At Clairvaux in April 1169 Becket excommuni-
cated Bishops Gilbert Foliot of London and Joscelin of Salisbury.
cated Bishops Gilbert Foliot of London and Joscelin of Salisbury.
Cambridge Medieval History - v5 - Contest of Empire and the Papacy
There was
sound political reason for the Irish proposal of 1155: William's support
was necessary, for Henry's second brother, Geoffrey, was making trouble
by insisting on his claims to Anjou and Touraine. To suppress him,
1 Cott. Vespasian E. xviii f. 73d.
CH. XVII.
## p. 556 (#602) ############################################
556
Wales and Scotland
1
1
1
and to assure himself of the loyalty of Aquitaine and Normandy, Henry
left England in January 1156. The capture of Geoffrey's castles of Mira-
beau and Chinon ended his revolt. He was satisfied with compensation
in money and permission to accept the invitation of the men of the
eastern part of Brittany and make himself Count of Nantes. In his
attitude towards Brittany, both now and later in his reign, Henry was
but maintaining the policy of his ancestors who claimed overlordship of
that province. In his relations with continental powers the same feeling
can be traced, a desire to lose nothing that had come to him by inherit-
ance or marriage; no right must be given up, no claim allowed to lapse.
But Henry was only an aggressor in so far as he forced others to recognise
claims which they would rather see forgotten. The war of Toulouse
which occupied the July, August, and September of 1159 was undertaken
to recover Toulouse, to which Henry inherited a title through his wife.
When the King of France interfered, Henry gave up the war; to con-
tinue it against his overlord would have been going beyond his right.
The question of Henry's relations with Wales and Scotland had to be
faced early in the reign. Both countries had gained by the anarchy in
England. David of Scotland had been succeeded in 1153 by his grand-
son Malcolm IV, who visited Henry in England, and agreed to surrender
Northumberland and Cumberland, with the castles of Bamburgh, New-
castle, and Carlisle. Either at Peak Castle or at Chester he did homage
to Henry for his English lands, the honour of Huntingdon. A Welsh
expedition was not only essential from the standpoint of general policy;
it was a means of securing the gratitude of marcher lords who had lost
land in the time of Stephen. The object of Henry's attack was the
northern kingdom of Gwynedd, where Owen Gwynedd had built up a
principality which Ranulf, Earl of Chester, himself had feared. The suc-
cession of a child of six to the earldom exposed it to Owen's attacks.
Henry's Welsh expedition of 1158, though not a brilliant military success,
achieved for the moment its end; Owen was forced to give hostages, and
his activities were checked for a time. Rhys ap Gruffydd, the ruler of
Deheubarth, the southern kingdom, after some hesitation, acknowledged
the overlordship of Henry. The Clares and Cliffords were restored to the
lands that Rhys had conquered in the previous reign. Neither Rhys, how-
ever, nor Owen was prepared to acquiesce in any reduction of power, and
in 1162 Rhys took Llandovery Castle from Walter Clifford. In the next
year Henry led an expedition into Wales, passing through Carmarthen and
taking Rhys prisoner at Pencader. Rhys was allowed to do homage and
return to his principality, but he immediately re-opened war, ravaging
Cardigan until little more than the castle and the town remained to the
Normans. Henry's absorption in the Becket quarrel after 1163 en-
couraged Rhys and Owen to make a combined attack on the marcher
barons. The lesser princes of Wales were attracted into the alliance by
the prestige of the two leaders. The failure of Henry's great expedition
1
## p. 557 (#603) ############################################
Becket as Chancellor
557
of 1165 to suppress the coalition secured for the Welsh another hundred
years of freedom. Henry made no other great effort, and from that time
his attention was confined to strengthening the border castles. His con-
cern was not to restrain the Welsh princes or keep their lands for the
marcher lords, but merely to retain the overlordship of the two kingdoms
of Deheubarth and Gwynedd. In the troubles of the rebellion of 1173-4
the Welsh princes were faithful to Henry.
The minister to whom Henry from the first gave his fullest confidence
was Thomas Becket, his Chancellor. The office of chancellor involved the
custody of the king's seal and constant attendance on his person: Becket
is almost always a witness, often the sole witness, to the charters and writs
of the early years of the reign. His power, however, depended not on his
office, but on his intimacy with the king. It was at Henry's gift that he
received the custody of vacant benefices, not by virtue of his office as
chancellor. Becket acquired wealth and became a leader of fashion. Too
busy to return to his archidiaconal duties, he earned but mild reproaches
from his archbishop and requests that he would forward certain business
with the king. Through him the king might be approached not only by
schemers like Arnulf, Bishop of Lisieux, but by such men as John of
Salisbury. The circumstances of Becket's death have secured the pre-
servation of masses of material, not only relating to his life as archbishop,
but also to his time as chancellor. His work can also be traced in the
official language of the Pipe Roll clerks. He was concerned in the restora-
tion of order, in the administration of justice, in diplomatic business at
the French court. His writ could authorise the payment of money out
of the treasury, a right that later in the reign belonged only to the
Justiciar. It was with reason, though in flattery, that Peter, Abbot
of La Celle at Troyes, wrote: “Who does not know you to be second
to the king in four kingdoms ? ”
Archbishop Theobald died in April 1161, and a year passed before
Henry decided that Becket should succeed him. The stories of Henry's
announcement of his decision to Thomas and Thomas' unwillingness to
become primate were probably invented to fit the history of the struggle.
The nolo episcopari of Thomas was probably no less common form than
that of most contemporary bishops; there is nothing in his career to
suggest an unwillingness to accept great office. He was a man of high
ambitions. Of undoubted ability, he was, however, not fitted to be Lan-
franc to Henry's William. He had neither the training nor the sanity
of that great archbishop and administrator, nor among the churchmen
of Henry's day would it have been easy to find a second Lanfranc.
Henry's hesitation may mean that he was not sure of Becket. There is
no evidence that he was obnoxious to the ecclesiastical party as a whole;
Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford and afterwards of London, was never
his friend, but Theobald seems to have desired him for a successor. Once
Becket was consecrated, he tried to be the perfect archbishop. He re-
CH. XVII.
## p. 558 (#604) ############################################
558
Becket as Archbishop; criminous clerks
signed the chancellorship, though he did not give up the archdeaconry of
Canterbury until the king forced him to do so. He played the ascetic as
perfectly as he had played the courtier. There was no insincerity in this
changed way of life.
He shewed from the first a determination to let go no right which the
Church could claim. His attitude was natural, for it must have seemed
a noble thing to be head of the Church in England. He set about win-
ning back for his own Church of Canterbury the lands and rights which
it had lost. No claim was too shadowy for him. He demanded from the
king the custody of the castles of Rochester, Saltwood, and Hythe, from
the Earl of Hertford, Roger de Clare, his homage for Tonbridge Castle.
Forgetting his own past, he deprived clerks in the king's service of the
benefices in the see of Canterbury that they held as their reward. As
archbishop he claimed rights of patronage over all benefices on land held
by tenants of the see; he excommunicated William of Eynsford, a
tenant-in-chief for other lands, for resisting the application of this claim.
He came into conflict with the king over a matter of general administra-
tion. In July 1163 at the council of Woodstock, Henry proposed that
the sheriff's aid should be paid into the royal treasury. Becket's oppo-
sition was so vigorous that Henry dropped the plan. Flagrant cases of
the inadequacy of ecclesiastical punishment for crime, and of abuse in
ecclesiastical courts, came to complete the estrangement. On 1 October
1163 at the council at Westminster the question of criminous clerks was
discussed at length. The king and his advisers demanded that accused
clerks should answer the accusation in the lay court, that they should
be handed over to the ecclesiastical court for trial and judgment, and
that if the accused were found guilty he should be degraded and given
up to the secular power for punishment. Warrant for this procedure
could be found in Canon Law. Becket, with the support of the bishops,
answered, not that Henry's interpretation of Canon Law was unjustifiable,
but that “God will not judge a man twice for the same offence. ” Real-
ising that Becket would continue to evade the question of law, Henry
fell back on custom, and asked whether the bishops were prepared to
observe the ancient customs of the kingdom. After discussing the matter
among themselves, they said that they were prepared to observe them,
“saving their order. “ Hilary, Bishop of Chichester, alone promised to
observe them without this reservation. Henry broke up the council in
exasperated fury.
The king used every means in his power to overcome the clerical
opposition. He removed his heir from Becket's charge, and he took from
Becket the custody of the castles and honours of Eye and Berkhampstead.
He did his utmost to make a party against Becket among the bishops, and
the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London promised to observe
the customs. In the last three months of 1163, Arnulf, Bishop of Lisieux,
and Richard of Ilchester, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, are said to
## p. 559 (#605) ############################################
The Constitutions of Clarendon
559
have crossed the sea six times to gain the Pope's assent to the customs.
The Pope himself, exiled from Rome and travelling in northern France,
was unwilling to offend Henry. He obviously wished Becket to moderate
his opposition, although he did not immediately accede to Henry's re-
quests that Roger, Archbishop of York, should be appointed legate in
succession to Theobald, and that the bishops should be ordered to obey
the customs. Before the end of the year Becket gave way to the ex-
postulations of the bishops and the fears of the Pope and cardinals; he
promised his consent to the customs.
A council was therefore summoned to meet at Clarendon in January
1164 at which Becket might give his formal assent. He is said to have
come repenting his promise and prepared to withdraw it. The king in
the meantime must have caused the customs to be carefully drawn up
and engrossed. The writing of the Constitutions cannot have been left,
as some authorities would have us believe, until the council was in actual
progress; they were produced on the first day of the council. Becket
was only induced to agree to them by the persuasions of bishops, two
knights of the Temple, and the two senior earls, Cornwall and Leicester.
