It was still the ancestral Anglo-Saxon crown which glittered on Edgar's head, but, if we may so say, its splendour had at the same time received a monkish and hierarchic colouring.

CHAPTER II.

TRANSFER OF THE ANGLO-SAXON CROWN TO THE NORMANS AND PLANTAGENETS.

Little did Edgar and those around him understand their position, when they attributed the peace they enjoyed to their own military power, in the splendid and extensive display of which they took delight. In reality it was the state of the world at large that brought this peace about. First of all, it was due to the settlement of the Normans in North Gaul, under the condition that they should be of one religion and one realm, and should fulfil the natural duty of keeping off fresh incursions: the current of Northern invasion thus lost its aim and direction. But it was of still more decisive effect at the first that the energetic family which arose in North Germany, and even assumed the imperial authority, not content with warding off the Danes, sought them out in their own country instead, and carried the war against heathenism into the North. The Saxons beyond the sea were indebted for the peace which they enjoyed chiefly to the great and splendid deeds of arms of their kindred on the mainland. How much all depended on this became very clear when Otto II, in the full glow of great enterprises, met with an unlooked for and early death. Within the empire two able women and their advisers succeeded in maintaining peace; but in Denmark, as in other neighbouring countries, the hostile elements got the upper hand. The Danish king's son, Sven Otto, abandoned the religion which he regarded as a yoke laid on him by the German conquerors; he could not destroy the order of things established in Denmark, but he revived the old sea-king's life, and threw himself with the old superiority of the Viking arms on the English coasts.

Ethelred on this attack fell into the greatest distress, mainly because he was not sure of his great nobles. How often did the commanders of the fleet desert it at the moment of action, and the leaders of the inland levies go over to the enemy! Ethelred sought for safety by an alliance with the Duchy of Normandy, then daily rising to greater power. Thus supported, he proceeded to unjustifiable outrages against his domestic as well as his foreign foes. The great nobles whom he suspected were mercilessly killed or exiled, and their children blinded. The Danes who remained in the land he caused to be murdered all on one day.

The consequences of this deed necessarily recoiled upon himself. When Sven some years after again landed with redoubled enmity, which was to a certain extent justified, he experienced no effectual resistance whatever; Ethelred had to fly before him and quit the island. But now that Sven too, who had been already saluted by many as King, died in the first enjoyment of his victory, a question arose which extended far beyond the personal relations and embarrassments of the moment.

The influence always exercised by the Witans of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in determining the succession to the throne remained much the same when they were all fused into a single kingdom; even among the descendants of Alfred, the great men designated the sovereign. In the disturbed state of things in which they now found themselves, the lawful King having fled, and the other, who had put himself into actual possession of the supreme authority, being dead, they framed the largest conception of their right. They formally made conditions with Ethelred for his return, and he consented to their demands through his son.[7] Since he, however, did not fulfil his promise—for how could he have altered his nature?—they held themselves released from their engagement to maintain this family on the throne. Sven's son, Canute, had taken his father's place among the Danes; he had been long ago baptised, he was of a character which commanded confidence, and possessed at the time overwhelming power. After Ethelred's death the lay and spiritual chiefs of England decided to abandon the house of Cerdic for ever, and to recognise Canute as their King. How many jarls and thanes of Danish origin do we find around the kings under all the last governments. Edgar was especially blamed for the very reason that he took them under his protection. But they had been subjected only by war; no hereditary sentiment of natural loyalty attached them to the West Saxon royal house. The ecclesiastical aristocracy was besides determined by religious considerations; to them these disasters and crimes seemed sufficient proof of the truth of those prophecies of coming woe which Dunstan was believed to have uttered. They repaired to Canute at Southampton, and concluded a peace with him, the conditions of which were that they would abandon the descendants of Ethelred for ever, and recognise Canute as their King; he, on the other hand, promised to fulfil the duties of a King truly, in both spiritual and temporal relations.[8] Yet once more, Ethelred's eldest son, Edmund Ironsides, who was himself half a Dane by birth, roused himself to a vigorous resistance: London and a part of the nobility took his side; he gained through force of arms a settlement by which, though indeed he lost the best part of the land and the capital itself, he maintained the crown; he died however, soon after, and then the whole country recognised Canute as King. The last scion of the royal house in the land was banished, and all the claims of the family to the crown again declared void. The Anglo-Saxon magnates undertook to make a money payment to the Danish host; in return they received the pledge from the King's hand, and the oath by his soul taken by his chiefs.[9] It was a treaty between the Anglo-Saxon and the Danish chiefs, by which the former received the King of the latter as also their own.

This extremely important event links the centuries together, and determines the future fortunes of England. The kingly house, whose right and pre-eminence was connected with the earliest settlements, which had completed the union of the realm and delivered it from the worst distress, was at a moment of moral deterioration and disaster excluded by the spiritual and temporal chiefs, of Anglo-Saxon and Danish origin. They had first tried to limit it, to bind it by its own promise; when this led to nothing, they annihilated its right by a formal resolution of the realm, and procured peace by raising to the throne another sovereign who had no right by birth. Canute did not owe the crown to conquest, though his greater power contributed to the result, but to election, which now appeared as the superior right: hitherto the Witan had always exercised it within the limits of the royal family; this time they disregarded that family altogether.

Canute decreed or allowed some bloody acts of violence, in order to strengthen the power that had fallen to his lot; but afterwards he administered it with a noble spirit answering to his position. He became the leading sovereign of the North: men reckoned five or six kingdoms as subject to him. England was the chief of them all, even for him; it was in possession of the culture and religion which he wished should prevail in the rest: the missionaries of the North went forth from Canterbury. England itself, however, gained a higher position in the world by its union with a power which ruled as far as Norway and North America, and carried on commerce with the East by the Baltic. In Gothland the great emporium of the West, Arabic as well as Anglo-Danish coins are found; the former were carried from the North as far as England. Canute favoured the Anglo-Saxon mode of life; he liked to be designated the 'successor of Edgar;' he confirmed his legislation; and it was his intention, at least, to rule according to the laws: as he even submitted himself to the military regulations of the Huskarls, so he commanded right and law to be administered in civil matters without respect to his own person.

