1128.
who might bring them into subjection, and reduce their country to the rank of a province; but the barons were displeased that a step so material to national interests had been taken without consulting them;[**] and Henry had too sensibly experienced the turbulence of their disposition not to dread the effects of their resentment.
[* Chron. Sax. p. 223. W. Malms, p. 165.]
[** W. Malms, p. 175. The Annals of (Waverly p.
150) say that the king asked and obtained the consent of all
the barons.]
It seemed probable that his nephew’s party might gain force from the increase of the malecontents; an accession of power, which that prince acquired a little after, tended to render his pretensions still more dangerous. Charles, earl of Flanders, being assassinated during the celebration of divine service, King Lewis immediately put the young prince in possession of that county, to which he had pretensions in the right of his grandmother Matilda, wife to the Conqueror. But William survived a very little time this piece of good fortune, which seemed to open the way to still further prosperity. He was killed in a skirmish with the landgrave of Alsace, his competitor for Flanders; and his death put an end, for the present, to the jealousy and inquietude of Henry.
The chief merit of this monarch’s government consists in the profound tranquillity which he established and maintained throughout all his dominions during the greater part of his reign. The mutinous barons were retained in subjection; and his neighbors, in every attempt which they made upon him, found him so well prepared that they were discouraged from continuing or renewing their enterprises. In order to repress the incursions of the Welsh, he brought over some Flemings in the year 1111, and settled them in Pembrokeshire, where they long maintained a different language, and customs, and manners, from their neighbors. Though his government seems to have been arbitrary in England, it was judicious and prudent; and was as little oppressive as the necessity of his affairs would permit. He wanted not attention to the redress of grievances; and historians mention in particular the levying of purveyance, which he endeavored to moderate and restrain. The tenants in the king’s demesne lands were at that time obliged to supply, gratis, the court with provisions, and to furnish carriages on the same hard terms, when the king made a progress, as he did frequently, into any of the counties. These exactions were so grievous, and levied in so licentious a manner, that the farmers, when they heard of the approach of the court, often deserted their houses, as if an enemy had invaded the country;[*] and sheltered their persons and families in the woods, from the insults of the king’s retinue. Henry prohibited those enormities, and punished the persons guilty of them by cutting off their hands, legs, or other members.[**] But the prerogative was perpetual; the remedy applied by Henry was temporary; and the violence itself of this remedy, so far from giving security to the people, was only a proof of the ferocity of the government, and threatened a quick return of like abuses.
[* Eadmer, p. 94. Chron. Sax., p. 212.]
[** Eadmer, p. 94.]
One great and difficult object of the king’s prudence was the guarding against the encroachments of the court of Rome, and protecting the liberties of the church of England. The pope, in the year 1101, had sent Guy, archbishop of Vienne, as legate into Britain; and though he was the first that for many years had appeared there in that character, and his commission gave general surprise,[*] the king, who was then in the commencement of his reign, and was involved in many difficulties, was obliged to submit to this encroachment on his authority. But in the year 1116, Anselm, abbot of St. Sabas, who was coming over with a like legantine commission, was prohibited from entering the kingdom;[**] and Pope Calixtus, who in his turn was then laboring under many difficulties, by reason of the pretensions of Gregory, an antipope, was obliged to promise that he never would for the future, except when solicited by the king himself, send any legate into England.[***] Notwithstanding this engagement, the pope, as soon as he had suppressed his antagonist, granted the cardinal De Crema a legantine commission over that kingdom; and the king, who, by reason of his nephew’s intrigues and invasions, found himself at that time in a dangerous situation, was obliged to submit to the exercise of this commission.[****] A synod was called by the legate at London; where, among other canons, a vote passed enacting severe penalties on the marriages of the clergy.[*****] The cardinal, in a public harangue, declared it to be an unpardonable enormity, that a priest should dare to consecrate and touch the body of Christ immediately after he had risen from the side of a strumpet; for that was the decent appellation which he gave to the wives of the clergy. But it happened, that the very next night the officers of justice, breaking into a disorderly house, found the cardinal in bed with a courtesan;[******] an incident which threw such ridicule upon him, that he immediately stole out of the kingdom; the synod broke up; and the canons against the marriage of clergymen were worse executed than ever.[*******]
[* Eadmer, p. 58.]
[** Hoveden, p. 474.]
[*** Eadmer, p. 125, 137, 138.]
[**** Chron. Sax. p. 229.]
[****** Hoveden, p. 478. M. Paris. p. 48.]
[******* M. West. ad ann 1125. H. Hunting. p. 382.]
It is remarkable that this last writer, who was a clergyman as well as the others, makes an apology for using such freedom with the fathers of the church; but says, that the fact was notorious, and ought not to be concealed.
Henry, in order to prevent this alternate revolution of concessions and encroachments, sent William, then archbishop of Canterbury, to remonstrate with the court of Rome against those abuses, and to assert the liberties of the English church. It was a usual maxim with every pope, when he found that he could not prevail in any pretension, to grant princes or states a power which they had always exercised, to resume at a proper juncture the claim which seemed to be resigned, and to pretend that the civil magistrate had possessed the authority only from a special indulgence of the Roman pontiff. After this manner, the pope, finding that the French nation would not admit his claim of granting investitures, had passed a bull, giving the king that authority; and he now practised a like invention to elude the complaints of the king of England. He made the archbishop of Canterbury his legate, renewed his commission from time to time, and still pretended that the rights which that prelate had ever exercised as metropolitan, were entirely derived from the indulgence of the apostolic see. The English princes, and Henry in particular, who were glad to avoid any immediate contest of so dangerous a nature, commonly acquiesced by their silence in these pretensions of the court of Rome.[*] [14]