England under the Angevin Kings, Volumes I and II

Details Eadward the Confessor’s final prophecy, which was initially dismissed as nonsensical but was reinterpreted a century later to describe England’s political restoration: the “green tree” of the West-Saxon monarchy was felled by William the Conqueror’s invasion, and three successive foreign rulers separated the surviving English royal branch from its root. Henry I’s marriage to Eadgyth, a princess of the old English royal line, was seen as the “regrafting” that restored the line. While one child of the union, William the Ætheling, died young, another child produced the future line of English rulers, and the long-held national ideal of English unity and prosperity associated with Eadward began to take tangible form under Henry Fitz-Empress.

Describes the unusual emergence of an English national revival under the alien Angevin regime, contrasting it with earlier periods of foreign overlordship such as the rule of Cnut the Dane, who ruled England as his home kingdom. Explains that the Angevin counts and kings (including Henry II and his sons) viewed England as a resource to fund their continental ambitions and a safe refuge, not as their home, so the revival was not completed until the reign of Edward I, when the dynasty had become fully integrated into English identity. Notes that understanding Henry I’s role in this revival requires context of the Angevin dynasty’s origins and the state of England when Henry of Anjou first took the crown.

Recounts William Rufus’s failed attempt to build a trans-channel Norman empire stretching from Scotland to the Pyrenees. In 1100, the Duke of Aquitaine offered his territories to Rufus as security for joining the Crusade; Rufus had already gained the Duchy of Normandy from his brother Robert and recaptured the county of Maine, so accepting Aquitaine would have created a near-continuous Norman realm. Rufus joked he would hold his next Christmas feast at Poitiers, but he was killed in the New Forest that same evening, collapsing the plan. Robert returned from Crusade to reclaim Normandy, while English barons bypassed Robert to elect his English-born brother Henry as king.

Traces Henry I’s early life and path to power: born in England to William and Matilda, he was the only son born to a reigning king and queen but was excluded from his father’s inheritance, receiving only a £10,000 cash legacy. He later purchased the Cotentin, Avranchin, and Mont-Saint-Michel from his cash-strapped brother Robert for £3,000, but was imprisoned by Robert after William Rufus seized his English estates. Following his release, he supported Robert against Rufus, but the brothers later conspired to strip Henry of his lands, leading to a 15-day siege of Mont-Saint-Michel where Henry surrendered and was left landless, wandering with a tiny retinue across France and the Vexin. He later gained control of the strategic fortress of Domfront after its citizens rebelled against their tyrannical lord, built his power base in Normandy, and became William Rufus’s vassal in 1095, fighting for Rufus against Robert.

Analyzes Henry I’s personality, contrasting him with his impulsive brothers William Rufus and Robert. Henry was a pragmatic, cold, and calculating “man of business” with no romantic or chivalric idealism, defined by exceptional self-control and a high capacity for hard work, traits his brothers completely lacked. He was well-educated for a layman of his era, retained literary interests throughout his life, and approached all interactions as transactional, from purchasing the Cotentin to arranging his heir’s marriage. His steady, reason-driven nature made him uniquely suited to navigate the political crises of his time, though he lacked the passionate idealism associated with great leaders.

Recounts Henry’s rapid seizure of power after William Rufus’s sudden death in 1100: he secured control of the treasury, won the support of key barons and prelates, and was crowned before opposition could organize. Anticipating a challenge from Robert of Normandy, who would claim the English throne, he issued a coronation charter promising to abolish his brother’s unjust governance: restoring church freedom and ending the sale of church offices, exempting knight-service tenants from extra taxes on their demesne lands, ending feudal barons’ practice of unjust exactions (wardships, forced marriages, unfair reliefs and forfeitures) toward their under-tenants, and restoring the laws of Edward the Confessor as modified by William the Conqueror. He also imprisoned the widely hated minister Ralf Flambard, recalled the exiled Archbishop Anselm, and married Eadgyth of Scotland, a descendant of the old English royal line, to solidify his popular support.

Recounts Robert of Normandy’s 1101 invasion of England, spurred by Ralf Flambard’s escape to Normandy and his persuasion of English coastal sailors to let Robert land at Portsmouth instead of the expected landing site of Pevensey. Henry renewed his coronation charter to win over the English people, who remained loyal to him as an English-born king married to an English royal princess, while most Norman barons initially favored Robert. The two armies met at Alton, but through the counsel of Archbishop Anselm, loyal barons, or Henry himself, the confrontation was resolved peacefully. The Treaty of Alton saw Robert renounce his claim to the English throne in exchange for a yearly pension from England; Henry gave up all his Norman possessions except Domfront, whose citizens refused to surrender him to Robert; and the brothers agreed that whichever survived the other would inherit his dominions if he had no legitimate heirs.

The treaty between Henry I and Robert of Normandy was ratified at Winchester in the first days of August 1101, almost on the anniversary of the death of William Rufus (the Red King), formally ending the last Norman invasion of England.

Like the earlier Treaty of Caen, the Winchester Treaty failed to resolve the core challenge of controlling the Norman baronage. Competing historical accounts of the treaty's terms exist: one claims it stipulated that individuals who incurred forfeiture in England for supporting Robert or in Normandy for supporting Henry would face no punishment, while the more probable account states the brothers agreed to cooperate in punishing traitors on both sides of the Channel.

Henry I systematically punished baronial offenders in England through formal legal processes: some were heavily fined, others stripped of their honors and exiled. He framed these actions as avenging treason against the peace and order of the realm rather than personal offenses against himself. Ivo of Grantmesnil was fined to the verge of ruin for waging private war against his neighbors, a practice common in Normandy but previously unseen in England during Henry's reign.

Robert of Bellême, a powerful border lord with holdings in England, Normandy, and Ponthieu, was fortifying his Bridgenorth and Arundel castles in preparation for open revolt when he was summoned to stand trial on 45 charges of treason against Henry as king of England and duke of Normandy. After failing to appear for trial, he faced Henry's siege of Bridgenorth, which surrendered in three weeks; Shrewsbury and Arundel followed suit, and Robert surrendered all his English possessions to secure his personal safety.

With Robert of Bellême's surrender, Henry I's rule in England was fully secured, but his elder brother Robert of Normandy failed to uphold his obligations under the Winchester Treaty. Barons expelled from England carried their treason to Normandy, where the neglectful Robert allowed them to ravage the lands of Normans loyal to Henry.

From 1103 onward, the central conflict between Henry I and his brother Robert shifted entirely to Normandy. Henry's English subjects recognized his rule was now secure following the expulsion of Robert of Bellême, while Robert's refusal to punish treasonous barons who were ravaging Henry's Norman supporters made clear that only Henry's direct intervention could restore order in the duchy.

Henry I arrived in Normandy in 1104, where he was joined by many of the duchy's more moderate barons. He was temporarily placated by Robert's promises of reform and the cession of the county of Evreux, but quickly concluded that further compromise with his brother was futile.

In the last week of Lent 1105, Henry I landed at Barfleur with the full determination of making himself master of Normandy. He was immediately rallied by his Norman partisans, and soon joined by two valuable allies: Elias, count of Maine, and Geoffrey, the young count of Anjou and Henry's intended son-in-law.

Henry's Angevin and Cenomannian allies secured his first major victory with the capture of Bayeux, which was burned to the ground including its churches. Warned by Bayeux's destruction, Caen surrendered without resistance, allowing Henry to seize control of the Norman treasury.

A siege of Falaise failed after Count Elias abruptly departed for unexplained reasons, and the conflict dragged on slowly until Henry returned to England at Michaelmas to prioritize negotiations for the return of Archbishop S. Anselm.

After both Robert of Bellême and Robert of Normandy traveled to England seeking peace terms the prior year, Henry returned to Normandy the following summer, now reconciled with S. Anselm and free from domestic concerns, to focus all his energies on the final struggle for control of the duchy.

On Michaelmas Eve 1106, as Henry I besieged the castle of Tinchebray, Duke Robert of Normandy approached with his full army and ordered Henry to abandon the siege. Henry refused, offering Robert a final compromise of shared rule with Henry controlling all administration and justice across Normandy, which Robert rejected. In the ensuing battle, Robert's force had numerical superiority in foot soldiers, while Henry's host, including the flower of the Norman nobility and his Angevin, Cenomannian, and Breton allies, had more knights. Robert of Bellême fled as soon as the battle turned, causing Robert's army to collapse, and Henry captured the duke of Normandy, the count of Mortain, roughly four hundred knights, and ten thousand foot soldiers with minimal losses on his own side.

The 1106 Battle of Tinchebray reversed the 1066 Norman Conquest, establishing Normandy as a dependency of England rather than the other way around. While Henry's reign may initially appear focused on foreign warfare for personal ends, his campaigns were ultimately driven by a goal of establishing peace and order, with his domestic and foreign policy inseparably linked to securing English freedom from the tyranny of Norman barons and their French allies.

Though a brave soldier and skilled commander, Henry I did not seek glory or territorial gain from his campaigns; his core ambition was establishing peace and order. He believed a ruler's authority was best secured by preserving order, justice, and peace for all subjects, rather than ruling by terror like his brother William Rufus. He enforced justice equally across all social groups and nationalities, and his lifelong struggle against Norman barons and their allies formed the foundation of his steady, equitable governance.

From 1103 onward, Henry I faced the longstanding European investiture controversy, which had been active for 25 years before reaching England. Henry initially upheld his father William the Conqueror's "paternal customs" that granted the king authority over papal communications, church council decrees, and ecclesiastical censure of crown servants, but clashed with Archbishop S. Anselm, who insisted on obedience to the 1075 Lateran Council decree banning lay investiture of spiritual offices with ring and staff. The dispute was not a matter of widespread popular or ecclesiastical partisanship in England, with most laypeople and clergy viewing it as a personal conflict between king and archbishop, as their primary concern was avoiding another period without an archbishop like the one experienced during Anselm's earlier exile.

The settlement of the Anselm–Henry I dispute is presented as a model of decorous negotiation, contrasting favorably with the continental contest between Pope and Emperor and the later Becket quarrel. For two years the dispute did not disturb the working of the Church: Anselm ruled his suffragans and labored at reform with Henry's full concurrence, and the clergy stood loyally by the king in his struggle with the barons. Even after Anselm's position became untenable, he departed in full possession of his property, and from Burgundy maintained active correspondence with his chapter and suffragans and friendly communication with the king and Queen Matilda. When Anselm finally threatened excommunication, he did so as a calculated means to obtain peace, matching Henry's own preparations in Normandy. The resulting compromise yielded the form of investiture while the substance remained under royal control: Henry kept effective influence over elections, and the bishops' homage for their temporalities offset the renunciation of ceremonial investiture. The Church gained a recognition of spheres beyond royal despotism and an acknowledgement of the Apostolic Curia's appellate jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes. The settlement foreshadowed the eventual collapse of the William–Lanfranc system, and when the slumbering feud broke out again under Henry II, the difference between the cool Norman temper of Anselm and Henry I and the fiery Angevin temperament of Thomas Becket gave it far greater virulence.

Henry's temporal policy, like his Church policy, rested on consistent principles. Compelled at the outset to rely on his English subjects, Henry accepted the position thoroughly and never wholly abandoned it. His coronation charter pledged him to uphold "the law of King Eadward as amended by King William," committing him to continue the Conqueror's work of compromise and amalgamation. The ecclesiastical question was only the first and most prominent among many social and political problems now confronting the king as present facts. Henry made no attempt at their theoretical, systematic solution, since the time was not ripe and he was not a legislator or original thinker. He was a clear-headed, sagacious, practical man of business, precisely suited to the moment. Though his reign appears outwardly as a "day of small things" compared with the ages before and after, it was a period of essential transition preparing the way for the work of his grandson by completing that of his father.

When the secular side of Norman government comes into distinct view after the 1107 settlement, the amount of administrative development since the Conqueror's death is striking. Royal power had outgrown even nominal older restraints: the Great Council had lost real legislative and governmental functions; "counsel" had become an empty phrase and "consent" a mere matter of course. The assembly functioned as a court rather than a council, its members qualifying as tenants-in-chief of the crown; bishops retained dignity as lineal successors of the older spiritual Witan, but the 1107 compromise compelled them to hold their temporalities by baronial homage, extending the rule to lay members. The Witenagemot was gradually supplanted by an inner circle of counsellors forming a permanent ministerial body that gathered financial and judicial administration into its own hands.

This inner ministerial body appeared in two aspects: as the Curia Regis, the supreme court of judicature absorbing the judicial powers of the Witenagemot, the old court of the king's thegns, and the feudal court of the Norman tenants-in-chief; and as the Exchequer, the court receiving the crown's revenues from sheriffs, reviewing taxation, and controlling the fiscal business of the realm. Because Norman judicial, military, and social organization rested on a fiscal basis, the Exchequer furnished the principal means of studying the whole system, and the close overlap between Exchequer and Curia Regis functions made them hard to separate. They were composed of nearly the same constituent elements: the justiciar, treasurer, chancellor, constable, marshal, and their subordinates—officers who had grown from personal attendants of the sovereign into officials of the state. The system had matured in the dark during William Rufus's reign under Ralf Flambard, with the justiciar at its head as second in authority to the king in his presence and his vicegerent and chief minister in his absence.

After Flambard's fall, the office passed through Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln, before reaching Roger of Salisbury, who rose from the humblest beginnings. Encountered by Henry as a poor priest rushing through mass during the king's youthful wanderings out of Caen, Roger was enlisted as a soldier's chaplain, became his steward, and earned complete confidence. Soon after Henry's accession he was appointed chancellor, overseeing the royal seal, the chancery clerks, royal accounts, correspondence, and writs. After a complex tenure interrupted by William Giffard and Waldric, Roger resumed the chancellorship in 1106 on Waldric's elevation to Laon, then resigned it in 1107 to become bishop of Salisbury and justiciar. As justiciar-bishop he was the model and head of a trained body of administrators—mostly clerks, several his relatives, almost all "new men"—forming an official caste distinct from the feudal nobility and the people, and particularly well fitted to manage the state at that crisis. His great work as justiciar was the organization of the Exchequer, which twice yearly met around the chequered table to settle accounts with the sheriffs, amounting to a thorough review of the realm's financial condition. The Exchequer reviewed the ferm of the shire, the Danegeld compounded at a fixed rate, town "aids," feudal revenues including reliefs, wardships, marriage-dues and escheats, and the profits of the forest law. Its financial work went hand in hand with the Curia Regis's judicial work, which acted as a supreme tribunal of appeal and first resort under the king or his chief justiciar. To adjust the Domesday-based assessment to changes in land, cultivation, and forests, the barons of the Exchequer sat as judges of the King's Court on judicial circuits, holding the pleas of the crown in the shire-moots and connecting local and central judicature—the first step toward bridging the gap between lower and higher organization.

Roger and his administrative body were a separate caste, equally obnoxious to feudal nobility and people, and Henry's later preference for foreigners—men of continental birth set over both Normans and English alike—drew further odium. The words "Norman" and "English" had acquired a new meaning since the Conquest. The descendants of the Conqueror's followers retained Norman pride but were increasingly rooted in England, many with English wives and mothers, while the wars between the Conqueror's successors severed the Norman duchy from the Norman kingdom. Already under Rufus, supporters of the king of England were reckoned indiscriminately as English, and Tinchebray was counted an English victory, with Normandy thereafter regarded as a foreign dependency. Suger, abbot of S. Denis, expressed the contrast sharply by justifying Louis VI's efforts to expel Henry from Normandy on the ground that "Englishmen ought not to rule over Frenchmen, nor French over English." Orderic the Englishman, the son of a Frenchman from Orléans who married an English wife and spent his life in the Norman monastery of Saint-Evroul, illustrates the incipient fusion: he never ceased to regard his mother's country as his own. Henry's whole policy advanced this fusion directly through impartial internal administration and his relations with France and Anjou, and indirectly through the common grievance of being passed over in favor of "strangers." The first links of the chain grew stronger year by year, and Henry's grandest stroke, the marriage of his daughter and destined successor to the count of Anjou, quickened the fusion of the two races by driving them to unite against sovereigns equally alien from both.

Henry and Roger of Salisbury bound all branches of public business and classes of society to the crown through the Curia Regis and the Exchequer. The system is fully expounded in the *Dialogue* written by Roger's great-nephew, and is illustrated in operation by the one surviving Pipe Roll of Henry I's reign, that of Michaelmas 1130. The roll takes its name from its folded, pipe-like shape and was compiled annually by the treasurer. Its principal value lies less in the bare financial totals than in the personal and social detail that surrounds each entry, giving an unmatched view of the social conditions of the reign.

The 1130 Pipe Roll suggests that nearly every contingency of human life was converted into a source of royal revenue, but aside from the Danegeld there was no direct taxation, so the budget was made up of feudal levies and miscellaneous incidents assessed by a regular and fairly equitable scale. The recorded items include payments to enter or leave office, payments by heirs to enter their inheritance, payments by would-be guardians of minors, suitors paying to marry heiresses or dowered widows, and heiresses and widows paying for freedom to choose their own husbands. Some remittances were in kind—coursing-dogs, destriers, and falcons, sometimes with stipulations about their colour. Land-owners paid for permissions to exchange land, to confirm or cancel exchanges, to expedite or delay suits, and to lodge claims; both winner and loser paid the treasury. Jewish usurers paid for royal help in recovering debts from Christians, and the citizens of Gloucester promised thirty marks of silver to recover money that had been taken from them in Ireland.

English towns differed fundamentally in origin and history from the cities of Italy and Gaul, which were daughters of Rome and preserved her municipal traditions through barbarian conquest and feudal reorganization. English boroughs had no imperial past and were originally indistinguishable from ordinary rural settlements; whether sheltered within the walls of a Roman camp such as Winchester or York, planted on an ancient hill-fort like Old Sarum, gathered round a fortress raised against the Welsh or Danes like Taunton or Warwick, or clustered around a great shrine like Beverley, Malmesbury, or Oxford, a borough differed from a hamlet only in size. It was simply an unusually large township, sometimes with a ditch, palisade, or wall, or a cluster of townships that had coalesced without forming an organic whole, each component keeping its own parish, assembly, and reeve, while the general borough-moot answered to the hundred-court. The earlier and greater towns were originally free, but later towns that grew up around a noble's hall or a great monastery were dependent from the first on the lord of the soil, owing him suit and service and receiving a reeve appointed by him. Towns without another lord were reckoned royal demesnes, and their chief magistrate was a royal officer, usually called a port-reeve—a title whose first syllable, though used for the town in general, properly refers to the *porta* or market-place, the feature that gave towns their chief importance.

The Norman Conquest greatly increased the trading importance of the towns, and a sense of corporate life and unity grew up within them; they began to be recognized as a separate element in the state. This distinction was marked financially by the severance of town interests from those of their shires: a fixed "aid" varying with size and wealth replaced the Danegeld, and a town's contribution to the ferm of the shire was settled as a fixed sum paid under the name of *firma burgi*, either by the sheriff or, by special privilege, by the town itself. Merchant-gilds now appeared as legally organized bodies with authority over trade in the great mercantile cities, and confirmation of the right to hold a gild-hall (or "hans-house") became a central plank in the towns' struggles for privileges and charters. The handicraftsmen followed the merchants' lead, and in 1130 the weavers of London, Huntingdon, and Lincoln and the leather-sellers and weavers of Oxford bought formal confirmation of their gild customs from the crown; lesser towns won similar assurances from their lords, with Archbishop Thurstan's charter to Beverley expressly modelled on Henry I's grant to York.

After the cathedral of Laon was burnt in a civic tumult of 1112 and its bishop Waldric, a former chancellor of Henry I, was killed, some of the canons toured northern Gaul and then crossed to England to collect alms for the rebuilding. They sailed from Wissant in an English ship captained by a man named Coldistan, in company with Flemish merchants bound to buy English wool, and reached Dover after a narrow escape from pirates. After winning sympathy at Canterbury from the archbishop, his chapter, and the wealthy abbey of S. Augustine, they proceeded westwards into southern England, where their progress is traced through Winchester, Christchurch, Exeter, Salisbury, Wilton, Bodmin, Barnstaple, and Totnes, and on into Devon and Bristol.

Winchester, the old West-Saxon capital, had lost its primacy to London, which had surpassed it commercially and politically and was now the place of coronation and royal residence. Yet the city retained close ties with the crown: its proximity to the New Forest made it a favourite residence of the Conqueror and his sons, and William built a castle on high ground at the western end of the city and a palace in its south-eastern quarter near the cathedral and the New Minster, where he held his Easter court. The Treasury, under its English name of the "Hoard," was still permanently settled at Winchester by Eadward the Confessor and was not finally transferred to Westminster until late in Henry II's reign. Of its two great religious houses, the "Old Minster" of S. Swithun assumed its outward Norman form under its first Norman bishop, while the "New Minster," founded by Ælfred, was displaced in 1111 by Henry I's leave to a new site outside the northern boundary of the city that grew into the wealthy Hyde Abbey, after William the Conqueror had planted his palace against its west front to punish the monks who fell at Senlac. As a trading centre Winchester ranked second only to London in Henry's day, and the great yearly fair on S. Giles's Hill, east of the city, preserved a memory of the vast medieval markets once held there.

At the opposite end of the New Forest from Winchester lay the little town of Twinham—already beginning to be called Christchurch after its great priory church, rebuilt on a grand scale by Ralf Flambard. On the octave of Pentecost the canons of Laon attended the town's fair, much to the annoyance of the dean, who wished to keep the offerings of the crowd for the improvement of his own church and had no wish to share them with Our Lady of Laon.

At Exeter the Laon canons were warmly received by its archdeacon and future bishop Robert. Exeter, counted the fourth city of the kingdom in the next reign, had no natural wealth of its own—the poor rocky soil of south-coast Devon produced only oats of the poorest quality—but the mouth of the Exe offered a safe anchorage for merchant vessels from Gaul and Ireland, and though Bristol was fast drawing away the Irish trade, Exeter could still boast such abundance of merchandise that nothing required for human use was sought there in vain.

Salisbury in those days was not the city in the plain around its present Gothic minster, but the cramped hill-top site of Old Sarum, whose buried traces occasionally surface in dry summers. Crowded into that narrow circle, Bishop Roger's Salisbury was an excellent post for military security but had no prospect of industrial or commercial importance, although Roger did not disdain to accept the grant of the town's market tolls, which until 1130 had formed part of the ferm of Wilton.

Wilton, the shire-town of the county that originally took its name from it, was still, like Christchurch, of importance mainly for its abbey, where the memory of S. Eadgyth, daughter of King Eadgar, was venerated alike by English and Normans and especially by the queen who shared her royal blood and had once borne her name. The canons of Laon were more impressed to find at Wilton, in this southern setting, the tomb of Bæda, venerated as the scene of miraculous cures.

The original twelfth-century Bristol stood wholly on the high neck of the peninsula then encircled on the south-east by the Avon and on the other sides by the Frome flowing almost in a horse-shoe to join the Avon below the present Bristol Bridge; its lower course had been diverted before the Norman Conquest, and the present channel was not cut until the middle of the thirteenth century across the marshy tide-flooded expanse that made the city seem an island in the Severn sea. Within its narrow limits Bristol was a busy, closely-packed commercial city. Ostmen from Waterford and Dublin, Northmen from the Western Isles and the distant Orkneys, and even Norwegians made their way in past the "Higra"—the mighty bore in the Severn estuary whose heathen name recalled the sea-god of their forefathers—into a harbour said to hold a thousand ships. Ranking as the third city in the kingdom, surpassed only by Winchester and London, Bristol's most lucrative trade brought no credit to its burghers: the stern efforts of S. Wulfstan and the Conqueror had barely checked the kidnapping of men for the Irish slave-market, and the traffic was in full career again in the later years of Henry I, as the Laon canons discovered when they went on board ships in the harbour and were warned by their friends ashore that they would likely be carried off and sold into bondage in a foreign land.

After the itinerary of the bishops ends abruptly at Bath, attention turns to the Severn Valley. Bishop John of Tours had moved his see from Wells to Bath because of the healing virtues of its waters, and subsequently purchased the whole city from King Henry I for five hundred pounds in 1111.

The vale of Gloucester is described as an earthly paradise: a fertile district whose trees bore fruit year-round, whose roads yielded apples to passing travellers, and whose vineyards produced a juice scarcely inferior to the wines of Gaul. The Severn served both as a fertilizing river and a commercial highway, around which abbeys and towns grew and flourished.

Although Worcester remained the head of its diocese, Gloucester had outranked it politically because of its accessibility for trade and its long-standing role as an assembly site of the court under the Danish kings. Hereford, once a more important border-post, was now a city of no great size whose broken-down ramparts signalled a vanished greatness.

Chester functions for the north-western coast much as the Severn estuary does for the south: it is simultaneously the centre of trade and a bulwark against the Welsh. Beyond the Dee, however, there is little sign of industrial life, since western Yorkshire remained uncultivated moorland and its eastern half was still recovering from the Conqueror's devastating harrying of 1068.

York alone survived the ruin of sixty miles of surrounding country, preserving its unbroken civic life, ecclesiastical primacy, and commercial greatness. Its merchants enjoyed a royal charter, were organized in a gild under an alderman with their own hans-house for bye-laws, and were freed from tolls throughout the shire.

Carlisle, destroyed by the Danes in 875 and desolate for over two centuries, was restored and repopulated by William Rufus in 1092 after he expelled an English thegn holding it under Scottish protection. Rufus ringed the city with new fortifications using surviving Roman walls, brought in a colony from southern England to till the land, and before the end of Henry I's reign the settlement had grown vigorous enough to be separated from the archbishopric of York as its own diocese.

Around the fortress of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, originally raised for defence against the Scots, an industrial community began to take shape. Its customs regulated both inland and outland trade: burghers had first claim to buy the cargo of any merchant vessel; disputes with foreign merchants had to be settled before three tides had ebbed; salt and herrings had to be sold on board; and only burghers could buy wool, hides, or other merchandise outside the town, or make cloth for dyeing within it.

Northern England remained a wild and isolated region, speaking a tongue incomprehensible to southerners and living a life so unconnected with the south that King Henry still reinforced his body-guard with northern auxiliaries whenever he crossed the Humber. The district around the lower Don and the Trent was one wide morass, and what is now the busy West Riding was a vast expanse of moor and woodland stretching from Wakefield to the Peak.

The only safe line of communication between Yorkshire and mid-England was the Foss Way, which crossed the central plain and the eastern Trent valley to Lincoln, then turned north-westward to cross the Trent and continue to York. This route made Lincoln the chief station on the highway between York and the south, and trade flowed into the city by road and by the small tidal Witham, which was connected to the Trent at Torksey by the Foss Dyke, a canal of probable Roman origin cleared and made navigable again by Henry I.

Under Norman rule Lincoln rose to a new importance, as two of its quarters were transformed: the south-western by William the Conqueror's castle, built after 166 houses were swept away, and the south-eastern by Bishop Remigius's cathedral. Around these centres a new untrammelled town grew up beyond the Witham, served by the churches of S. Mary-le-Wigford and S. Peter-at-Gowts; within some fifty years Lincoln was counted among the most populous and flourishing cities in England, with its "men of the city and merchants of the shire" already united in a merchant-gild.

The translation of episcopal sees to the chief towns of their dioceses was a practice that had emerged only since the Norman Conquest. Bishop Remigius's move from Dorchester to Lincoln followed the same logic that had prompted the old Mercian bishopric to be translated from Lichfield—a "little town in the woodland"—first to Chester, and then on to the great abbey of Coventry, and that would carry the East Anglian see from Thetford to Norwich.

Norwich, which had risen to great prosperity under Scandinavian traders in the first half of the eleventh century—at the coming of the Normans containing twenty-four churches and a burgher population exceeded only by London and York—suffered heavily from the consequences of Earl Ralf's rebellion, but a new Norman "borough" grew up in the parishes of S. Peter Mancroft and S. Giles, the number of churches and chapels rose to forty-four, and Bishop Herbert Lozinga laid the foundations of the cathedral. In 1121 Henry I held his Midwinter Council at Norwich, supplanting Gloucester, and on or about this occasion the citizens received their first royal charter, whose terms are now known only from the confirmations of Henry II.

Although Oxford remained a small place statistically—containing only about a thousand dwellings in the time of the Confessor—it experienced severe decay before the Domesday survey, with more than half its houses lying waste. The Thames Valley was nevertheless the region where English town-life was growing most vigorously, and under the wise governance of Robert of Oilly and his nephew, Oxford rapidly began to embody the varied life that would make its history an epitome of England's.

The damage Oxford suffered before Domesday—possibly inflicted by the army of Eadwine and Morkere during their 1065 march southward—was quickly repaired under Robert of Oilly and his nephew. By the close of Henry I's reign, every side of Oxford's marvelously varied life was already in existence, though only in germ.

The D'Oillys strengthened the military capabilities of Oxford's site, recognized long before by Eadward the Elder. Within the natural protection of the encircling rivers, the town was closely girt about with rampart and ditch, and the mound at its western end—probably raised by Eadward himself—was made the nucleus of a mighty fortress. Beyond fortification, the D'Oillys built bridges (the High Bridge representing one built by the first Robert), restored fallen churches, and founded new ones including S. George's-in-the-Castle and likely S. Peter's-in-the-East.

Under the D'Oillys, Oxford contained sixteen churches and chapels, including those founded or restored by Robert of Oilly and his nephew: S. George's-in-the-Castle, S. Peter's-in-the-East, S. Michael, S. Mary the Virgin, and S. Mary Magdalene without the walls. The intellectual and religious center remained the ancient monastery of S. Frideswide, which had passed into the hands of the Austin canons and prospered under its learned prior Guimund. The younger Robert founded a formidable rival priory at Oseney, also for Austin canons.

The Augustinians, a new order closely associated with the revival of intellectual and social culture, made their houses the best schools of the time, training scholars for both secular and clerical careers. Their presence at Oseney and S. Frideswide's prepared Oxford's intellectual soil to receive, at the close of Henry's reign, the seeds of the first English University in the divinity lectures of Robert Pulein in 1133.

Oxford's burgher life had long gathered around S. Martin's church, where the portmannimot or general assembly of citizens was held in the churchyard. The burghers had their merchant-gild and gild-hall, their common pasture-land on the wide green "Port-meadow" beyond the Isis, and the beginnings of local industry in the leather-sellers' and weavers' gilds.

Shortly before Henry I's death, indications emerged that Oxford would regain the political position it had held under the old English and Danish kings but lost since then. A legend held that the virgin patroness Fritheswith had called down Heaven's punishment on a royal suitor, striking him blind at the gate; no king thereafter dared enter Oxford's boundaries. Henry I, whose favorite residence was at Woodstock, built himself a "new hall" just outside the northern wall in 1133 and held one Easter there—his last in England. Thereafter each rival claimant for the throne found Oxford ready to serve as a political and military center of scarcely less importance than London.

The outline of twelfth-century London was an irregular half-ellipse, fenced on the northern land side by massive walls with gates and lofty towers, while the southern wall along the Thames was gradually washed away. The eastern extremity was guarded by the Tower, founded by William the Conqueror, while the western end was protected by Castle Baynard and Montfichet. A fortress near S. Paul's was partly destroyed by the great fire before the Conqueror's death; its ditch was surrendered by Henry I to Bishop Richard for a wall enclosing the cathedral precincts, where a new Norman church was nearing completion.

S. Paul's was the rallying-point of London's municipal life: the folkmoot assembled at its eastern end in peacetime, while in war the armed burghers gathered at its west door beneath the banner of the lord of Baynard's castle. London's constitution was less a town-constitution than an epitome of England's organization—parishes, townships, franchises, churches, and gilds loosely bundled under the bishop and port-reeve. By Henry I's reign, Londoners had secured a royal charter exchanging their regally-appointed port-reeve for a sheriff of their own choice, exemption from tolls throughout the realm, and custody of crown pleas through a special justiciar. Yet the charter left intact the diverse sokens, customs, wardmoots, and hustings—making London "a shire covered with houses" rather than a compact municipality.

London's mass of growing life lay chiefly northeast of S. Paul's, where conventual and parochial churches rose among close-packed streets and alleys. The Wallbrook flowed through its heart, with barges once towed up to a landing at the eastern end of the Cheap. Beyond lay the busier East-Cheap, while a thriving Jewish quarter lay to the north along the Walbrook's upper course. Population spread beyond the walls into pleasant suburban houses, the populous Westminster suburb around the abbey and Rufus's palace, Smithfield's horse-fair plain to the northwest, and surrounding tillage-lands, pastures, watermills, and woodlands reaching toward the Chiltern Hills.

The wealthier London citizens enjoyed quasi-regal hunting rights in the surrounding woodlands, while younger burghers strolled among suburban gardens and fresh springs in summer and skated, slid, and sledged on Moorfields in winter. Both S. Paul's and S. Peter's maintained schools, as did the abbey of Bermondsey. The citizens were respected above all others for manners, dress, table, and discourse, and nearly all English bishops, abbots, and great men kept magnificent London houses. Under the old English system, a merchant who completed three long sea voyages could rank as a thegn, providing a natural link between commercial and noble classes.

The fusion of races among London's townspeople began almost from the first years of the Conquest. Norman merchants, traders, and craftsmen—lacking the knightly spirit of spoliation—flocked peacefully to seek their fortunes in the new dominions. The grinding tyranny of the Red King united victims in common suffering, but Henry I's restoration of law and order enabled industrial and commercial energy to flourish. Settlers from Rouen, Caen, and other Norman cities came to London, where years of prior commercial intercourse had worn away barriers of language and prejudice. English and Normans lived contentedly side by side—sometimes in separate quarters, but in free and amicable intercourse, with Norman refinement spreading rapidly and intermarriages becoming frequent—making London the easiest place of all for racial fusion.

Norman burghers held dominant influence in early 12th-century London, achieving this predominance through fair means and wielding it equitably. They contributed to both the city’s corporate prosperity and broader national prosperity, bringing not just wealth but enterprise, vigor, refinement, culture, and social and political progress. Their pleasant, well-ordered homes offered hospitality and refined society that outstripped the uncomfortable, isolated nature of noble castles, and provided a level of society rarely found among the rough, reckless swordsmen that made up most of the high-born lay elite.

The household of Gilbert Becket, a Rouen-born port-reeve of London known for his intelligence, industry, and upright character, and his wife Rohesia, a Caen-born woman celebrated for her domestic devotion and Christian charity, is used as a representative example of a typical early 12th-century London burgher household. Their home stood in the busy Cheapside trading quarter, near Mercer’s Hall, St. Mary Colechurch, and St. Mary-at-Bow. The household was comfortably affluent but not ostentatiously wealthy, indistinguishable from other respectable, well-to-do middle-class citizen households of the era. Their son, the future Thomas Becket, was born here, sent to school at Merton Priory in Surrey, and spent his holidays riding and hawking with Richer de L’Aigle, a young Norman knight and family friend.

Flanders, a border region of Normandy, France, and the Empire and long-standing political ally of English kings, had deep cultural and economic ties to England, with kindred blood, speech, and temperament fostering natural sympathy between the two peoples. Flemish merchants from Bruges were even more frequent visitors to London than those from Rouen and Caen, and trade with Flanders was the most important part of eastern England’s commerce. English wool was the primary raw material for the thriving Flemish weaving industry, with Dover serving as the chief export mart for wool bound for the great yearly fairs of Bruges and Ghent. Under Henry I, Flemish settlers became numerous and prosperous in English towns, arousing jealousy from both Normans and English. In 1111, Henry I planted a Flemish colony in South Pembrokeshire to subdue turbulent Welsh populations; the settlement succeeded, leaving the region a Teutonic "little England beyond Wales." These settlements were the first social and industrial links between England and the Low Countries, forerunning later larger settlements that would drive major changes in English industry.

Jews first arrived in England under William the Conqueror, who brought a Jewish colony from Rouen to London. They were favored by William Rufus, and by the 12th century were established in most major English towns, but were not considered full members of the state: they were the king’s personal chattels, exempt from toll, tax, and secular justice fines, with their wealth protected by the king but liable to seizure at his arbitrary whim. Barred from most occupations by Church restrictions on usury, they worked primarily as money-lenders, contributing to commercial expansion indirectly but playing no role in the political or social development of towns. They lived in separate, self-governing Jewry quarters, exempt from the jurisdiction of merchant guilds, port-reeves, sheriffs, and bishops, and cut off from the surrounding Christian community by social and legal barriers.

12th-century domestic architecture was largely uniform across social classes, with most homes consisting of a hall, an upper solar (used as a combined bedroom and private sitting room), a kitchen, and attached offices, almost all built of wood. Halls served as communal living, eating, working, and sleeping spaces for the entire household, with wooden floors strewn with rushes, central stone hearths, and tables and benches arranged around the fire; at night, guests and servants slept in the hall separated only by curtains, in the glow of the dying fire. Solars held simple furniture: curtainless beds, oaken iron-bound chests used as wardrobes, and in some cases cradles for infants. Wood construction made towns prone to frequent, disastrous fires (Gilbert Becket’s house burned multiple times, taking large parts of London with it), and stone houses were affordable only to great nobles or exceptionally wealthy Jews, with most buildings roofed with thatch. All architectural effort of the period was focused on military and ecclesiastical construction, with even castles being simple, defense-focused stone structures with no emphasis on comfort or aesthetic elegance.

Dress was a key outlet for personal luxury in the period, as architectural focus was directed toward military and religious building. During William Rufus’s reign, noble attire had grown extremely extravagant, with long scented curled hair, feminine ornaments, pointed shoes, and flowing garments that made physical exercise impossible, drawing harsh criticism from senior churchmen. After Rufus’s death, Henry I and his ally Robert of Meulan led a reform movement returning to more practical Norman knightly dress: close-fitting tunics paired with long cloaks reaching almost to the feet for riding and walking. English townspeople adopted cross-Channel fashions, while rural populations retained older traditional dress, including the linen smock-frock that remained common among English country people for centuries.

By the 12th century, the ancient Anglo-Saxon township had fully transformed into the feudal manor, the center of rural life. The manor house (evolved from the thegn’s hall) sat at the center of the estate, surrounded by the lord’s demesne land, cultivated by free tenants and villeins whose cottages clustered at the demesne border. Villein holdings, along with shared common pasture, woodland, and hay meadow, made up the rest of the estate. Arable land was divided into large open fields split into acre or half-acre strips scattered across multiple fields; tenants contributed oxen to shared plough teams used to cultivate the fields. On estates like Peterborough Abbey’s, holdings were typically virgates (30 acres, requiring 2 oxen for the standard 4-ox plough team) or half-virgates (15 acres, requiring 1 ox). Tenants also held rights to common pasture, hay, and woodland (for pig forage, turf, and fuel), and some landless cottiers held small homes with or without gardens in exchange for work as essential village craftsmen including blacksmiths, carpenters, and wheelwrights. Mills, a key institution on every large manor, paid fixed money rents, sometimes plus fish tributes from their streams.

Villein tenure required holders to fulfill obligations to the lord, discharged via labor on the demesne, customary payments in money or kind, and occasional specialized "boon" or "bene-work" for specific seasonal tasks. The manor reeve or bailiff supervised all manor operations, including labor regulation, farm stock maintenance, due collection, unoccupied land leasing, and revenue accounting. Villeins were bound to perform "week-work": a set number of days of labor on the demesne each week (generally 2–3 days per virgate held in villenage year-round, with extra days required at harvest). Customary dues varied by individual manor custom, and included payments in kind or money, plus specialized services such as woodhewing, carting, turf cutting, thatch making, malt production, hay mowing and carrying, fence building, plough provision, and demesne ploughing, sowing, harrowing, and reaping. Some tenants held land in exchange for specialized village roles: cowherds, oxherds, shepherds, and swineherds occupied land "by their service" in return for overseeing the lord’s flocks and herds, with their wives sometimes owing additional labor rents such as winnowing and reaping demesne corn.

This section details manorial obligations recorded in the Peterborough *Liber Niger*, including labor dues, cash and in-kind payments, and service requirements for different tenant classes (full villeins, half villeins, bordarii, sokemen, and cottagers) across manors including Thorp, Colingham, Easton, Fisherton, and Oundle. Services required of tenants include weekly and seasonal agricultural labor, ploughing, harrowing, wood and turf collection, mill and market rent payments, and produce obligations such as grain, livestock, eggs, and linen for the abbey's use.

This section outlines the reciprocal rights and duties binding lords and villeins under the feudal system. Villeins were obligated to provide labor and customary dues to their lord, but were protected by a strict, long-prescribed customary code that limited the lord's arbitrary power over them, secured their land tenure and household goods as long as they fulfilled their obligations, and prohibited eviction even for unpaid dues. Legal recourse was available to villeins against their lord, as demonstrated by the 31 Henry I Pipe Roll record of Alfred of Cheaffword paying a 40-shilling fine for scourging his own villein. The interdependent feudal chain tying villeins to their land mirrored the obligations of higher feudal ranks, from knights to barons, to the king, as illustrated by Count William of Evreux's complaint that his homage and services had been transferred to Henry I without his consent.

This section first notes that unqualified personal freedom was often a dubious benefit if it meant the loss of local social ties and accustomed means of subsistence, before outlining three primary paths to villein enfranchisement: manumission by a lord, often granted on the lord's deathbed or as penance for sin under Church influence; flight to a chartered town, where a villein who evaded recapture for a year and a day gained status as a free burgher under the town's customs; and taking holy orders, as ordination or monastic admission automatically conferred freedom even if performed without the lord's consent, a practice that was widely accepted by the reign of Henry II despite royal prohibitions.

This section assesses the state of the English Church under Henry I, noting that while it avoided the open corruption and blatant sale of ecclesiastical offices seen under William Rufus, it was effectively subordinated to the state as a tool of secular governance. Key bishoprics were awarded to able administrators who served as royal ministers, and while these clerical officials were far more honest and competent than the corrupt appointees of Henry's predecessor, their focus on temporal duties left them neglectful of their spiritual responsibilities as bishops and priests. The true spiritual vitality of the Church persisted not among its high officials, but among its humble lay members.

This section traces the origins and early development of the Augustinian Canons (Canons Regular of the Order of St. Augustine), a 12th-century religious reform movement responding to widespread abuses in both monastic and secular clerical life. Failed attempts to impose the 8th-century Rule of Chrodegang on secular cathedral clergy in England and on the Continent led earnest reformers to establish a new order that blended the communal living and binding vows of traditional monasticism with a simpler, more flexible organizational structure. This structure allowed the order to support both active pastoral ministry and contemplative religious life, enabling it to adapt to diverse contexts and bridge the gap between lax secular clerical establishments and rigid monastic orders.

Austin canons arrived in England at the start of Henry I's reign, with their earliest settlement illustrating the intimate connection between the concurrent religious and national revival in the country.

The first Austin priory in England was founded in 1108 by Queen Matilda (referred to as "Maude the good queen" in the community's traditional accounts) in the soke of Aldgate, just inside London's eastern wall. Part of its endowment came from property surrendered by an old English cnihtengild for the benefit of the new community. The priory was dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and its first prior, Norman, a Kentish native who had studied under S. Anselm in Gaul, introduced the Augustinian order to Matilda and later served as her confessor. The fledgling brotherhood initially struggled to secure food, but after placing empty plates in the refectory to draw the sympathy of local citizens, London burgher-wives pledged to bring a loaf each Sunday, resolving their shortages.

Roughly fifteen years after the founding of Holy Trinity Aldgate, Rahere, a former minstrel to the king, established an Austin priory on marshy waste land along the eastern edge of Smithfield, dedicated to S. Bartholomew, and attached a hospital for the sick and poor to the house. The hospital's master Alfhun, almost certainly an English-born London citizen, regularly begged in city markets to fund care for the hospital's patients, a practice compared to that of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The Augustinian house at Merton in Surrey prioritized educational work. Founded in 1117, the same year its most famous early scholar Thomas Becket (son of Gilbert Becket) was born.

Kirkham Priory in Yorkshire was founded by Walter Lespec, one of the most respected lay barons of the era, who established the house on the site where his only son had died, devoting his son's intended inheritance to God's service as an act of grief.

By the end of Henry I's reign, Austin canons had attained significant ecclesiastical prominence: two members of the order were elevated to bishoprics, with one appointed to the primacy of all Britain.

After a five-year vacancy following the 1122 death of the elderly Archbishop Ralf of Rochester, the metropolitan see of Canterbury was filled by William of Corbeil, prior of S. Osyth's at Chiche in Essex, a canon regular selected as a compromise between rival monastic and secular factions. William was a personally blameless churchman, though his inherent timidity and aversion to political responsibility left him unable to curb worldliness among his suffragans, even as he protected the archbishopric itself from corrupting influences.

Henry I's final act before departing England in 1133, never to return, was appointing his English-born spiritual adviser Eadwulf, prior of the Augustinian house at Nostell in Yorkshire, as the first bishop of the newly created Carlisle see. Eadwulf structured his cathedral chapter along Augustinian lines, making Carlisle the only English bishopric founded before the Reformation served by canons regular of the Order of S. Augustine.

The Cistercian Order originated from a reform movement led by Stephen Harding, an Englishman who had joined the Abbey of Molêmes in Burgundy after a youth spent at Sherborne Monastery in Dorset. Convinced that Molêmes and most other monasteries had strayed far from the strict Rule of S. Benedict, Harding and a small group of zealous monks left the abbey in 1098 to settle in a desolate, marshy site called Cistellum (commonly known as Citeaux, meaning "the Cistern"). After most of the original group returned to Molêmes, eight remaining monks elected Alberic as abbot, with Harding serving as prior; upon Alberic's death in 1110, Harding became abbot, and under his leadership the order expanded rapidly, founding 23 daughter houses in his lifetime, including Pontigny (1114) and Clairvaux (1115), the latter led by Bernard of Clairvaux.

Dubbed the "White Monks" for the color of their undyed wool habits, the Cistercians spread from France and Normandy to England in 1128, when Bishop William Giffard of Winchester founded Waverley Abbey in Surrey for twelve monks from the Norman Cistercian house of Aumône. The order grew quickly across the country.

In 1131, two major Cistercian abbeys were founded in England: Rievaux Abbey in the Yorkshire wolds, established by Walter Lespec (founder of Kirkham Priory) as a "daughter of S. Bernard", and Tintern Abbey in the Wye valley on the Welsh border, founded by Walter de Clare.

Fountains Abbey, one of England's most prominent Cistercian houses, was founded in 1132 by thirteen monks from the Benedictine convent of S. Mary at York, who sought to adopt the Cistercian rule after being inspired by the new Rievaux Abbey. When their abbot refused to grant them leave to depart, they appealed to Archbishop Thurstan, who personally interceded on their behalf. After being insulted by the abbot, Thurstan placed the convent under interdict and left with the thirteen monks, who had no possessions beyond the clothes they wore. The archbishop provided them with temporary shelter, then a remote, rocky, thorn-covered valley called Skeldale near Ripon and the small township of Sutton to support the community. The monks initially took shelter under a large elm tree in the valley, which became the original core of the abbey (named for the stream that ran through the valley, "Our Lady of the Fountains"). After writing to S. Bernard for formal acceptance into the Cistercian order, the community faced severe hardship including famine, surviving on leaves and herbs after giving away their last loaves to a builder and a pilgrim. A donation from Eustace Fitz-John, lord of Knaresborough, relieved their immediate distress, and after two years they relocated to a more sustainable site after receiving a large gift from Hugh, dean of York. Within five years of its founding, Fountains had established its own daughter house at Newminster, and went on to become the largest and most influential Cistercian house in England.

The Cistercian reform movement was a direct reaction to the secularizing trends and excessive wealth accumulation that had come to define many Benedictine monasteries by the 11th century. Cistercians refused to accept tithes, arguing monks had no right to them, and rejected all forms of ornate decoration: their churches were plain and unadorned, with no embroidered hangings, paintings, or precious metal vessels, and they used only simple white surplices for even the most solemn rites. Their everyday habits were made from undyed white or gray wool from their own flocks, rather than the traditional dyed black Benedictine habit, as they rejected dyeing as an unnecessary luxury for those who had renounced worldly pleasures and wealth. Unlike Benedictine houses, which often became the centers of thriving towns, Cistercian abbeys were built in isolated wilderness locations, and their rule forbade establishing a new house within a set distance of an existing Cistercian community, to preserve their focus on strict, solitary observance.

Though small in number and focused on isolated wilderness living, the Cistercians' strict reform ethos had a profound influence far beyond their own order. By the mid-12th century, the Cistercian model was widely recognized as the ideal of monastic practice, praised by even Benedictine figures like William of Malmesbury as the standard for all religious communities. Their influence acted as a reforming leaven through the 19 years of anarchy that followed Henry I's death, helping to regenerate the English Church and position it to later drive broader national and state renewal.

St Godric was born in the final years of William the Conqueror’s reign to poor free peasant parents in Norfolk, raised with basic Christian teachings, and had a near-fatal experience as a boy when he was overtaken by the rising tide while foraging for food on the exposed sands of the Wash. He spent his early adulthood as a wandering peddler, then a merchant and sailor trading across Scotland, Brittany, Flanders, Denmark, and other regions, making regular pilgrimages to holy sites including St Andrews, Holy Isle, Farne, and Jerusalem, and also worked as a household steward before abandoning secular life to pursue religious retreat.

In 1122, Godric settled at the remote, undeveloped riverside site of Finchale near Durham, where he lived for 60 years until his death. His first dwelling was a cave cut into the rock, later replaced by a small hut with an attached oratory. He lived an extreme ascetic life, performing hard labour to clear the thicketed land, observing strict fasts, and standing immersed in the River Wear in all weathers while singing Psalms. He was known for his gentle rapport with local wildlife, and as his reputation for holiness grew, he was joined by family members and visited by people from across England seeking spiritual counsel, with Durham’s monks recording his life story.

Godric’s lifespan, which stretched from the final years of William the Conqueror’s reign to seven years before the death of Henry II, makes him a symbolic link between the religious culture of pre-Conquest England and the emerging post-Conquest religious order. His ascetic practices directly echoed those of early Northumbrian saints, and his widespread veneration demonstrated that the intensely national character of English religious life persisted even after the Norman Conquest, as Norman and English communities alike revered native English saints.

The 12th century saw a broad revival of reverence for early English saints that transcended Norman-English ethnic divisions. Norman nobles and church leaders patronized religious houses dedicated to native saints: Earl Hugh of Chester founded a Benedictine community at the minster of St Werburg, Roger of Shrewsbury built an abbey at Wenlock dedicated to St Milburg, bishops established communities at sites associated with St Osyth, St Frideswide, and St Etheldreda, and even notoriously worldly Norman bishops lavished funds on Durham Cathedral, a monument to St Cuthbert. This revival also drove a flourishing of hagiographical writing, with clerics across England producing new biographies of early saints including Dunstan, Wilfrid, Oswald, Ealdhelm, and Cuthbert.

Worcester Cathedral’s scriptorium had served as the repository for the only contemporary copy of the English Chronicle for more than a century (with the sole exception of the years 1043–1066, when the Abingdon Chronicle was also a contemporary record), continuing to record national history in the English vernacular into the early years of Henry I’s reign. After a 1116 fire destroyed Peterborough Abbey’s own records, the monks borrowed the Worcester Chronicle, copied it with local additions, and continued the annals in English for a further decade after the last Worcester entry, with later scribes adding fragmentary records of the period between the deaths of Henry I and Henry II. This vernacular chronicle work at Peterborough was a rare survival, as English had largely ceased to be used as a written language outside of that abbey.

In the early 12th century, Worcester monk Florence produced a Latin translation of the English Chronicle, but his work was marked by strong partisan bias and extensive unverifiable interpolations and alterations that caused significant confusion in the understanding of early English history for centuries. Despite this flaw, Florence’s choice to render the vernacular annals in Latin, the dominant literary language of the era, allowed the Worcester historical tradition to spread far beyond its home scriptorium, where the original English chronicle remained obscure.

Florence of Worcester’s Latin chronicle became the foundational text for a new generation of English historians, spreading the Worcester historical tradition across the country. Simeon of Durham used it as the basis for his own history of Northumbria covering the period from Ælfred’s birth in 848 to Florence’s death in 1118, and this work was later passed down through other local historians to be incorporated into Roger of Howden’s large historical compilation. Henry of Huntingdon, who began writing his history of the English soon after 1125, also drew on the Worcester tradition, likely accessing it via the Peterborough copy of the chronicle.

The historical writing impulse also reached West-Saxon monasteries in southern England, where a more nuanced intellectual tradition was developing. While the Worcester school focused on national chronicle production, West-Saxon monastic writers were joining the broader literary revival linked to renewed veneration for early English saints, contributing to the growing body of historical and hagiographical work being produced across the country.

William of Malmesbury was born some three or four years before the death of William the Conqueror, in or near the Wiltshire town from which he took his name. One of his parents was of Norman, the other of English, descent. His father early destined him for a literary career, urging that any other pursuit would waste his life and endanger his reputation. The boy accepted this counsel readily, for reading was already the pleasure that won him in childhood and grew with his years. His Norman-English heritage and his placement in the intellectually stimulating setting of Malmesbury Abbey would profoundly shape his later historical outlook.

Malmesbury Abbey had its origin in the seventh-century Irish recluse Maidulf, whose hermitage in the Wiltshire forest drew disciples and grew into a school and then a religious community. Its second abbot, Ealdhelm, was one of the most brilliant figures of early West-Saxon culture, shaping the region's architecture, Latin literature, and English ballad tradition, and receiving royal favour from Ine to Edgar. The house escaped the Danish wars and flourished under Edward the Confessor, but declined under the first Norman abbot Turold and his predatory successor Warin, who desecrated the graves of the old English abbots. Warin's death, around the time of William's birth, brought the Norman abbot Godfrey, whose vigorous material, moral, and intellectual reforms restored the abbey and made possible William's fruitful career there.

Within the reformed abbey school, William's interests revealed his future as a historian. He tasted logic only lightly, gave closer attention to physic, but searched deeply into moral philosophy, and above all into history, which he praised as preserving the manners of past times and by example guiding readers toward good and away from evil. His studious habits won the confidence of Abbot Godfrey, whose cherished project was the formation of a great library. William became the abbot's most energetic assistant in collecting books, a labour of which he afterwards spoke with pardonable pride as one in which he outstripped all his elders.

When William turned to English history, he found himself at an impasse. From the death of Bede to his own day, the most diligent search could discover no English writer truly worthy of the name of historian. Anglo-Saxon chronicles existed in the vernacular, and the noble Æthelweard had rendered them into Latin, but his style was unbearable. Florence of Worcester's work was as yet unfinished and unpublished; Eadmer's recent history, though admirable in subject and style, covered only recent events from Edgar's accession, leaving a yawning chasm of more than two centuries between its opening and Bede's death, a gap that no existing writer had bridged.

Stimulated by the same impulse of revived national sentiment that moved Florence of Worcester, William began from his position as a half-Norman assistant to a Norman abbot. He first collected, at his own expense, histories of foreign nations, and pondered them in the cloisters of Malmesbury. The abbey's treasures — Ealdhelm's relics, the saint's legendary chasuble, the Bible Ealdhelm had bought at Dover, royal charters of Ceadwalla, Ine, Ælfred, and Æthelstan, and the tombs of Ealdhelm, John Scotus, and the mysterious Greek archbishop Constantine — surrounded him with memories of a vanished English greatness and prompted the question whether his own people possessed nothing worthy of remembrance. Unable to find a guide, he began, in his own phrase, "to scribble himself," producing the Gesta Regum Anglorum, first published in 1120, and soon after the companion Gesta Pontificum devoted to the bishops.

William's temperament, as displayed in his works, belongs less to a twelfth-century monk than to a modern man of the world. He shows little of the cloister's narrowness, few of the prejudices of his profession, age, or race, and treats Norman and English sympathies with the judicial impartiality of a detached philosophical observer. His mind is philosophical, literary, and artistic rather than political: history is for him a scientific study and its composition a work of art. He discards the older chronicle arrangement by the years of Our Lord and groups his materials for narrative effect, always mindful of his reader and eager to break the monotony of political detail with curious illustrations, romantic episodes, quaint legends, and personal scandal. He is, after Bede, perhaps the greatest medieval English storyteller, with rare insight into foreign affairs and a gift for sketching individual characters in rapid, telling strokes.

The Norman conquest had doomed the vast unwritten popular verse carried by the gleeman through palace, minster, hall, and cottage, narrowing his audience as French-speaking jongleurs and ménestrels displaced him at court and castle. Before this oral world quite perished, the new school of patriotic historians, Florence first and William foremost, drew upon it as a treasure-house with which to fill gaps and adorn the meagre framework of the Chronicle. William drank especially deep of this stream at its source: the English ballads that country folk around Malmesbury still chanted as they worked traced back to the songs by which Ealdhelm had once drawn his forefathers to listen and be converted. Passed through William's pen, this oral inheritance transformed the story of the later West-Saxon royal house into a romance that obscures the tenth century it purports to describe, but vividly reveals how the England of Henry I and Roger of Salisbury, the England of Florence, Henry of Huntingdon, and William himself, imagined its Anglo-Saxon past.

William of Malmesbury is presented not as an average monk but as a man of exceptional genius who nevertheless found his monastic life and surroundings fully suited to the development of his powers. His profession gave him opportunities for personal experience and wide reading that produced a remarkably varied and extensive knowledge of the world.

A community like Malmesbury was in active and constant relations with every rank and class of society throughout the kingdom. The abbot sat as a great noble among earls and bishops in the Great Council, and the monastery served as a hub where political news, intellectual speculation, and social gossip were exchanged with a freedom impossible in the outside world.

The monastic guest-hall was open to king and bishop, Norman baron and English yeoman, returning pilgrims, merchants at the local fair, and visiting monks borrowing books or consulting the great local scholar. Within the inviolable shelter of the convent walls, all the news and ideas of the day could be discussed boldly and freely, unshackled by the bonds of custom and interest that constrained secular society.

William of Malmesbury was almost as indefatigable a traveller as a student, gathering material for his surveys of English dioceses on the spot: the marvels of Glastonbury, the legend of St Eadmund in East Anglia, the Roman walls of Carlisle, the Yorkshire speech from which he caught the lay of Waltheof, and the vale of Severn that inspired his life of St Wulfstan. His cell at Malmesbury served as the garner where treasures from one end of England to the other were stored, sifted, and ordered in perfect tranquillity.

The new intellectual movement was by no means confined to the cloister. Clerk and layman shared in it, and king and queen encouraged it warmly, so much so that their Norman courtiers mockingly nicknamed them "Godric and Godgifu."

Learning and culture of every kind found a ready welcome at Henry I's court, where he never forgot the maxim of his youth that an unlettered king is but a crowned ass. Natural science he pursued in characteristically practical fashion at Woodstock, where he kept a menagerie of lions, leopards, camels, lynxes, and other strange beasts collected from all parts of the world.

Henry's queen Maude had received at her aunt's convent at Romsey an education given to few women of her time, and in her later years at Westminster, when the king was often beyond sea, the crowd of poor and sick folk on whom she lavished charity was almost equalled by that of scholars and poets competing for her ear with new feats of melody and rime. Her second predecessor in royal affection, Adeliza of Louvain, became patroness of Philip de Thaun's Anglo-Norman "Bestiary."

Earl Robert of Gloucester, the king's son, was renowned as a scholar no less than as a warrior and statesman. William of Malmesbury dedicated his chief historical works to him as to a comrade and equal in the world of letters, and a glimpse of a "Robert" sitting eagerly in the Malmesbury library, turning over books and suggesting plans of work, may well be the earl himself.

The secular clergy had no mind to be outstripped by the regulars in literary activity. Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, nephew of the justiciar, urged his archdeacon Henry of Huntingdon to compose a History of the English in emulation of William's Gesta Regum.

Natural science had its followers beyond the court, including Henry I himself, who studied it at Woodstock amid his menagerie, and the Anglo-Norman poet Philip de Thaun, whose Bestiary found a patroness in the king's second queen, Adeliza of Louvain.

Adelard of Bath, a scholar of old English race, crossed the sea towards the close of the eleventh century to study at Tours and Laon, where he set up a school of his own before setting out on a long course of wandering. He crossed the Alps, made his way to the great medical school at Salerno, travelled into Greece and Asia Minor, and finally to the great centre of Arab culture at Cairo or Baghdad, returning to England after seven years, soon after Henry I's accession.

Back in the West, Adelard translated an Arabic version of Euclid that became the standard mathematical textbook for centuries. His teaching of Eastern physical science met with vehement opposition from western scholars, including his own nephew, a former pupil at Laon; in reply he put forth the Quaestiones Naturales, a discussion with his nephew pleading for free inquiry into the principles of natural science in place of blind deference to old authority. His career shows the daring spirit of enterprise stirring among Englishmen and the vast range of study and experience now opening to English scholars, bringing England within reach of the wider world her Angevin kings were soon to make her part of.

What gave scope for all this social, moral, and intellectual development was the "good peace" that Henry, like his father, made in the land, to borrow the phrase of the Peterborough Chronicler.

The foundations of the political and administrative system that preserved that peace inviolate to the end of Henry's reign were laid in the three years after the battle of Tinchebray, the brightest period of his prosperity and the only time he enjoyed on both sides of the sea the tranquillity he fought to secure. In England, from the expulsion of Robert of Bellême in 1103 to the king's death in 1135, the peace was never broken save by an occasional disturbance on the Welsh border.

In Wales, the settlement of the Flemings and the appointment of a "Saxon" bishop to St David's were doing their work, and though the restlessness of Welsh princes and people twice provoked Henry to march into their country in his later years, the danger was never great enough to mar the general security of the realm. From Scotland there was still less to fear, as its three successive kings, Eadgar, Alexander, and David, were the brothers of Queen Maude and faithful allies of her husband.

In the duchy of Normandy the year 1110 opened a new phase of politics, beginning a train of complications in which England seemed at the moment less directly concerned than in the earlier struggles between king and barons, but which in the end exercised an important influence on English history by bringing her into contact with the power of Anjou.

To trace how England came into contact with Anjou, the narrative must change its line of thought and study, turning from the well-worn track of English history into less familiar paths, leaving its own land for the depths of Gaul, and going back from the broad daylight of the twelfth century into the dim dawn of the ninth, there to seek the beginnings and follow the romantic story of the house of Anjou.

The chapter opens by establishing Anjou as the cradle-land of the Angevin kings, situating its original county in central Gaul around the lower Loire and its tributary the Mayenne (then called the Meduana). The geographic stage is set for centuries of border conflict, defense, and identity formation.

The original Anjou was a wedge-shaped territory hemmed in between the Loire to the south and the Loir, Sarthe, and Mayenne rivers to the north and west. Its earliest known inhabitants were the Gallic Andes or Andegavi. Juliomagus, the Roman successor settlement perched on a black slate rock above the confluence of the rivers, became the ecclesiastical and administrative center, taking on the native name Angers.

The 843 Treaty of Verdun divided the Karolingian realm among the three sons of Emperor Louis the Gentle. Charles the Bald received the western Frankish lands, but his actual control was weakened by the independence of Aquitaine and the Bretons, whose Celtic culture and pirate sympathies made them natural potential allies of the Northmen now raiding the coasts.

The Northmen menace forced West-Frankland to organize its own defense, since the distant king at Laon could not lead the struggle. The Seine and Loire estuaries became the principal invasion routes, with attacks spreading inward to Paris and Aquitaine, and a feared combination of Bretons and pirates threatening to open up central Gaul.

Anjou, the Angevin march, was the practical border between Neustria and both Aquitaine and Britanny. Angers, commanding the Loire valley from its Roman citadel, was a mightier fortress than Nantes and thus the true key of the Loire and the Neustrian stronghold against western attacks by land or sea.

Lambert, a Breton-born count of the Angevin march, sought the county of Nantes from Charles the Bald and, on being refused, betrayed the realm. He allied with the Breton king Nomenoë and then guided a Northmen pirate fleet up the Loire, allowing the sack of Nantes in 843—the first Northmen assault on the central Loire.

Following renewed Northmen pressure and fearing the treasonable alliance between Robert the Brave, count of the Angevin march, and the Bretons and rebel Aquitanians, Charles the Bald granted Robert a vast duchy stretching from the Seine to the Loire in 861. Robert was charged with defending the realm against Bretons and Northmen, a trust he fulfilled until his death at Brissarthe in 866.

Robert's successor, Hugh of Burgundy, failed to defend the duchy, allowing a band of Northmen to sail unopposed up the Loire and Mayenne and occupy Angers itself. The pirates settled there with their families, using the city as a base to harry the surrounding country while the main pirate forces concentrated on conquering Britain.

Charles the Bald, allied with the Breton king Solomon, besieged the Northmen-held Angers. The joint Frankish and Breton blockade failed until a Breton devised the plan of diverting the Mayenne, leaving the pirate ships stranded. Faced with the loss of their retreat, the Northmen paid a heavy ransom for safe withdrawal and evacuated Angers in 873.

Northmen attacks persisted across West-Frankland, with Paris besieged in 885. Count Odo of Paris, son of Robert the Brave, defended the city through the winter and thereby saved the kingdom. Soon afterward he inherited his father's ducal possessions and was acclaimed West-Frankish king by popular consent, deposing the unworthy Karolingian emperor Charles the Fat.

Post-Carolingian Feudal Reorganization and Rise of the French Dukes The revolution that elevated Odo to the throne in 888 was followed by a reaction; on Odo's death in 898 a Karolingian, Charles the Simple, was again set upon the throne. Although the monarchy of Laon lingered until the Carolingian line became extinct, it was gradually undermined and supplanted by the dukes of the French, rulers of the great duchy between Seine and Loire. Paris, especially after the siege of 885, became the chief seat of ducal power, and in the new feudal organization growing up around this center the border-stronghold of Angers sank to a secondary position. The dukes distributed fiefs among followers of diverse origin: in some cases, as at Chartres and Tours, Scandinavian settlers were transformed into peaceful lieutenants of the Frankish chief they had previously fought against, while in other cases the reward of valor was bestowed on men who had earned it through prowess against the invaders. It may be that the old alliance of Count Robert the Brave with the Bretons had sowed the seeds of a mighty tree.

Early Origins of the Angevin Count Lineage In the depths of a gloomy forest-belt along the Breton border at the foot of hills sheltering the western side of the Mayenne valley, there dwelt in Robert's day a valiant forester named Tortulf. He abandoned the hardy, hazardous borderer's life—half hunter, half bandit—to join the struggle of Charles the Bald and Robert the Brave against the Northmen; Charles set him to keep the pirates out of Touraine and gave him the post of forester of a wooded district known as the "Nid-de-Merle" (the Blackbird's Nest). In its wild fastnesses Tortulf ambushed the marauders, winning his sovereign's favor and the alliance of the duke of the French. His son Ingelger followed in his steps, and marriage came to the help of arms: with the hand of Ælendis, niece of the archbishop of Tours, Ingelger acquired her lands at Amboise, a rich and fertile district in central France halfway between Tours and Blois on the south bank of the Loire, where tradition said Julius Caesar had built a bridge, and where a Roman fortress dating to the Emperor Valens likely still stood on a rocky brow opposite the bridge.

Anjou's Strategic Position Among Neighboring Territories The little county of Anjou, of which Fulk the Red became the first hereditary count, ultimately overshadowed all other divisions of the duchy of France in political importance, even though at this stage it was one of the smallest under-fiefs. Theobald the Trickster's county of Blois and Chartres was far larger, as was the county of Maine (Cenomannia) lying to the north of Anjou on the right bank of the Loire. Maine's proud independence proved her ruin: her status was undefined and insecure, with both France and Normandy claiming overlordship while she acknowledged neither, leaving her a bone of contention between her neighbors until all three were united. Blois and Chartres, with dependency Touraine, enjoyed greater territorial extent, wealth, and towns, but this advantage proved a disadvantage—the house of Blois grew too fast, its dominions became straggling, and when they extended eastward into Champagne, Touraine—their most precious possession—was gradually absorbed by the Angevins. Anjou's position as a marchland, forming the extreme south-western corner of France divided from Aquitania by the Loire and from Brittany by the Mayenne, gave her a strong and compact geographical situation, with a political position equally favorable: she was neither hindered by a desperate effort to reclaim lost independence like Maine, nor led astray by scattered interests like Blois.

The Character and Expansionist Aims of the Angevin Counts Anjou's special career as a marchland presented two alternatives: be swallowed up piecemeal by neighbors, or in self-defense swallow up some of them. Anjou, as represented by Fulk the Red and his successors, strongly embraced the latter alternative. The Angevin counts were a remarkable race with a strong family likeness—men of thoroughness who did whatever they undertook with all their might. Nearly all were men of great and varied natural powers, gifted with lofty military capacity, deep political insight, and a taste for all kinds of pursuits pursued with full ardor. They were daring but not rash, persevering, watchful, tenacious, sometimes seemingly unscrupulous yet with an odd vein of irregular piety, passionate almost as madmen but with method in their madness. Unlike their rivals of Blois, who were led away by visionary schemes of personal promotion, the Angevins remained patriots in their way: their chief aim was the aggrandizement of Anjou as well as of themselves, and they never forgot that "black Angers" on its steep above the Mayenne was the center from which their power was to spread to the ends of the earth. Given such men in such a place, their success is scarcely surprising.

Fulk the Red's Rule and Land Acquisitions in Anjou Fulk, a ruddy youth, was Ingelger's son. He early entered the service of Count Odo of Paris and remained firmly attached to him and his house; one of the earliest acts of Odo's brother Robert, who succeeded him as duke of the French—if indeed it was not one of the last acts of King Odo himself—was to entrust the city of Angers to Fulk the Red as viscount. Fulk was gifted with sound political instinct that guided him through the revolutions of the next forty years; he never swerved from his adherence to the dukes of the French, and by quiet tenacity laid the foundation of his house's greatness. Preferments civil and ecclesiastical—the abbacies of S. Aubin and S. Licinius at Angers, the momentary viscounty of Tours—were stepping-stones to his final investiture, shortly before the death of Charles the Simple, as count of the Angevin March. The Angers in which Fulk came to rule around the time Æthelstan succeeded Eadward the Elder was a town of red flintstone and redder brick, its castle covering the site of a hall Count Odo had built about 851 on ground acquired by exchange with Bishop Dodo; from that time the dwelling-place of the Angevin counts was this house outside the south-west corner of the city wall, with the river at its feet and a vine-clad hill at its back. Seeking to strengthen his position through peaceful means as his father had done, Fulk married Roscilla, daughter of Warner, lord of Loches, Villentras and Haye, and through her dowry gained the valuable township of Loches—lying some twenty miles south of Amboise on the left bank of the Indre, in a loop of the river sheltered by woodland long a hunting-ground of Roscilla's descendants, with a pyramidal height of rock on whose steep sides houses clustered round a church said to have been built in the sixth century by S. Ours, the patron saint of Loches. This acquisition gave Fulk a foot-hold in the heart of southern Touraine which, coupled with Amboise, might one day serve as a basis for the conquest of the whole district.

West-Frankish Relations with the Normans and the St.-Clair-sur-Epte Treaty A few years before Fulk's investiture as count of Anjou, the relations between the West-Frankish kingdom and its northern foes entered a new phase. In 912, King Charles the Simple and Duke Hugh of Paris, finding themselves unable to wrest back from the pirate leader Hrolf the Ganger the lands he had won around the mouth of the Seine, made a virtue of necessity: by a treaty concluded at St.-Clair-sur-Epte they granted Hrolf formal investiture of his conquest on condition of homage to the king and conversion to the Christian faith. Tradition told how a rough Danish soldier, bidden to perform the homage in Hrolf's stead, kissed the foot of Charles the Simple but upset him and his throne in doing so—a not altogether inapt parable of relations between Normandy and its royal overlord for several generations. The homage and conversion were little more than nominal; Hrolf's son William Longsword strove to force French manners and civilization upon his people, but to those neighbors he was still only a "leader of the pirates." Although plundering raids became less frequent and horrible under William than in his father's heathen days, they far from ceased. William's support enabled Charles the Simple to carry on a fairly successful struggle against the rival claimant Rudolf of Burgundy. No sooner was Charles dead and Rudolf seated on his throne than Norman hostility broke out afresh in a pirate-raid sweeping across the Norman border, past Orléans and through the Gâtinais, to the very heart of the kingdom, to the abbey of S. Benedict at Fleury on the Loire.

Ingelger's Death, Guy of Soissons' Career, and Fulk the Red's Succession The abbot of Fleury had evidently expected the attack and called to his aid Count Gilbald of Auxerre and Ingelger of Anjou, Fulk's eldest son, who, young as he was, had already made a name in battle with the Northmen. The fight was stubborn, and when it was over scarcely a man of the defenders was left alive. The young heir of Anjou, taken prisoner, was slaughtered beneath the shadow of S. Benet's abbey as Count Robert the Brave had been slaughtered long before at the bridge of Sarthe. Fortunately the future of the Angevin house did not depend solely on that life cut off in its promise: two sons yet remained to Fulk. The duty of stepping into Ingelger's place fell upon the youngest, Fulk the Good, for the second son, Guy, was already in holy orders. Eight years later, in 937, Duke Hugh of Paris, the great maker of kings and bishops, who had just restored Louis From-over-sea to the throne of his father, procured Guy's elevation to the see of Soissons. The young bishop soon showed himself worthy of consideration, playing a conspicuous part in politics both ecclesiastical and secular; he adhered firmly to the party of Duke Hugh and his brother-in-law Herbert of Vermandois, even consecrating Herbert's little son Hugh, a child of six, to the archbishopric of Reims in 940, and through all the resulting scandals and censures stuck to his boy-archbishop with courage. He could also show zeal for the Karolingian king: in 945, when Louis From-beyond-sea fell prisoner to the Normans and they demanded his two sons as hostages, and Queen Gerberga refused to trust them with her eldest, the bishop of Soissons offered himself in the child's stead, an offer the Normans gladly accepted. The dauntless Angevin may have been more at home in the custody of valiant enemies than amid the ecclesiastical censures that fell upon him for his proceedings regarding Hugh of Reims, from which he was only absolved in 948 by the synod of Trier. A year after Hugh's consecration, in the winter of 941 or early spring of 942, Fulk the Red died "in a good old age," leaving the marchland his sword had won and guarded so well to his youngest son, Fulk the Good.

Fulk II is portrayed as the ideal Angevin count, whose twenty-year reign was one of unbroken peace. The annalists found nothing to record of him because he waged no wars and took no part in wider politics, while he cultivated the arts of peace with a refined, almost clerical disposition. His special devotion was to the church of S. Martin at Châteauneuf by Tours, where the relics of the Apostle of the Gauls had been enshrined, traditionally under the care of his grandfather Ingelger. Holding a canonry there, he would lodge with the clergy, fulfill the duties of his office, and compose anthems in honour of S. Martin, refusing to be addressed by his worldly title. When King Louis From-beyond-sea mocked him as a "clerk," Fulk's letter containing the proverb that "an unlettered king is but a crowned ass" passed into common usage. Beneath his contemplative life, Fulk was a practical ruler who rebuilt churches and towns ravaged by the northmen after Rudolf's great victory finally drove the pirates from the Loire, and the resulting fertility and wise government attracted settlers from neighbouring districts to repopulate the marchland.

In his final years, Fulk became entangled in Breton politics. After Alan Barbetorte, count of Nantes, died in 952 leaving an infant son Drogo, the wily Theobald "the Trickster" of Blois assumed the wardship and sought to extend his influence over Britanny. To gain the Angevin ruler's goodwill, Theobald offered Fulk the hand of his sister, Alan's widow, together with half the city and county of Nantes during Drogo's minority, while granting the other half to Juhel Berenger of Rennes. Fulk could further strengthen his claim to the Nantes inheritance because part of the debatable territory had once been Angevin ground and, with Drogo dead, two elder sons of Alan by another mother stood to inherit. Breton suspicion later accused Fulk of murdering his stepson Drogo, but this story, preserved only in the late Chronicle of Saint-Brieuc, is implausible and would have been contrary to Fulk's own interests.

When the Normans raided Britanny and captured the bishop of Nantes, the citizens appealed urgently to Fulk for help. After a week's delay during which the people of Nantes themselves repelled the invaders, they renounced their allegiance to the Angevin count and chose as their ruler Hoel, one of Alan Barbetorte's elder sons. This loss on his western frontier did not disturb Fulk's final peace. He died quietly during the communion at one of the feasts of S. Martin, passing away in the arms of his brother-canons in the church he loved, and was probably buried there like his predecessors. With him was buried the peace of the Marchland, for no subsequent count would again reign without waging war, although some would merit the epithet "the Good."

The legends surrounding Fulk, though not history, possess value as expressions of the ideal associated with Angevin rule. The most famous tells how Fulk, accosted by a leper on his way to Tours, shouldered the wretch and carried him to S. Martin's door, only to find his burden vanish; at midnight service, S. Martin appeared in a vision and told him he had unknowingly borne the Lord Himself, like another S. Christopher. A later addition attributed to Fulk a second vision at Angers in which an angel foretold that his successors to the ninth generation would extend their power to the ends of the earth—a prophecy whose introduction into the legend betrays the instinct of the Angevin house, which preferred to attribute its greatness to the peaceful, charitable "good count" rather than to the warrior-founder Ingelger or the bravest of his descendants.

Whatever refined tastes Fulk possessed appear to have passed to his younger son Guy, who early entered monastic life at S. Paul de Corméri in Touraine. The elder, Geoffrey Greygown, was a rough, dashing soldier, conspicuous in the coarse grey woollen tunic of the Angevin peasantry, and known to contemporaries by his simple attire and daring valour in the courts and camps of King Lothar and Duke Hugh. Although the epic bards of the marchland transformed him into a hero of impossible knightly exploits, this legendary character aligns with what authentic history records of his real career. Geoffrey thus became the instrument by which the first steps toward the realization of the angelic prophecy were taken.

The death of Louis From-over-sea in 954 brought his son Lothar to the throne, with Hugh Capet steadily preparing to exchange his ducal cap for a crown he was too prudent to seize prematurely. Lothar's greatest support had been his uncle Otto the Great, and the alliance between Eastern and Western Franks held while Otto lived; after Otto's death in 973, however, Lothar and Otto II., though brothers-in-law, were not friends. In 978, when Otto and his queen held court at Aachen, Lothar's jealousy drove him to summon the nobles for a raid into Lorraine, and Hugh Capet, eager for a breach between king and emperor, joined with his followers including the conspicuously grey-clad Geoffrey of Anjou. The sudden march forced Otto to retreat hastily from Aachen, but the West-Franks gained only plunder and the vain gesture of reversing the bronze eagle on Charlemagne's palace. Otto soon burst into the western realm in counter-invasion, driving Lothar across the Seine to seek Hugh's help and reaching the gates of Paris, where the two sides encamped on opposite banks while the duke gathered troops and engaged in skirmishes. When Otto judged his adversaries becoming dangerous, he withdrew rapidly, having inflicted far greater alarm and damage on his rash cousin than he had himself suffered.

Geoffrey Greygown's Second Marriage Around the time of the Lotharingian raid, Geoffrey took a second wife, Adela, countess of Chalon-sur-Saône and widow of Count Lambert of Autun. By his first marriage to another Adela he had only one surviving child, a daughter named Hermengard, who had been married in 970 to Conan the Crooked, count of Rennes.

Angevin Designs on Brittany The marriage of Hermengard to Conan reflected Geoffrey's broader ambitions in Brittany, where Fulk the Good's former claims to the overlordship of Nantes had long since lapsed. Geoffrey fixed his sights on the debatable lands between the Mayenne and the original county of Nantes, while the house of Rennes was consolidating its hold on the Breton ducal title. The death of Count Hoel of Nantes at an assassin's hand left only his brother Guerech, the bishop, as a candidate to defend the county.

The Capture of Bishop Guerech The warlike bishop Guerech, more suited to secular than ecclesiastical rule, travelled to Lothar's court to seek funds for his cathedral. On his return through Anjou, Geoffrey set traps along the road, seized him, and extorted homage not only for the debatable land but for Nantes itself—the first instance of a practice that would become characteristic of the Angevin counts.

Conflict with Conan of Rennes Geoffrey's seizure of Guerech enraged Conan, who as duke of Brittany claimed overlordship of Nantes for himself. Conan's elder sons raided Anjou and were driven back from the very gates of Angers by Geoffrey in person. Conan then turned his wrath upon Guerech, who was forced into an uneasy alliance with his Angevin overlord against their common Breton enemy.

The Battle of Conquereux The rivals met on the boggy heath of Conquereux near Nantes, where Conan won an engagement commemorated in the Angevin proverb, "Like the battle of Conquereux, where the crooked overcame the straight." Though victorious, Conan was severely wounded and did not press his advantage, leaving the Nantes question to be fought out a decade later on the same ground by Geoffrey's successor.

Lothar's Death and the Approach of Hugh Capet The death of King Lothar in early March 986 brought Hugh Capet within a single step of the throne. Lothar's final years had been spent trying to secure the succession for his son by winning the homage of the Aquitanian princes and the support of the duke of the French—aims made difficult by the entrenched opposition of William "Shockhead" of Poitou and his son William Fierabras.

Geoffrey's Conquest of Loudun Following his overlord Hugh Capet, Geoffrey launched a bold southern aggression, crossing the Loire and marching down the Angers-to-Poitiers road. He took Loudun, defeated William Fierabras in a pitched battle at Les Roches, and pursued him to the site later marked by the castle of Mirebeau. The war ended in compromise: Geoffrey retained his conquests as the man of Duke William. These gains—a scatter of small fiefs along the Layon, Argenton, Thouet and Dive—centred on the strategically vital town of Loudun, which looked both south toward Poitiers and north toward Saumur and Tours.

The Grant of Maine Hugh Capet, now king in all but name, dangled before Geoffrey the prospect of northward expansion by granting him the overlordship of Maine. The gift was purely nominal, since the Cenomannian counts acknowledged no authority save that of the Carolingian heirs, and rival claims were also advanced by the duke of the Normans and by the dukes of the French themselves. Geoffrey had no time to enforce the grant before events overtook him.

The Coronation of Hugh Capet In the early summer of 987, the last Carolingian king, Louis V, died suddenly at Senlis on 22 May. The nobles, on the archbishop of Reims's proposal, swore to await a second assembly before choosing a successor. Hugh used the interval to besiege a rebel vassal called Odo "Rufinus" at Marson in Champagne, accompanied by his loyal Geoffrey of Anjou, and on 1 June was crowned king at Noyon, passing over the claims of Charles of Lorraine.

Death of Geoffrey Greygown Geoffrey, whom Hugh had left to finish the siege of Marson, fell sick and died before the place seven weeks after his patron's coronation. His body was carried back from distant Champagne to be buried beside his father in the church of Saint-Martin at Tours.

The End of the Transitional Century With the passing of the last Carolingian and the elevation of Hugh Capet, the century of preparation and transition was over. The Angevin counts had reached beyond their natural river boundaries to the west and south, and now cast their eyes northward toward a claim whose consequences would be worked out in later generations. In the last years of Geoffrey Greygown one glimpses the foreshadowing of the great career soon to be begun by his successor, and with the new king and the new count a new era opens.

Note A: Sources of Early Angevin History The only detailed narrative of the early Angevins down to Geoffrey Greygown is the *Gesta Consulum Andegavensium* of John of Marmoutier, a late twelfth-century patchwork drawing on a lost work of Abbot Odo and on Thomas, prior of Loches. The printed *Historia Comitum Andegavensium* attributed to Thomas is in fact a copy of extracts from Ralph de Diceto's *Abbreviationes Chronicorum*, themselves drawn from the *Gesta*. Of somewhat earlier date, though very brief, is the *History* attributed to Count Fulk Rechin, whose pointed silence about the earliest Angevins casts doubt on the monkish genealogies. On this evidence the existence of Tortulf of Rennes and his son Tertullus rests entirely; their Latinized names look like artificial renderings of a single Teutonic "Tortulf," and the chronology John supplies—including the date 873 for Tortulf's appointment as forester, and the reversion of Saint-Martin—cannot be trusted.

Problems with the Angevin Pedigree The traditional pedigree is demonstrably flawed. The chronicler John took Hugh the Great ("Hugh of Burgundy," as he calls him) to be a son of the earlier Hugh of Burgundy (one manuscript of the *Gesta*, that printed by D'Achéry in the *Spicilegium*, vol. iii. p. 243, actually adds "filius alterius Hugonis"), and this earlier Hugh to have been the father of Petronilla, wife of Tertullus. This confusion undermines the entire genealogical framework on which the early Angevin story rests.

Chronology of Fulk the Red The chronology of Fulk the Red, long a matter of mingled tradition and guess-work, has been fairly established through the investigations of M. E. Mabille in his introduction to the *Chroniques des Comtes d'Anjou* and in "Les Invasions normandes dans la Loire" (*Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes*, ser. vi. vol. v. pp. 149–194), both accompanied by important charter evidence. Fulk's first appearance is as witness to a charter given at Tours by Abbot Odo of S. Martin's in April 886. If Fulk was old enough to be signing charters in 886, his parents must have married before 870 at the latest, meaning his grandparents Tertullus and Petronilla would have been married before 850—a difficult fit for a daughter of the Abbot Hugh who died in 887.

Ingelger's Investiture with Orléans and Gâtinais The story of Ingelger's investiture with Orléans and the Gâtinais is highly suspicious. While Ingelger's championship of the slandered countess of Gâtinais is one of those tales that cannot be refuted, the coupling of Gâtinais and Orléans is particularly questionable: no historical descendant of Ingelger is known to have had any connection with either place for nearly two hundred years. In 942, the year after Fulk the Red's death, the viscount of Orléans was a Geoffrey belonging to a different family, which did eventually acquire Gâtinais and merged with the house of Anjou in 1061. The suspicion is that late Angevin writers took up this story at the wrong end and projected it back two hundred years.

The Question of Ingelger's County of Anjou Ingelger's name does not appear in any known document of the period. The only rulers of the Angevin march who appear in the records are Hugh the Abbot and his successor Odo, until Fulk the Viscount, whose first appearance in this capacity is in September 898. He signs as "Fulco vicecomes," then as "Fulco Turonorum et Andecavorum vicecomes" in July 905, and as "domni Fulconis Andecavorum comitis" in October 909. These dates dispose of Ralph de Diceto's claim that Fulk succeeded Ingelger as second count in 912, and they rule out the *Gesta's* story that Fulk's comital title was granted by Hugh the Great on behalf of Charles the Simple, since neither was in the appropriate position in 909 or 924–929.

The Angevin March and the Mayenne The *Gesta*-writers admit that "another count" (the former count, Duke Hugh) went on ruling beyond the Mayenne, raising the question whether the Angevin March extended on both sides of the river. The old territory of the Andes and the march of Count Lambert certainly did spread on both sides. The author argues that when Lambert turned traitor he carried the Breton frontier to the Mayenne, a view supported by a charter of Herispoë from August 852 styling himself ruler of Britanny up to the Mayenne (Lobineau, *Hist. Bretagne*, vol. ii. col. 55). If this is correct, there is an end of the "bipartite county" and of Count Ingelger: the other count cannot have ruled west of the Mayenne, so he must have ruled east of it, leaving no room for any other count.

Fulk Rechin's Testimony on Ingelger The one writer whose testimony seems to lend some countenance to the *Gesta* need not trouble us much. Fulk Rechin (*Comtes*, p. 374) does call Ingelger the first count, but his own confession that he knew nothing about his first five ancestors beyond their names gives grounds to suspect he was mistaken in using the title. He says nothing about the county having been bipartite, and his statement that his forefathers received their honours from Charles the Bald, not from the house of Paris, may reflect the same misconception—possibly strengthened by a desire to disclaim connexion with the "genus impii Philippi," or by an indistinct memory of the investiture of Fulk I between 905 and 909.

The De Reversione Treatise and Its Anachronisms The latter part of the account of Ingelger in the *Gesta* (*Comtes*, pp. 47–62) is copied bodily from the *Tractatus de reversione B. Martini a Burgundiâ*, which professes to have been written by S. Odo of Cluny at the request of his foster-brother Count Fulk the Good. The wild anachronisms of this treatise have been thoroughly exposed by its latest editor, M. A. Salmon, and by M. Mabille. Since S. Odo was born in 879 and entered religion in 898, when Fulk the Good must have been a child, the foster-brother letters are forgeries. The treatise is wrong in every date and in every bishop's name it mentions save those of Archbishop Adaland of Tours and his brother Raino—who was bishop of Angers, not of Orléans as the treatise claims. All passages in the Tours chronicle describing Ingelger as count of Anjou derive from this source and prove nothing.

Ingelger's Marriage to Ælendis Ralph de Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 139) says that Ingelger married Ælendis, niece of Archbishop Adaland and of Raino, bishop of Angers, and that these two prelates gave the young couple their own hereditary estates at Amboise, in Touraine, and in the Orléanais. The *Gesta Consulum* say the same but later make Raino bishop of Orléans. This story appears to be a piece of truth embedded in fiction: it is neither impossible nor improbable. The author of the *De Reversione* is right that Adaland died shortly after the return of the relics, and his dates of consecration (870) and death (887) are borne out by the same charters that track Fulk the Red. A Raino was ordained bishop of Angers in 881, and there is no chronological obstacle to these prelates being the maternal uncles of Fulk the Red (born c. 865–870, died 941 or 942).

The Palace of the Counts at Angers Note B addresses a persistent local tradition at Angers that the counts and bishops had exchanged dwellings and that the ruined hall within the castle enclosure was Roman work formerly used as a synodal hall. M. de Beauregard and M. d'Espinay have clarified the history of the two palaces. A charter of Charles the Bald (2 July 851) ratifying an exchange between Bishop Dodo and Count Odo shows that the bishop gave the count a plot of land near the city wall on which to build a house—not his own dwelling. The Merovingian counts dwelt on the site of the Roman citadel of Juliomagus, where the bishop's palace now stands (confirmed by a charter of 1098). The count's palace, built on the land near the city wall, is first indicated by an account of the fire of 1132, and Ralph de Diceto places it in the south-west corner of the city in the day of Henry Fitz-Empress. The ruined hall is likely a work of the tenth or early eleventh century—a survival of the dwelling of Geoffrey Greygown and Fulk the Black.

