henry the second 23

henry the second 23

But there was still danger over sea, where the armies of the French and

the Flemings had closed round Rouen. On the 8th of August, exactly a

month after his landing at Southampton, Henry again crossed the Channel

with his unwieldy train of prisoners. As he stood under the walls of

Rouen, the besieging armies fled by night. Louis' fancy already showed

him the English host in the heart of France, and in his terror he sought

for peace. The two kings concluded a treaty at Gisors, and on the 30th

of September the conspiracy against Henry was finally dissolved. His

sons did homage to him, and bound themselves in strange medieval fashion

by the feudal tie which was the supreme obligation of that day; he was

now "not only their father, but their liege lord." The Count of Flanders

gave up into Henry's hands the charter given him by the young king. The

King of Scotland made absolute submission in December 1174, and was sent

back to his own land. Eleanor alone remained a close prisoner for years

to come.

 

The revolt of 1173-74 was the final ruin of the old party of the Norman

baronage. The Earl of Chester got back his lands, but lost his castles,

and was sent out of the way to the Irish war; he died before the king in

1181. Leicester humbly admitted "that he and all his holdings were at

the mercy of the king," and Henry "restored to him Leicester, and the

forest which by common oath of the country had been sworn to belong to

the king's own domain, for he knew that this had been done for envy, and

also because it was known that the king hated the earl;" but Henry had a

long memory, and the walls of Leicester were in course of time thrown

down and its fortifications levelled. The Bishop of Durham had to pay

200 marks of silver for the king's pardon, and give up Durham Castle. At

the death of Hugh Bigod in 1177 Henry seized the earl's treasure. The

Earls of Clare and Gloucester died within two years, and the king's son

John was made Gloucester's heir. The rebel Count of Aumale died in 1179,

and his heiress married the faithful Earl of Essex, who took the title

of Aumale with all the lands on both sides of the water. In 1186 Roger

Mowbray went on crusade. The king took into his own hands all castles,

even those of "his most familiar friend," the justiciar De Lucy. The

work of dismantling dangerous fortresses which he had begun twenty years

before was at last completed, and no armed revolt of the feudal baronage

was ever again possible in England.

 

But the rebellion had wakened in the king's mind a deep alarm, which

showed itself in a new severity of temper. Famine and plague had fallen

on the country; the treasury was well nigh empty; law and order were

endangered. Henry hastened to return as soon as his foreign campaign was

over, and in May 1175 "the two kings of England, whom a year before the

breadth of the kingdom could not contain, now crossed in one ship, sat

at one table, and slept in one bed." In token of reconciliation with the

Church they attended a synod at Westminster, and went together on solemn

pilgrimage to the martyr's tomb. Then they made a complete visitation of

the whole kingdom. Starting from Reading on the 1st of June, they went

by Oxford to Gloucester, then along the Welsh border to Shrewsbury,

through the midland counties by Lichfield and Nottingham to York, and

then back to London, having spent on their journey two months and a few

days; and in autumn they made a progress through the south-western

provinces. At every halt some weighty business was taken in hand. The

Church was made to feel anew the royal power. Twelve of the great abbeys

were now without heads, and the king, justly fearing lest the monks

should elect abbots from their own body, "and thus the royal authority

should be shaken, and they should follow another guidance than his own,"

sent orders that on a certain day chosen men should be sent to elect

acceptable prelates at his court and in his presence. The safety of the

Welsh marches was assured. The castle of Bristol was given up to the

king, and border barons and Welsh princes swore fidelity at Gloucester.

An edict given at Woodstock ordered that no man who during the war had

been in arms against the king should come to his court without a special

order; that no man should remain in his court after the setting of the

sun, or should come to it before the sun rising; in the England that lay

west of the Severn, none might carry bow and arrow or pointed knife. In

this wild border district the checks which prevailed elsewhere against

violent crime were unknown. The outlaw or stranger who fled to forest or

moorland for hiding, might lawfully be slain by any man who met him. No

"murder-fine" was known there. The king, not daring perhaps to interfere

with the "liberties" of the west, may have sought to check crime by this

order against arms; but such a law was practically a dead letter, for in

a land where every man was the guardian of his own life it was far more

perilous to obey the new edict than to disregard it.

 

The king's harsh mood was marked too by the cruel prosecutions of

offences against forest law which had been committed in the time of the

war. The severe punishments were perhaps a means of chastizing is affected

landowners; they were certainly useful in filling the empty treasury.

Nobles and barons everywhere were sued for hunting or cutting wood or

owning dogs, and were fined sometimes more than their whole possessions

were worth. In vain the justiciar, De Lucy, pleaded for justice to men

who had done these things by express orders of the king given to De Lucy

himself; "his testimony could prevail nothing against the royal will."

