But before this great machine could be put in motion, there were still many obstacles to surmount. Philip, jealous of Henry's power, entered into a private confederacy with young Richard; and, working on his ambitious and impatient temper, persuaded him, instead of supporting and aggrandizing that monarchy which he was one day to inherit, to seek present power and independence by disturbing and dismembering it. [MN 1189. Revolt of Prince Richard.] In order to give a pretence for hostilities between the two kings, Richard broke into the territories of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, who immediately carried complaints of this violence before the King of France as his superior lord. Philip remonstrated with Henry; but received for answer, that Richard had confessed to the Archbishop of Dublin, that his enterprise against Raymond had been undertaken by the approbation of Philip himself, and was conducted by his authority. The King of France, who might have been covered with shame and confusion by this detection, still prosecuted his design, and invaded the provinces of Berri and Auvergne, under colour of revenging the quarrel of the Count of Toulouse [p]. Henry retaliated by making inroads upon the frontiers of France, and burning Dreux. As this war, which destroyed all hopes of success in the projected crusade, gave great scandal, the two kings held a conference at the accustomed place between Gisors and Trie, in order to find means of accommodating their differences: they separated on worse terms than before; and Philip, to show his disgust, ordered a great elm, under which the conferences had been usually held, to be cut down [q]; as if he had renounced all desire of accommodation, and was determined to carry the war to extremities against the King of England. But his own vassals refused to serve under him in so invidious a cause [r]; and he was obliged to come anew to a conference with Henry, and to offer terms of peace. These terms were such as entirely opened the eyes of the King of England, and fully convinced him of the perfidy of his son, and his secret alliance with Philip, of which he had before only entertained some suspicion. The King of France required that Richard should be crowned King of England in the lifetime of his father, should be invested in all his transmarine dominions, and should immediately espouse Alice, Philip's sister, to whom he had formerly been affianced, and who had already been conducted into England . Henry had experienced such fatal effects both from the crowning of his eldest son, and from that prince's alliance with the royal family of France, that he rejected these terms; and Richard, in consequence of his secret agreement with Philip, immediately revolted from him [t], did homage to the King of France for all the dominions which Henry held of that crown, and received the investitures as if he had already been the lawful possessor. Several historians assert, that Henry himself had become enamoured of young Alice and mention this as an additional reason for his refusing these conditions: but he had so many other just and equitable motives for his conduct, that it is superfluous to assign a cause, which the great prudence and advanced age of that monarch rendered somewhat improbable. [FN [p] Bened. Abb. p. 508. [q] Bened. Abb. p. 517, 532. [r] Ibid. p. 519. Ibid. p. 521. Hoveden, p. 652. [t] Brompton, p. 114. Neubrig. p. 437.]
Cardinal Albano, the pope's legate, displeased with these increasing obstacles to the crusade, excommunicated Richard, as the chief spring of discord: but the sentence of excommunication, which, when it was properly prepared, and was zealously supported by the clergy, had often great influence in that age, proved entirely ineffectual in the present case. The chief barons of Poictou, Guienne, Normandy, and Anjou, being attached to the young prince, and finding that he had now received the investiture from their superior lord, declared for him, and made inroads into the territories of such as still adhered to the king. Henry, disquieted by the daily revolts of his mutinous subjects, and dreading still worse effects from their turbulent disposition, had again recourse to papal authority; and engaged the Cardinal Anagni, who had succeeded Albano in the legateship, to threaten Philip with laying an interdict on all his dominions. But Philip, who was a prince of great vigour and capacity, despised the menace, and told Anagni, that it belonged not to the pope to interpose in the temporal disputes of princes, much less in those between him and his rebellious vassal. He even proceeded so far as to reproach him with partiality, and with receiving bribes from the king of England ; while Richard, still more outrageous, offered to draw his sword against the legate, and was hindered by the interposition alone of the company from committing violence upon him [w]. [FN M. Paris, p. 104. Bened. Abb. p. 542. Hoveden, p. 652. [w] M. Paris, p. 104.]