After giving his unqualified assent to the Constitutions and allowing the
bishops to do the same, Becket refused to take the irrevocable step of
sealing the document. The Constitutions had been engrossed modo ciro-
grafi, that is, they had been written out three times on one piece of
parchment. Before the parchment was severed into three, the two arch-
bishops and the king should each have affixed his seal to each copy of
the Constitutions. Since Becket refused his seal, the document apparently
unsealed, was cut into three parts. One part was given to the Arch-
bishop of York, one was thrust into Becket's hand, and the third was
laid up in the royal treasury.
There is no evidence that the general body of English clergy felt that
the Constitutions of Clarendon were any other than Henry claimed,
that is, an accurate representation of the customs of his grandfather's
time. The relations between Church and State had never exactly been
defined before. Such hesitation as the bishops may have felt in agreeing
to the Constitutions was probably due to a natural dislike of definition
and fear of precedent. The Church won little by Becket's death because
it wished to win little. It was not an aggressive body, and many of the
judges in its courts had been trained, some were still actually engaged,
in the king's service. To say that the king's policy at this time meant an
inevitable quarrel between Church and State is to go beyond the evidence.
What might have been expected was an assertion of the right of the
king's court to define the limits of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and, there-
after, competition between the Church courts and the lay courts for
jurisdiction over individual cases. Henry did not begin the quarrel by
attempting a general revision of ecclesiastical justice. His ultimatum,
in the Constitutions, was as much directed against and caused by Becket's
CH. XVII.
## p. 560 (#606) ############################################
560
The fate of the Constitutions
general attitude of arrogant and aggressive rectitude as by the abuses of
ecclesiastical courts. A few years later, at the time of the Inquest of
Sheriffs, the barons submitted to a far more drastic supervision of feudal
justice than Henry ever proposed in the case of the courts of the Church.
Thomas was an exception among the churchmen of his day. He would
have found a congenial atmosphere in the Curia of Boniface VIII.
The fate of the Constitutions indicates the attitude of the English
Church to Henry's claims. Only in regard to criminous clerks and appeals
to the Pope was Henry forced to give way. Both sides laid particular
emphasis on the clause dealing with criminous clerks. Opinion among
canonists as to the validity of Henry's claims was divided. Passages in
Canon Law could be interpreted to mean that clerks found guilty and
degraded in the ecclesiastical court should be handed over to the lay
court for punishment. It does not seem to have been the opinion
canonists that this procedure was contrary to the dictum so constantly on
Becket's lips. The archbishop was no canonist, and there were those who
said that he was not even scholar enough to make a speech in Latin.
He concentrated on the question of punishment. His murder secured
for clerks immunity from lay punishment for their first crime. But it
should be remembered that, when Henry submitted on this point, and
indeed throughout the next century, the word clerk had not the wide
interpretation that it received in later times. In the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries a clerk had to prove his ordination, at least to the
sub-diaconate, before he was handed over to the official of the Church
to be tried in Court Christian. Moreover Henry succeeded in forcing
accused clerks to appear in the lay court to prove their clergy, although
Canon Law gives no justification for the practice. So much he gained.
His unfortunate surrender of the right to punish the guilty clerk left an
opening for private revenge. In 1202, in a trial for murder at Lincoln,
it was stated that the murdered man had been degraded from the
diaconate for killing a relative of the defendant.
The king retained without serious question much of what the Con-
stitutions gave him. Advowsons remained lay property; the king kept
control over the churches of his fee; elections to bishoprics were con-
ducted as before in the king's chapel. For the rest, the relations between
Church and State were left to be worked out in the practice of the courts.
By the Constitutions the king had agreed that jurisdiction over land
held in free alms belonged to the Church courts; but he had secured to
his own court the right of adjudging, in accordance with the verdict of a
jury, whether the land at issue were lay fee or free alms. Had the
Church courts been able to keep all the jurisdiction this clause would
have given them, much business would have been lost to the king's court;
for during the last half of the twelfth and throughout the thirteenth
century innumerable grants of lands were being made to religious houses
in free alıns. By John's day it was highly exceptional for this procedure
## p. 561 (#607) ############################################
The quarrel renewed
561
by the assize utrum, as it was called from the words of the writ which began
it, to be a prelude to a suit in the ecclesiastical court. The assize rolls
shew the religious houses using the layman's forms of action in the lay
courts. The assize utrum was already almost entirely confined to rectors
of parish churches, who without it would have found difficulty in proving
their right to the lands of their church appropriated by laymen. If the
jury's verdict in such a suit declared the land to be free alms the parson
recovered his land without further process of law. In this respect at
least the king had won far more than the customs of Henry I would
have given him. But the king's courts found it difficult to maintain
what Henry had asserted at Clarendon, jurisdiction over debts where the
bargain had included the formal pledging of faith. No one doubted
that it belonged to the Church courts to deal with questions of broken
faith. Henry declared in effect that the affidatio, or pledging of faith,
was not essential to the legal validity of a bargain, and that suits touch-
ing the bargain must be heard in his court. The lay court won in the
end, but it had to contend not only with ecclesiastical courts more
eager for jurisdiction than those of the twelfth century, but also against
the religious feeling of the English people.
Becket never intended to observe the Constitutions. He abstained
from the service of the altar as a penance for his weakness in ever promising
to observe them; and he even made an ineffectual attempt to leave the
country. The Pope took neither side, not daring to offend Henry nor
wishing to desert Becket. The next move came from the king. An officer
of the court, John the Marshal, father of the famous William Marshall,
Earl of Pembroke, complained to the king that the archbishop's court
had failed in justice in a plea which he had brought for the recovery of
land held of the see of Canterbury, and Becket was summoned to answer
for the failure of his court. Instead of sending an essoin, a formal excuse
for non-attendance, he sent four knights with letters from himself and the
sheriff of Kent to answer on his behalf. The case was adjourned, and
Becket was summoned to appear at a great council at Northampton in
October, to answer both for his previous contempt of the king's court
and for the failure of his own court to do right to John the Marshal.
Becket came to Northampton. He sought the king on 7 October, and
his case was heard the next day. On the original question, the case of
John the Marshal, the archbishop was successful, but the barons, both
lay and ecclesiastical, adjudged him guilty of contempt of the king's
court, and he therefore fell into the king's mercy. Although protesting
that no court had the right to try him, Becket was persuaded to offer to
make fine with the king for his amercement. The king, on the other
hand, seems to have come to Northampton with the intention of forcing
Becket's hand by attacking him in every possible way. He demanded an
account of the sums which Becket had received as custos of the honours
of Eye and Berkhampstead, of five hundred marks which he had received
C. LED. H. v0L, Y. CH. XVII.
36
## p. 562 (#608) ############################################
562
Becket's flight
1
i
1
from the king for the Toulouse campaign, of another five hundred marks
for which the king had been his pledge to a certain Jew, and finally of
the issues of the vacant sees which had passed through Becket's hands
while he was chancellor. Becket was forbidden to leave Northampton
until he had given the king security for the whole amount. The third
day of the council, Saturday 10 October, was passed by Becket in
discussing with the bishops and abbots the course that he should take.
However ungracious the king's demands, they did not alienate either the
bishops or the laity; some bishops even urged Becket to resign the
archbishopric and put himself in the king's mercy. On the following
Tuesday, Becket made up his mind to defiance. He forbade the bishops
to associate themselves in any judgment on him with regard to his con-
duct as chancellor, he appealed to the Pope, and he ordered the bishops
to excommunicate all who dared to give effect to the judgment of any
lay court upon him, thus directly contravening the Constitutions of
Clarendon. His action placed the bishops in a difficult position. They
must either endure the king's anger for breaking the eleventh clause of the
Constitutions of Clarendon or the censures of the Church for disobedience
to their archbishop. They evaded the dilemma by abstaining from judgment
upon the archbishop, but appealing to the Pope for his deposition on the
ground of his perjury in withdrawing the assent which he had originally
given to the Constitutions. The king's court never delivered its judg-
ment upon Becket. The barons, headed by Robert, Earl of Leicester,
qui dux erat verbi, went to pronounce it, but Becket did not stay to hear
it. He left the castle; next day he left Northampton; by 2 November
he had crossed the Channel as a fugitive.
The quarrel begun unnecessarily by Becket was pursued unmercifully
by the king. He exiled all the archbishop's kinsfolk, of whom there seem
to have been many. They had become rich with drippings from Becket's
abundance, and their departure impressed contemporaries so much that
private documents may occasionally be found dated “in the year in which
the king caused the kinsfolk of the archbishop to cross over. "? Becket's
exile lasted for six years. To a man of his temper it must have been hard
to bear, and its intluence upon his character was lamentable-he became
fanatic. The Pope was still unwilling to commit himself. Henry tried
to intimidate him by negotiations with the Emperor, but it was obvious
that opinion in England, although almost wholly on Henry's side in his
struggle with the archbishop, was not favourable to dealings with the
anti Pope. Alexander forbade Becket to take any irrevocable step until
Easter 1166. By the time the truce expired, the Pope was back at Rome,
and ready to support the archbishop. Becket was authorised to excom-
municate all who had occupied the lands of Canterbury since his flight,
and was given a legatine commission over all England except the see
of York. At Vézelay on Whitsunday Becket excommunicated John of
1 Cott. Nero C. i f. 200.
1
1
## p. 563 (#609) ############################################
The reconciliation
563
Oxford, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, and Richard of Ilchester, after-
wards Bishop of Winchester, for communicating with the supporters of
the anti-Pope. They had been Henry's ambassadors to the Emperor in
1165. Richard de Luci, the Justiciar, and Joscelin de Balliol were ex-
communicated as the authors and fabricators of the Constitutions, and
Ranulf de Broc, Hugh de St Clare, and Thomas fitz Bernard for having
occupied Canterbury lands.
The sentences brought Becket little good. The armies of Frederick
Barbarossa were coming south, and the Pope himself dared not attack
Henry openly. He received Henry's embassy sent to prosecute a renewed
appeal on behalf of the English bishops against Becket. One of the
ambassadors was John of Oxford, whom the Pope allowed to clear himself
by oath of the imputations which had been the ground of his excommunica-
tion. Legates were appointed to bring about peace, but both antagonists
had
gone beyond reason.