Note C addresses the marriages of Geoffrey Greygown, establishing that he married twice, both wives being named Adela or Adelaide. The second wife was Adela, countess of Chalon-sur-Saône and widow of Lambert, count of Autun. Documentary evidence, including a charter (992–998) where Hugh of Chalon calls himself "son of Adelaide and Lambert" and is approved by "Adelais his mother and Maurice his brother," confirms this second marriage. The identity of this Adela remains uncertain, with conflicting claims about her parentage. The note reconciles the chronology of Geoffrey's marriages with the death of his first wife (documented in her will of March 6, 974) and the death of Lambert (which must be dated 978, not 988). The discussion concludes by examining whose child Fulk the Black was, presenting a genealogical table suggesting Fulk was the son of Geoffrey and Adela of Chalon.

Note D critiques the legendary accounts of Geoffrey Greygown's military exploits, particularly the mythical fights with the Dane Æthelwulf and the Saxon Æthelred as recorded in the *Gesta Consulum*. Turning to the more reliable testimony of Fulk Rechin, the note identifies two genuine historical campaigns: a war with the count of Poitou and a war with the duke of Britanny. Fulk Rechin's account, while independent of the monkish legends, provides the basis for analyzing these two conflicts and reconciling them with the testimony of other chronicles, including Breton sources and the Chronicle of Saint-Maixent.

The first part of Note D examines Geoffrey's Breton war, reportedly a raid by the sons of Conan upon Angers, c. 980. Defending Fulk Rechin's account against Mabille's chronological objections, the note argues that Conan could well have had sons old enough to lead such a raid before his 992 death. The discussion then turns to the battle of Conquereux, weighing competing claims from the Breton chronicles (Chronicon Britanniae, Chronicon Sancti Michaelis, Chronicon Namnetense, and Chronicon Briocense) and the proverb "Bellum Conquerentium quo tortum superavit rectum," concluding that Conan won an earlier battle of Conquereux contrary to the biased account of the Nantes chronicler, who sought to exalt Guerech at the expense of both the Rennes party and the Angevins.

The second part of Note D addresses the Poitevin war, in which Geoffrey took Loudun and defeated William, duke (count) of Poitou, at Les Roches, pursuing him as far as Mirebeau. The note reconciles Fulk Rechin's account with that of the Chronicle of Saint-Maixent, which states that Geoffrey was subsequently "compelled by necessity" to submit to William and receive his conquests as Poitevin fiefs. Mabille's objection that Mirebeau had no existence until Fulk Nerra built the castle there in 1000 is dismissed: Fulk Rechin likely referred to the site, and the dating of the war to the close of Geoffrey's life (the S. Maxentian chronicler's "eo tempore" falls between 989 and 996, after Geoffrey's own death in July 987) remains conjectural.

Note E questions whether Geoffrey Greygown was actually the recipient of a grant of the county of Maine from the French crown. While the later history of Maine makes such a grant likely, the attribution to Geoffrey specifically is uncertain, as the Angevin historians systematically projected later Angevin claims backward onto him as a "convenient lay figure." The *Gesta Consulum* account describes David, count of Maine, and Geoffrey, count of Corbon, refusing homage to King Robert, with Geoffrey Greygown taking Corbon's castle of Mortagne and receiving a formal grant of Maine. The Abbé Voisin's alternative identification of this Geoffrey with a ninth-century figure (d. 890) is rejected as chronologically impossible, but the note acknowledges the Gesta-writers' confusion between Robert I and Robert II, leaving the story as it stands, subject to doubt.

Chronological Context establishes the timeframe constraints for identifying the grant. In 923 (the time of Robert I.), Geoffrey Greygown was not yet born and Anjou was held by his grandfather Fulk the Red. In 996–1031 (the time of Robert II.), Geoffrey was already dead and Anjou was held by his son Fulk the Black. Additionally, according to M. Voisin, David of Maine died at latest in 970, and Geoffrey of Corbon lived 1026–1040, further narrowing the window in which any grant could have occurred.

Three Possibilities distills the chronological evidence into three logical conclusions. First, if Maine was granted to a count of Anjou by Robert I., it could not have been to Geoffrey Greygown, who was not yet born. Second, if it was granted by Robert II., it also could not have been to Geoffrey, who was by then dead. Third, if it was granted to Geoffrey, it can only have been by Hugh Capet.

Hugh Capet's Involvement notes that one writer does bring Hugh into the affair, recounting that after being elected king by common counsel of the Franks following the death of Lothar, Hugh, while traveling through his realm and descending upon Tours, imposed a count upon the Cenomannenses. The writer does not name this new count, but it was most likely the reigning count of Anjou — which, just after Hugh's accession, would be Fulk Nerra. However, the writer ignores Louis V. and makes Hugh succeed Lothar directly, raising the question of whether he meant to place events in 986–7, when Hugh was king *de facto* but not yet *de jure*; in that case the count would be Geoffrey Greygown.

The Gesta Ambaziensium Account examines the Latin text from the *Gesta Ambaziensium Dominorum* (Marchegay, *Comtes*, p. 160), which reports that after Hugh Capet's election as king following Lothar's death, Hugh toured his realm, descended upon Tours, and imposed a count upon the people of Le Mans (*Cenomannensibusque consulem imponeret*). The writer omits Louis V. and places Hugh's succession immediately after Lothar, which creates ambiguity about the date and the identity of the count installed.

The Gesta Consulum Version presents the compilers' simplified account in the *Gesta Consulum Andegavorum* (Marchegay, *Comtes*, p. 76), which states that the king (interpreted as the duke) gave Geoffrey a carte-blanche to take and keep anything he could get: specifically, everything that King Lothar had held in his bishoprics of Angers and Le Mans, and anything else that Geoffrey or his successors could acquire, conceded with the same freedom by which he himself held the territory in commendation.

This section establishes the chronological and geographical frame of the chapter: the history of Anjou and Blois during the period 987–1044, a century of feudal rivalry following the accession of Hugh Capet, set in the Loire valley of central France where the destinies of these two great houses would be decided.

The chapter opens with one of the wildest legends attached to the Angevin house, in which a count of Anjou married a woman of unknown origin and unearthly beauty who refused to enter a church or be present at the consecration of the Host. When her husband had her stopped by armed men, she shook off her mantle—revealing two children at each side—took two of the children in her arms, and floated away through a church window, never to be seen on earth again. Richard Cœur-de-Lion is reported to have commented on this story: "what wonder if we lack the natural affections of mankind—we who come from the devil, and must needs go back to the devil." The source is Gerald of Cambray's *De Instructione Principum*.

The author suggests that the legend may have arisen to explain the extraordinary figure of Fulk the Black, whose talents and passions seemed almost superhuman to his contemporaries. Fulk inherited Anjou as a child of about eight from his father Geoffrey Greygown, surrounded by powerful foes and with no protector but the new king. Despite these odds, before reaching manhood he emerged as one of the most brilliant figures in French history, reigning for fifty-three years. His character was intensely self-contradictory: mad bursts of passion coexisting with cool, calculating, far-seeing policy; rapid perception of his own ends; relentless obstinacy in pursuing them; utter disregard for the suffering caused; and occasional vehement but short-lived fits of repentance. Together these traits composed the typical Angevin count. A note explains his historical surnames—"Fulco Nerra" or "Niger," "Palmerius," and "Hierosolymitanus"—the origin of the first being uncertain, while the latter two would become clear later in his career.

For more than a hundred years after Hugh Capet's accession, French history consisted largely of feudal struggles to control the crown. The king remained a figurehead in most of his nominal realm; the Norman duchy, Brittany, and southern Gaul stood largely beyond his reach, and Aquitaine passed from contempt to open aggression. A vignette illustrates this weakness: the count of Poitou was attacked by Adalbert of Périgord, who stormed Poitiers and threatened Tours, answering the king's indignant "Who made thee count?" with the retort "Who made thee king?" Within the duchy of France "between Seine and Loire," the regal authority was effectively a tool of whichever feudatary could seize it. At this stage, Aquitaine and Brittany stood aloof, and Normandy had not yet entered the contest, leaving the struggle between the vassals of the French duchy—chiefly the houses of Blois and Anjou. The count of Blois, ruling Blois, Chartres, and Tours, was the foremost in power, wealth, and territory, and his lands pressed against Anjou's eastern border. The central question of Fulk's life became: would the house of Anjou or the house of Blois win pre-eminence in central Gaul? Fulk devoted himself to a single fixed object—the consolidation of his marchland—pursuing every advantage with relentless vigor, whether the immediate work was building or besieging fortresses, browbeating bishops or kings, cajoling allies, or crushing rivals. Beneath all his actions lay a single thread of settled policy, the gradual building up of Angevin dominion.

Fulk's first victory came before he was fourteen, against Conan of Rennes, a veteran commander who had been more than a match for Fulk's father ten years earlier. After the deaths of Count Guerech of Nantes and his young son Alan, Conan seized Nantes. Fulk exploited the old hatred of the Nantes people toward the house of Rennes, winning guards with fair words and bribes, gaining admittance to the city, and receiving oaths and hostages. Conan returned with his forces and Norman auxiliaries, blockading the city by land and river. On the field of Conquereux—the same ground of his father's earlier fight—Conan laid a trap reminiscent of Bannockburn, hiding trenches beneath a deceptive covering of bushes and ferns across the swampy moor. The flower of the Angevin charge rode into the pitfall, where two thousand men and horses drowned, were slaughtered, or were crushed. Fulk himself was thrown from his horse, but leapt up, revived his panicked troops with his voice, and turned the rout into a triumphant counter-attack that killed Conan and destroyed his host. The blow shattered the power of Rennes; the new duke Geoffrey was no match for his young uncle. Fulk marched into Nantes, was received with open arms, and installed the young titular count Judicaël under the guardianship of Aimeric of Thouars, who ruled in Fulk's interest. Territory on the right bank of the Mayenne, lost a century and a half before by Count Lambert's treason, was reunited to the Angevin dominions.

With Nantes, Fulk controlled the entire Loire from his capital to the sea, the great waterway being the principal channel of communication in that age. The richer upper Loire valley was in the hands of the count of Blois, but Fulk held Amboise (the heritage of his mother) and Loches (the heritage of his wife), giving him a natural base for raids into Touraine. The first count of Blois, Odo I, died in 995, and Fulk waged desultory warfare with his sons Thierry and Theobald until Theobald's death in 1004 brought him face to face with Odo II, his lifelong antagonist. Odo II had begun characteristically early: in 999 he openly insulted his royal stepfather King Robert by wresting the castle of Melun from Count Burchard of Vendôme, an outrage only the Norman duke was strong enough to avenge. Whereas Fulk's seemingly wild career was held together by a single thread of policy, Odo's equally active life produced no lasting effects; his ambition lacked the Angevin practical sagacity, and his schemes, numerous and daring, were abandoned before maturity. Impulsive, impatient, breaking every engagement, Odo was "unstable as water." The author judges that the house of Blois failed through their lack of the quality that was the Angevin strength: thoroughness. This rivalry, though fought out in central Gaul, had a bearing on English history, for the struggle for Touraine was a foreshadowing of the later contest between Stephen of Blois and Henry of Anjou for the English crown—a contest in which, as always, the aimless activity of Blois spent itself vainly against the indomitable steadiness of the Angevins.

During the ten years of turmoil following the death of Odo I. and the remarriage of his widow, Fulk nearly completed a chain of fortresses stretching from Angers in a wide arc through Touraine to Amboise. These strongholds linked his outlying possessions with his Anjou headquarters while bisecting the dominions of his neighbor. Key fortresses included Montreuil, Passavant, Maulévrier, Loudun, Mirebeau, Sainte-Maure, Loches, Montrésor (held by Roger "the Devil"), Montrichard, and a fortified residence at Amboise itself. Although Langeais and Montbazon were later seized, Fulk controlled the entire course of the Indre above Montbazon, having won over the lords of every castle on its banks. To the north, Hugh of Alluye, lord of Château-la-Vallière and Saint-Christophe, was so devoted to the Angevin interest that the count normally traveled to and from Amboise through his lands.

The early part of the eleventh century was an age of castle-building, but Fulk had begun his line of fortifications even before the century began, during the gloomy years of interdict when royal power was at its lowest ebb. With religion's comforts cut off, the people suffered in hopeless anarchy, and many whispered in terror that the end of the world was at hand. While such superstitious fears paralyzed gentler souls, they only goaded Fulk into more restless activity and inflamed his fierce temper almost to madness.

Fulk had married the heiress of Vendôme, daughter of Count Burchard, the union being already in place by 990. This marriage came to a terrible end while its only child was still in her cradle. In the very dawn of the dreaded year 1000, Countess Elizabeth expiated her real or supposed sins as a wife by death at the stake. A conflagration that destroyed a large part of Angers immediately after her execution caused Fulk's horror-stricken subjects to deem that divine judgment was indeed at their gates. Angevin chronicles variously record "the burning of the city of Angers after the burning of Countess Elizabeth."

After the paroxysm came the reaction. When the dreaded year passed and the world found itself still alive, and the king at last parted from Bertha to lift the interdict, the blood Fulk had shed at Conquereux and elsewhere—together with the ashes of his wife—weighed heavily on the Black Count's soul. The "fear of Gehenna" seized him, and leaving the marchland to the care of his brother Maurice, he set out for the Holy Sepulchre. This first pilgrimage became the first link in a chain that brought the counts of Anjou into an especially intimate relation with the Holy Land and eventually established an Angevin dynasty upon its throne. Legend tells how Fulk the Palmer outwitted the Turks, secured a piece of the true Cross, and while kissing the sacred stone, bit off a loose fragment to bring home as a precious trophy.

Fulk's first care on his return was to build an abbey to house his holy relic. From the rocky angle by the winding Indre where the great "Square Tower" of Loches was rising in picturesque contrast to a church founded by Geoffrey Greygown in honor of Our Lady, the land stretched a mile eastward beyond the river in green meadow to a waste plot of broom belonging to a man named Ingelger. The place, originally called _Belli-locus_ (now corrupted to Beaulieu), was possibly set apart for trials by ordeal of battle. Fulk determined to purchase this field, paid the stipulated sum, and completed the contract by carrying the former owner on his shoulders from the middle of the field to the foot of the bridge, declaring "A man without wit his freehold must quit."

Despite his fiery haste, Fulk did all things with due method, and his next anxiety was to decide upon the dedication of his intended minster. He found his best counsellor in his newly-married wife, the Lady Hildegard, and by her advice the church was placed under the direct invocation, not of saint or angel, but of the Most Holy Trinity Itself. By the time the church stood ready for consecration, Fulk and Hildegard's son was nearly three years old; he had been nursed by a blacksmith's wife at Loches, and the count and countess would often linger beside the forge to mark the growth of little Geoffrey, the future conqueror of Tours.

The consecration of the church proved a difficulty: the archbishop of Tours refused to perform it unless Fulk would restore the stolen land of Montrichard. Fulk swore his customary oath—"by God's souls"—that he would get the better of the primate, and went straight off to Rome to lay his case before the Pope. After several years of wrangling, decided in his favor, one morning in May 1012 the abbey-church of the Holy Trinity at Beaulieu was hallowed with all due pomp by a Roman cardinal-legate. But that very afternoon a sudden storm of wind blew up from the south, whirled round the church, and swept the entire roof completely off. Clergy and laity alike seized on the prodigy as a token of Heaven's wrath against Fulk's insolence; the Black Count himself, however, simply replaced the roof and pushed on the completion of the monastic buildings as if nothing had happened.

Having successfully defied the Church, Fulk next ventured to defy the king and the count of Blois both at once. Fulk—possibly a kinsman of the new Queen Constance, at any rate alive to the value of alliance with her—sought to make common cause against their common rivals of Blois, and crushed King Robert's last hope of reunion with Bertha by sending twelve armed men to assassinate, at a hunting party before the king's own eyes, the seneschal Hugh of Beauvais, the confidant of the cherished scheme. The crime went altogether unpunished and even uncensured save by one bishop, Fulbert of Chartres, in striking proof both of the royal helplessness and of the independence and security Fulk had attained.

Fulk sent twelve armed men to assassinate the seneschal Hugh of Beauvais at a hunting party, before the eyes of King Robert himself. Hugh was the royal confidant of the cherished plan to reunite with Bertha, mother of young Odo of Blois, who still lived and was still loved by the king. Fulk's crime in ordering this assassination went altogether unpunished and uncensured save by Bishop Fulbert of Chartres.

Almost immediately after the assassination of Hugh of Beauvais, Fulk could again venture on leaving his dominions under the regency of his brother Maurice while he set off on another long journey. Legendary Angevin writers, by some confusion between their own hero and the Emperor Otto III., make this into a mission of knight-errantry to deliver the Pope from a tyrant named Crescentius, but the journey seems really to have been a second pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Fulk returned to find the storm on his eastern border about to break. The adherents of the count of Blois, headed by Landry of Châteaudun, had profited by Fulk's absence to plot the expulsion of the Angevins from Touraine. Despite vigorous resistance by Fulk's lieutenant Sulpice at Amboise, the Blois party seemed near success when Fulk himself dropped like a thunderbolt in their midst, dashed through the county of Blois into that of Chartres, punished Landry by sacking Châteaudun and harrying the district, and marched home in triumph to Amboise. This raid was a distinct declaration of war, not upon Landry, but upon Landry's lord Odo of Blois.

The county of Maine was thrown virtually into Fulk's hands by the death of its aged count Hugh. By allying with Hugh's youthful successor, Fulk secured the northern frontier of Touraine and the support of a body of valiant fighting-men. Fulk's gifts of attraction and persuasion, which allowed him to attach men to his service and inspire them with something of his own spirit, were strikingly shown in his choice of a lieutenant. Instinct told him he had found the man he wanted in young Lisoy, lord of Bazogers in Maine. Lisoy was appointed to share with the aged Sulpice the supreme command of Loches and Amboise; Sulpice built a lofty stone tower at Amboise to defend it, while Lisoy, "the pride of Cenomannian knighthood," threw himself heart and soul into Fulk's service, soon giving the burned and plundered districts of Saint-Aignan, Chaumont, and Blois cause to know it.

The crisis came in the summer of 1016, when Odo of Blois gathered his forces to attack Montrichard. The allied hosts of Anjou and Maine assembled at Amboise, then separated to make a battle unavoidable: Fulk took up a position at Pontlevoy in a wood then skirted by the high road from Blois to Montrichard (the later Bois-Royal), while Herbert of Maine rode down to the Cher and camped at Bourré just above Montrichard. If Odo followed the high road, he would meet the Angevins; if he tried a more easterly route, he would encounter the Cenomannians, with the garrison of Montrichard at their back. The two bodies of troops were so close that either could easily assist the other. The strategical arrangement proved vital, for on that Friday morning in July 1016, when Fulk met Odo face to face at Pontlevoy, he was never in all his long life—save in the panic at Conquereux—so near to complete overthrow.

At Pontlevoy, Odo of Blois advanced confidently, trusting in the size of his host, only to find Fulk Nerra's Angevins drawn up in battle array. The battle initially favored the numerically superior forces of Blois; Fulk was unhorsed and stunned, and the fate of Anjou hung in the balance. At the critical moment, Herbert of Maine and his knights charged the enemy left wing, turning the tide of battle. The chivalry of Blois fled in confusion, abandoning their foot soldiers to slaughter and their camp to plunder, while the victorious allies returned to Amboise laden with spoils and prisoners. The battle is dated July 6, 1016.

The victory of Pontlevoy marked the turning point of Fulk's career. Rather than immediately pressing his advantage in Touraine, Fulk allowed an armed truce to persist for nine years, secure in the knowledge that Touraine was a means rather than an end. His western frontier had been secured at Conquereux and his eastern frontier was now safe after Pontlevoy. From the south, Fulk had nothing to fear, as the duke of Aquitaine, to whom he owed homage for Loudun, proved a staunch friend and bestowed upon him the city of Saintes.

Fulk used the gift of Saintes as a pretext to entrap Herbert of Maine, possibly because of Herbert's nocturnal raids that had earned him the surname "Wake-the-dog." Fulk lured Herbert to Saintes with the promise of investiture, then had him seized and flung into prison. Herbert was only released after two years, upon submission to Fulk's terms, which likely included acknowledgment of Angevin suzerainty over Maine. This imprisonment set Angevin power on a collision course with the Norman ducal house and paved the way for the Angevin conquest of Maine and ultimately the union of Anjou with England through Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Empress Matilda.

While Herbert languished in prison, Odo of Blois inherited the county of Champagne from his cousin Stephen, dramatically increasing his wealth and power and enabling him to overawe the French crown. In 1025, King Robert—or rather Queen Constance—made peace with Odo, abandoning their former ally Fulk to face the combined forces of Touraine, Blois, Chartres, and Champagne alone, with possible support from the Royal Domain. Odo besieged the great fortified camp of the Montboyau on the Loire opposite Tours, while Fulk advanced to relieve the garrison, reaching Brain-sur-Alonnes.

Learning that Gelduin, lord of Saumur—the only man Fulk truly feared—had joined Odo at the Montboyau, Fulk made a hurried night-ride across the Loire and Vienne and arrived at Saumur at break of day, capturing the stronghold by sunset despite the defenders setting it ablaze. The monks of S. Florence emerged from the ruins carrying their patron's relics; Fulk famously promised the saint a better dwelling at Angers. When the boat carrying the relics stuck fast in a Loire sandbank, the monks declared the saint refused to leave his territory, and Fulk—amused despite himself—allowed them to deposit the relics at the church of S. Hilary.

Fulk's capture of Saumur stripped Odo of his best Angevin border stronghold, and Odo's grand expedition had achieved nothing. After Fulk relieved the Montboyau by drawing Odo off to Montbazon through a feigned retreat, peace was eventually negotiated through the monks of S. Florence as mediators. Odo relinquished Saumur definitively, and Fulk agreed to raze the Montboyau. A final attempt by Odo to surprise Amboise in 1027 alongside the young King Henry also failed, marking Odo's last effort. Fulk had out-generaled his rival in every way, and although he did not seek to hasten the final resolution, the issue of their rivalry had become a foregone conclusion.

After forty years as count of Anjou, Fulk Nerra stood at the height of his prosperity. Each threatening greater neighbour around the boy-heir of Geoffrey Greygown had been successfully dealt with, and the small Marchland had grown into a power second only to Normandy and perhaps Aquitaine. Before Fulk's reign closed, even Aquitaine, the one immediate neighbour that had never bowed to him, fell prostrate before his son.

Fulk's involvement in general French affairs was rare in his last years, but when it occurred it followed a consistent policy he had initiated and his descendants would maintain down to Henry Fitz-Empress: steady loyalty to the lawful authority of the French Crown. This stance stood in perpetual opposition to the policy pursued by the counts of Blois.

Following the death of King Robert in 1031, Fulk appeared as a peace-maker between Queen Constance and her son the young King Henry, whom she was trying to oust from his throne. He then accompanied Henry on an expedition to dislodge Odo of Champagne from Sens, an enterprise which fared no better than the earlier attempt by Odo and Henry to dislodge Fulk himself from Amboise.

Peace or war mattered little to the Black Count, who was never at a loss for work. When no enemy offered itself to be fought or outwitted, his energies turned to the encouragement of piety and the embellishment of his capital. A fragment of red flintstone ruins overlooking the river at Angers survives as the sole remaining trace of Fulk's own dwelling, probably his own construction. A poetic legend shows him quietly at home in this hall, gazing down at the purple Mayenne winding between its green meadows toward the Loire.

From his hall at Angers, Fulk watched a dove flying to and fro across the river, gathering fragments of earth to fill a cavity on the opposite slope. He marked the spot and used it as the foundation-stone for the great abbey of Saint Nicolas, vowed as a thank-offering for deliverance from a storm at sea on his return from his second pilgrimage and consecrated on 1 December 1020. Eight years later, in 1128, his countess Hildegard founded a nunnery nearby on the site of an ancient church of Our Lady of Charity; around these foundations grew the suburb of Ronceray, scarcely less important than the city itself.

The irresistible attraction of the Holy Land drew Fulk to revisit Jerusalem in 1035. The journey's one recorded event of particular interest was his meeting at Constantinople with Duke Robert of Normandy, father of the future Conqueror. The old and the young penitent completed their pilgrimage together, but only Fulk lived to see his home again.

On reaching Angers, Fulk found the gates shut in his face by his own son Geoffrey. The rebellion was quickly quelled. Saddled and bridled like a beast of burden, Geoffrey crawled to his father's feet, who shouted that he was conquered. Geoffrey's spirited reply, "Aye, conquered by thee, for thou art my father; but unconquered by all beside!" touched Fulk's paternal pride, and the son arose forgiven.

While Odo of Champagne wasted his last four years in a visionary attempt to seize Burgundy, Italy, and the imperial crown from Conrad II, Fulk's conquests of the Indre and Cher valleys were completed by the acquisition of Montbazon and Saint-Aignan. On hearing in 1037 that Odo had been defeated and slain at Bar by the imperial forces, Fulk at once laid siege to Langeais and took it. One more stronghold remained in the Vienne valley: Chinon, the mighty ridge rising abruptly above the silvery-blue river, won at last by Fulk's persuasion rather than his sword. Only Tours itself stood out against the conqueror of Touraine, and that final blow Fulk left for his successor.

As his life drew to a close, the ghostly terrors of his youth returned with redoubled force, and Fulk undertook a fourth pilgrimage to Jerusalem. There he had two oath-bound servants drag him round the Holy City in full view of the Turks, one holding a halter at his neck and the other scourging his naked back, while he cried aloud for mercy on his soul as a perjured and miserable sinner. He made his way homeward as far as Metz, where on 21 June 1040 the Black Count's soul passed away. His body was embalmed, carried home, and buried in the chapter-house of Beaulieu, the abbey that had been the monument of his earliest pilgrimage.

Beaulieu never forgot its debt to Fulk. For seven centuries the anniversaries of his death and of his widow Hildegard's were solemnly observed; the monks read in their office the story of his pilgrimage and chanted the praise of his pious theft, and treasured his tomb until its destruction in 1793, since when modern research has recovered its site. Across Anjou and Touraine, popular imagination attributed to him almost every important architectural work in his dominions and credited him with command over more than mortal artificers. He was rightly seen as the embodiment of Angevin glory—the astute politician, valiant warrior, consummate general, and strenuous ruler who, by the initiative force of genius, had launched Anjou on a career no opposing power could thenceforth check. His fifty-three years settled the question of whether Anjou or Blois would dominate central Gaul, and when Geoffrey Martel succeeded him the answer could no longer be doubted.

Geoffrey Martel began his reign in circumstances very unlike his father's half a century before: Anjou's political position had wholly changed, and he was a full-grown man already trained in Fulk's school and experienced in politics and war. His contemporaries looked up to him with as much respect and even more dread than they had given his father. He crushed Aquitaine, won Tours, and won Le Mans, delighting to commemorate in the surname Martel—"the Hammer"—the victorious blows of the blacksmith's foster-son.

Geoffrey was not the artificer of his own fortune: his pre-eminence rested on his father's labours, favourable accidents, and a military reputation owed more to luck than to generalship. He labours under two trying comparisons—as son of Fulk the Black and as rival of William the Conqueror. As statesman, his sweeping but pointless designs on Aquitaine came to nothing, and in Touraine and Maine he merely reaped Fulk's harvest. As ruler, he was regarded with dread rather than love; his harshness had earlier roused his subjects, and his neighbours looked on him as a tyrant to the last. As strategist, his two great victories at Montcontour and Montlouis dazzled the world, but the capture of William of Aquitaine was the fortune of war and the credit at Montlouis belonged largely to his lieutenant Lisoy of Amboise. Twice Geoffrey met his master: the first time he confessed it at his father's feet, the second time he evaded defeat by a tacit withdrawal against William of Normandy—a moral humiliation worse than any open loss. Compared with Fulk's living warmth, ardour, and impulsiveness, Geoffrey appears altogether coarser and lower: a sledge-hammer to his father's falcon.

About 1030 or 1031, Geoffrey acquired the little county of Vendôme by purchase from his half-sister Adela, the only child of Fulk Rechin's first marriage and heiress of her maternal grandfather Count Burchard. The transaction made Geoffrey a territorial ruler in his own right, and after performing homage to King Henry for the fief he proceeded at once to establish his authority within it.

Geoffrey's first act as master of Vendôme was to found, in the capital of his new county, an abbey dedicated to the Holy Trinity. The foundation served both as a pious endowment and as a visible assertion of his new status as an independent lord.

The appointment of an abbot for the new abbey became the occasion for the first recorded outbreak of discord between Fulk and his heir. A monk named Reginald, whom Fulk had obtained from the great abbey of Marmoutier to replace the fugitive Baldwin as abbot of S. Nicolas at Angers, defected to Geoffrey and accepted the abbotship of the Holy Trinity at Vendôme. Enraged at losing two abbots in succession, Fulk sent the Marmoutier colony back to their parent house and installed brethren from S. Aubin's at Angers under Prior Hilduin in their place. Though Fulk's wrath fell chiefly on the monks, the incident revealed Geoffrey's growing impatience with his father's quiet, waiting policy and his inclination to act independently in ways that displeased the old count.

Of all Fulk's neighbors, only the count of Poitou seems to have maintained consistently peaceable relations with him. William Fierabras, the duke from whom Geoffrey Greygown had once wrested Loudun, died roughly two years after the second battle of Conquereux; his successor William IV., reckoned by the Aquitanians as "William the Great," inherited little of his erratic kinsman's temperament and cultivated a friendly understanding with Anjou. Like Odo of Blois, William at one point received an offer of the Italian crown, in the negotiations over which Fulk acted as the duke's advocate with King Robert. Although the project failed, William is thought to have rewarded Fulk's good offices with the investiture of Saintes—a grant that was to become the pretext for later wars between their descendants.

William the Great died on January 31, 1029, and was succeeded by his son William the Fat, whose mother appears to have been a sister of Queen Constance. It was this new duke whom Geoffrey Martel chose as the first target of his military ambitions. An Angevin tradition attributes the war to a dispute over Saintes or Saintonge, but this explanation does not withstand scrutiny. Geoffrey was in fact resuming the expansionist policy of his grandfather Geoffrey Greygown, and with considerably greater effect.

In the autumn of 1033 Geoffrey Martel launched an expedition against the duke of Aquitaine. On September 20th the two forces met in a pitched battle near the abbey of S. Jouin-de-Marne, close to Montcontour in Poitou. The Poitevins were routed—partly, it seems, through treason in their own ranks—and William the Fat was taken prisoner. For three years the duke, the second great feudatory of the realm, languished in captivity at Vendôme. Only when the whole district of Saintonge and several important towns were ceded to Geoffrey, together with the promise of an annual tribute, was he released. He had been ransomed only just in time: his maltreatment in prison had broken his health, and he died three days after regaining his freedom.

After the capture of William the Fat, Geoffrey Martel moved to block the union of Poitou and Gascony. William's next heir was his half-brother Odo, son of William the Great's second wife Brisca, heiress of Gascony. By marrying William's still-young stepmother, the widowed Countess Agnes, Geoffrey positioned himself as stepfather and guardian to her three small children, putting Poitou effectively into his own hands.

Before William the Fat had been dead many months, his stepmother Agnes, left a young widow with three little children, gave her hand to Geoffrey of Vendôme (Geoffrey Martel). The marriage was a transparent move to secure Angevin influence over the guardianship of Agnes's sons and, through them, over the Poitevin realm.

The wedding caused great scandal in Anjou. Geoffrey and Agnes were denounced in the harshest terms as too near akin to marry: by canon-law reckoning they were cousins in the third degree, since one was a grandson and the other a great-granddaughter of Adela of Chalon, second wife of Geoffrey Greygown. They were widely regarded as sinners, and no one condemned them more fiercely than the bridegroom's own father.

Fulk Nerra found the whole scheme of Geoffrey's meddling in Aquitaine repugnant. He had looked to his son to complete his own unfinished work in Touraine and Maine, and saw the marriage as a betrayal of that duty. Geoffrey's misconduct during his regency in Anjou brought matters to a crisis, resulting in his first and last public defeat, though he obstinately continued to pursue his Poitevin projects.

With William the Fat dead, the Poitevins were left, in the words of their chronicler, "as sheep having no shepherd." A party led by William of Parthenay backed the claims of Agnes's sons against their elder half-brother Odo of Gascony, holding out successfully at Germont with Angevin help. Odo was killed assaulting another stronghold at Mausé, leaving no children, and the elder of Geoffrey Martel's stepsons—twin sons of Agnes—became heir to Poitou.

In 1044, Countess Agnes came to Poitiers accompanied by her twin sons Peter and Geoffrey and their stepfather Geoffrey Martel. There, with the chief nobles of Poitou, they held a council at which the elder boy, Peter, was solemnly ordained duke of Aquitaine under the official name William, while his brother was dispatched to Gascony to become its count. Agnes thereby achieved her principal objective.

Agnes's third child, a daughter who bore her mother's name, was married in 1043 to Emperor Henry III, whose first wife had been a daughter of Cnut. This imperial wedding preceded the formal settlement of Aquitaine's affairs by a year.

The imperial dreams that had consumed Odo of Champagne's final years died with him on the field of Bar, and he left his heirs not a foot of land outside the kingdom of France. His elder son Theobald inherited the original Blois-Chartres-Tours territories, while the younger, Stephen, became count of Champagne. Theobald's heritage, however, was shorn of its fairest portion: the county of Tours now comprised little more than the capital, with all Touraine south of the Loire in Angevin hands.

Odo's sons inherited his wrongheadedness without his quickness of action. Beset by powerful foes, they began their careers by rebelling after the manner of their ancestors, luring the king's youngest brother Odo—a weak-minded youth—into their coalition with a promise of dethroning Henry I. But the rebels lacked a concerted plan and were crushed one by one: young Odo was captured and imprisoned at Orléans, Stephen of Champagne was routed in pitched battle by the king himself, and Theobald of Blois was left to be dealt with by other hands.

With a master-stroke of policy, King Henry I proclaimed the city of Tours forfeit because of Theobald's rebellion and granted its investiture to the count of Anjou, formally transferring this strategic border-city into Angevin hands.

The city of Tours originated in the Roman empire as Cæsarodunum. Its castrum was built in a broad, shallow basin between the Loire and the Cher, on the site of a village of the Turones mentioned in Caesar's Gallic Wars. As the "city of the Turones" it became a road centre linking Poitiers, Chartres, Bourges, Orléans, Le Mans, and Angers, and was made the capital of the Third Lyonnese province.

Tours was the holy city of Gaul and the cradle of Gaulish Christianity. Its first bishop, Gatian, was one of seven missionaries sent from Rome to evangelize the Gallic provinces during the Decian persecution. After his long episcopate the see was vacant for nearly forty years; only after Constantine's death did Tours receive its second bishop, Lidorius, a native son who laid the foundations of a cathedral church.

The fame of Gatian and Lidorius was eclipsed by their successor, Saint Martin. Born at Sabaria in Upper Pannonia of heathen parents, Martin served with distinction under Julian before renouncing the army for Christianity. After fleeing to Poitiers, he received minor orders from Bishop Hilary and, following a perilous journey home to convert his family, returned to a life of seclusion in Gaul. In 371, on the death of Lidorius, the people of Tours forced him to become their bishop. He became the apostle of all central Gaul—the Thaumaturgus of Gaul, famed for the legend in which he cut his military cloak in two to share it with a beggar, a vision that confirmed his calling to baptism. From Tours the faith spread rapidly into Anjou and the surrounding lands.

On the north bank of the Loire, beyond the suburb of S. Symphorian, Martin found a "green retreat" against the white limestone cliff—a wooden cell, a stretch of solitude, and a small brotherhood of likeminded men. This nest in the wilderness became the "Great Monastery," Marmoutier (Majus Monasterium), whose rock-hewn cells later housed the monks under Alcuin of York. A second minster, of almost greater fame, grew up over Martin's burial place outside the western wall of the city, on low ground later reclaimed by ninth- and tenth-century dyke-makers. It is within this episcopal city of S. Martin, in the writings of Bishop Gregory of Tours, that West-Frankish history begins.

Tours and Northmen Invasions After the departure of the great English scholar Alcuin and the Emperor Charlemagne from Gaul, Tours endured repeated attacks during the Northmen invasions. The city and its abbey became the chief bulwark of the Loire valley against the heathen tide, much as Paris and Saint-Denis protected the Seine. Earlier, Tours had been saved from Saracens by Charles Martel, but no such champion arose against the Northmen. Defended only by citizen valour and Roman-era fortifications strengthened by Karolingian rulers, Tours repeatedly repelled the pirates at the walls of Cæsarodunum, though Saint-Martin's Abbey was burnt down multiple times.

S. Martin's Remains Relocations and Feasts The canons of Saint-Martin's Abbey, who had replaced the original monks in Alcuin's time, lived in constant fear of desecration to their patron's relics. They carried the saint's body from place to place—sometimes within the city walls, sometimes far inland, even into the distant Burgundian duchy—bringing it home whenever circumstances permitted. Two "reversions" were commemorated annually: one on December 13, 885, and another on May 12, 919, alongside two other feasts—S. Martin's ordination on July 4 and his deposition on November 11. In the first reversion, Ingelger, founder of the Angevin house, was said to have played a prominent role.

Legend of S. Martin's Subvention The story of the second reversion was superseded by the famous legend of the "subvention of Saint Martin." According to this tale, when Tours was hard-pressed by besieging Northmen, the citizens brought the saint's corpse onto the walls for divine protection. The living heathen fled before the dead saint, were pursued by the triumphant citizens still carrying their patron, and were utterly routed at a place thereafter named "S. Martin of the Battle." This legend is associated with the siege of 903, when Marmoutier was destroyed and S. Martin's abbey burnt for the third time.

Creation of Châteauneuf Fortified Borough When the canons rebuilt Saint-Martin's Abbey after the 903 destruction, they encircled it with a wall and obtained a charter from Charles the Simple creating a new fortified borough. This borough was exempt from both bishop and count, subject only to its own abbot—the duke of the French, who held the abbey in commendam from the mid-eighth century as he did Saint-Denis. Thus alongside the old city of Cæsarodunum arose the "Castrum Novum" or Châteauneuf, also called "Castellum S. Martini" or Martinopolis, with its own walls, collegiate church, and abbot-duke.

Angevin Counts' Ties to S. Martin's Abbey The counts of Anjou, who consistently aligned with the ducal house, recognized the value of establishing a foothold near Tours through its abbey. The first count and his father feature prominently in the legendary history of the two great "reversions." Fulk the Good was almost more canon than count, occupying a stall next to the dean of S. Martin's—a privilege he cherished and which became hereditary among his descendants as the abbotship did among Hugh the Great's descendants. While Fulk prized it as a spiritual privilege, his successors saw it as a political wedge for gaining entry into the coveted city.

Fulk the Black's Tours Campaign Tours was the objective toward which Fulk the Black worked steadily throughout his life. By the time he left the task to his son, it was nearly accomplished, but the city's broad river and Roman walls made it hard to win. Blocking the Loire was impossible, and breaking the walls required a long, tedious, and costly siege. Geoffrey delayed until the king's grant of investiture made the conquest both a point of honour and a matter of pressing interest.

Geoffrey Martel's Siege of Tours Awakening from his Aquitanian ambitions, Geoffrey Martel gathered his forces and marched—not by the old Roman road, but by a safer southern route along the Loire, across the Vienne and Indre valleys, to besiege Tours. Using Châteauneuf as his base, he seized the monastery of S. Julian at the city's northeast corner, close to the wall. The city held out for a year, its inhabitants apparently abandoned by their count. In August 1044, Theobald collected an army with his brother Stephen of Champagne to relieve it, advancing down the Cher valley and camping opposite Bléré. Geoffrey had stationed Lisoy with two hundred knights and fifteen hundred foot at Amboise to block Theobald's route.

Battle of Noit and Theobald's Capture Lisoy advised Geoffrey to raise the siege and unite forces for a pitched battle. Geoffrey followed this counsel, taking the consecrated banner of Saint-Martin's abbey from above the shrine and riding at the head of his troops. While Theobald moved from Bléré, Geoffrey reached Montlouis on the south bank. The next morning, the Angevins met the men of Blois at a place called Noit. The army of the brother-counts offered almost no resistance; Stephen fled at once, and Theobald was driven with some five or six hundred knights into the wood of Braye, where Lisoy captured him. Survivors claimed they saw Geoffrey's troops in shining white, believing themselves to be fighting the hosts of Heaven. The site was called "burgum S. Martini Belli," now known as St.-Martin-le-Beau.

Cession of Tours to Anjou The Angevins gained over a thousand prisoners, with Theobald—the most valuable—imprisoned at Loches. Refusing all monetary ransom, Geoffrey accepted only the city of Tours and the whole county of Touraine. A nominal overlordship was reserved to Theobald, requiring Geoffrey to do homage for the ceded territory. However, the circumstances and King Henry's prior grant indicated that Theobald's rights over the capital were considered entirely forfeited by his rebellion, so Geoffrey stepped into the exact place of the former counts, holding Tours directly of the king alone.

Strategic Importance of Tours for Anjou The acquisition of Tours closed the second stage of the Angevin house's career. Though preliminary, this period was the most important, determining Anjou's later growth and very existence. Had Blois proved too strong, Anjou would have been swallowed; had they been equals, both states would have neutralized each other. Beginning with Blois in the ascendant, Anjou's survival depended on Fulk Nerra's courage and statesmanship. The treaty sworn at his great castle on the Indre, four years after his death, crowned Fulk's life's work and left his son without a rival until he sought one in Maine. The long struggles of Fulk and Odo, completed by Geoffrey and Theobald, made a clear field for later contests—Geoffrey and William, Fulk V. and Henry I.—and ultimately, in a new form and for far higher stakes, the struggle of Stephen and Henry Fitz-Empress for the English crown.

The Siege of Melun is discussed through six different medieval sources, beginning with Richer's fullest account describing Odo's seizure of the castle and the royal siege involving Norman forces. William of Jumièges identifies the Odo in question as Odo II of Blois and names the Norman leader as Duke Richard the Good. Hugh of Fleury dates the event to 999, while other sources offer different chronologies. The central debate concerns the date: Hugh of Fleury's 999 is supported by William of Jumièges' identification of Odo II, though Odo did not become count until 1004. Some scholars date the affair to 991 based on Richer's plural "kings," while the author suggests 996, possibly during Hugh Capet's final illness. The Angevin version attributing the capture to Herbert count of Troyes with Geoffrey Greygown as hero is rejected as inconsistent with the more reliable Norman and Frankish sources.

The parentage of Queen Constance is investigated, with all authorities agreeing her father's name was William, identified by M. Mabille as William I, count of Arles and Provence. The disputed question is the identity of her mother and the nature of her kinship to the Angevin house. Three main source traditions are examined: an unprinted manuscript of R. Glaber calls her niece of Fulk Nerra through a sister named Blanca; Bishop Ivo of Chartres and an anonymous chronicle make her mother sister of Geoffrey Greygown; and the Chron. S. Albin. presents a confused account making Constance a daughter of Blanche and "Lothar." The author reconstructs that Constance's mother was Adelaide, the divorced wife of King Louis the Lazy, who married William of Arles around 982–983. This Adelaide/Blanche is traced through her marriages to Raymond duke of the Goths, Louis, and finally William of Arles, with the dating fitting Constance's marriage in 1000. The tradition that Constance's mother was a daughter of Fulk the Good remains uncertain, though the author suggests she may more likely have been Greygown's daughter than his sister, possibly by Fulk's second marriage with the widow of Alan Barbetorte.

The pilgrimages of Fulk Nerra are examined, with all authorities agreeing on at least three journeys: one before the foundation of Beaulieu, one after Beaulieu but before S. Nicolas, and one from which he died in 1040 at Metz. The first journey is dated by charter evidence to 1003. Three modern dating theories for the second pilgrimage are assessed: 1028 (rejected for misreading Ademar of Chabanais), 1019–20 (lacking documentary support), and 1010–11 (founded on inconclusive charters). The author identifies problems with the 1010 charter evidence, including the identification of "Fulco vicecomes" with Fulk Nerra, which the Gallia Christiana authors dispute. An alternative approach examines the Gesta Consulinum's account of "the wicked Landry's" attack on Anjou and the war of Châteaudun, suggesting that Fulk's brother Maurice may have served as regent during a second pilgrimage around 1014–1015. This theory would explain the otherwise inexplicable Angevin tradition about Maurice and is consistent with the established practice of leaving Maurice as regent during the first pilgrimage. The dating of Landry's attacks through the tenure of Sulpice as treasurer of S. Martin's (from 1014) and Archambald's death (1015–1016) supports this interpretation, though problems remain with the description of Odo of Blois's possessions that appear in the same narrative.

The chapter argues for a third Fulk Nerra pilgrimage in 1034–1035, intermediate between his 1014–1015 journey and his final one in 1040. Although the *Gesta Consulum*'s story of Fulk traveling with Robert the Devil is "a ludicrous tissue of anachronisms" that confuses at least two journeys, the basic claim of an intermediate pilgrimage gains support from Ralph de Diceto's account of Geoffrey Martel acting as regent during Fulk's absence, and decisively from Fulk's own hand in the charter in the *Epitome S. Nicolai*, where the phrase "ultimâ vice" can only mean "the journey whence I last returned." Combined with the 1033 consecration of Hilduin as abbot of S. Nicolas, this points to a third journey in 1034 or 1035. The resulting chronology of Fulk's four pilgrimages is: 1. in 1003; 2. in 1014–1015; 3. in 1034–1035; 4. in 1040.

William of Malmesbury offers a "much fuller" and "thoroughly self-consistent and reasonable" account of Geoffrey's rebellion and Fulk's last pilgrimage, but it contradicts both the date of the third journey established above and the universally-received account of Fulk's death. William places the final journey around 1036–1037 and has Fulk die at home, omitting any prior pilgrimage associated with Geoffrey's regency. Despite the high value of William's independent Angevin material and his keen psychological characterization of Fulk, his testimony cannot stand against the combined weight of the *Gesta Consulum*, Ralph de Diceto, and Fulk Rechin, who all agree that Fulk died on pilgrimage. The chronicler of S. Maxentius, the only other writer supporting the home-death story, himself gives the alternative death-on-pilgrimage account, further weakening the contrary version.

Geoffrey Martel's wars in Poitou and his marriage to Agnes present a "mass of contradictions" among the sources. The *Gesta Consulum*'s explanation of the war's origin only fits the 1062 battle of Chef-Boutonne, not the 1033 battle of S. Jouin-de-Marne where William VII (Guy-Geoffrey) was captured and held prisoner for three years until his death. On the marriage, three witnesses (the chronicles of S. Aubin, S. Sergius, and S. Michael in Periculo Maris) date it to 1 January 1032, while William of Poitiers and William of Malmesbury say it occurred after William's death, with the chronicle of S. Maxentius's vague "per hæc tempora" (1037) supporting neither side. Documentary evidence is ambiguous: 1036 charters confirm Agnes as Geoffrey's wife by that date, and the *Gesta Consulum*'s story of Agnes witnessing a prodigy when Holy Trinity at Vendôme was founded would require a 1032 marriage, but the foundation-charter is missing and the 1040 endowment-charter's phrase "a novo" leaves open the possibility that Geoffrey restarted the foundation with Agnes's dowry after a pause.

The marriage was considered scandalous only by Angevin chroniclers, while the two Williams saw in it merely Geoffrey's "impudence" in wedding so high-born a woman. The canon-law prohibition on marriages within the seventh degree of kindred makes the question of consanguinity impossible to resolve definitively given the gaps in the pedigrees, but the intensity of the Angevin reaction suggests "a close and obvious" rather than remote connexion. Two main possibilities emerge: Geoffrey's mother Hildegard may have been a daughter of Poitou (making him akin to William) or of Burgundy (making him akin to Agnes), and if Adela of Chalon was indeed daughter of Robert of Troyes and Geoffrey's grandmother, then William, Agnes, and Geoffrey were all cousins—Agnes and William in the fifth degree, Geoffrey and William in the fourth, and Geoffrey and Agnes in the third. A dispensation may have been obtained for Agnes's first marriage, but the second marriage clearly sought none. The chapter concludes by suggesting the additional possibility of spiritual affinity through Geoffrey's potential role as godfather to Agnes's younger son Guy-Geoffrey, paralleling the case of Robert and Bertha.

This section details the full historical trajectory of the County of Maine from its ancient origins through the mid-11th century: it outlines the region's roots as the homeland of the Aulerci Cenomanni tribe, its deep ties to Roman occupation (including Le Mans's origins as a Roman castrum and its cathedral built on the site of the Roman praetorium), and the long-standing secular authority of its bishops, who held power equal to local counts per a decree of Clovis. It covers Maine's repeated invasions by Bretons and Northmen in the 9th century, competing territorial claims from the houses of Anjou, Blois, and Normandy, the turbulent rule of Bellême family bishops Sainfred and Avesgaud and their conflicts with Count Herbert Wake-dog of Maine, Fulk the Black of Anjou's expanding influence over the region, the 1036 death of Count Hugh of Maine and his usurpation by his great-uncle Herbert Bacco. It then follows Bishop Gervase of Château-du-Loir's appeal to Count Geoffrey Martel of Anjou for patronage, his expulsion of Herbert Bacco and restoration of the young Hugh, his marriage of Hugh to the widowed Bertha of Blois, Geoffrey Martel's imprisonment of Gervase, and Geoffrey's seizure of full control of Maine after Hugh's death c. 1051. The section concludes with Geoffrey Martel's rise as the second most powerful figure in the kingdom, his conflict with King Henry I of France, his escalating disputes with Duke William of Normandy, and his capture of the key Norman border castles Alençon and Domfront, setting the stage for open warfare between Anjou and Normandy.

In autumn 1048, William launched a siege to dislodge Angevin and Bellême forces from Domfront, a castle built on an impregnable steep rocky spur accessible only via two narrow, difficult paths, making direct assault impossible. William opted for a winter blockade, during which his forces conducted regular ambushes against the garrison in the dense surrounding woodland. The starving, pinned-down garrison ultimately called on Geoffrey Martel for relief.

Geoffrey Martel responded to the call and sent a formal challenge to William to meet him at Domfront at dawn the following day, but by sunrise Geoffrey and his entire host had vanished. No Angevin chroniclers ever refuted the Norman account that Geoffrey had fled, and the 1048 Angevin campaign record is entirely blank. Immediately after this disappearance, Alençon fell to William, followed quickly by Domfront itself.

The 1048 defeat marked the start of a long-running Angevin-Norman feud, with a nearly 7-year lull in major fighting during which Geoffrey secured final control of Le Mans but never recovered from the shock of his losses. In the later conflicts between King Henry I of France and Normandy, Henry initially courted William to counter Angevin power, but reversed his policy to support rebellions against William. In 1054, Henry summoned all his realm's princes to join a large expedition to destroy William, but Geoffrey Martel did not appear at the muster at Mantes, despite his prior reputation for military strength that had once forced William of Aquitaine to disband his army and sue for peace. By deserting Henry, Geoffrey avoided involvement in the Norman rout at Mortemer, but the subsequent peace treaty between Henry and William included a clause authorizing William to seize any Angevin territory he could.

Following the 1054 peace, William warned Geoffrey he would arrive at Ambrières on the Mayenne with his forces within 40 days to build a fortification. Geoffrey of Mayenne appealed to Martel for support to stop the Norman construction, and Martel boastfully promised he would not allow the Normans to act unopposed. William completed the Ambrières fortifications unhindered, and when he departed, Geoffrey of Mayenne, the Duke of Aquitaine, and Odo, uncle and guardian of the Duke of Brittany, laid siege to the site. The mere rumor of William's approaching force caused the three allies to withdraw in disorganized, rapid retreat, leaving Geoffrey of Mayenne captured; he then renounced Martel as his lord and became William's vassal. Two key castles in Maine subsequently acknowledged William's rule.

For the next three years, Geoffrey's efforts were wasted on minor, unprofitable disputes. The long-running conflict over Nantes flared again, resolved in 1057 in a discreditable episode for Martel: after Duke Alan of Brittany died in 1040 leaving an infant heir Conan, Alan's uncle Odo seized the duchy, leading to 16 years of Breton factional conflict exacerbated by Geoffrey's meddling. When Conan was freed in 1056/1057 and Odo imprisoned, Geoffrey allied with his former enemy Hoel of Nantes, then betrayed Hoel by seizing Nantes, holding it only 40 days before losing it permanently. Additionally, Geoffrey's marriage to the widowed Countess of Poitou had failed to give him control over his stepsons: Guy-Geoffrey (later William VII of Aquitaine) became sole master of Gascony, while Peter-William ("the Bold") ruled Poitou peacefully except for conflicts with Anjou. Geoffrey divorced Peter-William's mother Agnes around 1053 to marry Grecia of Montreuil, likely ending his alliance with his stepson. In 1058, William of Aquitaine blockaded Geoffrey at Saumur, but died of sudden illness in August, freeing Martel for his final conflict with William of Normandy.

In early 1058, King Henry and Geoffrey Martel met at Angers to plan a joint campaign against William, now recognizing him as their most dangerous rival. The plan was a large plundering raid rather than an open battle. In August 1058, the Franco-Angevin host burned and plundered central Normandy as far as Caen. As they crossed the Dive River at the ford of Varaville, they were caught by both the incoming tide and William's attacking forces. Henry and Geoffrey, who had crossed first, could only watch as their army was destroyed, and fled Norman territory as quickly as possible.

King Henry died in summer 1060, followed by Geoffrey Martel in November 1060. Near death, Geoffrey took monastic vows at the Abbey of Saint Nicolas (founded by his father) and died the next morning at the hour of prime. With his death, the male line of Fulk the Red ended. His designated heir was his nephew Geoffrey "the Bearded", son of his sister Hermengard. Earlier in 1060, at Martel's deathbed, he had knighted his 17-year-old nephew Fulk "the Gosling" (Hermengard's younger son) and invested him with governance of Saintonge to suppress a local revolt.

The territories Geoffrey Martel bequeathed to his successor were not a unified whole, but four separate states held on different tenures, two burdened with ongoing feuds, held together only by fear of Martel's personal power. Within three years of his death, two of the four counties were lost. Anjou and Touraine remained loyal to his son, but Maine, his latest conquest, quickly rebelled to restore its former ruling line. Saintonge, his earliest conquest, was already drifting back to Aquitanian control: Guy-Geoffrey (William VII of Aquitaine) captured Saintes shortly after Martel's death, though the Angevins retook it briefly. William VII then blockaded Saintes until sword and famine forced its surrender in 1059, and Saintonge was permanently lost to the count of Anjou.

After his father Hugh's death, the minor Herbert II of Maine, advised by his mother Bertha of Blois, submitted to William the Conqueror to avoid Angevin domination. Herbert commended himself and his county to William under the ancient grant to Hrolf, promised to marry one of William's daughters, and stipulated that Maine should revert fully to William if he died without children. A further marriage pact linked William's eldest son Robert with Herbert's sister Margaret. Herbert died childless in 1064, activating the reversion clause.

William the Conqueror asserted his claim to Maine following Herbert II's death, encountering an Angevin claim from Geoffrey the Bearded who sought only overlordship. William allowed Robert to do homage to Geoffrey at Alençon and receive a grant of Margaret's hand, but when Walter of Mantes claimed Maine through Herbert's aunt Biota, William conquered the county by force. After the submission of Geoffrey of Mayenne, William made a triumphant entry into Le Mans, placed Margaret under his protection, and ruled Maine as its conqueror, effectively ending Angevin overlordship during his lifetime.

Geoffrey Martel's death triggered an Angevin succession crisis as his nephew Fulk Rechin ("the Quarreller") disputed the will with his elder brother Geoffrey the Bearded, claiming he had been unjustly disinherited of his uncle's heritage. Fulk proved a self-indulgent and treacherous ruler whose intrigues devastated Anjou. After capturing Geoffrey in 1068, Fulk imprisoned him for twenty-eight years while baronial turbulence, external invasions, and ecclesiastical censure ravaged the Marchland, leaving Anjou powerless to intervene effectively in Maine.

In 1073, Manceaux patriots revolted against Norman rule, installing Hugh of Este as count under his mother and Geoffrey of Mayenne. Geoffrey's tyranny prompted an abortive attempt to establish a commune at Le Mans; after its failure, the citizens appealed to Fulk of Anjou, who helped expel Geoffrey from the citadel but fled when William returned with a great army. A subsequent war over La Flèche led to a standoff at Blanchelande, where clergy mediated the Treaty of Blanchelande, confirming Robert of Normandy's investiture by Fulk as overlord while William retained actual possession of Maine.

After William the Conqueror's death in 1087, Robert Curthose inherited Normandy and Maine, allowing Fulk Rechin to revive Angevin overlordship claims. When Manceaux unrest threatened revolt in 1089, Robert sought Fulk's intervention, agreeing to secure Bertrada of Montfort as Fulk's bride despite Fulk's existing marriages and papal excommunication. The political arrangement was soon overshadowed by scandal when Bertrada abandoned Fulk to elope with King Philip of France in 1093.

This section details conflicting historical records for the dates of Fulk of Anjou’s two marriages: his marriage to Arengard is dated to either 1075/1076 (per Gaulish Easter-to-Easter year reckoning) or 1087 depending on the source, while his marriage to Bertrada is placed between April 1090 and 1091. It also notes Fulk’s excommunication was tied to his violence against the Archbishop of Tours and his imprisonment of his brother, with the excommunication lifted in 1094.

In the early 1090s, Maine rose in revolt against Angevin rule, led initially by young Elias of La Flèche, before leadership passed to veteran Geoffrey of Mayenne. Geoffrey installed Hugh of Este as count of Le Mans, but Hugh soon ceded his claims to Elias, who became the widely supported independent ruler of Maine.

Elias of Maine ruled for nearly six years as a beloved, autonomous count, with a bright, warm, and sincere character that made him a symbol of Cenomannian freedom for his people, standing out as one of the few positive figures in an era marked by widespread political corruption and vice.

When Elias prepared to join the First Crusade, he sought protection for his lands from William Rufus of England, but the Red King declared his intent to reclaim all territories held by his father, including Maine. Elias was captured by Robert of Bellême and imprisoned in Rouen; he surrendered Maine to William to secure his release, but William rejected his offer of service. Elias escaped, briefly retook Le Mans to popular acclaim, but was forced to withdraw when William advanced on the city, leaving Maine under Norman control for two more years.

During Maine’s period of independence, Fulk of Anjou was preoccupied with domestic and ecclesiastical conflicts, including his earlier excommunication (lifted in 1094) and later disputes with his son Geoffrey Martel the Second, who was sidelined in favor of Fulk’s younger son, Bertrada’s child.

In 1095, on his way to preach the First Crusade in western Francia, Pope Urban II was hosted by Fulk of Anjou at Angers, where he consecrated the newly completed abbey church of Saint Nicolas, before traveling on to Tours and Le Mans, where his call for the crusade inspired Elias of Maine to take the cross.

Elias was captured by Robert of Bellême in April 1098 and imprisoned for William Rufus. After surrendering Maine to secure his release, William rejected his offer of service. Elias escaped, retook Le Mans briefly, but withdrew when William advanced on the city, leaving Maine under Norman occupation for two additional years.

Maine was liberated in August 1100 following the death of William Rufus, as the Norman garrison of Le Mans surrendered to Elias without resistance after both Robert of Normandy and Henry I of England refused to intervene on their behalf, ending foreign occupation of the county.

After William Rufus’s death, Elias of Maine formed an alliance with Henry I of England, who accepted his homage and friendship, unlike his predecessor. Elias and his Cenomannian forces fought alongside Henry at the 1106 Battle of Tinchebray, contributing to Henry’s victory and his conquest of Normandy.

A planned union between Anjou and Maine, to be sealed by the marriage of Elias’s daughter Aremburg to Geoffrey Martel the Second (Fulk of Anjou’s eldest son), was derailed when Geoffrey died in May 1106 before the marriage could take place.

Geoffrey Martel the Second died in May 1106 after being struck by a poisoned arrow while besieging a rebellious vassal at the castle of Candé. His death, widely suspected to have been orchestrated by his stepmother Bertrada with Fulk Rechin’s tacit approval, ended the planned Anjou-Maine marriage alliance and removed the popular heir apparent from the Angevin line of succession.

After Geoffrey’s death, Fulk Rechin attempted to disinherit his valiant son in favor of Bertrada’s infant child, with support from the Duke of Aquitaine, but was forced to abdicate in 1103 after a short struggle backed by Elias of Maine. Fulk Rechin’s reign left Angevin power severely weakened, reduced to holding only Touraine, with the county’s centuries-long reputation for strength and progress replaced by weakness and disgrace.

In August 1109, Louis VI (Louis the Fat) succeeded his father Philip I as king of France, marking a turning point in the struggle between the French crown and the great feudal lords. He ascended the throne at age 32 with a fixed determination to assert absolute royal authority over the crown’s immediate domains and reduce the power of his increasingly independent vassals.

Louis VI pursued a policy of centralizing royal power, seeking to transform the previously weak and largely symbolic French crown into a dominant force over the great feudal fiefs (including Normandy, Anjou, Blois, and Aquitaine), whose rulers had long been far more powerful and independent than the monarchy.

Louis VI’s centralizing policy brought him into immediate conflict with Henry I of England, who had become Duke of Normandy after his victory at Tinchebray. Louis never accepted Henry’s homage for the duchy, and Henry avoided formally using the ducal title while his captive brother Robert lived, reflecting the tense rivalry between the French crown and the Anglo-Norman ruler who held both the English throne and the Duchy of Normandy as an English dependency.

Open conflict between Louis VI and Henry I broke out in 1110 over ownership of the border fortress of Gisors, when the two kings met with armies near the site but parted without resolution after a day of fruitless argument. Tensions were heightened by a separate dispute between Louis and Henry’s nephew Theobald, Count of Blois, over control of another castle, which aligned Louis and Henry as temporary allies against their common enemy.

The growing rivalry between the French crown and the Anglo-Norman regime was further complicated by the political position and policies of the young Count of Anjou, whose actions would have major, far-reaching consequences for both France and England in the coming years.

The accession of Fulk V marked a new era for Anjou, standing in sharp contrast to both his predecessor and his dissolute parents Fulk Rechin and Bertrada. Rejecting his parents' evil ways, he embodied classic Angevin traits with a ruddy complexion, and shared his great-grandfather Fulk the Black's adventurous, impetuous yet wary temperament, guided by a strong sense of right. His early life strengthened the slackened ties between Anjou and the French crown.

Almeric of Montfort, brother of Fulk's mother Bertrada, was the count's most trusted counsellor, a key supporter and frequent instigator of Fulk's reform and aggression schemes. His influence over the young, inexperienced Fulk was near-complete, rooted in both his own talents and his family ties to the count's mother.

Bertrada, who had used every means to persecute Louis VI during Philip I's reign, abruptly reversed her policy after Louis became king, transforming from a dangerous enemy into a useful ally of the French crown, and worked to align Anjou with French interests against Henry I of England.

At his mother Bertrada's counsel, Fulk V married Aremburg of Maine, who had previously been betrothed to Geoffrey Martel. This union fulfilled the mission of the late patriot-count Elias of Le Mans, who died shortly after the marriage in summer 1110.

As Aremburg's husband, Fulk V became count of Maine, triggering an immediate breach with Henry I over the county's overlordship. Refusing to submit to Henry, Fulk formed an active league with the French crown in opposition to the English and Norman lord.

The 1111–1113 Angevin-Norman War over Maine began in 1111, forcing Henry I to cross to the continent in August and remain for nearly two years. Fulk added Maine's "Cenomannian swords" to Angevin forces, while Norman baron treason, led by Robert of Bellême, plagued Henry's campaign. Robert's capture in November 1112 led to the surrender of his fortress Alençon, and Fulk and Louis were soon forced to seek peace.

Robert of Bellême, the most treacherous Norman baron opposing Henry I, was captured in November 1112 after a string of lesser traitors were brought to justice. His capture secured Henry's hold on Normandy, leading to the surrender of Alençon and a rapid shift in the war's momentum against the Franco-Angevin alliance.

In early Lent 1113, Fulk and Henry met at Pierre-Pécoulée near Alençon, where Fulk submitted to perform the required homage for Maine, and his infant daughter was betrothed to Henry's son William the Ætheling. The treaty was confirmed by the two kings at Gisors in March, and Fulk even fought alongside the count of Blois to help Henry suppress remaining rebels at Bellême as a sign of their new alliance.

To prepare for the expected renewal of war, Henry I first exacted a solemn oath of homage and fealty from his Norman barons, then from the Great Council of England, to his son William as his designated successor. This unprecedented ceremony in England was a precaution against future conflict with France and Anjou.

A grave dissension broke out between Fulk V and the burghers of Angers around 1116, possibly reflecting early stirrings of civic freedom in northern Europe, though the exact nature of the dispute and the burghers' demands remain unclear, as the conflict was quickly overshadowed by the renewed war between the rival kings.

Hostilities renewed in spring 1116 when Henry I invaded France over the grievances of Count Theobald of Blois. Louis retaliated with a raid on Normandy, Norman barons resumed their intrigues, and in 1117 Louis and Baldwin of Flanders formed a league with Fulk to avenge Duke Robert and restore his son William Clito to the duchy of Normandy.

In October 1117, Almeric of Montfort, who claimed the county of Evreux, betrayed the city of Evreux into his own hands, delivering a major disaster to Henry I and strengthening the Franco-Angevin coalition.

After Evreux's fall, the outraged citizens of Alençon admitted Fulk's troops into the town by night and joined them in blockading the castle. Stephen of Blois, who held the lands, failed to revictual the garrison, and after a day of fierce fighting led by Fulk, the Angevins won victory and secured the surrender of Alençon.

In 1119, Louis VI marched on Normandy but was decisively defeated by Henry I at the Battle of Brenneville. Louis' reckless disregard for forming his men into order before attack led to the near-total destruction of his French knightly force; he was unhorsed, fled alone, and was led back to Andely by a peasant unaware of his identity, returning to Paris in bitter shame.

After the Battle of Tinchebray, William Clito, infant son of the deposed Duke Robert, had been placed in the care of Elias of Saint-Saëns, Henry I's half-sister's husband. Suspecting Henry of hostile designs toward the boy, Elias sacrificed his own possessions to Henry's wrath, fled with William, and sought support for the Norman heir across neighboring lands before securing him shelter at the court of Baldwin of Flanders.

The 1119 peace treaty between Henry I and Fulk V was ratified by the marriage of William the Ætheling to Matilda of Anjou. Fulk attempted to resolve the Cenomannian dispute by settling Maine on his daughter as a marriage portion, and surrendered Alençon on condition Henry restore it to the dispossessed heir William Talvas. After Almeric of Montfort defected to Henry in exchange for the grant of Evreux, the anti-Henry coalition collapsed, William Clito was driven into exile, and a general peace treaty was arranged restoring all castles, freeing all captives, and forgiving all past wrongs.

With peace secured, Fulk V set out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for penance, following the example of his great-grandfather Fulk Nerra. He left his dominions in the care of his wife Aremburg and their two young sons, formally commended the county of Maine to Henry I as overlord during his absence, and bequeathed it to his son-in-law William the Ætheling if he did not return.

Two months before his pilgrimage departure, Fulk V attended the consecration of the newly rebuilt Le Mans Cathedral. At the close of the ceremony, he tearfully placed his young son Geoffrey on the altar, commending both his child and his county of Anjou to the protection of Saint Julian.

The 1119 peace treaty was shattered on November 25, 1120, when William the Ætheling, Fulk's son-in-law and Henry I's designated heir, died in the wreck of the White Ship, destroying the alliance between Anjou and Normandy.

The 1120 White Ship wreck killed not only Fulk of Anjou's hopes for settling the county of Maine, but also Henry I's hopes for a stable succession for England and Normandy. William the Ætheling's death was a catastrophic political blow to Henry: all 20 years of his work to secure a unified Anglo-Norman realm rested on William's life, as William was the only descendant of the Conqueror who could claim the English throne without opposition and retain control of Normandy. With William dead, Henry faced the near-certainty of being succeeded by his enemy, William the Clito, his brother's son and the only other male heir of the Conqueror, which would undo his life's work.

The Ætheling's child-widow (Fulk of Anjou's daughter) survived the wreck by traveling with Henry I instead of her husband. Fulk immediately demanded her return, but Henry refused to part with her, keeping her at his court as a memorial of his dead son, and also retaining her dowry. After the girl was allowed to return to Anjou in 1121, an embassy sent by Fulk at Christmas 1122 to recover the dowry failed after months of delay and a contentious parting with Henry. With the Ætheling dead, Fulk's prior settlement of Maine to the Ætheling and his wife was voided, leaving Fulk free to dispose of the county as he wished.

With ties to Henry I broken, and urged by Almeric of Montfort and King Louis of France, Fulk of Anjou ceded the county of Maine to William the Clito in 1124, along with the hand of his second daughter Sibyl, as compensation for the loss of his prior betrothal alliance with Henry.

A conspiracy of Norman barons led by Almeric and the young Count Waleran of Meulan (son of one of Henry I's close friends) broke out in 1124 in support of William the Clito's claims. Henry I discovered the plot, besieged and captured Waleran's castle of Pontaudemer after a six-week siege, though Almeric seized and sacked Gisors in retaliation; Henry responded by seizing Evreux. Bad weather and the advent season paused the conflict, and on March 25, 1124, royal forces under Ralf of Bayeux defeated the rebels at Bourgthéroulde despite their numerical superiority, capturing Waleran. The rebels surrendered their castles, Almeric made peace with Henry, and William the Clito's Norman support collapsed, leaving him reliant almost entirely on French and Angevin backing. Henry had also secured an alliance with Emperor Henry V, though a planned German invasion of France was abruptly abandoned when the Emperor turned back for unexplained reasons.

Henry I used threats, promises, and bribes to pressure the papacy to annul William the Clito's marriage to Sibyl on grounds of consanguinity (the pair were distantly related, though no more so than the relation between Henry's own would-be son and Sibyl's sister, to which no objection had ever been raised). William refused to separate from Sibyl, and was excommunicated by the Pope. Fulk responded to papal envoys demanding the annulment by publicly burning the papal letter, singeing the envoys' beards, and imprisoning them for two weeks. The Pope responded with an interdict on Anjou, forcing Fulk to submit; Sibyl and William separated, leaving William the Clito a wanderer without a secure power base.

After Emperor Henry V died in 1125, his widow Matilda (Henry I's only surviving legitimate child, known as the Empress) was summoned back to her father's court in England. At the midwinter assembly of 1126-1127, Henry I made the barons and prelates of England and Normandy swear an oath that if he died without a legitimate son, they would recognize Matilda as Lady of England and Normandy, securing her claim to his throne over that of William the Clito.

King Louis of France moved to undermine Henry I's succession plan by reviving his support for William the Clito, granting him the French Vexin as compensation for the loss of Sibyl and Maine, and arranging a marriage to Jane of Montferrat, who was not closely related to Clito. After the childless Count of Flanders was murdered in Bruges in 1127, Louis adjudged the County of Flanders to William the Clito as great-grandson of Count Baldwin V, and put him in possession of most of the county, leaving Henry's succession plan appearing nearly hopeless.

To counter the growing threat from France and William the Clito, Henry I sought an alliance with Fulk of Anjou by arranging the marriage of his daughter Matilda to Fulk's eldest son Geoffrey Plantagenet, which would unite the claims to Normandy and Anjou and settle the long-running dispute over Maine. Despite widespread scorn from Normans and English, Matilda's own reluctance, and Henry's prior promise not to marry his daughter outside his realm, he sent Matilda to Normandy under guard in 1127, knighted Geoffrey at Rouen, and the pair were married at Le Mans Cathedral in June 1128. The wedding was met with private resentment from many attending Normans, but was celebrated enthusiastically by the people of Anjou.

In the spring of 1128, Baldwin II of Jerusalem, who had no male heir, offered the hand of his eldest daughter and heiress Melisenda, along with the crown of Jerusalem, to Fulk of Anjou. Fulk accepted the offer, as his political work in Anjou was complete following his son's marriage to Matilda, and he sought a new sphere of action. He departed for Jerusalem shortly after the marriage, ending his active role in western European politics.

This note explores the contested genealogical connections between the early Counts of Anjou and the rulers of Gâtinais (Châteaulandon). It documents conflicting accounts of the name of the husband of Hermengard/Adela (daughter of Fulk the Black and Hildegard, sister of Geoffrey Martel), father of Geoffrey the Bearded and Fulk Rechin, and argues that Angevin chroniclers deliberately obscured the Gâtinais lineage to emphasize the family’s descent from Fulk Nerra. It also proposes a reconstructed pedigree for the Gâtinais line, noting the likely alternation of the names Alberic and Geoffrey across generations of viscounts, and the shared governance of Orléans and Châteaulandon by the two families.

This note evaluates three conflicting accounts of the division of Geoffrey Martel’s territories after his death. Using contemporary charter evidence, it concludes that Martel bequeathed his entire dominions to his elder nephew Geoffrey the Bearded, with stories of a split inheritance being later fabrications to protect Fulk Rechin’s reputation. It also addresses Fulk Rechin’s claim to overlordship of Maine, arguing this likely reflects a de jure rather than de facto assertion of right.

This note reconstructs the details of the conflict between Geoffrey the Bearded and Guy-Geoffrey (William VII) of Aquitaine over control of Saintonge, drawing on a single surviving contemporary chronicle entry. It identifies and resolves confusion in the *Gesta Consulum* text, which had mixed up this war with an earlier conflict between Geoffrey Martel and William the Fat of Aquitaine, and clarifies the disputed claims that sparked the war.

This note clarifies the unclear genealogy of female members of the ruling house of Maine, specifically the relationships of Margaret, Gersendis, Paula, and Biota to counts Hugh I, Herbert Wake-dog, and Hugh II. It confirms Margaret was the daughter of Hugh II and sister of Herbert II, establishes Biota as the daughter of Herbert Wake-dog and sister of Hugh II, and notes conflicting contemporary accounts that leave the status of Gersendis and Paula as either sisters or nieces of Biota unresolved.

The chapter opens by examining Orderic Vitalis's account of Elias of La Flèche's descent. Orderic reports Elias tracing his lineage through a grandmother whom he calls Herbert Wake-dog's daughter, who married Lancelin of Le Plessis and bore Elias's father John. Orderic names John's wife as Paula but says nothing of her parentage, merely calling Elias a cousin of Hugh, count of the Manceaux. The author argues that the houses of Le Mans and La Flèche cannot have intermarried twice in successive generations, so one of Orderic's statements must be wrong, though he cannot determine which. Turning to Gersendis, wife of Azzo of Este, the author notes that Elias's speech implies Gersendis's son was related to the counts of Le Mans in the same degree as Elias himself—a finding that might decide the previous question. Mr. Freeman regards Orderic's statement as conclusive that both Gersendis and Paula were daughters of Hugh II and therefore sisters of Margaret and Herbert II, in spite of the biographer of the bishops of Le Mans (Mabillon) explicitly calling Gersendis a daughter of Herbert Wake-dog, and the continuator of William of Jumièges describing her as the niece of Herbert through his eldest daughter. The latter description, however, could more simply be read as "granddaughter of Herbert I through his eldest daughter," which would instead support the bishops' biographer. Robert of Torigni's and Diceto's variants, naming Elias's bride as "Sibilla," are rejected as wrong, since Elias's first wife was Matilda of Château-du-Loir and his second was Agnes of Perche.

M. d'Arbois de Jubainville argues, on documentary evidence, that Stephen-Henry of Blois—father of King Stephen—was the son of Theobald III by his first marriage with Gersendis of Maine, which was dissolved by 1049 at the latest (when Theobald was excommunicated at the Council of Reims). Most historians have supposed that Gersendis was then a child and that Stephen's mother was Adela of Valois. Of the two charters cited in support, one in Gallia Christiana carries no date and sheds no light; the other, in Bernier's Histoire de Blois (1089), records Stephen-Henry's grant "pro animæ meæ et matris meæ Gandree" with confirmation by "Alæ uxoris Thebaudi comitis," seeming to show that Adela was not his mother—though not necessarily that "Gandree" is Gersendis. If it is, Stephen-Henry must have been born by 1049, ruling out Gersendis being a daughter of Hugh II (married no earlier than 1040). A passage in the Historia Pontificalis—that certain cardinals supported King Stephen because "avia ejus Lumbarda fuerit"—may reflect a confused tradition linking Gersendis to her second husband, the Lombard. The author raises a new possibility: that Theobald's second wife Adela is first documented only in 1061, and that the mysterious "Gandrea" of the 1089 charter may have been an Italian lady, wife of Theobald and mother of his heir, who died between 1049 and 1061.

NOTE E introduces the two questionable points about the siege of La Flèche and Treaty of Blanchelande: their date and their geography. The only detailed original account is Orderic's, who carries the narrative straight from the quelling of the revolt of Maine in 1073 to the siege of La Flèche as though both had happened in the same year, before William returned to England. No Angevin writer mentions La Flèche in 1073; the chronicles of Saint-Aubin and Saint-Florent-près-Saumur record an "Exercitus de Fissâ" in 1077 and 1078 respectively, which the Art de vérifier les Dates interprets as this siege. M. Voisin dates the affair to 1085 without reason. Mr. Freeman follows Orderic, and the author does the same.

The author's choice between Orderic's date of 1073 and the Angevin chronicles' 1077–1078 leans toward Orderic (followed by Freeman), despite the silence of the Angevin sources on La Flèche in 1073 and Voisin's unsupported dating of 1085. The dating debate is therefore resolved in favor of Orderic's chronology.

On the geography: Orderic says that to meet William, the Angevin and Breton host left La Flèche and boldly crossed the "Ligerim fluvium" (Loire). This must be wrong, as the Loire lies far south of La Flèche; Mr. Freeman reads "Liderim" (Loir) instead, though even crossing the Loir is strange, since La Flèche lies on the right (north) bank and they would have moved away from Normandy. If, as Freeman supposes, the treaty was concluded at Bruère in the Passais (north-west of La Flèche), Orderic's river-crossing becomes impossible. Pesche's Dictionnaire historique de la Sarthe, however, places Blanchelande (or Blanche-bruyère) between La Flèche and Le Lude, on the road between them—a location endorsed by Voisin, by Prévost in a note to Orderic (who records a farm still bearing the name in 1840). On this identification, Orderic's geography is consistent: the besiegers, on the north bank of the Loir, cross southward and march onto the "white moor," while William must have crossed higher up and made a southeasterly circuit, presumably for sound military reasons.

On the second siege of La Flèche by Fulk Rechin in 1081, the Chronicon Rainaldi Andegavi gives a strange additional story: not only did Fulk take and burn the castle (as the Chronicon S. Albini also records), but he also worsted King William in battle, forcing him to retreat and give hostages, including his brother the count of Mortain and his own son. Freeman ignores this apocryphal-looking tale. The author suggests it may be no more than an Angevin travesty of Robert Curthose's homage to Fulk at Blanchelande.

NOTE F addresses the marriage of Geoffrey of Anjou and the Empress Matilda. The Angevin chronicles never mention the marriage at all; the Gesta Consulum Andegavorum, William of Jumièges, and others refer to it without dating it. The English chroniclers—English Chronicle, Simeon of Durham, William of Malmesbury, and Henry of Huntingdon—give no distinct date but imply the proposal was immediately followed by the wedding, with Robert and Brian carrying Matilda overseas to marry her to Geoffrey. John of Marmoutier, Geoffrey's own biographer, provides the most detailed account, recording that Geoffrey was knighted on Whit-Sunday and married on its octave, and that he was then fifteen years old. He later states that Matilda's first son Henry Fitz-Empress was born in the fourth year of their marriage; Henry was born on Mid-Lent Sunday, March 5, 1133. Since Geoffrey was born on August 24, 1113, "in his fifteenth year" would put the marriage in 1128—the year whose octave of Pentecost fell on June 17, when Geoffrey lacked two months of completing fifteen years. The panegyrist's evident desire to make his hero as old as possible (he later gives Geoffrey's age at death as forty-one instead of thirty-eight) supports reading the phrase as "in his fifteenth year" rather than "past fifteen."

Three dates compete for the marriage: the Chronicon Fiscannense gives 1127; Orderic, in one of his two references, gives 1129; and a charter of agreement between the bishop of Séez and Marmoutier, dated 1127 (indiction VI), merely records Henry I's signum "quando dedit filiam suam Gaufredo," proving only that the betrothal took place in 1127. John of Marmoutier places the wedding on the octave of Pentecost but gives no year. Reconciling the evidence: William of Malmesbury says Matilda did not go to Normandy until after Whitsuntide 1127, and Henry of Huntingdon adds that Henry I followed her in August—so a 1127 wedding could not have occurred before September, at least three months after Whitsuntide. A 1129 wedding would place it at the beginning of the year and force Orderic to begin his year at Christmas; yet Fulk Rechin was himself married to the princess of Jerusalem before Whitsuntide 1129 (William of Tyre), so he could not then have been present at his son's wedding. The only date permitting a Whitsuntide wedding is 1128, when the octave of Pentecost fell on June 17. The Chronicon Fiscannense's 1127 and Orderic's 1129 are both incompatible with John's Pentecost dating. Although Orderic is generally a better authority than John, his late chronology is sketchy and confused; John, writing within sixty years of the event from materials supplied by Geoffrey's personal followers, is the primary authority. The author concludes that the real wedding-day of Geoffrey and Matilda was June 17, 1128.

Geoffrey, the eldest son of Fulk V and Aremburg of Maine, inherited the finest qualities of the Angevin house. The surname "Plantagenet" derived from his boyish habit of wearing a sprig of *planta genista* (broom) in his cap. He was renowned for his fair, ruddy complexion, brilliant eyes, tall and sinewy frame, and was unanimously called "Geoffrey the Handsome." His gracious manner, ready speech, and quick wits—sharpened by an unusually thorough education—made him precociously accomplished. He inherited Fulk Rechin's love of history, could hold his own in learned conversation with Henry I, and combined devotion to letters with active military pursuits, even taking a learned teacher to war with him. The *Historia Gaufridi Ducis*, compiled shortly after his death, preserves numerous anecdotes that reveal his character. These include: his clemency toward a knight who wished to make a wafer of "that red-head Geoffrey"; his release of four Poitevin prisoners moved by a flattering verse they sang in his praise; a Christmas encounter at Le Mans in which a poor clerk's answer—"Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given!"—prompted Geoffrey to secure him a prebend; and an adventure in the forest of Loches, where a charcoal-burner's candid criticism of his government led Geoffrey to reforms in his household administration. While these stories set Geoffrey in a romantic light, a survey of his life as a whole reveals a serious deficiency: a lack of steady principle and genuine feeling. His imagination was sensitive but his heart cold; his impulses sprang from fancy rather than passion. A story of his jesting response to a threat of excommunication by the archbishop of Tours illustrates this cold cleverness. Compared to the sterling Fulk V, Geoffrey was shallow, though his marriage to the much older Empress Matilda, binding a boy of fifteen to a woman of twenty-five, may have stunted his character and cut him off from an independent career.

King Henry I's grand scheme for uniting the English and Angevin lines rested on the 1128 marriage of his heiress Matilda to Geoffrey. At first, prospects seemed bright: six weeks after the wedding, the death of William the Clito removed Henry's most dangerous rival; Fulk V's departure for the Holy Land left the young couple as sole masters at Angers; and Henry returned to England in July 1129 seemingly content. But within days he learned that Matilda had been sent away by her husband and had withdrawn with a few attendants to Rouen, where she remained for nearly two years. Geoffrey's quarrel with Matilda left him friendless, and the Angevin barons—who had been subdued only with difficulty by Fulk V—rose in revolt. From Amboise in the east to Laval on the Breton border, from Sablé to Montreuil-Bellay, Thouars, Mirebeau, and the distant fief of Parthenay, the chief landowners closed in upon the boy-count, thinking to wring concessions from him. The crisis forced Geoffrey to mature rapidly. Drawing on the Angevin tradition of self-reliance, he besieged rebel leaders one by one, forcing, tricking, or frightening them into submission. At Mirebeau, while besieging Theobald of Blazon, he was himself blockaded by the count of Poitou, but his quick wit and energy extricated him in triumph. The revolt was crushed by the severe punishment of its most powerful leader, Lisiard of Sablé: Geoffrey ravaged his estates, razed Briolet, seized Suze, and built the fortress of Châteauneuf on the Sarthe as a permanent guard against that quarter.

King Henry joined Matilda in Normandy in the summer of 1130, and in July 1131 they returned to England together. Geoffrey, by then master in his own dominions, sent a message demanding his wife's return, asserting his rights as husband of Henry's heiress. A great council at Northampton on September 8 granted the request, and the assembled prelates and barons renewed their homage to Matilda as her father's destined successor. Geoffrey received her with due courtesy if not warmth. Fortunately for the ill-matched couple, both were of a cold-blooded temperament capable of finding sufficient bond of union in community of political interest rather than personal affection. On Mid-Lent Sunday, March 5, 1133, Matilda gave birth to a son and heir. Fittingly, the child was born neither in Normandy nor in Anjou, but in Le Mans—the city that had long been the ground of their strife and at last the scene of their union. He was baptized in the cathedral on Easter Eve by the bishop of the diocese, receiving the name of his grandfather Henry. By Matilda's special wish, he was solemnly placed on the same altar where his father had been dedicated thirteen years before, under the protection of the local patron saint. To this child, as contemporary chroniclers noted, "many peoples looked as to their future sovereign."

The birth of Henry I's grandson greatly strengthened Matilda's position as heir, since she could now be regarded as regent for an infant son, blunting objections to her sex. Henry summoned another great council at which the archbishops, bishops, earls, and barons swore fealty to the Empress "and also to her little son whom he appointed to be king after him." All seemed secure when Henry crossed to Normandy in early August, but his pleasure in his two grandchildren kept him lingering there with Matilda and her children, leaving England to Bishop Roger, until Welsh border disturbances prompted his return. Matilda opposed his departure and appears to have played a double game, secretly instigating her husband Geoffrey to claim castles in Normandy promised at their marriage. When Henry denied the claim, Geoffrey attacked and burned the castle of Beaumont, prompting Henry to consider taking Matilda back to England. Treason spread in Normandy; Roger of Toëny and William Talvas of Alençon were suspected, and Talvas fled to Anjou in September. Matilda pleaded in vain for Talvas's pardon, then parted from her father in anger, and father and daughter never met again. In the last week of November Henry fell ill while hunting in the Forest of Lions; he received the last sacraments from Archbishop Hugh of Rouen, and though his daughter made no sign of reconciliation, he reaffirmed his bequest of all his dominions to Matilda and her heirs. He died on the night of December 1, 1135, the last survivor of the Conqueror's nine children, ending the direct male line of the Conqueror.

With Henry's death, the sole representatives of the Conqueror were his daughter the countess of Anjou and her infant boys, and the barons of Normandy and England were thrice-bound by oath to acknowledge Matilda as their sovereign. Suddenly an unexpected competitor emerged: a rivalry that had seemed dead for nearly a hundred years revived in a new form, and the house of Anjou, on the very eve of its triumph, found itself once more face to face with the house of Blois, its deadliest of early foes.

Since Geoffrey Martel's victory over Theobald III in 1044 the counts of Blois had ceased to play a prominent part, and Theobald accepted his defeat as final. Theobald turned out his brother Stephen's son, but the injured heir took refuge in Normandy, married the Conqueror's sister, and found ample compensation in England, never attempting to recover his continental heritage. His grandson Stephen-Henry married King William's daughter Adela, proved a better man than his predecessors despite an unstable temper, deserted the Crusade at Antioch, and was eventually killed at Ramah. His eldest son William was disinherited by Adela as unfit for public life, and the responsibilities of the house fell on the abler Theobald, while the youngest brother was dedicated to the Church. The third brother, Stephen, was entrusted to Henry I's court for education, knighted by the king's own hand, granted the Norman county of Mortain (ranking him as first baron of the duchy), and married to Matilda, daughter of Count Eustace of Boulogne and Mary of Scotland. After the White Ship disaster, Stephen became virtually Henry's adoptive son and the first layman in the kingdom. At the Christmas council of 1126, when barons swore homage to the Empress Matilda in order of precedence, Stephen's dignity as the king's nephew earned him the second place among lay peers, ahead of Earl Robert of Gloucester.

Had Matilda's child been old enough to step into the place destined for him, the succession would have been settled, sparing England nineteen years of anarchy. But Henry Fitz-Empress was not yet three, and the practical choice lay between three adult descendants of the Conqueror: Matilda of Anjou, Theobald of Blois, and Stephen of Boulogne. Matilda's chief advantage was her birth as the child of a crowned king and queen, of the "good Queen Maude" with her ancient royal blood of Wessex, and of Henry I, revered for his good peace—though Old-English blood-royal counted for nothing in Normandy. Personally, Matilda was almost a stranger in both countries, having been raised in Germany as the Emperor's child-wife and returned to England only briefly and unwillingly; in Normandy the Angevin was deeply hated. By the principle of female succession, a daughter's son could fill the Conqueror's throne as worthily as a son's daughter and her Angevin husband, and by personal qualifications Theobald the Great was a strong candidate, possessing the tact, dignity, and steadfastness of his Norman mother, and enjoying the esteem of the Norman barons. But Theobald was little known in England, where Stephen had lived from childhood, holding vast territorial possessions and ranking as first baron of the duchy and first layman of the kingdom. Stephen's wife represented the Old-English royal line as worthily as her imperial cousin, and as count of Boulogne Stephen held a decisive practical advantage: immediate command of the shortest crossing from the Continent to England.