The King of England was now obliged to defend his dominions by arms, and to engage in a war with France, and with his eldest son, a prince of great valour, on such disadvantageous terms. Ferté-Barnard fell first into the hands of the enemy: Mans was next taken by assault; and Henry, who had thrown himself into that place, escaped with some difficulty [x]: Amboise, Chaumont, and Chateau de Loire, opened their gates on the appearance of Philip and Richard: Tours was menaced; and the king, who had retired to Saumur, and had daily instances of the cowardice or infidelity of his governors, expected the most dismal issue to all his enterprises. While he was in this state of despondency, the Duke of Burgundy, the Earl of Flanders, and the Archbishop of Rheims, interposed with their good offices; and the intelligence which he received of the taking of Tours, and which made him fully sensible of the desperate situation of his affairs, so subdued his spirit that he submitted to all the rigorous terms which were imposed upon him. He agreed that Richard should marry the Princess Alice; that that prince should receive the homage and oath of fealty of all his subjects both in England and his transmarine dominions; that he himself should pay twenty thousand marks to the King of France as a compensation for the charges of the war; that his own barons should engage to make him observe this treaty by force, and in case of his violating it, should promise to join Philip and Richard against him; and that all his vassals who had entered into confederacy with Richard, should receive an indemnity for the offence [y]. [FN [x] Ibid. p. 105. Bened. Abb. p. 543. Hoveden, p. 653. [y] M. Paris, p. 106. Bened. Abb. p. 545. Hoveden, p. 653.]
But the mortification which Henry, who had been accustomed to give the law in most treaties, received from these disadvantageous terms, was the least that he met with on this occasion. When he demanded a list of those barons, to whom he was bound to grant a pardon for their connexions with Richard, he was astonished to find at the head of them the name of his second son John [z]; who had always been his favourite, whose interests he had ever anxiously at heart, and who had even, on account of his ascendant over him, often excited the jealousy of Richard [a]. The unhappy father, already overloaded with cares and sorrows, finding this last disappointment in his domestic tenderness, broke out into expressions of the utmost despair, cursed the day in which he received his miserable being, and bestowed on his ungrateful and undutiful children a malediction which he never could be prevailed on to retract . The more his heart was disposed to friendship and affection, the more he resented the barbarous return which his four sons had successively made to his parental care; and this finishing blow, by depriving him of every comfort in life, quite broke his spirit and threw him into a lingering fever, of which he expired at the Castle of Chinon, near Saumur. [MN 1189. 6th July. Death,] His natural son Geoffrey, who alone had behaved dutifully towards him, attended his corpse to the nunnery of Fontevrault; where it lay in state in the abbey church. Next day Richard, who came to visit the dead body of his father, and who, notwithstanding his criminal conduct, was not wholly destitute of generosity, was struck with horror and remorse at the sight; and as the attendants observed, that, at that very instant, blood gushed from the mouth and nostrils of the corpse [c], he exclaimed, agreeably to a vulgar superstition, that he was his father's murderer; and he expressed a deep sense, though too late, of that undutiful behaviour which had brought his parent to an untimely grave [d]. [FN [z] Hoveden. p. 654. [a] Bened. Abb. p. 541. Hoveden, p. 654. [c] Bened. Abb. p. 547. Brompton, p. 1151. [d] M. Paris, p. 107.]
[MN and character of Henry.] Thus died, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, and thirty-fifth of his reign, the greatest prince of his time, for wisdom, virtue, and abilities, and the most powerful in extent of dominion of all those that had ever filled the throne of England. His character, in private as well as in public life, is almost without a blemish; and he seems to have possessed every accomplishment, both of body and mind, which makes a man either estimable or amiable. He was of a middle stature, strong and well proportioned; his countenance was lively and engaging; his conversation affable and entertaining; his elocution easy, persuasive, and ever at command. He loved peace, but possessed both bravery and conduct in war; was provident without timidity; severe in the execution of justice without rigour; and temperate without austerity. He preserved health, and kept himself from corpulency, to which he was somewhat inclined, by an abstemious diet and by frequent exercise, particularly hunting. When he could enjoy leisure, he recreated himself either in learned conversation or in reading; and he cultivated his natural talents by study, above any prince of his time. His affections, as well as his enmities, were warm and durable; and his long experience of the ingratitude and infidelity of men never destroyed the natural sensibility of his temper, which disposed him to friendship and society. His character has been transmitted to us by several writers who were his contemporaries [e]; and it extremely resembles, in its most remarkable features, that of his maternal grandfather Henry I.: excepting only that ambition, which was a ruling passion in both, found not in the first Henry such unexceptionable means of exerting itself, and pushed that prince into measures which were both criminal in themselves, and were the cause of farther crimes, from which his grandsons conduct was happily exempted. [FN [e] Petri Bles. epist. 46, 47. in Bibliotheca Patrum, vol. xxiv. p. 985, 986, &c. Girald. Camb. p. 783, &c.]