But a union of such different kingdoms could only be a transitory phenomenon. Canute himself thought of leaving England again independent under one of his sons.

With this object he had married Ethelred's widow Emma. For, according to Anglo-Saxon ideas, the Queen was not merely the King's wife, but also sovereign of the land, in her own right. It was settled that the children of this marriage should succeed him in England. Probably Canute did not wish the inheritance of the crown in his house to depend merely on the goodwill of the Witan.

After Canute's death we can observe a wavering between the principles of election and birthright. The magnates again elected, but limited their choice to the King's house. After the extinction of the Danish-Norman family, they came back to the English-Norman one; they called the son of Ethelred and Emma, Edward the Confessor, to the throne of his fathers, though, it is true, without leaving him much power. This lay rather in the hands of the Earls Godwin of Kent and Leofric of Mercia; especially in the former, whose wife was related to Canute, did the Anglo-Saxon spirit of independence energetically manifest itself. He was once banished, but returned and recovered all his offices. When however, Edward too died without issue, the dynastic question once more came before the English magnates. It might have seemed most consistent to recall the Aetheling Edgar a member of the house of Cerdic from exile, and to carry on the previous form of government under his name. But the thoughts of the English chiefs no longer turned in that direction. Not very long before a king from the ranks of the native nobility had ascended the throne of the Carolingians in the West Frank empire; in the East Frank, or German empire, men had seen first the mightiest duke, then one of the most distinguished counts, attain the imperial dignity. Why should it not be possible for something similar to happen in England also? The very day on which Edward the Confessor died, Godwin's son, Harold, was elected by the magnates of the kingdom, and crowned without delay[10] (Jan. 5, 1066). The event now happened which was only implied in what occurred at Canute's accession: the house of Cerdic was abandoned, and the further step taken of raising another native family to its throne.

It was not this time a pressing necessity that brought it about; but we cannot deny that, if carried through, it opened out an immeasurable prospect.

For such would have been the case, if the attempt to found a Germanic Anglo-Saxon kingdom under Harold, and maintain it free from any preponderating foreign influence had been successful. By recalling Edgar the influence of Normandy, against which the antipathies of the nation had been awakened under the last government, would have been renewed. But just as little were those claims to be recognised which the Northern kings put forward for the re-establishment of their supremacy. Even as regards the Papacy, the government began to adopt an independent line of conduct.

The question now was, whether the Anglo-Saxon nation would be unanimous and strong enough to maintain such a haughty position on all sides.

The first attack came from the North; it was all the more dangerous, from the fact that an ambitious brother of the new King supported it: only by an extreme effort were these enemies repelled. But, at the same moment, an attack was threatened from another enemy of infinitely greater importance—Duke William of Normandy. It was not only this sovereign, and his land, but a new phase of development in the history of the world, with which England now entered into conflict.

The Conquest.

Out of the antagonism of nationalities, of the Empire and the Church, of the overlord and the great chiefs, in the midst of invasions of foreign peoples and armies, the local resistance to them and their occupations of territory, a new world had, as it were, been forming itself in Southern Europe, and especially in Gaul. Still more decidedly than in England had the invading Vikings in France attached themselves to the national element, even in the second generation they had given up their language; they discovered at the same time a form which reconciled the membership in the kingdom, and the recognition of the common faith, with provincial freedom. In France no native power successfully opposed and checked the advancing Normans, such as that which the Danes had encountered in England. On the contrary they exercised the greatest influence over the foundation of a new dynasty. A system developed itself over the whole realm, in which, both in the provincial authorities and in the lower degrees of rank, the possession of land and share in public office, feudalism and freedom, interpenetrated each other, and made a common-weal which yet harmonised with all the inclinations that lend charm and colouring to individual life. The old migratory impulse and spirit of warlike enterprise set before itself religious aims also, which lent it a higher sanction; war for the Church, and conquest (which meant for each man a personal occupation of land) were combined in one. Starting from Normandy, where great warlike families were formed that found no occupation at home (for these young populations are wont to multiply quickest), North French love of war and habits of war transplanted themselves to Spain and to Italy. How must it have elevated their spirit of enterprise when in the latter country the Papacy, which had just thrown off the supremacy of the emperor, and entered on a new stage in the development of its power, made common cause with their arms, and a practised Norman warrior, Robert Guiscard, appeared as Duke of Apulia and Calabria 'by grace of God and of S. Peter and, under his protection, of Sicily also in time to come'![11] The Pope gave him lands in fief, which had hitherto belonged to the Greek Empire, and which the Germans had been unable to conquer; he promised, in return, to defend the prerogatives of S. Peter. Between the hierarchy which was striving to perfect its supremacy, and the warlike chivalry of the 11th century, an alliance was formed like that once concluded with the leaders of the Frankish host. The ideas were already stirring from which proceeded the Crusades, the foundation of the Spanish kingdoms, and the creation of the Latin Empire at Constantinople. In the princely fiefs of the French Crown, and above all in Normandy, they seized on men's minds. Chivalrous life and hierarchic institutions, dialectic and poetry, continual war at home and ceaseless aspirations abroad, were here fused into a living whole.