Before the first week of December 1135 was out, Matilda presented herself in Normandy to take possession of her inheritance. The officer in charge of the border-territories—the forfeited lands of William Talvas and the county of Hiesmes, together with Argentan, Domfront, Ambrières, Gorra, and Coulommiers—surrendered them to her at once and received her as his liege lady, but she had no time to secure the duchy before the kingdom was snatched from her grasp.

Stephen set out at once from Wissant and crossed the Channel amid a storm so terrific that men on shore deemed it could bode nothing less than the end of the world. The omen, however, merely signalled the arrival at Dover of a candidate for the English crown. Stephen's promptitude served him as well as similar boldness had served William Rufus and Henry I in comparable situations.

Repulsed from Dover and Canterbury—since the men of Kent harboured an hereditary grudge against anyone coming from Boulogne—Stephen pushed on to London, where King Henry's favourite nephew was hailed with delight by citizens who vehemently declared they would have no stranger to rule over them. The aldermen and wise folk claimed the city had inherited the right to a voice in electing the sovereign, and gathering to deliberate on the safety of the realm, they reasoned that a kingless land was exposed to countless perils. Of Matilda and her claims not a word was said: any burgesses who had sworn fealty to her as tenants-in-chief were in no humour to regard that oath now, and the citizens in general held themselves bound only by oaths they had personally taken. By common consent they acknowledged Stephen as king.

Stephen hurried to Winchester to secure the treasury. Bishop Henry of Winchester, his own brother, came forth with the chief citizens to meet him, and the treasurer, who had refused to surrender his keys to the bishop, handed them over at once to the king-elect. Thus far the two men who ought to have led the national counsels—the primate and the justiciar—had stood looking passively on, but both now joined Stephen.

All that Stephen lacked to make him full king was coronation, and Archbishop William of Canterbury initially drew back, raising two scruples: the oath he himself, Stephen, and the barons had sworn to the Empress, and the irregularity of an election made so hastily by a small part of the nation. The second objection was ignored; to the first Stephen's adherents replied that the oath had been extorted and that several who were present at Henry's death had heard him express repentance for forcing it on the barons. Roger of Salisbury argued that his own oath had been conditional on Henry's promise not to marry his daughter out of the realm without the Great Council's consent, a promise immediately broken. Hugh Bigod swore that Henry had in his presence absolved the barons and even formally disinherited Matilda in Stephen's favour. What truly prevailed, however, was the objection to a woman's rule and the urgent need of a male governor at once. Disorder had already broken out: within three weeks of Henry's death, men raided the forests and, having exhausted the game, turned their arms against each other and trampled law and order underfoot. The archbishop yielded on receiving a promise to restore and maintain the liberties of the Church, with Bishop Henry of Winchester standing surety. Stephen was crowned at Westminster, probably on 22 or 25 December 1135, and issued a comprehensive but vague coronation-charter promising to maintain his predecessor's laws.

The two great feuds that had hitherto shaped the Angevins' political career—the feud with Blois and the feud with Normandy—now merged into one, represented against the successors of Fulk Nerra by a single man who was not, in strict law, the nearest heir of either. Geoffrey of Anjou had followed Matilda into Normandy at the head of an armed force accompanied by William Talvas, whose influence secured him welcome at Séez and in the Alençon territories, but the rival races could not coexist: the Angevins treated the districts that submitted to them as a conquered land, harried and plundered them, and were at last driven out by an enraged populace. The Norman barons then met at Neubourg and decided to invite Count Theobald of Blois to take possession of the duchy. Theobald came to Rouen and thence to Lisieux, where on 21 December he had an interview with Earl Robert of Gloucester, but news of Stephen's English election abruptly altered the situation. The Norman barons recognised that the decision had been taken out of their hands and accepted the accomplished fact, acknowledging Stephen as duke. Robert of Gloucester assented, Theobald withdrew his claim and arranged a truce in his brother's name with Geoffrey from Christmas to the octave of Pentecost, and then quietly returned to his own dominions.

The first public act of Stephen's reign was the burial of Henry I at Reading on the feast of the Epiphany. This was followed by a danger England had not known for more than forty years: a Scottish invasion. King David of Scotland, faithful to the oath everyone else seemed to have forgotten, arose as the champion of Matilda's rights, led his troops into Northumberland, and partly conquered it in her name.

Stephen met David near Durham and pacified him by granting the earldoms of Carlisle, Huntingdon, and Doncaster to the Scottish king's son Henry. The king then returned in peace, almost in triumph, to the Easter festival and the coronation of his queen. Adherents now flocked in, and the splendour of the Easter court compensated for the meagreness of the Christmas gathering.

The most important new adherent was Earl Robert of Gloucester, the late king's eldest son, whose rank, wealth, and character marked him out as the natural leader of the baronage on both sides of the Channel. Stephen's sudden accession had snatched the leadership from his hands, and Robert lingered in Normandy watching events and meditating how to reconcile his own interests with his duty to his sister. Heeding Stephen's repeated invitations, he eventually crossed to England, but made terms more like a king than a mere earl: he did homage for his English estates only on the express condition that the bond would last no longer than Stephen kept his promises and maintained him in all his honours and dignities.

The first result of Robert's qualified submission was seen in a great council at Oxford, where all the bishops swore fealty to the king and the vague coronation-day promise to maintain the Laws of King Henry was amplified into a more detailed and definite charter.

Within a few weeks a rumour that the king was dead triggered a baronial revolt. Baldwin of Redvers seized Exeter, Hugh Bigod—who had been foremost among Stephen's supporters—took Norwich castle and was dislodged only by the king in person; being apparently forgiven, he soon rebelled again. Robert of Bathenton was caught and hanged, and his castle forced to surrender. Exeter, where Baldwin had shut himself up with his family and a band of young knights all sworn never to yield, fell only after a long siege ended by the agonies of thirst. Stephen allowed the garrison to go free, but Baldwin requited his leniency by setting up as a pirate-chief on the Isle of Wight; when Stephen began collecting a fleet at Southampton, Baldwin took fright and surrendered, losing his lands and going into exile in Anjou, where Geoffrey welcomed him. His defeat ended the revolt, and the Christmas court at Dunstable brought the first year of Stephen's reign to a tranquil close.

The political feuds of Blois and Normandy were now embodied in a single man, who yet inherited from the old counts of Blois their peculiar mental and moral constitution: in Theobald the type was almost lost, in Bishop Henry of Winchester it was greatly modified by Norman blood from their mother, but in Stephen the Norman strain had little influence on a fundamentally Blois nature. All the characteristic qualities and defects of the race were deeply rooted: gallant and courteous, warm-hearted, high-spirited, reckless in battle yet gentle and merciful afterwards, open-handed and gracious, apparently unstained by personal vice—qualities that explain Henry's affection and the high hopes with which he was regarded. Time and experience alone could reveal the radical defect vitiating them all: the old curse of his race, lack of steadfastness. Ingrained in every fibre of his nature, it acted like an incurable moral disease, turning his virtues into weaknesses, reducing his kingly career to a string of political inconsistencies, and eventually wrecking him, as it had wrecked Odo, on the rock of Angevin thoroughness.

Opening citations for the chapter’s coverage of the Scottish expedition and associated treaty records reference works by Orderic Vitalis, Henry of Huntingdon, the Worcester Florilegium continuator, William of Malmesbury, and other 12th-century chroniclers, with specific notes pointing to details of the 1136–1137 Scottish campaigns and treaty terms.

Stephen breached his widely popular election pledge to reform England’s harsh forest laws shortly after his 1136 victory over Baldwin of Redvers, holding a forest assize at Brampton that undermined his commitment to ruling as a national sovereign, per Henry of Huntingdon.

Unlike the peaceful, industrious continental immigrants who settled in England under Henry I, Stephen’s accession drew a large influx of violent, plunder-seeking mercenaries from Flanders and Brittany, attracted by his reputed prodigality and the opportunity to enrich themselves via exploitation of English resources, per William of Malmesbury.

William of Ypres, a Flemish soldier of fortune with no legitimate claim to Flemish lordship, served as Stephen’s chief foreign advisor and leader of his Flemish mercenary forces; his violent, rapacious conduct earned him widespread hatred from both English and Norman barons, though his steadfast loyalty to Stephen through adversity was noted as more consistent than that of many native nobles, per Gervase of Canterbury and related sources.

Stephen spent the entire year 1137 in Normandy, where he formalized an alliance with his brother Theobald (who waived all claims to the English throne and Norman duchy for an annual payment of 2000 marks of silver), secured formal French royal recognition of his rule over Normandy (with his eldest son performing homage on the same terms as Henry I), and worked to counter internal treason and Angevin interference in the duchy; no domestic disturbances occurred in England during his absence.

A Scottish invasion threatened shortly after Easter 1137 was averted by Archbishop Thurstan of York, who persuaded King David I to accept a truce until Advent; upon Stephen’s return to England, David demanded the earldom of Northumberland for his son, alleging Stephen had half-promised the title in a 1136 treaty; Stephen’s refusal prompted David to launch an invasion of England in early January 1138.

After Stephen refused his demand for the Northumberland earldom, David I led a Scottish army into England in early 1138; an initial unsuccessful siege of the border fortresses Carham and Wark was followed by widespread raiding across the region between the Tweed and Tyne, a scale of destruction not witnessed since the youth of Malcolm Canmore, with David leaving his nephew William Fitz-Duncan to lead the raiding parties while he stationed his main force at Corbridge.

When Stephen marched north against David in early February 1138, David abandoned the siege of Carham and hid his troops in a nearly inaccessible swamp near Roxburgh, plotting to ambush the English by having the town’s residents feign friendliness to draw them into a trap; Stephen uncovered the scheme (likely via English barons complicit in the plot), crossed the Tweed but chose to ravage David’s Scottish territories instead of assaulting Roxburgh, before being forced to retreat south due to shortages of provisions.

After Stephen departed the north, David I re-invaded Northumberland, ravaging the eastern coast until a mutiny among his troops forced a retreat to the border; he sent William Fitz-Duncan to raid the district of Craven, and remained at the Carham siege until dislodged by Count Waleran of Meulan. Empress Matilda, Stephen’s rival for the throne, sent repeated appeals for Scottish support to David, aided by northern agents including Eustace Fitz-John, a former chief minister of Henry I and lord of key northern castles (Bamborough, Knaresborough, Malton, Alnwick) who had already lost Bamborough due to plots against Stephen; in May 1138, Eustace openly defected to David, ceding his remaining castles and forces. David gathered his full army, joined Eustace in a failed bid to retake Bamborough, then marched south through the already thrice-devastated Patrimony of St. Cuthbert, crossed the Tees, and arrived in Yorkshire in mid-August 1138.

Stephen was unable to send aid to the northern front, as the south and west of England were engulfed in widespread, unsubdued revolts during the summer of 1138; northern barons and landowners organized their own defense under the leadership of Archbishop Thurstan of York, whose authority in Yorkshire far outstripped the king’s. The northern host mustered at York, where Thurstan led three days of fasting, almsgiving, and penance followed by a formal absolution to prepare the troops for battle; too frail to join the march, Thurstan remained in York to pray for the army as the barons led the forces north to confront the Scots.

The English northern army drew up in battle array on Cowton Moor near Northallerton on the morning of Tuesday, August 22, 1138, clustered around the "Standard": a cart bearing a pole topped with a silver pyx containing the Host, surrounded by the consecrated banners of St. Peter of York, St. John of Beverley, and St. Wilfrid of Ripon, which gave the battle its name. Led spiritually by Ralf, bishop of the Orkneys, and militarily by Walter Lespec (pious founder of Kirkham and Rievaux), who delivered a rousing speech from the Standard cart urging troops to fight for their country and avenge Scottish wrongs, the English force faced a Scottish army divided into four divisions. The first division, made up of Galloway men, charged recklessly but was cut down by English arrows and knightly shield walls, and fled in confusion; the second division (Cumbrians, Teviotdale fighters, and Eustace Fitz-John’s followers) charged with more success but fled when an English soldier displayed what he claimed was the severed head of David I; the third and fourth Scottish divisions also failed to break the English line. David fought nearly alone before being dragged from the field and forced to retreat; his remaining troops rallied only when they spotted the dragon on his standard, confirming he was alive. David’s son Henry led a final mounted charge by the Scottish household knights against the English shield wall, but it failed, and the remaining Scottish cavalry fled, abandoning so much baggage and supplies that the English nicknamed the camp "Baggamore". Approximately 1100 Scots were killed in the battle or subsequent flight, and only 19 of 200 Scottish knights survived to return home. The victorious Yorkshiremen declined to pursue the fleeing enemy, instead returning in solemn religious procession to restore the holy banners to their home churches before dispersing to their homes.

Roughly three months after the Battle of the Standard, the starving Scottish garrison of Carham, reduced to only one remaining horse, surrendered; the defenders were granted the right to march out freely with the honours of war, and David I razed the now-empty fortress.

This section details the 1138 Scottish defeat at the Battle of the Standard, drawing on contemporary sources including Æthelred of Rievaux’s *De Bello Standardi* and Henry of Huntingdon’s chronicle. It notes scholarly disagreement over the placement of Scottish forces (Galwegian “wild Highlanders” vs. Lothian men) in the battle line, and records an alternate account attributing the Scottish rout to hidden devices that emitted terrifying noises, spooking the Scottish baggage animals. It also notes that English baron Eustace Fitz-John, who had brought Scottish forces into England, shared responsibility for the defeat.

This section examines the causes and outbreak of the 1138 baronial revolt against King Stephen, rooted in deep mutual distrust between Stephen and his barons, as both sides had previously broken oaths to support Empress Matilda and her son. It details Stephen’s ineffective and self-undermining governance: his hiring of unpopular Flemish mercenaries, creation of new earldoms for favored followers that alienated the established nobility, diversion of crown revenues to support these new earls, debasement of the coinage, and arbitrary seizure of lands from untrusted nobles to reward his greedy favorites. His restless, inconsistent policy left him widely resented, and the revolt erupted in full in spring 1138.

This section focuses on Stephen’s conflict with Earl Robert of Gloucester, the illegitimate son of Henry I, half-brother of Empress Matilda, and one of England’s wealthiest and most powerful magnates with extensive holdings in the west and on the Welsh March. After a superficial reconciliation following a 1137 trip to Normandy, Stephen rashly confiscated Robert’s English and Welsh estates and razed several of his castles. Robert formally renounced his allegiance to Stephen after Whitsuntide 1138, urging his vassals to prepare for war, a move that triggered a general rebellion across England as barons across the south and west seized castles and declared for Robert.

This section chronicles Stephen’s military campaigns against rebel strongholds in western England in 1138. After a five-week siege of Hereford, which fell when the town caught fire, Stephen left garrisons at Hereford and Weobly before abandoning a planned siege of Bristol—Robert of Gloucester’s key stronghold—after advisors (some secretly sympathetic to the rebels) argued a proposed dam to block the city’s harbor was unfeasible. He then moved to suppress other rebel castles: Castle Cary, which he either forced to surrender or harassed with a forward-built tower; Harptree, which he gained by stratagem; Dudley, held by Ralf Paganel, which he did not assault but instead burned the surrounding area; and Shrewsbury, held by William Fitz-Alan, which he took by filling the fosse with wood and smoking out the garrison, then executing its leading defenders and 93 men from a nearby captured castle. His severity prompted the surrender of Dover, which was blockaded by Queen Matilda, and by August the west was largely pacified, allowing Stephen to turn his attention to Wareham in Dorsetshire, though that expedition yielded no results.

The seven-year Western Church schism ended in spring 1138 with the death of anti-pope Anacletus, allowing Pope Innocent II to send Bishop Alberic of Ostia as legate to England following the 1136 death of Archbishop William of Canterbury, who had previously held legatine authority alongside the primacy. Stephen, facing an ongoing baronial revolt, accepted Alberic’s credentials and allowed him to pursue his peace-focused mission. Alberic conducted a full visitation tour of England, concluding with a council at Carlisle where he attempted to mediate between King David of Scotland (who had supported Anacletus) and Stephen, securing only a truce until Martinmas, a promise to release all captive Englishwomen that could be gathered by that date, and a commitment to enforce more Christian conduct among David’s soldiers. He then held a council at Westminster on the third Sunday of Advent, where Theobald, abbot of Bec, was elected Archbishop of Canterbury by the prior of Christ Church and convent delegates in the presence of the king and legate; Theobald’s consecration two days after Epiphany brought the legatine mission to a successful close.

Queen Matilda, who was closely related to the Scottish royal family, actively advocated for reconciliation between Stephen and David of Scotland. On April 9, she met her cousin Henry of Scotland at Durham, where David and Henry provided hostages to guarantee peaceful conduct going forward, and the English earldom of Northumberland was granted to Henry (with the exception of Newcastle and Bamborough, on the condition that local customs established by Henry I would be maintained). Stephen ratified the treaty at Nottingham; Henry remained to celebrate Easter with his English relatives before joining Stephen’s military expedition against Ludlow Castle.

Ludlow Castle, likely founded by Roger de Lacy during William Rufus’s reign, had escheated to the Crown shortly after Stephen’s accession and was granted to Joce (or Joceas) of Dinan, who now held it against the king. The siege made little headway until an incident where a grappling iron thrown from the castle walls caught Henry of Scotland, dragging him toward the fortress; Stephen rushed forward to free the prince, an act that cooled his enthusiasm for the assault. He abandoned the siege after setting up two towers to contain the castle garrison, then withdrew to London. Earlier in the year, Stephen had captured Earl Robert’s castle of Leeds in Kent, and his military prospects had been improving prior to this setback.

State administration remained tightly controlled by Bishop Roger of Salisbury, who served as justiciar, his nephew Nigel, bishop of Ely, who held the treasurership, and his son (known as Roger the Poor) who served as chancellor. Though Stephen outwardly favored Roger and granted his every request, court factionists stirred the king’s suspicion that the bishop and his allies were in treasonable contact with the Empress, fortifying castles for her cause, and building up large armed retinues to support her claim. Roger, whose entire career was built on the patronage of Henry I, may have harbored regrets about breaking his oath to support Henry’s heir. In summer 1139, Stephen summoned Roger to Oxford; despite his misgivings, Roger arrived with his son, his two nephews (including Alexander, bishop of Lincoln), and armed knightly retinues. Stephen also ordered his own men to arm themselves. A dispute over quarters between the bishops’ followers and the men of Count Waleran of Meulan and Alan of Richmond escalated into a fray in which Alan’s nephew was nearly killed, prompting Stephen to seize the two Rogers and Alexander of Lincoln. Nigel of Ely, who was lodged outside Oxford, escaped and fled to his uncle’s castle at Devizes to prepare for a siege.

Devizes Castle, built by Roger of Salisbury on a steep greensand escarpment five hundred feet above sea level, was considered one of the strongest and most splendid fortresses in Europe. Stephen soon arrived at the castle with his captive Rogers, imprisoning the elder Roger in a cowshed and threatening to hang the younger Roger if the fortress was not surrendered immediately. Roger of Salisbury vowed to eat or drink nothing until the castle fell, but Nigel refused to yield. The keep was held by Matilda of Ramsbury, the younger Roger’s mother; when she saw a noose placed around her son’s neck, she surrendered the keep to save his life, and Nigel followed her example.

Following the surrender of Devizes, Roger of Salisbury’s other castles, Sherborne and Malmesbury, soon fell to Stephen’s forces, along with the vast treasure Roger had accumulated. Stephen then forced Alexander of Lincoln to surrender his castles of Newark and Sleaford by starving him until his followers capitulated, leaving all of Roger’s remaining fortified strongholds under Stephen’s control.

The arrest of two bishops sparked immediate outrage across the English Church, which was now led by Henry of Winchester, bishop of Winchester and Stephen’s own brother, who had been granted a legatine commission in March 1139. After failed private and public entreaties for the bishops’ release, Henry cited Stephen to appear before a Church council at Winchester on August 29. The three-day council saw Henry formally charge Stephen with sacrilege for laying violent hands on bishops and seizing their property; Stephen defended himself by arguing he had arrested the men as disloyal subjects, not as prelates, and that the seized property had been acquired in violation of Church canons. The dispute nearly turned violent, with both sides threatening appeal to Rome and swords drawn in the council chamber. A compromise was reached: prelates who held castles not belonging to their sees were required to place them under royal control and focus on their ecclesiastical duties, while Stephen’s arrest of the bishops was formally condemned. Stephen was forced to lay aside his royal robes and perform public penance to avoid ecclesiastical penalties, though the political damage to his reign was irreversible, as he lost the support of both the barons and the clergy.

All of Geoffrey of Anjou’s attempts to conquer Normandy during this period failed. After his 1136 truce with Count Theobald of Blois expired, Angevin barons revolted, delaying Geoffrey’s invasion of Normandy until late September. The duchy was in such internal disarray that the Norman regents had called on Theobald for aid, but the Normans united against the invading Angevins (derisively called “Guirribecs”), forcing Geoffrey to flee after he was wounded in the foot while besieging the castle of Le Sap near Lisieux. The next spring, Geoffrey invaded the Hiesmois, but Stephen—who had just secured Normandy’s investiture from King Louis VII—was forced to abandon his counterattack due to jealousies between his Norman and Flemish troops, agreeing to a two-year truce. The Angevins broke the truce in April 1140, and Robert of Gloucester declared his support for Geoffrey in June, leading to the surrender of Bayeux and Caen to Angevin forces. Geoffrey retreated, however, when faced with a joint attack by Stephen’s cousin Ralf of Vermandois, Waleran of Meulan, and William of Ypres. He made an unsuccessful assault on Falaise in early October, then attacked the port town of Toucques in November, where his forces looted the town and settled in for the night. William Trussebut, governor of nearby Bonneville Castle, led a night raid that set fire to Toucques in 45 locations; the Angevins fled in panic to Argentan, and Geoffrey did not launch another Normandy invasion for more than two years. He and the Empress Matilda made no further moves until late the following summer, when Stephen’s arrest of the bishops created an opening for their claim.

The Winchester council dissolved on September 1, 1139; less than a month later, on September 30, the Empress Matilda landed in England to press her claim to the throne.

Cites *Hist. Gaufr. Ducis* (Marchegay, *Comtes*), pp. 268, 269, with a cross-reference to Orderic Vitalis (Ord. Vit.) p. 903.

Cites Orderic Vitalis (Ord. Vit., Duchesne, *Hist. Norm. Scriptt.*) pp. 903–908, alongside Robert of Torigni's annal entry for the year 1136.

Notes Orderic Vitalis (Ord. Vit., as above) p. 909, which records that the relevant party was designated "stipendiarius conjugi suæ factus."

Cites Orderic Vitalis (Ord. Vit., Duchesne, *Hist. Norm. Scriptt.*) p. 910, alongside Robert of Torigni's 1137 annal entry that adjusts the referenced timeline to three years, and documents King Stephen's promise of an annual payment of two thousand marks of silver.

References Orderic Vitalis (Ord. Vit., as above) p. 916.

Makes a repeated reference to Orderic Vitalis (as above) with no new page citation provided.

Cites Orderic Vitalis (Ord. Vit., as above) p. 918, alongside the annals of St. Albin and St. Sergius for the year 1138 (Marchegay, *Eglises*, pp. 34, 145).

References Orderic Vitalis (Ord. Vit., as above) pp. 918, 919.

Cites William of Malmesbury's *Hist. Nov.*, book 2, chapter 29 (Hardy, p. 724).

England and the Barons (1139–1147) This section frames the 1139–1147 conflict as an unprecedented era of lawlessness in English history, where the feudal baronage held unregulated power as the crown's authority dissolved under Stephen's weak rule. The struggle devolved into unplanned raids, unfinished sieges, and back-and-forth territorial seizures with no coherent campaign strategy from either side.

Matilda's Landing at Arundel On the final day of September 1139, Matilda arrived in England at Arundel with her brother Robert of Gloucester and 140 knights, where she was welcomed into the castle by its owner, Adeliza, the former queen and Stephen's wife. King Stephen immediately marched to besiege the castle, but Robert of Gloucester had already departed to rally support for Matilda across southern England, evading Stephen's pursuit with only a 12-knight escort as he traveled to Gloucester and then Bristol.

Siege of Arundel and Matilda's Journey to Bristol Stephen began a full siege of Arundel, but his brother Bishop Henry argued the effort was wasted while Robert of Gloucester stirred up opposition elsewhere in England. Stephen opted to allow Matilda to leave Arundel, granting her a royal safe-conduct and sending the Count of Meulan and Bishop of Winchester to escort her to Bristol to join her brother, a move framed as either chivalrous idealism or a pragmatic attempt to concentrate his enemies in one location.

Civil War and Collapse of Royal Authority The seven years after Matilda's landing saw the total disintegration of the stable administrative system established by Henry I, as royal authority became a meaningless formality under Stephen. Feudal barons built private castles across the country, terrorized local populations, and operated outside all legal constraints, with contemporary chroniclers recording widespread starvation, destruction of property, and near-total breakdown of social order across the kingdom.

Territorial Control by 1140 By the end of 1140, territorial control was roughly divided along a line running from the Peak of Derbyshire to Wareham on the Dorset coast. Matilda held sway over the western shires thanks to Robert of Gloucester's influence, but was largely confined to the region, as the Thames valley, London, and Kent remained loyal to Stephen. Midland shires were a contested no-man's-land, while barons in East Anglia and the north shifted allegiance based on personal political gain.

Earl of Chester's Feudal Power The Earl of Chester held near-total autonomous rule over Cheshire as a palatine jurisdiction, with authority over all land and people in the territory save for church holdings, and no direct royal power within his domain. His tenure was more secure than Stephen's own rule over England. Earl Ralf of Chester, married to Robert of Gloucester's daughter, initially stayed neutral despite overtures from both sides, as he disputed the Earldom of Carlisle with Henry of Scotland, a dispute Stephen was forced to intervene in on Henry's behalf.

Dispute Over the Earldom of Lincoln Stephen sought to win Ralf of Chester's loyalty by granting the Earldom of Lincoln to Ralf's half-brother William of Roumare at a 1140 meeting in Lincolnshire, a concession tied to the brothers' maternal inheritance of Lincolnshire estates. The grant failed to secure their loyalty, and the two brothers immediately plotted to seize Lincoln Castle through a trick facilitated by their wives, establishing themselves as de facto rulers of the city and its surrounding area.

Siege of Lincoln Castle After seizing Lincoln Castle, the two brother-earls ruled the city tyrannically, prompting appeals for aid from both the city's citizens and Bishop Alexander, a former victim of Stephen's. Stephen, who was celebrating Christmas in London, immediately raised an army and marched to Lincoln, besieging the castle with support from the local population and bishop.

Robert of Gloucester's Relief March to Lincoln Ralf of Chester escaped the siege to Chester to gather reinforcements, then offered his allegiance to Matilda in exchange for Robert of Gloucester's aid in breaking the siege. Robert led his entire army to Lincoln, keeping his true destination secret from most of his troops until they came into view of Stephen's forces. The two earls joined forces and led their army across a flooded marshy area near Lincoln in February 1140 (Candlemas Day), preparing to confront Stephen's troops to relieve the besieged castle.

As opposing forces assembled on the marshy meadows near Lincoln, a dispute over command precedence broke out between rebel earls. Earl Ralf of Chester claimed the right to lead the first strike, as the conflict stemmed from his grievances, but Robert of Gloucester asserted the "Disinherited" (magnates stripped of lands and honors by Stephen) deserved the foremost position to avenge their losses and the claim of Henry I's heiress. Meanwhile, Stephen's advisors urged him to avoid a pitched battle on the dual holy day of Sexagesima Sunday and the Feast of the Purification, citing sinister omens at early mass (a broken lighted taper in the king's hand, a fallen pyx on the altar), but Stephen refused to delay the fight. He deployed his army in three divisions: two cavalry forces commanded by Alan of Richmond and William of Ypres, and a third infantry unit positioned around the royal standard with Stephen at its center. The rebel army arranged the Disinherited in the vanguard, Chester's men in a second infantry line, Robert of Gloucester leading the third line, with lightly armed Welsh auxiliaries stationed on the host's wings.

As Baldwin of Clare delivered a rousing address to Stephen's troops, Robert of Gloucester sounded his trumpets to signal the attack. The Disinherited charged and scattered the first line of royal cavalry under the earls of Richmond, Meulan, Norfolk, Northampton and Surrey in moments; Welsh forces flanked and routed the Flemish cavalry under William of Ypres, and Chester's men dispersed the fleeing Flemish forces, causing the entire royal cavalry to rout immediately, with Alan of Richmond leading the desertion. Stephen and his small contingent of foot soldiers were left surrounded, fighting a desperate defensive action against the encircling rebel army. After his sword broke, a Lincoln citizen gave him a two-handed Danish battle-axe; he fought with feral intensity, killing many attackers, until nearly all his followers were dead or captured. Earl Chester charged Stephen directly, breaking his axe on the king's helmet, before Stephen struck Chester to the ground. A stray stone then struck Stephen's head, knocking him unconscious; he was seized by William of Kahaines, and ultimately surrendered only to Robert of Gloucester. He was captured alongside Baldwin of Clare and three other loyalists, while the rest of his band were killed or taken. The triumphant rebel army sacked Lincoln before marching Stephen to Gloucester, where Robert presented him to Matilda, who had him imprisoned in Bristol Castle.

In the three weeks following the Battle of Lincoln, Matilda's forces rapidly seized key strongholds across England: Bedford Castle, Nottingham, and Devizes. Alan of Richmond, who had deserted Stephen, was trapped in a plot he had set for Ralf of Chester, forced to submit to both Chester and Matilda, and voluntary oaths of homage flowed in to Robert of Gloucester from magnates across the realm. The clergy remained hesitant to formally support Matilda: they had opposed Stephen's 1139 outrage against the Church but still viewed him as the Lord's anointed king, and their leader Henry of Winchester was Stephen's own brother. Matilda pressured Henry to join her cause, bluntly threatening to lead "all the armies of England" against him if he refused. Recognizing Matilda's unstoppable momentum, Henry met with her on a rainy March morning outside Winchester to negotiate terms; the next day, Winchester opened its gates to Matilda, and Henry led a triumphal procession of bishops, abbots, clergy, and citizens to the Old Minster to receive her. Soon after, the Archbishop of Canterbury swore fealty to Matilda at Wilton. She advanced to Reading (her father Henry I's burial place), forced the surrender of Oxford Castle, and held her Easter court at Oxford, securing control of the upper Thames valley. She then moved to St. Alban's and opened negotiations with London.

Henry of Winchester summoned a great council at Winchester for the second Monday after Easter. After a day of private conferences, Henry addressed the assembly publicly as the papal legate, laying out his case: the crown had been formally promised to Matilda, Stephen was only a temporary placeholder chosen after Henry I's death to avoid a power vacuum, he had flagrantly broken his promises to the Church and nation, and God's judgment at Lincoln had proven Matilda's rightful claim. He called on the assembly to confirm Matilda as Lady of England and Normandy and swear fealty to her. Only a clerk from Queen Matilda of Boulogne's household objected, reading a letter passionately pleading for Stephen's release. The London deputation present did not oppose the council's decision, only requesting Stephen's freedom, and carried the resolution back to their city. After weeks of negotiation, the Londoners agreed to submit just before midsummer, opening their gates to Matilda in a show of humility.

After the Londoners formally submitted to her rule, Matilda entered the city in triumph, taking up residence at Westminster as the recognized ruler of England.

Matilda's harsh, arrogant rule quickly eroded her popular support. She confiscated lands and honors, seized Church property more ruthlessly than Stephen had, and refused all pleas for conciliation: she ignored Queen Matilda's requests for her husband's release, rejected the Bishop of Winchester's plea to preserve Stephen's children's inherited lands, denied the Londoners' request to restore the Laws of King Edward the Confessor, and extorted large sums of money from wealthy London burghers, driving them away with abuse when they asked for delay or abatement. In response, Stephen's wife Matilda of Boulogne rallied his remaining supporters in Kent with William of Ypres, leading an army that advanced nearly to London's gates. The London citizens rose in revolt while Matilda was sitting down to dinner, driving her and her followers out of the city as fast as their horses could carry them. Earl Robert of Gloucester escorted Matilda as far as Oxford, after which she hurried to Gloucester to summon her loyal supporter Miles of Gloucester, returning with him to Oxford to rally her scattered forces. Meanwhile, Queen Matilda took control of London, and the disappointed Henry of Winchester reversed his earlier support for Matilda, lifting all excommunications issued against Stephen's party by the Winchester council and pledging to work for Stephen's restoration. After failed efforts to win Henry back to her side, Matilda marched a large force to Winchester without notifying her brother Robert.

In 1138, Bishop Henry of Winchester, frustrated with his episcopal residence adjacent to Winchester Cathedral, repurposed stone from the abandoned royal palace built by William the Conqueror to construct a formidable fortress later known as Wolvesey Castle, sited within the church's liberty just inside Winchester's eastern city boundary. As Empress Matilda entered the city, Bishop Henry retreated to the new castle and aligned himself with King Stephen's faction.

After establishing herself in Winchester, Matilda summoned Bishop Henry to meet with her, but he instead rallied all remaining supporters of Stephen, including barons, mercenaries, William of Ypres' Flemish troops, and a London contingent led by Stephen's queen Matilda. Stephen's forces besieged the bishop and his allies in Wolvesey Castle and the bishop's palace, set fire to parts of the city to deprive the besiegers of resources, and cut off supply lines from the east. When Matilda's forces dispatched 300 knights to Wherwell to build a fort to protect supply convoys, William of Ypres captured the entire party.

By September 1141, Robert of Gloucester, Matilda's half-brother and primary military commander, concluded the siege of Wolvesey was hopeless and organized a breakout to extract Matilda from the city. On the evening of September 13, the city gates were opened and peace declared in the bishop's name. Robert sent Matilda out first, planning to cover her retreat the following morning, but the bishop immediately signaled an attack after her departure. Stephen's forces routed Matilda's remaining troops; Robert was captured at Stockbridge by William of Ypres and his Flemings, while other Angevin leaders including Miles of Gloucester fled, and several bishops supporting Matilda were stripped of their horses and clothing. Matilda escaped to Gloucester with the aid of her loyal Breton ally Brian Fitz-Count.

In the six weeks following Robert of Gloucester's capture, negotiations for his release and that of King Stephen (also held by the Angevins) took place. Stephen's queen, Matilda of Boulogne, proposed a simple exchange of the two captives to Countess Mabel of Gloucester (Robert's wife, as the Empress refused to negotiate directly), which Mabel accepted. Robert rejected the terms, arguing an earl was not equal to a king and demanding all his captured followers be included in the exchange, a condition his captors refused. A second proposal to restore Stephen to the throne with Robert as governor of England also failed: Robert would not agree without Matilda's consent, and Matilda refused to compromise her claims. The queen threatened to imprison Robert in Boulogne for life, but Robert countered that any harm to him would lead his countess to transfer Stephen to Ireland, neutralizing the threat. As Matilda's faction rapidly collapsed, her remaining supporters urged Robert to accept any terms to save her, leading to the revival of the original simple exchange proposal, which was accepted in early November 1141.

The prisoner exchange was finalized in early November 1141, allowing Robert of Gloucester to rejoin Matilda at Oxford. Stephen re-entered London to widespread public celebration, with popular dissatisfaction with Matilda's overbearing rule and sympathy for Stephen's misfortunes and his queen's leadership turning public opinion back in his favor.

In early December 1141, papal legate Henry of Winchester convened a council at Westminster, where he formally reversed his earlier support for Matilda. After Stephen lodged a formal complaint against the vassals who had betrayed and captured him, Henry apologized for his prior recognition of Matilda, calling her rule a necessary evil that had proved intolerable. He proclaimed Stephen the lawfully elected and apostolically anointed sovereign, and excommunicated all who upheld Matilda's claim; the attending clergy gave silent consent to the decision.

During the quiet winter of 1141-1142, Matilda remained in Oxford while Stephen stayed in London. In spring 1142, Matilda moved to Devizes, where she held a secret council at Mid-Lent and dispatched an embassy to her husband Geoffrey of Anjou, requesting his support to secure her English inheritance. At Pentecost, Geoffrey agreed to provide aid only if Robert of Gloucester personally certified the reasonableness of the request. Reluctant to leave Matilda, Robert agreed only after her leading supporters swore an oath to stay within a set distance of Oxford and protect her until his return, after which he sailed from Wareham shortly before Midsummer.

Shortly after Robert of Gloucester departed for Anjou, King Stephen—who had been recovering from illness at Northampton since Easter—launched a surprise attack on Wareham, whose garrison surrendered immediately. Stephen then marched to Cirencester, where he destroyed a castle recently built by Matilda's forces, before turning west to attack Matilda's headquarters at Oxford.

Oxford was a critical strategic stronghold controlling the upper Thames valley, the main route between eastern England and the Angevin territories in the west. After seizing Wareham and destroying the Angevin castle at Cirencester, Stephen advanced on Oxford, breaking through Matilda's chain of defensive forts including Bampton and Ratcot. Three days before Michaelmas 1142, Stephen's forces reached the city; after crossing the Thames at the historic shallow ford below St Frideswide's, they defeated the defending Angevin forces, entered the city, set it on fire, and forced Matilda's remaining supporters to retreat into Oxford Castle.

Stephen blockaded Oxford Castle for nearly three months after capturing the city, vowing not to abandon the siege until both the fortress and Empress Matilda were in his hands. The castle’s inhabitants were pushed to the brink of starvation, while barons sworn to protect Matilda gathered at Wallingford in shame over their failure to relieve her, but dared not attack Stephen’s entrenched encampment.

Earl Robert of Gloucester returned to England after receiving news of his sister Matilda’s peril, landing at Wareham with a force of 300–400 Normans. Too small to directly break Stephen’s siege of Oxford, he launched diversionary sieges of Wareham, Portland, and Lulworth, then summoned all of Matilda’s supporters to meet at Cirencester to march on Oxford. Stephen refused to divert troops to relieve Wareham despite the garrison’s plea for aid before a set deadline, and the castle surrendered after a three-week siege.

With Oxford Castle’s provisions nearly exhausted and no hope of relief, Matilda devised a daring escape during the winter Christmas period, when deep snow covered the ground and the castle’s adjacent river was frozen solid. She and four (or six, per some contemporary chronicles) companions in white robes rappelled down the castle wall onto the frozen river, slipped through Stephen’s encampment undetected—only one sentinel saw them but let them pass, either mistaking them for ghosts or sympathetic to their desperate venture—and fled five miles on foot to Abingdon before mounting horses. They reached the safety of Wallingford and the protection of Brian Fitz-Count by morning.

Oxford Castle surrendered to Stephen immediately after Matilda’s escape. Matilda withdrew to Bristol or Gloucester and ceased to play a prominent role in the war, which dragged on for another five years. The Angevins’ last major victory came in July 1143 at the Battle of Wilton, where Stephen was utterly routed and only avoided capture a second time by taking headlong flight. Later that year, Matilda’s trusted ally Miles of Hereford was killed in a hunting accident. In early 1144, Ralf of Chester retook Lincoln Castle but pursued his own personal interests rather than Matilda’s cause, while other barons including Hugh Bigod, Turgis of Avranches, and Geoffrey of Mandeville fomented widespread chaos across eastern England, stretching Stephen’s forces thin as they attempted to suppress the unrest.

Several key figures who had contributed to the kingdom’s instability died in 1144: William of Dover, lord of Cricklade, abandoned his raiding activities after sending Malmesbury’s captured commandant to Matilda, and died on crusade in Palestine. Geoffrey de Mandeville, the most notorious troublemaker who had accepted titles and honours from both Stephen and Matilda while remaining loyal to neither, was killed in a skirmish with the king’s troops, and Robert of Marmion was soon after slain by the Earl of Chester’s men after desecrating the gates of Bath Abbey. The deaths briefly raised hopes that the widespread devastation of the war would finally subside.

The Angevin faction rapidly collapsed after a series of defections and political setbacks. Philip of Gloucester, son of Earl Robert, who had taken over William of Dover’s stronghold at Cricklade, was hard pressed by Oxford’s garrison and called on his father for aid. Earl Robert built a castle at Farringdon to support his son, but Stephen besieged it so vigorously that its defenders were compelled to surrender. Philip of Gloucester promptly defected to Stephen and took up arms against his own father. The Earl of Chester also made peace with Stephen, meeting him at Stamford to apologize for his rebellion, proving his sincerity by retaking Bedford for Stephen, accompanying him with a band of 300 picked knights, and building a fortress at Crowmarsh to keep the garrison of Wallingford in check. However, his refusal to surrender his seized castles and pay his dues to the royal treasury left him deeply distrusted by other barons and the king. In 1146, at Northampton, Ralf of Chester was arrested after refusing Stephen’s demand that he surrender his castles and give hostages for his loyalty; he was later released after partially complying with the terms, including surrendering the strategically vital Lincoln Castle.

After securing Lincoln Castle, Stephen chose to hold his midwinter feast in the city, defying a longstanding superstition that forbade any English king from appearing in regal state within Lincoln’s walls. He wore his crown at high mass in Lincoln Minster on Christmas Day, marking the peak of his authority and a symbolic reversal of his earlier catastrophic defeat in the city.

While Matilda experienced early success in England, her husband Geoffrey of Anjou focused on conquering Normandy, achieving far greater territorial gains than his wife over the seven years they were separated. After Stephen’s capture in early 1141, Geoffrey pressed Norman barons to submit to his authority; a proposed treaty negotiated by Theobald of Blois (which would have ceded Stephen’s claims to the Angevins in exchange for his release) was rejected by both Stephen’s brother and Matilda, but it convinced key Norman partisans of Stephen, including the twin earls of Meulan and Leicester, to make peace with Anjou. Nearly a third of the duchy, including key strongholds such as Mortagne, Verneuil, Lisieux, Falaise, and the Roumois region between the Seine and Rille, acknowledged Geoffrey’s rule within weeks. When Earl Robert visited Geoffrey in 1142 to request aid for Matilda, Geoffrey refused to divert his attention to England, instead convincing Robert to join him in a campaign to conquer the remaining western territories of Normandy. The pair captured a string of fortresses including Bastebourg, Tinchebray, Mortain, Pontorson, and Cérences, bringing nearly the entire duchy under Geoffrey’s control by the end of 1142.

This section details variant spellings and identifications of the settlement Cerences: it appears as "Cerences" in Rob. Torigni's 1142 entry, "Cerentias" in Marchegay's printed *Hist. Gaufr. Ducis*, "Carentias" in older editions (rendered "Carentan" by *Rer. Gall. Scriptt.* editors), and "Cérances" per Delisle's notes on Rob. Torigni. The settlement lies halfway between Avranches and Coutances, with a related site "Chérencé-le-Roussel" located a few miles northwest of Mortain.

The Angevin count and earl's campaign in Normandy was paused by news of Stephen's victory and Matilda's danger at Oxford. Robert of Gloucester was required to return to England immediately, and it was deemed unwise for Geoffrey of Anjou to accompany him due to the risk of sparking widespread ill-feeling toward the Angevin cause. Young Henry Fitz-Empress was selected as a substitute, as he posed no risk of damaging the cause even if he could offer no practical support. Robert and Henry sailed for England together, while Geoffrey remained to complete his subjugation of Normandy.

Geoffrey first targeted Avranches, which submitted readily; he took up residence in its castle and summoned lords of all Avranchin fortresses to pay homage, which they all did. He then moved to subdue the Cotentin: St.-Lô, strongly fortified by the local bishop, surrendered after a three-day siege. Geoffrey advanced on Coutances, where the bishop was absent and no resistance was offered, so he took the city and summoned its barons to pay homage. All barons complied except brothers Ralf and Richard of La Haye; Ralf quickly submitted, while Richard fled to the fortress of Cherbourg with approximately 200 knights.

Cherbourg was a formidable fortress built on solid rock, flanked by beast-filled woodland on one side and a strategically valuable bay on the other. A prolonged siege would be costly and difficult, but Geoffrey excelled at siege engineering and deployed a large array of siege machines against the fortress. Richard of La Haye attempted to flee to England by sea to seek King Stephen's aid, but was captured by pirates. News of his fate reached the Cherbourg garrison, who lost heart and surrendered to the Angevin forces.

With Cherbourg captured, Geoffrey gained control of all Normandy south and west of the Seine, with the sole exception of the town of Vaudreuil, which was captured before the end of 1143. Angevin power even extended beyond the Seine, as Walter Giffard and the people of the Pays de Caux reached an agreement with Geoffrey.

Rouen was the only remaining Norman holdout against Geoffrey's forces. In January 1144, Geoffrey crossed the Seine at Vernon and camped at La Trinité-du-Mont, just outside Rouen's walls. The next day, the city's citizens opened their gates and led Geoffrey in a solemn procession to the cathedral. The city's castle remained held by followers of the earl of Warren; barons led by Waleran of Meulan joined the siege, but the citadel only surrendered on St. George's Day after a three-month blockade reduced the garrison to starvation.

After securing Rouen, Geoffrey formed an alliance with Louis VII of France, the formal overlord of Normandy. This alliance was driven by renewed conflict between the house of Blois and the French crown: Louis VII, whose father had previously granted Normandy's investiture to Stephen's son, now embraced the Angevin alliance against all branches of the house of Blois on both sides of the Channel. Geoffrey was joined by his brother-in-law Theodoric of Flanders and Louis VII in his campaign to subdue remaining outstanding castles in Normandy.

With French and Flemish support, Geoffrey captured remaining castles including Driencourt (now Neufchâtel-en-Bray) and Lions-la-Forêt, completing his conquest of all Normandy west of the Seine. The only remaining holdout was Arques, held by William the Monk for Stephen; Geoffrey left a body of troops to besiege the fortress and returned home without waiting for its fall. William the Monk was killed by a stray arrow in summer 1145, and Arques' surrender completed Geoffrey's full conquest of Normandy. Geoffrey held the duchy by right of conquest, a right formally acknowledged by Louis VII, who granted him investiture of the entire Norman duchy in 1144, with the sole exception of Gisors, which Louis claimed as the price of his favor.

Geoffrey was called home from Normandy by a revolt among his Angevin barons, led by Robert of Sablé. His brother Elias also joined the rebels, putting forward a claim to the county of Maine and attempting to enforce it by force. Geoffrey defeated Elias, took him prisoner, and imprisoned him at Tours, where he remained for five years until his death from the effects of imprisonment shortly after his release. Geoffrey swiftly suppressed the rest of the revolt, forcing Robert of Sablé and his accomplices to submit immediately.

After suppressing the baronial revolt, Geoffrey sought to bring his heir Henry Fitz-Empress back from England to share in his triumph in Normandy. He sent envoys to Earl Robert of Gloucester requesting Henry's return, which was granted. By Ascension-tide 1147, Henry was reunited with his father, escorted by Earl Robert as far as Wareham, where they parted for the last time. Earl Robert caught a fever and died at Bristol in November 1147.

Following Earl Robert's death, Matilda felt all hope of winning the English throne had been lost. In early spring 1148, she abandoned the English struggle and joined her son Henry in Normandy, to live in peace with her husband Geoffrey for the remainder of her life. The unresolved English succession conflict was left to be settled by other parties in subsequent years.

This section presents a detailed analysis of the disputed topography of the 1141 Battle of Lincoln, addressing two core questions: the route taken by Robert of Gloucester and Ralf to approach the city, and the exact location of the battle. It compares conflicting accounts from William of Malmesbury, who claims the army crossed the swollen Trent river, and Henry of Huntingdon, who describes crossing an "almost impassable marsh" with no mention of the Trent. The author argues William's account is likely incorrect, as fording the swollen Trent in winter is physically impossible, and the most direct route from Gloucester to Lincoln runs east of the Trent valley. The author posits the Angevin army crossed a Roman paved ford in the Witham river between the city bridge and Brayford Head, allowing them to advance to the castle without entering the hostile city, and that William misnamed the waterway by conflating the Foss-Dyke, Witham, and Trent. The author also dismisses local tradition that the battle was fought north of the city, noting the only feasible battle site is a level tract of land west of the castle ridge, where Stephen could have taken a defensive position with the hill at his back. This conclusion is supported by the author's 1881 on-site examination, which found the "Battle-piece" site near the castle was used for trial-by-combat, not a battle, and the ground south of the castle is too steep for a pitched battle.

The English Church After the departure of the Empress Matilda, England entered a period of exhausted quiet rather than rest. In the 12 years since King Henry I’s death, all secular law, order, and authority had been completely destroyed by widespread turmoil, with only the Church remaining as a viable institution to withstand the devastation.

1136–1149: Collapse of Secular Authority, Survival of the Church The 12 years following King Henry I’s death saw every vestige of secular governance, order, and peace swept away by nationwide destruction, leaving the Church as the sole remaining organized body capable of providing stability and leadership as the waves of chaos began to subside.

Henry of Winchester: Background and Episcopal Rise Henry of Winchester, the youngest son of King Stephen and Adela of Blois, was raised in the Cluny Abbey and dedicated to religious life by his mother. Appointed abbot of Glastonbury Abbey in 1126 at the behest of his uncle King Henry I, he was consecrated bishop of Winchester just three years later, at approximately 28 years old, due to royal favor. Unlike the majority of low-born secular clerics in the English episcopate at the time, Henry was steeped in ecclesiastical and monastic tradition from childhood, and emerged as the natural leader of the religious revival that took hold in Henry I’s later reign. After Henry I’s death, he became the de facto leader of both the Church and the faltering secular state, securing his brother Stephen’s election to the throne as secular authority collapsed following the fall of Roger of Salisbury.

Henry of Winchester's Legatine Authority In 1139, Henry received a papal legatine commission that overrode the authority of the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, making him the acknowledged leader of the English Church. As secular government fully broke down, this commission vested Henry and the clerical synods he convened with the only remaining deliberative and legislative authority in the kingdom, with clergy and people broadly following his lead. This authority was controversial because the English Church had long held an unwritten privilege of exemption from external legatine control: the Archbishop of Canterbury held the status of *legatus natus* (born legate) as successor to St. Augustine, and was not subject to the jurisdiction of a papal *legatus a latere*. This tradition had been reaffirmed in 1125, when Archbishop William of Canterbury protested the misconduct of legate John of Crema and returned from Rome vested with his own *legatus a latere* commission, which he held until his death.

Henry of Winchester's Character and Ecclesiastical Politics Henry possessed a calm, imperturbable Norman temperament marked by tenacity, fearlessness, and strong will, though he also shared his father’s house’s traits of rashness, self-will, and short-sightedness. His political vision was non-partisan: he sought to secure the well-being of the state by upholding Church rights, privileges, and discipline, viewing all secular governance as existing solely to serve that end. He led synods that deposed both Stephen and Matilda in turn when they broke their compacts with the Church, and was the only organized force working to pull England out of chaos, though his efforts ultimately failed due to overwhelming circumstances and his own misalignment with the era’s rising religious trends. His churchmanship aligned with the older Cluniac school focused on outward Church power and prestige, which was losing favor to the purer Cistercian movement led by St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

Winchester and Canterbury Primacy Disputes After Archbishop William of Canterbury’s death, Henry was widely expected to succeed him as primate, but the Pope refused to grant a license for his translation from the see of Winchester to Canterbury. Instead, Queen Matilda of Stephen’s court helped secure the appointment of Theobald, abbot of Bec, as the new Archbishop of Canterbury. Pope Innocent II later appointed Henry as resident legate of England rather than Theobald, cementing Henry’s authority over the Church and sparking long-running tension with the rightful primate. Henry even plotted to have the see of Winchester elevated to metropolitical rank, with 2 (or 7, per some accounts) suffragan sees carved out of the province of Canterbury; Innocent reportedly sent him a pall (symbol of archiepiscopal dignity) in 1142 to endorse the scheme, though it never came to fruition. Theobald bore the supersession quietly for years, recognizing that his metropolitical rights were inalienable, while legatine authority was dependent on shifting papal favor that could strip Henry of his power at any time.

Archbishop Theobald's Preparatory Leadership While Henry of Winchester focused on short-term political maneuvering to consolidate his power, Theobald quietly prepared for the long term, gathering the era’s most talented scholars and dispassionate, cultured politicians into his household to train a new generation of English clerical and secular leaders, turning his palace into a seminary and training ground for the country’s future governance.

Thomas Becket's Entry into Theobald's Circle Thomas Becket, son of Gilbert Becket, a former London port-reeve whose family fell into near-poverty after a series of disastrous fires, was educated briefly in Paris before his mother’s death in his 22nd year ended his formal studies. He worked for years as a clerk for his wealthy kinsman Osbern Huitdeniers, a London sheriff, before clerks who had known his family in their prosperous days recruited him into Theobald’s household. He quickly rose to become one of Theobald’s three closest, most trusted confidential counsellors (alongside John of Canterbury and Roger of Pont-l’Evêque), and was the archbishop’s primary advisor on matters of special difficulty and delicacy.

Disputed York Archbishop Election After Archbishop Thurstan of York died in February 1140, William, treasurer of the York see and nephew of both King Stephen and Henry of Winchester, was appointed as his successor, receiving temporal investiture from Stephen in the camp before the Battle of Lincoln. A minority of the York chapter, supported by respected northern clergy including Abbot Richard of Fountains, protested the election as the product of bribery by William and intimidation by William of Aumale, Earl of York, acting on behalf of the king and legate. Theobald sided with the protesters and refused to assist with William’s consecration, so Henry sent the archbishop-elect to plead his case in Rome. In Lent 1143, Pope Innocent II ruled that William of York could be consecrated only if he and the dean of York swore oaths that the election was free from royal coercion and bribery. At the September 1143 council at Winchester, the dean of York was absent, having been elected Bishop of Durham and caught up in a dispute over his see, so Ralf, Bishop of Orkney, and two abbots swore the required oath in his place. William of York was consecrated by his uncle Henry three days before Michaelmas 1143, though Theobald continued to refuse his assent to the entire proceeding.

Henry's victory proved to be his final political success, as Pope Innocent II died shortly after, invalidating his legatine authority. The bishop of Winchester reverted to a subordinate position under Canterbury, and Archbishop Theobald became effective primate. Both Theobald and Henry traveled to Rome to seek favor with the new Pope Celestine II, but Celestine was sympathetic to the Angevins, so Theobald and Thomas easily convinced him to transfer the legatine commission to the primate. Henry retreated to Cluny for the winter. After Celestine's death in March 1144, Henry visited his successor Lucius II and was acquitted of Angevin charges, though the legation remained in abeyance rather than being restored to him.

While Stephen and Henry waged their destructive conflict, the religious life of England flourished with remarkable vigor, representing the one bright chapter of Stephen's troubled reign. As knights and barons ravaged the land, Templars and Hospitaliers established priories, Augustinian canons directed schools and hospitals, and Cistercians made the wilderness bloom. This vitality manifested itself in remarkable diversity of forms, with Augustinian orders predominating through their excellence in teaching and care of the poor. The period saw numerous hospices, hospitals, and almshouses founded for the aged, needy, and infirm.

The Augustinians excelled as educators and as caregivers for the poor, exemplified by hospitals such as S. Giles at Cripplegate, S. Bartholomew at Smithfield, and S. Katharine's near the Tower (founded 1148 by Queen Matilda and served by Holy Trinity canons at Aldgate). Henry of Winchester himself established the Hospital of the Holy Cross at Winchester for thirteen poor old men, whose white church survives as a memorial to his better spiritual nature. Military orders including the Hospitaliers and Templars, both living by the Augustinian rule, also established foundations, while the Premonstratensian White Canons received priories at Newhouse in Lincolnshire from Peter de Gousla and at Brodholm in Nottinghamshire from his wife.

William of Newburgh, an Augustinian canon of Yorkshire, extolled the religious foundations of Stephen's reign as God's castles, where servants of the true King kept watch and trained young soldiers for spiritual warfare. He contrasted these divine fortresses with the castles of violence being raised by the mighty during the king's weakness. Observing that more religious houses arose in Stephen's short reign than in the entire preceding century, Newburgh credited divine providence with confounding the prince of pride through these peaceful strongholds even amid civil chaos.

While other orders formed the working ranks of the spiritual army, the Cistercians served as its sentinels, guides, and commanding officers. Their undisputed leader was the abbot of Clairvaux, S. Bernard, a simple monk who never held high ecclesiastical office yet brought all Christendom to his feet through the irresistible influence of a pure mind and single purpose. Religious reformers instinctively turned to Cîteaux for models and guidance, as exemplified by the story of S. Gilbert of Sempringham, whose mixed Norman and Old-English heritage shaped his vocation as spiritual director of women.

S. Gilbert of Sempringham founded a double monastery that combined elements of multiple traditions into a uniquely composite institution. After running away to France as a boy, he returned to establish a school emphasizing moral and spiritual formation. Seven maidens first devoted themselves to the religious life under his guidance, soon joined by others of both sexes, forming a double monastery at Sempringham under Bishop Alexander of Lincoln's protection. When Gilbert sought incorporation under Cistercian authority, they declined out of respect for his distinct mission, prompting him to devise a rule combining Augustinian canons, Cistercian lay-brethren, nuns, and lay-sisters with his own additional regulations. The Gilbertine order spread rapidly through eastern England before its founder's death.

The Cistercian order's extraordinary influence culminated when Bernard abbot of S. Anastasius at Rome was elected pope as Eugene III following Lucius II's death in February 1145. Eugene proved utterly submissive to his namesake Bernard of Clairvaux, possessing no will of his own and serving merely as the voice and hand that executed the greater Bernard's thoughts. When Bernard playfully wrote to him "They say I am Pope, not you!", Eugene gloried in the reproach. This Cistercian pontificate marked a new departure in papal policy, enabling Bernard to pursue his cherished schemes including a new crusade for the Holy Land.

Motivated by Queen Melisenda's desperate pleas following King Fulk of Anjou's sudden death and the fall of Edessa to the Infidels, Bernard launched a new crusade. At Vézelay on Easter Day 1146, young King Louis of France took the cross from Bernard's own hands amid scenes of wildest enthusiasm, with Emperor Conrad soon following suit. The expedition departed at Pentecost 1147, though its ultimate failure in Palestine would be transformed by Bernard's biographer into a divinely purposed instrument for liberating western souls from sin rather than eastern bodies from heathen bondage.

Despite the overall failure of the Second Crusade in the Holy Land, the movement achieved remarkable results in England. Though torn by internal divisions, individual English volunteers eagerly joined, with the crusade's preaching awakening in many troubled spirits a smoldering capacity for better things. Knights disgusted with party-strife flung their wasted energies into a nobler cause. This response revealed a depth of spiritual vigor in the English people that could otherwise hardly have been suspected during such troubled times.

The crusade's sole success was achieved by an independent squadron of 164 ships that sailed from Dartmouth on May 23, 1147, consisting mainly of Englishmen with Germans and Flemings, nearly all of low degree. The fleet was organized by nationality with distinct leaders: Count Arnold of Aerschot for the Low-Germans, Christian of Gistelles for the Flemings, and four English marshals representing different regions, including Hervey of Glanville for Norfolk and Suffolk. Bound by vows as stringent as a religious order, with chaplains and weekly communion on every ship, these warrior-pilgrims diverted their mission at the request of King Alfonso to liberate Lisbon from Moorish rule. After a four-month blockade forced the city's surrender, the crusaders' English discipline overcame German greed, and they magnanimously handed Lisbon to its Christian sovereign before returning home, their single-hearted triumph contrasting sharply with the disasters suffered by the royal and imperial hosts.

The Cistercian order in England, directed by St. Bernard, opposed the appointment of William Fitz-Herbert to the see of York as a joint scheme of King Stephen and Legate Henry of Winchester to override the rights of the southern primate and the Church. Bernard complained to the Pope that the archbishop of York and the bishop of Winchester no longer walked in step with the archbishop of Canterbury, attributing the rift to the old quarrel over the legation. The clause permitting William of Durham to swear the required oath by proxy on William's behalf appeared to have been interpolated, prompting Bernard to cry, "One William has not sworn, yet the other is archbishop." When Cardinal-legate Hicmar arrived in 1144 carrying a pall for William of York, he assured Bernard that it would not be delivered until the bishop of Durham had taken the oath in person.

Neither prelate responded to Hicmar's presence, and when the legate was recalled by the death of Pope Lucius and the accession of Eugene, William of York belatedly realised his error and hurried to Rome to seek the pall he had previously ignored. Instead of granting it, Pope Eugene suspended him from all episcopal functions until William of Durham should take the oath required by the sentence of Pope Innocent. William then withdrew to Sicily, taking up residence with the chancellor Robert of Selby under the protection of King Roger—an imprudent refuge, since Roger was then at open feud with the Church. William's cause, already weak, was further damaged by the conduct of his own friends.

Henry Murdac, a Yorkshireman who in Archbishop Thurstan's time had renounced home, lands and kindred to follow St. Bernard at Clairvaux, was sent in 1135 to found the abbey of Vauclair and was appointed in 1143 to succeed the late Abbot Richard II of Fountains. Returning to England as Bernard's representative to make Fountains an English Clairvaux, he pursued his mission with characteristic Cistercian zeal. When William's suspension became known, William's friends blamed Murdac and staged an armed raid on Fountains, where, finding little worth plundering, they set the abbey ablaze; only the church escaped, and Murdac himself was preserved by lying unnoticed in prayer before the high altar. With the monks' energy and neighbours' sympathy, Fountains rose from its ashes. At a council held in Paris in the spring of 1147, charges against William were renewed and Eugene deposed him. The chapter of York, joined by the bishops of Durham and Carlisle, elected Murdac, who was consecrated and given the pall by Pope Eugene at Trier on the octave of St Andrew.

The failure of their scheme to control the northern primacy threw both Stephen and Henry of Winchester into confusion. William himself, however, was transformed by the papal sentence, exchanging worldly ease for humility; when he returned home the following year, he sought only to withdraw from strife. Henry of Winchester, refusing to accept defeat, ostentatiously hosted William and continued to treat him with the honours of an archbishop. When Henry Murdac returned to England in the summer of 1148, Stephen demanded sworn assurances of fidelity before permitting him to land. Citizens of York, stirred up by Hugh of Puiset—treasurer of the see and another royal nephew—shut their gates against the new primate. Murdac withdrew to Ripon, laid his diocese under interdict and excommunicated Hugh, but Hugh, backed by his powerful uncles, defied the interdict and brazenly returned the excommunication.

Early in 1148 the Pope summoned the English bishops to a council at Reims on Mid-Lent Sunday. Stephen sent three—Hereford, Chichester and Norwich—but when Archbishop Theobald sought leave to cross the Channel, the king, urged by his brother Henry, refused, stationed guards at every port, and swore to banish Theobald if he went. Theobald nevertheless slipped away in a broken boat with Roger of Pont-l'Evêque and Thomas of London, reached the council in safety, and was triumphantly presented by the Pope as a man who had swum rather than sailed for the Church's sake. Bishops who failed to attend were suspended, Henry of Winchester by name. When the king seized the see's temporalities and acted the tyrant, Eugene ordered the English bishops to summon Stephen to restore the primate, and, failing compliance, to lay his dominions under interdict and warn him of excommunication on Michaelmas; but the bishops, all court-aligned, complied only formally, and the interdict took effect only in Theobald's own diocese. The wiser queen Matilda, supported by William of Ypres, eventually mediated, and Theobald withdrew to St Omer for easier negotiation.

The Council of Reims dealt severely with the absent English prelates, suspending all who had failed to attend and singling out Henry of Winchester by name. His brother the count of Blois—esteemed by both Eugene and Bernard as peacemaker for the family—interceded successfully, securing a relaxation of the sentence on condition Henry appear at Rome within six months. Eugene would have excommunicated Stephen outright, but Theobald, like Anselm before him, stepped forward as mediator and obtained a three-month respite; his reward was the threatened sentence of banishment on his return to Canterbury. Though Theobald duly published the interdict, the bishops were too closely tied to the court to enforce it, and the sentence was observed only in his own diocese.

Matilda of Boulogne recognised that the ecclesiastical quarrel involved far more than church matters: the very issue that battle had left undecided was now being tried before another tribunal. A striking symptom was Brian Fitz-Count, Matilda's most devoted and successful military champion, who suddenly laid down the sword for the pen and published a defence of his Lady's rights that earned the approval of Gilbert Foliot, abbot of Gloucester. Geoffrey Plantagenet, the first to speak openly, sent Bishop Miles of Thérouanne to challenge Stephen to surrender his ill-gotten realm and submit his claim to the papal court; Stephen retorted by demanding that Geoffrey first surrender his equally ill-gotten duchy. Geoffrey accepted, in a way Stephen had not intended, by making over the duchy of Normandy to his young son Henry Fitz-Empress.

Stephen, driven to desperation, consented to a trial at Rome. His envoys, scraping for arguments, resurrected a scandal about the validity of Matilda's parents' marriage that St Anselm had laid to rest half a century earlier; many voices publicly attacked the legality of her claim. According to one account, her adversaries were triumphantly confuted by Bishop Ulger of Angers, but Gilbert Foliot—an eyewitness sympathetic to her cause—wrote that her advocates answered never a word. The trial ended without any decision, but it was followed almost immediately by developments of great significance for the future alignment of the English Church.

Gilbert Foliot, a Cluniac monk who had been abbot of Gloucester since 1139, was renowned for his learning, wisdom and holiness and trusted by all parties. Reluctantly obeying Theobald's summons, he joined the primate at the papal court and threw himself into organising the new policy of which Theobald was to be leader. During the council at Reims the bishop of Hereford died, and the Pope at once appointed Foliot vicar of the vacant see. In September he was consecrated by Theobald at St Omer, with the consent of the young duke of the Normans—given on the express condition that he do homage for the temporalities of Hereford to the duke, and not to the king.

Gilbert Foliot immediately broke the promise he had made to Theobald before being consecrated as Bishop of Hereford. Footnote references cite Gilbert's own letters and the Historia Pontificalis. The context reveals that Theobald's decision to consecrate Gilbert on such lenient terms was itself indicative of the troubled state of the English church, a fact that King Stephen could scarcely have failed to recognize.

Archbishop Theobald ventured back to England, crossing from Gravelines and landing at Gosford in the territories of Hugh Bigod, who received him hospitably. At Hugh's castle of Framlingham, Theobald was met by the bishops of London, Chichester, and Norwich, along with several barons. The gathering resulted in a full reconciliation with the king, restoration of the primate, and lifting of the interdict.

Following Theobald's return and the meeting at Framlingham, the interdict that had been imposed on England was raised. All of the suspended prelates were permitted to resume their ecclesiastical functions, with the sole exception of one figure whose case required separate treatment.

Henry of Winchester was the one notable exception to the general restoration. Because he had neglected to travel to Rome within the six-month period prescribed by Pope Eugene at the council of Reims, he had automatically fallen under the sentence of excommunication or suspension pronounced against him there. This procedural failure left him excluded from the broader reconciliation.

Despite Henry of Winchester's exclusion under the papal sentence, Archbishop Theobald was nevertheless willing, at King Stephen's request, to extend to him the hand of fellowship and forgiveness. This offer of personal reconciliation stood apart from the formal canonical disqualification Henry had incurred.

The chapter closes by noting that Henry of Winchester's career as a king-maker had come to an end. A new Henry was poised to enter the political stage: Henry of Anjou, the future Henry II. He would take his own cause in hand and emerge as the champion of his ancestral claims against Stephen, the man who had supplanted him on his grandfather's throne.

This section introduces Henry Fitz-Empress as Duke of the Normans during the 1149–1154 period, noting the scarcity of surviving detailed accounts of his childhood compared to his contemporary Thomas Becket, and establishing his complex, divided national identity rooted in the diverse lineages of his parents, Geoffrey of Anjou and Empress Matilda.

This section details the circumstances of Henry’s birth in Le Mans, a strategically symbolic location as the formerly independent territory of Maine that had been conquered by Norman and Angevin forces. It traces the mixed national backgrounds of his parents: his mother Matilda, daughter of King Henry I of England, had Norman, Flemish, Scottish, and West-Saxon/High-German ancestry with strong Norman leanings but no personal attachment to her birth country England; his father Geoffrey of Anjou had both Angevin and Cenomannian (Maine) heritage, with divided loyalty between the two regions. This blended lineage meant Henry had no innate national or patriotic attachment to a single territory; his cosmopolitan upbringing prevented him from being dominated by Angevin cultural influences but left his national identity an insoluble problem, making him connected to but not fully belonging to Normandy, Anjou, or England.

This section covers Henry’s early childhood and first formal education. He visited Normandy with his mother at 12 months old in spring 1134, where his brother Geoffrey was born at Argentan; the two boys narrowly avoided being left in the care of their grandfather King Henry I after a period of illness. After his mother returned to Anjou in 1135, Henry spent 7 years with little contact with Normandy, primarily under his mother’s care while his father Geoffrey was occupied with foreign military campaigns until 1138, when he began to take a more active role in his sons’ upbringing. To ensure Henry received a suitable education befitting his rank, Geoffrey selected Master Peter of Saintes, a poet and scholar “learned above all his contemporaries in the science of verse,” as his first tutor. Henry studied under Peter until the end of 1142.

This section covers Henry’s education in England under his uncle Robert of Gloucester. In late 1142, Henry was sent to England in Robert’s care, entering a new phase of his education. For four years, Robert housed Henry at his Bristol estate, where he was taught by Master Matthew, who was tasked with instructing him in letters and proper manners for his rank. Robert, a skilled soldier, statesman, and scholar, served as an ideal mentor, able to model knightly prowess, wise statecraft, and prudent policy for the young Henry. Later in life, Henry appointed a “Master Matthew” as his chancellor, widely identified as his former tutor. Henry’s time in Bristol exposed him to the city’s violent unrest as a “stepmother of all England,” though Robert worked to maintain order in his territories, and Henry’s domestic situation under Robert and his wife Mabel was likely more stable than life with his hot-tempered mother or self-absorbed father. Henry rejoined his father in Anjou in spring 1147, a year before Empress Matilda returned to the region.

This section covers Henry’s return to Anjou and formal investiture as Duke of Normandy. At 16 years old—an age considered adult in Angevin custom—Geoffrey formally ceded the Duchy of Normandy to Henry in a public declaration signaling that Henry would henceforth defend his claims in his own right, rather than his parents acting on his behalf. Henry immediately began working to advance his political and territorial objectives.

This section covers Henry’s 1149 invasion of England and failed campaign. In mid-May 1149, while King Stephen of England was suppressing a revolt by the earls of Chester and Pembroke, he learned Henry had landed in England. Henry traveled north, recruiting some of his mother’s former supporters, and was knighted by his great-uncle King David of Scotland at Carlisle on Whit Sunday. Stephen responded by knighting his own eldest son Eustace as a rival claimant. Stephen marched his forces to York, but no open conflict occurred. The planned joint campaign between David and Henry collapsed when Ralf of Chester failed to uphold his agreement to join their attack on Lancaster; David grew weary of waiting and returned to Scotland with Henry, who crossed back to the continent in January 1150. Henry recognized the political balance in England was too even for his small force to shift, and believed his interests would be better served by political and ecclesiastical maneuvering rather than military action at that time.

This section covers parallel developments in English church ties to Rome and the spread of legal study that aligned with Henry’s long-term interests. A network of connections linked English politics to the Roman curia, led by figures including Saint Bernard, Henry Murdac, Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, and Thomas of London (later Thomas Becket). Theobald’s policy aimed to strengthen the English Church by deepening its ties to Western Christendom, leveraging the newly formalized canon law code developed by Bolognese lawyer Gratian to address England’s weak secular administration. Strife from Henry of Winchester’s overreach as papal legate had already spurred increased appeals to Rome and the introduction of formal legal procedures to England, with a contemporary writer noting “Then were laws and lawyers first brought into England.” Members of Theobald’s household sought to introduce Roman civil law to England to promote order amid civil chaos. Thomas of London studied at Bologna and Auxerre between 1143 and 1148 to master legal and literary culture, and likely facilitated the 1149 visit of Lombard legal scholar Vacarius to England, who opened lectures on Roman law at Oxford. The lectures drew large crowds of rich and poor students, and Vacarius produced an abridged version of the Justinian Code and Digests to make the material accessible to less wealthy learners. King Stephen, threatened by Henry’s presence in the north and suspicious of ecclesiastical influence that might oppose him, ordered Vacarius’s lectures halted and students to surrender their books, but the move backfired: civil law study spread further, laying the groundwork for the future law school at Oxford University.

Stephen remained in open conflict with northern Archbishop Henry Murdac, imposing a heavy fine on Beverley residents for sheltering the archbishop. After Stephen's departure, Murdac succeeded in enforcing his interdict at York; Eustace intervened to restore religious services, killing the senior archdeacon in the ensuing tumult. Stephen also refused safe-conduct to returning crusader cardinal-legate John Paparo unless he pledged not to harm English interests, deeply angering the legate. Murdac sent bitter complaints to St. Bernard and the Pope, who began planning a clear warning to Stephen that he could not ignore.

The Pope and St. Bernard delivered their warning to Stephen by appointing Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury as resident legate a latere for all Britain. The commission was granted around 1150, before Lent 1151, making Stephen's ongoing conflict with the Church politically untenable.

The papal warning prompted Stephen to immediately shift his policy, with his top priority now securing the crown for his son Eustace. He sent Eustace to mediate between himself and Henry Murdac, leading to a reconciliation that saw Murdac enthroned at York on St. Paul's Day 1151. Murdac then traveled to keep Easter with the Pope, agreeing to intercede with Pope Eugene on Stephen's behalf, including seeking papal approval for formal recognition of Eustace as Stephen's heir.

Theobald launched his legatine tenure with a Mid-Lenten council in London, attended by Stephen, Eustace, and England's leading barons. The council was dominated by a large volume of appeals to Rome, including three submitted by the bishop of Winchester.

The bishop of Winchester (Henry) was still bound by a suspension issued at the Council of Reims, which Pope Eugene refused to lift, and faced a steady stream of complaints sent to Rome. He traveled to the papal court in person, where he secured absolution, but failed to win his requested concessions: renewal of his legation, a primacy over Wessex, or exemption of his see from Canterbury's jurisdiction. He returned to England with a collection of antique statues for his Winchester palace, after stopping to worship at the shrine of St. James at Compostela. At his request, the Pope ordered Archbishop Murdac to absolve Hugh of Puiset, who had been managing the bishop's castles during Henry's absence.

Hugh of Puiset's absolution brought the longstanding schism in the northern English province to a close, fully reuniting the English Church.

With stability improving for his reign, Stephen focused exclusively on securing the throne for Eustace, framing Henry Fitz-Empress as Eustace's rival rather than his own. He matched Henry's public moves with parallel actions for Eustace: after Henry's initial reconnaissance expedition to England, Eustace visited the King of France to gauge support for a campaign to regain Normandy.

The French Crown under Louis VII had a direct strategic stake in the Angevin-Blois rivalry over control of Normandy and England. The king opposed either a single ruler holding England, Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Touraine, or the House of Blois holding Normandy and England, preferring the two rivals split the contested territories. To this end, Louis supported Geoffrey of Anjou's conquest of Normandy while maintaining peaceful ties with Stephen and upholding an earlier promise of marriage between his sister and Stephen's son Eustace.

Shortly before his father Louis VI granted Normandy to Stephen's young son in 1137, the last male Duke of Aquitaine William IX died on pilgrimage, leaving his entire domains to his daughter Eleanor. His dying wish was for Eleanor to marry the young King Louis of France, a union that more than doubled the French Crown's power, granting Louis control of all western Aquitaine (Poitou, Gascony, and the territory between the Loire and Pyrenees, Rhône and ocean), a domain five to six times larger than his existing royal lands. Louis was crowned Duke of Aquitaine at Poitiers immediately after the wedding in a ceremony nearly as solemn as his royal coronation.

Geoffrey of Anjou faced a 1147 revolt led by Gerald, lord of the nearly impregnable Montreuil-Bellay fortress, who had won Louis VII's favor to become seneschal of Poitou. After Gerald's 1150 outrage against the abbot and monks of S. Aubin at Angers, Geoffrey launched a siege of the castle, filling the deep "Valley of Judas" that protected it by transferring the annual Saumur fair to the site for two weeks, allowing his workers and soldiers to level the ground. He then deployed siege engines to destroy the outworks, but Gerald refused to surrender, trusting in his keep's strength and expected royal support.

After returning from crusade in autumn 1149, Louis VII was furious at Geoffrey's treatment of his favorite Gerald, and agreed to join Eustace in an invasion of Normandy, then defended by the young Duke Henry, who was occupied besieging his cousin Richard Fitz-Count at Torigni. Henry met the invading force with an army of Normans, Angevins and Bretons, and his elder barons prevented a battle, rendering the expedition completely unsuccessful.

While the Louis-Eustace expedition failed, Geoffrey's siege of Montreuil-Bellay succeeded when a visiting Marmoutier monk suggested launching a large red-hot iron vessel filled with boiling oil from a mangonel, which set fire to the timber reinforcements in the castle wall. Gerald surrendered with his family and garrison, was imprisoned at Angers, and the castle keep was razed, with only one fragment of wall left standing as a memorial to Geoffrey's victory.

After capturing Montreuil, Geoffrey marched north to support his son Henry against the French invasion. With help from a brother of his ally William Talvas, he seized La Nue castle, belonging to Louis's brother Count Robert of Dreux. Louis and Robert burned the town of Séez in retaliation, then Louis gathered his forces along the Seine between Meulan and Mantes in August. Geoffrey and Henry assembled an opposing army on the Norman border, but Louis fell ill with fever, leading to a truce until his recovery.

Louis VII's attack on Geoffrey was driven by his habit of playing both sides in the Anglo-Angevin rivalry, rather than genuine concern for Gerald. Louis's own chief minister Suger had publicly rebuked the king for his unjust attack on the Angevins, supported Geoffrey throughout the conflict, and attempted to mediate to steer Louis back to his alliance with Anjou and foil Eustace's faction's schemes.

In 1151, a peace conference convened in Paris to settle the ongoing conflict between Normandy and France. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux personally pleaded for a settlement, but Geoffrey Plantagenet abruptly left the assembly without greeting anyone. After solitary reflection, Geoffrey concluded that political necessity required peace to secure his son Henry’s position in Normandy, particularly as Henry might soon be called to England. Geoffrey persuaded Henry to cede the Norman Vexin—the contested territory between the Epte and the Andelle rivers—to King Louis VII in exchange for the formal investiture of the remainder of the duchy. According to some French chroniclers, Henry also became Louis’s liegeman, a form of homage unprecedented among Norman dukes, though homage in some form is confirmed. The same settlement likely secured Henry’s investiture in his father’s own continental dominions before Geoffrey’s death.

Geoffrey Plantagenet died at age thirty-nine on September 7, 1152, at Château-du-Loir, succumbing to a fever after cooling himself in a river following a court session. Unlike his robust predecessors Fulk Nerra and Fulk of Jerusalem, Geoffrey lacked the physical and moral stamina for prolonged governance, and he reportedly grew weary of acting merely as a representative of others rather than for his own aggrandizement. Although he had freed Gerald of Montreuil, he refused to acknowledge past injustice or seek absolution from papal censure, responding to Saint Bernard’s remonstrances with blasphemous words. Bernard prophesied Geoffrey’s death within a year; he died within a fortnight. His final advice to Henry was to preserve the distinct customs of his territories rather than imposing Norman or Angevin practices on others. By his own desire, he was buried not among his Angevin ancestors but in his mother’s homeland at Le Mans, where a splendid effigial tomb was later erected, now lost to antiquarian collections.

King Stephen of England attempted to emulate continental practice by securing the succession for his son Eustace. At a great council in London during Lent 1152, all earls and barons swore fealty to Eustace, but Stephen recognized that oaths alone were insecure. He therefore sought to have Eustace crowned and anointed during his lifetime, following French precedent, and dispatched Archbishop Henry of York to Rome for papal approval. Pope Eugene III forbade the coronation, and the English bishops, led by Archbishop Theobald and supported by Thomas of London, collectively refused to perform the rite. Stephen responded by imprisoning the bishops, but Theobald escaped via the Thames in a fishing boat and fled overseas. Deprived of ecclesiastical cooperation, Stephen’s bid to establish hereditary succession failed completely.

Louis VII, freed from the opposition of his minister Suger who died on January 13, 1152, pursued a divorce from Eleanor of Aquitaine. A church council held at Beaugency declared the marriage invalid on grounds of consanguinity. Eleanor’s journey back to Aquitaine was perilous; she evaded abduction attempts by the young Count Theobald of Blois at Blois and by Geoffrey of Anjou (Henry’s brother) at Port-de-Piles. Once safely in her territories, she immediately dispatched an offer of marriage and her vast lands to Henry, Duke of Normandy. Henry hastened to join her, and they were married at Poitiers at Whitsuntide (May 18, 1152). The union transferred the Duchy of Aquitaine to the Angevin house, making Henry master of a territory stretching from the Flemish border to the Spanish March and from the Rhône to the ocean.

Louis VII’s worst fears were realized when Aquitaine passed to his most powerful vassal, Henry, now married to Eleanor. Louis summoned Henry to his court to answer for marrying Eleanor without royal consent, but Henry refused to acknowledge the French court’s jurisdiction. Meanwhile, Stephen’s son Eustace married Louis’s daughter Constance, cementing a French alliance against Henry. In the summer of 1152, a coalition comprising Louis VII, Eustace, Robert of Dreux, Henry of Champagne, and Henry’s brother Geoffrey formed to strip Henry of his possessions. Geoffrey, who had inherited Chinon, Loudun, and Mirebeau under their father’s will, opened a rebellion in Anjou while the confederates invaded Normandy and besieged Neufmarché. Henry rushed to relieve the fortress but arrived too late; Louis handed it to Eustace. Henry then ravaged the Norman Vexin, invaded the county of Dreux, and blockaded rebel leaders at Montsoreau, forcing Geoffrey’s submission. Louis’s retaliatory raids failed, he fell ill, his army disbanded, and he sought a truce. Henry, now free to sail for England, received an urgent summons to address the crisis there, and the continental conflict paused.

Stephen's military progress against remaining rebel barons was minimal in the four years following the Empress Matilda's departure from England. The only significant military events of the period were a 1149 revolt by Ralf of Chester and Gilbert of Pembroke, and two failed attempts by Stephen to retake Worcester from his former supporter Waleran of Meulan, to whom he had originally entrusted the city. Ralf of Chester's longstanding claim to Lincoln was eventually resolved via compromise. Stephen's primary frustration remained Wallingford Castle, a formidable fortress on the Thames held by the able and loyal Angevin commander Brian Fitz-Count, who used it as a persistent base to defy royal authority. Even after Stephen built the rival fortress of Crowmarsh directly across the Thames from Wallingford, he made no progress in capturing the stronghold. In winter 1152, Stephen constructed a strong wooden tower at the foot of the Thames bridge leading to Wallingford, successfully cutting off the castle's supply lines and trapping its garrison.

With their supply lines completely severed and no English allies strong enough to mount a relief force, Brian Fitz-Count and the Wallingford garrison sent envoys to their lord, the young Duke Henry of Normandy, begging for either permission to surrender with honor or military aid to break the siege.

Henry of Anjou responded to the Wallingford garrison's plea not with promised reinforcements, but by leading a personal invasion of England. He landed on the morning of Epiphany 1153, with contemporary chronicles recording his force as either 36 ships, or 140 horse and 3000 foot, likely on the Hampshire or Dorset coast. Within a week of landing, he had captured the town of Malmesbury and the outer works of its castle, placing the heavily fortified keep held by Bishop Roger under blockade. When Stephen advanced to relieve the siege, the two armies faced each other across the swollen, rain-flooded River Avon on a bitter January morning. Severe winter weather—rain, sleet, hail, and a violent west wind—drenched and disabled Stephen's troops, who were exposed to the elements while Henry's forces were shielded. Feeling as though divine forces were arrayed against him, Stephen abandoned the relief effort and retreated to London, and Malmesbury surrendered immediately after his departure. Henry then marched straight to Wallingford, demolished Stephen's supply-blocking wooden tower in a single assault, restocked the castle with provisions, and laid siege to Stephen's fortress of Crowmarsh.

When Stephen advanced to relieve the siege of Crowmarsh, the two armies once again formed battle lines facing each other, but no engagement took place. The English barons, who sought to keep both Stephen and Henry in check to prevent either from achieving total victory and threatening their own power, used a perceived bad omen—Stephen's horse reared and nearly threw him three times while he marshaled his troops—to demand a parley. Stephen and Henry agreed to hold a personal colloquy across a narrow stretch of the Thames, and arranged a temporary truce on the condition that Stephen raze Crowmarsh within five days. As the barons had anticipated, no resolution was reached on the core succession dispute, and the two sides separated after trading accusations of betrayal by their respective followers.

The initial parley between Stephen and Henry produced only a short-term truce focused on the demolition of Crowmarsh, with no progress made on the central dispute over the English succession. Both rulers were fully aware that their advisers had self-interested motives to block a permanent settlement, and they parted after mutual recriminations over the disloyalty of their followers, leaving the core conflict unresolved.

Sincere peace efforts were led by Archbishop Theobald, who maintained constant communication with both Stephen and Henry of Anjou via trusted envoys to build a foundation for formal negotiations. He was joined by Henry of Winchester, who had come to recognize his own role in fostering the ongoing civil war and was eager to help end the conflict. The two prelates quickly identified Stephen's eldest son Eustace as the primary barrier to a settlement: Stephen's insistence on Eustace's succession was unacceptable to Henry, and Eustace's widely reviled character made the possibility of his rule unthinkable to most of the realm's elite, making any self-renunciation of his claim hopeless.

Eustace was a violent, degenerate figure, criticized even by his own supporters for his vicious character, though he was acknowledged as a capable soldier. After the failure of the Crowmarsh campaign, he flew into a rage, loaded his father with reproaches, and deserted Stephen's army entirely, riding to Canterbury and vowing to ravage the country, sparing neither church property nor holy sites. He began his campaign by targeting St Edmund's Abbey in East Anglia, where he was hospitably received but refused funds; he then ordered the destruction of the abbey's crops. As he sat at table in the abbey, the first morsel of food he ate choked him, and he died in a fit of madness. His death eliminated the main obstacle to a peace settlement: Stephen's remaining sons were all young boys, and it was hopeless to position any of them as a rival to Henry, who was already securing the submission of most of England's barons and fortresses.

Eustace's death was part of a striking wave of high-profile deaths across Britain and Europe between 1151 and 1153 that reshaped the political landscape of the civil war. The series opened with the death of Geoffrey of Anjou, Henry's father, in September 1151, followed by the deaths of Suger and Theobald of Blois in January 1152. The death of Stephen's queen Matilda of Boulogne on May 3, 1152 was a particularly heavy blow to Stephen, as she was widely considered his wisest and most loyal supporter; she was followed a month later by the death of her cousin Henry of Scotland. 1153 saw a longer list of deaths: Eustace, Earl Ralf of Chester, Walter Lespec, King David of Scotland, and Bishop William of Durham (who had died in November 1152). The appointment of Hugh of Puiset to the vacant Durham see was strongly opposed by Archbishop Henry Murdac, nearly causing a provincial schism; the southern Archbishop Theobald resolved the dispute by sending Hugh to Rome for papal consecration to avoid further conflict. The wave of deaths extended to the highest levels of the church: Pope Eugene III died on July 9, 1153, followed six weeks later by St Bernard of Clairvaux, and two months after that by Archbishop Henry Murdac, leaving Stephen, Henry of Winchester, and the Archbishop of Canterbury as the last survivors of their generation, facing the rising power of the younger Henry of Anjou.

A formal peace treaty was signed at Wallingford on November 6, 1153, between Stephen and Henry of Anjou. Its core binding terms were that the two men would adopt each other as father and son: Stephen would retain the royal title and dignity for the rest of his life, with Henry serving as justiciar and the de facto practical ruler of the kingdom under him, and Henry would succeed Stephen as king upon his death. Contemporary poetic accounts of the settlement outline an ideal program of national restoration that reflected the peace-makers' goals: all royal rights usurped by nobles during the anarchy would be reclaimed; 1115 unlicensed "adulterine castles" built without royal permission during the conflict would be destroyed; all property seized during the war would be returned to its lawful owners from the reign of King Henry I; farms would be resettled with husbandmen, burnt homes rebuilt and reoccupied, forests restocked with game, hillsides covered with sheep, and meadows filled with cattle. The clergy would be relieved of all extraordinary and exorbitant financial demands, sheriffs would be appointed regularly and held strictly to their duties, thieves and robbers would face execution, soldiers would demobilize and return to civilian work, Flemish mercenaries would be expelled from the country, trade would be revived, and a single standardized currency would be used across the entire realm.

The Wallingford Treaty was formally ratified in late November 1153 at an assembly of bishops, earls, and barons held in Winchester. Stephen later accompanied Henry to London, where the young duke was joyfully welcomed by the city's citizens. The pair spent Christmas apart, as Henry focused earnestly on his reform program. At an assembly held in Oxford on the octave of Epiphany, the English nobility swore homage and fealty to Henry as their lord, reserving only the loyalty owed to Stephen for the duration of his lifetime. A subsequent assembly at Dunstable was less satisfactory: Henry learned that Stephen had been persuaded by builders of unlicensed castles to exempt their fortresses from the universal demolition order, a clear breach of the treaty terms. Henry earnestly protested the violation but chose not to enforce his wishes, as doing so would risk a quarrel he was too prudent to provoke. In Lent, Henry accompanied Stephen to Canterbury, then to Dover for a meeting with the Count and Countess of Flanders. There, they discovered that a group of Flemish mercenaries—who hated both Henry and his peace settlement—were plotting to assassinate him on his return to Canterbury. The plot was linked to Stephen's eldest surviving son William, and the combination of this discovery and the shock of William's involvement overwhelmed Stephen's already strained nerves. He urgently arranged for Henry to leave England at once; Henry passed through Canterbury before the conspirators could act, traveled via Rochester and London, and sailed safely to Normandy, landing shortly after Easter.

