabille quotes in support
of his date, 1010, a charter of S. Maur-sur-Loire, setting forth how
Fulk, Hildegard and Geoffrey visited that abbey on the eve of Fulk’s
departure for Holy Land. This charter is in Marchegay’s _Archives
d’Anjou_, vol. i. p. 356; it has no date of any sort; and it does not
specify whether Fulk’s intended journey was his second or third. The
presence of Geoffrey proves it was not the first, but nothing more.
M. Mabille pronounces for the second, and dates it “vers 1010”; but
the editor of the _Archives_, M. Marchegay, says in a note “vers l’an
1030.” This charter therefore does not help at all. M. de Salies
(_Foulques-Nerra_, p. 143, and pref. _ib._ p. xxxii) appeals in support
of the same date, 1010, to the Chronicle of Tours, whose chronology
throughout the century is so wild as to have no weight at all, except
in strictly local matters; to the Chron. S. Petr. Senon., where I can
find nothing about the question at issue;--and above all, to a charter
in Baluze’s collections which says: “In natali S. Barnabæ Apostoli,
qui est in Idibus Junii, Rainaldus ... Andecavensium Episcopus rebus
terrenis exemptus est ... Ad sepulchrum Domini Hierosolymam comitante
Fulcone vicecomite tendebat, progressusque usque Ebredunum” ... died
and was there buried “anno ab Incarnatione Domini nostri Jesu Christi
1010.”

In the first place, this charter is suspicious as to date, for the
Chronn. S. Albin. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 22), Vindoc. (_ib._ p.
164), S. Flor. Salm. (_ib._ p. 187), all date Bishop Rainald’s death
1005, and so, according to _Gallia Christiana_, vol. xiv. col. 558,
does the Obituary of S. Maurice; and the Chron. S. Serg. (Marchegay,
_Eglises_, p. 134) dates the consecration of his successor Hubert
1007. In the next place, what ground has M. de Salies for assuming
that “Fulco _vice_comes” is Fulk Nerra count of Anjou? The authors of
_Gallia Christiana_ quote this same charter, and their comment on it is
this: “Fulco sedenim comes” [it is _vice_comes in the charter] “quocum
Rainaldus Hierosolymitanum iter aggressus supra memoratur, Andegavensis
rei curam annum circa 1010, teste non uno, suscepit.” And as they have
been describing various dealings of the bishop with Fulk the Black long
before 1010, it is quite clear they take this Fulk to be some one else;
though one would like to see their witnesses and know who he really was.

There is however another clue which may suggest a different date for
this second pilgrimage. There are only two ways of making sense of the
account given in the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 88–91)
of “the wicked Landry’s” attack on Anjou and the war of Châteaudun.
In that account the first misdoings of Landry and his aggressions
against Sulpice and Archambald of Amboise are put in the reign of
Count Maurice; then Maurice dies and his son Fulk succeeds him, and
the raid upon Châteaudun follows as the first exploit of “juvenis haud
modici pectoris.” Now we have seen that Maurice was not Fulk’s father
but his younger brother, and never was count of Anjou at all. We must
therefore either regard the introduction of Maurice as a complete myth
and delusion, or interpret the tale as a distorted account of a regency
undertaken by Maurice during his brother’s absence. It is hard to see
why the chroniclers should have gratuitously dragged in Maurice without
any reason. Moreover the charter which establishes the date of Fulk’s
first pilgrimage informs us that he left his brother as regent of Anjou
on that occasion (Mabille, Introd. _Comtes_, p. lxxvi); it is therefore
quite possible that he may have done the same thing a second time. On
this theory, to ascertain the date of the war with Landry would be
equivalent to ascertaining the date of Fulk’s second pilgrimage.

If we take the _Gesta’s_ account of Landry just as it stands, Landry’s
attack on Anjou must have been made at the close of 1014 or in 1015;
for he was resisted (say they) by Sulpice, treasurer of S. Martin’s,
and his brother Archambald. Now Sulpice could not be treasurer of S.
Martin’s before 1014, as his predecessor Hervey died in that year
(Chron. Tur. Magn. ad ann., Salmon, _Chron. de Touraine_, p. 119;
Chronol. S. Mar. Autiss. ad ann., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
275); and on the other hand, Archambald must have died in 1015 or very
early in 1016, for the Chron. Tur. Magn. (as above)--which is likely
to be right in its dating of local matters, though hopelessly confused
in its general chronology--places in 1016 the building of Sulpice’s
stone tower at Amboise, which the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_,
pp. 88, 89) tell us took place after his brother’s death; and the whole
affair was certainly over some time before July 1016, the date of the
battle of Pontlevoy. According to the _Gesta_ (as above, pp. 89, 90),
Landry makes another attack on Sulpice, after his brother’s death, just
when Maurice has also died and Fulk succeeded him [_i.e._ Fulk has come
home and resumed the reins of government]; and the raid on Châteaudun
follows immediately. Here comes in a new difficulty; Odo of Blois is
now brought in with a minute list of his possessions in Champagne,
which he only acquired in 1019 at earliest, so that if this part of
the story is also to be taken literally, Landry’s war with Sulpice
and Fulk’s raid on Châteaudun must be separated by nearly four years.
Maurice cannot possibly have been regent all that time, so we must
either give him up entirely, or conclude that some of the details are
wrong. And the one most likely to be wrong is certainly the description
of Odo, whom almost all the old writers call “Campanensis” long before
he had any right to the epithet. This is the view of M. d’Arbois de
Jubainville, who dates the whole affair of Landry and Châteaudun in
1012–1014 (_Comtes de Champagne_, vol. i. pp. 227, 228), but ignores
Maurice and puts Fulk’s second journey in 1019, without giving any
reason. It seems to me that this strange Angevin hallucination about
Count Maurice, so utterly inexplicable in any other way, becomes
intelligible if we believe that he was regent of Anjou in 1014–1015
during a second journey of his brother to Holy Land; a theory which,
if it has no positive evidence to support it, seems at least to have
none to contradict it, and is not rendered improbable by the general
condition of Angevin affairs at the time.

2. As to the third journey. The _Gesta Cons._ state that Fulk, on
one of his pilgrimages, went in company with Robert the Devil. Now
as Robert died at Nikaia in July 1035 Fulk cannot have met him on
either of his first two journeys, nor on his last; therefore, if this
incident be true, we must insert another pilgrimage in 1034–1035.
The story appears only in the _Gesta Cons._ and is therefore open to
suspicion, as the whole account of Fulk’s travels there given is a
ludicrous tissue of anachronisms (Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 100–103).
Fulk first goes to Rome and promises to deliver Pope Sergius IV. (who
reigned 1009–1012) from Crescentius (who was killed in 997); then he
goes to Constantinople, and thence in company with Robert to Jerusalem;
Robert dies on the way home (1035) and Fulk on his return founds
Beaulieu Abbey (consecrated 1012.) The monk has confounded at least
two journeys, together with other things which had nothing to do with
either.

The idea of a journey intermediate between the second and the last is
however supported by the story of R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 164;
Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 329) that Geoffrey Martel having been left
regent while his father was on pilgrimage kept him out on his return.
Now at the time of Fulk’s first pilgrimage Geoffrey was not born; at
the time of the second he was a mere child; and from the last Fulk
came home only in his coffin. Consequently this story implies another
journey; and we seem to get its date at last on no less authority than
that of Fulk’s own hand. The charter in _Epitome S. Nicolai_ (quoted
in Mabillon, _Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. p. 386), after relating Fulk’s
application to Abbot Walter of S. Aubin’s to find him an abbot for
S. Nicolas, and the consequent appointment of Hilduin in 1033, ends
thus: “Res autem præscriptas a domno Beringario atque domno Reginaldo
scribere jussi, et _priusquam ad Jerusalem ultimâ vice perrexissem_
manu meâ roboravi.” The Chron. S. Albin. says Walter was not abbot till
1036 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 23; the extract in note 3, _ibid._,
makes it 1038), and if so the date of Hilduin’s consecration is wrong.
But the authors of _Gallia Christiana_ think it more likely that the
abbot’s name is wrong and the date right. Now by “ultimâ vice” Fulk
must have meant “the journey whence I last returned.” Before starting
for that of 1040 he might hope, but he could not know, that it would be
his last. So here we have, apparently, his own authority for a third
pilgrimage soon after Hilduin’s consecration--_i.e._ in 1034 or 1035.

The worst stumbling-block, however, in the way of our chronology
of Fulk’s last years is William of Malmesbury. He gives a much
fuller account than any one else of Geoffrey’s rebellion and Fulk’s
last pilgrimage, and his account, taken alone, is so thoroughly
self-consistent and reasonable, and withal so graphic, that it is hard
not to be carried away by it. But it utterly contradicts the date which
the sources above examined assign to the third journey, as well as that
which all other authorities agree in assigning to the last, and also
the universally-received account of Fulk’s death. William (l. iii. c.
235; Hardy, pp. 401, 402) says nothing about Geoffrey having rebelled
during his father’s absence. He tells us that Fulk in his last years
ceded his county to his son; that Geoffrey misconducted himself, and
was brought to submission (here comes in the story of the saddle); that
Fulk in the same year went out to Palestine (here follows the story of
the penance); that he came quietly home, and died a few years after.

This account of William’s is entitled to very much more respectful
handling than those of the _Gesta Consulum_ and Ralf de Diceto.
William’s statements about the counts of Anjou are of special value,
because they are thoroughly independent; where they come from is a
mystery, but they certainly come from some source perfectly distinct
from those known to us through the Angevin writers. Moreover William
shews a wonderfully accurate appreciation of the Angevins’ characters
and a strong liking for them--above all for Fulk Nerra, whom he seems
to have taken special pains to paint in the most striking colours. His
version therefore is not to be lightly treated; nevertheless it seems
clear that he is not altogether correct. His omitting all mention of
the pilgrimage which immediately preceded Geoffrey’s rebellion is no
proof of its non-reality. His account of the last journey of all is
a graver matter. According to him, it must have taken place about
1036–1037, and Fulk died, not at Metz, but at home. There is only one
other writer who countenances this version, and that is the chronicler
of S. Maxentius (a. 1040, Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 393), who says that
Fulk died in his own abbey of S. Nicolas at Angers. But this very same
chronicle gives also an alternative statement--the usual one of the
death on pilgrimage which is given by the _Gesta_, R. Diceto and Fulk
Rechin. Against either of the two former witnesses singly William’s
solitary word might stand, but not against them with Fulk Rechin to
support them. The pilgrimages therefore stand thus: 1. in 1003; 2. in
1014–1015; 3. in 1034–1035; 4. in 1040.


NOTE D.

GEOFFREY MARTEL AND POITOU.

The whole story of Geoffrey Martel’s doings in Poitou--his wars and
his marriage--is involved in the greatest perplexity. There is no lack
of information, but it is a mass of contradictions. The only writer
who professes to account for the origin of the war is the author of
the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 126), and his story, so
far as it can apply to anything at all, certainly applies to the
battle of Chef-Boutonne between Geoffrey the Bearded and William VII.
(Guy-Geoffrey) in 1062. All other authorities are agreed that the
battle was fought at S. Jouin-de-Marne, or Montcontour, on September
20, 1033, that William was captured and kept in prison three years,
and that he died immediately after his release. As to the marriage of
Geoffrey and Agnes, there is a question whether it took place before
William’s capture or immediately after his death.

1. The Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg., a. 1032 (Marchegay, _Eglises_,
pp. 23, 135) say positively that Geoffrey and Agnes were married on
January 1 in that year. The Chron. S. Michael. in Per. Maris ad ann.
also gives the date 1032 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 176).

2. Will. Poitiers and Will. Malm. say they married after William’s
death. “Porro ipsius defuncti ... novercam ... thoro suo [Gaufridus]
sociavit.” Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
182. “Tunc Martellus, ne quid deesset impudentiæ, novercam defuncti
matrimonio sibi copulavit.” Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231
(Hardy, p. 395).

These five are the only writers who directly mention the marriage,
except the Chron. S. Maxent. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 392), which
says under date 1037: “Per hæc tempora Gaufredus Martellus duxerat
uxorem supradictam,” etc. “Per hæc tempora” with the chronicler of S.
Maxentius is a phrase so frequent and so elastic that this passage
cannot be used to support either of the above dates. There are
therefore three witnesses for 1032, and two for 1036. The chroniclers
of S. Aubin and S. Sergius are both Angevin witnesses, and both nearly
contemporary; but the S. Sergian writer’s authority is damaged by his
having confused the whole story, for he dates the capture of the duke
of Aquitaine in 1028, thus evidently mistaking Agnes’s step-son for her
husband. William of Poitiers is in some sense a Poitevin witness, and
is also nearly contemporary. William of Malmesbury is further from the
source, and in this passage seems to have been chiefly following his
Poitevin namesake, but his whole treatment of the Angevin counts shews
such clear signs of special study and understanding that he is entitled
to be regarded as in some degree an independent authority.

That the marriage was not later than 1036 is certain from several
charters of that year, in which Agnes appears as Geoffrey’s wife
(Marchegay, _Archives d’Anjou_, vol. i. pp. 377, 402). But the _Gesta
Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 131, 132) tell a story of Geoffrey
having founded his abbey at Vendôme in consequence of a shower of stars
which he saw when standing at his palace window with “his wife, Agnes
by name.” As the first abbot of Holy Trinity at Vendôme was appointed
in 1033 (Mabillon, _Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. p. 379), if this story is
true, Agnes must have been married to Geoffrey in 1032. But unluckily,
the foundation-charter of the abbey is missing. The only documentary
evidence connected with the question consists of two charters. One of
these is printed in Besly, _Comtes de Poitou, preuves_, p. 304. It has
no date, and simply conveys some lands for the site of the abbey to
Count Geoffrey and Agnes his wife. Of course if this is the deed of
sale for the land on which the original buildings were begun in 1032,
it settles the question as to the previous marriage; but as the abbey
was not consecrated till 1040, it is quite possible that its building
was a slow process, and more ground was required as it proceeded. The
endowment-charter (dated 1040, Mabillon, _Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. p.
732) says: “Ego Goffredus comes et uxor mea Agnes ... monasterium ...
_a novo_ fundaremus.” Does the solution lie in those words, “a novo”?
Did Geoffrey found his abbey alone in 1032; stop work for a while on
account of the Poitevin war and his quarrel with his father; and then,
having married Agnes and acquired means by her step-son’s ransom, set
to work in earnest conjointly with her and found the abbey anew? It
is hard to throw over the distinct statements of two such writers as
William of Poitiers and William of Malmesbury for the sake of three
not very accurate chronicles and a late twelfth century romancer,
doubtfully supported by a very vague charter.

As to the crime of the marriage, it is only the Angevin chroniclers who
are so shocked at it. The S. Sergian writer’s mistake between Agnes’s
first husband and her step-son might account for his horror, but not
for the word he uses; and the _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay,
_Eglises_, p. 282) which uses the same, says distinctly that her
husband was dead. The two Williams seem to see nothing worse in it than
some “impudence” in the count of Vendôme daring to take a wife of such
high birth and position. The Chron. S. Maxent. makes no remark on
the subject; the chronicler of S. Sergius seems to have thought that
Geoffrey’s kinship was not with Agnes herself, but with her former
husband, for he says that Geoffrey married her “quæ fuerat consobrini
sui Willelmi ... uxor.” The canon law forbade marriages within the
seventh degree of kindred; and as the pedigrees of none of the three
persons concerned in this case can be traced back with certainty in all
their branches up to the seventh generation, it is quite impossible to
say what consanguinity there may or may not have been among them. The
strong language of the Angevin chroniclers, however, seems to indicate
no obscure and remote connexion, but a close and obvious one. There are
two possibilities which present themselves at once. 1. We do not know
at all who Geoffrey’s mother Hildegard was. 2. We are not perfectly
sure who his grandmother Adela was. Hildegard may have been a daughter
of Poitou, in which case her son would be akin to William; or a
daughter of Burgundy, and then he would be akin to Agnes. Or again, if
Adela of Chalon really was daughter to Robert of Troyes, and if she was
also really Geoffrey’s grandmother, then William, Agnes and Geoffrey
would be all cousins to each other--Agnes and William in the fifth
degree, Geoffrey and William in the fourth, Geoffrey and Agnes in the
third. The pedigree stands as follows:--

                         _Herbert of Vermandois._
                                     |
                  +------------------+------------------+
                  |                                     |
              Liutgard = Theobald the Trickster      Robert of Troyes
                  |                                     |
       +----------+                            +--------+
       |                            (1)        |              (2)
     Emma = William Fierabras      Lambert = _Adela_ = Geoffrey Greygown
          |                       of Autun |         |
          |                           +----+         +--------+
          |                           |                       |
  _William the Great_,            Gerberga = Adalbert of     Fulk Nerra
   3d from Herbert.                        | Lombardy         |
                                   +-------+                  |
                                   |                          |
                              Otto William.           _Geoffrey Martel_,
                                   |                  4th from Herbert,
                                _Agnes_,              2d from Adela.
                            5th from Herbert,
                            3d from Adela.

Strictly speaking, this would make both Agnes’s marriages wrong;
but the kindred in the case of the second would be much closer, and
aggravated by that between Geoffrey and William; and a dispensation
might very probably have been obtained for the first marriage, while
for the second it is plain that none was even sought.

It is just possible that there was also a spiritual affinity. Agnes’s
younger son bore the two names of Guy and Geoffrey; it is not clear
which was his baptismal name; but the idea suggests itself that it may
have been Geoffrey, and that he may have been godson to the Hammer of
Anjou. The case would then be something like that of Robert and Bertha.



CHAPTER IV.

ANJOU AND NORMANDY.

1044–1128.


The history of Anjou during the sixty years comprised in our last
chapter groups itself around the figure of Fulk the Black. The period
on which we are now to enter has no such personal centre of unity;
its interest and its significance lie in the drama itself rather
than in its actors; yet the drama has a centre which is living to
this day. The city of Le Mans still stands, as it stood in Geoffrey
Martel’s day and had stood for a thousand years before him, on the
long narrow brow of a red sandstone rock which rises abruptly from the
left bank of the Sarthe and widens out into the higher ground to the
north and east:--a situation not unlike that of Angers on its black
rock above the Mayenne. The city itself and the county of Maine, of
which it was the capital, both took their names from a tribe known
to the Romans as Aulerci Cenomanni, a branch of the great race of
the Aulerci who occupied central Gaul in its earliest recorded days.
Alike in legend and in history the Cenomanni are closely linked
to Rome. One branch of them formed, according to Roman tradition,
a portion of a band of Gallic emigrants who in the mythical days
of the Tarquins wandered down through the Alpine passes into the
valleys and plains of northern Italy, made themselves a new home on
the banks of Padus, where afterwards grew up the towns of Brixia and
Verona,[440] and became devoted allies of Rome.[441] When the last
struggle for freedom was over in Gaul, few spots took the impress of
Rome more deeply or kept it more abidingly than the home of their
Transalpine brethren, the “Aulerci Cenomanni whose city to the east
is Vindinum.”[442] The remains of the walls and gates of a Roman
_castrum_ which succeeded the primeval hill-fortress of Vindinum or
Le Mans are only now at last giving way to the destruction, not of
time, but of modern utilitarianism. Far into the middle ages, long
after Le Mans had outgrown its narrow Roman limits and spread down to
a second line of fortifications close to the water’s edge, one part
of the city on the height still kept the name of “Ancient Rome.”[443]
The wondrous cathedral which now rises in the north-eastern corner of
the city, towering high above the river and the double line of walls,
stands, if we may trust its foundation-legend, on the very site of
the _prætorium_; when the Cross followed in the train of the eagles,
Defensor, the governor of the city, gave up his palace for the site
of a church whose original dedication to the Blessed Virgin and S.
Peter has long been superseded by the name of its founder S. Julian, a
missionary bishop ordained and sent to Gaul by S. Clement of Rome.[444]
Defensor is probably only a personification of the official _defensor
civitatis_, the local tribune of the people under the later Roman
Empire; but the state of things of which the legend is an idealized
picture left its traces on the real relations of Church and state
at Le Mans. After the Frankish conquest bishop and people together
formed a power which more than matched that of the local lieutenant of
the Merovingian kings; a decree of Clovis, confirmed by his grandson
Childebert III., enacted that no count of Le Mans should be appointed
without their consent.[445] Under the early Karolingians Le Mans seems
to have held for a short time the rank afterwards taken by Angers as
the chief stronghold of the Breton border; local tradition claims
as its first hereditary count that “Roland, prefect of the Breton
march,” who is more generally known as the hero of Roncevaux.[446]
However this may be, the “duchy of Cenomannia” figures prominently in
various grants of territory on the western border made to members of
the Imperial house.[447] In the civil wars which followed the death of
Louis the Gentle it suffered much from the ravages of Lothar;[448] and
it underwent a far worse ordeal a few years later, when the traitor
count Lambert of Anjou led both Bretons and northmen into the heart of
central Gaul. The sack of Le Mans by Lambert and Nomenoë in 850[449]
was avenged some years later when the traitor fell by the sword of
Count Gauzbert of Maine;[450] but in 851 Charles the Bald was compelled
to cede the western part of the Cenomannian duchy to the Breton king
Herispoë;[451] the northern foes who had first come in the train of
the Bretons swept over Maine again and again; and it was in making
their way back to the sea after one of these raids by the old Roman
road from Le Mans to Nantes that they entrapped Robert the Brave to
his death at the bridge of Sarthe. The treaty of Clair-sur-Epte left
Maine face to face with the northman settled upon her northern border;
and in 924 a grant of the overlordship of the county was extorted by
Hrolf from King Rudolf of Burgundy. In the hands of Hrolf’s most famous
descendant the claim thus given was to become a formidable reality; at
the moment however its force was neutralized by another grant made in
the same year by Charles the Simple, which placed Maine together with
the rest of Neustria under the jurisdiction of Hugh the Great.[452]
In vain the counts of Le Mans strove to ignore or defy the house of
France and that of Anjou, to which, as we have seen, the ducal claims
over Maine were soon delegated. All their efforts were paralyzed by the
opposing influence of that other officer in their state whose authority
was of older date as well as loftier character than theirs, who held
his commission by unbroken descent alike from the Cæsars and from the
Apostles, and who had once at least been distinctly acknowledged as the
equal, if not the superior, of his temporal colleague. The bishops were
the nominees of the king, and therefore the champions of French and
Angevin interests at Le Mans. In the last years of the tenth century
and the early part of the eleventh, two of them in succession, an uncle
and nephew named Sainfred and Avesgaud, were members of the house of
Bellême who owned the borderlands of Perche, Séez and Alençon, between
France and Normandy, who were never loyal to either neighbour, and
whose name, as we have already seen, was one day to become a by-word
for turbulent wickedness both in Normandy and in England. Sainfred
was said to have owed his bishopric to Fulk Nerra’s influence with
the king;[453] Avesgaud’s life was passed between building, hunting,
and quarrelling with Count Herbert Wake-dog. Herbert’s military
capacities, proved on the field of Pontlevoy, enabled him to stand his
ground;[454] but very soon after his death Fulk’s dealings with Maine
and its bishop began to bear fruit. Fulk survived both Herbert and
Avesgaud. The count of Maine died in the prime of life in 1036,[455]
leaving as his heir a son named Hugh, who, on pretext of his extreme
youth, was set aside by a great-uncle, Herbert surnamed Bacco. Bishop
Avesgaud, too, had died a few months before, and his office passed a
second time from uncle to nephew in the person of his sister’s son,
Gervase of Château-du-Loir.[456] The selection of a third prelate from
the hated house of Bellême was in itself enough to excite the count’s
wrath; Herbert Bacco moreover had a special reason for jealousy--the
young nephew whose rights he had usurped was a godson of Gervase. For
two years Herbert contrived to keep the new bishop out of Le Mans
altogether; at the end of that time he admitted him, but no sooner were
the rival rulers established side by side than their strife became as
bitter and ceaseless as that of Herbert Wake-dog and Avesgaud. Gervase
looked for help to the king, who, whether as king or as duke of the
French, was patron and advocate of the see; but there was no help to
be got from the feeble, selfish Henry I. of France. Despair hurried
the bishop into a rasher step than any that his uncle had ever taken.
Thinking that a less exalted protector, and one nearer to the spot and
more directly interested, would be of more practical use, he besought
King Henry to grant the patronage and advocacy of the see of Le Mans to
Count Geoffrey of Anjou for his life.[457]

        [440] Tit. Liv., l. v. c. 35; Polyb., l. ii. c. 17.

        [441] Polyb., l. ii. cc. 23, 24, 32.

        [442] Ptolem., l. ii. c. 7. On the Peutinger Table, however,
        the name is Subdinnum.

        [443] “Ex parte vici de veteri Româ” is quoted by M. Voisin
        (_Les Cénomans anciens et modernes_, p. 86, note 3) from a
        document in the city archives.

        [444] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 1, in Mabillon, _Vetera
        Analecta_, pp. 239–241.

        [445] Charter of Childebert III. a. 698, in Mabillon, _Vet.
        Anal._, p. 283.

        [446] Eginhard, _Vita Car. Magni_, c. 9 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._,
        vol. v. p. 93).

        [447] Charles the Great granted “ducatum Cenomannicum” to
        his son Charles in 790; Ann. Mettens. ad ann. (_Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. v. pp. 346, 347). “Ducatus Cenomannicus,
        omnisque occiduæ Galliæ ora inter Ligerim et Sequanam
        constituta,” formed the share of Charles the Bald in 838; Ann.
        Bertin. ad ann. (_ib._ vol. vi. p. 199).

        [448] Ann. Bertin. a. 841 (_ib._ vol. vii. p. 60).

        [449] Chron. Fontanell. a. 850 (_ib._ p. 42).

        [450] The Chron. S. Maxent. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 366),
        two Aquitanian chronicles (in Labbe, _Nova Bibl._, vol. i. pp.
        291, 324) and Ademar of Chabanais (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        vii. p. 226) date this 852; Regino and the Ann. Mettens. (_Rer.
        Gall. Scriptt._, vol. vii. p. 190) place it in 860.

        [451] Above, p. 102. Part at least of this ceded territory must
        have been soon regained; for it extended “usque ad viam quæ a
        Lotitiâ Parisiorum Cæsarodunum Turonum ducit.” Ann. Bertin. a.
        856 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. vii. p. 71).

        [452] Frodoard. Chron. a. 924 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        viii. p. 181). See above, p. 124.

        [453] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 29 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._,
        p. 303).

        [454] See the story of his struggles with Avesgaud in _Acta
        Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 30 (as above, pp. 303, 304).

        [455] Necrol. S. Pet. de Culturâ (Le Mans), quoted in _Rer.
        Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi. p. 632. Ademar of Chabanais (_Rer.
        Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 161) seems to imply that he had
        contracted a mortal disease in his Angevin dungeon.

        [456] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 31 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._,
        pp. 305, 306). From the dates there given, Avesgaud must have
        died in October 1035, about five months before Herbert Wake-dog.

        [457] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, as above (p. 305).

As soon as the grant was made, Gervase “took counsel with the people
of the diocese and the brave men of the land,”[458] and headed a
revolution by which Herbert Bacco was expelled and the boy Hugh set
in his place. The bishop’s next step was to seek a wife for his
godson. Twelve years before, a band of Bretons, called by Hugh’s
father to aid him against Bishop Avesgaud and Fulk of Anjou, had made
a raid upon Blois and carried off Count Odo’s daughter Bertha to
become the wife of Duke Alan of Britanny.[459] It was this Bertha,
now a widow and a fugitive from Rennes, whence she was driven by
her brother-in-law after her husband’s death,[460] whom Gervase now
wedded to Hugh. Such a choice was not likely to conciliate Geoffrey
Martel; all the less if--as some words of a local historian seem to
imply--the daughter of Odo of Blois was gifted with all the courage
and energy that were lacking in her brothers.[461] By some of the
usual Angevin arts Geoffrey entrapped Gervase into his power and cast
him into prison,[462] where for the next seven years the luckless
bishop was left to reflect upon the consequences of his short-sighted
policy and to perceive that in striving to secure a protector against
Herbert Bacco he had placed himself and his country at the mercy of
an unscrupulous tyrant. During those years Maine, nominally ruled by
the young Count Hugh, was really in the power of Geoffrey Martel, and
it became the scene of a fierce warfare between Anjou and Normandy.
In 1049 the Council of Reims threatened Geoffrey with excommunication
unless he released the captive prelate,[463] and next year the
excommunication was actually pronounced by the Pope;[464] but neither
Council nor Pope could turn the Angevin from his prey. About 1051 Hugh
died, and his death sealed the fate of Le Mans. Its count’s son was an
infant, its bishop a captive in an Angevin dungeon; its citizens had
no choice but to submit. The twice-widowed countess and her children
were driven out at one gate as the Hammer of Anjou knocked at the
other, and without striking a blow Geoffrey became acknowledged master
of Maine from thenceforth till the day of his death.[465] Gervase,
his spirit broken at last, purchased his release by the surrender of
Château-du-Loir, and by a solemn oath never again to set foot in Le
Mans so long as Geoffrey lived. He found a refuge at the court of Duke
William of Normandy, till in 1057 he was raised to the metropolitan
chair of Reims.[466] In his former episcopal city the oppressor
triumphed undisturbed; but the day of retribution had already dawned.

        [458] “Concilium iniit cum parochianis et heroibus terræ.”
        _Ibid._ See Mr. Freeman’s note, _Norm. Conq._, vol. iii. p.
        194, note 3.

        [459] Chron. Kemperleg. a. 1008 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x.
        p. 294). For the real date see above, p. 159, note 4{343}.

        [460] See below, p. 211.

        [461] The author of the _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 31
        (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p. 305), calls her “nobilissimam
        fœminam” and “uxorem fortissimam.”

        [462] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, as above.

        [463] Concil. Rem. in Labbe, _Concilia_ (ed. Cossart), vol.
        xix. col. 742.

        [464] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1050 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 398).

        [465] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ (as above, pp. 305, 306).

        [466] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 31 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._,
        p. 306).

The tide of fortune which had borne Geoffrey Martel on from victory
to victory spent its last wave in carrying him to the brow of the
Cenomannian hill. The acquisition of Le Mans was the last outward mark
of his success; the height of his real security had been passed three
years before. The turning-point of Geoffrey’s life was the year 1044.
The settlement of Poitou, the winning of Tours, the capture of Bishop
Gervase, all followed close upon each other; and for the next four
years the count of Anjou was beyond all question the second power in
the kingdom. No one save the duke of Normandy could claim to stand on
a level with the lord of the Angevin march, of Touraine and Saintonge,
the step-father and guardian of the boy-duke of Aquitaine, the virtual
master of Maine. It was with the duke of Normandy that Geoffrey’s last
conquest now brought him into collision. His head had been turned by
his easy and rapid successes; in 1048, on his return from an expedition
to Apulia in company with his wife’s son-in-law the Emperor,[467] he
set himself up against King Henry with a boastful insolence which
threatened to disturb the peace of the whole realm.[468] Five years
earlier, Henry had profited by the feud between Anjou and Blois to
win Geoffrey’s help in putting down the rebellion of Theobald; now he
profited by the jealousy which the state of Cenomannian affairs was
just beginning to create between Anjou and Normandy to win the help of
the Norman Duke William in putting down the rebellion of Geoffrey. The
king’s own operations against Anjou seem to have extended no further
than a successful siege of the castle of Moulinières;[469] after this
his conduct towards William seems to have been copied from that of his
parents towards Fulk the Black three and twenty years before. William,
like Fulk, was left to fight the royal battles single-handed; and to
William, as to Fulk, the task was welcome, for the battle was in truth
less the king’s than his own. Geoffrey Martel, in the pride of his
heart, had openly proclaimed his ambition to crown all his previous
triumphs by an encounter with the only warrior whom he deigned to
regard as a foeman worthy of his steel,[470] and had diligently used
all the opportunities for provoking a quarrel with the Norman which
the dependent position of Maine furnished but too readily. Either by
force or guile, or that judicious mixture of both in which the Angevin
house excelled, he had managed to get into his own hands the two keys
of Normandy’s southern frontier, the castles of Alençon and Domfront,
which guarded the valleys of the Sarthe and the Mayenne;[471] and
thence, across the debateable lands of Bellême, he was now carrying his
raids into undisputed Norman territory.[472]

        [467] See _Art de vérifier les dates_, vol. xiii. p. 54.

        [468] Henry was “contumeliosis Gaufredi Martelli verbis
        irritatus.” Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._),
        p. 180. “Vexavit idem [sc. Gaufredus] Franciam universam regi
        rebellans.” _Ib._ p. 182.

        [469] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
        180. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 230 (Hardy, p. 394).

        [470] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 181.

        [471] _Ib._ p. 182. Wace, _Roman de Rou_, vv. 9380–9383
        (Pluquet, vol. ii. p. 47).

        [472] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 18. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
        Scriptt._, p. 276). Cf. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c.
        231 (Hardy, p. 396). These two writers ignore the king’s share
        in the quarrel, and make it arise solely from Geoffrey’s raids
        upon Normandy (“Brachium levabat in nos quo non leviter sese
        vulnerabat,” remarks W. Poitiers, as above). The _Gesta Cons._
        (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 131) reverse the whole situation and
        assert that William attacked the count of Maine, whereupon
        Geoffrey, as the latter’s “auxiliator et tutor,” took up the
        quarrel, and did William a great deal of damage! Fulk Rechin
        (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 378) wisely limits himself to the
        statement that his uncle “had a war with William, duke of the
        Normans.”

In the autumn of 1048 William set out to dislodge the intruder from
Domfront. It was no light undertaking. The ruined keep which still
stands, a splendid fragment, on the top of a steep wall-like pile of
grey rock, the last spur of a ridge of hills sweeping round from the
east, with the town and the dark woods at its back and the little
stream of Varenne winding close round its foot, may tell something of
what the castle was when its walls stood foursquare, fresh from the
builder’s hand, and manned by the fierce moss-troopers of Bellême,
reinforced by a band of picked soldiers from Anjou.[473] The rock
itself was an impregnable fortress of nature’s own making. To horsemen
it was totally inaccessible; foot-soldiers could only scale it by two
narrow and difficult paths. Assault was hopeless; William’s only chance
lay in a blockade, and even this was an enterprise of danger as well
as difficulty, for Domfront stood in the heart of a dense woodland
amid which the Normans were continually exposed to the ambushes and
surprises of the foe. To William however the forest was simply a
hunting-ground through which he rode day after day, with hawk on wrist,
in scornful defiance of its hidden perils, while the siege was pressed
closer and closer all through the winter’s snows, till at last the
garrison were driven to call upon Geoffrey Martel for relief.[474]
What followed reads like an anticipation of the story of Prestonpans
as told in Jacobite song. If we may trust the Norman tale, Geoffrey
not only answered the call, but sent his trumpeter with a formal
challenge to the young duke of the Normans to meet him on the morrow at
break of day beneath the walls of Domfront. But when the sun rose on
that morrow, Geoffrey and all his host were gone.[475] Duke William’s
chaplain, who tells the tale, could see but one obvious explanation of
their departure; and it is impossible to contradict him, for the whole
campaign of 1048 is a blank in the pages of the Angevin chroniclers.
The Hammer of Anjou stands charged with having challenged Duke William
at eventide and run away from him before sunrise, and no Angevin voice
seems ever to have been lifted to deny or palliate the charge. He had
scarcely turned his back when Alençon fell; and its fall was quickly
followed by that of Domfront. William carried away his engines of war
to set them up again on undisputed Cenomannian ground, at Ambrières
on the Mayenne: still Geoffrey made no movement; William laid the
foundations of a castle on the river-bank at Ambrières, and leaving it
securely guarded marched home unmolested to Rouen.[476]

        [473] Will. Poitiers (as above), p. 182.

        [474] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
        182. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 396).

        [475] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
        183. Cf. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, pp.
        396, 397).

        [476] Will. Poitiers, as above. Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 18
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 276). Wace, _Roman de
        Rou_, vv. 9430–9635 (Pluquet, vol. ii. pp. 49–58).

So began the most momentous feud ever waged by the counts of Anjou.
After the first burst of the storm came a lull of nearly seven
years, one of which was marked, as we have seen, by Geoffrey’s final
acquisition of Le Mans; but his power had sustained a shock from which
it never wholly recovered. In the struggles with Normandy which fill
the latter years of Henry I. of France, the king and the count of Anjou
play an almost equally ignoble part. Henry, who had once courted the
friendship of William to ward off the blows of the Angevin Hammer,
no sooner perceived which was really the mightier of the two princes
than he completely reversed his policy, gave an almost open support
to the treasons in William’s duchy, and at length, in 1054, when
these indirect attacks had failed, summoned all the princes of his
realm to join him in a great expedition for the ruin of the duke of
Normandy. They flocked to the muster at Mantes from all quarters save
one; strangely enough, the count of Anjou was missing.[477] Only a few
months ago the terror which clung around Martel’s name and the number
of troops at his command had sufficed to make his stepson William of
Aquitaine disband an army with which he was preparing to encounter him,
and sue for peace at his mere approach;[478] yet it seems that not even
with all the forces of king and kingdom at his side would Geoffrey
risk an encounter with the man whom he had challenged and fled from at
Domfront.

        [477] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 24 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
        Scriptt._, p. 281) says he was there; but see Mr. Freeman’s
        remarks, _Norm. Conq._, vol. iii., p. 144.

        [478] Charter of William of Passavant, dated Montilliers,
        1053, in _Archives d’Anjou_ (Marchegay), vol. i. p. 271. Besly
        (_Comtes de Poitou, preuves_, p. 327) printed it with the date
        1043, and it is apparently on this that the _Art de vérifier
        les dates_ founds a war between Geoffrey and Peter-William in
        that year--an almost impossible thing.

By thus deserting the king at a moment when Henry had every reason
to count upon his support, Geoffrey escaped all part in the rout of
Mortemer; but the consequence was that when peace was made next year
between the king and the duke, one of its clauses authorized William to
make any conquests he could at the expense of the count of Anjou.[479]
William at once sent warning to Geoffrey to expect him and all his
forces at Ambrières within forty days. South of Ambrières, lower down
in the valley of the Mayenne, stands the town which bears the same name
as the river; its lord, Geoffrey, was the chief man of the district.
He went in haste to his namesake and overlord and bitterly complained
to him that if these Normans were left unhindered to work their will
at Ambrières, the whole land would be at their mercy. “Cast me off
as a vile and unworthy lord,” was Martel’s reply, “if thou seest me
tamely suffer that which thou fearest!” But the boast was as vain as
the challenge before Domfront. William completed without hindrance his
fortifications at Ambrières; as soon as his back was turned Geoffrey
laid siege to the place, in company with the duke of Aquitaine and
Odo, uncle and guardian of the young duke of Britanny; but the mere
rumour of William’s approach sufficed to make all three withdraw their
troops “with wonderful speed, not to say in trembling flight.” Geoffrey
of Mayenne, made prisoner and left to bear alone the whole weight of
William’s wrath, took the count of Anjou at his word, and casting off
the “vile and unworthy lord” whose desertion had brought him to this
strait, owned himself the “man” of the Norman duke.[480]

        [479] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
        187. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 233 (Hardy, p. 399).

        [480] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp.
        187, 188.

Two castles in the heart of Maine thus acknowledged William for their
lord. Three years passed away without further advance from either
side; Geoffrey’s energies were frittered away in minor disputes which
brought him neither gain nor honour. The old quarrel about Nantes woke
up once more and was once more settled in 1057 under circumstances
very discreditable to the count of Anjou. Duke Alan of Britanny died
in 1040, leaving as his heir a boy three months old. The child was at
once snatched from the care of his mother--Bertha of Blois--by his
uncle Odo, who set himself up as duke of Britanny in his stead.[481]
The duchy split up into factions, and for sixteen years all was
confusion, aggravated, there can be little doubt, by the meddlesomeness
of Geoffrey of Anjou, who seems to have taken the opportunity thus
offered him for picking a quarrel with count Hoel of Nantes.[482]
In 1056 or 1057, however, a party among the Breton nobles succeeded
in freeing the young Conan, by whom Odo was shortly afterwards made
prisoner in his turn.[483] On this Geoffrey, it seems, following the
traditional policy of the Angevin house in Britanny, made alliance
with his late enemy the count of Nantes; and Hoel, on some occasion
which is not explained, actually ventured to intrust his capital to
Geoffrey’s keeping, whereupon Geoffrey at once laid a plot for taking
possession of it altogether. His treachery however met the reward
which it deserved; he held Nantes for barely forty days, and then lost
it for ever.[484] Troubles were springing up too in another quarter.
Geoffrey’s marriage with the widowed countess of Poitou had failed to
bring him the advantages for which he doubtless hoped when he carried
it through in defiance of public opinion and his father’s will. He had
been unable to keep any hold over his stepsons. Guy-Geoffrey fought and
bargained with the rival claimant of Gascony till he had made himself
sole master of the county: Peter-William, though he bears the surname
of “the Bold,” seems to have kept his land in peace, for his reign is
a blank in which the only break is caused by his quarrels with Anjou.
The first of these, in 1053, came as we have seen to no practical
consequence, and two years later William is found by Geoffrey’s side
at Ambrières. But the tie between them was broken; Geoffrey and Agnes
were no longer husband and wife,[485] and Geoffrey was married to
Grecia of Montreuil. There are sufficient indications of Geoffrey’s
private character to warrant the assumption that the blame of this
divorce rested chiefly upon his shoulders,[486] and it may be that
Peter-William acted as the avenger of his mother’s wrongs. The quarrel,
whatever may have been its grounds, broke out afresh in the spring or
early summer of 1058, when the duke of Aquitaine blockaded Geoffrey
himself within the walls of Saumur. But before the end of August
a sudden sickness drove William of Aquitaine home to Poitiers to
die,[487] and set the Angevin count free for one last struggle with
William of Normandy.

        [481] Chron. Brioc. ad ann. (Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_,
        vol. i. col. 35).

        [482] Fulk Rechin mentions among his uncle’s wars one “cum
        Hoello comite Nannetensi.” Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 378.

        [483] Chron. S. Michael. a. 1056 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        xi. p. 29). Chron. Kemperleg. a. 1057 (_ib._ p. 371).

        [484] Chronn. Vindoc. and S. Maxent. a. 1057 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 167, 399). The Chron. Britann. in Morice (_Hist.
        Bret., preuves_, vol. i. col. 101) records this affair under
        the year 1040; but on that chronicle’s own showing Hoel was not
        count of Nantes till 1051, while the Chron. Brioc. (_ib._ col.
        36) places his succession in 1054.

        [485] The last charter signed by Agnes as countess of Anjou is
        dated 1050 (Mabille, Introd. _Comtes_, p. lxxxiii). From 1053
        onwards she reappears at the court of her elder son--generally
        by the title of “mater comitum”--witnessing his charters,
        founding churches in Poitou, and in short holding her old place
        as duchess of Aquitaine, while her place as countess of Anjou
        is taken by Grecia, widow of Berlay of Montreuil, and mother
        of Eustachia, the wife of Agnes’s stepson William the Fat. See
        _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 293, and
        Besly, _Comtes de Poitou_, p. 89.

        [486] See a charter of our Lady of Charity (Ronceray) quoted in
        note to _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ as above.

        [487] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1058 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 400).

King Henry was now gathering up his strength for another invasion
of the Norman duchy. This time Geoffrey did not fail him. Both had
discovered, too late, who was really their most dangerous rival, and
all old grudges between them were forgotten in the common instinct
of vengeance upon the common foe. Early in 1058 Henry came to visit
the count at Angers;[488] and the plan of the coming campaign was no
doubt arranged during the time which they then spent together. It
was to be simply a vast plundering-raid; neither king nor count had
now any ambition to meet the duke in open fight. In August they set
forth--Geoffrey, full of zeal, at the head of all the troops which his
four counties could muster. The French and Angevin host went burning
and plundering through the Hiesmois and the Bessin, the central
districts of Normandy, as far as Caen. Half of the confederates’ scheme
was accomplished; but as they crossed the Dive at the ford of Varaville
they were overtaken at once by the inflowing tide and by the duke
himself; the two leaders, who had been the first to cross, could only
look helplessly on at the total destruction of their host, and make
their escape from Norman ground as fast as their horses would carry
them.[489] The wars of Henry and Geoffrey were over. The king died in
the summer of 1060; in November he was followed by the count of Anjou.
A late-awakened conscience moved Geoffrey to meet his end in the abbey
of S. Nicolas which had been founded by his father and completed under
his own care. One night he was borne across the river and received the
monastic habit; next morning at the hour of prime he died.[490]

        [488] Henry was at Angers on March 1, 1058; charter in _Epitome
        S. Nicolai_, p. 9, referred to by Mabille, Introd. _Comtes_,
        pp. lxxxiii, lxxxiv. The Chronn. Vindoc. and S. Maxent. place
        this visit in 1057 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 167, 399).

        [489] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
        188. Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 28 (_ib._ p. 283). Wace, _Roman
        de Rou_, vv. 10271–10430 (Pluquet, vol. ii. pp. 87–94).

        [490] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 379, gives the year
        and the day, November 14, 1060. The Chronn. Vindoc. and S.
        Maxent. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 167, 402) agree with him;
        the Chron. S. Albin. (_ib._ p. 25) gives the same day, but a
        year later; the Chron. S. Serg. (_ib._ p. 137) dates the event
        in the right year, 1060, but places it on November 13 instead
        of 14; the Chron. S. Flor. Salm. (_ib._ p. 189) says nothing
        of Geoffrey’s death, but places both his assumption of the
        monastic habit and King Henry’s death a year too early, in 1059.

With him expired the male line of Fulk the Red. But there was no
lack of heirs by the spindle-side. Geoffrey’s eldest nephew was his
half-sister Adela’s son, Fulk “the Gosling,” to whom after long
wrangling he had been compelled to restore the county of Vendôme.[491]
He was bound by closer ties to the two sons of his own sister
Hermengard, daughter of Fulk Nerra and Hildegard, and wife of Geoffrey
count of the Gâtinais, a little district around Châteaulandon near
Orléans.[492] Her younger son, Fulk, was but seventeen years old when
at Whitsuntide 1060 he was knighted by Geoffrey Martel, invested with
the government of Saintonge, and sent to put down a revolt among its
people.[493] The elder, who bore his uncle’s name, was chosen by him
for his heir.[494]

        [491] _Origo Com. Vindoc._, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        xi., p. 31. Vendôme seems however to have counted thenceforth
        as a dependency of Anjou--and, for the most part, a loyal and
        useful one.

        [492] See note A at end of chapter.

        [493] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 379. The revolt was
        headed by one “Petrus Didonensis.”

        [494] See note B at end of chapter.

The dominion which Geoffrey the Hammer thus bequeathed to Geoffrey the
Bearded was no compact, firmly-knit whole; it was a bundle of four
separate states, held on different tenures, and two of them burthened
with a legacy of unsettled feuds. The real character of their union
shewed itself as soon as Martel was gone. What had held them together
was simply the terror of his name, and the dissolution, already
threatening before his death, set in so rapidly that in less than
three years afterwards two out of his four counties were lost to his
successor. It was in fact only the dominions of Fulk the Black--Anjou
and Touraine--that were thoroughly loyal to his son. Geoffrey’s
last conquest, Maine, was only waiting till death should loose the
iron grasp that choked her to recall her ancient line. His earliest
conquest, Saintonge, lying further from the control of the central
power, was already drifting back to its natural Aquitanian master.
Young Count Fulk was still at his uncle’s death-bed when Saintes was
surprised and captured by the duke of Aquitaine,--Guy-Geoffrey of
Gascony, who had succeeded his twin-brother by the title of William
VII. William seems to have justified his aggression on the plea that by
the terms of the cession of 1036 Martel had no right to leave Saintonge
to collateral heirs, and that on his death without children it ought to
revert to the duke.[495] The city of Saintes itself however had been
Angevin ever since Fulk Nerra’s days, and a strong party of citizens
devoted to Anjou besought Geoffrey’s successor to come and deliver
them. While the two brothers prepared to march into Poitou, William
gathered an immense force to the siege of Chef-Boutonne, a castle on
a rocky height above the river Boutonne, on the borders of Poitou and
Saintonge. Thence, at the Angevins’ approach, he descended to meet them
in the plain, on S. Benedict’s day, March 21, 1061. The duke’s army,
including as it did the whole forces of Gascony and Aquitaine, must
have far outnumbered that of the brother-counts; but there was treason
in the southern ranks; the standard-bearers were the first to flee, and
their flight caused the rout of the whole ducal host.[496] Saintes
threw open its gates to the Angevin victor;[497] but its loss was only
delayed. Next year the duke of Aquitaine blockaded the city till sword
and famine compelled the garrison to surrender;[498] and from that
moment Saintonge was lost to the count of Anjou.

        [495] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 126. See note C
        at end of chapter.

        [496] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1061 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 402).
        _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 126–130. See note C at
        end of chapter.

        [497] _Gesta Cons._ (as above), p. 130.

        [498] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1062 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 403).

Meanwhile a change fraught with far graver consequences had undone
Geoffrey Martel’s work in the north. The conqueror of Le Mans was
scarcely in his grave when Maine flung off the yoke and called upon
the son of her late count Hugh to come home and enjoy his own again.
It was however but a shadowy coronet that she could offer now;
her independence had received a fatal shock; and, to increase the
difficulty of his position, Herbert II. was still a mere boy, without
a friend to guide and protect him except his mother, Bertha of Blois.
Bertha saw at once that his only chance of saving his father’s heritage
from the shame of subjection to Anjou was to throw himself on the
honour of the duke of Normandy; to William therefore, as overlord,
Herbert commended himself and his county, on the terms of the old grant
made to Hrolf by King Rudolf.[499] The commendation was accompanied by
an agreement that Herbert should in due time marry one of William’s
daughters; but there seems to have been a foreboding that the
boy-count’s life was not to be a long one, for it was further provided
that if he died without children Maine should revert in full property
to William;[500] and a marriage was also arranged between William’s
eldest son Robert and Herbert’s sister Margaret, whereby in the next
generation the rights of the “man” and his lord, of the house of Hrolf
and the house of Herbert Wake-Dog, might be united.[501]

        [499] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 487).
        Will. Poitiers (_ibid._), p. 189.

        [500] Will. Poitiers, as above.

        [501] Ord. Vit. as above.

In 1064 Herbert died, leaving neither child nor wife. By the
treaty which had seemed so admirably planned to meet all possible
contingencies, his county was now to revert to William; but there was
more than one difficulty to be met before he could take possession
of it. The first was a sudden revival of the Angevin claim. The
indifference with which Geoffrey the Bearded seems to have viewed the
transactions between Herbert and William may perhaps have been due
to the pressure of the war in Saintonge. Far more puzzling than his
tardiness in asserting his rights to the overlordship of Maine is the
readiness with which, when he did assert them, they seem to have been
admitted by William. Geoffrey did not indeed aspire to the actual
possession of the county which his uncle had enjoyed; all that he
claimed was its overlordship; and William, it seems, acknowledged his
claim by permitting the little Robert to do him homage at Alençon and
to receive from him a formal grant of Margaret’s hand together with the
whole honour of Maine.[502] Geoffrey’s action is easily accounted for.
His only reasonable course was to make a compromise with Normandy: the
wonder is that he was allowed to make it on such favourable terms. If
the story is correct, the truth probably is that compromise was at this
moment almost as needful to William as to Geoffrey, for any Angevin
intermeddling in Maine would have rendered his difficulties there all
but insurmountable. One clause of the treaty of 1061--the marriage of
Robert and Margaret--was still in the remote future, for the bridegroom
cannot have been more than nine years old, and the bride was far away
in what a Norman writer vaguely describes as “Teutonic parts.”[503]
There being thus no security that the county would ever revert to the
descendants of its ancient rulers, Cenomannian loyalty turned its
hopes from Hugh’s young daughter to her aunts, the three daughters of
Herbert Wake-the-dog, of whom the nearest to the spot was Biota, the
wife of Walter of Mantes, sister’s son to Eadward the Confessor.[504]
In his wife’s name Walter laid claim to the whole county of Maine,
and a considerable part of it at once passed into his hands. The
capital was held for him by Hubert of Sᵗᵉ-Suzanne and Geoffrey of
Mayenne--that same Geoffrey who, deceived in his Angevin overlord,
had yielded a compulsory homage to William, and now, casting off all
foreign masters alike, proved the most determined champion of his
country’s independence. It was between William and Geoffrey of Mayenne
that the contest really lay; and again the duke proved victorious.
The conqueror made his “joyous entry” into Le Mans, and sent for the
little Margaret to be kept under his own protection until her marriage
could take place. But before the wedding-day arrived she lay in her
grave at Fécamp; Walter and Biota had already come to a mysterious
end; and the one gallant Cenomannian who held out when Walter and all
else had yielded--Geoffrey of Mayenne--was at length compelled to
surrender.[505] Thenceforth William ruled Maine as its Conqueror, and
as long as he lived, save for one brief moment, the homage due to Anjou
was heard of no more.

        [502] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 532.
        The story is somewhat suspicious, because Orderic tells it not
        in its proper place, but in a sort of summary of Cenomannian
        history, introductory to the war of 1073; so that it looks very
        much like a confused anticipation of the treaty of Blanchelande
        (see below, p. 223). Still there is nothing intrinsically
        impossible in it, and I do not feel justified in rejecting it
        without further evidence.

        [503] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 190.

        [504] On the pedigree of the house of Maine see note D at end
        of chapter.

        [505] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp.
        190, 191. Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 27 (_ib._ p. 283). Ord.
        Vit. (_ibid._) pp. 487, 488.

The rapid decline of the Angevin power after Geoffrey Martel’s death
was due partly to the reaction which often follows upon a sudden rise,
partly to the exceptional greatness of the rival with whom the Angevin
count had to deal in the person of William the Conqueror. But behind
and beyond these two causes lay a third more fatal than either. The
house of Anjou was divided against itself. From the hour of Martel’s
death, a bitter dispute over his testamentary dispositions had been
going on between his nephews. To young Fulk it seemed an unpardonable
wrong that he was left without provision--for even Saintonge, as we
have seen, had now slipped from his grasp--while his elder brother
was in full possession not only of the paternal county of Gâtinais
but also of their uncle’s heritage. In later days Fulk went so far
as to declare that his uncle had intended to make him sole heir, to
the complete exclusion of Geoffrey the Bearded.[506] Fulk is in one
aspect a very interesting person. Almost the sole authority which
we possess for the history of the early Angevin counts is a fragment
written in his name. If it be indeed his work--and criticism has as
yet failed to establish any other conclusion--Fulk Rechin is not
merely the earliest historian of Anjou; he is well-nigh the first
lay historian of the Middle Ages.[507] But in every other point of
view he deserves nothing but aversion and contempt. His very surname
tells its own tale; in one of the most quarrelsome families known to
history, he was pre-eminently distinguished as “the Quarreller.”[508]
With the turbulence, the greed, the wilfulness of his race he had also
their craft and subtlety, their plausible, insinuating, serpent-like
cleverness; but he lacked the boldness of conception, the breadth of
view and loftiness of aim, the unflinching perseverance, the ungrudging
as well as unscrupulous devotion to a great and distant end, which
lifted their subtlety into statesmanship and their cleverness into
genius. The same qualities in him degenerated into mere artfulness
and low cunning, and were used simply to meet his own personal needs
and desires of the moment, not to work out any far-reaching train
of policy. He is the only one of the whole line of Angevin counts,
till we reach the last and worst of all, whose ruling passion seems
to have been not ambition but self-indulgence. Every former count of
Anjou, from Fulk the Red to Geoffrey Martel, had toiled and striven,
and sinned upon occasion, quite as much for his heirs as for himself:
Fulk Rechin toiled and sinned for himself alone. All the thoroughness
which they threw into the pursuit of their house’s greatness he threw
simply into the pursuit of his own selfish desires. Had Geoffrey the
Bearded possessed the highest capacities, he could have done little
for his own or his country’s advancement while his brother’s restless
intrigues were sowing strife and discontent among the Angevin baronage
and turning the whole land into a hotbed of treason.[509] Geoffrey’s
cause was however damaged by his own imprudence. An act of violent
injustice to the abbey of Marmoutier brought him under the ban of
the Church;[510] and from that moment his ruin became certain. From
within and without, troubles crowded upon the Marchland and its unhappy
count. The comet which scared all Europe in 1066 was the herald of
evil days to Anjou as well as to the land with which she was one day
to be linked so closely. In that very year a Breton invasion was only
checked by the sudden death of Duke Conan just after he had received
the surrender of Châteaugonthier.[511] Next spring, on the first Sunday
in Lent, Saumur was betrayed by its garrison to Fulk Rechin;[512]
on the Wednesday before Easter he was treacherously admitted into
Angers, and Geoffrey fell with his capital into the clutches of his
brother.[513] The citizens next day rose in a body and slew the chief
traitors;[514] the disloyalty of Saumur was punished by the duke of
Aquitaine, who profited by the distracted state of Anjou to cross
the border and fire the town;[515] while the remonstrances of Pope
Alexander II. soon compelled Fulk to release his brother.[516] Next
year, however, Geoffrey was again taken prisoner while besieging
Fulk’s castle of Brissac.[517] This time the king of France, alarmed
no doubt by the revelation of such a temper among his vassals, took up
arms for Geoffrey’s restoration, and he was joined by Count Stephen
of Blois, the son of Theobald from whom Geoffrey Martel had won
Tours. Fulk bought off both his assailants. Stephen, who was now
governing the territories of Blois as regent for his aged father, was
pacified by receiving Fulk’s homage for Touraine; the king was bribed
more unblushingly still, by the cession of what was more undeniably
Geoffrey’s lawful property than any part of the Angevin dominions--his
paternal heritage of the Gâtinais.[518] It thus became Philip’s
interest as well as Fulk’s to keep Geoffrey in prison. For the next
twenty-eight years he lay in a dungeon at Chinon,[519] and Fulk ruled
Anjou in his stead.

        [506] See note B at end of chapter.

        [507] “It needs some self-sacrifice to give up the only lay
        historian whom we have come across since the days of our own
        Æthelweard.” Freeman, _Norm. Conq._, 3d ed. vol. ii. p. 638.

        [508] This seems to be the meaning of “Rechin.”

        [509] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 138, 139.

        [510] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 134–137. See
        also _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 664, note.

        [511] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 33 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
        Scriptt._, p. 286). Chron. Brioc. and Chron. Britann. a. 1066
        (Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol. i. cols. 36, 102).
        Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Serg. and Vindoc. a. 1067 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 12, 137, 168)--which, however, means 1066, as
        all these chronicles place both the comet and the conquest in
        the same year.

        [512] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1067 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 403,
        404). This was February 25 (_ibid._).

        [513] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., Vindoc.
        a. 1067 (_ib._ pp. 12, 25, 137, 138, 168). _Gesta Cons._
        (Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 138, 139), antedated by a year.

        [514] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin. (as above); S. Serg.
        (_ib._ p. 138); Vindoc. (_ib._ pp. 168, 169).

        [515] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1067 (_ib._ p. 404).

        [516] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 379.

        [517] _Ib._ pp. 379, 380. Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S.
        Serg. and Vindoc. a. 1068 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 12, 26,
        138, 169).

        [518] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 139. Chron.
        Turon. Magn. a. 1067 (Salmon, _Chron. de Touraine_, p. 125)--a
        date which must be at least a year too early.

        [519] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 723,
        818. He makes it thirty years, but the dates are undoubtedly
        1068–1096.

That time was a time of shame and misery such as the Marchland had
never yet seen. Eight years of civil war had fostered among the barons
of Anjou and Touraine a spirit of turbulence and lawlessness which
Fulk, whose own intrigues had sown the first seeds of the mischief,
was powerless to control. Throughout the whole of his reign, all
southern Touraine was kept in confusion by a feud among the landowners
at Amboise;[520] and it can hardly have been the only one of its kind
under a ruler who, instead of putting it down with a strong hand, only
aggravated it by his undignified and violent intermeddling. Nor were
his foreign relations better regulated than his home policy. For a
moment, in 1073, an opportunity seemed to present itself of regaining
the lost Angevin overlordship over Maine. Ten years of Angevin rule
had failed to crush out the love of independence among the Cenomannian
people; ten years of Norman rule had just as little effect. While their
conqueror was busied with the settlement of his later and greater
conquest beyond sea, the patriots of Maine seized a favourable moment
to throw off the Norman yoke. Hugh of Este or of Liguria, a son of
Herbert Wake-the-dog’s eldest daughter Gersendis, was received as count
under the guardianship of his mother and Geoffrey of Mayenne. But
Geoffrey, who in the hour of adversity ten years before had seemed
little short of a hero, yielded to the temptations of power; and his
tyranny drove the Cenomannians to fall back upon the traditions of
their old municipal freedom and “make a commune”--in other words, to
set up a civic commonwealth such as those which were one day to be the
glory of the more distant Cenomannian land on the other side of the
Alps. At Le Mans, however, the experiment was premature. It failed
through the treachery of Geoffrey of Mayenne; and the citizens, in the
extremity of despair, called upon Fulk of Anjou to save them at once
from Geoffrey and from William. Fulk readily helped them to dislodge
Geoffrey from the citadel of Le Mans;[521] but as soon as William
appeared in Maine with a great army from over sea Fulk, like his uncle,
vanished. Only when the conqueror had “won back the land of Maine”[522]
and returned in triumph to Normandy did Fulk venture to attack La
Flèche, a castle on the right bank of the Loir, close to the Angevin
border, and held by John, husband of Herbert Wake-dog’s youngest
daughter Paula.[523] At John’s request William sent a picked band of
Norman troops to reinforce the garrison of La Flèche; Fulk at once
collected all his forces and persuaded Hoel duke of Britanny to bring
a large Breton host to help him in besieging the place. A war begun on
such a scale as this might be nominally an attack on John, but it was
practically an attack on William. He took it as such, and again calling
together his forces, Normans and English, led them down to the relief
of La Flèche. Instead, however, of marching straight to the spot, he
crossed the Loir higher up and swept round to the southward through
the territories of Anjou, thus putting the river between himself and
his enemies. The movement naturally drew Fulk back across the river to
defend his own land against the Norman invader.[524] The two armies
drew up facing each other on a wide moor or heath stretching along the
left bank of the Loir between La Flèche and Le Lude, and overgrown
with white reindeer-moss, whence it took the name of Blanchelande. No
battle however took place; some clergy who were happily at hand stepped
in as mediators, and after a long negotiation peace was arranged. The
count of Anjou again granted the investiture of Maine to Robert of
Normandy, and, like his predecessor, received the young man’s homage
to himself as overlord.[525] Like the treaty of Alençon, the treaty
of Blanchelande was a mere formal compromise; William kept it a dead
letter by steadily refusing to make over Maine to his son, and holding
it as before by the right of his own good sword. A few years later Fulk
succeeded in accomplishing his vengeance upon John of La Flèche by
taking and burning his castle;[526] but the expedition seems to have
been a mere border-raid, and so long as William lived neither native
patriotism nor Angevin meddlesomeness ventured again to question his
supremacy over Maine.

        [520] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 175 _et
        seq._

        [521] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ c. 33 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p.
        308).

        [522] Eng. Chron. a. 1074.

        [523] See note D at end of chapter.

        [524] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 533. See
        note E at end of chapter.

        [525] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 533.

        [526] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1081 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 26).
        See note E at end of chapter.

But on his death in 1087 the advantage really given to Anjou by the
treaties of Alençon and Blanchelande at last became apparent. From
the moment when Robert came into actual possession of the fief with
which he had been twice invested by an Angevin count, the Angevin
overlordship could no longer be denied or evaded. The action of the
Cenomannians forced their new ruler to throw himself upon Fulk’s
support. Their unquenchable love of freedom caught at the first ray
of hope offered them by Robert’s difficulties in his Norman duchy and
quarrels with his brother the king of England, and their attitude grew
so alarming that in 1089 Robert, lying sick at Rouen, sent for the
count of Anjou and in a personal interview besought him to use his
influence in preventing their threatened revolt. Fulk consented, on
condition that, as the price of his good offices, Robert should obtain
for him the hand of a beautiful Norman lady, Bertrada of Montfort.[527]
Fulk’s domestic life was as shameless as his public career. He had
already one wife dead and two living; Hermengard of Bourbon, whom he
had married in 1070[528] and who was the mother of his heir,[529] had
been abandoned in 1075 without even the formality of a divorce for
Arengard of Châtel-Aillon;[530] and Arengard was now set aside in her
turn to make way for Bertrada.[531] These scandals had already brought
Fulk under a Papal sentence of excommunication;[532] he met with a
further punishment at the hands of his new bride. Bertrada used him
simply as a stepping-stone to higher advancement; on Whitsun-Eve 1093
she eloped with King Philip of France.[533]

        [527] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 681.

        [528] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1070.

        [529] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 140.

        [530] According to a charter in Marchegay, _Documents inédits
        sur l’Anjou_, p. 96, Fulk married Arengard on Saturday the
        feast of S. Agnes (January 21) 1075--_i.e._ what we call 1076,
        as the year was usually reckoned in Gaul from Easter to Easter;
        see editor’s note 4, as above. The _Art de vérifier les dates_,
        however (vol. xiii. p. 62), refers to a document in Dom Huyne’s
        collection where the marriage is dated 1087.

        [531] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 681,
        seems to date Bertrada’s marriage about 1089. The Chron. Turon.
        Magn. puts it in 1091 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_, vol. i. p.
        128); but a charter in Marchegay, _Archives d’Anjou_, vol. i.
        p. 365, shows that it had already taken place in April 1090.

        [532] Gregor. VII. Epp., l. ix. ep. 22. Fulk’s violence to
        the archbishop of Tours had also something to do with his
        excommunication; see _ib._ ep. 23; Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1081
        (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_, vol. i. p. 126), and _Narratio
        Controversiæ_ in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 459. So
        too had his imprisonment of his brother; _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._
        as above, p. 664, note.

        [533] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1093 (as above, p. 128).

By that time Maine was again in revolt. The leader of the rising was
young Elias of La Flèche, a son of John and Paula; but his place was
soon taken by the veteran Geoffrey of Mayenne, whose treasons seem
to have been forgiven and forgotten, and who now once more installed
Hugh of Este as count at Le Mans. Hugh proved however utterly unfit
for his honourable but dangerous position, and gladly sold his claims
to his cousin Elias.[534] For nearly six years the Cenomannians were
free to rejoice in a ruler of their own blood and their own spirit. We
must go to the historian of his enemies if we would hear his praises
sung;[535] his own people had no need to praise him in words; for them
he was simply the incarnation of Cenomannian freedom; his bright,
warm-hearted, impulsive nature spoke for itself. The strength as well
as the charm of his character lay in its perfect sincerity; its faults
were as undisguised as its virtues. In the gloomy tale of public wrong
and private vice which makes up the history of the time--the time
of Fulk Rechin, Philip I. and William Rufus--the only figure which
shines out bright against the darkness, except the figure of S. Anselm
himself, is that of Count Elias of Maine.

        [534] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ c. 34 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._),
        pp. 310–312. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp.
        683, 684.

        [535] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 768, 769.

During these years Anjou interfered with him as little as Normandy;
Fulk was overwhelmed with domestic and ecclesiastical troubles. His
excommunication was at length removed in 1094;[536] two years later
Pope Urban II., on his way to preach the Crusade in western Gaul,
was received by the count at Angers and consecrated the abbey church
of S. Nicolas, now at length brought to completion.[537] From Angers
Urban passed to Tours and Le Mans; and among the many hearts stirred
by his call to take the cross there can have been few more earnest
than that of Elias of Maine. Robert of Normandy was already gone,
leaving his dominions pledged to his brother the king of England. Elias
prepared to follow him; but when his request to William Rufus for the
protection due to a crusader’s lands during his absence was met by a
declaration of the Red King’s resolve to regain all the territories
which had been held by his father, the count of Maine saw that he must
fight out his crusade not in Holy Land but at home. The struggle had
scarcely begun when he was taken prisoner by Robert of Bellême, and
sent in chains to the king at Rouen.[538] The people of Maine, whose
political existence seemed bound up in their count, were utterly
crushed by his loss. But there was another enemy to be faced. Aremburg,
the only child of Elias, was betrothed to Fulk Rechin’s eldest son,
Geoffrey,[539] whose youthful valour had won him the surname of “Martel
the Second;” Geoffrey hurried to save the heritage of his bride, and
Fulk was no less eager to seize the opportunity of asserting once
more his rights to the overlordship of Maine.[540] The Cenomannians
gladly welcomed the only help that was offered them; and while Geoffrey
reinforced the garrison of Le Mans, Fulk tried to effect a diversion
on the border.[541] But meanwhile Elias had guessed his design, and
frustrated it by making terms with the Norman.[542] If Maine must
needs bow to a foreign yoke, even William Rufus was at least a better
master than Fulk Rechin. To William, therefore, Elias surrendered his
county as the price of his own release;[543] and to William he offered
his services with the trustful frankness of a heart to which malice
was unknown. The offer was refused. Then, from its very ashes, the
spirit of Cenomannian freedom rose up once more, and for the second
time Elias hurled his defiance at the Red King. An Angevin count in
William’s place would probably have flung the bold speaker straight
back into the dungeon whence he had come; the haughty chivalry of
the Norman only bade him begone and do his worst.[544] In the spring
Elias fought his way back to Le Mans, where the people welcomed him
with clamorous delight; William’s unexpected approach, however, soon
compelled him to withdraw;[545] and Maine had to wait two more years
for her deliverance. It came with the news of the Red King’s death in
August 1100. Robert of Normandy was too indolent, Henry of England too
wise, to answer the appeal for succour made to each in turn by the
Norman garrison of Le Mans; Elias received their submission and sent
them home in peace;[546] and thenceforth the foreign oppressor trod
the soil of Maine no more. When the final struggle for Normandy broke
out between Robert and Henry, Elias, with characteristic good sense,
commended himself to the one overlord whom he saw to be worthy of
his homage.[547] Henry was wise enough loyally to accept the service
and the friendship which Rufus had scorned; and he proved its value
on the field of Tinchebray, where Elias and his Cenomannians decided
the battle in his favour, and thus made him master of Normandy. On
the other hand, the dread of Angevin tyranny had changed into a
glad anticipation of peaceful and equal union. The long battle of
Cenomannian freedom, so often baffled and so often renewed, was won at
last. When next a duke of Normandy disputed the possession of Maine
with a count of Anjou, he disputed it not with a rival oppressor but
with the husband of its countess, the lawful heir of Elias; and the
triumph of Cenomannia received its fitting crown when Henry’s daughter
wedded Aremburg’s son in the minster of S. Julian at Le Mans.

        [536] Letter of the legate, Archbishop Hugh of Lyons, dated
        S. Florence of Saumur, S. John Baptist’s day, 1094; _Gallia
        Christiana_, vol. iv., instrum. cols. 10, 11.

        [537] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., a. 1095
        (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 14, 27, 140); Chron. S. Maxent.
        a. 1096 (_ib._ p. 411). This last is the right year; see the
        itinerary of Pope Urban in Gaul, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        xii. pp. 3 note _m_, and 65 note _d_.

        [538] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp.
        769–771. _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ c. 35 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._,
        p. 313). The exact date of the capture is April 20, 1098;
        Chron. S. Albin. ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 28).

        [539] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ c. 35 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p.
        313). _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 142.

        [540] “Quia capitalis dominus erat.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 772.

        [541] _Ibid._ _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, as above.

        [542] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ (as above), p. 314.

        [543] _Ibid._ Ord. Vit., as above.

        [544] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 773.

        [545] _Ib._ pp. 774, 775. _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, as above.

        [546] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 784,
        785.

        [547] _Ib._ p. 822.

The union of Anjou and Maine did not, however, come to pass exactly
as it had been first planned; Aremburg became the wife of an Angevin
count, but he was not Geoffrey Martel the Second. That marriage, long
deferred by reason of the bride’s youth, was frustrated in the end by
the death of the bridegroom. His life had been far from an easy one.
Fulk, prematurely worn out by a life of vice, had for some years past
made over the cares of government to Geoffrey.[548] Father and son
agreed as ill as their namesakes in a past generation; but this time
the fault was not on the young man’s side. Geoffrey, while spending
all his energies in doing his father’s work, saw himself supplanted in
that father’s affection by his little half-brother, Bertrada’s child.
He found a friend in his unhappy uncle, Geoffrey the Bearded, whose
reason had been almost destroyed by half a lifetime of captivity; and
a touching story relates how the imprisoned count in a lucid interval
expressed his admiration for his nephew’s character, and voluntarily
renounced in his favour the rights which he still persisted in
maintaining against Fulk.[549] On the strength of this renunciation
Geoffrey Martel, backed by Pope Urban, at length extorted his father’s
consent to the liberation of the captive. It was, however, too late
to be of much avail; reason and health were both alike gone, and all
that the victim gained by his nephew’s care was that, when he died
shortly after, he at least died a free man.[550] His bequest availed as
little to Geoffrey Martel; in 1103, Fulk openly announced his intention
of disinheriting his valiant son in favour of Bertrada’s child. A
brief struggle, in which Fulk was backed by the duke of Aquitaine and
Geoffrey by Elias, ended in Fulk’s abdication. For three years Geoffrey
ruled well and prosperously,[551] till in May 1106, as he was besieging
a rebellious vassal in the castle of Candé on the Loire, he was struck
by a poisoned arrow and died next morning.[552] The bitter regrets of
his people, as they laid him to sleep beside his great-uncle in the
church of S. Nicolas at Angers,[553] were intensified by a horrible
suspicion that his death had been contrived by Bertrada, and that Fulk
himself condoned her crime.[554] It is doubtful whether her child,
who now had to take his brother’s place, had even grown up among his
own people; she had perhaps carried her baby with her, or persuaded
the weak count to let her have him and bring him up at court; there,
at any rate, he was at the time of Geoffrey’s death. Philip granted
him the investiture of Anjou in Geoffrey’s stead, and commissioned
Duke William of Aquitaine, who happened to be at court, to escort him
safe home to his father. The Poitevin, however, conveyed him away into
his own territories, and there put him in prison. Philip’s threats,
Bertrada’s persuasions, alike proved unavailing, till the boy’s own
father purchased his release by giving up some border-towns to Poitou,
and after a year’s captivity young Fulk at last came home.[555] Two
years later, on April 14, 1109, he was left sole count of Anjou by the
death of Fulk Rechin.[556]

        [548] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1098 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_,
        p. 130).

        [549] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 141.

        [550] _Ibid._ Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1098 (Salmon, _Chron.
        Touraine_, p. 128). Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
        Scriptt._), p. 723.

        [551] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 818. Chron. S. Albin. a.
        1103–1105 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 30).

        [552] Ord. Vit. as above. Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S.
        Serg., Vindoc., S. Flor. Salm., S. Maxent., a. 1106 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 15, 16, 30, 142, 171, 190, 423). The three
        first-named chronicles give the day as May 19, the Chron. S.
        Maxent. makes it May 26, and according to M. Marchegay’s note
        (as above, p. 171) the obituary of S. Maurice makes it June
        1. This, however, might be owing to an accidental omission of
        the “xiv.” (or “vii.”) before _Kal. Junii_. The _Gesta Cons._
        (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 142, places the death a year later.

        [553] Ord. Vit. and _Gesta Cons._ as above.

        [554] _Gesta Cons._ as above. Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1108
        (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_, p. 130). See also a quotation from
        Le Pelletier’s _Epitome S. Nicolai_, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._,
        vol. xii. p. 486, note.

        [555] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 818.
        Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. 1, has a different version, which does
        not look authentic.

        [556] Chron. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., Vindoc., S. Flor. Salm.
        ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 16, 31, 172, 190). The
        Chronn. S. Serg. and S. Maxent. (_ib._ pp. 143, 424), date it
        1108.

“Ill he began; worse he lived; worst of all he ended.”[557] Such is the
verdict of a later Angevin historian upon the man whom we should have
been glad to respect as the father of Angevin history. Fulk Rechin’s
utter worthlessness had well-nigh undone the work of Geoffrey Martel
and Fulk the Black; amid the wreck of the Angevin power in his hands,
the only result of their labours which seemed still to remain was the
mere territorial advantage involved in the possession of Touraine.
Politically, Anjou had sunk far below the position which she had held
in the Black Count’s earliest days; she had not merely ceased to be
a match for the greatest princes of the realm, she had ceased to be
a power in the realm at all. The title of count of Anjou, for nearly
a hundred years a very synonym of energy and progress, had become
identified with weakness and disgrace. The black cloud of ruin seemed
to be settling down over the marchland, only waiting its appointed
time to burst and pour upon her its torrent of destruction. It proved
to be only the dark hour before the dawn of the brightest day that
Anjou had seen since her great Count Fulk was laid in his grave at
Beaulieu--perhaps even since her good Count Fulk was laid in his grave
at Tours.

        [557] _Hist. Abbr. Com. Andeg._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 360.

Nearly nine months before the death of Fulk Rechin, Louis VI. had
succeeded his father Philip as king of France.[558] His accession marks
an era in the growth of the French monarchy. It is a turning-point in
the struggle of the feudataries with the Crown, or rather with each
other for control over the Crown, which lay at the root of the rivalry
between Anjou and Blois, and which makes up almost the whole history of
the first three generations of the kingly house founded by Hugh Capet.
The royal authority was a mere name; but that name was still the centre
round which the whole complicated system of French feudalism revolved;
it was the one point of cohesion among the various and ill-assorted
members which made up the realm of France, in the wider sense which
that word was now beginning to bear. The duke or count of almost any
one of the great fiefs--Normandy, Flanders, Burgundy, Aquitaine--was
far more really powerful and independent than the king, who was
nominally the lord paramount of them all, but practically the tool of
each in turn. In this seemingly ignominious position of the Crown there
was, however, an element of hidden strength which in the end enabled
it to swallow up and outlive all its rivals. The end was as yet far
distant; but the first step towards it was taken when Louis the Fat was
crowned at Reims in August 1109. At the age of thirty-two he ascended
the throne with a fixed determination to secure such an absolute
authority within the immediate domains of the Crown as should enable
him to become the master instead of the servant of his feudataries.

        [558] _Hist. Franc. Fragm._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii.),
        p. 7.

This policy led almost of necessity to a conflict with King Henry
of England, who had now become master of Normandy by his victory at
Tinchebray. Louis appears never to have received Henry’s homage for the
duchy;[559] and it may have been to avoid the necessity of performing
this act of subordination that Henry, as it seems, refrained from
formally assuming the ducal title, at least so long as his captive
brother lived.[560] Whatever may have been his motive, the fact aptly
typifies his political position. Alike in French and English eyes, he
was a king of England ruling Normandy as a dependency of the English
Crown. Such a personage was far more obnoxious to Louis and his
projects than a mere duke of the Normans, or even a duke of the Normans
ruling England as a dependency of the Norman duchy. On the other hand,
Henry, in the new position given him by his conquest, had every reason
to look with jealousy and suspicion upon the growing power of France.
The uncertain relations between the two kings therefore soon took an
openly hostile turn. In 1110 a quarrel arose between them concerning
the ownership of the great border-fortress of Gisors. They met near
the spot, each at the head of an army; but they parted again after
wasting a day in fruitless recriminations and empty challenges.[561]
Their jealousy was quickened by a dispute, also connected with the
possession of a castle, between Louis and Henry’s nephew Theobald count
of Blois.[562] Uncle and nephew made common cause against their common
enemy; but the strife had scarcely begun when a further complication
destined to be of far weightier consequence, if not to France at least
to England, arose out of the position and policy of the young count of
Anjou.

        [559] See Freeman, _Norm. Conq._, vol. v. p. 193.

        [560] Freeman, _Norm. Conq._, vol. v. p. 180 and note 2.

        [561] Suger, _Vita Ludov._, c. 15 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        xii. pp. 27, 28).

        [562] _Ib._ c. 18 (pp. 35, 36).

The accession of Fulk V., no less than that of Louis VI., began a new
era for his country. The two princes were in some respects not unlike
each other: each stands out in marked contrast to his predecessor,
and in Fulk’s case the contrast is even more striking than in that
of Louis, for if little good was to be expected of the son of Philip
I., there might well be even less hope of the child of Fulk Rechin
and Bertrada. As a ruler and as a man, however, young Fulk turned
utterly aside from the evil ways of both his parents.[563] Yet he was
an Angevin of the Angevins; physically, he had the ruddy complexion
inherited from the first of his race and name;[564] while in his
restless, adventurous temper, at once impetuous and wary, daring and
discreet, he shows a strong likeness to his great-grandfather Fulk the
Black. But the old fiery spirit breaks out in Fulk V. only as if to
remind us that it is still there, to shew that the demon-blood of Anjou
still flows in his veins, hot as ever indeed, but kept under subjection
to higher influences; the sense of right that only woke now and then
to torture the conscience of the Black Count seems to be the guiding
principle of his great-grandson’s life. The evil influences which must
have surrounded his boyhood, whether it had been passed in his father’s
house, or, as seems more probable, in the court of Philip and Bertrada,
seem, instead of developing the worse tendencies of his nature, only
to have brought out the better ones into more active working by sheer
force of opposition. Politically, however, there can be no doubt that
the peculiar circumstances of his early life led to important results,
by reviving and strengthening the old ties between Anjou and the Crown
which had somewhat slackened in Fulk Rechin’s days. The most trusted
counsellor of the new king, the devoted supporter and not unfrequently
the instigator of his schemes of reform or of aggression, was Almeric
of Montfort, the brother of Bertrada. She herself, after persecuting
Louis by every means in her power so long as his father lived, changed
her policy as soon as he mounted the throne and became as useful an
ally as she had been a dangerous enemy. Almeric’s influence, won by his
own talents, seems to have been almost all-powerful with the king; over
the count of Anjou, far younger and utterly inexperienced, natural ties
had given a yet more complete ascendency to him and his sister, Fulk’s
own mother. Their policy was to pledge Anjou irrevocably to the side of
the French crown by forcing it into a quarrel with Henry I.

        [563] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 143.

        [564] “Vir rufus, sed instar David.” Will. Tyr. l. xiv. c. 1.

The means lay ready to their hands. Aremburg of Maine, once the
plighted bride of Geoffrey Martel, was still unwed; Fulk, by his
mother’s counsel, sought and won her for his wife.[565] Her marriage
crowned the work of Elias. The patriot-count’s mission was fulfilled,
his task was done; and in that very summer he passed to his
well-earned rest.[566] Fulk, as husband of the heiress, thus became
count of Maine, and the immediate consequence was a breach with Henry
on the long-vexed question of the overlordship of the county. Whether
Elias had or had not recognized any right of overlordship in Fulk
Rechin or Geoffrey Martel II. is not clear; he certainly seems to have
done homage to Henry,[567] and their mutual relations as lord and
vassal were highly honourable to both; but it was hardly to be expected
that Fulk, whose predecessors had twice received the homage of Henry’s
elder brother for that very county, should yield up without a struggle
the rights of the count of Anjou. He refused all submission to Henry,
and at once formed a league with the French Crown in active opposition
to the lord of England and Normandy.

        [565] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 785,
        818. _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 143. Will. Tyr.,
        l. xiv. c. 1.

        [566] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1110 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 31, 143). Eng. Chron. a. 1110. Ord. Vit.
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 785, 839.

        [567] “Eac thises geares forthferde Elias eorl, the tha Mannie
        of tham cynge Heanri geheold, and on cweow.” Eng. Chron. a.
        1110. Nobody seems to know what “on cweow” means; Mr. Thorpe
        (Eng. Chron., vol. ii. p. 211) suggests that it may stand for
        “Angeow.”

The war began in 1111, and the danger was great enough to call Henry
himself over sea in August and keep him on the continent for nearly two
years. The leading part was taken by the count of Anjou, whose marriage
enabled him to add the famous “Cenomannian swords” to the forces of
Touraine and the Angevin March.[568] Moreover, treason was, as usual,
rife among the Norman barons; and the worst of all the traitors was
Robert of Bellême. One after another the lesser offenders were brought
to justice; at last, in November 1112, Robert himself fell into the
hands of his outraged sovereign, and, to the joy of all men on both
sides of the sea, was flung into a lifelong captivity.[569] Then at
last Henry felt secure in Normandy; the capture of Robert was followed
by the surrender of his fortress of Alençon, and the tide of fortune
turned so rapidly that Fulk and Louis were soon compelled to sue for
peace. Early in Lent 1113 Fulk and Henry met at Pierre-Pécoulée near
Alençon; the count submitted to perform the required homage for Maine,
and his infant daughter was betrothed to Henry’s son, the little
Ætheling William. In March the treaty was confirmed by the two kings at
Gisors; and as the first-fruits of their new alliance there was seen
the strange spectacle of a count of Anjou and a count of Blois fighting
side by side to help the lord of Normandy in subduing the rebels who
still held out in the castle of Bellême.[570]

        [568] Eng. Chron. a. 1111, 1112.

        [569] Eng. Chron. a. 1112. Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 841, 858.
        Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 398 (Hardy, p. 626).

        [570] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 841.

Henry’s next step was to exact, first from the barons of Normandy
and then from the Great Council of England, a solemn oath of homage
and fealty to his son William as his destined successor.[571] This
ceremony, not unusual in France, but quite without precedent in
England, was doubtless a precaution against the chances of the war
which he foresaw must soon be renewed. This time indeed he was
himself the aggressor; Louis had made no hostile movement, and Fulk
was troubled by a revolt at home, whose exact nature is not clearly
ascertained. The universal tendency of feudal vassals to rebel against
their lord had probably something to do with it; but there seems also
to have been another and a far more interesting element at work.
“There arose a grave dissension between Count Fulk the Younger and
the burghers of Angers.”[572] In this provokingly brief entry in one
of the Angevin chronicles we may perhaps catch a glimpse of that new
spirit of civic freedom which was just springing into life in northern
Europe, and which made some progress both in France and in England
during the reigns of Louis VI. and Henry I. One would gladly know
what were the demands of the Angevin burghers, and how they were met
by the son-in-law of Elias of Le Mans; but the faint echo of the
dispute between count and citizens is drowned in the roar of the more
imposing strife which soon broke out anew between the rival kings. Its
ostensible cause was now Count Theobald of Blois, whose wrongs were
made by his uncle a ground for marching into France, in company with
Theobald himself and his brother Stephen, in the spring of 1116. Louis
retaliated by a raid upon Normandy; the Norman barons recommenced their
old intrigues;[573] and they were soon furnished with an excellent
pretext. After the battle of Tinchebray, Duke Robert’s infant son
William had been intrusted by his victorious uncle to the care of his
half-sister’s husband, Elias of Saint-Saëns. Elias presently began to
suspect Henry of evil designs against the child; at once, sacrificing
his own possessions to Henry’s wrath, he fled with his charge and led
him throughout all the neighbouring lands, seeking to stir up sympathy
for the fugitive heir of Normandy, till he found him a shelter at
the court of his kinsman Count Baldwin of Flanders.[574] At last the
faithful guardian’s zeal was rewarded by seeing the cause of his young
brother-in-law taken up by both Baldwin and Louis. In 1117 they leagued
themselves together with the avowed object of avenging Duke Robert and
reinstating his son in the duchy of Normandy; and their league was at
once joined by the count of Anjou.[575]

        [571] Eng. Chron. a. 1115. Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p.
        69. Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), p. 237.

        [572] “Facta est gravis dissensio inter Fulconem comitem
        Juniorem et burgenses Andecavenses.” Chron. S. Serg. a. 1116
        (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 143). The Chron. S. Albin. a. 1114
        (_ib._ p. 32) has “Guerra burgensium contra comitem”; but M.
        Marchegay says in a note that two MSS. read “baronum” for
        “burgensium.”

        [573] See details in Suger, _Vita Ludov._ c. 21 (_Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 43), and Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Norm. Scriptt._), p. 843.

        [574] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 837, 838.

        [575] Eng. Chron. a. 1117. Hen. Huntingdon, l. vii. c. 29
        (Arnold, p. 239).

The quarrel had now assumed an aspect far more threatening to Henry;
but it was not till the middle of the following summer that the war
began in earnest. Its first honours were won by the count of Anjou,
in the capture of La Motte-Gautier, a fortress on the Cenomannian
border.[576] In September the count of Flanders was mortally wounded in
a skirmish near Eu;[577] Louis and Fulk had however more useful allies
in the Norman baronage, whose chiefs were nearly all either openly
or secretly in league with them. Almeric of Montfort, who claimed
the county of Evreux, was the life and soul of all their schemes. In
October the city of Evreux was betrayed into his hands;[578] and this
disaster was followed by another at Alençon. Henry had granted the
lands of Robert of Bellême to Theobald of Blois; Theobald, with his
uncle’s permission, made them over to his brother Stephen; and Stephen
at once began to shew in his small dominions the same incapacity for
keeping order which he shewed afterwards on a larger scale in England.
His negligence brought matters at Alençon to such a pass that the
outraged citizens called in the help of the count of Anjou, admitted
him and his troops by night into the town, and joined with him in
blockading the castle.[579] Stephen meanwhile had joined his uncle and
brother at Séez. On receipt of the evil tidings, the two young counts
hurried back to Alençon, made an unsuccessful attempt to revictual the
garrison, and then tried to surround the Angevin camp, which had been
pitched in a place called “the Park.” A long day’s fighting, in which
the tide seems to have been turned at last chiefly by the valour of
Fulk himself, ended in an Angevin victory and won him the surrender of
Alençon.[580]

        [576] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 844. His chronology is all wrong.

        [577] _Ib._ p. 843. Suger, _Vita Ludov._, c. 21 (_Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 45). Eng. Chron. a. 1118. Will. Malm.
        _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 403 (Hardy, pp. 630, 631) substitutes
        Arques for Eu.

        [578] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 843,
        846.

        [579] _Ib._ p. 847.

        [580] The details of this story--in a very apocryphal-looking
        shape--are in _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 145–150.
        The Angevin victory, however, comes out clearly in Ord. Vit.
        (as above).

The following year was for Henry an almost unbroken series of reverses
and misfortunes, and in 1119 he was compelled to seek peace with
Fulk. Their treaty was ratified in June by the marriage of William
the Ætheling and Matilda of Anjou; Fulk made an attempt to end the
Cenomannian difficulty by settling Maine upon his daughter as a
marriage-portion,[581] and gave up Alençon on condition that Henry
should restore it to the dispossessed heir, William Talvas.[582] Henry
had now to face only the French king and the traitor barons. With the
latter he began at once by firing the town of Evreux.[583] Louis, on
receiving these tidings from Almeric of Montfort, assembled his troops
at Etampes and marched upon Normandy. In the plain of Brenneville,
between Noyon and Andely, he was met by Henry with the flower of his
English and Norman forces. Louis, in the insane bravado of chivalry,
disdained to get his men into order before beginning the attack, and he
thereby lost the day. The first charge, made by eighty French knights
under a Norman traitor, William Crispin, broke against the serried
ranks of the English fighting on foot around their king; all the eighty
were surrounded and made prisoners; and the rest of the French army was
put to such headlong flight that, if the Norman tale can be true, out
of nine hundred knights only three were found dead on the field. Louis
himself, unhorsed in the confusion, escaped alone into a wood where he
lost his way, and was finally led back to Andely by a peasant ignorant
of his rank.[584] In bitter shame he went home to Paris to seek comfort
and counsel of Almeric, who, luckily for both, had had no share in
this disastrous expedition. By Almeric’s advice a summons was issued
to all bishops, counts, and other persons in authority throughout the
realm, bidding them stir up their people, on pain of anathema, to come
and help the king. The plan seems to have had much the same result as
a calling-out of the “fyrd” in England, and the host which it brought
together inflicted terrible ravages upon Normandy. In October Louis
sought help in another quarter. Pope Calixtus had come to hold a
council at Reims; the ecclesiastical business ended, he had to listen
to a string of appeals in all sorts of causes, and the first appellant
was the king of France, who came before the Pope in person and set
forth a detailed list of complaints against Henry. The archbishop
of Rouen rose to defend his sovereign, but the council refused to
hear him. Calixtus, however, was on too dangerous terms with Henry
of Germany to venture upon anathematizing his father-in-law, Henry
of England; and in a personal interview at Gisors, in November, the
English king vindicated himself to the Pope’s complete satisfaction.
The tide had turned once more. Almeric had been won over by a grant
of the coveted honour of Evreux; and his defection from Louis was
followed by that of all the other rebel Normans in rapid succession.
William the Clito--as Duke Robert’s son is called, to distinguish him
from his cousin William the Ætheling--was again driven into exile, with
his faithful brother-in-law still at his side; a treaty was arranged
between Henry and Louis; all castles were to be restored, all captives
freed, and all wrongs forgiven and forgotten.[585]

        [581] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 851. Eng. Chron. a. 1119. Suger,
        _Vita Ludov._ c. 21 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 45).
        Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 652).

        [582] Ord. Vit. as above.

        [583] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 852.

        [584] _Ib._ pp. 853–855. See also Eng. Chron. a. 1119, Hen.
        Hunt., l. vii. c. 31 (Arnold, p. 241), and Suger, _Vita
        Ludov._, c. 21 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 45).

        [585] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 858,
        859, 863–866. Cf. Eng. Chron. a. 1120.

We seem to be reading the story of Fulk Nerra over again as we are
told how his great-grandson, as soon as peace seemed assured and he
was reconciled to all his neighbours, desired also by penance for
his sins to become reconciled to God, and leaving his dominions in
charge of his wife and their two little sons, set out on pilgrimage to
Jerusalem.[586] The “lord of three cities,”[587] however, could not
leave his territories to take care of themselves as the Black Count
seems to have done; the regency of his boys was merely nominal, for
the eldest of them was but seven years old; and though their mother,
the daughter of Elias, may well have been a wise and courageous woman,
it was no light matter thus to leave her alone with the rival kings
on each side of her. To guard against all dangers, therefore, Fulk
again formally commended the county of Maine to King Henry as overlord
during his own life, and bequeathed it to his son-in-law the Ætheling
in case he should not return.[588] Two months before his departure, the
cathedral of Le Mans, which had just been rebuilt, was consecrated in
his presence and that of his wife. At the close of the ceremony he took
up his little son Geoffrey in his arms and placed him on the altar,
saying with tears: “O holy Julian, to thee I commend my child and my
land, that thou mayest be the defender and protector of both!”[589] The
yearning which drew him literally to tread in his great-grandfather’s
steps was too strong to be repressed; but he went,[590] it is clear,
with anxious and gloomy forebodings; and before he reached his home
again those forebodings were fulfilled. The treaty that had promised so
well was scattered to the winds on November 25, 1120, by the death of
William the Ætheling in the wreck of the White Ship.[591]

        [586] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 871.

        [587] “Trium urbium dominus.” I think it is Orderic who
        somewhere thus expressively designates the lord of Angers and
        Le Mans and Tours.

        [588] This seems to be the meaning of Will. Malm. _Gesta
        Reg._, l. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 652); “Quin et Ierosolymam
        Fulco ire contendens, comitatum commendavit regi suum, si
        viveret; futurum profecto generi, si non rediret.” The “county”
        in question can only be Maine, of the gift of which to the
        Ætheling at his marriage William has just been speaking.

        [589] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ c. 35 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p.
        318).

        [590] In company with Rainald, bishop of Angers, in 1120.
        Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 32, 190).

        [591] Eng. Chron. a. 1120; Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c.
        419 (Hardy, pp. 653, 654); Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 32 (Arnold,
        p. 242); Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), pp. 288, 289; Ord. Vit.
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 868, 869, etc.

In that wreck perished not merely Fulk’s hopes for the settlement of
Maine, but Henry’s hopes for the settlement of England and Normandy.
Setting aside the father’s personal grief for the loss of his favourite
child, the Ætheling’s death was the most terrible political blow that
could have fallen upon Henry. All his hopes for the continuance of his
work were bound up in the life of his son. The toils and struggles of
twenty years would be little more than lost labour unless he could
guard against two dangers which had been the bane of both England and
Normandy ever since the Conqueror’s death:--a disputed succession
to the English throne, and a separation between the insular and the
continental dominions of the ducal house. In the person of William
the Ætheling both dangers seemed provided against; if Henry lived but
a few years more, there was every reason to expect that William, and
William alone among the Conqueror’s surviving descendants, would be
able to mount the English throne without opposition. On any accepted
principle, his only possible competitor would have been his cousin and
namesake the Clito. Neither people nor barons would have been likely to
think for a moment of setting aside the son of their crowned king and
queen--a king born in the land and a queen who represented the ancient
blood-royal of England--for a landless, homeless stranger whose sole
claim rested on the fact that by strict rule of primogeniture he was
the heir male of the Conqueror; and, once master of England, William
might fairly be expected to keep his hold upon Normandy as his father
had done. The shipwreck of November 1120, however, left Henry suddenly
face to face with the almost certain prospect of being succeeded in
all his dominions by his brother’s son, his enemy, the rival of his
lost boy, the one person of all others whose succession would be most
repugnant alike to his feelings and to his policy. As soon as Henry
himself was gone, the Clito would have positively no competitor; for of
all Henry’s surviving children, the only one who had any legal rights
was a daughter. The future of Henry’s policy had hung upon the thread
of a single life, and now the silver cord was loosed.

The Ætheling’s child-widow was in England: on that sad night she
had crossed with her father-in-law instead of her husband, and thus
escaped sharing the latter’s fate. Fulk at once sent to demand his
daughter back;[592] but Henry was unwilling to part from her, and kept
her constantly with him as if she were his own child, till the little
girl herself begged to see her own parents again, and was allowed to
return to Angers.[593] Henry seems really to have clung to her as a
sort of legacy from his dead son; but, to Fulk’s great indignation, he
kept her dowry as well as herself.[594] An embassy sent to England at
Christmas 1122--apparently after her return to Anjou--came back without
success after a delay of several months and a stormy parting from the
king.[595] The most important part of the dowry however was still in
Fulk’s own hands. His settlement of Maine upon William and Matilda and
their possible posterity was annulled by William’s death; Fulk was once
more free to dispose of the county as he would. Regarding all ties with
Henry as broken, and urged at once by Almeric of Montfort and Louis of
France, he offered it, with the hand of his second daughter Sibyl, to
William the Clito.[596]

        [592] Eng. Chron. a. 1121.

        [593] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 875.

        [594] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 655).

        [595] Eng. Chron. a. 1123.

        [596] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 838, 876. Eng. Chron. a. 1124.
        Will. Malm. as above (p. 654).

To the threatening attitude of France and Anjou was added, as a
natural consequence, a conspiracy among the Norman barons, headed by
the arch-plotter Almeric and the young Count Waleran of Meulan, a son
of Henry’s own familiar friend. Their scheme, planned at a meeting held
in September at the Croix-Saint-Leuffroy, was discovered by the king;
he marched at once upon Waleran’s castle of Pontaudemer, and took it
after a six weeks’ siege, during which he worked in the trenches as
hard as any young soldier. This success was counterbalanced by the loss
of Gisors, which was taken and sacked by Almeric; Henry retaliated by
seizing Evreux. Advent and a stormy winter checked the strife; one
battle in the spring put an end to it. On March 25, 1124, the rebels
were met at Bourgthéroulde by Ralf of Bayeux, who commanded at Evreux
for King Henry; despite their superior numbers, they were completely
defeated, and Waleran was taken prisoner.[597] His capture was followed
by the surrender of his castles; Almeric, who had as usual escaped,
again made his peace with Henry; and the Clito’s cause, forsaken by
his Norman partizans, was left almost wholly dependent on the support
of Anjou.[598] Meanwhile Henry had found an ally in his son-in-law
and namesake the Emperor, and in August France was threatened with
a German invasion. Louis seized the consecrated banner--the famous
Oriflamme--which hung above the high altar in the abbey of S. Denis,
and hurried off with it, as Geoffrey Martel had once ridden forth with
the standard of S. Martin of Tours, to meet the foe. But the invasion
came to an unexpected end. For some reason which is not explained, the
Emperor turned suddenly homeward without striking a blow.[599]

        [597] Eng. Chron. a. 1124. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
        Scriptt._), pp. 876–880. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c.
        21 (_ib._ p. 302). The date comes from the Chronicle; the
        continuator of Will. Jumièges makes it a day later.

        [598] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 880–882.

        [599] Suger, _Vita Ludov._, c. 21 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        xii. pp. 49, 50).

The English king found a more useful friend in the Pope than in the
Emperor. By dint of threats, promises and bribes, he persuaded the
court of Rome to annul the marriage of Sibyl and the Clito on the
ground of consanguinity.[600] Of their kinship there is no doubt;[601]
but it was in exactly the same degree as the kinship between Henry’s
own son and Sibyl’s sister, to whose marriage no objection had ever
been raised. The Clito refused to give up his bride, and was thereupon
excommunicated by the Pope;[602] Fulk publicly burnt the letter in
which the legate insisted upon the dissolution of the marriage, singed
the beards of the envoys who carried it, and put them in prison for a
fortnight. The consequence was an interdict[603] which compelled him to
submit; the new-married couple parted, and William the Clito became a
wanderer once more.[604]

        [600] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 838.

        [601] They were descended, one in the fifth, the other in the
        sixth degree, from Richard the Fearless; Ord. Vit. as above,
        giving details of the pedigree.

        [602] Brief of Calixtus II., August 26 [1124], in D’Achéry,
        _Spicilegium_, vol. iii. p. 479.

        [603] Brief of Honorius II., April 12 [1125], _ibid._

        [604] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 882.

Next Christmas Henry struck his final blow at his nephew’s hopes of the
succession. An old tradition which declared that whatsoever disturber
of the realm of France was brought face to face with the might of
S. Denis would die within a twelvemonth was fulfilled in the person
of the Emperor Henry V.[605] His widow, the only surviving child of
Henry of England and the “Good Queen Maude,” was summoned back to her
father’s court.[606] She came not without regret, for she had dwelt
from childhood among her husband’s people, and was held by them in
great esteem. The dying Emperor had no child to take his place. He had
committed his sceptre to his consort;[607] and some of the princes of
Lombardy and Lorraine took this symbolical bequest in such earnest that
they actually followed Matilda over sea to demand her back as their
sovereign.[608] But King Henry had other plans for his daughter. At the
midwinter assembly of 1126–1127 he made the barons and prelates of
England swear that in case of his death without lawful son they would
acknowledge her as Lady of England and Normandy.[609]

        [605] Suger, _Vita Ludov._, c. 21 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        xii. p. 52). Henry V. died in Whit-week, 1125; Ord. Vit. (as
        above).

        [606] Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 25 (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Norm. Scriptt._, p. 304). Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c.
        1 (Hardy, p. 689). She went to England with her father in
        September 1126. Eng. Chron. ad ann.

        [607] Ord. Vit. as above.

        [608] Will. Jumièges Contin. and Will. Malm. as above.

        [609] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii.
        c. 25 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 304). Will. Malm.
        _Hist. Nov._, l. i. cc. 2, 3 (Hardy, pp. 690–692).

The first result of this unprecedented step was that the king of France
set himself to thwart it by again taking up the cause of William the
Clito, offering him, as compensation for the loss of Sibyl and Maine,
a grant of the French Vexin and a bride whom not even Rome could make
out to be his cousin--Jane of Montferrat, half-sister to Louis’s own
queen.[610] Two months later the count of Flanders was murdered at
Bruges. He was childless; the king of France adjudged his fief to
William the Clito as great-grandson of Count Baldwin V., and speedily
put him in possession of the greater part of the county.[611] Henry’s
daring scheme now seemed all but hopeless. His only chance was to make
peace with some one at least of his adversaries; and the one whom he
chose was not the king of France, but the count of Anjou. He saw--and
Fulk saw it too--that until the question about Maine was settled
there could be no lasting security, and that it could only be settled
effectually by the union of all conflicting claims in a single hand.
For such an union the way was now clear. The heir of Anjou was growing
up to manhood; the chosen successor of Henry was a childless widow.
Regardless of his promise not to give his daughter in marriage to any
one out of the realm[612]--regardless of the scorn of both Normans
and English,[613] of the Empress’s own reluctance,[614] and also of
the kindred between the houses of Normandy and Anjou--Henry sent
Matilda over sea shortly after Pentecost 1127 under the care of her
half-brother Earl Robert of Gloucester and Count Brian of Britanny,
who were charged with instructions to the archbishop of Rouen to make
arrangements for her marriage with Geoffrey Plantagenet, eldest son
of the count of Anjou. In the last week of August the king himself
followed them;[615] at the following Whitsuntide he knighted Geoffrey
at Rouen with his own hand;[616] and eight days later Geoffrey and
Matilda were wedded by the bishop of Avranches in the cathedral church
of S. Julian at Le Mans.[617]

        [610] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
        Scriptt._), p. 884. _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 151.

        [611] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 884, 885.
        See the Flemish Chronicles in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xiii.

        [612] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 693).

        [613] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. “Hit ofthute nathema ealle Frencisc
        and Englisc.”

        [614] Will. Jumièges Contin. as above.

        [615] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 3
        (Hardy, p. 692). Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 37 (Arnold, p. 247).

        [616] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 234–236.

        [617] _Ib._ p. 236. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._), p. 889. _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 36 (Mabillon,
        _Vet. Anal._, p. 321). On the date see note F at end of chapter.

It was a triumphant day for Fulk; but more triumphant still was the day
when he and Geoffrey brought the new countess home to Angers. A large
part of the barons and prelates who filled S. Julian’s minster on the
wedding-day were Normans who in their inmost souls viewed with mingled
rage and shame what they held to be the degradation of the Norman
ducal house; a large part of the crowd who with their lips cheered the
bridal procession as it passed through the streets of Le Mans were all
the while cursing in their hearts the Angevin foe of Normandy.[618]
But in Fulk’s own capital the rejoicings were universal and unalloyed.
Many a brilliant match had been made by the house of Anjou, from that
wedding with the heiress of Amboise which had been the beginning of
its founder’s fortunes, down to Fulk’s own marriage, only seventeen
years ago, with Aremburg of Maine; but never before had Black Angers
welcomed such a bride as King Henry’s daughter. A writer of the next
generation has left us a picture of Angers as it was in his days--days
when the son of Geoffrey and Matilda was king of England and count of
Anjou. In its main features that picture is almost as true a likeness
now as it can have been seven hundred years ago, and by its help we
can easily recall the scene of the bride’s homecoming. We can see the
eager citizens swarming along the narrow, crooked streets that furrow
the steep hill-side;--the clergy in their richest vestments assembling
from every church in what is still, as it was then, emphatically a
city of churches, and mustering probably on the very summit of the
hill, in the open space before the cathedral--not the cathedral whose
white twin spires now soar above all things around, the centre and the
crown of Angers, but its Romanesque predecessor, crowned doubtless by
a companion rather than a rival to the neighbouring dark tower of S.
Aubin’s abbey, which now contrasts so vividly with the light pinnacles
of S. Maurice. Thence, at a given signal, the procession streamed
down with lighted tapers and waving banners to the northern gate of
the city, and with psalms and hymns of rejoicing, half drowned in the
shouting of the people and the clang of the bells overhead, led the new
countess to her dwelling in the hall of Fulk the Black. It was Fulk
who had made the first rude plans for the edifice of statesmanship
which had now all but reached its last and loftiest stage. The
unconscious praise of the Black Count was in every shout which beneath
his palace-windows hailed in the person of his worthiest namesake and
descendant the triumph of the house of Anjou.

        [618] I think this may be safely inferred from the English
        Chronicler’s words a. 1127 (above, p. 243, note 5{613}), and
        from a singularly suggestive passage in the account of the
        wedding festivities in _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), p.
        237: “Clamatum est voce præconis ne quis indigena vel advena,
        dives, mediocris vel pauper, nobilis vel plebeius, miles vel
        colonus ex hâc regali lætitiâ se subtraheret; qui autem gaudiis
        nuptialibus minime interesset, regiæ procul dubio majestatis
        reus esset.”

There was no mother to welcome Geoffrey and his bride; Aremburg had
not lived to see the marriage of her son;[619] and now the shadow of
another coming separation fell over the mutual congratulations of Fulk
and of his people. Another royal father besides Henry was seeking an
Angevin bridegroom for his daughter and an Angevin successor to his
throne. It was now just thirty years since the acclamations of the
crusading host had chosen Godfrey of Bouillon king of Jerusalem. The
crown, which he in his humility declined to wear, passed after his
death to his brother Baldwin of Edessa, and then to another Baldwin,
of the noble family of Réthel in Champagne. After a busy reign of ten
years, Baldwin II., having no son, grew anxious to find a suitable
husband for his eldest daughter and destined heiress, Melisenda. In the
spring of 1128, with the unanimous approval of his subjects, he offered
her hand, together with his crown, to Count Fulk of Anjou.[620] He
could not have chosen a fitter man. Fulk was in the prime of life,[621]
young enough to bring to his task all the vigour and energy needful
to withstand the ever-encroaching Infidels, yet old enough to have
learned political caution and experience; and if the one qualification
was needed for defence against external foes, the other was no less so
for steering a safe course amid the endless jealousies of the Frank
princes in Palestine. Moreover, Fulk was known in the East by something
more than reputation. Free of all connexion with the internal disputes
of the realm, he was yet no utter stranger who would come thither as
a mere foreign interloper. He had dwelt there for a whole year as a
guest and a friend, and the memory of his visit had been kept alive
in the minds of the people of the land, as well as in his own, by
a yearly contribution which, amid all his cares and necessities at
home, he had never failed to send to the Knights of the Temple for the
defence of the Holy City.[622] Baldwin had thus every inducement to
make the offer; and Fulk had equally good reasons for accepting it. His
was clearly no case of mere vulgar longing after a crown. There may
have been a natural feeling that it would be well to put Geoffrey’s
father on a titular level with Matilda’s; if the prophecy said to have
been made to Fulk the Good was already in circulation, there may have
been also a feeling that it was rapidly approaching its fulfilment.
But every recorded act of Fulk V. shews that he was too practical in
temper to be dazzled by the mere glitter of a crown, without heeding
the solid advantages to be gained with it or to be given up for its
sake. He must have known that the sacred border-land of Christendom and
Islam was a much harder post to defend than the marchland of France and
Aquitaine had ever been; he must have known that the consort of the
queen of Jerusalem would find little rest upon her throne. But this
second Count Fulk the Palmer cared for rest as little as the first. It
was work that he longed for: and work at home was at an end for him.
The mission of the counts of Anjou, simply as such, was accomplished;
when the heir of the Marchland wedded the Lady-elect of Normandy and
England, he entered upon an entirely new phase of political existence.
Fulk had in fact, by marrying his son to the Empress, cut short his own
career, and left himself no choice but to submit to complete effacement
or seek a new sphere of action elsewhere. Had Baldwin’s proposal come a
year earlier, it might have caused a struggle between inclination and
duty; coming as it did just after Henry’s, it extricated all parties
from their last difficulty.

        [619] She died in 1126; Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm.
        ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 33, 190). A story of her
        last illness, in _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ c. 36 (Mabillon, _Vet.
        Anal._, p. 320), is very characteristic of Fulk, and indicates,
        too, that whether or not his marriage with her began in policy
        alone, it ended in real affection.

        [620] Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. 1. _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 36
        (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._) p. 321.

        [621] He cannot have been more than thirty-eight; he may have
        been only thirty-six.

        [622] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 871).
        Will. Tyr. as above.

Fulk could not, however, accept the proposal without the consent of
his overlord King Louis and that of his own subjects.[623] Both were
granted; his people had prospered under him, but they, too, doubtless
saw that alike for him and for them it was time to part. On that same
Whit-Sunday when young Geoffrey was knighted at Rouen by King Henry,
his father, prostrate before the high altar in the cathedral church
of Tours, took the cross at the hands of Archbishop Hildebert.[624]
From the wedding festivities at Le Mans he came home to make his
preparations for departure. It may be that once more in the old hall
overlooking the Mayenne the barons of Anjou and Touraine gathered round
the last Count Fulk, to be solemnly released from their allegiance to
him, and to perform their homage to his successor. A more secluded
spot was chosen for the last family meeting. A few miles south-east
of Saumur, in the midst of dark woods and fruitful apple-orchards, a
pious and noble crusader, Robert of Arbrissel, had founded in the
early years of Fulk’s reign the abbey of Fontevraud, whose church has
counted ever since among the architectural marvels of western Europe.
An English visitor now-a-days feels as if some prophetic instinct
must have guided its architect and given to his work that peculiar
awe-striking character which so exactly fits it for the burial-place
of the two Angevin kings of England whose sculptured effigies still
remain in its south transept. The first of their race who wore a crown,
however, came thither not for his last sleep, but only for a few hours
of rest ere he started on his eastward journey. The monastery was a
double one--half for men and half for women; in the latter Fulk’s
eldest daughter, the widow of William the Ætheling, had lately taken
the veil. The cloisters of Fontevraud offered a quiet refuge where
father and children could all meet undisturbed to exchange their last
farewells.[625] Before Whitsuntide came round again Fulk and Anjou had
parted for ever.[626]

        [623] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 205.

        [624] _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), p. 152.

        [625] “Ego Fulco junior Andegavensium comes, Fulconis comitis
        filius, ire volens Hierusalem, conventum sanctimonialium
        Fontis-Evraudi expetii. Adfuerunt etiam ibi filii mei Gaufridus
        et Helias, et filiæ meæ Mathildis et Sibylla, quarum una, id
        est Mathildis, paulo ante pro Dei amore se velari fecerat, etc.
        Acta charta apud Fontem-Ebraudi anno ab Incarnat. Dom. 1129”
        (_Rer. Gall. Script._, vol. xii. p. 736 note, from “Clypeum
        nascentis Fontis-Ebraldi”).

        [626] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 153. _Gesta Amb.
        Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 205. Will. Tyr., l. xiii. c. 24, l.
        xiv. c. 1. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1129 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 33, 144).

It is not for us to follow him on his lifelong crusade.[627] The
Angevin spirit of restless activity and sleepless vigilance, of
hard-working thoroughness and indomitable perseverance, never, perhaps,
shewed to better advantage than in this second half of the eventful
life of Fulk of Jerusalem; but we have to trace its workings only as
they influenced the history of our own land. Our place is not with the
devoted personal followers who went with Fulk across land and sea, but
with those who stayed to share the fortunes of his successor in Anjou.
Our concern is with the father of the Angevin kings, not of Jerusalem,
but of England.

        [627] Its history is in Will. Tyr., l. xiv. cc. 1–27.


NOTE A.

THE HOUSES OF ANJOU AND GÂTINAIS.

All historians are agreed that Geoffrey the Bearded and Fulk Rechin
were sons of Geoffrey Martel’s sister and of a count (or viscount)
of Gâtinais, or Châteaulandon, which is the same thing--the Gâtinais
being a district on the north-eastern border of the Orléanais whereof
Châteaulandon was the capital. But the names of both husband and wife
differ in different accounts. Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 375)
calls his mother Hermengard; R. Diceto (_ib._ p. 333; Stubbs, vol. i.
p. 185) calls her Adela; in the _Gesta Cons._ no names are given. If we
could be sure that Fulk really wrote the fragment which bears his name,
his testimony would of course be decisive; as it is, we are left in
doubt. The point is one of trifling importance, for whatever the lady’s
name may have been, there is no doubt that she was the daughter of Fulk
the Black and Hildegard. But who was her husband?

First, as to his name. The _Gesta Cons._ do not mention it. The Chron.
S. Maxent. a. 1060 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 402), Hugh of Fleury
(_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 797), and R. Diceto (Marchegay,
_Comtes_, p. 333; Stubbs, vol. i. p. 185) call him Alberic. Fulk Rechin
(as above) calls him Geoffrey. None of them tell us anything about him.
It seems in fact to be the aim of the Angevin writers to keep us in the
dark as to the descent of the later counts of Anjou from the house of
Gâtinais through the husband of Hermengard-Adela; but they try to make
out a connexion between the two families six generations further back.
One of the earliest legends in the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_,
pp. 39–45) tells how Châteaulandon and the Gâtinais were given to
Ingelger as a reward for his defence of his slandered godmother, the
daughter and heiress of a Count Geoffrey of Gâtinais, and the alleged
gift is coupled with a grant from the king of the viscounty of Orléans.
What Ingelger may or may not have held it is impossible to say, as we
really know nothing about him. But there is proof that the viscounty of
Orléans at least did not pass to his descendants. The very first known
charter of Fulk the Good, one dated May 942, is witnessed by Geoffrey
viscount of Orléans; and Geoffrey Greygown’s charter for the reform
of S. Aubin’s in 966 is witnessed by Alberic viscount of Gâtinais,
whose signature has already appeared in 957, attached to a charter of
Theobald the Trickster. This Alberic may very likely have been the son
of his predecessor Geoffrey, but he cannot well have been the father of
Fulk Nerra’s son-in-law; there is a generation dropped out, and of the
man who should fill it the only trace is in Ménage (_Hist. de Sablé_),
who says that Fulk Rechin’s father, Geoffrey count of Gâtinais, was
the son of _another Geoffrey_ and Beatrice, daughter of Alberic II. of
Mâcon (Mabille, introd. _Comtes_, pp. lxxxv–lxxxvi). It seems probable
that Orléans and Châteaulandon went together in fact as well as in
Angevin legend. Assuming therefore that Ménage was copying a document
now lost, the pedigree would stand thus:

                  Geoffrey,
           viscount of Orléans 942
                     |
                  Alberic,
           viscount in 957 and 966
                     |
                  Geoffrey,
  viscount of Orléans and count of Gâtinais
                     |
                Alberic or Geoffrey = Hermengard or Adela,
                                    |  daughter of Fulk Nerra
                     +--------------+--------------+
                     |                             |
           Geoffrey the Bearded.              Fulk Rechin.

If we might assume also, with M. Mabille, that the “Alberic” whose
signature appears beside that of Fulk the Red in 886 (Mabille, introd.
_Comtes_, p. lix, note 1) was the father of the first Geoffrey of
Orléans, then the two names would stand alternate till we come to
Hermengard’s husband. Is it just possible that (on a principle somewhat
like that which made all the dukes of Aquitaine assume the name of
William) this alternation of names grew into a family tradition, so
that the son of Geoffrey II. and Beatrice having by some accident been
christened by his father’s instead of his grandfather’s name, assumed
the latter officially on succeeding to the title, and thus became known
to outsiders as “Alberic,” while his own son (Fulk Rechin) spoke of him
by his original and real name?

However this may be, he was most probably descended from the family
who became viscounts of Orléans at about the same time that the house
of Anjou was being founded. They make no figure in history, and the
Angevin writers do their best to efface them altogether. Ralf de Diceto
just names the father of the two young counts, and that is all; in the
_Gesta Cons._ his very name is dropped, and the reader is left in utter
darkness as to who and what Martel’s nephews were. They were Martel’s
nephews, and that was all that anybody was intended to know about them.
Fulk Rechin himself, or his representative, merges the Châteaulandon
connexion almost completely in the Angevin, and regards himself simply
as the grandson of Fulk Nerra. After all, they are right; it was Fulk
Nerra’s blood that made his grandsons what they were; their father
might have been anybody, or, as he almost appears, nobody, for all the
influence he had on their characters or their destinies.


NOTE B.

THE HEIR OF GEOFFREY MARTEL.

Of the disposal of his territories made by Geoffrey Martel there are
three versions.

1. The _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 131), R. Diceto (_ib._
p. 333; Stubbs, vol. i. p. 185) and Chron. Tur. Magn. (Salmon, _Chron.
Touraine_, pp. 122, 123) say that Anjou and Saintonge were left to
Fulk, Touraine and Gâtinais to Geoffrey.

2. A MS. representing the earliest form of the _Gesta Cons._ (ending in
1106) says just the opposite: Anjou and Saintonge to Geoffrey, Touraine
and Gâtinais to Fulk (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 131, note 1. See Mabille,
introd. _Comtes_, _ib._ pp. iv–viii).

3. Orderic (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 532) and Will.
Poitiers (_ib._ pp. 188, 189) ignore Fulk and make Geoffrey sole heir.

The first version is easily disposed of. In three charters of S.
Florence of Saumur, one of 1061 (Marchegay, _Archives d’Anjou_, vol.
i. p. 259) and two whose dates must be between 1062 and 1066 (_ib._ p.
278), and in one of S. Maur, 1066 (_ib._ pp. 358–360), Geoffrey the
Bearded is formally described as count of Anjou. The strongest proof of
all is a charter of Fulk Rechin himself, March 11, 1068, setting forth
how Geoffrey, nephew and _heir_ of Geoffrey Martel, had made certain
promises to S. Florence, which he, Fulk, having now got possession of
Anjou, fulfilled (_ib._ p. 260).

The second version, though apparently not contradicted by any
documentary proof, has nothing to support it, and contains an internal
difficulty. For how could Martel leave the Gâtinais to Fulk? Surely it
was not his to leave at all, but would pass as a matter of course to
Geoffrey as Alberic’s (Geoffrey’s?) eldest son. The old confusion of
the relations of the Gâtinais to Anjou peeps out again here.

The third account is that of foreign writers; but those writers are
Orderic and William of Poitiers. And they are not unsupported. Geoffrey
Martel’s last act, a charter granted to Marmoutier on his deathbed, is
signed by his _nephew and successor-designate Geoffrey_, and by Fulk,
who is described simply as the latter’s brother (Mabille, introd.
_Comtes_, p. lxxxiv).

The conclusion to which all this leads is that Martel bequeathed the
whole of his dominions to his elder nephew Geoffrey, and that all the
conflicting stories of a division of territory were inventions to save
the character of Fulk Rechin. It is possible that Martel did, as Fulk
says, invest him with Saintonge, but even here it is evident that the
elder brother’s rights were reserved, for it is Geoffrey, not Fulk, who
fights for Saintonge with the duke of Aquitaine.

One portion of Martel’s dominions is named in none of these accounts,
except Fulk’s; and that is Maine. Fulk coolly puts it into the list of
his own possessions, and M. Mabille regards this as a blunder proving
that the author of the _Fragment_ was not what he professes to be.
May it not rather tell the other way? A forger would have remembered
that Maine was lost and not risked such a glaring falsehood; the count
ignores its _de facto_ loss because he holds himself its overlord
_de jure_. We shall find Geoffrey the Bearded making his appearance
as titular overlord of Maine in 1063. Did Martel feel about Maine as
William the Conqueror seems to have felt about England?


NOTE C.

THE WAR OF SAINTONGE.

The account of this war between Geoffrey the Bearded and Guy-Geoffrey,
_alias_ William VII., of Aquitaine, has to be made out from one direct
source and one indirect one. The first is the Chron. S. Maxent.
a. 1061 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 402, 403): “Goffredus et Fulco
habentes certamen cum Gaufredo duce propter Sanctonas, venientes
cum magno exercitu, pugnaverunt cum eo in bello etiam in Aquitaniâ,
ubi e contrario Pictavorum exercitus adunatus est; et ab utrisque
partibus magnis animositatibus pugnatum est, sed traditores belli et
ceteri signiferi, vexillis projectis, exercitum Pictavensium in fugam
verterunt. Quapropter vulnerati multi sunt et plurimi occisi atque
nonnulli capti; unde quidam versibus eam confusionem ita describit,
dicens: Cum de Pictavis bellum sit et Andegavinis, Inque die Martis
fuit et Sancti Benedicti, Circa forte Caput Wultonnæ contigit esse,
Annus millenus tunc sexagesimus unus.”

That entry comprises all the direct information on the subject. The
Angevin monastic chronicles and Fulk Rechin do not mention it at
all. Neither do the _Gesta Cons._ in the right place; but they mix
it up with the war between Geoffrey Martel and William the Fat in
1033. By the light of the Chron. S. Maxent., it seems possible to
disentangle the two stories. It even seems possible to make sense of
a passage in the _Gesta_ which never can be sense as it stands, by
understanding it as referring to Geoffrey the Bearded instead of his
uncle: “Willelmus Pictavensium comes consulatum Sanctonicum suum esse
volebat et vi preoccupatum tenebat, quia patrui sui fuerat. Martellus
eumdem consulatum reclamabat quia avi sui fuerat, cujus heredes absque
liberis mortui erant; et ideo ad heredes sororis avi sui debere reverti
affirmabat” (_Gesta Cons._, Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 126). This is the
story by which the _Gesta_-writer professes to explain the cause of
the war of Geoffrey Martel and William the Fat, of which he then gives
an elaborate account, ending with William’s capture and the consequent
surrender of Saintes to Geoffrey. But the story is utterly senseless;
the claims of William and Martel as therein stated are alike devoid of
all show of reason. In the account of the war itself, too, there are
strong traces of confusion; Saintes is assumed to have passed back into
the duke’s hands, of which there is no sign elsewhere; and to crown
all, the scene of the battle in which William is taken is laid, not as
by the Chron. S. Maxent. (a. 1032, Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 392) and
Fulk Rechin (_Comtes_, p. 378), at S. Jouin-de-Marne or Montcontour,
but at Chef-Boutonne. The question then arises: Can this wild tale in
the _Gesta_, which is quite impossible as an explanation of Martel’s
war with William V., be interpreted so as to explain his successor’s
war with William VII.?

“Willelmus [VII., _alias_ Guy-Geoffrey] Pictavensium comes consulatum
Sanctonicum suum esse volebat et vi præoccupatum tenebat [having
presumably seized it on Martel’s death], quia patrui sui [for _patrui_
read _fratris_--William the Fat--or _patris_, William the Great]
fuerat. Martellus [Barbatus] eumdem consulatum reclamabat, quia avi
sui [Fulconis Nerræ] fuerat, cujus hæredes [_i.e._ G. Martellus]
absque liberis mortui essent; et ideo ad hæredes sororis avi sui [read
_avunculi sui_--Martel’s sister, the Bearded one’s mother] debere
reverti affirmabat.”

Read in this way, the story is quite reasonable and intelligible,
and the rest of the _Gesta’s_ account might stand almost intact,
except the capture of the duke, which of course is dragged in from
the earlier war. The confusion between the Williams of Aquitaine is
easily accounted for, and so is that between the Geoffreys of Anjou,
especially as all the Geoffreys after Martel occasionally took to
themselves his cognomen.


NOTE D.

THE DESCENDANTS OF HERBERT WAKE-DOG.

Not the least puzzling matter connected with the Cenomannian wars is
the genealogy of the sovereign house of Maine. The succession of the
counts themselves--Hugh I. (or David), Herbert I. (Wake-dog), Hugh II.,
Herbert II.--is plain enough, as also that each was the son of his
predecessor. But the filiation of the women of the family--Margaret,
Gersendis, Paula and Biota--is far from being equally clear.

1. As to Margaret, there is no real doubt. Orderic does once (Duchesne,
_Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 683) call her a daughter of Herbert [II.];
but his own statements in two other places (_ib._ pp. 487 and 532), as
well as Will. Poitiers (_ib._ p. 190), shew that this is a mere slip.
Margaret was clearly a daughter of Hugh II. and sister of Herbert II.

2. As to Biota. Orderic (as above, p. 487) calls her “Hugonis
Cenomannensium comitis filiam”; in Will. Poitiers (_ib._ p. 189) she is
“_soror_ Hugonis”; and Mr. Freeman (_Norm. Conq._, 3d ed., vol. iii. p.
200, and note T, p. 676) adopts the latter version. Biota, then, was a
daughter of Herbert Wake-dog and sister of Hugh II. But were Gersendis
and Paula her sisters or her nieces?

3. The fullest and most distinct statement of the Cenomannian pedigree
is that of Orderic in Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 532: “Hugo
filius Herberti ... Bertam ... in conjugium accepit; quæ filium nomine
Herbertum et tres filias ei peperit. Una earum data est Azsoni Marchiso
Liguriæ. Alia nomine Margarita Rodberto filio Guillelmi Ducis Neustriæ
desponsata est ... Tertia vero Joanni domino castri quod Flecchia
dicitur nupsit.”

With regard to this last marriage, it is to be observed that in the
speech which Orderic puts into the mouth of Elias of La Flèche,
addressing Hugh of Este (_ib._ p. 684), he says nothing about his
mother at all, but makes him trace his descent from Herbert Wake-dog
through his grandmother, whom he calls Herbert’s daughter: “Filia
Herberti comitis Lancelino de Balgenceio nupsit, eique ... Joannem
meum genitorem peperit.” The name of John’s wife, Paula, comes from
another passage of Orderic (_ib._ p. 768); but he there says nothing
about her parentage, merely calling her son Elias “Hugonis Cenomannorum
consulis consobrinus.” The houses of Le Mans and La Flèche cannot have
intermarried twice in two succeeding generations; one of Orderic’s
statements must be wrong; but which, I cannot decide.

The last point is the parentage of Gersendis, the wife of Azzo of Este;
and as the whole tone of Elias’s speech (as above) implies that he and
her son were related to the counts of Le Mans in the same degree, the
solution of this question might almost be held to decide the previous
one also. This seems to be Mr. Freeman’s opinion, and he regards
Orderic’s statement quoted above as conclusive that Gersendis and Paula
were both daughters of Hugh II., and sisters therefore of Margaret
and Herbert II., in spite of the biographer of the bishops of Le Mans
(Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p. 308), who expressly says that Gersendis
was a daughter of Herbert Wake-dog, and the continuator of Will.
Jumièges, who says:--“Cenomannenses ... consilium ineunt cum Heliâ
filio Joannis de Flecâ ... ut _filiam cujusdam comitis Langobardiæ,
neptem videlicet Hereberti quondam Cenomannensis comitis ex primogenitâ
filiâ_, in matrimonium ducat.” Will. Jumièges, l. viii. c. 5 (Duchesne,
_Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 294). This re-appears in R. Diceto (Stubbs,
vol. i. pp. 183, 184; Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 334) in the following
form:--“Helias, filius Johannis de Flecâ, Sibillam, filiam cujusdam
comitis Longobardiæ, neptem scilicet Hereberti quondam Cenomannorum
comitis, duxit uxorem, et cum eâ comitatum Cenomanniæ suscepit.” But
this is certainly wrong; for the first wife of Elias was Matilda of
Château-du-Loir, and the second was Agnes of Perche.

What Elias could have had to gain by the marriage thus proposed for him
it is impossible to guess, as he himself certainly was quite as nearly
related to the counts of Maine as this oddly-described bride could have
been. Mr. Freeman (_Norm. Conq._, 3d ed., vol. iii., note T, p. 676),
takes the description as favouring Orderic’s theory, and remarks: “The
words could only have been written by one who looked on Gersendis as
a sister of Herbert.” “Neptem Hereberti,” then, he interprets, “niece
of Herbert [II].” But is it not a much simpler interpretation of the
whole phrase--“_neptem Hereberti ex primogenitâ filiâ_”--to read it
“granddaughter of Herbert [I.] through his eldest daughter”? In that
case, we should have another witness on the side of the bishops’
biographer.

There is another curious bit of evidence which at first glance seems
also to tell in his favour. I do not think that it really proves
anything about the matter; but it is worth examining for other reasons.
M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (_Comtes de Champagne_, vol. i. p. 392, note
5), declares it proved on documentary evidence that Stephen-Henry of
Blois, the father of our King Stephen, was the son of Theobald III.
by his first marriage with Gersendis of Maine. About the marriage
itself there is no doubt, nor about the divorce which followed it;
and the latter had taken place in 1049 at latest, for Theobald was
excommunicated for that very cause by the Council of Reims. Most
historians seem however to have supposed that Gersendis was then a mere
child, and that the mother of Stephen, as well as of Theobald’s other
children, was his second wife, Adela of Valois. M. de Jubainville, in
support of his opinion, refers especially to two charters. One is in
_Gallia Christiana_, vol. viii., instr. col. 548. It has no date, and
says nothing about Stephen’s mother or his stepmother; I therefore
cannot see its bearing on the question. The other is in Bernier,
_Histoire de Blois, preuves_, pp. xiii–xiv. In it Stephen-Henry, in the
year 1089, grants certain lands to Pontlevoy “pro animæ meæ et uxoris
et Theobaldi patris mei et _matris meæ Gandree_ ... remedio”; and has
the grant confirmed “nomine ... Alæ uxoris meæ, _Alæ uxoris Thebaudi
comitis_,” etc. This certainly seems to shew that Adela was not his
mother, though it does not necessarily follow that “Gandree” represents
Gersendis. If it does, Stephen-Henry must have been born in 1049 at
latest, and therefore Gersendis cannot possibly have been a daughter of
Hugh II., who was not married till 1040 at the very earliest.

The greatest puzzle in the whole matter, however, is this: If
Stephen-Henry was really the eldest son of Gersendis of Maine, how
does it happen that neither in 1073, nor in 1089, nor in any of the
Cenomannian revolutions and wars, do we hear a single word about his
claims upon the county? M. d’Arbois de Jubainville’s suggestion in fact
opens a question much more important and much more obscure than that of
the age and parentage of Gersendis. He certainly seems to have proved
that Adela of Valois was not Stephen’s mother; but has he proved that
Gersendis was? The only bit of evidence, direct or indirect, which
it seems possible to bring to bear upon this matter is a passage in
the _Historia Pontificalis_ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx. p.
531) where it is said that the cause of our King Stephen was upheld
by some of the Roman cardinals who claimed kindred with him “eo quod
avia ejus Lumbarda fuerit.” Now, as the second husband of Gersendis
was a Lombard, this may come from some confused idea about her. But it
also suggests another possible solution of the whole question about
Stephen-Henry’s mother. Theobald and Gersendis were divorced in 1049 at
latest; the first record in which Adela appears as Theobald’s wife is
dated 1061 (Jubainville, _Comtes de Champagne_, vol. i. p. 393, note
3). May not the mysterious “Gandrea” of the charter of 1089 have been
an Italian lady who was married to Theobald, became the mother of his
heir, and died, between those two dates?


NOTE E.

THE SIEGE OF LA FLÈCHE AND TREATY OF BLANCHELANDE.

There are two questionable points connected with these matters: 1. the
date; 2. the geography.

1. The only original writer who gives a detailed account of both siege
and treaty is Orderic, who carries his story straight on from the
quelling of the revolt of Maine in 1073 to the siege of La Flèche, as
if it had all happened in the same year, before William returned to
England with his troops. On the other hand, none of the Angevin writers
mention La Flèche under date 1073; but the Chronn. S. Albin. and S.
Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 26, 189) have “Exercitus de
Fissâ,” the former in 1077, the latter in 1078; and in the _Art de
vérifier les Dates_ these entries are interpreted as referring to the
siege which was followed by the treaty of Blanchelande. M. Voisin (_Les
Cénomans_, p. 414) dates the whole affair 1085; he gives no reason
and seems to be quite unsupported. The choice lies therefore between
Orderic’s date and that of the Angevin chronicles. Mr. Freeman (_Norm.
Conq._, vol. iv. pp. 560–563) follows Orderic, and I have done the same.

2. As to the geography. Orderic (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p.
533) says that to meet William the Angevin and Breton host, leaving
La Flèche, “Ligerim fluvium audacter pertransierunt.” Now this must
be wrong, as the Loire is a long way south of La Flèche. It is clear
that for _Ligerim_, “Loire,” we must read _Liderim_, “Loir,” as Mr.
Freeman says (_Norm. Conq._, vol. iv. p. 562, note 2). Even crossing
the Loir seems rather a strange proceeding; for La Flèche being on
the right or north bank of that river, they must have crossed it to
the southward--_i.e._ away from Normandy. How came it that William,
marching against them out of Normandy, had gone so far down to the
south of them?

There is however a further question as to the actual place of the
treaty, which Mr. Freeman (as above, p. 562) places at Bruère in the
Passais. If such was the case, Orderic’s story of the crossing of the
river becomes quite hopeless, as Bruère is a long way north-west of La
Flèche. But there is another version. J. Pesche in his _Dictionnaire
historique de la Sarthe_, vol. i. p. 168, under “_Blanchelande_ ou
_Blanche-bruyère_,” says: “Vaste espace de terrain infertile, où croît
abondamment le lichen des rennes, dont la blancheur lui aura fait
donner son nom; situé _entre La Flèche et Le Lude_, côtoyé par la route
qui conduit de l’une à l’autre de ces deux villes.” It is this which
Pesche and, following him, M. Voisin (_Les Cénomans_, p. 414, note
1) mark as the scene of the treaty. So does M. Prévost in a note to
Orderic, vol. ii. p. 258, and he adds that a farm there still in 1840
bore the name of Blanchelande. If this theory is correct, Orderic’s
geography is quite right and clear; the besiegers of La Flèche, on the
north side of the Loir, crossing over to its southern bank, would march
straight upon the “white moor.” William must then have crossed higher
up and made a circuit to the south-east of them. The only question
remaining would be, what was his reason for this movement? To which
there was doubtless a good military answer.

With regard to the second siege of La Flèche by Fulk Rechin, in 1081,
there is a very strange story in the Chron. Rain. Andeg. (Marchegay,
_Eglises_, p. 13). We are there told that Fulk not only took and burned
the castle (as the Chron. S. Albin., _ib._ p. 26, also states under
the same year) in revenge, for John’s rebellion against him, but also
punished King William for his previous relief of the castle, by so
worsting him in battle that he retreated after giving hostages for
peace, among whom were his brother the count of Mortain and his own
son! Mr. Freeman says nothing of this very apocryphal-looking story. Is
it anything more than an Angevin travesty of Robert’s homage to Fulk at
Blanchelande?


NOTE F.

THE MARRIAGE OF GEOFFREY AND MATILDA.

The date of this marriage is commonly given as 1127. A comparison of
evidence seems however to lead to the conclusion that its true date is
1128.

1. The Angevin chronicles never mention the marriage at all. The _Gesta
Cons._, Will. Jumièges and several other writers mention it without
any kind of date. The English Chronicle, Sim. Durh., Will. Malm. and
Hen. Hunt. give no distinct date, but imply that the proposal was
immediately followed by the wedding. They speak as if Robert and Brian
had taken Matilda over sea and married her to Geoffrey without more ado.

2. Orderic mentions the marriage in two places. In the first (Duchesne,
_Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 763) he gives no clue to the date; in the
second (_ib._ p. 889) he dates it 1129.

3. The Chron. Fiscannense (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 778)
dates it 1127.

4. A charter of agreement between the bishop of Séez and the convent
of Marmoutier (printed in Gilles Bry’s _Hist. de Perche_, p. 106)
has “signum Henrici Regis quando dedit filiam suam Gaufredo comiti
Andegavensi juniori.” It is dated “anno ab Inc. Dom. 1127, Indictione
VI.”

5. The last witness is John of Marmoutier, the author of the _Historia
Gaufredi Ducis_. From him we might have expected a distinct and
authentic statement; but he does not mention the year at all. He says
that Geoffrey was knighted on Whit-Sunday and married on its octave,
and that he was then fifteen years of age (_Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_,
Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 236, 233). Afterwards, in speaking of the
birth of Henry Fitz-Empress, he says that it took place in the fourth
year of his parents’ marriage (_ib._ pp. 277, 278). Henry was born
on Mid-Lent Sunday, March 5, 1133; if therefore the writer reckoned
backwards from the Whitsuntide of that year, his words ought to
mean that the marriage was in 1129. But as he goes on to state that
Matilda’s third son was born in the sixth year of her marriage, and
that Henry I. died “anno eodem, ab Incarnatione videlicet Domini 1137,”
it is impossible to say what he did mean. Whether he is collecting
the traditions of the ancient counts or writing the life of his own
contemporary sovereign, John’s chronology is pursued by the same fate;
whenever he mentions a date by the year, he is almost certain to make
it wrong. But that he should have done the like in his reckoning of
days, or even of his hero’s age, by no means follows. To consider the
latter point first: Geoffrey the Handsome was born on August 24, 1113
(Chron. S. Albin. _ad ann._, Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 32). Therefore,
if John meant that he was past fifteen at his marriage, it must have
been in 1129. But if he only meant “in his fifteenth year,” it would be
1128. In that year the octave of Pentecost fell on June 17; Geoffrey
then lacked but two months to the completion of his fifteenth year; and
considering Matilda’s age, it is no wonder that the panegyrist tried
to make her husband out as old as possible. It is in fact plain that
such was his intention, for though he places Geoffrey’s death in the
right year, 1151, he gives his age as forty-one instead of thirty-eight
(_Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_, Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 292).

The most important matter, however, is John’s statement that the
wedding took place on the octave of Pentecost. The date in this case
is not one casually slipped in by the writer in passing; it comes in
a detailed account of the festivities at Rouen on the occasion of
Geoffrey’s knighting, which is expressly said to have occurred at
Pentecost, and to have been followed by his marriage on the octave. Now
this leaves us on the horns of a dilemma fatal alike to the date in the
Chron. Fiscann., 1127, and to that of Orderic, 1129. For, on the one
hand, Will. Malm. (_Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 3, Hardy, p. 692) says that
Matilda did not go to Normandy till _after_ Whitsuntide [1127]; and
Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 37 (Arnold, p. 247), adds that the king followed
her in August (Sim. Durh., ed. Arnold, vol. ii. pp. 281, 282, really
witnesses to the same effect; for his chronology of the whole story is
a year in advance). Consequently, as Mrs. Everett Green remarks, “the
union could not have taken place before the spring of the following
year, 1128” (_Princesses of England_, vol. i. pp. 107, 108). On the
other hand, it is plain that Fulk was present at his son’s wedding; but
before Whitsuntide 1129 Fulk was himself married to the princess of
Jerusalem (Will. Tyr., l. xiii. c. 24).

From all this it results: 1. If Geoffrey and Matilda were married in
1127, it cannot have been earlier than September, _i.e._ at least three
months after Whitsuntide. 2. If they were married in 1129, it must
have been quite at the beginning of the year, and Orderic must, on
this occasion at least, have made his year begin in English fashion,
at Christmas. 3. If they were married at Whitsuntide, it can only have
been in 1128.

We have in short to choose one out of three authorities: the Chronicle
of Fécamp, Orderic and John of Marmoutier--for the Séez charter, as
Mrs. Everett Green remarks (_Princesses_, vol. i. p. 108), proves
nothing more than that the betrothal had taken place in 1127. Of these
three, the first is certainly of least account. Orderic, on the other
hand, is on most other subjects a far better authority than John. But
his chronology is very little better than John’s, at any rate towards
the close of his work; his whole account of Henry’s later years is
sketchy and confused; while John is Geoffrey Plantagenet’s own special
biographer, writing within sixty years of the event, from materials
furnished by personal followers of his hero. I cannot but regard him
as our primary authority on this subject, and believe on his testimony
that the real wedding-day of Geoffrey and Matilda was the octave of
Pentecost, June 17, 1128.



CHAPTER V.

GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET AND STEPHEN OF BLOIS.

1128–1139.


All the mental and bodily gifts wherewith nature had endowed the most
favoured members of the Angevin house seemed to have been showered
upon the eldest son of Fulk V. and Aremburg of Maine. The surname by
which he is most generally known, and which an inveterate usage has
attached to his descendants as well as to himself, is in its origin and
meaning curiously unlike most historical surnames; it seems to have
been derived simply from his boyish habit of adorning his cap with a
sprig of “planta-genista,” the broom which in early summer makes the
open country of Anjou and Maine a blaze of living gold. With a fair
and ruddy countenance, lit up by the lightning-glance of a pair of
brilliant eyes; a tall, slender, sinewy frame, made for grace no less
than for strength and activity:--[628] in the unanimous opinion of his
contemporaries, he was emphatically “Geoffrey the Handsome.” To this
prepossessing appearance were added the charms of a gracious manner
and a ready, pleasant speech;[629] and beneath this winning exterior
there lay a considerable share of the quick wits of his race, sharpened
and developed by such a careful education as was given to very few
princes of the time. The intellectual soil was worthy of the pains
bestowed upon it, and brought forth a harvest of, perhaps, somewhat too
precocious scholarship and sagacity. Geoffrey’s fondness for the study
of the past seems to have been an inheritance from Fulk Rechin; the
historian-count might have been proud of a grandson who carried in his
memory all the battles fought, all the great deeds done, not only by
his own people but also in foreign lands.[630] Even Fulk the Good might
have approved a descendant who when still a mere boy could shine in
serious conversation with such a “lettered king” as Henry I.;[631] and
Fulk the Black might not have been ashamed of one who in early youth
felt the “demon-blood” within him too hot to rest content in luxury
and idleness, avoided the corrupting influences of mere revelry, gave
himself up to the active exercises of military life,[632] and, while so
devoted to letters that he would not even go to war without a learned
teacher by his side,[633] turned his book-learning to account in ways
at which ruder warriors and more unworldly scholars were evidently
somewhat astonished.[634] Like his ancestor the Black Count, Geoffrey
was one of those men about whom their intimate associates have a fund
of anecdotes to tell. The “History” of his life put together from
their information, a few years after his death, is chiefly made up of
these stories; and through the mass of trite moralizing and pedantic
verbiage in which the compiler has imbedded them there still peeps out
unmistakeably the peculiar temper of his hero. Geoffrey’s readiness to
forgive those who threw themselves upon his mercy is a favourite theme
of his biographer’s praise; but the instances given of this clemency
indicate more of the vanity and display of chivalry in its narrower
sense than of real tenderness of heart or generosity of soul. Such is
the story of a discontented knight whose ill-will against his sovereign
took the grotesque form of a wish that he had the neck of “that
red-head Geoffrey” fast between the two hot iron plates used for making
a wafer-cake called _oublie_. It chanced that the man whose making of
_oublies_--then, as now, a separate trade--had suggested the wish of
this knight at St.-Aignan shortly afterwards made some for the eating
and in the presence of Count Geoffrey himself, to whom he related
what he had heard. The knight and his comrades were presently caught
harrying the count’s lands; and the biographer is lost in admiration
at Geoffrey’s generosity in forgiving not only their depredations, but
the more heinous crime of having, in a fit of ill-temper after dinner,
expressed a desire to make a wafer of him.[635] On another occasion
we find the count’s wrath averted by the charms of music and verse,
enhanced no doubt by the further charm of a little flattery. Four
Poitevin knights who had been taken captive in one of the skirmishes
so common on the Aquitanian border won their release by the truly
southern expedient of singing in Geoffrey’s hearing a rime which
they had composed in his praise.[636] A touch of truer poetry comes
out in another story. Geoffrey, with a great train of attendants and
noble guests, was once keeping Christmas at Le Mans. From his private
chapel, where he had been attending the nocturnal services of the
vigil, he set out at daybreak at the head of a procession to celebrate
in the cathedral church the holy mysteries of the festival. At the
cathedral door he met a poorly-dressed young clerk, whom he flippantly
saluted: “Any news, sir clerkling?”--“Ay, my lord, the best of good
news!”--“What?” cried Geoffrey, all his curiosity aroused--“tell me
quick!”--“‘Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given!’” Abashed,
Geoffrey asked the youth his name, bade him join the other clergy in
the choir, and as soon as mass was over went straight to the bishop:
“For the love of Him Who was born this day, give me a prebend in your
church.” It was no sooner granted than taking his new acquaintance by
the hand, he begged leave to make him his substitute, and added the
further gift of a stall in his own chapel, as a token of gratitude to
the poor clerk whose answer to his thoughtless question had brought
home to him, perhaps more deeply than he had ever felt them before, the
glad tidings of Christmas morning.[637] From another of these anecdotes
Geoffrey seems, as far as we can make out, to have been the original
hero of an adventure which has since, in slightly varying forms, been
attributed to several other princes, from Charles the Great down to
James the Fifth of Scotland, and which indeed may easily have happened
more than once. Led away by his ardour in pursuit of the chase--next to
literature, his favourite recreation--the count one day outstripped all
his followers, and lost his way alone in the forest of Loches. At last
he fell in with a charcoal-burner, who undertook to conduct him back
to the castle. Geoffrey mounted his guide behind him; and as they rode
along, the peasant, ignorant of his companion’s rank, and taking him
for a simple knight, let himself be drawn into conversation on sundry
matters, including a free criticism on the government of the reigning
count, and the oppressions suffered by the people at the hands of his
household officers. When they reached the gates of Loches, the burst of
joy which greeted the wanderer’s return revealed to the poor man that
he had been talking to the count himself. Overwhelmed with dismay, he
tried to slip off the horse’s back; but Geoffrey held him fast, gave
him the place of honour at the evening banquet, sent him home next day
with a grant of freedom and a liberal gift of money, and profited by
the information acquired from him to institute a thorough reform in the
administration of his own household.[638]

        [628] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 233.

        [629] _Ib._ pp. 232, 233.

        [630] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 232.

        [631] _Ib._ p. 235.

        [632] _Ib._ p. 233.

        [633] _Ib._ p. 276.

        [634] See the story of the siege of Montreuil-Bellay, _Hist.
        Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 286.

        [635] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 257–260.

        [636] _Ib._ pp. 253–256.

        [637] _Ib._ pp. 274–276.

        [638] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 240–250.

Such stories as these, while they help us to form some picture of the
manner of man that Geoffrey was, set him before us in the romantic
light in which he appears to the best advantage. When one turns from
them to a survey of his life as a whole, one is struck with a sense of
something wanting in him. The deficiency was in truth a very serious
one; it was a lack of steady principle and of genuine feeling. The
imaginative and impulsive vein which ran through all the more refined
characters of his race lay in him very near the surface, but it did
not go very deep. His imagination was sensitive, but his heart was
cold; his impulses sprang from the play of a quick fancy, not from
the passion of an ardent soul. One more story may furnish a slight,
but significant, illustration of his temper. For some wrong done to
the see of Tours Geoffrey was once threatened by the archbishop with
excommunication. Either the earlier or the later Fulk of Jerusalem
would have almost certainly begun by a reckless defiance of the threat,
and the later one, at least, would almost as surely have ended by
hearty penance. Geoffrey began and ended with a jest: “Your threats
are vain, most reverend father; you know that the archbishop of Tours
has no jurisdiction over the patrimony of S. Martin, and that I am
one of his canons!”[639] In all the sterling qualities of a ruler and
a man, the hasty, restless, downright Fulk V. was as superior to his
clever charming son as Fulk the Black was superior to Geoffrey Martel.
But it is only fair to bear in mind that Geoffrey Plantagenet’s life
was to a great extent spoilt by his marriage. The yoke which bound
together a lad of fifteen and a woman of twenty-five--especially such a
woman as the Empress Matilda--could not fail to press heavily on both
parties; but the one most seriously injured by it was probably the
young husband. Even in a political point of view, to him personally
his marriage was more of a hindrance than an advantage; it cut him
off from all chance of striking out an independent career. The man
himself was in fact sacrificed to his posterity. Chained down while
his character was yet undeveloped to the irksome position of a mere
appendage to King Henry’s heiress;--plunged suddenly, and for life,
into a sphere of interests and duties alien from his own natural temper
and inclinations:--weak, selfish, unprincipled as Geoffrey too plainly
shewed himself to be, still it was well not only for him but for
others that he had enough of the dogged Angevin thoroughness to carry
him safely and successfully, if not always gloriously, through his
somewhat dreary task till he could make it over to the freer, as well
as stronger, hands of his son.

        [639] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 252.

The hope which inspired both the king of England and the count of
Anjou when they planned their children’s marriage can only have been
the hope of a grandson in whom the blood of both would be united, who
would gather into his own person all conflicting claims, and in whom
all feuds would have an end. On this depended all King Henry’s schemes
for the future; on this were concentrated all his desires, on this were
founded all his plans and arrangements during the last seven years
of his reign. In the internal history of England those years are an
almost complete blank; they are in fact simply seven more years of the
administration of Bishop Roger of Salisbury, for Henry himself spent
almost the whole of them upon the continent. His work was finished, and
all that remained to do was to maintain the order of things which he
had established so as to hand it on in full working to his successor.
He must, however, have begun to doubt the success of his schemes when
Geoffrey and Matilda separated little more than twelve months after
their marriage. At first, everything had seemed to be turning in favour
of Henry’s arrangements. Six weeks after the wedding, the death of
William the Clito, wounded in a skirmish with a rival claimant of the
county of Flanders,[640] removed the only competitor whom the king
could deem likely to stand in the way of his plans for the descent of
the crown. In the spring Fulk’s departure for Holy Land left the young
couple sole masters at Angers. All things looked tranquil and secure
when Henry returned to England in July 1129. He had, however, been
there only a few days when he learned, to his great indignation, that
his daughter had been sent away with scorn by her husband, and had
betaken herself with a few attendants to Rouen.[641] There she remained
for nearly two years, while Geoffrey was busy with a general revolt
among his barons. East and west and south and north had all risen at
once; the list of rebels includes the chief landowners in all parts of
the Angevin dominions, from the old eastern outpost Amboise to Laval on
the Breton border, and from Sablé on the confines of Anjou and Maine
to Montreuil-Bellay, Thouars and Mirebeau in the Aquitanian territory
of Loudun, and the yet more remote fief of Parthenay in Poitou.[642]
It seems as if the disaffected barons, worsted in their struggle
with Fulk, had only been waiting till he was out of the country, and
now, when Geoffrey by his quarrel with his wife had deprived himself
of all chance of help from his father-in-law, they closed in upon the
boy-count with one consent, thinking to get him into their power and
wring from him any concessions they pleased. They unintentionally did
him an immense service, for by thus suddenly throwing him upon his
own resources they made a man of him at once. No one knew better than
Geoffrey Plantagenet that he was not the first count of Anjou who had
been left to shift for himself in difficult circumstances at the age
of fifteen; and he faced the danger with a promptitude and energy not
unworthy of Fulk Nerra’s representative. One after another he besieged
the rebel leaders in their strongholds; one after another was forced,
tricked or frightened into submission. Once, while besieging Theobald
of Blazon in the great fortress of Mirebeau, Geoffrey was blockaded
in his turn by the count of Poitou, whom the traitors had called to
their aid; even from this peril, however, his quick wit and youthful
energy extricated him in triumph; and the revolt was finally crushed
by a severe punishment inflicted on its most powerful leader, Lisiard
of Sablé. Geoffrey ravaged the whole of Lisiard’s estates, razed his
castle of Briolet, seized that of Suze and kept it in his own hands for
the rest of its owner’s life; while to guard against further dangers
from the same quarter, by the advice of his faithful barons he reared,
for the express purpose of defence against incursions from Sablé, a
fortress to which he gave the name of Châteauneuf, on the left bank of
the Sarthe, just below the bridge made famous by the death of Count
Robert the Brave.[643]

        [640] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 886,
        887.

        [641] Sim. Durh. _Gesta Reg._ a. 1129.

        [642] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 263.

        [643] For the barons’ revolt, see _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_
        (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 263–268. The strange and not very
        clear story of the double siege of Mirebeau is in pp. 265, 266.
        “Exercitus de Mirebello” is recorded in Chronn. S. Albin. and
        S. Flor. Salm. a. 1130 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 33, 191).
        The Chron. S. Albin. also records the building of Châteauneuf,
        a. 1131; the _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_, p. 270, connects it with
        the revolt of a lord of Sablé, but apparently with the later
        revolt of Lisiard’s son Robert--which, however, the date in the
        chronicle shows to be a mistake.

King Henry had joined his daughter in Normandy in the summer of 1130;
in July of the next year they returned to England together. They were
soon followed by a message from Geoffrey, who was now becoming awake to
his rights and duties as husband of King Henry’s heiress, and having
made himself thoroughly master in his own dominions felt it time to
demand the return of his wife. A great council held at Northampton on
September 8 decided that his request should be granted;[644] and the
assembled prelates and barons repeated their homage to Matilda as her
father’s destined successor.[645] She then went back to her husband, by
whom she was, if not warmly welcomed, at least received with all due
courtesy and honour.[646] Fortunately for the ill-matched couple, they
were both of that cold-blooded temperament to which intense personal
affection is not a necessary of life. Henceforth they were content
to work together as partners in political enterprise, and to find in
community of worldly interests a sufficient bond of union. On Mid-Lent
Sunday--March 5, 1133--the bond was made indissoluble by the birth of
their son and heir. Most fittingly, the child to whom so many diverse
nationalities looked as to their future sovereign[647] was born not in
the actual home of either of his parents, but in that city of Le Mans
which lay midway between Normandy and Anjou, which had so long been the
ground of their strife, and had at last been made the scene of their
union.[648] He was baptized in the cathedral church by the bishop of
the diocese on Easter Eve, receiving the name of his grandfather Henry,
and was then, by his mother’s special desire, solemnly placed under the
protection of the local patron saint on the same altar where his father
had been dedicated in like manner thirteen years before.[649]

        [644] Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 41 (Arnold, p. 252).

        [645] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 6 (Hardy, p. 698).

        [646] Hen. Hunt. as above.

        [647] “Quem multi populi dominum expectant.” Ord. Vit.
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 763.

        [648] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 36 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._,
        p. 322). Cf. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1133 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 33, 144, 145), Chron. S. Flor. Salm. a. 1133
        (_ib._ p. 191, giving a wrong day), _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_
        (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 277, 278, also wrongly dated.

        [649] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ as above.

To King Henry the birth of his grandson was the crowning of all his
hopes. The greatest difficulty which had hitherto stood in the way
of his scheme for the descent of the crown--the objection which was
sure to be made against Matilda on account of her sex--would lose
more than half its force now that she could be regarded as regent
for her infant son; and Henry at once summoned another great council
at which he again made the archbishops, bishops, earls and barons
of his realm swear fealty to the Empress “and also to her little
son whom he appointed to be king after him.”[650] All things seemed
as safe as human foresight could make them when in the beginning of
August he crossed over to Normandy.[651] Signs and wonders in earth
and sky, related afterwards as tokens of coming evil, accompanied his
voyage;[652] but nearly two years passed away before the portents
were fulfilled. In the spring Matilda joined her father at Rouen, and
there, shortly before Whitsuntide, her second son was born.[653] The
old king’s pleasure in his two little grandchildren was great enough to
keep him lingering on in Normandy with them and their mother, leaving
England to the care of Bishop Roger, till the middle of the following
year,[654] when there came tidings of disturbance on the Welsh border
which made him feel it was time he should return.[655] His daughter
however set herself against his departure. Her policy is not very
clear; but it seems impossible to acquit her of playing a double game
and secretly instigating her husband to attack her father while the
latter was living with her in unsuspecting intimacy and confidence.
Geoffrey now suddenly put forth a claim to certain castles in Normandy
which he asserted had been promised to him at his marriage.[656]
Henry denied the claim; the Angevin temper burst forth at once;
Geoffrey attacked and burned the castle of Beaumont, whose lord was
like himself a son-in-law of Henry, and altogether behaved with such
insulting violence that the king in his wrath was on the point of
taking Matilda, who was with him at Rouen all the while, back with him
to England. But he now found it impossible to leave Normandy. The land
was full of treason; many barons who only disguised their real feelings
from awe of the stern old king had been gained over in secret to the
Angevin cause; among those whose fidelity was most suspected were
Roger of Toëny and William Talvas the lord of Alençon, who had been
restored to the forfeited estates of his family at the intercession of
Geoffrey’s father in 1119. Roger’s castle of Conches was garrisoned
by the king; William Talvas was summoned to Rouen more than once, but
the conscious traitor dared not shew his face; at last Henry again
seized his estates, and then, in September, Talvas fled across the
border to be received with open arms by the count of Anjou.[657] The
countess pleaded warmly with her father for the traitor’s pardon, but
in vain. When she found him inexorable, she suddenly threw off the mask
and shewed on which side her real sympathies lay by parting from the
king in anger and going home to her husband at Angers.[658] Father and
daughter never met again. In the last week of November Henry fell sick
while hunting in the Forest of Lions; feeling his end near, he sent
for his old friend Archbishop Hugh of Rouen to receive his confession
and give him the last sacraments. His son Earl Robert of Gloucester
hurried to the spot at the first tidings of his illness; his daughter
made no sign of a wish for reconciliation; yet when the earl and the
primate asked for his final instructions concerning the succession to
the crown, he remained true to his cherished purpose and once more
bequeathed all his dominions on both sides of the sea to Matilda and
her heirs for ever.[659] He died on the night of December 1, 1135.[660]

        [650] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 187.

        [651] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 8 (Hardy, p. 700).

        [652] Eng. Chron. a. 1135.

        [653] Chron. S. Albin. and Rob. Torigni, a. 1134.

        [654] Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 43 (Arnold, p. 253).

        [655] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 900.

        [656] This is the version of Orderic (as above); according
        to Rob. Torigni (a. 1135) the claim included a good deal
        more: “Erat et alia causa ipsius discordiæ major, quia rex
        nolebat facere fidelitatem filiæ suæ et marito ejus de omnibus
        firmitatibus Normanniæ et Angliæ.”

        [657] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 900.

        [658] Rob. Torigni, a. 1133. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii.
        c. 34 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 310).

        [659] So says Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 8 (Hardy, p.
        701). We shall see however that there were other versions of
        Henry’s final testamentary dispositions.

        [660] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 8 (Hardy, p. 700).
        Flor. Worc. Contin. a. 1135 (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 95). Hen.
        Hunt., l. vii. c. 43 (Arnold, p. 254). Will. Jumièges Contin.,
        l. viii. c. 33 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 309). Ord.
        Vit. (_ibid._), p. 901.

With him expired the direct male line of the Conqueror; for Duke
Robert’s long captivity had ended a year before.[661] Of the nine
children of William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders, the youngest
and the last survivor was now gone, leaving as his sole representatives
his daughter the countess of Anjou and her infant boys. By a
thrice-repeated oath the barons of Normandy and England stood pledged
to acknowledge her as their sovereign. Suddenly there sprang forth an
unexpected competitor. A rivalry which had seemed dead for nearly a
hundred years revived in a new form; and the house of Anjou, on the
very eve of its triumph, found itself once more face to face with the
deadliest of its early foes--the house of Blois.

        [661] Flor. Worc. Contin. a. 1134 (Thorpe, vol. ii. pp. 94, 95).

Since Geoffrey Martel’s victory over Theobald III. in 1044 the counts
of Blois have ceased to play a prominent part in our story. Theobald
himself accepted his defeat as final; he seems indeed to have been
almost crushed by it, for he scarcely makes any further appearance
in history, save at his brother Stephen’s death in 1047, when he
requited the help which Stephen had given him against Anjou by turning
his son out of Champagne and appropriating all his possessions. The
injured heir took refuge in Normandy, married the Conqueror’s sister,
and afterwards found in England such ample compensation for what he
had lost that neither he nor his posterity ever made any attempt to
regain their continental heritage. The reunion of Champagne thus
helped to repair the fortunes of the elder line of Blois, so severely
shattered by the blows of the Angevin Hammer; and the ill-gotten gain
prospered so far that some thirty-five years later Theobald’s son and
successor--the young Count Stephen-Henry who in 1069 received Fulk
Rechin’s homage for Touraine--could venture on aspiring to the hand of
King William’s daughter Adela.[662] In winning her he won a prize of
which he was scarcely worthy. Stephen-Henry was indeed, in every way,
a better man than either his father or his grandfather; but he had the
nerveless, unstable temper which was the curse of his race. He went on
the Crusade, and deserted before Antioch was won. He came home to bury
his shame; his wife sent him out again to expiate it. Her burning words
changed the coward into a martyr, and the stain was washed out in his
life-blood beneath the walls of Ramah.[663] In the ordinary course of
things, his successor in the counties of Blois, Chartres and Champagne
would have been his eldest son William. But Stephen had left the entire
control of his affairs, including the disposal of his territories, to
his wife; and Adela knew that her firstborn was a youth of slow wit,
quite unfit for public life. She therefore disinherited him, to his own
complete satisfaction; for he had sense enough to be conscious of his
incapacity for government, and gladly withdrew to the more congenial
life of a simple country gentleman on the estates of his wife, the
lady of Sully in Champagne, while the duties and responsibilities of
the head of the family were laid on the abler shoulders of his next
brother, Theobald. Of the two remaining brothers, the youngest had
been from his infancy dedicated to the Church; the third, who bore his
father’s name of Stephen, had been intrusted for education to his uncle
the king of England.[664] Adela seems to have been Henry’s favourite
sister; she was certainly, in all qualities both of heart and head,
well worthy of his confidence and esteem; and she once at least did
him a service which deserved his utmost gratitude, for it was she who
contrived the opportunity for his reconciliation with S. Anselm. She
was moreover the only one of his sisters who had children; and the
relation between a man and his sister’s son was in the Middle Ages held
as a specially dear and sacred tie. Its force was fully acknowledged
by Henry in the case of the little Stephen. He had the child carefully
brought up at his court with his own son; he knighted him with his own
hand, and bestowed on him, in addition to ample estates in England, the
Norman county of Mortain, which had been for several generations held
by a near connexion of the ducal house, and entitled its possessor to
rank as the first baron of the duchy. Finally, some few years before
the second marriage of the Empress, he arranged a match between Stephen
and another Matilda of scarcely less illustrious descent--the only
daughter and heiress of Count Eustace of Boulogne and Mary of Scotland,
sister to Henry’s own queen.[665] Stephen seems in fact to have been,
next to William the Ætheling, the person for whom Henry cared most;
and after the disaster of the White Ship--in which a lucky attack of
illness saved him from sharing--he became virtually the king’s adoptive
son, and the first layman in the kingdom. His position is illustrated
by a dispute which occurred when the barons took the oath of homage
and fealty to Matilda in the Christmas council of 1126. They swore in
order of precedence. The first place among the lay peers belonged as
an unquestioned right to the king of Scots; the second was claimed at
once by Stephen and by the king’s son Earl Robert of Gloucester; the
dignity of the nephew was held to outweigh the privilege of the son;
and the second layman who swore on bended knee to acknowledge the
Empress Matilda as her father’s successor was her cousin Count Stephen
of Mortain and Boulogne.[666]

        [662] The story of this wooing is curious, and linked in
        a curious fashion to the old days when Fulk Nerra and Odo
        were fighting for Touraine. Gelduin, the “devil of Saumur,”
        when Odo’s mistaken tactics and his own loyal service had
        cost him the loss of his heritage, refused all the offers of
        compensation made to him by his penitent count, and merely
        asked him for a certain “bare hill” on the south bank of the
        Loire, half way between Amboise and Blois, where he built the
        castle afterwards known as Chaumont, and there remained as a
        perpetual thorn in the side of the Angevin lords of Amboise,
        till in 1035 he gave up his possessions to his son Geoffrey and
        went to end his days in peace in an abbey which he had founded
        on an estate of his own, hard by the battle-field of Pontlevoy.
        Geoffrey’s delicate beauty won him the surname of “the Maiden,”
        but beneath his girl-like face lay a spirit as manly and as
        noble as that of his father. In 1066 the hot northern blood
        in his veins drove him to give up his estates to his niece
        Dionysia (who married a son of Lisoy of Amboise) and join the
        host of adventurers who followed Duke William over sea. But
        after fifteen years of prosperity in England, his heart was
        still true to the race whom his father had served so loyally;
        and it was Geoffrey’s well-earned influence with the Conqueror
        which brought about, in 1082, the marriage between the son of
        his former lord and the daughter of his present one (_Gesta
        Amb. Domin._, Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 173, 174, 184). On the
        marriage see also Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._),
        p. 573. After the Conqueror’s death Geoffrey found the state of
        things in England no longer to his mind, made over his estates
        there to his nephew Savaric, and came home once more, to be
        received with open arms by the couple whom he had helped to
        marry. He dwelt at their court as an honoured guest for the
        rest of his days, lived to complete his hundredth year without
        the loss of a single faculty save the light of his still
        beautiful eyes, and was buried at last by his father’s side
        in the abbey of our Lady of Pontlevoy (_Gesta Amb. Domin._,
        Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 185, 197, 198).

        [663] On the flight from Antioch see Will. Tyr., l. v. c. 10,
        and all the historians of the first crusade. On Stephen’s
        second expedition and death see Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 789
        _et seq._; Will. Tyr., l. x. c. 20; and Will. Malm. _Gesta
        Reg._, l. iv. c. 384 (Hardy, pp. 593, 594).

        [664] “Nutriendum promovendumque.” Will. Newb., l. i. c. 4
        (Howlett, vol. i. p. 31).

        [665] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 811.
        Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 34 (_ib._ p. 310). Will.
        Newb., l. i. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 31). Will. Malm. _Hist.
        Nov._, l. iii. c. 49 (Hardy, p. 750).

        [666] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 692).

But for that council and its oath, the succession both to the English
crown and to the Norman ducal coronet would have been at Henry’s death
an open question. Had Matilda’s child been old enough to step at once
into the place destined for him by his grandfather, there would most
likely have been no question at all; Henry II. would have succeeded
Henry I. without opposition, and England would have been spared
nineteen years of anarchy. But Henry Fitz-Empress was not yet three
years old. The practical choice at the moment lay between the surviving
adult descendants of the Conqueror; and of these there were, besides
the Empress, at least two others who might be considered quite as well
qualified to represent him as she was. Independently of any special
engagement, the barons would be fully entitled to choose between the
daughter of William’s son and the sons of his daughter--between Matilda
of Anjou, Theobald of Blois, and Stephen of Boulogne. Of the three,
Matilda was on the whole the one who had least to recommend her. Her
great personal advantage was that she, and she alone, was the child
of a crowned king and queen, of the “good Queen Maude” in whose veins
flowed the ancient royal blood of Wessex, and the king whom his
English subjects revered after he was gone as “a good man,” who “made
peace for men and deer.”[667] Matilda’s birth would be a valuable
qualification in English eyes; but it would carry very little weight
in Normandy. Old-English blood-royal went for nothing there; and King
Henry’s good peace had been much less successfully enforced, and when
enforced much less appreciated, in the duchy than in the kingdom.
Personally, Matilda was almost a stranger in both countries. She had
left her own people and her father’s house at the age of eight years,
to be educated not as the daughter of the English king but as the
child-wife of the Emperor. All her associations, all her interests,
were in Germany; there she was known and respected, there she was at
home. She had only returned to England very unwillingly for a couple
of years, and then left it again to become the wife of a man known
there only as the son of that “earl of Anjou” who had been King Henry’s
most troublesome foe; while in Normandy the Angevin was known but too
well, and hated with a mingled hate and scorn which had grown with the
growth and strengthened with the strength of both county and duchy
ever since the days of Geoffrey Martel. If the principle of female
succession was to be admitted at all--if the Conqueror’s throne was to
be filled by a stranger--one of his daughter’s sons might fill it at
least as worthily as his son’s daughter and her Angevin husband. And
if a sovereign was to be chosen for his personal qualifications, it
would have been hard to find a better choice than Theobald the Great,
count of Blois, Chartres and Champagne. He did not owe his historical
epithet solely to his vast possessions; he was almost the only member
of the house of Blois who shewed any trace of intellectual or moral
greatness. His public life was one long series of vexations and
disappointments; the misfortunes which his race were so apt to bring
upon themselves by their own unsteadiness and self-will seemed to fall
upon him without provocation on his part; it was as if his heritage
had come to him charged with the penalties of all his forefathers’
errors. But it had not come to him charged with the heavier burthen of
their fatal intellectual perversity and moral weakness. In its place
he had the tact, the dignity, the stedfastness of his Norman mother;
and the whole of his after-career fully justified the esteem of the
Norman barons, grounded upon their acquaintance with his person and
character during those wars against the king of France in which his
cause had been inseparably bound up with that of his uncle Henry. In
England, however, he could only be known by report, as the nephew and
ally of the king, and the elder brother of Stephen. It was Stephen, not
Theobald, who had been the king’s favourite and constant companion,
lacking nothing of the rank of an adoptive son save the avowed prospect
of the crown. Stephen had lived in England from his childhood; his
territorial possessions, his personal interests, lay wholly in England
and Normandy; his name and his face were almost as familiar there as
those of Henry himself; he was the first baron of the duchy, the first
layman of the kingdom; moreover, he was the husband of a lady who
stood as near to the Old-English royal line and represented it, to say
the least, as worthily as her imperial cousin and namesake. Lastly,
his marriage gave him yet one more advantage, slight in itself, but
of no small practical use at the moment. As count of Boulogne, he had
immediate command of the shortest passage from the Continent to England.

        [667] Eng. Chron. a. 1135.

The tidings of Henry’s death soon reached Angers; and before the
first week of December was out, Matilda presented herself in Normandy
to take possession of her inheritance. The officer in charge of the
border-territories, comprising the forfeited lands of William Talvas
and the county of Hiesmes, at once surrendered them to her and received
her as his liege lady;[668] but before she had time to secure the
duchy, the kingdom was snatched from her grasp. Stephen set out at once
from Wissant and crossed the Channel amid a storm so terrific that
men on shore deemed it could bode nothing less than the end of the
world.[669] It only boded the arrival at Dover of a candidate for the
English crown.

        [668] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 903. The
        places specified, besides Hiesmes, are Argentan and Domfront.
        See also Chron. S. Albin. a. 1135 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p.
        34), and _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 294,
        where Geoffrey gets the credit of winning them. Rob. Torigni,
        a. 1135, adds Ambrières, “Gorra” and Coulommiers.

        [669] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 11 (Hardy, p. 703).

Stephen’s promptitude served him as well as the promptitude of William
Rufus and Henry had served them in a like case. But this time the
part which had been played in 1087 by the primate and in 1100 by “the
Witan who were there nigh at hand” was to be played by the citizens of
London. Repulsed from Dover and Canterbury[670]--for the men of Kent
had an hereditary grudge against any one coming from Boulogne--Stephen
pushed on to London, where the well-known face of King Henry’s
favourite nephew was hailed with delight by the citizens, vehemently
declaring that they would have no stranger to rule over them.[671]
They claimed to have inherited the right to a voice in the election
of the sovereign which had once, in theory at least, belonged to the
whole nation, and accordingly the “aldermen and wise folk”[672] came
together to consider what provision should be made for the safety of
the realm, and, for that end, to choose a king. A kingless land, said
they, was exposed to countless perils; the first thing needful was to
make a king as speedily as possible.[673] Of Matilda and her claims not
a word seems to have been said; if any of the leading burgesses, as
tenants-in-chief of the crown, had sworn fealty to her, they were in no
humour to regard it now; and the citizens in general would doubtless
not hold themselves bound by an oath which they had not personally
taken. They claimed the right of election as their special prerogative,
and exercising it without more ado in favour of the only person then at
hand whose birth and character fitted him to undertake the defence of
the kingdom, and who seemed to have been sent to them as by a special
providence in their hour of need, they by common consent acknowledged
Stephen as king. He hurried to Winchester to get possession of the
treasury; the bishop--his own brother--came forth with the chief
citizens to meet him; and the treasurer, who had refused to give up
his keys to the bishop, surrendered them at once to the king-elect.[674]

        [670] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94.

        [671] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 3, 4.

        [672] “Majores ... natu, consultuque quique provectiores.”
        _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 3.

        [673] _Ib._ pp. 3, 4.

        [674] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 4–6.

Thus far the two men who ought to have taken the lead in the national
counsels--the primate and the justiciar--had stood looking passively
on. Both now joined Stephen.[675] He lacked nothing to make him full
king but the rite of coronation. This however depended on the primate,
and when called upon to perform it William of Canterbury again drew
back. He had scruples, first, about the oath which he himself, as
well as Stephen and all the barons, had sworn to the Empress Matilda;
and secondly, about the validity of an election so hastily made by a
small part only of the nation. The second objection passed unheeded;
to the first Stephen’s adherents answered that the oath had been
extorted and was therefore not binding, and that several persons who
were with Henry at his death had heard him openly express repentance
for having forced it upon the barons.[676] Roger of Salisbury affirmed
that it was annulled in another way; it had been sworn, by him at
least, on condition of a promise from Henry that he would not give his
daughter in marriage out of the realm without the consent of the Great
Council--a promise which had been immediately broken.[677] Hugh Bigod,
too, the late king’s seneschal, declared upon oath that Henry had in
his presence solemnly absolved the barons from their engagement,[678]
and had even formally disinherited Matilda and designated Stephen as
his successor.[679] The argument which really prevailed, however, was
the objection to a woman’s rule, and the urgent need of having a man
to take the government, and to take it at once.[680] Henry had not yet
been three weeks dead, and already England was in confusion. The first
outcome of the reaction against his stern control had been a general
raid upon the forests; and when men in their frantic vehemence had left
themselves no more game to hunt, they turned their arms against each
other and trampled all law and order under foot.[681] Such a state of
things, resulting solely from the fact that England had been three
weeks without a king, spoke more in Stephen’s favour than any amount
of legal reasonings. The archbishop gave way; all that he demanded
from Stephen was a promise to restore and maintain the liberties of
the Church. Bishop Henry of Winchester offered himself as surety in
his brother’s behalf, and thereby won him the crown.[682] He received
it at Westminster,[683] probably either on the last Sunday in Advent
or on Christmas day,[684] and he issued at the same time, by way of
coronation-charter, a promise at once comprehensive and vague, to
maintain the laws established by his predecessor.[685]

        [675] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 11 (Hardy, pp. 703,
        704). _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 6.

        [676] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 6, 7.

        [677] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, pp. 692,
        693).

        [678] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94.

        [679] Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. ii. p. 217. Cf. the speeches
        before the battle of Lincoln in Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 15
        (Arnold, p. 270), and that of Stephen’s advocates at Rome in
        1151, in _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx.
        p. 543). Gerv. Cant. (as above) does not name Hugh, but merely
        says “quidam ex potentissimis Angliæ.”

        [680] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 8. R. Wend. as above.

        [681] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 1, 2.

        [682] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 11 (Hardy, p. 704).

        [683] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94. Flor. Worc. Contin.
        (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 95).

        [684] The date is variously given, as follows: December 15,
        Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 902.--December
        20, Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above).--December 21, Ann. Waverl.
        a. 1136 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p. 225).--December 22,
        Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 12 (Hardy, p. 704); Gerv.
        Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94; and Ann. Winton. Contin. a. 1135
        (Liebermann, _Ungedruckte Anglo-Norman. Geschichtsquellen_,
        p. 79).--December 23, Ann. Cantuar. a. 1135 (Liebermann, as
        above, p. 5).--December 24, Ann. Margam, a. 1135 (Luard, as
        above, vol. i. p. 13).--December 25, Eng. Chron. a. 1135; Ric.
        Hexh. (Raine, _Priory of Hexham_, vol. i.) p. 70; _Gesta Cons._
        (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 156; and Chron. Mort.-Mar. a. 1135
        (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 782).--December 26, Rog.
        Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 189; Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. ii. p.
        217.--January 1, Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 113.--Will. Malm., the
        Contin. Flor. Worc., and the Ann. Margam all add that the day
        was a Sunday. This in 1135 would be right for William’s date,
        December 22; nothing can make it agree with that of Florence’s
        continuator, “xiii. kal. Jan.”; but the Margam annalist may
        very possibly have substituted ix. for xi., really meaning the
        same as William. The two extreme dates--Orderic’s and John of
        Hexham’s--seem equally impossible; unless we may take Orderic’s
        “xviii. kal. Jan.” to have simply an x too much, and then there
        would be another witness for Christmas-day.

        [685] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 119.

Thus the two great feuds which had hitherto influenced the political
career of the Angevin house--the feud with Blois and the feud with
Normandy--merged at last into one. The successors of Odo of Blois and
those of William the Conqueror were now both represented, as against
the successors of Fulk Nerra and Geoffrey Martel, by one and the same
man, who yet was not, in strict law, the nearest representative of
either. We shall see hereafter that some of the Normans entertained a
project of making Theobald their duke; had they succeeded, the older
quarrel would have revived almost in its original form, as a direct
conflict between the heads of the two rival houses, only with Normandy
instead of Touraine for its object and its battle-ground. Its original
spirit was, however, more likely to be revived, on one side at least,
by the substitution of Stephen for Theobald. Stephen had renounced all
share in his father’s territories; but there was one paternal heir-loom
which he could not renounce, and which descended to him, and him alone,
among the sons of Stephen-Henry and Adela. This was the peculiar mental
and moral constitution which the house of Blois inherited from Odo II.
as surely as the Angevins inherited theirs from Fulk the Black. In
the reigning Count Theobald, indeed, the type was fortunately almost
lost, and in his youngest brother, Bishop Henry of Winchester, it was
very greatly modified by the infusion of Norman blood derived from
their mother. In Stephen, however, the Norman blood had but little
influence on a nature which in its essence was that of the old counts
of Blois. All the characteristic qualities and defects of the race
were there, just as deeply rooted as in Odo of Champagne himself;
the whole difference lay in this, that in Stephen the qualities lay
uppermost and shewed themselves in their most attractive aspect, while
the defects took a form so mild that till their fatal consequences were
seen they appeared hardly more than amiable weaknesses. Gallant knight
and courteous gentleman; warm-hearted, high-spirited, throwing himself
eagerly into every enterprise; all reckless valour in the battle-field,
all gentleness and mercy as soon as the fight was over; open-handed,
generous, gracious to all, and apparently unstained by any personal
vices:--it is easy to understand Henry’s affection for him, and the
high hopes with which at the opening of his career he was regarded
by all classes in the realm.[686] His good qualities were plainly
visible; time and experience alone could reveal the radical defect
which vitiated them all. That defect was simply the old curse of his
race--lack of stedfastness; and it ruined Stephen as surely as it had
ruined Odo. It was ingrained in every fibre of his nature; it acted
like an incurable moral disease, mingling its subtle poison with his
every thought and act, and turning his very virtues into weaknesses;
it reduced his whole kingly career to a mere string of political
inconsistencies and blunders; and it wrecked him at last, as it had
wrecked his great-grandfather, on the rock of the Angevin thoroughness.

        [686] See sketches of his character in Will. Malm. _Hist.
        Nov._, l. i. c. 12 (Hardy, p. 704), and _Gesta Steph._
        (Sewell), p. 3.

For the moment, however, Stephen had outstripped his rival. The Angevin
sagacity had been for once at fault. Steeped as were both Geoffrey and
his wife in continental ideas and feelings, their first thought was of
Normandy, and they had failed to see that in order to secure it their
true policy was to secure England first; or rather, perhaps, they had
failed to see that the mere will of the late king was not sufficient
to give them undisputed possession of both. Stephen’s bold stroke,
whether it resulted from a closer acquaintance with the relation
between the two countries, or simply from a characteristic impulse to
dash straight at the highest object in view, gained him kingdom and
duchy at one blow. Geoffrey had followed his wife into Normandy at
the head of an armed force, and accompanied by William Talvas, whose
influence secured him a welcome at Séez and in all the territories of
the house of Alençon. But the rival races were no sooner in actual
contact than their old hatred burst uncontrollably forth. The Angevins,
though they ostensibly came only to put their countess in peaceful
possession of her heritage, could not yet bring themselves to look upon
the Normans in any light but that of natural enemies; they treated the
districts which had submitted to them as a conquered land, and went
about harrying and plundering till the people rose and attacked them
with such fury that they were compelled to evacuate the country.[687]
The Norman barons now held at Neubourg a meeting at which they decided
to invite Count Theobald of Blois to come and take possession of the
duchy. Theobald came to Rouen, and thence to Lisieux, where on December
21 he had an interview with Matilda’s half-brother Earl Robert of
Gloucester. They were interrupted by a messenger from England with the
tidings of Stephen’s election as king.[688] The Norman barons then
felt that the decision was taken out of their hands; since Stephen
and England had been too quick for them, their best course now was to
accept the accomplished fact, and acknowledged the king-elect as duke
of Normandy.[689] To this Robert of Gloucester assented.[690] Theobald,
despite his natural vexation, at once withdrew his claim, and made in
his brother’s name a truce with Geoffrey to last from Christmas till
the octave of Pentecost; and having thus done his best to secure the
peace of the duchy till its own duke could come to it, he quietly
returned to his own dominions.[691]

        [687] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 903.

        [688] Rob. Torigni, a. 1135. Cf. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 902, 903.

        [689] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 903.

        [690] Rob. Torigni, a. 1135.

        [691] Ord. Vit. as above. Cf. _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay,
        _Comtes_), p. 294.

In England, meanwhile, Stephen was carrying all before him. The first
public act in which he had to take part as king was the burial of
his predecessor at Reading on the feast of the Epiphany;[692] the
next was the defence of his realm against a danger which it had not
known for more than forty years--a Scottish invasion. King David
of Scotland, true to the oath which every one else seemed to have
forgotten, arose as the champion of Matilda’s rights, led his troops
into Northumberland, and partly conquered it in her behalf. Stephen met
him near Durham, pacified him by a grant of the earldoms of Carlisle,
Huntingdon and Doncaster to his son Henry,[693] and came back in
peace, almost in triumph, to the Easter festival and the crowning of
his queen.[694] Adherents now came flocking in; the splendour of the
Easter court made up for the meagreness of the Christmas meeting.[695]
Baron and knight, clerk and layman, rallied round the winning young
sovereign who was ready to promise anything, to undertake anything, to
please anybody. The only class who still held aloof were the “new men”
of the last reign, men like Payne Fitz-John and Miles the sheriff of
Gloucester, who owed everything to Henry, and who were bound alike by
gratitude and by policy to uphold his daughter’s cause. But the chief
of them all, Bishop Roger of Salisbury, had already joined Stephen,
and the rest were soon persuaded to follow his example.[696] Shortly
after Easter there came in a yet more important personage. Earl Robert
of Gloucester, the eldest son of the late king, influential alike on
both sides of the sea by his rank, his wealth and his character, was
looked upon both in Normandy and in England as the natural leader of
the baronage. The suddenness of Stephen’s accession had snatched the
leadership out of his hands, and he lingered on in Normandy, watching
the course of events without sharing in them, and meditating how to
reconcile his own interest with his duty to his sister. Stephen,
anxious to win him over, sent him repeated invitations to England; till
at last he decided to let himself be won, at least in appearance, if
only for the sake of gaining a footing in England which might enable
him afterwards to work there in Matilda’s favour. The king’s son,
however, made terms for himself more like a king than a mere earl. He
came to Stephen’s court and did homage for his English estates; but
he did it only on the express condition of being bound by it only so
long as Stephen’s own promises to him were kept, and he himself was
maintained in all his honours and dignities.[697] The first result of
his submission--if submission it can be called--was seen in a great
council at Oxford, where all the bishops swore fealty to the king,
and the vague promise to maintain the “Laws of King Henry,” which
Stephen had issued on his coronation-day, was amplified into a more
detailed and definite charter.[698] Suddenly, a few weeks later, there
went forth a rumour that the king was dead, and the barons at once
broke into revolt. Baldwin of Redvers threw himself into Exeter; Hugh
Bigod, who but a few months ago had been foremost among the supporters
of Stephen, seized Norwich castle, and was only dislodged by the king
in person.[699] He was apparently forgiven; another rebel, Robert
of Bathenton,[700] was caught and hanged, and his castle forced to
surrender. The great castle of Exeter, where Baldwin had shut himself
up with his family and a picked band of young knights, all sworn never
to yield, cost a long and troublesome siege; but the agonies of thirst
at length drove the garrison to break their vow and ask for terms.
Stephen let them all go out free; Baldwin requited his leniency by
hastening to a castle which he possessed in the Isle of Wight, and
there setting himself up as a sort of pirate-chief at the head of
a band of men as reckless as himself. But when Stephen hurried to
Southampton and began to collect a fleet, Baldwin suddenly took fright
and surrendered. His lands were confiscated, and he went into exile
in Anjou, where he was eagerly welcomed by the count, and added one
more to the elements of strife already working in Normandy.[701] In
England his defeat put an end to the revolt, and the Christmas court
at Dunstable brought the first year of King Stephen to a tranquil
close.[702]

        [692] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 901, 902. Hen. Hunt., l. viii.
        c. 2 (Arnold, pp. 257, 258). Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol.
        ii. p. 95. Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 13 (Hardy, p.
        705).

        [693] For the details of this Scottish expedition and treaty
        see Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 4 (Arnold, pp. 258, 289), Ric.
        Hexh. (Raine), p. 72, and Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p. 114.

        [694] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 96.

        [695] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 2 (Arnold, p. 259).

        [696] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 14–16.

        [697] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 14 (Hardy, pp.
        705–707). Cf. _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 9.

        [698] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 15 (Hardy, pp.
        707–709). Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 119–121.

        [699] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 4 (Arnold, p. 259).

        [700] Or Bakington. In the _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 18, the
        name of the place is _Batthentona_, which Lappenberg and Mr.
        Freeman render by Bathenton in Devon. (Mr. Sewell, the editor
        of the _Gesta Steph._, rendered it _Bath_.) But while two MSS.
        of Hen. Hunt. have “Bathentun,” three others have “Bachentun”
        or “Bakentun” (Arnold, p. 259, note 6. In the index Mr. Arnold
        suggests “Bagington? Bathampton?”).

        [701] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 18–29. Hen. Hunt. as above.
        Eng. Chron. a. 1135. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp.
        96, 97.

        [702] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 5 (Arnold, p. 260).

Yet already there were signs that those who had thought to find in
Henry’s nephew such another king as Henry himself[703] were doomed to
disappointment. It was no good omen for the fulfilment of the pledges
embodied in his charters when Stephen broke the one which appealed
most strongly to popular feeling--the promise to mitigate the severe
forest laws--by holding a forest assize at Brampton after his triumph
over Baldwin of Redvers in 1136.[704] Neither was it satisfactory that
the accession of a king specially bound by the circumstances of his
election to rule as a national sovereign proved to be the signal for a
great influx of foreigners--not as in Henry’s time, honest industrious
settlers who fled from their own unquiet homes to share “the good
peace that he made in this land” and to become an useful element in
the growing prosperity of the nation; but as in the Red King’s time,
a rapacious and violent race of mercenary adventurers, chiefly from
Britanny and Flanders; men to whom nothing was sacred, and who flocked
to Stephen as they had flocked to Rufus, attracted by the report of
his prodigality and the hope, only too well founded, of growing rich
upon the spoils of England.[705] However much Henry may have provoked
his subjects by his preference for ministers of continental birth, he
had at least never insulted them by taking for his chief counsellor
and confidant a mere foreign soldier of fortune like that William of
Ypres who acted as the leader of Stephen’s Flemish mercenaries and
whose influence over him excited the wrath of both the English and
the Norman barons.[706] The peace of the country was probably all the
better kept during the year 1137 because its preservation was left
wholly to Bishop Roger and his nephews, while Stephen, accompanied by
his Flemish friend, was well out of the way in Normandy, where he spent
the year in concerting an alliance with his brother,[707] obtaining
the French king’s sanction to his tenure of the duchy, for which his
eldest son did homage in his stead,[708] and vainly endeavouring to
secure it from the combined dangers of internal treason and Angevin
intermeddling. No disturbance occurred in England during his absence;
a Scottish invasion, threatened soon after Easter, was averted by
Archbishop Thurstan of York, who persuaded the Scot king to accept a
truce till Advent,[709] when Stephen was expected to return. He was
no sooner back than David sent to demand for his son the earldom of
Northumberland,[710] which had been, it was said, half promised to
him a year before;[711] on the refusal of his demand,[712] early in
January he led an army into England. An unsuccessful siege of the
border fortress of Carham or Wark was followed by such a harrying of
the whole land from Tweed to Tyne as had not been heard of since the
wild heathenish days of Malcolm Canmore’s youth.[713] David, indeed,
was not personally concerned in this horrible work; he had left it
to the conduct of his nephew William Fitz-Duncan, while he himself
with a strong body of troops took up his quarters at Corbridge.[714]
Stephen marched against him early in February, whereupon he returned
to the siege of Carham; dislodged thence by the English king, he
buried himself and his troops in an almost inaccessible swamp near
Roxburgh, bidding the townsfolk decoy the Southrons by a false show of
friendliness and thus enable him to surround and despatch them.[715]
Stephen however discovered the trap--apparently through the double
treachery of some of his own barons who were concerned in it;[716] he
crossed the Tweed, but instead of marching upon Roxburgh he turned
south-westward and ravaged David’s territories till the lack of
provisions forced him to return to the south.[717]

        [703] “Hi uuendon thæt he sculde ben alsuic alse the eom wæs.”
        Eng. Chron. a. 1137.

        [704] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 4 (Arnold, p. 260).

        [705] “Sub Henrico rege multi alienigenæ, qui genialis humi
        inquietationibus exagitabantur, Angliam adnavigabant, et
        sub ejus alis quietum otium agebant; sub Stephano plures ex
        Flandriâ et Britanniâ, rapto vivere assueti, spe magnarum
        prædarum Angliam involabant.” Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii.
        c. 34. Cf. l. i. c. 14 (Hardy, pp. 731, 706).

        [706] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 105. William of Ypres
        was son of Philip of Flanders, second son of Count Robert
        the Frisian. Although he had no legal place in the house of
        Flanders, he was one of the claimants of the county after the
        death of Charles of Denmark, against William the Clito and
        Theodoric of Alsace. After being the torment of his own country
        for nearly ten years, he was compelled to fly, and took service
        in England under Stephen. See Walter of Térouanne, _Vita B.
        Caroli Com._, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xiii. pp. 336,
        342–347; Galbert of Bruges, _Vita B. Car._ (_ibid._), pp. 354,
        355, 359 _et seq._; _Geneal. Com. Flandr._ (_ibid._), pp.
        412, 413; Joh. Ypr. _Chron. Sith._ (_ibid._), 466, 468. The
        people’s hatred of William was justifiable enough; but it ill
        became the barons to cast stones at him. His evil-doings were
        not a whit greater than theirs, and the changeless devotion
        with which he--a mere hireling, bound to Stephen by no tie but
        that of a bargain which Stephen certainly cannot long have had
        means to fulfil--stuck to the king in adversity as firmly as in
        prosperity, might have put them all to shame.

        [707] Theobald renounced all claims upon kingdom and duchy
        for two thousand marks of silver to be paid him annually by
        Stephen. Rob. Torigni, a. 1137.

        [708] This was because William the Ætheling had done homage to
        Louis, and it was agreed that Stephen should hold Normandy on
        the same terms as his predecessor Henry. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 909. Cf. Rob. Torigni, a. 1137, and
        Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 5 (Arnold, p. 260). This was in May.
        Ord. Vit. as above.

        [709] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 76, 77. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p.
        115.

        [710] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 77. Joh. Hexh. as above.

        [711] Ric. Hexh. (Raine, p. 72) says that some who were
        present at the treaty made between Stephen and David in 1136
        affirmed that Stephen had then promised that if ever he should
        contemplate bestowing the earldom of Northumberland upon any
        man, he would first cause to be fairly tried in his court the
        claims upon it which Henry of Scotland had inherited from his
        mother, the eldest daughter of the last old English earl,
        Waltheof.

        [712] According to Orderic, Stephen had some ground for his
        refusal; for it seems that the form in which the lately expired
        truce reached him--at any rate, that in which it reached
        Orderic--was that of a plot made by “quidam pestiferi” to kill
        all the Normans in England on a certain day, and betray the
        realm to the Scots. Some of the plotters were said to have
        confessed to Bishop Nigel of Ely, who revealed the plot, and so
        it all came out. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._),
        p. 912. This plot appears also in R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i.
        p. 253, but is there attributed solely to one Ralf, a clerk of
        Bishop Nigel’s, and nothing is said about the Scots.

        [713] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 77–80. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), pp.
        115, 116. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 6 (Arnold, pp. 260, 261). The
        Scottish host was “coadunatus de Normannis, Germanis, Anglis,
        de Northanhymbranis et Cumbris, de Teswetadalâ, de Lodoneâ, de
        Pictis, qui vulgo Galleweienses dicuntur, et Scottis, nec erat
        qui eorum numerum sciret.” Ric. Hexh., p. 79.

        [714] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 79. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p. 116.

        [715] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 81. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p. 117.

        [716] Joh. Hexh. as above.

        [717] Ric. Hexh. and Joh. Hexh., as above. Hen. Hunt., l. viii.
        c. 6 (Arnold, p. 261), and Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol.
        ii. p. 102.

He had not long turned his back when David re-entered Northumberland
and marched ravaging along the eastern coast till a mutiny among his
soldiers compelled him to retreat to the border. Thence he sent William
Fitz-Duncan to ravage the district of Craven, while he himself remained
busy with the siege of Carham till he was dislodged by Count Waleran
of Meulan.[718] The Empress meanwhile plied him with entreaties for
support, both by her own letters and through her friends in the north,
chief among whom was her father’s old minister Eustace Fitz-John,[719]
lord of the mighty castles of Bamborough, Knaresborough, Malton and
Alnwick. Eustace had already forfeited his best stronghold, Bamborough,
through his plottings against Stephen;[720] in May 1138 he openly
placed himself, his remaining castles and his men at the disposal of
the Scot king. David hesitated no longer. Gathering up all the forces
of his kingdom,[721] he joined Eustace in an unsuccessful attempt to
regain Bamborough; thence the united host marched burning and harrying
through the already thrice-wasted Patrimony of S. Cuthbert, crossed the
Tees, and in the middle of August made its appearance in Yorkshire.[722]

        [718] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 81–84. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p.
        117. The record of Waleran’s exploit is in Flor. Worc. Contin.
        (as above), p. 112.

        [719] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 35.

        [720] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 117. “De magnis proceribus Angliæ,
        regi quondam Henrico familiarissimus, vir summæ prudentiæ et in
        secularibus negotiis magni consilii, qui a rege Anglorum ideo
        recesserat quod ab eo in curiâ contra patrium morem captus,
        castra quæ ei Rex Henricus commiserat reddere compulsus est.”
        Æthelred Riev. _De Bello Standardi_ (Twysden, _X. Scriptt._),
        col. 343. On Eustace Fitz-John see also Walbran, _Memor. of
        Fountains_, p. 50, note 11.

        [721] The Hexham chroniclers reckon them at something over
        twenty thousand.

        [722] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 84, 85, 89. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._),
        p. 118.

There was no help to be looked for from the king. All through that
summer the whole south and west of England had been in a blaze of
revolt which was still unsubdued, and Stephen had neither time,
thought, nor troops to spare for the defence of the north. But in face
of such a danger as this the men of the north needed no help from him.
When their own hearths and altars were threatened by the hereditary
Scottish foe, resistance was a matter not of loyalty but of patriotism.
The barons and great men of the shire at once organized their plans
under the guidance of Archbishop Thurstan, whose lightest word carried
more weight in Yorkshire than anything that Stephen could have said or
done. Inspired by him, the forces of the diocese met at York in the
temper of crusaders. Three days of fasting, almsgiving and penance,
concluding with a solemn absolution and benediction from their primate,
prepared them for their task. Worn out as he was with years and
labours--so feeble that he could neither walk nor ride--Thurstan would
yet have gone forth in his litter at the head of his men to encourage
the host with his presence and his eloquence; but the barons shrank
from such a risk. To them he was the Moses on whose uplifted hands
depended their success in the coming battle; so they sent him back to
wrestle in prayer for them within his own cathedral church, while they
went forth to their earthly warfare against the Scot.[723]

        [723] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 86, 87. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), pp.
        118, 119.

Early in the morning of Tuesday, August 22, the English forces drew
up in battle array upon Cowton Moor, two miles from Northallerton. In
their midst was the “Standard” from which the fight afterwards took
its name:--a cart into which was fixed a pole surmounted by a silver
pyx containing the Host, and hung round with the consecrated banners
of the local churches, S. Peter of York, S. John of Beverley, S.
Wilfrid of Ripon.[724] Thurstan’s place as chief spiritual adviser of
the army was filled by Ralf, bishop of the Orkneys;[725] their chief
military adviser was Walter Lespec, the pious and noble founder of
Kirkham and Rievaux--the very type and model of a Christian knight of
the time. Standing upon the cart, with the sacred banners waving round
his head, in a voice like a trumpet he addressed his comrades.[726]
He appealed to the barons to prove themselves worthy of their race;
he appealed to the English shire-levies to prove themselves worthy of
their country; he pictured in glowing colours the wrongs which they
all had to avenge, and the worse they would have to suffer if they
survived a defeat; then, grasping the hand of William of Aumale, the
new-made earl of York,[727] he swore aloud to conquer or die.[728] The
unanimous “Amen!” of the English host was answered by shrill cries
of “Albin! Albin!” as the Scots came charging on.[729] The glory of
the first onset was snatched, much against David’s will, by the men of
Galloway, who claimed it as their hereditary right.[730] The second
division of the Scottish host comprised the Cumbrians and the men of
Teviotdale, and the followers of Eustace Fitz-John. A third body was
formed by the men of Lothian and of the western islands, and a fourth
by the king’s household troops, a picked band of English and Norman
knights commanded by David in person.[731] The English array was simple
enough; the whole host stood in one compact mass clustered around the
Standard,--the barons and their followers occupying the centre, the
archers intermingled with them in front, and the general mass of less
well-armed troops of the shire in the rear, with a small detachment
of horse posted at a little distance; the main body of both armies
fought on foot in the old English fashion. The wild Celts of Galloway
dashed headlong upon the English front, only to find their spears and
javelins glance off from the helmets and shields of the knights as from
an iron wall, while their own half-naked bodies were riddled with a
shower of arrows; their leader fell, and they fled in confusion.[732]
The second line under the king’s son, Henry, charged with better
success; but an Englishman lifted up a gory head upon a pole crying
out that it was David’s; and like the English long ago in a like case
at Assandun, the Scottish centre at once fled almost without waiting
to be attacked.[733] David himself fought on well-nigh alone, till
the few who stood around him dragged him off the field, lifted him on
horseback, and fairly compelled him to retreat.[734] His scattered
troops caught sight of the dragon on his standard,[735] and discovering
that he was still alive, rallied enough to enable him to retreat in
good order. Henry gathered up the remnants of the royal body-guard--the
only mounted division of the army--and with them made a gallant
effort to retrieve the day; but the horsemen charged in vain against
the English shield-wall, and falling back with shattered spears and
wounded horses they were compelled to fling away their accoutrements
and escape as best they could.[736] Three days elapsed before Henry
himself could rejoin his father at Carlisle.[737] Eleven hundred Scots
were said to have been slain in the battle or caught in their flight
through the woods and marshes and there despatched.[738] Out of two
hundred armed knights only nineteen carried their mail-coats home
again;[739] such of the rest as escaped at all escaped only with their
lives; and the field was so strewn with baggage, provisions and arms,
left behind by the fugitives, that the victors gave it the nickname
of Baggamore.[740] The enthusiasm which had carried the Yorkshiremen
through the hour of danger carried them also through the temptation
of the hour of triumph. They sullied their victory by no attempt at
pursuit or retaliation, but simply returned as they had come, in solemn
procession, and having restored the holy banners to their several
places with joy and thanksgiving, went quietly back every man to his
own home.[741] Some three months later the garrison of Carham, having
salted their last horse save one, were driven to surrender; but their
stubborn defence had won them the right to march out free with the
honours of war, and all that David gained was the satisfaction of
razing the empty fortress.[742]

        [724] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 90, 91. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p.
        119. Cf. the description of the Milanese _carroccio_--“quod
        apud nos _standard_ dicitur” as the German writer remarks--in
        1162 (_Ep. Burchard. Notar. Imp. de Excidio Mediolan._, in
        Muratori, _Rer. Ital. Scriptt._, vol. vi. p. 917).

        [725] On Ralf see Dixon and Raine, _Fasti Eborac._, vol. i. p.
        168.

        [726] So says Æthelred of Rievaux (_De Bello Standardi_,
        Twysden, _X. Scriptt._, cols. 338, 339), giving a charming
        portrait of Walter and a vivid picture of the scene. Hen.
        Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 262), attributes the speech to
        Bishop Ralf.

        [727] “The the king adde beteht Euorwic.” Eng. Chron. a. 1138.

        [728] Æthelred Riev., _De Bello Standardi_ (as above), cols.
        339–342.

        [729] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, p. 263).

        [730] Æthelred Riev. _De Bello Stand._ (Twysden, _X.
        Scriptt._), col. 342. His account of the quarrel for precedence
        and its consequences makes one think of the Macdonalds at
        Culloden. Ric. Hexh. (Raine, p. 92), says the “Picti” were in
        the van; Joh. Hexh. (_ib._ p. 119), calls them “Scotti”--both
        meaning simply what at a later time would have been called
        “wild Highlanders,” _i.e._ in this case men of Galloway. Hen.
        Hunt. puts the Lothian men in front, but he is clearly wrong.

        [731] Æthelred Riev. (as above), cols. 342, 343.

        [732] _Ib._ col. 345. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, pp.
        263, 264), who, however, turns the Galwegians into men of
        Lothian; see above, note 2{730}.

        [733] Æthelred Riev. as above.

        [734] Æthelred Riev. _De Bello Stand._ (Twysden, _X.
        Scriptt._), col. 346. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, p.
        264).

        [735] “Regale vexillum, quod ad similitudinem draconis
        figuratum facile agnoscebatur.” Æthelred Riev. as above. Had S.
        Margaret’s son adopted the old royal standard of her West-Saxon
        forefathers?

        [736] Æthelred Riev. and Hen. Hunt., as above. The two accounts
        do not seem to tally at first sight, but they are easily
        reconciled.

        [737] Æthelred Riev. as above. Cf. Flor. Worc. Contin.
        (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 112.

        [738] Hen. Hunt. as above. Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 93.

        [739] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

        [740] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 120. Serlo (Twysden, _X.
        Scriptt._), cols. 331, 332. According to this last, the
        scattered eatables consisted chiefly of bread, cheese and
        horseflesh, which, as well as other flesh, the Scots ate
        indifferently raw or cooked.--There is yet one other curious
        version of the Scottish rout and its cause: “Archiepiscopus
        cum militibus regis latenter occurrens super Cotowne more
        juxta Northallerton, fieri jussit in viis subterraneis
        quædam instrumenta sonos horribiles reddentia, quæ Anglicè
        dicuntur _petronces_; quibus resonantibus, feræ et cætera
        armenta quæ procedebant exercitum prædicti David regis in
        adjutorium, timore strepitûs perterriti, in exercitum David
        ferociter resiliebant.” (MS. _Life of Abp. Thurstan_, quoted
        by Mr. Raine, _Priory of Hexh._, vol. i. p. 92, note _t_).
        The primate’s share in the victory was so strongly felt at
        the time that in the Ann. Cicestr. a. 1138 (Liebermann,
        _Geschichtsquellen_, p. 95), the battle appears as “Bellum
        inter archiepiscopum Eboracensem et David.”

        [741] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 93. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p. 120.

        [742] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 100. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p. 118.

The defeat of the Scots was shared by the English baron who had brought
them into the land. But Eustace Fitz-John was far from standing alone
in his breach of fealty to the English king. All the elements of
danger and disruption which had been threatening Stephen ever since
his accession suddenly burst forth in the spring of 1138.[743] Between
the king and the barons there had been from the first a total lack of
confidence. It could not be otherwise; for their mutual obligations
were founded on the breach of an earlier obligation contracted by both
towards Matilda and her son. There could not fail to be on both sides a
feeling that as they had all alike broken their faith to the Empress,
so they might at any moment break their faith to each other just as
lightly. But on one side the insecurity lay still deeper. Not only was
the king not sure of his subjects; he was not sure of himself. How far
Stephen was morally justified in accepting the crown after he had sworn
fealty to another candidate for it is a question whose solution depends
upon that of a variety of other questions which we are not bound to
discuss here. Politically, however, he could justify himself only in
one way: by proving his fitness for the office which he had undertaken.
What he proved was his unfitness for it. Stephen, in short, had done
the most momentous deed of his life as he did all the lesser ones,
without first counting the cost; and it was no sooner done than he
found the cost beyond his power to meet. A thoroughly unselfish hero,
a thoroughly unscrupulous tyrant, might have met it successfully, each
in his own way. But Stephen was neither hero nor tyrant; he was “a
mild man, soft and good--and did no justice.”[744] His weakness shewed
itself in a policy of makeshift which only betrayed his uneasiness
and increased his difficulties. His first expedient to strengthen his
position had been the unlucky introduction of the Flemish mercenaries;
his next was the creation of new earldoms in behalf of those whom he
regarded as his especial friends, whereby he hoped to raise up an
aristocracy wholly devoted to himself, but only succeeded in provoking
the resentment and contempt of the older nobility; while to indemnify
his new earls for their lack of territorial endowment and give them
some means of supporting their titular dignity, he was obliged to
provide them with revenues charged upon that of the Crown.[745] But
his prodigality had already made the Crown revenues insufficient for
his own needs;[746] and the next steps were the debasement of the
coinage[747] and the arbitrary spoliation of those whom he mistrusted
for the benefit of his insatiable favourites.[748] They grew greedier
in asking, and he more lavish in giving; castles, lands, anything and
everything, were demanded of him without scruple; and if their demands
were not granted the petitioners at once prepared for defiance.[749]
He flew hither and thither, but nothing came of his restless
activity;[750] he did more harm to himself than to his enemies,
giving away lands and honours almost at random, patching up a hollow
peace,[751] and then, when he found every man’s hand against him and
his hand against every man, bitterly complaining, “Why have they made
me king, only to leave me thus destitute? By our Lord’s Nativity, I
will not be a king thus disgraced!”[752]

        [743] “Hi igitur duo anni [_i.e._ 1136 and 1137] Stephani regis
        prosperrimi fuerunt, tertius vero ... mediocris et intercisus
        fuit; duo vero ultimi exitiales fuerunt et prærupti.” Hen.
        Hunt., l. viii. c. 5 (Arnold, p. 260). By this reckoning it
        seems that after Stephen’s capture at the battle of Lincoln
        Henry does not count him king at all.

        [744] Eng. Chron. a. 1137.

        [745] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 18 (Hardy, p. 712).

        [746] “He hadde get his [Henry’s] tresor, ac he todeld it and
        scatered sotlice.” Eng. Chron. a. 1137.

        [747] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 34 (Hardy, p. 732).

        [748] See the first and fullest example in the story of the
        siege of Bedford, December 1138–January 1139; _Gesta Steph._
        (Sewell), pp. 30–32. Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 6 (Arnold, p.
        260). The sequel of the story is in _Gesta Steph._, p. 74.

        [749] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 18 (Hardy, p. 711).

        [750] “Modo hic, modo illic subitus aderat,” _ibid._
        “Raptabatur enim nunc huc nunc illuc, et adeo vix aliquid
        perficiebat.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 105. Cf. R.
        Glaber’s description of Stephen’s ancestor Odo II. (above, p.
        150).

        [751] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 18 (Hardy, pp. 711,
        712).

        [752] _Ib._ c. 17 (p. 711).

Matters were made worse by his relations with Earl Robert of
Gloucester. As son of the late king and half-brother of the Empress;
as one of the greatest and wealthiest landowners in England--earl of
Gloucester by his father’s grant, lord of Bristol and of Glamorgan
by his marriage with the heiress of Robert Fitz-Hamon--all-powerful
throughout the western shires and on the Welsh march--Robert was the
one man who above all others could most influence the policy of the
barons, and whom it was most important for Stephen to conciliate at any
cost. Robert had followed the king back to Normandy in 1137; throughout
their stay there William of Ypres strove, only too successfully, to
set them at variance; a formal reconciliation took place, but it was
a mere form;[753] and a few months after Stephen’s return to England
he was rash enough to order the confiscation of the earl’s English
and Welsh estates, and actually to raze some of his castles.[754] The
consequence was that soon after Whitsuntide Robert sent to the king a
formal renunciation of his allegiance, and to his vassals in England
instructions to prepare for war.[755] This message proved the signal
for a general rising. Geoffrey Talbot had already seized Hereford
castle;[756] in the north Eustace Fitz-John, as we have seen, joined
hands with the Scot king; while throughout the south and west the
barons shewed at once that they had been merely waiting for Robert’s
decision. Bristol under Robert’s own son;[757] Harptree under William
Fitz-John;[758] Castle Cary under Ralf Lovel; Dunster under William
of Mohun; Shrewsbury under William Fitz-Alan;[759] Dudley under
Ralf Paganel;[760] Burne, Ellesmere, Whittington and Overton under
William Peverel;[761] on the south coast, Wareham, another castle of
Earl Robert’s, held by Ralf of Lincoln, and Dover, held by Walkelyn
Maminot[762]:--all these fortresses, and many more, were openly made
ready for defence or defiance; and Stephen’s own constable Miles, who
as sheriff of Gloucester had only a few weeks before welcomed him into
that city with regal honours,[763] now followed the earl’s example and
formally renounced his allegiance.[764]

        [753] _Ib._ (p. 710).

        [754] _Ib._ c. 18 (p. 713).

        [755] _Ib._ p. 712; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 104. The
        grounds of the defiance were--1, the unlawfulness of Stephen’s
        accession; 2, his breach of his engagements towards Robert;
        3, the unlawfulness of Robert’s own oath to him as being
        invalidated, like Stephen’s claim to the crown, by the previous
        oath to Matilda. (Will. Malm. as above.)

        [756] At Ascension-tide. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold,
        p. 261). There is also an account of the seizure of Hereford
        by Geoffrey Talbot in _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 69, where
        it seems to be placed in 1140. The writer has apparently
        confused the seizure by Geoffrey in 1138 with that by Miles of
        Gloucester in December 1139, and misdated both.

        [757] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 261). Ord. Vit.
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 917. _Gesta Steph._
        (Sewell), p. 36.

        [758] Ord. Vit. as above. _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 43.

        [759] Hen. Hunt. and Ord. Vit. as above.

        [760] “Paganellus [tenuit] castellum de _Ludelaue_,” says Hen.
        Hunt. (as above). But we shortly afterwards find Stephen,
        according to Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 110),
        marching against “castellum de _Duddelæge_, quod Radulf Paignel
        contra illum munierat.” As Henry makes no mention of Dudley
        at all, and the continuator of Florence makes no mention of
        Ludlow till 1139, when he says nothing of its commander, it
        seems plain that there has been some mistake between the two
        names, which indeed might easily get confounded. Mr. Eyton
        (_Antiquities of Shropshire_, vol. v. pp. 244, 245) rules that
        the Continuator is right, as there is no trace of any connexion
        between Ralf Paganel and Ludlow, which indeed he shews to have
        been in other hands at this time. See below, p. 301.

        [761] Ord. Vit. as above.

        [762] Hen. Hunt. and Ord. Vit. as above.

        [763] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 105.

        [764] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 104.

The full force of the blow came upon Stephen while he was endeavouring
to dislodge Geoffrey Talbot from Hereford. After a siege of nearly five
weeks’ duration the town caught fire below the bridge; the alarmed
rebels offered terms, and Stephen with his usual clemency allowed them
to depart free.[765] After taking the neighbouring castle of Weobly,
and leaving a garrison there and another at Hereford,[766] he seems
to have returned to London[767] and there collected his forces for an
attack upon the insurgents in their headquarters at Bristol. Geoffrey
Talbot meanwhile made an attempt upon Bath, but was caught and put in
ward by the bishop. The latter however was presently captured in his
turn by the garrison of Bristol, who threatened to hang him unless
their friend was released. The bishop saved his neck by giving up his
prize; Stephen in great indignation marched upon Bath, and was, it is
said, with difficulty restrained from depriving the bishop of his ring
and staff--a statement which tells something of the way in which the
king kept his compact towards the Church. He contented himself however
with putting a garrison into Bath, and hurried on to the siege of
Bristol.[768]

        [765] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 106. The writer adds
        that on the very day of Stephen’s departure (June 15) Geoffrey
        set fire to everything beyond the Wye; seven or eight Welshmen
        perished, but no English (_ib._ p. 107)--an indication that the
        part of Hereford beyond the Wye was then a Welsh quarter.

        [766] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 106.

        [767] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 36.

        [768] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), pp. 108, 109. In _Gesta
        Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 37–39, 41, 42, the story is told at
        greater length, and the writer seems to defend the bishop and
        to consider his own hero rather ungrateful.

A survey of its environs soon convinced him that he had undertaken
a very difficult task. Bristol with its two encircling rivers was a
natural stronghold of no common order; and on the one side where nature
had left it unprotected, art had supplied the deficiency. The narrow
neck of land at the eastern end of the peninsula on which the town
stood--the only point whence it could be reached without crossing the
water--was in the Conqueror’s last days occupied by a castle which in
the Red King’s reign passed into the hands of Robert Fitz-Hamon, famed
alike in history and legend as the conqueror of Glamorgan; in those
of his son-in-law and successor, Earl Robert of Gloucester,[769] it
grew into a mighty fortress, provided with trench and wall, outworks
and towers, and all other military contrivances then in use,[770] and
surrounded on its exposed eastern side by a moat whose waters joined
those of the Avon on the south.[771] Bristol was in fact Robert’s
military capital, and under the command of his eldest son it had now
become the chief muster-place of all his dispossessed partizans and
followers, as well as of a swarm of mercenaries attracted thither from
all parts of the country by the advantages of the place and the wealth
and renown of its lord.[772] From this stronghold they sallied forth
in all directions to do the king all the mischief in their power. They
overran his lands and those of his adherents like a pack of hounds;
wholesale cattle-lifting was among the least of their misdeeds; every
wealthy man whom they could reach was hunted down or decoyed into their
den, and there tortured with every refinement of ingenious cruelty till
he had given up his uttermost farthing.[773] One Philip Gay, a kinsman
of Earl Robert, specially distinguished himself in the contrivance of
new methods of torture.[774] In his hands, and those of men like him,
Bristol acquired the title of “the stepmother of all England.”[775] If
Bristol could be reduced to submission, Stephen’s work would be more
than half done. He held a council of war with his barons to deliberate
on the best method of beginning the siege. Those who were in earnest
about the matter urged the construction of a mole to dam up the narrow
strait which formed the haven, whereby not only would the inhabitants
be deprived of their chief hope of succour, but the waters, checked
in their course and thrown back upon themselves, would swell into a
mighty flood and speedily overwhelm the city. Meanwhile, added the
supporters of this scheme, Stephen might build a tower on each side of
the city to check all ingress and egress by means of the two bridges,
while he himself should encamp with his host before the castle and
storm or starve it into surrender. Another party, however, whose secret
sympathies were with the besieged, argued that whatever material,
wood or stone, was used for the construction of the dam would be
either swallowed up in the depths of the river or swept away by its
current; and they drew such a dismal picture of the hopelessness of the
undertaking that Stephen gave it up, and with it all attempt at a siege
of Bristol. Turning southward, he struck across the Mendip hills into
the heart of Somerset, and besieged William Lovel in Castle Cary,[776]
a fortress whose remains, in the shape of three grass-covered mounds,
still overlook a little valley where the river Cary takes its rise
at the foot of the Polden hills. According to one account, the place
yielded to Stephen;[777] according to another,[778] he built over
against it a tower in which he left a detachment of soldiers to annoy
its garrison, and marched northward to another castle, Harptree, whose
site is now buried in the middle of a lonely wood. Harptree was gained
by a stratagem somewhat later on;[779] for the present Stephen left it
to be harassed by the garrison of Bath, and pursued his northward march
to Dudley. Here he made no attempt upon the castle, held against him
by Ralf Paganel, but contented himself with burning and harrying the
neighbourhood, and then led his host up the Severn to Shrewsbury.[780]
The old “town in the scrub,” or bush, as its first English conquerors
had called it, had grown under the care of its first Norman earl,
Roger of Montgomery, into one of the chief strongholds of the Welsh
border. The lands attached to the earldom, forfeited by the treason
of Robert of Bellême, had been granted by Henry I. to his second
queen, Adeliza; she and her second husband, William of Aubigny, had
now thrown themselves into the party of her stepdaughter the Empress;
and the castle built by Earl Roger on the neck of a peninsula in the
Severn upon which the town of Shrewsbury stands was held in Matilda’s
interest by William Fitz-Alan, who had married a niece of Robert
of Gloucester.[781] William himself, with his wife and children,
slipped out at the king’s approach, leaving the garrison sworn never
to surrender. Stephen, however, caused the fosse to be filled with
wood, set it on fire, and literally smoked them out.[782] The noblest
were hanged; the rest escaped as best they could,[783] while Stephen
followed up his success by taking a neighbouring castle which belonged
to Fitz-Alan’s uncle Arnulf of Hesdin, and hanging Arnulf himself with
ninety-three of his comrades.[784] This unwonted severity acted as a
salutary warning which took effect at the opposite end of the kingdom.
Queen Matilda, with a squadron of ships manned by sailors from her own
county of Boulogne, was blockading Walkelyn Maminot in Dover, when the
tidings of her husband’s victories in Shropshire induced Walkelyn to
surrender.[785] This was in August.[786] When a truce had been patched
up with Ralf Paganel,[787] the west of England might be considered
fairly pacified, and Stephen was free to march into Dorsetshire against
Earl Robert’s southernmost fortress, Wareham.[788] Nothing, however,
seems to have come of this expedition; and Robert himself was still
out of reach beyond sea. In the midland shires William Peverel, the
lord of the Peak country, was still unsubdued, but he was now almost
isolated, for in the north Eustace Fitz-John, as we have seen, had
drawn his punishment upon himself from other hands than those of the
king. Stephen’s successes in the west, his wife’s success at Dover,
were quickly followed by tidings of the victory at Cowton Moor; and
meanwhile a peacemaker had come upon the scene.

        [769] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 692).

        [770] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 37.

        [771] See plans and description in Seyer, _Mem. of Bristol_,
        vol. i. pp. 373 _et seq._

        [772] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 37.

        [773] _Ib._ p. 40, 41. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii.
        p. 109. Both writers, however, seem to lay to the sole account
        of the Bristol garrison all the horrors which in the Eng.
        Chron. a. 1137, are attributed to the barons and soldiers in
        general throughout the civil war.

        [774] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

        [775] “Ad totius Angliæ novercam, Bristoam.” _Gesta Steph._
        (Sewell), p. 41.

        [776] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 43. Flor. Worc. Contin.
        (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 110.

        [777] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 43, 44.

        [778] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

        [779] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 44.

        [780] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above. On Dudley see above, p.
        295, note 4{760}.

        [781] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 917.

        [782] “Omnes infumigat et exfumigat.” Flor. Worc. Contin.
        (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 110.

        [783] _Ibid._

        [784] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 917.

        [785] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 261).

        [786] Ord. Vit. as above.

        [787] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

        [788] _Ibid._

In the spring of 1138 a schism which had rent the Western Church
asunder for seven years was ended by the death of the anti-pope
Anacletus, and Pope Innocent II. profited by the occasion to send
Alberic bishop of Ostia as legate into England--Archbishop William
of Canterbury, who had held a legatine commission together with the
primacy, having died in November 1136.[789] Alberic landed just as
the revolt broke out, and Stephen had therefore no choice but to
accept his credentials and let him pursue his mission, whatever it
might be.[790] It proved to be wholly a mission of peace. Alberic made
a visitation-tour throughout England,[791] ending with a council at
Carlisle, whither the king of Scots, who had adhered to Anacletus, now
came to welcome Innocent’s representative. There, on the neutral ground
of young Henry’s English fief, the legate made an attempt to mediate
between David and Stephen; but all that the former would grant was a
truce until Martinmas, and a promise to bring to Carlisle and there set
free all the captive Englishwomen who could be collected before that
time, as well as to enforce more Christian-like behaviour among his
soldiers for the future.[792] On the third Sunday in Advent the legate
held a council at Westminster, when Theobald, abbot of Bec, was elected
archbishop of Canterbury by the prior of Christ Church and certain
delegates of the convent, in presence of the king and the legate.[793]
Theobald’s consecration, two days after Epiphany, brought Alberic’s
mission to a satisfactory close.[794]

        [789] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp. 97, 98. On
        Alberic see Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 96, 97.

        [790] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 106.

        [791] _Ibid._ The details of his movements in the north are in
        Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 98, and Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p. 121.

        [792] Ric. Hex. (Raine), pp. 99, 100. Joh. Hexh. as above.

        [793] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, p. 265). Ric. Hexh.
        (Raine), pp. 101–103. Eng. Chron. a. 1140. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 107–109, and vol. ii. p. 384. Chron.
        Becc., in Giles, _Lanfranc_, vol. i. p. 207. _Vita Theobaldi_
        (_ibid._), pp. 337, 338.

        [794] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 109.

In the work of mediation he had soon found that there was one who had
the matter more nearly at heart, and who had a much better chance
of success than himself. Queen Matilda was warmly attached to her
Scottish relatives, and lost no opportunity of urging her husband to
reconciliation with them. At last, on April 9, she and her cousin Henry
met at Durham; David and Henry gave hostages for their pacific conduct
in the future, and the English earldom of Northumberland was granted
to Henry.[795] The treaty was ratified by Stephen at Nottingham;[796]
the Scottish prince stayed to keep Easter with his cousins, and
afterwards accompanied the king in an expedition against Ludlow. The
castle of Ludlow, founded probably by Roger de Lacy in the reign of
William Rufus, was destined in after-days to become a treasure-house
alike for historian, antiquary and artist. Memories of every period in
English history from the twelfth century to the seventeenth throng the
mighty pile, in which almost every phase of English architecture may
be studied amid surroundings of the most exquisite natural beauty. The
site of the fortress, on a rocky promontory rising more than a hundred
feet above the junction of the Corve and the Teme, was admirably
adapted for defence. The northern and western walls of its outer ward
rose abruptly from the steep slope of the rock itself; on the east and
south it was protected by a ditch, crossed by a bridge which led to the
inner ward and the keep, securely placed near the south-western angle
of the enclosure.[797] The fief of Ludlow had escheated to the Crown
soon after Stephen’s accession,[798] and he had apparently bestowed it
upon one Joce or Joceas of Dinan,[799] who now, it seems, was holding
it against him. The siege came to nothing, though it was made memorable
by an incident which nearly cost the life of Henry of Scotland and
furnished occasion for a characteristic display of Stephen’s personal
bravery. A grappling-iron thrown from over the wall caught the Scottish
prince, dragged him off his horse, and had all but lifted him into
the castle, when the king rushed forward and set him free.[800] This
adventure, however, seems to have cooled Stephen’s ardour for the
assault, and after setting up two towers to hold the garrison in check,
he again withdrew to London.[801] Early in the year he had taken Earl
Robert’s castle of Leeds;[802] and altogether his prospects were
beginning to brighten, when they were suddenly overclouded again by his
own rashness and folly.

        [795] With the exception of Newcastle and Bamborough, and on
        condition that the local customs established by Henry I. should
        be maintained inviolate. Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 105, 106. Hen.
        Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265), has a very strange
        version of the way in which this treaty was brought about; see
        below, p. 302, note 3{802}.

        [796] Ric. Hexh. (as above), p. 106.

        [797] See plan and description in Clark, _Mediev. Milit.
        Archit._, vol. ii. pp. 273–290.

        [798] By the death of Payne Fitz-John. See Eyton, _Antiqu.
        Shropshire_, vol. v. p. 244.

        [799] This is Joceas’s surname according to the romantic
        _History of Fulk Fitzwarine_, and it is adopted by Mr. Eyton,
        who takes it as derived from Dinan in Britanny; see his account
        of Joceas, _Antiqu. Shropsh._, vol. v. pp. 244–247. According
        to this, the name of _Dinham_, now borne by the part of Ludlow
        which lies south and west of the castle, would be a corruption
        of _Dinan_, which the above-mentioned romance (a work of the
        reign of Henry III.) says was the name given to the whole place
        in Joceas’s time. Mr. Wright, however (_Hist. Ludlow_, pp. 13,
        34), thinks that _Dinham_ was the original name, afterwards
        superseded by Ludlow; in which case Joceas becomes simply
        “Joceas of Dinham,” with a surname derived not from a foreign
        birthplace, but from an English fief.

        [800] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265).

        [801] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 115.

        [802] Hen. Hunt. as above. This is Leeds in Kent. It is
        probably through mistaking it for its Yorkshire namesake that
        Henry was misled into his odd notion that Stephen himself
        was fighting in the north, and compelled the Scots to a
        pacification. See above, p. 300, note 7{800}.

The administrative machinery of the state was still in the hands of
Bishop Roger of Salisbury and the disciples whom he had trained. Roger
himself retained his office of justiciar; the treasurership was held
by his nephew, Nigel bishop of Ely, and the chancellorship by one
whom he also called his nephew, but who was known to be really his
son. This latter was commonly distinguished as “Roger the Poor”--a
nickname pointed sarcastically at the enormous wealth of the elder
Roger, compared with which that of the younger might pass for poverty.
Outwardly, the justiciar stood as high in Stephen’s favour as he
had stood in Henry’s; whatever he asked--and he was not slack in
asking--was granted at once: “I shall give him the half of my kingdom
some day, if he demands it!” was Stephen’s own confession.[803] But
the greediness of the one and the lavishness of the other sprang
alike from a secret mistrust which the mischief-makers of the court
did their utmost to foster. Stephen’s personal friends assured him
that the bishop of Salisbury and his nephews were in treasonable
correspondence with the Empress, that they were fortifying and
revictualling their castles in her behalf, and that the worldly pomp
and show, the vast retinue of armed followers, with which they were
wont to appear at court, was really intended for the support of her
cause.[804] How far the suspicion was correct it is difficult to
decide. Roger owed his whole career to King Henry; he had broken his
plighted faith to Henry’s child; it is no wonder if his heart smote
him for the ungrateful deed. If, on the other hand, that deed had
been done from a real sense of duty to the state, a sincere belief in
the advantage of Stephen’s rule for England, then it is no wonder if
he felt that he had made a grievous mistake, and sought to repair it
by a return to his earlier allegiance. But whatever may be thought
of the bishop’s conduct, nothing can justify that of the king. At
Midsummer 1139 Stephen summoned Bishop Roger to come and speak with
him at Oxford. Some foreboding of evil--possibly some consciousness
of double-dealing--made the old man very unwilling to go;[805] but he
did go, and with him went his son the chancellor, and his two nephews,
the treasurer and Alexander bishop of Lincoln,[806] each accompanied
by a train of armed knights. Stephen, equally suspicious, bade his men
arm themselves likewise, to be ready in case of need. While he was
conversing with the bishops in Oxford castle,[807] a dispute about
quarters arose between their followers and those of the count of Meulan
and Alan of Richmond;[808] a fray ensued, in which Alan’s nephew was
nearly killed,[809] whereupon the two Rogers and the bishop of Lincoln
were at once seized by the king. Nigel of Ely, who was lodging apart
from the others outside the town,[810] escaped, threw himself into his
uncle’s castle of Devizes, and prepared to stand a siege.[811]

        [803] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 32 (Hardy, p. 729).