At Clairvaux in April 1169 Becket excommuni-
cated Bishops Gilbert Foliot of London and Joscelin of Salisbury. Foliot
had opposed Becket from the first, and had brought to his opposition a
bitter wit and a gift of sarcasm which Becket could not match.
As time went on, new matters of dispute made hopeless the original
quarrel over the Constitutions of Clarendon. Becket demanded all the
revenues of the see of Canterbury which had accrued during his exile.
In the meantime, the king had been providing for the apportionment of
his possessions among his sons, and wished his heir, his eldest surviving
son, Henry, to be crowned King of England. In Becket's absence, the
ceremony was performed on 14 June 1170 by Roger, Archbishop of York.
It is easy to understand Becket's anger at this infringement of an undoubted
prerogative of his see. The bitterness had never gone out of the struggle
for primacy between successive Archbishops of York and Canterbury, and
Roger had never made a profession of canonical obedience to Thomas.
Becket had a further, though unacknowledged, reason for resentment.
Roger de Pont l'Évêque had been a senior clerk in Archbishop Theobald's
household when Thomas of London had entered it from a merchant's
office? . It is hard to understand Becket's willingness to agree to a
reconciliation with Henry at Fréteval on 22 July 1170 which left every
matter at issue unsettled.
The king's attitude was plain. The Pope had commissioned the Arch-
bishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Nevers to make peace. Becket was
not to insist on the arrears of the revenues of his see, and the question
of the Constitutions was not to be raised until peace had been secured;
in that event, the king was to be persuaded to moderate them. If Henry
refused to be reconciled to the archbishop within forty days of the receipt
of the Pope's letters, his continental lands were to be laid under an interdict.
1 Thomas of London is the last, and Roger de Ponte episcopi the first, in a group
of Archbishop Theobald's clerks who attest an archiepiscopal writ in favour of
Southwark Priory. Cott. Nero C. in f. 188.
CH. XVII.
36-2
## p. 564 (#610) ############################################
1
564
The murder
1
The reconciliation of Fréteval was a mere form. Nothing was said of the
Constitutions, for Henry meant to maintain them, and Becket knew it.
The question of the arrears was not raised, for Becket meant to have them,
and Henry knew it. The king promised amends for the injury done to the
archbishop by the coronation, but refused to give him the kiss of peace.
Becket demanded it, though he meant war. At Becket's request, the Pope
had given him letters suspending the prelates who had taken part in the
coronation. These letters he sent to England before he himself landed
on 1 December. On Christmas Day in Canterbury cathedral, he violently
denounced his enemies, especially those who had entered upon the posses-
sions of his see. The end of his story, which came four days later, is well-
known, but Becket's secret thoughts and hopes, which undoubtedly
precipitated the tragedy of 29 December, remain mysterious. There is
much in his conduct at the end to suggest that he desired the martyr's
crown. In Becket's heart there had always burned a fierce desire to excel.
He had enjoyed the highest secular power he could hope to win; the
highest ecclesiastical position in England had been his. Neither Church
nor State had suffered from his exile, and even the Pope had not unre-
servedly supported him. He hoped to be a second and a greater Alphege;
by his death he won what to him was sweeter than life.
The news of the murder reached Henry at Argentan on 1 January 1171.
He is said to have spent three days in solitude. The Pope had previously
instructed the Archbishops of Sens and Rouen to lay an interdict on
Henry's continental lands if the archbishop were arrested. On 25 January
the Archbishop of Sens published the interdict, but the Archbishop of
Rouen and the Norman clergy refused to recognise the sentence. They
appealed against it, and the archbishop with three bishops and three
clerks set out to prosecute the appeal at the papal court. In considerable
anxiety as to Alexander's attitude, Henry sent an embassy, and the ex-
communicated bishops sent messengers. Alexander waited until April;
then he confirmed the interdict and the excommunication of the bishops.
Against the king personally he took no other action than to forbid him
to enter a church; legates were to be sent later to announce the terms
on which absolution would be granted. After a few days the Pope was
persuaded to send permission for a conditional absolution on behalf of
the Bishops of London and Salisbury because of their age and infirmity.
In the meantime Henry had spent the months of March and April in
Brittany. England must have been simmering with excitement, for the
miracles of Thomas began almost as soon as he was dead. The first
miracle occurred in Sussex on the third day after the martyrdom, and the
second miracle at Gloucester two days later. By Easter time “miracles
came in crowds. ". But at first it was the humble who believed. Brother
Elias of Reading dared not tell his abbot of his visit to the shrine of
Thomas to win a cure for his leprosy; he had asked leave to visit the
1 Abbott, St Thomas of Canterbury, 1, p. 249.
## p. 565 (#611) ############################################
Ireland
565
health-resort at Bath. Though the better-informed may have been sceptical
of the miracles, the unforgiven king must have been glad to leave England
for Ireland, to pass the time there until the legates should come to absolve
him.
Recent events in Ireland combined with the murder to suggest that
the invasion proposed in 1155 should at last be carried out. Ireland in
the twelfth century resembled Britain in the days of Gildas. The position
of high-king was a dignity to be fought for continually, but it gave to the
winner only a nominal supremacy, a cattle tribute, and jurisdictional rights
so vague as to be indefinable. In theory, each of the five divisions of
Ireland—Ulster, Munster, Leinster, Connaught, and Meath-had its king.
In fact, the boundaries of the provinces shifted with the varying power
of the kings, whose very existence depended on success in war and the
reputation which it brought. The chief preoccupation of each king was
to keep his family in power against other families, and himself as against
other members of his own family; no thought of establishing order in
their kingdoms troubled them. Indeed, if it had, their period of power
would have been short. The Scandinavian settlements along the coast,
Dublin, Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, were centres where the Irish
tribesmen disposed of their furs and hides, and obtained the produce of
civilisation. A poor country, ridden by war, Ireland was never previously
conquered because it was not worth conquest.
The immediate occasion of Norman intervention in Ireland was an
appeal for help from the exiled King of Leinster, Dermot Mac Murrough.
Henry gave him presents, received his homage, and issued letters patent
allowing any of his subjects to assist Dermot to recover his kingdom.
Dermot found help among the Norman colonists in Wales. Richard Fitz
Gilbert, whose father had been created Earl of Pembroke by Stephen,
was anxious to win a position in another land. The marcher lords of
South Wales were steadily losing ground before the encroachments of
Rhys ap Gruffydd. Richard, generally known by his father's nickname
of Strongbow, bargained for Dermot's daughter in marriage, with the
reversion of Leinster, and made his expedition conditional upon Henry's
consent. By the end of 1169, Dermot had recovered Leinster with the
help of small bands of Norman adventurers from Wales. In spite of
Henry's withdrawal of his permission for the expedition, Strongbow
himself landed in Ireland in August 1170, married Eva, Dermot's
daughter, and succeeded him, not without opposition, on his death in
May 1171. Henry, unwilling that a subject should make a kingdom in
Ireland, prevented reinforcements from reaching Strongbow, and recalled
him. On the news of Henry's intended expedition to Ireland, Strongbow
crossed to Wales, and met the king on his way to Milford Haven. Henry
allowed him to do homage for Leinster on condition that he surrendered
the seaports. The king stayed in Ireland for six months, from October
1171 to April 1172, in which he took homage from many Irish chiefs,
CH. XVII,
## p. 566 (#612) ############################################
566
Terms of Henry's absolution
summoned a council of the Irish Church at Cashel, and authorised a
programme of ecclesiastical reform. The chief seaports were garrisoned.
Hugh de Lacy, in command at Dublin, was appointed Justiciar of Ireland,
and was allowed to create for himself a feudal principality in Meath.
The lordship of Ireland had been easily won. The Irish had no castles,
their armies were only undisciplined rabbles, and the Church was on the
side of the invaders. But Henry left Ireland to be subdued by the
adventurers. Not trusting them, he tried to balance the native chiefs
against them, and the country was therefore never conquered. When,
in 1185, a great expedition was entrusted to John, Henry's youngest
son, it proved an utter failure!
Henry left Ireland in April 1172 to meet the legates and hear the
Pope's judgment. At Avranches on 21 May he received absolution. The
terms of reconciliation were light. The king submitted to a public
penance. He swore that he did not command nor wish the archbishop's
death, that when he heard of it he grieved exceedingly, that he would
give satisfaction because he could not produce the murderers, and because
he feared that words of his had given occasion for the crime. He also
swore that he would not withdraw from Pope Alexander and his successors,
and that he would allow appeals in ecclesiastical causes, provided that,
where there was any suspicion of disloyalty, security should be given that
the appeal was not to the hurt of the king or kingdom. He vowed
to undertake a crusade, and to give to the Templars as much money as
was in their judgment necessary to maintain two hundred knights in the
defence of the Cross for one year. He pardoned all those who had been
exiled for St Thomas' sake, and swore that the possessions of the Church
of Canterbury should be as they were one year before the murder. He
swore also to destroy all the customs adverse to the Church introduced
in his time, a vague promise which king and Pope could each interpret
as he chose. The king, most unhappily, gave way in the matter of the
criminous clerks. In regard to the other principles laid down in the
Constitutions of Clarendon, there was to be a trial of strength between
the king and the Pope, or rather between the king's justices and ministers
and the ecclesiastical courts, a struggle none the less real because it was
conducted without advertisement. Something has already been said of
the struggle and its issue.
The oath to go on crusade was lightly taken. Henry evaded the
obligation by promising to build three monasteries, a promise which he
fulfilled at the least possible expense. Before the final ratification in
September of the agreement at Avranches, Henry had known that
trouble was brewing in England. His sons, encouraged by their mother,
were meditating rebellion. The young king bore the style King of the
1 For a short, but convincing, summary of the arguments with regard to the Bull
Laudabiliter (authorising Henry II to conquer Ireland), see Orpen, The Normans in
Ireland, Vol. 1, Chapter ix.
