Chapter IX: Henry and England (1)

1154–1157.

The Christmas-tide of the year 1154 was an epoch in English history almost as marked as that of 1066. The crowning of Henry Fitz-Empress was, scarcely less than that of William the Conqueror, the beginning of a new era; and--unlike many historical events whose importance is only realized long after they are past--it was distinctly recognized as such by the men of the period. For the first time since the Norman conquest, the new king succeeded to his throne without a competitor, and with the unanimous goodwill of all ranks and all races throughout his kingdom. Normans and English, high and low, cleric and lay, welcomed the young Angevin king as the herald of a bright new day which was to dispel the darkness that had settled down upon the land during the nineteen winters of anarchy, and to bring back all, or more than all, the peace and prosperity of England’s happiest ages. But if Henry’s subjects looked forward to the year which was just beginning with a hope such as no new year had brought them since his grandfather’s death, Henry himself may well have contemplated with an anxiety little short of despair the task which lay before him. It was nothing less than the resuscitation of the body politic from a state of utter decay. The legal, constitutional and administrative machinery of the state was at a deadlock; the national resources, material and moral, were exhausted. To bring under subjection, once for all, the remnant of the disturbing forces which had caused the catastrophe, and render them powerless for future harm:--to disinter from the mass of ruin the fragments of the old foundations of social and political organization, and build up on them a secure and lasting fabric of administration and law;--to bring order out of chaos, life out of decay:--this was the work which a youth who had not yet completed his twenty-second year now found himself called to undertake, and to undertake almost single-handed.

The call did not indeed take him by surprise. The last year which he had spent in England must have given him some knowledge of the state of things with which as king he would have to deal; and the prospect of having so to deal with it sooner or later had been constantly before his eyes from his very infancy. His qualifications for the work must however have been chiefly innate. The first nine years of his life spent under the care of mother and father alternately in Anjou; the next four, under his uncle Earl Robert at Bristol; then two years in Anjou again, followed by a year with King David of Scotland, three more spent in securing his continental heritage and that of his bride, a year occupied in securing England, and another busied with self-defence in Normandy:--such a training was too desultory to have furnished Henry with the knowledge or the experience necessary for the formation of anything like a matured theory of government; and he could have had no time to think out one for himself in a life so busy and so short. Yet in his very youth and inexperience there was an element of strength. He came trammelled by no preconceived political theories, no party-pledges, no local and personal ties; he came simply with his own young intellect unwarped by prejudice, unruffled by passion, unclouded by care; fresh with the untried vigour and elasticity of youth, and ready, whatever his hand should find to do, fearlessly to do it with his might.

Thus much, at least, those who crowded to welcome the new sovereign might read in his very face and figure. Henry of Anjou had no claim to the personal epithet universally bestowed upon his father; and yet, as one of his courtiers expressively said, his was a form which a soldier, having once seen, would hasten to look upon again.[1229] He was of moderate height,[1230] appearing neither gigantic among small men nor insignificant among tall ones;[1231] in later days it was remarked that he had hit the golden mean of stature which his sons had all either overshot or failed to attain.[1232] His frame was made for strength, endurance and activity;[1233] thick-set, square-shouldered, broad-chested:--with arms muscular as those of a gladiator;[1234] highly-arched feet which looked made for the stirrup;[1235]--a large, but not disproportionate head, round and well-shaped, and covered with close-cropped hair of the tawny hue which Fulk the Red seems to have transmitted to so many of his descendants:[1236] a face which one of his courtiers describes as “lion-like”[1237] and another as “a countenance of fire”[1238]--a face, as we can see even in its sculptured effigy on his tomb, full of animation, energy and vigour;--a freckled skin;[1239] somewhat prominent grey eyes, clear and soft when he was in a peaceable mood, but bloodshot and flashing like balls of fire when the demon-spirit of his race was aroused within him:--[1240] Henry, his people might guess almost at a glance, was no mirror of courtly chivalry and elegance, but a man of practical, vigorous and rapid action. He inherited as little of Geoffrey’s personal refinement as of his physical grace. When the young duke of the Normans had first appeared in England, his shoulders covered with a little short cape such as was then usually worn in Anjou, the English knights, who since his grandfather’s time had been accustomed to wear long cloaks hanging down to the ground, were struck by the novelty of his attire and nicknamed him “Henry Curtmantel.”[1241] When once the Angevin fashion was transferred to the English court, however, there was nothing in Henry’s dress to distinguish him from his servants, unless it were its very lack of display and elegance; his clothing and headgear were of the plainest kind; and how little care he took of his person was shewn by his rough coarse hands, never gloved except when he went hawking.[1242] In his later years he was accused of extreme parsimony;[1243] even as a young man, he clearly had no pleasure in pomp or luxury of any kind. He was very temperate in meat and drink;[1244] over-indulgence in that respect seems indeed never to have been one of the habitual sins of the house of Anjou; and whatever complex elements may have had a part in his innermost moral constitution, in temper and tastes Henry was an Angevin of the Angevins. His restlessness seems to have outdone that of Fulk Nerra himself. He was always up and doing; if a dream of ease crossed him even in sleep, he spurned it angrily from him;[1245] he gave himself no peace, and as a natural consequence, he gave none to those around him. When not at war, he was constantly practising its mimicry with hawk and hound; his passion for the chase--a double inheritance, from his father and from his mother’s Norman ancestors--was so great as to be an acknowledged scandal in all eyes.[1246] He would mount his horse at the first streak of dawn, come back in the evening after a day’s hard riding across hill, moor and forest, and then tire out his companions by keeping them on their feet until nightfall.[1247] His own feet were always swollen and bruised from his violent riding; yet except at meals and on horseback, he was never known to be seated.[1248] In public or in private, in council or in church, he stood or walked from morning till night.[1249] At church, indeed, he was especially restless; unmindful of the sacred unction which had made him king, he evidently grudged the time taken from secular occupations for attendance upon religious duties, and would either discuss affairs of state in a whisper[1250] or relieve his impatience by drawing little pictures all through the most solemn of holy rites.[1251] His English or Norman courtiers, unaccustomed to deal with the demon-blood of Anjou, vainly endeavoured to account for an activity which remained undiminished when they were all half dead with exhaustion, and attributed it to his dread of becoming disabled by corpulence, to which he had a strong natural tendency.[1252] A good deal of it, however, was probably due to sheer physical restlessness and superabundant physical energy; and a good deal more to the irrepressible outward working of an extraordinarily active mind.

