Chapter IV: Henry and the Barons (1)

1166–1175.

For the last eight years Henry had been literally, throughout his English realm, over all persons and all causes supreme. From the hour of Thomas’s flight, not a hand, not a voice was lifted to oppose or to question his will; England lay passive before him; the time seemed to have come when he might work out at leisure and without fear of check his long-cherished plans of legal, judicial and administrative reform. In the execution of those plans, however, he was seriously hampered by the indirect consequences of the ecclesiastical quarrel. One of these was his own prolonged absence from England, which was made necessary by the hostility of France, and which compelled him to be content with setting his reforms in operation and then leave their working to other hands and other heads, without the power of superintending it and watching its effects with his own eyes, during nearly six years. He had now to learn that the enemy with whom he had been striving throughout those years was after all not the most serious obstacle in his way;--that the most threatening danger to his scheme of government still lay, as it had lain at his accession, in that temper of the baronage which it had been his first kingly task to bring under subjection. The victory which he had gained over Hugh Bigod in 1156 was real, but it was not final. The spirit of feudal insubordination was checked, not crushed; it was only waiting an opportunity to lift its head once more; and with the strife that raged around S. Thomas of Canterbury the opportunity came.

Henry’s attitude towards the barons during these years had been of necessity a somewhat inconsistent one. He never lost sight of the main thread of policy which he had inherited from his grandfather: a policy which may be defined as the consolidation of kingly power in his own hands, through the repression of the feudal nobles and the raising of the people at large into a condition of greater security and prosperity, and of closer connexion with and dependence upon the Crown, as a check and counterpoise to the territorial influence of the feudataries. On the other hand, his quarrel with the primate had driven him to throw himself on the support of those very feudataries whom it was his true policy to repress, and had brought him into hostility with the ecclesiastical interest which ought to have been, and which actually had been until now, his surest and most powerful aid. If it was what we may perhaps venture to call the feudal side of the ecclesiastical movement--its introduction of a separate system of law and jurisdiction, traversing and impeding the course of his own uniform regal administration--which roused the suspicions of the king, it was its anti-feudal side, its championship of the universal rights and liberties of men in the highest and widest sense, that provoked the jealousy of the nobles. This was a point which Henry, blinded for the moment by his natural instinct of imperiousness, seems to have overlooked when at the council of Northampton he stooped to avail himself of the assistance of the barons to crush the primate. They doubtless saw what he failed to see, that he was crushing not so much his own rival as theirs. The cause of the Church was bound up with that of the people, and both alike were closely knit to that of the Crown. Sceptre and crozier once parted, the barons might strive with the former at an advantage such as they had never had while Lanfranc stood beside William and Anselm beside Henry I., such as they never could have had if Thomas had remained standing by the side of Henry II.[583]

[583] “The government party was made up of two elements--the
higher order of the Clergy, who joined the king out of
cowardice, having more at stake than they could make up their
minds to lose; and the higher order of the Laity, who in this
instance sided with the king against the Church, that when
they had removed this obstacle they might afterwards fight him
single-handed.” (R. H. Froude, _Remains_, vol. iv. p. 30).
Which is just what Arnulf of Lisieux saw from the first (Ep.
clxii., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. pp. 309, 310), and what
Henry learned to his cost in 1173.

As yet, however, there was no token of the strife to come. In February 1166, two years after the publication of the Constitutions of Clarendon, Henry assembled another council at the same place and thence issued an ordinance[584] for carrying out a reform in the method of bringing to justice criminals in general, similar to that which he had in the Constitutions sought to apply to criminals of one particular class. By the Assize of Clarendon it was enacted that the king’s justices and the sheriffs should in every shire throughout the kingdom make inquiry concerning all crimes therein committed “since our lord the king was king.”[585] The method of their investigations was that of inquest by sworn recognitors chosen from among the “lawful men” of each hundred and township, and bound by oath to speak the truth according to their knowledge of the fact in question. This mode of legal inquiry had been introduced into England by William the Conqueror for fiscal purposes, such as the taking of the Domesday survey, and its employment for similar objects was continued by his successors. Henry II. had in the early years of his reign applied the same principle to the uses of civil litigation by an ordinance known as the “Great Assize,” whereby disputes concerning the possession of land might, if the litigants chose, be settled before the justices of the king’s court by the unanimous oath of twelve lawful knights chosen according to a prescribed form from among those dwelling in the district where the land lay, and therefore competent to swear to the truth or falsehood of the claim.[586] This proceeding seems to be assumed as already in use by the ninth Constitution of Clarendon, which ordains its application to disputes concerning Church lands.[587] The Assize of Clarendon aimed at bringing criminals to justice by the help of the same machinery. It decreed that in every hundred of every shire inquest should be made by means of twelve lawful men of the hundred and four from each township, who should be sworn to denounce every man known in their district as a robber, thief or murderer, or a harbourer of such; on their presentment the accused persons were to be arrested by the sheriff, and kept by him in safe custody till they could be brought before the itinerant justices, to undergo the ordeal of water and receive legal punishment according to its results.[588] The inquest was to be taken and the session of the justices held in full shire-court; no personal privileges of any kind were to exempt any qualified member of the court from his duty of attendance and of service on the jury of recognitors if required;[589] and no territorial franchise or private jurisdiction, whether of chartered town or feudal “honour,” was to shelter a criminal thus accused from the pursuit of the sheriffs on the authority of the justices.[590]

[584] On the date see Bishop Stubbs’ preface to _Gesta Hen._,
vol. ii. pp. lix.–lxi. The Assize is printed in an appendix to
same preface, pp. cxlix–cliv, and in _Select Charters_, pp.
143–146.

