Kate Norgate

“ In four ways especially Henry's assize is a landmark in English history. It was the first attempt made by an English king to put forth a code of laws, as distinct from a mere reassertion of traditional ‘custom.’ It was the first attempt to break down the feudal system of government by bringing its countless independent jurisdictions and irresponsible tribunals into subjection to one uniform judicial administration. ”

“ Alexander threatened to interdict the whole Angevin dominions and excommunicate the king unless he would do penance for the murder and submit unconditionally to the demands of the church, and at once despatched two legates to execute the threat. But the hour of extreme danger was always the hour which Henry turned to account for some specially daring piece of work; and it was at this most perilous crisis of his life that he added a new realm to his dominions. ”

“ Yet already England had discerned in this uncouth lad of twenty-one the quiet strength of a born ruler of men. ‘All folk loved him,’ says the English chronicler, summing up the impression left by the five months which had elapsed between Henry's treaty with Stephen and his return to Normandy, ‘for he did good justice and made peace.’ And ‘justice’ and ‘peace,’ in the sense which those words conveyed to the men of his day, were to be the main characteristics of his reign in England. ”

“ As he was keen in exacting, so he was prodigal in distributing his ill-gotten gains; displaying the claws of a harpy, the extravagance of a Cleopatra, and the shamelessness of both.’ ‘He was very stern and cruel over his land and his men, and with all his neighbours, and very terrible; and through evil men's counsels, which were ever pleasing to him, and through his own covetousness, he was ever tormenting the people with soldiering and with ungelds, forasmuch as in his days all right fell down and all unright, for God and for the world, uprose.’ Of his private life it is impossible to speak. ”

“ The people of Le Mans seized it on its way to Normandy and buried it in their own cathedral church, whereupon the citizens of Rouen threatened to come and reclaim it by force, and Henry II was obliged to order it to be disinterred and conveyed to Rouen for re-burial according to his son's last request. To the unthinking multitude the young king's charm probably lay in a stately, handsome person, a gracious manner, and a temper whose easy shallowness contrasted favourably, in their eyes, with the terrible earnestness of Richard. ”

“ Henry of Huntingdon in his ‘History’ charges ‘all, or almost all,’ the victims with the most shocking immorality; but in another work, where he is avowedly speaking more especially from the moralist's point of view, he speaks of them in wholly different terms, and, dilating on the character of William in particular, ascribes to him nothing worse than pride, love of pomp and splendour, and an eager anticipation of future greatness as king. The story that William openly threatened to ‘yoke the English like oxen to the plough, if ever he should reign over them,’ rests upon no authority. ”

“ In the ‘Historia Novella,’ which takes up the thread of the narrative where it was dropped at the conclusion of the ‘Gesta Regum,’ the last ten years of Henry's reign are rapidly run over, and the period from December 1135 to December 1142 is dealt with at greater length, but in a desultory way which shows that the book is little more than a collection of notes, or first draft, which the author did not live to put into shape. Imperfect as it is, however, it holds a foremost place among our materials for the history of Stephen's reign. ”

“ It re-established once for all, so far as England was concerned, the old Teutonic principle of the right and the duty of a people to govern itself, in its own courts and by its own customary procedure, as against the Roman law which was fast taking its place in continental Europe; and it opened an almost boundless field for the training of the English people in self-government, by bringing home to every man his share in the administration of justice and police. ”

“ Innocent now bade them, as proctors for their convent, choose for primate whom they would, ‘so he were but a fit man, and, above all, an Englishman.’ With Langton sitting in his place among the cardinals, the suggestion of his name followed as a matter of course. The monks were driven to confess their double-dealing and that of the king; Innocent scornfully absolved them from their shameful compact; all save one elected Stephen Langton, and the pope wrote to demand from John the fulfilment of his promise to ratify their choice. ”

“ He alone gives us, not so much the facts, or what passed for facts, as the philosophy of history. His facts indeed are not always exact, and his dates are rarely so. Like William of Malmesbury [q. v.] , William of Newburgh purposed to write, not a chronicle but a history. Unlike Malmesbury, he did not ‘deliberately set himself forward as the successor of the venerable Bede.’ That he came, in some respects, much nearer than Malmesbury to achieving that position may be partly due to the greater modesty which seems to have kept him from claiming it. ”

“ Although no sovereign ever did more, both by his public and private conduct, to deserve and provoke excommunication, the church had spared Rufus hitherto, probably from fear of goading him to yet further depths of wickedness. The pope indeed had threatened him once (April 1099) , but had been induced by Anselm to refrain from executing the threat. But now the clergy of Winchester, backed by the English people, dared to decide for themselves, and to act on their decision, that the dead man was beyond the pale of Christian fellowship. ”

“ It was no light matter that had moved the king thus to break off the work which he had but just begun in Ireland and to surrender the constitutions which he had so stubbornly maintained for eight years in the teeth of primate and pope; it was the discovery that in leaving his eldest son as king in his stead he had placed within reach of his foes a weapon which they were quick to use against him, and which was only too ready to lend itself to their use. ”

