all the bells of London’s six score churches rang in joy that the rebellion in England was at an end.
A few days later the king advanced to Huntingdon, which surrendered to him on 21st July. He then turned to attack Earl Hugh’s castle of Framlingham, and by the 24th had advanced with his siege train as far as Seleham; but next day the earl met him there, gave up his castles of Bungay and Framlingham, and agreed to pay a heavy fine for his offence and to make amends for the damage wrought by his soldiers; he was at once restored to his earldom, and his Flemish troops were permitted to leave the country unmolested, but not to take any property with them. During this interview, which took place on horseback in the open air, the king was kicked on the leg by the horse of Tostes de St. Omer, a Templar of prominence, but the injury did not prevent his going on to Northampton, where the last act of the rebellion in England was played. Bishop Hugh Puiset, who had brought over a detachment of Flemings under command of his nephew, the Count of Bar, on the very day on which the Scottish king was captured, had sent back the infantry at once, but had retained his nephew and his men-at-arms until the fortune of war had set definitely in Henry’s favour; he now made submission, gave up his castles of Durham, Northallerton, and Norham, and dismissed his foreign allies. The Earl of Clare, who was believed to have been plotting action with Gilbert Munfichet when the latter fortified his London castle, tendered assurances of loyalty. Roger Mowbray surrendered Thirsk; Ansketil Malory, who had defended Leicester so well, and had even attacked and defeated the loyalists at Northampton, gave up his master’s castles of Leicester, Groby, and Mountsorel; and Earl Ferrers, who not long before had sacked Nottingham, gave up Tutbury, which had been besieged for some time past by Rhys and his Welshmen. Rhys was rewarded by a grant of the castle and district of “Emelin,” while the loyalty of David ap Owain of North Wales was recompensed by the hand of Emma, King Henry’s half-sister.
Although affairs in England had been settled so satisfactorily there was no time to be lost; taking advantage of Henry’s absence King Louis had pressed forward with the young King Henry and invested Rouen. The town was devoted to the elder Henry’s interests; it was well provisioned and was in no great danger, but it was clearly desirable that it should be relieved as soon as possible, and on 8th August Henry sailed for Barfleur, carrying his more important prisoners with him and taking back not only the Brabantine mercenaries he had brought over in June but also a number of Welsh troops. These latter on 12th August, the day after their arrival at Rouen, crossed the Seine and made a bold and successful raid on the French camp, and next day a sally from the town resulted in the easy destruction of the defensive works of the besiegers’ camp. When the war had opened just a year before, in August 1173, with the siege of Verneuil, Louis had shown a blend of treachery, cowardice, and incompetence, and now that the war was closing with this siege of Rouen his conduct displayed the same features. Just before Henry’s arrival, on St. Laurence’s Day (10th August), the French king had declared a truce in honour of the saint and then made secret preparations for storming the city; fortunately some priests, who happened to be on the belfry looking at the view, saw the movement in the enemy’s camp and rang the tocsin; the citizens flew to arms, and the French took therefrom no advantage but dishonour and disgrace. On the day after the successful sally the French burnt their siege engines and fled, Louis staving off pursuit by proposing a conference at Malannai next day, but again breaking his word and flying into France.
Negotiations were opened on 8th September at Gisors, but as Richard was still defying his father in Poitou a settlement was postponed and Henry went in pursuit of his warlike son. A couple of weeks sufficed to bring Richard to terms, and on the last day of September conditions of peace were drawn up. The followers of the young king were released from the allegiance they had sworn to him, and were received back into the king’s favour and as full possession of their lands as they had at the time war broke out; prisoners were released without ransom, except such as had already come to terms and also excepting the King of Scotland, the Earls of Leicester and Chester, and Ralph of Fougères; all castles that had been built or strengthened during the rebellion were to be restored to their former condition, and, indeed, so far as possible everything was to resume its previous existence. The young King Henry was granted two castles in Normandy and a yearly allowance of £15,000 Angevin money (£3600 English); Richard should have two castles of no strategic importance in Poitou and half the revenues of that province, and Geoffrey half the inheritance of Constance, daughter of Count Conan of Brittany, and the whole when he married her. At the same time the young king agreed to the bestowal upon his youngest brother, John, of the castles of Nottingham and Marlborough, and £1000 from the English revenues, as well as castles and rents in Normandy, Anjou, and Maine. Richard and Geoffrey then did homage to their father, but this ceremony was dispensed with in Henry’s case out of deference to his rank of king. Finally, in December, King William the Lion obtained his release from the prison at Falaise by becoming the vassal of Henry and undertaking to hold Scotland under the English king. To ensure the fulfilment of this treaty the castles of Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Berwick, Jedburgh, and Stirling were surrendered to Henry. The close of 1174 thus found Henry completely triumphant and the formidable combination of his enemies absolutely shattered.