[585] Assize of Clarendon, c. 1 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p.
143).

[586] Glanville, _De legibus Angliæ_, l. ii. c. 7 (_ib._ p.
161). Cf. Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 616.

[587] Constit. Clar. c. 9 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 139).
See above, pp. 26, 27.

[588] Assize Clar. cc. 1, 2, 4, 6 (as above, pp. 143, 144).

[589] _Ib._ c. 8 (p. 144).

[590] _Ib._ cc. 9–11 (as above).

As was the case with most of Henry’s reforms, none of the methods of procedure adopted in this Assize were new inventions. Not only had the inquest by sworn recognitors been in use for civil purposes ever since the Norman conquest; it may even be that the germ of a jury of presentment in criminal cases, which in its modern shape appears for the first time in the Assize of Clarendon, is to be traced yet further back, to an ordinance of Æthelred II., whereby the twelve senior thegns in every wapentake were made to swear that they would “accuse no innocent man nor conceal any guilty one.”[591] The mission of itinerant justices--derived in principle from the early days of English kingship, when the sovereign himself perambulated his whole realm, hearing and deciding whatever cause came before him as he passed along--had been employed by Henry I., and revived by Henry II. immediately after his accession. A visitation of the greater part of England had been made by two of the chief officers of the Curia Regis in the first year of his reign, and again in the second; another circuit seems to have been made in 1159 by William Fitz-John; and in 1163 Alan de Neville held pleas of the forest in Oxfordshire, while the justiciar himself, Richard de Lucy, made a journey into Cumberland to hold the pleas of the Crown there, for the first time since the district had passed into the hands of the king of Scots.[592] From the date of the Assize of Clarendon, however, these journeys became regular and general,[593] and the work of the judges employed on them became far more extensive and important.

[591] Laws of Æthelred II., l. iii. c. 3 (Stubbs, _Select
Charters_, p. 72). See Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp.
103, 115, 396, 611, 614.

[592] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii., pref. p. lxiv.

[593] _Ib._ pp. lxiii, lxiv.

The first visitation under the assize was at once begun by Richard de Lucy and Geoffrey de Mandeville, earl of Essex;[594] and the Pipe Roll of the year furnishes some indications of its immediate results. The sums credited to the treasury for the pleas of the Crown reach a far greater amount than in the earlier rolls, and its receipts are further swelled by the goods and chattels of criminals condemned under the assize,[595] which were explicitly declared forfeit to the king.[596] The clause binding all qualified persons to be ready to serve on the juries was strictly enforced; one attempt to evade it was punished with a fine of five marks.[597] Another clause, enjoining upon the sheriffs the construction and repair of gaols for the detention of criminals, was carried into effect with equal vigour.[598] The work of the two justiciars was apparently not completed till the summer of 1167.[599] In that year pleas of the forest were held throughout the country by Alan de Neville; and in 1168 seven barons of the Exchequer made a general visitation of the shires for the collection of an aid on the marriage of the king’s eldest daughter.[600] This last was primarily a fiscal journey; the aid itself was a strictly feudal impost, assessed at one mark on every knight’s fee.[601] It was however levied in a remarkable manner. The Domesday survey, which by a few modifications in practice had been made to serve as the rate-book of the whole kingdom for eighty years, was at last found inadequate for the present purpose. A royal writ was therefore addressed to all the tenants-in-chief, requiring from them an account of the knights’ fees which they held and the services due upon them, whether under the “old infeoffment” of the time of Henry I., or under the “new infeoffment” since the resettlement of the country by his grandson.[602] The answers were enrolled in what is known as the _Black Book of the Exchequer_[603] and the aid was levied in accordance with their contents. The whole process occupied a considerable time; the preparations seem to have begun shortly after Matilda’s betrothal, for we hear of the purchase of “a hutch for keeping the barons’ letters concerning their knights” as early as 1166,[604] yet the collection of the money was not finished till the summer of 1169,[605] a year and a half after her marriage. The labours of the barons employed in it were however not confined to this one end; as usual, their travels were turned to account for judicial purposes,[606] and the system begun by the assize of Clarendon was by no means suffered to fall into disuse.

[594] Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 470. _Gesta Hen._,
vol. ii., pref. pp. lxiv, lxv.

[595] See Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 471.

[596] Ass. Clar., c. 5 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 143,
144).

[597] “Homines de Tichesoura debent v marcas quia noluerunt
jurare assisam regis.” Pipe Roll a. 1166, quoted in Stubbs,
_Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 470, note 1.

[598] “The expenses of gaols at Canterbury, Rochester,
Huntingdon, Cambridge, Sarum, Malmesbury, Aylesbury and Oxford
are accounted for in the Roll of 1166.” _Ib._ p. 471, note 5.

[599] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii., pref. pp. lxiv, lxv and
note 1.

[600] Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 471 and note 6.

[601] _Ib._ p. 472. Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. p. 572.

[602] The tenour of the king’s writ is shewn by a typical
answer, printed by Bishop Stubbs in his _Select Charters_, p.
146, from Hearne’s _Liber Niger Scaccarii_ (2d ed.), vol. i.
pp. 148, 149.

[603] _Liber Niger Scaccarii_, edited by Hearne. A roll of the
Norman tenants-in-chivalry was compiled in the same manner in
1172; see Stapleton, _Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniæ_, vol.
i., _Observations_, p. xxxiv.

[604] Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. p. 576, and Stubbs,
_Constit. Hist._, p. 471, note 7, from Pipe Roll a. 1166.

[605] Stubbs, as above, p. 472, and _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii.
pref. p. lxv and note 2. Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 117.

[606] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii., pref. p. lxv, note 2.