        [804] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 46, 47.

        [805] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 107. (This
        writer puts the event a year too early, but afterwards corrects
        himself, _ib._ p. 116). Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 20
        (Hardy, p. 717), says that he himself heard Roger’s expression
        of reluctance: “Per dominam meam S. Mariam (nescio quo
        pacto) reluctatur mens mea huic itineri! Hoc scio, quod ejus
        utilitatis ero in curiâ, cujus est equinus pullus in pugnâ.”
        This really seems to imply nothing more than that he was
        conscious of having lost all power to control or guide the king.

        [806] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265). Flor. Worc.
        Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 107.

        [807] “In castro Oxenfordiæ.” Ann. Oseney, a. 1139 (Luard,
        _Ann. Monast._, vol. iv. p. 23).

        [808] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 20 (Hardy, p. 717),
        lays the blame on the men of Alan of Richmond (or Britanny);
        the _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell, p. 49) on Waleran of Meulan. Flor.
        Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 108, gives no name.

        [809] Will. Malm. as above. Cf. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 124.

        [810] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 919.

        [811] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 108. _Gesta
        Steph._ (Sewell), p. 50.

The town of Devizes stands on a steep escarpment of greensand
penetrated by two deep ravines which give it the form of a semicircle
with a tongue projecting in the middle. On this tongue of rocky ground,
five hundred feet above the level of the sea, the bishop of Salisbury
had reared a castle unsurpassed in strength and splendour by any
fortress in Europe.[812] At its gates Stephen soon appeared, bringing
the two Rogers with him as captives. The elder he lodged in a cowshed,
the younger he threatened to hang if the place was not surrendered at
once. Its unhappy owner, in terror for his son’s life, vowed neither
to eat nor drink till the castle was in the hands of Stephen;[813] but
neither his uncle’s fasting nor his cousin’s danger moved Nigel to
yield. The keep, however, was held by the chancellor’s mother, Matilda
of Ramsbury, and the sight of a rope actually round her son’s neck
overcame her resistance. She offered her own life in exchange for his,
and the offer being refused, she surrendered. Nigel could only follow
her example.[814] Roger’s other castles, Sherborne and Malmesbury,
soon fell likewise into the king’s hands, and with them the enormous
treasure collected by their owner.[815] Alexander of Lincoln was
dragged to the gates of Newark and there kept starving till he induced
his people to give up the place; and his other castle, Sleaford, was
gained by the same means.[816]

        [812] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265).

        [813] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above. In Ord. Vit. (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 920, it is the king who vows to
        starve the bishop till the castle is won. Cf. Hen. Hunt. (as
        above) and Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 20 (Hardy, p.
        718).

        [814] Ord. Vit. as above.

        [815] Hen. Hunt. and Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._ as above. The
        Eng. Chron. tells the whole tale briefly under a wrong year (a.
        1137).

        [816] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 11 (Arnold, p. 266).

Such an outrage as Stephen had committed could not pass unchallenged.
His victims indeed were unpopular enough; but two of them were
bishops, and the whole English Church was up in arms at once. And
the English Church was no longer without a fully qualified spokesman
and leader. That leader, however, was not the new-made primate. The
legatine commission held by William of Corbeil was not renewed to his
successor in the archbishopric: it was sent instead to the man who had
long been the most influential member of the English episcopate--Henry,
bishop of Winchester. For nearly four months Henry kept this
all-powerful weapon lying idly in the scabbard;[817] now, at the call
of duty, neither fear nor love hindered him from drawing it against his
own brother. Having vainly dinned into Stephen’s ears, both privately
and publicly, his entreaties for the restoration of the two bishops, he
fell back upon his legatine powers and cited the king to answer for his
conduct before a council at Winchester on August 29.[818]

        [817] Innocent’s commission bore date March 1, 1139. Will.
        Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 22 (Hardy, p. 719).

        [818] _Ib._ c. 21 (p. 719).

The council sat for three days, and the case was argued out between
Stephen’s advocate Aubrey de Vere, the bishop of Salisbury and the
legate. Henry formally charged his brother with sacrilege, in having
laid violent hands upon bishops, and appropriated their lands and
goods to his own use. Stephen met the charge with the plea which had
been used by the Conqueror against Odo of Bayeux--he had arrested the
culprits not as bishops, but as unfaithful ministers and disloyal
subjects; and the property which he had taken from them they had
acquired as private men, in defiance of the canons of the Church.
Roger retorted that all these accusations were false; both parties
threatened an appeal to Rome, and swords were drawn almost in the
council-chamber.[819] The legate and the primate intervened as
peacemakers, and a compromise was arranged. It was decreed by the
council that all prelates who held fortresses other than those which
belonged to their sees should place them under the king’s control,
and confine themselves henceforth to their canonical duties and
rights.[820] On the other hand, Stephen’s act was solemnly condemned,
and he had to lay aside his royal robes and come as an humble penitent
to receive the censure of the Church.[821] This humiliation saved
him from the ecclesiastical penalties of his misdeed; from its
political consequences nothing could save him now. He had filled up
the measure of his follies. When the obedience of the barons had been
forfeited--when the trust of the people had been shaken--two forces
still remained by whose help he might have recovered all that he had
lost: the administration and the clergy. At a single blow he had
destroyed the one and thrown the other into opposition.

        [819] _Ib._ cc. 22–28 (pp. 719–724).

        [820] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 116. _Gesta
        Steph._ (Sewell), p. 51.

        [821] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 51, 52.

His rivals saw that the hour for which they were vainly waiting in
Normandy had struck at last in England. All Geoffrey’s attempts on
Normandy had failed. At the expiration of his truce with Theobald of
Blois in 1136 the barons of Anjou were again in revolt,[822] and it
was not till the end of September that Geoffrey was free to invade
the duchy. Its internal confusion was such that the twin earls of
Meulan and Leicester (sons of King Henry’s friend Robert), who were
trying to govern it for Stephen, had been obliged again to call Count
Theobald to their aid; but at sight of the hated “Guirribecs,” as the
Angevins were derisively called, the Normans forgot their differences
and rose as one man against the common foe. On October 1 Geoffrey
was wounded in the right foot while besieging the castle of Le Sap
near Lisieux; that night his wife joined him with reinforcements; but
the morning had scarcely dawned when, like another Geoffrey of Anjou
ninety years earlier, he fled with all his host[823]--not, however,
before the military fame of the Norman duke, but before the vengeance
of the Norman people. Next spring he again ventured to attack the
Hiesmois.[824] Stephen, who was now in Normandy and had just won its
investiture from King Louis, prepared to meet the invader; but the
jealousies between his Norman and his Flemish troops compelled him
to abandon the attempt and make another truce for two years.[825]
In April next the Angevins broke the truce;[826] in June Robert of
Gloucester openly declared for them, and under his influence Bayeux
and Caen surrendered to Geoffrey. The count of Anjou retired, however,
before a threatened attack from Stephen’s cousin Ralf of Vermandois,
in conjunction with Waleran of Meulan and William of Ypres.[827] Early
in October he made an unsuccessful attempt upon Falaise.[828] In
November he marched upon Toucques, then one of the most flourishing
seaport towns of Normandy. The burghers were taken captive “seated in
their own arm-chairs,” and in their comfortable houses the Angevins,
after feasting to their heart’s content, settled themselves carelessly
for the night. But their presence was known to William Trussebut, the
governor of the neighbouring castle of Bonneville; and at dead of night
a band of desperate characters, purposely chosen for a desperate deed,
came by his orders from Bonneville to Toucques, dispersed silently
throughout the town, and fired it in forty-five places. The Angevins,
wakened by the cries of the watchmen and the roaring of the flames,
fled headlong, leaving their arms, horses and baggage behind them.
William Trussebut had come forth at the head of his men to intercept
their flight, but the smoke and the darkness were such that neither
party could distinguish friends from foes. Geoffrey, bewildered as
he was, managed to bring some of his men to a stand in a cemetery;
there the rest of the Angevin force gradually collected, and waited,
in shame and trembling, for the day. At the first gleam of morning
they fled, and never stopped till they had buried themselves and their
disgrace safe within the walls of Argentan.[829] This time the Normans
had taught Geoffrey a lesson which he did not soon forget; he did not
venture to meddle with them again for more than two years. Neither
he nor his wife made any movement at all till late in the following
summer, when a prospect was opened for them beyond the sea by Stephen’s
arrest of the two bishops. The council of Winchester broke up on the
first of September;[830] on the thirtieth the Empress was in England.

        [822] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 268, 269.
        Cf. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 903.

        [823] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 903–908. Rob. Torigni, a. 1136.

        [824] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 909, says he was “stipendiarius
        conjugi suæ factus.”

        [825] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 910.
        Rob. Torigni, a. 1137, makes it three years. Stephen also
        promised an annual payment of two thousand marks of silver.

        [826] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 916.

        [827] Ord. Vit. as above.

        [828] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 918. Chronn. S. Albin. and S.
        Serg. a. 1138 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 34, 145).

        [829] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 918, 919.

        [830] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 29 (Hardy, p. 724).



CHAPTER VI.

ENGLAND AND THE BARONS.

1139–1147.


On the last day of September 1139 Matilda sailed in company with her
brother Robert and a hundred and forty knights;[831] they landed at
Arundel, and were received into the castle by its owner, the ex-queen
Adeliza.[832] Stephen hurried to besiege them there, but before he
could reach the spot one of the travellers had left it. Earl Robert
only stayed to place his sister in safety beneath her step-mother’s
roof,[833] and then set off to arouse her friends in England with the
tidings of her arrival. Stephen flew after him, but in vain. With an
escort of only twelve knights he rode right across southern England,
met Brian of Wallingford and told him the news, carried it on to Miles
at Gloucester, and got safe to his journey’s end at Bristol.[834] The
baffled king threw all his energies into the siege of Arundel, till his
brother joined him and suggested another scheme. Bishop Henry argued
that it was useless to besiege the Empress at one end of England while
her brother was stirring up the other, and that it would be far wiser
to get all the enemies collected in one spot by letting her follow
him to Bristol.[835] That Stephen, having once made up his mind to
this course, should not only give his rival a safe-conduct but should
commission the count of Meulan and the bishop of Winchester himself
to escort her till she reached her brother’s care,[836] was only what
might have been expected from his chivalrous character. Of the wisdom
of the proceeding it is difficult to judge. We can hardly imagine
either of Stephen’s predecessors giving a safe-conduct to a competitor
for his crown; but neither Rufus nor Henry had had to deal at once
with a lady-rival and with her brother; and both had been, materially,
politically and morally, in a much stronger position than Stephen.
As matters then stood with him, what in itself looks like a piece of
Quixotism may have been the best means of cutting an awkward knot; and
both he and Matilda played their game so badly from beginning to end
that it is hardly worth while to criticize single moves on either side.

        [831] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 29 (Hardy, p.
        724). The _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 56, and Rob. Torigni,
        a. 1139, also name Arundel as the landing-place, but give
        no date. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 11 (Arnold, p. 266), says
        merely “statim,”--_i.e._ immediately after the council at
        Winchester. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp. 116,
        117, says first “in October,” and afterwards “before S.
        Peter-in-chains,”--_i.e._ August 1; but he is clearly wrong in
        this as well as in saying they landed at Portsmouth.

        [832] Will. Malm. as above (p. 725).

        [833] Rob. Torigni, a. 1139, says he left her there “cum uxore
        suâ et aliis impedimentis.”

        [834] Will. Malm. as above. _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 56.
        Rob. Torigni, a. 1139.

        [835] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 56, 57.

        [836] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 29 (Hardy, p. 725).
        Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 117. Hen. Hunt., l.
        viii. c. 11 (Arnold, p. 266).

The next seven years were a time such as England never saw before or
since. For want of a better name, we call them the years of civil
war and count them as part of the reign of Stephen; but the struggle
was not worthy of the name of war, and the authority of the Crown,
whether vested in Stephen or in Matilda, was a mockery and a shadow.
The whole system of government established by King Henry had fallen
with his ministers; the death of Bishop Roger in December 1139[837] was
typical of the extinction of all law and order throughout the kingdom,
nearly half of which had already slipped from Stephen’s grasp. While
he kept his Christmas feast in Roger’s episcopal city,[838] Matilda
was doing the like in regal state at Gloucester, receiving homage
from the western shires, and distributing lands and honours at her
will.[839] Of the Easter assembly there is no notice at all,[840]
and by Whitsuntide matters had reached such a pass that Stephen held
his court not at Westminster as usual but in the Tower, and only one
bishop, and that one a foreigner, could be got to attend it.[841] “In
those days,” wrote one who lived through them, “there was no king in
the land, and every man did not only, as once in Israel of old, that
which was right in his own eyes, but that which he knew and felt to
be wrong.”[842] For the first and last time in English history, the
feudal principle had full play, uncontrolled by any check either from
above or from below, from regal supremacy or popular influence. England
was at the mercy of the body of feudal nobles whose aim throughout
the last seventy years had been to break through the checks placed
upon their action by the Conqueror and his sons, and to master the
power of the Crown and the control of the state for their own private
interests, as the French feudataries had striven in an earlier time to
master the Crown of France. This was the condition into which Normandy
fell whenever its ducal coronet passed to a weak man or a child, and
from which it had had to be forcibly rescued by almost every duke in
succession, from Richard the Fearless to Henry the First. By their
sternly repressive policy, by their careful adoption and dexterous
use of all those safeguards and checks upon the power of the baronage
which could be drawn from old English constitutional practice, by their
political alliance with the nation against the disruptive tendencies
of feudalism, and by their strict administrative routine, the
Conqueror and his sons had hitherto managed to save England from such
a catastrophe. The break-down of their system under Stephen revealed
its radical defect: it rested, in the last resort, on a purely personal
foundation--on the strong hand of the king himself. The “nineteen
winters” that England “suffered for her sins” under the nominal reign
of Stephen were a time of discipline which taught the people, the
sovereign, and at last even the barons themselves, to seek a wider
and more lasting basis for the organization and administration of the
state. The discipline was a very bitter one. The English chronicler’s
picture of it has been copied times out of number, yet whoever would
paint that terrible scene can but copy it once again. “Every rich man
made his castles and held them against the king, and filled the land
with castles. They greatly oppressed the wretched men of the land with
castle-work; and when the castles were made, they filled them with
devils and evil men. They took the men who they weened had any goods,
both by night and by day, men and women, and put them in prison for
gold and silver, and tortured them with unspeakable torture; never
were martyrs so tortured as they were.... When the wretched men had
no more to give, they reaved and burned all the townships; and well
thou mightest fare all a day’s journey and shouldst never find a man
sitting in a township, or land tilled. Corn and cheese and butter were
dear, for there was none in the land. Wretched men starved of hunger;
some went about asking alms who once were rich men; some fled out of
the land. Never was more wretchedness in a land, and never did heathen
men worse than these did, for they forbore neither for church nor
churchyard, but took all the goods that were therein and then burned
church and all.... If two or three men came riding to a township, all
fled from them, thinking they were reavers. The bishops and clerks
were ever cursing them; but that was nought to them; for they were all
accursed, and forsworn, and lost. Even if it was tilled, the earth bare
no corn, for it was all undone with their deeds; and they said openly
that Christ slept, and His holy ones. Such things, and more than we can
say, did we thole nineteen winters for our sins.”[843]

        [837] Will. Malm. (as above), c. 32 (Hardy, p. 727). Flor.
        Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 113, under a wrong year.

        [838] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 122.

        [839] _Ib._ p. 118. Will. Malm. (as above), cc. 29, 31 (pp.
        725, 726).

        [840] The only allusion to it is in Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 12
        (Arnold, p. 267); “Ubi autem ad Natale vel ad Pascha fuerit
        [sc. rex], dicere non attinet.” As to Christmas, however, see
        above, p. 310.

        [841] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 37 (Hardy, p. 734).
        The bishop was John of Séez.

        [842] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 22 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 69).

        [843] Eng. Chron. a. 1137.

The military history of the struggle is scarcely worth following out
in detail; for the most part it is but a dreary tale of raid and
counter-raid, of useless marches and unfinished sieges, of towns
and castles taken and retaken, plundered and burned, without any
settled plan of campaign on either side.[844] By the close of the
year 1140 the geographical position of the two parties may be roughly
marked off by a line drawn from the Peak of Derbyshire to Wareham on
the Dorset coast. Owing to the influence of Robert of Gloucester,
Matilda was generally acknowledged throughout the western shires; but
she was almost imprisoned in them, for the great highway of central
England, the valley of the Thames, from Oxford to the sea, was still
in Stephen’s hands; London was loyal to him, and so was Kent, although
the archbishop as yet stood aloof from both parties, as did also the
legate-bishop of Winchester and the bishops and clergy in general.
North of Thames, the midland shires served as a wide battle-field where
each of the combatants in turn gained and lost ground, without any
decisive advantage on either side. In East-Anglia, Hugh Bigod was for
the moment again professing obedience to Stephen, but he was simply
watching the political tide to take it at the flood and use it for
his own interest; and so were the chief men of central and northern
England, the earls of Northampton, Derby and York, the lords of the
Peak, of Holderness and of Richmond. In the north-west, between the
Welsh march and the southern border of Cumberland, lay a district ruled
by an almost independent chieftain whose action brought about the first
crisis in the war.

        [844] The details of the first year’s fighting are in _Gesta
        Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 58–69; Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol.
        ii. pp. 118–128; and Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. cc. 30,
        31, 34–37 (Hardy, pp. 726, 730–735).

Of all the great nobles, the one whom both parties were most anxious
to win to their own interest was the earl of Chester. His earldom
was no empty title, no mushroom creation of the last few years, but
a great palatine jurisdiction inherited in regular succession from
Hugh of Avranches, on whom it had been conferred by the Conqueror, and
comprising the sole government and ownership of the whole of Cheshire.
Within its limits the earl ruled supreme; every acre of land, save
what belonged to the Church, was held under him; every man owed him
suit and service; the king himself had no direct authority within the
little realm of Chester, and could claim from its sovereign nothing
but the homage due from vassal to overlord. The earl, in fact, as has
been often said, “held Chester by the sword as freely as the king
held England by the crown;” and as things now stood the earl’s tenure
was by far the more secure of the two. The present ruler of this
miniature kingdom, Ralf by name, had been married almost in his boyhood
to a daughter of Robert of Gloucester.[845] All his father-in-law’s
persuasions, however, had as yet failed to draw him to Matilda’s
side. Stephen on the other hand was equally alive to the importance
of securing Ralf’s adherence, and lavished upon him all the honours
he could desire,[846] with one exception. That one was the earldom
of Carlisle, which his father had held for a few years and then
surrendered in exchange for that of his cousin Richard of Chester,
who perished in the White Ship.[847] Ralf accordingly quarrelled for
the possession of Carlisle with Henry of Scotland, of whose Cumbrian
earldom it now formed a part. Henry appealed to Stephen, who could not
but take his side,[848] yet for his own sake was anxious to satisfy
Ralf. The mother of Ralf and of his elder half-brother William of
Roumare was a great Lincolnshire heiress, daughter of Ivo Taillebois
by his marriage with a lady of Old-English race whose family held
considerable estates in that county, of which one of them had been
sheriff under the Conqueror.[849] In consequence, no doubt, of this old
connexion, Stephen at the close of the year 1140 contrived a meeting
with the two brothers somewhere in Lincolnshire, and there bestowed
great honour upon them both,[850] including, as it seems, a grant of
the earldom of Lincoln to William of Roumare.[851] A mere empty title,
however, satisfied neither of the brother-earls. Rather, as the English
chronicler says of them and of all the rest, “the more he gave them the
worse they were to him.”[852] His back was no sooner turned than they
planned a trick, which their wives helped them to execute, for gaining
possession of Lincoln castle.[853] There Ralf set himself up as lord
and master of the city and the neighbourhood;[854] and we can want no
more speaking witness to the character of such feudal tyranny as was
represented in his person than the fact that not only the citizens, but
Stephen’s late victim Bishop Alexander himself, sent the king an urgent
appeal to come and deliver them from the intruder.[855]

        [845] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 38 (Hardy, p. 739).

        [846] “Noht forthi thæt he ne iaf him al thæt he cuthe axan
        him, alse he dide alle othre.” Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

        [847] On the earldoms of Carlisle and Chester, see Mr. Hodgson
        Hinde’s _Introd. to Pipe Rolls of Cumberland_, and his paper on
        the “Early History of Cumberland,” in _Archæological Journal_,
        vol. xvi. pp. 229, 230.

        [848] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 131, 132.

        [849] On the person, pedigree and connexions of Ralf’s mother,
        Countess Lucy, see Appendix P.P. to Mr. Freeman’s _Norm.
        Conq._, vol. iii. pp. 778, 779; and Mr. J. G. Nichols’s paper
        on the “Earldom of Lincoln,” in _Proceedings of Archæological
        Institute_, Lincoln, 1849, pp. 254–257.

        [850] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 38 (Hardy, p. 739).

        [851] See Nichols, “Earldom of Lincoln” (_Proc. Archæol.
        Inst._, Lincoln, 1849), p. 260.

        [852] Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

        [853] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 921.

        [854] “Cumque civibus et affinibus dira injungeret.” _Gesta
        Steph._ (Sewell), p. 70.

        [855] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 38 (Hardy, p. 739).
        _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 70. Ord. Vit. as above. The last
        alone mentions the bishop.

The news reached Stephen as he was keeping Christmas in London, and the
peaceful gathering of the court changed into the muster of an armed
host which set off at once for Lincoln, and, actively supported by
the citizens and the bishop, sat down to besiege the castle.[856] The
present polygonal keep of Lincoln castle appears to have been built by
Ralf of Chester in the last years of Stephen’s reign. That which he now
occupied stood on the same spot, on the south side of the enclosure,
and was the original round shell built by the Conqueror upon a mound
of still earlier date. Its base was surrounded by ditches, the outer
fortifications on that side being on a lower level, and probably still
consisting of nothing more than the old English rampart-mound and
palisade; the other three sides of the enclosure, where there was no
such steep natural incline, were protected by a curtain-wall raised
upon the old mounds, and encircled by ditches wide and deep, but
dry, for there was no means of contriving a moat on the top of that
limestone crag. The brother-earls were not prepared for Stephen’s
prompt and vigorous attack: their force was small, and they had their
wives and children to protect. Ralf slipped out alone,[857] made his
way to Chester to raise his followers there, and sent a message to his
father-in-law offering his allegiance to the Empress if Robert would
help the besieged at Lincoln out of their strait.[858] Even had his
own daughter not been among them, Earl Robert was not the man to miss
such a chance. At the head of the entire force of his party he answered
Ralf’s appeal; but so keenly did he feel the importance of the crisis
that he kept the real object of his expedition a secret from all but
his own nearest friends; and the bulk of his host followed him all the
way from Gloucester without any idea whither he was leading them, till
they found themselves actually in sight of the foe.[859]

        [856] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 13 (Arnold, p. 268). Ord. Vit. as
        above. According to Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. cc. 38,
        39 (Hardy, pp. 739, 740), the castle was closely invested all
        round, and a chief base of operations seems to have been the
        minster.

        [857] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 38 (Hardy, p. 740).
        Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 921.

        [858] Ord. Vit. as above.

        [859] Will. Malm. (as above), c. 39 (p. 741).

The two earls probably met at Claybrook in Leicestershire. At that
point Ralf, coming down from Chester by the Watling Street, and Robert,
marching up by a branch road from Gloucester, would both strike into
the Foss-Way, and thence would follow its north-eastward course along
the eastern side of the Trent valley. Between the road, the river
and the promontory of Lincoln stretched a tract of low-lying marshy
ground across which the Foss-Dyke ran from the Trent at Torksey into
the Witham just above the bridge of Lincoln, thus connecting the two
rivers and forming an outlet for the superfluous waters of the Trent,
which in rainy seasons was only too apt, as it is even now, to overflow
its banks and flood all the surrounding country. Against the storms
of the winter of 1140 all precautions had failed; the surging stream
had risen far above the level of the dyke, and the greater part of the
ground between it and the south-western slope of the Lincoln hill was
drowned in one vast sheet of water. The Foss-Way entered the city by
a bridge over the Witham; the two earls, however, could not venture to
take this route, and made instead for an ancient ford which crossed
the river a little farther westward, nearer to its junction with the
Foss-Dyke. Stephen was evidently expecting them and had anticipated
their course, for he had posted a detachment of troops to guard the
site of this ford.[860] All trace of the ford itself, however, was lost
in the flood. “Even so would I have it,” cried the earl of Gloucester
to his son-in-law, as in the dawn of Candlemas-day they reached the
southern margin of the water; “once across, retreat will be impossible;
we must conquer or die.” The two leaders plunged in, swam boldly across
the fordless stream, and their whole host followed their example.[861]
Stephen’s outpost fled or was overcome, and the earls apparently wound
their way round the foot of the hill till they reached a tract of
comparatively high and dry ground on its south-western side. On the
eastern border of this tract, close under shelter of the ridge, a dark
moving shadow might tell them that swift and secret as their march had
been, Stephen was aware of it and had drawn out all his forces to meet
them;[862] while on the height above there loomed out dimly, through
the chill grey mist of the February morning, the outlines of the
fortress which they had come to deliver.

        [860] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 71. See note at end of
        chapter.

        [861] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 40 (Hardy, p. 741).
        Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 15 (Arnold, p. 268).

        [862] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 71. See note at end of
        chapter.

As they drew up in battle array on the marshy meadows there arose a
momentary dispute for precedence. The fiery young earl of Chester
pleaded that as the quarrel was his, so the foremost place of danger
and of honour should be his likewise. But the quarrel was no longer
Ralf’s alone. The flower of the army which had come to aid him
consisted of the “Disinherited,” the men whom Stephen had deprived
of their lands and honours to bestow them on his own favourites--the
men whom Henry had raised up and whom Stephen had cast down[863]--and
for them Earl Robert claimed the right of striking the first blow to
avenge at once their own wrongs and those of King Henry’s heiress.
While his eloquence was winding up their feelings to the highest pitch
of excitement,[864] all was astir in the royal camp. There, too, crown
and kingdom were felt to be at stake, and many of Stephen’s friends
besought him not to risk everything in a pitched battle till he should
have gathered a larger force--above all, not on that holy day, for it
was Sexagesima Sunday as well as the feast of the Purification.[865]
Sinister omens at the early mass--the breaking of the lighted taper
in the king’s hand, the falling of the pyx upon the altar[866]--lent
additional force to their entreaties; but Stephen was impatient for
the crisis and would hear of no delay.[867] He drew up his host in
three divisions; two on horseback, commanded respectively by Alan of
Richmond and William of Ypres;[868] the third on foot around the royal
standard, with the king himself in their midst.[869] In the opposing
army the van was taken by the “Disinherited”; the men of Chester,
who had first occupied it, now stood in the second line, under the
command of their own earl, and on foot.[870] The third line was headed
by Robert of Gloucester, and on the wings of the host was a crowd of
half-savage Welshmen, drawn from the Welsh dependencies of the earldoms
of Gloucester and Chester, and “better furnished with daring than with
arms.”[871]

        [863] “Quos magnus rex Henricus erexit, iste dejecit--ille
        instruxit, iste destruxit.” Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 15 (Arnold,
        p. 270).

        [864] See Robert’s speech in Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 15
        (Arnold, pp. 268–271); and cf. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Norm. Scriptt._), p. 922. What does Orderic mean by “Bassiani”?

        [865] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 921.

        [866] _Ib._ p. 922. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 16 (Arnold, p.
        271). There is another version of the story about the taper in
        _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 70, 71.

        [867] Ord. Vit. as above.

        [868] “Tres nimirum cohortes sibi Rex constituit.... In primâ
        fronte regalis exercitûs Flandritæ et Britones erant.” _Ibid._
        Compared with the account of the actual battle in Hen. Hunt.,
        l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, pp. 273, 274), the meaning seems to be
        as given above.

        [869] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 16 (Arnold, p. 271).

        [870] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 922. Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c.
        13 (Arnold, p. 268), and c. 18 (p. 273).

        [871] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 13 (Arnold, p. 268). Cf. Ord.
        Vit. as above.

In the midst of a spirited harangue addressed to the royal troops by
Baldwin of Clare--for among all Stephen’s popular gifts, that of
eloquence was lacking[872]--Earl Robert sounded his trumpets for the
attack. The Disinherited charged the first line of the royal cavalry
under the earls of Richmond, Meulan, Norfolk, Northampton and Surrey,
with such vigour that it was scattered almost in a moment. The second
line of Stephen’s cavalry--the Flemings under William of Ypres and the
count of Aumale--were attacked in flank by the Welsh, whom they put
to flight, but a charge of the men of Chester dispersed them in their
turn, and the whole body of horsemen on the king’s side turned tail at
once.[873] Even William of Ypres for once forsook his royal friend; and
the hasty flight of the other leaders, with Alan of Richmond at their
head, shewed how half-hearted was their attachment to the king.[874]
Stephen and his foot-soldiers were left alone in the midst of the foe,
who closed round them on all sides and set to work to assault them
as if besieging a fortress. Again and again the horsemen dashed upon
that living wall, each time leaving a ghastly breach, but each time
driven back from the central point[875] where the king stood like a
lion at bay,[876] cutting down every one who came within reach of his
sword. The sword broke; but a citizen of Lincoln who stood at his side
replaced it by a yet more terrible weapon--one of those two-handed
Danish battle-axes which it seems had not yet gone quite out of use in
the Danelaw.[877] Almost all his followers were taken or slain, yet
still he fought on, with the rage of a wild beast[878] and the courage
of a hero, alone against an army. At last Chester charged with all
his forces straight at the king. Down upon his helmet came the axe,
and Ralf, on his knees in the mire, learned that he was even yet no
match for his deserted and outraged sovereign.[879] Most likely it was
that blow, dealt at the traitor with all Stephen’s remaining strength,
which broke the axe in his hands.[880] Then a stone, hurled no one knew
whence, struck him on the head and he fell.[881] A knight, William of
Kahaines, seized him by the helmet, shouting “Hither, hither! I have
the king!”[882] Yet even then Stephen shook him off, and it was only
to Robert of Gloucester in person that he deigned to surrender at
last.[883] Baldwin of Clare and three other faithful ones were captured
with him; all the rest of the gallant little band were already taken
or slain.[884] The triumphant host marched into Lincoln and sacked
the town under the royal captive’s eyes.[885] He was then conveyed to
Gloucester and there presented, as a great prize, by Earl Robert to his
sister, who straightway sent him to prison in Bristol castle.[886]

        [872] “Tunc quia rex Stephanus festivâ carebat voce.” Hen.
        Hunt., l. viii. c. 16 (Arnold, p. 271).

        [873] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, pp. 273, 274).

        [874] “His men him suyken and flugæn.” Eng. Chron. a. 1140.
        Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 134, says Alan deserted before the
        battle began, but Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, p. 273),
        and Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 922, both
        name him as receiving the first charge. Orderic (as above) is
        loud in his denunciations of the traitors. He says that some
        of them had adopted a practice not unknown in the civil war of
        the seventeenth century, and still more largely followed in
        the Jacobite risings of the eighteenth--that of joining the
        king with a part of their men, and sending the remainder to his
        enemies.

        [875] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, p. 274).

        [876] “Stetit autem rex in acie quasi leo.” Joh. Hexh. (Raine),
        p. 135.

        [877] _Ibid._ Hen. Hunt. (as above) says the axe was the first
        weapon, and the sword replaced it when broken, but John’s is
        far the more likely version. See also Ord. Vit. (as above) and
        Rob. Torigni, a. 1141.

        [878] “Rugiens ut leo ... stridens dentibus, spumans ore, apri
        more.” Rob. Torigni, a. 1141.

        [879] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 135.

        [880] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, p. 274), says that
        both sword and axe broke.

        [881] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 40 (Hardy, p. 742).

        [882] Hen. Hunt. as above.

        [883] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._) p. 922. Joh.
        Hexh. as above. For other accounts see Will. Malm. as above;
        _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 71; and Will. Newb., l. i. c. 8
        (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 39, 40). All agree in praise of Stephen’s
        valour.

        [884] Ord. Vit. as above. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold,
        pp. 274, 275).

        [885] Will. Malm., Hen. Hunt. and Will. Newb. as above.

        [886] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 41 (Hardy, p. 742).
        Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 19 (Arnold, p. 275). Will. Newb., l. i.
        c. 8 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 40). _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 72.
        Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 129, giving the date,
        February 9 [1141].

Matilda’s day had come now. Within three weeks after the battle of
Lincoln one of her adherents, Miles Beauchamp, regained Bedford castle
from its titular earl Hugh the Poor;[887] William Peverel was forced
to surrender Nottingham;[888] Hervey of Lions, Stephen’s son-in-law,
was driven out of Devizes;[889] and Alan of Richmond, repenting of
his treason and vainly striving to atone for it, was caught in a trap
which he himself had laid for Ralf of Chester, flung into a dungeon,
and compelled to make submission to the earl and the Empress both at
once;[890] while voluntary offers of service and homage came flowing
in to Gloucester from all quarters.[891] Still the clergy held aloof.
The outrage of Midsummer 1139 had made it impossible for them to
support the king; but he was still the Lord’s anointed, to whom their
faith was pledged; and their leader, Henry of Winchester, was his own
brother. Matilda, anxious above all things to gain Henry’s adhesion,
bluntly sent him word that if he would join her, she would honour him
as the chief among her counsellors; if not, she would lead “all the
armies of England” against him at once. The legate, thus driven into
a corner--for, at the moment, her words were by no means an empty
threat--felt that even for his brother’s interest, let alone the
interest of the Church, which was really dearer to him than all beside,
his best course was to make terms with the victorious party.[892] The
terms were arranged between him and his imperial cousin in person, on
a rainy March morning in the plain before Winchester. Next day the old
West-Saxon capital opened its gates to the Empress, and the legate
himself, with a long train of bishops and abbots, clergy and people,
led her in triumphal procession to the “Old Minster” where so many of
her forefathers had been crowned and buried.[893]

        [887] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 74. Cf. _ib._ p. 32.

        [888] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 136.

        [889] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 74. Cf. _ib._ p. 69. Hervey,
        it must be noticed, was actually expelled not by Matilda’s
        partizans, but by the poor country folk whom his oppressions
        had exasperated. But it was Matilda who got the benefit of his
        expulsion.

        [890] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 136.

        [891] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 74.

        [892] _Ib._ p. 75.

        [893] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 42 (Hardy, pp. 743,
        744). In Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 130, this
        entry into Winchester on March 3 is confused with Matilda’s
        formal election there in April. So it is also in _Gesta Steph._
        (Sewell), p. 75.

In a few days the archbishop of Canterbury followed the legate’s
example and swore fealty to the Empress at Wilton.[894] She next
advanced to her father’s burial-place, Reading, and thence summoned
Robert of Oilly, who had been her father’s constable, to surrender
Oxford castle; the summons was obeyed,[895] and she held her Easter
court at Oxford.[896] The key of the upper valley of the Thames being
thus in her hands, she set herself to win its lower valley by advancing
to S. Alban’s and thence opening negotiations with London.[897] A
deputation of its citizens were at the same time invited by the
legate-bishop to a great council at Winchester on the second Monday
after Easter. The first day of the council was spent in a succession
of private conferences; on the second Henry spoke out publicly. He set
forth how, as vicar of the Apostolic see, he had summoned this assembly
to consider of the best means of restoring order in the land; he
contrasted its present wretched state with the good peace which it had
enjoyed under King Henry; he recited how the crown had been promised
to Matilda;--how, in consequence of her absence at her father’s
death, it had seemed wiser to secure a king at once in the person of
Stephen;--how he, the speaker, had stood surety for the maintenance
of the new king’s promises to the Church and the nation:--and how
shamefully those promises had been broken. He had tried to bring his
brother to reason, but in vain; and now the matter had been decided
by a higher Power. The judgment of the God of battles had delivered
Stephen into the hand of his rival, and cast him down from his throne;
the speaker’s duty was to see that throne filled at once. He had
spent the previous day in consultation with the bishops and clergy to
whom the right of election chiefly belonged; their choice had fallen
upon the candidate to whom their faith had been plighted long ago;
he called upon them now publicly to confirm their choice, and swear
fealty to King Henry’s heiress as Lady of England and Normandy.

        [894] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 42 (Hardy, p. 744).
        Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 130.

        [895] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

        [896] Will. Malm. as above. The Contin. Flor. Worc. says she
        spent Easter at Wilton, and places the visits to Reading and
        Oxford between Easter and Rogation-tide; but his chronology is
        very confused, while that of Will. Malm. is especially careful
        just here. William’s account of all these matters is by far the
        best. The _Gesta Steph._ cuts them very short.

        [897] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 131.

Not a dissentient voice was raised save that of a clerk of the queen’s
household, who ventured to read out a letter from his mistress to
the legate, passionately entreating for her husband’s restoration.
The deputation from London, who seem to have been the only laymen in
the assembly, did not exactly oppose the decision of the majority;
they merely pleaded for Stephen’s release, and carried back a report
of the proceedings to their fellow-citizens, with a view to gaining
their assent. It was not till just before midsummer that the Londoners
were finally persuaded to forsake their own chosen king;[898] then,
indeed, they opened their gates with the utmost humility;[899] and thus
the Lady entered her capital and took up her abode at Westminster in
triumph.[900]

        [898] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. cc. 43–48 (Hardy, pp.
        744–749).

        [899] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 76, 77.

        [900] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 131.

The triumph did not last long. Matilda fell, just as her rival had
fallen, by her own fault; only the faults of the two cousins were
of a directly opposite nature. The Lady’s habitual temper was that
of her grandfather the Conqueror--“very stern to all who withstood
her will”; and her will was not, like his, kept under the control of
sound policy and reason. Where Stephen had erred through his fatal
readiness to listen to the most worthless counsellors, Matilda erred
through her obstinate refusal to listen to any counsellors at all. She
was no sooner in London than she began confiscating lands and honours
and disposing of Church property more ruthlessly than ever Stephen
had done; and neither the brother to whom she owed her victory, nor
the legate to whom she owed her throne, nor the old king of Scots who
came to share his niece’s triumph and give her the benefit of his
mature wisdom, could succeed in bringing her to reason. Not a word of
conciliation would she hear from any one. The queen appealed to her
in behalf of her captive husband; some of the great nobles did the
like; but she was deaf to their prayers. The bishop of Winchester
besought her at least to secure to Stephen’s children the possessions
which he had held before he became king; but she would not hear him
either. The citizens of London besought her to give them back “the
Laws of King Eadward”;[901] and that, too, she refused. She did worse;
she summoned the richest burghers to her presence, demanded from them
instant payment of a large sum of money, and when they respectfully
remonstrated, drove them away with a torrent of abuse, utterly refusing
all abatement or delay.[902] She was soon punished. All through
the spring Matilda of Boulogne had been busy in Kent with the help
of William of Ypres, rallying her husband’s scattered partizans,
and gathering an army which she now led up, wasting, plundering,
slaughtering all before them, almost to the gates of London. Her
vigorous action determined that of the citizens. One day, as the
Empress was quietly sitting down to dinner, the bells began to ring,
the people came swarming out of their houses “like bees out of a hive”;
the whole city flew to arms; and she and her friends were driven to
flee, some one way, some another, as fast as their horses could carry
them.[903] Earl Robert accompanied his sister as far as Oxford;[904]
thence she hurried on to Gloucester to consult with her favourite
Miles, the only person who seems to have had any real influence over
her, and brought him back with her to Oxford to help in rallying her
scattered forces.[905] Her cousin the queen meanwhile was in London at
the head of an enthusiastic city, eager for the restoration of Stephen;
from one end of England to the other the heroic wife was leaving no
stone unturned in her husband’s interest, and her zeal was speedily
rewarded by the re-conversion of the legate. Utterly disgusted at
the result of his second attempt at king-making for the good of the
Church, after one last warning to the Empress he met his sister-in-law
at Guildford, reversed all the excommunications issued against
Stephen’s party by the council of Winchester, and pledged himself to
do henceforth all that in him lay for the restoration of the captive
king.[906] Robert of Gloucester vainly sought to win him back;[907]
then the Lady resolved to try her own powers of persuasion, and without
a word of notice even to her brother, at the head of a strong body of
troops she set off for Winchester.[908]

        [901] “Ut leges eis Regis Edwardi observari liceret, quia
        optimæ erant, non patris sui Henrici, quia graves erant.” Flor.
        Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 132.

        [902] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 77.

        [903] _Ib._ pp. 78, 79. Cf. Flor. Worc. Contin. as above, and
        Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 48 (Hardy, p. 749).

        [904] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 79.

        [905] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

        [906] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 49 (Hardy, p. 750).

        [907] _Ib._ c. 50 (p. 751).

        [908] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._ as above. _Gesta Steph._
        (Sewell), p. 80. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 133)
        says this was just before August 1.

Of the two royal dwelling-places founded at Winchester by the
Conqueror, only one now remained. He and his sons apparently found the
castle at the western end of the city a more agreeable residence than
the palace whose inconvenient proximity drove the monks of the New
Minster to remove to Hyde. This palace was almost as great a nuisance
to the Old Minster as to the New, and three years after King Henry’s
death his nephew and namesake the bishop determined to get rid of
it. Amid the gathering storms of the year 1138 Bishop Henry, in his
turn, grew dissatisfied with his episcopal abode hard by the cathedral
church, and resolved that he too would have a castle of his own.
With an audacity characteristic alike of the man and of the time, he
carried the stones of his grandfather’s deserted palace down to a clear
space within the “soke” or “liberty” of the church, just within the
eastern boundary of the city, and there set them up again in the shape
of a mighty fortress[909] afterwards known as Wolvesey-house, some
fragments of whose walls still stand, broken and overhung with ivy, in
a green enclosure between the river-bank and the long, dark pile of
the cathedral. As the Lady rode into Winchester by one gate the bishop
rode out by another, to shut himself up in Wolvesey.[910] Matilda
established herself without opposition in the castle,[911] and thence
sent him a civil message requesting him to come and speak with her. He
answered, “I will make me ready”;[912] and he did so, by despatching
an urgent summons to all the partizans of the king.[913] The Empress,
too, called up her friends; they hurried to her support, quartered
themselves in the city with the goodwill of the inhabitants, and beset
both the bishop’s palace and his fortress with all the troops they
could muster.[914] But his summons was no less effectual than hers. It
brought up all the barons who still held with Stephen; it brought up a
troop of mercenaries;[915] best of all, it brought up, not only William
of Ypres with his terrible Flemings,[916] but a thousand valiant
citizens of London with Stephen’s own Matilda at their head.[917] The
besiegers of Wolvesey found themselves beset in their turn by “the
king’s queen with all her strength”;[918] the bishop himself ordered
the town to be fired, and the wind, which saved the cathedral, carried
the flames northward as far as Hyde abbey.[919] While he thus made
a desert for the besiegers within the city, the queen was doing the
like without. Under her directions the London contingent were guarding
every approach from the west, whence alone the Lady’s troops could
look for supplies: the convoys were intercepted, their escorts slain;
and while eastward the roads were lined all the way to London with
parties bringing provision for the bishop and his little garrison, his
besiegers already saw famine staring them in the face.[920] At last
they sent out a body of knights, three hundred strong, to Wherwell,
intending there to build a castle as a cover for their convoys.[921]
They had no sooner reached the spot than William of Ypres pounced upon
them and captured the whole party.[922]

        [909] “Hoc anno fecit Henricus episcopus ædificare domum quasi
        palatium cum turri fortissimâ in Wintoniâ.” Ann. Winton. a.
        1138 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p. 51). The story of the
        pulling down of the royal palace is in Girald. Cambr., _Vita S.
        Remigii_, c. 27 (_Opera_, ed. Dimock, vol. vii. p. 46).

        [910] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 80. Flor. Worc. Contin.
        (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 133.

        [911] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 133. Will.
        Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 50 (Hardy, p. 751).

        [912] “Ego parabo me.” Will. Malm. as above.

        [913] _Ibid._

        [914] “Castellumque episcopi, quod venustissimo constructum
        schemate in civitatis medio locârat, sed et domum illius quam
        ad instar castelli fortiter et inexpugnabiliter firmârat,
        validissimâ obsidione claudere præcepit” [sc. comitissa].
        _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 80. The first-named “castellum” is
        clearly the old palace of the bishops; the “domus” is Wolvesey,
        where Henry now was. The list of Matilda’s followers is given
        in _Gesta Steph._, p. 81, and in Will. Malm. as above.

        [915] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 82.

        [916] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 19 (Arnold, p. 275).

        [917] _Gesta Steph._ as above.

        [918] “Tha com the kings cuen mid all hire strengthe and besæt
        heom.” Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

        [919] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 50 (Hardy, p. 752).
        Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 133. The latter gives the
        date--August 2.

        [920] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 50 (Hardy, pp. 751,
        752). _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 83.

        [921] _Gesta Steph._ as above. Joh. Hexh. (Raine, p. 138) says
        two hundred knights, commanded by John the Marshal and Robert,
        son of King Henry and Eda (_i.e._ Edith who married Robert of
        Oilly).

        [922] _Gesta Steph._ and Joh. Hexh. as above.

Then Robert of Gloucester felt that the case was hopeless, and that,
cost what it might, he must get his sister out. Suddenly, as he was
marshalling his host to cut their way through at all risks,[923] on
the evening of September 13, the city gates were opened, and peace was
proclaimed in the bishop’s name.[924] Robert hereupon decided to march
quietly out next morning. He took, however, the precaution of sending
his sister out first of all, while he brought up the rear with a small
band of men as dauntless as himself.[925] He did wisely. Matilda had
but just ridden through the west gate when the bishop, doubtless from
his tower at Wolvesey, gave the signal for attack. The whole host of
the queen’s partizans rushed upon those of the Lady and routed them
completely. Earl Robert succeeded in covering his sister’s retreat,
and cut his own way out in another direction, but was overtaken at
Stockbridge by William of Ypres and his Flemings, who surrounded and
took him prisoner.[926] Miles of Gloucester (whom the Empress had made
earl of Hereford), surrounded in like manner, threw down his arms and
fled for his life, reaching Gloucester in disgrace, weary, alone, and
almost naked.[927] King David, it is said, was thrice made prisoner,
but each time bribed his captors to let him go,[928] and was hidden
in safety at last by a certain David Holcfard, who happened to be his
godson.[929] The archbishop of Canterbury and several other bishops who
had accompanied the Empress were despoiled of their horses and even
of their clothes. The Lady herself had escaped in company with the
Breton lord of Wallingford, Brian Fitz-Count, who had long been her
devoted friend and who never forsook her.[930] Their first halt was
at Luggershall; urged by her friends, still in terror of pursuit, she
mounted another horse and spurred on to Devizes; there, half dead with
fatigue, she laid herself on a bier, and bound to it with ropes as if
she had been a corpse, she was carried at last safe into Gloucester.

        [923] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 51 (Hardy, p. 753).
        Cf. _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 84.

        [924] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 134.

        [925] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 51 (Hardy, p. 753).

        [926] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 135. Cf. _Gesta
        Steph._, Will. Malm., and Joh. Hexh. (as above). The _Geneal.
        Com. Flandr._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xiii. p. 413)
        declares that this was the service for which Stephen rewarded
        William with the earldom of Kent.

        [927] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 135.

        [928] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 85.

        [929] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 138.

        [930] _Gesta Steph._ as above. Brian was a son of Alan Fergant,
        duke of Britanny (Eng. Chron. a. 1127). Together with Robert
        of Gloucester, he escorted Matilda over sea when she went to
        be married to Geoffrey, and he is said to have been one of
        the three persons with whom alone Henry consulted about the
        marriage. Eng. Chron. a. 1127; Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i.
        c. 3 (Hardy, p. 693). He was, all his life, a most loyal and
        useful member of the Angevin party. His father’s first wife
        was the Conqueror’s daughter Constance; the second was Fulk
        Rechin’s daughter Hermengard; Brian, however, had no kindred
        with the house which he served so well.

Earl Robert was brought back to Winchester to the feet of the queen,
who sent him, under his captor’s charge, into honourable confinement in
Rochester castle.[931] The next six weeks were spent in negotiations
for his release and that of Stephen; for the party of the Empress
found themselves helpless without Robert, and the chief aim of Matilda
of Boulogne was to get her husband free. She proposed to Countess
Mabel of Gloucester--for the Empress held sullenly aloof--that the
two illustrious captives should simply be exchanged, and to this
Mabel eagerly assented. Robert, however, protested that an earl was
no equivalent for a king, and insisted that all those who had been
captured with him should be thrown in to balance the crown. To this
their various captors naturally demurred, and the project failed.[932]
It was next proposed to settle the whole dispute by restoring Stephen
to his throne and making Robert governor of England in his name;[933]
but the earl would agree to nothing without his sister’s consent, and
the Empress refused to modify her claims in any way.[934] The queen
threatened that if Robert did not yield, she would send him over to
Boulogne and keep him there in chains for the rest of his life; but he
knew that if a hair of his head was touched his countess, whom he had
left in command at Bristol, would at once ship off her royal captive to
Ireland, and the threat produced no effect. Meanwhile the party of the
Empress was falling to pieces so rapidly that her few genuine adherents
grew alarmed for her personal safety, and besought Robert to accept
freedom on any terms, as the sole chance of averting her ruin. The
original proposition of a simple exchange was therefore revived, and
accepted in the first days of November.[935]

        [931] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 134.

        [932] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 58 (Hardy, pp. 759,
        760).

        [933] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 136. Will.
        Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 59 (Hardy, p. 760).

        [934] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above. At this point we lose him.

        [935] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. cc. 51, 60–64 (Hardy,
        pp. 754, 760–762). Cf. Eng. Chron. a. 1140; Hen. Hunt., l.
        viii. c. 19 (Arnold, p. 275); and _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp.
        85, 86.

The earl rejoined his sister at Oxford;[936] the king re-entered his
capital amid general rejoicings.[937] His misfortunes, the heroism of
his queen, the overbearing conduct of the Empress, all helped to turn
the tide of popular feeling in his favour once more. Early in December
the legate, with such daring indifference to the awkwardness of his
own position as can surely have been due to nothing but conscious
integrity of purpose, called a council at Westminster and formally
undid the work which he had done at Winchester in the spring. After a
solemn complaint had been lodged by Stephen against the vassals who
had betrayed and captured him--the counterpart of the charge once
made in a similar assembly against Stephen himself, of having been
false to his duty as king--Henry rose and made his apology. He had
acquiesced in the rule of the Empress, believing it a necessary evil;
the evil had proved intolerable, and he was thankful to be delivered
from its necessity. In the name of Heaven and its Roman representative
he therefore once more proclaimed his brother as the lawfully-elected
and apostolically-anointed sovereign to whom obedience was due, and
denounced as excommunicate all who upheld the claims of the Angevin
countess. The clergy sat in puzzled silence; but their very silence
gave consent.[938]

        [936] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 51 (Hardy, p. 754).

        [937] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 85. Hen. Hunt. as above.

        [938] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. cc. 52–53 (Hardy, pp.
        755, 756). The council met on December 7.

Throughout the winter both parties remained quiet, Stephen in London,
Matilda in Oxford; both, in the present exhausted state of their
forces, had enough to do in simply standing their ground, without
risking any attack upon each other. In the spring Matilda removed to
Devizes; there, at Mid-Lent, she held with her partizans a secret
council which resulted in an embassy to Anjou, calling upon Geoffrey to
come and help in regaining the English heritage of his wife and son.
At Pentecost the answer came. Geoffrey, before he would accede to the
summons, required to be certified of its reasonableness, and he would
accept no assurance save that of the earl of Gloucester in person.
Robert, knowing how closely his sister’s interest and even her personal
safety was bound up with his presence at her side, was very unwilling
to undertake the mission. A scheme was however contrived to satisfy
him. Matilda returned to her old quarters at Oxford; the chief men of
her party bound themselves by oath to keep within a certain distance
of the city, and to guard her against all danger until her brother’s
return. On this understanding he sailed from Wareham shortly before
Midsummer. He was but just gone when Stephen, who since Easter had
been lying sick at Northampton, swooped down upon Wareham so suddenly
that the garrison, taken by surprise, yielded to him at once.[939]
The king marched up to Cirencester, surprised and destroyed a castle
lately built there by the Empress,[940] and thence turned westward to
try conclusions with Matilda herself by attacking her headquarters at
Oxford.

        [939] _Ib._ cc. 66–71 (pp. 763–766).

        [940] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 87, 88.

Oxford was, from its geographical situation, one of the most important
strategical posts in England. It stood at the very centre and
crowning-point of the valley of the Thames, the great high-way which
led from the eastern sea and the capital into the western shires,
through the very heart of the land. So long as it remained loyal to
Stephen, he was master of the whole Thames valley, and the Angevins,
however complete might be their triumph in the west, were cut off
from all direct communication with eastern England and even with the
capital itself. The surrender of Oxford castle to Matilda in the summer
of 1141 had reversed this position of affairs. It probably helped
to determine--it was at any rate soon followed by--the surrender
of London; and even when London was again lost to the Empress, her
possession of Oxford still gave her command over the upper part of
the river-valley and thus secured her main line of communication with
her brother’s territories in the west, while Stephen in his turn was
almost prisoned in the eastern half of his realm. For nearly eleven
months he had seen her defying him from her father’s palace of Beaumont
or from the impregnable stronghold of the castle, where the first
Robert of Oilly, not content with raising a shell-keep on the old
English mound, had built another tall square tower which still stands,
on the western side of the enclosure, directly above the river.[941]
Not until her brother had left her did the king venture to take up
the challenge which her very presence there implied; then indeed he
felt that the hour had come. Matilda, as if in expectation of his
attack, had been employing her followers on the construction of a
chain of forts intended to protect and keep open her communications
with the west.[942] One by one Stephen broke the links of the
chain--Cirencester, Bampton, Ratcot[943]--and from this last place, a
little village in the midst of a marsh, half-way between Bampton and
Farringdon, he led his host across the Isis and round by the meadows
on its southern shore to the ford below S. Frideswide’s from which
the city took its name. Matilda’s partizans no sooner discovered his
approach--three days before Michaelmas[944]--than they streamed down
to the bank of the river, across which they greeted him first with a
torrent of abuse and then with a flight of arrows. The vanguard of
the royal host, with Stephen himself at their head, sprang into the
water, swam rather than waded across the well-known and time-honoured
ford,[945] and by the fury of their onset drove their insulting
enemies back to the city gates. The rest of the army quickly followed;
Matilda’s adherents fled through the open gate, their pursuers rushed
in after them, entered the town without difficulty, set it on fire,
captured and slew all on whom they could lay their hands, and drove the
rest to take shelter in the castle with their Lady.[946]

        [941] See above, p. 42, note 2{113}.

        [942] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 87, 88.

        [943] _Ib._ p. 88. “Apud viculum Ratrotam fluctibus inaccesse
        et paludibus obseptum.” _Ib._ p. 87. _Ratcot_ is Anthony Wood’s
        rendering.

        [944] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 71 (Hardy, p. 766).

        [945] “Præmonstrato antiquo sed eximiæ profunditatis vado.”
        _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 89.

        [946] _Ibid._

Stephen had doubtless not braved S. Frideswide’s wrath by entering
Oxford, so to say, under her very eyes. His troops had won the city;
his task was to win the castle, and that task he vowed never to abandon
till both fortress and Empress should be in his hands. For nearly
three months he blockaded the place, till its inhabitants were on the
verge of starvation. The barons who had sworn to protect Matilda,
bitterly ashamed of their failure, gathered at Wallingford ready to
meet Stephen if he should chance to offer them battle; but he had no
such intention, and they dared not attack him where he was.[947]
At last a gleam of hope came with Earl Robert’s return, quickened,
it seems, by tidings of his sister’s danger. Landing at Wareham with
a force of some three or four hundred Normans, he regained the port
and the village without difficulty, and as his force was too small to
effect Matilda’s relief directly, he laid siege to the castle, hoping
by this means to make a diversion in her favour.[948] The garrison
of Wareham did in fact send a message to Stephen beseeching him to
come and relieve them before a certain day, as if he did not, they
must give up the place.[949] But the king was not to be drawn from
his prey; he left Wareham to its fate, and after a three weeks’ siege
it surrendered. Robert went on to Portland and Lulworth, took them
both, and then summoned all the friends of the Empress to meet him at
Cirencester, thence to set out with their united forces for the rescue
of Matilda herself.[950] In Oxford castle the provisions were all but
exhausted; the Lady despaired of succour.[951] Her faithful friend
the lord of the castle, Robert of Oilly, had died a fortnight before
the siege began.[952] Christmas was close at hand; the snow lay thick
on the ground; the river was frozen fast. From the top of D’Oilly’s
tall tower nothing was to be seen but one vast sheet of cold, dead
white, broken only by the dark masses of Stephen’s host encamped round
about upon the frozen meadows:--a dreary outlook, but the prospect
within was drearier still. Matilda had gone through too many adventures
to shrink from the risk of one more. One night four white-robed
figures[953] dropped down by a rope[954] over the castle-wall upon
the frozen river at its foot; they crossed dry-shod over the stream
whose waters, a little lower down, had been almost over the heads of
their enemies three months before; their footsteps fell noiseless upon
the fresh snow, their white garments reflected its gleams and deceived
the eyes of Stephen’s sentinels; in the stillness of the night, broken
only by the bugle-call and the watchman’s cry, they stole through
the besieging lines and across the very sleeping-quarters of the
king--never caught, never discovered save by one man in all the host;
and he, whether taking them for ghosts, or in chivalrous sympathy for
their desperate venture, let them pass unchallenged and kept his story
till the morrow.[955] Five miles they fled on foot “over snow and
ice, over ditch and dale”; at Abingdon they took horse, and before
the morning broke the Empress Matilda and her faithful comrades were
safe under the protection of Brian Fitz-Count in his great fortress of
Wallingford.[956]

        [947] Will. Malm. as above.

        [948] _Ib._ cc. 72, 73 (Hardy, pp. 767, 768). _Gesta Steph._
        (Sewell), p. 91. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 124.

        [949] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 73 (Hardy, p. 768).

        [950] _Ib._ c. 74 (p. 768). Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp.
        124, 125.

        [951] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 90.

        [952] Ann. Osen. a. 1142 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. iv. p.
        24).

        [953] _Gesta Steph._ as above. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
        124, makes them six.

        [954] Eng. Chron. a. 1140. Gerv. Cant. (as above) says “per
        posticium.”

        [955] _Gesta Steph._ as above.

        [956] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 90. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
        vol. i. pp. 124, 125. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 20 (Arnold, p.
        276). Will. Newb., l. i. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 43).

At Wallingford her brother came to meet her, accompanied not by her
husband but by her son, a child nine years old whom Geoffrey, now
absorbed in the conquest of Normandy, had sent to England in his
stead.[957] The escape from Oxford was Matilda’s last exploit. The
castle surrendered to Stephen as soon as she had left it;[958] she
returned to her old quarters at Bristol or Gloucester; and thenceforth
she ceased to figure prominently in the war which dragged languidly
on for five more years. A battle between Stephen and Earl Robert near
Wilton, on July 1st, 1143, in which the king was utterly routed and
only escaped being made prisoner a second time by taking to headlong
flight,[959] was the last real success of the Angevin party. The year
closed with a severe blow to the Empress, in the death of her trusted
friend Miles of Hereford, who was slain on Christmas Eve, not in fight,
but by a chance shot in hunting.[960] Early in the next year Ralf of
Chester again seized Lincoln castle;[961] but Ralf fought for his own
hand rather than for the Empress; and so, too, did Hugh Bigod, Turgis
of Avranches and Geoffrey of Mandeville, who kept all eastern England
in ceaseless commotion.[962] Stephen’s energies were absorbed in a vain
endeavour to reduce them to order, while Robert struggled almost as
vainly against the anarchy of the western shires; in the north Ralf of
Chester now ruled supreme from the Witham to the Dee; and the upper
valley of the Thames was at the mercy of William of Dover, who had
built a castle at Cricklade, from which he ravaged the whole country
between Oxford and Malmesbury.[963]

        [957] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 70 (Hardy, p. 765).
        Rob. Torigni, a. 1142. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 125.

        [958] Will. Malm. as above, c. 74 (p. 769. At this point he
        ends). _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 91. Hen. Hunt. as above.

        [959] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 92. Gerv. Cant. (as above),
        pp. 125, 126. Will. Newb. as above (p. 42).

        [960] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 101. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p.
        146.

        [961] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 22 (Arnold, p. 277).

        [962] On Hugh Bigod and Turgis see _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell),
        pp. 109–111; on Geoffrey of Mandeville, _ib._ pp. 101–104;
        Will. Newb., l. i. c. 11 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 44–46); and Hen.
        Hunt., l. viii. c. 21 (Arnold, pp. 276, 277).

        [963] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 106, 107, 111.

Suddenly, after capturing the commandant of Malmesbury and sending him
as a great prize to the Empress, the lord of Cricklade threw aside his
evil work and went off to die for a nobler cause in Palestine.[964]
Geoffrey de Mandeville, the worst of all the troublers of the land, who
had accepted titles and honours from both the rival sovereigns and had
never for one moment been true to either, met his death in the same
summer of 1144 in a skirmish with the king’s troops; his fellow-sinner
Robert of Marmion was soon afterwards slain by the earl of Chester’s
men at the gates of the abbey of Bath which he had desecrated.[965]
For a moment it seemed as if the cry which had long been going up from
all the desolated sanctuaries of England--“Up, Lord, why sleepest
Thou?”--had been heard and answered at last.[966] Philip of Gloucester,
Earl Robert’s son, who had taken William of Dover’s place at Cricklade,
was so hard pressed by the garrison of Oxford[967] that he called his
father to his aid; Robert built a great castle at Farringdon, but the
king besieged it with such vigour that its defenders were compelled
to surrender.[968] From that moment the Angevin party fell rapidly to
pieces. Young Philip of Gloucester himself went over to Stephen and
turned his arms against his own father.[969] The earl of Chester came
to meet the king at Stamford,[970] humbly apologized for his rebellion,
and sought to prove the sincerity of his repentance by regaining
Bedford for Stephen, by constantly accompanying him with a band of
three hundred picked knights, and by helping him to build a fortress
at Crowmarsh to keep the garrison of Wallingford in check.[971] As,
however, he still refused to give up the castles which he had seized
and to pay his dues to the royal treasury, he was naturally regarded
with suspicion by the other barons and by the king himself.[972] In the
summer of 1146 their mutual distrust came to a crisis at Northampton.
Ralf besought Stephen’s help against the Welsh; the barons persuaded
Stephen to let them answer in his name that he would not give it unless
Ralf surrendered his castles and gave hostages for his fidelity; he
refused indignantly; they accused him of plotting treason, laid hands
upon him with one accord, and gave him in charge to the royal guards,
by whom he was flung into prison.[973] As in the case of the seizure of
the bishops, it is difficult to say how far Stephen was responsible,
and how much justification he had, for this arrest. We can hardly get
nearer to the truth than the English chronicler: “The king took him
in Hamton through wicked rede, and did him in prison; and soon after
he let him out again through worse rede, with the precaution that
he swore on the halidom and found hostages that he should give up
all his castles; some he gave up and some gave he not, and did then
worse than before.”[974] But among the castles which Ralf did give up
for the sake of regaining his freedom was that which Stephen valued
most--Lincoln.[975] Then at last the king felt that his enemies were
at his feet; and he resolved that the city which had beheld his worst
overthrow should also behold his highest triumph. In defiance of an old
superstition which forbade any English king to appear in regal state
within the walls of Lincoln, he kept his midwinter feast there with a
splendour which had been unknown for years, and wore his crown at high
mass in the minster on Christmas-day.[976]

        [964] _Ib._ p. 111.

        [965] Will. Newb., l. i. cc. 11, 12 (Howlett, vol. i. pp.
        46–48). _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 104. Hen. Hunt., l. viii.
        c. 22 (Arnold, p. 277).

        [966] “Dicebaturque a laborantibus piis ‘Exsurge, quare
        obdormis, Domine?’ At postquam ... ‘excitatus est,’ ut ait
        propheta, ‘tanquam dormiens Dominus, et percussit inimicos Suos
        in posteriora.’” Will. Newb., l. i. c. 11 (Howlett, vol. i.
        p. 45). “Quia igitur improbi dixerunt Deum dormire, excitatus
        est Deus.” Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 22 (Arnold, p. 227)--two
        different interpretations of the Chronicler’s phrase, “men said
        openly that Christ slept, and His hallows.”

        [967] Under William of Chamai, “civitatis Oxenefordiæ præses,
        regalisque militiæ dux et assignator.” _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell),
        p. 112. This seems to mean that he was the king’s constable--an
        office which had apparently gone with the command of Oxford
        castle ever since the Norman conquest.

        [968] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 112–114. Hen. Hunt.,
        l. viii. c. 23 (Arnold, p. 278). Will. Newb., l. i. c. 13
        (Howlett, vol. i. p. 48).

        [969] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 116.

        [970] Eng. Chron. a. 1140. The real date must be 1146, as given
        by Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 24 (Arnold, p. 279).

        [971] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 115. Hen. Hunt. as above.
        Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 129, 130.

        [972] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 115, 116.

        [973] _Ib._ pp. 121–123. Cf. Hen. Hunt. as above.

        [974] Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

        [975] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 123, 124. Hen. Hunt. as
        above. Will. Newb., l. i. c. 13 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 49).

        [976] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 25 (Arnold, p. 279). Will. Newb.,
        l. i. c. 18 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 57). Compare the different
        tone of the two writers.

The hour of Stephen’s exultation over Matilda in England was the hour
of her husband’s complete triumph on the other side of the Channel.
In the seven years which had gone by since they parted, the count of
Anjou had really achieved far more than his wife. As soon as he heard
of Stephen’s capture, early in 1141, Geoffrey again summoned the Norman
barons to give up their castles and submit to his authority in peace.
They held a meeting at Mortagne in the middle of Lent to consider their
answer; despairing of Stephen, yet still unwilling to accept Geoffrey,
they fell back upon their original scheme and once more besought
Theobald of Blois to come and take possession of both duchy and
kingdom. Theobald refused the impossible task; but, thinking like every
one else that all was over with Stephen, he undertook to arrange terms
with Geoffrey for the pacification of both countries. Stephen’s claims,
as king and duke, were to be given up to the Angevins on condition
that they should set him at liberty and secure to him and his heirs
the honours which he had held during his uncle’s lifetime; while to
Theobald, as the price of his services in negotiating this settlement,
Geoffrey was to restore the county of Tours.[977] The treaty however
remained a dead letter; for one of the contracting parties had reckoned
without his brother and the other without his wife, both of whom
refused their consent. But it served Geoffrey’s purpose nevertheless.
The twin earls of Meulan and Leicester, hitherto Stephen’s most active
partizans, and the former of whom was after Robert of Gloucester the
most influential man in Normandy, at once accepted the proposed terms
as final and made their peace with Anjou.[978] Nearly a third part
of the duchy followed their example. Mortagne had submitted already;
Verneuil and Nonancourt soon did the like; in the last week of Lent
Lisieux was surrendered by its bishop;[979] Falaise yielded shortly
after;[980] and in a few weeks more the whole Roumois--that is, the
district between the Seine and the Rille--except the capital itself,
acknowledged Geoffrey as its master.[981]

        [977] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 923.

        [978] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 923. Cf.
        Rob. Torigni, a. 1141.

        [979] Ord. Vit. as above. At this point we lose him.

        [980] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1141 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 34, 145).

        [981] Rob. Torigni, a. 1141.

All this happened while the Empress was in full career of success in
England. There, however, as we have seen, summer and autumn undid the
work of spring; the news of Matilda’s triumph were quickly followed by
those of her fall, of her brother’s capture, of his release in exchange
for Stephen, and finally, at Whitsuntide 1142, by the visit of Earl
Robert himself to entreat that Geoffrey would come and help his wife
to reconquer her father’s kingdom. Geoffrey’s views of statecraft were
perhaps neither very wide nor very lofty; but his political instinct
was quicker and more practical than that of either his wife or her
brother. He saw that they had lost their hold upon England; he knew
that he had at last secured a hold upon Normandy; and he resolved that
no temptation from over sea should induce him to let it go. Instead of
helping Robert to conquer the kingdom, he determined to make Robert
help him to conquer the duchy. He represented that it was impossible
for him to leave matters there in their present unsatisfactory
condition; if the earl really wanted him in England, he must first
help him in bringing Normandy to order. Thereupon Robert, finding that
he could get no other answer, agreed to join his brother-in-law in
a campaign which occupied them both until the end of the year.[982]
The central part of Normandy, from Nonancourt and Lisieux on the east
to a line marked by the course of the Orne on the west, and from
the Cenomannian border up to Caen, was already in Geoffrey’s power;
he had in fact inserted a big wedge into the middle of the duchy. To
gain its western side was the object of the present expedition. The
brothers-in-law seem to have started from Robert’s native Caen, and
their first success was probably the taking of Bastebourg--Bastebourg
above the ford of Varaville, whose name recalls an earlier time and
another Geoffrey of Anjou. Then the expedition moved south-westward
from Caen through the diocese of Bayeux and up the left bank of the
Orne to Villers, Aunay, Plessis and Vire, till it reached and won the
already historic site of Tinchebray, on the north-eastern frontier
of Stephen’s old county of Mortain.[983] The town and castle of
Mortain, and the whole county, with the fortresses of Le Teilleul and
St.-Hilaire, were speedily won.[984] Geoffrey marched on to Pontorson,
the south-western outpost of the Norman duchy, close upon the Breton
frontier, at the bottom of a sandy bay guarded by the Mont-St.-Michel;
warned by the general experience, the whole population, men and women,
townsfolk and garrison, streamed out to welcome the conqueror as
soon as he made his appearance. Thence he turned northward again, to
Cérences in the Avranchin; and this place, too, surrendered without
striking a blow.[985]

        [982] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 70 (Hardy, p. 765).

        [983] The story of this campaign, as told by the historians of
        the time, is little more than a list of the places taken, put
        together evidently at random, just as the names happened to
        come into the writer’s mind. Its real order must however have
        been somewhat as suggested above. The fullest list is in Will.
        Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 70 (Hardy, p. 765): Tinchebray,
        St. Hilaire, “Brichesart,” Aunay, Bastebourg, “Trivères,”
        Vire, “Plaiseiz,” Villers, Mortain. Bastebourg lies quite
        apart from all the rest, and must have been the object of a
        distinct expedition from Caen. The other places would follow in
        geographical order. “Plaiseiz” may be either Plessis-Grimoult
        or Placy; “Brichesart” and “Trivères” are still to be accounted
        for. There is a Trévières about half-way between Bayeux and
        Isigny, but this is even farther away from all the other
        places than Bastebourg, and in an opposite direction. From
        Rob. Torigni (a. 1142) we get another list: Aunay, Mortain,
        Tinchebray, Cérences, Le Teilleul, all in the county of
        Mortain. The _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p.
        295) names only Mortain and St. Hilaire. The Chronn. S. Albin.
        and S. Serg., a. 1142 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 35, 145), say
        Geoffrey won “castella plurima,” but specify only Mortain.

        [984] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 295, 296.
        Rob. Torigni, a. 1142.

        [985] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), pp. 296–298. The
        last-named place appears in Rob. Torigni, a. 1142, as
        “Cerences.” In the _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_, as printed by M.
        Marchegay (p. 298), it is “Cerentias”; in the old editions it
        was “Carentias,” which the editors of _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._
        rendered “Carentan.” “Cérences” is the rendering of M.
        Delisle (_Rob. Torigni_, vol. i. p. 226, note 2). It lies
        about half-way between Avranches and Coutances. There is a
        “Chérencé-le-Roussel” a few miles north-west of Mortain.

At this point the campaign of the count and the earl seems to have
been interrupted by tidings of Stephen’s success and Matilda’s danger
at Oxford. That Robert must go at once was clear; but that it would be
wise for Geoffrey to accompany him was even more doubtful now than it
had been six months ago. A substitute was found in the person of little
Henry Fitz-Empress, who, if he could do nothing practically to help
his mother’s cause and his own, at least ran no risk of damaging it
by raising such a storm of ill-feeling as would probably have greeted
the count of Anjou himself. While Robert and Henry sailed for England
together, Geoffrey remained to finish his work in Normandy. Avranches,
the next place which he threatened, made a ready submission; he took up
his abode in the castle, and summoned the lords of all the fortresses
in the Avranchin to come and do him homage, one after another. When
they had all obeyed, he set himself to win the Cotentin. St.-Lô, which
had been strongly fortified by the bishop of the diocese, surrendered
after a three days’ siege. The victor advanced straight upon Coutances;
the bishop was absent; no one else dared to offer resistance; Geoffrey
simply marched into the city and took it. Thither, as at Avranches, he
summoned the barons of the county to perform their homage, and they
all obeyed except two brothers, Ralf and Richard of La Haye. Ralf was
soon brought to submission; Richard flung himself with some two hundred
knights into Cherbourg, a mighty fortress on a foundation of solid
rock, guarded on one side by a belt of woodland full of wild beasts,
and on the other by a bay whose advantages as a naval station have only
been put to their full use in much later times. A siege of Cherbourg
was likely to be a lengthy, troublesome and costly undertaking. But
such a siege was of all military operations that in which Geoffrey
most excelled and most delighted. He had little sympathy with the
downright hand-to-hand fighting by which Fulk Nerra had won his spurs
at Conquereux, or Fulk V. had repulsed Theobald and Stephen before
Alençon, or Stephen had put his very captors to shame beneath the
walls of Lincoln. Engineering was Geoffrey’s favourite science; in its
developement he spared neither labour nor expense; and he now brought
up against Cherbourg such a formidable array of machines that Richard
thought it prudent to slip away by sea, intending to go to England
and ask help of King Stephen. He was however overtaken by pirates
and carried away “among strange peoples”; and a rumour of his fate
reaching the garrison whom he had left behind, they lost heart and
made submission to the Angevin.[986] The whole duchy south and west of
the Seine was now his,[987] except the one town of Vaudreuil; before
the close of the year this, too, was won, and the Angevin power even
advanced beyond the river, for “Walter Giffard and all the people of
the _Pays de Caux_ made agreement with Count Geoffrey.”[988] The Norman
capital now stood out alone against the Angevin conqueror of Normandy,
as Tours had once stood out alone against the conqueror of Touraine.
In January 1144 Geoffrey crossed the Seine at Vernon and pitched his
camp at La Trinité-du-Mont, close to the walls of Rouen.[989] Next day
the citizens opened their gates, and conducted him in solemn procession
to the cathedral church.[990] The castle was still held against him
by some followers of the earl of Warren;[991] the barons, headed by
Waleran of Meulan, came to help him in besieging it, but neither their
valour nor his machines were of any avail, and it was not till a three
months’ blockade had reduced the garrison to the last straits of
hunger that the citadel of Rouen was given up on S. George’s day.[992]

        [986] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 298–301.
        The year, 1143, is given by Rob. Torigni.

        [987] Chronn. S. Serg. and S. Albin. a. 1143 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 35, 146). The Chron. S. Flor. Salm. (_ib._ p.
        191) ventures to say in 1142: “Goffredus Comes totam Normanniam
        adquirit hoc anno, iii. octabarum Paschæ, x. kalendas maii.”
        This is the true date for the Wednesday in Easter week, 1142,
        but the fact is placed two years too early.

        [988] Rob. Torigni, a. 1143.

        [989] _Ib._ a. 1144.

        [990] Chron. Rotom. a. 1144 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii.
        p. 785); Rob. Torigni, a. 1144. The former makes the day
        January 19; the latter, January 20.

        [991] Rob. Torigni, as above.

        [992] Chron. Rotom. a. 1144 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii.
        p. 785); Rob. Torigni, a. 1144.

Allies offered themselves readily now to help in the little that
remained to be done; foremost among them was the overlord of Normandy,
the young King Louis VII. of France. All was changed since the days
when his father, Louis VI., had granted the investiture of Normandy
to Stephen’s little son. The inveterate enmity between the house of
Blois and the French Crown had broken out afresh, in a new and most
disastrous form, between Count Theobald and the young king; Louis fell
back upon the traditional policy of his forefathers and gladly embraced
the Angevin alliance against all the branches of the house of Blois on
both sides of the sea. Thus when Geoffrey, after composing matters as
well as he could at Rouen, mustered his forces to subdue the few still
outstanding castles, he was joined at once by his own brother-in-law
Theodoric of Flanders and by the king of France. Driencourt was the
first place won by their united hosts; then Lions-la-Forêt--the old
hunting-seat where King Henry had died--was given up by Hugh of
Gournay;[993] the rest of the castles beyond Seine were quickly won,
and then Geoffrey was master of the whole Norman duchy,[994] save one
fortress, Arques, which a Fleming called William the Monk held so
pertinaciously for Stephen that the Angevin was obliged to leave a
body of troops before the place and go home without waiting to finish
the siege in person.[995] Next summer the “monk” was shot dead by a
chance arrow, and the surrender of Arques completed Geoffrey’s conquest
of Normandy.[996] He made no pretence of holding it in the name of
either his wife or his son; it was his own by right of conquest, and
that right was formally acknowledged by the king of France. Before
they parted in 1144 Louis granted to Geoffrey the investiture of the
whole Norman duchy, save one spot which he claimed as the price of his
favour:--the old bone of contention, Gisors.[997]

        [993] Rob. Torigni, a. 1144. Driencourt is now known as
        Neufchâtel-en-Bray.

        [994] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1144 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 35, 146); Chronn. S. Michael. and S. Steph.
        Cadom. a. 1144 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. pp. 773, 780).

        [995] Rob. Torigni, a. 1144. “Willermus Monachus
        Flandrensis”--can he have been really a monk?

        [996] Rob. Torigni, a. 1145.

        [997] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 282.

The Angevin conqueror had been called home by a revolt among his own
barons.[998] The leader was, as before, Robert of Sablé;[999] but there
was worse to come. Geoffrey’s brother Elias was persuaded by the rebels
to put forth a claim to the county of Maine and uphold his pretension
by force of arms. Geoffrey defeated him, took him prisoner, and put
him in ward at Tours,[1000] where he remained five years, and whence
he was released only to die of the effects of his imprisonment.[1001]
The revolt failed as all previous revolts against Geoffrey had
failed; the count swooped down upon Robert and his accomplices with
such irresistible energy that they were utterly confounded and made
submission at once.[1002] Undisputed master from the Poitevin border to
the English Channel, Geoffrey once more cast his eyes across the sea,
not with any thought of joining his wife in her desperate venture, but
with an uneasy longing to get his heir safe out of the entanglement
of a losing cause and bring him home to share in his own triumph. He
therefore sent envoys to Earl Robert, begging that Henry might be
allowed to come and see him, if only for a short time. The request was
at once granted, and by Ascension-tide 1147 the boy was again at his
father’s side.[1003] His uncle the earl of Gloucester had escorted him
as far as Wareham;[1004] there they parted, as it turned out, for the
last time. Robert caught a fever and died at Bristol early in the
following November.[1005] Then at last the Empress herself felt that all
was lost. Her last faint chance had expired with the wise and valiant
brother whose patient devotion she had never fully appreciated until it
was too late. In the early spring of 1148 she gave up the struggle and
followed her son back to Normandy, to live thenceforth in peace by her
husband’s side;[1006] while the knot which the sword had failed to cut
was left to be slowly disentangled by more skilful hands which had long
been preparing for their task.

        [998] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1145 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 35, 146).

        [999] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), p. 269.

        [1000] _Ibid._ _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), p. 155.

        [1001] _Gesta Cons._ as above. The Chron. Vindoc. (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, p. 173), gives the date, 1150. Cf. Chron. Tur. Magn.
        a. 1110 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_, p. 131).

        [1002] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp.
        270–272. It is here that the writer places the building of
        Châteauneuf-sur-Sarthe (see above, p. 267). In connexion with
        this affair he gives an amusing reason for the warlike habits
        of the Angevins: “Antiquitus nempe Andegavenses præliandi
        consuetudinem habebant, forsan, ut puto, a Deo sibi permissum,
        ne per otium pejoribus inimicis expugnarentur, moribus scilicet
        vitiosis.” _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), pp. 270, 271.

        [1003] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 131. Rob. Torigni, a.
        1147.

        [1004] Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [1005] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 131. Gervase is not
        clear about the year, which we learn from Ann. Tewkesb. a. 1147
        (Luard, _Ann. Monast._ vol. i. p. 47), and from Ann. Cantuar.
        a. 1147 (Liebermann, _Geschichtsquellen_, p. 6). The place is
        given in _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 132.

        [1006] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 133--dated a year too early.


NOTE.

THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE BATTLE OF LINCOLN.

The topography of the battle of Lincoln is a very puzzling matter. We
have two sources of information, and it seems impossible to make them
agree. The questions to be solved are two: 1. Which way did Robert and
Ralf approach the city? 2. Where was the battle actually fought?

1. The first question lies between William of Malmesbury and Henry of
Huntingdon. William (_Hist. Nov._, l. iii. cc. 39, 40; Hardy, p. 741)
says distinctly that the main army started from Gloucester; that Ralf
and his troops joined them somewhere on the road; that Stephen, hearing
of their approach, left off besieging the castle and went forth to meet
them; and that on Candlemas day they arrived “ad flumen quod inter duos
exercitus præterfluebat, Trenta nomine, quod et ortu suo et pluviarum
profluvio tam magnum fuerat ut nullatenus vado transitum præberet.” He
then gives the story of the crossing. Henry of Huntingdon (l. viii. c.
13; Arnold, p. 268) describes the crossing much in the same way, except
that the “consul audacissimus” to whom he attributes the first plunge
seems to be Ralf, whereas in William’s version Robert is the hero. But
Henry makes no mention of the Trent; in his story the plunge is into
“paludem pœne intransibilem.”

For both these versions there is something to be said. The authority
of the two witnesses is very evenly balanced. Chronologically, both
are equally near to their subject. Geographically, the archdeacon of
Huntingdon is nearer than the librarian of Malmesbury; but he is not
a whit more likely to have been personally present; and if Henry may
have got his information from Bishop Alexander, William may just as
probably have got his from Earl Robert himself. The question therefore
becomes one of the intrinsic probability of the two stories. Here
again there is something to be said for William; for although the most
direct and obvious road from Gloucester to Lincoln would undoubtedly
be the Foss-Way, along the eastern side of the Trent valley, yet it is
possible that the earls might have chosen a more unusual route along
its western side, just because it would seem less likely to their
enemies. Yet we can hardly accept William’s version; for the fording
of the Trent, especially in winter, and when its waters were--as he
himself tells us--swollen with heavy rains, would be little short of
a physical impossibility. At the origin of his mistake (or of Earl
Robert’s, for it must surely have been Robert who told him the story)
we may perhaps be able to guess. The writer of the _Gesta Stephani_
(Sewell, p. 71) says nothing of either river or marsh; the only
thing which he mentions is a ford, of whose whereabouts he gives no
indication whatever. “Cumque fortissimam ... [Stephanus] præmississet
cohortem in exitu cujusdam vadi eis ad obsistendum, illi ... cum
violentiâ in ipsos irruentes vadum occupaverunt.” Now, if the earls had
followed the Foss-Way quite up to Lincoln, it would have brought them
not to any ford, but to the bridge over the Witham, leading directly
into the city by the south gate. But the city was bitterly hostile to
them; had they attempted to pass through it to reach the castle, they
must have cut their way through a crowd of enemies. There was however
another and a much more practicable route open to them. Some little
distance to westward of the bridge, the Witham at its junction with
the Foss-Dyke expands into a broad sheet of water known by the name of
Brayford. The kindness of the Rev. Precentor Venables has enabled me to
ascertain that half way between the bridge and Brayford Head (_i.e._
the eastern end of this sheet of water) there still exists in the bed
of the river a well-paved ford road, probably of Roman origin. By this
ford the army could cross the river and advance towards the castle
without entering the town at all; and I feel little doubt that this was
the ford at which Stephen posted the guard mentioned by his biographer,
and across which the two earls swam with their followers. In that case
William of Malmesbury’s mistake as to the name of the river is not
surprising. The Foss-Dyke unites the Witham and the Trent; a medieval
geographer could hardly be expected to know accurately where the one
ended and the other began. Out of the three names so closely connected,
he not unnaturally chose the one most generally known, and concluded
the whole water-way under the comprehensive name of Trent; while on the
other hand, the overflowing of dyke and river may quite sufficiently
account for Henry of Huntingdon having described them and the flooded
ground on each side of them all together as an “almost impassable
marsh.”

2. Local tradition persists in asserting that the battle was fought
to the north of the city, somewhere beyond the New Port. If this was
so, Stephen must have led his troops out of the city by the old Roman
way--the Ermine Street--through the New Port, and drawn them up on
the plateau formed by the top of the range of hills whose southern
extremity is occupied by the city itself; and his enemies, after
crossing the water, must have marched all round the south-western foot
of the hill, below the castle, and then climbed the western slope to
meet Stephen on the top. Such a manœuvre is doubtless possible; but
it hardly seems to agree with the indications--provokingly few and
slight though they are--given us by the historians. None of them indeed
tells us which way Stephen went forth; the nearest approach to a clear
statement is that of his own biographer, who says “extra civitatem
obvius eis audacter occurrit” (_Gesta Steph._ as above). Now marching
up northward can hardly be called “going forth boldly to meet” an
enemy who was coming from the south-west. The tradition in fact is in
itself very improbable, and has no evidence to support it. In 1881 I
made two attempts at a personal examination of the topography, with
the help of indications kindly furnished me by Precentor Venables.
The result was as follows: The western wall of the castle-enclosure
does not stretch to the extreme edge of the hill; beyond it lies a
part of the plateau, now occupied by the County Asylum, and marked by
Stukeley as the site of Stephen’s encampment. Stukeley was probably
misled by the circumstance that an adjoining bit of ground was called
“Battle-piece”--a name which is now known to have been derived not from
any battle fought there, but from the place having been set apart for
trials by battle. But farther to the west there lies at the foot of
the ridge a tract of comparatively level ground, rising slightly on
the one side to join the slope of the hill, and on the other gradually
sinking into the lower land which spreads to the bank of the Trent.
This tract--part of it is now a race-course--seems to be really the
only place in which it is possible for the two armies to have met. The
ground immediately south of the castle, between its outer wall and the
northern bank of the Foss-Dyke, is too steep to allow of anything like
a pitched battle between two formally-arrayed armies. The earls after
crossing the ford could hardly do anything but lead their troops round
the foot of the hill, to draw them up at last on the western side of
the level tract above described. Stephen, on the other hand, could
hardly have chosen a better post for defence than its eastern side,
with the ridge of the hill at his back.



CHAPTER VII.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

1136–1149.


The departure of the Empress was followed by a time of comparative
quiet; but it was the quiet of exhaustion, not of rest. In the twelve
years which had passed away since King Henry’s death all his work
seemed to have been utterly undone. Every vestige of law and authority,
order and peace, had been swept away by the torrent of destruction
which in those twelve years had overwhelmed the whole country. When
at last the waves began to subside, one ark of refuge was found to
have escaped the general desolation; one vessel alone had been able to
outride the storm. The state was a wreck; the Church remained.

The pilot of the sacred bark, during the first seven years of Stephen’s
reign, had been the king’s brother Henry, bishop of Winchester. The
youngest child of Stephen-Henry and Adela of Blois, devoted by his
mother to the religious life, had been brought up in the famous abbey
of Cluny; thence, in 1126, he was summoned by his uncle the king of
England to become abbot of one of the most ancient and illustrious
monasteries in Britain, that of Glastonbury; and three years later the
young abbot--he cannot have been more than twenty-eight--was raised to
the bishopric of Winchester.[1007] His rapid advancement was no doubt
owing to the personal favour of his uncle; but none the less did it
place in the important see of Winchester a prelate as different in
temper as in origin from the crowd of low-born secular clerks who then
filled the ranks of the English episcopate. Steeped in ecclesiastical
and monastic traditions from his very cradle, Henry was before all
things a churchman and a monk. It was to him and to men like him that
the religious revival which sprang up in his uncle’s later years
naturally looked for the guidance which it could not find either in the
secular bishops or in the shy, irresolute primate; and the consequences
appeared as soon as the king was dead, when the helm of the state and
that of the Church--the one dropped by Roger of Salisbury, the other
never firmly grasped by William of Canterbury--were both at once taken
by the young bishop of Winchester. His personal influence sufficed to
ensure his brother’s election to the throne; the legatine commission
sent to him in 1139, overriding the claims of the new primate, made him
the acknowledged leader of the English Church, and, coinciding as it
did with the complete break-down of all secular government at Bishop
Roger’s fall, practically vested in him and in the clerical synods
which he convened the sole remnant of deliberative and legislative
authority throughout the kingdom. Clergy and people followed him like
a flock of sheep; yet he was never really trusted by either of the two
political parties, because he never really belonged to either. His own
political ideal was independent of all party considerations. It was the
ideal of the ecclesiastical statesman in the strictest sense: to insure
the well-being of the state by securing the rights and privileges and
enforcing the discipline of the Church. In his eyes the whole machinery
of secular government, including the sovereign, existed solely for that
one end, and he carried out his theory to its logical result in the
synods which deposed Stephen and Matilda each in turn, as each in turn
broke the compact with the Church which had raised them to the throne.
Of the use to be made in later days of the precedent thus created he
and his brother-clergy never dreamed; they are, however, entitled to
the credit of having been the only branch of the body-politic which
made an organized effort to rescue England from the chaos into which
she had fallen. The failure of their efforts hitherto was due partly
to the overwhelming force of circumstances, partly to the character
of Henry himself. His temper was like that of the uncle whose name he
bore--the calm, imperturbable Norman temper which neither interest
nor passion could throw off its balance or off its guard; and with
the Norman coolness he had also the Norman tenacity, fearlessness and
strength of will. But although the main elements of his nature were
thus derived from his mother’s ancestors, he had not altogether escaped
the doom of his father’s house. He was free from the worst defect of
his race, their fatal unsteadiness of purpose; but he had his full
share of their rashness, their self-will, and their peculiar mental
short-sightedness. His policy really had a definite and a noble end,
but his endeavours to compass that end were little more than a series
of bold experiments. Moreover, his conception of the end itself was
out of harmony with the requirements of the time. Churchman as he was
to the core, his churchmanship was almost as unlike that of the rising
generation, trained up under the influence of the new religious orders,
as the downright worldliness of the Salisbury school with which some
of them were, though most unjustly, half inclined to confound him. He
belonged to a type of ecclesiastical statesmen, or rather political
churchmen, who did not shrink from arraying the Church militant in the
spoils of earthly triumph, and would fain elevate her above the world
in outward pomp and majesty no less than in inward purity and holiness.
This was the school of which Cluny had been, ever since the days of
Gregory VII., the citadel and stronghold; and Henry was thus attached
to it by all the associations of his youth as well as by his own
natural disposition. But in the second quarter of the twelfth century
this Cluniac school was losing its hold upon the finer and loftier
spirits of the time, and the influence of Cluny was beginning to pale
before the purer radiance diffused from S. Bernard’s “bright valley,”
Clairvaux.

        [1007] Joh. Glaston. (Hearne), pp. 165, 166.

Henry’s legatine commission, too, which was a chief source of his
strength, was really a source of moral and spiritual weakness to the
English Church; for it set him over the head of the man who ought to
have been her representative and leader, and placed in the hands of a
mere diocesan bishop all, and more than all, the power and authority
which belonged of right to the primate of all Britain.[1008] Until
very recent times the English Church had been, by an unwritten but
perfectly well-established privilege of immemorial antiquity, exempt
from all legatine control; papal envoys were admitted only for special
purposes, and exercised no authority within the province of the
“transmarine Pope”--the primate of all Britain. In technical language,
the archbishop of Canterbury, as successor of S. Augustine, was by
virtue of his office _legatus natus_ of the Holy See, and therefore
not subject to the jurisdiction of a _legatus a latere_. During the
reign of Henry I. three attempts had been made to break through this
venerable tradition; on the third occasion, in 1125, the outrageous
behaviour of the legate John of Crema roused Archbishop William to go
and protest at Rome, whence he returned clothed in his own person with
the functions of _legatus a latere_.[1009] This commission, granted by
Honorius II., was renewed by Innocent,[1010] and William thus retained
it until his death. When that event occurred Henry of Winchester must
have felt himself, and must have been generally felt throughout the
country, to be almost naturally marked out for William’s successor.
It seems, indeed, that he was actually elected to the vacant primacy.
There was however a difficulty which proved to be insuperable. The
translation of a bishop from one see to another could only be effected
by a special license from the Pope; and in this case the license was
apparently refused.[1011] Driven thus to seek elsewhere for a primate,
Stephen, or it may be Stephen’s wiser queen, sought him in the home
of Lanfranc and Anselm, and brought over a third abbot of Bec to walk
in the steps and sit on the throne of his sainted predecessors at
Canterbury.[1012] Theobald came of a good Norman family, and was well
reported of for learning, virtue and piety;[1013] further than that,
the world as yet knew nothing of him; it was therefore not unnatural,
though it was distinctly unfortunate, that when Pope Innocent II.
determined to appoint a resident legate in England he appointed Henry
instead of Theobald.

        [1008] See on this Ann. Winton. a. 1143 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._,
        vol. ii. p. 53); Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 384; and
        Will. Newb. l. i. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 43).

        [1009] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 84; Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 381, 382.

        [1010] In 1132, it seems. See Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c.
        7 (Hardy, p. 699).

        [1011] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 908.

        [1012] Queen Matilda’s share in the appointment seems distinctly
        implied in _Vita Theobaldi_ (Giles, _Lanfranc_, vol. i.), p.
        337; Chron. Becc. a. 1137 (_ib._ p. 207).

        [1013] See _Vita Theobaldi_ (as above), pp. 337–339; Chron.
        Becc. (_ibid._), p. 207.

For several years the archbishop bore his supersession quietly. His
political sympathies appear to have always inclined to the side of the
Empress, but his conduct shewed no trace of party spirit; no personal
jealousy on his part ever thwarted Henry’s attempts at pacification.
He doubtless felt that he could afford to wait; for his metropolitical
rights, though kept in abeyance for a time, were inalienable and
independent of all outward accidents, while the legatine authority
was drawn solely from the commission of an individual Pope, and a
change either of persons or of policy at Rome might at any moment
reduce Henry of Winchester to the rank of a mere suffragan bishop.
Henry himself was so conscious of this danger that he began to urge
upon his patron Innocent a project for raising the see of Winchester
to metropolitical rank and furnishing it with two (or, according
to another account, seven) suffragan sees, to be carved out of the
southern part of the province of Canterbury. This wild scheme was so
far endorsed by Innocent that he actually sent Henry a pall, the emblem
of archiepiscopal dignity, in 1142; so, at least, the story ran.[1014]
As yet, however, the matter rested wholly between legate and Pope; if
the archbishop knew anything of their plots against him, he was wise
enough to let them plot undisturbed. Instead of trying to fish in the
troubled waters of the present, he was looking to the open sea of the
future and meditating how best to prepare himself, his Church and his
adopted country for the voyage which lay before them. While the legate
was making and unmaking sovereigns and plotting a revolution in the
Anglican hierarchy, the primate was quietly gathering into his own
household the choicest spirits of the time, drawing around him a group
of earnest, deep-thinking students, of highly-cultured, large-minded,
dispassionate politicians; in a word, making his palace the seminary
and the training-college, the refuge and the home, of a new generation
of English scholars and English statesmen.

        [1014] Ann. Winton. a. 1143 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p.
        53); R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 255.

Foremost among them stood Thomas the son of Gilbert Becket,
ex-port-reeve of London. Troubles had fallen heavy upon Gilbert and his
wife since the days when from their comfortable home in Cheapside their
boy rode forth to his school at Merton or to his hawking excursions
with Richer de l’Aigle. A series of disastrous fires had brought them
down from affluence almost to poverty[1015] and compelled them to
take their son away from school at an earlier age than the mother,
at least, would have desired. She watched over his studies with the
deepest interest and care,[1016] and it was probably her influence
and good management which, after an interval of idleness at home,
sent him off again to study for a short time in Paris.[1017] The boy
learned quickly and easily, as he did everything to which he chose to
put his hand and give his mind; but his heart was set upon riding and
hawking and the sports and occupations of active life, far more than
upon the book-learning to which he devoted himself chiefly for the
sake of pleasing his mother; and when she died, in his twenty-second
year,[1018] his studies came to an end. Her death broke up the home;
Gilbert, worn out with age and grief, was powerless to guide or help
his son; and Thomas soon found it impossible to make their scanty
means sufficient to maintain them both.[1019] Irksome as the work must
have been to such a temper as his, he took a situation as clerk in
the counting-house of a kinsman, Osbern Huitdeniers, or “Eightpenny”
as we might perhaps call him now.[1020] Osbern was a wealthy man,
enjoying great consideration both in the city and at court;[1021]
at this time--just after the outbreak of the civil war--he seems to
have been one of the sheriffs of London, for we are told that Thomas
himself held a subordinate civic post as clerk and accountant to those
functionaries.[1022] For two or three years, the years of the personal
struggle between Stephen and Matilda, Thomas endured the drudgery of
the office as best he might,[1023] till at length a more congenial
position was offered him, first in the household of his old friend
Richer de l’Aigle[1024] and then in that of Archbishop Theobald. When
the war-storm had partly subsided and the primate was beginning to
organize his plans, some of his clerks who had been guests at the
little house in Cheapside in its prosperous days remembered the bright
boy whom they had often noticed there, and determined to enlist him
in their own ranks. One of them, known to us only by his nickname of
“Baille-hache” or the “Hatchet,” undertook to persuade the young man
himself;[1025] two others, Baldwin the archdeacon and Eustace his
brother, commended him and his father to the primate. It chanced that
Gilbert, though he had been domiciled at Rouen before his emigration
to England, was a native of Thierceville, close to the Bec-Herlouin. A
chat with Thomas’s father over old times and old names around Bec made
its former abbot all the more disposed to welcome Thomas himself, when
he rode out to Harrow and let his friend Baille-hache present him to
the archbishop.[1026] Before many months had passed he was admitted
to the innermost circle of Theobald’s confidential counsellors. That
circle consisted of three young men--John of Canterbury, Roger of
Pont-l’Evêque and Thomas of London. Without consulting one or other of
these three the archbishop rarely did anything;[1027] and in matters of
special difficulty or delicacy he relied mainly upon Thomas.[1028]

        [1015] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 8, 9; E. Grim (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 359; Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 3.

        [1016] Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 8.

        [1017] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 14. The _Thomas
        Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 21–25, has a curious and pretty
        legend of his stay in Paris.

        [1018] Will. Cant. and Anon. I. as above. This brings Rohesia’s
        death to a date between December 21, 1138, and December 21,
        1139; for although Mr. Magnusson (Preface to _Thomas Saga_,
        vol. ii. pp. c, ci) declares that Thomas was born “not as
        stated [T.,” _i.e._ _Thomas Saga_, “i. 12] in 1117, but in
        1118,” his own chronological argument infallibly leads to just
        the opposite conclusion.

        [1019] E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 359.

        [1020] “Tandem civi vice tabellionis adhæsit,” Will. Cant.
        (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 3. “Ad quendam Lundrensem, cognatum
        suum,” Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 8. “Osbernus Octo-nummi
        cognomine,” E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 361. “Osbern
        Witdeniers,” Garnier (Hippeau), p. 9. In the Pipe Roll 31
        Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 146, among the London accounts, one of
        the sureties for the debts of Hugh Cordele is “Osbertus viii
        denarii”--clearly the same man.

        [1021] E. Grim, Anon. I. and Garnier, as above.

        [1022] “Reversus” [sc. Thomas a Parisiis], “receptus est in
        partem sollicitudinis reipublicæ Londoniensis, et vicecomitum
        clericus et rationalis effectus.” Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 14.

        [1023] E. Grim, Anon. I. and Garnier, as above.

        [1024] _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 31. It is not very
        clear whether Thomas’s stay with Richer should come after or
        before his stay with Osbern, which the Saga omits altogether.

        [1025] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 10; E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. ii.), p. 361; Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 9. None of
        them name the man; but he is clearly the one who ultimately
        introduced Thomas to the primate; and we know his nickname from
        the sneer of Roger of Pont-l’Evêque; Garnier (as above); E.
        Grim (as above), p. 362; Anon. I. (as above), p. 10.

        [1026] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.),
        p. 15. “Thierrici-villa” is interpreted by M. Hippeau
        (Garnier, _Vie de S. Thomas_, introd. p. xxiv) “Probablement
        Thierceville, canton de Montfort, département de l’Eure.”

        [1027] Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 4.

        [1028] There is a curious and amusing account of their mutual
        relations in _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 37.

He had secured his services at the right moment; for the long impending
crisis between himself and the legate was now fast drawing near. In
purely secular politics Theobald had hitherto been content to follow
Henry’s lead; on a question of ecclesiastical politics they had now
come to a distinct severance. Archbishop Thurstan of York had died
in February 1140;[1029] in January 1141 William, treasurer of the
see, was appointed in his stead, and received the investiture of the
temporalities from Stephen in the camp before Lincoln.[1030] The
appointment had somewhat the look of a court job; for William was a
nephew of the king and the legate;[1031] he had been brought up in
wealth, luxury and idleness, and although of amiable and blameless
character, was obviously not the man for such a post as the northern
primacy. A minority of the York chapter therefore, supported by many
of the most respected clergy of the province, chief among whom was
Abbot Richard of Fountains, protested against the election as having
been procured by undue influence, in the form of bribery on William’s
own part and intimidation on that of William of Aumale, earl of York,
acting on behalf of the king and the legate; and this view was shared
by the southern primate. The legate, apparently shrinking from the
responsibility of consecrating his nephew by his own sole authority
(for Theobald absolutely refused to assist him), let the matter rest
during the remainder of that troubled year and then sent the elect of
York to plead his own cause at Rome. In Lent 1143 the Pope gave his
decision: “If Dean William of York can swear that the chapter did not
receive through the earl of Aumale a command from the king to elect his
nephew: and if the archbishop-elect himself can swear that he did not
seek his election by bribery:--then let him be consecrated.” A council
met at Winchester in September to receive the two oaths and witness
the consecration. The dean of York, however, was unable to attend;
he had been elected to the bishopric of Durham, and was absorbed in
struggling for the possession of his see with an intruder named William
Cumin, who had been placed there by the king of Scots. The partizans
of the archbishop-elect, foreseeing some obstacle of this kind, had
procured the addition to the Pope’s decree of a saving clause whereby
they were permitted to substitute “some other approved person” for the
dean: such, at least, was their account of the matter. Ralf, bishop of
Orkney, and two abbots therefore took the required oath in the place of
William of Durham, and William of York was consecrated by his uncle the
legate, three days before Michaelmas 1143.[1032] Theobald still refused
his assent to the whole proceeding.[1033]

        [1029] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 130.

        [1030] _Ib._ pp. 133, 134.

        [1031] Apparently a son of their sister Emma by her marriage
        with a certain Count Herbert. See Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 149
        and note _v_.

        [1032] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 139, 142–146. See also Thos.
        Stubbs (Twysden, _X. Scriptt._), col. 1721, and Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 123.

        [1033] Gerv. Cant. as above.

Henry was triumphant; but it was his last triumph. On that very day a
new Pope, Celestine II., was chosen in place of Innocent, who had died
two days before. The legatine commission expired with the Pope who
had granted it; the bishop of Winchester became again a mere suffragan
of Canterbury, and Theobald suddenly found himself primate in fact as
well as in name. Everything now depended on the dispositions of the new
Pope. Accordingly, early in November both Theobald and Henry set out
for Rome.[1034] The latter soon learned that his journey was useless;
Celestine was “a favourer of the Angevins”;[1035] and when Theobald
and his confidant Thomas arrived at Rome they found no difficulty
in persuading the Pope to transfer the legatine commission from the
bishop of Winchester to the primate.[1036] Henry consoled himself by
turning aside to Cluny and spending a quiet winter in the home of his
boyhood. Next spring came another change; Celestine died on March 9,
1144, and was succeeded by Lucius II. To Lucius Henry went, and in his
eyes he found at least so much favour that he was acquitted of sundry
charges brought against him by emissaries from Anjou. But the legation
was apparently left altogether in abeyance; if it was not renewed to
Theobald--a point which is not quite clear--it was at any rate not
restored to Henry.[1037]

        [1034] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 43). Cf.
        Ann. Waverl. a. 1143 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p. 229).

        [1035] “Alumpnus Andegavensium.” Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 146.

        [1036] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 384.

        [1037] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 146, 147.

The tide which had borne both Henry and Stephen to their triumph was in
truth now rising far above their heads. The religious movement of which
Henry had once seemed destined to become a leader had gone sweeping on
till it left him far behind. It was the one element of national life
whose growth, instead of being checked, seems to have been actually
fostered by the anarchy. The only bright pages in the story of those
“nineteen winters” are the pages in the _Monasticon Anglicanum_ which
tell of the progress and the work of the new religious orders, and shew
us how, while knights and barons, king and Empress, were turning the
fairest regions of England into a wilderness, Templars and Hospitaliers
were setting up their priories, Austin canons were directing schools
and serving hospitals, and the sons of S. Bernard were making the very
desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose. The vigour of the movement
shewed itself in the diversity of forms which it assumed. Most of them
were offshoots of the Order of S. Augustine. The Augustinian schools
were the best in England; the “Black Canons” excelled as teachers;
they excelled yet more as nurses and guardians of the poor. One of the
most attractive features of the time is the great number of hospices,
hospitals, or almshouses as we should call them now, established for
the reception and maintenance of the aged, the needy and the infirm.
Such were the two famous houses of S. Giles, Cripplegate, and S.
Bartholomew, Smithfield; such was the Hospital of S. Katharine near
the Tower, founded in 1148 by Stephen’s queen Matilda, and served by
the canons of Holy Trinity at Aldgate, to whom the younger “good Queen
Maude” was almost as devoted a friend as her aunt and namesake had
been. Such, too, was another foundation whose white church, nestling
amid a clump of trees in the meadows through which the little blue
Itchen goes winding down to the sea, is the only unmutilated remnant
that Winchester still retains of the handiwork of her legate-bishop
Henry. There, before he built his own fortified house, Henry founded
for thirteen poor old men the Hospital of the Holy Cross; and there,
while the dwelling which he made so strong for himself has perished,
the “Almshouse of noble Poverty” still stands--the hospital indeed
rebuilt by a later bishop to whom it owes its poetical name, but the
church unaltered since its founder’s days--a lasting memorial of that
better, spiritual side of his character which the world least saw and
least believed in. Another class of hospitals was destined for the
reception of poor travellers, especially pilgrims. Such had been, in
far-off Palestine, the original purpose of two societies of pious
laymen which had now made their way back into Europe and even into
England in the shape of two great military orders, the Hospitaliers
or Knights of S. John and the Templars. They, too, lived by the rule
of S. Austin. Another offshoot of the Augustinian order consisted of
the White Canons or Premonstratensians (so called from their first
establishment at Prémontré in the diocese of Laon), for whom, in
the midst of the civil war, Peter de Gousla endowed a priory at
Newhouse in Lincolnshire, while his wife founded a house at Brodholm
in Nottinghamshire for sisters of the same order.[1038] “What shall
we think,” exclaims an inmate of one of the great Augustinian houses
of Yorkshire, William of Newburgh,--“what shall we think of all these
religious places which in King Stephen’s time began more abundantly
to arise and to flourish, but that they are God’s castles, wherein
the servants of the true Anointed King do keep watch, and His young
soldiers are exercised in warfare against spiritual evil? For indeed
at that time, when the royal authority had lost all vigour, the mighty
men of the realm, and whosoever was able, were all building castles
either for their own protection or for their neighbours’ hurt; and thus
while through King Stephen’s weakness, or rather through the malice of
the Devil, who is ever a nourisher of strife, evils were swarming and
abundant, there did yet more abound and more gloriously shine forth the
wise and salutary providence of the Almighty King, Who at that very
time did the more mightily confound the king of pride by raising up for
Himself such fortresses as beseemed the King of Peace. For in the short
while that Stephen reigned, or rather bore the title of king, there
arose in England many more dwellings of the servants and handmaids
of God than had arisen there in the course of the whole previous
century.”[1039]

        [1038] The Augustinian houses are in Dugdale’s _Monast. Angl._,
        vol. vi. pt. 1; the hospitals, the military orders and the
        Premonstratensians in vol. vi. pt. 2.

        [1039] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 15 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 53).

It is significant that this enthusiastic outburst of the
historian-canon of Newburgh is called forth by the contemplation not of
his own order, but of three great Cistercian houses, Byland, Rievaux
and Fountains. Buried in their lonely wildernesses, the Cistercians
seem at first glance to have been intent only on saving their own
souls, taking no part in the regeneration of society at large. But the
truth is far otherwise. While the other orders were--if we may venture
to take up the suggestive figure employed by William of Newburgh--the
working, fighting rank and file of the spiritual army, the White Monks
were at once its sentinels, its guides and its commanding officers;
they kept watch and ward over its organization and its safety, they
pointed the way wherein it should go, they directed its energies and
inspired its action. For the never-ending crusade of the Church against
the world had at this time found its leader in a simple Cistercian
monk, who never was Pope, nor legate, nor archbishop, nor even official
head of his own order--who was simply abbot of Clairvaux--yet who, by
the irresistible, unconscious influence of a pure mind and a single
aim, had brought all Christendom to his feet. It was to the “Bright
Valley,” to Clairvaux, that men looked from the most distant lands for
light amid the darkness; it was to S. Bernard that all instinctively
turned for counsel and for guidance. The story of S. Gilbert of
Sempringham may serve for an example. The father of Gilbert was a
Norman holding property in Lincolnshire in the time of Henry I.; his
mother was a woman of Old-English descent. The boy ran away from school
and made his escape to France; there he repented of his idleness, threw
himself zealously into the pursuit of letters, and after some years
came home to set up in his native place a school for boys and girls.
He taught them a great deal more than mere book-learning; his purity,
sweetness and fervour won the very hearts and souls of all who came
under his influence; and there was something in his lofty yet tender
nature which made him seem peculiarly fitted for a spiritual director
of women. Seven maidens first devoted themselves to the religious life
under his guidance; others soon followed their example; several men did
the like. A double monastery thus grew up at Sempringham, under the
protection of Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, in the earliest years of
Stephen’s reign. For some time it continued subject to no other rule
than its founder’s own will. He saw, however, the necessity for a more
lasting basis of organization; instead of trying to devise one himself,
he applied to the general chapter of Cîteaux and besought them to take
charge of his little flock. They, however, refused; since Gilbert had
been inspired to found a new religious society, they would not presume
to interfere with his mission; he must draw up a rule for his own
spiritual children. He ended by working out his scheme into a composite
institution which aimed at combining the excellencies of all earlier
rules, but in which the Cistercian element strongly predominated. The
Gilbertine priories, when fully constituted, consisted of four orders
of persons: canons, who followed the rule of S. Austin; lay-brethren,
nuns and lay-sisters, all bound by the rule of Cîteaux; while the whole
community was held together by certain additional regulations specially
devised by the founder. The new order spread rapidly through eastern
England; and before S. Gilbert’s own life reached its close, he had the
satisfaction of seeing his spiritual children take a highly honourable
part in the great ecclesiastical struggle of which the foremost
champion and victim was S. Thomas of Canterbury.[1040]

        [1040] On the Gilbertines and their founder see Dugdale,
        _Monast. Angl._, vol. vi. pt. 2, pp. iii*–lix*; and Will.
        Newb., l. i. c. 16 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 54, 55).

One sees in this story how instinctively the religious reformers of the
day went to Cîteaux for a model and a guide; and one sees, too, how
little the Cistercians were as yet inclined to abuse their influence by
reaping where they had not sown. The extraordinary position of Bernard
himself was not of his own seeking; the “care of all the churches” came
upon him whether he would or not; as one of his biographers expresses
it, all Christendom looked upon him as a divinely-appointed Moses of
whom the ordained hierarchy and even the supreme pontiff himself were
but subordinate mouthpieces and representatives.[1041] Like their
prototype in the Old Testament, the Aarons of the time did not always
understand the policy or appreciate the aims of their inspired brother,
and the spiritual party in the Church sometimes found its worst
stumbling-block within the walls of the Lateran. Year by year, however,
its influence grew and spread, till on the death of Pope Lucius II. in
February 1145 a Cistercian, Bernard abbot of S. Anastasius at Rome,
was raised to the chair of S. Peter by the name of Eugene III. With
him the anti-Bernardine party had no chance of a moment’s hearing;
threats, flatteries or bribes were all alike thrown away upon a pontiff
whose glory and whose strength lay in having no will of his own, in
being simply the voice which proclaimed and the hand which executed
the thoughts of his greater namesake at Clairvaux. “They say I am
Pope, not you!” wrote S. Bernard to him,[1042] half playfully, half
in gentle reproach, and Eugene gloried in the saying. A new departure
in the policy of the Roman see was marked by the fulfilment of one of
Bernard’s most cherished schemes, the preaching of a new crusade for
the deliverance of the Holy Land, whence an imploring cry for help
came from the widowed Queen Melisenda--for King Fulk of Anjou had been
cut off suddenly in the midst of his labours, and his realm, left to
the rule of a woman and a child, was rapidly falling a prey to the
Infidels.[1043] At Vézelay, on Easter-day 1146, the young King Louis of
France took the cross from S. Bernard’s own hands amid a scene of the
wildest enthusiasm. The Emperor Conrad soon followed his example, and
at Pentecost 1147 the expedition set out.

        [1041] Ern. Bonneval, _Vita S. Bernardi_, l. ii. c. 4 (_S.
        Bern. Opp._, ed. Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1102).

        [1042] S. Bernard. Ep. ccxxxix (_Opp._, Mabillon, vol. 1. col.
        235).

        [1043] On Fulk’s reign in Palestine see Will. Tyr., ll. xiv.
        and xv. The exact date of his death is doubtful; Will. Tyr.,
        l. xv. c. 27, and l. xvi. c. 2, gives it as November 13,
        1142, and says that Baldwin II. was crowned on the following
        Christmas-day. But in l. xvi. c. 4 he says that Edessa was lost
        in the interval between Fulk’s death and his son’s coronation,
        and it is known from other sources that Edessa was taken by the
        Infidels on Christmas-night 1144. Moreover there is in Paoli’s
        _Codice Dipl. del S. Mil. Ord. Gerosol._, vol. i. p. 29, a
        charter of Melisenda dated “1149, Indictione xii.,” which she
        calls the fifth year of her son’s reign. The Chronn. S. Albin.
        and S. Serg. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 35, 146), Chron. Turon.
        Magn. (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_, p. 134), Chron. Namnet.
        (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 558) and Ric. Poitiers
        (_ib._ p. 415) all date Fulk’s death 1143; the Chron. S. Flor.
        Salm. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 191) places it in 1141, but
        couples it with the death of Pope Innocent, which certainly
        occurred in 1143. Fulk’s end was characteristic, being caused
        by his own impetuosity. He was thrown from his horse in dashing
        too hastily after a hare started by some children, as he was
        riding with Melisenda outside the walls of Acre (Will. Tyr.,
        l. xv. c. 27). See the peculiar philosophizing of the Tours
        chronicler thereon (Salmon, as above).

As far as its direct object was concerned, this second crusade failed
completely; yet it had not been projected in vain. As said a friend
and biographer of S. Bernard: “If it was God’s will thereby to deliver,
not the bodies of many eastern folk from the bondage of the heathen,
but the souls of many western folk from the bondage of sin, who shall
dare to ask why He has thus done?”[1044] If the movement did nothing
for Palestine, it did something for England. Torn and exhausted with
her internal divisions, she could take no part in it as a state; but
nowhere was it more readily joined by individual volunteers. The
preaching of the Crusade was a spark which kindled into flame, in the
heart of more than one of the troublers of the land, the smouldering
embers of a capacity for better things; it was a trumpet-call
which roused more than one brave knight to forsake the miserable
party-strife with which perhaps in his secret soul he had long been
growing disgusted, and fling into a better cause the energies which
he had been wasting upon his country’s ruin.[1045] But the movement
did more for England than this. It brought to light among the English
people a spirit whose existence at such a time could otherwise hardly
have been suspected. The one success of the Crusade was achieved by
a little independent squadron of one hundred and sixty-four ships
which sailed from Dartmouth on May 23, six days before the feast of
the Ascension, 1147. The expedition consisted of Germans, Flemings
and Englishmen, the latter being the most numerous. Nearly all were
men of low degree; they had no commander-in-chief; each nationality
chose its own leader. The “men of the Empire”--a body of Low-Germans
who, for some unknown reason, chose to be independent of the great
Imperial host--followed Count Arnold of Aerschot, who seems to have
been the only person of rank in the whole assemblage; the Flemings and
the men of Queen Matilda’s county of Boulogne were led by Christian of
Gistelles. The English grouped themselves according to the districts of
their birth under the guidance of four marshals; Hervey of Glanville
led the men of Norfolk and Suffolk; Simon of Dover[1046] commanded
the ships of Kent; a man named Andrew was chief of the Londoners; and
a miscellaneous contingent from other parts of the country was headed
by Saher de Arcelles. The whole company bound themselves by vows
almost as stringent as those of a religious order; they were pledged
to eschew all fine clothes and personal indulgences, and to help and
avenge one another in all things as sworn brethren; each ship had its
own chaplain and its regular services, as if it were a parish; every
man confessed and communicated once a week; and for the enforcement
of all these rules two men were elected out of every thousand to form
a body of sworn judges[1047] who should administer the common funds
and assist the marshals in maintaining order. These warrior-pilgrims,
sailing down the western coast of the Spanish peninsula on their way
to the Mediterranean Sea, touched at Oporto; at the entreaty of the
Portuguese King Alfonso and his people they exchanged their intended
crusade in Holy Land for one which was perhaps more useful--a campaign
for the deliverance of Christian Portugal from its Moorish oppressors.
The Moors who occupied Lisbon were starved into surrender by a four
months’ blockade; the crusaders entered the city in triumph; in the
hour of temptation English discipline proved strong enough to control
German greed,[1048] and renouncing all share in the fruit of their
victory these single-hearted soldiers of the Cross made over the future
capital of Portugal to its Christian sovereign and went home rejoicing
that they, a few poor men of lowly birth and no reputation, had been
counted worthy to strike a successful blow for the Faith, while its
royal and imperial champions at the head of their countless hosts met
with nothing but disaster and disgrace.[1049]

        [1044] Geoff. Clairvaux, _Vita S. Bern._, l. iii. c. 4 (_S.
        Bern. Opp._, Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1120).

        [1045] See, in particular, the cases of William of Cricklade
        and Philip of Gloucester, _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 111,
        119, 120.

        [1046] “Dorobernensis,” Osbern. _De Expugn. Lyxbon._ (prefixed
        to _Itinerarium Regis Ricardi_, Stubbs), p. cxliv. This ought
        to mean Canterbury; but is not Dover more likely in this case?

        [1047] “Qui judices et conjurati dicerentur.” Osbern (Stubbs,
        _Itin. Reg. Ric._), p. cxliv.

        [1048] The characteristic way in which the Germans and the
        English acted when they got into the city should be noticed in
        Osbern (Stubbs, _Itin. Reg. Ric._), pp. clxviii.–clxxx.

        [1049] Osbern (Stubbs, _Itin. Reg. Ric._), pp. clxxxi,
        clxxxii. See also a letter in Martène and Durand, _Ampliss.
        Coll._, vol. i. cols. 800–802; another in Pertz, _Mon. Germ.
        Hist._, vol. xvii. p. 27; and Hen. Hunt. l. viii. c. 27
        (Arnold, p. 281).

There was no need to despair of a country whose middle and lower
classes could still produce men capable of an exploit such as this.
When a spontaneous gathering of poor yeomen, common sailors and obscure
citizens could reveal such a spirit, it was plain that all England
wanted to rescue her from her misery was a competent leader. S.
Bernard, watching over the fortunes of the English Church through the
eyes of his brethren at Fountains and Rievaux, had seen this already;
and he saw, too, that it was vain to look for such a leader in either
the king or the king-maker, Henry of Winchester. Before the Church of
England could rescue the state, she must be freed from the political
entanglements into which she had been dragged by Henry’s impetuosity,
and enabled to resume a position of spiritual independence under her
rightful leader, the archbishop of Canterbury. With this view the whole
Cistercian order in England, supported and directed by S. Bernard,
had set their faces against William Fitz-Herbert’s appointment to
the see of York, as an attempt of king and legate to override the
constitutional rights of the southern primate and of the Church as a
whole. “The bishop of Winchester and the archbishop of York do not walk
in the same spirit with the archbishop of Canterbury, but go their own
way in opposition to him; and this comes from the old quarrel about
the legation”--thus Bernard summed up the case.[1050] Moreover the
saving clause whereby William of Durham was allowed to swear by proxy
in behalf of his namesake appears to have been interpolated by the
latter’s friends into the Papal decree; for “One William has not sworn,
yet the other is archbishop”[1051] was the burthen of S. Bernard’s
cry to the Pope; and when in 1144 a cardinal-legate, Hicmar, came to
England with a pall for William of York, he promised Bernard not to
give it till he should have received the oath from the bishop of Durham
in person.[1052]

        [1050] In a letter to Eugene III., S. Bern. Ep. ccxxxviii.
        (_Opp._ Mabillon, vol. i. col. 234).

        [1051] S. Bern. Epp. ccxxxv.–ccxxxvi., both to Celestine II.
        (as above, cols. 229–231).

        [1052] S. Bern. Ep. ccclx. (as above, cols. 324, 325)--to
        Abbot William of Rievaux. See also Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 149,
        and, for date, note _u_, _ibid._

Neither prelate took any notice of Hicmar’s presence; but when he was
recalled by the death of Pope Lucius and the accession of Eugene,
the archbishop of York suddenly perceived what a blunder he had
made, and hurried to Rome in quest of the pall about which he had
hitherto been so indifferent. Instead of giving it, Eugene suspended
him from all episcopal functions till such time as William of Durham
should have taken the oath required by the sentence of Pope Innocent.
The archbishop hereupon retired to Sicily and took up his abode
there with his fellow-countryman the chancellor, Robert of Selby or
Salisbury,[1053] under the protection of King Roger. As Roger was
then at bitter feud with the Church, this step was not likely to
mend William’s ecclesiastical reputation. His cause, bad from the
first and made worse by his own carelessness, was presently ruined
by his friends. The leaders of the opposition to him in England were
the abbots of Rievaux and Fountains; the latter, Henry Murdac, was a
native of Yorkshire who in Archbishop Thurstan’s time had given up
houses and lands, home and kindred, to go out to Clairvaux at the
call of S. Bernard. In 1135 he was sent thence to found the abbey of
Vauclair;[1054] in 1143 he was appointed to succeed Abbot Richard II.
of Fountains, who had died at Clairvaux while on his way to attend
the general chapter of his order at Cîteaux.[1055] Henry Murdac went
back to his native land charged with an implied commission to make
Fountains an English Clairvaux and himself an English representative
of S. Bernard, and he fulfilled his charge with true Cistercian zeal
and fidelity.[1056] As soon as William’s suspension became known, his
friends attributed it to the influence of Murdac, whom they sought to
punish by making an armed raid upon his abbey. Plunder, of course,
they got little or none in a freshly-reformed Cistercian house;[1057]
so, after a hurried and unsuccessful search for Murdac himself, they
set the place on fire. Every stone of it perished except the church,
which escaped as by miracle; and the abbot escaped with it, for he
had been lying all the while, unnoticed by the passion-blinded eyes
of his foes, prostrate in prayer before the high altar. The energy of
the monks and the sympathy of their neighbours soon enabled Fountains
to rise from its ashes more glorious than before;[1058] but William’s
day of grace was at once brought to a close by this outrage. At a
council held in Paris in the spring of 1147, the abbot of Fountains
and a deputation from the chapter of York once more formally presented
to the Pope their charges against their primate, and Eugene deposed
William from his episcopal office.[1059] On the eve of S. James the
chapter of York, with the two suffragan bishops of the province--Durham
and Carlisle--met in obedience to a papal mandate for the election of
a new archbishop. The choice of the majority fell upon Henry Murdac.
From Clairvaux, whither he had gone after the council, the abbot of
Fountains was summoned to the papal court at Trier, and there, on the
octave of S. Andrew, he received his consecration and his pall both at
once from Pope Eugene’s own hand.[1060]

        [1053] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 150–152. Robert was “oriundus in
        Angliâ, scilicet in Salesbiâ.” Mr. Raine renders this Selby;
        Twysden made it Salisbury; Bishop Stubbs (_Lect. on Mediev. and
        Mod. Hist._, p. 133), leaves the question undecided.

        [1054] On the earlier life of Henry Murdac see Dixon and Raine,
        _Fasti Ebor._, pp. 210–213; and Walbran, _Memor. of Fountains_,
        vol. i. p. 84, note 3.

        [1055] Walbran, _Memor. of Fountains_, vol. i. pp. 78, 81–83.
        S. Bern. Epp. cccxx, cccxxi (_Opp._ Mabillon, vol. i. cols.
        297, 298).

        [1056] Walbran, _Memor. of Fountains_, vol. i. pp. 84, 85.

        [1057] “Ferentes secum spolia, parum quidem pecuniæ, sed
        plurimum dampnationis.” Walbran, _Memor. of Fountains_, vol. i.
        p. 102.

        [1058] _Ib._ pp. 101, 102.

        [1059] On the council of Paris see Labbe, _Concilia_ (Cossart),
        vol. xxi., cols. 709, 710. As to the date, it appears from
        Jaffé (_Regesta Pontif. Rom._, pp. 626, 627) that Eugene
        reached Paris before Easter (April 20) and was there till June
        11; so the council must fall in the interval. On William’s
        deposition see Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 134. “Hoc
        concilio” ought, by all logical and grammatical rules, to mean
        the council of Reims, held in March 1148, and of which Gervase
        has just been speaking. Accordingly most of his commentators
        (including the editors of the Fountains and Hexham books, and
        the compilers of the _Fasti Eboracenses_) say that William was
        deposed at the council of Reims; and then, as his successor was
        undoubtedly consecrated in December 1147, they are obliged to
        antedate the council of Reims by a year. But Gervase himself
        says, almost in the same breath, that the deposition took place
        in _Paris_. He has confused the two councils; see Pagi’s note
        to Baronius, _Annales_, vol. xix. pp. 7, 8; and cf. Joh. Hexh.
        (Raine), p. 154.

        [1060] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 154, 155. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 135. Walbran, _Memor. of Fountains_, vol. i. p. 103.
        Will. Newb., l. i. c. 17 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 56). The _Hist.
        Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx. p. 518) says
        Henry was consecrated at Auxerre, but this is incompatible with
        dates.

The subsequent conduct of Stephen and Henry of Winchester proved
that their aim in securing the occupation of the northern primacy
had been rightly understood by Eugene and Bernard. They had staked
everything upon the success of their scheme, and when it failed not
only the king but even the once cool and sagacious bishop completely
lost his head. Upon William himself the papal sentence had the very
opposite effect; it woke him from his dreams of easy dignity and
worldly pride; from that moment the idle, showy, self-indulgent young
ecclesiastic changed into an humble saint, and when he came home next
year it was not to renew the strife but to turn away from the world
and possess his soul in patience.[1061] But his uncles would not hear
of submission; Henry took him to live in his own house, and there
persisted in ostentatiously treating him with all the honours due to
the archbishop of York;[1062] and when in the summer of 1148 the new
archbishop also came back to England, Stephen demanded sworn security
for his fidelity before he would let him set foot in the country.[1063]
The citizens of York, instigated by the treasurer of the see, Hugh of
Puiset, who like William was a nephew of the king, shut their gates
in their primate’s face; he withdrew to Ripon, laid his diocese under
interdict and excommunicated Hugh; but Hugh, strong in the support of
his uncles, defied the interdict and was even impudent enough to return
the excommunication.[1064]

        [1061] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 154.

        [1062] _Ibid._ Will. Newb. as above.

        [1063] _Ibid._ Oddly enough, this York affair is almost the
        only one in which William rather inclines to take the part of
        the king.

        [1064] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 158.

In the southern province matters had come to a still more dangerous
crisis. Early in 1148 all the English bishops were summoned by the Pope
to a council which was to meet at Reims on Mid-Lent Sunday. Three of
them--Hereford, Chichester and Norwich--were sent by Stephen himself;
but when the archbishop of Canterbury made the usual application for
leave to quit the country, the king refused, set a watch at every
port to stop his egress, and at his brother Henry’s instigation swore
that if Theobald did go he should be banished on his return. Theobald
however had made up his mind to go at any cost; he slipped away in an
old broken boat with only two companions--Roger of Pont-l’Evêque and
Thomas of London, the latter of whom had now been for several years
the most trusted medium of intercommunication between the primate and
the court of Rome. The daring voyagers reached their journey’s end in
safety, and Theobald was triumphantly presented to the council by the
Pope as one who had swum rather than sailed across the Channel for
the sake of his duty to the Church.[1065] The bishops who had failed
to attend were all suspended, Henry of Winchester being specially
mentioned by name. His brother, however,--the good count of Blois
who seems to have been at once the scapegoat and the peacemaker for
all the sins of his family, and who was held in the deepest esteem
by both Eugene and Bernard--made intercession on his behalf, and
obtained a relaxation of the sentence against him on condition of
his coming to Rome within six months.[1066] As for the king, Eugene
would have excommunicated him at once; but for him the other Theobald
stepped forward as mediator, like Anselm in a somewhat similar case,
and procured him a respite of three months.[1067] The intercessor’s
reward was the threatened sentence of banishment, issued as soon
as he returned to Canterbury. He withdrew into France and appealed
to the Pope, while Stephen seized the temporalities of the see and
began playing the part of the Red King on a small scale. Eugene
wrote to all the English bishops, severally and in a body, bidding
them summon the king to restore the primate at once, lay all his
dominions under interdict if he refused, and tell him that he should
certainly be excommunicated by the Pope on Michaelmas day. The bishops
however were all on the court-side; the interdict, duly published by
Theobald, was unheeded save in his own diocese; and the king remained
obstinate.[1068] But his wiser queen, aided by William of Ypres, who,
however he may have sinned against others, was unquestionably Stephen’s
truest friend, made an effort to restore peace; and at their request
Theobald removed to St. Omer, as being a more accessible place for
negotiation than his French retreat.[1069]

        [1065] _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx.),
        p. 519; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 134. Both accounts
        seem to be derived from a letter of S. Thomas (Ep. ccl.,
        Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi. pp. 57, 58). Thomas’s presence at
        the council is distinctly stated in _Hist. Pontif._ (as above),
        p. 522, and so is that of Roger of Pont-l’Evêque.

        [1066] _Hist. Pontif._ (as above), p. 520. Cf. Gilb. Foliot,
        Ep. lxxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 92).

        [1067] _Hist. Pontif._ (as above), p. 519.

        [1068] _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx.),
        pp. 530, 532.

        [1069] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 135.

Matilda of Boulogne doubtless saw what Theobald must have known full
well, that the quarrel involved a great deal more than strictly
ecclesiastical questions. The issue which the ordeal of battle had
failed to decide was on its trial now in a different form and before
another tribunal. The most curious symptom of this feeling, perhaps,
was the action of Brian Fitz-Count, who, after having been for years
Matilda’s most devoted and most successful champion in the field,
suddenly exchanged the sword for the pen and brought out a defence
of his Lady’s rights in the shape of a little treatise which gained
the approval of one of the cleverest men and greatest scholars of the
time, Gilbert Foliot, abbot of Gloucester.[1070] Geoffrey Plantagenet,
with his Angevin quickness, was the first openly to proclaim the true
position of affairs by sending to Stephen, through Bishop Miles of
Térouanne, a formal challenge to give up his ill-gotten realm and
submit to an investigation of his claims before the papal court.
Stephen retorted by a counter-challenge, calling upon Geoffrey to give
up his equally ill-gotten duchy before he would agree to any further
proceeding in the matter.[1071] Geoffrey took him at his word, but
in a way which he was far from desiring. He did give up the duchy of
Normandy, by making it over to his own son, Henry Fitz-Empress.[1072]

        [1070] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxix. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 94–102).

        [1071] _Hist. Pontif._ (as above), p. 531.

        [1072] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1149 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 36).
        But the story of Gilbert Foliot’s consecration shews that the
        cession must really have taken place in 1148.

The crisis was now close at hand; Stephen was at last face to face with
his true rival. He appears to have consented, as if in desperation, to
the proposed trial at Rome. It seems at first glance as if the envoys
whom he sent to represent him there must indeed have been driven to
their wits’ end for an argument in his behalf when they raked up again
a scandal which S. Anselm had laid to rest half a century ago, as to
the validity of the marriage between Matilda’s father and mother.[1073]
Yet such was the argument publicly put forth by many voices against
the legality of her claims to the crown; and though one account of the
proceedings states that her adversaries were triumphantly confuted by
Bishop Ulger of Angers,[1074] another, written by an eye-witness whose
own opinions were wholly in her favour, declares that her advocates
answered never a word.[1075] The trial seems to have ended without any
decision;[1076] it was however quickly followed by a very significant
event. The witness just referred to was Gilbert Foliot, a Cluniac monk
who since 1139 had been abbot of Gloucester, and whose reputation for
learning, wisdom and holiness had secured to him the confidence of the
primate and the consideration of all parties alike in Church and state.
He had reluctantly and after some delay obeyed Theobald’s summons to
join him at the papal court; once there, he seems to have flung all
his energies into the organization of the new policy of which Theobald
was to be the leader.[1077] During the session of the council at Reims
the bishop of Hereford died.[1078] The Pope at once appointed Gilbert
Foliot vicar of the diocese;[1079] in September he was consecrated by
Theobald at St. Omer, with the consent and approval of the young duke
of the Normans, given on the express condition that he should do homage
for the temporalities of his see to the duke and not to the king.

        [1073] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxix. (Giles, vol. i. p. 101). _Hist.
        Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx.), p. 543.

        [1074] _Hist. Pontif._ (as above), p. 544.

        [1075] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxix. (as above).

        [1076] From the way in which this trial is brought into the
        _Hist. Pontif._, it would at first glance seem to have taken
        place in 1151. But the presence of Bishops Ulger of Angers and
        Roger of Chester, both of whom died in 1149, and the account of
        the proceedings written by Gilbert Foliot to Brian Fitz-Count
        clearly prove the true date to be 1148.

        [1077] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. vi., vii., lxxvi. (Giles, vol. i. pp.
        13, 14, 92).

        [1078] _Hist. Monast. S. Petr. Glocestr._ (Hart), vol. i. p. 18.

        [1079] “G. gratiâ Dei abbas, et Herefordiensis ecclesiæ mandato
        Domini Papæ vicarius,” runs the salutation of his Ep. lxxviii.
        (Giles, vol. i. p. 93).

The very first thing Gilbert did was to break this promise;[1080] but
that Theobald should have consecrated such a man on such terms was
a sign of the times which Stephen could hardly fail to understand.
Theobald himself soon afterwards ventured back to England; crossing
from Gravelines, he landed at Gosford in the territories of Hugh Bigod,
by whom he was hospitably received; the bishops of London, Chichester
and Norwich, with several barons, came to meet him at Hugh’s castle
of Framlingham; the king was reconciled, the primate restored, the
interdict raised, and the suspended prelates, all save one, allowed to
resume their functions.[1081] The exception was Henry of Winchester,
who by neglecting to go to Rome within the prescribed six months
had necessarily fallen under the sentence pronounced against him by
Eugene at the council of Reims. Even to him, however, Theobald was
willing at Stephen’s request to hold out the hand of fellowship and
forgiveness.[1082] But Henry of Winchester’s days of king-making were
over. It was time for another Henry to appear upon the political scene,
to take his cause into his own hands and stand forth as the champion
of his own claims against the man who had supplanted him on his
grandfather’s throne.

        [1080] _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx.),
        pp. 532, 533.

        [1081] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 136, 137.

        [1082] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 152.



CHAPTER VIII.

HENRY DUKE OF THE NORMANS.

1149–1154.


No loving hands have done for the early life of Henry Fitz-Empress what
they did for that of his contemporary, his friend, his opponent Thomas
of London; we have no stories of his boyhood, no picture of his home.
Home indeed, in the full sense of the word, he never had and never
could have. That instinctive attachment to one particular spot, or at
the least to one particular country, which is innate in most men, was
to a child of Geoffrey and Matilda simply impossible. Geoffrey was the
son of an Angevin count and a Cenomannian countess; Matilda was the
daughter of a king born in England of a Norman father and a Flemish
mother, and of a queen whose parents were the one a Scottish Celt, the
other a West-Saxon with a touch of High-German blood. In the temper
of the Empress the Norman element was undoubtedly the strongest; no
trace can be seen in her of the gentle spirit of her mother; and it
is clear that no lingering regrets for the land of her birth[1083]
haunted the girl-bride of the Emperor in her palace at Aachen as they
haunted the monk Orderic, from boyhood to old age, in his cell at
Saint-Evroul. Yet when she came to Normandy in her twenty-third year,
she came there unwillingly and as a complete stranger. If Henry was
to inherit any national or patriotic feeling at all, it could not be
from his mother; what she transmitted to him instead was a sort of
cosmopolitanism which saved the future duke of Normandy and king of
England from the too exclusive influence of the demon-blood of Anjou,
not by making him a Norman, still less an Englishman, but by rendering
his nationality a yet more insoluble problem than her own. Even in
his father, too, there are signs of a divided national sentiment.
The son of Aremburg of Maine, the grandson and heir of Elias, could
not cling to the black rock of Angers with the exclusive attachment
of its earlier counts; a share of his patriotic affection and pride
must have been given to that other, red rock above the Sarthe which
had held out so long and so bravely against both Normandy and Anjou,
to that Cenomannian land of heroes which Norman and Angevin alike had
counted it their highest glory to overcome and win. It may have been by
chance, or it may have been of set purpose, that Geoffrey and Matilda
were at Le Mans when their first child was born; no other spot could
have been half so appropriate. The land which Normans and Angevins and
even Englishmen[1084] had done their utmost to wipe out of the list of
states, the land whose claim to a separate existence, ignored or denied
by them all, had yet proved the insurmountable stumbling-block which
forced them into union:--that land was the most fitting birth-place
for the child who was to be neither Norman, nor Angevin, nor English,
and yet was to be all three at once. The vengeance of Maine upon her
conquerors formed a characteristic close to her national career. They
had swallowed her up at last; but they had no sooner done it than she
gave a master to them all.

        [1083] She was born in London: Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 13.

        [1084] Eng. Chron. a. 1073.

If, then, Normandy, England and Anjou had each a part in Henry, Le Mans
had two parts, as being at once the home of his father’s mother and
the scene of his own birth. His earliest recollections, however, must
rather have been associated with Normandy. His first journey thither
was made when he was about twelve months old, when he accompanied
his mother on a visit to King Henry in the spring 1134. His brother
Geoffrey was born at Argentan on June 1, and the two children narrowly
escaped being left motherless under their grandfather’s care.[1085]
Possibly this made them all the dearer to him; he certainly found in
them his last earthly pleasure, of which he was finally deprived by a
quarrel with their mother, who seems to have sent them back to Angers
shortly before her own return thither in the autumn of 1135.[1086] For
the next seven years little Henry can have seen nothing of his future
duchy; and we have no means of knowing whether its stately capital,
its people, its dialect, had left any impression upon him, or whether
any dim personal remembrance was associated in his mind with that name
of “my grandfather King Henry” to which he appealed so constantly in
later life. His training, after his return to Angers as before, must
have devolved chiefly upon Matilda; for Geoffrey during the next three
years was too busy with unsuccessful fighting abroad in the interest
of his wife and son to have much leisure for devoting himself to their
society at home. It was not till the close of 1138 that his influence
can have been seriously brought to bear upon his children, of whom
there were now three, another son, named William, having been born in
August 1136.[1087] After the disaster of Toucques the count appears
to have spent his time until the beginning of 1141 for the most part
quietly at home, where his wife’s departure over sea left him in his
turn sole guardian of his boys. In one respect at least he did not
neglect his paternal duty. “Unlettered king, crowned ass,” was a
reproach which would have fallen with double disgrace upon the son of
Geoffrey Plantagenet and the grandson of Henry I.; and Geoffrey took
care that his firstborn should never be exposed to it. It may even
be that in those two years when war and politics left him at leisure
for the quieter enjoyments of his books, his hunting and his home,
the young father himself took up the task, of which he was certainly
quite capable, of instilling into his child the first rudiments of
that book-learning which he loved so well. At any rate, it was he who
chose the first teacher to whom Henry’s education was intrusted. As if
on purpose to add one more to the varied influences already working
in that young mind, the teacher was neither Angevin, nor Cenomannian,
nor Norman. He was one Master Peter of Saintes, “learned above all his
contemporaries in the science of verse.”[1088]

        [1085] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1134 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 33);
        Rob. Torigni, a. 1134. Cf. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. cc.
        27, 28 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, pp. 305, 306).

        [1086] Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 34 (as above, p.
        310).

        [1087] Rob. Torigni, _ad ann._

        [1088] “Hic [sc. Gaufridus] filium suum Enricum natu majorem ad
        erudiendum tradidit cuidam magistro Petro scilicet Xantonensi,
        qui in metris instructus est super omnes coætaneos suos.” Anon.
        Chron., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 120.

Under Peter’s care the boy remained till the close of 1142, when, as
we have seen, he was sent to England in company with his uncle Robert
of Gloucester. Henry now entered upon a third phase of education.
For the next four years his uncle took charge of him and kept him in
his own household at Bristol under the care of one Master Matthew,
by whom he was to be “imbued with letters and instructed in good
manners, as beseemed a youth of his rank.”[1089] This arrangement
may have been due to the Empress, or it may have originated with
Geoffrey when he sent the boy over sea in the earl’s company; for
much as they differed in other matters, on the subject of a boy’s
training the two brothers-in-law could hardly fail to be of the same
mind. A well-balanced compound of soldier, statesman and scholar
was Earl Robert’s ideal no less than Count Geoffrey’s; an ideal so
realized in his own person that he might safely be trusted to watch
over its developement in the person of his little nephew. As far as
the military element was concerned, the earl of Gloucester, with his
matured experience and oft-proved valour, was no less capable than
the count of Anjou of furnishing a model of all knightly prowess,
skill and courtesy; and if Henry’s chivalry was to be tempered with
discretion--if it was to be regulated by a wise and wary policy--if he
was to acquire any insight into the principles of sound and prudent
state-craft--Robert was certainly, among the group of adventurers
who surrounded the Empress, the only man from whom he could learn
anything of the kind. The boy was indeed scarce ten years old, and
even for the heir of Anjou and England it was perhaps somewhat too
early to begin such studies as these. For the literary side of his
education, later years proved that Robert’s choice of a teacher was as
good as Geoffrey’s had been; the seed sowed by Peter of Saintes was
well watered by Matthew, and it seems to have brought forth in his
young pupil’s mind a harvest of gratitude as well as of learning, for
among the chancellors of King Henry II. there appears a certain “Master
Matthew” who can hardly be any other than his old teacher.[1090]

        [1089] “Puer autem Henricus sub tutelâ Comitis Roberti apud
        Bristoviam degens, per quatuor annos traditus est magisterio
        cujusdam Mathæi, litteris imbuendus et moribus honestis ut
        talem decebat puerum instituendus.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs.), vol.
        i. p. 125.

        [1090] “The person meant was no doubt that Matthew who is
        called Henry’s chancellor in Foliot’s letters.” Stubbs,
        _Gerv. Cant._, vol. i. p. 125, note 2. (“Master Matthew, the
        chancellor,” is named in Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cli., Giles, vol.
        i. pp. 201, 202). In his _Lect. on Med. and Mod. Hist._, p.
        120, Bishop Stubbs speaks of Matthew as the king’s “tutor, who
        was some time his chancellor, and who probably was identical
        with the Bishop of Angers, Matthew of London.” Bishop Matthew
        of Angers is described by the editors of _Gall. Christ._ (vol.
        xiv. col. 570) as a native of _Loudun_--“Losduni natus.” He was
        consecrated in 1155, which seems hardly to leave time for his
        chancellorship.

To teach the boy “good manners”--in the true sense of those words--must
have been a somewhat difficult task amid his present surroundings.
Bristol, during the years of Henry’s residence there, fully kept up
its character as the “stepmother of all England”; he must have been
continually seeing or hearing of bands of soldiers issuing from the
castle to ravage and plunder, burn and slay, or troops of captives
dragged in to linger in its dungeons till they had given up their
uttermost farthing or were set free by a miserable death. It seems
likely, however, that the worst of these horrors occurred during
Robert’s absence and without his sanction, for even the special
panegyrist of Stephen gives the earl credit for doing his utmost to
maintain order and justice in the shires over which he ruled.[1091] It
was not his fault if matters had drifted into such a state that his
efforts were worse than useless; and his good intentions were at any
rate not more ineffectual than those of the king. Within the domestic
circle itself it is not unlikely that the child was better placed under
the influence of Robert and Mabel than either in the household of his
violent-tempered mother or in that of his refined but selfish father,
whom he rejoined in the spring of 1147, a year before the return of the
Empress. He was in his sixteenth year when Geoffrey ceded to him the
duchy of Normandy. A boy of that age, especially in the house of Anjou,
was counted a man, and expected to act as such. The cession was in fact
intended and understood as a solemn proclamation both to friends and
foes that henceforth they would have to deal with King Henry’s chosen
heir no longer indirectly, but in his own person; that his rights were
to be vindicated in future not by his parents but by himself.

        [1091] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 94.

He lost no time in beginning his work. In the middle of May 1149
Stephen, while endeavouring to put down a fresh revolt of the earls of
Chester and Pembroke,[1092] was startled by news of Henry’s arrival in
England. The young duke of the Normans landed we know not where, and
made his way northward, recruiting a few of his mother’s old adherents
as he went: his great-uncle King David welcomed him at Carlisle, and
there knighted him on Whit-Sunday.[1093] Stephen evidently took this
act as a challenge, for he immediately retorted by knighting his eldest
son Eustace, thus pointedly setting up his own heir as a rival to his
young kinsman.[1094] He then hastened with all his forces to York,
but no hostilities took place.[1095] The intended campaign of David
and Henry was frustrated by Ralf of Chester’s failure to keep his
engagement with them;[1096] the two kings sat awhile, one at York and
the other at Carlisle, each waiting for the other to strike, till David
grew weary and retired to his own kingdom,[1097] taking his nephew with
him; and in January Henry again withdrew beyond the sea.[1098] He saw
that the political scales were as yet too evenly balanced to be turned
by the mere weight of his maiden sword; and his work was being done for
him, better than he could do it himself, by clerk and primate, abbot
and Pope--most surely of all, by the blundering king himself.

        [1092] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 124–127, gives the details
        of this rising.

        [1093] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 140, 141. Cf. Hen.
        Hunt., l. viii. c. 29 (Arnold, p. 282). Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p.
        159. Rob. Torigni, a. 1149. The writer of _Gesta Steph._ (pp.
        128, 129) has a most romantic account of Henry’s adventures.
        Henry, he says, came over with a very small force, and nothing
        to pay them with except promises. He made an attempt upon
        Bourton and Cricklade, and was repulsed; whereupon his troops
        all fell away and left him so helpless that he was obliged to
        ask his mother for some money. She had none to give him; he
        then asked his uncle Gloucester, but the latter, “suis sacculis
        avide incumbens,” refused. Then Henry in desperation appealed
        to the king, beseeching his compassion for the sake of their
        kindred blood; and Stephen at once sent him the needful sum.
        The trait is just what might be expected in Stephen; but it is
        hard to conceive Henry ever getting into such a plight; and the
        mention of Robert of Gloucester as still alive shews there must
        be something wrong in the story.

        [1094] Hen. Hunt. as above. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 160. _Gesta
        Steph._ (Sewell), p. 130.

        [1095] Hen. Hunt. as above.

        [1096] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 159, 160. Ralf had agreed to
        give up his claims on Carlisle and accept instead the honour
        of Lancaster for himself and the hand of one of David’s
        granddaughters for his son; he promised on these conditions to
        join David and Henry in an attack upon Lancaster, but was, as
        usual, false to the tryst.

        [1097] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 29 (Arnold, p. 282).

        [1098] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 142.

A double chain connected English politics with those of the Roman
court. The links of the one chain were S. Bernard and Henry Murdac;
those of the other were Theobald of Canterbury and Thomas of London.
What was the exact nature of those communications between the primate
and the Pope of which Thomas was the medium--how much of the credit of
Theobald’s policy is due to himself and how much to his confidential
instrument and adviser--we have no means of determining precisely.
The aim of that policy was to consolidate the forces of the English
Church by deepening her intercourse and strengthening her connexion
with the sister-Churches of the West, and thus bring the highest
religious and political influences of Latin Christendom to bear upon
the troubles of the English state. The way had been paved by Henry of
Winchester in his legatine days. He and the councils which he convened
had first suggested the possibility of finding a remedy for the lack
of secular administration in an appeal to the authority of the canon
law, now formulated as a definite code by the labours of a Bolognese
lawyer, Gratian. The very strifes and jealousies which arose from
Henry’s over-vigorous assertion of his authority tended to a like
result; they led to more frequent appeals to Rome, to elaborate legal
pleadings, to the drawing of subtle legal distinctions unknown to the
old customary procedure of the land; as a contemporary writer expresses
it, “Then were laws and lawyers first brought into England.”[1099] On
the Continent the study of the civil jurisprudence of the Roman Empire
had been revived together with that of the canon law; some members of
Archbishop Theobald’s household resolved to introduce it into England,
hoping thereby, as it seems, to sow amid the general confusion some
seeds of a more orderly and law-abiding spirit. During the time of
comparative quiet which intervened between his first journey to Rome in
1143 and his expedition with Theobald to the council of Reims in 1148,
Thomas of London had spent a year at Bologna and Auxerre to perfect
himself in the literary culture which he had somewhat neglected in
his youth.[1100] The university of Bologna was the chief seat of the
new legal learning; it may therefore have been through Thomas that a
Lombard teacher, Vacarius, was induced to visit England in 1149 and
open lectures at Oxford on the Roman law.[1101] Rich and poor flocked
to hear him, and at the request of his poorer scholars he made an
abridgement of the Code and Digests, sufficient for practical use,
and more within reach of their scanty means than the heavy folios of
Justinian.[1102] His lectures however were summarily brought to an end
by order of the king; Stephen, scared by young Duke Henry’s presence
in the north, jealous of the primate, jealous of the Church, jealous
of everything in which he saw or thought he saw the least token of an
influence which might be used against himself, at once silenced the
teacher and ordered the students to give up their books. He gained
as little as is usually gained by such a mode of proceeding in such
cases. The study of the civil law only spread and prospered the more
for his efforts to hinder it;[1103] and the law-school of the future
university of Oxford may have sprung from a germ left in the cloisters
of Oseney or S. Frideswide’s by the brief visit of the Lombard master,
just as the divinity-school may have sprung from a germ left there
sixteen years before by the lectures of Robert Pulein.

        [1099] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 384.

        [1100] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        17.

        [1101] Gerv. Cant. as above. Rob. Torigni, a. 1149. Joh.
        Salisb., _Polycraticus_, l. viii. c. 22 (Giles, vol. iv. p.
        357), says that “domus venerabilis patris Theobaldi” brought
        the Roman law into England.

        [1102] Rob. Torigni, a. 1149.

        [1103] Joh. Salisb. as above.

Stephen had struck at the southern primate indirectly this time; with
the northern one he was still at open feud. One use which he made of
his stay in Yorkshire was to exact a heavy fine from the inhabitants
of Beverley, as a punishment for having given shelter to Henry Murdac.
After the king’s departure the archbishop at last succeeded in
enforcing his interdict at York; Eustace hurried thither, insisted upon
the restoration of the services, and drove out all who refused to take
part in them; there was a great tumult, in which the senior archdeacon
was killed by the followers of the king’s son.[1104] About the same
time a cardinal-legate, John Paparo, on his way to Ireland, asked for a
safe-conduct through the dominions of the English king; Stephen refused
to give it unless he would promise to do nothing on his journey to the
prejudice of the English realm. John went home highly indignant at such
an insinuation against his honour and that of the Apostolic See.[1105]
Meanwhile Archbishop Murdac was writing bitter complaints both to S.
Bernard and to the Pope. They apparently determined to give Stephen a
warning which even he could not fail to understand; and they did it by
sending a commission as resident legate _a latere_ for all Britain to
the archbishop of Canterbury.[1106]

        [1104] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 160. Will. Newb., l. i. c. 17
        (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 56, 57).

        [1105] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 164. In the _Hist. Pontif._
        (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx. pp. 518, 519) this first
        legation of John Paparo seems to be dated some years earlier.
        But the _Hist. Pontif._ is very erratic in its chronology; and
        John of Hexham seems quite clear and consistent in his account
        of the matter.

        [1106] The date of Theobald’s legatine commission seems to be
        nowhere stated. He had certainly received it before Lent 1151;
        it was therefore in all probability granted some time in 1150,
        under the circumstances related above.

The warning took effect; Stephen changed his policy at once. He was
weary of all his fruitless labour; his chief anxiety now was to secure
the crown to his son; and he suddenly awoke to the necessity of setting
himself right with the one power which alone could enable him to carry
out his desire. Eustace himself was sent to act as mediator between
his father and Henry Murdac; a reconciliation took place, and the
archbishop was enthroned at York on S. Paul’s day 1151. Thence he went
to keep Easter with the Pope, having undertaken, at Stephen’s request,
to intercede for him with Eugene concerning the state of politics in
England, and especially to obtain, if possible, the papal sanction
to a formal acknowledgement of Eustace as heir to the crown.[1107]
The southern primate meanwhile was beginning his legatine career with
a Mid-Lenten council in London, at which Stephen, Eustace, and the
principal barons of England were present. The main feature of this
council was a crowd of appeals to Rome, whereof three were made by
the bishop of Winchester.[1108] One of these appeals must have been
against the suspension to which he had been sentenced at the council
of Reims, and by which the Pope, less placable than the primate, still
held him bound. Moreover, complaints against him were pouring into
Rome from all quarters; so he carried his appeals in person, and went
to clear himself before the supreme pontiff. He succeeded in obtaining
absolution;[1109] his friends, of whom there were still many at
the papal court, tried hard to win for him something more--either a
renewal of the legation, or the accomplishment of his old scheme of a
primacy over Wessex, or at least the exemption of his own see from the
jurisdiction of Canterbury; but Eugene was inexorable. He believed that
Stephen’s misconduct towards the Church was instigated by his brother;
a very natural view, but somewhat unjust to the bishop.[1110] The
truth seems rather to be that Henry, after vainly trying to rule the
storm, had for awhile been swept away by its violence. Now he had
emerged into the calm once more; and there henceforth he was content
to remain. He consoled himself for the failure of his political hopes
with a choice collection of antique statues purchased in Rome for the
adornment of his palace at Winchester, and sailed quietly home with
these treasures, stopping on his way to pay his devotions at the shrine
of S. James at Compostella.[1111] At his request the Pope ordered
Archbishop Murdac to absolve Hugh of Puiset, who was making himself
useful at Winchester, not on clerical duty, but in taking charge of the
bishop’s castles during his absence.[1112] With Hugh’s absolution the
schism in the northern province came to an end, and the English Church
was once again reunited.

        [1107] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 162.

        [1108] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 31 (Arnold, p. 282): “Totum illud
        concilium novis appellationibus infrenduit.” It is, however,
        rather too hard upon Henry of Winchester when he adds that
        appeals to Rome had not been used in England till that prelate
        in his legatine days “malo suo crudeliter intrusit.”

        [1109] Ann. Winton. a. 1151 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii.
        pp. 54, 55).

        [1110] As the author of the _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon.
        Germ. Hist._, vol. xx. p. 542) truly says: “Credebatur
        fratrem suum regem contra ecclesiam instigare; sed rex, quod
        manifesta declarant opera, nec illius nec sapientis alterius
        consilio agebatur.”

        [1111] _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx.),
        p. 542.

        [1112] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 158, 162. He places Hugh’s
        absolution in 1150, but on his own shewing it cannot have
        occurred before 1151.

For England and for Stephen alike the prospect seemed to be
brightening. Stephen however was clearly beginning to feel that for
him as well as for his Angevin rivals it was time to give place to
a younger generation. It must have been chiefly for Eustace’s sake
that he valued his crown; and in Eustace’s case, as in that of Henry
Fitz-Empress, there were many circumstances which might make the
pretensions of the child more generally acceptable than those of the
parent. Eustace seems to have been about the same age as Henry, or
probably a few years older; he was free from the personal obloquy
and suspicion attaching to Stephen from the errors of the past; on
the other hand, as the son of Matilda of Boulogne, he might reap the
benefit of his mother’s well-earned personal popularity, as well as
of her descent from the royal house of Wessex. Henceforth, therefore,
Stephen showed a disposition to treat Henry Fitz-Empress as the rival
less of himself than of his son, and to follow up every movement in
Henry’s public life by a parallel step in the career of Eustace. And
as Henry’s first independent act had been a sort of reconnoitring
expedition to England, so the first retaliation was a visit made by
Eustace to the king of France, with a view to ascertain his chances of
support in an attempt to regain Normandy.

The existing phase of the rivalry between the houses of Anjou and
Blois--their struggle for the dominion of Normandy and England--was
a matter which concerned the interests of the French Crown almost
as deeply as the earlier phase in which Fulk the Black and Odo of
Champagne strove with each other for political mastery over their
common lord paramount. Neither the accumulation of England, Normandy,
Maine, Anjou and Touraine in a single hand, nor the acquisition of
Normandy and England by a branch of the mighty and troublesome house
which already held Blois, Chartres and Champagne, could be viewed by
the French king without grave uneasiness. Either alternative had its
dangers; to Louis VII., however, the danger would appear much less
threatening than to his father. Shortly before the dying Louis VI.
granted the investiture of Normandy to Stephen’s little son in 1137,
the last of the old line of the dukes of Aquitaine--William IX., son
of the gay crusader and troubadour whom the Red King had hoped to
succeed--died on a pilgrimage at Compostella.[1113] His only son was
already dead, and before setting out for his pilgrimage he did what a
greater personage had done ten years before: with the consent of his
barons, he left the whole of his dominions to his daughter. Moreover,
he bequeathed the girl herself as wife to the young King Louis of
France.[1114] This marriage more than doubled the strength of the
French Crown. It gave to Louis absolute possession of all western
Aquitaine, or Guyenne as it was now beginning to be called; that is,
the counties of Poitou and Gascony, with the immediate overlordship
of the whole district lying between the Loire and the Pyrenees, the
Rhône and the ocean:--a territory five or six times as large as his
own royal domain, and over which his predecessors had never been able
to assert more than the merest shadow of a nominal superiority.[1115]
To a man who was at once king of France and duke of Aquitaine it was
comparatively no great matter whether the dominions of Henry I. were to
be annexed to those of Geoffrey of Anjou or allied to those of Theobald
of Blois. The truest interest of France, however, obviously was that
England and Normandy should be divided, one of them being held by each
of the two competitors; and it was doubtless with this view that Louis,
while sanctioning and aiding Geoffrey’s conquest of the Norman duchy,
still kept on peaceful terms with the English king, and held to a
promise of marriage made some years before between his own sister and
Stephen’s son Eustace.[1116]

        [1113] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 909.
        _Hist. Franc._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii.), p. 116.
        Anon. Chron. (_ibid._) p. 119. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Maxent.
        a. 1137 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 34, 432).

        [1114] Suger, _Vita Ludov._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii.)
        p. 62. Chron. Mauriniac. (_ibid._) p. 83. _Hist. Franc._
        (_ibid._), p. 116. Ord. Vit. as above. See also Besly, _Comtes
        de Poitou_, p. 137.

        [1115] Perhaps the most striking indication of the importance
        of the duke of Aquitaine is the ceremony of the ducal crowning,
        which Louis, as husband of the duchess, underwent at Poitiers
        immediately after his marriage; Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Norm. Scriptt._), p. 911. There was a special “Ordo ad
        benedicendum ducem Aquitaniæ” (printed in Besly, _Comtes de
        Poitou, preuves_, pp. 183 _et seq._, and _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._,
        vol. xii. pp. 451–453), nearly as solemn as the office for the
        crowning of a king.

        [1116] Rob. Torigni, a. 1139. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
        112. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 125.

At the time of Geoffrey’s final success Louis was at deadly strife
with the count of Blois; a strife in which the king was wholly in the
wrong, and for whose disastrous consequences he afterwards grieved so
deeply that his penitence was the chief motive which induced him to
go on crusade.[1117] Since then, Geoffrey in his turn had incurred
the royal displeasure. There was a certain Gerald, lord of a castle
called Montreuil-Bellay, near the southern border of Anjou--one of
the fortresses raised by the great castle-builder Fulk Nerra in the
earliest days of his warfare with Odo of Blois--whom an Angevin
chronicler describes as an absolute monster of wickedness,[1118] but
who had so won the favour of the king that he made him seneschal of
Poitou. In 1147 this Gerald was the ring-leader of a fresh revolt of
the Angevin barons against their count. The revolt was as usual soon
put down: but it was not so easy to punish Gerald; for Montreuil was
an almost impregnable fortress, with a keep of great strength and
height, “lifting itself up to the stars,” surrounded by a double wall
and rampart, and further protected by an encircling chasm, very deep
and precipitous, which was called the “Valley of Judas,” and prevented
any engines of war from coming within range of the castle.[1119] Some
time in 1148 Geoffrey built three towers of stone in the neighbourhood
of Montreuil, as a base for future operations against it.[1120] In
the summer of 1150 an outrage committed by Gerald upon the abbot and
monks of S. Aubin at Angers brought matters to a crisis;[1121] Geoffrey
made the monks’ quarrel his own and at once set his engineers to level
the ground all around Montreuil, in preparation for bringing up his
machines to the assault. After nearly twelve months’ labour,[1122]
however, the “Judas-Valley” still yawned between himself and his
foes, till he ordered the annual fair usually held at Saumur to be
transferred to Montreuil. In a fortnight the energies of the crowd
who flocked to the fair, joined to those of his own soldiers, filled
up the valley and made it into level ground.[1123] Geoffrey could now
bring his engines within range, and he used them with such effect that
at the first assault the outworks were destroyed and the garrison
driven to take refuge in the keep. A summons to surrender was, however,
scornfully rejected by Gerald, trusting in the strength of his tower
and the expected help of the king.[1124]

        [1117] See Arbois de Jubainville, _Comtes de Champagne_, vol.
        ii. pp. 344 _et seq._

        [1118] Chron. Mairom. (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 84.

        [1119] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 282–284.
        See also Chron. S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 147).

        [1120] Rob. Torigni, a. 1149. As he himself, as well as the
        chronicles, makes the siege last altogether three years and end
        in 1151, he must mean 1148.

        [1121] See the whole curious story in _Cartæ et Chronn. de
        Obedientiâ Mairomni_ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), pp. 65 _et seq._

        [1122] Chron. Mairom. (as above), p. 87. Chron. S. Serg. a.
        1151 (_ib._ p. 147).

        [1123] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), p. 284.

        [1124] _Ib._ p. 285.

For Louis had now returned from Palestine;[1125] and so great was his
wrath at Geoffrey’s treatment of his favourite that he consented to
join Eustace in an attack upon the Norman duchy. Its defence was left
to its young duke, then busy with the siege of Torigni on the Vire,
held against him by his cousin Richard Fitz-Count--a son of Earl Robert
of Gloucester.[1126] Louis and Eustace marched upon Arques; Henry led
a force of Normans, Angevins and Bretons to meet them; but his “older
and wiser” barons averted a battle,[1127] and nothing more came of the
expedition. Geoffrey had never stirred from his camp before Montreuil.
Despite a formidable array of engines,[1128] he made little progress;
every breach made in the walls by day was mended by night with oaken
beams, of which the besieged seemed to have a never-ending supply.
Geoffrey was characteristically taking counsel with his books as to the
best method of overcoming this difficulty when some monks of Marmoutier
came to him on an errand for their convent. One of them took up the
book which the count laid down--the treatise of Vegetius Renatus _De
Re Militari_, then, and long after, the standard work on military
engineering. It may have been some memory of bygone days when he, too,
had worn helm and hauberk instead of cowl and scapulary that brought
into the monk’s eyes a gleam which made Geoffrey exclaim, “Stay with
me till to-morrow, good brother, and what you are now reading shall be
put in action before you.” Next day a large red-hot iron vessel filled
with boiling oil was launched from the beam of a mangonel against one
of the timber insertions in the wall, and its bursting set the whole
place on fire.[1129] Gerald, his spirit broken at last, came forth with
his family and his garrison “like serpents crawling out of a cave,” as
a hostile chronicler says,[1130] and surrendered to the mercy of the
count, who sent him to prison at Angers. The keep was razed at once,
save one fragment of wall, left by Geoffrey, and still standing at this
hour, as a memorial of his victory and of the skill and perseverance by
which it had been won.[1131]

        [1125] He returned in the autumn of 1149. See Rob. Torigni, _ad
        ann._, and M. Delisle’s note thereon, vol. i. p. 252, note 1.

        [1126] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151 and 1154.

        [1127] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151. See also Chronn. S. Albin. a.
        1150 and S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 36, 148).

        [1128] “Petroritas, fundibularias, mangonellos et arietes,”
        _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 285, and “sex
        tormenta quæ vulgo perreriæ vocantur.” Chron. S. Serg. (as
        above), p. 147.

        [1129] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), pp. 286, 287. The monk
        is called “frater G.” M. Marchegay suggests that he may have
        been the “Gauterius Compendiensis,” monk of Marmoutier, whom
        the writer names among his authorities in the Proœmium to his
        _Hist. Abbrev._ (_ib._ p. 353). If so, this detailed account
        of the last scene at the siege of Montreuil is due to an
        eye-witness.

        [1130] Chron. Mairom. (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 87.

        [1131] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 287.

The count of Anjou now moved northward to help his son against the
king. By the help of a brother of his old ally William Talvas he gained
possession of La Nue, a castle belonging to the king’s brother Count
Robert of Dreux.[1132] Louis and Robert avenged themselves by burning
the town of Séez. Presently after, in August, Louis gathered together
all his forces and brought them down the Seine to a spot between
Meulan and Mantes. Geoffrey and Henry collected an opposing army on
their side of the Norman border; but an attack of fever detained the
king in Paris, and a truce was made until he should recover.[1133] The
ostensible ground of the dispute was Geoffrey’s treatment of Gerald
of Montreuil, which certainly seems to have been unjustly cruel. Not
content with receiving his unconditional surrender, razing his castle,
and forcing him to make full atonement to the injured monks of S.
Aubin, Geoffrey still persisted in keeping in prison not only Gerald
himself but also his whole family. The Pope anathematized him for his
unchristianlike severity;[1134] but anathemas usually fell powerless
upon an Angevin count. Geoffrey was in truth visiting upon Gerald his
wrath at the double-dealing of Gerald’s royal master; for he was well
aware that King Louis’s interference was prompted by far other motives
than disinterested sympathy for his seneschal. Louis was, according to
his wont, playing fast and loose with the rival claimants of Normandy,
in such shameless fashion that his own chief minister, Suger, had
been the first to reprove him in strong terms for his unwarrantable
attack upon the Angevins, had stood firmly by Geoffrey all through the
struggle, and was now endeavouring, through the mediation of the count
of Vermandois and the bishop of Lisieux, to baffle the schemes of
Eustace and his party and bring the king back to his old alliance with
Anjou.[1135]

        [1132] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151 (Delisle, vol. i. p. 254; see the
        editor’s note 3, _ib._)

        [1133] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151.

        [1134] Geoff. Clairv., _Vita S. Bern._, l. iv. c. 3 (_S. Bern.
        Opp._, Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1135).

        [1135] Suger, Epp. cl., cliii., clxvii., clxviii., clxxv.
        (Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. 186, cols. 1418, 1419–1420,
        1427–1429, 1432).

As soon as Louis was sufficiently recovered a meeting was held in Paris
to discuss the possibility of a settlement, and the cause of peace
was pleaded by no less an advocate than S. Bernard in person. But,
almost for the first time, Bernard pleaded in vain; Geoffrey started
up in the midst of the colloquy, and without a word of salutation to
any one, sprang upon his horse and rode away. The assembly broke up in
despair, and Gerald, who had been brought to hear its result, threw
himself at the feet of S. Bernard to implore a last benediction before
returning, as he thought, to lifelong captivity. “Fear not,” replied
the saint, “deliverance is nearer than you think.” Scarcely had the
prisoner turned away when his jailer reappeared.[1136] Geoffrey during
his solitary ride had revolved the political situation in his mind and
perceived that for his son’s sake he must make peace with the king.
Matters in England had reached such a crisis that it was absolutely
necessary to secure Henry’s tenure of Normandy, as he might at any
moment be required to go beyond sea. To that end Geoffrey did more than
give up his personal vengeance upon Gerald of Montreuil; he persuaded
Henry to give up the Norman Vexin--the land between the Epte and the
Andelle, so long the battle-ground of France and Normandy--to the king
of France, in exchange for the investiture of the rest of the duchy.
If we may believe the French chroniclers, the young duke made a yet
further sacrifice and became the “liegeman” of the king--a form of
homage to which none of his predecessors had ever stooped.[1137] Of
the homage in some shape or other there is however no doubt;[1138]
and it appears that the same opportunity was taken to secure for
Henry, without waiting for his father’s death, the investiture of his
father’s own dominions.[1139]

        [1136] Geoff. Clairv., _Vita S. Bern._, l. iv. c. 3 (_S. Bern.
        Opp._, Mabillon, vol. i. col. 1135).

        [1137] _Hist. Ludov._, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 127;
        _Chron. Reg. Franc._ (_ibid._), p. 213. Both these writers,
        however, tell an apocryphal story of Louis, at Geoffrey’s and
        Henry’s request, reconquering the duchy for them and receiving
        these concessions in return for his help.

        [1138] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151.

        [1139] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 291 (Marchegay, _Comtes_,
        p. 336).

Geoffrey was but just entering his thirty-ninth year, and one can
hardly help speculating for a moment as to his plans for his own
future. For him, now that his work in the west was done, there was no
such brilliant opening in the east as there had been for Fulk V. when
he, too, in the prime of manhood, had chosen to make way for a younger
generation. But Geoffrey had begun public life at an earlier age than
either his father or his son; and he seems to have had neither the
moral nor the physical strength which had enabled one Angevin count
to carry on for half a century, without break and without slackening,
the work upon which he had entered before he was fifteen, and to
die in harness at the very crowning-point of his activity and his
success. Geoffrey Plantagenet was no Fulk Nerra; he was not even a
Fulk of Jerusalem; and he may well have been weary of a political
career which must always have been embittered by a feeling that he was
the mere representative of others, labouring not for himself, hardly
even for his country or his race, but only that the one might be
swallowed up in the vast dominions and the other merged in the royal
line of his ancestors’ Norman foe. He may have seriously intended to
pass the rest of his days among his books; or he may have felt an
inner warning that those days were to be very few. With a perversity
which may after all have been partly the effect of secretly failing
health, although he had now set Gerald at liberty he still refused
to acknowledge that he had treated him with unjust severity, or to
seek absolution from the Pope’s censure; and he even answered with
blasphemous words to the gentle remonstrances of S. Bernard. “With
what measure thou hast meted it shall be meted to thee again” said the
saint at last as he turned away; one of his followers, more impetuous,
boldly prophesied that Geoffrey would die within a year. He did die
within a fortnight.[1140] On his way home from the king’s court,[1141]
overcome with the heat, he plunged into a river to cool himself;[1142]
a fever was the consequence; he was borne to Château-du-Loir, and
there on September 7 he passed away.[1143] His last legacy to his son
was a piece of good advice, given almost with his dying breath:--not
to change the old customs of the lands over which he was called to
rule, whether by bringing those of Normandy and England into Anjou,
or by seeking to transfer those of the Angevin dominions into the
territories which he inherited from his mother.[1144] Dying in the
little border-fortress whence his grandfather Elias had gone forth to
liberate Maine, Geoffrey was buried, by his own desire, not among his
Angevin forefathers at Tours or at Angers, but in his mother’s home at
Le Mans.[1145] A splendid tomb, bearing his effigy adorned with gold
and gems, was raised over his remains in the cathedral church,[1146]
whence it has disappeared to become a mere antiquarian curiosity in a
museum. Geoffrey’s sole surviving monument is the one which he made for
himself--the ruined, blackened fragment of his great ancestor’s keep at
Montreuil.

        [1140] Geoff. Clairv., _Vita S. Bern._, l. iv. c. 3 (_S. Bern.
        Opp._, Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1135).

        [1141] At Paris, says Rob. Torigni, a. 1151; on the frontier
        of Normandy and France, say the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay,
        _Comtes_), p. 156. But if it was the assembly at which Henry
        received his investiture, that was certainly in Paris; and
        there does not seem time enough for another.

        [1142] _Gesta Cons._ as above.

        [1143] _Ibid._ _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (_ibid._), p. 292. Chronn.
        S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 36,
        37, 147). Rob. Torigni, a. 1151; etc.

        [1144] “Ne Normanniæ vel Angliæ consuetudines in consulatûs
        sui terram, vel e converso, variæ vicissitudinis altercatione
        permutaret.” _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), pp. 292, 293.

        [1145] Chron. S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 147);
        _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), p. 292. “Inque solo materno
        sibi locum eligens sepulturæ.” R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
        16 (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 341).

        [1146] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), p. 293. “Hic solus
        omnium mortalium intra muros civitatis Cinomannicæ sepultus
        est,” says Rob. Torigni, a. 1151.

Stephen could not do what Geoffrey had done. His kingdom was no mere
fief to be passed from hand to hand by a formal ceremony of surrender
and investiture; the crowned and anointed king of England could not so
easily abdicate in favour of his son. He might however do something to
counterbalance Henry’s advancement by obtaining a public recognition
of Eustace as his heir. In Lent 1152, therefore, he summoned a great
council in London, at which all the earls and barons swore fealty to
Eustace.[1147] Still the king felt that his object was far from being
secured. He himself was a living proof how slight was the worth of
such an oath when the sovereign who had exacted it was gone. There
was, however, one further step possible, a step without precedent in
England, but one which the kings of France had taken with complete
success for several generations past: the solemn coronation and unction
of the heir to the throne during his father’s lifetime. It was at this
that Stephen had aimed when he sent Archbishop Henry of York to Rome.
He took an unusually wise as well as a characteristically generous
measure in intrusting his cause to a reconciled enemy; nevertheless
the attempt failed. Pope Eugene by his letters absolutely forbade
the primate to make Eustace king; therefore, when Stephen called
upon Theobald and the other bishops to anoint and crown the youth,
they one and all refused. Father and son were both equally vexed and
angry. They shut up all the bishops in one house and tried to tease
them into submission. A few, remembering that “King Stephen never
had loved clerks,” and that it was not the first time he had cast
bishops into prison,[1148] were so frightened that they gave way;
the majority stood firm, and the primate himself escaped down the
Thames in a fishing-boat, made his way to Dover, and thence retreated
beyond sea.[1149] Without him there was nothing to be done, and of his
yielding there was no chance whatever; for close at his side stood the
real fount and source of the papal opposition--Thomas of London.[1150]

        [1147] Ann. Waverl. a. 1152 (Luard, _Ann. Monast_., vol.
        ii. p. 234). Ann. Winton. Contin. a. 1152 (Liebermann,
        _Geschichtsquellen_, p. 82).

        [1148] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 32 (Arnold, p. 284).

        [1149] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 151. _Vita Theobald._
        (Giles, _Lanfranc_, vol. i.), p. 338.

        [1150] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 150.

Some of Henry’s partizans in England now thought it time for him to
interfere, and despatched his uncle Reginald earl of Cornwall to urge
him to come over at once.[1151] Soon after Easter a meeting of the
Norman barons--already summoned by Henry in the previous autumn,[1152]
but delayed by the unexpected catastrophe of his father’s death--was
held at Lisieux to consider the matter.[1153] But whatever the result
of their deliberations may have been, Henry found something else to
do before he could cross the sea. King Louis VII. had been meditating
a divorce from his wife, the Aquitanian duchess Eleanor, ever since
their return from the crusade. The great obstacle to his scheme was
his father’s and his own old friend and minister Suger, who saw the
grave political danger of such a measure and opposed it with all the
influence he possessed.[1154] But Suger was dying; and the king had
made up his mind. He took the first step at Christmas 1151 by going
with Eleanor into Aquitaine and withdrawing all his own garrisons
from her territories.[1155] Suger’s death on January 13 recalled him
to Paris,[1156] and at the same time set him free to accomplish his
desire unopposed. A Church council was held under the presidency
of Archbishop Hugh of Sens at Beaugency on the Tuesday before Palm
Sunday;[1157] the king and queen were made out to be akin, and their
union was dissolved.[1158] Eleanor set out for her own dominions;
she had however some trouble in reaching them. She was young and
beautiful; her personal charms were more than equalled by those of
her two great duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony; and more than one
ambitious feudatary was eager to seize the prize which his sovereign
had thrown away. At her first halting-place, Blois, the young count
Theobald--son and successor of Theobald the Great who had died two
months before[1159]--sought to take her by force and make her his wife.
She fled by night to Tours, and there narrowly escaped being captured
with the same intention by a still more youthful admirer, Geoffrey of
Anjou, Henry’s brother. The audacious boy laid a plot to catch her at
Port-de-Piles, on the frontier of Touraine and Poitou; but she was
warned in time and made her escape by another road safe into her own
territory.[1160] Thence she at once wrote to offer herself and her
lands to the husband of her own choice--Henry duke of the Normans. He
set out to join her immediately, and at Whitsuntide they were married
at Poitiers.[1161]

        [1151] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.

        [1152] _Ibid._ a. 1151.

        [1153] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.

        [1154] _Vita Suger._, l. i. c. 5 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
        xii. p. 104).

        [1155] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1152 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_,
        p. 135). Cf. Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 53 (Labbe, _Nova
        Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 307; _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii.
        p. 437).

        [1156] _Vita Suger._, l. iii. cc. 11, 13 (as above, pp. 111,
        113).

        [1157] _Gesta Ludov._, c. 29 (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. iv. p. 411). The _Hist. Ludov._ (_ib._ p. 415)
        makes it Friday (March 21) instead of Tuesday.

        [1158] _Gesta Ludov._ and _Hist. Ludov._ as above. Chron.
        Turon. Magn. as above, etc.

        [1159] In January 1152. See Arbois de Jubainville, _Comtes de
        Champagne_, vol. ii. p. 398, note 12.

        [1160] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1152 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_,
        p. 135).

        [1161] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 149. See also Will.
        Newb., l. i. c. 31 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 93); Chron. Turon.
        Magn. a. 1152 (as above); _Hist. Ludov._ (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv. p. 413, and _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._,
        vol. xii. p. 127); _Fragm. Chron. Com. Pictav._ (_Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 410). This last gives the place; Rob.
        Torigni, a. 1152, gives the season. Whit-Sunday was May 18; and
        a charter referred to by M. Delisle in a note to Rob. Torigni
        _ad ann._ (vol. i. p. 260), proves that they were married
        before May 27. Gervase’s story is the fullest; according to
        him, they married for love, and Eleanor had herself procured
        the divorce for that object--such, at least, was the story
        which she wrote to her young lover. As to the question of
        consanguinity, that of Louis and Eleanor is not very clear; it
        was at any rate more remote than that of Eleanor and Henry,
        who certainly were within the forbidden degrees. One would
        like to know what S. Bernard, who had put a stop to a proposal
        of marriage between Henry and Eleanor’s daughter (S. Bern.
        Ep. ccclxxi., _Opp._, Mabillon, vol. i. col. 333), thought of
        the matter; a saint of the next generation, Hugh of Lincoln,
        thought and said plainly that it was the fatal sin which was
        visited upon the children of the guilty couple in the downfall
        of the Angevin empire. _Magna Vita S. Hugonis_, l. v. c. 16
        (Dimock, p. 332). In his eyes, however, the sin lay in the
        fact not of the kindred between the parties, but of Eleanor’s
        divorce; and it is noteworthy that William of Newburgh, who
        did not live to see the final catastrophe or to know the worst
        crimes of Eleanor’s youngest son, took exactly the same view;
        l. iii. c. 26 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 281).

Suger’s worst fears were now realized. Aquitaine was lost to the king
of France; it had gone to swell the forces of the prince who was
already the mightiest feudatary of the realm, and who would probably
be king of England ere long; and as Louis and Eleanor had no son,
there was very little hope that even in the next generation it would
revert to the French Crown. In feudal law, an heiress had no right
to marry without the consent of her overlord. It seems that Louis
accordingly summoned Henry to appear before the royal court and answer
for his conduct in thus hastily accepting Eleanor’s hand. But Henry
Fitz-Empress, duke of Normandy, count of Anjou, Touraine and Maine,
and duke of Aquitaine--for, rightly or wrongly, he was married, and in
full possession of his wife’s territories--master of more than half
Gaul, from the Flemish to the Spanish March and from the Rhône to the
ocean--could venture to defy a mere king of the French. He therefore
refused to appear before the court or to acknowledge its jurisdiction
in any way.[1162] Eustace seized the favourable moment to regain the
French alliance; he came over to visit King Louis; his long-standing
betrothal with Constance of France ended at last in marriage;[1163] and
Henry, on the point of sailing from Barfleur, just after midsummer,
was stopped by the discovery that Louis, Eustace, Robert of Dreux,
Henry of Champagne,[1164] and his own brother Geoffrey had made a
league to drive him out of all his possessions and divide them among
themselves.[1165]

        [1162] “Qui citatus ad Curiam, venire noluit ad jus faciendum,
        vel capiendum in Regis præsentiâ Palatii judicium omnino
        respuit et contempsit.” _Gesta Ludov._, c. 28 (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv. p. 411). “Ante dominum suum Regem
        Ludovicum defecit a justitiâ.” _Hist. Ludov._ (_ib._ p. 414).
        This is related as a piece of shameful ingratitude for Louis’s
        supposed help towards the conquest of Normandy. The story then
        proceeds to relate that Louis in wrath besieged and took Vernon
        and Neufmarché, whereupon Henry humbly promised to be more
        obedient for the future, and Louis, accepting his assurances,
        restored the two castles. We are not told on what charge Henry
        had been cited to the court, and no hint is given that the
        quarrel was in any way connected with his marriage, which
        indeed is not mentioned till some time after. Yet I can find
        no indication of any ground for such a citation, except the
        marriage; and that, indeed, would be a most obvious pretext.

        [1163] Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

        [1164] Second son of Theobald the Great of Blois, and betrothed
        husband of the infant princess Mary, eldest child of Louis and
        Eleanor.

        [1165] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152. See also Chron. S. Albin. a. 1152
        (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 37).

Geoffrey by his father’s will had inherited Chinon, Loudun and
Mirebeau;[1166] with this vantage-ground he began operations against
his brother’s authority in Anjou, while the other four princes crossed
the Norman border and laid siege to Neufmarché. Henry set out from
Barfleur on July 16 to relieve Neufmarché, but arrived too late to
save it from surrender;[1167] Louis handed it over to Eustace,[1168]
and proceeded to muster his forces near Chaumont in the French Vexin.
Henry did the like on the banks of the Andelle, and began ravaging
the country between that river and the Epte--the old Norman Vexin, so
lately ceded to Louis as the price of his alliance. In August Louis
brought his host across the Seine at Meulan; Henry crossed lower
down, by the bridge of Vernon, and thinking that the king intended to
attack Verneuil, was hurrying to reach it before him when a message
from the lord of Pacy told him that this last place was the one really
threatened. He turned and proceeded thither at such a pace that several
of his horses fell dead on the road; Louis, finding himself outwitted,
gave up the expedition and returned to Meulan. Henry next invaded the
county of Dreux, burned Brézolles and Marcouville, took hostages from
Richer de l’Aigle--Thomas Becket’s old friend--whose fidelity was
doubtful, and burned his castle of Bonmoulins, which was said to be
“a den of thieves”; he then planted a line of garrisons all along the
Norman frontier, and at the end of August went down into Anjou. There
he blockaded the rebel leaders congregated in the castle of Montsoreau
on the Loire till most of them fell into his hands, and his brother
gave up the useless struggle.[1169] Louis meanwhile profited by his
absence to burn part of the town of Tillières and a village near
Verneuil, and to make an attempt upon Nonancourt, in which however he
failed.[1170] Immediately afterwards he fell sick of a fever; his army
dissolved, and he was obliged to retire into his own domains[1171] and
make proposals for a truce.[1172] Henry was ready enough to accept
them; for he had just received another urgent summons from England, and
he felt that this time it must be answered in person.

        [1166] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1152 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_,
        p. 136).

        [1167] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.

        [1168] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 31 (Arnold, p. 283).

        [1169] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152. See also a shorter account in
        Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 149, 150, and a general
        summing-up of the result in Chron. S. Albin. a. 1152
        (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 37).

        [1170] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.

        [1171] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 150.

        [1172] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.

Since the Empress’s departure, Stephen had made but little progress in
reducing the castles of those barons who still, either in her name or
in their own, chose to defy his authority. A revolt of Ralf of Chester
and Gilbert of Pembroke in 1149 and two unsuccessful attempts made
by the king to recover Worcester from Waleran of Meulan, to whom he
had himself intrusted it in the days when Waleran was one of his best
supporters,[1173] make up almost the whole military history of the last
four years. Ralf of Chester’s obstinate claim upon Lincoln was at last
disposed of by a compromise.[1174] There was however one fortress which
throughout the whole course of the war had been, almost more than any
other, a special object of Stephen’s jealousy. This was Wallingford, a
castle of great strength seated on the right bank of the Thames some
twelve miles south of Oxford, and held as a perpetual thorn in the
king’s side by a Breton adventurer, Brian Fitz-Count, one of the most
able and energetic as well as most faithful and persevering members of
the Angevin party in England. Hitherto all Stephen’s attempts against
Wallingford--even the erection of a rival fortress, Crowmarsh, directly
over against it--had produced no effect at all. At last, in the winter
of 1152, he built a strong wooden tower at the foot of the bridge over
the Thames whereby alone the garrison of Wallingford obtained their
supplies. Brian and his men saw their convoys hopelessly shut out;
they knew that none of their friends in England were strong enough to
relieve them; they therefore sent to their lord the young duke of the
Normans, and begged that he would either give them leave to surrender
with honour, or send help to deliver them out of their strait.[1175]

        [1173] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 30 (Arnold, p. 282).

        [1174] See the terms in Dugdale, _Baronage_, vol. i. p. 39.

        [1175] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 32 (Arnold, p. 284). Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 153.

Henry did not send; he came. Landing with a small force on the morning
of the Epiphany,[1176] he entered a church to honour the festival with
such brief devotion as a soldier could spare time for, and the first
words that fell on his ear sounded like an omen of success: “Behold,
the Lord the ruler cometh, and the kingdom is in his hand.”[1177]
Before the week was out he had taken the town of Malmesbury and the
outworks of the castle, and was blockading Bishop Roger’s impregnable
keep. Stephen, warned by its commandant, hastened to its relief.
On a bitter January morning king and duke, each at the head of his
troops, met for the first time face to face, divided only by the river
Avon--here at Malmesbury a mere streamlet in itself, but so swollen
by the winter’s rains that neither party dared venture to cross it. A
torrent of rain, sleet and hail was pouring down, drifting before a
violent west wind, striking the Angevins in their backs, but beating
hard in the faces of the king and his host; drenched, blinded, scarce
able to hold their weapons, they stood shivering with cold and terror,
feeling as if Heaven itself had taken up arms against them, till
Stephen turned away in despair and led his dispirited forces back to
London. Malmesbury surrendered as soon as he was gone.[1178] The young
duke marched straight upon Wallingford, demolished Stephen’s wooden
tower at the first assault, and revictualled the castle. He then laid
siege to Crowmarsh. Stephen advanced to relieve it; again the two
armies fronted each other in battle array, but again no battle took
place. The barons, who were only anxious to maintain both the rival
sovereigns as a check upon each other, and dreaded nothing so much
as the complete triumph of either, took advantage of a supposed bad
omen which befell the king[1179] to insist upon a parley, and proposed
that Stephen and Henry in person should arrange terms with each
other, subject to ratification by their respective followers.[1180]
Yielding to necessity, and both fully aware of their advisers’ disloyal
motives, the two leaders held a colloquy across a narrow reach of the
Thames.[1181] For the moment a truce was arranged, on condition that
Stephen should raze Crowmarsh at the end of five days.[1182] As the
barons doubtless expected, however, no solution was reached on the main
question at issue between the rivals, and with mutual complaints of the
treason of their followers they separated once again.[1183]

        [1176] Rob. Torigni, a. 1153, says he came with thirty-six
        ships. Will. Newb., l. i. c. 29 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 88), gives
        the force as one hundred and forty horse and three thousand
        foot. From the sequel it seems that he landed on the Hampshire
        or Dorset coast.

        [1177] “Ecce advenit dominator Dominus, et regnum in manu
        ejus:”--first words of the introit for Epiphany. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 151, 152.

        [1178] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 34 (Arnold, pp. 285–287). See
        also Rob. Torigni, a. 1153.

        [1179] His horse reared and nearly threw him three times while
        he was marshalling his troops. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 154.

        [1180] _Ibid._ Hen. Hunt. as above (p. 287).

        [1181] Gerv. Cant. as above. Cf. Hen. Hunt. as above (p. 288).

        [1182] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 34 (Arnold, p. 288). Rob.
        Torigni, a. 1153.

        [1183] Hen. Hunt. as above.

But there were others who, in all sincerity, were labouring hard for
peace. Archbishop Theobald was in constant communication with the
king in person and with the duke through trusty envoys, endeavouring
to establish a basis for negotiations between them. He found an
ally in Henry of Winchester, now eager to help in putting an end to
troubles which he at last perceived had been partly fostered by his
own errors.[1184] The once rival prelates, thus united in their best
work, saw their chief obstacle in Eustace.[1185] Not only was it the
hope of his son’s succession which made Stephen cling so obstinately to
every jot and tittle of his regal claims; but Eustace’s character was
such that the mere possibility of his rule could not be contemplated
without dread; and to look for any self-renunciation on his part was
far more hopeless than to expect it from Stephen. Eustace was in fact
a most degenerate son, unworthy not only of his high-souled mother but
even of his weak, amiable father. He had one merit--he was an excellent
soldier;[1186] for the rest, his character was that of the house of
Blois in its most vicious phase, unredeemed by a spark of the generous
warmth and winning graciousness for which so much had been forgiven
to Stephen.[1187] Even with his own party and his own father he could
not keep at peace. The issue of the Crowmarsh expedition threw him
into a fury; after loading his father with reproaches, he deserted him
altogether and rode away to Canterbury, vowing to ravage the whole
country from end to end, sparing neither the property of the churches
nor the holy places themselves. He began with S. Edmund’s abbey. He
was hospitably received there, but his demand for money was refused,
and he ordered the crops to be destroyed. A century and a half before,
the heathen Danish conqueror Swein had in like manner insulted East
Anglia’s patron saint, and had been stricken down by a sudden and
mysterious death. So too it was with Eustace. As he sat at table in the
abbey, the first morsel of food choked him, and in the convulsions of
raging madness he expired.[1188]

        [1184] _Ib._ c. 37 (p. 289).

        [1185] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 30 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 90).

        [1186] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 35 (Arnold, p. 288).

        [1187] _Ibid._ Eng. Chron. a. 1140, and all the contemporary
        writers are unanimous in their accounts of him--except the
        _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell, p. 130).

        [1188] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 155. Rob. Torigni, a.
        1153, says the sacrilege was committed on S. Laurence’s day,
        and the punishment followed “circa octavas.” Cf. Joh. Salisb.,
        _Polycrat._, l. viii. c. 21 (Giles, vol. iv. pp. 354, 355).

Eustace’s death was only one of a striking series. The roll had opened
with Geoffrey of Anjou in September 1151. Suger and Theobald of Blois
both died in January 1152. Politically as well as personally, the
death of the good and wise brother who had stood by him so faithfully
and so unselfishly through all his difficulties in Normandy and at
Rome must have been a heavy blow to Stephen; but heavier still was
the blow that fell upon him three months later, when on May 3 he
lost the wisest, probably, of his counsellors as well as the truest
and bravest of all his partizans in England--his queen, Matilda of
Boulogne.[1189] She was followed in little more than a month by her
cousin Henry of Scotland.[1190] Next year the list of remarkable
deaths was longer still. On this side of the sea it included, besides
Eustace, Ralf earl of Chester,[1191] Walter Lespec,[1192] and David
king of Scots.[1193] Another person who had made some figure in the
history of northern England, William bishop of Durham, had died in
the previous November.[1194] The appointment of Hugh of Puiset to his
vacant chair,[1195] being strongly opposed by Archbishop Murdac,
nearly caused another schism in the province; the southern primate,
however, doubtless feeling that it was no time now for ecclesiastical
squabbles, took the case into his own hands and sent the elect of
Durham to be consecrated at Rome by the Pope.[1196] But the Pope was no
longer Eugene III. Rome lost her Cistercian bishop on July 9, 1153. Six
weeks later Clairvaux itself became a valley of the shadow of death,
as its light passed away with S. Bernard;[1197] and two months later
still the metropolitan chair of York was again vacated, and the three
great Cistercian fellow-workers were reunited in their rest, by the
death of Henry Murdac.[1198] The generation which had been young with
Stephen seemed to be rapidly passing away; the primate, the bishop of
Winchester and the king himself were left almost alone, like survivors
of a past age, in presence of the younger race represented by Henry of
Anjou.

        [1189] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152. Chron. S. Crucis Edinb. a. 1152.
        Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 151.

        [1190] Chron. S. Cruc. Edinb. a. 1152.

        [1191] _Ibid._ a. 1153. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 171. Gerv. Cant.
        (as above), p. 155.

        [1192] Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. v. p. 280.

        [1193] Chron. S. Cruc. Edinb. as above. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p.
        168.

        [1194] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 166.

        [1195] On January 22, 1153; _ib._ p. 167.

        [1196] See details in Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 167, and Gerv.
        Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 157, where the date is wrong.

        [1197] Rob. Torigni, a. 1153.

        [1198] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 171. Walbran, _Memor. of
        Fountains_, vol. i. p. 109.

With the life of Eustace ended the resistance of Stephen. He had
other sons, but they were mere boys; it was hopeless to think of
setting up even the eldest of them as a rival to Henry. The young duke
was carrying all before him; Stamford, Nottingham,[1199] Reading,
Barkwell, had yielded to him already, when Countess Gundrada of Warwick
surrendered Warwick castle,[1200] and the adhesion of Earl Robert of
Leicester placed more than thirty fortresses all at once at the young
conqueror’s disposal.[1201] Henry was, however, fully alive to the
wisdom of securing his kingdom by a legal settlement rather than by
the mere power of the sword. At last a treaty was made, on November
6, in the place where it had been first projected--Wallingford.[1202]
It was agreed that Stephen and Henry should adopt each other as
father and son; that Stephen should keep his regal dignity for the
rest of his life, Henry acting as justiciar and practical ruler of
the kingdom under him; and that after his death Henry should be
king.[1203] The details of the settlement have come down to us only
in a poetical shape which expresses not so much what the contracting
parties actually undertook to do as what needed to be done--what was
the ideal at which the peace-makers aimed, and how far removed from
it was the actual condition of the country. The rights of the Crown,
which the nobles had everywhere usurped, were to be resumed; the
“adulterine castles”--castles built during the anarchy and without the
king’s leave, to the number of eleven hundred and fifteen--were to be
destroyed; all property was to be restored to the lawful owners who had
held it in King Henry’s time. The farms were again to be supplied with
husbandmen; the houses which had been burnt down were to be rebuilt and
filled with inhabitants; the woods were to be provided with foresters,
the coverts replenished with game, the hill-sides covered with flocks
of sheep and the meadows with herds of cattle. The clergy were to enjoy
tranquillity and peace, and to be relieved from all extraordinary and
exorbitant demands. The sheriffs were to be regularly appointed in
accustomed places, and held strictly to their duties; they were not to
indulge their greed, nor to prosecute any one out of malice, nor shew
undue favour to their own friends, nor condone crimes, but to render
to every man his due; some they were to influence by the threat of
punishment, others by the promise of reward. Thieves and robbers were
to be punished with death. Soldiers were to beat their swords into
ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; the Flemings were to
quit the camp for the farm, the tent for the workshop, and render to
their own masters the service which they had so long forced upon the
English people; the country-folk were to dwell in undisturbed security,
the merchants to grow rich through the revival of trade. Finally, one
standard of money was to be current throughout the realm.[1204]

        [1199] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 36 (Arnold, p. 288).

        [1200] Rob. Torigni, a. 1153.

        [1201] Gerv. Cant. (as above), pp. 152, 153.

        [1202] The date is given by Rob. Torigni and Chron. S. Cruc.
        Edinb. a. 1153; the place by Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. ii. p. 255.

        [1203] “ ... Ferden te ærceb. and te wise men betwux heom and
        makede th. sahte th. te king sculde ben lauerd and king wile
        he liuede, and æfter his dæi ware Henri king; and he helde him
        for fader and he him for sune; and sib and sæhte sculde ben
        betwyx heom and on al Engleland. This and te othre forwuuardes
        thet hi makeden suoren to halden the king and te eorl and te
        b. and te eorles and rice men alle.” Eng. Chron., a. 1140. The
        accounts of Will. Newb., l. i. c. 30 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 90,
        91), R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 296, and Chron. Mailros, a.
        1153, are to much the same effect. Rog. Howden (Stubbs, vol. i.
        p. 212) adds: “Rex vero constituit ducem justitiarium Angliæ
        sub ipso, et omnia regni negotia per ipsum terminabantur.”
        Stephen’s proclamation of the treaty is in Rymer’s _Fœdera_,
        vol. i. p. 18. Its date is Westminster, 1153, and it is in form
        of a writ addressed to the archbishops, bishops, barons, and
        all faithful subjects, proclaiming and notifying to them the
        treaty just made. The primary article, concerning the adoption
        of Henry as heir, is stated exactly as by the chroniclers. The
        remainder of the document relates entirely to details of homage
        done by prelates and barons to Henry, stipulations in behalf of
        Stephen’s son William, and arrangements for surrender of royal
        castles to Henry on Stephen’s death. Finally: “In negotiis
        autem regni ego consilio ducis operabor. Ego vero in toto regno
        Angliæ, tam in parte ducis quam in meâ, regalem justiciam
        exercebo.” By “the duke’s part” and “my part” Stephen probably
        meant simply the parts which each held at the moment; the whole
        clause seems to mean that the regal justice was to be exercised
        in his name and for his profit, but by Henry’s wisdom--which
        agrees very well with Rog. Howden’s statement.

        [1204] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 297. Concerning the
        coinage, Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 211, says: “Fecit
        [Henricus] monetam novam, quam vocabant monetam ducis; et non
        tantum ipse, sed omnes potentes, tam episcopi quam comites et
        barones, suam faciebant monetam. Sed ex quo dux ille venit,
        plurimorum monetam cassavit.” This however is placed under the
        year 1149.

The treaty was ratified in an assembly of bishops, earls and barons,
held at Winchester at the end of the month.[1205] Stephen afterwards
accompanied his adoptive son to London, where he was joyfully welcomed
by the citizens.[1206] King and duke seem to have kept Christmas apart;
Henry indeed set himself to his task of reform in such earnest that he
could have little time to spare for mere festivities. On the octave
of Epiphany another assembly was held at Oxford, where the nobles of
England swore homage and fealty to the duke as to their lord, reserving
only the faith due to Stephen as long as he lived. The next meeting,
at Dunstable, was not quite so satisfactory. Henry, doing his share
of the public work with true Angevin thoroughness, was irritated at
finding that some of the builders of unlicensed castles had gained
the king’s ear and persuaded him to exempt their fortresses from the
sentence of universal destruction. Against this breach of faith the
duke earnestly remonstrated; but he found it impossible to enforce
his wishes without a quarrel which he was too prudent to risk.[1207]
He therefore let the matter rest, and in Lent he accompanied Stephen
to Canterbury and thence to a meeting with the count and countess of
Flanders at Dover.[1208] There it was discovered that some of the
Flemish mercenaries, to whom Henry and his good peace were equally
hateful,[1209] were conspiring to kill him on his return to Canterbury.
The shock of this discovery, added to that of an accident which befell
Stephen’s eldest surviving son William, who is said to have been aware
of the plot,[1210] was too much for the king’s overwrought nerves,
and with a last benediction he hurried his adoptive son out of the
country at once.[1211] Henry passed through Canterbury before the
conspirators were ready for him, made his way to Rochester and London,
and thence safe over sea to Normandy,[1212] where he landed soon after
Easter.[1213]

        [1205] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 156. See also Hen.
        Hunt., l. viii. c. 37 (Arnold, p. 289).

        [1206] Hen. Hunt. as above. Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

        [1207] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 38 (Arnold, pp. 289, 290).

        [1208] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 158. The countess was
        Henry’s aunt, Sibyl of Anjou, once the bride of William the
        Clito, now the wife of his rival Theodoric.

        [1209] “Qui duci simul ac paci invidebant.” _Ibid._

        [1210] _Ibid._

        [1211] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 30 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 91, 92).

        [1212] Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [1213] Rob. Torigni, a. 1154.

Only fifteen months had passed since his arrival in England; only five
had passed since the treaty of Wallingford; yet in that short time
Henry had made, as the contemporary English chronicler says, “such
good peace as never was here”[1214]--never, that is, since peace and
order were buried with his grandfather, eighteen years before. So well
was the work begun that even when he was thus obliged to leave it
for a while in the weak hands of Stephen, it did not fall to pieces
again. Stephen indeed, as was remarked by the writers of the day,
seemed now at length for the first time to be really king.[1215] For
eighteen years he had been king only in name; his regal dignity had
never been truly respected, his regal authority had never been fully
obeyed, till the last twelve months of his life, when he was avowedly
only holding them in trust for the future sovereign whom “all folk
loved,” because he did what Stephen had failed to do--“he did good
justice and made peace.”[1216] After Henry was gone Stephen gathered
up his failing strength for a campaign against some of the rebellious
castles in the north. Sick and weary as he was, his youthful valour
and prowess were even yet not altogether departed; castle after castle
fell into his hands, the last and most important being that of Drax in
Yorkshire.[1217] He then went southward again to hold another meeting
with the count of Flanders at Dover.[1218] There his health finally
gave way; and eight days before the feast of All Saints his nineteen
years’ reign, with all its troubles and disappointments, its blunders
and failures, its useless labours and hopeless cares, was ended by a
quiet death.[1219]

        [1214] “And hit ward sone suythe god pais, sua th. neure was
        here.” Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

        [1215] Will. Newb. as above (p. 91). Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 39
        (Arnold, p. 290). R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 297.

        [1216] Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

        [1217] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 39 (Arnold, p. 291). Will.
        Newb., l. i. c. 32 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 94). Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 213.

        [1218] Hen. Hunt. as above. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
        159.

        [1219] Hen. Hunt. and Gerv. Cant. as above. The Ann. Winton.
        Contin. a. 1154 (Liebermann, _Geschichtsquellen_, p. 82) dates
        it a day later.

The primate and the nobles, while they laid him in Feversham abbey
beside his wife and son,[1220] sent the news to the king-elect,
begging him to come and take his crown without delay.[1221] The
message reached Henry just as he was completing the suppression of a
disturbance in Normandy. A series of desultory attacks made by the
French king upon the duchy during Henry’s absence in 1153 had led to
no direct result, but they probably helped to foster the turbulence
of the Norman barons, who were fast getting into their old condition
of lawless independence when at Easter 1154 the duke re-appeared in
their midst. He began to assert his authority by resuming--not all at
once, but gradually and cautiously--the demesne lands of the duchy,
which his father had been compelled to alienate for a time in order
to purchase the support of the nobles. A hurried visit to Aquitaine
was followed in August by peace with the king of France; for Louis
had at last come to see that his opposition was as vain as Stephen’s.
Immediately afterwards the young duke was struck down by a severe
illness. In October he was sufficiently recovered to join Louis in a
campaign for the settlement of some disturbances in the Vexin; thence
he went once more to besiege his rebellious cousin and vassal Richard
Fitz-Count at Torigni. The place had apparently just surrendered when
the tidings of Stephen’s death arrived. Henry took counsel first of
all with his mother; then he summoned his brothers and the barons
of Normandy to meet him at Barfleur; but when he arrived there with
Eleanor the wind was so unfavourable that a whole month elapsed before
they could venture to cross.[1222] Henry, however, could afford to
wait; and England could wait for him. Three weeks without a king had
been enough to throw the whole country into disorder when Henry I.
had died leaving only a woman and an infant as his heirs; six weeks
passed away without any disturbance now while Archbishop Theobald was
guarding the rights of the Crown[1223] for one who had already proved
himself King Henry’s worthy grandson. “No man durst do other than
good, for the mickle awe of him.”[1224] At last, on December 8,[1225]
he landed in Hampshire;[1226] first at Winchester, then in London, he
received a rapturous welcome;[1227] and on the Sunday before Christmas
Henry Fitz-Empress, duke of the Normans, count of Anjou and duke of
Aquitaine, was crowned king of England in Westminster abbey.[1228]

        [1220] Hen. Hunt. as above. Eng. Chron. a. 1154. Will. Newb.,
        l. i. c. 32 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 95).

        [1221] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 40 (Arnold, p. 291).

        [1222] Rob. Torigni, a. 1154.

        [1223] “Nutu divino et cooperante Theodbaldo Cantuariensi
        archiepiscopo.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 159.

        [1224] Eng. Chron. a. 1154. Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 40
        (Arnold, p. 291).

        [1225] Gerv. Cant. as above. Rob. Torigni, a. 1154, gives the
        date as December 7. Most likely the crossing was made, as seems
        to have been the usual practice with Henry at least, in the
        night.

        [1226] “Hostreham,” Gerv. Cant. as above. “Apud Noveforest,”
        Hen. Hunt. as above; which Mr. Arnold glosses in the margin
        “Lymington.”

        [1227] Hen. Hunt. and Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [1228] The Chron. S. Albin. a. 1154 (Marchegay, _Eglises_,
        p. 38) says: “xiv kalendas januarii apud Wintoniam rex
        consecratur, et Natale Domini celebrans Londoniæ, cum uxore
        coronatur.” But the English writers mention only one crowning,
        at Westminster. The Eng. Chron. a. 1154, says Henry was “to
        king blessed in London on the Sunday before Midwinter-day.”
        Rob. Torigni _ad ann._, R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 299),
        Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 72), Ann. S. Aug.
        Cant. _ad ann._ (Liebermann, _Geschichtsquellen_, p. 82), all
        give the same date; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 159) makes
        it December 17, but as he also calls it the Sunday before
        Christmas, he evidently means 19. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 40
        (Arnold, pp. 291, 292), greets the new king with some hexameter
        verses, and then adds: “Et jam regi novo novus liber donandus
        est.” But the book, if it was ever written, is lost.



CHAPTER IX.

HENRY AND ENGLAND.

1154–1157.


The Christmas-tide of the year 1154 was an epoch in English history
almost as marked as that of 1066. The crowning of Henry Fitz-Empress
was, scarcely less than that of William the Conqueror, the beginning of
a new era; and--unlike many historical events whose importance is only
realized long after they are past--it was distinctly recognized as such
by the men of the period. For the first time since the Norman conquest,
the new king succeeded to his throne without a competitor, and with the
unanimous goodwill of all ranks and all races throughout his kingdom.
Normans and English, high and low, cleric and lay, welcomed the young
Angevin king as the herald of a bright new day which was to dispel
the darkness that had settled down upon the land during the nineteen
winters of anarchy, and to bring back all, or more than all, the peace
and prosperity of England’s happiest ages. But if Henry’s subjects
looked forward to the year which was just beginning with a hope such
as no new year had brought them since his grandfather’s death, Henry
himself may well have contemplated with an anxiety little short of
despair the task which lay before him. It was nothing less than the
resuscitation of the body politic from a state of utter decay. The
legal, constitutional and administrative machinery of the state was at
a deadlock; the national resources, material and moral, were exhausted.
To bring under subjection, once for all, the remnant of the disturbing
forces which had caused the catastrophe, and render them powerless for
future harm:--to disinter from the mass of ruin the fragments of the
old foundations of social and political organization, and build up on
them a secure and lasting fabric of administration and law;--to bring
order out of chaos, life out of decay:--this was the work which a youth
who had not yet completed his twenty-second year now found himself
called to undertake, and to undertake almost single-handed.

The call did not indeed take him by surprise. The last year which he
had spent in England must have given him some knowledge of the state of
things with which as king he would have to deal; and the prospect of
having so to deal with it sooner or later had been constantly before
his eyes from his very infancy. His qualifications for the work must
however have been chiefly innate. The first nine years of his life
spent under the care of mother and father alternately in Anjou; the
next four, under his uncle Earl Robert at Bristol; then two years in
Anjou again, followed by a year with King David of Scotland, three more
spent in securing his continental heritage and that of his bride, a
year occupied in securing England, and another busied with self-defence
in Normandy:--such a training was too desultory to have furnished
Henry with the knowledge or the experience necessary for the formation
of anything like a matured theory of government; and he could have
had no time to think out one for himself in a life so busy and so
short. Yet in his very youth and inexperience there was an element of
strength. He came trammelled by no preconceived political theories, no
party-pledges, no local and personal ties; he came simply with his own
young intellect unwarped by prejudice, unruffled by passion, unclouded
by care; fresh with the untried vigour and elasticity of youth, and
ready, whatever his hand should find to do, fearlessly to do it with
his might.

Thus much, at least, those who crowded to welcome the new sovereign
might read in his very face and figure. Henry of Anjou had no claim
to the personal epithet universally bestowed upon his father; and yet,
as one of his courtiers expressively said, his was a form which a
soldier, having once seen, would hasten to look upon again.[1229] He
was of moderate height,[1230] appearing neither gigantic among small
men nor insignificant among tall ones;[1231] in later days it was
remarked that he had hit the golden mean of stature which his sons had
all either overshot or failed to attain.[1232] His frame was made for
strength, endurance and activity;[1233] thick-set, square-shouldered,
broad-chested:--with arms muscular as those of a gladiator;[1234]
highly-arched feet which looked made for the stirrup;[1235]--a large,
but not disproportionate head, round and well-shaped, and covered
with close-cropped hair of the tawny hue which Fulk the Red seems to
have transmitted to so many of his descendants:[1236] a face which
one of his courtiers describes as “lion-like”[1237] and another as
“a countenance of fire”[1238]--a face, as we can see even in its
sculptured effigy on his tomb, full of animation, energy and vigour;--a
freckled skin;[1239] somewhat prominent grey eyes, clear and soft
when he was in a peaceable mood, but bloodshot and flashing like
balls of fire when the demon-spirit of his race was aroused within
him:--[1240] Henry, his people might guess almost at a glance, was
no mirror of courtly chivalry and elegance, but a man of practical,
vigorous and rapid action. He inherited as little of Geoffrey’s
personal refinement as of his physical grace. When the young duke of
the Normans had first appeared in England, his shoulders covered
with a little short cape such as was then usually worn in Anjou, the
English knights, who since his grandfather’s time had been accustomed
to wear long cloaks hanging down to the ground, were struck by the
novelty of his attire and nicknamed him “Henry Curtmantel.”[1241]
When once the Angevin fashion was transferred to the English court,
however, there was nothing in Henry’s dress to distinguish him from
his servants, unless it were its very lack of display and elegance;
his clothing and headgear were of the plainest kind; and how little
care he took of his person was shewn by his rough coarse hands, never
gloved except when he went hawking.[1242] In his later years he was
accused of extreme parsimony;[1243] even as a young man, he clearly
had no pleasure in pomp or luxury of any kind. He was very temperate
in meat and drink;[1244] over-indulgence in that respect seems indeed
never to have been one of the habitual sins of the house of Anjou;
and whatever complex elements may have had a part in his innermost
moral constitution, in temper and tastes Henry was an Angevin of the
Angevins. His restlessness seems to have outdone that of Fulk Nerra
himself. He was always up and doing; if a dream of ease crossed him
even in sleep, he spurned it angrily from him;[1245] he gave himself no
peace, and as a natural consequence, he gave none to those around him.
When not at war, he was constantly practising its mimicry with hawk
and hound; his passion for the chase--a double inheritance, from his
father and from his mother’s Norman ancestors--was so great as to be
an acknowledged scandal in all eyes.[1246] He would mount his horse at
the first streak of dawn, come back in the evening after a day’s hard
riding across hill, moor and forest, and then tire out his companions
by keeping them on their feet until nightfall.[1247] His own feet were
always swollen and bruised from his violent riding; yet except at meals
and on horseback, he was never known to be seated.[1248] In public or
in private, in council or in church, he stood or walked from morning
till night.[1249] At church, indeed, he was especially restless;
unmindful of the sacred unction which had made him king, he evidently
grudged the time taken from secular occupations for attendance upon
religious duties, and would either discuss affairs of state in a
whisper[1250] or relieve his impatience by drawing little pictures all
through the most solemn of holy rites.[1251] His English or Norman
courtiers, unaccustomed to deal with the demon-blood of Anjou, vainly
endeavoured to account for an activity which remained undiminished when
they were all half dead with exhaustion, and attributed it to his dread
of becoming disabled by corpulence, to which he had a strong natural
tendency.[1252] A good deal of it, however, was probably due to sheer
physical restlessness and superabundant physical energy; and a good
deal more to the irrepressible outward working of an extraordinarily
active mind.

        [1229] “Vir ... quem miles diligenter inspectum accurrebant
        [_accurrebat_?] inspicere.” W. Map, _De Nugis Curialium_,
        dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).

        [1230] _Ibid._ Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 29
        (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 71). Peter of Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles,
        vol. i. p. 193).

        [1231] Pet. Blois as above.

        [1232] Gir. Cambr. as above.

        [1233] W. Map as above.

        [1234] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 70). Pet. Blois as above.

        [1235] Pet. Blois as above.

        [1236] _Ibid._ Gir. Cambr. as above.

        [1237] Pet. Blois as above.

        [1238] Gir. Cambr. as above.

        [1239] See how Merlin’s prophecy about “fortem lentiginosum”
        was applied to him, Gir. Cambr. _Itin. Kambr._, l. i. c. 6
        (Dimock, vol. vi. p. 62).

        [1240] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 70). Pet. Blois as above.

        [1241] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 28 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 157).

        [1242] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 193, 194).

        [1243] See Ralf Niger (Anstruther), p. 169. Ralf, however,
        was a bitter enemy. Gerald on the other hand seems to draw,
        and to imply that Henry drew, a distinction between official
        and personal expenditure: “Parcimoniæ, quoad principi licuit,
        per omnia datus.” _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 70). “Largus in publico, parcus in privato”
        (_ib._ p. 71).

        [1244] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 70). Pet. Blois as above (p.
        195). W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 231).

        [1245] W. Map as above (p. 227).

        [1246] _Ibid._ Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 71). Pet. Blois as
        above (p. 194).

        [1247] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 71).

        [1248] _Ibid._ Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 194).

        [1249] Pet. Blois as above.

        [1250] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 72).

        [1251] “Oratorium ingressus, picturæ et susurro vacabat.” R.
        Niger (Anstruther), p. 169. It is only fair to add that some of
        the highest clergy of the day were just as unscrupulous as the
        king about talking business during mass. See, _e.g._, Chron. de
        Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), pp. 73, 74; and there are plenty of
        other examples.

        [1252] W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).

It was no light matter to be in attendance upon such a king. His
clerks, some playfully, some in all seriousness, compared his court
to the infernal regions.[1253] His habit of constantly moving about
from one place to another--a habit which he retained to the very end
of his life--was in itself sufficiently trying to those who had to
transact business with him, and was made positively exasperating by
his frequent and sudden changes of plan. “He shunned regular hours
like poison.”[1254] “Solomon saith,” wrote his secretary Peter of
Blois to him once, after vainly striving to track him across land and
sea, “Solomon saith there be three things difficult to be found out,
and a fourth which may hardly be discovered: the way of an eagle in
the air; the way of a ship in the sea; the way of a serpent on the
ground; and the way of a man in his youth. I can add a fifth: the way
of a king in England.”[1255] In a letter to his old comrades of the
court Peter gives a detailed account of the discomforts brought upon
them by Henry’s erratic movements. “If the king has promised to spend
the day in a place--more especially, if his intention so to do has
been publicly proclaimed by a herald--you may be quite sure he will
upset everybody’s arrangements by starting off early in the morning.
Then you may see men rushing about as if they were mad, beating their
packhorses, driving their chariots one into another--in short, such a
turmoil as to present you with a lively image of the infernal regions.
If, on the other hand, the king announces that he will set out early
in the morning for a certain place, he is sure to change his mind; you
may take it for granted that he will sleep till noon. Then you shall
see the packhorses waiting with their burthens, the chariots standing
ready, the couriers dozing, the purveyors worrying, and all grumbling
one at another. Folk run to the women and the tent-keepers to inquire
of them whither the king is really going; for this sort of courtiers
often know the secrets of the palace. Many a time when the king was
asleep and all was silent around, there has come a message from his
lodging, not authoritative, but rousing us all up, and naming the city
or town whither he was about to proceed. After waiting so long in
dreary uncertainty, we were comforted by a prospect of being quartered
in a place where there was a fair chance of accommodation. Thereupon
arose such a clatter of horse and foot that hell seemed to have broken
loose. But when our couriers had gone the whole day’s ride, or nearly
so, the king would turn aside to some other place where he had perhaps
one single house, and just enough provision for himself and none else.
I hardly dare say it,” adds the sorely-tried secretary, “but I verily
believe he took a delight in seeing the straits to which he put us!
After wandering a distance of three or four miles in an unknown wood,
and often in the dark, we thought ourselves lucky if we stumbled upon
some dirty little hovel; there was often grievous and bitter strife
about a mere hut; and swords were drawn for the possession of a lodging
which pigs would not have deemed worth fighting for. I used to get
separated from my people, and could hardly collect them again in three
days. O Lord God Almighty! wilt Thou not turn the heart of this king,
that he may know himself to be but man, and may learn to shew some
grace of regal consideration, some human fellow-feeling, for those whom
not ambition, but necessity, compels to run after him thus?”[1256]

        [1253] _Ibid._, dist. i. c. 2 (pp. 5, 6); dist. v. c. 7 (p.
        238). Pet. Blois, Ep. xiv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 50).

        [1254] R. Niger (Anstruther), p. 169.

        [1255] Pet. Blois, Ep. xli. (Giles, vol. i. p. 125). Arnulf of
        Lisieux makes a like complaint in a more serious tone: Arn.
        Lis., Ep. 92 (Giles, p. 247). See also the remark of Louis of
        France on Henry’s expedition to Ireland in 1172: R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351.

        [1256] Pet. Blois, Ep. xiv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 50, 51).

This bustling, scrambling, roving Pandemonium was very unlike the
orderly, well-disciplined court of the first King Henry, where
everything was done according to rule;--where the royal itinerary was
planned out every month, and its stages duly announced and strictly
adhered to, so that every man knew exactly when and where to find his
sovereign, and his coming brought people together as to a fair:--where
all the earls and barons of the realm were set down in a written list,
according to which every one on his arrival at court was furnished with
a certain allowance of bread, wine and candles for the term of his
sojourn;[1257]--where the king’s own daily life was passed in a steady
routine, holding council with his wise men and giving audiences until
dinner-time, devoting the rest of the day to the society of the young
gallants whom he drew from every country on this side of the Alps to
increase the splendour of his household:--a court which was “a school
of virtue and wisdom all the morning, of courtesy and decorous mirth
all the afternoon.”[1258] Yet this hasty, impetuous young sovereign, in
whose rough aspect and reckless ways one can at first glance discern
so little either of regal dignity or of steady application to regal
duty, was in truth, no less than his grandfather, an indefatigable
worker and a born ruler of men. His way of doing business, apparently
by fits and starts, bewildered men of less versatile intellect and
less rapid decision; but they saw that the business was done, and done
thoroughly, though they hardly understood when or how. They resigned
themselves to be swept along in the whirl of Henry’s unaccountable
movements, for they learned to perceive that those movements did not
spring from mere caprice and perversity, but had always a motive and
an object, inscrutable perhaps to all eyes save his own, but none the
less definite and practical. When he dragged them in one day over a
distance which should have occupied four or five, they knew that it
was to forestall the machinations of some threatening foe. When he ran
over the country from end to end without a word of notice, it was to
overtake his officials at unawares and ascertain for himself how they
were or were not attending to their duty.[1259] If he was never still,
he was also never idle. He seemed to be specially haunted by that dread
of the mischief attendant upon idle hands which an Angevin writer
quaintly puts forth as an apology for the ceaseless warfare in which
his race passed their lives.[1260] Henry’s hands were never idle; in
the intervals of state business, when not laden with bow and arrows,
they almost invariably held a book; for Henry was, to the very close
of his life, the most learned crowned head in Christendom.[1261] He
was a match for the best among his subjects in all knightly exercises
and accomplishments; he was no less a match for the best, among laymen
at least, in scholarship and mental culture. If we may believe one of
his chaplains, Walter Map, he knew something of every language “from
the bay of Biscay to the Jordan,” though he only spoke two, Latin and
his native French;[1262] he evidently never learned to speak, and it
is doubtful how far he understood, the natural tongue of the people of
his island realm. He loved reading; he enjoyed the society of learned
men; his delight was to stand amid a little group of clerks, arguing
out some knotty point with them; not a day passed in his court without
some interesting literary discussion.[1263] His habit of shutting
himself up in his own apartments with a few chosen companions was a
grievance to those who remembered his grandfather’s practice of coming
forth in public at stated hours every day;[1264] yet Henry II. was
never difficult of access; once, when the prior of Witham made a witty
retort to the marshals who refused him admittance to the royal chamber,
the king himself, overhearing the jest, opened the door with a peal
of laughter;[1265] and a courier charged with important news from the
north made his way to the sovereign’s bedside and woke him in the
middle of the night without hesitation.[1266] When he did shew himself
to the people, they thronged him without ceremony; they caught hold of
him right and left, they pulled him this way and that, yet he never
rebuked them, never gave them an angry look, but listened patiently to
what each man had to say, and when their importunity became intolerable
he simply made his escape without a word.[1267] Though not gifted with
a good voice,[1268] he was a ready and pleasant speaker;[1269] and
he had two other natural qualifications specially useful for a king.
Unlike his grandfather Fulk V., who never could remember a face and
constantly had to ask the names of his own familiar attendants,[1270]
Henry never failed to recognize a man whom he had once looked at;
and a thing once heard, if worth remembering, never slipped from his
memory, which was consequently stored with a fund of historical and
experimental knowledge ready for use at any moment.[1271]

        [1257] W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, pp. 224,
        225).

        [1258] W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. v. c. 5 (Wright, p. 210).

        [1259] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 194).

        [1260] See above, p. 343, note 6{1002}.

        [1261] Pet. Blois as above.

        [1262] W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).

        [1263] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 194).

        [1264] W. Map as above (p. 230).

        [1265] _Ib._ dist. i. c. 6 (p. 7).

        [1266] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 25 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 189).

        [1267] W. Map, as above, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 231).

        [1268] “Voce quassâ.” Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii.
        c. 29 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 70). This however refers to his
        later years.

        [1269] _Ib._ p. 71. Pet. Blois as above (p. 195).

        [1270] Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. i.

        [1271] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 73).

His worst private vices only reached their full developement in later
years; it is plain, however, that he was much less careful than his
grandfather had been of the outward decorum of his household; and
unluckily his consort was not a woman to control it by her influence
or improve it by her example like the “good Queen Maude.” His wrath
was even more terrific than the wrath of kings is proverbially wont to
be.[1272] His passions were strong, and they were lasting; when once
he had taken a dislike to a man, he could rarely be induced to grant
him his favour; on the other hand, when his friendship and confidence
were once given, he withdrew them with the utmost difficulty and
reluctance;[1273] and he had the gift of inspiring in all who came
in contact with him a love or a hatred as intense and abiding as his
own. His temper was a mystery to those who had not the key to it; it
was the temper of Fulk Nerra. He had the Black Count’s strange power
of fascination, his unaccountable variations of mood, and his cool,
clear head. Like Fulk, he was at one moment mocking and blaspheming
all that is holiest in earth and heaven, and at another grovelling in
an agony of remorse as wild as the blasphemy itself. Like Fulk, he
was an indefatigable builder, constantly superintending the erection
of a wall, the fortification of a castle, the making of a dyke,
the enclosing of a deer-park or a fish-pond, or the planning of a
palace;[1274] and all the while his material buildings were but types
of a great edifice of statecraft which, all unseen, was rising day
by day beneath the hands of the royal architect;--his ever-varying
pursuits, each of which seemed to absorb him for the moment, were but
parts of an all-absorbing whole;--and his seeming self-contradictions
were unaccountable only because the most useful of all his Angevin
characteristics, his capacity for instinctively and unerringly adapting
means to ends, enabled him to detect opportunities and recognize
combinations invisible to less penetrating eyes. This was the moral
constitution which in Fulk III. and Fulk V. had made the greatness of
the house of Anjou; its workings were now to be displayed on a grander
scale and in a more important sphere.

        [1272] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxxv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 223).

        [1273] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (_ib._ p. 194). Gir. Cambr. as
        above (p. 71).

        [1274] Pet. Blois as above (p. 195).

The young king saw at once that for his work of reconstruction and
reform in England the counsellors who surrounded him in Normandy were
of no avail; that he must trust solely to English help, and select his
chief ministers partly from among those who had been in office under
his predecessor, partly from such of his own English partizans as were
best fitted for the task. First among the former class stood Richard
de Lucy, who held the post of justiciar at the close of Stephen’s
reign,[1275] who retained it under Henry for five-and-twenty years, and
whose character is summed up in the epithet said to have been bestowed
on him by his grateful sovereign--“Richard de Lucy the Loyal.”[1276]
For thirteen years he shared the dignity and the duties of chief
justiciar with Earl Robert of Leicester,[1277] who, after having been
a faithful supporter of Stephen in his earlier and better days, had
transferred his allegiance to Henry, and continued through life one of
his most trusty servants and friends. The weight of Robert’s character
was increased by that of his rank and descent; as head of the great
house of Leicester, he was the most influential baron of the midland
shires; while as son of Count Robert of Meulan, the friend of Henry
I., he was a living link with that hallowed past which Henry II. was
expected to restore, and a natural representative of its traditions of
honour and of peace. Of the great ministers who had actually served
under the first King Henry only one survived: the old treasurer, Nigel,
bishop of Ely. We know not who took his place on his fall in 1139; but
the treasurer in Stephen’s latter years can have had little more than
an empty title; and when Nigel reappears in office, immediately after
Henry’s accession, it is not as treasurer, but as chancellor.[1278]
This, however, was a merely provisional arrangement; in a few weeks
the bishop of Ely was reinstated in his most appropriate place, on the
right side of the chequered table, gathering up the broken threads
of the financial system which he had learned under his uncle of
Salisbury;[1279] while the more miscellaneous work of the chancellor
was undertaken by younger hands.

        [1275] At the peace he held the Tower of London and the
        castle of Windsor; Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 18: these were
        peculiarly in the custody of the justiciar; Stubbs, _Const.
        Hist._, vol. i. p. 449, note 1.

