A History of England, Period I. Mediæval Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

Unsupported by the Pope, makes compromise at Bec. 1106.

Synod of Westminster.

At home the great points of Henry’s reign were those which form the domestic history of all feudal monarchies, the relation of the Church and State, and the maintenance of police. With regard to the Church his views were those of his father. He was ready to support and increase its influence; he was not ready to give up any of the prerogatives which his predecessors had possessed. He thus reversed all the action of his brother, recalled Anselm at once with marked honour, and filled up the vacant benefices. But the Archbishop during his exile had mixed in Continental politics, at that time consisting almost entirely of the question of investitures. He returned home determined to assert to the full the independence of the Church. He therefore refused to swear fealty, and do homage to the King, or to consecrate those bishops who had received their investitures from him. Henry, supported by his lay counsellors, was equally determined to uphold the rights of the crown. The matter was referred to the Pope, Pascal II. The Papacy had enemies enough already, and could not afford to drive to extremities a Prince so powerful, and in the main so friendly, as Henry. The reply which was returned was ambiguous. Henry again commanded the Archbishop to perform his usual duties. A second application to Rome produced no better result. Anselm was urged to perseverance. Henry’s ambassadors were given to understand that, as long as his appointments were good, the King should not be interfered with. Firm in his own views, but uncertain as to the Pope’s wishes, Anselm had no course open to him but to visit Rome in person. He there met with but lukewarm support, and withdrew to Lyons, while Henry laid hands upon all the revenues of the archbishopric. For some time Anselm rejected all offers of compromise; but when, after all his efforts, he could induce the Pope to go no further than the excommunication, not of the King, but of some of his ministers, he lost heart, and, in 1106, a compromise was arranged at Bec, by which Henry retained the really important part of investiture, the oaths of fealty and homage, while resigning the idle symbol of the gift of ring and crozier. This compromise, which was the same in effect as that made sixteen years afterwards at Worms between Henry V. and Calixtus II., set at rest for the present that rivalry between Church and State which the policy of the Conqueror had introduced. The decrees of a Synod held at Westminster, 1102, by Anselm before going to Rome, show the abuses which the ecclesiastical disputes of the last reign had introduced. They are directed against such habits as simony, marriage of the clergy, the assumption of lay dress by ecclesiastics, the holding of secular courts by bishops, the adoration of unauthorized saints and relics, and vindicate the claims of the Church to be considered as the chief civilizing agent of the time by forbidding the selling of men for slaves.

Frequent unfit appointments in the Church. Henry corrects them when possible.

It was not always that the Church appeared in such an amiable light. Henry no doubt, on the whole, attempted to make good appointments, but interest or desire to reward an ardent partisan sometimes put an unfit person into office. Thus Henry of Poitou was given the Abbey of Peterborough, although he already held an abbey in France, apparently as a reward for the support he gave the King in upholding the illegality of the marriage between William Clito and Sibylla of Anjou on the score of consanguinity. “He came like a drone to a hive,” says the chronicler; “all that the bees draw towards them the drones devour and draw from them, so did he.” It is fair to say that Henry, when he found out how bad a person he had appointed, had him removed. “It was not very long after that that the King sent for him, and made him give up the Abbey of Peterborough, and go out of the land.” Thus, again, after a great distribution of abbeys in 1107, it is remarked “that the abbots were rather wolves than shepherds.” Such complaints are however usually uttered by English writers, and the plight of the conquered people was evidently very miserable.

Wretched condition of the people.

Extracts from old chroniclers.

It was a time of great suffering on more accounts than one, and the suffering was of a kind to fall chiefly upon the lower orders. Agriculture was so rough that any little irregularity in the seasons produced a failure of the crops, and the habits of the people were such that any infectious disease was liable to become a pestilence. The constant warfare, either against his vassals or his enemies, which the King carried on, was the cause of frequent taxation, against which no class in the State had it in their power to remonstrate; while the natural and artificial causes of suffering were further aggravated by the frequent issue of false coin. Thus we find year after year such entries as these in the chroniclers:—“The year 1105 was very miserable, because of the failure of the crops, and the ceaseless taxation.” “The year 1110 was full of wretchedness, because of the bad season, and the tribute the King demanded for his daughter’s dowry.” “In this year (1124) were many failures in England in corn and all fruit, so that between Christmas and Candlemas the acre seed of wheat was sold for six shillings; and that of barley, that is three seedlips for three shillings, the acre seed of oats for four shillings, because there was little corn, and the penny was so bad that a man who had at market a pound could by no means buy therewith twelvepenny-worth.” “In this same year (1125) was so great a flood on St. Lawrence’s mass day that many towns and men were drowned, and bridges shattered; corn and meadows totally destroyed, and for all fruits there was so bad a season as there had not been for many years before.” “In that year (1131) there was so great a murrain of cattle as never was in the memory of man.” This carried off neat, swine, and domestic fowls alike. And when the harvest was good the pestilence came. “This year (1112) was a very good year, and very abundant in wood and field, but it was a very sorrowful one through a most destructive pestilence.” Or again, the year 1104, “It is not easy to recount all the miseries the country suffered this year through various and manifold illegalities and imposts which never ceased nor failed, and ever as the King went there was plundering by his followers on his wretched people, and at the same time often burnings and murders.”

Their chief complaints.