In the Germanic countries also this close alliance of hierarchy and chivalry now sought to win influence, but here it met with a strenuous resistance. In England, Edward the Confessor had tried to prepare the way for it: Godwin and his house opposed it. And when the former named the Norman Robert Archbishop of Canterbury, and the latter drove him out, the English quarrels became connected with those of Rome; Stigand, the archbishop put in by Godwin, received his pallium from Pope Benedict X, who had been elected in the old tumultuous manner once more by the neighbouring Roman barons, but had to succumb to Hildebrand's zeal for a regular election by the cardinals, on which the emancipation of the Papacy depended. It seemed, then, intolerable at Rome that there should be a primate of the English Church, connected by his Church position with a phase of the supreme priesthood now condemned and abolished: it is very intelligible that this priesthood in its present form took up a hostile position towards the England of that time. In this, moreover, it found an ally ready to act in Duke William of Normandy, who wished to be regarded as the born champion of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty, and as the natural successor to its rights. Once already his father had collected a fleet to restore the exiled Aethelings, and was only kept back from an invasion by unfavourable weather. There had often since been rumours, that Edward had destined Duke William to be his successor; men asserted that Harold had previously recognised this right, and that in return William's daughter, and a part of the land as an independent possession, had been promised him.[12] In his own position William had cleared the ground for himself with a strong hand. He had beaten his feudal lord in the open field, and thus not only recovered a frontier fortress lost during his minority, but also strengthened the independence of the duchy. At the same time William had vanquished his rebellious vassals in arms, banished them, deprived them of their possessions, and got rid, with the Pope's consent, of an archbishop who was allied with them. Death freed him from another mighty opponent, the Duke of Brittany, who threatened him with a great maritime expedition. It throws a certain light on his policy, to see how he made himself master of the county of Maine in 1062. On the ground that Count Heribert, whom he had supported in his quarrel with Anjou, had become his vassal and made him his heir,[13] he overran Maine, and put his adherents in possession of the fortresses which commanded the land. However we may decide as to the details told us about his relations to Edward and Harold, it seems undeniable that William had received provisional promises from both—for Harold loved to side with Edward. He was not the man to put up with their being broken. The system, however, which through Harold's accession gained the upper hand in England, was in itself hostile to the Norman one: and that a king of England like the present might some day become dangerous to the duke, amidst all the other hostilities which threatened him, is clear. To these motives was now added the approbation of the Roman See. The Pope's chief Council deliberated on the enterprise, above all did the archdeacon of the Church, Hildebrand, declare himself in its favour. He was reproached—then or at a later time—with being the author of bloodshed; he declared that his conscience acquitted him, since he knew well, that the higher William mounted, the more useful he would be to the Church.[14] Alexander II now sent the duke the banner of the Church. As a few years before Robert Guiscard had become duke, so now a Norman duke was to become king, in the service of the Church. The Normans were still divided in their views as to the enterprise, but when this news arrived, all opposition ceased, for in the service of S. Peter and the Church men believed themselves secure of success; then lay and spiritual vassals emulously armed ships and men; in the harbour of S. Valery, which belonged to one of those who had been last gained over, the Count of Ponthieu, the fleet and the troops gathered together.[15] The Count of Flanders, the duke's father-in-law, secretly favoured the enterprise; another of his nearest relations, Count Odo of Champagne, brought up his troops in person; Count Eustace of Boulogne armed, to avenge on Godwin's house an affront he had once suffered at Dover; a number of leading Breton counts and lords attached themselves to William in opposition to their duke, who cherished wholly different projects. To the lords and knights of North France were joined many of lower rank, whose names show that they came from Gascony, Burgundy, the duchy of France, or the neighbouring districts belonging to the German Empire. Of their own free will they ranged themselves round William, to vindicate the right which he claimed to the English crown, but each man naturally entertained brilliant hopes also for himself. William is depicted as a man of vast bodily strength, which none could surpass or weary out, with a strong hardy frame, a cool head, an expression in his features which exactly intimated the violence with which he followed up his enemies, destroyed their states, and burnt their houses. Yet all was not passionate desire in him. He honoured his mother, he was true to his wife. Never did he undertake a quarrel without giving fair notice, and certainly never without having well prepared for it beforehand. He knew how to keep up a warlike spirit in his vassals: there were seen with him only splendid men and able leaders; he kept strict discipline. So also he had seized the moment for his enterprise, at which the political relations of Europe were favourable to him. The two great realms, which might otherwise have well interposed, the East Frank (or the Roman-German) as well as the West Frank, were under kings not yet of age: the guardianship of the latter lay with the Count of Flanders, who thought he did enough in not standing openly by his son-in-law, of the former with great bishops devoted heart and soul to the hierarchic system.[16] Harold, on the other hand, had no friend or ally, in North or East, in South or in West. To encounter the combined efforts of a great European coalition he had only himself and his Anglo-Saxons to rely on. Harold is depicted as coming forth perfect from the hands of nature, without blemish from head to foot, personally brave before the enemy, gentle among his own people, and endowed with natural eloquence. His enemy's passion for, and knowledge of, war were not in him; the taste of the Anglo-Saxons was directed more to peaceful enjoyments than to ceaseless wars. At this moment too they were weakened by great losses in the last bloody war; many of the most trustworthy and bravest had fallen, others wavered in their fidelity; Harold had not been able to put even the coasts in a state of defence; William landed without resistance, to demand his crown from him. When reminded of his promise Harold was believed to have answered in the very spirit of Anglo-Saxon independence, that he had no right to make any such promise without the consent of the Anglo-Saxon chiefs and people. And not to meet the invading foe instantly at the sword's point would have seemed to him disgraceful cowardice. And so William and Harold, the North French knights and the national war-array of the Anglo-Saxons, encountered at Hastings. Harold fell at the very beginning of the fight. The Normans, according to their wont, knew how to separate their enemies by a pretended flight, and then by a sudden return to surround and destroy them in isolated bodies. It was the iron-clad, yet rapidly moving cavalry, which decided the battle.[17]

William expected, now that his rival had fallen, to be recognised by the Anglo-Saxons as their King. Instead of this the chiefs and the capital raised Edgar the Aetheling, grandson of Edmund Ironsides, to the throne: as though William would retire before a scion of the old West-Saxon house, of which he professed to be the champion. He held firmly to the transfer made to him by the last king without regard to any third person, ratified as it was by the Roman See, and marched on the capital.