[1229] “Vir ... quem miles diligenter inspectum accurrebant
[_accurrebat_?] inspicere.” W. Map, _De Nugis Curialium_,
dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).

[1230] _Ibid._ Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 29
(Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 71). Peter of Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles,
vol. i. p. 193).

[1231] Pet. Blois as above.

[1232] Gir. Cambr. as above.

[1233] W. Map as above.

[1234] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 70). Pet. Blois as above.

[1235] Pet. Blois as above.

[1236] _Ibid._ Gir. Cambr. as above.

[1237] Pet. Blois as above.

[1238] Gir. Cambr. as above.

[1239] See how Merlin’s prophecy about “fortem lentiginosum”
was applied to him, Gir. Cambr. _Itin. Kambr._, l. i. c. 6
(Dimock, vol. vi. p. 62).

[1240] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl.
Christ. Soc., p. 70). Pet. Blois as above.

[1241] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 28 (Angl.
Christ. Soc., p. 157).

[1242] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 193, 194).

[1243] See Ralf Niger (Anstruther), p. 169. Ralf, however,
was a bitter enemy. Gerald on the other hand seems to draw,
and to imply that Henry drew, a distinction between official
and personal expenditure: “Parcimoniæ, quoad principi licuit,
per omnia datus.” _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl.
Christ. Soc., p. 70). “Largus in publico, parcus in privato”
(_ib._ p. 71).

[1244] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 70). Pet. Blois as above (p.
195). W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 231).

[1245] W. Map as above (p. 227).

[1246] _Ibid._ Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 71). Pet. Blois as
above (p. 194).

[1247] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl.
Christ. Soc., p. 71).

[1248] _Ibid._ Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 194).

[1249] Pet. Blois as above.

[1250] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 72).

[1251] “Oratorium ingressus, picturæ et susurro vacabat.” R.
Niger (Anstruther), p. 169. It is only fair to add that some of
the highest clergy of the day were just as unscrupulous as the
king about talking business during mass. See, _e.g._, Chron. de
Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), pp. 73, 74; and there are plenty of
other examples.

[1252] W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).

It was no light matter to be in attendance upon such a king. His clerks, some playfully, some in all seriousness, compared his court to the infernal regions.[1253] His habit of constantly moving about from one place to another--a habit which he retained to the very end of his life--was in itself sufficiently trying to those who had to transact business with him, and was made positively exasperating by his frequent and sudden changes of plan. “He shunned regular hours like poison.”[1254] “Solomon saith,” wrote his secretary Peter of Blois to him once, after vainly striving to track him across land and sea, “Solomon saith there be three things difficult to be found out, and a fourth which may hardly be discovered: the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a ship in the sea; the way of a serpent on the ground; and the way of a man in his youth. I can add a fifth: the way of a king in England.”[1255] In a letter to his old comrades of the court Peter gives a detailed account of the discomforts brought upon them by Henry’s erratic movements. “If the king has promised to spend the day in a place--more especially, if his intention so to do has been publicly proclaimed by a herald--you may be quite sure he will upset everybody’s arrangements by starting off early in the morning. Then you may see men rushing about as if they were mad, beating their packhorses, driving their chariots one into another--in short, such a turmoil as to present you with a lively image of the infernal regions. If, on the other hand, the king announces that he will set out early in the morning for a certain place, he is sure to change his mind; you may take it for granted that he will sleep till noon. Then you shall see the packhorses waiting with their burthens, the chariots standing ready, the couriers dozing, the purveyors worrying, and all grumbling one at another. Folk run to the women and the tent-keepers to inquire of them whither the king is really going; for this sort of courtiers often know the secrets of the palace. Many a time when the king was asleep and all was silent around, there has come a message from his lodging, not authoritative, but rousing us all up, and naming the city or town whither he was about to proceed. After waiting so long in dreary uncertainty, we were comforted by a prospect of being quartered in a place where there was a fair chance of accommodation. Thereupon arose such a clatter of horse and foot that hell seemed to have broken loose. But when our couriers had gone the whole day’s ride, or nearly so, the king would turn aside to some other place where he had perhaps one single house, and just enough provision for himself and none else. I hardly dare say it,” adds the sorely-tried secretary, “but I verily believe he took a delight in seeing the straits to which he put us! After wandering a distance of three or four miles in an unknown wood, and often in the dark, we thought ourselves lucky if we stumbled upon some dirty little hovel; there was often grievous and bitter strife about a mere hut; and swords were drawn for the possession of a lodging which pigs would not have deemed worth fighting for. I used to get separated from my people, and could hardly collect them again in three days. O Lord God Almighty! wilt Thou not turn the heart of this king, that he may know himself to be but man, and may learn to shew some grace of regal consideration, some human fellow-feeling, for those whom not ambition, but necessity, compels to run after him thus?”[1256]

