In 1152 Stephen attempted to have Eustace crowned king, to ensure his succession. ‘Open-handed wherever he went, he enjoyed being generous,’ the Gesta Stephani says of Eustace. ‘Because he took after his father, he treated men as equals.’4 But the same writer admits that Eustace had a vicious streak, ordering his troops ‘to show the ferocity of wild beasts’. An evil man is how The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle sees him: ‘Wherever he went he did more evil than good – he robbed the land, levying heavy taxes.’5 Whatever the truth of the matter, Pope Eugenius forbade the English bishops to crown Eustace.
Henry’s position grew stronger when Eleanor of Aquitaine became his wife in 1152. Her marriage to Louis VII had recently been annulled, on grounds of consanguinity, although in reality because she had failed to produce a son. Lurid rumours surrounded her, such as her having slept with her new husband’s father – credited by Walter Map, who thought that in marrying Henry she was committing incest and brought a curse on their children. None the less, ‘incomparable’ is how the monk Richard of Devizes describes Eleanor. ‘Beautiful but gracious, strong but kind, unpretentious but wise, an unusual mixture in a woman.’6 Her assets outweighed her bad name as Aquitaine stretched from Poitou to the Pyrenees, meaning that Henry now ruled more of France than King Louis. Within a month he was at Barfleur, preparing to invade England.
Suddenly, however, joined by Eustace, Louis struck at Normandy, while Henry’s brother, another Geoffrey, rose in Anjou. ‘Nearly all the Normans thought Duke Henry would lose everything,’ wrote the Abbot of Mont Saint-Michel.7 They were mistaken. Reacting so fast that some of his men’s horses dropped dead, Henry laid waste Louis’s lands across the Norman border with such savagery that the French king asked for a truce; Henry then swung south and crushed Geoffrey.
In the meantime, Stephen was trying to eliminate Plantagenet strongholds before the invasion, tightening his blockade of Wallingford Castle in north Berkshire, whose garrison implored Henry to send a relief force or let them surrender. His response was to come in person, landing on Epiphany 1153 with 140 knights and 3,000 foot soldiers. Entering a church for Mass, the first words he heard were Psalm 71, ‘Give to the king thy judgment, O God: and to the king’s son thy justice’, which he took as a good omen. He then attacked Malmesbury in Wiltshire, one of Stephen’s own strongpoints, laying siege to the castle. This forced the king and Eustace (who had hurried back from France) to leave Wallingford and confront Henry.
Beneath a freezing downpour the two armies faced each other across the swollen River Avon, rain blowing into the faces of Stephen’s troops, whose hands became so cold that they could scarcely grip swords dripping with water. The king lost his nerve, retreating to London, aware that his barons had reached secret agreements with the duke, who was threatening their Norman estates. A truce was negotiated, leaving Wallingford in peace for six months and letting the Malmesbury garrison march out in safety.
Henry then marched through the Midlands, capturing fortresses and being joined by more and more barons. In July he began demolishing the enemy’s siege works at Wallingford, until the king and Eustace arrived with a bigger army. But Stephen’s barons refused to fight. Like the Gesta Stephani’s author, even those who supported the king saw Henry as the lawful heir to the throne. Reluctantly, Stephen agreed to open negotiations for a lasting peace.
Infuriated, Eustace ravaged East Anglia, trying to provoke Henry into fighting. In August he arrived at Bury St Edmunds, wrecking the abbey’s lands when it refused to lend him money, after which he dined in its refectory – and choked to death. Queen Matilda was dead and, although he had other sons, Stephen gave up. All he wanted was to die on the throne. In November he met the duke at Winchester, agreeing that Henry should succeed him and that stolen lands should be restored to those who had held them in 1135.
In December Stephen issued a charter recognizing the duke as his heir and promising to demolish over 1,100 castles. The settlement did not go smoothly, Henry grumbling that the king was slow in pulling down the castles. When some Flemish mercenaries plotted to kill him, Henry went back to Normandy, staying there until Stephen died from a haemorrhage in October 1154.