Edgar was a boy, and the magnates were at variance as to who should have the authority to exercise guardianship over him. When William appeared before the city, and threatened the walls with his siege-machines, it too lost courage. The embassy which it sent him was amazed at the grandeur and splendour of his appearance, was convinced as to the right which King Edward had transferred to him,[18] and penetrated by the danger which a resistance, in itself hopeless, would bring on the city. Aldermen and people abandoned Edgar, and recognised William as King. There is an old story, that the county of Kent, on capitulating, made good conditions for itself. To the nobles also, who submitted by degrees, similar terms may have been accorded, but their position was almost entirely altered. We need notice only this one point. Their chief right, which they exercised to a perhaps unauthorised extent, was that of electing the King; they had now elected twice, but the first election was annulled by defeat in the open field, the second by increasing superiority in arms; they had to recognise the Conqueror, who claimed by inheritance, as their King, whether they would or no. There is something almost symbolic of the resulting state of things in the story of William's coronation, which was now celebrated by the tomb of Edward the Confessor at Westminster. For the first time the voices of the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans were united to greet him as King, but the discordant outcry of the two languages seemed a sign of conflict to the troops gathered outside, and made the warlike fury, so hardly kept under control, boil up again in them; they set the houses of London on fire. Whilst all hurried from the church, the ceremony it is said was completed by shuddering priests in the light of the flames: the new King himself, who at other times did not know what fear was, trembled.[19]

By this coronation-acclaim, two constituent elements of the world, which had been fundamentally at conflict with each other, became indissolubly united.

That against which the Anglo-Saxons had set themselves to guard with all their strength during the last period, the inroad of the Norman-French element into their Church and their State, was now accomplished in fullest measure. William's maxim was, that all who had taken arms against him and his right had forfeited their property; those who escaped, and the heirs of those who had fallen, were deprived alike. In a short time we find William's leading comrades in the war, as earls of Hereford, Buckingham, Shrewsbury, Cornwall; his valiant brothers were endowed with hundreds of fiefs; and when the insurrection which quickly broke out led to new outlawries and new confiscations, all the counties were filled with French knights. From Caen came over the blocks of freestone to build castles and towers, by which they hoped to bridle the towns and the country. It is an exaggeration to assume a complete transfer of property from the one people to the other; among the tenants in chief about half the names are still Anglo-Saxon. At first, those who from any even accidental cause had not actually met William in arms were left in possession of their lands, though without hereditary right: later, after they had conducted themselves quietly for some time, this too was given back to them. In the next century it excited surprise that so many great properties should have remained in the hands of the Anglo-Saxons.[20] It would have been altogether against William's plan, to treat the Anglo-Saxons as having no rights. He wished to appear as the rightful successor of the Anglo-Saxon kings: by their laws he would abide, only adding the legal usages of the Normans to those of the Danes, Mercians, and West Saxons; and it was not merely through his will, but also by its higher form, and connexion with the ideas of the century, that the Norman law gained the upper hand. But however much we may deduct from the usual exaggerations, this fact remains, that the change of ownership which took place, like the change in the constitution and the general state of things, was of enormous extent: the military and judicial power passed entirely into the hands of the victors in the war. And in the Church alterations no less thoroughgoing ensued. Under the authority of Papal legates, the great office-holders of the English Church, who had been opposed to the newly arisen hierarchic system, were mercilessly deprived of their places. The King was afterwards personally on tolerably good terms with Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, but was not inclined on his account to oppose the Church. The archbishopric, and with it the primacy of England, passed to the man in whom the union of the Church authority and orthodoxy of that which we may call the especially hierarchic century was most vividly represented, the man who had been the chief agent in establishing the dogma of Transubstantiation, the great teacher of Bec, Lanfranc. In most of the bishoprics and abbeys we find Normans of kindred tendency. It was precisely in the enterprise against England that the hierarchy concluded its compact with the hereditary feudal state, which was all the more lasting in that they were both still in process of formation.

In this way was England attached by the strongest ties to the Continent, and to the new system of life and ecclesiastico-political constitution which had then gained the upper hand in Latin Europe. Under the next three successors of the Conqueror, none of whom enjoyed a completely legal recognition, it sometimes appeared as though England would again tear herself away from Normandy: such variances were not without influence on home affairs: in the general relations of the country they wrought no change at all. On the contrary, these were developed on a still larger scale, owing to the complicated family connexions which so peculiarly characterise that epoch. From the county of Anjou which, like the dominion of the Capets, had been formed in the struggle against the invasion of the Normans, a sovereign arose who had the right to rule the Norman conquests, the son of the Conqueror's granddaughter, Henry Plantagenet. He had become, though not without appeal to the sword, which his father wielded powerfully on his behalf, master of Normandy, and had then married Eleanor of Poitou, who brought him a great part of South France: he then succeeded more by fair means than by force in establishing his right to the throne of England. Henry was the first to establish in France the power of the great vassals, by which the crown was long in danger of being overthrown. The Kings of Castille and Navarre submitted to his arbitration. And under a sovereign whose grandfather had been King of Jerusalem, and one of the mightiest rulers of that Western kingdom established in the East, the tendencies, which had led so far, could not fail to extend themselves to the utmost in all their spheres of action? The hierarchic and chivalrous spirit of Continental Europe, which under the Normans had seized on England, was much strengthened by the accession of the Plantagenets. It thus came to pass that after the disastrous loss of Jerusalem, the knights of Anjou and of Guienne, from Brittany (for Henry had added this province also to his family possessions) and from Normandy, gathered together in London, and took the Cross in company with the English. England formed a part of the Plantagenet Empire—if we may apply this word to so anomalous a state—and contributed to its extension, even though no interest of its own was involved. But towards such a result the relations which this alliance established between England and Southern Europe had long tended. Not seldom was the military power of the provinces over the sea employed for enterprises that aimed at the direct advantage of England itself. Whether and when the German element without this influence would have become master of the British group of islands none could say. The English dominion over Ireland in particular is derived from Henry II, and his alliance at that time with the Papacy; he crossed thither under the Pope's authorisation: at the Pope's word the native kings did homage to him as their lord.[21] And the foreign-born Plantagenets struck living root in England itself. As Henry II's mother was the daughter of a princess descended from the West-Saxon house, he was hailed by the natives as their lawfully-descended King; in accordance with Edward the Confessor's prophecy, that from the severed bough should spring up a new tree: they traced his descent without scruple back to Wodan. This King, moreover, has impressed his mark deeply on English life; to this day justice is administered in England under forms established by him.