[1253] _Ibid._, dist. i. c. 2 (pp. 5, 6); dist. v. c. 7 (p.
238). Pet. Blois, Ep. xiv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 50).

[1254] R. Niger (Anstruther), p. 169.

[1255] Pet. Blois, Ep. xli. (Giles, vol. i. p. 125). Arnulf of
Lisieux makes a like complaint in a more serious tone: Arn.
Lis., Ep. 92 (Giles, p. 247). See also the remark of Louis of
France on Henry’s expedition to Ireland in 1172: R. Diceto
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351.

[1256] Pet. Blois, Ep. xiv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 50, 51).

This bustling, scrambling, roving Pandemonium was very unlike the orderly, well-disciplined court of the first King Henry, where everything was done according to rule;--where the royal itinerary was planned out every month, and its stages duly announced and strictly adhered to, so that every man knew exactly when and where to find his sovereign, and his coming brought people together as to a fair:--where all the earls and barons of the realm were set down in a written list, according to which every one on his arrival at court was furnished with a certain allowance of bread, wine and candles for the term of his sojourn;[1257]--where the king’s own daily life was passed in a steady routine, holding council with his wise men and giving audiences until dinner-time, devoting the rest of the day to the society of the young gallants whom he drew from every country on this side of the Alps to increase the splendour of his household:--a court which was “a school of virtue and wisdom all the morning, of courtesy and decorous mirth all the afternoon.”[1258] Yet this hasty, impetuous young sovereign, in whose rough aspect and reckless ways one can at first glance discern so little either of regal dignity or of steady application to regal duty, was in truth, no less than his grandfather, an indefatigable worker and a born ruler of men. His way of doing business, apparently by fits and starts, bewildered men of less versatile intellect and less rapid decision; but they saw that the business was done, and done thoroughly, though they hardly understood when or how. They resigned themselves to be swept along in the whirl of Henry’s unaccountable movements, for they learned to perceive that those movements did not spring from mere caprice and perversity, but had always a motive and an object, inscrutable perhaps to all eyes save his own, but none the less definite and practical. When he dragged them in one day over a distance which should have occupied four or five, they knew that it was to forestall the machinations of some threatening foe. When he ran over the country from end to end without a word of notice, it was to overtake his officials at unawares and ascertain for himself how they were or were not attending to their duty.[1259] If he was never still, he was also never idle. He seemed to be specially haunted by that dread of the mischief attendant upon idle hands which an Angevin writer quaintly puts forth as an apology for the ceaseless warfare in which his race passed their lives.[1260] Henry’s hands were never idle; in the intervals of state business, when not laden with bow and arrows, they almost invariably held a book; for Henry was, to the very close of his life, the most learned crowned head in Christendom.[1261] He was a match for the best among his subjects in all knightly exercises and accomplishments; he was no less a match for the best, among laymen at least, in scholarship and mental culture. If we may believe one of his chaplains, Walter Map, he knew something of every language “from the bay of Biscay to the Jordan,” though he only spoke two, Latin and his native French;[1262] he evidently never learned to speak, and it is doubtful how far he understood, the natural tongue of the people of his island realm. He loved reading; he enjoyed the society of learned men; his delight was to stand amid a little group of clerks, arguing out some knotty point with them; not a day passed in his court without some interesting literary discussion.[1263] His habit of shutting himself up in his own apartments with a few chosen companions was a grievance to those who remembered his grandfather’s practice of coming forth in public at stated hours every day;[1264] yet Henry II. was never difficult of access; once, when the prior of Witham made a witty retort to the marshals who refused him admittance to the royal chamber, the king himself, overhearing the jest, opened the door with a peal of laughter;[1265] and a courier charged with important news from the north made his way to the sovereign’s bedside and woke him in the middle of the night without hesitation.[1266] When he did shew himself to the people, they thronged him without ceremony; they caught hold of him right and left, they pulled him this way and that, yet he never rebuked them, never gave them an angry look, but listened patiently to what each man had to say, and when their importunity became intolerable he simply made his escape without a word.[1267] Though not gifted with a good voice,[1268] he was a ready and pleasant speaker;[1269] and he had two other natural qualifications specially useful for a king. Unlike his grandfather Fulk V., who never could remember a face and constantly had to ask the names of his own familiar attendants,[1270] Henry never failed to recognize a man whom he had once looked at; and a thing once heard, if worth remembering, never slipped from his memory, which was consequently stored with a fund of historical and experimental knowledge ready for use at any moment.[1271]

[1257] W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, pp. 224,
225).

