HOUSE OF PLANTAGENET.

CHAPTER I.

HENRY II. (PLANTAGENET).*

1154-1189.

Dominions of Henry.-War of Toulouse.-History of Thomas à Becket;contest between him and the king.-Murder of Becket.-Invasion of Ireland.

-Wars between Henry and his sons.-Death and character of the king.— Changes in the law of England.

On the death of Stephen, the English nation, weary of civil contention, cheerfully acquiesced in the accession of Henry Plantagenett. The new monarch, now only in his twenty-first year, exceeded all the princes of his time in extent of dominion. In right of his mother he ruled England, Normandy, and Maine; from his father he inherited Anjou and Touraine; while his union with Eleanor gave him the provinces thence to the Pyrenees, with Perigord, Limousin, and Auvergne. He thus possessed a third of France; a vassal far more powerful than the monarch to whom he owed his homage.

After a delay of six weeks, chiefly caused by inclement weather, Henry landed in England (Dec. 3), and shortly after (19th) he and his queen were crowned at Winchester with unwonted magnificence. His first care after the festivities were over was to reform the abuses which had

* Authorities :-Paris, Westminster, Bromton, Hoveden, Knighton, Newbury, Hemingford, Wikes, Gervasius, Diceto, Trivet, and the biographers of Becket.

†The earls of Anjou were so named from their device-a sprig of broom (plante de genét).

arisen during the civil contests of the late reign. He obliged all Stephen's mercenaries to quit the kingdom, and with them their leader William of Ypres, whom that king had made earl of Kent; he revoked all the grants made on either side during the late reign; he reformed the coin, which had been adulterated; he forced all those who had obtained possession of the royal castles to resign them, and he insisted on the demolition of those which had been erected by individual nobles*.

Having settled the affairs of England, Henry returned to France (1156) to oppose his brother Geoffrey, who had set up a claim to Anjou and Maine, and had invaded these provinces. He forced him to resign his pretensions, and the apanage left him by his father, for an annual pension of 1000l. The people of Nantes, in Brittany, who had just expelled their count Hoel, invited Geoffrey to be their ruler; he gave, of course, a ready consent, but he enjoyed his dignity only for two years: on his death (1158) the king of England claimed Nantes as his heir, and moreover as feudal superior of Brittany. Conan, the duke of that country, had already entered on it; but Henry having gained king Louis to his side by a contract of marriage between his eldest son Henry, now five years of age, and the daughter of that monarch, who was yet in her cradle, soon ended the pretensions of the Breton prince; and Conan moreover, to secure Henry's aid against his unruly subjects, affianced his daughter and only child, an infant, to Henry's third son, Geoffrey, also an infant. On the death of Conan (1165), Henry, as guardian to his son and daughter-in-law, took possession of Brittany.

As soon as he had made good his claim to Nantes, the ambitious king of England cast his eyes on one of the largest and wealthiest provinces of France. Queen Eleanor's grandfather had married the only daughter of Wil

* There had been one hundred and forty of them erected in the reign of Stephen.

liam count of Toulouse, but William had mortgaged or sold his dominions to his brother Raymond, who on his death quietly entered on them, and they continued in his family, though the duke of Guienne had asserted a claim in 1098, and Louis in right of Eleanor in 1145. These last pretensions were now advanced by Henry; and forming an alliance with Berenger count of Barcelona, and Trincaval lord of Nismes, he prepared to assert them (1159). Raymond of Toulouse, on the other hand, called on his superior lord king Louis, to whose sister Constance he was married, and Louis, now fully aware of the dangerous ambition of the king of England, prepared to oppose the very claim he had himself advanced some years before. Henry, sensible of the unwieldy nature of a feudal militia, followed the example of his grandfather, and in lieu of service imposed a tax of 37. on every knight's fee in England, and forty Angevin shillings on those of Normandy, and with the produce of this scutage, which amounted to 180,000l., he took large bodies of mercenaries into pay.

The war, however, was productive of no event of much importance. Henry was unable to make his claim good, and the pope finally mediated a peace between him and the king of France.

During the anarchy of the late reign the church had gone on emancipating itself from secular control. Holy orders were conferred by the bishops without discrimination; and as all who had received the tonsure were members of the sacerdotal body, and "the bishops," the historian says, 66 were more vigilant to defend the liberties and dignity of their order than to correct its faults, and thought they did their duty to God and the church if they protected the guilty clergy from public punishment,” rapines, thefts, and homicides were frequently committed by these "tonsured demons," as they are styled by Becket's biographer. The king was assured that not less than one hundred homicides had been committed with

impunity by the clergy since his accession. To this Henry was resolved to put a stop, and knowing the importance of having the primacy filled by a person from whom he would not have opposition to apprehend, on the death of archbishop Theobald (1161), he resolved to bestow the vacant dignity on his favourite and chancellor Thomas à Becket*.

This extraordinary man was the son of a respectable citizen of London named Gilbert à Becket. According to a romantic tradition his mother was the daughter of a Saracen emir. Gilbert, it is said, being on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem had become a captive to the emir, by whom he was treated kindly and admitted to his society. The emir's daughter saw and loved him; she made occasions of conversing with him, in which she learned his name and that he was from London in England. She told him her love, and her desire to become a Christian. An opportunity for escape, however, having presented itself, Gilbert, heedless of the fair Saracen, embraced it and returned to England. She resolved to pursue him, and quitting her father's abode in disguise she proceeded to the coast. She knew but two English words, London and Gilbert; by pronouncing the first she found a ship bound for England, and when she landed she reached by means of it the capital. There she went about the streets crying out Gilbert. Her strange manner and garb drew a crowd after her, and as she happened to go through the street in which Gilbert dwelt the noise attracted the attention of his servant Richard, and he went out to see the cause of it. Richard, who had shared his master's captivity in the East, at once recognised the fair Saracen. He told his master; they brought her in, and then placed her in a nunnery till Gilbert had consulted the prelates who were sitting at St. Paul's. It was their opinion that he should marry her, as she was desi

*For the history of Becket see Stephanides (Fitz-Stephen) and his other biographers.

rous of becoming a Christian: she was accordingly baptized by the name of Matilda, and made the wife of her beloved Gilbert*.

The fruit of the union of Gilbert and Matilda was a son named Thomas. As the child showed talent he was carefully educated at the schools of Merton, London, and finally Paris. When he grew up he was admitted into the family of the primate Theobald; he felt his inferiority to those whom he met there in learning, but the grace of his manners and his natural talents made up for the deficiency; though twice by the arts of his rivals expelled from the palace, he contrived to reinstate himself in the favour of the primate, by whom he was even employed on a negotiation at Rome, which he executed with such ability as to be rewarded with some preferments in the church. With his patron's permission he then went and attended lectures on the canon and civil law, first at Bologna and afterwards at Auxerre. On his return, the provostship of Beverley, and soon after the wealthy archdeaconry of Canterbury, were bestowed on him by the primate, and when Henry II. came to the throne, Becket, then thirty-seven years of age, was by Theobald's influence raised to the high office of chancellor. He speedily won the favour of the young monarch; the education of prince Henry was confided to him; he was made warden of the Tower, and had the custody of the castle of Berkhamstead and the honour of Eye, with the services of one hundred and forty knights.

Becket was of a vain, ostentatious temper; his soul was superior to the love of money, and he spent his large revenues with princely magnificence. He kept a splendid table which the king often honoured with his presence, and at which numerous noble guests sat each day.

* This tale rests on the single authority of Bromton, that collector and embellisher of romantic legends. It may be true, but Becket's biographers seem to have known nothing of it.