[MN 1153.] Henry, informed of these dispositions in the people, made an invasion on England. Having gained some advantage over Stephen at Malmesbury, and having taken that place, he proceeded thence to throw succours into Wallingford, which the king had advanced with a superior army to besiege. A decisive action was every day expected; when the great men of both sides, terrified at the prospect of farther bloodshed and confusion, interposed with their good offices, and set on foot a negotiation between the rival princes. The death of Eustace, during the course of the treaty, facilitated its conclusion; [MN Compromise between the king and Prince Henry.] an accommodation was settled, by which it was agreed, that Stephen should possess the crown during his lifetime, that justice should be administered in his name, even in the provinces which had submitted to Henry, and that this latter prince should, on Stephen's demise, succeed to the kingdom, and William, Stephen's son, to Boulogne and his patrimonial estate. After all the barons had sworn to the observance of this treaty, and done homage to Henry, as to the heir of the crown, that prince evacuated the kingdom; [MN Death of the king, Oct. 25, 1154.] and the death of Stephen, which happened the next year, after a short illness, prevented all those quarrels and jealousies which were likely to have ensued in so delicate a situation.
England suffered great miseries during the reign of this prince: but his personal character, allowing for the temerity and injustice of his usurpation, appears not liable to any great exception; and he seems to have been well qualified, had he succeeded by a just title, to have promoted the happiness and prosperity of his subjects [n]. He was possessed of industry, activity, and courage, to a great degree; though not endowed with a sound judgment, he was not deficient in abilities; he had the talent of gaining men's affections; and notwithstanding his precarious situation, he never indulged himself in the exercise of any cruelty or revenge [o]. His advancement to the throne procured him neither tranquillity nor happiness; and though the situation of England prevented the neighbouring states from taking any durable advantage of her confusions, her intestine disorders were to the last degree ruinous and destructive. The court of Rome was also permitted, during those civil wars, to make farther advances in her usurpations; and appeals to the pope, which had always been strictly prohibited by the English laws, became now common in every ecclesiastical controversy [p]. [FN [n] W. Malm. p. 180. [o] M. Paris, p. 51. Hagul. p. 312. [p] H. Hunt. p. 395.]
CHAPTER VIII.
HENRY II.
STATE OF EUROPE—OF FRANCE.—FIRST ACTS OF HENRY'S GOVERNMENT— DISPUTES BETWEEN THE CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL POWERS.THOMAS À BECKET, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.—QUARREL BETWEEN THE KING AND BECKET.— CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON.—BANISHMENT OF BECKET.—COMPROMISE WITH HIM.—HIS RETURN FROM BANISHMENT.—HIS MURDER—GRIEF AND SUBMISSION OF THE KING.
[MN 1154. State of Europe] The extensive confederacies by which the European potentates are now at once united and set in opposition to each other, and which, though they are apt to diffuse the least spark of dissension throughout the whole, are at least attended with this advantage, that they prevent any violent revolutions or conquests in particular states, were totally unknown in ancient ages; and the theory of foreign politics, in each kingdom, formed a speculation much less complicated and involved than at present. Commerce had not yet bound together the most distant nations in so close a chain: wars, finished in one campaign, and often in one battle, were little affected by the movements of remote states: the imperfect communication among the kingdoms, and their ignorance of each other's situation, made it impracticable for a great number of them to combine in one project or effort: and above all, the turbulent spirit and independent situation of the barons or great vassals in each state gave so much occupation to the sovereign, that he was obliged to confine his attention chiefly to his own state and his own system of government, and was more indifferent about what passed among his neighbours. Religion alone, not politics, carried abroad the views of princes; while it either fixed their thoughts on the Holy Land, whose conquest and defence was deemed a point of common honour and interest, or engaged them in intrigues with the Roman pontiff, to whom they had yielded the direction of ecclesiastical affairs, and who was every day assuming more authority than they were willing to allow him.
Before the conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy, this island was as much separated from the rest of the world in politics as in situation; and except from the inroads of the Danish pirates, the English, happily confined at home, had neither enemies nor allies on the continent. The foreign dominions of William connected them with the king and great vassals of France; and while the opposite pretensions of the pope and emperor in Italy produced a continual intercourse between Germany and that country, the two great monarchs of France and England formed, in another part of Europe, a separate system; and carried on their wars and negotiations, without meeting either with opposition or support from the others.