After the 1153 Treaty of Wallingford, Henry Fitz-Empress's 15-month stay in England and the 5 months following the treaty established unprecedented peace and order, the most stable the realm had seen since the death of Henry I 18 years prior. This stability held even when Henry returned to Normandy, leaving Stephen in charge. For the first time in his 18-year reign, Stephen was truly respected and obeyed as king in his final 12 months, governing justly as regent for the widely beloved Henry. In his last months, the ailing Stephen mustered his remaining strength to lead a campaign against rebellious northern castles, capturing the key stronghold of Drax in Yorkshire, before traveling to Dover to meet the Count of Flanders. His health failed there, and he died eight days before the Feast of All Saints in 1154, ending his 19-year reign marked by conflict, disappointment, and failed efforts to secure his dynasty's hold on the throne. He was interred at Feversham Abbey beside his wife and son.

Following Stephen's burial, the realm's primates and nobles sent news of his death to Henry, the designated king-elect, urging him to claim his crown without delay. The message reached Henry just as he concluded suppressing a disturbance in Normandy. Prior to this, French King Louis VII's minor attacks on Normandy during Henry's 1153 absence had limited direct impact but fostered lawless independence among Norman barons. Henry returned to Normandy at Easter 1154, gradually and cautiously reclaiming the demesne lands his father had alienated to secure noble support, reasserting ducal authority. After a brief trip to Aquitaine, he negotiated peace with Louis in August, as the French king accepted the futility of his opposition. Henry then suffered a severe illness, but recovered enough by October to join Louis in a campaign to settle disturbances in the Vexin, before besieging his rebellious cousin and vassal Richard Fitz-Count at Torigni, which had just surrendered when he learned of Stephen's death.

Henry's governance of Normandy in the period before learning of Stephen's death had already stabilized the duchy after years of unrest. He systematically reclaimed alienated ducal demesne lands to strengthen central control, secured peace with France, and suppressed baron rebellions, reestablishing order and ending the lawless independence that had taken hold among the Norman nobility during his absence in 1153.

Upon receiving news of Stephen's death, Henry consulted his mother, then summoned his brothers and Norman barons to meet him at Barfleur to plan his crossing to England. However, unfavorable winds delayed their departure for a full month. During this delay, England remained completely stable: unlike the chaos that followed Henry I's death, no disturbances broke out in the six weeks without a reigning king, as Archbishop Theobald guarded the Crown's rights for Henry, and the population's widespread awe of the king-elect prevented any unrest.

On December 8, 1154, Henry landed in Hampshire, received rapturous welcomes in Winchester and London, and was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey on the Sunday before Christmas. Contemporary chronicles confirm this coronation date, though minor discrepancies in the exact day appear in some historical sources.

The Christmas 1154 coronation of Henry Fitz-Empress is presented as an epoch-making event in English history, rivaling that of William the Conqueror. Unlike many historical events whose significance was only later recognized, contemporaries themselves understood its importance. For the first time since the Norman Conquest, a king succeeded to the throne without a competitor and with the unanimous goodwill of all ranks and races—Normans and English, cleric and lay—who welcomed the young Angevin as the herald of a new dawn after nineteen winters of anarchy.

Henry inherited a kingdom whose legal, constitutional, and administrative machinery was at a deadlock, with national resources—both material and moral—exhausted. The task facing him was nothing less than the resuscitation of the body politic: subduing the remaining forces of disorder, recovering the old foundations of social and political organization from ruin, and building upon them a secure fabric of administration and law, bringing order out of chaos and life out of decay. This was the staggering burden placed upon a youth who had not yet completed his twenty-second year.

Henry's training for kingship was desultory rather than systematic: his first nine years were divided between his mother and father in Anjou; four years were then spent with his uncle Earl Robert at Bristol; two more years in Anjou followed by a year with King David of Scotland; three years securing his continental heritage and that of his bride; a year securing England; and another defending himself in Normandy. Such a scattered upbringing furnished no matured theory of government, yet its very desultoriness proved an element of strength, for Henry came to his task with no preconceived political theories, no party-pledges, no local ties—only an unwarped, unruffled young intellect fresh with the untried vigor of youth.

Henry of Anjou possessed a soldier's commanding presence—a moderate but striking stature, a thick-set frame built for strength and endurance, broad chest, muscular arms, and highly-arched feet. His round, well-shaped head bore close-cropped tawny hair inherited from Fulk the Red, while his freckled, lion-like face blazed with animation, energy, and vigor; his grey eyes, clear and soft in calm moods, became bloodshot and fiery when roused. He dressed plainly in Angevin fashion—earning the nickname "Henry Curtmantel" from English knights accustomed to long cloaks—wore rough, coarse hands never gloved except for hawking, and was notably temperate in food and drink, with no pleasure in pomp or luxury, but a consuming passion for the chase that scandalized observers.

Henry's constant, unpredictable movement from place to place—retained to the end of his life—made attendance upon him a torment his clerks likened to the infernal regions. He shunned regular hours, abruptly changed plans, and refused to honor even publicly proclaimed itineraries, dragging his courtiers through forests, darkness, and miserable hovels in a scramble his secretary Peter of Blois compared to wandering labyrinths and hellish turmoil. Yet this erratic Pandemonium contrasted sharply with the orderly, well-disciplined court of Henry I, with its fixed monthly itineraries, written allowances, and routine of council and youthful companionship.

Beneath the rough, impetuous exterior lay an indefatigable worker and born ruler whose apparent caprice always concealed a practical motive—forestalling a foe, surprising negligent officials, or simply outpacing all rivals. Henry's hands were never idle: when not bearing bow and arrows, they almost invariably held a book, making him the most learned crowned head in Christendom. Versed in all knightly exercises, conversant in Latin and French, he delighted in literary disputation with clerks, possessed an unfailing memory for faces and facts, and though difficult to track, was never truly inaccessible—receiving importunate subjects with patience, meeting a jest with laughter, and ruling with the restless, untiring mind of an Angevin of the Angevins.

The King's Personal Vices and Household Conduct Henry II's worst private vices reached their full development only in later years, but even early in his reign he was considerably less careful than his grandfather Henry I had been of the outward decorum of his household. His queen was not a woman who could control his conduct by her influence or improve it by her example in the manner of the "good Queen Maude." The king's wrath was described as more terrifying than that of kings generally, reflecting the intensity of his passions.

The King's Temperament and Comparison to Fulk Nerra of Anjou Henry's passions were both strong and lasting: he rarely granted his favour to a man he had once taken a dislike to, but when his friendship and confidence were given, he withdrew them with great difficulty. He inspired in all who knew him feelings as intense and abiding as his own. His temper, mysterious to those without the key to it, was that of Fulk Nerra, the Black Count of Anjou. He shared Fulk's strange power of fascination, his unaccountable variations of mood, his cool clear head, his wild swings between mockery and blasphemy and agony of remorse, and his tireless interest in building. Beneath his many seemingly contradictory pursuits lay a single great edifice of statecraft, his Angevin gift for instinctively adapting means to ends enabling him to detect opportunities invisible to lesser observers. This moral constitution had made the greatness of the house of Anjou under Fulk III and Fulk V, and was now to be displayed on a grander stage.

Appointment of English Royal Ministers The young king recognized at once that for his work of reconstruction and reform in England the Norman counsellors around him were of no avail. He determined to rely solely on English help, drawing his chief ministers partly from those who had served under Stephen and partly from his own English supporters. Richard de Lucy, who had held the post of justiciar at the close of Stephen's reign, was the leading figure of the first class.

Service of Justiciars Richard de Lucy and Robert of Leicester Richard de Lucy retained the justiciarship under Henry for twenty-five years and earned from his grateful sovereign the epithet "Richard de Lucy the Loyal." For thirteen years he shared the office of chief justiciar with Earl Robert of Leicester, a former faithful supporter of Stephen who had transferred his allegiance to Henry and remained one of his most trusted servants and friends. As head of the great house of Leicester, Robert was the most influential baron of the midland shires, and as son of Count Robert of Meulan, friend of Henry I, he was a living link with the earlier era, a natural representative of its traditions of honour and peace.

Restoration of Bishop Nigel of Ely as Treasurer Among the great ministers who had actually served under the first King Henry, only one survived: the old treasurer Nigel, bishop of Ely. The identity of his successor after his fall in 1139 is unknown, and the treasurer in Stephen's latter years likely held little more than an empty title. When Nigel reappears in office immediately after Henry II's accession, he serves not as treasurer but as chancellor. This was a provisional arrangement; within a few weeks the bishop of Ely was reinstated in his most appropriate place at the right side of the chequered table, gathering up the broken threads of the financial system he had learned under his uncle of Salisbury, leaving the more miscellaneous work of the chancellor to younger hands.

Theobald of Canterbury's Advisory Role Under the old English constitutional system, the archbishop of Canterbury was the official keeper of the royal conscience and the first adviser of the sovereign. Theobald had contributed more than any other man to secure Henry's succession and saw in it the crowning of his own life's work for England, while Henry saw in Theobald his most weighty and valuable supporter. It was natural that the primate should resume the position he had inherited from Anselm and Lanfranc and their English predecessors. Theobald, however, was now in advanced age and feeble health, and felt unequal to the task of regulating the young king's strong passions, directing his youthful impulses, and following his restless movements. He feared the evil influences of courtiers, the Angevins' known hostility to the rights of religion, and the danger to his own soul if Henry should wander from the right path for lack of competent guidance. There was one man, however, who, if placed at the king's side, might be trusted with the arduous and delicate task.

Appointment of Thomas Becket as Chancellor Placing Thomas Becket at the young king's side was no difficult matter, since his past services to Henry's cause were too great to be left unrewarded. The recommendations of the bishops of Winchester, Bayeux, and Lisieux, and even those of the primate himself, could carry no more weight than the known qualifications of the candidate himself in obtaining the office of chancellor for Becket.

Prestige and Powers of the Chancellorship The chancellor's duties, as originally organized by Roger of Salisbury, included keeping the royal seal, drawing up royal writs and charters, conducting royal correspondence, preserving legal records, holding custody of vacant fiefs and benefices, and supervising the king's chaplains and clerks, in short the whole clerical and secretarial work of the royal household and government. Officially the chancellor was ranked below the chief ministers of state such as the justiciar or even the treasurer, but personally he was brought more than either into close and constant relations with the sovereign. The actual importance and dignity of the office depended on the individual chancellor's capacity for magnifying it.

Thomas Becket's Rapid Court Influence Thomas Becket magnified the chancellorship as no man had ever done before or since. Within a very few months he became what the justiciar had formerly been, the second man in the kingdom and in all the lands on both sides of the sea that owned Henry Fitz-Empress for sovereign. Theobald's scheme far more than succeeded: his favourite became not so much the king's chief minister as his friend, his director, his master. The two young men, drawn together by a strong personal attraction, seemed to share one heart and one soul; the disparity of fifteen years in their ages was lost in the perfect community of their feelings, interests, and pursuits. Though now in deacon's orders, having been ordained by Archbishop Theobald on his appointment to the archdeaconry of Canterbury—the highest ecclesiastical dignity in England after those of bishops and abbots—Thomas felt no vocation for sacred ministry and gladly flung his energies into the more congenial sphere of court life. Whether in business or pleasure, he was thoroughly at home, willingly taking on the burden of state ceremonial and business alike and bearing it with an easy grace that men never wearied of admiring. One day he would ride in coat of mail at the head of the royal troops, the next dispense justice in the king's name; his will was law throughout the land, for all men knew that his will and Henry's were one.

Becket's Physical Appearance and Demeanor In outward aspect Thomas was far more regal than the king himself. He was very tall and elegantly formed, with an oval face, handsome aquiline features, a lofty brow, and large, lustrous, penetrating eyes. There was an habitual look of placid dignity in his countenance, a natural grace in his every gesture, and an ingrained refinement in his every word and action. His slender, tapering, white fingers and dainty attire as the burgher's son contrasted curiously with the rough brown hands and careless appearance of Henry Fitz-Empress.

Becket's Lavish Royal Hospitality The riches passing through Thomas's hands were enormous; revenues and honours were heaped on him by the king, and costly gifts poured in from clergy and laity of every rank. But what he received with one hand he gave away with the other. His door was always open and his table always spread for all men who stood in need of hospitality. Besides fifty-two clerks regularly attached to his household, he entertained almost every day a company of invited guests, the hall freshly strewn with green leaves or rushes in summer and clean hay or straw in winter, with the overflow sitting and dining on the floor. The tables shone with gold and silver vessels and were laden with costly viands, though Thomas himself enjoyed the splendour less than his guests. These always included a crowd of poor folk, as sumptuously and carefully served as the rich, for the meanest in his house never had to endure the kind of dinner—half-baked bread, sour wine, stale fish, and bad meat—that the noblest were often obliged to suffer in the king's own court. Thomas was the most perfect of hosts: he attended to the smallest details, noted the position of each guest, missed and inquired after the absent, instantly righted any mistake in precedence, and seemed to pierce through curtains and walls with his wonderful eyes to find any guest who modestly tried to take a lower place. Barons and knights sent their sons to be educated under his roof, and his personal followers were far more numerous than those of the king.

Close Friendship Between King Henry and Thomas Becket Henry might have been jealous of his minister, but no thought of jealousy entered his mind. He was constantly in and out of the chancellor's house. He would come uninvited to dinner, riding up suddenly—often bow in hand, on his way to or from the chase—when Thomas was already seated. The two young men, with their strong personal attraction and shared heart and soul, treated each other with the easy intimacy of equals whose bond went beyond official roles.

Playful Interactions of the King and Chancellor Half in fun, half to verify the wonderful stories he heard, the king would sometimes take a stirrup-cup, nod to his friend, and ride away; at other times he would leap over the table, sit down, and eat. When their work was over, king and chancellor played together like a couple of schoolboys, whether in their private apartments, in the public streets, in the palace, or in church. A favourite tale among their associates recounted how, riding together through the streets of London one winter's day, the king, seeing a ragged shivering beggar, snatched at the chancellor's handsome new mantle of scarlet cloth lined with vair, crying that Thomas should have the merit of clothing the naked this time. After a struggle in which both nearly fell from their horses, the poor man was sent away rejoicing in his new garment, while bystanders crowded around Thomas with shouts of applause and laughter, playfully offering him their cloaks and capes in compensation for his loss.

Becket's tenure of the chancellorship was marked by the free flow of enormous wealth through his hands, but the standards of the twelfth century treated such open gifts as ordinary rather than scandalous. Becket commanded a significant portion of the royal revenues and spent lavishly in the king's service and for his glorification; he and Henry effectively shared one purse and one purpose. Amid this magnificence there is no evidence of corruption, and Becket carried no sense of upstart pretension, retaining his filial devotion to Archbishop Theobald, his loyalty to the friends and teachers of his youth at Merton, and his bonds with the burgher class from which he sprang. His almsgiving combined aristocratic refinement with the genuine tenderness inherited from his mother Rohese.

Contemporaries regarded Becket with the same astonishment they reserved for the king himself; clerics were scandalised by his unclerical life, while the simple half suspected sorcery. The "witchery" was in fact the natural magic of a winning personality, vivid imagination, dauntless spirit, and guileless heart—frivolity on the surface, purity within. He shared all of Henry's pursuits except the evil ones, punished coarseness and dishonesty summarily, and abhorred lying. Contemporary eulogists later credited him with much of the credit for Henry's early reforms, calling him champion of liberty, restorer of peace, and mediator between king and people. Yet the policy itself bears the stamp of Henry's mind alone; Becket's true merit lay in being the king's most thorough fellow-worker and second self, and the very qualities that drew them together were fated to make them bitter antagonists.

Henry's first manifesto was published before Becket entered his service. Immediately after his coronation he issued a charter restoring and confirming the liberties and customs of his grandfather's reign, with the marked omission of all reference to Stephen signalling a genuine return to earlier order. At the Christmas court at Bermondsey, with the counsel of the assembled barons, he began to enforce the provisions of the treaty of Wallingford that Stephen had proved unable to execute.

Peremptory orders were issued for the expulsion of the Flemish mercenaries and the demolition of the unlicensed castles raised during the anarchy. The Flemings vanished as suddenly as they had appeared, while the razing of the castles proceeded without delay or disturbance. With these preliminary obstacles cleared, Henry moved to re-assert the rights of the Crown by abolishing the fiscal earldoms and reclaiming demesne lands and fortresses that had passed into private hands.

Having proclaimed that all alienations of royal property made during Stephen's reign were void, Henry marched northward at the end of January to confront William of Aumale, lord of Holderness and earl of York, who held Scarborough against him. William made complete surrender. The other great northern baron, William Peverel of the Peak, fled the country rather than trust even his monastic tonsure to save him. Lesser men quickly followed, sullenly making restitution of crown lands.

After a London council in March confirmed the peace and renewed the ancient customs, the two mightiest barons of the west revolted. Roger of Hereford was brought to reason within a week by Bishop Gilbert of Hereford, but Hugh of Mortemer fortified his castles of Cleobury, Wigmore, and Bridgenorth for defiance. Henry divided his host into three divisions, and after the Easter council at Wallingford had settled the succession on the young William, the three castles fell in turn; Hugh surrendered before Bridgenorth on 7 July.

Two great barons still held out in East Anglia: Hugh Bigod, confirmed earl of Norfolk and long sheltered by a day of grace, and William of Blois, Stephen's son and earl of Warren and Surrey, who held Pevensey and Norwich. Summoning the Whitsuntide council of 1157 to meet unconventionally at Bury St Edmund's, Henry brought both earls to peaceful submission; William exchanged his royal castles for his father's private estates, and Hugh was restored to favour.

By the autumn of 1155 peace and order were sufficiently restored for Henry to consider leaving the realm. At Michaelmas he laid before his barons a scheme for conquering Ireland as a provision for his brother William, supported by a papal bull treating the island as the Pope's to bestow. The Empress, however, disapproved of the project, and when Henry crossed the Channel in January 1156 it was not to win a kingdom in Ireland but to suppress a rebellion in Anjou raised by his brother Geoffrey.

During Henry's absence abroad (1155–1156), England was essentially "a year without a history," with the chroniclers recording only the death of his eldest son shortly before Christmas. The Pipe Roll of Michaelmas 1156 reveals the state of royal government: three northern shires (Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland) submitted no accounts owing to Scottish occupation, while nearly every shire bore marks of "waste" and charges for repairing royal manors. Total revenue amounted to barely a third of what had been collected in 1130, augmented by various "aids," "gifts," and a new impost upon ecclesiastical estates termed scutage.

Scutage derived its name from the "service of the shield" (scutum), the feudal obligation whereby a holder of a knight's fee—typically five hides or land worth £20 annually—was bound to furnish a fully armed horseman for forty days. The use of this term indicated that the establishment of feudal military tenure throughout England was now virtually complete. The 1156 scutage was levied specifically to fund Henry's war against his rebel brother in Anjou. Drawing on Ralf Flambard's earlier precedent of substituting money payments for personal service, Henry began cautiously with ecclesiastical estates, since bishops and abbots now held their temporalities on the same feudal basis as lay barons and could be reasonably required to commute their claim of immunity by a money contribution.

The innovation of scutage passed without immediate resentment, as its ultimate significance was unforeseen and the sum demanded was modest. Far more impressive was Henry's fulfilment of his coronation pledges. The work of reconstruction followed hard upon necessary destruction: judicial machinery was restored, thirteen shires were visited by itinerant justices between Michaelmas 1155 and 1156, and Henry himself personally heard suits even amid military crises. The constable Henry of Essex and the chancellor were prominent among the justices, and the king's personal patience in adjudicating a six-year-old dispute between Bishop Hilary of Chichester and Abbot Walter de Lucy testified to his diligence. With order came prosperity—wolves had vanished, weapons were beaten into ploughshares, and merchants and Jews alike traveled in safety.

Henry returned to England soon after Easter 1157 and, having secured East-Anglian obedience, turned to asserting his overlordship over Wales and Scotland. The Welsh princes were acknowledged English vassals requiring homage to the new king, while the Scottish king owed homage for his English fiefs—Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, which David had conquered on Matilda's behalf and Stephen had granted to David's son Henry, now held by the young Malcolm IV. Although Henry had reportedly sworn as a boy to let the Scots keep these shires, he declared that such a promise could not override his duty as king and summoned Malcolm to surrender the disputed territory.

Without awaiting Malcolm's reply, Henry prepared for his first Welsh campaign, exploiting the appeal of Cadwallader, banished by his brother Owen, prince of North Wales. A council at Northampton in July 1157 ordered the expedition, employing a new military device: instead of summoning all knights for the standard forty days, Henry required every two knights to equip a third for extended service, thus ensuring both adequate manpower and a force that would not break up prematurely. The twofold invasion by land and sea reached the Welsh forces entrenched at Basingwerk. Near Consilt, the English were ambushed in wooded, marshy ground and routed by the nimble Welsh, with Henry of Essex dropping the royal standard and fleeing. Henry of Anjou rallied his men and cut through to Rhuddlan, fortifying the castle, while the fleet under Madoc Ap Meredith landed troops at Anglesey whose sacrilege caused their panicked return. Owen submitted, restored Cadwallader, performed homage, and gave hostages, effectively acknowledging Henry's lordship over all Wales.

On Henry's triumphant return from Wales, the Scottish king Malcolm came to meet him at Chester. Recognizing that power lay decisively with Henry, Malcolm surrendered the three disputed shires along with the fortresses of Newcastle, Bamborough, and Carlisle, and acknowledged himself Henry's vassal "in the same manner as his grandfather had been the man of King Henry the Elder." While the precise import of this formula remained deliberately vague—mutually advantageous for both crowns—it sufficed for Henry's purposes that homage was performed and the long-disputed question of the northern shires was settled in England's favor.

Malcolm's homage and the re-grant of Huntingdon are debated across multiple chronicles. The Chronicle of Melrose, William of Newburgh, and Robert of Torigni disagree about the timing and terms: Newburgh and Torigni suggest Huntingdon was granted afresh to Malcolm in 1157, but the treatise *De Judithâ uxore Waldevi comitis* places the grant in 1159, and the Melrose terms of homage exclude Huntingdon, which had been granted to Henry of Scotland by Stephen rather than Henry I. Robert of Torigni's phrase recording that Malcolm surrendered Edinburgh "et comitatum Lodonensem" likely captures the truth: Malcolm surrendered Lothian to receive its investiture again as a fief of the English Crown. Huntingdon appears in the Pipe Rolls of 1156, 1157, and 1158, but without mention of its third penny.

The year's closing feast was held with a brilliant court gathering at Lincoln. Henry, more cautious than his predecessor, did not defy local tradition by wearing his regal insignia within the city itself; instead, on Christmas Day he wore his crown in the lesser church of S. Mary in the suburb of Wigford beyond the river, not in the great minster on the hilltop. Roger of Howden supplies the suburb's name as "Wikeford," while Newburgh gives an incorrect date that the Pipe Roll of the fourth year of Henry II corrects.

At the following Easter, the king and queen performed the ancient solemnity of the "crown-wearing" together, and for the last time, in Worcester cathedral. When the moment came for their oblations, they laid their crowns upon the altar and vowed never to wear them again.

The motive for the renunciation was likely nothing more than Henry's impatience of court pageantry. The practice thus solemnly forsaken was not revived, save once under very exceptional circumstances in the middle of the next reign, until the connexion between England and Anjou was on the eve of dissolution. The abandonment of this custom of Old-English royalty marks one of the lesser epochs in Henry's career.

Henry was about to plunge into a sea of continental politics and wars that kept him altogether away from his island-realm for six years, and from which he never again thoroughly emerged. This last crown-wearing at Worcester serves as a fitting point at which to leave England for a while and glance once more at the history of the lands united with her beneath the sceptre of the Angevin king.

Henry II's accession transformed the English crown from a relatively insular kingdom into the centre of the most extensive empire in Christendom. While only Cnut's northern realm could rival it in extent, Henry's territories differed fundamentally in character: they lay in the heart of western Europe, covering vast regions of Gaul, surrounding the French royal domains on two sides, touching Spain, and bordering the old Burgundian marches between Germany and Italy. Unlike Cnut's homogeneous northern empire, Henry's continental possessions brought him into direct and unavoidable personal contact with the king of France, who was both his neighbour and his overlord.

Henry held not a single province but at least five separate fiefs from the French crown, each by different titles and upon different tenures, and their mutual relations were further entangled by overlapping feudal ties. Normandy, inherited from his mother, was the least puzzling; Anjou and Maine likewise raised little practical dispute. Touraine, however, still owed homage to the count of Blois, who retained outlying lands that could revive old feuds. Above all, Henry's marriage with Eleanor added the duchy of Aquitaine—comprising Poitou, Bordeaux, a swarm of lesser counties and baronies between Loire and Pyrenees, and shadowy claims over the old Aquitanian kingdom—complicated further by Eleanor's two marriages, which meant her second husband owed homage for these very territories to her first.

The Empress Matilda, Henry's mother, was his chief assistant in managing continental affairs, offering mature wisdom that outweighed the dangerously quick wit of his young wife Eleanor. Though she had once been harsh and impracticable, in later years her moral and intellectual grandeur had mastered her faults, and she retained the devotion of men like Miles of Hereford and Brian Fitz-Count. Living quietly in a palace near Notre-Dame-des-Prés outside Rouen, she exercised profound influence over her son's mind and policy, was consulted on every serious undertaking, and was entrusted informally with the tranquillity of the Norman duchy during Henry's absences in England.

In early 1156, with English affairs sufficiently composed, Henry crossed to Normandy to make sure of his position with the French king. Louis came to meet him on the border, and at a subsequent meeting received a renewed homage for all Henry's French fiefs, including the duchy of Aquitaine. Between the two meetings, Henry also received the count and countess of Flanders at Rouen.

To every French fief except Aquitaine and Normandy there was a rival claimant in Henry's brother Geoffrey, whose claims rested on a deathbed will of their father Geoffrey Plantagenet extorted from Henry at Château-du-Loir. Once he became king of England, Henry sought and obtained papal absolution from the oath and refused to surrender Anjou, Touraine and Maine, contenting Geoffrey for the moment with three castles. When Geoffrey used Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau to stir up revolt, Henry crossed to suppress it with mercenaries paid from an English scutage. Loudun and Mirebeau were taken in succession, and in July the fall of Chinon brought Geoffrey to complete surrender in exchange for a money compensation, though Loudun was later restored to him.

In August 1156, Queen Eleanor crossed the Channel to share her husband's triumph and accompanied him on a progress through Aquitaine, where he received homage from the duchy's vassals, took hostages for their fidelity, and kept Christmas at Bordeaux. Every part of his continental dominions was thus thoroughly secured.

With his continental dominions secured, Henry returned to England in the spring of 1157. Eleanor had preceded him, returning independently before Easter, and her travelling expenses from Normandy were recorded in the Hampshire accounts of the Pipe Roll.

Henry and Eleanor now had two surviving children: an eldest son, also named Henry, born in London on 28 February 1155 and already recognized as heir; and a daughter, born in 1156 and named Matilda after her grandmother the Empress. A third child, Richard, was born at Oxford on 8 September 1157. Eleanor's two daughters by Louis VII, Mary and Adela, were betrothed to the brother-counts of Champagne and Blois, while Louis's second marriage to Constance of Castille had produced the infant princess Margaret.

Early in 1158 Henry resolved to secure the hand of the infant Margaret, daughter of Louis VII and Constance of Castille, for his eldest son. To negotiate this match he sent his chancellor, Thomas Becket, across the Channel to make the proposal to the French king.

Becket's embassy to the French court was an unparalleled display of insular wealth and splendour, dwarfing anything seen in western Europe since the envoys of Haroun-al-Raschid to Charlemagne. Travelling in a procession of enormous chariots, packhorses, hounds, hawks, monkeys and some two hundred household members and another two hundred and fifty singing foot-pages, Becket presented himself before astonished France in twenty-four changes of raiment, eight mighty chariots each drawn by five horses, twelve sumpter-horses laden with gold and silver plate and treasure, and casks of ale that the French marvelled at as superior to wine. Declining Louis's customary hospitality, Becket's disguised caterers secretly provisioned his lodging at the Temple with three days' food for a thousand men, including a dish of eels costing a hundred shillings. He lavished gifts on every rank of the French court, received the masters and scholars of the university graciously, and on his way home captured and imprisoned the lawless Guy of Laval at Neufmarché.

The embassy was crowned with success: Louis promised the hand of his daughter Margaret to the heir of England, and Becket returned in triumph. Henry himself soon afterwards crossed to Gaul partly to confirm this family alliance, and partly for another urgent reason requiring his presence on the continent.

A fresh opening presented itself to Angevin ambitions in Britanny, a region associated with their earliest traditions since the time of Geoffrey Martel. The long rivalry between the counts of Nantes and Rennes had ended in a marriage, uniting all Britanny for eighty-two years beneath one ducal house. In 1148, however, Duke Conan III on his deathbed disavowed his son Hoel, splitting the duchy into factions. Count Eudo of Porhoët, married to Conan's daughter Bertha, was accepted by the greater part of Britanny, while the people of Nantes, fired by their traditional independence, opened their gates to Hoel. After eight years of struggle, the Nantes citizens, refusing to submit again to Rennes's supremacy, drove out Hoel and offered themselves to young Geoffrey Plantagenet in 1156. Geoffrey, recently defeated by his brother Henry in Anjou, eagerly accepted. Eudo was simultaneously challenged by Earl Conan of Richmond, Bertha's son by her first marriage, and during their struggle Geoffrey remained undisputed master of Nantes for nearly two years.

On July 26, 1158, Geoffrey Plantagenet died childless. The County of Nantes was at once seized by Conan of Richmond, but Henry II of England claimed it as heir to his brother. Henry landed in Normandy on the eve of the Assumption to enforce his claim through force if necessary.

Before resorting to arms, Henry deemed it prudent to secure the assent of King Louis VII of France as lord paramount of Britanny. The negotiations were again entrusted to the chancellor Thomas Becket with marked success. At a conference on the last day of August, Louis did far more than sanction Henry's claim upon Nantes; he granted Henry a formal commission to arbitrate between the Breton ducal competitors in his capacity as grand seneschal of France. Although this office was largely honorary, held throughout most of Louis's reign by the count of Blois, the rival house of Anjou had also put forth a claim to it, which Louis admitted when it suited his purposes, as on this occasion. The commission gave Henry a powerful legal pretext for intervention in Britanny.

From Argentan on September 8, Henry issued a summons for the Norman feudal host to assemble at Avranches on Michaelmas for an expedition into Britanny. He spent the interval visiting Paris, where Louis entertained him with the highest honours, ratified the betrothal of the young Henry and Margaret, and entrusted the little bride to Robert of Neubourg for her education. At Avranches, Conan submitted, recognising he could not match Henry with Louis at his back; he received confirmation as duke of Britanny in return for surrendering Nantes (the city and northern half of the county, worth sixty thousand shillings Angevin). Henry then visited Mont-Saint-Michel, briefly halted at Pontorson to restore the castle, took formal possession of Nantes, and besieged Thouars, whose lord was in rebellion. In November he met Louis at Le Mans and conducted him on a triumphal progress through Normandy, visiting Pacy, Evreux, Neubourg (to see his little daughter), Bec, Mont-Saint-Michel, Bayeux, Caen, and Rouen.

Though the County of Nantes was in itself a trifling addition to Henry's vast possessions, its acquisition was of far greater strategic importance than appeared at first sight. Nantes commanded the mouth of the Loire, making its political destinies of the highest consequence to princes whose dominions lay along that river. The carefully planned advances of Geoffrey Greygown and Fulk the Black, who had turned the entire navigable Loire into an Angevin highway, would have been almost useless without securing this entrance-gate. For Henry, who as count of Poitou held the opposite shore of the estuary, Nantes was doubly valuable: between his Norman and Aquitanian duchy jutted the Breton peninsula, a perpetual temptation to his ambition and a fragment of alien ground seemingly destined for absorption into the surrounding Angevin mass. The arbitration privilege conferred by Louis could, like a royal grant of investiture for Tours had been for Geoffrey Martel, pave the way for more direct intervention. Gervase of Canterbury rightly summed up the season's work: "This was Henry's first step towards subduing the Bretons."

A week before the assembly at Avranches, on September 23, 1158, Henry's fourth son was born. The infant was baptised Geoffrey, reviving a name made famous by Henry's own father and many earlier members of the family. By the light of after-events, the timing of this revival seemed a special reference to the memory of the recently deceased Count Geoffrey of Nantes, foreshadowing the new-born child's future destiny as duke of Britanny.

The year closed amid general tranquility. So cordial was the alliance of the two kings that Henry and Louis planned a joint crusade against the Moors in Spain and wrote to seek Pope Adrian IV's blessing upon their undertaking. A long-standing dispute between Henry and Theobald of Blois, which had originated in Henry's refusal, on succeeding his father as count of Anjou, to do homage for Touraine, and which had been compounded by a dispute about Fréteval and Amboise, was settled before Christmas through Louis's mediation.

In England, the year 1158 was marked by nothing more important than a new issue of coinage. Administration was directed by the two justiciars, Richard de Lucy and Robert of Leicester, assisted formally by Queen Eleanor until shortly before Christmas, when she crossed the sea to keep the feast with her husband at Cherbourg. Unhappily, the beginnings of strife followed in her train.

The Duchy of Aquitaine, or Guyenne, as held by Eleanor's predecessors, consisted, roughly speaking, of the territory between the Loire and the Garonne. More exactly, it was bounded on the north by Anjou and Touraine, on the east by Berry and Auvergne, on the south-east by the Quercy or county of Cahors, and on the south-west by Gascony, which had been united with it for the last hundred years. The old Karolingian kingdom of Aquitania had been far more extensive, including the whole country between the Loire, the Pyrenees, the Rhône, and the ocean. Over all this vast territory the counts of Poitou asserted a theoretical claim of overlordship by virtue of their ducal title. They had, however, a formidable rival in the house of the counts of Toulouse, who represented an earlier line of dukes of Aquitaine—successors of the dukes of Gothia or Septimania, under whom Toulouse, not Poitiers, had been the capital of southern Gaul, with Poitou itself counting as a mere underfief. In the latter half of the tenth century, these dukes of Gothia, or Aquitania Prima, had seen their ducal title transferred to the Poitevin lords of Aquitania Secunda.

The Poitevin overlordship was never fully acknowledged by the house of Toulouse, which rose again to great importance, reaching its height in Count Raymond IV, better known as Raymond of St. Gilles. From that small centre his rule spread over the whole territory of the ancient dukes of Septimania. By 1066 Rouergue had lapsed to his line; a year later Raymond gained Toulouse itself; in 1094 he acquired half of Provence through his wife. A hero of the First Crusade, when Raymond died in 1105 he left his son Bertrand, over and above his Aquitanian heritage, the Syrian county of Tripoli. On Bertrand's death in 1112, his son Pontius succeeded in Tripoli while his uncle Alfonso Jordan, a younger son of Raymond of St. Gilles, took the Toulouse claims. These were disputed: Raymond's elder brother, Count William IV, had left an only daughter who, after a childless marriage with King Sancho Ramirez of Aragon, became in 1094 the wife of Count William VIII of Poitou. From that point it became a moot question whether the lord of St. Gilles or the lord of Poitiers was rightful count of Toulouse. Raymond bore the title before his brother's death and his niece's remarriage, one historian claiming he acquired the county by purchase. Another story relates that William of Poitou, having married the Toulouse heiress, pledged the county to Raymond to raise money for the Crusade, a pledge neither he nor his son William IX ever redeemed, although William IX at some point gained possession of Toulouse. On his death, however, it immediately passed back into the hands of Alfonso Jordan.

Aquitaine (southern Gaul) retained a unique identity separate from northern France for centuries, with distinct racial, linguistic, cultural, and political traditions shaped by Roman, Gothic, and Saracen influences rather than Teutonic ones. Its princes were nominal vassals of both the French king and the Holy Roman Emperor but avoided involvement in northern French power struggles, instead focusing on alliances with Burgundian territories, the Spanish March, and the County of Barcelona. The marriage of Louis VII and Eleanor ended Aquitaine’s isolation, drawing it into broader northern European politics and prompting the French crown to pursue direct control over the duchy, particularly its claims to Toulouse.

Four years after his marriage to Eleanor, Louis VII summoned a host for a 1141 expedition against the Count of Toulouse to enforce Poitevin claims to the region. His chief advisor Theobald of Blois opposed the campaign so strongly he refused to participate, and the expedition was abandoned with no recorded outcome. Count Alfonso Jordan retained control of Toulouse until his 1148 death, when he was succeeded by his son Raymond V without incident.

Four years after Louis VII’s failed Toulouse campaign, Eleanor’s marriage to Louis was annulled, and she married Henry Fitz-Empress, transferring the Duchy of Aquitaine to him. This reduced the French king to a nominal overlord of Aquitaine, which was now linked to Anjou and Normandy, encircling the French royal domain and increasing French urgency to enforce its claimed supremacy over the duchy. In 1154, Raymond V of Toulouse cemented an alliance with the French crown by marrying Constance, widow of Eustace of Blois and sister of Louis VII.

By Christmas 1158, Henry II (now King of England) decided to launch an expedition to recover Toulouse on Eleanor’s behalf. He first issued a formal summons to Count Raymond V to cede the county to its heiress, which Raymond refused.

To fund the large, long-duration campaign, Henry II implemented a universal tax later known as the Great Scutage, commuting feudal military service for a monetary payment assessed at 60 shillings Angevin per knight’s fee in Normandy and two marks per fee in England. The tax was levied not only on lands obligated to knightly service, but on all lands held directly from the crown including church lands, a violation of traditional ecclesiastical immunity that sparked bitter clerical protest. The 1159 levy was recorded in the Pipe Roll under the label *donum* (gift) rather than scutage, as it applied broadly to all chief tenants. The total proceeds of roughly 180,000 pounds were used to hire a large mercenary force for the campaign. The scutage established a precedent for commutation of feudal military service for monetary payment, shifting the cherished privilege of tenants-in-chivalry from exemption from taxation to exemption from overseas service.

Henry II’s formal summons to Count Raymond V of Toulouse to return the county to its heiress was met with a flat refusal, serving as a formal prelude to the planned military campaign.

Henry II and Louis VII held a conference at Tours to discuss the Toulouse dispute, but failed to reach an agreement. The two parted without open breach, and Henry left under the impression that his campaign would not face French opposition.

Early in Lent 1159, Henry II traveled to Poitiers to hold council with the barons of Aquitaine. The council concluded with an order for his forces to muster at Poitiers on Midsummer Day, ready to march on Toulouse.

The Midsummer muster at Poitiers was a large, high-profile gathering of Henry II’s forces. It included his chancellor leading a personal retinue of 700 knights, King Malcolm of Scotland (seeking the knighthood his cousin Henry had denied him the prior year), an unnamed Welsh prince, and key allies including Raymond Trencavel, Viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne, who sought vengeance against the Count of Toulouse for despoiling his lands, and William of Montpellier. The force was supplemented by a large contingent of mercenaries funded by the Great Scutage.

Henry II’s most valuable ally for the Toulouse campaign was the Count of Barcelona, a powerful marchlord who ruled the Spanish March (a Pyrenees strip of land between Toulouse, Aragon, Gascony, and the Mediterranean) and also held de facto control of Aragon through his marriage to Queen Petronilla, though he refused to take the royal title to maintain his precedence among counts. Henry met the count at Blaye in Gascony, securing his alliance through a planned future marriage between the count’s infant daughter and Henry’s son Richard, with the Duchy of Aquitaine to be ceded to the young couple after the marriage.

In June 1159, a fruitless conference between Henry II and Louis VII near the Norman border preceded Henry's march from Poitiers to Périgueux, where he knighted his Scottish cousin Malcolm. The Angevin army advanced into southern France, capturing Cahors and its surrounding territory before moving on Toulouse. Count Raymond of Toulouse and local elites sent repeated appeals to Louis VII for aid, and Louis entered Toulouse alone in early July without substantial reinforcements. Henry, respecting Louis's status as his feudal overlord, postponed the siege of Toulouse and retreated, a decision that frustrated Thomas Becket, who urged Henry to capture the city and Louis immediately before reinforcements could arrive.

After retreating from Toulouse, Henry retained control of most of the conquered county, but his senior barons refused to take responsibility for defending the territory against Raymond of Toulouse and Louis VII. He appointed Thomas Becket and Constable Henry of Essex to hold the region; Becket established his headquarters at Cahors, ruled the conquered lands with extreme severity, using proscription and military force to suppress uprisings, and personally led troops to capture three previously impregnable castles. Henry returned to Limoges with the Scottish king, then moved to Normandy, where Becket commanded a large paid force at his own expense to defend the Norman frontier against French attacks. A December 1159 truce led to a 1160 peace treaty negotiated by Becket, which confirmed the betrothal of Young Henry and Margaret, settled the Vexin as the couple's dowry, restored Henry's Poitou holdings (except Toulouse), and established a one-year truce between Henry and Raymond.

As chancellor, Thomas Becket took charge of defending Henry II's conquered southern French territories after the retreat from Toulouse. Based at Cahors, he ruled the region harshly, putting down all resistance through proscription, execution, and the burning of manors and storming of towns, and led successful campaigns to capture three strong castles. He later joined Henry in Normandy, where he maintained 700 knights, 1200 paid horsemen, and 4000 foot soldiers for 40 days at his own expense to defend the frontier against French incursions, and defeated a French knight in single combat, taking his destrier as a trophy.

Negotiated by Thomas Becket after a December 1159 truce expired, the May 1160 peace treaty between Henry II and Louis VII ended the immediate conflict. Its core terms were: confirmation of the betrothal between Henry's son Young Henry and Louis's daughter Margaret; settlement of the Vexin territory as the couple's dowry, with Henry retaining control of its key fortresses until the marriage was solemnized; restoration of all Henry's rights and holdings in Poitou except Toulouse; and a one-year truce between Henry and Raymond of Toulouse, allowing both to keep their current possessions.

Louis VII's wife Constance died in October 1159, leaving him with only an infant daughter. Eager for a male heir, Louis married Adela of Blois, daughter of Theobald the Great and sister of the counts betrothed to Louis's elder daughters, less than a fortnight after Constance's death. While his subjects accepted the hasty marriage, Henry II deeply resented the match, as the House of Blois was a longstanding rival of the Angevin dynasty.

William, Earl of Boulogne and last surviving son of King Stephen, died childless in October 1159 while returning from the Toulouse campaign. His sister Mary, abbess of Romsey, was his sole heir, and King Henry devised a plan for her to marry Matthew, second son of the Count of Flanders, with a papal dispensation to permit her to leave her convent. Thomas Becket unexpectedly opposed the marriage on grounds of monastic discipline, used his influence at Rome to block the dispensation, and earned the lasting enmity of Matthew of Flanders, as well as a foretaste of Henry's future anger.

A long-standing goal for Henry II was to recover the Vexin territory he had ceded to Louis VII in 1151. The 1160 peace treaty stipulated that the Vexin would serve as the dowry for the betrothal of Young Henry and Margaret, with Henry retaining control of its key fortresses (held by the Knights Templars) until the children's marriage. Likely at Thomas Becket's instigation, Henry arranged for the pair to be married prematurely on November 2, 1160, at Neubourg, with papal legates solemnizing the union to fulfill the treaty's requirements. He immediately took control of the Vexin castles, outwitting Louis, who responded by banishing the involved Templars and allying with the House of Blois to fortify the Chaumont castle on the Loire as a threat to Angevin holdings.

In response to Louis VII and Theobald of Blois fortifying the Chaumont castle on the Loire as a base against Angevin interests, Henry II marched to the site, routed the French and Blois forces, and besieged Chaumont. He captured the fortress along with 35 knights and 80 men-at-arms sent to reinforce it by Theobald, then fortified the Angevin-held castles of Fréteval and Amboise to secure the region. With the threat neutralized, Henry traveled to Le Mans to celebrate Christmas with Eleanor of Aquitaine.

This section outlines the terms of the Wilcassin Treaty between Henry II and Louis VII of France. The treaty ceded all but three reserved fiefs of Wilcassin to the French king, with the remaining lands designated as a marriage portion for Louis's daughter to Henry's son, to be transferred three years after the peace agreement, or immediately if the children were married with church approval during that period. A central interpretive conflict emerged over the treaty's term "tunc" (then): Louis argued it meant the lands would transfer only after the three-year term expired if the children were married, while Henry and his Templar allies held the transfer should take effect immediately upon the children's marriage, regardless of the three-year timeline.

This section describes the year of peace that followed the treaty. Henry II spent most of this period in Normandy, where he oversaw the garrisoning of duchy castles, strengthening of newly recovered border fortresses, restoration of old royal strongholds, construction of new fortifications across his domains, repairs to his Rouen palace, building of a park at Quévilly, and founding of a leper hospital at Caen.

This section covers the education of Henry II's eldest son, the young prince Henry. As a mark of his full confidence, Henry entrusted the child's care to his chancellor Thomas Becket, who brought the boy into his own household to educate him alongside other noble sons in courtly manners and knightly skills, and affectionately referred to the child as his adoptive son. The prince was approximately seven years old at this time, and his father was already working to secure his succession to the throne.

This section outlines Henry II's plan to secure his heir's succession by adopting the continental practice of coronating the heir during the reigning king's lifetime. Having concluded that the conditional infant homage he had once received was an insufficient guarantee of succession (and noting the failure of Stephen's earlier attempt to crown his son Eustace), Henry sent his son to England in spring 1162 and summoned the realm's barons to swear homage and fealty to the boy as a preliminary to his coronation. The coronation rite could only be performed by the primate of England, and the Archbishop of Canterbury's seat was vacant; when Henry sought Thomas Becket's assistance with the coronation, Becket declined, ending his service to the king.

This section details the successful execution of the barons' homage to the young prince, managed entirely by Thomas Becket. Becket brought the child to England and presented him to a great council of bishops and barons, first kneeling and swearing his own fealty to the boy while reserving only fealty to the reigning Henry II. The full assembly followed Becket's lead, completing the homage without disturbance or protest, though the young prince reportedly refused to accept any reservations in Becket's oath.

Henry II's Governance Standard of Henry I's Reign** Henry II's material and political revival of the kingdom was guided by one explicit principle: restoring the order that had existed under his grandfather, Henry I. To both king and subjects, the task at Henry's accession was to resume government not where the anarchy had left it, but where Henry I and Roger of Salisbury had laid it down—tearing away the innovations of the intervening nineteen years and rebuilding legitimate institutions on Henry I's foundations. In law, finance, and general administration there was a single universal standard of reference: "the time of my grandfather King Henry."

The Independent Religious and Intellectual Revival** This standard of Henry I's reign, however, could not be applied to the religious and intellectual sphere. The movement that had begun under Henry I gathered force throughout the years of anarchy and became the one truly living power in the land—the very power that ultimately raised Henry II to the throne. It looked to him as a friend and protector but had no need to retrace its steps under a king who was nearly its own creation. At the very moment of Henry's accession, these hopes were powerfully reinforced when an Englishman, Nicolas Breakspear, was elevated to the Papal chair.

Nicolas Breakspear's Rise to Pope Adrian IV** Nicolas Breakspear, the only Englishman ever to attain the papacy, was the son of a poor clerk at Langley near the abbey of S. Alban's. Two contrasting traditions describe his origins: in one, his father retired into the abbey and the boy, too poor to attend school, came daily to beg at the abbey-gate until shamed into leaving England; in the other, Nicolas applied to the abbot for monastic admission but was dismissed as insufficiently educated. Either way, the lad made his way to Paris, where he outstripped his fellow-students; wearying of the life there as Thomas Becket would later do, he wandered into Provence and was hospitably received at the Austin priory of S. Rufus. Persuaded by the canons to join the order, he was even made superior, but his authority was resented, and appeals were made to Pope Eugene III. Eugene eventually brought Nicolas to Rome, made him cardinal and bishop of Albano, and employed him as legate to Norway and Denmark for several years. About 1150 Nicolas returned to Rome and acted as Eugene's secretary until the pope's death in July 1153. After Anastasius III reigned only sixteen months and died on 2 December 1154, Nicolas succeeded him, taking the name Adrian IV.

Archbishop Theobald's Reform Circle and Reception of Adrian IV** The English Church rejoiced at Adrian IV's accession, regarding him as one of their own and a disciple of Eugene III, whom they venerated almost as a patron saint. Adrian shared their aspirations more deeply than Eugene himself had done. The centre where these aspirations took shape was the household of Archbishop Theobald at Canterbury, the *Curia Theobaldi*, which served as a "school of the prophets" where the primate trained the choicest spirits of the rising generation. Through these scholars came the revival of legal and ecclesiastical learning, renewed contact with the sister Churches of the West, and the negotiations with Rome that restored order and peace. Theobald began sending his protégés out to independent positions, the first being John of Canterbury, who in 1153 succeeded Hugh of Puiset as treasurer of York.

Roger of Pont-l'Evêque's York Appointment and Rivalry with Thomas Becket** In 1154 Theobald secured the royal assent to the appointment of Roger of Pont-l'Evêque as archbishop of York in succession to S. William. Roger's earlier history is obscure, and even his surname's origin—whether from the English Bishopsbridge or the Norman Pont-l'Evêque—is debated. Considerably older than Theobald's other favourites, Roger was on familiar terms with Gilbert Foliot, but with the younger Thomas Becket he was never friendly, mockingly calling him the "hatchet-clerk" and making his life so miserable that Thomas twice fled to Theobald's brother Walter, archdeacon of Canterbury. When Walter became bishop of Rochester in 1148, Roger received the archdeaconry; threatened with the loss of his preferments (likely over the famous "swimming-voyage" to Reims), he was protected by Gilbert Foliot through papal influence. After six years as archdeacon, Roger was elevated at Theobald's wish for Roger's own sake, for Thomas's (whom Theobald wished to keep close to himself), and for the Church. Theobald hoped to plant a steadfast disciple at York pledged to his ecclesiastical policy; tragically, however, he missed the chance to settle the long-running Canterbury–York dispute and consecrated Roger without exacting any profession of obedience—a rashness that Roger later renewed, and whose consequences fell not on Theobald but on his successors.

Thomas Becket's Early Promotions and John of Salisbury's Background** Immediately after Roger's consecration, Thomas Becket received deacon's orders and was made archdeacon of Canterbury. A few months later Henry II's accession opened the way for his appointment as chancellor—an advancement that cost Theobald the daily presence of his most brilliant protégé and condemned the aging primate to a separation he felt keenly. The *Curia Theobaldi* was not left dark, however; John of Salisbury remained, his gentler radiance reflecting Theobald's own spirit. John had joined the archbishop's household only comparatively recently. His father was a man named Reinfred, and his family connections lay around Salisbury, though there are hints he may have been born in London. In the year after Henry I's death he went to study in Paris, where he sat at the feet of Peter Abelard and absorbed his dialectical teaching; when Abelard departed, John continued for about two years under Alberic and Robert of Melun (an Englishman who would later succeed Gilbert Foliot at Hereford). It was probably during this same Parisian period that the young Thomas of London, struggling to master books for his mother's sake, first formed the acquaintance that became his lifelong friendship with John; and it was in that same remarkable meeting-place of scholars that John first encountered Nicolas of Langley, the future Pope Adrian IV.

Student Life in Paris After Thomas Becket returned to his merchant's life in London and Nicolas began his long wandering toward the papacy, John of Salisbury applied himself for three years to the Parisian schools, building on his earlier studies and living by teaching others, a method he found reinforced his own learning.

The Grammarians John attended the schools of the grammarians William of Conches and Richard l'Evêque, where he reviewed his previous course of study and deepened his knowledge of the liberal arts.

The Quadrivium Under the direction of a German master named Hardwin, John made further progress in the *quadrivium* of mathematical sciences, and he also refined some elementary notions of rhetoric acquired from a certain Master Theodoric.

Teaching Pupils Unable to rely on his relatives for support, John earned his keep and his college fees like other poor students by teaching others, a discipline that, as he himself said, fixed what he learned more firmly in his mind by constantly bringing it out for his pupils.

William of Soissons Among John's pupils was William of Soissons, to whom he taught the elements of logic. William later gained a reputation, according to his followers, for breaking down the old strongholds of logic with novel methods and overthrowing ancient opinions, though John himself declined to credit such a "system of impossibilities."

Master Adam John soon transferred William of Soissons to the care of Master Adam, an English teacher deeply versed in Aristotelian learning who assisted John not as a teacher but as a friend. Adam may possibly be the same figure once connected with Gilbert Foliot, or more probably Adam "du Petit-Pont," who lectured in Paris and became bishop of St Asaph in 1176.

The Move to Provins Finding Paris too expensive to live in, John resolved on the advice of his friends to set up a school elsewhere. During his time on the Mont-Sainte-Geneviève he had befriended Peter, a young man from Champagne studying at Saint-Martin-des-Champs, and the two friends settled together at Provins in Peter's homeland.

Count Theobald At Provins John and Peter worked for three years under the protection of Count Theobald of Champagne, in what John later recalled as a carefree time spent among the roses of Champagne with hearts as light as their purses.

Return to Paris John returned to Paris and revisited the Mont-Sainte-Geneviève, where he found his old school-companions seemingly no further forward on the old questions. His three years of country reflection had convinced him that their dialectic, while useful as an instrument, was in itself a fruitless and lifeless study.

Theological Studies Now turning to theology, John studied under Master Gilbert, then under Robert "Pullus" (possibly the same Robert Pulein who had introduced divinity lectures at Oxford in 1133), and finally under Simon of Poissy.

Peter of Celle His old friend Peter had meanwhile withdrawn into monastic life and become abbot of Celle near Troyes. John, who was without means, found shelter with him as nominal secretary, in a household whose real gift was generous, uncalculating hospitality.

The Abbey of Celle At the Abbey of Celle John enjoyed a brief period of obscurity, though Peter himself recognised that John's gifts could not long remain hidden. The arrival of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bernard of Clairvaux at the council of Reims brought John's talents to wider notice.

The Court of Theobald Bernard of Clairvaux recommended John to Archbishop Theobald, providing a letter of introduction, while Peter of Celle provided the means. John thus entered Theobald's service and became one of its busiest and most valued members, crossing the Alps ten times in thirteen years, twice visiting Apulia, and travelling across England and Gaul on a host of errands.

Nicolas of Langley John's friendship with Nicolas of Langley, an acquaintance begun in Paris, made him invaluable to Theobald as a channel of communication with Rome. Nicolas, who loved John above all men living, found in him a confidant both as English cardinal-secretary and later as Pope, receiving him at his own table and sharing his dish and flagon.

Pope Adrian IV When Nicolas ascended the papal chair as Adrian IV, his friendship with John remained unchanged. His affection for John, combined with the political value of an English alliance, disposed the Pope warmly toward overtures from England.

The Irish Mission After Henry II's accession, it was naturally John who was sent to obtain papal authorisation for the king's projected conquest of Ireland, and he became Theobald's private secretary and confidential intermediary with Pope Adrian.

The Polycraticus Urged by Thomas Becket to relieve his restless mind by writing, John composed the *Polycraticus* during the quiet of Canterbury's cloisters while Thomas was on campaign against Toulouse. The work treats both the "trifles of the court" and the "footprints of philosophers," combining moral and political reflection with personal observation.

Court Trifles In the *Polycraticus* John reviews what he calls the "trifles of the court" but which are in fact the crying abuses of government, ecclesiastical administration, and society at large, examined in the light of scriptural and philosophical truth.

Philosophers' Footprints The second strand of the *Polycraticus* traces the "footprints of philosophers," leaving the wise to judge for themselves what should be followed and what shunned, all in service of John's central conviction that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

The Fear of the Lord All of John's reflections on Aristotle, Plato, and their scholastic commentators converge on a single conclusion: that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the love of God the end of all true philosophy, a maxim he neatly crystallises in two lines of his *Entheticus*.

The Royal Chase In the forefront of his critique, even though he dedicated the book to Becket, John attacks the inordinate love of the chase and the cruelties of forest law, a daring opening given the chancellor's own passion for hunting.

Errant Justices John laments the tardiness of royal justice and the corruption of the judges, whom he puns on as "justitiae errantes"—justices errant—because they wandered from equity in pursuit of greed and gain, a complaint still pressing after seven years of Henry II's government.

Decay of Chivalry The young knighthood of the day had grown soft through years of unbroken peace after the anarchy of Stephen's reign. Military exercises were neglected for courtly pleasures; the making of a knight, once almost as solemn as the making of a priest, was becoming a meaningless formality.

Welsh Marches The consequences of this decay were already visible on the Welsh border, whose insecure condition John contrasts with its splendid defence in the time of Harold, lamenting how the Conqueror's policies had weakened the island's self-sufficiency.

Luxury and Indolence John traces the decay of martial vigour to a flood of continental luxuries encouraged by William the Conqueror, which fed the natural indolence of the English and helped reduce them to subjection.

Ecclesiastical Extortions The ills of the state had their mirror in the Church, where the extortions and perversions of justice committed by secular judges were paralleled by those of ecclesiastical officials, the deans and archdeacons.

Spiritual Simony Although spiritual offices were no longer openly sold for cash, they were bought with court influence instead. The Church's most sacred charges were filled by men coming straight from worldly court life, their unfitness masked by a show of reluctance and a parade of converted sinners drawn from Scripture and hagiology.

False Brethren John reserves his bitterest sarcasm for the "false brethren" who advanced by subtler means—an ultra-monastic, ultra-ascetic school, with their overdone zeal and their reliance on exemptions that destroyed all discipline and subverted rightful authority.

Counterfeit Piety These false brethren cloaked their ambitions in a show of counterfeit piety, an excess of zeal and humility designed to recommend them for preferment while masking their true designs.

Monastic Exemptions At the root of the mischief lay the pernicious exemptions from diocesan jurisdiction that the religious orders vied with each other to procure from Rome, undermining all discipline and rightful authority within the Church.

John of Salisbury, a disciple of Archbishop Theobald, sets out his vision for how the Church and secular world ought to function, contrasting it with the flawed existing state of both institutions. Unlike Thomas More’s later *Utopia*, John’s model commonwealth is not the product of a single isolated mind, but a compilation of the plans and hopes of the reforming circle he lived and worked within, offering insight into the thought that guided their past actions and future reform schemes.

Medieval reformers, including John of Salisbury, grounded their political thought in a broad, high interpretation of the divine right of kings, which held that royal authority was divinely ordained. This doctrine was used not to justify absolute royal power, but to combat the emerging perverted theory that “the sovereign’s will has the force of law” influenced by imperial jurisprudence, and it rejected the principle of invariable hereditary succession. Rulers were chosen by God for their virtue and adherence to divine law, not merely by bloodline; only a king obstinate in wickedness could be rightfully removed, after patient admonition failed.

Drawing lessons from the chaos of the Anarchy, reformers sought societal regeneration through instilling a strong sense of individual duty and responsibility to replace widespread selfish lawlessness. They aimed to reform the knightly class to live up to their original vows: protecting the Church, suppressing treason, defending the rights of the poor, and pacifying the realm, so that the consecration of their swords at investiture was a meaningful symbol of their life’s purpose. Alongside reformed knights would stand reformed priests, both framed as “soldiers of the Cross” wielding the “two swords” approved by Christ, working to uphold the principle that all members of the body politic are interdependent (“Every one members one of another”).

Clerical reformers saw their duty as upholding the interdependent order of the body politic, and framed their defense of clerical rights as a defense of the rights of the entire English nation. Their claims on behalf of the Church served as a protest for true civil and religious liberty, pushing back against both tyrannical royal overreach and popular lawlessness. Reformers held that true freedom was inseparable from virtue, and that all legitimate freedom derived from God.

As of the final years of Stephen’s reign, it remained unclear how far these reformist ideals had taken hold among senior church leaders, though the overall tone of the English episcopate had improved markedly in the prior six years. Archbishop Theobald placed most of his hope for reform in the younger generation of clergy. Of the sitting bishops, only Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford, had the ability to meaningfully advance or obstruct Theobald’s reform agenda: Henry of Winchester, despite his royal blood and long career, had retreated from active church and state affairs and was living in Cluny. Gilbert Foliot’s character and policy made him a central figure for the reforming party.

Gilbert Foliot likely belonged to a poor Norman knightly family that migrated to England either with the Norman Conquest or under Henry I, though his early life is largely obscure. His exceptional scholarly and legal expertise, as well as his deep knowledge of ecclesiastical and political matters, indicates he studied at one of the era’s universities, though no records of his education or student companions survive in his extensive surviving correspondence. The only reference to his youth comes from letters he wrote as Bishop of London, appealing on behalf of the orphaned children of his old benefactor Master Adam, who had been his tutor, ward, and almost adoptive father. By 1139, Gilbert had long finished his studies, was a monk at Cluny, had risen to prior of the mother house, and was promoted to head of the dependent priory of Abbeville.

In 1139, following the death of the Abbot of St. Peter’s at Gloucester, Miles the constable (a powerful local lord and family connection of Gilbert’s) secured Gilbert’s appointment to the role, which Stephen approved likely due to reports of Gilbert’s merits rather than favour to Miles. The abbey was located in Gloucester, a volatile border city vulnerable to Welsh raids, and Gilbert took office during the upheaval of the Anarchy. Though he had been brought to England by a supporter of the Angevin cause and sympathized with that faction, he avoided partisan politics, positioning himself as a neutral churchman focused on ecclesiastical order and national tranquility rather than party loyalty. His judgement, moderation, and asceticism earned him widespread respect across the English Church: he was trusted by bishops of all factions, acted as a key advisor to multiple bishops and Pope Eugene III, served as a liaison between the western shire churches and Archbishop Theobald, and managed difficult church affairs in the Welsh Marches during the civil war.

In 1148, after the tide of the Anarchy turned in favour of the Angevin faction, Archbishop Theobald demonstrated his trust in Gilbert by ordering him to attend the Council of Reims, a trip Stephen had forbidden that was seen as a public declaration of ecclesiastical independence and Angevin loyalty. Gilbert initially excused himself to attend to matters at Gloucester, but ultimately joined the delegation. When Bishop Robert of Hereford (one of the three prelates allowed by Stephen to attend the council) died during the session, the Pope and Theobald appointed Gilbert as his successor to the See of Hereford. Gilbert later did homage to Stephen for the temporalities of the see, breaking an oath to hold them only from Henry Fitz-Empress, a perjury he likely justified as necessary to secure the see for the Angevin cause; Henry Fitz-Empress later accepted this reasoning. Gilbert had also recently written a letter to Brian Fitz-Count criticizing Brian’s public defense of the Empress, which circulated widely among Angevin supporters as a key document on the succession question.

Gilbert’s tenure as Bishop of Hereford was a natural extension of his work as Abbot of Gloucester, making him Theobald’s key deputy for the western dioceses. He and Theobald were fully aligned on secular policy, though it is unclear if they shared identical views on church reform. Gilbert’s character is difficult to parse: his vast surviving correspondence, covering nearly 50 years and addressed to people of all ranks and nationalities, is almost entirely composed of formal business letters or religious exhortations, lacking the personal, discursive tone of letters from his contemporaries John of Salisbury or Peter of Blois, or the raw emotional openness of Thomas Becket’s letters. His letters are highly polished, carefully crafted works; he once noted that drafting a review of Earl Brian’s book took two days of time he would have spent in prayer. A sharp, severe sarcasm occasionally breaks through his elaborate expressions of extreme monastic humility and self-deprecation, which many have interpreted as a struggle to suppress his innate bitter, sneering temperament rather than conscious hypocrisy. Despite this, he was widely trusted by the papacy and English church leadership during his episcopate, and the young King Henry II later acknowledged his wisdom and service with due respect.

Henry II’s religious perspective was shaped by his descent from Fulk of Jerusalem, and was defined by a persistent desire to join a crusade. Immediately after his coronation, he urged the newly elected English Pope Adrian IV to prioritize support for the Holy Land. Four years later, he proposed a joint crusade with Louis VII of France against the Moors in Spain; Louis sought Adrian’s counsel on the plan, and Adrian responded with sympathy but cautioned the kings to confirm Spanish willingness to accept their aid before intervening, while also warning Louis of the failure of his earlier rash crusade. This warning proved timely, as the two kings soon turned on each other in the War of Toulouse, and Adrian died before the conflict concluded.

Adrian IV’s death at Anagni on September 1, 1159, was a devastating blow to the English Church, and was followed by a schism that threatened all of Western Christendom. Two candidates were elected pope: Roland of Siena, who took the name Alexander III, and Octavian, cardinal of S. Cecilia, a Roman noble who assumed the name Victor IV with the backing of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. After being expelled from Rome, Victor fled to Frederick’s protection, and the emperor convened a council at Pavia in early 1160 to rule on the rival claims. Only bishops from Frederick’s territories attended, and Alexander refused to participate in what he viewed as a predetermined trial; as a result, he was condemned as a schismatic, and Victor was recognized as the legitimate pope by the imperial-aligned clergy.

The Pavia council’s decision only bound bishops within the Holy Roman Empire, and its credibility collapsed when Alexander’s supporters published evidence that Victor had surrendered his pontifical ring to Frederick as a symbol of investiture, violating the core principle of spiritual independence championed by reformers like Gregory VII and Anselm. Frederick immediately sought recognition of Victor from France and England, with high hopes for success in England due to Henry II’s recent efforts to strengthen political ties with Germany, his ongoing conflict with France, and potential sympathy for Frederick’s revival of Henry I’s claims to ecclesiastical investiture. An official report of the Pavia council claimed Henry had formally assented to its decisions via letters and envoys, though this was unknown in Henry’s own territories, and it appears the emperor was preempted by a Norman bishop before any formal English commitment could be secured.

Arnulf of Lisieux came from a family long involved in diplomatic affairs in Normandy and Anjou. Ordained bishop of Lisieux in 1141, shortly before Geoffrey Plantagenet’s final conquest of Normandy, he paid a heavy price to secure his position under the new regime. Over the next forty years, he played a role in nearly every major ecclesiastical and secular diplomatic transaction in England and Gaul, though he held no secular office and had limited formal political weight as a Norman bishop. A consummate diplomat with extensive experience and wide influence, he maintained an extensive correspondence with figures across social ranks and ideological lines, and served as a trusted advisor to all major political parties without compromising his reputation as a devout churchman and loyal subject. He had previously helped negotiate the 1151 settlement securing Henry’s investiture of Normandy, accompanied Henry to his coronation, and served as his chief continental policy advisor until he was replaced by Thomas Becket. He had also written a treatise defending an orthodox pope against a usurper in his youth, and counted leading scholars and statesmen like John of Salisbury and Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln, among his acquaintances.

Arnulf was uniquely positioned to assess the 1159 schism, having experienced a similar conflict thirty years prior, and immediately set out to advocate for Alexander III’s legitimacy. He reached Henry in Normandy before any other party could influence the king’s judgment, and delivered a compelling argument for Alexander’s claim that led Henry to promise immediate recognition. Henry delayed issuing a formal order for Alexander’s acceptance across his domains out of deference to Frederick Barbarossa and to await Louis VII’s position, as Louis had sent a representative to the Pavia council but had not committed to its decision. Louis, who had no interest in supporting the emperor’s investiture claims and valued French independence from papal overreach, was naturally inclined to reject Frederick’s position. After both kings met at a council in Beauvais in summer 1160, and Henry hosted a council of Norman bishops at Neufmarché in July, both assemblies agreed to recognize Alexander III.

Before the kings could publicly proclaim their support for Alexander, formal assent from the Churches of England and Aquitaine was required. Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury had requested guidance on the schism, and Arnulf provided an exhaustive, eloquent defense of Alexander’s claim. In line with Arnulf’s arguments, the English bishops assembled in council unanimously declared their acceptance of Alexander III as the legitimate successor of Saint Peter. Alexander’s legates were already present in Normandy, though Henry’s use of their presence would later contribute to a fresh rupture with Louis VII, which Frederick and Victor attempted to exploit with overtures to Henry, though Henry never seriously considered accepting their offers.

The English Church leadership was severely weakened at this time, raising concerns that Henry might be persuaded to reverse his support for Alexander. Bishop Richard of London was paralyzed while struggling to pay off debts incurred to secure his election under Stephen, with the bishops of Hereford and Lincoln attempting to resolve his financial chaos. Henry of Winchester had returned to his diocese in 1159 after nearly four years’ absence at Cluny, but left again for Cluny by spring 1161. The bishoprics of Chester (Lichfield), Exeter, and Worcester were all vacant, and Archbishop Theobald was dying. In his final months, Theobald expressed calm acceptance of his impending death, but deep anxiety for the future of the English Church, and a longing to see Henry return safely to England to avoid succumbing to political pressure to break with church unity. He also yearned for the return of his archdeacon Thomas Becket, his chief confidant, who had fallen out of favor with the king and briefly considered fleeing to France under the protection of Abbot Peter of Celle, though he ultimately remained at Canterbury to tend to Theobald and manage the Church’s affairs. Theobald’s greatest desire was that Becket would succeed him as Archbishop of Canterbury, to secure the future independence and stability of the English Church.

Later writers emphasized the apparent contrast between Becket's conduct as chancellor and as archbishop, but this contrast disappears when viewed through the eyes of Theobald and John of Salisbury, who knew his inner character. To the court, Becket seemed wholly devoted to worldly splendor, military exercise, and the king's pleasure, making his later defense of the Church seem miraculous or fraudulent. Yet Theobald and John of Salisbury understood that he was strategically placing himself at court to influence the king for good. Even his controversial proposal of scutage for the Toulouse campaign did not undermine their trust; they judged his error as weakness rather than willful misdeed. John dedicated the *Polycraticus* to Becket as the one court figure capable of candid criticism, and Henry repeatedly refused Theobald's requests to release him, insisting Becket's presence was indispensable until peace was restored.

Thomas faced an agonizing conflict between his duty to his dying spiritual father and the king's refusal to release him. He ultimately proposed that Theobald himself threaten deprivation to compel his return, hoping the king would yield. Theobald, puzzled by the contradictory reports of the king's and chancellor's positions, steered a cautious middle course, partly suspecting collusion. John of Salisbury also pressed urgently for Thomas to come before the primate's death, though there is no clear evidence he did so, possibly making only a brief visit. Thomas did secure one concession for Theobald: the appointment of Bartholomew, archdeacon of Exeter, to that bishopric. In April, Richard Peche was consecrated bishop of Chester at Canterbury, with the feeble archbishop carried in merely to lend his presence. Through John, Theobald transmitted his final benediction and farewell to Henry, commending his church and the choice of his successor. He died on April 18, 1161.

A list of corrections to Volume I is provided, addressing errors on pages 50, 158, 268, 274, 282, 417, and 438, including insertions, deletions, and word substitutions. The section also notes the end of Volume I and credits the printers R. & R. Clark of Edinburgh.

The contents of Volume II are listed, covering Chapters I through IX of *England Under the Angevin Kings* by Kate Norgate. The chapters trace the period from 1162 to 1206, including Becket's archbishopate, Henry II's relations with Rome, the conquest of Ireland, the king's dealings with the barons, the Angevin Empire, Henry's last years, the reigns of Richard I, and the fall of the Angevins. Published in 1887 by Macmillan and Co. in London and New York, the volume includes notes and is accompanied by maps and plans.

While taking leave of Henry II at Falaise on the eve of his return to England, Thomas the chancellor was privately informed by the king of his intention to appoint him Archbishop of Canterbury. Thomas treated the remark as a jest, pointing to his worldly dress and warning the king that such a promotion would destroy their friendship, since as archbishop he would have to oppose Henry's designs on the Church. Henry, undeterred, at once confided the plan to the justiciar Richard de Lucy and charged him, on his feudal oath, to labor for Thomas's elevation as earnestly as he would for the succession of Prince Henry.

Thomas was deeply alarmed by the king's design, even though he had long suspected Theobald's wishes and the hopes of others. For twelve months he had weighed the primacy and concluded that the price—the surrender of his secular pursuits and his intimate political partnership with Henry—was one he would not pay. The more passionately he remonstrated, the more Henry's confidence in him grew, until the legate Cardinal Henry of Pisa urged acceptance as a sacred duty, and Thomas at length yielded.

As soon as the London council ended, Richard de Lucy and three bishops hastened to Canterbury to secure the chapter's election of Thomas. The monks initially protested against entrusting the pastoral chair to a man given to hawks, hounds, and the court, but royal pressure and fear overcame their scruples, and Thomas was chosen without a dissentient voice. The election was repeated before a great council at Westminster on May 23, ratified by the assembled clergy, and confirmed by the great officers of state and the boy-king. The only protest came from Gilbert Foliot, who declared Thomas unfit because of his persecution of the Church; Henry of Winchester silenced the objection with a pointed Scriptural parallel, bidding Thomas to be Paul rather than Saul.

Disputes over who should perform the consecration were resolved in favor of Henry of Winchester, after Roger of York refused to make a profession of obedience to Canterbury and the dying bishop of London was replaced. Walter of Rochester ordained Thomas to the priesthood on the Saturday in Whitsun-week, and the consecration took place the following morning before a vast congregation that included the young king and his ministers. Before the rite, Henry of Winchester obtained a formal quit-claim freeing Thomas from all secular obligations to the crown; the new primate was led to his patriarchal chair amid applause, weeping and downcast. He marked the day by ordaining the annual feast of the Holy Trinity on the octave of Pentecost, an observance that eventually spread throughout Christendom as Trinity Sunday.

Soon after the consecration an embassy secured Thomas's pallium from Pope Alexander III without difficulty, since the pope was in no position to offend Henry. Thomas then sent a messenger to surrender the great seal, pleading that he was scarcely equal to the cares of one office, let alone two. Henry was both surprised and vexed: he had hoped to imitate the Emperor by uniting the archbishopric and the chancellorship in a single person, and had even obtained a papal dispensation to that end. Thomas's refusal left the chancellorship vacant and sowed in the king the suspicion that his friend's conduct sprang from weariness of royal service.

From the day of his consecration Thomas cast off his former life with passionate intensity. He dismissed the jongleurs who came for their customary largesse, doubled the alms established by Theobald, and redirected the resources of his household toward the Church and the poor. The archbishop's palace retained its old orderliness, retinue, and lavish hospitality, but the tone changed: knights and laymen sat apart, while Thomas dined with his clerics and his eruditi, discoursing on Scripture while his cross-bearer read aloud from a holy book in place of the old minstrelsy. He ate sparingly, gave the remains of his meals to the poor, and daily fed twenty-six beggars at his own table before taking his own midday meal.

Becket's daily routine as archbishop was extraordinarily demanding and ascetic, comparable in sheer volume to his busiest days as chancellor. His day began at tierce with mass, after which he fed a hundred "poor prebendaries" at his expense. He then sat in his audience-chamber until nones, hearing suits and administering justice. After dinner, he withdrew to his private apartments to work and study with his *eruditi*, pausing only for the canonical hours and brief rest. He rose at cock-crow for prime, secretly washing the feet of thirteen poor persons and serving them at table while wearing a hair-shirt beneath his public robes. He returned briefly to bed, then rose again before dawn to read Scripture with Herbert of Bosham. Around dawn, twelve more poor persons were fed and attended to by his almoner. Becket then spent time in private meditation, confession, scourging, and prayer until tierce called him back to his public duties.

Becket was deeply anxious to remedy his self-confessed ignorance of Scripture and theology, failings he openly acknowledged in comparison with many of his own clerks. He placed himself under the tutelage of his *eruditi* with childlike humility, singling out Herbert of Bosham as his special monitor and guide. On the day after his election, while riding from London to Canterbury, he charged Herbert to watch his conduct critically and inform him of any faults. Herbert fulfilled this duty faithfully, though his zeal sometimes outran his discretion. The two friends spent their early-morning hours eagerly searching the Scriptures together, and even while traveling Becket would draw books from his wide sleeves and engage in animated discussion as they rode. At Canterbury, his greatest pleasure was to read like a humble monk in a quiet corner of the cloister.

In the secluded evening hours spent with his *eruditi*, Becket developed plans for church reform and revival that built upon earlier ideas from the *Curia Theobaldi* but in a more radical form. Between Trinity and Ember-tide, he set himself to tackle ecclesiastical abuses at once by scrutinizing his first candidates for ordination. He believed the remedy for clerical corruption lay in the hands of bishops and especially metropolitans, who fostered simony, worldliness, and immorality by too easily ordaining unqualified men. Determined to ordain only those of saintly life, ample learning, and adequate benefice, he proclaimed and acted upon this resolve with the zeal of one who regarded his own former career as a glaring example of the evils produced by lax discipline.

Becket insisted on strict standards for ordination, refusing to advance any man whom he did not personally know to be of saintly life, sound learning, and sufficient ecclesiastical provision. He believed that unworthy, ignorant, and needy clerks either exploited their sacred profession for worldly advancement or disgraced it through idle wandering and undignified shifts for a living. By setting these demanding criteria and enforcing them publicly, he sought to cleanse the priesthood of the abuses that had proliferated under previous, more complacent regimes.

Becket undertook the recovery of alienated church property in the most sweeping fashion, claiming every estate that he could show had been granted away by his predecessors on insufficient grounds or on terms detrimental to his church's interest and dignity. Without respect of persons, he turned out those holding archiepiscopal manors in ferm, disputed with the earl of Clare over the jurisdiction of Tunbridge castle and district, and even reclaimed the custody of Rochester castle from the Crown itself on the strength of a Conqueror's charter. This aggressive campaign, comparable to similar efforts undertaken earlier by Gilbert Foliot at Hereford, naturally stirred up numerous enemies and inflamed the jealousy of those companions and rivals already resentful of his new dignity and altered mode of life.

The archbishop's enemies, still unable to attack him directly because of the king's favor, carried their complaints overseas to Henry, presenting every aspect of Becket's conduct in the worst possible light. They denounced his strictness of life as superstition, his zeal for justice as cruelty, his care for the church as avarice, his pontifical splendor as pride, and his vigor as rashness and self-conceit. They warned the king that unless he acted speedily, his laws and constitutions would be set at naught, his regal dignity trodden under foot, and himself and his heirs reduced to mere cyphers dependent on the will of the archbishop of Canterbury.

Henry determined to investigate the rumors himself at the close of the year. His negotiations over the papal schism had detained him on the continent throughout the summer, and both he and Louis gave a cordial welcome to Pope Alexander. A general pacification was effected at a meeting of the two kings and the Pope late in autumn at Chouzy on the Loire. Contrary winds forced Henry to keep Christmas at Cherbourg, and he finally landed at Southampton on S. Paul's day. Becket, still accompanied by the young Prince Henry, was waiting to receive him. The two friends met with warm demonstrations of affection and traveled to London together in their old intimate association. Their only disagreement concerned the archdeaconry of Canterbury, which Becket had held for six months alongside the archbishopric; after several vain remonstrances, Henry compelled its resignation. They parted in undisturbed harmony, the archbishop again taking his little pupil with him.

The first joint undertaking of king and primate was the translation of Gilbert Foliot from Hereford to London. Although some later observers claimed Henry had devised the scheme to secure Gilbert's opposition to Becket, it is clear that no such motive yet existed and that the suggestion came from Thomas himself. Becket regarded Gilbert as the greatest living light of the English Church and expected to find in him a zealous fellow-worker and an effective helper in influencing the king. Since Gilbert had seemed marked out for the primacy and that had passed him by, it was almost a matter of necessity to place him in the next most dignified see, where both king and primate could benefit from his counsel at hand. The chapter of London, whom Gilbert had served faithfully during their late bishop's troubles and illness, eagerly elected him. His world-wide reputation and Henry's pleadings secured the Pope's consent, and Gilbert was enthroned in S. Paul's cathedral on April 28, 1163.

While the king spent the early summer subduing South-Wales, the primate attended a council held by Pope Alexander at Tours. From the day of his departure to that of his return, Becket's journey was a triumphal progress; Pope and cardinals welcomed him with such unprecedented honors that they had hardly been accorded even to S. Anselm. His request to the Pope for Anselm's canonization reveals the effect these papal courtesies produced on his mind, confirming his resolve to stand boldly upon his right of opposition to the secular power wherever it clashed with ecclesiastical theories of liberty and justice.

The first practical test of Becket's new resolve arose at a council held by Henry at Woodstock on July 31, after the king's return from Wales, on a question of purely temporal administration. Henry had devised a financial project to increase his own revenue at the expense of the sheriffs by transferring to the Crown the two-shilling annual payment per hide of land that customarily went to those officers—the so-called "sheriff's aid," which was essentially the Danegeld still appearing in treasury rolls, collected in full by sheriffs who paid only a fixed composition to the Crown. Becket rose to resist the change as an injustice to both the receivers and the payers, viewing it as an attempt to re-establish the Danegeld with all its odious associations, and considering it his constitutional duty as representative of the whole people to speak in their behalf. He declared that this money was not the king's and could not be given as revenue, though it would willingly be paid to officers who did their duty. Henry angrily demanded by what right Becket contradicted him, insisting the sums be enrolled among royal revenues. Becket swore in turn that not a penny would he surrender from his own lands or from any lands of the Church—an oath of defiance that constituted the sharpest constitutional defeat suffered by an English sovereign since the Norman conquest, delivered at the hands of his own familiar friend.

At the 1158 Woodstock council, Thomas Becket made his first stand against royal policy by opposing the reviled Danegeld tax, asserting the right of national representatives to block Crown financial demands for the first time since the Norman Conquest. His successful opposition forced Henry to abandon the tax and erase its legal tradition, marking a constitutional victory for the realm rather than a fight for ecclesiastical privilege, aligning Thomas with the line of patriot-archbishops led by Dunstan.

Following the Woodstock council, litigation over alienated lands of the archiepiscopal see dominated subsequent weeks, most notably the case of Earl Roger of Clare, who refused to perform homage for Tunbridge to Thomas, claiming he held the fief directly from the king via knight-service. Henry ordered a nationwide inquisition to determine lawful service obligations, which royal justiciars used to adjudge at least one major disputed archiepiscopal fief to the Crown alone, siding with Roger and the barons over Thomas.

A separate patronage dispute arose between Thomas and William of Eynesford, a royal tenant-in-chief, when Thomas excommunicated Eynesford without giving the king the required prior notice for penalties against Crown tenants. Henry demanded Thomas withdraw the sentence, but Thomas refused, stating the king had no authority to dictate spiritual binding or loosing, directly raising the core conflict over the limits of royal and ecclesiastical power that would drive their later rivalry.

Henry II had long planned sweeping legal reforms focused on curbing clerical crime, a priority he pursued now that he was freed from continental political entanglements. He had appointed Thomas as Archbishop of Canterbury hoping the former chancellor would help roll back the separation of temporal and ecclesiastical courts established by William the Conqueror, restoring the integrated governance of the William and Lanfranc era, with Thomas as his key partner in both temporal and spiritual administration of the realm. Thomas initially avoided contradicting Henry, responding to all his proposals only with the phrase "I will render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s."

The root of the clerical immunity conflict lay in William the Conqueror's separation of secular and ecclesiastical courts, intended to operate without mutual interference except when secular power enforced spiritual rulings. In practice, the two jurisdictions clashed constantly, and the growth of canon law, the investiture struggle, and the collapse of secular administration under Stephen left church courts handling vast swathes of criminal and civil business. As church courts only imposed spiritual penalties and claimed exclusive jurisdiction over all clergy and monastic vowed individuals, a large portion of the population was outside secular law, leading to widespread unpunished crime: royal justiciars recorded over 100 murders plus countless robberies in the first nine years of Henry's reign committed by or shielded by clerical status. Both secular reformers and spiritual party members acknowledged the scandal, but disagreed on solutions.

Henry first encountered the limits of ecclesiastical jurisdiction over clerical crime in summer 1158, when a Scarborough citizen complained that a local dean had extorted money from him via libel, an offense Henry had explicitly banned. The case was tried before the Archbishop of York, two bishops, and the York treasurer, with the dean found guilty; however, the spiritual judges ordered only restitution to the citizen and delivery of the dean to his metropolitan, refusing to allow the king any role in sentencing despite the justiciars' protests. Henry ordered an appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but was called abroad before it could be heard, and did not return to England until Thomas had been installed as archbishop.

A July case involving clerk Philip de Broi brought the jurisdictional conflict to a head: de Broi had been acquitted of murder in the bishop of Lincoln's court via compurgation, but Henry ordered him rearrested and tried before a royal justice-in-eyre for the same charge. De Broi refused to plead again, insulted the judge, and was brought to Thomas's court in Canterbury per Thomas's insistence. The homicide charge was quickly dismissed due to the prior ecclesiastical acquittal, and de Broi was sentenced only to public scourging and two years' income forfeiture for contempt of court. Henry declared the punishment insufficient, and further reports from the dioceses of Salisbury and Worcester showed royal justice was helpless against ecclesiastical courts under Thomas's protection. Thomas's subsequent harsh sentences—including branding a convicted clerk and ordering banishment for another—only increased Henry's irritation, as the king sought systemic power to punish clerical criminals in royal courts, not isolated harsh rulings.

Henry laid the full clerical jurisdiction dispute before a great council at Westminster on October 1, 1158. His first demand was that bishops confirm the royal customs observed in his grandfather Henry I's reign, which he clarified to include three requirements: stricter pursuit of criminal clerks, handing over convicted and degraded clerks to the secular arm for temporal punishment as laymen, and renunciation of all temporal punishments (exile, monastic imprisonment) which he deemed infringements on his royal authority over all people and territory in his realm. Thomas, after consulting his suffragans, put forward the "two swords" doctrine, declaring that ministers of the Heavenly King were exempt from judgment by earthly sovereigns, offering only to treat degraded clerks as laymen for any future offenses. This position closed all possibility of agreement with the king.

When Henry pressed the bishops to accept the royal customs unconditionally, they refused, with Thomas speaking for all to state they would accept the customs only "saving our order". Henry demanded they remove the qualifying phrase, but they stood firm. Enraged, Henry stormed out of the council hall without farewell, and departed London the next morning. Within the day, he summoned Thomas to surrender honours he still held from his time as chancellor, and shortly after removed the young King Henry from Thomas's care, marking a total breakdown in their previously close relationship.

After his wrath cooled from an earlier outburst, Henry invited Thomas to a conference near Northampton. The two met on horseback in a field outside the town, where high words passed between them: the king again demanded unconditional acceptance of the customs, and the archbishop again refused, and in this state of mutual determination they parted.

A private negotiation, reportedly suggested by the diplomatist-bishop of Lisieux, met with more success when Roger of York and Robert of Lincoln met the king at Gloucester and agreed to accept his customs, qualifying their assent only with a promise that he would exact nothing contrary to the rights of their order. Hilary of Chichester went further, undertaking not only to do the same but to try to persuade the primate himself—though in that errand he naturally failed.

Before Christmas, three commissioners arrived claiming to have been sent by the Pope to bid Thomas withdraw his opposition, asserting that Henry had assured the Pope he had no designs against the clergy or the Church and required nothing beyond a verbal assent for the saving of his regal dignity. Trusting their word, Thomas met Henry at Oxford and there promised to accept the customs and obey the king "loyally and in good faith."

Henry then demanded that, since Thomas had withstood him publicly, his submission should also be repeated publicly before an assembly of barons and clergy—an expectation Thomas swallowed without protest. The Christmas season passed over in peace, with Henry keeping the feast at Berkhampstead, one of the castles recently taken from the archbishop, while Thomas remained at Canterbury, where he had just been consecrating the great English scholar Robert of Melun—one of the three papal commissioners—to succeed Gilbert Foliot as bishop of Hereford.

On St. Hilary's day the proposed council gathered at the royal hunting-seat of Clarendon near Salisbury. Henry at once called upon the archbishop to fulfil the promise he had given at Oxford and publicly declare his assent to the customs.

As Thomas surveyed the mighty array of barons about the king and the ranks of his fellow-bishops, the realization struck him that this insistence on a public repetition of a scene he had thought final must conceal more than the supposed papal envoys had led him to expect, and that the "customs" might prove a terrible reality if he yielded another step. For two days he stood firm under the king's Angevin fury, while the bishops cowered "like a flock of sheep ready for slaughter" and ministers implored him to spare them the shame of laying hands on him. On the third day, persuaded by two Knights Templar who solemnly assured him on the honour of their order that a verbal submission would end the quarrel, he gave way for the Church's sake, and publicly promised to obey the king's laws and customs loyally and in good faith, making all the other bishops do likewise.

No sooner were the words spoken than Thomas learned how justified his suspicions had been. A question was raised as to what these customs were; discussion was postponed till the next morning, when the king ordered the oldest and wisest of the barons to make a recognition of the customs observed by his grandfather and bring up a written report for ratification. Nine days later that report was presented, comprising sixteen articles ever since known as the Constitutions of Clarendon.

Some of the sixteen articles merely re-affirmed in more stringent form the rules of William the Conqueror forbidding bishops and beneficed clerks to quit the realm or excommunicate the king's tenants-in-chief without his leave, and the terms on which the bishops' temporal position had been settled by the Anselm compromise. Another checked the abuse of appeals to Rome by requiring the king's assent before any appeal could be carried beyond the archbishop's court. The remainder dealt with disputes over presentations and advowsons (transferred to the king's court), the treatment of excommunicate persons, the limits of sanctuary as regards goods of those who had incurred forfeiture, the ordination of villeins, jurisdiction over clerks accused of crime, the protection of laymen cited before Church courts, and procedure in suits concerning the tenure of Church lands.

