171. The King makes his Will; Civil War.
Some years after the murder, the King bequeathed England and Normandy (SS108, 159) to Prince Henry.[1] He at the same time provided for his sons Geoffrey and Richard. To John, the youngest of the brothers, he gave no territory, but requested Henry to grant him several castles, which the latter refused to do. "It is our fate," said one of the sons, "that none should love the rest; that is the only inheritance which will never be taken from us."
[1] After his coronation Prince Henry had the title of Henry III; but as he died before his father, he never properly became king in his own right.
It may be that that legacy of hatred was the result of Henry's unwise marriage with Eleanor, an able but perverse woman, or it may have sprung from her jealousy of "Fair Rosamond" and other favorites of the King.[1] Eventually this feeling burst out into civil war. Brother fought against brother, and Eleanor, conspiring with the King of France, turned against her husband.
[1] "Fair Rosamond" [Rosa mundi, the Rose of the world (as THEN interpreted)] was the daughter of Lord Clifford. According to tradition the King formed an attachment for this lady before his unfortunate marriage with Eleanor, and constructed a place of concealment for her in a forest in Woodstock, near Oxford. Some accounts report that Queen Eleanor discovered her rival and put her to death. She was buried in the nunnery of Godstow near by. When Henry's son John became King, he raised a monument to her memory with the inscription in Latin: "This tomb doth here enclose The world's most beauteous Rose— Rose passing sweet erewhile, Now naught but odor vile."
172. The King's Penance (1173).
The revolt against Henry's power began in Normandy (1173). While he was engaged in quelling it, he received intelligence that Earl Bigod of Norfolk[2] and the bishop of Durham, both of whom hated the King's reforms, since they curtailed their authority, had risen against him.
[2] Hugh Bigod: The Bigods were among the most prominent and also the most turbulent of the Norman barons.
Believing that this new trouble was a judgment from Heaven for Becket's murder, Henry resolved to do penance at his tomb. Leaving the Continent with two prisoners in his charge,—one his son Henry's queen, the other his own,—he traveled with all speed to Canterbury. There, kneeling abjectly before the grave of his former chancellor and friend, the King submitted to be beaten with rods by the priests, in expiation of his sin.
173. End of the Struggle of the Barons against the Crown.