skilful illumination of manuscripts it surpassed them all. It had no mean school of music and song. In political development it lagged far behind. Ireland was still in the tribal stage, and had never been welded into unity by foreign conquerors, as Gaul had been welded into unity by the Romans, and as England had been welded into unity by the Normans. Tribe warred with tribe and chief with chief. The efforts of chiefs to attain supremacy over the whole island had always ended in partial or complete failure. The Danes had made settlements in Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, and Limerick, but though the native Celtic population was not strong enough to expel them, neither were they strong enough to conquer the Celts. The Church was as disorganised 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.

21. Partial Conquest of Ireland. 1166-1172.-Henry, however, had too much to do during the earlier years of his reign to think of conquering Ireland. In 1166 Dermot, king or chief of Leinster, having been driven out of his dominions, appealed to Henry for aid. Henry gave him leave to carry over to Ireland any English knights whom he could persuade to help him. On this a number of knights from South Wales, of whom the most important was Richard de Clare, afterwards known as Strongbow, flocked across the Irish Sea (1169-1170). They fought and conquered, and Strongbow, who married Dermot's daughter, gave himself the title of Earl of Leinster. The rule of these knights was a rule of cruelty and violence, and, what was more, it might well become dangerous to Henry himself. If feudal nobles established themselves in Ireland, they might soon be holding out a hand to help the feudal nobles who were Henry's worst enemies in England. When Henry landed in Ireland in 1171 he set himself to restore order. The Irish welcomed him because he alone could bridle the invaders, and the invaders submitted to him because they dared not resist him. He gathered a synod of the clergy at Cashel, and arranged for the future discipline of the Church. 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. He had frightened Strongbow and his followers, and had

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shown the Pope, by his proceedings at Cashel, that his friendship was worth having.

22. Young Henry's Coronation and the Revolt of the Barons. 1172-1174-In the spring of 1172 Henry was back in Normandy. The English barons were longing to

take advantage of his quarrel with the Church, and his only chance of resisting them was to propitiate the Church. He met the Papal legates at Avranches, 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. "Your master," said Louis to the ambassadors of the father, "is king no longer. Here stands the king of the English." These words were the signal for a general attack on the elder king. Headed by Louis, his neighbours and discontented subjects took arms against him, and it was not till September that he prevailed over them. In July the great English barons of the north and centre 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 ac

Mitre of Archbishop Thomas of Canterbury preserved at Sens.

knowledged 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

Military and civil costume of the latter part of the twelfth century.

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.

23. The Assize of Arms. 1181.-In September 1174 there was a general peace. In 1181 Henry issued the Assize of Arms,

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organising 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 entrusted himself not to a paid standing army, but to 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.

24. Henry II. and his Sons. 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 amongst them who had not some English ancestress 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, the country south of the Loire, who differed in habits, and even in language, from the Frenchmen of Normandy and Anjou. They therefore found it difficult to give a share of the allegiance which they owed to their own duchess, Eleanor, to her Angevin husband, the king of England. Henry in 1172 having appointed his eldest son, Henry, as the future ruler of Normandy and Anjou as well as of England, thought it wise to recognise this feeling by giving 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. Richard was dragged away from his father by the interests and feelings of the men of Aquitaine, Geoffrey by the interests and feelings of the men of Brittany. 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 quarrelling with their father and with each other. "Dost thou not know," was the message which Geoffrey sent to his father, "that it is our proper nature, planted in us by inheritance from our ancestors, that none of us should love the other, but that ever brother should strive with brother and son against father? I would not that thou shouldst deprive us of our hereditary right nor vainly seek to rob us of our nature." 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 Ireland, and in 1185 he sent the youth— now eighteen years old-to Dublin to rule as king of Ireland. John soon showed his incompetence. He was rude to the English barons, and still ruder to the Irish chiefs, amusing himself by laughing at their dress and pulling the hairs out of their beards. Before the end of the year his father was obliged to recall him.

25. The Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. 1187.-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 1 Genealogy of the sons and grandchildren of Henry II. :—