A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria; Vol. I

by François Guizot

After having shone with some brilliancy in letters as well as in the history of religious faith, Ireland had for some time past fallen back into a state verging on barbarism. Originally inhabited by different colonies of the Celtic race, she retained institutions analogous to those of the Highlands of Scotland. The clans were called septs, the chief was known as a "Carfinny," and chose his successor or "Tanist" from his own family, without regard to the laws of primogeniture; when the "Carfinny" died the Tanist succeeded him and named his own heir presumptive. The same rule existed in the four kingdoms of Ulster, Munster, Leinster, and Connaught. Enmity and rivalry were constant between these princes; of one hundred and seventy-eight kings who ruled over Ireland, seventy-one were killed in war and sixty were murdered. In 1169 the King of Leinster, Dermod MacMorogh, having been driven from his possessions, had applied to Henry II. for assistance, offering to take the oath of allegiance to the English king. But the king was engrossed in his relations with France, and he contented himself with authorizing English warriors to support the cause of Dermod if they chose. Having obtained this permission, a certain number of adventurers went over to Ireland; the most notable of whom was the son of the Earl of Pembroke, Richard de Clare, called Strongbow, who took with him a force of three thousand men. He fought against Dermod's enemies, married that chief's daughter, and had just inherited the kingdom of his father-in-law, when the king, annoyed at his success, wrote for him, recalling him to England. Strongbow immediately crossed the sea and came and threw himself at the king's feet, offering to surrender the town of Dublin to him. Henry's anger was appeased, and he appointed Strongbow to the position of seneschal of Ireland. In the following year the king himself landed in his new dominions with an army so numerous that the Irish soon made a nominal submission. Henry, however, intended not to act as a conqueror; he was taking possession, he said, of Ireland, by virtue of an old bull of Pope Adrian which conferred upon him the sovereignty of this new kingdom by the right which the Popes claimed to exercise over all the islands recognizing the Christian faith. The Irish Bishops answered this appeal by meeting together in council. Several wise measures were adopted for the civilization of the savage regions, where polygamy was still practised, and where dead bodies were not always buried. But Henry did not attempt to impose the English laws upon his new subjects. That portion of Ireland occupied by the Normans was alone assimilated to England; the rest of the country remained subject to its old customs. When Henry returned from thence on the 17th of April, 1173, nominating Hugh de Lacy governor of Ireland, he left behind him territories which his armies had not overrun, and an undisciplined population, who took advantage of his absence to rebel. The jealousies of the English noblemen established in Ireland still further complicated the difficulties of the government. Harassed by their mutual recriminations, the king would depose, replace, or recall the rivals; disorder reigned in all parts, when, in 1185, the king, having obtained from the Pope the investiture of Ireland for his son John, sent the young prince there with his court. The arrogance, the severity, and the follies of the new sovereign soon caused fresh insurrections. John grew alarmed and returned precipitately to England, leaving to Sir John de Courcy the care of pacifying Ireland; the lieutenant succeeded in this, and, having become Earl of Ulster, he governed the new kingdom with as much firmness as good sense, until, at the end of the reign of Henry II., a prosperous state of affairs was inaugurated, to which Ireland had not been accustomed under native kings.

Henry had begun to appropriate Ireland to himself, but without being able to give his personal attention to that country. He was a prey to bitter and ever-increasing embarrassments. The crowning of his son, Prince Henry, had excited in the young man an ambitious spirit which his father-in-law, Louis VII., constantly encouraged. He asked for the immediate cession of Normandy or even of England, in order to be able, he said, to maintain his position and that of the queen his wife. "Wait until my death," replied the king, "you shall have wealth and power enough." He intended to bequeath England to Henry as well as Normandy, Anjou, and Maine. Aquitaine he designed for Richard, Brittany for Geoffrey, and Ireland for John. The young princes had even already been invested with these magnificent provinces; but, encouraged by their mother, the vindictive Eleanor, to whom Henry II. had always been a good husband, they plotted to seize their inheritance beforehand. In March, 1173, Prince Henry, who had slept with his father at Chinon, found a means of escaping during the night, and of reaching the territory of the King of France. A few days afterwards, his two brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, also escaped, and Queen Eleanor prepared to follow her sons; but she was captured by her husband's emissaries and brought back to England, where she was imprisoned until King Henry's death.

The father had sent to Paris to ask that his son should be given up to him; the ambassadors found the young prince clad in regal robes, seated by the side of Louis VII. "We come from Henry, King of the English, Duke of Normandy and of Aquitaine, Count of Anjou and of Maine," began the messengers. "No," said the king, interrupting them, "King Henry is sitting here, and he has commissioned you to deliver no message. If you wish to speak of the king his father, he is dead since his son wears the crown. If he still has any pretensions to the title of king, I will soon cure him of them." In accordance with these haughty words, the young prince caused a seal similar to that of England to be made, and declared, by letters addressed to the Pope, to his brothers, and to all the great noblemen of England and of the French states, that he was at war with his father in order to avenge the death of Becket, "my foster-father, whose assassins are still safe and sound. I am unable (he added) to bear this criminal negligence, for the blood of the martyr cries aloud in my ears. My father is incensed against me; but I do not fear to offend him when the honor of God is the cause." The Kings of France and Scotland, the Count of Flanders, and a great number of English and Norman noblemen sided with the conspirators; King Henry began to see himself abandoned by his most intimate friends.