        [1276] Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1540–1541 (Michel, p. 70).

        [1277] Robert appears as _capitalis justicia_ in a charter
        of, apparently, 1155 (Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 3). In
        1159–1160, John of Salisbury describes him as “illustris comes
        Legrecestriæ Robertus, modeste proconsulatum gerens apud
        Britannias” (Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, l. vi. c. 25; Giles,
        vol. iv. p. 65), and at his death in 1168 he is named in the
        Chron. Mailros (_ad ann._) as “comes justus Leicestrie, et qui
        summa justitia vocatur.”

        [1278] A charter issued at Westminster, evidently soon after
        the coronation, is witnessed by “N. Epọ de Ely et Canc.” Eyton,
        _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 2, note 2.

        [1279] _Dial. de Scacc._, l. i. c. 8 (Stubbs, _Select
        Charters_, p. 199).

Under the old English constitutional system, alike in its native purity
and in the modified form which it assumed under the Conqueror and his
sons, the archbishop of Canterbury was the official keeper of the
royal conscience and the first adviser of the sovereign. Theobald had
contributed more than any other one man to secure Henry’s succession;
he saw in it the crowning of his own life’s work for England; while
Henry saw in Theobald his most weighty and valuable supporter. It
was therefore a matter of course that the primate should resume the
constitutional position which he had inherited from Anselm and Lanfranc
and their old-English predecessors. Theobald, however, was now in
advanced age and feeble health; and when he fully perceived what manner
of man it was to whom he was bound to act as spiritual father and
political guide, he felt that to regulate these strong passions, to
direct these youthful impulses, to follow these restless movements, was
a task too hard for his failing strength. He feared the evil influences
of the courtiers upon the young king, who seemed so willing to be led
aright, and might for that very reason be so easily led astray;[1280]
he feared for the English Church, through which there was already
running a whisper of ill-omen concerning the Angevins’ known hostility
to the rights of religion;[1281] he feared for his own soul, lest Henry
should wander out of the right path for lack of guidance, and the sin
should lie at the door of the incompetent guide.[1282] There was one
man who, if he could but be placed at the young king’s side, might be
trusted to manage the arduous and delicate task. So to place him could
be no very difficult matter; for his own past services to Henry’s cause
were far too great to be left unrewarded. Neither the recommendations
of the bishops of Winchester,[1283] Bayeux and Lisieux,[1284] nor
even those of the primate, could have as much weight as the known
qualifications of the candidate himself in obtaining the office of
chancellor for Thomas Becket.[1285]

        [1280] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 160.

        [1281] _Vita S. Thomæ_, Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol.
        iv.), p. 11.

        [1282] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 160.

        [1283] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        18.

        [1284] “Quorum consiliis rex in primordiis suis innitebatur.”
        Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 12.

        [1285] “Facile regi inspiratum est commendatum habere quem
        propria satis merita commendabant.” E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.),
        p. 363. I cannot attach any importance to the version of
        _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 45–47.

The chancellor’s duties were still much the same as they had been when
first organized by Roger of Salisbury. He was charged with the keeping
of the royal seal, the drawing-up of royal writs and charters, the
conduct of the royal correspondence, the preservation of legal records,
the custody of vacant fiefs and benefices, and the superintendence of
the king’s chaplains and clerks;[1286]--in a word, the management of
the whole clerical and secretarial work of the royal household and of
the government. Officially, he seems to have been ranked below the
chief ministers of state--the justiciar, or even the treasurer;[1287]
personally, however, he was brought more than either of them into
close and constant relations with his sovereign. The actual importance
and dignity of the chancellorship depended in fact upon the capacity of
individual chancellors for magnifying their office. Thomas magnified it
as no man ever did before or since. In a very few months he became what
the justiciar had formerly been, the second man in the kingdom;[1288]
and not in the kingdom alone, but in all the lands, on both sides of
the sea, which owned Henry Fitz-Empress for their sovereign.[1289]
Theobald’s scheme far more than succeeded; his favourite became not
so much the king’s chief minister as his friend, his director, his
master.[1290] The two young men, drawn together by a strong personal
attraction, seemed to have but one heart and one soul.[1291] Thomas
was the elder by fifteen years; but the disparity of age was lost
in the perfect community of their feelings, interests and pursuits.
Thomas was now in deacon’s orders, having been ordained by Archbishop
Theobald at the close of the previous year on his appointment to the
archdeaconry of Canterbury,[1292] an office which was accounted the
highest ecclesiastical dignity in England after those of the bishops
and abbots.[1293] He felt, however, no vocation and no taste for the
duties of sacred ministry, and was only too glad to “put off the
deacon” and fling all his energies into the more congenial sphere
of court life.[1294] Alike in its business and in its pleasures
he was thoroughly at home. His refined sensibilities, his romantic
imagination, revelled in the elegance and splendour which to Henry’s
matter-of-fact disposition were simply irksome; he gladly took all the
burthen of state ceremonial as well as of state business upon his own
shoulders; and he bore it with an easy grace which men never wearied
of admiring. One day he would be riding in coat of mail at the head of
the royal troops, the next he would be dispensing justice in the king’s
name;[1295] and his will was law throughout the land, for all men knew
that his will and Henry’s were one.[1296]

        [1286] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above. On the chancellor’s office
        see Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 352, 353.

        [1287] Will. Fitz-Steph., as above, does indeed say
        “Cancellarii Angliæ dignitas est ut secundus a rege in regno
        habeatur”; but he had in his mind one particular chancellor.
        He also says “Cancellaria emenda non est”; but it seems that
        Thomas himself paid for his appointment (Gilb. Foliot, Ep.
        cxciv., Giles, vol. i. p. 268; Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. Ep.
        ccxxv. pp. 523, 524), like the chancellors before and after
        him, and like the other great ministers of state.

        [1288] “In regno secundus,” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i.
        p. 169. “Secundus a rege,” Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 18. “Nullus par ei erat in regno,
        excepto solo rege,” Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216. E.
        Grim (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 363, and the _Thomas
        Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 49, liken his position to that of
        Joseph.

        [1289] “Secundum post regem in quatuor regnis quis te ignorat?”
        writes Peter of Celle to Thomas (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v.
        Ep. ii. p. 4).

        [1290] “Regis amicus,” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 169.
        “Regis rector et quasi magister,” _ib._ pp. 160 and 169.

        [1291] Joh. Salisb., Ep. lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 109;
        Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. Ep. ix. p. 13).

        [1292] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 159, 160. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 213. Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. i.), p. 4. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 17.
        Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 168. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 11.

        [1293] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above. He says it was worth a
        hundred pounds of silver.

        [1294] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 173.

        [1295] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 12.

        [1296] _Ibid._ E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 364.

In outward aspect Thomas must have been far more regal than the king
himself. He was very tall and elegantly formed,[1297] with an oval
face,[1298] handsome aquiline features,[1299] a lofty brow,[1300]
large, lustrous and penetrating eyes;[1301] there was an habitual
look of placid dignity in his countenance,[1302] a natural grace in
his every gesture, an ingrained refinement in his every word and
action;[1303] the slender, tapering, white fingers[1304] and dainty
attire of the burgher’s son contrasted curiously with the rough brown
hands and careless appearance of Henry Fitz-Empress; the order,
elegance and liberality of the chancellor’s household contrasted no
less with the confusion and discomfort of the king’s. The riches that
passed through Thomas’s hands were enormous; revenues and honours were
heaped on him by the king; costly gifts poured in upon him daily from
clergy and laity, high and low. But what he received with one hand he
gave away with the other; his splendour and his wealth were shared
with all who chose to come and take a share of them. His door was
always open, his table always spread, for all men, of whatever race or
rank, who stood in need of hospitality.[1305] Besides fifty-two clerks
regularly attached to his household--some to act as his secretaries,
some to take charge of the vacant benefices in his custody, some to
serve his own numerous livings and prebends[1306]--he had almost
every day a company of invited guests to dinner; every day the hall
was freshly strewn with green leaves or rushes in summer and clean
hay or straw in winter, amid which those for whom there was no room
on the benches sat and dined on the floor. The tables shone with gold
and silver vessels, and were laden with costly viands; Thomas stuck
at no expense in such matters; but it was less for his own enjoyment
than for that of his guests;[1307] and these always included a crowd
of poor folk, who were as sumptuously and carefully served as the
rich;[1308] the meanest in his house never had to complain of a dinner
such as the noblest were often obliged to endure in King Henry’s court,
where half-baked bread, sour wine, stale fish and bad meat were the
ordinary fare.[1309] The chancellor’s hospitality was as gracious as it
was lavish. He was the most perfect of hosts; he saw to the smallest
details of domestic service; he noted the position of each guest,
missed and inquired for the absent, perceived and righted in a moment
the least mistake in precedence; if any man out of modesty tried to
take a lower place than was his due, it was in vain; no matter in
what obscure corner he might hide, Thomas was sure to find him out;
he seemed to pierce through curtains and walls with those wonderful
eyes whose glance brightened and cheered the whole table.[1310] No
wonder that barons and knights sent their sons to be educated under his
roof,[1311] and that his personal followers were far more numerous than
those of the king.[1312]

        [1297] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 17. Herb. Bosh.
        (_ibid._), p. 327. Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 3. _Thomas
        Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 29.

        [1298] Herb. Bosh. as above.

        [1299] Will. Fitz-Steph., Herb. Bosh., and _Thomas Saga_, as
        above.

        [1300] Herb. Bosh. as above.

        [1301] _Ib._ p. 229.

        [1302] Will. Cant., Will. Fitz-Steph., and _Thomas Saga_, as
        above.

        [1303] Anon. II. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 84.

        [1304] Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 327.

        [1305] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp.
        20, 21. Joh. Salisb., _Entheticus in Polycraticum_ (Giles, vol.
        iii.) p. 3.

        [1306] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above, p. 29.

        [1307] _Ib._ pp. 20, 21.

        [1308] Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 13.

        [1309] Pet. Blois, Ep. xiv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 49).

        [1310] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 229.

        [1311] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 22.

        [1312] E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 363. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol.
        iv.), p. 13.

Henry might have been jealous of his minister; but there was no
thought of jealousy in his mind. He was constantly in and out at the
chancellor’s house; half in sheer fun, half to see for himself the
truth of the wonderful stories which he heard about it, he would come
uninvited to dinner, riding up suddenly--often bow in hand, on his way
to or from the chase--when Thomas was seated at table; sometimes he
would take a stirrup-cup, nod to his friend and ride away; sometimes he
would leap over the table, sit down and eat. When their work was over,
king and chancellor played together like a couple of schoolboys, and
whether it was in their private apartments, in the public streets, in
the palace, or in church, made no difference at all. It was a favourite
tale among their associates how as they rode together through the
streets of London one winter’s day, the king, seeing a ragged shivering
beggar, snatched at the chancellor’s handsome new mantle of scarlet
cloth lined with vair, crying--“You shall have the merit of clothing
the naked this time!” and after a struggle in which both combatants
nearly fell off their horses, sent the poor man away rejoicing in his
new and strangely acquired garment, while with shouts of applause and
laughter the bystanders crowded round Thomas, playfully offering him
their cloaks and capes in compensation for his loss.[1313]

        [1313] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp.
        24, 25.

It is hardly possible to deny that such enormous wealth as passed
through Thomas’s hands during his tenure of the chancellorship must
have been acquired, in part at least, by means which in the case of a
minister of the Crown in our own day would be accounted little less
than scandalous. But in the twelfth century there was no scandal about
the matter. Costly gifts of all kinds were showered at the feet of
kings and great men openly and as matter of course, and kings and
great men received them as openly, often without any idea of bribery
on either side. Moreover it is to be remembered that Thomas’s position
as chancellor gave him command over a considerable portion of the
royal revenues, and that he was left free to draw upon them at his
own discretion to meet an expenditure of which part was incurred
directly in the king’s behalf, while the whole of it might be regarded
as indirectly tending to the king’s glorification and benefit. The
two friends in fact seem to have had but one purse as well as “one
mind and one heart,” and not till many years later was there any
thought of disentangling their accounts. Amid all the chancellor’s
wild magnificence, there is no evidence of corruption; and there was
certainly no arrogance. Thomas had nothing of the upstart in him; he
never ignored his burgher-origin, he never dropped the friends of his
boyhood; his filial submission to the primate remained unchanged;[1314]
his gratitude to his early teachers at Merton was proved by his choice
of a confessor from among them,[1315] and by his successful efforts to
bring their house under the special patronage of the king.[1316] His
tastes were those of the most refined aristocrat, but his sympathies
were with the people from whose ranks he had sprung; his boundless
almsgiving was doubled in value by the gracious considerateness with
which it was bestowed; his tenderness for the poor was as genuine and
as delicate as that of his mother the good dame Rohese, and he was
quick alike to supply their needs and to vindicate their cause.[1317]

        [1314] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Beckett_, vol. iv.) p. 11.

        [1315] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 21. This
        confessor, Robert by name, was with him all through his exile;
        see Garnier (Hippeau), p. 137.

        [1316] Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above), p. 23.

        [1317] Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 13. Cf. _Thomas Saga_
        (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 49, 55–57.

Like the king himself, Thomas was a standing marvel to his
contemporaries; the strict stood aghast at his unclerical mode of life;
the simple were half inclined to take him for a wizard.[1318] But his
witchery was universal and irresistible; and after all it was only the
magic of a winning personality, a vivid imagination, a dauntless spirit
and a guileless heart. For the chancellor’s frivolity was all on the
surface of his life; its inner depths were pure. Amid the countless
temptations of a corrupt court, no stain ever rested upon his personal
honour. He shared in all the king’s pursuits, except the evil ones;
into them Henry tried to entrap him night and day, but in vain.[1319]
The one thing he would not do, the one thing he would not tolerate, was
evil; the one species of human being to whom his doors were inexorably
closed was a man of known bad character.[1320] Coarseness, immorality,
dishonesty, in word or deed, met with summary and condign punishment at
his hands.[1321] Above all things, “lying lips and a deceitful tongue
were an abomination unto him.”[1322] When in after-days a biographer of
the martyred archbishop copied from the Epistle to the Ephesians the
description of the spiritual armour in which his hero was supposed to
have clothed himself at his consecration, he significantly omitted the
first piece of the panoply;[1323] Thomas had no need then to put on the
girdle of truth, for he had worn it all his life.

        [1318] Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 5.

        [1319] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        21. Cf. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._) p. 166; Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol.
        ii.), p. 303; Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), pp. 5, 6; Garnier
        (Hippeau), pp. 12, 13; _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp.
        53–55.

        [1320] “Nota domus cunctis, vitio non cognita soli.”
               “Huic, quæ sola placet, solâ virtute placebis.”

                  Joh. Salisb., _Enthet. in Polycrat._
                  (Giles, vol. iii.) pp. 2, 3.

        [1321] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 8. Will.
        Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 21.

        [1322] Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 166.

        [1323] _Ib._ p. 198.

His position at court was no easy one; for a while envy, hatred and
malice assailed him from all sides, and their attacks, added to an
immense load of work, so overwhelmed him that he more than once
declared to his friends and to the primate that he was weary of his
life and would be thankful to end it, or at any rate to break away from
the bondage of the court, if only he could do so with honour. But he
was not the man to forsake a task which he had once undertaken;[1324]
his nature was rather to do it, like the king himself, with all his
might. In the after-years, when friends and foes alike could hardly
look back upon any period of Thomas’s career save in the light of the
martyr’s aureole, more than half the credit of Henry’s early reforms
was bestowed upon the chancellor.[1325] Even at the time, he was
described by no mean authority as the champion of all liberty,[1326]
the defender of all rights, the redresser of all wrongs, the restorer
of peace,[1327] the mediator who stood between king and people to
soften the inflexibility of law and prevent justice from degenerating
into legal wrong.[1328] It is certain that the brightest and happiest
years of Henry’s reign were those during which Thomas held the foremost
rank and took the foremost part in the administration of government.
For the successful execution of Henry’s policy, therefore, Thomas is
entitled to a large share of credit. But that he in any serious degree
influenced and moulded the general scope of that policy is a theory
opposed both to the evidence of actual events and to the inferences
which must be drawn from the characters of the two men, as developed in
their after-careers. Thomas may have suggested individual measures--we
shall see that he did suggest one of very great importance;--he may
have contrived modifications in detail; but Henry’s policy, as a
whole, bears the clear stamp of one mind--his own. The chancellor’s
true merit lies in this, that he was Henry’s best and most thorough
fellow-worker--not so much his counsellor or minister as his second
self. It is not hard to see why they were friends; nor to see, too,
why they were to quarrel so fatally. The same characteristics which
drew them together were fated to part them in the end. The king found
in the burgher’s son a temper as energetic, a spirit as versatile
and impetuous, a tongue as quick and sharp,[1329] a determination as
resolute, dauntless and thorough as his own, with a much less subtle
brain, a much more excitable imagination, and much more sensitive
feelings. While they moved side by side in the same sphere, they had
“but one heart and one soul”; when once their spheres became opposed,
the friends could only change into bitter antagonists.

        [1324] Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 305. Cf. Anon. I.
        (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 12; and _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i.
        p. 59.

        [1325] See Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.),
        p. 19.

        [1326] Joh. Salisb., _Entheticus_, v. 1357 (Giles, vol. v. p.
        282).

        [1327] Joh. Salisb. _Enthet. in Polycrat._ (Giles, vol. iii.)
        p. 3.

        [1328] “Hic est qui regni leges cancellat iniquas,
                Et mandata pii principis æqua facit.”

        Joh. Salisb., _Enthet. in Polycrat._ (Giles, vol. iii.) p. 2.
        This seems to be the earliest version of the jest about law
        and equity, and sums up, in a playful shape, the chancellor’s
        relation to both.

        [1329] Although Thomas was “slightly stuttering in his talk.”
        _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 29. The statement
        occurs in none of the extant Latin lives, but from its very
        strangeness can hardly be anything but a touch of genuine
        tradition. The impediment however can only have been a very
        slight one, and was most likely nothing more than the effect
        of his extreme impetuosity. It certainly did not hinder him
        speaking his mind fully and forcibly upon any important
        occasion when his feelings were deeply stirred.

Henry’s first manifesto was published before Thomas entered his
service. Immediately after his coronation he issued a charter setting
forth the broad principles of his intended policy:--the restoration
and confirmation of all liberties and customs in Church and state as
settled by his grandfather.[1330] The actual wording of the charter was
hardly more explicit than that of Stephen’s; but the marked omission
of all reference to Stephen was in itself a significant indication
that the return to an earlier and better order of things was intended
to be something more than a phrase. On Christmas-day the king held his
court at Bermondsey, and with the counsel of the assembled barons set
himself to enforce at once the provisions of the treaty of Wallingford
which Stephen had proved incapable of executing. Peremptory orders
were issued for the expulsion of the Flemish mercenaries and the
demolition of the unlicensed castles.[1331] The effect was magical.
The Flemings saw at once that their day was over, and vanished like
an army of spectres, so suddenly that folk marvelled whither they
could have gone.[1332] The razing of the castles was necessarily a
less rapid process, but it was accomplished without delay and without
disturbance.[1333] These preliminary obstacles being cleared out of
the way, the next step was to re-assert the rights of the Crown by
abolishing the fiscal earldoms[1334] and reclaiming the demesne lands
and fortresses which had passed into private hands during the anarchy.
Henry proclaimed his determination clearly and firmly; all alienations
of royal revenue and royal property made during the late reign were
declared null and void; all occupiers of crown lands and castles were
summoned to surrender them at once, and the charters of donation from
Stephen whereby they attempted to justify their occupation were treated
simply as waste paper.[1335] There was one at least of the usurping
barons to whom Henry knew that he must carry his summons in person if
he meant it to be obeyed: William of Aumale, the lord of Holderness,
whose father had once aspired to the crown, whom Stephen had made
earl of York, and who ruled like an almost independent chieftain in
Yorkshire, where he held the royal castle of Scarborough and was in no
mind to give it up. As soon as the festival season was over Henry began
to move northward; by the end of January he was at York, and William of
Aumale was at his feet, making complete surrender of Scarborough and
of all his other castles.[1336] Another great northern baron, William
Peverel of the Peak, had been scared into a monastery by the mere
rumour of the king’s approach;[1337] he had been concerned two years
before in an attempt to poison Henry’s earliest English ally, Earl Ralf
of Chester; he knew that he was a doomed man,[1338] and when the king
turned southward again after receiving the surrender of Scarborough,
he dared not trust even his monastic tonsure to save him from his
doom, but fled the country and left all his fiefs to his sovereign’s
mercy.[1339]

        [1330] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 135.

        [1331] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 160.

        [1332] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 1 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 101, 102).

        [1333] _Ib._ p. 102. Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [1334] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155.

        [1335] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 2 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 103).

        [1336] _Ib._ cc. 2 and 3 (pp. 103, 104).

        [1337] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 161.

        [1338] See a charter of Henry, duke of the Normans, promising
        Peverel’s fief to Ralf on proof of the former’s guilt; Rymer,
        _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 16. Ralf of Chester died in 1153; Joh.
        Hexh. (Raine), p. 171. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 155. See
        above, p. 399.

        [1339] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 161.

After such an exhibition of Henry’s powers of coercion on the two
chief nobles of the north, lesser men were not likely to venture upon
defiance; the occupiers of crown lands passed from rage to terror and
dismay, and began sullenly to make restitution.[1340] The grantees of
Stephen, however, soon proved to be the least part of the difficulty.
Several of the royal fortresses were held by partizans of the Empress,
who had won them either while warring against Stephen in her behalf,
or by a grant from their imperial mistress in her brief day of power;
and they not unnaturally resented the king’s attempt to deprive them
of what they looked upon as the well-earned rewards of their service to
his mother and himself. Henry, however, had made up his mind that there
must be no distinction of parties or of persons; all irregularities,
no matter whence they proceeded, must be suppressed; every root of
rebellion must be cut off, and every ground of suspicion removed.[1341]
Early in March he called another council in London,[1342] confirmed
the peace and renewed the old customs of the realm,[1343] and again
summoned all holders of royal castles to give an account of their
usurpations.[1344] The two mightiest barons of the west revolted at
once; Roger of Hereford, the son of Matilda’s faithful Miles, hurried
away from court to fortify his castles of Hereford and Gloucester
against the king, and made common cause with Hugh of Mortemer, the lord
of Cleobury and Wigmore, who held the royal fortress of Bridgenorth.
Roger was brought to reason in little more than a week by the
persuasions of his kinsman Bishop Gilbert of Hereford;[1345] Hugh was
suffered to complete his preparations for defiance while Henry kept
the Easter feast and held a great council at Wallingford to settle the
succession to the throne, first upon his eldest child William, and,
in case of William’s death, upon the infant Henry, who was scarcely
six weeks old.[1346] That done, the king marched with all his forces
against Hugh of Mortemer. He divided his host into three parts; one
division laid siege to Cleobury, another to Wigmore,[1347] and the
third, commanded by Henry himself, sat down before Bridgenorth.[1348]
On the spot where the spirit of feudal insubordination, incarnate in
Robert of Bellême, had fought its last fight against Henry I., the
same spirit, represented by Hugh of Mortemer, now fought against Henry
II. The fight had been useless fifty years ago; it was equally useless
now. One after another the three castles were taken, and on July 7 a
great council met beneath the walls of Bridgenorth to witness Hugh’s
surrender.[1349]

        [1340] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 2 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 103).

        [1341] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 161.

        [1342] _Ibid._ Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 72.

        [1343] Chron. de Bello as above.

        [1344] Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [1345] _Ib._ p. 162.

        [1346] _Ibid._ Rob. Torigni, a. 1155, giving the date--Sunday
        after Easter, _i.e._ April 10.

        [1347] Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [1348] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 105).

        [1349] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155. Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ.
        Soc.), p. 75.

At the opposite side of the kingdom two great barons still remained to
be dealt with. One was Hugh Bigod, the veteran turncoat who had been
seneschal to Henry I., and who had (as the Angevin party believed)
perjured himself to oust Matilda from her rights, yet whose hereditary
and territorial influence had, it seems, been great enough to win from
the young king a confirmation of his earldom of Norfolk,[1350] as well
as to procure him a long day of grace before he was called upon to
give up his many unlawfully-acquired castles. The other was William
of Blois, Stephen’s eldest surviving son, by marriage earl of Warren
and Surrey, to whom the treaty of Wallingford had assigned two royal
castles, Pevensey and Norwich. The danger of leaving these important
fortresses in William’s hands was increased by the position of Norwich,
in the very midst of Hugh Bigod’s earldom; and after a year’s delay
Henry determined to put an end to this state of things in East Anglia.
Contrary to all precedent, he summoned the Whitsuntide council of
1157 to meet at Bury S. Edmund’s.[1351] This peaceful invasion of
their territories sufficed to bring both earls to submission. William
contentedly gave up his castles in exchange for the private estates
which his father had held before he became king; Hugh surrendered in
like manner,[1352] and was likewise taken back into favour, to have
another opportunity of proving his ingratitude sixteen years later.
This settlement of East Anglia completed the pacification of the realm.
Even before this, however, as early as the autumn of 1155, peace
and order were so far secured that Henry could venture to think of
leaving the country. At Michaelmas in that year he laid before his
barons a scheme for conquering Ireland as a provision for his brother
William.[1353] The Pope, who was traditionally held to be the natural
owner of all islands which had no other sovereign, had granted a bull
authorizing the expedition;[1354] but the Empress, whose counsel was
always deferentially sought by her royal son, disapproved of his
project;[1355] and when he went over sea in January 1156 it was not to
win a kingdom for his youngest brother in Ireland, but to put down a
rebellion of the second in Anjou.[1356]

        [1350] Granted by Stephen before 1153; Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i.
        p. 18. In the Pipe Roll of 1157 there is a charge “in tercio
        denario comitatûs comiti Hugoni l. libras de anno et dimidio,”
        among the accounts “de veteri firmâ” of Norfolk, rendered by
        Hugh himself as ex-sheriff (Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II., Hunter, p.
        75). As his successor in the sheriffdom renders an account “de
        firmâ dimidii anni” (_ib._ p. 76), the year and half above
        mentioned takes us back to the autumn of 1155. In the Pipe Roll
        of 1156, however, Hugh does not appear at all.

        [1351] Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 85. In the
        Winchester accounts for the year (Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II., Hunter,
        p. 107) is a charge of 22s. “pro portandis coronis regis ad S.
        Ædmundum.” “Coronis” looks as if Eleanor wore her crown also.

        [1352] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157.

        [1353] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155.

        [1354] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v.
        pp. 205, 206).

        [1355] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155.

        [1356] _Ib._ a. 1156.

In England the year of his absence was a year without a history. Not a
single event of any consequence is recorded by the chroniclers save the
death of Henry’s eldest son, shortly before Christmas;[1357] and even
this was a matter of no political moment; for, as we have seen, there
was another infant to take his place as heir-apparent. The blank in
the chronicles has to be filled up from the Pipe Roll which once again
makes its appearance at Michaelmas 1156, and which has a special value
and interest as being the most authoritative witness to the character
of the young king’s efforts for the reorganization of the government,
and to the results which they had already produced. The record itself
is a mere skeleton, and a very imperfect one; the carefulness of
arrangement, the fulness of detail, the innumerable touches of local
and personal colour which make the one surviving Pipe Roll of Henry
I. so precious and so interesting, are sadly wanting in this roll of
the second year of Henry II.; yet between its meagre lines may be read
a suggestive, almost a pathetic story. Its very imperfections, its
lack of order and symmetry, its scantiness of information, its brief,
irregular, confused entries, help us to realize as perhaps nothing else
could how disastrous had been the break-down of the administrative
machinery which we saw working so methodically five-and-twenty years
ago, and how laborious must have been the task of restoration. Three
whole shires, Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmoreland, send in no
account at all, for they were still in the hands of the king of Scots;
in almost every shire there are significant notices of “waste,” and a
scarcely less significant charge for repair of the royal manors. The
old items reappear--the Danegeld, the aids from the towns, the proceeds
of justice, the feudal incidents; but the total product amounts to
little more than a third part of the sum raised in 1130; and even this
diminished revenue was only made up with the help of sundry “aids”
and “gifts” (as they were technically called), and of a new impost
specially levied upon some of the ecclesiastical estates under the name
of _scutage_.

        [1357] Mat. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ (Madden), vol. i. p. 307.

The origin of this tax is implied in its title; it was derived from the
“service of the shield” (_scutum_)--one of the distinguishing marks of
feudal tenure--whereby the holder of a certain quantity of land was
bound to furnish to his lord the services of a fully-armed horseman for
forty days in the year. The portion of land charged with this service
constituted a “knight’s fee,” and was usually reckoned at the extent
of five hides, or the value of twenty pounds annually. The gradual
establishment of this military tenure throughout the kingdom was a
process which had been going on ever since the Norman conquest; the use
of the word “scutage,” implying an assessment of taxation based on the
knight’s fee instead of the old rating division of the hide, indicates
that it was now very generally completed. The scutage of 1156 was
levied, as we learn from another source,[1358] specially to meet the
expenses of a war which Henry was carrying on with his rebel brother
in Anjou. For such a purpose the feudal host itself was obviously not
a desirable instrument. Ralf Flambard’s famous device of 1093, when
he took a money compensation from the English levies and sent it over
sea to pay the wages of the Red King’s foreign mercenaries, suggested
a precedent which might be applied to the feudal knighthood as well
as to the national host. Its universal application might be hindered
at present by a clause in the charter of Henry I., which exempted the
tenants by knight-service from all pecuniary charges on their demesne
lands. It was, however, possible to make a beginning with the Church
lands. These habitually claimed, with more or less success, immunity
from military service except in the actual defence of the country; on
the other hand, now that the bishops and abbots had been made to accept
their temporalities on the same tenure as the lay baronies, there was a
fair shew of reason for compelling them to compromise their claim by a
money contribution assessed on the same basis as the personal service
for which it was a substitute.[1359]

        [1358] Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 178).

        [1359] On scutage and knight’s fees see Stubbs, _Const. Hist._,
        vol. i. pp. 431–433, 581, 582, 590.

Such, it seems, was the origin of the great institution of scutage.
Its full developement, which it only attained three years later, was
avowedly the work of Thomas the chancellor; whether or not its first
suggestion came from him is not so clear. At the moment no resentment
seems to have been provoked by the measure; its ultimate tendency
was not foreseen, the sum actually demanded was not great, and the
innovation was condoned on the ground of the king’s lawful need and
in the belief that it was only an isolated demand.[1360] A greater
matter might well have been condoned in consideration of Henry’s loyal
redemption of his coronation-pledges, to which the Pipe Roll bears
testimony. If the king had been prompt in resuming his kingly rights,
he had been no less prompt in striving to fulfil his kingly duties. The
work of necessary destruction was no sooner accomplished than the work
of reconstruction began in all departments of state administration.
The machinery of justice was set in motion once again; the provincial
visitations of the judges of the king’s court were revived; thirteen
shires were visited by some one or more of them between Michaelmas
1155 and Michaelmas 1156. The person most extensively employed in
this capacity was the constable, Henry of Essex:[1361] the chancellor
also appears in the like character, twice in Henry’s company[1362] and
once in that of the earl of Leicester.[1363] Nay, the supreme “fount
of justice” itself was always open to any suitor who could be at the
trouble and expense of tracking its ever-shifting whereabouts; not only
was the chancellor, as the king’s special representative, constantly
employed in hearing causes, but Henry himself was always ready to
fulfil the duty in person; at the most inconvenient moments--in the
middle of the siege of Bridgenorth, at the crisis of his struggle
with the Angevin rebels--he found time and patience to give attentive
hearing to a wearisome suit which had been going on at intervals for
nearly six years between Bishop Hilary of Chichester and Walter de
Lucy the abbot of Battle.[1364] Hand in hand with the revival of order
and law went the revival of material prosperity. In the dry, laconic
prose of the financial record we can find enough to bear out, almost
to the letter, the historians’ poetical version of the work of Henry’s
first two years. The wolves had fled or become changed into peaceable
sheep; the swords had been beaten into ploughshares and the spears into
pruning-hooks;[1365] and the merchants again went forth to pursue their
business, the Jews to seek their creditors, in peace and safety as of
old.[1366]

        [1360] Such was apparently the state of mind of John of
        Salisbury: “Interim scutagium remittere non potest [rex], et a
        quibusdam exactionibus abstinere, quoniam fratris gratia male
        sarta nequicquam coiit.” Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxxviii. (Giles, vol.
        i. p. 178).

        [1361] Pipe Roll 2 Hen. II. (Hunter), pp. 17, 31, 32, 47, 54,
        57, 60, 65.

        [1362] _Ibid._ pp. 17, 65.

        [1363] _Ibid._ p. 26.

        [1364] Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), pp. 75, 76.

        [1365] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.) p.
        19. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 1 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 102).

        [1366] “Exeunt securi ab urbibus et castris ad nundinas
        negotiatores, ad creditores repetendos Judæi.” Will.
        Fitz-Steph. as above.

Henry returned to England soon after Easter 1157.[1367] His first step,
as we have seen, was to secure the obedience of East-Anglia. Having
thus fully established his authority throughout his immediate realm,
his next aim was to assert the rights of his crown over its Scottish
and Welsh dependencies. The princes of Wales, who had long been
acknowledged vassals of England, must be made to do homage to its new
sovereign; the king of Scots owed homage no less, if not for his crown,
at any rate for his English fiefs; moreover, his title to these was
in itself a disputed question. Three English shires, Northumberland,
Cumberland and Westmoreland, had been conquered by David, nominally
in behalf of his niece the Empress Matilda, in the early years of
Stephen’s reign; Stephen, making a virtue of necessity, had formally
granted their investiture to David’s son Henry;[1368] and they were
now in the hands of Henry’s son, the young king Malcolm IV. The story
went that old King David, before he knighted his grand-nephew Henry
Fitz-Empress in 1149, had made him swear that if ever he came to the
English throne he would suffer the king of Scots to keep these shires
in peace for ever.[1369] Henry does not seem to have denied his oath;
he simply refused to keep it, on the ground that it ran counter to his
duty as king. Acting on what his enemies declared to be his habitual
principle, of choosing to do penance for a word rather than for a
deed,[1370] he declared that the crown of England must not suffer such
mutilation, and summoned his Scottish cousin to give back to him the
territory which had been acquired in his name.[1371]

        [1367] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157. Cf. Chron. de Bello (Angl.
        Christ. Soc.), p. 84.

        [1368] Cumberland was granted to Henry of Scotland by Stephen
        in 1136 and Northumberland in 1139; see above, pp. 282,
        300. Westmoreland seems to have counted as a dependency of
        Cumberland.

        [1369] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 211. Will. Newb., l.
        ii. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 105).

        [1370] “Quoties res in arctum devenerat, de dicto malens quam
        de facto pœnitere, verbumque facilius quam factum irritum
        habere.” Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._ dist. ii. c. 24 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc. p. 72).

        [1371] Will. Newb. as above.

Meanwhile, without waiting for Malcolm’s answer, Henry prepared for his
first Welsh war. The domestic quarrels of the Welsh princes furnished
him with an excellent pretext. Owen, prince of North-Wales, had
confiscated the estates of his brother Cadwallader and banished him
from the country; Cadwallader appealed to King Henry, and of course
found a gracious reception.[1372] A council was held at Northampton
on July 17,[1373] and thence orders were issued for an expedition into
North-Wales. The force employed was the feudal levy, but in a new form;
instead of calling out the whole body of knights to serve their legal
term of forty days, Henry required every two knights throughout England
to join in equipping a third[1374]--no doubt for a threefold term of
service. By this expedient he obtained a force quite sufficient for his
purpose, guarded against the risk of its breaking up before its task
was accomplished--a frequent drawback in medieval warfare--and made the
first innovation upon the strict rule of feudal custom in such a manner
as to avoid all offence.

        [1372] Caradoc of Llancarvan (Llwyd), p. 159. Some grants of
        land in Shropshire to Cadwallader appear in the Pipe Rolls of
        1156 and 1157 (Hunter, pp. 43 and 88).

        [1373] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 163.

        [1374] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157. See Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, vol.
        i. pp. 455, 589.

The invasion was to be twofold, by land and sea.[1375] The host
assembled near Chester,[1376] on Saltney marsh,[1377] and was joined
by Madoc Ap Meredith, prince of Powys. Owen of North-Wales, with his
three sons and all his forces, entrenched himself at Basingwerk.[1378]
The king, with his youthful daring,[1379] set off at once by way of
the sea-coast, hoping to fall upon the Welsh at unawares; Owen’s
sons however were on the watch,[1380] and in the narrow pass of
Consilt[1381] the English suddenly found themselves face to face with
the foe. Entangled in the woody, marshy ground, they were easily routed
by the nimble light-armed Welsh;[1382] and a cry that the king himself
had fallen caused the constable, Henry of Essex, to drop the royal
standard and fly in despair. Henry of Anjou soon shewed himself alive,
rallied his troops, and almost, like his ancestor Fulk at Conquereux,
turned the defeat into a victory;[1383] for he cut his way through the
Welsh ambushes with such vigour that Owen judged it prudent to withdraw
from Basingwerk and seek a more inaccessible retreat.[1384] Cutting
down the woods and clearing the roads before him, Henry pushed on to
Rhuddlan, and there fortified the castle.[1385] Meanwhile the fleet had
sailed[1386] under the command of Madoc Ap Meredith.[1387] It touched
at Anglesey and there landed a few troops whose sacrilegious behaviour
brought upon them such vengeance from the outraged islanders[1388] that
their terrified comrades sailed back at once to Chester, where they
learned that the war was ended.[1389] Owen, in terror of being hemmed
in between the royal army and the fleet, sent proposals for peace,
reinstated his banished brother,[1390] performed his own homage to King
Henry,[1391] and gave hostages for his loyalty in the future.[1392]
As the South-Welsh princes were all vassals of North-Wales, Owen’s
submission was equivalent to a formal acknowledgement of Henry’s rights
as lord paramount over the whole country, and the young king was
technically justified in boasting that he had subdued all the Welsh to
his will.[1393]

        [1375] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157. A charge in the year’s Pipe
        Roll--“In locandâ unâ nave ad portandum corredium regis usque
        Pembroc” (Winchester accounts, Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II., Hunter,
        p. 108)--looks as if Henry had meditated an attempt upon South
        as well as North Wales. But it also seems to imply that the
        attempt was not actually made.

        [1376] Ann. Cambr. a. 1158. _Brut y Tywysogion_, a. 1156. (The
        chronology of these Welsh chronicles is hopelessly wrong).

        [1377] Caradoc (Llwyd), p. 159.

        [1378] Ann. Cambr., _Brut y Tywys._, and Caradoc as above.

        [1379] Gir. Cambr. _Itin. Kambr._, l. ii. c. 10 (_Opera_,
        Dimock, vol. vi. p. 137), and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
        165, make no scruple of calling it rashness.

        [1380] Ann. Cambr. and Caradoc as above.

        [1381] “In arcto silvestri apud Coleshulle, id est, Carbonis
        collem” (Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 7, p. 130)--that is, Consilt,
        near Flint. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 5 (Howlett, vol. i. p.
        107).

        [1382] Will. Newb. as above (pp. 107, 108). _Brut y Tywys._ a.
        1156. Caradoc (Llwyd), p. 160. Gir. Cambr. _Itin. Kambr._, l.
        ii. c. 7 (Dimock, vol. vi. p. 130) and c. 10 (p. 137).

        [1383] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 5 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 108).
        Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 165. Caradoc (Llwyd, p.
        160) has a totally different version of the battle, but it is
        incompatible with the undoubted facts about Henry of Essex.

        [1384] Ann. Cambr. a. 1158. Caradoc (Llwyd), p. 160. _Brut y
        Tywys._ a. 1156.

        [1385] _Ibid._

        [1386] Ann. Cambr. and _Brut y Tywys._ as above.

        [1387] So says Caradoc (as above); but is it possible that
        Madoc, a Welsh prince and one whose territory lay wholly
        inland, should have been put in command of the English fleet?

        [1388] Ann. Cambr. a. 1158. _Brut y Tywys._ a. 1158. Caradoc
        (Llwyd), p. 160. Gir. Cambr. _Itin. Kambr._, l. ii. c. 7
        (Dimock, vol. vi. p. 130).

        [1389] Caradoc as above.

        [1390] Ann. Cambr., _Brut y Tywys._, and Caradoc, as above.

        [1391] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166. Will. Newb., l.
        ii. c. 5 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 108, 109). Mat. Paris (_Hist.
        Angl._, Luard, vol. i. p. 308) says the homage was done at
        Snowdon; how could this be?

        [1392] See reference to the hostages in Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II.
        (Hunter), p. 114.

        [1393] “Subjectis ad libitum Walensibus,” Rob. Torigni,
        a. 1157. The only entries in this year’s Pipe Roll visibly
        relating to the Welsh war are: “Pro thesauro conducendo ad
        Waliam xxxi s. et viii d.” (Oxfordshire, Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II.,
        Hunter, p. 82), and a payment of two marks of silver by the
        abbot of Abbotsbury “de Exercitu Wal.” (Dorset, _ib._ p. 99).
        In the next year’s roll there are several references to the
        matter; Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter) pp. 114, 170, 175. The
        first relates to the hostages, the second to payments made to
        Henry’s Welsh allies, and the last is a payment made to Ralf
        “_vitulus_” (cf. Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 73,
        Hardy, p. 767) of Winchester “de Itinere de Waliâ”--_i.e._ for
        the fleet.

It was doubtless on his triumphant return that the king of Scots came
to meet him at Chester.[1394] Whichever of the royal kinsmen might
have the better cause, Malcolm now clearly perceived that the power to
maintain it was all on Henry’s side. He therefore surrendered the three
disputed shires,[1395] with the fortresses of Newcastle, Bamborough and
Carlisle,[1396] and acknowledged himself the vassal of the English king
“in the same manner as his grandfather had been the man of King Henry
the Elder.”[1397] The precise import of this formula is uncertain, and
was probably not much less so at the time; the exact nature and grounds
of the Scottish homage to England formed a question which both parties
usually found it convenient to leave undetermined.[1398] For Henry’s
present purpose it sufficed that, on some ground or other, the homage
was done.

        [1394] Chron. Mailros, a. 1157.

        [1395] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 105, 106).

        [1396] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157.

        [1397] Chron. Mailros, a. 1157.

        [1398] The Scottish theory seems to be that Malcolm did homage
        for the earldom of Huntingdon, which had lapsed on his father’s
        death, and which Will. Newb. (as above, p. 106) and Rob.
        Torigni (a. 1157) say was now granted afresh to him. But, on
        the one hand, the treatise “De Judithâ uxore Waldevi comitis”
        in _Chroniques Anglo-Normandes_ (Francisque Michel, vol. ii.
        p. 128) says that Huntingdon was not granted to Malcolm till
        1159; and on the other, the terms of homage as stated by the
        Chron. Mailros exclude Huntingdon, which was granted to Henry
        of Scotland not by Henry I. but by Stephen. The truth probably
        lurks in another phrase of Rob. Torigni (a. 1157), which
        says that Malcolm surrendered, besides the three fortresses
        above-named, Edinburgh “et comitatum Lodonensem.” This can
        only mean that he made a surrender of Lothian, to receive its
        investiture again on the same terms as his forefathers--_i.e._
        as a fief of the English Crown. Huntingdon appears in the Pipe
        Rolls of 1156, 1157 and 1158, but without mention of its third
        penny.

The closing feast of the year was celebrated with a brilliant gathering
of the court at Lincoln. More cautious than his predecessor, Henry did
not venture to defy local tradition by appearing in his regal insignia
within the city itself; he wore his crown on Christmas day, not in the
great minster on the hill-top, but in the lesser church of S. Mary
in the suburb of Wigford beyond the river.[1399] Next Easter the king
and queen went through this ancient solemnity of the “crown-wearing”
together, and for the last time, in Worcester cathedral. When the
moment came for making their oblations, they laid their crowns upon the
altar and vowed never to wear them again.[1400] The motive for this
renunciation was probably nothing more than Henry’s impatience of court
pageantry; but the practice thus solemnly forsaken was not revived,
save once under very exceptional circumstances in the middle of the
next reign, till the connexion between England and Anjou was on the
eve of dissolution; and as it happens, the abandonment of this custom
of Old-English royalty marks off one of the lesser epochs in Henry’s
career. He was about to plunge into a sea of continental politics and
wars which kept him altogether away from his island-realm for six
years, and from which he never again thoroughly emerged. This last
crown-wearing at Worcester serves as a fitting point at which we may
leave our own country for a while and glance once more at the history
of the lands united with her beneath the sceptre of the Angevin king.

        [1399] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 9 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 117,
        118). Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216; it is he who gives
        the name of the suburb, “Wikeford.” Will. Newb. has a wrong
        date; the Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 136, settles that
        point.

        [1400] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216; more briefly,
        R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 302; both with very confused
        dates, but again they are set right by the Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II.
        (Hunter), p. 175.



CHAPTER X.

HENRY AND FRANCE.

1156–1161.


Formidable as was the task of England’s internal reorganization, it
was but a small part of the work which lay before Henry Fitz-Empress.
His accession brought the English Crown into an entirely new relation
with the world at large. The realm which for ages had been counted
almost as a separate sphere, whose insularity had been strong enough
to survive even the Norman conquest and to turn the conqueror’s own
native land into a dependency of the conquered island, suddenly became
an unit in a vast group of states gathered into the hands of a single
ruler, and making up altogether the most extensive and important
empire in Christendom. Among the earlier kings of England Cnut is the
only one whose dominions were at all comparable in extent to those of
Henry II. But the empire of Cnut and that of Henry differed widely in
character and circumstances. Cnut’s northern empire was to a certain
extent homogeneous; its members had at least one thing in common
besides their common allegiance--they were all, geographically and
politically, almost as completely severed from the rest of Europe as
England herself. It was only as an indirect consequence partly of his
territorial power, but still more of his personal greatness, that Cnut
and his realms came into connexion with central and southern Europe. In
Henry’s case, on the contrary, such a connexion was rendered inevitable
by the geographical position of his continental territories. They lay
in the very heart of western Christendom; they covered the largest and
some of the fairest regions of Gaul; they positively surrounded on two
sides the domains of the French Crown to which they owed a nominal
homage; they touched the borders of Spain, and they went very near to
those old Burgundian lands which formed the south-western march of
Germany and the north-western march of Italy. Again, Cnut’s territories
were all perfectly independent of any ruler save himself; no rival
power disputed his claims to any one of them; no other sovereign had
any pretension to receive homage from him. Henry, on the other hand,
was by the possession of his Gaulish fiefs placed in direct personal
connexion with the French king who was not merely his neighbour but
also his overlord. A like connexion had indeed existed between the
Norman kings of England and the French kings as overlords of Normandy.
But Henry’s relations with France were far more complex and fraught
with far weightier political consequences than those of his Norman
predecessors. He held under the king of France not a single outlying
province, but--at the lowest reckoning--not less than five separate
fiefs, all by different titles and upon different tenures, which were
yet further complicated by the intricate feudal and political relations
of these fiefs one with another.

Normandy was the least puzzling member of the group; Henry had
inherited it from his mother, and held it on the same tenure as
all her ancestors from Hrolf downwards. About Anjou, again--the
original patrimony of the heirs of Fulk the Red--there could hardly
be any question; and the old dispute whether Maine should count as
an independent fief of the Crown or as an underfief of Normandy or
of Anjou was not likely to be of any practical consequence when the
immediate ruler of all three counties was one and the same. Yet all
these had to be treated as separate states; each must have its special
mention in the homage done by Henry to Louis; each must be governed
according to its own special customs and institutions. So, too, must
the other appendage of Anjou--Touraine, for which homage was still
owed to the count of Blois, and where he still possessed a few outlying
lands which might easily be turned into bones of contention should he
choose to revive the ancient feud. Lastly, over and above all this
bundle of family estates inherited from his father and his mother,
Henry’s marriage had brought him the duchy of Aquitaine:--that is,
the immediate possession of the counties of Poitou and Bordeaux; the
overlordship of a crowd of lesser counties and baronies which filled
up the remaining territory between the Loire and the Pyrenees; and
a variety of more or less shadowy claims over all the other lands
which had formed part of the old Aquitanian kingdom, and whose feudal
relations with each other, with Poitou and with the Crown of France
were in a state of inextricable confusion:--added to which, there was a
personal complication caused by the two marriages of Eleanor, whereby
her second husband owed homage to the first for the territories which
he held in her name. Without going further into the details of the
situation, we can easily see that it was crowded with difficulties
and dangers, and that it would require the utmost care, foresight and
self-restraint on the part of both Henry and Louis to avoid firing,
at some point or other, a train which might produce an explosion
disastrous to both alike.

Henry’s chief assistant in the management of his continental affairs
was his mother, the Empress Matilda. Still closer to his side, indeed,
stood one who in after-years shewed herself gifted with far greater
administrative sagacity, and who had already acquired considerable
political experience as queen of France and duchess of Aquitaine. As
yet, however, Henry was likely to derive less assistance from the
somewhat dangerously quick wit of his wife than from the mature wisdom
of his mother. Matilda had been a harsh, violent, impracticable woman;
but there was in her character an element of moral and intellectual
grandeur which even in her worst days had won and kept for her the
devotion of men like Miles of Hereford and Brian Fitz-Count, and which
now in her latter years had fairly gained the mastery over her less
admirable qualities. She had inherited a considerable share of her
father’s talents for government; she had indeed failed to use them in
her own behalf, but she had learned from her failure a lesson which
enabled her to contribute not a little, by warnings and suggestions,
to the success of her son. In England, where the haughtiness of her
conduct had never been forgiven, whatever was found amiss in Henry’s
seems to have been popularly laid to her charge.[1401] In Normandy,
however, she was esteemed far otherwise. From the time of her son’s
accession to the English crown she lived quietly in a palace which her
father had built hard by the minster of Notre-Dame-des-Prés, outside
the walls of Rouen;[1402] taking no direct share in politics, but
universally held in profound respect by reason of her dignified and
pious life, and of the influence which she was known to exercise upon
the mind and policy of the young duke. His first step on the tidings
of Stephen’s death had been to hold a consultation with her; so long
as she lived, her opinions and her wishes were an element never absent
from his calculations before entering upon any serious undertaking; and
if he did not formally leave her as regent of the Norman duchy, yet he
trusted in great measure to her for the maintenance of its tranquillity
and order during his own absence beyond the sea.

        [1401] “Nos autem illi doctrinæ [sc. maternæ] fidenter
        imputamus omnia quibus erat tædiosus” [rex]. W. Map. _De Nug.
        Cur._, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).

        [1402] _Draco Norm._, l. iii. cc. 1, 2, vv. 37–66 (Howlett,
        _Will. Newb._, vol. ii. pp. 712–714).

A personal visit was, however, necessary to make sure of his ground
with the king of France. As soon, therefore, as matters in England were
sufficiently composed, early in 1156 Henry went to Normandy;[1403]
Louis came to meet him on the border, and shortly afterwards, at a
second meeting, received a repetition of his homage for all his French
fiefs, including the duchy of Aquitaine.[1404] It was time; for to
every one of those fiefs, except Aquitaine and Normandy, there was
a rival claimant in the person of his brother. The story went that
Geoffrey Plantagenet as he lay dying at Château-du-Loir had made the
bishops and barons around his bed promise that they would not suffer
him to be laid in the grave till his eldest son had sworn to abide by
the contents of a will which he had just executed. When they called
upon Henry to take the oath, he hesitated a long while; at last, seeing
no other means of getting his father buried in peace, with a burst
of tears he swore as he was required. After the funeral the will was
read; and Henry found himself thereby pledged to make over the whole
of his patrimonial territories--Anjou, Touraine and Maine--to his
brother Geoffrey, as soon as the addition of the English crown to his
Norman coronet should put him in complete possession of his mother’s
heritage. Till then Geoffrey was to be content with three castles,
Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau. For the moment Henry dissembled his
vexation; the contingency contemplated in the will was still in the
unknown future. But before it came to pass Geoffrey, as we have seen,
provoked his brother’s ill-will by using his three castles as a basis
of rebellion. Henry on his part sought and obtained a papal absolution
from the extorted oath, and flatly refused to keep it.[1405] Hereupon
Geoffrey again began stirring up a revolt whose suppression was one
of the chief objects of Henry’s visit to the continent in 1156. The
brothers met at Rouen, but they could not agree; Geoffrey hurried
back to fortify his three castles, and Henry followed to besiege
them.[1406] The troops which he employed were, as we have already seen,
mercenaries paid out of the proceeds of a scutage levied in England;
and if the chancellor’s share in the matter amounted to nothing more
than the suggestion of this contrivance, its perfect success in every
way would be enough to justify the statement of a contemporary, that
Henry “profited greatly by his assistance.”[1407] Loudun and Mirebeau
were successively besieged and taken;[1408] and in July the fall of
Geoffrey’s last and mightiest fortress, Chinon, brought him to complete
surrender of all his claims, for which he accepted a compensation
in money from his brother.[1409] Next month Queen Eleanor came over
to share her husband’s triumph;[1410] she doubtless accompanied him
in a progress through Aquitaine, where he received homage from the
vassals of the duchy, took hostages for their fidelity,[1411] and kept
Christmas at Bordeaux.[1412] Every part of his continental dominions
was thus thoroughly secured before he returned to England in the spring
of 1157.[1413]

        [1403] He was at Rouen on Candlemas day. Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.

        [1404] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 215. Between the two
        meetings with Louis came one with the count and countess of
        Flanders at Rouen. Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.

        [1405] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 112, 113).

        [1406] Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.

        [1407] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 162, says that Henry
        won his success “Thomæ cancellarii sui magno fretus auxilio.”
        It is not quite clear whether Thomas was with him in person; he
        was certainly in England part of this year, witness the Pipe
        Roll.

        [1408] Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.

        [1409] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 114).
        Rob. Torigni, a. 1156. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1156 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, p. 38). The first states the compensation as “terram
        planam ex quo fructuum utilitas proveniret”; the second as a
        thousand pounds sterling and two thousand Angevin _per annum_.
        All say Geoffrey lost his castles, except Loudun, which Henry
        restored to him (Chron. S. Albin. as above). The date is from
        Rob. Torigni.

        [1410] She and Richard de Lucy were both with Henry at Saumur
        on August 29. Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 76.

        [1411] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 215.

        [1412] Anon. Chron., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 121.

        [1413] Eleanor went back independently before Easter. “In
        corredio reginæ quando venit de Normanniâ” appears among the
        accounts “de veteri firmâ” of Hampshire, Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II.
        (Hunter), p. 107.

Henry and Eleanor had now two children living. The eldest, born in
London on February 28, 1155,[1414] and baptized by his father’s name,
had already been recognized as his heir; the second was a girl, born
in 1156,[1415] and named after her grandmother the Empress Matilda. A
third, Richard, was born at Oxford[1416] on September 8, 1157.[1417]
Eleanor had moreover by her former marriage with Louis of France two
daughters, Mary and Adela, betrothed to the brother-counts of Champagne
and Blois;[1418] while the second marriage of Louis with Constance of
Castille had given him one child, the infant princess Margaret.[1419]
Early in 1158 Henry resolved to secure the hand of this little girl
for his eldest son, and he sent his chancellor over sea to make the
proposal to Louis.[1420]

        [1414] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1155
        (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 38).

        [1415] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 302.

        [1416] _Ibid._

        [1417] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1157 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 39).

        [1418] _Gesta Ludov._, c. 29 (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. iv. p. 411). _Hist. Ludov._ (_ibid._) p. 415.
        Mary had once been proposed as wife for Henry Fitz-Empress,
        but S. Bernard put a stop to the scheme on the ground of
        consanguinity (see above, p. 393, note 2{1161})--an objection
        which, however, applied still more strongly to Henry’s marriage
        with her mother. Mary was betrothed to Henry of Champagne before
        the Crusade (_Gesta Ludov._, c. 18, as above, pp. 403, 404).
        Adela was born in 1149 or 1150, and apparently betrothed to
        Theobald of Blois in 1152 or soon after (_ib._ cc. 27, 29, as
        above, pp. 410, 411; _Hist. Ludov._, _ib._ pp. 414, 415).
        Neither couple was married till 1164.

        [1419] _Gesta Ludov._, c. 29 (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. iv.), p. 411. _Hist. Ludov._ (_ibid._), p. 415.

        [1420] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        29. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 302.

Never, since Haroun-al-Raschid sent his envoys to Charles the Great,
had such an embassy been seen in western Europe. Thomas made up his
mind to display before the eyes of astonished France all the luxury and
splendour which the wealth of the island-realm could procure, that King
Henry might be glorified in his representative.[1421] The six ships
with which he habitually crossed the Channel[1422]--the king himself
had but one for this purpose, till his chancellor presented him with
three more[1423]--can hardly have sufficed for the enormous train which
he took with him on this occasion. It comprized, in the first place,
some two hundred members of his household, knights, clerks, stewards,
servants, squires, and young pages of noble blood, all provided with
horses and fitted out with new and gay attire as beseemed their several
degrees. Thomas himself had twenty-four changes of raiment, most of
which he gave away in the course of his journey; besides a quantity of
rich silks, rare furs, and costly cloths and carpets, “fit to adorn
the sleeping-chamber of a bishop.” He had a right royal train of
coursing-dogs and hawks of all kinds. Above all, he had eight mighty
chariots, each drawn by five horses equal to war-chargers in beauty
and strength; beside each horse ran a stalwart and gaily-clad youth,
and each chariot had its special conductor. Two of these vehicles were
laden with casks of ale, to be given to the French, who marvelled at
the beverage, strange to them, which the English thought superior
to wine. The other chariots bore the furniture of the chancellor’s
chapel, of his private chamber, and of his kitchen; others again
contained treasure, provisions for the journey, necessaries of the
toilet, trappings and baggage of all kinds. Next, there were twelve
sumpter-horses, of which eight were loaded with coffers containing the
gold and silver vessels of the chancellor’s household, vases, ewers,
goblets, bowls, cups, flagons, basins, salt-cellars, spoons, plates and
dishes. Other chests and packages held the money for daily expenses and
gifts, the chancellor’s own clothes, and his books. One pack-horse,
which always went first, bore the sacred vessels, altar-ornaments and
books belonging to the chapel. To each horse there was a well-trained
groom; to each chariot was fastened a dog, large, strong and “terrible
as a lion or a bear”; and on the top of every chariot sat a monkey. The
procession travelled along the road in regular order; first came the
foot-pages, to the number of about two hundred and fifty, in groups of
six, ten or more, “singing together in their native tongue, after the
manner of their country.” They were followed at a little distance by
the coursing-dogs and hounds coupled and in leashes under the charge
of their respective keepers. Next, the great chariots covered with
hides came heavily rolling and rattling along; after them trotted
the pack-horses, each with a groom; these again were followed by the
squires, bearing the shields and leading the chargers of the knights;
then came a crowd of other attendants, pages, and those who had charge
of the hawks; then the sewers and other servants of the chancellor’s
household; then his knights and his clerks, all riding two and two;
and lastly, amid a select group of friends, the chancellor himself. In
every town and village along the road the French rushed out to inquire
the meaning of such a startling procession, and when told that it was
the chancellor of the king of England coming on a mission to the king
of France, exclaimed: “If this is the chancellor, what must his master
be?”

        [1421] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

        [1422] Partly, it seems, for the sake of giving a free passage
        to any one who wanted to go. _Ib._ p. 23.

        [1423] _Ibid._ p. 26.

Immediately after landing Thomas notified his arrival to Louis; at
Meulan he received an answer, fixing a day for an audience in Paris.
It was the custom of the French kings to provide at their own expense
for every man who came to their court during his sojourn there; Louis
therefore issued a proclamation in Paris forbidding the sale of any
article whatsoever to the chancellor or his attendants. Thomas however
was resolved to decline the royal hospitality; he sent his caterers in
disguise and under feigned names to all the fairs round about--Lagny,
Corbeil, Pontoise, S. Denys--where they bought up such an abundance
of bread, meat, fish and wine that when he reached his lodging at the
Temple he found it stocked with three days’ provisions for a thousand
men. One dish of eels, which had cost a hundred shillings sterling, was
long remembered as an instance of the English chancellor’s prodigality.
Every possible courtesy was interchanged between him and the French
king. Every member of the court, were he count, baron, knight or
serving-man, received some token of insular wealth and generosity;
Thomas gave away all his gold and silver plate, all his costly
raiment; to one a cloak, to another a fur cape, to another a pelisse,
to another a palfrey or a destrier.[1424] The masters and scholars
of the university came in for their share; the chancellor’s gracious
reception of them, and of the citizens with whom the English scholars
lodged,[1425] was a marked feature in his visit to Paris.[1426] The
embassy was successful; Louis promised his daughter’s hand to the heir
of England, and Thomas went home in triumph, having finished up his
expedition by capturing and casting into prison at Neufmarché a certain
Guy of Laval whose lawless depredations were a continual insult to
King Henry and a continual terror to his subjects.[1427] Henry himself
soon afterwards went over sea, partly, no doubt, to confirm the family
alliance thus concluded with Louis. But there was also another reason
which urgently required his presence in Gaul.

        [1424] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp.
        29–33.

        [1425] “Cives scholarium Angligenarum creditores”(_ib._ p. 32)
        must mean something like this.

        [1426] _Ibid._

        [1427] _Ibid._ p. 33.

A fresh opening had presented itself to the ambition of the Angevin
house in a quarter where they seem to have had no dealings since the
time of Geoffrey Martel, but which was intimately associated with their
earliest traditions and with the very foundations of their power. The
long rivalry between the counts of Nantes and of Rennes had ended,
like that between the dukes of Normandy and the counts of Anjou, in
a marriage, and for eighty-two years all Britanny had been united
beneath the immediate and undisputed sway of the one ducal house, when
in 1148 Duke Conan III. on his death-bed disavowed the young Hoel who
had hitherto passed as his son and heir.[1428] The duchy split up
into factions once again; the greater part accepted the rule of Count
Eudo of Porhoët, who was married to Conan’s only daughter Bertha; the
people of Nantes alone, fired with their old spirit of independence and
opposition, opened their gates to Hoel and acknowledged him as their
count. Hoel however proved unable to cope with the superior forces
of his rival; at the end of eight years his people grew hopeless of
maintaining their independence under him. Rather than give it up once
more to those whom they looked upon as representatives of the hated
supremacy of Rennes, they fell back upon their old traditional alliance
with Anjou, and having driven out the unfortunate Hoel, offered
themselves and their country to young Geoffrey Plantagenet.[1429]
Geoffrey, smarting under the defeat which he had just sustained at
his brother’s hands in Anjou, was naturally delighted with this new
acquisition, and all the more as he had a fair prospect of enjoying
it in peace; for Eudo at that very moment was suddenly confronted
by another rival. Earl Conan of Richmond, Bertha’s son by a former
marriage, being now grown to manhood, came over from England in this
same summer of 1156 to claim the heritage which his stepfather had
usurped;[1430] and during the struggle which ensued between them
neither party had time or energy to spare for dislodging the Angevin
intruder from Nantes, where he remained undisputed master for nearly
two years.

        [1428] Chron. Britann. _ad ann._ (Morice, _Hist. Bret.,
        preuves_, vol. i. col. 103).

        [1429] _Ib._ a. 1148, 1156, 1157 (as above). Chron. Brioc.
        (_ibid._), col. 37.

        [1430] Chron. Brioc. as above. Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.

On July 26, 1158, Geoffrey died.[1431] The county of Nantes was at
once seized by Conan and claimed by the king of England as heir to his
childless brother;[1432] and on the eve of the Assumption Henry landed
in Normandy to enforce his claim. Before resorting to arms, however,
he deemed it prudent to secure the assent of the lord paramount of
Britanny, King Louis of France, to his intended proceedings. The
negotiations were again intrusted to the chancellor, and again with
marked success. At a conference held on the last day of August[1433]
Louis did far more than sanction Henry’s claim upon Nantes; he granted
him a formal commission to arbitrate between the competitors for
the dukedom of Britanny and settle the whole question in dispute as
he might think good, in virtue of his office as grand seneschal of
France.[1434] This office was now little more than honorary, and was
held throughout the greater part of the reign of Louis VII. by the
count of Blois; but the rival house of Anjou seems to have also put
forth a claim to it, which Louis admitted for a moment, as on the
present occasion, whenever it suited his own purposes.[1435] From
Argentan, on September 8, Henry issued a summons to the whole feudal
host of Normandy to assemble at Avranches on Michaelmas-day for an
expedition into Britanny. He himself spent the interval in a visit to
Paris, where he was entertained by Louis with the highest honours; the
betrothal of little Henry and Margaret was ratified, and the baby-bride
was handed over to the care of her future father-in-law, who intrusted
her for education to a faithful Norman baron, Robert of Neubourg.[1436]
The host gathered at Avranches on the appointed day, but only to
witness Conan’s submission. He knew that he was no match for the king
of England with the king of France at his back; so he put himself into
Henry’s hands, and received his confirmation in the dukedom of Britanny
in return for the surrender of Nantes.[1437] Henry, after a visit to
the Mont-S.-Michel and a brief halt at Pontorson to restore the castle,
proceeded to take formal possession of Nantes; he then went to besiege
Thouars,[1438] whose lord was in rebellion against him. In November he
met Louis at Le Mans,[1439] and thence conducted him on a triumphal
progress through Normandy. After going through Pacy and Evreux to
Neubourg, that the French king might see his little daughter, they were
received with a solemn procession at Bec; they then visited the abbey
of Mont-S.-Michel, where Louis had a vow to pay, and from Avranches
Henry escorted his guest by way of Bayeux, Caen and Rouen safely and
honourably back to his own dominions.[1440]

        [1431] Contin. Becc. a. 1158 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii.
        p. 166). Chron. S. Albin. a. 1158 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 39).

        [1432] Rob. Torigni, a. 1158. Chron. Brioc. (Morice, _Hist.
        Bret., preuves_, vol. i.), col. 37. Chron. Britann. a. 1158
        (_ib._ col. 103).

        [1433] Contin. Becc. a. 1158 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii.
        p. 167).

        [1434] “Eo tempore, per industriam Thomæ cancellarii a
        Lundoniâ, rex Angliæ a rege Francorum Christianissimo, viro
        tamen nimis simplici, optinuit ut quasi senescallus regis
        Francorum intraret Britanniam, et quosdam ibidem inter se
        inquietos et funebre bellum exercentes coram se convocaret et
        pacificaret, et quem inveniret rebellum violenter coherceret.”
        Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166.

        [1435] On the office of seneschal of France see A. Luchaire,
        _Hist. des Institutions Monarchiques sous les premiers
        Capétiens_, vol. i. pp. 173–181. The treatise of Hugh of
        Clères “De senescalciâ et majoratu regni Franciæ” (printed in
        Marchegay, _Comtes d’Anjou_, pp. 387–394), which sets forth
        the Angevin claim in detail, is shown by M. Mabille to be a
        forgery (Introd., pp. xlix–li); and so too, it seems, is the
        only charter in which Henry appears as seneschal (_ib._ p. li,
        note). The treatise was, however, written between 1150 and
        1168 (_ib._ p. li), and must therefore have been intended to
        support a claim made at that time. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville
        (_Comtes de Champagne_, vol. ii. pp. 270–274; vol. iii. pp. 96,
        97) gives from charters a list of the seneschals of France from
        A.D. 1091 to A.D. 1163. No count of Anjou appears; and from
        1154 to 1163 (inclusive) the seneschal each year is Theobald of
        Blois. That the Angevin claim was, however, not only made but
        occasionally admitted--doubtless for some special purpose--is
        shewn by the passage of Gerv. Cant. quoted above (note 3
{1434}), and also by two passages in Robert of Torigni, none of
        which are noticed by M. Luchaire. In A.D. 1169 Robert tells us
        that the younger Henry did homage to Louis at Montmirail for the
        county of Anjou, “et concessit ei rex Francorum ut esset
        senescallus Franciæ, quod pertinet ad feudum Andegavense;” and
        he adds that at Candlemas young Henry officiated as seneschal to
        the king in Paris; after which he proceeds to abridge from the
        pseudo-Hugh de Clères the story of the origin of the dignity. In
        A.D. 1164 he says: “Comes Carnotensis Tedbaudus despondit filiam
        Ludovici regis Franciæ, et ideo rex ei concessit dapiferatum
        Franciæ, quem comes Andegavensis antiquitus habebat.” M. de
        Jubainville’s list shews that Theobald had been seneschal long
        before this; but the words shew that the Angevin claim was well
        known, at any rate in the Angevin dominions.

        [1436] Rob. Torigni, a. 1158.

        [1437] _Ibid._ Contin. Becc. a. 1158 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_,
        vol. ii. p. 169). Chron. Britann. (Morice, _Hist. Bret.,
        preuves_, vol. i.), col. 104. This last dates the surrender
        “circa festivitatem S. Dionysii” [Oct. 9]; the two former make
        it Michaelmas. According to Rob. Torigni the actual cession
        comprised the city of Nantes and the northern half of the
        county, said to be worth sixty thousand shillings Angevin.

        [1438] Rob. Torigni and Contin. Becc. as above. Chron. S.
        Albin. a. 1158 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 39). Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166.

        [1439] Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [1440] Rob. Torigni, a. 1158. Contin. Becc. a. 1158 (Delisle,
        _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. pp. 169, 170). Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 166.

The county of Nantes was in itself a very trifling addition to the
vast possessions of Henry Fitz-Empress; yet its acquisition was a
more important matter than appears at first sight. Nantes, by its
geographical position, commanded the mouth of the Loire; its political
destinies were therefore of the highest consequence to the princes
whose dominions lay along the course of that river. The carefully
planned series of advances whereby Geoffrey Greygown and Fulk the
Black had gradually turned the whole navigable extent of the Loire
into a high-way through their own territories would have been almost
useless had they not begun by securing the entrance-gate. To Henry, who
as count of Poitou had command of the opposite shore of the estuary,
there might have been less danger in the chance of hostility at Nantes;
but the place was, for another reason, of greater value to him than
it could ever have been to his ancestors. From the English Channel
to the Pyrenees he was master of the entire western half--by far the
larger half--of Gaul, with one exception: between his Norman and his
Aquitanian duchy there jutted out the Breton peninsula. Britanny
must have been in Henry’s eyes something like what Tours had been in
those of Geoffrey Martel:--a perpetual temptation to his ambition, a
fragment of alien ground which must have seemed to him destined almost
by the fitness of things to become absorbed sooner or later into
the surrounding mass from which it stood out in a sort of unnatural
isolation. By his acquisition of Nantes he had gained a footing in
the Breton duchy, somewhat as his forefathers had gained one in the
city of Tours by their canonry at S. Martin’s; and as a grant of
investiture from the French king had served as the final stepping-stone
to Martel’s great conquest, so the privilege of arbitration conferred
by Louis upon Henry might pave the way for more direct intervention
in Britanny. The meaning of this autumn’s work is well summed up by
Gervase of Canterbury: “This was Henry’s first step towards subduing
the Bretons.”[1441] A week before the assembly at Avranches his fourth
son had been born;[1442] the infant was baptized by the name of
Geoffrey. It would indeed have been strange if the name made famous by
Henry’s own father, as well as by so many of the earlier members of the
family, had been allowed to drop out of use in the next generation. Yet
by the light of after-events one may suspect that its revival at this
particular moment had a special reference to the memory of the lately
deceased Count Geoffrey of Nantes, and that the new-born child’s future
destiny as duke of Britanny was already foreshadowed, however vaguely,
in his father’s dreams.

        [1441] “Hic fuit primus ingressus ejus super Britones
        edomandos.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166.

        [1442] On September 23; Rob. Torigni, a. 1158.

The year closed amid general tranquillity. So cordial was, or seemed to
be, the alliance of the two kings, that they planned a joint crusade
against the Moors in Spain, and wrote to ask the Pope’s blessing upon
their undertaking;[1443] and a long-standing dispute between Henry and
Theobald of Blois was settled before Christmas by the mediation of
Louis.[1444] In England the year is marked by nothing more important
than a new issue of coinage.[1445] The administration of the country
was directed by the two justiciars, assisted, formally at least, by the
queen,[1446] until shortly before Christmas, when she went over sea
to keep the feast with her husband at Cherbourg.[1447] Unhappily, the
beginnings of strife followed in her train.

        [1443] Letter of Adrian IV.--date, February 19 [1159]--in
        Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv. pp. 590, 591.

        [1444] Rob. Torigni, a. 1158. The quarrel had originated in
        Henry’s refusal, when he succeeded his father as count of
        Anjou, to do homage for Touraine. To this was added a dispute
        about Fréteval and Amboise. See details in _Gesta Ambaz.
        Domin._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 216, 222, 223.

        [1445] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 302. There are some
        references to this new coinage in the Pipe Roll of the year (4
        Hen. II., Hunter, pp. 114, 181). Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i.
        p. 215, misdates it 1156.

        [1446] Richard de Lucy and Eleanor seem to share the regency
        during her stay in England; see Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp.
        42, 43, and Palgrave, _Eng. Commonwealth_, vol. ii. pp. v, vi.
        After her departure her place seems to be taken by Robert of
        Leicester.

        [1447] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

The duchy of Aquitaine, or Guyenne, as held by Eleanor’s predecessors,
consisted, roughly speaking, of the territory between the Loire and
the Garonne. More exactly, it was bounded on the north by Anjou and
Touraine, on the east by Berry and Auvergne, on the south-east by the
Quercy or county of Cahors, and on the south-west by Gascony, which had
been united with it for the last hundred years. The old Karolingian
kingdom of Aquitania had been of far greater extent; it had in fact
included the whole country between the Loire, the Pyrenees, the Rhône
and the ocean. Over all this vast territory the counts of Poitou
asserted a theoretical claim of overlordship by virtue of their ducal
title; they had, however, a formidable rival in the house of the counts
of Toulouse. These represented an earlier line of dukes of Aquitaine,
successors of the dukes of Gothia or Septimania, under whom the capital
of southern Gaul had been not Poitiers but Toulouse, Poitou itself
counting as a mere underfief. In the latter half of the tenth century
these dukes of Gothia or _Aquitania Prima_, as the Latin chroniclers
sometimes called them from the old Roman name of their country, had
seen their ducal title transferred to the Poitevin lords of _Aquitania
Secunda_--the dukes of Aquitaine with whom we have had to deal. But
the Poitevin overlordship was never fully acknowledged by the house of
Toulouse; and this latter in the course of the following century again
rose to great importance and distinction, which reached its height
in the person of Count Raymond IV., better known as Raymond of St.
Gilles, from the name of the little county which had been his earliest
possession. From that small centre his rule gradually spread over the
whole territory of the ancient dukes of Septimania. In the year of
the Norman conquest of England Rouergue, which was held by a younger
branch of the house of Toulouse, lapsed to the elder line; in the year
after the Conqueror’s death Raymond came into possession of Toulouse
itself; in 1094 he became, in right of his wife, owner of half the
Burgundian county of Provence. His territorial influence was doubled
by that of his personal fame; he was one of the chief heroes of the
first Crusade; and when he died in 1105 he left to his son Bertrand,
over and above his Aquitanian heritage, the Syrian county of Tripoli.
On Bertrand’s death in 1112 these possessions were divided, his son
Pontius succeeding him as count of Tripoli, and surrendering his claims
upon Toulouse to his uncle Alfonso Jordan, a younger son of Raymond
of St. Gilles.[1448] Those claims, however, were disputed. Raymond’s
elder brother, Count William IV., had left an only daughter who, after
a childless marriage with King Sancho Ramirez of Aragon,[1449] became
the wife of Count William VIII. of Poitou.[1450] From that time forth
it became a moot point whether the lord of St. Gilles or the lord of
Poitiers was the rightful count of Toulouse. Raymond unquestionably
bore the title and exercised its functions for some six years before
his brother’s death and his niece’s second marriage,[1451] and one
historian asserts that he had acquired the county by purchase from his
brother.[1452] Another story relates that William of Poitou having
married the heiress of Toulouse after her father’s death,[1453]
immediately entered upon her inheritance, but afterwards pledged
it to Raymond in order to raise money for the Crusade.[1454] The
reckless, spendthrift duke, whose whole energies were given up to
verse-making, discreditable adventures, and either defying or eluding
the ecclesiastical authorities who vainly strove to check the scandals
of his life, never found means to redeem his pledge; neither did his
son William IX.,[1455] although it appears that he did at some time or
other contrive to obtain possession of Toulouse.[1456] On his death,
however, it immediately passed back into the hands of Alfonso Jordan.

        [1448] On the counts of Toulouse and St. Gilles see Vic and
        Vaissète, _Hist. du Languedoc_ (new ed., 1872), vol. iii.

        [1449] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 48 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. p. 304).

        [1450] _Ibid._ Rob. Torigni, a. 1159. This second marriage took
        place in 1094: MS. Chron. quoted by Besly, _Comtes de Poitou,
        preuves_, p. 408.

        [1451] Vic and Vaissète, _Hist. du Languedoc_, vol. iii. pp.
        452, 453.

        [1452] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iv. c. 388 (Hardy, p. 603).

        [1453] William IV. of Toulouse died in 1093. Vic and Vaissète,
        _Hist. du Languedoc_, vol. iii. p. 465.

        [1454] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10
        (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 121, 122). It will be remembered that
        Duke William sought to pledge his own Poitou to the Red King
        for the same purpose.

        [1455] Will. Newb. as above (p. 122).

        [1456] Geoff. Vigeois, as above, describes Eleanor’s father as
        “Guillelmus dux Aquitaniæ filius Guillermi et filiæ comitis
        Tholosani, qui jure avi sui urbem Tholosanam possedit.” Besly
        (_Comtes de Poitou_, p. 132) has an account of the matter, but
        I cannot find his authorities.

With all these shiftings and changes of ownership the kings of France
had never tried to interfere. Southern Gaul--“Aquitaine” in the wider
sense--was a land whose internal concerns they found it wise to leave
as far as possible untouched. It was, even yet, a land wholly distinct
from the northern realm whose sovereign was its nominal overlord.
The geographical barrier formed by the river Loire had indeed been
long ago passed over, if not exactly by the French kings, at least
by the Angevin counts. But a wider and deeper gulf than the blue
stream of Loire stood fixed between France and Aquitaine. They were
peopled by different races, they belonged to different worlds. There
was little community of blood, there was less community of speech,
thought and temper, of social habits or political traditions, between
the Teutonized Celt of the north and the southern Celt who had been
moulded by the influences of the Roman, the Goth and the Saracen.
Steeped in memories of the Roman Empire in its palmiest days, and
of the Gothic kingdom of Toulouse which had inherited so large a
share of its power, its culture and its glory, Aquitania had never
amalgamated either with the Teutonic empire of the Karolings or with
the French kingdom of their Parisian supplanters. Her princes were
nominal feudataries of both; but, save in a few exceptional cases, the
personal and political relations between the northern lord paramount
and his southern vassals began and ended with the formal ceremonies of
investiture and homage. In the struggle of Anjou and Blois for command
over the policy of the Crown, in the struggle of the Crown itself to
maintain its independence and to hold the balance between Anjou and
Normandy, the Aquitanian princes took no part; the balance of powers
in northern Gaul was nothing to them; neither party ever seriously
attempted to enroll them as allies; both seem to have considered them,
as they considered themselves, totally unconcerned in the matter.
Whatever external connexions and alliances they cultivated were in
quite another direction--in the Burgundian provinces which lay around
the mouth of the Rhône and the western foot of the Alps, and on the
debateable ground of the Spanish March, the county of Barcelona, which
formed a link between Gascony and Aragon. The marriage of Louis and
Eleanor, however, altered the political position of Aquitaine with
respect not only to the French Crown but to the world at large. She was
suddenly dragged out of her isolation and brought into contact with the
general political system of northern Europe, somewhat as England had
been by its association with Normandy. The union of the king and the
duchess was indeed dissolved before its full consequences had time to
work themselves out. Its first and most obvious result was a change in
the attitude of the Crown towards the internal concerns of Aquitaine.
Whether the count of Toulouse paid homage to the count of Poitou, or
both alike paid it immediately to the Crown--whether Toulouse and
Poitiers were in the same or in different hands--mattered little or
nothing to the earlier kings whose practical power over either fief was
all bound up in the mere formal grant of investiture. But to Eleanor’s
husband such questions wore a very different aspect. To him who was in
his own person duke of Aquitaine as well as its overlord, they were
matters of direct personal concern; the interests of the house of
Poitou were identified with those of the house of France. For his own
sake and for the sake of his posterity which he naturally hoped would
succeed him in both kingdom and duchy, it was of the utmost importance
that Louis should strive to make good every jot and tittle of the
Poitevin claims throughout southern Gaul.

Four years after his marriage, therefore, Louis summoned his host
for an expedition against the count of Toulouse.[1457] It tells
very strongly against the justice of the Poitevin claims in that
quarter that one of his best advisers--Theobald of Blois--so greatly
disapproved of the enterprize that he refused to take any part in it
at all;[1458] and it may be that his refusal led to its abandonment,
for we have no record of its issue, beyond the fact that Alfonso Jordan
kept Toulouse for the rest of his life, and dying in 1148 was succeeded
without disturbance by his son Raymond V.[1459] Four years later the
duchy of Aquitaine passed with Eleanor’s hand from Louis VII. to Henry
Fitz-Empress. Once again the king of France became its overlord and
nothing more:--his chance of enforcing his supremacy fainter than ever,
yet his need to enforce it greater than ever, since Aquitaine, far from
sinking back into her old isolation, was now linked together with Anjou
and Normandy in a chain which encircled his own royal domain as with a
girdle of iron. In these circumstances the obvious policy of France and
Toulouse was a mutual alliance which might enable them both to stand
against the power of Henry. It was cemented in 1154 by the marriage
of Raymond V. with Constance, widow of Eustace of Blois and sister
of Louis VII.[1460] Four more years passed away; Henry’s energies
were still tasked to the uttermost by more important work than the
prosecution of a doubtful claim of his wife against the brother-in-law
of her overlord and former husband. Whether the suggestion at last came
from Eleanor herself, during the Christmas-tide of 1158, we cannot
tell; we only know that early in 1159 Henry determined to undertake the
recovery of Toulouse.

        [1457] At Midsummer 1141. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
        Scriptt._), p. 923.

        [1458] _Alterius Roberti App. ad Sigebertum_, _Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. xiii. p. 331.

        [1459] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

        [1460] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 122).

A summons to Raymond to give back the county to its heiress was of
course met with a refusal.[1461] It was a mere formal preliminary,
and so was also a conference between Henry and Louis at Tours, where
they discussed the matter and failed to agree upon it,[1462] but
parted, it seems, without coming to any actual breach; Henry indeed
was evidently left under the impression that his undertaking would
meet with no opposition on the part of France.[1463] Early in Lent he
went to Poitiers and there held council with the barons of Aquitaine.
The upshot of their deliberations was an order for his forces to meet
him at Poitiers on Midsummer-day, ready to march against the count of
Toulouse.[1464]

        [1461] _Ib._ (p. 123).

        [1462] Contin. Becc. a. 1159 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii.
        p. 171).

        [1463] “Inde graves inimicitiæ inter ipsum” [sc. Ludovicum]
        “et regem Anglorum ortæ sunt, cum videret sibi regem Francorum
        nocere, de cujus auxilio plurimum confidebat” remarks Rob.
        Torigni on Louis’s arrival at Toulouse (a. 1159).

        [1464] Contin. Becc. a. 1159 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii.
        pp. 171, 172).

A question now arose of what those forces were to consist. The feudal
levies of Eleanor’s duchy might fairly be called upon to fight for
the supposed rights of their mistress; those of Anjou and Maine
might perhaps be expected to do as much for the aggrandizement of
their count; but to demand the services of the Norman knighthood
for an obscure dynastic quarrel in southern Gaul--still more, to
drag the English tenants-in-chivalry across sea and land for such a
purpose--would have been both unjust and impolitic, if not absolutely
impracticable. On the other hand, the knights of Aquitaine were of
all Henry’s feudal troops those on whom he could least depend; and
they would be moreover, even with the addition of those whom he could
muster in his paternal dominions, quite insufficient for an expedition
which was certain to require a large and powerful host, and whose
duration it was impossible to calculate. In these circumstances the
expedient which had been tentatively and in part adopted three years
before was repeated, and its application this time was sweeping and
universal. The king gave out that in consideration of the length and
hardship of the way which lay before him, and desiring to spare the
country-knights, citizens and yeomen, he would receive instead of
their personal services a certain sum to be levied as he saw fit upon
every knight’s fee in Normandy and his other territories.[1465] This
impost, which afterwards came to be known in English history as the
“Great Scutage,” was, as regards England, the most important matter
connected with the war of Toulouse. It marks a turning-point in the
history of military tenure. It broke down the old exemption of “fiefs
of the hauberk” from pecuniary taxation, in such a way as to make the
encroachment upon their privilege assume the shape of a favour. To
the bulk of the English knighthood the boon was a real one; military
service beyond sea was a burthen from which they would be only too glad
to purchase their release; the experiment, so far as it concerned them,
succeeded perfectly, and made a precedent which was steadily followed
in after-years. From that time forth the word “scutage” acquired
its recognized meaning of a sum paid to the Crown in commutation of
personal attendance in the host; and the specially cherished privilege
of the tenants-in-chivalry came to be not as formerly exemption from
money-payment on their demesne lands, but, by virtue of their payment,
exemption from service beyond sea.

        [1465] “Rex igitur Henricus ... considerans longitudinem
        et difficultatem viæ, nolens vexare agrarios milites nec
        burgensium nec rusticorum multitudinem, sumptis LX. solidis
        Andegavensium in Normanniâ de feudo uniuscujusque loricæ et de
        reliquis omnibus tam in Normanniâ quam in Angliâ, sive etiam
        aliis terris suis, secundum hoc quod ei visum fuit,” etc. Rob.
        Torigni, a. 1159.

The sums thus raised in 1159 are however entered in the Pipe Roll of
the year not as scutage but under the vaguer and more comprehensive
title of _donum_. The reason doubtless is that they were assessed, as
the historians tell us and as the roll itself shews, not only upon
those estates from which services of the shield were explicitly due,
but also upon all lands held in chief of the Crown, and all Church
lands without distinction of tenure:[1466]--the basis of assessment in
all cases being the knight’s fee, in its secondary sense of a parcel of
land worth twenty pounds a year. Whatever the laity might think of this
arrangement, the indignation of the clergy was bitter and deep. The
wrong inflicted on them by the scutage of 1156 was as nothing compared
with this, which set at naught all ancient precedents of ecclesiastical
immunity, and actually wrung from the Church lands even more than from
the lay fiefs.[1467] Their wrath however was not directed solely or
even chiefly against the king. A large share of the blame was laid at
the chancellor’s door; for the scheme had his active support, if it was
not actually of his contriving. Its effects on English constitutional
developement were for later generations to trace; the men of the
time saw, or thought they saw, its disastrous consequences in the
after-lives of its originators. In the hour of Thomas’s agony Gilbert
Foliot raked up as one of the heaviest charges against him the story of
the “sword which his hand had plunged into the bosom of his mother the
Church, when he spoiled her of so many thousand marks for the army of
Toulouse”;[1468] and his own best and wisest friend, John of Salisbury,
who had excused the scutage of 1156, sorrowfully avowed his belief that
the scutage of 1159 was the beginning of all Henry’s misdoings against
the Church, and that the chancellor’s share in it was the fatal sin
which the primate had to expiate so bitterly.[1469]

        [1466] “Secundum ejus scutagium assisum pro eodem exercitu
        Walliæ” [this writer assigns a like object to the scutage of
        1156, but in both cases he is contradicted by chronology and
        contemporary evidence] “reperies in rotulo anni quinti regis
        ejusdem inferius. Fuitque assisum ad duas marcas pro quolibet
        feodo, non solum super prælatos, verum tam super ipsos quam
        super milites suos, secundum numerum feodorum, qui tenuerunt
        de rege in capite; necnon et super residuos milites singulorum
        comitatuum in communi.” [Cf. Rob. Torigni as quoted above, p.
        459, note 2.] “Intitulaturque illud scutagium, _De Dono_. Eâ
        quidem, ut credo, ratione, quod non solum prælati qui tenentur
        ad servicia militaria sed etiam alii, abbates utpote de Bello
        et de Salopesbirie et alii, tunc temporis dederunt auxilium.”
        Alex. Swereford (_Liber Ruber Scacc._) quoted in Madox, _Hist.
        Exchequer_, vol. i. p. 626. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
        167, calls it a scutage: “Scotagium sive scuagium de Angliâ
        accepit.” The references to it are in almost every page of
        the Pipe Roll 5 Hen. II. (Pipe Roll Soc.); the most important
        are collected by Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp. 626, 627.
        There are also a few notices in the next year; Pipe Roll 6
        Hen. II. (Pipe Roll Soc.), pp. 3, 6, 24, 29, 30, 32, 51. There
        are a few entries of “scutage” by that name--from the abbot
        of Westminster (Pipe Roll 5 Hen. II., pp. 6, 24, 27; 6 Hen.
        II., pp. 11, 24, 28), the bishop of Worcester (5 Hen. II.,
        p. 24), William of Cardiff (_ibid._), the abbot of Evesham
        (_ib._ p. 25), and the earl of Warwick (_ib._ p. 26). Some of
        these pay “donum” as well. In reference to this matter some
        of the Northumbrian tenants-in-chivalry are designated by a
        title which is somewhat startling in the middle of the twelfth
        century: the sheriff of Northumberland renders an account “de
        dono militum et _tainorum_” (Pipe Roll 5 Hen. II., p. 14). What
        was the distinction between them?

The sum charged on the knight’s fee in Normandy was sixty shillings
Angevin;[1470] in England it seems to have been two marks.[1471]
The proceeds, with those of a similar tax levied upon Henry’s
other dominions,[1472] amounted to some hundred and eighty
thousand pounds,[1473] with which he hired an immense force of
mercenaries.[1474] But his host did not consist of these alone. The
great barons of Normandy and England, no less than those of Anjou,
Aquitaine and Gascony, were eager to display their prowess under
the leadership of such a mighty king. The muster at Poitiers was
a brilliant gathering of Henry’s court, headed by the chancellor
with a picked band of seven hundred knights of his own personal
following,[1475] and by the first vassal of the English Crown, King
Malcolm of Scotland,[1476] who came, it seems, to win the spurs which
his cousin had refused to grant him twelve months ago, when they met
at Carlisle just before Henry left England in June 1158.[1477] The
other vassal state was represented by an unnamed Welsh prince;[1478]
and the host was further reinforced by several important allies. One
of these was Raymond Trencavel, viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne,
a baron whom the count of Toulouse had despoiled, and who gladly
seized the opportunity of vengeance.[1479] Another was William of
Montpellier.[1480] The most valuable of all was the count of Barcelona,
a potentate who ranked on an equality with kings.[1481] His county
of Barcelona was simply the province which in Karolingian times had
been known as the Spanish March--a strip of land with the Pyrenees
for its backbone, which lay between Toulouse, Aragon, Gascony and
the Mediterranean sea. It was a fief of the West-Frankish realm; but
the facilities which every marchland in some degree possesses for
attaching itself to whichever neighbour it may prefer, and so holding
the balance between them as to keep itself virtually independent
of them all, were specially great in the case of the Spanish March,
whose rulers, as masters of the eastern passes of the Pyrenees, held
the keys of both Gaul and Spain. During the last half-century they
had, like the lords of another marchland, enormously strengthened
their position by three politic marriages. Dulcia of Gévaudan, the
wife of Raymond-Berengar III. of Barcelona, was heiress not only to
her father’s county of Gévaudan, but also, through her mother, to the
southern half of Provence, whose northern half fell to the share of
Raymond of St.-Gilles. Her dower-lands were settled upon her younger
son. He, in his turn, married an heiress, Beatrice of Melgueil, whose
county lay between Gévaudan and the sea; and the dominions of the
house of St.-Gilles were thus completely cut in twain, and their
eastern half surrounded on two sides, by the territories of his son,
the present count of Provence, Gévaudan and Melgueil.[1482] The elder
son of Dulcia, having succeeded his father as Count Raymond-Berengar
IV. of Barcelona, was chosen by the nobles of Aragon to wed their
youthful queen Petronilla, the only child of King Ramirez the Monk. He
had thus all the power of Aragon at his command, although, clinging
with a generous pride to the old title which had come down to him from
his fathers, he refused to share his wife’s crown, declaring that the
count of Barcelona had no equal in his own degree, and that he would
rather be first among counts than last among kings.[1483] A man with
such a spirit, added to such territorial advantages, was an ally to be
eagerly sought after and carefully secured. Henry therefore invited him
to a meeting at Blaye in Gascony, and secured his co-operation against
Toulouse on the understanding that the infant daughter of Raymond
and Petronilla should in due time be married to Henry’s son Richard,
and that the duchy of Aquitaine should then be ceded to the young
couple.[1484]

        [1467] Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxlv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 223;
        Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. Ep. cxciv., p. 378).

        [1468] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxciv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 269;
        Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. Ep. ccxxv., p. 525).

        [1469] Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxlv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 223, 224).

        [1470] See above, p. 459, note 2{1465}.

        [1471] So says Alex. Swereford. See above, p. 460 note{1466}.

        [1472] “De aliis vero terris sibi subjectis inauditam similiter
        censûs fecit exactionem.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167.
        Cf. above, p. 459, note 2{1465}.

        [1473] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167. He makes this to
        be the proceeds of the scutage in England alone, but see Bishop
        Stubbs’s explanation, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 457, note 4,
        and his remarks in the preface to _Gesta Hen. Reg._ (“Benedict
        of Peterborough”), vol. ii. pp. xciv–xcvi.

        [1474] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

        [1475] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        33.

        [1476] Gerv. Cant. as above. Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

        [1477] Chron. Mailros, a. 1158.

        [1478] “Quidam rex Gualiæ.” Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [1479] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 125). He
        miscalls him _William_ Trencavel.

        [1480] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

        [1481] “Vir magnus et potens, nec infra reges consistens.”
        Will. Newb. as above (p. 123).

        [1482] On these marriages, etc., see Vic and Vaissète, _Hist.
        du Languedoc_, vol. iii.

        [1483] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. pp.
        123–125). Raymond’s speech, and the whole story of Raymond,
        Ramirez and Petronilla, as given in this chapter, form a
        charming romance, whose main facts are fully borne out by the
        more prosaic version of Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

        [1484] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

A last attempt to avert the coming struggle was made early in June;
the two kings met near the Norman border, but again without any
result.[1485] Immediately after midsummer, therefore, Henry and his
host set out from Poitiers and marched down to Périgueux. There, in
“the Bishop’s Meadow,” Henry knighted his Scottish cousin, and Malcolm
in his turn bestowed the same honour upon thirty noble youths of his
suite.[1486] The expedition then advanced straight into the enemy’s
country. The first place taken was Cahors; its dependent territory was
speedily overrun;[1487] and while in the south Raymond Trencavel was
winning back the castles of which the other Raymond had despoiled him,
Henry led his main force towards the city of Toulouse itself.[1488]
Count and people saw the net closing round them; they had seen it
drawing near for months past, and one and all--bishop, nobles and
citizens--had been writing passionate appeals to the king of France,
imploring him, if not for the love of his sister, at least for the
honour of his crown, to come and save one of its fairest jewels from
the greedy grasp of the Angevin.[1489] Louis wavered till it was all
but too late; he was evidently, and naturally, most unwilling to
quarrel with the king of England. He began to move southward, but
apparently without any definite aim; and it was not till after another
fruitless conference with Henry in the beginning of July[1490] that
he at last, for very shame, answered his brother-in-law’s appeal by
throwing himself into Toulouse almost alone, as if to encourage its
defenders by his presence, but without giving them any substantial
aid.[1491] Perhaps he foresaw the result. Henry, on the point of
laying siege to the city, paused when he heard that his overlord was
within it. Dread of Louis’s military capacity he could have none;
personal reverence for him he could have just as little. But he
reverenced in a fellow-king the dignity of kingship; he reverenced in
his own overlord the right to that feudal obedience which he exacted
from his own vassals. He took counsel with his barons; they agreed
with him that the siege should be postponed till Louis was out of the
city--a decision which was equivalent to giving it up altogether.[1492]
The soldiers grumbled loudly, and the chancellor loudest of all. Thomas
had now completely “put off the deacon,” and flung himself with all
his might into the pursuit of arms. His knights were the flower of the
host, foremost in every fight, the bravest of the brave; and the life
and soul of all their valour was the chancellor himself.[1493] The
prospect of retreat filled him with dismay. He protested that Louis had
forfeited his claim to Henry’s obedience by breaking his compact with
him and joining his enemies, and he entreated his master to seize the
opportunity of capturing Toulouse, city, count, king and all, before
reinforcements could arrive.[1494] Henry however turned a deaf ear to
his impetuous friend. Accompanied by the king of Scots and all his
host, he retreated towards his own dominions just as a body of French
troops were entering Toulouse.[1495]

        [1485] Contin. Becc. a. 1159 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii.
        p. 172).

        [1486] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 58 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. p. 310). The Chron. Mailros, a. 1159, says Malcolm was
        knighted at Tours on the way back from Toulouse; Geoff. Vigeois
        implies that it was on the way out.

        [1487] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.),
        p. 34. Rob. Torigni, a. 1159. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10
        (Howlett, vol. i. p. 126), who however has got the sequence of
        events wrong.

        [1488] Will. Newb. as above.

        [1489] Letters of Peter archbishop of Narbonne:--Hermengard
        viscountess of Narbonne:--“commune consilium urbis Tolosæ et
        suburbii”--Epp. xxxiii., xxxiv., ccccxiv., Duchesne, _Hist.
        Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv. pp. 574, 575, 713. The archbishop
        curiously describes the threatening invader as “Dux Normanniæ.”
        The citizens make a pitiful appeal; the viscountess makes a
        spirited one, and wishes the king “Karoli regis magnanimitatem.”

        [1490] Contin. Becc. a. 1159 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii.
        pp. 173, 174).

        [1491] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        33. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 125).

        [1492] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        33, Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 58 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol.
        ii. p. 310), Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p.
        125), the _Draco Norm._, l. i. c. 12, vv. 437–464 (_ib._ vol.
        ii. pp. 608, 609), and R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303,
        attribute the retreat to Henry’s reverence for his overlord;
        Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167, seems to look upon it as
        a measure of necessity; but considering that Louis had brought
        almost nothing but himself to Raymond’s aid, one does not see
        what necessity there could be in the case. The _Draco_ alone
        mentions Henry’s consultation with the barons--unless there
        is some allusion to it in the words of Will. Fitz-Steph., who
        describes Henry as “vanâ superstitione et reverentiâ tentus
        consilio aliorum.”

        [1493] The English archdeacon’s unclerical doings in this war
        were however quite eclipsed by those of the archbishop of
        Bordeaux. See a letter from the citizens of Toulouse to King
        Louis; Ep. ccccxxv., Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol.
        iv. p. 718.

        [1494] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        34.

        [1495] _Ibid._

He had, however, conquered the greater part of the county,[1496]
and had no intention of abandoning his conquests; but the task of
protecting them against Raymond and Louis together, without the
support of Henry’s own presence, was a responsibility which all his
great barons declined. Two faithful ministers accepted the duty:
Thomas the chancellor and Henry of Essex the constable.[1497] Thomas
fixed his head-quarters at Cahors;[1498] thence, with the constable’s
aid, he undertook to hold the country by means of his own personal
followers,[1499] backed by Raymond of Barcelona, Trencavel, and William
of Montpellier.[1500] He ruled with a high hand, putting down by
proscription and even with the sword every attempt at a rising against
Henry’s authority storming towns and burning manors without mercy in
his master’s service;[1501] in helm and hauberk he rode forth at the
head of his troops to the capture of three castles which had hitherto
been considered impregnable.[1502] Henry’s “superstition” (as it was
called by a follower of Thomas)[1503] about bearing arms against
his overlord applied only to a personal encounter in circumstances
of special delicacy; he had no scruples in making war upon Louis
indirectly, as he had done more than once before, and was now doing
not only through Thomas but also at the opposite end of France. The
English and Scottish kings had retired from Toulouse to Limoges,
where they arrived about Michaelmas.[1504] Meanwhile Count Theobald
of Blois, now an ally of Henry, was despatched by him “to disquiet
the realm of France”--that is, doubtless, to make a diversion which
should draw off the attention of the French from Toulouse and leave a
clear field to the operations of Thomas. The French king’s brothers,
Henry, bishop of Beauvais, and Robert, count of Dreux, retaliated by
attacking the Norman frontier with fire and sword.[1505] Thomas, having
chased away the enemies across the Garonne and secured the obedience
of the conquered territory, hurried northward to join his sovereign,
whom he apparently followed into Normandy. There he undertook the
defence of the frontier. Besides his seven hundred picked knights,
he maintained at his own cost for the space of forty days twelve
hundred paid horsemen and four thousand foot in his master’s service
against the king of France on the marches between Gisors, Trie and
Courcelles; he not only headed his troops in person, but also met in
single combat a valiant French knight of Trie, Engelram by name; and
the layman went down before the lance of the warlike archdeacon, who
carried off his opponent’s destrier as the trophy of his victory.[1506]
The king himself marched into the Beauvaisis, stormed Gerberoi, and
harried the surrounding country till he gained a valuable assistant
in Count Simon of Montfort, who surrendered to him all his French
possessions, including the castles of Montfort, Rochefort and Epernon.
As these places lay directly in the way from Paris to Etampes and
Orléans, Louis found himself completely cut off from the southern part
of his domain, and was compelled to ask for a truce. It was made in
December, to last till the octave of Pentecost.[1507] Henry’s wife had
now joined him; they kept Christmas together at Falaise,[1508] and
Henry used the interval of tranquillity to make some reforms in the
Norman judicature.[1509] When the truce expired the two kings made
a treaty of peace,[1510] negotiated as usual by the indefatigable
chancellor;[1511] the betrothal of little Henry and Margaret was
confirmed, and the Vexin was settled upon the infant couple. As for the
Aquitanian quarrel, Louis formally restored to Henry all the rights
and holdings of the count of Poitou, except Toulouse itself; Henry and
Raymond making a truce for a year, during which both were to keep their
present possessions, and complete freedom of action was left to their
respective allies.[1512]

        [1496] _Ibid._ Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

        [1497] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        34.

        [1498] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

        [1499] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

        [1500] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

        [1501] E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 365. Herb.
        Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 175, 176.

        [1502] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 34.

        [1503] _Ib._ p. 33. See above, p. 465, note 1{1485}.

        [1504] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 58 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. p. 310).

        [1505] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

        [1506] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp.
        34, 35.

        [1507] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

        [1508] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

        [1509] Contin. Becc. a. 1160 (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii.
        p. 180).

        [1510] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

        [1511] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 24 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 159).

        [1512] The treaty is printed in Lyttelton’s _Hen. II._, vol.
        iv. pp. 173, 174. It has no date; we have to get that from Rob.
        Torigni--May 1160. The terms of the treaty are summarized by
        Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 218, who places it a year too
        late. He also introduces a second betrothal, between Richard
        and Adela, the second daughter of Louis and Constance. But the
        treaty printed by Lyttelton says nothing of this; and if it be
        the treaty mentioned by Rob. Torigni the clause is impossible,
        for Adela was not born till the autumn of 1160.

This imperfect settlement, as far as Toulouse was concerned, advanced
no further towards completion during the next thirteen years. Henry’s
expedition could hardly be called a success; and whatever advantage he
had gained over Raymond was dearly purchased at the cost of a quarrel
with Louis. There can be little doubt that Henry had fallen into a
trap; Louis had misled him into lighting the torch of war, and then
turned against him in such a way as to cast upon him the blame of
the subsequent conflagration. The elements of strife between the two
kings could hardly have failed to burst sooner or later into a blaze;
the question was whose hand should kindle it. In spite of Henry’s
Angevin wariness, Louis had contrived to shift upon him the fatal
responsibility; and for the rest of his life the fire went smouldering
on, breaking out at intervals in various directions, smothered now and
then for a moment, but never thoroughly quenched; consuming the plans
and hopes of its involuntary originator, while the real incendiary
sheltered himself to the last behind his mask of injured innocence.

For six months all was quiet. In October the two kings held another
meeting; the treaty was ratified, and little Henry, who had lately
come over from England with his mother, was made to do homage to Louis
for the duchy of Normandy.[1513] About the same time the queen of
France died, leaving to her husband another infant daughter.[1514]
Disappointed for the fourth time in his hopes of a son, Louis in
his impatience set decency at defiance; before Constance had been
a fortnight in her grave he married a third wife, Adela of Blois,
daughter of Theobald the Great, and sister of the two young counts who
were betrothed to the king’s own elder daughters.[1515] His subjects,
sharing his anxiety for an heir, easily forgave his unseemly haste
and welcomed the new queen, who in birth, mind and person was all
that could be desired.[1516] It would, however, have been scarcely
possible to find a choice more irritating to Henry of Anjou. On either
side of the sea, the house of Blois seemed to be always in some way
or other crossing his path; in their lives or in their deaths, they
were perpetually giving him trouble. At that very time the death of
Stephen’s last surviving son, Earl William of Warren,[1517] had led
to a quarrel between the king and his dearest friend. William was
childless, and the sole heir to his county of Boulogne was his sister
Mary, abbess of Romsey. This lady was now brought out of her convent
to be married by Papal dispensation to Matthew, second son of the
count of Flanders.[1518] The scheme, devised by King Henry,[1519] was
strongly opposed by the bridegroom’s father,[1520] and also by Henry’s
own chancellor. Thomas, somewhat unexpectedly perhaps, started up as a
vindicator of monastic discipline, remonstrated vehemently against the
marriage of a nun, and used all his influence at Rome to hinder the
dispensation; he gained, however, nothing save the enmity of Matthew,
and a foretaste of that kingly wrath[1521] which was to burst upon him
with all its fury three years later. Even without allowing for Henry’s
probable frame of mind in consequence of this affair, the French king’s
triple alliance with the hereditary rivals of the Angevin house would
naturally appear to him in the light of a provocation and a menace.
The chancellor seems to have made his peace by suggesting an answer to
it.

        [1513] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

        [1514] _Ibid._ R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303. _Hist.
        Ludov._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv.), p.
        415. Constance died on October 4; Lamb. Waterloo, _Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. xiii. p. 517.

        [1515] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303. Cf. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167, and Rob. Torigni, a. 1160. Adela was
        crowned at Paris with her husband on S. Brice’s day (November
        13); _Hist. Ludov._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol.
        iv.), p. 416.

        [1516] _Hist. Ludov._ as above.

        [1517] He died in October 1159, on the way home from Toulouse;
        Rob. Torigni, _ad ann._

        [1518] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160. Lamb. Waterloo (_Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. xiii.), p. 517. According to Matthew Paris,
        _Hist. Angl._ (Madden), vol. i. p. 314, the marriage took place
        in 1161.

        [1519] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 328.

        [1520] Lamb. Waterloo as above.

        [1521] Herb. Bosh. as above. Mat. Paris, _Hist. Angl._
        (Madden), vol. i. pp. 314, 315.

One of Henry’s great desires was to recover the Vexin, which at his
father’s suggestion he had ceded to Louis in 1151 as the price of the
investiture of Normandy. By the last treaty between the two kings it
had been settled that this territory should form the dowry of little
Margaret; her father was to retain possession of it, and to place
its chief fortresses in the custody of the Knights Templars, for the
next three years, until she should be wedded to young Henry with the
consent of Holy Church; whenever that should take place, Henry’s
father was to receive back the Vexin. In other words, the dowry was
not to be paid till the bride was married; and there was evidently a
tacit understanding, at any rate on the French side, that this was
not to be for three years at least.[1522] Later in the summer two
cardinal-legates visited France and Normandy on business connected with
a recent Papal election.[1523] Henry, apparently at the instigation
of Thomas,[1524] persuaded them to solemnize the marriage of the two
children on November 2 at Neubourg.[1525] The written conditions of
the treaty were fulfilled to the letter--the babes were wedded with
the consent of Holy Church, represented by the Pope’s own legates;
and the castles of the Vexin were at once made over to Henry by the
Templars,[1526] three of whom were present at the wedding.[1527] Louis
found himself thoroughly outwitted. His first step was to banish the
three Templars, who were cordially received by Henry;[1528] his next
was to concert with the brothers of his new queen a plan of retaliation
in Anjou. The house of Blois naturally resented a curtailment of the
possessions of the crown which they now hoped one day to see worn by
a prince of their own blood. Louis and Theobald accordingly set to
work to fortify Chaumont, a castle which Gelduin of Saumur had long
ago planted on the bank of the Loire as a special thorn in the side
of the Angevin counts. Henry flew to the spot, put king and count
to flight, besieged and took the castle of Chaumont together with
thirty-five picked knights and eighty men-at-arms whom Theobald had
sent to reinforce its garrison; he then fortified Fréteval and Amboise,
and, secure from all further molestation, went to keep Christmas with
Eleanor in his native city of Le Mans.[1529]

        [1522] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 24 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 159),
        distinctly states that the children were not to be married till
        they were of a fit age; and such was no doubt the intention of
        Louis; but it was by no means expressed in the treaty:--“Totum
        remanens Wilcassini” [_i.e._ all except three of its fiefs
        which were specially reserved to Henry] “regi Francie; hoc
        modo, quod ipse illud remanens dedit et concessit maritagium
        cum filiâ suâ filio regis Anglie habendum. Et eum unde
        seisiendum ab Assumptione B. Marie proximâ post pacem factam in
        tres annos, et si infra hunc terminum filia regis Francie filio
        regis Anglie desponsata fuerit, assensu et consensu Sancte
        Ecclesie, tunc erit rex Anglie seysitus de toto Wilcassino,
        et de castellis Wilcassini, ad opus filii sui.” Treaty in
        Lyttelton, _Hen. II._, vol. iv. p. 173. The question turned on
        the construing of “_tunc_.” Louis intended it to mean “then,
        when the three years are expired, if the children shall be
        wedded”; Henry and his friends the Templars made it mean “then,
        when the children are wedded, whether the three years are
        expired or not.”

        [1523] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxlviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 197). Of
        their business we shall see more later.

        [1524] This must surely be the meaning of Herb. Bosh.
        (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 175: “Quam industrie
        munitiones quinque munitissimas, in Franciæ et Normanniæ sitas
        confinio, domino suo regi, ad cujus tamen jus ab antiquo
        spectare dignoscebantur, a rege Francorum per matrimonium, sine
        ferro, sine gladio, absque lanceâ, absque pugnâ, in omni regum
        dilectione et pace revocaverit, Gizortium scilicet, castrum
        munitissimum, et alia quatuor.” Cf. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson),
        vol. i. p. 57, which seems however to refer rather to the
        drawing-up of the treaty.

        [1525] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 304. Cf. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 168, Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 218,
        and Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

        [1526] Rog. Howden and Rob. Torigni, as above. Will. Newb., l.
        ii. c. 24 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 159).

        [1527] Roger of Pirou, Tostig of S. Omer and Richard of
        Hastings; Rog. Howden as above.

        [1528] _Ibid._

        [1529] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

A year of peace followed: Henry spent the greater part of it in
Normandy, garrisoning the castles of the duchy, strengthening its
newly-recovered border-fortresses, providing for the restoration of the
old royal strongholds and the erection of new ones in all parts of his
dominions, and superintending the repair of his palace at Rouen, the
making of a park at Quévilly, and the foundation of an hospital for
lepers at Caen.[1530] The chancellor was still at his side, and had
lately, as a crowning mark of his confidence, been intrusted with the
entire charge of his eldest son. Thomas received the child into his own
household, to educate him with the other boys of noble birth who came
to learn courtly manners and knightly prowess in that excellent school;
he playfully called him his adoptive son, and treated him as such in
every respect.[1531] Little Henry was now in his seventh year, and his
father was already anxious to secure his succession to the throne. The
conditional homage which he had received as an infant was, as Henry
knew by personal experience, a very insufficient security. Indeed, the
results of every attempt to regulate the descent of the crown since
the Norman conquest tended to prove that the succession of the heir
could be really secured by nothing short of his actual recognition and
coronation as king during his father’s life-time. This was now becoming
an established practice in France and Germany. In England, where the
older constitutional theory of national election to the throne had
never died out, such a step had never been attempted but once; and that
attempt, made by Stephen in behalf of his son Eustace, had ended in
signal failure. Discouraging as the precedent was, however, Henry had
made up his mind to follow it; and in the spring of 1162 he sent his
boy over sea and called upon the barons of England to do him homage and
fealty, as a preliminary to his coronation as king.[1532]

        [1530] _Ibid._ a. 1161.

        [1531] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        22. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 176, 177.

        [1532] E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 366. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol.
        iv.), p. 13.

A matter so important and so delicate could be intrusted to no one but
the chancellor. He managed it, like everything else that he took in
hand, with a calm facility which astonished every one. He brought the
child to England, presented him to the bishops and barons of the realm
in a great council summoned for the purpose,[1533] knelt at his feet
and swore to be his faithful subject in all things, reserving only the
fealty due to the elder king so long as he lived and reigned;[1534] the
whole assembly followed his example, and thus a measure which it was
believed that Henry’s personal presence would hardly have availed to
carry through without disturbance was accomplished at once and without
a word of protest,[1535] save from the little king himself, who with
childish imperiousness, it is said, refused to admit any reservation
in the oath of his adoptive father.[1536] Henry probably intended that
the boy’s recognition as heir to the crown should be speedily followed
by his coronation.[1537] This, however, was a rite which could only be
performed by the primate of all England; and the chair of S. Augustine
was vacant. Once again it was to Thomas that Henry looked for aid;
but this time he looked in vain. Thomas had done his last act in the
service of his royal friend. The year which had passed away since
Archbishop Theobald’s death had been, on both sides of the sea, a year
of almost ominous tranquillity. It was in truth the forerunner of a
storm which was to shatter Henry’s peace and to cost Thomas his life.

        [1533] Anon. I. as above. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 306.

        [1534] R. Diceto as above.

        [1535] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 13.

        [1536] Mat. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ (Madden), vol. i. p. 316.

        [1537] Such an intention is distinctly stated by E. Grim
        (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 366: ... “filio suo, jam
        tunc coronando in regem.”



CHAPTER XI.

THE LAST YEARS OF ARCHBISHOP THEOBALD.

1156–1161.


All Henry’s endeavours for the material and political revival of
his kingdom had been regulated thus far by one simple, definite
principle:--the restoration of the state of things which had existed
under his grandfather. In his own eyes and in those of his subjects the
duty which lay before him at his accession, and which he had faithfully
and successfully fulfilled, was to take up the work of government and
administration not at the point where he found it, but at the point
where it had been left by Henry I. and Roger of Salisbury: to pull
down and sweep away all the innovations and irregularities with which
their work had been overlaid during the last nineteen years, and bring
the old foundations to light once more, that they might receive a
legitimate superstructure planned upon their own lines and built upon
their own principles. In law, in finance, in general administration,
there was one universal standard of reference:--“the time of my
grandfather King Henry.”

But there was one side of the national revival, and that the most
important of all, to which this standard could not apply. The religious
and intellectual movement which had begun under Henry I., far from
coming to a standstill at his death, had gone on gathering energy and
strength during the years of anarchy till it had become the one truly
living power in the land, the power which in the end placed Henry II.
on his throne. It looked to find in him a friend, a fellow-worker,
a protector perhaps; but it had no need to go back to a stage which
it had long since overpassed and make a new departure thence under
the guidance of a king who was almost its own creation. At the very
moment of Henry’s accession, the hopes of the English Church were
raised to their highest pitch by the elevation of an Englishman to the
Papal chair. Nicolas Breakspear was the only man of English birth who
ever attained that lofty seat; and the adventures which brought him
thither, so far as they can be made out from two somewhat contradictory
accounts, form a romantic chapter in the clerical history of the time.
Nicolas was the son of a poor English clerk[1538] at Langley, a little
township belonging to the abbey of S. Alban’s.[1539] The father retired
into the abbey,[1540] leaving his boy, according to one version of the
story, too poor to go to school and too young and ignorant to earn his
bread; he therefore came every day to get a dole at the abbey-gate,
till his father grew ashamed and bade him come no more; whereupon
the lad, “blushing either to dig or to beg in his own country,” made
his way across the sea.[1541] Another version asserts that Nicolas,
being “a youth of graceful appearance, but somewhat lacking in clerkly
acquirements,” sued to the abbot of S. Alban’s for admission as a
monk; the abbot examined him, found him insufficiently instructed, and
dismissed him with a gentle admonition: “Wait awhile, my son, and go
to school that you may become better fitted for the cloister.”[1542]
Whether stung by the abbot’s hint or by his father’s reproofs, young
Nicolas found his way to Paris and into its schools, where he worked
so hard that he out-did all his fellow-students.[1543] But the life
there wearied him as it had wearied Thomas Becket; he rambled on
across Gaul into Provence, and there found hospitality in the Austin
priory of S. Rufus. His graceful figure, pleasant face, sensible talk
and obliging temper so charmed the brotherhood that they grew eager
to keep him in their midst,[1544] and on their persuasion he joined
the order.[1545] It seems that he was even made superior of the house,
but the canons afterwards regretted having set a stranger to rule over
them, and after persecuting him in various ways appealed to the Pope to
get rid of him. The Pope--Eugene III.--at first refused to hear them;
but on second consideration he decided to give them over to their own
evil devices and offer their rejected superior a more agreeable post
in his own court.[1546] Nicolas, who had already twice visited Rome,
proceeded thither a third time and was made cardinal[1547] and bishop
of Albano.[1548] Shortly afterwards he was appointed legate to Norway
and Denmark, an office which he filled with prudence and energy during
some years.[1549] Returning to Rome about 1150, he apparently acted as
secretary to Eugene III. until the latter’s death in July 1153.[1550]
The next Pope, Anastasius III., reigned only sixteen months, and dying
on December 2, 1154, was succeeded by the bishop of Albano, who took
the name of Adrian IV.[1551]

        [1538] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 6 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 109).

        [1539] _Gesta Abbat. S. Albani_ (Riley), vol. i. p. 112.

        [1540] Will. Newb. as above. Probably he separated from his
        wife in consequence of some of the decrees against clerical
        marriage passed under Henry I.; that she was not dead is plain
        from John of Salisbury’s mention of her as still living in the
        days of his friendship with Nicolas. Joh. Salisb., _Metalog._,
        l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. p. 205).

        [1541] Will. Newb. as above (pp. 109, 110).

        [1542] _Gesta Abbat._ as above. The abbot’s name is there given
        as Robert, but this must be wrong, as Robert did not become
        abbot till 1151, and by 1150, as we shall see, Nicolas was at
        Rome.

        [1543] _Gesta Abbat._ (as above), pp. 112, 113.

        [1544] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 6 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 110).

        [1545] _Ibid._ _Gesta Abbat._ (Riley), vol. i. p. 113.

        [1546] Will. Newb. as above (pp. 110, 111). The church of S.
        Rufus (diocese Valence) had between 1145 and 1151 an abbot
        named N.... The editors of _Gall. Christ._ (vol. xvi. cols.
        359, 360) will not allow that this N. was Nicolas Breakspear,
        and of course the date will not agree with the version of his
        history in the _Gesta Abbat._; but it agrees perfectly with
        that of Will. Newb.; while the _Gesta’s_ dates are confuted by
        Nicolas’s undoubted signatures at Rome.

        [1547] _Gesta Abbat._ as above.

        [1548] Will. Newb. as above (p. 111). Rob. Torigni, a. 1154.

        [1549] Will. Newb. as above.

        [1550] “A partir de l’année 1150, on trouve la souscription
        de _Nicolaus episcopus Albanensis_ au bas des bulles d’Eugène
        III.” Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. i. p. 288, note 2.

        [1551] Will. Newb. as above (p. 111). Date from Cod. Vatic.,
        Baronius, _Annales_ (Pagi), vol. xix. p. 77.

The English Church naturally hailed with delight the accession of a
pontiff who was at once one of her own sons and a disciple of Eugene,
whom the leaders of the intellectual and spiritual revival in England
had come to regard almost as their patron saint.[1552] Adrian indeed
shared all their highest and most cherished aspirations far more deeply
and intimately than Eugene himself could have done. It was in the
cloisters of Canterbury that these aspirations were gradually taking
definite shape under the guidance of Archbishop Theobald. There,
beneath the shadow of the cathedral begun by Lanfranc and completed
by S. Anselm, their worthy successor had been throughout the last ten
or twelve years of the anarchy watching over a little sanctuary where
all that was noblest, highest, most full of hope and promise in the
dawning intellectual life of the day found a peaceful shelter and a
congenial home. The _Curia Theobaldi_, the household of Archbishop
Theobald, was a sort of little school of the prophets, a seminary into
which the vigilant primate drew the choicest spirits among the rising
generation, to be trained up under his own eyes in his own modes of
thought and views of life, till they were fitted to become first the
sharers and then the continuators of his work for the English Church
and the English nation. Through his scholars had come the revival of
legal and ecclesiastical learning in England; through them had come the
renewal of intercourse and sympathy with the sister-Churches of the
west; through them had been conducted the negotiations with Rome which
had led to the restoration of order and peace; and in them, as Theobald
hoped, the Church, having saved the state, would find her most fitting
instruments for the work of reform and revival which still remained to
be done within her own borders. One by one, as the occasion presented
itself, he began to send them forth to take independent positions in
the Church or in the world. Of the chosen three whom he specially
trusted, the first who thus left his side was John of Canterbury,
who in 1153 succeeded Hugh of Puiset as treasurer of York. Next year
Theobald was able to place another of his disciples in the northern
metropolis in a far more important capacity: he succeeded in obtaining
the royal assent to the appointment of Roger of Pont-l’Evêque as
archbishop of York, in succession to S. William, who had been restored
by Pope Anastasius after Henry Murdac’s death, but died six weeks after
his restoration.[1553]

        [1552] John of Salisbury frequently writes of him as “Sanctus
        Eugenius.”

        [1553] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 298, 299. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 158. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 26 (Howlett,
        vol. i. pp. 80, 82). Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.),
        pp. 10, 11.

Roger’s history before his entrance into the primate’s household is
so completely lost that even the rendering of his surname is a matter
of some doubt; it may have been derived from the English town of
Bishopsbridge, and if so Roger was now going back as primate to his
own native shire; it seems however more probable that he came from
Pont-l’Evêque in Normandy.[1554] He was evidently some years older
than Theobald’s other favourites, John of Canterbury and Thomas of
London; for we find him and Gilbert Foliot quarrelling, apologizing,
lecturing and forgiving each other with an outspoken freedom and
familiarity possible only between two men of equal standing who have
been friends from their youth.[1555] With Thomas Becket, on the other
hand, Roger was never upon really friendly terms; jealous, no doubt,
of the younger man who seemed likely to supersede him in the primate’s
confidence, Roger lost no opportunity of teasing the “hatchet-clerk”
(as he called Thomas, from the nickname of the man who had first
introduced him to Theobald), and made his life so wretched that he
was twice driven to quit the archbishop’s house and take refuge with
Theobald’s brother, Walter, archdeacon of Canterbury, till the latter
smoothed the way for his return.[1556] On Walter’s elevation to the see
of Rochester in 1148 his archdeaconry was given to Roger;[1557] he also
held some other preferments, all of which he was at one time in great
danger of losing--most likely on account of his share in the famous
“swimming-voyage” to Reims; but his friend Gilbert Foliot secured him
the protection of the Pope;[1558] and the restoration of the archbishop
would naturally involve that of the archdeacon. After six years’ tenure
of his office at Canterbury Roger was called to go up higher. Theobald
had more than one reason for desiring his archdeacon’s elevation. He
wished it for Roger’s own sake; he wished it still more for the sake
of his younger favourite, whom he longed to establish in a position of
dignity and importance, yet close to his own side; above all, he wished
it for the sake of the Church;[1559] for he naturally hoped that in
leaving one of his own foremost disciples seated on the metropolitan
chair of York, he would be leaving at least one prelate of the highest
rank firmly pledged to those schemes of ecclesiastical policy and
organization which he himself had most at heart. His confidence in
Roger was over-great. After all the disputes about the canonical
relations between Canterbury and York which had wasted the energies of
Lanfranc and embittered the last days of S. Anselm, Theobald missed his
opportunity of securing at last a full acknowledgement of Canterbury’s
superior rights, and was rash enough to consecrate Roger without
requiring from him a profession of obedience.[1560] The large-hearted
primate evidently never dreamed that any question of obedience could
arise between himself and one of his spiritual sons, or that Roger’s
loyalty to him could fail to be extended to his successor. He never
discovered his mistake; it was Roger’s old rival, and with him the
English Church, who ultimately had to bear its unhappy consequences.

        [1554] There is a bit of evidence on this side in _Thomas Saga_
        (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 40, where the writer calls him “Rogerum
        Nevstriensem.”

        [1555] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. cix.–cxi. (Giles, vol. i. pp.
        135–145). This was after Roger became archbishop; the quarrel
        went so far that Roger appealed to Rome about it, and carried
        his appeal in person. (What can be the date of this?) Gilbert
        owns that he had let his sharp tongue run away with him; Roger
        lectures him soundly, but ends with “ecce jam in occursum
        vestrum vetus festinat amicus,” and a proposal to kill the
        fatted calf in celebration of his repentance (Ep. cx. p. 141).

        [1556] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        16. Cf. Anon I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 9, 10; E. Grim (_ib._
        vol. ii.), p. 362; and Gamier (Hippeau), p. 10.

        [1557] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 133.

        [1558] “Clericus ... dilecti filii vestri domini Cantuariensis
        archiepiscopi Magister R. de Ponte Episcopi vestrum adit
        urgente necessitate præsidium ut ad tuenda ea quæ canonice
        possidet a vestrâ imploret serenitate patrocinium.” Gilb.
        Foliot, Ep. xvii (Giles, vol. i. p. 30). The salutation of
        the letter runs “Summo Dei gratiâ Pontifici E., frater G.
        Glocestriæ dictus abbas”; it looks very much as if written
        in the interval between the council of Reims and Gilbert’s
        consecration.

        [1559] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 10.

        [1560] “Sed professionem non fecit” [Roger], significantly
        remarks R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 298. Roger was
        consecrated at Westminster on October 10, 1154; _ibid._ Gerv.
        Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 158.

Immediately after Roger’s consecration Thomas was raised by his
primate to deacon’s orders and made archdeacon of Canterbury.[1561]
A few months later the accession of Henry II. opened the way for his
advancement in another direction. His appointment to the chancellorship
involved a great self-sacrifice on the part of Theobald; for the
chancellor’s duties--at least as conceived by Thomas, and as Theobald
had intended him to conceive them--took him not only quite away from
those of his archdeaconry and from his primate’s side, but very often
out of the country altogether; so that Theobald in giving him up to the
king had condemned himself to pass his declining years apart from the
object of his warmest earthly affections. But the _Curia Theobaldi_ was
by no means deserted; though it had lost its most brilliant star, there
was no lack of lesser lights to brighten the primate’s home-circle;
there was one whose soft mild radiance, less dazzling than the glory
of Thomas, was a far truer and steadier reflex of Theobald’s own calm
and gentle spirit. Yet John of Salisbury had entered the archbishop’s
household within a comparatively recent period. His father’s name seems
to have been Reinfred;[1562] his family connexions were all in or
around the city whence his surname was derived;[1563] but there is some
indication that John himself may have been born in London.[1564] In the
year after the death of Henry I. he went to study in Paris, and there
received his first lessons in dialectics from the greatest scholar of
the day--sitting at the feet of Peter Abelard, and eagerly drinking in,
to the utmost capacity of his young mind, every word that fell from
the master’s lips. Abelard departed all too soon, and John pursued his
studies for about two years under his successors Alberic and Robert,
of whom the latter, although commonly called “Robert of Melun” from
having taught with distinction in that place, was an Englishman by
birth, and will come before us again in later days as Gilbert Foliot’s
successor in the bishopric of Hereford. It must have been precisely
during those two years that Thomas of London also was in Paris for the
first time, striving for his mother’s sake to overcome his dislike of
books; and it was possibly there that the two young Englishmen, who
must have been of nearly the same age, began to form an acquaintance
which afterwards ripened into a lifelong friendship. And it can only
have been about the same time, and in that same wonderful meeting-place
where so many of the happiest and most fruitful associations of the
time had their beginnings, that John of Salisbury first met with
Nicolas of Langley.

        [1561] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        17. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 168. Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.),
        p. 4. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 11. Garnier (Hippeau), p.
        10. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 159. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 213, where he is called “Thomas Beket”--apparently
        for the first time.

        [1562] “Magister B. filius Reinfred peccator, fraterculus
        meus,” is named by Joh. Salisb. Ep. xc. (Giles, vol. i. p. 135).

        [1563] See his correspondence _passim_.

        [1564] There is among John’s letters a most enigmatical
        one--Ep. cxxx. (Giles, vol. i. p. 109)--without date, address,
        or writer’s name, but very much in the tone and style of John’s
        familiar letters--in which a Londoner, or rather a man who
        tried to make himself out to be such, is described as “concivis
        noster.” It looks very much as if written by John to Thomas.

Thomas went home to the plodding life of a city merchant’s clerk;
Nicolas set out on the long course of wandering which was to bring him
at last to the Papal chair; John, having as he says “steeped himself
to the finger-tips in dialectics, and moreover learned to think his
knowledge greater than it really was,” applied himself for the next
three years to the schools of the grammarians William of Conches
and Richard l’Evêque, with whom he went over again the whole course
of his previous studies, penetrated somewhat deeper into those of
the _quadrivium_ which he had begun under the direction of a German
named Hardwin, and improved some slight notions of rhetoric which
he had acquired at the lectures of a certain Master Theodoric. His
relatives were quite unable to maintain him all this while; like all
poor students of the day, he earned his living and his college-fees
by teaching others, and as he pleasantly says “What I learned was
the better fixed in my mind, because I constantly had to bring it
out for my pupils.” One of these pupils was William of Soissons, to
whom he taught the elements of logic, “and who afterwards contrived,
as his followers say, a method of breaking down the old strongholds
of logic, producing unexpected consequences, and overthrowing the
opinions of the ancients.” John however declined to believe in a
“system of impossibilities,” for which he at any rate was clearly not
responsible; for he had soon transferred his pupil to the care of one
Master Adam, an English teacher deeply versed in Aristotelian lore. It
seems just possible that this Master Adam, who was at this time helping
John in his studies not as a teacher but as a friend,[1565] was the
same who many years before had stood in a somewhat similar relation
to Gilbert Foliot.[1566] He may, however, perhaps be more probably
identified with Adam “du Petit-Pont”--so called from the place where
he lectured in Paris--who in 1176 became bishop of S. Asaph’s.[1567]
After a while John found that with all his efforts he could hardly
earn enough to live upon in Paris; so by the advice of his friends he
determined to set up a school elsewhere.[1568] While sitting at the
feet of the “Peripatetic” doctors on the Mont-Ste.-Geneviève he had
become acquainted with a young native of Champagne, Peter by name,
who was studying in the school of S. Martin-des-Champs.[1569] The two
friends, it seems, settled together at Provins in Peter’s native land,
and there, under the protection of the good Count Theobald,[1570]
laboured and prospered for three years.[1571] Long afterwards, from
his anxious post at the side of the dying Archbishop Theobald, John’s
thoughts strayed tenderly back to the days which he and his young
comrade, with hearts as light as their purses, had spent among the
roses of Champagne: “I am the same that ever I was,” he wrote to
Peter, now abbot of Celle, “only I possess more than you and I had
between us at Provins.”[1572] He returned to Paris, revisited his
old haunts on the Mont-Ste.-Geneviève, and was amused to find his
old school-companions just where and as he had left them. “They
did not seem to have advanced an inch towards disposing of the old
questions, nor to have added one new proposition.” He, in his three
years of healthy meditation in the country, had discovered that
their dialectics, however useful as a help to other studies, were in
themselves but a fruitless and lifeless system; he therefore now gave
himself up to the study of theology under a certain Master Gilbert,
Robert “Pullus”--in whom one is tempted to recognize the Robert Pulein
who had planted the seed of the first English University by his
divinity-lectures at Oxford in 1133--and lastly, Simon of Poissy.

        [1565] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. ii. c. 10 (Giles, vol.
        v. pp. 78–80). Adam’s nationality appears in l. iii. c.
        3 (p. 129), where he is described as “noster ille Anglus
        Peripateticus Adam.”

        [1566] See below, p. 492, 493.

        [1567] Wright, _Biogr. Britt. Lit._, vol. ii. pp. 245, 246.

        [1568] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. ii. c. 10 (Giles, vol. v.
        pp. 80, 81).

        [1569] On Peter of Celle see Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. ccii.
        cols. 399, 400, and _Gall. Christ._, vol. xii. col. 543.

        [1570] Cf. Joh. Salisb. Epp. lxxxii. and cxliii. (Giles, vol.
        i. pp. 114, 206); and see also Demimuid, _Jean de Salisbury_,
        pp. 26, 27.

        [1571] “Reversus itaque in fine triennii.” Joh. Salisb.
        _Metalog._ as above (p. 81).

        [1572] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxxii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 114).

John’s whole career in the schools, after occupying about twelve
years,[1573] apparently came to an end shortly before the council of
Reims. His old friend Peter had already retired into the peace of the
cloister, and about this time became abbot of Celle, near Troyes.
There John, who was utterly without means of living, found a shelter
and a home, nominally, it seems, in the capacity of Peter’s “clerk” or
secretary, but in reality as the recipient of a generous hospitality
which sought for no return save the enjoyment of his presence and his
friendship.[1574] Such a light as John’s, however, could not long
remain thus hidden under a bushel. So felt Peter himself;[1575] and
at that moment a better place for it was easily found. At the council
of Reims, or during his exile after it, the archbishop of Canterbury
probably met the abbot of Celle and his English “clerk”;[1576] he
certainly must have met the abbot of Clairvaux; and S. Bernard, with
his unerring instinct, had already discovered John’s merits. He named
him to Theobald in terms of commendation; and it was he who furnished
the letter of introduction,[1577] as it was Peter who furnished the
means,[1578] wherewith John at last made his way to the archbishop’s
court,[1579] of which he soon became one of the busiest and most
valued members. So busy was he--so “distracted with diverse and adverse
occupations,” as he himself said--that he complained of being scarce
able to steal an hour for the literary and philosophical pursuits
which he so dearly loved. Ten times in the next thirteen years[1580]
did he cross the Alps, twice did he visit Apulia, on business with
the Roman court for his superiors or his friends; besides travelling
all over England and Gaul on a variety of errands, and fulfilling a
crowd of home-duties which left him scarcely time to look after his
own private affairs, much less to indulge in study.[1581] The greater
part of the communications between Theobald and Eugene III. must
have passed through his hands, either as messenger or as amanuensis;
but his name never figures in their diplomatic history; his place
therein was a subordinate one. It was not in his nature to take the
foremost rank. Not that he was unfit for it:--with his gracious, genial
temper; his calm clear judgement, generally sound because always
disinterested; his delicate wit, his easy, elegant scholarship, and his
wide practical experience of the world--John of Salisbury might have
adorned far higher positions in either Church or state than any which
he ever actually occupied. But his own position was a thing of which
he seems never to have thought, save as a means of serving others. His
apology for his unwilling neglect of literature--“I am a man under
authority”[1582]--might have been the motto of his life. He left it to
others to lead; if they led in the way of righteousness, they might be
sure of one faithful adherent who would serve and follow them through
good report and evil report, who would try to clear the path before
them at any risk to himself; who would criticize their conduct and
tell them of their errors with fearless simplicity, while striving to
avert the consequence of those errors and to cover their retreat; who
in poverty and exile, incurred for another’s sake, would make light
of his own sufferings and be constantly endeavouring to relieve those
of his fellow-sufferers, and who would always find or make a silver
lining to the darkest cloud. This was what John did for the possible
acquaintance of his early student-days whom he had now rejoined in
the household of Archbishop Theobald. To the end of his life he was
more than satisfied to count the friendship of Thomas Becket as his
chief title of honour, and to let whatever share of lustre might have
been his own go to brighten the aureole of his friend. It brightened
it far more than he knew. When detractors and panegyrists have both
done their worst, there remains this simple proof of the real worth of
Thomas--that he inspired such devotion as this in a man such as John of
Salisbury, and that he knew how to appreciate it as it deserved.

        [1573] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. ii. c. 10 (Giles, vol. v. p.
        81).

        [1574] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxxv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 117). Pet.
        Cell. Epp. lxvii.–lxxv. (Migne, _Patrol._, vol. ccii. cols.
        513–522).

        [1575] Pet. Cell. Ep. lxx. (as above, col. 516).

        [1576] The _Historia Pontificalis_, certainly the work of one
        who was present at this council, is attributed to John.

        [1577] S. Bern. Ep. ccclxi. (Mabillon, vol. i. col. 325).

        [1578] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxxv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 117).

        [1579] From the Prologue to the _Polycraticus_, l. i. (_Joh.
        Salisb. Opp._, Giles, vol. iii. p. 13), it appears that at the
        time of writing it John had been twelve years at the court. As
        the _Polycraticus_ was written during the war of Toulouse, this
        takes us back to 1148. He must in fact have joined Theobald
        very soon after the council of Reims.

        [1580] He himself makes it twenty years (Joh. Salisb.
        _Metalog._, prolog. l. iii., Giles, vol. v. p. 113); but
        he cannot possibly have left Paris before 1147, and the
        _Metalogicus_ was finished before Theobald’s death in 1161.
        Either there is something wrong in John’s reckoning, or in his
        copyist’s reading of it, or this passage was added some years
        after the completion of the book.

        [1581] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._ as above.

        [1582] Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, prolog. l. vii. (Giles, vol.
        iv. p. 80).

It was however John’s friendship with Nicolas of Langley which in these
years of his residence in the primate’s household made him so valuable
to Theobald as a medium of communication with Rome. We can hardly doubt
that this acquaintance, too, had begun in Paris; now, as the English
cardinal-secretary and the envoy of the English primate discussed
in the Roman court the prospects of their common mother-country and
mother-Church, their acquaintance ripened into a friendship which no
change of outward circumstances could alter or disturb. Nicolas cared
more for John than for his own nearest relatives; he declared in public
and in private that he loved him above all men living; he delighted in
unburthening his soul to him. When he became Pope there was no change;
a visit from John was still Adrian’s greatest pleasure; he rejoiced in
welcoming him to his table, and despite John’s modest remonstrances
insisted that they should be served from the same dish and
flagon.[1583] King and primate were both alike quick to perceive and
use such an opportunity of strengthening the alliance between England
and Rome; while Adrian on his part was all the more ready to give a
cordial response to overtures made to him from the land of his birth,
when they came through the lips of his dearest friend. As a matter of
course, it was John who very soon after the accession of Henry II. was
sent to obtain a Papal authorization for the king’s projected conquest
of Ireland.[1584] Naturally, too, it was John who now became Theobald’s
private secretary and confidential medium of communication with Pope
Adrian. A considerable part of the correspondence which goes under
John’s name really consists of the archbishop’s letters, John himself
being merely the amanuensis. This part of his work, however, was a
relaxation which he only enjoyed at intervals; he was still constantly
on active duty of some kind or other not only at the court of the
primate but also at that of the king; and sorely did he long to escape
from its weary trifling, to find rest for his soul in the pursuit of
that “divine philosophy” which had been the delight of his youth.[1585]
But obedience, not inclination, had brought him to court, and obedience
kept him there. Thomas knew his worth and would not let him go; at
last, to pacify his uneasiness, he bade him relieve his mind by pouring
it out in a book. John protested he had scarce time to call his soul
his own, much less his intellect or his hands.[1586] He was, however,
set free by the removal of the court over sea for the expedition
against Toulouse; and while Thomas was riding in coat of mail at the
head of his troops against Count Raymond and King Louis, John was
writing his _Polycraticus_ in the quiet cloisters of Canterbury.[1587]

        [1583] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. p.
        205).

        [1584] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v.
        pp. 205, 206).

        [1585] Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, l. i. prolog. (Giles, vol.
        iii. p. 13).

        [1586] _Ib._ l. vii. prolog. (vol. iv. p. 80).

        [1587] _Ib._ l. i. prolog. (vol. iii. p. 16). Cf. _ib._ l.
        viii. c. 24 (vol. iv. p. 379).

This book of _Polycraticus on the Triflings of Courtiers and the
Foot-prints of Philosophers_[1588] is a strange medley of moral and
political speculations, personal experiences, and reflections upon men
and things, old and new. Its greatest charm lies in the revelation of
the writer’s pure, sweet, child-like character, shining unconsciously
through the veil of his scholastic pedantries and rambling metaphysics;
its historical value consists in the light which it throws on the
social condition of England with respect to a crowd of matters which
the chroniclers leave wholly in the dark. “Part of it,” says the author
in his dedication, “deals with the trifles of the court; laying most
stress on those which have chiefly called it forth. Part treats of
the foot-prints of the philosophers, leaving, however, the wise to
decide for themselves in each case what is to be shunned and what to be
followed.”[1589] We need not weary ourselves with John’s meditations
upon Aristotle and Plato and their scholastic commentators; they
all come round to one simple conclusion--that the fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom, and the love of Him the end of all true
philosophy.[1590] It is in the light of this truth that he looks at
the practical questions of the day, and reviews those “trifles of
the court” which are really the crying abuses of the government, the
ecclesiastical administration, and society at large. In the forefront
of all he does not hesitate, although dedicating his book to the
chancellor whose passion for hunting almost equalled that of the king
himself, to set the inordinate love of the chase and the cruelties
of the forest-law.[1591] The tardiness of the royal justice and the
corruption of the judges--“_justitiæ errantes_, justices errant are
they rightly called who go erring from the path of equity in pursuit
of greed and gain”[1592]--was also, after seven years of Henry’s
government, still a ground of serious complaint. So, too, was the decay
of valour among the young knighthood of the day--a consequence of the
general relaxation of discipline, first during the years of anarchy,
and then in the reaction produced by the unbroken peace which England
had enjoyed since Henry’s accession. Chivalry was already falling
back from its lofty ideal; military exercises were neglected for the
pleasures and luxury of the court; the making of a knight, in theory a
matter almost as solemn as the making of a priest, was sinking into a
mere commonplace formality;[1593] and the consequences were beginning
to be felt on the Welsh border.[1594] John was moved to contrast
the present insecurity of the marches with their splendid defence
in Harold’s time,[1595] and to lament that William the Conqueror,
in his desire to make his little insular world share the glories of
the greater world beyond the sea, had allowed the naturally rich and
self-sufficing island to be flooded with luxuries of which it had no
need, and thus fostered rather than checked the indolent disposition
which had helped to bring its people under his sway.[1596]

        [1588] _Polycraticus de Nugis Curialium et Vestigiis
        Philosophorum._

        [1589] Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, l. i. prolog. (Giles, vol.
        iii. p. 13).

        [1590] This is the idea which runs through the whole of
        _Polycraticus_, and indeed through all John’s writings. It is
        neatly expressed in two lines of his _Entheticus_ (vv. 305,
        306, Giles, vol. v. p. 248):

        “Si verus Deus est hominum sapientia vera, Tunc amor est veri
        philosophia Dei.”


        [1591] Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, l. i. c. 4 (Giles, vol. iii.
        pp. 19–32).

        [1592] _Ib._ l. v. c. 15 (p. 322). Cf. cc. 10, 11 (pp.
        300–311). Pet. Blois, Ep. xcv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 297), makes a
        like play on the title of the judges.

        [1593] Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, l. vi. cc. 2, 3, 5, 8–10
        (Giles, vol. iv. pp. 8–12, 15, 16, 20–23).

        [1594] _Ib._ cc. 6, 16 (pp. 16, 17, 39, 40).

        [1595] _Ib._ c. 6 (p. 18).

        [1596] _Ib._ l. viii. c. 7 (p. 238).

The ills of the state had each its counterpart in the Church; the
extortions and perversions of justice committed by the secular judges
were paralleled by those of the ecclesiastical officials, deans and
archdeacons;[1597] and at the bottom of the mischief lay the old root
of all evil. Simony was indeed no longer public; spiritual offices
were no longer openly bought with hard cash; but they were bought with
court-interest instead;[1598] the Church’s most sacred offices were
filled by men who came straight from the worldly life of the court to a
charge for which they were utterly unfit;[1599] although, in deference
to public opinion, they were obliged to go through an elaborate shew
of reluctance, and Scripture and hagiology were ransacked for examples
of converted sinners, which were always found sufficient to meet any
objections against a candidate for consecration and to justify any
appointment, however outrageous.[1600] All the sins of the worldly
churchmen, however, scarcely move John’s pure soul to such an outburst
of scathing sarcasm as he pours upon the “false brethren” who sought
their advancement in a more subtle way, by a shew of counterfeit
piety:--the ultra-monastic, ultra-ascetic school, with their overdone
zeal and humility, and their reliance on those pernicious exemptions
from diocesan jurisdiction which the religious orders vied with each
other in procuring from Rome, and which were destroying all discipline
and subverting all rightful authority.[1601]

        [1597] _Ib._ l. v. c. 15 (vol. iii. pp. 327, 328).

        [1598] _Ib._ l. vii. c. 18 (vol. iv. pp. 149, 152).

        [1599] _Ib._ l. v. c. 15 (vol. iii. p. 329).

        [1600] _Ib._ l. vii. cc. 18, 19 (vol. iv. pp. 149–152, 156–158).

        [1601] Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, l. vii. c. 21 (Giles, vol. iv.
        pp. 169–178). It is to be noted that the two orders which John
        considers to be least infected with this hypocrisy are those of
        the Chartreuse and of Grandmont. _Ib._ c. 23 (pp. 180, 181).

Over against the picture of the world and the Church as they actually
were, the disciple of Archbishop Theobald sets his ideal of both as
they should be--as the primate and his children aimed at making them.
For John’s model commonwealth, built up in a somewhat disjointed
fashion on a foundation partly of Holy Writ and partly of classic
antiquity, is not, like the great Utopia of the sixteenth century,
the product of one single, exceptionally constituted mind; it is a
reflection of the plans and hopes of those among whom John lived and
worked, and thus it helps us to see something of the line of thought
which had guided their action in the past and which moulded their
schemes for the future. Like all medieval theorists, they began at the
uppermost end of the social and political scale; they started from a
definite view of the rights and duties of the king, as the head on
which all the lower members of the body politic depended. The divine
right of kings, the divine ordination of the powers that be, were
fundamental doctrines which they understood in a far wider and loftier
sense than the king-worshippers of the seventeenth century:--which they
employed not to support but to combat the perverted theory that “the
sovereign’s will has the force of law,” already creeping in through the
influence of the imperial jurisprudence;[1602]--and which were no less
incompatible with the principle of invariable hereditary succession.
“Lands and houses and suchlike things must needs descend to the next
in blood; but the government of a people is to be given only to him
whom God has chosen thereto, even to him who has God’s Spirit within
him and God’s law ever before his eyes.... Not that for the mere love
of change it is lawful to forsake the blood of princes, to whom by the
privilege of the divine promises and by the natural claims of birth the
succession of their children is justly due, if only they walk according
to right. Neither, if they turn aside from the right way, are they
to be immediately cast off, but patiently admonished till it become
evident that they are obstinate in their wickedness”[1603]--then, and
then only, shall the axe be laid to the root of the corrupt tree, and
it shall cumber the ground no more.[1604]

        [1602] _Ib._ l. iv. c. 7 (vol. iii. p. 241).

        [1603] Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, l. v. c. 6 (Giles, vol. iii.
        p. 278).

        [1604] _Ib._ l. iv. c. 12 (pp. 259, 260).

Such was the moral which the wisest and most thoughtful minds in
England drew from the lessons of the anarchy. On a like principle, it
was in the growth of a more definite and earnest sense of individual
duty and responsibility, as opposed to the selfish lawlessness which
had so long prevailed, that they trusted for the regeneration of
society. They sought to teach the knights to live up to the full
meaning of their vows and the true objects of their institution--the
protection of the Church, the suppression of treason, the vindication
of the rights of the poor, the pacification of the country;[1605]
so that the consecration of their swords upon the altar at their
investiture should be no empty form, but, according to its original
intention, a true symbol of the whole character of their lives and, if
need be, of their deaths.[1606] And then side by side with the true
knight would stand the true priest:--both alike soldiers of the Cross,
fighting in the same cause though with different weapons--figured,
according to John’s beautiful application of a text which medieval
reformers never wearied of expounding, by the “two swords” which
the Master had declared “enough” for His servants, all the lawless
undisciplined activity of self-seekers and false brethren being
merely the “swords and staves” of the hostile multitude.[1607] Into a
detailed examination of the rights or the duties of the various classes
of the people no one in those days thought it necessary to enter;
their well-being and well-doing were regarded as dependent upon those
of their superiors, and the whole question of the relation between
rulers and ruled--“head and feet,” according to the simile which
John borrows from Plutarch--was solved by the comprehensive formula,
“Every one members one of another.”[1608] To watch over and direct the
carrying-out of this principle was the special work of the clergy;
and the clerical reformers were jealous for the rights of their order
because, as understood by them, they represented and covered the rights
of the whole nation; the claims which they put forth in the Church’s
name were a protest in behalf of true civil and religious liberty
against tyranny on the one hand and license on the other.[1609] “For
there is nothing more glorious than freedom, save virtue; if indeed
freedom may rightly be severed from virtue--for all who know anything
aright know that true freedom has no other source.”[1610]

        [1605] _Ib._ l. vi. c. 8 (vol. iv. p. 21).

        [1606] _Ibid._ c. 10 (p. 23). Cf. Pet. Blois, Ep. xciv. (Giles,
        vol. i. pp. 291–296).

        [1607] Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, l. vi. c. 8 (Giles, vol. iv.
        p. 21). John’s use of the text is perhaps only a generalization
        from S. Bernard’s application of it to Suger and the count of
        Nevers, left regents of France in 1149. Odo of Deuil, _Rer.
        Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 93.

        [1608] Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, l. vi. c. 20 (as above, pp.
        51, 52).

        [1609] _Ib._ l. vii. c. 20 (pp. 161–169).

        [1610] _Ibid._ c. 25 (p. 192).

How far these lofty views had made their way into the high places of
the Church it was as yet scarcely possible to judge. The tone of the
English episcopate had certainly undergone a marked change for the
better during the last six years of Stephen’s reign. Theobald’s hopes
must, however, have been chiefly in the rising generation. Of the
existing bishops there was only one really capable of either helping
or hindering the work which the primate had at heart; for Henry of
Winchester, although his royal blood, his stately personality and
his long and memorable career necessarily made him to his life’s end
an important figure in both Church and state, had ceased to take an
active part in the affairs of either, and for several years lived
altogether away from England, in his boyhood’s home at Cluny.[1611]
A far more weighty element in the calculations of the reforming party
was the character and policy of the bishop of Hereford, Gilbert
Foliot. From the circumstances in which we find Gilbert’s relatives in
England,[1612] it seems probable that he belonged to one of the poorer
Norman families of knightly rank who came over either in the train of
the great nobles of the conquest or in the more peaceful immigration
under Henry I. His youth is lost in obscurity; of his education we
know nothing, save by its fruits. Highly gifted as he unquestionably
was by nature, even his inborn genius could hardly have enabled him to
acquire his refined and varied scholarship, his unrivalled mastery of
legal, political and ecclesiastical lore, his profound and extensive
knowledge of men and things, anywhere but in some one or other of the
universities of the day. It is curious that although Gilbert’s extant
correspondence is one of the most voluminous of the time--extending
over nearly half a century, and addressed to persons of the most
diverse ranks, parties, professions and nationalities--it contains not
one allusion to the studies or the companions of his youth, not one
of those half playful, half tender reminiscences of student-triumphs,
student-troubles and student-friendships, which were so fresh in the
hearts and in the letters of many distinguished contemporaries. Only
from an appeal made to him, when bishop of London, in behalf of his old
benefactor’s orphan and penniless children, do we learn that he had
once been the favourite pupil, the ward, almost the adoptive son, of a
certain Master Adam.[1613] It is tempting, but perhaps hardly safe,
to conjecture that this Master Adam was the learned Englishman of that
name who in like manner befriended another young fellow-countryman,
John of Salisbury, when he too was studying in Paris.[1614] This,
however, was not till Gilbert Foliot’s student-days had long been past.
Wherever his youth may have been spent, wherever his reputation may
have been acquired, the one was quite over and the other was fully
established before 1139, when he had been already for some years a
monk of Cluny, had attained the rank of prior in the mother-house, and
had thence been promoted to become the head of the dependent priory of
Abbeville.[1615]

        [1611] He went there in 1155 (Rob. Torigni, _ad ann._), and
        does not reappear in England till March 1159 (Palgrave, _Eng.
        Commonwealth_, vol. ii. p. xii).

        [1612] See his letters _passim_.

        [1613] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. dxv., dxvii. (Giles, vol. ii. pp.
        323, 324, 326). The writer of the first is “Ranulfus de
        Turri”; the second is anonymous. Both appeal earnestly to
        the bishop’s charity and gratitude in behalf of “J. filius
        A. magistri quondam vestri, procuratoris vestri, tutoris
        vestri.... Hæreat animo sanctitatis vestræ illa M. Adæ circa
        vos curarum gravitas, alimoniæ fœcunditas, diligentia doctrinæ,
        specialis impensa benivolentiæ. Quis hodie proprios liberos
        regit providentius, educat uberius, instruit attentius, diligit
        ferventius? Sic pæne amor ille modum excessit, ut vos diligeret
        non quasi excellenter, sed quasi singulariter ... qui vos
        aliquando pro filio adoptavit” (Ep. dxv.). “Tangat memoriam
        vestram illa M. Adæ circa vos curarum gravitas, doctrinæ
        profunditas, alimoniæ ubertas, postremo fervens, immo ardens
        caritas. Hæreat animo vestro quantâ curâ, quali amplexu, quam
        speciali privilegio, illa doctoris vestri, procuratoris,
        tutoris, diligens vigilantia vos non modo supra familiares,
        verum supra quoslibet mortales adoptaverit, qualiterque ejus
        spiritus in vestro, ut ita dicam, spiritu quieverit.” Ep. dxvii.

        [1614] See above, p. 482. In any case, Gilbert’s Master Adam
        is surely a somewhat interesting person, of whom one would
        like to know more. This was the condition of his eldest son,
        when commended to the gratitude of Gilbert: “Pater ejus cum
        fati munus impleret, filium reliquit ære alieno gravatum,
        fratrum numerositate impeditum, redituum angustiis constrictum,
        et quibusdam aliis nexibus intricatum.” Gilb. Foliot, Ep.
        dxvii. (Giles, vol. ii. p. 326). “Onerant enim eum supra modum
        redituum angustiæ, debitorum paternorum sarcinæ, amicorum
        raritas, fratrum sororumque pluralitas et reliquæ sarcinæ
        parentelæ.” Ep. dxv. (_ib._ p. 323).

        [1615] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cclxix. (Giles, vol. i. p. 366).

In 1139 the abbot of S. Peter’s at Gloucester died; Miles the
constable, the lord of Gloucester castle and sheriff of the county,
and the greatest man of the district after Earl Robert himself,
secured the vacant office for Gilbert Foliot,[1616] who was a family
connexion of his own.[1617] The abbey of S. Peter at Gloucester,
founded as a nunnery in the seventh century, changed into a college
of secular priests after the Danish wars, and finally settled as a
house of Benedictine monks in the reign of Cnut, had risen to wealth
and fame under its first Norman abbot, Serlo, some of whose work still
survives in the nave of his church, now serving as the cathedral
church of Gloucester. Gloucester itself, the capital of Earl Robert’s
territories, was still, like Hereford and Shrewsbury, a border-city
whose inhabitants had to be constantly on their guard against the
thievery and treachery of the Welsh, who, though often highly useful
to their English earl as auxiliary forces in war, were anything but
loyal subjects or trustworthy neighbours. The position of abbot of S.
Peter’s therefore was at all times one of some difficulty and anxiety;
and Gilbert entered upon it at a specially difficult and anxious time.
Stephen’s assent to his appointment can hardly have been prompted by
favour to Miles, who had openly defied the king a year ago; he may have
been influenced by fear of giving fresh offence to such a formidable
deserter, or he may simply have been, as we are told, moved by the
report of Gilbert’s great merits.[1618] The new abbot proved quite
worthy of his reputation. His bitterest enemies always admitted that he
was a pattern of monastic discipline and personal asceticism; and his
admirable judgement, moderation and prudence soon made him a personage
of very high authority in the counsels of the English Church. Holding
such an important office in the city which was the head-quarters of
the Empress’s party throughout the greater part of the civil war, he
of course had his full share of the troubles of the anarchy, whereof
Welsh inroads counted among the least. There is no doubt that in
bringing him to England Miles had, whether intentionally or not,
brought over one who sympathized strongly with the Angevin cause; but
Gilbert’s sympathies led him into no political partizanship. During
his nine years’ residence at Gloucester he consistently occupied the
position which seems to have been his ideal through life: that of a
churchman pure and simple, attached to no mere party in either Church
or state, but ready to work with each and all for the broad aims of
ecclesiastical order and national tranquillity. That these aims came
at last to be identified with the success of the Angevin party was
a result of circumstances over which Gilbert had no control. He was
honoured, consulted and trusted by the most diverse characters among
the bishops. Mere abbot of a remote monastery as he was, Nigel of
Ely was glad to be recommended by him to Pope Celestine, Jocelyn of
Salisbury to Lucius, and Alexander of Lincoln to Eugene III.[1619]
He was treated almost as an equal not only by his own diocesan Bishop
Simon of Worcester, by his neighbour Robert of Hereford, and by Jocelyn
of Salisbury, but even by the archbishop of Canterbury and the legate
Henry of Winchester; and he writes in the tone of a patron and adviser
to Bishop Uhtred of Landaff and to the heads of the religious houses on
the Welsh border.[1620] He seems indeed to have been the usual medium
of communication between the Church in the western shires and its
primate at far-off Canterbury, who evidently found him a trustworthy
and useful agent in managing the very troublesome Church affairs of the
Welsh marches during the civil war.

        [1616] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 114. _Hist.
        Monast. S. Pet. Gloc._ (Riley), vol. i. p. 18.

        [1617] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 162.

        [1618] Flor. Worc. Contin., a. 1139 (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 114).
        _Hist. S. Pet. Gloc._ (Riley), vol. i. p. 18.

        [1619] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. v., xi., xxv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 12,
        22, 37).

        [1620] See his correspondence while abbot of Gloucester; _Gilb.
        Foliot Opp._ (Giles), vol. i. pp. 3–94.

When at last the storm subsided and a turn of the tide came with the
spring of 1148, Theobald openly shewed his confidence in the abbot
of Gloucester by commanding his attendance on that journey to Reims
which the king had forbidden, and which was therefore looked upon
as the grand proclamation of ecclesiastical independence, as well
as of devotion to the house of Anjou. Gilbert, with characteristic
caution, excused himself on the plea that the troubles of his house
urgently required his presence at home;[1621] but he ended by going
nevertheless,[1622] and when his friend Bishop Robert of Hereford--one
of the three prelates whom Stephen had permitted to attend the council
of Reims--died during its session, the Pope and the primate rewarded
Gilbert with the succession to the vacant see.[1623] For his perjury in
doing homage to Stephen for its temporalities after swearing to hold
them only of Henry Fitz-Empress he may be supposed to have quieted his
conscience with the plea that there was no other means of securing them
for Henry’s benefit;--a plea which Henry, after some delay,[1624] found
it wise to accept. The heads of the Angevin party knew indeed that
Gilbert regarded all homage to Stephen as simply null and void; he had
just written it plainly to Brian Fitz-Count, when criticizing Brian’s
apology for the Empress, in a letter[1625] which, we may be very sure,
must have been handed about and studied among her friends as a much
more valuable document than the pamphlet which had called it forth.

        [1621] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. vi., vii. (_ib._ pp. 13, 14).

        [1622] He writes--evidently from the spot--a report of the
        council of Reims to Robert archdeacon of Lincoln; Gilb. Foliot,
        Ep. lxxvi. (as above, p. 92). In July he was at Arras with
        Theobald: Ep. lxxiii. (_ib._ p. 89).

        [1623] See above, pp. 370, 371.

        [1624] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. xc., cxxx. (as above, pp. 116, 170).

        [1625] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxix. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 94–102); a
        most interesting and valuable letter, being a detailed review
        of the whole question of the succession, as well as of Brian’s
        “book.” The latter is unhappily lost.

The career of the new bishop of Hereford was but the natural
continuation of that of the abbot of Gloucester. His more exalted
office enabled him to be more than ever Theobald’s right hand in the
direction of the western dioceses. In their secular policy he and
Theobald were wholly at one; whether they really were equally so in
their ideas of Church reform is a question which was never put to the
test; but the tone of Gilbert’s mind, so far as it can be made out
from his letters and from his course in after-years, does not seem to
have altogether harmonized with that which prevailed in the primate’s
household; and the one member of that household with whom Gilbert was
on really intimate terms was precisely the one who, as afterwards
appeared, had imbibed least of its spirit--Roger of Pont-l’Evêque.
Gilbert’s character is not an easy one to read. Its inner depths are
scarcely reflected in his letters, which are almost all occupied with
mere business or formal religious exhortation; we never get from him
such a pleasant little stream of unpremeditated, discursive talk as
John of Salisbury or Peter of Blois delighted to pour out of the
abundance of their hearts into the ears of some old comrade, or such
a flood of uncontrolled passion as revealed the whole soul of Thomas
Becket. Gilbert’s letters are carefully-balanced, highly-finished
compositions; almost every one of them reads as if it had received as
much polishing, in proportion to its length and importance, as the
review of Earl Brian’s book, which, the abbot owns, occupied what
should have been his hours of prayer during two days.[1626] A strong
vein of sarcasm, very clever as well as very severe, is the only
token of personal feeling which at times forces its way strangely,
almost startlingly, through the veil of extreme self-depreciation
with which Gilbert strove to cover it. The self-depreciation is even
more disagreeable than the sarcasm; yet it seems hardly fair to
accuse Gilbert of conscious hypocrisy. There was a bitter, sneering
disposition ingrained in his innermost being, and he knew it. His
elaborate expressions of more than monastic humility and meekness
may have been the outcome of a struggle to smother what he probably
regarded as his besetting sin; and if he not only failed to smother it,
but drifted into a much more subtle and dangerous temptation, still
it is possible that he himself never perceived the fact, and was less
a deceiver than a victim of self-deception. During his episcopate at
Hereford, at any rate, no shadow of suspicion fell upon him from any
quarter; primate and Pope esteemed, trusted and consulted him as one of
the wisest as well as most zealous doctors of the English Church; and
when the young king came to his throne he did not fail to shew a duly
respectful appreciation of Gilbert’s character and services.

        [1626] “Et biduo saltem ores pro me, quia biduo mihi est
        intermissa oratio ut literas dictarem ad te.” Gilb. Foliot, Ep.
        lxxix. (Giles, vol. i. p. 102).

The king’s own attitude towards the religious revival was as yet not
very clearly defined. Henry was not without religious impulse; but it
had taken a special direction which indeed might naturally be expected
in a grandson of Fulk of Jerusalem:--a restless desire to go upon
crusade. He had no sooner mounted his throne than he began to urge upon
the English Pope, newly crowned like himself, the importance of giving
special attention to the necessities of the Holy Land.[1627] Four
years later he proposed to join Louis of France in a crusade against
the Moors in Spain. Louis wrote to the Pope announcing this project
and begging for his advice and support; Adrian in reply assured the
two kings of his sympathy and goodwill, but though praising their zeal
he expressed some doubt of its discretion, advised them to ascertain
whether the Spaniards desired their help before thrusting it upon them
unasked, and reminded Louis in plain terms of the disastrous issue of
his former rash crusade.[1628] The warning was needless, for it was
hardly written before the intending brothers-in-arms were preparing to
fight against each other; and before the war of Toulouse was over the
English Pope was dead.[1629]

        [1627] Pet. Blois, Ep. clxviii. (Giles, vol. ii. pp. 116–118).
        The letter is headed merely “Tali Papæ talis rex,” but there
        can be no doubt that they are Henry and Adrian. The king
        congratulates himself and his country--“noster Occidens”--on
        the elevation of a native thereof to the Papal chair, and makes
        suggestions to the Pope about the work which lies before him.

        [1628] Adrian IV. Ep. ccxli. (Migne, _Patrol._, vol.
        clxxxviii., cols. 1615–1617; Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._,
        vol. iv. pp. 590, 591). Date, February 18 [1159].

        [1629] Adrian died at Anagni on September 1, 1159. Alex. III.
        Ep. i. (Migne, _Patrol._, vol. cc., col. 70).

His death was a heavy blow to the Church of his native land; and it was
followed by a schism which threatened disastrous consequences to all
western Christendom. Two Popes were elected--Roland of Siena, cardinal
of S. Mark and treasurer of the Holy See, and Octavian, cardinal of S.
Cecilia, a Roman of noble birth. This latter, who assumed the name of
Victor IV., was favoured by the Emperor, Frederic Barbarossa. After a
violent struggle he was expelled from Rome and fled to the protection
of his imperial patron, who thereupon summoned a general council to
meet at Pavia early in the next year and decide between the rival
pontiffs.[1630] Only the bishops of Frederic’s own dominions obeyed the
summons, and only one of the claimants; for Alexander III. (as Roland
was called by his adherents) disdained to submit to a trial whose issue
he believed to have been predetermined against him. He was accordingly
condemned as a rebel and schismatic, and Victor was acknowledged as
the lawful successor of S. Peter.[1631] This decision, however, bound
only the bishops of the Imperial dominions; and its general acceptance
throughout the rest of Christendom, doubtful from the first, became
impossible when Alexander and his partizans published their account
of the mode by which it had been arrived at. Victor--so their story
went--had actually placed his pontifical ring in the Emperor’s hands
and received it back from him as the symbol of investiture.[1632]
The Church at large could have no hesitation in deciding that a man
who thus climbed into the sheepfold by surrendering, voluntarily and
deliberately, the whole principle of spiritual independence whose
triumph Gregory and Anselm had devoted their lives to secure, was no
true shepherd but a thief and robber. Frederic however lost no time
in endeavouring to obtain for him the adhesion of France and England;
and in the last-named quarter he had great hopes of success. Henry had
for several years past shewn a disposition to knit up again the old
political ties which connected England with Germany; friendly embassies
had been exchanged between the two countries;[1633] now that he had
begun to quarrel with France, too, he was likely to be more inclined
towards an imperial alliance. Moreover it might naturally be expected
that Frederic’s bold and apparently successful attempt to revive the
claims of his predecessor Henry IV. on the subject of ecclesiastical
investitures would meet with sympathy from the grandson and
representative of Henry I. Indeed, the official report of the council
of Pavia declares that Henry had actually, by letters and envoys, given
his assent to its proceedings.[1634] But nothing of the kind was known
in Henry’s own dominions;[1635] and it seems that the Emperor was
forestalled by a Norman bishop.

        [1630] Radevic of Freisingen, l. ii. cc. 43, 50–56 (Muratori,
        _Rer. Ital. Scriptt._, vol. vi. cols. 819, 823–834), largely
        made up of official letters. This is the Victorian or
        Imperialist version; for the Alexandrine see Will. Newb., l.
        ii. c. 9 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 118, 119), and Arn. Lisieux,
        Epp. 21, 22, 23 (Giles, pp. 108–122. Arnulf calls the antipope
        “Otto.”) It seems quite hopeless to reconcile them or decide
        between them.

        [1631] Rad. Freising., l. ii. cc. 64–72 (as above, cols.
        838–853). Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 9 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 119,
        120).

        [1632] Arn. Lisieux, Ep. 23 (Giles, p. 118).

        [1633] Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 112. Cf. Rad.
        Freising., l. i. c. 7 (Muratori, _Rer. Ital. Scriptt._, vol.
        vi. cols. 744, 745). Another embassy from Henry reached
        Frederic in Lombardy, in the winter of 1158–1159, immediately
        after one from Louis. The object of each king was to secure
        Frederic’s alliance against the other, in prospect of the
        coming war of Toulouse; Rad. Freising., l. ii. c. 22 (as above,
        col. 804).

        [1634] Report in Rad. Freising., l. ii. c. 70 (as above, col.
        850). But the bishop of Bamberg, also an eye-witness, says:
        “Nuntius regis Francorum promisit pro eo neutrum se recepturum
        usque dum nuntios Imperatoris recipiat. Nuntius regis Anglorum
        idem velle et idem nolle promisit, tam in his quam in aliis”
        (_ib._ c. 71, col. 851); which leaves it doubtful whether the
        English envoy really echoed the decision of the council, or the
        answer of his French brother.

        [1635] Not even to Stephen of Rouen, the author of the _Draco
        Normannicus_, who has a long account of the schism, curious as
        proceeding from a Norman monk whose sympathies are wholly and
        openly on the opposite side to that which was formally adopted
        by his own sovereign, nation and Church. _Draco Norm._, l. iii.
        cc. 6–11, vv. 361–868 (Howlett, _Will. Newb._, vol. ii. pp.
        724–739).

Arnulf of Lisieux came of a family which had for more than half a
century been constantly mixed up in the diplomatic concerns of Normandy
and Anjou. Arnulf himself had begun his career about 1130 by writing
a treatise in defence of an orthodox Pope against an usurper;[1636]
he had been chosen to succeed his uncle Bishop John of Lisieux[1637]
shortly before Geoffrey Plantagenet’s final conquest of Normandy, and
had bought at a heavy price his peace with the new ruler;[1638] and
for the next forty years there was hardly a diplomatic transaction
of any kind, ecclesiastical or secular, in England or in Gaul, in
which he was not at some moment and in some way or other concerned.
He had little official influence; he had indeed a certain amount of
territorial importance in Normandy, for Lisieux was the capital of a
little county of which the temporal as well as the spiritual government
was vested in the bishop; but a Norman bishop, merely as such, had none
of the political weight of an English prelate; and Arnulf never held
any secular office. He was not exactly a busybody; he was a consummate
diplomatist, of wide experience and far-reaching intelligence, with
whose services no party could afford to dispense; and his extraordinary
caution and sagacity enabled him to act as counsellor and guide of
all parties at once without sacrificing his own reputation as a sound
Churchman and a loyal subject. In his youth he had come in contact with
most of the rising scholars and statesmen of the day in the schools of
Paris; and as he was an indefatigable and accomplished letter-writer,
he kept up through life a busy correspondence with men of all ranks
and all schools of thought on both sides of the sea.[1639] During the
quarrel between Louis VII. and Geoffrey Plantagenet concerning the
affair of Montreuil-Bellay, Arnulf was intrusted by Suger with a chief
part in the negotiations for the restoration of peace;[1640] the final
settlement in 1151, whereby the investiture of Normandy was secured to
Henry, was chiefly owing to his diplomacy;[1641] he accompanied Henry
to England and was present at his crowning;[1642] and on all questions
of continental policy he continued to be Henry’s chief adviser till he
was superseded by Thomas Becket.

        [1636] See his _Tractatus de Schismate_ in his “Works” (ed.
        Giles), pp. 43–79.

        [1637] In 1141. _Gall. Christ._, vol. xi. cols. 774, 775.

        [1638] _Ib._ col. 775.

        [1639] One of his fellow-students was Ralf de Diceto, the
        future historian and dean of S. Paul’s, to whom he writes
        affectionately in after-years, recalling vividly the memories
        of joy and sorrow which they had shared in their college days.
        Arn. Lis. Ep. 16 (Giles, pp. 100, 101). Another of his early
        friends was Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln, whose good offices
        he earnestly entreated in behalf of the young Duke Henry when
        the latter made his expedition to England in 1149. Ep. 4 (pp.
        85, 86).

        [1640] Suger, Epp. clxvii., clxviii. (Migne, _Patrol._, vol.
        clxxxvi., cols. 1428, 1429).

        [1641] Arn. Lis. Ep. 5 (Giles, pp. 86, 87). One passage looks
        as if the demand for Henry’s investiture had come from England;
        it is described as “postulatio Anglorum.”

        [1642] Rob. Torigni, a. 1154.

To Arnulf there was nothing new or startling in a schism at Rome; his
experiences of thirty years before enabled him to penetrate the present
case at once, and as then with his pen, so now with his tongue, he
proved the readiest and most powerful advocate of the orthodox pontiff.
Fortunately, Henry was in Normandy; before any one else had time to
gain his ear and bias his mind, before he himself had time to think of
forming an independent judgement on the subject, Arnulf hurried to his
side,[1643] and set forth the claims of Alexander with such convincing
eloquence that the king at once promised to acknowledge him as Pope.
He refrained however from issuing an immediate order for Alexander’s
acceptance throughout his dominions, partly in deference to the
Emperor,[1644] and partly to make sure of the intentions of the king
of France. Louis, like Henry, had sent a representative to the council
of Pavia, but he had taken care not to commit himself to any decision
upon its proceedings.[1645] He was not naturally inclined to favour the
Emperor’s views. The question of the investitures had never been as
important in France as in Germany or in England, and had been settled
by a kind of tacit concordat which the Most Christian King had no mind
to forfeit his title by disturbing; France was always the staunchest
upholder of the independence of the Apostolic see;[1646] and neither
king nor clergy desired to change their attitude. They met in council
at Beauvais some time in the summer of 1160; a similar gathering of the
Norman bishops, in Henry’s presence, took place in July at Neufmarché;
both assemblies resulted in the acknowledgement of Alexander.[1647] The
formal assent of the Churches of England and Aquitaine had still to be
obtained before either king would fully proclaim his decision.[1648]
Archbishop Theobald’s anxious request for information and instructions
concerning the schism[1649] was answered by an exhaustive and eloquent
statement of the case from the pen of the indefatigable bishop of
Lisieux;[1650] and in accordance with his directions the English
bishops in council assembled unanimously declared their acceptance of
Alexander III. as the lawful successor of S. Peter.[1651]

        [1643] Arn. Lis. Epp. 18 and 21 (Giles, pp. 103, 104, 111).

        [1644] Arn. Lis. Ep. 21 (Giles, p. 111).

        [1645] See above, p. 499, note 3{1634}.

        [1646] Arn. Lis. Ep. 23 (Giles, p. 120).

        [1647] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

        [1648] Arn. Lis. Epp. 23, 24 (Giles, pp. 120, 129).

        [1649] Joh. Salisb. Ep. xliv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 45, 46).

        [1650] Arn. Lis. Ep. 23 (Giles, pp. 116–122). Cf. Gilb. Foliot,
        Ep. cxlviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 197).

        [1651] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxlviii. (as above). Joh. Salisb. Ep.
        lxiv (Giles, vol. i. p. 79).

Alexander’s legates were already in Normandy;[1652] unluckily, however,
the use which Henry made of their presence led as we have seen to a
fresh rupture between him and Louis; and by this the Emperor and the
anti-pope immediately sought to profit. Tempting as their overtures
were to Henry, it does not appear that he ever seriously entertained
them; but the leaders of the English Church, having now learned the
circumstances of the case and grasped the full importance of the
triumph insured to the reforming party by his acceptance of Alexander,
were naturally alarmed lest he should be induced to change his mind.
Their anxiety was increased by the enfeebled state of their own
ranks. The struggles of Bishop Richard of London to clear off the
debts incurred in raising a fine required by Stephen at his election
seemed to have only aggravated the confusion of his affairs, which his
friends the bishops of Hereford and Lincoln were engaged in a desperate
effort to disentangle,[1653] while Richard himself, to complete his
misfortunes, was stricken helpless by paralysis.[1654] Henry of
Winchester had returned to his diocese, after nearly four years’
absence, in 1159;[1655] but by the spring of 1161 he again left the
Church of England to her fate and went back to his beloved Cluny.[1656]
The bishoprics of Chester (or Lichfield), Exeter and Worcester were
vacant;[1657] and, worst of all, Archbishop Theobald was dying.

        [1652] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxlviii (as above).

        [1653] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxx. (Giles, vol. i. p. 158).

        [1654] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 304.

        [1655] See above, p. 492, note 1{1611}.

        [1656] R. Diceto, as above.

        [1657] Walter of Lichfield died December 7, 1160 (Stubbs,
        _Registr. Sac. Ang._, p. 30); Alfred of Worcester, July 31,
        1160; and Robert of Exeter some time in the same year (_ib._ p.
        31).

The primate’s letters during the last few months of his life shew him
calmly awaiting his call to rest, yet anxiously longing to be assured
of the future of those whom he was leaving behind, and to set in order
a few things that were wanting before he could depart altogether in
peace. Very touching are the expressions of his longing to “see the
face of the Lord’s anointed once again”--to welcome the king back to
his country and his home, safely removed from political temptations to
break away from the unity of the Church.[1658] And there was another
for whose return Theobald yearned more deeply still: his own long
absent archdeacon--“the first of my counsellors, nay, my only one,”
as he calls him, pleading earnestly with the king to let him come
home.[1659] For a moment, indeed, Theobald was on the point of being
left almost alone. Some rather obscure mischief-making in high places
had caused John of Salisbury to be visited with the king’s severe
displeasure; treated as a suspected criminal in England, forbidden to
go and clear himself in Normandy, John found his position so unbearable
that he contemplated taking refuge in France under the protection of
his old friend Abbot Peter of Celle.[1660] He seems, however, to have
ended by remaining in England under Theobald’s protection; before
the winter of 1160, at any rate, he was again at Canterbury, watching
over and tending the primate’s gradual decline;--almost overwhelmed
with “the care of all the churches,” which Theobald had transferred
to him;[1661]--characteristically finding relief from his anxieties
in correspondence with old friends, and in the composition of another
little philosophical treatise, called _Metalogicus_, whose chief
interest lies in the sketch which it contains of its author’s early
life.[1662] John’s disinterested affection and devoted services were
fully appreciated by Theobald;[1663] but they could not make up for
the absence of Thomas. Not only did the old man long to see his early
favourite once more; not only were there grave matters of diocesan
administration dependent on the archdeacon’s office and urgently
requiring his personal co-operation:[1664]--it was on far weightier
things than these that the archbishop desired to hold counsel with
Thomas. In the hands of Thomas, as chief adviser and minister of the
king, rested in no small degree the future of the English Church;
Theobald’s darling wish was that it should rest in his hands as primate
of all England.[1665]

        [1658] Joh. Salisb. Epp. lxiii, lxiv,* lxiv** (Giles, vol. i.
        pp. 77, 78, 80–82), all from Theobald to Henry.

        [1659] “Qui [sc. Thomas] nobis unicus est et consilii nostri
        primus.” Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxx. (_ib._ p. 93).

        [1660] Joh. Salisb. Epp. lxi., xcvi., cviii., cxii., cxiii.,
        cxv., cxxi. (_ib._ pp. 74, 75, 141–144, 158, 160, 161, 164,
        165, 169, 170). See Demimuid, _Jean de Salisbury_, pp. 183–188.

        [1661] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, prolog. (Giles, vol. v. pp. 8,
        9), and l. iv. c. 42 (_ib._ p. 206).

        [1662] _Ib._ l. ii. c. 10 (pp. 78–81).

        [1663] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxiv.* (Giles, vol. i. p. 80), from
        Theobald to Henry.

        [1664] Joh. Salisb. Epp. xlix., lxxi. (_ib._ pp. 51, 52, 94,
        95), both from Theobald to Thomas. The initial in the address
        of lxxi. is clearly wrong. See Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. p.
        11, note a.

        [1665] This is distinctly stated by John of Salisbury:--

          “Ille Theobaldus qui Christi præsidet aulæ,
           Quam fidei matrem Cantia nostra colit,
           Hunc successurum sibi sperat et orat, ut idem
           Præsulis officium muniat atque locum.”

          _Entheticus_, vv. 1293–1296 (Giles, vol. v. p. 280.)


Later writers dilate upon the startling contrast between Becket’s
character and policy as chancellor and as archbishop. That contrast
vanishes when we look at the chancellor through the eyes of the
two men who knew him best; and we find that the real contrast lies
between their view of him and that of the outside world which only
saw the surface of his life and could not fathom its inner depths.
Those who beheld him foremost in every military exercise and every
courtly pastime, far outdoing the king himself in lavish splendour
and fastidious refinement, devoting every faculty of mind and body
to the service and the pleasure of his royal friend:--those who saw
all this, and could only judge by what they saw, might well have
thought that for such a man to become the champion of the Church was a
dream to be realized only by miracle or by imposture. But Archbishop
Theobald and John of Salisbury had known his inmost soul, better
perhaps than he knew it himself, before ever he went to court; and
they knew that however startling his conduct there might look, he was
merely fulfilling in his own way the mission on which he had been sent
thither:--making himself all things to all men, if thereby he might by
any means influence the court and the king for good.[1666] Even his
suggestion of the scutage for the war of Toulouse did not seriously
shake their faith in him; they blamed him, but they believed that he
had erred in weakness, not in wilfulness.[1667] In the middle of the
war John dedicated the _Polycraticus_ to him as the one man about the
court to whom its follies and its faults could be criticized without
fear, because he had no part in them.[1668] Thomas himself does not
seem to have contemplated the possibility of removal from his present
sphere. It was not in his nature at any time to look far ahead; and
Henry seemed to find his attendance more indispensable than ever,
declaring in answer to Theobald’s intreaties and remonstrances that he
could not possibly spare him till peace was thoroughly restored.[1669]

        [1666] Joh. Salisb. _Enthet._, vv. 1435–1440 (Giles, vol. v. p.
        285).

        [1667] Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxlv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 223, 224).

        [1668] Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, prolog. (Giles, vol. iii. p.
        13).

        [1669] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 106).

Thomas was in a strait. His first duty was to his dying spiritual
father; but he could not go against the king’s will without running
such a risk as Theobald would have been the first to disapprove. Thomas
himself therefore at last suggested that the archbishop should try to
move the king by summoning his truant archdeacon to return home at
once on pain of deprivation.[1670] Theobald, unable to reconcile the
contradictory letters of king and chancellor with the general reports
of their wonderful unanimity, steered a middle course between severity
and gentleness, from fear of bringing down the royal displeasure upon
his favourite, whom he yet half suspected of being in collusion with
the king. His secretary, John, had no such doubts; but he too was
urgent that by some means or other Thomas should come over before
the primate’s death.[1671] If he did go, it can only have been for a
flying visit; and there is no sign that he went at all. One thing he
did obtain for Theobald’s satisfaction: the appointment of Bartholomew
archdeacon of Exeter to the bishopric of that diocese.[1672] In April
Richard Peche, on whom the see of Chester had been conferred, was
consecrated at Canterbury by Walter of Rochester, the archbishop
being carried into the chapel to sanction by his presence the rite in
which he was too feeble to assist.[1673] By the hand of the faithful
secretary John he transmitted to King Henry his last solemn benediction
and farewell, and commended to the royal care the future of his church
and the choice of his successor.[1674] A few days later, on April 18,
1161, the good primate passed away.[1675]

        [1670] _Ib._ (p. 105).

        [1671] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 105–107).

        [1672] Joh. Salisb. Epp. lxx., lxxi., lxxviii. (as above,
        pp. 94, 95, 106). On Bartholomew see also Ep. xc. (_ib._ pp.
        132–136), where John addresses him as a personal friend.

        [1673] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 168.

        [1674] Joh. Salisb. Ep. liv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 56–58). See
        the archbishop’s will in Ep. lvii. (_ib._ pp. 60–62).

        [1675] Gerv. Cant. as above.



_ERRATA_


  Page 50, line 8 from foot, _insert_ “and” _before_ “bore.”
    ” 158,  ”   5, _for_ “in” _read_ “by.”
    ” 268,  ”  18, _dele_ “the following.”
    ” 274,  ”  14 from foot, _for_ “two” _read_ “three.”
    ” 282,  ”  14, _insert_ “and” _before_ “made.”
    ” 417, lines 3 and 4 from foot, _for_ “husband ... heiress”
      _read_ “head.”
    ” 438, note 5, line 8, _for_ “David” _read_ “Henry of Scotland.”


END OF VOL. I.


_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_



  ENGLAND
  UNDER
  THE ANGEVIN KINGS



[Illustration: Publisher’s colophon]



  ENGLAND
  UNDER
  THE ANGEVIN KINGS

  BY
  KATE NORGATE

  IN TWO VOLUMES--VOL. II.

  WITH MAPS AND PLANS

  London
  MACMILLAN AND CO.
  AND NEW YORK
  1887

  _All rights reserved_



CONTENTS


  CHAPTER I

                                                              PAGE
  ARCHBISHOP THOMAS, 1162–1164                                   1
    Note A.--The Council of Woodstock                           43
    Note B.--The Council of Clarendon                           44


  CHAPTER II

  HENRY AND ROME, 1164–1172                                     46


  CHAPTER III

  THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND, 795–1172                             82


  CHAPTER IV

  HENRY AND THE BARONS, 1166–1175                              120


  CHAPTER V

  THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE, 1175–1183                                169


  CHAPTER VI

  THE LAST YEARS OF HENRY II., 1183–1189                       229


  CHAPTER VII

  RICHARD AND ENGLAND, 1189–1194                               273


  CHAPTER VIII

  THE LATER YEARS OF RICHARD, 1194–1199                        332


  CHAPTER IX

  THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS, 1199–1206                          388
    Note.--The Death of Arthur                                 429


  CHAPTER X

  THE NEW ENGLAND, 1170–1206                                   431



LIST OF MAPS


  III. IRELAND, A.D. 1172                        _To face page_ 82

  IV. MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE REBELLION OF 1173–1174       ”     149

  V. FRANCE AND BURGUNDY _c._ 1180                       ”     185

  VI. EUROPE _c._ 1180                                   ”     189

  VII. FRANCE AND THE ANGEVIN DOMINIONS, 1194            ”     359



PLANS


  VII. LES ANDELYS AND CHÂTEAU-GAILLARD         _To face page_ 375

  VIII. CHÂTEAU-GAILLARD                                ”      378



CHAPTER I.

ARCHBISHOP THOMAS.

1162–1164.


Somewhat more than a year after the primate’s death, Thomas the
chancellor returned to England. He came, as we have seen, at the
king’s bidding, ostensibly for the purpose of securing the recognition
of little Henry as heir to the crown. But this was not the sole nor
even the chief object of his mission. On the eve of his departure--so
the story was told by his friends in later days--Thomas had gone to
take leave of the king at Falaise. Henry drew him aside: “You do not
yet know to what you are going. I will have you to be archbishop of
Canterbury.” The chancellor took, or tried to take, the words for a
jest. “A saintly figure indeed,” he exclaimed with a smiling glance at
his own gay attire, “you are choosing to sit in that holy seat and to
head that venerable convent! No, no,” he added with sudden earnestness,
“I warn you that if such a thing should be, our friendship would soon
turn to bitter hate. I know your plans concerning the Church; you will
assert claims which I as archbishop must needs oppose; and the breach
once made, jealous hands would take care that it should never be healed
again.” The words were prophetic; they sum up the whole history of
the pontificate of Thomas Becket. Henry, however, in his turn passed
them over as a mere jest, and at once proclaimed his intention to the
chancellor’s fellow-envoys, one of whom was the justiciar, Richard de
Lucy. “Richard,” said the king, “if I lay dead in my shroud, would
you earnestly strive to secure my first-born on my throne?” “Indeed I
would, my lord, with all my might.” “Then I charge you to strive no
less earnestly to place my chancellor on the metropolitan chair of
Canterbury.”[1]

        [1] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp. 180, 182.
        Cf. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 63–67.

Thomas was appalled. He could not be altogether taken by surprise;
he knew what had been Theobald’s wishes and hopes; he knew that from
the moment of Theobald’s death all eyes had turned instinctively upon
himself with the belief that the future of the Church rested wholly
in his all-powerful hands; he could not but suspect the king’s own
intentions,[2] although the very suspicion would keep him silent,
and all the more so because those intentions ran counter to his own
desires. For twelve months he had known that the primacy was within his
reach; he had counted the cost, and he had no mind to pay it. He was
incapable of undertaking any office without throwing his whole energies
into the fulfilment of its duties; his conception of the duties of the
primate of all Britain would involve the sacrifice not only of those
secular pursuits which he so keenly enjoyed, but also of that personal
friendship and political co-operation with the king which seemed almost
an indispensable part of the life of both; and neither sacrifice was
he disposed to make. He had said as much to an English friend who had
been the first to hint at his coming promotion,[3] and he repeated it
now with passionate earnestness to Henry himself, but all in vain. The
more he resisted, the more the king insisted--the very frankness of his
warnings only strengthening Henry’s confidence in him; and when the
legate Cardinal Henry of Pisa urged his acceptance as a sacred duty,
Thomas at last gave way.[4]

        [2] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 180. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.),
        p. 14. _Thomas Saga_ (as above), p. 63.

        [3] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp. 25,
        26.

        [4] Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), pp. 7, 8. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol.
        iv.), p. 18. Anon. II. (_ib._), p. 86.

The council in London was no sooner ended than Richard de Lucy and
three of the bishops[5] hurried to Canterbury, by the king’s orders,
to obtain from the cathedral chapter the election of a primate in
accordance with his will. The monks of Christ Church were never very
easy to manage; in the days of the elder King Henry they had firmly
and successfully resisted the intrusion of a secular clerk into the
monastic chair of S. Augustine; and a strong party among them now
protested that to choose for pastor of the flock of Canterbury a
man who was scarcely a clerk at all, who was wholly given to hawks
and hounds and the worldly ways of the court, would be no better
than setting a wolf to guard a sheepfold. But their scruples were
silenced by the arguments of Richard de Lucy and by their dread
of the royal wrath, and in the end Thomas was elected without a
dissentient voice.[6] The election was repeated in the presence of a
great council[7] held at Westminster on May 23,[8] and ratified by
the bishops and clergy there assembled.[9] Only one voice was raised
in protest; it was that of Gilbert Foliot,[10] who, alluding doubtless
to the great scutage, declared that Thomas was utterly unfit for the
primacy, because he had persecuted the Church of God.[11] The protest
was answered by Henry of Winchester in words suggested by Gilbert’s
own phrase: “My son,” said the ex-legate, addressing Thomas, “if thou
hast been hitherto as Saul the persecutor, be thou henceforth as Paul
the Apostle.”[12]

        [5] E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), pp. 366. The bishops were Exeter,
        Chichester and Rochester; Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 16, 17, Anon.
        I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), pp. 14–16, and Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 169; this last alone names Rochester, and
        adds another envoy--Abbot Walter of Battle, Chichester’s old
        adversary and the justiciar’s brother.

        [6] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 17. E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. ii.), pp. 366, 367. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp.
        183–185. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 16. _Thomas Saga_
        (Magnusson, vol. i. p. 73) has quite a different version of the
        result.

        [7] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 17. Will.
        Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 9. Garnier, as above. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 169. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 306.

        [8] The Wednesday before Pentecost. R. Diceto (as above), p.
        307.

        [9] Garnier, Will. Cant., Anon. I., as above. R. Diceto (as
        above), p. 306. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 170. All these
        writers either say or imply that the council represented, or
        was meant to represent, the entire _clerus et populus_ of all
        England; except R. Diceto, who says: “clero totius provinciæ
        _Cantuariorum_ generaliter Lundoniæ convocato” (p. 306). Cf.
        _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 73–77; Will. Fitz-Steph.
        (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 36; and Herb. Bosh.
        (_ib._), p. 184.

        [10] Garnier, Will. Cant., Will. Fitz-Steph. and Anon. I. as
        above. E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 367. Will.
        Cant., E. Grim and the Anon. call him “bishop of London” by
        anticipation.

        [11] “Destruite ad seinte Iglise.” Garnier, as above.

        [12] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 18.

The election was confirmed by the great officers of state and the
boy-king in his father’s name;[13] the consecration was fixed for the
octave of Pentecost, and forthwith the bishops began to vie with each
other for the honour of performing the ceremony. Roger of York, who
till now had stood completely aloof, claimed it as a privilege due to
the dignity of his see; but the primate-elect and the southern bishops
declined to accept his services without a profession of canonical
obedience to Canterbury, which he indignantly refused.[14] The bishop
of London, on whom as dean of the province the duty according to
ancient precedent should have devolved, was just dead;[15] Walter
of Rochester momentarily put in a claim to supply his place,[16]
but withdrew it in deference to Henry of Winchester, who had lately
returned from Cluny, and whose royal blood, venerable character, and
unique dignity as father of the whole English episcopate, marked him
out beyond all question as the most fitting person to undertake the
office.[17] By way of compensation, it was Walter who, on the Saturday
in Whitsun-week, raised the newly-elected primate to the dignity of
priesthood.[18]

        [13] _Ibid._ Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 17.
        Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 9. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p.
        367. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 185.

        [14] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 170.

        [15] He died on May 4. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 306.

        [16] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 188.

        [17] Gerv. Cant., R. Diceto and Herb. Bosh. as above. MS.
        Lansdown. II. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 155. Cf.
        Anon. I. (_ib._), p. 19. There was another claimant, a Welsh
        bishop, who asserted priority of consecration over all his
        brother-prelates; so at least says Gerv. Cant., but one does
        not see who he can have been.

        [18] R. Diceto, as above.

Early next morning the consecration took place. Canterbury cathedral
has been rebuilt from end to end since that day; it is only imagination
which can picture the church of Lanfranc and Anselm and Theobald as
it stood on that June morning, the scarce-risen sun gleaming faintly
through its eastern windows upon the rich vestures of the fourteen
bishops[19] and their attendant clergy and the dark robes of the monks
who thronged the choir, while the nave was crowded with spectators,
foremost among whom stood the group of ministers surrounding the little
king.[20] From the vestry-door Thomas came forth, clad no longer in
the brilliant attire at which he had been jesting a few weeks ago, but
in the plain black cassock and white surplice of a clerk; through the
lines of staring, wondering faces he passed into the choir, and there
threw himself prostrate upon the altar-steps. Thence he was raised to
go through a formality suggested by the prudence of his consecrator.
To guard, as he hoped, against all risk of future difficulties which
might arise from Thomas’s connexion with the court, Henry of Winchester
led him down to the entrance of the choir, and in the name of the
Church called upon the king’s representatives to deliver over the
primate-elect fully and unreservedly to her holy service, freed from
all secular obligations, actual or possible. A formal quit-claim was
accordingly granted to Thomas by little Henry and the justiciars, in
the king’s name;[21] after which the bishop of Winchester proceeded to
consecrate him at once. A shout of applause rang through the church as
the new primate of all Britain was led up to his patriarchal chair;
but he mounted its steps with eyes downcast and full of tears.[22] To
him the day was one of melancholy foreboding; yet he made its memory
joyful in the Church for ever. He began his archiepiscopal career by
ordaining a new festival to be kept every year on that day--the octave
of Pentecost--in honour of the most Holy Trinity;[23] and in process of
time the observance thus originated spread from Canterbury throughout
the whole of Christendom, which thus owes to an English archbishop the
institution of Trinity Sunday.

        [19] See the list in Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 170.

        [20] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 188.

        [21] MS. Lansdown. II. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 154, 155. Cf.
        Anon. I. (_ib._), pp. 17, 18; Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.),
        p. 9; E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 367; Herb. Bosh. (_ib._
        vol. iii.), p. 185; Garnier (Hippeau), p. 19; and _Thomas
        Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 81. All these place this scene
        in London, immediately after the consecration. The three
        first, however, seem to be only following Garnier; and the
        words of Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii. p.
        36), though not very explicit, seem rather to agree with the
        MS. Lansdown. Garnier, Grim and the Anon. I. all expressly
        attribute the suggestion to Henry of Winchester.

        [22] Anon. I. (as above), p. 19.

        [23] Gerv. Cant. as above.

“The king has wrought a miracle,” sneered the sarcastic bishop of
Hereford, Gilbert Foliot; “out of a soldier and man of the world he
has made an archbishop.”[24] The same royal power helped to smooth the
new primate’s path a little further before him. He was not, like most
of his predecessors, obliged to go in person to fetch his pallium from
Rome; an embassy which he despatched immediately after his consecration
obtained it for him without difficulty from Alexander III., who had
just been driven by the Emperor’s hostility to seek a refuge in France,
and was in no condition to venture upon any risk of thwarting King
Henry’s favourite minister.[25] The next messenger whom Thomas sent
over sea met with a less pleasant reception. He was charged to deliver
up the great seal into the king’s hands with a request that Henry would
provide himself with another chancellor, “as Thomas felt scarcely equal
to the cares of one office, far less to those of two.”[26]

        [24] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 36.

        [25] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 24, 25. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.) p. 9. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 189.
        Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 172. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol.
        i. p. 307. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 91–95.

        [26] Will. Cant. (as above), p. 12. Cf. Garnier (Hippeau), p.
        29, and R. Diceto as above.

Henry was both surprised and vexed. It was customary for the chancellor
to resign his office on promotion to a bishopric; but this sudden step
on the part of Thomas was quite unexpected, and upset a cherished
scheme of the king’s. He had planned to rival the Emperor by having an
archbishop for his chancellor, as the archbishops of Mainz and Cöln
were respectively arch-chancellors of Germany and Italy;[27] he had
certainly never intended, in raising his favourite to the primacy, to
deprive himself of such a valuable assistant in secular administration;
his aim had rather been to secure the services of Thomas in two
departments instead of one.[28] To take away all ground of scandal, he
had even procured a papal dispensation to sanction the union of the
two offices in a single person.[29] Thomas, however, persisted in his
resignation; and as there was no one whom Henry cared to put in his
place, the chancellorship remained vacant, while the king brooded over
his friend’s unexpected conduct and began to suspect that it was caused
by weariness of his service.

        [27] R. Diceto (as above), p. 308. The real work of the office
        in the Empire was, however, done by another chancellor, who at
        this time was a certain Reginald, of whom we shall hear again
        later on. “Cancellarius” plays almost as conspicuous and quite
        as unclerkly a part in the Italian wars of Barbarossa as in the
        French and Aquitanian wars of Henry.

        [28] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 29. Cf. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson),
        vol. i. pp. 69–71.

        [29] Garnier, as above.

Meanwhile Thomas had entered upon the second phase of his strangely
varied career. He had “put off the deacon” for awhile; he was resolved
now to “put off the old man” wholly and for ever. No sooner was he
consecrated than he flung himself, body and soul, into his new life
with an ardour more passionate, more absorbing, more exclusive than
he had displayed in pursuit of the worldly tasks and pleasures of the
court. On the morrow of his consecration, when some jongleurs came to
him for the largesse which he had never been known to refuse, he gently
but firmly dismissed them; he was no longer, he said, the chancellor
whom they had known; his whole possessions were now a sacred trust, to
be spent not on actors and jesters but in the service of the Church and
the poor.[30] Theobald had doubled the amount of regular alms-givings
established by his predecessors; Thomas immediately doubled those of
Theobald.[31] To be diligent in providing for the sick and needy,
to take care that no beggar should ever be sent empty away from his
door,[32] was indeed nothing new in the son of the good dame Rohesia
of Caen. The lavish hospitality of the chancellor’s household, too,
was naturally transferred to that of the archbishop; but it took a
different tone and colour. All and more than all the old grandeur and
orderliness were there; the palace still swarmed with men-at-arms,
servants and retainers of all kinds, every one with his own appointed
duty, whose fulfilment was still carefully watched by the master’s
eyes; the bevy of high-born children had only increased, for by an
ancient custom the second son of a baron could be claimed by the
primate for his service--as the eldest by the king--until the age of
knighthood; a claim which Thomas was not slow to enforce, and which
the barons were delighted to admit. The train of clerks was of course
more numerous than ever. The tables were still laden with delicate
viands, served with the utmost perfection, and crowded with guests
of all ranks; Thomas was still the most courteous and gracious of
hosts. But the banquet wore a graver aspect than in the chancellor’s
hall. The knights and other laymen occupied a table by themselves,
where they talked and laughed as they listed; it was the clerks and
religious who now sat nearest to Thomas. He himself was surrounded
by a select group of clerks, his _eruditi_, his “learned men” as he
called them: men versed in Scriptural and theological lore, his chosen
companions in the study of Holy Writ into which he had plunged with
characteristic energy; while instead of the minstrelsy which had been
wont to accompany and inspire the gay talk at the chancellor’s table,
there was only heard, according to ecclesiastical custom, the voice of
the archbishop’s cross-bearer who sat close to his side reading from
some holy book: the primate and his confidential companions meanwhile
exchanging comments upon what was read, and discussing matters too
deep and solemn to interest unlearned ears or to brook unlearned
interruption.[33] Of the meal itself Thomas partook but sparingly;[34]
its remainder was always given away;[35] and every day twenty-six poor
men were brought into the hall and served with a dinner of the best,
before Thomas would sit down to his own midday meal.[36]

        [30] MS. Lansdown. II. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 156.

        [31] Anon. I. (_ibid._), p. 20. The Anon. II. (_ibid._), p.
        90, and Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 307, say that to
        this purpose he appropriated a _tithe_ of all his revenues--a
        statement which reflects rather strangely upon the former
        archbishops.

        [32] Joh. Salisb. and Anon. I. as above. Anon. II. (as above),
        pp. 89, 90.

        [33] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp. 225–229.
        On the _eruditi_ see _ib._ pp. 206, 207, 523–529.

        [34] _Ib._ pp. 231–236. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 37.
        Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 308. Anon. II. (_ib._ vol.
        iv.), p. 89.

        [35] Joh. Salisb. (as above), p. 307. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol.
        iv.), pp. 20, 21.

        [36] Anon. II. (_ib._), p. 89.

The amount of work which he had got through by that time must have
been quite as great as in the busiest days of his chancellorship. The
day’s occupations ostensibly began about the hour of tierce, when the
archbishop came forth from his chamber and went either to hear or to
celebrate mass,[37] while a breakfast was given at his expense to a
hundred persons who were called his “poor prebendaries.”[38] After
mass he proceeded to his audience-chamber and there chiefly remained
till the hour of nones, occupied in hearing suits and administering
justice.[39] Nones were followed by dinner,[40] after which the primate
shut himself up in his own apartments with his _eruditi_[41] and spent
the rest of the day with them in business or study, interrupted only
by the religious duties of the canonical hours, and sometimes by a
little needful repose,[42] for his night’s rest was of the briefest. At
cock-crow he rose for prime; immediately afterwards there were brought
in to him secretly, under cover of the darkness, thirteen poor persons
whose feet he washed and to whom he ministered at table with the utmost
devotion and humility,[43] clad only in a hair-shirt which from the day
of his consecration he always wore beneath the gorgeous robes in which
he appeared in public.[44] He then returned to his bed, but only for
a very short time; long before any one else was astir he was again up
and doing, in company with one specially favoured disciple--the one who
tells the tale, Herbert of Bosham. In the calm silent hours of dawn,
while twelve other poor persons received a secret meal and had their
feet washed by the primate’s almoner in his stead, the two friends sat
eagerly searching the Scriptures together, till the archbishop chose
to be left alone[45] for meditation and confession, scourging and
prayer,[46] in which he remained absorbed until the hour of tierce
called him forth to his duties in the world.[47]

        [37] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 208.

        [38] _Ib._ p. 203.

        [39] _Ib._ p. 219.

        [40] _Ib._ p. 225.

        [41] _Ib._ pp. 236, 237.

        [42] _Ib._ p. 238.

        [43] _Ib._ p. 199. Cf. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 38, and
        Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 307.

        [44] On the hair-shirt see MS. Lansdown. II. (_ib._ vol. iv.),
        p. 154; Anon. I. (_ibid._), p. 20; Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.),
        p. 10; Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 196, 199; Garnier
        (Hippeau), p. 23. On Thomas’s troubles about his dress and
        how he settled them see Garnier, pp. 19, 20, 23; Anon. I. (as
        above), p. 21; E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 368; Herb. Bosh.
        (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 196. On his whole manner of life after
        consecration cf. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 95–111.

        [45] Herb. Bosh. (as above), pp. 202–205.

        [46] Anon. II. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 88.

        [47] Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 205.

He was feverishly anxious to lose no opportunity of making up for his
long neglect of the Scriptural and theological studies befitting his
sacred calling. He openly confessed his grievous inferiority in this
respect to many of his own clerks, and put himself under their teaching
with child-like simplicity and earnestness. The one whom he specially
chose for monitor and guide, Herbert of Bosham, was a man in whom,
despite his immeasurable inferiority, one can yet see something of a
temper sufficiently akin to that of Thomas himself to account for their
mutual attraction, and perhaps for some of their joint errors. As they
rode from London to Canterbury on the morrow of the primate’s election
he had drawn Herbert aside and laid upon him a special charge to watch
with careful eyes over his conduct as archbishop, and tell him without
stint or scruple whatever he saw amiss in it or heard criticized by
others.[48] Herbert, though he worshipped his primate with a perfect
hero-worship, never hesitated to fulfil this injunction to the letter
as far as his lights would permit; but unluckily his zeal was even
less tempered by discretion than that of Thomas himself. He was a far
less safe guide in the practical affairs of life than in the intricate
paths of abstract and mystical interpretation of Holy Writ in which
he and Thomas delighted to roam together. Often, when no other quiet
time could be found, the archbishop would turn his horse aside as
they travelled along the road, beckon to his friend, draw out a book
from its hiding-place in one of his wide sleeves, and plunge into an
eager discussion of its contents as they ambled slowly on.[49] When at
Canterbury, his greatest pleasure was to betake himself to the cloister
and sit reading like a lowly monk in one of its quiet nooks.[50]

        [48] _Ib._ p. 186.

        [49] _Ib._ p. 206.

        [50] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._), pp. 38, 39.

But the _eruditi_ of Thomas, like the disciples of Theobald, were
the confidants and the sharers of far more than his literary and
doctrinal studies. It was in those evening hours which he spent in
their midst, secluded from all outside interruption, that the plans
of Church reform and Church revival, sketched long ago by other hands
in the _Curia Theobaldi_, assumed a shape which might perhaps have
startled Theobald himself. As the weeks wore quickly away from Trinity
to Ember-tide, the new primate set himself to grapple at once with
the ecclesiastical abuses of the time in the persons of his first
candidates for ordination. On his theory the remedy for these abuses
lay in the hands of the bishops, and especially of the metropolitans,
who fostered simony, worldliness and immorality among the clergy by the
facility with which they admitted unqualified persons into high orders,
thus filling the ranks of the priesthood with unworthy, ignorant and
needy clerks, who either traded upon their sacred profession as a
means to secular advancement, or disgraced it by the idle wanderings
and unbecoming shifts to which the lack of fit employment drove them
to resort for a living. He was determined that no favour or persuasion
should ever induce him to ordain any man whom he did not know to be
of saintly life and ample learning, and provided with a benefice
sufficient to furnish him with occupation and maintenance; and he
proclaimed and acted upon his determination with the zeal of one who,
as he openly avowed, felt that he was himself the most glaring example
of the evils resulting from a less stringent system of discipline.[51]

        [51] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp. 238–247.

His next undertaking was one which almost every new-made prelate in any
degree alive to the rights and duties of his office found it needful to
begin as soon as possible: the recovery of the alienated property of
his see. Gilbert Foliot, the model English bishop of the day, had no
sooner been consecrated than he wrote to beg the Pope’s support in this
important and troublesome matter.[52] It may well be that even fourteen
years later the metropolitan see had not yet received full restitution
for the spoliations of the anarchy. Thomas however set to work in the
most sweeping fashion, boldly laying claim to every estate which he
could find to have been granted away by his predecessors on grounds
which did not satisfy his exalted ideas of ecclesiastical right, or
on terms which he held detrimental to the interest and dignity of his
church, and enforcing his claims without respect of persons; summarily
turning out those who held the archiepiscopal manors in ferm,[53]
disputing with the earl of Clare for jurisdiction over the castle and
district of Tunbridge, and reclaiming, on the strength of a charter of
the Conqueror, the custody of Rochester castle from the Crown itself.
Such a course naturally stirred up for him a crowd of enemies, and
increased the jealousy, suspicion and resentment which his new position
and altered mode of life had already excited among the companions and
rivals of his earlier days. The archbishop however was still, like the
chancellor, protected against them by the shield of the royal favour;
they could only work against him by working upon the mind of Henry.
One by one they carried over sea their complaints of the wrongs which
they had suffered, or with which they were threatened, at the primate’s
hands;[54] they reported all his daily doings and interpreted them in
the worst sense:--his strictness of life was superstition, his zeal for
justice was cruelty, his care for his church avarice, his pontifical
splendour pride, his vigour rashness and self-conceit:[55]--if the king
did not look to it speedily, he would find his laws and constitutions
set at naught, his regal dignity trodden under foot, and himself and
his heirs reduced to mere cyphers dependent on the will and pleasure of
the archbishop of Canterbury.[56]

        [52] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxxvii. (Giles, vol. i., p. 113).

        [53] E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.) pp. 371, 372.
        Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.) pp. 250, 251. _Thomas Saga_
        (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 117–121.

        [54] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 252. _Thomas Saga_ (as above),
        p. 121.

        [55] Joh. Salisb. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.) pp. 309, 310.
        Anon. II. (_ib._ vol. iv.) pp. 91, 92.

        [56] Joh. Salisb. (as above), p. 310. E. Grim (_ibid._) p. 372.
        Anon. II. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 92. Cf. Arn. Lisieux, Ep. 34
        (Giles, pp. 148, 149).

At the close of the year Henry determined to go and see for himself the
truth of these strange rumours.[57] The negotiations concerning the
papal question had detained him on the continent throughout the summer;
in the end both he and Louis gave a cordial welcome to Alexander, and
a general pacification was effected in a meeting of the two kings and
the Pope which took place late in the autumn at Chouzy on the Loire.
Compelled by contrary winds to keep Christmas at Cherbourg instead of
in England as he had hoped,[58] the king landed at Southampton on S.
Paul’s day.[59] Thomas, still accompanied by the little Henry, was
waiting to receive him; the two friends met with demonstrations of the
warmest affection, and travelled to London together in the old intimate
association.[60] One subject of disagreement indeed there was; Thomas
had actually been holding for six months the archdeaconry of Canterbury
together with the archbishopric, and this Henry, after several vain
remonstrances, now compelled him to resign.[61] They parted however in
undisturbed harmony, the archbishop again taking his little pupil with
him.[62]

        [57] Anon. II. as above.

        [58] Rob. Torigni, a. 1162.

        [59] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 252. The
        date is given by R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 308.

        [60] Herb. Bosh. (as above), pp. 252, 253. Anon. II. (_ib._
        vol. iv.), p. 92. R. Diceto (as above) tells a different tale;
        but Herbert is surely a better authority on these personal
        matters. Cf. also _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp.
        121–123.

        [61] R. Diceto, as above.

        [62] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 253.

The first joint work of king and primate was the translation of Gilbert
Foliot from Hereford to London. Some of those who saw its consequences
in after-days declared that Henry had devised the scheme for the
special purpose of securing Gilbert’s aid against the primate;[63]
but it is abundantly clear that no such thought had yet entered his
mind, and that the suggestion of Gilbert’s promotion really came from
Thomas himself.[64] Like every one else, he looked upon Gilbert as the
greatest living light of the English Church; he expected to find in him
his own most zealous and efficient fellow-worker in the task which lay
before him as metropolitan, as well as his best helper in influencing
the king for good. Gilbert was in fact the man who in the natural
fitness of things had seemed marked out for the primacy; failing that,
it was almost a matter of necessity that he should be placed in the
see which stood next in dignity, and where both king and primate could
benefit by his assistance ever at hand, instead of having to seek out
their most useful adviser in the troubled depths of the Welsh marches.
The chapter of London, to whom during the pecuniary troubles and long
illness of their late bishop Gilbert had been an invaluable friend
and protector, were only too glad to elect him; and his world-wide
reputation combined with the pleadings of Henry to obtain the Pope’s
consent to his translation,[65] which was completed by his enthronement
in S. Paul’s cathedral on April 28, 1163.[66]

        [63] Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above), p. 46.

        [64] This is the statement of Anon. II. (_ib._ vol. iv. p. 98)
        and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 173), fully borne out by
        the letters of Thomas.

        [65] Epp. xvi.–xix. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. pp. 24–30).
        Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 255, 256. Cf. Anon. II.
        (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 98.

        [66] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 309.

The king spent the early summer in subduing South-Wales; the primate,
in attending a council held by Pope Alexander at Tours.[67] From the
day of his departure to that of his return Thomas’s journey was one
long triumphal progress; Pope and cardinals welcomed him with such
honours as had never been given to any former archbishop of Canterbury,
hardly even to S. Anselm himself;[68] and the request which he made to
the Pope for Anselm’s canonization[69] may indicate the effect which
they produced on his mind--confirming his resolve to stand boldly upon
his right of opposition to the secular power whenever it clashed with
ecclesiastical theories of liberty and justice. The first opportunity
for putting his resolve in practice arose upon a question of purely
temporal administration at a council held by Henry at Woodstock on
July 31, after his return from Wales. The Welsh princes came to swear
fealty to Henry and his heir; Malcolm of Scotland came to confirm his
alliance with the English Crown by doing homage in like manner to the
little king.[70] Before the council broke up, however, Henry met the
sharpest constitutional defeat which had befallen any English sovereign
since the Norman conquest, and that at the hands of his own familiar
friend.

        [67] According to Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 173, and
        Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 14 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 135), it opened
        on Trinity Sunday, May 19; according to R. Diceto (as above),
        p. 310, on May 21. The _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp.
        123–127, makes out that Thomas’s chief object in going there
        was to obtain confirmation of certain privileges of his see.
        Cf. also the account of this council in _Draco Norm._, l. iii.
        cc. 13–15, vv. 949–1224 (Howlett, _Will. Newb._, vol. ii. pp.
        742–751).

        [68] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp. 253–255.
        _Thomas Saga_ (as above), pp. 129, 131.

        [69] Ep. xxiii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. p. 35).

        [70] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 311.

The king had devised a new financial project for increasing his own
revenue at the expense of the sheriffs. According to current practice,
a sum of two shillings annually from every hide of land in the shire
was paid to those officers for their services to the community in
its administration and defence. This payment, although described as
customary rather than legal,[71] and called the “sheriff’s aid,”[72]
seems really to have been nothing else than the Danegeld, which still
occasionally made its appearance in the treasury rolls, but in such
small amount that it is evident the sheriffs, if they collected it
in full, paid only a fixed composition to the Crown and kept the
greater part as a remuneration for their own labours. Henry now, it
seems, proposed to transfer the whole of these sums from the sheriff’s
income to his own, and have it enrolled in full among the royal dues.
Whether he intended to make compensation to the sheriffs from some
other source, or whether he already saw the need of curbing their
influence and checking their avarice, we know not; but the archbishop
of Canterbury started up to resist the proposed change as an injustice
both to the receivers and to the payers of the aid. He seems to have
looked upon it as an attempt to re-establish the Danegeld with all the
odiousness attaching to its shameful origin and its unfair incidence,
and to have held it his constitutional duty as representative and
champion of the whole people to lift up his voice against it in their
behalf. “My lord king,” he said, “saving your good pleasure, we will
not give you this money as revenue, for it is not yours. To your
officers, who receive it as a matter of grace rather than of right, we
will give it willingly so long as they do their duty; but on no other
terms will we be made to pay it at all.”--“By God’s Eyes!” swore the
astonished and angry king, “what right have you to contradict me? I am
doing no wrong to any man of yours. I say the moneys shall be enrolled
among my royal revenues.”--“Then by those same Eyes,” swore Thomas in
return, “not a penny shall you have from my lands, or from any lands of
the Church!”[73]

        [71] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 30. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 12. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 373.
        Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 23.

        [72] “L’Aïde al Vescunte.” Garnier, as above.

        [73] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 30. Cf. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 12. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 374.
        Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 23, 24.

How the debate ended we are not told; but one thing we know: from that
time forth the hated name of “Danegeld” appeared in the Pipe Rolls no
more. It seems therefore that, for the first time in English history
since the Norman conquest, the right of the nation’s representatives
to oppose the financial demands of the Crown was asserted in the
council of Woodstock, and asserted with such success that the king
was obliged not merely to abandon his project, but to obliterate the
last trace of the tradition on which it was founded. And it is well
to remember, too, that the first stand made by Thomas of Canterbury
against the royal will was made in behalf not of himself or his order
but of his whole flock;--in the cause not of ecclesiastical privilege
but of constitutional right. The king’s policy may have been really
sounder and wiser than the primate’s; but the ground taken by Thomas
at Woodstock entitles him none the less to a place in the line of
patriot-archbishops of which Dunstan stands at the head.[74]

        [74] On the different account of this affair given in the
        _Thomas Saga_, and the view which has been founded on it, see
        note A at end of chapter.

The next few weeks were occupied with litigation over the alienated
lands of the metropolitan see. A crowd of claims put in by Thomas and
left to await the king’s return now came up for settlement, the most
important case being that of Earl Roger of Clare, whom Thomas had
summoned to perform his homage for Tunbridge at Westminster on July
22. Roger answered that he held the entire fief by knight-service, to
be rendered in the shape of money-payment,[75] of the king and not of
the primate.[76] As Roger was connected with the noblest families in
England,[77] king and barons were strongly on his side.[78] To settle
the question, Henry ordered a general inquisition to be made throughout
England to ascertain where the service of each land-holder was lawfully
due. The investigation was of course made by the royal justiciars; and
when they came to the archiepiscopal estates, one at least of the most
important fiefs in dispute was adjudged by them to the Crown alone.[79]

        [75] “Publicis pensionibus persolvendis.” R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 311.

        [76] _Ibid._

        [77] And had moreover “the fairest sister in the whole
        kingdom,” adds Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol.
        iii.), p. 43.

        [78] _Ibid._

        [79] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 311.

Meanwhile a dispute on a question of church patronage arose between the
primate and a tenant-in-chief of the Crown, named William of Eynesford.
Thomas excommunicated his opponent without observing the custom which
required him to give notice to the king before inflicting spiritual
penalties on one of his tenants-in-chief.[80] Henry indignantly bade
him withdraw the sentence; Thomas refused, saying “it was not for the
king to dictate who should be bound or who loosed.”[81] The answer was
indisputable in itself; but it pointed directly to the fatal subject
on which the inevitable quarrel must turn: the relations and limits
between the two powers of the keys and the sword.

        [80] _Ib._ pp. 311, 312. Will. Fitz-Steph. as above. The
        object of this rule--one of the _avitæ consuetudines_--was,
        as R. Diceto explains, to guard the king against the risk of
        unwittingly associating with excommunicates.

        [81] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

Almost from his accession Henry seems to have been in some degree
contemplating and preparing for those great schemes of legal reform
which were to be the lasting glory of his reign. His earliest efforts
in this direction were merely tentative; the young king was at once
too inexperienced and too hard pressed with urgent business of all
kinds, at home and abroad, to have either capacity or opportunity for
great experiments in legislation. Throughout the past nine years,
however, the projects which floated before his mind’s eye had been
gradually taking shape; and now that he was at last freed for a while
from the entanglements of politics and war, the time had come when he
might begin to devote himself to that branch of his kingly duties for
which he probably had the strongest inclination, as he certainly had
the highest natural genius. He had by this time gained enough insight
into the nature and causes of existing abuses to venture upon dealing
with them systematically and in detail, and he had determined to begin
with a question which was allowed on all hands to be one of the utmost
gravity: the repression of crime in the clergy.

The origin of this difficulty was in the separation--needful perhaps,
but none the less disastrous in some of its consequences--made by
William the Conqueror between the temporal and ecclesiastical courts of
justice. In William’s intention the two sets of tribunals were to work
side by side without mutual interference save when the secular power
was called in to enforce the decisions of the spiritual judge. But in
practice the scheme was soon found to involve a crowd of difficulties.
The two jurisdictions were constantly coming into contact, and it was
a perpetual question where to draw the line between them. The struggle
for the investitures, the religious revival which followed it, the vast
and rapid developement of the canon law, with the increase of knowledge
brought to bear upon its interpretation through the revived study
of the civil law of Rome, gave the clergy a new sense of corporate
importance and strength, and a new position as a distinct order in
the state; the breakdown of all secular administration under Stephen
tended still further to exalt the influence of the canonical system
which alone retained some vestige of legal authority, and to throw
into the Church-courts a mass of business with which they had hitherto
had only an indirect concern, but which they alone now seemed capable
of treating. Their proceedings were conducted on the principles of
the canon law, which admitted of none but spiritual penalties; they
refused to allow any lay interference with the persons over whom they
claimed sole jurisdiction; and as these comprised the whole clerical
body in the widest possible sense, extending to all who had received
the lowest orders of the Church or who had taken monastic vows, the
result was to place a considerable part of the population altogether
outside the ordinary law of the land, and beyond the reach of adequate
punishment for the most heinous crimes. Such crimes were only too
common, and were necessarily fostered by this system of clerical
immunities; for a man capable of staining his holy orders with theft
or murder was not likely to be restrained by the fear of losing them,
which a clerical criminal knew to be the worst punishment in store for
him; and moreover, it was but too easy for the doers of such deeds to
shelter themselves under the protection of a privilege to which often
they had no real title. The king’s justiciars declared that in the nine
years since Henry’s accession more than a hundred murders, besides
innumerable robberies and lesser offences, had gone unpunished because
they were committed by clerks, or men who represented themselves to
be such.[82] The scandal was acknowledged on all hands; the spiritual
party in the Church grieved over it quite as loudly and deeply as
the lay reformers; but they hoped to remedy it in their own way, by
a searching reformation and a stringent enforcement of spiritual
discipline within the ranks of the clergy themselves. The subject had
first come under Henry’s direct notice in the summer of 1158, when
he received at York a complaint from a citizen of Scarborough that a
certain dean had extorted money from him by unjust means. The case was
tried, in the king’s presence, before the archbishop of the province,
two bishops, and John of Canterbury the treasurer of York. The dean
failed in his defence; and as it was proved that he had extorted the
money by a libel, an offence against which Henry had made a special
decree, some of the barons present were sent to see that the law had
its course. John of Canterbury, however, rose and gave it as the
decision of the spiritual judges that the money should be restored
to the citizen and the criminal delivered over to the mercy of his
metropolitan; and despite the justiciar’s remonstrances, they refused
to allow the king any rights in the matter. Henry indignantly ordered
an appeal to the archbishop of Canterbury; but he was called over sea
before it could be heard,[83] and had never returned to England until
now, when another archbishop sat in Theobald’s place.

        [82] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 16 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 140).

        [83] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_), vol. iii. pp.
        43–45.

That it was Thomas of London who sat there was far from being an
indication that Henry had forgotten the incident. It was precisely
because Henry in these last four years had thought over the question
of the clerical immunities and determined how to deal with it that
he had sought to place on S. Augustine’s chair a man after his own
heart. He aimed at reducing the position of the clergy, like all other
doubtful matters, to the standard of his grandfather’s time. He held
that he had a right to whatever his ancestors had enjoyed; he saw
therein nothing derogatory to either the Church or the primate, whom he
rather intended to exalt by making him his own inseparable colleague in
temporal administration and the supreme authority within the realm in
purely spiritual matters--thus avoiding the appeals to Rome which had
led to so much mischief, and securing for himself a representative to
whom he could safely intrust the whole work of government in England
as guardian of the little king,[84] while he himself would be free to
devote his whole energies to the management of his continental affairs.
He seems in fact to have hoped tacitly to repeal the severance of the
temporal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, and bring back the golden
age of William and Lanfranc, if not that of Eadgar and Dunstan; and
for this he, not unnaturally, counted unreservedly upon Thomas. By
slow degrees he discovered his miscalculation. Thomas had given him
one direct warning which had been unheeded; he had warned him again
indirectly by resigning the chancellorship; now, when the king unfolded
his plans, he did not at once contradict him; he merely answered all
his arguments and persuasions with one set phrase:--“I will render unto
Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are
God’s.”[85]

        [84] Anon. II. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 92–94.

        [85] _Ib._ pp. 94, 95.

In July occurred a typical case which brought matters to a crisis. A
clerk named Philip de Broi had been tried in the bishop of Lincoln’s
court for murder, had cleared himself by a legal compurgation, and had
been acquitted. The king, not satisfied, commanded or permitted the
charge to be revived, and the accused to be summoned to take his trial
at Dunstable before Simon Fitz-Peter, then acting as justice-in-eyre
in Bedfordshire, where Philip dwelt. Philip indignantly refused to
plead again in answer to a charge of which he had been acquitted,
and overwhelmed the judge with abuse, of which Simon on his return
to London made formal complaint to the king. Henry was furious,
swore his wonted oath “by God’s Eyes” that an insult to his minister
was an insult to himself, and ordered the culprit to be brought to
justice for the contempt of court and the homicide both at once. The
primate insisted that the trial should take place in his own court at
Canterbury, and to this Henry was compelled unwillingly to consent. The
charge of homicide was quickly disposed of; Philip had been acquitted
in a Church court, and his present judges had no wish to reverse its
decision. On the charge of insulting a royal officer they sentenced
him to undergo a public scourging at the hands of the offended person,
and to forfeit the whole of his income for the next two years, to be
distributed in alms according to the king’s pleasure. Henry declared
the punishment insufficient, and bitterly reproached the bishops with
having perverted justice out of favour to their order.[86] They denied
it; but a story which came up from the diocese of Salisbury[87] and
another from that of Worcester[88] tended still further to shew the
helplessness of the royal justice against the ecclesiastical courts
under the protection of the primate; and the latter’s blundering
attempts to satisfy the king only increased his irritation. Not only
did Thomas venture beyond the limits of punishment prescribed by the
canon law by causing a clerk who had been convicted of theft to be
branded as well as degraded,[89] but he actually took upon himself to
condemn another to banishment.[90] He hoped by these severe sentences
to appease the king’s wrath;[91] Henry, on the contrary, resented them
as an interference with his rights; what he wanted was not severe
punishment in isolated cases, but the power to inflict it in the
regular course of his own royal justice. At last he laid the whole
question before a great council which met at Westminster on October
1.[92]

        [86] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 30–32. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.), pp. 12, 13. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), pp.
        374–376. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 45. Herb.
        Bosh. (_ib._), pp. 265, 266. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp.
        24, 25. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 313. There is another
        version in _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 145.

        [87] Herb. Bosh. (as above), pp. 264, 265. _Thomas Saga_ (as
        above), p. 143.

        [88] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

        [89] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp.
        45, 46.

        [90] Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 267.

        [91] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 46.

        [92] Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 266. Anon. II. (_ib._ vol. iv.),
        p. 95. _Summa Causæ_ (_ibid._), p. 201; this last gives the
        date.

The king’s first proposition, that the bishops should confirm the old
customs observed in his grandfather’s days,[93] opened a discussion
which lasted far into the night. Henry himself proceeded to explain
his meaning more fully; he required, first, that the bishops should
be more strict in the pursuit of criminal clerks;[94] secondly, that
all such clerks, when convicted and degraded, should be handed over to
the secular arm for temporal punishment like laymen, according to the
practice usual under Henry I.;[95] and finally, that the bishops should
renounce their claim to inflict any temporal punishment whatever, such
as exile or imprisonment in a monastery, which he declared to be an
infringement of his regal rights over the territory of his whole realm
and the persons of all his subjects.[96] The primate, after vainly
begging for an adjournment till the morrow, retired to consult with
his suffragans.[97] When he returned, it was to set forth his view of
the “two swords”--the two jurisdictions, spiritual and temporal--in
terms which put an end to all hope of agreement with the king. He
declared the ministers of the Heavenly King exempt from all subjection
to the judgement of an earthly sovereign; the utmost that he would
concede was that a clerk once degraded should thenceforth be treated
as a layman and punished as such if he offended again.[98] Henry,
apparently too much astonished to argue further, simply repeated his
first question--“Would the bishops obey the royal customs?” “Aye,
saving our order,” was the answer given by the primate in the name and
with the consent of all.[99] When appealed to singly they all made the
same answer.[100] Henry bade them withdraw the qualifying phrase, and
accept the customs unconditionally; they, through the mouth of their
primate, refused;[101] the king raged and swore, but all in vain. At
last he strode suddenly out of the hall without taking leave of the
assembly;[102] and when morning broke they found that he had quitted
London.[103] Before the day was over, Thomas received a summons to
surrender some honours which he had held as chancellor and still
retained;[104] and soon afterwards the little Henry was taken out of
his care.[105]

        [93] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 32. Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. iv.), pp. 25, 26. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 376.

        [94] Anon. II. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 96.

        [95] _Ibid._ Cf. _Summa Causæ_ (_ib._), p. 202, Herb. Bosh.
        (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 266, and _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol.
        i. pp. 148, 149.

        [96] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 267.

        [97] _Summa Causæ_ (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 202. Their discussion
        is given in _Thomas Saga_ (as above), p. 151.