The economic effects of the rebellion were far-reaching. Those who had been involved in it returned, it is true, nominally to the position in which they had been before the outbreak, but their lands had been systematically ravaged, their castles given to the flames, and blackened ruins told for a generation the tale of their disastrous failure. So far as England was concerned these effects were more localised and less extensive. During the war Mowbray’s castles of Kirkby Malzeard and Axholme had been destroyed, and at its close the same fate befell Thirsk. Thetford and Brackley and the two Kentish castles of Allington and Saltwood had been dismantled before the end of 1174, and so had Geoffrey de Turville’s castle of Weston. Next year saw the overthrow of Groby and Tutbury; Dudley, the castle of Earl Ferrers’ son-in-law, Gervase Painel, was razed and its owner fined 500 marks for his share in the revolt, his neighbour and comrade in arms, Hamo de Masci, being at the same time fined 300 marks. The strongholds of Huntingdon and Leicester were rendered incapable of again resisting the king’s forces, and the great English military architect and engineer, Ælnoth, came down to supervise the levelling of the walls of Framlingham Castle and the filling of its fosse. For strategic reasons the fort at Walton, which had successfully resisted the Flemish invaders, was destroyed in 1176, and also the keep of Bennington, and the Bishop of Durham only saved his castle of Northallerton by a payment of 2000 marks. What other castles disappeared we do not know, but such as remained were taken into the king’s hands, the Earl of Gloucester yielding Bristol and Gloucester with great reluctance.
The expenses of the war must have strained Henry’s finances severely. For the expeditions on the Scottish border alone we know that Ranulph de Glanville and Robert de Stuteville paid over £2000 to their troops, and the cost of the mercenaries employed on the Continent must have been very heavy. A large but quite uncertain sum must have been obtained from the ransom of the many important prisoners taken, and further contributions were levied in the form of fines. The Earl of Leicester was impleaded by Bertram de Verdon, Sheriff of Leicestershire, for injuries done by his men and fined 500 marks. Nine citizens of York who had sided with the rebels were fined 1300 marks between them, several of them being also fined smaller sums for receiving goods belonging to Flemings. These latter had been banished from England, saving their lives at the expense of their property, and the township of Selby was fined £5 for allowing Flemings to carry away their goods, William of Selby 5 marks for not detaining Flemings whom he saw pass through the town, and Fulk of Selby £10 for hiring his ship to the Flemings. For the most part these foreigners were clothworkers, and their forfeited property, consisting chiefly of wool, did not yield any great sum. A more fruitful source of income arose from the estates of the Earl of Leicester and his companions during the time that they were in arms against the king, and from these only about £300 were obtained between September 1174 and the restoration of the estates to their owners. Apart from the 2600 marks assessed upon the citizens of York, the Earl of Leicester, Gervase Painel, and Hamo de Masci, £500 was raised by smaller fines upon persons who had sold horses or armour or given other assistance to the rebels. Even adding in Earl Hugh’s fine of 700 marks and the 500 marks which Gospatric was fined for the surrender of Appleby, the total amount accounted for at the exchequer as wrung from the vanquished party seems to have fallen far short of £4000. Searching for some device to fill his empty coffers Henry hit upon the idea of vigorously punishing all offences against the Forest Laws which had been committed during the time of the disturbances. Accordingly, in August 1175, he held pleas of the forest at Nottingham and afterwards at York in person and sent special commissioners to hold similar pleas in other counties. The baronage protested, and Richard de Luci produced the king’s own writ issued at the time of the war, apparently suspending the Forest Laws and authorising any person to take wood and venison in the royal forests. It is as difficult to understand why Henry issued such a writ as it is to see upon what grounds he set it aside. Possibly a writ intended to apply to certain special cases, such as the taking of venison for the provisioning of the royal troops or of timber for military works, had by a misunderstanding or error of wording been made to apply generally, and Henry declined to accept responsibility for the mistake. However this may be, it is clear that his action in pressing these pleas was at least a piece of sharp practice, and the heavy fines exacted can hardly be regarded in the circumstances as anything but extortion. The sum of the fines inflicted appears to have been £13,450, and although much of this was not paid at once and some was in the end remitted, the eventual yield seems to have been quite £10,000. About 1700 persons were amerced; and when it is remembered that to these must be added a large number of cases in which whole townships were fined, it is clear that the total number of persons affected must have been very large. A few fortunate counties, such as Kent, Sussex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, contained no royal forests, but elsewhere every class of man was swept into the legal net, from the great baron to the villein and including the clergy. Henry had indeed succeeded in wringing from the papal legate, Cardinal Ugoccione, the concession that the clergy should be subject to the Forest Laws.