## p. 567 (#613) ############################################
Reasons for the rebellion of 1173–74
567
English, Duke of the Normans, and Count of the men of Anjou! He
had done homage to the French king for Anjou and Brittany. Geoffrey,
the second son, had done homage to his brother for Brittany, and had
himself received the homage of the men of the province. For Aquitaine,
which lay outside the young king's titles, Richard had done homage to
the King of France. No independent power had been given to any of
the king's sons. The young king's wife had not been crowned with her
husband, a grievance to Louis VII, and after the agreement at Avranches
the young king was crowned again, and his wife with him. He had his
own seal and his own court, but ministers of his father composed his
court and doubtless directed him in the use of his seal. That Henry
should commit the rule of any part of his dominions to the reckless
youth of his sons was inconceivable.
The occasion of their rebellion was Henry's attempt to provide for
his youngest son John, born in 1166 or 1167. Early in 1173, a marriage
was arranged between John and Alais, heiress of Humbert III, Count of
Maurienne. In return for the provision that the greater part of Humbert's
possessions should descend to John and his wife, Henry proposed to settle
on them the three castles of Chinon, Loudun, and Mirabeau, formerly
granted as an appanage to his second son Geoffrey. The young king
refused his consent, and fled to the French court in March 1173. His
brothers Richard and Geoffrey followed him, and Eleanor, their mother,
set off to raise Poitou for Richard. She was taken and kept in confinement.
Richard Barre, to whom Henry had entrusted the young king's seal,
brought it back to the king, and the other ministers whom Henry had
placed with his son returned to Henry, bringing with them the young
king's baggage. Henry, always generous to his sons, sent back the
ministers with rich gifts, but the young king dismissed those of them who
would not swear fealty to him against his father. Walter the chaplain,
Ailward the chamberlain, and William Blund the usher, returned to the
old king; of the labours of the two last in the king's service the Pipe
Rolls give ample evidence.
Barons of every province of the continental Angevin dominions joined
the rebellion. The Counts of Flanders and Boulogne and William, King
of Scots, gave their support. To secure it, the young king made lavish
grants. His charters were sealed with a new seal which the King of
France had had made for him. All Kent, with the castles of Rochester
and Dover, was to go to the Count of Flanders; Carlisle and Westmor-
land were promised to the King of Scots; the earldom of Huntingdon
and the county of Cambridge, to which the King of Scots had inherited
a claim, were promised to his brother David. In England, the rebels were
joined by Hugh, Earl of Chester, Robert “Blanchesmaines,” Earl of
| The young king's style is so recorded in a writ, the original of which has
survived, issued on behalf of the priory of St Frideswide, Oxford. Bod. Lib. Oxford,
Charters, 59.
CH. XVII.
## p. 568 (#614) ############################################
568
Balance of parties
Leicester (son of Henry's justiciar), William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby,
Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, and Roger de Mowbray, a great baron in
Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire. They brought to the cause of the
young king a great stretch of England and many castles. Leicester was
a centre for the rebels, with Leicester Castle supported by Groby Castle
five miles to the north-west and Mountsorrel seven miles to the north.
The Ferrers castles of Duffield in Derbyshire and Tutbury in Stafford-
shire, the Bigod castles of Bungay and Framlingham in Suffolk, and the
Mowbray castles of Thirsk and Kirkby Malzeard in Yorkshire, were all
held for the young king.
On Henry's side were the mass of the clergy. The legates sent to
give Henry absolution remained to attempt a reconciliation between him
and his sons: At their suggestion, Henry proceeded to fill all vacant
bishoprics and abbeys. It was not Henry's fault that the see of Canter-
bury had not been filled before, for the perennial quarrel between the prior
and monks of Canterbury and the provincial bishops delayed every election.
The six bishops now appointed were all chosen for their politics rather than
for their religious zeal. Richard of Ilchester, elected Bishop of Winchester,
was a skilled financier. Geoffrey Ridel, elected Bishop of Ely, had suc-
ceeded Becket as Archdeacon of Canterbury and had borne the king's seal.
Both of them were bitter opponents of Becket, and had been excom-
municated in the course of the struggle. The king's illegitimate son,
Geoffrey, was elected Bishop of Lincoln. In June, the monks of Canter-
bury were conciliated by the election of Richard, prior of St Martin's at
Dover, to the archbishopric. The young king's attempt to prevent the
consecration of the prelates probably did much to confirm the eccle-
siastical order in its support of his father; the only English bishop who
finally joined the rebels was Hugh Puiset of Durham.
Among the barons, there were on the king's side his uncle Reginald,
Earl of Cornwall, his half-brother Hamelin, Earl Warenne, his cousin
William, Earl of Gloucester, William de Mandeville, Earl of Essex,
Simon de Sentliz, Earl of Northampton, and William de Albini, Earl of
Arundel. Although the most powerful of the earls were in revolt, the
baronage as a whole was on the king's side. The rebel castles were
more than balanced by the royal castles and those of loyal barons. The
fee of the Earl of Derby was roughly balanced by the honour of Peverel,
then in the king's hand, with its castles of Nottingham, Bolsover, and
the Peak. John de Lacy, constable of Chester, was on the king's side,
and his loyalty made Roger de Mowbray's defection of less moment. In
East Anglia, the Warennes balanced the Bigods, and in the west, the
loyal marchers and the king's Welsh auxiliaries balanced the Farl of
Chester. In the north, the Umfravilles, Vauxes, Vescis, Bruces, Balliols,
and Stutevilles, balanced the King of Scots. The mass of men, the lesser
baronage, the sheriff's, and above all the new ministerial class, were
solidly on Henry's side. Richard de Luci the justiciar, himself an Essex
## p. 569 (#615) ############################################
First summer of rebellion
569
baron holding the castle and honour of Ongar, raised forces and gar-
risoned castles. The Kymes of Lincolnshire, richer than most baronial
families, were active in the king's support. If Henry's sons expected a
glad response in England to the call of anarchy, they were disillusioned.
The rebellion began with an attack upon Henry's position in northern
France. The Earl of Chester, hereditary Viscount of Avranches and
Bayeux, ravaged Brittany, in association with Breton nobles. The young
king, with the Counts of Flanders and Boulogne, advanced from the east,
while the King of France laid siege to Verneuil. Louis VII, though he
could intrigue, could not carry through a war. He and his allies had no
concerted plan; the brains were all on Henry's side. His castles were
ready to stand siege, and he himself with a competent force could go
where he was needed. Brittany was cleared of rebels by the end of July
1173, and the Earl of Chester was taken prisoner with many other nobles.
The King of France did no more than sack Verneuil and then retreat
before Henry. The rebel forces operating in the east took Aumâle, but
after Matthew, Count of Boulogne, had been mortally wounded did no
more. At a meeting between Trie and Gisors in September, Henry made
generous offers to his sons, though denying them independent rule; his
terms were refused, and after the meeting the rebels and their allies seem
to have concluded that an attack on England must be made.
In England, the centres of war were the midlands, the north, and the
east. There also no definite plan can be traced. No other warfare was
possible at this period than a series of sieges and counter-sieges, raids
and counter-raids, for neither side could call itself victorious while the
other side still held unreduced castles. The justiciar took the offensive by
laying siege to Leicester, and if he could have taken it, the fall of Groby
and Mountsorrel would soon have followed. The town of Leicester was
almost entirely destroyed by an accidental fire. The townsfolk came to
terms, but the castle still held out. The justiciar arranged a truce that
he might be free to meet a Scotch inroad, and together with Humphrey de
Bohun, the king's constable, he chased the Scots into Scotland; but he was
then obliged to make a truce with them until 13 January 1174, in order
to turn south to meet an invasion by the Earl of Leicester with a body of
mercenaries. The earl was one of Henry's bitterest opponents at this time.
He may possibly have felt slighted because he had not succeeded his father
as justiciar, though his conduct during the rebellion gives no indication
that he had any of the ability necessary for such an office. He landed
at Walton near Felixstowe about 18 October 1173. Walton was a royal
castle, and the earl failed to take it. He joined the Earl of Norfolk at
Framlingham, and together they attacked and took the great castle of
Haughley, held for the king by Ranulf de Broc. At Bury St Edmunds,
on his way to Leicester, the earl heard of the approach of the royal
army under the constable, supported by the Earls of Cornwall, Gloucester,
and Arundel. He retreated before they came up, and tried to escape to
CH. XVII.
## p. 570 (#616) ############################################
570
Second summer of rebellion
Leicester by passing to the north. They met him at Fornham St Gene-
vieve three miles north-west of Bury. "In the twinkling of an eye” the
battle was over, and the earl and his wife were prisoners. Winter was
now coming on, and a truce was made with the Earl of Norfolk, to last
until 19 May 1174, on condition that his Flemish mercenaries were sent
back over sea. The Bishop of Durham arranged for a prolongation of
the truce with the Scots until the end of March, and the Northumbrian
barons paid the King of Scots two hundred pounds for the respite.
The winter was passed in preparation for the final struggle. The
Bishop of Durham, abandoning his pretence of loyalty, fortified his epis-
copal castle of Northallerton, while Roger de Mowbray strengthened his
castles of Thirsk and Kirkby Malzeard, and put into a defensible state a
derelict castle at Kinnard Ferry in the Isle of Axholme, of which he was
lord. The site of the castle can still be seen at Owston Ferry by the
lower Trent. A typical Norman motte and bailey, it had probably been
an adulterine castle of Stephen's time, from which the broad and fertile
flats of Axholme could be protected. The castles of Bamburgh, Wark,
and Carlisle, the border fortresses of Liddel and Harbottle, Prudhoe
Castle on the Tyne, Appleby and Brough-under-Stainmoor, were all held
for the king. The rebel plan for 1174, as for the previous year, seems to
have involved a threefold attack on Henry's supporters. The King of
France intended that the young king and the Count of Flanders should
land in East Anglia to join the Earl of Norfolk. In the midlands, the
Earl of Derby, David, the Scottish Earl of Huntingdon, and Anketill
Mallory, the constable of Leicester, tried to reduce the neighbouring
towns.
sound political reason for the Irish proposal of 1155: William's support
was necessary, for Henry's second brother, Geoffrey, was making trouble
by insisting on his claims to Anjou and Touraine. To suppress him,
1 Cott. Vespasian E. xviii f. 73d.
CH. XVII.
