We have noted the way in which Henry used his children as his tools or as the counters of his game. He began with them very young. His eldest child, William, to whom we have seen homage done immediately after the coronation, died very soon after, and Henry, who was born in February, 1155, and had received conditional homage when he was two months old, now became the heir apparent. The next child was a daughter, Matilda, born in 1156; in 1157 Richard was born, at either Oxford or Woodstock; Geoffrey, the next brother, came in 1158; then Eleanor, in 1162; Johanna, in 1165; and last of all John, in 1167. On Henry’s attempts to provide for these children hangs nearly all the interest of his foreign wars; and the marriages of the daughters form a key to the history of the foreign policy of England and her alliances for many ages.

His projects
of marriage
for them.

Marriage of
Henry and
Margaret.

The game may be considered to begin with Richard, who at the age of a year was betrothed to the daughter of Raymond of Barcelona and Queen Petronilla of Aragon. This was done, it appears, to bind the count and queen either to help or to stand neutral in the war of Toulouse. The betrothal came to nothing. Henry, the elder brother, was the next victim. The peace of 1160 assigned him, at the age of five, as husband to the little lady Margaret of France, Lewis’s daughter by his second wife, Constance of Castile. This marriage was not only to seal the peace but to secure to Henry a good frontier between Normandy and France. The castles of Gisors and Neafle, and the county of the Vexin, which lay between Normandy and Paris, were to be Margaret’s portion, not to be surrendered until the marriage could be formally celebrated, and until then to remain in the custody of the Templars. Henry, however, did not stick at trifles. The little Margaret had been put into his hands to learn English or Norman ways. He had the marriage celebrated between the two children, and then prevailed on the Templars to surrender the castles. Lewis never forgave that, and the Vexin quarrel remained an open sore during the rest of the reign; for after the death of the younger Henry his rights were transferred to Richard by another unhappy marriage contract with another of Lewis’s daughters. Practically the question was settled by the betrayal of Gisors to Philip, by Gilbert of Vacœuil, whilst Richard was in Palestine; but the struggle continued until John finally lost not only the Vexin but Normandy itself and all else that he had to lose. For the present, however, the outbreak of war, to which Henry’s sharp practice led, was only a brief one. Henry was successful, and peace was concluded in August, 1161. The year 1162 he spent in Normandy, holding councils and organizing the administration of the duchy, as he had done that of the kingdom in his first year.

England
during the
king’s
absence.

During the whole of this long absence from England the country was governed by Richard de Lucy and Earl Robert of Leicester, as the king’s chief justices or justiciars; the little Henry taking his father’s place on occasions of ceremony, when he happened to be in England. The historians of these years tell us little or nothing of what was going on. There were no wars or revolts; abbots and bishops died and their successors were appointed; notably the good Archbishop Theobald, to whom Henry owed so much, died in 1161, and Becket succeeded him.

Progress of
reforms.

Nature of
the revenue.

Administration
of
justice.

From other sources we learn that Henry’s legal reforms were in full operation. He had restored the machinery of the Exchequer, and with it the method of raising revenue which had been arranged in his grandfather’s time. That revenue arose, firstly, from the ferm or rent of the counties; that is, the sum paid by the sheriffs as royal stewards; by way of composition for the rents of royal lands in the shire, and the ordinary proceeds of the fines and other payments made in the ancient shiremoot or county court; secondly, from the Danegeld, a tax of two shillings on the hide of land, originally levied as tribute to the Danes under Ethelred, but continued, like the Income Tax, as a convenient ordinary resource; thirdly, from the feudal revenue, arising from the profits of marriages, wardships, transfers of land, successions, and the like, and from the aids demanded by the king from the several barons or communities that owed him feudal support. To these we may add a fourth source, the proceeds of courts of justice, held by the king’s officers to determine causes for which the ancient popular courts were not thought competent; such as began with suits between the king’s immediate dependents, and by degrees extended to all the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the country. Judicature and finance were thus bound very closely together; the sheriffs were not only tax-gatherers but executors of the law, and every improvement in the law was made to increase the income of the Exchequer. To this we must attribute the means taken by Henry to administer justice in the counties, sending some of the chief members of his judicial staff, year after year, through the country, forcing their way into the estates and castles of the most despotic nobles, and spreading the feeling of security together with the sense of loyalty, and the conviction that ready justice was well worth the money that it seemed to cost. Besides the revival of the provincial judicature in this shape Henry, from the beginning of the reign, added form and organization to the proceedings of his supreme court of justice, which comes into prominence later on.