When England was secured, it was comparatively a light matter to secure the rest. Louis of France was so dismayed at the sudden collapse of the rebellion in England—a collapse which necessarily entailed a like fate upon the rebellion in Normandy, since the leaders were the same men in both cases—that he at once recalled the young king and the count of Flanders from their project of invasion. As a last resource, all three concentrated their forces upon the siege of Rouen.[822] Its garrison held out gallantly until Henry had time to recross the sea with his Brabantines and a thousand Welshmen[823] who had already done good service under Rees Ap-Griffith at the siege of Tutbury.[824] On August 11, three days after landing, he entered Rouen;[825] a successful raid of his Welshmen upon some French convoys, followed by an equally successful sally of Henry himself against the besieging forces, sufficed to make Louis ask for a truce, under cover of which he fled with his whole host back into his own dominions.[826] Some three weeks later[827] he and Henry met in conference at Gisors and arranged a suspension of hostilities until Michaelmas on all sides, except between Henry and his son Richard, who was fighting independently against his father’s loyal subjects in Poitou.[828] Henry marched southward at once; Richard fled before him from place to place, leaving his conquests to fall back one by one into the hands of their rightful owner; at last he suddenly returned to throw himself at his father’s feet, and a few days before Michaelmas Henry concluded his war in Poitou[829] by entering Poitiers in triumph with Richard, penitent and forgiven, at his side.[830]

On the last day of September the two kings and all the princes met in conference between Tours and Amboise.[831] Henry’s three elder sons accepted the endowments which he offered them; in return, the young king gave his assent to a provision for John. A general amnesty was agreed upon; all prisoners on both sides, except the king of Scots, the earls of Leicester and Chester and Ralf of Fougères, were released at once; all the rebels returned to their allegiance, and were fully forgiven; Henry claimed nothing from any of them save the restoration of their castles to the condition in which they had been before the war, and the right of taking such hostages and other security as he might choose.[832] These terms of course did not apply to England; while, on the other hand, the king of Scots and his fellow-captives, whom Henry had brought back with him to Normandy and replaced in confinement at Falaise,[833] were excluded from them as prisoners of war. It was at Falaise, on October 11, that Henry and his sons embodied their agreement in a written document.[834] A few weeks later William of Scotland, with the formal assent of the bishops and barons of his realm, who had been allowed free access to him during his captivity, submitted to pay the price which Henry demanded for his ransom. The legal relations between the crowns of England and Scotland had been doubtful ever since the days of William the Conqueror and Malcolm Canmore, if not since the days of Eadward the Elder and Constantine; henceforth they were to be doubtful no longer. William the Lion became the liegeman of the English king and of his son for Scotland and for all his other lands, and agreed that their heirs should be entitled to a like homage and fealty from all future kings of Scots. The castles of Roxburgh, Jedburgh, Berwick, Edinburgh and Stirling were required by Henry as security; and as soon as the treaty had been ratified at Valognes[835] William was sent over sea in a sort of honourable custody to enforce their surrender and thereby complete his own release.[836]

By the terms of Henry’s treaty with France, all the English barons who held lands on both sides of the sea were to be at once re-instated in their continental possessions, except the castles over which the king resumed his ancient rights of garrison or of demolition. Their English estates however were wholly at his mercy; but he made a very gentle use of his power over them. He took in fact no personal vengeance at all; he exacted simply what was necessary for securing his own authority and the peace of the realm—the instant departure of the Flemish mercenaries[837] and the demolition of unlicensed fortifications—and for defraying the expenses of the war. This was done by a tax levied partly on the royal demesnes, partly on the estates of the rebels throughout the country, on the basis of an assessment made for that purpose during the past summer by the sheriffs of the several counties, assisted by some officers of the Exchequer.[838] No ruinous sums were demanded; even Hugh Bigod escaped with a fine of a thousand marks, and lost none of the revenues of his earldom save for the time that he was actually in open rebellion; the third penny of Norfolk was reckoned as due to him again from the third day after his surrender, and its amount for two months was paid to him accordingly at Michaelmas.[839] Even the earls of Leicester and Chester seem to have been at once set free;[840] and in little more than two years they were restored to all their lands and honours, except their castles, which were either razed or retained in the king’s hands.[841]

This very clemency was in itself at once the strongest proof of the completeness of Henry’s victory and the surest means of retaining the hold which he had now gained over the barons. The struggle whose course we have been trying to follow has a special significance: it was the last struggle in English history in which the barons were arrayed against the united interests of the Crown and the people. That feudal pride which had revolted so often and so fiercely against the determination of William the Conqueror and Henry I. to enforce justice and order throughout their realm stooped at last to acknowledge its master in Henry II. In the unbroken tranquillity, the uninterrupted developement of reform in law and administration, the unchecked growth of the material and social prosperity of England during the remaining fifteen years of his reign, Henry and his people reaped the first-fruits of the anti-feudal policy which he and his predecessors had so long and so steadily maintained. Its full harvest was to be reaped after he was gone, not by the sovereign, but by the barons themselves, to whom his strong hand had at last taught their true mission as leaders and champions of the English people against a king who had fallen away from the traditions alike of the Norman and of the Angevin Henry.

CHAPTER V.
THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE.
1175–1183.