The discussion of the Constitutions occupied six days, and as each clause was read Thomas rose and set forth his reasons for opposing it. When the end was reached, Henry called upon him and all the bishops to affix their seals to the document; Thomas burst out, "Never, while there is a breath left in my body!" Obliged to content himself with the verbal submission already gained, the king handed a copy of the Constitutions to the primate, who took it, as he said, for a witness against its contrivers, and indignantly quitted the assembly. In an agony of remorse for his credulity he withdrew to Winchester and suspended himself from all priestly functions until he had received absolution from the Pope.

Meanwhile the political quarrel was embittered by a personal blow to Henry. His brother William—once intended by Henry for a kingdom in Ireland—had set his heart on a marriage with the widowed countess of Warren, but the archbishop had forbidden the match on grounds of affinity, and so put an end to the scheme. Baffled and indignant, William returned to Normandy to pour out his grievance to his mother and to the brotherhood at Bec; on 29 January 1164, one day before the dissolution of the council of Clarendon, he died at Rouen, and a Bec writer, supported by the words later spoken to Thomas at his murder, suggests that Henry came to regard the primate as little less than the murderer of his brother.

Both parties looked to the Pope for a settlement, but Alexander III, ill acquainted with the merits of the case and the characters of the disputants, and beset with political difficulties, could only strive in vain to hold the balance evenly. As the summer drew on, Thomas found himself gradually deserted: his best friend John of Salisbury had been taken from his side and was soon driven into exile by the king's jealousy; John of Canterbury had been removed abroad by the device of being made bishop of Poitiers. The old Canterbury–York dispute had broken out afresh with intensified bitterness between Roger of Pont-l'Evêque and his former comrade, while the king intrigued at the Papal court in Roger's behalf through Thomas's own archdeacon, Geoffrey Ridel. The bishops were as yet passive, but Gilbert Foliot, who strongly supported his own metropolitan of York, had already raised with Thomas a small but ominous question as to whether the profession of obedience once made to Theobald should be repeated to Theobald's successor by the same man as bishop of London.

John of Salisbury, separated from Thomas before the Council of Clarendon, wandered for months before finding shelter at the Abbey of Saint Remigius in Reims, where his friend Peter of Celle served as abbot; he remained there for the next seven years. He was consecrated as a bishop by the Pope at the Council of Tours, likely at Henry's behest to remove him from the kingdom due to his well-known, outspoken zeal for protecting clerical immunities.

Convinced he would meet the same fate as former Archbishop Anselm, Thomas spent the winter of 1163–1164 with allies working to secure him refuge in France. In early summer 1164, after being denied an audience with Henry, he made two secret escape attempts from Romney: the first was foiled by contrary winds, and the second saw sailors turn back after recognizing him and fearing royal retribution. A servant found Thomas exhausted, sitting alone outside the deserted Canterbury Palace like a beggar on his own doorstep. He then sought an audience with Henry at Woodstock; Henry, fearing Thomas's flight would trigger a Papal interdict on his lands and give Louis of France a strategic advantage in his ongoing war in Auvergne, received Thomas courteously but without their former warmth, making clear their friendship was over as his enemies closed in around him.

John the king's marshal filed a suit against Thomas over the manor of Pageham in Thomas's ecclesiastical court. Using a new legal procedure introduced by Henry that allowed suitors to transfer cases to a higher court if they swore they could not get justice in their lord's court (supported by two witnesses), John moved the case to the king's court. Thomas was cited to answer on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, but was too ill to attend; he sent legal essoiners to excuse his absence and a written protest noting John had perjured himself by swearing on a songbook rather than the Gospels to secure the transfer. Henry refused to accept Thomas's explanation and immediately ordered a great council to be held at Northampton.

The council, a near-complete gathering of all the realm's tenants-in-chief (both lay and spiritual), was summoned for Tuesday, 6 October 1164. Henry delayed hawking by the riverside until late the night before the scheduled start, so Thomas could not secure an audience until after Mass the following morning. Thomas asked for leave to travel to Rome to consult the Pope on his disputes with Roger of York and other matters of church and state interest, but Henry angrily silenced him and ordered him to prepare his defense for contempt of the royal summons over John the marshal's suit.

The contempt trial was held the day after the council formally opened. John the marshal did not appear, detained by the Michaelmas Exchequer session in London; the charge of failure of justice was dropped, but Thomas was sentenced to a £500 fine for contempt of court. Thomas was outraged at the flagrant illegality of the trial, which forced his own suffragan bishops to sit in judgement on their primate, but he submitted to the sentence to avoid further conflict over what had become a seemingly trivial monetary dispute.

Henry next demanded £300 from Thomas for revenues from the honours of Eye and Berkhampstead that Thomas had earned during the period he held the lands after resigning the chancellorship. Thomas protested he had spent far more than that sum repairing royal palaces and that the demand was unfair for being issued without warning, but he disdained to resist over a sum of money, and provided sureties for the required amount. The next morning, Henry added a demand for repayment of a loan he had made to Thomas during Thomas's time as chancellor; Thomas was deeply wounded by the demand, which made clear their former friendship was entirely over, but submitted again, though finding sureties for the larger sum was far more difficult.

Late on the Friday of the council, Henry issued his most crushing demand: Thomas was required to provide a full, itemized account of all revenues from vacant sees, baronies, and honours he had custody of as chancellor, i.e. a complete set of accounts for the entire chancellery during his tenure. The total sum demanded was eventually assessed at £30,000 (or 30,000 marks per some contemporary sources, with one account citing a total of 44,000 marks), an effectively unpayable sum.

After the demand for the chancellery accounts was issued, Thomas's courage broke and he threw himself at the king's feet in despair; all the bishops did the same, but Henry swore "by God's Eyes" that he would receive the full accounts, only granting a respite until the next day. Thomas consulted his suffragan bishops the following morning: Gilbert of London advised unconditional surrender, while Henry of Winchester (who had already confronted Henry the night prior) opposed this, suggesting a compromise offer of 2,000 marks, which Henry rejected. After lengthy deliberation, the bishops (following Henry of Winchester's suggestion) decided Thomas should refuse the demand on the grounds that he had been released from all secular obligations at his consecration as archbishop. The bishops delivered this answer to Henry, who refused to accept it, claiming the release had been granted without his royal authority, and only granted a further adjournment until Monday morning.

Late on Sunday night, the prolonged, cruel strain broke Thomas's highly strung nervous system; by the next morning he was lying in helpless agony, and secured another day's delay from the king with great difficulty. Before the new deadline, a warning reached Thomas that if he appeared in court he would face imprisonment or death, a rumour that quickly spread through the council. At dawn, all the bishops begged Thomas to abandon his futile resistance and throw himself on the king's mercy, but he refused, as he believed accepting the sentence would be both illegal and a betrayal of his Church.

Thomas forbade the bishops from taking any further part in his trial, gave them formal notice of an appeal to Rome if they proceeded, and ordered them to excommunicate any laymen who sat in judgement on him. The bishop of London immediately appealed this command. All the bishops departed except Henry of Winchester and Jocelyn of Salisbury, who lingered to offer a final word of pleading or sympathy before leaving Thomas alone.

After the remaining bishops departed, Thomas went to the chapel of the small Benedictine monastery of Saint Andrew just outside the walls of Northampton where he was lodging, and solemnly celebrated the Mass of Saint Stephen, whose introit reads "Princes have sat and spoken against me." When the mass ended, he mounted his horse and, no longer accompanied by a train of clerks and knights but by a crowd of poor, sympathetic onlookers, rode straight to the castle where the council was waiting for him.

This section details Becket’s solitary entrance to the royal hall, robed in full pontificals and carrying a crucifix as a defensive banner, shocking all assembled bishops and barons. Bishops urge him to set down the cross, which he refuses, prompting Gilbert Foliot to insult him as a fool. Becket is left with only William Fitz-Stephen and Herbert of Bosham as companions. The king, viewing the entrance as an unpardonable insult, declares Becket a traitor. As the court prepares to pass judgment, Becket encourages Herbert, then is forbidden from speaking to anyone by a royal marshal; Fitz-Stephen points to the crucifix to remind him of patience and prayer.

This section covers Henry’s ultimatum to Becket, delivered after the king consults with his inner council: Becket must withdraw his appeal to Rome, rescind his commands to bishops that violate the customs Henry swore to uphold, and submit to the royal court’s judgment on chancery accounts. Becket firmly refuses, enraging Henry, who orders the bishops to condemn Becket for contempt of royal jurisdiction. The bishops instead propose citing Becket before the Pope on charges of perjury at Clarendon and unjust demands on their obedience, which Henry accepts. Hilary of Chichester delivers a harsh formal appeal against Becket on the bishops’ behalf, and the bishops take seats opposite Becket to await the sentence of the lay barons.

Faced with the king’s demand that they condemn Becket for contempt of royal jurisdiction, the assembled bishops refuse to sit in judgment on their primate. The bishops of York, London, and Chichester propose instead citing Becket before the Pope on charges of perjury at Clarendon and unjust demands on their obedience, a plan Henry accepts. Hilary of Chichester delivers a formal, highly insulting appeal against Becket on behalf of all the bishops, who then take seats opposite Becket to await the sentence of the lay barons.

This section recounts the failed attempt to deliver the lay barons’ sentence against Becket. When Earl Robert of Leicester, the old justiciar, arrives to pronounce the judgment, Becket stands, raises his crucifix, forbids the sentence to be spoken, and solemnly appeals to the protection of the Pope. The justiciar and his companions withdraw in silence. Becket declares the hour has passed and leaves the hall, enduring a torrent of insults from courtiers, squires, and serving-men outside. Ralf de Broc and the king’s half-brother Count Hameline accuse him of treason; Becket retorts that if he were a knight, he would prove Hameline a liar. He mounts his horse with Herbert of Bosham, escapes the locked outer gate with help from a squire who finds the keys, and rides out to rapturous cheers from poor commoners who press to receive his blessing.

After his dramatic departure from the royal court, Becket suppes that night with local poor folk, as most of his household has abandoned him. He requests a safe-conduct from the king to travel to Canterbury via the bishops of Rochester, Hereford, and Worcester, but Henry defers his answer until the next day. Suspicious of the king’s intentions, Becket has his bed laid in the local church to give the impression he will spend the night in prayer, but at dead of night he flees with two canons of Sempringham and his faithful squire Roger of Brai, aided by a heavy rainstorm that covers their tracks. The king and his council do not discover his escape until the middle of the next day.

Immediately after Becket’s escape, Henry orders all ports watched to prevent Becket from leaving England, and dispatches a delegation of bishops led by the archbishop of York to the Pope to prosecute his appeal against Becket, while confiscating the temporalities of the Canterbury see pending the appeal’s outcome. The delegation sails from Dover on All Souls’ Day; that same night, after three weeks of wandering under the protection of the Sempringham brethren, Becket embarks from Sandwich in a small boat, landing in Flanders the next day. After two more weeks in hiding, he travels to Soissons, where the king of France welcomes him warmly despite an embassy from Henry urging him to refuse Becket entry, then continues on to Sens where the Pope is residing.

When Becket arrives in Sens, he finds the king’s bishop delegation has preceded him, but Pope Alexander III refuses to hear their arguments against him. Becket presents his copy of the Constitutions of Clarendon to the Pope; the documents are read, debated, and formally condemned in full papal consistory.

Following the papal condemnation of the Constitutions of Clarendon, Becket withdraws to the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny in Burgundy, a shelter secured for him by his ally Bishop John of Poitiers.

On Christmas Eve, Henry’s envoys report to him at Marlborough that their mission to persuade the Pope to rule against Becket has failed. The next day, S. Stephen’s Day, Henry confiscates all possessions of the Canterbury metropolitan see, Becket’s personal property, and the assets of all his clerical and lay dependents, and orders all of Becket’s family and associates, both clerical and secular, to be banished from England.

This scholarly note debates the nature of the tax dispute at the Council of Woodstock that contributed to Becket’s conflict with Henry II. The traditional view, supported by contemporary chronicles and historian Bishop Stubbs, holds the dispute concerned a general national levy, but the Icelandic *Thomas Saga* argues it was a special tax on Church lands, a continuation of the “ungeld” imposed by William Rufus. The note disputes the Saga’s claim, noting that Garnier’s account (the primary source for most other chroniclers) points to the Danegeld, a general tax confirmed by Pipe Roll records as levied regularly until 1163, and that the Saga’s authors had less direct knowledge of English royal taxation than Garnier, who collected materials firsthand in England. The note concludes the balance of evidence supports the traditional view of a general levy, rather than a Church-specific tax.

Note B focuses specifically on the Council of Clarendon, noting significant scholarly difficulty in confirming both the council's exact opening date and total length, due to inconsistent reports from medieval chroniclers and official documentary sources.

Multiple historical sources provide contradictory dates for the council's opening: Gervase of Canterbury records January 13, Ralph of Diceto records January 25, while the official copy of the Constitutions records the council's closing day as January 30, described as the fourth day before the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary.

Accounts of the council's duration are also disputed: Herbert of Bosham and Gervase of Canterbury note an adjournment of at least one night, while Gilbert Foliot's wording appears to describe the council's closing proceedings, which some interpret as indicating a total duration of only three days, though this reading is contested.

A proposed reconciliation of the conflicting date and duration accounts suggests the council first convened on January 13, with three days of initial discussion before Thomas Becket yielded, followed by a delay while a royal commission prepared a written report of the kingdom's customary laws, which was presented on January 25, with six further days of discussion over the sixteen constitutions ending on January 30, aligning with the official recorded closing date.

With Becket's flight to France, the conflict between the king and archbishop entered a new phase where its original core issue of clerical rights was largely sidelined, and the dispute became a pawn in wider European political struggles. In England, Henry faced no pushback to enforcing the Constitutions of Clarendon, followed a year later by an Assize that laid the groundwork for England's later criminal procedure system, with legal and judicial reform proceeding almost uninterrupted for the next five years despite the ongoing royal-primate conflict.

After Becket's departure from England, Henry II implemented the Constitutions of Clarendon without opposition, then issued a follow-up Assize a year later that established the foundation of England's future criminal procedure system. Legal and judicial reform continued almost without break for the next five years, remaining totally unaffected by the ongoing strife between the king and the archbishop.

The original principle of clerical immunities at the heart of the Becket-Henry conflict failed to resonate with the general English public or even most of the clergy, with popular sentiment instead focused entirely on the personal dimension of the quarrel. Becket, already a popular public figure, was framed as a victim of regal tyranny by the high-handed proceedings of the Northampton council, and the harsh proscriptions of people even remotely connected to him further amplified public sympathy for his perceived wrongs, though this support was directed at the individual rather than the cause he championed.

Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, sympathized with Becket's underlying goal of protecting clerical rights but sharply criticized his methods as reckless and self-defeating. Foliot argued that Becket had betrayed the cause by abandoning the passive resistance strategy adopted by bishops at Westminster that had left them unassailable, instead staking everything on the king's good faith at the Oxford meeting and Clarendon council, then acting rashly by fleeing, shifting positions at Northampton, insulting the king by arriving at council with a cross, and making an undignified departure from England, leaving his suffragans to bear the brunt of the king's anger.

For twenty years before Becket became archbishop, Gilbert Foliot was one of the most respected figures in the English Church reform movement, trained in Cluniac traditions of ecclesiastical authority and providing steady support to Archbishop Theobald's reform efforts. Unlike Henry of Winchester, Foliot was never derailed by rashness or inconsistency, and he denied ever seeking the archbishopric, with his opposition to Becket's election fully consistent with his known views and long record of reform work.

Foliot's opposition to Becket's election as archbishop was entirely aligned with his established positions and views. He initially cooperated with Becket after his election, but their partnership broke down over their differing approaches to the question of clerical immunities: while Becket saw the issue as an all-consuming matter of life and death, Foliot viewed it as a minor administrative detail that threatened far more important, wide-reaching church and state interests if pursued recklessly.

At the council of Northampton, Foliot took a firm moderate position on the Constitutions of Clarendon: he held that once the customary laws were accepted, the true Churchman's duty was to obey them and work for their peaceful abolition over time, rather than resist them and risk provoking the king into irreversible hostility to the Church. He argued that royal hostility would have catastrophic consequences, including widening the existing schism in western Christendom and severing ties between the English Church and its continental counterparts that had been carefully built by Theobald, Pope Eugene, and Pope Adrian.

Foliot and other moderate church leaders feared that the prolonged Becket-Henry conflict would trigger a full schism in western Christendom, with the Angevin dominions aligning with the Emperor and the anti-Pope, cutting the English Church off from its continental sisters. This risk of schism was a core driver of Foliot's push for compromise and his rejection of Becket's uncompromising stance.

Pope Alexander III faced an exceptionally difficult position in the Becket dispute, as the head of a Church in exile, dependent on fickle sovereign support, and caught between the warring Emperor and anti-Pope, and the Angevin kingdom whose loyalty was tenuous. He had little understanding of English or Angevin politics, no close confidant to mediate between the parties, and was equally fearful of both Henry and Becket, making him eager to avoid direct involvement in the quarrel.

Alexander III adopted an inconsistent, contradictory policy in the Becket dispute, driven by his impossible position: he could not withhold support from Becket as a defender of church privileges, but could not risk driving Henry into schism by fully backing Becket's demands. He was open to compromise efforts led by Foliot and others, but Becket's total refusal to accept any middle ground left Alexander with no viable path, leading to a policy of tergiversation that frustrated both Henry and Becket.

Becket was entirely single-minded in his demands, viewing the conflict as a binary matter of right and wrong with no room for compromise, expediency, or consideration of broader consequences. He rejected all of Foliot's arguments for temporary submission to avoid schism, and when he briefly offered to resign the archbishopric out of self-doubt after his Clarendon experience, Alexander refused to accept his resignation, recognizing that Becket was the Church's key champion. Becket spent six years laboring tirelessly to pressure every available party—including his own suffragans, monastic orders, the Pope, cardinals, the Empress Matilda, and the king of France—to force Henry into full surrender to his demands.

King Louis VII of France saw Becket's flight as a valuable tool to undermine his rival Henry II's continental power, while maintaining a public show of disinterested support for the Church. He allowed Becket to reside at the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny rather than at the French court, giving him a plausible excuse to deny Henry's complaints that he was harboring a "traitor", while his public sympathy for Becket's cause boosted his own reputation as a defender of the Church and highlighted Henry's supposed hostility to the Church. Louis carefully manipulated the dispute to keep the rift open whenever it served his political interests, while presenting himself as a neutral mediator.

Henry adopted a cautious, uncompromising stance in the Becket conflict, provoked by his former friend's personal opposition into defending his regal dignity more firmly than he otherwise would have. Though he might have accepted a compromise, Becket's obstinacy forced Henry into a rigid, determined position. Concerned about Becket's presence in France, Henry crossed back to Normandy in early 1165, spent Lent attempting to arrange a triple conference with the French king and the Pope but refused to allow Becket to attend; Becket urged the Pope not to meet Henry without him, and Pope Alexander declined to dictate who could join his papal suite before returning to Rome. Henry returned to England after Easter.

Following the death of antipope Victor, Emperor Frederick I sought to leverage Henry's dispute with the Church to support the schismatic cause of new antipope Paschal III. A German embassy led by Archbishop-elect Reginald of Cologne, a staunch imperial privilege champion aligned with the schismatic party, arrived in Rouen with alliance proposals secured by two marriages: Henry's eldest daughter Matilda to Frederick's cousin Duke Henry of Saxony, and Henry's second daughter to Frederick's son. Henry sent Reginald to England, where Queen regent Eleanor convened a Westminster council to formally promise Matilda's hand to the Duke of Saxony. Earl Robert of Leicester refused to grant peace to the schismatic Reginald and had his altars dismantled, preventing Henry from a public commitment to the anti-pope. Despite this, Henry sent two clerks to the Würzburg council who abjured Pope Alexander and acknowledged Paschal, likely swearing to this in Henry's name, a move Reginald boasted would lead all of Henry's bishops to do the same.

An imminent schism crisis was averted when Henry abruptly fled back to England and launched a summer Welsh war, which kept him out of reach of both the Emperor's solicitations and the Pope's remonstrances, and gave him a pretext to indefinitely delay finalizing the alliance with the schismatic party. The alliance was ultimately not worth the cost: Pope Alexander had regained his throne, Becket was being urged to seek French royal protection, Louis VII was triumphant after the birth of his long-desired son, and the Angevin territories governed by Eleanor in Henry's absence were rife with suppressed disaffection and surrounded by threatening or scheming enemies.

In Lent 1166, Henry hurried back to Normandy to hold a conference with Louis VII, with the goal of freeing his hands to address the large, complex work of his succession and territorial plans.

At age 33, Henry was developing an elaborate scheme for his children's futures and the distribution of his territories: his eldest son Henry would be elected joint king of England and inherit Normandy and Anjou; Aquitaine would be settled on Richard as Eleanor's heir; Henry sought the Duchy of Brittany for Geoffrey. To secure Brittany, Henry had installed Conan IV as duke in 1158, who had one daughter whose hand and the duchy's reversion Henry wanted for Geoffrey. This required approval from Conan, Louis VII, and resistant Breton barons who resented Norman rule, with Louis encouraging their opposition. Henry's 1166, 1167, and 1168 campaigns broke Breton resistance, so in May 1169 Geoffrey was sent to Brittany to receive homage as heir to the duchy; Henry joined him three months later, and they held a triumphant joint court at Nantes at Christmas, receiving homage and fealty across the duchy.

Subduing Brittany proved easier than maintaining control of Aquitaine: the semi-independent southern princes scorned Henry as a king from beyond the Loire and across the sea. In November 1166, Henry was forced to summon the Aquitainian princes to a conference at Chinon, and relieved Eleanor of governance duties by sending her to England for Christmas 1166, taking her place at Poitiers himself. His foes revived the long-running Toulouse dispute, a meeting with Count Raymond at Grandmont and an attempt to assert ducal authority over the Count of Auvergne caused a fresh rupture with Louis VII. In spring 1168, discontented Aquitaine barons, confident of French royal support, launched an open revolt. Henry left negotiations with Louis to suppress the revolt, then Earl Patrick of Salisbury, whom he had appointed to assist Eleanor in governing the duchy, was murdered by a rebel leader. Eleanor was left to hold Poitou alone while Henry fought the Bretons, countered threatening ecclesiastical censures, and unsuccessfully tried to pacify Louis, who openly positioned himself as the champion of all of Henry's disaffected vassals (Breton, Poitevin, Scottish, Welsh) as well as the exiled Becket.

Henry worked to strengthen his political position via dynastic marriage alliances in multiple regions: his eldest daughter Matilda married Duke Henry of Saxony in early 1168; two years prior, one of Matilda's sisters had been half-promised to the Marquis of Montferrat's son in exchange for his support with the Pope; a plan for his second daughter Eleanor to marry the King of Castile was realized in 1169; the infant Jane (nearly four years old) was betrothed to the boy-king William of Sicily. Henry also sought the hand of Adela of France, Louis VII's younger daughter, for his son Richard as security for the investiture of Aquitaine. He simultaneously made overtures to the Emperor's Italian rivals, the rising Lombard commonwealths and Bologna jurisconsults, while Frederick attempted to regain Henry's alliance via an embassy led by his cousin, Henry's new son-in-law the Duke of Saxony.

Henry was forced to navigate all these political, ecclesiastical, and diplomatic challenges almost single-handedly, as nearly all the core counselors from his early reign had died: Arnulf of Lisieux and Richard de Lucy were almost the only survivors. He had lost his constable Henry of Essex months before the Woodstock council that sparked his conflict with Becket: Essex was accused of high treason six years earlier for deliberately dropping the royal standard and falsely proclaiming Henry's death at the Battle of Consilt. Though Henry had continued to trust Essex and appointed him to high commands in the Toulouse war and other campaigns, the charge required an ordeal of battle at Reading, where Essex was defeated by his accuser's lance. Henry saved his life by having local monks carry his body off the field as if for burial, then allowed him to remain as a monk at the abbey, while Essex's property was confiscated by the Crown and his services lost to the state. Henry's mother died in autumn 1167, and his old friend and advisor Earl Robert of Leicester died in 1168. Attempts were even made to separate Henry from Eleanor to undermine his claims to Aquitaine, while his former most successful diplomatic agent had become a formidable tool for his enemies.

Henry II's 1169 Submission to Louis VII In January 1169, at Montmirail on the feast of Epiphany, Henry II renewed his homage to Louis VII, made full submission, and promised compensation to the Breton and Poitevin barons for losses in the recent wars. The following day, young Henry performed homage to Louis for Anjou, Maine, and apparently Britanny (which his brother Geoffrey was to hold under him), while Richard did homage for Aquitaine and received its investiture along with a promise of Adela's hand. Three weeks later, young Henry, now count of Anjou, officiated as seneschal to the French king in Paris, then repeated his homage to Louis's heir and received Geoffrey's homage for Britanny. The king himself retained Touraine on the old terms of homage to Theobald of Blois.

Dispute Over Heir Coronation Rights Although Henry had long planned the coronation of his heir, the dispute with Thomas Becket had made it impossible to carry out. The constitutional and ecclesiastical tradition that only the archbishop of Canterbury could lawfully crown a king of England was so deeply rooted that even Henry I had set it aside only under absolute necessity, and Henry II could not risk such an innovation for his son. With the prospect of reconciliation with the primate appearing further off than ever, the crowning of the heir remained the one element lacking in the completion of his political arrangements.

Becket's Pontigny Exile and Correspondence with Henry II On entering Pontigny, Thomas initially devoted himself to severe study, devotion, and self-discipline, secretly assuming the habit of the Cistercians and nearly ruining his health through excessive abstinence. Despite John of Salisbury's warnings that such spiritual pursuits were alone worthy of a true confessor, Thomas kept his friends busy in his cause while collecting books for his cathedral library and gathering privileges from the Roman archives. Restrained by Pope Alexander from direct action against the king until Easter 1166, Thomas then wrote to Henry requesting a personal interview; when rebuffed, he sent a torrent of remonstrances, and finally, in late May, a barefooted monk delivered a third letter at Chinon warning Henry of "Divine vengeance" unless he restored the Church's privileges. The Empress Matilda had already transmitted Thomas's explicit threat that "shortly, yea, very shortly" the "sword of the Spirit" would be drawn against his dominions.

Henry II and English Bishops' Appeals to the Pope Provoked and fearing interdict and excommunication, Henry tearfully demanded help from the bishops around him, calling them traitors for not ridding him of Becket. Arnulf of Lisieux counseled an appeal to the Pope as a way to forestall the primate's censures, a desperate remedy that, as John of Salisbury noted, confirmed the very right of appeal Henry wished to abolish. After the appeal was filed, messengers were sent to close English ports and sever communication with Thomas and the Pope, while the bishops of Lisieux and Séez traveled to Pontigny to bid the primate wait until the octave of Easter 1167. The appeal was too late to prevent Thomas's next actions.

Becket's Soissons-Vézelay Pilgrimage and Excommunications Returning from Chinon, Thomas hurried to Soissons, where he kept solemn vigil at the shrines of the Blessed Virgin, S. Gregory the Great, and S. Drausius, spending the night of Ascension-day before the last. On Whitsun-eve he reached Vézelay, crowded with pilgrims, and after celebrating High Mass and preaching, he solemnly anathematized the royal customs and excommunicated by name seven persons: John of Oxford and Richard of Ilchester (the king's envoys to the Emperor), Jocelyn de Bailleul, justiciar Richard de Lucy, Ralf de Broc, Hugh of S. Clare, and Thomas Fitz-Bernard. Though Thomas had intended to excommunicate Henry himself, he learned en route that the king was dangerously ill, and so contented himself with a public solemn warning addressed to him by name.

Becket's Papal Legatine Commission and Exile at Sens On hearing of Thomas's excommunications, Henry ordered Richard de Lucy to convene the English bishops and clergy into a general appeal against their primate. The assembly, held in London at midsummer, was driven mainly by Gilbert of London and Jocelyn of Salisbury, with Gilbert clearly the author of the appeal letters; Thomas replied with a long sarcastic letter directed at Gilbert personally. The dispute escalated at the opening of the next year, when a papal brief was thrust into Gilbert's hands before his high altar, granting Thomas a legatine commission for all England and ordering the bishops to obey him and surrender confiscated church properties. Gilbert pleaded in vain with Henry for permission to comply, and Henry, absorbed in the Breton campaign, threatened to expel all Cistercians from his dominions if Thomas were not expelled from Pontigny. Forced to leave Pontigny on S. Martin's day 1166, Thomas took refuge as the guest of Louis VII in the abbey of S. Columba at Sens.

Henry II, recognizing his blunder, dispatched an embassy to Pope Alexander requesting a legatine commission to settle his dispute with Thomas Becket. The excommunicate John of Oxford served as one of the envoys and returned triumphantly, boasting that the Pope had absolved him and that two cardinals—William and Otto, the latter a determined opponent of Thomas—were coming with full powers to adjudicate the case without appeal. The first boast proved true, but the Pope instructed his envoys only to arbitrate if possible.

The papal legates did not reach Normandy until autumn 1167. Thomas Becket came to meet them on the French border on November 18, but the mediation effort collapsed when the king dismissed the legates at Argentan with an exclamation of disappointment and disgust at the failure of the mission, declaring he never wished to set eyes upon a cardinal again.

When Thomas Becket met the papal legates on the French border in November 1167, he refused to enter into any negotiations until the property of the metropolitan see of Canterbury was fully restored to him. This precondition blocked any meaningful mediation from the outset.

Five English bishops whom Henry had summoned to advise him renewed their earlier appeal to the Pope, since its original term had expired six months previously. Because the legates insisted that Thomas respect this renewed appeal, another full year of delay was gained in the dispute, prolonging the standoff between king and primate.

At the treaty between the two kings at Montmirail at Epiphany 1169, Thomas Becket, protected by Louis VII, suddenly entered the royal presence and fell at Henry's feet, offering to place himself unreservedly in the king's hands. All parties believed the struggle was over, until Thomas added the words "Saving God's honour and my order"—the same qualification that had enraged Henry at Oxford and Clarendon—causing the king to burst into fury and the meeting to break up in confusion.

Three months after Montmirail, on Palm Sunday from the high altar of Clairvaux, Thomas excommunicated ten of his opponents, with Gilbert Foliot named first. Gilbert had already appealed against the sentence before it was uttered. Henry set guards at every seaport to intercept messengers, but on Ascension Day the layman Berengar succeeded in delivering Thomas's letter of excommunication to Gilbert during High Mass at his cathedral. On that same day Thomas issued another series of excommunications.

Gilbert Foliot, driven to extremity, renewed his appeal two days later, adding a formal refusal to acknowledge Canterbury's metropolitan jurisdiction and reportedly claiming the metropolitical dignity for his own see as an ancient right. A storm of protest arose from the archbishop's party, and the terrified Pope sent another pair of envoys who, as usual, failed to agree with anyone and left the case exactly where they had found it.

By late 1169 both king and primate were weary of the quarrel and of fruitless mediation. At a personal interview at Montmartre in November, the archbishop's unconditional restoration was all but decided. Thomas rashly attempted to hasten the settlement by threatening an interdict, which stung Henry into a far rashness: the coronation of his eldest son in England, decisively overriding Canterbury's exclusive privileges.

Despite Thomas's threatened interdict, the Pope's ratification of it, and prohibitions to all English bishops, Henry II pressed ahead with the coronation. Using a papal brief obtained three years earlier under duress authorizing the archbishop of York to act in default of the primate, Henry had young Henry crowned and anointed at Westminster on Sunday, June 14, 1170. Gilbert of London, having extorted conditional absolution from Archbishop Rotrou of Rouen, stood openly at the ceremony. Thomas entrusted the papal prohibition to a nun, Idonea, who delivered it to Roger of York the day before the coronation.

After the coronation, Louis VII was incensed that his daughter's husband had been crowned without her and threatened war, while Thomas overwhelmed the Pope with demands for vengeance. Henry, recognizing he must make peace at any price, held a conference with Louis near Fréteval two days before the feast of S. Mary Magdalene and was reconciled with him, jesting as they parted that "that rascal of yours" (Thomas) would also have his peace the next day.

On the morning of S. Mary Magdalene's day, Henry met Thomas in the "Traitor's Meadow" near Fréteval. They rode apart together for so long that their followers' patience was nearly exhausted, until Thomas dismounted and threw himself at the king's feet. Henry sprang from his horse, raised the archbishop, held his stirrup while he remounted, and rode back to announce that peace was made on terms amounting to a complete mutual amnesty and a return to the pre-quarrel status quo.

Henry had no sooner returned to Normandy than he fell sick almost to death. Upon his recovery he undertook a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady at Rocamadour in the Quercy. It was not until October that Thomas saw him again at Tours, on his way to a conference with Count Theobald of Blois at Amboise.

At Amboise, a letter from Henry to his son announcing the reconciliation and bidding him enforce the restoration of the archiepiscopal estates was drawn up in Thomas's presence and sent to England by two of his clerks, who presented it at Westminster on October 5. The restoration was not effected until Martinmas, however, and consisted of little more than empty garners and ruined houses. Further meetings at Chaumont and a planned meeting at Rouen were frustrated by fresh complications with the king of France, and Henry delegated the archbishop of Rouen and the dean of Salisbury to escort Thomas instead.

The duty of escorting Thomas Becket back to England devolved solely upon the dean of Salisbury, who was none other than Thomas's old opponent John of Oxford. The primate was deeply hurt at being sent to his see under the protection of a man who, as Thomas said, ought to have been thankful for the privilege of travelling in his suite. Despite forebodings and warnings from the king of France down to the pilot of his ship, Thomas hastened to depart, weary of life and persuaded he was going to his death, upheld only by Herbert of Bosham.

Plots Against Becket's Life The author dismisses the wild accusations made by Becket's biographers that Henry II was involved in plots against the archbishop's life. While a counsellor's remark about keeping Becket in England rather than abroad was quoted as suspicious, the words were simply true in literal terms: the quarrel mattered little on English ground, but exile had made the primate dangerous. Henry's worst blunder, the author argues, was driving Thomas into France, and he was wholly incapable of contemplating the infinitely greater blunder of murder. Roger of York and Gilbert of London, though sharing the king's dread of the archbishop, were likewise not criminal; the truly dangerous men were those like Ralf de Broc—a ruffian adventurer who had fattened on the archbishop's estates during his exile and was prepared to commit any crime to keep his ill-gotten gains.

Becket's Return to England With Becket known to be carrying Papal letters suspending the bishops who had crowned the young king and reinstating excommunications, Roger of York, Gilbert of London, and Jocelyn of Salisbury hurried to Canterbury intending to follow Thomas to Normandy. Ralf de Broc, Reginald de Warren, and Gervase of Cornhill planned to intercept him at landing, search his baggage, and seize the Papal letters. Thomas, however, was warned and sent the letters ahead; the three prelates thus read their condemnation before their judge even left Gaul. The next day Thomas sailed from Wissant and on the morning of December 1 landed at Sandwich. His enemies were ready to receive him, but halted at the sight of John of Oxford, who in the king's name forbade any interference. Amid rapturous popular greetings, Thomas rode to Canterbury, where royal officials demanded the absolution of the suspended bishops. He at first refused to annul a Papal sentence, but later offered to risk doing so if the culprits would abjure their errors in the form prescribed by the Church.

The Bishops' Appeal Gilbert and Jocelyn were inclined to accept Thomas's conditional offer of absolution, but Roger of York refused, and the three bishops ended by dispatching Geoffrey Ridel to enlist the sympathies of the young king while they themselves crossed to Normandy to carry their protest to Henry. Meanwhile, the young king was preparing to hold his Christmas court at Winchester, and when Thomas proposed to join it, he was stopped in London by a peremptory command to return to Canterbury and mind his own business. Thomas obeyed under protest and on Christmas Day again excommunicated the De Brocs and their fellow-robbers.

The King's Fatal Words The elder king was keeping Christmas at his hunting-seat of Bures near Bayeux, where the three bishops threw themselves at his feet. Roger of York spoke in the name of all and presented the Papal letters. The courtiers burst into a confused storm of indignation, but none had any counsel to offer. In his impatience and disappointment, Henry uttered the fatal words he was to rue all his life: "What a parcel of fools and dastards have I nourished in my house, that none of them can be found to avenge me of this one upstart clerk!"

The Four Knights' Conspiracy The words were hardly more than Henry had used at Chinon four years before, but they now fell upon other ears. Four knights—Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy, Reginald Fitz-Urse, and Richard le Breton—took them as a warrant for the primate's death. That night, Christmas-eve, they vowed to slay him no matter how or where. Leaving the court in secret and crossing to England by different routes, they met again at Saltwood—a castle Becket had been vainly trying to recover from Ralf de Broc, and where Ralf himself dwelt among his kinsfolk and dependents. There the final plot was laid.

The Murder of Thomas Becket On the evening of December 29, after a scene in his own hall scarcely less disgraceful than the last scene in the king's hall at Northampton, the primate of all England was butchered at the altar's foot in his own cathedral church.

The News at the Norman Court The ill news travelled fast and fell like a thunderbolt upon the Norman court still gathered around the king at Argentan, whither the assembly had adjourned after the Christmas feast at Bures. Henry stood for a moment speechless with horror, then burst into a frenzy of despair, shutting himself up in his rooms, refusing to eat, drink, or see anyone. Within a few days, all Christendom was ringing with execration of the murder and clamouring for vengeance upon the king, universally regarded as its instigator. The Pope ordered an interdict upon Henry's continental dominions, excommunicated the murderers and all who gave them aid, shelter, or support, and was only restrained from a like sentence against the king himself by a promise that Henry would make compurgation and submit to penance.

Papal Retribution and Henry's Flight Two cardinal-legates charged with enforcing the papal decrees were at once dispatched to Normandy, but when they arrived, Henry was out of their reach. The death of Duke Conan in February had thrown Britanny completely into Henry's hands, and after securing Geoffrey's final establishment as duke, the king called a council at Argentan and announced that he was going to Ireland. He quitted Normandy just as the legates reached it, leaving strict orders that the ports should be closed to all clerks and papal envoys. Landing at Portsmouth in the first days of August, he hurried to Winchester for a last interview with the dying Bishop Henry, closed the English ports as he had closed those of Normandy, and then plunged into the depths of South Wales, sailing from Milford Haven on October 16 for Waterford.

The Irish Expedition The elements favoured Henry's escape: for five months a persistent contrary wind hindered all communication to Ireland from any part of his dominions. The bishops and ministers were left to fight their own battles and make their own peace with the legates in Normandy until May 1172, when the king suddenly reappeared to claim papal absolution. He offered in return not only his own spiritual obedience and that of his English and continental realms, but also that of Ireland, which he had secured for Rome as her share in the spoils of a conquest won with Adrian's bull in his hand.

Reconciliation at Avranches The bargain was soon struck. On Sunday May 21, Henry met the legates at Avranches, made his purgation for the primate's death, promised the required expiation, and abjured his obnoxious "customs," his eldest son joining in the abjuration. To pacify Louis, young Henry and Margaret were sent oversea with the archbishop of Rouen and by him crowned together at Winchester on August 27. The Norman primate then returned to join a great council of the Norman clergy assembled at Avranches to witness, two days before Michaelmas, a public repetition of their sovereign's purgation and his final absolution by the legates.

The Norse settlements of the ninth century form the origin of the relations between England and Ireland that led to Henry II's invasion. Earlier intercourse between the two islands had been peaceful, ending when Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne returned to Iona after Whitby in 664. From then until the ninth century, Ireland sank into isolation owing to her geographical position. The fame of Ireland's material wealth and the treasures of her religious houses drew the "white strangers" from the Norwegian fiords. Thorgils's settlement in Ulster and fellow-wiking settlements along the eastern and southern coasts served as a base for operations against Britain, though the Irish eventually freed Ulster after Thorgils's death.

The wiking invasions proved far more disastrous for Ireland than for Britain or Gaul. Cut off by geography, the Irish had never advanced beyond the primitive tribal mode of life common to all Aryan peoples at the dawn of history. In the time of Ecgberht and Charles the Great, Ireland remained divided into separate septs bound only by community of blood, with patriarchal institutions unaffected by external influences. The provincial kings of Ulster, Connaught, Leinster, and Munster were merely foremost chieftains among tribal groups, while the Ard-Righ's supremacy was an honorary pre-eminence carrying little effective authority. Tara was in ruins, and a tribal under-king had ousted the monarch from Meath. When the Norse attack came, Ireland lacked any unifying centre comparable to the Karolingian sovereigns of Gaul or the house of Ecgberht in England. The assault crushed the possibility of national development, and the destruction of Ireland's religious and cultural centres—Bangor, Kildare, Clonmacnoise, Armagh—was unmitigated by any equivalent of Wessex and Ælfred.

By the middle of the ninth century, the wikings were firmly established at four points on the Irish coast: Dublin, Waterford, Cork, and Limerick. While Irish fighting succeeded in limiting wiking expansion, these coastal strongholds held their ground.

Under the leadership of Olaf the Fair, Dublin became the head of a confederacy that served as the launching point for the Danish conquests in England. For a hundred years afterward, throughout the struggle of the house of Ælfred to recover the Danelaw, the support given by the Ostmen of Ireland to their brethren across the channel was simultaneously the main strength of the Northumbrian Danes and a standing difficulty for the English kings.

The concentration of wiking forces upon Britain gave the Irish an advantage in checking the spread of settlements in their own country, and the failure of Scandinavian dominion in Britain destroyed any chance of a Scandinavian conquest of Ireland. The Ostmen never secured such a footing in Ireland as Hrolf's followers gained in Frankland: their presence received no sanction from any Ard-Righ, and they formed not a compact territorial body but scattered groups along the coast holding their ground by hard fighting. The long struggle ended in mutual defeat. The Irish kings of Munster established overlordship over Limerick and Waterford, and in 989 Malachi II. extracted the submission of the Dublin Ostmen after nine years of fighting.

Malachi II.'s campaign against the Ostmen of Dublin culminated in a blockade that starved the city into surrender, with a yearly tribute promised to Malachi and his successors. In 995 Malachi captured "the ring of Tomar and the sword of Carl," two heathen relics treasured as sacred emblems of sovereignty by the Ostmen. A renewal of the strife in 999 or 1000 ended in a rout of the Ostmen and a great slaughter of their leaders, with Dublin sacked and burned by the victorious Irish.

Malachi's triumph cost the disruption of the monarchy. He was displaced by Brian Boroimhe of the rival Munster house, whose career of conquest ended with his death at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, fighting against the men of Leinster and the Ostmen. When Malachi resumed the kingship and died in 1022, the downfall of the Irish monarchy was complete. The tradition linking it to the house of Niall had been shattered by Brian's successes, and Brian had not lived to consolidate power in his own line. Thereafter the Scandinavian colonies merely added another element to the strife of Irish chieftains and to the rivalry between the O'Briens of Munster and the O'Neills of Ulster for a shadowy supremacy.

At the close of the tenth century the Ostmen remained for the most part heathens, even the Irish Church having failed to convert these pagans seated at her door, despite her earlier success in winning half England and half Europe to the Faith. The Ostmen were thus aliens from whatever culture or civilization remained in the nation around them, and their social and political system proved powerless to expel or absorb them.

The Ostmen's relations with England altered as the English Danelaw submitted to Eadred, bringing the Irish Danelaw into alliance. The Ostmen sought protection from English kings against Irish princes, evidenced by Eadgar's coinage in Dublin. During the long peace from Cnut's triumph until the Norman coming, new ties sprang up through trade: the coastal towns of the Irish Danelaw flourished through commerce with northern Europe, especially with Bristol and Chester. This traffic, though it dealt chiefly in English slaves sold to Irish neighbours or distant traders, fostered closer relations between Ostmen and Englishmen. The political alliance of Eadgar's day was carefully renewed under Godwine, demonstrated by Dermot Mac-Maelnambo's sheltering of Harold and Leofwine in 1151.

The Ostmen's conversion to Christianity, completed in the early years of the eleventh century, was probably due to intercourse with Christianized English brethren rather than Irish clergy, whose speech was strange to them. About 1040 the Ostmen of Dublin established a bishopric, with Donatus as their first bishop, probably Irish by consecration if not by birth. After Donatus's death in 1074, the Ostmen turned toward Canterbury, where Lanfranc was asserting metropolitan authority over all the British isles and where Norman vigour was renewing the English Church. With the consent of their king Godred, the Ostmen chose Patrick as bishop and sent him to be consecrated by Lanfranc, who welcomed the opportunity to extend Canterbury's authority. For the next seventy-eight years the bishops of Dublin were suffragans not of Armagh but of Canterbury. In 1096 the Ostmen of Waterford also chose a bishop, Malchus, an Irishman or Ostman by birth and a monk of Winchester, consecrated by Anselm and professing obedience to him as metropolitan.

Through these Irish suffragans, the archbishops of Canterbury cultivated friendship with the Irish princes who won the Ostmen's acknowledgement of overlordship. The Ostmen's submission was the real test of sovereignty in the struggles of provincial kings for the supreme monarchy. The power wielded by Dermot Mac-Maelnambo passed after his death first to Terence O'Brien of Munster, a grandson of Brian Boroimhe, and then to his son Murtogh, both of whom corresponded with Lanfranc and Anselm and were recognized as patrons by the Ostmen, enabling the O'Briens to hold ground against Donnell O'Lochlainn of western Ulster. After Murtogh's death in 1119, Terence O'Conor of Connaught won the Dublin Ostmen's submission in 1120 and celebrated the fair of Telltown, becoming undisputed monarch after Donnell's death in 1121. A joint rising of Ostmen and Leinstermen in 1127 threw off his yoke, but Murtogh O'Lochlainn rebuilt Ulster power until in 1150 all provincial kings gave him hostages. The Ostmen, acting independently, briefly held the balance between northern and southern Ireland, but in 1154 accepted Murtogh as their king, leaving him sole monarch two years later upon Terence O'Conor's death.

The Irish Church's Primitive Condition The anarchy of the Irish state was mirrored in the disorganization of its Church. The Irish Church had never experienced the unifying discipline of a Theodore, leaving its diocesan and parochial system undeveloped and scarcely advanced beyond the primitive missionary stage. Six centuries after St. Patrick's death, the Irish clergy remained essentially a band of mission-priests, scattered across the country or gathered in vast monastic houses like Bangor, Durrow, and Clonmacnoise. Bishops were for the most part merely heads of ever-shifting mission-stations, with no fixed number, little ecclesiastical authority, and few privileges beyond the power of ordination. At the apex stood the archbishop of Armagh as successor and representative of St. Patrick, but since the death of Archbishop Maelbrigid in 927, the see of Armagh had been seized by a family of local chieftains who occupied its estate, usurped its revenues, and handed on the title from father to son, being bishops only in name. The lower clergy suffered likewise. A class of lay impropriators known as "comorbas" and "erenachs" ousted them from the management and revenues of their church-lands, reducing them to dependence on fees for spiritual functions and stripping them of political influence. Doctrinally loyal to the Latin Church, the Irish Church had fallen behind it in discipline, remaining untouched by the tenth-century monastic reforms and the eleventh-century struggles for clerical celibacy and freedom of investiture. The long strain of the northern invasions had cut Ireland off from broader Christendom, so that even its bond to Rome had faded into a vague tradition of spiritual loyalty, and Rome itself knew little of the actual condition of a Church once her most illustrious daughter.

The Movement for Ecclesiastical Reform The very Northmen who had severed Ireland from the wider Church were now to become the means of restoring the broken connection. Reports reaching Canterbury from Dublin and Waterford painted a picture of ecclesiastical disorder too grievous for reforming churchmen like Lanfranc and Anselm to ignore. Lanfranc urged Terence O'Brien to remove two notorious abuses: the neglect of canonical restraints upon marriage and the swarms of titular bishops without fixed sees. Anselm exerted similar influence with Murtogh O'Brien, and when these efforts failed, laid his complaints before the Pope. The result was the appointment, for the first time, of a papal legate for Ireland: Gilbert, recently the first bishop of the Ostmen of Limerick. Though himself apparently an Irish prelate, Gilbert promptly established communication with Canterbury and displayed zealous devotion to Roman discipline and ritual. In 1118 he presided over a synod at Rathbreasil, which attempted for the first time to map out Irish dioceses on a definite plan. Little real progress was possible, however, until the metropolitan see of Armagh was freed from the lay usurpers who had held it in bondage, an evil tradition that was not broken until 1134 with the election of St. Malachi.

St. Malachi and the Synod of Kells St. Malachi, the wisest, most enlightened, and most saintly Irish prelate of his time, had already laboured for nearly a decade in reforming the diocese of Connor and had earlier laid foundations for reform in Armagh itself as vicar to Archbishop Celsus. After a successful three-year pontificate as primate, he retired to the humbler position of a diocesan bishop at Down, but continued to oversee the wider Irish Church. In 1139 he journeyed to Rome to lay its needs before the Pope, seeking a pallium for the archbishop of Armagh and another for the bishop of Cashel as metropolitan of southern Ireland. Pope Innocent II granted the pallium only on condition that the Irish clergy and people request it in council, but he recognized Cashel as the metropolis of southern Ireland and transferred to Malachi the legatine commission recently resigned by Gilbert of Limerick. Gilbert died soon afterwards; his successor in Limerick sought consecration from Theobald of Canterbury, and the profession of obedience he made was the last ever rendered by an Irish bishop to an English metropolitan. In 1148, a synod at Inispatrick under Archbishop Gelasius of Armagh, with Malachi as papal legate, decided to send Malachi himself once more to Rome, formally requesting both palls in the name of the whole Irish Church. Malachi died on the journey at Clairvaux, entrusting his mission to the care of St. Bernard, who had recognized a kindred spirit in him years before. Through Bernard's influence, Pope Eugene III received the petition favourably and dispatched John Paparo as special legate. Stephen's refusal to allow John passage through his dominions delayed the mission a year, but at the close of 1151 John reached Ireland through Scotland. In March 1152 he held the synod of Kells, which organized the diocesan and provincial system of the Irish Church on lines that endured until the sixteenth century. Episcopal sees were fixed and grouped under four archbishoprics: Armagh, with primacy over all Ireland and metropolitan authority over Ulster and Meath; Tuam for Connaught; Cashel for Munster; and Dublin, whose bishop Gregory received a fourth pallium with metropolitan jurisdiction over all of Leinster, settling the rivalry between Armagh and Canterbury for the spiritual obedience of the Ostmen.

Adrian IV and the Laudabiliter Bull It was evident that Bernard and Eugene sought to apply to Ireland the same remedy they were simultaneously applying to England: building a united nation and a strong national government on the foundation of a free and united national Church. But scarcely had the foundation-stone been laid at Kells when both master-builders were called away. Meanwhile, the young Angevin king Henry, within nine months of his accession, was already casting about for new spheres of activity. He overwhelmed the newly-crowned English-born Pope Adrian IV with proposals for cooperation in every quarter of Christendom, beginning with the reduction of Ireland to political, ecclesiastical, and social order after the pattern of England and Normandy. The forged "Donation of Constantine," universally accepted as genuine in Adrian's day, vested the ultimate sovereignty of all islands in the Papacy, and from Gregory the Great onward the best Popes had interpreted this as making them specially responsible for the welfare of such outlying regions. While Alexander II's sanction of the Norman conquest of England represented an earlier application of this principle, the case of Ireland offered far stronger justification. The labours of St. Malachi, the brief visit of John Paparo, and the decrees of Kells had proved insufficient to reform Ireland's inveterate ecclesiastical and political evils or the resulting intellectual and moral decay. Henry's proposal must have seemed to Adrian an offer to relieve him of a crushing burden, to cut a knot he could not untie, and to clear a path through difficulties he saw no way to overcome. John of Salisbury presented the plan at Rome in Henry's name in the summer of 1155, returning with a bull that granted all the king's demands. Adrian bade Henry enter Ireland "for the enlargement of the Church's borders, for the restraint of vice, the correction of morals and the planting of virtue, the increase of the Christian religion, and whatsoever may tend to God's glory and the well-being of that land," and he sent with the bull a gold ring set with a valuable emerald as a symbol of investiture with the government of Ireland.

Dermot MacMurrough's Appeal to Henry II The crusade authorized by the Laudabiliter bull was temporarily postponed in deference to objections from the Empress Matilda, and the bull and ring were stored in the English chancery, where they lay unused and apparently forgotten amid a growing mass of more pressing business. Eventually, however, the course of events in Ireland itself revived Henry's long-dormant project. Two years before Henry's accession, Dermot MacMurrough, king of Leinster, had raided the district of Breffny in Connaught, on the borders of Ulster and Meath, and carried off Dervorgil, the wife of its chieftain Tighernan O'Ruark. From that moment O'Ruark's vengeance never slept. For the next fourteen years, while Murtogh O'Lochlainn struggled for mastery first against the veteran Terence O'Conor and then against Terence's son Roderic, the men of Breffny threw their swords into either scale as opportunity offered for avenging the outrage. In 1166 the crisis arrived. Murtogh provoked a general uprising by blinding the king of Uladh, whose safety he had pledged to the archbishop of Armagh; Ulster, Meath, Leinster, and Dublin rose against him together, and he was defeated and slain in a great battle at the Fews. The Ostmen of Dublin acknowledged Roderic as their king, and all the princes of southern Ireland followed suit. Dermot's submission was in vain, for Roderic's first act was to banish him from the realm. The Leinstermen promptly forsook him, their loyalty long alienated by his harsh rule and evil deeds. Left alone to face Roderic's justice and O'Ruark's vengeance, Dermot fled to Cork and thence took ship to Bristol, where he found refuge for a time in the priory of St. Augustine under the protection of its founder Robert Fitz-Harding. At the close of the year he made his way to Normandy, and from there, with some difficulty, tracked Henry's restless movements into the depths of Aquitaine, where he finally laid his appeal for succour at the feet of the English king.

The chapter opens by weighing the romantic tradition, preserved in the Anglo-Norman Poem and Giraldus Cambrensis, which makes Dervorgil's abduction the immediate cause of Dermot's downfall. While chronology undermines this view, the author argues that a careful reading of the Four Masters from 1153 to 1166 shows Tighernan O'Ruark acting as the decisive figure in Irish politics, whose grievances Roderic O'Conor could not afford to ignore. Dermot's banishment thus appears less as personal vengeance by Roderic than as satisfaction demanded by Tighernan, though the opportunity arose from Dermot's own disaffected subjects and, characteristically, the rising of the Ostmen of Dublin.

Henry II, preoccupied with the crisis over Thomas of Canterbury, Louis of France, and the rebel barons of Poitou, could offer Dermot little more than acceptance of his homage and fealty, a promise of future help, and a letter authorizing any loyal English, Norman, Welsh, Scottish, or Angevin subjects disposed to do so to join Dermot's standard as that of a faithful royal vassal. A further stay of some weeks at Bristol convinced the Irish prince that his most promising recruits lay beyond the Severn, in the still largely Celtic marches of Wales.

Wales remained a Celtic land under native princes only nominally subject to the English crown, its conquest achieved not by royal power but by individual Norman adventurers whose tenure, though sanctioned, made them scarcely more amenable to royal authority than their Welsh neighbors. The author traces this pattern through Robert of Bellême's Shrewsbury earldom and Pembroke connection, Robert of Gloucester's great lordship of Glamorgan, and Gilbert de Clare's Cardigan grant, leading to the figure of his son Richard of Striguil. A promise of Wexford and its territory also won the support of the half-brothers Maurice Fitz-Gerald and Robert Fitz-Stephen, descendants of Nest and thus mingled of Norman and South Welsh royal blood, while the Pembrokeshire knight Richard Fitz-Godoberd volunteered at once with a small Norman-Welsh band. With these forces Dermot returned to Ireland in August 1167, suffered a pitched defeat by Roderic and Tighernan, but remained secure in his hereditary principality of Kinsellagh, wintering at Ferns before sending his bard Maurice Regan to remind his Welsh allies of their pledges.

In the first days of May 1169, Robert Fitz-Stephen landed at Bannow between Wexford and Waterford with thirty picked knights, sixty men-at-arms, and three hundred archers, accompanied by his nephews Meiler Fitz-Henry, Miles Fitz-David, and Robert de Barri, and by the ruined knight Hervey of Mountmorris. The next day Maurice de Prendergast arrived independently from Milford with ten more knights and a band of archers. Joined by Dermot with about five hundred Irishmen, the combined force marched on Wexford and took it in two days, then established headquarters at Ferns.

From their Ferns base, the Norman-Welsh forces launched an expedition into Ossory, whose chieftain was particularly hostile to Dermot. Despite overwhelming odds, unknown terrain of woods and marshes, and skilfully laid traps, the knights and archers penetrated to the heart of Ossory, winning a great battle whose Irish rout produced two hundred heads laid at Dermot's feet on the banks of the Barrow. Successful raids followed upon Offaly, upon Glendalough, and upon Ossory again, establishing Norman dominance throughout Leinster.

The mounting Norman threat drove all the Irish princes and the Ostmen of Dublin into a great confederacy under Roderic O'Conor for the expulsion of the intruders. At Tara in 1169 Roderic met the northern chieftains, marched to Dublin, and proceeded into Leinster, where Tighernan O'Ruark, the king of Meath, and the Ostmen of Dublin joined with the men of Munster, Leinster, and Ossory in open contempt for the "Flemings."

Dermot then pledged himself to acknowledge Roderic as monarch of Ireland, and was in turn acknowledged by Roderic as king of Leinster on condition that he dismiss his foreign allies. The agreement was scarcely concluded when Maurice Fitz-Gerald landed at Wexford with some hundred and forty men; these at once joined Dermot in an expedition against Dublin, harrying the surrounding countryside until the citizens were compelled to promise obedience.

Early in the following year, Dermot's son-in-law Donell O'Brien, king of Limerick or Northern Munster, succeeded with the help of Robert Fitz-Stephen in throwing off the overlordship of Roderic O'Conor, further loosening the high king's grip on the south.

Encouraged by these successes, Dermot now began to aspire in his turn to the monarchy of all Ireland. However, his foreign auxiliaries remained numerically insufficient, and the one from whom he had expected the most—the earl of Striguil—had as yet failed to appear at all.

The history of Richard of Striguil during these two years remains somewhat obscure, though the scale of his eventual expedition suggests active preparations that may have drawn royal suspicion. For some unrevealed reason he was now a ruined man whose lands were forfeited to the Crown, lingering in a desperate effort to regain Henry's favor. Dermot's letter, recounting the successes in Leinster and renewing his former offers of Eva's hand and the royal succession, forced Richard into action. A last appeal to the king, seeking either restoration of his lands or royal license to seek his fortune elsewhere, met with Henry's ironical permission to depart.

On the eve of St. Bartholomew, 1170, Richard of Striguil landed at Waterford with twelve hundred men. Next day he was joined by Raymond "the Fat," a young warrior sent over three months earlier with ten knights and seventy archers, who had with this small force beaten back an assault of three thousand Irishmen of Decies and Ostmen of Waterford upon his hastily fortified camp of wattle and thatch on the rocky promontory of Dundonulf. On August 25 Richard and Raymond assaulted Waterford, three attacks in one day carrying both town and citadel, slaughtering seven hundred citizens, and capturing its officers, whose northern names betrayed their Scandinavian origins.

A few days after the capture, Richard was married at Waterford to Dermot's daughter Eva. He then joined his father-in-law on a circuitous march across the hills and through Glendalough, avoiding a great host which Roderic had gathered at Clondalkin to intercept them, and arrived in safety on St. Matthew's day beneath the walls of Dublin. Dermot sent his bard to demand instant surrender with thirty hostages. Amid disputes over the selection of hostages, Archbishop Laurence striving to mediate, and Hasculf Thorgils' son, a northern-blooded commander of the citadel, having actually promised surrender on the morrow, Raymond the Fat and the knight Miles Cogan launched a sudden attack from opposite sides that carried both town and citadel before the leaders knew what had happened. Hasculf escaped by sea to the Orkneys, Dublin was sacked, and the town was left throughout the winter under Miles Cogan's command, while Richard guarded Waterford against the men of Munster and Dermot, from Ferns, made raid after raid upon Meath and Breffny.

The Irish clergy gathered in synod at Armagh in a futile attempt to avert divine wrath, solemnly decreeing the liberation of English slaves still held in Irish chieftains' households. The chronicler illustrates the lawlessness of the period by noting that the Ui-Maine made seven predatory excursions into Ormond between Palm Sunday and Low Sunday of the following year. At Whitsuntide, Dermot MacMurrough, described as one "by whom a trembling sod was made of all Ireland," died at Ferns of a loathsome and unconfessed disease. His death removed the last legal pretext for the Normans' presence in Ireland, as his grants and homage had been void in Irish law from the outset, causing his allies to fall away rapidly.

Coinciding with Dermot's death, a Viking fleet from Norway, the Hebrides, Orkney, and Man appeared in Dublin Bay under Hasculf, the exiled leader of the Ostmen, and a northern chief known as "John the Furious" (John the Wode), reportedly a nephew of the king of Norway. In what proved to be the last Viking battle fought on British soil, the northerners fought with great valor and nearly hewed their way into the city before a timely sally by the besieged caught them from behind. An Irish chieftain named Gillamocholmog, whom Miles Cogan had posted on a nearby hill with instructions to join the winning side, decisively aided the Normans. John the Wode was killed by Miles Cogan, and Hasculf was captured by Cogan's brother Richard, then beheaded after defiant words. Fifteen hundred northmen were slain and five hundred drowned, driving the last northern fleet from Irish shores.

Recognizing the danger posed by a tight-knit band of Norman-Welsh adventurers, mostly bound by close family ties, who were establishing an independent feudal state under the disgraced baron Robert Fitz-Stephen, King Henry II issued an edict at the beginning of 1171 prohibiting further involvement in Ireland and ordering those already there to return before Easter or face perpetual banishment. Not a single man returned. Richard of Striguil sent Raymond the Fat to Normandy to protest that the conquests had been undertaken with royal sanction, while the "Geraldines" accepted exile and resolved to hold their conquests by force of arms alone.

By midsummer, the Irish rose against the invaders as one man, with Roderic O'Conor mustering the north, Archbishop Laurence of Dublin rallying the south, and Jarl Godred of Man contributing thirty ships. The coalition numbered sixty thousand men, with Roderic commanding thirty thousand from Castle-Knock, Mac-Dunlevy of Uladh planting his banner on the Clontarf battlefield, Donell O'Brien at Kilmainham, and Murtogh Mac-Murrough at Dalkey. For nearly two months the English knights, barely six hundred strong, were blockaded and starving in Dublin until Donell Kavanagh brought word that Robert Fitz-Stephen was besieged at Carrick by three thousand men and needed relief within three days. After Roderic rejected an offer of surrender, the garrison sallied out and surprised the Irish camp while the men were bathing, slaying fifteen hundred and returning laden with provisions, thus breaking the siege.

Earl Richard arrived too late to save Robert Fitz-Stephen at Carrick, where three thousand men of Wexford and Kinsellagh, unable to storm the fort, resorted to fraud by forcing two bishops and monks to swear upon relics that Dublin had fallen and Roderic was marching on Wexford. On a promise of safe conduct to Wales, Fitz-Stephen surrendered, only to see his followers slaughtered and himself and his five knights chained. The men of Wexford burned their town and retreated to the island of Beg-Erin, threatening to behead the captives if Richard approached. Despite this disaster and the failure of a plot against the chief of Ossory (foiled by Maurice de Prendergast's loyalty), the invaders continued to gain ground, with the king of North Munster allying with his English brother-in-law.

The Norman position recovered as Dermot's death was followed by the Ostmen making common cause with the new arrivals. Tighernan O'Ruark's attempt to renew the siege of Dublin failed, and Murtogh of Kinsellagh was ultimately compelled to surrender his principality into Richard of Striguil's hands and accept its re-grant as his vassal. Donell Kavanagh was similarly invested with the remaining portion of Leinster, completing the Norman consolidation in the region through a combination of military victory and feudal subordination of native chieftains.

Hervey of Mountmorris, returning from his mission to Henry II after Raymond's failure, brought word to Richard at Waterford that the king himself was coming and required Richard's presence. Richard crossed to Wales, met Henry on the border (around September 8, 1171), and was pardoned on the conditions that he surrender Dublin and the other coast towns absolutely to the king and do homage and fealty for the remainder of Leinster. Richard then accompanied Henry into Pembrokeshire, where the royal fleet was assembling in Milford Haven.

Henry's fleet, numbering some four hundred ships (or two hundred and forty according to Irish sources) and carrying roughly four thousand men—including about five hundred knights plus mounted and unmounted archers—embarked on the evening of Saturday, October 16, and landed next day at Croch, eight miles from Waterford. On S. Luke's day Henry entered Waterford, where he was met by seneschal William Fitz-Aldhelm, constable Humfrey de Bohun, Hugh de Lacy, Robert Fitz-Bernard, and other officers. The local Irish and the Ostmen under Ragnald made submission, while Richard of Striguil formally surrendered the town and did homage for the earldom of Leinster. The men of Wexford delivered the captive Robert Fitz-Stephen, whom Henry briefly imprisoned before releasing him.

The submission of the English adventurers was followed by that of the Irish princes, beginning with Dermot MacCarthy, king of Cork or South Munster, who came to Henry at Waterford and swore fealty, gave hostages, and promised tribute. On November 1 Henry advanced to Lismore, and thence two days later to Cashel, where at the passage of the Suir he was met by Donell O'Brien, king of Limerick or Northern Munster. Within three weeks of his arrival all Munster had submitted, and its chief coast towns—Wexford, Waterford, Limerick, and Cork—were in the custody of the king's own officers.

At Martinmas Henry reached Dublin, and before Christmas he received hostages from the princes of Leinster and Meath, from Tighernan O'Ruark of Breffny, from O'Carroll of Oiriel, and from the king of Uladh or eastern Ulster. His new vassals built him a wattle dwelling outside the walls of Dublin in the Irish manner, and there in their midst he held his Christmas court.

Early in November two royal chaplains, Nicolas and Ralf archdeacon of Llandaff, had been despatched to summon the Irish bishops to a council and demand their submission. Although no explicit mention of Pope Adrian's bull survives, its existence and contents were likely certified to the prelates, who met in council at Cashel in the first weeks of 1172. The archbishop of Armagh absented himself on the plea of extreme age and infirmity, but all his episcopal brethren made full submission, pledged themselves to conform to the pattern of the English Church, gave written promises to support Henry and his heirs as lawful sovereigns of Ireland, and joined with him in sending to Rome a report of the proceedings.

Roderic of Connaught, trusting to the inaccessibility of his country, at first refused all dealings with Henry, declaring himself the sole rightful monarch of Ireland. He later came to a meeting with William Fitz-Aldhelm and Hugh de Lacy by the banks of the Shannon on the frontier of Connaught and Meath, where he promised tribute and fealty like his fellow-kings. The promise was worthless until confirmed by his personal homage, however, and Henry soon perceived that this was only to be extorted at the sword's point.

The impossibility of fighting to advantage in the wet Irish winter compelled Henry to postpone any campaign against Connaught until spring. From the day he left Milford he had received not one word of tidings from any part of his dominions. This total isolation, welcome at first as a relief from the cares he had purposely left behind, became at the end of nineteen weeks an almost unbearable anxiety.

On March 1 Henry removed from Dublin to Wexford, where for nearly a month he eagerly watched for a ship from England. None came until after Mid-Lent, and when one finally arrived it carried such ill news that Henry could only take the most hasty measures to maintain his hold upon Ireland and prepare to hurry out of it as soon as the wind would carry him.

Richard of Striguil was suffered to remain at Kildare as earl of Leinster. The general direction of government and administration throughout the king's Irish domains was entrusted to Hugh de Lacy—who had already received Meath in fee—as justiciar of Ireland, with command of the Dublin citadel and a garrison of twenty knights that included Maurice Fitz-Gerald, Robert Fitz-Stephen, Meiler Fitz-Henry, and Miles Fitz-David. Dermot's grants to the half-brothers were annulled; Waterford and Wexford were garrisoned and placed under a king's officer, with a fortress erected or repaired in each; and John de Courcy is said to have received a grant of Ulster should he be able to conquer it by force.

A better means of securing his authority in Dublin was suggested by the devastations of war and famine among its population. Henry, who eight years earlier had taken the burghers of Bristol under his special patronage and protection as the medium of trading intercourse between England and Ireland, now granted them the city of Dublin to colonize and to hold of him and his heirs by the same free customs they enjoyed at Bristol. The varied list of English names from all parts of the realm found in an early Dublin citizens' roll shows how readily his plans were taken up. Henry was plainly aiming at something far beyond mere military conquest, but his plans were scarcely formed before he had to leave their development to other hands, with the consequence of a half success that proved in the end worse than total failure.

On Easter night Henry sailed from Wexford, landing next day at Portfinnan near S. David's. Before the octave was out he had hurried through South Wales to Newport, and within a few more days reached Portsmouth. Before Rogation-tide he was once more in Normandy, ready to face the bursting of a storm whose consequences were to overshadow all his remaining years and to preclude any chance of his return to complete the conquest of Ireland.

In January 1164 Henry II granted a short charter of privileges to the burghers of Bristol, whom, as sovereign lord, he styled *his* burgesses even though they were then under the lordship of the earl of Gloucester. The charter contained only an exemption from toll, passage, and other customary payments for themselves and their goods throughout the king's own lands, together with a confirmation of their existing privileges and liberties (Seyer, *Mem. of Bristol*, vol. i. p. 494, citing "Charters of Bristol, No. 1").

The charter is printed in Gilbert's *Hist. and Munic. Documents of Ireland*, p. 1 (fragment 576), with continuation of the same source at p. 3 *et seq.* (fragment 577), providing the standard printed reference for the Irish-related documentary material.

Sources differ on the precise timing of Henry II's 1172 voyage. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351, places it at sunset on Easter day (April 16); the Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1172 (Hennessy, vol. i. p. 147), say on Easter day "after Mass." Gerald, *Expugn. Hibern.*, l. i. c. 38 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 286), the *Gesta Hen.* (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 30, and Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 34, say he sailed early on the Monday morning, the latter two explaining that he would not travel on the feast-day though he permitted his household to do so. Most probably he sailed at midnight, a common practice. The *Brut y Tywys.* a. 1172 (Williams, p. 217), makes him reach Pembroke on Good Friday, which is impossible.

The royal household had sailed from Croch to Milford, according to the *Gesta Hen.* (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 30, the Anglo-Norman Poem (Michel), p. 131, and Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 34, with cross-reference *ibid.* confirming the Croch-to-Milford route.

The name of the landing place, Portfinnan, is recorded only in the Anglo-Norman Poem (Michel), p. 131, with corroboration in the *Gesta Hen.* and Rog. Howden (as above) and R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351, which provide additional details of the voyage without naming the site.

The Ireland voyage itinerary is set out in Gir. Cambr. *Expugn. Hibern.*, l. i. cc. 38–40 (Dimock, vol. v. pp. 286–291), compared with the *Brut y Tywys.* a. 1172 (Williams, pp. 217–219). A related landing reference appears in the *Gesta Hen.* (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 30 and Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 34, while R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351, gives the landing place as Porchester.

Henry II's Rule and Feudal Baron Threats 1166–1175. For the last eight years before 1166 Henry had been supreme over all persons and causes throughout his English realm; from the hour of Thomas's flight not a hand or voice was lifted against his will, and England lay passive before him. This unchallenged supremacy seemed to open the way to his long-cherished plans of legal, judicial, and administrative reform. Yet those plans were seriously hampered by indirect consequences of the ecclesiastical quarrel, most importantly Henry's own prolonged absence from England, made necessary by the hostility of France, which forced him to set his reforms in motion and leave their working to others without his own supervision for nearly six years. He now had to learn that the most dangerous obstacle in his way was not the primate but the baronage: the victory over Hugh Bigod in 1156 was real but not final, the spirit of feudal insubordination had been checked but not crushed, and with the strife over S. Thomas of Canterbury the opportunity for it to lift its head again had arrived.

Henry's Inconsistent Policy Towards Barons and the Church. Henry's attitude towards the barons during these years was necessarily inconsistent. He never lost sight of the main thread of policy inherited from his grandfather, namely the consolidation of kingly power through the repression of the feudal nobles and the raising of the people into greater security and closer dependence on the Crown as a counterpoise to territorial influence. On the other hand, his quarrel with the primate drove him to throw himself on the support of those very feudataries whom it was his true policy to repress, and brought him into hostility with the ecclesiastical interest which ought to have been, and until now had been, his surest and most powerful ally. The feudal side of the ecclesiastical movement—a separate system of law and jurisdiction impeding his uniform regal administration—roused the king's suspicions, while its anti-feudal side, its championship of universal rights and liberties, provoked the jealousy of the nobles. At the council of Northampton Henry, blinded by his instinct of imperiousness, stooped to use the barons to crush the primate, overlooking that they saw what he failed to see, namely that he was crushing not so much his own rival as theirs; for the cause of the Church was bound up with that of the people, and both were closely knit to the Crown, and once sceptre and crozier were parted the barons could strive with the former at an unprecedented advantage.

Assize of Clarendon 1166 and Criminal Justice Reform. In February 1166, two years after the publication of the Constitutions of Clarendon, Henry assembled another council at the same place and issued an ordinance for carrying out a reform in the method of bringing criminals to justice, similar in form to that which the Constitutions had applied to one particular class. The Assize of Clarendon enacted that the king's justices and the sheriffs should in every shire make inquiry concerning all crimes committed "since our lord the king was king," using the method of inquest by sworn recognitors chosen from among the lawful men of each hundred and township, bound by oath to speak the truth. The procedure decreed that in every hundred of every shire inquest should be made by twelve lawful men of the hundred and four from each township, sworn to denounce every man known as a robber, thief, murderer, or harbourer of such; on their presentment the accused were to be arrested by the sheriff, kept in safe custody, and brought before the itinerant justices to undergo the ordeal of water and receive legal punishment according to its results. The inquest was to be taken and the justice session held in full shire-court; no personal privileges exempted any qualified member of the court from attendance or jury service, and no territorial franchise or private jurisdiction, whether of chartered town or feudal honour, could shelter an accused criminal from pursuit by the sheriffs on the authority of the justices.

Precedents for Henry II's Jury and Itinerant Justice Systems. As with most of Henry's reforms, none of the methods of procedure adopted in the Assize of Clarendon were new inventions. The inquest by sworn recognitors had been in use for civil purposes ever since the Norman Conquest, having been introduced by William the Conqueror for fiscal purposes such as the Domesday survey, and Henry II himself had in the early years of his reign applied the same principle to civil litigation through the "Great Assize," whereby disputes over possession of land might be settled before the king's justices by the unanimous oath of twelve lawful knights of the district. The ninth Constitution of Clarendon assumes this proceeding as already in use for disputes concerning Church lands. The germ of a jury of presentment in criminal cases may even be traced further back to an ordinance of Æthelred II., whereby the twelve senior thegns in every wapentake were made to swear they would accuse no innocent man nor conceal any guilty one. The mission of itinerant justices, derived in principle from the early days of English kingship when the sovereign perambulated his realm, had been employed by Henry I. and revived by Henry II immediately after his accession: a visitation of most of England had been made by two chief officers of the Curia Regis in the first year of his reign and again in the second, another circuit was made in 1159 by William Fitz-John, and in 1163 Alan de Neville held pleas of the forest in Oxfordshire while the justiciar Richard de Lucy held pleas of the Crown in Cumberland for the first time since the district had passed into the hands of the king of Scots.

Implementation of the Assize of Clarendon 1166–1167. From the date of the Assize of Clarendon these judicial journeys became regular and general, and the work of the judges employed on them far more extensive and important. The first visitation under the assize was at once begun by Richard de Lucy and Geoffrey de Mandeville, earl of Essex, and the Pipe Roll of the year shows its immediate results: the sums credited to the treasury for pleas of the Crown reach a far greater amount than in earlier rolls, swelled further by the goods and chattels of criminals condemned under the assize, which were explicitly declared forfeit to the king. The clause binding all qualified persons to be ready to serve on the juries was strictly enforced, with one attempt at evasion punished by a fine of five marks, and the clause enjoining upon sheriffs the construction and repair of gaols for the detention of criminals was carried into effect with equal vigour, expenses for gaols at Canterbury, Rochester, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Sarum, Malmesbury, Aylesbury, and Oxford being accounted for in the Roll of 1166. The work of the two justiciars was apparently not completed until the summer of 1167, in which year pleas of the forest were held throughout the country by Alan de Neville.

Daughter's Marriage Aid and the Black Book of the Exchequer. In 1168 seven barons of the Exchequer made a general visitation of the shires for the collection of an aid on the marriage of the king's eldest daughter, a journey primarily fiscal in character, the aid being a strictly feudal impost assessed at one mark on every knight's fee, levied in a remarkable manner. The Domesday survey, which by a few modifications in practice had served as the rate-book of the kingdom for eighty years, was at last found inadequate, and a royal writ was addressed to all tenants-in-chief requiring an account of the knights' fees they held and the services due upon them, whether under the "old infeoffment" of Henry I's time or under the "new infeoffment" since the resettlement of the country by his grandson. The answers were enrolled in the Black Book of the Exchequer, and the aid was levied in accordance with their contents. The whole process occupied a considerable time: preparations seem to have begun shortly after Matilda's betrothal, for a hutch for keeping the barons' letters concerning their knights was purchased as early as 1166, yet the collection of the money was not finished until the summer of 1169, a year and a half after her marriage. The labours of the barons were not, however, confined to this one end, for as usual their travels were turned to account for judicial purposes, and the system begun by the Assize of Clarendon was by no means suffered to fall into disuse.

1170 Sheriff Inquest and Administrative Overhaul. Although it was too soon for the beneficial results of Henry's measures to become evident to the people at large, it was not too soon for them to excite the resentment of the barons, the stringency of the assize in making every claim of personal exemption or special jurisdiction give way before the all-embracing authority of the king's supreme justice showing that Henry still clave to the policy of checking the feudal principle, and the aid for his daughter's marriage, though apparently leaving the determination of each landowner's liabilities in his own hands, pressing very heavily upon feudal tenants as a body. Unsatisfactory reports from England of the general results of his legal measures led Henry to suspect some failure of duty among those charged with their execution, and a large share of responsibility rested with the sheriffs, who were still for the most part, as in his grandfather's days, the chief landowners in their shires, only too likely to have the will and power to defeat the very measures they were called upon to administer. On his return to England at Easter 1170 Henry therefore summarily deposed all sheriffs of counties and bailiffs of royal demesnes, pending an inquisition into all details of their official conduct since his own departure over sea four years earlier. The inquiry was entrusted not to the usual members of the King's Court and Exchequer but to a large body of commissioners specially chosen from the higher ranks of both clergy and laity, who were to take pledges from sheriffs and bailiffs to appear and make redress on an appointed day, and to exact an oath from all barons, knights, and freemen in every shire that they would answer truthfully all questions put to them in the king's name. The subject-matter of the inquiries embraced far more than the conduct of the sheriffs, including the disposal of all chattels forfeited under the Assize of Clarendon, the honesty of the collection of the aid pour fille marier, the administration of the forests, the condition of the royal demesnes, the discovery of persons who had failed to do homage to the king or his son, and a minutely detailed inquisition into the proceedings of all special courts of franchises held by archbishop or bishop, abbot, earl, or baron. Only two months were allowed to the commissioners, whose great number alone enabled them to execute the work in the time, and although the report they brought up to the king on S. Barnabas's day is lost, its results are preserved in one respect: out of twenty-seven sheriffs, only seven were allowed to retain their offices, the rest, mostly local magnates whose importance rested on territorial and family influence rather than on connexion with the court, being replaced by men of inferior rank, all but four of whom were officials of the Exchequer.

The Westminster council that issued the decree for the inquest of sheriffs simultaneously dispatched the summons for the crowning of the young king. From the same assembly that on S. Barnabas's day deposed the delinquent officers there followed, three days later, the dangerously suggestive spectacle of two kings reigning at once in England.

In 1171, as a continuation of the anti-feudal policy that had virtually completed its work in England thirteen years earlier, Henry ordered a general inquisition into the extent and condition of the demesne lands and forests held by his grandfather in Normandy and into baronial encroachments upon them. The restitution that resulted almost doubled his ducal revenue.

The dual coronation was followed within six months by the murder of S. Thomas, which left Henry stripped of regal dignity shared with another and of the Church's support. The barons, whose endurance was now nearly exhausted, adapted Henry's own weapon to their purposes and used the very son he had left behind him as a rallying-point and pretext for designs against him.

Young Henry crossed to Normandy just before his father quit it in July 1171, staying there with his mother and her younger children until early the next year, when he and his wife went to England and remained as titular king and queen until Henry's return from Ireland. His kingship was scarcely more than nominal; the real work of government was done by the justiciars in his presence as in his absence, and his personal interests lay chiefly beyond the sea.

The influences surrounding the young king in Normandy were those of his father's open or secret enemies: his father-in-law King Louis of France, his mother Queen Eleanor (now no longer a loyal vice-gerent for her husband), and Eleanor's political confidant, her uncle Ralf of Faye, one of the faithless barons of Poitou. It was at Eleanor's instigation, by the whisper of Ralf and the Angevin baron Hugh of Ste.-Maure, that Young Henry was prompted to demand the substance of kingly power of which his father had given him only the shadow.

On his return from France in late 1172, the young king at once confronted his father with a demand to be put in possession of his heritage—England, Normandy, or Anjou—where he might dwell as an independent sovereign with his queen. Henry refused, having never intended to make his sons independent rulers of the territories allotted to them; the eldest son's crowning had been designed only to give him an inchoate royalty enabling him to act as colleague and representative.

Henry's plans for the distribution of his territories and the establishment of his children had so far succeeded well. Britanny had been secured in Geoffrey's name before Henry quitted Gaul in 1171, and a month after his return Richard was enthroned at Poitiers as duke of Aquitaine. Only John, the youngest, remained what his father had called him at his birth—"John Lackland"—but even for him a politic marriage was already in view.

On Trinity Sunday, June 10, 1172, Richard was enthroned as duke of Aquitaine according to ancient custom in the abbot's chair in the church of S. Hilary at Poitiers.

In 1171, Henry's diplomatic relations with the Alpine princes bore fruit in a proposal from Count Humbert of Maurienne for the marriage of his eldest daughter with the king's youngest son. Humbert had no son, and by the terms of the marriage-contract his territories, Alpine and Pyrenean, were to be settled upon his daughter and her future husband.

The county of Maurienne, although its name properly denotes only a small mountainous region encircled by the Graian and Cottian Alps and lesser chains, gave its counts power far beyond their native valleys. They held Chambéry on the lake of Bourget (guarding the pass of Les Echelles), territories almost surrounding the county of Geneva, Aosta and lands to Castiglione on the Dora Baltea, the Italian outposts of Susa and Turin (with the title "Marquises of Italy"), and Chiusa, Rochetta and Aspromonte on the Maritime Alps—together commanding every pass between Italy and north-western Europe from the Great S. Bernard to the Col di Tenda. Humbert also appears to have claimed, though without holding it, the Pyrenean county of Roussillon.

The marriage-contract between John and Alice of Maurienne was signed and ratified before Christmas 1172. In return for five thousand marks of English silver, Humbert settled his Alpine and Pyrenean territories upon his daughter and her future husband; the infant heiress was then placed under the care of her intended father-in-law.

At Montferrand, before Candlemas, Henry and his eldest son met Humbert and his daughter, together with the counts of Vienne and Toulouse and the king of Aragon—a striking measure of Henry's risen influence, since both Alfonso of Aragon (his old ally's son) and his former enemy Raymond of Toulouse agreed to choose him as arbiter of their quarrel. At Limoges Henry settled the dispute, and Raymond did homage to the two Henrys for Toulouse, pledging to do likewise to Richard as duke of Aquitaine at Whitsuntide, with military service and yearly tribute.

Henry's political schemes seemed all but complete when Count Humbert asked what provision Henry intended to make for the landless bridegroom. Henry proposed to endow John with Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau; but the Angevin lands, with which the younger Henry had been formally invested, could not be dismembered without his consent, and this he angrily refused. The mere request kindled his smouldering discontent into flame, fanned by Eleanor's suggestions, and the question was to trouble Henry until the child who had caused it broke his father's heart.

Warned by Raymond of Toulouse of plots hatched by Eleanor and the children, Henry set off under the pretext of a hunting-party and carried his son back toward Normandy with all speed. Reaching Chinon about Mid-Lent, he found that Young Henry had slipped away by night to Alençon, then to Argentan, and thence before cock-crow across the French border to the court of his father-in-law Louis. To Henry's messengers Louis replied: "Your master is king no longer—here stands the king of the English!"

Henry at once made a circuit of his Norman fortresses, especially those along the French border, placing them in a state of defence. He issued corresponding orders to all his castellans throughout Anjou, Britanny, Aquitaine, and England to do the same.

Before Lent had closed, the old prophecy—often thrown in Henry's teeth by his enemies—was fulfilled: his own "lion-cubs" were all openly seeking to make him their prey.

Whether sent by their mother, with whom they had been left behind in Aquitaine, or secretly fetched by their eldest brother in person, both Richard and Geoffrey now joined the French court.

Eleanor herself was caught attempting to follow them disguised as a man, and by her husband's order was placed in strict confinement. A contemporary noted that she was "a very prudent woman, born of noble lineage, but inconstant."

Louis VII openly espoused the rebel cause. In a great council at Paris, he and his nobles publicly swore to help the young king and his brothers against their father to the utmost of their power, while the three brothers pledged themselves to be faithful to Louis and to make no terms with their father save through his mediation and consent.

Young Henry at once began to purchase allies among the French feudatories and supporters among the English and Norman barons, by making grants of pensions and territories on both sides of the sea. The recipients did him homage and fealty for these grants, which were put in writing and sealed with a new seal made for him by order of Louis—his own chancellor, Richard Barre, having loyally carried back the original seal to the elder king who had first entrusted it to his keeping.

Nearly three months passed before war actually broke out, but when it did the list of participants showed that the whole Angevin empire had become a vast hotbed of treason. Yet the treason was almost entirely confined to one class—the feudal baronage—and its local distribution was highly significant.

The restless barons of Aquitaine, still smarting under their defeat of 1169, were eager at the instigation of their duchess and newly-crowned duke to renew their struggle. Foremost were, as before, the count of Angoulême, the nobles of Saintonge, and Geoffrey of Lusignan, beside whom now stood his young brother Guy, beginning in this ignoble strife a career destined to strange vicissitudes in far-off Palestine. Other Aquitanian rebels included Geoffrey of Rancogne, the lords of Coulonges and Rochefort in Saintonge, the lords of Blaye and Mauléon in Gascony, the lord of Chauvigny in Poitou, Archbishop William of Bordeaux, Abbot Richard of Tournay, and Ralf of Faye.

The heart of the old Angevin lands, Anjou itself, was in the main loyal: only five traitors are named there, and three of them—Hugh, William, and Jocelyn of Ste.-Maure—came of a notoriously rebellious house merely repeating what their predecessors had done in the days of Geoffrey Plantagenet's youth. Maine likewise furnished only seven barons; five of these are easily accounted for. The lord of Sablé naturally stood beside the lord of Ste.-Maure; Brachard of Lavardin and his brother Guy were themselves at strife with their father, Count John of Vendôme, a faithful ally of Henry; Bernard of La Ferté represented a house whose great castle on the Huisne near the Norman border was almost as independent as that of the lords of Bellême across the frontier; and Hugh of Sillé, whose family name recalled feudal arrogance in the days of the "commune" a century before, had personal reason for enmity if he was akin to a Robert of Sillé whose cruel imprisonment after 1169 had ended in death.

Across the western border of Maine, in Geoffrey's duchy, Ralf of Fougères was once more at the head of a band of discontented Breton nobles, chiefly belonging to the old seed-plot of disturbance, the county of Nantes. With him were Hardwin of Fougerai, Robert of Tréguier, Gwiounon of Ancenis, and Joibert of La Guerche, to whom others were later added.

The true centre and focus of revolt was, as of old, the duchy of Normandy. Almost all the great names conspicuous in the earlier risings of the feudal baronage against William and Henry I. reappeared among the partizans of the young king. The house of Montfort on the Rille was represented by Robert of Montfort, whose challenge to Henry of Essex ten years before had deprived the king of a trusty servant. The more famous house of Montfort was represented by Count Simon of Evreux, who, like the count of Eu (and probably the count of Aumale), came from a junior branch of the Norman ducal house that resented most bitterly the concentration of political power in the duke's hands. The counts of Ponthieu and of Alençon inherited the spirit as well as the territories of Robert of Bellême; Count Robert of Meulan was the son of Waleran who had rebelled in 1123 and head of the Norman branch of the great house of Beaumont. Among second-rank rebels were the Norman lords of Anneville and Lessay in the Cotentin, of St.-Hilaire on the Breton frontier, of Falaise, Dives, La Haye, and Orbec in Calvados, of Tillières, Ivry, and Gaillon along the French border, alongside such names as Ralf of Chesney, Gerald Talbot, Jordan Ridel, Thomas de Muschamp, Saher de Quincy the younger, Simon of Marsh, Geoffrey Fitz-Hamon, Jocelyn Crispin, and—destined for far other renown—William the Marshal, together with William de Tancarville, the Fitz-Erneis cousins, Robert of Angerville (the young king's steward), and many others.

The chief of the English Beaumonts was the young king's cousin, the count of Leicester, son of the faithful justiciar who had died in 1168, whose countess was heiress of the proud old Norman house of Grandmesnil. Hugh of Chester, son of the fickle Ralf, had at stake his palatine earldom in England and his hereditary viscounties of Bayeux and Avranches across the Channel. Hugh Bigod, the aged earl of Norfolk, undeterred by his experiences of Stephen's reign or his humiliation in 1157, was ready to break faith again for the hereditary constableship of Norwich castle offered by the young king. Earl Robert of Ferrers, Hamo de Massey, Richard de Morville, and the whole remnant of the Mowbray race—Geoffrey of Coutances, Roger de Mowbray and his two sons—were men whose grandfathers had come over with the Conqueror and who were determined to fight for their share of the spoils. All these were, by training and sympathy if not by personal interest, more Norman than English.