## p. 556 (#602) ############################################
556
Wales and Scotland
1
1
1
and to assure himself of the loyalty of Aquitaine and Normandy, Henry
left England in January 1156. The capture of Geoffrey's castles of Mira-
beau and Chinon ended his revolt. He was satisfied with compensation
in money and permission to accept the invitation of the men of the
eastern part of Brittany and make himself Count of Nantes. In his
attitude towards Brittany, both now and later in his reign, Henry was
but maintaining the policy of his ancestors who claimed overlordship of
that province. In his relations with continental powers the same feeling
can be traced, a desire to lose nothing that had come to him by inherit-
ance or marriage; no right must be given up, no claim allowed to lapse.
But Henry was only an aggressor in so far as he forced others to recognise
claims which they would rather see forgotten. The war of Toulouse
which occupied the July, August, and September of 1159 was undertaken
to recover Toulouse, to which Henry inherited a title through his wife.
When the King of France interfered, Henry gave up the war; to con-
tinue it against his overlord would have been going beyond his right.
The question of Henry's relations with Wales and Scotland had to be
faced early in the reign. Both countries had gained by the anarchy in
England. David of Scotland had been succeeded in 1153 by his grand-
son Malcolm IV, who visited Henry in England, and agreed to surrender
Northumberland and Cumberland, with the castles of Bamburgh, New-
castle, and Carlisle. Either at Peak Castle or at Chester he did homage
to Henry for his English lands, the honour of Huntingdon. A Welsh
expedition was not only essential from the standpoint of general policy;
it was a means of securing the gratitude of marcher lords who had lost
land in the time of Stephen. The object of Henry's attack was the
northern kingdom of Gwynedd, where Owen Gwynedd had built up a
principality which Ranulf, Earl of Chester, himself had feared. The suc-
cession of a child of six to the earldom exposed it to Owen's attacks.
Henry's Welsh expedition of 1158, though not a brilliant military success,
achieved for the moment its end; Owen was forced to give hostages, and
his activities were checked for a time. Rhys ap Gruffydd, the ruler of
Deheubarth, the southern kingdom, after some hesitation, acknowledged
the overlordship of Henry. The Clares and Cliffords were restored to the
lands that Rhys had conquered in the previous reign. Neither Rhys, how-
ever, nor Owen was prepared to acquiesce in any reduction of power, and
in 1162 Rhys took Llandovery Castle from Walter Clifford. In the next
year Henry led an expedition into Wales, passing through Carmarthen and
taking Rhys prisoner at Pencader. Rhys was allowed to do homage and
return to his principality, but he immediately re-opened war, ravaging
Cardigan until little more than the castle and the town remained to the
Normans. Henry's absorption in the Becket quarrel after 1163 en-
couraged Rhys and Owen to make a combined attack on the marcher
barons. The lesser princes of Wales were attracted into the alliance by
the prestige of the two leaders. The failure of Henry's great expedition
1
## p. 557 (#603) ############################################
Becket as Chancellor
557
of 1165 to suppress the coalition secured for the Welsh another hundred
years of freedom. Henry made no other great effort, and from that time
his attention was confined to strengthening the border castles. His con-
cern was not to restrain the Welsh princes or keep their lands for the
marcher lords, but merely to retain the overlordship of the two kingdoms
of Deheubarth and Gwynedd. In the troubles of the rebellion of 1173-4
the Welsh princes were faithful to Henry.
The minister to whom Henry from the first gave his fullest confidence
was Thomas Becket, his Chancellor. The office of chancellor involved the
custody of the king's seal and constant attendance on his person: Becket
is almost always a witness, often the sole witness, to the charters and writs
of the early years of the reign. His power, however, depended not on his
office, but on his intimacy with the king. It was at Henry's gift that he
received the custody of vacant benefices, not by virtue of his office as
chancellor. Becket acquired wealth and became a leader of fashion. Too
busy to return to his archidiaconal duties, he earned but mild reproaches
from his archbishop and requests that he would forward certain business
with the king. Through him the king might be approached not only by
schemers like Arnulf, Bishop of Lisieux, but by such men as John of
Salisbury. The circumstances of Becket's death have secured the pre-
servation of masses of material, not only relating to his life as archbishop,
but also to his time as chancellor. His work can also be traced in the
official language of the Pipe Roll clerks. He was concerned in the restora-
tion of order, in the administration of justice, in diplomatic business at
the French court. His writ could authorise the payment of money out
of the treasury, a right that later in the reign belonged only to the
Justiciar. It was with reason, though in flattery, that Peter, Abbot
of La Celle at Troyes, wrote: “Who does not know you to be second
to the king in four kingdoms ? ”
Archbishop Theobald died in April 1161, and a year passed before
Henry decided that Becket should succeed him. The stories of Henry's
announcement of his decision to Thomas and Thomas' unwillingness to
become primate were probably invented to fit the history of the struggle.
The nolo episcopari of Thomas was probably no less common form than
that of most contemporary bishops; there is nothing in his career to
suggest an unwillingness to accept great office. He was a man of high
ambitions. Of undoubted ability, he was, however, not fitted to be Lan-
franc to Henry's William. He had neither the training nor the sanity
of that great archbishop and administrator, nor among the churchmen
of Henry's day would it have been easy to find a second Lanfranc.
Henry's hesitation may mean that he was not sure of Becket. There is
no evidence that he was obnoxious to the ecclesiastical party as a whole;
Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford and afterwards of London, was never
his friend, but Theobald seems to have desired him for a successor. Once
Becket was consecrated, he tried to be the perfect archbishop. He re-
CH. XVII.
## p. 558 (#604) ############################################
558
Becket as Archbishop; criminous clerks
signed the chancellorship, though he did not give up the archdeaconry of
Canterbury until the king forced him to do so. He played the ascetic as
perfectly as he had played the courtier. There was no insincerity in this
changed way of life.
He shewed from the first a determination to let go no right which the
Church could claim. His attitude was natural, for it must have seemed
a noble thing to be head of the Church in England. He set about win-
ning back for his own Church of Canterbury the lands and rights which
it had lost. No claim was too shadowy for him. He demanded from the
king the custody of the castles of Rochester, Saltwood, and Hythe, from
the Earl of Hertford, Roger de Clare, his homage for Tonbridge Castle.
Forgetting his own past, he deprived clerks in the king's service of the
benefices in the see of Canterbury that they held as their reward. As
archbishop he claimed rights of patronage over all benefices on land held
by tenants of the see; he excommunicated William of Eynsford, a
tenant-in-chief for other lands, for resisting the application of this claim.
He came into conflict with the king over a matter of general administra-
tion. In July 1163 at the council of Woodstock, Henry proposed that
the sheriff's aid should be paid into the royal treasury. Becket's oppo-
sition was so vigorous that Henry dropped the plan. Flagrant cases of
the inadequacy of ecclesiastical punishment for crime, and of abuse in
ecclesiastical courts, came to complete the estrangement. On 1 October
1163 at the council at Westminster the question of criminous clerks was
discussed at length. The king and his advisers demanded that accused
clerks should answer the accusation in the lay court, that they should
be handed over to the ecclesiastical court for trial and judgment, and
that if the accused were found guilty he should be degraded and given
up to the secular power for punishment. Warrant for this procedure
could be found in Canon Law. Becket, with the support of the bishops,
answered, not that Henry's interpretation of Canon Law was unjustifiable,
but that “God will not judge a man twice for the same offence. ” Real-
ising that Becket would continue to evade the question of law, Henry
fell back on custom, and asked whether the bishops were prepared to
observe the ancient customs of the kingdom. After discussing the matter
among themselves, they said that they were prepared to observe them,
“saving their order. “ Hilary, Bishop of Chichester, alone promised to
observe them without this reservation. Henry broke up the council in
exasperated fury.
The king used every means in his power to overcome the clerical
opposition. He removed his heir from Becket's charge, and he took from
Becket the custody of the castles and honours of Eye and Berkhampstead.
He did his utmost to make a party against Becket among the bishops, and
the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London promised to observe
the customs. In the last three months of 1163, Arnulf, Bishop of Lisieux,
and Richard of Ilchester, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, are said to
## p. 559 (#605) ############################################
The Constitutions of Clarendon
559
have crossed the sea six times to gain the Pope's assent to the customs.
The Pope himself, exiled from Rome and travelling in northern France,
was unwilling to offend Henry. He obviously wished Becket to moderate
his opposition, although he did not immediately accede to Henry's re-
quests that Roger, Archbishop of York, should be appointed legate in
succession to Theobald, and that the bishops should be ordered to obey
the customs. Before the end of the year Becket gave way to the ex-
postulations of the bishops and the fears of the Pope and cardinals; he
promised his consent to the customs.
A council was therefore summoned to meet at Clarendon in January
1164 at which Becket might give his formal assent. He is said to have
come repenting his promise and prepared to withdraw it. The king in
the meantime must have caused the customs to be carefully drawn up
and engrossed. The writing of the Constitutions cannot have been left,
as some authorities would have us believe, until the council was in actual
progress; they were produced on the first day of the council. Becket
was only induced to agree to them by the persuasions of bishops, two
knights of the Temple, and the two senior earls, Cornwall and Leicester.
After giving his unqualified assent to the Constitutions and allowing the
bishops to do the same, Becket refused to take the irrevocable step of
sealing the document. The Constitutions had been engrossed modo ciro-
grafi, that is, they had been written out three times on one piece of
parchment. Before the parchment was severed into three, the two arch-
bishops and the king should each have affixed his seal to each copy of
the Constitutions. Since Becket refused his seal, the document apparently
unsealed, was cut into three parts. One part was given to the Arch-
bishop of York, one was thrust into Becket's hand, and the third was
laid up in the royal treasury.
