From the point of view of dynastic continuity, Eleanor of Aquitaine proved not only wealthy and formidable but also fecund. She secured the Plantagenets by ensuring there was no lack of heirs to the throne in an age when the first sign of weakness in the direct line would be seized upon by the barons to push their own agenda - even displace the monarch for a puppet or one of their own.
There were four players in the medieval political game, three of consequence and one to be watched with care lest it become troublesome - the indigenous English whose 'middle class' were embedded in the lower reaches of the Church. The barons (always incipient warlords) were only controlled through energetic use of power under conditions of dynastic strength allied to the ideological legitimacy that royalism was given by the Church in the local version of the Constantinian Settlement. Authority was vested in a secular overlord in return for the overlord's acceptance of the moral boundaries to be set by religion and the privileges to be accorded to its guardians.
The rapid acceptance that murdering Becket was an error is testimony to Henry's understanding that he needed the Church to rule. Another result of Becket's murder may have been a new sensitivity to the opinions of churchgoers on the part of the Crown. In 1177, for example, for whatever reason, a monk stole the bones of St. Petroc from Bodmin Priory and took them to Brittany. The King proved himself active in the search for them and their return.
Henry's sexual activity represented another facet of royalism - the need to strengthen the primus inter pares of the ruling family in any tussle with the barons where any debates over legitimacy might permit these barely suppressed warlords an opportunity to test their own strength against the centre and rivals alike. The swiftness of Henry's reaction to Strongbow's irruption into Ireland (which we will deal with later) is testament to his sensitivity to any one mainland-based aristocrat developing sufficient material strength to take advantage of weakness in the royal house.
Henry's second son (another Henry) by Eleanor of Aquitaine was born in February 1154 but William, the heir, died in 1156 (aged three). In the same year, they had a daughter, Matilda. Then, in 1157, Richard (Duke of Aquitaine and later to be King) was born. There was Geoffrey (Duke of Brittany) in 1158, Eleanor in 1161, Joan in 1165 and John (later King John) in 1167 so an already a healthy line of heirs and marriageable assets for the Dynasty existed well before the Becket crisis. The old Empress Matilda, meanwhile, had died in 1167.
The young Princess Matilda (who died in 1189) started the asset-building process by being married off to Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony in 1168 at the ripe young age of 12. Princess Eleanor (aged 17) was to be married off to Alphonso VIII of Castile in 1176. In 1170, Prince Henry, meanwhile, at the age of 16 was crowned 'King of the English' (even referred to as Henry III by some chroniclers but not to be confused with the later Henry III) in order to establish his position as heir-presumptive. He died in 1183 of a fever, leaving his brother Richard as heir. Geoffrey, next-in-line, died in a tournament in 1186. The attrition rate on royal heirs was high but when Henry died, he still had two sons who could succesively take up the Crown.
Becket's murder and the reining back of Henry's ambition to centralise judicial power at the expense of the Church and eliminate or reduce corruption and criminality in order to control the barons (which was the essential political purpose of the reforms in the earlier part of his reign as well as to connect the royal house with the people through direct rule) meant that many issues had to remain unresolved. Nevertheless, the King's commitment to reform continued in 1176 with the division of England into 'circuits', each with its own set of travelling judges. This system, adapted to the needs of each period, continued until reforms in the nineteenth century but the Assize system was not finally abolished until as late as 1972 (to be replaced by the Crown Court).
There was also a major reorganisation of the English militia with the Assize of Arms in 1181. The intention was to create a country force loyal to the King that would offset the retained forces of the barony but also preclude the need for mercenary forces with their attendant costs to the Treasury. All freemen of England were to own and bear arms in the service of the King, swearing allegiance on pain of "vengeance, not merely on their lands or chattels, but on their limbs". The link between 'freemen' (basically the equivalent of the propertied middle class today) and the Crown on the one hand and the opposition to the Crown of the 'free' Barons with their individualism and attempts to constrain centralised power is perhaps the start of the great political division in the Kingdom between what were later to be called Tories (the party of the Crown or State) and the Whigs (the Party of increasingly tamed warlords and their retainers).
Money was always a concern and the King would expropriate where he could - evidently not from the barons but, in 1186, Henry had no compunction in appropriating the fabulous wealth of Aaron the Jew of Lincoln, whose wealth was said to exceed that of the King himself, on Aaron's death.
The Church, in its own self interest, had checked the growth of administrative order at its own expense (an order that also looked like tyranny to the freebooters in the aristocracy) and ensured that the royal attempt to transfer control of the population was limited. The Church's position, with its sixth of the population given clerical privileges, remained essentially unchallenged. The balance of power between barons, dynasty and church was thus very fine.
Caught between potential anarchy, incomplete order and ideology, the probability was that violence or the threat of it would return in some form as soon as the Crown weakened, a baronial faction achieved significant national power or the Church was instructed to intervene in politics from outside or decided to use its reserve ideological power to intervene for or against a King who 'went too far'. In fact, the 'the proto-Tories' could rely on the Church so long as they respected it and no doubt the Church's protective stance towards the 'free men' who attended mass helped cohere the population around the King, a process which eventually led to a coherence around the 'nation'.
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| Remnants of Old London Bridge |
Henry left England for the last time in 1188 and died at Chinon the next year to be succeeded by his son Richard.