The king of Scots, William the Lion, brother and successor of Malcolm IV, had long been suspected of a secret alliance with France against his English overlord. Young Henry now offered him the cession of all Northumberland as far as the Tyne, and for his brother David confirmation in the earldom of Huntingdon with a grant of the earldom of Cambridge in addition, in return for the homage and services of both brothers—offers which the king of Scots accepted, only after long hesitation and an unsuccessful attempt to obtain equivalent terms from the elder king.

Only three prelates on either side of the sea showed any disposition to countenance the rebellion: in the south, William, the new-made archbishop of Bordeaux; in the north, Arnulf of Lisieux and Hugh of Durham. Arnulf's influence at court had long been waning and all his diplomacy had failed in personal terms with Henry, but as possessor of both the temporal and spiritual lordship of his see he now tried to play the great baron rather than the bishop, temporizing between the parties. He imitated on a smaller scale the example of Hugh of Puiset in his palatine bishopric of Durham, where Hugh had been throughout his career simply a great temporal ruler. It was the pride of the feudal noble, not the personal sympathies of the churchman, that stirred both prelates to intrigue.

Young Henry relied chiefly on his foreign allies—his father-in-law, the counts of Flanders and Boulogne, and the count of Blois. The count of Blois was bribed by a promise of an annual pension and the restitution of Château-Renaud and Amboise; to Philip of Flanders was promised the earldom of Kent with a pension in English gold; and to Matthew of Boulogne the soke of Kirton-in-Lindsey and the Norman county of Mortain.

The first hostile movement was made directly after Easter by a body of Flemings who crossed the Seine at Pacy, but no sooner had they touched Norman soil than they were driven back by the people of the town and nearly all drowned in attempting to recross the river.

Henry, after spending Easter at Alençon, established his headquarters at Rouen, where he remained till the end of June, apparently indifferent to the plots hatching around him and entirely absorbed in the pleasures of the chase. In reality he was transacting a good deal of quiet business—filling vacant sees in England, appointing a new chancellor, Ralf of Varneville, to the office that had been in commission since Thomas Becket resigned it ten years before, and writing to all his continental allies to enlist their sympathies and if possible their support in the coming struggle. One of them at least, his future son-in-law William of Sicily, returned an answer full of hearty sympathy, but neither he nor his fellow-kings had anything more substantial to give.

The only support on which Henry could really depend was a troop of twenty thousand Brabantine mercenaries who served him bravely and loyally, but by no means for nothing. According to a writer with unusual knowledge of Brabantine affairs, Henry's finances were already so exhausted that he was obliged to give the sword of state used at his coronation in pledge to these men as security for wages he was unable to pay. Yet he could trust no one else in Normandy, and as yet he scarcely knew his own resources in England.

Early in June 1173, Robert of Leicester and William of Tancarville, the high-chamberlain of Normandy, sought license from the justiciars in London to join Henry II at Rouen. Upon landing, however, they went directly to the young King Henry rather than to the elder king. Their defection was so alarming that the chief justiciar, Richard de Lucy, appears to have considered crossing to Normandy in person to consult Henry, though ultimately he decided to remain at his post. The Pipe Roll evidence suggests the Dorset confiscation of Leicester's manor of Kingston had already occurred some four months earlier, dating the defection to the very beginning of June.

In the last days of June or the first days of July 1173, while the counts of Flanders and Boulogne were easily overcoming the resistance of Aumale and Driencourt and Louis of France was laying siege to Verneuil, Henry II suddenly crossed the sea. He traveled inland as far as Northampton, stayed four days, collected his treasure and assembled his loyal adherents, issued instructions for action against the rebels, and returned to Rouen so quickly that neither friends nor foes seem ever to have discovered his absence. Pipe Roll entries recording expenses for ships and the king's four-day stay at Northampton preserve the traces of this remarkable secret expedition, which effectively braced up the energies of the loyal English vassals.

The king's visit rallied his faithful English and Welsh supporters, though they were unevenly matched against the rebels. The Welsh princes David Ap-Owen and Rees Ap-Griffith remained loyal, with Rees proving the more active ally, though their fidelity could not balance the hostility of the King of Scots. Among the loyal English barons, the most conspicuous were a group of Henry's immediate kinsmen: his half-brother Earl Hameline of Warren, his uncle Reginald of Cornwall, and his cousin William of Gloucester, though Gloucester's loyalty would later prove doubtful. Earl William of Arundel, the husband of his grandfather's widow Queen Adeliza, his son William, and his kinsman Richard of Aubigny also supported the king. Earl William de Mandeville of Essex, son of the notorious Geoffrey de Mandeville, was a close personal friend of Henry. Earl Simon of Northampton's loyalty may have been quickened by his rivalry with David of Scotland for the earldom of Huntingdon, while William of Salisbury inherited his loyalty from his father Earl Patrick.

Some half-dozen of the king's English adherents—William of Essex, William of Arundel, Robert de Stuteville, the elder Saher de Quincy, Richard of Striguil, and Hugh de Lacy—either returned with Henry to Rouen or had already joined him there. In Normandy, Henry's loyal retinue contained no baron of the first rank, consisting only of a few personal friends and ministers: Richard of Hommet the constable of the duchy, with all his sons and brothers; William de Courcy the seneschal; Richard Fitz-Count the king's cousin; Hugh de Beauchamp and Henry of Neubourg of the loyal house of Beauchamp; and Richard de Vernon and Jordan Tesson. Two faithful members of the older Norman nobility, Hugh of Gournay and his son, had already been captured by the young king.

The loyal barons of lesser degree were chiefly representatives of a class known half a century before as the "new men," who had risen through service in the administration under Henry I or Henry II. Among them were the justiciar Richard de Lucy, the constable Humfrey de Bohun, William de Vesci (son of Eustace Fitz-John), his nephew John constable of Chester, the whole house of Stuteville headed by Robert de Stuteville sheriff of Yorkshire, and Ralf de Glanville, sheriff of Lancashire and custodian of the honour of Richmond. The Glanvilles, Stutevilles, and de Vescis now wielded in Yorkshire the influence formerly usurped by William of Aumale. In Northumberland, Odelin de Umfraville and Bernard de Bailleul (Balliol) had inherited the power of the rebel house of Mowbray, alongside loyal northern barons Robert and Adam de Bruce. Geoffrey Trussebut, Everard de Ros, Guy de Vere, Bertram de Verdon, Philip de Kime, and his brother Simon belonged to this same class of administrative loyalists.

The two chief English rebels, the earls of Leicester and Chester, were both beyond the Channel, and their absence enabled the king's representatives to strike the first blow before the revolt could break out in England. On July 3, the town of Leicester was besieged by Richard de Lucy and Earl Reginald of Cornwall at the head of "the host of England"—the national rather than the feudal host. After a three-week siege involving vast expenditure, the town was fired and surrendered on July 28. The castle held out, its garrison accepting a truce until Michaelmas. The gates and walls of the city were at once thrown down; the citizens were permitted to depart freely on payment of a fine of three hundred marks; but the rebel leaders could only find safety by taking sanctuary in the great abbeys of St Albans or St Edmund.

Three days before the capture of Leicester, an arrow shot by one of Henry's Brabantine cross-bowmen gave Matthew of Boulogne his death-wound, causing the break-up of the Flemish expedition against Normandy. The accounts vary as to the precise circumstances: Ralph of Diceto places the event on the invaders' march from Driencourt to Arques and gives a specific date, while the Gesta Henrici, Gervase of Canterbury, and William of Newburgh locate it during the siege of Driencourt (or Neufchâtel), though this is chronologically irreconcilable. Gervase specifies that Matthew was shot by an arbalestier. His death effectively ended the Flemish threat to Normandy.

A fortnight after Matthew's death, Henry set out at the head of all his available forces to relieve Verneuil, which Hugh de Lacy and Hugh de Beauchamp were defending against Louis of France. By a "double treachery," Louis, under cover of a truce, gained possession of the town, set it on fire, and retreated into his own domains before Henry could overtake him. Enraged, Henry marched back to Rouen, taking Gilbert of Tillières's castle of Damville on the way, and thence dispatched his Brabantines to check the plundering operations of Hugh of Chester and Ralf of Fougères in the border district between Fougères and Avranches.

The Brabantines intercepted an important convoy and slaughtered its escort, driving the rebel leaders to retire into the fortress of Dol. There they were blockaded by the Brabantines, backed by the populace of the district of Avranches, who clearly had no sympathy with the treason of their viscount. The siege began on August 20; on the morrow Henry received tidings of it at Rouen; on the 23rd he appeared among his soldiers; and on the 26th Dol and its garrison, with Ralf of Fougères and Hugh of Chester at their head, surrendered into his hands. Accounts differ as to whether Ralf of Fougères escaped to the woods or was captured with Hugh and a hundred knights. This blow crushed the Breton revolt, and the rest of the duchy submitted at once.

Louis of France, impressed by Henry's success, began making overtures for negotiation, and shortly before Michaelmas a meeting took place near Gisors. Henry displayed the utmost anxiety to be reconciled with his sons, offering them literally half of his realms in wealth and honours, and declaring his willingness to strip himself of everything except his regal powers of government and justice. This last reservation, however, was precisely what the French king and the disaffected barons were determined to fight against—just as Henry himself had fought against S. Thomas's reservation of the rights of his order. The terms were refused, and the earl of Leicester in his baffled rage loaded his sovereign with abuse and even drew his sword to strike him, an outrage that of course broke up the meeting.

Humiliated at Gisors, Leicester hurried through Flanders, collecting troops as he went, to Wissant, whence he sailed for England on Michaelmas day. Though Gervase of Canterbury and the Gesta Henrici date his crossing to about S. Luke's day, this is irreconcilable with Ralph of Diceto's careful subsequent chronology, while the Chronica of Robert Niger places it on the vigil of S. Maurice (September 20). Leicester landed at Walton in Suffolk and made his way to Hugh Bigod's castle of Framlingham, where the two earls joined their forces.

Having joined forces with Hugh Bigod at Framlingham, the two earls took and burned the castle of Haughley, which Ralf de Broc was holding against them for the king. This destructive act marked the opening of the rebel offensive in England, striking directly at royalist positions in East Anglia.

Map IV illustrates the geography of the 1173–1174 rebellion, distinguishing royal strongholds (underlined) from rebel strongholds. The map's legend identifies rebel factions: Scottish holdings; Hugh of Durham; the Mowbrays; Hugh Bigod; Hugh of Chester; Hamo de Massey; Richard de Morville; Robert of Leicester; and Robert of Ferrers.

While Earl Robert of Leicester arrived in England, the king's representatives were confronting William of Scotland on the northern border. William had mustered Lowland knights and Galloway Highlanders, marched through the see of Durham, and begun ravaging Yorkshire, but Richard de Lucy and Humfrey de Bohun compelled him to retreat into Celtic Scotland. After English forces overran Lothian and burned Berwick, news of Leicester's activities in Suffolk prompted a truce so that the royal leaders could return south. Richard de Lucy resumed his role as viceroy, and Humfrey de Bohun assumed supreme military command, supported by the earls of Cornwall, Gloucester, and Arundel. Posting themselves at Bury St Edmund's with three hundred paid soldiers, they intercepted Leicester, who was attempting to join the garrison of Leicester from Framlingham. Marching beneath the banner of St Edmund, the royal forces overtook the earl in a marsh near Fornham and defeated him completely. Leicester's Flemish mercenaries, who had boasted in song, were cut down largely by local peasants armed with forks and flails. His French and Norman knights were captured, and he himself was overtaken and seized along with his wife. The victors garrisoned Bury St Edmund's, Ipswich, and Colchester to contain Hugh Bigod. A winter truce followed, under which Hugh dismissed approximately fourteen hundred Flemish mercenaries, who were given safe-conduct through Essex and Kent and ships at Dover to return home.

The earl and countess of Leicester were sent to Normandy and imprisoned at Falaise alongside Hugh of Chester. Their capture dismayed the French king and the rebel princes, none of whom dared oppose Henry when he led his Brabantines into Touraine at Martinmas, forced rebellious barons into submission, and reinstated his ally Count John of Vendôme in his capital. Henry returned to keep Christmas at Caen. A young-king attack on Séez at the new year was repulsed, producing a truce until the end of March. The Scottish truce was prolonged to the same date—the octave of Easter—through Bishop Hugh of Durham's diplomacy, who secured the delay by promising three hundred marks of silver from Northumbrian baronial lands, apparently without authority and for his own purposes.

Bishop Hugh's true aim was to gain time for organizing a general northern rising, and he succeeded. The network of rebel strongholds blocking communications from Yorkshire included: Hugh of Chester's Chester, Hamo de Massey's Dunham, and Geoffrey of Coutances' Stockport on the Dee and Mersey; the earl of Ferrers' Tutbury and Duffield in the upper Trent valley; the earl of Leicester's Leicester, Groby, and Mount Sorrel in Charnwood Forest; Roger de Mowbray's renewed fortification at Kinardferry in the Isle of Axholm, linked to his castles at Kirkby Malzeard and Thirsk; and Bishop Hugh's Northallerton. To the north stood Durham, backed by a double belt of fortresses from the Forth and Tweed to the Solway: Lauder (Richard de Morville), and the Scottish-held Stirling, Edinburgh, Berwick, Jedburgh, Roxburgh, Annan, and Lochmaben.

The southern belt of rebel strongholds was opposed by a chain of royal castles in Cumberland and Northumberland. Nicolas de Stuteville held Liddell; Robert de Stuteville held Burgh on the Solway and Appleby; Carlisle's castellan was Richard de Vaux; the Tyne was guarded by Wark (Roger de Stuteville), Prudhoe (Odelin de Umfraville), and Newcastle (Roger Fitz-Richard). Between the Wansbeck and Coquet stood Harbottle (Odelin), Warkworth (Roger Fitz-Richard), and Alnwick (William de Vesci). When the truce expired and William of Scotland again invaded England, his brother David joined the rebel garrison at Leicester while William laid siege to Wark. Though William had besieged Wark unsuccessfully the previous autumn and had sustained a similar repulse at Carlisle, this campaign he again failed at Wark before turning to Carlisle. While blockading Carlisle, he detached forces that took Liddell, Burgh, Appleby, Harbottle, and Warkworth. The arrival of David at Leicester revived the garrison, which under Earl Robert of Ferrers sallied forth to burn Nottingham, killing many citizens and returning with plunder and prisoners.

The royal representatives in the south, recognizing they could not rescue the north directly, sought to divert the Scots by laying siege to David of Scotland's castle of Huntingdon. Huntingdon had been held since 1136 by successive kings of Scots or their nearest kinsmen, deriving from Waltheof's daughter Matilda's marriage to King David. The fief was held for life by special grant rather than by hereditary right, enabling the house of Northampton to maintain an ancient claim. Earl Simon of Northampton pressed this claim upon the king, who replied that Simon might keep Huntingdon if he could win it. This secured Simon's support for Richard de Lucy's siege, which began on May 8.

Three days before the siege of Huntingdon began, Geoffrey, the king's eldest son and bishop-elect of Lincoln, gathered the forces of Lincolnshire and laid siege to Kinardferry in Axholm. Robert of Mowbray, commanding the garrison, slipped out to seek help from Leicester but was surrounded and captured by country-folk at Clay. On May 5 Kinardferry surrendered, and after razing it Geoffrey marched to York, where he joined the archbishop and shire forces. This united host took Mowbray's castle of Malessart (Kirkby Malzeard), and menaced Thirsk by building a rival fortification at Topcliff. Geoffrey entrusted Malessart to Archbishop Roger and Thirsk to William de Stuteville, then marched back to Lincoln in triumph.

Approximately three days after Pentecost, some three hundred Flemish soldiers landed at the mouth of the Orwell, forerunners of the great host Count Philip of Flanders had sworn to bring at Midsummer on behalf of the young king. Hugh Bigod, whose truce with the king's officers expired four days later, received them into his castles. For a month there was little further action, save that the garrison of Leicester made a successful plundering raid on Northampton at the close of Whitsun-week. On June 18, Hugh Bigod and his Flemings marched on Norwich, took it by assault, slaughtered many men and women, and sacked and burned the city. They returned toward Framlingham by way of Dunwich, but the stout fisher-folk there met them with such determined resistance that the Flemings were compelled to retire.

The chapter's climactic event is the Flemish invasion and sack of Norwich. Hugh Bigod, having received Flemish reinforcements after the expiration of his truce, led them and his own forces on an assault that resulted in vast slaughter and the burning of the city. The Flemings' attempted descent on Dunwich was repelled by the local population. This incursion formed the opening phase of Count Philip of Flanders' promised Midsummer invasion on behalf of the young king, foreshadowing the further military operations to be recounted in the succeeding narrative.

The Siege of Huntingdon and Lawlessness in London While Richard de Lucy pressed the siege of Huntingdon, the garrison set fire to the town; he built a blocking tower and handed the operation over to the earl of Northampton. Turning from warfare to justice, Richard faced an outbreak of lawlessness in London, where gangs of young men from leading families went out by night to rob and murder. When one such band, led by Andrew Bucquinte, was surprised breaking into a citizen's house, Bucquinte was captured and revealed his accomplices, including the wealthy John Oldman, who was hanged despite offering five hundred marks. With the realm in such a state, the justiciars sent a delegation in person to Normandy to urge Henry to return.

Henry's Return from the Continent Henry had spent the spring campaigning through Maine and Anjou to Poitiers, where he kept Whitsun, and had just retaken Saintes from rebels acting in young Henry's name. By S. Barnabas's day he was back on the Anjou-Brittany border, took and fortified Ancenis, and met the Norman castellans at Bonneville on Midsummer day, where Richard of Ilchester arrived to summon him home. Aware that his eldest son was waiting at Gravelines for a fair wind to invade England, Henry secured his continental holdings and arranged transport for his queen Eleanor, the earl and countess of Leicester, the earl of Chester, the young queen Margaret, the affianced brides of his younger sons, and the children Jane and John. Embarking at Barfleur on July 7, he prayed that God would either bring him safe to port or deny him his shores, and landed at Southampton by nightfall.

Penance at Becket's Shrine After disposing of his prisoners and hostages in safe custody, Henry set out at once for Canterbury, traveling on bread and water. He dismounted outside S. Dunstan's church, exchanged his royal robes for a pilgrim's woollen gown, and walked barefoot through the streets to the cathedral, where he prostrated himself on Becket's tomb in the crypt. The bishop of London read a protestation of innocence in his name, the assembled prelates granted absolution, and Henry was publicly scourged by the bishops and monks. He spent the whole night in prayer, heard mass at dawn, left rich gifts, and rode back fasting to London, where he spent several days raising forces and recovering.

The Capture of William the Lion at Alnwick On the night of July 17 a courier from Ralf de Glanville burst into Henry's chamber with news that William the Lion was held prisoner at Richmond. William, who had been besieging Prudhoe, had divided his host, dispersing most of it under the earls of Fife and Angus and the English traitor Richard de Morville to plunder Northumberland, while he lingered outside Alnwick with only some sixty knights. A small English force of about four hundred knights under Bernard de Balliol, William de Vesci, Glanville, Odelin de Umfraville, and Archbishop Roger's men marched north through the mist. Despite being urged to turn back, they pushed on under Balliol's lead, surprised the Scots, and captured William and all his men after a sharp fight; Roger de Mowbray and the outlawed Adam de Port were the only ones to escape.

The End of the Rebellion The capture of the Scottish king broke the rebellion. Hugh of Durham paid off the Flemings just landed at Hartlepool and sent them home, and the young king, weary of waiting at Gravelines, sent troops under Ralf of La Haye from Wissant to help Hugh Bigod. In London Henry set out for Huntingdon, which surrendered three days later; he then divided his forces, sending one column against Bungay while he led the other to Framlingham, where Hugh Bigod surrendered on July 25. At Northampton the king received a series of submissions: William the Lion, brought in humiliating fashion from Richmond; Bishop Hugh, surrendering Durham, Norham and Northallerton; the constables of Leicester's three castles; Roger of Mowbray yielding up Thirsk; and Robert de Ferrers yielding Tutbury and Duffield. The earl of Gloucester and Richard de Clare came in to renew their allegiance, and the princes of Galloway revolted against Scotland and offered themselves to Henry. Within three weeks of his landing, every royal fortress was back in his hands and the realm was at peace.

With England secured, the rebellion's collapse in Normandy followed inevitably, since the same leaders were involved on both sides of the Channel. Louis VII, dismayed at the sudden English reversal, recalled the young King Henry and the Count of Flanders from their projected invasion. As a final recourse, all three concentrated their forces on the siege of Rouen. The garrison held out gallantly until Henry II could recross the sea with his Brabantine mercenaries and a force of approximately a thousand Welshmen who had previously distinguished themselves under Rees Ap-Griffith at the siege of Tutbury.

On August 11, three days after landing, Henry entered Rouen. A successful raid by his Welshmen on French convoys, followed by an equally successful sally by Henry himself against the besieging forces, compelled Louis to seek a truce, under cover of which the French king withdrew his entire host back into his own territories. Some three weeks later, on September 8, Louis and Henry met in conference at Gisors and arranged a general suspension of hostilities until Michaelmas, with the exception of hostilities between Henry and his son Richard, who was fighting independently against his father's loyal subjects in Poitou. Henry marched southward at once; Richard fled before him, his conquests falling back one by one into royal hands. Richard suddenly returned to throw himself at his father's feet, and a few days before Michaelmas Henry concluded his Poitevin war by entering Poitiers in triumph with his penitent and forgiven son at his side.

On the last day of September, the two kings and all the princes met in conference between Tours and Amboise. Henry's three elder sons accepted the endowments he offered them, and in return the young King Henry gave his assent to a provision for John. A general amnesty was agreed upon: all prisoners on both sides, except William the Lion, the Earls of Leicester and Chester, and Ralf of Fougères, were released at once; all rebels returned to their allegiance and were fully forgiven. Henry demanded nothing save the restoration of castles to their prewar condition and the right to take such hostages and securities as he chose. These terms did not apply to England. The Scottish king and his fellow-captives, whom Henry had brought back to Normandy and confined at Falaise, were excluded as prisoners of war. At Falaise on October 11, Henry and his sons embodied their agreement in a written document, witnessed by twenty-eight signatories including Geoffrey, bishop elect of Lincoln.

A few weeks after the Falaise agreement, William of Scotland, with the formal assent of the Scottish bishops and barons who had been permitted free access to him during captivity, submitted to the price Henry demanded for his ransom. The legal relations between the English and Scottish crowns, doubtful since the days of William the Conqueror and Malcolm Canmore, were definitively settled. William the Lion became the liegeman of the English king and his son for Scotland and all his other lands, and agreed that their heirs would be entitled to like homage and fealty from all future kings of Scots. The castles of Roxburgh, Jedburgh, Berwick, Edinburgh, and Stirling were required as security. Once the treaty was ratified at Valognes on December 8, William was sent overseas in a form of honourable custody to enforce their surrender and thereby complete his own release.

Under the terms of Henry's treaty with France, all English barons holding lands on both sides of the Channel were at once reinstated in their continental possessions, except for castles over which the king resumed his ancient rights of garrison or demolition. Their English estates, however, were wholly at his mercy, though Henry used his power gently. He exacted only what was necessary to secure his authority and the realm's peace: the immediate expulsion of Flemish mercenaries, the demolition of unlicensed fortifications, and a tax to defray war expenses, levied partly on royal demesnes and partly on rebel estates according to an assessment made during the summer by sheriffs and Exchequer officers. No ruinous sums were demanded; Hugh Bigod escaped with a fine of one thousand marks and lost none of his earldom's revenues save for the period of open rebellion, the third penny of Norfolk being reckoned as due to him from the third day after his surrender. Even the Earls of Leicester and Chester were apparently freed soon after the Scottish king, and within little more than two years they were restored to all their lands and honours, except their castles, which were razed or retained in the king's hands.

Henry's clemency was at once the strongest proof of the completeness of his victory and the surest means of retaining his new hold over the barons. The Great Rebellion possessed a special significance: it was the last struggle in English history in which the barons were arrayed against the united interests of Crown and people. The feudal pride that had so often revolted against the determination of William the Conqueror and Henry I to enforce justice and order at last acknowledged its master in Henry II. In the unbroken tranquillity, the uninterrupted development of legal and administrative reform, and the unchecked growth of England's material and social prosperity during the remaining fifteen years of his reign, Henry and his people reaped the first fruits of the anti-feudal policy he and his predecessors had so steadily maintained. Its full harvest was to be reaped after Henry's death—not by the sovereign, but by the barons themselves, whom his strong hand had at last taught their true mission as leaders and champions of the English people against a king who had fallen away from the traditions alike of the Norman and of the Angevin Henry.

In the seven years after the suppression of the barons' revolt, Henry's prosperity reached its height. Within Britain he was supreme: the English people supported him, the Church was reconciled by his penance, feudalism was definitively defeated, the Welsh princes were his vassals, and the Scottish king had been humbled into a similar position, while a new subject-realm was growing up in Ireland. External hostility from France was paralyzed by Henry's success, and other European rulers—the kings of Spain and Sicily, the princes of the Western and Eastern Empires—sought his friendship. All hindrances to the full development of his governmental policy across his dominions were removed.

The period 1175–1182 was one of unbroken tranquillity and steady growth in England. Henry made longer stays than ever before: from May 1175 to August 1177; from July 1177 to April 1180; and from July 1181 to March 1182. Each visit saw further judicial and administrative reforms. Henry and his eldest son landed together on May 9, 1175, sealed their reconciliation with the Church at a Westminster council under the new archbishop Richard (formerly prior of Dover), and proceeded on pilgrimage to Canterbury. They held a Whitsuntide court at Reading and met the Welsh princes at Gloucester. At Woodstock the vacant bishoprics and abbacies were filled and an edict issued for order in the realm. A major forest visitation—begun in summer 1175 and completed by Michaelmas 1177—subjected nearly everyone in the kingdom to fines at the king's mercy, despite Richard de Lucy's protest that Henry's own writ had authorized the people to use the forests during the war.

In early 1176 Henry assembled a great council at Northampton and issued an Assize continuing the legislative series begun at Clarendon ten years earlier. The first three and twelfth clauses re-issued the Clarendon provisions on presentment, detention, and punishment of criminals, now requiring presentment to the king's justices directly rather than to the sheriff, and with harsher penalties (e.g., forger, robber, murderer, or incendiary to lose both foot and hand and quit the realm within forty days). The fourth article regulated the procedure for the estate of a deceased freeholder, securing the rights of heir and widow before relief, and referring disputes to the king's justices on a recognition of twelve—this became the assize of mort d'ancester. Other clauses required justices to take oaths of homage and fealty from all men, enforce the demolition of condemned castles, investigate castle-guard obligations, inquire into outlaws and report them to the Exchequer, hold royal demesne bailiffs to account, and defined the justices' jurisdiction over Crown pleas and over escheats, wardships, and royal demesne lands and churches.

The visitations carrying the Assize of Northampton into effect were organized on a new plan, adapted from the tallage assessment of 1173. For the war, nineteen barons of the Exchequer, grouped into six companies, had assessed a tallage on the royal demesnes. At the 1176 council of Northampton the kingdom was again mapped into six divisions, each served by three justices. In the Pipe Roll of that year these officers were officially called "justitiæ itinerantes" (or "errantes")—justices-in-eyre—for the first time since the Assize of Clarendon, and from this point modern legal historians date the regular institution of itinerant judges. The following year, the same eighteen officers made a fiscal visitation in four companies instead of six.

On Henry's return to England in summer 1178 he reorganized the central judicature in response to complaints that the realm was oppressed by the great multitude of justices. Acting on the counsel of the wise men, he chose five officers—two clerks and three laymen—from his private household to hear all complaints and do right, instructed them to stay at the king's court rather than itinerate, and reserved difficult cases for the king's own hearing in council. This committee, since it touched both the central and provincial judicature, took the highest judicial functions out of the larger body of the Curia Regis and is regarded as the origin of the Court of King's Bench. The reservation of cases to the king in council with his "wise men" is seen as a revival of the earliest form of the Curia Regis, pointing forward to the later courts of Chancery and the Privy Council in its judicial capacity.

The changes in circuits and the Curia Regis were driven by Henry's difficulty in finding ministers who would administer his reforms as he intended—"never changing his mind, but ever changing his ministers." Having tried feudal nobles, court officials, and confidential servants, Henry lost his most trusted servant when Richard de Lucy resigned the justiciarship in summer 1179 and retired to Lesnes Abbey, where he died shortly afterward. Following a precedent from his grandfather's time, Henry placed the chief administration in clerical hands, appointing three justiciar-bishops: Richard of Ilchester (bishop of Winchester), Geoffrey Ridel (bishop of Ely), and John of Oxford (bishop of Norwich), all of whom had long experience in secular administration.

The arrangement of 1179 was provisional. The circuits were raised to four: the three southern circuits each received one of the justiciar-bishops accompanied by a royal clerk and three laymen, while the northern circuit (from the Trent to the Scottish border) was entrusted to six justices led nominally by Godfrey de Lucy but in practice by Ralf de Glanville—sheriff of Lancashire and castellan of Richmond, who had received William the Lion's sword at the capitulation of Alnwick in 1174. These six also formed the committee for hearing the people's complaints, succeeding the five chosen in 1178. All four commissions reported to the king at Westminster on August 27, producing the most satisfactory report yet received. When Henry crossed to Normandy the following April, he left Ralf de Glanville as chief justiciar. Glanville proved as capable and honest as Richard de Lucy, and from that time the management of the entire legal and judicial administration was left in his hands. Circuits continued annually with varying numbers of judges, while the King's Court and Exchequer pursued their established course without further interruption until the end of Henry's reign.

The Assize of Arms, published in autumn 1181 (and the last of Henry's great legal measures aside from a Forest Assize of 1184), aimed to put the ancient "fyrd" on a more definite footing as a counterpoise to baronial military power, whose value had been demonstrated in the campaigns of 1173–1174. It bound every free layman to bear arms at the king's command, prescribing a graduated scale of equipment from the knight's full harness down to the burgher's mail-coat, steel-cap, and spear. Justices were to enroll freeholders by category through the "lawful men" of the hundreds and towns, read the Assize publicly, and administer an oath to provide the requisite arms by S. Hilary's day. Arms were reserved for royal service, could not be taken abroad or alienated, passed to the owner's heir at death, and any surplus had to be disposed of for the king's use; defaulters faced corporal punishment.

The freemen armed under the Assize had little occasion to use their weapons during Henry's lifetime: within the four seas of Britain there was almost unbroken peace until his death. The Scottish treaty was ratified by William the Lion's public homage at York on 10 August 1175, after which Henry's Scottish role was largely confined to arbitrating between William and his Galloway vassals and advising him in his Roman difficulties. In Wales, the 1157 expedition against the princes of North Wales had little result, but the 1163 campaign against Rees Ap-Griffith of South Wales succeeded when Henry, guided by a fateful omen at the Pencarn ford, swept unopposed through Glamorgan and Carmarthen to Pencader, where Rees submitted. Welsh homage was renewed at Woodstock, where the first quarrel with Becket also arose. A 1165 rising, provoked by Henry's alleged breach of promises and by Earl Roger of Clare's shelter of a kinslayer, was checked by the weather: encamped at Berwen, Henry's vast army—drawn from across his dominions and reinforced by Flemish and Scottish allies—was routed by ceaseless rain. After six years' absence, his 1171 passage through South Wales on the way to Ireland enabled a series of interviews with Rees that produced a lasting agreement, leaving Rees as the king's "justice" over South Wales; Rees proved his loyalty in 1174 by marching to besiege Tutbury. David of North Wales resisted the temptation to join the 1174 revolt and later married Henry's half-sister Emma, a politic match. A sworn mutual alliance of the border barons, sworn at Gloucester in June 1175, proved of limited value, and it was only in 1184 that disorders grew serious enough to summon Henry in person, when a march to Worcester brought Rees once more to his knees.

Ireland gave Henry more persistent trouble than any other dependency. At the outbreak of the 1173 baronial revolt he recalled his Irish coast-town garrisons and summoned Richard of Striguil and Hugh de Lacy to Normandy; Richard distinguished himself as commandant of Gisors, and was rewarded with the Irish governorship in Hugh's stead. For two years affairs ran much as before, but the lesson of Henry's domestic settlement was not lost on the settlers, and in late 1175 Roderic O'Conor, prompted by Henry's recent successes and by the publication at Waterford of Adrian's "Laudabiliter" and another papal bull, opened negotiations. The resulting treaty, signed at Windsor on 6 October 1175, made Roderic Henry's liegeman in return for a yearly tribute of one merchantable hide per ten cattle, and confirmed him in the government and justice of the whole island except Leinster, Meath, and Waterford, with the help of the royal constables. The scheme was undermined by disorders among the settlers. The death of Richard of Striguil in 1176 elevated Raymond the Fat, a forceful but already court-suspected figure, only to be displaced in turn by the king's seneschal William Fitz-Aldhelm, whose tact proved unequal to his loyalty. His imprudent remark on landing—"I will soon put an end to all this!"—and his hasty severities united the Geraldines against him, and Henry recalled him early in 1177. Meanwhile the settlers, in defiance of Roderic's reserved rights, used the mutual quarrels of native chieftains to extend English power far beyond the treaty's limits: Raymond and his Geraldine kinsmen effectively subjugated Munster; Miles Cogan invaded Connaught; and John de Courcy was in full career of conquest in Ulster.

The collapse of the original Savoyard match—John's betrothed Alice of Maurienne having died within a year of the betrothal, despite a provision substituting her sister—freed Henry to seek a more advantageous destiny for his youngest son. In autumn 1176 John was betrothed to his cousin Avice, the youngest daughter of Earl William of Gloucester, heiress to the vast western and South Welsh estates of the earldom of Gloucester. Avice's wealth was meant to support a loftier dignity: allegedly armed with papal permission to make any of his sons king of Ireland, Henry reverted to his scheme of conquering the whole island. In May 1177 he publicly announced the grant of the realm of Ireland to John and, at a great council at Oxford, parcelled out the southern half of the country among feudal tenants who did homage for their new fiefs to him and John. Since John was too young to govern in person, Henry reappointed Hugh de Lacy as viceroy; with the brief exception of a temporary disgrace in 1181, Hugh held the office for the next seven years, and the further internal history of Angevin Ireland falls outside the scope of the present chapter.

The text examines the appointment of a viceroy for Ireland following the earl's restoration. While the Gesta Henrici implies the appointment was given to Hugh of Chester, Gerald of Wales states that Hugh de Lacy was re-appointed viceroy at this time. The passage notes that Hugh de Lacy acted as such for the next seven years, with no evidence that Hugh of Chester ever went to Ireland, suggesting either a refusal of the office, a change of mind by the king, or a confusion between the two Hughs by the Gesta's author. Hugh de Lacy was briefly superseded for about half a year by John de Vesci and Richard de Pec.

During years of prosperity and peace, the clearest view emerges of Henry II's general scheme of home and foreign policy. His empire extended from the western shores of Ireland to the Cévennes, and from the northernmost point of Britain to the Pyrenees, but was composed of separate members over which his authority varied. These fell into two groups: one where Henry ruled as supreme head within the British Isles, and another where he had at least a nominal superior in the king of France. His policy thus had two centers—one in England, the other in Anjou. The key to his policy lies in blending these two characters: king of England and head of the house of Anjou. His insular policy aimed to make England a strong national state with Scotland, Wales, and Ireland as dependent allies, while his continental empire was distinctly Angevin with its center at Angers.

The prophecy made to Fulk the Good was now literally fulfilled, as his descendants' dominions reached the ends of the known world. In the east, one grandson of Fulk V. ruled over a strip of Holy Land, while in the west, another was acknowledged overlord of Ireland. In Gaul itself, the Angevin dominion stretched unbroken from the Somme to the Bidassoa, encompassing more than two-thirds of the kingdom of France. The text traces this expansion through Fulk Nerra and Geoffrey Martel's conquest of Touraine, Fulk V.'s annexation of Maine, and Geoffrey Plantagenet's acquisition of Normandy through marriage.

Count Henry Fitz-Empress, standing like Fulk the Black upon the rock of Angers, surveyed his marchland and borders, identifying points for strengthening, rounding off, or enlargement, pursuing Fulk Nerra's work in Fulk Nerra's spirit. The work had vastly altered in scale but not in character. Henry's policy in Gaul was essentially the same as Fulk's—a policy of consolidation rather than conquest. He never dreamed of pitting his dominions against the French Crown in a struggle for the mastery of Gaul, nor of freeing himself from feudal obedience to the French king. He aimed simply at compacting and securing his territories in Gaul and maintaining his rank as the most influential vassal of the Crown.

Henry II's moderate ambition in Gaul entailed no complicated schemes of foreign diplomacy. Although he was in diplomatic relations with every state in Christendom, from Portugal to Norway, and from the count of Montferrat to the Eastern and Western Emperors, these relations sprang primarily from his insular position as a mighty English king. It was this knowledge that roused Louis VII's jealousy and drove Henry into diplomacy and war not natural results of his own policy. Henry's foreign relations concerned England far more than Anjou. His German and Italian alliances counterbalanced the French king's league with the Pope; his daughters' marriages were strictly alliances of the English Crown, with proposals formally deliberated upon by great councils of English bishops and barons as matters concerning England's interests as a state.

Henry's daughters served as instruments of his regal, national, English policy. Matilda's marriage with Henry of Saxony was occasioned by the quarrel with S. Thomas and continued a policy traceable through earlier royal marriages. Eleanor's and Jane's marriages were first planned during the same troubled time, with proposals coming from the bridegrooms as humble suits to the king of England. Details of Jane's journey to Sicily and Eleanor's husband's arbitration at Westminster were recorded as matters of national interest and pride. For carrying out his Angevin, family policy, Henry looked to his sons.

Henry had long abandoned his early scheme of devoting himself to continental politics and making England over to his eldest son—a scheme frustrated by the quarrel with Thomas and ended by the 1173 revolt, which proved he must never delegate his kingly power. Yet he persistently refused to give his eldest son real power on the continent equal to what younger sons received. The probable reason was that he could not part with any share of authority over his ancestral dominions without parting with his ancestral dignities. To place his mother's duchy and his father's counties in other hands would have been to renounce his birthright and equivalent to complete abdication on the continent. When Henry found it impossible to give England to his eldest son, he had nothing else to give him unless he gave him all. Henry Fitz-Empress, like William the Conqueror, would not "take off his clothes before he was ready to go to bed." His schemes from 1175 onward aimed solely at insuring a fair partition among his sons after his death, with young Henry stepping into exactly his own position as king of England, duke of Normandy, and count of Anjou.

At the close of the 1175 revolt, the young King Henry was entering his twentieth year, Richard his eighteenth, and Geoffrey his seventeenth; although they had been titular dukes of Aquitaine and Brittany respectively since 1169, the real government of all the continental duchies had remained in their father's hands. Of these possessions, Normandy lay nearest to England and was most closely connected with it politically, so it is the duchy whose internal affairs merit extended treatment, while the others require only a brief sketch.

A comparison of dates suggests Henry tested administrative experiments in Normandy before applying them in England. The Falaise edict of Christmas 1159–1160, requiring accusations to be supported by neighbours of good character and magistrates to act only with witness of neighbours, foreshadowed the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164) and the subsequent Assize. A 1162 commission of inquiry into Norman episcopal sees and viscounties anticipated the 1170 inquest into English sheriffs, and a 1171 inquiry into ducal forests and demesnes paralleled the great forest assize of 1176 and the 1177 demesne inquest. Conversely, the 1172 Norman tenants-in-chivalry roll was modelled on the English "Black Book" of 1168. Following the death of Seneschal William de Courcy in 1176, Henry appointed Richard of Ilchester—an Englishman long employed at the royal treasury and exchequer, though also archdeacon of Poitiers and later bishop of Winchester—who reorganized the Norman administration with authority more akin to an English justiciar than a typical seneschal and may have shaped the Norman Court of Exchequer, whose earliest extant roll dates from 1180. The earlier legal history of Normandy is too obscure for precise comparison with England, and the speedy severance of their political connexion renders the question of limited practical importance.

The internal history of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine under Henry II is even more obscure than that of Normandy, owing to a general dearth of historical records throughout his dominions outside England. Normandy could claim only Robert of Torigni (Robert de Monte) as a chronicler of any consequence, and even his work is a conventional annalistic compilation. The Breton chronicles become increasingly meagre; the chronicles of Tours are thin; and the "Acts of the Bishops of Le Mans," the sole native authority for Maine, record only ecclesiastical matters. Although patriotic Angevin writers gathered traditions of the counts in Henry's early years—supplementing them with a memoir of Geoffrey Plantagenet—Henry's own reign produced no historian in the Marchland, and the half-blank pages of its few monastic chronicles suggest that Anjou was once more, as under Fulk the Good, "happy in having no history."

In Anjou, Touraine, and Maine alone can one discern a side of Henry's character invisible in his northern realms: where England and Normandy show him as enterprising politician, stern ruler, and uncompromising opponent of the Church, his Marchland reveals him as the one Angevin count who fully realized the ideal of the good count-canon, with a reign of unbroken peace for his paternal lands. While English tradition reduces him to the hero of a foolish romance or the man who did penance at Becket's grave, leaving not one stone upon another of his English dwelling-places, the valley of the Loire preserves him as a builder of palaces and hospitals whose material works rival those of Fulk Nerra himself, and whose popular memory differs as much from that of Fulk the Black as from the image retained in England.

Henry adorned nearly all his local Angevin capitals with palaces of regal dimensions, rebuilding the ducal palace at Rouen (begun 1161), nearly completing that at Caen by 1180 (its hall still the traditional seat of the Norman Exchequer), erecting a castle at Tours of which a round tower survives, transforming Geoffrey the Bearded's prison at Chinon into a royal retreat of exquisite beauty, and reconstructing Angers after a fire of 1132 on a regal scale that astonished the English visitor Ralf de Diceto. Though he founded only six religious houses—and showed little sympathy for church-building or abbey-founding—his munificence toward the sick and needy was exceptional. Norman exchequer-rolls record ducal revenues supporting lazar-houses and hospitals across the bailiwicks; he founded a leper-hospital outside Caen in 1161 and converted his 1161 hunting-lodge at Quévilly near Rouen into a Grandmontine asylum for lepers. At Le Mans he reared a great almshouse whose hall still stands; and at Angers, taking over a hospice begun by his seneschal Stephen, he endowed and spiritually confirmed the hospital in 1180–1181, completed its chapel of S. John the Baptist and domestic offices before his death, and left the smaller of its two great pillared halls clearly of his building.

The Hospice of St. John, founded as a third pious establishment alongside Fulk Nerra's abbey of St. Nicolas and Hildegard's nunnery of Our Lady of Charity, clustered on the meadows along the right bank of the Mayenne. Around these foundations grew the suburb now known as Ronceray or La Doutre, which by the end of Henry's reign had become almost as populous as Angers itself and was actually preferred as a residence by the chronicler Ralf de Diceto.

Henry II undertook substantial infrastructure work in Anjou to address the chronic dangers of the Loire valley. The bridge linking the Ronceray suburb to the city was destroyed by fire twice during his reign (in 1167 and 1177), and the present Grand-Pont is attributed to him. The rivers of the region, dry and choked with sand in summer, would rage and swell in winter like the sea. The greatest and most lasting of Henry's benefactions was the great embankment, or Levée, stretching some thirty miles along the Loire from Ponts-de-Cé eastward to Bourgueil—a work planned and executed, characteristically, in the very midst of his struggle with the Church.

In the valley of the Vienne, the legend of the Pont de l'Annonain illustrates how popular imagination conflated Henry with his great predecessor Fulk Nerra. The long viaduct, in reality built by Henry to secure safe transit from Chinon into Poitou across the swampy south bank of the Vienne, was said by later peasant tradition to have been raised in a single night by the Black Count's familiar demon. This devil is explained as a popular personification of the spirit of dauntless enterprise and ceaseless activity that animated the material and political workmanship of both Henry and Fulk alike.

Aquitaine was geographically remote from England and even more remote in the character of its people, yet it concerned Henry II more than any other part of his Gaulish possessions. It was a chief source of the political complications that filled the closing years of his life, and uniquely among his continental dominions its connexion with England survived the fall of the Angevin house: while the heritages of Geoffrey and Matilda were lost by their grandson, Eleanor's heritage remained in the hands of her descendants for more than two hundred years.

Aquitaine was at once a dower of great value and a heavy burden. In extent it surpassed all of Henry's Norman and Angevin dominions put together and was scarcely equalled by England itself, embracing every variety of soil and landscape—from the rich pastures of Berry and the vineyards of Poitou and Saintonge to the volcanic rocks of Auvergne, the salt marshes and pine-forests of the Gascon coast, and the valleys at the feet of the Pyrenees. Its population differed from their fellow-subjects north of the Loire in blood, speech, temper, and modes of life so widely that, by contrast, Angevins, Normans, and English could almost count themselves one people.

Aquitaine's entire eastern frontier, from the banks of the Cher to the Pyrenees, was more or less in dispute throughout Henry's reign. The question of Toulouse was settled in 1173, after which the county, with its northern dependencies of Rouergue and Alby, became a recognized under-fief of Aquitaine, to which Quercy had already been annexed after the war of 1160. Berry and Auvergne proved sources of more lasting trouble: Berry was split between the dukes of Aquitaine and a northern viscounty held directly of the French Crown, while Auvergne, having virtually freed itself from both Poitiers and Toulouse, was treated as an immediate fief of the French Crown yet never ceased to be claimed by the dukes of Aquitaine—a quarrel that the French kings exploited for twenty-five years by sending troops into Auvergne at every adverse turn of Henry's fortunes.

The Aquitanian border lacked the chain of strongly-fortified, stoutly-manned ducal castles that guarded Normandy, and Henry's hold over his wife's dominions was far weaker than his grasp of his mother's heritage. Twenty years of Angevin rule had not bridged the gulf between Aquitaine and the northern world. Nowhere in his dominions was a spirit of revolt so rife as among the nobles of Poitou, but their insubordination was unlike the feudal pride of the Norman baronage: it sprang from a love of strife for its own sake, one phase of a passion for adventure and excitement that coloured every aspect of southern life. In this world the most delicate poetry and the fiercest savagery, the wildest disorder and the most refined culture, mingled together: the southern warrior was expected to sing his battles as well as fight them, and the troubadour's sirvente often wrought more deadly mischief than sword or firebrand.

The nature of the men of the south is illustrated in the contemporary portrait of Bertrand de Born, lord of Hautefort in the Limousin, a good knight, a good warrior, a good servant of ladies, and a good troubadour. Commanding near a thousand men, he was perpetually at war with his neighbours, with his own brother, and with the count of Poitou, yet he was a pleasant, courteous, and wise man who, whenever he chose, could master King Henry and his sons. He worked ceaselessly to keep the father, the sons, and the brothers at war with one another, and the kings of England and France at war with each other, and whenever they made peace he would set to work to unmake it with his sirventes.

Until the duchy passed to a woman, the vassals of Aquitaine were like their sovereign: Eleanor's grandfather William VIII and her father William IX were simply the boldest knights, the gayest troubadours, and the most reckless adventurers in their duchy. Eleanor's own influence preserved Aquitaine's obedience to Henry during the prosperous early years of their marriage, but at the first turn of the tide the south rose against its northern master, and after her revolt in 1173 the chances of a good understanding became nearly desperate. Henry, who had long perceived that Aquitaine required a different apprenticeship from Normandy or England, had from Richard's earliest years designated him as Eleanor's destined colleague and ultimate heir. After long diplomacy, Richard was formally enthroned at Poitiers on Trinity Sunday 1172; and following the restoration of peace in 1175, he was sent into Poitou with full authority to employ its forces and suppress disorder in the duchy.

Richard's training for rule in Aquitaine is uncertain, but his temperament was arguably the least suited among Eleanor's sons to win the goodwill of the south. While the traditional "Cœur-de-lion" image evokes the southern spirit, Richard's intellectual affinities with his mother's southern blood were outweighed by a sterner character rooted in his northern ancestry. His love of splendour, poetry, music, and adventure came from Eleanor, but he attributed his moral defects to the "demon-blood" of the Angevin counts—an explanation the author rejects. In body and mind, Richard resembled the Norman forefathers of the Empress Matilda: his tall stature, great strength, blue eyes, and golden hair marked him as a child of the north. His sympathies likewise lay northward; he chose Rouen, not Poitiers, as his final resting-place, and his legendary companion Blondel was a northern *trouvère*, not a southern troubadour. His seamanship, which blossomed late in life on the voyage to Palestine, reflected his wiking heritage. Even as a youth, Richard was intensely serious, stern toward those who opposed him, and possessed of an unwavering will. Descending into Aquitaine, he resolved to impose order through ruthless, straightforward action without southern cunning or Angevin tact, declaring his intent to bring "the shapeless into shape" and chastise the Aquitanians "with scorpions" rather than whips.

Richard launched a furious campaign against the strongholds of the unruly barons, overcoming steep terrain and formidable fortifications with skill and daring. By midsummer he had captured most of the castles of Poitou and was besieging Castillonnes-sur-Agen, which surrendered in mid-August. Before winter he was master of Périgueux and had nearly disinherited the barons of Périgord, Quercy, and the Limousin. In spring, resentment was rekindled by Bertrand de Born—whose brother Constantine, expelled from Hautefort, had appealed to Richard—and by the Count of Angoulême, who raised revolt at the other end of Poitou. At Easter, Richard sought advice and reinforcements from Henry in England, where Geoffrey of Britanny also arrived seeking aid. Henry sent the young king to help his brothers; the young king reluctantly complied, collecting forces in France while Richard hurried back. Count Vulgrin of Angoulême had invaded with Brabantines, but Richard's constable Theobald Chabot and Bishop John of Poitiers defeated them at Barbezieux. By Whitsuntide, Richard raised a force of loyal Poitevins and mercenaries, defeated Vulgrin near the Angoumois–Saintonge border, captured the viscount of Limoges's castle of Aixe, and took Limoges itself. At midsummer the young king rejoined him at Poitiers, and together they besieged Châteauneuf on the Charente. The young king soon withdrew, allegedly seduced by an evil counsellor (probably Bertrand de Born). Undaunted, Richard pressed on to Moulin-Neuf and Angoulême, where after a six-day siege Vulgrin surrendered himself, his fellow-rebels, his city, and five castles. Richard sent the prisoners to Henry, who returned them; Richard imprisoned them to await sentencing.

Northern Aquitaine (Guyenne) was briefly subdued. After Christmas, Richard reduced Gascony: Dax, defended by Viscount Peter and the Count of Bigorre, and Bayonne, defended by Viscount Ernald Bertram, each fell after a ten-day siege; S. Pierre-de-Cize fell in a day; the Basques and Navarrese were compelled to promise peace; and Richard reported to Henry from Poitiers on Candlemas that he had pacified the whole country. The peace soon broke down. At the opposite end of the duchy, Ralf of Déols, the wealthiest baron in Berry, had died leaving an infant daughter; her relatives seized her and her estates, defying feudal wardship. Henry, feeling Richard had enough on his hands, charged the young king with settling the matter, admonishing him that he had lost nothing while ruling alone and must not do so now. The young king besieged Châteauroux with Norman and Angevin forces but achieved little, with no prospect of help from Richard, for the Limousin was again in civil war and southern Aquitaine threatened by strife: Count Raymond of Toulouse, attempting to tighten his authority over Narbonne, provoked a league led by the high-spirited Viscountess Hermengard and the king of Aragon against him. Raymond, illustrating southern character, sought not a knightly ally but a troubadour ally in Bertrand de Born, asking him to publish his cause in a *sirvente*. Bertrand eagerly complied, declaring he wished the great barons ever at odds.

The Septimanian conflict between the houses of Toulouse and Aragon dragged on for years, but Richard was soon summoned to Normandy. Henry had thrice mustered an army in England to aid his sons and twice disbanded it, but by midsummer the situation required his presence: Geoffrey needed help in Britanny, Richard needed it nearly as much in Aquitaine, the young king's sluggishness in the Berry campaign raised suspicions of disloyalty, and the recent Anglo-French treaty was generating fresh disputes. Henry demanded that Louis fulfil the treaty by handing over the Vexin to the young king and the viscounty of Bourges to Richard as dowries; Louis countered that Henry must first allow the marriage of Richard and Adela, long in his custody. Louis escalated the crisis by extracting from a papal legate—who had been dealing with heresy in southern Gaul—a threat of interdict on all Henry's dominions unless Richard and Adela were married at once. The English bishops appealed, and Henry hurried to Normandy, meeting his two elder sons, the legate, and finally Louis. At Nonancourt on September 25 the two kings concluded a treaty making no mention of marriages or dowries, pledging instead to go on crusade together, to arbitrate the Auvergne and Berry disputes, and to bury all other quarrels. This expedient gave Henry freedom to march into Berry: Châteauroux surrendered, and the lord of La Châtre released the little heiress of Déols. Henry advanced into the Limousin to chasten its barons, met Louis at Graçay after Martinmas for another fruitless attempt on Auvergne (where Henry's preferred device of sworn inquest failed and the agreed arbitration never proceeded), then purchased the county of La Marche from Count Adalbert, who planned to end his days in the Holy Land. At Christmas, Henry kept the feast at Angers with his three elder sons amid an unprecedented gathering of knights.

Henry received the homage of the under-tenants of La Marche, but the arrangement soon proved hollow: the brother-lords of Lusignan asserted a claim to the county as next-of-kin to Adalbert and enforced it by occupation. After roughly six months of peace, Henry returned to England in July and knighted his son Geoffrey at Woodstock on 6 August; Geoffrey then crossed to the continent, where he could find nothing more serious to exercise his martial energies than a run of tournaments on the borders of France and Normandy. Richard, meanwhile, was engaged in more earnest fighting. Rivalry between the houses of Aragon and Toulouse had stirred the southern Gascon chieftains, and Richard undertook a campaign against the count of Bigorre that occupied him to year's end. At Christmas he was called back to Saintes by the defiant attitude of the nobles of Saintonge and the Angoumois, especially Geoffrey of Rancogne. After the feast Richard besieged Geoffrey's castle of Pons, leaving his constables to continue the blockade while he reduced five other rebel castles between Easter and Rogation-tide. He then turned his full force against Taillebourg, the strongest of Geoffrey's strongholds, perched on a steep rock above Saintes. Richard cut vineyards, burned houses, and cleared every obstacle to the walls; after a sally gave him entry to the town, the castle surrendered three days later, and Geoffrey with it. Ten further days of fighting brought the rest of the rebels to submission and forced Vulgrin of Angoulême to surrender Angoulême and his Périgord castle of Montignac, and Richard reported the success to his father in England at Whitsuntide.

Richard returned to the continent shortly before Michaelmas to witness a new phase in Angevin relations with the French Crown. Philip, the fourteen-year-old son of Louis VII, fell dangerously ill, and Louis dreamed that the martyr of Canterbury required him to visit the shrine for the boy's recovery. He crossed to England—the first French king ever seen there—where Henry met him at Dover and conducted him to Canterbury for three days of fasting and prayer; Louis re-entered France on the fourth day to find his prayers answered. Scarcely had Philip recovered when Louis himself was struck by paralysis, heightening the urgency of the coronation, which took place at Reims on All Saints' Day. The young King Henry, in his capacity as duke of Normandy, carried the crown before his youthful overlord in the procession, while Count Philip of Flanders bore the sword of state. The crowning proved the beginning of troubles: Louis's helpless condition left the boy-king open to influence, and his godfather, Philip of Flanders, was the first to capture his ear. Flemish policy aimed to set the boy against all of his father's old friends and even against his mother, whom he tried to strip of her dower-lands and persecuted so harshly that she was driven to take refuge with her brothers. The combined forces of Flanders and the Crown overpowered Champagne and Blois, and the house of Blois was forced to seek help from its old Angevin rivals.

The appeal from Queen Adela and her brothers, supported by Henry's eldest son—who crossed to England at Mid-Lent 1180 to confer with his father—drew Henry back to Normandy before Easter for a personal meeting with the French queen, Theobald of Blois, Stephen of Sancerre, and other victims of the young king's tyranny. Pledges were exchanged and a general levy of Henry's forces was summoned to attack Philip after Easter, but the attack became unnecessary. At the end of Lent Philip went into Flanders and married Elizabeth of Hainaut, a niece of the count, and then summoned the princes of his realm to Sens at Whitsuntide for a joint coronation. Fearing opposition to his niece's crowning, Philip of Flanders persuaded the young king to anticipate the ceremony and have her crowned with him at Saint-Denis on Ascension-day by the archbishop of Sens. The great vassals were furious, and the archbishop of Reims was more formidable still, forwarding an indignant protest to Rome against the violation of his see's exclusive right. The episode placed Henry in the unexpected position of shielding Philip from the consequences of his rashness and reconciling him with the outraged Church and people—a role that, the chapter notes, was traditional for a count of Anjou toward a king of France, but was rarely discharged as honestly and unselfishly as Henry discharged it during Philip's first two years. By his personal influence he brought both Philip and the count of Flanders to reason; after Louis VII's death in September 1180, Henry's mediation checked a Flemish attempt to recover influence by arms; and when Blois joined Flanders against France, the prompt action of Henry's sons alone saved the royal domain from invasion until Henry himself crossed to negotiate another settlement in the spring of 1182.

The condition of Aquitaine continued to deteriorate despite Richard's efforts. Henry's bargain with Adalbert of La Marche had failed to deliver the county, as the Lusignan brother-lords occupied it in his absence. The Limousin was again threatening revolt, and Richard ordered the walls of Limoges razed at midsummer 1181. The death of Count Vulgrin of Angoulême opened a fresh quarrel, his two brothers claiming the inheritance against his only daughter, whom Richard took into wardship; on his refusal to admit their claims, they made common cause with Ademar of Limoges. Richard's unbending resolve to bridle Aquitaine had by now stirred up the bitter hatred of the whole people. From Hautefort in 1181, Bertrand de Born sent forth a sirvente that rang like a trumpet-call to the lords of Ventadour, Comborn, Périgord, Dax, Angoulême, Pons, and Taillebourg. But the troubadour had already glimpsed a possibility of stirring strife in higher quarters, and he now saw his chance of giving the Aquitanian resistance a rallying-point and a leader in Richard's own brother.

The younger Henry of Anjou—the "young king"—is one of the most puzzling figures of the age: from his crowning to his death not a single deed is recorded of him save those of the meanest ingratitude, selfishness, cowardice, and treachery, yet this undutiful, rebellious son and faithless ally was loved and admired by all men in his lifetime and lamented by all after his death, exercising a fascination over a man so far his superior as William the Marshal. The historians' panegyrics suggest that his gift of general fascination was an Angevin inheritance, but the form it took in the young king differed sharply from that of Fulk Nerra or Henry Fitz-Empress. A contemporary portrait drawn in contrast with Richard makes the distinction clear: "The first was admired for his mildness and liberality; the second was esteemed for his seriousness and firmness. One was commendable for graciousness, the other for stateliness… One was the refuge and the shield of vagabonds and evil-doers, the other was their scourge. One was devoted to the sports of war, the other to war itself; one was gracious to strangers, the other to his own friends—one to all men, the other only to good men." Henry was, in essence, what Richard was only on the surface—a careless, pleasure-loving, capricious, but gracious and winning child of the south. The most philosophic English historian of the day could account for the young king's popularity only by remarking that "the number of fools is infinite," but it was in fact no folly but a shrewd sense of their own interest that led the Aquitanians, writhing under Richard's iron rule, to see in his elder brother a prince after their own hearts.

Bertrand de Born intensifies his campaign to inflame the Young King's latent jealousy, ridiculing Henry as a king in title only who cannot even collect road tolls in his own realm. He compares him unfavorably to a carter, declares that a tiny honorable tract of land outweighs a great empire held in disgrace, and points ominously toward the gleaming white walls of Clairvaux visible from Mateflon—a deliberate provocation against Richard.

Richard has entrenched his position by building a castle at Clairvaux, situated between Loudun and Poitiers but on the Angevin side of the frontier—an encroachment, however nominal, upon territory belonging to his eldest brother. Bertrand de Born makes sure the Young King knows of this affront, ensuring the slight rankles deeply.

When Henry II returns to Normandy in spring 1182, the Aquitanian rising is already in full swing. After composing matters in France, he hurries to Richard's aid in the Limousin, conferring at Whitsuntide at Grandmont with the counts of Angoulême and Périgord and the viscount of Limoges, though negotiations fail. He then attacks Pierre-Buffière while Richard besieges Excideuil; by midsummer, with Geoffrey of Brittany at his side, Henry rejoins Richard before Périgueux.

The Young King finally advances into Aquitaine and is joyfully received at Limoges on the feast of Saint Martial. The next day he joins his father and brothers before Périgueux, and within a week peace is concluded: the city surrenders, its count and the viscount of Limoges submit to Richard. Only the brother-counts of Angoulême remain in arms.

Peace proves short-lived, and the Young King once more presses his father for an immediate, definite share of the family heritage. When refused, he flees to the court of France and is only enticed back by a promise of an increased monetary allowance for himself and Queen Margaret.

With Henry's departure, Aquitaine descends into unprecedented anarchy as the sudden end of the war releases hordes of mercenaries—called "Brabantines" though drawn from across western Europe—who ravage the countryside as the heathen Northmen once did, according to a local chronicler.

The misery breeds its own remedy: a humble Auvergnat carpenter, inspired by a vision of the Blessed Virgin and supported by the bishop of Le Puy, preaches peace. Like-minded folk of every rank form a society pledged to mutual support of right and resistance to wrong, and within a few years these "Caputii"—named for their linen capes and hoods—prove more than a match for the Brabantines.

Meanwhile, the Aquitanian barons rage at their leader's submission. After Christmas festivities at Caen, the Young King of his own accord renews his oath of allegiance to his father, confesses his secret alliance with Richard's enemies, and offers to abandon them if Henry will compel Richard to surrender Clairvaux. After some hesitation, Richard yields the disputed fortress to his father.

The affair opens Henry II's eyes to the need to define his sons' political relations clearly. While Bertrand de Born gives voice to the barons' wrath, Henry leads his three sons to Angers, makes them swear obedience to him and peace with one another, and demands that the two younger do homage to the eldest for their fiefs.

Geoffrey obeys, but Richard indignantly refuses, arguing that children of the same parents should share equal rank and that if the paternal heritage belongs to the eldest, the maternal one is equally the second son's due. The Young King, entangled with the Aquitanian barons, is almost as loath to receive the homage. Richard storms from court in threats and insults and hurries into Poitou to prepare for war.

Henry II first bids the two brothers "subdue Richard's pride" by force, then summons all three with the aggrieved barons to Mirebeau. But the Young King has already marched into Poitou to a warm welcome; Geoffrey leads Bretons, Brabantines, and other mercenaries into Limoges, where the Young King joins him in the citadel and incites the countryside against Richard. Richard appeals to his father, who hastens to relieve him and besieges the citadel of Limoges for six weeks—twice narrowly escaping death from crossbow bolts while the Young King twice feigns submission to buy time for the rebels.

By Easter, Bertrand de Born is openly soliciting aid from Flanders, France, and Normandy. Fear of a rising there prompts Henry II to order the arrest of barons in Normandy and England conspicuous in the 1173 rebellion. The Young King quits Limoges to create a diversion at Angoulême, but on his return finds the citizens awakened to his true character; they hurl stones and shout "We will not have this man to reign over us!"

The insult drives the Young King to yet more reckless plunder and sacrilege. Having already robbed Limoges and stripped the shrine of Saint Martial to pay his Brabantines, he captures Aixe, extorts Grandmont—whose piety is famed and revered by his father—even snatching a golden pyx from the high altar. At Uzerches he meets the duke of Burgundy and count of Toulouse, then advances through Donzenac and Martel to Rocamadour, the holiest Aquitanian shrine, where he strips the tomb of Saint Amadour and, tradition holds, carries off the legendary sword Durandal of Roland, leaving his own blade in its place.

Already ailing from Uzerches, the Young King is thrown into a fever at Martel by his baffled rage. Dying in a blacksmith's cottage, he sends for his father, but Henry is deterred by friends fearing another trick and sends instead a bishop bearing love, pardon, and a precious ring said to be Henry I's heirloom. On the Tuesday in Whitsun-week the Young King publicly confesses, is absolved, and receives communion. He lingers three more days, dictating letters pleading clemency for Eleanor, Queen Margaret, and his adherents, and begging his father to make atonement for his sacrileges and bury him at Rouen. On Saint Barnabas's eve, having confessed again, he wraps himself in the crusader's cross he had assumed at Limoges, charges William the Marshal to bear it to the Holy Sepulchre, dons a hair-shirt with a rope around his neck, and has himself dragged onto ashes with stones at head and feet to receive the last sacraments. An hour after nones, kissing his father's ring, he dies.

The death of the young king, conveyed to Henry by the prior of Grandmont where the body had been prepared for burial, struck his father nearly out of his mind with grief. Even hardened figures like Bertrand de Born set aside their accustomed sarcasm to mourn him; churchmen and courtiers, though unable to excuse his sins, betrayed an unreasoning attachment to his memory. The body, arrayed in the linen robe of his coronation, was carried on an open bier from Grandmont northward through Anjou, with the people of every town and village streaming out to mourn. At Le Mans the bishops and citizens forcibly took possession of it and buried him beside his grandfather Geoffrey Plantagenet. A later quarrel between the citizens of Le Mans and Rouen, indignant at being defrauded of the dead king's bequest, compelled Henry to have the body disinterred and re-buried at Rouen.

With the young king gone, the Aquitanian league suddenly lost its head, for Geoffrey of Brittany, however plausible, was the most generally distrusted of the king's sons. On Midsummer-day Ademar of Limoges surrendered his citadel and made his peace, and most of the other rebels quickly followed. By the end of the month Henry had razed the walls of Limoges and garrisoned the surrendered castles with his own troops, leaving him free to set out for Normandy. Alfonso of Aragon, who had come to assist his father's old ally, found nothing left to do but join Richard in an expedition against the one remaining rebel, Bertrand de Born.

After about a week's siege of Hautefort, in which Bertrand claimed Alfonso played him false, he surrendered to Richard. Richard transferred the castle to Constantine de Born, the troubadour's brother and lifelong rival, but Bertrand did not rally his fellow-barons as of old; instead he appealed in a sirvente to Richard, who referred him to the king. Henry greeted him with a sarcastic allusion to one of his own earlier poems, asking what had become of all the wit he once boasted. Bertrand replied, "Sire, I lost them on the day that you lost your son," at which Henry burst into tears, forgave him, indemnified him for his losses, and granted him a charter securing the sole possession of Hautefort. From that point Bertrand's lyre and sword were both at the service of the ducal house he had so long troubled.

The death of the heir upset all Henry's schemes for distributing his territories. His first thought was to provide at last for his "Lackland," John, summoning him to Normandy under the escort of the English justiciar Ralf de Glanville. With Richard now the eldest son and destined to head the Angevin house, Henry proposed — short of a second coronation — to give him the same position the young king had held, and to redistribute the continental dominions among the three surviving brothers. Since Geoffrey, now married to the duchess, could not give up Brittany, the only possible arrangement was to ask Richard to surrender Aquitaine to John. Richard, however, saw the matter in an entirely different light.

Richard had spent eight years fighting unceasingly to crush Aquitaine beneath his feet, and now that it lay prostrate he would not let it escape to other hands. Riding straight back to Poitou, he sent word that as long as he lived no one but himself should hold the duchy. Through the winter Henry alternated between threats and pleas, and at one point lost patience so far as to authorize John, now fifteen, to lead an army into Richard's territories and win an inheritance for himself. After Henry returned to England in June 1184, the two younger sons joined to harry Richard's lands while Richard retaliated by raiding Brittany, so that by November Henry found it necessary to summon all three back to England.

On St Andrew's Day, at a great council in Westminster, a public reconciliation of the whole family took place: Eleanor was suffered to resume her place as queen, and the three sons were compelled at least formally to make peace. Geoffrey was sent back to Normandy, while Richard and John stayed to keep Christmas with their father and mother at Windsor amid a brilliant court gathering. Richard soon returned to his troublesome duchy, for Henry had by then abandoned any idea of transferring it to John. Falling back on his earlier plans for his youngest child, Henry knighted John at Windsor on Mid-Lent Sunday 1185 and despatched him as governor to Ireland, where he landed at Waterford on 25 April.

Henry was called back across the Channel by renewed trouble in Gaul. The king of France and the count of Flanders had been quarrelling for two years over the counties of Amiens and Vermandois, the dower of the count's deceased wife; Henry's last act before leaving Normandy had been to arrange a truce. In August 1184 Philip of France broke the truce by stirring up the count of Hainaut to attack Flanders, drawing the count of Flanders' appeal to the Emperor and the archbishop of Cologne into a counter-invasion, with war between France and Germany only averted by imperial reluctance. When Henry returned in April 1185 his first task was to pacify another quarrel between his own sons, in which Richard had been the aggressor; only after that could he turn his attention to the France–Flanders dispute.

A new complication arose when King Bela of Hungary sued for the hand of the widowed Queen Margaret, reopening the question of her dower: the earlier agreement had been conditional on Richard's marriage to Adela, which still seemed remote, and Philip of France again claimed the whole dowry including Gisors. He was too dependent on Henry's help in the Vermandois dispute to press the point, and at a conference at Gisors early in 1186 both matters were settled, with the count of Flanders ceding Vermandois to Philip Augustus, and Philip and Margaret in return for a money-compensation allowing Henry to retain Gisors on the old condition that Richard should marry Adela without further delay. The condition remained unfulfilled; Richard was sent back to Aquitaine as his father's representative rather than duke, with all its fortresses placed under officers of Henry's own appointment. Eleanor, who had briefly been named as the duchy's lawful lady in the hope of softening Richard, was never re-invested with real authority, and in April Henry carried her back to England with him.

In these final years of the reign, the whole interest of the story centres on the king's person, and incidents occurring on English soil stand in striking contrast to the turbulent state of his Angevin dominions across the Channel. Each visit to England brought fresh evidence of the firm hold Henry had gained upon his realm and its dependencies, and of the lofty position England under him had acquired among the powers of the world. Little is heard of England's internal affairs beyond a few ecclesiastical details, and Wales and Scotland receive only slightly more attention.

Upon landing in 1184, Henry led an army against South Wales, but Rees hastened to make his submission at Worcester before the king arrived. Scotland followed suit: William of Scotland hurried to meet Henry with a suit for the hand of his granddaughter Matilda of Saxony, and at Carlisle in 1186 Galloway finally submitted to Henry with William himself standing surety for its obedience.

William of Scotland initially sought Matilda of Saxony, but the Pope refused a dispensation necessary for the match owing to the common descent of both parties from Malcolm III and Margaret. Henry then proposed that William marry Matilda's kinswoman Hermengard of Beaumont, who stood even nearer to Henry I in lineage and faced no canonical impediment. William accepted, and the alliance between the two kings was cemented at Woodstock on September 5 by the marriage, to which Henry contributed Edinburgh Castle as part of the bride's dowry. Bela of Hungary had likewise courted Matilda before transferring his suit to her sister Margaret, allegedly owing to Henry's characteristic slowness in answering.

Henry's family cares were increased from 1180 by the troubles of his eldest daughter Matilda and her husband, Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony, who had fallen into imperial displeasure after the Italian retreat of 1179 and been stripped of his estates and placed under the Empire's ban in 1180. The duke and his family took refuge at Henry's court in the summer of 1182, where they remained for two years. Towards the end of 1184 Henry's influence in Germany secured the duke's restoration to the patrimonial duchy of Brunswick, while the Emperor demanded as a condition the betrothal of one of his daughters to Richard of Poitou—a dangerous prospect that was annulled by the bride's speedy death. Brunswick was only a fragment of the Lion's former territories, and another sentence of banishment would later drive him and his wife again to Henry's court.

Early in 1185 a striking proof arrived of Henry's standing abroad. King Baldwin III of Jerusalem had died in 1162, his brother Almeric in 1173, and Almeric's son Baldwin IV—a leper, crippled in body and political capacity—had long been struggling against the rising power of Saladin. As Baldwin's nearest kinskin and head of the Angevin race on both sides of the sea, Henry was the natural recipient of an appeal from the Angevin king of Jerusalem. In late January 1185, while heading north to York, Henry learned that Heraclius the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Grand Master of the Hospital had landed at Canterbury; he turned south to meet them at Reading, where Heraclius, bursting into tears, laid at his feet the royal standard of Jerusalem and the keys of the city, the Tower of David, and the Holy Sepulchre, beseeching him to lead a crusade.

At the Clerkenwell council on March 18, 1185, Henry laid the matter before the bishops and barons and promised to abide by their counsel. After deliberation, they unanimously judged that he must remain at home rather than abandon the duty imposed by his coronation oath of keeping his own realms in peace and order. Whether or not the decision served the wider interests of Christendom, it represented a remarkable tribute to Henry's personal hold upon his people. Heraclius, bitterly disappointed, urged in vain that at least John be sent to the Holy Land, and the king refused his consent.

Six weeks after refusing the Patriarch, Henry despatched John as governor to Ireland, but the mission failed completely through John's own fault. Though received with demonstrations of loyalty by both native princes and English settlers, John treated the English leaders with overbearing insolence, insulted the Irish chieftains at Waterford by mocking their dress and pulling their beards, sent his English mercenaries on a disastrous raid into North Munster, and then drove them to mutiny by withholding their wages. By September affairs had reached such a pass that Henry was obliged to recall John and entrust the government of Ireland to John de Courcy in his stead.

Henry, blind to John's failings, attributed the failure to other causes and resolved that the lad should return to Ireland invested with fuller powers and higher dignity. Taking advantage of the change in papacy, he secured from Urban III permission to have John anointed and crowned king of Ireland, accompanied by a gift of a crown of peacock's feathers set in gold. The following summer brought news that an Irishman had beheaded Hugh de Lacy, whose vast estates Henry hoped to recover for the Crown; he hurried John off to Ireland before the coronation could be held, possibly intending that it should take place in Dublin.

Before John could sail, he was recalled by tidings of Geoffrey of Brittany's death in Paris on August 19 at the French court, where Philip honoured him with regal obsequies in Notre-Dame. Report had it that Geoffrey, out of spite against his father and elder brother, was about to withdraw his homage for Brittany and become Philip's liegeman in return for the title of grand seneschal—an arrangement that faithful servants saw as divinely punished. Philip at once claimed wardship of Geoffrey's infant daughter Eleanor, heiress-presumptive of Brittany through her mother Constance, and the administration of the duchy until her marriage; Henry tried to temporize, but negotiations grew more complex as Philip added demands concerning Aquitaine, Richard's homage, and the restitution of Gisors. After border clashes between constables cooled with Christmas, Henry lingered in England awaiting two papal legates sent to crown John, but the coronation never occurred, and on February 17, 1187, king and legates sailed together for Normandy.

Contemporary sources offer sharply conflicting explanations for the death of Henry the Young King. Rigord, William the Armorican, and Gervase of Canterbury attribute it to an unspecified malady, while Gerald of Wales connects it to the same fever that killed his brother. The Gesta Henrici and Roger of Howden instead blame injuries sustained in a tournament, though the Gesta preserves an alternative version as well.

When the two kings convened at Gué-St.-Rémy on April 5, Eleanor was no longer heiress of Brittany: Constance had given birth on Easter Day to a son whom the Bretons insisted on naming Arthur after their legendary hero, against the wishes of his grandfather Henry. Philip claimed wardship of the new heir just as he had claimed wardship of Eleanor, and the conference broke down as both sides prepared for war.

Henry II divided his forces into four commands, entrusting one to his eldest son Geoffrey, another to Earl William de Mandeville, and the remaining two to Richard and John, who were dispatched into Berry to meet Philip's expected advance. After Whitsuntide Philip took Issoudun and Graçay and besieged Châteauroux; Henry marched with his sons to relieve it, and Richard reportedly made his way into the town. For nearly a fortnight the two kings faced each other across the Indre, drawing up for battle each morning but repeatedly prevented from engaging by French bishops, Roman legates, miraculous portents, the count of Flanders' interference, and Henry's own overtures.

On Midsummer-eve a truce was concluded for two years. According to Bertrand de Born, Philip was compelled to accept because Henry had secretly bought off the troops of Champagne within his army.

Richard himself was the actual negotiator of the truce, and his subsequent departure in close company with Philip aroused Henry's suspicions about the terms obtained. Those suspicions deepened when Richard, under pretext of obeying a summons, rode to Chinon, seized the Angevin treasury, and used the funds to fortify his own Poitou castles. Henry's reported scheme to disinherit Richard in favor of John by marrying Adela to John was overtaken by events, and a meeting at Angers ended with Richard's reinstatement as duke of Aquitaine and a public renewal of his homage to his father.

News from the Holy Land eclipsed these western disputes at year's end. After Baldwin IV's death his infant nephew had briefly reigned, and on his own death the crown passed to Sibyl, who at once bestowed it upon her husband Guy of Lusignan. Despised as an upstart from a faithless Poitevin house but esteemed in Palestine for his courage, Guy defended the realm until July 1187, when he was captured by the Turks at the disastrous Battle of Tiberias along with the relic of the True Cross.

Three months after Guy's capture, in October 1187, Jerusalem itself fell to Saladin's forces. The archbishop of Tyre arrived in person to bring word of this catastrophe to the west.

In the presence of the archbishop of Tyre the quarrel between Henry and Philip was shamed into silence: both kings took the cross on the spot, joined by the archbishops of Reims and Rouen and a host of French and Norman barons. They marked the place with a wooden cross, later replaced by a church, and called it the "Holy Field" before separating to make their preparations.

Henry immediately sought safe-conduct through the realms of Hungary and the Western and Eastern Emperors. Before the month was out he issued from Le Mans the famous ordinance of the Saladin tithe, requiring every man in his dominions to contribute a tenth of his movable goods toward the crusade, along with eight related ordinances; Philip Augustus imitated the measure two months later. Returning to England on January 30, Henry met the bishops and barons at Geddington on February 11 to obtain their assent and arrange collection, while Archbishop Baldwin went to preach the crusade in Wales.

Eager to depart at once, Richard was restrained by Henry's insistence that they go together, and in his father's absence he made all his preparations and wrote to his brother-in-law William of Sicily to arrange the voyage. His plans were interrupted by a fresh revolt of the Poitevin barons led by the count of Angoulême, Geoffrey of Rancogne, and Geoffrey of Lusignan, the last of whom had treacherously murdered a personal friend of Richard's. Geoffrey of Lusignan's status as a crusader secured him safe passage to Palestine before the summer was out, and the remaining rebels were put down.

Richard's suppression of the Poitevin revolt was followed by a confrontation with Raymond of Toulouse, who had seized and maltreated Poitevin merchants passing through his territory. Richard retaliated with a raid on the Toulouse frontier and captured Raymond's chief adviser Peter Seilun. Raymond countered by seizing two English knights, Robert Poer and Ralf Fraser, returning from Compostella, and refused to release them despite Richard's protests and even Philip Augustus's command, yielding only after a heavy ransom was offered. After Whitsuntide Richard invaded Toulouse again, capturing castle after castle until he began to threaten the capital itself.

In Aquitaine the quarrel between Richard and Raymond of Toulouse ignites a wider conflict that eventually sweeps away Henry Fitz-Empress himself. Rumours—encouraged by Philip—accuse Henry of secretly stirring up the count of Toulouse and the Aquitanian rebels to keep Richard from the Crusade. Openly siding with Toulouse, Philip demands that Henry restrain his son, and without waiting for a reply marches on Berry and captures Châteauroux on June 16.

Henry protests the breach of truce, but knowing his presence is essential, sends John ahead and crosses from Barfleur to muster his forces at Alençon. His army includes the feudal levies of England and Normandy, Welsh troops under Ralf de Glanville, Breton and Flemish mercenaries, and some Angevin and Cenomannian contingents. Despite this host, Henry remains deeply reluctant to wage war on his overlord, troubled by scruples about feudal loyalty and averse to bloodshed and expense; for weeks his forces conduct only occasional plundering raids across the French border.

While Henry hesitates, Philip overruns Berry and pushes into Auvergne. Richard seizes the moment to attempt the recapture of Châteauroux but fails, narrowly escaping capture or death only through the help of a friendly butcher. His advance, however, suffices to force Philip to withdraw into his own domains. The approaching vintage season compels Philip to disband part of his army, with the remainder under the bishop of Beauvais ravaging the Norman borderlands. Henry demands reparation and threatens to renounce his allegiance; Philip retorts that he will not cease hostilities until Berry and the Vexin are in his hands.

In mid-August the two kings meet between Gisors and Trie, but the conference collapses in anger. As they part, Philip in a fury cuts down the great elm tree under which the rulers of France and Normandy had long held their meetings, vowing that no conference shall ever be held there again.

Richard rejoins his father and urges a joint attack on Mantes, held by a small French garrison under William des Barres. Richard succeeds in capturing William in revenge for Châteauroux, but William escapes and the expedition gains nothing. Richard returns to Berry, while Henry lingers on the Norman border. A second conference at Châtillon on October 7 likewise produces no agreement. Philip pursues Richard, who opens separate negotiations offering to submit his quarrel with Toulouse to the French king's court, but these too come to nothing.

Henry's position deteriorates as he lacks the money to pay his soldiers. His realms have been drained by the Saladin tithe, his treasury is empty, his troops desert for lack of pay or plunder, and he is forced to disband his mercenaries and send the Welsh auxiliaries home. Philip, meanwhile, is secretly in communication with Richard, who is eager to bring matters to a head. Unable to fathom his father's subtler policy or to see through Philip's wiles, Richard is ready to suspect Henry of disinheriting him in favour of John, and to credit every calumny reported by his father's enemies.

Determined to settle the question of his inheritance, Richard arranges a meeting of the two kings with himself near Bonmoulins on November 18. The conference lasts three days, with the prospect of peace fading daily. Philip proposes a return to the pre-cross status quo, which Henry accepts but Richard rejects, since it would force him to surrender his Toulouse conquests in exchange for a precarious overlordship. The kings conclude a truce to last until S. Hilary's day, and Philip then offers to restore his conquests if Henry will order his subjects to do homage to Richard as heir and allow Richard's marriage to Adela to proceed. Henry refuses. Richard, standing with the two kings and the archbishop of Reims amid a crowd of spectators, demands that Henry explicitly acknowledge him as heir; twice Henry tries to put him off. Exclaiming that he now believes what had seemed incredible, Richard ungirds his sword, stretches out his hands to Philip, and offers him homage and fealty for the whole Angevin continental heritage, which Philip gladly accepts in return for restoring Richard's recent Berry conquests. Henry draws back in speechless consternation; the crowd rushes between the two kings, and Richard rides off with the French king, leaving Henry alone to reflect on the ruinous fruits of his son's earlier alliance with Louis VII and to dread the far more dangerous new alliance with Philip.

Henry acts swiftly to limit the damage. He dispatches Geoffrey the chancellor to secure the Angevin fortresses and himself rides to strengthen Aquitaine, returning to keep a dreary Christmas at Saumur, where he still contrives a semblance of his former regal state despite his abandonment. After the truce expires he postpones his proposed meeting with Philip on grounds of illness, first to Candlemas and then past Easter, hoping to use the delay to win back Richard—but Richard turns a deaf ear to every overture and, as soon as the truce ends, joins Philip in attacking Henry's territories with the aid of the discontented Bretons.

After Easter Richard is brought at last to meet his father on the borders of Anjou and Maine, but the interview is fruitless. The Pope, alarmed that these quarrels will wreck the Crusade, sends two legates in succession. The first, Henry of Albano, postpones his mediation and goes to preach the cross in Germany, where he persuades the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to take it; Frederick, before departing, banishes the suspect Henry the Lion, who with his wife finds shelter first in England and then in Normandy, though they fail to reach Henry at Le Mans. Henry of Albano excommunicates Richard for disturbing the peace, withdraws to Flanders, and dies. His mission is taken up by John of Anagni, who reaches Le Mans at Ascension-tide 1189, excommunicates all disturbers of the peace except the two kings, and compels Henry and Philip to promise to submit their quarrels to his arbitration and that of the archbishops of Reims, Bourges, Canterbury, and Rouen.

A conference accordingly convenes at La Ferté-Bernard on Trinity Sunday, June 4, attended by the two kings, Richard, the legate, the four arbitrating archbishops, most of the Norman bishops, those of Angers and Le Mans, four English and several French prelates, and a great throng of barons. Philip demands the immediate marriage of Richard and Adela, security for Richard's succession, and that John be made to take the cross and accompany Richard to Palestine; Richard repeats these demands; Henry refuses and counter-proposes that Adela marry John, which Philip in turn rejects. The legate threatens Philip with interdict unless he comes to terms; Philip defies the threat and accuses the legate of having been bribed by English gold. The meeting breaks up. Henry retires to Le Mans, where he refuses to stir despite the appeals of bishops, barons, and friends, while Philip and Richard overrun Maine with their united forces. In five days the chief castles of its eastern portion fall, including Ballon, only fifteen miles from Le Mans, on June 9. There the conquerors pause for three days, receiving the submission of the western barons—Geoffrey of Mayenne, Guy of Laval, and Ralf of Fougères. The citizens of Le Mans, however, remain steadfastly loyal to the count they regard as their own; and Henry, with his father's grave and his own cradle in their city, clings to them in return. With John absent and his doings unknown, only Geoffrey the chancellor, a handful of faithful barons, Archbishop Bartholomew of Tours, and a small force of mercenaries remain at his side—yet the citizens are willing to stand a siege, and Henry has promised never to desert them.

The chapter opens by noting contradictory accounts of the peace conferences held after Easter. Ralph of Diceto reports two meetings at La Ferté, but no other source corroborates a second; Gervase of Canterbury's account of a Le Mans conference on June 9 so closely matches the Gesta Henrici and Roger of Howden's report of the June 4 La Ferté proceedings that the author suspects Gervase simply confused both place and date, since by June 9 the war was already raging and Philip and Richard were besieging Ballon. The author also questions William of Newburgh's claim that Henry's youngest son John was present during the king's retreat, noting that no contemporary historian corroborates it and that Henry's later shock at John's treachery suggests there had been no open desertion. Among the clergy who remained loyal, the chapter identifies Bartholomew (often called William by English writers), the archbishops of Canterbury (Baldwin) and Rouen (Walter), and notes that the archbishops vanish from the record despite Bartholomew's presence at Henry's burial.

The discussion of loyal companions extends to the lay followers. The chapter notes that besides Henry's one faithful son Geoffrey the chancellor, his old friend Earl William de Mandeville, and William Fitz-Ralf the seneschal of Normandy, the English baron William the Marshal accompanied the king in his flight from Le Mans.

On Sunday, June 11 (the feast of St. Barnabas), Philip and Richard appeared before Le Mans with their host. After a feint toward Tours, Philip drew up for an assault the next morning. The desperate defenders set fire to the suburbs, but the wind drove the flames into the city itself. Philip's forces rushed the bridge; a Cenomannian knight, Geoffrey of Brulon, heroically attempted to break it down, thereby redeeming his reputation after his rebellion sixteen years earlier, but he was wounded and captured along with many comrades. The French forced their way into the city, and Henry, recognizing he could no longer protect the citizens, fled with some seven hundred knights. The French pursued briefly but were checked, possibly because the fugitives had crossed the partially demolished bridge, which may have collapsed behind them.

Geoffrey of Brulon was not alone among former rebels who now stood by Henry. The chapter introduces William the Marshal, tracing his lineage: his father John, marshal to Henry I and Stephen, had married a sister of Patrick of Salisbury and supported the Empress; the elder John was reinstated as marshal under Henry II and became notorious through his quarrel with Thomas Becket. William himself, born around 1146, first appears as a child hostage in Stephen's hands, whose fearless charm so won the king that he twice spared the boy's life. After serving the Young King in the 1173 rebellion, William became his closest knight and was charged with fulfilling his crusading vow; six years later, he stood ready to defend another doomed king. During the retreat from Le Mans, William brought up the rear; turning to face his pursuers, he found himself confronted by Richard, who cried out that he wore no hauberk. William drove his spear into Richard's horse instead of the rider, forcing Richard to abandon the chase.

About two miles from Le Mans, Henry paused on a hilltop to gaze back upon his blazing native city. Maddened by the sight, he cried out against God for shamefully taking from him the city he loved most, where his father lay buried alongside his patron saint, and vowed to withdraw from God the thing He cared for most. Another eighteen miles' ride brought the fugitives by nightfall to La Frênaye, whose lord, the Viscount of Beaumont, was Henry's kinsman and father of Hermengard, whose marriage to the king of Scots had been arranged by Henry three years earlier. The king sheltered in the castle while his diminished followers quartered in the town; Geoffrey the chancellor would have remained to guard them, but his father insisted he come inside. Geoffrey, whose baggage had been left in Le Mans, borrowed fresh clothes from his father, while Henry, with characteristic indifference to such matters, lay down to rest in his travel-stained garments with his son's cloak for a coverlet.

Although his followers urged him to retreat to Normandy and rally for a renewed campaign, Henry changed his mind overnight. Convinced his end was near, he resolved to return to the Angevin homeland and die at his hereditary post as count of Anjou. He made William Fitz-Ralf and William de Mandeville swear to surrender Norman castles to no one save John, and entrusted Geoffrey with command of the troops, ordering him to escort the barons as far as Alençon before rejoining him. Geoffrey secured Alençon with a hundred picked knights and overtook his father at Savigny; by month's end both were safe at Chinon. The author compares this solitary ride through the Angevin woodlands—where Henry the hunter now risked being hunted—to the daring adventures of Fulk Nerra.