Even the clergy were dragged before the civil courts, "neither archbishop

nor bishop daring to make any protest." The king's triumph over the

rebellion was visibly complete when at York the treaty which had been made

the previous year with the King of Scotland was finally concluded, and

William and his brother did homage to the English sovereigns. A few weeks

later Henry and his son received at Windsor the envoys of the King of

Connaught, the only one of the Irish princes who had till now refused

homage.

 

In the Church as in the State the royal power was unquestioned. A papal

legate arrived in October, who proved a tractable servant of the king;

"with the right hand and the left he took gifts, which he planted

together in his coffers". His coming gave Henry opportunity to carry out

at last through common action of Church and State his old scheme of

reforms. In the Assize of Northampton, held in January 1176, the king

confirmed and perfected the judicial legislation which he had begun ten

years before in the Assize of Clarendon. The kingdom was divided into

six circuits. The judges appointed to the circuits were given a more

full independence than they had before, and were no longer joined with

the sheriffs of the counties in their sessions, their powers were

extended beyond criminal jurisdiction to questions of property, of

inheritance, of wardship, of forfeiture of crown lands, of advowsons to

churches, and of the tenure of land. For the first time the name of

Justitiarii Itinerantes was given in the Pipe Roll to these travelling

justices, and the anxiety of the king to make the procedure of his

courts perfectly regular, instead of depending on oral tradition, was

shown by the law books which his ministers began at this time to draw

up. As a security against rebellion, a new oath of fealty was required

from every man, whether earl or villein, fugitives and outlaws were to

be more sharply sought after, and felons punished with harsher cruelty.

"Thinking more of the king than of his sheep," the legate admitted

Henry's right to bring the clergy before secular courts for crimes

against forest law, and in various questions of lay fiefs; and agreed

that murderers of clerks, who till then had been dealt with by the

ecclesiastical courts, should bear the same punishment as murderers of

laymen, and should be disinherited. Religious churchmen looked on with

helpless irritation at Henry's first formal victory over the principles

of Thomas; in the view of his own day he had "renewed the Assize of

Clarendon, and ordered to be observed the execrable decrees for which

the blessed martyr Thomas had borne exile for seven years, and been

crowned with the crown of martyrdom."

 

During the next two years Henry was in perpetual movement through the

land from Devon to Lincoln, and between March 1176 and August 1177 he

summoned eighteen great councils, besides many others of less consequence.

From 1178 to 1180 he paid his last long visit to England, and again with

the old laborious zeal he began his round of journeys through the

country. "The king inquired about the justices whom he had appointed, how

they treated the men of the kingdom; and when he learned that the land and

the subjects were too much burthened with the great number of justices,

because there were eighteen, he elected five--two clerks and three

laymen--all of his own household; and he ordered that they should hear

all appeals of the kingdom and should do justice, and that they should not

depart from the King's Court, but should remain there to hear appeals, so

that if any question should come to them they should present it to the

audience of the king, and that it should be decided by him and by the wise

men of the kingdom." The _Justices of the Bench_, as they were called,

took precedence of all other judges. The influence of their work was soon

felt. From this time written records began to be kept of the legal

compromises made before the King's Court to render possible the

transference of land. It seems that in 1181 the practice was for the

first time adopted of entering on rolls all the business which came to

the King's Court, the pleas of the Crown and common pleas between

subjects. Unlike in form to the great Roll of the Pipe, in which the

records of the Exchequer Court had long been kept, the Plea Rolls

consisted of strips of parchment filed together by their tops, on which,

in an uncertain and at first a blundering fashion, the clerks noted down

their records of judicial proceedings. But practice soon brought about an

orderly and mechanical method of work, and the system of procedure in the

Bench rapidly attained a scientific perfection. Before long the name of

the _Curia Regis_ was exclusively applied to the new court of appeal.

 

The work of legal reform had now practically come to an end. Henry

indeed still kept a jealous watch over his judges. Once more, on the

retirement of De Lucy in 1179, he divided the kingdom into new circuits,

and chose three bishops--Winchester, Ely, and Norwich--"as chief

justiciars, hoping that if he had failed before, the seat least he might

find steadfast in righteousness, turning neither to the right nor to the

left, not oppressing the poor, and not deciding the cause of the rich

for bribes." In the next year he set Glanville finally at the head of

the legal administration. After that he himself was called to other

cares. But he had really finished his task in England. The mere system

of routine which the wisdom of Henry I. had set to control the arbitrary

power of the king had given place to a large and noble conception of

government; and by the genius of Henry II. the law of the land was finally established as the supreme guardian of the old English liberties and the new administrative order.