Henry the Second - Mrs. J. R. Green
Henry perhaps already saw the deep current of discontent which only a
year later was to break out in the most terrible rebellion of his reign.
In any case the severity of the measures which he took shows how serious
he thought the crisis. After his landing in March 1170 one month was
given to inquiry as to the state of the country. In the beginning of
April he held a council to consider the reform of justice. A commission
was appointed to examine, during the next two months, every freeholder
throughout the kingdom as to the conduct of judges and sheriffs and
every other officer charged with the duty of collecting or accounting
for the public money. Its members were chosen from among the most
zealous opponents of the Court officials-the great barons, the priors,
the important abbots of the shires--and they were all men who had no
connection with the Exchequer or the Curia Regis. Their work was done,
and their report presented within the time allowed; but the king,
practical, businesslike, impatient of abuses, like every vigorous
autocratic ruler, had no mind to wait two months to redress the grievances
of his people. The barons who had been appointed as sheriffs at the
opening of his reign had governed after the old corrupt traditions, or
perhaps themselves suffering under the ruthless pressure of the barons of
the Exchequer, had been driven to a like severity of extortion. By an
edict of the king every sheriff throughout the country was struck from
his post; of the twenty-seven only seven were restored to their places,
and new sheriffs were appointed, all of whom save four were officers of
the King's Court. The great local noble who had lorded it as he chose over
the suitors of the Court for fifteen years, and fined and taxed and
forfeited as seemed good to him, suddenly, without a moment's warning,
saw his place filled by a stranger, a mere clerk trained in the Court
among the royal servants, a simple nominee of the king; he could no
longer doubt that the royal supremacy was now without rival, without
limit, irresistible, complete. Such an act of absolute authority had
indeed, as Dr. Stubbs says, "no example in the history of Europe since
the time of the Roman Empire, except possibly in the power wielded by
Charles the Great."
Nor was this Henry's only act of high-handed government. On the 10th of
April he called a council to London to consult about the coronation of
his son. It was a dangerous innovation, against all custom and tradition,
for no such coronation of the heir in his father's lifetime had ever taken
place in England. But Henry was no mere king of England, nor did he
greatly heed barbaric or insular prejudice when he had even before his
eyes the example not only of the French Court, but of the Holy Roman
Empire. The coronation was a necessary step in the completion of the plan
unfolded at Montmirail for the ordering of the second empire of the West.
Moreover, the settlement probably seemed to him more imperative than ever
from the restlessness and discontent of the land. No king of England since
the Conquest had succeeded peaceably to his father. The reign of Stephen
had abundantly proved how vain were oaths of homage to secure the
succession; and the sacred anointing, which in those days carried with it
an inalienable consecration, was perhaps the only certain way of securing
his son's right. It may well be, too, that, threatened as he was with
interdict, he saw the advantage of providing for the peace and security of
England by crowning as her king an innocent boy with whom the Church had
no quarrel. The actual ceremony of consecration raised, indeed, an
immediate and formidable difficulty. A king of England could be legally
consecrated only by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Three years before Henry
had forced the Pope, then in extreme peril, to grant special powers to the
Archbishop of York to perform the rite, but he had not yet ventured to
make use of the brief. Now, however, whether the case seemed to him more
urgent, or whether his temper had grown more imperious, he cast aside his
former prudence. On the 14th of June the lords and prelates were gathered
together "in fear, none knowing what the king was about to decree." The
younger Henry, a boy of fifteen, was brought before them; he was anointed
and crowned by Roger of York. From this moment a new era opened in Henry's
reign. The young king was now lord of England, in the view of the whole
medieval world, by a right as absolute and sacred as that of his father.