The legate had been sent over to settle the rival claims of the sees of Canterbury and York, but his arrival only tended to aggravate matters. At a synod held at Westminster on 18th March 1176, the endeavours of Archbishop Roger of York to oust Richard of Canterbury from his seat of honour on the legate’s right hand led to a disgraceful scuffle, in which Archbishop Roger was attacked by the supporters of the southern primate, knocked down, and in the end ignominiously ejected from the chapel. The legate indignantly dismissed the synod and was with difficulty persuaded to retain his official position. In July he left England, having accomplished practically nothing in the matter of the rival sees. If popular rumour was correct in believing that he had been sounded by Henry on the question of a divorce from Queen Eleanor, in this matter also there had been no result. The one important result of his visit had been that the clergy were for the future to be subject to the Forest Laws and also to plead in the king’s court in matters touching lay fees. It is said that by way of compensation Henry recognised their exemption from lay jurisdiction in all other matters, agreed not to make a practice of retaining vacant bishoprics and abbeys in his hands, and granted that the murder of a clerk should be punished by forfeiture. Even if these concessions were made they were far from reconciling those of the clerical party who still held Becket’s ideal of the supremacy of the Church.
Restored to favour with the pope and victorious over as formidable a combination of his enemies as could well be formed against him, Henry was now at the height of his power, recognised throughout Europe as a prince whose friendship was worth seeking. In his court at Westminster on 12th November 1176, might have been seen ambassadors from the Emperor Manuel of Constantinople, the Emperor Frederic, the Duke of Saxony, the Count of Flanders, and the Archbishop of Rheims. About the same time also came a joint mission from the Kings of Castile and Navarre asking Henry to arbitrate between them in a dispute about certain castles and other territory. Accordingly, in the following March Henry heard the arguments of the rival embassies and gave his decision after consultation with the peers of his court, sentencing each side to make restitution to the other and further condemning the King of Castile to pay to Navarre 3000 maravedis a year for the next ten years. This King Alphonso of Castile had married Henry’s daughter Eleanor in 1170, and about the time that the subject of this arbitration was first broached, at the end of 1176, another of Henry’s daughters, Joan, was on her way to marry King William of Sicily. Negotiations for the marriage had been opened earlier in the year, and after her
trousseaux had been bought in London, at a cost of over £100 (say £2500 of modern money), she travelled through France with a brilliant retinue to St. Gilles, where she found awaiting her the Sicilian nobles and the Bishop of Norwich. The unfortunate bishop had been sent on ahead earlier in the year to Sicily to make final arrangements and had had a very rough time; the country through which he passed was suffering from famine and he could hardly get provisions for himself or his horse; accommodation sometimes failed completely, so that he had to sleep on the rocks or sand of the seashore, and when he had a roof over his head he found that the fleas had no reverence for his episcopal or ambassadorial dignity, so that he was very pleased to complete his mission by handing the princess over to the Sicilians and to hurry back to England in time for the Christmas festivities at the court at Nottingham.
Two other marriages occupied the king’s attention about this time. The young daughter of Count Hubert of Maurienne having died, Henry had to find another heiress as bride for his favourite son John, and ultimately decided that the great estates of the Earl of Gloucester would make a suitable endowment for the landless prince. The earl had three daughters, of whom two were already married to the Earl of Hertford and the Count of Evreux, and Henry now prevailed upon the earl to agree that all his estates should be settled upon the remaining daughter, Isabel, and that she should be betrothed to John, for whom the king had also reserved the great estates of his uncle, Earl Reynold of Cornwall, upon the latter’s death in 1175, with similar disregard for the rights of his daughters and lawful heirs. Having settled this matter to his satisfaction Henry next found himself confronted with the question of Richard’s matrimonial affairs. Richard had long been pledged to marry Alais, daughter of King Louis, and she had been, in accordance with the usual practice of the time, brought up at the court of her intended father-in-law. She was now about twenty and the King of France was pressing for the marriage to be performed, and in 1177 a papal legate was despatched from Rome with instructions to lay Henry’s dominions under an interdict if he should refuse to carry out the agreement. In August of that year Henry crossed to Normandy and next month met the legate at Rouen, and on 21st September held a conference with King Louis at Ivry. At this conference the promise that Richard should marry Alais seems to have been renewed in an informal way, but Henry had no intention of fulfilling it, and indeed it seems probable that he was at this time himself the lover of the princess, who had succeeded the famous Rosamund Clifford in his affections when that beautiful favourite died.[35]
A more important effect of the conference at Ivry was the treaty then drawn up between the two kings, composing their differences and agreeing to submit such points as still remained in dispute to arbitration, and also agreeing to go together on crusade to the Holy Land. Henry probably never had the slightest intention of going to Jerusalem; indeed to have done so, leaving behind him such disloyal and unprincipled young scoundrels as his sons had proved themselves to be, would have been madness, even if he had felt any particular interest in the fate of the Holy Land. It will be remembered that the terms upon which Henry was absolved from the guilt of the murder of Becket had included the payment of a large sum for the support of the warriors in Palestine and his personal participation in a crusade for three years. The first of these obligations he would seem to have discharged early in 1177, when the Earl of Essex and other English knights went with Count Philip of Flanders to the East, as William de Braose was sent “to carry the king’s alms to the Templars.” The three years’ crusade was commuted for the foundation of three monasteries, and Henry, whose partiality for monastic establishments was by no means marked, contrived