        [98] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp. 268–272.
        Cf. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 22. The speech in _Thomas
        Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 151–153, is much more moderate
        in tone, but grants no more in substance.

        [99] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 32. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 13. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 376.
        Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 273. Anon. II. (_ib._ vol.
        iv.), p. 97. Cf. Ep. ccxxv. (_ib._ vol. v. p. 527).

        [100] For Hilary of Chichester’s attempt at evasion see Herb.
        Bosh. (as above), pp. 273, 274, and _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson),
        vol. i. p. 155.

        [101] Garnier, E. Grim, Herb. Bosh., Anon. II., as above. For
        this scene the _Saga_ (as above), pp. 153–155, substitutes a
        wrangle between king and primate, which however comes to the
        same result.

        [102] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 274.

        [103] _Ib._ p. 275. _Summa Causæ_ (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 205.
        _Thomas Saga_ (as above), p. 157.

        [104] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 275.

        [105] He was with his father at the council of Clarendon in
        January 1164. _Summa Causæ_ (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 208.

The king’s wrath presently cooled so far that he invited the primate
to a conference at Northampton. They met on horseback in a field near
the town; high words passed between them; the king again demanded, and
the archbishop again refused, unconditional acceptance of the customs;
and in this determination they parted.[106] A private negotiation
with some of the other prelates--suggested, it was said, by the
diplomatist-bishop of Lisieux--was more successful; Roger of York and
Robert of Lincoln met the king at Gloucester and agreed to accept his
customs with no other qualification than a promise on his part to exact
nothing contrary to the rights of their order. Hilary of Chichester
not only did the same but undertook to persuade the primate himself.
In this of course he failed.[107] Some time before Christmas, however,
there came to the archbishop three commissioners who professed to be
sent by the Pope to bid him withdraw his opposition; Henry having,
according to their story, assured the Pope that he had no designs
against the clergy or the Church, and required nothing beyond a
verbal assent for the saving of his regal dignity.[108] On the faith
of their word Thomas met the king at Oxford,[109] and there promised
to accept the customs and obey the king “loyally and in good faith.”
Henry then demanded that as the archbishop had withstood him publicly,
so his submission should be repeated publicly too, in an assembly
of barons and clergy to be convened for that purpose.[110] This was
more than Thomas had been led to expect; but he made no objection,
and the Christmas season passed over in peace. Henry kept the feast
at Berkhampstead,[111] one of the castles lately taken from the
archbishop; Thomas at Canterbury, where he had just been consecrating
the great English scholar Robert of Melun--one of the three Papal
commissioners--to succeed Gilbert Foliot as bishop of Hereford.[112]

        [106] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), pp. 27–29.

        [107] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 33, 34. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.), pp. 14, 15. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), pp.
        377, 378. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 30–31. Cf. Herb. Bosh.
        (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 276, and _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol.
        i. p. 159.

        [108] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 34, 35. Will. Cant. (as above),
        p. 15. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 378. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol.
        iv.), p. 31. _Thomas Saga_ (as above), p. 161. All, except the
        Anon., seem to doubt the genuineness of the mission.

        [109] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 277. The Anon. I. (_ib._ vol.
        iv.), p. 32, and Garnier (Hippeau), p. 35, say Woodstock.

        [110] Garnier, Will. Cant., Herb. Bosh. and _Thomas Saga_, as
        above. E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 379. Anon.
        I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 33, 34.

        [111] Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 66, from Pipe Roll a. 1164.

        [112] On December 22. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 176.

On S. Hilary’s day the proposed council met at the royal hunting-seat
of Clarendon near Salisbury.[113] Henry called upon the archbishop to
fulfil the promise he had given at Oxford and publicly declare his
assent to the customs. Thomas drew back. As he saw the mighty array
of barons round the king--as he looked over the ranks of his own
fellow-bishops--it flashed at last even upon his unsuspicious mind that
all this anxiety to draw him into such a public repetition of a scene
which he had thought to be final must cover something more than the
supposed papal envoys had led him to expect, and that those “customs”
which he had been assured were but a harmless word might yet become
a terrible reality if he yielded another step. His hesitation threw
the king into one of those paroxysms of Angevin fury which scared the
English and Norman courtiers almost out of their senses. Thomas alone
remained undaunted; the bishops stood “like a flock of sheep ready for
slaughter,” and the king’s own ministers implored the primate to save
them from the shame of having to lay violent hands upon him at their
sovereign’s command. For two days he stood firm; on the third two
knights of the Temple brought him a solemn assurance, on the honour
of their order and the salvation of their souls, that his fears were
groundless and that a verbal submission to the king’s will would end
the quarrel and restore peace to the Church. He believed them; and
though he still shrank from the formality, thus emptied of meaning, as
little better than a lie, yet for the Church’s sake he gave way. He
publicly promised to obey the king’s laws and customs loyally and in
good faith, and made all the other bishops do likewise.[114]

        [113] On the date see note B at end of chapter.

        [114] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 20–22, 36. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.), pp. 16, 17. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), pp.
        380–382. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 278, 279. Anon. I.
        (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 33–36. Anon. II. (_ibid._), p. 99. Cf.
        _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 163–167, and Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 177, 178.

The words were no sooner out of their mouths than Thomas learned how
just his suspicions had been. A question was instantly raised--what
were these customs? It was too late to discuss them that night; next
morning the king bade the oldest and wisest of the barons go and make
a recognition of the customs observed by his grandfather and bring
up a written report of them for ratification by the council.[115]
Nine days later[116] the report was presented. It comprised sixteen
articles, known ever since as the Constitutions of Clarendon.[117] Some
of them merely re-affirmed, in a more stringent and technical manner,
the rules of William the Conqueror forbidding bishops and beneficed
clerks to quit the realm or excommunicate the king’s tenants-in-chief
without his leave, and the terms on which the temporal position of
the bishops had been settled by the compromise between Henry I. and
Anselm at the close of the struggle for the investitures. Another
aimed at checking the abuse of appeals to Rome, by providing that no
appeal should be carried further than the archbishop’s court without
the assent of the king. The remainder dealt with the settlement of
disputes concerning presentations and advowsons, which were transferred
from the ecclesiastical courts to that of the king; the treatment
of excommunicate persons; the limits of the right of sanctuary as
regarding the goods of persons who had incurred forfeiture to the
Crown; the ordination of villeins; the jurisdiction over clerks accused
of crime; the protection of laymen cited before the Church courts
against episcopal and archidiaconal injustice; and the method of
procedure in suits concerning the tenure of Church lands.

        [115] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 37. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 18. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 382.
        Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 279. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol.
        iv.), p. 37. Anon. II. (_ibid._), p. 102. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 178.

        [116] On the chronology see note B at end of chapter.

        [117] Will. Cant. (as above), pp. 18–23; Gerv. Cant, (as
        above), pp. 178–180; Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 137–140.

The two articles last mentioned are especially remarkable. The former
provided that if a layman was accused before a bishop on insufficient
testimony, the sheriff should at the bishop’s request summon a jury
of twelve lawful men of the neighbourhood to swear to the truth or
falsehood of the charge.[118] The other clause decreed that when an
estate was claimed by a clerk in frank-almoign and by a layman as a
secular fief the question should be settled by the chief justiciar in
like manner on the recognition of twelve jurors.[119] The way in which
these provisions are introduced implies that the principle contained
in them was already well known in the country; it indicates that some
steps had already been taken towards a general remodelling of legal
procedure, intended to embrace all branches of judicial administration
and bring them all into orderly and harmonious working. In this view
the Constitutions of Clarendon were only part of a great scheme in
whose complete developement they might have held an appropriate and
useful place.[120] But the churchmen of the day, to whom they were thus
suddenly presented as an isolated fragment, could hardly be expected to
see in them anything but an engine of state tyranny for grinding down
the Church. Almost every one of them assumed, in some way or other,
the complete subordination of ecclesiastical to temporal authority;
the right of lay jurisdiction over clerks was asserted in the most
uncompromising terms; while the last clause of all, which forbade the
ordination of villeins without the consent of their lords, stirred
a nobler feeling than jealousy for mere class-privileges. Its real
intention was probably not to hinder the enfranchisement of serfs, but
simply to protect the landowners against the loss of services which,
being attached to the soil, they had no means of replacing, and very
possibly also to prevent the number of criminal clerks being further
increased by the admission of villeins anxious to escape from the
justice of their lords. But men who for ages had been trained to regard
the Church as a divinely-appointed city of refuge for all the poor and
needy, the oppressed and the enslaved, could only see the other side
of the measure and feel their inmost hearts rise up in the cry of a
contemporary poet--“Hath not God called us all, bond and free, to His
service?”[121]

        [118] Const. Clarend. c. 6 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 138,
        139).

        [119] Const. Clarend. c. 9 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 139).

        [120] It should be noticed that this was clearly understood,
        and full justice was done to Henry’s intentions, not only
        by the most impartial and philosophic historian of the
        time--William of Newburgh (l. ii. c. 16; Howlett, vol. i. p.
        140)--but even by Thomas’s most ardent follower, Herbert of
        Bosham (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii. pp. 272, 273, 278, 280).

        [121] “Et Deus à sun servise nus a tuz apelez!
               Mielz valt filz à vilain qui est preuz et senez,
               Que ne fet gentilz hum failliz et debutez!”

        Garnier (Hippeau), p. 89. This, variously expressed, was the
        grand argument of the clerical-democratic party, and the true
        source of their strength. And they were not altogether wrong in
        attributing the action of their opponents, in part at least,
        to aristocratic contempt and exclusiveness--if we may trust
        Gervase of Canterbury’s report of a complaint said to have
        been uttered at a later time by the king: “Hi quoque omnes”
        [_i.e._ the religious orders] “tales sibi fratres associant,
        pelliparios scilicet et sutores, quorum nec unus deberet
        instante necessitate in episcopum vel abbatem salvâ conscientiâ
        nostrâ promoveri.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 540.

The discussion occupied six days;[122] as each clause was read out
to the assembly, Thomas rose and set forth his reasons for opposing
it.[123] When at last the end was reached, Henry called upon him and
all the bishops to affix their seals to the constitutions. “Never,”
burst out the primate--“never, while there is a breath left in my
body!”[124] The king was obliged to content himself with the former
verbal assent, gained on false pretences as it had been; a copy of
the obnoxious document was handed to the primate, who took it, as he
said, for a witness against its contrivers, and indignantly quitted the
assembly.[125] In an agony of remorse for the credulity which had led
him into such a trap he withdrew to Winchester and suspended himself
from all priestly functions till he had received absolution from the
Pope.[126]

        [122] See note B at end of chapter.

        [123] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp.
        280–285. The answers to the Constitutions in Garnier (Hippeau),
        pp. 84–89, seem to be partly Thomas’s and partly his own.

        [124] “L’arcevesques respunt: Fei que dei Deu le bel,
               Co n’ert, tant cum la vie me bate en cest vessel!”

        Garnier (Hippeau), p. 37. Cf. E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. ii.), p. 383, and Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 37.

        [125] Garnier, as above. Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. i.), p. 23. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 383. Anon. I.
        (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 37. Cf. Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol. ii.),
        p. 311; Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 288; Anon. II.
        (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 103, and _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol.
        i. pp. 167–169. Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol.
        iii.), pp. 48, 49, says that Thomas did set his seal to the
        constitutions; but his statement is at variance with those of
        all other authorities; and he himself afterwards recites two
        speeches made at Northampton, one by Thomas and one by Hilary
        of Chichester, both distinctly affirming that none of the
        bishops sealed. _Ib._ pp. 66, 67.

        [126] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 38. Will. Cant. (as above), p. 24.
        Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 312. E. Grim (_ibid._), p.
        383. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 49. Herb. Bosh.
        (_ibid._), pp. 289–292. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 37.

It was to the Pope that both parties looked for a settlement of their
dispute; but Alexander, ill acquainted both with the merits of the
case and with the characters of the disputants, and beset on all sides
with political difficulties, could only strive in vain to hold the
balance evenly between them. Meanwhile the political quarrel of king
and primate was embittered by an incident in which Henry’s personal
feelings were stirred. His brother William--the favourite young brother
whom he had once planned to establish as sovereign in Ireland--had set
his heart upon a marriage with the widowed countess of Warren; the
archbishop had forbidden the match on the ground of affinity, and his
prohibition had put an end to the scheme.[127] Baffled and indignant,
William returned to Normandy and poured the story of his grievance into
the sympathizing ears first of his mother and then, as it seems, of
the brotherhood at Bec.[128] On January 29, 1164--one day before the
dissolution of the council of Clarendon--he died at Rouen;[129] and
a writer who was himself at that time a monk at Bec not only implies
his own belief that the young man actually died of disappointment, but
declares that Henry shared that belief, and thenceforth looked upon
the primate by whom the disappointment had been caused as little less
than the murderer of his brother.[130] The king’s exasperation was at
any rate plain to all eyes; and as the summer drew on Thomas found
himself gradually deserted. His best friend, John of Salisbury, had
already been taken from his side, and was soon driven into exile by
the jealousy of the king;[131] another friend, John of Canterbury, had
been removed out of the country early in 1163 by the ingenious device
of making him bishop of Poitiers.[132] The old dispute concerning
the relations between Canterbury and York had broken out afresh with
intensified bitterness between Roger of Pont-l’Evêque and the former
comrade of whom he had long been jealous, and who had now once again
been promoted over his head; the king, hoping to turn it to account
for his own purposes, was intriguing at the Papal court in Roger’s
behalf, and one of his confidential agents there was Thomas’s own
archdeacon, Geoffrey Ridel.[133] The bishops as yet were passive;
in the York controversy Gilbert Foliot strongly supported his own
metropolitan;[134] but between him and Thomas there was already a
question, amicable indeed at present but ominous nevertheless, as to
whether or not the profession of obedience made to Theobald by the
bishop of Hereford should be repeated by the same man as bishop of
London to Theobald’s successor.[135]

        [127] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.) p. 142.
        Isabel de Warren was the widow of Stephen’s son William, who of
        course was cousin in the third degree to William of Anjou.

        [128] “Hic” [_i.e._ Thomas] “regis fratrem pertæsum semper
                                                          habebat,
                 Ne consul foret hic, obvius ille fuit:
               Cum nata comitis comitem Warenna tulisset,
                 Nobilis hic præsul ne nocuisset ei.
               Irâ permotus, nunquam rediturus, ab Anglis
                 Advenit is, matri nunciat ista piæ.
               Hinc Beccum veniens fratrum se tradit amori.”

        _Draco Norm._, l. ii. c. 8, vv. 441–447 (Howlett, _Will.
        Newb._, vol. ii. p. 676).

        [129] Rob. Torigni, a. 1164. _Draco Norm._, l. ii. c. 8, vv.
        448–450 (as above). The date is from the first-named writer.

        [130] _Draco Norm._, l. ii. c. 8, vv. 453–456 (as
        above). Considering the abundance--one might almost say
        superabundance--of unquestionably authentic information which
        we already possess as to the origin and grounds of Henry’s
        quarrel with Thomas, I cannot attach so much importance as
        Mr. Howlett apparently does (_ib._ pref. pp. lxi–lxiii) to
        this new contribution from Stephen of Rouen. Stephen’s work
        is quasi-romantic in character and utterly unhistoric in
        style; and his view of the whole Becket controversy is simply
        ludicrous, for he ignores the clerical immunities and the
        Constitutions of Clarendon altogether, and attributes the
        quarrel wholly to two other causes--this affair about William,
        and Thomas’s supposed peculations while chancellor (_ib._ l.
        iii. c. 12, vv. 909–914, p. 741). That the domestic tragedy
        of which he gives such a highly-coloured account had some
        bearing upon the great political drama appears from the words
        of Richard le Breton to Thomas at his murder seven years later,
        “Hoc habeas pro amore domini mei Willelmi fratris regis” (Will.
        Fitz-Steph., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii. p. 142). But in
        these words there is no mention either of William’s death or
        of Henry’s feelings about it. Some allusion to either or both
        may have been in the speaker’s mind; but what he actually
        said implies nothing more than that he had been in William’s
        service, and had therefore resented the thwarting of his lord’s
        interests, and through them, it may be, of his own. Will.
        Fitz-Steph., after explaining what William’s grievance was,
        simply adds, “Unde Willelmus ... inconsolabiliter doluit; et
        omnes sui archiepiscopo inimici facti sunt.” _Ibid._

        [131] From a comparison of Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 46, with Ep. lv. (_ib._ vol. v. pp.
        95–103), it appears that John was separated from Thomas before
        the council of Clarendon. After some months of wandering he
        found shelter at Reims, in the great abbey of S. Remigius of
        which his old friend Peter of Celle was now abbot, and there he
        chiefly dwelt during the next seven years.

        [132] Will. Fitz-Steph., as above, says John was promoted for
        the purpose of getting him out of the way. He was consecrated
        by the Pope at the council of Tours; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol.
        i. p. 311. It must be remembered that Henry had already had
        experience of John’s zeal for clerical immunities.

        [133] Epp. xiii., xxvii., xxxvi., xli.–xliii., l., li., liii.,
        liv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. pp. 21, 22, 44–46, 59, 60,
        67–69, 85, 87, 88, 91, 94); Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p.
        24; E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 384; Anon. I. (_ib._ vol.
        iv.), pp. 38, 39; Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 39, 40; _Thomas Saga_
        (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 179–181; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i.
        p. 181.

        [134] Ep. xxviii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. pp. 46, 47).

        [135] Epp. xxxv., lxvii. (_ib._ pp. 56, 57, 130, 131).

Thomas himself fully expected to meet the fate of Anselm; throughout
the winter his friends had been endeavouring to secure him a refuge in
France;[136] and early in the summer of 1164, having been refused an
interview with the king,[137] he made two attempts to escape secretly
from Romney. The first time he was repelled by a contrary wind; the
second time the sailors put back ostensibly for the same reason, but
really because they had recognized their passenger and dreaded the
royal wrath;[138] and a servant who went on the following night to shut
the gates of the deserted palace at Canterbury found the primate, worn
out with fatigue and disappointment, sitting alone in the darkness
like a beggar upon his own door-step.[139] Despairing of escape,
he made another effort to see the king at Woodstock. Henry dreaded
nothing so much as the archbishop’s flight, for he felt that it would
probably be followed by a Papal interdict on his dominions,[140] and
would certainly give an immense advantage against him to Louis of
France, who was at that very moment threatening war in Auvergne.[141]
He therefore received Thomas courteously, though with somewhat less
than the usual honours,[142] and made no allusion to the past except
by a playful question “whether the archbishop did not think the realm
was wide enough to contain them both?” Thomas saw, however, that
the old cordiality was gone; his enemies saw it too, and, as his
biographer says, “they came about him like bees.”[143] Foremost among
them was John the king’s marshal, who had a suit in the archbishop’s
court concerning the manor of Pageham.[144] It was provided by one of
Henry’s new rules of legal procedure that if a suitor saw no chance of
obtaining justice in the court of his own lord he might, by taking an
oath to that effect and bringing two witnesses to do the same, transfer
the suit to a higher court.[145] John by this method removed his case
from the court of the archbishop to that of the king; and thither
Thomas was cited to answer his claim on the feast of the Exaltation
of the Cross. When that day came the primate was too ill to move; he
sent essoiners to excuse his absence in legal form, and also a written
protest against the removal of the suit, on the ground that it had been
obtained by perjury--John having taken the oath not upon the Gospel,
but upon an old song-book which he had surreptitiously brought into
court for the purpose.[146] Henry angrily refused to believe either
Thomas or his essoiners,[147] and immediately issued orders for a great
council to be held at Northampton.[148] It was customary to call the
archbishops and the greater barons by a special writ addressed to each
individually, while the lesser tenants-in-chief received a general
summons through the sheriffs of the different counties. Roger of York
was specially called in due form;[149] the metropolitan of all Britain,
who ought to have been invited first and most honourably of all,
merely received through the sheriff of Kent a peremptory citation to
be ready on the first day of the council with his defence against the
claim of John the marshal.[150]

        [136] Epp. xxxv., xxxvi., lv. (_ib._ pp. 57, 58, 97).

        [137] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._), vol. iii. p. 49.

        [138] Cf. Will. Fitz-Steph. as above; Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._),
        p. 293; Anon. II. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 104; and Alan Tewkesb.
        (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 325, with E. Grim (_ibid._), pp. 389, 390;
        Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 29; Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.),
        p. 40; and Garnier (Hippeau), p. 49.

        [139] Alan Tewkesb. as above.

        [140] Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 29. E. Grim (_ib._
        vol. ii.), p. 390. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 40. Garnier
        (Hippeau), p. 50.

        [141] Ep. lx. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v., p. 115).

        [142] Ep. ccxxv. (_ib._ p. 530). Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.),
        p. 294.

        [143] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp. 294,
        295.

        [144] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 50.

        [145] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 51. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 31. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 41. On
        this proceeding see Glanville, _De Legg. et Conss. Angl._, l.
        xii. c. 7.

        [146] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 51–53. Will. Cant. (as above), p.
        30. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 390. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._
        vol. iii.), p. 50. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 41. Ep. ccxxv.
        (_ib._ vol. v.), pp. 530, 531.

        [147] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

        [148] _Ib._ p. 49. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 296. Anon. I.
        (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 30. Ep. ccxxv. (_ib._ vol. v.), p. 531.
        Garnier (Hippeau), p. 50.

        [149] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 313, 314.

        [150] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 51.

The council--an almost complete gathering of the tenants-in-chief, lay
and spiritual, throughout the realm[151]--was summoned for Tuesday
October 6.[152] The king however lingered hawking by the river-side
till late at night,[153] and it was not till next morning after Mass
that the archbishop could obtain an audience. He began by asking
leave to go and consult the Pope on his dispute with Roger of York
and divers other questions touching the interests of both Church and
state; Henry angrily bade him be silent and retire to prepare his
defence for his contempt of the royal summons in the matter of John
the marshal.[154] The trial took place next day. John himself did not
appear, being detained in the king’s service at the Michaelmas session
of the Exchequer in London;[155] the charge of failure of justice
was apparently withdrawn, but for the alleged contempt Thomas was
sentenced to a fine of five hundred pounds.[156] Indignant as he was
at the flagrant illegality of the trial, in which his own suffragans
had been compelled to sit in judgement on their primate, Thomas was yet
persuaded to submit, in the hope of avoiding further wrangling over
what seemed now to have become a mere question of money.[157] But there
were other questions to follow. Henry now demanded from the archbishop
a sum of three hundred pounds, representing the revenue due from the
honours of Eye and Berkhampstead for the time during which he had held
them since his resignation of the chancellorship.[158] Thomas remarked
that he had spent far more than that sum on the repair of the royal
palaces, and protested against the unfairness of making such a demand
without warning. Still, however, he disdained to resist for a matter
of filthy lucre, and found sureties for the required amount.[159] Next
morning Henry made a further demand for the repayment of a loan made to
Thomas in his chancellor days.[160] In those days the two friends had
virtually had but one purse as well as “one mind and one heart,” and
Thomas was deeply wounded by this evident proof that their friendship
was at an end. Once more he submitted; but this time it was no easy
matter to find sureties;[161] and then, late on the Friday evening,
there was reached the last and most overwhelming count in the long
indictment thus gradually unrolled before the eyes of the astonished
primate. He was called upon to render a complete statement of all the
revenues of vacant sees, baronies and honours of which he had had the
custody as chancellor--in short, of the whole accounts of the chancery
during his tenure of office.[162]

        [151] Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._) p. 296. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.),
        p. 390. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 41. R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 313. Only two bishops were absent: Nigel of Ely,
        disabled by paralysis, and William of Norwich, who made an
        excuse to avoid sharing in what he knew was to come. Gerv.
        Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 185. From Alan Tewkesb. however
        (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii. p. 331), it seems that Norwich
        came after all--only, like Rochester (Will. Fitz-Steph., _ib._
        vol. iii. p. 52), somewhat late.

        [152] Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above), p. 50. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._
        p. 296), says “hebdomadæ feria quinta, sexta ante B. Calixti
        ... diem”--a self-contradiction, for in 1164 October 9, the
        sixth day before the feast of S. Calixtus, was not Thursday
        but Friday. He makes, however, a similar confusion as to the
        last day of the council (_ib._ pp. 301, 304, 326); and as this
        was undoubtedly Tuesday October 13--not Wednesday 14, as he
        seems to make it in p. 304--it is plain that his mistake lies
        in placing the feast of S. Calixtus a day too early, and that
        the day to which he really means to assign the opening of the
        assembly is Thursday October 8. This really agrees with Will.
        Fitz-Steph., for, as will be seen, the council did not formally
        meet till a day after that for which it was summoned, and did
        not get to business till a day later still. William gives the
        date for which it had been summoned; Herbert, that of its
        practical beginning. R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 313) has
        substituted the closing day for that of opening; the author of
        _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson, vol. i. p. 241), has done the same,
        with a further confusion as to the days of the week; while
        Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 182) has a date which agrees
        with nothing, and which must be altogether wrong.

        [153] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

        [154] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 52. E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. ii.), p. 391. Cf. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 42, and
        Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 51.

        [155] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 51.

        [156] _Ibid._ Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 297. Will. Cant.
        (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 30. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 391.
        Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 42. Garnier (Hippeau), p. 52.
        _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 18. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 183. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 313. The
        actual sentence was forfeiture of all his moveable goods _ad
        misericordiam_--commuted according to custom; cf. Herb. Bosh.
        and Gerv. Cant., as above, with Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above),
        p. 62. Garnier makes the sum three hundred pounds; Will. Cant.,
        fifty; E. Grim, the Anon. I. and R. Diceto, five hundred.

        [157] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 52. E. Grim (as above), p. 391.
        Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 43.

        [158] This must be the meaning of Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol.
        iii.), p. 53, compared with R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp.
        313, 314.

        [159] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

        [160] The demand is stated by Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._) as
        “de quingentis marcis ex causâ commodati in exercitu Tolosæ,
        et aliis quingentis marcis ex causâ fidejussionis regis pro eo
        erga quendam Judæum ibidem.” This would make the total amount
        £666: 3: 8. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 298, and the _Thomas
        Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 189, make it five hundred pounds.

        [161] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp. 298,
        299.

        [162] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 53. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 31. Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p.
        312. E. Grim (_ibid._), p. 392. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol.
        iii.), p. 54. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 299. Anon. I. (_ib._
        vol. iv.), p. 43. Anon. II. (_ibid._), p. 104. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 314. The total sum due was assessed
        in the end at thirty thousand pounds, according to Garnier
        (p. 65), Will. Cant. (p. 38), E. Grim (p. 396) and Anon. I.
        (p. 49). Herb. Bosh., however (as above), makes it thirty
        thousand marks (_i.e._ twenty thousand pounds). The _Thomas
        Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 191, says thirty thousand marks
        “of burnt silver,” _i.e._ blanch; while Gilbert Foliot, when
        reciting the story to the Pope’s legates in 1167, is reported
        as stating it at forty-four thousand marks (£2933: 6: 8); Ep.
        cccxxxix. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi. p. 271). Herb. Bosh.
        (as above) places this demand on the Saturday morning, and the
        whole history of the three days, Friday-Sunday, October 9–11,
        is somewhat confused by the discordant notes of time given by
        the various biographers. I have followed Will. Fitz-Steph., who
        is the most self-consistent and apparently the most trustworthy.

At this crushing demand the archbishop’s courage gave way, and he
threw himself at the king’s feet in despair. All the bishops did
likewise, but in vain; Henry swore “by God’s Eyes” that he would
have the accounts in full. He granted, however, a respite till the
morrow,[163] and Thomas spent the next morning in consultation
with his suffragans.[164] Gilbert of London advised unconditional
surrender;[165] Henry of Winchester, who had already withstood
the king to his face the night before,[166] strongly opposed this
view,[167] and suggested that the matter should be compromised by an
offer of two thousand marks. This the king rejected.[168] After long
deliberation[169] it was decided--again at the suggestion of Bishop
Henry--that Thomas should refuse to entertain the king’s demands on
the ground of the release from all secular obligations granted to him
at his consecration. This answer was carried by the bishops in a body
to the king. He refused to accept it, declaring that the release had
been given without his authority; and all that the bishops could wring
from him was a further adjournment till the Monday morning.[170] In
the middle of Sunday night the highly-strung nervous organization of
Thomas broke down under the long cruel strain; the morning found him
lying in helpless agony, and with great difficulty he obtained from
the king another day’s delay.[171] Before it expired a warning reached
him from the court that if he appeared there he must expect nothing
short of imprisonment or death.[172] A like rumour spread through the
council, and at dawn the bishops in a body implored their primate to
give up the hopeless struggle and throw himself on the mercy of the
king. He refused to betray his Church by accepting a sentence which
he believed to be illegal as well as unjust, forbade the bishops to
take any further part in his trial, gave them notice of an appeal
to Rome if they should do so, and charged them on their canonical
obedience to excommunicate at once whatever laymen should dare to sit
in judgement upon him.[173] Against this last command the bishop of
London instantly appealed.[174] All then returned to the court, except
Henry of Winchester and Jocelyn of Salisbury, who lingered for a last
word of pleading or of sympathy.[175] When they too were gone, Thomas
went to the chapel of the monastery in which he was lodging--a small
Benedictine house dedicated to S. Andrew, just outside the walls of
Northampton--and with the utmost solemnity celebrated the mass of S.
Stephen with its significant introit: “Princes have sat and spoken
against me.” The mass ended, he mounted his horse, and escorted no
longer by a brilliant train of clerks and knights, but by a crowd of
poor folk full of sympathy and admiration, he rode straight to the
castle where the council awaited him.[176]

        [163] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 53, 54.

        [164] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 300.

        [165] Alan Tewkesb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), pp. 326, 327.

        [166] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 54.

        [167] Alan Tewkesb. (as above), p. 327.

        [168] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 54.

        [169] The speeches of the bishops--interesting for studies of
        character--are given at length by Alan Tewkesb. (as above), pp.
        327, 328. Cf. the account in _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i.
        pp. 193–199.

        [170] Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 31. E.
        Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 392. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.),
        p. 300. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 43. Anon. II. (_ibid._),
        pp. 104, 105. Alan Tewkesb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), pp. 328, 329,
        has a slightly different version; in this, and also in _Thomas
        Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 199–201, Gilbert Foliot wins the
        respite by a daring misrepresentation of Thomas’s answer to the
        king. I have followed Herbert’s reckoning of the days here, as
        it fits in with that of Will. Fitz-Steph., who seems the best
        guide in this matter.

        [171] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 55, 56. Will. Cant. (as above),
        p. 32. Alan Tewkesb. (_ib._ vol. ii.) pp. 329, 330. E. Grim
        (_ibid._), pp. 392, 393. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.),
        p. 56. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 300, 301. Anon. I. (_ib._
        vol. iv.), p. 44. _Thomas Saga_ (as above), p. 203. Here again
        I follow Will. Fitz-Steph. and Herbert as to the day.

        [172] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 56. Will. Cant. as above. E. Grim
        (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 393. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 44.
        _Thomas Saga_ as above.

        [173] Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above), p. 62. Herb. Bosh.
        (_ibid._), pp. 301–303. _Thomas Saga_ (as above), pp. 205–207.

        [174] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 303. _Thomas Saga_ (as above),
        p. 207. Some of the other biographers place this scene later
        in the day, but we can hardly do otherwise than follow the two
        eye-witnesses, William and Herbert.

        [175] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 303.
        Jocelyn’s after-conduct shewed that his sympathy with the
        primate was not very deep.

        [176] Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.), pp. 32, 34.
        Alan Tewkesb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 330. E. Grim (_ibid._), p.
        393. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 56, 57. Herb.
        Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 304. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 45.
        Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 56–60. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol.
        i. pp. 207–209.

At the gate he took his cross from the attendant who usually bore it,
and went forward alone to the hall where the bishops and barons were
assembled.[177] They fell back in amazement at the apparition of the
tall solitary figure, robed in full pontificals, and carrying the
crucifix like an uplifted banner prepared at once for defence and for
defiance; friends and opponents were almost equally shocked, and it
was not till he had passed through their midst and seated himself in a
corner of the hall that the bishops recovered sufficiently to gather
round him and intreat that he would give up his unbecoming burthen.
Thomas refused; “he would not lay down his standard, he would not part
with his shield.” “A fool you ever were, a fool I see you are still and
will be to the end,” burst out Gilbert Foliot at last, as after a long
argument he turned impatiently away.[178] The others followed him, and
the primate was left with only two companions, William Fitz-Stephen
and his own especial friend, Herbert of Bosham.[179] The king had
retired to an inner chamber and was there deliberating with his most
intimate counsellors[180] when the story of the primate’s entrance
reached his ears. He took it as an unpardonable insult, and caused
Thomas to be proclaimed a traitor. Warnings and threats ran confusedly
through the hall. The archbishop bent over the disciple sitting at
his feet:--“For thee I fear--yet fear not thou; even now mayest thou
share my crown.” The ardent encouragement with which Herbert answered
him[181] provoked one of the king’s marshals to interfere and forbid
that any one should speak to the “traitor.” William Fitz-Stephen, who
had been vainly striving to put in a gentle word, caught his primate’s
eyes and pointed to the crucifix, intrusting to its silent eloquence
the lesson of patience and prayer which his lips were forbidden to
utter. When he and Thomas, after long separation, met again in the land
of exile, that speechless admonition seems to have been the first thing
which recurred to the minds of both.[182]

        [177] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 60. Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 57. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 304.
        Alan Tewkesb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 330. _Thomas Saga_ (as
        above), p. 209.

        [178] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 60, 61. Will. Cant. (as above), p.
        34. Alan Tewkesb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 330. E. Grim (_ibid._),
        p. 394. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 57. Herb. Bosh.
        (_ibid._), pp. 305, 306. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 46, 47.
        _Thomas Saga_ (as above), pp. 211–213.

        [179] Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 34. Herb.
        Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 307. They only mention Herbert;
        William’s presence appears in the sequel.

        [180] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 61. Will. Cant. (as above), p.
        35. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 394. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol.
        iii.), p. 305. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 47.

        [181] Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 306–308.

        [182] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 59.

In the chamber overhead, meanwhile, Henry had summoned the bishops
to a conference.[183] On receiving from them an account of their
morning’s interview with Thomas, he sent down to the latter his
ultimatum, requiring him to withdraw his appeal to Rome and his
commands to the bishops as contrary to the customs which he had sworn
to observe, and to submit to the judgement of the king’s court on
the chancery accounts. Seated, with eyes fixed on the cross, Thomas
quietly but firmly refused. His refusal was reported to the king,
who grew fiery-red with rage, caught eagerly at the barons’ proposal
that the archbishop should be judged for contempt of his sovereign’s
jurisdiction in appealing from it to another tribunal, and called
upon the bishops to join in his condemnation.[184] York, London
and Chichester proposed that they should cite him before the Pope
instead, on the grounds of perjury at Clarendon and unjust demands on
their obedience.[185] To this Henry consented; the appeal was uttered
by Hilary of Chichester in the name of all, and in most insulting
terms;[186] and the bishops sat down opposite their primate to await
the sentence of the lay barons.[187]

        [183] _Ib._ p. 57. Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 35. Alan
        Tewkesb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 331. Garnier (Hippeau), p. 62.

        [184] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 65, 66. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.), pp. 36–38. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol.
        iii.), pp. 62–65. Cf. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp.
        213–217.

        [185] Will. Cant. (as above), p. 37. In the versions of E.
        Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 396, Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.),
        p. 308, and the _Thomas Saga_ (as above), p. 217, they bluntly
        bargain to be let off from actually sitting in judgement on
        their primate in consideration of a promise to stand by the
        king against him for ever after.

        [186] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp.
        65, 66. Alan Tewkesb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), pp. 331, 332. According
        to Alan, Thomas answered but one word--“I hear”; according to
        William, he condescended to make a long speech. Cf. Anon. I.
        (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 49.

        [187] Alan Tewkesb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 332.

What that sentence was no one outside the royal council-chamber ever
really knew. It was one thing to determine it there and another to
deliver it to its victim, sitting alone and unmoved with the sign of
victory in his hand. With the utmost reluctance and hesitation the old
justiciar, Earl Robert of Leicester, came to perform his odious task.
At the word “judgement” Thomas started up, with uplifted crucifix and
flashing eyes, forbade the speaker to proceed, and solemnly appealed to
the protection of the court of Rome. The justiciar and his companions
retired in silence.[188] “I too will go, for the hour is past,” said
Thomas.[189] Cross in hand he strode past the speechless group of
bishops into the outer hall; the courtiers followed him with a torrent
of insults, which were taken up by the squires and serving-men outside;
as he stumbled against a pile of faggots set ready for the fire, Ralf
de Broc rushed upon him with a shout of “Traitor! traitor!”[190] The
king’s half-brother, Count Hameline, echoed the cry;[191] but he shrank
back at the primate’s retort--“Were I a knight instead of a priest,
this hand should prove thee a liar!”[192] Amid a storm of abuse Thomas
made his way into the court-yard and sprang upon his horse, taking up
his faithful Herbert behind him.[193] The outer gate was locked, but a
squire of the archbishop managed to find the keys.[194] Whether there
was any real intention of stopping his egress it seems impossible
to determine; the king and his counsellors were apparently too much
puzzled to do anything but let matters take their course; Henry indeed
sent down a herald to quell the disturbance and forbid all violence to
the primate;[195] but the precaution came too late. Once outside the
gates, Thomas had no need of such protection. From the mob of hooting
enemies within he passed into the midst of a crowd of poor folk who
pressed upon him with every demonstration of rapturous affection; in
every street as he rode along the people came out to throw themselves
at his feet and beg his blessing.

        [188] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 67. Will. Cant. (as above), pp.
        38, 39. Alan Tewkesb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), pp. 332, 333. E. Grim
        (_ibid._), pp. 397, 398. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.),
        pp. 67, 68. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 309, 310. Anon. I.
        (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 50, 51. Cf. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson),
        vol. i. p. 221, where the altercation is longer, but comes to
        the same end.

        [189] Anon. I. (as above), p. 51.

        [190] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 68. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 39. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 398.
        Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 51, 52. Cf. Will. Fitz-Steph.
        (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 68.

        [191] Garnier and Will. Cant. as above. Anon. I. (as above), p.
        52.

        [192] Anon. I. as above. Cf. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p.
        310. There is a different version in Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol.
        i.), pp. 39, 40.

        [193] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above. Of his own escape William
        says nothing; but we know from a passage later in the same page
        that he soon rejoined his primate.

        [194] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 69. Cf. Will. Cant. (as above), p.
        40; Alan Tewkesb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 333; Anon. I. (_ib._
        vol. iv.), p. 52; and _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 222.

        [195] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 70. Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above),
        p. 69. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 399.

It was with these poor folk that he supped that night, for his own
household, all save a chosen few, now hastened to take leave of
him.[196] Through the bishops of Rochester, Hereford and Worcester he
requested of the king a safe-conduct for his journey to Canterbury;
the king declined to answer till the morrow.[197] The primate’s
suspicions were aroused. He caused his bed to be laid in the church, as
if intending to spend the night in prayer.[198] At cock-crow the monks
came and sang their matins in an under-tone for fear of disturbing
their weary guest;[199] but his chamberlain was watching over an empty
couch. At dead of night Thomas had made his escape with two canons of
Sempringham and a faithful squire of his own, named Roger of Brai. A
violent storm of rain helped to cover their flight,[200] and it was not
till the middle of the next day that king and council discovered that
the primate was gone.

        [196] Alan Tewkesb. (as above), p. 333. E. Grim (_ibid._), p.
        399. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 310. Anon. I. (_ib._
        vol. iv.), p. 52. Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 40. Garnier,
        as above.

        [197] Alan Tewkesb. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 334.
        Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 69. Herb. Bosh.
        (_ibid._), p. 312.

        [198] Alan Tewkesb. and Will. Fitz-Steph. as above. Will. Cant.
        (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 40. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 53.
        Garnier (Hippeau), p. 70. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p.
        229.

        [199] Garnier, as above.

        [200] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 71. E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. ii.), p. 399. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 53, 54. Cf.
        Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 40, Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._
        vol. iii.), p. 69, and Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._) p. 312.

“God’s blessing go with him!” murmured with a sigh of relief the
aged Bishop Henry of Winchester. “We have not done with him yet!”
cried the king. He at once issued orders that all the ports should
be watched to prevent Thomas from leaving the country,[201] and that
the temporalities of the metropolitan see should be left untouched
pending an appeal to the Pope[202] which he despatched the archbishop
of York and the bishops of London, Worcester, Exeter and Chichester
to prosecute without delay.[203] They sailed from Dover on All Souls
day;[204] that very night Thomas, after three weeks of adventurous
wanderings, guarded with the most devoted vigilance by the brethren
of Sempringham, embarked in a little boat from Sandwich; next day he
landed in Flanders;[205] and after another fortnight’s hiding he
made his way safe to Soissons, where the king of France, disregarding
an embassy sent by Henry to prevent him, welcomed him with open
arms. He hurried on to Sens, where the Pope was now dwelling; the
appellant bishops had preceded him, but Alexander was deaf to their
arguments.[206] Thomas laid at the Pope’s feet his copy of the
Constitutions of Clarendon; they were read, discussed and solemnly
condemned in full consistory.[207] The exiled primate withdrew to a
shelter which his friend Bishop John of Poitiers had secured for him in
the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny in Burgundy.[208] On Christmas-eve,
at Marlborough, Henry’s envoys reported to him the failure of their
mission. On S. Stephen’s day Henry confiscated the whole possessions of
the metropolitan see, of the primate himself and of all his clerks, and
ordered all his kindred and dependents, clerical or lay, to be banished
from the realm.[209]

        [201] Anon. I. (as above), p. 55.

        [202] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 70. Herb. Bosh.
        (_ibid._), p. 322.

        [203] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 79. Alan Tewkesb. (as above), p.
        336. E. Grim (_ibid._), p. 402. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol.
        iii.), p. 70. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 323. Anon. I. (_ib._
        vol. iv.), pp. 60, 61. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p.
        261.

        [204] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

        [205] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 71–74. E. Grim (as above), pp.
        399, 400. Alan Tewkesb. (_ibid._), p. 335. Will. Fitz-Steph.
        (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 70. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 323–325.
        Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 54, 55. _Thomas Saga_
        (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 245. Here again there is a confusion
        about the date.

        [206] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 74–81. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.), pp. 42–46. Alan Tewkesb. (_ib._ vol. ii.),
        pp. 335–341. E. Grim (_ibid._), pp. 400–403. Will. Fitz-Steph.
        (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 70–74. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp.
        325–340. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 57–61. Cf. _Thomas
        Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 265–289.

        [207] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 82–84. Will. Cant. (as above),
        p. 46. Alan Tewkesb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), pp. 341, 342. E. Grim
        (_ibid._), pp. 403, 404. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp.
        340–342. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 61–64. The formal
        record of these proceedings is the edition of the Constitutions
        included among the collected letters of S. Thomas--Ep. xlv.
        (_ib._ vol. v. pp. 71–79), in which there is appended to each
        article the Pope’s verdict--“Hoc toleravit” or “Hoc damnavit.”
        The tolerated articles are 2, 6, 11, 13, 14 and 16. Alan of
        Tewkesbury, who first collected the letters of S. Thomas, was
        for some years a canon of Benevento, and probably got this
        annotated copy of the Constitutions from Lombard, who had been
        in Thomas’s suite as one of his _eruditi_ during this visit to
        Sens, and who was archbishop of Benevento at the time of Alan’s
        residence there.

        [208] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 90. Will. Cant. (as above), p. 46.
        Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 313. Alan Tewkesb. (_ibid._),
        p. 345. E. Grim (_ibid._), p. 404. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._
        vol. iii.), p. 76. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 357. Anon. I.
        (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 64. Anon. II. (_ibid._), p. 109. Cf. Ep.
        lx. (_ib._ vol. v.), p. 114.

        [209] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 91. Will. Cant. (as above), pp.
        46, 47. Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), pp. 313, 314. E. Grim
        (_ibid._), p. 404. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p.
        75. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 359. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.),
        p. 65. The dates are from Will. Fitz-Steph. The _Thomas Saga_
        (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 347–349, puts this banishment too late
        in the story.


NOTE A.

THE COUNCIL OF WOODSTOCK.

The usual view of the council of Woodstock--a view founded on
contemporary accounts and endorsed by Bishop Stubbs (_Constit. Hist._,
vol. i. p. 462)--has been disputed on the authority of the Icelandic
_Thomas Saga_. This Saga represents the subject of the quarrel as
being, not a general levy of so much per hide throughout the country,
but a special tax upon the Church lands--nothing else, in fact, than
the “ungeld” which William Rufus had imposed on them to raise the money
paid to Duke Robert for his temporary cession of Normandy, and which
had been continued ever since. “We have read afore how King William
levied a due on all churches in the land, in order to repay him all
the costs at which his brother Robert did depart from the land. This
money the king said he had disbursed for the freedom of Jewry, and
therefore it behoved well the learned folk to repay it to their king.
But because the king’s court hath a mouth that holdeth fast, this due
continued from year to year. At first it was called Jerusalem tax, but
afterwards Warfare-due, for the king to keep up an army for the common
peace of the country. But at this time matters have gone so far, that
this due was exacted, as a king’s tax, from every house” [“monastery,”
editor’s note], “small and great, throughout England, under no other
name than an ancient tax payable into the royal treasury without any
reason being shown for it.” _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 139.
Mr. Magnusson (_ib._ p. 138, note 7) thinks that this account “must
be taken as representing the true history of” the tax in question. In
his Preface (_ib._ vol. ii. pp. cvii–cviii) he argues that if the tax
had been one upon the tax-payers in general, “evidently the primate
had no right to interfere in such a matter, except so far as church
lands were concerned;” and he concludes that the version in the Saga
“gives a natural clue to the archbishop’s protest, which thus becomes
a protest only on behalf of the Church.” This argument hardly takes
sufficient account of the English primate’s constitutional position,
which furnishes a perfectly “natural clue” to his protest, supposing
that protest to have been made on behalf of the whole nation and not
only of the Church:--or rather, to speak more accurately, in behalf of
the Church in the true sense of that word--the sense which Theobald’s
disciples were always striving to give to it--as representing the
whole nation viewed in a spiritual aspect, and not only the clerical
order. Mr. Magnusson adds: “We have no doubt that the source of
the Icelandic Saga here is Robert of Cricklade, or ... Benedict of
Peterborough, who has had a better information on the subject than
the other authorities, which, it would seem, all have Garnier for a
primary source; but he, a foreigner, might very well be supposed to
have formed an erroneous view on a subject the history of which he did
not know, except by hearsay evidence” (_ib._ pp. cviii, cix). It might
be answered that the “hearsay evidence” on which Garnier founded his
view must have been evidence which he heard in England, where he is
known to have carefully collected the materials for his work (Garnier,
ed. Hippeau, pp. 6, 205, 206), and that his view is entitled to just as
much consideration as that of the Icelander, founded upon the evidence
of Robert or Benedict;--that of the three writers who follow Garnier,
two, William of Canterbury and Edward Grim, were English (William
of Canterbury may have been Irish by birth, but he was English by
education and domicile) and might therefore have been able to check any
errors caused by the different nationality of their guide:--and that
even if the case resolved itself into a question between the authority
of Garnier and that of Benedict or Robert (which can hardly be
admitted), they would be of at least equal weight, and the balance of
intrinsic probability would be on Garnier’s side. For his story points
directly to the Danegeld; and we have the indisputable witness of the
Pipe Rolls that the Danegeld, in some shape or other, was levied at
intervals throughout the Norman reigns and until the year 1163, when it
vanished for ever. On the other hand, the Red King’s “ungeld” upon the
Church lands, like all his other “ungelds,” certainly died with him;
and nothing can well be more unlikely than that Henry II. in the very
midst of his early reforms should have reintroduced, entirely without
excuse and without necessity, one of the most obnoxious and unjust of
the measures which had been expressly abolished in “the time of his
grandfather King Henry.”


NOTE B.

THE COUNCIL OF CLARENDON.

There is some difficulty as to both the date and the duration of this
council. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 176) gives the date of meeting
as January 13; R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 312) as January 25; while
the official copy of the Constitutions (_Summa Causæ_, Robertson,
_Becket_, vol. iv. p. 208; Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 140) gives
the closing day as January 30 (“_quartâ die ante Purificationem S.
Mariæ_”). As to the duration of the council, we learn from Herb. Bosh.
(Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii. p. 279) and Gerv. Cant. (as above, p.
178) that there was an adjournment of at least one night; while Gilbert
Foliot (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. Ep. ccxxv. pp. 527–529) says
“Clarendonæ ... continuato triduo id solum actum est ut observandarum
regni consuetudinum et dignitatum a nobis fieret absoluta promissio;”
and that “die vero tertio,” after a most extraordinary scene, Thomas
“antiquas regni consuetudines antiquorum memoriâ in commune propositas
et scripto commendatas, de cætero domino nostro regi se fideliter
observaturum in verbo veritatis absolute promittens, in vi nobis
injunxit obedientiæ sponsione simili nos obligare.” This looks at first
glance as if meant to describe the closing scene of the council, in
which case its whole duration would be limited to three days. But it
seems possible to find another interpretation which would enable us to
reconcile all the discordant dates, by understanding Gilbert’s words
as referring to the verbal discussion at the opening of the council,
before the written Constitutions were produced at all. Gilbert does
indeed expressly mention “customs committed to writing”; but this may
very easily be a piece of confusion either accidental or intentional.
On this supposition the chronology may be arranged as follows:--The
council meets on January 13 (Gerv. Cant.). That day and the two
following are spent in talking over the primate; towards evening of the
third--which will be January 15--he yields, and the bishops with him
(Gilb. Foliot). Then they begin to discuss what they have promised;
the debate warms and lengthens; Thomas, worn out with his three days’
struggle and seeing the rocks ahead, begs for a respite till the morrow
(Herb. Bosh.). On that morrow--_i.e._ January 16--Henry issues his
commission to the “elders,” and the council remains in abeyance till
they are ready with their report. None of our authorities tell us how
long an interval elapsed between the issue of the royal commission and
its report. Herbert, indeed, seems to imply that the discussion on
the constitutions began one night and the written report was brought
up next day. But this is only possible on the supposition that it had
been prepared secretly beforehand, of which none of the other writers
shew any suspicion. If the thing was not prepared beforehand, it must
have taken some time to do; and even if it was, the king and the
commissioners would surely, for the sake of appearances, make a few
days’ delay to give a shew of reality to their investigations. Nine
days is not too much to allow for preparation of the report. On January
25, then, it is brought up, and the real business of the council begins
in earnest on the day named by R. Diceto. And if Thomas fought over
every one of the sixteen constitutions in the way of which Herbert
gives us a specimen, six days more may very well have been spent in the
discussion, which would thus end, as the _Summa Causæ_ says, on January
30.



CHAPTER II.

HENRY AND ROME.

1164–1172.


With the archbishop’s flight into France the struggle between him
and the king entered upon a new phase. Its intrinsic importance was
almost entirely lost, and it became simply an element in the wider
questions of general European politics. In England Thomas’s departure
left Henry sole master of the field; the Constitutions of Clarendon
were put in force without delay and without difficulty; a year later
they were followed up by an Assize, significantly issued from the same
place, which laid the foundations of the whole later English system of
procedure in criminal causes; and thenceforth the work of legal and
judicial reform went on almost without a break, totally unaffected
by the strife which continued to rage between king and primate for
the next five years. The social condition of the country was only
indirectly affected by it. The causes which had ostensibly given rise
to it--the principle involved in the acceptance or rejection of the
Constitutions--did not appeal strongly to the national mind, and had
already become obscured and subordinated to the personal aspect which
the quarrel had assumed at Northampton. As in the case of Anselm,
it was on this personal aspect alone that popular feeling really
fastened; and in this point of view the advantage was strongly on the
archbishop’s side. Thomas, whose natural gifts had already made him a
sort of popular idol, was set by the high-handed proceedings of the
council in the light of a victim of regal tyranny; and the sweeping and
cruel proscriptions inflicted upon all who were in the remotest way
connected with him tended still further to excite popular sympathy for
his wrongs and turn it away from his persecutor. But the sympathy was
for the individual, not for the cause. The principle of the clerical
immunities had no hold upon the minds of the people or even of the
clergy at large. Even among the archbishop’s own personal friends,
almost the only men who clave to it with anything like the same ardour
as himself were his two old comrades of the _Curia Theobaldi_, Bishop
John of Poitiers and John of Salisbury; and even the devotion of
John of Salisbury, which is one of the brightest jewels in Becket’s
crown, was really the devotion of friend to friend, of Churchman to
primate, of a generous, chivalrous soul to what seemed the oppressed
and down-trodden side, rather than the devotion of a partizan to party
principle. Herbert of Bosham, the primate’s shadow and second self,
who clave to his side through good report and evil report and looked
upon him as a hero and a martyr from first to last, was nevertheless
the author of the famous verdict which all the searching criticism of
later times has never yet been able to amend: “Both parties had a zeal
for God; which zeal was according to knowledge, His judgement alone can
determine.”[210]

        [210] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.) p. 273. The
        whole passage from “O rex et o pontifex” to “judicium” (pp.
        272, 273) should be compared with the admirable commentary of
        Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 16 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 140–141).

Cool, dispassionate thinkers like Gilbert Foliot, on the other hand,
while inclining towards the cause which Thomas had at heart, recoiled
from his mode of upholding it as little less than suicidal. In
Gilbert’s view it was Thomas who had betrayed those “rights of his
order” which he proclaimed so loudly, by forsaking the attitude of
passive resistance which the bishops had adopted at Westminster and
in which they were practically unassailable, and staking everything
upon the king’s good faith, without security, in the meeting at Oxford
and the council at Clarendon:--it was Thomas who by his subsequent
conduct--his rash attempts at flight, his rapid changes of front at
Northampton in first admitting and then denying the royal jurisdiction,
his final insult to the king in coming to the council cross in hand,
and his undignified departure from the realm--had frustrated the
efforts whereby wiser and cooler heads might have brought the king to
a better mind and induced him to withdraw the Constitutions:--and it
was not Thomas, but his suffragans, left to bear the brunt of a storm
which they had neither deserved nor provoked, who were really in a
fair way to become confessors and martyrs for a Church brought into
jeopardy by its own primate.[211] Gilbert in fact saw clearly that
the importance of the point at issue between king and archbishop was
as nothing compared to the disastrous consequences which must result
from their protracted strife. It threatened nothing less than ruin to
the intellectual and religious revival which Theobald had fostered so
carefully and so successfully. The best hopes of the movement were
bound up with the alliance between Church and state which had been
cemented at Henry’s accession; that alliance was now destroyed; instead
of the Church’s most valuable fellow-worker, the king had been made her
bitter foe; and the work of revival was left to be carried on--if it
could be carried on at all--in the teeth of the royal opposition and
without a leader, while the man who should have directed it was only
a perpetual stumbling-block in the path of those who had to supply
as best they could the place left deserted by his flight. It was
upon Gilbert of London that this burthen chiefly fell; and it is in
Gilbert’s position that we may find a key to the subsequent direction
of the controversy, as far as England was concerned.

        [211] Ep. ccxxv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v.), pp. 526 _et
        seq._

For full twenty years before Becket’s rise to the primacy Gilbert
Foliot had been one of the most respected members of the reforming
party in the English Church. While Thomas was a worldly young subdeacon
in the household of Archbishop Theobald, while as chancellor he was
outshining the king in luxurious splendour or riding in coat of
mail at the head of his troops, Gilbert was setting the pattern of
ecclesiastical discipline and furnishing the steadiest and most
valued assistance to the primate’s schemes of reform. Trained no
less than Henry of Winchester in the old Cluniac traditions of
ecclesiastical authority, his credit had never been shaken by rashness
and inconsistency such as had marred Henry’s labours; and it would
have been neither strange nor blameworthy if he had cherished a hope
of carrying on Theobald’s work as Theobald’s successor. Gilbert,
however, solemnly denied that he had ever sought after or desired
the primacy;[212] and his conduct does not seem to furnish any just
ground for assuming the falsehood of the denial. His opposition to
the election of Thomas was thoroughly consistent with his position
and known views; equally so was the support and co-operation which
Thomas, as soon as he was fairly launched into his new course of
action, anxiously sought to obtain from him, and which he for a while
steadily gave. He had begun to find such co-operation difficult even
before the question of the clerical immunities arose at the council of
Westminster. On that question, in itself, the primate and the bishop
of London were at one; but they differed completely in their way of
treating it. To the impulsive, short-sighted, downright Thomas it was
the one, sole, all-absorbing question of life and death; to the calm,
far-seeing, cautious Gilbert it was a provoking hindrance--raised
up partly by the primate’s own bad management--to the well-being of
interests far too serious and too wide-reaching to be imperilled for a
mere point of administrative detail. He took up his position definitely
at the council of Northampton. The customs being once accepted, he held
it the true Churchman’s duty to obey them, to make the best and not
the worst of them, while desiring and labouring for their abrogation,
but only by pacific means. A temporary submission was the least of two
evils. It was infinitely safer to bend to the storm and trust to the
influences of time and conciliation for turning the mind of the king,
than to run the risk of driving him into irreconcileable hostility
to the Church. For hostility to the Church meant something far worse
now than in the days when William Rufus and Henry I. had set up their
regal authority against primate and Pope. It meant a widening of the
schism which was rending western Christendom in twain; it meant the
accession of the whole Angevin dominions to the party of the Emperor
and the anti-Pope, and the severance of all the ties between the
English Church and her continental sisters which Theobald, Eugene and
Adrian had laboured so diligently to secure.

        [212] Ep. ccxxv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v.), pp. 522, 523.

The dread of this catastrophe explains also the attitude of the
Pope. In the long dreary tale of negotiation and intrigue which has
to be traced through the maze of the Becket correspondence, the
most inconsistent and self-contradictory, the most undecided and
undignified, the most unsatisfactory and disappointing part of all
is that played by Alexander III. It is however only fair to remember
that, in this and in all like cases, the Pope’s part was also the
most difficult one. No crown in Christendom pressed so sorely on its
wearer’s brow as the triple tiara:--“It may well look bright,” Adrian
IV. had been wont to say to his friend John of Salisbury, “for it is
a crown of fire!” Adrian indeed, though his short reign was one of
marked vigour and prosperity, declared that if he had had any idea of
the thorns with which S. Peter’s chair was filled, he would have begged
his bread in England or remained buried in the cloisters of S. Rufus
to the end of his days sooner than thrust himself into such a thicket
of troubles.[213] For it was not only “the care of all the churches”
that rested upon a medieval Pope, but the care of all the states as
well. The court of Rome had grown into the final court of appeal for
all Christendom; the Pope was expected to be the universal referee,
arbitrator and peacemaker of Europe, to hold the balance between
contending parties, to penetrate and disentangle the intricacies of
political situations which baffled the skill of the most experienced
diplomatists, to exercise a sort of equitable jurisdiction on a vast
scale over the whole range of political as well as social life.
Earlier and later pontiffs may have voluntarily brought this burthen
upon themselves; most of the Popes of the twelfth century, at any
rate, seem to have groaned under it as a weight too heavy for any
human strength to bear. Unprincipled as their policy often seemed,
there was not a little justice in the view of John of Salisbury, that
a position so exceptional could not be brought within the scope of
ordinary rules of conduct, and that only those who had themselves felt
its difficulties could be really competent to judge it at all.[214]
Adrian’s energetic spirit was worn out by it in four years;[215] yet
his position was easy compared to that of Alexander III. Alexander
was a pontiff without a throne, the head of a Church in captivity and
exile; dependent on the support of the most selfish and untrustworthy
of living sovereigns; with Italy and Germany arrayed against him under
the rule of a schismatic Emperor, and with the fidelity of the Angevin
house hanging upon a thread which the least strain, the lightest touch,
might break at any moment. Moreover Alexander was no Englishman like
his predecessor. He had no inborn comprehension and no experience of
the ways and tempers of the north; he had no bosom-friend, no John of
Salisbury, to stand as interpreter between him and the Angevin king or
the English primate; he understood neither of them, and he was almost
equally afraid of both. His chief anxiety was to have as little as
possible to do with them and their quarrel, and the fugitive archbishop
was to him anything but a welcome guest.

        [213] Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, l. viii. c. 23 (Giles, vol. iv.
        p. 367).

        [214] Joh. Salisb., _Polycrat._, l. viii. c. 23 (Giles, vol.
        iv. p. 363).

        [215] _Ibid._ (pp. 366, 367). “Licet nihil aliud lædat, necesse
        est ut citissime vel solo labore deficiat [sc. Papa].... Dum
        superest, ipsum interroga.” This was written early in 1159, and
        in August Adrian died.

It was of course impossible for the Pope to withhold his sympathy and
his support from a prelate who came to him as a confessor for the
privileges of the Church. But it was equally impossible for him to run
the risk of driving Henry and his dominions into schism by espousing
Thomas’s cause as decisively as Thomas himself desired. Placed thus in
what Adrian had once declared to be the ordinary position of a Roman
pontiff--“between hammer and anvil”--Alexander drifted into a policy
of shifts and contradictions, tergiversations and double-dealings,
which irritated Henry and which Thomas simply failed to comprehend. If
Gilbert Foliot and Arnulf of Lisieux could have succeeded in their
efforts to induce the contending parties to accept a compromise, the
Pope would have been only too glad to sanction it. But it was useless
to talk of compromise where Thomas Becket was concerned. To all the
remoter consequences, the ultimate bearings of the quarrel, he was
totally blind. For him there was but one question in the world, the
one directly before him; it could have but two sides, right and
wrong, between which all adjustment was impossible, and with which
considerations of present expediency or future consequences had nothing
to do. All Gilbert’s arguments for surrender, his solemn warnings of
the peril of schism, his pleadings that it was better for the English
Church to become for a while a sickly member of the ecclesiastical
body than to be cut off from it altogether,[216] Thomas looked upon,
at best, as proposals for doing evil that good might come. After his
humiliating experience at Clarendon he seems to have felt that he
was no match for Henry’s subtlety; his flight was evidently caused
chiefly by dread of being again entrapped into a betrayal of what
he held to be his duty; and once, in an agony of self-reproach and
self-distrust, he laid his archiepiscopal ring at the Pope’s feet
and prayed to be released from the burthen of an office for which he
felt himself unworthy and unfit.[217] Strong as was the temptation to
pacify Henry thus easily, Alexander felt that the Church could not
allow such a sacrifice of her champion; and Thomas never again swerved
from his determination to be satisfied with nothing short of complete
surrender on the part of the king. For this one object he laboured,
pleaded, argued, censured, during the next six years without ceasing;
his own suffragans, the monastic orders, Pope, cardinals, the Empress
Matilda, the king of France, none of them had a moment’s peace from his
passionate endeavours to press them into a service which he seemed
to expect them all to regard as a matter of life and death not merely
for England but for all Christendom. Doubtless it was a sad waste of
energy and a sad perversion of enthusiasm; yet the enthusiasm contrasts
pathetically, almost heroically, with the spirit in which it was met.
There was something noble, if there was also something exasperatingly
unpractical, in a man who, absorbed in his devotion to one mistaken
idea, never even saw that he and his cause were becoming the pretexts
and the tools of half the political intrigues of Europe, and whom the
experience of a lifetime failed to teach that all the world was not as
single-hearted as himself. Intellectually, a mind thus constituted must
needs provoke and deserve the impatient scorn of a cool clear brain
such as Gilbert Foliot’s; but its very intellectual weakness was the
source of its true strength. It is this dogged adherence to one fixed
idea, this simplicity of aim, which appeals to the average crowd of
mankind far more strongly than the larger and more statesmanlike temper
of men like Foliot, or like Henry himself. Whether or no the cause be
worthy--whether or no the zeal be according to knowledge--it is the
zealot, not the philosopher, who becomes the popular hero and martyr.

        [216] Ep. cviii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v.), p. 207.

        [217] Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 46; Alan Tewkesb.
        (_ib._ vol. ii.), pp. 342, 343; E. Grim (_ibid._), p. 403;
        Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 76; _Thomas Saga_
        (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 305–313. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 16
        (Howlett, vol. i. p. 140), gives this scene as having occurred,
        “ut dicitur,” at the council of Tours.

From the moment of Thomas’s arrival in France, then, little though he
perceived it himself, the direct question at issue between him and the
king became in every point of view save his own entirely subordinate
to the indirect consequences of their quarrel; the ecclesiastical
interest became secondary to the political, which involved matters of
grave importance to all Europe. The one person to whom the archbishop’s
flight was most thoroughly welcome was Louis of France. Louis and
Henry were nominally at peace; but to Louis their alliance was simply
a shield behind which he could plan without danger his schemes for
undermining Henry’s power on the continent, and no better tool for this
purpose could possibly have fallen into his hands than the fugitive
archbishop of Canterbury. Thomas had indeed just enough perception
of the state of affairs between the two kings--of which he must have
acquired considerable experience in his chancellor days--to choose
going to live on his own resources at Pontigny rather than accept the
hospitality of his sovereign’s enemy.[218] This arrangement probably
delighted Louis, for it furnished him with a safe answer to Henry’s
complaints and remonstrances about harbouring the “traitor”--Thomas
was in sanctuary in a Cistercian abbey in Burgundy, and France was
not harbouring him at all; while the welcome which Louis gave to the
primate’s exiled friends and the sympathy which he displayed for their
cause heightened his own reputation for devotion to the Church and
served as a foil to set off more conspicuously the supposed hostility
of Henry. To Louis in short the quarrel was something which might turn
to his own advantage by helping to bring Henry into difficulties; and
he used it accordingly with a skill peculiar to himself, making a great
shew of disinterested zeal and friendly mediation, and all the while
taking care that the breach should be kept open till its healing was
required for his own interest.

        [218] Anon. II. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 109.

With such an onlooker as this Henry knew that he must play his
game with the utmost caution. He had been provoked by the personal
opposition of his old friend into standing upon his regal dignity more
stiffly than he would have thought it worth while to do so long as
it remained unchallenged. On his side, too, there was a principle at
stake, and he could not give it up unconditionally; but he might have
been induced to accept a compromise, had not the obstinacy of Thomas
forced him into a corresponding attitude of unbending determination.
So keen was his sense of the danger attendant upon the fugitive
archbishop’s presence in France that it led him to postpone once
more the work which he had been planning in England and cross over
to Normandy again early in 1165.[219] Lent was passed in fruitless
attempts to bring about a triple conference between the two kings
and the Pope; Henry refused to allow Thomas to be present; Thomas
begged the Pope not to expose himself to Henry’s wiles without him
who alone could help him to see through them; and Alexander, now busy
with preparations for his return to Rome, was probably not sorry to
escape by declaring that for a temporal prince to dictate who should
or who should not form part of the Pope’s suite was a claim which had
never been heard of before and which he could not possibly admit.[220]
Immediately after Easter he set out on his journey homewards.

        [219] Rob. Torigni, a. 1165.

        [220] Alan Tewkesb. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), pp. 346,
        347; evidently taken from the Pope’s own letter, extant only in
        the Icelandic version, in _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p.
        329.

The rival party saw their opportunity and seized it without delay.
Their fortunes were now at a very low ebb; the antipope Victor had died
in April; his chief supporter, Cardinal Guy of Crema, had succeeded
him under the title of Paschal III.; but Italy had cast him off,
and even in Germany the tide was turning against him. The Emperor,
however, clung with unwavering determination to his original policy;
and he at once saw in the English king’s quarrel with the Church a
means of gaining for Paschal’s cause what would amply compensate
for all that had been lost. Before Alexander was fairly out of the
French kingdom an embassy from Germany came to Henry at Rouen,
bringing proposals for an alliance to be secured by two marriages: one
between the English princess Matilda, Henry’s eldest daughter, and
the Emperor’s cousin Duke Henry of Saxony; the other between Henry’s
second daughter and Frederic’s own little son. The chief ambassador was
Reginald, archbishop-elect of Cöln, who from the time of Frederic’s
accession--two years before that of Henry--had been his chancellor and
confidential adviser, playing a part curiously like that of Thomas
Becket, till in the very year of the English chancellor’s removal to
Canterbury he was appointed to the see of Cöln. There the parallel
with Thomas ended; for Reginald was the most extreme champion of
the privileges not of the Church but of the Imperial Crown, and was
even more closely identified with the schismatic party than Frederic
himself. Henry sent him over to the queen, who had been left as regent
in England, to receive from her a formal promise of her daughter’s hand
to the duke of Saxony, in a great council convened at Westminster for
that purpose. The old justiciar Earl Robert of Leicester refused the
kiss of peace to the schismatic and caused the altars at which he had
celebrated to be thrown down,[221] thereby saving Henry from the fatal
blunder of committing himself publicly to the cause of the anti-pope,
and England from the dangers of open schism. But he could not prevent
the king from sending two clerks to a council which met at Würzburg
on Whit-Sunday to abjure Pope Alexander and acknowledge Paschal; and
although the fact was strenuously denied, it seems impossible to doubt
that they did take the oath at the Emperor’s hands in their master’s
name;[222] indeed, Reginald of Cöln boasted that Henry had promised to
make all the bishops in his dominions do the same.

        [221] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 318. He mistakenly thinks
        that the _king_ was at Westminster, and he also thinks the
        embassy came in 1167. Its true date, 1165, is shown by the
        letters referred to in next note.

        [222] Epp. xcviii.–ci. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. pp.
        184–195). Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), pp. 52, 53. _Thomas
        Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 331.

A crisis seemed imminent, but Henry managed to avoid it. From the
Emperor’s solicitations, from the Pope’s remonstrances, from all
the pleadings of friends and all the intrigues of foes, he suddenly
made his escape by flying back to England and plunging into a Welsh
war which kept him all the summer safe out of their reach,[223] and
furnished him with an excuse for postponing indefinitely the completion
of his alliance with the schismatic party. Such an alliance would in
fact have cost far more than it was worth. Alexander was once more
safely seated upon S. Peter’s chair, and was urging Thomas to throw
himself wholly on the protection of the king of France; Louis was
in the highest state of triumph, rejoicing over the birth of his
long-desired son; while the whole Angevin dominions, which Eleanor
was governing in her husband’s absence, were full of suppressed
disaffection and surrounded with threatening or intriguing foes.[224]
In Lent 1166 therefore Henry hurried back to Normandy to hold a
conference with Louis, and, if possible, to free his own hands for the
work which lay before him.

        [223] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 197) says Henry went
        into Wales in 1165, “quo facilius domini Papæ vel etiam
        Cantuariensis archiepiscopi ... declinaret sententiam.”

        [224] “Movetur enim [rex] Francorum invidiâ, calumniisque
        Flandrensium, Wallensium improbitate, Scottorum insidiis,
        temeritate Britonum, Pictavorumque fœderibus, interioris
        Aquitaniæ sumptibus, Gasconum levitate, et (quod gravius est)
        simultate fere omnium quoscumque ditioni ejus constat esse
        subjectos.” Ep. clxii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v.), pp. 313,
        314.

The work was in truth a vast and complex one. At the age of
thirty-three Henry was already planning out an elaborate scheme for
the future of his children and the distribution of his territories,
in which the election of his eldest son as joint-king in England was
but the first and least difficult step. Normandy and Anjou, as well as
England, had to be secured for little Henry; Aquitaine was if possible
to be settled upon Richard as his mother’s heir; for Geoffrey Henry was
bent upon acquiring the Breton duchy.[225] Conan IV., whom Henry had in
1158 established as duke of Britanny, had but one child, a daughter,
whose hand, together with the reversion of her father’s territories,
the king was anxious to secure for his son. This however required the
assent not only of Conan but of Louis of France, and also of the Breton
barons, who bitterly resented the Norman interference which had set
Conan as ruler over them, and were inclined to resist to the uttermost
an arrangement which would bring them still more directly under the
Norman yoke; while Louis was but too ready to encourage them in their
resistance. A campaign in the summer of 1166, however, another in
August 1167, and a third in the following spring so far broke their
opposition[226] that in May 1169 Geoffrey was sent into Britanny to
receive their homage as heir to the dukedom; three months later his
father joined him,[227] and at Christmas they held their court together
at Nantes,[228] whence they made a sort of triumphal progress through
the duchy, receiving homage and fealty wherever they went.[229]

        [225] Will. Newb. l. ii. c. 18 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 145, 146).

        [226] On the Breton campaign of 1166 see R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 329, and Rob. Torigni _ad ann._ Henry was near
        Fougères on June 28 (Ep. ccix., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. p.
        421); he was besieging Fougères itself on July 13–14 (Eyton,
        _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 96). On the campaigns of 1167 and 1168
        see Rob. Torigni _ad ann._, the meagre entries in a Breton
        chronicle, a. 1168–1169 (Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol.
        i. col. 104; _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 560), and
        Chron. S. Albin. a. 1167 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 40), which
        tells of Louis’s share in the matter. See also the account
        of Henry’s correspondence with King Arthur in _Draco Norm._,
        l. ii. cc. 17–22, vv. 941–1282 (Howlett, _Will. Newb._, vol.
        ii. pp. 695–707). According to this writer, one of the Breton
        leaders--“Arturi dapifer, Rollandus, consul et idem tunc
        Britonum” (Mr. Howlett suggests that this may be Roland of
        Dinan, _ib._ p. 696 note)--wrote a letter to Arthur imploring
        his aid for Britanny, and received a reassuring answer; Henry
        also received a long epistle from the blameless king, to which,
        “subridens sociis, nil pavefactus,” (c. 21, v. 1218, p. 705)
        he returned a polite and diplomatic answer. Unluckily the good
        monk omits to say how the letters were conveyed, and gives us
        no light upon the postal arrangements between Britanny and
        Avalon--which by the way he places among “silvas ... Cornubiæ,
        proxima castra loco,” whatever that may mean (c. 20, vv.
        1213, 1214, p. 705). It is quite possible that some of the
        Breton leaders did seek to rouse the spirit of their followers
        by publishing an imaginary correspondence with the mythic
        hero-king whose existence was to most of the common people in
        Britanny at that time almost as much an article of faith as
        any in the Creed; it is possible too that they were themselves
        so far carried away by the same illusion as to attempt to work
        upon Henry by similar means; and in that case it is extremely
        probable that Henry, with his Angevin tact and sense of humour,
        would meet the appeal pretty much as the Bec writer represents.
        But the letters given in the _Draco_ must be the monk’s own
        composition. Neither Roland nor Henry can have been capable of
        stringing together such a quantity of pseudo-history, ancient
        and modern, as is therein contained.

        [227] Rob. Torigni, a. 1169.

        [228] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 337. _Gesta Hen._
        [“Benedict of Peterborough”] (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 3. Rog.
        Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 3.

        [229] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

It had proved easier to subdue Britanny than to hold Aquitaine. The
half independent princes of the south, so scornful of a king beyond
the Loire, were at least equally scornful of a king from beyond the
sea; in November 1166 Henry was obliged to summon them to a conference
at Chinon,[230] and to relieve Eleanor of her task of government by
sending her to keep Christmas in England,[231] while he himself took
her place at Poitiers.[232] His foes seized their opportunity to revive
the vexed question of Toulouse; a meeting with Raymond at Grandmont and
an attempt to assert Henry’s ducal authority over the count of Auvergne
led to a fresh rupture with Louis;[233] and in the spring of 1168 the
discontented barons of Aquitaine, secure of the French king’s goodwill,
broke into open revolt. In the midst of a negotiation with Louis, Henry
hurried away to subdue them.[234] Scarcely had he turned northward
again when Earl Patrick of Salisbury, whom he had appointed to assist
Eleanor in the government of the duchy, was murdered by one of the
rebel leaders;[235] and Eleanor was once more left to stand her ground
alone in Poitou, while her husband was fighting the Bretons, staving
off the ecclesiastical censures which threatened him, and vainly
endeavouring to pacify Louis, who now openly shewed himself as the
champion of all Henry’s disaffected vassals, Breton, Poitevin, Scottish
and Welsh,[236] as well as of the exiled archbishop.

        [230] Ep. ccliii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi.), p. 74.

        [231] Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 104, 108.

        [232] Rob. Torigni, a. 1167. Cf. Ep. cclxxvii. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. vi.), p. 131.

        [233] Rob. Torigni, a. 1167. Cf. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg.
        a. 1166 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 40, 149).

        [234] Rob. Torigni, a. 1168. Ep. ccccix. (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. vi.), p. 408.

        [235] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 205. R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 331. Rob. Torigni, a. 1168. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. i. pp. 273, 274. This last writer states that the slayer
        was Guy of Lusignan, and that Guy fled to Jerusalem (of
        which he afterwards became king) to escape the punishment of
        this crime. This story has been generally adopted by modern
        historians. But its latter half is incompatible with the
        appearance of “Guy of Lusignan” among the rebels in Aquitaine
        in 1173, five years after the death of Patrick (_Gesta Hen._,
        Stubbs, vol. i. p. 46); and the whole of it seems to rest
        solely on Roger’s misunderstanding of the passage in the
        _Gesta_ which he was copying. In that passage Guy is introduced
        as “Guido de Lezinan, frater Gaufridi de Lezinan, qui Patricium
        comitem Salesbiriensem tempore hostilitatis ... occiderat.
        Erat enim prædictus Guido,” etc.; then comes an account of his
        adventures in Palestine (_Gesta Hen._, Stubbs, vol. i. p. 343).
        Roger of Howden chose to make _qui_ refer to _Guido_; but it
        might just as well, or even better, refer to _Gaufridus_. Guy
        comes upon the historical scene for the first time in 1173.
        It seems pretty clear that Geoffrey was his elder brother,
        and took a leading part in southern politics and warfare long
        before Guy was of an age to join in them. If Patrick was slain
        by either of the brothers, therefore, it was by Geoffrey and
        not by Guy. Admitting this much, however, there is still no
        ground for looking upon even Geoffrey as a murderer who had
        committed such a crime as to be obliged to fly from justice.
        For “Geoffrey of Lusignan” stood by the side of Guy among
        the rebels of 1173 (_Gesta Hen._, Stubbs, vol. i. p. 46);
        “Geoffrey of Lusignan” and his brothers claimed La Marche
        against King Henry between 1178 and 1180 (Geoff. Vigeois, l.
        i. c. 70, Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 324); “Geoffrey
        of Lusignan” rose against Richard in 1188 (_Gesta Hen._,
        Stubbs, vol. ii. p. 34; Rog. Howden, Stubbs, vol. ii. p. 339;
        R. Diceto, Stubbs, vol. ii. pp. 54, 55); and it was not till
        after he had in this revolt slain a special friend of Richard,
        that he betook himself to Palestine, where he arrived in the
        summer of the same year (_Itin. Reg. Ric._, Stubbs, p. 26), and
        where, moreover, he and Richard afterwards became firm allies.
        Geoffrey may therefore enjoy the benefit of the plea which
        Bishop Stubbs (_Itin. Reg. Ric._, introd. p. cxxiv, note) puts
        forward for Guy, that “there is nothing to show that Patrick
        was not killed in fair fight.” But it seems pretty clear that
        for the heroic king of Jerusalem himself no such plea is needed
        at all.

        [236] Rob. Torigni, a. 1168; Epp. ccccix., ccccxxxiv.
        (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi.), pp. 408, 455, 456.

Henry meanwhile was endeavouring to strengthen his political position
by alliances in more remote quarters; the marriage of his eldest
daughter with the duke of Saxony had taken place early in 1168;[237]
two years before, the hand of one of her sisters had been half
promised to the marquis of Montferrat for his son, in return for his
good offices with the Pope;[238] and a project was now on foot for
the marriage of Henry’s second daughter, Eleanor, with the king of
Castille--a marriage which took place in 1169;[239] while the infant
Jane, who was scarcely four years old, was betrothed to the boy-king
William of Sicily.[240] For Richard his father was now endeavouring to
gain the hand of Adela of France, the younger daughter of Louis and
Constance, as a sort of security for the investiture of Aquitaine;
while at the same time Henry was on the one hand making interest with
the Emperor’s Italian foes, the rising commonwealths of Lombardy and
the jurisconsults of Bologna;[241] and on the other, Frederic was
endeavouring to regain his alliance by an embassy headed by his own
cousin, Henry’s new-made son-in-law, the duke of Saxony.[242]

        [237] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 205. From the Pipe
        Roll of the year, with Mr. Eyton’s comment (_Itin. Hen. II._,
        p. 109), it seems that Matilda and her mother crossed the
        sea together in September 1167, and that Matilda went on to
        Germany, where she was married early next year, while Eleanor
        returned to England before Christmas. Rob. Torigni, a. 1167.

        [238] Ep. cclii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi.), p. 68.

        [239] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 334. The original scheme
        seems to have been for marrying both Eleanor and Jane to
        Spanish sovereigns, among whom, however, Castille is not named.
        In a letter written in the summer of 1168 John of Salisbury
        speaks of “regum, Navariensis aut Aragonensis scilicet, quibus
        filias suas dare disponit [rex].” Ep. ccccxxxiv. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. vi.) p. 457.

        [240] Ep. dxxxviii. (_ib._ vol. vii.) p. 26. Jane was born at
        Angers in October 1165; Rob. Torigni, _ad ann._

        [241] Epp. dxxxviii., dxxxix. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.),
        pp. 26, 30, 31.

        [242] Rob. Torigni, a. 1168. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
        205. _Draco Norm._, l. iii. cc. 4, 5, vv. 191–360 (Howlett,
        _Will. Newb._, vol. ii. pp. 718–724).

All this political, ecclesiastical and diplomatic coil Henry had to
unravel almost single-handed. Of the group of counsellors who had stood
around him in his early years, Arnulf of Lisieux on one side of the sea
and Richard de Lucy on the other were almost the sole survivors. He had
lost the services of his constable Henry of Essex under very painful
circumstances a few months before that council at Woodstock which saw
the beginning of his quarrel with Thomas. The constable was accused by
Robert de Montfort of having committed high treason six years before
by purposely letting fall the standard and falsely proclaiming the
king’s death at the battle of Consilt. Henry of Essex declared that he
had dropped the standard in the paralysis of despair, really believing
the king to be dead; and it is evident from the high commands which he
held in the war of Toulouse and elsewhere that the king continued to
treat him with undiminished confidence, and to regard him as one of his
most valuable ministers and friends. The charge once made, however,
could only be met by ordeal of battle. The encounter took place at
Reading; Henry of Essex went down before his accuser’s lance; and all
that his sovereign could do for him was to save his life by letting the
monks of the neighbouring abbey carry his body off the field as if for
burial, and when he proved to be still alive, suffering him to remain
as a brother of the house, while his property was confiscated to the
Crown and his services were lost to the state.[243] The king’s mother
died in the autumn of 1167;[244] his old friend and adviser Earl Robert
of Leicester passed away in 1168.[245] A desperate attempt was even
made to part him from his wife, in order to get rid of his rights over
Aquitaine;[246] while the man who had once been his most successful
diplomatic agent and his unfailing helper against the wiles of all his
enemies was now the most formidable tool in their hands.

        [243] Rob. Torigni, a. 1163. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 5 (Howlett,
        vol. i. p. 108). Joc. Brakelond (Rokewode, Camden Soc.), pp.
        50–52. For date see Palgrave, _Eng. Commonwealth_, vol. ii. pp.
        xxii, xxiii.

        [244] Rob. Torigni, a. 1167. _Draco Norm._, l. iii. c. 1, vv.
        1–12 (Howlett, _Will. Newb._, vol. ii. p. 711). Chron. S.
        Serg., a. 1167 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 150).

        [245] Rob. Torigni, a. 1168. Ann. Waverl. a. 1168 (Luard, _Ann.
        Monast._, vol. ii. p. 239). Chron. Mailros, a. 1168.

        [246] See the _Gradus cognationis inter regem et reginam_
        (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi. p. 266). “Hanc computationem
        præsentaverunt Pictavenses cardinalibus quando S. Thomas
        exsulabat, sed non sunt auditi.” The “computation” as there
        stated is wrong; but the right one really does leave Henry and
        Eleanor within the forbidden degrees. (See above, vol. i. p.
        393, note 2{1161}, and p. 445, note 11{1418}). They were
        cousins in the fifth degree, their common ancestress being
        Herleva of Falaise.

It was for his children’s sake that Henry at last bent his pride to do
what he had vowed never to do again. At Montmirail, on the feast of
Epiphany 1169, he renewed his homage to Louis, made full submission
to him, and promised compensation to the Breton and Poitevin barons
for their losses in the recent wars.[247] Next day young Henry did
homage to the French king for the counties of Anjou and Maine,[248]
and, as it seems, of Britanny, which his brother Geoffrey was to hold
under him.[249] Richard did the like for Aquitaine, of which Louis
granted him the investiture,[250] together with a promise of Adela’s
hand.[251] Three weeks later young Henry, in his new capacity of count
of Anjou, officiated in Paris as seneschal to the king of France;[252]
he afterwards repeated his homage to Louis’s son and heir, and received
that of his own brother Geoffrey for the duchy of Britanny.[253]

        [247] Ep. cccclxi. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi.), pp. 506,
        507.

        [248] _Ib._ p. 507. Rob. Torigni a. 1169. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 208.

        [249] Rob. Torigni, a. 1169, and Gerv. Cant. (as above) say
        that young Henry did homage to Louis for Britanny; Normandy was
        not mentioned, the homage done for it by young Henry in 1160
        being counted sufficient (_ibid._). The elder king himself kept
        Touraine on the old terms of homage to Theobald of Blois (Ep.
        cccclxi. as above).

        [250] Ep. cccclxi., Rob. Torigni and Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [251] Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [252] Rob. Torigni, a. 1169.

        [253] _Ibid._

One thing alone was now lacking to the completion of Henry’s scheme:
the crowning of his heir. There can be no doubt that when he sent
Thomas and the child to England together--the one to be chosen king
and the other to be made primate--he intended the coronation to take
place as soon as he himself could rejoin them. Its performance,
delayed by his own continued absence on the continent, had however
been made impossible by his quarrel with Thomas. That the archbishop
of Canterbury alone could lawfully crown a king of England was a
constitutional as well as an ecclesiastical tradition so deeply rooted
in the minds of Englishmen that nothing short of absolute necessity
had induced Henry I. to set it aside in his own case; and still less
could Henry II. venture to risk such an innovation in the case of his
son.[254] Yet the prospect of a reconciliation with the primate seemed
at this moment further off than ever.

        [254] The historical arguments on this subject may be seen in
        Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 110,
        and Ep. dclxxxiv. (_ib._ vol. vii.), pp. 328–330. Henry was
        once said to have projected getting the Pope himself to crown
        the child; Ep. lv. (_ib._ vol. v.), p. 100. Against this, of
        course, Canterbury could have had nothing to say.

Thomas’s first impulse on entering Pontigny had been to give himself
up to a course of study, devotion and self-discipline more severe than
anything which he had yet attempted. He secretly assumed the habit of
the “white monks,”[255] and nearly ruined his delicate constitution by
a rash endeavour to practise the rigorous abstinence enjoined by the
rules of the order.[256] He grew more diligent than ever in prayer,
meditation, and study of Holy Scripture.[257] But his restless,
impetuous nature could not rise to the serene heights of more than
worldly wisdom urged upon him by John of Salisbury, who truly insisted
that such occupations alone were worthy of a true confessor.[258]
In spite of John’s warnings and pleadings, he still kept all his
friends--John himself included--ceaselessly at work in his behalf; and
while he sought out in every church and convent in Gaul every rare and
valuable book that he could hear of, to be copied for his cathedral
library, he was also raking together for the same collection all the
privileges, old or new, that could be disinterred from the Roman
archives or extorted from the favour of the Pope.[259] Until Easter
1166 Alexander restrained him from any direct measures against the
king;[260] then, unable to keep silence any longer, Thomas again took
the matter into his own hands and wrote to Henry himself, earnestly
imploring him to consider his ways and to grant his old friend a
personal interview.[261] Henry was inexorable; Thomas wrote again, this
time a torrent of mingled warnings, intreaties and remonstrances,[262]
and with just as little effect. Then, towards the end of May, as the
king was holding council with his barons at Chinon, a barefooted monk
came to him with a third letter from the primate.[263] Once again
Thomas expressed his longing for a personal meeting; once again he
set forth the doctrine of the divine rights and duties of kings, and
charged Henry, by the solemn memory of his coronation-vows, to restore
to the English Church her privileges and her chief pastor. Only in
the last sentence came a significant warning: “If not, then know of
a surety that you shall feel the severity of Divine vengeance!”[264]
And there was no doubt about its meaning; for the Empress Matilda
had already transmitted to her son a threat sent to her by Thomas in
plain words, that unless she could bring him to acknowledge his error,
“shortly, yea, very shortly” the “sword of the Spirit” should be drawn
against his dominions and even against himself.[265]

        [255] Alan Tewkesb. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 345.
        Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 64. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson),
        vol. i. p. 315.

        [256] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 126, 127. E. Grim (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. ii.), pp. 412, 413. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol.
        iii.), pp. 376–379. _Thomas Saga_ (as above), p. 317.

        [257] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        77. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 379.

        [258] Ep. lxxxv. (_ib._ vol. v.), pp. 163, 164.

        [259] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

        [260] Ep. xcv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v.), pp. 179, 180.

        [261] Ep. clii. (_ib._ pp. 266–268).

        [262] Ep. cliii. (_ib._ pp. 269–278), translated by Garnier
        (Hippeau), pp. 100–106.

        [263] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 106. E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. ii.), p. 419. Cf. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp.
        383–385. Eyton (_Itin. Hen. II._, p. 93) dates this council
        June 1, but this cannot be reconciled with Thomas’s subsequent
        proceedings.

        [264] Ep. cliv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. pp. 278–282),
        translated by Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 109–111.

        [265] Ep. clxxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. p. 361).

Harassed by disaster and revolt, provoked by the primate’s former
letters, Henry, upon reading this one and hearing the messenger’s
comment upon it--for Thomas had charged him to say a good deal more
than he wrote[266]--might well feel that he was standing on the brink
of a volcano. He turned desperately upon the bishops around him, half
imploring, half commanding them to help him out of his strait, abusing
them for a pack of traitors who would not trouble themselves to rid
him of this one unmanageable foe, and exclaiming with a burst of tears
that the archbishop was destroying him soul and body together; for he
naturally expected nothing less than an interdict on his dominions and
an anathema against himself, and both sanctioned by the Pope. When
Henry was thus at his wits’ end, the only one among his continental
advisers who was likely to have any counsel to offer him was Arnulf of
Lisieux. Once more Arnulf proved equal to the occasion; he suggested
that the primate’s intended censures should be forestalled by an appeal
to the Pope. The remedy was a desperate one, for, as John of Salisbury
triumphantly remarked when he heard of it, the king was flying in the
face of his own Constitutions and confirming that very right of appeal
which he was so anxious to abolish, by thus having recourse to it for
his own protection. But there was no other loophole of escape; so the
appeal was made, a messenger was despatched to give notice of it in
England, close the ports and cut off all communication with Thomas
and with the Pope; while the bishops of Lisieux and Séez set out for
Pontigny to bid the primate stay his hand till the octave of Easter
next, which was fixed for the term of Henry’s appeal.[267]

        [266] Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 385.

        [267] Ep. cxciv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v.), pp. 381, 382.
        Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 393, confuses this appeal
        with a later one.

They were too late. No sooner had the barefooted messenger returned
with his tidings of the king’s irreconcileable wrath than Thomas
hurried to Soissons on a pilgrimage to its three famous shrines:--those
of the Blessed Virgin, who had been the object of his special reverence
ever since he learned the Ave Maria at his mother’s knee; of S. Gregory
the Great, the patron of the whole English Church and more particularly
of Canterbury and its archbishops; and of S. Drausius, who was believed
to have the power of rendering invincible any champion who spent a
night in prayer before his relics. Before each of these shrines Thomas,
like a warrior preparing for mortal combat, passed a night in solemn
vigil, the last night being that of the festival of S. Drausius, and
also of Ascension-day.[268] On the morrow he left Soissons;[269] on
Whitsun-eve[270] he reached Vézelay, a little town distant only a
day’s journey from Pontigny, and made famous by its great abbey, which
boasted of possessing the body of S. Mary Magdalene. Thomas found
the place crowded with pilgrims assembled to keep the Whitsun feast
on this venerated spot. He was invited by the abbot to celebrate
High Mass and preach on the festival day;[271] his sermon ended, he
solemnly anathematized the royal customs and all their upholders, and
excommunicated by name seven persons whom he denounced as special
enemies to the Church; the two first being Henry’s confidential envoys
John of Oxford and Richard of Ilchester, who had been the medium of his
communications with the Emperor; while a third, Jocelyn de Bailleul,
was one of his chief advisers, and a fourth was no less a personage
than the justiciar, Richard de Lucy.[272] Thomas had set out from
Soissons in the full determination to excommunicate Henry himself at
the same time; but on his way he learned that the king was dangerously
ill; he therefore contented himself with a solemn warning publicly
addressed to him by name, calling him to repentance for the last time,
and in default, threatening him with immediate excommunication.[273]

        [268] It was also the anniversary of his own ordination to the
        priesthood--June 2.

        [269] Ep. cxciv. (Robertson, vol. v.), p. 382.

        [270] Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 391, says “proximâ
        ante festum die,” and he makes the festival that of S. Mary
        Magdalene, the patron of the place. Tempting, however, as his
        version is--for it would explain at once Thomas’s otherwise
        rather unaccountable choice of Vézelay for the scene of his
        proceedings, and the great concourse of people who evidently
        were assembled there--it is quite irreconcileable with the
        minute chronological details of John of Salisbury’s letter (Ep.
        cxciv. as above), written within a few weeks of the events,
        while Herbert’s story was written from memory, many years
        after. On the other hand, R. Diceto’s date (Stubbs, vol. i. p.
        318), Ascension-day, is more impossible still.

        [271] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 391.

        [272] The details of the sentence are in Thomas’s own letters,
        Epp. cxcv., cxcvi., cxcviii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v.),
        pp. 386–391, 392–397. Cf. Ep. cxciv. (_ibid._), p. 383. The
        other excommunicated persons were Ralf de Broc, Hugh of S.
        Clare and Thomas Fitz-Bernard. Their crime was invasion of
        Church property. Richard of Ilchester and John of Oxford were
        condemned for their dealings with the schismatics; Richard
        de Lucy and Jocelyn de Bailleul, as being the authors of the
        Constitutions.

        [273] Epp. cxciv., cxcvi., cxcviii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol.
        v.), pp. 382, 383, 391, 396. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp.
        391, 392.

The news of these proceedings reached Henry when, sick and anxious,
he was trying to gather up strength and energy for a campaign against
the Bretons. He instantly despatched another messenger to England,
bidding Richard de Lucy call an assembly of the bishops and clergy
and compel them to make a general appeal to the Pope against the
authority and jurisdiction of their primate.[274] The meeting was
held in London[275] at midsummer.[276] The appeal was made and sent
to the Pope in the name of all the bishops and clergy of England;
but it is tolerably clear that the main body were merely passive
followers, more or less willing, of Gilbert of London and Jocelyn
of Salisbury, the former of whom was almost certainly the writer of
the letter which conveyed the appeal to the Pope, as well as of that
which announced it to the primate.[277] The hand of Gilbert Foliot was
indeed so plainly visible that Thomas’s reply was addressed with equal
plainness to him personally.[278] The long and sarcastic letter with
which he retorted[279] was answered in a yet more startling fashion at
the opening of the next year. As Gilbert stood before the high altar
of his cathedral church on the feast of its patron saint a paper was
thrust into his hand; to his dismay it proved to be a papal brief
granting to Archbishop Thomas a commission as legate for all England,
and commanding the bishops to render him unqualified obedience and to
resign within two months whatever confiscated church property had been
placed in their charge by the king. In an agony of distress Gilbert,
who himself had the custody of the Canterbury estates, sent this
news to the king, imploring him to grant permission that the Pope’s
mandate might be obeyed, at least till some method could be devised
for escaping from a dilemma which now looked well-nigh hopeless.[280]
Henry, absorbed in a struggle with the Bretons, had already been
provoked into a vengeance as impolitic as it was mean. He threatened
the Cistercian abbots assembled on Holy Cross day at the general
chapter of their order that if Thomas were not immediately expelled
from Pontigny, he would send all the White Monks in his dominions to
share the primate’s exile.[281] When the abbot of Pontigny carried this
message home, Thomas could only bid him farewell and betake himself
to the sole protection left him--that of the king of France. He left
Pontigny on S. Martin’s day[282] 1166, and took up his abode as the
guest of Louis in the abbey of S. Columba at Sens.[283]

        [274] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 200.

        [275] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 200. Will. Cant.
        (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 56.

        [276] Ep. ccix. (_ib._ vol. v.), p. 421.

        [277] Epp. cciv., ccv. (_ib._ vol. v.), pp. 403–413. Cf.
        Ep. ccix. (_ibid._), p. 241, and Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol.
        i.), pp. 56, 57. The bishop of Exeter consented to appeal,
        but in a fashion of his own, of which however there is no
        trace in the letter actually sent to the Pope. Two prelates
        were absent: Walter of Rochester, who pleaded illness, and
        Henry of Winchester, who wrote in excuse: “Vocatus a summo
        Pontifice, nec appello nec appellare volo.” The others thought
        he meant that the Pope had cited him; “ipse vero summum
        Pontificem, summum Judicem intelligebat, ad cujus tribunal
        jamjam trahebatur examinandus, tanquam qui in multis diebus
        processerat et vitæ metis appropinquaret.” So says Will.
        Cant.; but John of Salisbury says distinctly that the letter
        of appeal was sealed by London, _Winchester_ and Hereford (Ep.
        cclii., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi. p. 65). Can William
        have founded his pretty story on the old confusion (which is
        perpetually breaking out in his favourite authority, Garnier,
        and in other writers who have less excuse for it) between
        _Wincestre_ and _Wirecestre_--and was Roger of Worcester the
        real absentee? He certainly did not share in the obloquy which
        this appeal brought upon Robert of Hereford, with whom hitherto
        he had usually been coupled by Thomas; on the contrary, he and
        Bartholomew of Exeter are henceforth always coupled together as
        fellow-sufferers for their loyalty to the primate.

        [278] Epp. ccxxiii., ccxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. pp.
        490–520).

        [279] The famous “Multiplicem nobis et diffusam.” Ep. ccxxv.
        (_ib._ pp. 521–544).

        [280] Ep. ccviii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. pp. 417, 418).
        The Pope’s brief is Ep. clxxii. (_ib._ pp. 328, 329); it is
        dated “Anagniæ, vii. Idus Octobris,” but its true date is
        Easter-day, April 24 (see editor’s note, p. 329)--the actual
        date of the letter whereby Alexander notified his act to
        the English bishops; Ep. clxxiii. (Robertson, as above, pp.
        229–231). The diocese (not the province) of York was exempted
        from Thomas’s legatine jurisdiction--the reason being that
        Roger of York was legate for Scotland (Ep. cclxx., _ib._ vol.
        vi. p. 119). Thomas sent the brief over to his friends Robert
        of Hereford and Roger of Worcester, bidding them communicate
        it to their brethren, beginning with London (Ep. clxxix.,
        _ib._ vol. v. pp. 344–346). Canon Robertson supposes this
        brief to have been delivered to Gilbert on the feast of the
        Commemoration of S. Paul, _i.e._ June 30, 1166. Gilbert himself
        says merely “die beati Pauli”; and his letter has no date. But
        it mentions “legatos qui diriguntur ad nos”; and there is no
        hint elsewhere of any talk about sending legates till late in
        the autumn, or even winter. There really seems to be no reason
        why we should not adopt a more obvious rendering of the date,
        as representing the greater and better-known festival of S.
        Paul’s Conversion. In that case, of course, the year must be
        1167.

        [281] Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 50. E.
        Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 414. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol.
        iii.), p. 83. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 397. Anon. I. (_ib._
        vol. iv.), p. 65. Cf. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 371.

        [282] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 201, 202.

        [283] E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 415. Herb.
        Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 403, 404; etc.

Henry saw his own blunder as soon as it was made, and endeavoured
to neutralize its effects by despatching an embassy to the Pope,
requesting that he would send a legatine commission to settle the
controversy. One of his envoys was the excommunicate John of Oxford;
to the horror of Thomas and the indignation of Louis, John came
back in triumph, boasting not only that he had been absolved by the
Pope, but that two cardinals, William and Otto--the former of whom
was a determined opponent of Thomas--were coming with full powers to
sit in judgement on the case between primate and king and decide it
without appeal.[284] The first half of the boast was true, but not the
second; the cautious Pope instructed his envoys to do nothing more
than arbitrate between the contending parties, if they could.[285]
They did not reach Normandy till the autumn of 1167; Thomas came to
meet them on the French border on November 18; he refused to enter
upon any negotiations till the property of the metropolitan see
was restored;[286] the legates carried their report to the king at
Argentan, and were dismissed with an exclamation of disappointment and
disgust--“I wish I may never set eyes upon a cardinal again!”[287] Five
of the English bishops whom Henry had summoned to advise him renewed
their appeal,[288] its original term having expired six months ago;
and the legates insisting that Thomas should respect the appeal,[289]
another year’s delay was gained.

        [284] Epp. cclxxx., cclxxxiii., cclxxxv., ccxcii. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. vi.), pp. 140, 146, 147, 151–153, 170, 171.

        [285] Ep. cccvii. (_ibid._), p. 201. Cf. Will. Cant. (_ib._
        vol. i.), p. 65, and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 202, 203.

        [286] Epp. cccxxxi., cccxxxii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi.),
        pp. 247–251, 256–258.

        [287] Ep. cccxxxix. (_ibid._), pp. 269, 270.

        [288] Epp. cccxxxix., cccxli.–cccxlv. (_ibid._), pp. 270–272,
        276, 277, 283–288.

        [289] Ep. cccxliii. (_ibid._), pp. 284, 285.

At last, when the two kings made their treaty at Montmirail at
Epiphany 1169, Thomas, who had come to the spot under the protection
of Louis, suddenly entered the royal presence and fell at Henry’s
feet, offering to place himself unreservedly in his hands. All parties
thought the struggle was over, till the archbishop added once again
the words which had so exasperated Henry at Oxford and at Clarendon:
“Saving God’s honour and my order.” The king burst into a fury, and
the meeting broke up in confusion.[290] Three months later, on Palm
Sunday, from the high altar of Clairvaux, Thomas excommunicated ten
of his opponents, first among whom was Gilbert Foliot.[291] Gilbert,
who knew that the sentence had been hanging over him for more than a
year, had appealed against it before it was uttered;[292] the king,
too, was forewarned, and at every seaport guards were set to catch and
punish with the utmost rigour any messenger from the primate. It was
not till Ascension-day that a young layman named Berengar made his way
up to the altar of Gilbert’s cathedral church in the middle of High
Mass and thrust into the hand of the celebrant the archbishop’s letter
proclaiming the excommunication of the bishop.[293] On that very day
Thomas issued another string of excommunications.[294] Gilbert, driven
to extremity, renewed his appeal two days later; and he added to it a
formal refusal to acknowledge the jurisdiction of a metropolitan to
whom he had made no profession, and a declaration--so at least it was
reported in Gaul--of his intention to claim the metropolitical dignity
for his own see, as an ancient right of which it had been unjustly
defrauded by Canterbury.[295] A storm of indignant protest and vehement
denunciation arose from the archbishop’s party; and the terrified Pope
checked further proceedings by despatching another pair of envoys, who
as usual failed to agree either with the king, with the archbishop, or
even with each other, and after wasting the summer in misunderstandings
and recriminations left the case just where they had found it.[296]
By this time king and primate were both weary of their quarrel, and
still more weary of mediation. In November they had another personal
interview at Montmartre, and the archbishop’s unconditional restoration
was all but decided.[297] Thomas, however, rashly attempted to hasten
the completion of the settlement by a threat of interdict;[298] and
the threat stung Henry into an act of far greater rashness. He had met
Louis, as well as Thomas, at Montmartre, and had gained his immediate
object of restraining the French king yet a little longer from direct
hostilities; the settlement of Britanny was completed at Christmas,
that of Aquitaine was so far secure that its conclusion might safely be
left to Eleanor’s care; in March 1170 Henry went to England[299] with
the fixed determination of seeing his eldest son crowned there before
he left it again.

        [290] Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 418–427. Epp.
        ccccli., cccclxi. (_ib._ vol. vi.), pp. 488, 489, 507–509. Cf.
        Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), pp. 73, 74, and _Thomas Saga_
        (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 427–433.

        [291] Ep. cccclxxxviii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi. pp. 558,
        559). See also Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 87, and
        for date, R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 333.

        [292] Ep. dxiii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi.), p. 614.

        [293] Compare the account given by “Magister Willelmus” in Ep.
        dviii. (_ibid._), pp. 603, 604, with that of Will. Fitz-Steph.
        (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 89, 90. They are clearly from the same
        hand.

        [294] Epp. dii., dvii. (_ib._ vol. vi.), pp. 594, 601–603. For
        date cf. Ep. cccclxxxviii. (_ib._ pp. 558, 559).

        [295] Ep. dviii. (_ibid._), pp. 604–606--a very circumstantial
        account, yet one can scarcely understand how a man so wise and
        so learned as Gilbert can really have made such an utterly
        unhistorical claim. He must have known that it had no shadow
        of foundation, the nearest approach to such a thing being S.
        Gregory’s abortive scheme for fixing the two archbishoprics
        at London and York. Gilbert’s opponents, on the other hand,
        declared that he derived his claim from the archpriests
        of Jupiter who had their seat in the Roman Londinium, and
        denounced him as their would-be representative and successor.
        Epp. dxxxv., dxlvi. (_ib._ vol. vii.), pp. 10, 41.

        [296] On this legation of Gratian and Vivian see R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 335; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp.
        212, 213; Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.),
        pp. 441–445; Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), pp. 72, 73; Epp.
        ccccxci., ccccxcii. (_ib._ vol. vi.), pp. 563, 564, 567; dlx.,
        dlxi., dlxiii.–dlxviii., dlxxxi., dlxxxiv., dci., dcii. (_ib._
        vol. vii.), pp. 70–76, 78–92, 115, 116, 124, 125, 151–154, etc.

        [297] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp.
        97, 98; Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 445–451; Epp. dciv.–dcvii.
        (_ib._ vol. vii. pp. 158–168). _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol.
        i. p. 447. R. Diceto as above, pp. 335–337. Gerv. Cant. as
        above, p. 213.

        [298] Epp. dlxxiii.–dlxxvii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.
        pp. 97–109), etc.

        [299] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 3. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 3. Gerv. Cant. as above, p. 216.

Three years before, he had wrung from the Pope--then blockaded in Rome
by the Imperial troops, and in the last extremity of peril--a brief
authorizing young Henry’s coronation by the archbishop of York, in
default of the absent primate of all England.[300] In face of a mass of
earlier and later rescripts from Alexander’s predecessors and Alexander
himself, all strenuously confirming the exclusive privileges of
Canterbury, Henry had never yet ventured to make use of this document;
like Adrian’s bull for the conquest of Ireland, it had been kept in
reserve for a future day; and that day had now come. In vain did Thomas
proclaim his threatened interdict;[301] in vain did the Pope ratify
it;[302] in vain did both alike issue prohibitions to all the English
bishops against the act which they knew to be in contemplation.[303]
The vigilance of the justiciars, quickened by a fresh set of stringent
injunctions sent over by the king in the previous autumn,[304] made
the delivery of letters from either primate or Pope so difficult that
Thomas at last could intrust it to no one but a nun, Idonea, whom he
solemnly charged with the duty of presenting to Roger of York the papal
brief in which the coronation was forbidden.[305] The ceremony was
fixed for Sunday, June 14. A week before that date young Henry, who
with his girl-bride Margaret of France had been left at Caen under the
care of his mother and Richard of Hommet the constable of Normandy,
was summoned to join his father in England.[306] On S. Barnabas’s day
the bishops and barons assembled at Westminster in obedience to the
royal summons;[307] on Saturday, the 13th, the Pope’s letter was at
last forced upon the archbishop of York;[308] but none the less did he
on the following morning crown and anoint young Henry in Westminster
abbey; while Gilbert of London, who had managed to extort conditional
absolution in the Pope’s name from Archbishop Rotrou of Rouen,[309]
once more stood openly by his side in the foremost rank of the English
bishops.[310]

        [300] Ep. cccx. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi. pp. 206, 207).
        See the editor’s note as to the date.

        [301] Epp. dclxxviii.–dclxxxiii. (_ib._ vol. vii. pp. 320–325).

        [302] Epp. dcxxviii.–dcxxx. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. pp.
        210–214).

        [303] Epp. dcxxxii., dcxxxiii., dcxlviii.–dcli. (_ib._ pp. 216,
        217, 256–264). Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 462, puts this
        interdict too late.

        [304] The “ten ordinances”; Ep. dxcix. (_ib._ vol. vii. pp.
        147–149); Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), pp. 53–55; Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 214–216; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i.
        pp. 231–236; on the date see Bishop Stubbs’s note at last
        reference.

        [305] Ep. dclxxii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. pp.
        307–309). See the editor’s note.

        [306] Ep. dclxxiii. (_ibid._), pp. 309, 312.

        [307] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 5.

        [308] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
        103.

        [309] _Ibid._ Epp. dclviii.–dclx. (_ib._ vol. vii. pp. 275–277).

        [310] Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above), p. 103; _Gesta Hen._
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 5; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs) vol. i. p. 219.
        R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 338, Chron. Mailros, a. 1170,
        Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 4, Chron. S. Serg. a. 1169
        (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 150), all give different dates, and
        all wrong.

The elder king only waited to see the tenants-in-chief, with the king
of Scots at their head, swear fealty to his new-made colleague ere he
hurried back to Normandy to meet the fast-gathering storm.[311] Louis,
incensed that his daughter’s husband should have been crowned without
her, was already threatening war;[312] Thomas, seeing in the king’s
action nothing but the climax of Canterbury’s wrongs, was overwhelming
the Pope with complaints, reproaches, and intreaties for summary
vengeance upon all who had taken part in the coronation; and the
majority of the cardinals strongly supported his demands.[313] Henry
saw that he must make peace at any price. Two days before the feast of
S. Mary Magdalene he held a conference with Louis near Fréteval, on the
borders of the Vendômois and the county of Chartres;[314] they were
reconciled, and as they parted Henry said jestingly to the French king:
“That rascal of yours, too, shall have his peace to-morrow; and a right
good peace shall it be.”[315] At dawn on S. Mary Magalene’s day[316] he
met Thomas in the “Traitor’s Meadow,”[317] close to Fréteval; they rode
apart together, and remained in conference so long that the patience
of their followers was all but exhausted, when at last Thomas was seen
to dismount and throw himself at the king’s feet. Henry sprang from
his horse, raised the archbishop from the ground, held his stirrup
while he remounted, and rode back to tell his followers that peace was
made, on terms which practically amounted to a complete mutual amnesty
and a return to the state of affairs which had existed before the
quarrel.[318]

        [311] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 6. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 220. Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. i.), p. 83. Henry landed at Barfleur about Midsummer;
        _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [312] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [313] Ep. dccvii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. pp. 373, 374).

        [314] “In limitibus suis inter Firmitatem, oppidum scilicet
        in pago Carnotensi, et Fretivalle, castrum videlicet in
        territorio Turonensi.” Ep. dclxxxv. (_ibid._), p. 339. This
        _Firmitas_ must be La Ferté-Villeneuil, and _Turonensi_ should
        be _Vindocinensi_. Herb. Bosh., who lays the scene “in confinio
        Carnotusiæ et _Cenomanniæ_, inter duo castella quorum unum
        nominatur Viefui” [Viévy-le-Rayé] “et alterum Freteval” (_ib._
        vol. iii. p. 466), is no nearer to the true geography.

        [315] “Et crastinâ die habebit pacem suam latro vester; et
        quidem bonam habebit.” Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 108.

        [316] Ep. dclxxxv. (_ib._ vol. vii.), p. 340.

        [317] Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 466. _Thomas Saga_
        (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 461.

        [318] Epp. dclxxxiv., dclxxxv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol.
        vii.), pp. 326–334, 340–342. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol.
        iii.), pp. 108–111. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 466. Garnier
        (Hippeau), pp. 150, 151. _Thomas Saga_ (as above), pp. 461–465.

Henry had no sooner returned to Normandy than he fell sick almost to
death; on his recovery he went on a pilgrimage to the shrine of our
Lady at Rocamadour in the Quercy,[319] and it was not until October
that Thomas again saw him at Tours, on his way to a conference with
Count Theobald of Blois at Amboise.[320] A difficulty had arisen about
the restitution of the confiscated Church property and the absolution
of the persons whom Thomas had excommunicated, each party insisting
that the other should make the first step in conciliation.[321] There
was also a difficulty about the kiss of peace, which Thomas required
as pledge of Henry’s sincerity, but which Henry seemed desirous of
postponing indefinitely.[322] Nevertheless, a letter from Henry to his
son, announcing the reconciliation and bidding the young king enforce
the restoration of the archiepiscopal estates, was drawn up in Thomas’s
presence at Amboise and sent over to England by the hands of two of
his clerks,[323] who presented it at Westminster on October 5.[324]
The restoration was, however, not effected until Martinmas, and then
it comprised little more than empty garners and ruined houses.[325]
Thomas saw the king once more, at Chaumont,[326] and Henry promised
to meet him again at Rouen, thence to proceed with him to England
in person.[327] Before the appointed time came, however, fresh
complications had arisen with the king of France; Henry was obliged to
give up all thought of going not only to England but even to Normandy,
and delegated the archbishop of Rouen and the dean of Salisbury to
escort Thomas in his stead.

        [319] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 6, 7.

        [320] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.) pp. 468,
        469. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 114. Garnier (Hippeau), p.
        154. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 469. The writer of
        the _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 8) gives the date of this
        meeting as Tuesday, October 12. But this must be quite ten days
        too late, for we shall see that a letter drawn up after the
        meeting was received in England on October 5.

        [321] Ep. dclxxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.), pp.
        333–337.

        [322] Henry alleged that he had publicly sworn never to give
        Thomas the kiss of peace, and could not face the shame of
        breaking his oath. Garnier (Hippeau), p. 150; Herb. Bosh.
        (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 450; Ep. dcxxiii. (_ib._
        vol. vii.) pp. 198, 199; _Thomas Saga_, as above, p. 449. See
        in Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 469, Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._),
        p. 115, and _Thomas Saga_ (as above), p. 469, the contrivance
        by which he avoided it at Tours--or Amboise, in William’s
        version.

        [323] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 156, 157. The letter, of which
        Garnier gives a translation, is Ep. dcxc. (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. vii.) pp. 346, 347; also in Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.),
        p. 85; Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 112; Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 221; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 339.

        [324] Ep. dccxv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.), p. 389.

        [325] Ep. dccxxxiii. (_ibid._), p. 402.

        [326] Chaumont on the Loire, seemingly. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol.
        iii.), p. 470. Cf. _Thomas Saga_, as above, pp. 471–473.

        [327] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp.
        115, 116.

The duty finally devolved solely upon the dean, who was no other than
Thomas’s old opponent John of Oxford.[328] Naturally enough, the
primate was deeply hurt at being thus sent back to his see under the
protection of a man who, as he truly said, ought to have been thankful
for the privilege of travelling in his suite.[329] Thomas, however,
was in haste to be gone, although fully persuaded that he was going to
his death. He seems indeed to have been weary of life; the tone of his
letters and of his parting words to the friends whom he was leaving
in France indicates not so much a morbid presentiment of his fate as
a passionate longing for it. Yet it can hardly have been from him
alone that the foreboding communicated itself to so many other minds.
Warnings came to him from all quarters; one voice after another, from
the king of France[330] down to the very pilot of the ship in which
he took his passage, implored him not to go; Herbert of Bosham alone
upheld his resolution to the end.[331]

        [328] _Ib._ p. 116. Epp. dccxxii., dccxxiii. (_ib._ vol. vii.),
        pp. 400, 403. Garnier (Hippeau), p. 160.

        [329] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

        [330] _Ib._ p. 113.

        [331] Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 472–476.

We may put aside at once all the wild talk of the archbishop’s
biographers about plots against his life in which the king had a share.
Even if Henry’s sudden willingness for his return was really suggested
by words said to have been uttered by one of his counsellors--“Why
keep the archbishop out of England? It would be far better to keep him
in it”--there is no need to assume that those words bore even in the
speaker’s mind, far less in that of the king, the horrible meaning
which they were afterwards supposed to have covered;[332] for they
were true in the most literal sense. The quarrel of king and primate
would have mattered little had it been fought out on English ground;
it was the archbishop’s exile which rendered him so dangerous. Thomas
had dealt his most fatal blow at Henry by flying from him, and Henry,
as he now perceived, had made his worst blunder in driving Thomas into
France. Of the infinitely greater blunder involved in the archbishop’s
murder--setting the criminal aspect of the deed altogether aside--it
is enough to say that Henry was wholly incapable. The same may be
said of Roger of York and Gilbert of London, although, like the king
himself, they were urged by dread of the archbishop into making common
cause with men of a very different stamp:--men who hated the primate
with a far more intense personal hatred, and who were restrained by
no considerations either of policy or of morality:--men such as Ralf
de Broc, a ruffian adventurer who had served as the tool of Henry’s
vengeance upon the archbishop’s kinsfolk, had resumed the custody of
the archiepiscopal estates when it was resigned by Gilbert Foliot, had
been for the last four years at once fattening upon the property of
Thomas and smarting under his excommunication, and was ready to commit
any crime rather than disgorge his ill-gotten gains.[333] It was known
that Thomas had letters from the Pope suspending all those bishops
who had taken part in the coronation of the young king, and replacing
Gilbert of London, Jocelyn of Salisbury, and all whom Thomas had
excommunicated under the sentences from which they had been irregularly
released by some of the Papal envoys.[334] Gilbert, Jocelyn and Roger
of York now hurried to Canterbury, intending to proceed to Normandy
as soon as Thomas set foot in England; while Ralf de Broc, Reginald de
Warren and Gervase of Cornhill the sheriff of Kent undertook to catch
him at the moment of landing, ransack his baggage, search his person,
and seize any Papal letters which he might bring with him. Thomas,
however was warned; he sent the letters over before him, and the three
prelates at Canterbury read their condemnation before their judge
quitted Gaul.[335] Next day he sailed from Wissant, and on the morning
of December 1 he landed at Sandwich.[336] His enemies were ready to
receive him; but at the sight of John of Oxford they stopped short, and
John in the king’s name forbade all interference with the primate.[337]
Amid the rapturous greetings of the people who thronged to welcome
their chief pastor, he rode on to Canterbury; there some of the royal
officials came to him in the king’s name, demanding the absolution of
the suspended and excommunicate bishops. Thomas at first answered that
he could not annul a Papal sentence; but he afterwards offered to take
the risk of doing so, if the culprits would abjure their errors in the
form prescribed by the Church. Gilbert and Jocelyn were inclined to
yield; but Roger refused, and they ended by despatching Geoffrey Ridel
to enlist the sympathies of the young king in their behalf, while they
themselves carried their protest to his father in Normandy.[338]

        [332] Will Fitz-Steph. as above, pp. 106, 107.

        [333] On Ralf de Broc see Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 75; Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 360;
        Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.) p. 65; E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p.
        404; Epp. lxxviii. (_ib._ vol. v. p. 152), cccxli., ccccxcviii.
        (_ib._ vol. vi. pp. 278, 582), dccxviii., dccxxiii. (_ib._ vol.
        vii. pp. 394, 402). In the last place Thomas says that Ralf
        “in ecclesiam Dei ... per septem annos licentius debacchatus
        est”; and the writer of the _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol.
        i. p. 321, seems to have understood this as meaning that Ralf
        had had the stewardship of the Canterbury property throughout
        the archbishop’s exile. This, however, does not appear to have
        been the case. Ralf certainly had the stewardship for a short
        time at first; but it was, as we have seen, soon transferred to
        Gilbert Foliot, and only restored to Ralf when Gilbert resigned
        it early in 1167.

        [334] Epp. dccxx., dccxxii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. pp.
        397–399).

        [335] Ep. dccxxiii., dccxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.),
        pp. 403, 410. Cf. Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), pp. 87–89; Will.
        Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 117; Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._),
        pp. 471, 472; Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 68; Anon. II.
        (_ibid._), p. 123; Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 161, 163. The version
        in _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 483, seems founded on
        a confusion between the delivery of these Papal letters and
        that which Berengar delivered in S. Paul’s on the Ascension-day
        of the previous year.

        [336] Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above), p. 118. Herb. Bosh.
        (_ibid._) p. 476. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 68. Garnier
        (Hippeau), p. 164. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 339. Gerv.
        Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 222. _Thomas Saga_ (as above), pp.
        489–491. The date is from Will. Fitz-Steph., R. Diceto and the
        Saga; Gervase makes it November 30, and Herbert “two or three
        days after the feast of S. Andrew.”

        [337] Will. Fitz-Steph. and Garnier, as above. Ep. dccxxiii.
        (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.), pp. 403, 404. _Thomas Saga_
        (as above), p. 491.

        [338] Ep. dccxxiii., dccxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol.
        vii.), pp. 404–406, 411, 412. Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), pp.
        102–105. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 120, 121.
        Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 480. _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol.
        i. pp. 497–501. Garnier (Hippeau), p. 172, erroneously thinks
        the censures on the bishops were not issued till Christmas-day.

The young king was preparing to hold his Christmas court at
Winchester.[339] Thomas proposed to join it, but was stopped in
London by a peremptory command to “go back and mind his own business
at Canterbury.”[340] He obeyed under protest, and on Christmas-day
again excommunicated the De Brocs and their fellow-robbers.[341]
The elder king was keeping the feast at his hunting-seat of Bures
near Bayeux.[342] There the three bishops threw themselves at his
feet; Roger of York spoke in the name of all, and presented the
Papal letters;[343] the courtiers burst into a confused storm of
indignation, but not one had any counsel to offer. In his impatience
and disappointment Henry uttered the fatal words which he was to rue
all his life: “What a parcel of fools and dastards have I nourished
in my house, that none of them can be found to avenge me of this one
upstart clerk!”[344]

        [339] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 166. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 106. Anon. II. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 126.
        R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 342, says the young king was at
        Woodstock when Thomas sought for an interview; he was, however,
        certainly at Winchester at Christmas.

        [340] “Fère vostre mestier à Cantorbire alez.” Garnier
        (Hippeau), p. 171. Cf. Ep. dccxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. vii.), p. 412; Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.) pp. 106–113;
        Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 121–123; Herb. Bosh.
        (_ibid._), pp. 482, 483; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 13;
        _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 505–507.

        [341] Will. Cant. (as above), p. 120. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.),
        p. 428. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 130. Herb.
        Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 484, 485. R. Diceto (as above), p. 342.
        _Thomas Saga_ (as above), pp. 511–513.

        [342] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 481. Garnier (Hippeau), p.
        175. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 11. Rob. Torigni, a.
        1171.

        [343] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 175–177. Will. Cant. (as above),
        pp. 122, 123. Cf. _Thomas Saga_ (as above), pp. 501–503.

        [344] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 175. Will. Cant. (as above), p.
        121. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 429. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol.
        iii.), p. 487.

The words were hardly more than he had used at Chinon four years
before, but they fell now upon other ears. Four knights--Hugh de
Morville, William de Tracy, Reginald Fitz-Urse and Richard le
Breton[345]--took them as a warrant for the primate’s death. That
night--it was Christmas-eve[346]--they vowed to slay him, no matter how
or where;[347] they left the court in secret, crossed to England by
different routes,[348] and met again at Saltwood, a castle which the
archbishop had been vainly endeavouring to recover from the clutches
of Ralf de Broc, and where Ralf himself was dwelling amid a crowd of
his kinsfolk and dependents. There the final plot was laid.[349] How it
was executed is a tale which has been told so often that its details
may well be spared here. On the evening of December 29, after a scene
in his own hall scarcely less disgraceful than the last scene in the
king’s hall at Northampton, the primate of all England was butchered at
the altar’s foot in his own cathedral church.[350]

        [345] In Will. Cant. (as above), pp. 128, 129, is a “descriptio
        spiculatorum,” in which the only point of interest is the
        English speech of Hugh de Morville’s mother.

        [346] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 177. Will. Cant. (as above), p. 123.

        [347] Garnier, as above. Will. Cant. (as above), p. 124. E.
        Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 429. Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 128. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 487.
        _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 517.

        [348] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 177. Will. Cant. (Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. i.) p. 124, Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.),
        p. 130. _Thomas Saga_ as above.

        [349] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above; cf. _ib._ p. 126. _Thomas
        Saga_, as above, pp. 517–519. Saltwood was mentioned, as a
        special subject for inquiry and restitution, in the king’s
        letter commending Thomas to his son.

        [350] Will. Cant. (as above), pp. 131–135. Joh. Salisb. (_ib._
        vol. ii.), pp. 319, 320. E. Grim (_ibid._), pp. 430–438.
        Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 132–142. Herb. Bosh.
        (_ibid._), pp. 488 _et seq._ Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp.
        70–77. Anon. II. (_ibid._), pp. 128–132. Garnier (Hippeau), pp.
        179–195. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 343, 344. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 224–227. _Thomas Saga_ as above, pp.
        523–549.

The ill news travelled fast. It fell like a thunderbolt upon the
Norman court still gathered round the king at Argentan,[351] whither
the assembly had adjourned after the Christmas feast at Bures. Henry
stood for a moment speechless with horror, then burst into a frenzy of
despair, and shut himself up in his own rooms, refusing to eat or drink
or to see any one.[352] In a few days more, as he anticipated, all
Christendom was ringing with execration of the murder and clamouring
for vengeance upon the king who was universally regarded as its
instigator. The Pope ordered an interdict upon Henry’s continental
dominions, excommunicated the murderers and all who had given or should
henceforth give them aid, shelter or support, and was only restrained
from pronouncing a like sentence upon the king himself by a promise
that he would make compurgation and submit to penance.[353] Two
cardinal-legates charged with the enforcement of these decrees were at
once despatched to Normandy;[354] but when they arrived there, Henry
was out of their reach. The death of Duke Conan in February had thrown
Britanny completely into his hands; he only stayed to secure Geoffrey’s
final establishment there as duke[355] before he called a council at
Argentan and announced that he was going to Ireland.[356] He quitted
Normandy just as the legates reached it,[357] leaving strict orders
that the ports should be closed to all clerks and papal envoys, and
that no one should dare to follow him without special permission.[358]
Landing at Portsmouth in the first days of August,[359] he hurried
to Winchester for a last interview with the dying Bishop Henry,[360]
closed the English ports as he had closed those of Normandy,[361] then
plunged once more into the depths of South Wales, and on October 16
sailed from Milford Haven for Waterford.[362]

        [351] R. Diceto (as above), p. 345. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol.
        i. p. 14.

        [352] Ep. dccxxxviii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.), p. 438.
        Cf. MS. Lansdown. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 159, 160, and _Gesta
        Hen._ as above.

        [353] Epp. dccl., dccli. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. pp.
        471–478).

        [354] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 233. R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 346. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 24.

        [355] Rob. Torigni, a. 1171. Conan died February 20; Chron.
        Kemperleg. _ad ann._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 563).
        The Chron. S. Serg. a. 1169 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 150),
        places the event two years too early. Cf. Chron. Britann. a.
        1170, 1171 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 560; Morice,
        _Hist. Bretagne, preuves_, vol. i. col. 104).

        [356] Rob. Torigni, a. 1171.

        [357] MS. Lansdown. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 169.
        Gerv. Cant. (as above), pp. 233, 234. The _Gesta Hen._ (as
        above), and Rog. Howden (Stubbs, vol. ii. pp. 28, 29) seem to
        imply that they arrived just before Henry left; but they are
        rather confused about these legates. They make two pairs of
        them come to Normandy this summer--first, Vivian and Gratian,
        who come with hostile intent, and from whom Henry runs away
        (_Gesta Hen._, Stubbs, vol. i. p. 24; Rog. Howden, Stubbs, vol.
        ii. p. 29); and secondly, Albert and Theodwine, who apparently
        supersede them later in the year, and whom Henry hurries to
        meet (_Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 29; Rog. Howden as above, p.
        34). But the MS. Lansdown. (which is the fullest account of
        all), Gerv. Cant. and R. Diceto distinctly make only one pair
        of legates, Albert and Theodwine. The confusion in _Thomas
        Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. ii. pp. 31–33, is greater still.

        [358] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 24. Cf. Rog. Howden (as
        above), p. 29.

        [359] _Gesta Hen._ as above, and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i.
        p. 234, say August 3; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 347, says
        August 6.

        [360] R. Diceto as above. Bishop Henry died on August 8; _ibid._

        [361] Gerv. Cant., _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden, as above.

        [362] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 25.

The elements favoured his escape; for five months a persistent contrary
wind hindered all communication to Ireland from any part of his
dominions.[363] The bishops and the ministers were left to fight their
own battles and make their own peace with the legates in Normandy until
May 1172, when the king suddenly reappeared[364] to claim the papal
absolution and offer in return not only his own spiritual obedience and
that of his English and continental realms, but also that of Ireland,
which he had secured for Rome as her share in the spoils of a conquest
won with Adrian’s bull in his hand.[365] The bargain was soon struck.
On Sunday May 21 Henry met the legates at Avranches, made his purgation
for the primate’s death, promised the required expiation, and abjured
his obnoxious “customs,” his eldest son joining in the abjuration.[366]
To pacify Louis, young Henry and Margaret were sent over sea with the
archbishop of Rouen and by him crowned together at Winchester on August
27;[367] and the Norman primate returned to join a great council of the
Norman clergy assembled at Avranches to witness there, two days before
Michaelmas, a public repetition of their sovereign’s purgation and his
final absolution by the legates.[368]

        [363] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 350. Gir. Cambr., _Expugn.
        Hibern._, l. i. c. 36 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 284).

        [364] R. Diceto (as above), p. 351.

        [365] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 28.

        [366] Ep. dcclxxi.–dcclxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii.
        pp. 513–522). MS. Lansdown. (_ib._ vol. iv.), pp. 173, 174.

        [367] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 31; Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. p. 34; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 237. R. Diceto
        (as above), p. 352, makes it August 21.

        [368] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 32, 33. Rog. Howden (as
        above), pp. 35–37. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 238. These three
        are the only writers who mention this purgation in September,
        and they say nothing of the one in May. That it took place is
        however clear from the letter of the legates themselves (Ep.
        dcclxxiv. Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. p. 521), giving its
        date, “_Vocem jucunditatis_,” _i.e._ Rogation-Sunday. On the
        other hand, the MS. Lansdown. (_ib._ vol. iv. pp. 173, 174)
        mentions only one purgation, and this clearly is the earlier
        one, for it is placed before the re-crowning of young Henry.
        The explanation seems to be that this was a private ceremony
        between the king and the legates, with a few chosen witnesses;
        the legates say in their letter that Henry promised to repeat
        it publicly at Caen; he probably did so at Avranches instead.
        On the other hand, Rob. Torigni (a. 1172) says: “Locutus est
        cum eis primo Savigneii, postea Abrincis, tercio Cadomi, ubi
        causa illa finita est;” and seems to make the Michaelmas
        council at Avranches a mere ordinary Church synod, where
        moreover “obsistente regis infirmitate parum profecerunt.” To
        add to the confusion, Gir. Cambr. (_Expugn. Hibern._, l. i.
        c. 39; Dimock, vol. v. p. 289) says the purgation was made at
        Coutances.



CHAPTER III.

THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND.

795–1172.


[Illustration: Map III.

  IRELAND A. D. 1172.

  _Ostmen’s settlements marked thus: Dublin._

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

It is in the history of the settlements formed on the Irish coast by
the northern pirates in the ninth century that we must seek for the
origin of those relations between England and Ireland which led to
an English invasion of the latter country in the reign of Henry II.
The earliest intercourse between the two islands had been of a wholly
peaceful character; but it had come utterly to an end when Bishop
Colman of Lindisfarne sailed back to his old home at Iona after the
synod of Whitby in 664. From the hour when her missionary work was
done, Ireland sank more and more into the isolation which was a natural
consequence of her geographical position, and from which she was
only roused at the opening of the ninth century by the coming of the
wikings. In the early days of the northmen’s attack upon the British
isles it was the tradition of Ireland’s material prosperity and wealth,
and the fame of the treasures stored in her religious houses, that
chiefly tempted the “white strangers” from the Norwegian fiords across
the unknown perils of the western sea; and the settlement of Thorgils
in Ulster and those of his fellow-wikings along the eastern and
southern coasts of Ireland formed a chief basis for the operations of
the northmen upon Britain itself. The desperate fighting of the Irish
succeeded in freeing Ulster after Thorgils’s death; but by the middle
of the ninth century the wikings were firmly established at four points
on the Irish coast, Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick.[369]
Under the leadership of Olaf the Fair, Dublin became the head of a
confederacy which served as a starting-point and furnished a constant
supply of forces for the Danish conquests in England;[370] and for
a hundred years afterwards, throughout the struggle of the house of
Ælfred for the recovery of the Danelaw, the support given by the Ostmen
or wikings of Ireland to their brethren across the channel was at once
the main strength of the Northumbrian Danes and the standing difficulty
of the English kings.[371]

        [369] On Thorgils and the wiking settlements in Ireland see
        _Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill_ (Todd), and Green,
        _Conquest of England_, pp. 66, 67, 74, 76.

        [370] Green, _Conquest of England_, pp. 90, 91, 107.

        [371] _Ib._ pp. 213, 242, 252–254, 270–272.

To Ireland itself the results of the wiking invasions were far more
disastrous than either to Britain or to Gaul. Owing to the peculiar
physical character of their country, to their geographical remoteness
from the rest of Europe, and to the political and social isolation
which was a consequence of these, the Irish people had never advanced
beyond the primitive tribal mode of life which had once been common to
the whole Aryan race, but which every European branch of that race,
except the Irish, had long since outgrown. In the time of Ecgberht and
of Charles the Great Ireland was still, as at the very dawn of history,
peopled by a number of separate tribes or septs whose sole bond of
internal cohesion was formed by community of blood;--whose social and
political institutions had remained purely patriarchal in character,
unaffected by local and external influences such as had helped to mould
the life of England or of Gaul:--who had never yet coalesced into any
definite territorial organization, far less risen into national unity
under a national sovereign. The provincial kings of Ulster, Connaught,
Leinster and Munster were merely the foremost chieftains among the
various groups of tribes over whom they exercised an ever-shifting
sway; while the supremacy of the _Ard-Righ_ or chief monarch, to whom
in theory was assigned the overlordship of the whole island, was
practically little more than a sort of honorary pre-eminence attached
to certain chosen descendants of an early hero-king, Niall “of the
Nine Hostages”; it carried with it little effective authority, and no
territorial power; for the monarch’s traditional seat at Tara had long
been a heap of ruins, and a tribal under-king had ousted him from the
plain of Meath which in legal theory formed his royal domain.[372]
Neither in the monarch himself nor in the provincial chieftains of
a state thus constituted could there be found, when the storm-cloud
from the north burst upon Ireland, a centre of unity even such as the
peoples of Gaul found in their Karolingian sovereigns, far less such
as the West-Franks found in the dukes of the French, or such as the
English found in their kings of the house of Ecgberht. The stress of
the northmen’s attack, which elsewhere gave a fresh impulse to the
upgrowth of national life, crushed out all hope of its developement
in Ireland. The learning and the civilization of ages perished when
Columba’s Bangor, Bridget’s Kildare, Ciaran’s Clonmacnoise, Patrick’s
own Armagh, shared the fate of Bæda’s Jarrow and Hild’s Streoneshealh,
of Cuthbert’s Melrose and Aidan’s Lindisfarne; and in Ireland there was
no Wessex and no Ælfred.

        [372] Maine, _Early Hist. of Institutions_, lect. i.–x.;
        O’Donovan, Introd. to _Book of Rights_; Lynch, _Cambrensis
        Eversus_, with Mr. Kelly’s notes; O’Donovan, notes to Four
        Masters, vols. i. and ii.

On the other hand, the concentration of the wiking forces upon Britain
had given to the Irish an advantage which enabled them to check the
spread of wiking settlements in their country; and the failure of all
attempts to establish a Scandinavian dominion in Britain destroyed
all chance of a Scandinavian conquest of Ireland. The Ostmen never
even gained such a footing in Ireland as the followers of Hrolf
gained in Frankland: their presence never received the sanction of
any Ard-Righ; they were not a compact body occupying the whole of an
extensive and well-defined territory, but a number of separate groups
settled here and there along the coast, and holding their ground
only by sheer hard fighting against a ring of implacable foes. The
long struggle may be said to have ended in a defeat of both parties.
The Irish kings of Munster succeeded in establishing a more or
less effective overlordship over the Scandinavian communities of
Limerick and Waterford; and in 989 Malachi II., supreme monarch of
Ireland, reaped his reward for nine years of desperate fighting in
the submission of the Ostmen of Dublin. The city was blockaded and
starved into surrender, and a yearly tribute was promised to Malachi
and his successors.[373] Six years later “the ring of Tomar and the
sword of Carl”--two heathen relics probably of ancient heroes, which
seem to have been treasured as sacred emblems of sovereignty by the
Ostmen[374]--were carried off by Malachi as trophies of another
victory;[375] and in 999 or 1000 a renewal of the strife ended in a
rout of the Ostmen and a great slaughter of their leaders, and Dublin
was sacked and burnt by the victorious Irish.[376]

        [373] Tighernach, a. 989 (O’Conor, _Rer. Hibern. Scriptt._,
        vol. ii. pp. 264, 265).

        [374] See O’Donovan’s introduction to the _Book of Rights_, pp.
        xxxviii, xxxix.

        [375] Tighernach, a. 995 (as above, p. 267).

        [376] _Ib._ a. 998, 999 (p. 268). _Wars of Gaedhil with Gaill_
        (Todd), pp. 109–117.

Malachi’s triumph, however, was gained at the cost of a disruption of
the monarchy. Malachi himself was displaced by a king of the rival
house of Munster, his colleague in the sack of Dublin, the famous Brian
Boroimhe;[377] Brian’s career of conquest ended in 1014 on the field
of Clontarf, where he was slain in battle with the men of Leinster and
the Ostmen;[378] and when Malachi, who now resumed his place, died
in 1022,[379] the downfall of the Irish monarchy was complete.[380]
The tradition which had so long linked it to the house of Niall had
been shattered by Brian’s successes; and Brian had not lived to
consolidate in his own house the forces which had begun to gather
around himself. Thenceforth the Scandinavian colonies simply furnished
an additional element to the strife of the Irish chieftains, and to
the rivalry between the O’Briens of Munster and the O’Neills of Ulster
for the possession of a shadowy supremacy, claimed by the one house as
descendants of Brian Boroimhe and by the other as heirs of Malachi II.
and of his great ancestor Niall.

        [377] Tighernach, a. 1000, 1001 (as above, pp. 269, 270). _Wars
        of Gaedhil with Gaill_ (Todd), p. 119. Brian’s victory was won
        by the help of the Ostmen, with whom he stooped to ally himself
        for the sake of overcoming his rival; but the alliance was only
        momentary. On Brian’s reign see _Wars of Gaedhil with Gaill_,
        pp. 119–155.

        [378] _Wars of Gaedhil with Gaill_ (Todd), pp. 155–211. Four
        Masters, a. 1013 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp. 773–781). Ann. Loch
        Cé, a. 1014 (Hennessy, vol. i. pp. 1–13).

        [379] Tighernach, a. 1022 (as above, p. 274). Four Masters, a.
        1022 (as above, p. 800). Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1022 (as above, p.
        23).

        [380] “From the death of Maelseachlainn II. the legitimate
        monarchy of all Ireland departed from all families during
        seventy-two years, until the joint reigns of Muircheartach
        O’Briain and Domhnall MacLochlainn; during that time no Feis
        or general assembly, so agreeable to the people, was held,
        because Ireland had no supreme king.” Quoted by Mr. Kelly, note
        to _Cambrensis Eversus_, vol. ii. p. 38, from Gilla-Modud, an
        Irish poet of the twelfth century.

The social and political system of Ireland was powerless either to
expel or to absorb the foreign element thus introduced within its
borders. Not only was such an union of the two peoples as had at last
been effected in England simply impossible in Ireland; the Irish
Danelaw was parted from its Celtic surroundings by barriers of race and
speech, of law and custom and institutions, far more insuperable than
those which parted the settlers in the “northman’s land” at the mouth
of Seine from their West-Frankish neighbours. Even the Irish Church,
which three hundred years before had won half England--one might add
half Europe--to the Faith, had as yet failed to convert these pagans
seated at her door. At the close of the tenth century the Ostmen were
still for the most part heathens in fact if not in name, aliens from
whatever culture or civilization might still remain in the nation
around them. Meanwhile their relations with England had wholly altered
in character. The final submission of the English Danelaw to Eadred
carried with it the alliance of the Irish Danelaw; it seems that the
Ostmen in their turn endeavoured to strengthen themselves against
the attacks of the Irish princes by securing a good understanding
with the English king, if not actually by putting themselves under
his protection; for the fact that Eadgar coined money in Dublin[381]
indicates that his authority must have been in some way or other
acknowledged there. The years of the Ostmen’s struggle with Malachi
and Brian Boroimhe were the years of England’s struggle with Swein
and Cnut; but the two strifes seem to have been wholly unconnected;
and throughout the long peace which lasted from Cnut’s final triumph
until the coming of the Normans, new ties sprang up between the
Ostmen and the sister-isle. Owing to their position on the sea-coast
and to the spirit of merchant enterprise which was, quite as much
as the spirit of military enterprise, a part of the wiking-heritage
of their inhabitants, the towns of the Irish Danelaw rose fast into
importance as seats of a flourishing trade with northern Europe, and
above all with England through its chief seaports in the west, Bristol
and Chester. The traffic was chiefly in slaves, bought or kidnapped
in England to be sold to the merchants of Dublin or Waterford, and
by these again to their Irish neighbours or to traders from yet more
distant lands.[382] Horrible as this traffic was, however, even while
filling the Irish coast-towns with English slaves it helped to foster
a more frequent intercourse and a closer relation between Ostmen and
Englishmen; and the shelter and aid given to Harold and Leofwine in
1151 by Dermot Mac-Maelnambo,[383] a prince of the royal house of
Leinster who had acquired the sovereignty over both Leinstermen and
Danes, shews that the political alliance established in Eadgar’s day
had been carefully renewed by Godwine.

        [381] Green, _Conquest of England_, p. 323.

        [382] Green, _Conquest of England_, pp. 440, 443, 444.

        [383] See Freeman, _Norm. Conq._, vol. ii. pp. 154.

To these commercial and political relations was added soon afterwards
an ecclesiastical tie. The conversion of the Ostmen to Christianity,
completed in the early years of the eleventh century, was probably due
to intercourse with their Christianized brethren in England rather than
to the influence of the Irish clergy, whose very speech was strange
to them; and their adoption of their neighbours’ creed, instead of
drawing together the hostile races, soon introduced a fresh element
into their strife. About the year 1040 the Ostmen of Dublin set up a
bishopric of their own. Their first bishop, Donatus, was probably Irish
by consecration if not by birth.[384] But when he died, in 1074,[385]
the Ostmen turned instinctively towards the neighbouring island with
which they had long been on peaceful terms, where the fruits of the
warfare waged by generation after generation of wikings upon the shores
of Britain were being reaped at last by Norman hands, where William of
Normandy was entering upon the inheritance alike of Ælfred and of Cnut,
and where Lanfranc was infusing a new spirit of discipline and activity
into the Church of Odo and Dunstan. The last wiking-fleet that ever
sailed from Dublin to attack the English coast--a fleet which Dermot
Mac-Maelnambo, true to his alliance with their father, had furnished
to the sons of Harold--had been beaten back six years before.[386]
Since then Dermot himself was dead;[387] the Ostmen were once more
free, subject to no ruler save one of their own choice and their own
blood; with the consent of their king, Godred,[388] they chose a priest
named Patrick to fill Donatus’s place, and sent him to be consecrated
in England by the archbishop of Canterbury.[389] No scruples about
infringing the rights of the Irish bishops were likely to make Lanfranc
withhold his hand. At the very moment when the Ostmen’s request
reached him, he had just been putting forth against the archbishop
of York a claim to metropolitical jurisdiction over the whole of
the British isles, founded on the words of S. Gregory committing
“all the bishops of the Britains” to S. Augustine’s charge.[390] He
therefore gladly welcomed an opportunity of securing for the authority
of his see a footing in the neighbour-isle. He consecrated Patrick
of Dublin and received his profession of obedience;[391] and for the
next seventy-eight years the bishops of Dublin were suffragans not of
Armagh but of Canterbury. When in 1096 the Ostmen of Waterford also
chose for themselves a bishop, they too sought him beyond the sea; an
Irishman, or more probably an Ostman by birth, a monk of Winchester
by profession, Malchus by name, he was consecrated by S. Anselm and
professed obedience to him as metropolitan.[392]

        [384] That is, he was certainly not consecrated in England;
        Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iii. pp. 433–436. But
        might he not have been consecrated by some of the bishops in
        Scotland and the Isles, with which the Ostmen were in constant
        intercourse and alliance?

        [385] Tighernach, a. 1074 (O’Conor, _Rer. Hibern. Scriptt._),
        vol. ii. p. 309. Four Masters, a. 1074 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p.
        907).

        [386] Eng. Chron. (Worc.) a. 1067, 1068; Flor. Worc. (Thorpe),
        vol. ii. p. 2; Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._),
        p. 513; Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 41 (_ib._ p. 290); Freeman,
        _Norm. Conq._, vol. iv. pp. 225–227, 243–245, 788–790.

        [387] He fell in battle with the king of Meath in 1072,
        according to the Four Masters _ad ann._ (O’Donovan, vol. ii.
        pp. 901–903), and the Ann. Loch Cé (Hennessy, vol. i. p. 67).
        The Chron. Scot. (Hennessy, p. 291) places his death in 1069;
        Mr. Freeman (as above, p. 245) adopts this date.

        [388] At the time of Donatus’s appointment in 1040, one Sihtric
        ruled in Dublin (see Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol.
        iii. pp. 434, 435)--doubtless under the overlordship of Dermot.
        On Dermot’s death the Ostmen flung off the Irish supremacy and
        took for their king, first a jarl named Godred, who died in
        1072, and then another of the same name, who seems to have been
        already king of Man. (Freeman, as above, p. 528 and note 5).
        Lanfranc addresses this Godred as “King of Ireland” (Lanfranc,
        Ep. 43, Giles, vol. i. p. 61); and no other prince is mentioned
        in connexion with Patrick’s consecration. But it is plain
        from Lanfranc’s correspondence, if from nothing else, that
        Terence O’Brien was acknowledged overlord of Dublin for some
        time before his death (see Lanfranc, Ep. 44, _ib._ p. 62; and
        Lanigan, as above, p. 474 _et seq._); and he died in 1086.

        [389] Lanfranc, Ep. 43 (as above, p. 61). Eng. Chron. Winch.,
        Appendix (Thorpe, vol. i. p. 387). Cf. Lanigan, as above, pp.
        457, 458.

        [390] Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iii. pp. 464–466.

        [391] _Ib._ p. 458. Eng. Chron. Winch., Appendix (Thorpe, vol.
        i. p. 387).

        [392] Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), pp. 76, 77. Cf. Lanigan, as
        above, vol. iv. pp. 15, 16.

Through the medium of these Irish suffragans the archbishops of
Canterbury endeavoured to gain a hold upon the Irish Church by
cultivating the friendship of the different Irish princes who from time
to time succeeded in winning from the Ostmen an acknowledgement of
their overlordship. In the struggles of the provincial kings for the
supreme monarchy of Ireland it was always the Ostmen who turned the
scale; their submission was the real test of sovereignty. The power
which had been wielded by Dermot Mac-Maelnambo passed after his death
first to Terence or Turlogh O’Brien, king of Munster,[393] a grandson
of Brian Boroimhe, and then to Terence’s son Murtogh.[394] Both were
in correspondence with the successive English primates, Lanfranc and
Anselm,[395] and both were recognized as protectors and patrons, in
ecclesiastical matters at least, by the Ostmen,[396] whose adherence
during these years enabled the O’Briens to hold their ground against
the advancing power of Donnell O’Lochlainn, king of Aileach or western
Ulster,[397] a representative of the old royal house of the O’Neills
which had fallen with Malachi II. On Murtogh’s death in 1119[398] a new
aspirant to the monarchy appeared in the person of the young king of
Connaught, Terence or Turlogh O’Conor. A year before, Terence had won
the submission of the Ostmen of Dublin;[399] in 1120 he celebrated the
fair of Telltown,[400] a special prerogative of the Irish monarchs;
and from the death of Donnell O’Lochlainn next year[401] Terence
was undisputed monarch till 1127, when a joint rising of Ostmen and
Leinstermen enabled both to throw off his yoke.[402] Meanwhile Murtogh
O’Lochlainn, a grandson of Donnell, was again building up a formidable
power in Ulster; at last, in 1150, all the provincial kings, including
Terence, gave him hostages for peace;[403] and Terence’s throne seems
to have been only saved by a sudden change in the policy of the Ostmen,
whose independent action enabled them for a moment to hold the balance
and act as arbitrators between northern and southern Ireland.[404] Four
years later, however, they accepted Murtogh as their king,[405] and two
years later still he was left sole monarch by the death of Terence
O’Conor.[406]

        [393] Four Masters, a. 1073–1086 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp.
        905–927).

        [394] _Ib._ a. 1087–1119 (pp. 929–1009).

        [395] Lanfranc, Ep. 44 (Giles, vol. i. pp. 62–64); Anselm, Epp.
        l. iii., Epp. cxlii., cxlvii. (Migne, _Patrol._, vol. clix.,
        cols. 173, 174, 178–180); Lanigan, as above, vol. iii. pp. 474
        _et seq._, vol. iv. pp. 15, 19, 20.

        [396] Samuel of Dublin in 1095 and Malchus of Waterford in 1096
        were both elected under Murtogh’s sanction and sent to England
        for consecration with letters of commendation from him. Eadmer,
        _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), pp. 73–76; Lanigan, as above, vol. iv. pp.
        12–15.

        [397] Four Masters, a. 1083–1119 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp.
        921–1009). Cf. Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1083–1119 (Hennessy, vol. i.
        pp. 73–111).

        [398] Four Masters, a. 1119 (as above, p. 1009). Ann. Loch. Cé,
        a. 1119 (as above, p. 111).

        [399] Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. p. 48, says:
        “The Annals of Innisfallen have at _A._ 1118, ‘Turlogh O’Conor
        became king of the Danes of Dublin.’” (This passage does not
        occur in either of the two editions of Ann. Inisfal. printed
        by O’Conor.) The Four Masters, a. 1118 (as above, p. 1007),
        say that Terence took hostages from the Ostmen in that year.
        He was, at any rate, acknowledged as their overlord by 1121,
        for it was he who in that year sent Gregory, bishop-elect of
        Dublin, to England for consecration. Lanigan, as above, p. 47.

        [400] Four Masters _ad ann._ (as above, p. 1011).

        [401] _Ib._ a. 1121 (p. 1013). Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1121 (as above,
        p. 113).

        [402] Ann Loch Cé, a. 1127 (p. 123).

        [403] Four Masters, a. 1150 (as above, p. 1093).

        [404] Something of this kind must be meant by the phrase of the
        Four Masters (_ib._ p. 1095): “The foreigners made a year’s
        peace between Leath-Chuinn and Leath-Mhogha.” This is in
        1150, after Murtogh’s appearance as “King of Ireland” and the
        Ostmen’s submission to Terence (II.) O’Brien, whom his namesake
        of Connaught had set up as king in Munster.

        [405] Four Masters, a. 1154 (as above, p. 1113).

        [406] Four Masters, a. 1156 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1119).

The anarchy of the Irish state was reflected in that of the Church. If
Lanfranc, when he consecrated Patrick of Dublin, knew anything at all
of the ecclesiastical condition of Ireland, he may well have thought
that it stood in far greater need of his reforming care than England
itself. The Irish Church had never felt the organizing hand of a
Theodore; its diocesan and parochial system was quite undeveloped; it
had in fact scarcely advanced beyond the primitive missionary stage.
Six centuries after S. Patrick’s death, the Irish clergy were still
nothing but a band of mission-priests scattered over the country or
gathered together in vast monastic establishments like Bangor or Durrow
or Clonmacnoise; the bishops were for the most part merely heads of
ever-shifting mission-stations, to whose number there was no limit;
destitute of political rank, they were almost equally destitute of
ecclesiastical authority, and differed from the ordinary priesthood by
little else than their power of ordination. At the head of the whole
hierarchy stood, as successor and representative of S. Patrick, the
archbishop of Armagh. But since the death of Archbishop Maelbrigid
in 927 the see of Armagh had been in the hands of a family of local
chieftains who occupied its estate, usurped its revenues, handed on
its title from father to son, and were bishops only in name.[407]
The inferior members of the ecclesiastical body could not escape the
evil which paralyzed their head. The bishops and priests of the Irish
Church furnished a long roll of names to the catalogue of saints; but
they contributed little or nothing to the political developement of
the nation, and scarcely more to its social developement. The growth
of a class of lay-impropriators ousted them from the management and
the revenues of their church-lands, reduced them to subsist almost
wholly upon the fees which they received for the performance of their
spiritual functions, stripped them of all political influence, and
left them dependent solely upon their spiritual powers and their
personal holiness for whatever share of social influence they might
still contrive to retain.[408] The Irish Church, in fact, while
stedfastly adhering in doctrinal matters to the rest of the Latin
Church, had fallen far behind it in discipline; to the monastic reforms
of the tenth century, to the struggle for clerical celibacy and for
freedom of investiture in the eleventh, she had remained an utter
stranger. The long-continued stress of the northern invasions had cut
off the lonely island in the west from all intercourse with the world
at large, so completely that even the tie which bound her to Rome had
sunk into a mere vague tradition of spiritual loyalty, and Rome herself
knew nothing of the actual condition of a Church which had once been
her most illustrious daughter.

        [407] S. Bernard, _Vita S. Malach._, c. 10 (Mabillon, vol. i.
        col. 667). Cf. Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iii. p.
        382.

        [408] On these lay impropriators, “comorbas” and “erenachs,”
        see Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 79–86.

But it was the northmen, too, who were now to become the means of
knitting up again the ties which had been severed by their fathers’
swords. The state of things in Ireland, as reported to Canterbury from
Dublin and Waterford, might well seem to reforming churchmen like
Lanfranc and Anselm too grievous to be endured. Lanfranc had urged
upon Terence O’Brien the removal of two of its worst scandals, the
neglect of canonical restraints upon marriage and the existence of a
crowd of titular bishops without fixed sees;[409] Anselm used all his
influence with Murtogh O’Brien for the same end;[410] at last, finding
his efforts unavailing, he seems to have laid his complaints before
the Pope. The result was that, for the first time, a papal legate was
appointed for Ireland. The person chosen was Gilbert, who some two or
three years before Anselm’s death became the first bishop of the Ostmen
of Limerick. Gilbert seems, like the first Donatus of Dublin, to have
been himself an Irish prelate; he lost no time, however, in putting
himself in communication with Canterbury,[411] and displayed an almost
exaggerated zeal for the Roman discipline and ritual.[412] In 1118 he
presided over a synod held at Rathbreasil, where an attempt was made
to map out the dioceses of Ireland on a definite plan.[413] Little,
however, could be done till the metropolitan see was delivered from the
usurpers who had so long held it in bondage; and it was not until 1134
that the evil tradition was broken by the election of S. Malachi.

        [409] Lanfranc, Ep. 44 (Giles, vol. i. p. 63).

        [410] Anselm, Epp. l. iii., Epp. cxlii., cxlvii. (Migne,
        _Patrol._, vol. clix., cols. 173, 174, 178–180).

        [411] On Gilbert’s relations with Anselm see Lanigan, _Eccles.
        Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 23–26.

        [412] _Ib._ pp. 26–29.

        [413] _Ib._ pp. 38, 40–43.

Malachi was the wisest and most enlightened as well as the most
saintly Irish prelate of his time; he had already been labouring for
nearly ten years at the reform of the diocese of Connor; in that of
Armagh itself he had earlier still, as vicar to Archbishop Celsus,
laid the foundations of a similar work which he now took up again as
primate.[414] After a successful pontificate of three years he again
retired to the humbler position of a diocesan bishop at Down;[415]
but he still continued to watch over the interests of the whole Irish
Church; and in 1139 he went to Rome specially to lay its necessities
before the Pope, and if possible to obtain from him the gift of a
pallium for the archbishop of Armagh, and another for the bishop of
Cashel as metropolitan of southern Ireland.[416] The pallium was now
generally regarded as an indispensable note of metropolitical rank,
but it had never been possessed by the successors of S. Patrick.[417]
Innocent II. refused to grant it save at the request of the Irish
clergy and people in council assembled; he sanctioned, however, the
recognition of Cashel as metropolis of southern Ireland, and moreover
he transferred to Malachi himself the legatine commission which Gilbert
of Limerick had just resigned.[418] Gilbert seems to have died shortly
afterwards: his successor in the see of Limerick went to Theobald of
Canterbury for consecration; but his profession of obedience was the
last ever made by an Irish bishop to an English metropolitan.[419] In
1148 a synod held at Inispatrick by Archbishop Gelasius of Armagh,
with Malachi as papal legate, decided upon sending Malachi himself
to the Pope once more, charged with a formal request for the two
palls, in the name of the whole Irish Church. Malachi died on the
way, at Clairvaux;[420] but he left his commission in safe hands.
Nine years before, when on his first journey to Rome he had passed
through the “bright valley,” its abbot had recognized in him a kindred
spirit.[421] From that moment S. Bernard’s care of all the churches
extended itself even to the far-off Church of Ireland; and if it was
not he who actually forwarded his dying friend’s petition to Eugene
III., there can be little doubt that Eugene’s favourable reception of
it was chiefly owing to his influence. The result was the mission of
John Paparo as special legate to Ireland. Stephen’s refusal to let
John pass through his dominions caused another year’s delay;[422] but
at the close of 1151 John made his way through Scotland safe to his
destination.[423] In March 1152 he held a synod at Kells, in which
the diocesan and provincial system of the Irish Church was organized
upon lines which remained unaltered till the sixteenth century. The
episcopal sees were definitely fixed, and grouped under not two but
four archbishoprics. The primacy of all Ireland, with metropolitical
authority over Ulster and Meath, was assigned to Armagh; Tuam became
the metropolis of Connaught, Cashel of Munster; while the rivalry
of Armagh and Canterbury for the spiritual obedience of the Ostmen
was settled by the grant of a fourth pallium, with metropolitical
jurisdiction over the whole of Leinster, to Bishop Gregory of Dublin
himself.[424]

        [414] For S. Malachi see his _Life_ by S. Bernard, and Lanigan,
        as above, pp. 59 _et seq._

        [415] S. Bern., _Vita S. Malach._, c. 14 (Mabillon, vol. i.
        cols. 671–672).

        [416] _Ib._ c. 15 (col. 672).

        [417] _Ibid._ Cf. Lanigan’s note, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol.
        iv. pp. 110, 111.

        [418] S. Bern., _Vita S. Malach._, c. 16 (as above, col. 674).
        Lanigan, as above, p. 112.

        [419] Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 114, 115,
        116.

        [420] S. Bern., _Vita S. Malach._, cc. 30, 31 (Mabillon, vol.
        i. cols. 687–692). Lanigan, as above, pp. 129, 130.

        [421] S. Bern., _Vita S. Malach._, c. 16 (as above, cols. 673,
        674).

        [422] See above, vol. i. p. 380.

        [423] Four Masters, a. 1151 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1095).

        [424] On the synod of Kells see Four Masters, a. 1152 (as
        above, p. 1101); Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 212; and
        Lanigan, as above, pp. 139–151.

It is plain that Bernard and Eugene aimed at applying to Ireland’s
troubles the same remedy which they were at that very time applying to
those of England. They hoped to build up an united nation and a strong
national government on the basis of a free and united national Church.
But the foundation-stone of their work for Ireland was scarcely laid
at Kells when both the wise master-builders were called away. On the
other hand, their labours for England were crowned by the accession
of the young Angevin king, whose restless temper, before he had been
nine months on his throne, was already seeking for another sphere of
activity still further beyond the sea; overwhelming the newly-crowned,
English-born Pope with suggestions of work and offers of co-operation
in every quarter of Christendom,[425] and proposing to begin at once
with the reduction of Ireland to political, ecclesiastical and social
order after the pattern of England and Normandy.[426] Adrian IV. would
have needed a wisdom and a foresight greater than those of S. Bernard
himself to enable him to resist the attractions of such an offer. The
so-called “Donation of Constantine”--a donation which is now known
to be forged, but whose genuineness no one in Adrian’s day had ever
thought of doubting--vested the ultimate sovereignty of all islands
in the Papacy.[427] The best and greatest Popes, from S. Gregory down
to Adrian himself, seem to have interpreted this as making them in
a special way responsible for the welfare of such outlying portions
of Christendom, and bound to leave no means untried for providing
them with a secure and orderly Christian government.[428] The action
of Alexander II. in sanctioning the Norman conquest of England was
a logical outcome of this principle, applied, however unwisely or
unjustly, to a particular case. But there was infinitely greater
justification for applying the same principle, in the same manner, to
the case of Ireland. Neither the labours of S. Malachi, nor the brief
visit of John Paparo, nor the stringent decrees passed at the synod
of Kells, could suffice to reform the inveterate evils of Ireland’s
ecclesiastical system, the yet more inveterate evils of her political
system, or the intellectual and moral decay which was the unavoidable
consequence of both. On the Pope, according to the view of the time,
lay the responsibility of bringing order out of this chaos--a chaos of
whose very existence he had but just become fully conscious, and which
no doubt looked to him far more hopeless than it really was. In such
circumstances Henry’s proposal must have sounded to Adrian like an
offer to relieve him of a great weight of care--to cut at one stroke a
knot which he was powerless to untie--to clear a path for him through a
jungle-growth of difficulties which he himself saw no way to penetrate
or overcome. John of Salisbury set forth the plan at Rome, in Henry’s
name, in the summer of 1155; he carried back a bull which satisfied all
Henry’s demands. Adrian bade the king go forth to his conquest “for
the enlargement of the Church’s borders, for the restraint of vice,
the correction of morals and the planting of virtue, the increase of
the Christian religion, and whatsoever may tend to God’s glory and the
well-being of that land;”[429] and he sent with the bull a gold ring,
adorned with an emerald of great price, as a symbol of investiture with
the government of Ireland.[430]

        [425] Pet. Blois, Ep. clxviii. (Giles, vol. ii. pp. 116–118).
        See above, vol. i. p. 497.

        [426] “Significâsti siquidem nobis, fili in Christo carissime,
        te Hiberniæ insulam, ad subdendum illum populum legibus et
        vitiorum plantaria inde exstirpanda, velle intrare; et de
        singulis domibus annuam unius denarii beato Petro velle solvere
        pensionem; et jura ecclesiarum illius terræ illibata et integra
        conservare.” Bull of Adrian IV. to Henry (“Laudabiliter”), in
        Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 5 (Dimock, vol. v. p.
        317), etc.

        [427] “Nam omnes insulæ, de jure antiquo, ex donatione
        Constantini qui eam fundavit et dotavit, dicuntur ad Romanam
        ecclesiam pertinere.” Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42
        (Giles, vol. v. p. 206).

        [428] “Sane Hiberniam et omnes insulas, quibus sol justitiæ
        Christus illuxit, et quæ documenta fidei Christianæ ceperunt,
        ad jus beati Petri et sacrosanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ, quod tua
        etiam nobilitas recognoscit, non est dubium pertinere. Unde
        tanto in eis libentius plantationem fidelem et germen gratum
        Deo inserimus quanto id a nobis interno examine districtius
        prospicimus exigendum.” Bull “Laudabiliter,” Gir. Cambr.
        _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 5 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 317).

        [429] Bull “Laudabiliter,” Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l.
        ii. c. 5 (Dimock, vol. v. pp. 317, 318); R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. i. pp. 300, 301; Pet. Blois, Ep. ccxxxi. (Giles, vol.
        ii. pp. 201, 202); Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 19; etc. Its
        authenticity has been fiercely disputed, but is now admitted
        by all Irish scholars. See proofs in Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist.
        Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 165, 166, and O’Callaghan’s edition of
        _Macariæ Excidium_ (Irish Archæol. Soc.), pp. 242, 245, where
        it is reprinted from Baronius’s copy, found by him in the
        Vatican archives.

        [430] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. p.
        206).

This strange crusade was postponed for the moment, as we have seen,
in deference to objections made by the Empress Matilda.[431] Adrian’s
bull and ring were stored up in the English chancery, and there, long
after Adrian was dead, they still lay,[432] unused and, as it seemed,
forgotten amid an ever-increasing throng of more urgent cares and
labours which even Henry found to be quite as much as he was capable
of sustaining. At last, however, the course of political events in
Ireland itself took a turn which led almost irresistibly to a revival
of his long-forsaken project. Two years before Henry’s accession Dermot
Mac-Murrough, king of Leinster, had made a raid upon the district of
Breffny in Connaught, on the borders of Ulster and Meath, and carried
off Dervorgil, the wife of its chieftain Tighernan O’Ruark.[433] From
that hour Tighernan’s vengeance never slept. During the next fourteen
years, while Murtogh O’Lochlainn was striving for the mastery first
against the veteran Terence O’Conor and after Terence’s death with
his son Rory or Roderic, the swords of the men of Breffny were thrown
alternately into either scale, as their chieftain saw a hope of
securing the aid of either monarch to avenge him of his enemy.[434]
In 1166 the crisis came. Murtogh drew upon himself the wrath of his
people by blinding the king of Uladh, for whose safety he was pledged
to the archbishop of Armagh; Ulster, Meath, Leinster and Dublin rose
against him all at once; he was defeated and slain in a great battle at
the Fews; the Ostmen of Dublin acknowledged Roderic as their king, and
all the princes of southern Ireland followed their example. Dermot’s
submission, however, was in vain; the first act of the new monarch was
to banish him from the realm.[435] The Leinstermen forsook him at once,
for their loyalty had long been alienated by his harsh government and
evil deeds.[436] Left alone to the justice of Roderic and the vengeance
of O’Ruark, he fled to Cork and thence took ship to Bristol. Here he
found shelter for a while in the priory of S. Augustine, under the
protection of its founder Robert Fitz-Harding;[437] at the close of the
year he made his way to Normandy, and thence, with some difficulty,
tracked Henry’s restless movements into the depths of Aquitaine,[438]
where he at last laid his appeal for succour at the feet of the English
king.

        [431] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155. See above, vol. i. p. 431.

        [432] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. p.
        206).

        [433] Four Masters, a. 1152 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1103).
        Cf. Gir. Cambr., _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 1 (Dimock, vol.
        v. pp. 225, 226), and the elaborately romantic account in the
        Anglo-Norman Poem on the Conquest of Ireland, edited by M.
        Francisque Michel, pp. 2–6. The two last-named authorities
        represent this affair as the _immediate_ cause of Dermot’s
        overthrow, and of all the consequent troubles. Chronology shews
        this to be mere romance; yet, notwithstanding the criticisms
        of some modern writers, there still seems to be some ground
        for the earlier view which looked upon Dervorgil as a sort
        of Irish Helen. If we follow carefully the thread of the
        story in the Four Masters from 1153 to 1166 we can hardly
        avoid the conclusion that throughout those years the most
        important personage in Irish politics, the man whose action
        turned the scale in nearly all the ups and downs of fortune
        between Murtogh of Ulster and the kings of Connaught, was the
        border-chieftain whose position made him the most dangerous of
        foes and the most indispensable of allies--Tighernan O’Ruark;
        and we can hardly help seeing in Dermot’s banishment the
        vengeance less of Roderic O’Conor himself than of a supporter
        whom Roderic could not afford to leave unsatisfied. On the
        other hand, it is perfectly true that the opportunity for
        executing that vengeance was given by the disaffection of
        Dermot’s own subjects--and, as usual, more especially by the
        rising of the Ostmen of Dublin.

        [434] See Four Masters, a. 1153–1166 (as above, pp. 1107–1159).

        [435] Four Masters, a. 1166 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1159–1163).

        [436] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 1 (Dimock, vol.
        v. pp. 225, 226). For specimens of his misdeeds see Four
        Masters, a. 1141 (as above, p. 1065), and Ann. Clonmacnoise, a.
        1135 (_ib._ p. 1051, note _f_).

        [437] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 12.

        [438] “In remotis et transmarinis Aquitannicæ Galliæ partibus.”
        Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 227). Henry was in Aquitaine from
        December 1166 till May 1167; see Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp.
        103–106. The chase which he characteristically led the Irish
        king is amusingly described in the Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel),
        p. 13:

“Bien est, seignurs, ke jo vus die Cum Dermod va par Normandie; Li rei
Henri va dunc quere, A munt, à val, avant, arere; Tant ad mandé et
enquis Que trové ad li rei Henris, A une cité l’ad trové, Que seignur
esteit clamé.”

On the last line the editor (notes, p. 168) remarks: “_Seignur_ (seigñ,
MS.)? Is it not: of which he was called lord?” One feels tempted to
suggest that it might be meant for the name of the place; but if so,
what can it be? Saintes?

At the crisis of his struggles with Thomas of Canterbury, with Louis
of France and with the rebel barons of Poitou, all that Henry could do
was to accept Dermot’s offer of homage and fealty,[439] promise to
send him help as soon as possible,[440] and furnish him with a letter
authorizing any loyal English, Norman, Welsh, Scottish or Angevin
subjects who might be so disposed to join the standard of the Irish
prince, as of a faithful vassal of their sovereign.[441] Another stay
of some weeks in Bristol[442] convinced Dermot that his best chance of
aid lay beyond the Severn. Wales was still in the main a Celtic land,
ruled in primeval Celtic fashion by native princes under little more
than nominal subjection to the king of England. The Norman conquest of
Wales, so far as Wales could be said to have been conquered at all,
had been effected not by the royal power but by the daring and prowess
of individual adventurers who did, indeed, seek the royal sanction for
their tenure of the lands which they had won, but who were scarcely
more amenable to the royal authority than their Welsh neighbours,
with whom they not unfrequently made common cause against it. It was
Robert of Bellême’s connexion with Wales, through his border-earldom
of Shrewsbury and his brother’s lordship of Pembroke, which had made
him so formidable to Henry I.; it was Robert of Gloucester’s tenure
of the great Welsh lordship of Glamorgan, even more than his English
honours, which had enabled him to act as an independent potentate
against Stephen. Another border-chieftain who played some part in the
civil war was Gilbert de Clare, whose father had received a grant of
Cardigan from Henry I. in 1107,[443] and upon whom Stephen in 1138
conferred the title of earl of Pembroke.[444] His son Richard appears
under the same title among the witnesses to Stephen’s proclamation
of the treaty of Wallingford in 1153;[445] the writers of the time,
however, usually describe him as earl of Striguil, a fortress which
seems to have occupied the site whence the ruins of Chepstow castle
now look down upon the Wye. His earldom of Pembroke, indeed, as one of
Stephen’s fictitious creations, must have been forfeited on Henry’s
accession; but the lord of Striguil was still a mighty man on the
South-Welsh border when in the spring of 1167 he promised to bring all
the forces which he could muster to aid in restoring Dermot, who in
return offered him his daughter’s hand, together with the succession to
his kingdom.[446] A promise of the town of Wexford and its adjoining
territory won a like assurance of aid from two half-brothers in whose
veins the blood of Norman adventurers was mingled with the ancient
royal blood of South-Wales: Maurice Fitz-Gerald, a son of Gerald
constable of Pembroke by his marriage with Nest, aunt of the reigning
prince Rees Ap-Griffith, and Robert Fitz-Stephen, son of the same Nest
by her second husband, Stephen constable of Cardigan.[447] Another
Pembrokeshire knight, Richard Fitz-Godoberd, volunteered to accompany
Dermot at once with a little band of Norman-Welsh followers.[448] With
these Dermot returned to Ireland in August 1167;[449] he was defeated
in a pitched battle with Roderic O’Conor and Tighernan O’Ruark;[450]
but in his own hereditary principality of Kinsellagh[451] he was safe;
there throughout the winter he lay hid at Ferns,[452] and thence, when
spring returned, he sent his bard Maurice Regan to claim from his Welsh
allies the fulfilment of their promises.[453]

        [439] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 1 (Dimock, vol.
        v. p. 227). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 15.

        [440] Anglo-Norm. Poem, as above.

        [441] Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 227, 228).

        [442] _Ib._ c. 2 (p. 228). He was at Bristol “quinzein u un
        meins”; Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 16.

        [443] _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1107 (Williams, p. 105).

        [444] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 917.

        [445] Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 18. Richard de Clare became
        known to later generations by the nickname of “Strongbow.” Its
        use is convenient, as helping to avoid confusion with the other
        Richards of the period; but it seems to have no contemporary
        authority. See Mr. Dimock’s note, _Gir. Cambr._, vol. v. p.
        228, note 4.

        [446] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 2 (Dimock, vol.
        v. p. 228). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 17.

        [447] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 229). The circumstances
        of Fitz-Stephen’s enlistment illustrate the condition of
        South-Wales at this time. He had been cast into prison three
        years before by his cousin Rees, and at the moment of Dermot’s
        arrival had just been released on condition of joining Rees in
        an attack upon England. His Norman blood, however, was loyal
        enough to revolt against the fulfilment of the condition; and
        Rees, who had warmly espoused Dermot’s interest, was persuaded
        to allow its exchange for service in Ireland. _Ibid._; cf.
        Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 19, 20. For pedigree of Nest’s
        descendants see Mr. Dimock’s edition of _Gir. Cambr. Opp._,
        vol. v. App. B. to pref., pp. c, ci.

        [448] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 21.

        [449] About August 1, according to Gir. Cambr. _Expugn.
        Hibern._, l. i. c. 2 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 229).

        [450] Four Masters, a. 1167 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp.
        1165–1167). Among the slain they mention “the son of the king
        of Britain, who was the battle-prop of the island of Britain,
        who had come across the sea in the army of Mac Murchadha.” This
        can only mean a son or brother of Rees; but neither Gerald
        nor the Welsh chronicles make any mention of such a person in
        Ireland.

        [451] The modern county of Wexford, or rather the diocese of
        Ferns. The Four Masters (as above, p. 1165) say that Dermot
        “returned from England with a force of Galls, and he took the
        kingdom of Ui-Ceinnsealaigh.”

        [452] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 2 (Dimock, vol.
        v. p. 230).

        [453] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 21.

In the first days of May[454] Robert Fitz-Stephen landed at Bannow,
between Wexford and Waterford, with thirty picked knights of his own
immediate following, and a body of auxiliaries to the number of sixty
men-at-arms and three hundred archers.[455] With him came three of
his nephews, Meiler Fitz-Henry, Miles Fitz-David[456] and Robert de
Barri;[457] and also a ruined knight called Hervey of Mountmorris,
uncle of Richard de Clare.[458] Next day an independent adventurer,
Maurice de Prendergast, arrived from Milford with ten more knights and
a band of archers.[459] Dermot himself came to meet them with some
five hundred Irishmen. The united force marched upon Wexford, and took
it in two days;[460] they then established their head-quarters at
Ferns,[461] and thence made an expedition into Ossory, whose chieftain
was specially hostile to Dermot. In spite of overwhelming odds, through
all the difficulties of an unknown country full of woods and marshes,
and traps laid against them by their skilful foes, the Norman-Welsh
knights and archers made their way into the heart of Ossory; and
a great battle ended in the rout of the Irish and the bringing of
two hundred heads to Dermot’s feet in his camp on the banks of the
Barrow.[462] A successful raid upon Offaly was followed by one upon
Glendalough, and a third upon Ossory again,[463] till in the following
year the state of affairs in Leinster had become threatening enough to
drive all the Irish princes and the Ostmen of Dublin into a confederacy
under Roderic O’Conor for the expulsion of the intruders.[464] Dermot
pledged himself to acknowledge Roderic as monarch of Ireland, and was
in his turn acknowledged by Roderic as king of Leinster on condition
that he should dismiss his foreign allies.[465] The agreement was
however scarcely made when Maurice Fitz-Gerald landed at Wexford with
some hundred and forty men;[466] these at once joined Dermot in an
expedition against Dublin, and harried the surrounding country till
the citizens were reduced to promise obedience.[467] Early in the next
year Dermot’s son-in-law Donell O’Brien, king of Limerick or Northern
Munster, succeeded by the help of Robert Fitz-Stephen in throwing off
the authority of Roderick O’Conor.[468] Encouraged by these successes,
Dermot now began to aspire in his turn to the monarchy of all
Ireland;[469] but his auxiliaries were numerically insufficient; and
the one from whom he had expected most had as yet failed to appear at
all.

        [454] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 3 (as above). All
        the later Irish historians, as well as Lord Lyttelton and Mr.
        Dimock (_ib._ margin) date the arrival of Fitz-Stephen in May
        1169. The reason apparently is that, as far as Dermot and his
        English auxiliaries are concerned, the year 1168 is a blank in
        the Four Masters, while under 1169 they say: “The fleet of the
        Flemings came from England in the army of Mac Murchadha, _i.e._
        Diarmaid, to contest the kingdom of Leinster for him; they were
        seventy heroes clad in coats of mail.” But seeing that in the
        following year, 1170, they for the first time mention Robert
        Fitz-Stephen, and represent him as coming over with Richard
        of Striguil (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp. 1173–1175), it is by no
        means evident that the foregoing entry has any reference to
        him. It may just as well apply to Maurice Fitz-Gerald, who
        certainly followed him after an interval of some months at
        least. Gerald (as above, c. 2, p. 229) says that Fitz-Stephen
        and Fitz-Gerald both promised, in the summer of 1167, to join
        Dermot “cum zephyris et hirundine primâ.” Maurice undoubtedly
        made a long delay; but there is not a word to shew that Robert
        did otherwise than fulfil his engagement to the letter. Nay,
        Gerald pointedly introduces him (_ib._ c. 3, p. 230) as “nec
        promissionis immemor nec fidei contemptor.” He also tells
        us (c. 2, _ibid._) that Dermot had _wintered_ at Ferns. Why
        then are we to assume that by “wintered” he means “wintered,
        summered, and wintered again”? What could Dermot possibly have
        been doing there for more than twenty months?

        [455] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 3 (p. 230). For account of
        Fitz-Stephen himself see _ib._ c. 26 (pp. 271, 272).

        [456] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 22. On Meiler see Gir.
        Cambr. as above, l. ii. c. 9 (pp. 324, 325); and for pedigree,
        Mr. Dimock’s App. B. to pref. (_ib._ pp. c., ci.).

        [457] Gir. Cambr. as above, l. i. c. 3 (Dimock, vol. v. p.
        232). Cf. App. B. to pref., _ib._ p. c.

        [458] Gir. Cambr. as above, l. i. c. 3 (p. 230). See also l.
        ii. c. 11 (pp. 327, 328).

        [459] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 3 (Dimock, vol.
        v. p. 232).

        [460] _Ibid._ (pp. 232, 233). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp.
        24, 25.

        [461] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 25, 26.

        [462] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 4 (p. 234). Cf. the long account
        in Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 27–38.

        [463] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 42–51.

        [464] Roderic, in 1169, met the northern chieftains at Tara,
        thence marched to Dublin, and afterwards proceeded into
        Leinster; and Tighernan O’Ruark, Dermot king of Meath, and the
        Ostmen of Dublin “went to meet the men of Munster, Leinster and
        Osraigh” [Ossory], “and they set nothing by the Flemings.” Four
        Masters, a. 1169 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1173).

        [465] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 10 (p. 244).

        [466] Ten knights, thirty “arcarii” or mounted archers, and
        about a hundred “sagittarii pedestres.” _Ib._ c. 11 (pp. 244,
        245).

        [467] _Ibid._ (p. 245).

        [468] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 11 (Dimock,
        vol. v. p. 245). The date, 1170, comes from the Four Masters
        (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1175), who however do not mention
        Fitz-Stephen’s share in the matter.

        [469] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 12 (p. 246).

The history of Richard of Striguil is far from clear. From the number
of troops which eventually accompanied him to Ireland it is evident
that he had been during these two years actively preparing for his
expedition; and it may even be that the extent of his preparations
had drawn upon him the suspicions of King Henry. We only know that,
for some cause or other, he was now a ruined man; his lands were
forfeited to the Crown;[470] and he seems to have lingered on, absorbed
in a desperate effort to regain Henry’s favour, and clinging to his
lost home with a feeling that if he once turned his back upon it, he
would never be allowed to see it again. A letter from Dermot, telling
of the successes of his party in Leinster and renewing his former
offers, forced him into action.[471] He made a last appeal to the
king, intreating either for restoration of his lands or for the royal
license to go and repair his fortunes elsewhere. Henry ironically bade
him go, and he went.[472] On S. Bartholomew’s eve, 1170, he landed at
Waterford with twelve hundred men;[473] next day he was joined by
Raymond “the Fat,” a young warrior whom he had sent over three months
before[474] with ten knights and seventy archers, and who with this
small force had contrived to beat back an assault of three thousand
Irishmen of Decies and Ostmen of Waterford upon his camp of wattle and
thatch, hastily thrown up on the rocky promontory of Dundonulf.[475]
On August 25 Richard and Raymond attacked Waterford; three assaults in
one day carried both town and citadel;[476] seven hundred citizens were
slaughtered,[477] and the officers of the fortress, whose names tell
of northern blood, were made prisoners.[478] A few days later Richard
was married at Waterford to Dermot’s daughter Eva.[479] He then joined
his father-in-law in a circuitous march across the hills and through
Glendalough,[480] whereby they avoided a great host which Roderic had
gathered at Clondalkin to intercept them, and arrived in safety on S.
Matthew’s day beneath the walls of Dublin.[481] Dermot sent his bard
to demand the instant surrender of the town, with thirty hostages for
its fidelity. A dispute arose, probably between the Irish and Danish
inhabitants, as to the selection of the hostages;[482] Archbishop
Laurence was endeavouring to compose the difficulty,[483] and Hasculf
Thorgils’ son, a chieftain of northern blood who commanded the citadel,
had actually promised to surrender it on the morrow,[484] when a sudden
attack made by Raymond the Fat on one side and by a knight called
Miles Cogan on the other carried the town before the leaders of either
party knew what had happened.[485] A second rush won the citadel;
Hasculf escaped by sea and took refuge in the Orkneys;[486] Dublin was
sacked,[487] and left throughout the winter under the command of Miles
Cogan,[488] while Richard of Striguil was guarding Waterford against
the men of Munster,[489] and Dermot, from his old head-quarters at
Ferns,[490] was making raid after raid upon Meath and Breffny.[491]

        [470] The cause of Richard’s disgrace seems to be nowhere
        stated, except by William of Newburgh. He has (l. ii. c. 26;
        Howlett, vol. i. pp. 167, 168), as usual, an independent
        version of the whole affair. According to him, Richard’s
        chief motive for going to Ireland was to escape from his
        creditors, he being deep in debt; he went in defiance of an
        express prohibition from Henry, and it was on hearing of his
        victories--_i.e._ some time in the latter part of 1170--that
        Henry confiscated his estates. Dugdale (_Baronage_, vol. i. p.
        208) gives 1170 as the date of the forfeiture, on the authority
        of a MS. in the Bodleian library. But this is irreconcileable
        with the very circumstantial story of Gerald. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 234, dates the forfeiture three years
        before Henry’s visit to Ireland, _i.e._ 1168.

        [471] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 12 (as above, pp.
        246, 247).

        [472] _Ib._ cc. 12, 13 (pp. 247, 248). Cf. Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [473] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 16 (Dimock, vol.
        v. p. 254). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 72. The latter gives
        the number of troops as fifteen hundred; Gerald makes them two
        hundred knights and a thousand foot-men.

        [474] So says Gerald, as above, c. 13 (p. 248); but Mr. Dimock
        (_ib._ note 2) thinks this too early.

        [475] _Ibid._ (pp. 248, 249). There is however a less heroic
        version of this affair in the Anglo-Norman Poem (Michel), pp.
        68–70. We are there told that Raymond and his men had provided
        themselves with food by “lifting” all the cattle in the
        neighbourhood and penning them within the camp. At the sound
        of arms these creatures rushed out in a wild stampede, and it
        was this which put the assailants to flight. On the site of
        Dundonulf see Mr. Dimock’s _Glossary_ to Gir. Cambr., vol. v.
        p. 421.

        [476] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 16 (_ib._ pp. 254, 255).

        [477] Four Masters, a. 1170 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1177).

        [478] Ragnald and “the two Sihtrics”; Gir. Cambr. as above (p.
        255). The Four Masters (as above) give to the commandant of
        the citadel--which Gerald calls “Ragnald’s tower”--the name of
        Gillemaire. In the Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 72, we read
        that “les plus poanz de la cité” were Regenald and “Smorch.”

        [479] Gir. Cambr. as above. Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 73.
        Four Masters, a. 1170 (as above).

        [480] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 17 (p. 256).

        [481] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 75–78. Cf. Gir. Cambr.
        and Four Masters as above. The latter say that “there was a
        challenge of battle between them” (_i.e._ between Roderic
        and the foreigners) “for three days, until lightning burned
        Ath-Cliath” [Dublin].

        [482] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 79, 80.

        [483] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 17 (Dimock, vol.
        v. p. 256).

        [484] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 80. He is there called
        “Hesculf”; in p. 79, “Mac Turkil Esculf.” In the Four Masters,
        a. 1170 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1177), he is “Asgall, son of
        Raghnall, son of Turcaill.” Gir. Cambr. (as above) calls him
        simply “Hasculphus.”

        [485] Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 256, 257). Anglo-Norm. Poem
        (Michel), pp. 80, 81.

        [486] Four Masters, as above. Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 257).

        [487] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 81, 82.

        [488] Gir. Cambr. as above. Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 82.

        [489] “A victory was gained by the son of Cormac, grandson of
        Carthach, and the people of Desmond, over the knights who were
        left to defend Port Lairge” [_i.e._ Waterford]. Four Masters,
        as above. Earl Richard returned thither early in October;
        Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 82.

        [490] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 83.

        [491] Four Masters, a. 1170 (as above, pp. 1177, 1179).

In vain did the Irish clergy meet in synod at Armagh and strive
to avert the wrath which seemed to have been revealed against
their country by a solemn decree for the liberation of the English
slaves with whom, even yet, the houses of the Irish chieftains were
filled.[492] One sentence from an Irish record of the next year may
serve to illustrate the condition of the country: “Seven predatory
excursions were made by the Ui-Maine into Ormond from Palm Sunday till
Low Sunday.”[493] It made but little difference when at Whitsuntide
Dermot, “by whom a trembling sod was made of all Ireland,” died at
Ferns “of an insufferable and unknown disease--without a will, without
penance, without the Body of Christ, without unction, as his evil
deeds deserved.”[494] At that very moment a wiking fleet gathered from
all the lands where the old sea-rovers’ life still lingered--Norway,
the Hebrides, Orkney, Man--appeared in Dublin bay under the command
of Hasculf, the exiled leader of the Ostmen, and of a northern chief
whose desperate valour won him the title of “John the Furious”--in the
English speech of that day, John the Wode.[495] Something of the spirit
of the old northern sagas breathes again in the story of this, the last
wiking-fight ever fought upon the soil of the British isles. Bard and
historian alike tell of the mighty strokes dealt by the battle-axes
of John and his comrades,[496] and how they had almost hewed their
way into Dublin once more, when a well-timed sally of the besieged
caught them at unawares in the rear;[497]--how an Irish chief named
Gillamocholmog, whom Miles Cogan had posted on a neighbouring hill,
chivalrously bidding him watch the course of the battle and join the
winning side, rushed down with his followers at the critical moment and
helped to complete the rout of the Ostmen;[498]--how John the Wode fell
by the hand of Miles Cogan;[499]--how Hasculf was taken prisoner by
Miles’s brother Richard and brought back to be reserved for ransom, and
how his hot wiking-blood spoke in words of defiance which goaded his
captors to strike off his head.[500] Fifteen hundred northmen fell upon
the field; five hundred more were drowned in trying to regain their
ships.[501] From the shores of Ireland, as from those of England, the
last northern fleet was driven away by Norman swords.

        [492] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 18 (p. 258).

        [493] Four Masters, a. 1171 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1185). The
        Ui-Maine were a tribe in south-eastern Connaught.

        [494] _Ibid._ (p. 1183). Cf. Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1171 (Hennessy,
        vol. i. p. 145). The date, “circa Kalendas Maiæ,” is given by
        Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 20 (Dimock, vol. v. p.
        263).

        [495] “Duce Johanne agnomine the Wode,” Gir. Cambr. as above,
        c. 21 (p. 264). “Johan le Devé,” Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel),
        p. 108. It is there added that, “solum les Yrreis,” he was
        a nephew of the king of “Norwiche,” _i.e._ Norway. The Four
        Masters, a. 1171 (as above, p. 1185) describe him as “Eoan, a
        Dane from the Orkney Islands.”

        [496] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 116. Gir. Cambr. as above.

        [497] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 111–114. Gir. Cambr. as
        above.

        [498] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 109–111, 115.

        [499] _Ib._ p. 117.

        [500] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 117, 118. (On his captor
        cf. _ib._ p. 111). Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 21
        (Dimock, vol. v. pp. 264, 265).

        [501] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 116, 118. The date of this
        siege is given by Gir. Cambr. (as above, p. 263) as “eâdem
        fere tempestate” (_i.e._ about the time of Dermot’s death),
        “circa Pentecosten.” This would be at the beginning of May. In
        the Poem it comes much later in the year. There seems however
        no reason to upset Gerald’s arrangement of events. See Mr.
        Dimock’s remarks, Gir. Cambr. as above, note 2.

The garrison of Dublin fought in truth even more desperately than
their assailants; for they were fighting for their all. A remonstrance
addressed by some of the Irish princes to the king of England against
the aggressions of his subjects[502] can hardly have been needed to
open Henry’s eyes to the danger gathering for him and his realm beyond
the western sea. This little band of adventurers, almost all bound
together by the closest ties of kindred,[503] were conquering Leinster
neither for its native sovereign nor for their own, but were setting
up a new feudal state independent of all royal control, under the
leadership of a disgraced English baron. Such a state, if suffered
to grow unhindered, would soon be far more dangerous to England than
to Ireland, for it would be certain to play in every struggle of the
feudal principle against the royal authority in England the part
which the Ostmen had played of old in the struggles of the Danelaw.
At the beginning of the year 1171 therefore Henry issued an edict
prohibiting all further intermeddling of his subjects in Ireland,
and bidding those who were already there either return before Easter
or consider themselves banished for life.[504] Not a man went back;
Richard of Striguil sent Raymond over to Normandy with a written
protest to the king, pleading that his conquests had been undertaken
with the royal sanction and that he was ready to place them at the
king’s disposal;[505] but the “Geraldines,” as the kindred of Maurice
Fitz-Gerald called themselves, seem to have at once accepted their
sentence of exile and resolved to hold by their swords alone the lands
which those swords had won.[506]

        [502] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 234, 235.

        [503] The close kindred of these Norman-Welsh settlers in
        Ireland is a very remarkable feature of their settlement.
        Robert Fitz-Stephen and Maurice Fitz-Gerald were half-brothers
        (Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 2, p. 229); the two Fitz-Henrys,
        Raymond the Fat, Miles Fitz-David and Robert de Barri were
        their nephews (_ib._ cc. 4, 13, and l. ii. c. 10, pp. 234, 248,
        335); Richard of Striguil was nephew to Hervey of Mountmorris
        (_ib._ l. i. c. 3, p. 230), who afterwards married a daughter
        of Maurice Fitz-Gerald, while Maurice’s eldest son married
        Richard’s daughter Alina (_ib._ l. ii. c. 4, p. 314); another
        daughter of Richard married his constable Robert de Quincy
        (Anglo-Norm. Poem, Michel, p. 130); and his sister Basilea
        became the wife of Raymond the Fat (_ib._ p. 145, and Gir.
        Cambr. as above, l. ii. c. 3, pp. 312, 313).

        [504] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 19 (Dimock, vol.
        v. p. 259).

        [505] _Ibid._ Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 235. Raymond
        was back again in time to share in the defence of Dublin
        against Roderic O’Conor--_i.e._ by the end of May or beginning
        of June. Gerald says he had to seek the king in “Aquitanic
        Gaul,” but this time the phrase cannot be taken literally.
        Eyton’s _Itinerary_ shews plainly that throughout 1171 Henry
        never was further south than the Norman, or, at the utmost, the
        Breton border.

        [506] This seems to be the key-note of a speech which Gerald
        puts into Maurice’s mouth; _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 23 (as
        above, pp. 266, 267).

The hostility of the Ostmen had apparently ended with Hasculf’s defeat;
thenceforth they seem to have made common cause with the new-comers in
whom they were perhaps already beginning to recognize the stirrings of
kindred blood. But, on the other hand, the position of Earl Richard
and his comrades had been seriously weakened by Dermot’s death. The
king of Leinster’s devise of his kingdom to his son-in-law was, like
the grants which he had made to the Geraldines and like his own homage
to King Henry, void in Irish law. In Irish eyes his death removed the
last shadow of excuse for the presence of the strangers on Irish soil;
their allies rapidly fell away;[507] and by midsummer the whole country
rose against them as one man. Roderic O’Conor mustered the forces
of the north; Archbishop Laurence of Dublin, whose family occupied
an influential position in Leinster, called up the tribes of the
south; while a squadron of thirty ships was hired from Jarl Godred of
Man.[508] The aim of the expedition was to blockade Dublin, whither
Earl Richard had now returned, and where almost all the leaders of
the invasion, except Robert Fitz-Stephen and Hervey of Mountmorris,
were now gathered together. The whole Irish land-force amounted to
sixty thousand men; half of these were under the immediate command of
Roderic, encamped at Castle-Knock;[509] Mac-Dunlevy, the chieftain of
Uladh, planted his banner on the old battle-field of Clontarf;[510]
Donell O’Brien, the king of North Munster, posted himself at
Kilmainham; and Murtogh Mac-Murrough, a brother of Dermot, whom
Roderic had set up as king of Leinster in 1167, took up his position
at Dalkey.[511] To these were added, for the northern division, the
men of Breffny and of East Meath under Tighernan O’Ruark, those of
Oiriel or southern Ulster under Murtogh O’Carroll,[512] and those of
West Meath under Murtogh O’Melaghlin; while the archbishop’s call had
brought up the whole strength of Leinster except the men of Wexford and
Kinsellagh;[513] and even these, as the sequel proved, were preparing
to fight the same battle on other ground.

        [507] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 83.

        [508] Gir. Cambr. as above, cc. 22, 24 (pp. 265, 266, 269).
        This is the archbishop afterwards canonized as S. Laurence
        O’Toole.

        [509] Cf. Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 84, with Gerald’s
        reckoning of Roderic’s own forces at thirty thousand. _Expugn.
        Hibern._, l. i. c. 24 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 268).

        [510] “A Clontarf ficha sa banere.” Anglo-Norm. Poem, as above.

        [511] _Ibid._

        [512] Four Masters, a. 1171 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1185). Gir.
        Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 24 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 269).

        [513] Gir. Cambr. as above.

For nearly two months[514] the English knights were thus blockaded in
Dublin. Their sole hope of relief was in Robert Fitz-Stephen, who had
been left in command at Wexford. They were all but starving when Donell
Kavanagh, a half-brother of Eva Mac-Murrough and a devoted adherent
of her husband, slipped into the city with tidings that Wexford had
risen; Robert Fitz-Stephen was blockaded in the little fort of Carrick
by the townsfolk and the men of Kinsellagh, to the number of three
thousand; unless he could be succoured within three days, all would be
over with him and his men.[515] Earl Richard at once called a council
of war. It comprised nearly all the leaders of the English and Welsh
forces in Ireland:--Richard of Striguil himself; Maurice Fitz-Gerald
with three of his gallant nephews, Meiler Fitz-Henry, Miles Fitz-David
and Raymond the Fat; Miles Cogan, the captor of Dublin and its chief
defender in the recent siege; Maurice de Prendergast,[516] who two
years before had thrown up the adventure and gone home in disgust at
the faithlessness of his allies,[517] but had returned, it seems, in
Earl Richard’s train, and was yet to leave, alone of all the invading
band, an honoured memory among the Irish people;[518] and some fourteen
others.[519] They decided upon sending Maurice de Prendergast and
Archbishop Laurence to Roderic with an offer of surrender on condition
that Richard of Striguil should hold the kingdom of Leinster under
Roderic as overlord. Roderic rejected the proposal with scorn; the
knights might hold what the earlier pirates had held--Dublin, Waterford
and Wexford; not another rood of Irish land should be granted to the
earl and his company; and if they refused these terms, Dublin should be
stormed on the morrow.[520] That afternoon the little garrison--scarce
six hundred in all[521]--sallied forth and surprized Roderic’s camp
while he and his men were bathing; Roderic himself escaped with great
difficulty; fifteen hundred Irishmen were slain, many of them perishing
in the water; while at sunset the victors returned, after a long
pursuit, with scarcely a man missing, and laden with provisions enough
to supply all Dublin for a year.[522] The rest of the besieging army
dispersed at once, and the very next morning Earl Richard was free to
set out for the relief of Robert Fitz-Stephen.[523]

        [514] _Ib._ c. 22 (p. 266). This would bring the beginning of
        the siege to Midsummer at latest, for it was certainly over by
        the middle of August. The Four Masters (as above) make it last
        only a fortnight.

        [515] Gir. Cambr. as above. The Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp.
        85, 86, gives a very hasty and confused sketch of this Wexford
        affair.

        [516] Earl Richard, Meiler, the two Mileses and Maurice
        Prendergast are mentioned in the Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp.
        86, 87. Raymond is named by Gerald, _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i.
        c. 22 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 266), as “a curiâ jam reversus”; his
        presence also appears later in the Poem. Gerald alone mentions
        the presence of Maurice Fitz-Gerald, whom the Poem never names
        throughout the siege; while Gerald never names Maurice de
        Prendergast. Is it possible that he has transferred to his
        own uncle the exploits of his namesake? But if so, where can
        Fitz-Gerald have been?

        [517] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 51–67.

        [518] _Ib._ pp. 97–103.

        [519] The Poem (as above), p. 87, reckons them at twenty in
        all, and names four besides those already mentioned, viz.,
        Robert de Quincy, Walter de Riddlesford, Richard de Marreis and
        Walter Bluet.

        [520] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 87–90.

        [521] The Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 90, 91, describes the
        force as composed of three divisions, each consisting of forty
        knights, sixty archers and a hundred “serjanz.” Gir. Cambr. as
        above, c. 24 (p. 268), makes the three bands of knights contain
        respectively twenty, thirty and forty, each accompanied by as
        many archers and citizens as could be spared from guarding the
        walls.

        [522] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 24 (Dimock, vol.
        v. pp. 268, 269). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 90–94. Cf. the
        brief account in Four Masters, a. 1171 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p.
        1185).

        [523] Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 269, 270). Anglo-Norm. Poem
        (Michel), p. 95.

He was however already too late. Three thousand men of Wexford and
Kinsellagh, finding that they could make no impression by fair means
upon Robert Fitz-Stephen shut up in the fort of Carrick with five
knights and a handful of archers, at length had recourse to fraud. Two
bishops and some monks were made to stand under the walls of the fort
and swear upon relics brought for the purpose that Dublin was taken,
the earl and his comrades slain, and Roderic on the march to Wexford at
the head of his victorious host. On a promise of liberty to escape to
Wales[524] Robert in his despair surrendered, only to see his little
band of humbler followers slaughtered to a man, and himself and his
five knights cast into chains. The men of Wexford then fired their
town and took refuge with their captives on the neighbouring island of
Beg-Erin,[525] whence they sent word to Richard of Striguil that if
he dared to approach them he should immediately receive the heads of
his six friends.[526] Notwithstanding this disaster at Wexford, and
the failure of a plot to entrap the chief of Ossory--a well-deserved
failure, due to the loyalty of Maurice de Prendergast[527]--the
invaders were rapidly gaining ground. The king of North Munster, who
was married to Eva’s sister, again forsook Roderic and made alliance
with his English brother-in-law;[528] an attempt made by Tighernan
O’Ruark to renew the siege of Dublin ended in failure;[529] and at
last Murtogh of Kinsellagh was reduced to make a surrender of his
principality into Richard’s hands and accept a re-grant of it from him
as overlord, while Donell Kavanagh was invested on like terms with the
remaining portion of Leinster.[530]

        [524] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 25 (pp. 270, 271).

        [525] _Ibid._ (p. 271). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 85, 97.

        [526] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 28 (p. 273).

        [527] See the story in Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 97–103.

        [528] _Ib._ pp. 97, 98.

        [529] Four Masters, a. 1171 (as above, pp. 1185–1187). Gir.
        Cambr. as above, c. 29 (p. 274).

        [530] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 103.

The earl’s triumphs, however, met with an abrupt check from over
sea. His uncle Hervey of Mountmorris, who had gone to plead his
cause with the king after the failure of Raymond’s mission, returned
to Waterford[531] with tidings that Henry himself was on his way
to Ireland and required the self-styled earl of Leinster to go and
speak with him without delay. Richard hurried over to Wales,[532]
met Henry on the border,[533] and was forgiven on condition that
he should surrender Dublin and the other coast towns absolutely
into the king’s hands and do him homage and fealty for the rest of
Leinster;[534] he then accompanied Henry into Pembrokeshire;[535]
where the royal fleet was assembling in Milford Haven. It consisted
of four hundred ships,[536] carrying a force of about four thousand
men, of whom some five hundred were knights and the rest archers,
mounted and unmounted.[537] The king embarked on the evening of
Saturday, October 16, and landed next day at Croch, eight miles from
Waterford.[538] On the morrow, S. Luke’s day, he entered the town of
Waterford;[539] there he was met by his seneschal William Fitz-Aldhelm,
his constable Humfrey de Bohun, Hugh de Lacy, Robert Fitz-Bernard,
and some other officers of his household whom he had sent over to
prepare for his coming.[540] The Irish of the district and the Ostmen
of the town, in the person of their chieftain Ragnald, made submission
to him as their sovereign;[541] while Richard of Striguil formally
surrendered the place into the king’s hands and did homage to him for
the earldom of Leinster.[542] The men of Wexford now, according to
an agreement which they had made with Henry while he was waiting for
a wind at Pembroke,[543] brought their captive Robert Fitz-Stephen
to his sovereign’s feet, to be by him dealt with as a rebel and a
traitor. Henry loaded him with reproaches and imprisoned him afresh,
but his anger was more assumed than real, and the captive was soon
released.[544] The submission of the English adventurers was followed
by that of the Irish princes. Dermot MacCarthy, king of Cork or South
Munster, was the first of them who came to Henry’s feet at Waterford,
swore him fealty, gave hostages and promised tribute.[545] On November
1[546] Henry advanced to Lismore, and thence, two days later, to
Cashel, where at the passage of the Suir he was met by the king of
Limerick or of Northern Munster, Donell O’Brien, with offers of tribute
and obedience. The lesser chieftains of southern Ireland followed the
example of the two kings; in three weeks from his arrival all Munster
was at his feet, and its coast-towns, Wexford, Waterford, Limerick and
Cork, were all in the custody of his own officers.[547] At Martinmas he
reached Dublin;[548] before Christmas he received hostages from all the
princes of Leinster and Meath, from Tighernan O’Ruark of Breffny, from
O’Carroll of Oiriel, and from the king of Uladh or eastern Ulster;[549]
his new vassals built him a dwelling of wattle or wicker-work, after
the manner of their country, outside the walls of Dublin, and there in
their midst he held his Christmas court.[550]

        [531] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 28 (Dimock, vol.
        v. p. 273). Hervey must have gone before Midsummer; he was
        clearly not in Dublin during the second siege, and returned
        shortly after its conclusion.

        [532] _Ibid._ Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 105, 106.

        [533] At Newnham in Gloucestershire, according to Gerald (as
        above). The Anglo-Norm. Poem (p. 106), however, says they met
        at Pembroke. This would make a difference of at least ten days
        in the date. From the account of Henry’s movements in the _Brut
        y Tywys._, a. 1171 (William, pp. 211–213), it seems that he
        crossed the border about September 8 and reached Pembroke on
        September 20.

        [534] Gir. Cambr. as above. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 26
        (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 168, 169).

        [535] _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1171 (Williams, p. 215).

        [536] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 25; Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 29; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 235.
        The Four Masters, a. 1171 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1187), and
        Ann. Loch. Cé, a. 1171 (Hennessy, vol. i. p. 145), give the
        number as two hundred and forty.

        [537] Gerald (_Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 30, Dimock, vol. v.
        p. 275) reckons five hundred knights, with “arcariis [_var._
        satellitibus equestribus] quoque et sagittariis multis.” The
        Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 123, makes the knights four
        hundred, and a few lines later sums up the whole force as
        “quatre mil Engleis.” Mr. W. Lynch (_View of Legal Inst. in
        Ireland under Hen. II._, p. 2) argues from the payments for
        arms, provisions, shipping, etc. recorded in the Pipe-Rolls
        for 1171, that the army must have numerically “far exceeded
        the force described in our printed historians.” He gives a
        few details of these payments, extracted from the Pipe-Roll
        in question (17 Hen. II., a. 1171); some more, from this and
        the next year’s roll, maybe seen in Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._,
        pp. 161, 163. The host was no doubt composed almost wholly of
        English tenants-in-chivalry; but whatever may have been its
        numbers, there was a large proportion of these tenants who had
        nothing to do with it except by paying its expenses next year
        with a great scutage. See in Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp.
        629–632, the extracts from Pipe Roll 18 Hen. II. “de scutagio
        militum qui nec abierunt in Hyberniam nec denarios” (in some
        cases “nec milites nec denarios”) “illuc miserunt.”

        [538] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 25; Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 29. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 348,
        makes October 16 the day of Henry’s arrival in Ireland; Gerv.
        Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 235, makes it “about S. Calixtus’s
        day” (October 16 would be two days after). Gerald, _Expugn.
        Hibern._, l. i. c. 30 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 275) makes him reach
        Waterford “circa kalendas Novembris, die videlicet S. Lucæ.”
        The Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel, p. 123) turns this into “à la
        Tusseinz”; the Four Masters, a. 1171 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p.
        1187) record his coming without any date at all; and the _Brut
        y Tywys._ a. 1171 (Williams, p. 217), absurdly says he sailed
        on Sunday, November 16. The Anglo-Norman poet seems to have
        taken Croch--“à la Croiz” as he calls it--for the place of
        embarkation.

        [539] _Gesta Hen._, Rog. Howden and Gir. Cambr. as above.

        [540] _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden, as above. Anglo-Norm. Poem
        (Michel), p. 124.

        [541] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
        30.

        [542] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 124.

        [543] See the curious story of their envoy’s arrival and
        reception at Pembroke, _ib._ pp. 119–123.

        [544] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. cc. 31, 32 (Dimock,
        vol. v. pp. 276, 277, 278). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 125,
        126.

        [545] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 31 (p. 277).

        [546] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 30, says he stayed at
        Waterford fifteen days.

        [547] Gir. Cambr. as above, cc. 31, 32 (pp. 277, 278). He adds
        that Henry returned to Waterford, where he released Robert
        Fitz-Stephen, and thence proceeded to Dublin. The Anglo-Norm.
        Poem (Michel), pp. 126, 127, places this progress through
        Cashel and Lismore in inverse order, after Henry’s first visit
        to Dublin, and says nothing of a second visit to Waterford. Its
        account is however much less circumstantial than Gerald’s. The
        _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden only name two places where Henry
        stayed--Waterford and Dublin; and as they both say he reached
        the latter at Martinmas, while Roger says he left Waterford
        when he had been there a fortnight (_i.e._ on November 1),
        Gerald’s story fills up the interval very well.

        [548] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 28. Rog. Howden (as
        above), p. 32.

        [549] Gerald (as above, c. 33, p. 278) enumerates the princes
        who submitted at Dublin as follows: “Machelanus Ophelan
        [O’Phelan], Machtalewi, Otuetheli [O’Toole], Gillemoholmoch
        [Gillamocholmog of Fingal by Dublin--see above, p. 106],
        Ocathesi [O’Casey], Ocaruel Urielensis [O’Carroll of Oiriel],
        et Ororicius Medensis [O’Ruark]”. He then relates the
        half-submission of Roderic of Connaught (of which more later),
        and adds: “sic itaque, præter solos Ultonienses, subditi per
        se singuli.” (_Ib._ p. 279.) He need not however have excepted
        the Ulstermen; for the Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1171 (Hennessy, vol.
        i. p. 145)--copying, it seems, the old Annals of Ulster (see
        Four Masters, O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1187, note _c_, and
        O’Kelly’s note to Lynch’s _Cambr. Evers._, vol. ii. p. 472,
        note _d_)--say that Henry while at Dublin received hostages
        from “Leinster, Meath, Breffny, Oiriel and Uladh.” This leaves
        only Connaught and Aileach unsubdued. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs, vol.
        i. p. 235) and the _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 25) lump
        all these submissions together, and the latter seems to place
        them all, as well as the submission of the bishops, during
        Henry’s stay in Waterford. Rog. Howden (Stubbs, vol. ii. p.
        30) not only does the same still more distinctly, but he does
        worse; he places the submission of the bishops first, and then
        says that the lay princes submitted “exemplo clericorum.” It
        is he, not Gerald or any one else, who is responsible for this
        misrepresentation, which the champions of the Irish Church have
        been justly denouncing ever since Dr. Lynch’s time.

        [550] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 28, 29. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 32. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 236.
        Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 33 (Dimock, vol. v. p.
        279).

Early in November two royal chaplains had been despatched to summon the
Irish bishops to a council and claim their submission.[551] We hear
not a word of Pope Adrian’s bull; but we can hardly doubt that its
existence and its contents were in some way or other certified to the
Irish prelates before, in response to the royal mandate, they met in
council at Cashel in the first weeks of 1172.[552] The archbishop of
Armagh absented himself on the plea of extreme age and infirmity;[553]
all his episcopal brethren, however, made full submission to Henry,
pledged themselves to conform in all things to the pattern of the
English Church,[554] gave written promises to support the English king
and his heirs as lawful sovereigns of Ireland,[555] and joined with
him in sending to Rome a report of his proceedings and their own.[556]

        [551] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 28. Rog. Howden (as above),
        p. 31. The messengers were Nicolas, a chaplain of the king, and
        Ralf archdeacon of Landaff. They were sent out “circa festum S.
        Leonardi” (November 6). _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [552] The _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden as above, both place
        this council before Christmas 1171. Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 35
        (p. 281), and R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351, date it 1172.
        It seems better to follow them, for though Gerald is certainly
        no chronologist, he is the only writer who gives a detailed and
        rational account of this synod; and the summary given by R.
        Diceto also shews a fair knowledge of the subject, though he
        makes the synod meet at Lismore instead of Cashel.

        [553] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 283). He adds that the primate
        afterwards went to Dublin and there submitted to Henry; but see
        Dr. Lanigan’s comment, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp.
        205, 206.

        [554] Gir. Cambr. as above. R. Diceto (as above), pp. 350, 351.

        [555] They sent him “litteras suas in modum cartæ extra
        sigillum pendentes:” _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 26. Cf. Rog.
        Howden (as above), pp. 30, 31. This is however placed by both
        writers some time before the council. See above, p. 114,
        note 6{549}.

        [556] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 31, says that Henry
        sent copies of the bishops’ letters of submission to Rome.
        Dr. Lanigan (_Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 217, 218)
        objects that this can only have been done some time later,
        as Henry’s communications were cut off by the weather. But
        this is not borne out either by the words of R. Diceto
        (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 350) or by those of Gerald (_Expugn.
        Hibern._, l. i. c. 36, Dimock, vol. v. p. 284). They both
        say distinctly that a persistent contrary wind hindered all
        communication _from England to Ireland_. For communication
        in the opposite direction such a wind would surely be most
        favourable. Moreover, it is quite certain that the Pope did,
        some time before September 20, 1172, receive reports of Henry’s
        proceedings in Ireland both from Henry himself and from the
        Irish bishops, for he says so in three letters--one addressed
        to Henry, another to the kings and bishops of Ireland, and the
        third to the legate, Christian bishop of Lismore--all dated
        Tusculum, September 20, and all printed in Hearne’s _Liber
        Niger_, vol. i. pp. 42–48, as well as in the notes to _Macariæ
        Excidium_ (O’Callaghan), pp. 255–262.

In all Ireland the king of Connaught was now the only ruler, spiritual
or temporal, who had not submitted to Henry.[557] Trusting to the
inaccessible nature of his country,[558] Roderic had at first refused
all dealings with the invader, declaring that he himself was the sole
rightful monarch of Ireland.[559] It seems however that he afterwards
came to a meeting with William Fitz-Aldhelm and Hugh de Lacy by the
banks of the Shannon, on the frontier of Connaught and Meath, and
there promised tribute and fealty like his fellow-kings.[560] The
promise was however worthless until confirmed by his personal homage;
and this Henry soon perceived was only to be extorted at the sword’s
point. The impossibility of fighting to any advantage in the wet Irish
winter compelled him to postpone the attempt until the spring;[561]
and when spring came he found that his intended campaign must be
abandoned altogether. From the day when he left Milford he had received
not one word of tidings from any part of his dominions.[562] This
total isolation, welcome at first as a relief from the load of cares
which indeed he had purposely left behind him,[563] became at the end
of nineteen weeks a source of almost unbearable anxiety. On March 1
he removed from Dublin to Wexford;[564] there for nearly a month he
remained eagerly watching for a ship from England; none came until
after Mid-Lent,[565] and then it was laden with such ill news that he
could only take such hasty measures as were possible at the moment for
maintaining his hold upon Ireland, and prepare to hurry out of it as
soon as the wind would carry him.[566] Richard of Striguil was suffered
to remain at Kildare[567] as earl of Leinster; the general direction
of government and administration throughout the king’s Irish domains
was intrusted to Hugh de Lacy,[568] who had already received a grant of
Meath in fee,[569] and who was also left in command of the citadel of
Dublin,[570] with a garrison of twenty knights, among whom were Maurice
Fitz-Gerald[571] and Robert Fitz-Stephen.[572] The grants of territory
made by Dermot to the half-brothers were of course annulled; Waterford
and Wexford were both garrisoned and placed in charge of an officer
appointed by the king;[573] and in each of these towns a fortress was
either erected or repaired by his orders.[574]

        [557] Perhaps we should add the chief of Aileach; see above, p.
        114, note 6{549}.

        [558] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 348.

        [559] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 25, 26. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 235.

        [560] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 33 (Dimock, vol.
        v. p. 279). See Dr. Lanigan’s refutation of Gerald’s comment on
        the legal effect of this transaction, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_,
        vol. iv. pp. 203, 204.

        [561] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 26, 29.

        [562] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 36 (p. 284). R. Diceto as above,
        p. 350.

        [563] See Gervase of Canterbury’s account of his motives for
        going to Ireland (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 235).

        [564] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 29; Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 33.

        [565] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 37 (Dimock, vol.
        v. p. 285).

        [566] _Ib._ c. 37 (pp. 285, 286). In the Anglo-Norm. Poem
        (Michel), pp. 128, 129, Henry is made to receive the bad news
        before leaving Dublin, which is obviously too soon. Cf. _Gesta
        Hen._ as above, and Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 33, 34.

        [567] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 132.

        [568] “Constituit eum justitiarium Hyberniæ.” Rog. Howden (as
        above), p. 34.

        [569] _Ibid._ _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 30. Gir. Cambr. (as
        above), c. 38 (p. 286). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 130. See
        the charter of donation in Lyttelton, _Hen. II._, vol. iv. p.
        295.

        [570] Gir. Cambr., _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden, as above.
        Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 129.

        [571] Gir. Cambr. as above.

        [572] Anglo-Norm. Poem, as above--adding Meiler Fitz-Henry and
        Miles Fitz-David.

        [573] _Gesta Hen._, Rog. Howden and Gir. Cambr. as above.

        [574] _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden, as above. If we may believe
        the Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel, p. 130) Henry furthermore made
        a grant of Ulster to John de Courcy--“si à force la peust
        conquere.”

A better mode of securing his authority in Dublin was probably
suggested to him by the ravages which war and famine had made among
its population. Eight years before he had taken the burghers of
Bristol, so long the medium of trading intercourse between England
and Ireland, under his especial patronage and protection.[575] He now
granted to them the city of Dublin, to colonize and to hold of him and
his heirs by the same free customs which they enjoyed in their own
town of Bristol.[576] It is plain that Henry was already aiming at
something far other than a mere military conquest of Ireland; and the
long and varied list of English names, from all parts of the country,
which is found in a roll of the Dublin citizens only a few years
later,[577] shews how willingly his plans were taken up, not only at
Bristol but throughout his realm, by the class to which he chiefly
and rightly trusted for aid in their execution. Unluckily, they were
scarcely formed when he was obliged to leave their developement to
other hands; and the consequence was a half success which proved in
the end to be far worse than total failure. On Easter night[578] he
sailed from Wexford;[579] next day he landed at Portfinnan, hard by S.
David’s;[580] before the octave was out he had hurried through South
Wales to Newport;[581] in a few days more he was at Portsmouth;[582]
and before Rogation-tide he was once more in Normandy, ready to face
the bursting of a storm whose consequences were to overshadow all his
remaining years and to preclude all chance of his return to complete
his conquest of Ireland.

        [575] In January 1164 “he granted a short charter of privileges
        to the burghers of Bristol, whom as sovereign lord he calls
        _his_ burgesses, although they were then under the lordship
        of the earl of Gloucester. This charter contains only an
        exemption from toll and passage and other customary payments
        for themselves and their goods through the king’s own lands,
        with a confirmation of their existing privileges and liberties”
        (Seyer, _Mem. of Bristol_, vol. i. p. 494, with a reference to
        “Charters of Bristol, No. 1”).

        [576] Charter printed in Gilbert, _Hist. and Munic. Documents
        of Ireland_, p. 1.

        [577] _Ib._ p. 3 _et seq._

        [578] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351, says at sunset on
        Easter day (April 16); the Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1172 (Hennessy,
        vol. i. p. 147), say on Easter day “after Mass.” Gerald,
        _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 38 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 286), the
        _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 30, and Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. p. 34, say he sailed early on the Monday morning,
        the two latter adding a reason--he would not travel on the
        feast-day, though he had suffered his household to do so. Most
        probably he sailed at midnight, as seems to have been often
        done. The _Brut y Tywys._ a. 1172 (Williams, p. 217), makes him
        reach Pembroke on Good Friday, but this is impossible.

        [579] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 30. Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel),
        p. 131. The household had sailed from Croch to Milford; _ibid._
        Cf. Rog. Howden as above, p. 34.

        [580] _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden, as above. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351. The name of the place, Portfinnan, is
        given only in the Anglo-Norm. Poem (as above).

        [581] See the itinerary in Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i.
        cc. 38–40 (Dimock, vol. v. pp. 286–291), compared with _Brut y
        Tywys._ a. 1172 (Williams, pp. 217–219).

        [582] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 30. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 34. It is Porchester in R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351.



CHAPTER IV.

HENRY AND THE BARONS.

1166–1175.


For the last eight years Henry had been literally, throughout his
English realm, over all persons and all causes supreme. From the hour
of Thomas’s flight, not a hand, not a voice was lifted to oppose or
to question his will; England lay passive before him; the time seemed
to have come when he might work out at leisure and without fear of
check his long-cherished plans of legal, judicial and administrative
reform. In the execution of those plans, however, he was seriously
hampered by the indirect consequences of the ecclesiastical quarrel.
One of these was his own prolonged absence from England, which was
made necessary by the hostility of France, and which compelled him
to be content with setting his reforms in operation and then leave
their working to other hands and other heads, without the power of
superintending it and watching its effects with his own eyes, during
nearly six years. He had now to learn that the enemy with whom he had
been striving throughout those years was after all not the most serious
obstacle in his way;--that the most threatening danger to his scheme of
government still lay, as it had lain at his accession, in that temper
of the baronage which it had been his first kingly task to bring under
subjection. The victory which he had gained over Hugh Bigod in 1156
was real, but it was not final. The spirit of feudal insubordination
was checked, not crushed; it was only waiting an opportunity to lift
its head once more; and with the strife that raged around S. Thomas of
Canterbury the opportunity came.

Henry’s attitude towards the barons during these years had been of
necessity a somewhat inconsistent one. He never lost sight of the
main thread of policy which he had inherited from his grandfather: a
policy which may be defined as the consolidation of kingly power in
his own hands, through the repression of the feudal nobles and the
raising of the people at large into a condition of greater security
and prosperity, and of closer connexion with and dependence upon the
Crown, as a check and counterpoise to the territorial influence of
the feudataries. On the other hand, his quarrel with the primate had
driven him to throw himself on the support of those very feudataries
whom it was his true policy to repress, and had brought him into
hostility with the ecclesiastical interest which ought to have been,
and which actually had been until now, his surest and most powerful
aid. If it was what we may perhaps venture to call the feudal side of
the ecclesiastical movement--its introduction of a separate system of
law and jurisdiction, traversing and impeding the course of his own
uniform regal administration--which roused the suspicions of the king,
it was its anti-feudal side, its championship of the universal rights
and liberties of men in the highest and widest sense, that provoked
the jealousy of the nobles. This was a point which Henry, blinded for
the moment by his natural instinct of imperiousness, seems to have
overlooked when at the council of Northampton he stooped to avail
himself of the assistance of the barons to crush the primate. They
doubtless saw what he failed to see, that he was crushing not so much
his own rival as theirs. The cause of the Church was bound up with that
of the people, and both alike were closely knit to that of the Crown.
Sceptre and crozier once parted, the barons might strive with the
former at an advantage such as they had never had while Lanfranc stood
beside William and Anselm beside Henry I., such as they never could
have had if Thomas had remained standing by the side of Henry II.[583]

        [583] “The government party was made up of two elements--the
        higher order of the Clergy, who joined the king out of
        cowardice, having more at stake than they could make up their
        minds to lose; and the higher order of the Laity, who in this
        instance sided with the king against the Church, that when
        they had removed this obstacle they might afterwards fight him
        single-handed.” (R. H. Froude, _Remains_, vol. iv. p. 30).
        Which is just what Arnulf of Lisieux saw from the first (Ep.
        clxii., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. pp. 309, 310), and what
        Henry learned to his cost in 1173.

As yet, however, there was no token of the strife to come. In
February 1166, two years after the publication of the Constitutions
of Clarendon, Henry assembled another council at the same place and
thence issued an ordinance[584] for carrying out a reform in the
method of bringing to justice criminals in general, similar to that
which he had in the Constitutions sought to apply to criminals of one
particular class. By the Assize of Clarendon it was enacted that the
king’s justices and the sheriffs should in every shire throughout the
kingdom make inquiry concerning all crimes therein committed “since
our lord the king was king.”[585] The method of their investigations
was that of inquest by sworn recognitors chosen from among the “lawful
men” of each hundred and township, and bound by oath to speak the truth
according to their knowledge of the fact in question. This mode of
legal inquiry had been introduced into England by William the Conqueror
for fiscal purposes, such as the taking of the Domesday survey, and its
employment for similar objects was continued by his successors. Henry
II. had in the early years of his reign applied the same principle
to the uses of civil litigation by an ordinance known as the “Great
Assize,” whereby disputes concerning the possession of land might, if
the litigants chose, be settled before the justices of the king’s court
by the unanimous oath of twelve lawful knights chosen according to a
prescribed form from among those dwelling in the district where the
land lay, and therefore competent to swear to the truth or falsehood of
the claim.[586] This proceeding seems to be assumed as already in use
by the ninth Constitution of Clarendon, which ordains its application
to disputes concerning Church lands.[587] The Assize of Clarendon aimed
at bringing criminals to justice by the help of the same machinery. It
decreed that in every hundred of every shire inquest should be made by
means of twelve lawful men of the hundred and four from each township,
who should be sworn to denounce every man known in their district
as a robber, thief or murderer, or a harbourer of such; on their
presentment the accused persons were to be arrested by the sheriff,
and kept by him in safe custody till they could be brought before the
itinerant justices, to undergo the ordeal of water and receive legal
punishment according to its results.[588] The inquest was to be taken
and the session of the justices held in full shire-court; no personal
privileges of any kind were to exempt any qualified member of the court
from his duty of attendance and of service on the jury of recognitors
if required;[589] and no territorial franchise or private jurisdiction,
whether of chartered town or feudal “honour,” was to shelter a criminal
thus accused from the pursuit of the sheriffs on the authority of the
justices.[590]

        [584] On the date see Bishop Stubbs’ preface to _Gesta Hen._,
        vol. ii. pp. lix.–lxi. The Assize is printed in an appendix to
        same preface, pp. cxlix–cliv, and in _Select Charters_, pp.
        143–146.

        [585] Assize of Clarendon, c. 1 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p.
        143).

        [586] Glanville, _De legibus Angliæ_, l. ii. c. 7 (_ib._ p.
        161). Cf. Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 616.

        [587] Constit. Clar. c. 9 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 139).
        See above, pp. 26, 27.

        [588] Assize Clar. cc. 1, 2, 4, 6 (as above, pp. 143, 144).

        [589] _Ib._ c. 8 (p. 144).

        [590] _Ib._ cc. 9–11 (as above).

As was the case with most of Henry’s reforms, none of the methods of
procedure adopted in this Assize were new inventions. Not only had
the inquest by sworn recognitors been in use for civil purposes ever
since the Norman conquest; it may even be that the germ of a jury of
presentment in criminal cases, which in its modern shape appears for
the first time in the Assize of Clarendon, is to be traced yet further
back, to an ordinance of Æthelred II., whereby the twelve senior thegns
in every wapentake were made to swear that they would “accuse no
innocent man nor conceal any guilty one.”[591] The mission of itinerant
justices--derived in principle from the early days of English kingship,
when the sovereign himself perambulated his whole realm, hearing and
deciding whatever cause came before him as he passed along--had been
employed by Henry I., and revived by Henry II. immediately after his
accession. A visitation of the greater part of England had been made by
two of the chief officers of the Curia Regis in the first year of his
reign, and again in the second; another circuit seems to have been made
in 1159 by William Fitz-John; and in 1163 Alan de Neville held pleas
of the forest in Oxfordshire, while the justiciar himself, Richard de
Lucy, made a journey into Cumberland to hold the pleas of the Crown
there, for the first time since the district had passed into the hands
of the king of Scots.[592] From the date of the Assize of Clarendon,
however, these journeys became regular and general,[593] and the work
of the judges employed on them became far more extensive and important.

        [591] Laws of Æthelred II., l. iii. c. 3 (Stubbs, _Select
        Charters_, p. 72). See Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp.
        103, 115, 396, 611, 614.

        [592] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii., pref. p. lxiv.

        [593] _Ib._ pp. lxiii, lxiv.

The first visitation under the assize was at once begun by Richard de
Lucy and Geoffrey de Mandeville, earl of Essex;[594] and the Pipe Roll
of the year furnishes some indications of its immediate results. The
sums credited to the treasury for the pleas of the Crown reach a far
greater amount than in the earlier rolls, and its receipts are further
swelled by the goods and chattels of criminals condemned under the
assize,[595] which were explicitly declared forfeit to the king.[596]
The clause binding all qualified persons to be ready to serve on the
juries was strictly enforced; one attempt to evade it was punished with
a fine of five marks.[597] Another clause, enjoining upon the sheriffs
the construction and repair of gaols for the detention of criminals,
was carried into effect with equal vigour.[598] The work of the two
justiciars was apparently not completed till the summer of 1167.[599]
In that year pleas of the forest were held throughout the country
by Alan de Neville; and in 1168 seven barons of the Exchequer made a
general visitation of the shires for the collection of an aid on the
marriage of the king’s eldest daughter.[600] This last was primarily a
fiscal journey; the aid itself was a strictly feudal impost, assessed
at one mark on every knight’s fee.[601] It was however levied in a
remarkable manner. The Domesday survey, which by a few modifications in
practice had been made to serve as the rate-book of the whole kingdom
for eighty years, was at last found inadequate for the present purpose.
A royal writ was therefore addressed to all the tenants-in-chief,
requiring from them an account of the knights’ fees which they held
and the services due upon them, whether under the “old infeoffment”
of the time of Henry I., or under the “new infeoffment” since the
resettlement of the country by his grandson.[602] The answers were
enrolled in what is known as the _Black Book of the Exchequer_[603]
and the aid was levied in accordance with their contents. The whole
process occupied a considerable time; the preparations seem to have
begun shortly after Matilda’s betrothal, for we hear of the purchase of
“a hutch for keeping the barons’ letters concerning their knights” as
early as 1166,[604] yet the collection of the money was not finished
till the summer of 1169,[605] a year and a half after her marriage. The
labours of the barons employed in it were however not confined to this
one end; as usual, their travels were turned to account for judicial
purposes,[606] and the system begun by the assize of Clarendon was by
no means suffered to fall into disuse.