All who were discontented and restless had henceforth a leader ordained by
law, consecrated by the Church, round whom they might rally. Delicate
questions had to be solved as to the claims and powers of the new king,
which never in fact found their answer so long as he lived. Meanwhile
Henry had raised up for himself a host of new difficulties. The archbishop
had a fresh grievance in the king's reckless contempt of the rights of
Canterbury. The Church party both in England and in Europe was outraged
at the wrong done to him. Many who had before wavered, like Henry of
Blois, now threw themselves passionately on the side of Thomas. In the
fierce contention that soon raged round the right of the archbishop to
crown the king, and to deal as he chose with any prelate who might
infringe his privileges, all other questions were forgotten. Not only
the zealots for religious tradition, but all who clung loyally to
established law and custom, were thrown into opposition. The French
king was bitterly angry that his daughter had not been crowned with her
husband. All Henry's enemies banded themselves together in a frenzy of
rage. So immediate and formidable was the outburst of indignation that
ten days after the coronation the king no longer ventured to remain in
England; and on the 24th of June he hastily crossed the Channel. Near
Falaise he was met by the bishop of Worcester, who had supported him at
Northampton. The king turned upon him passionately, and broke out in angry
words, "Now it is plain that thou art a traitor! I ordered thee to attend
the coronation of my son, and since thou didst not choose to be
there, thou hast shown that thou hast no love for me nor for my son's
advancement. It is plain that thou favourest my enemy and hatest me. I
will tear the revenues of the see from thy hands, who hast proved unworthy
of the bishopric or any benefice. In truth thou wert never the son of my
uncle, the good Count Robert, who reared me and thee in his castle, and
had us there taught the first lessons of morals and of learning." Earl
Robert's son, however, was swift in retort. He vehemently declared he
would have no part in the guilt of such a consecration. "What grateful
act of yours," he cried, "has shown that Count Robert was your uncle, and
brought you up, and battled with Stephen for sixteen years for your
sake, and for you was at last made captive? Had you called to mind his
services you would not have driven my brothers to penury and ruin. My
eldest brother's tenure, given him by your grandfather, you have
curtailed. My youngest brother, a stout soldier, you have driven by stress
of want to quit a soldier's life and give himself to the perpetual service
of the hospital at Jerusalem, and don the monk's habit. Thus you know how
to bless those of your own household! Thus you are wont to reward those
who have deserved well of you! Why threaten me with the loss of my
benefice? Be it yours if it suffice you not to have already seized an
archbishopric, six vacant sees, and many abbeys, to the peril of your
soul, and turned to secular uses the alms of your fathers, of pious kings,
the patrimony of Jesus Christ!" All this abuse, and much more besides, the
angry bishop poured out in the hearing of the knights who were riding on
either side of the king. "He fares well with the king since he is a
priest," commented a Gascon; "had he been a knight he would leave behind
him two hides of land!" Some one else, thinking to please the king, abused
the bishop roundly. Henry, however, turned on him with an outburst of
rage. "Do you think, scoundrel, if I say what I choose to my kinsman and
my bishop, that you or anyone else are at liberty to dishonour him with
words and persecute him with threats? Scarce can I keep my hands from
thy eyes!"
The king well understood, indeed, in what a critical position matters
stood. He swiftly agreed to every conceivable concession on every hand.
He met the papal messengers and bent to their terms of reconciliation.
On the 20th of July he had a conference with Louis near Freteval in
Touraine, and next day the kings parted amicably. On the 22d an interview
between the king and the archbishop followed. The royal customs were not
mentioned; no oath was exacted from the Primate; he was promised safe
return and full possession of his see, and the "kiss of peace"; he was
to crown once more the young king and his wife. At the close of the
conference Thomas lighted from his horse to kiss the king's foot, but
Henry, rivalling him in courtesy, dismounted to hold the Primate's
stirrup, with the words, "It is fit the less should serve the greater!"
But if there was a show of peace "the whole substance of it consisted only
in hope," as Thomas wrote. Each side was full of distrust. Thomas demanded
immediate restitution of his see, and liberty to excommunicate the bishops
who had shared in the coronation. Henry wanted first to see "how Thomas
would behave in the affairs of the kingdom." The king and Primate met for
the last time in October 1170 at Chaumont with seeming friendliness, but
any real peace was as far off as ever. "My lord," said Thomas, as he bade
farewell, "my heart tells me that I part from you as one whom you shall
see no more in this life." "Do you hold me as a traitor?" asked the king.
"That be far from thee, my lord!" answered Thomas. But to the Primate the
king's fair promises were but the tempting words of the devil--"all these
things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me." He begged
from the Pope unlimited powers of excommunication. "The more potent and
fierce the prince is," he said, "the stronger stick and harder chain is
needed to bind him and keep him in order." He had warning visions. He
spoke of returning to his church "perhaps to perish for her." "I go to
England," he said; "whether to peace or to destruction I know not; but God
has decreed what fate awaits me."
