A History of England, Period I. Mediæval Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

Henry’s penance at Canterbury.

Capture of the Scotch King at Alnwick.

Henry’s complete success.

All his dominions seemed now at peace, but a great danger was brewing. His son Henry, since his coronation, had already, at the instigation of the French King, his father-in-law, demanded the actual possession of some portion at least of his kingdom, and this combination caused him well-grounded apprehension. He took the opportunity of the general peace of his kingdom to negotiate a marriage for his son John with the daughter of Count Humbolt of Savoy, and promised to give with him as her dowry Chinon, Loudon, and Mirabeau. The young king Henry protested against this treaty, and suddenly disappearing from court, took refuge with Louis VII. at St. Denis. The old king understood only too well what this meant. Shortly, there was a universal insurrection throughout all his dominions. It is not difficult to understand. His domestic relations were not happy, although he was very fond of his children; his wife was constantly urging them to disobedience. His dominions were widespread, and consisted of various races; his hand was heavy upon the feudal nobility, when the English nobles had not yet forgotten the charms of the late reign; while the defeat which the King had sustained in his quarrel with Becket gave a false impression of his weakness. The discontent was very general. While Louis recognized the young Henry as the rightful king, and entered into his quarrel in company with the Counts of Blois, Boulogne, Flanders, and others, the nobles of Aquitaine rose in insurrection, the princes Richard and Geoffrey made common cause with the insurgents, William the Lion of Scotland was engaged to take part with them, and the great Earls of the middle and north of England, Leicester, Ferrars of Derby, Chester, and Bigod, joined in the general alliance. Henry, though alarmed, did not despair. His policy had led him to trust much to his auxiliaries, and with these he determined to withstand the feudal malcontents. Leaving his generals to resist the attack from Flanders and France, he won a great battle before Dol in Brittany, took the great Earl of Chester prisoner, and re-established his power in that province. Meanwhile, Leicester had been besieged by Lucy, his justiciary in England; the efforts of William the Lion, who demanded Northumberland and refused homage for Huntingdon, were thwarted by the brave defence of the border castles; and an invasion of Flemings from the East, headed by the Earl of Leicester, was defeated at Farnham, near Bury St. Edmunds. But the existing truce with France terminated at Easter; the king of that country was able to enter actively into the war; and Henry’s successes, and the large offers he made his sons, seemed alike unavailing. Hostilities began again, and Henry was obliged to take the command in person in his hereditary provinces, Maine and Anjou, where he was received with enthusiasm. The troops of his son Richard were conquered; while in England the King’s natural son, Geoffrey Plantagenet, and Richard de Lucy, made head against the nobles in the East and a fresh invasion from Scotland; but were still so pressed, that messengers were sent in haste to summon Henry across the Channel. It was indeed a moment of great danger. Philip of Flanders and his allies, to whom Kent had been promised, were assembling a fleet at Whitsand; the Scotch invaders had reached Alnwick. Henry hastened home. But before he proceeded to active measures, in deference to the popular feeling, which attributed his difficulties to the Divine anger at Becket’s death, he made a pilgrimage and did penance at the shrine of the martyr. Immediately after this while still in anxious doubt as to the fate of his kingdom, news was brought him that Ranulf de Glanvill had surprised the Scotch at Alnwick, and that William the Lion and many of his nobility were prisoners. A few days afterwards the town of Huntingdon was taken, and Hugh, the Bishop of Durham, who had joined the insurgents, conquered. By July all the English nobles had returned to their allegiance, and Prince David had withdrawn the Scotch troops. The same rapidity which saved England saved Normandy also. The sudden arrival of the King before Rouen raised the siege of that place, which had been hard pressed, and before long a peace between Henry and Louis was made, by which all the French conquests were restored, and the young King Henry’s dependants had to abjure the fealty which they had taken to him. The great insurrection which for a moment had threatened the existence of Henry’s monarchy was thus over. To his sons Henry was merciful. To Richard he granted two castles in Poitou, with half its revenues; to Geoffrey, similar terms in Brittany. They were required to renew their allegiance. William of Scotland was forced to content himself with harder terms. He was only released upon condition of appearing at York in the following year with all his barons, and swearing fealty to Henry as his suzerain. He and his brother did homage for Scotland, for Galloway, and for their English possessions; while the Scotch clergy acknowledged the supremacy of the Archbishop of York. In the following year the young Henry left his French patron and reconciled himself completely with his father.

Small diminution of Henry’s power, either temporal or ecclesiastical.