        [594] Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 470. _Gesta Hen._,
        vol. ii., pref. pp. lxiv, lxv.

        [595] See Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 471.

        [596] Ass. Clar., c. 5 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 143,
        144).

        [597] “Homines de Tichesoura debent v marcas quia noluerunt
        jurare assisam regis.” Pipe Roll a. 1166, quoted in Stubbs,
        _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 470, note 1.

        [598] “The expenses of gaols at Canterbury, Rochester,
        Huntingdon, Cambridge, Sarum, Malmesbury, Aylesbury and Oxford
        are accounted for in the Roll of 1166.” _Ib._ p. 471, note 5.

        [599] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii., pref. pp. lxiv, lxv and
        note 1.

        [600] Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 471 and note 6.

        [601] _Ib._ p. 472. Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. p. 572.

        [602] The tenour of the king’s writ is shewn by a typical
        answer, printed by Bishop Stubbs in his _Select Charters_, p.
        146, from Hearne’s _Liber Niger Scaccarii_ (2d ed.), vol. i.
        pp. 148, 149.

        [603] _Liber Niger Scaccarii_, edited by Hearne. A roll of the
        Norman tenants-in-chivalry was compiled in the same manner in
        1172; see Stapleton, _Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniæ_, vol.
        i., _Observations_, p. xxxiv.

        [604] Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. p. 576, and Stubbs,
        _Constit. Hist._, p. 471, note 7, from Pipe Roll a. 1166.

        [605] Stubbs, as above, p. 472, and _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii.
        pref. p. lxv and note 2. Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 117.

        [606] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii., pref. p. lxv, note 2.

It was too soon as yet for the beneficial results of these measures to
become evident to the people at large; but it was not too soon for them
to excite the resentment of the barons. The stringency with which in
the assize of Clarendon every claim of personal exemption or special
jurisdiction was made to give way before the all-embracing authority
of the king’s supreme justice shewed plainly that Henry still clave
to the policy which had led him to insist upon the restoration of
alienated lands and the surrender of unlicensed castles in England, to
lose no opportunity of exercising his ducal right to seize and garrison
the castles of his vassals in Normandy[607]--in a word, to check and
thwart in every possible way the developement of the feudal principle.
The assessment of the aid for his daughter’s marriage seems indeed at
first glance to have been based on a principle wholly favourable to the
barons, for it apparently left the determination of each landowner’s
liabilities wholly in his own hands. But the commissioners who spent
nearly two years in collecting the aid had ample power and ample
opportunity to check any irregularities which might have occurred in
the returns; and the impost undoubtedly pressed very heavily upon the
feudal tenants as a body. Its proceeds seem, however, not to have
come up to Henry’s expectations, and the unsatisfactory reports which
reached him from England of the general results of his legal measures
led him to suspect some failure in duty on the part of those who were
charged with their execution.

        [607] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. pref. p. xlvii, note.

A large share of responsibility rested with the sheriffs; and the
sheriffs were still for the most part, as they had been in his
grandfather’s days, the chief landowners in their respective shires,
men of great local importance, and only too likely to have at once
the will and the power to defeat the ends of the very measures which
by their official position they were called upon to administer. Henry
therefore on his return to England at Easter 1170 summarily deposed
all sheriffs of counties and bailiffs of royal demesnes, pending an
inquisition into all the details of their official conduct since his
own departure over sea four years ago. The inquiry was intrusted not
to any of the usual members of the King’s Court and Exchequer, but to a
large body of commissioners specially chosen for the purpose from the
higher ranks of both clergy and laity.[608] These were to take pledges
of all the sheriffs and bailiffs that they would be ready to appear
before the king and make redress on an appointed day; an oath was also
to be exacted from all barons, knights and freemen in every shire that
they would answer truthfully and without respect of persons to all
questions put to them by the commissioners in the king’s name.[609]

        [608] The list of commissioners for seven of the southern
        shires is in Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216. See also
        Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 473 and note 2.

        [609] Inquest of sheriffs, Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 148.
        Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 217.

The subject-matter of these inquiries, as laid down in the king’s
instructions, embraced far more than the conduct of the sheriffs. Not
only were the commissioners to examine into all particulars of the
sums received by the sheriffs and bailiffs in the discharge of their
functions, and the manner and grounds of their acquisition,[610] and
into the disposal of all chattels and goods forfeited under the assize
of Clarendon; they were also to ascertain whether the collection of the
aid _pour fille marier_ had been honestly conducted; they were at the
same time to investigate the administration of the forests[611] and
the condition of the royal demesnes;[612] to find out and report any
persons who had failed to do homage to the king or his son;[613] and
they were moreover to make inquisition into the proceedings of all the
special courts of the various franchises, whether held by archbishop
or bishop, abbot, earl or baron, as fully and minutely as into those
of the ordinary hundreds.[614] Only two months were allowed to the
commissioners for their work, which nothing but their great number
can have enabled them to execute in the time. Unhappily, the report
which they brought up to the king on S. Barnabas’s day is lost, and we
have no record of its results save in relation to one point: out of
twenty-seven sheriffs, only seven were allowed to retain their offices.
The rest, who were mostly local magnates owing their importance rather
to their territorial and family influence than to their connexion with
the court, were replaced by men of inferior rank, and of whom all but
four were officials of the Exchequer.[615]

        [610] Inquest of sheriffs, cc. 1, 4, 9, 10 (as above, pp.
        148–150).

        [611] _Ib._ cc. 5, 6, 7 (p. 149).

        [612] _Ib._ c. 12 (p. 150).

        [613] _Ib._ c. 11 (p. 150).

        [614] _Ib._ cc. 2, 3 (pp. 148, 149).

        [615] See the list, and Bishop Stubbs’s analysis of it, in his
        preface to _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. p. lxvii, note 3.

This significant proof of Henry’s determination to pursue his
anti-feudal policy was followed up next year by the last step in that
resumption of alienated demesnes which in England had been virtually
completed thirteen years ago, but which had been enforced only by
slower degrees on the other side of the channel. In 1171 Henry ordered
a general inquisition into the extent and condition of the demesne
lands and forests held by his grandfather in Normandy, and into the
encroachments since made upon them by the barons; and we are told
that the restitution which resulted from the inquiry almost doubled
his ducal revenue.[616] The endurance of the barons was now almost at
an end; and moreover, their opportunity had now come. From that same
council at Westminster whence the decree had gone forth for the inquest
of sheriffs, there had gone forth also the summons for the crowning
of the young king; that other assembly which on S. Barnabas’s day saw
the deposition of the delinquent officers saw also, three days later,
the new and dangerously suggestive spectacle of two kings at once in
the land. When, six months later still, the first consequences of that
coronation appeared in the murder of S. Thomas, the barons could not
but feel that their hour was at hand. His regal dignity no longer all
his own, but voluntarily shared with another--his regal unction washed
out in that stream of martyr’s blood which cut him off from the support
of the Church--Henry seemed to be left alone and defenceless in the
face of his foes. The year which he spent in conquering Ireland was a
breathing-space for them as well as for him. They used it to adapt to
their purposes the weapon which he had so lately forged for his own
defence; they found a rallying-point and a pretext for their designs
against him in the very son whom he had left to cover his retreat and
supply his place at home.

        [616] Rob. Torigni, a. 1171.

The younger Henry had passed over to Normandy just before his father
quitted it, in July 1171.[617] There he apparently stayed with his
mother and her younger children till the opening of the next year, when
he and his wife went to England, and there remained as titular king
and queen until his father’s return from Ireland.[618] The youth’s
kingship, however, was scarcely more than nominal; in his presence no
less than in his absence, the real work of government in England was
done by the justiciars; and his own personal interests lay chiefly
beyond the sea. The influences which surrounded him there were those of
his father’s open or secret foes:--of his wife’s father, King Louis of
France, of his own mother, Queen Eleanor, her kindred and her people;
and Eleanor had ceased to be a loyal vice-gerent for the husband who
had by this time forfeited his claims to wifely affection from her.
She seems to have taken for her political confidant her uncle, Ralf
of Faye[619]--one of the many faithless barons of Poitou; and it is
said to have been at her instigation that Ralf and an Angevin baron,
Hugh of Ste.-Maure, profited by Henry’s absence in Ireland to whisper
to her eldest son that a crown was worthless without the reality of
kingly power, and that it was time for him to assert his claim to the
substance of which his father had given him only the shadow.[620]
Young Henry, now seventeen years old, listened but too readily to such
suggestions; and it was a rumour of his undutiful temper, coupled
significantly with a rumour of growing discontent among the barons,
that called Henry back from Ireland[621] and made him carry his son
with him to Normandy[622] in the spring of 1172. After the elder king’s
reconciliation with the Church, however, and the second coronation of
the younger one, the danger seemed to have subsided; and in November
Henry, to complete the pacification, allowed his son to accompany his
girl-wife on a visit to her father, the king of France.[623] When they
returned,[624] the young king at once confronted his father with a
demand to be put in possession of his heritage, or at least of some
portion of it--England, Normandy, or Anjou--where he might dwell as an
independent sovereign with his queen.[625] The father refused.[626]
He had never intended to make his sons independent rulers of the
territories allotted to them; Richard and Geoffrey indeed were too
young for such an arrangement to be possible in their cases; and the
object of the eldest son’s crowning had been simply to give him such
an inchoate royalty as would enable his father to employ him as a
colleague and representative in case of need, and to feel assured
of his ultimate succession to the English throne. The king’s plans
for the distribution of his territories and for the establishment of
his children had succeeded well thus far. He had secured Britanny in
Geoffrey’s name before he quitted Gaul in 1171; and a month after his
return, on Trinity Sunday (June 10) 1172, Richard was enthroned as duke
of Aquitaine according to ancient custom in the abbot’s chair in the
church of S. Hilary at Poitiers.[627] One child, indeed, the youngest
of all, was still what his father had called him at his birth--“John
Lackland.”[628] Even for John, however, though he was scarcely five
years old,[629] a politic marriage was already in view.

        [617] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 24, note 2.

        [618] Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 162, 166. He kept Christmas
        at Bures; Rob. Torigni, a. 1172 (_i.e._ 1171).

        [619] Ep. ciii., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. p. 197. Cf. Ep.
        cclxxvii., _ib._ vol. vi. p. 131.

        [620] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 350.

        [621] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 37 (Dimock, vol.
        v. p. 285). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 128, 129.

        [622] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 30.

        [623] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 34. This writer says
        they went over--young Henry much against his will--about All
        Saints’ day, and were sent to the king of France both together.
        Rob. Torigni, a. 1172, says they crossed at Martinmas, and paid
        their visits to Louis separately, Henry at Gisors, Margaret at
        Chaumont.

        [624] Summoned, it seems, by Henry, “timens fraudem et malitiam
        regis Franciæ, quas sæpe expertus fuerat.” _Gesta Hen._ (as
        above), p. 35.

        [625] _Ib._ p. 41. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 242.
        The _Gesta_ say the demand was made “per consilium regis
        Francorum, et per consilium comitum et baronum Angliæ et
        Normanniæ, qui patrem suum odio habebant.”

        [626] _Gesta Hen._ and Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [627] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 67 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. p. 318).

        [628] “Quartum natu minimum Johannem Sine Terrâ agnominans.”
        Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 18 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 146).

        [629] There is some doubt as to the date of John’s birth. Rob.
        Torigni (_ad ann._) places it in 1167; R. Diceto (Stubbs,
        vol. i. p. 325) in 1166. The prose addition to Robert of
        Gloucester’s Chronicle (Hearne, vol. ii. p. 484) says that he
        was born at Oxford on Christmas Eve. As Eleanor seems to have
        been in England at Christmas-tide in both years, this gives us
        no help. Bishop Stubbs (Introd. to _W. Coventry_, vol. ii.
        p. xvii, note 3) adopts the later date.

One of the many branches of Henry’s continental policy was the
cultivation of an alliance with those small but important states
which lay on the border-land between Italy, Germany, and that old
Aquitanic Gaul over which he claimed dominion in his wife’s name. The
most important of these was the county of Maurienne, a name which in
strictness represents only a small mountainous region encircled to
east and south by the Graian and Cottian Alps, and to west and north
by another chain of mountains bordering the outermost edges of two
river-valleys, those of the Isère and the Arc, which again are severed
from each other by a line of lesser heights running through the heart
of the district. In the southern valley, that of the Arc, stood the
capital of the county, S. Jean-de-Maurienne, the seat of a bishopric
from the dedication of whose cathedral church the town itself took its
name. In the northern valley, at the foot of the Little S. Bernard,
some few miles above the source of the Isère, the counts of Maurienne
were advocates of the abbey of S. Maurice, which long treasured the
sacred symbol of the old Burgundian royalty, the spear of its patron
saint. The power of the counts of Maurienne, however, was not bounded
by the narrow circle of hills which stood like an impregnable rampart
round about their native land. On the shore of the lake of Bourget
they held Chambéry, guarding the pass of Les Echelles, through which
southern Gaul communicated with the German lands around the lake of
Geneva; the county of Geneva itself was almost surrounded by their
territories, for on its western side their sway extended from Chambéry
across the valley of the Rhône northward as far as Belley, while
eastward they held the whole southern shore of the lake. To north-east
of Maurienne, again, the great highway which led from Geneva and from
the German lands beyond it into Italy, through the vale of Aosta by
the passes of the Pennine Alps or up the valley of the Isère by S.
Maurice under the foot of the Little S. Bernard, was in their hands;
for Aosta itself and the whole land as far as Castiglione on the Dora
Baltea belonged to them. Across the Graian Alps, their possession of
the extreme outposts of the Italian border, Susa and Turin, gave them
the title of “Marquises of Italy,”[630] and the command of the great
highway between Italy and southern Gaul by the valley of the Durance
and through the gap which parts the Cottian from the Maritime Alps
beneath the foot of the Mont Genèvre; while yet further south, on
either side of the Maritime Alps where they curve eastward towards the
Gulf of Genoa, Chiusa, Rochetta and Aspromonte all formed part of their
territories.[631] In one word, they held the keys of every pass between
Italy and north-western Europe, from the Great S. Bernard to the Col
di Tenda. Nominally subject to the Emperor in his character of king of
Burgundy, they really possessed the control over his most direct lines
of communication with his Imperial capital; while the intercourse of
western Europe with Rome lay almost wholly at their mercy;[632] and far
away at the opposite extremity of Aquitania the present count Humbert
of Maurienne seems to have claimed, though he did not actually hold,
one of the keys of another great mountain-barrier, in the Pyrenean
county of Roussillon on the Spanish March.[633]

        [630] “Comes Maurianensis et Marchio Italiæ” is Count Humbert’s
        style in the marriage-contract of his daughter with John:
        _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 36.

        [631] All these places are named in the marriage-contract of
        John and Alice of Maurienne; _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 36–40.

        [632] As says Rob. Torigni, a. 1171: “Nec aliquis potest adire
        Italiam, nisi per terram ipsius” [sc. comitis].

        [633] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 37. Humbert “concedit eis”
        [_i.e._ to John and Alice, in case he himself should have a son
        who must oust them from Maurienne] “in perpetuum et hæredibus
        eorum Russillun cum toto mandato suo sive pertinentiis suis
        omnibus,” as if he actually had it in his own hands. I have
        however failed to discover any connexion between Roussillon and
        Maurienne.

In 1171[634] Henry’s diplomatic relations with the Alpine princes
bore fruit in a proposal from Humbert of Maurienne for the marriage
of his eldest daughter with the king’s youngest son. Humbert himself
had no son, and by the terms of the marriage-contract his territories,
Alpine and Pyrenean, were to be settled upon his daughter and her
future husband,[635] in return for five thousand marks of English
silver.[636] The contract was signed and ratified before Christmas
1172,[637] and soon afterwards Henry summoned his eldest son to join
him in a journey into Auvergne for a personal meeting with Humbert.
They reached Montferrand before Candlemas, and were there met not only
by Humbert and his daughter but also by the count of Vienne,[638] the
count of Toulouse and the king of Aragon.[639] How high the English
king’s influence had now risen in these southern lands may be judged by
the fact that not only King Alfonso of Aragon, a son of his old ally
Raymond-Berengar, but also his former enemy Raymond of Toulouse, could
agree to choose him as arbiter in a quarrel between themselves.[640]
Raymond in truth saw in Henry’s alliances with Aragon and Maurienne
a death-blow to his own hopes of maintaining the independence of
Toulouse. Hemmed in alike to south and east by close allies of the
English king whose own duchy of Aquitaine surrounded almost the whole
of its north-western border, the house of St.-Gilles felt that it
was no longer possible to resist his claim to overlordship over its
territories. Henry carried his guests back with him to Limoges; there
he settled the dispute between Raymond and Alfonso; and there Raymond
did homage to the two Henrys for Toulouse,[641] promising to do the
like at Whitsuntide to Richard as duke of Aquitaine, and pledging
himself to military service and yearly tribute.[642]

        [634] Rob. Torigni _ad ann._

        [635] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 36–40.

        [636] _Ib._ p. 36.

        [637] Rog. Howden (Stubbs, vol. ii. p. 44), in copying from the
        _Gesta Hen._ (as above, p. 40) an account of the ratification
        of the contract, heads the paragraph “De adventu nunciorum
        comitis Mauriensis _in Angliam_.” If he is right, it must have
        taken place in April; but he may mean only “to the king of
        England.”

        [638] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 353.

        [639] _Ibid._ _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 35, 36.

        [640] This seems to be the meaning of _Gesta Hen._ (as above),
        p. 36: “Venerunt etiam illuc ad regem rex Arragoniæ et comes de
        S. Ægidio, qui inimici erant ad invicem, et rex duxit eos secum
        usque Limoges, et ibi pacem fecit inter eos.”

        [641] _Ibid._ Rog. Howden (as above), p. 45. R. Diceto, as
        above, says only “fecit homagium regi Anglorum Henrico patri
        regis Henrici.” Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 67 (Labbe, _Nova
        Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 319), gives the date, the first Sunday
        in Lent, February 25.

        [642] _Gesta Hen._ as above. “Sed quia Ricardus dux Aquitaniæ,
        cui facturus esset homagium comes S. Egidii, præsens non erat,
        usque ad octavas Pentecostes negotii complementum dilationem
        accepit,” says R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. pp. 353, 354). The
        _Gesta_ and Rog. Howden make Raymond do homage to the two
        Henrys and to Richard all at once. They alone give full details
        of the services promised.

The infant heiress of Maurienne was now placed under the care of
her intended father-in-law;[643] Henry’s political schemes seemed
to have all but reached their fulfilment, when suddenly Count
Humbert asked what provision Henry intended to make for the little
landless bridegroom to whom he himself was giving such a well-dowered
bride.[644] That question stirred up a trouble which was never again to
be laid wholly to rest till the child who was its as yet innocent cause
had broken his father’s heart. Henry proposed to endow John with the
castles and territories of Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau.[645] But the
Angevin lands, with which the younger Henry had been formally invested,
could not be dismembered without his consent; and this he angrily
refused.[646] The mere request, however, kindled his smouldering
discontent into a flame[647] which seems to have been fanned rather
than quenched by the suggestions of Eleanor; yet so blind was the
indulgent father that, if we may venture to believe the tale, nothing
but a warning from Raymond of Toulouse opened his eyes to the danger
which threatened him from the plots of his own wife and children. Then,
by Raymond’s advice, he started off at once with a small escort, under
pretence of a hunting-party,[648] and carried his son back towards
Normandy with the utmost possible speed. They reached Chinon about
Mid-Lent; thence young Henry slipped away secretly by night to Alençon;
his father flew after him, but when he reached Alençon on the next
evening the son was already at Argentan; and thence before cock-crow he
fled again over the French border, to the court of his father-in-law
King Louis.[649] Henry in vain sent messengers to recall him: “Your
master is king no longer--here stands the king of the English!” was the
reply of Louis to the envoys.[650]

        [643] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 36.

        [644] _Ib._ p. 41.

        [645] _Ibid._ Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 242, turns these
        into “tria castella in Normanniâ.”

        [646] _Ibid._

        [647] According to Rob. Torigni, a. 1173, the young king was
        further offended because his father removed from him some of
        his favourite counsellors and friends, Hasculf of St. Hilaire
        and some other young knights.

        [648] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 67 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. p. 319).

        [649] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 41, 42. R. Diceto (as
        above), p. 355. The chronology is here in great confusion. The
        _Gesta_ tell us that the two kings reached Chinon just before
        Mid-Lent (which in 1173 was on March 16), that young Henry was
        next day at Alençon, the day after that at Argentan, and that
        on the third night, “circa gallicantum,” he went off again,
        “octavâ Idus Martii, feriâ quintâ ante mediam Quadragesimam.”
        (In the printed edition by Bishop Stubbs--vol. i. p. 42--the
        word _mediam_ has been accidentally omitted; see note to his
        edition of R. Diceto, vol. ii. pref. p. xxxvi, note 6). It is
        of course impossible to make anything of such a contradiction
        as this. On the other hand, R. Diceto gives only one date, that
        of the young king’s flight from Argentan, which he places on
        March 23. Now in 1173 March 23 was the Friday after Mid-Lent
        Sunday. Reckoning backwards from this--_i.e._ from the night of
        Thursday-Friday, March 22–23, for it is plain that the flight
        took place before daybreak--we should find the young king at
        Alençon on Wednesday, March 21, and at Chinon on Tuesday, March
        20; that is, four days after Mid-Lent. It looks very much as
        if the author or the scribe of the _Gesta_ had written “ante”
        instead of “post” twice over.

        [650] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 27 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 170).

Henry at once made a circuit of his Norman fortresses, especially those
which lay along the French border, put them in a state of defence, and
issued orders to all his castellans in Anjou, Britanny, Aquitaine and
England, to do the like.[651] Before Lent had closed the old prophecy
which Henry’s enemies were never weary of casting in his teeth was
fulfilled: his own “lion-cubs” were all openly seeking to make him
their prey.[652] Whether sent by their mother, with whom they had
been left behind in Aquitaine, or secretly fetched by their eldest
brother in person,[653] both Richard and Geoffrey now joined him at the
French court.[654] Eleanor herself was caught trying to follow them
disguised as a man, and was by her husband’s order placed in strict
confinement.[655] Louis meanwhile openly espoused the cause of the
rebels; in a great council at Paris he and his nobles publicly swore
to help the young king and his brothers against their father to the
utmost of their power, while the three brothers on their part pledged
themselves to be faithful to Louis, and to make no terms with their
father save through his mediation and with his consent.[656] Young
Henry at once began to purchase allies among the French feudataries
and supporters among the English and Norman barons, by making grants
of pensions and territories on both sides of the sea: grants for which
the recipients did him homage and fealty,[657] and which he caused to
be put in writing and sealed with a new seal made for him by order of
Louis[658]--his own chancellor, Richard Barre, having loyally carried
back the original one to the elder king who had first intrusted it to
his keeping.[659]

        [651] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 42.

        [652] See the quotation from Merlin’s prophecy, and the comment
        on it, _ib._ pp. 42, 43.

        [653] The first is the version of the _Gesta Hen._ (as above);
        the second that of Will. Newb. (as above, pp. 170, 171).

        [654] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 42. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol.
        i. p. 355. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 242.

        [655] Gerv. Cant. as above. He adds a comment: “Erat enim
        prudens femina valde, nobilibus orta natalibus, sed instabilis.”

        [656] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 44.

        [657] See the list, _ib._ pp. 44, 45; and cf. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 243.

        [658] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 43 and 45.

        [659] _Ib._ p. 43.

Nearly three months passed away before war actually broke out; but
when the outburst came, the list of those who were engaged in it shews
that the whole Angevin empire had become a vast hotbed of treason;
though, on the other hand, it shews also that the treason was almost
entirely confined to one especial class. Its local distribution, too,
is significant. The restless barons of Aquitaine, still smarting
under their defeat of 1169, were but too eager, at the instigation of
their duchess and their newly-crowned duke, to renew their struggle
against the king. Foremost among them were, as before, the count of
Angoulême,[660] the nobles of Saintonge, and Geoffrey of Lusignan,
beside whom there stood this time his young brother Guy, now to begin
in this ignoble strife a career destined to strange vicissitudes in
far-off Palestine.[661] The heart of the old Angevin lands, Anjou
itself, was in the main loyal; we find there the names of only five
traitors; and three of these, Hugh, William and Jocelyn of Ste.-Maure,
came of a rebellious house, and were only doing over again what their
predecessors had done in the days of Geoffrey Plantagenet’s youth.[662]
The same may be said of Henry’s native land, Maine; this too furnished
only seven barons to the traitor’s cause; and five of these again
are easily accounted for. It was almost matter of course that in
any rising against an Angevin count the lord of Sablé should stand
side by side with the lord of Ste.-Maure. Brachard of Lavardin had a
fellow-feeling with undutiful sons, for he was himself at strife with
his own father, Count John of Vendôme, a faithful ally of Henry II.;
the same was probably the case of Brachard’s brother Guy.[663] Bernard
of La Ferté represented a family whose position in their great castle
on the Huisne, close to the Norman border, was almost as independent
as that of their neighbours the lords of Bellême, just across the
frontier. Hugh of Sillé bore a name which in an earlier stage of
Cenomannian history--in the days of the “commune,” just a hundred years
before--had been almost a by-word for feudal arrogance; and whether or
not he inherited anything of his ancestor’s spirit, he had a personal
cause for enmity to the king if, as is probable, he was akin to a
certain Robert of Sillé, whose share in the southern revolt of 1169 was
punished by Henry, in defiance of treaties, with an imprisonment so
strict and cruel that it was speedily ended by death.[664]

        [660] _Ib._ p. 47.

        [661] _Ib._ p. 46. The other Aquitanian rebels, besides the
        count of Angoulême and the two Lusignans, were Geoffrey of
        Rancogne, the lords of Coulonges and Rochefort in Saintonge,
        of Blaye (“Robertus de Ble”--this might possibly be Blet in
        Berry) and Mauléon in Gascony, and of Chauvigny in Poitou, with
        Archbishop William of Bordeaux and Abbot Richard of Tournay
        (_ib._ pp. 46, 47); to whom we may add Ralf of Faye.

        [662] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 46, 47. The other
        Angevin rebels are Vivian and Peter of Montrévault: to whom may
        be added John of Lignières and Geoffrey of La Haye in Touraine.
        _Ibid._ p. 46.

        [663] _Ib._ pp. 47, 63.

        [664] “Robertum de Selit quâdam occasione captum rex Henricus
        crudeliter ferro indutum, pane arcto atque aquâ breve cibavit
        donec defecit.” Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 66 (Labbe, _Nova
        Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 318). “Robertus de Silliaco redeat in
        mentem ... quem nec pacis osculum publice datum, nec fides
        corporaliter regi Francorum præstita, fecit esse securum.” Ep.
        dcx., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. p. 178. Cf. Epp. dcvi.,
        dcxliv., _ib._ pp. 165, 247. The other Cenomannian rebels are
        Gwenis of Palluau and Geoffrey of Brulon; _Gesta Hen._ (as
        above), p. 46.

Across the western border of Maine, in Geoffrey’s duchy, Ralf of
Fougères was once more at the head of a band of discontented Breton
nobles, chiefly, it seems, belonging to that old seed-plot of
disturbance, the county of Nantes.[665] The true centre and focus
of revolt, however, was as of old the duchy of Normandy. Almost all
the great names which have been conspicuous in the earlier risings of
the feudal baronage against the repressive policy of William and of
Henry I. re-appear among the partizans of the young king. The house of
Montfort on the Rille was represented by that Robert of Montfort[666]
whose challenge to Henry of Essex ten years before had deprived the
king of one of his most trusty servants. The other and more famous
house of Montfort--the house of Almeric and of Bertrada--was also,
now as ever, in opposition in the person of its head, Count Simon of
Evreux.[667] He, like his fellow-traitor the count of Eu,[668] to whom,
as after-events shewed, may be added the count of Aumale, represented
one of those junior branches of the Norman ducal house which always
resented most bitterly the determination of the dukes to concentrate
all political power in their own hands. The counts of Ponthieu[669]
and of Alençon[670] inherited the spirit as well as the territories of
Robert of Bellême. Count Robert of Meulan[671] was the son of Waleran
who in 1123 had rebelled against Henry I., and the head of the Norman
branch of the great house of Beaumont, which for more than half a
century had stood in the foremost rank of the baronage on both sides of
the sea. The chief of the English Beaumonts was his cousin and namesake
of Leicester, soon to prove himself an unworthy son of the faithful
justiciar who had died in 1168; while the countess of Leicester, a
woman of a spirit quite as determined and masculine as her husband’s,
was the heiress of the proud old Norman house of Grandmesnil[672]--a
granddaughter of that Ivo of Grandmesnil who had been banished by Henry
I. for trying to bring into England the Norman practice of private
warfare. Of the other English rebels, Hugh of Chester[673] was a son
of the fickle Ralf, and had at stake besides his palatine earldom in
England his hereditary viscounties of Bayeux and Avranches on the other
side of the Channel. Hugh Bigod, the aged earl of Norfolk, untaught
by his experiences of feudal anarchy in Stephen’s day and undeterred
by his humiliation in 1157, was ready to break his faith again for
a paltry bribe offered him by the young king.[674] Earl Robert of
Ferrers, Hamo de Massey, Richard de Morville, and the whole remnant
of the great race of Mowbray--Geoffrey of Coutances, Roger de Mowbray
and his two sons--were all men whose grandfathers had “come over with
the Conqueror,” and determined to fight to the uttermost for their
share in the spoils of the conquest. All these men were, by training
and sympathy, if not actually by their own personal and territorial
interests, more Norman than English; and the same may probably be said
of the rebels of the second rank, among whom, beside the purely Norman
lords of Anneville and Lessay in the Cotentin, of St.-Hilaire on the
Breton frontier, of Falaise, Dives, La Haye and Orbec in Calvados, of
Tillières, Ivry and Gaillon along the French border, we find the names
of Ralf of Chesney, Gerald Talbot, Jordan Ridel, Thomas de Muschamp,
Saher de Quincy the younger, Simon of Marsh, Geoffrey Fitz-Hamon, and
Jocelyn Crispin, besides one which in after-days was to gain far other
renown--William the Marshal.[675]

        [665] Hardwin of Fougerai, Robert of Tréguier, Gwiounon of
        Ancenis, Joibert of La Guerche; _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i.
        pp. 46, 47. To these we afterwards find added several others;
        _ib._ pp. 57, 58.

        [666] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 45.

        [667] _Ib._ p. 47.

        [668] _Ib._ p. 45.

        [669] _Ibid._

        [670] Called simply “William Talvas” in the _Gesta Hen._
        (as above), p. 46, and “John count of Sonnois” by R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 371. John was his real name.

        [671] _Gesta Hen._ and R. Diceto, as above.

        [672] Rob. Torigni, a. 1168.

        [673] R. Diceto, as above.

        [674] Young Henry promised him, and received his homage for,
        the hereditary constableship of Norwich castle; _Gesta Hen._
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 45. This writer adds the honour of Eye;
        Rog. Howden, however (Stubbs, vol. ii. p. 46), says this was
        granted to Matthew of Boulogne.

        [675] All these names are given in the list of the young
        king’s partizans in _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 45–48. The
        remaining names are: William de Tancarville the chamberlain
        of Normandy, of whom more presently; Eudo, William, Robert,
        Oliver and Roland Fitz-Erneis (see _Liber Niger_, Hearne,
        pp. 142, 295, and Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 186 and 251);
        Robert of Angerville (he seems to have been the young king’s
        steward or seneschal--see quotations from Pipe Roll a. 1172
        in Eyton, as above, pp. 166, 167, 168); Solomon Hostiarius
        (probably also an attendant of young Henry); Gilbert and Ralf
        of Aumale: “Willelmus Patricius senior” (he appears in Pipe
        Rolls 3 Hen. II., Hunter, p. 81, 4 Hen. II., p. 118--Berks
        and Wilts); William Fitz-Roger (Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II., p.
        172, Hants); Robert “de Lundres” (is this some mighty London
        citizen?); Peter of St.-Julien (may be either St.-Julien in
        Gascony, in eastern Touraine, or in the county of Nantes); Hugh
        “de Mota” (La Mothe on the lower Garonne, La Motte Archard in
        the county of Nantes, or La Motte de Ger in Normandy); Robert
        of Mortagne (possibly the Norman Mortagne, possibly a place of
        the same name in Anjou close to the Poitevin border); William
        of “Tibovilla” (probably Thiberville in the county and diocese
        of Lisieux); John and Osbert “de Praellis” (possibly Pradelles
        in Auvergne, more likely Préaux in Normandy); Almeric Turel,
        Robert Bussun, Guy of Curtiran, Fulk Ribule, Adam de Ikobo,
        Robert Gerebert, William Hagullun, Baldric of Baudemont,
        Geoffrey Chouet, “Bucherius,” and William de Oveneia, whom I
        cannot identify.

One other rebel there was who stood indeed on a different footing from
all the rest, and whose defection had a wider political significance.
The king of Scots--William the Lion, brother and successor of Malcolm
IV.--had long been suspected of a secret alliance with France against
his English cousin and overlord. The younger Henry now offered him
the cession of all Northumberland as far as the Tyne for himself, and
for his brother David confirmation in the earldom of Huntingdon,[676]
with a grant of the earldom of Cambridge in addition, in return for
the homage and services of both brothers:--offers which the king of
Scots accepted.[677] Only three prelates, on either side of the sea,
shewed any disposition to countenance the rebellion; in the south,
William, the new-made archbishop of Bordeaux;[678] in the north, Arnulf
of Lisieux[679] and Hugh of Durham. Arnulf’s influence at court had
long been on the wane; all his diplomacy had failed, as far as his
personal interest with King Henry was concerned; but he possessed the
temporal as well as the spiritual lordship of his see; and the man’s
true character now shewed itself at last, justifying all Henry’s
suspicions, in an attempt to play the part of a great baron rather
than of a bishop--to use his diplomatic gifts in temporizing between
the two parties, instead of seeking to make peace between them or
to keep his straying flock in the path of loyalty as a true pastor
should. He did but imitate on a smaller scale and under less favourable
conditions the example set by Hugh of Puiset in his palatine bishopric
of Durham, where he had been throughout his career simply a great
temporal ruler, whose ecclesiastical character only served to render
almost unassailable the independence of his political position. It
was the pride of the feudal noble, not the personal sympathies of the
churchman, that stirred up both Hugh and Arnulf to their intrigues
against Henry. Personal sympathies indeed had as yet little share
in drawing any of the barons to the side of the boy-king. What they
saw in his claims was simply a pretext and a watchword which might
serve them to unite against his father. Young Henry himself evidently
relied chiefly on his foreign allies--his father-in-law, the counts
of Flanders and Boulogne, and the count of Blois, the last of whom
was bribed by a promise of an annual pension and the restitution of
Château-Renaud and Amboise; while to Philip of Flanders was promised
the earldom of Kent with a pension in English gold, and to Matthew
of Boulogne the soke of Kirton-in-Lindsey and the Norman county of
Mortain.[680]

        [676] To which, as will be seen later, there was a rival
        claimant who adhered to Henry II.

        [677] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 45. Jordan Fantosme,
        vv. 268, 269 (Michel, p. 14) adds Carlisle and Westmoreland
        to the young king’s offers, and relates at great length how
        William hesitated before accepting them, how he sent envoys
        to the elder king begging for a new cession of Northumberland
        from him, and only upon Henry’s defiant refusal, and after long
        debate with his own barons, entered upon the war. _Ib._ vv.
        372–426 (pp. 14–22).

        [678] “Willelmus archiepiscopus.” _Gesta Hen._ (as above),
        p. 47. This can be no one else than William, formerly abbot
        of Reading, appointed to Bordeaux in February 1173; Geoff.
        Vigeois, l. i. c. 67 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p.
        319); but I find no further account of his political doings.

        [679] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 51, note 4.

        [680] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 44, 45. Roger of
        Howden, as has been said above (p. 139, note 1), adds the
        honour of Eye to Matthew’s intended possessions.

The first hostile movement was made directly after Easter by a body of
Flemings who crossed the Seine at Pacy; but they had no sooner touched
Norman soil than they were driven back by the people of the town, and
were nearly all drowned in attempting to recross the river.[681] Henry
meanwhile, after spending Easter at Alençon,[682] had established
his head-quarters at Rouen, where he remained till the end of June,
apparently indifferent to the plots that were hatching around him,
and entirely absorbed in the pleasures of the chase.[683] In reality
however he was transacting a good deal of quiet business, filling
up vacant sees in England;[684] appointing a new chancellor, Ralf
of Varneville, to the office which had been in commission--that is,
virtually, in the hands of Geoffrey Ridel--ever since S. Thomas had
resigned it ten years before;[685] and writing to all his continental
allies to enlist their sympathies and if possible their support in
the coming struggle.[686] One of them at least, his future son-in-law
William of Sicily, returned an answer full of hearty sympathy;[687]
neither he nor his fellow-kings, however, had anything more substantial
to give. The only support upon which Henry could really depend was that
of a troop of twenty thousand Brabantine mercenaries, who served him
indeed bravely and loyally, but by no means for nothing;[688] and if
we may trust a writer who, although remote from the present scene of
action, seems to have had a more intimate acquaintance than most of
his fellow-historians with all matters connected with the Brabantines,
Henry’s finances were already so exhausted that he was obliged to give
the sword of state used at his coronation in pledge to these men as
security for the wages which he was unable to pay them.[689] Yet he
could trust no one else in Normandy; and as yet he scarcely knew his
own resources in England.

        [681] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 367. He says they were
        drowned because the bridge was “a quâdam mulierculâ effractus.”

        [682] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 45.

        [683] “Rex pater eo tempore morabatur Rothomagi, ut populo
        videbatur æquo animo ferens quæ fiebant in terrâ; frequentius
        solito venatui totus indulgens” [see extracts from Pipe Roll
        1173 illustrating this, in Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 173];
        “venientibus ad se vultum hylaritatis prætendens, aliquid
        extorquere volentibus patienter respondens.” R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 373, 374. Cf. Jordan Fantosme, vv. 118,
        119 (Michel, p. 6).

        [684] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 366–368. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 243, 245.

        [685] R. Diceto (as above), p. 367.

        [686] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 47. He says Henry wrote
        “_imperatoribus_ et regibus,” which we must take to include the
        Eastern Emperor.

        [687] Letter in _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 55, note 2;
        Rog. Howden (as above), p. 48.

        [688] Rog. Howden (as above), p. 47. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c.
        27 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 172). The latter does not mention their
        number; Jordan Fantosme, v. 67 (Michel, p. 4) makes it only ten
        thousand; the _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 51, says “plus quam
        decem millia.”

        [689] I suppose this to be the meaning of Geoff. Vigeois, l.
        i. c. 67 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 319): “Adeo Rex
        multis thesauris exhaustis nauseatus est, ut Brabantionibus
        qui ei parebant pro mercede Spatham regiæ coronæ in gagium
        mitteret.”

Early in June Robert of Leicester and William of Tancarville, the
high-chamberlain of Normandy, sought license from the justiciars in
London to join the king at Rouen. Immediately on landing, however,
they hastened not to Henry II., but to his son.[690] The justiciar
himself, Richard de Lucy, was in such anxiety that he seems to have
had some thoughts of going in person to consult with the king.[691]
The consultation however was to be held not in Normandy but in
England. In the last days of June or the first days of July, while
the counts of Flanders and Boulogne were easily overcoming the mock
resistance of Aumale and Driencourt, and Louis of France was laying
siege to Verneuil,[692] Henry suddenly crossed the sea, made his way
as far inland as Northampton, where he stayed four days, collected his
treasure and his adherents, issued his instructions for action against
the rebels, and was back again at Rouen so quickly that neither friends
nor foes seem ever to have discovered his absence.[693]

        [690] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 370. He gives no date; but
        it must have been quite in the beginning of June, for Mr. Eyton
        says (_Itin. Hen. II._, p. 172, note 5): “The Dorset Pipe Roll
        of Michaelmas 1173 shews that the Earl of Leicester’s manor of
        Kingston (now Kingston Lacy) had been confiscated four months
        previously (Hutchins, iii. 233).”

        [691] “Et in liberacione ix navium quæ debuerunt transfretare
        cum Ricardo de Luci, et Ricardo Pictaviæ archidiacono, et
        Gaufrido Cantuariensi archidiacono et aliis baronibus, precepto
        Regis £13: 15s. per breve Ricardi de Luci.” Pipe Roll a. 1173
        (Southampton), quoted by Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 174.
        See Mr. Eyton’s comment, _ib._ note 4, which points to the
        conclusion that the ships made the voyage--doubtless with the
        other passengers--but that Richard “probably thought it wise to
        adhere to his post of viceroy.”

        [692] R. Diceto (as above), pp. 373, 374. _Gesta Hen._
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 49. Rob. Torigni, a. 1173.

        [693] “Et item in liberacione Esnaccæ quando transfretavit
        in Normanniam contra Regem £7: 10s. per breve Regis. Et in
        liberacione xx. hominum qui fuerunt missi de cremento in
        Esnacchâ 40s. per breve Regis. Et in liberacione iv. navium
        quæ transfretaverunt cum Esnacchiâ £7: 10s. per idem breve.
        Et pro locandis carretis ad reportandum thesaurum de Hantoniâ
        ad Wintoniam duabus vicibus 9s. Et pro unâ carretâ locandâ
        ad portandas Bulgas Regis ad Winton. 9d.” Pipe Roll a. 1173
        (Southampton), quoted in Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 173. “Et
        in corredio Regis apud Norhanton per iv dies £32: 6: 5 per
        breve Regis.” Northampton, _ibid._ “Et in soltis per breve
        Regis ipsi vicecomiti [of Northamptonshire] £72: 11: 9, pro
        robbâ quam invenit Regi.” _Ibid._ On the Southampton entries
        Mr. Eyton remarks: “The above charges, from their position on
        the roll, would seem to have been incurred after July 15.”
        But surely if Henry had been in England during the siege of
        Leicester, which lasted from July 3 to July 28, we must have
        had some mention of his presence; and there is scarcely time
        for it later, between the capture of Leicester and his own
        expedition to Conches on August 7. Is it not much more natural
        to conclude that the visit took place earlier--at the end of
        June--and that the orders for the Leicester expedition, which
        Rog. Wend. (Coxe, vol. ii. p. 372) expressly says were given
        by the king, were issued to Richard de Lucy in a personal
        interview?

Hurried, however, as was the king’s visit to England, it did its work
in bracing up the energies and determining the action of the vassals
who were faithful to him there. In personal and territorial importance
indeed these were very unequally matched with the rebels. The fidelity
of the Welsh princes, David Ap-Owen and Rees Ap-Griffith,[694] could
not balance the hostility of the King of Scots. Among the loyal English
barons, the most conspicuous were a group of the king’s immediate
kinsmen, none of whom however ranked high among the descendants of the
ducal house of Normandy:--his half-brother Earl Hameline of Warren,
his uncle Reginald of Cornwall, his cousin William of Gloucester;[695]
besides Earl William of Arundel the husband of his grandfather’s widow
Queen Adeliza, his son William, and his kinsman Richard of Aubigny. The
earl of Essex, William de Mandeville, was a son of that Geoffrey de
Mandeville who had accepted the earldom of Essex from both Stephen and
Matilda, and who had been one of the worst evil-doers in the civil war;
but the son was as loyal as the father was faithless; he seems indeed
to have been a close personal friend of the king, and to have well
deserved his friendship.[696] The loyalty of Earl Simon of Northampton
may have been quickened by his rivalry with David of Scotland for the
earldom of Huntingdon. That of William of Salisbury was an inheritance
from his father, Earl Patrick, who had earned his title by his services
to the Empress, and had fallen honourably at his post of governor of
Aquitaine in the rising of 1168. The loyal barons of lesser degree are
chiefly representatives of the class which half a century before had
been known as the “new men”--men who had risen by virtue of their
services in the work of the administration, either under Henry himself
or under his grandfather. Such were the justiciar Richard de Lucy
and the constable Humfrey de Bohun; William de Vesci, son of Eustace
Fitz-John, and like his father a mighty man in the north; his nephew
John, constable of Chester;--the whole house of Stuteville, with Robert
de Stuteville the sheriff of Yorkshire at its head;[697]--and Ralf
de Glanville,[698] sheriff of Lancashire, custodian of the honour of
Richmond,[699] and destined in a few years to wider fame as the worthy
successor of Richard de Lucy. The Glanvilles, the Stutevilles and the
de Vescis now wielded in Yorkshire as the king’s representatives the
influence which had been usurped there by William of Aumale before his
expulsion from Holderness; while in Northumberland a considerable share
of the power formerly exercised by the rebellious house of Mowbray had
passed to servants of the Crown such as Odelin de Umfraville[700] and
Bernard de Bailleul,[701] whose name in its English form of Balliol
became in after-times closely associated with that borne by two other
loyal northern barons--Robert and Adam de Bruce.[702] To the same class
of “new men” belonged Geoffrey Trussebut, Everard de Ros, Guy de Vere,
Bertram de Verdon, Philip de Kime and his brother Simon.[703]

        [694] In _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 51, note 4, the
        names are given as “David et Evayn reges Walliæ”--a blunder
        probably caused by the writer’s greater familiarity with David,
        owing to his later family alliance with the English king. In
        the present war, however, Rees proved the more active ally of
        the two, as we shall see later.

        [695] It will however appear later that Gloucester’s fidelity
        was somewhat doubtful.

        [696] William de Mandeville is constantly found, throughout his
        life, in the king’s immediate company. See Eyton, _Itin. Hen.
        II. passim._

        [697] All these names are in the list in the _Gesta Hen._
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 51, note 4.

        [698] _Ib._ p. 65. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 60. Will.
        Newb., l. ii. c. 33 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 184).

        [699] Escheated on the death of Duke Conan of Britanny.

        [700] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 51, note 4, 66.

        [701] _Ib._ pp. 65, 66. Will. Newb. as above.

        [702] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 51, note 4.

        [703] _Ibid._ The Trussebuts, de Roses and de Veres appear
        under Henry I. Bertram de Verdon and Philip de Kime were
        employed in the Curia Regis and Exchequer under Henry II.; see
        Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 185, 76, 130, etc. Another name
        among the loyalists in the _Gesta Hen._ (as above)--that of
        Richard Louvetot--seems to have got in by mistake; cf. _ib._ p.
        57, where he appears among the rebels at Dol.

Some half-dozen of the king’s English adherents--William of Essex,
William of Arundel, Robert de Stuteville and the elder Saher de Quincy,
besides two who had lately come over from Ireland, Richard of Striguil
and Hugh de Lacy--either returned with him to Rouen or had joined him
there already,[704] thus helping to swell the little group of loyalists
who surrounded him in Normandy. That group contained no Norman baron
of the first rank, and consisted only of a few personal friends and
ministers:--Richard of Hommet the constable of the duchy, with all his
sons and brothers;[705] William de Courcy the seneschal;[706] Richard
Fitz-Count, the king’s cousin;[707] Hugh de Beauchamp[708] and Henry of
Neubourg,[709] sons of the loyal house of Beauchamp which in England
looked to the earl of Warwick as its head; Richard de Vernon and Jordan
Tesson;[710]--while two faithful members of the older Norman nobility,
Hugh of Gournay and his son, had already fallen prisoners into the
hands of the young king.[711] It was in truth Henry’s continental
dominions which most needed his presence and that of all the forces
which he could muster; for the two chief English rebels, the earls of
Leicester and Chester, were both beyond the Channel, and their absence
enabled the king’s representatives to strike the first blow before the
revolt had time to break forth in England at all. On July 3 the town of
Leicester was besieged by Richard de Lucy and Earl Reginald of Cornwall
at the head of “the host of England.”[712] After a three weeks’ siege
and a vast expenditure of money and labour,[713] the town was fired,
and on July 28 it surrendered.[714] The castle still held out, its
garrison accepting a truce until Michaelmas; the gates and walls of the
city were at once thrown down; the citizens were suffered to go out
free on payment of a fine of three hundred marks;[715] but it was only
by taking sanctuary in the great abbeys of S. Alban or S. Edmund that
their leaders could feel secure against the vengeance of the king.[716]

        [704] Essex and Arundel had both been with him since the very
        beginning of the year, for they witnessed the marriage-contract
        of John and Alice of Maurienne; _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i.
        p. 39. Robert de Stuteville and Saher de Quincy seem to have
        been with him in the summer of 1173 (Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._,
        p. 174). Hugh de Lacy was at Verneuil, defending it for the
        king in July (_Gesta Hen._, vol. i. p. 49); and Richard of
        Striguil was of the party which went to its relief in August
        (R. Diceto, Stubbs, vol. i. p. 375).

        [705] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 51, note 4.

        [706] _Ib._ p. 39. Cf. Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 170, 177.

        [707] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 51.

        [708] _Ib._ p. 49.

        [709] _Ib._ p. 52.

        [710] _Ib._ pp. 51, 52.

        [711] Hugh of Gournay and his son, with eighty knights, fell
        into the young king’s hands, “non tam inimicorum virtuti quam
        insidiis intercepti,” quite early in the war; R. Diceto (as
        above), p. 369.

        [712] “Cum exercitu Angliæ,” _i.e._ the national not the feudal
        host. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 58. The date comes from R.
        Diceto (as above), p. 376.

        [713] See some illustrations in the Pipe Roll of 1173, as
        quoted by Eyton (as above), p. 175.

        [714] R. Diceto (as above), p. 376. He seems to make the fire
        accidental, and the surrender a consequence of it. In the
        _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 58, the victors seem to fire
        the town after they have captured it.

        [715] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 376.

        [716] Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 289.

Three days before the capture of Leicester, an arrow shot by one
of Henry’s Brabantine cross-bowmen gave Matthew of Boulogne his
death-wound, and thereby caused the break-up of the Flemish expedition
against Normandy.[717] A fortnight later Henry set out at the head of
all his available forces to the relief of Verneuil, which Hugh de Lacy
and Hugh de Beauchamp were defending against the king of France. By a
double treachery Louis, under cover of a truce, gained possession of
the town, set it on fire, and retreated into his own domains before
Henry could overtake him.[718] Henry marched back to Rouen, taking
Gilbert of Tillières’s castle of Damville on the way,[719] and thence
despatched his Brabantines to check the plundering operations which
Hugh of Chester and Ralf of Fougères were carrying on unhindered
throughout the border district which lay between Fougères and
Avranches. The interception of an important convoy and the slaughter of
its escort by the Brabantines drove the rebel leaders to retire into
the fortress of Dol. Here they were blockaded by the Brabantines,
backed by the populace of the district of Avranches,[720] who clearly
had no sympathy with the treason of their viscount. The siege began
on August 20; on the morrow Henry received tidings of it at Rouen; on
the 23d he appeared in the midst of his soldiers; and on the 26th Dol
and its garrison, with Ralf of Fougères and Hugh of Chester at their
head, surrendered into his hands.[721] This blow crushed the Breton
revolt; the rest of the duchy submitted at once.[722] Louis of France
was so impressed by Henry’s success that he began to make overtures
for negotiation, while Henry was holding his court in triumph at Le
Mans. Shortly before Michaelmas a meeting took place near Gisors; Henry
shewed the utmost anxiety to be reconciled with his sons, offering
them literally the half of his realms in wealth and honours, and
declaring his willingness virtually to strip himself of everything
except his regal powers of government and justice.[723] That, however,
was precisely the reservation against which the French king and the
disaffected barons were both alike determined to fight as Henry himself
had fought against S. Thomas’s reservation of the rights of his order.
The terms were therefore refused, and the earl of Leicester in his
baffled rage not only loaded his sovereign with abuse, but actually
drew his sword to strike him. This outrage of course broke up the
meeting.[724] Leicester hurried through Flanders, collecting troops
as he went, to Wissant, whence he sailed for England on Michaelmas
day.[725] Landing at Walton in Suffolk, he made his way to Hugh
Bigod’s castle of Framlingham; here the two earls joined their forces;
and they presently took and burned the castle of Haughley, which Ralf
de Broc held against them for the king.[726]

        [717] R. Diceto as above, p. 373. He alone gives the date,
        attributes the wound to a shot “a quodam marchione,” and places
        the scene on the invaders’ march from Driencourt to Arques. The
        _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 49, Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
        246, and Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 28 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 173)
        make it occur during the siege of Driencourt (William calls it
        by its more modern name, “Neufchâtel”), but as the former has
        told us that this siege began about July 6 and was ended within
        a fortnight, this is irreconcileable with the date given by R.
        Diceto. Gervase says Matthew was shot “a quodam arcubalistâ.”

        [718] See the details of the story, and the disgraceful conduct
        of Louis, in _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 51–54; Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 50; R. Diceto as above, p. 375; and
        another version in Will. Newb. as above (pp. 174, 175).

        [719] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 56.

        [720] Rob. Torigni, a. 1173. “Itaque obsessa est turris Doli a
        Brebenzonibus et militibus regis et plebe Abrincatinâ.”

        [721] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 378; _Gesta Hen._
        (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 57, 58; Rob. Torigni, a. 1173; Will.
        Newb. l. ii. c. 29 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 176). The _Gesta Hen._
        gives the date, and a list of the captured. According to Rob.
        Torigni, Ralf of Fougères escaped to the woods, and his two
        sons were taken as hostages. The Chron. S. Albin. a. 1173
        (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 42), says he was taken, together
        with Hugh (whom the Angevin monk transforms into “comitem
        Sceptrensem”) and a hundred knights.

        [722] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 52.

        [723] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 59. Rog. Howden as above, p. 53.

        [724] Rog. Howden as above, p. 54.

        [725] R. Diceto as above, p. 377. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol.
        i. p. 246, and _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 60, say he came
        over about S. Luke’s day; but this is irreconcileable with
        R. Diceto’s careful and minute chronology of the subsequent
        campaign. R. Niger (Anstruther), p. 175, says “in vigiliâ S.
        Mauricii,” _i.e._ September 20.

        [726] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 60, 61, with an
        impossible date; see _ib._ p. 60, note 12. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 246. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 377,
        gives the correct date of the capture of Haughley, October 13.

[Illustration: Map IV.

  Map to Illustrate the REBELLION of 1173–1174.

  _Royal Strongholds underlined thus: Alnwick._

    Rebel Stronholds:
    (S)   _Scottish_.
    (H D) _Hugh of Durham_.
    (M)   _Mowbrays_.
    (H B) _Hugh Bigod_.
    (H C) _Hugh of Chester_.
    (H M) _Hamo de Massey_.
    (R M) _Richard de Morville_.
    (R L) _Robert of Leicester_.
    (R F) _Robert of Ferrers_.

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

At the moment of Leicester’s arrival the representatives of the king
were far away on the Scottish border. At the close of the summer
William of Scotland had gathered his motley host of Lowland knights and
wild Galloway Highlanders, marched unhindered through the territories
of the see of Durham, and was just beginning to ravage Yorkshire
after the manner of his forefathers when Richard de Lucy and Humfrey
de Bohun hastily reassembled their forces and marched against him
with such promptitude and vigour that he was compelled to retreat not
merely into Lothian but into the safer shelter of the Celtic Scotland
beyond it. The English host overran Lothian,[727] and had just given
Berwick to the flames when tidings reached them of Earl Robert’s
doings in Suffolk. The king of Scots was begging for a truce; the
English leaders readily consented, that they might hurry back to their
duties in the south.[728] Richard de Lucy returned to his post of
viceroy, and the supreme military command was left to the constable
Humfrey de Bohun, assisted by the earls of Cornwall and Gloucester
and by Earl William of Arundel,[729] who had now come to give the
help of his sword in England as he had already given it in Normandy.
The constable and the three earls, with three hundred paid soldiers
of the king, posted themselves at S. Edmund’s, ready to intercept
Earl Robert on his way from Framlingham to join the garrison of
Leicester.[730] He made a circuit to the northward to avoid them, but
in vain. They marched forth from S. Edmund’s beneath the banner of its
patron saint, the famous East-Anglian king and martyr, overtook the
earl in a marsh near the church of S. Geneviève at Fornham,[731] and
in spite of overwhelming odds defeated him completely. His Flemish
mercenaries, who had gone forth in their insolent pride singing “Hop,
hop, Wilekin! England is mine and thine,”[732] were cut to pieces not
so much by the royal troops as by the peasantry of the district, who
flocked to the battle-field armed with forks and flails, with which
they either despatched them at once or drove them to suffocation
in the ditches.[733] His French and Norman knights were all made
prisoners;[734] he himself took to flight, but was overtaken and
captured;[735] and his wife, who had accompanied him throughout his
enterprise, was made captive with him.[736] The victors followed up
their success by posting bodies of troops at S. Edmund’s, Ipswich
and Colchester, hoping that Hugh Bigod, thus confined within his own
earldom, would be unable to provide for the large force of Flemish
mercenaries still quartered in his various castles, and that these
would be starved into surrender. The approach of winter however
disposed both parties for a compromise; a truce was arranged to last
till the octave of Pentecost, Hugh consenting to dismiss his Flemings,
who were furnished with a safe-conduct through Essex and Kent and with
ships to transport them from Dover back to their own land.[737]

        [727] R. Diceto as above, p. 376. Cf. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p.
        61.

        [728] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 61. R. Diceto as above, p.
        376. Jordan Fantosme, vv. 478–838 (Michel, pp. 22–38), has a
        long account of this first Scottish invasion, but it is far
        from clear, and some parts of it, _e.g._ the statement that
        Warkworth was taken by the Scots, seem incompatible with
        after-events.

        [729] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [730] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 377. _Gesta Hen._
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 61. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 54.

        [731] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Rog. Howden (as above), p. 55. The
        date, according to R. Diceto (as above, p. 378) is October 17;
        the _Gesta_ (as above, p. 62) make it October 16.

        [732] Mat. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ (Madden), vol. i. p. 381.
        “Hoppe, hoppe, Wilekin, hoppe, Wilekin, Engelond is min ant
        tin.”

        [733] Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1086–1091 (Michel, p. 50).

        [734] R. Diceto as above, pp. 377, 378. _Gesta Hen._ as above,
        pp. 61, 62. Rog. Howden as above, p. 55. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 246. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 30 (Howlett, vol. i.
        p. 179). The number of Robert’s Flemish troops is surely
        exaggerated by all these writers; still, even at the lowest
        computation, the odds seem to have been, as R. Diceto says, at
        least four to one.

        [735] Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [736] Will. Newb. as above. R. Diceto as above, p. 378. She
        had been with her husband in France, and returned with him
        to England; _ib._ p. 377. According to Jordan Fantosme, vv.
        980–992 (Michel, p. 46), it was she who urged him to the march
        which led to his ruin, in defiance of his own dread of the
        royal forces. See also in Jordan, vv. 1070–1077 (Michel, p.
        50) the story of her trying to drown herself in a ditch to
        avoid being captured; and that in Mat. Paris, as above, of her
        throwing away her ring. This latter seems to be only another
        version of Jordan’s; cf. his v. 1072.

        [737] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 378. He gives the number
        of these Flemings as fourteen hundred.

The earl and countess of Leicester were sent over to Normandy by the
king’s orders, there to be shut up in company with Hugh of Chester in
prison at Falaise.[738] Their capture filled the French king and the
rebel princes with dismay, and none of them dared to venture upon any
opposition against Henry when at Martinmas he led his Brabantines into
Touraine, forced some of its rebellious barons into submission,[739]
reinstated his ally Count John of Vendôme in his capital from which
he had been expelled by his own son,[740] and returned to keep the
Christmas feast at Caen.[741] An attack upon Séez, made at the opening
of the new year by the young king and the counts of Blois, Perche and
Alençon, was repulsed by the townsfolk,[742] and led only to a truce
which lasted till the end of March.[743] The truce made by Richard de
Lucy with the king of Scots was prolonged to the same date--the octave
of Easter--by the diplomacy of Bishop Hugh of Durham, who took upon
himself to purchase this delay, apparently without authority and for
his own private ends, by a promise of three hundred marks of silver
to be paid to the Scot king out of the lands of the Northumbrian
barons.[744]

        [738] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 62. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 55. See also quotations from Pipe Roll a.
        1173 on this matter, in Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 177.

        [739] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 62, 63. The chief rebels were
        Geoffrey of La Haye--apparently that same La Haye which had
        formed part of the dower-lands of the first countess of Anjou,
        and is known now as La Haye Descartes--and Robert of “Ble” (see
        above, p. 136, note 6{661}) who held Preuilly and Champigny. A
        list of the garrisons of these castles is given; two names are
        worth noting--“Hugo le Danais” and “Rodbertus Anglicus.”

        [740] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 63.

        [741] _Ibid._ Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 246. According
        to Rob. Torigni, however (a. 1174--i.e. 1173 in our reckoning)
        he kept it at Bures.

        [742] R. Diceto as above, p. 379.

        [743] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 63, 64.

        [744] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 64. King and bishop met
        in person at “Revedale”--or, as Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii.
        pp. 56, 57, says, “in confinio regnorum Angliæ et Scotiæ apud
        Revedene.”

The issue proved that Hugh’s real object was simply to gain time for
the organization of a general rising in the north; and in this object
he succeeded. The old isolation of Yorkshire was not yet a thing of
the past; and its few lines of communication with southern England
were now all blocked, at some point or other, by some stronghold of
rebellion. Earl Hugh’s Chester, Hamo de Massey’s Dunham[745] and
Geoffrey of Coutances’ Stockport commanded the waters of the Dee and
the Mersey. South of the Peak, in the upper valley of the Trent, the
earl of Ferrers held Tutbury and Duffield; further to south-east, on
the opposite border of Charnwood Forest, lay the earl of Leicester’s
capital and his castles of Groby and Mount Sorrel.[746] By the time
that the truce expired Roger de Mowbray had renewed the fortifications
of Kinardferry in the Isle of Axholm,[747] thus linking this southern
chain of castles with those which he already possessed at Kirkby
Malzeard, or Malessart, and Thirsk;[748] and Bishop Hugh had done the
like at Northallerton.[749] Further north stood the great stronghold of
Durham; while all these again were backed, far to the north-westward, by
a double belt of fortresses stretching from the mouths of the Forth and
the Tweed to that of the Solway:--Lauder, held by Richard de Morville;
Stirling, Edinburgh, Berwick, Jedburgh, Roxburgh, Annan and Lochmaben,
all in the hands of the king of Scots.[750]

        [745] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 48. Hamo de Massey had another
        castle called Ullerwood; where was this?

        [746] _Ibid._

        [747] _Ib._ p. 64. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 379.

        [748] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 48.

        [749] Rog. Howden as above, p. 57.

        [750] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 48. Annan and Lochmaben
        belonged to Robert de Bruce; _ibid._ No doubt William had
        seized them when Bruce joined Henry.

Between this northern belt of rebel strongholds, however, and the
southern one which stretched from Chester to Axholm, there lay along
the river-valleys of Cumberland and Northumberland a cluster of royal
castles. Nicolas de Stuteville held Liddell, on the river of the same
name. Burgh[751] stood on the Solway Firth, nearly opposite Annan; the
whole valley of the Eden was guarded by Carlisle, whose castellan was
Richard de Vaux,[752] and Appleby, which like Burgh was held by Robert
de Stuteville for the king.[753] The course of the Tyne was commanded
by Wark, under Roger de Stuteville,[754] Prudhoe, under Odelin de
Umfraville,[755] and by the great royal fortress of Newcastle, in
charge of Roger Fitz-Richard;[756] further north, between the valleys
of the Wansbeck and the Coquet, stood Harbottle, also held by Odelin,
with Roger Fitz-Richard’s Warkworth[757] and William de Vesci’s
Alnwick[758] at the mouths of the Coquet and the Alne. This chain of
defences William of Scotland, when at the expiration of the truce he
again marched into England, at once set himself to break. While his
brother David went to join the rebel garrison of Leicester,[759] he
himself began by laying siege to Wark. This fortress, held in the
king’s name by Roger de Stuteville--apparently a brother of the sheriff
of Yorkshire--occupied a strong position in the upper valley of the
Tyne, on the site of an earlier fortress which under the name of Carham
had played a considerable part in the Scottish wars of Stephen’s
time, and had been finally taken and razed by William’s grandfather
King David in 1138.[760] William himself had already in the preceding
autumn besieged Wark without success;[761] he prospered no better this
time, and presently removed his forces to Carlisle,[762] where he had
also sustained a like repulse six months before.[763] Carlisle, as
well as Wark, was in truth almost impregnable except by starvation;
and William, while blockading it closely, detached a part of his host
for a series of expeditions against the lesser fortresses, Liddell,
Burgh, Appleby, Harbottle and Warkworth, all of which fell into his
hands.[764] His brother’s arrival at Leicester, meanwhile, seemed to
have revived the energies of its garrison; under the command of Earl
Robert of Ferrers they sallied forth very early one morning, surprised
and burned the town of Nottingham, made a great slaughter of its
citizens, and went home laden with plunder and prisoners.[765]

        [751] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 65.

        [752] _Ib._ p. 64.

        [753] _Ib._ p. 65. Jordan Fantosme, v. 1467 (Michel, p. 66),
        gives us the name--a very interesting one--of the acting
        commandant--“Cospatric le fiz Horm, un viel Engleis fluri.”

        [754] Jordan Fantosme, vv. 478–483 (Michel, pp. 22–24).

        [755] _Ib._ vv. 594–603 (p. 28), _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [756] Jordan Fantosme, vv. 566, 567 (Michel, p. 26).

        [757] _Ib._ vv. 562–565 (p. 26). _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 65.
        See above, p. 149, note 3{728}.

        [758] Jordan Fantosme, vv. 538, 539 (as above).

        [759] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Cf. Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1113–1136
        (Michel, p. 52).

        [760] See above, vol. i. pp. 287, 292.

        [761] Jordan Fantosme, vv. 478–530 (Michel, pp. 22, 26).

        [762] _Ib._ vv. 1191–1351 (pp. 54–62).

        [763] Jordan Fantosme, vv. 610–760 (pp. 28–36).

        [764] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 64, 65. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 60. Will. Newb., l. ii. cc. 30, 31
        (Hewlett, vol. i. pp. 177, 180), seems to have confused this
        campaign with that of the preceding autumn; and so has,
        apparently, Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1145–1511 (Michel, pp.
        52–68). “Banesburc” in v. 1158 (p. 54), though it looks like
        Bamborough, surely ought to be _Burgh_.

        [765] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 69. Nottingham was commanded by
        Reginald de Lucy; what relation to the justiciar?

Meanwhile the king’s representatives in the south were not idle.
Knowing however that he was powerless to rescue the north, Richard de
Lucy made an attempt to draw off in another direction the forces both
of the Scot king and of his brother by laying siege to David’s castle
of Huntingdon.[766] Huntingdon had been held ever since 1136 either
by the reigning king of Scots or by one of his nearest kinsmen, in
virtue of their descent from Waltheof, the last Old-English earl of
Huntingdon and Northampton, through his daughter Matilda, the wife
of King David. In each case, however, the fief seems to have been
held not as an hereditary possession but by a special grant made to
the individual holder for his life. The house of Northampton, sprung
from an earlier marriage of the same Matilda, were thus enabled to
maintain a claim upon it which had never been entirely barred, and
which Earl Simon of Northampton now seized his opportunity to urge upon
the king.[767] Henry answered that Simon might keep Huntingdon if he
could win it;[768] thus securing for Richard de Lucy his support and
co-operation in the siege, which began on May 8.[769] Three days before
this, however, a severe blow had been dealt at the northern rebels.
The king’s eldest son Geoffrey, who a year before had been appointed
to the bishopric of Lincoln, gathered up the forces of Lincolnshire,
led them into Axholm and laid siege to Kinardferry. Robert of Mowbray,
who was commanding there, seeing his garrison threatened with the want
of water, slipped out to seek aid of his friends at Leicester, but
was surrounded and made prisoner by the country-folk at Clay.[770]
On May 5 Kinardferry surrendered; after razing it, Geoffrey marched
northward to York; here he was joined by the forces of the archbishop
and of the shire; with this united host he took Mowbray’s castle
of Malessart,[771] closely menaced that of Thirsk by erecting a
rival fortification at Topcliff, and having intrusted the former to
Archbishop Roger and the latter to William de Stuteville, marched
back to Lincoln in triumph.[772] His victory was scarcely won when a
new peril arose in East-Anglia. Three days after Pentecost some three
hundred Flemish soldiers, forerunners of a great host with which Count
Philip of Flanders had sworn to invade England at Midsummer on behalf
of the young king, landed at the mouth of the Orwell.[773] Hugh Bigod,
whose truce with the king’s officers, made when he dismissed his other
Flemish troops in the preceding autumn, expired four days later, at
once received them into his castles.[774] For a whole month, however,
no further movement was made save by the garrison of Leicester, who
after the close of Whitsun-week made a successful plundering raid upon
the town of Northampton.[775] On June 18 Hugh Bigod and his Flemings
marched upon Norwich, took it by assault, committed a vast slaughter
of men and women, and finally sacked and fired the city.[776] They seem
to have returned to Framlingham by way of Dunwich, which was still a
flourishing seaport, of sufficient wealth to tempt their greed; but its
stout fisher-folk met them with such a determined front that they were
compelled to retire.[777]

        [766] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 384.

        [767] See the story in the tract “De Judithâ uxore Waldevi
        comitis,” in M. F. Michel’s _Chroniques Anglo-Normandes_, vol.
        ii. pp. 128, 129.

        [768] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 71. The case seems to have been
        tried in the Curia Regis; _ibid._, and _Chron. Anglo-Norm._, as
        above.

        [769] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 384.

        [770] “A rusticis del Clay.” _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
        68. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 58, alters “rusticis”
        into “hominibus.” The place is perhaps Clay Cross in Derbyshire.

        [771] Kirkby or Kirby Malzeard, near Ripon.

        [772] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 68, 69. Cf. R. Diceto as
        above, and Gir. Cambr., _Vita Galfr. Archiep._, l. i. cc. 2, 3
        (Dimock, vol. iv. pp. 364–367).

        [773] “Apud Airewellam.” R. Diceto (as above), p. 381.

        [774] _Ibid._ Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 247.

        [775] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 68.

        [776] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 68. R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 381 (to whom we owe the date). Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 248.

        [777] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 30 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 178).
        “Insignum vicum maritimum, variis opibus refertum, qui dicitur
        Donewich,” he calls it. He gives an account of the entire
        East-Anglian campaign, but he has mixed up the doings of this
        summer of 1174 with those of the preceding autumn. Jordan
        Fantosme, vv. 845–897 (Michel, pp. 40–42), has done the same.
        He explains, however, the otherwise unaccountable facility
        with which Norwich was taken, by telling us that “Uns traïtres
        Lohereng la trahi, pur ço si fud surprise.”

Richard de Lucy was all this while busy with the siege of Huntingdon.
Provoked apparently by a vigorous assault which he made upon it at
midsummer,[778] the garrison set fire to the town; Richard then built
a tower to block their egress from the castle, and left the completion
of the siege to the earl of Northampton.[779] For himself it was time
once more to lay down the knightly sword and resume that of justice.
While the justiciar’s energies were absorbed in warfare with the
barons, the burgher-nobles of the capital had caught from their feudal
brethren the spirit of lawlessness and misrule, and London had become
a vast den of thieves and murderers. Young men, sons and kinsmen of
the noblest citizens, habitually went forth by night in parties of a
hundred or more, broke into rich men’s houses and robbed them by force,
and if they met any man walking in the streets alone, slew him at once.
Peaceable citizens were driven in self-defence to meet violence with
violence. One man, expecting an attack, gathered his armed servants
around him in a concealed corner, surprised his assailants in the
act of breaking into his house with crowbars, struck off with a blow
of his sword the right hand of their leader Andrew Bucquinte, and
raised an alarm which put the rest to flight. Bucquinte was captured
and delivered next morning to the justiciar; on a promise of safety
for life and limb he gave up the names of his accomplices; some fled,
some were caught, and among the latter was one of the noblest and
richest citizens of London, John Oldman,[780] who vainly offered five
hundred marks of silver to the Crown to purchase his escape from
the gallows.[781] The revelation of such a state of things in the
capital apparently drove Richard de Lucy and his colleagues almost to
desperation. They had already sent messenger after messenger to intreat
that the king would return; getting however no certain answer, they now
determined that one of their number should go to Normandy in person to
lay before him an authentic account of the desperate condition of his
realm.[782]

        [778] “Appropinquante autem nativitate S. Johannis Baptistæ,
        Ricardus de Luci magnum congregavit exercitum et obsedit
        castellum de Huntendoniâ.” _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 70. Rog.
        Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 60, substitutes for the first
        words “in festo Nativitatis S. Johannis.” This is the first
        time that either writer mentions the siege, but see R. Diceto
        as above, p. 376.

        [779] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 71.

        [780] “Johannes Senex.”

        [781] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 155, 156. The story is
        there told in connexion with that of the murder of a brother of
        the earl of Ferrers in 1177, and said to have happened “three
        years before.” The wording of the latter part, where it is said
        that John “obtulit quingentas marcas argenti _domino regi_ ...
        sed ... noluit denarios illos accipere, et præcepit ut judicium
        de eo fieret,” seems to imply that the king himself came to
        England between the capture of Bucquinte and the execution of
        John. In that case the date of the affair would be about June
        or July 1174. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 131, mentions
        the hanging of John Oldman, but puts it after the murder of De
        Ferrers in 1177 and omits the whole story which in the _Gesta_
        intervenes, thereby also omitting to shew the true sequence of
        events and chronology.

        [782] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 381.

Henry had spent the spring in a successful progress through Maine and
Anjou to Poitiers, where he kept the Whitsun feast. He had just rescued
Saintes from a band of rebels who had seized it in Richard’s name[783]
when he was called northward again by a rumour of the Flemish count’s
scheme for the invasion of England. By S. Barnabas’s day he was back
again on the borders of Britanny and Anjou; he took and fortified
Ancenis, and then, leaving Anjou to the charge of a faithful baron,
Maurice of Craon,[784] went to meet the castellans of the Norman border
in a council at Bonneville on Midsummer-day. Their deliberations were
interrupted by the appearance of Richard of Ilchester--now bishop-elect
of Winchester--on his errand from England to recall the king.[785]
Richard’s pleadings however were scarcely needed. Henry knew that
his eldest son was at that very moment with the count of Flanders
at Gravelines, only awaiting a favourable wind to set sail for the
invasion of England,[786] and that, whatever might be the risk to his
continental realms, he must hasten to save the island.[787] He at
once took measures for the security of the Norman castles and for the
transport of those prisoners and suspected persons whom he dared not
venture to leave behind him--his queen,[788] the earl and countess of
Leicester, the earl of Chester,[789] the young queen Margaret,[790]
and the affianced brides of his three younger sons; besides the two
children who were still with him, Jane and John.[791] The wind which
thwarted the designs of his foes was equally unfavourable to him; it
was not till July 7 that he himself embarked at Barfleur, and even then
the peril of crossing seemed so great that the sailors were inclined
to put back. Henry raised his eyes to heaven: “If I seek the peace of
my realm--if the heavenly King wills that my return should restore
its peace--He will bring me safe into port. If He has turned away His
Face from me and determined to scourge my realm, may I never reach its
shores!” By nightfall he was safe[792] at Southampton.[793]

        [783] _Ib._ p. 380. Cf. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 71, and
        Chron. S. Albin. a. 1174 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 43).

        [784] R. Diceto and _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [785] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 381, 382. Cf. Jordan
        Fantosme, vv. 1530–1633 (Michel, pp. 70–74).

        [786] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 72. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 61.

        [787] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 248. Cf. Will. Newb., l.
        ii. c. 32 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 181).

        [788] R. Diceto as above, p. 382. _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [789] R. Diceto (as above) has “comitem Cestrensem,
        Legecestrensem comitissam”; Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ (Luard),
        vol. ii. p. 292, turns this into “comitem Legecestrensem et
        comitissam.” We may surely combine the two versions.

        [790] R. Diceto and _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [791] R. Diceto as above, p. 382. “Uxores filiorum suorum”
        must mean Adela of France, Constance of Britanny and Alice
        of Maurienne, all of whom are known to have been in Henry’s
        custody.

        [792] R. Diceto as above, pp. 382, 383.

        [793] _Ib._ p. 383. _Gesta Hen._ as above. Cf. Pipe Roll
        a. 1173, quoted by _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 180. R. Niger
        (Anstruther), p. 176, puts the voyage two days later.

His first care was to bestow his prisoners and hostages in safe
custody.[794] That done, he set off at once on a pilgrimage to the
grave of his former friend and victim at Canterbury. Travelling with
the utmost speed, and feeding only on bread and water, he reached
Canterbury on July 12; before the church of S. Dunstan, outside the
west gate, he dismounted, exchanged his kingly robes for the woollen
gown of a pilgrim, and made his way with bare and bleeding feet along
the rough-paved streets to the cathedral church. Here, surrounded by
a group of bishops and abbots who seem to have come with him, as well
as by the monks of the cathedral chapter and a crowd of wondering
lay-folk, he threw himself in an agony of penitence and prayer on the
martyr’s tomb, which still stood in the crypt where his body had been
hastily buried by the terrified monks immediately after the murder.
The bishop of London now came forward and spoke in the king’s name,
solemnly protesting that he had never sought the primate’s death, and
beseeching absolution from the assembled prelates for the rash words
which had occasioned it. The absolution was given; the king then
underwent a public scourging at the hands of the bishops and monks;
he spent the whole night in prayer before the shrine; early on the
morrow he heard mass and departed, leaving rich gifts in money and
endowments, and rode back still fasting to London, which he reached on
the following morning.[795] The next few days were spent in collecting
forces, in addition to a large troop of Brabantines whom he had brought
over with him,[796] and in despatching a part of these into Suffolk
against Hugh Bigod; Henry himself lingering another day or two to
recover from his excitement and fatigue.[797]

        [794] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 72. Eleanor was placed
        at Salisbury (Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 67; Labbe, _Nova Bibl._,
        vol. ii. p. 319) in charge of Robert Mauduit; the younger queen
        “and the hostages” were sent to Devizes under the care of
        Eustace Fitz-Stephen. (Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 180, from
        Pipe Roll a. 1173.)

        [795] For accounts of the penance see R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol.
        i. p. 383; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 248, 249; _Gesta
        Hen._ as above; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 61, 62;
        Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 35 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 18); E. Grim
        (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), pp. 445–447; Herb. Bosh.
        (_ib._ vol. iii.), pp. 545–547.

        [796] R. Diceto as above, p. 382. _Gesta Hen._ as above. Rob.
        Torigni, a. 1174.

        [797] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 35 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 189), says
        he stayed in London in order to be bled.

In the middle of the night of July 17 a courier from the north came
knocking wildly for admittance at the palace-gate. The porters
remonstrated with him in vain; he bore, he said, good news which the
king must hear that very night. He hurried to the door of the king’s
chamber, and, despite the expostulations of the chamberlains, made
his way to the bedside and woke the king from his sleep. “Who art
thou?” demanded Henry. “A servant of your faithful Ralf de Glanville,
and the bearer of good tidings from him to you.” “Is he well?” “He
is well; and lo! he holds your enemy the king of Scots in chains at
Richmond castle.” Not till he had seen Ralf’s own letters could Henry
believe the tidings; then he burst into thanksgivings for the crowning
triumph which had come to him, as he now learned, almost at the moment
when his voluntary humiliation at Canterbury was completed.[798]
The garrison of Carlisle had pledged themselves to surrender to the
Scot king at Michaelmas if not previously relieved. In the interval
William laid siege to Odelin de Umfraville’s castle of Prudhoe on
the Tyne.[799] Here he was rejoined by Roger de Mowbray, who came to
intreat the Scot king’s aid in the recovery of his lost castles.[800]
Meanwhile, however, the king’s return had apparently brought with it
the return of the sheriff of Yorkshire, Robert de Stuteville. Under his
leadership and that of his son William the whole military forces of the
shire, with those of William de Vesci, Ralf de Glanville, Bernard de
Balliol and Odelin de Umfraville, and Archbishop Roger’s men under his
constable Ralf de Tilly, gathered and marched northward to oppose the
Scots.[801] They reached Newcastle on July 12[802]--the day of Henry’s
penitential entry into Canterbury--but only to find that on the rumour
of their approach William the Lion had retired from Prudhoe, and was
gone to besiege Alnwick with his own picked followers, while the bulk
of his host, under the earls of Fife and Angus and the English traitor
Richard de Morville, dispersed over all Northumberland to burn, plunder
and slay in the old barbarous Scottish fashion which seems hardly to
have softened since the days of Malcolm Canmore.[803] The English
leaders now held a council of war. Their forces consisted only of a
few hundred knights, all wearied and spent with their long and hurried
march, in which the foot had been unable to keep up with them at all.
The more cautious argued that enough had been done in driving back the
Scots thus far, and that it would be madness for a band of four hundred
men to advance against a host of eighty thousand. Bolder spirits,
however, urged that the justice of their cause must suffice to prevail
against any odds; and it was decided to continue the march to Alnwick.
They set out next morning before sunrise; the further they rode, the
thicker grew the mist; some proposed to turn back. “Turn back who
will,” cried Bernard de Balliol, “if no man will follow me, I will go
on alone, rather than bear the stain of cowardice for ever!” Every one
of them followed him; and when at last the mist cleared away, the first
sight that met their eyes was the friendly castle of Alnwick. Close
beside it lay the king of Scots, carelessly playing with a little band
of some sixty knights. Never dreaming that the English host would dare
to pursue him thus far, he had sent out all the rest of his troops on
a plundering expedition, and at the first appearance of the enemy he
took them for his own followers returning with their spoils. When they
unfurled their banners he saw at once that his fate was sealed. The
Scottish Lion, however, proved worthy of his name, and his followers
proved worthy of their leader. Seizing his arms and shouting, “Now it
shall be seen who are true knights!” he rushed upon the English; his
horse was killed, he himself was surrounded and made prisoner, and so
were all his men.[804] Roger de Mowbray and Adam de Port, an English
baron who had been outlawed two years before for an attempt on King
Henry’s life, alone fled away into Scotland;[805] not one Scot tried
to escape, and some even who were not on the spot, when they heard the
noise of the fray, rode hastily up and almost forced themselves into
the hands of their captors, deeming it a knightly duty to share their
sovereign’s fate.[806]

        [798] _Ib._ (pp. 189, 190). On the coincidence of time see Mr.
        Howlett’s note 3, p. 188. Cf. the more detailed, but far less
        vivid version of the story in Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1956–2029
        (Michel, pp. 88–92). In the _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
        72, Henry is said to have received the news on July 18. Taken
        in conjunction with the story given above, this must mean the
        night of July 17–18.

        [799] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 65. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol.
        ii. p. 60. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 32 (as above, p. 182);
        and Jordan Fantosme, vv., 1640–1650 (Michel, p. 74).

        [800] Will. Newb. as above.

        [801] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 65, 66. Cf. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 60.

        [802] “Sexta Sabbati.” Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 33 (Howlett, vol.
        i. p. 183).

        [803] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 66. Cf. Rog. Howden as above;
        Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 32 (as above, pp. 182, 183), and Jordan
        Fantosme, vv. 1671–1729 (Michel, pp. 76–78). On the Scottish
        misdoings see also R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 376; Gerv.
        Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 247; and _Gesta Hen._ as above, p.
        64; this latter writer can find no better way of describing
        them than by copying Henry of Huntingdon’s account of the
        Scottish invaders of 1138 (Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 6, Arnold,
        p. 261).

        [804] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 33 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 183–185).
        Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1731–1839 (Michel, pp. 78–84). Cf. _Gesta
        Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 67; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii.
        p. 63; and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 249.

        [805] Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1841–1849 (Michel, p. 84). Will.
        Newb. as above (p. 185). On Adam de Port (whose presence on
        this occasion is mentioned by Jordan only) see _Gesta Hen._
        as above, p. 35 and note 2, and Stapleton, _Magn. Rot. Sacc.
        Norm._ (Soc. Antiq.), vol. i., _Observ._, p. clxi.

        [806] Will. Newb. as above.

The capture of William the Lion almost put an end to the rebellion.
A body of Flemings summoned by Bishop Hugh of Durham landed the same
day at Hartlepool; but at the tidings of the Scottish disaster, Hugh
thought it safest to pay them their forty days’ wages and send them
home again at once.[807] On the same day, too, the young king, weary
of waiting for a wind at Gravelines, left the count of Flanders there
alone and proceeded to Wissant with a body of troops whom he succeeded
in despatching from thence into England, under the command of Ralf of
La Haye, to the assistance of Hugh Bigod.[808] In London, meanwhile,
the news brought by Ralf de Glanville’s courier raised to the highest
pitch the spirits both of Henry and of his troops. On that very day he
set out for Huntingdon,[809] whose titular earl had already fled back
to Scotland;[810] at Huntingdon Geoffrey of Lincoln came to meet him
with a force of seven hundred knights;[811] and three days later the
garrison surrendered at discretion.[812] The king then marched to S.
Edmund’s; here he divided his host, sending half against Hugh Bigod’s
castle of Bungay, while he himself led the other half to Framlingham,
where Hugh was entrenched with five hundred knights and his Flemish
men-at-arms. The number of these, however, had dwindled greatly; when
the royal host encamped on July 24 at Sileham, close to Framlingham,
Hugh felt himself unable to cope with it; and next morning he
surrendered.[813] By the end of the month the whole struggle was over.
One by one the king’s foes came to his feet as he held his court at
Northampton. The king of Scots was brought, with his feet tied together
under his horse’s body, from his prison[814] at Richmond.[815] On the
last day of July Bishop Hugh of Durham came to give up his castles
of Durham, Norham and Northallerton. On the same day the earl of
Leicester’s three fortresses were surrendered by his constables;[816]
and Thirsk was given up by Roger of Mowbray.[817] Earl Robert de
Ferrers yielded up Tutbury and Duffield;[818] the earl of Gloucester
and his son-in-law Richard de Clare, who were suspected of intriguing
with the rebels, came to offer their services and their obedience to
the king;[819] and a like offer came from far-off Galloway, whose
native princes, Uhtred and Gilbert, long unwilling vassals of the
king of Scots, had seized their opportunity to call home their men,
drive out William’s bailiffs, destroy his castles and slaughter his
garrisons, and now besought his victorious English cousin to become
their protector and overlord.[820] In three weeks from Henry’s landing
in England all the royal fortresses were again in his hands, and the
country was once more at peace.[821]

        [807] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 67.

        [808] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 381. Cf. _ib._ p. 385.

        [809] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 72.

        [810] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 37 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 195).

        [811] See Henry’s remark at their meeting in Gir. Cambr. _Vita
        Galfr._, l. i. c. 3 (Dimock, vol. iv. p. 368).

        [812] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 73. Cf. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 384.

        [813] _Gesta Hen._ as above. R. Diceto as above, pp. 384, 385.

        [814] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 64.

        [815] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 33 (as above, p. 185).

        [816] _Gesta Hen._ as above. R. Diceto as above, p. 384, dates
        the surrender of these three castles July 22--_i.e._ just as
        Henry was leaving Huntingdon for Suffolk. The chronology of
        the _Gesta_ seems much more probable. See in Will. Newb., l.
        ii. c. 37 (as above, pp. 194, 195), how Henry frightened the
        constables into submission. Jordan Fantosme, vv. 2039–2046
        (Michel, p. 92), has a different story about Leicester. He
        makes David of Huntingdon its commandant, and says that as
        soon as Henry received the news of the Scot king’s capture, he
        forwarded it to David with a summons to surrender; whereupon
        David gave up Leicester castle and himself both at once.

        [817] _Gesta Hen._ as above. R. Diceto (as above), p. 385.

        [818] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Tutbury was being besieged by a
        host of Welshmen under Rees Ap-Griffith; R. Diceto (as above),
        p. 384.

        [819] R. Diceto as above, p. 385.

        [820] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 63.

        [821] _Ib._ p. 65. Rob. Torigni, a. 1174.

When England was secured, it was comparatively a light matter to secure
the rest. Louis of France was so dismayed at the sudden collapse of
the rebellion in England--a collapse which necessarily entailed a like
fate upon the rebellion in Normandy, since the leaders were the same
men in both cases--that he at once recalled the young king and the
count of Flanders from their project of invasion. As a last resource,
all three concentrated their forces upon the siege of Rouen.[822] Its
garrison held out gallantly until Henry had time to recross the sea
with his Brabantines and a thousand Welshmen[823] who had already done
good service under Rees Ap-Griffith at the siege of Tutbury.[824]
On August 11, three days after landing, he entered Rouen;[825] a
successful raid of his Welshmen upon some French convoys, followed by
an equally successful sally of Henry himself against the besieging
forces, sufficed to make Louis ask for a truce, under cover of which he
fled with his whole host back into his own dominions.[826] Some three
weeks later[827] he and Henry met in conference at Gisors and arranged
a suspension of hostilities until Michaelmas on all sides, except
between Henry and his son Richard, who was fighting independently
against his father’s loyal subjects in Poitou.[828] Henry marched
southward at once; Richard fled before him from place to place, leaving
his conquests to fall back one by one into the hands of their rightful
owner; at last he suddenly returned to throw himself at his father’s
feet, and a few days before Michaelmas Henry concluded his war in
Poitou[829] by entering Poitiers in triumph with Richard, penitent and
forgiven, at his side.[830]

        [822] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 73. Rog. Howden as
        above, p. 64. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 36 (Howlett, vol. i. p.
        190). Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 249. R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 386.

        [823] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 74.

        [824] See R. Diceto as above, p. 384. It seems most likely that
        these were the same. The Pipe Roll of 1174 (Eyton, _Itin. Hen.
        II._, p. 183) has a charge of £4: 18: 11 “in corredio Reis et
        aliorum Walensium qui venerunt ad regem in expedicionem.”

        [825] R. Diceto as above, p. 385. _Gesta Hen._ as above. Rog.
        Howden as above, p. 65.

        [826] See the details of Louis’s disgraceful conduct in _Gesta
        Hen._ as above, pp. 74–76, Rog. Howden as above, pp. 65, 66, R.
        Diceto as above, pp. 386, 387, Gerv. Cant. as above, p. 250,
        and Will. Newb., l. ii. cc. 36 and 37 (as above, pp. 192–196).

        [827] On September 8. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 76.

        [828] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 76. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 66. Rob. Torigni, a. 1174.

        [829] “Et sic finivit rex gwerram suam in Pictaviâ,” comments
        the writer of the _Gesta Hen._ (as above) on the reconciliation.

        [830] Rog. Howden as above, p. 67.

On the last day of September the two kings and all the princes met in
conference between Tours and Amboise.[831] Henry’s three elder sons
accepted the endowments which he offered them; in return, the young
king gave his assent to a provision for John. A general amnesty was
agreed upon; all prisoners on both sides, except the king of Scots,
the earls of Leicester and Chester and Ralf of Fougères, were released
at once; all the rebels returned to their allegiance, and were fully
forgiven; Henry claimed nothing from any of them save the restoration
of their castles to the condition in which they had been before the
war, and the right of taking such hostages and other security as he
might choose.[832] These terms of course did not apply to England;
while, on the other hand, the king of Scots and his fellow-captives,
whom Henry had brought back with him to Normandy and replaced in
confinement at Falaise,[833] were excluded from them as prisoners of
war. It was at Falaise, on October 11, that Henry and his sons embodied
their agreement in a written document.[834] A few weeks later William
of Scotland, with the formal assent of the bishops and barons of his
realm, who had been allowed free access to him during his captivity,
submitted to pay the price which Henry demanded for his ransom. The
legal relations between the crowns of England and Scotland had been
doubtful ever since the days of William the Conqueror and Malcolm
Canmore, if not since the days of Eadward the Elder and Constantine;
henceforth they were to be doubtful no longer. William the Lion became
the liegeman of the English king and of his son for Scotland and for
all his other lands, and agreed that their heirs should be entitled to
a like homage and fealty from all future kings of Scots. The castles
of Roxburgh, Jedburgh, Berwick, Edinburgh and Stirling were required
by Henry as security; and as soon as the treaty had been ratified at
Valognes[835] William was sent over sea in a sort of honourable custody
to enforce their surrender and thereby complete his own release.[836]

        [831] _Ibid._ _Gesta Hen._ as above. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol.
        i. p. 250. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 394. On the date
        given by this last see below, note 7{834}.

        [832] Treaty given at length in _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp.
        77–79, and Rog. Howden as above, pp. 67–69; abridged in R.
        Diceto as above, pp. 394, 395.

        [833] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 74.

        [834] The treaty, as given in _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden (see
        above, note 5{832}), is printed also in Rymer’s _Fœdera_,
        vol. i. p. 30, with the addition of a date--Falaise--and the
        signatures of twenty-eight witnesses. Among the latter is
        Geoffrey, bishop elect of Lincoln. Now we know from R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 393, that Geoffrey came over from England
        to Normandy on October 8. R. Diceto (_ib._ p. 394) gives the
        date of the meeting at which the treaty was made as October 11.
        Is it not probable that he has substituted for the date of the
        making of the treaty that of its formal ratification at Falaise?

        [835] This treaty, as given in _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i.
        pp. 96–99, and Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 80–82 (and
        from them in Rymer’s _Fœdera_, vol. i. pp. 30, 31), is dated at
        Falaise. R. Diceto, however (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 396), who gives
        an abridgement of it, says it was made at Valognes, on December
        8. Now there is in Hearne’s _Liber Niger_, vol. i. pp. 36–40,
        a copy of the treaty, differing from the former ones in having
        eighteen more witnesses (one cannot help noting the name of
        the last--“Roger Bacun”) and in its date, which is “Valognes.”
        No doubt the Falaise copy was made first, and this is the
        ratification of it.

        [836] R. Diceto as above, p. 398.

By the terms of Henry’s treaty with France, all the English barons who
held lands on both sides of the sea were to be at once re-instated in
their continental possessions, except the castles over which the king
resumed his ancient rights of garrison or of demolition. Their English
estates however were wholly at his mercy; but he made a very gentle use
of his power over them. He took in fact no personal vengeance at all;
he exacted simply what was necessary for securing his own authority
and the peace of the realm--the instant departure of the Flemish
mercenaries[837] and the demolition of unlicensed fortifications--and
for defraying the expenses of the war. This was done by a tax levied
partly on the royal demesnes, partly on the estates of the rebels
throughout the country, on the basis of an assessment made for that
purpose during the past summer by the sheriffs of the several counties,
assisted by some officers of the Exchequer.[838] No ruinous sums were
demanded; even Hugh Bigod escaped with a fine of a thousand marks, and
lost none of the revenues of his earldom save for the time that he was
actually in open rebellion; the third penny of Norfolk was reckoned as
due to him again from the third day after his surrender, and its amount
for two months was paid to him accordingly at Michaelmas.[839] Even the
earls of Leicester and Chester seem to have been at once set free;[840]
and in little more than two years they were restored to all their lands
and honours, except their castles, which were either razed or retained
in the king’s hands.[841]

        [837] Hugh Bigod’s Flemings and the knights sent over by the
        young king were all sent out of the country immediately after
        Hugh’s surrender, and the former were made to swear that they
        would never set a hostile foot in England again. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 385.

        [838] This is the “Assiza super dominica regis et super terras
        eorum qui recesserunt.” Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 184, 185.

        [839] See extract from Pipe Roll 20 Hen. II. [a. 1174], and Mr.
        Eyton’s comment upon it, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 181, note 2.

        [840] Hugh of Chester was probably released at the same time
        with the king of Scots, for he signs among the witnesses to the
        treaty of Falaise. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 99. Rog.
        Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 82.

        [841] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 134, 135. Rog. Howden as
        above, p. 118.

This very clemency was in itself at once the strongest proof of the
completeness of Henry’s victory and the surest means of retaining
the hold which he had now gained over the barons. The struggle whose
course we have been trying to follow has a special significance: it
was the last struggle in English history in which the barons were
arrayed against the united interests of the Crown and the people. That
feudal pride which had revolted so often and so fiercely against the
determination of William the Conqueror and Henry I. to enforce justice
and order throughout their realm stooped at last to acknowledge its
master in Henry II. In the unbroken tranquillity, the uninterrupted
developement of reform in law and administration, the unchecked
growth of the material and social prosperity of England during the
remaining fifteen years of his reign, Henry and his people reaped the
first-fruits of the anti-feudal policy which he and his predecessors
had so long and so steadily maintained. Its full harvest was to be
reaped after he was gone, not by the sovereign, but by the barons
themselves, to whom his strong hand had at last taught their true
mission as leaders and champions of the English people against a king
who had fallen away from the traditions alike of the Norman and of the
Angevin Henry.



CHAPTER V.

THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE.

1175–1183.


In the seven years which followed the suppression of the barons’ revolt
Henry’s prosperity reached its height. The rising in which all his
enemies had united for his destruction had ended in leaving him seated
more firmly than ever upon the most securely-established throne in
Europe. Within the four seas of Britain he was master as no king had
ever been master before him. The English people had been with him from
the first, and was learning year by year to identify its interests
more closely with his; the Church, alienated for nearly ten years, was
reconciled by his penance; feudalism was beaten at last, and for ever.
The Welsh princes were his obedient and serviceable vassals; the Scot
king had been humbled to accept a like position; a new subject-realm
was growing up on the coast of Ireland. The great external peril which
had dogged Henry’s footsteps through life, the hostility of France, was
for a while paralyzed by his success. Other external foes he had none;
the kings of Spain and of Sicily, the princes of the Western and even
of the Eastern Empire, vied with each other in seeking the friendship,
one might almost say the patronage, of the one sovereign in Europe who,
safe on his sea-girt throne, could afford to be independent of them
all. Within and without, on either side of the sea, all hindrances to
the full and free developement of Henry’s policy for the government of
his whole dominions were thus completely removed.

In England itself the succeeding period was one of unbroken
tranquillity and steady prosperous growth, social, intellectual,
political, constitutional. Henry used his opportunity to make a longer
stay in the island than he had ever made there before, save at the
very beginning of his reign. He was there from May 1175 to August
1177; in the following July he returned, and stayed till April 1180;
he came back again in July 1181, and remained till March 1182. Each of
these visits was marked by some further step towards the completion
of his judicial and administrative reforms. Almost as soon as he
set foot in the country, indeed, he took up his work as if it had
never been interrupted. The king and his eldest son went to England
together on May 9, 1175;[842] on Rogation Sunday they publicly sealed
their reconciliation with each other and with the Church in a great
council which met at Westminster[843] under the presidence of a new
archbishop of Canterbury, Richard, formerly prior of Dover, who
after countless troubles and delays had been chosen just before the
outbreak of the rebellion to fill S. Thomas’s place,[844] and had
come back from Rome in triumph, with his pallium and a commission as
legate for all England, just as Henry was returning to Normandy from
his success against Hugh Bigod.[845] From the council the two kings
and the primate went all together on a pilgrimage to the martyr’s
tomb at Canterbury;[846] at Whitsuntide the kings held a court at
Reading,[847] and on S. Peter’s day they met the Welsh princes in a
great council at Gloucester.[848] Two days later the process, begun
two years before, of filling up the vacant bishoprics and abbacies
which had been accumulating during Thomas’s exile was completed in
another council at Woodstock.[849] Thence, too, was issued an edict for
the better securing of order throughout the realm, and particularly
around the person of the king; all his opponents in the late war were
forbidden, on pain of arrest as traitors, to come to the court without
special summons, and, under any circumstances, to come before sunrise
or stay over night; and all wearing of arms, knife, bow and arrows,
was forbidden on the English side of the Severn. These prohibitions
however were only temporary;[850] and they were, with one exception,
the only measure of general severity taken by Henry in consequence of
the rebellion. That exception was a great forest-visitation, begun by
Henry in person during the summer of 1175 and not completed by his
ministers, it seems, till Michaelmas 1177, and from which scarcely
a man throughout the kingdom, baron or villein, layman or priest,
was altogether exempt. In vain did Richard de Lucy, as loyal to the
people as to the king, shew Henry his own royal writ authorizing the
justiciars to throw open the forests and give up the royal fish-ponds
to public use during the war, and protest against the injustice of
punishing the people at large for a trespass to which he had himself
invited them in the king’s name and in accordance, as he had understood
it, with the king’s expressed will. The license had probably been
used to a far wider extent than Henry had intended; the general
excitement had perhaps vented itself in some such outburst of wanton
destructiveness as had occurred after the death of Henry I.; at any
rate, the Norman and the Angevin blood in Henry II. was all alike
stirred into wrath at sight of damage done to vert and venison; the
transgressors were placed, in technical phrase, “at the king’s mercy,”
and their fines constituted an important item in the Pipe Roll of
1176.[851]

        [842] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 83, 84. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 399.

        [843] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 84. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol.
        i. p. 250. R. Diceto as above, pp. 399–401.

        [844] On the Canterbury troubles and Richard’s election see
        Gerv. Cant. as above, pp. 239–242, 243–245, 247.

        [845] _Ib._ p. 249. R. Diceto as above, p. 391. _Gesta Hen._ as
        above, p. 74.

        [846] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 91. Gerv. Cant. as above, p.
        256. R. Diceto as above, p. 399.

        [847] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [848] _Ib._ p. 92.

        [849] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 93. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 78, 79.

        [850] _Gesta Hen._ as above. “Sed hæc præcepta parvo tempore
        custodita sunt.”

        [851] On the “misericordia regis pro forestâ,” as it is called
        in the Pipe Rolls, see _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 92, 94; Rog.
        Howden as above, p. 79; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 402;
        Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 483; and the extracts from
        the Pipe Rolls 22 and 23 Hen. II. (_i.e._ 1176 and 1177) in
        Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp. 541, 542.

In the beginning of that year the king assembled a great council at
Northampton,[852] and thence issued an Assize which forms another
link in the series of legal enactments begun at Clarendon just ten
years before. The first three clauses and the twelfth clause of the
Assize of Northampton are substantially a re-issue of those articles
of the Assize of Clarendon which regulated the presentment, detention
and punishment of criminals and the treatment of strangers and
vagabonds.[853] The experience of the past ten years had however led to
some modifications in the details of the procedure. The recognition by
twelve lawful men of every hundred and four of every township, to be
followed by ordeal of water, was re-enacted; but the presentment was
now to be made not to the sheriff, but direct to the king’s justices.
The punishments, too, were more severe than before; the forger, robber,
murderer or incendiary who under the former system would have suffered
the loss of a foot was now to lose a hand as well, and to quit the
realm within forty days.[854] The remaining articles dealt with quite
other matters. The fourth declared the legal order of proceeding with
regard to the estate of a deceased freeholder, in such a manner as to
secure the rights of his heir and of his widow before the usual relief
could be exacted by the lord; and it referred all disputes between the
lord and the heir touching the latter’s right of inheritance to the
decision of the king’s justices, on the recognition of twelve lawful
men[855]--a process which, under the name of the assize of _mort
d’ancester_, soon became a regular part of the business transacted
before the justices-in-eyre. Some of the other clauses had a more
political significance. They directed the justices to take an oath
of homage and fealty to the king from every man in the realm, earl,
baron, knight, freeholder or villein, before the octave of Whit-Sunday
at latest, and to arrest as traitors all who refused it:[856]--to
investigate and strictly enforce the demolition of the condemned
castles;[857] to ascertain and report by whom, how and where the duty
of castle-guard was owed to the king;[858] to inquire what persons had
fled from justice and incurred the penalty of outlawry by failing to
give themselves up at the appointed time, and to send in a list of all
such persons to the Exchequer at Easter and Michaelmas for transmission
to the king.[859] The tenth article was aimed at the bailiffs of the
royal demesnes, requiring them to give an account of their stewardship
before the Exchequer;[860] and two others defined the justices’
authority, as extending, in judicial matters, over all pleas of the
Crown, both in criminal causes and in civil actions concerning half a
knight’s fee or less; and in fiscal matters, over escheats, wardships,
and lands and churches in royal demesne.[861]

        [852] On January 26. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 404.
        Cf. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 107, and Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 87. The _Gesta_ date it merely “circa
        festum Conversionis S. Pauli”; Roger turns this into “in
        festo,” etc., and adopts the reading “Nottingham” instead of
        “Northampton.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 257, 258,
        confounds the Assize of Clarendon with the Constitutions.

        [853] Cf. articles 1–3, 12 of Ass. Northampton (Stubbs, _Select
        Charters_, pp. 150, 151, 152), with Ass. Clarendon, cc. 1–4,
        13, 15, 16 (_ib._ pp. 143, 144, 145). The Assize of Northampton
        is given in the _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 108–110, and by Rog.
        Howden as above, pp. 89–91.

        [854] Ass. North., c. 1 (Stubbs, as above, p. 151).

        [855] _Ib._ c. 4 (pp. 151, 152).

        [856] Ass. North., c. 6 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 152).

        [857] _Ib._ c. 8 (as above).

        [858] _Ib._ c. 11 (_ibid._)

        [859] _Ib._ c. 13 (pp. 152, 153).

        [860] _Ib._ c. 10 (p. 152).

        [861] _Ib._ cc. 7 and 9 (_ibid._).

The visitations of the justices by whom this assize was carried into
effect were arranged upon a new plan, or rather upon a modified form
of the plan which had been adopted two years before for the assessment
of a tallage upon the royal demesnes, to meet the cost of the expected
war. It was at that terrible crisis, when most men in Henry’s place
would have had no thought to spare for anything save the military
necessities and perils of the moment, that he had first devised and
carried into effect the principle of judicial circuits which with some
slight changes in detail has remained in force until our own day. This
tallage was levied by nineteen barons of the Exchequer, distributed
into six companies, each company undertaking the assessment throughout
a certain district or group of shires.[862] The abandonment of
this scheme in the assizes of the two following years was probably
necessitated by the disturbed state of the country. But at the council
of Northampton the kingdom was again definitely mapped out into six
divisions, to each of which three justices were sent.[863] In the
report of their proceedings in the Pipe Roll of the year they are for
the first time since the Assize of Clarendon[864] officially described
by the title which they had long borne in common speech, “_justitiæ
itinerantes_” (or “_errantes_”), justices-in-eyre; and it is from this
time that the regular institution of itinerant judges is dated by
modern legal historians.[865]

        [862] See the lists in Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii., pref. p.
        lxv, note 5, and Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 176; from the Pipe
        Roll 19 Hen. II. (a. 1173).

        [863] See lists in _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 107, 108.

        [864] Ass. Clar., c. 19 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 145).

        [865] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. pref. pp. lxix, lxx and
        notes.

This first distribution of circuits however was soon altered. In
the very next year the same eighteen officers made, in addition to
their judicial circuits, a general visitation of the realm for fiscal
purposes, in four companies instead of six;[866] and on Henry’s return
to England in the summer of 1178 he made what at first glance looks
like a sweeping change in the organization of the Curia Regis. “The
king,” we are told, “made inquiry concerning his justices whom he had
appointed in England, whether they treated the men of the realm with
righteousness and moderation; and when he learned that the country and
the people were sore oppressed by the great multitude of justices--for
they were eighteen in number--by the counsel of the wise men of the
realm he chose out five, two clerks and three laymen, who were all of
his private household; and he decreed that those five should hear all
the complaints of the realm, and do right, and that they should not
depart from the king’s court, but abide there to hear the complaints of
his men; so that if any question came up among them which they could
not bring to an end, it should be presented to the king’s hearing and
determined as might please him and the wise men of the realm.”[867]
From the mention of the number eighteen it appears that the persons
against whom were primarily directed both the complaint of the people
and the action of the king were the justices-in-eyre of the last two
years; and this is confirmed by the fact that of all these eighteen,
only six were among the judges who went on circuit in 1178 and 1179,
while from 1180 onwards only one of them reappears in that capacity,
though many of them retained their functions in the Exchequer. In 1178
and 1179 moreover the circuits were reduced from six to two, each
being served by four judges.[868] The enactment of 1178, however,
evidently touched the central as well as the provincial judicature,
and with more important results. It took the exercise of the highest
judicial functions out of the hands of the large body of officers who
made up the Curia Regis as constituted until that time, and restricted
it to a small chosen committee. This was apparently the origin of a
limited tribunal which, springing up thus within the Curia Regis, soon
afterwards appropriated its name, and in later days grew into the Court
of King’s Bench. At the same time the reservation of difficult cases
for the hearing of the king in council points to the creation, or
rather to the revival, of a yet higher court of justice, that of the
king himself in council with his “wise men”--a phrase which, while on
the one hand it carries us back to the very earliest form of the Curia
Regis, on the other points onward to its later developements in the
modern tribunals of equity or of appeal, the courts of Chancery and of
the Privy Council in its judicial capacity.[869]

        [866] _Ib._ p. lxx and note 3.

        [867] _Ib._ vol. i. pp. 207, 208.

        [868] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii., pref. p. lxxi and note 2.

        [869] Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 486, 487, 601–603;
        _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. pref. pp. lxxi, lxxiv–lxxvii.

All these changes in the circuits and in the Curia Regis had however
another motive. The chief obstacle to Henry’s judicial and legal
reforms was the difficulty of getting them administered according to
the intention of their author. It was to meet this difficulty that
Henry, as a contemporary writer says, “while never changing his mind,
was ever changing his ministers.”[870] He had employed men chosen
from every available class of society in turn, and none of his
experiments had altogether brought him satisfaction. Feudal nobles,
court officials, confidential servants and friends, had all alike
been tried and, sooner or later, found wanting.[871] There was only
one who had never yet failed him in a service of twenty-five years’
duration--Richard de Lucy “the loyal”; but in the summer of 1179
Richard de Lucy, to his master’s great regret, resigned his office of
justiciar and retired to end his days a few months later as a brother
of an Augustinian house which he had founded at Lesnes in Kent to
the honour of S. Thomas of Canterbury.[872] Henry in this extremity
fell back once more upon a precedent of his grandfather’s time and
determined to place the chief administration, for the moment at
least, again in clerical hands. Instead of a single justiciar-bishop,
however, he appointed three--the bishops of Winchester, Ely and
Norwich;[873] all of whom, under their earlier appellations of Richard
of Ilchester, Geoffrey Ridel and John of Oxford, had long ago acquired
ample experience and shewn ample capacity for the work of secular
administration.[874]

        [870] “Sic animum a proposito non immutans, circa personas
        mutabiles immutabilem semper sæpe mutavit sententiam.” R.
        Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 434--part of a long passage which
        sets forth very fully the motives and the general aims and
        results of Henry’s administrative changes.

        [871] R. Diceto as above, pp. 434–435.

        [872] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 238. Cf. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 190.

        [873] R. Diceto as above, p. 435.

        [874] Richard of Ilchester is well known as an active official
        of the Exchequer; see below, pp. 193, 194. Geoffrey Ridel seems
        to have acted as vice-chancellor throughout S. Thomas’s primacy
        and exile; see Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 174, note 1. As for
        John of Oxford, his diplomatic talents are only too notorious.

This arrangement was however only provisional. The number of judicial
circuits was again raised to four, and to each of the three southern
circuits was despatched one of the justiciar-bishops, with a royal
clerk and three laymen to act as his subordinate assistants. The fourth
circuit, which took in the whole district between the Trent and the
Scottish border, was intrusted to six justices, of whom only two were
clerks; one of these, Godfrey de Lucy the archdeacon of Richmond, a
brother of the late chief justiciar, stood nominally at the head
of the commission; but there can be little doubt that its real head
was one of his lay colleagues--Ralf de Glanville,[875] the faithful
sheriff of Lancashire and castellan of Richmond to whom William the
Lion had given up his sword at Alnwick in 1174;[876] and these six
were appointed to form the committee for hearing the complaints of the
people, apparently in succession to the five who had been selected in
the previous year.[877] All four bodies of judges brought up a report
of their proceedings to the king at Westminster on August 27,[878]
and it seems to have been the most satisfactory which he had yet
received. When he went over sea in the following April, he left Ralf de
Glanville to represent him in England as chief justiciar.[879] Ralf’s
business capacities proved to be at least as great, and his honesty as
stainless, as those of his predecessor; and from that time forth the
management of the entire legal and judicial administration was left in
his hands. Circuits, variously distributed, continued to be made from
year to year and for divers purposes by companies of judges, ranging
in total numbers from three to twenty-two;[880] while the King’s Court
and the Exchequer pursued their work on the lines already laid down,
without further interruption, till the end of Henry’s reign.

        [875] See the lists in _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 238,
        239; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 190, 191.

        [876] Jordan Fantosme, v. 1811 (Michel, p. 82).

        [877] “Isti sex sunt justitiæ in curiâ regis constituti ad
        audiendum clamores populi.” _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 239. See
        on this Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. pref. p. lxxiii, and
        _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 601, 602.

        [878] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 436.

        [879] Rog. Howden as above, p. 215.

        [880] See notices of the circuits and of the sessions of the
        Curia Regis and Exchequer in Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 236,
        237, 243, 244, 247, 248, 249, 251, 253, 258, 259, 265, 272,
        273, 281, 291.

The last of Henry’s great legal measures, with the exception of a
Forest Assize issued in 1184, was an ordinance published in the autumn
of 1181 and known as the Assize of Arms. Its object was to define more
fully and exactly the military obligations of the people at large in
the service of the king and the defence of the country;--in a word, to
put once again upon a more definite footing the old institution of the
“fyrd,” which was the only effective counterpoise to the military power
of the barons, and whose services in 1173 and 1174 had proved it to be
well worthy of the royal consideration and encouragement. The Assize
of 1181 declared the obligation of bearing arms at the king’s command
to be binding upon every free layman in the realm. The character of
the arms with which men of various ranks were required to provide
themselves was defined according to a graduated scale, from the full
equipment of the knight down to the mail-coat, steel-cap and spear of
the burgher and the simple freeman.[881] The justices were directed to
ascertain, through the “lawful men” of the hundreds and towns, what
persons fell under each category, to enroll their names, read out the
Assize in their presence, and make them swear to provide themselves
with the proper accoutrements before S. Hilary’s day.[882] Every man’s
arms were to be carefully kept and used solely for the royal service;
they were not to be taken out of the country, or alienated in any
way;[883] at their owner’s death they were to pass to his heir;[884] if
any man possessed other arms than those required of him by the Assize,
he was to dispose of them in such a manner that they might be used in
the king’s service;[885] and all this was enforced by a stern threat of
corporal punishment upon defaulters.[886]

        [881] Ass. Arms, cc. 1–3 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 154;
        from _Gesta Hen._, vol. i. pp. 278–280. The Assize is also
        given by Rog. Howden, vol. ii. pp. 261, 262).

        [882] _Ib._ cc. 9 and 4 (Stubbs as above, pp. 155, 156, 154).

        [883] _Ib._ cc. 4, 8 (pp. 154, 155).

        [884] _Ib._ c. 5 (p. 155).

        [885] _Ib._ cc. 6, 7 (as above).

        [886] _Ib._ c. 10 (p. 156).

The freemen who were armed under this Assize had little occasion
to use their weapons so long as King Henry lived. Within the four
seas of Britain there was almost unbroken peace till the end of his
reign. The treaty with Scotland was ratified by the public homage of
William the Lion to Henry and his son at York on August 10, 1175;[887]
and thenceforth Henry’s sole trouble from that quarter was the
necessity of arbitrating between William and his unruly vassals in
Galloway,[888] and of advising him in his ecclesiastical difficulties
with the Roman see. The western border of England was less secure than
the northern; yet even in Wales the authority of the English Crown
had made a considerable advance since Henry’s accession. His first
Welsh war, directed against the princes of North Wales in 1157, had
little practical result. A second expedition marched in 1163 against
Rees Ap-Griffith, prince of South Wales, and a lucky incident at the
outset insured its success. Directly in the king’s line of march from
Shrewsbury into South Wales, between Wenlock and Newport, there ran a
streamlet called Pencarn--a mountain-torrent passable only at certain
points. One of these was an ancient ford concerning which a prophecy
attributed to the enchanter Merlin declared: “When ye shall see a
strong man with a freckled face rush in upon the Britons, if he cross
the ford of Pencarn, then know ye that the might of Cambria shall
perish.” The Welsh guarded this ford with the utmost care to prevent
Henry from crossing it; he, ignorant of the prophecy, sent his troops
over by another passage, and was about to follow them himself, when a
loud blast from their trumpets on the opposite bank caused his horse
to rear so violently that he was obliged to turn away and seek a means
of crossing elsewhere. He found it at the fatal spot, and as the Welsh
saw him dash through the stream their hearts sank in despair.[889] He
marched unopposed from one end of South Wales to the other, through
Glamorgan and Carmarthen as far as Pencader;[890] here Rees made his
submission;[891] and Rees himself, Owen of North Wales, and several
other Welsh princes appeared and swore allegiance to King Henry and his
heir in that famous council of Woodstock where the first quarrel arose
between Henry and Thomas of Canterbury.[892]

        [887] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 94–96. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. p. 79. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 38 (Howlett, vol. i.
        p. 198).

        [888] On the Galloway affair see _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol.
        i. pp. 67, 68, 79, 80, 99, 126, 313, 336, 339, 348, 349; Rog.
        Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 63, 69, 105, 299, 309.

        [889] Gir. Cambr. _Itin. Kambr._ l. i. c. 6 (Dimock, vol. vi.
        pp. 62, 63).

        [890] _Ib._ l. ii. c. 10 (p. 138).

        [891] Ann. Cambr. a. 1164 (Williams, p. 49). _Brut y Tywys._,
        a. 1162 (Williams, p. 199). Both dates are self-evidently
        wrong; the only possible one is the intermediate year.

        [892] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 311.

Next year Rees, provoked as he alleged by Henry’s non-fulfilment of his
promises and also by the shelter given to the slayer of his nephew by
Earl Roger of Clare, harried the whole border and roused all Wales to
fling off the yoke of the “Frenchmen,” as the Welsh still called their
Norman conquerors.[893] Henry was obliged to delay his vengeance till
the following summer, when it furnished him with an excellent pretext
for escaping from his ecclesiastical and political entanglements on
the continent.[894] He set out from Oswestry[895] at the head of a
vast army drawn from all parts of his dominions, both insular and
continental, and reinforced by Flemish and Scottish allies.[896]
All the princes of Wales were arrayed against him, and both parties
intended the campaign to be decisive. But the wet climate of the Welsh
hills proved a more dangerous foe than the mountaineers themselves; and
after remaining for some time encamped at Berwen, Henry was compelled
to beat an ignominious retreat, completely defeated by the ceaseless
rain,[897] and venting his baffled wrath against the Welsh in a savage
mutilation of their hostages.[898] For six years after this, as we
have seen, he never had time to visit his island realm at all, and
the daring “French” settlers in Wales or on its borders, such as the
Geraldines or the De Clares, were free to fight their own battles and
make their own alliances with the Welsh just as they chose; it was
not till Henry in 1171 followed them to their more distant settlement
in Ireland that he again entered South Wales. Then he used his
opportunity for a series of personal interviews with Rees,[899] which
ended in a lasting agreement. Rees was left, in the phrase of his
native chronicler, as the king’s “justice” over all South Wales.[900]
How far he maintained, along the border or within his own territories,
the peace and order whose preservation formed the main part of an
English justiciar’s duty, may be doubted; but in the rebellion of
1174 he shewed his personal loyalty to the king by marching all the
way into Staffordshire to besiege Tutbury for him, and some of his
followers did equally good service in the suppression of the Norman
revolt.[901] David of North Wales, too, if he did nothing to help the
king, at least resisted the temptation of joining his enemies; and
the war was no sooner fairly over than, anxious that some reflection
of the glories of English royalty should be cast over his own house,
he became an eager suitor for the hand of Henry’s half-sister Emma--a
suit which Henry found it politic to grant.[902] A few months later,
in June 1175, the king made an attempt to secure the tranquillity of
the border by binding all the barons of the district in a sworn mutual
alliance for its defence.[903] The attempt was not very successful; the
border-warfare went on in much the same way as of old; but it was not
till the summer of 1184 that it grew serious enough to call for Henry’s
personal intervention, and then a march to Worcester sufficed to bring
Rees of South Wales once more to his feet.[904]

        [893] Ann. Cambr. a. 1165 (Williams, pp. 49, 50). _Brut y
        Tywys._, a. 1163 (Williams, p. 199).

        [894] See above, p. 56, note 3{223}.

        [895] Ann. Cambr. a. 1166 (_i.e._ 1165; Williams, p. 50). _Brut
        y Tywys._, a. 1164 (Williams, p. 201). Gir. Cambr. _Itin.
        Kambr._, l. ii. c. 10 (Dimock, vol. vi. p. 138). According to
        the _Brut_ (as above) Henry first “moved an army with extreme
        haste, and came to Rhuddlan, and purposed to erect a castle
        there, and stayed there three nights. After that he returned
        into England, and collected a vast army,” etc. Following this,
        Mr. Bridgeman (_Princes of S. Wales_, p. 48) and Mr. Eyton
        (_Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 79, 82) divide the Welsh campaign of
        1165 into two, one in May and the other in July. Neither the
        Ann. Cambr. nor Gerald, however, make any mention of the
        Rhuddlan expedition.

        [896] Ann. Cambr. and _Brut y Tywys._ as above.

        [897] _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1164 (Williams, pp. 201, 203).

        [898] _Ibid._ (p. 203). Chron. Mailros a. 1165.

        [899] See _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1171, 1172 (Williams, pp.
        213–219).

        [900] _Ib._ a. 1172 (p. 219).

        [901] See above, p. 164.

        [902] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 397, 398.

        [903] At the council held at Gloucester on June 29. _Gesta
        Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 92.

        [904] _Ib._ p. 314.

It was the latest-won dependency of the English crown which during
these years gave the most trouble to its wearer. If Henry found it hard
to secure fit instruments for the work of government and administration
in England, he found it harder still to secure them for the same work
in Ireland. At the outbreak of the barons’ revolt he had at once
guarded against all danger of the rebels finding support in Ireland by
recalling the garrisons which he had left in the Irish coast-towns and
summoning the chief men of the new vassal state, particularly Richard
of Striguil and Hugh de Lacy, to join him personally in Normandy.[905]
Richard served him well in the war as commandant of the important
border-fortress of Gisors;[906] and it may have been as a reward for
these services that he was sent back to Ireland as governor in Hugh’s
stead[907] at the close of the year. For the next two years, while the
king had his hands full in Normandy and England, matters in Ireland
went much as they had gone before his visit there; the Norman-English
settlers pursued their strifes and their alliances with their Irish
neighbours or with each other, and granted out to their followers
the lands which they won, entirely at their own pleasure.[908] But
the lesson which Henry was meanwhile teaching their brethren in
England was not thrown away upon them; and at the close of 1175 it
was brought home to them in another way. Roderic O’Conor, moved as it
seems by the fame of Henry’s successes, and also perhaps by two papal
bulls--Adrian’s famous “Laudabiliter,” and another from the reigning
Pope Alexander--which Henry had lately caused to be published at
Waterford,[909] at last bent his stubborn independence to send three
envoys to the English king with overtures for a treaty of peace. The
treaty was signed at Windsor on October 6. Roderic submitted to become
Henry’s liegeman, and to pay him a yearly tribute of one hide “pleasing
to the merchants” for every ten head of cattle throughout Ireland; on
these conditions he was confirmed in the government and administration
of justice over the whole island, except Leinster, Meath and Waterford,
and authorized to reckon upon the help of the royal constables in
compelling the obedience of his vassals and collecting from them their
share of the tribute.[910]

        [905] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 136–141. Cf. above, p. 145.

        [906] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 137.

        [907] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 44 (Dimock, vol.
        v. p. 298).

        [908] For the history of these years in Ireland see Four
        Masters, a. 1173–1175 (O’Donovan, vol. iii. pp. 9–23); Gir.
        Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. cc. 1–4 (Dimock, vol. v. pp.
        308–314); Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 142 to end.

        [909] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 5 (pp. 315–319).

        [910] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 101–103. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 83, 84.

This scheme might perhaps have answered at least as well as a similar
plan had answered during a few years in South Wales, had it not been
for the disturbed condition of the English settlement. The death of
Richard of Striguil in 1176[911] left the command in the hands of his
brother-in-law and constable, Raymond the Fat, who for some years had
been not only the leader of his forces, but also his chief adviser and
most indispensable agent in all matters political and military.[912]
A jealous rival, however, had already brought Raymond into ill repute
at court,[913] and the king’s seneschal William Fitz-Aldhelm was sent
to supersede him.[914] William appears to have been a loyal servant of
the king, but his tact and wisdom did not equal his loyalty. At the
moment of landing his suspicions were aroused by the imposing display
of armed followers with which Raymond came to meet him; the muttered
words which he incautiously suffered to escape his lips--“I will soon
put an end to all this!”--were enough to set all the Geraldines against
him at once; and the impolitic haste and severity with which he acted
upon his suspicions, without waiting to prove their justice,[915] drove
the whole body of the earlier settlers into such a state of irritation
that early in the next year Henry found it necessary to recall
him.[916] Meanwhile the aggressive spirit of the English settlers had
made Henry’s treaty with Roderic almost a dead letter. In defiance of
the rights which that treaty reserved to the Irish monarch, they had
profited by the mutual dissensions of the lesser native chieftains to
extend their own power far beyond the limits therein laid down. A civil
war in Munster had ended in its virtual subjugation by Raymond and his
Geraldine kinsfolk;[917] a like pretext had served for an invasion of
Connaught itself by Miles Cogan;[918] John de Courcy was in full career
of conquest in Ulster.[919] Henry could scarcely have put a stop to
all this, even had he really wished to do so; and by this time he was
probably more inclined to encourage any extension of English power in
Ireland, for he had devised a new scheme for the government of that
country.

        [911] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 14 (Dimock, vol.
        v. p. 332). R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 407. Four Masters,
        a. 1176 (O’Donovan, vol. iii. p. 25). _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 125.

        [912] Gir. Cambr. as above, cc. 1–3 (pp. 308–313).

        [913] _Ib._ cc. 10, 11 (pp. 327, 328).

        [914] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
        100.

        [915] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 15 (pp. 334–337).

        [916] _Ib._ c. 20 (p. 347). Gerald gives no date for the recall
        of William; but it seems to have been before the nomination of
        John as king of Ireland in May 1177; see below, p. 184.

        [917] Gir. Cambr. as above, cc. 7, 12, 13 (pp. 320–323,
        329–332).

        [918] Four Masters, a. 1177 (O’Donovan, vol. iii. p. 35).
        Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1177 (Hennessy, vol. i. p. 155). Gir. Cambr.
        _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 19 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 346).

        [919] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 17 (pp. 338–343). Four Masters,
        as above, pp. 29–33. Ann. Loch Cé, as above, pp. 155–157.
        _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 137, 138. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 120.

The bride of John “Lackland,” Alice of Maurienne, had died within a
year of her betrothal.[920] The marriage-contract indeed provided that
in case of such an event her sister should take her place; but the
connexion had begun too inauspiciously for either Henry or Humbert to
have any desire of renewing it; and Henry now saw a possibility of more
than repairing within his insular dominions the ill-luck which had
befallen his plans of advancement on the continent for his favourite
child. In the autumn of 1176 John was betrothed to his cousin Avice,
the youngest of the three daughters of Earl William of Gloucester, and
Avice was made heiress to the whole of the vast estates in the west
of England and South Wales which her father had inherited from his
parents, Earl Robert of Gloucester and Mabel of Glamorgan.[921] But
a mere English earldom, however important, was not enough to satisfy
Henry’s ambition for his darling. In his scheme Avice’s wealth was to
furnish her bridegroom with the means of supporting a loftier dignity.
He had now, it was said, obtained Pope Alexander’s leave to make king
of Ireland whichever of his sons he might choose. On the strength of
this permission he seems to have reverted to his original scheme of
conquering the whole island.[922] In May 1177 he publicly announced
his intention of bestowing the realm of Ireland upon his youngest son
John, and parcelled out the southern half of the country among a
number of feudal tenants, who did homage for their new fiefs to him
and John in a great council at Oxford.[923] As however John was too
young to undertake the government in person, his father was again
compelled to choose a viceroy. He fell back upon his earliest choice
and re-appointed Hugh de Lacy;[924] and with the exception of a
temporary disgrace in 1181,[925] it was Hugh who occupied this somewhat
thankless office during the next seven years. With the internal history
of Ireland during his administration and throughout the rest of Henry’s
reign we are not called upon to deal here; for important as are its
bearings upon the history of England, their importance did not become
apparent till a much later time than that of the Angevin kings.

        [920] _Art de vérifier les Dates_, vol. xvii. p. 165.

        [921] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 124. Rog. Howden as above, p.
        100. Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 415.

        [922] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 161.

        [923] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 162–165. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 133–135.

        [924] The _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 161, seem to imply that
        the appointment was given to Hugh of Chester. After relating
        the earl’s restoration to his lands and honours, they add: “Et
        postea præcepit ei [rex] ut iret in Hiberniam ad subjiciendum
        eam sibi et Johanni filio suo ... et præcepit prædicto comiti
        ut debellaret reges et potentes Hiberniæ qui subjectionem ei
        facere noluerunt.” Hugh de Lacy is named simply in the general
        list of those who were to accompany him. But Gerald (_Expugn.
        Hibern._, l. ii. c. 20, Dimock, vol. v. p. 347), says that Hugh
        de Lacy was re-appointed viceroy at this time. That he acted as
        such for the next seven years is certain, while there is, as
        far as I know, no indication that his namesake of Chester ever
        was in Ireland at all. It seems therefore that either the earl
        refused the office--or the king changed his mind--or the author
        of the _Gesta_, confused by the identity of Christian names,
        has substituted one Hugh for another.

        [925] When he was superseded for about half a year by John
        de Vesci (the constable of Chester) and Richard de Pec. Gir.
        Cambr. as above, c. 23 (pp. 355, 356). _Gesta Hen._ as above,
        p. 270.

[Illustration: Map V.

  FRANCE & BURGUNDY cir. 1180.

  Shewing the growth of the Angevin Empire from the time of Fulk the
  Black.

_Anjou 987, Touraine 1044, Maine 1111, Normandy 1144, Aquitaine and
Gascony 1152, England 1154, Nantes 1158, Quercy 1160, Britanny 1169,
Overlordship of Toulouse 1173._

  Key: _Royal Domain (France)_
       _House of St. Gilles (Toulouse)_
       _Aragon_
       _Provence_ _Maurienne_

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

It is during these years of prosperity and peace that we are able to
get the clearest view of the scope and aims of Henry’s general scheme
of home and foreign policy. That policy, when fully matured in its
author’s mind, formed a consistent whole; it was however made up of two
distinct parts, originating in the twofold position of Henry himself.
His empire extended from the western shores of Ireland to the Cévennes,
and from the northernmost point of the mainland of Britain to the
Pyrenees. But this empire was composed of a number of separate members
over which his authority differed greatly in character and degree.
These members, again, fell into two well-marked groups. Over the one
group Henry ruled as supreme head; no other sovereign had ever claimed
to be his superior, none now claimed to be even his equal, within the
British Isles. In the other group, however, he had at least a nominal
superior in the king of France. It was impossible to deal with these
two groups of states on one and the same principle; and Henry had
never attempted to do so. The one group had its centre in England, the
other in Anjou. As a necessary consequence, Henry’s policy had also
two centres throughout his reign. The key to it as a whole lies in
its blending of two characters united in one person, yet essentially
distinct: the character of the king of England and supreme lord of the
British Isles, and the character of the head of the house of Anjou.
Henry himself evidently kept the two characters distinct in his own
mind. His policy as king of England, however little it may have been
consciously aimed at such a result--and we should surely be doing a
great injustice to Henry’s sagacity if we doubted that it was so aimed,
at least in some degree--certainly tended to make England a strong
and independent national state, with its vassal states, Scotland,
Wales and Ireland, standing around it as dependent allies. If he had
ever for a moment dreamed of reducing his insular dominions to a mere
subject-province of the empire which he was building up in Gaul, when
he thought of intrusting their government to his boy-heir under the
guardianship of Thomas, that dream had been broken at once and for ever
by the quarrel which deprived the child of his guardian and the king
of his friend. But, on the other hand, Henry certainly never at any
time contemplated making his continental empire a mere dependency of
the English crown. It was distinctly an Angevin empire, with its centre
in the spot whence an Angevin count had been promised of old that the
sway of his descendants should spread to the ends of the earth. Henry
in short had another work to carry on besides that of Cnut and William
and Henry I. He had to carry on also the work of Fulk the Black and
Geoffrey Martel and Fulk V.; and although to us who know how speedy was
to be its overthrow that work looks a comparatively small matter, yet
at the time it may well have seemed equally important with the other
in the eyes both of Henry and of his contemporaries. While what may be
called the English thread in the somewhat tangled skein of Henry’s life
runs smoothly and uneventfully on from the year 1175 to the end, it is
this Angevin thread which forms the clue to the political and personal,
as distinguished from the social and constitutional, interest of all
the remaining years of his reign. And from this interest, although its
centre is at Angers, England is not excluded. For the whole continental
relations of Henry were coloured by his position as an English king;
and the whole foreign relations of England, from his day to our own,
have been coloured by the fact that her second King Henry was also
head of the Angevin house when that house was at the height of its
continental power and glory.

The prophecy said to have been made to Fulk the Good was now literally
fulfilled. The dominions of his posterity reached to the uttermost ends
of the known world. In the far east, one grandson of Fulk V. ruled over
the little strip of Holy Land which formed the boundary of Christendom
against the outer darkness of unexplored heathendom. In the far west,
another of Fulk’s grandsons was, formally at least, acknowledged
overlord of the island beyond which, in the belief of those days, lay
nothing but a sea without a shore. Scarcely less remarkable, however,
was the fulfilment of the prediction in a narrower sense. The whole
breadth of Europe and the whole length of the Mediterranean sea parted
the western from the eastern branch of the Angevin house. But in Gaul
itself, the Angevin dominion now stretched without a break from one
end of the land to the other. The Good Count’s heir held in his own
hands the whole Gaulish coast-line from the mouth of the Somme to
that of the Bidassoa, and he could almost touch the Mediterranean Sea
through his vassal the count of Toulouse. Step by step the lords of
the little Angevin march had enlarged their borders till they enclosed
more than two-thirds of the kingdom of France. Fulk Nerra and Geoffrey
Martel had doubled their possessions by the conquest of Touraine to
the south-east; Fulk V. had tripled them by the annexation of Maine
to the northward; Geoffrey Plantagenet’s marriage with the heiress of
Normandy had brought him to the shores of the English Channel. The
whole series of annexations and conquests whereby his son expanded his
continental dominions to the extent which they covered thirty years
after Geoffrey’s death resulted simply from a continuation of the same
policy which, a century and a half before, had laid the foundations of
the Angevin empire. Count Henry Fitz-Empress stood in a figure, like
Count Fulk the Black, upon the rock of Angers, looked around over his
marchland and its borders, noted every point at which those borders
might be strengthened, rounded off or enlarged, and set himself to
the pursuit of Fulk Nerra’s work in Fulk Nerra’s own spirit. For such
a survey indeed he needed a more wide-reaching vision than even that
of the Black Falcon. The work had altered vastly in scale since it
left the “great builder’s” hands; but it had not changed in character.
Henry’s policy in Gaul was essentially the same as Fulk’s--a policy of
consolidation, rather than of conquest. He clearly never dreamed, as
a man of less cautious ambition might well have done in his place, of
pitting the whole strength of his continental and insular dominions
against that of the French Crown in a struggle for the mastery of Gaul;
he seems never to have dreamed even of trying to free himself from his
feudal obedience to a sovereign far inferior to him in territorial
wealth and power; he never, so far as we can see, aspired to stand in
any other relation to the French king than that which had been held by
his forefathers. He aimed in fact simply at compacting and securing his
own territories in Gaul, and maintaining the rank of the head of the
Angevin house, as the most influential vassal of the Crown. If he ever
saw, on a distant horizon, a vision of something greater than this, he
kept his dream to himself and, like Fulk of old, left his successors to
attempt its fulfilment.

[Illustration: Map VI.

  MAP OF EUROPE cir. 1180.

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

An ambition so moderate as this entailed no very complicated schemes
of foreign diplomacy. As a matter of fact, Henry was at some time or
other in his reign in diplomatic relations with every state and every
ruler in Christendom, from Portugal to Norway, and from the count
of Montferrat to the Eastern and Western Emperors. But these relations
sprang for the most part from his insular rather than from his
continental position; or, more exactly, they arose from his position
as a king of England, but a king far mightier than any who had gone
before him. It was the knowledge that Henry had at his back all the
forces of the island-crown which roused in Louis VII. such a restless
jealousy of his power in Gaul; and it was the jealousy of Louis which
drove Henry into a labyrinth of diplomacy and of war, neither of which
was a natural result of Henry’s own policy. A very brief glance at
Henry’s foreign relations will suffice to shew that they concerned
England far more than Anjou. A considerable part of them arose directly
out of his quarrel with the English primate. Such was the case with
his German and Italian alliances, designed to counterbalance the
French king’s league with the Pope. The alliances formed through the
marriages of his daughters were all strictly alliances made by the
English Crown. The immediate occasion of Matilda’s marriage with Henry
of Saxony was her father’s quarrel with S. Thomas; in another point
of view, this union was only a natural continuation of a policy which
may be traced through the wedding of her grandmother with Henry V. and
that of Gunhild with Henry III. back to the wedding of Æthelstan’s
sister Eadgifu with Charles the Simple. The marriages of Eleanor and
Jane were first planned during the same troubled time; in each case
the definite proposal came from the bridegroom, and came in the shape
of an humble suit to the king of England for his daughter’s hand;
and in the case of all three sisters, the proposal was laid before a
great council of the bishops and barons of England, and only accepted
after formal deliberation upon it with them, as upon a matter which
concerned the interests of England as a state.[926] When Jane went to
be married to the king of Sicily in 1176, the details of her journey
to her new home and of the honours which she received on her arrival
there were recorded in England as matters of national interest and
national pride.[927] When in the following year her sister Eleanor’s
husband, Alfonso of Castille, submitted a quarrel between himself and
his kinsman the king of Navarre to his father-in-law’s arbitration, the
case was heard in an assembly of the English barons and wise men at
Westminster.[928] Henry’s daughters in short were instruments of his
regal, his national, his English policy; for the carrying out of his
Angevin, his family policy, he looked to his sons.

        [926] On the marriages of Matilda and Eleanor see above, pp.
        55, 59, 60, and the references there given; on that of Jane,
        _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 116, 117; Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 94; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 408;
        Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 32.

        [927] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 414, 415, 418; _Gesta
        Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 120, 127, 157, 158, 169–172; Rog.
        Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 95–98; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol.
        i. pp. 263–265.

        [928] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 139–154; Rog. Howden as above,
        pp. 120, 131.

The arrangement by which he endeavoured to make them carry it out is
however not very easy to understand or to account for. He had long
since abandoned his early scheme of devoting himself entirely to
continental politics and making England over to the hands of his eldest
son. That scheme, indeed, had been frustrated in the first instance by
his quarrel with Thomas; although it seemed to have been revived in
1170, it was as a mere temporary expedient to meet a temporary need;
and the revolt of 1173 put an end to it altogether, by proving clearly
to Henry that he must never again venture to delegate his kingly power
and authority to any one, even for a season. But, on the other hand,
it is not easy at once to see why, during the years which followed, he
persistently refused to give to his eldest son as much real, though
subordinate, power on the continent as he was willing to give to the
younger ones--why young Henry was not suffered to govern Anjou and
Normandy as Richard was suffered to govern Aquitaine and Geoffrey to
govern Britanny, so soon as they were old enough, under the control
of their father as overlord. So far as we can venture to guess at the
king’s motives, the most probable reason seems to be that he could
not part with any share of authority over his ancestral dominions
without parting at the same time with his ancestral dignities. From a
strictly Angevin or Cenomannian point of view, Aquitaine and Britanny
were both simply appendages, diversely acquired, to the hereditary
Angevin and Cenomannian dominions. Nay, from a strictly Norman point
of view, England itself was but an addition to the heritage of the
Norman ducal house. Henry might make over all these to his sons as
under-fiefs to govern in subjection to him, and yet retain intact his
position as head of the sovereign houses of Normandy and Anjou. But to
place his mother’s duchy and his father’s counties in other hands--to
reduce them to the rank of under-fiefs, keeping for himself no closer
connexion with them than a mere general overlordship--would have
been, in principle, to renounce his birthright; while in practice, it
would probably have been equivalent to complete abdication, as far as
his continental empire was concerned. Henry would have had as little
chance of enforcing his claim to overlordship without a territorial
basis on which to rest it, as a German Emperor without his hereditary
duchy of Saxony or Franconia or Suabia, or a French king without his
royal domain. In short, when Henry found it impossible to give England
to his eldest son, he had nothing else to give him, unless he gave
him all; and Henry Fitz-Empress was no more inclined than William the
Conqueror had been to “take off his clothes before he was ready to
go to bed.” All his schemes for the distribution of his territories,
therefore, from 1175 onwards, were intended solely to insure a fair
partition among his sons after his own death; his general aim being
that young Henry should step into exactly his own position as king of
England, duke of Normandy and count of Anjou, and overlord of Britanny,
Aquitaine, and all other dependencies of the Angevin and Norman
coronets or of the English crown.

None of the holders of these dependencies, however, had as yet entered
into full enjoyment of their possessions. At the close of their first
revolt, in 1175, the young king was but just entering his twentieth
year; Richard was in his eighteenth and Geoffrey in his seventeenth
year; and although the one had been titular duke of Aquitaine and the
other titular duke of Britanny since 1169, the real government of
both duchies, as well as that of Normandy and Anjou, had been until
now in the hands of their father. For the purposes of our story there
is only one part of these continental possessions of our Angevin
king into whose internal concerns we need enter at any great length;
a very slight sketch may suffice for the others. The part which lay
nearest to England, and which politically was most closely connected
with it--the duchy of Normandy--was also associated with it in many of
Henry’s legal, constitutional and administrative reforms. A comparison
of dates indeed would almost suggest that Henry, when contemplating
a great legal or administrative experiment in England, usually tried
it first in Normandy in order to test its working there upon a small
scale before he ventured on applying it to his island realm. An edict
issued at Falaise in the Christmas-tide of 1159–1160, ordaining “that
no dean should accuse any man without the evidence of neighbours who
bore a good character, and that in the treatment of all causes, the
magistrates of the several districts at their monthly courts should
determine nothing without the witness of the neighbours, should do
injustice to no man and inflict nothing to the prejudice of any, should
maintain the peace, and should punish all robbers summarily,”[929]
seems to contain a foreshadowing at once of some of the Constitutions
of Clarendon which created such excitement in England four years
afterwards, and of the Assize which followed two years later still. A
commission of inquiry into the administration of the Norman episcopal
sees and viscounties in 1162[930] was a sort of forerunner of the
great inquest into the conduct of the English sheriffs in 1170. This
again was followed next year, as we have seen, by an inquiry into the
state of the ducal forests and demesnes,[931] which has its English
parallels in the great forest assize of 1176 and in an inquest into the
condition of the royal demesnes ordered in the spring of 1177.[932]
On the other hand, a roll of the Norman tenants-in-chivalry compiled
in 1172 seems to have been modelled upon the English “Black Book” of
1168;[933] and when Henry determined to institute a thorough reform in
the whole Norman administration, it was at the English exchequer-table
that he found his instrument for the work. In 1176 William de Courcy,
the seneschal of Normandy, died. In his stead the king appointed
Richard of Ilchester. Richard, to judge by his surname, must have
been an Englishman by birth; from the second year of Henry’s reign
he was employed as a “writer” in the royal treasury;[934] about 1163
he was made archdeacon of Poitiers, but his archidiaconal functions
sat as lightly upon him as upon a contemporary whose name is often
associated with his, Geoffrey Ridel, archdeacon of Canterbury and
vice-chancellor; and throughout the struggle with Archbishop Thomas he
was one of the most active agents of Henry’s foreign diplomacy.[935]
Unlike his colleagues Geoffrey Ridel and John of Oxford, he contrived,
notwithstanding the ecclesiastical disgrace in which he became
involved through his dealings with the schismatic Emperor and the
antipope, to retain the general respect of all parties among his
fellow-countrymen.[936] Throughout the same period, when not absent
from England on some diplomatic mission, he frequently appears as an
acting justice of the King’s Court and baron of the Exchequer.[937]
He continued to fulfil the same duties after his elevation to the
see of Winchester in 1174; and the estimation in which he was held
is shewn by the fact that on his return from Normandy, where he was
replaced at the end of two years by William Fitz-Ralf,[938] a special
seat was assigned to him at the exchequer-table between the presiding
justiciar and the treasurer, “that he might diligently examine what
was written on the roll.”[939] He was evidently invested with far
more authority in Normandy than that which usually appertained to a
Norman seneschal--authority, in fact, more like that of an English
justiciar; indeed, he is actually called justiciar, and not seneschal,
by contemporary English writers.[940] His work in the duchy seems to
have been moreover specially connected with finance;[941] and we may
perhaps venture to see a trace of his hand in the organization of
the Norman Court of Exchequer, which first comes distinctly to light
in Henry’s latter years, its earliest extant roll being that of the
year 1180.[942] The earlier stages of the legal and administrative
organization of Normandy are, however, so lost in obscurity that
neither constitutional lawyers in Henry’s day nor constitutional
historians in our own have been able to determine the exact historical
relation of the Norman system to that of England;[943] and the
speedy severance of the political connexion between them makes the
determination of the question, after all, of little practical moment.

        [929] Contin. Becc. (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. p. 180).
        Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 459, 460.

        [930] Rob. Torigni, a. 1162.

        [931] Rob. Torigni, a. 1171. See above, p. 128.

        [932] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 138.

        [933] See above, p. 125.

        [934] Pipe Roll 2 Hen. II., pp. 30, 31; 4 Hen. II., pp. 121,
        122 (Hunter); 5 Hen. II., p. 20; 6 Hen. II., p. 57; 7 Hen. II.,
        p. 48; 8 Hen. II., p. 21 (Pipe Roll Soc.)

        [935] See the Becket correspondence, _passim_.

        [936] Except, of course, the immediate personal friends of the
        archbishop, to whom he seems to have been even more obnoxious
        than the “_archidiabolus_” Geoffrey Ridel--that is, supposing
        Mr. Eyton to be right in his theory that Richard of Ilchester
        is the person designated in the private letters of Thomas
        and his friends as “Luscus.” Canon Robertson, however, took
        “Luscus” to mean Richard de Lucy; but the other interpretation
        seems on the whole more probable.

        [937] Madox, _Formulare Anglic._, p. xix (a. 1165). Eyton,
        _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 130 (a. 1168, 1169). He was one of two
        custodians of the temporalities of the see of Lincoln during
        the vacancy caused by Bishop Robert’s death in 1167; _ib._ p.
        99, note 5, from Pipe Roll 12 Hen. II.

        [938] See Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 100, and the
        editor’s note 3.

        [939] _Dialog. de Scacc._, Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 178;
        cf. _ib._ p. 184.

        [940] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 124. “Curiâ sibi totius
        Normanniæ deputatâ” says R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 415.

        [941] R. Diceto as above.

        [942] Edited by Mr. Stapleton for the Society of
        Antiquaries--_Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniæ_, vol. i.

        [943] _Dial. de Scacc._ as above, p. 176. Stubbs, _Constit.
        Hist._, vol. i. p. 438.

Even more obscure than the internal history of Normandy under Henry
II. is that of Anjou and of the two dependencies which may now be
reckoned as one with it, Touraine and Maine. There is in his time
throughout the whole of his dominions, with the marked exception of
England, a dearth of historical records. Normandy cannot boast of a
single historian such as those of the preceding generation, Orderic or
William of Jumièges; the only Norman chronicle of any importance is
that of Robert of Torigny, commonly known as “Robert _de Monte_,” from
the Mont-St.-Michel of which he was abbot; and even his work is nothing
more than a tolerably full and accurate chronicle of the old-fashioned
type, arranged on the annalistic plan “according to the years of our
Lord” which William of Malmesbury had condemned long ago. The Breton
chronicles, always meagre, grow more meagre still as the years pass
on; the same may be said of the chronicles of Tours; the “Acts of the
bishops of Le Mans,” our sole native authority for the history of
Maine, cease to record anything save purely ecclesiastical details. In
Anjou itself the recent aggrandizement of the Angevin house stirred up
in Henry’s early years a spirit of patriotic loyalty which led more
than one of his subjects to collect the floating popular traditions of
his race, as the ballads and tales of old England had been collected
by Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury, and weave them into
a narrative which passed for a history of the Angevin counts; and one
of these writers supplemented his work with a special memoir of Henry’s
father, Geoffrey duke of the Normans. But the reign of Henry himself
found no historian in the Marchland; and indeed the half-blank pages
of the few monastic chronicles which still dragged out a lingering
existence in one or two of the great Angevin abbeys shew us that under
Count Henry Fitz-Empress Anjou was once more, as of old under Count
Fulk the Good, happy in having no history.

Yet it is there, and there alone, that we can catch a glimpse of one
side of his character which, if we saw him only in England or in
Normandy, we should hardly have discerned at all. Strange as it seems
to us who know him in his northern realms only as the enterprising and
somewhat unscrupulous politician, the stern and vigorous ruler, the
hard-headed statesman, the uncompromising opponent of the Church’s
claims, Henry is yet the one Angevin count who completely reproduced
in his Marchland, as a living reality, the ideal which was represented
there by the name of the good count-canon of Tours. Fulk the Black and
Fulk the Fifth had both tried to reproduce it, each according to his
lights, during those few years when the pressure of external politics
and warfare left them free to devote their energies for a while to
their country’s internal welfare. But Henry’s whole reign was, for his
paternal dominions, a reign of peace. If we drew our ideas of him
solely from the traces and traditions which he has left behind him
there, we could never have guessed that he was a greater warrior than
Fulk Nerra; we should rather have taken him for a quiet prince who,
like Fulk the Good, “waged no wars.” These traces and traditions lie
scattered over the soil of Anjou, Touraine and Maine as thickly as the
traces and the traditions of the Black Count himself. Henry is in fact
the only one of the later Angevin counts who made upon the imagination
of his people an impression even approaching in vividness to that
left by Fulk the Black, and of whose material works there remains
anything which can be compared with those of the “great builder” of the
preceding century. But the memory which Anjou has retained of Henry
differs much in character from that which she has kept of Fulk; and
it differs more widely still from that which Henry himself has left
in his island-realm. In English popular tradition he appears simply
as the hero of a foolish and discreditable romance, or as the man
who first caused the murder of S. Thomas and then did penance at his
grave; and material traces of him there are literally none, for of his
English dwelling-places not one stone is left upon another, and not a
single surviving monument of public utility, secular or ecclesiastical,
is connected with his name. In the valley of the Loire it was far
otherwise. There the two great Angevin builders share between them the
credit of well-nigh all the more important monuments which give life to
the medieval history of the land--except the military constructions,
which belong to Fulk alone. It is not in donjons such as that of Loches
or Montrichard, but in palaces and hospitals, bridges and embankments,
that we see our Angevin king’s handiwork in his own home-lands. Almost
every one of his many local capitals was adorned during his reign with
a palace of regal dimensions and magnificence, reared by him in place
of the lowlier “halls” which had served for the dwelling of the merely
local rulers whom he succeeded. The rebuilding of the ducal palace
at Rouen was begun in 1161;[944] that of Caen was nearly finished
in 1180; its hall, which still exists, is the traditional seat of
the Norman Exchequer.[945] At Tours a round tower which still stands
in the barrack-yard is the sole surviving fragment of a castle which
Henry is said to have built. His favourite abode in Touraine, however,
was not at Tours but at Chinon, where the little fortress above the
Vienne which had been the last conquest of Fulk Nerra and the lifelong
prison of Geoffrey the Bearded grew under Henry’s hands into a royal
retreat of exquisite beauty and splendour--a gem, even now in its ruin,
worthy of its setting in the lovely valley of the Vienne, with the
background of good greenwood which to Henry was probably its greatest
charm. Angers, again, almost put on a new face in the course of Henry’s
lifetime. In the year before his birth it had been visited by a fire
which reduced to almost total ruin its whole south-western quarter,
including the palace of the counts,[946] of which nothing but the
great hall seems to have remained. The work of reconstruction, begun
no doubt by Geoffrey Plantagenet, was completed on a regal scale by
his son, and before the close of Henry’s reign a visitor from England,
Ralf de Diceto, could gaze in admiration at the “vast palace,” with
its “newly-built apartments, adorned with splendour befitting a king,”
which rose at the foot of the vine-clad hills above the purple stream
of Mayenne.[947]

        [944] Rob. Torigni, a. 1161.

        [945] _Mag. Rot. Scacc. Norm._ (Stapleton), vol. i. p. 56.
        _Ib._ Observ. pp. xxvii–xxviii.

        [946] Chron. S. Serg. a. 1132 (Marchegay, _Eglises d’Anjou_, p.
        144).

        [947] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 292 (_Hist. Com. Andeg._,
        Marchegay, _Comtes d’Anjou_, p. 337).

But the count-king did not build for himself alone. It was, above
all, with works of public usefulness that he delighted to adorn his
realms. His beneficence indeed took a different shape from that of
his predecessors. Church-building and abbey-founding met with little
sympathy from him; throughout his whole dominions, only six religious
houses, in the strict sense, could claim him as their founder; and
even one of these was as much military as religious, for it was a
commandery of knights Templars.[948] But no sovereign was ever more
munificent in providing for the sick and needy. Not only do the Norman
Exchequer-rolls contain frequent mention of sums set apart out of the
ducal revenues for the support of lazar-houses and hospitals in the
chief towns of the several bailiwicks;[949] nineteen years before the
completion of his own palace at Caen, he had founded an hospital for
lepers outside the walls of the town;[950] and a park and hunting-lodge
which he had made for himself in the same year, 1161, at Quévilly by
Rouen[951] were shortly afterwards given up by him to a colony of
monks from Grandmont in Aquitaine, to be converted under their care
into another great asylum for victims of the same disease.[952] At
his own native Le Mans, the great hall of an almshouse or hospital
outside the north-eastern boundary of the city, said to have been
reared by him for the reception of its poor and sick folk, is still
to be seen, though long since perverted to other uses. At Angers,
on the other hand, it is only within the last half-century that the
sick and disabled poor have exchanged for a more modern dwelling the
shelter provided for them by Henry Fitz-Empress. Some time in the quiet
years which followed the barons’ revolt, Stephen,[953] the seneschal
of Anjou, bought of the abbess and convent of our Lady of Charity at
Angers a plot of ground which lay between their abbey and the river,
and on which he designed to build an hospice for the poor. In the
last days of 1180 or the first days of 1181 the count-king took under
his own care the work which his seneschal had begun, granted to the
new hospital a rich endowment in lands and revenues, exempted it from
secular charges and imposts, and won from Pope Alexander a confirmation
of its spiritual independence.[954] Four priests were appointed to
minister to the spiritual needs of its inmates; the care of their
bodies was undertaken at first, it seems, by some pious laymen bound
by no special rule; some years later, however, the hospital became,
like most other establishments of the kind, affiliated to the Order of
S. Augustine.[955] The pretty little chapel--dedicated to S. John the
Baptist, and still standing,--the cloisters and the domestic offices
were all finished before Henry’s death;[956] while of the two great
pillared halls which now form the chief architectural glory of the
suburb, one, the smaller and simpler, is clearly of his building;
and the other, more vast and beautiful, is in all probability the
last legacy of his sons to the home which was soon to be theirs no
longer.[957]

        [948] Founded in 1173, at Vaubourg in the forest of Roumare--an
        old hunting-seat of his Norman grandfather; Stapleton, _Mag.
        Rot. Scacc. Norm._, vol. i., Observ., p. cxli. Of the other
        houses, three were Austin priories: S. Laurence at Beauvoir
        in the forest of Lions, founded while Henry was still only
        duke of Normandy (_ib._ p. cxiv); Newstead, in Sherwood
        Forest, founded before 1174 (its foundation-charter, dated at
        Clarendon, has no mention of day or year, but is witnessed
        by “Geoffrey archdeacon of Canterbury,” who in 1174 became a
        bishop; Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. vi. pt. i. p. 474); and
        the priory “B. Mariæ Mellinensis,” near La Flèche, founded in
        1180 (_Gall. Christ._, vol. xiv. col. 600. I cannot identify
        this place). The other two were Carthusian houses, Witham
        in the forest of Selwood and Le Liget in that of Loches,
        founded respectively in 1174 and 1175. (The date of Le Liget
        is traditional; I cannot find any mention of the place in
        _Gall. Christ._) Of all these, Witham is the only one of any
        consequence; and the importance of even Witham lies chiefly in
        its connexion with S. Hugh. (For its history see _Magna Vita
        S. Hugonis_, Dimock, pp. 52 _et seq._) The insignificance of
        the others is shewn by Gerald’s account of Henry’s religious
        foundations, in _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 7 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., pp. 27, 28)--an account, however, which is by
        no means fair. Henry on his absolution for S. Thomas’s death,
        in 1172, promised to go on a crusade of three years’ duration
        (Rog. Howden, Stubbs, vol. ii. p. 37); this undertaking he was
        afterwards allowed to exchange for a promise that he would
        build three religious houses in his dominions. According to
        Gerald, he managed one of these by turning the nuns out of
        Amesbury and putting a colony from Fontevraud in their place
        (see _Gesta Hen._, Stubbs, vol. i. pp. 134–136, 165), and
        another by turning the secular canons out of Waltham and
        putting regulars in their place (_ib._ pp. 134, 135, 173, 174,
        316, 317. Both these transactions took place in 1177.) “Tertium
        vero,” says Gerald (as above) “vel nullum, vel simile prioribus
        sibique prorsus inutile fecit; nisi forte domum conventualem
        ordinis Cartusiensis de Witham, s. modicis sumptibus et exilem,
        ad hoc fecisse dicatur.” No doubt Witham was one of the three.
        But the other two are easily found; they were Newstead and
        Vaubourg or Le Liget. R. Niger (Anstruther, p. 168) is as
        unjust to Henry in this matter as Gerald; but so he is on most
        others also.

        [949] See Stapleton, _Mag. Rot. Scacc. Norm._, vol. i.,
        Observ., pp. lix., lxi., lxvii.

        [950] _Ib._ p. ci. Rob. Torigni, a. 1161.

        [951] Rob. Torigni, a. 1161.

        [952] See Stapleton as above, pp. cxlvi–cxlvii.

        [953] Of Marçay--or Matha--or Turnham; authorities differ so
        much as to his identity that I dare not venture upon adopting
        either surname.

        [954] C. Port, _Cartulaire de l’Hopital St. Jean d’Angers_, pp.
        2–10, ii–vi.

        [955] _Ib._ pp. 11–13.

        [956] _Ib._ p. xiv.

        [957] On the hospital-buildings see an article by M. D’Espinay
        in _Revue de l’Anjou_, vol. xii. (1874), pp. 264–273.

This Hospice of S. John formed a third with Fulk Nerra’s abbey of S.
Nicolas and Hildegard’s nunnery of our Lady of Charity in the group of
pious and charitable foundations round which there gathered, on the
meadows that bordered the right bank of the Mayenne, the suburb now
known as Ronceray or La Doutre,--a suburb which even before the close
of Henry’s reign had grown almost as populous as Angers itself, and
was actually preferred to it as a residence by Ralf de Diceto.[958]
Twice in Henry’s reign the bridge which linked it to the city was
destroyed by fire;[959] the present “Grand-Pont” probably owes its
erection to him. Fire was, however, by no means the most destructive
element in the valleys of the Loire and its tributaries. “Well-nigh
disappearing in summer, choked within their sandy beds,” these streams
were all too apt, as Ralf de Diceto says of the Mayenne, to “rage and
swell in winter like the sea;”[960] and the greatest and most lasting
of all Henry’s material benefactions to Anjou was the embankment or
“_Levée_”--a work which he seems characteristically to have planned and
executed in the very midst of his struggle with the Church[961]--which
stretches along Loire-side, from Ponts-de-Cé, just above the junction
of the Mayenne and the Loire, some thirty miles eastward to Bourgueil.
Further south, in the valley of the Vienne, the legend of the “Pont de
l’Annonain” illustrates the curious but not altogether unaccountable
confusion which grew up in popular imagination between the two great
builders of Anjou. The “bridge,” a long viaduct which stretched from
Chinon across river and meadow south-westward to the village of
Rivière, was in reality built by Henry to secure a safe transit from
Chinon into Poitou across the low ground on the south bank of the
Vienne, which in rainy seasons was an all but impassable swamp. Later
ages, however, connected it with a dim tradition, which still lingered
in the district, of the wonderful night-ride across Loire and Vienne
whereby Fulk Nerra had won Saumur, and in the belief of the peasantry
the Pont de l’Annonain became a “devil’s bridge,” built in a single
night by the Black Count’s familiar demon[962]--a demon who is but
a popular personification of that spirit of dauntless enterprise
and ceaseless activity which, alike in their material and in their
political workmanship, was the secret of Henry’s success no less than
of Fulk’s.

        [958] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 292 (_Hist. Com. Andeg._,
        Marchegay, _Comtes d’Anjou_, p. 337).

        [959] In 1167 and 1177. Chron. S. Serg. a. 1167 and 1177,
        Chron. S. Albin. a. 1177 (Marchegay, _Eglises d’Anjou_, pp.
        149, 151, 44).

        [960] R. Diceto as above.

        [961] It was certainly made before 1169; see Rob. Torigni _ad
        ann._

        [962] See Salies, _Foulques-Nerra_, note civ., pp. 429, 430.

One portion, however, of Henry’s continental dominions has during
these years a political and military history of its own, which is not
without a bearing upon that of our own land. Geographically remote
as it was from England, still more remote in the character of both
country and people, Aquitaine yet concerns us more than any other part
of Henry’s Gaulish possessions. For not only was it a chief source of
the political complications which filled the closing years of his life;
it was the only one of those possessions whose connexion with England
survived the fall of the Angevin house. The heritages of Geoffrey and
Matilda were lost by their grandson; the heritage of Eleanor remained,
in part at least, in the hands of her descendants for more than two
hundred years.

It was in truth a dower at once valuable and burdensome that Henry
had received with his Aquitanian wife. She had made him master
of a territory whose extent surpassed that of all his Norman and
Angevin dominions put together, and was scarcely equalled by that of
England--a territory containing every variety of soil and of natural
characteristics, from the flat, rich pastures of Berry and the
vineyards of Poitou and Saintonge to the rugged volcanic rocks and
dark chestnut-woods of Auvergne, the salt marshes, sandy dunes, barren
heaths and gloomy pine-forests of the Gascon coast, and the fertile
valleys which open between the feet of the Pyrenees:--a territory whose
population differed in blood and speech from their fellow-subjects
north of Loire almost as widely as Normans and Angevins differed
from Englishmen; while in temper and modes of thought and life they
stood so apart from the northern world that in contradistinction to
them Angevins and Normans and English might almost be counted, and
indeed were almost ready to count themselves, as one people. It
was a territory, too, whose political relations varied as much as
its physical character, and were full of dangers which all Henry’s
vigilance and wisdom were powerless to guard against or overcome.
Setting aside, for the moment, the internal difficulties of Aquitaine,
its whole eastern frontier, from the banks of the Cher to the Pyrenees,
was more or less in dispute throughout his reign. The question of
Toulouse, indeed, was settled in 1173; thenceforth the county of
Toulouse, with its northern dependencies Rouergue and Alby, became a
recognized underfief of the Poitevin duchy of Aquitaine, to which its
western dependency, Quercy or the county of Cahors, had been already
annexed after the war of 1160. The north-eastern portions of the older
Aquitania, Berry and Auvergne, were sources of more lasting trouble.
Berry had long ago been split into two unequal portions, of which
the larger had remained subject to the dukes of Aquitaine, while the
smaller northern division formed the viscounty of Bourges, and was an
immediate fief of the French Crown. Naturally, the king was disposed
to use every opportunity of thwarting the duke in the exercise of
his authority over southern Berry; and Henry was equally desirous to
lose no chance of re-asserting his ducal rights over Bourges.[963]
The feudal position of Auvergne was a standing puzzle which king and
duke, count, clergy and people, all in vain endeavoured to solve.
During the struggle for supremacy in southern Gaul between the houses
of Poitiers and Toulouse, Auvergne, after fluctuating for nearly a
hundred years between the rival dukedoms, had virtually succeeded in
freeing itself from the control of both, and in the reign of Louis
VI. it seems to have been regarded as an immediate fief of the French
Crown, to which however it proved a most unruly and troublesome
possession. But the dukes of Aquitaine had never relinquished their
claim to its overlordship; and when a quarrel broke out between two
rival claimants of the county, it was naturally followed by a quarrel
between Henry and Louis VII. as to their respective rights, as overlord
and as lord paramount, to act as arbiters in the strife.[964] During
five-and-twenty years it was a favourite device of Louis and of his
successor, at every adverse crisis in Henry’s fortune, to despatch
a body of troops into Auvergne to occupy that country and threaten
Aquitaine through its eastern marches,[965] just as they habitually
threatened Normandy through the marches of the Vexin.

        [963] His first attempt to do so was made in 1170, when a
        pretext was given him by the declaration said--whether truly
        or falsely--to have been made by the dying archbishop Peter of
        Bourges, that his see belonged of right to Aquitaine. Nothing,
        however, came of the attempt. See _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol.
        i. pp. 10, 11.

        [964] See Rob. Torigni, a. 1167.

        [965] _E.g._ in 1164 (Ep. lx., Robertson. _Becket_, vol. v.
        p. 115), 1167 (above, p. 58; Rob. Torigni _ad ann._), 1170
        (Will. Fitz-Steph., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii. p. 116; Ep.
        dccxxii., _ib._ vol. vii. p. 400), and again in 1188.

Such a threat implied a far more serious danger in the south than
in the north. The Aquitanian border was guarded by no such chain of
strongly-fortified, stoutly-manned ducal castles as girt in the Norman
duchy from Gisors to Tillières; and Henry’s hold over his wife’s
dominions was very different from his grasp of the heritage of his
mother. Twenty years of Angevin rule, which for political purposes
had well-nigh bridged over the channel that parted England from Gaul,
seem to have done nothing towards bridging over the gulf that parted
Aquitaine from France and Anjou. If our Angevin king sometimes looks
like a stranger amongst us, he was never anything but a stranger
among the fellow-countrymen of his wife. Nowhere throughout his whole
dominions was a spirit of revolt and insubordination so rife as among
the nobles of Poitou and its dependencies; but it was a spirit utterly
unlike the feudal pride of the Norman baronage. The endless strife
of the Aquitanian nobles with their foreign duke and with each other
sprang less from political motives than from a love of strife for its
own sake; and their love of strife was only one phase of the passion
for adventure and excitement which ran through every fibre of their
nature and coloured every aspect of their social life. The men of
the south lived in a world where the most delicate poetry and the
fiercest savagery, the wildest moral and political disorder, and the
most refined intellectual culture, mingled together in a confusion as
picturesque as it was dangerous. The southern warrior was but half
a knight if the sword was his only weapon--if he could not sing his
battles as well as fight them. From raid and foray and siege he passed
to the “Court of Love,” where the fairest and noblest women of the
land, from the duchess herself downwards, presided over contests of
subtle wit, skilful rime and melodious song, conducted under rules
as stringent and with earnestness as deep as if life and death were
at stake upon the issue; and in truth they sometimes were at stake,
for song, love and war all mingled together in the troubadour’s
life in an inextricable coil which the less subtle intellects of
the north would have been powerless to unravel or comprehend. The
_sirvente_ or poetical satire with which he stung his enemies into
fury or roused the slumbering valour of his friends often wrought more
deadly mischief than sharp steel or blazing firebrand. The nature of
the men of the south was like that of their country: it was made up
of the most opposite characteristics--of the lightest fancies, the
stormiest passions, the most versatile capabilities of body and mind,
the most indolent love of ease and pleasure, the most restless and
daring valour, the highest intellectual refinement and the lowest
moral degradation. It was a nature which revolted instinctively from
constraint in any direction,--whose impetuosity burst all control of
law and order imposed from without upon its restless love of action and
adventure, just as it overflowed all conventional bounds of thought and
language with its exuberant play of feeling and imagination in speech
or song.[966] We may see a type of it in the portrait, drawn by almost
contemporary hands, of one who played an important part both in the
social and in the political history of Aquitaine throughout the closing
years of Henry II. and the reign of his successor. “Bertrand de Born
was of the Limousin, lord of a castle in the diocese of Périgueux, by
name Hautefort. He had at his command near a thousand men. And all his
time he was at war with all his neighbours, with the count of Périgord,
and the viscount of Limoges, and with his own brother Constantine--whom
he would have liked to disinherit, had it not been for the king of
England--and with Richard, while he was count of Poitou. He was a
good knight, and a good warrior, and a good servant of ladies, and a
good troubadour of _sirventes_; he never made but two songs, and the
king of Aragon assigned the songs of Guiraut de Borneil as wives to
his _sirventes_; and the man who sang them for him was named Papiol.
And he was a pleasant, courteous man, wise and well-spoken, and knew
how to deal with good and evil. And whenever he chose, he was master
of King Henry and his sons; but he always wanted them to be at war
among themselves, the father and the sons and the brothers one with
another; and he always wanted the king of France and King Henry to
be at war too. And if they made peace or a truce, he immediately set
to work to unmake it with his _sirventes_, and to shew how they were
all dishonoured in peace. And he gained much good by it, and much
harm.”[967]

        [966] As John of Salisbury says--“auctor ad opus suum”:--

        “De Pictavorum dices te gente creatum,
         Nam licet his linguâ liberiore loqui.”

            (_Enthet. ad Polycrat._, Giles, vol. iii. p. i.)


        [967] From the two old Provençal sketches of the life of
        Bertrand de Born, printed and translated into French by M. Léon
        Clédat in his monograph _Du rôle historique de Bertrand de
        Born_, pp. 99–101.

Until the dukedom of Aquitaine passed to a woman, as were the vassals,
so was their sovereign. Eleanor’s grandfather the crusader-duke William
VIII. and her father William IX. were simply the boldest knights, the
gayest troubadours and the most reckless adventurers in their duchy.
There can be no doubt that the submission of Aquitaine to Louis VII.,
so far as it ever did submit to him, was due to Eleanor’s influence;
and it was the same influence which chiefly contributed to preserve its
obedience to her second husband during those earlier years of their
married life when, at home and abroad, all things had seemed destined
to prosper in his hands. But at the first symptom of a turn in the
tide of his fortunes, southern Gaul at one rose against its northern
master. Eleanor’s tact and firmness, Henry’s wariness and vigour, were
all taxed to the uttermost in holding it down throughout the years of
his struggle with the Church; and when Eleanor herself turned against
him in 1173, the chances of a good understanding between her subjects
and her husband became very nearly desperate. Henry himself seems to
have long ago perceived that a duke of Aquitaine, to be thoroughly
sure of his ground, needed a different apprenticeship from that which
might befit a king of England, a duke of Normandy or Britanny, or a
count of Anjou. The very first step in his plans for the future of
his children--a step taken several years before he seems even to have
thought of crowning his eldest son--was the designation of the second
as his mother’s destined colleague and ultimate heir. Richard had been
trained up ever since he was two years old specially for the office of
duke of Aquitaine. After long diplomacy, and at the cost of a betrothal
which became the source of endless mischief and trouble, the French
king’s sanction to the arrangement had been won; and on Trinity-Sunday
1172 Richard, in his mother’s presence, had been formally enthroned
at Poitiers. He was probably intended to govern the duchy under her
direction and advice; if so, however, the plan was frustrated by
Eleanor’s own conduct and by the suspicions which it aroused in her
husband. She was one of the very few captives whom at the restoration
of peace in 1175 he still retained in confinement. Richard, on the
other hand, had been like his brothers fully and freely forgiven; and
while his father and eldest brother went to seal their reconciliation
in England, he was sent into Poitou charged with authority to employ
its forces at his own discretion, and to take upon himself the
suppression of all disturbance and disorder in Aquitaine.[968]

        [968] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 81.

What had been the precise nature of Richard’s training for his
appointed work--what proportion of his seventeen years’ life had
been actually spent in Aquitaine, what opportunities he had had
of growing familiar with the people over whom he was now set to
rule--we have no means of determining. By his own natural temper,
however, he was probably of all Eleanor’s sons the one least fitted
to gain the goodwill of the south. The “Cœur-de-lion” of tradition,
indeed--the adventurous crusader, the mirror of knightly prowess and
knightly courtesy, the lavish patron of verse and song, the ideal
king of troubadours and knights-errant--looks at first glance like
the very incarnation of the spirit of the south. But it was only in
the intellectual part of his nature that his southern blood made
itself felt; the real groundwork of his character was made of sterner
stuff. The love of splendour and elegance, the delight in poetry and
music,[969] the lavish generosity, the passion for adventure, which
contrasted so vividly with his father’s practical businesslike temper,
came to him without doubt from his mother. The moral deficiencies
and evil tendencies of his nature he himself charged, somewhat too
exclusively, upon the demon-blood of the Angevin counts.[970] But we
need not look either to an ancestress so shadowy and so remote as the
demon-countess, nor to a land so far distant from us as Poitou, for
the source of Richard’s strongest characteristics both of body and
of mind. In him alone among Henry’s sons can we see a likeness to
the Norman forefathers of the Empress Matilda. His outward aspect,
his lofty stature, his gigantic strength--held in check though it
was by the constantly-recurring ague which “kept him, fearless, in a
tremor as continual as the tremor of fear in which he kept the rest
of the world”[971]--his blue eyes and golden hair, all proclaimed him
a child of the north. And although he spent the chief part of his
life elsewhere, the slender share of local and national sympathies
which he possessed seems to have lain in the same direction. The
“lion-heart” chose its own last earthly resting-place at Rouen, not
at Poitiers;[972] and the intimate friend and comrade whose name is
inseparably associated with his by a tradition which, whatever its
historical value, is as famous as it is beautiful, was no Poitevin
or Provençal troubadour, but a trouvère from northern France.[973]
The influence of his northman-blood shewed itself more vividly still
when on his voyage to Palestine, having lived to be more than
thirty years old without possessing a skiff that he could call his
own, or--unless indeed in early childhood he had gone a cruise round
his father’s island-realm--ever making a longer or more adventurous
voyage than that from Southampton to Barfleur or Wissant, he suddenly
developed not only a passionate love of the sea, but a consummate
seamanship which he certainly had had no opportunity of acquiring in
any way, and which can only have been born in him, as an inheritance
from his wiking forefathers. When scarcely more than a boy in years,
Richard was already one of the most serious and determined of men.
His sternness to those who “withstood his will” matched that of the
Conqueror himself; and Richard’s will, even at the age of seventeen,
was no mere caprice, but a fixed determination which overrode all
obstacles between itself and its object as unhesitatingly as the old
wiking-keels overrode the billows of the northern sea. He went down
into Aquitaine fully resolved that the country should be at once, and
once for all, reduced to submission and order. He set himself “to bring
the shapeless into shape, to reduce the irregular to rule, to cast
down the things that were mighty and level those that were rugged; to
restore the dukedom of Aquitaine to its ancient boundaries and its
ancient government.”[974] He did the work with all his might, but he
did it with a straightforward ruthlessness untempered by southern
craft or Angevin caution and tact. He would not conciliate; he could
not wait. “He thought nothing done while anything still remained to
do; and he cared for no success that was not reached by a path cut
by his own sword and stained with his opponent’s blood. Boiling over
with zeal for order and justice, he sought to quell the audacity of
this ungovernable people and to secure the safety of the innocent amid
these workers of mischief by at once proceeding against the evil-doers
with the utmost rigour which his ducal authority could enable him to
exercise upon them.”[975] In a word, before Richard had been six months
in their midst, the Aquitanians discovered that if their Angevin duke
had chastised them with whips, the son of their own duchess was minded
to chastise them with scorpions.

        [969] See R. Coggeshall’s description of Richard’s love of
        church music: “clericos sonorâ voce modulantes donis et
        precibus ad cantandum festivius instimulabat, atque per chorum
        huc illucque deambulando, voce ac manu ut altius concreparent
        excitabat.” R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 97.

        [970] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 27 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 154).

        [971] _Ib._ c. 8 (p. 105).

        [972] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 84.

        [973] That is, if the Blondel of tradition is to be identified
        with Blondel of Nesle.

        [974] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 104).

        [975] _Ibid._ (p. 105).

He set off at once upon a furious campaign against the strongholds of
the unruly barons. “No mountain-side however steep and rugged, no tower
however lofty and impregnable, availed to check his advance, as skilful
as it was daring, as steady and persevering as it was impetuous.”[976]
By midsummer the castles of Poitou itself were mostly in his hands, and
the young conqueror was busy with the siege of Castillonnes-sur-Agen,
which surrendered to him in the middle of August.[977] Before the
winter was over he was master of Périgueux, and had, in the phrase of
a local writer, well-nigh “disinherited” the barons of Périgord, the
Quercy and the Limousin. But in the spring their smouldering resentment
was kindled into a blaze by the incitements of Bertrand de Born, whose
brother Constantine, expelled by him from the castle of Hautefort which
the two brothers had inherited in common, had appealed to Richard
for succour; the signal for revolt, given by Bertrand in a vigorous
_sirvente_, was answered by all the malcontents of the district,[978]
and at the opposite end of Poitou by the count of Angoulême; and at
Easter Richard found his position so difficult that he went to seek
advice and reinforcements from his father in England.[979] Geoffrey
of Britanny arrived at the same time on a like errand. Henry bade
his eldest son go to the help of the younger ones; the young king
complied,[980] somewhat unwillingly, and went to collect forces in
France while Richard hurried back into Poitou. The peril was urgent; in
his absence Count Vulgrin of Angoulême had invaded Poitou at the head
of a host of Brabantines. The invaders were however met and defeated
with great slaughter at Barbezieux by Richard’s constable Theobald
Chabot and Bishop John of Poitiers.[981] By Whitsuntide Richard had
gathered a sufficient force of loyal Poitevins and stipendiaries from
the neighbouring lands to march against Vulgrin and his Brabantines
and defeat them in a battle near the border of the Angoumois and
Saintonge. He then turned upon the viscount of Limoges, besieged
and took his castle of Aixe, and thence advanced to Limoges itself,
which he captured in like manner. At midsummer he was rejoined at
Poitiers by his elder brother, and the two led their combined forces
against Vulgrin of Angoulême.[982] A fortnight’s siege had however
scarcely made them masters of Châteauneuf on the Charente when the
young king--seduced, it was said, by some evil counsellor whom we may
probably suspect to have been Bertrand de Born[983]--suddenly abandoned
the campaign and withdrew again to France. Richard, undaunted by his
brother’s desertion, pushed on to Moulin-Neuf and thence to Angoulême
itself, where all the leaders of the rebellion were gathered together.
A six days’ siege sufficed to make Vulgrin surrender himself, his
fellow-rebels, his city and five of his castles to the mercy of the
duke and the English king. Richard sent over all his prisoners to his
father in England; Henry, however, sent them back again, and Richard
put them in prison to await their sentence till the king should return
to Gaul.[984]

        [976] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 105).

        [977] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 101.

        [978] See Clédat, _Bertrand de Born_, pp. 29, 30.

        [979] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 114, 115.

        [980] _Ib._ p. 115. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 93.

        [981] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 407. He adds: “Sicque
        salus in manu clericorum data satis evidenter ostendit
        plerisque non animos deesse sed arma.”

        [982] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 120, 121.

        [983] See Clédat, _Bertrand de Born_, p. 35.

        [984] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 121.

Northern Aquitaine, or Guyenne, was now for the moment subdued. As
soon as Christmas was over Richard proceeded to the reduction of
Gascony. Dax, held against him by its viscount Peter and by the count
of Bigorre, and Bayonne, defended by its viscount Ernald Bertram,
submitted each after a ten days’ siege; S. Pierre-de-Cize, on the
Spanish frontier, fell in one day; the Basques and Navarrese were
compelled to promise peace; the plunderings habitually inflicted by
the border-folk upon pilgrims to the shrine of S. James at Compostella
were suppressed; and from his court at Poitiers on Candlemas-day
Richard triumphantly reported to his father that he had pacified the
whole country.[985] But the peace did not last long. Trouble was
already threatening at the opposite end of the duchy. Ralf of Déols,
the wealthiest baron in Berry, had lately died leaving as his heir
an infant daughter. She was of course, according to feudal law, a
ward of her overlord, King Henry; but her relatives seized both her
and her estates, and refused to give up either.[986] Henry, probably
feeling that the boy-duke of Aquitaine had already more than enough
upon his hands, charged his eldest son with the settlement of this
affair, bidding him take possession of all Ralf’s lands without delay,
and significantly adding: “While I governed my realms alone, I lost
none of my rightful possessions; it will be shame to us all if aught
of them be lost now that we are several to rule them.” The young king
took the hint, marched with all his Norman and Angevin forces into
Berry, and laid siege to Châteauroux;[987] but he seems to have had
no success;[988] and there was no chance of help from Richard, for
not only was the Limousin again plunged in civil war,[989] but all
southern Aquitaine was in danger of a like fate--an attempt of Count
Raymond of Toulouse to exert his authority as overlord of Narbonne
with greater stringency than its high-spirited viscountess Hermengard
was disposed to endure having stirred up against him a league of all
the princes of Septimania and the Spanish border, under the leadership
of Hermengard herself and of Raymond’s hereditary rivals, the king of
Aragon and his brothers.[990] The way in which Raymond prepared to meet
their attack supplies a vivid illustration of southern character and
manners. He sought an ally in Bertrand de Born, and he appealed to him
in his character not of knight but of troubadour. He sent a messenger
to Hautefort to state his cause and to ask Bertrand, not to fight for
it, but simply to publish it to the world in a _sirvente_. Bertrand
answered readily to the appeal; he was only too glad of any excuse for
a _sirvente_ which should “cause dints in a thousand shields, and rents
in a thousand helms and hauberks.” “I would fain have the great barons
ever wroth one with another!” is the characteristic exclamation with
which he ends his war-song.[991]

        [985] _Ib._ pp. 131, 132.

        [986] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 127.

        [987] _Ib._ p. 132.

        [988] The _Gesta Hen._, as above, say Châteauroux was
        surrendered to him at once; but we hear nothing more of it till
        the autumn, and then we find that the elder king has to besiege
        it himself; so if the younger one ever did win it, he must have
        lost it again as quickly.

        [989] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. cc. lxix., lxx. (Labbe, _Nova
        Biblioth._, vol. ii. pp. 322, 323).

        [990] See Vic and Vaissète, _Hist. du Languedoc_ (new ed.),
        vol. vi. pp. 69, 70; and the terms of the league, _ib._ vol.
        viii. cols. 325, 326.

        [991] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, pp. 38, 39.

The strife thus begun for the mastery in Septimania was continued at
intervals between the houses of Toulouse and Aragon for many years to
come. The overlord of Toulouse, however, seems to have taken no part in
it as yet; and indeed, it had scarcely more than begun when Richard was
summoned away to meet his father in Normandy. Three times in the course
of that spring and summer had King Henry collected his host in England
for the purpose of going over sea to the help of his sons; twice had he
remanded it,[992] for the sake, as it seems, of continuing his legal
and administrative work in England. By midsummer however the tidings
from Gaul were such that he dared not further prolong his absence.
Geoffrey wanted his help in Britanny; Richard wanted it almost as much
in Aquitaine; the young king’s unaccountable lack of vigour in their
support, and in the prosecution of the war in Berry, was justly raising
suspicions of his loyalty to the family cause; and the treaty made
with Louis of France at the close of the last war was proving, as such
treaties too often did prove, only a source of fresh disputes. Henry
summoned Louis to fulfil his part of the agreement by handing over
the Vexin to the young king and the viscounty of Bourges to Richard,
according to his promise, as the dowries of their brides;[993] Louis
insisted that Henry should first complete his share of the engagement
by allowing Adela, who had been in his custody ever since the treaty
was signed, to be wedded to her promised bridegroom, Richard. At last,
in July, he succeeded in bringing the matter to a crisis by extorting
from a papal legate who had been sent to deal with a heresy that had
arisen in southern Gaul a threat of laying all Henry’s dominions under
interdict unless Richard and Adela were married at once.[994] The
English bishops appealed against the threat;[995] while Henry hurried
over to Normandy,[996] met first his two elder sons,[997] then the
legate,[998] then the French king,[999] and once again contrived to
stave off the threatening peril. At Nonancourt, on September 25,
the two kings made a treaty containing not one word of marriages or
dowries, but consisting of an agreement to bury all their differences
under the cross. They pledged themselves to go on crusade together,
to submit to arbitration the questions in dispute between them about
Auvergne and Berry, and to lay aside all their other quarrels at once
and for ever.[1000] Such a treaty was in reality a mere temporary
expedient; but it served Henry’s purpose by securing him against
French interference while he marched against the rebels in Berry. As
usual, he carried all before him; Châteauroux surrendered without a
struggle; the lord of La Châtre, who had stolen the little heiress
of Déols and was keeping her fast in his own castle, hurried to make
his peace and give up his prize.[1001] Henry used his opportunity to
advance into the Limousin and exert his authority in punishing its
turbulent barons;[1002] soon after Martinmas he and Louis met at Graçay
and made another ineffectual attempt to settle the vexed question of
Auvergne;[1003] a month later he was again in Aquitaine, purchasing
the direct ownership of one of its under-fiefs, the county of La
Marche, from the childless Count Adalbert who was purposing to end his
days in Holy Land;[1004] and at Christmas he was back at Angers, where
he kept the feast with his three elder sons amid such a gathering of
knights as had never been seen at his court except at his own crowning
or that of the young king.[1005]

        [992] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 138, 160, 167, 168.

        [993] _Ib._ p. 168.

        [994] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 180, 181. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 143. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 271.

        [995] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 181.

        [996] In the night of August 17–18. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p.
        190. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 421.

        [997] Rob. Torigni, a. 1177.

        [998] On September 11. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 190.

        [999] September 21. _Ibid._ Cf. Rog. Howden and Gerv. Cant. as
        above.

        [1000] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 191–194. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. pp. 144–146; Gerv. Cant. as above, pp. 272–274;
        shorter in R. Diceto as above, pp. 421, 422. The place and date
        are from this last authority.

        [1001] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 195, 196. Cf. R. Diceto as
        above, p. 425.

        [1002] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 196.

        [1003] The proceedings on this occasion are worth notice.
        Henry, it seems, tried to substitute for the arbitration of
        three prelates and three laymen on each side (which had been
        agreed upon at Nonancourt) his own favourite plan of sworn
        inquest. He called together the barons of Auvergne, and
        required them to certify what rights his predecessors the dukes
        of Aquitaine had enjoyed in their country. They answered that
        by ancient right all Auvergne pertained to the ducal dominions,
        except the bishopric (Clermont), which was dependent on the
        French Crown. To this definition Louis would not agree; so
        they fell back upon the former scheme of arbitration--which,
        however, seems never to have got any further. _Gesta Hen._
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 196. This was apparently the last meeting
        (except the one in England; see below, p. 216) between Henry
        and Louis, and must therefore be the one of which a curious
        account is given by Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii.
        c. 1 (Angl. Christ. Soc., pp. 85, 86).

        [1004] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 197. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 147, 148. Rob. Torigni, a. 1177. R.
        Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 425, under a wrong year. Geoff.
        Vigeois, l. i. c. 70 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p.
        324). Henry received the homage of the under-tenants of La
        Marche (_Gesta Hen._ as above); but he did not really get what
        he paid for, as will be seen later.

        [1005] Rob. Torigni, a. 1178.

For six months there was peace, and in July the king ventured to
return to England.[1006] He knighted his son Geoffrey at Woodstock on
August 6,[1007] and when the lad hurried over sea, eager to flesh his
maiden sword and emulate the prowess of his brothers, he could find no
more serious field in which to exercise his warlike energies than a
succession of tournaments on the borders of France and Normandy.[1008]
Richard however was again busy with more earnest fighting. The rivalry
between the houses of Aragon and Toulouse had stirred up the petty
chieftains of southern Gascony, whom the king of Aragon was seeking
to enlist in his service; and Richard was obliged to undertake a
campaign against the count of Bigorre in particular, which seems to
have occupied him till the end of the year. The defiant attitude of the
nobles of Saintonge and the Angoumois, and especially of a powerful
baron, Geoffrey of Rancogne, called him back at Christmas to Saintes;
as soon as the feast was over he laid siege to Geoffrey’s castle of
Pons; after spending more than three months before the place, he left
his constables to continue the blockade while he himself went to
attack the other rebel castles. Five of them were taken and razed
between Easter and Rogation-tide,[1009] and then Richard gathered up
all his forces to assault Geoffrey of Rancogne’s mightiest stronghold,
Taillebourg. It stood a few miles north of Saintes, on the crest of a
lofty rock, three of whose sides were so steep as to defy any attempt
to scale them, while the fourth was guarded by a triple ditch and
rampart. Three lines of wall, built of hewn stone and strengthened
with towers and battlements, encircled the keep, which was stored
with provisions and arms offensive and defensive, and crowded with
picked men-at-arms who laughed to scorn the rashness of the young duke
in attempting to besiege a fortress which all his predecessors had
looked upon as well-nigh unapproachable. But he cleared its approaches
with a ruthless energy such as they little expected, cutting down
vineyards, burning houses, levelling every obstacle before him, till
he pitched his tents close to the castle walls under the eyes of the
astonished townsfolk. A sally of the latter only resulted in making
a way for Richard’s entrance into the town; three days later the
castle surrendered, and Geoffrey himself with it.[1010] Ten days’ more
fighting brought all the rebels to submission and reduced Vulgrin
of Angoulême himself to give up his capital city and his castle of
Montignac in Périgord;[1011] and at Whitsuntide Richard went to report
his success with his own lips to his delighted father in England.[1012]

        [1006] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 206, 207. R. Diceto as above,
        p. 426.

        [1007] R. Diceto as above.

        [1008] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 207.

        [1009] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 212, 213.

        [1010] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 431, 432. Cf. _Gesta
        Hen._ as above, p. 213, and Rob. Torigni, a. 1179.

        [1011] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [1012] _Ibid._ R. Diceto as above, p. 432.

He returned shortly before Michaelmas,[1013] to witness the opening
of a new phase in the relations between the Angevin house and the
French Crown. Philip of France, the only son of Louis VII., was now
fourteen years old, and his father was desirous to have him crowned
king. Before the appointed day arrived, however, he fell sick almost to
death.[1014] Louis, half wild with anxiety, dreamed that the martyr
of Canterbury required him to visit his shrine as a condition of the
boy’s recovery.[1015] He hurried across the Channel; Henry met him at
Dover and conducted him to Canterbury, where they both spent three days
in fasting and prayer before the shrine; and on the fourth day after
his landing Louis re-entered his own country, to find that his prayers
were answered.[1016] His brief visit was long remembered in England,
where no king of France had ever been seen before,[1017] or was ever
seen again save when John the Good was brought there as a prisoner in
the days of Edward III. Scarcely, however, had Philip recovered when
Louis himself was stricken down by paralysis.[1018] This calamity made
him all the more anxious for his son’s coronation, which took place at
Reims on All Saints’ day. The archbishop of the province--a brother of
Queen Adela--performed the rite, assisted by nearly all the bishops of
Gaul; all the great vassals of the kingdom were present, among them
the young King Henry, who in his capacity of duke of Normandy carried
the crown before his youthful overlord in the procession to and from
the cathedral church, as Count Philip of Flanders carried the sword of
state.[1019] Like the crowning of young Henry himself, the crowning
of Philip Augustus proved to be a beginning of troubles. His father’s
helpless condition left the boy-king to fall under the influence of
whatever counsellor could first get at his ear. That one happened to be
his godfather, Philip of Flanders; and the policy of Flanders was to
get the boy entirely under his own control by setting him against all
his father’s old friends,[1020] and even against his mother, whom he
tried to rob of her dower-lands and persecuted to such a degree that
she was compelled to leave his domains and fly to her brothers for
the protection which her husband was powerless to give her.[1021] The
united forces of Flanders and of the Crown--for the latter were now
wholly at Philip’s command[1022]--were, however, more than a match for
those of Champagne and Blois; and the house of Blois was driven to seek
help of the only power which seemed capable of giving it--the power of
their old rivals of Anjou.[1023]

        [1013] So it appears from an entry in the Pipe Roll of 1179;
        Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 227.

        [1014] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 240. According to Rob.
        Torigni, a. 1179, Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._,
        vol. v. p. 5), and Will. Armor., _Philippis_, l. i. (_ib._ pp.
        99, 100), the boy’s sickness was the effect of a fright caused
        by an adventure in the forest of Compiègne, very like that of
        Geoffrey Plantagenet at Loches.

        [1015] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 240–241. Cf. Rog.
        Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 192.

        [1016] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 241, 242; Rog. Howden, as
        above, pp. 192, 193; Will. Armor., _Philipp._, l. i. (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.) pp. 100, 101. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 432, 433, relates the pilgrimage without
        any mention of its motive; while Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), p. 293,
        seems to think Louis came for the benefit of his own health,
        not his son’s.

        [1017] R. Diceto, as above, p. 433.

        [1018] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 243.

        [1019] _Ib._ p. 242. Rog. Howden as above, pp. 193, 194. R.
        Diceto as above, p. 438. It is Roger who says that Henry
        bore the crown officially--“de jure ducatûs Normanniæ.”
        Ralf explains away the matter as a mere act of courtesy and
        friendship.

        [1020] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 244. Rog. Howden as above, p.
        196.

        [1021] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 196. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 6. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
        294.

        [1022] He had stolen his father’s royal seal, to prevent all
        further exercise of authority on the part of Louis. R. Diceto,
        as above.

        [1023] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 244. Rog. Howden as
        above.

The days were long gone by when it had been a chief part of the
Angevin interest and policy to set the French king and the house of
Blois at variance with each other. If Henry had needed any proof that
the rivalry of Blois was no longer to be feared, he would have found
it in the appeal for succour thus sent to him by Queen Adela and her
brothers, and supported by his own eldest son, who at Mid-Lent 1180
went over to England purposely to consult with him on the state of
affairs in France. Before Easter father and son both returned to
Normandy, and there held a personal meeting with the French queen,
her brothers Theobald of Blois and Stephen of Sancerre, and several
other victims of young Philip’s tyranny. Pledges of good faith were
exchanged, and summons were issued for a general levy of all Henry’s
forces, on both sides of the sea, ready to attack Philip after
Easter.[1024] Before the attack could be made, however, Philip had
got himself into such difficulties as to render it needless. As soon
as Lent was over he went into Flanders and there married a niece of
its count, Elizabeth, daughter of the count of Hainaut.[1025] He
then summoned all the princes of his realm to meet him at Sens on
Whit-Sunday for the coronation of himself and his queen. The marriage
had, however, given such offence that Philip of Flanders, in dread
of opposition to his niece’s crowning, persuaded the young king to
anticipate the ceremony and have her crowned together with himself at
S. Denis, early in the morning of Ascension-day, by the archbishop of
Sens.[1026] The wrath of the great vassals knew no bounds; and the
wrath of the archbishop of Reims was almost more formidable still,
for the exclusive right to crown the king of France was a special
prerogative of his see, and he at once forwarded to Rome an indignant
protest against the outrage done to him by his royal nephew.[1027]
Philip of France and Guy of Sens had in fact put themselves into a
position which might easily have become almost as full of peril as that
into which Henry of England and Roger of York had put themselves by
a somewhat similar proceeding ten years before. As, however, William
of Reims was not a Thomas of Canterbury, the consequences were less
tragic; and Henry himself must have been tempted to smile at the
turning of the tables which suddenly placed in his hands the task of
shielding Philip from the consequences of his rashness, and reconciling
him to the outraged Church and the offended people.

        [1024] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 245. Rog. Howden as above.

        [1025] _Ibid._ R. Diceto as above, p. 5. Gerv. Cant. as above.
        Rob. Torigni, a. 1181 (a year too late). The bride is called
        Elizabeth by her husband’s panegyrist, Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 7), and Isabel by another of his
        biographers (_ib._ p. 258). R. Diceto calls her Margaret.

        [1026] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 245, 246. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 197. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
        5. Rob. Torigni, a. 1181. This last writer, whose chronology
        has now become extremely confused, puts the event a year too
        late. So does Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._,
        vol. v.), p. 7. Rigord indeed gives an account of the matter
        so different from that of the English writers--_e.g._ he
        represents it as taking place publicly, amid a great concourse
        of spectators--that one might almost suppose he was relating a
        second coronation, performed in the following year. But there
        seems no other record of any such thing; and there are some
        details in his story which point to a different conclusion.
        Not only does he, too, name the archbishop of Sens as the
        consecrator--an outrage upon Reims which could not possibly
        have been repeated--but he betrays his own confusion by giving
        the date as June 1, 1181, and then describing the day as
        Ascension-day, which in 1181 fell on May 14, but which really
        was the day of the crowning in 1180 (May 29). The truth is
        that the panegyrists of Philip Augustus are obliged to slur
        over this first disgraceful year of his reign as rapidly and
        confusedly as they can.

        [1027] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 246. Rog. Howden as above.

There was a story that young Henry of Anjou, standing close behind his
brother-in-law Philip on his first coronation-day in Reims cathedral,
had bent forward to hold the crown upon the boy’s head, and thus
relieve him of its weight and keep it safely in its place.[1028] The
little act of brotherly kindness and protecting care may be taken as
typical of the political attitude which Henry’s father actually assumed
towards the boy-king of the French, and which he faithfully maintained
until Philip himself rendered its maintenance impossible. It was in
truth no new thing for a count of Anjou to act as the protector of a
king of France. But we may fairly question whether this traditional
function of the Angevin house had ever been fulfilled so honestly
and unselfishly as it was by Henry during the first two years of
Philip’s reign. It was Henry alone who, by his personal influence and
tact, brought Philip himself to reason and the count of Flanders to
submission.[1029] Next year, when Philip had been left sole king of
France by the death of Louis VII.,[1030] it was Henry whose mediation
checked an attempt of the Flemish count to avenge by force of arms the
loss of his influence at court;[1031] and when a few months later the
house of Blois, with characteristic inconstancy, made common cause
with Flanders against France, it was the prompt and vigorous action
of Henry’s sons which alone saved the royal domain from invasion on
all sides at once, and enabled their young sovereign to hold out
against his assailants till Henry himself came over to patch up another
settlement in the spring of 1182.[1032]

        [1028] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 439. Rigord (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 5, tells the same story
        more briefly, and it is amusing to see how differently he
        colours it.

        [1029] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 246, 247. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 6.

        [1030] September 18, 1180; _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 250;
        R. Diceto as above, p. 7; Will. Armor., _Gesta Phil. Aug._
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 72. Rigord
        (_ib._), p. 7, makes a confusion about the year.

        [1031] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 277. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. p. 260.

        [1032] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 284–286. R. Diceto as above,
        pp. 9–11. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 297, 300. Gir.
        Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. cc. 15, 16 (Angl. Christ.
        Soc., pp. 42–47). Rob. Torigni, a. 1182.

Other needs, however, than those of the French Crown were once more
calling for Henry’s presence in Gaul. The condition of Aquitaine
only grew more unsatisfactory, in spite or in consequence of
Richard’s efforts to improve it. Henry’s bargain with Adalbert of
La Marche had failed to secure him the possession of that county;
the brother-lords of Lusignan claimed it as next-of-kin to Adalbert
as soon as the king’s back was turned, and made good their claim by
forcible occupation.[1033] The Limousin was again threatening revolt;
the town-walls of Limoges were razed by Richard’s order at midsummer
1181.[1034] Almost at the same moment the death of Count Vulgrin of
Angoulême opened a fresh source of strife; his two brothers laid claim
to his inheritance against his only daughter, whom Richard of course
took into wardship as a feudal heiress, and on Richard’s refusal to
admit their claims they made common cause with Ademar of Limoges.[1035]
The mischief however did not end here. Richard’s unbending resolve
to bridle Aquitaine had gradually stirred up against him the bitter
hatred of the whole people--a hatred for which his stern rule is quite
sufficient to account, without admitting the blacker charges brought
against him by the reckless tongues of the south.[1036] The voice of
Bertrand de Born had once more given the signal for a general rising.
A _sirvente_ which went forth from Hautefort in 1181 rang like a
trumpet-call in the ears of the lords of Ventadour and Comborn and
Périgord and Dax, of Angoulême and Pons and Taillebourg.[1037] But even
this was not all. Years before, it seems, there had flashed through
the troubadour’s quick brain a possibility of stirring up strife in
higher quarters than among the petty princes of his native land. Now he
distinctly saw the possibility of finding for the Aquitanian resistance
to Richard a rallying-point and a leader in Richard’s own brother.

        [1033] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 70 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. p. 324).

        [1034] _Ib._ c. 72 (p. 326).

        [1035] _Ibid._ He was their half-brother, the only son of their
        mother’s first marriage.

        [1036] Cf. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 292, with Gerv.
        Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303, and Gir. Cambr., _De Instr.
        Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 105).

        [1037] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, pp. 44, 45.

One of the most puzzling figures in the history of the time is that of
the younger Henry of Anjou--the “young king,” as he is usually called.
From the day of his crowning to that of his death not one deed is
recorded of him save deeds of the meanest ingratitude, selfishness,
cowardliness and treachery. Yet this undutiful, rebellious son, this
corrupter and betrayer of his younger brothers, this weak and faithless
ally, was loved and admired by all men while he lived, and lamented
by all men after he was gone.[1038] The attraction exercised by him
over a man so far his superior as William the Marshal[1039] is indeed
well-nigh incomprehensible. But the panegyrics of the historians,
unaccountable as they look at first glance, do throw some light on
the secret of young Henry’s gift of general fascination. It was a
gift which indeed, in varying degrees, formed part of the hereditary
endowments of the Angevin house. But the character which it took in
Fulk Nerra or Henry Fitz-Empress was very different from that which it
assumed in Henry’s eldest son. The essence of the young king’s nature
was not Angevin. He had little either of the higher talents or of the
stronger and sterner qualities of the Angevin race; he had still less
of the characteristics of the Norman. It is by studying his portrait
as drawn in contrast to that of Richard by a hand equally favourable
to both that we can best see what he really was. “The first was
admired for his mildness and liberality; the second was esteemed for
his seriousness and firmness. One was commendable for graciousness,
the other for stateliness. One gained praise for his courtesy, the
other for his constancy. One was conspicuous for mercy, the other for
justice. One was the refuge and the shield of vagabonds and evil-doers,
the other was their scourge. One was devoted to the sports of war, the
other to war itself; one was gracious to strangers, the other to his
own friends--one to all men, the other only to good men.”[1040] Henry
in fact was at bottom what Richard never was but on the surface--a
careless, pleasure-loving, capricious, but withal most gracious and
winning child of the south. The most philosophic English historian of
the day was reduced to account for the young king’s popularity by the
simple and comprehensive explanation that “the number of fools is
infinite.”[1041] But it was not folly, it was a shrewd perception of
their own interest, which led the Aquitanians writhing under Richard’s
iron rule to see in his elder brother a prince after their own
hearts.[1042]

        [1038] Except the ever-independent William of Newburgh; see his
        l. iii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 233, 234).

        [1039] See Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 279.

        [1040] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc. p. 106).

        [1041] “Quia ut scriptum est, Stultorum infinitus est numerus.”
        Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 234). The
        quotation is from the Vulgate version of Ecclesiastes i. 15;
        the English A. V. conveys a wholly different idea.

        [1042] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303. See also Gerald’s
        other account of young Henry, _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c.
        9 (Angl. Christ. Soc., pp. 31, 32).

It was not the first time that Bertrand de Born had sought to kindle in
the young king’s mind the sparks of jealousy and discontent which were
always latent there.[1043] Now, he fed the flames with an unsparing
hand. In words of bitter satire he ridicules the position of the young
king, who bears the titles of a great sovereign, but has no authority
in his own land, and cannot even claim the tolls upon the traffic along
its roads: “Barons of Aquitaine, are we not all of us better than a
carter who leaves his cart to go as it may, and counts his dues, if he
counts any at all, with trembling fingers?” “I prize a tiny tract of
land with honour above a great empire with disgrace!”[1044] Richard,
meanwhile, was playing into his enemies’s hands by an encroachment
upon territory which in name at least belonged to his brother. He had
built a castle at Clairvaux, between Loudun and Poitiers, but on the
Angevin side of the frontier. If the thought of resentment did not
occur to Henry, Bertrand took care to suggest it: “Between Poitiers and
Ile-Bouchard and Mirebeau and Loudun and Chinon some one has dared to
rear, at Clairvaux, a fair castle in the midst of the plain. I would
not have the young king see it or know of it, for it would not be to
his taste; but its walls are so white, I doubt he will catch sight of
their gleam from Mateflon!”[1045] The troubadour’s shafts were well
aimed, and they rankled. When King Henry returned to Normandy in the
spring of 1182 the Aquitanian rising was in full career; as soon as
he had composed matters in France he hurried to the help of Richard,
who was fighting the rebels in the Limousin; at Whitsuntide the counts
of Angoulême and Périgord and the viscount of Limoges came to confer
with him at Grandmont, but nothing came of the negotiations; Henry then
went to attack Pierre-Buffière, while Richard returned to the siege of
Excideuil. At midsummer the king was back at Grandmont, and Geoffrey
of Britanny with him; thence they went to rejoin Richard, who was now
busy with the siege of Périgueux.[1046] Matters were in this stage when
the young king at last made up his mind to advance into Aquitaine.
He was joyfully welcomed at Limoges on the festival of its patron S.
Martial--the last day of June. On the morrow, however, he joined his
father and brothers before Périgueux, and within a week peace was made;
Périgueux surrendered, its count and the viscount of Limoges submitted
to Richard, and only the brother-counts of Angoulême still remained in
arms against him.[1047]

        [1043] See Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, p. 36.

        [1044] _Ib._ p. 44.

        [1045] _Ibid._

        [1046] Strictly, of its suburb Puy-St.-Front.

        [1047] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. cc. 1, 2 (Labbe, _Nova
        Biblioth._, vol. ii. pp. 330, 331).

Peace, however, never lasted long either in Aquitaine or in King
Henry’s family. His eldest son now again grew importunate for a
definite and immediate share in the family heritage. When this was
refused, he fled to the court of France, and was only recalled by
a promise of an increased pecuniary allowance for himself and his
queen.[1048] Aquitaine, as soon as Henry had left it, drifted into
a state of anarchy more frightful than any that had ever been known
there before; the sudden conclusion of the war had let loose all over
the country a crowd of mercenaries--commonly known as “Brabantines,”
but really the off-scouring of every land from Flanders to Aragon--who
wrought, as a local writer says, such havoc as had never been seen
since the days of the heathen northmen.[1049] The evil in some measure
brought its own remedy with it, for it drove the common people to
take into their own hands the maintenance of peace and order. A poor
Auvergnat carpenter, urged by a vision of the Blessed Virgin, set
forth under the protection of the diocesan bishop to preach the cause
of peace in his native district of Le Puy. Those who were like-minded
with him, no matter what their rank or calling, enrolled themselves
in a society bound together by solemn pledges for mutual support in
adherence to right and resistance to wrong in every shape; and in a few
years these “_Caputii_,” as they were called from the linen capes or
hoods which they always wore in fight, proved more than a match for the
Brabantines.[1050]

        [1048] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 289, 291. Cf. Rog.
        Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 266, 267.

        [1049] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 73 (as above, p. 328).

        [1050] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 22 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. p. 339). Rob. Torigni, a. 1183. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
        vol. i. pp. 300, 301. Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), pp. 11, 12.

Meanwhile, however, the warlike barons of Aquitaine were exasperated
at the failure of their league against Richard; and their anger
reached its height when at the conclusion of the Christmas festivities
held by King Henry and his sons at Caen, the young king of his own
accord renewed his oath of allegiance to his father, confessed his
secret alliance with Richard’s enemies, and offered to abandon it
and make peace with his brother if his father would but insist upon
the surrender of Clairvaux. Richard, after some hesitation, gave up
to his father the fortress in dispute.[1051] The incident apparently
opened Henry’s eyes to the necessity of clearly defining his sons’
political relations with each other; and while Bertrand de Born was
giving a voice to the wrath of his fellow-barons at the young king’s
desertion of their cause,[1052] Henry led his three sons back to
Angers, made them all take an oath of obedience to him and peace with
each other,[1053] and then called upon the two younger to do homage
to the eldest for their fiefs.[1054] Geoffrey obeyed;[1055] Richard
indignantly refused, declaring it was utterly unreasonable that there
should be any distinction of rank between children of the same parents,
and that if the father’s heritage belonged of right to the eldest son,
the mother’s was equally due to the second.[1056] The young king, on
the other hand, was on account of his entanglements with the Aquitanian
barons almost as unwilling to receive the homage as Richard was to
perform it.[1057] The end of the discussion was that Richard quitted
the court, “leaving behind him nothing but threats and insults,” and
hurried into Poitou to prepare for defence and defiance.[1058]

        [1051] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 291, 294, 295.

        [1052] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, p. 47.

        [1053] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 295. Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. p. 18.

        [1054] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 291. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. p. 273.

        [1055] _Ibid._ R. Diceto as above.

        [1056] R. Diceto (as above), pp. 18, 19. _Gesta Hen._ (as
        above), p. 292. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 303.

        [1057] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 18. _Gesta Hen._
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 292. The two accounts do not exactly
        agree, Ralf placing at this point the young king’s confession
        of his dealings in Aquitaine; while the story in the _Gesta_ is
        extremely confused, because it is told twice over, in different
        forms (pp. 291, 292 and 294, 295).

        [1058] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 292.

In the first burst of his anger Henry bade the other two brothers
go and “subdue Richard’s pride” by force of arms.[1059] Immediately
afterwards, however, he summoned all three, together with the aggrieved
barons of Aquitaine, to meet him in conference at Mirebeau.[1060] But
the young king had already marched into Poitou and received a warm
welcome there;[1061] Geoffrey, to whom his father had intrusted his
summons to the barons, led a motley force of Bretons, Brabantines
and mercenaries of all kinds to Limoges;[1062] soon afterwards young
Henry joined him; with the viscount’s help they threw themselves into
the citadel,[1063] and set to work to raise the whole country against
Richard. He, in his extremity, appealed to his father;[1064] and Henry
at once hurried to the rescue. For six weeks he laid siege to the
citadel of Limoges;[1065] twice he was personally shot at, and narrowly
escaped with his life; twice the young king came to him with offers of
submission, and each time he was welcomed with open arms, but each time
the submission was a mere feint, designed to keep Henry quiet and give
the barons time to wreak their vengeance upon Richard.[1066] By Easter
matters were so far advanced that Bertrand de Born was openly calling
for aid upon Flanders, France and Normandy;[1067] and the dread of a
rising in this last-named quarter prompted Henry to send orders for the
arrest of those barons, both in Normandy and England, who had been most
conspicuous in the rebellion of 1173.[1068]

        [1059] R. Diceto as above, p. 19.

        [1060] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 295.

        [1061] _Ib._ p. 292.

        [1062] _Ib._ pp. 293, 295. Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 6 (Labbe,
        _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 332).

        [1063] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 293, 296. Geoff. Vigeois as
        above. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 304.

        [1064] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 274.

        [1065] From Shrove Tuesday--March 1--to Easter. Geoff. Vigeois,
        l. ii. cc. 12, 16 (as above, pp. 334, 336).

        [1066] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 296–298. Cf. Geoff. Vigeois,
        l. ii. c. 7 (as above, pp. 332, 333).

        [1067] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, p. 52.

        [1068] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 294.

The young king at the same time quitted Limoges to make a diversion
at Angoulême. On his return, however, he found it impossible to
re-enter Limoges; its townsfolk had by this time so fully awakened to
his real character and to their own best interests that they drove
him from their walls with a volley of stones, shouting “We will not
have this man to reign over us!”[1069] He had already robbed them of
their wealth and stripped the shrine of their patron saint to provide
wages for his Brabantines;[1070] and the insult goaded him to yet more
unsparing plunder and yet more reckless sacrilege. From the castle
of Aixe, which he took on the Monday in Rogation-week, he advanced
to Grandmont, a religious house whose inmates enjoyed, amid the now
general decay of monastic sanctity, an almost unique reputation for
piety and virtue, and were known to be held by his father in especial
reverence and esteem. He wrung from them all the treasure they
possessed, and forcibly carried off a golden pyx, his father’s gift,
from the high altar itself. He then proceeded to Uzerches, where the
duke of Burgundy and the count of Toulouse met him with reinforcements
on Ascension-day; from Uzerches he moved southward to Donzenac and
Martel, and thence to Rocamadour.[1071] Rocamadour was the most famous
of the holy places of Aquitaine; besides the tomb of the hermit from
whom its name was derived, it boasted of a statue of the Virgin which
attracted as many pilgrims as the shrine of S. James at Compostella;
and among the treasures of its church, which was said to have been
founded by Zacchæus the publican, was a sword traditionally believed to
be the famous “Durandal”--the sword of the Paladin Roland, devoted by
him to the Blessed Virgin on the eve of his last campaign, and carried
to her shrine at Rocamadour after the disaster of Roncevaux. Heedless
alike of paladins and of saints, the young king stripped the shrine
of S. Amadour[1072] as he had stripped that of S. Martial; and local
tradition declares that he also carried off the hallowed sword, leaving
his own dishonoured brand in its place.

        [1069] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 16 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. p. 336). _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 299.

        [1070] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. cc. 13, 14 (pp. 335, 336).

        [1071] _Ib._ c. 16 (p. 336).

        [1072] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 278.

He had been ailing ever since he left Uzerches;[1073] now, on his
return to Martel, his baffled rage threw him into a fever, to which
other complications were soon added.[1074] Conscience awoke as death
drew near. From the blacksmith’s cottage[1075] where he lay awaiting
his end he sent a message to Limoges, imploring his father to come and
speak with him once more.[1076] Henry would have gone, but his friends,
in their natural dread of another trick, prevented him;[1077] he sent,
however, a bishop charged with a message of love and pardon,[1078]
and as a token of the genuineness of the commission, a precious ring,
said to be an heirloom from Henry I.[1079] The messenger was only
just in time. On the Tuesday in Whitsun-week the young king called
together the bishops and religious men who had gathered round him at
the tidings of his sickness, confessed his sins first privately, then
publicly, before all his followers, was absolved and received the
Holy Communion.[1080] For three more days he lingered, long enough to
receive his father’s message of forgiveness and to dictate a letter to
him, pleading that the same clemency might be extended to his mother
the captive Queen Eleanor, to his own young Queen Margaret, and to
all his servants, friends, adherents and allies;[1081] beseeching also
that his father would make atonement in his stead for the sacrileges
which he had committed against the holy places of Aquitaine, and would
cause his body to be buried at Rouen in the cathedral church of our
Lady.[1082] In the early twilight of S. Barnabas’s day he repeated
his confession, after which he begged to be wrapped once more in his
cloak, marked with the cross which he had taken at Limoges in petulance
rather than in piety. Now, however, he was in earnest, and when the
sacred symbol had rested for a moment on his shoulder he gave it to
his best-beloved knight, William the Marshal, charging him to bear it
to the Holy Sepulchre and thus fulfil his vow in his stead.[1083] He
then caused his attendants to strip him of his soft raiment, clothe
him in a hair-shirt and put a rope round his neck; with this he bade
the assembled clergy drag him out of bed and lay him on a bed of ashes
strewed for the purpose. There, lying as if already in his grave, with
a stone at his head and another at his feet, he received the last
sacraments;[1084] and there, an hour after nones,[1085] kissing his
father’s ring he died.[1086]

        [1073] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 16 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. p. 336).

        [1074] _Ibid._ _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 300. Will.
        Newb., l. iii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 233, 234).

        [1075] “In domo Stephani cognomine Fabri.” Geoff. Vigeois, l.
        ii. c. 19 (as above, p. 337). Is this to be taken literally,
        or can it be merely a punning nickname applied to the lord of
        _Martel_?

        [1076] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Will. Newb. as above (p. 234).

        [1077] Will. Newb. as above. Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 17 (as
        above, p. 337).

        [1078] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [1079] “Annulum preciosum ... qui Henrici munifici Regis
        olim extitisse narratur.” Geoff. Vigeois as above. Cf. Will.
        Newb. as above, and Th. Agnellus, _De Morte Hen. Reg. jun._
        (Stevenson, _R. Coggeshall_), pp. 265, 266.

        [1080] Geoff. Vigeois as above.

        [1081] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 24 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. p. 339). _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 300, 301.

        [1082] Geoff. Vigeois as above.

        [1083] _Ib._ c. 17 (p. 337). Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
        279. On young Henry’s vow of crusade see _Gesta Hen._ as above,
        pp. 297, 298.

        [1084] Rog. Howden as above.

        [1085] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 19 (as above, p. 338).

        [1086] Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 234).



CHAPTER VI.

THE LAST YEARS OF HENRY II.

1183–1189.


The unexpected death of the young king was a catastrophe almost
equally overwhelming to both parties in the war. Henry himself, when
the news was brought to him by the prior of Grandmont, whither the
body had been taken to be prepared for burial,[1087] went almost out
of his mind with grief.[1088] For a moment indeed friends and foes
alike seemed incapable of anything but mourning. Hero or saint could
scarcely have won a more universal tribute of affection and regret than
was showered upon this young king who, so far as we can see, had done
so little to deserve it. Stern voices like that of Bertrand de Born,
accustomed only to the bitterest tones of sarcasm, insult and angry
strife, melted suddenly into accents of the deepest tenderness and
lamentation.[1089] Sober-minded churchmen and worldly-wise courtiers,
though they could not deny or excuse the dead man’s sins, yet betrayed
with equal frankness their unreasoning attachment to his memory.[1090]
As his body, arrayed in the linen robe which he had worn at his
coronation--its white folds, hallowed by the consecrating oil, made to
serve for a winding-sheet--was borne on an open bier upon the shoulders
of his comrades-in-arms from Grandmont northward through Anjou, the
people streamed forth from every castle and town and village along the
road to meet it with demonstrations of mourning and tears;[1091] and at
Le Mans, where it was deposited for a night in the cathedral church,
the bishops and citizens forcibly took possession of it, refused to
give it up, and buried their beloved young king then and there by the
side of his grandfather Geoffrey Plantagenet.[1092].

        [1087] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 20 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. p. 338).

        [1088] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 301. Cf. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 279, and Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._,
        dist. ii. c. 8 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 30).

        [1089] See Bertrand de Born’s two elegies on the young king,
        Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, pp. 53, 54.

        [1090] See Pet. Blois, Ep. ii. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 3–5); Gir.
        Cambr. as above, c. 9 (pp. 31, 32); W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._,
        dist. iv. c. i. (Wright, pp. 139, 140); and Th. Agnellus
        (Stevenson, _R. Coggeshall_), pp. 265–273. The tone of the
        real historians of the time is however somewhat different.
        The _Gesta Hen._ is perfectly colourless, and even on the
        young king’s death the writer adds not a word of comment, good
        or bad. Rog. Howden, on the other hand (Stubbs, vol. ii. p.
        279), openly gives vent to a feeling which may be expressed by
        “So perish all the enemies of King Henry,” and grows almost
        impatient with Henry’s grief. R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. ii. pp.
        19, 20) is as usual very cautious in the expression of his
        personal opinions, but they also appear to be somewhat opposed
        to the popular sentiment. The point of view taken by Gerv.
        Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 305) is probably unique. The one
        really judicial commentator on the whole affair is William of
        Newburgh (l. iii. c. 7--Howlett, vol. i. pp. 233, 234).

        [1091] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 20. Cf. Th. Agnellus
        (Stevenson, _R. Coggeshall_), p. 268.

        [1092] R. Diceto as above. Th. Agnellus (as above), p. 269.
        _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303.

The political tide, however, turned as soon as he was gone. The
Aquitanian league suddenly found itself without a head; for Geoffrey
of Britanny, although the wiliest and most plausible of all the king’s
sons, was also the most generally distrusted and disliked.[1093] The
league broke up at once; on Midsummer-day Ademar of Limoges surrendered
his citadel and made his peace;[1094] and most of the other rebels soon
followed his example. By the end of the month Henry, having razed the
walls of Limoges and garrisoned with his own troops the castles which
had submitted to him, could venture to set out for Normandy;[1095]
while King Alfonso of Aragon, who had come to the help of his father’s
old ally, found nothing left for him to do but to join Richard
in an expedition against the one baron who still persisted in his
rebellion--Bertrand de Born.[1096] If Bertrand’s story may be believed,
it was Alfonso’s treachery which, after a week’s siege, compelled
him to surrender Hautefort.[1097] What followed shewed plainly that
the Aquitanian revolt was at an end. Richard made over Hautefort to
Constantine de Born, the troubadour’s brother and lifelong rival;[1098]
Bertrand, instead of calling his fellow-barons to avenge him as of
old, threw himself upon the generosity of his conqueror, and addressed
Richard in a _sirvente_ entreating that his castle might be restored
to him. Richard referred him to his father; Bertrand then hastened to
the king, who greeted him sarcastically with an allusion to one of
his own earlier _sirventes_: “You were wont to boast of possessing
more wits than you ever needed to use--what has become of them now?”
“Sire, I lost them on the day that you lost your son.” Henry burst into
tears; Bertrand was forgiven, indemnified for the losses which he had
sustained during the siege, and dismissed with a charter securing to
him from that time forth the sole possession of Hautefort.[1099] As a
natural consequence, his lyre and his sword were thenceforth both alike
at the service of the ducal house to whom he had hitherto been such a
troublesome and dangerous foe.

        [1093] See Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 11
        (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 35). The author of the _Gesta Hen._
        seems to look upon Geoffrey as the instigator of all his
        brothers’ misdoings, and scarcely ever mentions his name
        without an epithet of abuse.

        [1094] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 18 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. p. 337). _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 302. The date comes
        from Geoffrey.

        [1095] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 303.

        [1096] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 18 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. p. 337).

        [1097] On the story of this siege see Clédat, _Bert. de Born_,
        pp. 55–57, and Geoff. Vigeois as above.

        [1098] Geoff. Vigeois as above.

        [1099] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, pp. 57, 58.

On his northward march Henry met with no opposition. The young king had
drawn to himself followers from all parts of the Angevin dominions, as
well as from those of the French Crown;[1100] but they had all been
drawn by a purely personal attraction, or by the hope of gain; their
action had no political significance; and the greater barons, warned
by their experience of ten years before, had remained entirely aloof
from the whole movement. On reaching Le Mans, indeed, Henry found the
old jealousy between Normandy and Maine on the point of breaking out
over his son’s dead body; the clergy and people of Rouen, indignant at
being defrauded of their young king’s dying bequest, were threatening
to come and destroy the city of Le Mans and carry off his body by
force. Henry was obliged to cause it to be disinterred and conveyed
to Rouen for re-burial,[1101] while he himself returned to Angers to
meet Richard and to receive Geoffrey’s submission.[1102] The quarrel
between the Cenomannians and the citizens of Rouen was however only the
smallest part of the troubles which arose from the young king’s death.
As Margaret’s only child had died in infancy, her brother Philip of
France at once demanded the restoration of her dowry, and especially
the fortress of Gisors. Henry refused to give it up; conference after
conference was held without result;[1103] at last, in December, a
compromise was made, Henry consenting to do homage to Philip for all
his transmarine dominions and to pay a money-compensation for Gisors,
which was to be left in his hands henceforth as the dowry not of
Margaret, but of her sister Adela, Richard’s affianced bride.[1104]

        [1100] W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. iv. c. i. (Wright, p. 139).

        [1101] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 303, 304. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 280. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 20.
        Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 305. Th. Agnellus (Stevenson,
        _R. Coggeshall_), pp. 269–272.

        [1102] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 304.

        [1103] _Ib._ pp. 304, 305. Cf. Rog. Howden as above, pp. 280,
        281. According to the _Gesta_, one of Henry’s contrivances for
        avoiding the restitution of the dower-lands was to declare
        that he had bestowed them upon his own wife; and he set her at
        liberty and made her go through the said lands to demonstrate
        the fact. If so, however, she was soon put in prison again.

        [1104] _Ib._ p. 306. Cf. Rog. Howden, as above, pp. 281, 284.

But a far worse difficulty remained. All Henry’s schemes for the
distribution of his territories were upset by the death of his heir,
and it was necessary to devise some new arrangement. It really seems as
if Henry’s first thought about the matter was that now at last he could
provide as he chose for his darling “Lackland”; for he at once bade
the English justiciar Ralf de Glanville bring John over to meet him
in Normandy. As soon as they arrived he sent for Richard and unfolded
his plan. Richard was now the eldest son; if he lived, he must in due
time succeed his father as head of the Angevin house. Henry had clearly
no mind to venture a second time upon the dangerous experiment of
crowning his heir during his own life. But, although we have no actual
statement of his intentions, it seems plain that he did intend to place
Richard, in every respect short of the coronation, in the same position
which had been held by the young king. Under these circumstances, if
the continental dominions of the Angevin house were to be redistributed
among the three surviving brothers, there was only one possible mode
of redistribution. Geoffrey could not give up Britanny, for he was now
actually married to its duchess;[1105] but Richard, in consideration
of his prospects as future king of England, duke of Normandy and count
of Anjou, might fairly be asked to surrender to his youngest brother
the duchy of Aquitaine. So at least it seemed from Henry’s point of
view. Richard however saw the matter in another light. Not because he
loved Aquitaine, but because he hated it--because for eight years he
had fought unceasingly to crush it beneath his feet--now that it lay
there prostrate, he could not let it escape him. Richard was generous;
but to give up to other hands the reaping of a harvest which he had
sown with such unsparing labour and watered with such streams of blood,
was a sacrifice too great for his generosity in his six-and-twentieth
year. He met his father’s demand with a request for time to think it
over; that evening he mounted his horse and rode straight for Poitou;
and thence he sent back a message that so long as he lived, no one but
himself should ever hold the duchy of Aquitaine.[1106]

        [1105] Geoffrey and Constance were married in 1181; see a
        document in Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol. i. col. 687.
        Rob. Torigni dates the marriage a year too late (Delisle, vol.
        ii. p. 104 and note 4).

        [1106] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 308.

After threatening and beseeching him by turns all through the winter,
Henry so far lost patience that he gave permission to John--now fifteen
years old--to lead an army into his brother’s territories and win an
heritage for himself if he could.[1107] It does not appear, however,
that any such attempt was actually made till after Henry himself had
gone back to England in June 1184.[1108] As soon as his back was
turned, his two younger sons joined to harry the lands of the eldest;
Richard retaliated by pushing across the Angevin border and making
a raid upon Britanny; and in November Henry found it necessary to
check the lawless doings of all three by summoning them to rejoin him
in England.[1109] On S. Andrew’s day a sort of public reconciliation
of the whole family took place in a great council at Westminster;
Eleanor was suffered to resume her place as queen, and the three sons
were compelled formally at least to make peace among themselves.[1110]
Geoffrey was at once sent back to Normandy;[1111] Richard and John
stayed to keep the Christmas feast with their father and mother amid
a brilliant gathering of the court at Windsor.[1112] Soon afterwards
Richard also returned to his troublesome duchy;[1113] for Henry had
now abandoned all idea of transferring it to John. Falling back upon
his earlier plans for his youngest child, on Mid-Lent Sunday 1185 he
knighted John at Windsor, and thence despatched him as governor to
Ireland.[1114]

        [1107] _Ib._ p. 311.

        [1108] _Ib._ p. 312. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 21.

        [1109] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 319.

        [1110] _Ib._ pp. 319, 320. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
        288. Eleanor had been released in June in order that she might
        welcome her daughter, the duchess of Saxony; _Gesta Hen._ as
        above, p. 313.

        [1111] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 320.

        [1112] _Ib._ p. 333.

        [1113] _Ib._ p. 334.

        [1114] _Ib._ p. 336. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 34.
        John sailed from Milford on April 24 and landed next day at
        Waterford. Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 32 (Dimock,
        vol. v. p. 380).

