A Basic History of the British Isles: May 2016

Thursday 26 May 2016

1154-1172: Henry II Part I - The Problem of Becket

In December 1154, Henry II, founder of Plantagenet Dynasty (which will last until 1399), was crowned King and immediately appointed Thomas Becket as his Chancellor, apparently on the recommendation of Theobald Archbishop of Canterbury. Almost immediately as well, Henry began a campaign to limit clerical power as part of a wider project to restore power to the royal courts which had lost ground during the anarchic preceding two decades . In Becket, he seems to have misjudged, taking a perfect example of corporate man, loyal to obeying the role he has given like a caricature of Sartre's waiter, and misreading him as loyal to the person, himself, as Crown. This misjudgement was long masked by Becket's diligence in acting out his new given role as royal agent to the full in difficult negotiations with the Church. We all know the type - modernity certainly cannot survive without men who cease to be persons and become the roles they are assigned to - and, in this, Becket was a modern avant la lettre.

Henry perhaps thought he could solve the problem of appropriate jurisdiction by ensuring that Becket became Archbishop of Canterbury in June 1162 (Archbishop Theobald having died in the previous April). It is not that there was not a fundamental identity of interest between Church and Crown in the maintenance of social order. Quite the contrary. A hint that the English still need to be placated by their Continental rulers and shown the legitimacy of royal and Church rule through respect for English tradition is demonstrated in the almost standard performance art of honouring an English saint - in Henry's case, it was the transfer of the allegedly undecayed remains of St. Edward the Confessor to a new shrine built on the orders of the King.

The fact that the body was personally carried to its new resting place in 1163 by the King, the Archbishop and the Abbot of Westminster shows us how ideologically significant this bit of theatre was and perhaps how the former Chancellor was still thinking (as Archbishop) of political realities that served his King. At this point, it could be argued, Church and Dynasty were in perfect balance, holding on to the allegiance of the people at the expense of the conquering warlords whose excesses were something that Henry was determined to limit. The subsequent lack of co-operation by the Church in permitting the framework for the control of those excesses leads to a crisis in which the Archbishop was to be 'martyred' in order to ensure the Church's long term victory in drawing the line in the sand that suited it.

The crisis started with the January 1164 ratification of King's preferred national code of conduct, really a restoration of many practices normal in the reign of Henry I, at the Council of Clarendon. However, the Church had accrued an increased social and judicial power in the period of anarchy between the two Henries. Archbishop Becket, backed by his Bishops, rejected 'The Constitutions of Clarendon' because they limited that power. The breach between King and Archbishop became so serious that nine months later, following the Council of Northampton (October 1164), Becket was tried and found guilty of feudal disobedience. This brought into the open the issue of the primacy of Becket's fealty as a former Chancellor to the feudal chain of command or his fealty to 'God' through the Church. Since the trial was conducted within a feudal context, Becket justifiably feared for his life and he made a night time escape to Grantham. He was in voluntary exile in Europe within the month.

The King was not in the wrong as far as the restoration of national order was concerned. The absence of leading aristocrats on the crusades and the confusion created by the civil war had resulted in a considerable degree of continuing lawlessness. An enforceable legal structure that was national (and therefore royal) in scope was required to ensure order and order was, on balance despite its oppressive and brutal nature, mostly in the best interests of the people. Henry ordered an enquiry into the rise of criminality (shades here of periodic modern state panics about such things) and, at the Assize of Clarendon (1166), he introduced reforms that shifted the legal system from one dominated by ordeal or combat to one dominated by evidence-gathering and the jury operating under oath although the process, even here, was to be gradual. Some minor elements of the older Germanic system of trial by strength rather than the Roman system of 'justitia' would persist into the early nineteenth century. Power was to be transferred from local barons to appointed royal judges but the same process threatened to bring the sixth of the population classed as clergy under royal jurisdiction. In this matter, the Church was deeply reactionary, as much as the barons who were to try to claw back their power under King John (it is perhaps ironic that the reactionary Magna Carta is seen now as such a progressive document when this was never its intention).