Once safe from pursuit, Henry made no further move until Philip, having taken Le Mans's citadel and advanced south via Chaumont and Amboise to Roche-Corbon, proposed a meeting at Azay on June 30. Henry advanced from Chinon, but on the day of the conference he was struck by a fever superadded to his existing illness and could not attend; he likely sent representatives. No truce resulted: Philip marched to the Loire's southern bank opposite Tours, forded the half-dried river the next day, established headquarters at Châteauneuf (the borough of St. Martin), and began the investment. On Sunday, July 2, the archbishop of Reims, the count of Flanders, and the duke of Burgundy visited Henry at Saumur to arrange peace, but their mission was futile since they acted without Philip's sanction and despite his warning that he would assault Tours regardless. The walls that had resisted Fulk Nerra and Geoffrey Martel could not hold against Philip Augustus, and within hours he was master of Tours.

News of Tours's fall reached Henry with a summons to meet Philip at Colombières, midway between Tours and Azay. On William the Marshal's advice, Henry followed his barons' counsel and went, though Geoffrey, unable to bear witnessing his father's humiliation, was permitted to stay behind. Henry lodged at a Templar commandery at Ballan but was seized with racking pains; the Marshal persuaded him to take to bed. Philip and Richard, who had long suspected feigning, insisted the conference proceed. On seeing Henry's drawn, colorless face, they offered him a seat on a cloak spread on the ground, but he refused, saying he had come only to hear the French king's demands. Philip bluntly required unconditional submission as a conquered enemy. As Henry hesitated, thunder pealed from a cloudless sky and a lightning bolt appeared to strike between the two kings; when a second peal followed, Henry's shattered nerves gave way and he surrendered wholly to Philip's mercy. The dictated terms required homage to Philip, the placement of Adela under Richard's chosen guardians with a promise of marriage after Richard's return from Palestine, Richard's receipt of fealty from all Angevin barons and release of those who had joined his side, joint departure for crusade from Vézelay at Mid-Lent, renunciation of claims on Auvergne, and payment of a twenty-thousand-mark indemnity. Tours, Le Mans, and three border castles were to serve as pledges, with Henry's barons swearing conditional allegiance. Henry was forced to acknowledge reconciliation with Richard and bestow the kiss of peace, which Richard accompanied with a whisper he later gleefully repeated at the French court: "May I only be suffered to live long enough to take vengeance upon thee as thou deservest!"

Henry, having endured humiliation at the meeting with Philip at Colombières, asked one thing in return: a written list of those among his subjects whose allegiance had been transferred to Richard. The list was promised, and Henry was carried back to Chinon, exhausted by fatigue, suffering, and shame. By the time he arrived, he was too ill to rise again.

Henry sent his vice-chancellor, Roger Malchat, to fetch the promised list of traitors. As Roger read the names aloud beside his master's bed, the first name he came to was Count John, Henry's own son. The revelation devastated Henry, who exclaimed that John, his "darling child," had forsaken him. Unable to bear the news, he turned his face to the wall and declared he cared no more for himself or the world.

For two days Henry lay trembling, conscious of nothing but pain, muttering broken words and frenzied curses upon himself and his sons, which the attendant bishops urged him to revoke. His delirium persisted with cries of "Shame, shame upon a conquered king," until the third morning—the seventh day of the fever—when the final lightning before death appeared.

Geoffrey, Henry's loyal son, brought his father moments of calm. Henry rested his head on Geoffrey's shoulder, expressing gratitude for his dutifulness and promising to elevate him among the greatest men of the realm. Geoffrey was overcome with emotion and forced to leave the room. In a later lucid moment, Henry whispered of his wish to see Geoffrey bishop of Winchester or archbishop of York, gave him a gold ring engraved with the Angevin leopard to send to the king of Castille, bequeathed him another precious ring, and offered his blessing.

Henry had himself carried into the castle chapel and laid before the altar, where he confessed his sins to the attending bishops and priests, received absolution, and devoutly took his last Communion. Immediately afterward, he passed away.

The servants who should have prepared Henry's body for burial stripped it naked and plundered everything they could during his three days of dying. Friends were appalled to find the dead king without a rag to cover him until his knight William de Trihan gave his own cloak for the purpose.

William the Marshal took command of the funeral arrangements, as Geoffrey was overcome by grief. He summoned nearby barons and directed the proper robing of the corpse, succeeding within twenty-four hours and without resources in arranging a regal burial for the fallen king. Henry was dressed as for a coronation, with a gold crown, ring, sandals, and a sceptre in his gloved hand.

Henry's body was borne on the shoulders of his barons from Chinon, across the viaduct he had built, and along the Vienne to Fontevraud. Though Henry had wished to be buried at Grandmont, this proved impossible. The prophecy that "he shall be shrouded among the shrouded women" was now fulfilled as the veiled nuns of Fontevraud knelt by night and day around his bier, murmuring prayers and psalms.

The barons feared meeting Richard, against whom they had taken arms, and were especially anxious for William the Marshal, who had unhorsed Richard at Le Mans. They offered their service and possessions to help him, but he quietly refused, declaring he did not repent his actions and trusting God to help him as He always had.

Before nightfall, Richard overtook the funeral party, arriving alone. His demeanor betrayed nothing—he neither grieved nor rejoiced, repented nor raged—but he "spoke not a word, good or bad." He went straight to the church and into the choir where his father's body lay in state.

Richard stood motionless before the bier, then stepped to the head and gazed down at the uncovered face. Witnesses reported that blood flowed from the dead king's nostrils and ceased only on Richard's departure, proclaiming him his father's murderer. Richard sank to his knees and remained thus for about the time it takes to say the Lord's Prayer, then rose and spoke for the first time.

Richard called for William the Marshal, who came accompanied by Maurice of Craon. Richard addressed him outside the church: "Fair Sir Marshal, you had like to have slain me." William replied that he had had the power to kill Richard but had only killed his horse, and did not repent. With kingly dignity, Richard granted him his pardon at once.

The following day, Henry Fitz-Empress was laid in his grave before the high altar of Fontevraud Abbey by Archbishop Bartholomew of Tours, assisted by Archbishop Fulmar of Trier. Richard and William the Marshal stood side by side at the burial, symbolizing the new king's reconciliation with the knight who had so nearly killed him.

The discovery of John's treason at once removed all doubt about the destination of Henry's realms, and throughout the Angevin dominions no voice was raised against Richard's succession. The English marshal and the Angevin barons who gathered at Fontevraud accepted him unquestioningly, though the seneschal of Anjou, Stephen of Turnham, was imprisoned for failing to surrender the royal treasure, which proved in fact to be empty. Richard probably authorized William the Marshal to do little more than release Eleanor, who at her son's request assumed the regency in England for the next six weeks. Geoffrey the chancellor surrendered his seal immediately after Henry's funeral. The Norman castellans' earlier promise to hold for John was annulled by events; John hastened to his brother, received a gracious welcome, and returned with him to Normandy. At Séez the archbishops of Canterbury and Rouen absolved Richard from the excommunication laid on him by the legate John of Anagni, and the company then proceeded to Rouen.

On 20 July Richard went in state to the metropolitan church at Rouen, where Archbishop Walter girded him with the ducal sword and invested him with the standard of the duchy. On the same day he received the fealty of the Norman barons and held his first court as duke of Normandy and, in effect, as king-elect of England, although no formal election had taken place. He made plain that the abettors of his revolt had nothing to hope from him, three of the most conspicuous already having been deprived of their lands, while his father's loyal servants had nothing to fear if they would transfer their allegiance. He nominated Geoffrey for the see of York, confirmed Henry's last grant to John of the Norman county of Mortain and four thousand pounds' worth of land in England, bestowed on William the Marshal the hand of Isabel de Clare, daughter and heiress of Earl Richard of Striguil, and arranged for the son of the count of Perche a match with his niece Matilda of Saxony—a bride already sought by two kings.

The marriage of Matilda of Saxony to the heir of Perche was plainly meant to secure the attachment of that border county in case of a rupture with France. The alliance of Philip and Richard had died with Henry, and Philip now saw in Richard nothing but his father's successor, whose policy was to be thwarted on every possible occasion. At a colloquy on St Mary Magdalene's day the French king greeted his former ally with a peremptory demand for the restitution of the Vexin. Richard put him off with a bribe of four thousand marks in addition to the twenty thousand promised by Henry at Colombières, and on this condition, accompanied by a vague understanding that Richard and Adela were to marry after all, Philip agreed to leave Richard in undisturbed possession of all his father's dominions, including the castles and towns taken in the last war, except those of Berry and Auvergne.

Thus secured in Normandy, Richard prepared to take possession of his island realm. He had paved the way for his coming by empowering Eleanor to make a progress through England, taking oaths of fealty in his name from all freemen, releasing captives, pardoning criminals, and mitigating Henry's severe administration wherever possible without disturbing the ordinary course of justice. Richard himself now restored the earl of Leicester and the other barons whom Henry had disseized six years before. His next step was to send home the archbishop of Canterbury and three other English prelates who had been with him in Normandy, and on 12 August he followed them across the Channel.

Eleanor's politic measures of conciliation, executed with characteristic intelligence and tact, secured Richard a ready welcome. At the moment the English thought of Henry chiefly as the author of grievances his son seemed bent upon removing. Richard's mother, with a great train of bishops and barons, was waiting at Winchester, where on the vigil of the Assumption he was welcomed in solemn procession and came into possession of the royal treasury, whose contents might make up for the deficiencies of that of Anjou. So complete was his security that, unlike his predecessors, he did not hasten to be crowned; instead he left Eleanor nearly three weeks to arrange the ceremony while he went on a progress through southern England, at last returning to be crowned by Archbishop Baldwin at Westminster on 3 September. No charter was issued: the circumstances called only for the threefold coronation oath pledging the sovereign to maintain the Church's peace, to put down injustice, and to enforce righteousness and mercy. In the formal election by clergy and people, and in the essentials of the rite, ancient prescription was strictly followed, but the procession and ceremonial were arranged with unusual care and minuteness. It was the most splendid and elaborate coronation ever seen in England and served as a precedent for all after-time. Richard took delight in the outward splendours of kingship almost as much as in its substance, and his tall figure, finely-chiselled features, and soldierly bearing made him the most regal-looking sovereign crowned since the Conqueror. When the crown was set on his golden hair, Englishmen might briefly dream that, stranger to England for nearly thirty years, he was yet to be in reality a true English king.

On the second day after his crowning Richard received the homage of the bishops and barons of his realm and then proceeded into Northamptonshire, where on 15 September he held a great council at Pipewell. His first act was to fill four vacant sees besides that of York. London, whose aged bishop Gilbert Foliot had died in 1187, was bestowed on Richard Fitz-Nigel, son of Bishop Nigel of Ely and for twenty years his successor as treasurer. Ely, vacated by the death of Geoffrey Ridel, was given to the chancellor William of Longchamp, rewarding past service and securing future loyalty. Winchester, vacant since the death of Richard of Ilchester, went to Godfrey de Lucy, son of Henry's early friend Richard de Lucy. Salisbury, without a bishop since November 1184, was given to Hubert Walter, a near connexion of Ralf de Glanville, Henry's faithful later minister. Hubert's appointment also removed a major obstacle to Geoffrey's election as archbishop of York: as dean of York he had stood at the head of a chapter party that disputed Geoffrey's election and had even proposed Hubert himself as an opposition candidate for the primacy. With Hubert translated to Salisbury, no further protest was raised when Richard confirmed his half-brother's election in the same council.

When the king turned from the settlement of the Church to that of the state, it became apparent that his English policy had only two objects: to raise money for the crusade and to secure the obedience of the realm during his own absence in the East. He pursued both at once through a wholesale change of ministers, sheriffs and royal officers at Pipewell and during the ten days before the Michaelmas Exchequer. Although the practice of paying for office was not new, Richard carried it to a length that shocked some statesmen of the old school. The first to feel it was the late justiciar Ralf de Glanville, himself under a crusading vow but forced to resign at once and to pay a heavy fine; the same price was required of Stephen of Turnham for his release from prison. The commutation of crusading vows for money, obtained from Clement III, raised a large sum and avoided stripping England of her best warriors and administrators. In place of Ralf, Richard appointed two chief justiciars, Earl William de Mandeville and Bishop Hugh of Durham—Hugh paying a thousand marks for the remission of his own vow—under whom sat five subordinate justiciars, including William the Marshal. Richard Fitz-Nigel was left undisturbed as treasurer, but William of Longchamp, though a favourite, had to pay three thousand pounds for the chancellorship, Richard at the same time refusing a still higher bid from another candidate. All sheriffs were removed: seven or eight were restored, five more were shifted to new shires, and several offices were openly sold, including the sheriffdom of Hampshire to the bishop-elect of Winchester, those of Lincolnshire to Gerard de Camville, and those of Leicestershire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire to Bishop Hugh of Chester, while the earldom of Northumberland was granted on similar terms to the justiciar-bishop of Durham.

Richard's Preparations for Departure: Before Richard could leave England for the crusade, two matters required attention—securing external borders against Welsh and Scottish threats and preventing internal treason from his brother John left behind in England.

Securing the Welsh Vassals: To guard against external disturbance, Richard needed to secure the fealty of the Welsh vassal-rulers. After the council of Pipewell, Richard sent John against the rebellious Welsh princes with an armed force, and the other Welsh princes came to meet John at Worcester and submitted to him as his brother's representative.

Rees of South Wales's Rebellion: Rees of South Wales had broken the peace imposed on him by Henry II after the change of rulers in England. He refused to treat with anyone except the king himself, accompanied John to Oxford, but Richard refused to grant him an audience and sent him home in extreme indignation. Rees's threatening attitude served as an excuse for raising a scutage nominally for a Welsh war, though the expedition was never made.

Treaty with the King of Scots: William the Lion of Scotland came to visit Richard at Canterbury in early December, and they struck a bargain. Richard received ten thousand marks and William's homage for his English estates as held by his brother Malcolm, while Richard restored the castles of Roxburgh and Berwick and released William and his heirs forever from homage for Scotland itself, a homage Henry II had enforced in 1175.

The Threat of John's Ambition: Richard's worst difficulty was preventing John from trying to supplant him during his absence. Richard knew his brother had been his rival since childhood and understood John's character intimately, since their mother had scarcely seen her youngest child since age six. Richard's wisest course would have been to take John on crusade, but he was now led astray by his trusting generosity.

Richard's Generosity to John: From the hour of their reconciliation after their father's death, Richard sought to gain John's affection and gratitude by showering honours upon him. He granted John the county of Mortain, making him the first baron of Normandy, along with liberal English lands, and upon reaching England added a string of honours including Marlborough, Luggershall, Lancaster, the Peak, Bolsover, Peverel, Wallingford, Tickhill, and Nottingham, plus the whole shire of Derby and four whole southwestern shires (Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Dorset) with all jurisdictional profits.

John's Marriage to Avice of Gloucester: Richard secured the honour of Gloucester to John by causing him to marry Avice, his betrothed bride, at Marlborough on August 29, despite Archbishop Baldwin's protests that they were third cousins requiring papal dispensation. Baldwin laid the young couple's lands under interdict, but John appealed, and a papal legate who arrived in November confirmed the appeal and annulled the primate's sentence.

Eleanor as Queen-Regent: Richard could give John no more honours, so to hold his ambition in check he relied on the management of Eleanor. She was left as queen-regent with practical authority but seemingly without formal commission, and with the dowries of two former queens in addition to her own.

Death of William de Mandeville: An important part of Richard's administrative arrangements was upset when William de Mandeville, who had gone to Normandy on royal business, died there on November 14. Earl of Essex by Henry II's grant and count of Aumale by marriage, Mandeville had been one of Henry's most faithful friends, honoured by all parties on both sides of the sea, and Richard saw no immediate means of filling his place.

Appointment of Justiciars: Richard left Bishop Hugh of Durham as sole chief justiciar but made changes among the subordinate justiciars appointed at Pipewell. Two were superseded; one was replaced by Hugh Bardulf, and the other apparently by the chancellor William of Longchamp, who was also put in charge of the Tower of London with powers making him virtually equal in authority to the chief justiciar.

Hugh of Puiset, Bishop of Durham: Hugh of Puiset, called "Pudsey" by the English, had stood high in Church and state since the civil war era. A great-grandson of the Conqueror through his mother, he had been bishop of Durham since 1153, with a position combining diocesan jurisdiction over Northumberland with secular authority as earl palatine. Strong, attractive, eloquent, and a thorough Englishman in practical terms, he had served as the de facto supreme authority in the north since Archbishop Roger of Pont-l'Evêque's death in November 1181, and had secured Northumberland as a counterpoise to the primate's influence.

Background of William of Longchamp: William of Longchamp had a lowly origin and physical disadvantages—diminutive stature, swarthy ill-favoured countenance, misshapen figure, and lameness. His father Hugh received lands in Herefordshire in 1156, his grandfather was said to be a fugitive French serf, and his family fell into Henry II's disgrace. William entered the Church and served Geoffrey the chancellor as an official in the archdeaconry of Rouen, but fled from Geoffrey to Richard shortly before the last outbreak and became chief instigator of Richard's rebellion.

Contrast Between Puiset and Longchamp: Hugh of Puiset and William of Longchamp were worse-matched yokefellows than any two men could be. Hugh possessed stately presence, royal state, and long experience in England; William was physically unprepossessing, a total stranger to England ignorant of the English tongue, contemptuous of his new surroundings, and temperamentally neither cautious nor conciliatory.

Longchamp's Unpopularity: William of Longchamp had every qualification for becoming extremely unpopular. The nation at large detested him as a disagreeable stranger, his colleagues despised him as an upstart interloper, and the justiciar Hugh of Durham keenly resented being subordinated to one he regarded as his inferior. Of all statesmen living, he was well-nigh the least fitted to reproduce the career of Thomas of London as a powerful chancellor.

Richard's Trust in Longchamp: Richard, constant in his friendships like his father, retained unshaken trust in William to the end of his life. As Richard's most intimate companion, confidential secretary, and political adviser in foreign affairs, William was in his right place; his loyalty, energy, and industry were unquestionable, and it was sound policy to use him as a check upon Hugh of Durham.

Richard's Departure from England: The king left England on December 11, after which William of Longchamp was consecrated bishop on December 31 alongside Richard Fitz-Nigel, and was enthroned at Ely on the feast of the Epiphany.

Longchamp's Assertion of Authority: Immediately after his enthronement, Longchamp began asserting his temporal authority, turning the bishop of Durham out of a meeting of the Court of Exchequer and soon depriving Hugh of Puiset of jurisdiction over Northumberland. He also dispossessed Bishop Godfrey of Winchester not only of his sheriffdom and castles but even of his patrimony, though the principle that no man should hold a sheriffdom together with a bishopric justified removing the sheriffdom while spoliation of patrimony had no apparent excuse.

Conflicts with the Bishops: Longchamp's conflicts with the bishops extended beyond Durham; he deprived Hugh of his Northumberland jurisdiction on grounds that the purchase-money was not yet paid, and dispossessed Godfrey of Winchester of his sheriffdom, castles, and even patrimony without apparent justification for the latter action.

Richard's Final Council in Normandy: In February 1190 Richard summoned his mother, his brothers, and his chief ministers to a final meeting in Normandy. The chancellor, knowing that complaints would be brought against him, hurried over in advance to justify himself before being accused, and succeeded so well that Richard sent him back to England with full authority after the council.

Longchamp's Enhanced Authority: Richard not only sent Longchamp back to England with full authority to act as chief justiciar as well as chancellor, but opened negotiations with Rome to obtain for him a commission as legate. Since the archbishop of Canterbury was bound on crusade with the king, this arrangement would have left William supreme both in Church and state.

The new justiciar's first act on returning to England was to fortify the Tower of London. He then turned to a disturbance that had recently occurred at York, where long-suppressed hatred of the Jews had broken into open violence during the preceding six months.

Anti-Jewish violence erupted across England after Richard's coronation. Richard had ordered that no Jew approach him during the ceremony, but when some wealthy Jews defied or ignored the prohibition to offer gifts, courtiers and populace seized the pretext to rob, beat, and kill them. A general sack of the Jewish quarter followed that night. Richard, occupied with the coronation banquet, learned of the events only the next day and severely punished the ringleaders. Once he departed, the spark of violence spread through the chief English cities in succession—Winchester being nearly the sole exception—with massacres recorded at Norwich (February 6), Stamford (March 7), and St Edmund's (March 18, Palm Sunday).

A day before the St Edmund's massacre, an even worse tragedy occurred at York. The principal Jews of the city, fearing popular attack, had sought and obtained shelter in a castle tower under the protection of the constable and the Yorkshire sheriff, but once admitted they refused to surrender it. The constable and sheriff raised the forces of city and shire to dislodge them. After a twenty-four-hour siege the Jews offered a heavy ransom, which was rejected. In desperation, the Jews chose death at their own hands: husbands and fathers killed the women and children, hurled the corpses over the battlements, and set fire to the tower. Nearly five hundred perished. The citizens and soldiers, baulked of ransom, sacked and burned the Jewish houses and destroyed the bonds of all Jewish usurers in the city.

At the end of April or beginning of May the new justiciar arrived at York with an armed force to investigate. The citizens blamed the castellan and sheriff, whom William accordingly deposed. The sheriff—John, elder brother of William the Marshal—was replaced by William's own brother Osbert, and the constableship was left vacant pending the castle's rebuilding. The knights who had taken part had fled beyond his reach, but their estates were fined and chattels seized. The citizens escaped only by paying a fine and giving hostages, who were not redeemed for three years. Even the clergy of the minster were disciplined: William, though his legatine commission had not yet arrived, claimed to be received as legate and placed the church under interdict until his claim was admitted.

With Hugh of Durham still in Gaul, William's power in the north was unopposed for the moment. But Richard sent word that he intended to send Hugh back as justiciar over the whole country north of the Humber, and Hugh soon arrived, hurrying northward in hopes of confronting the chancellor beyond the Humber and compelling acknowledgment of his inferiority. They met at Blyth in Nottinghamshire. At a second meeting at Tickhill, William produced a later-dated royal letter commanding all English subjects to render obedience to "our trusty and well-beloved chancellor, the bishop of Ely" as to the king himself, along with his legatine commission. William forced Hugh to give hostages for the surrender of all his castles and stripped him of his lately purchased honors—Windsor, Newcastle, Northumberland, and even the manor of Sadberge—leaving him only his bishopric. Hugh was detained all the way to London before yielding. He complained to the king and received only a writ restoring Sadberge and forbidding further molestation.

Prince John exercised autonomous territorial authority over five shires in the south-west and mid-England, together with numerous "honours" scattered across the midland shires, with full rights of government, administration, and finance accountable only to the king. John maintained his own justiciar (Roger de Planes), chancellor (Stephen Ridel), seneschal (William de Kahaines), butler (Theobald Walter), and sheriffs, all operating independently of the king's court and exchequer. Although Richard had earlier compelled both brothers to swear to stay out of England for three years, Eleanor persuaded Richard to release John from the oath, and William as legate confirmed the release. John could now govern his territories openly from England.

Anticipating a political struggle, William began to marshal his forces. On August 1 he held a church council at Gloucester, in the heart of John's territories, and on October 13 another at Westminster. He then spent the winter on a half-legatine, half-vice-regal progress through the country, attending to justice, finance, and the assertion of his own authority.

William's progress stirred considerable discontent. Crippled though he was, he travelled almost as rapidly as Henry II., a contemporary saying he "went up and down the country like a flash of lightning." His train of a thousand armed knights, together with a crowd of clerks and attendants, was a ruinous burden to the religious houses where he claimed entertainment, and the burden was made almost unbearable by the heavy exactions he levied from clerk and layman alike in his master's name.

Richard was now at Messina with Philip of France, preparing to depart for the East. Whether he would return at all was felt to be doubtful, given his ardour, rash valour, and delicate health, and the question of the succession became urgent. The male Angevin line, already extinct in Palestine, had in Europe only three representatives—Richard himself, John, and the infant Arthur of Brittany. By strict feudal primogeniture, Arthur, as Geoffrey's son, would have the next claim; but by old English constitutional practice, John, as a grown man and the reigning sovereign's own brother, would have a much better chance of recognition. Neither alternative was without drawbacks.

Richard resolved on Arthur's succession. Early in November 1190 he arranged a marriage between Arthur and a daughter of King Tancred of Sicily, on the distinct understanding that in case of Richard's death without children Arthur was to succeed to all his dominions. William of Longchamp was simultaneously endeavouring to secure the Scottish king's recognition of Arthur as heir-presumptive to the English crown.

Eleanor was unwilling to contemplate the succession of either Arthur or John, and was anxious to find Richard a wife. Knowing that he would never marry the woman to whom he had been long betrothed, she took it upon herself to choose another bride—Berengaria, daughter of King Sancho VI of Navarre. Richard accepted the choice, and early in February 1191 Berengaria crossed to Gaul, where Eleanor met her and carried her on into Italy. By the end of March both were with Richard at Messina.

On the day of their arrival Philip of France had sailed. After long wrangling Richard had at last freed himself from his engagement to Adela, and at once plighted his troth to Berengaria. After Eleanor's four-day visit she set out for home, and Berengaria remained with Richard under the care of his sister, the widowed Queen Jane of Sicily, until the expiration of Lent and the circumstances of their eastward voyage enabled them to marry. The wedding was celebrated and Berengaria crowned at Limasol in Cyprus on the fourth Sunday after Easter.

Richard I remained in Sicily from September 23, 1190, to April 10, 1191, as documented in the Gesta Ricardi and Ralph de Diceto. His extended stay was driven by both political negotiations with Philip Augustus and the pending arrival of his bride from Navarre.

Richard and Philip Augustus concluded a treaty in 1191, preserved in the Gesta Ricardi and Roger of Howden. Although undated, Richard informed Pope Clement III of its provisions by letter dated November 11, 1190, seeking papal sanction for the agreement.

Contemporary descriptions of Richard's betrothed, Berengaria of Navarre, varied. Richard of Devizes characterized her as "puella prudentior quam pulchra," contrasting her with Eleanor of Aquitaine, while William of Newburgh described her as a maiden of "famosae pulchritudinis et prudentiae." The Itinerarium Regis Ricardi notes she had been Richard's own choice for many years.

Richard dispatched ships to Naples to meet Berengaria before the end of the month. She arrived on March 30, 1191, as recorded in the Gesta Ricardi, accompanied by her mother Eleanor of Aquitaine and other members of her retinue.

On her return journey, Eleanor of Aquitaine paused at Rome to conduct diplomatic business and apparently remained in Gaul until the following year. Her prolonged absence allowed John of Mortain to exploit the situation in England, setting up a quasi-regal court that alarmed the chancellor.

Profiting by the liberty Eleanor's intercession had obtained for him, John crossed to England early in 1191 and established a semi-regal court. His presence became a source of extreme irritation and grave concern to Chancellor William of Longchamp, who found himself confronting a formidable new rival.

News reached England in March 1191 that Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury had died at Acre the previous November. The succession question immediately arose: the Bishop of Ely (Longchamp) would lose his legation unless he could secure either the primacy for himself or keep the see vacant—though Richard's notions of ecclesiastical propriety precluded the latter option, and he nominated the Sicilian prelate William, Archbishop of Monreale, to Canterbury on January 25, 1191.

John and Chancellor Longchamp quarreled openly. Popular sympathy, alienated by William's arrogance and oppressions, sided with John. Even the subordinate justiciars who had supported William against Hugh of Durham now turned against him, and complaints against the chancellor poured in to the king from all quarters.

By late February, Richard grew so bewildered and uneasy that he resolved to send Archbishop Walter of Rouen to England to investigate the state of affairs and determine what remedies could be applied. This decision reflected Richard's growing dissatisfaction with the chaos Longchamp had allowed to develop.

Walter of Coutances was a man of noble birth and stainless character who had served successively as archdeacon of Oxford, treasurer of Rouen cathedral, and vice-chancellor to Henry II. After eight years of doing the actual work of chancery head, he was promoted in 1183 to Lincoln and a year later to the primacy of Normandy. He was a quiet, unassuming person of unimpeachable integrity, though not a vigorous statesman.

Although Richard's commission to Walter was dated February 23, it was not until April 2 that Walter was permitted to leave Messina. During the interval, Richard, reluctant to supersede the chancellor, kept changing his mind and varying his instructions, leaving Walter laden with a bundle of contradictory commissions by the time he departed, accompanied by a verbal order to use one, all, or none at his own discretion.

Before Walter reached England, John and the chancellor were at open war. Their Mid-Lent Sunday meeting at Winchester over John's pensions and castles ended in quarrel, which became a signal for revolt. Gerard de Camville and his wife Nicolaa de Haye defied royal authority at Lincoln, while Roger de Mortemer plotted with the Welsh. On April 25, 1191, bishops of London, Winchester, and Bath, with eleven lay arbitrators, decided the case wholly against Longchamp—compelling him to reinstate Gerard, confirm John's effective control over disputed castles, and promise to secure the crown for John if Richard should die.

Two days after Walter landed at Shoreham, the chancellor repudiated the April concessions and advanced on Lincoln, formally depriving Gerard of the sheriffdom. The other bishops, now backed by the Norman primate, intervened, and a fresh settlement was reached at Winchester on July 28, 1191. Gerard was reinstated pending trial, both parties were bound over against forcible disseizins, and disputed castles were placed in the archbishop of Rouen's charge. All reference to John's claims upon the throne was carefully omitted, leaving the contest a virtual drawn battle.

In the autumn of 1191, a new element entered the strife with the return of Archbishop Geoffrey of York to England. As the eldest living child of Henry II, Geoffrey embodied the strong feelings and fiery temper that caused half the troubles of his life, and his arrival reconfigured the political landscape already unsettled by John and Longchamp's conflict.

Geoffrey, born between 1151 and 1153, was Henry II's eldest surviving son. Made archdeacon of Lincoln as a child and bishop of the same see in 1173, he renounced the office to serve as his father's chancellor and constant companion for Henry's final eight years. Richard, suspecting him of designs upon the crown, nominated him to York carrying out their father's last wishes rather than Geoffrey's own. After years of obstruction by the bishop of Durham and hostile York canons, Geoffrey secured his final confirmation on the eve of Richard's departure, only to be made to swear three years' absence from England.

Eleanor undertook the task of securing papal consent for Geoffrey's consecration to York, traveling from Messina to Rome to plead his cause with Clement III or his successor Celestine. Although Eleanor had long been Geoffrey's determined enemy, political considerations now prevailed over natural feeling: she recognized that a reinstated archbishop of York could serve as a check on the legatine authority of Hugh of Durham and the virtually unlimited power of William of Longchamp, the justiciar. The long vacancy of York had allowed Hugh to function almost as metropolitan of the north, and he had even secured from Clement III a privilege exempting Durham from York's jurisdiction. Reinstatement of the archbishop, Eleanor calculated, would advance both the interests of the kingdom and her own.

Eleanor's mission succeeded: Celestine confirmed both Geoffrey's election and his claim to the obedience of the bishop of Durham. Geoffrey was consecrated at Tours by Archbishop Bartholomew on August 18 and received his pall the same day. He at once communicated with Count John to secure a protector on his return to England. William of Longchamp, however, having had no notice of Richard's remission of Geoffrey's vow of absence from the crusade, refused to credit it, issued orders for the archbishop's arrest the moment he should land in England, and arranged with the Countess of Flanders (governing her husband's territories during his absence) that no Flemish ship should carry him. The countess evaded her pledge by allowing him to sail from Wissant in an English boat.

Geoffrey landed at Dover on Holy Cross Day in disguise. The constable, Matthew de Clères, was away, but his wife Richenda—a sister of Longchamp—was on hand. Her men-at-arms surrounded Geoffrey the moment he stepped ashore, recognized him despite his disguise, and tried to arrest him. He broke free and made his way to the priory of S. Martin just outside the town.

For five days Richenda's followers blockaded the priory, attempting to starve Geoffrey into surrender. On the fifth day armed men rushed into the priory-church and, in the chancellor's name, ordered him to leave the country at once. Geoffrey, seated by the altar in full pontifical robes and grasping his archiepiscopal cross, defied them and the chancellor together. They dragged him out of the church by hands and feet; when he refused to mount the horse they offered, they hauled him through the town in his pontifical dress, still clutching his cross and excommunicating them as he went, and flung him into the castle prison.

The outrage united Church and state against the chancellor. Protests came from the treasurer and bishop of London Richard Fitz-Nigel, from the aged bishop of Norwich John of Oxford, and from the Canterbury chapter—all of whom had ample cause to remember the disasters wrought by violence to an archbishop. The most venerated English prelate, S. Hugh of Lincoln, at once excommunicated Richenda, her husband, and all their abettors with lighted candles at Oxford. Count John remonstrated more vehemently than any.

John's remonstrances procured Geoffrey's release on September 26, but only on condition that he go straight to London and remain there until his case against the chancellor could be tried by an assembly of bishops and barons. Geoffrey, increasingly seen as a second S. Thomas, made a kind of triumphal progress from Dover to London; bound by his parole, he was obliged to seek the chancellor's consent even to accept John's invitation to join him, and obtained it only on pledging to return by a fixed time.

From Lancaster, where he was plotting with Bishop Hugh of Coventry, John hurried to Marlborough and summoned the great men he hoped to rally against Longchamp. The co-justiciars answered from their shires: William the Marshal from Gloucestershire, William Bruère from Oxfordshire, Geoffrey Fitz-Peter from Northamptonshire; the bishops were represented by Godfrey of Winchester and Reginald of Bath; the sovereign by Walter of Rouen; and S. Hugh of Lincoln joined the train as it passed through Oxford to Reading. From Reading John summoned his half-brother. While the chancellor was still at Norwich, he received a summons to answer for his conduct toward both Geoffrey of York and Hugh of Durham at an assembly to be held at Lodden bridge, between Reading and Windsor, on Saturday October 5. He countered with a summons to all who had joined the count of Mortain to forsake him, but hastened to Windsor for the meeting. On Saturday the earls of Arundel, Warenne, and Norfolk appeared in his stead, pleading his illness—an unhappy day for any settlement—and the barons spent the day in reviewing complaints and considering which of the chancellor's bundle of royal letters suited the crisis. All agreed the chancellor must be brought down at once. On Sunday morning his attempt to bribe John failed. At high mass in Reading parish church the bishops publicly excommunicated all who had been involved in Geoffrey's arrest, and at nightfall the chancellor was forced to swear to stand his trial at Lodden bridge on the morrow.

On Monday morning, as the chancellor set out, he learned that his enemies were marching on London. John and the barons had crossed Lodden bridge and divided their forces: the smaller body, with John himself and the bishops and barons, advanced toward Windsor to meet him; the larger, comprising men-at-arms and baggage, took the southern road to Staines. The movement was enough to send William racing back to Windsor and on toward London. Before he could arrive he met John's men coming up from Staines; a skirmish followed in which John's justiciar Roger de Planes was mortally wounded, but the chancellor still won safe entry to the city. He summoned the citizens to the Guildhall to rally them against John, only to find a strong opposing party. Three days after the second award at Winchester, on the last day of July, the Londoners had seized the king's absence and the chancellor's humiliation to set up a *commune*—something they knew neither Henry nor Richard would ever have sanctioned, but which John might tolerate. Seeing his cause lost in the city, Longchamp shut himself up in the Tower.

John and his companions were admitted at the gates; next morning barons and citizens gathered in S. Paul's. The chancellor's victims, led by the archbishop of York, laid out their grievances in turn. Archbishop Walter of Rouen and William the Marshal then produced Richard's letter of February 20 to the Marshal, accrediting Walter to the justiciars and bidding them, if the chancellor failed in his duty, follow Walter's direction. John and the barons agreed to act on these instructions; they won the citizens' assent by swearing to maintain the commune; the whole assembly swore fealty to Richard and to John as his destined successor. According to one account they went further, appointing John regent and granting him the disposal of all royal castles except three to be left to the chancellor. They then marched to enforce these decisions at the sword's point.

Longchamp's garrison was ample in numbers but had no time to revictual, was dangerously overcrowded, and within twenty-four hours found its position untenable. On Wednesday the chancellor tried to bribe John into withdrawing; Geoffrey of York and Hugh of Coventry discovered the negotiation and remonstrated so loudly that John had to drop it. In the afternoon, at Longchamp's own request, four bishops and four earls entered the Tower to parley with him. Five days of tension had so exhausted his feeble frame that when they told him of the previous day's decisions he collapsed senseless at their feet, and on reviving could only beg for sympathy and mediation. The brutal insults of Hugh of Coventry stung him back to boldness: with flashing eyes he warned them that the day of reckoning would come when they and their new lord must answer to Richard, and he dismissed them with a flat refusal to surrender either his castles or his seal. Late that night, with rest impossible, he yielded at last to his friends' pleas and gave an unwilling permission for his brother Osbert and others to offer themselves as hostages for his submission on the morrow.

Geoffrey's qualifications for the role he was thrust into can be simply stated. He possessed the Angevin fearlessness, energy, persistence, and thoroughness, with a fair share of the family's versatile capability; he had all their impetuosity, but little of their wariness and tact. Mingled with the Angevin fire, court gossip reported, ran the blood and spirit of a different race: through his mother—known to Walter Map as "Ykenai" or "Hikenai"—Geoffrey was said to be a child of the English people, and of its very lowest class. (Mr. Dimock questions this, suggesting she may have come from a knightly family of Akeny, i.e., Acquigny, in Normandy.) Whatever her origin, the plebeian element believed to exist in Geoffrey became significant later when he stood forth as a champion of constitutional liberty; before then it had not visibly shaped his political sympathies, but it may well have informed his character. Few specimens of the Angevin race, the author concludes, are more unmistakable than Geoffrey—and few more creditable.

On Thursday morning the barons assembled in fields east of the Tower of London, where William of Longchamp came forth to meet them. Hugh of Coventry stepped forward, recited the indictment, and pronounced sentence: William was to be deposed from all secular authority, retaining only his bishopric and the castles of Dover, Cambridge, and Hereford, and must give hostages for future good behaviour. The assembly roared approval, but William regained his composure, denied every charge, refused to recognize the legality of his deposition, and protested his actions as King Richard's lawful chancellor. Walter of Rouen was proclaimed justiciar in his place. William surrendered the Tower, Windsor, and hostages the next day, withdrew to Bermondsey, and then proceeded to Dover.

From Dover, William of Longchamp made two desperate attempts to escape overseas to rally support for holding the castles: first disguised as a monk, then as a pedlar-woman. His lameness and ignorance of English betrayed him each time, and he was detected, dragged back, and imprisoned in the town until all the castles were surrendered. He was then set at liberty and sailed for Gaul on October 29.

William, as a bishop, appealed to Pope Celestine III, who warmly took up his cause, acknowledged him as legate, and on December 2 issued a brief to the English bishops ordering them to excommunicate those involved in his deposition and place their lands under interdict. William excommunicated twenty-six of his chief enemies, with the archbishop of Rouen at their head, and threatened John with the same. However, the English bishops ignored his letters, the justiciars sequestrated his see, and they held him bound by prior sentences for his persecution of Geoffrey of York. The suffragans of Rouen treated him as excommunicate.

Geoffrey of York became the highest ecclesiastical authority in England but struggled to rule the Church or even his own suffragan. Upon his enthronement at York on All Saints' Day 1191, he summoned Hugh of Durham to make his profession of obedience. Hugh, recently reinstated as earl of Northumberland, ignored the summons, and Geoffrey excommunicated him. John kept Christmas with Hugh at Howden and was himself treated as excommunicate by his half-brother Geoffrey. The coalition formed against the chancellor had already split into fragments, though general administration continued smoothly under Walter of Rouen, who kept John out of mischief through the winter while Eleanor remained on the continent.

Shortly before Christmas 1191, Philip of France returned to his kingdom. In January 1192 he summoned the seneschal and barons of Normandy and demanded, on the strength of a document he presented as the treaty made at Messina, the restitution of his sister Adela and her dower-castles in the Vexin, along with the counties of Eu and Aumale. The seneschal, rightly suspecting the document to be a forgery, refused. Philip threatened war, and Richard's constables prepared for defence.

Philip offered John the investiture of all Richard's continental dominions if John would accept Adela's hand, despite John already having a wife. John was ready to accept, but Eleanor hurried to England, landing at Portsmouth on Quinquagesima Sunday (February 11, 1192), where she found him on the point of embarking. The archbishop of Rouen and the justiciars welcomed her as regent and forbade John's departure. Councils were held at Windsor, Oxford, London, and Winchester. In London, the barons renewed their oath to Richard but were forced to do likewise to John as heir, after which John persuaded the constables of Windsor and Wallingford to surrender their castles. William of Longchamp gained Eleanor's ear and bribed John, conniving at his return to Dover, and demanded restoration at a Lenten council in London. However, John revealed he was prepared to ally with William for seven hundred pounds, and the justiciars outbid him with two thousand marks from the royal treasury, persuading the queen-mother and ordering William to depart, which he did on Maunday Thursday, April 2.

William of Longchamp was ultimately outbid by the justiciars, who paid John two thousand marks from the royal treasury to drop his alliance with the chancellor. With Walter of Rouen helping to persuade Eleanor, the chancellor was bidden to depart the land, and he sailed again on April 2, 1192, ending his final bid for restoration.

Two cardinal-legates arrived in France to settle William's dispute with the archbishop of Rouen but were refused admittance to Normandy by the seneschal, who shut the gates of Gisors in their faces on the grounds that ancient custom forbade admitting legates without the king's consent. The legates excommunicated the seneschal and laid all Normandy under interdict. With Philip openly threatening invasion and the protection of the crusader-king's territories weakened by the interdict, Hugh of Durham was the only person capable of negotiating with the legates, but he declined to go until his quarrel with his metropolitan was settled in mid-October. He then went to France and obtained the removal of the interdict.

While the interdict drama played out, revolts erupted in Richard's continental territories. Aquitaine, held in check by Eleanor's presence, rose once she was out of reach. Count Ademar of Angoulême marched into Poitou with a large force but was captured by the Poitevins, who appealed to Philip for his deliverance. A revolt of the Gascon barons was suppressed by the seneschal with the help of young Sancho of Navarre, and the victors rashly followed their success with an unpunished raid upon Toulouse that promised further trouble. In England, John continued to defy the justiciars, who dared not proceed to extremes as an imminent prospect of having to acknowledge him as king loomed.

Richard's adventures in the East lay outside English history, though the Crusade had indirect social effects; but it was not a national undertaking, and every man in the host was a volunteer. Richard's glory was all his own, and the story, told in fragments by English historians and at length in the "Itinerary" of a fellow-crusader, reads more like a Viking saga than sober history, with Richard resembling a companion of St. Olaf or Harald Hardrada. His northman-blood alone accounts for his intense love of the sea and consummate seamanship, displayed when he guided his large fleet from Messina to Acre through overwhelming perils. He conquered Cyprus in a few days to avenge his shipwrecked sailors, but it was a mere Viking-conquest, soon sold to the Templars and then to Guy of Lusignan. His love of adventure characterized his Holy Land exploits, but there a higher aspect emerged: alongside the reckless northern valour were endurance, patience, self-restraint, disinterestedness, and a self-sacrificing generosity hard to match among his ancestors. In military, political, and moral respects, Richard—along with Guy—was the only leader to emerge from the ordeal unstained, a fact that alone explains why nearly every other leader became his open or secret foe.

This section opens with footnote references to primary source materials documenting Richard's voyage to the Holy Land, including the *Itinerarium Regis Ricardi*, *Gesta Ricardi*, Roger of Howden's chronicle, and Rigord's *Historia Francorum Scriptt*.

Following the death of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who had been designated commander-in-chief of the crusader host, Richard I was appointed to the leadership role.

Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the most prominent Christian prince of his era in political capacity, military skill, and personal nobility, set out for the Holy Land in May 1189. After fighting through Byzantine treachery and Turkish ambushes, he drowned crossing a small river in Asia Minor on June 10, 1190. News of his death reached Richard when he arrived in Messina in September 1190.

Richard's brother-in-law, King William of Sicily, died childless in November 1189. After failing to convince his father-in-law Henry II to take the Sicilian crown, William bequeathed it to his young aunt Constance, wife of Henry VI (Frederick Barbarossa's eldest son). The crown was instead seized by Tancred, a cousin of the late king. Richard's necessary alliance with Tancred to secure Sicilian support for the crusade offended the new King of Germany, who already resented England for the forced restoration of Henry the Lion to his forfeited estates earlier that summer.

By the time Richard arrived at Acre in June 1191, he was already unpopular with German crusader leaders Duke Frederick of Swabia and Duke Leopold of Austria, due to his alliance with Tancred, his capture of Cyprus, and the jealousy his superior military skill inspired among the princes.

Isaac, the deposed tyrant of Cyprus whom Richard had taken captive, was connected to the Swabian and Austrian dynasties, making his capture an additional source of offense for the German crusader leaders.

After the fall of Acre on July 12, 1191, one month after Richard joined the siege, Richard and Leopold of Austria quarreled over credit for the victory. Per tradition, Leopold raised his banner alongside Richard's on the city walls, and Richard tore it down, escalating their conflict.

Richard's policy in the Holy Land directly opposed that of the other crusader princes. After Queen Sibyl's death in October 1189, the princes sought to replace her childless husband Guy of Lusignan as ruler of the Crusader states with Conrad of Montferrat, lord of Tyre, while Richard backed Guy's claim.

Conrad of Montferrat was a powerful Italian fiefholder whose mother was aunt to both Leopold of Austria and Frederick Barbarossa, granting him the backing of Austrian and imperial influence. Philip of France also supported Conrad's claim as a counter to Richard's support for Guy of Lusignan.

Despite his family's long history of conflict with Richard in Aquitaine, Guy of Lusignan placed his full trust in Richard, and the two stood united from their meeting in Cyprus through the end of the crusade, isolated from the other princes who supported Conrad.

Philip of France left the Holy Land shortly after the capture of Acre, intending to stir up conflict in Europe that would damage Richard's interests more effectively than fighting in Palestine could.

Richard twice led the crusader army within eight miles of Jerusalem, but both times was forced to turn back due to obstruction from the French and German factions supporting Conrad of Montferrat.

Conrad of Montferrat was assassinated in April 1192, but his political cause and the effort to reclaim Jerusalem were already lost beyond recovery.

Worn out by years of failed effort, physically and emotionally unwell, and harassed by bad news from England and fears of trouble in France, Richard decided his only chance of future success in either the East or West was to return home immediately.

Richard's final major exploit in the Holy Land was the rescue of Joppa, which had been seized by Turkish forces during his absence, on September 2, 1192.

Richard negotiated a three-year truce with Saladin on September 2, 1192, prior to his departure from the Holy Land.

Richard sailed from Acre on October 9, 1192, to begin his journey back to England.

Richard's ship was separated from his fleet by storms, and when within three days' sail of Marseille, he learned Count Raymond of Toulouse planned to capture him on landing to avenge a recent attack on Toulouse by the Gascony seneschal. Avoidance of capture, which would have handed him to Philip of France, combined with contrary winds, forced Richard to land at Corfu around Martinmas.

Count Raymond of Toulouse's plot to seize Richard on his landing was motivated by revenge for the Gascony seneschal's attack on Toulouse. Capture by Raymond would have resulted in Richard being handed over to Richard's enemy Philip of France.

From Corfu, Richard set out in disguise with 20 followers aboard a small pirate vessel, coasting up the Adriatic until a storm wrecked the ship at the head of the Gulf of Aquileia.

Richard's German enemies were actively searching for him, and a navigational error brought him to Vienna, where Duke Leopold of Austria had recently returned. Despite his disguise, Richard was recognized, captured on December 20, 1192. Three days after Christmas, Leopold notified Philip of France that their common enemy was in his custody.

Leopold sent the news of Richard's capture to Philip of France, who immediately forwarded it to John, Richard's brother, and renewed his earlier proposal for an alliance against Richard.

John traveled to France and did homage to Philip for all of Richard's continental territories, but the Norman seneschal and barons rejected the agreement. John returned to England, falsely claimed Richard was dead, and demanded the justiciars swear homage to him, which they refused.

After John's demand for homage was rejected, he withdrew to fortify his castles, and the justiciars prepared to attack them. A French fleet sent to aid John was repelled by English militia mustered by Archbishop Walter.

The justiciars laid siege to Windsor Castle, while Geoffrey of York fortified Doncaster to support Hugh of Durham's siege of Tickhill. The castles were nearly captured, and John was on the verge of surrender when the justiciars grew hesitant to humiliate Richard's heir due to uncertainty over Richard's fate.

At the urging of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the justiciars agreed to a truce with John lasting until All Saints' Day, securing six months of peace.

After learning of Richard's capture, the justiciars sent Bishop Savaric of Bath to negotiate with Emperor Henry VI, and dispatched the abbots of Boxley and Robertsbridge to locate Richard, though his whereabouts were only known to be somewhere in the Austrian dominions.

Traditional accounts hold that Richard's minstrel Blondel traveled across Europe to find him, identifying his location by hearing Richard sing a private song they had composed together through a prison window. It is possible Blondel guided the abbots to Richard's location.

The abbots met Richard at Ochsenfurt as he was being transported to be handed over to Emperor Henry VI at Speyer on Palm Sunday.

Richard was delivered to Emperor Henry VI at Speyer on Palm Sunday, after which negotiations for his release began immediately.

The negotiations for Richard's release took nearly a year, during which Emperor Henry VI, motivated by personal jealousy, family interest, and pride at holding the most famous Christian knight captive, repeatedly obstructed the process.

Henry VI, claiming his position as titular head of Western Christendom, demanded satisfaction for perceived wrongs Richard had inflicted on imperial princes, and for alleged misdeeds during the crusade, including his alliance with Tancred and suggested involvement in Conrad of Montferrat's assassination. None of the charges were valid, but Henry used them as an excuse to delay Richard's release and play him and Philip of France against each other.

The final terms for Richard's release were fixed at a ransom of 150,000 marks, the liberation of Isaac of Cyprus, and the betrothal of Eleanor of Brittany to a son of Duke Leopold of Austria.

Richard initially assigned his chancellor William of Longchamp to oversee ransom collection and transmission of hostages required by the Emperor, but Longchamp faced universal distrust: justiciars forced him to swear he would not act outside his narrow commission, Walter of Rouen denied him the kiss of peace, and the queen-mother and barons refused to let him handle the hostages. The justiciars implemented unprecedented tax measures to raise the funds: a standard feudal aid of 20 shillings per knight’s fee, plus a new universal tax of one-fourth of all revenue and moveable goods from every layperson and cleric across Richard’s domains, which faced no opposition even from the clergy, led by newly elected Archbishop of Canterbury Hubert Walter. When these revenues proved insufficient, the Cistercian and Gilbertine orders contributed one-fourth of their wool income, and gold and silver church vessels were confiscated. Parallel measures in Richard’s continental territories raised most of the ransom by January 1194, with the remaining balance covered by hostages including Archbishop Walter of Rouen. With the chief justiciarship vacant, Richard appointed Hubert Walter as the new chief justiciar of England.

John, furious at Richard’s impending release, sought protection from Philip II of France as early as July 1193, when Richard reached terms with the Emperor. Richard offered John highly favorable reconciliation terms, but Norman constables refused to enforce them. Philip and John later attempted to bribe the Emperor to extend Richard’s captivity by a year or hand him over to them, but the plot failed. In a fit of desperation, John sent a clerk to England with orders to prepare his castles for defense, but the clerk was arrested in London after boastfully revealing his mission, and his incriminating letters were seized. Acting on the initiative of Justiciar-Archbishop Hubert Walter, a council excommunicated John, disseized him of all his English lands, and dispatched forces to capture his strongholds. Royal armies swiftly seized Tickhill, Nottingham, Marlborough, Lancaster, and St. Michael’s Mount, with most surrendering within days of Richard’s arrival. Richard was released from captivity on February 4, 1194, traveled slowly through Germany and the Low Countries, and landed at Sandwich on March 13. He first visited the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury, was welcomed by Hubert Walter, and entered London three days later. Remaining holdout castles surrendered immediately, and Nottingham fell after a three-day siege, leaving Richard as undisputed ruler of England.

Immediately after securing his throne, Richard imposed new levies to fund his war with France: he required one-third of England’s knights to accompany him to Normandy, a new land tax (carucage) of two shillings per carucate of land from all freeholders, and the full year’s wool output from Cistercian orders. The carucage, a revived form of the old hide-based Danegeld, faced no resistance as it was widely viewed as an honourable debt to pay the remaining ransom balance. The Cistercians successfully negotiated a money compensation in lieu of their wool. At a great council held in Nottingham from March 30 to April 2, 1194, Richard also moved to punish traitors and reform the administration: most officials who had opposed Longchamp were dismissed, with some sheriffs transferred between shires, while Gerard de Camville and Hugh Bardulf were removed from their sheriffdoms without compensation. Richard sold the three vacant sheriff offices; Longchamp attempted to purchase two but was outbid by Archbishop Geoffrey of York, who bought the sheriffdom of Yorkshire for 3000 marks plus an annual 100-mark increment, making him the most powerful figure in northern England after Hugh of Durham resigned Northumberland. Richard also rejected a proposal from William of Scotland to purchase northern English territories held by his grandfather, after barons protested the cession of castles at a Northampton council.

Richard made a progress through mid-England ending at Winchester, where he was re-crowned in the cathedral on the first Sunday after Easter 1194, reviving the old regnal coronation practice abandoned by Henry II in 1158. The ceremony was intended to reassert English royal majesty after Richard’s captivity, during which he had accepted investiture of the titular Kingdom of Burgundy from Emperor Henry VI and paid homage for it, an act that offended English insular pride. After the re-coronation, Richard sailed for Normandy on May 12, 1194, and never returned to England.

Richard's Later Years (1194–1199) The political history of England from 1194 to 1199 is essentially the history of Hubert Walter's administration. After returning briefly to deal with the revolt and collect his ransom, Richard departed again and never subsequently intervened in English affairs except to extract money, leaving every detail of governance to the justiciar's discretion. Hubert thus wielded power even more absolute than that of William of Longchamp during the earlier crusade, but his vice-royalty was far more successful because Richard himself remained within reach if needed and because Hubert possessed far greater qualifications for the office.

Hubert Walter's Early Career and Appointment Hubert Walter was trained under Ralf de Glanville, the era's foremost constitutional lawyer and administrator, being Glanville's nephew by marriage and having served as clerk or chaplain in his household until 1186. After a brief tenure as dean of York and an unsuccessful nomination to the see, he served at court under Henry II in a role connected with the royal seal, was consecrated bishop of Salisbury in October 1189, accompanied Archbishop Baldwin on crusade, succeeded to spiritual leadership of the host after Baldwin's death, and proved himself Richard's most capable adviser in Palestine. Richard subsequently sent him to England to be made archbishop and assist in raising the ransom, recognizing—as contemporaries noted—that no one shared his mind so completely or had proven such fidelity, prudence, and honesty in so many changes of fortune.

Hubert Walter's Uncontested Vice-Royalty Hubert entered his vice-royalty under exceptionally favorable conditions: he was an Englishman of established standing, familiar with the people and the administrative system, and universally acknowledged as qualified. There was no serious opposition to his authority—William of Longchamp had permanently left England, and John was neutralized by Richard's clemency combined with a stripped restoration that left him dependent on royal bounty. The sole potential ecclesiastical rival, Archbishop Geoffrey of York, was crushed through a combination of papal condemnation, confiscation of his estates by Hubert's royal justices, and Richard's refusal to grant his appeal, leaving England with a single primate for five years. The death of Hugh of Durham in March 1195 removed the last northern challenger, and Pope Celestine III's legatine commission to Hubert in the same month made him undisputed ruler in both church and state.

Hubert Walter's Judicial and Administrative Reforms A statesman rather than churchman, steeped in the Glanville tradition of reform, Hubert enacted sweeping changes through the 1194 "Form of proceeding in the pleas of the Crown," which vastly extended the justices itinerant's jurisdiction to cover churches, escheats, wardship, debts of murdered Jews, fines from John's adherents, and other matters—chiefly aimed at filling the royal treasury. The commission's most significant innovation was the systematic extension of the sworn jury's role to all branches of judicial business, with a new ordinance requiring four knights chosen by the shire to elect two men from each hundred, who in turn chose ten others to form the legal twelve—an advance in elective and representative principles. Three knights and a clerk were also appointed in each shire to keep pleas of the Crown, creating the office of coroner and curbing the sheriff's judicial power, while sheriffs were barred from acting as justiciar in their own or former shires. The chapter closes with the 1195 oath requiring every man above fifteen to pledge preservation of the king's peace, a revival of Cnut's ancient principle whose enforcement through specially assigned knights produced the conservators of the peace and ultimately the modern justices of the peace.

In 1194, the year marked by the only important ecclesiastical act of Hubert Walter's pontificate as legate, the archbishop used his legatine commission to hold a visitation of the northern province, which was now deprived of both its chief pastors by the absence of Archbishop Geoffrey and the death of Hugh of Puiset. The visitation culminated in a council held in York minster, at which fifteen canons were passed to remedy the general relaxation of Church discipline that had been growing since the flight of Thomas Becket.

At the close of the same year Hubert was again at York, this time on a diplomatic errand: the negotiation of a fresh treaty with Scotland. The proposed basis was a marriage between the Scottish king's eldest daughter and Richard's nephew Otto of Saxony. Although the marriage itself never took place—partly because of Scottish baronial opposition to William the Lion's earlier scheme of bequest, and later because of the hope, fulfilled in August 1198, of a direct heir to the Scottish crown—the alliance of which it was to be the pledge lasted throughout Richard's reign. Notably, the following year William the Lion issued a similar edict for the preservation of peace and order, evidently modelled upon the English ordinance and "taking therefrom a good example."

Richard I's 1194 revenue-raising measures were directed by the urgent need to extract unprecedented supplies of money from an already heavily drained kingdom. The whole of the complicated ransom accounts, including the spring carucage, were closed by Michaelmas 1194, and a tallage was imposed upon the towns; but these, together with sales of office during the king's visit and the proceeds of the judges' visitation, failed to satisfy the king's wants. Richard therefore devised two further expedients. The first, issued on 20 August 1194, was a license to hold tournaments in England—previously unknown save during the disorderly reign of Stephen—with a graduated fee payable to the Crown by every participant, the collection of which was entrusted to the justiciar's brother Theobald Walter. The second was the revocation of the chancellor's seal, the creation of a new one, and the annulment of all acts passed under the old seal until they had been brought to the king for confirmation—in effect, compelling payment a second time for the same acts.

In the following spring Richard experienced a fit of characteristic Angevin penitence, during which he began to replace the church-plate that had been given up for his ransom; no fresh tax was imposed until late in the year, when only a scutage of the usual twenty shillings on the knight's fee was levied for the war in Normandy. The king's mood, however, soon changed, and he resolved to carry into effect, with or without Hubert's assent, the inquiry into the financial administration that Hubert had postponed in 1194. To this end he sent over Robert, abbot of S. Stephen's at Caen, a man of wide experience as a clerk of the Norman exchequer, accompanied by the bishop-elect of Durham, Philip of Poitiers. They reached London in Lent 1196 and demanded Hubert's co-operation; the justiciar, displeased but without choice, complied, and an order was issued in the king's name bidding all sheriffs and officers of the Crown be ready to give an account of their stewardship in London at the Easter Exchequer-meeting.

Before Easter came, the abbot of Caen himself was called to his last account: he was seized with illness while dining with Archbishop Hubert on Passion Sunday and died five days later. The intended inquisition into the financial administration never took place. The mere proposal to conduct such an inquiry through the medium of a stranger from overseas was, however, a direct slight offered to the justiciar by the king, prompting Richard to send a sort of apology to Hubert on 15 April, four days after the abbot's death. The cancellation of the inquiry coincided with a disturbance that warned Hubert of a possible danger to his authority from another quarter.

Despite Hubert's efforts to equalize the burthens of taxation, the weight of these taxes pressed upon the poorer classes with ever-increasing severity, and the grievance was felt most keenly in London. The substitution of the "commune" for the older shire-organization of London in 1191 had placed the entire control of civic administration—including the regulation of trade and the assessment of taxes—in the hands of a governing body consisting of a mayor and aldermen representing the wards, drawn from the merchant-gild. The rule of this newly established oligarchy over the unenfranchised mass of citizens was at least as oppressive as that of the sheriffs and "barons of the city" which it had succeeded, and was the less willingly borne for the jealousy between craftsmen and merchant-gild. As taxes grew more burdensome, suspicion spread that they were being assessed so as to spare the well-filled pockets of the assessors and wring an unfair proportion from the hard-earned savings of the poor. The grievance found a spokesman in William Fitz-Osbert—known as "William with the Long Beard"—a member by birth of the city's ruling class who had served in the crusading fleet of 1190 and had since become the preacher and leader of a popular movement against the wealthy rulers of London. At every meeting of the governing body he withstood his fellow-aldermen to the face; his whispers stirred up the craftsmen, and a conspiracy sufficiently formidable to excuse, if not to justify, the terror of the civic rulers was in existence. After a visit to Normandy, William began openly to boast of the king's favour, and in the streets and open spaces of the city, and at last in S. Paul's itself, gathered crowds of eager listeners to whom he proclaimed himself "king and saviour of the poor," expounding a text from Isaiah: "With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of the Saviour."

Powerless to deal with William's assemblies within the city, Hubert determined at least to check the spread of such teaching by ordering the arrest of any citizen of the lower class found outside the walls, and accordingly some London chapmen were arrested at Stamford fair at Mid-Lent. A day or two later, an attempt was made to summon William himself to account for his seditious proceedings, but the bearer of the summons found him surrounded by such a formidable array of followers that he dared not execute his commission. A forcible arrest was then decided on. Guided by two citizens who undertook to catch him unawares, a party of armed men was sent to seize him; William felled one of the guides with a blow of a hatchet, and his friends slew the other. William with a few adherents took sanctuary in the church of S. Mary-at-Bow. Hubert surrounded the church with soldiers and ordered it to be set on fire. Driven out by the smoke and flames, William was stabbed on the threshold by the son of the man he had killed an hour before. Though the wound was not immediately fatal, the soldiers seized him and carried him to the Tower for trial before the justiciars, who at once condemned him to death. He was stripped, tied to a horse's tail, dragged through the city, and hanged with eight of his adherents; the rest of the malcontents were so overawed that they made complete submission.

Hubert had triumphed, but at the cost of what little personal popularity and ecclesiastical repute still remained to him. The common people persisted in reverencing William Longbeard as a martyr; the clergy were horrified at the sacrilege of violating the right of sanctuary and firing a church, committed all the more unpardonably by an archbishop; and Hubert's own chapter seized upon it as the crowning charge in the long indictment they were preparing against their primate. Overwhelmed with obloquy on all sides, Hubert in disgust for a moment threw up the justiciarship, but resumed it as soon as he was once more assured of Richard's confidence. For two more years he toiled on at his thankless task: the budget of 1196 was made up by another scutage; the sole legislative act ventured upon in the following year was an Assize enforcing uniformity of weights and measures throughout the kingdom, whose provisions proved so impracticable that, like an earlier similar ordinance, it seems to have remained inoperative and was abolished altogether six years later. In the autumn Hubert went over to Normandy, where he was occupied for some weeks in diplomatic business for the king; a month after his return, the chapter closes, the crisis came.

Richard, struggling against Philip of France and short of trusted men, demanded from England either three hundred knights to serve at their own cost for a year, or enough money to hire the same number of mercenaries at three shillings a day. The justiciar Hubert Walter chose to ignore the monetary alternative and proposed in a great council at Oxford on 7 December that the barons, including the bishops, should supply the three hundred knights personally. The archbishop and the bishop of London, Richard Fitz-Nigel, declared their willingness to share the burden.

When asked for his assent, Hugh of Avalon, bishop of Lincoln—the universally acknowledged leader of the English Church—objected on the ground that the church of Lincoln owed military service only within England, not abroad. He declared himself ready to resign his bishopric and return to his hermit's cell rather than strip his church of its ancient immunities. Bishop Herbert of Salisbury, who represented the older ministerial tradition, echoed Hugh's stance, saying he could do or say nothing different from what his lord of Lincoln had said. Hubert, taken by surprise, dissolved the assembly and reported to Richard that his plan had been foiled.

Richard furiously ordered the property of the two recalcitrant bishops confiscated. The order was executed against Salisbury, but no Englishman dared touch anything belonging to the saint of Lincoln, so greatly was he feared. The king and his justiciar were thus completely beaten in their effort to extract the service.

At the urging of Richard's own officers, who begged Hugh to spare them the scandal, the bishop crossed to Normandy and personally forced the king into a reconciliation on St. Augustine's day. Herbert of Salisbury, by contrast, had to purchase his restoration at a heavy price. Hugh emerged vindicated; the justiciar's plan was wholly frustrated.

The death of Rees Ap-Griffith and a dispute between his sons over the succession in South Wales gave Hubert Walter a chance to recover his standing. He led a brilliant expedition to the Welsh marches, restored peace between the contending princes, and secured the border-fortresses of Hereford, Bridgenorth, and Ludlow for the king.

On 8 January 1198 Pope Celestine died, and the cardinals elected the young deacon Lothar as his successor, who took the name Innocent III. He immediately set about purging abuses in the Roman court and vindicating the rights of the Holy See against the Roman aristocracy, demonstrating the energy that would characterize his pontificate.

The monks of Canterbury promptly sent Innocent a list of grievances against their primate, chief among them the charge that Hubert Walter had violated his priestly order by serving as the king's justiciar and sitting in judgment on life and death. Innocent commanded Richard, on pain of spiritual harm, to allow no priest to hold any secular office, and forbade the practice throughout the Church. Discredited on all sides, Hubert had no choice but to resign, and Richard had no choice but to accept. On 11 July 1198 a royal writ announced the appointment of Geoffrey Fitz-Peter in his place.

Early in the spring of 1198 Hubert had imposed a carucage of five shillings on every carucate of ploughland. To eliminate the ancient elasticity of the term, he fixed the carucate at a standard hundred acres, thereby requiring a complete re-measurement of England's arable land. A new Domesday-style commission was issued: into every shire went a clerk and a knight, who with the sheriff and lawful men of the shire were to summon stewards, lords, bailiffs, reeves, and jurors and ascertain on oath how many ploughlands lay in demesne, in villenage, and in alms. The rolls were kept in four copies, collection was assigned to two lawful knights and the bailiff of every hundred, and stern penalties punished false testimony. Only parish-church free estates and lands held of the king by serjeanty or special service were exempt, and even these had to be included in the survey and their holders prove their exemption in London at the octave of Pentecost.

Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, from a family long engaged in administration, had been sheriff of Northampton under Henry II and an assistant-justiciar under Richard. When he took office, he proved less scrupulous than Hubert had been. Some religious orders refused to pay their share of the carucage, and Geoffrey met them with a royal edict declaring the entire clergy, secular and monastic, incapable of claiming redress for wrongs inflicted by laymen, while exacting full satisfaction for any injury done by a clerk to a layman. He also renewed Richard's order that all charters granted under the old seal be brought in for confirmation under the new one. Meanwhile, three justices-errant holding pleas of the Crown in the northern shires, and a great forest-assize modeled on that of 1184, reduced all England, in the words of Roger of Howden, to penury.

The early portion of the chapter is supported by an apparatus of source references drawn from Rymer's *Fœdera*, Eyton's *Itinerary of Henry II*, the Pipe Rolls of Richard I, and the chronicle of Roger of Howden edited by Stubbs. These citations document the careers of royal officials, including a figure who served as sheriff of Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire between 1156 and 1170, and who appears as marshal in 1165 and as a justice-errant in 1163. Other references point to lists of sheriffs, judicial commissions in northern counties under Richard I, and the workings of the itinerant justices, with named commissioners such as Hugh Bardulf, Roger Arundel and Geoffrey Hacket holding pleas across Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Northumberland, Westmoreland, Cumberland and Lancashire.

The narrative opens with an assessment of the administration of Richard's last eight months of reign. Though stern and cruel, this administration is presented as part of a salutary disciplinary tradition begun by his predecessor. The milder measures of Hubert Walter and the harsher scorpion-lashes wielded through Geoffrey Fitz-Peter are characterized as stages in a training whose value would only become apparent under the personal tyranny of Richard's successor. The passage signals a turning of the tide for the Angevin house, foreshadowing the more direct confrontation between English people and Angevin king that was soon to come.

Richard is portrayed as having divided his reign between two losing causes: the first half spent fighting for a lost cause in Palestine, and the second half fighting for a losing cause in Gaul. The long sequence of Angevin conquests stretching back more than two hundred years, from Fulk the Red to Henry Fitz-Empress, had brought the family into direct geographical and political contact with a more formidable enemy than any previously encountered. The French king, once patron and then tool of the Angevins, had become their sole remaining rival and was soon to become their conqueror.

A great change in the political position of the French Crown is traced to a corresponding change in the position of the Angevin house. With the western half of Gaul utterly transformed by Angevin dominion, the remaining powers of northern Gaul were driven into union, finding their only possible centre in the king of the French, who alone could match the crowned masters of the west in rank and dignity. The old Angevin march had ceased to be a marchland; that character was now transferred to the counties of Chartres and Blois, while the royal domain itself became the sole bulwark of north-eastern Gaul against the advancing power of Anjou.

When Louis VI came to the throne in 1109, he found the so-called kingdom of France distributed across an elaborate mosaic of fiefs. The western half, from the Somme to the Pyrenees, was divided between Normandy, Britanny, Anjou and Aquitaine. Four other great fiefs—Champagne, Burgundy, Auvergne and Toulouse—covered the eastern portion from the Meuse to the Mediterranean, while Flanders occupied the northernmost angle. The royal domain itself, distributed in two very unequal portions, lay amid an irregular group of smaller territories; its northern and larger half was flanked by Champagne, Normandy, and the counties of Chartres, Blois and Sancerre, while a much smaller fragment, including Bourges and the Bourbonnais, lay south of the Loire. Within these limited bounds, Louis VI established his authority so firmly during his twenty-nine-year reign that the independence of the Crown was secured for his successors, who then faced the larger task of bringing the great feudataries into subjection.

Louis VII secured Chartres and Blois through matrimonial alliances with the house of Blois and Champagne, binding them in a community of personal interest with the French Crown. This was especially necessary because the bulk of the Blois-Champagne strength lay far from the royal domain. The resulting chain proved too strong to be broken by the boyish wilfulness of Philip Augustus; from his reconciliation with his mother and uncles in 1180, the military and political strength of Blois, Chartres and Champagne could be reckoned at his command as unreservedly as that of his own immediate domains.

The royal power made an important advance to the northward under Philip Augustus. At the opening of his reign, the dominions of the count of Flanders stretched from the Channel to the borders of Champagne and touched Normandy at Ponthieu. Vermandois was ceded to Philip in 1186, and the death of the Flemish count Philip in 1191, combined with the dowry of Philip's first queen Elizabeth of Hainaut, made him master of all Flanders south of the Lys. This brought the upper valley of the Somme, Péronne, Amiens and Arras to the Crown, broke the power of Flanders, and fundamentally altered the political position of Normandy by removing the threat of a Flemish–Norman–imperial junction. With Blois, Champagne and Vermandois secured, the power and influence of the French Crown north of the Loire was now a territorial match for the house of Anjou.

The Angevin empire lacked a single unifying centre. To Angevins it was Angers, to Normans it was Rouen, to the men of the south it was Poitiers. Henry Fitz-Empress had struggled with the difficulty of playing two such opposite parts, and Britanny and Aquitaine had been held only by force. For Richard the difficulty was even greater, for he was at home nowhere even though he was master everywhere. Normans and Angevins alike continued to see in him primarily a representative of his mother's Poitevin ancestors, while Bretons saw in him the son of their conqueror. A growing feeling emerged that one regional people should not rule over another, and that if independence was to be lost it might more naturally be laid down before the acknowledged superior of all—the king of the French.

On his return from the Crusade at Christmas 1191, Philip Augustus had not yet developed any settled plan of conquest, but the boldness of his demands upon the Norman constables in the following spring suggested a definite design. He asked them to accept that Richard had ceded not only the whole Vexin but also the counties of Aumale and Eu, a claim with no basis in past history or present circumstances but one that, if granted, would have cut Norman communications with Ponthieu and Flanders and given Philip a foothold on the Channel. The terms of his treaty with John the following year pointed in the same direction with greater clarity.

By the 1192 treaty with John, Philip, as the price of John's investiture with the rest of his brother's dominions, reserved to himself the whole Norman territory on the right bank of the Seine except Rouen, and on the left bank nearly half the viscounty of Évreux with Vaudreuil, Verneuil and Ivry, together with the most valuable Angevin possessions in Touraine—Tours, Azay, Montbazon, Montrichard, Amboise and Loches—and the transfer of the Angevin fiefs in the Vendômois from the count of Anjou to the count of Blois. Exploiting the disorganization caused by Richard's captivity, Philip repelled an initial invasion by the Norman barons under Earl Robert of Leicester but then took Gisors and Neaufle by treason, secured the rest of the Vexin, captured Aumale and Eu, besieged Rouen briefly, and took Pacy and Ivry on his retreat. In July, with Richard about to be released, he accepted peace, sanctioning his recent conquests in Normandy, the liberation of Ademar of Angoulême, and temporary possession of Loches, Châtillon-sur-Indre, Driencourt and Arques as pledges for twenty thousand marks payable within two years of Richard's release.

Map VII, titled "FRANCE AND THE ANGEVIN DOMINIONS" and dated A.D. 1194, illustrates the wars of Richard and John with Philip Augustus. The map distinguishes the Royal Domain of Philip and was produced by Wagner & Debes' Geographical Establishment of Leipzig and published in London by Macmillan & Co.

Seven months after the treaty was signed, Philip anticipated Richard's intentions by crossing the Norman border, taking Evreux—which he handed over to John's custody—and marching via Neubourg and Vaudreuil, both captured, to besiege Rouen. He then retired southward, possibly alarmed by news of Richard's approach, and laid siege to Verneuil on May 10.

Richard landed at Barfleur on May 12 and by the end of another fortnight was encamped at L'Aigle, within a few miles of Verneuil. The defection of John, who contrived to join him on the road, coupled with the surprise and slaughter of the French garrison of Evreux by Norman troops, alarmed Philip so greatly that on Whitsun Eve, May 28, he again fled into his own dominions.

While strengthening Verneuil, Richard received news that the Angevins and Cenomannians were besieging Montmirail, a border castle famous as the scene of a stormy conference between Henry II and Thomas Becket. He hurried to its relief but found it levelled with the ground, and pushing on to Tours took quarters at Châteauneuf, where he drove out the canons of S. Martin as a sign of his suspicions. The burghers responded with a free-will offering of two thousand marks, and Richard joined Navarrese and Brabantine reinforcements at Beaulieu to blockade Loches, which its French garrison surrendered on June 13.

While Richard was engaged with Loches, Bertrand de Born was again kindling feuds in the south, and Philip was once more threatening Rouen. At the end of June the two kings marched toward each other, Richard taking position at Vendôme and Philip at Fréteval by July 4. Philip suddenly struck his tents and withdrew toward Blois; Richard pursued, missed the king himself, but fell upon the troops convoying the baggage, routing them and capturing Philip's royal seal, the treasury-rolls of the whole kingdom, valuable horses, money, plate, and the charters of conspiracy between Philip and the Norman, Angevin, and Poitevin rebels.

The disaster kept Philip occupied for the remainder of the year, leaving Richard free to march against the Aquitanian rebels. Sancho of Navarre was already wasting the lands of Geoffrey of Rancogne and Ademar of Angoulême, and by July 22 Richard could report to his justiciar in England that he was master of all the castles of the Angoumois and all the lands of Geoffrey. He marched north to take measures for the security of Anjou and Maine, and then returned to Normandy.

Richard's representatives, headed by the chancellor, had just concluded a truce with Philip lasting until All Saints' day—a proceeding that served as the pretext for Richard's withdrawal of the seal from William of Longchamp and his repudiation of engagements made under it. No further movement occurred until spring, after which a weary tale of fruitless negotiations alternating with indecisive warfare, confined largely to the Norman border with occasional diversions in Berry, continued unceasingly for the next four years without decisive advantage to either side.

Although neither king could gain decisive military advantage, the diplomatic rivalry carried on alongside the fighting proved more important. In this sphere, Richard—who had hitherto shown little of his race's far-sighted statecraft—proved more than a match for his wily antagonist.

Philip's alliance with John had proved a failure, but he soon saw a chance of securing a more useful tool in the person of the young Arthur of Britanny. Despite English claims that the treaty of Messina in March 1191 contained a formal acknowledgement of Richard's overlordship of Britanny, the text itself is silent on the subject, and a parallel agreement recognizing Arthur as Richard's successor in default of direct heirs also remained a dead letter. Having discovered that his interests were better served by supporting Richard than by intriguing against him, John became an active and useful ally, while those controlling political affairs in Britanny were equally determined that Richard should never receive Arthur's homage.

Constance of Brittany, who had successfully defied her husband Earl Ralf of Chester, Richard, and Philip alike for nearly seven years, was finally summoned by Richard to a conference in Normandy in 1196. No sooner had she set foot in the Avranchin at Pontorson than she was seized by Ralf and imprisoned in his castle of S. James-de-Beuvron, in circumstances that strongly suggested collusion between Ralf and Richard. Richard at once renewed his claim to the wardship of Arthur and prepared to enforce it at the sword's point, whereupon the Bretons sent their young duke first to the innermost fastnesses of their country under the bishop of Vannes, and then into the protection of Philip of France, who received him with open arms and sent him to be educated with his own son.

Although Philip now had the old Angevin patrimony between two fires, the Bretons were so little accustomed to concerted action that they could be of little use as allies. Their independent warfare across the south-western Norman border had little effect on the main struggle along the eastern border, and the Breton revolt left the lands between Britanny and France—Maine and Anjou—undisturbed. Even Aquitaine enjoyed an unwonted tranquillity, partly owing to the withdrawal of Bertrand de Born into a monastery in 1196, but chiefly because Richard had outflanked Philip far more effectively in the south than Philip had outflanked him in the west.

The key to Aquitaine's new-found security was Richard's swift seizure of an opportunity offered by the death of his old enemy Count Raymond V of Toulouse. He offered the hand of his favourite sister, the young and handsome Queen Jane of Sicily, widow of William II, to the new Count Raymond VI, and thenceforth the eastern frontier of his Aquitanian duchy was as firmly secured under the protection of his sister's husband as its southern frontier was under that of his wife's brother, the king of Navarre.

Richard's year of captivity in Germany yielded lasting political gains. On his release in spring 1194 he parted from Henry VI as a seeming ally, and also detached Leopold of Austria by offering his niece Eleanor of Britanny to Leopold's son, though the marriage was averted by Leopold's sudden death, which he himself attributed to divine retribution for his treatment of Richard. Henry VI, having mastered Sicily, revived the old imperial dream of supremacy over Gaul and in summer 1195 summoned Richard to invade France, remitting 17,000 marks of his ransom. When Henry died on Michaelmas Eve 1197, the value of Richard's homage became clear: the German princes invited him, as chief lay member of the Empire through his investiture with the kingdom of Arles, to the imperial election at Cöln on February 22. Unable to leave Gaul in person, Richard first proposed his nephew Duke Henry of Saxony, who was rejected for his absence in the Holy Land, and then secured the election of Henry's brother Otto, his favourite nephew, who was crowned king of the Germans at Aachen on July 12.

The prospect of an Angevin on the imperial throne prompted hopes of renewed world-wide dominion, but a rival Emperor was set up in Philip of Suabia, who allied himself with Philip Augustus. The vast sums which Hubert Walter had been forwarding to Richard were now bearing fruit: Flanders, Britanny, and Champagne had all been secretly detached from the French alliance, the Flemish count had already drawn Philip into a war in which he nearly became a prisoner, and in summer 1198 a comprehensive offensive and defensive alliance was formed against the French king, embracing Baldwin of Flanders, Reginald of Boulogne, the counts of Guines, Louvain, Brienne, Perche, and Toulouse, the young count Louis of Blois, and the boy-duke Arthur of Britanny himself. Philip begged Hubert Walter, just released from the justiciarship, to make peace, and even offered to surrender all his Norman castles except Gisors, but Richard would accept no terms that excluded his allies. A first truce to S. Hilary's day was made in November, and after a striking colloquy on the Seine between Vernon and Les Andelys, Richard in a boat and Philip on the shore, the mediation of the cardinal-legate Peter of Capua persuaded the two kings to prolong their truce for five years.

The text turns to the geography that was to shape the mightiest of the Angevin fortresses. At Gaillon the Seine bends in a great semicircle to the north, and at this point the valley of Les Andelys breaks the line of the chalk cliffs; blue woodland crowns the distant hills, and within the river curve lies a flat reach of meadow through which the Seine, broken with green islets, flashes on its way to Rouen. Some three-quarters of a league from the right bank, in a valley watered by the Gambon, stood the old town of Andely, separated from the river by a lake or marsh through which the Gambon and a lesser stream found their way by two issues into the Seine opposite the Isle of Andely. The enclosed tract between the rivers and the marsh was waste land bearing only a toll-house for the archbishop of Rouen's dues, Andely being the archbishopric's most valuable possession. Over against this spot, on the southern bank of the Gambon at its junction with the Seine, a mass of limestone crag rose abruptly three hundred feet, with a sheer western face above the river, a scarcely less steep northern face above the Gambon, and rocky ravines on the north-east and south-west, the whole connected with the Forest of Andely only by a narrow isthmus at its south-eastern end—a site that, as the author insists, would long since have been seized by a lay baron or by Fulk the Builder himself, had the soil of Andely not belonged to the Norman primate.

Richard's first recorded act at the rock of Andely was a savage one: the flinging of three French prisoners from its summit in vengeance for the slaughter of Welsh auxiliaries in the neighbouring valley. By the opening of 1196, however, he had a grander purpose. The January treaty with Philip made Andely a neutral zone and expressly forbade its fortification, while resigning the older Norman bulwarks of Nonancourt, Ivry, Pacy, Vernon, Gaillon, Neufmarché, and Gisors to the French king; both kings broke the agreement at once, and while Philip leagued with the Bretons against Anjou, Richard began his counterwork on the Seine. He first seized the Isle of Andely, building a lofty octagonal tower encircled by ditch and rampart and linking it to either shore by two bridges; on the right, beyond the eastern bridge, he traced the walls of the new town of the Lesser or New Andely, protected by the lake, the Seine, and the two lesser rivers, with a bridge over each of the two streams as its only landward access. From the southern bridge, over the Gambon, the rock itself was to be crowned with the mightiest work of all. Richard deepened the ravines that parted the rock from the surrounding heights, leaving only the south-eastern isthmus, and on the plateau above raised a triple fortress: an outer triangular ward with a great round tower at the apex facing the isthmus, flanked by towers at the base angles and smaller towers along the curtain, all set within a rock-cut ditch more than forty feet deep with a perpendicular counterscarp; a middle enclosure fronting the north-western side of the outer ward, with a ninety-foot wall eight feet thick and round towers, a wall carried round the plateau's edges where the rock itself served as rampart, broken on the south-west by a cylindrical-and-octagonal tower and protected on the north by two mighty rectangular bastions; and at the heart a citadel, formed on the east and south by seventeen semicircular bastions parted by barely two feet of curtain—a feature apparently imitated from Cherbourg—raised on a rampart above a fifteen-to-twenty-foot ditch with perpendicular counterscarp and a series of rock-cut casemates. On the western side of the citadel stood the great circular keep, with walls twelve feet thick, two or three stages high, and arched windows commanding the Vexin and the river to Rouen; behind it lay the principal dwelling-house, with a rock-cut staircase descending to an underground passage leading to outworks, a tower at the foot of the hill, and a wall carried down to the river-bank beyond the northern end of the long narrow "Isle of the Three Kings," while the river itself was barred by a double stockade from shore to shore.

Château-Gaillard Construction and Church Conflict Richard I completed the construction of his fortress Château-Gaillard on the rock of Andely within a single year (1197–1198), reportedly delighting in the work and naming it his "saucy castle" (Château-Gaillard), a name that quickly replaced its formal title in popular usage. Without seeking the primate's permission to build on his land, Richard provoked Archbishop Walter of Rouen, who placed Normandy under interdict and appealed to the Pope. Undeterred, Richard pressed on with construction, dismissing omens such as a rain of blood and reportedly declaring that even an angel would receive only a curse for trying to stop him. He eventually reconciled with the Church in the spring of 1197 through a highly favorable land exchange with the archbishop, which the Pope ratified by lifting the interdict in May; the exchange was formally concluded on October 16 and separately confirmed by a charter of John, suggesting John's growing recognition as Richard's heir.

Flanders Treaty and Richard's Funding Issues Around the same time, a treaty with Flanders—the cornerstone of Richard's anti-French coalition—was signed within the walls of the new fortress, although the league was not fully organized until late the following summer. Richard's chief obstacle remained his chronic lack of funds, a problem made worse by Hubert Walter's political defeat at the Oxford council and his subsequent resignation in July. A glimmer of hope, however, arrived unexpectedly in the spring of 1199 from a new quarter.

Châlus Siege and Treasure Discovery While marching through Poitou with his mercenaries to curb the treasonable designs of the viscount of Limoges and the count of Angoulême, Richard learned of a remarkable treasure discovered by a peasant at Châlus in the Limousin, popularly imagined as "an emperor with his wife, sons and daughters, all of pure gold." The local lord Achard tried to keep the find for himself, but as overlord the viscount Ademar of Limoges claimed the treasure-trove, only to yield to Richard's superior claim. When Richard rejected the share Ademar sent him and demanded the entire hoard, both Achard and Ademar refused, prompting Richard to lay siege to Châlus. The stronghold, now represented by the twin villages of Châlus-Chabrol, was attacked by Richard and his mercenary captain Mercadier at Mid-Lent 1199. Despite Achard's desperate pleas—involving submission to the French king's court, a truce for the holy season, and finally surrender with honors—Richard remained implacable, swearing to hang the entire garrison. With the outworks destroyed and the keep undermined, Achard withdrew with six knights and nine men-at-arms to make a last stand.

Richard's Fatal Wound at Châlus On Friday, March 26, Richard and Mercadier circled the walls seeking a safe point of assault while sappers continued to undermine the keep. Short of missiles and defensive arms, the desperate defenders hurled beams and stones down on the miners; one defender famously stood for more than half the day on a turret with only a frying-pan for a shield. Seizing a spent bolt caught in a crevice near him, this man fitted it to his crossbow and aimed at the king. Richard, wearing only his iron helm and failing to raise his buckler, was struck on the left shoulder just below the neck, the arrow glancing downward and penetrating deep into his side. He made light of the wound, ordered Mercadier to intensify the assault, and rode back to his tent. There, he rashly tried to extract the arrow himself, breaking off the shaft and leaving the iron barb embedded; the surgeon summoned to cut it out caused worse internal damage than the original wound, and Richard's restless temperament aggravated the injury until mortification set in.

Richard's Final Days and Burial Confronted with death, Richard regained his composure and prepared for the end, having previously admitted only four trusted barons to his sickroom. He summoned his followers to witness the formal bequest of all his dominions to his brother John, exacting oaths of fealty, and wrote urgently to his mother Eleanor at Fontevraud. He bequeathed his jewels to his nephew King Otto and a fourth of his treasure to his servants and the poor. Once Châlus fell and its garrison was hanged—except the crossbow-man, reserved for Richard's judgement—the king confronted his would-be killer, heard his grievance (the slaying of his father and two brothers), and forgave him, ordering his release with a hundred shillings. On April 6, the eleventh day after his wounding, Richard made his confession and received Holy Communion, having reportedly not communicated for nearly seven years because he could not be in charity with Philip of France. He directed that his body be embalmed, with his brain and organs buried at Charroux, his heart interred in Rouen cathedral, and his corpse laid in penitence at his father's feet in the abbey of Fontevraud. After receiving extreme unction, he died as day closed. He was buried in Fontevraud in the robes of his last English coronation, with St. Hugh of Lincoln performing the last rites; his unusually large heart was enshrined in a gold and silver casket at Rouen, where Normandy continued to venerate him as Richard Cœur-de-Lion.

Contemporary sources disagree on the identity of the man who killed Richard I at the siege of Châlus in 1199. He is variously called Peter Basilius (in Ralph of Diceto, the *Annales Margam*, the anonymous continuator of Geoffrey of Vigeois, and Roger of Wendover), John Sabraz (in Gervase), Bertrand de Gourdon (in Roger of Howden), and plain "Guy" without surname (in William Armoricus). Scholars such as Géraud have demonstrated that the slayer cannot have been Bertrand de Gourdon, since the only known bearer of that name was still living in 1231, long after Richard's pardon failed to save the man's life. The true identity of the assassin therefore remains unresolved.

The chronicles offer several different dates for the death of Richard I. Ralph of Coggeshall and the *Chronicon S. Flor. Salm.* place it on April 7, though in Coggeshall's case this is evidently a slip, since he otherwise counts eleven days from the wounding. Rigord and the *Chronicon S. Serg.* date it April 8, while the *Annales Margam* give April 10. Most other sources, including Ralph of Diceto, Gervase of Canterbury, Roger of Howden, Roger of Wendover, the *Annales Wintonienses* and Waverlienses, and the continuator of Geoffrey of Vigeois, place the death on the eleventh day after the wound was inflicted.

The funeral of Richard I took place on Palm Sunday, as recorded in the *Magister Vitae S. Hugonis*.

Berengaria, Richard's wife, was residing at Beaufort in Anjou when her husband died, and she did not receive his letter in time to see him alive. Saint Hugh of Lincoln turned aside from his journey between Angers and Fontevraud in order to visit and comfort her, and he found her in a state of intense grief. Her mourning is presented as further evidence of Richard's singular capacity to win love, even when he did not fully deserve the affection bestowed upon him.