[1258] W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. v. c. 5 (Wright, p. 210).

[1259] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 194).

[1260] See above, p. 343, note 6{1002}.

[1261] Pet. Blois as above.

[1262] W. Map, _De Nug. Cur._, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).

[1263] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 194).

[1264] W. Map as above (p. 230).

[1265] _Ib._ dist. i. c. 6 (p. 7).

[1266] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 25 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 189).

[1267] W. Map, as above, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 231).

[1268] “Voce quassâ.” Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii.
c. 29 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 70). This however refers to his
later years.

[1269] _Ib._ p. 71. Pet. Blois as above (p. 195).

[1270] Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. i.

[1271] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl.
Christ. Soc., p. 73).

His worst private vices only reached their full developement in later years; it is plain, however, that he was much less careful than his grandfather had been of the outward decorum of his household; and unluckily his consort was not a woman to control it by her influence or improve it by her example like the “good Queen Maude.” His wrath was even more terrific than the wrath of kings is proverbially wont to be.[1272] His passions were strong, and they were lasting; when once he had taken a dislike to a man, he could rarely be induced to grant him his favour; on the other hand, when his friendship and confidence were once given, he withdrew them with the utmost difficulty and reluctance;[1273] and he had the gift of inspiring in all who came in contact with him a love or a hatred as intense and abiding as his own. His temper was a mystery to those who had not the key to it; it was the temper of Fulk Nerra. He had the Black Count’s strange power of fascination, his unaccountable variations of mood, and his cool, clear head. Like Fulk, he was at one moment mocking and blaspheming all that is holiest in earth and heaven, and at another grovelling in an agony of remorse as wild as the blasphemy itself. Like Fulk, he was an indefatigable builder, constantly superintending the erection of a wall, the fortification of a castle, the making of a dyke, the enclosing of a deer-park or a fish-pond, or the planning of a palace;[1274] and all the while his material buildings were but types of a great edifice of statecraft which, all unseen, was rising day by day beneath the hands of the royal architect;--his ever-varying pursuits, each of which seemed to absorb him for the moment, were but parts of an all-absorbing whole;--and his seeming self-contradictions were unaccountable only because the most useful of all his Angevin characteristics, his capacity for instinctively and unerringly adapting means to ends, enabled him to detect opportunities and recognize combinations invisible to less penetrating eyes. This was the moral constitution which in Fulk III. and Fulk V. had made the greatness of the house of Anjou; its workings were now to be displayed on a grander scale and in a more important sphere.

[1272] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxxv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 223).

[1273] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (_ib._ p. 194). Gir. Cambr. as
above (p. 71).

[1274] Pet. Blois as above (p. 195).

The young king saw at once that for his work of reconstruction and reform in England the counsellors who surrounded him in Normandy were of no avail; that he must trust solely to English help, and select his chief ministers partly from among those who had been in office under his predecessor, partly from such of his own English partizans as were best fitted for the task. First among the former class stood Richard de Lucy, who held the post of justiciar at the close of Stephen’s reign,[1275] who retained it under Henry for five-and-twenty years, and whose character is summed up in the epithet said to have been bestowed on him by his grateful sovereign--“Richard de Lucy the Loyal.”[1276] For thirteen years he shared the dignity and the duties of chief justiciar with Earl Robert of Leicester,[1277] who, after having been a faithful supporter of Stephen in his earlier and better days, had transferred his allegiance to Henry, and continued through life one of his most trusty servants and friends. The weight of Robert’s character was increased by that of his rank and descent; as head of the great house of Leicester, he was the most influential baron of the midland shires; while as son of Count Robert of Meulan, the friend of Henry I., he was a living link with that hallowed past which Henry II. was expected to restore, and a natural representative of its traditions of honour and of peace. Of the great ministers who had actually served under the first King Henry only one survived: the old treasurer, Nigel, bishop of Ely. We know not who took his place on his fall in 1139; but the treasurer in Stephen’s latter years can have had little more than an empty title; and when Nigel reappears in office, immediately after Henry’s accession, it is not as treasurer, but as chancellor.[1278] This, however, was a merely provisional arrangement; in a few weeks the bishop of Ely was reinstated in his most appropriate place, on the right side of the chequered table, gathering up the broken threads of the financial system which he had learned under his uncle of Salisbury;[1279] while the more miscellaneous work of the chancellor was undertaken by younger hands.

[1275] At the peace he held the Tower of London and the
castle of Windsor; Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 18: these were
peculiarly in the custody of the justiciar; Stubbs, _Const.
Hist._, vol. i. p. 449, note 1.

[1276] Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1540–1541 (Michel, p. 70).