The will of destiny cannot be gainsaid. Just as Germany without its connexion with Italy, so England without its connexion with France, would never have been what it is. More than all, the great commonwealth of the western nations, whose life pervades and determines the history of each separate state, would never have come into existence. But on this ground first, amidst continual warfare, was gradually accomplished the formation of the nationalities.

CHAPTER III.

THE CROWN IN CONFLICT WITH CHURCH AND NOBLES.

It was an evil thought, and all the more atrocious because manifold ties had been already gradually formed between the two populations. How could they ever become fused into one nation if the one was always plotting the destruction of the other?

It was not merely by alliances of blood and family, but even still more by great common political and ecclesiastical interests that the English nationality, which contains both elements, was founded. And, in truth, the leading impulse towards it was that the conquerors, no less than the conquered, felt themselves oppressed by the yoke which the two supreme authorities laid on them, and hence both combined to oppose them. But centuries elapsed before this could be effected. The first occasion for it was given when the two authorities quarrelled with each other, and alternately called on the population to give its voluntary aid.

For, as the authorities which represent the objective ideas are of different origin, they have never in our Western Europe remained more than a short time in complete harmony with each other. Each retains its natural claim to be supreme, and not to endure the supremacy of the other. The one has always more before its eyes the unity of the whole, the other the needs and rights of the several kingdoms and states. Amidst their antagonism European life has moulded itself and made progress.

Close as their union was at the time of the Conquest of England, yet even then their quarrel broke out. Though the Conqueror pledged himself again to pay a tribute which the Anglo-Saxon kings had formerly charged themselves with, and which had been long unpaid, yet this was not sufficient for the Roman See: Gregory VII demanded to be recognised as feudal lord of England. But this was not what William understood, when he had allowed the papal banner to wave over the fleet that brought him to England. It was not from the Pope's authorisation that he derived his claim to the English crown, as if this had been merely transferred to him by the Papal See, but from the Anglo-Saxon kings, as whose heir and legal successor he wished to be regarded. He answered the Pope that he could enter into no other relation to him than that in which his predecessors in England had stood to previous popes.

For the first time the popes had to give up altogether the attempt to make kings their feudal dependents; they attempted, however, an almost deeper encroachment into the very heart of the royal power, when they then formed the plan of severing the spiritual body corporate, which already possessed the most extensive temporal privileges, from their feudal obligation to the sovereigns. The English kings opposed them in this also with resolution and success. Under the influence of the father of scholasticism, Anselm of Canterbury, Primate of England, a satisfactory agreement was arranged long before the Concordat was obtained in Germany. In general there was little to fear, as long as the Archbishop of Canterbury had a good understanding with the Crown; and this was the case in the first half of the 12th century, if not on all points, yet, at least on all leading questions. Far-reaching differences did not appear until the higher ecclesiastics embraced the party of the Papacy, which happened in England through Thomas Becket.

Henry II and Becket.

It was precisely from him that this would have been least expected. He had been the King's Chancellor, or if we may avail ourselves of a somewhat remote equivalent expression, his most trusted cabinet minister, and had as such, in both home and foreign affairs, rendered the most valuable services. The introduction of scutage is attributed to him, and he certainly had a large share in the acquisition of Brittany. It was through the direct influence of the King that he was elected archbishop.[22] But from that hour he seemed to have become another man. As he had hitherto rivalled the courtiers in splendour, pleasure, and pomp, so would he now by strictness of life equal the sanctity of the saints; as hitherto to the King, so did he now attach himself to the interests of the Church. It might, so we may suppose, be some satisfaction to his self-esteem, that he could now confront his stern and mighty sovereign as Archbishop 'also by the grace of God,' for so he designates himself in his letter to the King; or he might feel himself bound to recover the possessions of his Church, which had been wrested from it by the Crown or the high nobility. But, as spiritually-minded men are moved more by universal ideas than by special interests, so for Becket the determining impulse without doubt lay above all in the sympathy which he devoted to the hierarchic movement in general.

Those were the times in which the attempt of the Emperor Frederic I to call a council, and in it to decide on a contested papal election, had created general excitement among the peoples and churches of Southern Europe, which would only consent to be led by a pope independent of the empire. Driven from Italy, Alexander III, the Pope rejected by the Emperor, found a cordial reception in France; and here he now collected on his side a papal council in opposition to the imperial one, in which the cardinals, whose election the Emperor was trying to annul, and the bishops of Spain and South Italy, and those of the collective Gaulish dioceses (more than a hundred in number), and the English bishops also, gathered around him, and laid the Pope elected by the Emperor under the anathema. It was inevitable that the idea of the Church, as independent of the temporal power, should here find its strongest expression. Some canons were passed which prohibited the usurpation of ecclesiastical property by the laity, and made it a crime in the bishops to allow it.[23]

Thomas Becket was welcomed in this council with a seductive kindness; but besides this, what is harder than to set oneself against the common feeling of one's own order, when moderation already appears to be apostasy? He returned to England filled with the ideas of hierarchic independence; in preparing to carry it through, he necessarily brought on the conflict which had hitherto been avoided.