The king's conduct indeed gave ground for fear. He had summoned clergy
abroad against law and custom to elect bishops who, in contempt of the
Primate's rights, were to be sent to Rome for consecration. In the
general doubt as to the king's attitude, no one dared to speak to envoys
sent by Thomas to England. Ranulf de Broc was still wasting the lands of
Canterbury; the palace was half in ruins, the barns destroyed, the lands
uncultivated, the woods cut down. The Primate's friends urged him to
keep out of England for fear of treachery. Thomas, however, was determined
to return, and to return with uncompromising defiance. He sent before him
letters excommunicating the bishops of London and Salisbury, and
suspending the Bishop of Durham and the Archbishop of York, for having
joined in the coronation; and on the following day, under the protection
of John of Oxford as the king's officer, he landed at Sandwich. The
excommunications had set the whole quarrel aflame again, and John of
Oxford with difficulty prevented open fighting. The royal officers
demanded absolution for the bishops. Thomas flatly refused unless they
would swear to appear at his court for justice, an oath which the bishops
in their terror of the king dared not take. They fled to Henry's court in
Normandy; while on the 1st of December Thomas passed on to Canterbury. The
men of Kent were stout defenders of their customary rights; they clung
tenaciously to their special privileges; they had their own views of
inheritance, their fixed standard of fines, their belief that the Crown
had no right to the property of thief or murderer, who had been
hanged--"the father to the bough, the son to the plough," said they, in
Kent at least. They were a very mixed population, constantly recruited
from the neighbouring coasts. They held the outposts of the country as the
advanced guard formally charged with the defence of its shores from
foreign invasion, which was a very present terror in those days. Lying
near the Continent they caught every rumour of the liberties won by the
Flemish towns or French communes; commerce and manufacture were doing
their work in the ports and among the iron mines of the forests; and it
seems as though the shire very early took up the part it was to play
again and again in medieval history, and even later, as the asserter and
defender of popular privileges. From such a temper Thomas was certain to
find sympathy as he passed through the country in triumph. At Canterbury
the monks received him as an angel of God, crying, "Blessed be he that
cometh in the name of the Lord." "I am come to die among you," said
Thomas in his sermon. "In this church there are martyrs," he said again,
"and God will soon increase their number." A few days later he made a
triumphant progress through London on his way to visit the young king;
his fellow-citizens crowded round him with loud blessings, while a
procession of three hundred poor scholars and London clerks raised a
loud Te Deumas Thomas rode along with bowed head scattering alms on
every side. His old pupil Henry refused, however, to receive him, and
Thomas returned to Canterbury.
News of all these things travelled fast to the king in Normandy. The
excommunicated bishops, falling at his feet, told him of the evil done
against his peace; rumour, growing as it crossed the sea, said that the
archbishop had travelled through the country with a mighty army of paid
soldiers, and had sought to enter into the king's fortresses, and that
he was ready to "tear the crown from the young king's head." Henry,
"more angry than was fitting to the royal majesty," was swept beyond
himself by one of his mad storms of passion. "What a pack of fools and
cowards," he shouted aloud in his wrath, "I have nourished in my house,
that not one of them will avenge me of this one upstart clerk!" A
council was at once summoned. Thomas, the king said, had entered as a
tyrant into his land, had excommunicated the bishops for obedience to
the king, had troubled the whole realm, had purposed to take away the
royal crown from his son, had begged for a legation against Henry, and
had obtained from the Pope grants of presentations to churches, which
deprived knights and barons as well as the king himself of their
property. The council fell in with the king's mood. Thomas was worthy of
death. The king would have neither quiet days nor a peaceful kingdom
while he lived. "On my way to Jerusalem," said one sage adviser, "I
passed through Rome, and asking questions of my host, I learned that a
pope had once been slain for his intolerable pride!"
But while the king was still busied in devising schemes for the punishment
or ruin of Thomas, came news that he was rid of his enemy, and that the
archbishop had won the long looked-for crown of martyrdom. Four knights
who had heard the king's first outburst of rage had secretly left the
Court, and travelling day and night, had reached Canterbury on the 29th,
and had there in the cathedral slain the archbishop. Henry was at Argentan
when the news of the murder was brought to him. So overwhelming was his
despair that those about him feared for his reason. For three days he
neither ate nor spoke with any one, and for five weeks his door was closed
to all comers. The whole flood of difficulties against which he had so
long fought desperately was at once let loose upon him. In England the
feeling was indescribable. All the religious fervour of the people was
passionately thrown on the side of the martyr. The church of Canterbury
closed for a year. The ornaments were taken from the altar, the walls were
stripped, the sound of the bells ceased. Excitement was raised to its
utmost pitch as it became known that miracles were wrought at the tomb.