There is no evidence that the general body of English clergy felt that
the Constitutions of Clarendon were any other than Henry claimed,
that is, an accurate representation of the customs of his grandfather's
time. The relations between Church and State had never exactly been
defined before. Such hesitation as the bishops may have felt in agreeing
to the Constitutions was probably due to a natural dislike of definition
and fear of precedent. The Church won little by Becket's death because
it wished to win little. It was not an aggressive body, and many of the
judges in its courts had been trained, some were still actually engaged,
in the king's service. To say that the king's policy at this time meant an
inevitable quarrel between Church and State is to go beyond the evidence.
What might have been expected was an assertion of the right of the
king's court to define the limits of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and, there-
after, competition between the Church courts and the lay courts for
jurisdiction over individual cases. Henry did not begin the quarrel by
attempting a general revision of ecclesiastical justice. His ultimatum,
in the Constitutions, was as much directed against and caused by Becket's
CH. XVII.
## p. 560 (#606) ############################################
560
The fate of the Constitutions
general attitude of arrogant and aggressive rectitude as by the abuses of
ecclesiastical courts. A few years later, at the time of the Inquest of
Sheriffs, the barons submitted to a far more drastic supervision of feudal
justice than Henry ever proposed in the case of the courts of the Church.
Thomas was an exception among the churchmen of his day. He would
have found a congenial atmosphere in the Curia of Boniface VIII.
The fate of the Constitutions indicates the attitude of the English
Church to Henry's claims. Only in regard to criminous clerks and appeals
to the Pope was Henry forced to give way. Both sides laid particular
emphasis on the clause dealing with criminous clerks. Opinion among
canonists as to the validity of Henry's claims was divided. Passages in
Canon Law could be interpreted to mean that clerks found guilty and
degraded in the ecclesiastical court should be handed over to the lay
court for punishment. It does not seem to have been the opinion
canonists that this procedure was contrary to the dictum so constantly on
Becket's lips. The archbishop was no canonist, and there were those who
said that he was not even scholar enough to make a speech in Latin.
He concentrated on the question of punishment. His murder secured
for clerks immunity from lay punishment for their first crime. But it
should be remembered that, when Henry submitted on this point, and
indeed throughout the next century, the word clerk had not the wide
interpretation that it received in later times. In the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries a clerk had to prove his ordination, at least to the
sub-diaconate, before he was handed over to the official of the Church
to be tried in Court Christian. Moreover Henry succeeded in forcing
accused clerks to appear in the lay court to prove their clergy, although
Canon Law gives no justification for the practice. So much he gained.
His unfortunate surrender of the right to punish the guilty clerk left an
opening for private revenge. In 1202, in a trial for murder at Lincoln,
it was stated that the murdered man had been degraded from the
diaconate for killing a relative of the defendant.
The king retained without serious question much of what the Con-
stitutions gave him. Advowsons remained lay property; the king kept
control over the churches of his fee; elections to bishoprics were con-
ducted as before in the king's chapel. For the rest, the relations between
Church and State were left to be worked out in the practice of the courts.
By the Constitutions the king had agreed that jurisdiction over land
held in free alms belonged to the Church courts; but he had secured to
his own court the right of adjudging, in accordance with the verdict of a
jury, whether the land at issue were lay fee or free alms. Had the
Church courts been able to keep all the jurisdiction this clause would
have given them, much business would have been lost to the king's court;
for during the last half of the twelfth and throughout the thirteenth
century innumerable grants of lands were being made to religious houses
in free alıns. By John's day it was highly exceptional for this procedure
## p. 561 (#607) ############################################
The quarrel renewed
561
by the assize utrum, as it was called from the words of the writ which began
it, to be a prelude to a suit in the ecclesiastical court. The assize rolls
shew the religious houses using the layman's forms of action in the lay
courts. The assize utrum was already almost entirely confined to rectors
of parish churches, who without it would have found difficulty in proving
their right to the lands of their church appropriated by laymen. If the
jury's verdict in such a suit declared the land to be free alms the parson
recovered his land without further process of law. In this respect at
least the king had won far more than the customs of Henry I would
have given him. But the king's courts found it difficult to maintain
what Henry had asserted at Clarendon, jurisdiction over debts where the
bargain had included the formal pledging of faith. No one doubted
that it belonged to the Church courts to deal with questions of broken
faith. Henry declared in effect that the affidatio, or pledging of faith,
was not essential to the legal validity of a bargain, and that suits touch-
ing the bargain must be heard in his court. The lay court won in the
end, but it had to contend not only with ecclesiastical courts more
eager for jurisdiction than those of the twelfth century, but also against
the religious feeling of the English people.
Becket never intended to observe the Constitutions. He abstained
from the service of the altar as a penance for his weakness in ever promising
to observe them; and he even made an ineffectual attempt to leave the
country. The Pope took neither side, not daring to offend Henry nor
wishing to desert Becket. The next move came from the king. An officer
of the court, John the Marshal, father of the famous William Marshall,
Earl of Pembroke, complained to the king that the archbishop's court
had failed in justice in a plea which he had brought for the recovery of
land held of the see of Canterbury, and Becket was summoned to answer
for the failure of his court. Instead of sending an essoin, a formal excuse
for non-attendance, he sent four knights with letters from himself and the
sheriff of Kent to answer on his behalf. The case was adjourned, and
Becket was summoned to appear at a great council at Northampton in
October, to answer both for his previous contempt of the king's court
and for the failure of his own court to do right to John the Marshal.
Becket came to Northampton. He sought the king on 7 October, and
his case was heard the next day. On the original question, the case of
John the Marshal, the archbishop was successful, but the barons, both
lay and ecclesiastical, adjudged him guilty of contempt of the king's
court, and he therefore fell into the king's mercy. Although protesting
that no court had the right to try him, Becket was persuaded to offer to
make fine with the king for his amercement. The king, on the other
hand, seems to have come to Northampton with the intention of forcing
Becket's hand by attacking him in every possible way. He demanded an
account of the sums which Becket had received as custos of the honours
of Eye and Berkhampstead, of five hundred marks which he had received
C. LED. H. v0L, Y. CH. XVII.
36
## p. 562 (#608) ############################################
562
Becket's flight
1
i
1
from the king for the Toulouse campaign, of another five hundred marks
for which the king had been his pledge to a certain Jew, and finally of
the issues of the vacant sees which had passed through Becket's hands
while he was chancellor. Becket was forbidden to leave Northampton
until he had given the king security for the whole amount. The third
day of the council, Saturday 10 October, was passed by Becket in
discussing with the bishops and abbots the course that he should take.
However ungracious the king's demands, they did not alienate either the
bishops or the laity; some bishops even urged Becket to resign the
archbishopric and put himself in the king's mercy. On the following
Tuesday, Becket made up his mind to defiance. He forbade the bishops
to associate themselves in any judgment on him with regard to his con-
duct as chancellor, he appealed to the Pope, and he ordered the bishops
to excommunicate all who dared to give effect to the judgment of any
lay court upon him, thus directly contravening the Constitutions of
Clarendon. His action placed the bishops in a difficult position. They
must either endure the king's anger for breaking the eleventh clause of the
Constitutions of Clarendon or the censures of the Church for disobedience
to their archbishop. They evaded the dilemma by abstaining from judgment
upon the archbishop, but appealing to the Pope for his deposition on the
ground of his perjury in withdrawing the assent which he had originally
given to the Constitutions. The king's court never delivered its judg-
ment upon Becket. The barons, headed by Robert, Earl of Leicester,
qui dux erat verbi, went to pronounce it, but Becket did not stay to hear
it. He left the castle; next day he left Northampton; by 2 November
he had crossed the Channel as a fugitive.
The quarrel begun unnecessarily by Becket was pursued unmercifully
by the king. He exiled all the archbishop's kinsfolk, of whom there seem
to have been many. They had become rich with drippings from Becket's
abundance, and their departure impressed contemporaries so much that
private documents may occasionally be found dated “in the year in which
the king caused the kinsfolk of the archbishop to cross over. "? Becket's
exile lasted for six years. To a man of his temper it must have been hard
to bear, and its intluence upon his character was lamentable-he became
fanatic. The Pope was still unwilling to commit himself. Henry tried
to intimidate him by negotiations with the Emperor, but it was obvious
that opinion in England, although almost wholly on Henry's side in his
struggle with the archbishop, was not favourable to dealings with the
anti Pope. Alexander forbade Becket to take any irrevocable step until
Easter 1166. By the time the truce expired, the Pope was back at Rome,
and ready to support the archbishop. Becket was authorised to excom-
municate all who had occupied the lands of Canterbury since his flight,
and was given a legatine commission over all England except the see
of York. At Vézelay on Whitsunday Becket excommunicated John of
1 Cott. Nero C. i f. 200.
1
1
## p. 563 (#609) ############################################
The reconciliation
563
Oxford, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, and Richard of Ilchester, after-
wards Bishop of Winchester, for communicating with the supporters of
the anti-Pope. They had been Henry's ambassadors to the Emperor in
1165. Richard de Luci, the Justiciar, and Joscelin de Balliol were ex-
communicated as the authors and fabricators of the Constitutions, and
Ranulf de Broc, Hugh de St Clare, and Thomas fitz Bernard for having
occupied Canterbury lands.
The sentences brought Becket little good. The armies of Frederick
Barbarossa were coming south, and the Pope himself dared not attack
Henry openly. He received Henry's embassy sent to prosecute a renewed
appeal on behalf of the English bishops against Becket. One of the
ambassadors was John of Oxford, whom the Pope allowed to clear himself
by oath of the imputations which had been the ground of his excommunica-
tion. Legates were appointed to bring about peace, but both antagonists
had
gone beyond reason.