Meanwhile the king himself was again called over sea by fresh troubles
in Gaul. The king of France and the count of Flanders had been
quarrelling for the last two years over the territories of the latter’s
deceased wife, the counties of Amiens and Vermandois;[1115] Henry’s
last act before he left Normandy had been to arrange a truce between
them.[1116] Two months later--in August 1184--while Philip of Flanders
was away in England on a pilgrimage to the martyr’s tomb at Canterbury,
Philip of France broke the truce by stirring up his father-in-law the
count of Hainaut to attack Flanders in his behalf: Philip of Flanders
appealed for help to his other overlord the Emperor Frederic; the
archbishop of Cöln, who had been his fellow-pilgrim, at once joined him
in a counter-invasion of Hainaut;[1117] and the incalculable dangers
of a war between France and Germany were only averted by Frederic’s
wise reluctance to interfere, strengthened, we may perhaps suspect, by
the influence of the English king. It seemed indeed as if nothing but
Henry’s presence could avail to keep order in Gaul. When he returned
thither, in April 1185,[1118] his first task was to pacify another
quarrel between his own sons. This time the elder one seems to have
been the aggressor; and Henry grew so angry that he once more summoned
Richard to give up Aquitaine altogether, not, however, to either of
his brothers, but to its own lawful lady, his mother, Queen Eleanor.
Despite all her faults, Eleanor was reverenced by her sons; Richard
especially treated her throughout his life with the utmost respect and
affection; and the demand thus made in her behalf met with immediate
submission.[1119] For nine months Henry’s dominions were quiet, and
his hands were free to deal with the quarrels of France and Flanders.
But before he had succeeded in pacifying them, a further complication
was added. King Bela of Hungary made suit to Philip of France for the
hand of his sister the widowed Queen Margaret,[1120] and this at once
re-opened the question about her dower; for the agreement made two
years before had been conditional upon Richard’s marriage with Adela,
and as this event seemed as far off as ever, Philip again laid claim to
the whole dowry, including Gisors. He was however too much in need of
Henry’s assistance in his dispute with Flanders over the dower-lands
of Isabel of Vermandois to risk a quarrel with him about those of the
young queen; and by Henry’s tact and diplomacy both questions were
settled in a conference at Gisors itself early in 1186.[1121] The count
of Flanders gave up Vermandois to Philip Augustus,[1122] while Philip
and Margaret again consented, in return for a money-compensation from
Henry, to make Gisors over to him on the old condition--that Richard
should marry Adela without further delay.[1123] The condition however
remained unfulfilled. Richard was again despatched into Aquitaine,
not indeed as its duke--for Henry had placed all its fortresses under
officers of his own appointment[1124]--but still as his father’s
representative, charged in his name with the maintenance of obedience
and order.[1125] As for Eleanor, Henry had clearly never intended again
to intrust her with any real authority; and in April he carried her
back with him to England.[1126]

        [1115] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 311, 312. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 309. On this quarrel cf. Rigord (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), pp. 12, 13, and Gir. Cambr.
        _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 2 (Angl. Christ. Soc.,
        pp. 88–90). This last version is extremely confused in its
        chronology. The main facts of the case are these: Philip of
        Flanders and Isabel his wife had no children, and they had
        quarrelled (_Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 99, 100). Philip’s
        heir-presumptive was his sister Margaret, wife of Count Baldwin
        of Hainaut, and after her, her son, another Baldwin. In 1180,
        however, Philip proposed, instead of leaving all his dominions
        to his sister and her son, to settle the southern half of them,
        comprising Vermandois and Flanders south of the river Lys, upon
        her daughter Elizabeth, whom he had just given in marriage to
        Philip of France. (_Ib._ p. 245.) He meant to leave them to her
        on his own death; but when his wife died, in 1182 (_ib._ p.
        285), Philip Augustus laid claim to her two counties as lapsed
        fiefs. King and count went on quarrelling till 1186, when, as
        we shall see, the matter was settled by the immediate cession
        of Vermandois to Philip Augustus, who thereupon agreed to wait
        for the rest till the Flemish count’s death.

        [1116] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 312. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 309.

        [1117] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 321, 322. Cf. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 288, and R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
        32.

        [1118] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 337. R. Diceto as above, p. 34.

        [1119] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 337, 338. Cf. Rog. Howden as
        above, p. 304.

        [1120] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.),
        p. 20. Will. Armor., _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 73.
        According to the _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 346, Bela’s first
        suit was to Henry, for the hand of his granddaughter Matilda of
        Saxony; but Henry, “ut mos suus erat,” was so slow in answering
        that Bela, tired of waiting, transferred his proposals to
        Margaret. On the other hand, Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i.
        pp. 336, 337, charges Henry with having contrived Margaret’s
        marriage with Bela on purpose to get her to a safe distance,
        whence neither she nor her husband could reclaim the dowry.

        [1121] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 343. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 40. The last gives the date as March 10;
        the _Gesta_ make it just before Mid-Lent, which was February 26.

        [1122] Cf. Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.),
        p. 13, with R. Diceto as above.

        [1123] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 344. Cf. R. Diceto as above.

        [1124] R. Diceto as above.

        [1125] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 345.

        [1126] _Ibid._ R. Diceto as above.

England was now his only refuge. In these closing years of his reign,
when the whole interest of the story centres round the person of
the king, the character of those few incidents which take place on
English ground is in striking contrast with the state of affairs which
occupied him in Gaul. While the Angevin dominions on the continent
were threatening disruption under their owner’s very eyes, each of
his visits to England was marked by some fresh indication of the firm
hold which he had gained upon his island realm and its dependencies,
or of the lofty position which England under him had acquired among
the powers of the world. Of the internal affairs of England itself,
indeed, we hear absolutely nothing save a few ecclesiastical details,
and of Wales and Scotland scarcely more. Henry’s first business after
his landing in 1184 had been to lead an army against South Wales;[1127]
but at the mere tidings of his approach Rees hurried to make submission
at Worcester.[1128] William of Scotland was in still greater haste to
meet the English king with a suit for the hand of his granddaughter
Matilda of Saxony,[1129] who was now in England with her parents. The
project was foiled by the Pope’s refusal to grant a dispensation,[1130]
without which such a marriage was impossible, owing to the descent of
both parties from Malcolm III. and Margaret. Henry, however, on his
next visit to England in 1186, proposed that William should wed in
Matilda’s place her kinswoman Hermengard of Beaumont.[1131] Hermengard
stood even nearer than Matilda in descent from Henry I., but there
was no obstacle to her marriage with the king of Scots; he therefore
willingly embraced the offer; and before the year closed the alliance
between the two kings was doubly cemented, first at Carlisle by the
final submission of Galloway to Henry, William himself standing surety
for its obedience;[1132] and afterwards, at Woodstock on September
5, by the marriage of Hermengard and William, to whom Henry restored
Edinburgh castle as his contribution to the dowry of the bride.[1133]

        [1127] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 314. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 309.

        [1128] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [1129] _Ib._ p. 313.

        [1130] _Ib._ p. 322.

        [1131] _Ib._ p. 347.

        [1132] _Ib._ pp. 348, 349.

        [1133] _Ib._ p. 351.

Henry is said to have received in the course of the same year another
proposal, from a more distant quarter, for his granddaughter’s hand.
According to one writer, Bela of Hungary had at first desired the
young Saxon princess for his queen, and it was only Henry’s long
delay in answering his suit which provoked him to transfer it to
Margaret.[1134] Both Matilda’s suitors must have been attracted solely
by the ambition of forming a family connexion with her grandfather
King Henry; and that attraction must have been a very strong one, for
at the time of William’s suit, if not at the time of Bela’s, it had
to counterbalance the fact that Matilda herself, her parents, and all
their other children, were landless and penniless exiles. To Henry’s
load of family cares there had been added since 1180 that of the
troubles of his eldest daughter and her husband, Duke Henry the Lion
of Saxony. During the retreat of the Imperial forces from Italy in
1179 the duke fell under the displeasure of his cousin the Emperor;
next year he was deprived of all his estates and placed under the ban
of the Empire. In the summer of 1182 he and his family made their
way to the sole refuge left them, the court of his father-in-law;
and there for the most part they remained during the next two years.
Towards the close of 1184 the English king’s influence in Germany
prevailed to obtain the duke’s restoration to his patrimonial duchy
of Brunswick;[1135] and another token of the eagerness with which
Henry’s alliance was sought may be seen in the fact that among the
conditions demanded by Frederic was the betrothal of one of his own
daughters to Richard of Poitou.[1136] This condition, which might have
added considerably to Henry’s difficulties in France, was annulled
by the speedy death of the intended bride.[1137] On the other hand,
the restoration of the exiled duke was far from complete; Brunswick
was only a small part of the vast territories which he had formerly
possessed; although he returned to Germany in 1185,[1138] it was as
a suspected and ruined man; and before Henry’s reign closed another
sentence of banishment drove him and his wife again to seek the shelter
of her father’s court.

        [1134] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 346. See above, p.
        235, note 5{1120}.

        [1135] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 249, 287, 288, 318, 319, 322,
        323; cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 199–201, 269, 288,
        289.

        [1136] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 319.

        [1137] _Ib._ p. 322.

        [1138] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 38.

Early in 1185 came a crowning proof of the estimation in which the
English king was held both at home and abroad. King Baldwin III. of
Jerusalem, the eldest son and successor of Queen Melisenda and Fulk of
Anjou, had died in 1162, the year of Thomas Becket’s appointment to the
see of Canterbury. He was succeeded by his brother Almeric, who died
while Henry was struggling with his rebellious barons in 1173. During
the twelve years which had passed since then, Almeric’s son, another
Baldwin, had fought on bravely against overwhelming odds to keep out
the Infidel foe. But the struggle grew more hopeless year by year and
day by day. The young king himself was in natural temper as gallant
a knight as ever sprang from the blood of Anjou; but he was crippled
physically, socially and politically by a disease which made his life a
burthen--he was a leper; his kingdom was torn by the mutual jealousies
of the kinsmen on whom he was compelled to rely for its government
and defence; while the political and military power of the Turks was
growing to a height such as it had never before attained, under their
famous leader Saladin.[1139] If the necessities of Palestine had
been grievous when King Baldwin II. had called upon Fulk to protect
Melisenda on her perilous throne--if they had been grievous when
Melisenda sought the aid of the western princes for her infant son
Baldwin III.--they were far more grievous now. But times were changed
in the west since Melisenda had been obliged to rest content with a
general appeal addressed to Latin Christendom through the abbot of
Clairvaux. Independent of the claim of the king of Jerusalem to the
sympathy and the succour of all Christian princes, Baldwin had a direct
personal claim upon one prince, and that one well-nigh the mightiest
of all. He himself represented one branch of the race whose power had
spread from the black rock of Angers to the ends of the earth; the
other, the elder branch, was represented by Henry Fitz-Empress. As
Baldwin’s nearest kinsman, as the foremost descendant alike of Fulk
the King and of Fulk the Canon, as head of the whole Angevin race on
both sides of the sea, it was to the Angevin king of England that the
Angevin king of Jerusalem appealed, as a matter of right and almost of
duty, for succour in his extremity.[1140] And he threw his appeal into
a shape which made it indeed irresistible. Henry was at Nottingham, on
his way northward to York, in the last days of January 1185, when he
was stopped by tidings that two of the highest dignitaries of the Latin
Church in the east, Heraclius the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Grand
Master of the Hospital, had arrived at Canterbury on a mission from
Holy Land.[1141] He at once changed his course and hurried southward
again to meet them at Reading.[1142] With a burst of tears Heraclius
laid at the feet of the English king the royal standard of Jerusalem,
the keys of the city, those of the Tower of David and of the Holy
Sepulchre itself, beseeching him in Baldwin’s name to carry them back
at the head of his crusading host.

        [1139] Will. Tyr., ll. xix.–xxii. l. xxi.; containing a most
        moving account of Baldwin. See also Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 10
        (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 240–247), and Bishop Stubbs’s elucidation
        of the whole story and its significance in his introduction to
        _Itin. Reg. Ric._, pp. lxxxi. _et seq._

        [1140] “Sicut ab eo ad cujus nutum regnum Jerosolymitanum de
        jure hæreditario prædecessorum suorum spectabat.” _Gesta Hen._
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 328.

        [1141] _Ib._ p. 335. They had come through France, and had been
        received in Paris by Philip on January 16; Rigord (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 14. They were at
        Canterbury on January 29, and it seems that even the Patriarch
        of Jerusalem, with the very keys of the Sepulchre itself in his
        hands, thought it well to stop and pay his devotions at the
        martyr’s tomb; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 325. A third
        envoy, the Grand Master of the Temple, had died on the way at
        Verona; _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 331; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol.
        ii. p. 32.

        [1142] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 335; cf. R. Diceto as above.
        Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 24 (Angl. Christ.
        Soc., p. 59) places the meeting at Winchester.

The whole assembly wept with the Patriarch; and the king himself was
deeply moved.[1143] How many of his earlier projects of going on
crusade--now to Spain, now to Holy Land, now alone, now with the king
of France--had been mere political expedients, we cannot tell; there
may have been more sincerity in them than one is at first disposed
to imagine. Little as Henry cared for either war or adventure merely
for its own sake, still there flowed in his veins, no less than in
those of his young cousin Baldwin, the blood of Angevin pilgrims and
crusaders. The lifelong dream of Fulk Nerra and Fulk V. may have been
also the dream of Henry, although none of the three was a man to let
his dreams influence his conduct until he saw a clear possibility of
realizing them. Whether there was such a possibility now, however,
was a question whose decision did not rest with Henry alone. If he
was to head a crusade, he must head it not merely as count of Anjou
but as king of England, with all England’s powers and resources,
material and moral, at his back; and this could only be if England
sanctioned his undertaking. The “faithful men of the land”--the bishops
and barons, the constitutional representatives of the nation--were
therefore gathered together in council at Clerkenwell on March 18;
Henry bade them advise him as they thought best for his soul’s health,
and promised to abide by their decision. After deliberation, they gave
it as their unanimous judgement that he must remain at home and not
venture to abandon, for the sake of giving his personal assistance in
the east, the work to which he was pledged by his coronation-oath,
of keeping his own realms in peace and order and securing them from
external foes.[1144] Whether or not the decision thus arrived at
was wise for the interests of Christendom at large--whether or not
it redounds altogether to the honour of England--it was surely the
highest tribute she could pay to her Angevin king. A ruler from whom
his people were so unwilling to part had clearly some better hold over
them than that of mere force. That they shrank with such dread from any
interruption of his kingly labours is the best proof how greatly they
had benefited by those labours during the past thirty years.

        [1143] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 335, 336. R. Diceto as above,
        pp. 32, 33. Cf. Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 59, 60).

        [1144] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 33, 34. The author
        of _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 336, dates the council
        eight days earlier than Ralf, and finds nothing more to say
        about it than “cum diu tractâssent de itinere Jerosolimitanæ
        profectionis, tandem placuit regi et consiliariis consulere
        inde Philippum regem Franciæ.” But the totally independent
        versions of Henry’s answer to the Patriarch given by Gir.
        Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 27 (Angl. Christ.
        Soc., pp. 64, 65), and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 32,
        both distinctly support Ralf thus far, that they represent the
        king’s refusal as grounded on the difficulty of reconciling the
        proposed expedition with the fulfilment of his duty to his own
        realms.

The Patriarch was bitterly disappointed, and vented his disappointment
upon Henry in unmeasured terms. In vain did he intreat that at least
John, the only one of the king’s sons then in England, might be sent
to infuse some new life into the rapidly-dying stock of the Angevin
house in Palestine. John himself, it is said, was eager to go,[1145]
but the king refused his consent, and six weeks later, as we have seen,
despatched him as governor to Ireland. This mission failed completely,
through John’s own fault. He was received with every demonstration of
loyalty both by the native princes and by the English settlers; but in
a very few months he contrived to set them all against him. He treated
the English leaders with the most overbearing insolence; he insulted
the Irish chieftains who came to bring him their loyal greetings at
Waterford more brutally still, mocking at their dress and manners,
and even pulling their beards;[1146] he sent the mercenaries who had
accompanied him from England to make a raid upon North Munster, in
which they were repulsed with great loss,[1147] and then exasperated
them to mutiny by keeping them penniless while he spent their wages
upon his own pleasure.[1148] By September he had brought matters to
such a pass that his father was obliged to recall him and bid John de
Courcy undertake the government of Ireland in his place.[1149] Henry
however was far from abandoning his cherished scheme. Blinded by his
fatal partiality for his youngest child, he was willing to attribute
John’s failure to any cause except the true one; he determined that
the lad should return to his post, but clothed with fuller powers
and loftier dignity. Taking advantage of a change in the Papacy, he
at once applied to the new Pope, Urban III., for leave to have his
son anointed and crowned as king of Ireland. Urban not only gave his
consent, but accompanied it with a gift of a crown made of peacock’s
feathers set in gold.[1150] Next summer there came to England news
that “a certain Irishman had cut off the head of Hugh de Lacy”;[1151]
Henry, seeing in this event an opportunity of recovering for the Crown
Hugh’s vast estates in Ireland, hurried John off thither at once[1152]
without waiting to have him crowned, or possibly intending that the
coronation should take place in Dublin. But before John had sailed, he
was recalled by tidings of another death which touched his father more
nearly.

        [1145] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 27 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 65).

        [1146] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 36 (Dimock,
        vol. v. p. 389).

        [1147] Four Masters, a. 1185 (O’Donovan, vol. iii. p. 67).

        [1148] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 339.

        [1149] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._ as above (p. 392).

        [1150] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii.
        pp. 306, 307.

        [1151] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 350. Cf. _ib._ p. 361;
        Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 309; Four Masters, a.
        1186 (O’Donovan, vol. iii. pp. 71–75); Gir. Cambr. _Expugn.
        Hibern._, l. ii. c. 35 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 387); and R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 34. This last gives the day, July 25, but
        places the event a year too early.

        [1152] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 350.

Geoffrey of Britanny had gone to visit the French king in Paris; there,
on August 19, he died.[1153] No one regretted him, unless it was his
father, and Philip of France, who caused him to be buried with regal
honours in the cathedral church of our Lady in Paris, and followed him
to the grave with every demonstration of mourning.[1154] If report
spoke true, Philip’s grief was as sincere as it was selfish; for
Geoffrey had been cut off in the midst of a plot whereby he proposed,
out of spite against his father and elder brother, to withdraw from
them his homage for Britanny and become Philip’s liegeman, receiving
in return the title of grand seneschal which in the year of his own
birth had been conferred upon his father as a warrant for intervention
in the affairs of the Breton duchy.[1155] Faithful servants of the
English king were inclined to see in Geoffrey’s sudden end a divine
judgement upon this undutiful scheme.[1156] Philip however saw a means
of making his own profit out of Geoffrey’s death, quite as readily
as out of his life. He at once claimed, as overlord, the wardship of
the infant heiress-presumptive of Britanny--Eleanor, the only child
of Geoffrey and Constance[1157]--and with it the administration of
her duchy till she should be old enough to be married. Henry tried
to temporize,[1158] but the longer the negotiations lasted the more
complicated they became, as Philip kept increasing his demands. First
Aquitaine was dragged into the dispute. Its northern portion was just
now in a state of unwonted tranquillity, for at the close of the year
we find Bertrand de Born complaining that he had witnessed neither
siege nor battle for more than twelve months.[1159] Richard was in fact
busy in the south, at war with the count of Toulouse.[1160] Against
this Philip remonstrated, as an unjust aggression upon a loyal vassal
of the French Crown;[1161] he added to his remonstrance a demand for
Richard’s homage to himself for Aquitaine, and also--all prospect of
Adela’s marriage being now apparently at an end--for the definite
restitution of Gisors.[1162] While the two kings were negotiating,
actual hostilities broke out between some of their constables on the
border; the warlike zeal of both parties, however, died down at the
approach of Christmas;[1163] Henry lingered in England to receive two
papal legates who were coming to crown John as king of Ireland,[1164]
but the crowning never took place; and at last, on February 17, 1187,
king and legates sailed together for Normandy.[1165]

        [1153] R. Diceto as above, p. 41. Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 20. Will. Armor., _Gesta Phil.
        Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 73. The accounts of the cause of death are
        very conflicting. Rigord, Will. Armor. and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs,
        vol. i. 336) say he died of some malady not specified. Gir.
        Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 10 (Angl. Christ.
        Soc., p. 34), makes him die “eodem quo et frater antea morbo
        acutissimo, sc. febrili calore.” The _Gesta Hen._ as above, and
        Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 309, attribute his death to
        injuries received in a tournament; but the _Gesta_, as we shall
        see, have an alternative version.

        [1154] Gir. Cambr., Rigord and Will. Armor. as above.

        [1155] Cf. Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 33, 34), with _Gesta Hen._
        as above, and Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. p.
        235).

        [1156] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [1157] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 41, says they had two
        daughters; but I can find no trace of a second.

        [1158] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 353, 354.

        [1159] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, pp. 68, 69.

        [1160] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 345.

        [1161] R. Diceto as above, pp. 43, 44.

        [1162] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
        23. Will. Armor., _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), pp. 73, 74;
        _Philipp._, l. ii. (_ibid._), p. 118.

        [1163] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 354, 355. R. Diceto as above,
        p. 44.

        [1164] Cardinal Octavian and Hugh of Nonant, bishop-elect of
        Chester; _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 3, 4; R. Diceto
        (as above), p. 47. They landed at Sandwich on Christmas-eve and
        kept the feast at Canterbury. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
        346.

        [1165] The _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 4, and Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 317, say they crossed together; R. Diceto
        as above, p. 47, to whom we owe the date of Henry’s crossing,
        seems to think the legates had preceded him.

When the two kings met at the Gué-St.-Rémy on April 5,[1166] little
Eleanor was no longer heiress of Britanny. On Easter-day Constance
had become the mother of a son, whom the Bretons, in defiance of his
grandfather’s wish to bestow upon him his own name, insisted upon
calling after the legendary hero of their race, Arthur[1167]--thus at
once claiming him as the representative of their national existence
and rights. The child’s birth made little difference in the political
situation; Philip claimed the wardship of the heir of Britanny just
as he had claimed that of its heiress; the conference broke up, and
both parties prepared for war. Henry distributed his forces in four
divisions; one of these was commanded by his eldest son, Geoffrey the
chancellor, who as bishop-elect of Lincoln had given good proof of
his military capacities in the revolt of 1174;--another was intrusted
to the king’s faithful friend Earl William de Mandeville; the other
two were commanded respectively by Richard and John, and it seems
that both of these were at once sent down into Berry, where Philip
was expected to begin his attack. Soon after Whitsuntide Philip
advanced upon Berry,[1168] took Issoudun and Graçay, and laid siege
to Châteauroux.[1169] Henry now followed his sons; the three together
marched to the relief of Châteauroux, and Richard apparently succeeded
in making his way into the place, where John afterwards rejoined
him.[1170] For nearly a fortnight the two kings remained encamped on
opposite sides of the Indre, drawing up their forces every morning
for battle;[1171] but each day the battle was averted by some means
or other. Now it was the mediation of the French bishops in Philip’s
camp, or of the Roman legates in that of Henry;[1172] now it was a
miraculous judgement upon a sacrilegious Brabantine in the French host,
which scared Philip into dismissing his mercenaries;[1173] now it was
the count of Flanders who, as soon as his peace with France was made,
turned against the peace-maker and sought to stir Richard up to play
over again the part of the young king; now it was Henry himself who
opened negotiations for a truce.[1174] Finally, on Midsummer-eve,[1175]
a truce was made for two years.[1176] According to Bertrand de Born, it
was wrung from Philip by the discovery that the troops of Champagne,
which formed a considerable part of his army, had been bought over
by the English king.[1177] Its actual negotiator was Richard;[1178]
and when Richard, instead of returning to his father, rode away in
the closest companionship with the king of France, Henry naturally
grew suspicious of the terms on which it had been won. His suspicions
were confirmed when Richard, under pretence of obeying his summons to
return, made his way to Chinon and there seized the contents of the
Angevin treasury, which he immediately applied to the fortification of
his own castles in Poitou.[1179] A partizan of Richard tells us that
Philip had communicated to him a letter in which Henry proposed to
make peace by marrying Adela to John and constituting the latter heir
to all his dominions except England and Normandy.[1180] If this scheme
really existed, it was foiled by Philip’s own act; and when Henry and
his elder son met soon afterwards at Angers, their differences were
apparently settled for the moment by Richard’s reinstatement in the
dukedom of Aquitaine; for we are told that he not only returned to his
duty, but publicly renewed his homage to the king.[1181]

        [1166] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 5.

        [1167] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 48. Will. Newb., l. iii.
        c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 235). _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol.
        i. pp. 358, 361. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 315. These
        two latter make the year 1186, which is nonsense, as they both
        expressly say that the child was posthumous.

        [1168] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 6.

        [1169] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.),
        p. 23; Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 74;
        _Philipp._, l. ii. (_ibid._), p. 119.

        [1170] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 5. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 369.

        [1171] See Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, p. 71.

        [1172] _Ibid._ _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 6, 7.

        [1173] Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 369, 370; Rigord
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), pp. 23, 24; Will.
        Newb., l. iii. c. 14 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 248); and Gir. Cambr.
        _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 2 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 92).

        [1174] Gerv. Cant. as above, pp. 371–373.

        [1175] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 49.

        [1176] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 7; R. Diceto and Gir.
        Cambr. as above; Rigord (as above), p. 23. Will. Armor., _Gesta
        Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 75, and _Philipp._, l. ii. (_ibid._),
        p. 120, turns the truce into an abject submission of Henry and
        Richard. Gerald says that one of the conditions of the truce
        was that Auvergne, which Philip had conquered, should remain in
        his hands during the period. But none of the other authorities
        mention Auvergne at all at this time; and Gerald’s statement
        seems incompatible with the French accounts of Philip’s attack
        upon Auvergne, as if upon a hostile country, in 1188 (Rigord,
        as above, p. 27; Will. Armor., _ibid._, pp. 74, 122). Gerald
        and Rigord are however almost equally untrustworthy for
        details, and especially for chronology.

        [1177] See Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, pp. 71, 72.

        [1178] Gerv. Cant. as above, p. 373.

        [1179] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 9.

        [1180] Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 91, 92).

        [1181] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 9.

All these western quarrels again sank into the background before
the tidings which came from Holy Land as the year drew to a close.
Heraclius had gone home from his unsuccessful mission to find Baldwin
IV. delivered out of all his troubles, and his throne occupied by his
infant nephew, the child of his sister Sibyl. The little king soon
followed his uncle to the grave; and Sibyl, on whom the representation
of the royal house thus devolved, at once bestowed her crown upon the
man who had already been for six years the bravest and most successful
defender of the distracted realm--her husband, Guy of Lusignan.[1182]
Guy sprang from a faithless race whom the Angevins had little cause
to love or trust in their western home; but in Palestine he was hated
simply because he had deservedly won the affection and the confidence
of both Baldwin and Sibyl. Thwarted, baffled, deserted, betrayed by
envious rivals, left almost alone to face the Infidel foes whose
advance grew more threatening day by day, Guy fought on till in a great
battle at Tiberias, in July 1187, he was made prisoner by the Turks;
the Christians were totally defeated, and the relic of the Cross, which
they had carried with them to the fight, fell with the king into the
hands of the unbelievers.[1183] The tidings of this disaster, when
they reached Europe in October, gave the death-blow to Pope Urban
III.[1184] His successor, Gregory VIII., opened his pontificate with
an impassioned appeal to all Western Christendom for the rescue of
the Holy Land.[1185] The first response came from the young duke of
Aquitaine; without waiting to consult his father, at the earliest
tidings of the catastrophe Richard took the cross at the hands of the
archbishop of Tours.[1186] Henry himself was so thunderstruck at the
news that for four days he suspended all state business and refused
to see any one.[1187] He was in Normandy, and with him was Archbishop
Baldwin of Canterbury, who had taken the cross two years before with
the archbishop of Rouen, the veteran warrior-bishop Hugh of Durham, the
justiciar Ralf de Glanville, and a crowd of other dignitaries of both
Church and state, none of whom, however, had as yet actually started
on their crusade. It was not King Henry who hindered them; he had
given every facility for the preaching of the crusade throughout his
dominions;[1188] and even in Richard’s case, although reproving the
hastiness of the vow, he made no attempt to thwart its fulfilment, but
on the contrary promised his son every assistance in his power.[1189]
Richard’s project, however, roused up the king of France to insist
once more upon his immediate marriage with Adela, or, failing this,
the restitution of Gisors; and Henry, on his way to England in January
1188, was recalled by tidings that Philip had gathered his host and was
threatening to invade Normandy unless his demands were granted at once.
The kings met at the old trysting-place between Gisors and Trie;[1190]
but their conference had scarcely begun when it was interrupted by
another messenger from Palestine, charged with news of a catastrophe
more awful than even that of Tiberias. Three months after Guy’s
capture, in October 1187, Jerusalem itself had fallen into the hands of
the Infidels;[1191] and the archbishop of Tyre now came to tell with
his own lips the sad and shameful story.

        [1182] _Ib._ vol. i. pp. 358, 359.

        [1183] According to the pathetic story in _Itin. Reg. Ric._
        (Stubbs), p. 15, it was rather the king who fell with the
        Cross, in a desperate effort to save it. See also _Gesta Hen._
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 13, 22, 37; R. Coggeshall (Stevenson),
        p. 21; _Expugn. Terræ Sanctæ_ (_ibid._), pp. 209–227.

        [1184] Cf. Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 21 (Howlett, vol. i. p.
        267), and Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.),
        p. 24.

        [1185] Will. Newb. as above. See also _Gesta Hen._ as above, p.
        15, and Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 322.

        [1186] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 50. Cf. Will. Newb., l.
        iii. c. 23 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 271). Gir. Cambr. _De Instr.
        Princ._, dist. iii. c. 5 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 98).

        [1187] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 389.

        [1188] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 302.

        [1189] Will. Newb. as above.

        [1190] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 29. Rog. Howden as
        above, p. 334. R. Diceto as above, p. 51. Gerv. Cant. as above,
        p. 406. Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.),
        p. 24. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 74. The
        date is either S. Hilary’s day, January 13 (Rigord and Will.
        Armor.), or that of S. Agnes, January 21 (_Gesta Hen._, Rog.
        Howden and R. Diceto). Gerv. Cant. makes it “about S. Vincent’s
        day” (January 22).

        [1191] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 24. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson),
        pp. 22, 23. _Expugn. Terræ Sanctæ_ (_ibid._), pp. 241–248.
        _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 20–22.

In his presence the selfish quarrel of the two kings was shamed into
silence. The king of France took the cross at once, and the king
of England followed his example, this time without waiting for his
people’s consent; the archbishops of Reims and Rouen, the counts of
Flanders, Burgundy, Blois and Champagne, and a crowd of French and
Norman barons did the like.[1192] The two kings set up a wooden cross,
afterwards replaced by a church, to mark the spot, which they called
the “Holy Field”;[1193] then they separated to make their preparations.
Henry at once sent to request a safe-conduct for himself and his
troops through the dominions of the king of Hungary and those of the
Western and Eastern Emperors.[1194] Before the end of the month he
issued from Le Mans an ordinance known as that of the “Saladin tithe,”
requiring every man in his dominions to give towards the expenses of
the crusade a tithe of all his personal property, excepting only the
necessary outfit of a knight or a priest.[1195] This was accompanied
by eight other ordinances also relating to the crusade,[1196] and
was imitated two months later in France by Philip Augustus.[1197] On
January 30 Henry returned to England;[1198] on February 11 he met
the bishops and barons in council at Geddington near Northampton, to
obtain their assent to the Saladin tithe and make arrangements for its
collection.[1199] It was chiefly to superintend this that the king
remained in England, while the archbishop of Canterbury went to preach
the crusade in Wales.[1200]

        [1192] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 51. _Gesta Hen._
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 30. Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 23 (Howlett,
        vol. i. p. 272). Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 406. Rigord
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 25.

        [1193] Rigord, as above.

        [1194] R. Diceto as above, pp. 51–54.

        [1195] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 31. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol.
        ii. pp. 335, 336. Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 160.

        [1196] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 31, 32. Rog. Howden as above,
        pp. 336, 337. These latter ordinances were issued in all
        Christian realms by the Pope’s desire; see Will. Newb. as above
        (pp. 273, 274).

        [1197] Rigord (as above), pp. 25, 26.

        [1198] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 33. Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [1199] Gerv. Cant. as above, pp. 409, 410 (we are indebted to
        him for place and date). _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [1200] Henry seems to have intended going to Wales himself,
        but to have given it up and sent the archbishop instead--an
        exchange which Baldwin gladly accepted, as he was at feud with
        his chapter, and greatly relieved to get away from it. Gerv.
        Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 419–421.

Meanwhile Richard was eager to start without delay; but his father
refused his consent, insisting that their expedition should be made
in common. The impatient “Lion-heart,” however, was not to be thus
restrained, and in his father’s absence he made all his preparations
and wrote to bespeak the aid of his brother-in-law William of Sicily
for the voyage which he was determined to begin as soon as the summer
should arrive.[1201] But his plans were checked by a fresh rising
of the Poitevin barons, headed as usual by the count of Angoulême,
Geoffrey of Rancogne and Geoffrey of Lusignan.[1202] This last was
the worst offender, having treacherously slain a personal friend of
Richard’s.[1203] But, like Richard himself, he had taken the cross; and
it was doubtless owing to this protection that, before the summer was
over, he was suffered to make his escape to the realm of his hapless
brother in Palestine.[1204] The other rebels were scarcely put down
when Raymond of Toulouse seized and cruelly maltreated some Poitevin
merchants who were passing through his territory. Richard at once
avenged this outrage by an armed raid upon the frontier-districts of
Toulouse, and presently managed to catch and imprison the count’s chief
adviser Peter Seilun, who was said to have instigated the seizure of
the merchants. Raymond retaliated by capturing two knights attached
to the household of the English king, Robert Poer and Ralf Fraser, on
their way back from a pilgrimage to Compostella; and neither Richard’s
protest against the sacrilege of keeping pilgrims in prison, nor
even the express command of the king of France for their liberation
out of reverence to S. James, could induce him to give them up on
any condition save the release of Peter Seilun, which Richard firmly
refused.[1205] A heavy ransom offered by the two English captives
themselves shortly afterwards changed Raymond’s determination;[1206]
but this was of course no satisfaction to Richard, and after
Whitsuntide he again invaded Toulouse with fire and sword; castle after
castle fell into his hands, till at last he began to threaten the
capital itself.[1207]

        [1201] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 7 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., pp. 102, 103).

        [1202] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 34.

        [1203] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 54.

        [1204] _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 26.

        [1205] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 34, 35. Cf. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 339, 340. The date of this expedition
        of Richard’s against Toulouse seems to have been about April;
        see Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 74.

        [1206] Rog. Howden. (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 340.

        [1207] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 36. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 55. This last writer says that Richard
        took seventeen castles, but he must be counting in those
        which had been taken in the spring. The date of this second
        expedition comes from Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 27, who places it between Pentecost
        and midsummer. The new editors of Vic and Vaissète, _Hist.
        du Languedoc_, vol. vii. p. 22, charge Rigord with false
        chronology here, and insist upon following (as they suppose)
        that of Will. Armor., who tells us that Richard began his
        campaign against Toulouse “modico elapso tempore” after the
        Mid-Lenten council at Paris (_Gesta Phil. Aug._, Duchesne,
        _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 74). If, however, they had
        read the English authorities more carefully, they would have
        seen that there were really two campaigns, and that while Will.
        Armor. speaks of the first, Rigord is speaking of the second.

In Aquitaine even more than elsewhere, the beginning of strife was like
the letting-out of water. This time the strife of Richard and Raymond
led to the outbursting of a flood which ended by overspreading the
whole Angevin dominions and sweeping away Henry Fitz-Empress himself.
If Richard’s story was true, neither he nor Raymond was the real
originator of the mischief; it was Philip of France who had secretly
urged him to the attack;[1208] while another rumour, which Richard
was only too ready to believe, accused Henry himself of stirring up
the count of Toulouse and the Aquitanian rebels against his son, in
order to prevent him from starting on the Crusade.[1209] Little as we
can credit such a tale, it is easy to imagine how dexterously Philip
would use it to sow dissensions between father and son and entangle the
impetuous Richard in a coil such as only the sword could cut. Openly,
meanwhile, Philip was taking the part of Toulouse, and peremptorily
insisting that Henry should put a stop to his son’s aggressions in
that quarter.[1210] Without waiting for Henry’s reply, he marched upon
Berry and laid siege to Châteauroux, which surrendered to him on
June 16.[1211] It was now Henry’s turn to remonstrate against this
breach of truce, all the more flagrant because committed against a
brother-crusader. He knew however that nothing but his own presence
could make his remonstrances of any avail; sending John over before
him, on the night of July 10 he hurried across the sea to Barfleur,
and thence went to muster his forces at Alençon.[1212] They consisted
of the feudal levies of England and Normandy, and a multitude of Welsh
under the command of Ralf de Glanville,[1213] together with some
Bretons and Flemish mercenaries,[1214] and apparently some Angevins
and Cenomannians.[1215] Henry was however very unwilling to resort to
force; his old scruple about making war upon his overlord seems not to
have been yet quite extinguished, and moreover he shrank alike from
the bloodshed and the expense of war. During some weeks his forces
were still kept idle, save for an occasional plundering-raid across
the French border.[1216] Philip meanwhile was carrying all before him
in Berry, and having conquered nearly the whole district, made a dash
upon Auvergne.[1217] Richard seized the opportunity for an attempt to
regain Châteauroux, in which however he failed, and was only saved
from capture or death by the help of a friendly butcher.[1218] His
advance however had been enough to make Philip retire into his own
domains.[1219] Soon afterwards the approach of the vintage-season
compelled the French king to disband a part of his forces; the
remainder, under command of the bishop of Beauvais, went to ravage
the Norman frontier-lands. Henry demanded reparation, and threatened
to cast off his allegiance in default of it; Philip retorted that he
would not cease from the warfare which he had begun till all Berry and
the Vexin were in his hands.[1220] At last, in the middle of August,
the two kings met in person once more between Gisors and Trie; but the
meeting broke up in anger; and when they parted, Philip in his rage cut
down the great elm tree under which the conferences between the rulers
of France and Normandy had so long been held, vowing that no conference
should ever be held there again.[1221]

        [1208] Rog. Howden as above. Cf. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 39.

        [1209] R. Diceto as above. Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._,
        dist. iii. c. 7 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 103).

        [1210] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 36.

        [1211] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 55. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 432, seems to have confused this siege of
        Châteauroux with an earlier one. Cf. Will. Newb., l. iii. c.
        25 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 276), Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 27, and Will. Armor., _Gesta Phil.
        Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 74.

        [1212] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 40. Cf. Gerv. Cant.
        as above, p. 433. R. Diceto (as above) dates the king’s
        crossing “circa festum S. Jacobi,” but this is clearly wrong.

        [1213] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [1214] R. Diceto as above.

        [1215] Rog. Howden (Stubbs, vol. ii. p. 343) adds some troops
        “from his other lands.”

        [1216] Gerv. Cant. as above, pp. 433, 434.

        [1217] Rigord as above. Will. Armor. as above; _Philipp._, l.
        iii. (_ibid._), p. 122. Both these writers however throw some
        suspicion upon their account of Philip’s successes by saying
        that Henry was flying before him all the while, and was finally
        chased back by him into Normandy--which in reality it seems
        plain that he had never quitted.

        [1218] Gerv. Cant. as above, p. 434.

        [1219] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 45.

        [1220] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 45, 46.

        [1221] According to R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 55, the
        conference began on August 16 and lasted three days. The _Gesta
        Hen._ as above, p. 47, place it after September 1, but this is
        impossible. Will. Armor., _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 74, and _Philipp._, l. iii.
        (_ibid._) pp. 123, 124, tells the story of the tree in a very
        odd shape. He says the English were sitting comfortably under
        its shade, while the French were broiling in the sun, and the
        French grew so envious of the more agreeable situation of their
        foes that they made a dash at them, put them to flight, and
        then cut down the tree, which Henry had caused to be carefully
        enclosed, as a sort of symbol of his ownership in the soil. R.
        Diceto, however, says that the ground on which the tree stood
        was French.

Richard had now rejoined his father,[1222] and at his instigation
an attack was made by their united forces upon Mantes, which was
occupied by a small French force under William des Barres, lately the
commandant of Châteauroux. Richard succeeded in avenging his recent
mishap at Châteauroux by taking William prisoner, but he made his
escape immediately, and nothing was gained by the expedition.[1223]
Richard again went into Berry; Henry lingered on the Norman border,
where soon afterwards he received from Philip a demand for another
conference. It took place at Châtillon on October 7, but again without
result. Philip now followed Richard, who thereupon opened negotiations
on his own account, offering to submit his quarrel with Toulouse to
the judgement of the French king’s court;[1224] but this also came
to nothing. Still the negotiations went on, and Henry’s difficulties
were increasing. Chief among them was the want of money to pay his
soldiers. His realms had been almost drained for the Saladin tithe; his
own treasury was exhausted; his troops, seeing no prospect of either
wages or plunder, began to slip away; and at last he was obliged to
disband his mercenaries and send his Welsh auxiliaries back to their
own country.[1225] Philip meanwhile was secretly in communication with
Richard;[1226] and Richard was growing eager to bring matters to a
crisis. The insidious whispers of France and Flanders had done their
work in his too credulous mind. To the end of his life Richard was but
little of a statesman and less of a diplomatist; it is therefore no
wonder that he failed on the one hand to fathom the subtle policy of
his father, and on the other to see through the wiles of Philip. His
fault lay in this--that while Henry’s servants were content to trust
him where they could not understand him, his own son was ready to find
a ground of suspicion in every word and action of his father’s for
which his own intelligence was incapable of accounting, and to credit
every calumny reported to him by his father’s enemies. More than a year
ago they had contrived, as has been seen, to awaken in his mind an idea
that he was in danger of being disinherited in favour of his youngest
brother; and it was with a determination to ascertain once for all the
extent of this danger that he brought the two kings to a meeting with
each other and with himself near Bonmoulins on November 18.[1227]

        [1222] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 10 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 111), makes them meet before Châteauroux. He
        has confused this campaign with that of the previous year.

        [1223] Cf. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 46, with Will. Armor.
        _Philipp._, l. iii. (as above), pp. 124–132.

        [1224] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 46, 48, 49.

        [1225] _Ib._ p. 50. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 434,
        435.

        [1226] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 435.

        [1227] _Ibid._ R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 57. _Gesta
        Hen._ as above.

The conference lasted three days; and each day the prospect of peace
grew fainter.[1228] Philip proposed that all parties should return to
the position which they had occupied before taking the cross; Henry was
ready to close with this proposition, but Richard rejected it, as it
would have compelled him to give up his conquests won from Toulouse
and worth a thousand marks or more as demesne lands, in exchange for
Châteauroux and a few other castles over which he would have had only a
precarious overlordship.[1229] As far as the two kings were concerned,
the meeting ended in a simple truce between them, to last till S.
Hilary’s day. No sooner however was this settled than Philip offered
to restore all his conquests on condition that Henry should cause his
subjects to do homage to Richard as his heir, and should allow his
marriage with Adela to take place immediately. Henry refused.[1230] The
two kings were standing, with Richard and the archbishop of Reims, in
the midst of a crowded ring of spectators. Richard himself now suddenly
turned to his father, and demanded to be distinctly acknowledged as
heir to all his dominions. Henry tried to put him off; he repeated
his demand with the same result. “Now,” he exclaimed, “I believe what
hitherto seemed to me incredible.” Ungirding his sword, he stretched
out his hands to the king of France and offered him his homage and
fealty for the whole continental heritage of the Angevin house; an
offer which Philip readily accepted, promising in return to give back
to Richard his recent conquests in Berry.[1231] Henry drew back,
speechless with amazement and consternation; the crowd, seeing the two
kings thus separated, rushed in between them, and the duke of Aquitaine
rode away in company with the French king, leaving Henry alone with
his recollections of all the evils which had come of his eldest son’s
alliance with Louis VII., and his forebodings of worse mischief to come
from this new alliance with Philip, who, as he well knew, was far more
dangerous than Louis had ever been; for he had more brains and even
fewer scruples.[1232]

        [1228] Gerv. Cant. as above.

        [1229] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 58.

        [1230] _Ibid._ Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 435. _Gesta
        Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 50.

        [1231] Gerv. Cant. as above, pp. 435, 436. R. Diceto and _Gesta
        Hen._ as above. Cf. Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._,
        vol. v.), p. 27, and Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii.
        c. 10 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 111).

        [1232] Gerv. Cant. as above, p. 436.

What little could be done to ward off the impending danger Henry did
without delay. He sent the only one of his sons on whom he could
really depend, Geoffrey the chancellor, to secure the fortresses of
Anjou; he himself went to do the like in Aquitaine,[1233] whence he
returned to keep Christmas at Saumur. The feast must have been a dreary
one, even if both Geoffrey and John were with him; yet, deserted as he
was, he managed to collect, for the last time, some semblance of the
old regal state.[1234] When the truce expired, however, he postponed
his intended meeting with Philip, on the plea of illness, first to
Candlemas-day, and then till after Easter. He hoped to make use of
the delay for winning Richard back; but Richard turned a deaf ear to
every message of conciliation.[1235] He had in fact joined Philip in
an attack upon Henry’s territories as soon as the truce was expired;
and the ever-discontented Bretons had been induced to lend their
aid.[1236] After Easter Richard was at length brought to a meeting with
his father, on the borders of Anjou and Maine; but nothing came of the
interview.[1237] In vain did the Pope, fearing that these quarrels in
Gaul would put a stop to the crusade, send two legates in succession to
make peace. The first, Henry of Albano, who was sent early in 1188 to
mediate between Henry and Louis, unintentionally became the indirect
cause of a further addition to Henry’s troubles. Thinking it safer to
postpone his mediation till the meeting of the two kings should take
place, he in the meantime went to preach the crusade in Germany and
there persuaded the Emperor himself to take the cross.[1238] By May
1189 Frederic was ready to start;[1239] but before doing so he took
a stern and summary measure to secure the peace of the Empire during
his absence. He ordered all those princes and nobles whose loyalty he
suspected either to accompany him or to quit the country and take an
oath not to set foot in it again till his return. Among those who
thus incurred banishment was Henry the Lion. For the second time he
and his wife sought shelter in England; not finding the king there,
they crossed over to Normandy in search of him,[1240] but it does
not appear that they ever reached him where he lay, sick and weary,
at Le Mans.[1241] Meanwhile Henry of Albano, after anathematizing
Richard for his disturbance of the peace, had withdrawn to Flanders
and there died.[1242] His mission was taken up with a somewhat
firmer hand by another legate, John of Anagni. Reaching Le Mans at
Ascension-tide 1189,[1243] John at once excommunicated all troublers
of the peace except the two kings themselves, who were made to promise
that they would submit their quarrels to his arbitration and that of
the archbishops of Reims, Bourges, Canterbury and Rouen, and were
threatened with excommunication if they should fail to redeem their
promise.[1244]

        [1233] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 436.

        [1234] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 60, 61.

        [1235] Gerv. Cant. as above, pp. 438, 439.

        [1236] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 61.

        [1237] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 13 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., pp. 116, 117).

        [1238] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 355, 356.

        [1239] He took the cross at Mainz on March 27, 1188, and
        started on May 10, 1189. Ansbert (Dobrowsky), pp. 18, 21.

        [1240] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 62.

        [1241] The duchess died in that very summer, seven days after
        her father according to R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 65,
        or nine days before him according to the Chron. Stederburg
        (Leibnitz, _Scriptt. Rer. Brunswic._, vol. i. p. 861).

        [1242] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 51, 55, 56. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 355.

        [1243] _Epp. Cant._ cccvii. (Stubbs), p. 290.

        [1244] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 61.

On the basis of this agreement a conference was held on Trinity Sunday,
June 4, at La Ferté-Bernard. There were present, besides the two kings,
Richard, and the legate, the four archbishops who were to assist him
as arbitrators, most of the Norman bishops, those of Angers and Le
Mans, four English and several French prelates, and a crowd of French,
English and Norman barons.[1245] Philip began by again demanding that
Adela and Richard should be married at once; that Richard should have
security given him for his succession to his father’s dominions; and
that John should be made to take the cross and accompany his brother
to Palestine.[1246] Richard repeated these demands for himself.[1247]
Henry refused, and made a counter-proposition to Philip--the same which
he was said to have made at Châteauroux two years ago, for Adela’s
marriage with John; but this Philip rejected in his turn.[1248] The
legate now interposed with a threat to Philip that unless he would come
to terms, his domains should be laid under interdict; Philip defied
the threat, and charged the legate with having been bribed by English
gold.[1249] This explosion of course broke up the meeting.[1250]
Henry went back to Le Mans, whence neither bishop nor archbishop,
servant nor friend, could persuade him to move,[1251] although Philip
and Richard with their united forces were overrunning Maine at their
will. In five days the principal castles of its eastern portion were
in their hands; one of the most important, Ballon, only fifteen miles
from Le Mans, fell on June 9. There the conquerors paused for three
days;[1252] and there, probably, they received the submission of the
chief nobles of the western border--Geoffrey of Mayenne, Guy of Laval,
Ralf of Fougères.[1253] But while the barons were false, the citizens
were true. Le Mans still clung with unswerving loyalty to the count
whom she looked upon as her own child; and Henry clung with equal
attachment to the city which held his father’s grave and had held his
own cradle.[1254] He had little else to cling to now. Where John was it
is impossible to say; he was clearly not at Le Mans; and it is certain
that, wherever he may have been, his proceedings were wholly unknown to
Henry.[1255] Geoffrey the chancellor was still at his father’s side,
and so were some half-dozen faithful barons, as well as Archbishop
Bartholomew of Tours.[1256] Beyond these the king had nothing but a
small force of mercenaries wherewith to defend either himself or Le
Mans. The citizens were however willing to stand a siege for his sake,
and he in return had promised never to desert them.[1257]

        [1245] _Ib._ p. 66. The English bishops were Lincoln, Ely,
        Rochester and Chester.

        [1246] _Ibid._ Rog. Howden as above, p. 362.

        [1247] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 447.

        [1248] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 363.

        [1249] _Ibid._ _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 66.

        [1250] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 62, says there were
        _two_ meetings at La Ferté “after Easter.” There seems to be no
        other notice of the second; but Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i.
        pp. 446, 447, has an account of a conference at Le Mans on June
        9, which agrees almost to the letter with the report given in
        the _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden of the proceedings at La Ferté
        on June 4. It seems most unlikely that either Philip or Richard
        would go to a conference at Le Mans itself; and June 9 is an
        impossible date, for by that time, as we shall see, the war was
        in full career, and Philip and Richard were actually besieging
        Ballon. Gervase has probably mistaken both place and date.

        [1251] R. Diceto as above, p. 63.

        [1252] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 67.

        [1253] R. Diceto as above.

        [1254] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [1255] Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 25 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 277),
        says, after the king’s retreat from Le Mans, “Tunc Johannes
        filius ejus minimus, quem tenerrime diligebat, recessit ab
        eo.” But it is almost impossible that all the contemporary
        historians should have failed to mention John’s presence with
        his father if he had really been there; and Henry’s horrified
        surprise at the final discovery of John’s treachery shews that
        there had been no open desertion such as William seems to imply.

        [1256] Besides Bartholomew (whom most of the English writers of
        the time call William) there had been with him throughout the
        spring the archbishops of Canterbury and Rouen; Gir. Cambr. _De
        Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 13 (Angl. Christ. Soc., pp. 115,
        116). It is clear that Bartholomew stayed with him to the end,
        for he buried him. But we hear nothing more of either Baldwin
        of Canterbury or Walter of Rouen, except that Baldwin was at
        Rouen two or three days before Henry’s death; _Epp. Cant._
        cccxi. (Stubbs), p. 296. See Bishop Stubbs’s preface to Rog.
        Howden, vol. ii. p. lxi, note 1. Of the laymen more later.

        [1257] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 67.

On S. Barnabas’s day--Sunday, June 11--Philip and Richard appeared
with their host before Le Mans. They made a feint of passing on in
the direction of Tours; but next morning Philip suddenly drew up his
forces under the walls and prepared for an assault. The defenders,
conscious of the overwhelming odds against them, adopted the desperate
remedy of setting fire to the suburbs. Unhappily, the wind carried
the flames not into the enemy’s lines but into the city itself.[1258]
The French saw their opportunity and rushed at the bridge; a gallant,
though unsuccessful, attempt to break it down was made by some of
Henry’s troops, headed by a Cenomannian knight, Geoffrey of Brulon, who
thus honourably wiped out the memory of his rebellion of sixteen years
before; after a desperate fight, Geoffrey was wounded and made prisoner
with a number of his comrades, and the rest were driven back into the
city, the French rushing in after them.[1259] Then at last Henry felt
that he could not keep his promise to the citizens of Le Mans, and with
some seven hundred knights he took to flight.[1260] The French hurried
in pursuit, but they did not carry it far. It may be that Geoffrey of
Brulon’s effort to break down the bridge saved the king although it
could not save the city; for the French are said to have been checked
in their pursuit by the impossibility of fording the river,[1261] and
one can scarcely help conjecturing that the fugitives had crossed by
the half-undermined bridge, and that it fell as soon as they had passed
over it.[1262]

        [1258] _Ibid._ R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 63. Gir. Cambr.
        as above, c. 24 (p. 137). Cf. Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 25
        (Howlett, vol. i. p. 277).

        [1259] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [1260] _Ibid._ Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 447; R.
        Diceto and Will. Newb. as above; Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 138);
        Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 28; and
        Will. Armor., _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 75.

        [1261] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 68.

        [1262] This is suggested by Bishop Stubbs’s remark about “the
        breaking down of the bridge.” _Rog. Howden_, vol. ii. pref. p.
        lxii.

Geoffrey however was not the only baron who after siding with
Henry’s enemies in his prosperous days had learned to stand by him
in his last hour of need. Besides his one faithful son, Geoffrey the
chancellor, his old friend Earl William de Mandeville, and William
Fitz-Ralf the seneschal of Normandy, Henry was accompanied in his
flight by an English baron, William the Marshal. William’s father,
John, who seems to have been marshal successively to Henry I. and
to Stephen, had married a sister of Patrick of Salisbury and, like
his brother-in-law, espoused the cause of the Empress in the civil
war.[1263] William himself first appears in history at the age of about
six years, in 1152, when he was placed as a hostage in the hands of
Stephen. Twice his life was forfeited by his father’s defiance of the
king, and twice it was saved by the unconscious fearlessness of the
child, which so won Stephen’s heart that he ended by making himself
the little fellow’s playmate instead of his slayer.[1264] John’s
services to the Empress were rewarded on Henry’s accession by his
reinstatement in the office of marshal; he afterwards became notorious
through his quarrel with Thomas of Canterbury, which formed one of
the pretexts for the archbishop’s condemnation at Northampton.[1265]
After John’s death his title and office seem to have been shared by
his two sons.[1266] The second, William, we find in 1173 among the
partizans of the young king’s rebellion; ten years later he appears
as the young king’s best-beloved knight, and as charged by him with
the last office of friendship, the accomplishment in his stead of
the crusading vow which he had not lived to fulfil.[1267] Six years
afterwards, however, William was still in Europe, ready to stand to
the last by another perishing king, and to take the post of honour
as well as of danger among the little band of faithful servants who
watched over the last days of Henry Fitz-Empress. It was William
who brought up the rear of the little force which covered Henry’s
retreat from Le Mans. Turning round as he heard the pursuers close
behind him, he suddenly found himself face to face with Richard, and
levelled his spear at him without hesitation. “God’s feet, marshal!”
cried Richard with his wonted oath, “slay me not! I have no hauberk.”
“Slay you! no; I leave that to the devil,” retorted William, plunging
his spear into the horse’s body instead of the rider’s.[1268] Richard
was of course compelled to abandon the chase, and at a distance of
some two miles from Le Mans the king felt himself sufficiently out
of danger to pause on the brow of a hill whence he could look back
for the last time upon his native city. As he saw its blazing ruins
words of madness burst from his lips: “O God, Thou hast shamefully
taken from me this day the city which I loved most on earth, in which
I was born and bred, where lies the body of my father and that of
his patron saint--I will requite Thee as I can; I will withdraw from
Thee that thing in me for which Thou carest the most.”[1269] Another
eighteen miles’[1270] ride brought the fugitives at nightfall to La
Frênaye,[1271] whose lord, the viscount of Beaumont, was a kinsman of
Henry, and the father of Hermengard whose marriage with the king of
Scots had been arranged three years ago by Henry’s influence. The king
found shelter in the castle; his followers, already sadly diminished in
number in consequence of the overpowering heat and fatigue of the day’s
ride, quartered themselves in the little town as best they could; the
chancellor would have remained with them to keep guard himself, but his
father would not be parted from him, and made him come in to sup and
spend the night. Geoffrey, whose baggage had been all left in Le Mans,
was glad to exchange his travel-stained clothes for some which his
father was able to lend him; Henry, with characteristic disregard of
such details, persisted in lying down to rest just as he was, with his
son’s cloak thrown over him for a coverlet.[1272]

        [1263] See extracts from _Hist. de Guillaume le Maréchal_, vv.
        23–398, in _Romania_, vol. xi. (1882), pp. 47–52.

        [1264] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 399–654 (as above, pp.
        52–55).

        [1265] See above, pp. 32, 33.

        [1266] They seem to have both officiated at the crowning of
        Richard. _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs, “Benedict of Peterborough,” vol.
        ii.), p. 81.

        [1267] See above, pp. 139 and 228.

        [1268] P. Meyer, in _Romania_, vol. xi. pp. 62, 63, from _Hist.
        de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 8833–8836. This is clearly the incident
        recorded briefly and without a name by Gir. Cambr. _De Instr.
        Princ._, dist. iii. c. 25 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 140).

        [1269] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 24 (p. 138). He makes the
        distance two miles from Le Mans; in the _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. p. 67, the pursuit is said to have extended to three
        miles.

        [1270] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. iii. (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 132, makes the day’s ride twenty
        miles altogether; but he carries it as far as Alençon. See,
        however, Bishop Stubbs’s pref. to Rog. Howden, vol. ii. pp.
        lxii, lxiii and notes.

        [1271] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 25 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 140); _Vita Galfr._, l. i. c. 4 (Brewer, vol.
        iv. p. 369). See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. ii. pref. p.
        lxiii, note 5.

        [1272] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._ as above.

From La Frênaye another day’s ride would have brought the king to the
Norman border. His first intention on leaving Le Mans had evidently
been to fall back upon Normandy and there rally his forces--doubtless
also to summon help from England--to renew the struggle with Philip;
and this was the course to which his followers still urged him on the
Tuesday morning. He, however, had changed his plans in the night.
He seems to have made up his mind that his end was near; and in
consequence, he had also made up his mind to go back to the Angevin
lands. Since he had been compelled to leave his own birthplace in
the enemy’s power, he would at any rate stand to the last by the old
home of his father’s house, and die at his hereditary post as count
of Anjou. He made William Fitz-Ralf and William de Mandeville swear
that they would surrender the castles of Normandy to no one save
John; he bade Geoffrey take the command of the troops, escort the
barons with them as far as Alençon, and then come back to rejoin him
in Anjou. Geoffrey, whose dominant feeling clearly was anxiety for
his father’s personal safety, only stayed in Alençon long enough to
secure the place and collect a fresh force of a hundred picked knights,
and with these set off southward again to overtake his father. Henry
meanwhile had started for Anjou almost alone. His son rejoined him at
Savigny[1273]--whether it was the village of that name near Chinon, or
one of several others further north, there is no means of deciding;
but it is certain that by the end of the month Henry and his son were
both safe at Chinon.[1274] Whether the king had made his way alone,
or whether he had been at once the leader and the guide of the little
Norman force, through the Angevin woodlands which as a hunter he had
learned to know so well, and where he was now in danger of being hunted
down in his turn--in either case this sick and weary man had achieved
an adventure equal in skill and daring to those of Fulk Nerra’s most
romantic days, or of his own youth. Once safe out of the enemy’s reach,
he made no further movement until Philip, having possessed himself
of the citadel of Le Mans[1275] and the remnant of the Cenomannian
strongholds, and made his way southward by Chaumont and Amboise as
far as Roche-Corbon,[1276] sent him a proposal for a meeting to be
held at Azay on the last day of June.[1277] Henry apparently advanced
from Chinon to Azay; but on that very day an attack of fever was
added to the malady from which he was already suffering, and he was
unable to attend the conference.[1278] It seems probable that he sent
representatives to whom Philip and Richard made their propositions,
and who may possibly have accepted them in his name.[1279] Certainly,
however, no truce was made; for that same day Philip marched up to the
southern bank of the Loire and drew up his host opposite the gates of
Tours.[1280] Next day he forded the river--an easy exploit when it was
half dried up by the summer’s heat[1281]--established his headquarters
in the “borough of S. Martin” or Châteauneuf,[1282] and began to invest
the city.[1283] Henry, it seems, had now gone to Saumur;[1284] there on
the Sunday--July 2--he was visited, according to one account at his own
request, by the archbishop of Reims, the count of Flanders and the duke
of Burgundy, endeavouring to arrange terms of peace.[1285] The visit
was a failure; it could not be otherwise, for the peacemakers were
acting without Philip’s sanction, and in spite of a distinct warning
from him that, whatever tidings they might bring back, he would assault
Tours next morning.[1286] The morning came; the assault was made; the
walls which had kept out Fulk Nerra and Geoffrey Martel could not
avail to keep out Philip Augustus, enabled as he was by his possession
of Châteauneuf and by the lack of water in the Loire to bring up his
machines against their weakest side; and in a few hours he was master
of Tours.[1287]

        [1273] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. i. c. 4 (Brewer, vol. iv.
        p. 369). See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. ii. pref. pp. lxiv,
        lxv and notes.

        [1274] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 68.

        [1275] Some of Henry’s troops had thrown themselves into the
        citadel, and held out there for three days after his flight.
        _Gesta Hen._ as above. Another body of troops in a tower by
        the north gate (this must be the Conqueror’s Mont-Barbet--the
        “citadel” being the old palace or castle of the counts, near
        the cathedral) held out for a week longer still. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 63.

        [1276] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 69.

        [1277] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 25 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 140). R. Diceto, as above, p. 64, makes the
        day June 28; Bishop Stubbs (_Rog. Howden_, vol. ii. pref. p.
        lxv) follows Gerald.

        [1278] Gir. Cambr. as above.

        [1279] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 365, 366, gives,
        with the date “circa festum apostolorum Petri et Pauli, ad
        colloquium inter Turonim et Azai,” a treaty identical with that
        which the _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 69, 70, give without any
        date at all, but after Philip’s capture of Tours, and which
        we know to have been finally made at Colombières on July 4
        (see below, p. 265). R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 63, also
        gives the substance of the treaty, adding (p. 64): “Facta sunt
        autem hæc in vigiliâ Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, scilicet
        inter Turonim et Azai.” It seems possible that the terms were
        arranged at Azay between Philip and Henry’s representatives,
        subject to ratification by Henry himself. See Stubbs, _Rog.
        Howden_, vol. ii. pref. p. lxv.

        [1280] On the date see Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. ii. pref. p.
        lxvi and note.

        [1281] This is the English account; _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol.
        ii. p. 69, copied by Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 364. But
        the French writers turn it into something very like a miracle.
        See Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
        28; Will. Armor., _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 75, and
        _Philipp._, l. iii. (_ibid._), p. 133.

        [1282] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [1283] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, l. iii. c. 25 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 140) says the investment began on the morrow
        of the Azay conference.

        [1284] _Gesta Hen._ as above. See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol.
        ii. pref. p. lxvi and note.

        [1285] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 141).
        For the duke of Burgundy Gerald substitutes the count of Blois.
        Bishop Stubbs (_Rog. Howden_, as above) adopts the former
        version.

        [1286] _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [1287] _Ibid._ Cf. Rigord and Will. Armor. as above, and
        _Philipp._ l. iii. (_ibid._), pp. 133, 134.

The tidings were carried at once to Henry, with a final summons
to meet the conqueror at Colombières, half-way between Tours and
Azay.[1288] Henry, at his wits’ end, consulted William the Marshal
as to whether or not he should respond to the summons; William
recommended him to follow the counsel of his barons; they advised
that he should go, and he went. Most of his followers went with
him; Geoffrey, however, feeling that he could not endure to see his
father’s humiliation, besought and obtained permission to remain where
he was.[1289] Henry found a lodging in a small commandery of Knights
Templars at Ballan,[1290] close to Colombières; but he had no sooner
reached it than he was seized with racking pains in every limb and
every nerve. He again called for William the Marshal, who did his best
to soothe him, and persuaded him to go to bed. Philip and Richard had
always refused to believe that his sickness was anything but a feint,
and despite the pleadings of his friends they still insisted that the
conference should take place[1291] on the following day.[1292] When
they saw him, however, they were compelled to admit the truth of his
excuse; his sternly-set and colourless face shewed but too plainly
how acutely he was suffering. So evident was his weakness that they
offered him a seat--on a cloak spread upon the ground--but he refused
it; he had not come there, he said, to sit down with them; he had
come simply to hear and see what the French king demanded of him, and
why he had taken away his lands.[1293] Philip formulated his demands
with brutal bluntness; he required that Henry should put himself, as
a conquered enemy, entirely at his mercy before he would discuss any
terms at all.[1294] Henry could not at once bring himself to submit.
Suddenly, amid the breathless stillness of the sultry July morning, a
clap of thunder was heard, and the excited bystanders thought they
actually saw a stroke of lightning fall out of the cloudless blue
sky, directly between the two kings. Both started back in terror;
after a while they rode forward again, and immediately there was a
second peal of thunder. Henry’s shattered nerves gave way completely;
he nearly fell from his horse, and at once placed himself wholly at
Philip’s mercy.[1295] Then the terms were dictated to him. He was made
to do homage to Philip, and to promise that Adela should be placed
under guardians chosen by Richard, who was to marry her on his return
from Palestine;--that Richard should receive the fealty of all the
barons of the Angevin dominions, on both sides of the sea, and that
all who had attached themselves to Richard’s party in the late war
should be suffered to remain in his service and released from their
obligations to his father, at any rate until the latter should be
ready to set forth on the crusade;--that he would be thus ready, and
would meet Philip and Richard at Vézelay, thence to start with them at
Mid-Lent;[1296]--that he would renounce all claims upon Auvergne,[1297]
and pay Philip an indemnity of twenty thousand marks.[1298] As security
for the fulfilment of the treaty, Philip and Richard were to hold in
pledge either three castles on the Norman border or two in Anjou, with
the cities of Tours and Le Mans; and all Henry’s barons were to swear
that they would hold their allegiance to him contingent only upon
his fulfilment of these conditions.[1299] Finally, he was compelled
to acknowledge himself reconciled with Richard, and to give him the
kiss of peace. The kiss was indeed given; but it was accompanied by
a whisper which Richard did not scruple to repeat for the amusement
of the French court when the conference was over--“May I only be
suffered to live long enough to take vengeance upon thee as thou
deservest!”[1300]

        [1288] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 8935–8944 (_Romania_,
        vol. xi. p. 64). The name of Colombières is given only by Will.
        Armor., _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._,
        vol. v.), p. 75, and _Philipp._, l. iii. (_ibid._), p. 134.

        [1289] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. i. c. 5 (Brewer, vol. iv.
        p. 370).

        [1290] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 8947–8958 (as above). M.
        Meyer (_ib._ p. 69) supplies the name of the commandery.

        [1291] _Ib._ vv. 8960–8997 (as above, p. 64).

        [1292] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. iii. (as above), gives the
        date by saying Henry died “post triduum.”

        [1293] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 9013–9028 (as above, p.
        65).

        [1294] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 25 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 141).

        [1295] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 366.

        [1296] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 70.

        [1297] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 64.

        [1298] _Ib._ p. 63. _Gesta Hen._ as above.

        [1299] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 70, 71.

        [1300] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 26 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., pp. 149, 150).

One thing alone Henry asked and obtained in return for all this
humiliation; a written list of those among his subjects whose services
were transferred to Richard.[1301] The list was promised,[1302] and
Henry was carried back, worn out with fatigue, suffering and shame,
to the favourite home of his brighter days at Chinon.[1303] By the
time he reached it he was too ill to do anything but lie down never
to rise again. He sent back his vice-chancellor, Roger Malchat,[1304]
to fetch the promised list of traitors; and on Roger’s return he
bade him sit down beside his bed and read him out the names. With a
sigh Roger answered: “Our Lord Jesus Christ help me, sire! the first
written down here is Count John, your son.”[1305] The words gave Henry
his death-blow. “Say no more,”[1306] he faltered, turning away his
face.[1307] Yet the tale seemed too horrible to be true, and he started
up again: “Can it be? John, my darling child, my very heart, for love
of whom I have incurred all this misery--has he indeed forsaken me?”
It could not be denied; he sank back again and turned his face to the
wall, moaning: “Let things go now as they will; I care no more for
myself or for the world.”[1308]

        [1301] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 366. _Hist. de Guill.
        le Mar._, v. 9035 (_Romania_, vol. xi. p. 65).

        [1302] Rog. Howden says that it was given, and implies that it
        was read, then and there, but we shall see that he is wrong.

        [1303] Rog. Howden as above. _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, v. 3639
        (as above). Bishop Stubbs (_Rog. Howden_, vol. ii. pref. p.
        lxviii) says “he returned to Azai,” and makes the reading of
        the fatal list take place there, before Henry went on to Chinon
        (_ib._ p. lxx). This seems to be the meaning of Gir. Cambr. _De
        Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 25 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 148).
        But Gerald evidently thought Henry had been at Azay ever since
        the Friday, just as William of Armorica (_Philipp._, l. iii.,
        Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 134) thought he
        had been all the while at Chinon; whereas the _Gesta_ and Roger
        shew that both are wrong in this. On the other hand, the _Life
        of William the Marshal_ seems distinctly to shew that the place
        where Henry went to lodge before the meeting at Colombières
        was not Azay, but Ballan; and it also tells us that he went
        straight back from Colombières to Chinon, and _there_ read the
        list. In the absence of further elucidations, I venture to
        follow this version.

        [1304] “... Mestre Roger Malchael,
                Qui lores portout son seel.”

        _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 9051–9052 (as above, p. 65). See
        M. Meyer’s note, _ib._ p. 69.

        [1305] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 9040–9076 (as above, p.
        65).

        [1306] “Asez en avez dit.” _Ib._ v. 9083 (as above).

        [1307] _Ib._ v. 9084 (p. 66).

        [1308] Gir. Cambr. as above.

All through that day and the next he lay there, trembling from head to
foot, sometimes appearing to see and hear nothing, and to be conscious
of nothing but pain, murmuring broken words which no one could
understand.[1309] At other times his delirium shewed itself in frenzied
curses upon himself and his sons, which the attendant bishops vainly
besought him to revoke.[1310] It was Geoffrey who at length managed to
bring him to a somewhat calmer frame both of body and of mind. With
his head on his son’s shoulder and his feet on the knees of a faithful
knight, Henry at last seemed to have fallen asleep. When he opened his
eyes again and saw Geoffrey patiently watching over him and fanning
away the flies which buzzed around his head, he spoke in accents very
different from any that he had used for some days past. “My dearest
son! thou, indeed, hast always been a true son to me. So help me God,
if I recover of this sickness, I will be to thee the best of fathers,
and will set thee among the chiefest men of my realm. But if I may not
live to reward thee, may God give thee thy reward for thy unchanging
dutifulness to me!” “O father, I desire no reward but thy restoration
to health and prosperity” was all that Geoffrey could utter, as the
violence of his emotion so overcame his self-control that he was
obliged to rush out of the room.[1311] The interval of calmness passed
away, and the ravings of delirium were heard again; “Shame, shame upon
a conquered king!” Henry kept muttering over and over again, till the
third morning broke--the seventh day of the fever[1312]--and brought
with it the lightning before death. Once more Geoffrey, stifling his
own distress, came to his father’s side; once more he was rewarded by
seeing Henry’s eyes open and gaze at him with evident recognition; once
more the dying king recurred wistfully to his plans, not this time of
vengeance upon his rebellious sons, but of advancement for the loyal
one, faintly murmuring in Geoffrey’s ear how he had hoped to see him
bishop of Winchester, or better still, archbishop of York;[1313] but he
knew that for himself all was over. He took off a gold finger-ring,
engraved with a leopard[1314]--the armorial device of the Angevin
house--and handed it to Geoffrey, bidding him send it to the king of
Castille, the husband of his daughter Eleanor; he also gave directions
that another precious ring which lay among his treasures should be
delivered to Geoffrey himself, and gave him his blessing.[1315]
After this he was, by his own desire, carried into the chapel of the
castle and laid before the altar; here he confessed his sins to the
attendant bishops and priests, was absolved, and devoutly made his last
Communion. Immediately afterwards he passed away.[1316]

        [1309] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 9085–9094 (_Romania_,
        vol. xi. p. 66).

        [1310] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 366.

        [1311] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. i. c. 5 (Brewer, vol. iv.
        pp. 370, 371).

        [1312] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, l. iii. c. 26 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 150).

        [1313] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._ as above (p. 371).

        [1314] “Pantera.” “The word is doubtful,” notes Mr. Brewer
        (_Gir. Cambr._, vol. iv. p. 371); Bishop Stubbs (_Rog. Howden_,
        vol. ii. pref. p. lxxi) renders it “panther.”

        [1315] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. i. c. 5 (Brewer, vol. iv.
        p. 371).

        [1316] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 367. Gir. Cambr. _De
        Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 28 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 156),
        says there were no bishops with him at his death; any way,
        there were two at his burial. The date of death--July 6--is
        given by many authorities: _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
        71; Rog. Howden as above; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 64;
        Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 450, etc.

Then followed one of those strange scenes which so often occurred
after the death of a medieval king. The servants who should have laid
out the body for burial stripped it and left it naked on the ground;
and as during the three days that he lay dying they had plundered him
of everything on which they could lay their hands, the few friends
who were shocked at the sight could not find a rag wherewith to cover
the dead king, till one of his knights, William de Trihan, took off
his own cloak for the purpose.[1317] All this, however, was speedily
set right by William the Marshal. He at once took the command of the
little party--a duty for which Geoffrey was evidently unfitted by the
violence of his grief--sent to call as many barons as were within reach
to attend the funeral, and gave directions for the proper robing of the
corpse.[1318] It was no easy matter to arrange within four-and-twenty
hours, and utterly without resources, anything like a regal burial
for this fallen king.[1319] William, however, managed to do it; and
next day Henry Fitz-Empress, robed as if for his coronation, with a
crown of gold upon his head, a gold ring on his finger, sandals on his
feet, and a sceptre in his gloved right hand,[1320] was borne upon the
shoulders of his barons down from his castle on the rock of Chinon,
across the viaduct which he himself had built over the swampy meadows
beneath, and thence northward along the left bank of the silvery,
winding Vienne to his burial-place at Fontevraud.[1321] He had wished
to be buried at Grandmont;[1322] but this of course was impossible now.
“He shall be shrouded among the shrouded women”--so ran the closing
words of a prophecy which during the last few months had been whispered
throughout Henry’s dominions as a token of his approaching end. It was
fulfilled now to the letter, as he lay in state in the abbey-church of
Fontevraud, while the veiled sisters knelt by night and day murmuring
their prayers and psalms around the bier.[1323]

        [1317] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 9027–9161 (_Romania_,
        vol. xi. p. 66). Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, as above (pp.
        156, 157), tells the same story, more highly coloured, but with
        less verisimilitude, as he has lost the name of William de
        Trihan and turned him into “puer quidam.”

        [1318] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 9165–9172, 9215–9220 (as
        above, pp. 66, 67).

        [1319] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 28 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., pp. 157, 158).

        [1320] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 71. How hard it was
        to manage all this we learn from Gerald: “Vix annulus digito,
        vix sceptrum manu, vix capiti corona sicut decuit, quia de
        aurifrigio quodam veteri inventa fuit, vix ulla prorsus
        insignia regalia nisi per emendicata demum suffragia, eaque
        minus congruentia suppetiere.” _De Instr. Princ._ as above (p.
        158). The chronicle of Laon, a. 1187, quoted in note (_ibid._),
        adds that the gold fringe of which the crown was made came off
        a lady’s dress.

        [1321] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 9071–9223 (_Romania_,
        vol. xi. p. 67). See a curious incident at the setting out of
        the funeral train, in vv. 9173–9214.

        [1322] He had given solemn directions to that effect, when he
        thought himself dying at La Motte-de-Ger, in 1170. _Gesta Hen._
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 7.

        [1323] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 9229–9244 (as above). For
        the prophecy and its application see _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. p. 55, and Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 356, 367.

None of the dead king’s friends had thought it necessary to wait for
any instructions from his heir. The marshal, however, had sent to
apprise Richard of his father’s death, and delayed the burial long
enough to give him an opportunity of attending it if he chose to do
so. The other barons were in great dread of meeting the future king
against whom they had been in arms; and several of them were even more
anxious for the marshal than for themselves, for they could not but
imagine that Richard’s heaviest vengeance would fall upon the man who
had unhorsed and all but killed him at Le Mans. More than one of them
offered to place himself and all his possessions at the service of the
comrade whom they all held in such reverence, if thereby anything could
be done to save him from Richard’s wrath. But he only answered quietly:
“Sirs, I do not repent me of what I did. I thank you for your proffers;
but, so help me God, I will not accept what I cannot return. Thanks be
to Him, He has helped me ever since I was made a knight; I doubt not
He will help me to the end.”[1324] Before nightfall Richard overtook
them.[1325] He came, it seems, alone. Vainly did the bystanders seek to
read his feelings in his demeanour; he shewed no sign of either grief
or joy, penitence or wrath; he “spoke not a word, good or bad,”[1326]
but went straight to the church and into the choir, where the body
lay.[1327] For awhile he stood motionless before the bier;[1328] then
he stepped to the head, and looked down at the uncovered face.[1329] It
seemed to meet his gaze with all its wonted sternness; but there were
some who thought they saw a yet more fearful sight--a stream of blood
which flowed from the nostrils, and ceased only on the departure of the
son who was thus proclaimed as his father’s murderer.[1330] Richard
sank upon his knees; thus he remained “about as long as one would take
to say the Lord’s Prayer;”[1331] then he rose and, speaking for the
first time, called for William the Marshal. William came, accompanied
by a loyal Angevin baron, Maurice of Craon. Richard bade them follow
him out of the church; outside, he turned at once to the marshal:
“Fair Sir Marshal, you had like to have slain me; had I received your
spear-thrust, it would have been a bad day for both of us!” “My lord,”
answered William, “I had it in my power to slay you; I only slew your
horse. And of that I do not repent me yet.” With kingly dignity Richard
granted him his kingly pardon at once;[1332] and on the morrow they
stood side by side while Henry Fitz-Empress was laid in his grave
before the high altar by Archbishop Bartholomew of Tours.[1333]

        [1324] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 9245–9290 (_Romania_,
        vol. xi. pp. 67, 68).

        [1325] The _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 71, make Richard
        meet the corpse on its way; and Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii.
        p. 367, follows the _Gesta_. But the _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._
        and Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 28 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 157) both distinctly say that he met it at
        Fontevraud. The other version is intrinsically most improbable,
        for Richard can hardly have been coming from anywhere else than
        Tours, and in that case he could not possibly meet the funeral
        train on its way from Chinon to Fontevraud. That he should
        reach Fontevraud some hours after it, on the other hand, is
        perfectly natural; and this is just what Gerald and the French
        _Life_ imply; for they both tell us that the funeral started
        from Chinon on the day after the death--_i.e._ Friday, July
        7--and Gerald (as above, p. 158) implies that the actual burial
        took place the day after Richard’s arrival, while in the _Vita
        Galfr._, l. i. c. 5 (Brewer, vol. iv. p. 372), he seems to
        place it on the Saturday, July 8. See Bishop Stubbs’s preface
        to Rog. Howden, vol. ii. p. lxix, note 1. One of the MSS. of
        Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ (Luard, vol. ii. p. 344, note 8) has
        a curiously different version of Richard’s behaviour on the
        occasion.

        [1326] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 9294–9298, 9300 (p. 68).

        [1327] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._ as above.

        [1328] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 9299, 9300 (as above).

        [1329] _Ib._ v. 9301. Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._ and _Vita
        Galfr._ as above.

        [1330] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 28 (Angl.
        Christ. Soc., p. 157); _Vita Galfr._, l. i. c. 5 (Brewer, vol.
        iv. p. 372). _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 71.

        [1331] Gir. Cambr. as above.

        [1332] _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 9304–9344 (_Romania_,
        vol. xi. pp. 68, 69).

        [1333] The day is given by Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._ as
        above (p. 158), and _Vita Galfr._ as above; the name of the
        officiating prelate by R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 65.
        Bartholomew was assisted by Archbishop Fulmar of Trier (_ibid._)



CHAPTER VII.

RICHARD AND ENGLAND.

1189–1194.


All doubts as to the destination of Henry’s realms after his death were
settled at once by the discovery of John’s treason. Throughout the
Angevin dominions not a voice was raised to challenge the succession
of Richard. The English marshal and the Angevin barons gathered at
Fontevraud received him unquestioningly as their lord, and were at once
accepted as loyal subjects. One of them indeed, the seneschal of Anjou,
Stephen of Turnham or of Marçay, was flung into prison for failing to
surrender the royal treasure;[1334] but the reason of his failure seems
to have been simply that the treasury was empty.[1335] According to
one contemporary historian, Richard sealed his forgiveness of William
the Marshal by at once despatching him to England with a commission
to hold the country for him--in effect, to act as justiciar--till he
could proceed thither himself.[1336] In all probability, however,
William was authorized to do nothing more than set Eleanor at liberty;
it was she who, by her son’s desire, undertook the office of regent
in England,[1337] which she fulfilled without difficulty for the
next six weeks. Geoffrey the chancellor resigned his seal into his
half-brother’s hands as soon as the funeral was over.[1338] The
promise of the Norman castellans to Henry that they would surrender to
no one but John was of course annulled by later events. John himself
hastened to join his brother; Richard gave him a gracious welcome,
and they returned to Normandy together.[1339] At Séez the archbishops
of Canterbury and Rouen came to meet them, and absolved Richard from
the excommunication[1340] laid on him by the legate John of Anagni.
Thence they all proceeded to Rouen. On July 20 Richard went in state
to the metropolitan church, where Archbishop Walter girded him with
the ducal sword and invested him with the standard of the duchy.[1341]
On the same day he received the fealty of the Norman barons,[1342]
and held his first court as duke of Normandy, and also, it seems, as
king-elect of England, although there had been no formal election. He
at once made it clear that the abettors of his revolt had nothing to
hope from him--three of the most conspicuous had been deprived of their
lands already[1343]--and that his father’s loyal servants had nothing
to fear, if they would transfer their loyalty to him. He shewed indeed
every disposition to carry out his father’s last wishes; he at once
nominated Geoffrey for the see of York, and confirmed Henry’s last
grant to John, consisting of the Norman county of Mortain and four
thousand pounds’ worth of land in England;[1344] at the same time he
bestowed upon William the Marshal the hand of Isabel de Clare, daughter
and heiress of Earl Richard of Striguil, and upon the son of the count
of Perche a bride who had already been sought by two kings--his niece,
Matilda of Saxony.[1345]

        [1334] _Gesta Ric._ (“Benedict of Peterborough,” Stubbs, vol.
        ii.), p. 71. Cf. Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 6.

        [1335] See _Hist. de Guill. le Mar._, vv. 9198, 9199
        (_Romania_, vol. xi. p. 67).

        [1336] _Ib._ vv. 9347–9354 (p. 69).

        [1337] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 67.

        [1338] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. i. c. 5 (Brewer, vol. iv.
        p. 372).

        [1339] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 72.

        [1340] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 67. How had the
        archbishops power to cancel a legatine sentence?

        [1341] _Ibid._ _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 73. (The date is from
        this last).

        [1342] _Gesta Ric._ as above.

        [1343] _Ib._ p. 72.

        [1344] _Ib._ p. 73. Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 3 (Howlett, vol. i.
        p. 301). On John and Mortain see Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii.
        p. 6 and note 2, and preface to vol. iii. p. xxiv, note 1.

        [1345] _Gesta Ric._ as above.

This last match was evidently intended to secure the attachment of the
important little border-county of Perche in case of a rupture with
France, which seemed by no means unlikely. The alliance of Philip
and Richard had expired with King Henry; now that Richard stood
in his father’s place, Philip saw in him nothing but his father’s
successor--the head of the Angevin house, whose policy was to be
thwarted and his power undermined on every possible occasion and by
every possible means. This was made evident at a colloquy held on
S. Mary Magdalene’s day to settle the new relations between the two
princes; Philip greeted his former ally with a peremptory demand for
the restitution of the Vexin.[1346] Richard put him off with a bribe
of four thousand marks, over and above the twenty thousand promised by
Henry at Colombières; and on this condition, accompanied, it seems,
by a vague understanding that Richard and Adela were to marry after
all,[1347] Philip agreed to leave Richard in undisturbed possession
of all his father’s dominions, including the castles and towns which
had been taken from Henry in the last war,[1348] except those of
Berry and Auvergne.[1349] Thus secured, for the moment at least, in
Normandy, Richard prepared to take possession of his island realm. He
had paved the way for his coming there by empowering Eleanor to make a
progress throughout England, taking from all the freemen of the land
oaths of fealty in his name, releasing captives, pardoning criminals,
mitigating, so far as was possible without upsetting the ordinary
course of justice, the severe administration of the late king. Richard
himself now restored the earl of Leicester and the other barons whom
Henry had disseized six years before.[1350] The next step was to send
home the archbishop of Canterbury and three other English prelates who
were with him in Normandy.[1351] On August 12 they were followed by
Richard himself.[1352]

        [1346] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 73, 74. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. iii. pp. 3, 4.

        [1347] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 74.

        [1348] Rog. Howden as above, p. 4.

        [1349] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
        29. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ib._), p. 75. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 450.

        [1350] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 74, 75.

        [1351] _Ib._ p. 75.

        [1352] Gerv. Cant. as above, p. 457. The _Gesta Ric._, as
        above, give a confused date--“Idus Augusti, die dominicâ post
        Assumptionem B. Mariæ.”

His politic measures of conciliation, executed by his mother with
characteristic intelligence and tact, had secured him a ready welcome.
It was only by slow degrees, and with the growing experience of years,
that the English people learned how much they owed to the stern old
king who was gone. At the moment they thought of him chiefly as the
author of grievances which his son seemed bent upon removing.[1353]
Richard’s mother, with a great train of bishops and barons, was
waiting to receive him at Winchester;[1354] there, on the vigil of the
Assumption, he was welcomed in solemn procession;[1355] and there, too,
he came into possession of the royal treasury, whose contents might
make up for the deficiencies in that of Anjou.[1356] So complete was
his security that instead of hastening, as his predecessors had done,
to be crowned as soon as possible, he left Eleanor nearly three weeks
in which to make the arrangements for that ceremony,[1357] while he
went on a progress throughout southern England,[1358] coming back at
last to be crowned by Archbishop Baldwin at Westminster on September
3.[1359] No charter was issued on the occasion. The circumstances of
the new king’s accession were not such as to make any special call for
one; they were sufficiently met by a threefold oath embodied in the
coronation-service, pledging the sovereign to maintain the peace of
the Church, to put down all injustice, and to enforce the observance
of righteousness and mercy.[1360] In the formal election by clergy and
people which preceded the religious rite,[1361] and in the essentials
of the rite itself, ancient prescription was strictly followed. The
order of the procession and the details of the ceremonial were,
however, arranged with unusual care and minuteness; it was the most
splendid and elaborate coronation-ceremony that had ever been seen in
England, and it served as a precedent for all after-time.[1362] Richard
had none of his father’s shrinking from the pageantries and pomps of
kingship; he delighted in its outward splendours almost as much as in
its substantial powers.[1363] He himself, with his tall figure, massive
yet finely-chiselled features, and soldierly bearing, must have been
by far the most regal-looking sovereign who had been crowned since the
Norman Conqueror; and when Archbishop Baldwin set the crown upon his
golden hair, Englishmen might for a moment dream that, stranger though
he had been for nearly thirty years to the land of his birth, Richard
was yet to be in reality what he was in outward aspect, a true English
king.

        [1353] Cf. _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 75, 76; and Will. Newb.,
        l. iv. c. 1 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 293).

        [1354] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 453, 454.

        [1355] _Ib._ p. 457. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 67. _Gesta
        Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 74.

        [1356] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 76, 77.

        [1357] “Mater comitis Alienor regina de vocatione comitum,
        baronum, vicecomitum, uit sollicita.” R. Diceto as above, p. 68.

        [1358] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 77. Gerv. Cant. as above, p.
        457, says he went to check the depredations of the Welsh.

        [1359] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 78, 79. Gerv. Cant. and R.
        Diceto as above. Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 5. R. Coggeshall
        (Stevenson), pp. 26, 27. Will. Newb. as above (p. 294).

        [1360] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 81, 82. R. Diceto as above.
        This last was an eye-witness, for, the see of London being
        vacant, the dean had to fulfil in his bishop’s stead the duty
        of handing the unction and chrism to the officiating primate.
        _Ib._ p. 69.

        [1361] R. Diceto as above, p. 68.

        [1362] See details in _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 80–83; and
        Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 9–12.

        [1363] We see this in the descriptions of his magnificent
        dress, brilliant armour, etc. in the _Itinerarium Regis
        Ricardi_.

Such dreams however were soon to be dispelled. On the second day after
his crowning Richard received the homage of the bishops and barons
of his realm;[1364] he then proceeded into Northamptonshire, and on
September 15 held a great council at Pipewell.[1365] His first act
was to fill up the vacant sees, of which there were now four besides
that of York. The appointments were made with considerable judgement.
London, whose aged bishop Gilbert Foliot had died in 1187,[1366] was
bestowed upon Richard Fitz-Nigel,[1367] son of Bishop Nigel of Ely, and
for the last twenty years his successor in the office of treasurer;
while Ely, again vacated scarcely three weeks ago by the death of
Geoffrey Ridel,[1368] rewarded the past services and helped to secure
the future loyalty of Richard’s chancellor, William of Longchamp.[1369]
Winchester, vacated nearly a year ago by the death of Richard of
Ilchester,[1370] was given to Godfrey de Lucy, a son of Henry’s early
friend and servant Richard de Lucy “the loyal”;[1371] Salisbury, which
had been without a bishop ever since November 1184,[1372] was given to
Hubert Walter,[1373] a near connexion of the no less faithful minister
of Henry’s later years, Ralf de Glanville. This last appointment had
also another motive. Hubert Walter was dean of York; he stood at the
head of a party in the York chapter which had strongly disputed the
validity of Geoffrey’s election in the preceding August, and some of
whom had even proposed the dean himself as an opposition candidate
for the primacy.[1374] Hubert’s nomination to Salisbury cleared this
obstacle out of Geoffrey’s way, and no further protest was raised when
Richard confirmed his half-brother’s election in the same council of
Pipewell.[1375]

        [1364] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 84.

        [1365] _Ib._ p. 85. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 69. Gerv.
        Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 458.

        [1366] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 5. R. Diceto as
        above, p. 47.

        [1367] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 85. R. Diceto as above, p. 69.
        Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 9.

        [1368] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 78. R. Diceto as above, p. 68.

        [1369] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 85. R. Diceto as above, p. 69.
        Ric. Devizes as above.

        [1370] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 58. R. Diceto as above, p. 58.

        [1371] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 84. R. Diceto as above, p. 69.
        Ric. Devizes as above.

        [1372] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 32. _Gesta Hen._
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 320.

        [1373] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 84. R. Diceto as above, p. 69.
        Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 9.

        [1374] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 77, 78. Cf. Gir. Cambr. _Vita
        Galfr._, l. i. c. 6 (Brewer, vol. iv. p. 373). Hubert had
        indeed been proposed for the see as far back as 1186; _Gesta
        Hen._ as above, p. 352. See also Bishop Stubbs’s preface to
        Rog. Howden, vol. iv. pp. xxxix–xlvi.

        [1375] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 374).

When, however, the king turned from the settlement of the Church to
that of the state, it became gradually apparent that his policy in
England had only two objects:--to raise money for the crusade, and to
secure the obedience of his realm during his own absence in the East.
These objects he endeavoured to effect both at once by a wholesale
change of ministers, sheriffs and royal officers in general, at the
council of Pipewell or during the ten days which elapsed between its
dissolution and the Michaelmas Exchequer-meeting. The practice of
making a man pay for the privilege either of entering upon a public
office or of being released from its burthen was, as we have seen,
counted in no way disgraceful in the days of Henry I., and by no means
generally reprobated under Henry II. Richard however carried it to a
length which clearly shocked the feelings of some statesmen of the
old school,[1376] if not those of the people in general. The first
to whom he applied it was no less a person than the late justiciar,
Ralf de Glanville. Ralf was, like Richard himself, under a vow of
crusade, which would in any case have rendered it impossible for him
to retain the justiciarship after the departure of the English host
for Palestine.[1377] The king, however, insisted that his resignation
should take effect at once,[1378] and also that it should be paid for
by a heavy fine--a condition which was also required of the Angevin
seneschal, Stephen of Turnham, as the price of his release from
prison.[1379] Worn out though he was with years and labours,[1380] Ralf
faithfully kept his vow.[1381] If all the intending crusaders had done
the same, it would have been no easy matter to fill his place or to
make adequate provision for the government and administration of the
realm. Both king and Pope, however, had learned that for eastern as
well as western warfare money was even more necessary than men; Richard
had therefore sought and obtained leave from Clement III. to commute
crusading vows among his subjects for pecuniary contributions towards
the expenses of the war.[1382] By this means he at once raised a large
sum of money, and avoided the risk of leaving England deprived of all
her best warriors and statesmen during his own absence. Instead of
Ralf de Glanville he appointed two chief justiciars, Earl William de
Mandeville and Bishop Hugh of Durham;[1383] under these he placed five
subordinate justiciars, one of whom was William the Marshal.[1384] The
bishop-elect of London, Richard Fitz-Nigel, was left undisturbed in his
post of treasurer, where his services were too valuable for the king to
venture upon the risk of forfeiting them; but the bishop-elect of Ely,
although a favourite servant and almost a personal friend of Richard,
had to pay three thousand pounds for his chancellorship. On the other
hand, Richard proved that in this instance he was not actuated solely
by mercenary motives, by refusing a still higher bid from another
candidate.[1385] All the sheriffs were removed from office; some seven
or eight were restored to their old places, five more were appointed
to shires other than those which they had formerly administered;[1386]
the sheriffdom of Hampshire was sold to the bishop-elect of
Winchester,[1387] that of Lincolnshire to Gerard de Camville, those
of Leicestershire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire to Bishop Hugh of
Chester;[1388] and the earldom of Northumberland was granted on similar
terms to the justiciar-bishop of Durham.[1389]

        [1376] This appears from the tone in which his sales of office,
        etc., are described by Richard Fitz-Nigel in the _Gesta Ric._
        (Stubbs), pp. 90, 91, and by Roger of Howden (Stubbs), vol.
        iii. p. 13.

        [1377] He had taken the cross in 1185; Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. p. 302. The _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 87, and Will.
        Newb. l. iv. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 302) say distinctly that
        Ralf himself wished to resign in order to fulfil his vow.

        [1378] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 90. Ric. Devizes (Stevenson),
        p. 7, says he even put him in ward.

        [1379] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), pp. 6, 7.

        [1380] _Ib._ p. 9.

        [1381] He died at the siege of Acre before October 21, 1190.
        _Epp. Cant._ ccclvi. (Stubbs, p. 329).

        [1382] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 17.

        [1383] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 87. Hugh paid a thousand
        marks for the remission of his crusading vow, to enable him to
        undertake the office. _Ib._ p. 90.

        [1384] Rog. Howden as above, p. 16.

        [1385] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 9.

        [1386] Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii. pref. p. xxix.

        [1387] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 10.

        [1388] Stubbs as above, pp. xxviii, xxix, and Madox, _Hist.
        Exch._, vol. i. p. 458, from Pipe Roll 2 Ric. I.

        [1389] Pipe Roll 2 Ric. I. (Stubbs, as above, p. xxviii, note
        3). _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 90. Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p.
        8. Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 5 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 304). Geoff.
        Coldingham, c. 9 (_Script. Dunelm. III._, Raine, p. 14). The
        grant itself, dated November 25, is in _Scriptt. Dunelm. III._,
        App. p. lxii.

Two other matters had to be dealt with before Richard’s preparations
for departure were completed. To guard his realm from external
disturbance, he must secure the fealty of the vassal-rulers of Scotland
and Wales. To guard it against internal treason, he must, if such a
thing were possible, secure the loyalty of the brother whom he was
leaving behind him. The first was at once the less important and the
easier matter of the two. Rees of South Wales had indeed profited
by the change of rulers in England to break the peace which he had
been compelled to maintain with King Henry, and after the council
of Pipewell Richard sent John against him at the head of an armed
force. The other Welsh princes came to meet John at Worcester and
made submission to him as his brother’s representative;[1390] Rees
apparently refused to treat with any one but the king in person, and
accordingly he came back with John as far as Oxford, but Richard would
not take the trouble to arrange a meeting, and was so unconcerned about
the matter that he let him go home again without an audience, and,
of course, in a state of extreme indignation.[1391] His threatening
attitude served as an excuse for raising a scutage, nominally for a
Welsh war;[1392] but the expedition was never made. The king of Scots
was otherwise dealt with. Early in December, while Richard was at
Canterbury on his way to the sea, William the Lion came to visit him,
and a bargain was struck to the satisfaction of both parties. Richard
received from William a sum of ten thousand marks, and his homage for
his English estates, as they had been held by his brother Malcolm;
in return, he restored to him the castles of Roxburgh and Berwick,
and released him and his heirs for ever from the homage for Scotland
itself, enforced by Henry in 1175.[1393]

        [1390] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 87, 88.

        [1391] _Ib._ p. 97.

        [1392] Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. p. 664, from Pipe Roll 2
        Ric. I.

        [1393] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 98. Richard’s charter of
        release to William is in Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 30; _Gesta
        Ric._ as above, pp. 102, 103; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii.
        pp. 25, 26. It is dated (in Rymer’s copy) December 5. On this
        transaction see also R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 72, and
        Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 5 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 304).

Richard’s worst difficulty however was still unsolved: how to prevent
John from trying to supplant him in his absence. Richard knew that this
lad, ten years younger than himself, had been his rival ever since
he was of an age to be a rival to any one; and he knew his brother’s
character as, perhaps, no one else did know it as yet--for their mother
had scarcely seen her youngest child since he was six years old. In the
light of later history, it is impossible not to feel that Richard’s
wisest course, alike for his own sake and for England’s, would have
been to follow the instinct which had once prompted him to insist that
John should go with him to the crusade. In this case however he was now
led astray by the noblest feature in his character, his unsuspecting
confidence and generosity. From the hour of their reconciliation
after their father’s death, Richard’s sole endeavour respecting John
was to gain his affection and gratitude by showering upon him every
honour, dignity and benefit of which it was possible to dispose in his
favour. The grant of the county of Mortain made him the first baron
of Normandy, and it was accompanied by a liberal provision in English
lands. To these were added, as soon as the brothers reached England, a
string of “honours”--Marlborough, Luggershall, Lancaster, each with its
castle; the Peak, Bolsover, and the whole honour of Peverel; those of
Wallingford and Tickhill, and that of Nottingham, including the town;
and the whole shire of Derby;[1394] besides the honour of Gloucester,
which belonged to John’s betrothed bride Avice, and which Richard
secured to him by causing him to be married to her at Marlborough on
August 29,[1395] in spite of Archbishop Baldwin’s protests against a
marriage between third cousins without dispensation from the Pope.
Baldwin at once laid all the lands of the young couple under interdict;
but John appealed against him, and a papal legate who came over in
November to settle Baldwin’s quarrel with his own monks confirmed the
appeal and annulled the sentence of the primate.[1396] At the same time
Richard bestowed upon his brother four whole shires in south-western
England--Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset--with the ferms and the
entire profits of jurisdiction and administration.[1397] More than this
even Richard could not give; if more was needed to hold John’s ambition
in check, he could only trust to the skilful management of Eleanor.
She was left, seemingly without any formal commission, but with the
practical authority of queen-regent, and with the dowries of two former
queens in addition to her own.[1398]

        [1394] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 78. See also Stubbs, _Rog.
        Howden_, vol. iii., pref. p. xx.

        [1395] _Gesta Ric._ as above, p. 78.

        [1396] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 72, 73.

        [1397] _Gesta Ric._ as above, p. 99. Stubbs as above, p. xxv.
        Cf. Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 3 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 301), and his
        comments on the subject (_ib._ p. 302).

        [1398] _Gesta Ric._ as above.

One important part of Richard’s administrative arrangements was however
already upset: William de Mandeville, having gone to Normandy on
business for the king, died there on November 14.[1399] Earl of Essex
by grant of Henry II., count of Aumale by marriage with its heiress,
William had been through life one of Henry’s most faithful friends;
he was honoured and esteemed by all parties on both sides of the sea;
there was no one left among the barons who could command anything like
the same degree of general respect; and Richard for the moment saw no
means of filling his place. He therefore left Bishop Hugh of Durham as
sole chief justiciar; but he made a change in the body of subordinate
justiciars appointed at Pipewell. Two of them were superseded; one was
replaced by Hugh Bardulf, and the other, it seems, by the chancellor
William of Longchamp, who, in addition to the office which he already
held, was put in charge of the Tower of London, and intrusted with
powers which virtually made him equal in authority to the chief
justiciar.[1400]

        [1399] R. Diceto as above, p. 73. _Gesta Ric._ as above, p.
        92. The day comes from Ralf. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 26,
        makes it December 12.

        [1400] On these appointments cf. _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p.
        101; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 28; Ric. Devizes
        (Stevenson), pp. 8, 11; Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 5 (Howlett, vol.
        i. p. 306); and Bishop Stubbs’s note, pref. to Rog. Howden as
        above, p. xxx.

None of these appointments was in itself unwise; but two worse-matched
yokefellows than the justiciar and the chancellor it would have been
difficult to find. Hugh of Puiset--or “Pudsey,” as his English flock
called him--had stood high in both Church and state ever since the days
of the civil war. Through his mother he was a great-grandson of the
Conqueror, and thus cousin in no remote degree to Henry Fitz-Empress
and Richard Cœur-de-Lion, as well as to Philip of France. We saw
him more than forty years ago, as archdeacon and treasurer of York,
meeting the ecclesiastical censures of his metropolitan with a retort
on equal terms, and wielding not unsuccessfully the weapons both of
spiritual and temporal warfare in the cause of his cousin William of
York and his uncle Henry of Winchester. Since 1153 he had been bishop
of Durham; certainly not an ideal successor of S. Cuthbert; yet his
appointment had been sanctioned by the saintly archbishop Theobald;
and throughout his long episcopate he shewed himself by no means
ill-fitted, on the whole, for his peculiar position. That position, it
must be remembered, had more than that of any other English bishop an
important political side. The bishop of Durham was earl palatine of his
shire; its whole administration, secular as well as ecclesiastical,
was in his hands. His diocesan jurisdiction, again, extended over the
whole of Northumberland, and thus brought him into immediate contact
with the Scots across the border. His diocese was in fact a great
marchland between England and Scotland; he was the natural medium
of communication or negotiation between the two realms; and on him
depended in no small degree the security of their relations with each
other. For such a post it was well to have a strong man, in every sense
of the words; and such a man was Hugh of Puiset. His strength was not
based solely upon an unscrupulous use of great material and political
resources. He was a popular man with all classes; notwithstanding
his unclerical ways, he never fell into any ecclesiastical disgrace
except with his own metropolitan, for whom he was generally more than
a match; and he was one of the very few prelates who managed to steer
their way through the Becket quarrel without either damaging their
reputation as sound churchmen or forfeiting the confidence of Henry II.
His intrigues with the Scot king and the rebel barons in 1174 failed
so completely and so speedily that Henry found it scarcely worth while
to punish them in any way; and on the other hand, Hugh’s position
was already so independent and secure that he himself never found it
worth while to renew them. In his own diocese, whatever he might be
as a pastor of souls, he was a vigorous and on the whole a beneficent
as well as magnificent ruler; the men of the county palatine grumbled
indeed at his extravagance and at the occasional hardships brought
upon them by his inordinate love of the chase, but they were none the
less proud of his splendid buildings, his regal state, and his equally
regal personality. His appearance and manners corresponded with his
character and his rank; he was tall in stature, dignified in bearing,
remarkably attractive in look, eloquent and winning in address.[1401]
Moreover, he had lived so long in England, and all his interests had
so long been centred there, that for all practical purposes, social as
well as political, he was a thorough Englishman--certainly far more
of an Englishman than his young English-born cousin, King Richard.
For the last eight years, indeed, he had held in the north much the
same position as had belonged in earlier times to the archbishops of
York; for the northern province had been without a metropolitan ever
since the death of Roger of Pont-l’Evêque in November 1181,[1402] and
the supreme authority, ecclesiastical as well as secular, had thus
devolved upon the bishop of Durham. He was now threatened with the loss
of this pre-eminence; but he had no intention of giving it up without
a struggle, in which his chances of success were at least as good as
those of his rival the archbishop-elect; and whatever the result might
be with respect to his ecclesiastical independence, he had secured a
formidable counterpoise to the primate’s territorial influence by his
purchase of Northumberland, which made him sole head, under the Crown,
of the civil administration of the whole country between the Tweed and
the Tees.

        [1401] On Hugh of Durham see Will. Newb., l. v. c. 10 (Howlett,
        vol. ii. pp. 436–438), Geoff. Coldingham, cc. 1, 4, 11, 14
        (_Script. Dunelm. III._, Raine, pp. 4, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14), and
        Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii. pref. pp. xxxiii.–xxxvii.

        [1402] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 283. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 10. Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 5 (Howlett,
        vol. i. p. 225).

Alike in himself and in his antecedents Hugh of Puiset was the very
antithesis to William of Longchamp. William had nothing of the
stately presence and winning aspect which distinguished the bishop
of Durham; on the contrary, he laboured under personal disadvantages
which should have entitled him to sympathy, but which one of his
political opponents was heartless enough to caricature, after his
fall, in order to make him an object of vulgar contempt and disgust.
His stature was diminutive, his countenance swarthy and ill-favoured,
his figure mis-shapen, and he was moreover very lame.[1403] His
origin was as lowly as his person. His father was a certain Hugh of
Longchamp who in 1156 received from the king a grant of lands in
Herefordshire,[1404] and about the time of the barons’ revolt was
fermor of the honour of Conches in Normandy.[1405] His grandfather was
said to have been a French serf who had fled from the justice of his
lord and found a refuge in the Norman village whence his descendants
took their name.[1406] In Henry’s latter years Hugh of Longchamp was
deep in debt and disgrace,[1407] and his six sons had to make their
way in the world as best they could under the shadow of the king’s
displeasure.[1408] William, whose physical infirmities must have shut
him out from every career save that of a clerk, first appears under
the patronage of Geoffrey the chancellor, as his official in one of
his many pieces of Church preferment, the archdeaconry of Rouen.[1409]
The king, however, remonstrated strongly with his son on the danger
of associating with a man whom he declared to be “a traitor, like his
father and mother before him.”[1410] The end of his remonstrances was
that, shortly before the last outbreak, William fled from Geoffrey to
Richard, and, according to one account, became the chief instigator
of Richard’s rebellion.[1411] However this may be, it is certain that
Richard, while still merely duke of Aquitaine, employed William as his
chancellor,[1412] and that he was not only so well satisfied with his
services as to retain him in the same capacity after his accession to
the crown, but had formed such a high opinion of his statesmanship and
his fidelity as to make him his chief political adviser and confidant.
Richard, like his father, was constant in his friendships, and very
unwilling to discard those to whom he had once become really attached;
his trust in William remained unshaken to the end of his life, and
in some respects it was not misplaced. William seems to have been
thoroughly loyal to his master, and his energy and industry were as
unquestionable as his loyalty. As Richard’s most intimate companion,
confidential secretary, and political adviser in foreign affairs,
William was in his right place; but he was by no means equally well
fitted to be Richard’s representative in the supreme government and
administration of England. He had the primary disqualification of being
a total stranger to the land, its people and its ways. Most likely he
had never set foot in England till he came thither with Richard in
1189; he was ignorant of the English tongue;[1413] his new surroundings
were thoroughly distasteful to him; and as he was by no means of a
cautious or conciliatory temper, he expressed his contempt and dislike
of them in a way which was resented not only by the people, but even
by men whose origin and natural speech were scarcely more English
than his own.[1414] He had in short every qualification for becoming
an extremely unpopular man, and he behaved as if he desired no other
destiny. The nation at large soon learned to return his aversion
and to detest him as a disagreeable stranger; his colleagues in the
administration despised him as an upstart interloper; the justiciar,
in particular, keenly resented his own virtual subordination to one
whom he naturally regarded as his inferior in every way.[1415] It was
sound policy on Richard’s part to place a check upon Hugh of Durham;
and it was not unnatural that he should select his chancellor for that
purpose. The seven happiest years of Henry Fitz-Empress had been the
years during which another chancellor had wielded a power almost as
great as that which Richard intrusted to William of Longchamp. But, on
the other hand, any one except Richard might have seen at a glance that
of all statesmen living, William of Longchamp was well-nigh the least
fitted to reproduce the career of Thomas of London.

        [1403] Cf. Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 11, with the horrible
        caricature in Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. c. 19 (Brewer,
        vol. iv. p. 420).

        [1404] Pipe Roll 2 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 51.

        [1405] _Mag. Rot. Scacc. Norm._ (Stapleton), vol. i. p. 74. Cf.
        Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii. pref. p. xxxviii.

        [1406] Letter of Hugh of Nonant, in _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs),
        p. 216 (also in Rog. Howden, Stubbs, vol. iii. p. 142). Gir.
        Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. c. 18 (Brewer, vol. iv. p. 418).

        [1407] _Mag. Rot. Scacc. Norm._ (Stapleton), vol. i. p. 74.
        Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii. pref. pp. xxxviii, xxxix and
        notes.

        [1408] Stubbs, as above, pp. xxxix, xl.

        [1409] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 1 (p. 388).

        [1410] _Ibid._ Cf. c. 19 (pp. 420, 421). It does not seem to be
        known exactly who William’s mother was; but she brought to her
        husband in dower a knight’s fee in Herefordshire under Hugh de
        Lacy. See _Lib. Nig. Scacc._ (Hearne), p. 155, and Stubbs, as
        above, p. xxxviii, note 4.

        [1411] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 19 (p. 421).

        [1412] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 6.

        [1413] Letter of Hugh of Nonant in _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), vol.
        ii. p. 219.

        [1414] See Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. c. 19 (Brewer,
        vol. iv. p. 424).

        [1415] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 101. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. iii. p. 29.

The king left England on December 11.[1416] William was consecrated,
together with Richard Fitz-Nigel, on December 31,[1417] and on the
feast of the Epiphany he was enthroned at Ely.[1418] Immediately
afterwards he began to assert his temporal authority. At a meeting
of the Court of Exchequer the bishop of Durham was turned out by
the chancellor’s orders; presently after he was deprived of his
jurisdiction over Northumberland. Soon after this, Bishop Godfrey of
Winchester was dispossessed not merely of his sheriffdom and castles,
but even of his own patrimony.[1419] For this last spoliation there
is no apparent excuse; that a man should hold a sheriffdom together
with a bishopric was, however, contrary alike to Church discipline and
to sound temporal policy; and the non-recognition of Hugh’s purchase
of Northumberland might be yet further justified by the fact that
the purchase-money was not yet paid.[1420] In February 1190 Richard
summoned his mother, his brothers and his chief ministers to a final
meeting in Normandy;[1421] the chancellor, knowing that complaints
against him would be brought before the king, hurried over in advance
of his colleagues, to justify himself before he was accused,[1422] and
he succeeded so well that Richard not only sent him back to England
after the council with full authority to act as chief justiciar as well
as chancellor,[1423] but at the same time opened negotiations with Rome
to obtain for him a commission as legate[1424]--an arrangement which,
the archbishop of Canterbury being bound on crusade like the king,
would leave William supreme both in Church and state.

        [1416] _Gesta Ric._ as above. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
        73, makes it December 14.

        [1417] R. Diceto as above, p. 75. Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p.
        11.

        [1418] R. Diceto as above.

        [1419] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 11.

        [1420] See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii. pref. p. xxxi. and
        note 3.

        [1421] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 105, 106.

        [1422] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 12.

        [1423] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 106. Cf. Ric. Devizes as
        above, and Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 14 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 331).

        [1424] _Gesta Ric._ as above.

The new justiciar’s first act on his return was to fortify the Tower
of London;[1425] his next was to punish a disturbance which had lately
occurred at York. During the last six months the long-suppressed hatred
which the Jews inspired had broken forth into open violence. The first
pretext had been furnished by a misunderstanding on the coronation-day.
Richard, who had some very strict ideas about the ceremonials of
religion, had given orders that no Jew should approach him on that
solemn occasion; in defiance or ignorance of the prohibition, some
rich Jews came to offer gifts to the new sovereign; the courtiers and
the people seized the excuse to satisfy at once their greed and their
hatred; the unwelcome visitors were driven away, robbed, beaten, some
even slain;[1426] and the rage of their enemies, once let loose, spent
itself throughout the night in a general sack of the Jewish quarter.
Richard, engaged at the coronation-banquet, knew nothing of what had
happened till the next day,[1427] when he did his best to secure the
ringleaders, and punished them severely.[1428] When he was gone,
however, the spark thus kindled burst forth into a blaze in all the
chief English cities in succession, Winchester being almost the sole
exception.[1429] Massacres of Jews took place at Norwich on February 6,
at Stamford on March 7, at S. Edmund’s on March 18, Palm Sunday.[1430]
A day before this last, a yet worse tragedy had occurred at York. The
principal Jews of that city, in dread of a popular attack, had sought
and obtained shelter in one of the towers of the castle, under the
protection of its constable and the sheriff of Yorkshire.[1431] Once
there, they refused to give it up again; whereupon the constable and
the sheriff called out all the forces of city and shire to dislodge
them. After twenty-four hours’ siege the Jews offered to ransom
themselves by a heavy fine; but the blood of the citizens was up, and
they rejected the offer. The Jews, in desperation, resolved to die by
their own hands rather than by those of their Gentile enemies; the
women and children were slaughtered by their husbands and fathers,
who flung the corpses over the battlements or piled them up in the
tower, which they fired.[1432] Nearly five hundred Jews perished in the
massacre or the flames;[1433] and the citizens and soldiers, baulked of
their expected prey, satiated their greed by sacking and burning all
the Jewish houses and destroying the bonds of all the Jewish usurers
in the city.[1434] At the end of April or the beginning of May[1435]
the new justiciar came with an armed force to York to investigate
this affair. The citizens threw the whole blame upon the castellan
and the sheriff; William accordingly deposed them both.[1436] As the
castle was destroyed, he probably thought it needless to appoint a
new constable until it should be rebuilt; for the sheriff--John,
elder brother of William the Marshal--he at once substituted his own
brother Osbert.[1437] Most of the knights who had been concerned in
the tumult had taken care to put themselves out of his reach; their
estates were, however, mulcted and their chattels seized;[1438] and the
citizens only escaped by paying a fine[1439] and giving hostages who
were not redeemed till three years later, when all thought of further
proceedings in the matter had been given up.[1440] Even the clergy of
the minster had their share of punishment, although for a different
offence: William, though his legatine commission had not yet arrived,
claimed already to be received as legate, and put the church under
interdict until his claim was admitted.[1441]

        [1425] _Ibid._

        [1426] The _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 83, lay the blame
        on “curiales”; with Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p.
        12, the source of the mischief is “plebs superbo oculo et
        insatiabili corde”; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 69, is
        so ashamed of the whole business that he tries to shift
        the responsibility off all English shoulders alike--“Pax
        Judæorum, quam ab antiquis temporibus semper obtinuerant, ab
        alienigenis interrumpitur.” Cf. the very opposite tone of R.
        Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 28, and the judicial middle course
        characteristically steered by Will. Newb., l. iv. cc. 1 and 9
        (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 297, 298, 316, 317).

        [1427] R. Diceto as above.

        [1428] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 84. Rog. Howden as above.
        Both take care to assure us that Richard’s severity was owing
        not to any sympathy for the Jews, but to the fact that in
        the confusion a few Christians had suffered with them. Cf. a
        slightly different version in Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 1 (as
        above, pp. 297–299).

        [1429] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 5.

        [1430] R. Diceto as above, p. 75. Cf. Will. Newb., l. iv. cc.
        7, 8 (as above, pp. 308–312), who adds Lynn to the series.

        [1431] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 107, and a more detailed
        account in Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 9 (as above, pp. 312–314).
        From him we learn that the Jews of Lincoln did the same, and
        with a more satisfactory result.

        [1432] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 107. For date--March 16--see
        R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 75.

        [1433] R. Diceto as above.

        [1434] _Gesta Ric._ as above. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii.
        p. 34. Cf. the somewhat different version of Will. Newb., l.
        iv. cc. 9, 10 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 314–322), and also R.
        Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 27, 28.

        [1435] The _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 108, say merely “post
        Pascha”; Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 11 (as above, p. 323), says
        “circa Dominicæ Ascensionis solemnia,” which fell on May 4.

        [1436] _Gesta Ric._ as above.

        [1437] Rog. Howden as above.

        [1438] Will. Newb. as above (p. 323). Cf. Pipe Roll 2 Ric. I.,
        quoted in Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii. pref. pp. xliv.,
        notes 4, 5, xlv., note 1.

        [1439] Will. Newb. as above.

        [1440] Pipe Roll 5 Ric. I. in Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii.
        pref. p. xliv., note 7. Will. Newb., as above (p. 324), says
        that nothing further was ever done in the matter.

        [1441] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 108, 109.

For the moment William’s power was undisputed even in the north;
for Hugh of Durham was still in Gaul. Now, however, there came a
notice from the king that he was about to send Hugh back to England
as justiciar over the whole country north of the Humber.[1442] Hugh
himself soon afterwards arrived, and hurried northward, in the hope,
it seems, of catching the chancellor on the further side of the Humber
and thus compelling him to acknowledge his inferiority.[1443] In this
hope he was disappointed; they met at Blyth in Nottinghamshire.[1444]
Hugh, impetuous in old age as in youth, talked somewhat too much
as the chancellor had acted--“as if all the affairs of the realm
were dependent on his nod.”[1445] At last, however, he produced the
commission from Richard upon which his pretensions were founded;[1446]
and William, who could read between the lines of his royal friend’s
letters, saw at once that he had little to fear.[1447] He replied
simply by expressing his readiness to obey the king’s orders,[1448]
and proposing that all further discussion should be adjourned to a
second meeting a week later at Tickhill. There Hugh found the tables
turned. The chancellor had reached the place before him; the bishop’s
followers were shut out from the castle; he was admitted alone into
the presence of his rival, who, without giving him time to speak, put
into his hands another letter from Richard, bidding all his English
subjects render service and obedience to “our trusty and well-beloved
chancellor, the bishop of Ely,” as they would to the king himself.
The letter was dated June 6--some days, if not weeks, later than
Hugh’s credentials;[1449] and it seems to have just reached William
together with his legatine commission, which was issued on the previous
day.[1450] He gave his rival no time even to think. “You had your say
at our last meeting; now I will have mine. As my lord the king liveth,
you shall not quit this place till you have given me hostages for the
surrender of all your castles. No protests! I am not a bishop arresting
another bishop; I am the chancellor, arresting his supplanter.”[1451]
Hugh was powerless; yet he let himself be dragged all the way to London
before he would yield. Then he gave up the required hostages,[1452] and
submitted to the loss of all his lately-purchased honours--Windsor,
Newcastle, Northumberland, even the manor of Sadberge which he had
bought of the king for his see[1453]--everything, in short, except his
bishopric. For that he set out as soon as he was liberated; but at his
manor of Howden he was stopped by the chancellor’s orders, forbidden
to proceed further, and again threatened with forcible detention. He
promised to remain where he was, gave security for the fulfilment of
his promise, and then wrote to the king his complaints of the treatment
which he had received.[1454] All the redress that he could get,
however, was a writ commanding that Sadberge should be restored to him
at once and that he should suffer no further molestation.[1455]

        [1442] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 109. This appointment is
        mentioned (_ib._ p. 106) among those made at the council of
        Rouen, where William himself was appointed; but it seems plain
        that it was not ratified till some time later.

        [1443] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 12.

        [1444] _Gesta Ric._ as above, p. 109.

        [1445] Ric. Devizes as above.

        [1446] _Ib._ p. 13. _Gesta Ric._ as above.

        [1447] Ric. Devizes as above.

        [1448] _Gesta Ric._ as above.

        [1449] Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 83, with Ric.
        Devizes as above.

        [1450] R. Diceto as above.

        [1451] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 13.

        [1452] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 109. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. iii. p. 35, places the submission at Southwell.

        [1453] _Gesta Ric._ as above. On Sadberge see Rog. Howden as
        above, p. 13.

        [1454] _Gesta Ric._, pp. 109, 110.

        [1455] The _Gesta Ric._, p. 110, say Richard ordered the
        restitution of Newcastle and Sadberge; for Newcastle Rog.
        Howden, as above, p. 38, substitutes “comitatum Northumbriæ”;
        but the king’s letter, given by Roger himself (_ib._ pp. 38,
        39), mentions nothing except Sadberge. For its date see _ib._
        pp. 37 note 1, 39 note 3, and _Gesta Ric._ as above, p. 112,
        note 1.

The chancellor’s first rival was thus suppressed; but already he
could see other stumbling-blocks arising in his path, not a few of
them placed there by the shortsighted policy of his royal master.
Richard’s reckless bestowal of lands and jurisdictions would, if left
undisturbed, have put the administration of at least ten whole shires
practically beyond the control of the central government. The bishops
of Durham, Winchester and Coventry or Chester would have had everything
their own way, in temporal matters no less than in spiritual,
throughout their respective dioceses. To this state of things William
had summarily put an end in the cases of Northumberland and Hampshire;
in those of Leicestershire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire the
primate had been induced to remonstrate with Hugh of Coventry upon
the impropriety of a bishop holding three sheriffdoms, and Hugh had
accordingly given up two of them, though he managed to get them back
after Baldwin’s death at the close of 1190.[1456] There were however
still four shires in the south-west and one in Mid-England over which
the king’s justiciar was not only without practical, but even without
legal jurisdiction. In these, and in a number of “honours” scattered
over the midland shires from Gloucester to Nottingham, the whole rights
and profits of government, administration and finance belonged solely
to John; for his exercise of them he was responsible to no one but
the king; and thus, as soon as Richard was out of reach, John was to
all intents and purposes himself king of his own territories. For the
present indeed he was unable to set foot in his little realm: Richard
in the spring had made both his brothers take an oath to keep away
from England for three years.[1457] It was however easy enough for
John to govern his part of England, as the whole of it had often been
governed for years together, from the other side of the Channel. He
had his staff of ministers just like his brother--his justiciar Roger
de Planes,[1458] his chancellor Stephen Ridel,[1459] his seneschal
William de Kahaines, and his butler Theobald Walter;[1460] the sheriffs
of his five counties and the stewards or bailiffs of his honours were
appointed by him alone, and exercised their functions solely for
his advantage, without reference to the king’s court or the king’s
exchequer.[1461] It is evident that, even though as yet the sea lay
between them, John had already the power to make himself, if he were
so minded, a serious obstacle to the chancellor’s plans of governing
England for Richard. Moreover, before Richard finally quitted Gaul, his
mother persuaded him to release John from his oath of absence;[1462]
and William of Longchamp himself, in his new character of legate, was
obliged to confirm the release with his absolution.[1463] In view of
the struggle which he now saw could not be far distant, William began
to marshal his political forces and concert his measures of defence. On
August 1 he held a Church council at Gloucester, in the heart of John’s
territories;[1464] on October 13 he held another at Westminster;[1465]
and he seems to have spent the winter in a sort of half legatine, half
vice-regal progress throughout the country, for purposes of justice and
finance and for the assertion of his own authority. This proceeding
stirred up a good deal of discontent. Cripple though he was, William of
Longchamp seems to have been almost as rapid and restless a traveller
as Henry II.; one contemporary says he “went up and down the country
like a flash of lightning.”[1466] It may be however that these words
allude to the disastrous effects of the chancellor’s passage rather
than to its swiftness and suddenness; for he went about in such state
as no minister except Henry’s first chancellor had ever ventured to
assume. His train of a thousand armed knights, besides a crowd of
clerks and other attendants, was a ruinous burthen to the religious
houses where he claimed entertainment; and the burthen was made almost
unbearable by the heavy exactions, from clerk and layman alike, which
he made in his master’s name.[1467]

        [1456] See R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 77, 78, and Stubbs,
        _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii. pref. p. xxxi. and note 5.

        [1457] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 106. Ric. Devizes (Stevenson),
        p. 15.

        [1458] R. Diceto as above, p. 99.

        [1459] _Gesta Ric._ as above, p. 224.

        [1460] Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 55.

        [1461] See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii. pref. pp. xxxiii
        and lii.

        [1462] _Gesta Ric._ and Ric. Devizes as above.

        [1463] Gir. Cambr. _De rebus a se gestis_, l. ii. c. 23
        (Brewer, vol. i. p. 86). Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 15, says
        the arrangement was that John “in Angliam per cancellarium
        transiens staret ejus judicio, et ad placitum illius vel
        moraretur in regno vel exularet.” But with Eleanor in England
        to back her son, William could really have no choice in the
        matter.

        [1464] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 83. On the version of
        this in Ric. Devizes (as above, pp. 13, 14), see Stubbs, _Rog.
        Howden_, vol. iii. pref. p. xlix.

        [1465] R. Diceto as above, p. 85. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i.
        p. 488, makes it October 16.

        [1466] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 14.

        [1467] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 214. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. iii. p. 72. Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 14 (Howlett, vol. i.
        pp. 333, 334).

That master was now with Philip of France at Messina,[1468] preparing
for his departure from Europe. When he would come back--whether he ever
would come back at all--was felt by all parties to be doubtful in the
extreme. With his ardent zeal, rash valour and peculiar health, he was
little likely to escape both the chances of war and the effects of the
eastern climate;[1469] and the question of the succession was therefore
again becoming urgent. There was indeed not much latitude of choice;
the male line of Anjou, already extinct in Palestine, had in Europe
only three representatives--Richard himself, John, and their infant
nephew Arthur of Britanny. By the strict feudal rule of primogeniture,
Arthur, being Geoffrey’s son, would have after Richard the next claim
as head of the Angevin house. By old English constitutional practice,
John, being a grown man and the reigning sovereign’s own brother,
would have a much better chance of recognition as his successor than
his nephew, a child not yet four years old. Neither alternative was
without drawbacks. Richard himself had made up his mind to the first;
early in November 1190 he arranged a marriage for Arthur with a
daughter of King Tancred of Sicily, on a distinct understanding that
in case of his own death without children Arthur was to succeed to
all his dominions;[1470] while at the same time William of Longchamp
was endeavouring to secure the Scot king’s recognition of Arthur as
heir-presumptive to the English crown.[1471] The queen-mother was
unwilling to contemplate the succession of either Arthur or John; she
was anxious to get Richard married. Knowing that he never would marry
the woman to whom he had been so long betrothed, she took upon herself
to find him another bride. Her choice fell upon Berengaria, daughter
of King Sancho VI. of Navarre;[1472] it was accepted by Richard;
early in February 1191[1473] she went over to Gaul; there she met her
intended daughter-in-law, whom she carried on with her into Italy,
and by the end of March they were both with Richard at Messina.[1474]
On the very day of their arrival Philip had sailed.[1475] After long
wrangling with him, Richard had at last succeeded in freeing himself
from his miserable engagement to Adela;[1476] he at once plighted his
troth to Berengaria; and when his mother, after a four days’ visit, set
out again upon her homeward journey,[1477] his bride remained with him
under the care of his sister the widowed queen Jane of Sicily[1478]
till the expiration of Lent and the circumstances of their eastward
voyage enabled them to marry. The wedding was celebrated and the queen
crowned at Limasol in Cyprus on the fourth Sunday after Easter.[1479]

        [1468] Richard was there from September 23, 1190, to April 10,
        1191. _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 125, 162; R. Diceto as above,
        pp. 84, 91.

        [1469] See Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 5 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 306).

        [1470] Treaty in _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 133–136, and Rog.
        Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 61–64. It is dateless, but
        on November 11 Richard wrote to the Pope telling him of its
        provisions and asking for his sanction. _Gesta Ric._ as above,
        pp. 136–138; Rog. Howden as above, pp. 65, 66.

        [1471] Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 14 (as above, pp. 335, 336).
        William represents this as an unauthorized proceeding of the
        chancellor’s, contrived in his own interest as against John. He
        seems to place it at a later date.

        [1472] “Puella prudentior quam pulchra” says Ric. Devizes
        (Stevenson), p. 25; but he seems to be contrasting her with
        Eleanor. On the other hand, Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 19 (as
        above, p. 346), calls her “famosæ pulchritudinis et prudentiæ
        virginem.” According to the _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 175,
        this had been Richard’s own choice for many years past.

        [1473] Richard sent ships to meet her at Naples before the end
        of that month. _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 157.

        [1474] They arrived on March 30. _Gesta Ric._ as above, p. 161.

        [1475] _Ibid._

        [1476] _Gesta Ric._ as above, pp. 160, 161. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 99. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 86.
        Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 26. The actual treaty between
        Richard and Philip, of which more later, is in Rymer, _Fœdera_,
        vol. i. p. 54.

        [1477] She sailed on April 2. _Gesta Ric._ as above, p. 161.
        Cf. R. Diceto as above.

        [1478] _Ibid._ Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 28.

        [1479] _Gesta Ric._ as above, pp. 166, 167. Ric. Devizes, p.
        39. _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 195, 196.

On her way home Eleanor stopped to transact some diplomatic business
at Rome, and she seems to have remained in Gaul until the beginning of
the next year. Long before she returned to England there were evident
tokens that when Richard had proposed to keep John out of it, he had
for once been wiser than his mother. Early in the year John, profiting
by the liberty which her intercession had procured him, came over to
England and there set up his court in such semi-regal state as to make
it a source of extreme irritation, if not of grave anxiety, to the
chancellor.[1480] Eleanor’s departure thus left William of Longchamp
face to face with a new and most formidable rival; while about the
same time he saw his power threatened on another side. In March 1191
tidings came that Archbishop Baldwin had died at Acre in the foregoing
November.[1481] If a new primate should be appointed, it was to be
expected as a matter of course that the bishop of Ely would lose the
legation; he could hope to retain it only by persuading Richard either
to nominate him to the primacy, or to keep it vacant altogether.
Richard’s notions of ecclesiastical propriety were however too strict
to admit the latter alternative; from the former he would most likely
be deterred by his father’s experiences with another chancellor; so, to
the astonishment of everybody, he nominated for the see of Canterbury
a Sicilian prelate, one of his fellow-crusaders, William archbishop
of Monreale.[1482] Meanwhile John and the chancellor were quarrelling
openly; popular sympathy, which William had alienated by his arrogance
and his oppressions, was on the side of John; even the subordinate
justiciars, who had stood by William in his struggle with Hugh of
Durham,[1483] were turning against him now; from one and all complaints
against him were showering in upon the king;[1484] till at the end of
February Richard grew so bewildered and so uneasy that he decided upon
sending the archbishop of Rouen to investigate the state of affairs in
England and see what could be done to remedy it.[1485]

        [1480] See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii. pref. pp. li., lii.

        [1481] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 488, 490.

        [1482] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 493, 494; date,
        January 25 [1191].

        [1483] See Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), pp. 11, 12.

        [1484] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 158. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. iii. pp. 95, 96.

        [1485] _Gesta Ric_. as above. Rog. Howden as above, p. 96. We
        get the date approximately from Richard’s letter in R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 90.

The archbishop of Rouen--Walter of Coutances--was a man of noble birth
and stainless character who had been successively archdeacon of Oxford,
treasurer of Rouen cathedral and vice-chancellor to Henry II.;[1486]
in this last capacity he had for eight years done the whole work of
head of the chancery for his nominal chief Ralf of Varneville,[1487]
till Ralf was succeeded in 1182 by the king’s son Geoffrey, and next
year the vice-chancellor was promoted to the see of Lincoln, which
Geoffrey had resigned. A year later Walter was advanced to the primacy
of Normandy.[1488] He was now with Richard, on his way to Holy Land,
but commuted his vow to serve the king.[1489] He was a very quiet,
unassuming person, and certainly not a vigorous statesman; but his
integrity and disinterestedness were above question;[1490] and the
position in which he was now placed was one in which even a Thomas
Becket might well have been puzzled how to act. The only commission
given him by Richard of which we know the date was issued on February
23;[1491] but it was not till April 2 that he was allowed to leave
Messina;[1492] and during the interval Richard, in his reluctance to
supersede the chancellor, seems to have been perpetually changing his
mind and varying his instructions, some of which were sent direct to
England and some intrusted to Walter, till by the time the archbishop
started he was laden with a bundle of contradictory commissions,
addressed to himself, to William and to the co-justiciars, and
apparently accompanied by a verbal order to use one, all or none of
them, wholly at his own discretion.[1493]

        [1486] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. c. 10 (Brewer, vol.
        iv. p. 408).

        [1487] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 367.

        [1488] _Ib._ vol. ii. pp. 10, 14, 21.

        [1489] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 27--very unfairly coloured.

        [1490] Cf. Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. c. 10 (Brewer,
        vol. iv. p. 408), and Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 15 (Howlett, vol.
        i. p. 336). In this place William calls Walter “virum prudentem
        et modestum”; but in l. iii. c. 8 (_ib._ p. 236) he displays a
        curiously bitter resentment against him for his abandonment of
        the see of Lincoln for the loftier see of Rouen.

        [1491] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 90. Gir. Cambr. as
        above, c. 6 (p. 401), gives the date as February 20.

        [1492] He and Eleanor left Messina together. _Itin. Reg. Ric._
        (Stubbs), p. 176.

        [1493] This seems the only possible explanation at once of
        Walter’s conduct and of the conflicting accounts in R. Diceto
        as above, pp. 90, 91; Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 400, 401);
        _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 158; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii.
        pp. 96, 97; Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), pp. 27–29; and Will.
        Newb. as above. See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii. pref. pp.
        lx., lxi., note 1.

Before he reached England John and the chancellor were at open war.
On Mid-Lent Sunday they met at Winchester to discuss the payment of
John’s pensions from the Exchequer and the possession of certain
castles within his territories.[1494] The discussion clearly ended in a
quarrel; and this served as a signal for revolt against the unpopular
minister. Gerard de Camville, sheriff of Lincolnshire by purchase from
the king, was also constable of Lincoln castle in right of his wife
Nicolaa de Haye. He was accused of harbouring robbers in the castle,
and when summoned before the king’s justices he refused to appear,
declaring that he had become John’s liegeman and was answerable only
to him.[1495] At the opposite end of England Roger de Mortemer, the
lord of Wigmore--successor to that Hugh de Mortemer who had defied
Henry II. in 1156--was at the same moment found to be plotting treason
with the Welsh. Against him the chancellor proceeded first, and his
mere approach so alarmed Roger that he gave up his castle and submitted
to banishment from the realm for three years.[1496] William then
hurried to Lincoln; but before he could reach it Gerard and Nicolaa
had had time to make their almost impregnable stronghold ready for
a siege, and John had had time to gain possession of Nottingham and
Tickhill[1497]--two castles which the king had retained in his own
hands, while bestowing upon his brother the honours in which they
stood. Nicolaa was in command at Lincoln, and was fully equal to the
occasion; her husband was now with John, and John at once sent the
chancellor a most insulting message, taunting him with the facility
with which the two castles had been betrayed,[1498] and threatening
that if the attempt upon Lincoln was not at once given up, he would
come in person to avenge the wrongs of his liegeman.[1499] William saw
that John was now too strong for him; he knew by this time that Pope
Clement was dead,[1500] and his own legation consequently at an end; he
must have known, too, of the mission of Walter of Rouen; he therefore,
through some of his fellow-bishops,[1501] demanded a personal meeting
with John, and proposed that all their differences should be submitted
to arbitration. John burst into a fury at what he chose to call the
impudence of this proposal,[1502] but he ended by accepting it, and on
April 25 the meeting took place at Winchester. The case was decided by
the bishops of London, Winchester and Bath, with eleven lay arbitrators
chosen by them from each party. Their decision went wholly against the
chancellor. He was permitted to claim the restitution of Nottingham and
Tickhill, but only to put them in charge of two partizans of John; his
right to appoint wardens to the other castles in dispute was nominally
confirmed, but made practically dependent upon John’s dictation; he was
compelled to reinstate Gerard de Camville, and moreover to promise that
in case of Richard’s death he would do his utmost to secure the crown
for John.[1503]

        [1494] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 26.

        [1495] Cf. Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 30, with Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 242, 243, and Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 16
        (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 337, 338), and see Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_,
        vol. iii. pref. pp. lvi., lvii.

        [1496] Ric. Devizes as above.

        [1497] _Ibid._ _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 207. Will. Newb. as
        above (p. 338).

        [1498] Ric. Devizes as above.

        [1499] _Ibid._ _Gesta Ric._ as above.

        [1500] He died on the Wednesday before Easter--April 10--and
        his successor Celestine III. was elected on Easter-day. _Gesta
        Ric._ as above, p. 161.

        [1501] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 31, makes Walter of Rouen
        the mediator, but we shall see that this is chronologically
        impossible.

        [1502] _Ibid._

        [1503] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), pp. 32, 33. On the date see
        Bishop Stubbs’s notes to _Gesta Ric._, p. 208, and Rog. Howden,
        vol. iii. p. 134, and pref. to latter, pp. lviii., lix.

Two days later Walter of Rouen landed at Shoreham.[1504] He was
evidently not wanted now to act as a check upon William of Longchamp;
he might almost expect to be soon wanted as a check upon John; but
meanwhile, he could only stand aside and watch the effect of the
new arrangements. His passive attitude gave, however, an indirect
support to the chancellor; after midsummer, therefore, the latter
ventured to repudiate the concessions wrung from him at Winchester;
he again advanced upon Lincoln, and formally deprived Gerard of the
sheriffdom, which he conferred upon William de Stuteville.[1505] Once
more the other bishops interposed, backed now by the Norman primate.
Another assembly met at Winchester on July 28,[1506] and here a
fresh settlement was made. Gerard was reinstated in the sheriffdom
of Lincolnshire, pending his trial in the king’s court; William and
John were both bound over to commit no more forcible disseizures;
the disputed castles were to be again put in charge for the king,
but through the medium of the archbishop of Rouen instead of the
chancellor, and John was allowed no voice in the selection of the
castellans, who were chosen by the assembly then and there. If the
chancellor should infringe the agreement, or if the king should die,
these castles were to be given up to John; but all reference to his
claims upon the succession to the throne was carefully omitted.[1507]
The contest almost seemed to have ended in a drawn battle. It was
strictly a contest between individuals, involving no national or
constitutional interests. The barons, as a body, clearly sided with
John; but, just as clearly, they sided with him from loyal motives. The
authority of the Crown was never called in question; the question was,
who was fittest to represent and uphold it--the king’s chancellor, or
his brother. Of treason, either to England or to Richard, there was not
a thought, unless--as indeed is only too probable--it lurked in the
mind of John himself.

        [1504] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 497, says he landed
        about midsummer, and the printed text of R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. p. 90, makes the date June 27; but see note in latter
        place. Bishop Stubbs (_Rog. Howden_, vol. iii. pref. p. lix.)
        adopts the earlier date.

        [1505] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 207.

        [1506] The date comes from Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 32,
        who however misapplies it. See Bishop Stubbs’s notes to _Gesta
        Ric._, p. 208, and Rog. Howden, vol. iii. p. 134.

        [1507] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 135–137.

A drawn battle, however, could not possibly be the end of a struggle
between two such men as John of Mortain and William of Longchamp. In
the autumn a new element was added to the strife by the return of
Archbishop Geoffrey of York. For thirty-five years Geoffrey had been
the eldest living child, if indeed he was not actually the first-born,
of Henry Fitz-Empress;[1508] but of the vast Angevin heritage there
fell to his share nothing, except the strong feelings and fiery temper
which caused half the troubles of his life. As a child he had been
brought up at court almost on equal terms with his half-brothers;[1509]
he seems indeed to have been his father’s favourite, till he was
supplanted by the little John. When he grew to manhood, however, Henry
could see no way of providing for him except by forcing him into
a career for which he had no vocation. At an early age he was put
into deacon’s orders and made archdeacon of Lincoln;[1510] in 1173,
when about twenty years of age, he was appointed to the bishopric of
the same place.[1511] The Pope, however, demurred to the choice of
a candidate disqualified alike by his youth and his birth; and when
the former obstacle had been outlived and the latter might have been
condoned, Geoffrey voluntarily renounced an office in which he would
have been secure for life, but which he had never desired and for
which he felt himself unfit,[1512] in order to become his father’s
chancellor and constant companion during the last eight years of his
life. It was Henry’s last regret that this son, the only one of his
sons whose whole life had been an unbroken course of perfect filial
obedience, had to be left with his future entirely at the mercy of his
undutiful younger half-brother. Richard received him with a brotherly
welcome;[1513] when, however, he nominated him to the see of York, he
was indeed carrying out their father’s last wishes, but certainly not
those of Geoffrey himself. Richard seems to have thought that he was
held back by other motives than those of conscience or of preference
for a secular life; he suspected him of cherishing designs upon the
crown.[1514] It can only be said that Geoffrey, so far as appears,
never did anything to justify the suspicion, but shewed on the contrary
every disposition to act loyally towards both his brothers, if they
would but have acted with equal loyalty towards him. As soon however
as the tonsure had marked him irrevocably for a priestly life,[1515]
Richard’s zeal for his promotion cooled. The bishop of Durham, who was
striving to make his see independent of the metropolitan,[1516] and a
strong party in the York chapter with whom Geoffrey had quarrelled on
a point of ecclesiastical etiquette, easily won the king’s ear;[1517]
it was not till the very eve of Richard’s departure from England that
Geoffrey was able to buy his final confirmation both in the see of
York and in the estates which his father had bequeathed to him in
Anjou;[1518] and in March he was summoned over to Normandy and there,
like John, made to take an oath of absence from England for three
years.[1519]

        [1508] In the first chapter of his _Life_ by Gerald (Brewer,
        vol. iv. p. 363), we are told that Geoffrey was scarcely twenty
        when elected to Lincoln, _i.e._ in 1173. But in l. i. c. 13
        (_ib._ p. 384), Gerald says that he was consecrated to York
        “anno ætatis quasi quadragesimo,” in 1191. These two dates, as
        is usual with Gerald in such cases, do not agree, and neither
        of them pretends to be more than approximate. Still it seems
        plain that Geoffrey’s birth must fall somewhere between 1151
        and 1153. Even if we adopt the latest date, he must have
        been born in the same year as Eleanor’s first son--the baby
        William who died in 1156--and must have been at least two years
        older than the young king, four years older than Richard, and
        fourteen years older than John.

        [1509] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. i. c. 1 (Brewer, vol. iv.
        p. 363).

        [1510] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. i. c. 1 (Brewer, vol. iv.
        p. 363).

        [1511] _Ib._ p. 364. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 22 (Howlett, vol.
        i. p. 154).

        [1512] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 271, 272. Gir.
        Cambr. as above, c. 4 (p. 368). The resignation was formally
        completed at Epiphany 1182. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 10.

        [1513] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 5 (p. 372).

        [1514] _Ib._ c. 8 (p. 379). In c. 7 (p. 374) Gerald actually
        represents Geoffrey as entertaining some hope of surviving
        and succeeding both his younger brothers; but this is a very
        different thing from plotting against them during their lives.
        See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii. pref. p. lxvi. As it
        turned out, the first part, at any rate, of this dream of
        Geoffrey’s was not so mad as it seemed, for he died only four
        years before John.

        [1515] He was ordained priest September 23, 1189. _Gesta Ric._
        (Stubbs), p. 88.

        [1516] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 146. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. iii. p. 74.

        [1517] _Gesta Ric._ as above, pp. 88, 91, 99. Rog. Howden as
        above, pp. 17, 18, 27. Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. i. c. 8
        (Brewer, vol. iv. pp. 377, 378).

        [1518] _Gesta Ric._ as above, p. 100. Cf. Gir. Cambr. as above
        (p. 379).

        [1519] Gir. Cambr. as above. _Gesta Ric._ as above, p. 106.
        Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 15.

According to Geoffrey’s own account, he followed his brother as far
as Vézelay, and there won from him a remission of this vow.[1520] It
is certain that by April 1191 Richard had so far changed his mind
again as to be desirous of Geoffrey’s speedy consecration. The Pope’s
consent was still lacking; and the negotiations for obtaining this
were undertaken by the person who, from Geoffrey’s very birth, had
been his most determined enemy--Queen Eleanor. When she went from
Messina to Rome to plead his cause with Clement III. or his successor
Celestine,[1521] it is plain that natural feeling gave way to motives
of policy. She could now see that an archbishop of York might become
very useful in England, in holding the balance between Hugh of Durham
and William of Ely. His canonical authority and personal influence
might furnish, not indeed a counterpoise, but at least a check to the
now unlimited powers of the legate. On the other hand, it was the long
vacancy of York which more than anything else had tended to Hugh’s
exaltation. For ten years the bishop of Durham, with no metropolitan
over him, had virtually been himself metropolitan of northern England.
He strongly resented the filling of the vacant see, and had actually
obtained from Clement III. a privilege of exemption from its
jurisdiction.[1522] If the archbishop of York could be reinstated in
his proper constitutional position, his own interests would lead him to
use it for those of the kingdom and the king.

        [1520] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 11 (p. 382).

        [1521] Rog. Howden as above, p. 100. The change in the Papacy
        must have occurred while she was there.

        [1522] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 146.

Geoffrey’s qualifications and disqualifications for such a task may
be very easily summed up. He had the Angevin fearlessness, energy,
persistence and thoroughness, with a fair share of the versatile
capabilities of the family; he had all their impetuosity, but very
little of their wariness and tact. Mingled with the Angevin fire, there
seems to have run in his veins the blood, and with it the spirit,
of a totally different race. If we may credit on such a point the
gossip of his father’s court, Geoffrey was through his mother a child
of the people--seemingly the English people--and of its very lowest
class.[1523] This consideration has more interest at a later stage of
Geoffrey’s career, when he stands forth as a champion of constitutional
liberty. Until then, there is, so far as we can see, no evidence of any
special sympathy between him and the English people. Yet the plebeian
and probably English element in him existed, or was believed to exist;
and if it did not become, as it easily might have done, an important
element in his political career, it was at any rate not unlikely to
have exercised some influence upon his character.

        [1523] W. Map, _De Nugis Cur._, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, pp.
        228–235). Walter is the only writer who tells us anything about
        Geoffrey’s mother; as he does not say she was a foreigner, it
        seems most probable that he looked upon her as an Englishwoman.
        The name which he gives to her--“Ykenai” or “Hikenai”--tells
        nothing either way, in itself. But Mr. Dimock (in his preface
        to the seventh volume of Gerald’s works, p. xxxvii) throws
        doubt upon Walter’s whole account of her except her name,
        and suggests that she may have belonged to a knightly family
        of _Akeny_ (i.e. Acquigny) in Normandy. This, however, is a
        question to be investigated by a biographer of Geoffrey or
        a student of his later political career rather than by an
        historian of the Angevin kings. The doubts which W. Map tries
        to throw upon his connexion with them are probably affected,
        and clearly unfounded. Few specimens of the Angevin race are
        more unmistakeable than Geoffrey; one might perhaps add, few
        more creditable.

Eleanor’s mission to Rome succeeded. Geoffrey’s election and his claim
to the obedience of the bishop of Durham were both confirmed by Pope
Celestine;[1524] he was consecrated at Tours by Archbishop Bartholomew
on August 18, and received his pall on the same day.[1525] He at once
put himself in communication with John, to secure a protector on his
return to his see;[1526] for William of Longchamp, having had no
notice from Richard of the remission of Geoffrey’s vow of absence,
refused to believe in it,[1527] and had not only issued orders for the
archbishop’s arrest as soon as he should land in England,[1528] but
had agreed with the countess of Flanders that no Flemish ship should
be allowed to give him a passage. The countess, however, evaded her
agreement by letting him sail from Wissant in an English boat.[1529]
He landed at Dover on Holy Cross day,[1530] having changed his clothes
to avoid recognition.[1531] The constable of Dover, Matthew de Clères,
was absent; his wife Richenda was a sister of William of Longchamp;
her men-at-arms surrounded the archbishop the moment he touched the
shore, recognized him in spite of his disguise, and strove to arrest
him, but he managed to free himself from their hands and make his way
to the priory of S. Martin, just outside the town. Here for five days
Richenda’s followers vainly endeavoured to blockade and starve him
into surrender.[1532] On the fifth day a band of armed men rushed into
the priory-church, and in the chancellor’s name ordered Geoffrey to
quit the country at once. Geoffrey, seated by the altar, clad in his
pontifical robes and with his archiepiscopal cross in his hand, set
them and their chancellor at defiance.[1533] They dragged him out of
the church by the hands and feet; and as nothing would induce him to
mount a horse which they brought for him, they dragged him on, still in
the same array, still clinging to his cross and excommunicating them
as they went, all through the town to the castle, where they flung him
into prison.[1534]

        [1524] _Gesta Ric._ as above, p. 209. See Celestine’s letter
        (date, May 11) in _Monasticon Angl._, vol. vi. pt. iii. col.
        1188, and Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii. pref. p. lxvii, note
        2.

        [1525] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 96. Cf. _Gesta Ric._
        (Stubbs), p. 209; Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. i. c. 13
        (Brewer, vol. iv. p. 384). Will. Newb., always hostile to
        Geoffrey, declares that “ordine præpostero” he got his pallium
        before he was consecrated; l. iv. c. 17 (Howlett, vol. i. pp.
        339, 340).

        [1526] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 34.

        [1527] His disbelief was evidently shared by Roger of Howden
        (Stubbs, vol. iii. p. 138); but Roger’s authority, the
        treasurer, does not commit himself to any opinion on the
        subject. _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 210.

        [1528] See the chancellor’s writ--dated Preston, July 30--in
        R. Diceto as above, and Gir. Cambr. as above, l. ii. c. 1 (p.
        389); and cf. Ric. Devizes and _Gesta Ric._ as above.

        [1529] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 388). Cf. _Gesta Ric._ as
        above. The countess--Isabel of Portugal, second wife of Count
        Philip--was governing her husband’s territories during his
        absence on crusade, where he died.

        [1530] R. Diceto as above, p. 97. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i.
        p. 504.

        [1531] _Gesta Ric._ as above.

        [1532] Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 388–390). Cf. R. Diceto and
        _Gesta Ric._ as above, and Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 17 (Howlett,
        vol. i. p. 340).

        [1533] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. c. 1 (Brewer, vol. iv.
        p. 391).

        [1534] _Ibid._ (pp. 391, 392). Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), pp.
        35, 36. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 97. _Gesta Ric._
        (Stubbs), p. 111. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 505. Will.
        Newb., l. iv. c. 17 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 340).

This outrage roused up all parties alike in Church and state. England
had had quite enough of persecuted and martyred archbishops. Protests
and remonstrances came pouring in upon the chancellor from the
most opposite quarters:--from the treasurer and bishop of London,
Richard Fitz-Nigel[1535]--from the aged bishop of Norwich, John of
Oxford,[1536] and from the Canterbury chapter,[1537] both of whom had
had only too much experience, in different ways, of the disasters which
might result from such violence to an archbishop. The most venerated
of living English prelates, S. Hugh of Lincoln, at once excommunicated
Richenda, her husband and all her abettors, with lighted candles at
Oxford.[1538] John remonstrated most vehemently of all,[1539] and his
remonstrances procured Geoffrey’s release,[1540] but only on condition
that he would go straight to London and there remain till the case
between him and the chancellor could be tried by an assembly of bishops
and barons.[1541] This of course satisfied nobody. John had no mind
to lose his opportunity of crushing his enemy once for all. From
Lancaster, where he was laying his plans with the help of Bishop Hugh
of Coventry--a nephew of the old arch-plotter Arnulf of Lisieux--he
hurried to Marlborough, and thence sent out summons to all the great
men whom he thought likely to help him against the chancellor. He
was not disappointed. The co-justiciars hastened up from the various
shires where they were apparently busy with their judicial or financial
visitations--William the Marshal from Gloucestershire, William Bruère
from Oxfordshire, Geoffrey Fitz-Peter from Northamptonshire; the
bishops were represented by Godfrey of Winchester and Reginald of Bath,
and the sovereign himself by Walter of Rouen; S. Hugh of Lincoln joined
the train as it passed through Oxford to Reading. From Reading John
sent to call his half-brother to his side. Geoffrey, who was beginning
to be looked upon and to look upon himself as something like another
S. Thomas, had made a sort of triumphal progress from Dover to London;
tied by his parole, he was obliged to ask the chancellor’s consent to
his acceptance of John’s invitation, and only gained it on condition of
returning within a given time.[1542]

        [1535] R. Diceto as above. Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 2 (pp. 393,
        394).

        [1536] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 394).

        [1537] Gerv. Cant. as above, pp. 505, 506.

        [1538] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 393).

        [1539] _Ibid._ (p. 394). _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 211. Rog.
        Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 139.

        [1540] On September 26; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 97. Cf.
        Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 4 (p. 395), Gerv. Cant. as above, p.
        507, and Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 36.

        [1541] Gir. Cambr. as above.

        [1542] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. cc. 4, 5 (Brewer, vol.
        iv. pp. 395–397).

The chancellor meanwhile was at Norwich;[1543] and thither John and
the justiciars had already sent him a summons to appear before them
and answer for his conduct towards both Geoffrey of York and Hugh
of Durham, at an assembly to be held at the bridge over the Lodden,
between Reading and Windsor, on Saturday October 5.[1544] William
retorted by a counter-summons to all who had joined the count of
Mortain to forsake him as an usurper and return to their obedience to
the king’s chosen representative.[1545] He hurried, however, to Windsor
in time for the proposed meeting; but when the Saturday morning came,
the earls of Arundel, Warren and Norfolk appeared at the trysting-place
in his stead, pleading ill-health as an excuse for his absence.[1546]
As Saturday was accounted an unlucky day for contracts or settlements
of any kind,[1547] no one regretted the delay; John and the barons,
sitting amid a ring of spectators in the meadows by the Lodden, spent
the day in discussing all the complaints against the chancellor, and
also, apparently, in looking through such of the Norman primate’s
bundle of royal letters as he chose to shew them, and deliberating
which would be most appropriate to the present state of affairs. On one
point all were agreed; the chancellor must be put down at once.[1548]
Early next morning he tried to bribe John into reconciliation, but in
vain.[1549] At the high mass in Reading parish church the whole body of
bishops lighted their candles and publicly excommunicated all who had
been, whether by actual participation, command or consent, concerned in
Archbishop Geoffrey’s arrest;[1550] and at nightfall the chancellor was
compelled to swear that, come what might, he would be ready to stand
his trial at the bridge of Lodden on the morrow.[1551]

        [1543] _Ib._ cc. 2, 5 (pp. 393, 394, 397).

        [1544] _Ib._ c. 5 (p. 397). Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 37,
        giving the date, which is confirmed by one of the summons--that
        addressed to the bishop of London--given by R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. p. 98. Cf. also _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 212.

        [1545] Gir. Cambr. as above.

        [1546] _Ib._ c. 6 (p. 398). Cf. R. Diceto, Ric. Devizes and
        _Gesta Ric._ as above.

        [1547] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 98.

        [1548] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. c. 6 (Brewer, vol. iv.
        pp. 398–401).

        [1549] _Ib._ c. 7 (p. 402).

        [1550] _Ibid._ R. Diceto as above.

        [1551] Gir. Cambr. as above.

Scarcely had he set out on the Monday morning when he was met by a
report that his enemies were marching upon London.[1552] The report was
true in substance; John and the barons, instead of waiting for him at
the Lodden bridge, crossed it, and then divided their forces into two
bodies; the smaller, consisting of the bishops and barons with John
himself, proceeded towards Windsor to meet the chancellor; the larger,
comprising the men-at-arms and the servants in charge of the baggage,
was sent on by the southern road to Staines.[1553] Such a movement was
quite enough to justify William in hurrying back to Windsor and thence
on to London as fast as horses could carry him.[1554] Before he could
reach it he met John’s men-at-arms coming up by the other road from
Staines; a skirmish took place, in which John’s justiciar Roger de
Planes was mortally wounded, but his followers seem to have had the
best of the fight,[1555] although they could not prevent the chancellor
from making his way safe into London. Here he at once called a meeting
of the citizens in the Guildhall, and endeavoured to secure their
support against John.[1556] He found, however, a strong party opposed
to himself. On the last day of July[1557]--three days after the second
award between John and William at Winchester--the citizens of London
had profited by the king’s absence and his representative’s humiliation
to set up a _commune_. They knew very well that, as a contemporary
writer says, neither King Henry nor King Richard would have sanctioned
such a thing at any price;[1558] and they knew even better still that
Richard’s chancellor would never countenance it for a moment. With
John they might have a chance, and they were not disposed to lose
it by shutting their gates in his face at the bidding of William of
Longchamp. William, seeing that his cause was lost in the city, shut
himself up in the Tower.[1559]

        [1552] _Ibid._ c. 8 (pp. 402, 403). Ric. Devizes (Stevenson),
        p. 37. _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 212.

        [1553] Cf. Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 403, 404), and R. Diceto
        as above, p. 99. Ric. Devizes, as above, says plainly what the
        other writers leave us to guess, that these followers were
        meant to go on to London.

        [1554] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 403). Ric. Devizes (Stevenson),
        p. 38. R. Diceto and _Gesta Ric._ as above. Cf. Will. Newb., l.
        iv. c. 17 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 341, 342).

        [1555] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 99. _Gesta Ric._
        (Stubbs), p. 212. Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. c. 8
        (Brewer, vol. iv. p. 404).

        [1556] Gir. Cambr. as above. Cf. Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p.
        38.

        [1557] “Ipsâ die”--the day on which Philip of France set out
        homeward from Acre. Ric. Devizes, p. 53.

        [1558] _Ib._ pp. 53, 54. Yet Richard had once said that he
        would sell London altogether, if he could find anybody who
        would give him his price for it. _Ib._ p. 10, and Will. Newb.,
        l. iv. c. 5 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 306).

        [1559] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 38. R. Diceto as above.
        _Gesta Ric._ as above, pp. 212, 218. Will. Newb. as above,
         c. 17 (p. 342).

By this time John and his companions were at the gates; a short parley
ended in their admittance.[1560] Next morning barons and citizens
came together in S. Paul’s.[1561]. One after another the chancellor’s
victims, with the archbishop of York at their head, set forth their
grievances.[1562] Archbishop Walter of Rouen and William the Marshal
then produced the king’s letter of February 20, addressed to the
Marshal, and accrediting Walter to him and his fellow-justiciars,
and bidding them, in case of any failure of duty on the chancellor’s
part, follow Walter’s direction in all things.[1563] John and the
barons agreed to act in accordance with these instructions; they won
the assent of the citizens by swearing to maintain the commune;[1564]
the whole assembly then swore fealty to Richard, and to John as his
destined successor.[1565] According to one account they went a step
further: they appointed John regent of the kingdom, and granted him
the disposal of all the royal castles except three, which were to be
left to the chancellor.[1566] Upon the latter they now set out to
enforce their decision at the sword’s point. His forces were more
than sufficient to defend the Tower; they were in fact too numerous;
they had had no time to revictual the place, they were painfully
overcrowded, and before twenty-four hours were over they found their
position untenable.[1567] On the Wednesday William tried to bribe John
into abandoning the whole enterprise, and he very nearly succeeded;
Geoffrey of York and Hugh of Coventry, however, discovered what was
going on, and remonstrated so loudly that John was obliged to drop
the negotiation and continue the siege.[1568] In the afternoon, at
the chancellor’s own request, four bishops and four earls went to
speak with him in the Tower.[1569] Five days of intense excitement
had so exhausted his feeble frame that when they told him what had
passed at the meeting on the previous day, he dropped senseless at
their feet, and when brought to himself could at first do nothing but
implore their sympathy and mediation.[1570] The brutal insolence of
Hugh of Coventry,[1571] however, seems to have stung him into his
wonted boldness again. With flashing eyes he told them that the day
of reckoning was yet to come, when they and their new lord would have
to account for their treason with Richard himself; and he sent them
away with a positive refusal to surrender either his castles or his
seal.[1572] Late at night, however, as he lay vainly endeavouring
to gain a little rest, his friends came and implored him to abandon
the useless struggle with fate; and at last his brother Osbert and
some others wrung from him an unwilling permission to go and offer
themselves as hostages for his submission on the morrow.[1573]

        [1560] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 404).

        [1561] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 38, says “in ecclesiâ S.
        Pauli”; R. Diceto as above, “in capitulo”; the _Gesta Ric._ as
        above, p. 213, and Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 140, say
        “in atrio.”

        [1562] Ric. Devizes as above. _Gesta Ric._ as above, pp. 213,
        218.

        [1563] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 213, 218.

        [1564] _Ib._ p. 213. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 99.

        [1565] _Gesta Ric._ as above, p. 214.

        [1566] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), pp. 37, 38.

        [1567] Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 17 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 342).

        [1568] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. c. 9 (Brewer, vol. iv.
        p. 406).

        [1569] Gerald (_ib._ p. 405), says “quartâ vero feriâ.” Ric.
        Devizes (Stevenson), p. 39, says “Dies ille nefastus declinabat
        ad vesperam,” which, taken in connexion with what precedes,
        ought to mean Tuesday evening; but he seems to have lost
        count of the days just here. It is he alone who mentions the
        earls; while it is Gerald alone who gives the names of the
        bishops--London, Lincoln, Winchester and Coventry.

        [1570] Cf. Ric. Devizes as above, and Gir. Cambr. as above, who
        tries to colour this scene differently.

        [1571] Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 405, 406).

        [1572] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 39.

        [1573] _Ib._ p. 40. Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. c. 9
        (Brewer, vol. iv. p. 406).

On the Thursday morning the barons assembled in the fields east of the
Tower,[1574] and there William of Longchamp went forth to meet them.
The instant he appeared Hugh of Coventry stepped forward, recited the
whole indictment against him, and pronounced with brutal bluntness the
sentence of the assembly.[1575] William was to be deposed from all
secular authority, to keep nothing but his bishopric and the castles
of Dover, Cambridge and Hereford; he must give hostages for his future
good behaviour; then let him begone wherever he would. The assembly
broke into a chorus of approval which seemed intended to give William
no chance of reply; but his dauntless spirit had by this time regained
its mastery over his physical weakness; he stood quietly till they had
all talked themselves out, and then they had to listen in their turn.
He denied every one of the charges against him; he refused to recognize
either the moral justice or the legal validity of his deposition;
he agreed to surrender the castles, because he no longer had power
to hold them, but he still lifted up his protest, as King Richard’s
lawful chancellor and justiciar, against all the proceedings and the
very existence of the new ministry.[1576] Walter of Rouen was at once
proclaimed justiciar in his stead.[1577] The keys of the Tower and
of Windsor castle, and the hostages, were delivered up next morning,
and William was then allowed to withdraw to Bermondsey, whence on
the following day he proceeded to Dover.[1578] Thence, apparently in
a desperate hope that his men might yet be able to hold the castles
till he could gather means to relieve them, he twice attempted to
escape over sea, first in the disguise of a monk, then in that of a
pedlar-woman. His lameness, however, and his ignorance of English were
fatal to his chances of flight; he was detected, dragged back into the
town, and shut up in prison till all the castles were surrendered. Then
he was set at liberty, and sailed for Gaul on October 29.[1579]

        [1574] Ric. Devizes (as above). Gir. Cambr. as above. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 100.

        [1575] Ric. Devizes as above.

        [1576] _Ib._ pp. 40–42. Cf. Gir. Cambr. and R. Diceto as above;
        _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 214; and Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 17
        (Howlett, vol. i. p. 341).

        [1577] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 213. Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 18
        (Howlett, vol. i. p. 344).

        [1578] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 100. Gir. Cambr. _Vita
        Galfr._, l. ii. c. 9 (Brewer, vol. iv. p. 407). Ric. Devizes
        (Stevenson), p. 42.

        [1579] Ric. Devizes as above. R. Diceto as above, pp. 100, 101.
        Gir. Cambr. as above, cc. 12, 13 (pp. 410–413). _Gesta Ric._
        (Stubbs), pp. 219, 220. Will. Newb. as above, c. 17 (p. 343).
        The date comes from R. Diceto.

His opponents, however, were not rid of him yet. The king was now
practically out of reach of his remonstrances and appeals for
succour;[1580] but the Pope was not. William was a bishop; and the
harshness with which he had been treated enabled him now to pose in his
turn as a consecrated victim of profane violence. Celestine III. warmly
took up his cause; he distinctly acknowledged him as legate, whether
with or without a formal renewal of his commission;[1581] and on
December 2 he issued a brief addressed to the English bishops, bidding
them excommunicate all who had taken part in William’s deposition, and
put their lands under interdict till he should be reinstated.[1582]
William, as legate, followed this up by excommunicating twenty-six
of his chief enemies by name, with the archbishop of Rouen at their
head, and, with the Pope’s sanction, threatening to treat John in like
manner, if he did not amend before Quinquagesima.[1583] The bishops,
however, took no notice of his letters, and the justiciars retorted by
sequestrating his see;[1584] they all held him bound by the sentences
pronounced against him at Reading and at London for his persecution
of Geoffrey of York, and their view was upheld by the suffragans of
Rouen, who all treated him as excommunicate.[1585] Geoffrey was now the
highest ecclesiastical authority in England; but he was not the man
to rule the English Church. He had more than enough to do in ruling
his own chief suffragan. As soon as he was enthroned at York,[1586] he
summoned Hugh of Durham to come and make his profession of obedience;
Hugh, who having been reinstated in his earldom of Northumberland[1587]
felt himself again more than a match for his metropolitan, ignored
the summons, whereupon Geoffrey excommunicated him.[1588] This did
not deter John from keeping Christmas at Howden with the bishop;
in consequence of which John himself was for a while treated as
excommunicate by his half-brother.[1589] The momentary coalition,
formed solely to crush the chancellor, had in fact already split into
fragments. The general administration, however, went on satisfactorily
under the new justiciar’s direction, and his influence alone--for
Eleanor was still on the continent[1590]--sufficed to keep John out of
mischief throughout the winter.

        [1580] He had written to complain of John’s insubordination,
        but Richard did not get the letter till six months after the
        writer’s fall. _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 333.

        [1581] See _Epp. Cant._ (Stubbs), introd. p. lxxxiii, note 1.

        [1582] Letter of Celestine III. in _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp.
        221, 222.

        [1583] Letter of William “bishop of Ely, legate and
        chancellor,” _ib._ pp. 222–224; and Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol.
        iii. pp. 152–154.

        [1584] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 225.

        [1585] _Ib._ p. 221. Cf. Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 43.

        [1586] On All Saints’ day [1191]. Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l.
        ii. c. 11 (Brewer, vol. iv. p. 410).

        [1587] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 39.

        [1588] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 225. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. iii. pp. 168, 169. See the excellent summary of this
        affair in Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 27 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 371,
        372).

        [1589] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 235, 236.

        [1590] She kept Christmas at Bonneville. _Ib._ p. 235. Rog.
        Howden as above, p. 179.

Richard’s continental dominions had thus far been at peace--a peace
doubly secured by the presence of Eleanor and the absence of Philip of
France. Shortly before Christmas 1191, however, Philip returned to his
kingdom.[1591] In January 1192 he called the seneschal and barons of
Normandy to a conference, and demanded from them, on the strength of a
document which he shewed to them as the treaty made between himself
and Richard at Messina, the restitution of his sister Adela and her
dower-castles in the Vexin, as well as the counties of Eu and Aumale.
The seneschal, rightly suspecting the paper to be a forgery, answered
that he had no instructions from Richard on the subject, and would
give up neither the lands nor the lady.[1592] Philip threatened war,
and all Richard’s constables prepared for defence.[1593] Meanwhile,
Philip offered to John the investiture of all Richard’s continental
dominions, if he would accept Adela’s hand with them.[1594] That John
had a wife already was an obstacle which troubled neither the French
king nor John himself. He was quite ready to accept the offer; but
meanwhile it reached his mother’s ears, and she hurried to England to
stop him.[1595] Landing at Portsmouth on Quinquagesima Sunday,[1596]
she found him on the point of embarking; the archbishop of Rouen
and the other justiciars gladly welcomed her back to her former
post of regent, and joined with her in forbidding John to leave the
country, under penalty of having all his estates seized in the king’s
name.[1597] They then held a series of councils, at Windsor, Oxford,
London and Winchester;[1598] in that of London the barons renewed their
oath of fealty to the king, but to pacify John they were obliged to do
the like to him as heir,[1599] and the immediate consequence was that
he persuaded the constables of Windsor and Wallingford to surrender
their castles into his hands.[1600] William of Longchamp thought his
opportunity had come. He managed to gain Eleanor’s ear and to bribe
John;[1601] both connived at his return to Dover, and thence he sent
up his demand for restoration to a council gathered in London towards
the close of Lent.[1602] It seems plain that he had won the favour of
the queen; for the justiciars, whose original purpose in meeting had
been to discuss the misdoings of John, now saw themselves obliged to
fetch John himself from Wallingford to support them, as they expected,
in their resistance to the chancellor’s demands. To their dismay John
told them plainly that he was on the point of making alliance with
his old enemy for a consideration of seven hundred pounds.[1603] They
saw that their only chance was to outbid William. They gave John two
thousand marks out of the royal treasury;[1604] Walter of Rouen helped
to persuade the queen-mother,[1605] and the chancellor was bidden to
depart out of the land.[1606]

        [1591] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 76.

        [1592] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 236. Cf. Ric. Devizes
        (Stevenson), p. 56. It is certain that Philip told and acted
        a downright lie; for the treaty of Messina is extant, and its
        main provisions are these: Richard shall be bound to surrender
        Adela only within one month after his own return to Gaul, and
        the whole Norman Vexin, including its castles, shall remain
        to him and his heirs male for ever. Only in case of his death
        without male heir is it to revert to the French Crown; and
        as for Aumale and Eu, there is not a word about them. Rymer,
        _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 54.

        [1593] _Gesta Ric._ as above. Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 55.

        [1594] _Gesta Ric._ as above.

        [1595] _Ibid._ Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 57.

        [1596] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 55. This was
        February 11 [1192].

        [1597] _Gesta Ric._ as above, p. 237.

        [1598] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 57.

        [1599] _Gesta Ric._ as above. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii.
        p. 187.

        [1600] Ric. Devizes as above. In Rog. Howden (as above), p.
        204, the betrayal of these castles is placed a year later.
        Roger’s account of the first few months of 1193 has, however,
        somewhat the look of a repetition of the history of 1192, and
        his story is much less consistent and circumstantial than
        Richard’s, which I have therefore ventured to follow.

        [1601] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 239. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. iii. p. 188. Cf. Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. c. 14
        (Brewer, vol. iv. p. 413); Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 56; and
        Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 512.

        [1602] Gir. Cambr., as above, says he landed about April 1,
        _i.e._ the Wednesday before Easter. But the other writers seem
        to place this council soon after Mid-Lent. Gerv. Cant., as
        above, says the chancellor came “mediante mense Martio.”

        [1603] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), pp. 58, 59.

        [1604] “2000 marks, £500 of which were to be raised from the
        chancellor’s estates” is Bishop Stubbs’s interpretation (_Rog.
        Howden_, vol. iii. pref. p. xc.) of _Gesta Ric._, p. 239, and
        Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 59.

        [1605] _Gesta Ric._ as above.

        [1606] _Ibid._ Ric. Devizes as above. Gir. Cambr. as above (p.
        415). Cf. Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 18 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 345,
        346). According to the first authority, William sailed again on
        Maunday Thursday, April 2.

Shortly afterwards, two cardinal-legates arrived in France to settle
his dispute with the archbishop of Rouen. When they attempted to enter
Normandy, the seneschal refused them admittance and shut the gates of
Gisors in their faces, pleading that the subjects of an English king
were forbidden by ancient custom to admit legates into any part of
his dominions without his consent. The legates on this excommunicated
the seneschal and laid all Normandy under interdict.[1607] William
had done the same to his own diocese before leaving England.[1608]
Archbishop Walter, the English justiciars, even the queen-mother,
were all at their wits’ end: Philip was openly threatening to invade
the Norman duchy; the obstacle which had prevented him until now--the
unwillingness of the French barons to attack the territories of a
crusader[1609]--would be considerably lessened by the interdict; the
only person who could be found in England capable of undertaking a
negotiation with the legates was Hugh of Durham; but Hugh declined
to go till his own quarrel with his metropolitan was settled,[1610]
and this was not accomplished till the middle of October.[1611] Then
indeed he went to France, and succeeded in obtaining the removal of the
interdict.[1612] But in other quarters the prospect grew no brighter.
Aquitaine, held in check for a while by the presence of its duchess,
had risen as soon as she was out of reach. Count Ademar of Angoulême
marched into Poitou with a large body of horse and foot; taken prisoner
by the Poitevins, he appealed to the French king for deliverance.[1613]
A revolt of the Gascon barons was with difficulty suppressed by the
seneschal, assisted by young Sancho of Navarre,[1614] brother of
Richard’s queen; and the victors rashly followed up their success by a
raid upon Toulouse, which, though it went unpunished for the moment,
could only lead to further mischief.[1615] In England John was still
defying the justiciars; and they dared not proceed to extremities with
him, for they now saw before them an imminent prospect of having to
acknowledge him as their king.

        [1607] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 246, 247. Ric. Devizes
        (Stevenson), pp. 43, 44.

        [1608] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. c. 15 (Brewer, vol.
        iv. p. 414). Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), pp. 42, 43, puts this in
        the previous October.

        [1609] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 236. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. iii. p. 187.

        [1610] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 247.

        [1611] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 513. Rog. Howden as
        above, pp. 170 note, 172.

        [1612] _Gesta Ric._ as above, p. 250.

        [1613] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1192 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 50).
        The sequel of this story, however, clearly belongs to the
        following year; so it may be that the whole of it is antedated.

        [1614] Rog. Howden as above, p. 194.

        [1615] _Ibid._ Cf. Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 55.

Richard’s adventures in the East lie outside the sphere of English
history. The crusade of which he was the chief hero and leader had
indirectly an important effect upon English social life; but it was
in no sense a national undertaking; every man in the host was, like
the king himself, simply a volunteer, not sent out by his country or
representing it in any way. Richard’s glory is all his own; to us,
the practical interest of the crusade in which he won it consists in
the light which it throws upon his character, and on his political
relations with the other princes who took part in the enterprise. The
story, as it comes out bit by bit, oddly intermingled with the dry
details of home affairs, in the English historians of the time, and
as it is told at full length in the “Itinerary” composed by one of
his fellow-crusaders, reads more like an old wiking-saga than a piece
of sober history, and its hero looks more like a comrade of S. Olaf
or Harald Hardrada than a contemporary of Philip Augustus. Nothing
indeed except Richard’s northman-blood can account for the intense
love of the sea, and the consummate seamanship, as sound and practical
as it was brilliant and daring, which he displayed on his outward
voyage. No sea-king of old ever guided his little squadron of “long
keels” more boldly, more skilfully and more successfully through a
more overwhelming succession of difficulties and perils than those
through which Richard guided his large and splendid fleet on its way
from Messina to Acre.[1616] Not one had ever made a conquest at once
as rapid, as valuable and as complete as the conquest of Cyprus,
which Richard made in a few days, as a mere episode in his voyage, in
vengeance for the ill-treatment which some of his ship-wrecked sailors
had met with at the hands of the Cypriots and their king.[1617] But
it was a mere wiking-conquest; Richard never dreamed of permanently
adding this remote island to the list of his dominions; within a few
months he sold it to the Templars,[1618] and afterwards, as they
failed to take possession, he made it over to the dethroned king of
Jerusalem who had helped him to conquer it, Guy of Lusignan.[1619]
The same love of adventure for its own sake colours many of his
exploits in the Holy Land itself. But there we learn, too, that his
character had yet another and a higher aspect. We find in him, side
by side with the reckless northern valour, the northern endurance,
patience and self-restraint, coupled with a real disinterestedness and
a self-sacrificing generosity for which it would be somewhat hard to
find a parallel among his forefathers on either side.[1620] Alike in a
military, a political and a moral point of view, Richard is the only
one among the leaders of the crusading host, except Guy, who comes out
of the ordeal with a character not merely unstained, but shining with
redoubled lustre. And this alone would almost account for the fact
that, before they separated, nearly every one of them, save Guy, had
become Richard’s open or secret foe.

        [1616] See the details of the voyage in _Itin. Reg. Ric._
        (Stubbs), pp. 177–209; _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 162–169; Rog.
        Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 105–112.

        [1617] _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 188–204. _Gesta Ric._
        (Stubbs), pp. 163–168. Rog. Howden as above, pp. 105–112. Ric.
        Devizes (Stevenson), pp. 47–49. Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 20
        (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 350, 351).

        [1618] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
        35.

        [1619] _Ibid._ _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 351. R.
        Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 36.

        [1620] It is impossible to give illustrations here; the whole
        _Itinerarium_, from his arrival at Acre (p. 211) onwards, is in
        fact one long illustration.

Envy of a better man than themselves was however not the sole cause
of their hostility. The office of commander-in-chief of the host fell
to Richard’s share in consequence of a catastrophe which altered the
whole balance of political parties in Europe. That office had been
destined for the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, who for more than thirty
years had stood as high above all other Christian princes in political
capacity, military prowess, and personal nobility of character, as in
titular dignity and territorial power. Frederic set out for Palestine
as early as May 1189;[1621] he fought his way through the treacheries
of the Greek Emperor and the ambushes of the Turkish sultan of Iconium,
only to be drowned in crossing a little river in Asia Minor on June
10, 1190.[1622] These tidings probably met Richard on his arrival
at Messina in September. There he had to deal with the consequences
of another death which had occurred in the previous November, that
of his brother-in-law King William of Sicily.[1623] William was
childless; after a vain attempt to induce his father-in-law Henry
II. to accept the reversion of his crown,[1624] he had bequeathed it
to his own young aunt Constance, who was married to Henry of Germany,
the Emperor’s eldest son.[1625] It was, however, seized by Tancred,
a cousin of the late king.[1626] Richard’s alliance with Tancred,
though on the one hand absolutely necessary to secure the co-operation
of Sicily for the crusade, was thus on the other a mortal offence to
the new king of Germany, who moreover had already a grudge against
England upon another ground:--Henry the Lion had in this very summer
extorted from him almost at the sword’s point his restoration to his
forfeited estates.[1627] Thus when Richard at last reached Acre in June
1191,[1628] he was already in ill odour with the leaders of the German
contingent, the Emperor’s brother Duke Frederic of Suabia and his
cousin Duke Leopold of Austria.

        [1621] Ansbert (Dobrowsky), p. 21. Most of the English writers
        give a wrong date.

        [1622] See the story of Frederic’s expedition and death in
        Ansbert (Dobrowsky), p. 21 _et seq._; _Itin. Reg. Ric._
        (Stubbs), pp. 43–55; _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 56, 61, 62, 88,
        89; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 358; Monach. Florent.,
        vv. 245–330 (_ib._ vol. iii. app. to pref. pp. cxiv.–cxvii.).

        [1623] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 101, 102.

        [1624] “Vidimus, et præsentes fuimus, ubi regnum Palæstinæ,
        regnum etiam Italiæ patri vestro aut uni filiorum suorum, quem
        ad hoc eligeret, ab utriusque regni magnatibus et populis est
        oblatum.” Pet. Blois, Ep. cxiii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 350--to
        Geoffrey of York). Bishop Stubbs (_Rog. Howden_, vol. ii. pref.
        p. xciii.) interprets “regnum Italiæ” as representing Sicily.

        [1625] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 102, 202. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 29, 164 and note.

        [1626] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 102.

        [1627] See _ibid._ p. 145 and note.

        [1628] _Ib._ p. 169.

This, however, was not all. Isaac, the tyrant of Cyprus, whom Richard
had brought with him as a captive, was also connected with the Suabian
and Austrian houses;[1629] his capture was another ground of offence.
Next, when the siege of Acre, which the united forces of eastern and
western Christendom had been pressing in vain for nearly two years,
came to an end a month after Richard joined it,[1630] Richard and
Leopold quarrelled over their shares in the honour of the victory;
Leopold--so the story goes--set up his banner on the wall of the
conquered town side by side with that of the English king, and Richard
tore it down again.[1631] Besides all this, as Richard’s superior
military capacity made him an object of perpetual jealousy to the
other princes, so his policy in Holy Land was in direct opposition to
theirs. Since the death of Queen Sibyl in October 1189,[1632] they
had one and all aimed at transferring the crown from her childless
widower Guy of Lusignan to the lord of Tyre, Conrad, marquis of
Montferrat. Montferrat was an important fief of the kingdom of Italy;
Conrad’s mother was aunt both to Leopold of Austria and to Frederic
Barbarossa;[1633] he thus had the whole Austrian and imperial influence
at his back; and that of Philip of France was thrown into the same
scale, simply because Richard had espoused the opposite cause. Guy
of Lusignan, with a fearlessness which speaks volumes in his favour
as well as in Richard’s, had thrown himself unreservedly on the
generosity and justice of the prince against whom all his race had for
so many years been struggling in Aquitaine; his confidence was met
as it deserved, and from the hour of their meeting in Cyprus to the
break-up of the crusade, Richard and Guy stood firmly side by side. But
they stood alone amid the ring of selfish politicians who supported
Conrad, and whose intrigues brought ruin upon the expedition. Philip,
indeed, went home as soon as Acre was won, to sow the seeds of mischief
in a field where they were likely to bring forth a more profitable
harvest for his interests than on the barren soil of Palestine. But
the whole body of French crusaders whom he left behind him, except
Count Henry of Champagne, made common cause with the Germans and the
partizans of Conrad in thwarting every scheme that Richard proposed,
either for the settlement of the Frank kingdom in Palestine or for the
reconquest of its capital. Twice he led the host within eight miles of
Jerusalem, and twice, when thus close to the goal, he was compelled
to turn away.[1634] Conrad fell by the hand of an assassin in April
1192;[1635] but Guy’s cause, like that of Jerusalem itself, was lost
beyond recovery; all that Richard could do for either was to compensate
Guy with the gift of Cyprus,[1636] and sanction the transfer of the
shadowy crown of Jerusalem to his own nephew, Henry of Champagne.[1637]
Harassed by evil tidings from England and forebodings of mischief
in Gaul, disappointed in his most cherished hopes and worn out with
fruitless labour, sick in body and more sick at heart, he saw that his
only chance of ever again striking a successful blow either for east
or west was to go home at once. After one last brilliant exploit, the
rescue of Joppa from the Turks who had seized it in his absence,[1638]
on September 2 he made a truce with Saladin for three years;[1639] on
October 9 he sailed from Acre.[1640]

        [1629] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 59. Ansbert (Dobrowsky),
        p. 114.

        [1630] On July 12, 1191. _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 232,
        233. _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 178, etc.

        [1631] See the different versions of this story in Otto of
        S. Blaise, c. 36 (Wurstisen, _Germ. Hist. Illustr._, vol. i.
        p. 216); Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 514; R. Coggeshall
        (Stevenson), p. 59; Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 52; Rigord
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 35; and Mat.
        Paris, _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 384.

        [1632] _Epp. Cant._ cccxlvi. (Stubbs, p. 329).

        [1633] Frederic’s father and Leopold’s father were
        half-brothers, sons of the two marriages of Agnes of Franconia,
        daughter of the Emperor Henry IV. Conrad’s mother, Judith, was
        a child of Agnes’s second marriage with Leopold, marquis of
        Austria. Conrad’s father was the Marquis William of Montferrat
        who had been one of Henry II.’s allies in his struggle with
        the Pope (see above, p. 60); and his elder brother had been
        the first husband of Queen Sibyl. On his own iniquitous
        marriage, if marriage it is to be called, with her half-sister
        and heiress, Isabel--an affair which seems to have actually
        broken the heart of Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury--see
        _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 119–124; _Expugn. Terræ Sanctæ_
        (Stevenson, _R. Coggeshall_), p. 256; _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs),
        p. 141; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 70, 71. Conrad’s
        antecedents are told by Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 320,
        321. Considering, however, the case of Guy of Lusignan, it is
        perhaps hardly safe to admit a charge of homicide against any
        claimant to the throne of Palestine on Roger’s sole authority.

        [1634] _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 285–312, 365–396;
        Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 174, 175, 179; R.
        Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 37–40. See also the characteristic
        and pathetic account of Richard’s distress at the last
        turning-back, in Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), pp. 75–77.

        [1635] _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 339, 340. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 104. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 35.
        Rog. Howden (as above), p. 181. Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 24
        (Howlett, vol. i. p. 363).

        [1636] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
        35, makes it a sale; but it is hard to conceive where poor Guy
        could have found money for the purchase.

        [1637] _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 342, 346, 347. R. Diceto
        and Rog. Howden as above. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 35,
        36. Will. Newb. as above, c. 28 (p. 374). Henry of Champagne
        was son of Count Henry “the Liberal” and Mary, daughter of
        Louis VII. and Eleanor.

        [1638] _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 403–424. R. Coggeshall
        (Stevenson), pp. 41–51. This is really the most splendid of all
        Richard’s wiking exploits.

        [1639] _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 249. R. Coggeshall
        (Stevenson), p. 52. Rog. Howden (as above), p. 184.

        [1640] _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 441, 442. R. Diceto (as
        above), p. 106. Rog. Howden (as above), p. 185, makes it a day
        earlier.

Stormy winds had again parted the king’s ship from the rest of his
fleet when, within three days’ sail of Marseille, he learned that Count
Raymond of Toulouse was preparing to seize him on his landing,[1641]
no doubt in vengeance for the attack made upon Toulouse a few months
before by the seneschal of Gascony. Capture by Raymond meant betrayal
to Philip of France, and Richard knew Philip far too well to run
any needless risk of falling into his hands. Under more favourable
conditions, he might have escaped by sailing on through the strait of
Gibraltar direct to his island realm; but contrary winds made this
impossible, and drove him back upon Corfu, where he landed about
Martinmas.[1642] Thence, in his impatience, he set off in disguise with
only twenty followers[1643] on board a little pirate-vessel[1644] in
which, at imminent risk of discovery, he coasted up the Adriatic till
another storm wrecked him at the head of the Gulf of Aquileia.[1645]
By this time his German enemies were all on the look-out for him,
and whatever his plans on leaving Corfu may have been, he had now no
resource but to hurry through the imperial dominions as rapidly and
secretly as possible. His geographical knowledge, however, seems to
have been at fault, for he presently found himself at Vienna, whither
Leopold of Austria had long since returned. In spite of his efforts to
disguise himself, Richard was recognized, captured and brought before
the duke;[1646] and three days after Christmas the Emperor sent to
Philip of France the welcome tidings that their common enemy was a
prisoner in Leopold’s hands.[1647]

        [1641] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 53.

        [1642] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 106. _Itin. Reg. Ric._
        (Stubbs), p. 442. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 185. R.
        Coggeshall as above. The two first supply the dates.

        [1643] Rog. Howden as above. The _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (as above)
        says four, but there were at least nine with him after his
        landing. See Rog. Howden (as above), p. 195.

        [1644] _Itin. Reg. Ric._ as above. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson),
        pp. 53–54, gives some details highly characteristic of Richard.
        The pirates began by attacking the king’s ship, whereupon
        he, “for their praiseworthy fortitude and boldness,” made
        friends with them, and took his passage in their company. This
        is authentic, for the writer had it from one of Richard’s
        companions, the chaplain Anselm. _Ib._ p. 54.

        [1645] This is the Emperor’s account, given in a letter to
        Philip of France; Rog. Howden (as above), p. 195. Cf. Ansbert
        (Dobrowsky), p. 114; Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 31 (Howlett, vol.
        i. p. 383); _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 42; R. Diceto as
        above; R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 54; and Rog. Howden (as
        above), p. 185 and note 7.

        [1646] He was captured December 20, 1192; _Itin. Reg. Ric._
        (Stubbs), p. 443; R. Diceto (as above), p. 107. R. Coggeshall
        (Stevenson), p. 56, makes it a day later. Otto of S. Blaise, c.
        38 (Wurstisen, _Germ. Hist. Illustr._, vol. i. p. 217), gives
        the most detailed account of the capture--an account which
        looks too characteristic not to be true. According to him,
        Richard stopped to dine at a little inn just outside Vienna,
        and to avoid recognition, set to work to broil some meat for
        himself. He was holding the spit with his own hands, utterly
        forgetful that one of them was adorned with a magnificent
        ring, when a servant of the duke chanced to look in, noticed
        the incongruity, then recognized the king whom he had seen in
        Palestine, and hurried off to report his discovery; whereupon
        the duke came in person and seized his enemy on the spot,
        in the middle of his cooking. The story of R. Coggeshall
        (Stevenson), pp. 55, 56, is somewhat more dignified. Cf.
        also Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 31 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 383);
        Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 186, 195; and Ansbert
        (Dobrowsky), p. 114.

        [1647] The letter is in Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 195,
        196. “Gratissimum illi super aurum et topazion ... nuntium
        destinavit,” says Will. Newb. as above, c. 32 (p. 384).

Philip at once forwarded the news to John, with a renewal of the
proposal which he had made to him a year before. John hurried over
sea and formally did homage to the French king for all his brother’s
continental dominions; but the seneschal and barons of Normandy refused
to acknowledge the transaction, and he hastened back again to try his
luck in England.[1648] There he met with no better success. He called
the justiciars to a council in London, assured them that the king was
dead, and demanded their homage; they refused it; he withdrew in a
rage to fortify his castles, and the justiciars prepared to attack
them.[1649] Before Easter a French fleet sailed to his assistance,
but was repulsed by the English militia assembled at the summons of
Archbishop Walter.[1650] While the justiciars laid siege to Windsor,
Geoffrey of York fortified Doncaster for the king, and thence went
to help his gallant old suffragan and rival, Hugh of Durham, who was
busy with the siege of Tickhill.[1651] The castles had all but fallen,
and John was on the eve of submission, when the victorious justiciars
suddenly grew alarmed at their own success. Richard’s fate was still
so uncertain that they dared not humiliate his heir; and at Eleanor’s
instigation they made a truce with John, to last until All-Saints’
day.[1652]

        [1648] Rog. Howden (as above), p. 204. Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. p. 106. John’s treaty with Philip is in Rymer,
        _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 57; date, February 1193.

        [1649] Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 204, 205. Cf. Will. Newb. as
        above, c. 34 (p. 390).

        [1650] Rog. Howden (as above), p. 205. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
        vol. i. pp. 514, 515.

        [1651] Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 206, 208.

        [1652] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 207. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 516, says Michaelmas.

The six months of tranquillity thus gained were spent in negotiations
for the king’s release. As soon as the justiciars heard of his capture
they had despatched Bishop Savaric of Bath to treat with the Emperor,
and the abbots of Boxley and Robertsbridge to open communications, if
possible, with Richard himself;[1653] this however was a difficult
matter, for of the place of his confinement nothing was known except
that it was somewhere in the Austrian dominions, and these were to most
Englishmen of that day a wholly undiscovered country. How the captive
was first found history does not say. Tradition filled the blank
with the beautiful story of the minstrel Blondel, wandering through
Europe till he reached a castle where there was said to be a prisoner
whose name no one could tell--winning the favour of its lord and thus
gaining admittance within its walls--peering about it on every side
in a vain effort to catch a glimpse of the mysterious captive, till
at last a well-known voice, singing “a song which they two had made
between them, and which no one knew save they alone,” fell upon his
delighted ear through the narrow prison-window whence Richard had seen
and recognized the face of his friend.[1654] It may after all have been
Blondel who guided the two abbots to the spot; we only know that they
met Richard at Ochsenfurt on his way to be delivered up on Palm Sunday
to the Emperor Henry at Speyer.[1655] Thenceforth the negotiations
proceeded without intermission; but it took nearly a year to complete
them. Personal jealousy, family interest, and pride at finding himself
actually arbiter of the fate of the most illustrious living hero in
Christendom, all tempted Henry VI. to throw as many obstacles as
possible in the way of his captive’s release. Taking advantage of
his own position as titular head of western Christendom, he demanded
satisfaction for all the wrongs which the various princes of the Empire
had received, or considered themselves to have received, at Richard’s
hands, and for all his alleged misdoings on the Crusade, from his
alliance with Tancred to the death of Conrad of Montferrat, in which
it was suggested that he had had a share.[1656] Not one of the charges
would bear examination; but they served Henry as an excuse for playing
fast and loose with Richard on the one side and Philip of France on
the other, and for making endless changes in the conditions required
for Richard’s liberation. These were ultimately fixed at a ransom of a
hundred and fifty thousand marks, the liberation of Isaac of Cyprus,
and the betrothal of Eleanor of Britanny to a son of the Austrian
duke.[1657]

        [1653] Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 197, 198.

        [1654] _Récits d’un ménestrel de Reims_ (ed. N. de Wailly, Soc.
        de l’Hist. de France), cc. 77–81 (pp. 41–43).

        [1655] Rog. Howden (as above), p. 198.

        [1656] The charges are summed up in R. Coggeshall (Stevenson),
        pp. 58, 59. On the death of Conrad see Stubbs, _Itin. Reg.
        Ric._, pref. pp. xxii, xxiii.

        [1657] Treaty in Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 215,
        216. Roger dates it S. Peter’s day; _ib._ p. 215. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 110, makes it July 5. Cf. Will. Newb., l.
        iv. c. 37 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 398).

The duty of superintending the collection of the ransom and the
transmission of the hostages required by the Emperor for its payment
had been at first intrusted by Richard to his old friend and confidant,
the chancellor William of Longchamp. William, however, found it
impossible to fulfil his instructions; before the justiciars would
allow him to set foot in England at all, they made him swear to meddle
with nothing outside his immediate commission; when compelled to meet
him in council at S. Albans, Walter of Rouen refused him the kiss of
peace, and the queen-mother and the barons all alike refused to trust
him with the hostages.[1658] Prompt and vigorous measures were however
taken for raising the money. An “aid for the king’s ransom” was one of
the three regular feudal obligations, which in strict law fell only
upon the tenants-in-chivalry; but all the knights’ fees in Richard’s
whole dominions would have been unable to furnish so large a sum as
was required in his case. In addition therefore to an aid of twenty
shillings on the knight’s fee, the justiciars imposed a wholly new tax:
they demanded a fourth part of the revenue and of the moveable goods of
every man, whether layman or clerk, throughout the realm. Severe and
unprecedented as was this demand, it provoked no opposition, even from
the clergy;[1659] it had indeed the active co-operation of the bishops,
under the direction of a new primate--Hubert Walter, the bishop of
Salisbury, who had been one of Richard’s fellow-crusaders, and was now
at Richard’s desire elected to the see of Canterbury.[1660] The nation
seems to have responded willingly to the demands made upon it; yet
the response proved inadequate, and the deficiency had to be supplied
partly by a contribution from the Cistercians and Gilbertines of a
fourth part of the wool of the flocks which were their chief source of
revenue, and partly by confiscating the gold and silver vessels and
ornaments of the wealthier churches.[1661] Similar measures were taken
in Richard’s continental dominions, and they were so far successful
that when the appointed time arrived for his release, in January 1194,
the greater part of the ransom was paid.[1662] For the remainder
hostages were given, of whom one was Archbishop Walter of Rouen.[1663]
This selection left the chief justiciarship of England practically
vacant, and accordingly Richard, before summoning the Norman primate
to Germany, superseded him in that office by bestowing it upon the new
archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter.[1664]

        [1658] Gir. Cambr. _Vita Galfr._, l. ii. c. 17 (Brewer, vol.
        iv. pp. 415, 416). Cf. Rog. Howden as above, pp. 211, 212.

        [1659] Except at York, where the resistance was prompted by
        spite against the archbishop. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii.
        p. 222.

        [1660] Elected May 29, 1193; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp.
        108, 109. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 518.

        [1661] On the ransom, and how it was raised, see Rog. Howden
        as above, pp. 210, 211, 222, 225; R. Diceto as above, p. 110;
        Will. Newb. l. iv. c. 38 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 399, 400); and
        Bishop Stubbs’s explanations of the matter, in his preface to
        Rog. Howden, vol. iv. pp. lxxxii–lxxxvi, and _Constit. Hist._,
        vol. i. p. 501.

        [1662] Rog. Howden as above, p. 225.

        [1663] _Ib._ p. 233. Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 41 (Howlett, vol.
        i. p. 404), and R. Diceto as above, p. 113. According to this
        last, another of the hostages was William the chancellor; but
        his name does not appear in Rog. Howden’s list. One MS. of Ralf
        has in its place that of Baldwin Wake. As Baldwin certainly
        was a hostage on this occasion, perhaps William was selected
        first, and Baldwin afterwards substituted for him. One at least
        of the hostages was released before the whole ransom was paid:
        Archbishop Walter came back to England on May 19. R. Diceto as
        above, p. 115.

        [1664] Rog. Howden as above, p. 226. R. Diceto as above, p.
        112. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 523.

The new justiciar immediately had his hands full of trouble. At the
prospect of Richard’s return John grew half frantic with rage and
dismay. As early as July 1193, when it became known that Richard
and the Emperor had come to terms, Philip had sent warning to
John--“Beware, the devil is loose again!” and John, without stopping
to reflect that the “devil” could not be really loose till his ransom
was paid, had hurried over sea to seek shelter from his brother’s wrath
under the protection of the French king. Richard, however, at once made
overtures of reconciliation to both;[1665] the terms which he offered
to John were indeed so favourable that the Norman constables refused
to execute them, and thereby put an end to the negotiation.[1666]
In January Philip and John made a last effort to bribe the Emperor
either to keep Richard in custody for another year, or actually to
sell him into their hands.[1667] When this failed, John in the frenzy
of desperation sent a confidential clerk over to England with letters
to his adherents there, bidding them make all his castles ready for
defence against the king. The messenger’s foolish boasting, however,
betrayed him as he passed through London; he was arrested by order
of the mayor, his letters were seized, and a council was hurriedly
called to hear their contents. Its prompt and vigorous measures were
clearly due to the initiative of the new justiciar-archbishop. John was
excommunicated and declared disseized of all his English tenements, and
the assembly broke up to execute its own decree by force of arms. The
old bishop of Durham returned to his siege of Tickhill; the earls of
Huntingdon, Chester and Ferrers led their forces against Nottingham;
Archbishop Hubert himself besieged Marlborough, and took it in a few
days; Lancaster was given up to him by its constable, who happened to
be his own brother; and S. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall--a monastery
whose site, not unlike that of its great Norman namesake, had tempted
one of John’s partizans to drive out the monks and fortify it in his
interest--surrendered on the death of its commander, who is said
to have died of terror at the news of the king’s approach.[1668]
Richard had been set free on February 4.[1669] After a slow progress
through Germany and the Low Countries, he embarked at Swine, near
Antwerp, and landed at Sandwich on March 13.[1670] Following the
invariable practice of his father, he hastened first to the martyr’s
shrine at Canterbury;[1671] next day he was met by the victorious
archbishop hastening to welcome him home,[1672] and three days later
he was solemnly received in London.[1673] As soon as the defenders of
Tickhill were certified of his arrival they surrendered to the bishop
of Durham.[1674] As Windsor, Wallingford and the Peak had been in
the queen-mother’s custody since the truce of May 1193,[1675] only
Nottingham now remained to be won. Richard at once marched against it
with all his forces; the archbishop followed, Hugh of Durham brought
up his men from Tickhill; in three days the castle surrendered, and
Richard was once again undisputed master in his realm.[1676]

        [1665] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 216–220.

        [1666] _Ib._ pp. 227, 228.

        [1667] _Ib._ p. 229. Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 40 (Howlett, vol.
        i. p. 402).

        [1668] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 236–238.

        [1669] _Ib._ p. 233. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 112, 113.
        R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 62, dates it February 2.

        [1670] Rog. Howden as above, p. 235; R. Coggeshall as above.
        Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 524, dates it March 12, and R.
        Diceto as above, p. 114, March 20.

        [1671] Gerv. Cant. as above. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 63.

        [1672] Gerv. Cant. as above, p. 524.

        [1673] R. Diceto and R. Coggeshall as above.

        [1674] Rog. Howden as above, p. 238.

        [1675] _Ib._ p. 207.

        [1676] _Ib._ pp. 238–240. R. Diceto and R. Coggeshall as above.
        Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 42 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 407, 408).

It must have seemed, to say the least, an ungracious return for the
sacrifices which England had made in his behalf, when the king at
once demanded from the English knighthood the services of a third of
their number to accompany him into Normandy, from the freeholders a
contribution of two shillings on every carucate of land, and from the
Cistercians the whole of their wool for the current year.[1677] In
view of a war with France, of which it was impossible to calculate
either the exigencies or the duration, Richard undoubtedly needed
money; but his needs pressed heavily upon a country which had already
been almost drained to provide his ransom. In justice to him, it must
however be added that the “carucage,” as the new land-tax came to be
called, seems to have been levied not for his personal profit, but as
a supplement to the measures taken by the justiciars in the previous
year, to complete the sum still due to Henry VI. It was in reality an
old impost revived under a new name, for the carucate or ploughland
was in practice reckoned as equivalent to the ancient hide,[1678]
and the sum levied upon it was precisely that which the hide had
furnished for the Danegeld of earlier times.[1679] Its re-imposition
in these circumstances, under a new appellation and for the payment
of what the whole nation regarded as a debt of honour, met with no
resistance. The Cistercians, however, remonstrated so strongly against
the demand for their wool that they were allowed to escape with a
money-compensation.[1680] The taxes were imposed in a great council
held at Nottingham at the end of March and beginning of April,[1681]
where measures were also taken for the punishment of the traitors
and the reconstruction of the administrative body. These two objects
were accomplished both at once, and both were turned to account for
the replenishment of the royal coffers. Except John, Bishop Hugh of
Chester, and Gerard de Camville, who were cited before the king’s court
on a charge of high treason,[1682] none of the delinquents were even
threatened with any worse punishment than dismissal from office. This
was inflicted upon most of those who had taken part in the proceedings
against the chancellor. Several of the sheriffs indeed were only
transferred from one shire to another;[1683] but Gerard de Camville
was ejected without compensation from the sheriffdom of Lincolnshire,
and Hugh Bardulf, one of the subordinate justiciars who had joined
the party of John, from those of Yorkshire and Westmoreland. These
three offices Richard at once put up for sale, and, with a strange
inconsistency, William of Longchamp, whose well-grounded resistance
to the accumulation of sheriffdoms in episcopal hands had been the
beginning of his troubles, now sought to buy the two former, and
also that of Northamptonshire, for himself. He was however outbid by
Archbishop Geoffrey of York, who bought the sheriffdom of Yorkshire
for three thousand marks and a promise of a hundred marks annually as
increment.[1684] This purchase made Geoffrey the most influential man
in the north, for Hugh of Durham, apparently finding himself powerless
to hold Northumberland, had resigned it into the king’s hands.[1685]
William of Scotland immediately opened negotiations with Richard for
its re-purchase, as well as for that of Cumberland, Westmoreland,
Lancaster, and the other English lands held by his grandfather David.
The barons, however, before whom Richard laid the proposal in a council
at Northampton, resented it strongly; Richard’s own military instinct
led him to refuse the cession of the castles, and as William would not
be satisfied without them, the scheme came to nothing.[1686]

        [1677] Rog. Howden as above, p. 242. Cf. Will. Newb., l. v. c.
        1 (vol. ii. pp. 416, 417).

        [1678] That it was so in the reign of Henry I. seems plain from
        Orderic’s story about Ralf Flambard re-measuring for William
        Rufus “omnes carrucatas, quas Angli hidas vocant” (Ord. Vit.,
        Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 678)--a statement which,
        whether the story itself be correct or not, shews that Orderic
        himself was accustomed to hear carucates and hides identified.
        The settlement of the carucates at a hundred acres in 1198
        points to the same identification.

        [1679] And seemingly, to the “dona” which took the place of
        the Danegeld after its abolition _eo nomine_ in 1163. On the
        carucage of 1194 see Stubbs, pref. to Rog. Howden, vol. iv. pp.
        lxxxii–lxxxiv and notes, lxxxvi. See also the account of it
        given by Will. Newb., l. v. c. i (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 416).

        [1680] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 242.

        [1681] March 30–April 2. _Ib._ pp. 240–243.

        [1682] _Ib._ pp. 241, 242. Cf. the account of John’s
        condemnation in Ann. Margam, a. 1199 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._,
        vol. i. p. 24).

        [1683] Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 503.

        [1684] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p, 241.

        [1685] _Ib._ p. 249. Will. Newb., l. v. c. 1 (Howlett, vol. ii.
        p. 416).

        [1686] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 243–245, 249, 250.

Richard meanwhile had been making a progress through Mid-England,[1687]
similar to that which he had made before his crowning in 1189,
and ending at Winchester, where he solemnly “wore his crown” in
the cathedral church on the first Sunday after Easter.[1688] This
ceremonial was in itself merely a revival of the old regal practice
which Henry II. had formally abandoned in 1158; but its revival on
this occasion was prompted by other motives than Richard’s love of
pomp and shew. As a concession to the Emperor’s vanity--for we can
scarcely conceive any other motive--Richard had accepted from Henry
VI. the investiture of the kingdom of Burgundy; “over which,” says
a contemporary English writer, “be it known that the Emperor had
really no power at all,” but for which, nevertheless, he had received
Richard’s homage.[1689] The homage was, of course, as empty as the gift
for which it was due; but insular pride, which had always boasted that
an English king, alone among European sovereigns, had no superior upon
earth, was offended by it none the less; and although the story that
Richard had formally surrendered England itself into Henry’s hands and
received it back from him as a fief of the Empire[1690] may perhaps be
set down as an exaggeration, still it seems to have been felt that the
majesty of the island-crown had been so far dimmed by the transactions
of his captivity as to require a distinct re-assertion.[1691] As he
stood in his royal robes, sceptre in hand and crown on head,[1692] amid
the throng of bishops and barons in the “Old Minster” where so many of
his English forefathers lay sleeping, past shame was forgotten, and
England was ready once again to welcome him as a new king.[1693] But
the welcome met with no response. On May 12--just two months after his
landing at Sandwich--Richard again sailed for Normandy;[1694] and this
time he went to return no more.

        [1687] _Ib._ pp. 243–246.

        [1688] _Ib._ p. 247. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 114. R.
        Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 64. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i.
        pp. 524, 525. Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 42 (Howlett, vol. i. p.
        408).

        [1689] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 226.

        [1690] _Ib._ pp. 202, 203. He seems to be the only writer who
        mentions it.

        [1691] See R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 113; and on the
        whole question of this coronation, Bishop Stubbs’s note to Rog.
        Howden, vol. iii. p. 247, and his remarks in _Constit. Hist._,
        vol. i. pp. 504, 561, 562. Richard himself seems to have
        resented the popular view, for R. Coggeshall (Stevenson, p. 64)
        says he went through the ceremony “aliquantulum renitens.”

        [1692] Rog. Howden (as above), p. 247. See the details of the
        ceremony in Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 524–526.

        [1693] “Detersâ captivitatis ignominiâ quasi rex novus
        apparuit.” Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 42 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 408).

        [1694] Rog. Howden as above, p. 251. R. Diceto as above, p.
        114. Gerv. Cant. as above, p. 527.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE LATER YEARS OF RICHARD.

1194–1199.


The political history of England during the four years which
followed Richard’s departure over sea is simply the history of the
administration of Hubert Walter. Richard never again interfered in
the concerns of his island realm, save for the purpose of obtaining
money from it; and even the method whereby the money was to be raised
he left, like all other details of administration, wholly to the
justiciar’s discretion. Hubert in fact, as justiciar and archbishop,
wielded during these years a power even more absolute than that
which William of Longchamp had wielded during the king’s absence on
crusade. But Richard’s second experiment in governing England by deputy
succeeded far otherwise than the first. It was, indeed, attended with
far less risk; for the king himself was never really out of reach, and
could at any moment have returned to take up the reins of government
in person, had there been any need to do so. Moreover, the man whom he
now left as viceroy had far other qualifications for the office than
William of Longchamp.

Hubert Walter had been trained under the greatest constitutional lawyer
and most successful administrator of the age, Ralf de Glanville. He
was nephew to Ralf’s wife,[1695] and had been a clerk or chaplain
in Ralf’s household until 1186, when he was appointed dean of
York.[1696] A few months later he was one of five persons nominated
by the York chapter in answer to a royal mandate for election to the
vacant see.[1697] King Henry, however, refused all five, and Hubert
remained dean of York for three years longer. He seems to have held,
besides his deanery, an office at court, either as protonotary or
as vice-chancellor under Geoffrey; for during the last few months
of Henry’s life he is found in Maine attending upon the king,
and apparently charged with the keeping of the royal seal.[1698]
Consecrated to Salisbury by Archbishop Baldwin on October 22,
1189,[1699] he immediately afterwards set out with him for Palestine;
there he won universal esteem by the zeal and ability with which he
exerted himself to relieve the wants of the poorer crusaders;[1700] on
Baldwin’s death Hubert virtually succeeded to his place as the chief
spiritual authority in the host;[1701] and after Richard’s arrival
he made himself no less useful as the king’s best adviser and most
trusty diplomatic agent in Palestine.[1702] It was Hubert who headed
in Richard’s stead the first body of pilgrims whom the Turks admitted
to visit the Holy Sepulchre;[1703] and it seems to have been he, too,
who led back the English host from Palestine to Europe after Richard’s
departure. He hastened as early as possible to visit the king in his
captivity;[1704] and Richard lost no time in sending him to England
to be made archbishop, and to help the justiciars in collecting the
ransom.[1705] They had refused the help of William of Longchamp,
but they could not reject that of Hubert; for they knew that, as a
contemporary historian says, “the king had no one so like-minded with
himself, whose fidelity, prudence and honesty he had proved in so
many changes of fortune.”[1706] Hubert was one of the commissioners
appointed to have the custody of the ransom;[1707] and there can be
little doubt that the scheme by which it was raised was in part at
least devised by his financial genius, and carried into execution by
his energy and skill--qualities which he displayed no less effectively
in dealing with the revolt which was finally quelled by the return of
Richard himself.

        [1695] Hubert’s mother and Ralf’s wife were sisters; cf. the
        Glanville family history in Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. vi.
        pt. i., p. 380, and the foundation-charter of Arklow, given by
        Hubert’s brother Theobald, _ib._ pt. ii. p. 1128. Hubert and
        his brothers seem to have been brought up by their aunt and her
        husband; Hubert, when dean of York, founded a Premonstratensian
        house at West Dereham “pro salute aniniæ meæ, et patris, et
        matris meæ, et domini Ranulphi de Glanvillâ, et dominæ Bertriæ
        uxoris ipsius, qui nos nutrierunt.” _Ib._ vol. vi. pt. ii. p.
        899.

        [1696] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. 360. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 310.

        [1697] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 352.

        [1698] See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. p. xli. note 1.

        [1699] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 71.

        [1700] _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 134–137. _Gesta Ric._
        (Stubbs), p. 145.

        [1701] R. Diceto as above, p. 88. The Patriarch Heraclius
        had become discredited in the eyes of all the right-minded
        crusaders by his share in the divorce and remarriage of Queen
        Isabel, which broke Baldwin’s heart.

        [1702] Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 29 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 378).

        [1703] _Ibid._ _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 437, 438.

        [1704] Will. Newb. as above, c. 33 (p. 388). Cf. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 209.

        [1705] Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 33 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 388). Cf.
        Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 516, 517.

        [1706] Will. Newb. as above.

        [1707] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 212.

Hubert entered upon his vice-royalty--for it was nothing less--under
more favourable conditions than William of Longchamp. He came to it
not as an upstart stranger, but as an Englishman already of high
personal and official standing, thoroughly familiar and thoroughly in
sympathy with the people whom he had to govern, intimately acquainted
with the principles and the details of the system which he was called
upon to administer; his qualifications were well known, and they were
universally acknowledged. Moreover, there was now no one capable of
heading any serious opposition to his authority, at least in secular
affairs. William of Longchamp was still chancellor; but like the
royal master to whose side he clave for the rest of his life, he had
left England for ever. From John there was also nothing to fear. His
intended trial never took place, for he threw himself at Richard’s
feet at the first opportunity, and was personally forgiven; but the
king was wise enough to leave untouched the sentence of forfeiture
passed by the justiciar, and to keep his brother at his own side,
a dependent upon his royal bounty, for nearly twelve months;[1708]
and then he restored to him nothing but the counties of Mortain and
Gloucester and the honour of Eye, but without their castles, giving
him in compensation for the latter and for his other estates a yearly
pension of eight thousand pounds Angevin.[1709] Even John’s capacities
for mischief-making were so far paralyzed by this arrangement that he
seems to have made no further attempt to meddle in English politics so
long as Richard lived. The one man in whom Hubert saw, or fancied he
saw, a possible rival on personal and ecclesiastical grounds, he swept
roughly out of his path. The two primates had already quarrelled over
the privileges of their respective sees, and nothing but the king’s
presence had availed to keep peace between them.[1710] The northern one
had been at feud with his own chapter ever since his appointment, and
they were now prosecuting an appeal against him at Rome. In June 1194,
backed, it can hardly be doubted, by Hubert’s influence, they obtained
from the Pope a sentence which practically condemned Geoffrey without
trial;[1711] and before these tidings reached England in September,
a committee of royal justices, sent by Hubert to deal with the case
in its temporal aspect, had already punished Geoffrey’s refusal to
acknowledge their jurisdiction by confiscating all his archiepiscopal
estates except Ripon.[1712] He went over sea and appealed to the
king, but in vain;[1713] and for the next five years there was again
but one primate in the land. One northern bishop, however, was still
ready to defy Hubert as he had defied William of Longchamp and his
own metropolitan. When the newly appointed sheriff of Northumberland,
Hugh Bardulf, sought to enter upon his office shortly after Richard’s
departure, he found that Hugh of Durham had already made a fresh
bargain with the king, whereby he was to retain the county on a
payment of two thousand marks. He tried, however, as before, to evade
the necessity of payment, and was in consequence forcibly disseized
by Richard’s orders.[1714] Still he was unwilling to give up the
game; and in the spring of 1195 he made another attempt to regain
the territorial influence in the north which Geoffrey’s fall seemed
to have placed again within his reach. The story went in Yorkshire
that he actually succeeded in once more obtaining from Richard--of
course on Richard’s usual terms--a commission as co-justiciar with
Hubert.[1715] Such a commission can hardly have been given otherwise
than in mockery; yet the aged bishop, untaught by all his experience
of the king’s shifty ways, once again set out from York, where he
had just been excommunicating some of Geoffrey’s partizans,[1716] to
publish his supposed triumph in London. Sickness, however, overtook him
on the way; from Doncaster he was compelled to turn back to his old
refuge at Howden, and there on March 3 he died.[1717] His palatinate
was of course taken into the custody of the royal justiciars.[1718] A
fortnight later Celestine III. sent to Archbishop Hubert a commission
as legate for all England;[1719] and thenceforth he was undisputed
ruler alike in Church and state.

        [1708] Cf. Rog. Howden as above, pp. 252 and 286, and also R.
        Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 64.

        [1709] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 286.

        [1710] _Ib._ pp. 246, 247, 250; vol. iv. pref. pp. lix, lx.

        [1711] _Ib._ vol. iii. pp. 272, 273, 278–286; vol. iv. pref.
        pp. lxii, lxiv.

        [1712] _Ib._ vol. iii. pp. 261, 262; vol. iv. pref pp. lxi,
        lxii.

        [1713] Richard in November ordered his restoration, but the
        order was not carried out; the brothers went on quarrelling,
        and next year Richard again declared the archiepiscopal estates
        forfeited, and this time finally. _Ib._ vol. iii. pp. 273, 287;
        vol. iv. pref. pp. lxiv, lxix.

        [1714] _Ib._ vol. iii. pp. 260, 261; cf. p. 249.

        [1715] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp. 438,
        439).

        [1716] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 284.

        [1717] _Ibid._ Will. Newb. as above (p. 439).

        [1718] Rog. Howden as above, p. 285.

        [1719] Dated March 18 [1195]. _Ib._ pp. 290–293. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 125–127.

Like most of the higher clergy of Henry’s later years, Hubert was
distinctly more of a statesman than a churchman. His pontificate left
no mark on the English Church; as primate, his chief occupation was
to quarrel with his chapter. No scruples such as had moved Archbishop
Thomas to resign the chancellorship, or had made even Bishop Roger
of Salisbury seek a papal dispensation before he would venture to
undertake a lay office,[1720] held back Hubert Walter from uniting in
his own person the justiciarship and the primacy of all England. He
was, however, a statesman of the best school of the time, steeped in
the traditions of constitutional and administrative reform which had
grown up during Henry’s later years under the inspiration of the king
himself and the direction of Ralf de Glanville. The task of developing
their policy, therefore, could not have fallen to more competent
hands; and as Richard was totally destitute of his father’s business
capacities, it was well that Hubert was left to fulfil it according to
his own judgement and on his own sole responsibility for nearly four
years.

        [1720] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 408 (Hardy, p. 637).

The justiciar’s first act after his sovereign’s departure was to
despatch the judges itinerant upon their annual visitation-tour with
a commission[1721] which struck the key-note of his future policy.
It was the note which had been struck by Henry II. in the Assizes
of Clarendon and Northampton; but the new commission shewed a great
advance in the developement of the principles which those measures
embodied. The jurisdiction of the justices is defined with greater
fulness and extended over a much wider sphere. The “pleas of the
Crown” with which they are empowered to deal include, besides those
formerly recognized under this head, such various matters as the
number and condition of churches in the king’s gift,[1722] escheats,
wardships and marriages;[1723] forgers[1724] and defaulters;[1725]
the harbouring of malefactors;[1726] the arrears of the ransom;[1727]
the use of false measures;[1728] the debts of the murdered Jews; the
fines due from their slayers,[1729] from the adherents of John, and
from his debtors, as well as from his own forfeited property;[1730]
the disposal of the chattels of dead usurers, and also of crusaders
who had died before setting out on their pilgrimage;[1731] and the
taking of recognitions under the Great Assize concerning land worth
not more than five pounds a year.[1732] In all these proceedings the
chief object evidently was to procure money for the royal treasury; a
tallage which the judges were also directed to assess upon all cities,
towns and royal demesnes[1733] being deemed insufficient to supply its
needs. The details of this multifarious business are however of less
historical importance than the method employed for its transaction.
Every item of it was to be dealt with on the presentment of what may
now be called the “grand jury”--the jury of sworn recognitors in
every shire, whose functions, hitherto confined to the presentment of
criminals, were thus extended to all branches of judicial work. This
growth in the importance of the jury was marked by the introduction
of a new ordinance for its constitution. The Assizes of Clarendon and
Northampton simply ordered that the jury should consist of twelve
lawful men of every hundred and four of every township, without
specifying how they were to be selected. Most probably they were
nominated by the sheriff.[1734] The recognitors employed in the civil
process known as the Great Assize, however, were from the first
appointed in a special manner prescribed in the Assize itself. Four
knights of the shire were summoned by the sheriff, and these four
elected the twelve recognitors.[1735] By the “Form of proceeding in
the pleas of the Crown” delivered to the justices-errant in 1194,
this method of election was applied to the jury of presentment in
all cases, with a modification which removed the choice yet one step
further from the mere nomination of the sheriff. Four knights were
first to be chosen out of the whole shire; these were to elect two
out of every hundred or wapentake, and these two were to choose ten
others, who with them constituted the legal twelve.[1736] Whether or
not the choice of the first four was actually, as seems most probable,
transferred from the sheriff to the body of the freeholders assembled
in the county-court,[1737] still this enactment shews a distinct
advance in the principles of election and representation, as opposed
to that of mere nomination by a royal officer. Another step in the
same direction was the appointment of three knights and a clerk to be
“elected in every shire to keep the pleas of the Crown.”[1738] This
was the origin of the office afterwards known as that of coroner. It
had the effect of depriving the sheriff of a considerable part of his
judicial functions; and his importance was at the same time yet further
limited by an order that no sheriff should act as justiciar in his own
shire, nor in any shire which he had held at any time since the king’s
first crowning.[1739] The difficulty of checking the abuse of power in
the hands of the sheriffs, which Henry had been unable to overcome,
had certainly not been lessened by Richard’s way of distributing the
sheriffdoms in his earlier years. It had indeed become so serious
that in this very year either the new justiciar, or possibly the king
himself, proposed an inquisition similar to that made by Henry in
1170, into the administration of all servants of the Crown, whether
justices, sheriffs, constables, or foresters, since the beginning of
the reign. When the king was gone, however, it seems to have been
felt that such an undertaking would add too heavily to the labours of
the judges-errant; and the inquiry was accordingly postponed for an
indefinite time by the archbishop’s orders.[1740]

        [1721] “Forma qualiter procedendum est in placitis Coronæ
        Regis.” Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 262–267; Stubbs,
        _Select Charters_, pp. 259–263.

        [1722] _Forma procedendi_, c. 4 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p.
        259).

        [1723] _Ib._ cc. 3, 5, 6, 23 (pp. 259, 260, 261).

        [1724] _Ib._ c. 8 (p. 260).

        [1725] _Ib._ c. 19 (as above).

        [1726] _Ib._ c. 7 (as above).

        [1727] _Ib._ c. 10 (as above).

        [1728] _Ib._ c. 16 (as above). Richard had at the beginning of
        his reign caused all weights and measures to be reduced to one
        standard; Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 351.

        [1729] _Forma proced._, c. 9 (as above).

        [1730] _Ib._ cc. 11–14 (as above).

        [1731] _Ib._ cc. 15, 17 (as above).

        [1732] _Ib._ c. 18 (as above).

        [1733] _Ib._ c. 22 (p. 261).

        [1734] Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. pp. xcvi, xcvii.

        [1735] R. Glanville, _De Legg. Angl._, l. xiii. c. 3.

        [1736] _Forma proced._, introductory chap., Stubbs, _Select
        Charters_, p. 259; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 262.

        [1737] Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, as above, pp. xcvii–xcix.

        [1738] _Forma proced._, c. 20 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p.
        260).

        [1739] _Ib._ c. 21 (as above).

        [1740] _Ib._ c. 25 (p. 263).

The principle of co-operation between the government and the people
for maintaining order and peace, which underlies all Henry’s reforming
measures, and of which the new regulations for election of the
grand jury are a further recognition, was again enunciated yet more
distinctly in the following year. An edict was published requiring
every man above the age of fifteen years to take an oath that he would
do all that in him lay for the preservation of the king’s peace; that
he would neither be a thief or robber, nor a receiver or accomplice of
such persons, but would do his utmost to denounce and deliver them to
the sheriff, would join to the uttermost of his power in the pursuit of
malefactors when hue and cry was raised against them, and would deliver
up to the sheriff all persons who should have failed to perform their
share in this duty.[1741] The obligation binding upon every member
of the state to lend his aid for the punishment of offences against
its peace had been declared, in words which are almost echoed in this
edict, as long ago as the reign of Cnut.[1742] The difficulty of
enforcing it caused by the disorganized condition of society which had
grown up during the civil war was probably the reason which led Henry,
in framing his Assizes of Clarendon and Northampton, at once to define
it more narrowly and to lay the responsibility of its execution upon a
smaller body of men specially appointed for the purpose in every shire.
The completeness of organization which the system introduced by these
Assizes had now attained, however, gave scope for a wider application
of the principle through one of those revivals of older custom in which
the enduring character of our ancient national institutions and their
capacity for adaptation to the most diverse conditions of national
life are so often and so strikingly displayed. The edict of 1195 forms
a link between the usage of Cnut’s day and that of modern times. It
directed that the oath should be taken before knights assigned for the
purpose in every shire; out of the office thus created there seems to
have grown that of conservators of the peace; and this again developed
in the fourteenth century into that of justices of the peace, which has
retained an unbroken existence down to our own age.[1743]

        [1741] _Edictum Regium._ Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp.
        299, 300; Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 264.

        [1742] “And we will that every man above xii years make oath
        that he will neither be a thief nor cognizant of theft.” Cnut,
        Secular Dooms, c. 21, Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 74.

        [1743] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 263; _Constit. Hist._,
        vol. i. p. 507; pref. to Rog. Howden, vol. iv. pp. c, ci.

The same year was marked by the only important ecclesiastical act of
Hubert’s pontificate. Having received in the spring his commission
as legate, he made use of it to hold a visitation of the northern
province--now, by Geoffrey’s absence and Hugh of Puiset’s death,
deprived of both its chief pastors--and a council in York minster at
which fifteen canons were passed[1744] to remedy the general relaxation
of Church discipline which had been growing ever since Thomas’s flight.
At the close of the year Hubert was again at York, upon a different
errand: the negotiation of a fresh treaty with Scotland, on the basis
of a marriage between the Scot king’s eldest daughter and Richard’s
nephew Otto of Saxony.[1745] The marriage never took place, but the
alliance of which it was to be the pledge lasted throughout Richard’s
reign; and it is a noteworthy proof at once of the growth of friendly
relations between the two countries, and of the success of Hubert’s
recent ordinance for the preservation of peace and order in England,
that in the following year a similar edict, evidently modelled upon the
English one, was issued in Scotland by William the Lion.[1746]

        [1744] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 293–298. Cf. R.
        Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 146–148, and Will. Newb., l. v.
        c. 12 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 442).

        [1745] William the Lion had been sick almost to death, and
        having no son, had proposed to leave his crown to his eldest
        daughter, under the protection of Richard, whose nephew he
        wished her to marry. The opposition of his barons, and the
        restoration of his own health, caused him to drop the scheme of
        bequest (Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 298, 299). That of
        the marriage however was still pursued, and accepted by Hubert
        in Richard’s name, on somewhat singular conditions: Lothian, as
        the bride’s dowry, was to be given over to Richard’s custody,
        while Northumberland and the county of Carlisle were to be
        settled upon Otto and made over to the keeping of the king of
        Scots. The negotiation, however, dragged on for a year, and
        was again checked by the hope of an heir to the Scottish crown
        (_ib._ p. 308); and the fulfilment of this hope in August 1198
        led to its abandonment. _Ib._ vol. iv. p. 54.

        [1746] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 33. He says William
        issued his proclamation “de bono sumens exemplum.”

Neither the renewal of order in the Church, nor the securing
of the external tranquillity of the realm by alliance with its
neighbour-states, nor the organization of justice and police within
its own borders, was however the most laborious part of Hubert’s task.
One thing only was required of him by his royal master; but that was
precisely the one thing which cost him the most trouble to obtain.
From a country which must, as it seems, have been almost drained of
its financial resources over and over again during the last ten years,
he was perpetually called upon to extract supplies of money such as
had never been furnished before to any English king. That he contrived
to meet Richard’s ceaseless demands year after year without either
plunging the nation into helpless misery or provoking it to open
revolt, is the strongest proof not only of his financial genius and
tact, but also of the increase in material prosperity and national
contentment which had been fostered by Henry’s rule, and of the success
of Hubert’s own efforts in carrying out the policy which Henry had
begun. By Michaelmas 1194 it seems that the whole of the complicated
accounts for the ransom, including the carucage imposed in the
spring, were closed.[1747] In the same year the country had borne the
additional burthen of a tallage upon the towns. This, however, added
to the sums raised by sales of office during the king’s visit and to
the proceeds of the judges’ visitation, failed to satisfy the wants of
Richard. He therefore resorted to two other methods of raising money,
both apparently of his own devising, and both harmonizing very ill with
the constitutional policy of his justiciar. Save during the disorderly
reign of Stephen, the practice of tournaments had been hitherto
unknown in England. Both Henry I. and Henry II. were too serious and
practical-minded to encourage vain shews of any kind, far less to
countenance the reckless waste of energy and the useless risk of life
and limb which these entertainments involved, which had moved Pope
after Pope to denounce them as perilous alike to body and soul,[1748]
and, in spite of a characteristic protest from Thomas Becket, to
exclude those who were slain in them from the privileges of Christian
burial.[1749] The Church had indeed been unable to check this obnoxious
practice in Gaul; backed, however, by the authority of the Crown, she
had as yet succeeded in keeping it out of England. But in 1194 a fresh
prohibition, issued by Pope Celestine in the previous year,[1750] was
met by Richard with a direct defiance. On August 20 he issued a license
for the holding of tournaments in England, on condition that every man
who took part in them should pay to the Crown a specified sum, varying
according to his rank. Five places were appointed where tournaments
might be held, and no one was allowed to enter the lists until he
had paid for his license.[1751] The collection of this new item of
revenue was evidently looked upon as an important matter, for it was
intrusted to the justiciar’s brother Theobald Walter.[1752] Whatever
may have been Hubert’s share in this measure, he was clearly in no way
responsible for the other and yet more desperate expedient to which
Richard, almost at the same time, resorted for the replenishment of his
treasury. On pretext of a quarrel with his chancellor, he took away the
seal from him, ordered another to be made, and declared all acts passed
under the old one to be null and void, till they should have been
brought to him for confirmation:[1753] in other words, till they should
have been paid for a second time.

