Second
coronation.
The whole of the next year he had to spend in Normandy and Anjou, and, when he returned in 1157, he found abundant work ready for his hands in his still undetermined relations with Wales and Scotland. His first visit was to the Eastern counties, and there he combined business with pleasure. William of Warenne, Count of Boulogne and Earl of Surrey, the son of Stephen, had received a considerable estate in Norfolk, including the castle of Norwich; and Hugh Bigot, the earl of the county of Norfolk, the same Hugh who had sworn that Henry I., disinherited the empress, was very reluctant to accept the strong rule of the new king. Whether Hugh was now acting on behalf of Stephen’s family or in opposition to them is not clear. It was his attitude that drew the king into that country. He was made to surrender his castles; and William of Warenne likewise surrendered his special provision, on the understanding that he was to receive his hereditary estates. Henry added solemnity to this visit by holding a solemn court and wearing his crown in state on Whit-Sunday, at St. Edmund’s, the second recorded coronation-day of the reign. This ceremony was a revival of the great courts held by the Conqueror and his sons on the great festivals, Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, at Gloucester, Westminster, and Winchester, the three chief cities of the South. At such gatherings all the great men attended, both witan and warriors, clerk and lay. The king heard the complaints of his subjects, and decided their suits with the advice of his wise men; the feudal services, by which the great estates were held, were solemnly rendered; a special peace was set, the breakers of which within the purlieus of the court were liable to special penalties; and during the gathering, whilst the people were amused and humored by the show, the king and his really trusted advisers contrived the despatch of business. The ceremony of coronation, which gave the name to these courts, was not, as is sometimes supposed, a repetition of the formal rite of initiation by which the king at his accession received the authorization of God through the hands of the bishops; the character so impressed was regarded as indelible, and hence the only way of disposing of a bad king was to kill him. That rite, the solemn consecration and unction, was incapable of being repeated. The crown was, however, on these occasions placed on the king’s head in his chamber by the archbishop of Canterbury, with special prayers, and the court went in procession to mass, where the king made his offering, and afterwards the barons did their services, as at the real coronation. These courts had been given up by Stephen, as the historian Henry of Huntingdon notes with an expressive lamentation, in the year 1140, when the clergy ceased to attend them; and he had made only one unlucky attempt, the Lincoln coronation, in 1147, to revive them. Henry, however, renewed the custom on this occasion, and twice after this we find it observed. At the Christmas of this year he was crowned at Lincoln, but not, like Stephen, in the cathedral, for he feared the omen; and at Easter 1158 he was crowned at Worcester. After that he never actually wore the crown again, although he did occasionally hold these formal courts, in order to receive the honorary services by which his courtiers held their estates. This coronation, then, at St. Edmund’s was, as usual, turned to purposes of business. The king was ready for a Welsh war; measures were taken for providing men and money.
First Welsh
war.
At another council, held in July, at Northampton, the expedition started. This was Henry’s first Welsh war, and it was no great success. The army advanced into North Wales; at Consilt, near Flint, an awkward pass, they were resisted by the Welsh. There Henry of Essex, the Constable, let fall the royal standard, as he declared, by accident. The army, thinking that the king was killed or the battle lost, fell into confusion, and the day was claimed by the Welsh as a victory. That it was merely a misfortune of little importance is proved by the fact that Henry continued his march to Rhuddlan. The ostensible pretext of the expedition being to arrange a quarrel between Owen Gwynneth and his brother Cadwalader, there was no overt attempt at conquest. The king returned from Wales into Nottinghamshire to meet the young Malcolm IV., who seems at this time to have finally surrendered his hold on the Northern counties. At Christmas Henry was at Lincoln.
Long visit
to France,
1158-1163.
In 1158 he wore his crown, as we have seen, at Easter, at Worcester; in the summer he went into Cumberland, no doubt to set the machinery of government at work there in due order after the change of rulers; and at Carlisle on Midsummer-day he conferred knighthood on William of Warenne. In August he went to France, whence he did not return until January, 1163. This brings us to the point of time at which the struggle with Becket begins, to which, with its attendant circumstances, we may devote another chapter.
Foreign
possessions
of Henry.
His relations
with his
vassals.
We may, therefore, now take up the thread of the foreign transactions at the beginning of the reign and bring it down to the same point. The geographical extent of Henry’s dominions furnishes the leading clue to this part of his history. They embraced, speaking roughly and roundly, Normandy, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, Guienne, Poictou, and Gascony. But this statement has to be accepted with some very important limitations. In the first place, each of these states, and each bundle of them, had come to him in a different way—some from his father, some from his mother, some by his wife—and each bundle had been got together by those from whom he received it in similar ways. The result of that was that in each state or bundle of states there was a distant relation between the lord and his vassals—a constitution, we might call it, by which various rights and privileges and a varying legal system or customs subsisted. What was law in Normandy was not customary in Anjou; and the barons of Poictou had, or claimed, customs which must, if they could have enforced them, have produced utter anarchy. Here was a constant and abundant source of administrative difficulties, the adjustment of which was one of the causes of Henry’s long absence from England. But a second incidental result was, that, as many of these estates came into the common inheritance on very deficient title, conquest in one case, chicanery in another, there were a number of claimants in each, claimants who by prescriptive right might have lost all chance of recovering their lands, but whose very existence gave trouble. In Anjou, for instance, Henry had to contend against his own brother Geoffrey, to whom their father had left certain cities, and who might have a claim to the whole county. In Normandy the heirs of Stephen claimed the county of Mortain; in Maine, Saintonge, and other Southern provinces, there were the remnants of older dynasties, always ready to give trouble.
His relation
to the King
of France.