1173-1189: Henry II Part II - Securing the Plantagenets

The first major rebellion after Becket's death took place in 1173 and once again the Scots tried to take advantage of it with an invasion. Henry was forced into the expedient of using mercenary troops to put down the revolt. He succeeded and the reign was relatively untroubled by armed revolt from that point on but the rebellion may have strengthened the realisation in the immediate aftermath of the murder that division from the Church was unwise.

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'.

Remnants of Old London Bridge

The second part of Henry's reign, though secure, was troubled by disasters (although how much the disasters were a result of better reporting through chroniclers and how much a genuine upsurge is a moot point). The Choir of Canterbury Cathedral was gutted by fire in September 1174 and its rebuilding (completed in 1185) saw the first appearance in England of the pointed arch introduced by William of Sens (which we will cover in a later posting) alongside other cathedral building. 1176 also saw the building of the first stone bridge over the Thames - the Old London Bridge. A great fire destroyed much of Rochester in Kent in 1177. Glastonbury Abbey was also badly damaged by fire in 1184, with rebuilding starting immediately. Lincoln Cathedral was destroyed in an earthquake in 1185 and in 1186 a great fire swept through Chester. One suspects a connection here between heavy use of wood in construction and increased use of artificial light (a sign of economic prosperity) which might lead to the heavier expenditure but greater security of stone for important building works.

Henry left England for the last time in 1188 and died at Chinon the next year to be succeeded by his son Richard.

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.