to interpret this obligation in a way consistent with the strictest economy. Finding that the secular canons of Waltham had become remiss in the performance of their duties, he ejected them from their collegiate church, with the connivance of their dean, Guy Rufus, and replaced them by canons regular of the Augustinian order. In the same way, finding the lives of the nuns at Amesbury far from satisfactory, he turned them out, pensioning off the abbess, and put in their place other nuns from the Norman abbey of Fontevrault. Both of these transformations took place in the latter half of 1177, and for the next few years the work of rebuilding and enlarging at Waltham and Amesbury were carried on at the king’s expense on a fairly generous scale. The third monastery was a new foundation, a small priory of Carthusians established at Witham in Somerset. It would seem that Henry brought over a few brethren from the famous monastery of Chartreuse early in 1175, but gave them no assistance and took no further steps towards establishing them in permanent buildings. The first prior abandoned his post in despair and the next died soon after his arrival at Witham; Henry then succeeded with much difficulty in persuading the Prior of Chartreuse to send Hugh of Avalon, a monk of equal ability and piety; but when he came he had to endure the same heartbreaking round of delays, evasions, and unfulfilled promises, and it was not until about 1180, when Henry discovered the true worth and charm of his personality and became his close friend, that the king made any endeavour to complete the priory of Witham. It was characteristic of Henry that when the prior expressed his wish for a copy of the Holy Scriptures for the use of his brethren, the king compelled the monks of Winchester to give up an elaborately written copy, which they had just completed for their own use, and presented it to the grateful monks of Witham. It was equally characteristic of Hugh that, when he learnt how the precious volume had been provided, he insisted upon returning it to its rightful owners.
The warm affection which the king lavished upon Hugh led many people to believe that the latter was Henry’s son, a belief strengthened by a certain likeness observable between the two. And indeed the likeness was not confined to physical traits, for Hugh, with all his piety and austerity, was quick-tempered and quick-witted and had as keen appreciation for a joke as had Henry himself, and fully realised that a witty as well as a soft answer may turn away wrath. On one occasion, having incurred the king’s wrath by excommunicating one of his foresters, he was summoned to Woodstock and found Henry and his courtiers sitting in a circle on the grass. To intimate his displeasure the king ignored Hugh’s salutation and maintained a sulky silence, the attendant nobles following his example; Hugh calmly pushed aside an earl and sat down next to the king, who, incapable of resting idle, called for a needle and thread and began to stitch a torn leather finger-stall which he was wearing on his left hand. Hugh watched him for a minute and then said dryly, “How like you are now to your cousins of Falaise!” The impudence of the remark appealed to Henry, who lay back and roared with laughter, and then himself explained to such of his courtiers as had not grasped the point that the allusion was to his descent, through William the Conqueror, from the peasant girl of Falaise, a town famous for its skinners and leatherworkers. This incident occurred after Hugh had been promoted, in 1186, from the priory of Witham to the bishopric of Lincoln, which had been held from 1173 to 1182 by the king’s acknowledged bastard, Geoffrey, who, however, preferring rather to fleece than to tend his sheep, had never been consecrated to the see.
It is curious that Henry, himself careless of religion and actively antagonistic to the Church, should have lavished his warmest affection upon two men destined after their death to rank in the calendar of saints. The intimate friend of his early years became St. Thomas of Canterbury, and the chosen associate of the closing years of his reign was destined to become St. Hugh of Lincoln. The claims to saintship of the two men were singularly different; Thomas was one of those arrogant, fighting ecclesiastics who identify the cause of the Church with themselves and “take the kingdom of heaven by violence,” while Hugh was a man of peace, one of those who identify themselves with the cause of God, to whom beatification comes as the natural reward for the blessings they have themselves bestowed upon their flocks. Of the two St. Thomas inevitably made the greater impression upon the
popular imagination, and his shrine was a centre of pilgrimage long before St. Hugh had even left his obscure priory for the great bishopric of Lincoln. A great impulse was no doubt given to the adoration of St. Thomas by the events of 1174, when the capture of the King of Scotland followed so immediately upon Henry’s penance at Canterbury. In the twelfth century people did not talk of coincidence or propound elaborate theories that the concentration of Henry’s mind upon the desire for victory had acted upon the brain centres of Ranulph de Glanville’s subconsciousness and spurred him on to action. They simply accepted as a fact the personal intervention of St. Thomas, and Henry himself countenanced that view by going with his royal son on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to Canterbury on 28th May 1175. Later in that year the young Queen Margaret visited the shrine “for the sake of prayer,” and it is not improbable that we have the partial fulfilment of her petitions in the birth of a son at Paris in June 1177; but if so the answer to her prayers was only partial, for the child lived barely long enough to be christened William, and died within three days of his birth. A still more remarkable tribute to the fame of St. Thomas was paid in 1179. At that time King Louis was arranging for the coronation of his son Philip, then fourteen years old, but just before the date fixed for the ceremony the boy fell ill as the result of a hunting misadventure. Casting about in his mind for a suitable spiritual advocate it was not unnatural that the king’s choice should fall upon Thomas of Canterbury; if he had come so effectually to the help of his old adversary Henry he might surely be relied upon to assist his old supporter Louis. King Henry readily acceded to the French king’s request for a safe conduct and met him in person at Dover on 22nd August, whence the two kings went next day to Canterbury. Here King Louis offered his petition at the tomb of the saint and enriched the convent with the grant of a yearly render of wine and exemption from customs for goods exported for their use from France.