The restorer
All over England crowds thundered ‘Vivat Rex’ when Henry II was crowned by Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury at Westminster Abbey on 7 December 1154. Londoners gaped at the short French cloak worn by this battle-scarred veteran of twenty-one, calling him ‘court-mantle’, which shows how foreign he seemed. Yet, although a Frenchman from top to toe, Henry was a great-great-grandson of the hero King Edmund Ironside through his grandmother (Henry I’s queen), and as early as 1139 a Norman chronicler had claimed he represented England’s old rulers. ‘Nowadays, no earl, bishop or abbot is an Englishman’, the great monk-historian William of Malmesbury who was himself half-English, had written thirty years before. ‘Newcomers eat up the riches and the very guts of England, nor is there any hope of ending such misery.’8 But by 1154 speaking French was a sign of class rather than race.9
Whatever their class or race, Henry’s subjects would have been struck by his appearance. Stocky, bull-necked, slightly above average height, with coarse, reddish skin and bulging eyes, he had red hair that was close-cropped. His clothes were as rough as his looks, his one jewel a gold signet ring engraved with a lion. If quiet-spoken, his manner was brutally direct.
Presumably, he inspected his new capital. William fitz Stephen described it later in the reign, boasting of the Tower and the Palace of Westminster upstream, of walls with seven double gates and many towers, of thirteen great churches and 126 smaller ones. He praises its spacious gardens and healthy air, tells how it was bordered by pastures, cornfields and meadows and a forest full of deer, and how the Thames teemed with fish. He mentions cook shops where it was possible to get venison, sturgeon or guineafowl, and extols the capital’s pleasures – tournaments on the river, hunting and hawking outside the walls. But, recalling Le Mans and Rouen, the king may not have been so enthusiastic, while the queen no doubt missed Paris and Poitiers.
Henry soon left London, travelling all over the kingdom to rebuild government. The administrative framework of Henry I’s day still existed: the most senior official was the justiciar (regent in the king’s absence overseas), a role often filled by the chancellor, who, with other senior royal servants, formed the court of the Great Council (Curia Regis), which met at Westminster Hall, hearing appeals and controlling finances. To help him, the king appointed a new chancellor, a flamboyant canon-lawyer named Thomas Becket, who had studied at Paris and was recommended by Archbishop Theobald.
Within months William Peverell of the Peak lost his huge estates, retiring to a monastery, while William of Aumale, who controlled Yorkshire, surrendered his strongholds, as did Hugh de Mortimer and Hugh of Hereford on the Welsh Marches. Many lesser lords were tamed. By 1157 the king had expelled the Scots from the northern counties and retaken castles seized by the Welsh. Demolishing illegal fortresses, he frightened ‘castlemen’ into leaving the country ‘so quickly, they appeared to vanish like ghosts’, writes William of Newburgh. William adds, ‘his primary concern was restoring order and he took care to ensure the law’s full strength returned to England, where under King Stephen it seemed dead and buried. He appointed men to administer proper justice in every region of the realm and see laws were kept, keeping down criminals and deciding disputes . . . if they got it wrong or were too lenient, he put matters right with a royal ordinance.’10
The Exchequer at Westminster (so called from a black and white cloth on the table around which its officials sat) looked after the revenue. In Henry I’s time it had met only at Easter and Michaelmas, chaired by the king or the justiciar, to audit accounts and question sheriffs about tax discrepancies, although it also supervised the collection of income from royal estates and forests, using notched wooden tally sticks as receipts and sheepskin scrolls as records (the Pipe Rolls). Under the new king it centralized financial control and, from an occasional committee, b
ecame an institution with a permanent staff.11 Royal estates lost under Stephen were recovered while sheriffs who pocketed taxes were prosecuted.
More and more English wool was being sold to Flemish weavers, so in 1158 merchants were given a better currency – silver pence containing 10 per cent more bullion than before. (In 1180 another new coinage appeared, with an even bigger silver content.) To help credit facilities the king encouraged Jewish moneylenders to settle in English cities.