[MN Miscellaneous transactions of this reign.] This prince, like most of his predecessors of the Norman line, except Stephen, passed more of his time on the continent than in this island: he was surrounded with the English gentry and nobility, when abroad: the French gentry and nobility attended him when he resided in England: both nations acted in the government as if they were the same people: and, on many occasions, the legislatures seem not to have been distinguished. As the king and all the English barons were of French extraction, the manners of that people acquired the ascendant, and were regarded as the models of imitation. All foreign improvements, therefore, such as they were, in literature and politeness, in laws and arts, seem now to have been, in a good measure, transplanted into England; and that kingdom was become little inferior, in all the fashionable accomplishments, to any of its neighbours on the continent. The more homely but more sensible manners and principles of the Saxons were exchanged for the affectations of chivalry, and the subtleties of school philosophy: the feudal ideas of civil government, the Romish sentiments in religion, had taken entire possession of the people: by the former, the sense of submission towards princes was somewhat diminished in the barons; by the latter the devoted attachment to papal authority was much augmented among the clergy. The Norman and other foreign families established in England had now struck deep root; and being entirely incorporated with the people, whom at first they oppressed and despised, they no longer thought that they needed protection of the crown for the enjoyment of their possessions, or considered their tenure as precarious. They aspired to the same liberty and independence which they saw enjoyed by their brethren on the continent, and desired to restrain those exorbitant prerogatives and arbitrary practices, which the necessities of war and the violence of conquest had at first obliged them to indulge in their monarch. That memory also of a more equal government under the Saxon princes, which remained with the English, diffused still farther the spirit of liberty, and made the barons both desirous of more independence to themselves, and willing to indulge it to the people. And it was not long ere this secret revolution in the sentiments of men produced, first violent convulsions in the state, then an evident alteration in the maxims of government.
The history of all the preceding Kings of England since the Conquest gives evident proofs of the disorders attending the feudal institutions; the licentiousness of the barons, their spirit of rebellion against the prince and laws, and of animosity against each other: the conduct of the barons in the transmarine dominions of those monarchs afforded perhaps still more flagrant instances of these convulsions; and the history of France, during several ages, consists almost entirely of narrations of this nature. The cities, during the continuance of this violent government, could neither be very numerous nor populous; and there occur instances which seem to evince, that though these are always the first seat of law and liberty, their police was in general loose and irregular, and exposed to the same disorders with those by which the country was generally infested. It was a custom in London for great numbers, to the amount of a hundred or more, the sons and relations of considerable citizens, to form themselves into a licentious confederacy, to break into rich houses and plunder them, to rob and murder the passengers, and to commit with impunity all sorts of disorder. By these crimes, it had become so dangerous to walk the streets by night, that the citizens durst no more venture abroad after sunset than if they had been exposed to the incursions of a public enemy. The brother of the Earl of Ferrars had been murdered by some of those nocturnal rioters; and the death of so eminent a person, which was much more regarded than that of many thousands of an inferior station, so provoked the king, that he swore vengeance against the criminals and became thenceforth more rigorous in the execution of the laws [f]. [FN [f] Bened. Abb. p. 196.]
There is another instance given by historians, which proves to what a height such riots had proceeded, and how open these criminals were in committing their robberies. A band of them had attacked the house of a rich citizen, with an intention of plundering it; had broken through a stone wall with hammers and wedges; and had already entered the house sword in hand; when the citizen armed cap-a-pie, and supported by his faithful servants, appeared in the passage to oppose them; he cut off the right hand of the first robber that entered; and made such stout resistance, that his neighbours had leisure to assemble, and come to his relief. The man who lost his hand was taken; and was tempted by the promise of pardon to reveal his confederates; among whom was one John Senex, esteemed among the richest and best-born citizens in London. He was convicted by the ordeal; and though he offered five hundred marks for his life, the king refused the money, and ordered him to be hanged [g]. It appears from a statute of Edward I. that these disorders were not remedied even in that reign. It was then made penal to go out at night after the hour of the curfew, to carry a weapon, or to walk without a light or lantern [h]. It is said in the preamble to this law, that, both by night and by day, there were continual frays in the streets of London. [FN [g] Ibid. p. 197, 198. [h] Observations on the ancient Statutes, p. 216.]
Henry's care in administering justice had gained him so great a reputation, that even foreign and distant princes made him arbiter, and submitted their differences to his judgment. Sanchez, King of Navarre, having some controversies with Alphonso, King of Castile, was contented, though Alphonso had married the daughter of Henry, to choose this prince for a referee; and they agreed each of them to consign three castles into neutral hands as a pledge of their not departing from his award. Henry made the cause be examined before his great council, and gave a sentence, which was submitted to by both parties. These two Spanish kings sent each a stout champion to the court of England, in order to defend his cause by arms, in case the way of duel had been chosen by Henry . [FN Rymer, vol. iv. p. 43. Bened. Abb. p. 172. Diceto, p. 597. Brompton, p. 1120.]
Henry so far abolished the barbarous and absurd practice of confiscating ships which had been wrecked on the coast, that he ordained, if one man or animal were alive in the ship, that the vessel and goods should be restored to the owners [k]. [FN [k] Rymer, vol. i. p. 36.]