The Plantagenet King, whose whole heart was in the work of securing the obedience of the manifold provinces that had fallen to his lot; who hastened ceaselessly from one to the other (when people thought him far away in South France, he had already recrossed the sea to England), ever occupied in extending his inherited power by institutions of a legal and administrative nature, was not inclined to give way to the Church in this attempt. He would neither make the election of the higher clergy free, nor allow their excommunication to be valid without State control; he not only maintained the right of the lay courts to try ecclesiastics for heinous offences, which else often remained unpunished; but, even in the sphere of spiritual jurisdiction, he claimed to hear appeals in the last instance without regard to the Pope. In all this the lay and spiritual nobility agreed with him; in a Council at Clarendon they framed 'constitutions,' in which they declared these rules to be the law of the realm, as it had always been observed, and ought to be observed henceforth.[24]

Becket did not possess the inflexible obstinacy which distinguishes most of the champions of the hierarchy. As the accordant voice of Europe moved him to take up the hierarchic principles, so now the accordant voice of his country's rulers made an impression on him: he listened to the ecclesiastics who entreated him not to draw the King's displeasure on them, and to the laymen, who prayed him not to bring on them the necessity of executing it on the ecclesiastics: he virtually accepted the Constitutions of Clarendon. But then again he could not prevail on himself to observe them. Only when his vacillation endangered him personally, so that he could expect nothing else to follow but a condemnation by a new assembly of the royal court, did he come to a decision. Then he took the hierarchic side resolutely; in contradiction to the Constitutions, he appealed to the Pope. It is a remarkable day in English history, that 14th October 1164, on which Thomas Becket, after reading mass, appeared before the court without his archiepiscopal dress, but cross in hand. He forbade the earl, who wished to announce the judgment to him, to speak, since no layman had power to sit in judgment on his spiritual father;[25] he again put himself under the protection of God and the Roman Church, and then passed from the court, no man venturing to lay hands on him, still armed with his cross, to a church close by, from whence he escaped to the Continent. By this he brought into England the war of the two powers, which had already burst into flame in Italy and Germany. The archbishop and primate rejected the supreme judicial authority of the Curia Regis; only in the chief pontiff at Rome did he recognise his rightful judge: by undertaking to bring into full view the complete independence of the spiritual principle on this ground also, he broke down that unity of authority, which had, been hitherto maintained in the English realm, and entered into open war with his King.

Henry II was, like most of the sovereigns of that age, above all things a warrior; you could see by his stride that he spent his days on horseback; and he was an indefatigable hunter. But yet he found time besides for study; he took pleasure in solving, in the company of scholars, the difficulties of the theologico-philosophical problems which then largely occupied men's minds; there is no doubt that he also fully understood these politico-ecclesiastical questions. He was by no means a good husband, rather the contrary, but, in other things, he could control himself; he was moderate in eating and drinking. Success did not make him overweening, but all the more prudent:[26] ill-success found him resolute; yet it was remarked that he was more severe in success, milder in adversity. If contradicted, he showed all the excitability of the Southern French nature; he passed from promises to threats, from flatteries to outbursts of wrath, until he met with compliance. His administration at home witnesses to a noble conception of his mission and to a practical understanding; from his lion-like visage shone forth a pair of quiet eyes, but how suddenly did they flame up with wild fire, if the passion was roused that slumbered in the depths of his soul! It was the passion of unlimited power; an ambition for which, as he once said, the world appeared to be too small. He never forgave an opponent; he never reconciled himself with an enemy or took him again into favour.

He would of himself have been much inclined to abandon Alexander III, and attach himself to the Pope set up by the Emperor: his ambassadors took part in a German diet at which the most extreme steps were approved of. But Henry was not sufficiently master of his clergy nor, above all, of his people for this; the solemn curse of Thomas Becket wrought on men from far away. Was there really any foundation for what men then said, that the King thought it better that his foe should be in the country rather than out of it? An apparent reconciliation was brought about, which, however, left the main questions undecided, each side only consenting generally to a peace with the other. Becket did not allow himself to be hindered by it, on his return to England, from excommunicating leading ecclesiastics who had supported the King's party. But at this Henry's deep-seated wrath awoke. Beset by the exiles with cries for protection, he let the complaint escape him in the presence of his knights, that among so many to whom he had shown favour there was not one who had courage enough to avenge the insults offered to him.[27] As opposed to the Church sympathies which through the clergy wrought on all people, the temporal state was mainly kept together by the reciprocal relations of the feudal lord and sovereign to his vassals and knights, and of them to him: to spiritual reverence was opposed personal devotion. But these feelings, too, as they have their justification, so they have their moral limitations; they are as capable of exaggeration and excess as all others. Enflamed by the King's words which seemed to touch the honour of knighthood, four of his knights hastened to Canterbury, and sought out the man, who dared to bid the King defiance in his own kingdom; as Becket refused to recall the excommunication, they murdered him horribly in the cathedral. When required to obey the King, Becket was wont to reserve the rights of the Church and the priesthood; for this reservation he died.

Henry II by calling forth, intentionally or not, this brutal act of violence in the ecclesiastical strife, drew on himself the catastrophe of his life.