It was too soon as yet for the beneficial results of these measures to become evident to the people at large; but it was not too soon for them to excite the resentment of the barons. The stringency with which in the assize of Clarendon every claim of personal exemption or special jurisdiction was made to give way before the all-embracing authority of the king’s supreme justice shewed plainly that Henry still clave to the policy which had led him to insist upon the restoration of alienated lands and the surrender of unlicensed castles in England, to lose no opportunity of exercising his ducal right to seize and garrison the castles of his vassals in Normandy[607]--in a word, to check and thwart in every possible way the developement of the feudal principle. The assessment of the aid for his daughter’s marriage seems indeed at first glance to have been based on a principle wholly favourable to the barons, for it apparently left the determination of each landowner’s liabilities wholly in his own hands. But the commissioners who spent nearly two years in collecting the aid had ample power and ample opportunity to check any irregularities which might have occurred in the returns; and the impost undoubtedly pressed very heavily upon the feudal tenants as a body. Its proceeds seem, however, not to have come up to Henry’s expectations, and the unsatisfactory reports which reached him from England of the general results of his legal measures led him to suspect some failure in duty on the part of those who were charged with their execution.

[607] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. pref. p. xlvii, note.

A large share of responsibility rested with the sheriffs; and the sheriffs were still for the most part, as they had been in his grandfather’s days, the chief landowners in their respective shires, men of great local importance, and only too likely to have at once the will and the power to defeat the ends of the very measures which by their official position they were called upon to administer. Henry therefore on his return to England at Easter 1170 summarily deposed all sheriffs of counties and bailiffs of royal demesnes, pending an inquisition into all the details of their official conduct since his own departure over sea four years ago. The inquiry was intrusted not to any of the usual members of the King’s Court and Exchequer, but to a large body of commissioners specially chosen for the purpose from the higher ranks of both clergy and laity.[608] These were to take pledges of all the sheriffs and bailiffs that they would be ready to appear before the king and make redress on an appointed day; an oath was also to be exacted from all barons, knights and freemen in every shire that they would answer truthfully and without respect of persons to all questions put to them by the commissioners in the king’s name.[609]

[608] The list of commissioners for seven of the southern
shires is in Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216. See also
Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 473 and note 2.

[609] Inquest of sheriffs, Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 148.
Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 217.

The subject-matter of these inquiries, as laid down in the king’s instructions, embraced far more than the conduct of the sheriffs. Not only were the commissioners to examine into all particulars of the sums received by the sheriffs and bailiffs in the discharge of their functions, and the manner and grounds of their acquisition,[610] and into the disposal of all chattels and goods forfeited under the assize of Clarendon; they were also to ascertain whether the collection of the aid _pour fille marier_ had been honestly conducted; they were at the same time to investigate the administration of the forests[611] and the condition of the royal demesnes;[612] to find out and report any persons who had failed to do homage to the king or his son;[613] and they were moreover to make inquisition into the proceedings of all the special courts of the various franchises, whether held by archbishop or bishop, abbot, earl or baron, as fully and minutely as into those of the ordinary hundreds.[614] Only two months were allowed to the commissioners for their work, which nothing but their great number can have enabled them to execute in the time. Unhappily, the report which they brought up to the king on S. Barnabas’s day is lost, and we have no record of its results save in relation to one point: out of twenty-seven sheriffs, only seven were allowed to retain their offices. The rest, who were mostly local magnates owing their importance rather to their territorial and family influence than to their connexion with the court, were replaced by men of inferior rank, and of whom all but four were officials of the Exchequer.[615]

[610] Inquest of sheriffs, cc. 1, 4, 9, 10 (as above, pp.
148–150).

[611] _Ib._ cc. 5, 6, 7 (p. 149).

[612] _Ib._ c. 12 (p. 150).

[613] _Ib._ c. 11 (p. 150).

[614] _Ib._ cc. 2, 3 (pp. 148, 149).

[615] See the list, and Bishop Stubbs’s analysis of it, in his
preface to _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. p. lxvii, note 3.

This significant proof of Henry’s determination to pursue his anti-feudal policy was followed up next year by the last step in that resumption of alienated demesnes which in England had been virtually completed thirteen years ago, but which had been enforced only by slower degrees on the other side of the channel. In 1171 Henry ordered a general inquisition into the extent and condition of the demesne lands and forests held by his grandfather in Normandy, and into the encroachments since made upon them by the barons; and we are told that the restitution which resulted from the inquiry almost doubled his ducal revenue.[616] The endurance of the barons was now almost at an end; and moreover, their opportunity had now come. From that same council at Westminster whence the decree had gone forth for the inquest of sheriffs, there had gone forth also the summons for the crowning of the young king; that other assembly which on S. Barnabas’s day saw the deposition of the delinquent officers saw also, three days later, the new and dangerously suggestive spectacle of two kings at once in the land. When, six months later still, the first consequences of that coronation appeared in the murder of S. Thomas, the barons could not but feel that their hour was at hand. His regal dignity no longer all his own, but voluntarily shared with another--his regal unction washed out in that stream of martyr’s blood which cut him off from the support of the Church--Henry seemed to be left alone and defenceless in the face of his foes. The year which he spent in conquering Ireland was a breathing-space for them as well as for him. They used it to adapt to their purposes the weapon which he had so lately forged for his own defence; they found a rallying-point and a pretext for their designs against him in the very son whom he had left to cover his retreat and supply his place at home.

[616] Rob. Torigni, a. 1171.

