1. As soon as Henry the Second came to the throne, he began to set things to rights again. He had all the new castles pulled down, and made the bad men who had lived in them, leave the country; then he set people to work to rebuild the towns that had been burned down in the late wars; and ordered that the judges should go on circuits; that is, travel to all the cities, and hold assizes, two or three times a year, as they do now, to see that justice is done to everybody.
2. But it was not quite so easy to do justice then; for, as long as the feudal laws lasted, the rich could always oppress the poor, and every great man had an army of his own vassals, who would do any thing he bade them, whether it was lawful or not.
3. Now the king wisely thought that the best thing in the world for the country would be to give more freedom to the people, so that the Barons might not have quite so much power.
4. He, therefore, granted charters to some of the cities, which made them a little more independent; but it was by very slow degrees that the people of England became free, although this happy change was beginning to take place.
5. Another thing the king wanted to do, was to make the clergy answerable to the judges for any bad acts they might commit, instead of having particular laws and judges for themselves; and, I am sorry to say, they sometimes did very wicked things, for which they were not punished half so severely as other people would have been for similar offences, which certainly was unjust.
6. But the bishops were unwilling to let the king have any thing to do with church affairs, and the Pope encouraged them to oppose him, in this respect; for the Pope, in those days, had more power over all Europe than the kings themselves, who seldom dared to disobey him.
7. The person who quarrelled most with Henry about these things was Thomas à Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, a very proud man, who wanted to rule both king and state his own way.
8. The king was so much annoyed at the opposition he constantly met with from the archbishop, that one day, in a fit of passion, he said he wished that troublesome priest was dead; on which some persons, who heard these incautious words thinking to get into favor, rode off to Canterbury, and killed the archbishop in his Cathedral.
9. But they gained nothing by this wicked deed; for the king was shocked when he heard of it, and sorry for what he had said; which shows how wrong it is for people to use violent expressions when they feel angry.
10. One very remarkable event which occurred in this reign, was the conquest of Ireland. That country had been, for many years, divided into several small kingdoms, and the disputes of the chiefs had often given rise to warfare among themselves; but it now happened that the king of Leinster, having been deposed by another prince, went direct to the king of England, to beg his assistance, which Henry readily promised, on condition that, if he were restored, he should hold his kingdom as a vassal of the English crown.