and reduced to submission some barons who were inclined to oppose this salutary measure. The whole kingdom was soon brought to such a state of tranquillity, that Henry seeing that his presence was no longer necessary to preserve order at home, went abroad to oppose the attempts of his brother Geoffrey, who had made an incursion into Anjou and Maine, and got possession of a considerable part of those territories. On the king's approach the people returned to their allegiance; Geoffrey resigned his claim for a pension, and took possession of the county of Nantz, which the inhabitants who had expelled count Hoel, their prince, had put into his hands. Henry returned the following year to England, where the incursions of the Welch provoked him to make an invasion upon their territories. He soon reduced them to submission. Ann. 1158 to 1161. Geoffrey, the king's brother, dies soon after his acquisition of the county of Nantz. Henry lays claim to it, as devolved to him by hereditary right, and goes over to support his pretensions by force of arms against Conan, duke of Britanny, who had already taken possession of the territory; but despairing of being able to make resistance, he delivered up the county of Nantz to the king, and be ing desirous of securing to himself the support of that powerful monarch, he betrothed his daughter, an only child, yet an infant, to Geoffrey, the king's third son, who was of the same age. Thus, at the death of the duke of Britanny, which took place seven years after, Henry, as the natural guardian to his son and daughter-in-law, put himself in possession of the duchy, and annexed it to his other dominions in France, which consisted, in right of his father, of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine; in that of his mother, of Normandy; in that of his wife, of Guienne, Poitou, Saintonge, Angoumois, and Limousin. He revived also his wife's claim on the county of Toulouse, in the right of Philippa duchess of Guienne, her mother, who was the only issue of William IV. count of Toulouse, and would have inherited his dominions had not that prince, desirous of preserving the succession in the male line, conveyed it to his brother Raymond de St. Gilles, by a contract of sale which was known to be fictitious and illusory. The present count of Toulouse, Raymond, grandson of Raymond de St. Gilles, applied for protection to the king of France, who was so much interested to prevent the farther aggrandisement of the English monarch. Henry, finding that he should be obliged to support by force of arms against potent antagonists a claim which he had in vain asserted by arguments and manifestos, assembled a formidable army, and invaded the county of Toulouse. After having taken Verdun, Castelnau, and some other fortresses, he besieged the capital, when the king of France threw himself into the place with reinforcements. This war between the two monarchs produced no memorable event. It soon ended in an armistice, which was followed by a peace, that, however, would not have been of long duration, had it not been for the mediation and authority of Pope Alexander III. who had been chased from Rome by the Anti-pope Victor IV. and resided at that time in France. To give an idea of the immense authority acquired by the Roman Pontiff, through the ignorance of those ages and the weakness of the sovereigns, it may be proper to observe, that in the year 1160, the two kings, Henry and Lewis, having met the Pope at the castle of Torci, on the Loire, they gave him such marks of respect that both dismounted to receive him, and holding each of them one of the reins of his bridle, walked on foot by his side, and conducted him in that submissive manner into the castle. How could they do less, when, by the prevalent opinion of the times, Gregory VII. and his bold successors had been allowed to maintain, as a fundamental principle, that the church being entitled to excommunicate the ungodly sovereigns, and the deposing being inseparable from the anathema, the necessary consequence of these premises was, that the church had an incontestable right to depose any sovereign rebellious to its maxims; and of course, that the Pope was above all sovereigns either in temporal or in spiritual concerns. The papal chair being thus become the first throne in the world, all the intrigues, cabals, and factions which attended every election to the papacy are not to be wondered at, though greatly detrimental to the Christian religion; as it frequently happened, from the violence of each party's zeal for its candidate, that two Popes were proclaimed at once instead of one, and as long as the schism lasted it was impossible to determine which of them was the right Pope, and which the Anti-pope. It is not to be denied that the fatal division betwen the Regale and Pontificate, which began to take place in the eleventh century, was the consequence of the exorbitant pretensions of the Popes above mentioned, and of those of the emperors of the west, who, from the concessions made by the Holy See to Charlemagne, claimed the right of naming not only the bishops but the Pope himself; they often did so; they even went so far as to depose those they had not named. The Pope sometimes gave, sometimes imitated the example by deposing the emperor and naming an Anti-Cæsar as the emperor named Anti-popes, a scandal, which not uncommonly occurred from the Pontificate of Gregory VII. The temporal influence of the clergy was daily gaining ground in England, and was already grown to such a pitch as to endanger the royal authority. They pretended to be exempted, not only from the ordinary taxes of the state but from its penal laws, as during the last reign they had obtained an immunity from all but ecclesiastical penalties. From the beginning of his reign, the king had shown a fixed purpose to repress clerical usurpations. But out of regard for the mild character and advanced age of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, and his merit in refusing to put the crown on the head of Eustace, son of Stephen, he resolved to postpone the execution of his plans of ecclesiastical reform during the life-time of the primate. Ann. 1162 to 1164. Soon after the death of Theobald, Henry returns to England, and resolves not to postpone any longer the execution of his measures against the encroachments of the clergy. That he might be more secure against any opposition to that indispensable reform, he named to the vacant See of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, his chancellor, in whose compliance he thought he could entirely depend. The famous Thomas Becket, the first man of English extraction, who, since the Norman conquest, had risen to any share of power, was the son of a citizen of London, where he received his early education. He resided some time at Paris, and on his return, became clerk of the sheriff's office. He was then recommended to the archbishop of Canterbury, and obtained from him some beneficial dignities, which enabled him to travel to Italy, where he studied the civil law at Bologna. On his return, he was promoted to the archdeaconry of Canterbury, an office of considerable trust and profit. On the accession of Henry to the throne, Becket was recommended to him as worthy of greater preferment, and the monarch, on further acquaintance, finding him so, promoted him to the dignity of chancellor. Honours, preferments, and riches were now heaped upon him. His revenues were immense, his expences incredible. The pomp of his retinue, the munificence of his presents, the sumptuousness of his furniture, and his lofty apartments glittering with gold and silver plate, exhibited the splendour of his station. He kept open table for persons of all ranks; the greatest barons were proud of being invited to it, and the king himself frequently vouchsafed to partake of his entertainments. His amusements were gay, and partook of the cavalier spirit, which, as he had only taken deacon's orders, he did not think unbefitting his character. He employed himself at leisure hours in hawking, hunting, gaming, and tilting, at which he was so expert, that even the most approved knights dreaded his encounter; he exposed his person in several military actions; he carried over at his own charge seven hundred knights to attend the king in his wars at Toulouse; in the subsequent wars on the frontiers of Normandy, he maintained during forty days twelve hundred knights and four thousand of their train, and in an embassy to France, he astonished that court by the number and magnificence of his retinue. Such was Thomas Becket when only chancellor ; but he was no sooner installed in the high dignity of archbishop of Canterbury, which rendered him for life the second person in the kingdom, than he totally altered his conduct, and endeavoured to acquire the highest character for sanctity. Without consulting the king, he immediately returned into |