The younger Henry had passed over to Normandy just before his father quitted it, in July 1171.[617] There he apparently stayed with his mother and her younger children till the opening of the next year, when he and his wife went to England, and there remained as titular king and queen until his father’s return from Ireland.[618] The youth’s kingship, however, was scarcely more than nominal; in his presence no less than in his absence, the real work of government in England was done by the justiciars; and his own personal interests lay chiefly beyond the sea. The influences which surrounded him there were those of his father’s open or secret foes:--of his wife’s father, King Louis of France, of his own mother, Queen Eleanor, her kindred and her people; and Eleanor had ceased to be a loyal vice-gerent for the husband who had by this time forfeited his claims to wifely affection from her. She seems to have taken for her political confidant her uncle, Ralf of Faye[619]--one of the many faithless barons of Poitou; and it is said to have been at her instigation that Ralf and an Angevin baron, Hugh of Ste.-Maure, profited by Henry’s absence in Ireland to whisper to her eldest son that a crown was worthless without the reality of kingly power, and that it was time for him to assert his claim to the substance of which his father had given him only the shadow.[620] Young Henry, now seventeen years old, listened but too readily to such suggestions; and it was a rumour of his undutiful temper, coupled significantly with a rumour of growing discontent among the barons, that called Henry back from Ireland[621] and made him carry his son with him to Normandy[622] in the spring of 1172. After the elder king’s reconciliation with the Church, however, and the second coronation of the younger one, the danger seemed to have subsided; and in November Henry, to complete the pacification, allowed his son to accompany his girl-wife on a visit to her father, the king of France.[623] When they returned,[624] the young king at once confronted his father with a demand to be put in possession of his heritage, or at least of some portion of it--England, Normandy, or Anjou--where he might dwell as an independent sovereign with his queen.[625] The father refused.[626] He had never intended to make his sons independent rulers of the territories allotted to them; Richard and Geoffrey indeed were too young for such an arrangement to be possible in their cases; and the object of the eldest son’s crowning had been simply to give him such an inchoate royalty as would enable his father to employ him as a colleague and representative in case of need, and to feel assured of his ultimate succession to the English throne. The king’s plans for the distribution of his territories and for the establishment of his children had succeeded well thus far. He had secured Britanny in Geoffrey’s name before he quitted Gaul in 1171; and a month after his return, on Trinity Sunday (June 10) 1172, Richard was enthroned as duke of Aquitaine according to ancient custom in the abbot’s chair in the church of S. Hilary at Poitiers.[627] One child, indeed, the youngest of all, was still what his father had called him at his birth--“John Lackland.”[628] Even for John, however, though he was scarcely five years old,[629] a politic marriage was already in view.

[617] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 24, note 2.

[618] Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 162, 166. He kept Christmas
at Bures; Rob. Torigni, a. 1172 (_i.e._ 1171).

[619] Ep. ciii., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. p. 197. Cf. Ep.
cclxxvii., _ib._ vol. vi. p. 131.

[620] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 350.

[621] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 37 (Dimock, vol.
v. p. 285). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 128, 129.

[622] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 30.

[623] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 34. This writer says
they went over--young Henry much against his will--about All
Saints’ day, and were sent to the king of France both together.
Rob. Torigni, a. 1172, says they crossed at Martinmas, and paid
their visits to Louis separately, Henry at Gisors, Margaret at
Chaumont.

[624] Summoned, it seems, by Henry, “timens fraudem et malitiam
regis Franciæ, quas sæpe expertus fuerat.” _Gesta Hen._ (as
above), p. 35.

[625] _Ib._ p. 41. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 242.
The _Gesta_ say the demand was made “per consilium regis
Francorum, et per consilium comitum et baronum Angliæ et
Normanniæ, qui patrem suum odio habebant.”

[626] _Gesta Hen._ and Gerv. Cant. as above.

[627] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 67 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
vol. ii. p. 318).

[628] “Quartum natu minimum Johannem Sine Terrâ agnominans.”
Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 18 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 146).

[629] There is some doubt as to the date of John’s birth. Rob.
Torigni (_ad ann._) places it in 1167; R. Diceto (Stubbs,
vol. i. p. 325) in 1166. The prose addition to Robert of
Gloucester’s Chronicle (Hearne, vol. ii. p. 484) says that he
was born at Oxford on Christmas Eve. As Eleanor seems to have
been in England at Christmas-tide in both years, this gives us
no help. Bishop Stubbs (Introd. to _W. Coventry_, vol. ii.
p. xvii, note 3) adopts the later date.

One of the many branches of Henry’s continental policy was the cultivation of an alliance with those small but important states which lay on the border-land between Italy, Germany, and that old Aquitanic Gaul over which he claimed dominion in his wife’s name. The most important of these was the county of Maurienne, a name which in strictness represents only a small mountainous region encircled to east and south by the Graian and Cottian Alps, and to west and north by another chain of mountains bordering the outermost edges of two river-valleys, those of the Isère and the Arc, which again are severed from each other by a line of lesser heights running through the heart of the district. In the southern valley, that of the Arc, stood the capital of the county, S. Jean-de-Maurienne, the seat of a bishopric from the dedication of whose cathedral church the town itself took its name. In the northern valley, at the foot of the Little S. Bernard, some few miles above the source of the Isère, the counts of Maurienne were advocates of the abbey of S. Maurice, which long treasured the sacred symbol of the old Burgundian royalty, the spear of its patron saint. The power of the counts of Maurienne, however, was not bounded by the narrow circle of hills which stood like an impregnable rampart round about their native land. On the shore of the lake of Bourget they held Chambéry, guarding the pass of Les Echelles, through which southern Gaul communicated with the German lands around the lake of Geneva; the county of Geneva itself was almost surrounded by their territories, for on its western side their sway extended from Chambéry across the valley of the Rhône northward as far as Belley, while eastward they held the whole southern shore of the lake. To north-east of Maurienne, again, the great highway which led from Geneva and from the German lands beyond it into Italy, through the vale of Aosta by the passes of the Pennine Alps or up the valley of the Isère by S. Maurice under the foot of the Little S. Bernard, was in their hands; for Aosta itself and the whole land as far as Castiglione on the Dora Baltea belonged to them. Across the Graian Alps, their possession of the extreme outposts of the Italian border, Susa and Turin, gave them the title of “Marquises of Italy,”[630] and the command of the great highway between Italy and southern Gaul by the valley of the Durance and through the gap which parts the Cottian from the Maritime Alps beneath the foot of the Mont Genèvre; while yet further south, on either side of the Maritime Alps where they curve eastward towards the Gulf of Genoa, Chiusa, Rochetta and Aspromonte all formed part of their territories.[631] In one word, they held the keys of every pass between Italy and north-western Europe, from the Great S. Bernard to the Col di Tenda. Nominally subject to the Emperor in his character of king of Burgundy, they really possessed the control over his most direct lines of communication with his Imperial capital; while the intercourse of western Europe with Rome lay almost wholly at their mercy;[632] and far away at the opposite extremity of Aquitania the present count Humbert of Maurienne seems to have claimed, though he did not actually hold, one of the keys of another great mountain-barrier, in the Pyrenean county of Roussillon on the Spanish March.[633]

