CHAPTER XV
HENRY II. A JUST KING
Henry II was a great Lawgiver, and it was he who laid down the great Legal Principle that everything is either legal or (preferably) illegal.
He also made another very just arrangement about trials:—
Before Henry II’s time there were two kinds of legal trial, (a) the Ideal and (b) the Combat. The Ideal form of trial consisted in making a man plunge his head in boiling ploughshares, in order to see whether he had committed a crime or not. According to Henry’s reformed system a man was tried first by a jury of his equals and only had to plunge his head into the ploughshares afterwards (in order to confirm the jury’s opinion that he had committed the crime). This was obviously a much Better Thing.
The Combat was a system by which in civil cases the litigants decided their dispute by mortal combat, after which the defeated party was allowed to fly the country. But Henry altered all this and declared that a Grand Jury must decide first what the parties were fighting about: a reform which naturally gave rise to grave discontent among the Barons, who believed in the Combat, the whole Combat and nothing but the Combat.
THOMAS À BELLOC
It was at this time that Thomas à Belloc, the great religious leader, claimed that clergymen, whatever crimes they might commit, could not be punished at all; this privilege, which was for some reason known as Benefit of Clergy, was in full accord with the devout spirit of the age. Henry II, however, exclaimed to some of his Knights one day, “Who will rid me of this Chesterton beast?” Whereupon the Knights pursued Belloc and murdered him in the organ at Canterbury Cathedral. Belloc was therefore made a Saint and the Knights came to be called the Canterbury Pilgrims.
Shortly afterwards Henry died of despair on receiving news that his sons were all revolting.