From the date of this visit to Normandy, in the spring of 1116, Henry's continental interests mix themselves with those of the absolute ruler of the English Church, and he was more than once forced to choose upon which side he would make some slight concession or waive some right for the moment. Slowly the sides were forming themselves and the opposing interests growing clear, of a great conflict for the dominion of northern France, a conflict forced upon the English king by the necessity of defending the position he had gained, rather than sought by him in the spirit of conquest, even when he seemed the aggressor; a conflict in which he was to gain the victory in the field and in diplomacy, but to be overcome by the might of events directed by no human hand and not to be resisted by any.
The peace between Henry and Louis, made in the spring of 1113, was broken by Henry's coming to the aid of his nephew, Theobald of Blois. Theobald had seized the Count of Nevers on his return from assisting Louis in a campaign in the duchy of France in 1115. The cause was bad, but Henry could not afford to see so important an ally as his nephew crushed by his enemies, especially as his dominions were of peculiar strategical value in any war with the king of France. To Louis's side gathered, as the war developed, those who had reason from their position to fear what looked like the policy of expansion of this new English power in north-western France, especially the Counts of Flanders and of Anjou. The marriage of Henry's son William with Fulk's daughter had not yet taken place, and the Count of Anjou might well believe—particularly from the close alliance of Henry with the rival power of Blois—that he had more to fear than to hope for from the spread of the Norman influence. At the same time the division began to show itself among the Norman barons, of those who were faithful to Henry and those who preferred the succession of Robert's son William; and it grew more pronounced as the war went on, for Louis took up the cause of William as the rightful heir of Normandy. In doing this he began the policy which the French kings followed for so many years, and on the whole with so little advantage, of fomenting the quarrels in the English royal house and of separating if possible the continental possessions from the English.
On Henry's side were a majority of the Norman barons and the counts of Britanny and of Blois. For the first time, also, appeared upon the stage of history in this war Henry's other nephew, Stephen, who was destined to do so much evil to England and to Henry's plans before his death. His uncle had already made him Count of Mortain. The lordship of Bellême, which Henry had given to Theobald, had been by him transferred to Stephen in the division of their inheritance. It was probably not long after this that Henry procured for him the hand of Matilda, heiress of the county of Boulogne, and thus extended his own influence over that important territory on the borders of Flanders. France, Flanders, and Anjou certainly had abundant reason to fear the possible combination into one power of Normandy, Britanny, Maine, Blois, and Boulogne, and that a power which, however pacific in disposition, showed so much tendency to expansion. For France, at least, the cause of this war was not the disobedience of a vassal, nor was it to be settled by the siege and capture of border castles.
The war which followed was once more not a war of battles. Armies, large for the time, were collected, but they did little more than make threatening marches into the enemy's country. In 1118 the revolt of the Norman barons, headed by Amaury of Montfort, who now claimed the county of Evreux, assumed proportions which occasioned the king many difficulties. This was a year of misfortunes for him. The Count of Anjou, the king of France, the Count of Flanders, each in turn invaded some part of Normandy, and gained advantages which Henry could not prevent. Baldwin of Flanders, however, returned home with a wound from an arrow, of which he shortly died. In the spring of this year Queen Matilda died, praised by the monastic chroniclers to the last for her good deeds. A month later Henry's wisest counsellor, Robert of Meulan, died also, after a long life spent in the service of the Conqueror and of his sons. The close of the year saw no turn of the tide in favour of Henry. Evreux was captured in October by Amaury of Montfort, and afterwards Alençon by the Count of Anjou.
The year 1119, which was destined to close in triumph for Henry, opened no more favourably. The important castle of Les Andelys, commanding the Norman Vexin, was seized by Louis, aided by treachery. But before the middle of the year, Henry had gained his first great success. He induced the Count of Anjou, by what means we do not know,—by money it was thought by some at the time,—to make peace with him, and to carry out the agreement for the marriage of his daughter with the king's son. The county of Maine was settled on the young pair, virtually its transfer to Henry. At the same time, Henry granted to William Talvas, perhaps as one of the conditions of the treaty, the Norman possessions which had belonged to his father, Robert of Bellême. In the same month, June, 1119, Baldwin of Flanders died of the wound which he had received in Normandy, and was succeeded by his nephew, Charles the Good, who reversed Baldwin's policy and renewed the older relations with England. The sieges of castles, the raiding and counter-raiding of the year, amounted to little until, on August 20, while each was engaged in raiding, the opposing armies commanded by the two kings in person unexpectedly found themselves in the presence of one another. The battle of Bremule, the only encounter of the war which can be called a battle, followed. Henry and his men again fought on foot, as at Tinchebrai, with a small reserve on horseback. The result was a complete victory for Henry. The French army was completely routed, and a large number of prisoners was taken, though the character which a feudal battle often assumed from this time on is attributed to this one, in the fact reported that in the fighting and pursuit only three men were killed.
A diplomatic victory not less important followed the battle of Bremule by a few weeks. The pope was now in France. His predecessor, Gelasius II, had been compelled to flee from Italy by the successes of the Emperor Henry V, and had died at Cluny in January, 1119, on his way to the north. The cardinals who had accompanied him elected in his stead the Archbishop of Vienne, who took the name of Calixtus II. Gelasius in his short and unfortunate reign had attempted to interfere with vigour in the dispute between York and Canterbury, and had summoned both parties to appear before him for the decision of the case. This was in Henry's year of misfortunes, 1118, and he was obliged to temporize. The early death of Gelasius interrupted his plan, but only until Calixtus II was ready to go on with it. He called a council of the Church to meet at Reims in October, to which he summoned the English bishops, and where he proposed to decide the question of the obedience of York to Canterbury. Henry granted a reluctant consent to the English bishops to attend this council, but only on condition that they would allow no innovations in the government of the English Church. To Thurstan of York, to whom he had restored the temporalities of his see, under the pressure of circumstances nearly two years before, he granted permission to attend on condition that he would not accept consecration as archbishop from the pope. This condition was at once violated, and Thurstan was consecrated by the pope on October 19. Henry immediately ordered that he should not be allowed to return to any of the lands subject to his rule.
