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Henry II and the Restoration of Order

Henry II and the Restoration of Order

Henry II had got the title of king. His life's work was spent in making that kingship a reality. He strove to make himself supreme in his kingdom, and what he did includes a great success and a great failure. Over the barons he triumphed; the Church, on the other hand, worsted him. We have to deal in succession with these two struggles, and we may leave a third aspect of his greatness, his position as a Continental ruler, to lead on to the exploits of his warrior son, Richard Cceur de Lion.

To understand the reasons of his strength, it is necessary to look for a moment beyond England. His father, Geoffrey of Anjou, was one of a family that, like the Norman dukes, had been fertile in strong men, men who had united warlike daring with the ruthlessness and unscrupulousness by which a feudal vassal of the King of France could make himself as strong as his master (Mr. J. R. Green has pointed out how typical their castle at Anjou is of the family. The castle (what remains of it) is a huge, hideous, black pile which seems to scowl down at the town). Geoffrey had not been able to do very much in England, where even Maud's followers feared and disliked him. But he had reduced Normandy, and when he died, in 1151, he left Henry, then eighteen years of age, the ruler of Normandy, and Count of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine. The next year Henry married Eleanor, divorced wife of Louis VII, and thereby became Duke of Aquitaine, Count of Poitou, Toulouse, Saintonge, and Limousin, with a suzerainty over all the countries west of the Rhone. As he made good these dominions against the King of France, he was, even before he became King of England, the mightiest uncrowned head in Europe. If we add that he was skilled in war, adroit in diplomacy, full of restless energy and fiery temper, never for a moment idle, knowing well how to use his own time and how to make others work for him; it is plain that the barons would find him widely different from the "mild and good" King Stephen.

Henry's general policy was to undo all that Stephen had done. The first thing was to restore the royal revenue. Stephen had allowed two-thirds of it to dwindle away by quarrelling with the bishops and so upsetting the management of the exchequer, and by granting crown lands to his friends; and the little that Stephen had not spent Maud had scattered. Henry took back the crown lands, and restored Nigel, Bishop of Ely (Roger of Salisbury's nephew), to his familiar place in the exchequer. He stopped the practice of barons issuing their own coin, put out a good coinage of his own, and took stern measures with any who adulterated it. He pulled down many hundreds of those oppressive castles which the barons had built in defiance of law. He recovered the royal castles which were in baronial hands. Of the barons, Mortimer held out on the west border, Aumale in Scarborough, and Peverel in the Peak; but he marched against them with an army, and made them submit. The country was still full of the hateful mercenaries who had made it their business to plunder both sides. These were expelled from the realm. Henry also forced Malcolm, King of Scots, to yield the northern counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Northumberland, which David had seized; and Malcolm even renewed the old homage, declaring himself to be Henry's "man".

Henry II and the Restoration of Order

Chronology