        [1747] See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. pp.
        lxxxii–lxxxiv and notes.

        [1748] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp. 422, 423).

        [1749] Ep. xxiv., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. p. 36.

        [1750] Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 56.

        [1751] Writ in Rymer, as above, p. 65, and in Stubbs, _R.
        Diceto_, vol. ii., app. to pref. pp. lxxx, lxxxi; this latter
        copy is dated August 22. Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p.
        268, Will. Newb., l. v. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp. 422, 423),
        and R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 120.

        [1752] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 268.

        [1753] _Ib._ p. 267. Cf. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 93. Rog.
        Howden’s very confused account of the seals is made clear by
        Bishop Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 506 note.

In the following spring a fit of characteristic Angevin
penitence--fervent and absorbing while it lasted, but passing away all
too soon--moved the king to make some amends for his extortions as well
as for his other sins; he began to replace the church-plate which had
been given up for his ransom;[1754] no fresh tax was imposed till late
in the year, and then it was only a scutage of the usual amount--twenty
shillings on the knight’s fee--for the war in Normandy.[1755] Next
year, however, the king’s mood again changed. He was now resolved to
carry into effect, with or without Hubert’s assent, the inquiry into
the financial administration which Hubert had postponed in 1194. For
this purpose he sent over to England Robert, abbot of S. Stephen’s at
Caen, who, notwithstanding his monastic profession, had acquired great
experience as a clerk of the Norman exchequer, and seems to have there
enjoyed a high reputation for knowledge and skill in all matters of
finance.[1756] The abbot, accompanied by the bishop-elect of Durham,
Philip of Poitiers,[1757] reached London in Lent 1196, and demanded
Hubert’s co-operation in fulfilling the royal orders. The justiciar,
though displeased and hurt, had no choice but to comply, and an order
was issued in the king’s name bidding all sheriffs and officers of the
Crown be ready to give an account of their stewardship in London on
a certain day--apparently the day of the usual Exchequer-meeting in
Easter-week.[1758] Before Easter came, the abbot of Caen himself was
gone to his last account; he was seized with illness while dining with
Archbishop Hubert on Passion Sunday, and five days later he died.[1759]
The intended inquisition never took place; but the mere proposal to
conduct it thus through the medium of a stranger from over sea was
a direct slight offered to the justiciar by the king;[1760] and it
coincided with a disturbance which warned Hubert of a possible danger
to his authority from another quarter.

        [1754] Rog. Howden as above, p. 290. Cf. _Itin. Reg. Ric._
        (Stubbs), pp. 449, 450.

        [1755] See Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp. 637, 638. That it
        was imposed late in the year seems implied by so much of it not
        being accounted for till the next year; see Stubbs, pref. to
        Rog. Howden, vol. iv. p. lxxxviii and note 3.

        [1756] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 19 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 464). Cf.
        Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 5.

        [1757] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 5. He seems to imply
        that Philip shared in the abbot’s commission; but he evidently
        made no attempt to act upon it after Robert’s death.

        [1758] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 19 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 465).

        [1759] Rog. Howden as above. “Nec cum eis quos evocaverat post
        Pascha positurus, sed ante Pascha rationem superno Judici de
        propriis actibus redditurus.” Will. Newb. as above.

        [1760] On April 15, four days after the abbot’s death, Richard
        wrote a sort of apology to the justiciar. See Stubbs, _R.
        Diceto_, vol. ii. app. to pref. pp. lxxix, lxxx.

Strive as he might to equalize the burthens of taxation, he could
not prevent them from pressing upon the poorer classes with a
severity which grew at last well-nigh intolerable. The grievance was
felt most keenly in London. The substitution of the “commune” for
the older shire-organization of London in 1191 was a step towards
municipal unity, and thus indirectly towards local independence and
self-government; but it had done nothing for the poorer class of
citizens. It had placed the entire control of civic administration,
including the regulation of trade and the assessment of taxes, in the
hands of a governing body consisting of a mayor and aldermen, one of
whom presided over each of the wards into which the whole city was
divided, the head of them all being the mayor.[1761] This corporation
was the representative of the merchant-gild, which had thus absorbed
into itself all the powers and privileges of the earlier ruling
class of territorial magnates, in addition to its own. As might be
expected, the rule of this newly-established oligarchy over the mass
of its unenfranchized fellow-citizens was at least as oppressive as
that of the sheriffs and “barons of the city” which had preceded it;
and it was less willingly borne, owing to the jealousy which always
existed between the craftsmen and the merchant-gild. As the taxes
grew more burthensome year by year, a suspicion began to spread
that they were purposely assessed in such a manner as to spare the
well-filled pockets of the assessors, and wring an unfair proportion
of the required total from the hard-earned savings of the poor.[1762]
Whether the injustice was intentional or not, the grievance seems to
have been a real one; and it soon found a spokesman and a champion.
William Fitz-Osbert--“William with the Long Beard,” as he was commonly
called--was by birth a member of the ruling class in the city.[1763]
He seems to have shared with a goldsmith named Geoffrey the leadership
of a band of London citizens who in 1190 formed part of the crusading
fleet, and did good service, not indeed, so far as we know, in Holy
Land, but like their brethren forty-three years earlier, in helping
to drive the Moors out of Portugal.[1764] Since his return, whether
fired by genuine zeal for the cause of the oppressed, or, as some of
his contemporaries thought, moved by the hope of acquiring power and
influence which he found unattainable by other means,[1765] he had
severed himself from his natural associates in the city to become the
preacher and leader of another sort of crusade, for the deliverance
of the poorer classes from the tyranny of their wealthy rulers. At
every meeting of the governing body he withstood his fellow-aldermen
to the face, remonstrating continually against their corrupt fiscal
administration. They could not silence and dared not expel him,
for they knew that his whispers were stirring up the craftsmen;
and although the rumour that he had more than fifty thousand sworn
followers at his back must have been an exaggeration, yet there could
be no doubt of the existence of a conspiracy sufficiently formidable
to excuse, if not to justify, the terror of the civic rulers.[1766]
When after a visit to Normandy William began openly to boast of the
king’s favour and support, the justiciar thought it time to interfere.
He called the citizens together, endeavoured to allay their discontent
by reasonings and remonstrances, and persuaded them to give hostages
for their good behaviour.[1767] William however set his authority at
defiance. Day after day, in the streets and open spaces of the city,
and at last even in S. Paul’s itself,[1768] this bold preacher with the
tall stately form, singular aspect and eloquent tongue gathered round
him a crowd of eager listeners to whom he proclaimed himself as the
“king and saviour of the poor.” One of his audience afterwards reported
to a writer of the time his exposition of a text from Isaiah: “With joy
shall ye draw water out of the wells of the Saviour.”[1769] “I,” said
William, “am the saviour of the poor. Ye poor who have felt the heavy
hand of the rich, ye shall draw from my wells the water of wholesome
doctrine, and that with joy, for the time of your visitation is at
hand. For I will divide the waters from the waters. The people are the
waters; and I will divide the humble and faithful people from the proud
and perfidious people. I will divide the elect from the reprobate, as
light from darkness.”[1770]

        [1761] In the _Liber de Antiquis Legibus_ (a chronicle of the
        mayors and sheriffs of London, compiled in 1274, and edited
        by Mr. Stapleton for the Camden Soc.), p. 1, the first mayor,
        Henry Fitz-Aylwine, is said to have been appointed “anno gratie
        Mº centesimo lxxxviii, anno primo regni Regis Ricardi;” and
        the document known as Fitz-Aylwine’s Assize (_ib._ p. 206)
        purports to have been issued “Anno Domini Mº Cº lxxxix,
        scilicet primo anno regni illustris Regis Ricardi, existente
        tunc Henrico filio Aylewini Maiore, qui fuit primus Maiorum
        Londoniarum.” On this however Bishop Stubbs remarks: “It is
        improbable that London had a recognized mayor before 1191,
        in which year the communa was established ... and there is
        I believe no mention of such an official in a record until
        some three years later.” Introd. to _Annales Londonienses_
        (“Chronicles of Ed. I. and Ed. II.”), p. xxxi.

        [1762] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 5. Mat. Paris, _Chron.
        Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 418. Will. Newb., l. v. c. 20
        (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 466).

        [1763] “Willelmus cum Barbâ,” Rog. Howden as above, pp. 5,
        6; “agnomen habens a barbâ prolixâ,” Will. Newb. (as above);
        “cognomento cum-Barbâ,” “dictus Barbatus vel Barba,” Mat.
        Paris (as above), pp. 418, 419. Will. Newb. thinks he wore the
        unusual appendage simply to make himself conspicuous; Mat.
        Paris explains “cujus genus avitum ob indignationem Normannorum
        radere barbam contempsit,” on which see Freeman, _Norm. Conq._,
        vol. v. p. 900.

        [1764] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 116–118.

        [1765] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 5, 6, and Mat. Paris,
        _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. pp. 418, 419, represent the
        former view; Will. Newb., l. v. c. 20 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp.
        467, 468), and R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 143, the latter.

        [1766] Will. Newb. as above (p. 468).

        [1767] _Ib._ (pp. 468, 469).

        [1768] R. Diceto as above.

        [1769] “Of salvation,” A. V.; “de fontibus Salvatoris,” Vulg.
        Is. xii. 3.

        [1770] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 20 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 469).

Powerless to deal with these assemblies within the city, Hubert
determined at least to check the spread of such teaching as this,
and issued orders that any citizen of the lower class found outside
the walls should be arrested as an enemy to king and kingdom. Some
chapmen from London were accordingly arrested at Mid-Lent at Stamford
fair.[1771] A day or two afterwards--the justiciar’s fears being
perhaps quickened by the arrival of the abbot of Caen, which William
might easily interpret as the effect of his own remonstrances with the
king--an attempt was made to call William himself to account for his
seditious proceedings. The bearer of the summons found him surrounded
by such a formidable array of followers that he dared not execute
his commission, and a forcible arrest was decided on. Guided by two
citizens who undertook to catch him at unawares, a party of armed men
was sent to seize him;[1772] one of the guides was felled with a blow
of a hatchet by William himself, the other was slain by his friends;
William, with a few adherents, took sanctuary in the church of S.
Mary-at-Bow. The justiciar, after surrounding the church with soldiers,
ordered it to be set on fire,[1773] and William, driven out by the
smoke and the flames, was stabbed on the threshold by the son of the
man whom he had killed an hour before.[1774] The wound however was
not immediately fatal; the soldiers seized him and carried him to the
Tower for trial before the justiciars, who at once condemned him to
death; he was stripped, tied to a horse’s tail, thus dragged through
the city, and hanged with eight of his adherents.[1775] The rest of
the malcontents were so overawed by this spectacle that they at once
made complete submission.[1776] The justiciar had triumphed; but his
triumph was dearly bought at the cost of what little still remained
to him of personal popularity and ecclesiastical repute. The common
people persisted in reverencing William Longbeard as a martyr;[1777]
the clergy were horrified at the sacrilege involved in the violation
of the right of sanctuary and the firing of a church, a sacrilege all
the more unpardonable because committed by an archbishop; while his
own chapter seized upon it as the crowning charge in the already long
indictment which they were preparing against their primate.[1778]
Thus overwhelmed with obloquy on all sides, Hubert in disgust for a
moment threw up the justiciarship, but resumed it as soon as he was
once more assured of Richard’s confidence.[1779] For two more years
he toiled on at his thankless task. The budget of 1196 was made up
by the safe expedient of another scutage.[1780] Next year the sole
legislative act ventured upon by the justiciar was an attempt to
enforce uniformity of weights and measures throughout the kingdom by
means of an Assize,[1781] whose provisions however turned out to be
so impracticable that, like a similar ordinance issued earlier in the
reign, it seems to have remained inoperative, and six years later was
abolished altogether.[1782] In the autumn Hubert went over to Normandy,
where he was occupied for some weeks in diplomatic business for the
king.[1783] A month after his return the crisis came.

        [1771] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 6.

        [1772] Will. Newb. as above (p. 470).

        [1773] _Ibid._ Rog. Howden as above; Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._
        (Luard) vol. ii. p. 419. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 143,
        makes William himself fire the church, but this seems nonsense,
        as he clearly had no intention of dying in it.

        [1774] Will. Newb. as above. Cf. Rog. Howden as above.

        [1775] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 20 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 471) says
        nine. Eight is the number given by Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol.
        iv. p. 6. Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 143; Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 533, 534; and Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._
        (Luard), vol. ii. p. 419. Gervase calls the place of execution
        “ad ulmos,” Mat. Paris “ad Ulmetum” [“the Elms in Smithfield”
        notes Mr. Luard in the margin]. R. Diceto calls it Tyburn;
        the other writers give it no name at all. We are indebted
        to Gervase (as above, p. 533) for the date of this affair;
        Saturday, April 6--the day before the abbot of Caen fell sick;
        see above, p. 344.

        [1776] Rog. Howden and R. Diceto, as above.

        [1777] See Will. Newb. as above, c. 21 (pp. 471, 472). Mat.
        Paris (as above) heartily shared in their opinion.

        [1778] Rog. Howden as above, p. 48.

        [1779] _Ib._ pp. 12, 13.

        [1780] Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. p. lxxxviii and
        note 3. Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp. 637, 638.

        [1781] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 33, 34.

        [1782] _Ib._ p. 172. Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 509.

        [1783] R. Diceto as above, p. 158. Gerv. Cant. as above, pp.
        544, 545. The dates do not exactly agree.

Richard, at the height of his struggle with Philip of France, found
himself short not only of money but of men,[1784] at any rate of men
whom he could trust. He called upon Hubert to send him over from
England either a force of three hundred knights to serve him at their
own charges for a year, or a sum which would enable him to enlist the
same number of mercenaries for the same period, at the rate of three
English shillings a day.[1785] For some reason or other it seems
that Hubert, somewhat unwisely, at once decided to ignore the second
alternative; in a great council held at Oxford on December 7[1786] he
simply proposed, in his own name and that of his colleagues in the
government, that the barons of England, among whom the bishops were to
be reckoned, should come to the rescue of their distressed sovereign by
supplying him with three hundred knights to serve him at their own cost
for a year. Hubert himself, in his character of archbishop, declared
his readiness to take his share of the burthen; so did the bishop of
London, Richard Fitz-Nigel the treasurer. The bishop of Lincoln, Hugh
of Avalon, was then asked for his assent. “O ye wise and noble men here
present,” said the Burgundian saint, “ye know that I came to this land
as a stranger, and from the simplicity of a hermit’s life was raised
to the office of a bishop. When therefore my inexperience was called
to rule over the church of our Lady, I set myself carefully to learn
its customs and privileges, its duties and burthens; and for thirteen
years I have not strayed from the path marked out by my predecessors,
in preserving the one and fulfilling the other. I know that the church
of Lincoln is bound to do the king military service, but only in this
land; outside the boundaries of England she owes him no such thing.
Wherefore I deem it meeter for me to go back to my native land and my
hermit’s cell, rather than, while holding a bishopric here, to bring
upon my church the loss of her ancient immunities and the infliction of
unwonted burthens.”[1787]

        [1784] _Magna Vita S. Hugonis_ (Dimock), p. 248.

        [1785] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 40.

        [1786] Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 549, and _Mag. Vita
        S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 251.

        [1787] _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), pp. 249, 250.

Hugh of Lincoln was the universally-acknowledged leader of the English
Church in all matters of religion and morals; he had exercised in Henry
II.’s later years such an influence over the king as no one, except
perhaps Thomas Becket, had ever possessed; the whole Church and nation
reverenced him as it had never reverenced any man since the death of S.
Anselm. When he took up the position of Thomas and Anselm as a champion
of constitutional liberty, the victory was sure. Strangely enough, his
action seems to have taken the primate completely by surprise. For a
moment Hubert stood speechless; then he turned to Bishop Herbert of
Salisbury, and with quivering lips asked what he was minded to do for
the king’s assistance. As a son of Richard of Ilchester and a kinsman
of the great ministerial house founded by Roger of Salisbury,[1788]
Herbert represented the traditions of an old and venerated political
school, as Hugh represented those of the best school of ecclesiastics.
The statesman’s reply was an echo of the saint’s: “It seems to me that,
without grievous wrong to my church, I can neither do nor say aught but
what I have heard from my lord of Lincoln.” The justiciar, hurling a
torrent of reproaches at Hugh, broke up the assembly, and wrote to the
king that his plan had been foiled through Hugh’s opposition.[1789]
Richard in a fury ordered the property of the two recalcitrant bishops
to be confiscated; in the case of Salisbury this was done, but no
Englishman dared lay a finger on anything belonging to the saint of
Lincoln, “for they feared his curse like death itself.” In vain did
the king reiterate his command, till at last his own officers begged
Hugh to put an end to the scandal by making his peace, for their sakes
if not for his own; Hugh therefore went to seek Richard in Normandy,
and literally forced him into a reconciliation on S. Augustine’s day.
Herbert, on the other hand, had to purchase his restoration at a
heavy price;[1790] but the king and his justiciar were none the less
completely beaten. The death of Rees Ap-Griffith and a dispute between
his sons for the succession in South Wales gave Hubert an opportunity
of renewing his fading laurels by a brilliant expedition to the Welsh
marches, where he succeeded in restoring tranquillity and securing
the border-fortresses for the king.[1791] He had however scarcely had
time to recover from his political defeat before he was overwhelmed by
the bursting of an ecclesiastical storm which had long been hanging
over his head. Pope Celestine died on January 8, 1198. On the morrow
the cardinals elected as his successor a young deacon named Lothar,
who took the name of Innocent III., and began at once to sweep away
the abuses of the Roman court and to vindicate the rights of his see
against the Roman aristocracy with a promptness and vigour which were
an earnest of his whole future career.[1792] The monks of Canterbury
lost no time in sending to the new Pope their list of grievances
against their primate; and at the head of the list they set a charge
which, in the eyes of such a pontiff as Innocent, could admit of no
defence. Hubert, said they, had violated the duties and the dignity
of his order by becoming the king’s justiciar, acting as a judge in
cases of life and death, and so entangling himself in worldly business
that he was incapable of paying due attention to the government of
the Church. Innocent immediately wrote to the king, charging him, if
he valued his soul’s health, not to suffer either the archbishop of
Canterbury or any other priest to continue in any secular office;
and at the same time he solemnly forbade the acceptance of any such
office by any bishop or priest throughout the whole Church. Discredited
as Hubert now was in the eyes of all parties, he had no choice but
to resign, and this time Richard had no choice but to accept his
resignation.[1793]

        [1788] On Herbert’s antecedents and connexions see Stubbs,
        _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. p. xci, note 4.

        [1789] _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 250. Cf. the brief
        account in Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 40.

        [1790] _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 251.

        [1791] On Rees’s death his two sons quarrelled over the
        succession, and Hubert had to go to the “fines Gwalliæ” and
        make peace between them. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p.
        21. At Christmas he was at Hereford, where he took the castle
        into his own hands, turning out its custodians and putting in
        new ones, “ad opus regis”; he did the same at Bridgenorth and
        Ludlow. _Ib._ p. 35. See also Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
        543, Gerald’s letter to Hubert after his victory, and Hubert’s
        reply: Gir. Cambr. _De Rebus a se gestis_, l. iii. cc. 5, 6
        (Brewer, vol. i. pp. 96–102).

        [1792] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 41–44.

        [1793] _Ib._ pp. 47, 48.

The last few months of his justiciarship were however occupied with the
projection, if not the execution, of a measure of great constitutional
importance. Early in the spring he had, in his master’s name, laid upon
England a carucage to the amount of five shillings upon every carucate
or ploughland. The great increase in the rate of taxation, as compared
with that of 1194, was not unjustifiable; for since that year the
socage-tenants, on whom the impost fell, had paid no direct taxes at
all, while two scutages had been exacted from the tenants-in-chivalry.
But a far more important change was made in the assessment of the new
impost. Until now, the carucate, like the hide, had been a term of
elastic significance. It represented, as the literal meaning of the
word implied, the extent of land which could be cultivated by a single
plough; and this of course varied in different parts of the country
according to the nature of the soil, and the number and strength of
the plough-team. In general, however, a hundred acres seem to have
been reckoned as the average extent both of the carucate and of the
hide. In order to avoid the endless complications and disputes which
under the old system had made the assessment of the land-tax a matter
of almost more trouble than profit, Hubert Walter adopted this average
as a fixed standard, and ordered that henceforth, for purposes of
taxation, the word “carucate” should represent a hundred acres. It
followed as a necessary consequence that the whole arable land of
England must be re-measured. The old customary reckoning of hides,
based upon the Domesday survey, would no longer answer its purpose:
the venerable rate-book which had been in use for more than a hundred
years, partially superseded since 1168 by the Black Book of the
Exchequer, was now to be superseded entirely. Hubert therefore issued
in the king’s name a commission for what was virtually a new Domesday
survey. Into every shire he sent a clerk and a knight, who, together
with the sheriff and certain lawful men chosen out of the shire, were,
after swearing that they would do the king’s business faithfully, to
summon before them the stewards of the barons of the county, the lord
or bailiff of every township and the reeve and four lawful men of the
same, whether free or villein, and two lawful knights of the hundred;
these persons were to declare upon oath what ploughlands there were in
every township--how many in demesne, how many in villenage, how many
in alms, and who was responsible for these last. The carucates thus
ascertained were noted in a roll of which four copies were kept, one
by each of the two royal commissioners, one by the sheriff, and the
other divided among the stewards of the local barons. The collection
of the money was intrusted to two lawful knights and the bailiff of
every hundred; these were responsible for it to the sheriff; and the
sheriff had to see that it agreed with his roll, and to pay it into
the Exchequer. Stern penalties were denounced against witnesses,
whether free or villein, who should be detected in trying to deceive
the commissioners. No land was to be exempted from the tax, except the
free estates belonging to the parish churches, and lands held of the
king by serjeanty or special service; even these last, however, were
to be included in the survey, and their holders were required to come
and prove their excuses at its conclusion, in London at the octave of
Pentecost.[1794]

        [1794] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 46, 47.

This was Hubert’s last great administrative act, and it had a far
more important significance than he himself probably knew. In form,
the application of the process of jury-inquest to the assessment of
an impost on the land was only a return to the precedent of Domesday
itself. In reality, however, it was something much more important
than this. The jury-inquest had been introduced by the Conqueror in
1086 under exceptional circumstances, and for an exceptional purpose
which could be attained by no other means. So far as its original
use was concerned, the precedent had remained a wholly isolated one
for more than a hundred years. But during those years the principle
which lay at the root of the jury-inquest had made its way into every
branch of legal, fiscal and judicial administration. It had been
applied to the purposes of private litigation by the Great Assize,
to the determination of individual liability to military duty by the
Assize of Arms, to the assessment of taxation on personal property
by the ordinance of the Saladin tithe; it had penetrated the whole
system of criminal procedure through the Assizes of Clarendon and
Northampton; and it had gained a yet fuller recognition in the
judicial ordinances of 1194. Viewed in this light, its application
to the assessment of taxation on real property was another highly
important step in the extension of its sphere of work. But this was
not all. The chief value of the jury-system lay in its employment
of the machinery of local representation and election, whereby it
was a means of training the people to the exercise of constitutional
self-government. The commission of 1198 shews that, although doubtless
neither rulers nor people were conscious of the fact, this training
had now advanced within measurable distance of its completion. The
machinery of the new survey was not identical with that used in 1086.
The taxpayers were represented, not only by the witnesses on whose
recognition the assessment was based, but by the “lawful men chosen
out of the shire” who took their place side by side with the king’s
officers as commissioners for the assessment, and by the bailiff and
two knights of the hundred who were charged with the collection of
the money. The representative principle had now reached its furthest
developement in the financial administration of the shire. Its next
advance must inevitably result in giving to the taxpayers a share in
the determination, first of the amount of the impost, and then of the
purposes to which it should be applied, by admitting them, however
partially and indirectly, to a voice in the great council of the
nation.[1795]

        [1795] On this “Great Carucage” see Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._,
        vol. i. pp. 510, 511, and pref. to Rog. Howden, vol. iv. pp.
        xci–xcv.

We must not credit Hubert Walter with views so lofty or so far-reaching
as these. The chief aim of his policy doubtless was to get for his
master as much money as he could, although he would only do it by
what he regarded as just and constitutional methods. Unluckily the
commissioners’ report is lost, and there is not even any proof that
it was ever presented; for before Whitsuntide the new Pope’s views
had become known, and on July 11 a royal writ announced Hubert’s
retirement from the justiciarship and the appointment of Geoffrey
Fitz-Peter in his stead.[1796] Like Hubert, Geoffrey Fitz-Peter came
of a family which had long been engaged in administrative work. His
elder brother Simon had in Henry’s early years filled the various
offices of sheriff, justice-in-eyre, and king’s marshal.[1797] Geoffrey
himself had been sheriff of Northampton throughout the last five years
of Henry’s reign, and had during the same period acted occasionally
as an ordinary justice of assize, and more frequently as a judge of
the forest-court.[1798] In 1189 Richard appointed him one of the
assistant-justiciars, and in this capacity he supported Walter of Rouen
in the affair of William of Longchamp’s deposition.[1799] In the early
days of William’s rule, however, Geoffrey had made use of the latter’s
influence to secure for himself the whole English inheritance of the
earl of Essex, William de Mandeville, upon which his wife had a distant
claim.[1800] Such a man was likely to be controlled by fewer scruples,
as well as hampered by fewer external restraints, than those which had
beset the justiciar-archbishop; and in truth, before the year was out,
both clergy and people had cause to regret the change of ministers.
Some of the religious orders refused to pay their share of the
carucage; their refusal was met by a royal edict declaring the whole
body of clergy, secular as well as monastic, incapable of claiming
redress for any wrongs inflicted on them by the laity, while for any
injury done by a clerk or a monk to a layman satisfaction was exacted
to the uttermost farthing. The archbishop of Canterbury could hardly
have published what was virtually a decree of outlawry against his own
order; the new justiciar published it seemingly without hesitation,
and the recalcitrant monks were compelled to submit.[1801] This act
was followed by a renewal of the decree requiring all charters granted
under the king’s old seal to be brought up for confirmation under
the new one[1802]--a step which seems to imply that Richard’s former
command to this effect had not been very strictly enforced by Hubert.
Meanwhile three justices-errant, acting on a set of instructions
modelled upon those of 1194, were holding pleas of the Crown in the
northern shires;[1803] “so that,” says King Henry’s old chaplain Roger
of Howden, “with these and other vexations, just or unjust, all England
from sea to sea was reduced to penury. And these things were not yet
ended when another kind of torment was added to confound the men of
the kingdom, through the justices of the forest,” who were sent out
all over England to hold a great forest-assize, which was virtually a
renewal of that issued by Henry in 1184.[1804]

        [1796] Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 71.

        [1797] He was sheriff of Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and
        Buckinghamshire from 1156 till 1160, and of Northamptonshire
        again from Michaelmas 1163 till Easter 1170. See the list of
        sheriffs in index to Eyton’s _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 337, 339. He
        appears as marshal in 1165 (Madox, _Form. Angl._, p. xix), and
        as justice-errant in Bedfordshire, A.D. 1163, in the story of
        Philip de Broi (above, p. 21).

        [1798] Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, list of sheriffs, p. 339; _ib._
        pp. 265, 273, 281, 291, 298. Pipe Roll I. Ric. I. (Hunter)
        _passim_.

        [1799] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 16, 28, 96, 153.

        [1800] Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii., pref. p. xlviii, note
        6.

        [1801] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 66.

        [1802] _Ibid._ Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p.
        451. Ann. Waverl. a. 1198 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p.
        251).

        [1803] Instructions in Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 61, 62. The
        judges were Hugh Bardulf, Roger Arundel and Geoffrey Hacket;
        they held pleas in Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire,
        Yorkshire, Northumberland, Westmoreland, Cumberland and
        Lancashire.

        [1804] Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 62–66.

Stern and cruel, however, as was the administration of the last eight
months of Richard’s reign, it was still part of a salutary discipline.
The milder chastenings which Richard’s English subjects had endured
from Hubert Walter, the scorpion-lashes with which he chastised them
by the hands of Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, were both alike stages in the
training which Richard’s predecessor had begun, and whose value they
were to learn when left face to face with the personal tyranny of his
successor. For nearer at hand than they could dream was the day when
English people and Angevin king were to stand face to face indeed,
more closely than they had ever stood before. The nine generations of
increasing prosperity promised to Fulk the Good were all numbered and
fulfilled, and with their fulfilment had come the turn of the tide.
The power of the Angevins had reached its destined limit, and had
begun to recede again. From the sacred eastern land all trace of it was
already swept away; in the west it was, slowly indeed as yet, but none
the less surely falling back. Five years were still to pass before the
tide should be fairly out; then it was to leave the Good Count’s heir
stranded, not on the black rock of Angers, but on the white cliffs of
England.

Richard had spent the first half of his reign in fighting for a lost
cause in Palestine; he spent the other half in fighting for a losing
cause in Gaul. The final result of the long series of conquests
and annexations whereby the Angevin counts, from Fulk the Red to
Henry Fitz-Empress, had been enlarging their borders for more than
two hundred years, had been to bring them into direct geographical
contact and political antagonism with an enemy more formidable than
any whom they had yet encountered. In their earliest days the king
of the French had been their patron; a little later, he had become
their tool. Now, he was their sole remaining rival; and ere long he
was to be their conqueror. Since the opening of the century, a great
change had taken place in the political position of the French Crown;
a change which was in a considerable measure due to the yet greater
change in the position of the Angevin house. When Louis VI. came to the
throne in 1109, he found the so-called “kingdom of France” distributed
somewhat as follows. The western half, from the river Somme to the
Pyrenees, was divided between four great fiefs--Normandy, Britanny,
Anjou and Aquitaine. Four others--Champagne, Burgundy, Auvergne and
Toulouse--covered its eastern portion from the river Meuse to the
Mediterranean Sea; another, Flanders, occupied its northernmost angle,
between the sources of the Meuse, the mouth of the Scheld, and the
English Channel. The two lines of great fiefs were separated by an
irregular group of smaller territories, amid which lay, distributed in
two very unequal portions, the royal domain. Its northern and larger
half, severed from Flanders by the little counties of Amiens and
Vermandois, was flanked on the east by Champagne and on the north-west
by Normandy, while its south-western border was ringed in by the
counties of Chartres, Blois and Sancerre, which parted it from Anjou,
and which were all linked together with Champagne under the same ruling
house. Southward, in the upper valleys of the Loire and the Cher, a
much smaller fragment of royal domain, comprising the viscounty of
Bourges and the territory afterwards known as the Bourbonnais, lay
crowded in between Auvergne, the Aquitanian district of Berry, and the
Burgundian counties of Mâcon and Nevers and that of Sancerre, which
parted it from the larger royal possessions north of the Loire. The
whole domains of the Crown thus covered scarcely more ground than the
united counties of Anjou, Touraine and Maine, scarcely so much as the
duchy of Normandy. Within these limits, however, Louis VI. had in his
twenty-nine years’ reign contrived to establish his absolute authority
on so firm a basis that from thenceforth the independence of the Crown
was secured. To destroy that of the great feudataries, and to bring
them one by one into a subjection as absolute as that of the royal
domain itself, was the work which he bequeathed to his successors.

[Illustration: Map VII.

  FRANCE AND THE ANGEVIN DOMINIONS.

  To illustrate the wars of Richard and John with Philip Augustus.

  Key: _Royal Domain of Philip. A. D. 1194._

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

We may set aside the temporary annexation of Aquitaine through the
marriage of Louis VII. and Eleanor as forming no part of this process
of absorption. In the plans of Louis VI. it was doubtless meant to be a
very important part; but as a matter of fact, its historical importance
proved to be of a wholly different kind. The marriage of Louis and
Eleanor contributed to the final acquisition of Guienne and Gascony
by the French Crown not a whit more than the marriage of Geoffrey
Martel and Agnes had contributed to their acquisition by the house of
Anjou. The Parisian king, like his Angevin follower of old, had work
to do on his own side of the Loire before he might safely attempt
the conquest of the south. By the middle of the century, the map of
Gaul had undergone a marked transformation. Its eastern and central
portions indeed remained unchanged; but the western half was utterly
metamorphosed. Its four great divisions had been virtually swept away,
and the whole land had become Angevin. In face of this altered state
of things, the remaining powers of northern Gaul were of necessity
driven into union, as a counterpoise to this enormous growth of Anjou;
and the only possible centre of union, alike in a political and a
geographical point of view, was the king of the French. He alone could
claim to match in rank and dignity the crowned masters of the west;
and under his leadership alone was it possible to face them all along
the line from the mouth of the Somme to the source of the Cher with a
front as unbroken as their own. The old Angevin march had ceased to
be a marchland at all; its original character was now transferred to
the counties of Chartres and Blois; while to north and south of these,
from Nonancourt to Aumale and along the whole course of the Cher above
Vierzon, the royal domain itself was the sole bulwark of north-eastern
Gaul against the advancing power of Anjou. To secure Chartres and Blois
was the first necessity for the king: but their counts needed his
protection even more than he needed their fidelity, for the whole width
of his domains parted them from Champagne, where the bulk of their
strength lay. Accordingly Louis VII., by the matrimonial alliances
which he formed first for his daughters and lastly for himself with the
house of Blois and Champagne, easily succeeded in binding them to a
community of personal interests with the royal house of France, whereby
their subservience to the French Crown was for the future secured. The
chain was too strong to be broken by the boyish wilfulness of Philip
Augustus; and from the moment of his reconciliation with his mother and
uncles in 1180, the whole military and political strength of Blois,
Chartres and Champagne may be reckoned at his command as unreservedly
as that of his own immediate domains.

Since that time, the royal power had made an important advance to the
northward. At the opening of Philip’s reign the dominions of the count
of Flanders stretched from the Channel to the borders of Champagne,
covered the whole northern frontier of the royal domain, and touched
that of Normandy at its junction with Ponthieu. Twelve years later,
more than half this territory had passed, either by cession or by
conquest, into the hands of the king. Vermandois was given up to him
in 1186; and in 1191 the death of the Flemish count Philip made him
master of all Flanders south of the river Lys, which had been promised
to him as the dowry of his first queen, Elizabeth of Hainaut, niece
of the dead count and daughter of his successor.[1805] This was in
several respects a most valuable acquisition. Not only did it bring to
the Crown a considerable accession of territory, including the whole
upper valley of the Somme, the famous fortress of Péronne, and the
flourishing towns of Amiens and Arras; but the power of Flanders, which
a few years before had threatened to overshadow every other power in
northern Gaul, was completely broken; and the effect upon the political
position of Normandy was more important still. While Vermandois and
Amiens were in Flemish hands, a league between the Flemish count and
the ruler of Normandy would at any moment not only place the whole
north-western border of France at their mercy, but would enable them to
call in the forces of the imperial Crown to a junction which the French
king could have no power to hinder, and which must almost certainly
lead to his ruin. Now, on the other hand, such a junction was rendered
well-nigh impossible; the whole territory between Normandy, Ponthieu
and the German border was in the king’s own hands, and all that was
left of Flanders lay in almost complete isolation between the Lys and
the sea. In fine, as the dukes of Burgundy had for several generations
been obedient followers of their royal kinsmen, now that Blois,
Champagne and Vermandois were all secured, the power and influence of
the French Crown north of the Loire was fully a match in territorial
extent for that of the house of Anjou. South of the Loire the balance
was less equal. The extensive possessions of the house of S. Gilles may
indeed be left out of both scales; their homage for Toulouse was now
secured to the dukes of Aquitaine, but it was a mere formality which
left them practically still independent of both their rival overlords.
It was indeed at the expense of Toulouse that the Angevin rulers of
Poitou had made their last conquest, that of the Quercy. But since
then the French king, too, had been gaining territory in Aquitaine; and
his gains were made at the expense of the Poitevin duke. Richard had
found it needful to buy Philip’s assent to his peaceful entrance upon
his ancestral heritage after his father’s death by a renunciation of
all claims upon Auvergne and a cession of two important lordships in
Berry, Graçay and Issoudun.[1806] The sacrifice was trifling in itself,
but it was significant. It marked Richard’s own consciousness that a
turning-point had come in the career of his house. Hitherto they had
gone steadily forward; now it was time to draw back. The aggressive
attitude which had been habitual to the counts of Anjou for nearly
three hundred years must be dropped at last. Henceforth they were to
stand on the defensive in their turn against the advance of the French
Crown.

        [1805] See above, p. 234, note 7{1115}.

        [1806] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.) p.
        29. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 75.

It was not the strength of that advance itself which made it so
formidable to Richard; it was the knowledge that, side by side with
the process of consolidation in France, there had been and still was
going on in the Angevin dominions a process of disintegration which
his father had been unable to check, and against which he himself
was well-nigh helpless. The French monarchy was built up around one
definite centre, a centre round which all the subordinate parts of the
structure grouped themselves unquestioningly as a matter of course.
Paris and its king, even when his practical authority was at the
lowest ebb, had always been in theory the accepted rallying-point of
the whole kingdom, the acknowledged head of the body politic, none of
whose members had ever dreamed of establishing any other in its place.
But the empire of Richard Cœur-de-Lion had no centre; or rather, it
had three or four rival ones. In Angevin eyes its centre was Angers;
in Norman eyes it was Rouen; to the men of the south, it was Poitiers.
Even Henry Fitz-Empress had felt at times the difficulty of fulfilling
two such opposite parts as those of duke of Normandy and count of
Anjou without rousing the jealous resentment of either country against
himself as the representative of the other; while as for Britanny
and Aquitaine, he had only been able to keep an uncertain hold over
them by sheer force, until Britanny was appeased by the marriage of
Constance, and Aquitaine subdued by the vigour of Richard. But for
Richard in his father’s place the difficulty was far greater. Chafe
as they might against the yoke which bound them together--dispute as
they might over their respective shares in their common ruler and their
respective claims upon him--neither Angevin nor Norman could fail to
recognize his own natural sovereign and national representative in
the son of Geoffrey and Matilda. But the chances of this recognition
being extended to the next generation expired with the young king.
If the two Henrys were strangers in Britanny and in Aquitaine, yet
on the banks of the Seine, the Loire and the Mayenne they were felt
to be at home. But Richard was at home nowhere, though he was master
everywhere, from the Solway to the Pyrenees. His Aquitanian subjects
for the most part, if they counted him as a fellow-countryman, counted
him none the less as an enemy; his subjects north of Loire counted him
as a southern stranger. Normans and Angevins still saw in him, as they
had been taught to see in him for the first twenty-six years of his
life, the representative not of Hrolf and William or of Fulk the Red
and Geoffrey Martel, but simply of his mother’s Poitevin ancestors.
The Bretons saw in him the son of their conqueror, asserting his
supremacy over them and their young native prince only by the right
of the stronger. As Suger had laid it down as an axiom, more than
half a century ago, that “Englishmen ought not to rule over Frenchmen
nor French over English,” so now we begin to discern growing up in
Richard’s continental dominions a feeling that Normans should not rule
over Angevins, nor Angevins over Normans, nor either over Bretons and
Poitevins, nor Poitevins over any of the rest; and that if one and all
must needs submit to the loss of their ancient independence, it would
be more natural and less humiliating to lay it down at the feet of the
prince who had always been acknowledged in theory as the superior of
all alike, the king of the French.

This feeling, however, had scarcely come into existence, much less
risen to the surface of politics, when Philip Augustus came home from
the Crusade at Christmas 1191. It is scarcely probable that any plan
of actual conquest had as yet taken shape in Philip’s mind. But the
very audacity of the demand which he made upon the credulity of the
Norman constables when in the following spring he asked them to believe
that Richard had ceded to him not only the whole Vexin, but also the
counties of Aumale and Eu--a cession for which there was not a shadow
of reason either in past history or in present circumstances, and which
if carried into effect would have cut off the Norman communications
with Ponthieu and Flanders, and given him at once a foothold upon
the Channel and an invaluable coign of vantage for an attempt upon
Rouen--seems to indicate that he was already forming some more definite
design against the Angevins’ power than the simple system of lying
in wait to steal from them any territorial or political advantage
that could be stolen with impunity, with which he, like his father,
had hitherto been content. The terms of his treaty with John in the
following year point still more strongly in the same direction. As the
price of John’s investiture with the rest of his brother’s dominions,
Philip reserved to himself the whole Norman territory on the right bank
of the Seine, except the city of Rouen; on the left bank, nearly half
the viscounty of Evreux, including the castles of Vaudreuil, Verneuil
and Ivry; and from the older Angevin patrimony, all that was most
worth having in Touraine--Tours itself, Azay, Montbazon, Montrichard,
Amboise and Loches--besides the transfer of the Angevin fiefs in
the Vendômois from the count of Anjou to the count of Blois.[1807]
Owing to the disorganized state of Richard’s dominions caused by his
captivity, Philip’s endeavours to carry this bargain into effect by
conquering Normandy in John’s interest and his own met for a while
with considerable success. His first attempt at invasion was indeed
repulsed by the Norman barons under the leadership of Earl Robert of
Leicester;[1808] but a few weeks later treason opened to him the gates
of Gisors and Neaufle; the rest of the Vexin was easily won,[1809] and
secured thus against attack in his rear, he marched northward to the
capture of Aumale and Eu.[1810] Thence he turned back to besiege Rouen,
but soon retreated again into his own territories,[1811] taking Pacy
and Ivry on his way.[1812] In July, finding that, according to his own
phrase, the Angevin demon was after all to be let loose upon him once
more, he thought it advisable to accept Richard’s overtures of peace;
and Richard on his part--being still in prison--deemed it wise for the
moment to sanction the French king’s recent conquests in Normandy and
the liberation of Ademar of Angoulême, and also to let Philip have
temporary possession of Loches, Châtillon-sur-Indre, Driencourt and
Arques, as pledges for the payment of twenty thousand marks, due within
two years of his own release.[1813]

        [1807] Treaty in Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 57.

        [1808] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 205.

        [1809] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 206. Will. Newb., l.
        iv. c. 34 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 389, 390). Rigord (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 36. Will. Armor. _Gesta
        Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 77.

        [1810] Will. Newb. as above (p. 390).

        [1811] _Ibid._ Rog. Howden, as above. Cf. Chron. Rothom., a.
        1193 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. i. p. 369).

        [1812] Will. Newb. as above.

        [1813] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 217–220. These were apparently
        the twenty thousand marks promised in 1189 and not yet paid.

Whether he intended to keep or to break these engagements is
practically no matter; for, if he meant to break them, Philip took care
to anticipate him. Seven months after the treaty was signed he again
crossed the Norman border, took Evreux,[1814] which he handed over to
John’s custody,[1815] and marched up by way of Neubourg and Vaudreuil,
both of which he captured, to besiege Rouen. Thence, however, he again
retired--scared, it may be, by tidings of Richard’s approach--and
hurrying back to the southern border laid siege to Verneuil on May
10.[1816] Two days later Richard landed at Barfleur,[1817] and by the
end of another fortnight he was encamped at L’Aigle,[1818] within a
few miles of Verneuil. His presence there, coupled with the defection
of John who had contrived to join him on the road,[1819] and the
surprise and slaughter of the French garrison of Evreux by a body
of Norman troops,[1820] alarmed Philip so much that on Whitsun Eve,
May 28, he again fled into his own dominions.[1821] Richard was busy
strengthening the walls of Verneuil when tidings came to him that “the
Angevins and Cenomannians” were besieging Montmirail,[1822] a castle
on the borders of Perche and Maine, famous as the scene of a stormy
conference between Henry II. and S. Thomas. Who the besiegers actually
were, or what was the ground of their hostility either to William
of Montmirail[1823] or to his overlord King Richard, must remain
undecided. It is plain, however, that in Richard’s ears the tidings
sounded as a warning of disaffection in his patrimonial dominions.
He hurried to the relief of Montmirail, but found it levelled with
the ground.[1824] He wasted no time in pursuit of its destroyers, but
pushed on direct to Tours, took up his quarters in Châteauneuf,[1825]
and shewed his suspicions concerning the origin of the new mischief by
driving the canons of S. Martin out of the abbey where they dwelt under
the special protection of the French king.[1826] The burghers, on the
other hand, made proof of their loyalty by a free-will offering of two
thousand marks.[1827] Determined now to redeem his pledges to Philip
not with gold but with steel, Richard marched on to Beaulieu,[1828] to
join a body of Navarrese and Brabantines, sent by his brother-in-law
Sancho of Navarre, in blockading the castle of Loches;[1829] a few
days after his arrival, on June 13, it was surrendered by its French
garrison.[1830] He was however standing between two fires. Bertrand de
Born was again stirring up the south, singing and fighting ostensibly
in Richard’s interest against his disaffected neighbours in the
Limousin, but in reality kindling into a fresh blaze all the reckless
passions and endless feuds which had been smouldering too long for the
warrior-poet’s pleasure.[1831] Philip meanwhile was again threatening
Rouen;[1832] the Norman archbishop and seneschal attempted to negotiate
with him in Richard’s name, but without result;[1833] and at the end of
the month he marched southward to meet Richard himself. On July 4 the
two kings were within a few miles of each other--Richard at Vendôme,
Philip at Fréteval.[1834] What followed is told so diversely by the
English and French historians of the time that it seems impossible
to reconcile the rival accounts or to decide between them. All that
we know for certain is that Philip suddenly struck his tents and
withdrew into the territories of the count of Blois; that Richard set
off in pursuit, missed Philip himself, but fell at unawares upon the
troops who were convoying his baggage towards Blois, routed them, and
captured all the French king’s most precious possessions, including
his royal seal and the treasury-rolls of the whole kingdom, besides
a number of valuable horses, an immense quantity of money and plate,
and--what would be scarcely less useful to Richard for political
purposes--the charters of agreement between Philip and all the Norman,
Angevin and Poitevin rebels who had plotted treason with him and John
against their lord.[1835]

        [1814] Will. Newb. as above, c. 40 (p. 403). Rigord (as above),
        p. 37. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ as above; _Philipp._, l.
        iv. (_ibid._) p. 143.

        [1815] Will. Armor. _Philipp._ as above.

        [1816] Rigord as above. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ as
        above. Cf. _Philipp._ as above; Rog. Howden (as above), pp.
        251, 252; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 114, 115; and Will.
        Newb., l. v. c. 2 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 418). The date of the
        siege of Verneuil comes from Rog. Howden.

        [1817] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 251. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 114.

        [1818] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 2 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 418).

        [1819] Rog. Howden (as above), p. 252. R. Diceto, as above,
        says they met “apud Bruis.”

        [1820] This is all that Rigord says about the disaster
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 37). In the
        hands of the poet William of Armorica it becomes a horrible
        romance, wherein John, as commandant of Evreux, invites the
        unsuspecting Frenchmen to a banquet, and then brings in his
        “armed Englishmen” to massacre them (_Philipp._, l. iv.,
        _ib._ p. 143; _Gesta Phil. Aug._, _ib._ p. 77). John has so
        many undoubted crimes to answer for that it probably seemed
        a mere trifle to add one more to the list, but for that very
        reason one cannot admit it on the sole testimony of the
        poet-historiographer. The English writers say nothing of the
        whole matter.

        [1821] Rog. Howden and Will. Newb. as above. R. Diceto (as
        above), p. 115. Cf. Rigord and Will. Armor. as above.

        [1822] “Andegavenses et Cenomannenses” says Rog. Howden as
        above. R. Diceto (as above), p. 116, has “Andegavenses” only;
        the Chron. S. Albin. a. 1192 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 49), has
        “Andegavenses et alii.”

        [1823] William “Gohet” as R. Diceto calls him; _i.e._ (see
        Bishop Stubbs’s note, _ibid._), “William of Perche Gouet,
        Goeth, or le petit Perche.”

        [1824] Rog. Howden as above. R. Diceto as above, p. 117. Cf.
        Chron. S. Albin. a. 1192 (as above).

        [1825] R. Diceto as above.

        [1826] Rigord (Duchesne), _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p.
        38.

        [1827] “Dono spontaneo,” Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p.
        252; “nullâ coactione præmissâ,” R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii.
        p. 117. The “burgenses” in question, as appears from R. Diceto,
        were those of Châteauneuf, not the _cives_ of Tours proper.

        [1828] R. Diceto as above.

        [1829] Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 252, 253.

        [1830] _Ib._ p. 253 (with the date). R. Diceto as above. Cf.
        Chron. S. Albin. a. 1192 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 49).

        [1831] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, pp. 83, 84.

        [1832] Rog. Howden as above, p. 253. R. Diceto, p. 116.

        [1833] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 253–255.

        [1834] R. Diceto as above.

        [1835] Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 255, 256; R.
        Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 117, 118; Will. Newb., l. v.
        c. 2 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 419); Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 38; Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil.
        Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 77; _Philipp._, l. iv. (_ibid._), p. 144;
        and Chron. S. Albin. a. 1192 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 49).
        Rog. Howden alone mentions the charters, and Will. Armor. the
        treasury-rolls and seal.

The repairing of this disaster gave Philip sufficient occupation
for the rest of the year, and Richard was free to march upon the
Aquitanian rebels. Sancho of Navarre was already wasting the lands of
the ringleaders, Geoffrey of Rancogne and Ademar of Angoulême;[1836]
and by July 22 Richard was able to report to his justiciar in England
that he was master of all the castles of the Angoumois and all the
lands of Geoffrey.[1837] From Angoulême he marched northward again,
took measures for the security of Anjou and Maine,[1838] and then
returned to Normandy, where he found that his representatives, headed
by the chancellor, had just concluded a truce with the French king
to last till All Saints’ day[1839]--a proceeding which served him
as the pretext for that withdrawal of the seal from William and
repudiation of all engagements made under it, which has been mentioned
already.[1840] No further movement was however made by either party
until the spring. Then the wearisome story of fruitless negotiations
alternating with indecisive warfare begins again, and goes on
unceasingly for the next four years. Save for an occasional attempt to
make a diversion in Berry, the actual fighting between the two kings
was confined to the Norman border.[1841] Normandy was the chief object
of Philip’s attack, partly no doubt because, owing to its geographical
position, he could invade it with more ease and less risk than any
other part of Richard’s dominions, but also because it was the key
to all the rest. A French conquest of Normandy would sever Richard’s
communications not only with Flanders and Germany, but also with
England; and the strength of the Angevins in Gaul now rested chiefly
upon the support of their island-realm. Neither assailant nor defender,
however, was able to gain any decisive advantage in the field. The
armed struggle between them was in fact of less importance than the
diplomatic rivalry which they carried on side by side with it; and in
this, strangely enough, Richard, who had hitherto shewn so little of
the far-sighted statecraft and political tact of his race, proved more
than a match for his wily antagonist.

        [1836] R. Diceto as above, p. 117. Will. Newb. as above.

        [1837] Letter of Richard to Hubert Walter (date, Angoulême,
        July 22) in Rog. Howden as above, pp. 256, 257. Cf. R. Diceto
        as above, pp. 118, 119. Will. Newb. as above (p. 420).

        [1838] “Rediit in Andegaviam, et redemit omnes baillivos suos,
        id est, ad redemptionem coegit. Similiter fecit in Cenomanniâ.”
        Rog. Howden as above, p. 267. At Le Mans “convocavit magnates
        omnes suæ jurisdictioni subpositos,” and apparently tried to
        shame them into more active loyalty--or more liberal gifts--by
        eulogy of their English brethren: “ubi fidem Anglorum in
        adversitate suâ semper sibi gratiosam, integram et probabilem
        plurimum commendavit.” R. Diceto as above, p. 119.

        [1839] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 257–260. Cf. R. Diceto as
        above, p. 120, and Will. Newb., l. v. c. 3 (as above). This
        last gives a wrong date; that of the document in Rog. Howden is
        July 23.

        [1840] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 267. See above, p.
        343.

        [1841] It may be followed in Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii.
        pp. 301–305, vol. iv. pp. 3–7, 14, 16, 19–21, 24, 54–61, 68,
        78–81; Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), pp.
        38–40, 42; Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), pp. 78,
        79; _Philipp._, l. v. (_ib._), pp. 146–154.

That the foes in Richard’s own household should league themselves
against him with Philip, as he had done in earlier days against his
own father, was, so far as Richard himself is concerned, no more than
retributive justice. Philip’s alliance with John had proved a failure;
but it was not long before he saw a chance of securing a more useful
tool in the person of little Arthur of Britanny. English historians
tell us that when Richard and Philip made their treaty at Messina in
March 1191 Richard obtained a formal acknowledgement of his rights,
as duke of Normandy, to the overlordship of Britanny and the liege
homage of its duke.[1842] The text of the treaty of Messina, however,
contains not a word on this subject; the agreement, if made at all,
must have been drawn up in a separate form; and it seems to have
remained a dead letter, like another agreement made at the same place a
few months earlier--the treaty with Tancred whereby Richard had engaged
to recognize Arthur of Britanny as his successor in default of direct
heirs. Although after five years of marriage Queen Berengaria was
still childless, no such recognition had yet been made. Richard on his
return to Europe probably perceived that Arthur’s succession would be
impossible in England, and in Gaul would be fatal to the independence
of the Angevin house. Accordingly, he was once more doing all in
his power to win the attachment of John; and John, having at length
discovered that his own interests could be better served by supporting
his brother than by intriguing against him, proved an active and useful
ally in the war against Philip.[1843] On the other hand, Richard seems
never to have received Arthur’s homage for Britanny; and those who had
the control of political affairs in that country were determined that
he never should. The dispute between Henry and Philip for the wardship
of the two children of Geoffrey and Constance had apparently ended in
a compromise. Eleanor, the elder child, was now under the care of her
uncle Richard;[1844] but Constance seems to have succeeded in keeping
her infant boy out of the reach of both his would-be guardians, and,
moreover, in governing her duchy without any reference to either of
them, for nearly seven years after the death of her father-in-law King
Henry. She had been given in marriage by him, when scarcely twelve
months a widow, to Earl Ralf of Chester,[1845] son and successor of
Earl Hugh who had been one of the leaders in the revolt of 1173. As
the earls of Chester were hereditary viscounts of the Avranchin--the
border-district of Normandy and Britanny--this marriage would have
furnished an excellent means of securing the Norman hold upon the
Breton duchy, if only Ralf himself could have secured a hold upon his
wife. In this however he completely failed. Safe in her hereditary
dominions, with her boy at her side, and strong in the support of
her people rejoicing in their newly-regained independence, Constance
apparently set Ralf, Richard and Philip all alike at defiance, till in
1196 Richard summoned her to a conference with himself in Normandy,
and she set out to obey the summons. Scarcely had she touched the soil
of the Avranchin at Pontorson when she was caught by her husband and
imprisoned in his castle of S. James-de-Beuvron.[1846] It is hard not
to suspect that Richard and Ralf had plotted the capture between them;
for Richard, instead of insisting upon her release, at once renewed
his claim to the wardship of Arthur, and prepared to enforce it at
the sword’s point. The Bretons first hurried their young duke away to
the innermost fastnesses of their wild and desolate country under the
care of the bishop of Vannes,[1847] and then, after a vain attempt to
liberate his mother, intrusted him to the protection of the king of
France,[1848] who of course received him with open arms, and sent him
to be educated with his own son.[1849]

        [1842] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 161. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
        vol. iii. pp. 99, 100.

        [1843] See _e.g._ Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 5, 16, 60;
        Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 38;
        Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 77.

        [1844] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 275, 278.

        [1845] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 29.

        [1846] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 7.

        [1847] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. v. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 149. Will. Newb., l. v. c. 18 (Howlett,
        vol. ii. pp. 463, 464).

        [1848] Rog. Howden as above.

        [1849] Will. Armor. as above.

Philip had now got the old Angevin patrimony between two fires; but
the Bretons were so little accustomed to act in concert even among
themselves, far less with any other power, that he found it impossible
to make any real use of them as allies either for military or political
purposes. The independent warfare which they carried on with Richard
across the south-western border of Normandy[1850] had little effect
upon that which Richard and Philip were carrying on along its eastern
border; and upon the Angevin lands which lay directly between Britanny
and France the Breton revolt had no effect at all. To the end of
Richard’s life, we hear of no further troubles in Maine or Anjou.
Nay more, we hear of no further troubles in Aquitaine. If Philip
had in some sense turned Richard’s flank in the west, Richard had
turned Philip’s flank far more effectually in the south. The unwonted
tranquillity there may indeed have been partly due to the fact that
one of the chief sources of disturbance was removed in 1196 by the
withdrawal of Bertrand de Born into a monastery;[1851] but it was also
in great measure owing to Richard’s quickness in seizing an opportunity
which presented itself, in that same eventful year, of forming a
lasting alliance with the house of Toulouse. His old enemy Count
Raymond V. was dead;[1852] he now offered the hand of his own favourite
sister, the still young and handsome Queen Jane of Sicily, to the new
Count Raymond VI.;[1853] and thenceforth the eastern frontier of his
Aquitanian duchy was as secure under the protection of his sister’s
husband as its southern frontier under that of his wife’s brother, the
king of Navarre.

        [1850] Will. Newb. as above, c. 30 (p. 491). Rog. Howden as
        above.

        [1851] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, p. 92.

        [1852] In 1194, according to Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 38.

        [1853] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 13. Will. Newb., l. v.
        c. 30 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 491). R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p.
        70.

Nor were Richard’s alliances confined within the boundaries of Gaul.
His year of captivity in Germany had not been all wasted time. When
he parted from his imperial jailor in the spring of 1194, they were,
at any rate in outward semblance, close political allies; and at the
same time Richard had succeeded in gaining over his bitterest foe,
Leopold of Austria, by an offer of his niece Eleanor of Britanny as
wife to Leopold’s son.[1854] The marriage-contract was however not
yet executed when the Austrian duke met with a fatal accident and
died in agony, owning with his last breath that his miserable end was
a just retribution for his conduct towards the English king.[1855]
The impression made by this event deepened the feeling of respect and
awe which the captive lion had already contrived to inspire in the
princes of the Empire. Meanwhile Henry VI. had made himself master
of Sicily;[1856] and now the old dream by which the German Emperors
never quite ceased to be haunted, the dream of re-asserting their
imperial supremacy over Gaul, was beginning to shape itself anew in
his brain. In the summer of 1195 he sent to Richard a golden crown
and a message charging him, on his plighted faith to the Emperor and
on the very lives of his hostages, to invade the French kingdom at
once, and promising him the support and co-operation of the imperial
forces. Richard, suspecting a trap, despatched William of Longchamp
to inquire into the exact nature, extent and security of Henry’s
promised assistance; Philip vainly tried to intercept the envoy as he
passed through the royal domains;[1857] and the negotiations proved
so far effectual that Henry remitted seventeen thousand marks out of
the ransom, as a contribution to Richard’s expenses in his struggle
with Philip.[1858] When, on Michaelmas Eve 1197, Henry VI. died,[1859]
the use of that homage on Richard’s part which his English subjects
had resented so bitterly was made apparent to them at last. While the
English king was holding his Christmas court at Rouen there came to him
an embassy from the princes of Germany, summoning him, as chief among
the lay members of the Empire[1860] by virtue of his investiture with
the kingdom of Arles, to take part with them in the election of a new
Emperor at Cöln on February 22.[1861] Richard himself could not venture
to leave Gaul; but the issue proved that his presence at Cöln was not
needed to secure his interests there. He wished that the imperial crown
should be given to his nephew Duke Henry of Saxony, eldest son and
successor of Henry the Lion. This scheme, however, when laid before the
other electors by the envoys whom he sent to represent him at Cöln,
was rejected on account of the duke’s absence in Holy Land.[1862] The
representatives of the English king then proposed Henry’s brother
Otto, for whom Richard had long been vainly endeavouring to find
satisfactory provision on either side of the sea,[1863] and who seems
really to have been his favourite nephew. The result was that, on the
appointed day, Otto was elected Emperor of the Romans,[1864] and on
July 12 he was crowned king of the Germans at Aachen by the archbishop
of Cöln.[1865]

        [1854] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 273. See above, p.
        325.

        [1855] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 276, 277. R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. p. 124. Will. Newb. as above, c. 8 (pp. 431–434). R.
        Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 65, 66.

        [1856] In the autumn of 1194. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii.
        pp. 268–270. Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 123, 124.

        [1857] Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 300, 301.

        [1858] _Ib._ pp. 303, 304.

        [1859] _Ib._ vol. iv. p. 31.

        [1860] “Sicut præcipuum membrum imperii.” _Ib._ p. 37.

        [1861] _Ibid._

        [1862] _Ib._ pp. 37, 38.

        [1863] He appointed him earl of York in 1190, but as the grant
        was made after the king left England, some of the Yorkshire
        folk doubted its genuineness, and Otto never succeeded in
        obtaining possession. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 86.
        The elaborate scheme for his endowment in the north, projected
        in 1195, has already been mentioned (above, p. 341). This
        having also failed, Richard in 1196 gave him the investiture
        of Poitou. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 7; cf. _ib._ vol.
        iii. p. 86, and R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 70.

        [1864] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 37–39. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 163.

        [1865] R. Diceto as above.

For a moment, at the mere prospect of beholding a grandson of Henry
Fitz-Empress seated upon the imperial throne of the west, there had
flashed across the mind of at least one friend of the Angevin house
a fancy that the world-wide dominion which seemed to be passing away
from the heirs of Fulk the Good was to be renewed for yet one more
generation.[1866] There was indeed an opposition party in Germany,
who set up a rival Emperor in the person of Philip of Suabia, a
brother of Henry VI.;[1867] and he at once made common cause with
his French namesake.[1868] This Suabian alliance, however, and the
support of the count of Ponthieu--purchased two years before with the
hand of the unhappy Adela, whom Richard had at last restored to her
brother[1869]--could not much avail Philip Augustus against such a
league as was now gathering around the English king. The vast sums
which Hubert Walter had been sending, year after year, to his royal
master over sea were bringing a goodly interest at last. Flanders,
Britanny, Champagne, had all been secretly detached from the French
alliance and bought over to the service of Richard;[1870] the Flemish
count had already drawn Philip into a war in which he narrowly escaped
being made prisoner;[1871] and in the summer of 1198, when the imperial
election was over, not only Baldwin of Flanders, Reginald of Boulogne,
Baldwin of Guines, Henry of Louvain, Everard of Brienne, Geoffrey of
Perche and Raymond of Toulouse, but even the young count Louis of
Blois and the boy-duke Arthur of Britanny himself, one and all leagued
themselves in an offensive and defensive alliance with Richard against
the French king.[1872] The immediate consequence was that Philip
begged Hubert Walter, who being just released from his justiciarship
had rejoined his sovereign in Normandy, to make peace for him with
Richard; and he even went so far as to offer the surrender of all
the Norman castles which he had won, except Gisors. Richard however
would listen to no terms in which his allies were not included.[1873]
At last, in November, a truce was made, to last till the usual term,
S. Hilary’s day.[1874] When it expired the two kings held a colloquy
on the Seine between Vernon and Les Andelys, Richard in a boat on
the river, Philip on horseback on the shore;[1875] this meeting was
followed by another, where, by the mediation of a cardinal-legate,
Peter of Capua, who had lately arrived in Gaul, they were persuaded to
prolong their truce for five years.[1876]

[Illustration: Plan VII.

  LES ANDELYS AND CHATEAU-GAILLARD.

  (From Deville, “Histoire du Château-Gaillard”)

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

        [1866] R. Diceto tells the story of the prophecy made to Fulk
        the Good in two places; in the _Abbreviationes Historiarum_
        (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 149) and in the _Opuscula_ (vol. ii. pp.
        267, 268). In the latter place he adds: “Quod quondam probavit
        regnum Jerosolimitanum; quod adhuc ostendit regnum Anglorum;
        quod suo tempore declarabit Romanum imperium.” This, as Bishop
        Stubbs notes, “looks like an anticipation of the election
        of Otto IV. to the empire.... As Bishop Longchamp died in
        1197, before which date we must suppose MS. R to have been
        written” [the MS. from which the _Opuscula_ are printed, and
        which begins with a dedication to William of Longchamp], “it
        can scarcely be a prophecy after the event.” As William of
        Longchamp died January 31, 1197 (R. Diceto, vol. ii. p. 150;
        February 1 according to Gerv. Cant., Stubbs, vol. i. p. 543),
        it seems indeed to shew that the possibility of one or other
        of Richard’s nephews becoming Emperor at the next vacancy was
        already in contemplation more than eight months before the
        death of Henry VI. Or was Ralf dreaming rather of a transfer of
        the imperial crown to Richard himself? for it is to be observed
        that Otto can be included within the “nine generations” only
        by excluding from them Fulk the Good himself; but this mode of
        computing would fail if applied to the eastern branch of the
        Angevin house, where it would give only eight generations, so
        that we can hardly suppose it to have been adopted by Ralf.
        According to R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 88, and Gerv. Cant.
        as above, p. 545, a party among the electors actually did
        choose Richard, and--much more strangely--another party chose
        Philip of France.

        [1867] Rog. Howden as above, p. 39.

        [1868] Treaty in Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 70; date,
        June 29 [1197].

        [1869] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 303. Rigord
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 38. Will.
        Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._) p. 77.

        [1870] Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 19, R. Coggeshall
        (Stevenson), p. 77, and Will. Newb., l. v. c. 32 (Howlett, vol.
        ii. p. 495). Richard’s treaty with Flanders is in R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 152, 153, and Rymer, as above, pp. 67,
        68; it has no date, but as R. Diceto (as above, p. 158) tells
        us that it was drawn up by Hubert Walter, and also that Hubert
        was in Gaul from September 14 (or 28, according to Gerv. Cant.,
        Stubbs, vol. i. p. 574) to November 8 [1197], it must fall in
        that interval.

        [1871] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 20, 21. Will. Newb. as above.
        R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 77, 78.

        [1872] Rog. Howden as above, p. 54.

        [1873] _Ib._ p. 61.

        [1874] _Ib._ p. 68.

        [1875] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 79, 80.

        [1876] _Ib._ p. 80. Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._,
        vol. v.), p. 42.

Yet all the while, there lurked in Richard’s heart a misgiving that,
in the last resort, his diplomacy would prove to have been in vain;
that, strive as he might to turn away the tide of war from his own
borders by stirring up north and east and south to overwhelm the Crown
of France, still, after all, the day must come when the Angevins would
have to stake their political existence solely upon their own military
resources, and to stand at bay, unaided, unsupported, alone, behind
whatever bulwark they might be able to devise by their own military
genius. It was the genius and the foresight of Richard himself which
insured that when the crisis came, the bulwark was ready, even though
it were doomed to prove unavailing in the end. The last and mightiest
of the many mighty fortresses reared by Angevin hands since the first
great builder of the race had begun his castle-building in the Loire
valley was the Château-Gaillard, the “saucy castle” of Richard the
Lion-heart. He “fixed its site where the Seine bends suddenly at
Gaillon in a great semicircle to the north, and where the valley of
Les Andelys breaks the line of the chalk cliffs along its banks. Blue
masses of woodland crown the distant hills; within the river curve
lies a dull reach of flat meadow, round which the Seine, broken with
green islets and dappled with the grey and blue of the sky, flashes
like a silver bow on its way to Rouen.”[1877] Some three-quarters of a
league from the right bank of the river, in a valley opening upon it
from the eastward and watered by the little stream of Gambon, stood
the town of Andely. Between the town and the river stretched a lake,
or rather perhaps a marsh,[1878] through which the Gambon and another
lesser rivulet descending from the hills to the north of Andely found
their way by two separate issues into the Seine, nearly opposite two
islets, of which the larger and more northerly was known as the Isle
of Andely.[1879] The space enclosed between the three rivers and the
marsh seems to have been a tract of waste land, occupied only by a
toll-house for the collection of dues from the vessels passing up and
down the Seine[1880]--dues which formed one of the most important items
in the revenue of the archbishop of Rouen, to whom Andely and its
neighbourhood belonged.[1881] Over against this spot, on the southern
bank of the Gambon, in the angle formed by its junction with the Seine,
a mass of limestone crag rose abruptly to the height of three hundred
feet. Its western side, almost perpendicular, looked down upon the
great river, the northern, scarcely less steep, over the Gambon and
the lake beyond; to the north-east and south-west its rocky slopes
died down into deep ravines, and only a narrow neck of land at its
south-eastern extremity connected it with the lofty plateau covered
with a dense woodland known as the Forest of Andely, which stretches
along the eastern side of the Seine valley between Andely and Gaillon.
One glance at the site was enough to rivet a soldier’s gaze. If,
instead of the metropolitan church of Normandy, a lay baron had owned
the soil of Andely, we may be sure that long ago that lofty brow would
have received its fitting crown; if the power of Fulk the Builder had
reached to the banks of the Seine, we may doubt whether the anathemas
of the Norman primate would not have availed as little to wrest such a
spot from his grasp as those of the archbishop of Tours had availed to
wrest from him the site of Montrichard. But a greater castle-builder
than Fulk Nerra himself was the architect of Château-Gaillard.

        [1877] I copy Mr. Green’s picture, _Hist. of the English
        People_, vol. i. p. 187.

        [1878] Now dried up. See Deville, _Hist. du Château-Gaillard_,
        pp. 27, 28.

        [1879] “Est locus Andelii qui nunc habet insula nomen.” Will.
        Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. v. 29 (Deville, _Château-Gaillard_,
        p. 126; Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 169).

        [1880] See a charter of Archbishop Malger (11th century) and
        one of Pope Eugene III., a. 1148, quoted in Deville as above,
        p. 26, note 2.

        [1881] The archbishops seem to have looked upon Andely as
        their most profitable territorial possession; Rotrou called it
        his “unicum vivendi subsidium” (Rotr. Ep. xxiv., _Rer. Gall.
        Scriptt._, vol. xvi. p. 632); Walter called it “patrimonium
        ecclesiæ solum et unicum” (R. Diceto, Stubbs, vol. ii. p. 148).

Richard’s historical connexion with the “rock of Andely” has its
ill-omened beginning in a ghastly story of the fate of three French
prisoners whom he flung from its summit into the ravine below, in
vengeance for the slaughter of some Welsh auxiliaries who had been
surprised and cut to pieces by the French king’s troops in the
neighbouring valley.[1882] By the opening of 1196, however, he had
devised for it a more honourable use. In a treaty with Philip, drawn
up in January of that year, the fief of Andely was made the subject of
special provisions whereby it was reserved as a sort of neutral zone
between the territories of the two kings, and a significant clause was
added: “Andely shall not be fortified.”[1883] As by the same treaty the
older bulwarks of Normandy--Nonancourt, Ivry, Pacy, Vernon, Gaillon,
Neufmarché, Gisors--were resigned into Philip’s hands, this clause,
if strictly fulfilled, would have left the Seine without a barrier
and Rouen at the mercy of the French king. The agreement in short,
like all those which bore the signatures of Philip and Richard, was
made only to be broken; both parties broke it without delay; and while
Philip was forming his league with the Bretons for the ruin of Anjou,
Richard was tracing out in the valley of the Gambon and on the rock of
Andely the plan of a line of fortifications which were to interpose
an insurmountable barrier between his Norman capital and the French
invader. His first act was to seize the Isle of Andely.[1884] Here he
built a lofty octagonal tower, encircled by a ditch and rampart, and
threw a bridge over the river from each side of the island, linking it
thus to either shore.[1885] On the right, beyond the eastern bridge, he
traced out the walls of a new town, which took the name of the New or
the Lesser Andely,[1886] a secure stronghold whose artificial defences
of ramparts and towers were surrounded by the further protection of the
lake on its eastern side, the Seine on the west, and the two lesser
rivers to north and south, a bridge spanning each of these two little
streams forming the sole means of access from the mainland.[1887]
The southern bridge, that over the Gambon, linked this New Andely
with the foot of the rock which was to be crowned with the mightiest
work of all. Richard began by digging out to a yet greater depth the
ravines which parted this rock from the surrounding heights, so as to
make it wholly inaccessible save by the one connecting isthmus at its
south-eastern extremity. On its summit, which formed a plateau some six
hundred feet in length and two hundred in breadth at the widest part,
he reared a triple fortress. The outer ward consisted of a triangular
enclosure; its apex, facing the isthmus already mentioned, was crowned
by a large round tower,[1888] with walls ten feet in thickness; the
extremities of its base were strengthened by similar towers, and two
smaller ones broke the line of the connecting curtain-wall. This
was surrounded by a ditch dug in the rock to a depth of more than
forty feet, and having a perpendicular counterscarp. Fronting the
base of this outer fortress across the ditch on its north-western
side was a rampart surmounted by a wall ninety feet long and eight
feet thick, also flanked by two round towers; from these a similar
wall ran all round the edges of the plateau, where the steep sides
of the rock itself took the place of rampart and ditch. The wall on
the south-west side--the river-front--was broken by another tower,
cylindrical without, octagonal within; and its northern extremity
was protected by two mighty rectangular bastions. Close against one
of these stood a round tower, which served as the base of a third
enclosure, the heart and citadel of the whole fortress. Two-thirds
of its elliptical outline, on the east and south, were formed by a
succession of semicircular bastions, or segments of towers, seventeen
in number, each parted from its neighbour by scarcely more than
two feet of curtain-wall--an arrangement apparently imitated from the
fortress of Cherbourg, which was accounted the greatest marvel of
military architecture in Normandy, until its fame was eclipsed by that
of Richard’s work.[1889] This portion of the enclosure was built upon
a rampart formed by the excavation of a ditch about fifteen to twenty
feet in width; the counterscarp, like that of the outer ditches, was
perpendicular; and a series of casemates cut in the rock ran along on
this side for a distance of about eighty feet. On the western side of
the citadel stood the keep, a mighty circular tower, with walls of
the thickness of twelve feet, terminating at an angle of twenty feet
in depth where it projected into the enclosure; it had two or perhaps
three stages,[1890] and was lighted by two great arched windows, whence
the eye could range at will over the wooded hills and dales of the
Vexin, or the winding course of the river broadening onward to Rouen.
Behind the keep was placed the principal dwelling-house, and under this
a staircase cut out of the rock gave access to an underground passage
leading to some outworks and a tower near the foot of the hill, whence
a wall was carried down to the river-bank, just beyond the northern
extremity of a long narrow island known as the “isle of the Three
Kings”--doubtless from some one of the many meetings held in this
district by Louis VII. or Philip Augustus and the two Henrys.[1891] The
river itself was barred by a double stockade, crossing its bed from
shore to shore.[1892]

[Illustration: Plan VIII.

  CHATEAU-GAILLARD

  (From Deville, “Histoire du Château-Gaillard”).

  Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.      London, Macmillan & Co.
]

        [1882] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. v. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 151.

        [1883] Treaty in Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 66. For date see
        Rigord (Duchesne as above), p. 39.

        [1884] Letter of Walter of Rouen (a. 1196), R. Diceto (Stubbs),
        vol. ii. pp. 148, 149. Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p.
        14, and Will. Newb., l. v. c. 34 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 499).

        [1885] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 29–43 (Deville,
        _Château-Gaillard_, p. 126; Duchesne as above, p. 169).

        [1886] A poet of the thirteenth century, William Guiart, calls
        it “le Nouvel-Andeli.” It is known now as “le Petit-Andely.”
        Deville as above, p. 26.

        [1887] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 81. Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, p. 27.

        [1888] Now known as “tour de la Monnaie.” Deville as above, p.
        30, note 1.

        [1889] See Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, p. 34, and the passage
        there quoted from _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes
        d’Anjou_, p. 300).

        [1890] See Deville as above, p. 38, note 2.

        [1891] _Ib._ p. 36. The island is now joined to the mainland;
        _ib._ note 1.

        [1892] For description see Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 81;
        _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 48–85 (_ib._ pp. 169, 170; Deville as
        above, pp. 126, 127), and Deville as above, pp. 25–40.

All this work was accomplished within a single year.[1893] Richard,
who had watched over its progress with unremitting care, broke into
an ecstasy of delight at its completion; he called his barons to see
“how fair a child was his, this child but a twelvemonth old”;[1894]
he called it his “saucy castle,” “Château-Gaillard,”[1895] and the
name which he thus gave it in jest soon replaced in popular speech
its more formal title of “the Castle on the Rock of Andely.”[1896]
The hardness of the rock out of which the fortifications were hewn
was not the sole obstacle against which the royal builder had had to
contend. Richard had no more thought than Fulk Nerra would have had of
asking the primate’s leave before beginning to build upon his land;
the work therefore was no sooner begun than Archbishop Walter lifted
up his protest against it; obtaining no redress, he laid Normandy
under interdict and carried his complaint in person to the Pope.[1897]
Richard at once sent envoys to appeal against the interdict and make
arrangements for the settlement of the dispute.[1898] Meanwhile,
however, he pushed on the building without delay. Like Fulk of old,
the seeming wrath of Heaven moved him as little as that of its earthly
representatives; a rain of blood which fell upon the workmen and
the king himself, though it scared all beside, failed to shake his
determination; “if an angel had come down out of the sky to bid him
stay his hand, he would have got no answer but a curse.”[1899] He
had now, however, made his peace with the Church; in the spring of
1197 he offered to the archbishop an exchange of land on terms highly
advantageous to the metropolitan see; and on this condition the Pope
raised the interdict in May of the same year.[1900] The exchange was
carried through on October 16,[1901] and ratified by John in a separate
charter, a step which seems to indicate that John was now recognized as
his brother’s heir.[1902]

        [1893] That is, the castle on the rock, built 1197–1198. See
        the story of the rain of blood in May 1198 (R. Diceto, Stubbs,
        vol. ii. p. 162), which fixes its completion after that date.
        The tower on the island and the Nouvel-Andely were the work of
        the previous year, 1196–1197.

        [1894] “Ecce quam pulcra filia unius anni!” J. Bromton,
        Twysden, _X. Scriptt._, col. 1276.

        [1895] “Totamque munitionem illam vocavit Gaillardum, quod
        sonat in Gallico petulantiam.” Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 81.

        [1896] “Castrum” or “castellum de Rupe Andeleii” or
        “Andeliaci,” it is called in the charters of Richard and John.
        The first document in which it appears as “Château-Gaillard” is
        a charter of S. Louis, “actum in Castro nostro Gaillard,” A.D.
        1261; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, p. 40. Will. Armor. however
        uses the name, and other writers soon begin to copy him.

        [1897] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 14. Cf. Will. Newb.,
        l. v. c. 28 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp. 487, 488), R. Coggeshall
        (Stevenson), p. 70, and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 544.

        [1898] The envoys were William of Longchamp, William bishop of
        Lisieux and Philip elect of Durham; Rog. Howden (as above), pp.
        16, 17. They must have started early in 1197, for William of
        Longchamp died on the journey, at Poitiers, on January 31 or
        February 1; see above, p. 373, note 4{1866}.

        [1899] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 34 (as above, p. 500). This is
        William’s last sentence. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 162,
        also tells of the portent, and gives its date, May 8, 1198.

        [1900] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 17–19. Will. Newb.,
        l. v. c. 34 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp. 499, 500).

        [1901] Richard’s charter, of which Deville gives a fac-simile
        in his _Château-Gaillard_, p. 18, and a printed copy in his
        “pièces justificatives,” _ib._ pp. 113–118, is also in R.
        Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 154–156. According to this last
        writer (_ib._ pp. 158, 159), and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i.
        p. 544), the settlement was due to the mediation of Archbishop
        Hubert.

        [1902] See Deville, as above, pp. 21, 22. John’s charter is in
        the “pièces justificatives,” _ib._ pp. 119–123.

It was probably about the same time that the treaty with Flanders, the
corner-stone of the league which Richard was forming against the king
of France, was signed within the walls of the new fortress.[1903] Yet,
as has been already seen, the coalition was not fully organized till
late in the following summer; and even then the complicated weapon hung
fire. Want of money seems to have been Richard’s chief difficulty, now
as ever--a difficulty which after Hubert Walter’s defeat in the council
at Oxford and his resignation in the following July must have seemed
well-nigh insurmountable. At last, however, in the spring of 1199, a
ray of hope came from a quarter where it was wholly unexpected. Richard
was leading his mercenaries through Poitou to check the viscount of
Limoges and the count of Angoulême in a renewal of their treasonable
designs[1904] when he was met by rumours of a marvellous discovery
at Châlus in the Limousin. A peasant working on the land of Achard,
the lord of Châlus, was said to have turned up with his plough a
treasure[1905] which popular imagination pictured as nothing less than
“an emperor with his wife, sons and daughters, all of pure gold, and
seated round a golden table.”[1906] In vain did Achard seek to keep
his secret and his prize to himself. Treasure-trove was a right of the
overlord, and it seems to have been at once claimed by the viscount
Ademar of Limoges, as Achard’s immediate superior. His claim, however,
had to give way to that of his own overlord, King Richard; but when
he sent to the king the share which he had himself wrung from Achard,
Richard indignantly rejected it, vowing that he would have all. This
Achard and Ademar both refused, and the king laid siege to Châlus.[1907]

        [1903] R. Diceto (as above), p. 153.

        [1904] Rog. Howden as above, p. 80, says merely that Richard
        was on his way to Poitou. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 94,
        says he was marching against the viscount of Limoges, to
        punish him for a treasonable alliance with the French king.
        The writer of the _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 280, says
        “expeditionem direxerat adversus comitem Engolismensem”; and
        that Angoulême had some share in the matter appears also from
        the confused story of Gerv. Cant. (as above), pp. 592, 593, who
        makes Richard receive his death-wound while besieging “castrum
        comitis Engolismi, quod Nantrum erat appellatum.” A joint
        rebellion of the lords of Limoges and Angoulême would be very
        natural, for they were half-brothers. On the other hand, the
        two men were very likely to be confounded by historians, for
        they both bore the same name, Ademar. See above, p. 220 and
        note 3{1035}.

        [1905] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. v. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 155. Rigord (_ib._ p. 42) describes the
        finder as a soldier.

        [1906] “Qui posteris, quo tempore fuerant, certam dabant
        memoriam,” adds Rigord (as above), p. 43. Is it possible that
        the thing can have been a real relic of some of the old Gothic
        kings of Aquitania?

        [1907] This seems to be the only way of reconciling the
        different accounts in Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 82,
        Rigord (as above), p. 42, Will. Armor. as above, and R.
        Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 94.

This place, not far from the western border of the Limousin, is now
represented by two villages, known conjointly as Châlus-Chabrol, and
built upon the summits of two low hills, at whose foot winds the
little stream of Tardoire. Each hill is crowned by a round tower of
late twelfth-century work; the lower one is traditionally said to be
the keep of the fortress besieged by Richard with all his forces at
Mid-Lent 1199.[1908] In vain did Achard, who was utterly unprepared
to stand a siege, protest his innocence and offer to submit to the
judgement of the French king’s court, as supreme alike over the duke
of Aquitaine and over his vassals; in vain did he beg for a truce
till the holy season should be past; in vain, when the outworks were
almost wholly destroyed and the keep itself undermined,[1909] did he
ask leave to surrender with the honours of war for himself and his men.
Richard was inexorable; he swore that he would hang them all.[1910]
With the courage that is born of despair, Achard, accompanied by six
knights and nine serving-men, retired into the keep, determined to hold
it until death.[1911] All that day--Friday, March 26[1912]--Richard
and his lieutenant Mercadier, the captain of his mercenaries,[1913]
prowled vainly round the walls, seeking for a point at which they
could assault them with safety.[1914] Their sappers were all the while
undermining the tower.[1915] Its defenders, finding themselves short
of missiles, began throwing down beams of wood and fragments of the
broken battlements at the miners’ heads.[1916] They were equally short
of defensive arms; one of the little band stood for more than half the
day upon a turret, with nothing but a frying-pan for a shield against
the bolts which flew whistling all around him, yet failed to drive him
from his post.[1917] At last the moment came for which he had been
waiting so long and so bravely. Just as Richard, unarmed save for his
iron head-piece, paused within bow-shot of the turret, this man caught
sight of an arrow which had been shot at himself from the besieging
ranks--seemingly, indeed, by Richard’s own hand--and had stuck
harmlessly in a crevice of the wall within his reach. He snatched it
out, fitted it to his cross-bow, and aimed at the king.[1918] Richard
saw the movement and greeted it with a shout of defiant applause; he
failed to shelter himself under his buckler; the arrow struck him on
the left shoulder, just below the joint of the neck, and glancing
downwards penetrated deep into his side.[1919] He made light of the
wound,[1920] gave strict orders to Mercadier to press the assault with
redoubled vigour,[1921] and rode back to his tent as if nothing was
amiss.[1922] There he rashly tried to pull out the arrow with his own
hand.[1923] The wood broke off, the iron barb remained fixed in the
wound; a surgeon attached to the staff of Mercadier was sent for, and
endeavoured to cut it out; unluckily, Richard was fat like his father,
and the iron, buried deep in his flesh, was so difficult to reach that
the injuries caused by the operator’s knife proved more dangerous
than that which had been inflicted by the shaft of the hostile
crossbow-man.[1924] The wounded side grew more swollen and inflamed day
by day; the patient’s constitutional restlessness, aggravated as it
was by pain, made matters worse;[1925] and at last mortification set
in.[1926]

        [1908] Will. Armor. (as above) says the treasure was discovered
        _after_ Mid-Lent. But Rog. Howden (as above, p. 84), Gerv.
        Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 593), R. Coggeshall (Stevenson,
        p. 95), and the Ann. of Margam, Winton. and Waverl. a. 1199
        (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. i. p. 24, vol. ii. pp. 71, 251),
        all tell us that Richard received his death-wound on March
        26--Friday, the morrow of Mid-Lent--and R. Coggeshall adds that
        this was the third day of the siege, which must therefore have
        begun on Wednesday, March 24.

        [1909] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. v. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 155.

        [1910] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 82. Cf. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 593.

        [1911] Will. Armor. as above.

        [1912] See above, p. 382, note 4{1908}.

        [1913] On this man’s history see an article by H.
        Géraud--“Mercadier; les Routiers au xiiiᵉ siècle”--in
        _Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes_, ser. i. vol. iii. pp. 417
        _et seq._ The writers of his own time call him “Marcadeus,”
        “Mercaderius,” in every possible variety of spelling; in a
        charter of his own, printed by Géraud (as above, p. 444),
        his style is “ego Merchaderius”; it seems best therefore
        to adopt the form “Mercadier,” which Géraud uses. He was a
        Provençal by birth (Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._, Luard, vol. ii.
        p. 421). He makes his first historical appearance in 1183,
        in Richard’s service, amid the disorders in Aquitaine after
        the death of the young king (Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 25,
        Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 340). He reappears by
        Richard’s side at Vendôme in 1194 (Rog. Howden, Stubbs, vol.
        iii. p. 256); about this time Richard endowed him with the
        lands of Bainac in Périgord (see his own charter, a. 1195, as
        referred to above, and Géraud’s comments, _ib._ pp. 423–427).
        He played a considerable part in Richard’s wars with Philip
        (see authorities collected by Géraud, as above, pp. 428–431),
        remained, as we shall see, with Richard till his death, and
        afterwards helped Eleanor to regain Anjou for John. He was
        slain at Bordeaux in April 1200 (Rog. Howden, Stubbs, vol. iv.
        p. 114).

        [1914] Rog. Howden (as above), p. 82.

        [1915] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 94.

        [1916] _Ibid._ Will. Armor. as above.

        [1917] R. Coggeshall, p. 95.

        [1918] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. v. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 156. Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv.
        p. 82.

        [1919] “Percussitque regem super humerum sinistrum juxta colli
        spondilia, sicque arcuato vulnere telum dilapsum est deorsum
        ac lateri sinistro immersum.” R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p.
        95. See also the briefer accounts of the scene and the wound
        in Rog. Howden and Will. Armor. as above, and Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 593.

        [1920] R. Coggeshall as above.

        [1921] Rog. Howden as above.

        [1922] _Ibid._ R. Coggeshall as above.

        [1923] R. Coggeshall as above. Rog. Howden (as above), p. 83,
        lays the blame of this unskilful operation upon the doctor.

        [1924] Rog. Howden and R. Coggeshall as above.

        [1925] The English writers--Rog. Howden and R. Coggeshall--try
        to shift the blame of their king’s death as much as possible
        upon the foreign surgeon. Will. Armor. (as above) attributes
        it wholly to Richard’s disregard of the doctor’s orders; and
        even R. Coggeshall (Stevenson, p. 96) is obliged to add at
        last “rege ... præcepta medicorum non curante.” Rog. Wendover.
        (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 135, says the arrow was poisoned, but this
        seems to be only an inference from the result.

        [1926] R. Coggeshall as above.

Then Richard, face to face with death, came to his better self once
more, and prepared calmly and bravely for his end. Until then he had
suffered no one to enter the chamber where he lay save four barons
whom he specially trusted, lest the report of his sickness should be
bruited about,[1927] to discourage his friends or to rejoice his foes.
Now, he summoned all of his followers who were within reach to witness
his solemn bequest of all his dominions to his brother John, and made
them swear fealty to John as his successor.[1928] He wrote to his
mother, who was at Fontevraud, requesting her to come to him;[1929] he
bequeathed his jewels to his nephew King Otto, and a fourth part of
his treasures to be distributed among his servants and the poor.[1930]
By this time Châlus was taken and its garrison hung, according to
his earlier orders--all save the man who had shot him, and who had
apparently been reserved for his special judgement. Richard ordered the
man to be brought before him. “What have I done to thee,” he asked him,
“that thou shouldest slay me?” “Thou hast slain my father and two of my
brothers with thine own hand, and thou wouldst fain have killed me too.
Avenge thyself upon me as thou wilt; I will gladly endure the greatest
torments which thou canst devise, since I have seen thee upon thy
death-bed.” “I forgive thee,” answered Richard, and he bade the guards
loose him and let him go free with a gift of a hundred shillings.[1931]
The story went that Richard had not communicated for nearly seven
years, because he could not put himself in charity with Philip.[1932]
Now, on the eleventh day after his wound--April 6, the Tuesday in
Passion-week[1933]--he made his confession to one of his chaplains,
and received the Holy Communion. His soul being thus at peace, he gave
directions for the disposal of his body. It was to be embalmed; the
brain and some of the internal organs were to be buried in the ancient
Poitevin abbey of Charroux; the heart was to be deposited in the
Norman capital, where it had always found a loyal response; the corpse
itself was to be laid, in token of penitence, at his father’s feet
in the abbey-church of Fontevraud.[1934] Lastly, he received extreme
unction; and then, “as the day drew to its close, his day of life also
came to its end.”[1935] His friends buried him as he had wished. S.
Hugh of Lincoln, now at Angers on his way to protest against a fresh
spoliation of his episcopal property, came to seal his forgiveness
by performing the last rites of the Church over this second grave
at Fontevraud,[1936] where another Angevin king was thus “shrouded
among the shrouded women”--his own mother, doubtless, in their
midst.[1937] He was laid to sleep in the robes which he had worn on his
last crowning-day in England, five years before.[1938] His heart was
enclosed in a gold and silver casket, carried to Rouen, and solemnly
deposited by the clergy among the holy relics in their cathedral
church;[1939] and men saw in its unusual size[1940] a fit token of the
mighty spirit of him whom Normandy never ceased to venerate as Richard
Cœur-de-Lion.

        [1927] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 96.

        [1928] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 83. And this, although
        he and John had parted on bad terms shortly before. R.
        Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 99. _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p.
        287.

        [1929] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 96.

        [1930] Rog. Howden as above.

        [1931] _Ibid._ Cf. the different account of the captive’s
        demeanour in Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 593. It seems
        impossible to make out who this man really was. R. Diceto
        (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 166, the Ann. Margam, a. 1199 (Luard,
        _Ann. Monast._, vol. i. p. 24), the anonymous continuator of
        Geoff. Vigeois (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 342) and
        Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 135, call him Peter Basilius or
        Basilii. Gervase calls him John Sabraz; Rog. Howden, Bertrand
        de Gourdon; and Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. v. (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 156), Guy, without any
        surname at all. But as Géraud proves (art. “Mercadier,” in
        _Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes_, ser. i. vol. iii. pp. 433, 434,
        442), it cannot have been Bertrand de Gourdon; for the only man
        who is known to have borne that name was still living in 1231,
        while Rog. Howden himself tells us that Richard’s pardon did
        not avail to save the life of his slayer. Mercadier detained
        the man till the king was dead, and then had him flayed and
        hanged; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 84;--or, according to
        another account, he sent him to Jane, and it was she who took
        this horrible vengeance for her brother’s death. Ann. Winton.
        a. 1199 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p. 71).

        [1932] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 96. This must be, at any
        rate, an exaggeration; for Richard had certainly communicated
        upon at least one occasion within the last five years--at his
        crowning at Winchester in April 1194. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
        vol. i. p. 526.

        [1933] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 166; Gerv. Cant. (as
        above), p. 593; Rog. Howden as above; Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol.
        iii. p. 136; Ann. Winton. and Waverl. a. 1199 (Luard as above,
        pp. 71, 251); Geoff. Vigeois Contin. (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii.), p. 342. R. Coggeshall as above, and the Chron. S.
        Flor. Salm. a. 1199 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 194), make it
        April 7; on the part of R. Coggeshall, however, this is clearly
        a mere slip, for he rightly places the death on the eleventh
        day after the wound. Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._,
        vol. v.), p. 42, and the Chron. S. Serg. a. 1199 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, p. 151), date it April 8, and the Ann. Margam, a.
        1199 (Luard, as above, vol. i. p. 24), April 10.

        [1934] Rog. Howden as above. Cf. Rog. Wend. as above.

        [1935] “Cum jam dies clauderetur, diem clausit extremum.” R.
        Coggeshall as above.

        [1936] _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 286. The funeral was on
        Palm Sunday; _ibid._

        [1937] She seems not to have got his letter in time to see him
        alive. Berengaria was at Beaufort in Anjou, whither S. Hugh
        turned aside to visit and comfort her on his way from Angers to
        Fontevraud; and the state of intense grief in which he found
        her supplies another proof of Richard’s capacity for winning
        love which he did not altogether deserve. _Mag. Vita S. Hug._
        (Dimock), p. 286.

        [1938] Ann. Winton. a. 1199 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p.
        71).

        [1939] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. v. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 157.

        [1940] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 593. According to the
        Ann. Winton. as above, it was “paulo majus pomo pini.”



CHAPTER IX.

THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS.

1199–1206.


“In the year 1199,” says a contemporary French writer, “God visited the
realm of France; for King Richard was slain.”[1941] Richard’s death
was in truth the signal for the break-up of the Angevin dominions
to the profit of the French Crown. John, who was at the moment in
Britanny, hurried southward as soon as he heard the news. Three days
after the funeral--on April 14, the Wednesday before Easter--he
arrived at Chinon, the seat of the Angevin treasury; the wardens of
the castle[1942] welcomed him as their lord in his brother’s stead;
the household of the late king came to meet him and acknowledged him
in like manner, after receiving from him a solemn oath that he would
carry out Richard’s testamentary directions and maintain the customs of
the lands over which he was called to rule.[1943] On this understanding
the treasury was given up to him by the Angevin seneschal, Robert of
Turnham.[1944] After keeping Easter at Beaufort,[1945] he proceeded
into Normandy; here he was received without opposition, and on the
Sunday after Easter was invested with the sword, lance and coronet
of the duchy by Archbishop Walter at Rouen.[1946] As the lance was
put into his hands he turned with characteristic levity to join in
the laughing comments of the young courtiers behind him, and in so
doing let the symbol of his ducal authority fall to the ground. His
irreverent behaviour and refusal to communicate on Easter-day had
already drawn upon him a solemn warning from S. Hugh; and this fresh
example of his profane recklessness, and its consequence, were noted
as omens which later events made but too easy of interpretation.[1947]
For the moment, however, the Normans were willing to transfer to
Richard’s chosen successor the loyalty which they had shewn towards
Richard himself; and so, too, were the representatives of the English
Church and baronage who happened to be on the spot, Archbishop Hubert
and William the Marshal.[1948] But in the Angevin lands Philip’s
alliance with the Bretons, fruitless so long as Richard lived, bore
fruit as soon as the lion-heart had ceased to beat. While Philip
himself invaded the county of Evreux and took its capital,[1949]
Arthur was at once sent into Anjou with a body of troops;[1950] his
mother, released or escaped from her prison, joined him at the head
of the Breton forces;[1951] they marched upon Le Mans, whence John
himself only escaped the night before it fell into their hands;[1952]
Angers was given up to them by its governor, a nephew of the seneschal
Robert of Turnham;[1953] and on Easter-day,[1954] while John was
actually holding court within fifteen miles of them at Beaufort, the
barons of Anjou, Touraine and Maine held a council at which Arthur was
unanimously acknowledged as lawful heir to his uncle Richard according
to the customs of the three counties, and their capital cities were
surrendered to him at once.[1955] At Le Mans he met the French king
and did homage to him for his new dominions, Constance swearing fealty
with him.[1956] Shortly afterwards, at Tours, Constance formally
placed her boy, who was now twelve years old, under the guardianship
of Philip; and Philip at once took upon himself the custody and the
administration of all the territories of his ward.[1957]

        [1941] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 80.

        [1942] “A proceribus quibusdam _Anglorum_ castrum ipsum
        servantibus.” _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 287.

        [1943] _Ibid._

        [1944] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 86. R. Coggeshall
        (Stevenson), p. 99.

        [1945] Rog. Howden as above, p. 87.

        [1946] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 166. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 87, 88. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p.
        99. _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 293.

        [1947] _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), pp. 291–294.

        [1948] Rog. Howden as above, p. 86.

        [1949] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
        43. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 80. Cf. R.
        Coggeshall as above.

        [1950] Rigord as above.

        [1951] Cf. R. Coggeshall as above, and _Mag. Vita S. Hug._
        (Dimock), p. 296, with Rog. Howden as above, p. 87.

        [1952] _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ as above.

        [1953] Rog. Howden as above, p. 86.

        [1954] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1199 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 50).

        [1955] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 86, 87. Cf. R. Coggeshall as
        above.

        [1956] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
        43.

        [1957] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 87. The Chron. S.
        Albin. a. 1200 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 51) places this a year
        later.

Neither in personal influence nor in political skill, however, was
Constance a match for her mother-in-law. Eleanor was, as has been seen,
at Fontevraud when Richard died. Feeling and policy alike inclined her
to favour the cause of his chosen successor, her own only surviving
son, rather than that of a grandson whom most likely she had never
even seen. She therefore effected a junction with Mercadier and his
Brabantines as soon as they had had time to march up from Châlus,
and the whole band of mercenaries, headed by the aged queen and the
ruthless but faithful Provençal captain, overran Anjou with fire and
sword to punish its inhabitants for their abandonment of John.[1958]
Having given this proof of her undiminished energy, Eleanor, to take
away all pretext for French intermeddling in the south, went to meet
Philip at Tours and herself did homage to him for Poitou.[1959] By this
means Aquitaine was secured for John. John himself had made a dash
into Maine and burned Le Mans in vengeance for the defection of its
citizens.[1960] He could, however, venture upon no serious attempt at
the reconquest of the Angevin lands till he had secured his hold upon
Normandy and England; and for this his presence was now urgently needed
on the English side of the Channel.

        [1958] Rog. Howden as above, p. 88.

        [1959] Rigord as above.

        [1960] Rog. Howden as above, p. 87. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson),
        p. 99.

Archbishop Hubert and William the Marshal had already returned to
England charged with a commission from John to assist the justiciar
Geoffrey Fitz-Peter in maintaining order there until the new king
should arrive.[1961] The precaution was far from being a needless one.
The news of Richard’s death reached England on Easter Eve; and its
consequences appeared the very next morning, when some of the nobles
and knights went straight from their Easter feast to begin a course
of rapine and depredation which recalls the disorders after the death
of Henry I., and which was only checked by the return of the primate.
Hubert at once excommunicated the evil-doers,[1962] and, in concert
with the Marshal, summoned all the men of the realm to swear fealty and
peaceable submission to John, as heir of Henry Fitz-Empress. The peace,
however, was not so easy to keep now as it had been during the interval
between Henry’s death and Richard’s coronation. Since then John himself
had set an example which those whom he now claimed as his subjects
were not slow to follow. All who had castles, whether bishops, earls
or barons, furnished them with men, victuals and arms, and assumed
an attitude of defence, if not of defiance; and this attitude they
quitted only when the archbishop, the marshal and the justiciar had
called all the malcontents to a conference at Northampton, and there
solemnly promised that John should render to all men their rights,
if they would keep faith and peace towards him. On this the barons
took the oath of fealty and liege homage to John. The king of Scots
refused to do the like unless his lost counties of Northumberland and
Cumberland were restored to him, and despatched messengers charged with
these demands to John himself; the envoys were, however, intercepted by
the archbishop and his colleagues, and the Scot king was for a while
appeased by a promise of satisfaction when the new sovereign should
arrive in his island-realm.[1963]

        [1961] Rog. Howden as above, p. 86.

        [1962] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 98.

        [1963] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 88, 89.

On May 25 John landed at Shoreham; next day he reached London;[1964]
on the 27th--Ascension-day--the bishops and barons assembled for the
crowning in Westminster abbey.[1965] John’s coronation is one of the
most memorable in English history. It was the last occasion on which
the old English doctrine of succession to the crown was formally
asserted and publicly vindicated, and that more distinctly than it had
ever been since the Norman conquest. In the midst of the crowded church
the archbishop stood forth and spoke: “Hearken, all ye that are here
present! Be it known unto you that no man hath any antecedent right
to succeed another in the kingdom, except he be unanimously chosen
by the whole realm, after invocation of the Holy Spirit’s grace, and
unless he be also manifestly thereunto called by the pre-eminence of
his character and conversation, after the pattern of Saul the first
anointed king, whom God set over his people, although he was not of
royal race, and likewise after him David, the one being chosen for his
energy and fitness for the regal dignity, the other for his humility
and holiness; that so he who surpassed all other men of the realm in
vigour should also be preferred before them in authority and power. But
indeed if there be one of the dead king’s race who excelleth, that one
should be the more promptly and willingly chosen. And these things have
I spoken in behalf of the noble Count John here present, the brother of
our late illustrious King Richard, now deceased without direct heir;
and forasmuch as we see him to be prudent and vigorous, we all, after
invoking the Holy Spirit’s grace, for his merits no less than his royal
blood, have with one consent chosen him for our king.” The archbishop’s
hearers wondered at his speech, because they could not see any occasion
for it; but none of them disputed his doctrine; still less did they
dispute its immediate practical application. “Long live King John!” was
the unanimous response;[1966] and, disregarding a protest from Bishop
Philip of Durham against the accomplishment of such an important rite
in the absence of his metropolitan Geoffrey of York,[1967] Archbishop
Hubert proceeded to anoint and crown the king. A foreboding which he
could not put aside, however, moved him to make yet another significant
interpolation in the ritual. When he tendered to the king-elect the
usual oath for the defence of the Church, the redressing of wrongs and
the maintenance of justice, he added a solemn personal adjuration to
John, in Heaven’s name, warning him not to venture upon accepting the
regal office unless he truly purposed in his own mind to perform his
oath. John answered that by God’s help he intended to do so.[1968] But
he contrived to omit the act which should have sealed his vow. For the
first and last time probably in the history of Latin Christendom, the
king did not communicate upon his coronation-day.[1969]

        [1964] _Ib._ p. 89.

        [1965] _Ib._ pp. 89, 90. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 166.
        R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 99, 100.

        [1966] Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. pp. 454, 455.

        [1967] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 90.

        [1968] Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 140.

        [1969] _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 293.

On that very day he made his arrangements for the government of the
realm which he was already anxious to leave as soon as he could do
so with safety. Geoffrey Fitz-Peter was confirmed in his office of
justiciar, William in that of marshal, and both were formally invested
with the earldoms whose lands and revenues they had already enjoyed
for some years--Geoffrey with the earldom of Essex, William with
that of Striguil. At the same time, in defiance alike of precedent,
of ecclesiastical propriety, and of the warnings of an old colleague
in the administration, Hugh Bardulf, Archbishop Hubert undertook the
office of chancellor.[1970] Next day John received the homage of the
barons, and went on pilgrimage to S. Alban’s abbey;[1971] he afterwards
visited Canterbury and S. Edmund’s,[1972] and thence proceeded to keep
the Whitsun feast at Northampton.[1973] An interchange of embassies
with the king of Scots failed to win either the restitution of the two
shires on the one hand, or the required homage on the other; William
threatened to invade the disputed territories if they were not made
over to him within forty days; John retorted by giving them in charge
to a new sheriff, the brave and loyal William de Stuteville, and by
appointing new guardians to the temporalities of York, as security for
the defence of the north against the Scots,[1974] while he himself
hurried back to the sea, and on June 20 sailed again for Normandy.[1975]

        [1970] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 90, 91.

        [1971] Rog. Wend. as above.

        [1972] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 166.

        [1973] _Ibid._ Rog. Howden as above, p. 91, says _Nottingham_;
        but John was at Northampton on Whit-Monday according to Sir T.
        D. Hardy’s _Itin. K. John_, a. 1 (_Introd. Pat. Rolls_).

        [1974] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 91, 92.

        [1975] _Ib._ p. 92. R. Diceto (as above) says June 19, but
        Sir T. D. Hardy’s _Itinerary_, a. 1 (as above), shews John at
        Shoreham on the 20th.

On Midsummer-day he made a truce with Philip for three weeks.[1976] At
its expiration the two kings held a personal meeting; John’s occupation
of his brother’s territories without previous investiture from and
homage to Philip was complained of by the latter as an unpardonable
wrong; and John was required to expiate it by the cession of the whole
Vexin to Philip in absolute ownership, and of Poitou and the three
Angevin counties for the benefit of Arthur. This John refused.[1977]
His fortunes were not yet so desperate as to compel him to such
humiliation. He had already secured the alliance of Flanders;[1978]
his nephew Otto, now fully acknowledged by the Pope as Emperor-elect,
was urging him to war with France and promising him the aid of the
imperial forces;[1979] and his refusal of submission to Philip was at
once followed by offers of homage and mutual alliance from all those
French feudataries who had been in league with Richard against their
own sovereign.[1980] The war began in September, with the taking of
Conches by the French king; this was followed by the capture of Ballon.
Philip, however, chose to celebrate these first successes by levelling
Ballon to the ground. As the castle stood upon Cenomannian soil, it
ought, according to the theory proclaimed by Philip himself, to have
been handed over by him to Arthur; Arthur’s seneschal William des
Roches therefore remonstrated against its demolition as an injury done
to his young lord. Philip retorted that “he would not for Arthur’s
sake stay from dealing as he pleased with his own acquisitions.” The
consequence was a momentary desertion of all his Breton allies. William
des Roches not only surrendered to John the city of Le Mans, which
Philip and Arthur had intrusted to him as governor, but contrived to
get the boy-duke of Britanny out of Philip’s custody and bring him to
his uncle, who received him into seeming favour and peace.[1981] That
very day, however, a warning reached Arthur of the fate to which he
was already doomed by John; and on the following night he fled away
to Angers with his mother and a number of their friends. Among the
latter was the viscount Almeric of Thouars, who had just been compelled
to resign into John’s hands the office of seneschal of Anjou and the
custody of the fortress of Chinon, which he held in Arthur’s name; and
it seems to have been shortly afterwards that Constance, apparently
casting off Ralf of Chester without even an attempt at divorce, went
through a ceremony of marriage with Almeric’s brother Guy.[1982]

        [1976] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 93.

        [1977] _Ib._ pp. 94, 95.

        [1978] The count of Flanders did homage to John at Rouen on
        August 13 [1199]. _Ib._ p. 93.

        [1979] _Ib._ pp. 95, 96.

        [1980] _Ib._ p. 95.

        [1981] _Ib._ p. 96. This must have been on September 22; see
        Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 1 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

        [1982] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 96, 97. The marriage
        of Guy and Constance must however have been legalized somehow,
        for their child was ultimately acknowledged as heiress of
        Britanny.

The year’s warfare again ended in a truce, made in October to last
till S. Hilary’s day.[1983] Its author was that Cardinal Peter of
Capua[1984] who had negotiated the last truce between Philip and
Richard, and who now found another occupation in punishing the
matrimonial sins of the French king:--Philip having sent away his queen
Ingebiorg of Denmark immediately after his marriage with her in 1193,
and three years later taken as his wife another princess, Agnes of
Merania.[1985] At a Church council at Dijon on December 6, 1199, the
legate passed a sentence of interdict upon the whole royal domain, to
be publicly proclaimed on the twentieth day after Christmas[1986]--the
very day on which Philip’s truce with John would expire. It was no
doubt the prospect of this new trouble which moved Philip, when he met
John in conference between Gaillon and Les Andelys,[1987] to accept
terms far more favourable to the English king than those which he
had offered six months before. As a pledge of future peace and amity
between the two kings, Philip’s son Louis was to marry John’s niece
Blanche, a daughter of his sister Eleanor and her husband King Alfonso
of Castille; John was to bestow upon the bride, by way of dowry, the
city and county of Evreux and all those Norman castles which had been
in Philip’s possession on the day of Richard’s death; he was also to
give Philip thirty thousand marks of silver, and to swear that he would
give no help to Otto for the vindication of his claim to the Empire.
The formal execution of the treaty was deferred till the octave of
midsummer; and while the aged queen-mother Eleanor went to fetch her
granddaughter from Spain, John at the end of February took advantage of
the respite to make a hurried visit to England,[1988] for the purpose
of raising the thirty thousand marks which he had promised to Philip.
This was done by means of a carucage or aid of three shillings on every
ploughland.[1989] As a scutage of a most unusual amount--two marks
on the knight’s fee--had already been levied since John’s accession,
this new impost was a sore burthen upon the country. The abbots of
some of the great Cistercian houses in Yorkshire withstood it as an
unheard-of infringement of their rights, to which they could not assent
without the permission of a general chapter of their order. John in a
fury bade the sheriffs put all the White Monks outside the protection
of the law. The remonstrances of the primate compelled him to revoke
this command; but he rejected all offers of compromise on the part of
the monks, and “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the
disciples of the Lord” went over sea again at the end of April.[1990]
As France had been suffering the miseries of an interdict ever since
January,[1991] Philip was now growing eager for peace. He therefore
met John at Gouleton, between Vernon and Les Andelys, on May 22, and
there a treaty was signed. Its solid advantages were wholly on the
side of John. In addition to the concessions made in January, he did
indeed resign in favour of Blanche and her bridegroom his claims upon
the fiefs of Berry; but the thirty thousand marks due to Philip were
reduced to twenty thousand; Arthur was acknowledged as owing homage
to his uncle for Britanny; and John was formally recognized by the
French king as rightful heir to all the dominions of his father and
his elder brother.[1992] On the morrow Louis and Blanche were married,
by the archbishop of Bordeaux, and on Norman soil, in consequence of
the interdict in France;[1993] and on the same day, at Vernon, John
received in Philip’s presence Arthur’s homage for Britanny,[1994]
Philip having already accepted that of John for the whole continental
dominions of the house of Anjou.[1995]

        [1983] _Ib._ p. 97. Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._,
        vol. v.) p. 43, says S. John’s day.

        [1984] Rog. Howden as above.

        [1985] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 224, 306, 307. R.
        Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 111. Rigord (as above), pp. 36,
        37, 40, 42. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), pp. 77,
        78. “Merania” is Moravia. Rigord and William both call the lady
        Mary, but all scholars seem agreed that Agnes was her real name.

        [1986] Rigord (as above), p. 43. Will. Armor. (as above), p.
        80. Cf. R. Diceto (as above), pp. 167, 168.

        [1987] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 106.

        [1988] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 106, 107. John
        crossed on February 24; Ann. Winton, a. 1200 (Luard, _Ann.
        Monast._, vol. ii. p. 73).

        [1989] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 101. Rog. Howden as above,
        p. 107.

        [1990] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 102, 103. The date of
        John’s crossing lies between April 28 and May 2. Hardy, _Itin.
        K. John_, a. 1 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

        [1991] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
        43; Rog. Howden as above, p. 112. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii.
        p. 168, says only since Mid-Lent.

        [1992] Treaty in Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 79, and Rog.
        Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 148–151. Its date is not quite
        clear; the document itself bears only “mense Maii”; Rigord
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 43) says it
        was made on Ascension-day (May 18); Rog. Howden (as above,
        p. 114) begins by placing it at the date for which it had
        been originally fixed--the octave of S. John Baptist--but in
        the next page corrects this into “xi kalendas Junii, feria
        secunda,” _i.e._ Monday, May 22. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p.
        103, believed the thirty thousand marks to have been paid in
        full. The remission of ten thousand of them clearly made no
        difference to England; they were pocketed by John.

        [1993] Rog. Howden as above, p. 115. He says it was at
        Portmort, on the morrow of the treaty--_i.e._ according to
        his reckoning, on Tuesday, May 23. Rigord however (as above),
        p. 44, dates it “at the same place, on the Monday after
        [Ascension],” _i.e._ Gouleton, May 22. Hardy’s _Itinerary_, a.
        2, shews John at La Roche-Andelys (Château-Gaillard) daily from
        May 17 to May 25. The places however are all close together.

        [1994] Rog. Howden as above.

        [1995] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 101.

The next six weeks were spent by John in a triumphant progress
southward, through Le Mans, Angers, Chinon, Tours and Loches, into
Aquitaine, where he remained until the end of August.[1996] While
there, he received the homage of his brother-in-law Count Raymond
of Toulouse for the dower-lands of Jane,[1997] who had died in the
preceding autumn.[1998] Of all these successes, however, John went far
to cast away the fruit by a desecration of the marriage-bond almost as
shameless and quite as impolitic as that which had brought upon Philip
the wrath of Rome. He persuaded the Aquitanian and Norman bishops to
annul his marriage with his cousin Avice of Gloucester, apparently by
making them believe that the dispensation granted by Clement III. had
been revoked by Innocent.[1999] Instead however of restoring to Avice
the vast heritage which had been settled upon her at her betrothal, he
gave her county of Gloucester to her sister’s husband Count Almeric of
Evreux as compensation for the loss of his Norman honour,[2000] and
apparently kept the remainder of her estates in his own hands. These
proceedings were enough to excite the ill-will of a powerful section
of the English baronage. John’s next step was a direct challenge to
the most active, turbulent and troublesome house in all Aquitaine. He
gave out that he desired to wed a daughter of the king of Portugal,
and despatched an honourable company of ambassadors, headed by the
bishop of Lisieux, to sue for her hand; after these envoys had started,
however, and without a word of notice to them, he suddenly married the
daughter of Count Ademar of Angoulême.[2001] Twenty-nine years before,
Richard, as duke of Aquitaine, had vainly striven to wrest Angoulême
from Ademar in behalf of Matilda, the only child of Ademar’s brother
Count Vulgrin III. Matilda was now the wife of Hugh “the Brown” of
Lusignan, who in 1179 or 1180 had in spite of King Henry made himself
master of La Marche,[2002] and whose personal importance in southern
Gaul was increased by the rank and fame which his brothers Geoffrey,
Guy and Almeric had won in the kingdoms of Palestine and Cyprus. His
son by Matilda--another Hugh the Brown--had through Richard’s good
offices been betrothed in boyhood to his infant cousin Isabel, Ademar’s
only child; the little girl was educated with her future husband, and
it was hoped that in due time their marriage would heal the family feud
and unite the lands of Angoulême and La Marche without possibility
of further dissension. No sooner however did Count Ademar discover
that a king wished to marry his daughter than he took her away from
her bridegroom; and at the end of August she was married to John at
Angoulême by the archbishop of Bordeaux.[2003]

        [1996] See Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 2 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

        [1997] Rog. Howden as above, p. 124.

        [1998] _Ib._ p. 96.

        [1999] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 103, says the divorce was
        made “per mandatum domini Papæ ... propter consanguinitatis
        lineam.” But R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 167, says it
        was made because John was “sublimioris thori spe raptatus,”
        and adds: “unde magnam summi pontificis, scilicet Innocentii
        tertii, et totius curiæ Romanæ indignationem incurrit.” He
        dates it 1199, and attributes it to the Norman bishops; Rog.
        Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 119, places it in 1200, and names
        only the archbishop of Bordeaux and the bishops of Poitiers and
        Saintes.

        [2000] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 101.

        [2001] R. Diceto as above, p. 170.

        [2002] See above, p. 220.

        [2003] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 119, 120. Cf. R.
        Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 103. No one gives a date; but John
        was at Angoulême on August 26 (Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 2,
        _Intr. Pat. Rolls_); and “his settlement on Isabella is dated
        Aug. 30. _Rot. Chart._, p. 75” (Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv.
        p. 168, note 1). Rog. Howden and R. Coggeshall both say this
        marriage was advised by Philip.

Heedless of the storm which this marriage was sure to raise in
Aquitaine, John in the first days of October carried his child-queen
with him to England, and on the 8th was crowned with her at
Westminster.[2004] His first business in England was to renew his
persecution of the Cistercians;[2005] the next was to arrange a meeting
with the king of Scots. This took place in November at Lincoln, where
John, defying the tradition which his father had carefully observed,
ventured to present himself in regal state within the cathedral
church.[2006] The two kings held their colloquy on a hill outside the
city; William performed his long-deferred homage,[2007] although his
renewed demand for the restitution of the northern shires was again
put off till Whitsuntide.[2008] Next day the king of England helped
with his own hands to carry the body of the holy bishop Hugh to its
last resting-place in the minster which he had himself rebuilt.[2009]
Some haunting remembrance of Hugh’s saintlike face, as he had seen it
in London only a few weeks before the good bishop’s death,[2010]
may have combined with a sense that the White Monks were still too
great a power in the land to be defied with impunity, and moved
John on the following Sunday to make full amends to the Cistercian
abbots, promising to seal his repentance by founding a house of
their order[2011]--a promise which he redeemed by the foundation of
Beaulieu abbey, in the New Forest.[2012] After keeping Christmas at
Guildford[2013] he came back again to Lincoln, and quarrelled with
the canons about the election of a new bishop.[2014] He thence went
northward, accompanied by his queen, through Lincolnshire, Yorkshire,
Northumberland and Cumberland, taking fines everywhere for offences
against the forest-law. At Mid-Lent he was at York,[2015] and on
Easter-day he and Isabel wore their crowns at Canterbury.[2016] A few
days later, rumours of disturbances in Normandy and in Poitou paused
him to issue orders for the earls and barons of England to meet him at
Portsmouth at Whitsuntide, ready with horses and ships to accompany him
over sea. The earls however held a meeting at Leicester, and thence by
common consent made answer to the king that they would not go with him
“unless he gave them back their rights.” It is clear that they already
looked upon personal service beyond sea as no longer binding upon them
without their own consent, specially given for a special occasion.
John retorted by demanding the surrender of their castles, beginning
with William of Aubigny’s castle of Beauvoir, which William was only
suffered to retain on giving his son as a hostage.[2017] This threat
brought the barons to Portsmouth on the appointed day; but the quarrel
ended in a compromise. After despatching his chamberlain Hubert de
Burgh, with a hundred knights, to act as keeper of the Welsh marches,
and sending William the Marshal and Roger de Lacy, each with a hundred
mercenaries, to resist the enemies in Normandy, John took from the
remainder of the host a scutage in commutation of their services, and
bade them return to their own homes.[2018] On Whit-Monday the queen
crossed to Normandy, and shortly afterwards her husband followed.[2019]

        [2004] Rog. Howden as above, p. 139. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol.
        ii. p. 170. R. Coggeshall as above, with a wrong date.

        [2005] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 103, 104.

        [2006] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 140, 141.

        [2007] _Ib._ p. 141.

        [2008] _Ib._ p. 142.

        [2009] _Ibid._ R. Diceto as above, p. 171. _Mag. Vita S. Hug._
        (Dimock), pp. 370, 371.

        [2010] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 140, 141.

        [2011] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 107–110. _Mag. Vita S.
        Hug._ (Dimock), pp. 377, 378.

        [2012] On Beaulieu see R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 147; Ann.
        Waverl. a. 1204 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p. 256); and
        Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. v. pp. 682, 683.

        [2013] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 172. Rog. Howden
        (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 156.

        [2014] Rog. Howden as above.

        [2015] _Ib._ p. 157. See details of his movements in Hardy,
        _Itin. K. John_, a. 2 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

        [2016] Rog. Howden as above, p. 160. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol.
        ii. p. 172.

        [2017] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 160, 161.

        [2018] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 163.

        [2019] _Ib._ p. 164.

After a friendly meeting near the Isle of Andelys,[2020] Philip
invited John to Paris, where he entertained him with the highest
honours, vacating his own palace for the reception of his guest, and
loading him with costly gifts.[2021] From Paris John went to meet his
sister-in-law, Richard’s queen Berengaria, at Chinon,[2022] where he
seems to have chiefly spent the rest of the summer. He came back to
Normandy in the autumn,[2023] and the Christmas feast at Argentan[2024]
passed over in peace; but trouble was fast gathering on all sides.
Philip was at last free of his ecclesiastical difficulties, for Agnes
of Merania was dead, and he had taken back his wife.[2025] John was
now in his turn to pay the penalty for his unwarrantable divorce and
his lawless second marriage. As if he had not already done enough to
alienate the powerful house of Lusignan by stealing the plighted bride
of its head,[2026] he had now seized the castle of Driencourt, which
belonged to a brother of Hugh the Brown, while its owner was absent
in England on business for the king himself;[2027] and he had further
insulted the barons of Poitou by summoning them to clear themselves in
his court from a general charge of treason against his late brother
and himself, by ordeal of battle with picked champions from England
and Normandy. They scorned the summons,[2028] and appealed to the king
of France, John’s overlord as well as theirs, to bring John to justice
for their wrongs.[2029] On March 25 Philip met John at Gouleton,[2030]
and peremptorily bade him give up to Arthur all his French fiefs,
besides sundry other things, all of which John refused.[2031] Hereupon
Philip sent, through some of the great French nobles,[2032] a citation
to John, as duke of Aquitaine, to appear in Paris fifteen days after
Easter at the court of his lord the king of France, to stand to its
judgement, to answer to his lord for his misdoings, and to undergo the
sentence of his peers.[2033] John made no attempt to deny Philip’s
jurisdiction; but he declared that, as duke of Normandy, he was not
bound to obey the French king’s citation to any spot other than the
traditional trysting-place on the border. Philip replied that his
summons was addressed to the duke of Aquitaine, not to the duke of
Normandy, and that his rights over the former were not to be annulled
by the accidental union of the two dignities in one person.[2034] John
at length yielded so far as to promise that on the appointed day he
would present himself before the court in Paris, and would give up to
Philip the two castles of Tillières and Boutavant as security for his
abiding by the settlement then to be made. The day however came and
went without either the surrender of the forts or the appearance of
John.[2035] The court of the French peers condemned him by default,
and sentenced him to be deprived of all his lands.[2036]

        [2020] _Ibid._ John was at the Isle June 9–11, and again June
        25–27 [1201]. Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 3 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

        [2021] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
        44. Rog. Howden as above; on the date see Bishop Stubbs’s note
        1, _ibid._

        [2022] Rog. Howden as above. The purpose was to settle with her
        about her dowry; _ibid._, and p. 172 and note 2.

        [2023] See Hardy as above.

        [2024] Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 167.

        [2025] Rigord as above. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._
        (_ibid._), p. 81. Rog. Howden as above, pp. 146–148.

        [2026] Strictly speaking, its future head. The elder Hugh,
        father of Isabel’s bridegroom, lived till 1206.

        [2027] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vi. (Duchesne, as above), p.
        159. This was Ralf of Issoudun, a brother of the elder Hugh,
        and count of Eu in right of his wife.

        [2028] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 176.

        [2029] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 135. Will. Armor. _Gesta
        Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
        81; _Philipp._, l. vi. (_ibid._) p. 159.

        [2030] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 174.

        [2031] Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 167.

        [2032] “Per proceres regni Francorum.” R. Coggeshall as above.

        [2033] _Ib._ pp. 135, 136. The date fixed for the trial--April
        29 [1202]--is from Rigord (Duchesne as above), p. 44. This
        writer and Will. Armor. (_Gesta Phil. Aug._ as above) give a
        version somewhat different from Ralf’s, saying that Philip
        summoned John to do right to Philip himself for the counties of
        Anjou, Touraine and Poitou. William however in the _Philipp._
        (as above) substantially agrees with the English writer as to
        the ground of Philip’s complaint.

        [2034] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 136.

        [2035] Will. Armor. as above, pp. 81, 161.

        [2036] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 136.

Philip at once marched upon Normandy to execute the sentence by force
of arms. He began by taking Boutavant[2037] and Tillières;[2038]
thence he marched straight up northward by Lions,[2039] Longchamp, La
Ferté-en-Bray,[2040] Orgueil and Mortemer,[2041] to Eu;[2042] all these
places fell into his hands. Thus master of almost the whole Norman
border from the Seine to the sea, he turned back to lay siege on July
8 to Radepont on the Andelle, scarcely more than ten miles from Rouen.
Dislodged at the end of a week by John,[2043] he again withdrew to the
border. The castle of Aumale and the rest of its county were soon in
his hands.[2044] Hugh of Gournay alone, the worthy bearer of a name
which for generations had been almost a synonym for loyalty to the
Norman ducal house, still held out in his impregnable castle; Philip
however, by breaking down the embankment which kept in the waters of
a reservoir communicating with the river and the moat, let loose upon
the castle a flood which undermined its walls and almost swept it away,
thus compelling its defenders to make their escape and take shelter as
best they could in the neighbouring forest.[2045] At Gournay Philip
bestowed upon Arthur the hand of his infant daughter Mary,[2046] the
honour of knighthood,[2047] and the investiture of all the Angevin
dominions except the duchy of Normandy,[2048] which he evidently
intended to conquer for himself and keep by right of conquest.

        [2037] _Ibid._ Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 168. Rigord
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 45. Will.
        Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 81; _Philipp._,
        l. vi. (_ibid._), p. 161. Boutavant was a small fortress
        built by Richard in 1198, on the Seine, four miles above
        Château-Gaillard, on the border-line between Normandy and
        France (Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ as above. Rog. Howden,
        Stubbs, vol. iv. p. 78). Philip had retorted by building hard
        by it a rival fortress which he called Gouleton (Rog. Howden
        as above)--the scene of his treaty with John in May 1202; see
        above, p. 396.

        [2038] Will. Armor. as above.

        [2039] Rog. Wend. and Will. Armor. _Philipp._ as above.

        [2040] Will. Armor. as above.

        [2041] _Ibid._ _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 81. Rigord
        (_ibid._), p. 45.

        [2042] Rog. Wend. as above.

        [2043] _Ibid._ p. 167; he says Philip besieged Radepont for
        eight days. John got there on July 15; Hardy, _Itin. K. John_,
        a. 4 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

        [2044] R. Coggeshall as above.

        [2045] Rog. Wend. as above, pp. 167, 168. Will. Armor. _Gesta
        Phil. Aug._ as above; _Philipp._ (_ibid._), pp. 161, 162.

        [2046] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ as above, p. 82;
        _Philipp._ (_ibid._), p. 162. Cf. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson),
        p. 137. Mary (or Jane, as Rigord calls her) was one of the two
        children of Agnes of Merania, legitimatized by Innocent III.;
        cf. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 81, and Rigord (_ibid._), p. 44.

        [2047] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 137. Rigord as above,
        p. 45; Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 82;
        _Philipp._ (_ibid._), p. 162. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p.
        94, says that Arthur was knighted by Philip when he first did
        him homage in 1199.

        [2048] Rigord as above. The order of the campaign above
        described is not easy to make out, for no two contemporary
        writers name the castles in the same order. Taking geography
        for a guide, it would at first glance seem more natural that
        Philip should have gone to Radepont from Tillières, and that
        the whole northward expedition should come afterwards. But
        it is certain that the siege of Radepont happened July 8–15
        (see above, p. 403, note 8{2043}); and on the one hand, the
        northern campaign, or at any rate part of it, seems needed to
        fill up the interval between the breaking-out of the war at the
        beginning of May and July 8; while on the other, it seems
        impossible to crowd in the whole campaign between July 15 and
        the knighting of Arthur, which clearly took place before that
        month had expired. Lions, however, was not taken till after May
        29, for on that day John was there; Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a.
        4 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

What John had been doing all this time it is difficult to understand.
Between the middle of May and the end of June he had shifted his
quarters incessantly, moving through the whole length of eastern
Normandy, from Arques to Le Mans; throughout July he was chiefly in
the neighbourhood of Rouen;[2049] but, except in the one expedition to
Radepont, he seems to have made no attempt to check the progress of his
enemies. After the knighting of Arthur at Gournay, however, he tried to
make a diversion by sending a body of troops into Britanny. With their
duchess dead[2050] and their young duke absent, the Bretons were in no
condition for defence; Dol and Fougères were taken by John’s soldiers,
and the whole country ravaged as far as Rennes.[2051] This attack stung
Arthur into an attempt at independent action which led to his ruin. He
and Philip divided their forces; while the French king led the bulk
of his army northward to the siege of Arques,[2052] Arthur with two
hundred knights[2053] moved southward to Tours,[2054] sending forward
a summons to the men of his own duchy and those of Berry to meet him
there for an expedition into Poitou.[2055] At Tours he was met by the
disaffected Aquitanian chiefs:--the injured bridegroom young Hugh of La
Marche, and two of his uncles, Ralf of Issoudun the dispossessed count
of Eu, and Geoffrey of Lusignan, the inveterate fighter who had taken a
leading part in every Aquitanian rising throughout the last twenty-two
years of Henry’s reign, who after being Richard’s bitterest foe at home
had been one of his best supporters in Palestine, and who had come
back, it seems, to join in one more fight against his successor. The
three kinsmen, however, brought together a force of only seventy-five
knights; to which a Gascon baron, Savaric of Mauléon, added thirty
more, and seventy men-at-arms.[2056] Arthur, mere boy of fifteen though
he was, had enough of the hereditary Angevin wariness to shrink from
attempting to act with such a small force, and in accordance with
Philip’s instructions proposed to wait for his expected allies.[2057]
But the Poitevins would brook no delay; and a temptation now offered
itself which was irresistible alike to them and to their young leader.
On her return from Castille with her granddaughter Blanche in the
spring of 1200, Queen Eleanor, worn out with age and fatigue, had
withdrawn to the abbey of Fontevraud,[2058] where she apparently
remained throughout the next two years. The rising troubles of her
duchy, however, seem to have brought her forth from her retirement
once more, and she was now in the castle of Mirebeau, on the border
of Anjou and Poitou. All John’s enemies knew that his mother was, in
every sense, his best friend. She was at once his most devoted ally and
his most sagacious counsellor, at least in all continental affairs;
moreover, in strict feudal law, she was still duchess of Aquitaine in
her own right, a right untouched by the forfeiture of John; and she
therefore had it in her power to make that forfeiture null and void
south of the Loire, so long as she lived to assert her claims for
John’s benefit.[2059] To capture Eleanor would be to bring John to his
knees; and with this hope Arthur and his little band laid siege to
Mirebeau.[2060]

        [2049] See Hardy, as above, a. 3, 4 (_ibid._)

        [2050] Constance died September 3 or 4, 1201. Chronn. Britt.
        _ad ann._ (Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol. i. cols. 6,
        106).

        [2051] Will. Armor. _Philipp._ as above, p. 163. In the _Gesta
        Phil. Aug._ (as above) he places this after Arthur’s capture.
        In both works he says that _John_ did all this in Britanny;
        but Hardy’s _Itinerary_ (as above) shews that John did it
        vicariously.

        [2052] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
        45. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 138. Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol.
        iii. p. 169.

        [2053] Rog. Wend., as above, p. 168.

        [2054] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vi. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 162. Rigord as above.

        [2055] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne as above), p.
        82. To the Bretons and the men of Berry he adds “Allobroges.”
        What can they have had to do in the case, or what can he mean
        by the name?

        [2056] Will. Armor. _Philipp._ as above. He says Geoffrey
        brought twenty picked knights, Ralf forty, and Hugh fifteen. R.
        Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 137, makes the total force of Arthur
        and the Poitevins together two hundred and fifty knights.

        [2057] Will. Armor, as above, p. 163.

        [2058] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 114.

        [2059] On the relations of Eleanor, John, and Aquitaine see
        Bishop Stubbs’s note to W. Coventry, vol. ii., pref. p.
        xxxiv, note 1. His conclusion is that “certainly the legal
        difficulties were much greater than Philip’s hasty sentences of
        forfeiture could solve.”

        [2060] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vi. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 164; _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p.
        82. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 137. Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol.
        iii. p. 168.

John, however, when once roused, could act with all the vigour and
promptitude of his race. On July 30, as he was approaching Le Mans,
he received tidings of his mother’s danger; on August 1 he suddenly
appeared before Mirebeau.[2061] The town was already lost, all the
gates of the castle save one were broken down, and Eleanor had been
driven to take refuge in the keep; the besiegers, thinking their
triumph assured, were surprised and overpowered by John’s troops,
and were slain or captured to a man, the Lusignans and Arthur
himself being among the prisoners.[2062] Philip, who was busy with
the siege of Arques, left it and hurried southward on hearing of
this disaster;[2063] John however at once put an end to his hopes of
rescuing Arthur by sending the boy to prison at Falaise;[2064] and
Philip, after taking and burning Tours,[2065] withdrew into his own
domains.[2066] John in his turn then marched upon Tours, and vented
his wrath at its capture by completing its destruction.[2067] Shortly
afterwards he had the good luck to make prisoner another disaffected
Aquitanian noble, the viscount of Limoges.[2068] It was however
growing evident that he would soon have nothing but his own resources
to depend upon. His allies were falling away; the counts of Flanders,
Blois and Perche and several of the other malcontent French barons
had taken the cross and abandoned the field of western politics to
seek their fortunes in the East;[2069] he had quarrelled with Otto of
Germany;[2070] William des Roches, after pleading in vain for Arthur’s
release, was organizing a league of the Breton nobles which some of
the Norman border-chiefs were quite ready to join, and by the end of
October the party thus formed was strong enough to seize Angers and
establish its head-quarters there.[2071] It was probably the knowledge
of all this which in the beginning of 1203 made John transfer his
captive nephew from the castle of Falaise to that of Rouen.[2072]
Sinister rumours of Arthur’s fate were already in circulation, telling
how John had sent a ruffian to blind him at Falaise, how the soldiers
who kept him had frustrated the design, and how their commandant,
John’s chamberlain Hubert de Burgh, had endeavoured to satisfy the king
by giving out that Arthur had died of wounds and grief and ordering
funeral services in his memory, till the threats of the infuriated
Bretons drove him to confess the fraud for the sake of John’s own
safety.[2073] How or when Arthur really died has never yet been clearly
proved. We only know that at Easter 1203 all France was ringing with
the tidings of his death, and that after that date he was never
seen alive. In his uncle’s interest an attempt was made to suggest
that he had either pined to death in his prison, or been drowned in
endeavouring to escape across the Seine;[2074] but the general belief,
which John’s after-conduct tends strongly to confirm, was that he
had been stabbed and then flung into the river by the orders, if not
actually by the hands, of John himself.[2075]

        [2061] These dates are given by John himself in a letter to the
        barons of England, inserted by R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp.
        137, 138. Hardy’s _Itin. K. John_, a. 4 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_),
        shews John at Bonport on July 30, and then gives no further
        indication of his whereabouts till August 4, when he appears at
        Chinon.

        [2062] R. Coggeshall as above. Rog. Wend., as above, p. 169.
        Cf. Rigord (Duchesne as above), p. 45; Will. Armor. _Gesta
        Phil. Aug._ as above; and _Philipp_, (_ibid._), pp. 164, 165.
        According to this last, John got into Mirebeau by night, by a
        fraudulent negotiation with William des Roches.

        [2063] Rog. Wend., Rigord, and Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._,
        as above.

        [2064] Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. pp. 169, 170. Will. Armor.
        _Philipp._, l. vi. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol.
        v.), p. 165.

        [2065] Rigord (Duchesne, as above), p. 45. Will. Armor. _Gesta
        Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 82.

        [2066] Rog. Wend. (as above), p. 170. He adds “residuum anni
        illius imbellis peregit.”

        [2067] Rigord as above. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ as
        above. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 138.

        [2068] Rigord as above. This was Guy, son and successor to
        Ademar, who had been slain in 1199 by Richard’s son Philip in
        vengeance for the quarrel which had led to Richard’s death.
        Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 97.

        [2069] Rigord and Will. Armor, as above.

        [2070] In 1200 Otto had demanded the lands and the jewels
        bequeathed to him by Richard; John had refused to give them up.
        Rog. Howden as above, p. 116.

        [2071] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1202 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 51).
        R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 139. The former gives the date,
        Wednesday before All Saints’ day.

        [2072] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 143. Rog. Wend., as above.
        Will. Armor. _Philipp._ as above, p. 166.

        [2073] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 139–141.

        [2074] Mat. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ (Madden), vol. ii. p. 95.

        [2075] On Arthur’s death see note at end of chapter.

The fire which had been smouldering throughout the winter in Britanny
now burst into a blaze. The barons and prelates of the duchy, it
is said, held a meeting at Vannes, and thence sent to the king of
France, as overlord alike of Arthur and of John, their demand for a
judicial inquisition before the peers of the realm--that is, before
the supreme feudal court of France--into John’s dealings with their
captive duke.[2076] A citation was accordingly sent to John, as duke
of Normandy, either to present Arthur alive,[2077] or to come and
stand his trial before the French king’s court on a charge of murder.
John neither appeared nor sent any defence; the court pronounced him
worthy of death, and sentenced him and his heirs to forfeiture of all
the lands and honours which he held of the Crown of France.[2078] The
trial seems to have been held shortly after Easter. The legal force
of the sentence need not be discussed here.[2079] Its moral justice
can hardly be disputed, so far as John himself is concerned; and
Philip’s action did little more than precipitate the consequences
which must sooner or later have naturally resulted from John’s own
deed. John in committing a great crime had committed an almost greater
blunder. Arthur’s death left him indeed without a rival in his own
house. It left him sole survivor, in the male line, alike of the
Angevin and Cenomannian counts and of the ducal house of Normandy.
Even in the female line there was no one who could be set up against
him as representative of either race. Eleanor of Britanny, the only
remaining child of his brother Geoffrey, was a prisoner in her uncle’s
keeping. The sons of his sister Matilda had cast in their lot with
their father’s country and severed all ties with their mother’s people;
the children of his sister Eleanor were still more complete strangers
to the political interests of northern Gaul, and the only one of them
who was known there at all was known only as the wife of the heir to
the French crown. But these very facts set John face to face with a
more dangerous rival than any of the ambitious kinsmen with whom the
two Williams or the two Henrys had had to contend. They drove his
disaffected subjects to choose between submission to him and submission
to Philip Augustus. The barons of Anjou, of Maine, of Britanny or of
Normandy had no longer any chance of freeing themselves from the yoke
of the king from over-sea who had become a stranger to them all alike,
save by accepting in its stead the yoke of the king with whom they had
grown familiar through years of political and personal intercourse, and
whom, in theory at least, even their own rulers had always acknowledged
as their superior. Anjou, Maine and Britanny had all resolved upon
Richard’s death that they would not have John to rule over them;
Normandy was now fast coming to the same determination. Under the
existing circumstances it would cost them little or no sacrifice to
accept their titular overlord as their real and immediate sovereign. So
long as Arthur lived, Philip had been compelled to veil his ambition
under a shew of zeal for Arthur’s rights; now he could fling aside
the veil, and present himself almost in the character of a deliverer.
If the barons did not actually hail him as such, they were at any rate
for the most part not unwilling to leave to him the responsibility of
accomplishing their deliverance, and to accept it quietly from his
hands.

        [2076] Le Baud, _Hist. de Bretagne_, pp. 209, 210, with a
        reference to Robert Blondel, a writer of the fifteenth century.
        On the value of this account see Bishop Stubbs, pref. to W.
        Coventry, vol. ii. p. xxxii, note 3.

        [2077] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 143–145.

        [2078] Proclamation of Louis of France, a. 1216, in Rymer,
        _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 140. Ann. Margam, a. 1204 (Luard, _Ann.
        Monast._, vol. i. p. 27). Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 373.
        Le Baud as above, p. 210. Stubbs, _W. Coventry_, vol. ii. pref.
        p. xxxii.

        [2079] Bishop Stubbs’s remark (_W. Coventry_, vol. ii. pref. p.
        xxxiv, note 1), quoted above, p. 406, note 1{2058}, applies to
        this case also. On the vexed question as to the composition of
        the court I do not feel bound to enter here at all.

Philip took the field as soon as the forfeiture was proclaimed.
Within a fortnight after Easter he had taken Saumur[2080] and entered
Aquitaine; there he seems to have spent some weeks in taking sundry
castles, with the help of the Bretons and the malcontent Poitevin
nobles.[2081] One great Norman baron, the viscount of Beaumont, had
already openly joined the league against John;[2082] and as Philip
turned northward again, the count of Alençon formally placed himself
and all his lands at the disposal of the French king.[2083] Thus
secure of a strong foothold on the southern frontier of Normandy,
and already by his last year’s conquests master of its north-eastern
border from Eu to Gisors, Philip set himself to win the intervening
territory--the remnant of the viscounty of Evreux. One by one its
castles--Conches,[2084] Vaudreuil[2085] and many others--fell into
his hands. Messenger after messenger came to John as he sat idle in
his palace at Rouen,[2086] all charged with the same story: “The king
of France is in your land as an enemy, he is taking your castles, he
is binding your seneschals to their horses’ tails and leading them
shamefully to prison, and he is dealing with your goods according to
his own will and pleasure.” “Let him alone,” John answered them all
alike; “I shall win back some day all that he is taking from me now.”
The barons who still clave to him grew exasperated as they watched
his unmoved face and heard his unvarying reply; some of them began to
attribute his indifference to the effects of magic; all, finding it
impossible to break the spell, turned away from him in despair. One by
one they took their leave and withdrew to their homes, either passively
to await the end, or actively to join Philip. Even Hugh of Gournay, who
had held out so bravely and so faithfully a year ago, now voluntarily
gave up his castle of Montfort.[2087] Not till near the middle of
August did John make any warlike movement; then he suddenly laid siege
to Alençon; but at Philip’s approach he fled in a panic;[2088] an
attempt to regain Brezolles ended in like manner,[2089] and John
relapsed into his former inactivity. That the conqueror did not march
straight to the capture of Rouen, that he in fact made no further
progress towards it for six whole months, was owing not to John but to
his predecessor. Richard’s favourite capital was safe, so long as it
was sheltered behind the group of fortifications crowned by his “saucy
castle” on the Rock of Andely.

        [2080] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1203 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 52).

        [2081] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.),
        p. 46. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 82; both
        under a wrong year, viz. 1202 instead of 1203.

        [2082] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 139.

        [2083] Rigord and Will. Armor. as above.

        [2084] Rigord as above.

        [2085] _Ibid._ R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 143.

        [2086] John was not literally there all the while; but he only
        quitted it for short excursions, never going further than
        Moulineaux, Pont-de-l’Arche, Orival or Montfort, from the
        middle of May till the beginning of August, when he suddenly
        went as far west as Caen, and thence as suddenly south again to
        Falaise and Alençon. Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 5 (_Intr. Pat.
        Rolls_).

        [2087] Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. pp. 171, 172.

        [2088] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 82. John was at Alençon August 11–15;
        Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 5 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

        [2089] Will. Armor. as above.

Upon the winning of Château-Gaillard, therefore, Philip now
concentrated all his energies and all his skill. There was no hope
of voluntary surrender here; John had given the fortress in charge
to Roger de Lacy the constable of Chester, an English baron who had
no stake in Normandy, whose private interests were therefore bound
up with those of the English king, and who was moreover a man of
dauntless courage and high military capacity.[2090] The place was only
to be won by a regular siege. Crossing the Seine higher up, perhaps
at Vernon, Philip led his troops along its left bank, and encamped
in the peninsula formed by the bend of the river just opposite Les
Andelys. The garrison of the fort in the Isle of Andely no sooner
beheld his approach than they destroyed the bridge between the island
and the left bank. Philip was thus deprived of the means not only of
reaching them, but also of opening communications with the opposite
shore; for this could only be done with safety at some point below
Château-Gaillard, and the transport of the materials needful for the
construction of a bridge or pontoon was barred by the stockade which
crossed the river-bed directly under the foot of the castle-rock. The
daring of a few young Frenchmen, however, soon cleared this obstacle
away. While the king brought up his engines close to the water’s edge
and kept the garrison of the island-fort occupied with the exchange
of a constant fire of missiles, a youth named Gaubert of Mantes with
a few bold comrades plunged into the water, each with an axe in his
hand, and, regardless of the stones and arrows which kept falling upon
them from both sides, hewed at the stockade till they had made a breach
wide enough for boats to pass through in safety. A number of the broad
flat-bottomed barges used for transport were then hastily collected
from the neighbouring riverside towns, and moored side by side across
the stream; these served as the foundation of a wooden bridge, which
was further supported with stakes and strengthened with towers, and
by means of which Philip himself, with the larger part of his host,
crossed the river to form a new encampment under the walls of the
Lesser Andely. The garrison of the Isle were thus placed between two
fires;[2091] and the whole Vexin was laid open as a foraging-ground for
the besieging army, while the occupants of the Lesser Andely and of
Château-Gaillard itself found their communications and their supplies
cut off on all sides.[2092]

        [2090] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 144. Rog. Wend. as above,
        p. 180.

        [2091] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), pp. 82, 83; _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 86–131
        (_ib._ p. 170; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, pp. 127–129).

        [2092] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 132–139 (Duchesne,
        p. 170; Deville, p. 129).

John was now again hovering about at a safe distance in the
neighbourhood.[2093] To the peril of Château-Gaillard his fatuous
indifference was at last beginning to yield. A year ago he had shewn
some appreciation of his brother’s work, by making an addition to
the buildings in the second ward;[2094] and he had shewn his sense
of the military importance of the place yet more significantly, by
appointing Roger de Lacy as its commander. He now gathered up all his
remaining forces--still, it seems, a formidable array[2095]--with
the apparent intention of dislodging the French from Les Andelys. As
Philip’s biographer remarks, however, John feared and hated the light;
he resolved, according to his wont, upon a night attack; and even that
attack he did not lead in person.[2096] He intrusted its command indeed
to a far braver man than himself, but a man who was better fitted for
action in the light of day than for such deeds of darkness as John
delighted in. William the Marshal, the favourite comrade-in-arms of
the younger King Henry, the faithful friend and servant of the elder
one even unto death, the honoured minister of Richard, still clave
to the last survivor of the house which he had loved so long and so
well. To him John confided his plan for the relief of Les Andelys.
The marshal was to lead a force of three hundred knights, three
thousand mounted serving-men and four thousand foot, with a band of
mercenaries under a chief called Lupicar,[2097] along the left bank of
the Seine, and to fall under cover of darkness upon the French camp
in the peninsula. Meanwhile seventy transport-vessels, constructed by
Richard to serve either for sea or river-traffic, and as many more as
could be collected, were to be laden with provisions for the besieged
garrison of the Isle, and convoyed up the river by a flotilla of
small war-ships, manned by pirates[2098] under a chief named Alan,
and carrying, besides their own daring and reckless crews, a force of
three thousand Flemings. Two hundred strokes of the oar, John reckoned,
would bring these ships to the French pontoon; they must break it if
they could; if not, they could at least co-operate with the land-forces
under the Marshal in cutting off the northern division of the French
army from its comrades and supplies on the left bank, and throw into
the island-fort provisions enough to save it from the necessity of
surrender till John himself should come to its relief.

        [2093] “Non multum distabat a loco illo” says Will. Armor.
        _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, as above), p. 83. The date must
        fall between August 16, when John was at Alençon, and September
        5, when he was at Bonneville. His whereabouts during the
        interval vary between Chambrai, Trianon, Montfort and Rouen.
        Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 5 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

        [2094] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 84; _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 737–746
        (_ib._ p. 181; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, p. 145).

        [2095] “Maximum congregaverat exercitum.” Will. Armor. _Gesta
        Phil. Aug._, as above, p. 83.

        [2096] _Ibid._; _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 140–143, 188–194 (_ib._
        pp. 170, 171; Deville as above, pp. 129, 130).

        [2097] On this man see Géraud, _Les Routiers_ (_Bibl. de
        l’Ecole des Chartes_, ser. i. vol. iii. p. 132). In his
        native tongue he was called “Lobar”; in Latin he appears
        as “Lupicarius,” “Lupescarus,” “Lupatius.” M. Géraud calls
        him in French “Louvart”; the name was doubtless an assumed
        one, meaning “wolf.” He was a fellow-countryman and old
        comrade-in-arms of Mercadier; Mat. Paris introduces them both
        at once, in 1196, as “natione Provinciales”--“qui duces fuerunt
        catervæ quam ruttam vocamus, militantes sub comite Johanne
        regis fratre.” _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 421. Lupicar
        however had made his first historical appearance some years
        earlier than Mercadier, as a leader of the Brabantines in the
        Limousin, about 1177. See Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 70 (Labbe,
        _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 324).

        [2098] It seems a strange return to long-past times to hear
        of “_pirates_” sailing up the Seine to attack a king of the
        French. Of what nationality are these men likely to have been?

The flower of the French host, as John knew, had crossed the river
with its king. Those who remained in the peninsula were hampered
by the presence of a crowd of unwarlike serving-men, sutlers and
camp-followers, many of whom, after spending the day in drunken
revelry, were lying asleep in the fields outside the camp. The night
was drawing to its close--for the cock had crowed thrice--when the
Marshal’s troops fell upon these sleepers and slew more than two
hundred of them as they lay. The soldiers within the camp quickly
caught the alarm; in their terror they rushed to the pontoon in such
numbers that it broke under their weight, and they sought safety in
swimming across the river to join their comrades on the opposite
shore. These however had now been aroused by the tumult; the bravest
of the French knights, headed by William des Barres, confronted the
fugitives with indignant reproaches for their cowardice, and drove
them back across the stream. By the light of torches and fires,
hastily kindled, the whole host was soon got under arms, the bridge
repaired, and the Marshal’s troops, surprised in their turn while
groping about in the darkness of the deserted camp, were routed with
heavy loss. The victors, thinking the fight was over, went back to
their sleeping-quarters, but had scarcely reached them when they
were roused up again, to see, in the dim light of the August sunrise,
the hostile fleet bearing down upon them. In a few minutes the two
river-banks and the pontoon were lined with armed Frenchmen. Still
the boats held on their course till the foremost of them touched the
bridge; and despite a ceaseless shower of arrows from either shore, and
of stones, iron missiles, and boiling oil and pitch from the engines
mounted on the wooden turrets of the bridge, the crews began to hew
at the cables and stakes in a desperate effort to break it down, and
kept its defenders at bay till the Seine ran red with blood. At last an
enormously heavy oaken beam fell directly upon the two foremost ships
and sank them. The rest, stricken with sudden terror, rowed away in
disorder as fast as oars could move them. Gaubert of Mantes and three
other gallant French sailors sprang each into a little boat, set off in
pursuit, and succeeded in capturing two of the fugitive ships, which
they brought back in tow, with their stores and all of their crews who
survived.[2099] The delay in the arrival of the fleet, caused by the
difficulties of navigation in the Seine,[2100] had ruined John’s plan
for the relief of the Isle of Andely. The fate of its garrison was soon
decided; and again the hero of the day was Gaubert of Mantes. The fort
was encircled by a double palisade or rampart of wood, outside the
walls. Gaubert tied a rope round his waist, took in his hand two iron
vessels coated with pitch and filled with burning charcoal,[2101] swam
to the easternmost point of the island, which the garrison, trusting
to the proximity of Château-Gaillard on this side, had ventured to
leave unguarded, and threw these missiles against the palisade. The
wood instantly caught fire; the wind carried the flames all round the
ramparts and into the fort itself. Some of the garrison made their
escape by swimming or on rafts; some were stifled in the cellars
and galleries in which they sought a refuge from the fire; the rest
surrendered to the French king. Philip lost no time in repairing and
garrisoning the fort and rebuilding the bridge on its western side. At
the sight of his success the whole population of the Lesser Andely fled
in a body to Château-Gaillard; Philip entered the town in triumph, sent
for new inhabitants to fill the places of the fugitives, and intrusted
its defence to two companies of mercenaries, whose strength may be
estimated from the statement that the leader of one of them, Cadoc by
name, received from the royal treasury a thousand pounds daily for
himself and his men.[2102]

        [2099] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 144–335 (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. pp. 171–174; Deville,
        _Château-Gaillard_, pp. 129–134). Cf. _Gesta Phil. Aug._
        (Duchesne as above), p. 83.

        [2100] Will. Armor. as above, vv. 206, 207 (Duchesne as above,
        p. 172; Deville as above, p. 131).

        [2101] See Deville’s note, _Château-Gaillard_, p. 66.

        [2102] Will. Armor., _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 336–398 (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. pp. 174, 175; Deville,
        _Château-Gaillard_, pp. 134–136). Cf. _Gesta Phil. Aug._
        (Duchesne as above), p. 83.

Philip’s mastery of the river was still precarious and incomplete
without the reduction of Château-Gaillard. For an attack upon the Saucy
Castle itself, however, his courage seems as yet to have failed; and
striking north-westward by the road which leads from Les Andelys into
the valley of the Andelle, on the last day of August he again sat down
before Radepont. In two or three weeks it surrendered.[2103] This time
John made no attempt to save it, but fled away to the depths of his own
old county of Mortain,[2104] leaving Rouen to its fate. Philip however
dared not advance upon Rouen with Château-Gaillard still unconquered
in his rear; and at the opening of the vintage-season he moved back
to Les Andelys and girded himself up for his task. A brief survey of
the Rock convinced him that assault was well-nigh hopeless; his best
chance was in a blockade. On the north the Lesser Andely occupied by
his mercenaries, on the west the river commanded by his troops in
the island-fort, sufficed to imprison the garrison. The next step
was to dig out a double trench two hundred feet deep, starting from
the brow of the hill over against the south-eastern extremity of the
castle-rock, extending northward to the margin of the lake of Andely
and westward to the bank of the Seine, and completely enclosing the two
ravines which furrowed the sides of the rock. Each line of entrenchment
was garnished with seven _bretasches_ or wooden forts, placed at
regular intervals, each surrounded by a ditch of its own, furnished
with a wooden draw-bridge, and filled with as many soldiers as it could
hold. The rest of the army took up their quarters in the trenches,
where they built themselves little huts of wood and thatch for a
shelter against the wet and cold of the coming winter--shelter against
other foes they needed none, for they were out of bowshot from the
castle[2105]--and whiled away their time in jesting and making songs in
mockery of the straits to which the Saucy Castle was reduced--“So many
thousands girt about with a single girdle,”--“The eyrie overcrowded
with nestlings, who will have to turn out when the spring comes.”[2106]
The greater part of the “nestlings” were turned out before the
spring came. The blockade once formed, Roger de Lacy soon perceived
the terrible blunder he had made in admitting within his walls the
townsfolk of the Lesser Andely. According to one computation, the
number of these non-combatants now huddled within the castle-enclosure
was no less than two thousand two hundred souls; at the lowest
reckoning, they seem to have amounted to fourteen hundred--all, in a
military point of view, simply useless mouths, devouring in a few weeks
the stores of food that should have furnished rations for a year and
more to the little garrison which was amply sufficient to hold the
castle for John. One day, therefore, Roger opened the castle-gate and
turned out five hundred of the oldest and weakest. They were suffered
to pass unmolested through the blockading lines, and were followed a
few days later by five hundred more. Philip however, who meanwhile had
returned to his own dominions, no sooner heard what was going on than
he issued strict orders that every man, woman or child, of whatever age
or condition, who might issue from the castle should be driven back
again without mercy. A large number still remained of whom Roger was
as eager to be rid as Philip was anxious that he should be obliged to
keep them. He took account of his stores, and found that he had enough
to feed the regular garrison for a whole year. Hereupon he called
together all the remaining non-combatants, and sent them forth, as they
thought, to rejoin their families and friends. To their horror, as
soon as they approached the French lines, they were overwhelmed with a
volley of arrows. They rushed back to the castle-gate, only to find it
closed against them. For three months this multitude of people dragged
out a wretched existence in the ravines around the fortress, with no
shelter against the wet and the cold but what they might find in the
clefts of the rock, and no food but the dry leaves and scant herbage
which they could pick up at its foot, and the flesh of the dogs which
the garrison soon let loose for the purpose of yet further economizing
their rations. This last resource was exhausted, and the horrors of
cannibalism were already reached, when Philip came back to see how the
siege was progressing. As he was crossing the bridge to the island-fort
these unhappy beings caught sight of him and lifted up their voices in
agonizing appeal; the king, moved with a tardy compassion, and perhaps
also by fear of the not improbable outbreak of a pestilence which might
easily have spread into his own entrenchments, ordered that immediate
relief should be given to all who survived. These however amounted to
no more than half of the original number, which seems to have been
something over four hundred; and most of them had been so long without
food that their first meal proved fatal.[2107]

        [2103] Rigord (Duchesne as above), p. 47, says the siege of
        Radepont began on the last day of August and lasted fifteen
        days. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 82, makes
        it last three weeks; in _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 399, 400 (_ib._
        p. 175; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, p. 136), he extends its
        duration to a month.

        [2104] He went to Falaise on September 13--the day after the
        fall of Radepont, according to Rigord’s reckoning. Thence he
        went on the 17th to Mortain, on the 19th to Dol, and back to
        Mortain again on the 22d. Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 5 (_Intr.
        Pat. Rolls_).

        [2105] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), pp. 83, 84; _Philipp._, l. vii. vv.
        414–450 (_ib._ pp. 175, 176; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, pp.
        136, 137).

        [2106] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 451–456 (Duchesne,
        p. 176; Deville, p. 137).

        [2107] Cf. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist.
        Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 84, and _Philipp._, l. vii. vv.
        467–606 (_ib._ pp. 176–179; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, pp.
        138–142).

The last act of this tragedy must have taken place soon after
Christmas. For three months the whole military power of the French
Crown had been concentrated on the investment of Château-Gaillard; and
in all this time John had done absolutely nothing. From his expedition
to the Breton border he had indeed returned to Rouen for a few days in
the beginning of October. Not a hand did he lift, however, to check
the progress of the blockade which was being formed almost before his
eyes. Soon he was again far away in the Bessin; thence he suddenly
moved across the duchy to Verneuil, and in the second week of November
he was once more at Rouen.[2108] It was probably during one of these
visits to the capital that he wrote to Roger de Lacy: “We thank you
for your good and faithful service, and desire that, as much as in
you lies, you will persevere in the fealty and homage which you owe
us, that you may receive a worthy meed of praise from God and from
ourselves, and from all who know your fidelity to us. If, however,
which God forbid, you should find yourselves in such straits that you
can hold out no longer, then do whatsoever our trusty and well-beloved
Peter of Préaux, William of Mortemer and Hugh of Howels our clerk
shall bid you in our name.”[2109] Whether this letter ever found its
way through the blockading lines into the castle it is scarcely worth
while to inquire. If it did, it failed to shake the courage or the
loyalty of the garrison, although it must have proved to them what they
doubtless guessed already, that their sovereign had forsaken them, and
that they were serving him for nought. Of the crowning proof of his
desertion they probably remained unconscious until all was over for
them. After dismantling Pont-de-l’Arche, Moulineaux and Montfort,[2110]
John, on November 12, again left Rouen; for three weeks he flitted
aimlessly up and down the country, from Bonneville and Caen to Domfront
and Vire, and back again to Barfleur and Cherbourg;[2111] on December
6 he quitted Normandy altogether;[2112] and while the burghers of
the Lesser Andely were starving and freezing to death in the valleys
round Château-Gaillard, and the garrison of the castle were anxiously
reckoning how much longer their provisions would enable them to hold
out for his sake, he was keeping his Christmas feast at Canterbury at
the expense of Archbishop Hubert.[2113]

        [2108] Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 5 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

        [2109] Letter in Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 1059.

        [2110] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 826–828 (Deville,
        _Château-Gaillard_, pp. 147, 148; Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 182).

        [2111] Hardy as above.

        [2112] Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 173, says he landed at
        Portsmouth on S. Nicolas’s day. The _Itinerary_ (as above)
        shews him at Barfleur on December 5 and at Portsmouth on the
        7th.

        [2113] “H. archiepiscopo omnia necessaria festivitati regiæ
        ministrante.” Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 174.

By the end of February 1204[2114] Philip grew impatient of the blockade
of Château-Gaillard, and probably also uneasy lest John should
return from England with an overwhelming force for its relief. He
therefore resolved to try whether it could not, after all, be taken
by assault. He himself took up his station at the central point of
the entrenchment, on the crest of the hill, facing the narrow neck
of land by which it was joined to the castle-rock. This isthmus, the
only direct approach to the castle itself, he caused to be levelled
and widened till he could erect upon it a wooden gallery or covered
way leading from his own lines up to the edge of the outermost ditch
of the fortress. When, with considerable difficulty and loss of life,
this was accomplished, he caused a _beffroy_ or wooden tower on wheels
to be carried through the gallery, set up when it reached the further
end, and moved along the edge of the fosse, the cross-bowmen with whom
it was filled doing deadly execution upon the soldiers on the ramparts,
who however made a gallant defence. Meanwhile, the French were bringing
through their covered way earth, wood, stones, turf, everything they
could find to fill up the ditch. Before it was half full they lost
patience and adopted a quicker method of approach. They dropped down
the perpendicular counterscarp by means of their scaling-ladders, and
set these up again on the sloping inner side of the ditch, under the
foot of the great round tower which formed the head of the first ward.
The ladders were too short for the ascent; but despite a heavy fire
of stones and arrows from the tower, the storming-party scrambled up,
crawling on hands and knees, or using their swords and daggers by way
of Alpine-staves, till the base of the wall was reached. Then, while
a shower of missiles rattled down upon the shields held over them by
their comrades, the sappers dug and hewed at the foundations till the
tower was undermined; the fuse was inserted and fired, and the miners
had just had time to withdraw when a large portion of the wall fell
crashing into the ditch. The French rushed to the breach; Roger de
Lacy, seeing that the first ward was lost, ordered the wooden buildings
within it to be fired; he and his men withdrew across the drawbridge
into the second ward, and when the fire died down, they saw the ruined
fragment of the tower crowned by the banner of Cadoc.[2115]

        [2114] “Superveniente cathedrâ S. Petri” (February 22). Rigord
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 47.

        [2115] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 84; _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 612–726
        (_ib._ pp. 179–181; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, pp. 142–145).

The French were one step nearer to the goal; but the next step looked
as impracticable as ever. Between them and the besieged there yawned
another ditch as wide and deep, there rose another rampart as mighty
and as inaccessible as the first. In vain they prowled about the edge
of the fosse seeking for a point at which they could venture upon an
attack, till a young squire or man-at-arms, by name Peter, but more
commonly known in the camp as “Bogis” or “Snub-nose,” caught sight of
a little window just above the wall at the south-eastern corner of the
rampart.[2116] This window was the sole external opening in John’s new
building, which was otherwise accessible only on the inner side, by two
doors, one leading into the storehouse which formed the lower story,
one into the chapel above it, and both opening towards the courtyard.
Bogis at once communicated his discovery to a few trusty comrades; they
reconnoitred the ditch till they found a somewhat shallower place on
its southern side, where it was possible to scramble down; thence they
crawled along the bottom till they were directly under the window, and
then clambered up the sloping side to the foot of the wall. By standing
on the shoulders of a comrade Bogis managed to reach the window; he
found it unbarred, unguarded, and wide enough for his body to pass
through; he sprang in, let down to his companions a rope which he had
brought for the purpose, and drew them up one by one till they were
all safe inside the building, which proved to be the storehouse under
the chapel.[2117] Finding the door locked, they began to hammer at it
with the hilts of their daggers. This noise and the shouts with which
they accompanied it soon alarmed the garrison. They, thinking that the
French had entered the new building and occupied it in force, hastily
set it on fire; unhappily, the wind caught the flames and spread them
in a few minutes over the whole enclosure. The garrison fled to their
sole remaining refuge, the citadel; Bogis and his companions escaped
out of the blazing ruins into the casemates; the bulk of the French
host, anxiously watching the scene from the opposite side of the ditch,
thought they had all perished; but when the flames died down and the
smoke began to clear away, Bogis himself appeared at the gate and let
down the drawbridge for the army to pass over in triumph.[2118]

        [2116] I cannot understand M. Deville’s idea of this window.
        In his plan of the castle he marks it about the middle of the
        south-western side of John’s building--the side looking towards
        the river. But Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (as above), p.
        85, says it was “in latere orientali.” And if it had not been
        there, how could Bogis, from the foot of the rampart of the
        first ward, ever have seen it at all?

        [2117] So says M. Deville (_Château-Gaillard_, p. 82),
        following the _Philippis_; but in the _Gesta Phil. Aug._
        William makes it the chapel, _i.e._ the upper instead of the
        lower story. One would naturally expect the solitary window to
        be in the chapel rather than in the storehouse under it.

        [2118] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug_. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 85; _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 727–791
        (_ib._ pp. 181, 182; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, pp. 145–147).

Philip’s engines and their own too hastily-kindled fires had made
havoc among the besieged garrison; they were now reduced to a hundred
and eighty fighting-men.[2119] Even this small number, however,
might have sufficed to hold for an indefinite time the remains of
Richard’s matchless fortress, but for one strange error on the part
of the royal architect. Richard had indeed taken the precaution of
making the sole gate of his citadel open not directly towards the
courtyard of the second ward, but at a much less accessible point to
the north-eastward, where only a narrow strip of ground intervened
between the counterscarp of the ditch and the outer rampart. Most
unaccountably, however, instead of furnishing this gate with a
drawbridge, he left a portion of the rock itself to serve as a natural
passage over the ditch hollowed out beneath it. Across this immovable
bridge a machine known by the name of “cat”--a sort of tent upon
wheels, moved by the men inside it--was, as the epic bard of the
siege expresses it, “made to crawl” close up to the gate, which the
sappers, hidden under this shelter, at once began to undermine. Roger
de Lacy, alarmed no doubt by the fate of the first tower which had been
thus dealt with, tried the effect of a countermine, which was so far
successful that the French were for a moment compelled to retire; but
the “cat” was speedily replaced by a mighty engine discharging heavy
stones with immense force. At the third discharge, the wall, undermined
as it was from both sides, suddenly fell in. The French troops poured
through the breach; Roger and his little band were quickly surrounded,
and it was no fault of theirs that they were not slaughtered to a
man, for every one of them refused to yield, and was only disarmed
by main force. The hundred and twenty men-at-arms and thirty-six
knights who still remained were, however, made prisoners without
further bloodshed; and thus, on March 6, 1204, Philip became master of
Château-Gaillard.[2120]

        [2119] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. v. 775 (Duchesne as
        above, p. 181; Deville, p. 146).

        [2120] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 792–811
        (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 182; Deville,
        _Château-Gaillard_, p. 147). Cf. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne
        as above), p. 85. The date is from Rigord (_ibid._), p. 47
        (who, however, puts it under a wrong year, 1202), and Rog.
        Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 180. This last writer has a wholly
        different version of the capture, but it is not worthy of
        consideration. The number of prisoners is stated by Will.
        Armor. in the _Gesta Phil. Aug._ as forty knights, a hundred
        and twenty men-at-arms, “and many others.” (By his own account
        in _Philipp._, l. vii. v. 775, these “many” cannot have been
        more than twenty. See above, p. 422). Rigord speaks only of the
        knights, whom he reduces to thirty-six, saying that four had
        been slain during the siege.

On that March day the king of England really lost not only his Saucy
Castle, but his whole continental dominions north of Loire. Thenceforth
all resistance in Normandy was at an end; and in three months the
whole duchy laid itself without a struggle at the victor’s feet. Soon
after John’s departure over sea Philip had opened negotiations with
the citizens of the chief Norman towns, representing to them that the
king of England had deserted them, that he himself was their rightful
overlord and sovereign, and bidding them either receive him as such, or
prepare to be all hanged or flayed alive when he should have overcome
their resistance by force. After some discussion they made a truce
with him for a year, promising that if no succour came from England
within that time, they would submit to him without reserve.[2121] On
the fall of Château-Gaillard they all, together with the constables
of the remaining fortresses throughout John’s trans-marine dominions,
sent messages to John setting forth the difficulties of their position
and remonstrating earnestly with him on his tardiness in coming to
their aid. He bade them look for nothing from him, but do each of them
whatsoever they might think good.[2122] A few weeks later he despatched
the bishops of Norwich and Ely with the earls of Pembroke and Leicester
to see if there was any possibility of coming to terms with the king of
France.[2123] But it was too late. Philip sarcastically retorted that
the first preliminary to peace must be the restoration of Arthur;[2124]
and on the Sunday after Easter he marched again into Normandy. Falaise
surrendered after a week’s siege;[2125] Domfront, Séez, Lisieux, Caen,
Bayeux, Barfleur, Cherbourg, Coutances,[2126] opened their gates at
his mere approach. Meanwhile Guy of Thouars, who had been governing
Britanny since Arthur’s death,[2127] with four hundred knights and
an immense host of Bretons attacked and burned the Mont-St.-Michel,
sacked Avranches, and marched ravaging and burning through the Bessin
to join the king at Caen. Philip sent them back again, together with
the count of Boulogne, William des Barres, a large body of French
knights, and a troop of John’s mercenaries who had changed sides
after the surrender of Falaise, to finish the subjugation of Mortain
and the Avranchin,[2128] while he himself returned to complete his
conquest of eastern Normandy. Only three important places were still
unsubdued there: Arques on the northern coast, Verneuil on the southern
border, and Rouen itself. The three bodies of soldiers and townsfolk
came to a mutual understanding whereby those of the capital, on the
Tuesday in Rogation-week--June 1--made a truce with Philip for thirty
days, stipulating that their brethren at Arques and Verneuil should
receive the same benefit if they applied for it within a certain
time, and promising in the name of all alike that if no succour came
from John within the specified interval, they would give themselves
up unreservedly to the king of France.[2129] None of them, however,
waited for the expiration of the truce. On midsummer-day Rouen opened
its gates;[2130] Arques and Verneuil followed its example,[2131] and
Normandy was won.

        [2121] Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. pp. 173, 174.

        [2122] _Ib._ pp. 180, 181.

        [2123] “Post mediam Quadragesimam,” _i.e._ in the beginning of
        April. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 144. The earl of Pembroke
        (or Striguil), it will be remembered, was William the Marshal.

        [2124] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 145.

        [2125] _Ibid._ Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. viii. (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 183); _Gesta Phil. Aug._
        (_ibid._), p. 85. Rigord (_ibid._), p. 47. The dates come from
        the two last, both of whom however make the year 1203 instead
        of 1204.

        [2126] Cf. Rigord as above; Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._
        as above; _Philipp._ l. viii. (_ibid._), pp. 183, 184; and R.
        Coggeshall as above.

        [2127] As guardian of his own daughter by Constance, the infant
        Alice, whom the Bretons and the French recognized as heiress of
        Britanny, in place of her half-sister Eleanor, who was in the
        custody of John.

        [2128] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
        Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 85. _Philipp._, l. viii. (_ibid._), pp.
        184, 185.

        [2129] Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, pp. 1057–1059.

        [2130] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 146. Rigord (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 47, giving the date.
        Cf. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 85, and
        _Philipp._, l. viii. (_ibid._), p. 186.

        [2131] R. Coggeshall as above.

Cadoc and his mercenaries had established their head-quarters at
Angers;[2132] the whole of Anjou and Touraine, except the strongholds
of Chinon and Loches, was already secured; Aquitaine alone still
remained to be conquered. This, indeed, was likely to prove a more
difficult task; for however bitterly the men of the south might
hate their Norman or Angevin rulers, their chances of regaining or
preserving their independence under a sovereign who must henceforth
be parted from them by the whole width of the Bay of Biscay would be
obviously so much better than under one whose direct sway now stretched
all along the northern bank of the Loire from its mouth almost to its
source, that they were certain to veer round at once to the side of
John, simply for the purpose of keeping Philip out. Such was in fact
the result throughout the whole country south of the Dordogne; Savaric
of Mauléon, lately John’s enemy and prisoner, at once became his most
energetic and devoted champion;[2133] while Angoulême was secured
for John as the heritage of his queen Isabel. But the link which had
bound Guyenne to the Angevin house was broken at last; Queen Eleanor
had died on April 1.[2134] There was no longer any legal obstacle to
the execution of the sentence of forfeiture passed two years ago; and
on S. Laurence’s day Philip assembled his host for the conquest of
Poitou.[2135] Robert of Turnham, John’s seneschal,[2136] did what he
could in its defence, but he was powerless against the indifference
of the people and the active hostility of William des Roches and the
Lusignans.[2137] Poitiers was soon taken; and in a few weeks all
Poitou, except La Rochelle, Niort and Thouars, submitted to Philip as
its liege lord.[2138] At the approach of winter Philip returned to his
own dominions, leaving a body of troops to blockade Chinon, which was
held for John by Hubert de Burgh, and another to form the siege of
Loches, no less bravely defended by Gerald of Atie.[2139] At Easter
1205 the king marched with a fresh host upon Loches and took it by
assault.[2140] On midsummer-eve Chinon fell in like manner.[2141]
Robert of Turnham had already been made prisoner by the French;[2142]
the viscount of Thouars now made his submission to Philip, and received
from him the seneschalship of Poitou in Robert’s stead;[2143] Niort and
La Rochelle were left alone in their resistance to the French king.

        [2132] Will. Armor. as above, pp. 86 and 188.

        [2133] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 146.

        [2134] Ann. Waverl. a. 1204 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p.
        256). R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 144, and Mat. Paris, _Hist.
        Angl._ (Madden), vol. ii. pp. 102, 103, give the same year;
        the latter takes occasion to describe Eleanor as “admiribalis
        domina pulchritudinis et astutiæ,” and says she died at
        John’s newly-founded abbey of Beaulieu. The Chron. S. Albin.
        (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 53) places her death a year earlier,
        and at Poitiers.

        [2135] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
        47.

        [2136] Brother of Stephen of Turnham, and apparently seneschal
        of Anjou at the close of Richard’s reign; transferred to Poitou
        in 1201. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 86, 142, 176.

        [2137] R. Coggeshall as above.

        [2138] _Ibid._ Rigord as above. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._
        (_ibid_.), p. 86. Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 181.

        [2139] R. Coggeshall and Rigord as above. Will. Armor. as
        above; _Philipp._, l. viii. (_ibid._), pp. 189, 190.

        [2140] Rigord (as above), pp. 47, 48, and Will. Armor. _Gesta
        Phil. Aug._ as above; both under a wrong year. R. Coggeshall
        (Stevenson), p. 152.

        [2141] Rog. Wend. (Coxe, vol. iii.), pp. 182, 183; R.
        Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 154, 155; cf. Rigord (Duchesne,
        _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 48; Will. Armor. _Gesta
        Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 86; and Chron. S. Albin. a. 1203
        (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 54).

        [2142] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 152.

        [2143] Will. Armor. as above.

John, however, was now at last threatening an attack from over sea.
Three weeks after his return to England, in January 1204, he had held
a council at Oxford and compelled all the tenants-in-chief, including
the bishops and abbots, to promise a scutage of two marks and a half on
the knight’s fee,[2144] and a contribution, from which even the parish
churches were not exempt, of a seventh of all moveable goods;[2145]
all under the plea of gathering a great host for the recovery of his
lost dominions.[2146] In May he held a council at Northampton,[2147]
which resulted in a summons to the fleet and the host to meet him at
Porchester at Whitsuntide, prepared to accompany him over sea. When all
was ready, however, the expedition was countermanded, at the urgent
entreaty, it was said, of Archbishop Hubert and William the Marshal,
the latter of whom had lately returned from Gaul, and might therefore
be supposed to know the condition of affairs there better than the king
could know it himself. John, after a great shew of resistance, yielded
to their entreaties; the soldiers and sailors were made to pay a fine
in commutation of their services, and dismissed, grumbling bitterly,
to their homes.[2148] The king gained a considerable sum of money by
the transaction; and the primate and the marshal, in their boundless
loyalty, were content to take upon themselves the burthen of its shame,
which John felt, or affected to feel, so keenly that he actually put
to sea with a small escort several days after the dispersion of the
fleet. He landed again, however, at Wareham on the third day,[2149]
and contented himself with sending his half-brother Earl William of
Salisbury and his own son Geoffrey with a body of knights to reinforce
the garrison of La Rochelle.[2150] A year later he again assembled his
fleet at Portsmouth;[2151] and this time he led it in person direct to
La Rochelle. He landed there on June 7,[2152] and marched to Montauban,
which he besieged and captured;[2153] the fickle viscount of Thouars,
being now in revolt against Philip, speedily joined him;[2154] they
advanced to Angers together, won it on September 6,[2155] ravaged
Anjou with fire and sword, and were doing the like in south-eastern
Britanny[2156] when Philip again crossed the Loire and harried the
viscounty of Thouars under their very eyes.[2157] John at once proposed
a truce; the terms were formally drawn up at Thouars on October
26;[2158] but when the English king’s signature was required, he was no
longer to be found. He had slipped away the night before, and was out
of reach at La Rochelle;[2159] and thence, on December 12, he sailed
for England once more.[2160]

        [2144] Rog. Wend. as above, p. 175.

        [2145] Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 483.

        [2146] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 144.

        [2147] _Ibid._ Date, May 21–25; Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 7
        (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

        [2148] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 152, 153. Cf. Rog. Wend.
        as above, p. 183.

        [2149] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 154. Rog. Wend. (Coxe),
        vol. iii., p. 183. This happened June 13–15; see note 1 to R.
        Coggeshall as above, and Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 7 (_Intr.
        Pat. Rolls_).

        [2150] R. Coggeshall as above.

        [2151] Rog. Wend. (as above), p. 186. John was at Porchester
        from Whit-Monday, May 22, to Friday, May 26. Hardy, _Itin. K.
        John_, a. 8 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

        [2152] He crossed from Stoke to Yarmouth on Trinity Sunday, May
        28, and thence to La Rochelle on Wednesday, June 7; cf. Hardy,
        as above, with Rog. Wend. as above, who has twice written
        “Julii” for “Junii.”

        [2153] On August 1, after fifteen days’ siege, says Rog. Wend.
        (as above), p. 187; but see Hardy as above.

        [2154] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
        48. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 86.

        [2155] _Ibid._ Date from Chron. S. Albin. a. 1206 (Marchegay,
        _Eglises_, pp. 54, 57).

        [2156] Will. Armor. as above.

        [2157] Rigord (_ibid._), p. 48. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1206 (as
        above, pp. 56, 57).

        [2158] Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 95.

        [2159] Will. Armor. as above. He was at La Rochelle on October
        25; Hardy as above.

        [2160] Rog. Wend. as above, p. 188.

Of the two devoted English ministers who had stood by him through
so much obloquy, only the Marshal was now left. A month after the
humiliating scene at Porchester in 1205, Archbishop Hubert died.[2161]
“Now for the first time am I truly king of England!” was the comment
of his ungrateful master upon the tidings of his death.[2162] The words
were words of ill omen for John himself, even more than for his people.
He was indeed king of England, and of England alone. The prophecy of
Merlin, which had been working itself out for a hundred years in the
history of the Norman and Angevin houses, was fulfilled in yet one more
detail: “the sword was parted from the sceptre.”[2163] The sword of
Hrolf the Ganger and William the Conqueror, of Fulk the Red and Fulk
the Black, had fallen from the hand of their unworthy descendant. The
sceptre of his English forefathers was left to him. But the England
over which he had to wield it was no longer the exhausted and divided
country which had been swallowed up almost without an effort in the
vast dominions of the young Count Henry of Anjou. It was an England
which was once more able to stand alone--a new England which had been
growing up under the hands of Henry himself, of his ministers, and
of the ministers of his successor, silently and imperceptibly, they
themselves knew not when or how; and between this new England and its
stranger-king the day of reckoning was now to come.

        [2161] _Ib._ p. 183. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 156.

        [2162] Mat. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ (Madden), vol. ii. p. 104.

        [2163] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 146.


NOTE.

THE DEATH OF ARTHUR.

Only two contemporary writers even pretend to give a circumstantial
account of Arthur’s death: the Annalist of Margam and William of
Armorica. The former tells us that John, “post prandium, ebrius et
dæmonio plenus” [did John, as well as Richard, make the demon-blood
answerable for his sins?], slew Arthur with his own hand, and having
tied a great stone to the body, flung it into the Seine; thence it
was drawn up in a fisherman’s net, recognized, and buried secretly,
“propter metum tyranni,” in Notre-Dame-des-Prés (Ann. Margam, a. 1204;
Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. i. p. 27). William allows the murderer
no such excuse, if excuse it be, but works up the story into a long
and horrible romance, in which John deliberately and of set purpose
takes Arthur out alone with him by night in a boat on the Seine,
plunges a sword into his body, and then rows along for three miles
before he flings the corpse overboard (Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l.
vi.; Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. pp. 166, 167). Both
these writers place the scene at Rouen. The Chron. Brioc. (Morice,
_Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol. i. col. 39) transfers it to Cherbourg:
“Apud Cæsaris-burgum duxit, et ibi proditorie et tyrannice eum in
mare submersit.” Rigord says not a word of the matter. R. Coggeshall
(Stevenson, p. 145) only speaks of it incidentally, saying that Philip
“sæviebat ... permaxime pro nece Arthuri, quem in Sequanâ submersum
fuisse audierat.” Rog. Wend. (Coxe, vol. iii. p. 170) says merely
“subito evanuit.” Mat. Paris in _Chron. Maj._ (Luard, vol. ii. p.
480) copies this, and adds: “modo fere omnibus ignorato; utinam non
ut fama refert.” In _Hist. Angl._ (Madden, vol. ii. p. 95) he gives
three stories as currently reported: accidental drowning, death from
grief, and the third, “ipsum manibus vel præcepto regis Johannis fuisse
peremptum”--this last being the assertion of the French, “quibus
propter hostilitatem plena fides non est adhibenda.” But his own
words in the _Chron. Maj._ shew that he could not wholly reject the
unavoidable conclusion of John’s guilt.

The date of Arthur’s disappearance or death is given only by the Margam
annalist. He places it on Maunday Thursday; but unluckily he has
damaged his own authority on chronological matters by putting the whole
affair a year too late, viz. in 1204 instead of 1203. Will. Armor., on
the other hand, tells us that for three days before the murder John was
at Moulineaux, near Rouen. These two chronological indications do not
exactly agree, for in 1203 Maunday Thursday was April 3, and the _Itin.
K. John_, a. 4 (Hardy, _Intr. Pat. Rolls_), shews that the king was at
Moulineaux on Wednesday, April 2, but on the two preceding days he was
at Rouen. It is however plain from the after-history that the deed must
have been done shortly before Easter.



CHAPTER X.

THE NEW ENGLAND.

1170–1206.


In the eyes of all contemporary Europe the most striking and important
event in English history during the half-century which had passed away
since the accession of Henry II. was the murder of Archbishop Thomas.
The sensation which it produced throughout western Christendom was
out of all proportion both to the personal influence of its victim
during his lifetime and to its direct political results. The popular
canonization bestowed upon the martyr was ratified by Rome with
almost unprecedented speed, in little more than two years after his
death;[2164] the stream of pilgrims which flowed to his shrine, from
the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, was
such as had hardly been seen even at the “threshold of the Apostles”
or at the Holy Sepulchre itself; and it flowed on without a break for
more than three hundred years. Yet Pope and pilgrims all alike were
probably as blind as Thomas himself had been to the true significance
for England of his life and his death. The great ecclesiastical
struggle of which he was the hero and the martyr marks a turning-point
in the social history of the reign of Henry II. even more than in
its political history. With the quarrel between Henry and Thomas the
direction of the moral and intellectual revival whose growth we have
in earlier chapters endeavoured to trace from the accession of Henry
I. to the death of Archbishop Theobald passed altogether out of the
hands in which it had prospered so long and so well--the hands of the
higher clergy and the monastic orders. The flight of Thomas scattered
to the winds the little band of earnest churchmen who had been sharers
with him in the inheritance of Theobald’s policy and Theobald’s work,
and left the reforming party in the Church without a rallying-point
and without a leader. One man alone still remained among the higher
clergy who under more favourable circumstances might have taken up the
work with a far more skilful hand than that of Thomas himself; but the
leadership of Gilbert Foliot was made impossible by the subsequent
course of events, which ranged all the religious opinion and all
the popular sympathies of England on the side of the persecuted and
martyred primate, and set Gilbert, as the primate’s most conspicuous
adversary, in the light of an enemy to the Church, a rebel against her
divine authority, and almost a denier of her faith.[2165]

        [2164] He was canonized by Alexander III. on Ash-Wednesday,
        February 21, 1173. Epp. dcclxxxiii.–dcclxxxvi., Robertson,
        _Becket_, vol. vii. pp. 544–550.

        [2165] The story of Gilbert’s dream, in Mat. Paris, _Chron.
        Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 240, was probably suggested by a
        line in the French _Life of S. Thomas_:

--“Gilebert Foliot, De lettres sout assez e servi Astarot”--

(Garnier, ed. Hippeau, p. 77)--where again in all likelihood the last
words were prompted by nothing more than the exigencies of rime. That
some such charges were however brought against Foliot we have seen
above, p. 70, note 5{295}.

The final settlement of the controversy was in some sense a defeat
of both parties; but the one which seemed to have gained the victory
really suffered the heaviest loss. The king was indeed compelled to
abandon his scheme for reforming the morals of the priesthood by the
strong hand of his royal justice; the privilege of the clergy was
saved, to fall at last before another King Henry four centuries later.
Yet its staunchest champions must surely have felt their cause reduced
well-nigh to an absurdity when they found that the first result of its
triumph was to secure the primate’s very murderers from the penalty
due to their crime;[2166] and far greater than the seeming gain of
Henry’s surrender at Avranches was the loss to the English Church
involved in the break-down of Theobald’s plans for the reform of the
episcopate. The cowardice of the bishops during the struggle left
them at its close wholly at the mercy of the king. The vacant sees,
of which there were eight besides Canterbury, were filled after long
delays with secular clerks wholly subservient to the royal will; and
before the end of Henry’s life the English episcopate was as completely
secularized as it had been in the worst days of his grandfather. The
inevitable consequences followed. As were the bishops, so, and even
worse, were the lower clergy. The cry against the extortion and tyranny
of the diocesan officials which rang at the opening of Henry’s reign
through the _Polycraticus_ of John of Salisbury rang yet more loudly
and bitterly at its close through the pages of Walter Map and Gerald
de Barri; the immorality which had once stirred the indignant zeal of
Henry himself grew more wide-spread and more frightful year by year,
as a direct result of his own shortsighted and selfish ecclesiastical
policy. To that policy there were, indeed, two honourably marked
exceptions. In 1186 Henry raised to the bishopric of Lincoln one of
the holiest and wisest men then living, Hugh of Avalon. His dealings
with the important and difficult question of the succession to the
metropolitan see itself appear to have been prompted by equally
disinterested motives. It was not the apathy or procrastination of
the king, but the determination of the monks of Christ Church to
use to the uttermost the favourable opportunity for asserting their
independence, and the difficulty of finding any willing candidate for
such a siege--perilous as the chair of S. Thomas was felt to be,
that delayed the election of his successor for two years and a half,
and his consecration for nine months longer still.[2167] The new
Archbishop Richard was a monk of unblemished character, and though
possessed of little talent or learning, fulfilled his office creditably
for ten years;[2168] while Baldwin, who took his place in 1185, was a
Cistercian of the best type--a type which, however, was now rapidly
passing away.

        [2166] Henry, not knowing what to do with the archbishop’s
        murderers, counselled or connived at their flight into
        Scotland. The Scot king and people, however, shewed such a
        strong disposition to hang them that they were driven to
        re-cross the border (MS. Lansdown., Robertson, _Becket_, vol.
        iv. p. 162). They then, it seems, took refuge at Knaresborough,
        and there lay hid till hunger compelled them to issue from
        their lurking-place. Finding themselves everywhere shunned like
        wild beasts, they at last in desperation gave themselves up to
        the mercy or the vengeance of the king. But the murderer of
        a priest was legally amenable to none save an ecclesiastical
        tribunal; Henry could do nothing with them but send them on
        to the Pope; and all that the Pope could do with them was to
        sentence them to lifelong exile and penance in Holy Land.
        Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 25 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 163, 164);
        cf. MS. Lansdown (as above), pp. 162, 163. See also a minor
        illustration of the inconveniences attaching to this other side
        of the clerical immunities, in a letter of Archbishop Richard
        to some of his suffragans; Ep. dccxciv., Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. vii. pp. 561–564.

        [2167] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 239–245, 247.

        [2168] “Homo quidem mediocriter literatus, sed laudabiliter
        innoxius, et, ne ambularet in magnis, modulo suo prudenter
        contentus.” Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 8 (Howlett, vol. i. pp.
        235, 236).

The monastic revival which had shed such brightness over the earlier
half of the twelfth century died down long before its close. S. Bernard
had not yet been seven years in his grave when John of Salisbury,
certainly not a hostile witness, was compelled to acknowledge that the
love of power and the greed of gain had infected the whole monastic
body, not excepting even the White Monks. Rome herself soon found it
needful to make an attempt, although a vain one, to curb the arrogance
of the military orders.[2169] Reformers in the next generation vied
with each other in denouncing the vices and crimes of the Cluniacs and
those of the “white-robed herd, the abominable order” of Cîteaux.[2170]
The fall of the Cistercians indeed was the most terrible of all;
within the space of two generations their name, once the symbol of
the highest moral and spiritual perfection which the men of their
day were capable of conceiving, had become a by-word for the lowest
depths of wickedness and corruption. Startling as was the change, its
causes are not far to seek. Pledged though they were by the origin and
primitive constitution of their order to be a standing protest against
the wealth and luxury of the Benedictines, they had nevertheless
become, in less than a hundred years from their first appearance in
England, the richest and most powerful body of monks in the realm.
At the time of their coming, almost the whole extent of arable land
throughout the country was already occupied; the only resource open to
the new-comers was the yet unexhausted and, as it seemed in England
at least, well-nigh inexhaustible resource of pasturage. They brought
to their sheep-farming the same energy, skill and perseverance which
characterized all their undertakings; and their well-earned success in
this pursuit, together with the vast increase of the wool-trade which
marked the same period, made them in a few years masters of the most
productive branch of English industry. Temptation came with prosperity.
But the more obvious temptations of wealth, the temptations to ease
and vanity and luxurious self-indulgence, had little power over the
stern temper of the White Monks; it was a deeper and a deadlier snare
into which they fell; not sloth and gluttony, but avarice and pride,
were their besetting sins. In the days of Richard and John, when we
find them struggling and bargaining almost on equal terms with the
king’s ministers and the king himself, they were indeed a mighty power
both in Church and state; but the foundation on which their power now
rested was wholly different from that upon which it had first arisen;
its moral basis was gone. As an element in the nation’s spiritual life
the Order of Cîteaux, once its very soul, now counted for worse than
nothing.

        [2169] See a canon of the third Lateran Council (A.D. 1179),
        in Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 3 (as above, pp. 221–223). On the
        Templars and Hospitaliers see also W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._,
        dist. i. c. 23 (Wright, pp. 36–38).

        [2170] See especially Gir. Cambr. _Spec. Eccles._, distt. ii.
        and iii. (Brewer, vol. iv. pp. 29 _et seq._). “Grex albus,
        ordo nefandus,” is a description of the Cistercians quoted
        apparently from W. Map by his opponent W. Bothewald; Wright,
        _Latin Poems attributed to W. Mapes_, introd. p. xxxv. See also
        King Richard’s opinion of these two orders and of the Templars,
        in Gir. Cambr. as above, dist. ii. c. 12 (p. 54).

Still the monastic impulse which had guided so many religious movements
in the past was not wholly dead. On the continent it was giving indeed
fresh proofs of its vitality in the growth of two remarkable orders,
those of Grandmont and of the Chartreuse, both of earlier origin
than that of Cîteaux, but overshadowed until now by its transcendent
fame. These however had little influence upon English religious
life. The “Good Men” of Grandmont--as the brotherhood were commonly
called--although special favourites of King Henry, never set foot in
his island realm; the Carthusians reached it only in his last years,
and the few settlements which they formed there never rose to any
great importance.[2171] Out of all the English monasteries, of various
orders, whose dates of foundation are known, only one hundred and
thirteen arose during the thirty-five years of Henry’s reign, while
a hundred and fifteen owed their origin to the nineteen troubled
winters of his predecessor. In Yorkshire alone no less than twenty
new houses had been founded under Stephen; only eleven were founded
there under Henry.[2172] Towards the close of the century, indeed, the
reputation of English monachism had fallen so low that in the high
places of the Church a reaction in favour of secular clerks began to
set in once more. One bishop, Hugh of Coventry, not only ventured to
repeat the experiment which had been vainly tried elsewhere under the
Confessor and the Conqueror, of turning the monks out of his cathedral
and replacing them by secular canons, but actually proposed that all
the cathedral establishments served by monks should be broken up and
put upon a new foundation of a like secular character. Hugh himself
was however scarcely the man to meet with general recognition in the
capacity of a reformer; and his bold anticipation of the ecclesiastical
revolution which was to come four centuries later ended in ignominious
failure.[2173] It was, however, no less a personage than Archbishop
Baldwin himself who in 1186 proposed to endow out of his archiepiscopal
revenues a college of secular priests at Hackington by Canterbury,
with the avowed object of providing a dwelling-place and a maintenance
for the scholarship which monkish jealousy and monkish sloth had all
but driven out of the cloisters where from the days of Theodore to
those of Theobald it had found a home. This scheme was at once met by
a determined opposition on the part of the monks of Christ Church,
who suspected, perhaps not without reason, that it was part of a
design for curtailing the privileges and destroying the independence
of the metropolitan chapter. They instantly appealed to Rome, and the
appeal opened a contest which absorbed the unlucky primate’s energies
throughout the remainder of his life. He was steadily supported by
the king; but the weight of the whole monastic body, except his own
order, was thrown into the opposite scale; the general drift of
ecclesiastical feeling still lay in the same direction; and after
nearly four years of wearisome litigation at Rome and almost open
warfare at Canterbury, the building of the new college was stopped by
order of the Pope. The undaunted primate transferred his foundation
to a new site at Lambeth, where it might have seemed less open to
suspicion of rivalry with the Canterbury chapter; but the jealousy of
the monks pursued it with relentless hatred, and Baldwin’s absence
and death in Holy Land enabled them to secure an easy victory a year
later. The next archbishop, Hubert Walter, took up his predecessor’s
scheme with a zeal doubtless quickened by the fact that he was himself
a secular clerk. The dispute dragged on for five more years, to end at
last in the defeat of the primate, and, with him, of the last attempt
made in England systematically to utilize the superfluous wealth of
a great monastic corporation for the promotion of learning and the
endowment of study.[2174] The attempt was made under unfavourable
circumstances, perhaps by unskilful hands; and it was moreover made
too soon. In English national sentiment, monachism was inseparably
bound up with Christianity itself. To the monastic system England
owed her conversion, her ecclesiastical organization, her earliest
training as a nation and as a Church. Even if the guides to whom she
had so long trusted were failing her at last, the conservatism and the
gratitude of Englishmen both alike still shrank from casting aside
a tradition hallowed by the best and happiest associations of six
hundred years. The bent of popular sympathy was strikingly shewn by
an episode in Baldwin’s quarrel with his monks, when their insolent
defiance of his authority provoked him to cut off all their supplies,
in the hope of starving them into submission. For eighty-four weeks
not a morsel of food reached them save what was brought by their
friends or by the pilgrims who crowded to the martyr’s shrine; so
great however was the amount of these contributions, some of which
came even from Jews, that--if we may believe the tale of one who was
himself an inmate of the convent at this time--the brethren were able
out of their superabundance to give a daily meal to two hundred poor
strangers.[2175] As a spiritual force, however, monachism in England
was well-nigh dead. Though it still kept a lingering hold upon the
hearts of the people, it had lost its power over their souls. It might
produce individual saints like Hugh of Lincoln; but its influence had
ceased to mould the spiritual life of the nation. The time was almost
ripe for the coming of the Friars.

        [2171] On Grandmont (founded in 1176, by Stephen of Tierny,
        near Muret in the diocese of Limoges) see _Gall. Christ._, vol.
        ii. col. 645; _Vita S. Steph. Muret._ (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
        vol. ii. pp. 674–683); Bern. Guidon, _De Ordine Grandimont._
        (_ib._ p. 275 _et seq._); W. Map, _De Nug. Curial._, dist. i.
        cc. 17, 27 (Wright, pp. 28, 29, 58, 59); and Gir. Cambr. _Spec.
        Eccles._, dist. iii. c. 21 (Brewer, vol. iv. p. 254). Henry’s
        reverence for the brethren showed itself not only in frequent
        visits and benefactions to their house, and also in his desire
        to be buried there (above, p. 270), but also by the remarkable
        way in which he deferred to their suggestions and sought their
        counsel on grave matters of policy. Examples of this are
        frequent during the Becket controversy; another may be seen
        in _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 194. For the Chartreuse
        (diocese of Grenoble--founded in 1084 or 1086 by Bruno of
        Cöln, a canon of Reims) see W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. i.
        cc. 16 and 28 (Wright, pp. 26–28, 59, 60); Gir. Cambr. _Spec.
        Eccles._, dist. iii. c. 20 (as above, pp. 248–252); _Gall.
        Christ._, vol. xvi. cols. 268, 269. The history of the English
        Carthusian houses is in Dugdale’s _Monasticon_, vol. vi. pt.
        i.; a full account of one, Witham, is given in the Life of S.
        Hugh of Lincoln, who had been its first prior.

        [2172] These figures are from Mr. Howlett’s introduction to
        Will. Newb., vol. i. pp. xiii, xiv.

        [2173] Gir. Cambr. _Spec. Eccles._, dist. ii. c. 23 (as above,
        pp. 65, 67). Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), pp. 65–67. Gerv. Cant.
        (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 470, 488, 489, 550.

        [2174] The history of this quarrel is told at wearisome length
        by Gervase of Canterbury, and in the _Epistolæ Cantuarienses_.
        It is summed up and explained by Bishop Stubbs in his preface
        to the last-named book.

        [2175] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 405.

Meanwhile the decay of holiness and learning in the cloister was
brought into more vivid light by a great outburst of intellectual
vigour of a wholly new type. The literary activity of the reign of
Henry I. had been all but quenched by the troubles of Stephen’s
reign. Chronicler after chronicler lays down his pen, as if in
disgust or despair, in the middle of the dreary story, till Henry
of Huntingdon and the nameless English annalist at Peterborough are
left to struggle almost alone through the last years of anarchy to
welcome the new king; and he is no sooner crowned than they, too,
pass away into silence.[2176] The first half of Henry’s reign has
no contemporary historian at all. The other branches of literature
continued equally barren; and a promise of better things had scarcely
dawned in the miscellaneous treatises of John of Salisbury when the
whole intellectual horizon was darkened by the great ecclesiastical
storm. No sooner had it subsided, however, than the literary impulse
revived under wholly changed conditions. Its bent was still mainly
historical; and, as might be expected, the first subject-matter upon
which it seized was the history of the new martyr. Within twenty
years of his death, no less than ten different biographies of S.
Thomas were composed by writers of the most diverse characters--his
old comrade John of Salisbury, three of his own confidential clerks,
a Benedictine abbot of Peterborough, an Augustinian prior of Oxford,
a monk of Canterbury who was probably an Irishman by blood, a French
poet who had seen the primate in his chancellor-days, a Cambridge
clerk who had joined him on the eve of his martyrdom. But meanwhile a
new school of English history was springing up in the court instead
of the cloister. Modern research has ascertained that the book which
may fairly be called the foundation-stone of this new school, as well
as the primary authority for English political history from the death
of S. Thomas to the third year of Richard Cœur-de-Lion--- the “Acts
of King Henry and King Richard,” long attributed to Benedict abbot
of Peterborough--is really the work of Richard Fitz-Nigel, bishop of
London and treasurer. Its continuator, Roger of Howden, was a clerk
of the royal chapel and an active and trusted officer of the royal
administration under both Henry and Richard.[2177] A third chronicler
of the period, Ralf de Diceto, was archdeacon of Middlesex from 1153 to
1180, when he became dean of S. Paul’s, an office of great political
as well as ecclesiastical importance, which he filled with distinction
until his death in the fourth year of King John.[2178] The works of
these three writers are examples of a species of historical composition
which is one of the most valuable literary products of the later
twelfth century. They are chronicles in the strictest sense of the
word:--records of facts and events arranged year by year in orderly
chronological sequence, and for the most part without any attempt at
illustration, comment or criticism. But the gap which parts them from
the ordinary type of monastic chronicle is as wide as that which parted
the highly-placed ecclesiastical dignitary, the trusted minister of
the Crown, or the favourite court-chaplain from the obscure monk who
had spent, it may be, well-nigh his whole life in copying manuscripts
in the scriptorium of Burton or Dunstable or Waverley. Their writers
were not merely chroniclers; they were statesmen and diplomatists
as well. Their position as members of the royal administration,
dwelling in the capital or at the court, placed them in constant and
intimate communication with the chief actors in the events which they
narrate, events of which not only were they themselves frequently
eye-witnesses, but in which they even took a personal, though it might
be subordinate, share; it gave them access to the most authentic
sources of political intelligence, to the official records of the
kingdom, to the state-papers and diplomatic correspondence of the
time, whereof a considerable part, if not actually drawn up by
themselves, must at any rate have passed through their hands in the
regular course of their daily business. The fulness and accuracy, the
balance of proportion, the careful order which characterize the work
of these statesmen-chroniclers are scarcely more remarkable than its
cosmopolitan range; Henry’s historiographers, like Henry himself, sweep
the whole known world into the wide circle of their intelligence and
their interest; the internal concerns of every state, from Norway to
Morocco and from Ireland to Palestine, find a place in the pages of
Richard Fitz-Nigel and Roger of Howden, side by side with the narrative
of their sovereign’s wars with France or with the text of the various
assizes whereby he was reforming the legal and judicial administration
of their own native land. While, however, the first works of this new
historical school thus rose far above the level of mere annals, they
still stood far below the literary standard of history in the higher
sense, which had been set up by a monk at Malmesbury half a century
before. The only writer who in the latter half of the twelfth century,
like William of Malmesbury in its earlier half, looked at history in
its true light, not as a mere record of facts, but according to its
old Greek definition, as “philosophy teaching by examples,” must be
sought after all not in the court but in the cloister. William indeed
had left no heir to his many-sided literary genius; but if some shreds
of his mantle did fall upon any historian of the next generation, they
fell upon one who bore his name, in an Augustinian priory among the
Yorkshire moors.

        [2176] Henry of Huntingdon, we know, intended to “devote a new
        book to the new king”; but it seems that this intention was not
        fulfilled.

        [2177] On the _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden see Bishop Stubbs’s
        prefaces to his editions of them in the Rolls series.

        [2178] Stubbs, _R. Diceto_, vol. i. pref. pp. xxvi–lxxxiii.

William of Newburgh was born in 1136 at Bridlington, a quiet little
town lying under the southern escarpment of the York Wolds, not far
from Flamborough Head. Here, between the bleak uplands and the cold
northern sea, a priory of Austin canons had been founded by Walter de
Gant in the reign of Henry I.;[2179] from this house a colony went
forth in the early years of Stephen to settle, under the protection
of Roger de Mowbray, first at Hode near Thirsk, and afterwards, in
1145, at Newburgh near Coxwold. William entered the new house as a
child--probably, therefore, almost at its foundation; there he passed
his whole life; and there, as the reign of Richard Cœur-de-Lion drew
towards its close, he wrote his _English History_, from the Norman
conquest to his own day. The actual composition of the book seems to
have occupied little more than two years; it can scarcely have been
begun earlier than 1196, and it breaks off abruptly in the spring
of 1198. The surroundings of its writer offered comparatively few
advantages for the pursuit of historical study. No atmosphere of
venerable antiquity, no traditions of early scholarship and poetry,
no hallowed associations with the kings and saints and heroes of old,
hung around Newburgh priory; the house was younger than its historian;
the earliest and well-nigh the only memory that can attract a pilgrim
to its now desolate site is the memory of William himself. No crowd
of devotees from all parts of the realm came thither year by year to
bring their offerings and their news, as they came to the shrine of S.
Ealdhelm; no visit of king or prince is likely ever to have startled
the inmates of Newburgh out of the quiet routine of their daily life;
its prior held no such place among the ecclesiastical dignitaries
of his province as the abbot of Malmesbury had held for ages among
the prelates of the south; he and his canons could have little or no
business with the outside world, and it is hardly conceivable that
any of them would ever have occasion to travel further than to the
mother-house at Bridlington, unless indeed his own love of enterprise
and thirst for a wider knowledge of the world should drive him further
afield. Even in such a case, however, the undertaking would have been
beset with difficulties; travelling in Yorkshire was still, even under
Henry Fitz-Empress and his son, a more arduous and dangerous matter
than travelling in Wessex under his grandfather. William, too, had
grown up amid those terrible days when peaceable folk could find no
shelter save within convent-walls, and even that shelter sometimes
proved unavailing--when the men of the north were only too thankful
to wrap themselves in that comparative isolation which saved them at
any rate from sharing in the worst miseries that overwhelmed their
brethren in southern England. The memories of his boyhood were little
calculated to arouse in him such a spirit of enterprise as had fired
the young librarian of Malmesbury. He seems, indeed, never to have set
a foot outside his native shire; we might almost fancy that like the
first and most venerable of all our historians, he never set a foot
outside his own monastery. The vivid sketches of town and country which
give such a picturesque charm to the writings of William of Malmesbury
are wholly absent from those of William of Newburgh; there is but one
bit of local description in his whole book, and even that one--a brief
account of Scarborough[2180]--contains no distinct proof of having
been drawn from personal knowledge of the place. The brotherhood of
Newburgh had, however, ample opportunities of obtaining authentic,
though indirect, intelligence from the outer world. Their home, in
a sheltered spot under the western slope of the Hambledon Hills, was
quiet and peaceful, but not lonely; for it lay on an old road leading
from York to the mouth of the Tees, and within easy reach of a whole
group of famous monastic establishments which had sprung up during the
early years of the religious revival in the little river-valleys that
open around the foot of the moors. A few hours’ journey down the vale
of Pickering would bring the canons of Newburgh to brethren of their
own order at Kirkham and Malton; some ten or twelve miles of hill and
moor lay between them and the famous abbey of Rievaux; another great
Cistercian house, Byland, rose only a mile from their own home. With
the two last-named houses, at least, they were clearly in frequent
and intimate communication; it was indeed at the desire of Abbot
Ernald of Rievaux that William undertook to write his history; and
remembering the important part which the Cistercians, and especially
those of Yorkshire, had played for more than half a century in English
politics, secular as well as ecclesiastical, we can readily see that
his external sources of information were likely to be at once copious
and trustworthy.

        [2179] Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. vi. pt. 1, pp. 284, 285.

        [2180] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 3 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 104).

The literary resources of Newburgh itself, however, must have been
of the very poorest; its library, if it possessed one at all, could
only be in process of formation even in William’s mature years. He
himself gives us no clue to its contents. His style is that of a man
of education and taste, but he shews little trace of the classical
scholarship which may be detected in William of Malmesbury. Only three
earlier writers are mentioned by name in his preface; with two of
these--Bæda and Gildas--he has of course no ground in common; while
the third, Geoffrey of Monmouth, is named only to be overwhelmed with
scorn. It is plain, however, that William largely used the works of
Simeon of Durham and Henry of Huntingdon; while the fact that his
sketch of the reigns of Henry I. and Stephen is founded upon the
last-named writer seems to shew that his literary ambition had never
been quickened by a sight of the _Gesta Regum_ and _Historia Novella_,
of which nevertheless his book is the sole worthy continuation.
Compared with the works of Richard Fitz-Nigel and Roger of Howden,
its faults are obvious; its details are vague and inaccurate, it is
full of mistakes in names, pedigrees and suchlike small matters, and
its chronology is one long tangle of inconsistencies, confusions and
contradictions. But in the eyes of William of Newburgh, as in the
eyes of William of Malmesbury, the office of an historian is not so
much to record the events of the past as to explain them, to extract
from them their moral and political significance for the instruction
of the present and the future. His work is not a chronicle; it is a
commentary on the whole history of England, political, ecclesiastical
and social, throughout the twelfth century.[2181] Such a commentary,
written at such a time and by such a man, is for later students
above all price. The one short chapter in which William sums up the
causes and effects of the anarchy under Stephen[2182] is of more real
historical worth than the whole chaos of mere disjointed facts which
is all that the chroniclers have to give us, and in which he alone
helps us to discover a meaning and a moral. The same might be said of
many of his reflections upon men and things, both at home and abroad.
In some respects indeed he contrasts favourably even with his greater
namesake of Malmesbury. If he is less anxious for the entertainment
of his reader, he is more in earnest about the philosophical bearings
of his subject; he cares less for artistic effect and more for moral
impressions; his stories are less amusing and less graphically told,
but they are untinged with Malmesbury’s love of gossip and scandal;
his aim is always rather to point a moral than to adorn a tale;
he has a feeling for romance and a feeling for humour,[2183] but
he will ruthlessly, though quietly, demolish a generally-accepted
story altogether, if he knows it to be false.[2184] Only once does
the judicial calmness of his tone change into accents of almost
passionate indignation; and it is this outburst which above all has
gained for him in our own day the title of “the father of historical
criticism,”[2185] for it is the earliest protest against a rising
school of pseudo-historical writers who seemed in a fair way to drive
true history altogether out of the literary field.

        [2181] On Will. Newb. and his work see Mr. Howlett’s preface to
        vol. i. of his edition of the _Historia Anglicana_ in the Rolls
        series.

        [2182] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 22 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 69, 70).

        [2183] See _e.g._, l. ii. c. 10, and l. iv. c. 32 (as above,
        pp. 123–125, 385, 386), l. v. cc. 6 and 14 (vol. ii. pp.
        424–427, 451–453).

        [2184] L. i. c. 26 (vol. i. p. 81).

        [2185] From Mr. Freeman, in the _Contemporary Review_, vol.
        xxxiii. (1878), p. 216.

Nowhere, perhaps, has the marvellous vitality of the ancient Celtic
race shewn itself more strikingly than in the province of literature.
Of all the varied intellectual elements that went to the making of the
new England, the Celtic element rose to the surface first. The romantic
literature of England owes its origin to a Welsh monk, Geoffrey of
Monmouth, who became bishop of S. Asaph’s about two years before the
accession of Henry II. Long before that time--probably in the days
when poets and men of letters of every type were thronging to the
court of Henry’s grandmother the good Queen Maude--Walter Calenius,
archdeacon of Oxford, had picked up during a journey in Britanny “a
very ancient book, containing a history of the Britons, from Brut to
Cadwallader son of Cadwallon;” this book he carried home to England
and presented to his friend Geoffrey, begging him to translate it out
of Welsh into Latin.[2186] Some years after the death of Henry I.
Geoffrey’s translation was given to the world. Its original cannot
now be identified; but Geoffrey may fairly take to himself the whole
credit of the _History of the British Kings_ to which his name is
attached. The book is an elaborate tissue of Celtic myths, legends and
traditions, scraps of classical and Scriptural learning, and fantastic
inventions of the author’s own fertile brain, all dexterously thrown
into a pseudo-historical shape and boldly sent forth under the imposing
name of History. The success of Geoffrey’s venture was amazing. The
dedication of the book was accepted by the foremost lay scholar of
the day, William of Malmesbury’s friend and patron, Earl Robert of
Gloucester; its fame spread rapidly through all sections and classes of
society. A Yorkshire priest, Alfred of Beverley, tells us how some of
the clergy of the diocese, when suspended from the usual occupations of
their calling--doubtless by one of the many interdicts which fell upon
them during the struggle between S. William and Henry Murdac--beguiled
their time by discussing the stories which they had heard or read about
the ancient British kings; how, his curiosity aroused by their talk, he
with some difficulty borrowed a copy of the new book which had set them
talking; and how he longed to transcribe it at length, but lacking time
and means was obliged to content himself with an abridgement.[2187]
Norman barons and ladies heard of the wondrous book and became eager
to read it in their own tongue; a copy was borrowed from Earl Robert
himself by no less a personage than Walter Lespec, that he might lend
it in his turn to a friend of his own, Ralf Fitz-Gilbert, whose wife
wanted her household-minstrel Geoffrey Gaimar to translate it into
French verse for her entertainment.[2188]

        [2186] Geoff. Monm. _Hist. Reg. Brit._, l. i. c. 1 (Giles,
        Caxton Soc., pp. 1, 2).

        [2187] Alf. Beverl. (Hearne), pp. 1–3.

        [2188] Geoff. Gaimar, vv. 6436–6460 (Wright, Caxton Soc., pp.
        224, 225).

The version of Gaimar was superseded in a few years by that of Wace,
a Norman poet who did a better service to the cause of history by his
later work, the _Roman de Rou_ or riming chronicle of the Norman dukes
from Hrolf to Henry II. Neither Alfred nor Gaimar nor Wace seems to
have had any suspicion of the true character of Geoffrey’s book of
marvels; they all alike treated it as genuine history, and from the
point where it closes, at the death of Cadwallon in 689, carried on
their narratives without a break down to the times of the Norman kings.
It was against this blurring of the line between truth and falsehood,
this obliteration of the fundamental distinction between history and
romance, that William of Newburgh lifted up his well-grounded and
eloquent protest in the preface to his _Historia Anglicana_.[2189]
Notwithstanding that protest, the fabulous tales of the _Brut_ (as
Geoffrey’s book is commonly called, from the name of the first British
king mentioned in it) continued to pass current as an integral part of
the history of Britain for many generations after him. The fraud was
in fact countenanced in high places for political ends; Henry himself
was quick to seize upon it as a means of humouring the national
vanity and soothing the irritated national feelings of those Celtic
vassals who were generally among the most troublesome of his subjects,
but who were also not unfrequently among the most necessary and
useful of his allies. On one occasion he is said, though on doubtful
authority, to have conciliated the Bretons by consenting to enter
into a diplomatic correspondence with their long-departed, yet still
mysteriously living monarch, Arthur, and by proposing to hold Britanny
as Arthur’s vassal.[2190] In his last years, however, he turned the new
Arthurian lore to account in a far more significant way in the island
Britain: he set the monks of Glastonbury to find the grave of the
British hero-king. In the cemetery of S. Dunstan’s old abbey stood two
pyramidal stones, of unknown age, and covered with inscriptions so old
and worn that nothing could be read in them save, as it was thought,
Arthur’s name. Between these stones, sixteen feet below the surface
of the ground, Henry--so the monks afterwards declared--guided by
what he had heard from an old Welsh bard and read in the histories of
the Britons,[2191] bade them look for a wooden sarcophagus containing
Arthur’s mortal remains. The discovery was made in 1191; a coffin,
hollowed as Henry had said out of the solid trunk of an oak-tree,
was dug up on the spot indicated; let into a stone at its foot was
a leaden cross, which when taken out proved to bear upon its inner
face the words, “Here in the isle of Avalon lies buried the renowned
King Arthur, with Guinevere his wife.” In the coffin were found a few
rotten bones, and a “cunningly-braided tress of golden hair,” which
however crumbled into dust in the hand of a monk who snatched it up
too eagerly. The bones were carefully preserved and solemnly re-buried
under a marble tomb before the high altar in the abbey-church.[2192]

        [2189] Will. Newb. proœm. (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 11–18).

        [2190] “Hanc [sc. Britanniam] sub jure tuo, sub pace tuâ,
                    teneamus;
                Jus tibi, pax nobis, totaque terra simul”--

        ends Henry’s letter to Arthur in the _Draco Norm._, l. ii. c.
        22, vv. 1279, 1280 (Howlett, _Will. Newb._, vol. ii. p. 707).
        See above, p. 57, note 2{226}. The whole story is extremely
        curious; but I feel too doubtful about the character of the
        source from which it comes to venture upon any discussion of its
        possible significance.

        [2191] “Sicut ab historico cantore Britone audierat antiquo,”
        Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._ (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 192.
        “Ex gestis Britonum et eorum cantoribus historicis,” _Spec.
        Eccles._, dist. ii. c. 9 (Brewer, vol. iv. p. 49). These
        pyramids were there in William of Malmesbury’s day, when one
        of them was already threatening to fall “præ nimiâ vetustate.”
        They were covered with “antiquitatis nonnulla spectacula, quæ
        plane possunt legi licet non plane possunt intelligi.” These
        were pictures of bishops and kings, with old English names
        written under them; Arthur, however, is not in the list.
        William thought that the persons represented were buried
        underneath. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. i. c. 21 (Hardy, pp.
        34, 35).

        [2192] See the various accounts of the invention and
        translation of Arthur in Gir. Cambr. _Spec. Eccles._, dist. ii.
        cc. 9, 10 (Brewer, vol. iv. pp. 48–51), and _De Instr. Princ._
        (Angl. Christ. Soc.), pp. 191, 192; R. Coggeshall (Stevenson),
        p. 36; Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 48, and Ann. Margam, a.
        1190 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. i. pp. 21, 22). Gerald seems
        to have been present himself. He tells us the “translation”
        was made by the king’s order; and indeed his account, taken by
        itself, would leave an impression that the whole thing occurred
        during King Henry’s lifetime; but R. Coggeshall and Rog. Wend.
        both distinctly give the date, 1191; the Margam Annals place it
        only a year earlier; and in both those years the reigning king
        was far away.

It is easy to see what was, at any rate in Henry’s mind, the political
significance of this transaction. When Arthur could be thus publicly
exhibited as dead and buried, it was because the long-cherished dreams
of Celtic national independence, of which his name had been the symbol
and the watchword, were dead and buried too. But the scene thus enacted
at Glastonbury in 1191 had also another meaning of which perhaps none
of the actors in it could be fully aware. It marked the final “passing
of Arthur” out of the sphere of politics into a wholly new sphere of
pure intellect and philosophical romance. If Geoffrey of Monmouth
corrupted the sources of British history, he atoned for his crime by
opening to the poets of the generation succeeding his own a fount of
inspiration which is hardly exhausted yet. Their imagination seized
upon the romantic side of these old-world legends, and gradually wove
them into a poetic cycle which went on developing all through the later
middle ages not in England alone, but over the whole of civilized
Europe. But in the hands of these more highly-cultured singers the wild
products of bardic fancy took a new colour and a new meaning. As usual,
it was the Church who first breathed into the hitherto soulless body
the breath of spiritual and intellectual life. The earliest of the
Arthurian romances, as we possess them now, is a wholly new creation of
the religious mysticism of the twelfth century, the story of the Holy
Grail--

        “The cup, the cup itself, from which our Lord
    Drank at the last sad supper with His own.
    This, from the blessed land of Aromat--
    After the day of darkness, when the dead
    Went wandering o’er Moriah--the good saint,
    Arimathæan Joseph, journeying brought
    To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn
    Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord.
    And there awhile it bode; and if a man
    Could touch or see it, he was heal’d at once,
    By faith, of all his ills. But then the times
    Grew to such evil that the holy cup
    Was caught away to Heaven, and disappear’d.”

As one by one the older legends of Arthur and Merlin, the later stories
of Lancelot and Tristan and Gawaine, were moulded into literary form, a
link to bind them all together was found in the “quest of the Grail,”
vowed by the whole company of Arthur’s knights assembled at the Table
Round, achieved only by one, the Galahad whose pure figure has gleamed
upon all after-time, as it flashed first upon the corrupt court of the
Angevins, the mirror of ideal Christian chivalry.

The greater part--certainly the noblest part--of this vast fabric of
romance seems to have been woven by the genius of one man.[2193] Every
side of the intellectual movement which throughout the latter half
of the twelfth century was working a revolution in English thought
and life is reflected in Walter Map. Born on the marches of England
and Wales, probably in the early years of the civil war, he studied
at Paris under Gerard la Pucelle, and came home again, while Thomas
Becket was still chancellor, to occupy some post at court, doubtless
that of chaplain to the king. He came of a family which had already
done good service to the Crown; but once in personal contact with Henry
himself, Walter can have needed no passport to the royal favour save
his own versatile genius. At once a scholar, a theologian and a poet,
an earnest political and ecclesiastical reformer and a polished man
of the world, shrewd and practical, witty and wise, he soon rose high
in the king’s confidence and esteem. Henry employed him in the most
varied capacities--as a justice-itinerant in England, as an ambassador
to the court of France, as a representative of English orthodoxy and
theological learning at the Lateran council of 1179; while in the
intervals of these missions he was in close and constant attendance
upon the king himself. In addition to his post in the royal household
he held several ecclesiastical preferments--a canonry at S. Paul’s,
the parsonage of Westbury in Gloucestershire, and the precentorship
of Lincoln, which he resigned in 1196 to become archdeacon of
Oxford.[2194] By that time his literary work was probably for the most
part done. The only book now extant which actually bears his name,
the treatise _De Nugis Curialium_--“Courtiers’ Triflings”--is a fruit
of the busy years spent in attendance upon King Henry from 1182 to
1189. By its title and origin it recalls the _Polycraticus_; and the
difference between the two books marks the change which had come over
the tone of educated English thought in the quarter of a century that
lay between them. Walter Map was, in all likelihood, as ripe a scholar
as John of Salisbury; but there is nothing scholastic in his treatment
of his subject. His book is far less elaborate in form and methodical
in arrangement than John’s; it has, in fact, no visible arrangement
at all; it is a collection of miscellaneous notes--scraps of folklore
from the Welsh marches, tales brought home by pilgrims and crusaders
from Byzantium or Jerusalem, stories from the classics, sayings from
the Fathers, fragments of information gleaned from the by-ways of
history, personal anecdotes new and old, sketches of contemporary life
and manners in the world and the Church, court-news, court-gossip,
court-scandal--all, as it seems, picked out at random from the
writer’s private commonplace-book and flashed in picturesque confusion
before the eyes of the literary public of his day. Yet the purpose of
it all is as earnest as that of the _Polycraticus_, though veiled under
a shew of carelessness. Walter appeals to a wider circle than John;
he writes not for a chosen band of kindred souls, but for all sorts
and conditions of men who know Latin enough to read him, for courtiers
and men of the world who have neither time nor patience to go through
a course of philosophical reasonings and exhortations, but who may be
caught at unawares by “truth embodied in a tale,” and are the more
likely to be caught by it the more unexpected the shape in which it
comes. When Walter stops to point the moral of his stories--for a moral
they always have--he does it with the utmost tact; more often he leaves
his readers to find the moral for themselves. “I am your huntsman;
I bring you the game; dress the dishes for yourselves!” he tells
them.[2195] But he strikes down the quarry--if we may venture to borrow
his own metaphor--with a far more unsparing hand than his predecessor.
King Henry himself, indeed, never was spared in his own court; but it
is in the satirist’s attitude towards the Church that we find the most
significant sign of the times. The grave tone of righteous indignation,
the shame and grief of the Theobaldine reformers at the decay of
ecclesiastical purity, has given place to bitter mockery and scathing
sarcasm. Where John lifts up his hands in deprecation of Heaven’s
wrath against its unworthy ministers, Walter points at them the finger
of scorn. John turns with eager hope from the picture of decaying
discipline and declining morality, which he paints with firm hand but
with averted face, to the prospect of a reformation which is to be the
spontaneous work of the clergy and the “religious” themselves; Walter
has seen this dream of reform buried in the grave of S. Thomas--perhaps
we should rather say of Theobald--and now sees no way of dealing with
the mass of corruption but to fling it bodily into the furnace of
public criticism and popular hatred. The mightiest creation of his
genius is the “Bishop Goliath” whose gigantic figure embodies all the
vice and all the crime which were bringing disgrace upon the clerical
order in his day. The “Apocalypse” and “Confession” of this imaginary
prelate have been ascribed to Walter Map by a constant tradition whose
truth it is impossible to doubt, although it rests upon no direct
contemporary authority.[2196] The satire is in fact so daring, so
bitter, and withal so appallingly true to life, that the author may
well have deemed it wiser to conceal his name. He is the anonymous
spokesman of a new criticism which has not yet fully discovered its own
power; of a public opinion which is no longer held in check by external
authority, but which is beginning to be itself an independent force;
which dares to sling its pebble at abuses that have defied king and
Pope, and will dare one day to sling it at king and Pope themselves.
That day, however, was still far distant. Walter’s ideal of perfection
in Church and state is one with John of Salisbury’s, only it is set
forth in a different shape. The moral lesson which lies at the heart
of the Arthurian romances comes home to us the more forcibly as we
remember that the hand which drew Sir Galahad was the same hand which
drew Bishop Goliath.

        [2193] On these Arthur-romances and Walter Map’s share in
        them see Sir F. Madden’s introduction to his edition of _Sir
        Gawayne_ (Bannatyne Club), and that of M. Paulin Paris to the
        first volume of his _Manuscrits Français de la Bibliothèque du
        Roi_, summarized in Mr. H. Morley’s _English Writers_, vol. i.
        pp. 562–569.

        [2194] For the life of Walter Map see Mr. Wright’s _Biog.
        Britt. Litt._, vol. ii. pp. 295–298, and his preface to _De
        Nug. Cur._ (Camden Soc.) pp. i.–viii.

        [2195] “Venator vester sum, feras vobis affero, fercula
        faciatis.” W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. ii. c. 32 (Wright, p.
        106).

        [2196] They have been edited, under the title of _Latin Poems
        ascribed to Walter Mapes_, by Mr. T. Wright for the Camden
        Society.

Side by side with Walter Map, in the foremost rank of this new school
of critics and satirists, stands his probably younger contemporary,
Gerald de Barri. Gerald was born in 1147 in the castle of Manorbeer,
some three miles from Pembroke. He has left us a vivid picture of his
childhood’s home--its ramparts and towers crowning a lofty hill-top
exposed to all the winds that swept over the stormy Irish Sea, whirled
up the creek that ran up from the Bristol Channel to westward of the
castle, and ruffled with ceaseless wavelets the surface of the little
stream that flowed through the sandy valley on its eastern side;--its
splendid fishponds at the northern foot of the hill, the enclosed
tract of garden-ground beyond, and at the back of all, the protecting
belt of woodland whose precipitous paths and lofty nut-trees were
perhaps alike attractive to Gerald and his brothers in their boyish
days.[2197] His father, William de Barri, the lord of Manorbeer,
represented one of those Norman families of knightly rank who had
made for themselves a home in South Wales, half as conquerors, half
as settlers, in the days of Henry I. His mother, Angareth, was a
granddaughter of Rees Ap-Tewdor, prince of South Wales--a child of his
daughter Nest by her marriage with Gerald the constable of Pembroke;
and the fiery Celtic spirit as well as the quick Celtic wit which the
boy inherited from her shews itself alike in every act of his life
and in every page of his writings. On both sides he came of a race of
fighting-men, and he was certainly not the least pugnacious of his
family. The countless battles of his life were, however, to be fought
with other weapons than the sword which had won Manorbeer for his
paternal ancestors, and which was soon to win for some of his mother’s
nearest kinsmen--for her half-brother Robert Fitz-Stephen, her nephews
Meiler and Robert and Raymond, her own brother Maurice Fitz-Gerald--a
wider heritage and a more lasting fame beyond the Irish Sea. Gerald’s
bent towards the clerical profession shewed itself in his earliest
years; as a child he was known at Manorbeer as “the little bishop.”
At three different periods before he reached the age of twenty-five,
he spent some years in study at Paris, where he also lectured upon
rhetoric with considerable success. He finally came home in 1172, just
as King Henry, having twice passed through South Wales on his way to
and from Ireland, was planning out a new scheme for the government of
the principality. One part of this scheme was, as we have seen, the
delegation of the supreme authority to the young Welsh prince Rees
Ap-Griffith. Another part was the revival of the policy begun by the
Norman kings of managing the Welsh people through the instrumentality
of the Church, and, to this intent, filling the ranks of the clergy
in Wales with as many foreign priests as possible. Experience had,
however, shewn that men of pure English or Norman blood were not always
the fittest instruments for such a purpose. A year after Gerald’s birth
a compromise had been tried in the appointment to the bishopric of
S. David’s of a prelate who was half Norman and half Welsh:--David,
son of Gerald of Pembroke and Nest, brother of Maurice Fitz-Gerald and
of Angareth the wife of William de Barri. When Angareth’s son Gerald
came home from Paris in 1172, therefore, the influence of her family
was at its height. The foremost man in South Wales was her cousin Rees
Ap-Griffith; the second was her brother the bishop of S. David’s. It
was only natural that Gerald, sharing with his uncle the qualification
of mingled Welsh and Norman blood, and already known as a distinguished
scholar of the most famous seat of learning in Europe, should be at
once selected for employment in the business of reforming his native
land. Gerald himself was eager for the work; he had no difficulty in
obtaining from Archbishop Richard a commission to act as his legate
and representative in the diocese of S. David’s; thus armed, he began
a vigorous campaign against the evil doings of clergy and laity
alike--forcing the people to pay their tithes of wool and cheese, a
duty which the Welsh were always very unwilling to fulfil; compelling
the priests to abandon the lax system of discipline which they had
inherited from the ancient British Church, and had contrived to retain
in spite of Lanfranc and Anselm and Theobald; excommunicating the
sheriff and deposing the archdeacon of Brecknock themselves when they
dared to resist his authority, and receiving in 1175, as the reward of
his zeal, the appointment to the vacated archdeaconry.