[630] “Comes Maurianensis et Marchio Italiæ” is Count Humbert’s
style in the marriage-contract of his daughter with John:
_Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 36.

[631] All these places are named in the marriage-contract of
John and Alice of Maurienne; _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 36–40.

[632] As says Rob. Torigni, a. 1171: “Nec aliquis potest adire
Italiam, nisi per terram ipsius” [sc. comitis].

[633] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 37. Humbert “concedit eis”
[_i.e._ to John and Alice, in case he himself should have a son
who must oust them from Maurienne] “in perpetuum et hæredibus
eorum Russillun cum toto mandato suo sive pertinentiis suis
omnibus,” as if he actually had it in his own hands. I have
however failed to discover any connexion between Roussillon and
Maurienne.

In 1171[634] Henry’s diplomatic relations with the Alpine princes bore fruit in a proposal from Humbert of Maurienne for the marriage of his eldest daughter with the king’s youngest son. Humbert himself had no son, and by the terms of the marriage-contract his territories, Alpine and Pyrenean, were to be settled upon his daughter and her future husband,[635] in return for five thousand marks of English silver.[636] The contract was signed and ratified before Christmas 1172,[637] and soon afterwards Henry summoned his eldest son to join him in a journey into Auvergne for a personal meeting with Humbert. They reached Montferrand before Candlemas, and were there met not only by Humbert and his daughter but also by the count of Vienne,[638] the count of Toulouse and the king of Aragon.[639] How high the English king’s influence had now risen in these southern lands may be judged by the fact that not only King Alfonso of Aragon, a son of his old ally Raymond-Berengar, but also his former enemy Raymond of Toulouse, could agree to choose him as arbiter in a quarrel between themselves.[640] Raymond in truth saw in Henry’s alliances with Aragon and Maurienne a death-blow to his own hopes of maintaining the independence of Toulouse. Hemmed in alike to south and east by close allies of the English king whose own duchy of Aquitaine surrounded almost the whole of its north-western border, the house of St.-Gilles felt that it was no longer possible to resist his claim to overlordship over its territories. Henry carried his guests back with him to Limoges; there he settled the dispute between Raymond and Alfonso; and there Raymond did homage to the two Henrys for Toulouse,[641] promising to do the like at Whitsuntide to Richard as duke of Aquitaine, and pledging himself to military service and yearly tribute.[642]

[634] Rob. Torigni _ad ann._

[635] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 36–40.

[636] _Ib._ p. 36.

[637] Rog. Howden (Stubbs, vol. ii. p. 44), in copying from the
_Gesta Hen._ (as above, p. 40) an account of the ratification
of the contract, heads the paragraph “De adventu nunciorum
comitis Mauriensis _in Angliam_.” If he is right, it must have
taken place in April; but he may mean only “to the king of
England.”

[638] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 353.

[639] _Ibid._ _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 35, 36.

[640] This seems to be the meaning of _Gesta Hen._ (as above),
p. 36: “Venerunt etiam illuc ad regem rex Arragoniæ et comes de
S. Ægidio, qui inimici erant ad invicem, et rex duxit eos secum
usque Limoges, et ibi pacem fecit inter eos.”

[641] _Ibid._ Rog. Howden (as above), p. 45. R. Diceto, as
above, says only “fecit homagium regi Anglorum Henrico patri
regis Henrici.” Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 67 (Labbe, _Nova
Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 319), gives the date, the first Sunday
in Lent, February 25.

[642] _Gesta Hen._ as above. “Sed quia Ricardus dux Aquitaniæ,
cui facturus esset homagium comes S. Egidii, præsens non erat,
usque ad octavas Pentecostes negotii complementum dilationem
accepit,” says R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. pp. 353, 354). The
_Gesta_ and Rog. Howden make Raymond do homage to the two
Henrys and to Richard all at once. They alone give full details
of the services promised.