[1277] Robert appears as _capitalis justicia_ in a charter
of, apparently, 1155 (Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 3). In
1159–1160, John of Salisbury describes him as “illustris comes
Legrecestriæ Robertus, modeste proconsulatum gerens apud
Britannias” (Joh. Salisb. _Polycrat._, l. vi. c. 25; Giles,
vol. iv. p. 65), and at his death in 1168 he is named in the
Chron. Mailros (_ad ann._) as “comes justus Leicestrie, et qui
summa justitia vocatur.”

[1278] A charter issued at Westminster, evidently soon after
the coronation, is witnessed by “N. Epọ de Ely et Canc.” Eyton,
_Itin. Hen. II._, p. 2, note 2.

[1279] _Dial. de Scacc._, l. i. c. 8 (Stubbs, _Select
Charters_, p. 199).

Under the old English constitutional system, alike in its native purity and in the modified form which it assumed under the Conqueror and his sons, the archbishop of Canterbury was the official keeper of the royal conscience and the first adviser of the sovereign. Theobald had contributed more than any other one man to secure Henry’s succession; he saw in it the crowning of his own life’s work for England; while Henry saw in Theobald his most weighty and valuable supporter. It was therefore a matter of course that the primate should resume the constitutional position which he had inherited from Anselm and Lanfranc and their old-English predecessors. Theobald, however, was now in advanced age and feeble health; and when he fully perceived what manner of man it was to whom he was bound to act as spiritual father and political guide, he felt that to regulate these strong passions, to direct these youthful impulses, to follow these restless movements, was a task too hard for his failing strength. He feared the evil influences of the courtiers upon the young king, who seemed so willing to be led aright, and might for that very reason be so easily led astray;[1280] he feared for the English Church, through which there was already running a whisper of ill-omen concerning the Angevins’ known hostility to the rights of religion;[1281] he feared for his own soul, lest Henry should wander out of the right path for lack of guidance, and the sin should lie at the door of the incompetent guide.[1282] There was one man who, if he could but be placed at the young king’s side, might be trusted to manage the arduous and delicate task. So to place him could be no very difficult matter; for his own past services to Henry’s cause were far too great to be left unrewarded. Neither the recommendations of the bishops of Winchester,[1283] Bayeux and Lisieux,[1284] nor even those of the primate, could have as much weight as the known qualifications of the candidate himself in obtaining the office of chancellor for Thomas Becket.[1285]

[1280] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 160.

[1281] _Vita S. Thomæ_, Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol.
iv.), p. 11.

[1282] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 160.

[1283] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
18.

[1284] “Quorum consiliis rex in primordiis suis innitebatur.”
Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 12.

[1285] “Facile regi inspiratum est commendatum habere quem
propria satis merita commendabant.” E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.),
p. 363. I cannot attach any importance to the version of
_Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 45–47.

The chancellor’s duties were still much the same as they had been when first organized by Roger of Salisbury. He was charged with the keeping of the royal seal, the drawing-up of royal writs and charters, the conduct of the royal correspondence, the preservation of legal records, the custody of vacant fiefs and benefices, and the superintendence of the king’s chaplains and clerks;[1286]--in a word, the management of the whole clerical and secretarial work of the royal household and of the government. Officially, he seems to have been ranked below the chief ministers of state--the justiciar, or even the treasurer;[1287] personally, however, he was brought more than either of them into close and constant relations with his sovereign. The actual importance and dignity of the chancellorship depended in fact upon the capacity of individual chancellors for magnifying their office. Thomas magnified it as no man ever did before or since. In a very few months he became what the justiciar had formerly been, the second man in the kingdom;[1288] and not in the kingdom alone, but in all the lands, on both sides of the sea, which owned Henry Fitz-Empress for their sovereign.[1289] Theobald’s scheme far more than succeeded; his favourite became not so much the king’s chief minister as his friend, his director, his master.[1290] The two young men, drawn together by a strong personal attraction, seemed to have but one heart and one soul.[1291] Thomas was the elder by fifteen years; but the disparity of age was lost in the perfect community of their feelings, interests and pursuits. Thomas was now in deacon’s orders, having been ordained by Archbishop Theobald at the close of the previous year on his appointment to the archdeaconry of Canterbury,[1292] an office which was accounted the highest ecclesiastical dignity in England after those of the bishops and abbots.[1293] He felt, however, no vocation and no taste for the duties of sacred ministry, and was only too glad to “put off the deacon” and fling all his energies into the more congenial sphere of court life.[1294] Alike in its business and in its pleasures he was thoroughly at home. His refined sensibilities, his romantic imagination, revelled in the elegance and splendour which to Henry’s matter-of-fact disposition were simply irksome; he gladly took all the burthen of state ceremonial as well as of state business upon his own shoulders; and he bore it with an easy grace which men never wearied of admiring. One day he would be riding in coat of mail at the head of the royal troops, the next he would be dispensing justice in the king’s name;[1295] and his will was law throughout the land, for all men knew that his will and Henry’s were one.[1296]

[1286] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above. On the chancellor’s office
see Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 352, 353.

[1287] Will. Fitz-Steph., as above, does indeed say
“Cancellarii Angliæ dignitas est ut secundus a rege in regno
habeatur”; but he had in his mind one particular chancellor.
He also says “Cancellaria emenda non est”; but it seems that
Thomas himself paid for his appointment (Gilb. Foliot, Ep.
cxciv., Giles, vol. i. p. 268; Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. Ep.
ccxxv. pp. 523, 524), like the chancellors before and after
him, and like the other great ministers of state.