This outbreak may be regarded as a consequence of Henry’s defeat in his dispute with Becket. The King had shown how little that defeat had weakened his real power in temporal matters. His appointments to the vacant bishoprics, which were a necessary consequence of the termination of that quarrel, prove how little he had really lost even in influence. Of the six bishoprics which were filled up, three were given to avowed partisans of the King. Winchester fell to Richard of Ilchester; Ely, to Godfrey Ridel, Becket’s great opponent; and Lincoln to Geoffrey Plantagenet; while, shortly after, the Bishopric of Norwich was given to John of Oxford, who had been Henry’s chief agent throughout the Becket difficulty. Such disputes as still existed in the Church ceased to have political meaning, and assumed the form of quarrels between the monks and the secular clergy. It was thus that Richard, the Prior of Dover, a man in the royal interests, was elected to succeed Becket after a lengthened dispute between the monks of the Holy Trinity at Canterbury, who claimed the right of election, and the other bishops of the province. Henry’s influence was naturally employed in favour of the episcopal candidate, but he contrived to confine the dispute within the limits of the ecclesiastical body.

Henry’s judicial and constitutional changes.

The Curia Regis.

Itinerant justices.

The period which elapsed between the suppression of the great rebellion and the outbreak of the quarrel between Henry and his sons is the period of his greatest power. It is at this time that we find the greatest marks of his activity as a lawgiver. The year 1176 is marked by the great Assize of Northampton, an expansion of a similar Assize of Clarendon in the year 1166, the fruit perhaps of his experience in the late rebellion, and the knowledge gained by his inquiries into the conduct of the sheriffs in 1170. That inquiry, which was called for by the complaints of the exactions of the sheriffs, proved to him that their conduct had not been free from peculation, and led him to believe that the employment of local nobles as his chief officials was dangerous. He took the opportunity of making a general examination of the judicial system of the country, the fruit of which was the concentration and organization of the Curia Regis, and the arrangements embodied in the Assize of Northampton. The King’s court consisted originally, as has been already mentioned, of all those tenants who held their land direct from the crown (tenants in capite), and was the ordinary feudal court, and the natural parent of our present Parliament, and especially of the House of Lords. But for the ordinary despatch of business, whether judicial or financial, what may be regarded as a permanent committee of this body of immediate holders was employed. This committee consisted of the great officers of the household, such as the chancellor, treasurer, marshal and others, and other selected barons closely connected with the royal household. The head of this committee, or Curia Regis, was the great justiciary, the King’s representative. The royal chaplains or clerks were formed into a body of secretaries, at the head of which was the chancellor. The Curia Regis at first attended the King and had a twofold duty; when they sat as judges its members were called justices, in financial questions they sat in the exchequer[28] chamber, and were called barons. This administrative system, which had been organized in Henry I.’s reign, was entirely destroyed by the wild reign of Stephen. Its reconstitution was the great work of Henry II. In the earlier part of his reign the visitations were renewed upon the old system, the itinerant justice being usually either the great justiciary, chancellor, or some other great household officer. In the year 1168 four barons of the exchequer performed this duty; in 1176 the country was divided into six circuits. This number was not permanent, several alterations were made in it. Nor was the number of visitations thoroughly established. By Magna Charta in John’s reign commissions are promised four times a year, but shortly afterwards it would seem that the general journey of the itinerant justices was every seven years, until the reign of Edward I. It is to be remembered that these visitations were for all sorts of objects; for hearing civil cases, for inspecting the working of criminal jurisdiction, and, perhaps before all things, for arranging the financial matters of the country, and superintending the sheriffs in all matters connected with the exchequer. The itinerant justices during their circuits superseded the sheriff’s authority and presided in his courts. They were also allowed to enter and preside in the baronial courts. It has been mentioned that these courts were in most respects complete Hundreds. The two parallel systems, now on certain occasions presided over by the same official, were thus assimilated and brought into immediate connection with the central authority. This administrative organization gave rise to what is of much political importance, a new class of barons, new men who had risen by their talents and by the King’s favour, whose interests were therefore on the side of order and of the crown. At one period, in 1178, Henry II. appears to have found his new ministers untrustworthy, at all events in that year he restricted the Curia Regis to five persons, keeping the highest appellate jurisdiction in the hands of himself and the old Curia Regis, which may henceforth be regarded as the King’s ordinary council. The name Curia Regis has thus passed through three phases; a feudal court, a permanent committee of the feudal court, and a restricted committee of that committee. In these various bodies we have the sources of all the judicial bodies in England. The feudal court, with certain additions, became the Parliament; without those additions the Great Council, retaining its natural prerogative of final court of appeal, and represented now by the House of Lords. The permanent committee, or ordinary council, is represented by the privy council, still retaining some of its judicial powers. From its body of clerks, headed by the chancellor, arose the courts of Chancery. While the limited committee was divided shortly after the Magna Charta into three courts, the exchequer, the common pleas, and the king’s bench, at first with the same judges for all, but by the end of Edward III.’s reign with a separate staff.