It is at this point that Becket decided to return to Canterbury in December 1170, only to be murdered at the end of that month by four of Henry II's knights (Reginald Fitzurse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Morville and Richard Le Breton), almost certainly on Henry's orders. If this was an attempted coup against the English Church, it failed because Henry had underestimated the ideological power of the Church and its ability to disrupt the system of fealty owed to the Crown through proferring an alternative legitimacy based on the magical thinking of Judaeo-Christianity to which the vast majority of the population was culturally bound. A secure royal system was now at the point of potential destabilisation. Henry, who was clearly no fool even if he had miscalculated on this occasion or perhaps had lost control of his own retainers, was quick to change course, understanding that, at the end of the day, the Church needed the Crown as much as the Crown needed the Church.

There was no benefit or possibility for a medieval monarch in trying to create early modern monarchical absolutism against a Church that mediated between it (the Crown) and what passed for the middle classes and which acted as restraint on any number of minor and major barons ready to go back to the life of plunder that they had enjoyed in the recent Civil War. Not for the first time, the Church created a link between itself and the people and pacified popular feeling by creating a cult around Becket at Canterbury Cathedral where a shrine in the crypt recorded 14 miraculous cures within months. The boil of potential for instability was lanced by the King offering contrition for the acts of his agents and the Church exploited the situation to halt the drive against its privileges. In return, the Church then played its role in dampening down popular discontent by diverting it into the opiate of cultism. Things haven't changed much since the Angevin era if you substitute the terms State for Crown and Media for Church.

Wednesday 18 May 2016

1134-1154: Between the Two Henries - Civil War, Stephen and Matilda

The history of Anglo-Norman feudalism is simple enough - a strong king held the system together. To become strong, the king had to overcome the centrifugal tendencies created by the ambitions of his strongest vassals whether as individuals or in coalition. When Henry I died in Rouen in December 1135, his chosen heir, Empress Mathilda (she had been married first as a child bride to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V whom she had outlived but who had given her the right to call herself Empress) was married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, with a two-year old son who would later become Henry II. The Angevins were not popular with their peers and were challenged by the barons' preference, the initially popular Stephen, Count of Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror. Stephen quickly crossed the Channel and was crowned within three weeks. Noting Stephen's first mover advantage, we should note that both candidates were based in Northern France and that England was still just a prize asset to be added to family businesses with a first allegiance to lands on the other side of the English Channel. England still had the characteristics of occupied territory.

The eventual rise of the Plantagenets would confirm that the dynastic focus would be on straddling the seaways as if they were a mere inconvenience. We will be able later to speak of an Angevin Empire stretching from the Scots borders southwards to cover the bulk of Western and Northern France. The 'Anarchy' of the second quarter of the twelfth century in England was little more than a struggle to see which branch of the trans-channel ruling elite (of which the Frankish kings were just another component) would get the English asset - the line of Blois-Boulogne or the line of Anjou. In the first half of the twelfth century holdings in Normandy and France would always be of more consequence to the status and wealth of major vassals than holdings in England.

The expected result was civil war between two competing baronial coalitions as well as the Scots invasion that we noted in the last posting. The early years of Stephen's reign appeared successful enough but the Welsh rebellion was not brought under control, the Normanised Scots retained excessive influence in the North, the monarchy had serious financial problems and many barons were beginning to feel insufficiently rewarded for their loyalty. The plots started in earnest in 1137 with Richard of Gloucester, Henry I's illegitimate son, whose activities were in the interest of his half-sister Matilda. Matilda landed in England two years later, now openly supported by the Earl of Gloucester, triggering full-on civil war. In 1141, Stephen was captured at the Battle of Lincoln but gained his freedom in return for that of Richard of Gloucester and the war started up again almost immediately. Gloucester died in 1147, the campaign faltered and a disheartened Matilda left England for the Continent the following year, leaving behind her son Henry to carry on the struggle.