        [2197] Gir. Cambr. _Itin. Kambr._, l. i. c. 12 (Dimock, vol.
        vi. p. 92).

Early in the next year his uncle, Bishop David, died. The young
archdeacon had just issued victorious from a sharp struggle in behalf
of the see against the bishop of S. Asaph’s, who had attempted to
encroach upon its rights; the darling wish of his heart was to see it
restored to its ancient metropolitical rank; and he had managed to
kindle in his fellow-canons a spark of the same ambition. They saw
in him the only man capable of bringing their desire to fulfilment,
and made a bold attempt to obtain him for their bishop. By this time,
however, both King Henry and Archbishop Richard had learned enough of
Gerald’s character to perceive that, however useful he might be as an
archdeacon in Wales, he was not at all the man to suit their purposes
as bishop of any Welsh see, least of all as bishop of S. David’s.
Henry, with a burst of fury, summarily refused the nomination of the
chapter; a long wrangle ended in the appointment of Peter de Leia,
prior of the Cluniac house of Much Wenlock, to the vacant see. Peter,
being a foreigner, a monk, and a man of no great intellectual capacity,
was utterly unable either to rule his turbulent Welsh flock or to cope
with his self-willed and quick-witted Welsh canons; Gerald undertook to
teach him his duties, but found him such an unsatisfactory pupil that
he soon gave up the task in disgust, and again betook himself to Paris.
There he remained, studying civil and canon law, and lecturing at the
same time with great success, till the summer of 1180, when he returned
to England, was received by the chapter of Canterbury at a great
banquet on Trinity Sunday, and thence proceeded into Wales. He found
Bishop Peter at his wits’ end, and the diocese in utter confusion,
which he at once set himself to remedy after his own fashion. Thus
matters went on till 1184, when Henry on his last hurried visit to
England found time to intervene once more in the troubled affairs of
South Wales. He called a council on the border, summoned Gerald to meet
him there, and employed him to arrange the final submission of his
cousin Rees to the English Crown; and then he dexterously removed the
over-zealous archdeacon from a sphere where he was likely henceforth to
be more dangerous than useful, by making him one of his own chaplains,
and sending him next year to Ireland in attendance upon John. John came
back in September; Gerald lingered till the following Easter. Two books
were the fruit of this visit: a _Topography of Ireland_, published
in 1187, and dedicated to the king; and the _Conquest of Ireland_,
which came out under the patronage of Count Richard of Poitou in 1188.
Towards the close of that year, when Archbishop Baldwin went to preach
the Crusade in Wales, Gerald accompanied him half as interpreter, half
as guide. An _Itinerary of Wales_ forms the record of this expedition,
which was followed by a journey over sea, still in the company of the
archbishop, with whom Gerald seems to have remained in more or less
close attendance upon Henry’s movements until the final catastrophe
in July 1189. He then offered his services to Richard, who sent him
home once more to his old task of helping to keep order in South
Wales. For a while he found favour with all parties;[2198] William
of Longchamp offered him the bishopric of Bangor, John, in his day
of power after William’s fall, offered him that of Landaff. Gerald
however refused them both, as he had already refused two Irish sees;
he cared in fact for no preferment short of the metropolitan chair
of S. David. Shut out of Paris by the war between Richard and Philip
Augustus, he withdrew to Lincoln and resumed his theological studies
under its chancellor William, whom he had known in his earlier college
days on the Mont-Ste.-Geneviève, till in the summer of 1198 he was
roused to action once more by the death of Bishop Peter de Leia. The
fight began at once; the chapter of S. David’s nominated Gerald for
the vacant see; the archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter, set his
face against the nomination; they defied his authority and appealed to
king and Pope; Gerald himself fought his own battle and that of the see
with indomitable courage, at home and abroad, for nearly four years;
but the canons were less resolute than their bishop-elect, he found
himself at last fighting alone against the world, and in 1202 he gave
up the struggle and withdrew to spend the rest of his life in the quiet
pursuit of letters.[2199]

        [2198] Gerald himself goes so far as to say, with respect to
        Richard’s appointment of William of Longchamp as justiciar,
        “cui archidiaconum adjunxit” (_De Rebus a se gestis_, dist. ii.
        c. 21, Brewer, vol. i. p. 84). We find however no hint of such
        a thing elsewhere.

        [2199] Gerald’s life may be studied in his own book, _De Rebus
        a se gestis_, published in the first volume of the Rolls
        edition of his works; and, more conveniently, in Mr. Brewer’s
        preface to the same volume.

For nearly thirty years it had been the aim of Gerald’s highest
ambition to be the S. Thomas of his native land. He had struggled and
suffered for the privileges of S. David’s in the same spirit in which
Thomas had struggled and suffered for those of Canterbury, and it is
by no means unlikely that had the occasion ever arisen, he would have
been found ready to follow his model even unto death.[2200] But,
unlike Thomas, he knew when to yield; and instead of dying for a lost
cause, was content to live for posterity. Both men have had their
fitting reward. Gerald the Welshman--“Giraldus Cambrensis”--still lives
in his writings under the title won for him by his ardent patriotism;
he lives however for us not as the champion of Welsh ecclesiastical
independence, but as what he has been called by a writer of our own
day--“the father of our popular literature.”[2201] Gerald’s first
essay in authorship was made at the age of twenty; he was still busy
with his pen when past his seventieth year;[2202] and all through the
intervening half-century, every spare moment of his active, restless
career was devoted to literary composition. His last years were
spent in revising and embellishing the hasty productions of these
earlier and briefer intervals of leisure. Even in their more finished
shape, however, they still bear the impress of their origin. They
breathe in all its fulness a spirit of which we catch the first faint
indications in William of Malmesbury, and which may be described in
one word as the spirit of modern journalism. Gerald’s wide range of
subjects is only less remarkable than the ease and freedom with which
he treats them. Whatever he touches--history, archæology, geography,
natural science, politics, the social life and thought of the day,
the physical peculiarities of Ireland and the manners and customs of
its people, the picturesque scenery and traditions of his own native
land, the scandals of the court and of the cloister, the petty struggle
for the primacy of Wales and the great tragedy of the fall of the
Angevin empire--is all alike dealt with in the bold, dashing, offhand
style of a modern newspaper or magazine-article. His first important
work, the _Topography of Ireland_, is, with due allowance for the
difference between the tastes of the twelfth century and those of the
nineteenth, just such a series of sketches as a special correspondent
in our own day might send from some newly-colonized island in the
Pacific to satisfy or to whet the curiosity of his readers at home.
The book made no small stir in the contemporary world of letters.
Sober, old-fashioned scholars stood aghast at this daring Welshman’s
disregard of all classical traditions and literary conventionalities,
at the colloquialisms of his style, and still more at the audacity of
his stories.[2203] For Gerald, determined to entertain his readers no
matter by what means, and secure in their universal ignorance of the
country which he professed to be describing, had raked together all the
marvellous and horrible tales that could be found in Irish traditionary
lore or devised by the inventive genius of his Irish informants;
and the more frightful and impossible these stories were, the more
greedily did he seize upon them and publish them. Irish scholars,
almost from that day to this, have justly declaimed against Gerald
for his atrocious libels upon their country and its people; yet the
fact remains that, in the words of one of his latest editors, “to his
industry we are exclusively indebted for all that is known of the state
of Ireland during the whole of the middle ages.”[2204] His treatise
_De Expugnatione Hiberniæ_ is by far the most complete and authentic
account which we possess of the English or Norman conquest of Ireland.
The _Topographia_, despite its glaring faults, has a special merit of
its own; its author “must” (as says the writer already quoted) “take
rank with the first who descried the value, and, in some respects, the
proper limits of descriptive geography.”[2205]

        [2200] That Thomas was Gerald’s chosen model may be seen all
        through his writings. He harps upon the martyr’s life and death
        somewhat as Thomas himself harped upon the life of Anselm.

        [2201] Green, _Hist. Eng. People_, vol. i. p. 172.

        [2202] Gir. Cambr. _De Jure Menev. Eccles._, dist. vii.
        (Dimock, vol. iii. pp. 372, 373).

        [2203] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, introit. (Dimock, vol. v.
        p. 209).

        [2204] Brewer, _Gir. Cambr._, vol. i. pref. p. xl.

        [2205] _Ibid._

A far better specimen of his work in this direction is his _Welsh
Itinerary_, followed some three or four years later by a _Description
of Wales_.[2206] Here Gerald is on familiar and congenial ground,
dealing with a subject which he thoroughly knows and understands,
describing a country which he ardently loves and a people with whom,
although by no means blind or indulgent to their faults, he is yet
heartily in sympathy, because he is one of themselves. In these
treatises therefore we see him at his very best, both as a writer
and as a man. In his own opinion the best of all his works was the
_Gemma Ecclesiastica_,[2207] or _Jewel of the Church_, a handbook of
instructions on the moral and religious duties of the priesthood,
compiled for the clergy of his own archdeaconry of Brecknock. To
modern readers it is interesting only for the glimpse which it affords
of the social, moral and intellectual condition of the South-Welsh
clergy in his day. In his _Mirror of the Church_[2208] the general
state of religious society and ecclesiastical discipline, at home and
abroad, is reflected as unsparingly as in the satires of Walter Map.
The remainder of Gerald’s extant works are of the most miscellaneous
character--a half-finished autobiography, a book of _Invectives_
against his enemies political and ecclesiastical, a collection of
letters, poems and speeches, a treatise on the _Rights of the Church of
S. David’s_, some Lives of contemporary bishops, a tract nominally _On
the Education of Princes_, but really occupied for the most part with
a bitter attack upon the characters of Henry II. and his sons.[2209]
All of them are, more or less, polemical pamphlets, coloured throughout
by the violent personal antipathies of the writer,[2210] but valuable
for the countless side-lights which they cast upon the social life of
the period. As we read their bold language, we can scarcely wonder at
Archbishop Hubert’s relentless determination to put down their author
by every means in his power. But though Gerald the bishop-elect of
S. David’s was no match for the primate of all England, Gerald the
pamphleteer wielded a force against which the religious authority
of the metropolitan and the hostility of the older race of scholars
were both alike powerless. He and his colleagues in the new school of
literature had at their back the whole strength of the class to which
they belonged, a class of men who were rapidly taking the place of the
clergy as leaders of the intellectual life and thought of the nation.
When old-fashioned critics lifted up their protest against Gerald’s
_Irish Topography_, he boldly carried the book down to Oxford, “where
the most learned and famous English clerks were then to be found,” and
read it out publicly to as many as chose to come and hear it. “And
as there were three distinctions or divisions in the work, and each
division occupied a day, the readings lasted three successive days.
On the first day he received and entertained at his lodgings all the
poor of the town; on the next day all the doctors of the different
faculties, and such of their pupils as were of fame and note; on the
third day the rest of the scholars, with the knights, townsmen and many
burgesses.”[2211] If some of the elder teachers shook their heads, it
mattered little to Gerald; their murmurs were lost in the applause
of a younger generation which hailed him as one of its own most
distinguished representatives.

        [2206] Dimock, vol. vi.

        [2207] Brewer, vol. ii.

        [2208] _Speculum Ecclesiæ_ (Brewer, vol. iv.).

        [2209] Gerald’s works have all been edited for the Rolls
        series by Mr. Brewer and Mr. Dimock, except the _Vitæ Sex
        Episcoporum_, which are in Wharton’s _Anglia Sacra_, vol. ii.,
        and _De Instructione Principum_, which has been published by
        the Anglia Christiana Society.

        [2210] It is only fair to note that Gerald at the close of his
        life published a little book of _Retractations_, printed in
        first volume of his works (ed. Brewer).

        [2211] Gir. Cambr. _De Rebus a se gestis_, l. ii. c. 16
        (Brewer, vol. i. pp. 72, 73). I have availed myself of Mr.
        Brewer’s translation of the passage, in his preface to the same
        volume, p. xlvii.

The spirit which breathes through the pages of Gerald and Walter is
the spirit of the rising universities. The word “university” indeed,
as applied to the great seats of learning in the twelfth century,
is somewhat of an anachronism; the earliest use of it in the modern
sense, in reference to Oxford, occurs under Henry III.;[2212] and
the University of Paris appears by that name for the first time in
1215,[2213] the year of our own Great Charter. But although the title
was not yet in use, the institution now represented by it was one of
the most important creations of the age. The school of Bologna sprang
into life under the impulse given by Irnerius, a teacher who opened
lectures upon the Roman civil law in 1113.[2214] Nearly forty years
later, when Gratian had published his famous book on the Decretals,
a school of canon law was instituted in the same city by Pope Eugene
III.; and in 1158 the body of teachers who formed what we call the
University won a charter of privileges from the Emperor Frederic
Barbarossa.[2215] We have already, in the course of our story, had
more than one glimpse of the great school of arts and theology which
was growing up during the same period in Paris. There, where the study
of divinity had long found a congenial home under the shadow of the
cathedral church, William of Champeaux in 1109--the year of S. Anselm’s
death--opened on the Mont-Ste.-Geneviève a school of logic which in a
few years became the most frequented in Europe. Under his successors,
Abelard and Peter Lombard (the latter of whom was made bishop of Paris
in 1159), the schools of Paris became the centre of the intellectual
life of Christendom.[2216] Teachers and scholars from every nation met
on equal terms, as fellow-citizens of a new and world-wide commonwealth
of learning, on the slopes of the “Mount,” and went forth again to
carry into the most distant lands the instruction which they had
acquired. There a Wiltshire lad could begin a lifelong intimacy with
a youth from Champagne;--could pass from the lectures of Abelard to
those of a master who, though disguised under the title of “Robert of
Melun,” was in reality a fellow-countryman of his own; could enter the
_quadrivium_ under the guidance of a German teacher, make acquaintance
with Aristotle by the help of another learned Englishman, and complete
his theological studies, it may be, under the same Robert Pulein whom
we saw lecturing at Oxford some twelve or thirteen years before.[2217]
There a scholar from the Welsh marches could sit at the feet of the
English master Gerard La Pucelle,[2218] and another from the depths of
Pembroke could give lectures on rhetoric and could study theology with
William of Blois, who in after-days came at the call of the Burgundian
S. Hugh to undertake the direction of a school at Lincoln.[2219] There
Ralf de Diceto was a fellow-student with Arnulf of Lisieux;[2220]
there, in all likelihood, John of Salisbury met Nicolas Breakspear and
Thomas Becket. Thence, we cannot doubt, came through some of these
wandering scholars the impulse which called the schools of Oxford into
being. The first token of their existence is the appearance of Robert
Pulein in 1133. From that time forth the intellectual history of Oxford
is again blank till the coming of Vacarius in 1149; and it is not till
the reign of Henry II. has all but closed that we begin to discern any
lasting result from the visits of these two teachers. Then, however,
the words of Gerald would alone suffice to shew that the University
was to all intents and purposes full-grown. It had its different
“faculties” of teachers, its scholars of various grades; and the little
city in the meadows by the Isis, famous already in ecclesiastical
legend and in political and military history, had by this time won
the character which was henceforth to be its highest and most abiding
glory, as the resort of all “the most learned and renowned clerks in
England.”

        [2212] Anstey, _Munimenta Academica_, vol. i. introd. p. xxxiv.

        [2213] Mullinger, _Univ. Cambridge_, p. 71 (from Savigny,
        _Gesch. des Röm. Rechts_, c. xxi. sec. 127).

        [2214] _Ib._ pp. 36, 37, 72.

        [2215] Mullinger, _Univ. Camb._, p. 73.

        [2216] _Ib._ pp. 75–77.

        [2217] See above, vol. i. pp. 480–483.

        [2218] See above, p. 449.

        [2219] _Ib._ pp. 453, 456.

        [2220] Arn. Lisieux, Ep. 16 (Giles, pp. 100, 101).

On a site less favoured by nature, Oxford’s future rival was more
slowly growing up. A lift of slightly higher ground above the left bank
of the river Grant--better known to us now as the Cam--on the southern
margin of what was then and for five hundred years afterwards a vast
tract of flood-drowned fen stretching northward as far as the Wash,
there stood at the close of the seventh century--long before Oxford
makes its first appearance in history--a “little waste chester”[2221]
representing what had once been the Roman city of Camboritum. At
the coming of the Normans the place was known as Grantebridge, and
contained some three or four hundred houses, twenty-seven of which were
pulled down by the Conqueror’s orders to make room for the erection of
a castle.[2222] It may be that here, as at Lincoln, the inhabitants
thus expelled went to make for themselves a new home beyond the river;
and a church of S. Benet which still survives, and whose tower might
pass for a twin-sister of Robert D’Oilly’s tower of S. Michael’s at
Oxford, may have been the nucleus of a new town which sprang up half a
mile to the south-east of the old one, on the right bank of the Cam.
Around this new town there gathered in the course of the following
century a fringe of religious foundations. The “round church” of the
Holy Sepulchre, clearly a work of the time of Henry I., was probably
built by some crusader whose imagination had been fired by the sight
of its prototype at Jerusalem. A Benedictine nunnery, part of whose
beautiful church now serves as the chapel of Jesus College, was
established under the invocation of S. Radegund early in the reign of
Stephen; an hospital dedicated to S. John the Evangelist was founded
at some time between 1133 and 1169 under the patronage of Bishop
Nigel of Ely. This hospital, like most institutions of the kind, may
have been served by canons regular of the order of S. Augustine. Some
years before this, however, the Augustinians had made a more important
settlement in the same neighbourhood. As early as 1092 Picot the
sheriff of Cambridgeshire had founded within the older town on the left
bank of the river a church of S. Giles, to be served by four regular
canons. In 1112 this little college was removed to Barnwell, some two
miles to the north-eastward, on the opposite side of the river, where
it grew into a flourishing Austin priory. Wherever there were Austin
canons a school was sure to spring up ere long; so, too, we cannot
doubt, it was at Cambridge. Whether the seeds of learning were first
sown in the cloisters of S. John’s or of Barnwell, or under the shadow
of that old S. Benet’s which seems to have been the original University
church[2223]--who it was that played here the part which had been
played at Oxford by Robert Pulein--we know not; but we do know that by
the middle of the following century the old Grantebridge had sunk into
a mere suburb of the new town beyond the river, and the existence of
the schools of Cambridge had become an established fact.[2224]

        [2221] Bæda, _Hist. Eccles._, l. iv. c. 19.

        [2222] Domesday, vol. i. p. 189.

        [2223] See Mullinger, _Univ. Camb._, p. 299, note 3; and Willis
        and Clark, _Archit. Hist. Cambr._, vol. i. p. 276 and note 3.

        [2224] On the rise of Cambridge--town and university--see
        Mullinger, _Univ. Camb._, pp. 332–334. The schools were not
        formally recognized as an “University” till 1318; _ib._ p. 145.
        For S. Radegund’s see Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. iv. pp.
        215, 216; for Barnwell, _ib._ vol. vi. pt. i. pp. 83–87; for S.
        John’s Hospital, _ib._ pt. ii. p. 755. The present S. John’s
        College stands on the site of the hospital.

The student-life of the twelfth century--whether it were the life of
scholar or of teacher--had nothing either of the ease or the dignity
which we associate with the college life of to-day. Colleges in the
modern sense there were indeed none. Students of all ranks and ages,
from boys of ten or twelve years to men in full priestly orders, lodged
as they could in a sort of dames’-houses or hostels scattered up and
down the streets and lanes of the city. The schools were entirely
unendowed; there was no University chest, no common fund, no pecuniary
aid of any kind for either scholars or teachers. The sole support of
both was, at first, the power under whose sheltering wings the school
had grown up--the Church. Every book, even, had to be either bought
out of their own private purses or borrowed from the library of some
religious establishment. We may perhaps gather some idea of what
this latter resource was likely to furnish in the great educational
centres from a catalogue which has been preserved to us of the library
attached to Lincoln minster, at the time when the Lincoln school of
theology was at the height of its fame under Gerald’s friend William
of Blois and the saintly bishop Hugh. Five-and-thirty years before
Hugh’s appointment to the see, the church of Lincoln possessed, in
addition to the necessary service-books which were under the care of
the treasurer, some thirty or forty books in the chancellor’s keeping.
Among these we find, besides a number of Psalters, works of the Latin
Fathers, Epistles, Gospels, and a complete Bible in two volumes, the
Canons, Statutes and Decretals of the Popes;--the Decretals edited by
Ivo of Chartres;--the works of Vergil: a copy of the military treatise
of Vegetius, bound up with the Roman History of Eutropius, “which
volume Master Gerard gave in exchange for the Consolations of Boëthius,
which he lost”;--Priscian’s Grammar:--a “Mappa Mundi”: and a _Book of
the Foundation of Lincoln Minster_, with a collection of its charters.
Of nine books presented by Bishop Robert de Chesney, who died in
1166, the most noticeable were the works of Josephus and of Eusebius,
and the _Sentences_ of Peter Lombard. Somewhat later, one Warin of
Hibaldstow presented to the chapter a “book of Aristotle”--doubtless a
Latin version of his treatise on logic or on natural philosophy--and
seven volumes, whose contents are not stated, were given by Master
“Radulphus Niger” or Ralf the Black, known to us as one of the minor
chroniclers of King Henry’s later years. A copy of Gratian’s great book
of Decretals was presented about the same time by an archdeacon of
Leicester; Gerald de Barri, probably during his residence at Lincoln at
the close of Richard’s reign, added another law-book called _Summula
super Decreta_, a copy of S. Anselm’s treatise _Cur Deus Homo_, and
three of his own works, the _Topographia Hiberniæ_, the _Life of Bishop
Remigius_, and the _Gemma Sacerdotalis_ or _Ecclesiastica_; and the
list closes with another copy of the _Sentences_, acquired seemingly in
the early years of the following century.[2225]

        [2225] See the Catalogues of Lincoln cathedral library in the
        twelfth century, in _Gir. Cambr. Opp._, vol. vii. (Dimock and
        Freeman), App. C., pp. 165–171.

The head of the scholastic body was the chancellor, who was an officer
of the diocesan bishop--in the case of Oxford, the bishop of Lincoln.
From him those who had reached a certain degree of proficiency in the
schools received their license to become teachers in their turn; and it
was an established rule that all who had attained the rank of Master
or Doctor should devote themselves for a certain time to the work of
instructing others. They gave their lectures how and where they could,
in cloister or church-porch, or in their own wretched lodgings, their
pupils sitting literally at their feet, huddled all together on the
bare ground; their living depended solely on their school-fees, and
these were often received with one hand only to be paid away again with
the other, for many an ardent young teacher of logic or rhetoric was,
like John of Salisbury and Gerald de Barri, at one and the same time
giving lectures in these arts to less advanced scholars and pursuing
his own studies under some great doctor of theology. The course of
study was much the same everywhere. From the fifth century downwards
it had consisted of two divisions, _trivium_ and _quadrivium_. Under
the former head were comprised Grammar, defined by an early teacher
as the art of “writing and reading learnedly, understanding and
judging skilfully;”[2226] Dialectics, including logic and metaphysics;
and Rhetoric, by which were meant the rules and figures of the art,
chiefly derived from Cicero. The Quadrivium included Geometry, not so
much the science now known by that name as what we call geography;
Arithmetic, which in the middle ages meant the science of mystical
numbers; Music, in other words metre and harmony; and Astronomy, of
course on the Ptolemaic system, although as early as the fifth century
a theory had been put forth which is said to have given in after-days
the clue to Copernicus.[2227] There was a separate faculty of Theology,
and another of Law. Between these different faculties there seems to
have been a good deal of jealousy. The highest authorities of the
Western Church, while encouraging by every means in their power the
study of the canon law, set their faces steadily against the civil law
of imperial Rome; the “religious” were over and over again forbidden
to have anything to do with it: and on the continent the two branches
of the legal profession were followed by different persons. As,
however, the procedure of the canon law was founded upon that of the
Theodosian code, the English clerical lawyers in Stephen’s time and in
Henry’s early years found their account in combining the two studies;
by degrees both together passed out of the hands of the clergy into
those of a new class of lay lawyers; and in later days, while on the
continent the canon law fell into neglect with its exclusively clerical
professors, in England it was preserved by being linked with the civil
law under the care of lay _doctores utriusque juris_.[2228]

        [2226] “Docte scribere legereque, erudite intelligere
        probareque.” Martianus Capella, quoted by Mullinger, _Univ.
        Camb._, pp. 24, 25.

        [2227] Mullinger, _Univ. Camb._, pp. 24–26.

        [2228] _Ib._ pp. 37–39.

Theology had, however, a yet more formidable rival in the schools
of logic. The text-book commonly used in these schools was a Latin
translation, made by Boëthius in the sixth century, of part of
Aristotle’s treatise upon logic. Early in the twelfth century the
natural philosophy of Aristotle was in some measure rendered accessible
to western students through translations made by travelled scholars
such as Adelard of Bath from Arabic versions which they had picked
up in the schools of Salerno or of the remoter East. Of the “Ethics”
nothing was known save a few fragments imbedded in the works of Latin
writers, until a hundred years later, when they found their way back to
Europe, probably in the train of the returning crusaders, and certainly
in a very strange shape--that of a Latin translation from a Hebrew
version of what was, after all, nothing more than an Arabic commentary
founded upon a Syriac version of the original Greek text.[2229] Garbled
as it was, however, this new Aristotelian lore revolutionized the
schools of western Christendom by laying open to them wholly new fields
of criticism and speculation. The spirit of free inquiry in which
Adelard had begun to deal with physical science invaded every region of
intellectual thought and knowledge, while the spread of legal studies
helped to the invention of new methods of argument and disputation. In
vain did Peter Lombard, in the famous book which gained for him his
title of “Master of the Sentences,” strive to stem the rising tide
and counterwork the influence of the rationalizing dialecticians by
applying to the purposes of theology the methods of their own favourite
science. The “Sentences” remained the accepted text-book of theology
down to the cataclysm in the sixteenth century; but their effect was
precisely the opposite to that which their author had desired.[2230]
The endless “doubtful disputations,” the hair-splittings, the “systems
of impossibilities,” which had already taken possession of the
logic-schools in John of Salisbury’s day, were even more irritating
to the practical mind and impetuous temper of Gerald de Barri. They
were in fact ruining both theology and letters. “Our scholars,” Gerald
complains, “for the sake of making a shew, have betaken themselves
to subjects which rather savour of the quadrivium:--questions of
single and compound, shadow and motion, points and lines, acute and
obtuse angles--that they may display a smattering of learning in the
quadrivium, whereof the studies flourish more in the East than in
the West; and thence they have proceeded to the maintaining of false
positions, the propounding of insoluble problems, the spinning of
frivolous and long-winded discourses, not in the best of Latin, hereby
holding up in their own disputations a warning of the consequences
ensuing from their abandonment of the study of letters.”[2231] Yet it
was from those very schools that Gerald himself, and men like him, had
caught the fearless temper, the outspoken, unrestrained tone, in which
they exposed and criticized not only every conspicuous individual,
but every institution and every system, alike in the world and in the
Church of their day. The democratic spirit of independence which had
characterized the strictly clerical reformers of an earlier day had
passed from the ranks of the priesthood into those of the universities,
and had taken a mightier developement there. It was mainly through
them that the nation at large entered in some degree into the labours
of Theobald and his fellow-workers; it was they themselves who entered
into the labours of Thomas Becket. A large proportion of both students
and teachers--a proportion which grew larger and larger as time went
on--were laymen; but an inveterate legal fiction still counted them all
as “clerks.” The schools had grown up under the wings of the Church,
and when they reached their full stature, they were strong enough both
to free themselves from the control of the ecclesiastical authorities
and to keep the privileges for which the clergy had fought. A priest
of the English Church in our own day is as completely subject to the
ordinary law of the land as any of his flock; but the chancellor’s
court of the University of Oxford still possesses sole cognizance over
all causes whatsoever, in all parts of the realm, which concern any
resident member of the University.[2232]

        [2229] Mullinger, _Univ. Camb._, pp. 94–96 and notes.

        [2230] _Ib._ pp. 58–62.

        [2231] Gir. Cambr. _Gemma Eccles._, dist. ii. c. 37 (Brewer,
        vol. ii. p. 355). Cf. _ib._ pp. 350, 351, and _Spec. Eccles._,
        dist. i. proœm. (vol. iv. pp. 4–9).

        [2232] This privilege was secured by a charter of Edward III.;
        it was successfully asserted as lately as January 1886.

Not the universities, however, but the towns, were the true strongholds
of English freedom. The struggle of the English towns for municipal
liberty which we have seen beginning under Henry I. was renewed
under Henry II. and Richard with increased vigour and success. Henry
Fitz-Empress was far too clear-sighted a statesman to undervalue the
growing importance of this element in English social and political
life. Most of his town-charters, however, date from the earlier years
of his reign, and scarcely any of them contain anything more than
a confirmation of the liberties enjoyed in his grandfather’s time,
with the addition in some cases of a few new privileges, carefully
defined and strictly limited.[2233] In the great commercial cities,
where the municipal movement had probably received a fresh impulse
from the extension of trade and intercourse with the continent which
was a natural consequence of Henry’s accession to the crown, the
merchant-gilds soon began openly to aim at gathering into their
own hands the whole powers of local government and administration,
and acquiring the position of a French “commune.” The French kings
encouraged the growth of the communal principle as a possible
counterpoise to the power of the feudal nobles; Henry, who had little
need of it for such a purpose, saw the dangers which it threatened
to his system of government and held it steadily in check. In 1170
Aylwine the Mercer, Henry Hund and “the other men of the town” paid
a heavy fine to the treasury for an attempt to set up a commune at
Gloucester;[2234] six years later one Thomas “From-beyond-the-Ouse”
paid twenty marks for a like offence at York.[2235] Owing to the close
connexion between the organization of the commune and that of the
gilds, every developement of this latter institution also was watched
by the Crown with jealous care; in 1164 the burghers of Totnes, those
of Lidford and those of Bodmin were all fined for setting up gilds
without warrant from the king;[2236] and in 1180 no less than eighteen
“adulterine gilds” in London met with a similar punishment.[2237] Once
established, however, they seem to have been permitted to retain their
existence, for in the first Pipe Roll of Richard we find them again
paying their fines “as they are set down in the twenty-sixth Roll of
King Henry II.”[2238] A bakers’ gild in London, a weavers’ gild at
Nottingham, one of the same craft and another of fullers at Winchester,
make their appearance as authorized bodies at the opening of Henry’s
reign;[2239] among the “adulterine gilds” of London were those of
the butchers, goldsmiths, grocers, clothiers and pilgrims.[2240] The
golden days of English borough-life, however, began with the crowning
of Henry’s successor. “When History drops her drums and trumpets and
learns to tell the story of Englishmen”--as he who wrote these words
has told it--“it will find the significance of Richard, not in his
crusade or in his weary wars along the Norman border, but in his lavish
recognition of municipal life.”[2241] In his first seven years alone,
we find him granting charters to Winchester, Northampton, Norwich,
Ipswich, Doncaster, Carlisle, Lincoln, Scarborough and York. Some of
these towns were only beginning their career of independence, and were
content with the first step of all, the purchase of the _firma burgi_;
some bought a confirmation of privileges already acquired; Lincoln in
1194 had got so far as to win from the king a formal recognition of its
right to complete self-government in a clause empowering its citizens
to elect their own reeve every year.[2242] King of knights-errant
and troubadours as he seemed, Richard, it is plain, could read the
signs of the times as clearly and act upon their warnings as promptly
and as wisely as any of his race; and we may be very sure that this
bold advance upon his father’s cautious policy towards the towns was
dictated by a sound political instinct far more than by the mere greed
of gain. John went still further in the same direction; the first
fifteen years of his reign afford examples of town-charters of every
type, from the elementary grant of the _firma burgi_ and the freedom of
the merchant-gild to the little Cornish borough of Helston[2243] up to
the crowning privilege bestowed upon the “barons of our city of London”
in 1215, of electing their own mayor every year.[2244]

        [2233] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 165–168.

        [2234] Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. p. 563, from Pipe Roll 16
        Hen. II.

        [2235] Madox, _Firma Burgi_, p. 35, from Pipe Roll 22 Hen. II.

        [2236] Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp. 562, 563.

        [2237] _Ib._ p. 562, from Pipe Roll 26 Hen. II.

        [2238] Pipe Roll 1 Ric. I. (Hunter), p. 226.

        [2239] Pipe Roll 2 Hen. II. (Hunter), pp. 4, 39, 52.

        [2240] “Aurifabrorum,” “Bocheiorum,” “Piperariorum,”
        “Parariorum,” “Peregrinorum.” There are four gilds “de Ponte”;
        one “de S. Lazaro”; one “de Haliwell”; the rest are described
        simply as “the gild whereof So-and-so is alderman.” Madox,
        _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. p. 562, note _z_.

        [2241] Green, _Stray Studies_, p. 216.

        [2242] Northampton bought the _firma burgi_ in 1191, Norwich
        in 1192, Ipswich and Doncaster in 1194 (Madox as above, pp.
        399, 400, from Pipe Rolls); Winchester bought a confirmation
        of its liberties in 1190 (Stubbs, _Select Chart._, pp. 265,
        266), Carlisle in 1194, York and Scarborough in 1195 (Madox
        as above). The Lincoln charter is given by Bishop Stubbs, as
        above, pp. 266, 267; for its date see Pipe Roll 6 Ric. I.,
        quoted by Madox, as above, p. 400.

        [2243] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 313, 314.

        [2244] _Ib._ pp. 314, 315. John’s town-charters are all in the
        _Rotuli Chartarum_, edited by Sir T. D. Hardy for the Record
        Commission. See also extracts from Pipe Rolls in Madox, _Hist.
        Exch._, vol. i. pp. 400 _et seq._

From the charter of Henry I. to the establishment of the commune under
Richard the constitutional history of London is shrouded in obscurity.
The charter granted by Henry II. to the citizens, some time before
the end of 1158, is simply a confirmation of his grandfather’s.[2245]
During the first fifteen years of his reign two sheriffs of London
appear annually in the Pipe Rolls; in 1171 there were four, as there
had been in the thirty-first year of Henry I.; but in the twentieth
year of Henry II., 1171, we find that their number was again reduced to
two; and from 1182 onwards there seems to have been only one, till at
Michaelmas 1189 the accounts were rendered by Richard Fitz-Reiner and
Henry of Cornhill, both of whom continued in office till 1191.[2246]
In that year, as we have seen, the commune won its legal recognition
from John and Archbishop Walter of Rouen as representatives of the
absent king;[2247] and although the charter which Richard issued to the
citizens of London, shortly before his final departure from England in
1194, is a mere echo of his father’s,[2248] yet the existence of the
new corporation is thenceforth a recognized fact. John’s first charter
to London was issued from Normandy six weeks after his crowning. It
renewed the old grant of the sheriffdom of London and Middlesex, with
all rights and customs thereunto belonging, to the citizens and their
heirs, to have and to hold of the king and his heirs for ever. They
were to appoint as sheriffs any of their own number whom they might
choose, and to remove them at their pleasure; and for this privilege
they were to pay, through the said sheriffs, three hundred pounds
a year to the Treasury.[2249] The establishment of the commune had
reduced the sheriffs to the rank of mere financial officers, and the
real head of the civic administration was the mayor. The first mayor
of London, Henry Fitz-Aylwine, retained his office for life; and his
life extended beyond the limits of our present story. Yet the true
significance of that story is strikingly illustrated by the next
step in the history of London, a step which followed two years after
Fitz-Aylwine’s death. On May 9, 1215, John granted to the “barons of
the city of London” the right of annually electing their mayor.[2250]
Five weeks later the barons of England compelled him to sign, in the
meadows of Runnymede, the Great Charter which secured the liberties
not of one city only but of the whole English people; and among the
five-and-twenty men whom they chose from among themselves to enforce
its execution was Serlo the Mercer, mayor of London.[2251]

        [2245] Charter in Riley’s _Munimenta Gildhallæ_, vol. ii. part
        i. pp. 31, 32. It is witnessed by “archiepiscopo Cantuariæ” and
        “Ricardo episcopo Londoniarum”; _i.e._ Richard of London who
        died in May 1162, and Theobald who died in April 1161. As it is
        certain that neither of these two prelates ever crossed the sea
        after Henry’s accession, the charter must have been issued in
        England, and therefore before Henry went abroad in August 1158.

        [2246] Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 629.

        [2247] Above, p. 301.

        [2248] Riley, _Munim. Gildh._, vol. ii. pt. i. pp. 248, 249.
        Date, Winchester, April 23, 1194.

        [2249] Riley, _Munim. Gildh._, vol. ii. pt. i. pp. 249–251.
        Date, Bonneville, July 5, 1199.

        [2250] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 314, 315.

        [2251] Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 605.

Little, indeed, as the burghers themselves may have dreamed of any
such thing, the highest importance of their struggle for municipal
liberty lies in this, that its fruits were to be reaped by a far larger
community than was inclosed within the town-walls. It was from the
burghers that their brethren in the rural districts caught once more
the spirit of freedom which ages of oppression had well-nigh crushed
out of their hearts. “‘Ketel’s case’” at Bury S. Edmund’s--the case
of a tenant of the abbey who, dwelling “outside the gate,” was hanged
for a theft of which he had been found guilty by the Norman process
of the judicial duel usual in the manor-courts, and over whose fate
the townsmen, rejoicing in the Old-English right of compurgation which
they still retained, grew so bitterly sarcastic that the abbot and
the “saner part of the convent” were driven by terror of a peasant
revolt to admit their rural tenants to a share in the judicial
franchise of the town[2252]--was in all probability only one out of
many. The history of this same abbey of S. Edmund’s shews us how even
the villeins were rising into a position more like that of their free
brethren, how the old badges of serfdom, the heavy labour-rents, the
hard customs, were vanishing one by one, and how in this process of
enfranchisement the boroughs led the way.[2253] “The ancient customs
belonging to the cellarer’s office, as we have seen them”--that is,
as Jocelyn of Brakelond, who was a monk of S. Edmund’s from 1172
to 1211, had seen them in the old custom-roll of the house--“were
these: The cellarer had his messuage and barn by the well of Scurun,
where he solemnly held his court for the trial of thieves and of all
pleas and quarrels; and there he received the pledges of his men, and
enrolled them, and renewed them every year, and got gain by it, as
the reeve did in the portmannimot. This messuage was the homestead
of Beodric, who of old time was lord of this township, whence it was
called Beodricesworth; whose demesne lands are now in the demesne of
the cellarer; and what is now called the _aver-land_ was the land of
his rustics. Now the sum of his tenements and those of his men was
three hundred and thirty acres, which are lands still belonging to
the township, whereof the services, when the town was made free, were
divided into two parts; so that the sacristan or the reeve should
receive the quit-rent, that is, twopence on every acre; and the
cellarer should have the ploughings and other services, that is, the
ploughing of one rood for every acre, without food (which custom is
observed still); he was also to have the folds wherein all the men of
the township (except the seneschal, who has his own fold) were bound
to put their sheep (this custom, too, is observed still). He was also
to have the _aver-penny_,[2254] that is twopence for every thirty
acres; this custom was changed before the death of Abbot Hugh (1180).
For the men of the township had to go at the cellarer’s bidding to
Lakenheath, to fetch a load of eels from Southrey, and often they came
back with their carts empty, and so they had their trouble without any
benefit to the cellarer; wherefore it was agreed between them that
every thirty acres should pay a penny a year, and the men should stay
at home. At the present time, however, these lands are so cut up that
scarcely anybody knows from whom the payment is due; so that whereas
I have seen the cellarer receive twenty-seven pence in a year, now he
can hardly get tenpence farthing. Moreover, the cellarer used to have
control over the roads outside the township, so that no one might dig
chalk or clay without his leave. He was also wont to summon the fullers
of the township to lend cloths for carrying his salt; otherwise he
would forbid them the use of the waters, and seize whatever cloths he
found there; which customs are observed unto this day.” “Moreover the
cellarer alone ought, or used, to have one bull free in the fields
of this township; but now several persons have them.” “Moreover the
cellarer used to warrant those who owed service to his court, so that
they were exempt from scot and tallage; but now it is not so, because
the burghers say that those who do service at the court ought to be
exempt for their service, but not for the burgage which they hold in
the town, and forasmuch as they and their wives do publicly buy and
sell in the market.”[2255] After the affair of Ketel, in fact, the
cellarer’s court was merged in that of the town; “it was decreed that
his men should come to the toll-house with the others, and there renew
their pledges, and be written in the reeve’s roll, and there give to
the reeve the penny which is called _borth-silver_, and the cellarer
should have half of it (but he gets nothing at all of it now); and all
this was done, that all might enjoy equal liberty.”[2256]

        [2252] Joc. Brakelond (Rokewode), p. 74. See Mr. Green’s _Stray
        Studies_, pp. 222–224, and _Hist. Eng. People_, vol. i. pp.
        219, 220.

        [2253] On all this see Mr. Green’s _Abbot and Town_, in _Stray
        Studies_, pp. 213–229.

        [2254] “The money paid by the tenant in commutation of the
        service (_avera_) of performing any work for his lord by horse
        or ox, or by carriage with either.” Greenwell, Glossary to
        _Boldon Buke_ (Surtees Soc.)

        [2255] Joc. Brakelond (Rokewode), pp. 75, 76.

        [2256] _Ib._ p. 74.

“That all might enjoy equal liberty”--Jocelyn’s words had a
significance wider and deeper than he himself could know, wider and
deeper than could be known perhaps even to his abbot from whom they
were probably echoed; although it is clear from almost every page
of Jocelyn’s story that Abbot Sampson of S. Edmund’s was a far more
enlightened and far-seeing statesman than most of the great landowners
of his day, whether secular or tonsured. The rural tenants of S. Edmund
in his time had evidently made a good deal more progress towards
enfranchisement than those of some other great houses, such as, for
example, the abbey of Abingdon. In 1185, on the death of Abbot Roger
of Abingdon, a dispute between the “obedientiaries,” or officers of
the convent to whose support various portions of its revenues were
assigned, and the steward appointed by the king to take charge of
the abbot’s property during the vacancy of his office, led to the
drawing-up of a consuetudinary,[2257] which it would be interesting
to compare with the earlier “Black Book” of Peterborough. A large
proportion of the tenants’ dues were paid in money; but there were
still considerable remnants of the older system. The chamberlain of
the abbey, for instance, had an acre of land at Culham, which the men
of that township were bound to reap and carry to make beds for the
monks. The hay to be laid “under the monks’ feet when they bathed” was
supplied in like manner from a meadow at Stockgrave. A tenant named
Daniel of Colebrook was bound, besides paying a rent of five shillings,
to furnish the chamberlain whenever he went to London with hay for his
horses, with wood and salt, and with straw for his bed. At Welsford,
near Newbury, there were twenty-two “cotset-lands,” whose tenants held
them by their services as swineherds, bedels (or messengers of the
chamberlain’s court), shepherds, hedgewards and such like. Of eleven
rent-paying tenants in the same township, one owed, besides his rent
of twenty-seven pence, his personal service for getting in hay and
stacking corn in August. As the whole township was in demesne, its
inhabitants paid a tribute to the lord--in this case the chamberlain of
the abbey--for the pannage of their pigs; they had also to furnish the
services of one man for harvesting in August, and to lend their ploughs
for bene-work. The men of Boxhole, Benham, Easton and Weston did the
like. At Boxhole, out of twelve tenants, eight were bound, besides
paying their rent, to plough an acre of the demesne and sow it with
their own seed; and seven of these had moreover to carry hay and corn.
One Berner and his sons held a “cotset-land” by a rent of six sextaries
of honey to the cellarer and thirty-one pence to the chamberlain.[2258]
There were twenty-six tenants withdrawn from demesne, of whom six owed
work in August, in addition to their rent; and there were five acres of
meadow which had to be mowed and carried by five men of the township.
At Benham, out of twenty-four tenants, eleven were “cotsetles”; three
of these were servants of the chamberlain, holding their lands by
their service; the rest were to hold by rent or by work, as the lord
might choose[2259]--an arrangement which applied also to the cotters
of Boxhole.[2260] Of the remaining thirteen tenants at Benham, six
paid rent only; the rest were bound also to plough and sow an acre or
half an acre apiece, and to carry corn and hay.[2261] One was excused
the ploughing and sowing, doubtless in consideration of her sex and
condition--she was “Ernive a widow.”[2262] The whole township owed a
customary payment or church-shot of forty-six hens.[2263]

        [2257] _Hist. Mon. Abingdon_ (Stevenson), vol. ii. pp. 297, 298.

        [2258] _Hist. Mon. Abingdon_ (Stevenson), vol. ii. pp. 300–302.

        [2259] _Ib._ pp. 303–305.

        [2260] _Ib._ p. 303.

        [2261] And this though one of them was no less a personage
        than _Gaufridus vicecomes_! What can this mean? _Hist. Mon.
        Abingdon_ as above, pp. 304, 305.

        [2262] _Ib._ p. 304.

        [2263] _Ib._ p. 305.

On the manor of Weston the dues were thus distributed: Robert of
Pont-de-l’Arche held four acres of the abbot “by the service of half
a knight.” One acre belonged to the church of the township; half a
hide was held by John of S. Helen’s, on what terms we are not told.
Of the remainder, over which the chamberlain was lord, half a hide
was in demesne; the rest was distributed in ten portions, held by
thirteen tenants--a hide or half a hide being in three cases held by
two persons conjointly. Two hides and a half were for work or for
gavel, at the option of the lord; in actual practice, however, there
were only two cotters who owed labour instead of, or in addition
to, their money-rent. On the other hand, the right of poundage, or
exemption from impounding of cattle, was paid for in this village by
the ploughing of two acres.[2264] The township of Berton and several
others were bound to furnish sumpter-horses for conveying fish to
the abbey-kitchen thrice a year; the persons responsible for this
service had to pay their own travelling expenses and those of their
horses; but they got each a loaf from the abbey when they left; and
those who could not fulfil the service were allowed to compound for
it with the kitchener “as best they could.” The same manors rendered
each five hundred eggs on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed
Virgin, at Christmas, Easter, Rogation-tide and Pentecost; and three
hundred at Candlemas and Quinquagesima, besides eighteen hens apiece
at the festivals of S. Martin and at Christmas. They also gave on the
Wednesday before Easter a hundred herrings, which on the following
Thursday were distributed to the poor;[2265] and each of them sent
moreover to the monks’ kitchen, in the course of the year, besides the
eggs and hens already enumerated, twenty-four bushels of beans.[2266]
Eight fisheries were bound to furnish each a certain number of eels on
Ash-Wednesday;[2267] the fishermen who carried the eels to the hall
were entitled to receive thence two loaves apiece.[2268] From another
fishery a money-rent of seventeen shillings was due, paid in three
terms; and its holder owed church-shot of twelve hens.[2269] Berton
furnished five loads of straw, and Culham as many of hay, three times a
year--on Christmas Eve, Easter Eve, and All Saints’ Eve--for strewing
the refectory.[2270] When the chamberlain went to Winchelcombe fair,
the men of Dumbleton were bound to bring home for him whatever he
purchased there; the same duty fell to the tenantry of Welford when he
went to the fair at Winchester.[2271]

        [2264] _Hist. Mon. Abingdon_ (Stevenson), vol. ii. pp. 305, 306.

        [2265] _Ib._ pp. 307, 308.

        [2266] _Ib._ p. 323.

        [2267] _Ib._ pp. 308, 323.

        [2268] _Ib._ p. 308.

        [2269] _Ib._ p. 309.

        [2270] _Ib._ p. 313.

        [2271] _Ib._ pp. 326, 327.

If we compare this Abingdon consuetudinary of 1185 with the
Peterborough Black Book of 1128, the main result seems to be this:
the Abingdon dues are quite as heavy, if not heavier, but the
labour-services are much lighter. We must not indeed assume that the
difference is wholly owing to progress made during the half-century
which elapsed between the compilation of the two books; the customs
of different localities varied in all ages, and those of Abingdon may
never have been so hard as those of Peterborough. On the estates of the
bishop of Durham, on the other hand, when Hugh of Puiset took account
of his dues in 1183, the old labour-rents and customs seem to have
subsisted almost without alteration. A large proportion of the villeins
on the bishop’s manors were holders of two bovates or oxgangs of thirty
acres each, for which each man paid two shillings and sixpence for
scot-pennies, half a chalder of oats, sixteen pence for aver-pennies,
five cart-loads of wood, two hens and ten eggs; he had to work for the
lord three days every week throughout the year except Easter-week,
Whitsun-week and the twelve days of Christmas; moreover, he and all his
family, except the house-wife, had to do in autumn four days boon-work
in reaping; besides this, he had to reap three roods of _averipe_ (ripe
oats), and plough and harrow three roods of _averere_ (oat-stubble).
Each villein plough had to plough and harrow two acres; on this
occasion the villeins had a corrody from the bishop, and so they had on
occasion of a great boon-work. They were to harrow whenever required;
to perform services of carting, for which they got every man a loaf; to
make each one booth for the fair of S. Cuthbert; “and when they make
lodges” (possibly for the bishop’s hunting) “and cart wood, they are
free of other work.” These were the services due from twenty-two out
of the thirty-six tenants on the manor of Boldon. Of the remainder,
twelve were “cotmen,” holding each twelve acres and working throughout
the year, except at the above-named seasons, two days a week, and
rendering twelve hens and sixty eggs. One man held two oxgangs of
thirty-seven acres, at a rent of half a mark; another was the pounder,
who held twelve acres, received from each plough one thrave of corn,
and rendered twenty-four hens and five hundred eggs. The mill paid
five marks and a half. The villeins were bound to give their labour
every year, if required, for the building of a house (perhaps a
hunting-lodge) forty feet long and fifteen feet wide; in that case
they were forgiven fourpence for aver-pennies. The whole township
rendered seventeen shillings for cornage, and one cow.[2272] Clevedon
and Whitburn contained twenty-eight villeins and twelve cotmen whose
services were the same as at Boldon; besides these and the pounder,
there were four other tenants; one held two bovates of twenty-four
acres at a rent of sixteenpence, and “went on the bishop’s errands”;
one held sixty acres and a toft at eightpence, and fulfilled the same
duty; the other two held their lands at a money-rent only.[2273] At
Sedgefield there were fifty-one tenants, of whom twenty were villeins
holding and labouring on the same terms as their brethren at Boldon;
twenty more were “farmers,” holding two bovates apiece, paying five
shillings, ploughing and harrowing half an acre, and finding two men
to mow, two to reap, and two to make hay, for two days, and also one
cart for two days to carry corn, and the same to cart hay; they also
did four days’ boon-work in autumn with all their families except the
housewives. The reeve, the smith and the carpenter held land by their
service; the pounder got his thraves of corn and paid his dues in hens
and eggs as on the other manors. Five _bordarii_ held five tofts, paid
five shillings, and did four days’ boon-work. William of Oldacres and
Uhtred of Butterwick held lands, whose extent is not specified, at a
rent of sixteen shillings and half a mark respectively.[2274] At Norton
there were thirty villeins holding and labouring like those of Boldon,
save that for lack of pasture-land they owed no cornage; and twenty
farmers, whose tenure was much the same as that of the farmers of
Sedgefield. Alan of Normanton held one carucate for ten shillings, and
had to find thirty-two men for a day’s work when required, four carts
for one day or two for two days for carrying corn, and the same for
carting hay; besides which his men, if he had any, were to work four
boon-days in autumn with all their families except the housewives, but
Alan himself and his own household were free of this service. Adam,
son of Gilbert of Hardwick, held a large piece of land by a money-rent.
There was a mill, with eight acres and a meadow, and rendering twenty
marks; a pounder, holding on the usual terms; and there were twelve
cotmen, holding tofts and crofts, and paying partly in money, partly in
work.[2275] The palatine bishopric, it is clear, was an old-fashioned
district where innovations of any kind were slow to penetrate. Even
here, however, the newer system of money-payment in commutation of
service was beginning to make its appearance. The tenures on the manor
of Whickham had undergone a sweeping change, apparently not long
before Bishop Hugh’s survey was drawn up. On this manor there were
thirty-five villeins, holding each an oxgang of fifteen acres. Each
of these had been wont to pay sixteenpence, and to work three days a
week throughout the year, three boon-days in autumn with all his family
except his wife, and a fourth boon-day with two men; in their ordinary
work they had to mow the grass, to cut and carry the hay, to reap and
carry the corn; and over and above this, they had to plough and harrow
two acres of _averere_ with each plough; for this, however, they had a
corrody. They had also, in the course of their work, to “make a house”
forty feet long and fifteen feet wide, to make three fisheries in the
Tyne, and to do carting and carrying like the villeins of Boldon;
they gave nine shillings cornage, one cow, and for every oxgang one
hen and ten eggs. “Now, however,” adds the record, “the said manor of
Whickham is at farm”--demesne, villeins, mill, fisheries and all:--it
may possibly, like its neighbour Ryton, have been let at farm to the
tenants themselves; but at any rate, its entire services and dues,
except a small tribute of hens and eggs, were commuted for a rent of
six-and-twenty pounds.[2276]

        [2272] _Boldon Buke_ (Greenwell), pp. 3, 4. Cornage was a
        “payment made in commutation of a return of cattle” (_ib._
        Glossary).

        [2273] _Ib._ p. 5.

        [2274] _Ib._ p. 11.

        [2275] _Boldon Buke_ (Greenwell), pp. 12, 13.

        [2276] _Ib._ pp. 33, 34.

On the whole, the glimpses which we get of the condition of the rural
population of England under the Angevin kings seem to indicate that
they were by no means excluded from a share in the progress of the
kingdom at large. Even if their dues had grown heavier, this surely
points to an advance in agricultural prosperity and of the material
ease and comfort which are its natural results. The spread of industry
shewed itself in many ways. In the towns we can trace it in the growing
importance of the handicraftsmen, proved by the jealousy with which
their gilds were regarded by the central government and still more by
the civic authorities. The weavers seem to have been special objects
of civic dislike; in most of the great towns they were treated as a
sort of outcasts by the governing body; and in 1201 the London citizens
bought of John, at the price of twenty silver marks a year and sixty
marks down, a charter authorizing them to turn the weavers out of the
city altogether. The sequel of this bargain is eminently characteristic
of John; but it is equally significant of the growing influence of
the craftsmen. The king took the citizens’ money and gave them the
charter which they desired, but he made it null and void by granting
his protection to the weavers as before, merely exacting from them an
annual payment of twenty marks instead of eighteen.[2277]

        [2277] Riley, _Munim. Gildh._, vol. ii. pt. i. introd. pp.
        lxi–lxiii.

Hand in hand with the growth of industry went the growth of trade.
Markets and fairs were springing up everywhere, and a keen commercial
rivalry sprang up with them. The little borough of S. Edmund’s set
up a “merchant-gild,” whose members insisted that all who did not
belong to it must pay toll in their market.[2278] The great success of
Abingdon fair in Henry’s early years stirred up the jealousy of both
Wallingford and Oxford, and their remonstrances compelled the king to
order that inquisition should be made, through twenty-four of the old
men of the shire “who were living in his grandfather’s time,” whether
the obnoxious little township had in those days enjoyed the privilege
of a market. The case was tried in full shire-moot at Farnborough; the
twenty-four elders were duly elected, and swore that Abingdon had had
a full market in the time of King Henry the First. The jurors were
however challenged by the opposing party, whereupon Henry ordered “the
men of Wallingford and the whole county of Berkshire” to meet before
his justices at Oxford, and there to choose fresh recognitors. This
time the jury could not agree among themselves. The Wallingford jurors
swore that they remembered nothing sold at Abingdon in the first King
Henry’s reign except bread and ale; the Oxford men admitted more
than this, but not a “full market”--nothing brought by cart or boat
(there was an old-standing quarrel between Oxford and Abingdon about
boat-cargoes and river-tolls); the shiremen acknowledged that there had
been a “full market,” but doubted whether goods were carried thither
by any boats save those belonging to the abbot himself. The justiciar,
Earl Robert of Leicester, who was presiding over the court in person,
transmitted these various opinions to the king without venturing to
decide the case. As it chanced, however, he could--so at least the
Abingdon story ran--add to them an useful reminiscence of his own
childhood: he had himself seen a full market at Abingdon not only in
the days of King Henry I., but as far back as the days of King William,
when he, Earl Robert, was a little boy in the abbey-school. And so the
men of Abingdon won their case.[2279]

        [2278] Joc. Brakelond (Rokewode), p. 74.

        [2279] _Hist. Mon. Abingdon_ (Stevenson), vol. ii. pp. 227–229.
        This happened 1158–1161. Mr. Eyton (_Itin. Hen. II._, pref.
        pp. v, vi) denies on chronological grounds the authenticity
        of Earl Robert’s supposed witness to the state of affairs in
        the Conqueror’s time. He does not adduce his proofs; I can
        therefore only leave this part of the matter undecided, and
        take the Abingdon story as I find it.

Disputes of this kind, however, were not always so peacefully settled.
Some forty years later--in 1201--the monks of Ely set up, under
the protection of a royal charter, a market at Lakenheath, within
the “liberties” of S. Edmund’s abbey. The chapter of S. Edmund’s,
“together with their friends and neighbours,” sent to Ely an amicable
remonstrance against this proceeding, adding that they would willingly
make good the fifteen marks which the monks of Ely had paid for their
charter, if these latter would consent to forego the use of it. The
remonstrance however produced no effect. The brotherhood of S. Edmund’s
therefore demanded a recognition to declare whether the new market had
been set up to their injury, and to the injury of the market at their
own town. The verdict of the recognitors decided that it was so. The
next step was to inform the king, and ascertain from him the exact
tenour of his charter to Ely; search was made in the royal register,
and it was found that the market had been granted only on condition
that it should not damage the interests of other markets in the
neighbourhood. Hereupon the king, for a promise of forty marks, gave to
S. Edmund’s a charter providing that no market should thenceforth be
set up within the liberties of the abbey save by the abbot’s consent;
and he issued orders to the justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, for the
abolition of the market at Lakenheath. The justiciar sent on the order
to the sheriff of Suffolk; and the sheriff, having no jurisdiction
within the liberties of S. Edmund’s, forwarded it to the abbot for
execution. Next market-day the hundred-reeve came to Lakenheath, and
shewing the letters of king and sheriff, supported by the testimony
of the freemen, forbade the market in the king’s name; he was however
met with nothing but contempt and abuse. The abbot, who was in London
at the time, after consulting with some “wise men” there, wrote to his
bailiffs bidding them assemble all the men of S. Edmund’s with their
horses and arms, overthrow the market by force, and take prisoners as
many of the buyers and sellers as they could. In the middle of the
night some six hundred well-armed men set out from S. Edmund’s for
Lakenheath. When they reached it the market was deserted; all the
stall-holders had fled. The prior of Ely was at Lakenheath with his
bailiffs, having come that same night in expectation of the intended
attack; but he “would not come out of his house”; so the bailiffs of S.
Edmund’s, after vainly demanding pledges from him that he would “stand
to right” in the abbey-court, seized the butchers’ trestles and the
planks which formed the stalls, as well as the cart-horses, sheep and
oxen, “yea, and all the beasts of the field,” and carried them away to
Icklingham. The prior’s bailiffs hurried in pursuit, and begged to have
their goods on pledge for fifteen days, which was granted. Within the
fifteen days came a writ summoning the abbot to answer for this affair
at the Exchequer, and to restore the captured animals. “For the bishop
of Ely, who was a man of ready and eloquent speech, had complained in
his own person to the justiciar and the great men of England, saying
that an unheard-of insult had been done to S. Etheldreda in time of
peace; wherefore many were greatly stirred up against the abbot.”[2280]

        [2280] Joc. Brakelond (Rokewode), pp. 98, 99.

The developement of foreign commerce, resulting from the wide-spread
relations of the Angevin kings with lands on both sides of the sea
which encompassed their island-realm, woke a rivalry no less keen
between some of the great trading cities, although they might shew it
in less rough and ready fashion than the champions of the mercantile
privileges of S. Edmund’s. One interesting illustration has recently
come to light, in a writ of Henry II. to the bailiffs of Dublin in
favour of the citizens of Chester. Henry, as we know, had granted
to the men of Bristol the right of colonizing Dublin and holding it
of him and his heirs with the same liberties and privileges as were
enjoyed by Bristol itself. Bristol and Chester had for ages been rivals
in the trade with Ireland; Chester now saw itself in imminent danger
of being altogether shut out of that trade, an exclusion which would
have meant little less than ruin to the city. We can hardly doubt
that its citizens appealed to the king for a reservation of their
commercial privileges in Dublin as against the Bristol merchants.
At any rate, Henry in 1175 or 1176 issued a writ to the bailiffs of
Dublin commanding that the burghers of Chester should be free to buy
and sell at Dublin as they had been wont to do, and should have the
same rights, liberties and free customs there as they had had in his
grandfather’s days.[2281] Yet more important than the trade of the
western seaports with Ireland was that of the eastern coast, not only
with the continental dominions of the Angevin house, but with almost
the whole of Europe. Not the least beneficial result of the Angevins’
renewal of the old political ties between England and the Empire was
the increase of trade which it helped to bring from the merchant-cities
of northern Germany and the Low Countries to the port of London.
Nor were the kings themselves blind to the advantage of these
commercial relations. Richard on the eve of his return from captivity
in 1194 granted to the citizens of Cöln a gildhall in London, “with
all their other customs and demands,” for an annual payment of two
shillings.[2282] The hall of the other Teutonic merchants--famous in
later days under the name of the Steel-yard--was probably established
about the same period; and early in the following century we find
an elaborate and interesting code of regulations for the trade of
the Lorrainers, the “men of the Emperor of Germany,” the Danes and
the Norwegians.[2283] The developement of commerce brought with it
a corresponding growth of riches, and of the material comforts and
refinements of life. Domestic architecture began to improve. Henry
Fitz-Aylwine issued at the opening of his mayoralty an “Assize” which
has been described as “the earliest English Building Act,” and which at
any rate shews that the civic authorities were earnestly endeavouring
to secure health and comfort in the houses within their jurisdiction,
and also to guard against the risk of fire which had ruined so many
citizens in times past.[2284] Ecclesiastical architecture progressed
still more rapidly; church-building or rebuilding went on all over the
country on a scale which proves how great was the advance, both in
artistic taste and material wealth, which England had made under the
just rule and peaceful administration of her first Angevin king. At
the opening of John’s reign the citizens of London were contemplating
an important architectural work of another kind: they were planning
to replace the wooden bridge over the Thames with a bridge of stone.
Degenerate representative as he was in more important respects of the
“great builders” of Anjou, John had yet inherited a sufficient share
of their tastes to feel interested in such an undertaking as this; and
in April 1202 we find him writing to the mayor and citizens of London
to recommend them an architect, Isenbert, master of the schools at
Saintes, whose skill in the construction of bridges had been lately
proved at Saintes and at La Rochelle.[2285] The citizens however seem
not to have adopted the king’s suggestion; they found an architect
among themselves, in the person of Peter, chaplain or curate of S. Mary
Colechurch--the little church beneath whose shadow S. Thomas the martyr
was born. It was Peter who “began the stone bridge at London”; and in a
chapel on that bridge his body found its appropriate resting-place when
he died in 1205.[2286]

        [2281] The real meaning of this writ is pointed out by Mr. J.
        H. Round in the _Academy_, May 29, 1886 (new issue, No. 734, p.
        381). The writ itself is there reprinted from the Eighth Report
        of the Royal Commission on Historical MSS., where it has been
        wrongly interpreted, owing to a misreading of the word which
        stands for Dublin.

        [2282] Riley, _Munim. Gildh._, vol. ii. pt. i. introd. p. xli,
        from _Placita de quo warranto_, p. 468.

        [2283] Riley as above, pp. 61, 64, and introd. pp. xxxv–xxxix.

        [2284] Fitz-Aylwine’s Assize is printed by Mr. Stapleton from
        the _Liber de Antiquis Legibus_, pp. 206–211. It is there dated
        1189.

        [2285] Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 83.

        [2286] Ann. Waverl. a. 1205 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii.
        pp. 256, 257).

There can be little doubt that a large part of the means for this
developement of commercial and architectural energy was furnished by
the Jews. The Jewish settlements increased rapidly both in numbers
and in importance under Henry II. In the Pipe Rolls of his first
five years we find, in addition to the London Jews who appeared
in the thirty-first year of his grandfather, and those of Oxford
and Lincoln of whom there are traces in the next reign, Jewries at
Norwich, Cambridge, Thetford and Bungay, as well as at an unnamed
place in Suffolk, which from other evidence seems to have been Bury
S. Edmund’s;[2287] and we have already seen that before Henry’s death
there were important Hebrew colonies at Lynn, Stamford, York, and many
other places. At Winchester the Jews were so numerous and so prosperous
that a writer in Richard’s early years calls it their Jerusalem.[2288]
The great increase in their numbers throughout England during Henry’s
reign is shewn by the fact that in 1177 he found it necessary to grant
them permission for the making of a Jewish burial-ground outside the
walls of every city in England, instead of sending all their dead to be
buried in London, as had been the practice hitherto.[2289] Legally, the
Jews were still simply chattels of the king. Practically, they were
masters of the worldly interests of a large number of his Christian
subjects, and of a large portion of the wealth of his realm. Without
their loans many a great and successful trading venture could never
have been risked, many a splendid church could never have been built,
nay, many a costly undertaking of the king himself might have been
brought to a standstill for lack of funds necessary to its completion.
The abbey-church of S. Edmund was rebuilt with money borrowed in great
part, at exorbitant interest, from Jewish capitalists. Abbot Hugh,
when he died in 1173, left his convent in utter fiscal bondage to two
wealthy Jews, Isaac son of Rabbi Joses, and Benedict of Norwich.[2290]
The sacred vessels and jewels belonging to Lincoln minster were in
the same year redeemed by Geoffrey, then bishop-elect, from Aaron, a
rich Jew of the city who had had them in pledge for seven years or
more.[2291] In 1187 Aaron died; his treasure was seized for the king,
and a large part of it sent over sea. The ship which bore it went
down between Shoreham and Dieppe, and the sum of the lost treasure
was great enough for its loss to be chronicled as a grave misfortune
by the treasurer, Bishop Richard Fitz-Nigel;[2292] while two years
later the affairs of the dead Jew still made a prominent figure in
the royal accounts.[2293] His house, as it stands at the head of the
“Steep Hill” of Lincoln to this day, is one of the best examples of a
mode of domestic architecture to which Christian townsfolk had scarcely
yet begun to aspire, but which was already growing common among those
of his race: a house built entirely of stone, in place of the wooden
or rubble walls and thatched roofs which, even after Fitz-Aylwine’s
Assize, still formed the majority of dwellings in the capital itself.

        [2287] Jews at Norwich, Pipe Roll 2 Hen. II. (Hunter), p.
        8; Cambridge, _ib._ p. 15; Thetford and Bungay, 5 Hen. II.
        (Pipe Roll Soc.), p. 12. In 4 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 127, the
        sheriff of Suffolk renders an account of twenty silver marks
        “pro Judæis”; as we find Jews at S. Edmund’s at the opening of
        Richard’s reign, it seems probable that they are the persons
        referred to here.

        [2288] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 62.

        [2289] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 182.

        [2290] Joc. Brakelond (Rokewode), pp. 2, 3.

        [2291] Gir. Cambr. _Vita S. Remig._, c. 24 (Dimock and Freeman,
        vol. vii. p. 36).

        [2292] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 5.

        [2293] Pipe Roll 1 Ric. I. (Hunter), pp. 8, 59, 219, 226, 229,
        246.

It is no wonder that these people, with their untold stores of wealth,
their independence of all ordinary jurisdictions, their exemption
from all the burthens of civil life, their voluntary exclusion from
the common brotherhood of Christendom, their strange aspect and their
mysterious language, were objects of universal jealousy, suspicion and
hatred, which they on their part took but little pains to conciliate
or allay. The religious feelings of the whole population of Oxford
were outraged by a Jew who publicly mocked at S. Frideswide amid the
solemnities of her festival-day, well knowing that neither prior nor
bishop, chancellor nor portreeve, dared lift a finger to check or to
punish him.[2294] Darker stories than this, however, were whispered
against his race. They were charged not only with ruining many
Englishmen of all classes by their usury, and with openly insulting
the Christian sacraments and blaspheming the Christians’ Lord, but
with buying Christians for money in order to crucify them.[2295] A
boy, afterwards canonized as S. William, was said to have been thus
martyred at Norwich in 1137;[2296] another, Robert, at S. Edmund’s in
1181;[2297] and a third at Winchester in 1192.[2298] Little as we may
be inclined to believe such tales, we can scarcely wonder that they
found credit at the time, and that the popular hatred of the Jews went
on deepening till it broke out in the massacres of 1190. That outbreak
compelled the king to interfere in behalf of his “chattels”; but the
fines with which he punished it, though they deterred the people from
any further attempts to get rid of the Jews by force, could not alter
the general feeling. At S. Edmund’s Abbot Sampson, immediately after
the massacre, sought and obtained a royal writ authorizing him to turn
all the remaining Jews out of the town at once and for ever;[2299] and
in 1194 Richard, or Hubert Walter in his name, found it needful to make
an elaborate ordinance for the regulation of Jewish loans throughout
the realm and the security of Jewish bonds. Such loans were to be made
only in six or seven appointed places, before two “lawful Christians,”
two “lawful Jews,” two “lawful writers,” and two clerks specially
named in the ordinance; the deed was to be drawn up in the form of an
indenture; one half, sealed with the borrower’s seal, was to be given
to the Jewish lender; the other half was to be deposited in a common
chest having three locks; the two Christians were to keep one key, the
two Jews another, and the two royal clerks the third; and the chest
was to be sealed with three seals, one being affixed by each of the
parties who held the keys. The clerks were to have a roll containing
copies of all such deeds; for every deed threepence were to be paid,
half that sum by the Jew and half by his creditor; the two scribes got
a penny each, and the keeper of the roll the third; and no transactions
whatsoever in connexion with these Hebrew bonds was henceforth to take
place save in accordance with these regulations.[2300]

        [2294] _Mirac. S. Fridesw._, in _Acta SS._, vol. lvi. p. 576
        (October 19).

        [2295] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 28.

        [2296] Eng. Chron. a. 1137.

        [2297] Joc. Brakelond (Rokewode), p. 12.

        [2298] Ric. Devizes (Stevenson), p. 60.

        [2299] Joc. Brakelond (Rokewode), p. 33.

        [2300] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 266, 267. These
        “Capitula de Judæis” form the twenty-fourth chapter of _Forma
        procedendi in placitis Coronæ Regiæ_ (see above, p. 337),
        printed also in Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 259–263.

It is just possible that this growth of anti-Jewish feeling may have
helped in some degree to the growth of a sense of national unity among
the other dwellers in the land. All Christians, to whatever race they
might belong, whatever tongue they might speak, could not but feel
themselves to be one people as against these Oriental intruders. It is
at any rate clear that of the foreign elements which had been infused
into the population of England during the hundred and forty years which
had passed since Duke William landed at Pevensey, the Hebrew element
was the only one which had not amalgamated with the native mass. The
fusion in blood between Normans and English, which we saw making rapid
progress under Henry I., was before the end of his grandson’s reign
so far complete that the practice of “presentment of Englishry”--that
is, the privilege whereby the hundred in which a man was found slain
escaped paying the murder-fine to the treasury, if it could prove that
the victim was not of Norman blood--had to be given up because the two
nationalities had become so intermixed in every class above that of
serfs that it could hardly ever be made out to which of them any man
really belonged.[2301] In this fusion the English element, as it was
far the larger, was also the weightier and the stronger. In the matter
of speech it was fast regaining its supremacy. Foreign priests and
foreign prelates were learning to speak and to preach to the English
people in their own tongue; Norman barons and knights were learning
to talk English with their English-speaking followers and dependents;
some of them were learning to talk it with their own wives.[2302]
If the pure Teutonic speech of our forefathers had suffered some
slight corruption from foreign influences, Walter Map’s legend of
the well at Marlborough whereof whosoever drank spoke bad French for
ever after[2303] may hint that the language of the conquerors was
becoming somewhat Anglicized in the mouths of some at least of their
descendants; and the temper of these adoptive Englishmen was changing
yet more rapidly than their speech. Of the many individual figures
which stand out before us, full of character and life, in the pages of
the twelfth-century historians, the one who in all ages, from his own
day to ours, has been unanimously singled out as the typical Englishman
is the son of Gilbert of Rouen and Rohesia of Caen.

        [2301] _Dial. de Scacc._, l. i. c. 10 (Stubbs, _Select
        Charters_, pp. 201, 202).

        [2302] See the story of Helwyse de Morville and her
        husband--parents of the Hugh de Morville who was one of the
        murderers of S. Thomas--in Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_,
        vol. i.), p. 128.

        [2303] W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, pp. 235,
        236).

The whole policy of the Angevin kings tended to mould their insular
subjects into an united English nation. Their equal administration
completed that wiping-out of local distinctions which had been begun
by the wisdom of the Norman kings and helped on by the confusion of
the civil war; their developement of old English methods of judicial
and administrative procedure brought the English people again visibly
and tangibly to the forefront of affairs. Even those very qualities
and tendencies which were most un-English in the Angevins themselves
helped indirectly to a like result. The almost world-wide range of
their political interests gave England once more a place among the
nations, and a place far more important than any which she had ever
before held. For, above all, it was England that they represented in
the eyes of the continental powers; it was as “Kings of the English”
that they stood before the world; and it was as Kings of the English
that their successors were to stand there still, when the Angevin
empire had crumbled into dust. On the eve of that catastrophe the new
England found a voice. The English tongue once more asserted its right
to a place among the literary tongues of Europe. The higher English
poetry, which had slumbered ever since the days of Cadmon, suddenly
woke again to life among the Worcestershire hills. The story of the
origin of Layamon’s _Brut_ can never be told half so well as in the
poet’s own words. “A priest there was in the land, Layamon was he
named; he was Leovenath’s son; may the Lord be gracious to him! He
dwelt at Ernley, at a noble church by Severn’s bank--good it there
seemed to him!--hard by Radstone, where he read books. It came into
his mind, and into his chief thoughts, that he would tell the noble
deeds of Englishmen--what they were called, and whence they came, who
first owned English land.... Layamon began to journey wide over this
land, and got the noble books that he took for models. He took the
English book that Saint Beda made; another he took, in Latin, that
Saint Albin made, and the fair Austin, who brought baptism in hither;
a third book he took, and laid there in the midst, that a French clerk
made, Wace was he called, who well could write, and he gave it to the
noble Eleanor who was the high King Henry’s queen. Layamon laid these
books before him, and turned the leaves; he lovingly beheld them;
may the Lord be merciful to him! Pen he took with fingers and wrote
on a bookskin, and the true words set together, and the three books
compressed into one.”[2304] We must not blame a dweller on the western
border in the early days of King John if, when setting himself to
tell “the noble deeds of Englishmen,” he thought it needful to begin
with the fall of Troy after the pattern of Wace and Wace’s original,
Geoffrey of Monmouth. We can only be thankful to this simple English
priest for leaving to us a purely English poem of more than thirty
thousand lines which is indeed beyond all price, not only as a
specimen of our language at one of its most interesting stages, but as
an abiding witness to the new spirit of patriotism which, ten years and
more before the signing of the Great Charter, was growing up in such
quiet corners of the land as this little parish of “Ernley” (or Areley
Kings) by Severn-side. The subject-matter of Layamon’s book might be
taken chiefly from his French guide, Wace; but its spirit and its
language are both alike thoroughly English. The poet’s “chief thought,”
as he says himself, was to “tell the noble deeds of Englishmen,” to
Englishmen, in their own English tongue. A man who wrote with such an
ambition as this was surely not unworthy of the simple reward which was
all that he asked of his readers: “Now prayeth Layamon, for love of
Almighty God, every good man that shall read this book and learn this
counsel, that he say together these soothfast words for his father’s
soul, and for his mother’s soul, and for his own soul, that it may be
the happier thereby. Amen!”[2305]

        [2304] Layamon (Madden), vol. i. pp. 1–3.

        [2305] Layamon (Madden), vol. i. pp. 3, 4.

Layamon’s _Brut_ was written at some time between John’s crowning and
his return to England, after the loss of Normandy, in 1206.[2306] It
was a token that, on both sides of the sea, the Angevins’ work was all
but ended, their mission all but fulfilled. The noblest part of that
mission was something of which they themselves can never have been
fully conscious; and yet perhaps through that very unconsciousness they
had fulfilled it the more thoroughly. “The silent growth and elevation
of the English people”--as that people’s own historian has taught
us--“was the real work of their reigns;”[2307] and even from a survey
so imperfect as ours we may see that when John came home in 1206 the
work was practically done.

        [2306] On the date, etc., of Layamon see Sir F. Madden’s
        preface to his edition of the _Brut_, vol. i.; and Mr. Morley’s
        _English Writers_, vol. i. pp. 632–635.

        [2307] Green, _Stray Studies_, p. 217.



INDEX


  Aaron of Lincoln, ii. 487

  Abelard, i. 480

  Abingdon, its customs in 1185, ii. 475–477;
    its fair, 481, 482.
    _See_ Faricius

  Achard, lord of Châlus, ii. 382, 383

  Aclea, battle of, i. 102

  Acre taken by the crusaders, ii. 319

  Adaland, archbishop of Tours, i. 131, 132

  Adalbert, count of Périgord, i. 145

  Adam, Master, i. 482, 492, 493

  Adam de Bruce, ii. 145

  Adam de Port, ii. 162

  Adela, first wife of Geoffrey Greygown, i. 121, 135

  Adela, countess of Chalon-sur-Saône, second wife of Geoffrey Greygown,
    i. 121, 134, 135, 199

  Adela of France, daughter of Louis VII. and Eleanor, i. 445

  Adela, daughter of Louis VII. and Constance, born, i. 468;
    betrothed to Richard, ii. 62;
    offered to John, 314;
    marries the count of Ponthieu, 374

  Adela of Blois, daughter of Theobald IV., third wife of Louis VII.,
    i. 468

  Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, wife of Stephen-Henry of
    Blois, i. 272;
    her children, 273

  Adela of Vendôme, daughter of Fulk Nerra and Elizabeth, i. 172

  Adela, _see_ Hermengard

  Adelaide or Blanche, mother of Queen Constance, i. 191, 192

  Adelard of Bath, i. 94, 95

  Adeliza of Louvain, second wife of Henry I., i. 94;
    married to William of Aubigny, 298;
    receives the Empress Matilda, i. 309

  Ademar, count of Angoulême, ii. 316, 381, 398, 399

  Ademar, viscount of Limoges, ii. 220, 230, 381, 382

  Adrian IV., Pope, i. 476;
    his relations with the English Church and the _Curia Theobaldi_,
    477;
    friendship with John of Salisbury, 485;
    bull for conquest of Ireland, 431; ii. 95, 96, 182;
    relations with Henry II., i. 497;
    dies, 498.
    _See_ Nicolas

  Ælendis of Amboise, wife of Ingelger, i. 105, 131

  Aerschot, _see_ Arnold

  Agnes of Burgundy, her marriages, i. 174, 197–199;
    kinship with Geoffrey Martel, 136, 175, 199;
    divorced, 212

  Agnes of Merania, ii. 395, 401

  Agnes of Poitou, daughter of William IV., marries Emperor Henry III.,
    i. 176

  “Aids” from towns, i. 25, 29;
    the Sheriff’s, ii. 15;
    _pour fille marier_, 125, 126;
    for the king’s ransom, 325

  Aileach, kings of, _see_ Donell, Murtogh

  Alan Barbetorte, count of Nantes and duke of Britanny, i. 115

  Alan III., duke of Britanny, helps Herbert Wakedog against Avesgaud
    and Fulk, i. 159, note 4{343};
    marriage, 205;
    death, 206, 211

  Alan Fergant, duke of Britanny, his marriages, i. 328, note 4{930}

  Alan, count of Nantes, i. 146

  Alan of Richmond, i. 318, 319, 321

  Albano, _see_ Henry

  Alberic, bishop of Ostia, legate, i. 299, 300

  Alberic, count of Gâtinais, _see_ Geoffrey

  Albinus or Aubin, S., bishop of Angers, i. 98

  Alcuin, i. 181

  Aldgate, priory of Holy Trinity at, i. 66

  Alençon, i. 208, 209;
    treaty of, 217;
    surrendered to Henry I., 233;
    restored to William Talvas, 236;
    won by Fulk V., _ib._
    _See_ Robert, William

  Alexander II., Pope, i. 220

  Alexander III., Pope, i. 498;
    acknowledged in France and England, 502;
    grants the pall to Thomas, ii. 6;
    meets Henry and Louis at Chouzy, 13;
    holds a council at Tours, 14;
    relation to the Becket quarrel, 29, 50–52;
    condemns Constitutions of Clarendon, 42;
    returns to Rome, 55;
    appoints Thomas legate, 67;
    sends commissioners to mediate between Henry and Thomas, 69, 70;
    authorizes Roger of York to crown young Henry, 71;
    forbids him, 72;
    interdicts the Angevin dominions and excommunicates the murderers of
    S. Thomas, 79;
    sends envoys to Henry, 80

  Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, i. 83, 94, 303, 304

  Alfhun, master of S. Bartholomew’s hospital, i. 67

  Alfonso II., king of Aragon, ii. 133;
    helps Richard in Aquitaine, 230, 231

  Alfonso VIII., king of Castille, marries Eleanor, daughter of
    Henry II., ii. 60;
    submits his quarrel with Navarre to Henry’s arbitration, 190

  Alfonso Jordan, count of Toulouse, i. 455, 456, 458

  Alfred of Beverley, ii. 445, 446

  Alice of Maurienne betrothed to John Lackland, ii. 132–134;
    dies, 184

  Almeric of Montfort, i. 232, 236, 237, 238, 241

  Almeric, viscount of Thouars, ii. 395, 427, 428

  Alnwick, ii. 161

  Amboise, i. 105, 106;
    house of the Angevin counts at, 151;
    Odo’s last attack on, 163.
    _See_ Lisoy, Sulpice

  Ambrières, i. 209, 211

  Anagni, _see_ John

  Andegavi, i. 97

  Andely, Isle of, ii. 376, 377;
    besieged by Philip, 411, 412;
    John’s attempt to relieve it, 413–415;
    taken, 416

  Andely, Nouvel or Petit, ii. 377;
    taken by Philip, 416;
    fate of its townsfolk, 417, 418

  _Andes_, i. 97, 130

  Andrew of London, i. 363

  Angareth, wife of William de Barri, ii. 453

  Angers (Juliomagus), i. 98;
    its position as a border-fortress, 101;
    seized by northmen, 103;
    relieved by Charles the Bald, _ib._, 104;
    its aspect in tenth century, 108;
    palace of the counts, 109, 132–134, 165;
    of the bishops, 133;
    fires at, _ib._, 152;
    R. Diceto’s description of, 134;
    Henry I. of France at, 213;
    betrayed to Fulk Rechin, 220;
    Urban II. at, 225;
    burghers of, revolt against Fulk V., 234;
    Fulk Nerra’s buildings at, 165;
    abbeys of S. Aubin and S. Sergius at, 98;
    our Lady of Charity (Ronceray), 165;
    S. Nicolas, _ib._, 172, 214, 225, 228;
    Henry II.’s buildings at, ii. 197, 199, 200;
    Henry and his sons at, 224;
    given up to Arthur, 389;
    seized by his friends, 407;
    retaken by John, 428;
    bishops, _see_ Albinus, Dodo, Rainald, Raino, Ulger

  Angevin March, the, i. 101;
    its extent, 130

  Angevins, _see_ Anjou

  Angoulême, disputed succession, ii. 220.
    _See_ Ademar, Isabel, Matilda, Vulgrin, William

  Anjou, its geographical position and character, i. 97;
    political position, 106, 107;
    its character as a marchland, 107;
    its golden age, 113;
    sources of its history, 126, 127;
    county of, “bipartite,” 128, 129, 130;
    its extent, 97, 130;
    dependence on the duchy of France, 130;
    condition at Fulk Rechin’s death, 229;
    placed under interdict, 242;
    revolts of the barons, 266–267, 343;
    rebels in (1173), ii. 136;
    condition under Henry II., 194–196;
    John acknowledged in, 388;
    accepts Arthur, 389;
    submits to Philip, 425;
    counts of, their origin, i. 105;
    character, 108;
    palace at Angers, 109, 132–134, 165;
    burial-place, 117, note 3{263};
    claims upon Nantes, 116, 117;
    upon Maine, i. 124, 140–142;
    the demon-countess, 143;
    house at Amboise, 151;
    rivalry with Blois, 145, 150, 188, 271, 279;
    extinction of the male line, 214;
    decline after Martel’s death, 215, 218;
    relations with France, 164; ii. 357;
    growth of their power, 187, 188;
    career in Palestine, 239;
    their work for England, 490, 492.
    _See_ Elias, Fulk, Geoffrey, Guy, Henry, Hermengard, Ingelger,
    Lambert, Matilda, Odo, Robert, Sibyl, William

  Annonain, Pont de l’, ii. 200, 201

  Anselm, S., archbishop of Canterbury, i. 8, 9;
    his struggle with Henry I., 15–18;
    consecrates Malchus to Waterford, ii. 89;
    dies, i. 63;
    proposal to canonize him, ii. 14

  Aquitaine, its relations with France, i. 123, 145, 383, 456, 457;
    ii. 202;
    extent and history, i. 454;
    granted to Richard, ii. 62;
    rebels in (1173), 136;
    country and people, 201, 203–205;
    its importance for England, 201;
    relations with Henry II., 203, 205;
    risings in, 58, 109, 220;
    submits, 230;
    proposal to give it to John, 233;
    restored to Richard, 247.
    _See_ Eleanor, Odo, Richard, William

  _Aquitania_, i. 99, 454

  Aragon, _see_ Alfonso, Ramirez, Petronilla

  Arcelles, _see_ Saher

  Archambald, brother of Sulpice of Amboise, i. 194

  Architecture, English, in twelfth century, i. 55

  Aremburg of Maine, betrothed to Geoffrey Martel II., i. 226;
    marries Fulk V., 232;
    dies, 245

  Argentan, i. 373; ii. 79, 80

  Aristotle, study of, in the middle ages, ii. 466, 467

  Arles, _see_ Bertha, Burgundy, Provence, William

  Armagh, synod at, ii. 105.
    _See_ Malachi

  Arms, Assize of, ii. 177, 178

  Arnold, count of Aerschot, i. 362

  Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux, i. 500;
    persuades Henry II. to acknowledge Pope Alexander, 501;
    advises Henry to appeal against Thomas, ii. 65;
    rebels, 140

  Arques, i. 342; ii. 405, 406, 425

  Arthur, King, i. 33;
    Henry II.’s correspondence with, ii. 57 note 2{226}, 447;
    invention and translation of, 447, 448;
    romances of, 448, 449

  Arthur, son of Geoffrey and Constance of Britanny, born, ii. 245;
    recognized by Richard as his heir, 295;
    in custody of Philip, 370;
    joins Richard, 374;
    acknowledged in Anjou, Touraine and Maine, 389;
    does homage to Philip, 390;
    quarrels with Philip and goes to John, 394;
    flies, 395;
    does homage to John, 397;
    knighted, 404;
    meets the Lusignans at Tours, 405;
    besieges Mirebeau, 406;
    captured, _ib._;
    imprisoned, 407;
    death, 408, 429, 430;
    its consequences, 409

  Arundel, i. 10, 309.
    _See_ William

  Assize of Arms, ii. 177, 178;
    of Clarendon, 122, 123;
    of the Forest, 177;
    Great, 122;
    Henry Fitz-Aylwine’s, 485;
    of Measures, 348;
    of _Mort d’ancester_, 172;
    of Northampton, 172, 173;
    later developements, 338–340

  Aubigny, _see_ William

  Aubrey de Vere, i. 305

  Augustinians, _see_ Canons

  _Aulerci Cenomanni_, i. 201, 202

  Aumale, _see_ William

  Austin canons, _see_ Canons

  Austria, _see_ Leopold

  Autun, _see_ Lambert

  Auvergne, its feudal relations, ii. 202, 203;
    attacked by Philip, 252;
    Richard gives up his claims upon, 361

  Auxerre, Thomas Becket studies at, i. 379

  Avesgaud, bishop of Le Mans, i. 159 note 4{343}, 204, 205

  Avice of Gloucester betrothed to John Lackland, ii. 184;
    married, 282;
    divorced, 398

  Avranches, ii. 81

  Axholm, ii. 152, 155

  Azay, conference at, ii. 263


  Baggamore, i. 291

  “Baille-hache,” i. 353, 354

  Bailleul, _see_ Bernard, Jocelyn

  Baldwin II., king of Jerusalem, i. 246

  Baldwin III., king of Jerusalem, ii. 239

  Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem, ii. 239, 247

  Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, takes the cross, ii. 248;
    preaches the crusade in Wales, 249;
    opposes John’s marriage, 282;
    dies, 296, 297;
    his proposed college, 437

  Baldwin, count of Flanders, i. 235

  Baldwin of Clare, i. 318, 320

  Baldwin of Redvers, i. 284

  Balliol, _see_ Bernard, Jocelyn

  Ballon, ii. 394

  Bamborough, i. 288

  Bar, i. 167

  Barcelona, county of, i. 462.
    _See_ Raymond-Berengar

  Barnwell priory, ii. 463

  Barri, _see_ Gerald, William

  Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter, i. 506

  Bath, i. 35, 296.
    _See_ Adelard

  Bayeux, i. 11, 307.
    _See_ Ralf

  Baynard’s Castle, i. 44

  Beauchamp, _see_ Miles

  Beaugency, council at, i. 392

  Beaulieu abbey (Hants), ii. 400

  Beaulieu abbey (Touraine), i. 154, 155, 168

  Beaumont, _see_ Hermengard

  Beauvais, council at, i. 502

  Becket, _see_ Gilbert, Rohesia, Thomas

  Bedford, i. 320

  Bela III., king of Hungary, marries Margaret of France, ii. 235

  Bellême, house of, i. 204.
    _See_ Robert

  Benedictines contrasted with the Cistercians, i. 73

  “Bene-work,” i. 57

  Berengaria of Navarre, wife of Richard I., ii. 295, 296

  Bermondsey, council at, i. 427

  Bernard, S., abbot of Clairvaux, i. 70, 72;
    his influence, 359;
    relations with Rome, 360, 361;
    with S. Malachi, ii. 94;
    plans for England, i. 364;
    pleads for Gerald of Montreuil, 388;
    recommends John of Salisbury to Abp. Theobald, 483;
    death, 400

  Bernard de Balliol, ii. 145, 161

  Berry, its feudal relations, ii. 202;
    war in, 245, 251, 252

  Bertha of Arles, widow of Odo I. of Blois, marries King Robert,
    i. 149;
    separated, _ib._

  Bertha, daughter of Odo of Blois, wife of Alan of Britanny, i. 205;
    of Hugh II. of Maine, 206

  Bertha, daughter of Conan III. of Britanny, i. 449

  Bertrada of Montfort, marries Fulk Rechin, i. 223, 224;
    elopes with King Philip, 224;
    suspected of contriving her stepson’s death, 228;
    her policy, 232

  Bertrand de Born, ii. 204, 205;
    stirs up revolt in Aquitaine, 209, 220, 366;
    his _sirvente_ for Toulouse, 211, 212;
    sets the young king against Richard, 222;
    submits, 231;
    enters a monastery, 371

  Bertrand, count of Toulouse and Tripoli, i. 455

  Beverley, i. 30, 37, 38.
    _See_ Alfred

  Béziers, _see_ Raymond

  Bigod, _see_ Hugh

  Biota of Maine, i. 217, 218, 254

  Bishops, English, their political position, i. 20;
    appeal against Thomas, ii. 67.
    _See_ Church

  Blanche of Castille, daughter of Alfonso and Eleanor, ii. 395, 397

  Blanche, _see_ Adelaide

  Blanchelande, i. 223, 257

  Bloet, _see_ Robert

  Blois, counts of, their rivalry with Anjou, i. 145, 150, 188;
    their character, 150.
    _See_ Adela, Bertha, Henry, Odo, Stephen, Theobald, William

  Blondel, ii. 324

  Bodmin, gild at, ii. 469

  “Bogis,” Peter, ii. 421, 422

  Bohun, _see_ Humfrey

  Bologna, university of, ii. 460;
    S. Thomas at, i. 379

  Bonmoulins, conference at, ii. 254, 255

  Bonneville, i. 307;
    council at, ii. 157

  “Boon-work,” i. 57

  Bordeaux, _see_ William

  Born, _see_ Bertrand

  Bosham, _see_ Herbert

  Boulogne, _see_ Matilda, Matthew, Mary, William

  Bourbon, _see_ Hermengard

  Bourges, its feudal relations, ii. 202

  Bourgthéroulde, battle of, i. 241

  Brabantines, ii. 223

  Breakspear, _see_ Nicolas

  Breffny, ii. 97

  Brenneville, battle of, i. 237

  Brian Boroimhe, king of Munster, ii. 85

  Brian Fitz-Count, i. 243, 328, 396;
    his “book,” 369

  Bridgenorth, sieges of, i. 10, 429, 430

  Brissarthe, i. 103

  Bristol, i. 33, 34, 295, 296;
    its slave-trade, 35, ii. 87;
    Stephen’s attempt on, i. 296, 297;
    ill-doings of its garrison, 297;
    Dermot of Leinster at, ii. 98, 99;
    Henry II.’s charters to, 118

  Britanny, i. 99;
    its extent under Herispoë, 102 note 1{236}, 130;
    civil wars in, 115;
    Geoffrey Martel’s dealings with, 211, 212;
    claimed by Eudo of Porhoët and Conan of Richmond, 449;
    granted by Henry II. to Conan, 451;
    Henry’s designs on, 452, 453;
    conquered by Henry, ii. 57, 58;
    rebels in (1173), 137;
    barons of, appeal to Philip against John, 408.
    _See_ Alan, Arthur, Conan, Constance, Eleanor, Geoffrey, Herispoë,
    Hoel, Juhel, Nomenoë, Odo, Solomon

  Broc, _see_ Ralf

  Bruce, _see_ Adam, Robert

  Brulon, _see_ Geoffrey

  Burchard, count of Vendôme, i. 149, 189

  Burgundy, kingdom of, granted to Richard I., ii. 331.
    _See_ Hugh, Robert, Rudolf.


  Cadoc, ii. 416, 421, 425

  Cadwallader, brother of Owen of North Wales, i. 435

  Caen, surrendered to Henry I., i. 11;
    to Geoffrey Plantagenet, 307;
    to Philip, ii. 424;
    hospital, i. 471; ii. 198;
    palace, ii. 196, 197.
    _See_ Robert

  _Cæsarodunum_, _see_ Tours

  Cahors, i. 464, 466

  Calixtus II., Pope, i. 237

  Cambridge, ii. 462, 463

  Camville, _see_ Gerard

  Candé, i. 228

  Canons, Austin or Augustinian, their origin, i. 64, 65;
    character, 43, 66, 357;
    in England, 66–69.
    _See_ Aldgate, Barnwell, Carlisle, Chiche, Kirkham, Nostell, Oseney,
    Oxford, Smithfield

  Canons, White, i. 357

  Canon law, its effects in England, ii. 18

  Canterbury, canons of Laon visit, i. 30;
    plot to kill Henry Fitz-Empress at, 403;
    Thomas elected at, ii. 3;
    privilege of the archbishop to crown the king, 62;
    S. Thomas slain at, 79;
    Henry II.’s penance at, 159;
    Louis VII. at, 216;
    Philip of Flanders at, 235;
    Richard at, 328;
    John crowned at, 400.
    _See_ Anselm, Baldwin, Geoffrey, Hubert, John, Ralf, Richard, Roger,
    Theobald, Thomas, Walter, William

  Capua, _see_ Peter

  _Caputii_, ii. 223, 224

  Carcassonne, _see_ Raymond Trencavel

  Carham, i. 286, 287, 292.
    _See_ Wark

  Carlisle, i. 36, 37;
    S. Godric at, 76;
    council at, 300;
    Henry Fitz-Empress knighted at, 377;
    meeting of Henry and Malcolm IV. at, 462;
    besieged by William the Lion, ii. 153, 154;
    meeting of William and Henry at, 237;
    earldom of, granted to Henry of Scotland, i. 282;
    claimed by Ralf of Chester, 314;
    see of, 37, 69

  Carrick, ii. 109, 111

  Carthusians, ii. 435, 436 note 1{2171}

  Carucage of 1194, ii. 328, 329, 342;
    the Great, 352–354

  Carucate, ii. 352

  Cashel, metropolis of Munster, ii. 94;
    council at, 115

  Castille, _see_ Alfonso, Blanche, Constance, Eleanor

  Castle Cary, i. 295, 298

  Celestine II., Pope, i. 355, 356

  Celestine III., Pope, ii. 303, 304, 312, 351

  Celle, _see_ Peter

  _Cenomanni_ (_Aulerci_), i. 201, 202

  Cenomannia, _see_ Maine

  Châlus, ii. 382, 385

  Champagne, _see_ Henry, Odo, Stephen, Theobald

  Chancellor, the, his office, i. 22, 419.
    _See_ Geoffrey, Matthew, Nigel, Ralf, Robert, Roger, Waldric,
    William

  Charles the Bald, Emperor, i. 99, 102, 103, 105

  Charles the Fat, king of West-Frankland and Emperor, i. 104

  Charles the Simple, king of West-Frankland, i. 104

  Charter of Henry I., i. 8;
    Henry II., 427;
    Stephen, 279, 284

  Chartres, _see_ Blois

  Château-Gaillard, ii. 375–380;
    siege, 416–423;
    John’s buildings at, 413, 421, 422

  Châteaudun, i. 156.
    _See_ Landry

  Châteaulandon, _see_ Gâtinais

  Château-du-Loir, i. 390.
    _See_ Gervase

  Châteauneuf-sur-Sarthe, i. 267

  Châteauneuf, _see_ Tours

  Châteauroux, ii. 211, 213, 245, 251

  Châtillon, conference at, ii. 253

  Chaumont-sur-Loire, i. 272 note 1{662}, 471

  Chef-Boutonne, battle of, i. 215, 252, 253

  Cherbourg, siege of, i. 340

  Chester, i. 36;
    its slave-trade, _ib._, ii. 87;
    meeting of Henry II. and Malcolm IV. at, i. 438;
    privileges granted to its burghers at Dublin, ii. 484;
    earldom of, its peculiar character, i. 313, 314.
    _See_ Hugh, Ralf

  Chiche, priory of S. Osyth at, i. 68, 80

  Chichester, _see_ Hilary

  Chinon won by Fulk Nerra, i. 167;
    Geoffrey the Bearded imprisoned at, 221;
    bequeathed to Geoffrey Plantagenet II., 394, 444;
    councils at, ii. 58, 64;
    Henry II.’s buildings at, 197, 200;
    treasury at, plundered by Richard, 246;
    Henry II. at, 263, 267;
    given up to John, 388, 395;
    taken by Philip, 426

  Chouzy, conference at, ii. 13

  Christchurch or Twinham, i. 32

  Chrodegang of Metz, rule of, i. 65

  Chronicle, English, i. 81, 82

  Church, English, under Henry I., i. 63;
    the Augustinian revival, 64–69;
    the Cistercian revival, 69–74;
    new sees, 68, 69;
    its national character, 80;
    political position of the bishops, 20;
    condition during the anarchy, 347–360;
    relations with Rome, 378;
    position at accession of Henry II., 474;
    vacant sees (1161), 503;
    Henry’s schemes of reform, ii. 17–20;
    question of the “two swords,” _ib._ 22, 23;
    quarrel of Henry and Thomas, its effects, 46–50;
    course of the revival after Theobald’s death, 432;
    condition in Henry II.’s later years, 433–438.
    _See_ Clergy

  Church, Irish, its early glory, ii. 82, 86;
    condition in eleventh and twelfth centuries, 91–93;
    settlement at Synod of Kells, 94;
    submits to Henry II., 115

  Circuits, _see_ Justices

  Cirencester, i. 330, 333

  Cistercians or White Monks, their origin, i. 69, 70;
    in England, 71;
    work and influence, 74, 358, 359;
    quarrel with John, ii. 396, 399, 400;
    fall, 434, 435.
    _See_ Cîteaux, Clairvaux, Fountains, Newminster, Pontigny, Rievaux,
    Tintern, Waverley

  Cîteaux, i. 70

  Clairvaux (abbey), i. 70; ii. 70, 94

  Clairvaux (castle), ii. 222, 224

  Clare, _see_ Baldwin, Gilbert, Isabel, Richard, Roger, Walter

  Clarendon, council of, ii. 25–28, 44, 45;
    Constitutions of, 26, 27;
    condemned by the Pope, 42;
    Assize of, 46, 122, 123

  Cleobury, i. 429

  Clergy, their position under Henry I., i. 63, 64;
    regular and secular, 64, 65;
    attitude in the civil war, 321;
    criminal clerks, ii. 19.
    _See_ Church

  Clerkenwell, council at, ii. 241

  Clontarf, battle of, ii. 85

  Cogan, _see_ Miles

  Coinage, debasement under Stephen, i. 293;
    new, in 1149, 402 note 1{1204};
    in 1158, 453

  Colechurch, _see_ Peter

  Cöln, gildhall of its citizens in London, ii. 485.
    _See_ Reginald

  Colombières, conference at, ii. 265, 266

  Commune of Le Mans, i. 222;
    Gloucester, ii. 469;
    London, 309, 310, 344;
    York, 469

  Conan the Crooked, count of Rennes and duke of Britanny, i. 121;
    his war with Geoffrey Greygown, 122, 137–139;
    with Fulk the Black, 146–148

  Conan II., duke of Britanny, i. 211, 212, 220

  Conan III., duke of Britanny, i. 449

  Conan, earl of Richmond, claims Britanny, i. 449;
    duke, 451;
    dies, ii. 80

  Conquereux, first battle of, i. 122, 138;
    second, 147, 148

  Connaught invaded by Miles Cogan, ii. 184.
    _See_ Roderic, Terence

  Conrad III., Emperor, i. 361

  Conrad, marquis of Montferrat, ii. 320, 321

  Consilt, battle of, i. 436

  Constables, _see_ Henry, Humfrey

  Constance of Arles, wife of Robert I. of France, i. 155;
    her parents, 190, 192;
    her policy, 160, 164

  Constance of Britanny, daughter of Conan IV., betrothed to Geoffrey,
    son of Henry II., ii. 57;
    married, 233;
    marries Ralf of Chester, 369;
    imprisoned, 370;
    joins Arthur in Anjou, 389;
    does homage to Philip, 390;
    marries Guy of Thouars, 395;
    dies, 404, note 4{2050}

  Constance of Castille, second wife of Louis VII. of France, i. 446,
    468

  Constance of France, daughter of Louis VI., betrothed to Stephen’s son
    Eustace, i. 384;
    marries him, 394;
    marries Raymond V. of Toulouse, 458

  Constance, heiress of Sicily, ii. 319

  Constantine, Donation of, ii. 95

  Constitutions of Clarendon, ii. 26, 27;
    condemned by the Pope, 42

  Corbeil, _see_ William

  Cork, its origin, ii. 83.
    _See_ Dermot

  Cornwall, _see_ Reginald, William

  Coroners, their origin, ii. 338, 339

  Councils, _see_ Argentan, Armagh, Beaugency, Beauvais, Bermondsey,
   Bonneville, Carlisle, Cashel, Clarendon, Clerkenwell, Chinon,
   Geddington, Gloucester, Inispatrick, Kells, Lisieux, London,
   Neufmarché, Northampton, Nottingham, Oxford, Pavia, Pipewell,
   Poitiers, Rathbreasil, Tours, Wallingford, Westminster,
   Woodstock, Würzburg, York

  Council, the Great, its character, i. 20

  Courcy, _see_ John, William

  Coutances, _see_ Walter

  Coventry, _see_ Hugh

  Cowton Moor, i. 289

  Cricklade, i. 335

  Cross, S., _see_ Winchester

  Crowmarsh, i. 336, 396

  Crown, pleas of the, ii. 337

  Crusade, the second, i. 361–363;
    in Spain, proposed by Louis VII. and Henry II., 453, 497;
    the third, ii. 318–321

  _Curia Regis_, _see_ King’s Court

  Customs, “paternal,” i. 16;
    royal, ii. 22, 26, 27;
    of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, i. 37

  Cyprus, ii. 317, 321


  Danegeld, i. 25;
    abolished, ii. 16, 44

  David I., king of Scots, i. 95;
    invades England, 282, 286, 287, 288;
    defeated at Cowton Moor, 289–291;
    treaties with Stephen, 282, 300;
    joins the Empress in London, 323;
    escapes from Winchester, 328;
    knights Henry Fitz-Empress, 377;
    dies, 399

  David, prince of North-Wales, marries Henry II.’s sister Emma, ii. 181

  David, bishop of S. David’s, ii. 454

  David, brother of William of Scotland, ii. 140, 153;
    claims on Huntingdon and Northampton, 154

  David or Hugh, count of Maine, i. 124, 140

  David’s, S., bishops of, _see_ David, Peter

  Defensor of Le Mans, i. 202

  Denis, S., _see_ Suger

  Denmark, _see_ Ingebiorg

  Déols, ii. 211

  Dermot Mac-Carthy, king of Cork or South Munster, ii. 114

  Dermot Mac-Maelnambo, king of Leinster, ii. 87, 88

  Dermot Mac-Murrough, king of Leinster, ii. 97;
    seeks aid of Henry II., 98;
    returns to Ireland, 100;
    successes in Ossory etc., 102;
    summons Richard of Striguil, 103;
    dies, 106

  Dervorgil, wife of Tighernan O’Ruark, ii. 97

  Devizes, i. 304, 321, 330

  _Dialogus de Scaccario_, i. 26

  Diceto, _see_ Ralf

  Dinan, _see_ Joceas

  Dodo, bishop of Angers, i. 109, 133

  Dol, ii. 148

  Domfront, i. 6, 208, 209

  Donatus, bishop of Dublin, ii. 87

  Doncaster, earldom of, granted to Henry of Scotland, i. 282

  Donell O’Brien, king of Limerick or North Munster, ii. 102, 103, 109,
    111, 114

  Donell O’Lochlainn, king of Aileach, ii. 90

  Donell Kavanagh, ii. 109, 112

  Dorchester, _see_ Remigius

  Dover, i. 295, 299;
    chief mart of the wool trade, 52;
    Geoffrey of York arrested at, ii. 305, 306.
    _See_ Simon, William

  Drausius, S., ii. 65

  Dress, English, in twelfth century, i. 56

  Dreux, _see_ Robert

  Drogo of Nantes, son of Alan Barbetorte, i. 115, 116

  Dublin, its origin, ii. 83;
    metropolis of Leinster, 94;
    taken by Dermot etc., 105;
    attacked by wikings, 106;
    blockaded by Roderic O’Conor, 109;
    Henry II. at, 114, 115;
    colonized by Henry, 118;
    privileges of the Chester merchants at, 484.
    _See_ Donatus, Godred, Gregory, Laurence, Patrick

  Dudley, i. 295, 298

  Dulcia of Gévaudan, i. 463

  Dunstan, S., lives of, i. 80

  Dunster, i. 295

  Durham, S. Godric at, i. 77;
    cathedral, 80;
    treaty made at, 300;
    customs of the bishop’s estates in 1183, ii. 478–480.
    _See_ Hugh, Ralf, Simeon, William


  Eadgyth or Edith, S., i. 33

  Eadgyth, _see_ Matilda

  Eadmer, i. 80, 88

  Eadward the Confessor, king of England, his prophecy, i. 1;
    his laws demanded by the citizens of London, 324

  Eadwulf, prior of Nostell and confessor to Henry I., i. 68;
    bishop of Carlisle, 69

  Ealdhelm, S., i. 84, 86, 90;
    life by Faricius, 81

  Earldoms created by Stephen, i. 293

  Edith, _see_ Eadgyth

  Edmund’s, S., Henry II. at, i. 430;
    massacre of Jews at, ii. 289;
    its customs, 473, 474;
    merchant-gild, 481;
    dispute with Ely, 482, 483

  Eleanor of Aquitaine, daughter of William IX., marries Louis VII. of
    France, i. 383;
    divorced, 392;
    marries Henry, 393;
    claims on Toulouse, 457, 458;
    attempt to divorce her from Henry, ii. 61;
    turns against him, 129;
    imprisoned, 135;
    Richard gives up Aquitaine to, 235;
    regent for Richard, 273, 282;
    arranges his marriage, 295, 296;
    negotiates at Rome, 303;
    returns to England, 314;
    ravages Anjou, and does homage to Philip, 390;
    goes to Spain, 396;
    retires to Fontevraud, 405;
    besieged in Mirebeau, 406;
    dies, 426

  Eleanor, daughter of Henry II., marries Alfonso of Castille, ii. 60,
    189

  Eleanor of Britanny, daughter of Geoffrey and Constance, ii. 244, 325,
    371

  Elias, count of Maine, i. 224, 225;
    war with William Rufus, 225, 226;
    Le Mans surrendered to, 227;
    relations with Henry I., 11, 227, 233;
    marriages, 255;
    death, 233

  Elias of Anjou, son of Fulk V., i. 343

  Elias of Saint-Saëns, i. 235

  Elizabeth of Hainaut, first wife of Philip Augustus, ii. 217, 234,
    note 7{1115}

  Elizabeth of Vendôme, first wife of Fulk Nerra, i. 152

  Ely, see of, founded, i. 68;
    quarrel with S. Edmund’s, ii. 482, 483.
    _See_ Geoffrey, Nigel

  Emma, daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet, ii. 181

  Emperors, _see_ Charles, Conrad, Frederic, Henry, Otto

  Engelram of Trie, i. 467

  England under the Angevins, i. 1–3;
    relations with Rome, 15;
    with Normandy, 23, 24;
    invaded by Robert Curthose, 9;
    journey of canons of Laon in, 30–35;
    its peace under Henry I., 48;
    Flemings settle in, 52;
    town life in twelfth century, 54, 55;
    rural life, 56–62;
    revival under Henry I., 64–95;
    religious revival during the anarchy, 356–358;
    effects of the second Crusade, 362;
    rebels in (1173), ii. 138, 139;
    loyal barons in, 144, 145;
    rebel castles in the north, 152;
    royal strongholds, 153;
    condition of rural population under the Angevins, 473–480;
    fusion of races, 489;
    growth of national feeling, 489.
    _See_ Church, Literature, Towns, Trade.
    _See also_ Eadward, Eleanor, Henry, John, Jane, Matilda, Richard,
    Stephen, William

  “English” and “French,” i. 24

  “English” and “Normans,” different meanings of, i. 23, 24

  English and Normans, fusion of, i. 24, 48, 49; ii. 489, 490

  Englishry, presentment of, abolished, ii. 489

  Essex, _see_ Geoffrey, Henry, William

  Este, _see_ Hugh

  Euclid, Adelard of Bath’s version of, ii. 95

  Eudo, count of Porhoët, i. 449

  Eugene III., Pope, i. 361;
    deposes S. William and consecrates Henry Murdac, 366;
    suspends Henry of Winchester and threatens Stephen, 368;
    makes Abp. Theobald legate, 380;
    forbids the crowning of Eustace, 391;
    dies, 400

  Eustace, son of Stephen, king of England, does homage to Louis VI.
    for Normandy, i. 286;
    knighted, 377;
    goes to York, 380;
    his prospects, 382;
    goes to France, 383;
    betrothed to Constance, 384;
    attacks Normandy, 385;
    receives homage, 391;
    proposal to crown him, _ib._;
    marriage, 394;
    character, 398;
    death, 399

  Eustace Fitz-John, i. 72, 288

  Eva, daughter of Dermot Mac-Murrough, ii. 104

  Evreux ceded to Henry I., i. 11, 62;
    betrayed to Almeric of Montfort, 236;
    fired by Henry I., _ib._, 237;
    granted to Almeric, 238;
    taken by Philip Augustus, ii. 389;
    ceded to him, 396.
    _See_ Simon

  Exchequer, court of, i. 21;
    organization under Bishop Roger, 25–27;
    headquarters, 31;
    Black Book of, ii. 125;
    the Norman Exchequer, 194, 197

  Exeter, i. 32, 284.
    _See_ Bartholomew

  Eynesford, _see_ William


  Falaise besieged by Henry I., i. 11;
    attacked by Geoffrey Plantagenet, 307;
    submits, 338;
    treaties at, ii. 165, 166;
    Arthur imprisoned at, 407;
    submits to Philip, 424

  Faricius, abbot of Abingdon, i. 68 note 1{187}, 81

  Farringdon, i. 335

  Faye, _see_ Ralf

  Ferm of the shire, i. 25;
    of towns, 29

  Ferrers, _see_ Robert

  Ferté-Bernard, La, conference at, ii. 257

  Finchale, i. 77, 78

  Fitz-Alan, _see_ William

  Fitz-Aldhelm, _see_ William

  Fitz-Aylwine, _see_ Henry

  Fitz-Count, _see_ Brian, Richard

  Fitz-David, _see_ Miles

  Fitz-Duncan, _see_ William

  Fitz-Gerald, _see_ Maurice

  Fitz-John, _see_ Eustace, William

  Fitz-Osbert, _see_ William

  Fitz-Peter, _see_ Geoffrey, Simon

  Fitz-Ralf, _see_ William

  Fitz-Stephen, _see_ Robert, William

  Fitz-Urse, _see_ Reginald

  Flambard, _see_ Ralf

  Flanders granted to William the Clito, i. 243;
    trade with England, 30, 51, 52.
    _See_ Baldwin, Matthew, Philip, Theodoric

  Flèche, La, i. 222, 223, 256, 257

  Flemings, their settlements in England and Wales, i. 52, 53;
    in England under Stephen, 285;
    plot to kill Henry, 403;
    expelled, 427;
    land in Suffolk, ii. 155;
    at Hartlepool, 162

  Fleury, abbey, i. 112

  Florence, S., of Saumur, i. 162

  Florence of Worcester, i. 82, 88, 89, 90

  Foliot, _see_ Gilbert

  Folkmoot of London, i. 45

  Fontevraud, i. 248;
    Henry II. buried at, ii. 270–272;
    Richard buried at, ii. 386;
    Eleanor at, 385, 405

  Forest, assizes of, i. 285; ii. 171, 177, 356

  Fornham, battle at, ii. 150

  Foss-Dyke, i. 40

  Foss-Way, i. 38

  Fougères, _see_ Ralf

  Fountains abbey, i. 71–73;
    burnt, 366

  France, duchy of, _see_ French

  France, kingdom of, character of its early history, i. 144;
    condition under Hugh Capet, 145;
    under Louis VI., 230;
    relations with Normandy, 24, 111;
    with Toulouse, 457, 458;
    with Rome, 501, 502;
    union with Aquitaine, 383;
    its developement, ii. 357–361.
    _See_ Adela, Constance, Henry, Hugh, Louis, Margaret, Mary, Odo,
    Philip, Robert

  Frankland, West, northmen in, i. 100.
    _See_ Charles, Lothar, Louis, Odo, Robert, Rudolf

  Frederic Barbarossa, Emperor, supports antipope Victor IV., i. 498;
    relations with Henry II., 499; ii. 55, 60, 238;
    banishes Henry the Lion, 238, 257;
    takes the cross, 256;
    dies, 318

  French, dukes of the, extent of their duchy, i. 103, 105;
    underfiefs, 105;
    claims upon Maine, 124.
    _See_ Hugh, Odo, Robert

  “French and English,” i. 24

  Fréteval, ii. 73, 366

  Fritheswith or Frideswide, S., i. 43.
    _See_ Oxford

  Fulk the Red, first count of Anjou, i. 106;
    his neighbours, 109;
    political position, 109, 110;
    marriage, 110;
    death, 113;
    chronology of his life, 128, 129, 132

  Fulk II. the Good, count of Anjou, i. 113;
    his rule, 113, 115;
    canon of S. Martin’s, 114;
    letter to Louis IV., _ib._;
    marriages, 116;
    claims upon Nantes, _ib._;
    death, 117;
    vision of S. Martin, 118;
    prophecy made to, _ib._;
    its fulfilment, ii. 187, 373

  Fulk III., the Black, count of Anjou, his mother, i. 136;
    surnames, 143, note 2{294};
    character, 144;
    significance of his life, 145, 146, 169;
    war with Conan of Rennes, 146, 147;
    regains Anjou west of Mayenne, 148;
    attacks Blois, 149;
    rivalry with Odo II., 150;
    castle-building, 151;
    seizure of the water-ways, 151–152;
    first marriage, 152;
    first pilgrimage, 153, 192;
    founds Beaulieu abbey, 153–155;
    marries Hildegard, 154;
    second pilgrimage, 156, 192–195;
    his oath, 155;
    contrives the death of Hugh of Beauvais, _ib._;
    sacks Châteaudun, 156;
    alliance with Maine, _ib._;
    victory at Pontlevoy, 157, 158;
    subdues Hugh of Maine, 159;
    imprisons Herbert of Maine, _ib._;
    invested with Saintes, _ib._, 173;
    fortifies Montboyau, 161;
    takes Saumur, 162;
    besieges Montbazon, 163;
    treaty with Odo, _ib._;
    his policy and its success, 164;
    makes peace between Constance and her son, _ib._;
    joins King Henry’s expedition against Sens, _ib._;
    his home, 165;
    buildings at Angers, _ib._;
    third pilgrimage, 166, 195, 196;
    rebellion of his son, 166, 195;
    wins Chinon, 167;
    fourth pilgrimage, 167, 168;
    quarrels with his son, 172, 175;
    death, 168;
    his tomb, _ib._;
    his work, 169, 188

  Fulk IV. Rechin, son of Geoffrey of Gâtinais and Hermengard of Anjou,
    invested with Saintonge, i. 214;
    his character, 219;
    intrigues against his brother, _ib._;
    wins Saumur and Angers, 220;
    captures Geoffrey, _ib._;
    does homage for Touraine, 221;
    cedes Gâtinais to France, _ib._;
    his rule, _ib._;
    drives Geoffrey of Mayenne from Le Mans, 222;
    besieges La Flèche, _ib._, 223, 257;
    receives Robert’s homage for Maine, 223;
    his marriages, 224;
    excommunicated, _ib._;
    absolved, 225;
    quarrels with his eldest son, 227, 228;
    dies, 229;
    his reign and its results, _ib._;
    his Angevin history, 127

  Fulk V., count of Anjou, i. 229;
    character and policy, 231, 232;
    marries Aremburg, 232;
    quarrel with Henry I. and alliance with France, 233;
    homage to Henry, 234;
    revolt of the burghers against, _ib._;
    joins league against Henry, 235;
    wins Alençon, 236;
    treaty with Henry, _ib._;
    goes to Jerusalem, 238;
    quarrel with Henry, 240;
    offers Maine to Clito, _ib._;
    imprisons the legate’s envoys, 242;
    marries Melisenda and becomes king of Jerusalem, 246–248;
    dies, 361

  Fulk the Gosling, count of Vendôme, i. 214


  Gaimar, _see_ Geoffrey

  Galloway, ii. 164, 179, 237

  Gandrea, wife of Theobald III. of Blois, i. 255, 256

  Gascony, Richard’s campaign in, ii. 214;
    revolt in, 316.
    _See_ Guy-Geoffrey, Odo

  Gatian, S., bishop of Tours, i. 179

  Gâtinais, county of, i. 129;
    ceded to France, 221;
    counts, 249, 250

  Gaubert of Mantes, ii. 415

  Geddington, council at, ii. 249

  Gelduin of Saumur, i. 161, 162

  Geoffrey I. Greygown, count of Anjou, i. 118;
    his character, 119;
    joins invasion of Lorraine, 120;
    his marriages, 121, 134–136;
    relations with Britanny, 121, 122, 137–139;
    with Maine, 124, 140–142;
    war with Poitou, 123, 137, 139;
    wins Loudun, 123, 124, 139;
    founds church of our Lady at Loches, 153;
    dies at siege of Marson, 125

  Geoffrey II. Martel, son of Fulk the Black, born, i. 154;
    nursed at Loches, _ib._;
    count of Vendôme, 172;
    quarrel with Fulk, _ib._, 175;
    marries Agnes, 136, 174, 197, 199;
    war with Poitou, 173–175;
    wins Saintonge, 174;
    rebels, 166, 195, 196;
    count of Anjou, 169;
    his character, 170–172;
    invested with Tours, 178;
    besieges it, 184;
    victory at Montlouis, 186;
    treaty with Theobald, 187;
    its significance, 188;
    advocate of see of Le Mans, 205;
    imprisons Bp. Gervase, 206;
    master of Maine, _ib._;
    excommunicated, _ib._;
    revolts, 207;
    wins Alençon and Domfront, 208;
    challenges William and retires, 209;
    war with Aquitaine, 210;
    besieges Ambrières, 211;
    dealings with Nantes, 211, 212;
    marries Grecia, 212;
    blockaded in Saumur, 213;
    joins invasion of Normandy, _ib._, 214;
    loses Vendôme, 214;
    dies, _ib._;
    break-up of his dominions, 215;
    dispute over them, 218;
    his heirs, 251–252

  Geoffrey III. the Bearded, count of Anjou, i. 214;
    victory at Chef-Boutonne, 215, 252, 253;
    receives Robert’s homage for Maine, 217;
    wrongs Marmoutier, 220;
    captured by Fulk, _ib._;
    imprisoned at Chinon, 221;
    released and dies, 228

  Geoffrey Martel II. of Anjou, son of Fulk Rechin, betrothed to
    Aremburg of Maine, i. 226;
    joins Henry I., 11;
    quarrel with Fulk, 227, 228;
    slain, 228

  Geoffrey V. Plantagenet, son of Fulk V. and Aremburg, knighted by
    Henry I., i. 244;
    marriage, _ib._, 258–260;
    his person and character, 261–265;
    quarrels with his wife, 266;
    with Henry, 269, 270;
    invades Normandy, 281, 306, 307;
    revolts against, 266, 267, 306, 343, 384;
    summoned to England, 330;
    treaty with Theobald, 337;
    conquers Normandy, 338–342;
    recalls his son, 343;
    challenge to Stephen, 369;
    cedes Normandy to his son, _ib._, 377;
    his siege of Montreuil, 384, 386;
    treatment of Gerald, 387;
    cedes the Vexin to Louis, 388;
    death, 389, 390;
    burial, 390;
    will, 444

  Geoffrey of Anjou, second son of Geoffrey and Matilda, born, i. 373;
    seeks to marry Eleanor, 393;
    rebels against Henry, 394, 395, 444, 445;
    count of Nantes, 449;
    dies, _ib._

  Geoffrey I., duke of Britanny, i. 137, 148

  Geoffrey, fourth son of Henry II. and Eleanor, born, i. 453;
    acknowledged heir to Britanny, ii. 58;
    duke, 80;
    revolts, 135;
    knighted, 214;
    joins young Henry, 225;
    submits, 232;
    marries Constance, 233;
    dies, 243

  Geoffrey, son of Henry II., bishop-elect of Lincoln, ii., 155;
    takes Kinardferry etc., _ib._;
    chancellor, 245;
    secures castles of Anjou, 256;
    with Henry at Le Mans, 258, 259, 260;
    at La Frênaye, 262;
    goes to Alençon, _ib._;
    rejoins Henry, 263;
    his devotion to Henry, 268;
    appointed archbishop of York, 274, 278, 302;
    early life, 301, 302;
    character, 304;
    consecrated, 305;
    returns to England, _ib._;
    arrested, _ib._;
    released, 306;
    joins John, 307;
    enthroned, 313;
    quarrel with Hugh of Durham, _ib._, 316;
    buys sheriffdom of Yorkshire, 330;
    driven from England, 335;
    redeems the Lincoln church-plate, 487

  Geoffrey (Alberic), count of Gâtinais, marries Hermengard of Anjou,
    i. 214, 249, 250

  Geoffrey of Brulon, ii. 259

  Geoffrey of Chaumont, i. 272, note 1{662}

  Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, justiciar, ii. 355, 356;
    earl of Essex, 393

  Geoffrey Gaimar, ii. 446

  Geoffrey of Lusignan, ii. 59 note 1{235}, 136, 250, 405

  Geoffrey of Mandeville, i. 334, 335

  Geoffrey de Mandeville, earl of Essex, ii. 124

  Geoffrey of Mayenne, i. 211;
    holds Le Mans for Walter of Mantes, 218;
    submits to William, _ib._;
    revolts, 221, 222, 224

  Geoffrey of Monmouth, ii. 445, 448

  Geoffrey of Rancogne, ii. 214, 250, 367

  Geoffrey Ridel, archdeacon of Canterbury, ii. 30, 77;
    vice-chancellor, 142;
    bishop of Ely, 176;
    dies, 277

  Geoffrey Talbot, i. 294, 296

  Gerald de Barri (“Giraldus Cambrensis”), ii. 452–460

  Gerald of Montreuil-Bellay, i. 384, 385, 386, 388

  Geraldines, the, ii. 108, 183

  Gerard de Camville, ii. 280, 298, 299, 300, 329

  Gerard la Pucelle, ii. 449

  Gerberga, wife of Fulk the Good, i. 116, note 1{258}

  Germany, English trade with, under the Angevins, ii. 484, 485

  Gersendis of Maine, i. 221, 254–256

  Gervase of Château-du-Loir, bishop of Le Mans, i. 205;
    imprisoned by Geoffrey Martel, 206;
    released, _ib._;
    archbishop of Reims, 207

  _Gesta Consulum Andegavensium_, its authorship and character, i. 126,
    127

  Gévaudan, _see_ Dulcia

  Gilbert of Sempringham, S., i. 359, 360

  Gilbert Becket, i. 50

  Gilbert Foliot, abbot of Gloucester, i. 369, 370, 493;
    bishop of Hereford, 371, 495;
    his earlier history, 492, 493;
    career as abbot, 494, 495;
    relations with Abp. Theobald and with Henry II., 495, 496;
    with Roger of Pont-l’Evêque, 478, 479;
    character, 496, 497;
    remarks on Thomas’s election, ii. 3, 6;
    translated to London, 13, 14;
    relations with Thomas, 13, 31, 49;
    at council of Northampton, 35, 36, 37, 39;
    his attitude in the Becket quarrel, 47–49;
    his share in the bishops’ appeal, 67;
    excommunicated, 70;
    denies the primate’s jurisdiction, _ib._;
    absolved, 72;
    dies, 277

  Gilbert, bishop of Limerick, ii. 92;
    legate in Ireland, _ib._, 93

  Gilbert de Clare, earl of Pembroke, i. 377, 395, 396; ii. 99

  Gilds, i. 29;
    under Henry II. and Richard, ii. 469, 470;
    leather-sellers’, i. 30;
    merchant, i. 29, 36, 40, 43; ii. 481;
    weavers’, i. 30, 52; ii. 481

  Gildhall, i. 129;
    of German merchants, ii. 485

  Gilles, St., _see_ Raymond

  Giraldus Cambrensis, _see_ Gerald

  Gisors, i. 231, 234, 343;
    meeting of Henry I. and Pope Calixtus at, 237, 238;
    of Louis VII. and Henry II. at, ii. 148, 165;
    claimed by Philip, 232, 236

  Glanville, _see_ Hervey, Ralf

  Glastonbury, invention of Arthur at, ii. 447, 448

  Gleeman, the, i. 90

  Gloucester, i. 35, 36;
    abbey and city, 493, 494;
    council at, ii. 170;
    commune at, 469.
    _See_ Avice, Gilbert, Miles, Philip, Robert, William

  Godfrey de Lucy, bishop of Winchester, ii. 277, 288

  Godfrey, abbot of Malmesbury, i. 84, 85

  Godred, king of Dublin, ii. 88

  Godric, S., i. 74–79

  “Goliath, Bishop,” ii. 452

  Gouleton, ii. 396, 402

  Gournay, ii. 403.
    _See_ Hugh

  Graçay, ii. 213, 361

  Grandmesnil, _see_ Ivo, Petronilla

  Grandmont, ii. 58, 226;
    order of, 435

  Gratian, his work on canon law, i. 378

  Grecia of Montreuil, second wife of Geoffrey Martel, i. 212

  Gregory, archbishop of Dublin, ii. 94

  Gregory, bishop of Tours, i. 181

  Gué-St.-Rémy, ii. 244

  Guerech, bishop and count of Nantes, i. 121, 122, 146

  Guimund, prior of S. Frideswide’s, Oxford, i. 43

  “Guirribecs,” i. 306

  Guy of Anjou (son of Fulk the Red), bishop of Soissons, i. 112, 113

  Guy of Anjou, son of Fulk the Good, i. 119

  Guy of Crema, _see_ Paschal

  Guy, viscount of Limoges, ii. 407

  Guy of Lusignan, ii. 59 note 1{235}, 136;
    king of Jerusalem, 247;
    Cyprus, 317, 321;
    ally of Richard, 318, 320

  Guy of Thouars, ii. 395, 424

  Guy-Geoffrey, count of Gascony, i. 176, 212.
    _See_ William VII. of Aquitaine


  Hackington, college at, ii. 437

  Hainaut, _see_ Elizabeth

  Hameline, earl of Warren, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, ii. 40, 144

  Hamo de Massey, ii. 139

  Hans-house, i. 29;
    at York, 36

  Harding or Stephen, founder of Cîteaux, i. 69, 70

  Harptree, i. 295, 298

  Hasculf Thorgils’ son, ii. 105, 106

  Hautefort, ii. 204, 231

  Haye, La, _see_ Richard

  Henry I., son of William the Conqueror, his early life, i. 4–6;
    character, 6, 7;
    election and coronation, 7;
    charter, 8;
    marriage, 1, 8, 9;
    treaty with Robert, 9;
    proceedings against traitors, 10;
    Norman campaigns, 11;
    victory at Tinchebray, 12, 13;
    policy, 13–15, 19;
    struggle with Anselm, 15–18;
    character of his reign, 19;
    his work, 19, 20;
    love of “foreigners,” 23;
    his ministers, _ib._;
    called “the Lion of Justice,” 26;
    charter to York, 30, 36;
    to Norwich, 41;
    London, 45, 46;
    palace at Woodstock, 44, 94;
    court at Oxford, 44;
    his “good peace,” 30 note 4{58}, 48, 95;
    settles Flemings in Pembroke, 52;
    dealings with the Church, 63;
    results, 64;
    founds see of Ely, 68;
    Carlisle, 69;
    revival of literature under, 80–95;
    relations with Maine, 227;
    with France, 230, 231;
    wars with France and Anjou, 233, 235;
    treaties with Fulk, 234, 236;
    victory at Brenneville, 237;
    meets Calixtus at Gisors, _ib._, 238;
    treaty with Louis, 238;
    wreck of his hopes, 239, 240;
    quarrel with Fulk, 240;
    quells revolt in Normandy, 241;
    alliance with Henry V., _ib._;
    proclaims Matilda his heiress, 243;
    last years, 268–270;
    death, 271;
    possible successors, 274–275;
    state of England after his death, 279;
    burial, 282;
    his court, 413

  Henry II. Fitz-Empress born, i. 268;
    Eadward’s prophecy fulfilled in, 1;
    Witan swear fealty to, 269;
    his early life, 372–374;
    tutors, 375, 376;
    goes to England, 334;
    returns to Anjou, 343;
    duke of Normandy, 369, 377;
    goes to England, 377;
    knighted, _ib._;
    returns, 378;
    besieges Torigni, 386, 405;
    does homage to Louis, 388;
    marries Eleanor, 393;
    ignores Louis’s jurisdiction, 394;
    war with Louis and Geoffrey, 395;
    lands in England, 396;
    besieges Malmesbury, 397;
    colloquy at Wallingford, _ib._;
    treaty with Stephen, 400, 401;
    receives homage, 402;
    plot to kill him, 403;
    returns to Gaul, _ib._;
    effects of his visit to England, _ib._;
    resumes Norman demesnes, 404;
    peace with Louis, 405;
    comes to England, _ib._;
    crowned, _ib._;
    his work, 407;
    person and character, 408–411, 414–417;
    court, 411–413;
    first ministers, 417, 418;
    relations with Becket, 420, 423–427;
    charter, 427;
    settlement of the country, _ib._;
    of the succession, 429;
    subdues William of Aumale, 428;
    and Hugh of Mortemer, 429;
    holds court at S. Edmund’s, 430;
    goes to Anjou, 431;
    scheme for conquering Ireland, _ib._, ii. 95;
    effects of his first two years’ work in England, i. 431–434;
    returns, 434;
    demands Northumberland etc., 435;
    receives Malcolm’s homage, 438;
    wears his crown at Wigford, _ib._, 439;
    at Worcester, 439;
    his position compared with Cnut’s, 2, 440, 441;
    relations with France, 441, 442;
    does homage, 443;
    subdues Geoffrey, 444, 445;
    proposes for Margaret as wife for his son, 446;
    seneschal of France, 450;
    grants Britanny to Conan and obtains Nantes, 451;
    designs on Britanny, 452, 453;
    claims Toulouse, 458;
    great scutage, 459–461;
    his allies, 462, 463;
    knights Malcolm, 464;
    takes Cahors and threatens Toulouse, _ib._;
    withdraws, 465;
    treaty, 467;
    quarrel with Thomas, 469;
    drives Louis from Chaumont, 471;
    principle of his reforms, 474;
    projects of crusade, 453, 497;
    attitude towards the religious revival, 497;
    relations with Adrian IV., _ib._;
    with Germany, 499, 502;
    acknowledges Alexander III. as Pope, 502;
    appoints Thomas archbishop, ii. 1;
    meets Alexander and Louis, 13;
    goes to England, _ib._;
    receives homage of Welsh princes at Woodstock, 14;
    quarrel with Thomas, 15, 16;
    plans of reform in criminal legislature, 17–20;
    propounds his grandfather’s customs at Westminster, 22;
    meets Thomas at Northampton, 23;
    at Oxford, 24;
    publishes constitutions of Clarendon, 26;
    meets Thomas at Woodstock, 31, 32;
    council of Northampton, 32–40;
    sends envoys to the Pope, 41;
    confiscates the primate’s estates and banishes his friends, 42;
    effects of the quarrel, 46–49;
    goes to Normandy, 54;
    receives envoys from the Emperor, 55, 60;
    plans for his children, 57, 60;
    conquers Britanny, 57, 58;
    correspondence with Arthur, 57 note 2{226}, 447;
    meets Raymond, 58;
    attempt to divorce him from Eleanor, 61;
    does homage at Montmirail, _ib._, 62;
    holds council at Chinon, 64;
    appeals to Rome, 65;
    drives Thomas from Pontigny, 68;
    meets him at Montmirail, 69;
    meets Louis and Thomas at Montmartre, 71;
    at Fréteval, 73;
    meets Thomas at Tours and Chaumont, 74;
    goes to Rocamadour, _ib._;
    rash words at Bures, 78;
    absolved, 81;
    promises help to Dermot, 99;
    forbids the war in Ireland, 108;
    summons Richard of Striguil to Wales, 112;
    goes to Ireland, 80, 113;
    his fleet, 112;
    Irish princes submit to, 114;
    settlement of Ireland, 117;
    of Dublin, 118;
    goes to Normandy, 119;
    relations with the barons, 120, 121, 126, 128;
    legal and administrative reforms, 122–127;
    inquest on Norman demesnes, 128;
    alliance with Maurienne, 131;
    receives homage of Toulouse, 133;
    quarrel with young Henry, 134, 135;
    revolt against, 141;
    visits England, 143;
    his adherents, 144–146;
    takes Dol, 148;
    meets Louis, _ib._;
    subdues rebels in Touraine, 151;
    regains Saintes, 157;
    returns to England, 158;
    pilgrimage to Canterbury, 159;
    receives news of William’s capture, 160;
    takes Huntingdon and subdues Hugh Bigod, 163;
    relieves Rouen, 164;
    subdues Poitou, 165;
    reconciled with his sons, _ib._;
    treaty with William the Lion, 166;
    treatment of the rebels, 167;
    end of the struggle, 166, 168;
    his position after it, 169;
    administrative work in England, 170–178;
    his forest visitations, 171;
    receives homage for Scotland, 178;
    dealings with Wales, i. 435–437; ii. 179–181, 237, 453, 455;
    treaty with Roderic O’Conor, ii. 182;
    appoints John king of Ireland, 184;
    character of his empire, 185–187;
    continental policy, 188–191;
    arbitrates between Castille and Navarre, 190;
    administration in Normandy, 192–194;
    buildings, 196, 197;
    religious foundations, 197 and note 4{948};
    hospitals, 198, 199;
    _Levée_, 200;
    bridges, _ib._;
    relations with Aquitaine, 203, 205;
    quarrel with Louis, 212;
    treaty, 213;
    takes Châteauroux, _ib._;
    buys La Marche, 214;
    house of Blois seek his help, 217;
    makes peace in France, _ib._, 219;
    tries to make peace among his sons, 224;
    summons a conference at Mirebeau, 225;
    besieges Limoges, _ib._;
    arrests rebel leaders of 1173, 226;
    forgives young Henry, 227;
    Aquitaine submits to, 230;
    interview with Bertrand de Born, 231;
    homage to Philip, 232;
    proposes to transfer Aquitaine to John, 233, 242;
    makes John governor of Ireland, 234;
    mediates between France and Flanders, 235;
    receives submission of Galloway, 237;
    receives the patriarch Heraclius, 240;
    meets Philip, 244;
    marches into Berry, 245;
    truce, 246;
    reinstates Richard in Aquitaine, 247;
    meets Philip, 248;
    takes the cross, 249;
    musters his forces in Normandy, 252;
    meets Philip, 253;
    conference at Bonmoulins, 254;
    goes into Aquitaine, 256;
    meets Richard, _ib._;
    goes to Le Mans, 257;
    conference at La Ferté, _ib._;
    flies, 259–262;
    returns to Anjou, 262;
    goes to Chinon and Azay, 263;
    submits to Philip at Colombières, 265, 266;
    learns John’s treason, 267;
    last days, 268;
    death, 269;
    burial, 270, 272;
    points out Arthur’s tomb, 447;
    grants trading privileges to Chester, 484;
    grants burial-grounds to the Jews, 486

  Henry, second son of Henry II. and Eleanor, born, i. 429, 445;
    betrothal, 446, 448;
    does homage for Normandy, 468;
    marriage, 470;
    intrusted to Thomas for education, 471, 472;
    recognised heir to the crown, 472, 473;
    receives homage of Malcolm IV., ii. 15;
    withdrawn from Thomas, 23;
    homage at Montmirail, 62;
    receives Geoffrey’s homage for Britanny, _ib._;
    officiates as seneschal and does homage to Philip, _ib._;
    crowned, 72;
    crowned again, 81;
    rebels, 129, 130;
    flies to France, 134;
    threatens to invade England, 158, 162;
    reconciled, 165;
    receives homage of William the Lion, 178;
    joins Richard in Aquitaine, 209, 210;
    besieges Châteauroux, 211;
    at crowning of Philip Augustus, 216, 218, 219;
    character, 221;
    quarrel with Richard, 222;
    enters Aquitaine, 223;
    confesses his league with the Poitevins, 224;
    holds Limoges against his father, 225;
    driven thence, 226;
    plunders Grandmont, _ib._;
    and Rocamadour, 227;
    death, _ib._, 228;
    burial, 230, 232

  Henry III., Emperor, i. 176

  Henry V., Emperor, i. 241, 242

  Henry VI., Emperor, his claims on Sicily, ii. 319;
    demands for Richard’s ransom, 324, 325;
    negotiates with Philip and John, 327;
    grants Burgundian kingdom to Richard, 331;
    conquers Sicily, 371, 372;
    stirs up Richard against France, 372;
    dies, _ib._

  Henry I., king of France, joins Odo II. against Fulk Nerra, i. 163;
    tries to drive Odo from Sens, 164;
    revolt against, 177, 178;
    grants Tours to Geoffrey Martel, 178;
    relations with Normandy and Anjou, 207, 210;
    visits Angers, 213;
    invades Normandy, _ib._;
    defeated at Varaville, _ib._, 214;
    dies, 214

  Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, his early life, i. 347;
    supports Stephen, 277, 279;
    legate, 305;
    summons Stephen before a council at Winchester, 305;
    advice at siege of Arundel, 309;
    escorts Matilda to Bristol, 310;
    receives her at Winchester, 321;
    holds council there, 322;
    again declares for Stephen, 324, 325;
    his fortress of Wolvesey, 325;
    besieged, 326;
    fires the city, _ib._;
    holds council at Westminster and again proclaims Stephen, 329, 330;
    his Church policy, 348;
    character, 349;
    position as legate, _ib._, 350;
    elected to Canterbury, 350;
    rivalry with Theobald, 351;
    loses the legation, 356;
    goes to Rome, _ib._;
    founds S. Cross, 357;
    suspended, 368;
    appeals, 381;
    absolved, _ib._;
    consecrates S. Thomas, ii. 5;
    at council of Northampton, 35, 36, 37, 41;
    dies, 80

  Henry the Liberal, count of Champagne, joins invasion of Normandy,
    i. 394;
    betrothed to Mary of France, 445

  Henry II., count of Champagne, king of Jerusalem, ii. 321

  Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, betrothed to Matilda, daughter of
    Henry II., ii. 55;
    married, 59, 60;
    exiled 238, 257;
    regains his lands, 319

  Henry, son of David king of Scots, made earl of Carlisle and
    Huntingdon, i. 282;
    Northumberland promised to, 286;
    at battle of the Standard, 290, 291;
    earl of Northumberland, 300;
    at siege of Ludlow, 301, 302;
    dies, 399

  Henry of Albano, legate, ii. 256, 257

  Henry of Essex, constable, i. 434;
    drops standard at Consilt, 436, 437;
    present in war of Toulouse, 466;
    defeated in ordeal of battle, ii. 61

  Henry Fitz-Aylwine, mayor of London, ii. 472;
    his assize, 485

  Henry of Huntingdon, i. 82, 83, 94

  Henry Murdac, abbot of Fountains, i. 365;
    opposes S. William, _ib._;
    archbishop of York, 366;
    his troubles in Yorkshire, 367, 380;
    reconciled to the king and enthroned, 381;
    goes to Rome, _ib._;
    opposes election of Hugh of Puiset to Durham, 399, 400;
    death, 400

  Henry of Pisa, cardinal, ii. 2

  Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, ii. 240

  Herbert I. Wake-dog, count of Maine, saves Fulk at Pontlevoy, i. 157,
    158;
    his surname, 159;
    imprisoned by Fulk, _ib._;
    quarrels with Bp. Avesgaud, _ib._ note 4{343}, 204;
    death, 204;
    daughters, 254, 255

  Herbert II., count of Maine, i. 216

  Herbert Bacco usurps the county of Maine, i. 204;
    quarrels with Bishop Gervase, 205;
    expelled, _ib._

  Herbert Lozinga, bishop of Thetford, removes his see to Norwich,
    i. 41

  Herbert, bishop of Salisbury, withstands Hubert Walter, ii. 350

  Herbert of Bosham, ii. 9, 10, 38, 40, 75;
    verdict on the Becket quarrel, 47

  Hereford, i. 36;
    castle seized by Geoffrey Talbot, 294;
    yields to Stephen, 295.
    _See_ Gilbert, Miles, Robert, Roger

  Herispoë, king of Britanny, i. 130, 203

  Hermengard of Anjou, daughter of Geoffrey Greygown and wife of Conan
    of Rennes, i. 121, 135

  Hermengard (Adela) of Anjou, daughter of Fulk Nerra, wife of Geoffrey
    of Gâtinais, i. 214, 249

  Hermengard of Anjou, daughter of Fulk Rechin, marries Alan Fergant,
    duke of Britanny, i. 328 note 4{930}

  Hermengard of Beaumont, wife of William the Lion, ii. 237

  Hermengard of Bourbon, second wife of Fulk Rechin, i. 224

  Hervey of Glanville, i. 362

  Hervey of Lions, i. 321

  Hervey of Mountmorris, ii. 101, 112

  Hicmar, legate, i. 364

  _Higra_, the, i. 34

  Hilary, bishop of Chichester, ii. 24, 39

  Hildegard, wife of Fulk III. of Anjou, i. 154, 165, 168

  _Historia Comitum Andegavensium_, its authorship and character,
    i. 126, 127

  History, English, under Henry I., i. 81–83, 87–91;
    decay during the anarchy, ii. 438;
    new school of, under Henry II., 439–445;
    romantic school, 445, 449

  Hoel, duke of Britanny, i. 222

  Hoel I., count of Nantes, i. 117, 121

  Hoel II., count of Nantes, i. 212

  Hoel of Rennes, count of Nantes, i. 449

  Holy Land, _see_ Jerusalem

  Hommet, _see_ Richard

  Hospitaliers, i. 357

  Hospitals founded in Stephen’s reign, i. 357;
    Henry II., ii. 198, 199

  Houses, English, in twelfth century, i. 54, 55

  Howden, _see_ Roger

  Hrolf the Ganger, i. 111, 124, 203

  Hubert Walter, dean of York, ii. 278;
    bishop of Salisbury, _ib._, 333;
    elected to Canterbury, 326;
    justiciar, _ib._;
    suppresses revolt, 327;
    early life, 332, 333;
    rivals, 334–336;
    legate, 336;
    his policy, _ib._;
    administration, 337–341, 348, 352–354;
    fires Bow church and hangs William Fitz-Osbert, 347;
    defeated in council at Oxford, 349, 350;
    expedition to Wales, 351;
    resigns the justiciarship, _ib._, 354, 355;
    negotiates with Philip, 374;
    regent for John, 390, 391;
    crowns him, 392;
    chancellor, _ib._;
    persuades John to dismiss the host, 427;
    dies, 428;
    his proposed college, 437

  Hubert de Burgh, ii. 400, 407, 408, 426

  Hugh, S., bishop of Lincoln, excommunicates the De Clères, ii. 306;
    withstands Hubert Walter, 349;
    buries Richard, 386;
    dies, 399

  Hugh of Nonant, bishop of Chester or Coventry, ii. 280, 293, 306, 310,
    329;
    his scheme of “new foundation,” 436

  Hugh of Puiset, treasurer of York, excommunicated, i. 367;
    absolved, 382;
    bishop of Durham, 399, 400;
    rebels, ii. 140, 141;
    makes a truce with the Scots, 151;
    fortifies Northallerton, 152;
    calls in the Flemings, 162;
    submits, 163;
    takes the cross, 248;
    justiciar, 279;
    earl of Northumberland, 280;
    character and antecedents, 283–285;
    quarrels with the chancellor, 288, 291, 292;
    relations with York, 303, 304;
    quarrel with Geoffrey, 313, 316;
    mission to France, 316;
    besieges Tickhill, 323, 327, 328;
    resigns Northumberland, 330;
    tries to regain it, 335;
    dies, 336;
    his _Boldon Buke_, 478–480

  Hugh, duke of Burgundy, i. 103, 104

  Hugh the Great, duke of the French, i. 112, 123, 124, 204

  Hugh Capet, duke of the French, i. 120, 124, 141, 142;
    king, 125

  Hugh I. count of Maine, i. 124;
    subdued by Fulk the Black, 159;
    dies, 156

  Hugh II. count of Maine, set aside by Herbert Bacco, i. 204;
    restored, 205;
    marriage and death, 206

  Hugh of Este, count of Maine, i. 221, 224

  Hugh the Poor, earl of Bedford, i. 320

  Hugh Bigod, i. 278;
    revolts against Stephen, 284;
    earl of Norfolk, 430;
    revolts against Henry, ii. 139;
    takes Norwich, 155;
    submits, 163;
    his punishment, 167

  Hugh, earl of Chester, rebels against Henry II., ii. 138;
    taken prisoner, 148;
    restored, 167

  Hugh Bardulf, ii. 283, 330, 335

  Hugh of Beauvais, seneschal of France, i. 155

  Hugh of Gournay, ii. 146, 403

  Hugh de Lacy, ii. 113, 116;
    governor in Ireland, 117;
    with Henry in Normandy, 145, 147;
    viceroy again, 185;
    slain, 242, 243

  Hugh IX., the Brown, of Lusignan, ii. 398

  Hugh X. of Lusignan, ii. 398, 405

  Hugh of Ste.-Maure, ii. 129, 136

  Hugh of Mortemer, i. 429, 430

  Hugh de Morville, ii. 78

  Hugh of Sillé, ii. 137

  Huitdeniers, _see_ Osbern

  Humbert, count of Maurienne, ii. 132, 133, 134

  Humfrey de Bohun, constable, ii. 113, 145, 149

  Hungary, _see_ Bela

  Huntingdon, siege of, ii. 154, 156;
    surrenders, 163;
    earldom of, i. 282, ii. 154;
    weavers at, i. 30, 52.
    _See_ Henry, Simon

  Hyde abbey, i. 31


  Ilchester, _see_ Richard

  Ingebiorg of Denmark, second wife of Philip Augustus, ii. 395

  Ingelger, son of Tortulf, i. 105, 114, 128–131, 182

  Ingelger, son of Fulk the Red, i. 112

  Inispatrick, synod at, ii. 94

  Innocent II., Pope, i. 299, 351, 355; ii. 93

  Innocent III., Pope, ii. 351

  Inquest, _see_ Jury

  Investitures, i. 15–18

  Ireland, English trade with, i. 32, 35, ii. 87;
    northmen in, ii. 82–86;
    civil wars in, 89–91;
    Henry II.’s proposal to conquer, 95, 431;
    plans of Eugene III. and S. Bernard for, 95;
    bull for its conquest, i. 431, 486, ii. 96;
    Henry II. in, ii. 113–118;
    condition in his later years, 181–185;
    John made governor of, 234;
    John in, 242;
    Gerald’s treatises on, 457, 458.
    _See_ Brian, Dermot, Donell, Malachi, Murtogh, Niall, Roderic,
    Terence.
    _See also_ Church

  Isaac, king of Cyprus, ii. 317, 319

  Isabel of Angoulême, ii. 398;
    married to John, 399

  Isabel de Clare, wife of William the Marshal, ii. 274

  Isabel de Warren, ii. 29

  Issoudun, ii. 361.
    _See_ Ralf

  Ivo of Grandmesnil, i. 10


  Jane, third daughter of Henry II., betrothed to William II. of Sicily,
    ii. 60;
    marries him, 189, 190;
    marries Raymond VI. of Toulouse, 371;
    dies, 397

  Jane of Montferrat, wife of William the Clito, i. 243

  Jerusalem, kingdom of, condition under the Angevin kings, ii. 239;
    taken by Saladin, 247.
    _See_ Baldwin, Fulk, Guy, Henry, Melisenda, Sibyl

  Jews in England, i. 27, 46, 53;
    under Henry II., ii. 486;
    burial-grounds granted to, _ib._;
    massacres of, 289, 290;
    relations with the Christians, 487, 488;
    ordinance for their bonds, 488, 489

  Joceas of Dinan, i. 301

  Jocelyn, bishop of Salisbury, ii. 37, 67, 76

  Jocelyn de Balliol, ii. 66

  John “Lackland,” son of Henry II. and Eleanor, born, ii. 130;
    betrothed to Alice of Maurienne, 132–134;
    to Avice of Gloucester, 184;
    appointed king of Ireland, _ib._;
    proposal to give him Aquitaine, 233;
    knighted and sent to Ireland, 234;
    his misconduct in Ireland, 242;
    recalled, _ib._;
    proposal to crown him, _ib._, 244;
    his treason discovered, 267;
    reconciled to Richard, 274;
    treats with Rees, 280;
    his lands in England, 282;
    marries Avice, _ib._;
    his power in England, 293;
    quarrels with the chancellor, 297–301;
    calls up the barons against him, 307;
    enters London, 309;
    appointed regent, 310;
    alliance with Philip, 314, 323;
    its terms, 363;
    acknowledged heir by the English barons, 314;
    negotiates with the chancellor, 315;
    struggle with the justiciars, 323;
    truce, 324;
    charged with treason, 329;
    reconciled to Richard, 334;
    helps him against Philip, 369;
    acknowledged in Anjou, 388;
    invested as duke of Normandy, _ib._, 389;
    burns Le Mans, 390;
    goes to England, 391;
    crowned, 391–393;
    administrative arrangements, 393;
    quarrel with Philip, 394;
    treaty, 395, 397;
    visits England, 396;
    receives Arthur’s homage, 397;
    Raymond’s, _ib._;
    does homage to Philip, _ib._;
    divorces Avice, 398;
    marries Isabel, 398, 399;
    crowned with her, 399;
    meets the Scot king at Lincoln, _ib._;
    founds Beaulieu abbey, 400;
    crowned at Canterbury, _ib._;
    summons the barons to Portsmouth, _ib._;
    goes to Paris, 401;
    seizes Driencourt, _ib._;
    charges the Poitevin barons with treason, _ib._, 402;
    cited to the French king’s court, 402;
    condemned to forfeiture, 403;
    sends troops into Britanny, 404;
    relieves Mirebeau and captures Arthur, 406;
    destroys Tours, 407;
    quarrels with Otto, _ib._;
    cited by Philip for murder, 408;
    condemned, _ib._;
    his apathy, 410;
    plan for relief of Les Andelys, 413, 414;
    letter to garrison of Château-Gaillard, 419;
    goes to England, _ib._, 420;
    sends ambassadors to Philip, 424;
    summons the host and dismisses it, 427;
    sails to La Rochelle, 428;
    takes Angers, _ib._;
    flies back to England, _ib._;
    comment on Hubert Walter’s death, 428, 429;
    charter to London, 471, 472

  John of Anagni, legate, ii. 257, 258

  John of Canterbury, i, 354;
    treasurer of York, 477; ii. 19;
    bishop of Poitiers, ii. 30, 209

  John de Courcy, ii. 184, 242

  John of La Flèche, i. 222

  John of Marmoutier, i. 126, 127

  John the Marshal, ii. 32, 33, 260

  John Oldman, ii. 157

  John of Oxford excommunicated, ii. 66;
    negotiations at Rome, 68;
    escorts Thomas to England, 75, 77;
    bishop of Norwich, 176

  John Paparo, cardinal, legate to Ireland, i. 380; ii. 94

  John of Salisbury, his studies and early life, i. 480–483;
    enters Abp. Theobald’s household, 483;
    becomes his secretary, 484;
    character, 484, 485;
    relations with Adrian IV., 485, 486;
    with Theobald, 486, 504;
    _Polycraticus_, 486–191;
    _Metalogicus_, 504;
    exiled, ii. 30;
    brings bull “Laudabiliter,” 96

  John Scotus, i. 86, 87

  John, count of Vendôme, ii. 137, 151

  John the Wode, ii. 106

  John, S., knights of, _see_ Hospitaliers

  Jouin-de-Marne, S., battle of, i. 174

  Judges, _see_ Justices

  Judicaël, bishop and count of Nantes, i. 148

  Juhel Berenger, count of Rennes, i. 116

  Julian, S., of Le Mans, i. 202

  _Juliomagus_, _see_ Angers

  Jury, the grand, ii. 338

  Jury-inquest, ii. 122, 123, 353, 354

  Justices itinerant under Henry I., i. 26;
    under Henry II., 433, 434; ii. 124, 125, 173–177;
    commission of 1194, 337;
    circuit of 1198, 356

  Justiciar, the, his office, i. 21.
    _See_ Hubert, Hugh, Ralf, Richard, Robert, Roger, Walter, William


  Kavanagh, _see_ Donell

  Kells, synod at, ii. 94

  Ketel of S. Edmund’s, ii. 472

  Kinardferry, ii. 152, 155

  King’s Court, the, i. 20, 21;
    its judicial work, 25;
    Henry II.’s changes in, ii. 174, 175

  Kinsellagh, ii. 100

  Kirkham priory, i. 67


  Lacy, _see_ Hugh, Roger

  L’Aigle, _see_ Richer

  Lakenheath, dispute about market at, ii. 482, 483

  Lambert, count of the Angevin march, i. 101, 130

  Lambert, count of Autun, i. 121, 134, 135

  Lambeth, college at, ii. 437

  Landry of Châteaudun, i. 156, 193, 194

  Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, consecrates Patrick to Dublin,
    ii. 89

  Langley, _see_ Nicolas

  Laon, canons of, their journey in England, i. 30–35

  Laurence, archbishop of Dublin, ii. 105, 108, 110

  Law, canon, introduced into England, i. 378;
    Roman civil, 379;
    study of, in the schools, ii. 466

  Layamon, ii. 491, 492

  Leather-sellers’ gild at Oxford, i. 30

  Legates in England, i. 350.
    _See_ Alberic, Gilbert, Henry, Hicmar, John, Malachi, Peter,
    Theobald, Thomas, William

  Leia, _see_ Peter

  Leicester, siege of, ii. 146, 147.
    _See_ Robert, Petronilla

  Leinster, _see_ Dermot

  Leopold, duke of Austria, ii. 319, 371

  Lespec, _see_ Walter

  _Levée_, the, on the Loire, ii. 200

  _Liber Niger Scaccarii_, ii. 125

  _Liber Niger_, _see_ Peterborough

  Lichfield, i. 40

  Lidford, gild at, ii. 469

  Lidorius, S., bishop of Tours, i. 179

  Limerick, ii. 83.
    _See_ Donell, Gilbert

  Limoges besieged by Henry II., ii. 225;
    plundered by the young king, 226;
    surrenders, 230.
    _See_ Ademar, Guy

  Lincoln, i. 38–40;
    weavers at, 30, 52;
    merchant gild, 40;
    castle seized by Ralf of Chester, 315;
    besieged by Stephen, _ib._;
    battle of, 316–320, 344–346;
    sacked by Earl Robert, 320;
    castle again seized by Ralf, 334;
    given up to Stephen, 336;
    Stephen at, 337;
    Henry II. at, 438;
    castle besieged by William of Longchamp, ii. 299;
    John at, 399;
    minster-library, 464, 465;
    Richard’s charter to, 470.
    _See_ Aaron, Alexander, Geoffrey, Hugh, Remigius, Robert, William

  Lions, _see_ Hervey

  Lisbon won by English crusaders, i. 363

  Lisieux, council at, i. 392.
    _See_ Arnulf

  Lisoy of Bazogers, commandant of Amboise and Loches, i. 157, 184, 185;
    advice to Geoffrey Martel, 185;
    captures Theobald, 186

  Literature, revival of, under Henry I., i. 80–95;
    under the Angevins, ii. 439–460, 491–492

  Loches, i. 110, 153;
    treaty of, 187;
    pledged to Philip, ii. 364;
    taken by Richard, 366;
    taken by Philip, 426.
    _See_ Lisoy, Thomas

  Lodden, conferences at the, ii. 307, 308

  Lombard, _see_ Peter

  London, its growing importance, i. 31;
    walls and castles, 44;
    cathedral, folkmoot, portreeve, sheriffs, 45;
    fires, _ib._, 55;
    weavers, 30, 52, ii. 481;
    constitution under William I., i. 45;
    under Henry I., _ib._, 46;
    Jews in, 46;
    suburbs, _ib._, 47;
    schools, 47;
    character of its citizens, 47, 48;
    Normans in, 48, 49;
    trade, 49;
    claim of its citizens to elect the king, 277;
    loyal to Stephen, 313;
    submits to the Empress, 323;
    expels her, 324;
    citizens at siege of Winchester, 326;
    hospitals in, 357;
    councils at, 381, 390, 429; ii. 314;
    tumults in (1173), ii. 156–157;
    meeting of barons at, 309, 310, 311;
    the commune, 309, 310, 344;
    rising under William Fitz-Osbert, 345–347;
    gilds in, 469;
    constitution under Henry II., Richard and John, 471, 472;
    foreign commerce, 485;
    gildhall of German merchants, _ib._;
    stone bridge, _ib._, 486.
    _See_ Andrew, Gilbert, Henry, Richard, Serlo, Thomas, Westminster

  Longchamp, _see_ William

  Lorraine, i. 120

  Lothar, king of West-Frankland, i. 119, 120, 122

  Lothar, _see_ Innocent III.

  Lotharingia, i. 120

  Loudun, i. 123, 124, 139, 394, 444

  Louis the Gentle, Emperor, partition of his realms, i. 98, 99

  Louis From-beyond-sea, King of West Frankland, i. 112, 113;
    Fulk’s letter to, 114;
    dies, 119

  Louis the Lazy (_Fainéant_), King of West Frankland, i. 123;
    marriage, 191;
    death, 125

  Louis VI., King of France, his policy, i. 230;
    supports William Clito, 235;
    defeated at Brenneville, 237;
    treaty with Henry, 238;
    marches against the Emperor, 241;
    grants Flanders to Clito, 243

  Louis VII., King of France, his quarrel with Blois and alliance with
    Anjou, i. 342;
    helps Geoffrey to conquer Normandy, _ib._;
    grants him its investiture, 343;
    takes the cross, 361;
    marries Eleanor, 383;
    strife with Blois, 384;
    attacks Normandy, 385;
    dealings with Geoffrey and Eustace, 386, 387;
    grants Normandy etc. to Henry, 388, 389;
    divorces Eleanor, 392;
    cites Henry to his court, 393;
    war in Normandy, 395;
    receives Henry’s homage, 443;
    marries Constance, 446;
    makes Henry seneschal, 450;
    proposed crusade in Spain, 453, 497;
    claims on Toulouse, 457;
    throws himself into Toulouse, 464;
    attacks Normandy, 466;
    treaty, 467;
    marries Adela, 468;
    alliance with Blois, 469, 471;
    driven from Chaumont, 471;
    acknowledges Alexander III. as Pope, 502;
    meets Alexander and Henry at Chouzy, ii. 13;
    threatens war in Auvergne, 31;
    welcomes Thomas, 42;
    his view of the Becket quarrel, 53, 54;
    receives homage of the two Henrys and grants Aquitaine to Richard,
    62;
    meets Henry at Montmartre, 71;
    Fréteval, 73;
    supports young Henry’s revolt, 135, 136;
    attacks Normandy, 143;
    burns Verneuil, 147;
    meets Henry II. at Gisors, 148;
    besieges Rouen, 164;
    truce, 165;
    renewed quarrel, 212;
    treaty, 213;
    pilgrimage to Canterbury, 216;
    dies, 219

  Louis, son of Philip Augustus, ii. 395, 397

  Lucius II., Pope, i. 356, 360

  Lucy, _see_ Richard

  Ludlow, i. 301

  Lupicar, ii. 413

  Lusignan, _see_ Geoffrey, Guy, Hugh


  Mabel of Glamorgan, wife of Robert, earl of Gloucester, i. 294, 328

  MacCarthy, _see_ Dermot

  MacMurrough, _see_ Dermot, Eva, Murtogh

  Madoc Ap-Meredith, prince of Powys, i. 436, 437

  Maidulf, founder of Malmesbury, i. 83

  Maine (Cenomannia), duchy of, i. 203;
    county, 106, 107;
    its defiance of the house of France, 109;
    claims of Normandy and France upon, 124, 203, 204;
    granted to Geoffrey Greygown, 124, 140–142;
    subject to Geoffrey Martel, 206;
    relations with Normandy and Anjou, 216, 217, 222, 223;
    conquered by William, 218;
    revolts, 221, 222;
    revolts against Robert, 223, 224;
    condition under Elias, 224, 225;
    won back by William Rufus, 3, 226;
    Henry I. overlord of, 227, 233, 234;
    united with Anjou, 233;
    settled on William and Matilda, 236, 238;
    on Sibyl and Clito, 240;
    pedigree of the counts, 253–256;
    rebels in (1173), ii. 137.
    _See_ Aremburg, Biota, David, Elias, Gersendis, Herbert, Hugh,
    Margaret, Paula, Roland

  Maine, river, _see_ Mayenne

  Malachi, S., ii. 93, 94

  Malachi II., king of Ireland, ii. 85

  Malchus, bishop of Waterford, ii. 89

  Malcolm IV., king of Scots, his claims on Northumberland etc., i. 435;
    submits to Henry II., 438;
    at war of Toulouse, 462;
    homage to young Henry, ii. 14, 15

  Malmesbury abbey, i. 83–87;
    castle surrendered to Stephen, 304;
    taken by Henry, 397.
    _See_ Ealdhelm, Godfrey, Maidulf, Turold, Warin, William

  Maminot, _see_ Walkelyn

  Mandeville, _see_ Geoffrey, William

  Manorbeer, ii. 452

  Mans, Le, (_Vindinum_), its early history, i. 201–203;
    cathedral, 202, 238;
    bishop, people and count, 202, 204;
    advocacy of the see granted to Geoffrey Martel, 205;
    taken by William, 218;
    “commune” of, 222;
    surrendered to Elias, 227;
    marriage of Geoffrey and Matilda at, 244;
    Henry Fitz-Empress born at, 268;
    Geoffrey buried at, 390;
    the young king buried at, ii. 230;
    Henry II. at, 257, 258;
    taken by Philip, 259, 263;
    submits to Arthur, 389;
    burnt by John, 390;
    given up to John, 394;
    hospital, 198.
    _See_ Avesgaud, Gervase, Julian, Sainfred

  Mantes, _see_ Gaubert, Walter

  Map, _see_ Walter

  March, Spanish, _see_ Barcelona

  Marche, La, bought by Henry II., ii. 214

  Margaret of France, daughter of Louis VII. and Constance, i. 446;
    betrothed to young Henry, 448;
    intrusted to Henry II., 451;
    Vexin settled upon her, 467;
    married, 470;
    crowned, ii. 81;
    quarrels over her dowry, 232, 236;
    marries Bela of Hungary, 235

  Margaret of Maine, i. 216, 254

  Marmion, _see_ Robert

  Marmoutier, abbey of, i. 181

  Marshal, _see_ John, William

  Marson, i. 125

  Martel, ii. 227

  Martin, S., bishop of Tours, his life, i. 179–181;
    appearance to Fulk the Good, 118;
    “reversion,” 128, 131, 182;
    “subvention,” 182, 187;
    abbey, _see_ Tours

  Martin-le-Beau, S., i. 187

  Mary of Boulogne, daughter of Stephen and Matilda, i. 469

  Mary of France, daughter of Louis VII. and Eleanor, i. 445

  Massey, _see_ Hamo

  Matilda (Eadgyth) of Scotland, first wife of Henry I., i. 9, 17, 93,
    94;
    called “good queen Maude,” 66

  Matilda, daughter of Henry I. of England, widow of Emperor Henry V.,
    i. 242;
    acknowledged as Henry’s heiress, 243, 268, 269, 274;
    marries Geoffrey, 243, 244, 258–260;
    leaves him, 266;
    goes to England, 268;
    returns, _ib._;
    quarrels with Henry, 270;
    qualifications for the throne, 274, 275;
    enters Normandy, 276;
    lands at Arundel, 309;
    goes to Bristol and Gloucester, 310;
    negotiates with the legate, 321;
    in London, 323, 324;
    besieges the legate at Winchester, 325, 326;
    blockaded by the queen, 326;
    escapes, 327, 328;
    goes to Oxford, 329;
    sends for Geoffrey, 330;
    besieged at Oxford, 332;
    escapes, 333;
    returns to Gaul, 344;
    trial of her claims at Rome, 370;
    later years, 442, 443;
    death, ii. 61

  Matilda of Boulogne marries Stephen, i. 273;
    crowned, 283;
    blockades Dover, 299;
    mediates between Stephen and David, 300;
    drives the Empress from London, 324;
    wins over the legate, _ib._;
    besieges Winchester, 326;
    negotiates for Stephen’s release, 328;
    founds S. Katharine’s Hospital, 357;
    tries to reconcile Stephen and Theobald, 369;
    dies, 399

  Matilda, eldest daughter of Henry II. and Eleanor, born, i. 445;
    betrothed to Henry the Lion, ii. 55;
    married, 59–60, 189;
    aid for her marriage, 125;
    death, ii. 257 note 2{1241}

  Matilda of Anjou, daughter of Fulk V., betrothed to William the
    Ætheling, i. 234;
    married, 236;
    quarrel over her dowry, 240;
    nun at Fontevraud, 248

  Matilda of Angoulême, wife of Hugh IX. of Lusignan, ii. 398

  Matilda of Saxony, daughter of Henry the Lion, her suitors, ii. 237;
    marriage, 274

  Matilda of Ramsbury, i. 304

  Matthew, son of Theodoric count of Flanders, marries Mary of Boulogne,
    i. 469;
    dies, ii. 147

  Matthew, tutor to Henry Fitz-Empress, i. 375;
    chancellor, 376

  Maude, “Good Queen,” i. 66.
    _See_ Matilda

  Mauléon, _see_ Savaric

  Maurice, son of Geoffrey Greygown, i. 134, 135;
    regent of Anjou, 153, 156, 194

  Maurice Fitz-Gerald, ii. 100, 102

  Maurice de Prendergast, ii. 102, 110, 111

  Maurienne, ii. 131, 132.
    _See_ Alice, Humbert

  Mayenne or Maine, river, i. 97

  Mayenne, _see_ Geoffrey

  Measures, Assize of, ii. 348

  Meiler Fitz-Henry, ii. 101

  Melgueil, i. 463

  Melisenda, queen of Jerusalem, i. 246, 361

  Melun, i. 149, 189, 190

  Merania, _see_ Agnes

  Mercadier, ii. 383, 390

  Merlin’s prophecy, its fulfilment, ii. 429

  Merton priory, i. 51, 67

  Messina, Richard at, ii. 294–296;
    treaty of, 368, 369

  _Metalogicus_, i. 504

  Metz, _see_ Chrodegang

  Metz (in Gâtinais?), i. 168

  Meulan, _see_ Robert, Waleran

  Middle Kingdom, i. 99, 120

  Middlesex, sheriffs of, i. 46

  Miles Beauchamp, i. 320

  Miles Cogan, ii. 105, 106, 184

  Miles Fitz-David, ii. 101

  Miles of Gloucester defies Stephen, i. 295;
    joins the Empress at Oxford, 324;
    earl of Hereford, 327;
    slain, 334

  Mirebeau, castle built by Fulk Nerra, i. 139, 151;
    siege of, by Geoffrey Plantagenet, 267;
    bequeathed to Geoffrey Plantagenet II., 394, 444;
    Eleanor besieged in, ii. 406;
    Arthur captured at, _ib._

  Mohun, _see_ William

  Molêmes, abbey of, i. 69, 70

  Monmouth, _see_ Geoffrey

  Montbazon, i. 151, 163

  Montboyau, i. 161, 163

  Montcontour or St. Jouin-de-Marne, battle of, i. 174

  Montferrat, _see_ Conrad, Jane, William

  Montfichet’s Castle, i. 44

  Montfort, _see_ Almeric, Bertrada, Robert, Simon

  Montlouis, battle of, i. 186

  Montmartre, conference at, ii. 71

  Montmirail, conference at, ii. 61, 62, 69;
    razed, 365

  Montpellier, _see_ William

  Montrésor, i. 151

  Montreuil-Bellay, siege of, i. 384–387.
    _See_ Gerald, Grecia

  Montrichard, i. 151

  Mont-St.-Michel, siege of, i. 5.
    _See_ Robert

  Moorfields, i. 47

  _Mort d’ancester_, ii. 172

  Mortain, _see_ John, Stephen, William

  Mortemer, _see_ Hugh, Roger

  Morville, _see_ Hugh, Richard

  Mountmorris, _see_ Hervey

  Mowbray, _see_ Robert, Roger

  Munster conquered by the Geraldines, ii. 183.
    _See_ Brian, Donell, Murtogh, Terence

  Murdac, _see_ Henry

  Murtogh Mac-Murrough, ii. 109, 111

  Murtogh O’Brien, king of Munster, ii. 89, 90

  Murtogh O’Lochlainn, king of Aileach, ii. 90, 97, 98


  Nantes, i. 101;
    ceded to the Bretons, 102;
    Angevin claims on, 116, 117;
    attacked by Normans, 117;
    counts and bishops, 121, 122;
    seized by Conan, 146;
    won by Fulk, 148;
    Geoffrey Martel’s dealings with, 212;
    union with Rennes, 449;
    again independent, _ib._;
    seized by Conan IV. and claimed by Henry II., 450;
    surrendered to Henry, 451;
    significance of its acquisition, 452, 453;
    Henry and Geoffrey at, ii. 58.
    _See_ Alan, Drogo, Geoffrey, Guerech, Hoel, Judicaël

  Nest, daughter of Rees Ap-Tewdor, ii. 100, 453

  Neubourg, i. 282, 470

  Neufmarché, council at, i. 502

  Newcastle-upon-Tyne, i. 37

  Newark, i. 304

  Niall of the Nine Hostages, ii. 84

  Nicolas Breakspear or of Langley, i. 475, 476, 481.
    _See_ Adrian

  Nigel, bishop of Ely and treasurer, i. 302;
    defends Devizes, 304;
    chancellor, 418;
    treasurer again, _ib._

  Nomenoë, king of Britanny, i. 101

  Nonancourt, treaty at, ii. 213

  Nonant, _see_ Hugh

  Norfolk, _see_ Hugh Bigod

  Normandy, duchy of, i. 111;
    confusion under Robert Curthose, 11;
    campaigns of Henry I. in, 11–13;
    relations with England, 13, 23, 24;
    with France, 24;
    invaded by Henry of France, 210, 213;
    claimed by Matilda, 276;
    invaded by Geoffrey, 281, 306–308;
    offered to Theobald of Blois, 282, 337;
    Stephen in, 286;
    granted to his son, _ib._;
    conquered by Geoffrey, 338–342;
    ceded to Henry Fitz-Empress, 369, 377;
    attacked by Louis VII. and Eustace, 385, 386, 394;
    inquest on ducal demesnes, ii. 128;
    rebels in (1173), 138, 139;
    attacked by Louis etc., 143;
    loyal barons in (1173), 146;
    Henry’s administration in, 192–194;
    laid under interdict, 315, 380;
    submits to Philip, 424, 425;
    dukes of, their claims upon Maine, i. 124, 203, 216.
    _See_ Geoffrey, Henry, Hrolf, John, Richard, Robert, William

  Normans destroy Fleury, i. 112;
    attack Nantes, 117;
    fusion of Normans and English, 24, 48, 49; ii. 489, 490

  “Normans” and “English,” different meanings of, i. 23, 24

  Northallerton, i. 289

  Northampton, Ralf of Chester seized at, i. 336;
    Henry II. at, ii. 23, 143;
    priory of S. Andrew at, 37;
    meeting of justiciars and barons at, 391;
    Assize of, 172, 173;
    councils at, i. 136; ii. 32–40, 172, 427.
    _See_ David, Simon

  Northmen, their work in Frankland and in England, i. 100;
    enter the Loire, 101;
    sack Nantes, _ib._;
    attack Toulouse, Paris, Bordeaux, 102;
    defeated at Aclea, _ib._;
    sack Tours, _ib._;
    seize Angers, 103;
    driven out, 104;
    besiege Paris, _ib._;
    defeated by Rudolf, 115;
    attacks on Tours, 181, 182.
    _See_ Ostmen

  Northumberland, Scottish claims upon, i. 286

  Norwich, i. 40, 41;
    sacked, ii. 155, 156;
    massacre of Jews at, 289;
    castle, i. 284, 430.
    _See_ Herbert, John

  Nostell priory, i. 68

  Nottingham, i. 320;
    council at, ii. 329


  O’Briens, their rivalry with the O’Neills, ii. 86.
    _See_ Donell, Murtogh, Terence

  O’Conor, _see_ Roderic, Terence

  Octavian, cardinal, _see_ Victor IV.

  Odelin de Umfraville, ii. 145, 153, 160

  Odo, count of Paris, duke of the French and king of West-Frankland,
    i. 104

  Odo, count of Anjou, i. 109, 133

  Odo I., count of Blois, Chartres and Tours, i. 145

  Odo II., count of Blois etc., seizes Melun, i. 149, 189;
    character, 150;
    defeated at Pontlevoy, 157, 158;
    count of Champagne, 160;
    besieges Montboyau, 161;
    Saumur, 163;
    attacks Amboise, _ib._;
    seizes Sens, 164;
    aims at the Empire, 166;
    death, 167

  Odo, count of Gascony and duke of Aquitaine, i. 174, 175

  Odo, son of Robert II. of France, i. 177, 178

  Odo of Britanny, i. 211, 212

  Oilly, _see_ Robert

  O’Lochlainn, _see_ Donell, Murtogh

  O’Neills, their rivalry with the O’Briens, ii. 86

  Orderic, i. 24

  Orkneys, _see_ Ralf

  Orléans, viscounts of, i. 249, 250

  O’Ruark, _see_ Tighernan

  Osbern Huitdeniers, i. 353

  Oseney priory, i. 43

  Ossory, ii. 102

  Ostia, _see_ Alberic

  Ostmen, their settlements in Ireland, ii. 82–84;
    relations with England, 83, 86, 87;
    struggle with Malachi and Brian, 85;
    ecclesiastical relations, 87–89;
    share in Irish politics, 89, 90

  Otto I., Emperor, i. 119

  Otto II., Emperor, i. 119, 120

  Otto of Saxony, son of Henry the Lion, his proposed marriage, ii. 341;
    chosen Emperor, 372, 373;
    quarrel with John, 407

  Otto, cardinal, ii. 69

  Oundle, i. 60

  Owen, prince of North Wales, i. 435, 436, 437; ii. 179

  Oxford, i. 41–44;
    Robert Pulein at, 43;
    Henry I. at, 44;
    bishops seized at, 303, 304;
    Matilda at, 322, 331–333;
    military advantages, 331;
    taken by Stephen, 332;
    Vacarius at, 379;
    Richard I. born at, 445;
    Henry and Thomas meet at, ii. 24;
    Gerald de Barri at, 460;
    councils at, i. 283, 402; ii. 349–350, 427;
    castle, i. 41, 331–334;
    gilds, 30, 43, 52;
    S. Frideswide’s priory, 42;
    Port-meadow, 43;
    schools, _ib._; ii. 462.
    _See_ John


  Paganel, _see_ Ralf

  Pageham, ii. 32

  Palestine, _see_ Jerusalem

  Paparo, _see_ John

  Paris attacked by northmen, i. 102, 104;
    capital of the duchy of France, 105;
    university of, ii. 461.
    _See_ Odo

  Paschal III., antipope, ii. 55

  Patrick, bishop of Dublin, ii. 88, 89

  Patrick, earl of Salisbury, governor of Aquitaine, ii. 58, 59

  Paula of Maine, i. 222, 254

  Pavia, council at, i. 498, 499.
    _See_ William

  Peace, edict for preservation of, ii. 339, 340;
    conservators of, their origin, 340

  Pembroke, Flemings in, i. 52.
    _See_ Gilbert, Richard, William

  Pencarn, ii. 179

  Périgueux, ii. 223

  Périgord, _see_ Adalbert

  Peter, duke of Aquitaine, _see_ William VI.

  Peter “Bogis,” ii. 421, 422

  Peter of Capua, cardinal-legate, ii. 375, 395

  Peter of Celle, i. 482, 483

  Peter of Colechurch, ii. 486

  Peter de Leia, bishop of S. David’s, ii. 455, 456

  Peter Lombard, ii. 461, 467

  Peter of Saintes, tutor to Henry Fitz-Empress, i. 375

  Peterborough, “Black Book” of, i. 58;
    chronicle, 81

  Petronilla, queen of Aragon, wife of Raymond-Berengar IV. of
    Barcelona, i. 463

  Petronilla, wife of Tertullus, i. 128

  Petronilla of Grandmesnil, countess of Leicester, ii. 138, 150

  Pevensey, i. 430

  Peverel, _see_ William

  Philip I., king of France, i. 220, 221, 224

  Philip Augustus, son of Louis VII. of France, born, ii. 56;
    receives young Henry’s homage, 62;
    crowned, 216;
    quarrels with Blois, 217;
    marries Elizabeth, _ib._;
    crowned again, 218;
    succeeds Louis, 219;
    demands Margaret’s dowry, 232, 236;
    quarrel with Flanders, 234;
    plots with Geoffrey, 243;
    claims wardship of Eleanor of Britanny, _ib._;
    of Arthur, 245;
    attacks Berry, _ib._;
    truce, 246;
    takes the cross, 249;
    takes Châteauroux, 251;
    attacks Auvergne, 252;
    negotiates with Richard, 253, 254;
    receives his homage, 255;
    takes Le Mans, 259;
    Tours, 264;
    treaty with Richard, 275;
    policy in Palestine, 320;
    returns to France, 313;
    demands the Vexin etc., _ib._, 314;
    alliance with John, 314, 323, 363;
    attacks Normandy, 363, 364;
    routed at Fréteval, 366, 367;
    secures Arthur, 370;
    war with Flanders, 374;
    truce with Richard, 375;
    takes Evreux, 389;
    receives homage of Arthur, 390;
    of Eleanor, _ib._;
    razes Ballon, 394;
    divorces Ingebiorg, 395;
    treaty with John, 395–397;
    takes Ingebiorg back, 401;
    cites John to his court, 402, 408;
    conquers eastern Normandy, 403;
    besieges Arques, 405, 406;
    burns Tours, 407;
    takes Saumur and enters Poitou, 410;
    successes in Normandy, _ib._;
    takes Isle of Andely, 411–416;
    Petit-Andely, 416;
    Radepont, _ib._;
    Château-Gaillard, 416–423;
    Normandy submits to, 424–425;
    conquers Poitou, 426;
    takes Loches and Chinon, _ib._;
    marches against John, 428

  Philip, count of Flanders, joins young Henry, ii. 141;
    threatens to invade England, 155, 158;
    his policy in France, 216;
    quarrels with France, 234, 235;
    pilgrimage to Canterbury, 235

  Philip de Broi, ii. 21

  Philip Gay, i. 297

  Philip of Gloucester, i. 335, 336

  Philip de Thaun, i. 94

  Pierre-Pécoulée, treaty of, i. 234

  Pipe Rolls, i. 26, 431–432

  Pipewell, council at, ii. 277

  Pisa, _see_ Henry

  Poitiers stormed by Adalbert of Périgord, i. 145;
    Henry and Eleanor married at, 393;
    council at, 458;
    Richard enthroned at, ii. 130;
    taken by Philip, 426.
    _See_ John

  Poitou granted to Hugh the Great, i. 123;
    barons of, appeal to Philip against John, ii. 402;
    conquered by Philip, 426.
    _See_ Aquitaine

  _Polycraticus_, i. 486–491

  Pontaudemer, siege of, i. 241

  Pontigny, abbey of, i. 70;
    S. Thomas at, ii. 42, 54

  Pont-l’Evêque, _see_ Roger

  Pontlevoy, battle of, i. 157, 158

  Popes, _see_ Adrian, Alexander, Calixtus, Celestine, Eugene, Innocent,
    Lucius, Paschal, Urban

  Porhoët, _see_ Eudo

  Port, _see_ Adam

  Portmannimot of Oxford, i. 43

  Port-meadow at Oxford, i. 43

  Port-reeve, i. 29;
    of London, 45.
    _See_ Gilbert Becket

  Portsmouth, ii. 400, 427

  Premonstratensians, i. 357, 358

  Prendergast, _see_ Maurice

  Provence, i. 454, 463.
    _See_ William

  Provins, i. 482

  Pucelle, _see_ Gerard

  Puiset, _see_ Hugh

  Pulein, _see_ Robert

  Pullus, _see_ Robert


  Quévilly, i. 471; ii. 198


  Radepont, ii. 403, 416

  Rahere, founder of S. Bartholomew’s hospital, i. 67

  Rainald, bishop of Angers, i. 193

  Raino, bishop of Angers, i. 131, 132

  Ralf, bishop of the Orkneys, i. 289, 355

  Ralf, bishop of Rochester, made archbishop of Canterbury, i. 68

  Ralf, earl of Chester, his marriage, i. 314;
    claims Carlisle, _ib._;
    seizes Lincoln castle, 315;
    brings Robert to relieve it, 316;
    at battle of Lincoln, 317, 320;
    again seizes the castle, 334;
    joins Stephen, 336;
    imprisoned, _ib._;
    gives up Lincoln, _ib._;
    revolts again, 377, 395;
    dies, 399

  Ralf, earl of Chester, second husband of Constance of Britanny,
    ii. 369, 370

  Ralf of Bayeux, i. 241

  Ralf de Broc, ii. 39, 76, 79, 149

  Ralf de Diceto, dean of S. Paul’s, ii. 439;
    his Angevin History, i. 127

  Ralf of Faye, ii. 129

  Ralf Flambard, justiciar, i. 8, 9, 21, 32, 432;
    bishop of Durham, 80

  Ralf of Fougères, ii. 137, 147, 148, 258

  Ralf de Glanville, ii. 145, 160;
    justiciar, 177;
    takes the cross, 248;
    resigns and dies, 279

  Ralf of Issoudun, ii. 401, 405

  Ralf Paganel, i. 295, 298

  Ralf of Varneville, chancellor to Henry II., ii. 142, 297

  Ralf of Vermandois, i. 307

  Ramirez the Monk, king of Aragon, i. 463

  Ramsbury, _see_ Matilda

  Rancogne, _see_ Geoffrey

  Rathbreasil, synod of, ii. 93

  Raymond-Berengar III., count of Barcelona, i. 463

  Raymond-Berengar IV., count of Barcelona, i. 463, 466

  Raymond of St. Gilles, count of Toulouse, i. 454, 455

  Raymond V., count of Toulouse, his marriage, i. 458;
    war with Henry II., 464–467;
    meets Henry at Grandmont, ii. 58;
    does him homage, 133;
    struggle with Aragon, 211;
    quarrel with Richard, 244, 250, 251;
    death, 371

  Raymond VI., count of Toulouse, marriage, ii. 371;
    homage to John, 397

  Raymond Trencavel, viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne, i. 462, 464,
    466

  Raymond the Fat, ii. 104, 108, 183

  Reading, i. 282, 322; ii. 61, 240, 308

  Redvers, _see_ Baldwin

  Rees Ap-Griffith, prince of South Wales, his dealings with Henry II.,
    ii. 164, 179–181, 237;
    with John and Richard, 280;
    death, 351

  Reginald, earl of Cornwall, i. 391; ii. 144, 146

  Reginald, chancellor to Frederic Barbarossa, and archbishop of Cöln,
    ii. 55

  Reginald Fitz-Urse, ii. 78

  Reims, councils at, i. 206, 237, 367, 368.
    _See_ Gervase, William

  Remigius, bishop of Dorchester, moves his see to Lincoln, i. 39

  Rennes united with Nantes, i. 449.
    _See_ Conan, Hoel, Juhel

  Richard, third son of Henry II. and Eleanor, born, i. 445;
    first betrothal, 463;
    invested with Aquitaine and betrothed to Adela, ii. 62;
    enthroned at Poitiers, 130;
    revolts, 135;
    submits, 165;
    his character, 206–208;
    fights the barons in Aquitaine, 209, 210, 214, 215, 220, 223;
    refuses homage to his brother, 224;
    takes Hautefort, 231;
    refuses to give up Aquitaine, 233;
    war with Geoffrey and John, _ib._;
    reconciled, 234;
    gives up Aquitaine to Eleanor, 235;
    wars with Toulouse, 244, 250, 251;
    negotiates a truce, 246;
    seizes the Angevin treasure, _ib._;
    reinstated in Aquitaine, 247;
    takes the cross, 248;
    tries to regain Châteauroux, 252;
    negotiates with Philip, 253, 254;
    meets Henry and Philip at Bonmoulins, 254;
    homage to Philip, 255;
    encounter with William the Marshal, 261;
    scene with Henry at Colombières, 266;
    comes to Fontevraud, 271;
    reconciled with the Marshal, 272;
    recognized as Henry’s successor, 273;
    duke of Normandy, 274;
    treaty with Philip, 275;
    goes to England, _ib._;
    crowned, 276;
    fills vacant sees, 277, 278;
    his policy, 278;
    appoints justiciars, 279, 283;
    sells sheriffdoms etc., 280;
    dealings with Wales, _ib._;
    with Scotland, 281;
    with John, 281–282;
    goes to Normandy, 287;
    holds council there, 288;
    possible successors, 295;
    treaty with Tancred, _ib._;
    marriage, 296;
    names William of Monreale for the primacy, 297;
    sends Walter of Rouen to England, 297, 298;
    his voyage, 317;
    conquers Cyprus, _ib._;
    alliance with Guy of Lusignan, 318, 320;
    reaches Acre, 319;
    quarrel with Leopold of Austria, _ib._;
    relations with other crusaders, 319–321;
    truce with Saladin, 321;
    homeward voyage, 322;
    wrecked and captured, _ib._;
    given up to the Emperor, 324;
    his ransom, 325, 326;
    negotiates with Philip and John, 327;
    returns to England, 328;
    imposes taxes, _ib._, 329;
    negotiates with Scotland, 330;
    crowned at Winchester, _ib._, 331;
    king of Burgundy, 331;
    leaves England, _ib._;
    forgives John, 334;
    gives license for tournaments, 342;
    annuls his charters, 343, 356;
    sends the abbot of Caen to England, 343;
    quarrel with S. Hugh, 350;
    edict against the clergy, 355;
    cessions to Philip, 361;
    difficulties in Gaul, 361, 362;
    treaty with Philip, 364;
    goes to Normandy, 365;
    to Tours, 365, 366;
    regains Loches, 366;
    routs Philip at Fréteval, _ib._, 367;
    claims wardship of Arthur, 370;
    alliance with Toulouse, 371;
    with Henry VI., 372;
    called to elect an emperor, _ib._;
    league against Philip, 374;
    truce, 375;
    builds Château-Gaillard, 375–380;
    quarrel with Abp. Walter, 380, 381;
    lays siege to Châlus, 382;
    wounded, 384;
    dies, 385, 386;
    burial, 386, 387;
    his encouragement of municipal life, 470;
    grant to merchants of Cöln, 485

  Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, ii. 170, 434

  Richard I., bishop of London, i. 45

  Richard II., bishop of London, i. 502, 503

  Richard Fitz-Nigel, treasurer and bishop of London, ii. 277;
    his _Gesta Henrici_, 439

  Richard of Ilchester, ii. 66;
    bishop of Winchester, 158, 176;
    work in the Exchequer, 193, 194;
    seneschal of Normandy, 193;
    death, 277

  Richard de Clare, earl of Pembroke or Striguil, ii. 99, 100;
    goes to Ireland, 103;
    takes Waterford, 104;
    marriage, _ib._;
    blockaded in Dublin, 109, 110;
    summoned by Henry, 112;
    does homage for Leinster, 113;
    in Normandy with Henry, 145, 182;
    governor of Ireland, 182;
    death, 183

  Richard le Breton, ii. 78

  Richard Fitz-Count, son of Robert of Gloucester, i. 386, 405; ii. 146

  Richard Fitz-Godoberd, ii. 100

  Richard of La Haye, i. 340, 341

  Richard of Hommet, constable of Normandy, ii. 146

  Richard de Lucy, justiciar, his character, i. 417;
    his share in election of Thomas, ii. 1–3;
    excommunicated, 66;
    takes Leicester, 146;
    marches against the Scots, 149;
    besieges Huntingdon, 154, 156;
    protests against the forest visitation, 171;
    retires to a monastery, 176

  Richard de Morville, ii. 139, 161

  Richenda de Clères, sister of William of Longchamp, ii. 305

  Richer de l’Aigle, i. 51, 395

  Richmond, _see_ Alan

  Ridel, _see_ Geoffrey

  Rievaux abbey, i. 71

  Robert I., king of France, i. 149, 164

  Robert the Brave, count of Anjou, i. 102;
    duke of the French, 103

  Robert the Magnificent, or the Devil, duke of Normandy, i. 166

  Robert, son of William the Conqueror, betrothed to Margaret of Maine,
    i. 216;
    homage to Geoffrey the Bearded, 217;
    to Fulk Rechin, 223;
    seeks Fulk’s help in Maine, _ib._;
    sells the Cotentin to Henry, 4;
    wars with his brothers, 5, 6;
    pledges Normandy to Rufus, 3;
    crusade, _ib._;
    invades England, 9;
    war with Henry, 11;
    taken prisoner, 13;
    dies, 271

  Robert Bloet, chancellor, justiciar and bishop of Lincoln, i. 22

  Robert II., bishop of Lincoln, ii. 24

  Robert I., bishop of Hereford, i. 370, 495

  Robert of Melun, i. 481;
    bishop of Hereford, ii. 24

  Robert of Bellême, count of Alençon etc., i. 6;
    banished, 10;
    sues for peace, 11;
    flies at Tinchebray, 13;
    captures Elias, 225;
    imprisoned, 233

  Robert, count of Burgundy, i. 178

  Robert, count of Dreux, i. 394

  Robert, earl of Ferrers, ii. 139, 163

  Robert, earl of Gloucester, son of Henry I., friend of William of
    Malmesbury, i. 92, 94;
    escorts Matilda over sea, 243;
    at Henry’s death, 270;
    dispute for precedence with Stephen, 274;
    joins Stephen, 283;
    defies him, 294;
    comes to England, 309;
    marches to Lincoln, 316, 317;
    receives Stephen’s surrender, 320;
    made prisoner, 327;
    exchanged, 329;
    goes to fetch Geoffrey, 330;
    returns, 332;
    besieges Wareham, _ib._;
    takes Portland and Lulworth, 333;
    meets his sister at Wallingford, 334;
    routs Stephen at Wilton, _ib._;
    builds a castle at Farringdon, 335;
    helps Geoffrey in Normandy, 338, 339;
    dies, 343, 344

  Robert I., earl of Leicester and count of Meulan, i. 16, 54, 56

  Robert II., earl of Leicester, joins Henry, i. 400;
    justiciar, 417;
    at council of Northampton, ii. 39;
    refuses the kiss of peace to Reginald of Cöln, 55, 56;
    dies, 61

  Robert III., earl of Leicester, rebels, ii. 138, 142;
    goes to England, 148;
    made prisoner, 150;
    restored, 167;
    repulses Philip from Normandy, 363

  Robert II., count of Meulan, ii. 138

  Robert de Barri, ii. 101

  Robert de Bruce, ii. 145

  Robert, abbot of Caen, ii. 343, 344

  Robert Fitz-Stephen, ii. 100;
    goes to Ireland, 101;
    blockaded in Carrick, 109;
    made prisoner, 111;
    released, 113

  Robert of Marmion, i. 335

  Robert de Montfort defeats Henry of Essex in ordeal, ii. 60;
    rebels, 138

  Robert of Mowbray, ii. 155

  Robert I. of Oilly, i. 41, 42, 331

  Robert II. of Oilly founds Oseney priory, i. 43;
    gives up Oxford to the Empress, 322;
    death, 332

  Robert Pulein, i. 43, 44

  Robert Pullus, i. 483

  Robert of Sablé, i. 343

  Robert of Selby, chancellor of Sicily, i. 365

  Robert of Sillé, ii. 137

  Robert de Stuteville, ii. 145, 153, 160

  Robert of Torigny or _de Monte_, ii. 194

  Robert of Turnham, seneschal of Anjou, ii. 388, 389;
    of Poitou, 426;
    prisoner, 427

  Rocamadour, ii. 74, 226, 227

  Rochelle, La, ii. 428

  Roches, _see_ William

  Rochester, _see_ Ralf, Walter

  Roderic O’Conor, king of Connaught, ii. 97;
    of Ireland, 98;
    treaty with Dermot,102;
    gathers a host against him, 104;
    blockades Dublin, 109, 110;
    routed, 110, 111;
    promises tribute to Henry II., 116;
    treaty, 182

  Roger, king of Sicily, i. 365

  Roger of Pont-l’Evêque, i. 354, 368;
    archbishop of York, 477;
    earlier career, 478, 479;
    accepts the royal customs, ii. 24;
    dispute with S. Thomas, 30;
    crowns young Henry, 72;
    appeals to the king, 78;
    dies, 285

  Roger, chaplain to Henry I., chancellor, bishop of Salisbury and
    justiciar, i. 22;
    his administration, 25, 26;
    called the “Sword of Righteousness,” 26;
    his Church policy, 63;
    joins Stephen, 278;
    his family, 302;
    relations with Stephen and with the Empress, _ib._, 303;
    seized at Oxford, 303, 304;
    death, 310

  Roger, earl of Clare, ii. 12, 16, 180

  Roger, earl of Hereford, i. 429

  Roger of Howden, i. 82; ii. 439

  Roger de Lacy, ii. 400, 401;
    at Château-Gaillard, 411, 417, 418, 423

  Roger of Montrésor, i. 151

  Roger de Mortemer, ii. 299

  Roger de Mowbray, ii. 139, 152, 160, 162, 163

  Roger “the Poor,” chancellor, i. 302, 303

  Rohesia, wife of Gilbert Becket, i. 50, 352

  Roland, count of Maine, i. 203

  Roland of Siena, cardinal, _see_ Alexander III.

  Rome, relations of William and Lanfranc with, i. 15;
    trial of Stephen’s and Matilda’s claims at, 370;
    schism at, 498

  Ronceray, i. 165 note 3{363}, 166; ii. 200

  Roscilla of Loches, wife of Fulk the Red, i. 110

  Rotrou, archbishop of Rouen, ii. 72, 81

  Rouen surrenders to Geoffrey Plantagenet, i. 341, 342;
    besieged by Louis VII., ii. 164;
    palace, 196;
    young Henry buried at, 232;
    Richard’s heart buried at, 387;
    Arthur imprisoned at, 407;
    submits to Philip, 425.
    _See_ Rotrou, Walter

  Rouergue, i. 454

  Roumare, _see_ William

  Roxburgh, i. 287

  Rudolf of Burgundy, king of West-Frankland, i. 111, 115

  Rufus, S., priory of, i. 476


  Saher de Arcelles, i. 363

  Sainfred, bishop of Le Mans, i. 204

  Saintes granted to Fulk Nerra, i. 159, 173;
    taken by William VII. of Aquitaine, 215;
    regained and lost again, 216.
    _See_ Peter

  Saintonge ceded to Geoffrey Martel, i. 174;
    granted to Fulk Rechin, 214;
    war of, 215, 216, 252, 253

  Saint-Saëns, _see_ Elias

  Saints, Old-English, revived veneration for, i. 33, 80

  Saladin tithe, ii. 249

  Salisbury, i. 32–33.
    _See_ Herbert, Hubert, Jocelyn, John, Patrick, William

  Saltwood, ii. 79

  Sancho VI., king of Navarre, submits to Henry II.’s arbitration,
    ii. 190

  Sancho VII., king of Navarre, suppresses revolt in Gascony and attacks
    Toulouse, ii. 316;
    helps Richard, 366, 367

  Saumur, i. 161;
    taken by Fulk Nerra, 162;
    blockaded by William of Poitou, 213;
    betrayed to Fulk Rechin, 220;
    burnt, _ib._;
    Henry II. at, ii. 256;
    taken by Philip, 410;
    abbey of S. Florence, i. 162, 163.
    _See_ Gelduin

  Savaric of Mauléon, ii. 405, 426

  Saxony, _see_ Henry, Matilda, Otto

  Scarborough, i. 428

  Schools, Augustinian, i. 43;
    at Oxford, _ib._, ii. 462;
    London, i. 47;
    Malmesbury, 84, 85.
    _See_ Universities

  Scotland, its relations with Henry I., i. 96.
    _See_ David, Henry, Matilda, William

  Scutage, i. 432, 433;
    the Great, 459–461;
    of 1195, ii. 343;
    1196, 348

  Sees, removal of, i. 40

  Selby, _see_ Robert

  Sempringham, order of, i. 359, 360;
    helps S. Thomas, ii. 41

  Seneschal of France, office of, i. 450

  Sens, i. 164; ii. 42, 68

  Serfdom in twelfth century, i. 61, 62

  Serlo the Mercer, mayor of London, ii. 472

  Severn, valley of, i. 35

  Sherborne castle, i. 304

  “Sheriff’s Aid,” ii. 15

  Sheriffs of London, i. 45; ii. 471;
    Middlesex, i. 46;
    inquest on (1170), ii. 126, 127

  Shrewsbury, i. 295, 298, 299

  Sibyl, queen of Jerusalem, ii. 247, 320

  Sibyl of Anjou, daughter of Fulk V., i. 240, 241

  Sicily conquered by Henry VI., ii. 371, 372.
    _See_ Constance, Jane, Roger, Tancred, William

  Sillé, _see_ Hugh, Robert

  Simeon of Durham, i. 81, 82

  Simon, count of Montfort, i. 467

  Simon de Montfort, count of Evreux, ii. 138

  Simon, earl of Northampton, ii. 144;
    claim to Huntingdon, 154

  Simon of Dover, i. 363

  Simon Fitz-Peter, ii. 21

  Sleaford, i. 304

  Smithfield, i. 47;
    S. Bartholomew’s priory and hospital, 67

  Soissons, ii. 42, 65.
    _See_ Guy, William

  Solomon, king of Britanny, i. 103

  Spain, proposed crusade in, i. 453, 497

  Standard, battle of the, i. 289–291

  Stephen Harding, S., i. 69, 70

  Stephen of Blois, son of Stephen-Henry and Adela, i. 235, 236;
    his “Lombard grandmother,” 256;
    brought up by Henry I., 273;
    count of Mortain, _ib._;
    marriage, _ib._;
    relations with Henry, 274;
    oath to Matilda, _ib._;
    goes to England, 276;
    gains the treasury, 277;
    crowned, 279;
    first charter, _ib._;
    character, 280, 281;
    treaty with Scotland, 282;
    early successes, 283;
    second charter, 284;
    revolt against him, _ib._;
    holds forest assize, 285;
    goes to Normandy, 286;
    invades Scotland, 287;
    relations with the barons, 292, 293;
    with Earl Robert, 294;
    revolt in the west, 295–299;
    grants Northumberland to Henry of Scotland, 300;
    besieges Ludlow, 301, 302;
    takes Leeds, 302;
    seizes Roger of Salisbury and his nephew, 303, 304;
    summoned before a council at Winchester, 305;
    penance, 306;
    truce with Geoffrey, 307;
    besieges Arundel, 309;
    sends Matilda to Bristol, 310;
    keeps Whitsuntide in the Tower, 311;
    besieges Lincoln castle, 315;
    exploits at battle of Lincoln, 319, 320;
    prisoner, 320;
    exchanged, 329;
    takes Wareham and Cirencester, 330;
    Oxford, 332;
    besieges the castle, 332, 333;
    routed at Wilton, 334;
    takes Farringdon, 335;
    builds Crowmarsh, 336;
    imprisons Ralf of Chester, _ib._;
    wears his crown at Lincoln, 337;
    banishes Abp. Theobald, 368;
    trial of his claims at Rome, 370;
    reconciled to Theobald, 371;
    knights Eustace, 377;
    drives Vacarius from Oxford, 379;
    refuses a safe-conduct to John Paparo, 380;
    proposes to crown Eustace, 381, 390;
    imprisons the bishops, 391;
    meets Henry, 397;
    treaty, 400;
    last days, 403;
    death, 404

  Stephen I., count of Champagne, i. 160

  Stephen II., count of Champagne, i. 177;
    rebels, 177, 178;
    defeated, 178, 186;
    dies, 271

  Stephen-Henry, count of Blois, Chartres and Champagne, receives Fulk
    Rechin’s homage, i. 221;
    his parents, 255, 256;
    marriage, 271, 272;
    crusade and death, 272

  Stephen of Turnham, seneschal of Anjou, ii. 273, 279

  Stockbridge, i. 327

  Striguil, _see_ Richard, William

  Strongbow, ii. 99 note 7{445}

  Stuteville, _see_ Robert, William

  Suger, abbot of S. Denis, his views on “Frenchmen and Englishmen,”
    i. 24;
    policy, 387, 388;
    opposes divorce of Louis VII., 392;
    death, _ib._, 399

  Sulpice of Amboise, i. 156, 157, 194

  Synods, _see_ Councils


  Taillebourg, ii. 215

  Talbot, _see_ Geoffrey

  Tallage of 1174, ii. 173; 1194, 337, 342

  Talvas, _see_ William

  Tancarville, _see_ William

  Tancred, king of Sicily, ii. 295

  Tara, ii. 84

  Taxation, i. 25, 26, 27;
    of towns, 29;
    “Sheriff’s Aid,” ii. 15;
    aid _pour fille marier_, 125, 126;
    Saladin tithe, 249;
    tax on moveables, 325;
    taxes in 1194, 328, 329, 337, 342;
    1195, 343;
    1198, 352;
    in London, 344, 345

  Templars, i. 357

  Terence O’Brien, king of Munster, ii. 89

  Terence O’Conor, king of Connaught, ii. 90, 91

  Tertullus, i. 127, 128

  Theobald, abbot of Bec, archbishop of Canterbury, i. 300, 351;
    joins the Empress, 321;
    his policy, 351, 352, 378;
    household, 352, 354, 379, 477;
    legate, 356, 380;
    “swimming-voyage” to Reims, 368;
    banished, _ib._;
    consecrates Gilbert Foliot, 371;
    returns, _ib._;
    holds a council, 381;
    imprisoned, 391;
    escapes, _ib._;
    relations with Henry II., 418;
    consecrates Roger of York, 479;
    last days, 503–504;
    death, 506

  Theobald I. the Trickster, count of Blois, Chartres and Tours, i. 106,
    115, 116

  Theobald III., count of Blois, Chartres and Tours, i. 177;
    rebels, 177, 178;
    marches to relieve Tours, 184, 185;
    prisoner, 186;
    cedes Tours to Geoffrey Martel, 187;
    his marriages, 255, 256;
    seizes Champagne, 271

  Theobald IV. the Great, count of Blois, Chartres and Champagne,
    i. 273;
    character, 275, 276;
    alliance with Henry I., 231;
    wars with Louis VI., _ib._, 235;
    invited to Normandy, 282, 337;
    treaties with Geoffrey, _ib._;
    with Stephen, 286;
    opposes Louis VII.’s attempt on Toulouse, 457;
    quarrel with Louis, 384;
    death, 392, 399

  Theobald V., count of Blois etc., seeks to marry Eleanor, i. 392;
    betrothed to Adela, 445;
    ally of Henry II., 466

  Theobald Walter, ii. 293, 343

  Theodoric, count of Flanders, i. 342

  Thierceville, i. 354

  Thomas of London, son of Gilbert Becket, his boyhood, i. 50, 51;
    studies in Paris, 352;
    clerk to Osbern Huitdeniers, 353;
    enters Theobald’s household, 353, 354;
    goes with him to Rome, 356;
    to Reims, 368;
    studies at Bologna and Auxerre, 379;
    opposes crowning of Eustace, 391;
    chancellor, 418;
    archdeacon of Canterbury, 420, 479, 480;
    his person, 421;
    life as chancellor, 421–425;
    relations with Henry, 423, 425–427;
    embassy to France, 446–448;
    exploits in war of Toulouse, 465, 466;
    combat with Engelram of Trie, 467;
    opposes marriage of Mary of Boulogne, 469;
    takes charge of young Henry and procures his recognition as heir,
    471–473;
    relations with Roger of Pont-l’Evêque, 478;
    with John of Salisbury, 485;
    character as chancellor and as primate, 504, 505;
    archbishop of Canterbury, ii. 1–3;
    consecrated, 4–5;
    institutes Trinity-Sunday, 5;
    receives his pall and resigns the chancellorship, 6;
    life as archbishop, 7–10;
    his _eruditi_, 8;
    plans of Church reform, 11;
    reclaims alienated lands, 11, 12;
    dispute with Roger of Clare, 12, 16;
    with William of Eynesford, 17;
    resigns archdeaconry, 13;
    relations with Gilbert Foliot, _ib._, 31;
    at council of Tours, 14;
    resists Henry at Woodstock, 15, 16;
    refuses the “customs,” 22, 23;
    young Henry taken from him, 23;
    meets Henry at Northampton, _ib._;
    consecrates Robert of Melun, 24;
    accepts the customs, _ib._;
    swears to them at Clarendon, 25;
    rejects the constitutions of Clarendon, 28;
    forbids marriage of William of Anjou, 29;
    dispute with Roger of York, 30;
    attempts flight, 31;
    meets Henry at Woodstock, 31, 32;
    dispute with John the marshal, 32, 33, 34;
    at council of Northampton, 33–40;
    flight, 41;
    goes to Soissons and Sens, 42;
    effects of the quarrel in England, 46–49;
    resigns his ring to the Pope, 52;
    goes to Pontigny, 42, 54;
    life there, 63;
    writes to Henry, 63, 64;
    pilgrimage to Soissons, 65;
    excommunications at Vézelay, 66;
    legate, 67;
    goes to Sens, 68;
    meets Henry at Montmirail, 69;
    excommunications at Clairvaux, 70;
    meets Henry at Montmartre, 71;
    proclaims interdict, 71;
    forbids crowning of young Henry, 72;
    meets Henry at Fréteval, 73;
    Tours and Chaumont, 74;
    his estates restored, 74;
    returns to England, 77;
    excommunicates the De Brocs, 78;
    slain, 79;
    canonized, 431;
    results of his life and death, 431–433;
    lives of, 439

  Thomas Pactius, prior of Loches, i. 126, 127, 153, note 3{318}

  Thorgils, ii. 82

  Thouars, _see_ Almeric, Guy

  Thurstan, archbishop of York, his charter to Beverley, i. 30, 38;
    protects Fountains, 71;
    makes truce with the Scots, 286;
    organizes defence of Yorkshire, 288, 289;
    dies, 354

  Tiberias, battle of, ii. 247

  Tickhill, ii. 282, 291, 299, 323, 328

  Tighernan O’Ruark, chief of Breffny, ii. 97, 109, 111, 114

  Tinchebray, battle of, i. 12, 13, 227

  Tintern abbey, i. 71

  Tithe, the Saladin, ii. 249

  Torigni, 386, 405.
    _See_ Robert

  Tortulf the Forester (Torquatius), i. 105, 127, 128

  Totnes, gild at, ii. 469

  Toucques, i. 307

  Toulouse, relations with France, i. 457, 458;
    war of Henry II. against, 464–466;
    its results, 468;
    attacked by Sancho of Navarre and the seneschal of Gascony, ii. 316;
    counts, i. 454–456.
    _See_ Alfonso, Bertrand, Raymond, William

  Touraine, i. 107;
    ceded to Geoffrey Martel, 187, 188

  Tournaments authorized by Richard I., ii. 342

  Tours (_Cæsarodunum_) sacked by northmen, i. 102;
    early history, 178–183;
    granted to Geoffrey Martel, 178;
    siege, 184;
    ceded by Theobald, 187;
    council at, ii. 14;
    taken by Philip, 264;
    Richard at, 365, 366;
    meeting of Arthur and the Lusignans at, 405;
    burnt by Philip, 407;
    destroyed by John, _ib._;
    S. Martin’s abbey, i. 102, 113, 114, 181–183;
    its banner, 186;
    Châteauneuf, 183, ii. 264, 366.
    _See_ Adaland, Gatian, Gregory, Lidorius, Martin, Odo, Theobald

  Towns, English, their origin and character, i. 27–29;
    taxation, 25, 29;
    _firma burgi_, 29;
    condition under Henry I., 30–54;
    fusion of races in, 48, 49;
    progress under the Angevins, ii. 468–472

  Tracy, _see_ William

  Trade, English, with Flanders, i. 30, 52;
    with Ireland, 32, 34, 35; ii. 87;
    of Winchester, i. 32;
    Bristol, 34, 35; ii. 87;
    Chester, i. 36; ii. 87;
    Lincoln, i. 39, 40;
    Norwich, 40;
    London, 49;
    under the Angevins, ii. 481–485

  Treasurers, _see_ Nigel, Richard

  Trencavel, _see_ Raymond

  Trent, river, i. 40, 344, 345

  Trèves (near Saumur), i. 162

  Trie, _see_ Engelram

  Trinity Sunday instituted, ii. 5

  Trussebut, _see_ William

  Tuam, metropolis of Connaught, ii. 94

  Tunbridge, ii. 12, 16

  Turlogh, _see_ Terence

  Turnham, _see_ Robert, Stephen

  Turold, abbot of Malmesbury, i. 84

  _Turones_ or _Turoni_, i. 179

  Twinham or Christchurch, i. 32


  Ulger, bishop of Angers, i. 370

  Ulster invaded by John de Courcy, ii. 184

  Umfraville, _see_ Odelin

  Universities, ii. 460–468.
    _See_ Bologna, Cambridge, Oxford, Paris

  Urban II., Pope, i. 225

  Urban III., Pope, ii. 242, 247

  Ursus or Ours, S., i. 110


  Vacarius, i. 379

  Varaville, i. 213

  Varneville, _see_ Ralf

  Vegetius Renatus, his book _De Re Militari_, i. 386

  Vendôme, abbey of Holy Trinity at, i. 172.
    _See_ Adela, Burchard, Elizabeth, Fulk, Geoffrey, John

  Verdun, treaty of, i. 98

  Vere, _see_ Aubrey

  Vermandois, ii. 360.
    _See_ Ralf

  Verneuil, ii. 364, 365, 425

  Vexin, the French, granted to William Clito, i. 243

  Vexin, the Norman, ceded to Louis VII., i. 388;
    settled on Margaret, 467, 471;
    seized by Henry II., 470

  Vézelay, S. Thomas at, ii. 66

  Victor IV., antipope, i. 498, 499; ii. 55

  Vienna, Richard I. captured at, ii. 322

  Villeins in twelfth century, i. 57–62

  Vulgrin, count of Angoulême, invades Poitou, ii. 209;
    submits to Richard, 210, 215;
    dies, 220


  Wace, ii. 446

  Walbrook, i. 46

  Waldric or Gualdric, chancellor of England and bishop of Laon, i. 22,
    30

  Waleran, count of Meulan, rebels, i. 241;
    raises siege of Carham, 287;
    escorts the Empress to Bristol, 310;
    submits to Geoffrey, 337, 338

  Wales, Flemish settlers in, i. 52;
    Henry I.’s dealings with, 96;
    condition in twelfth century, ii. 99;
    Henry II.’s wars in, i. 435–437; ii. 179–181, 237;
    crusade preached in, ii. 249;
    Gerald’s books on, 458.
    _See_ Cadwallader, David, Madoc, Nest, Owen, Rees

  Walkelyn Maminot, i. 295, 299

  Wallingford, the Empress at, i. 334;
    blockaded by Stephen, 396;
    relieved by Henry, 397;
    treaty of, 400;
    council at, 429;
    granted to John, ii. 282;
    taken from him, 323, 328

  Walter of Coutances, archbishop of Rouen, ii. 297;
    sent to England, 298, 300;
    supports John against W. Longchamp, 308, 309;
    justiciar, 311, 312;
    hostage for Richard’s ransom, 326;
    quarrel with Richard, 380, 381;
    invests John as duke, 389

  Walter, archdeacon of Canterbury, i. 478;
    bishop of Rochester, _ib._, 506; ii. 4

  Walter, count of Mantes, i. 217, 218

  Walter de Clare, i. 71

  Walter Lespec founds Kirkham priory, i. 67;
    Rievaux, 71;
    at battle of the Standard, 289;
    death, 399

  Walter Map, ii. 449–452

  Walter, _see_ Hubert

  Wareham, i. 295, 299, 330, 332, 333

  Warin, abbot of Malmesbury, i. 84

  Wark, ii. 153.
    _See_ Carham

  Warren, _see_ Isabel, Hameline, William

  Waterford, its origin, ii. 83;
    taken by Richard of Striguil, 104;
    Henry II. at, 113;
    bull “Laudabiliter” published at, 182.
    _See_ Malchus

  Waverley abbey, i. 71

  Weavers, gilds of, i. 30, 52; ii. 481

  “Week-work,” i. 57

  Weobly, i. 296

  Westminster, i. 46;
    coronations at, i. 279, 405; ii. 72, 276, 391, 399;
    councils at, i. 300, 329, 330; ii. 3, 22, 23, 190

  Wexford, ii. 102, 109, 111, 117

  Wherwell, i. 327

  _White Ship_ wrecked, i. 239

  Wigford, i. 439

  Wigmore, i. 429

  William, S., archbishop of York, i. 354, 355, 364–367, 478

  William the Conqueror, king of England and duke of Normandy, his
    ecclesiastical customs, i. 16;
    charter to London, 45;
    shelters Bp. Gervase of Le Mans, 206;
    helps King Henry against Geoffrey Martel, 207;
    besieges Domfront, 208, 209;
    regains Alençon and fortifies Ambrières, 209;
    challenges Geoffrey, 211;
    treaty with Herbert of Maine, 216;
    conquers Maine, 218;
    Maine revolts against, 221, 222;
    treaty with Anjou, 223;
    death, _ib._

  William II. Rufus, king of England, regains Maine, i. 3;
    restores Carlisle, 36;
    his palace at Westminster, 46;
    war with Elias, 225, 226;
    death, 3, 226

  William the Lion, king of Scots, does homage to young Henry, ii. 72;
    joins his rebellion, 140;
    invades England, 149, 153, 154;
    his border castles, 152;
    prisoner, 161, 162;
    does homage for his crown, 166, 178;
    marriage, 237;
    negotiations with Richard, 281, 330, 341;
    with John, 391, 393;
    homage to John, 399

  William II. the Good, king of Sicily, betrothed to Jane, daughter of
    Henry II., ii. 60;
    marriage, 189;
    death, 318

  William the Ætheling, son of Henry I., betrothed to Matilda of Anjou,
    i. 234;
    receives homage, _ib._;
    marriage, 236;
    drowned, 239

  William, eldest son of Henry II. and Eleanor, i. 429, 431

  William of Corbeil, prior of Chiche, archbishop of Canterbury, i. 68;
    joins Stephen, 278;
    crowns him, 279;
    dies, 299, 300

  William, archbishop of Bordeaux, ii. 140

  William I. Shockhead (_Tête-d’Etoupe_), count of Poitou and duke of
    Aquitaine, i. 123

  William II. Fierabras, duke of Aquitaine, i. 123, 139, 173

  William IV. the Great, duke of Aquitaine, i. 159, 173

  William V. the Fat, duke of Aquitaine, i. 173, 174

  William VI. (Peter) the Bold, duke of Aquitaine, i. 176;
    relations with Geoffrey Martel, 210–213;
    death, 213

  William VII. (Guy-Geoffrey), duke of Aquitaine, i. 215;
    war with Anjou, _ib._, 252, 253;
    regains Saintonge, 216

  William VIII., duke of Aquitaine, offers his duchy in pledge to
    William Rufus, i. 3;
    imprisons Fulk of Anjou, 229;
    marriage, 455

  William IX., duke of Aquitaine, bequeaths his daughter to Louis VII.
    of France, i. 383;
    claims on Toulouse, 455

  William Longsword, duke of Normandy, i. 111

  William of Longchamp, bishop of Ely and chancellor, ii. 277, 279;
    character and antecedents, 285–287;
    justiciar, 288;
    proceedings at York, 290;
    quarrel with Hugh of Durham, 291;
    legate, _ib._;
    his difficulties, 292, 293;
    his rule, 294;
    quarrels with John, 298–301;
    struggle with Geoffrey of York, 305, 306;
    with John etc., 307–311;
    his fall, 311, 312;
    appeals to the Pope and excommunicates his enemies, 312;
    negotiates with Eleanor and John, 315;
    goes to England for Richard’s ransom, 325;
    makes truce with Philip, 367;
    mission to Germany, 372;
    death, 373, note 4{1866}

  William, dean of York, i. 355;
    bishop of Durham, _ib._;
    death, 399

  William Giffard, chancellor, i. 22;
    bishop of Winchester, 71

  William I., count of Arles or Provence, i. 190, 191

  William, count of Angoulême, ii. 136

  William IV. count of Toulouse, i. 455

  William of Aubigny, earl of Arundel, i. 298; ii. 144, 145, 149

  William of Aumale, earl of York, i. 289

  William of Blois, chancellor of Lincoln, ii. 456, 461

  William, earl of Gloucester, ii. 144, 163, 184

  William de Mandeville, earl of Essex, ii. 144;
    supports Henry II., 145, 260;
    justiciar, 279;
    death, 282

  William the Marshal rebels against Henry II., ii. 139;
    relations with the young king, 228;
    early history, 260;
    encounter with Richard, 261;
    arranges Henry’s funeral, 269, 270;
    meeting with Richard, 272;
    marriage, 274;
    co-justiciar, 279;
    regent for John, 390, 391;
    earl of Striguil, 393;
    sent to Normandy, 400, 401;
    goes to relieve Les Andelys, 413;
    ambassador to Philip, 424;
    persuades John to dismiss the host, 427

  William, marquis of Montferrat, ii. 60

  William of Mortain, earl of Cornwall, i. 11, 13

  William of Roumare, i. 314;
    earl of Lincoln, 315

  William, earl of Salisbury, ii. 144

  William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, son of Henry II., ii. 428

  William, earl of Warren and count of Mortain and Boulogne (son of
    Stephen), i. 430, 469

  William of Anjou, third son of Geoffrey and Matilda, born, i. 374;
    proposal to conquer Ireland for him, 431;
    death, ii. 29

  William de Barri, ii. 453

  William the Clito, son of Robert of Normandy, i. 235, 238;
    betrothed to Sibyl of Anjou, 240;
    marriage annulled, 241;
    excommunicated, 242;
    Flanders granted to, 243;
    marriage, _ib._;
    death, 266

  William de Courcy, seneschal of Normandy, ii. 146, 193

  William of Dover, i. 335

  William of Eynesford, ii. 17

  William Fitz-Alan, i. 295, 298

  William Fitz-Aldhelm, seneschal to Henry II., ii. 113, 116;
    governor of Ireland, 183

  William Fitz-Duncan, i. 287

  William Fitz-John, i. 295

  William Fitz-Ralf, seneschal of Normandy, ii. 194, 260

  William Fitz-Osbert or Long-beard, ii. 345–347

  William Fitz-Stephen, ii. 38

  William of Malmesbury, i. 83–93;
    his account of the Angevins, 196

  William of Mohun, i. 295

  William “the Monk,” i. 342

  William, lord of Montpellier, i. 462, 466

  William of Newburgh, ii. 441–445

  William Peverel, i. 295, 299, 320, 428

  William of Pavia, cardinal, ii. 69

  William, archbishop of Reims, ii. 218

  William des Roches, ii. 394, 407, 426

  William of Soissons, i. 481

  William de Stuteville, ii. 160, 393

  William Talvas, lord of Alençon, i. 236, 270, 281

  William of Tancarville, chamberlain of Normandy, ii. 142

  William de Tracy, ii. 78

  William Trussebut, i. 307

  William de Vesci, ii. 145, 160

  William of Ypres, i. 285, 294;
    at battle of Lincoln, 318, 319;
    helps the queen in Kent, 324;
    at siege of Winchester, 326;
    captures Earl Robert, 327;
    tries to reconcile Stephen and Abp. Theobald, 369

  Wilton, i. 33;
    battle at, 334

  Winchester, i. 31;
    treaty of, 9;
    fair, 32;
    Stephen received at, 277;
    Matilda received at, 321;
    palace, 325;
    siege, 326;
    Matilda’s escape from, 327, 328;
    councils at, 305, 322, 402;
    hospital of S. Cross, 357;
    coronations at, ii. 81, 330;
    meetings of John and W. of Longchamp at, 298, 299, 300.
    _See_ Henry, Richard, William

  Windsor, ii. 182, 314, 323, 328

  Witham, river, i. 38, 40

  Wolvesey-house, i. 325

  Woodstock, Henry I. at, i. 44, 94;
    Henry II. and Thomas at, ii. 31, 32;
    Welsh princes at, 14, 179;
    council at, 14–16, 43, 44

  Wool-trade, Flemish and English, i. 30, 52

  Worcester, i. 35;
    its historical school, 81, 82;
    Henry II. at, 439

  Würzburg, council at, ii. 56


  York, i. 36;
    Henry I.’s charter to, _ib._;
    S. Mary’s abbey, 71;
    dispute for the primacy, 354, 355, 364–366;
    tumults at, 380;
    Henry Murdac enthroned at, 381;
    end of the schism, 382;
    Henry II. and William the Lion at, ii. 178;
    massacre of Jews at, 289, 290;
    council at, 340;
    commune at, 469.
    _See_ Geoffrey, Henry, Hubert, Hugh, John, Roger, Thurstan, William

  Yorkshire, its condition under Henry I., i. 36, 38



_ERRATA_


  Page 71, line 3, _for_ “the two kings” _read_ “they.”
    ”  81,   ”  3 from foot, _for_ “Caen” _read_ “Avranches.”
    ”  81, note 6, line 11, _for_ “doubtless” _read_ “probably.”
    ” 147,   ”  3,   ”   6, _for_ “Châteauneuf” _read_ “Neufchâtel.”
    ” 152, line 16, _for_ “Robert” _read_ “Roger.”
    ” 155,   ”   8, _dele_ “in person.”
    ” 157,   ”   7, _for_ “thousand” _read_ “hundred.”
    ” 160,   ”  22, _for_ “Robert” _read_ “Roger.”
    ” 160, lines 22, 23, _dele_ “had ... now.”
    ” 163, line  5, from foot, _for_ “Robert” _read_ “Roger.”


END OF VOL. II.


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Transcriber’s Note


The Errata have been moved to the end of each volume of the book, the
corrections listed in them have been applied to this transcription.

Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of paragraphs.

All references to footnote numbers (i.e. page and note number) are
followed by the footnote number used here in braces e.g. {386}.

Some formatting and punctuation in citations and the index have been
standardized.

Variant spelling, inconsistent hyphenation and inconsistent spelling
of people’s names are retained, as are inconsistent punctuation after
roman numerals (e.g. “i.” and “i” both occur) and inconsistent use of
italics, however a few palpable printing errors have been corrected.


Volume I

“Guib. Noviog. Opp. Opp.” has been changed to “Guib. Noviog. Opp.” in
all the footnotes it occurs.

In footnote 727 (originally Page 289 Footnote 5) “The the king” is
quoted correctly.

In footnote 1040 (originally Page 360 Footnote 1) “xcix*” has been
changed to “lix*” in “see Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. vi. pt. 2, pp.
iii*–lix*”.

In footnote 1229 “_De Nugis Curialibus_” has been changed to “_De Nugis
Curialium_”

In footnote 1291 The closing bracket has been moved: “Joh. Salisb., Ep.
lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 109; Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. Ep. ix. p.
13).” has been changed to “Joh. Salisb., Ep. lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i.
p. 109); Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. Ep. ix. p. 13.”


Volume II

The anchor for footnote 177, originally footnote 3 on page 37, was
missing. It has been placed by the transcriber.

Footnote 924 (originally page 185 footote 2) “whose” has been changed
to “those” in “the general list of those were to accompany him”.

Page 382 “that” changed to “than” in “nothing less than”.

Page 462 “Norman” changed to “Normans” in “at the coming of the
Normans”.

Page 503 in the index entry for Henry I. his “good peace,” “30 note 1
changed to“30 note 4{58}”

An index entry for William of Reims has been added.

The following have been left as printed:

Footnote 959 (originally page 200 footnote 2), the references to page
149, 151 and 44 of the Chronicals of S. Albin. in Eglises d’Anjou, have
been left in the order they were printed.

Page 205 “at one” in “southern Gaul at one rose against its northern
master” might be either “at once” or “as one”.

Footnote 2130 (originally page 425 footnote 5) It is possible that
“Will. Armor. as above, pp. 86 and 188.” should read “Will. Armor. as
above, pp. 86, _Philipp._, l. viii. (_ibid_), p. 188.”



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