A year of peace followed: Henry spent the greater part of it in Normandy, garrisoning the castles of the duchy, strengthening its newly-recovered border-fortresses, providing for the restoration of the old royal strongholds and the erection of new ones in all parts of his dominions, and superintending the repair of his palace at Rouen, the making of a park at Quévilly, and the foundation of an hospital for lepers at Caen.[1530] The chancellor was still at his side, and had lately, as a crowning mark of his confidence, been intrusted with the entire charge of his eldest son. Thomas received the child into his own household, to educate him with the other boys of noble birth who came to learn courtly manners and knightly prowess in that excellent school; he playfully called him his adoptive son, and treated him as such in every respect.[1531] Little Henry was now in his seventh year, and his father was already anxious to secure his succession to the throne. The conditional homage which he had received as an infant was, as Henry knew by personal experience, a very insufficient security. Indeed, the results of every attempt to regulate the descent of the crown since the Norman conquest tended to prove that the succession of the heir could be really secured by nothing short of his actual recognition and coronation as king during his father’s life-time. This was now becoming an established practice in France and Germany. In England, where the older constitutional theory of national election to the throne had never died out, such a step had never been attempted but once; and that attempt, made by Stephen in behalf of his son Eustace, had ended in signal failure. Discouraging as the precedent was, however, Henry had made up his mind to follow it; and in the spring of 1162 he sent his boy over sea and called upon the barons of England to do him homage and fealty, as a preliminary to his coronation as king.[1532]

A matter so important and so delicate could be intrusted to no one but the chancellor. He managed it, like everything else that he took in hand, with a calm facility which astonished every one. He brought the child to England, presented him to the bishops and barons of the realm in a great council summoned for the purpose,[1533] knelt at his feet and swore to be his faithful subject in all things, reserving only the fealty due to the elder king so long as he lived and reigned;[1534] the whole assembly followed his example, and thus a measure which it was believed that Henry’s personal presence would hardly have availed to carry through without disturbance was accomplished at once and without a word of protest,[1535] save from the little king himself, who with childish imperiousness, it is said, refused to admit any reservation in the oath of his adoptive father.[1536] Henry probably intended that the boy’s recognition as heir to the crown should be speedily followed by his coronation.[1537] This, however, was a rite which could only be performed by the primate of all England; and the chair of S. Augustine was vacant. Once again it was to Thomas that Henry looked for aid; but this time he looked in vain. Thomas had done his last act in the service of his royal friend. The year which had passed away since Archbishop Theobald’s death had been, on both sides of the sea, a year of almost ominous tranquillity. It was in truth the forerunner of a storm which was to shatter Henry’s peace and to cost Thomas his life.

CHAPTER XI.
THE LAST YEARS OF ARCHBISHOP THEOBALD.
1156–1161.

All Henry’s endeavours for the material and political revival of his kingdom had been regulated thus far by one simple, definite principle:—the restoration of the state of things which had existed under his grandfather. In his own eyes and in those of his subjects the duty which lay before him at his accession, and which he had faithfully and successfully fulfilled, was to take up the work of government and administration not at the point where he found it, but at the point where it had been left by Henry I. and Roger of Salisbury: to pull down and sweep away all the innovations and irregularities with which their work had been overlaid during the last nineteen years, and bring the old foundations to light once more, that they might receive a legitimate superstructure planned upon their own lines and built upon their own principles. In law, in finance, in general administration, there was one universal standard of reference:—“the time of my grandfather King Henry.”

But there was one side of the national revival, and that the most important of all, to which this standard could not apply. The religious and intellectual movement which had begun under Henry I., far from coming to a standstill at his death, had gone on gathering energy and strength during the years of anarchy till it had become the one truly living power in the land, the power which in the end placed Henry II. on his throne. It looked to find in him a friend, a fellow-worker, a protector perhaps; but it had no need to go back to a stage which it had long since overpassed and make a new departure thence under the guidance of a king who was almost its own creation. At the very moment of Henry’s accession, the hopes of the English Church were raised to their highest pitch by the elevation of an Englishman to the Papal chair. Nicolas Breakspear was the only man of English birth who ever attained that lofty seat; and the adventures which brought him thither, so far as they can be made out from two somewhat contradictory accounts, form a romantic chapter in the clerical history of the time. Nicolas was the son of a poor English clerk[1538] at Langley, a little township belonging to the abbey of S. Alban’s.[1539] The father retired into the abbey,[1540] leaving his boy, according to one version of the story, too poor to go to school and too young and ignorant to earn his bread; he therefore came every day to get a dole at the abbey-gate, till his father grew ashamed and bade him come no more; whereupon the lad, “blushing either to dig or to beg in his own country,” made his way across the sea.[1541] Another version asserts that Nicolas, being “a youth of graceful appearance, but somewhat lacking in clerkly acquirements,” sued to the abbot of S. Alban’s for admission as a monk; the abbot examined him, found him insufficiently instructed, and dismissed him with a gentle admonition: “Wait awhile, my son, and go to school that you may become better fitted for the cloister.”[1542] Whether stung by the abbot’s hint or by his father’s reproofs, young Nicolas found his way to Paris and into its schools, where he worked so hard that he out-did all his fellow-students.[1543] But the life there wearied him as it had wearied Thomas Becket; he rambled on across Gaul into Provence, and there found hospitality in the Austin priory of S. Rufus. His graceful figure, pleasant face, sensible talk and obliging temper so charmed the brotherhood that they grew eager to keep him in their midst,[1544] and on their persuasion he joined the order.[1545] It seems that he was even made superior of the house, but the canons afterwards regretted having set a stranger to rule over them, and after persecuting him in various ways appealed to the Pope to get rid of him. The Pope—Eugene III.—at first refused to hear them; but on second consideration he decided to give them over to their own evil devices and offer their rejected superior a more agreeable post in his own court.[1546] Nicolas, who had already twice visited Rome, proceeded thither a third time and was made cardinal[1547] and bishop of Albano.[1548] Shortly afterwards he was appointed legate to Norway and Denmark, an office which he filled with prudence and energy during some years.[1549] Returning to Rome about 1150, he apparently acted as secretary to Eugene III. until the latter’s death in July 1153.[1550] The next Pope, Anastasius III., reigned only sixteen months, and dying on December 2, 1154, was succeeded by the bishop of Albano, who took the name of Adrian IV.[1551]