Matilda's husband Geoffrey of Anjou died in 1151 and was succeeded as Count of Anjou by Henry. The death of his father pulled Henry back from England to deal with his estate. In the next year, Henry married Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Europe who had only recently obtained an annulment of her marriage to Louis VI, King of France. Stephen's son Eustace (inclined to pursue his own claim to the throne) died in the same year, opening the way for Henry to invade England again in 1153, with fresh resources, to claim his rights. He gets them in the Treaties of Wallingford, Winchester and Westminster under which he is promised the English succession. This would not necessarily have ended the civil war if Stephen had lived longer but Stephen died the following October. Henry was back in England by December 8th and was crowned Henry II on the 19th.

There is one incident from this era that needs mention because it is often taken as one of the most significant instances of medieval anti-semitism - the murder in 1140 of a skinner's apprentice, the 11 year old William of Norwich, which was blamed locally on the Jews residing in the town. The murder was framed by locals as a ritual sacrifice and a wave of antisemitism followed. The issue is complicated by politics and later by Church greed (since the Church gained revenue from the cults of saints). William is canonised although there is no evidence of a specifically antisemitic aspect to this minor and localised cult.

What is probably more significant is that the attack on the Jews was linked to an attack on the King and his agents, noting that Norwich had recently been the centre of conflict between Stephen and the Duke of Norfolk (1136). Jews tended to speak French and to live close to the castle where they were under aristocratic protection. The accusers seemed to have been Anglo-Saxon origin families from 'married priestly' families. Something had boiled over. It may be that a genuine family tragedy rapidly got drawn into political struggles linked to English resentment of the Norman King and his corrupt agents. If so, the Church's cult may be seen less as an endorsement of antisemitism than as a potentially profitable placatory act designed to divert popular feeling into something more private and harmlessly ritualistic for a class of lower middle class clerics 'feeling the pinch'. The story may be less interesting as a precursor of the European anti-semitism narrative as it was to play out in the crimes of the twentieth century and more as an incident expressing the same sort of social tensions that we see in the Robin Hood legend.

Tuesday 10 May 2016

1093-1165: Scotland & the English Question

Back to Scotland. Malcolm III was succeeded by Donald Bane (1093-1097), his brother. Malcom's wife, later to be Saint Margaret (canonised 1250), died that same year. Donald Bane was deposed and replaced, after an intervention from William II of England, with Edgar (1097-1107), Malcolm III's son. This is interesting because this made the Scottish monarchy a half-English dynasty through Margaret, a Princess of Wessex. The Norman monarchy to the South seemed to have no difficulty in supporting the claims of a prince from the line of Wessex when it suited it.

As we will see, the ties between royal families were often close even as they were competing. There was more in common between the line of the House of Wessex, the Kings of Scotland and the Norman Kings of England than any of these had with their own populations. These were family businesses treating their subjects as units of taxation and labour in what we would recognise today as 'healthy business competition', albeit that people got killed in a way unacceptable today. An analogy with modern organised crime is probably closer.

Edgar is succeeded by his brother Alexander I (1107-1124). His reign is only noted here for the murder on Eglisay in Orkney of Magnus (later Saint Magnus), Earl of Orkney. The story is interesting because Magnus is presented as an exemplar of piety and gentleness which the Norwegians who dominated the far North West of Britain considered cowardice. He was actually murdered in a fit of frustration about his co-rule with his brother, Haakon. The full story is not relevant. The creation of a gentle Christian hero who fell foul of Viking mores is what is going to be important here because it shows us how Christianity and Kingship were constantly being merged at the frontiers of European society in order to create more stable societies based on the rule of dynastic and church law.