The clergy were forced into hostility; they dared no longer take Henry's
side. The barons saw the opportunity for which they had waited fifteen
years. Henry had himself provided them with a ready instrument to execute
their vengeance, and the boy-king, consecrated scarcely six months ago,
and already urged to revolt by his mother and the king of France, was
only too willing to hear the tale of their accumulated wrongs and
discontents. All Christendom had been watching the strife; all Christendom
was outraged at its close. The Pope shut himself up for eight days, and
refused to speak to his own servants. The king of France,--who had now a
cause more powerful than any he had ever dreamt of,--Theobald of Blois,
and William of Champagne, the Archbishop of Sens, wrote bitterly to Rome
that it was Henry himself who had given orders for the murder. The king's
messengers sent to plead with the Pope found matters almost desperate.
Alexander had determined to excommunicate him at Easter, and to lay an
interdiction on all his lands. In their despair, and not venturing to tell
their master what they had done, they swore on Henry's part an unreserved
submission to the Pope, and the excommunication was barely averted for a
few months, while a legation was sent to pronounce an interdiction on his
lands, and receive his submission. Henry, however, was quite determined
that he would neither hear the sentence nor repeat the oath taken by his
envoys at Rome. Orders were given to allow no traveller, who might intend
evil against the king, to cross into England; and before the legates could
arrive in Normandy Henry himself was safe beyond the sea. On the 6th of
August, as he passed through Winchester, he visited the dying Henry of
Blois, and heard the bishop's last words of bitter reproach as he
foretold the great adversities which the Divine vengeance held in store
for the true murderer of the archbishop. But England itself was no safe
refuge for the king in this great extremity. Hurrying on to Wales, he
rapidly settled the last details of a plan for the conquest of Ireland,
and hastened to set another sea between himself and the bearers of the
papal curse. As he landed on Irish shores on the 16th of October, a
white hare started from the bushes at his feet, and was brought to him
as a token of victory and peace. Here at last he was in safety, beyond
the reach of all dispute, in a secure banishment where he could more
easily avoid the interdict or more secretly bow to it. The wild storms
of winter, which his terrified followers counted as a sign of the wrath
of God, served as an effectual barrier between him and his enemies; and
for twenty weeks no ship touched Irish shores, nor did any news reach
him from any part of his dominions.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND
Nearly a hundred years before William Rufus once stood on the cliffs of
Wales, and cried, as he looked across the waters towards Ireland, "For
the conquest of that land I will gather together all the ships of my
kingdom, and will make of them a bridge to cross over." The story was
carried to a king of Leinster, who listened thoughtfully. "After so
tremendous a threat as that," he asked, "did the king add, if the Lord
will?" Being told that Rufus used no such phrase, "Since he trusts to do
this by human power, not divine," said the shrewd Irishman, "I need not
greatly dread his coming." Prophecies which passed from mouth to mouth
in Ireland declared that the island should not be conquered till very
shortly before the great Day of Judgment. Even in England men commented
on the fact that while the Romans had reached as far as the Orkneys,
while Saxons and Normans and Danes had overrun England, Ireland had
never bowed to foreign rule. The Northmen alone had made any attempt at
invasion; but within the fringe of foreign settlements which they
planted along the coast from Dublin to Limerick, the various Irish
kingdoms maintained themselves according to their ancient customs, and,
as English tribes had done before in Britain, waged frequent war for the
honour of a shifting and dubious supremacy. The island enjoyed a fair
fame for its climate, its healthfulness, its pasturage, its fisheries;
English chroniclers dwelt on "the far-famed harbour of Dublin, the rival
of our London in commerce," and told of ships of merchandise that sailed
from Britanny to Irish ports, and of the busy wine trade with Poitou.
Ireland alone broke the symmetry of an empire that bordered the Atlantic
from the Hebrides to Spain, and the fame of empire had its attractions
for the heirs of the Norman conquerors. Patriotic and courtly historians
remembered that their king was representative of Gerguntius, the first
king of Britain who had gone to Ireland; the heir of Arthur, to whom
Irish kings had been tributary; the ruler over the Basque provinces,
from whence undoubtedly the Irish race had sprung. To fill up what was
lacking in these titles, he was proclaimed lord and ruler by a yet
clearer divine right, when in 1155 John of Salisbury brought to him from
Rome a bull, by which the English Pope, Hadrian IV., as supreme lord of
all islands, granted Ireland to the English king, that he might bring
the people under law, and enlarge the borders of the Church.