[MN State of France.] On the decline of the Carlovingian race, the nobles in every province of France, taking advantage of the weakness of the sovereign, and obliged to provide, each for his own defence, against the ravages of the Norman freebooters, had assumed, both in civil and military affairs, an authority almost independent, and had reduced within very narrow limits the prerogative of their princes. The accession of Hugh Capet, by annexing a great fief to the crown, had brought some addition to the royal dignity; but this fief, though considerable for a subject, appeared a narrow basis of power for a prince who was placed at the head of so great a community. The royal demesnes consisted only of Paris, Orleans, Estampes, Compeigne, and a few places scattered over the northern provinces: in the rest of the kingdom, the prince's authority was rather nominal than real: the vassals were accustomed, nay entitled, to make war, without his permission, on each other: they were even entitled, if they conceived themselves injured, to turn their arms against their sovereign: they exercised all civil jurisdiction, without appeal, over their tenants and inferior vassals: their common jealousy of the crown easily united them against any attempt on their exorbitant privileges; and as some of them had attained the power and authority of great princes, even the smallest baron was sure of immediate and effectual protection. Besides six ecclesiastical peerages, which, with the other immunities of the church, cramped extremely the general execution of justice, there were six lay peerages, Burgundy, Normandy, Guienne, Flanders, Toulouse, and Champaigne, which formed very extensive and puissant sovereignties. And though the combination all those princes and barons could, on urgent occasions, muster a mighty power; yet it was very difficult to set that great machine in movement; it was almost impossible to preserve harmony in its parts; a sense of common interest alone could, for a time, unite them under their sovereign against a common enemy; but if the king attempted to turn the force of the community against any mutinous vassal, the same sense of common interest made the others oppose themselves to the success of his pretensions. Lewis the Gross, the last sovereign, marched at one time to his frontiers against the Germans at the head of an army of two hundred thousand men; but a petty lord of Corbeil, of Puiset, of Couci, was able, at another period, to set that prince at defiance, and to maintain open war against him.
The authority of the English monarch was much more extensive within his kingdom, and the disproportion much greater between him and the most powerful of his vassals. His demesnes and revenue were large, compared to the greatness of his state: he was accustomed to levy arbitrary exactions on his subjects; his courts of judicature extended their jurisdiction into every part of the kingdom: he could crush by his power, or by a judicial sentence, well or ill founded, any obnoxious baron: and though the feudal institutions which prevailed in his kingdom had the same tendency as in other states to exalt the aristocracy and depress the monarchy, it required, in England, according to its present constitution, a great combination of the vassals to oppose their sovereign lord, and there had not hitherto arisen any baron so powerful, as of himself to levy war against the prince, and to afford protection to the inferior barons.
While such were the different situations of France and England, and the latter enjoyed so many advantages above the former, the accession of Henry II., a prince of great abilities, possessed of so many rich provinces on the continent, might appear an event dangerous, if not fatal, to the French monarchy, and sufficient to break entirely the balance between the states. He was master, in the right of his father, of Anjou and Touraine; in that of his mother, of Normandy and Maine; in that of his wife, of Guienne, Poictou, Xaintogne, Auvergne, Perigord, Angoumois, the Limousin. He soon after annexed Britany to his other states, and was already possessed of the superiority over that province, which, on the first cession of Normandy to Rollo, the Dane, had been granted by Charles the Simple, in vassalage to that formidable ravager. These provinces composed above a third of the whole French monarchy, and were much superior, in extent and opulence, to those territories which were subjected to the immediate jurisdiction and government of the king. The vassal was here more powerful than his liege lord: the situation which had enabled Hugh Capet to depose the Carlovingian princes seemed to be renewed, and that with much greater advantages on the side of the vassal; and when England was added to so many provinces, the French king had reason to apprehend, from this conjuncture, some great disaster to himself and to his family: but in reality, it was this circumstance, which appeared so formidable, that saved the Capetian race, and, by its consequences, exalted them to that pitch of grandeur which they at present enjoy.