1170

To obviate this danger Henry again sought to make peace with Thomas. An agreement was come to on the vague terms that the past should be forgotten on both sides. Henry perhaps hoped that when Thomas was once again in England he would be too wise to rake up the question of his claim to crown the king. If it was so he was soon disappointed. On December 1, 1170, Thomas landed at Sandwich and rode to Canterbury amid the shouts of the people. He refused to release from excommunication the bishops who had taken part in young Henry's coronation unless they would first give him satisfaction for the wrong done to the see of Canterbury, thus showing that he had forgotten nothing.

The aggrieved bishops at once crossed the sea to lay their complaint before Henry. "What a parcel of fools and dastards," cried Henry impatiently, "have I nourished in my house, that none of them can be found to avenge me on one upstart clerk!" Four of his knights took him at his word, and started in all haste for Canterbury. The archbishop before their arrival had given fresh offense in a cause more righteous than that of his quarrel with the bishops. Ranulf de Broc and others who had had the custody of the lands in his absence refused to surrender them, robbed him of his goods, and maltreated his followers. On Christmas Day he excommunicated them and repeated the excommunication of the bishops. On December 29 the four knights sought him out. They do not seem at first to have intended to do him bodily harm. The excommunication of the king's servants before the king had been consulted was a breach of the Constitutions of Clarendon, and they bade him, in the king's name, to leave the kingdom. After a hot altercation the knights retired to arm themselves. The archbishop was persuaded by his followers to take refuge in the church. In rushed the knights crying, "Where is the traitor? Where is the archbishop?" "Behold me," replied Thomas, "no traitor, but a priest of God." The assailants strove to lay hands upon him. He struggled and cast forth angry words upon them. In the madness of their wrath they struck him to the ground and slew him as he lay.

Archbishop Thomas did not die as a martyr for any high or sacred cause. He was not a martyr for the faith, like those who had been thrown to the lions by the Roman emperors. He was not a martyr for righteousness. He was a martyr for the privileges of his order and of his see. Yet if he sank below the level of the great martyrs, he did not sink to that lowest stage at which men cry

1171-1172

out for the preservation of their privileges, after those privileges have ceased to benefit any but themselves. The sympathy of the mass of the population shows the persistence of a widespread belief that in maintaining the privileges of the clergy Thomas was maintaining the rights of the protectors of the poor. This sentiment was only strengthened by his murder. All through Europe the news was received with a burst of indignation. Of that indignation the Pope made himself the mouthpiece. In the summer of 1171 two Papal legates appeared in Normandy to excommunicate Henry unless he was able to convince them that he was guiltless of the murder. Henry was too cautious to abide their coming. He crossed first to England and then to Ireland, resolving to have something to offer the Pope which might put him in a better humor.

In the domain of art, Ireland was inferior to no European nation. In political development it lagged far behind. Tribe warred with tribe and chief with chief. The Church was as disorganized as the State, and there was little discipline exercised outside the monasteries. For some time the Popes and the Archbishops of Canterbury had been anxious to establish a better regulated Church system, and in 1154 Adrian IV.-the only Englishman who was ever Pope-hoping that Henry would bring the Irish Church under Papal order, had made him a present of Ireland, on the ground that all islands belonged to the Pope.

Henry, however, had too much to do during the earlier years of his reign to think of conquering Ireland. In 1166 the chief of Leinster appealed to Henry for aid. Henry gave him leave to carry over to Ireland any English knights whom he could persuade to help him. Several went and were victorious, but the rule of these knights was a rule of cruelty and violence, and, what was more, it might well become dangerous to Henry himself. When Henry landed in Ireland in 1171 he set himself to restore order. The Irish and the invaders both acknowledged him because they dared not resist him. He gathered a synod of the clergy at Cashel, arranged for the future discipline of the Church, and showed the Pope that his friendship was worth having. Unhappily he could not remain long in Ireland, and when he left it the old anarchy and violence blazed up again. Though Henry had not served Ireland, he had gained his own personal ends.

In the spring of 1172 Henry was back in Normandy. The English barons were longing to take advantage of his quarrel with

1172-1181

the Church, and his only chance of resisting them was to propitiate the Church. He met the Papal legates, swore that he was innocent of the death of Thomas, and renounced the Constitutions of Clarendon. He then proceeded to pacify Louis VII., whose daughter was married to the younger Henry, by having the boy recrowned in due form. Young Henry was a foolish lad, and took it into his head that because he had been crowned his father's reign was at an end. In 1173 he fled for support to his father-in-law and persuaded him to take up his cause. The great English barons of the north and center rose in insurrection, and William the Lion, king of the Scots, joined them. De Lucy, the Justiciar, stood up for Henry; but, though he gained ground, the war was still raging in the following year, 1174. In the spring of that year the rebels were gaining the upper hand, and the younger Henry was preparing to come to their help. In July the elder Henry landed in England. For the first and only time in his life he brought to England the mercenaries who were paid with the scutage money. At Canterbury he visited the tomb of Thomas, now acknowledged as a martyr, spent the whole night in prayer and tears, and on the next morning was, at his own request, scourged by the monks as a token of his penitence. That night he was awakened by a messenger with good news. Ranulf de Glanvile had won for him a great victory at Alnwick, had dispersed the barons' host, and had taken prisoner the Scottish king. About the same time the fleet which was to bring his son over was dispersed by a storm. Within a few weeks the whole rebellion was at an end. It was the last time that the barons ventured to strive with the king till the time came when they had the people and the Church on their side. William the Lion was carried to Normandy, where, by the treaty of Falaise, he acknowledged himself the vassal of the king of England for the whole of Scotland.