[1288] “In regno secundus,” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i.
p. 169. “Secundus a rege,” Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson,
_Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 18. “Nullus par ei erat in regno,
excepto solo rege,” Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216. E.
Grim (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 363, and the _Thomas
Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 49, liken his position to that of
Joseph.

[1289] “Secundum post regem in quatuor regnis quis te ignorat?”
writes Peter of Celle to Thomas (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v.
Ep. ii. p. 4).

[1290] “Regis amicus,” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 169.
“Regis rector et quasi magister,” _ib._ pp. 160 and 169.

[1291] Joh. Salisb., Ep. lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 109;
Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. Ep. ix. p. 13).

[1292] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 159, 160. Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 213. Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_,
vol. i.), p. 4. Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 17.
Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), p. 168. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 11.

[1293] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above. He says it was worth a
hundred pounds of silver.

[1294] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 173.

[1295] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 12.

[1296] _Ibid._ E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 364.

In outward aspect Thomas must have been far more regal than the king himself. He was very tall and elegantly formed,[1297] with an oval face,[1298] handsome aquiline features,[1299] a lofty brow,[1300] large, lustrous and penetrating eyes;[1301] there was an habitual look of placid dignity in his countenance,[1302] a natural grace in his every gesture, an ingrained refinement in his every word and action;[1303] the slender, tapering, white fingers[1304] and dainty attire of the burgher’s son contrasted curiously with the rough brown hands and careless appearance of Henry Fitz-Empress; the order, elegance and liberality of the chancellor’s household contrasted no less with the confusion and discomfort of the king’s. The riches that passed through Thomas’s hands were enormous; revenues and honours were heaped on him by the king; costly gifts poured in upon him daily from clergy and laity, high and low. But what he received with one hand he gave away with the other; his splendour and his wealth were shared with all who chose to come and take a share of them. His door was always open, his table always spread, for all men, of whatever race or rank, who stood in need of hospitality.[1305] Besides fifty-two clerks regularly attached to his household--some to act as his secretaries, some to take charge of the vacant benefices in his custody, some to serve his own numerous livings and prebends[1306]--he had almost every day a company of invited guests to dinner; every day the hall was freshly strewn with green leaves or rushes in summer and clean hay or straw in winter, amid which those for whom there was no room on the benches sat and dined on the floor. The tables shone with gold and silver vessels, and were laden with costly viands; Thomas stuck at no expense in such matters; but it was less for his own enjoyment than for that of his guests;[1307] and these always included a crowd of poor folk, who were as sumptuously and carefully served as the rich;[1308] the meanest in his house never had to complain of a dinner such as the noblest were often obliged to endure in King Henry’s court, where half-baked bread, sour wine, stale fish and bad meat were the ordinary fare.[1309] The chancellor’s hospitality was as gracious as it was lavish. He was the most perfect of hosts; he saw to the smallest details of domestic service; he noted the position of each guest, missed and inquired for the absent, perceived and righted in a moment the least mistake in precedence; if any man out of modesty tried to take a lower place than was his due, it was in vain; no matter in what obscure corner he might hide, Thomas was sure to find him out; he seemed to pierce through curtains and walls with those wonderful eyes whose glance brightened and cheered the whole table.[1310] No wonder that barons and knights sent their sons to be educated under his roof,[1311] and that his personal followers were far more numerous than those of the king.[1312]

[1297] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 17. Herb. Bosh.
(_ibid._), p. 327. Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 3. _Thomas
Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 29.

[1298] Herb. Bosh. as above.

[1299] Will. Fitz-Steph., Herb. Bosh., and _Thomas Saga_, as
above.

[1300] Herb. Bosh. as above.

[1301] _Ib._ p. 229.

[1302] Will. Cant., Will. Fitz-Steph., and _Thomas Saga_, as
above.

[1303] Anon. II. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 84.

[1304] Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 327.

[1305] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp.
20, 21. Joh. Salisb., _Entheticus in Polycraticum_ (Giles, vol.
iii.) p. 3.

[1306] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above, p. 29.

[1307] _Ib._ pp. 20, 21.

[1308] Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 13.

[1309] Pet. Blois, Ep. xiv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 49).

[1310] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 229.

[1311] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ibid._), p. 22.

[1312] E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 363. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol.
iv.), p. 13.

Henry might have been jealous of his minister; but there was no thought of jealousy in his mind. He was constantly in and out at the chancellor’s house; half in sheer fun, half to see for himself the truth of the wonderful stories which he heard about it, he would come uninvited to dinner, riding up suddenly--often bow in hand, on his way to or from the chase--when Thomas was seated at table; sometimes he would take a stirrup-cup, nod to his friend and ride away; sometimes he would leap over the table, sit down and eat. When their work was over, king and chancellor played together like a couple of schoolboys, and whether it was in their private apartments, in the public streets, in the palace, or in church, made no difference at all. It was a favourite tale among their associates how as they rode together through the streets of London one winter’s day, the king, seeing a ragged shivering beggar, snatched at the chancellor’s handsome new mantle of scarlet cloth lined with vair, crying--“You shall have the merit of clothing the naked this time!” and after a struggle in which both combatants nearly fell off their horses, sent the poor man away rejoicing in his new and strangely acquired garment, while with shouts of applause and laughter the bystanders crowded round Thomas, playfully offering him their cloaks and capes in compensation for his loss.[1313]

[1313] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), pp.
24, 25.