The infant heiress of Maurienne was now placed under the care of her intended father-in-law;[643] Henry’s political schemes seemed to have all but reached their fulfilment, when suddenly Count Humbert asked what provision Henry intended to make for the little landless bridegroom to whom he himself was giving such a well-dowered bride.[644] That question stirred up a trouble which was never again to be laid wholly to rest till the child who was its as yet innocent cause had broken his father’s heart. Henry proposed to endow John with the castles and territories of Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau.[645] But the Angevin lands, with which the younger Henry had been formally invested, could not be dismembered without his consent; and this he angrily refused.[646] The mere request, however, kindled his smouldering discontent into a flame[647] which seems to have been fanned rather than quenched by the suggestions of Eleanor; yet so blind was the indulgent father that, if we may venture to believe the tale, nothing but a warning from Raymond of Toulouse opened his eyes to the danger which threatened him from the plots of his own wife and children. Then, by Raymond’s advice, he started off at once with a small escort, under pretence of a hunting-party,[648] and carried his son back towards Normandy with the utmost possible speed. They reached Chinon about Mid-Lent; thence young Henry slipped away secretly by night to Alençon; his father flew after him, but when he reached Alençon on the next evening the son was already at Argentan; and thence before cock-crow he fled again over the French border, to the court of his father-in-law King Louis.[649] Henry in vain sent messengers to recall him: “Your master is king no longer--here stands the king of the English!” was the reply of Louis to the envoys.[650]

[643] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 36.

[644] _Ib._ p. 41.

[645] _Ibid._ Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 242, turns these
into “tria castella in Normanniâ.”

[646] _Ibid._

[647] According to Rob. Torigni, a. 1173, the young king was
further offended because his father removed from him some of
his favourite counsellors and friends, Hasculf of St. Hilaire
and some other young knights.

[648] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 67 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
vol. ii. p. 319).

[649] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 41, 42. R. Diceto (as
above), p. 355. The chronology is here in great confusion. The
_Gesta_ tell us that the two kings reached Chinon just before
Mid-Lent (which in 1173 was on March 16), that young Henry was
next day at Alençon, the day after that at Argentan, and that
on the third night, “circa gallicantum,” he went off again,
“octavâ Idus Martii, feriâ quintâ ante mediam Quadragesimam.”
(In the printed edition by Bishop Stubbs--vol. i. p. 42--the
word _mediam_ has been accidentally omitted; see note to his
edition of R. Diceto, vol. ii. pref. p. xxxvi, note 6). It is
of course impossible to make anything of such a contradiction
as this. On the other hand, R. Diceto gives only one date, that
of the young king’s flight from Argentan, which he places on
March 23. Now in 1173 March 23 was the Friday after Mid-Lent
Sunday. Reckoning backwards from this--_i.e._ from the night of
Thursday-Friday, March 22–23, for it is plain that the flight
took place before daybreak--we should find the young king at
Alençon on Wednesday, March 21, and at Chinon on Tuesday, March
20; that is, four days after Mid-Lent. It looks very much as
if the author or the scribe of the _Gesta_ had written “ante”
instead of “post” twice over.

[650] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 27 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 170).

Henry at once made a circuit of his Norman fortresses, especially those which lay along the French border, put them in a state of defence, and issued orders to all his castellans in Anjou, Britanny, Aquitaine and England, to do the like.[651] Before Lent had closed the old prophecy which Henry’s enemies were never weary of casting in his teeth was fulfilled: his own “lion-cubs” were all openly seeking to make him their prey.[652] Whether sent by their mother, with whom they had been left behind in Aquitaine, or secretly fetched by their eldest brother in person,[653] both Richard and Geoffrey now joined him at the French court.[654] Eleanor herself was caught trying to follow them disguised as a man, and was by her husband’s order placed in strict confinement.[655] Louis meanwhile openly espoused the cause of the rebels; in a great council at Paris he and his nobles publicly swore to help the young king and his brothers against their father to the utmost of their power, while the three brothers on their part pledged themselves to be faithful to Louis, and to make no terms with their father save through his mediation and with his consent.[656] Young Henry at once began to purchase allies among the French feudataries and supporters among the English and Norman barons, by making grants of pensions and territories on both sides of the sea: grants for which the recipients did him homage and fealty,[657] and which he caused to be put in writing and sealed with a new seal made for him by order of Louis[658]--his own chancellor, Richard Barre, having loyally carried back the original one to the elder king who had first intrusted it to his keeping.[659]

[651] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 42.

[652] See the quotation from Merlin’s prophecy, and the comment
on it, _ib._ pp. 42, 43.

[653] The first is the version of the _Gesta Hen._ (as above);
the second that of Will. Newb. (as above, pp. 170, 171).

[654] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 42. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol.
i. p. 355. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 242.

[655] Gerv. Cant. as above. He adds a comment: “Erat enim
prudens femina valde, nobilibus orta natalibus, sed instabilis.”

[656] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 44.

[657] See the list, _ib._ pp. 44, 45; and cf. Gerv. Cant.
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 243.

[658] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 43 and 45.

[659] _Ib._ p. 43.

Nearly three months passed away before war actually broke out; but when the outburst came, the list of those who were engaged in it shews that the whole Angevin empire had become a vast hotbed of treason; though, on the other hand, it shews also that the treason was almost entirely confined to one especial class. Its local distribution, too, is significant. The restless barons of Aquitaine, still smarting under their defeat of 1169, were but too eager, at the instigation of their duchess and their newly-crowned duke, to renew their struggle against the king. Foremost among them were, as before, the count of Angoulême,[660] the nobles of Saintonge, and Geoffrey of Lusignan, beside whom there stood this time his young brother Guy, now to begin in this ignoble strife a career destined to strange vicissitudes in far-off Palestine.[661] The heart of the old Angevin lands, Anjou itself, was in the main loyal; we find there the names of only five traitors; and three of these, Hugh, William and Jocelyn of Ste.-Maure, came of a rebellious house, and were only doing over again what their predecessors had done in the days of Geoffrey Plantagenet’s youth.[662] The same may be said of Henry’s native land, Maine; this too furnished only seven barons to the traitor’s cause; and five of these again are easily accounted for. It was almost matter of course that in any rising against an Angevin count the lord of Sablé should stand side by side with the lord of Ste.-Maure. Brachard of Lavardin had a fellow-feeling with undutiful sons, for he was himself at strife with his own father, Count John of Vendôme, a faithful ally of Henry II.; the same was probably the case of Brachard’s brother Guy.[663] Bernard of La Ferté represented a family whose position in their great castle on the Huisne, close to the Norman border, was almost as independent as that of their neighbours the lords of Bellême, just across the frontier. Hugh of Sillé bore a name which in an earlier stage of Cenomannian history--in the days of the “commune,” just a hundred years before--had been almost a by-word for feudal arrogance; and whether or not he inherited anything of his ancestor’s spirit, he had a personal cause for enmity to the king if, as is probable, he was akin to a certain Robert of Sillé, whose share in the southern revolt of 1169 was punished by Henry, in defiance of treaties, with an imprisonment so strict and cruel that it was speedily ended by death.[664]

