CHAPTER VI.
REIGN OF HENRY II.
A.D. 1154.
A.D. 1158.The death of Stephen left an undisputed succession for the first time since the death of Edward the Confessor. Henry, descended equally from the Norman Conqueror and the old English kings, adopted by Stephen, acknowledged by the barons, united in himself every kind of title. It was grown into a custom for the king to grant a charter of liberties on his accession to the crown. Henry also granted a charter of that kind, confirming that of his grandfather; but as his situation was very different from that of his predecessors, his charter was different,—reserved, short, dry, conceived in general terms,—a gift, not a bargain. And, indeed, there seems to have been at that juncture but little occasion to limit a power which seemed not more than sufficient to correct all the evils of an unlimited liberty. Henry spent the beginning of his reign in repairing the ruins of the royal authority, and in restoring to the kingdom peace and order, along with its ancient limits; and he may well be considered as the restorer of the English monarchy. Stephen had sacrificed the demesne of the crown, and many of its rights, to his subjects; and the necessity of the times obliged both that prince and the Empress Matilda to purchase, in their turns, the precarious friendship of the King of Scotland by a cession of almost all the country north of the Humber. But Henry obliged the King of Scotland to restore his acquisitions, and to renew his homage. He took the same methods with his barons. Not sparing the grants of his mother, he resumed what had been so lavishly squandered by both of the contending parties, who, to establish their claims, had given away almost everything that made them valuable. There never was a prince in Europe who better understood the advantages to be derived from its peculiar constitution, in which greater acquisitions of dominion are made by judicious marriages than by success in war: for, having added to his patrimonial territories of Anjou and Normandy the Duchy of Guienne by his own marriage, the male issue of the Dukes of Brittany failing, he took the opportunity of marrying his third son, Geoffrey, then an infant, to the heiress of that important province, an infant also; and thus uniting by so strong a link his northern to his southern dominions, he possessed in his own name, or in those of his wife and son, all that fine and extensive country that is washed by the Atlantic Ocean, from Picardy quite to the foot of the Pyrenees.
Henry, possessed of such extensive territories, and aiming at further acquisitions, saw with indignation that the sovereign authority in all of them, especially in England, had been greatly diminished. By his resumptions he had, indeed, lessened the greatness of several of the nobility. He had by force of arms reduced those who forcibly held the crown lands, and deprived them of their own estates for their rebellion. He demolished many castles, those perpetual resources of rebellion and disorder. But the great aim of his policy was to break the power of the clergy, which each of his predecessors, since Edward, had alternately strove to raise and to depress,—at first in order to gain that potent body to their interests, and then to preserve them in subjection to the authority which they had conferred. The clergy had elected Stephen; they had deposed Stephen, and elected Matilda; and in the instruments which they used on these occasions they affirmed in themselves a general right of electing the kings of England. Their share both in the elevation and depression of that prince showed that they possessed a power inconsistent with the safety and dignity of the state. The immunities which they enjoyed seemed no less prejudicial to the civil economy,—and the rather, as, in the confusion of Stephen's reign, many, to protect themselves from the prevailing violence of the time, or to sanctify their own disorders, had taken refuge in the clerical character. The Church was never so full of scandalous persons, who, being accountable only in the ecclesiastical courts, where no crime is punished with death, were guilty of every crime. A priest had about this time committed a murder attended with very aggravating circumstances. The king, willing at once to restore order and to depress the clergy, laid hold of this favorable opportunity to convoke the cause to his own court, when the atrociousness of the crime made all men look with an evil eye upon the claim of any privilege which might prevent the severest justice. The nation in general seemed but little inclined to controvert so useful a regulation with so potent a prince.
A.D. 1162.Amidst this general acquiescence one man was found bold enough to oppose him, who for eight years together embroiled all his affairs, poisoned his satisfactions, endangered his dominions, and at length in his death triumphed over all the power and policy of this wise and potent monarch. This was Thomas à-Becket, a man memorable for the great glory and the bitter reproaches he has met with from posterity. This person was the son of a respectable citizen of London. He was bred to the study of the civil and canon law, the education, then, used to qualify a man for public affairs, in which he soon made a distinguished figure. By the royal favor and his own abilities, he rose, in a rapid succession through several considerable employments, from an office under the sheriff of London, to be High Chancellor of the kingdom. In this high post he showed a spirit as elevated; but it was rather a military spirit than that of the gownman,—magnificent to excess in his living and appearance, and distinguishing himself in the tournaments and other martial sports of that age with much ostentation of courage and expense. The king, who favored him greatly, and expected a suitable return, on the vacancy, destined Becket, yet a layman, to the see of Canterbury, and hoped to find in him a warm promoter of the reformation he intended. Hardly a priest, he was made the first prelate in the kingdom. But no sooner was he invested with the clerical character than the whole tenor of his conduct was seen to change all at once: of his pompous retinue a few plain servants only remained; a monastic temperance regulated his table; and his life, in all respects formed to the most rigid austerity, seemed to prepare him for that superiority he was resolved to assume, and the conflicts he foresaw he must undergo in this attempt.