At this council King Louis of France, defeated in the field and now without allies, appealed in person to the pope for the condemnation of the king of England. He is said, by Orderic Vitalis who was probably present at the council and heard him speak, to have recited the evil deeds of Henry, from the imprisonment of Robert to the causes of the present war. The pope himself was in a situation where he needed to proceed with diplomatic caution, but he promised to seek an interview with Henry and to endeavour to bring about peace. This interview took place in November, at Gisors, and ended in the complete discomfiture of the pope. Henry was now in a far stronger position than he had been at the beginning of the year, and to the requests of Calixtus he returned definite refusals or vague and general answers of which nothing was to be made. The pope was even compelled to recognize the right of the English king to decide when papal legates should be received in the kingdom. Henry was, however, quite willing to make peace. He had won over Louis's allies, defeated his attempt to gain the assistance of the pope, and finally overcome the revolted Norman barons. He might reasonably have demanded new advantages in addition to those which had been granted him in the peace of 1113, but all that marks this treaty is the legal recognition of his position in Normandy. Homage was done to Louis for Normandy, not by Henry himself, for he was a king, but by his son William for him. It is probable that at no previous date would this ceremony have been acceptable, either to Louis or to Henry. On Louis's part it was not merely a recognition of Henry's right to the duchy of Normandy, but it was also a formal abandonment of William Clito, and an acceptance of William, Henry's son, as the heir of his father. This act was accompanied by a renewal of the homage of the Norman barons to William, whether made necessary by the numerous rebellions of the past two years, or desirable to perfect the legal chain, now that William had been recognized as heir by his suzerain, a motive that would apply to all the barons.
This peace was made sometime during the course of the year 1120. In November Henry was ready to return to England, and on the 25th he set sail from Barfleur, with a great following. Then suddenly came upon him, not the loss of any of the advantages he had lately gained nor any immediate weakening of his power, but the complete collapse of all that he had looked forward to as the ultimate end of his policy. His son William embarked a little later than his father in the White Ship, with a brilliant company of young relatives and nobles. They were in a very hilarious mood, and celebrated the occasion by making the crew drunk. Probably they were none too sober themselves; certainly Stephen of Blois was saved to be king of England in his cousin's place, by withdrawing to another vessel when he saw the condition of affairs on the White Ship. It was night and probably dark. About a mile and a half from Barfleur the ship struck a rock, and quickly filled and sank. It was said that William would have escaped if he had not turned back at the cries of his sister, Henry's natural daughter, the Countess of Perche. All on board were drowned except a butcher of Rouen. Never perished in any similar calamity so large a number of persons of rank. Another child of Henry's, his natural son Richard, his niece Matilda, sister of Theobald and Stephen, a nephew of the Emperor Henry V, Richard, Earl of Chester, and his brother, the end of the male line of Hugh of Avranches, and a crowd of others of only lesser rank. Orderic Vitalis records that he had heard that eighteen ladies perished, who were the daughters, sisters, nieces, or wives of kings or earls. Henry is said to have fallen to the ground in a faint when the news was told him, and never to have been the same man again.
But if Henry could no longer look forward to the permanence in the second generation of the empire which he had created, he was not the man to surrender even to the blows of fate. The succession to his dominions of Robert's son William, who had been so recently used by his enemies against him, but who was now the sole male heir of William the Conqueror, was an intolerable idea. In barely more than a month after the death of his son, the king took counsel with the magnates of the realm, at a great council in London, in regard to his remarriage. In less than another month the marriage was celebrated. Henry's second wife was Adelaide, daughter of Geoffrey, Duke of Lower Lorraine, a vassal of his son-in-law, the emperor, and his devoted supporter, as well as a prince whose alliance might be of great use in any future troubles with France or Flanders. This marriage was made chiefly in hope of a legitimate heir, but it was a childless marriage, and Henry's hope was disappointed.
For something more than two years after this fateful return of the king to England, his dominions enjoyed peace scarcely broken by a brief campaign in Wales in 1121. At the end of 1120, Archbishop Thurstan, for whose sake the pope was threatening excommunication and interdict, was allowed to return to his see, where he was received with great rejoicing. But the dispute with Canterbury was not yet settled. Indeed, he had scarcely returned to York when he was served with notice that he must profess, for himself at least, obedience to Canterbury, as his predecessors had done. This he succeeded in avoiding for a time, and at the beginning of October, in 1122, Archbishop Ralph of Canterbury died, not having gained his case. An attempt of Calixtus II to send a legate to England, contrary to the promise he had made to Henry at Gisors, was met and defeated by the king with his usual diplomatic skill, so far as the exercise of any legatine powers is concerned, though the legate was admitted to England and remained there for a time. In the selection of a successor to Ralph of Canterbury a conflict arose between the monastic chapter of Christ church and the bishops of the province, and was decided undoubtedly according to the king's mind in favour of the latter, by the election of William of Corbeil, a canon regular. Another episcopal appointment of these years illustrates the growing importance in the kingdom of the great administrative bishop, Roger of Salisbury, who seems to have been the king's justiciar, or chief representative, during his long absences in Normandy. The long pontificate of Robert Bloet, the brilliant and worldly Bishop of Lincoln, closed at the beginning of 1123 by a sudden stroke as he was riding with the king, and in his place was appointed Roger's nephew, Alexander.