From the beginning, indeed, there rested on the unhappy country a curse
which has remained to the present moment. The invasion of the Ostmen was
the first of a series of half-conquests which brought all the evils of
foreign invasion with none of its benefits. In England the great rivers
and the Roman roads had been so many highways by which the Scandinavians
had penetrated into the heart of the country. But in Ireland no road and
no great river had guided the invader onwards past morass and bog and
forest. While the great host of the Danish invaders swooped down over
England and Gaul, the pirates that sailed to Ireland had only force to
dash themselves on the coast, and there cling cautiously to guarded
settlements. They settled as a race apart, as unable to mix with the
Irish people as they were powerless to conquer them. No memory as in
England of a common origin united them, no ties of a common language, no
sense of common law or custom, or of a common political tradition. The
strangers built the first cities, coined the first money, and introduced
trade. But they were powerless to affect Irish civilization. The tribal
system survived in its full strength, and Ireland remained divided
between two races, two languages, two civilizations in different stages
of progress, two separate communities ruled by their own laws, and two
half-completed ecclesiastical systems, for the Danish Church long looked,
as the Irish had never done, to the Archbishop of Canterbury as their
head. Earnest attempts had already been made by Hadrian's predecessor to
bring the Irish into closer connection with the see of Rome. In 1152 a
papal legate had carried out a great reform by which four archbishops,
wholly independent of Canterbury and receiving their palls from Rome, were
set over four provinces. But still no Peter's Pence were paid to Rome;
Roman canon law, Roman ritual, the Roman rules of marriage, had no
authority; the Roman form of baptism was replaced by a tradition which
made the father dip his new-born child three times in water, or, if he
were a rich man, in milk; there was no payment of tithes; clerks were
taxed like laymen when a homicide occurred; Irish nobles still demanded
hospitality from religious houses, and claimed, according to ancient
custom, provisions from towns on Church domains. Hadrian himself had long
been interested in Irish affairs. The religious houses which the Irish
maintained in Germany kept up communication with Pope and Emperor; an
Irish abbot at Nuremberg was chaplain to the Emperor Frederick; one of
Hadrian's masters at Paris had been a monk from the Irish settlement in
Ratisbon, and as Pope he still remembered the Irish monk with warm
affection. When he was raised to the Papacy in the very year of Henry's
coronation, one of his first cares was to complete the organization of
Christendom in the West by bringing the Irish Church under Catholic
discipline.
Henry, on his part, was only too eager to accept his new responsibility,
and less than a year after his coronation he called a council to discuss
the conquest of Ireland. The scheme was abandoned on account of its
difficulties, but the question was later raised again in another form.
Diarmait Mac Murchadha (in modern form Jeremiah Murphy), King of
Leinster, had carried off in 1152 the wife of the chief of Breifne
(Cavan and Leitrim). A confederation was formed against him under
Ruaidhri (or Rory), King of Connaught, and he was driven from the island
in 1166. "Following a flying fortune and hoping much from the turning of
the wheel," he fled to Henry in Aquitaine, did homage to the English
king for his lands, and received in return letters granting permission
to such of Henry's servants as were willing to aid him in their recovery.
Diarmait easily found allies in the nobles of the Welsh border, in whose
veins ran the blood of two warlike races. It was by just such an
enterprise as this that their Norman fathers and grandfathers had won
their Welsh domains. From childhood they had been brought up in the tumult
of perpetual forays, and trained in a warfare where agility and dash and
endurance of hunger and hardship were the first qualifications of a
soldier. Richard de Clare, Earl of Striguil, in later days nicknamed
Strongbow--a descendant of one of the Conqueror's greatest warriors,
but now a needy adventurer sorely harassed by his creditors--was easily
won by the promise of Diarmait's daughter and heiress, Aeifi, as his wife.
Rhys, the Prince of South Wales, looked favourably on the expedition.
His aunt, Nesta, had been the mistress of Henry I. of England; and
had afterwards married first Gerald of Windsor, and then a certain
Stephen; her sons and grandsons, whether Fitz-Henrys, Fitz-Geralds, or
Fitz-Stephens, were famous men of war; nor were the children of her
daughter, who had married William de Barri, behind them in valour. No less
than eighteen knights of this extraordinary family took part in the
conquest, where in feats of war they renewed the glories of their
ancestors both Norse and Welsh; a son of Nesta's, David, the Bishop of
St. David's, gave his sympathy and help; while her grandson, Gerald
de Barri, became the famous historian of the conquest.