On his return to France the king found his son convalescent, and in November the postponed coronation took place, the younger Henry being amongst those present. But before this date King Louis himself had been struck down with paralysis, and after nine months’ illness he died on 18th September 1180. Death was busy about this time; Richard de Luci, the great justiciar, had died in July 1179 at the priory of Lesnes, which he had founded; Pope Alexander III. died in August 1181, and Roger, Archbishop of York, in the following November. In Louis, Henry lost an old antagonist, but one whose weakness and incompetence had been a source of strength to the English king. Henry had never pursued an aggressive policy towards France and had never attempted to crush Louis or even to throw off his nominal suzerainty; when their claims clashed, as they frequently had done, he was content to defeat the attack or outwit the diplomacy of the French king, but in the young Philip there was growing up a far more formidable adversary and one who could neither be hoodwinked nor driven from the field without difficulty. For the time, however, Henry’s relations with the young French king were almost paternal. In the spring of 1180 Henry intervened to reconcile Philip and his uncles of the house of Blois, and in July of the following year he patched up a peace between Philip and his wife’s uncle, Count Philip of Flanders. This peace was broken before the end of the year, when Count Philip formed a coalition against the King of France, and he might have fared badly if the younger Henry, who had remained in Normandy after his father had gone back to England, had not come to the rescue. Peace was again patched up between France and Flanders by Henry in March 1182, and the two Philips united with Henry in intervening on behalf of the latter’s son-in-law, Henry the Lion of Saxony, who had incurred the enmity of the Emperor Frederic and had been sentenced to seven years’ banishment. As a result of this intervention the duke’s sentence was substantially reduced, and when he came to Normandy with his wife and children he was warmly welcomed and liberally provided for by Henry.
Conspicuous as was Henry’s success in dealing with foreign princes, his failure when dealing with his own sons was equally conspicuous. He could act as peacemaker between France and Flanders, but from 1176 onwards his sons were continually at war, sometimes assisting one another to suppress rebellious vassals, at other times quarrelling among themselves. Richard in particular was continually fighting in Poitou, where his arrogance and licentiousness had made him extremely unpopular with his subjects. Matters came to a crisis early in 1183, when, upon Richard’s refusing to do homage for Poitou to the younger Henry, the latter with his brother Geoffrey joined the discontented Poitevins and made war upon Richard. King Henry came to the help of Richard and advanced to Limoges, where he had a narrow escape from being shot by his sons’ soldiers. The rebellious princes, relying upon their father’s affection, obtained a succession of truces which they broke without compunction whenever it suited their purpose, ill-treating his messengers and plundering his supporters. Geoffrey stripped the shrine of St. Martial at Limoges in order to pay his mercenaries, and the young king, finding his plans going astray, took an oath at that same shrine to go on crusade. His father endeavoured to persuade him to renounce the rash vow, but when he found him apparently intent upon the project generously promised to equip him. He repaid the generous offer by abandoning the scheme and indulging in a plundering foray, stripping the monastery of Grammont, the one religious house for which his father had displayed an affection. Towards the end of May 1183 the young king fell ill, but this did not deter him from sacking the famous shrine of Roquemadour. On his way back from this sacrilegious exploit he was obliged to stop at Martel, as his fever had much increased and soon developed into dysentery. Realising that it was likely to end in death he sent for his father, but Henry, naturally suspecting a trap, would not come, though he sent a sapphire ring to his son as a token of his affection, and possibly with the hope that the mystic curative qualities of that precious stone might prove beneficial. On 11th June the young man died, expressing a pious penitence which would have been more edifying had it been displayed earlier, and commissioning the faithful William Marshal, who had just been recalled to his court after an undeserved period of exile, to perform for him the two years’ crusade which he had sworn to undertake.
