Henry was a kind and loving father, but his political game led him to sacrifice the real interest of his children to the design for their advancement. They soon found out that he used them like chess-men, and could not see the love which prompted his design. To his people he was a politic ruler, a great reformer and discipliner; not a hero or patriot, but a far-seeing king who recognized that the well-being of the nation was the surest foundation of his own power. As a lawgiver or financier, or supreme judge, he made his hand felt everywhere; and at the beginning of his reign, when the need of the reforms was forcibly impressed on the minds of his subjects by their recent misery, his reforms were welcomed; he was popular and beloved. By and by, when he had educated a new generation, and when the dark cloud of sin and sorrow and ingratitude settled down upon him, they forgot what he had done in his early days; but they never forgot how great a king he was. We may not say that he was a good man; but his temptations were very great, and he was sinned against very much by his wife and children. It is only in a secondary sense that he was a good king, for he loved his power first and his people only second; but he was good so far as selfish wisdom and deep insight into what is good for them could make him. In his early years he gave promise of something more than this, and some share of the blame that attends his later short-comings must rest with those who scrupled at nothing that might humiliate and disappoint him.

In appearance, we are told, Henry was a tall, stout man, with a short neck, and projecting but very expressive eyes; he was a careless dresser, a great hunter, a man of business rather than a model of chivalry; capable of great exertion, moderate in meat and drink, and anything but extravagant in personal as opposed to official expenditure. He was a builder of halls and castles, not very much of churches; but that may easily be accounted for. We are glad to have him pictured for us even with this scanty amount of detail, for he is well worth the trouble of an attempt at least to realize his outward presentment. Every one knows Henry VIII. by sight; it might be as well if we had as definite an impression of Henry II.

Plan of
reform.

We have observed, in sketching the close of the last reign, the existence of certain terms by which Henry and Stephen, after or in preparation for the peace of November 1153, agreed that the country should be governed. Those terms are not preserved in any formal document, but they occur in two or three of the historians of the time, in a somewhat poetical garb, disguised in language adapted partly from the prophecies of Merlin, king Arthur’s seer, which were in vogue at the time, and partly from the words of Holy Scripture; and yet, from the clue they furnish to the reforms actually carried out by Henry, they seem to be based upon certain real articles of agreement.

Term of
pacification.

By these terms the administration of justice was to be restored, sheriffs to be appointed to the counties, and a careful examination into their honesty and justice to be instituted; the castles which had been built since the death of Henry I. were to be destroyed; the coinage was to be renewed, a uniform silver currency of lawful weight; the mercenaries who had flooded the kingdom under Stephen were to be sent back to their own countries; the estates which had been usurped were to go to their lawful owners; all property alienated from the crown was to be resumed, especially the pensions on the Exchequer with which Stephen endowed his newly-created earls; the royal demesnes were to be re-stocked, the flocks to return to the hills, the husbandman to the plough, the merchant to his wares; the swords were to be turned into ploughshares and the spears into pruning-hooks.

Meaning of
these terms.

These sentences give us a clue to Henry’s reforms; that is, they show us clearly the evils that first called for his attention. The kingdom, divided in two under Stephen, had been in constant war; the barons on one side had entered on the lands of the barons on the other; Stephen had confiscated the estates of Matilda’s friends in the East of England, Matilda had retaliated or authorized reprisals in the West. All this must be set right. The crown had been the greatest loser, and the impoverishment of the crown involved the oppression of the people. Henry gained the crown by a national act; he must then resume not only the wasteful grants of Stephen but those of his mother also, and, in his character of king, know neither friends nor foes amongst his own people. So the Exchequer, the board which managed the royal revenue, must be placed on its old footing, and under its old managers. With the Exchequer would revive the ancient office of the sheriffs, to whom both the collection of revenue, the administration of justice in the shires, and the maintenance of the military force was entrusted. Thus local security would restore and revive trade and commerce. And when the local administration of the sheriff was revived, no doubt the feudal usurpations of the lords of castles and manors must end. The fortified houses must be pulled down; no more should the petty tyrants tax and judge their men, fight their battles like independent princes, and coin their money as so many kings. The great Peace should be restored, of which the king was guardian and keeper. In fact, the golden age was to return. Nor was it to be delayed until Henry came to the crown; it was to be Stephen’s last and expiatory task to bring about these happy results. Stephen, as we saw, wanted either the will or the power to accomplish it.

Arrival of
Henry as
successor
to Stephen,
1154.

Henry’s
advisers.