He was a match for his four sons. "The King of England neither rides nor sails," said King Louis, alarmed by the rapidity of his rival's movements; "he is believed to be in England, and he is in France; he is believed to be in Ireland, and he is in England." An army of Brabantines had been raised, and King Henry II. had called upon all those monarchs who had sons, to support him in his quarrel; endeavoring to secure their help by the consideration of the disorder which would reign in their own dominions if their own children followed the example set by the English princes. He had implored the Pope to help him to defend the patrimony of St. Peter, as he called the islands of England and Ireland; the pontiff replied by sending legates to put an end to this unnatural struggle; but blood had already been shed. In the month of June, 1173, the Count of Flanders had entered into Normandy; but his brother, who was his heir, having been killed at the first siege, he retired from this impious struggle and re-entered his states. King Louis VII. and Prince Henry were defeated by the Brabantines; Prince Geoffrey did not meet with success in Brittany; a conference convoked at Gisors again excited their animosity. The war was carried on with alternate successes and reverses; the insurrection had spread as far as Aquitaine; the Scots had crossed the frontier, and several towns of England were in the hands of the insurgents, when, in the month of July 1174, Henry hastily left Normandy. On reaching England he proceeded directly to Becket's tomb. It was on the morrow of his humiliation and repentance, when he was already in his bed, overcome by fever, that it was announced to him that an attendant of Ranulph de Glanville wished to speak with him. The king inquired whether Ranulph, who was one of his intimate friends, was well. "My lord is well," replied the messenger, "and your enemy, the King of Scotland, is in your hands." The king trembled. "Say that again," he said. The man tendered some letters to the king; it appeared that on the 12th of July Glanville had surprised the King of Scotland, William the Lion, in the neighborhood of Alnwick, and had made a prisoner of him. This good news effected a cure of the king's disorder; the people again thronged round his standards. In a few days the insurrection was quelled in all parts, and Henry, after this triumph, recrossed the sea with his army to relieve Rouen, which was besieged by the King of France, Prince Henry, and the Count of Flanders. A battle took place under the walls of the town, which was decided in favor of the King of England; the princes were for the time reduced to obedience. Richard resisted for a greater length of time than his brothers; he had acquired a taste for warlike achievements, which were to become the passion of his life, and he thought besides that he was upholding the rights of his mother, to whom he was tenderly attached. But he yielded at length. An interval of peace at length allowed Henry II. breathing time and leisure to organize the great institution which he wished to bequeath to England. It was in 1176 that he definitively established, with the help of his friend Ranulph de Glanville, the courts of justice, where the assizes were regularly held for all the civil and criminal business, and which were presided over by itinerant judges, who made a circuit from town to town to direct the decisions of the knights of the shire who then represented the jury.

Louis VII. was dead. Philip Augustus had ascended the throne (1180), and war was about to break out afresh. King Henry, who was now reconciled to his eldest son, wished to compel Richard to do homage to his brother for the duchy of Aquitaine; the prince refused, saying that he would not compromise the rights of his mother. She was greatly beloved in her hereditary dominions, and the poet Bertrand de Born, powerful among his countrymen, and devoted to Eleanor's cause, was intriguing successively with whichever of the three sons appeared the most incensed against his father. King Henry had caused a picture to be painted re-presenting four young eagles attacking their sire. "If John does not join his brothers," he said sadly, "it is because he is too young."

Richard at length made peace with his father, but Henry and Geoffrey had raised the standard of rebellion in their turn. They had invited the king to a conference at Limoges (1183); when he approached the town he was saluted with a volley of arrows, of which one wounded his horse in the neck. "Ah! Geoffrey," cried the king, "what has your unhappy father done to you that you should thus make a target of him for your arrows?" The prince laughed at this bitter remonstrance. "We cannot live in peace amongst ourselves," he said, "without being in league against my father." His brother Henry was disgusted at this evidence of his brother's hard-heartedness, and joined the king for awhile; but soon after, having been again annoyed, he departed and joined Geoffrey and the Poitevins, who had revolted, when he fell ill at Limoges. In terror, he sent, begging his father to come and grant his forgiveness. The king did not dare to accede to the request; his friends would not allow him to venture into the camp of his sons, who had so recently attempted his life. He contented himself with sending a ring by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, assuring the prince of his forgiveness. The prelate found the young man dying upon a bed of ashes, a prey to remorse and despair. He died pressing to his lips the ring which his father had sent to him, greatly distressed at not having received the benediction upon which he had hitherto set so little value.

A few days afterwards Limoges was taken, and the instigator of the insurrections, Bertrand de Born, was made a prisoner; he was brought before the king to receive sentence; he said nothing, and did not defend himself. "Bertrand," said the king, "you pretend that at no time do you require one-half of your talents; know that in this instance the whole of them would avail you little." "Sire," replied Bertrand, "it is true that I said that, and I told the truth." "And I think that your talents have deserted you," cried Henry angrily. "Ah! Sire," said Bertrand, "my powers deserted me on the day that the brave young king, your son, died; on that day I lost all my powers." The king burst into tears. "Bertrand," he cried, "it is but right that my son's death should have unnerved you, for he was more attached to you than to anybody else in the world; and I, for love of him, give you your life, your goods, and your castle."

The poet Dante did not forgive Bertrand de Born, as king Henry had done, for he placed him in hell. "I saw," said he, "and I seem to see it still, a headless trunk approach us, and the head being cut off, it held it in one hand by the hair, like a lantern: 'Know that I am Bertrand de Born, who gave bad advice to the young king.'"