By Becket's murder the ideas of Church independence gained what was yet wanting to them, a martyr: his death was more advantageous to them than his life could ever have been. The belief that the victim wrought miracles, which were ascribed to him in increasing measure, at first slight, then more and more surprising ones, viz. cures of incurable diseases,—who does not know the resistless nature of this illusion, bound up as it is with the nearest needs of man in every form?—made him the idol of England. Henry II had to live to see the man who had refused him the old accustomed obedience, reverenced among his people with almost divine honours as one of the greatest saints that had ever lived. The great Hohenstaufen in the unsuccessful struggle with the Papacy was at last brought to declare that all he had hitherto done rested on an error; and in like manner, but one far more humiliating and painful, Henry II had to do penance, and receive the discipline of the scourge, at the tomb of the man who had been murdered by his loyal subjects. On a hasty glance it seems as though his Constitutions were established, but a more accurate inquiry shows that the articles which displeased the Pope were left out. The hierarchic ideas gained the day in England also.

It was precisely the Church quarrel that fed the discords which broke out in the King's own house. His eldest son found a pretence for his revolt, and essentially promoted it, by alleging that the murderers of the glorious martyr were unpunished; he on his side promised the clergy to make good all existing injuries, since what belonged to the Church should not serve man's ostentation. The example of the elder wrought on the younger sons too, who, to withstand their father, recognised the supremacy of the King of France. Henry's last years were filled with depression, and even with despair; when dying he was believed to have bequeathed his curse to his children. In the cloisters his death was ascribed to the intercession and merits of S. Thomas.

For with the acceptance of the hierarchic ideas the prestige of their martyr grew day by day. In the crusade of 1189 men saw him appear in dreams, and declare that he was appointed to protect the fleet, to calm the storms.

It was under these auspices that the chivalry of the Plantagenet realm took part in the Third Crusade: King Richard (in whom the ideas of Church and Chivalry attained their highest splendour) at their head gave back to the already lost kingdom of Jerusalem, in despite of a very powerful foe, a certain amount of stability: as he served the hierarchic views with all his power, there was no question under him as to any dispute between Church and State. But this power itself could not be increased owing to his absence. Whilst he fought for the Church far away, elements of resistance were stirring in his realm which had been there long ago, and soon after his death came to the most violent outbreak.

John Lackland and Magna Charta.

Despite all the community of interests between the sovereigns of the Conquest and their vassals, grounds of hostility between them had never been altogether wanting. The Conqueror's sons had to make concessions to the great lords, because their succession was not secure; they needed a voluntary recognition, the price of which consisted in a relaxation of the harsh laws with which the monarchy had at first fettered every department of life. But when the great nobles had managed, or decided, contests for the throne, Were they likely to feel bound unconditionally to obey the man whom they had raised? Besides Henry II in his ecclesiastical quarrel needed the consent of his vassals; his court-Assemblies were no longer confined to proclamations of ordinances from the one side only; consultations were held, leading to decisions that concerned them all.

But what is now surprising is the fact, that even the associates in the Conquest, and much more their descendants, claimed the rights which the Anglo-Saxon magnates had once possessed. They, too, appealed incessantly to the Laga, the laws of Edward the Confessor, by which was meant the collection of old legal customs, the observation of which had been promised from the first. Following the precedent of their kings, the families that had risen through the Conquest regarded themselves as the heirs of the fallen Anglo-Saxon chiefs, into whose place they had stepped. The rights of the old Witan and of the vassals of the new feudal state became fused together.

We must now lay greater weight than is commonly done on the incidents that occurred during King Richard's absence. He had entrusted the administration of the realm to a man of low origin, William, bishop of Ely, who carried it on with great energy, and not without the pomp and splendour, which grace authority, but arouse jealousy. Hence lay and spiritual chiefs combined against him: with Earl John, the brother of the absent King, at their head, they banished the hated bishop by the strong hand, and of their own authority set another in his place. The city of London, which had been already allowed the election of its own magistrates by Henry II, had then formed a so-called Communia after the pattern of the Flemish and North French towns; bishops, earls, and barons, swore to support the city in it.[28]

These first attempts at an opposition by the estates obtained fresh weight when on Richard's death a contest again arose about the succession. Earl John claimed it for himself, but Arthur, an elder brother's son, seemed to have a better right, and had been moreover recognised at once in the South French provinces. The English nobles fortified their castles, and for some time assumed an almost threatening position; they only acknowledged John on the assurance that each and all should have their rights.[29] John's possession of the crown was therefore derived not merely from right of inheritance, but also from their election.

A strong territorial confederacy had thus gradually grown up, confronting the royal power with a claim to independent rights; events now happened that roused it into full life.

King John incurred the suspicion of having murdered Arthur, who had fallen into his hands, to rid himself of his claims; he was accused of it by the peers of France, and pronounced guilty; on which the Plantagenet provinces which were fiefs of the French crown went over to the King of France at the first attack. The English nobility would at least not fight for a sovereign on whom such a heinous suspicion lay: on another pretence it abandoned him.

But then broke out a new quarrel with the Church. The most powerful pontiff that ever sat in the Roman See, Innocent III, thought good to decide a disputed election at Canterbury by passing over both candidates, including the King's, and caused the election of, or rather himself named, one of his friends from the great school at Paris, Stephen Langton. As King John did not acknowledge him, Innocent laid England under an Interdict.

