One of Henry’s great desires was to recover the Vexin, which at his father’s suggestion he had ceded to Louis in 1151 as the price of the investiture of Normandy. By the last treaty between the two kings it had been settled that this territory should form the dowry of little Margaret; her father was to retain possession of it, and to place its chief fortresses in the custody of the Knights Templars, for the next three years, until she should be wedded to young Henry with the consent of Holy Church; whenever that should take place, Henry’s father was to receive back the Vexin. In other words, the dowry was not to be paid till the bride was married; and there was evidently a tacit understanding, at any rate on the French side, that this was not to be for three years at least.[1522] Later in the summer two cardinal-legates visited France and Normandy on business connected with a recent Papal election.[1523] Henry, apparently at the instigation of Thomas,[1524] persuaded them to solemnize the marriage of the two children on November 2 at Neubourg.[1525] The written conditions of the treaty were fulfilled to the letter—the babes were wedded with the consent of Holy Church, represented by the Pope’s own legates; and the castles of the Vexin were at once made over to Henry by the Templars,[1526] three of whom were present at the wedding.[1527] Louis found himself thoroughly outwitted. His first step was to banish the three Templars, who were cordially received by Henry;[1528] his next was to concert with the brothers of his new queen a plan of retaliation in Anjou. The house of Blois naturally resented a curtailment of the possessions of the crown which they now hoped one day to see worn by a prince of their own blood. Louis and Theobald accordingly set to work to fortify Chaumont, a castle which Gelduin of Saumur had long ago planted on the bank of the Loire as a special thorn in the side of the Angevin counts. Henry flew to the spot, put king and count to flight, besieged and took the castle of Chaumont together with thirty-five picked knights and eighty men-at-arms whom Theobald had sent to reinforce its garrison; he then fortified Fréteval and Amboise, and, secure from all further molestation, went to keep Christmas with Eleanor in his native city of Le Mans.[1529]

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.”