A History of England, Period I. Mediæval Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

Henry had been hunting in the New Forest when his brother William was killed, and rode at once to Winchester to secure the King’s treasure. As the rights of primogeniture had not yet been established, and he was very obviously a fitter man to be King than his brother Robert, the slight opposition offered by the treasurer was speedily overruled, and the Sunday following (August 5, 1100) he was crowned at Westminster. To secure his position, however, he found it necessary to conciliate all parties. The Church he won by the immediate filling of vacant sees, and by the recall of the exiled Anselm. William Giffard, the chancellor of Rufus, was made Bishop of Winchester; Girard of Hereford, Archbishop of York; while both Norman and Saxon laity were bound to him by a charter, by which he laid some constitutional restrictions upon the despotism established by his father. In that charter he promised to abolish all oppressive duties, and to confine his demands to his just claims as feudal lord; rendering the same agreement obligatory on his tenants towards their vassals. False coining was checked, the right of leaving personal property by will granted, and the law of King Edward, which meant the old institutions of the country, re-established. He likewise thought it well to win the heart of the people by marrying a Princess of English descent, Matilda, niece of Eadgar Ætheling, daughter of Margaret and Malcolm of Scotland. Further to show his disapproval of his brother’s policy, he arrested Ralph Flambard, who, however, found means to escape to Normandy, and was made Bishop of Lisieux.

His policy.

Henry had thus declared the policy he intended to pursue, the policy of his father rather than of his brother. He meant to be at once a friend and master of the Church, and a national sovereign of the English, a character which became a prince who had been born in that country. That position implied a power much more centralized than that of a feudal suzerain; and in England his chief policy was directed throughout his reign to upholding his mastery over the Church and over refractory barons who aimed at more perfect feudalism. He was in heart however a Norman, and, in pursuit of his objects, did not shrink from using his English subjects with great severity. Similarly, his chief foreign difficulties were produced by his wish to win the Duchy of Normandy, and having won it to rule it in the same masterful spirit in which he ruled England. We find then in his reign ecclesiastical disputes, disputes with the feudal barons of both England and Normandy, wars for the conquest of the duchy, and consequent complications with his suzerain the King of France. Mixed with these are stories, chiefly from Saxon sources, of cruel and unjust exactions and acts of injustice, tolerated, if not ordered, against his Saxon subjects.

His supporters.

His opponents.

His views found supporters in the two sons of that Roger de Beaumont, to whom his father had left the regency of Normandy when he first came to England. These were the two great Earls, Robert, Count of Mellent,[6] afterwards Earl Leicester, and his younger brother Henry, Earl of Warwick, the elder of whom had received no less than ninety-one manors from the Conqueror, and was the most influential and wisest statesman of the day. On the other hand, he was constantly opposed by his brother Robert, a military prince of the feudal type, and Robert de Belesme of the House of Montgomery, possessor of the Earldoms of Alençon in France and of Shrewsbury in England, and by right of marriage of the county of Ponthieu.

Robert of Normandy seeks the English Crown. 1101.

Robert heard of his brother’s accession to the throne while on his journey home from the Holy Land. He had served with credit throughout the first crusade, especially at Dorylæum and at Ascalon. He had declined the offer of the crown of Jerusalem, and on his return home had married Sibylla, the daughter of Geoffrey of Conversana. He was a man of extravagant and profligate habits, and speedily squandered the fortune which his wife had brought him, but the entreaties of English exiles, and of those discontented nobles who longed for an easier rule than they could expect from Henry, roused him to assert his claim to the English crown. Robert of Belesme and his brothers, Walter Giffard, Robert Malet, Ivo of Grantmesnil, even William of Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, closely connected with the royal house, joined his party.

Withdraws without bloodshed.

Henry attacks his partisans.