It is hardly possible to deny that such enormous wealth as passed through Thomas’s hands during his tenure of the chancellorship must have been acquired, in part at least, by means which in the case of a minister of the Crown in our own day would be accounted little less than scandalous. But in the twelfth century there was no scandal about the matter. Costly gifts of all kinds were showered at the feet of kings and great men openly and as matter of course, and kings and great men received them as openly, often without any idea of bribery on either side. Moreover it is to be remembered that Thomas’s position as chancellor gave him command over a considerable portion of the royal revenues, and that he was left free to draw upon them at his own discretion to meet an expenditure of which part was incurred directly in the king’s behalf, while the whole of it might be regarded as indirectly tending to the king’s glorification and benefit. The two friends in fact seem to have had but one purse as well as “one mind and one heart,” and not till many years later was there any thought of disentangling their accounts. Amid all the chancellor’s wild magnificence, there is no evidence of corruption; and there was certainly no arrogance. Thomas had nothing of the upstart in him; he never ignored his burgher-origin, he never dropped the friends of his boyhood; his filial submission to the primate remained unchanged;[1314] his gratitude to his early teachers at Merton was proved by his choice of a confessor from among them,[1315] and by his successful efforts to bring their house under the special patronage of the king.[1316] His tastes were those of the most refined aristocrat, but his sympathies were with the people from whose ranks he had sprung; his boundless almsgiving was doubled in value by the gracious considerateness with which it was bestowed; his tenderness for the poor was as genuine and as delicate as that of his mother the good dame Rohese, and he was quick alike to supply their needs and to vindicate their cause.[1317]

[1314] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Beckett_, vol. iv.) p. 11.

[1315] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 21. This
confessor, Robert by name, was with him all through his exile;
see Garnier (Hippeau), p. 137.

[1316] Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above), p. 23.

[1317] Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 13. Cf. _Thomas Saga_
(Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 49, 55–57.

Like the king himself, Thomas was a standing marvel to his contemporaries; the strict stood aghast at his unclerical mode of life; the simple were half inclined to take him for a wizard.[1318] But his witchery was universal and irresistible; and after all it was only the magic of a winning personality, a vivid imagination, a dauntless spirit and a guileless heart. For the chancellor’s frivolity was all on the surface of his life; its inner depths were pure. Amid the countless temptations of a corrupt court, no stain ever rested upon his personal honour. He shared in all the king’s pursuits, except the evil ones; into them Henry tried to entrap him night and day, but in vain.[1319] The one thing he would not do, the one thing he would not tolerate, was evil; the one species of human being to whom his doors were inexorably closed was a man of known bad character.[1320] Coarseness, immorality, dishonesty, in word or deed, met with summary and condign punishment at his hands.[1321] Above all things, “lying lips and a deceitful tongue were an abomination unto him.”[1322] When in after-days a biographer of the martyred archbishop copied from the Epistle to the Ephesians the description of the spiritual armour in which his hero was supposed to have clothed himself at his consecration, he significantly omitted the first piece of the panoply;[1323] Thomas had no need then to put on the girdle of truth, for he had worn it all his life.

[1318] Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 5.

[1319] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
21. Cf. Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._) p. 166; Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol.
ii.), p. 303; Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), pp. 5, 6; Garnier
(Hippeau), pp. 12, 13; _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp.
53–55.

[1320] “Nota domus cunctis, vitio non cognita soli.”
“Huic, quæ sola placet, solâ virtute placebis.”

Joh. Salisb., _Enthet. in Polycrat._
(Giles, vol. iii.) pp. 2, 3.

[1321] Anon. I. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 8. Will.
Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 21.

[1322] Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 166.

[1323] _Ib._ p. 198.

His position at court was no easy one; for a while envy, hatred and malice assailed him from all sides, and their attacks, added to an immense load of work, so overwhelmed him that he more than once declared to his friends and to the primate that he was weary of his life and would be thankful to end it, or at any rate to break away from the bondage of the court, if only he could do so with honour. But he was not the man to forsake a task which he had once undertaken;[1324] his nature was rather to do it, like the king himself, with all his might. In the after-years, when friends and foes alike could hardly look back upon any period of Thomas’s career save in the light of the martyr’s aureole, more than half the credit of Henry’s early reforms was bestowed upon the chancellor.[1325] Even at the time, he was described by no mean authority as the champion of all liberty,[1326] the defender of all rights, the redresser of all wrongs, the restorer of peace,[1327] the mediator who stood between king and people to soften the inflexibility of law and prevent justice from degenerating into legal wrong.[1328] It is certain that the brightest and happiest years of Henry’s reign were those during which Thomas held the foremost rank and took the foremost part in the administration of government. For the successful execution of Henry’s policy, therefore, Thomas is entitled to a large share of credit. But that he in any serious degree influenced and moulded the general scope of that policy is a theory opposed both to the evidence of actual events and to the inferences which must be drawn from the characters of the two men, as developed in their after-careers. Thomas may have suggested individual measures--we shall see that he did suggest one of very great importance;--he may have contrived modifications in detail; but Henry’s policy, as a whole, bears the clear stamp of one mind--his own. The chancellor’s true merit lies in this, that he was Henry’s best and most thorough fellow-worker--not so much his counsellor or minister as his second self. It is not hard to see why they were friends; nor to see, too, why they were to quarrel so fatally. The same characteristics which drew them together were fated to part them in the end. The king found in the burgher’s son a temper as energetic, a spirit as versatile and impetuous, a tongue as quick and sharp,[1329] a determination as resolute, dauntless and thorough as his own, with a much less subtle brain, a much more excitable imagination, and much more sensitive feelings. While they moved side by side in the same sphere, they had “but one heart and one soul”; when once their spheres became opposed, the friends could only change into bitter antagonists.