The death of the unfilial and unprincipled Henry had followed so close upon his sacrilegious spoliation of St. Amadour that it might well have been considered a divine judgment, and it is almost incredible that even his most devoted partisans could have proclaimed him a saint; yet such was the case, and a few audacious and imaginative adherents even asserted that miracles had been wrought by him. His liberality, good fellowship, and manly courage, which showed itself in his addiction to the tournament, a form of sport so far from saintly that it was under the papal ban, had made him friends who mourned his loss; a still larger number regretted the removal of a tool so useful for undermining the influence of the hated King of England. The one man who sorrowed for him most sincerely was the father against whom he had sinned so persistently.
Within a month of the young king’s death the rebellion which he had fomented was at an end. During the latter half of 1183 Henry appears to have made an uneventful tour through his continental dominions, but in the spring of 1184 we find him negotiating for the re-marriage of the Count of Flanders, sending his own royal yacht to fetch the bride, a daughter of the King of Portugal, and conducting her from La Rochelle to the Flemish border. And, more or less as the result of this marriage, we find him called upon to interfere once more between the King of France and the Count of Flanders to procure peace. Immediately afterwards, on 10th June 1184, Henry crossed once more to England, after an absence of two years. The next six months were largely taken up with the choice of a successor to Archbishop Richard, who had died in the preceding February. At last, after several names had been suggested by the Canterbury monks only to be rejected by the king, Bishop Baldwin of Worcester was elected on 16th December.
The year 1185 opened with the arrival at Canterbury of Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, charged by Baldwin, the head of the tottering kingdom of Jerusalem, with an appeal to Henry for help. On 18th March Henry gave formal audience to Heraclius, who offered him the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and the crown of Jerusalem, and produced a letter from the pope urging a new crusade. By the advice of his council Henry declared his inability to go in person, and he also declined to accept the crown for any of his sons, but he promised assistance in men and money, and large numbers of his nobles took the cross. A month later the king and the patriarch passed over together into Normandy, and on 1st May they had an interview with King Philip of France, who took up the same line as Henry had done, so that Heraclius had to return to his master with the promise indeed of assistance, but disappointed in his hopes of obtaining an influential leader. As soon as the interview was over Henry had to turn his attention to his quarrelsome son Richard. Untaught by experience, the king had continued to provoke his sons against one another and against himself, striving to wrest Aquitaine from Richard for the benefit of John and then setting John and Geoffrey to fight their elder brother; this quarrel had been composed for a time, but Richard was now attacking the lands of his brother Geoffrey, and in order to quiet him Henry sent for Queen Eleanor, the rightful owner of Poitou, and forced Richard to surrender the province into his mother’s hands. This had the desired effect of restoring order, and in August 1186 Geoffrey was killed in a tournament at Paris, regretted by none except his father and Philip of France.
In May 1186 Henry, who was an inveterate matchmaker, had arranged for the marriage of King William of Scotland with his cousin Ermengarde, daughter of Richard, Viscount of Beaumont. The marriage took place at Woodstock on 5th September, Henry’s wedding present taking the shape of the Castle of Edinburgh; but before it was celebrated the two kings had marched north together, in July, and compelled Ronald, son of Uctred, the usurping Lord of Galloway, to submit to Henry’s judgment. But while Henry’s relations with his old adversary of Scotland were thus satisfactory there was growing friction between him and Philip of France. The questions of the dower due to the young king’s widow, Margaret, and of the marriage of Philip’s other sister Alais to Richard, had been debated with acrimony on several occasions, and the action of the English Constable of Gisors in destroying a fortress in process of erection on the French border and killing the son of the French knight in charge of the work, in October 1186, had further exasperated Philip. For the time the storm blew over, but in May 1187, after an ineffective endeavour to come to terms with Philip, Henry prepared for war. The French king besieged Richard and John at Châteauroux and Henry had to come to their rescue, but a pitched battle was avoided by the interposition of Pope Urban III., whose anxiety for the fate of Palestine made him particularly desirous of peace in Europe, and a truce for two years was agreed upon on 23rd June. Immediately afterwards Philip began to cultivate Richard’s friendship, hoping to use him against his father, as he had done young Henry and Geoffrey. Richard swallowed the bait and went off with Philip, living for some time in the closest intimacy with him, ignoring his father’s remonstrances, and even plundering his treasury at Chinon; but after a while he came to a better mind and returned to his allegiance.