What made Henry rich, however, was the legal system, to which he made a lasting contribution, introducing circuit judges, writs and twelve-man juries. He was determined England should be ruled by custom and precedent as under his Anglo-Saxon predecessors. Realizing that a central legal system would increase the Crown’s authority and its revenue, he combined into one the royal court (Curia Regis), the shire courts and the hundred baronial and manorial courts. He sent out Exchequer officials as his personal representatives; they travelled the country with armed escorts and sat in the courts next to the sheriffs, trying criminals, and dealing with disputes over land and property. All serious offences – murder, rape, robbery – were heard by these royal ‘justices in eyre’, forerunners of today’s circuit judges. Procedure was standardized, so that there could be no confusion about the law’s meaning.
Echoing Anglo-Saxon tradition, the justices summoned a panel of twelve reliable men to report anyone suspected of ill-doing and asked it if those ‘presented’ were guilty, a practice that became the jury system. Some justices stayed at Westminster, forming a tribunal – the origin of the courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas. Recovering land stolen during Stephen’s reign was solved by the sheriffs issuing writs: one writ ordered the offender to give it back – if he refused, another summoned twelve neighbours to declare on oath who was the rightful owner. The main document setting out these reforms was the Assize of Clarendon, drawn up early in 1166, and supplemented a few years later by the Assizes of Northampton. Clarendon marks the beginning of the Common Law.12
After Clarendon, annual royal income rose from £13,000 to over £20,000, largely thanks to fines levied under the new system. Another source was feudal dues, collected more efficiently following a survey of the Crown’s major tenants. Instead of summoning knights to serve in his army or garrison his castles, the king made them pay shield money (scutage) and ward-money, which enabled him to hire mercenaries. His castles became treasure houses in which dungeons were crammed with bullion.13
Government had never broken down in Normandy and Anjou, while southwards it did not exist, authority belonging to the local aristocracy. Henry’s problems here were rebellious barons and protecting his frontiers. When his brother Geoffrey, whom the Bretons had chosen to be their ruler, died in 1157 he succeeded him as Duke of Brittany, diplomacy securing the border castles of the Vexin and giving eastern Normandy a vital line of defence. A campaign to add Toulouse to his territory was a failure, but one he would rectify within a few years.
The man
Two stories explain why his subjects liked Henry II. When he called Bishop Roger of Worcester a traitor for not coming to court, the bishop (who was Robert of Gloucester’s son) retorted that the king was ungrateful after all his brothers had done to help him gain the Crown – he had taken away three-quarters of the family estates, letting one brother grow so poor that he had been forced to join the Hospitallers: ‘That’s how you repay family and friends, that’s what people get for helping you.’ When some sycophant rebuked Roger, Henry told the man he was an oaf: ‘Don’t think that because I speak as I like to my cousin the bishop it gives you a right to insult him.’ Then he asked Roger to dinner, during which they had a very friendly discussion.14
Bishop Hugh of Lincoln angered the king by excommunicating a royal forester who ill-treated peasants. Next time he came to court, Henry, sitting on the ground and stitching a fingerstall, ignored him. Calmly taking a seat next to the king, Hugh whispered, ‘You look like your cousins at Falaise’ – alluding to William the Conqueror’s mother, daughter of a tanner. Henry laughed so much that he rolled on the ground, before explaining the joke to his courtiers.15
Because Henry fascinated chroniclers, we know a lot about him. Gerald of Wales recalls bloodshot eyes flaming with rage, a big paunch, a mania for hunting, inattention at Mass. He says the king regularly broke treaties, comparing his greed for money to that of Elisha’s covetous servant, Gehazi. Even so, Gerald praises Henry’s humanity, his pity for those who fell in battle and preference for a peaceful solution; for example, when things went badly, nobody was more courteous. Gerald also states that Henry never altered his opinion of anyone he disliked on first sight and rarely changed his mind about somebody to whom he took a liking.
‘In making laws and improving government he showed extreme intelligence, very clever at finding new, unexpected ways of getting what he wanted,’ says Walter Map, Gerald’s fellow courtier. ‘He was always affable, polite, unassuming. In troubled times, he never complained. But on his endless journeys he travelled like a common carrier and did not bother about accommodation, showing no consideration for his entourage . . . He spent whole nights without sleep, seemingly tireless . . . personally, I think his excessive activity was not so much due to lack of self-control as fear of growing fat.’