A leader now had to be not only strong but 'good' and a strong king who was not 'good' (meaning accepting of Roman Catholic ideology) was implicitly worse than a weak leader who was 'good' in the rhetorical world of medieval culture. The reality, of course, was that strength had priority but a strong 'bad' king (as defined by the clerics) would be damaged in the eyes of posterity. That was no idle threat in a culture still mired in pagan notions of honour. The Church could dishonour you after your death if you did not play ball with the people who wrote the history and this is what the Church always did with the ending of bardic courtly literature. The power of the Church to dictate the perceptions of kings will become clearer in the Becket story. Eventually, Christian ideology and the culture of honour would merge in chivalric literature in which tamed aristocratic behaviour and 'goodness' became as one in an ideal that still lingers on in modern Western notions of appropriate sexuality.

Alexander was succeeded by David I (1124-1153) who was instrumental in introducing Anglo-Norman culture and feudalism into Scotland during the so-called 'Davidian Revolution'. This transformation strengthened Scotland as a potential military power. It is at this point that English and Scottish history become interwined so that it will be hard to speak of one without the other. The Normanisation of Scotland is one with the Orkney story told above - a process of creating a working ideology (a process happening all over Europe and cross-connected to the aggression of the Crusades) for a new class of aristocrats in transition from pure predation to a sense of their own worth as agents of the divine.

This ideologisation and justification of predation through its moderation by faith-based intellectuals who offer administrative benefits is pretty standard fare in the human story. The British Empire, primarily a trading and predatory operation at its start, went through the same process in the nineteenth century resulting in the pompous aristocratic Tory imperialism of Curzon which presaged the destruction of that which it claimed to preserve. The Divine Right of Kings would be a similar high point for feudalism leading to its destruction in turn in a slew of revolutions but this is half a millenium in the future. History tends to speed up with modernisation.

The Scots, now with the cultural technology to be effective organisers under a strong warlord and adopting a suitable ideology to be called 'civilised', start to become imperial predators exploiting any sign of English weakness. There was an attempted invasion in 1135 as soon as Henry I died and another in 1138 which led to the Scots' defeat at the Battle of the Standard. David's persistence paid off with the cession of Northumbria to Scotland in 1149. However, the Scots did not find it easy to stand up to a unified England under a strong King such as Henry II. Henry II recaptured Northumbria in 1157 during the reign of David's successor, Malcolm IV (1153-1165), only twenty-four when he died.

What is happening here is a political call-and response that will continue through the Middle Ages. All things being equal, England is always stronger than Scotland but, when England is weak, it is only a matter of time before the Scottish Kings try to exploit the situation. It is also only a matter of time before the English Kings are going to feel it necessary to use their superior strength to bring Scotland under English suzerainty. This pattern of threat and response (where the English are not necessarily strong enough actually to crush Scotland any more than Scotland is strong enough to do more than harry the north) continues throughout British history until the Union of 1707 and even after insofar as the Jacobite Rebellion can be seen as part of the same pattern.

It may not have ended yet since the basic truths remain in force even as Scotland moves to independence. England is stronger than Scotland but when England weakens, the Scots take advantage of that weakness - and yet the English can never truly control Scotland. It is like a dysfunctional marriage whose history can be traced even further back into the mists of Anglo-Saxon and Roman tension between the prosperous South and the barbarian North with the Borders and Northumbria the play thing of whoever happens to have the whip hand that year. Only the British Empire, in which the Scots found themselves with a lucrative minority stake, permitted a viable peace between the two major cultural centres of Great Britain. The third centre of power, weaker than both Scotland and England, that is, Ireland, will emerge as an issue for the English soon enough.