In January 1188 Henry was preparing to return to England, when Philip threatened to invade Normandy unless the marriage of his sister Alais and Richard were celebrated at once and the fortress of Gisors surrendered to France. Henry at once proceeded to meet him at the usual place, a great elm standing on the borders of France and Normandy near Gisors. Little progress was made in the negotiations until the arrival of the Archbishop of Tyre, who preached a stirring sermon on the misfortunes of Palestine, recounting the capture of King Guy and the True Cross by Saladin in July 1187—a disaster which caused the death of Pope Urban III.—and the fall of Jerusalem in the following October. His hearers were so moved that almost with one accord they vowed to go upon crusade, Henry and Philip setting the example and putting aside all their differences. So great were the numbers of those that took the cross that it was needful to adopt badges to distinguish the different nationalities, the French wearing red crosses, the followers of the English king white crosses, and the Flemings green. Henry at once issued orders at Le Mans for the collection of a tithe to be levied throughout all his continental dominions. All persons who did not go to the crusade themselves were to give a tenth of their goods, and arrangements were made for ensuring that none should evade his duty. Those who were willing to serve in person might take the tithes of their men and lands for their own equipment. As soon as this ordinance had been published Henry hastened to England, landing at Winchester on 30th January. A fortnight later a council was held at Geddington, when the ordinance for the collection of the crusading tithe, usually known as the Saladin tithe, was made applicable to England. The King of Scotland was urged to follow his suzerain’s lead, and Archbishop Baldwin was sent to preach the crusade in Wales, accompanied by Gerald de Barri, who has left an account of the mission containing many interesting details of Welsh topography and history and a very full appreciation of the services rendered by Gerald himself.
Meanwhile Richard, who had taken the cross the previous year in Brittany, was indulging in a little war with the Count of Toulouse with considerable success. Philip, who appears to have incited Richard to action in order to pick a further quarrel with Henry, now complained to the latter of his son’s conduct, and in June invaded Berry, capturing Châteauroux and other places. Henry crossed once more, for the last time, to Normandy, to find that Richard had driven Philip out of Berry. After some desultory border raiding a conference was arranged between the two kings at the historic elm by Gisors. Neither side would accede to the demands of the other, and after a proposal to settle the dispute by battle between four picked champions from either side had been rejected, preparations were made to resume the campaign. Some of the French troops, irritated at the sight of the English resting in comfort in the shade of the elm while they themselves were out in the heat, cut down the famous tree. Philip was annoyed at the spiteful vandalism, and Henry vowed to revenge the elm.
For the moment no fighting took place; the Counts of Flanders and of Blois and other French nobles declining to serve any longer against Christians when their arms were so badly needed in Palestine, Philip was obliged to disband his forces, and Henry did likewise, giving, however, secret orders for their reassembly at Pacey. Thence he sent them across the French border to ravage the district round Mantes, while Richard operated further south from Châteauroux. King Henry took little active part in this campaign, as he had been taken ill at Chinon early in the autumn. A meeting of the kings at Châtillon in October came to nothing, and Philip began to tamper with Richard’s unstable fidelity. A promise that he should have Anjou, Touraine and Maine in reward for deserting his father speedily brought Richard over to Philip’s side, and the latter then arranged for a fresh conference with Henry at Bonmoulins on 18th November. Richard and Philip arrived together, and though the former explained to his father that his meeting with the French king on the way was quite accidental, Henry’s incredulity and alarm were soon justified. Philip, after proposing a mutual retrocession of all territories taken during the recent campaign, again demanded the marriage of Richard and Alais, the cession to Richard of Anjou, Touraine and Maine, and his acknowledgment as Henry’s heir. King Henry refused these last demands, and Richard angrily flung down his sword and did homage to Philip for the three provinces which his father had refused him.
A truce had been agreed upon to last until 13th January 1189, but with its expiration Philip and Richard renewed the attack. Henry, whose health had completely broken down, was laid up at Le Mans during the spring, and from there he sent William Marshal and the Archdeacon of Hereford to Paris to negotiate with King Philip; but by the efforts of Richard and his wily minister, William Longchamp, their endeavours were brought to nought. A slight improvement in his health enabled Henry to meet his opponents in person on 28th May at La Ferté Bernard, where Richard’s demand that his brother John should go on crusade was met by Henry not merely with a direct negative but with the suggestion that John should marry Alais and have the provinces which Richard claimed. This, while exasperating Richard still more completely, did not appeal to Philip, and, in spite of the efforts of the legate, Cardinal John of Anagni, who threatened to lay his dominions under an interdict if he did not make peace, the French king resumed the campaign with vigour, and after several smaller successes appeared before Le Mans on 12th June. The bridges across the Sarthe had been broken down and the known fords blocked with sharp stakes, but the French cavalry, sounding the river with their spears, found a place where they could cross and caught the English by surprise. During the sharp fighting that ensued outside the town Stephen of Tours, the governor of the town, set fire to a suburb whose buildings would have afforded dangerous cover for the assailants. Unfortunately the wind suddenly shifted and, blowing strongly, drove the flames into the city, which itself caught fire in several places. Realising the desperate nature of their position King Henry and his knights sought safety in flight. They were pursued by a force of cavalry under the leadership of Richard, who was some way in advance of his followers and rapidly overtaking the king when William Marshal turned upon him. Count Richard had for some reason thrown aside his defensive armour, and, seeing himself at the Marshal’s mercy, called to him not to kill him. “Not I! the devil may kill you!” retorted the knight, and, lowering his lance, he struck the count’s horse dead, bringing its rider to the ground. Richard at once called off his men and abandoned the pursuit, and Henry, pausing for a while on a little hill and looking back upon his beloved native town in flames, burst into a flood of furious blasphemy, vowing that as God had cheated him of the place which he loved better than all others so he would cheat God of his soul.