Alike careless and cruel, naturally hasty and untrustworthy, of doubtful birthright, and now rejected by the Church, John must have rather expected resistance than support from the great men of the realm. He tried to assure himself of those he suspected by taking hostages from their families; he confiscated the property of the ecclesiastics who complied with the Pope's orders, and took it under his own management; he employed every means which the still unlimited extent of the supreme authority allowed, to obtain money and men; powerfully and successfully he used the sword. But in the long run he could not maintain himself by these means. When a revolt broke out in Wales at the open instigation of the Pope, and the King's vassals were summoned to put it down, even among them a general discontent was perceptible; John had reason to dread that if he came near the enemy with such an army he might be delivered into their hands or killed: he did not venture to carry out the campaign. And meanwhile he saw himself threatened from abroad also. King Philip Augustus of France armed, to attack his old opponent at home (whom he had already driven from in those provinces over which he himself was feudal sovereign), and to carry out the Pope's excommunication against him. He boasted, probably with good grounds, of having the English barons' letters and seals, promising that they would join him. He would have restored all the fugitives and exiles; the Church element would have raised itself all the more strongly, in proportion to its previous depression; a general revolt would have accompanied his attack, the English government according to all appearance would have been lost.

King John knew this well: to avoid immediate ruin he seized on a means of escape which was completely unexpected, but quite decisive—he gave over his kingdom in vassalage to the Pope.

What William I had so expressly rejected was now accepted in a moment of extreme pressure, from which such a step was the only means of escape. The moment the Pope was recognised as feudal lord of England, not only must his hostility cease, but he would be bound to take the realm under his protection. He now forbade the King of France, whom he had before urged on to its conquest, to carry out the invasion, which was already prepared.

It appears as if the barons had originally agreed with the King's proceeding, although they did not entirely approve its form. They maintained that they had risen up for the Church's rights,[30] and saw in the Pope a natural ally. They thought to gain their own purpose all the more surely now that Stephen Langton received the see of Canterbury, a man who, while he represented the Papal authority, at the same time zealously made their interests his own. At the very moment when the archbishop absolved the King from the excommunication, he made him swear that he would restore the good laws, especially those of King Edward, and would do all according to the legal decisions of his courts. It may be regarded as the first time that a Norman-Plantagenet king's administration was acted on by an obligatory engagement, when King John, on the point of taking the field against some barons whom he regarded as rebels, was hindered by the archbishop who reminded him that he would thus be breaking his last oath, which bound him to take judicial proceedings. The tradition that a forgotten charter of Henry I was produced by the archbishop (who was certainly, as his writings show, a scholar of research), and recognised as a legal document which gave them a firm footing, may admit of some doubt; there is no doubt that it was Stephen Langton who gathered around him the great nobles and bound them by a mutual engagement, to defend, even at the risk of life, the old liberties and rights which they derived from Anglo-Saxon times.

It was, in fact, of considerable importance that the primate, on whose co-operation with the King the Norman state originally rested, united himself in this matter as closely as possible with the nobles; among all alike, without regard to their origin, whether from France or from England, had arisen the wish to limit the crown, as it had been limited in the Anglo-Saxon period.

Here, however, they had to discover that the Pope was minded to protect the King, his vassal, not only against attacks from abroad, but also against movements at home. The engagements which the barons had formed, when he released them from their oath of fidelity to the King, he now declared to be invalid and void. The legate in England reported unfavourably on their proceedings, and it was seen that he was intimately allied with the King. The war was still raging on the continent, and the King had been again defeated, at Bouvines, July 27, 1214; he had returned disheartened, but not without bodies of mercenaries, both horse and foot, which excited anxiety in the allied nobles. This feeling was strengthened by the fact that, after the death of a chancellor connected with them by family, and on good terms with them, he raised a foreigner, Peter des Roches, to that dignity, and it was believed that this foreigner would lend a hand to any attempt at restoring the previous state of things. Acts of violence of the old sort, and the King's lusts, which brought dishonour into their families, added to their indignation. In short, the barons, far from breaking up their alliance, confirmed it with new oaths. While they pressed the King to accept the demands which they laid before him, they sent one of the chief of their number, Eustace de Vescy, to Rome, to win the Pope to their cause, by reminding him of the gratitude due to them for their services in the cause of the Church. As lord of England, for they did not hesitate to designate him as such, he might admonish King John, and, if necessary, force him to restore unimpaired the old rights guaranteed them by the charters of earlier Kings.[31]

But not so did Innocent understand his right of supreme lordship in England; he did not side with those who had helped to win the victory for him over the King, but with the King himself, to whose sudden decision he owed its fruits—the acknowledgment of his feudal superiority. He blamed the archbishop for concealing the movements of the barons from him, and for having, perhaps, even encouraged them, though knowing their pernicious nature: with what view was he stirring questions of which no mention had been made either under the King's father or brother? He censured the barons for refusing the scutage, which had been paid from old times, and for their threat of proceeding sword in hand. He repeated his command to them to break up their confederacy, under threat of excommunication.

As one step lower the primate and nobles, so in the highest sphere Innocent and John were in alliance. The Papacy, then in possession of supremacy over the world, made common cause with royalty. Would not the nobles, some from reverence for the supreme Pontiff's authority, others from a sense of religious obligation, yield to this alliance? Such was not their intention.[32]

The King proffered the barons an arbitration, the umpire to be the Pope, or else an absolute reference of the whole matter to him, who then by his apostolic power could settle what was right and lawful. They could not possibly accept either the one or the other, after the known declarations of the Pope. As they persevered in their hostile attitude, the King called on the archbishop to carry out the instructions of a Papal brief, and pronounce the barons excommunicated. Stephen Langton answered that he knew better what was the true intention of the holy father. The Pope's name this time remained quite powerless. Rather it was preached in London that the highest spiritual power should not encroach on temporal affairs; Peter, in the significant phrase of the time, could not be Constantine as well.[33] Only among the lower citizens was there a party favourable to the King, but they were put down at a blow by the great barons and the rich citizens. The capital threw its whole weight on the side of the barons. They rose in arms and formally renounced their allegiance to the King; they proclaimed war against him under the name of 'the army of God.' Thus confronted by the whole kingdom, in which there appeared to be only one opinion, the King had no means of resistance remaining, no choice left.