Thus, then, early in 1173 a head was provided for a great confederation of French lords and English barons, actively aided by Lewis of France, Philip of Flanders, the Counts of Champagne and the King of Scots, William the Lion, who had succeeded Malcolm IV. in 1165. The younger Henry, liberal in promises, proposed to reward with vast English estates the men who were to help in renewing the glories of the Conquest. And the great English earls, Chester, Leicester, and Norfolk, were bent on reviving the feudal influence which Henry’s reforms had so weakened. These earls were mighty men on both sides of the Channel: the Norman quarrel could be fought in England as well as in Normandy, Anjou, and Poictou. Measures were contrived at Paris for a universal rising. And the success of the design seemed at first almost certain. Henry had a large force of Brabançon mercenaries about him, but scarcely any other force on which he could depend at all.
War begins.
The war began by a Flemish invasion of Normandy; then the Earl of Chester raised Brittany against the king; then the Poictevins rose in arms. From France the torch was handed to England. William the Lion, with a half-barbarian army, began a devastating march southward; the Earl of Leicester landed a great force of Flemings in Norfolk; the Earl Ferrers of Derby fortified his castles in the midland counties; old Hugh Bigot of Norfolk, who had sworn the disinheritance of Matilda in 1135, garrisoned his castles—all England was in an uproar. The old justiciar, the king’s lieutenant, Richard de Lucy, was bewildered; and the great Bishop of Durham, Hugh de Puiset, King Stephen’s nephew, began to play a double game, negotiating with the Scots, and allowing the landing of Flemish mercenaries, to be used at discretion.
Henry’s
success.
In France.
Two influences, however, turned the scale against this overwhelming preponderance of treachery and force—Henry’s wonderful energy, which his contemporaries called supernatural good luck, and the faithfulness of the English people, who, now, when the crucial test was applied to them, amply repaid the many years of culture spent upon them. Henry had been taken by surprise by the general onset; and, unwilling to believe in the ingratitude of his boys, he at first was slow to move against them; but he showed extraordinary promptness when he saw the state of affairs and had made up his mind how to act. Having put Lewis VII. to ignominious flight at Conches, he rushed down upon Dol, in Brittany, where he captured the Earl of Chester and the chief Breton and Angevin rebels; and during the autumn of 1173, before the worst news from England arrived, he had captured one after the other the nests of rebellion in Maine. At Christmas he concluded a three months’ truce with Lewis and undertook the pacification of Poictou, which employed him until the next summer, fretting and chafing against the detention which kept him away from England.
War in
England.
Capture of
William the
Lion.
In England matters had gone on more slowly, owing to the unprepared state of the ministry and the general feeling of apprehension and mistrust. There, however, Henry had some men on whom he could depend: Richard de Lucy, the justiciar; Ranulf Glanvill, the great lawyer, who was rising into the first rank as a minister; Reginald, Earl of Cornwall, the king’s uncle; the Earl of Arundel, husband of Queen Adeliza, widow of Henry I., and others connected with the royal house. These men had insufficient forces at their disposal, and were at first unable to decide whether the Scots in the North, or the Earl of Leicester in the East, or the midland revolt under Earl Ferrers, was the most formidable. At last, having made up their minds to make a truce with the Scots, they moved upon Norfolk, and defeated the earls in October, at Fornham St. Geneviève. There they took prisoners the Earl of Leicester and his wife, the great Lady Petronilla, whose comprehensive soul embodied all the spite and arrogance and vindictiveness of the oligarchy of the Conquest. She, as heiress of Grantmesnil, had brought a great inheritance to her husband, the degenerate heir of the faithful Beaumonts; for the Leicester Beaumonts were the only house which since the Conquest had been uniformly faithful to the Conqueror and his heirs. This great success enabled Henry to remain in Poictou during the winter and spring of 1174, and allowed the ministers to concentrate their forces against the Scots. The people rose against the feudal party, and a brisk struggle was kept up in the interior of the country until the summer. William the Lion spent his time in securing the border castles, seeking his own ends, instead of pressing southwards, and so doing his part to overturn Henry’s throne. At last early in July, 1174, he was surprised and taken prisoner at Alnwick, by the host of Yorkshire men and the loyal barons.
Henry’s
arrival in
England,
1174.