With Henry were his son John and his illegitimate son Geoffrey. This Geoffrey, the only one of Henry’s sons worthy of the name, was born about 1153, his mother being a woman of humble position;[36] he was devoted to his father and, as bishop-elect of Lincoln, had taken a vigorous part in the suppression of the rebellion of 1173-4. Resigning the see of Lincoln in 1181 he became chancellor, in which office he was in constant attendance upon the king. At Le Mans he fought valiantly with fire and foe, and now that the fugitives had reached Fresnai he proposed to spend the night outside the castle so as to bear the brunt of any attack that might be made. To this Henry would not assent, and it was Geoffrey’s cloak that covered the weary king when he flung himself down, clothed as he was, for the night. Next day, refusing the advice of his barons to fall back on
Normandy, Henry sent Geoffrey with almost all his forces to Alençon, himself making his way towards Chinon. John now took the opportunity of deserting his father, although Henry had just shown his partiality for him by making the seneschal of Normandy and Earl William de Mandeville swear that in the event of his death they would only give up the castles of Normandy to John and to none other. Geoffrey, his brother, base in birth but not in nature, as soon as he had discharged his commission spurred back to join his royal father, whose illness, aggravated by the strain and grief of the last few days, had entered upon its final stage.
Meanwhile Philip, carrying everything before him, had reached Tours on 30th June. There he received a mission from the Count of Flanders, the Archbishop of Rheims, and the Duke of Burgundy, urging him to come to terms with Henry. Tours was captured on 3rd July, and next day King Henry agreed to a meeting at a house of Templars not far from Colombier, near Azai, but when Henry reached the spot and dismounted he found that his legs would not support him, and his agony was such that he was obliged to lie down. King Philip and Richard on their arrival, not finding Henry, denounced his illness as a feint, and it was not until the king rode up, supported on his horse by his attendants, that they realised that he was dying. Philip courteously spread a cloak upon the ground and bade him be seated, but his indomitable spirit would not allow him to display so much weakness. He had come prepared to accept any terms, to make any concessions, but with the full intention, if he lived, of winning all back by the power of the sword. Philip’s terms, considering the hopeless position of his adversary, were not ungenerous. Henry had to surrender all claims to Auvergne and to do homage to Philip for his continental dominions; Alais was to be taken from his custody and married to Richard, who was to be recognised as his father’s heir and to receive the fealty of his barons. Moreover, all those who had joined Richard during the war were to remain his men and not to return to their allegiance to Henry. Finally, Henry was to pay 20,000 marks to the French king, and the agreement for a common crusade was renewed, Lent 1190 being named as the date and Vézelay as the rendezvous. At the end of the interview Henry had to give his son the formal kiss of peace, but as he did so he muttered, “May God grant that I live long enough to take my revenge upon you,” a threat at which Richard openly jested to his friends.
Henry returned from Colombier to Chinon, and as he lay upon his deathbed the list of those who had deserted him and sworn allegiance to Richard was brought in. He bade the bearer read out the names, but when the first name of all proved to be his best-loved son, John, for whom he had done so much, he stopped the reader, saying, “It is enough! Now let come what may!” Broken-hearted and racked with pain the great king lingered on for two days, muttering in his delirium “Shame on a conquered king!” and cursing his sons. The sole redeeming feature of these last days was the unremitting tenderness with which Geoffrey nursed his father, who repaid his affectionate care with words of loving praise, giving him at the last his royal signet ring engraved with his symbol, a leopard.[37] Yet even Geoffrey seems to have been absent at the moment that his father passed away, and the few servants who were there, seizing the opportunity to lay hands on everything portable that was worth taking, left the king’s body lying half naked and uncared for, till one William Trihan, known only to history for this good act, placed over his royal master his cloak, appropriately one of the short Angevin cloaks, the introduction of which into England had earned Henry the nickname of “Courtmantel.”
Thus, on 6th July 1189, died Henry II.
Next day the dead king was carried to Fontevrault, where, in the church of the great nunnery, his body lay for a time in state. Hither came Richard, now in his turn king; for a while he stood and gazed at the stern uncovered face of his father, then, kneeling for a brief moment in prayer, rose, and calling William Marshal and Maurice de Craon to him, strode out of the church. In a few words he showed that he bore no ill-will towards his father’s loyal adherents and then departed, to return next day for the funeral. Henry had never cared much for the outward pomp and circumstance of kings, and such emblems of royalty as he may have had with him in his last days seem to have been either lost at Le Mans or stolen at the time of his death. And so when he was being robed for burial it was with difficulty that the royal insignia of crown, ring and sceptre could be improvised, and he who had been the greatest of the princes of Europe was laid to rest with less ceremonial splendour than many an obscure vassal.