War with the baronage.
Henry's conciliatory measures were not taken a moment too soon. He had but just time to announce his good intentions, and to give some earnest of his desire to carry them out, when he found himself involved in a desperate civil war. The barons had broken loose, headed by Robert of Belesme, the turbulent Earl of Shrewsbury, and they were set on making Duke Robert King of England. Robert, indeed, had just returned from Palestine, and had retaken possession of his duchy shortly after his brother's death. He planned an invasion of England to assist his partisans, and began to collect an army.
But the new king was too much for his shiftless brother. When Robert landed at Portsmouth, he bought him off for a moment by offering him a tribute of £3000, an irresistible bribe to the impecunious duke, and then used his opportunity to crush the rebellious barons. The fate of the rising was settled by the next summer. Gathering together the English shire levies and those of the baronage who were faithful to him, the king marched against Robert of Belesme and his associates. The successful sieges of Arundel and Bridgenorth decided the war: Robert was forced to surrender, and granted his life on condition of forfeiting his estates and leaving the realm. "Rejoice, King Henry, for now may you truly say that you are lord of England," cried the English levies to their monarch, "since you have put down Robert of Belesme, and driven him out of the bounds of your kingdom" (1101).
Marriage of Henry to Matilda of Scotland.
So Henry retained the crown that he had seized, and set to work to strengthen his position in the land. He did his best to conciliate the native English by marrying, five months after his accession, a princess of the old royal house of King Alfred. The lady was Eadgyth, or Matilda as the Normans re-named her, the daughter of Malcolm, the King of Scotland and of Margaret, the sister of Eadgar the Etheling. So the issue of King Henry, and all his descendants who sat on the English throne, had the blood of the ancient kings of Wessex in their veins. Some of the Normans mocked at this marriage, and at the anxiety which Henry showed to please his native-born subjects, and nicknamed him "Godric," an English name which sounded uncouth to their own ears. But the king heeded not, when he got so much solid advantage from his conduct, and the prosperity of his reign justified his wisdom.
Fusion of English and Norman races.
Henry showed himself his father's true son, reproducing the good as well as the evil qualities of the Conqueror. He had the advantage over his father of having been born in England, and of living in a generation when the first bitterness of the strife of races was beginning to be assuaged. If he was selfish and hard-hearted and often cruel, yet he dispensed even-handed justice, curbed all oppressors, and kept to the letter of the law. He made so little difference between Norman and Englishman that the two races soon began to melt together: intermarriage between them became common in all classes save the highest nobility; the English thegns and yeomen began to christen their children by Norman names, while the Anglo-Normans began to learn English, and to draw apart from their kindred beyond the sea in the old duchy. Thirty years after Henry's death, it was remarked by a contemporary writer that no man could say that he was either Norman or English, so much had the two races become intermingled. Much of the benefit of this happy union must be laid to the credit of Henry himself, who both set the example of wedding a wife of English blood, and treated all his men of either race as equal before his eyes. Nor was he averse to granting a larger measure of liberty to his subjects: his charter to the city of London, issued in 1100, was a very liberal grant of self-government to the burghers of his capital, and served as a model ever after to his successors when they gave privileges to their town-dwelling liegemen. He allowed the Londoners to raise their own taxes, to choose their own sheriffs, and to make bye-laws for their municipal government.
Character of Henry.
But Henry's character had a bad side: he was at times as ruthlessly cruel as his father; he punished not only rebellion, but theft and offences against the forest laws, by death, or blinding, or mutilation. Once, when he found that the workmen of his mints had conspired together to issue base coins, he struck off the right hand of every moneyer in England. We shall see that he was capable of holding his own brother in close prison for thirty years. He was as grasping and avaricious as his predecessor William, though he was much less arbitrary and harsh in his exactions. His private life, though not a patent scandal like that of the Red King, was open to grave reproach. Above all things he was selfish; his own advantage was his aim, and if he governed the land wisely and justly, it was mainly because he thought that wisdom and justice were the best policy for himself.
Strength of the monarchy.—