Map stresses the king’s accessibility. ‘Whenever he went outside, he was mobbed by crowds, pulled this way and that, dragged along. Astonishingly, he listened patiently to what they were saying even when being yelled at or violently shoved and pushed, never rebuking anybody or using it as an excuse to lose his temper. If the pestering became really unbearable, he stayed calm, retreating to a quieter place. He was never proud or puffed up . . .’16
Map also describes how Henry reimbursed skippers wrecked while shipping his court across the Channel. Courtiers dreaded these crossings in tiny, clinker-built transports, particularly during winter. So did the king, who had his own ship, the Esnecca (‘Sea-Snake’), and went to confession before embarking – sailing on lucky feast days such as Candlemas or postponing a voyage because of an ill omen. Such fears are understandable. In March 1170, 400 courtiers, including the royal physician, were drowned en route from Normandy.
On land, Henry lived on horseback as his realm stretched from the Tweed to the Pyrenees, from the Shannon to the verge of the Ile de France. Much of his time was spent hearing law cases and drafting charters. His entourage dropped from exhaustion, his secretary Peter of Blois recalling how the king stopped at places with shelter for himself but none for courtiers. After wandering by night for miles through dense woodland, they would come to blows over who should sleep in a pigsty.
Clarendon and court life
One of the places in England where Henry could relax was Clarendon, ‘in which I delight above all other’.17 On a low hill amid woodland, 3 miles from Salisbury, this was a hunting lodge he transformed into a palace around a courtyard, with chambers where he could sulk, an aisled hall 50 ft wide and 80 ft long for assemblies, wooden cloisters where he walked in wet weather, and a huge wine cellar. Yet Clarendon can have been scarcely more comfortable than his castles. Rooms reserved for royal privacy were mere closets, while, save for a few portable windows of oiled cloth, there was no glazing, only wooden shutters, which in winter meant choosing between rain, snow or darkness. The air was thick with smoke, its sole exit through holes in the roof.
A large deer park contained the fallow buck that was the principal game, although red deer, boar and hare were also hunted. Henry set off at daybreak, riding into the woods and up into the hills, says Gerald of Wales. From Shrovetide to midsummer he pursued the otter. Walter Map comments on his knowledge of hawks as well as hounds, and he flew peregrines and gyrfalcons, possibly even sea eagles. Brutal game laws cowed poachers of whatever class in the royal forests (game parks) that covered a third of England
Yet, as a Frenchman who spent only a third of his reign in England, Henry’s favourite residence in his entire lands was not Clarendon but Chinon.
On a low hill over the Vienne before it flows into the Loire, this key stronghold was the nerve centre of Plantagenet France and the ‘defensive pivot’ of his empire.18 He replaced its old buildings with a massive fortress, from whose tall keep (the ‘Tower of the Mill’) watch could be kept for miles around.
Gifted men were attracted to Henry’s court, hoping for a bishopric or a lucrative office, although Gerald of Wales called it a hell. It was regulated with impressive ceremony, by heralds who blew trumpets and marshals with wands. Despite preferring rough clothes, on formal occasions Henry wore rich robes and, from the 1170s, was ‘rex dei gratia’ in charters – addressed as ‘Lord King’ in French or Latin, or ‘God hold thee, King’ in English.19 Petitioners knelt before him or threw themselves on their faces.
There were men at court who discussed Plutarch between the hunting and the drinking bouts. Henry enjoyed their conversation while they respected his intellect. Gerald praises his memory and knowledge of history, Map his command of languages, Peter of Blois his fondness for reading and learned discussion. (Like all medieval men he read aloud, to himself.) Fifteen books are known to have been dedicated to him, which shows their authors thought he might at least look at them. The authors included the Exchequer official Richard fitz-Neale, the jurist Ranulf Glanville and four chroniclers. Admittedly, Gerald of Wales grumbled he had wasted his time by writing his Topography of Ireland for Henry.
What really interested Henry were legends of King Arthur and Merlin’s prophecies, popularized by Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of England, translated as the Roman de Brut by Wace (who dedicated it to Queen Eleanor) and by Marie de France’s Lais. According to Gerald, Henry unearthed Arthur’s bones at Glastonbury, informing the monks that a bard who sang of ancient Britain had told him the body would be found 16 feet down, in a hollowed-out oak tree.
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