Perhaps Scotland will have something to fear (economically) from a resurgent England that chooses on June 23rd to remove its dying Empire from the state-planned integration into the ramshackle European Imperium. The interests of England may always be sacrificiable to the illusion of empire in the long run. Perhaps the ideology of dynastic feudalism and 'romanitas' lives on in the plan to make the country a prosperous province of something larger. We are probably and in practice being led by the belief of the British State that a safe transition from one imperial state to another may be the only way to hold the island (the 'family business') together through acquisition and merger though the business analogy would suggest that the acquired company won't exist for long afterwards. Another view, of course, might be to ensure that England remained strong in its own right and left Scotland (and Ireland) to pursue their own devices happy in their independence. So a great deal is at stake on June 23rd. The issue, as at the time of writing, remains uncertain.

Monday 2 May 2016

1100-1154: Cathedral Building and Abbey Foundations

Archbishop Anselm died in 1109. His see remained vacant until Ralph, Bishop of Rochester, was appointed to it in 1114.We will not otherwise list the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and will only refer to those who are the most prominent or interesting from a political point of view. The accession of Henry II in 1154 will eventually bring out the inherent tension between Crown and Church. This would be expressed in the tense and ultimately violent relationship with Thomas A Becket and the King which we will review in a later posting. Until then, the symbiotic relationship between national Church and the miltary Norman aristocracy continued regardless of civil strife. Indeed, it is the return of a strong Kingship that precipitates a crisis - and we should remember that the Church was largely staffed at the highest levels from the literate members of the same international class whose Anglo-Norman branch ran England.

As we have noted in our posting on Henry I, cathedral and church building began again after a long gap following the start of construction of Durham Cathedral in 1093: Southwark Priory (1106 - the basis of the later Southwark Cathedral), Southwell Minster (1108), Exeter (1112), Peterborough (1117) and with Llandaff and Bangor asserting Church authority in Normanised Wales (1120). Building work then shifted to Abbey foundations within a couple of decades: Hexham (1113), Tintern (1131), Quarr (1131), Buildwas (1135) and Jervaulx (1145), all but the first Cistercian in origin.

These buildings are not to be assumed to be under direct royal patronage by any means (for example, the Cistercians were introduced to England by Walter Fitz Richard, of the powerful Clare family who funded Tintern Abbey) but there is always a political aspect to the foundations if only in terms of aristocratic status. It is not accidental that the last two of the new cathedral foundations were in the borderlands with Wales which were in the process of being 'tamed'. The slowing down of cathedral foundation after 1120 was both a sign of internal civil strife but also of the natural expansion of Norman power to its English and Welsh limits at that time. Internal strife (as we will see in the next posting) was as much a sign of the collapse of any form of English alternative to Norman rule as of the potential for anarchy arising from a warlord Norman aristocracy during periods of central weakness. Similarly the abbey foundations represent the exploitation of the conquest by aristocrats and churchmen alike.

An example of the growing militarisation (albeit defensive) of religion and its close marriage of interest to the Anglo-Norman aristocracy and their English subjects comes from the Battle of the Standard in 1138 where it is Archbishop Thurston of York who organises an army to counter a Scottish invasion. The Archbishop himself carried into battle the banner of St. John of Beverley alongside those of St. Cuthbert, St. Peter of York and St. Wilfred, all hung from a large pole 'like the mast of a ship' on a four wheeled cart on which the Archbishop stood. The Battle was a resounding victory for the English.

This is also the period of the Second Crusade (1147-1149) which offers us yet another example of the militarisation of religion as if the civilising influence of the Church on barbarian use of unbridled force had been bought at the cost of the Catholic Church itself becoming an agent for the redirection of that violence onto the 'other', in this case the Muslims and often the Eastern Orthodox Church. The period is also notable for having the first and only English Pope in Nicholas Breakspear, elected in December 1154 as Adrian IV, although this only tells us what we knew already - that the Catholic Church was a Universal Church (at least in Western Europe). What is more interesting perhaps is that there was no English Pope after the middle of the Twelfth Century.

Cathedrals and Minsters under Henry I

[Please note, once again that, the Norman element in these buildings, unless specified, is usually well hidden under later accretions. Many Cathedrals, such as Exeter, were fundamentally rebuilt later in the Middle Ages.]