At Clairvaux in April 1169 Becket excommuni-
cated Bishops Gilbert Foliot of London and Joscelin of Salisbury. Foliot
had opposed Becket from the first, and had brought to his opposition a
bitter wit and a gift of sarcasm which Becket could not match.
As time went on, new matters of dispute made hopeless the original
quarrel over the Constitutions of Clarendon. Becket demanded all the
revenues of the see of Canterbury which had accrued during his exile.
In the meantime, the king had been providing for the apportionment of
his possessions among his sons, and wished his heir, his eldest surviving
son, Henry, to be crowned King of England. In Becket's absence, the
ceremony was performed on 14 June 1170 by Roger, Archbishop of York.
It is easy to understand Becket's anger at this infringement of an undoubted
prerogative of his see. The bitterness had never gone out of the struggle
for primacy between successive Archbishops of York and Canterbury, and
Roger had never made a profession of canonical obedience to Thomas.
Becket had a further, though unacknowledged, reason for resentment.
Roger de Pont l'Évêque had been a senior clerk in Archbishop Theobald's
household when Thomas of London had entered it from a merchant's
office? . It is hard to understand Becket's willingness to agree to a
reconciliation with Henry at Fréteval on 22 July 1170 which left every
matter at issue unsettled.
The king's attitude was plain. The Pope had commissioned the Arch-
bishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Nevers to make peace. Becket was
not to insist on the arrears of the revenues of his see, and the question
of the Constitutions was not to be raised until peace had been secured;
in that event, the king was to be persuaded to moderate them. If Henry
refused to be reconciled to the archbishop within forty days of the receipt
of the Pope's letters, his continental lands were to be laid under an interdict.
1 Thomas of London is the last, and Roger de Ponte episcopi the first, in a group
of Archbishop Theobald's clerks who attest an archiepiscopal writ in favour of
Southwark Priory. Cott. Nero C. in f. 188.
CH. XVII.
36-2
## p. 564 (#610) ############################################
1
564
The murder
1
The reconciliation of Fréteval was a mere form. Nothing was said of the
Constitutions, for Henry meant to maintain them, and Becket knew it.
The question of the arrears was not raised, for Becket meant to have them,
and Henry knew it. The king promised amends for the injury done to the
archbishop by the coronation, but refused to give him the kiss of peace.
Becket demanded it, though he meant war. At Becket's request, the Pope
had given him letters suspending the prelates who had taken part in the
coronation. These letters he sent to England before he himself landed
on 1 December. On Christmas Day in Canterbury cathedral, he violently
denounced his enemies, especially those who had entered upon the posses-
sions of his see. The end of his story, which came four days later, is well-
known, but Becket's secret thoughts and hopes, which undoubtedly
precipitated the tragedy of 29 December, remain mysterious. There is
much in his conduct at the end to suggest that he desired the martyr's
crown. In Becket's heart there had always burned a fierce desire to excel.
He had enjoyed the highest secular power he could hope to win; the
highest ecclesiastical position in England had been his. Neither Church
nor State had suffered from his exile, and even the Pope had not unre-
servedly supported him. He hoped to be a second and a greater Alphege;
by his death he won what to him was sweeter than life.
The news of the murder reached Henry at Argentan on 1 January 1171.
He is said to have spent three days in solitude. The Pope had previously
instructed the Archbishops of Sens and Rouen to lay an interdict on
Henry's continental lands if the archbishop were arrested. On 25 January
the Archbishop of Sens published the interdict, but the Archbishop of
Rouen and the Norman clergy refused to recognise the sentence. They
appealed against it, and the archbishop with three bishops and three
clerks set out to prosecute the appeal at the papal court. In considerable
anxiety as to Alexander's attitude, Henry sent an embassy, and the ex-
communicated bishops sent messengers. Alexander waited until April;
then he confirmed the interdict and the excommunication of the bishops.
Against the king personally he took no other action than to forbid him
to enter a church; legates were to be sent later to announce the terms
on which absolution would be granted. After a few days the Pope was
persuaded to send permission for a conditional absolution on behalf of
the Bishops of London and Salisbury because of their age and infirmity.
In the meantime Henry had spent the months of March and April in
Brittany. England must have been simmering with excitement, for the
miracles of Thomas began almost as soon as he was dead. The first
miracle occurred in Sussex on the third day after the martyrdom, and the
second miracle at Gloucester two days later. By Easter time “miracles
came in crowds. ". But at first it was the humble who believed. Brother
Elias of Reading dared not tell his abbot of his visit to the shrine of
Thomas to win a cure for his leprosy; he had asked leave to visit the
1 Abbott, St Thomas of Canterbury, 1, p. 249.
## p. 565 (#611) ############################################
Ireland
565
health-resort at Bath. Though the better-informed may have been sceptical
of the miracles, the unforgiven king must have been glad to leave England
for Ireland, to pass the time there until the legates should come to absolve
him.
Recent events in Ireland combined with the murder to suggest that
the invasion proposed in 1155 should at last be carried out. Ireland in
the twelfth century resembled Britain in the days of Gildas. The position
of high-king was a dignity to be fought for continually, but it gave to the
winner only a nominal supremacy, a cattle tribute, and jurisdictional rights
so vague as to be indefinable. In theory, each of the five divisions of
Ireland—Ulster, Munster, Leinster, Connaught, and Meath-had its king.
In fact, the boundaries of the provinces shifted with the varying power
of the kings, whose very existence depended on success in war and the
reputation which it brought. The chief preoccupation of each king was
to keep his family in power against other families, and himself as against
other members of his own family; no thought of establishing order in
their kingdoms troubled them. Indeed, if it had, their period of power
would have been short. The Scandinavian settlements along the coast,
Dublin, Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, were centres where the Irish
tribesmen disposed of their furs and hides, and obtained the produce of
civilisation. A poor country, ridden by war, Ireland was never previously
conquered because it was not worth conquest.
The immediate occasion of Norman intervention in Ireland was an
appeal for help from the exiled King of Leinster, Dermot Mac Murrough.
Henry gave him presents, received his homage, and issued letters patent
allowing any of his subjects to assist Dermot to recover his kingdom.
Dermot found help among the Norman colonists in Wales. Richard Fitz
Gilbert, whose father had been created Earl of Pembroke by Stephen,
was anxious to win a position in another land. The marcher lords of
South Wales were steadily losing ground before the encroachments of
Rhys ap Gruffydd. Richard, generally known by his father's nickname
of Strongbow, bargained for Dermot's daughter in marriage, with the
reversion of Leinster, and made his expedition conditional upon Henry's
consent. By the end of 1169, Dermot had recovered Leinster with the
help of small bands of Norman adventurers from Wales. In spite of
Henry's withdrawal of his permission for the expedition, Strongbow
himself landed in Ireland in August 1170, married Eva, Dermot's
daughter, and succeeded him, not without opposition, on his death in
May 1171. Henry, unwilling that a subject should make a kingdom in
Ireland, prevented reinforcements from reaching Strongbow, and recalled
him. On the news of Henry's intended expedition to Ireland, Strongbow
crossed to Wales, and met the king on his way to Milford Haven. Henry
allowed him to do homage for Leinster on condition that he surrendered
the seaports. The king stayed in Ireland for six months, from October
1171 to April 1172, in which he took homage from many Irish chiefs,
CH. XVII,
## p. 566 (#612) ############################################
566
Terms of Henry's absolution
summoned a council of the Irish Church at Cashel, and authorised a
programme of ecclesiastical reform. The chief seaports were garrisoned.
Hugh de Lacy, in command at Dublin, was appointed Justiciar of Ireland,
and was allowed to create for himself a feudal principality in Meath.
The lordship of Ireland had been easily won. The Irish had no castles,
their armies were only undisciplined rabbles, and the Church was on the
side of the invaders. But Henry left Ireland to be subdued by the
adventurers. Not trusting them, he tried to balance the native chiefs
against them, and the country was therefore never conquered. When,
in 1185, a great expedition was entrusted to John, Henry's youngest
son, it proved an utter failure!
Henry left Ireland in April 1172 to meet the legates and hear the
Pope's judgment. At Avranches on 21 May he received absolution. The
terms of reconciliation were light. The king submitted to a public
penance. He swore that he did not command nor wish the archbishop's
death, that when he heard of it he grieved exceedingly, that he would
give satisfaction because he could not produce the murderers, and because
he feared that words of his had given occasion for the crime. He also
swore that he would not withdraw from Pope Alexander and his successors,
and that he would allow appeals in ecclesiastical causes, provided that,
where there was any suspicion of disloyalty, security should be given that
the appeal was not to the hurt of the king or kingdom. He vowed
to undertake a crusade, and to give to the Templars as much money as
was in their judgment necessary to maintain two hundred knights in the
defence of the Cross for one year. He pardoned all those who had been
exiled for St Thomas' sake, and swore that the possessions of the Church
of Canterbury should be as they were one year before the murder. He
swore also to destroy all the customs adverse to the Church introduced
in his time, a vague promise which king and Pope could each interpret
as he chose. The king, most unhappily, gave way in the matter of the
criminous clerks. In regard to the other principles laid down in the
Constitutions of Clarendon, there was to be a trial of strength between
the king and the Pope, or rather between the king's justices and ministers
and the ecclesiastical courts, a struggle none the less real because it was
conducted without advertisement. Something has already been said of
the struggle and its issue.
The oath to go on crusade was lightly taken. Henry evaded the
obligation by promising to build three monasteries, a promise which he
fulfilled at the least possible expense. Before the final ratification in
September of the agreement at Avranches, Henry had known that
trouble was brewing in England. His sons, encouraged by their mother,
were meditating rebellion. The young king bore the style King of the
1 For a short, but convincing, summary of the arguments with regard to the Bull
Laudabiliter (authorising Henry II to conquer Ireland), see Orpen, The Normans in
Ireland, Vol. 1, Chapter ix.