“ The part of Henry's life-work bequeathed to him by his English grandfather was so well in train that he could safely turn his attention to that other, and probably in his eyes more important work, which he had inherited from his paternal ancestors: the building up of an empire which, as had been foretold to one of them, was to spread from the rock of Angers to the ends of the earth. It spread now from the Flemish border to the Pyrenees, commanding the whole western coast of France, and covering more than half the soil whose nominal lord paramount was King Louis VII of France. ”

“ In his absence an attack made by Richard on Toulouse gave Philip a pretext for invading Berry; Henry hastened to its defence; Philip fought and negotiated by turns with the father and the son; at last all three met in conference at Bonmoulins (18 Nov. 1188) ; Richard demanded an explicit recognition as heir to all his father's dominions, and on the refusal of his demand openly transferred his homage to the French king.
Henry was left alone, without troops, without money, without resources of any kind. His enemies saw their advantage and used it ruthlessly. ”

“ The English people, on the other hand, seem to have quickly cooled in their enthusiasm for the king whom before his accession they had ‘all loved;’ it was only by slow degrees, and after he was gone, that they learned to appreciate his real merits as a ruler. Henry never courted popularity. ”

“ Henry saw the opportunity which such a transitional state of society afforded for the building up of a system of financial, judicial, and military organisation in direct dependence upon the king, wherein men should find their surest safeguard amid the dangers that beset them on every side in the rapidly changing conditions of the national life. ”

“ Thomas, and at the pope's desire the first thing he did on his arrival was to deliver to the Roman people a sermon on the English martyr. He demanded of the pope three things: that all assumption of metropolitical dignity by the Archbishop of York in the southern province should be once more forbidden; that the papal claim of provision should never be exercised twice for the same benefice; and that during his own lifetime no resident legate should be again sent to England. ”

“ In the selfish, faithless, unprincipled character displayed throughout young Henry's life, redeemed though it was by his deathbed repentance, it is difficult to discover the secret of the attraction which won him the friendship of such a man as William Marshal. ”

“ Henry's first kingly act was the issuing of a charter declaring, as the basis of his scheme of government, the restitution and confirmation of all liberties in church and state as settled by his grandfather. He next put in force certain hitherto unfulfilled provisions of the treaty of 1153, for the expulsion of Stephen's Flemish mercenaries, the demolition of castles built by individual barons without royal license and held by them independently of royal control, and the restoration of royal fortresses and other crown property which had passed into private hands during the anarchy. ”

“ On the 23rd Geoffrey was ordained priest at Southwell by a newly consecrated suffragan of his own, John, bishop of Whithern, in defiance of Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, who, by an unwarrantable stretch of his authority as metropolitan of all Britain, claimed for himself the exclusive right of ordaining and consecrating the elect of York. Shortly afterwards Richard commissioned his half-brother to escort the king of Scots on his journey to Canterbury, where he was to do homage to the new English king. ”

“ Next spring, while Henry was crushing out rebellion in Anjou and Aquitaine, a Scottish invasion stirred up a rising in the north; scarcely were the northern rebels defeated by the king's illegitimate son Geoffrey, bishop-elect of Lincoln, when East Anglia was overrun by a host of Flemings brought in by the traitor Earl of Norfolk, Hugh Bigod; the London citizens broke into anarchy; the young king threatened invasion from Flanders; and the justiciars in despair called Henry to the rescue. ”

“ Hubert issued an edict requiring every man above the age of fifteen years to take an oath for the maintenance of public peace, before knights appointed for the purpose in every shire; from this sprang the office first of conservators, and later, of justices of the peace. At the close of the year he negotiated with William, king of Scots, a treaty of marriage between William's eldest daughter, and Richard's nephew Otto, which was never carried out, but served the good purpose of keeping peace between England and Scotland for many years. ”

“ Innocent III was no sooner pope (January 1198) than he renewed the old decrees against the tenure of secular office by priests, and especially urged the dismissal of the Archbishop of Canterbury from the justiciarship, which Hubert thereupon resigned; in September he joined the king in Normandy; there he apparently remained till after Richard's death (April 1199) , when John sent him home to form with William Marshal and the new justiciar, Geoffrey FitzPeter, a council of regency, whose energetic action kept England at peace till John's own arrival. ”

“ At the battle of Lincoln on 2 Feb. 1141, William shared with the Count of Aumale the command of the second division of Stephen's forces, which, after repelling a flank attack of the empress's Welsh auxiliaries, was routed by her English troops. Like all the other leaders on Stephen's side, William fled; ‘being highly skilled in war, and seeing the impossibility of helping the king, he reserved his aid for a better opportunity.’ The king was made prisoner; William joined the queen in Kent, and helped her to raise fresh forces, with which in July they besieged the empress at Winchester. ”

“ It was a saying of Rufus that ‘no man can keep all his promises,’ and this promise was one which he had shown no desire to fulfil until 1096, when Normandy passed from his brother's hands to his own, and when Count Elias of Maine, desiring to take the cross, sought to assure the peace of his county during his absence by acknowledging the suzerainty of the new ruler of Normandy and requesting his license to depart. William answered by a demand for the absolute surrender of Maine, and, when Elias refused, threatened him with instant war. ”