Main objects of Henry’s reign.
First acts of his reign.
The consolidation of the nation was the great work of Henry of Anjou. He brought to it great gifts, sagacity, masterful courage, a legal and judicial mind; while his training, as the prince of widely extending countries, prevented the intrusion of petty local interests into his views for his people’s good. The lessons of the last reign were not lost on him. Before all things he desired a strong government and good order. In pursuing these objects he took for his model his grandfather and great-grandfather, and worked out in greater and more systematic detail the policy they had begun. And though in his efforts to subordinate the Church he may seem to have run counter to the legislation of his great-grandfather, it will be seen that in many points his policy was really the same. In the earlier part of his reign work lay ready to his hand, and the compromise at Winchester had already marked out his line of action. He could not immediately come to England, being detained by an insurrection in Guienne. But when he had settled this, and, by a humility of bearing he knew well how to feign, secured the friendship of Louis VII., he crossed the Channel, and at once proceeded with his reforms.
He restores order in the State.
He renewed the charter of the City of London; fixed a short period during which the Flemish auxiliaries, who had already probably begun to return home, should leave the country; recalled grants of the royal domains which had been made in Stephen’s reign; re-established the old number of limited earldoms; and proceeded to lay hands on both the royal castles which individual barons had appropriated and those private fastnesses with which the country had become covered. Their number is variously estimated, by some it is put as high as 1150. It was not without some opposition that he carried out this work. It was chiefly in the North and West that difficulty occurred. Before the year was over he had received the submission of William of Albemarle, who was nearly independent in Yorkshire. In February of the next year he expelled Peveril, who had been guilty among other things of poisoning the great Earl of Chester, from his Earldom of Nottingham. He followed up his success by compelling the border barons, Roger, son of Milo, Earl of Hereford, and Hugh Mortimer, a descendant of the same family as Robert de Belesme, to surrender their fastnesses. To complete his dominion at home he marched against Malcolm of Scotland, who was occupying the three Northern counties. These he compelled him to resign, obliging him to do homage for the county of Huntingdon, which he claimed as a descendant of the old Earl Waltheof. Throughout all the earlier part of the reign the Scotch King appears as a great English baron, following the King to his wars.
Friendship of Adrian IV.
Henry even thus early began to think of curbing the overgrown power of the Church; and Henry of Winchester, in fear of what might happen, thought it better to lay aside his episcopal robes and retire for a time to Clugny, from which, however, he was soon induced to return. An event, indeed, soon occurred which rendered the King’s position with the Church peculiarly strong. In 1154 Nicolas Breakspear ascended the Papal throne, the only Englishman who ever attained that honour. The connection between England and the Papal See, always close since the Conquest, was drawn even closer, and the Pope made a grant of the schismatical country Ireland to the English King; a grant the enjoyment of which Henry postponed till a more convenient season. Henry’s widely spread dominions kept him constantly moving, and in 1156 the affairs of his native county summoned him to France. He left his kingdom in charge of Robert of Leicester, his great justiciary.
The difficulty in Anjou arose from the claim raised by his younger brother Godfrey to that province. This claim rested upon a doubtful will, by which his father was said to have intended Anjou for Godfrey if Henry was called to the throne of England. By force of arms Henry reduced the country; and his brother withdrew on the receipt of certain payments, being shortly after called by the burghers of Nantes to become lord of their town. This affair was scarcely settled when Henry hurried back to England, there to complete his conquest of the Scotch King, by obliging him to surrender his strong castles of Bamborough, Newcastle and Carlisle, and again to do homage for Huntingdon, on which occasion, however, the clause “Salvis omnibus dignitatibus suis” was introduced into his oath. This, with the surrender of castles by Hugh Bigod in Norfolk, and of William, called of Warrenne, son of the late King, and Earl of Surrey, completed the subjugation of the feudal nobles, and rendered him absolute master of England.
Master of England, Henry attacks Wales.
Rise of Thomas à Becket.
He is employed in foreign negotiation. 1158.