## p. 567 (#613) ############################################
Reasons for the rebellion of 1173–74
567
English, Duke of the Normans, and Count of the men of Anjou! He
had done homage to the French king for Anjou and Brittany. Geoffrey,
the second son, had done homage to his brother for Brittany, and had
himself received the homage of the men of the province. For Aquitaine,
which lay outside the young king's titles, Richard had done homage to
the King of France. No independent power had been given to any of
the king's sons. The young king's wife had not been crowned with her
husband, a grievance to Louis VII, and after the agreement at Avranches
the young king was crowned again, and his wife with him. He had his
own seal and his own court, but ministers of his father composed his
court and doubtless directed him in the use of his seal. That Henry
should commit the rule of any part of his dominions to the reckless
youth of his sons was inconceivable.
The occasion of their rebellion was Henry's attempt to provide for
his youngest son John, born in 1166 or 1167. Early in 1173, a marriage
was arranged between John and Alais, heiress of Humbert III, Count of
Maurienne. In return for the provision that the greater part of Humbert's
possessions should descend to John and his wife, Henry proposed to settle
on them the three castles of Chinon, Loudun, and Mirabeau, formerly
granted as an appanage to his second son Geoffrey. The young king
refused his consent, and fled to the French court in March 1173. His
brothers Richard and Geoffrey followed him, and Eleanor, their mother,
set off to raise Poitou for Richard. She was taken and kept in confinement.
Richard Barre, to whom Henry had entrusted the young king's seal,
brought it back to the king, and the other ministers whom Henry had
placed with his son returned to Henry, bringing with them the young
king's baggage. Henry, always generous to his sons, sent back the
ministers with rich gifts, but the young king dismissed those of them who
would not swear fealty to him against his father. Walter the chaplain,
Ailward the chamberlain, and William Blund the usher, returned to the
old king; of the labours of the two last in the king's service the Pipe
Rolls give ample evidence.
Barons of every province of the continental Angevin dominions joined
the rebellion. The Counts of Flanders and Boulogne and William, King
of Scots, gave their support. To secure it, the young king made lavish
grants. His charters were sealed with a new seal which the King of
France had had made for him. All Kent, with the castles of Rochester
and Dover, was to go to the Count of Flanders; Carlisle and Westmor-
land were promised to the King of Scots; the earldom of Huntingdon
and the county of Cambridge, to which the King of Scots had inherited
a claim, were promised to his brother David. In England, the rebels were
joined by Hugh, Earl of Chester, Robert “Blanchesmaines,” Earl of
| The young king's style is so recorded in a writ, the original of which has
survived, issued on behalf of the priory of St Frideswide, Oxford. Bod. Lib. Oxford,
Charters, 59.
CH. XVII.
## p. 568 (#614) ############################################
568
Balance of parties
Leicester (son of Henry's justiciar), William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby,
Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, and Roger de Mowbray, a great baron in
Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire. They brought to the cause of the
young king a great stretch of England and many castles. Leicester was
a centre for the rebels, with Leicester Castle supported by Groby Castle
five miles to the north-west and Mountsorrel seven miles to the north.
The Ferrers castles of Duffield in Derbyshire and Tutbury in Stafford-
shire, the Bigod castles of Bungay and Framlingham in Suffolk, and the
Mowbray castles of Thirsk and Kirkby Malzeard in Yorkshire, were all
held for the young king.
On Henry's side were the mass of the clergy. The legates sent to
give Henry absolution remained to attempt a reconciliation between him
and his sons: At their suggestion, Henry proceeded to fill all vacant
bishoprics and abbeys. It was not Henry's fault that the see of Canter-
bury had not been filled before, for the perennial quarrel between the prior
and monks of Canterbury and the provincial bishops delayed every election.
The six bishops now appointed were all chosen for their politics rather than
for their religious zeal. Richard of Ilchester, elected Bishop of Winchester,
was a skilled financier. Geoffrey Ridel, elected Bishop of Ely, had suc-
ceeded Becket as Archdeacon of Canterbury and had borne the king's seal.
Both of them were bitter opponents of Becket, and had been excom-
municated in the course of the struggle. The king's illegitimate son,
Geoffrey, was elected Bishop of Lincoln. In June, the monks of Canter-
bury were conciliated by the election of Richard, prior of St Martin's at
Dover, to the archbishopric. The young king's attempt to prevent the
consecration of the prelates probably did much to confirm the eccle-
siastical order in its support of his father; the only English bishop who
finally joined the rebels was Hugh Puiset of Durham.
Among the barons, there were on the king's side his uncle Reginald,
Earl of Cornwall, his half-brother Hamelin, Earl Warenne, his cousin
William, Earl of Gloucester, William de Mandeville, Earl of Essex,
Simon de Sentliz, Earl of Northampton, and William de Albini, Earl of
Arundel. Although the most powerful of the earls were in revolt, the
baronage as a whole was on the king's side. The rebel castles were
more than balanced by the royal castles and those of loyal barons. The
fee of the Earl of Derby was roughly balanced by the honour of Peverel,
then in the king's hand, with its castles of Nottingham, Bolsover, and
the Peak. John de Lacy, constable of Chester, was on the king's side,
and his loyalty made Roger de Mowbray's defection of less moment. In
East Anglia, the Warennes balanced the Bigods, and in the west, the
loyal marchers and the king's Welsh auxiliaries balanced the Farl of
Chester. In the north, the Umfravilles, Vauxes, Vescis, Bruces, Balliols,
and Stutevilles, balanced the King of Scots. The mass of men, the lesser
baronage, the sheriff's, and above all the new ministerial class, were
solidly on Henry's side. Richard de Luci the justiciar, himself an Essex
## p. 569 (#615) ############################################
First summer of rebellion
569
baron holding the castle and honour of Ongar, raised forces and gar-
risoned castles. The Kymes of Lincolnshire, richer than most baronial
families, were active in the king's support. If Henry's sons expected a
glad response in England to the call of anarchy, they were disillusioned.
The rebellion began with an attack upon Henry's position in northern
France. The Earl of Chester, hereditary Viscount of Avranches and
Bayeux, ravaged Brittany, in association with Breton nobles. The young
king, with the Counts of Flanders and Boulogne, advanced from the east,
while the King of France laid siege to Verneuil. Louis VII, though he
could intrigue, could not carry through a war. He and his allies had no
concerted plan; the brains were all on Henry's side. His castles were
ready to stand siege, and he himself with a competent force could go
where he was needed. Brittany was cleared of rebels by the end of July
1173, and the Earl of Chester was taken prisoner with many other nobles.
The King of France did no more than sack Verneuil and then retreat
before Henry. The rebel forces operating in the east took Aumâle, but
after Matthew, Count of Boulogne, had been mortally wounded did no
more. At a meeting between Trie and Gisors in September, Henry made
generous offers to his sons, though denying them independent rule; his
terms were refused, and after the meeting the rebels and their allies seem
to have concluded that an attack on England must be made.
In England, the centres of war were the midlands, the north, and the
east. There also no definite plan can be traced. No other warfare was
possible at this period than a series of sieges and counter-sieges, raids
and counter-raids, for neither side could call itself victorious while the
other side still held unreduced castles. The justiciar took the offensive by
laying siege to Leicester, and if he could have taken it, the fall of Groby
and Mountsorrel would soon have followed. The town of Leicester was
almost entirely destroyed by an accidental fire. The townsfolk came to
terms, but the castle still held out. The justiciar arranged a truce that
he might be free to meet a Scotch inroad, and together with Humphrey de
Bohun, the king's constable, he chased the Scots into Scotland; but he was
then obliged to make a truce with them until 13 January 1174, in order
to turn south to meet an invasion by the Earl of Leicester with a body of
mercenaries. The earl was one of Henry's bitterest opponents at this time.
He may possibly have felt slighted because he had not succeeded his father
as justiciar, though his conduct during the rebellion gives no indication
that he had any of the ability necessary for such an office. He landed
at Walton near Felixstowe about 18 October 1173. Walton was a royal
castle, and the earl failed to take it. He joined the Earl of Norfolk at
Framlingham, and together they attacked and took the great castle of
Haughley, held for the king by Ranulf de Broc. At Bury St Edmunds,
on his way to Leicester, the earl heard of the approach of the royal
army under the constable, supported by the Earls of Cornwall, Gloucester,
and Arundel. He retreated before they came up, and tried to escape to
CH. XVII.
## p. 570 (#616) ############################################
570
Second summer of rebellion
Leicester by passing to the north. They met him at Fornham St Gene-
vieve three miles north-west of Bury. "In the twinkling of an eye” the
battle was over, and the earl and his wife were prisoners. Winter was
now coming on, and a truce was made with the Earl of Norfolk, to last
until 19 May 1174, on condition that his Flemish mercenaries were sent
back over sea. The Bishop of Durham arranged for a prolongation of
the truce with the Scots until the end of March, and the Northumbrian
barons paid the King of Scots two hundred pounds for the respite.
The winter was passed in preparation for the final struggle. The
Bishop of Durham, abandoning his pretence of loyalty, fortified his epis-
copal castle of Northallerton, while Roger de Mowbray strengthened his
castles of Thirsk and Kirkby Malzeard, and put into a defensible state a
derelict castle at Kinnard Ferry in the Isle of Axholme, of which he was
lord. The site of the castle can still be seen at Owston Ferry by the
lower Trent. A typical Norman motte and bailey, it had probably been
an adulterine castle of Stephen's time, from which the broad and fertile
flats of Axholme could be protected. The castles of Bamburgh, Wark,
and Carlisle, the border fortresses of Liddel and Harbottle, Prudhoe
Castle on the Tyne, Appleby and Brough-under-Stainmoor, were all held
for the king. The rebel plan for 1174, as for the previous year, seems to
have involved a threefold attack on Henry's supporters. The King of
France intended that the young king and the Count of Flanders should
land in East Anglia to join the Earl of Norfolk. In the midlands, the
Earl of Derby, David, the Scottish Earl of Huntingdon, and Anketill
Mallory, the constable of Leicester, tried to reduce the neighbouring
towns.