[660] _Ib._ p. 47.

[661] _Ib._ p. 46. The other Aquitanian rebels, besides the
count of Angoulême and the two Lusignans, were Geoffrey of
Rancogne, the lords of Coulonges and Rochefort in Saintonge,
of Blaye (“Robertus de Ble”--this might possibly be Blet in
Berry) and Mauléon in Gascony, and of Chauvigny in Poitou, with
Archbishop William of Bordeaux and Abbot Richard of Tournay
(_ib._ pp. 46, 47); to whom we may add Ralf of Faye.

[662] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 46, 47. The other
Angevin rebels are Vivian and Peter of Montrévault: to whom may
be added John of Lignières and Geoffrey of La Haye in Touraine.
_Ibid._ p. 46.

[663] _Ib._ pp. 47, 63.

[664] “Robertum de Selit quâdam occasione captum rex Henricus
crudeliter ferro indutum, pane arcto atque aquâ breve cibavit
donec defecit.” Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 66 (Labbe, _Nova
Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 318). “Robertus de Silliaco redeat in
mentem ... quem nec pacis osculum publice datum, nec fides
corporaliter regi Francorum præstita, fecit esse securum.” Ep.
dcx., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. p. 178. Cf. Epp. dcvi.,
dcxliv., _ib._ pp. 165, 247. The other Cenomannian rebels are
Gwenis of Palluau and Geoffrey of Brulon; _Gesta Hen._ (as
above), p. 46.

Across the western border of Maine, in Geoffrey’s duchy, Ralf of Fougères was once more at the head of a band of discontented Breton nobles, chiefly, it seems, belonging to that old seed-plot of disturbance, the county of Nantes.[665] The true centre and focus of revolt, however, was as of old the duchy of Normandy. Almost all the great names which have been conspicuous in the earlier risings of the feudal baronage against the repressive policy of William and of Henry I. re-appear among the partizans of the young king. The house of Montfort on the Rille was represented by that Robert of Montfort[666] whose challenge to Henry of Essex ten years before had deprived the king of one of his most trusty servants. The other and more famous house of Montfort--the house of Almeric and of Bertrada--was also, now as ever, in opposition in the person of its head, Count Simon of Evreux.[667] He, like his fellow-traitor the count of Eu,[668] to whom, as after-events shewed, may be added the count of Aumale, represented one of those junior branches of the Norman ducal house which always resented most bitterly the determination of the dukes to concentrate all political power in their own hands. The counts of Ponthieu[669] and of Alençon[670] inherited the spirit as well as the territories of Robert of Bellême. Count Robert of Meulan[671] was the son of Waleran who in 1123 had rebelled against Henry I., and the head of the Norman branch of the great house of Beaumont, which for more than half a century had stood in the foremost rank of the baronage on both sides of the sea. The chief of the English Beaumonts was his cousin and namesake of Leicester, soon to prove himself an unworthy son of the faithful justiciar who had died in 1168; while the countess of Leicester, a woman of a spirit quite as determined and masculine as her husband’s, was the heiress of the proud old Norman house of Grandmesnil[672]--a granddaughter of that Ivo of Grandmesnil who had been banished by Henry I. for trying to bring into England the Norman practice of private warfare. Of the other English rebels, Hugh of Chester[673] was a son of the fickle Ralf, and had at stake besides his palatine earldom in England his hereditary viscounties of Bayeux and Avranches on the other side of the Channel. Hugh Bigod, the aged earl of Norfolk, untaught by his experiences of feudal anarchy in Stephen’s day and undeterred by his humiliation in 1157, was ready to break his faith again for a paltry bribe offered him by the young king.[674] Earl Robert of Ferrers, Hamo de Massey, Richard de Morville, and the whole remnant of the great race of Mowbray--Geoffrey of Coutances, Roger de Mowbray and his two sons--were all men whose grandfathers had “come over with the Conqueror,” and determined to fight to the uttermost for their share in the spoils of the conquest. All these men were, by training and sympathy, if not actually by their own personal and territorial interests, more Norman than English; and the same may probably be said of the rebels of the second rank, among whom, beside the purely Norman lords of Anneville and Lessay in the Cotentin, of St.-Hilaire on the Breton frontier, of Falaise, Dives, La Haye and Orbec in Calvados, of Tillières, Ivry and Gaillon along the French border, we find the names of Ralf of Chesney, Gerald Talbot, Jordan Ridel, Thomas de Muschamp, Saher de Quincy the younger, Simon of Marsh, Geoffrey Fitz-Hamon, and Jocelyn Crispin, besides one which in after-days was to gain far other renown--William the Marshal.[675]

[665] Hardwin of Fougerai, Robert of Tréguier, Gwiounon of
Ancenis, Joibert of La Guerche; _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i.
pp. 46, 47. To these we afterwards find added several others;
_ib._ pp. 57, 58.