It will not be unpleasing to pause a moment at this remarkable period, in order to view in what consisted that greatness of the clergy, which enabled them to bear so very considerable a sway in all public affairs,—what foundations supported the weight of so vast a power,—whence it had its origin,—what was the nature, and what the ground, of the immunities they claimed,—that we may the more fully enter into this important controversy, and may not judge, as some have inconsiderately done, of the affairs of those times by ideas taken from the present manners and opinions.
It is sufficiently known, that the first Christians, avoiding the Pagan tribunals, tried most even of their civil causes before the bishop, who, though he had no direct coercive power, yet, wielding the sword of excommunication, had wherewithal to enforce the execution of his judgments. Thus the bishop had a considerable sway in temporal affairs, even before he was owned by the temporal power. But the Emperors no sooner became Christian than, the idea of profaneness being removed from the secular tribunals, the causes of the Christian laity naturally passed to that resort where those of the generality had been before. But the reverence for the bishop still remained, and the remembrance of his former jurisdiction. It was not thought decent, that he, who had been a judge in his own court, should become a suitor in the court of another. The body of the clergy likewise, who were supposed to have no secular concerns for which they could litigate, and removed by their character from all suspicion of violence, were left to be tried by their own ecclesiastical superiors. This was, with a little variation, sometimes in extending, sometimes in restraining the bishops' jurisdiction, the condition of things whilst the Roman Empire subsisted. But though their immunities were great and their possessions ample, yet, living under an absolute form of government, they were powerful only by influence. No jurisdictions were annexed to their lands; they had no place in the senate; they were no order in the state.
From the settlement of the Northern nations the clergy must be considered in another light. The Barbarians gave them large landed possessions; and by giving them land, they gave them jurisdiction, which, according to their notions, was inseparable from it. They made them an order in the state; and as all the orders had their privileges, the clergy had theirs, and were no less steady to preserve and ambitious to extend them. Our ancestors, having united the Church dignities to the secular dignities of baronies, had so blended the ecclesiastical with the temporal power in the same persons that it became almost impossible to separate them. The ecclesiastical was, however, prevalent in this composition, drew to it the other, supported it, and was supported by it. But it was not the devotion only, but the necessity of the tunes, that raised the clergy to the excess of this greatness. The little learning which then subsisted remained wholly in their hands. Few among the laity could even read; consequently the clergy alone were proper for public affairs. They were the statesmen, they were the lawyers; from them were often taken the bailiffs of the seigneurial courts, sometimes the sheriffs of counties, and almost constantly the justiciaries of the kingdom.[78] The Norman kings, always jealous of their order, were always forced to employ them. In abbeys the law was studied; abbeys were the palladiums of the public liberty by the custody of the royal charters and most of the records. Thus, necessary to the great by their knowledge, venerable to the poor by their hospitality, dreadful to all by the power of excommunication, the character of the clergy was exalted above everything in the state; and it could no more be otherwise in those days than it is possible it should be so in ours.
William the Conqueror made it one principal point of his politics to reduce the clergy; but all the steps he took in it were not equally well calculated to answer this intention. When he subjected the Church lands to military service, the clergy complained bitterly, as it lessened their revenue: but I imagine it did not lessen their power in proportion; for by this regulation they came, like other great lords, to have their military vassals, who owed them homage and fealty: and this rather increased their consideration amongst so martial a people. The kings who succeeded him, though they also aimed at reducing the ecclesiastical power, never pursued their scheme on a great or legislative principle. They seemed rather desirous of enriching themselves by the abuses in the Church than earnest to correct them. One day they plundered and the next day they founded monasteries, as their rapaciousness or their scruples chanced to predominate; so that every attempt of that kind, having rather the air of tyranny than reformation, could never be heartily approved or seconded by the body of the people.
The bishops must always be considered in the double capacity of clerks and barons. Their courts, therefore, had a double jurisdiction: over the clergy and laity of their diocese for the cognizance of crimes against ecclesiastical law, and over the vassals of their barony as lords paramount. But these two departments, so different in their nature, they frequently confounded, by making use of the spiritual weapon of excommunication to enforce the judgments of both; and this sentence, cutting off the party from the common society of mankind, lay equally heavy on all ranks: for, as it deprived the lower sort of the fellowship of their equals and the protection of their lord, so it deprived the lord of the services of his vassals, whether he or they lay under the sentence. This was one of the grievances which the king proposed to redress.