[1324] Joh. Salisb. (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 305. Cf. Anon. I.
(_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 12; and _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i.
p. 59.

[1325] See Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.),
p. 19.

[1326] Joh. Salisb., _Entheticus_, v. 1357 (Giles, vol. v. p.
282).

[1327] Joh. Salisb. _Enthet. in Polycrat._ (Giles, vol. iii.)
p. 3.

[1328] “Hic est qui regni leges cancellat iniquas,
Et mandata pii principis æqua facit.”

Joh. Salisb., _Enthet. in Polycrat._ (Giles, vol. iii.) p. 2.
This seems to be the earliest version of the jest about law
and equity, and sums up, in a playful shape, the chancellor’s
relation to both.

[1329] Although Thomas was “slightly stuttering in his talk.”
_Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 29. The statement
occurs in none of the extant Latin lives, but from its very
strangeness can hardly be anything but a touch of genuine
tradition. The impediment however can only have been a very
slight one, and was most likely nothing more than the effect
of his extreme impetuosity. It certainly did not hinder him
speaking his mind fully and forcibly upon any important
occasion when his feelings were deeply stirred.

Henry’s first manifesto was published before Thomas entered his service. Immediately after his coronation he issued a charter setting forth the broad principles of his intended policy:--the restoration and confirmation of all liberties and customs in Church and state as settled by his grandfather.[1330] The actual wording of the charter was hardly more explicit than that of Stephen’s; but the marked omission of all reference to Stephen was in itself a significant indication that the return to an earlier and better order of things was intended to be something more than a phrase. On Christmas-day the king held his court at Bermondsey, and with the counsel of the assembled barons set himself to enforce at once the provisions of the treaty of Wallingford which Stephen had proved incapable of executing. Peremptory orders were issued for the expulsion of the Flemish mercenaries and the demolition of the unlicensed castles.[1331] The effect was magical. The Flemings saw at once that their day was over, and vanished like an army of spectres, so suddenly that folk marvelled whither they could have gone.[1332] The razing of the castles was necessarily a less rapid process, but it was accomplished without delay and without disturbance.[1333] These preliminary obstacles being cleared out of the way, the next step was to re-assert the rights of the Crown by abolishing the fiscal earldoms[1334] and reclaiming the demesne lands and fortresses which had passed into private hands during the anarchy. Henry proclaimed his determination clearly and firmly; all alienations of royal revenue and royal property made during the late reign were declared null and void; all occupiers of crown lands and castles were summoned to surrender them at once, and the charters of donation from Stephen whereby they attempted to justify their occupation were treated simply as waste paper.[1335] There was one at least of the usurping barons to whom Henry knew that he must carry his summons in person if he meant it to be obeyed: William of Aumale, the lord of Holderness, whose father had once aspired to the crown, whom Stephen had made earl of York, and who ruled like an almost independent chieftain in Yorkshire, where he held the royal castle of Scarborough and was in no mind to give it up. As soon as the festival season was over Henry began to move northward; by the end of January he was at York, and William of Aumale was at his feet, making complete surrender of Scarborough and of all his other castles.[1336] Another great northern baron, William Peverel of the Peak, had been scared into a monastery by the mere rumour of the king’s approach;[1337] he had been concerned two years before in an attempt to poison Henry’s earliest English ally, Earl Ralf of Chester; he knew that he was a doomed man,[1338] and when the king turned southward again after receiving the surrender of Scarborough, he dared not trust even his monastic tonsure to save him from his doom, but fled the country and left all his fiefs to his sovereign’s mercy.[1339]

[1330] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 135.

[1331] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 160.

[1332] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 1 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 101, 102).

[1333] _Ib._ p. 102. Gerv. Cant. as above.

[1334] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155.

[1335] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 2 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 103).

[1336] _Ib._ cc. 2 and 3 (pp. 103, 104).

[1337] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 161.

[1338] See a charter of Henry, duke of the Normans, promising
Peverel’s fief to Ralf on proof of the former’s guilt; Rymer,
_Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 16. Ralf of Chester died in 1153; Joh.
Hexh. (Raine), p. 171. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 155. See
above, p. 399.

[1339] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 161.