In September, 1174, there was a general peace. In 1181 Henry issued the Assize of Arms, organizing the old fyrd in a more serviceable way. Every English freeman was bound by it to find arms of a kind suitable to his property, that he might be ready to defend the realm against rebels or invaders. The Assize of Arms is the strongest possible evidence as to the real nature of Henry's government. He had long ago sent back to the Continent the mercenaries whom he had brought with him in the peril of 1174, and he now intrusted himself not to a paid standing army, but to

1172-1185

the whole body of English freemen. He was in truth, king of the English not merely because he ruled over them, but because they were ready to rally round him in arms against those barons whose ancestors had worked such evil in the days of Stephen. England was not to be given over either to baronial anarchy or to military despotism.

In England Henry ruled as a national king over a nation which, at least, preferred his government to that of the barons. The old division between English and Norman was dying out, and though the upper classes, for the most part, still spoke French, intermarriages had been so frequent that there were few among them who had not some English ancestors and who did not understand the English language. Henry was even strong enough to regain much that he had surrendered when he abandoned the Constitutions of Clarendon. In his continental possessions there was

no such unity. The inhabitants of each province were tenacious of their own laws and customs, and this was especially the case with the men of Aquitaine. Henry, in 1172, having appointed his eldest son, Henry, as the future ruler of Normandy and Anjou as well as of England, gave to his second son, Richard, the immediate possession of Eleanor's duchy of Aquitaine. In 1181 he provided for his third son, Geoffrey, by a marriage with Constance, the heiress of Brittany, over which country he claimed a feudal superiority as Duke of the Normans. Yet, though he gave away so much to his sons, he wished to keep the actual control over them all. The arrangement did not turn out well. He had set no good example of domestic peace. His sons knew that he had married their mother for the sake of her lands, that he had subsequently thrown her into prison and had been faithless to her with a succession of mistresses. Besides this, they were torn away from him by the influence of the men whom they were set to rule. John, the fourth son, who was named Lackland from having no territory assigned to him, was, as yet, too young to be troublesome. Both Richard and Geoffrey had taken part with their brother Henry in the great revolt of 1173. In 1177 they were again quarreling with their father and with each other. Henry loved his children, and could never bring himself to make war very seriously against them. Henry died young in 1183, and Geoffrey in 1185. Richard was now the heir of all his father's lands, from the Tweed to the Pyrenees. Henry made an effort to provide for John in

1185-1189

Ireland, and in 1185 he sent the youth-now eighteen years oldto Dublin to rule as king of Ireland. John soon showed his incompetence. Before the end of the year his father was obliged to recall him.

The divisions in Henry's family were stirred up afresh by the new king of France, Philip II., who had succeeded his father, Louis VII., in 1179. Philip was resolved to enlarge his narrow dominions at the expense of Henry. He was Henry's feudal lord, and he was crafty enough to know that by assisting Henry's sons he might be able to convert his nominal lordship into a real power. News, however, arrived in the midst of the strife which for a little time put an end to the discords of men and peoples. The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was attacked by the Mohammedan warrior Saladin, who in 1187 took Jerusalem and almost every city still held by the Christians in the East. Tyre alone held out, and that, too, would be lost unless help came speedily.

For a moment the rulers of the West were shocked at the tidings from the East. In 1188 Philip, Henry, and Richard had taken the cross as the sign of their resolution to recover the Holy City from the infidel. To enable him to meet the expenses of a war in the East, Henry imposed upon England a new tax of a tenth part of all movable property, which is known as the Saladin tithe, but in a few months those who were pledged to go on the crusade were fighting with one another-first Henry and Richard against Philip, and then Philip and Richard against Henry. At last, in 1189, Henry, beaten in war, was forced to submit to Philip's terms, receiving in return a list of those of his own barons who had engaged to support Richard against his father. The list reached him when he was at Chinon, ill and worn out. The first name on it was that of his favorite son John. The old man turned his face to the wall. "Let things go now as they will," he cried bitterly. "I care no more for myself or for the world." After a few days of suffering he died. The last words which passed his lips were, "Shame, shame upon a conquered king."

The wisest and most powerful ruler can only assist the forces of nature; he cannot work against them. Those who merely glance at a map in which the political divisions of France are marked as they existed in Henry's reign, cannot but wonder that Henry did not make himself master of the small territory which was directly governed, in turn, by Louis VII. and Philip II. A