[666] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 45.

[667] _Ib._ p. 47.

[668] _Ib._ p. 45.

[669] _Ibid._

[670] Called simply “William Talvas” in the _Gesta Hen._
(as above), p. 46, and “John count of Sonnois” by R. Diceto
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 371. John was his real name.

[671] _Gesta Hen._ and R. Diceto, as above.

[672] Rob. Torigni, a. 1168.

[673] R. Diceto, as above.

[674] Young Henry promised him, and received his homage for,
the hereditary constableship of Norwich castle; _Gesta Hen._
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 45. This writer adds the honour of Eye;
Rog. Howden, however (Stubbs, vol. ii. p. 46), says this was
granted to Matthew of Boulogne.

[675] All these names are given in the list of the young
king’s partizans in _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 45–48. The
remaining names are: William de Tancarville the chamberlain
of Normandy, of whom more presently; Eudo, William, Robert,
Oliver and Roland Fitz-Erneis (see _Liber Niger_, Hearne,
pp. 142, 295, and Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 186 and 251);
Robert of Angerville (he seems to have been the young king’s
steward or seneschal--see quotations from Pipe Roll a. 1172
in Eyton, as above, pp. 166, 167, 168); Solomon Hostiarius
(probably also an attendant of young Henry); Gilbert and Ralf
of Aumale: “Willelmus Patricius senior” (he appears in Pipe
Rolls 3 Hen. II., Hunter, p. 81, 4 Hen. II., p. 118--Berks
and Wilts); William Fitz-Roger (Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II., p.
172, Hants); Robert “de Lundres” (is this some mighty London
citizen?); Peter of St.-Julien (may be either St.-Julien in
Gascony, in eastern Touraine, or in the county of Nantes); Hugh
“de Mota” (La Mothe on the lower Garonne, La Motte Archard in
the county of Nantes, or La Motte de Ger in Normandy); Robert
of Mortagne (possibly the Norman Mortagne, possibly a place of
the same name in Anjou close to the Poitevin border); William
of “Tibovilla” (probably Thiberville in the county and diocese
of Lisieux); John and Osbert “de Praellis” (possibly Pradelles
in Auvergne, more likely Préaux in Normandy); Almeric Turel,
Robert Bussun, Guy of Curtiran, Fulk Ribule, Adam de Ikobo,
Robert Gerebert, William Hagullun, Baldric of Baudemont,
Geoffrey Chouet, “Bucherius,” and William de Oveneia, whom I
cannot identify.

One other rebel there was who stood indeed on a different footing from all the rest, and whose defection had a wider political significance. The king of Scots--William the Lion, brother and successor of Malcolm IV.--had long been suspected of a secret alliance with France against his English cousin and overlord. The younger Henry now offered him the cession of all Northumberland as far as the Tyne for himself, and for his brother David confirmation in the earldom of Huntingdon,[676] with a grant of the earldom of Cambridge in addition, in return for the homage and services of both brothers:--offers which the king of Scots accepted.[677] Only three prelates, on either side of the sea, shewed any disposition to countenance the rebellion; in the south, William, the new-made archbishop of Bordeaux;[678] in the north, Arnulf of Lisieux[679] and Hugh of Durham. Arnulf’s influence at court had long been on the wane; all his diplomacy had failed, as far as his personal interest with King Henry was concerned; but he possessed the temporal as well as the spiritual lordship of his see; and the man’s true character now shewed itself at last, justifying all Henry’s suspicions, in an attempt to play the part of a great baron rather than of a bishop--to use his diplomatic gifts in temporizing between the two parties, instead of seeking to make peace between them or to keep his straying flock in the path of loyalty as a true pastor should. He did but imitate on a smaller scale and under less favourable conditions the example set by Hugh of Puiset in his palatine bishopric of Durham, where he had been throughout his career simply a great temporal ruler, whose ecclesiastical character only served to render almost unassailable the independence of his political position. It was the pride of the feudal noble, not the personal sympathies of the churchman, that stirred up both Hugh and Arnulf to their intrigues against Henry. Personal sympathies indeed had as yet little share in drawing any of the barons to the side of the boy-king. What they saw in his claims was simply a pretext and a watchword which might serve them to unite against his father. Young Henry himself evidently relied chiefly on his foreign allies--his father-in-law, the counts of Flanders and Boulogne, and the count of Blois, the last of whom was bribed by a promise of an annual pension and the restitution of Château-Renaud and Amboise; while to Philip of Flanders was promised the earldom of Kent with a pension in English gold, and to Matthew of Boulogne the soke of Kirton-in-Lindsey and the Norman county of Mortain.[680]

[676] To which, as will be seen later, there was a rival
claimant who adhered to Henry II.

[677] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 45. Jordan Fantosme,
vv. 268, 269 (Michel, p. 14) adds Carlisle and Westmoreland
to the young king’s offers, and relates at great length how
William hesitated before accepting them, how he sent envoys
to the elder king begging for a new cession of Northumberland
from him, and only upon Henry’s defiant refusal, and after long
debate with his own barons, entered upon the war. _Ib._ vv.
372–426 (pp. 14–22).

[678] “Willelmus archiepiscopus.” _Gesta Hen._ (as above),
p. 47. This can be no one else than William, formerly abbot
of Reading, appointed to Bordeaux in February 1173; Geoff.
Vigeois, l. i. c. 67 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p.
319); but I find no further account of his political doings.

[679] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 51, note 4.

[680] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 44, 45. Roger of
Howden, as has been said above (p. 139, note 1), adds the
honour of Eye to Matthew’s intended possessions.