The claim in Ralph of Coggeshall that Richard had not communicated for a considerable period before his death must be regarded as an exaggeration. In fact, Richard had certainly communicated on at least one occasion within the last five years of his life, namely at his crowning at Winchester in April 1194, as recorded by Gervase of Canterbury.

The death of Richard I is recorded by Ralph of Coggeshall with the Latin phrase: "Cum jam dies clauderetur, diem clausit extremum" ("When the day was now drawing to a close, he closed his own last day").

According to Gervase of Canterbury, the wound that killed Richard I was of a notable size, and the *Annales Wintonienses* describe it as "paulo majus pomo pini"—slightly larger than a pine cone.

Mercadier, the mercenary captain, detained Richard's slayer until the king had died and then had him flayed and hanged, as recorded by Roger of Howden. An alternative account, found in the *Annales Wintonienses*, relates that Mercadier sent the man to Jane, Richard's sister, and that it was she who took this horrible vengeance for her brother's death.

Richard I's death in 1199 became the catalyst for the break-up of the Angevin dominions. John, then in Britanny, hastened south to Chinon, the seat of the Angevin treasury. Three days after Richard's funeral—on April 14, the Wednesday before Easter—the castle wardens welcomed him as their lord, and Richard's household acknowledged him after he swore to execute Richard's testamentary directions and maintain the customs of the lands. On this understanding, the Angevin seneschal Robert of Turnham surrendered the treasury to him. John kept Easter at Beaufort before proceeding into Normandy.

John was received in Normandy without opposition, and on the Sunday after Easter Archbishop Walter invested him at Rouen with the sword, lance, and coronet of the duchy. As the lance was placed in his hands, John turned with characteristic levity to laugh with the young courtiers behind him, letting the symbol of ducal authority fall to the ground. Combined with his refusal to communicate on Easter Day—which had already drawn a solemn warning from S. Hugh—this irreverent behavior was recorded as an ill omen. The Normans, however, along with the English churchmen and barons present, including Archbishop Hubert and William the Marshal, were willing to transfer their loyalty to Richard's chosen successor.

With Richard dead, Philip II's long-standing alliance with the Bretons bore fruit. While Philip himself invaded the county of Évreux and took its capital, Arthur was dispatched into Anjou with troops; his mother Constance, released or escaped from prison, joined him with Breton forces. They marched on Le Mans, which John barely escaped the night before its fall. Angers was surrendered by a nephew of Robert of Turnham. On Easter Day, while John held court at Beaufort only fifteen miles away, the barons of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine assembled in council and unanimously acknowledged Arthur as the lawful heir to his uncle Richard according to the customs of those counties, surrendering their capital cities to him. At Le Mans, Arthur met the French king and did homage for his new dominions, with Constance swearing fealty alongside him. At Tours, Constance formally placed the twelve-year-old Arthur under Philip's guardianship, and Philip assumed custody and administration of all his ward's territories.

Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was at Fontevraud when Richard died, threw her support behind John—her only surviving son—rather than the grandson she had likely never seen. She effected a junction with Mercadier and his Brabantines as they marched up from Châlus, and the combined force of mercenaries, led by the aged queen and the ruthless but faithful Provençal captain, overran Anjou with fire and sword to punish its inhabitants for abandoning John. Having demonstrated her undiminished energy, Eleanor then went to meet Philip at Tours and personally did homage to him for Poitou, thereby securing Aquitaine for John and removing any pretext for French intervention in the south.

Archbishop Hubert and William the Marshal returned to England under John's commission to assist the justiciar Geoffrey Fitz-Peter in maintaining order until the new king arrived. The precaution was necessary, for on Easter morning—the day the news of Richard's death reached England—some nobles and knights went straight from their Easter feast into a course of rapine recalling the disorders after Henry I's death. Hubert excommunicated the offenders and, with the Marshal, summoned all men of the realm to swear fealty and peaceable submission to John as heir of Henry Fitz-Empress. With many barons, bishops, and earls fortifying their castles in an attitude of defence or defiance, the three leaders convened the malcontents at Northampton and solemnly promised that John would render to all men their rights in return for fealty and peace; thereupon the barons took the oath. The king of Scots refused homage unless his lost counties of Northumberland and Cumberland were restored; his envoys were intercepted by the primate and his colleagues, and the Scottish king was temporarily appeased with a promise of satisfaction upon John's arrival.

John landed at Shoreham on May 25, reached London the next day, and on Ascension Day, May 27, was crowned in Westminster Abbey in one of the most memorable coronations in English history. Archbishop Hubert formally asserted the old English doctrine of succession: that no man has antecedent right to succeed in the kingdom unless unanimously chosen by the whole realm after invocation of the Holy Spirit, on grounds of character, energy, and fitness—citing Saul and David as precedents—and that among the dead king's kin, the most excellent should be the more promptly chosen. Hubert applied this to "the noble Count John here present," and the assembly unanimously responded "Long live King John!" Despite a protest from Bishop Philip of Durham over the absence of his metropolitan Geoffrey of York, Hubert anointed and crowned the king, adding a personal adjuration that John should not accept the office unless he truly intended to perform his oath. John swore he would, but then—reportedly for the first and last time in Latin Christendom on such an occasion—omitted to communicate on his coronation day.

On coronation day itself, John arranged for the government of the realm in his anticipated absence. Geoffrey Fitz-Peter was confirmed as justiciar and William as marshal; both were formally invested with the earldoms they had long enjoyed—Geoffrey with Essex, William with Striguil. In defiance of precedent and propriety, Archbishop Hubert himself undertook the office of chancellor, despite warnings from Hugh Bardulf. On the next day John received the barons' homage and went on pilgrimage to S. Alban's Abbey, then visited Canterbury and S. Edmund's, and proceeded to keep Whitsun at Northampton. Interchange of embassies with the king of Scots failed to settle the dispute over the two northern shires or to win the required homage; William the Lion threatened to invade the disputed territories within forty days, and John countered by entrusting them to a new sheriff, William de Stuteville, and appointing new guardians to the temporalities of York, before himself hurrying back to the sea and sailing for Normandy on June 20.

John made a truce with Philip on Midsummer Day for three weeks. At its expiry the two kings met in person. Philip complained that John's occupation of his brother's territories without prior investiture and homage was an unpardonable wrong and demanded that John atone by ceding the whole Vexin to Philip outright, with Poitou and the three Angevin counties for Arthur's benefit. John refused the humiliation, fortified by his alliance with Flanders, the promised imperial aid of his nephew Otto (now acknowledged by the Pope as Emperor-elect) against France, and offers of homage and mutual alliance from French feudataries formerly leagued with Richard. War began in September with Philip's capture of Conches, followed by Ballon; Philip then razed Ballon to the ground, asserting he would not stay his hand for Arthur's sake. William des Roches, Arthur's seneschal, remonstrated against the demolition as an injury to his young lord, whereupon the Breton allies momentarily deserted Philip. William des Roches not only surrendered Le Mans to John, in whose custody he had been governor, but contrived to bring the boy-duke of Britanny to his uncle, who received him with apparent favour. That very day, however, a warning reached Arthur of the fate John had in store, and the following night he fled to Angers with his mother and friends, including the viscount Almeric of Thouars, who had just been compelled to surrender to John the seneschalship of Anjou and the custody of Chinon. Around this time Constance, apparently setting aside Ralf of Chester without even a formal divorce, underwent a ceremony of marriage with Almeric's brother Guy. The year's campaigning ended with a truce made in October to last until S. Hilary's day.

John's fortunes were not yet desperate enough to compel the humiliation Philip demanded. By the time of the meeting after the Midsummer truce, John had secured the alliance of Flanders—whose count did him homage at Rouen on August 13—and was receiving urgent promises of imperial support from his nephew Otto. His refusal to submit to Philip's terms was at once followed by offers of homage and mutual alliance from all the French feudatories who had previously been in league with Richard against their own sovereign.

The first Anglo-French war opened in September with the taking of Conches by Philip, followed by the capture of Ballon. Philip chose to mark these successes by razing Ballon, even though it stood on Cenomannian soil and, by his own proclaimed theory, should have been handed over to Arthur. Arthur's seneschal William des Roches protested the demolition as an injury to his ward, and Philip retorted that he would not, for Arthur's sake, refrain from dealing as he pleased with his own acquisitions. In consequence, the Breton allies momentarily deserted him: William des Roches surrendered Le Mans to John and contrived to bring the boy-duke of Britanny out of Philip's custody to his uncle, who received him with apparent favour. A warning reached Arthur the same day, and the following night he fled to Angers with his mother Constance and a band of friends, including Almeric of Thouars, who had just been forced to surrender to John the seneschalship of Anjou and the custody of Chinon, which he had held in Arthur's name. Shortly afterwards Constance, apparently setting aside Ralf of Chester without even an attempt at divorce, underwent a ceremony of marriage with Guy's brother, Almeric of Thouars's brother Guy.

To raise the thirty thousand marks of silver promised to Philip under the treaty of January 1200, John made a hurried visit to England at the end of February, levying a carucage of three shillings on every ploughland. Coming on top of an unusually heavy scutage of two marks on the knight's fee already imposed since John's accession, this new impost was a sore burden on the country. The abbots of some of the great Cistercian houses in Yorkshire withstood the carucage as an unprecedented infringement of their rights that they could not assent to without permission of a general chapter. John in fury bade the sheriffs place all the White Monks outside the protection of the law; only the remonstrances of the primate compelled him to revoke the command. He rejected all offers of compromise from the monks and, "breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord," crossed the Channel again at the end of April.

While Philip had been warring, the legate Cardinal Peter of Capua—who had negotiated the last truce between Philip and Richard—turned to punishing Philip's matrimonial sins: the king had sent away his Danish queen Ingebiorg in 1193 and three years later taken Agnes of Merania. At a Church council at Dijon on December 6, 1199, the legate pronounced an interdict upon the whole royal domain, to be publicly proclaimed on the twentieth day after Christmas—the very day on which Philip's truce with John would expire. This prospect moved Philip, at a meeting between Gaillon and Les Andelys, to accept terms far more favourable to John than those of six months before. As a pledge of future peace, Philip's son Louis was to marry John's niece Blanche of Castille; John was to bestow on the bride the city and county of Évreux and the Norman castles in Philip's hands on the day of Richard's death, pay Philip thirty thousand marks, and swear to give no aid to Otto for the Empire. While Eleanor went to fetch the bride from Spain, John crossed to England in February to levy the carucage. By May, with France suffering under the interdict since January, Philip met John at Gouleton, between Vernon and Les Andelys, on May 22 and signed a treaty whose solid advantages lay wholly on John's side: he resigned claims on Berry in favour of Blanche and Louis, the thirty thousand marks were reduced to twenty thousand, Arthur was acknowledged as owing homage to his uncle for Britanny, and John was formally recognized by Philip as rightful heir to all the dominions of his father and elder brother. The morrow saw Louis and Blanche married by the archbishop of Bordeaux on Norman soil, because of the interdict in France; at Vernon, in Philip's presence, John received Arthur's homage for Britanny, and Philip accepted John's homage for the whole continental dominion of the house of Anjou.

John secured his French inheritance through the Treaty of Le Goulet in May 1200, after which he undertook a triumphant progress through Le Mans, Angers, Chinon, Tours and Loches into Aquitaine. There he received the homage of his brother-in-law Count Raymond of Toulouse for the dower-lands of Jane. He then persuaded Aquitanian and Norman bishops to annul his marriage with his cousin Avice of Gloucester, allegedly by claiming that the papal dispensation had been revoked by Innocent III. Rather than restore her vast inheritance, John gave her county of Gloucester to her sister's husband Count Almeric of Evreux as compensation for loss of his Norman honour, and kept the remainder of her estates himself, alienating a powerful section of the English baronage and incurring the wrath of Rome.

John next challenged the most turbulent house in Aquitaine, the Lusignans. He initially sent ambassadors headed by the bishop of Lisieux to sue for the hand of a daughter of the king of Portugal, but without notice to them he suddenly married Isabella, daughter of Count Ademar of Angoulême. The girl had been betrothed in boyhood to Hugh "the Brown" the younger, son of Hugh the Brown of Lusignan and Matilda (Ademar's niece), in a match designed to heal the family feud and unite Angoulême and La Marche. When Count Ademar learned a king wished to marry his daughter, he withdrew her from her Lusignan bridegroom, and at the end of August the archbishop of Bordeaux married her to John at Angoulême.

Heedless of the storm the marriage would raise in Aquitaine, John brought his child-queen to England in early October and was crowned with her at Westminster on October 8. His first business in England was to renew his persecution of the Cistercians, after which he arranged a meeting with the king of Scots.

In November John met the king of Scots at Lincoln, defying the tradition his father had observed by presenting himself in regal state within the cathedral. The two kings held their colloquy on a hill outside the city, where William performed his long-deferred homage, although his renewed demand for the restitution of the northern shires was again postponed till Whitsuntide. The following day the king of England helped carry the body of the holy bishop Hugh to its last resting-place in the minster he had rebuilt, and on the following Sunday he made full amends to the Cistercian abbots.

After keeping Christmas at Guildford, John returned to Lincoln and quarrelled with the canons about the election of a new bishop. He redeemed his promise to the Cistercians by founding Beaulieu Abbey in the New Forest as a house of their order.

From Lincoln John went northward with his queen through Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Northumberland and Cumberland, taking fines everywhere for offences against the forest-law. At Mid-Lent he was at York, and on Easter-day he and Isabel wore their crowns at Canterbury. Rumours of disturbances in Normandy and Poitou shortly afterwards prompted him to summon the earls and barons to Portsmouth at Whitsuntide.

The earls met at Leicester and answered that they would not go with John unless he restored their rights, treating personal service overseas as no longer binding without their specific consent. John retorted by demanding the surrender of their castles, beginning with William of Aubigny's castle of Beauvoir, which William was only allowed to retain on giving his son as a hostage. The threat brought the barons to Portsmouth, where the quarrel ended in compromise: John sent his chamberlain Hubert de Burgh with a hundred knights to the Welsh marches, despatched William the Marshal and Roger de Lacy with mercenaries to Normandy, and took a scutage from the remainder in commutation of their services.

On Whit-Monday the queen crossed to Normandy, and shortly afterwards her husband followed. After a friendly meeting near the Isle of Andelys, Philip invited John to Paris.

Philip entertained John at Paris with the highest honours, vacating his own palace for his guest and loading him with costly gifts. From Paris John went to meet his sister-in-law Berengaria, Richard's queen, at Chinon, where he seems to have chiefly spent the rest of the summer before returning to Normandy in the autumn, with the Christmas feast at Argentan passing over in peace.

Trouble gathered rapidly. Agnes of Merania was dead and Philip had taken back his wife, freeing himself of his ecclesiastical difficulties. John now faced the consequences of his own conduct: having already alienated the Lusignans by stealing the plighted bride of its head, he had seized the castle of Driencourt, belonging to a brother of Hugh the Brown while its owner was on the king's business in England. He further insulted the barons of Poitou by summoning them to clear themselves in his court from a general charge of treason against his late brother and himself by ordeal of battle with picked champions from England and Normandy. They scorned the summons and appealed to Philip as their overlord and John's.

On March 25 Philip met John at Gouleton and peremptorily bade him give up to Arthur all his French fiefs, besides sundry other things, all of which John refused. Philip thereupon sent a citation through some of the great French nobles to John, as duke of Aquitaine, to appear in Paris fifteen days after Easter at the court of his lord the king of France, to answer for his misdoings and undergo the sentence of his peers. John did not deny Philip's jurisdiction but declared that as duke of Normandy he was not bound to obey citation to any spot other than the traditional border trysting-place; Philip replied that his summons was addressed to the duke of Aquitaine. John at length promised to present himself and to give up Tillières and Boutavant as security, but the day came and went without either the surrender of the forts or John's appearance.

The court of the French peers condemned John by default, sentencing him to be deprived of all his lands.

Philip at once marched into Normandy to execute the sentence by force, taking Boutavant and Tillières, then moving northward through Lions, Longchamp, La Ferté-en-Bray, Orgueil and Mortemer to Eu, all of which fell into his hands. Master of almost the whole Norman border from the Seine to the sea, he turned back to lay siege on July 8 to Radepont on the Andelle, scarcely more than ten miles from Rouen.

John arrived on July 15 and dislodged Philip at the end of a week, forcing him to withdraw again to the border. The castle and county of Aumale soon fell into Philip's hands, but Hugh of Gournay held out in his impregnable castle until Philip broke down the embankment of a reservoir that fed its moat, loosing a flood that undermined its walls and compelled the defenders to flee to the neighbouring forest.

At Gournay Philip bestowed upon Arthur the hand of his infant daughter Mary, the honour of knighthood, and the investiture of all the Angevin dominions except the duchy of Normandy, which Philip evidently intended to conquer for himself and keep by right of conquest.

Contemporary accounts disagree about when Arthur was knighted—Roger of Howden placing the ceremony during Arthur's first homage in 1199, while William the Breton and Rigord place it later. The chapter discusses the difficulty of reconstructing the order of Philip's 1202 campaign, since no two contemporary writers name the castles in the same sequence. Using geography and dated events—the siege of Radepont on July 8–15, and John's documented presence at Lions after May 29—the author argues that the entire northern expedition cannot be fitted in before Radepont, and that the whole campaign cannot be squeezed between July 15 and the end of the month, when Arthur was clearly knighted. The conflicting chronologies leave the campaign order uncertain.

Between mid-May and the end of June 1202, John shifted quarters incessantly across eastern Normandy, moving from Arques to Le Mans, and throughout July he was chiefly in the neighbourhood of Rouen. Apart from the one expedition to Radepont, he made no attempt to check the progress of his enemies, and the reason for this prolonged inactivity is acknowledged to be difficult to explain.

After Arthur's knighting at Gournay, John attempted a diversion by sending troops into Brittany, where the duchess had died and the young duke was absent. Dol and Fougères were taken and the country was ravaged as far as Rennes, though it is noted that John acted vicariously rather than in person. Stung into independent action, Arthur divided his forces with Philip: while the French king led the main army northward to Arques, Arthur took some two hundred knights southward to Tours, summoning Bretons and the men of Berry for an expedition into Poitou. At Tours he was met by the disaffected Aquitanian chiefs—young Hugh of La Marche, the dispossessed count of Eu Ralf of Issoudun, and the veteran fighter Geoffrey of Lusignan, with the Gascon Savaric of Mauléon bringing thirty more knights. The combined force was far too small for Arthur's liking, and he proposed to wait for more allies, but the lure of Queen Eleanor, who had emerged from Fontevraud to the castle of Mirebeau on the Anjou–Poitou border, proved irresistible. As still-duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, Eleanor was both John's most devoted ally and the one person whose continued existence could undo his forfeiture of the duchy, and capturing her would, it was hoped, bring John to his knees.

John, once roused, acted with characteristic vigour. On July 30, approaching Le Mans, he learned of his mother's danger; by August 1 he had appeared before Mirebeau. The town had already fallen and Eleanor was driven into the keep, and the besiegers—thinking their triumph assured—were surprised and overwhelmed, the Lusignans and Arthur himself being taken prisoner. Philip, besieging Arques, hurried south on hearing the news, but John forestalled any rescue by sending Arthur to prison at Falaise; Philip then burned Tours and withdrew. John retaliated by completing the destruction of Tours and had the further luck to capture the Viscount of Limoges. Yet his position was visibly crumbling: his French allies took the cross for the East, he had quarrelled with Otto of Germany, and William des Roches—after pleading in vain for Arthur's release—organized a league of Breton nobles joined by some Norman border-chiefs, strong enough by late October to seize Angers as its headquarters. Early in 1203 John transferred his captive from Falaise to Rouen.

By this time sinister rumours of Arthur's fate were circulating: that John had sent a man to blind the boy at Falaise, that the garrison had thwarted the design, and that Hubert de Burgh, John's chamberlain in charge, had placated the king with a false announcement of Arthur's death—complete with funeral services—until Breton threats forced him to confess the fraud for the sake of John's safety. How or when Arthur really died was never clearly proved; all that is certain is that by Easter 1203 all France was ringing with the news and that he was never seen alive again. An attempt was made on John's behalf to suggest that Arthur had pined away in prison or been drowned while trying to cross the Seine, but the general belief, strongly confirmed by John's later conduct, was that he was stabbed and then flung into the river on the king's orders, if not by the king's own hand.

The fire that had been smouldering in Brittany now burst into flame. The barons and prelates of the duchy, meeting at Vannes, appealed to Philip as overlord of both Arthur and John for a judicial inquest by the peers of France into John's treatment of his captive duke. John was cited, as duke of Normandy, either to produce Arthur alive or to stand trial on a charge of murder. He neither appeared nor offered any defence; the court pronounced him worthy of death and sentenced him and his heirs to forfeit all the lands and honours held of the French crown. The chapter notes the moral, if not the strict legal, justice of the sentence, and reflects on the political consequences: Arthur's death left John the sole surviving male Angevin, Cenomannian and Norman heir, with Eleanor of Britanny a captive, Matilda's sons tied to Germany, and the children of his sister Eleanor known in northern Gaul only as relatives of the heir to the French throne. The disappearance of Arthur as a rallying point allowed Philip to drop the pretense of championing Arthur's rights and present himself almost as a deliverer to John's disaffected subjects in Anjou, Maine, Brittany and Normandy, who had no alternative route to independence save submission to their titular overlord.

Philip took the field as soon as the forfeiture was proclaimed. Within a fortnight after Easter he had taken Saumur and entered Aquitaine, spending several weeks reducing castles with the help of the Bretons and the malcontent Poitevin nobles. The Viscount of Beaumont had already openly joined the league against John, and the Count of Alençon placed himself and his lands at Philip's disposal. Already master of the Norman north-eastern border from Eu to Gisors, and now secure on the southern frontier, Philip set about conquering the intervening viscounty of Evreux, taking Conches, Vaudreuil and other castles in turn. Messenger after messenger brought the same report to John, who sat idle in his Rouen palace and replied uniformly that he would one day win back all that Philip was taking. His barons grew exasperated—some attributing his indifference to magic—and one by one took their leave; even Hugh of Gournay, the hero of the previous year's defence, voluntarily surrendered Montfort. Not until near mid-August did John stir, briefly laying siege to Alençon and then attempting Brezolles, both of which he abandoned in panic at Philip's approach before sinking back into inactivity. Rouen itself remained safe, sheltered behind Richard's "saucy castle" on the rock of Andely.

Unable to storm Château-Gaillard, Philip marches his army up the Seine, crosses higher up (perhaps at Vernon), and encamps in the peninsula opposite Les Andelys. When his approach is spied by the garrison of the Isle of Andely, they destroy the bridge linking the island to the left bank, and a stockade beneath the castle-rock bars river transport. A young Frenchman named Gaubert of Mantes, with a handful of daring comrades, plunges into the Seine under a hail of stones and arrows and hacks a breach in the stockade with axes. Flat-bottomed barges are then assembled into a pontoon bridge fortified with stakes and towers, across which Philip himself leads the bulk of his host to form a new camp under the walls of the Lesser Andely. The Isle garrison is caught between two fires, the Vexin lies open to French foragers, and the communications and supplies of both the Lesser Andely and Château-Gaillard are cut off on every side.

Hovering at a safe distance, John at last rouses himself to the peril of his flagship fortress and gathers a formidable force to dislodge the French. Entrusting the operation to William the Marshal rather than leading it himself, John plans a night attack with three hundred knights, three thousand mounted men, four thousand foot soldiers, and mercenaries under a routier captain called Lupicar (Lobar), supported by a flotilla of seventy of Richard's old transport vessels laden with provisions and escorted by pirates and three thousand Flemings. Just before dawn the Marshal's troops fall upon sleeping sutlers and camp-followers in the French peninsula, killing more than two hundred; but the panicked rush of soldiers onto the pontoon breaks the bridge, and the bravest French knights, headed by William des Barres, drive the fugitives back across the river and rally the host. Surprised in turn as they grope through the deserted camp, the Marshal's men are routed with heavy loss. The relief fleet then arrives late, its crews hacking desperately at the bridge under a hail of arrows, stones, boiling oil, and pitch until an enormous oaken beam smashes and sinks the two foremost ships; the rest flee in disorder, and Gaubert of Mantes captures two of them in small boats.

The delay of the fleet has doomed the garrison of the Isle of Andely. Gaubert of Mantes once more proves the hero of the day: tying a rope round his waist and taking two iron vessels filled with burning pitch-coated charcoal, he swims to the eastern end of the island, left unguarded because the defenders trusted to the proximity of Château-Gaillard on that side, and hurls the firebrands against the outer wooden palisade. The double rampart instantly blazes, and the wind drives the flames into the fort itself. Some of the garrison escape by swimming or on rafts, others are stifled in cellars and galleries, and the rest surrender to Philip. The king at once repairs and regarrisons the island-fort and rebuilds the bridge on its western side. The entire population of the Lesser Andely thereupon flees in a body to Château-Gaillard; Philip enters the town in triumph, repopulates it with new inhabitants, and entrusts its defence to two companies of mercenaries led by a chief named Cadoc.

Still lacking full command of the river, Philip turns aside from the Saucy Castle and on the last day of August strikes north-westward along the road into the valley of the Andelle to besiege Radepont. After two to three weeks (or, by some accounts, a month) the place surrenders. John makes no attempt whatever to save it, but flees westward into the depths of his old county of Mortain, abandoning Rouen to its fate. Philip, however, dares not advance upon Rouen with Château-Gaillard still unconquered in his rear, and at the opening of the vintage-season he moves back to Les Andelys to address the great stronghold at last.

Surveying the rock, Philip judges assault nearly hopeless and resolves on a blockade. The mercenaries in the Lesser Andely to the north and the garrison in the island-fort to the west already imprison Château-Gaillard; to complete the encirclement Philip digs a double trench two hundred feet deep from the brow of the opposite hill, running northward to the lake of Andely and westward to the Seine, garnishing each line with seven wooden bretasches manned with soldiers, and quartering the rest of the army in timber-and-thatch huts where they mock the Saucy Castle with songs. Roger de Lacy soon recognizes his fatal error in admitting the townsfolk of the Lesser Andely—between fourteen hundred and twenty-two hundred non-combatants who rapidly devour the stores that should have fed the garrison for a year. He expels them in batches of five hundred; but Philip, now back in his own dominions, orders every man, woman, and child driven back without mercy. When Roger sends out the remainder, they are met with a volley of arrows and find the castle-gate shut against them. For three months these wretches drag out a miserable existence in the ravines, sheltering in rock clefts and living on scant herbage, dry leaves, and the dogs let loose by the garrison. Cannibalism has already been reached when Philip returns; at the sight of the survivors he orders relief out of tardy compassion and fear of pestilence, but only about half of the original four hundred are still alive, and for most of them the first meal proves fatal.

During the autumn and winter of 1203, King John wandered aimlessly through his Norman dominions—moving from Falaise to Mortain and Dol, back to Rouen, then through the Bessin and on to Verneuil—without once attempting to relieve the garrison at Château-Gaillard, which was being slowly invested by Philip Augustus's encircling army. He sent Roger de Lacy a letter that amounted to permission to do whatever his envoys commanded if the garrison could hold out no longer, and after dismantling Pont-de-l'Arche, Moulineaux and Montfort, he finally quitted Normandy on December 6, keeping his Christmas feast at Canterbury at the expense of Archbishop Hubert while his starving soldiers held out in vain. The fortress fell on March 6, 1204, after Philip's assault forced the first ward by means of a wooden gallery and the mobile tower, and a young squire nicknamed "Bogis" enabled the French to penetrate the second ward through an unguarded window in John's new building; with the citadel captured by direct assault through Richard's misjudged rock-bridge, Normandy collapsed within weeks as its chief towns opened their gates to the victorious French king.

In late February 1204, Philip grew weary of the blockade of Château-Gaillard and resolved to take it by assault, taking up his station on the crest of the hill facing the narrow isthmus that joined the fortress to the mainland. After the isthmus was levelled and widened, the French pushed a wooden gallery up to the edge of the fosse, rolled a wheeled beffroy along it to clear the ramparts with cross-bowmen, and began filling the ditch with earth, wood, stones, and turf; losing patience, storming parties dropped down the perpendicular counterscarp on scaling-ladders, scrambled up the inner slope to the foot of the great round tower, and sapped its foundations until a mine brought a large portion of the wall crashing down. While the garrison fell back from the first ward, a young man-at-arms nicknamed Bogis discovered an unguarded window in John's new building on the south-eastern corner, crawled through it with a few companions into the storehouse, and was unwittingly aided when the defenders set the building ablaze, allowing him to escape through the flames and let down the drawbridge for the French host. The assault on the citadel ended on March 6, 1204, when sappers working beneath a movable "cat" and a stone-throwing engine brought down the gate-tower, and Roger de Lacy with his remaining 120 men-at-arms and 36 knights were taken prisoner, leaving Philip master of Richard's Saucy Castle.

By the end of February 1204 Philip Augustus grew weary of the protracted blockade of Château-Gaillard and resolved to test whether Richard's seemingly impregnable fortress could be taken by direct assault, stationing himself on the crest of the hill that faced the narrow isthmus joining the castle-rock to the mainland. The French leveled and widened this approach, drove a covered wooden gallery forward through it, and pushed a wheeled beffroy filled with crossbowmen up to the lip of the outer ditch, under cover of which the stormers descended on scaling ladders, scrambled up the sloping scarp beneath the great round tower at the head of the first ward, and undermined its foundations until a fuse was fired and a large section of the wall crashed into the fosse. Seeing the outer enclosure lost, Roger de Lacy ordered the wooden buildings within the first ward to be set ablaze and withdrew his garrison across the drawbridge into the second ward, leaving the shattered fragment of the tower crowned by the banner of Cadoc.

After the fall of the first ward, the French faced an equally formidable second ditch and rampart until a young man-at-arms nicknamed Bogis, or "Snub-nose," spied a small unguarded window on the south-eastern corner of John's new building, and he and a few comrades scrambled into the ditch, climbed the sloping side, and let themselves into the storehouse beneath the chapel by means of a rope. When their hammering on the locked door alarmed the garrison, the defenders hastily set fire to the building, only to have the wind spread the flames across the whole enclosure, forcing them to retreat to the citadel while Bogis and his men escaped from the burning ruins into the casemates; once the fire subsided, Bogis appeared at the gate and dropped the drawbridge, giving Philip's army its triumphal entry into the second ward.

While King John abandoned the defenders of Château-Gaillard to their fate, wandering aimlessly through Normandy before crossing to England to keep Christmas at Canterbury at Archbishop Hubert's expense, Philip Augustus resolved in late February 1204 to storm the fortress by assault rather than wait longer for its reduction by blockade. The French king constructed a covered gallery across the isthmus to wheel a wooden beffroy against the outer defenses, took the first ward by mining its great round tower, and then gained the second ward through the exploit of a squire nicknamed Bogis, who climbed through an unguarded window in John's new building, only to have the garrison set the structure ablaze and flee to the citadel; finally, a covered ram known as a "cat" was brought against the citadel gate, which Richard had unwisely left without a drawbridge, and on March 6, 1204, the remaining garrison of 120 men-at-arms and 36 knights were forced to surrender. With the Saucy Castle lost, all organized resistance in Normandy collapsed within three months as Falaise, Caen, Rouen, Arques, Verneuil and the rest of the duchy's towns opened their gates to Philip, after which the conqueror turned south to overrun Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou, taking Chinon and Loches by mid-1205 and leaving only La Rochelle and Niort still unsubdued.

While Philip concentrated the full military power of the French crown on the investment of Château-Gaillard, John wandered idly through his duchy, dismantling outlying posts and finally quitting Normandy altogether on December 6 to keep Christmas at Canterbury, abandoning the garrison of his Saucy Castle to its fate; his letter to Roger de Lacy, permitting surrender at discretion, reached too late to alter the besiegers' success, and after the assault in which the squire Bogis clambered through a forgotten window of John's new building, let in the French, and unwittingly set the second ward ablaze, the citadel itself was undermined through a "cat" worked across Richard's rock-bridge and fell on March 6, 1204, yielding up the king of England's last great Norman stronghold. Once the castle was lost, John frankly bade his constables do each what seemed good in their own defence, and town after town—Falaise after a week's siege, then Domfront, Séez, Lisieux, Caen, Bayeux, Barfleur, Cherbourg, and Coutances—opened its gates at Philip's mere approach, while Rouen, after entering on a thirty days' truce in Rogation-week, anticipated its expiry and submitted on midsummer-day, followed immediately by Arques and Verneuil, so that by the summer of 1204 Normandy was wholly won.

After the fall of Château-Gaillard and the collapse of Normandy, Philip Augustus turned his attention to the remaining Angevin domains, with Cadoc and his mercenaries already established at Angers and most of Anjou and Touraine secured except for the strongholds of Chinon and Loches. Although the death of Queen Eleanor on April 1 removed the last legal obstacle to the execution of the long-standing sentence of forfeiture, the men of the south nevertheless veered toward John rather than submit to a sovereign parted from them by the whole width of the Bay of Biscay, with Savaric of Mauléon becoming John's most energetic champion and Angoulême secured as the heritage of Queen Isabel. Philip accordingly assembled his host on S. Laurence's day for the conquest of Poitou, where Robert of Turnham proved powerless against the indifference of the people and the active hostility of William des Roches and the Lusignans; Poitiers was soon taken and in a few weeks all Poitou, except La Rochelle, Niort and Thouars, submitted to Philip as its liege lord. With the approach of winter Philip returned to his own dominions, leaving one body of troops to blockade Chinon, which was held for John by Hubert de Burgh, and another to form the siege of Loches, no less bravely defended by Gerald of Atie. At Easter 1205 Philip marched with a fresh host upon Loches and took it by assault, and on midsummer-eve Chinon fell in like manner; Robert of Turnham had already been made prisoner by the French, the viscount of Thouars made his submission and received from Philip the seneschalship of Poitou in Robert's stead, and only Niort and La Rochelle were left alone in their resistance to the French king.

In January 1204, three weeks after returning to England, John convened a council at Oxford that extracted a scutage of two and a half marks per knight's fee and a seventh of all moveable goods—even from parish churches—ostensibly to fund the recovery of his lost continental territories. A second council at Northampton in May summoned the fleet and host to gather at Porchester at Whitsuntide, but at the urgent entreaty of Archbishop Hubert and William the Marshal, the king yielded and dismissed the gathered forces, collecting fines in commutation of service. Though John briefly put to sea with a small escort, he landed again at Wareham on the third day, and contented himself with dispatching Earl William of Salisbury and his son Geoffrey to reinforce the garrison at La Rochelle. A year later John again mustered his fleet, this time at Portsmouth, and led it in person, landing at La Rochelle on June 7. He marched to Montauban, captured it after a brief siege, was joined by the Viscount of Thouars in revolt against Philip, and together they took Angers on September 6, ravaging Anjou and south-eastern Britanny. Philip's counter-crossing of the Loire and his harrying of the Viscounty of Thouars prompted John to propose a truce; the terms were drawn up at Thouars on October 26, but the English king slipped away the night before his signature was required and fled to La Rochelle, whence he sailed for England on December 12.

Of the two devoted English ministers who had stood by John through obloquy, only the Marshal now remained; a month after the humiliating Porchester scene of 1205, Archbishop Hubert died. John is said to have remarked upon hearing the news, "Now for the first time am I truly king of England!" The chapter frames this as an ill-omened utterance, noting that the old prophecy of Merlin—"the sword was parted from the sceptre"—was thereby fulfilled in another detail: the sword of Hrolf the Ganger, William the Conqueror, Fulk the Red and Fulk the Black had fallen from the hand of their unworthy descendant, leaving him only the English sceptre. Yet the England over which he now wielded it was no longer the exhausted realm absorbed without effort into the vast dominions of the young Count Henry of Anjou; it was a new England, quietly grown strong under Henry and his ministers, and between this nation and its stranger-king the day of reckoning was at hand.

The note on the death of Arthur observes that only two contemporary writers—the Annalist of Margam and William of Armorica—offer a circumstantial account. The Margam annalist claims that John, "post prandium, ebrius et dæmonio plenus," slew Arthur with his own hand, tied a stone to the body, and flung it into the Seine, whence it was recovered in a fisherman's net and secretly buried at Notre-Dame-des-Prés. William of Armorica elaborates a long and lurid romance in which John rows Arthur alone on the Seine by night, stabs him, and rows three miles before discarding the corpse. Both place the scene at Rouen, though the Chronicle of Brioc transfers it to Cherbourg. Other writers are more guarded: Rigord says nothing, Coggeshall speaks only incidentally of Arthur having been submerged in the Seine, Roger of Wendover says merely "subito evanuit," and Matthew Paris records three current rumours—accidental drowning, death from grief, and murder at John's hand or command—while his own language suggests he could not wholly acquit the king. The Margam annalist dates the deed to Maundy Thursday, but places it a year too late in 1204, while William of Armorica's mention of three days at Moulineaux before the murder does not quite align with the Itinerary of King John, which shows him at Rouen on the two days before Maundy Thursday 1203 (April 3) and at Moulineaux on April 2; the after-history nonetheless makes it plain that the deed was done shortly before Easter.

The murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in 1170 produced a sensation throughout western Christendom disproportionate to either his personal influence during his lifetime or its direct political consequences. His rapid canonization by Alexander III in February 1173 and the three centuries of continuous pilgrimage to his shrine testify to the event's religious impact. Yet both Pope and pilgrims misread its true significance: for England, the Becket quarrel marked a social turning-point even more than a political one, ending the direction of the moral and intellectual revival that had flourished under Archbishop Theobald. Theobald's heirs were scattered after Thomas's flight, leaving the reforming party without a leader. Gilbert Foliot alone among the higher clergy might have assumed leadership with greater skill than Thomas himself, but his conspicuous opposition to the martyr cast him as an enemy of the Church, rebel against her divine authority, and almost a denier of her faith.

The final settlement of the Becket controversy was a defeat for both parties, but the apparent victor suffered the heavier loss. The king was compelled to abandon his plan to reform clerical morals through royal justice, securing the privilege of clergy (to fall centuries later under another King Henry); yet the immediate result of this triumph was the scandal of shielding Thomas's very murderers from capital penalty, since they were ecclesiastically amenable only to a Church tribunal that could only sentence them to lifelong penance in the Holy Land. Far worse was the loss to the English Church through the breakdown of Theobald's episcopal reform plans: the cowardice of the bishops during the struggle left them at the king's mercy, and eight vacant sees besides Canterbury were filled with secular clerks subservient to the royal will, secularizing the episcopate as completely as in the worst days of Henry I. The lower clergy, as John of Salisbury and Walter Map and Gerald de Barri complained, became correspondingly extortionate and immoral. The two honorable exceptions were the appointment of Hugh of Avalon to Lincoln in 1186 and the king's disinterested handling of the Canterbury succession; the monk Richard and the Cistercian Baldwin proved worthy primates, though the Cistercian type they represented was already passing away.

The monastic revival that had illuminated the earlier twelfth century had died down well before its close. Within seven years of S. Bernard's death, John of Salisbury was compelled to acknowledge that the love of power and greed of gain had infected the entire monastic body, including the Cistercians. Rome itself tried, though vainly, to curb the arrogance of the military orders through the Third Lateran Council of 1179. Reformers of the next generation vied in denouncing the Cluniacs and the "white-robed herd, the abominable order" of Cîteaux. On the continent, older orders like Grandmont and the Chartreuse—founded before Cîteaux but overshadowed by its fame—revived monastic vitality, yet they had little effect in England: the "Good Men" of Grandmont never reached the island, and the Carthusians arrived only in Henry's last years, founding only a few unimportant settlements. The numerical decline of foundations tells the story: only 113 English monasteries of known foundation date from Henry's thirty-five-year reign, compared with 115 from Stephen's troubled nineteen years; in Yorkshire alone, twenty new houses had risen under Stephen against only eleven under Henry.

The fall of the English Cistercians was the most terrible of all monastic declines: within two generations, their name, once the symbol of the highest moral and spiritual perfection, had become a byword for the lowest depths of wickedness and corruption. The cause lay in their very success. Although pledged by their origin to protest against Benedictine wealth and luxury, within a century of their arrival in England they had become the richest and most powerful body of monks in the realm, having transformed unoccupied arable land into vast sheep-pastures and grown wealthy through the booming wool-trade. The obvious temptations of luxury had little power over the stern White Monks, but the deadlier snares of avarice and pride overcame them. Under Richard and John, when they bargained on near-equal terms with king and ministers, their political power was vast, but the moral basis on which that power had first arisen was wholly gone. As an element in the nation's spiritual life, the Order of Cîteaux, once its very soul, now counted for worse than nothing.

Toward the close of the century, with monastic reputation fallen so low, a reaction in favor of secular clerks set in among the high places of the Church. Bishop Hugh of Coventry repeated the Conqueror's earlier experiment by turning monks out of his cathedral and replacing them with secular canons, and even proposed that all cathedral establishments served by monks should be similarly secularized; but he was not the man to command recognition as a reformer, and his bold anticipation of the later Reformation ended in ignominious failure. The more serious attempt came from Archbishop Baldwin himself in 1186, who proposed to endow a college of secular priests at Hackington near Canterbury out of his archiepiscopal revenues, explicitly to provide a home for the scholarship that monkish sloth had all but expelled from the cloisters. The Christ Church monks instantly appealed to Rome, suspecting a design against their privileges, and although the king supported Baldwin, the weight of the whole monastic body—except Baldwin's own Cistercians—was thrown against him. After four years of litigation and open warfare, the Pope ordered construction stopped. Baldwin's transfer of the foundation to Lambeth did not save it; his death in the Holy Land left the monks victorious. His successor Hubert Walter, himself a secular clerk, took up the scheme, but after five more years the primate too was defeated, ending the last systematic English attempt to redirect monastic wealth toward learning and study.

As a spiritual force, English monachism was by the early thirteenth century well-nigh dead, though it still retained a lingering hold on the hearts of the people. The conservatism and gratitude of Englishmen still shrank from casting aside a tradition hallowed by six hundred years of association with the nation's conversion, ecclesiastical organization, and earliest training. This sentiment was strikingly revealed in Baldwin's quarrel with his Christ Church monks, when, after he cut off their supplies to starve them into submission, contributions from friends, pilgrims, and even Jews sustained them in such abundance for eighty-four weeks that the brethren were reportedly able to feed two hundred poor strangers daily. Yet however strong popular attachment remained, monachism had lost its power over souls; it might still produce individual saints like Hugh of Lincoln, but it had ceased to mould the spiritual life of the nation.

With the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of both the higher clergy and the established monastic orders, the time was almost ripe for a new religious movement capable of reawakening the spiritual life of England. The conditions produced by the failure of clerical privilege to reform morals, the secularization of the episcopate, the collapse of monastic idealism, and the persistent popular hunger for genuine religious experience set the stage for the imminent arrival of the mendicant Friars, who would inherit the spiritual leadership that the monks had forfeited.

The decay of holiness and learning within the English cloister during the reign of Stephen is highlighted by the way chronicler after chronicler lays down his pen amid the anarchy, leaving only Henry of Huntingdon and the anonymous Peterborough annalist to carry the narrative through to Henry II.'s accession. Other branches of literature remain equally barren, and the modest promise visible in John of Salisbury's miscellaneous treatises is cut short by the Becket controversy.

Once the great ecclesiastical storm subsides, the literary impulse revives under wholly changed conditions. Its bent remains predominantly historical, and it is upon the martyrdom of the new saint that this renewed activity first seizes, before expanding into broader forms of political and ecclesiastical narration.

Within twenty years of Becket's death, no fewer than ten biographies of the martyred archbishop appear, composed by writers of strikingly diverse backgrounds: his old comrade John of Salisbury, three of his confidential clerks, a Benedictine abbot of Peterborough, an Augustinian prior of Oxford, a Canterbury monk probably of Irish blood, a French poet who had known him in his chancellor days, and a Cambridge clerk who joined him on the eve of his murder.

Simultaneously, a new school of English history takes root in the court rather than the cloister. Modern scholarship identifies the foundational text of this school—the "Acts of King Henry and King Richard," long ascribed to Benedict of Peterborough—as the actual work of Richard Fitz-Nigel, bishop of London and royal treasurer, and it serves as the primary authority for English political history from Becket's death to the third year of Richard I.

The three chief chroniclers of the period exemplify this court-based school. Richard Fitz-Nigel, the royal treasurer, is the true author of the foundational chronicle; Roger of Howden, a clerk of the royal chapel and trusted officer of the administration under both Henry and Richard, continues it; and Ralph de Diceto, archdeacon of Middlesex from 1153 and later dean of St Paul's from 1180 until his death in the fourth year of King John, rounds out the trio. Their chronicles, arranged year by year with little comment, stand sharply apart from the typical monastic annal.

These statesmen-chroniclers, thanks to their place in the royal administration, enjoy access to official records and diplomatic correspondence and frequently serve as eyewitnesses or participants in the events they record. The cosmopolitan range of their work matches Henry II.'s own interests: alongside the narrative of his wars and legal reforms, the affairs of every state from Norway to Morocco and from Ireland to Palestine find a place in their pages.

William of Newburgh is born in 1136 at Bridlington, beneath the southern escarpment of the York Wolds near Flamborough Head. He enters the Augustinian priory of Newburgh near Coxwold as a child, probably around its foundation, lives there his entire life, and there composes his *English History* during a period of just over two years, beginning no earlier than 1196 and breaking off abruptly in the spring of 1198.

Newburgh Priory offers few external advantages for historical study. Younger than its historian, it lacks venerable associations with kings and saints; no royal visits or pilgrim devotions enliven its routine; its prior holds no distinguished place among the ecclesiastical dignitaries of his province; and Yorkshire travel in this period is more arduous and dangerous than in Wessex under Henry I.

Yet the canons of Newburgh are not wholly isolated. Their priory lies on an old road from York to the Tees, within easy reach of Augustinian houses at Kirkham and Malton, the great Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx, and Byland Abbey only a mile away. Abbot Ernald of Rievaulx himself commissions William's history, and given the prominent role of the Yorkshire Cistercians in English politics, his external sources of information are likely both copious and trustworthy.

The internal literary resources of Newburgh are strikingly poor. The library, if it existed at all, was still in formation during William's mature years, and he shows little of the classical learning that marks William of Malmesbury. Of the three earlier writers he names in his preface—Bede, Gildas, and Geoffrey of Monmouth—the last is mentioned only to be condemned, while he draws heavily on Simeon of Durham and Henry of Huntingdon without ever seeing Malmesbury's *Gesta Regum* and *Historia Novella*, of which his own book is the sole worthy continuation.

Compared with the statesmen-chroniclers, William's details are vague, his names and pedigrees often wrong, and his chronology a tangle of inconsistencies. Yet he follows William of Malmesbury in treating history as "philosophy teaching by examples": his work is a sustained moral and political commentary on twelfth-century England, and his chapter on the causes and effects of Stephen's anarchy is of more real historical worth than the entire mass of disjointed facts the chroniclers supply. Earnest, morally serious, and ruthlessly critical of falsehood—once bursting into "almost passionate indignation" against the pseudo-historical romancers—he is hailed by Freeman as "the father of historical criticism."

Nowhere does the vitality of the ancient Celtic race display itself more strikingly than in literature. Of the varied intellectual elements forming the new England, the Celtic element rises to the surface first, and the romantic literature of England owes its origin to a Welsh monk, Geoffrey of Monmouth, who becomes bishop of St Asaph's shortly before Henry II.'s accession.

Some years before this, Walter Calenius, archdeacon of Oxford, had picked up in Brittany "a very ancient book" containing the history of the Britons from Brut to Cadwallader, which he brought to England and begged his friend Geoffrey to translate from Welsh into Latin. Though the original cannot now be identified, Geoffrey may fairly claim the credit for the *History of the British Kings*, an elaborate tissue of Celtic myths, legendary traditions, scraps of classical and scriptural learning, and his own inventions, all boldly presented under the name of history.

Geoffrey's venture achieves astonishing success. The book is dedicated to William of Malmesbury's patron, Earl Robert of Gloucester, and its fame spreads through every section of society. A Yorkshire priest, Alfred of Beverley, describes how clergy suspended during the interdicts of the Canterbury dispute eagerly discuss its stories, while Norman barons and ladies beg to read it in their own tongue—Walter Lespec borrowing a copy from Earl Robert himself so that Geoffrey Gaimar might translate it into French verse for the wife of Ralf Fitz-Gilbert.

Wace, a Norman poet, superseded Gaimar's version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's history with his later work, the *Roman de Rou*, a rhymed chronicle tracing the Norman dukes from Hrolf to Henry II. Like Alfred of Beverley and Gaimar before him, Wace accepted Geoffrey's book of marvels uncritically as genuine history, continuing his narrative from Geoffrey's closing point at the death of Cadwallon in 689 without acknowledging any break between the fabulous and the factual.

William of Newburgh raised a well-grounded and eloquent protest in the preface to his *Historia Anglicana* against the blurring of the line between truth and falsehood—the obliteration of the fundamental distinction between history and romance—that characterized the medieval reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth's work. Despite this criticism, the fabulous tales of the *Brut* continued to circulate as an integral part of British history for many generations.

Henry II countenanced the fraud of the *Brut* for political purposes, exploiting Geoffrey's fabrications to humor the national vanity of his Celtic vassals and to soothe their irritated national feelings. These Celtic subjects were among his most troublesome but also among his most necessary and useful allies, making the mythical history a useful diplomatic instrument.

On one occasion—reported on doubtful authority—Henry II is said to have conciliated the Bretons by entering into diplomatic correspondence with the long-departed Arthur, mysteriously still living, and by proposing to hold Britanny as Arthur's vassal. A Latin verse from the *Draco Normannicus* is cited showing Henry addressing Arthur with words acknowledging Arthur's lordship over Britain.

In his last years, Henry II set the monks of Glastonbury to find the grave of Arthur, turning the Arthurian legend to significant political account. In the cemetery of St. Dunstan's old abbey stood two pyramidal stones covered with ancient, worn inscriptions thought to bear Arthur's name. Guided by an old Welsh bard and by histories of the Britons, Henry directed excavations sixteen feet below the surface, and in 1191 a wooden sarcophagus was found containing Arthur's supposed remains, accompanied by a leaden cross inscribed with words identifying it as the burial of King Arthur and Guinevere. The bones and a tress of golden hair (which crumbled to dust) were ceremonially re-buried under a marble tomb before the high altar.

The Glastonbury "discovery" of 1191 marked the final "passing of Arthur" out of the sphere of politics into the sphere of pure intellect and philosophical romance. Although Geoffrey of Monmouth corrupted the sources of British history, he opened to succeeding poets a fount of inspiration not yet exhausted. The imaginative poets seized upon the romantic side of these legends, gradually weaving them into a poetic cycle that developed throughout the later Middle Ages across all of civilized Europe, taking on new colors and meanings in the hands of more highly-cultured singers.

The Church first breathed spiritual and intellectual life into the soulless body of Arthurian legend. The earliest Arthurian romance is a creation of twelfth-century religious mysticism: the story of the Holy Grail, quoted in extenso from Tennyson. As older legends of Arthur and Merlin, and later stories of Lancelot, Tristan, and Gawaine, were molded into literary form, the "quest of the Grail"—vowed by Arthur's knights at the Table Round and achieved only by the pure Galahad—served as the unifying link, with Galahad's figure gleaming as the mirror of ideal Christian chivalry.

Walter Map, who wove the greater and noblest part of the Arthurian romance, was born on the English-Welsh marches, studied at Paris under Gerard la Pucelle, and entered royal service while Thomas Becket was still chancellor. A scholar, theologian, poet, ecclesiastical reformer, and man of the world, Map rose high in Henry II's confidence. Henry employed him as a justice-itinerant, ambassador to France, and representative at the Lateran Council of 1179. He held ecclesiastical preferments including a canonry at St. Paul's, the parsonage of Westbury, the precentorship of Lincoln (resigned 1196), and finally the archdeaconry of Oxford.

Walter Map's only extant work, *De Nugis Curialium* ("Courtiers' Triflings"), was produced during his years in attendance on Henry II from 1182 to 1189. Though recalling the *Polycraticus* of John of Salisbury, it differs in lacking scholastic method and visible arrangement. It is a miscellaneous collection—folklore, pilgrim tales, classical stories, patristic sayings, historical fragments, anecdotes, and court gossip—apparently gathered from the writer's commonplace-book. Beneath its carelessness, however, lies a serious purpose: to instruct a wider Latin-reading audience through "truth embodied in a tale," with Map acting as a huntsman who provides game for his readers to dress themselves.

Map's satire toward the Church marks a significant shift from John of Salisbury's grave indignation to bitter mockery and scathing sarcasm. Where John lifted his hands in deprecation, Walter pointed the finger of scorn, having seen the dream of clerical reform buried with Thomas Becket. His mightiest creation is "Bishop Goliath," whose gigantic figure embodies all the vice and crime disgracing the clerical order. The "Apocalypse" and "Confession" of this imaginary prelate have been ascribed to Map by a constant, if indirect, tradition—the satire being so daring and appallingly true to life that the author wisely concealed his name. Map emerges as the anonymous spokesman of a new public opinion, an independent force beginning to challenge abuses that had defied kings and popes.

Gerald de Barri was born in 1147 at Manorbeer Castle, three miles from Pembroke, into a family with both Norman and Welsh blood. His father William de Barri was a Norman knight settled in South Wales; his mother Angareth was a granddaughter of Rees Ap-Tewdor, prince of South Wales, and niece of the bishop of St. David's. Gerald's quick Celtic wit and pugnacious spirit, inherited from his mother, appear throughout his life and writings. Known as "the little bishop" in childhood for his clerical bent, he spent years studying and lecturing on rhetoric at Paris before returning home in 1172, when Henry II was planning the government of the Welsh principality.

On returning from Paris in 1172, Gerald was selected to reform his native land, leveraging his mixed Welsh-Norman blood and his reputation as a scholar from Europe's most famous university. Archbishop Richard commissioned him as legate in the diocese of St. David's, and Gerald launched a vigorous campaign against clerical and lay misconduct: forcing payment of tithes on wool and cheese, compelling priests to abandon lax British ecclesiastical discipline inherited from the ancient Church, excommunicating the sheriff of Brecknock, and deposing its archdeacon when they resisted. In 1175, his zeal earned him the vacant archdeaconry of Brecknock.

Early in the year following Bishop David's death, Gerald emerged victorious from a sharp struggle defending the rights of the see of St. David's against encroachment by the bishop of St. Asaph's. He had long nursed the ambition of restoring St. David's to its ancient metropolitical rank, and he succeeded in kindling this same aspiration in his fellow-canons, who regarded him as the only man capable of fulfilling their desire. The chapter accordingly made a bold attempt to secure his nomination as bishop.

Both King Henry II and Archbishop Richard, having learned something of Gerald's character, decided that however useful he might be as an archdeacon in Wales, he was unsuited to be bishop of any Welsh see, and least of all of St. David's. Henry angrily refused the chapter's nomination, and after a prolonged dispute the vacant see was filled by Peter de Leia, prior of the Cluniac house of Much Wenlock. A foreigner, a monk, and a man of limited intellect, Peter proved unable to govern his turbulent Welsh flock or to manage the self-willed canons, leaving the diocese in a state of chronic confusion.

After his failed bid for the bishopric, Gerald returned to Paris, where he remained studying civil and canon law and lecturing with great success until the summer of 1180, when he returned to England. He was received by the chapter of Canterbury at a great banquet on Trinity Sunday before proceeding back into Wales, where he once more attempted to set the disordered diocese to rights.

In 1184, on Henry II's last hurried visit to England, the king summoned a council on the Welsh border and employed Gerald to arrange the final submission of his cousin Rees to the English Crown. Henry then removed the over-zealous archdeacon from South Wales by making him one of his own chaplains and sending him to Ireland in 1185 in attendance upon Prince John. Gerald remained abroad with John until the following Easter, and two important books were the fruit of this visit. He also accompanied Archbishop Baldwin on the Crusade-preaching tour through Wales, producing an Itinerary, and continued in attendance upon the king until Henry's death in July 1189. Richard then sent him home again to help keep order in South Wales.

The fruit of Gerald's Irish expedition was twofold: the *Topography of Ireland*, published in 1187 and dedicated to the king, and the *Conquest of Ireland*, which appeared in 1188 under the patronage of Count Richard of Poitou. The *Topography*, written in a bold, colloquial, journalistic style that scandalised sober scholars, was a raking together of marvels from Irish tradition designed to entertain an audience ignorant of the country, and has been justly denounced by Irish scholars; yet it remains, in the words of one of his editors, the source "to whose industry we are exclusively indebted for all that is known of the state of Ireland during the whole of the middle ages." The *Conquest of Ireland*, by contrast, is a complete and authentic account of the English or Norman invasion.

A far better example of Gerald's descriptive work is his *Itinerary of Wales*, recording the Crusade-preaching journey with Archbishop Baldwin, followed three or four years later by a *Description of Wales*. On this familiar and beloved ground, dealing with a country he knew intimately and a people with whom he was heartily in sympathy, Gerald is seen at his very best, both as a writer and as a patriotic Welshman.

Gerald's remaining literary output is of highly miscellaneous character. The *Gemma Ecclesiastica*, a handbook of priestly duties for the clergy of his Brecknock archdeaconry, was the work he valued most, though to modern readers it is chiefly valuable as a mirror of the South-Welsh clergy of his day. His *Mirror of the Church* reflects the general state of religious society with the unsparing satire of Walter Map. The rest—a half-finished autobiography, a book of *Invectives* against his enemies, a collection of letters, poems, and speeches, the *Rights of the Church of St. David's*, lives of contemporary bishops, and a tract *On the Education of Princes* chiefly directed against Henry II and his sons—are polemical pamphlets coloured by his personal animosities, but cast countless illuminating side-lights upon the social life of the age. He closed his life with a small book of *Retractations*.

When older critics protested against the unconventional style of his *Irish Topography*, Gerald boldly carried the book down to Oxford, "where the most learned and famous English clerks were then to be found," and read it aloud publicly over three successive days. On the first day he entertained all the poor of the town; on the second, the doctors of the various faculties and their more distinguished pupils; on the third, the remaining scholars, knights, townsmen, and burgesses. Whatever murmurs came from the elder teachers were drowned in the applause of a younger generation that claimed him as one of its own.

The spirit animating the works of Gerald and Walter Map is the spirit of the rising universities. The very term "university," as applied to the great seats of learning in the twelfth century, is something of an anachronism: the earliest use of it in its modern sense with reference to Oxford occurs under Henry III, and the University of Paris appears under that name for the first time in 1215. Yet although the title was not yet in use, the institution it came to denote was already one of the most important creations of the age.

The school of Bologna sprang into life under the impulse given by Irnerius, who opened lectures upon the Roman civil law in 1113. Nearly forty years later, when Gratian published his famous work on the Decretals, a school of canon law was instituted in the same city by Pope Eugene III; and in 1158 the body of teachers forming the university won a charter of privileges from the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.

In Paris, the study of divinity had long found a home beneath the shadow of the cathedral, and in 1109—the year of St. Anselm's death—William of Champeaux opened on the Mont-Ste-Geneviève a school of logic that within a few years became the most frequented in Europe. Under his successors, Abelard and Peter Lombard, the schools of Paris became the intellectual centre of Christendom, drawing teachers and scholars from every nation as fellow-citizens of a new and world-wide commonwealth of learning. There a Wiltshire lad could form a lifelong friendship with a youth from Champagne, study logic and the *quadrivium* under masters of many nationalities, and encounter Aristotle and theology in turn; there John of Salisbury in all likelihood met Nicolas Breakspear and Thomas Becket, and there scholars from the Welsh marches and from Pembroke alike received the instruction they would later carry home.

From these wandering scholars, it can scarcely be doubted, came the impulse that called the schools of Oxford into being. The first token of their existence is the appearance of Robert Pulein in 1133; from then until the coming of Vacarius in 1149 the record is blank, and it is only towards the close of Henry II's reign that any lasting result from their visits can be discerned. By that time, however, as Gerald's own testimony makes clear, the University was to all intents and purposes full-grown, with its different faculties of teachers and scholars of various grades. The little city in the meadows by the Isis, already famous in legend and in political and military history, had won the character that was thenceforth to be its highest and most abiding glory—that of the resort of "the most learned and renowned clerks in England."

Cambridge grew slowly on a slightly elevated site above the left bank of the river Cam, at the southern edge of the vast fen tract stretching to the Wash. At the close of the seventh century it was a "little waste chester" marking the former Roman city of Camboritum. By Norman times it was known as Grantebridge and held three to four hundred houses, twenty-seven of which the Conqueror cleared to build a castle. The displaced inhabitants likely crossed the river, and the surviving church of S. Benet, whose tower resembles Robert D'Oilly's S. Michael's at Oxford, may have been the nucleus of a new town half a mile to the south-east. Around it gathered twelfth-century religious foundations: the round Holy Sepulchre church (Henry I's time), the Benedictine nunnery of S. Radegund (early Stephen), and S. John's Hospital (1133–1169, Bishop Nigel of Ely), possibly served by Augustinian canons. Picot the sheriff had already founded S. Giles on the left bank in 1092, and this college moved to Barnwell in 1112 as an Austin priory. The Augustinian presence brought a school, and by the mid-twelfth century the old Grantebridge had become a suburb while Cambridge's schools were an established fact—though not formally recognized as a "University" until 1318.

Twelfth-century scholarly life, whether of student or teacher, had neither the ease nor the dignity of modern college life, as there were no colleges in the modern sense. Students of all ranks and ages—from boys of ten or twelve to ordained priests—lodged in scattered dames'-houses or hostels. The schools were entirely unendowed: there was no university chest, no common fund, and no pecuniary aid. The sole support of both scholars and teachers was the Church, under whose shelter the schools had grown. Books had to be purchased from private means or borrowed from religious libraries. The chapter illustrates what such a library could furnish by cataloguing Lincoln minster's collection at the height of its theology school's fame under William of Blois and Bishop Hugh. Beyond service-books, the chancellor's keeping held some thirty or forty volumes, including Psalters, Latin Fathers, Epistles, Gospels, a two-volume Bible, papal Canons, Ivo of Chartres's Decretals, Vergil, Vegetius and Eutropius, Boëthius's Consolations, Priscian's Grammar, a Mappa Mundi, and a Foundation book of Lincoln Minster with charters. Later gifts included Josephus, Eusebius, and Peter Lombard's Sentences (Bishop Robert de Chesney, d. 1166); a "book of Aristotle" and seven volumes from Warin of Hibaldstow and Radulphus Niger; Gratian's Decretals from an archdeacon of Leicester; and from Gerald de Barri, a Summula super Decreta, Anselm's Cur Deus Homo, his own Topographia Hiberniae, Life of Bishop Remigius, and Gemma Sacerdotalis, with another Sentences closing the list.

The head of the scholastic body was the chancellor, an officer of the diocesan bishop (for Oxford, the bishop of Lincoln), who licensed those who had reached a certain proficiency to teach. All who attained the rank of Master or Doctor were required to devote a period to instructing others. Lectures were held wherever possible—cloisters, church porches, or the teachers' own wretched lodgings—with pupils sitting at their feet on the bare ground. Teachers' living came solely from school-fees, often passing from hand to hand, since many young teachers of logic and rhetoric, like John of Salisbury and Gerald de Barri, simultaneously lectured to less advanced scholars and pursued their own studies under a great doctor of theology.

The course of study was the same everywhere and from the fifth century had consisted of two divisions: the trivium and quadrivium. The trivium comprised Grammar (the art of writing and reading learnedly and judging skilfully), Dialectics (logic and metaphysics), and Rhetoric (the rules and figures chiefly derived from Cicero). The quadrivium included Geometry (essentially geography), Arithmetic (mystical numbers), Music (metre and harmony), and Astronomy (on the Ptolemaic system, though a fifth-century theory is said to have given Copernicus his clue). There were separate faculties of Theology and Law, with considerable jealousy between them. The highest Church authorities encouraged canon law but steadily set their faces against the civil law of imperial Rome, forbidding the "religious" to have any dealings with it. On the continent, the two branches of the law were followed by different persons, but in England, since canon-law procedure was founded on the Theodosian code, clerical lawyers in Stephen's time and Henry II's early years combined both studies. Gradually both passed into lay hands, and while continental canon law fell into neglect, in England it survived by being linked with civil law under lay doctores utriusque juris.

Theology faced a yet more formidable rival in the schools of logic. The standard text was Boëthius's sixth-century Latin translation of part of Aristotle's logic, and early in the twelfth century his natural philosophy became accessible to the West through Arabic versions translated by scholars such as Adelard of Bath from the schools of Salerno or the remoter East. Of the "Ethics" only fragments embedded in Latin writers were known until a century later, when the work returned to Europe—likely in the train of the crusaders—in a Latin translation of a Hebrew version of an Arabic commentary on a Syriac version of the Greek original. Garbled as it was, this new Aristotelian lore revolutionized the schools of western Christendom by opening wholly new fields of criticism and speculation. Adelard's free inquiry in physical science invaded every region of intellectual thought, while legal studies contributed new methods of argument. Peter Lombard strove in his Sentences to stem the rationalizing tide by applying the dialecticians' own methods to theology, but the book became the accepted text-book of theology down to the sixteenth century, with the opposite effect to that intended. The endless "doubtful disputations," hair-splittings, and "systems of impossibilities" were already irritating John of Salisbury and were even more galling to Gerald de Barri, who complained that scholars, for display, had taken to questions of single and compound, shadow and motion, points and lines, and acute and obtuse angles, propounding false positions and insoluble problems in long-winded, imperfect Latin—ruining both theology and letters. Yet from those same schools Gerald and his like had caught the fearless, outspoken temper with which they criticized individuals, institutions, and systems alike.

The democratic spirit of independence that had characterized the earlier clerical reformers passed from the priesthood into the universities and there took a mightier developement. It was mainly through the universities that the nation entered into the labours of Theobald and his fellow-workers, and it was the universities themselves who entered into the labours of Thomas Becket. A large and growing proportion of students and teachers were laymen, though an inveterate legal fiction still counted them all as "clerks." Having grown up under the Church's wings, the schools at full stature were strong enough to free themselves from ecclesiastical control while keeping the privileges the clergy had won. A priest of the English Church today is as subject to ordinary law as any of his flock, yet the chancellor's court of Oxford still holds sole cognizance over all causes, in all parts of the realm, concerning any resident member of the University—a privilege secured by a charter of Edward III and successfully asserted as recently as January 1886.

The true strongholds of English freedom were not the universities but the towns. The municipal movement begun under Henry I was renewed under Henry II and Richard with increased vigour and success. Henry Fitz-Empress, a clear-sighted statesman, valued the growing importance of the towns, but most of his town-charters date from the earlier years of his reign and mostly merely confirm his grandfather's liberties, with only a few new, carefully defined and strictly limited privileges. In the great commercial cities, where trade with the continent had given fresh impulse to the movement, the merchant-gilds openly aimed at gathering all local government into their own hands and acquiring the position of a French "commune." The French kings encouraged communes as a counterpoise to the feudal nobles, but Henry saw the dangers they threatened to his system of government and held them steadily in check.

The Crown watched every developement of gilds with jealous care because of the close connexion between the commune and the gild organization. In 1164 the burghers of Totnes, Lidford, and Bodmin were all fined for setting up gilds without royal warrant, and in 1180 no less than eighteen "adulterine gilds" in London met with a similar punishment. Once established, however, they were permitted to retain their existence, for in the first Pipe Roll of Richard we find them paying their fines "as they are set down in the twenty-sixth Roll of King Henry II." Authorized bodies at the opening of Henry's reign included a bakers' gild in London, a weavers' gild at Nottingham, and a weavers' and a fullers' gild at Winchester; among London's adulterine gilds were those of the butchers, goldsmiths, grocers, clothiers, and pilgrims. Punishments for attempted communes were equally firm: in 1170 Aylwine the Mercer, Henry Hund, and "the other men of the town" paid a heavy fine for an attempt at Gloucester, and six years later Thomas "From-beyond-the-Ouse" paid twenty marks for a like offence at York.

The golden days of English borough-life began with the crowning of Henry's successor, Richard I, who lavishly recognized municipal life. In his first seven years alone, he granted charters to Winchester, Northampton, Norwich, Ipswich, Doncaster, Carlisle, Lincoln, Scarborough, and York. Some of these towns were only beginning their independence and were content with the elementary purchase of the firma burgi; some bought confirmation of privileges already acquired. Lincoln in 1194 won from the king a formal recognition of its right to complete self-government, in a clause empowering its citizens to elect their own reeve every year. Despite his knight-errant and troubadour appearance, Richard read the signs of the times as clearly and acted as promptly and wisely as any of his race, and this bold advance upon his father's cautious policy was dictated by a sound political instinct far more than by greed of gain.

King John went still further in the same direction. The first fifteen years of his reign afford examples of town-charters of every type, from the elementary grant of the firma burgi and the freedom of the merchant-gild to the little Cornish borough of Helston, up to the crowning privilege bestowed upon the "barons of our city of London" in 1215 of electing their own mayor every year.

London's municipal constitutional history from the charter of Henry I. to the establishment of the commune under Richard is described as shrouded in obscurity. Henry II.'s charter to the citizens, issued before late 1158, simply confirmed his grandfather's grant. The number of sheriffs recorded in the Pipe Rolls fluctuated—two appearing annually in the first fifteen years of Henry II.'s reign, four in 1171, reduced to two in 1174, and from 1182 only one until Michaelmas 1189, when Richard Fitz-Reiner and Henry of Cornhill jointly assumed office until 1191. The commune won legal recognition from John and Archbishop Walter of Rouen that year. Richard's 1194 charter merely echoed his father's, but the new corporation became a recognized fact. John's first charter, issued from Normandy in July 1199, renewed the old grant of the sheriffdom of London and Middlesex, allowing citizens to appoint and remove their own sheriffs for an annual payment of three hundred pounds. The commune had reduced sheriffs to mere financial officers, with the mayor becoming the real head of civic administration. Henry Fitz-Aylwine, London's first mayor, held office for life. On May 9, 1215—five weeks before Runnymede—John granted the barons of London the right to annually elect their mayor, and Serlo the Mercer served as London's mayor among the twenty-five enforcers of the Great Charter.

The struggle for municipal liberty by burghers held a significance far beyond the town-walls, as the spirit of freedom caught from borough dwellers spread to their rural brethren. The freedom achieved in towns served as a model and inspiration for rural tenants, who began to assert Old-English rights against the Norman manorial customs that had oppressed them for generations.

The famous "Ketel's case" at Bury St Edmund's exemplified this rural awakening. Ketel, a tenant of the abbey dwelling "outside the gate," was hanged for theft under the Norman process of judicial duel customary in manor-courts. The townsmen, who still retained the Old-English right of compurgation, mocked the proceedings so bitterly that the abbot and the "saner part of the convent," fearing a peasant revolt, were compelled to admit their rural tenants to a share in the town's judicial franchise. This was likely only one of many similar confrontations across the country.

The history of Bury St Edmund's illustrates the broader process of manorial enfranchisement and decline of serfdom. Villeins were rising into a position more like that of their free brethren, while old badges of serfdom—heavy labour-rents and hard customs—were vanishing one by one. The boroughs led the way in this process of transformation from servile to free tenure.

The ancient customs of the cellarer's office at Bury St Edmund's, recorded in Jocelyn of Brakelond's old custom-roll, reveal much about manorial organization. The cellarer held his court at a messuage and barn by the well of Scurun, formerly the homestead of Beodric, lord of Beodricesworth. Of three hundred and thirty acres, the quit-rent (twopence per acre) went to the sacristan or reeve, while ploughings and other services (one rood per acre) went to the cellarer. The cellarer also held the township's sheepfolds, the aver-penny (commuted before 1180 from a service of fetching eels from Lakenheath), control over roads and chalk-digging, and rights over the fullers' cloths and waters. The cellarer also held one free bull in the township fields and warranted his court attendants from scot and tallage. After Ketel's affair, the cellarer's court was merged into the town's, with his men coming to the toll-house to renew pledges and pay borth-silver (half of which the cellarer nominally received), so that "all might enjoy equal liberty."

The abbey of Abingdon's rural tenants had made less progress towards enfranchisement than those of St Edmund's. In 1185, on the death of Abbot Roger, a dispute between the obedientiaries and the king's steward led to a consuetudinary comparable to Peterborough's "Black Book." While many dues were paid in money, considerable remnants of older labour services persisted. The chamberlain held an acre at Culham, reaped and carried by the township for the monks' beds; hay for bathing came from a meadow at Stockgrave. Daniel of Colebrook paid five shillings rent plus hay, wood, salt, and straw for the chamberlain's journeys to London. At Welsford, twenty-two cotset-lands were held by services as swineherds, bedels, shepherds, and hedgewards. At Boxhole, eight of twelve tenants had to plough an acre of demesne with their own seed, and seven of these also carried hay and corn. Berner and his sons held a cotset-land for six sextaries of honey and thirty-one pence. At Benham, eleven of twenty-four tenants were cotsetles holding by service or by rent-and-work at the lord's option. The widow Ernive was excused ploughing, and the whole township owed church-shot of forty-six hens.

On Weston manor, Robert of Pont-de-l'Arche held four acres "by the service of half a knight"; one acre belonged to the township's church; John of S. Helen's held half a hide on unknown terms. The chamberlain was lord of the remainder, with half a hide in demesne and the rest distributed among thirteen tenants in ten portions, sometimes held conjointly. Two and a half hides were held for work or gavel at the lord's option, though in practice only two cotters owed labour. The right of poundage (exemption from impounding) was paid for by ploughing two acres.

Berton, Culham, and other manors owed sumpter-horses thrice yearly to convey fish to the abbey-kitchen, with the responsible tenants paying their own and their horses' expenses, though receiving a loaf from the abbey; those unable to perform the service could compound with the kitchener. These same manors rendered five hundred eggs each at the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, Christmas, Easter, Rogation-tide, and Pentecost, and three hundred at Candlemas and Quinquagesima, plus eighteen hens at S. Martin's and Christmas. On the Wednesday before Easter they gave a hundred herrings for distribution to the poor on Thursday, and each sent twenty-four bushels of beans yearly. Eight fisheries supplied eels on Ash-Wednesday, with the carriers entitled to two loaves apiece; another fishery paid seventeen shillings rent and twelve hens in church-shot. Berton supplied five loads of straw and Culham five of hay three times yearly (Christmas Eve, Easter Eve, All Saints' Eve) for strewing the refectory. The men of Dumbleton had to bring home the chamberlain's purchases from Winchelcombe fair, while Welford's tenantry performed the same service for the Winchester fair.

A comparison of the Abingdon consuetudinary of 1185 with the Peterborough Black Book of 1128 shows that Abingdon's dues were quite as heavy, if not heavier, than Peterborough's, but its labour-services were much lighter. The author cautions that the difference cannot be assumed to reflect progress over the intervening half-century, since the customs of different localities varied in all ages and Abingdon's may never have been as severe as Peterborough's.

On the bishop of Durham's estates, when Hugh of Puiset took account of his dues in 1183, the old labour-rents and customs seem to have subsisted almost without alteration. A large proportion of the villeins on the bishop's manors held two bovates of thirty acres each, paying two shillings and sixpence in scot-pennies, half a chalder of oats, sixteen pence in aver-pennies, five cart-loads of wood, two hens and ten eggs, and labouring three days a week throughout most of the year with additional autumn boon-work, reaping, ploughing, and harrowing obligations.

On the manor of Boldon, twenty-two of the thirty-six tenants were villeins on the standard terms. Of the remainder, twelve were cotmen holding twelve acres each and working two days a week; one man held two oxgangs of thirty-seven acres at a rent of half a mark; another was the pounder, who held twelve acres and received a thrave of corn from each plough while paying in hens and eggs; and the mill paid five marks and a half. The villeins were also bound to labour annually on the building of a house forty feet long and fifteen feet wide, and the township rendered seventeen shillings for cornage and one cow.

Clevedon and Whitburn contained twenty-eight villeins and twelve cotmen on the same terms as at Boldon, with the pounder and four other tenants, two of whom held by money-rent and two of whom went on the bishop's errands. At Sedgefield there were fifty-one tenants, including twenty villeins on the Boldon terms, twenty farmers holding two bovates apiece at five shillings with various seasonal labour obligations, five bordarii holding tofts, and the reeve, smith, carpenter, and pounder holding land by their services or customary dues.

At Norton there were thirty villeins on the Boldon terms save for the lack of cornage owing to shortage of pasture, and twenty farmers with similar tenure to those of Sedgefield. Alan of Normanton held one carucate for ten shillings, finding thirty-two men for a day's work and various carting services, though he and his own household were free of the autumn boon-work. Adam, son of Gilbert of Hardwick, held a large piece of land by money-rent, a mill rendered twenty marks, the pounder held on usual terms, and twelve cotmen paid partly in money and partly in work.

The palatine bishopric is shown to have been an old-fashioned district where innovations of any kind were slow to penetrate.

Even in the conservative Palatinate, however, the newer system of money-payment in commutation of service was beginning to appear, and the manor of Whickham had recently undergone a sweeping change. Where thirty-five villeins had formerly owed heavy labour and produce dues, the whole manor—demesne, villeins, mill, fisheries and all—had been "at farm," its entire services and dues (except a small tribute of hens and eggs) commuted for a rent of twenty-six pounds.

On the whole, the glimpses of the rural population of England under the Angevin kings suggest they were not excluded from a share in the kingdom's progress. Even if their dues had grown heavier, this points to an advance in agricultural prosperity and in the material ease and comfort which follow from it, and the spread of industry shewed itself in many ways.

In the towns, the growing importance of the handicraftsmen was proved by the jealousy with which their gilds were regarded, both by the central government and, still more, by the civic authorities.

The weavers were special objects of civic dislike; in most of the great towns they were treated as outcasts by the governing body, and in 1201 the London citizens bought from King John, for twenty silver marks a year and sixty marks down, a charter authorising them to expel the weavers from the city. The sequel was characteristic of John: he took the citizens' money and granted the charter, but made it null and void by continuing his protection of the weavers, merely raising their annual payment from eighteen to twenty marks.

Hand in hand with the growth of industry went the growth of trade, with markets and fairs springing up everywhere and a keen commercial rivalry arising with them. The little borough of St Edmund's set up a merchant-gild whose members insisted that all who did not belong to it must pay toll in their market.

The success of Abingdon fair in Henry II's early years stirred up the jealousy of both Wallingford and Oxford, whose remonstrances compelled the king to order an inquisition through twenty-four old men of the shire living in his grandfather's time. The case was tried in shire-moot at Farnborough; a fresh jury was summoned at Oxford, where the Wallingford and Oxford jurors disagreed about the extent of the old market. Earl Robert of Leicester, presiding, transmitted the opinions to the king but added his own childhood recollection of a full market at Abingdon in the Conqueror's time, and so the men of Abingdon won their case.

The Lakenheath dispute of 1201 shows how such conflicts could be settled less peacefully. When the monks of Ely set up a market at Lakenheath within the liberties of St Edmund's abbey, the chapter of St Edmund's offered to reimburse the fifteen marks paid for the Ely charter if the monks would withdraw, but their remonstrance had no effect. After a recognition found the new market damaging to St Edmund's, the king, for forty marks, granted a charter forbidding any market in the abbey's liberties without the abbot's consent and ordered the justiciar to abolish the Lakenheath market. When the hundred-reeve's proclamation was met with contempt, the abbot, after consulting "wise men" in London, ordered some six hundred armed men of St Edmund's to descend on Lakenheath in the night, overthrow the deserted market, and seize the stalls, horses, and beasts, which were carried away to Icklingham. The prior of Ely's bailiffs obtained pledges for fifteen days, but the bishop of Ely complained eloquently to the justiciar of the insult to St Etheldreda, and the abbot was summoned to answer at the Exchequer.

The development of foreign commerce, resulting from the wide-spread relations of the Angevin kings with lands on both sides of the sea, woke a rivalry no less keen between some of the great trading cities, even when it was conducted in less rough-and-ready fashion than at St Edmund's.

An interesting illustration is provided by a writ of Henry II to the bailiffs of Dublin in favour of the citizens of Chester, who had for ages been rivals of Bristol in the trade with Ireland. After Henry granted the men of Bristol the right of colonising Dublin with Bristol's liberties, Chester appealed for a reservation of its commercial privileges, and Henry in 1175 or 1176 commanded the Dublin bailiffs to allow Chester's burghers to buy and sell there as in his grandfather's days.

The trade of the eastern coast, with the Angevin continental dominions and with almost the whole of Europe, was even more important. One beneficial result of the Angevins' renewal of political ties with the Empire was the increase of trade from the northern German and Low Country merchant-cities to the port of London. In 1194 Richard granted the citizens of Cologne a gildhall in London for an annual payment of two shillings; the Steel-yard was probably established about the same time; and early in the next century an elaborate code regulated the trade of the Lorrainers, the men of the Emperor of Germany, the Danes, and the Norwegians.

The development of commerce brought with it a growth of riches and material comfort, and domestic architecture began to improve. Henry Fitz-Aylwine, at the opening of his mayoralty, issued an "Assize" described as the earliest English Building Act, shewing that the civic authorities were earnestly endeavouring to secure health and comfort in houses within their jurisdiction and to guard against the risk of fire which had ruined so many citizens in the past.

Ecclesiastical architecture progressed still more rapidly, with church-building and rebuilding throughout the country proving how great was the advance in artistic taste and material wealth under the just rule of the first Angevin king. At the opening of John's reign the London citizens were planning to replace the wooden bridge over the Thames with one of stone, and in April 1202 John recommended to the mayor and citizens an architect, Isenbert, master of the schools at Saintes, whose skill had been proved at Saintes and La Rochelle. The citizens, however, found their own architect, Peter, chaplain of St Mary Colechurch—the little church beneath which Thomas the Martyr was born—who began the stone bridge and, dying in 1205, was buried in a chapel upon it.

The opening footnotes establish the scholarly apparatus underlying the chapter, referencing key legal writs and historical records. Notable sources include Mr. J. H. Round's interpretation of a writ relating to Dublin (misread in the Royal Commission report), Riley's extracts from the *Munimenta Gildhallae* and *Placita de quo warranto*, and references to Fitz-Aylwine's Assize of 1189 concerning London building regulations. The *Fœdera* and the Waverley Annals for 1205 are also cited, providing the documentary foundation for the legal and administrative developments discussed in the chapter proper.

Jewish communities expanded dramatically under Henry II, with new Jewries established at Norwich, Cambridge, Thetford, Bungay, and Bury St Edmund's, supplementing the older settlements at London, Oxford, and Lincoln. By Henry's death, important Hebrew colonies flourished at Lynn, Stamford, York, and many other places, with Winchester so prosperous that a contemporary called it the Jews' Jerusalem. The 1177 grant permitting Jewish burial grounds outside every city reflects their growing numbers. Though legally the king's chattels, Jews practically dominated much of the realm's wealth, financing trading ventures, church construction, and royal projects. The rebuilding of the abbey-church of St Edmund's relied heavily on loans from Isaac son of Rabbi Joses and Benedict of Norwich. Bishop-elect Geoffrey of Lincoln redeemed sacred vessels from Aaron, a rich Jew, in 1173; when Aaron died in 1187, his seized treasure was lost at sea off Shoreham, a loss Bishop Richard Fitz-Nigel recorded as a grave misfortune. Aaron's stone house atop Lincoln's "Steep Hill" exemplifies the advanced domestic architecture that Christian townsfolk had not yet begun to match.

The Jews' accumulated wealth, jurisdictional independence, and exemption from civil burdens made them objects of universal jealousy and hatred. Outrageous incidents, such as a Jew mocking St Frideswide at Oxford, fueled religious hostility, while darker accusations claimed Jews crucified Christian children for money—tales attached to St William of Norwich (1137), Robert of St Edmund's (1181), and a boy at Winchester (1192). These stories gained credibility, deepening hatred until the massacres of 1190. Richard fined the perpetrators but could not change popular sentiment; at St Edmund's, Abbot Sampson obtained a royal writ expelling all remaining Jews. In 1194, Richard or Hubert Walter issued an elaborate ordinance regulating Jewish loans, requiring transactions at six or seven appointed places before Christian and Jewish witnesses, with bonds recorded in indenture form and deposited in a triple-locked chest. This "Capitula de Judæis" established unprecedented official supervision of Jewish financial dealings throughout the realm.

Anti-Jewish sentiment may have inadvertently fostered a sense of national unity among all Christians, regardless of racial origin. The Hebrew element was the only foreign infusion that had not amalgamated with the native English mass; the fusion of Norman and English blood, begun under Henry I, was now so complete that the "presentment of Englishry" had to be abandoned because the two nationalities were intermixed above the servile class. The English element predominated in this fusion, with English speech regaining supremacy as foreign priests learned to preach in the vernacular and Norman barons conversed with their English-speaking followers. Walter Map's legend of the well at Marlborough, where drinkers spoke bad French, hints at the anglicizing of the conquerors' language. The temper of these adoptive Englishmen was changing as rapidly as their speech, with Henry II's minister, the son of Gilbert of Rouen, standing out as the type of the new English character.

The Angevin kings' policy of equal administration completed the erasure of local distinctions begun by the Norman kings, bringing the English people to the forefront of affairs. Even the Angevins' un-English qualities served the nation, as their world-wide political interests restored England's importance among nations. Kings of the English in continental eyes, the Angevins' successors would continue to bear that title even after their empire crumbled. On the eve of that catastrophe, the new England found its voice: the English tongue reasserted itself as a literary language when Layamon, a Worcestershire priest at Ernley (Areley Kings), composed his *Brut* of over thirty thousand lines, drawing on Bede, Albin, and the French Wace to tell the noble deeds of Englishmen in their own tongue. Written between John's coronation and his return from Normandy in 1206, Layamon's work is both a specimen of the language at a critical stage and a witness to the patriotic spirit that, more than a decade before Magna Carta, was stirring in quiet corners of the land. As Green's *Stray Studies* affirms, "the silent growth and elevation of the English people" was the real work of the Angevin reigns—and by 1206 that work was practically done.

The chapter's alphabetical index opens with entries for Aaron of Lincoln, Abelard, and the customs and fair of Abingdon in 1185, followed by figures such as Achard of Châlus and the battle of Aclea. The Crusader capture of Acre is noted, along with ecclesiastical figures like Adaland of Tours, Adalbert of Périgord, and Master Adam. Landed families including Adam de Bruce and Adam de Port are indexed, as are the many Adelas and Adelaides who appear in the dynastic history of the period—from Adela of France (daughter of Louis VII and Eleanor) to Adeliza of Louvain, second wife of Henry I. The index continues with reference to Pope Adrian IV and his dealings with the English Church, his friendship with John of Salisbury, his Irish conquest bull, and his relations with Henry II, with cross-references provided to alternative spellings and further sources.

"Aids" from towns are referenced at i.25, 29. The Sheriff's aids appear at ii.15; the *pour fille marier* levy (aid to marry a daughter) at ii.125, 126; and aids for the king's ransom at ii.325.

The Angevin March, the borderland territory of the counts of Anjou, is introduced at i.101, with discussion of its territorial extent at i.130.

English Architecture in the twelfth century is referenced at i.55, treating the building traditions of the Norman-Angevin era.

The Assize of Arms, a military ordinance, is documented at ii.177, 178.

The Assize of Arms appears at ii.177, 178, cross-referencing the entry on Arms.

The Assize of Clarendon is referenced at ii.122, 123, related to the council of Clarendon treated at ii.25–28.

The Assize of the Forest, dealing with royal forest law, is noted at ii.177.

The Assize of Measures, regulating weights and measures, is documented at ii.348.

The Assize of Mort d'ancester, a procedure for inheritance disputes, is referenced at ii.172.

The Assize of Northampton is noted at ii.172, 173, with later developments discussed at ii.338–340.

The contrast between the Benedictines and the Cistercians is referenced at i.73, distinguishing the older Benedictine tradition from the newer Cistercian reform.

The term "Bene-work," denoting a form of labor service, is noted at i.57.

"Boon-work," another category of labor obligation, is documented at i.57, in conjunction with the entry on "Bene-work."

Canon law and its effects in England are discussed at ii.18, addressing the impact of ecclesiastical legal traditions on English institutions.

The Carucage of 1194, a tax assessed on the carucate, is referenced at ii.328, 329 and ii.342, with the Great Carucage covered at ii.352–354.

The Carucate, a unit of land assessment used for taxation, is defined at ii.352.

The Carthusians, an austere monastic order, are referenced at ii.435, 436.

The Chancellor, the chief royal secretary, is discussed at i.22 and i.419. Holders of the office cross-referenced include Geoffrey, Matthew, Nigel, Ralf, Robert, Roger, Waldric, and William.

Austin or Augustinian Canons had their origins at i.64, 65; their character is treated at i.43, 66, 357; and their establishment in England at i.66–69. Cross-referenced houses include Aldgate, Barnwell, Carlisle, Chiche, Kirkham, Nostell, Oseney, Oxford, and Smithfield.

The entry for the White Canons in this index consists of a brief cross-reference directing the reader to volume i, page 357, where the broader discussion of their character is treated under the main heading of Austin or Augustinian Canons. That fuller entry traces the origin of such regular canons to pages 64–65, examines their character on pages 43, 66, and 357, and surveys their establishment in England on pages 66–69, citing specific houses at Aldgate, Barnwell, Carlisle, Chiche, Kirkham, Nostell, Oseney, Oxford, and Smithfield as points of further reference.

The Cistercians or White Monks had their origin at i.69, 70; they became established in England at i.71; their work and influence are discussed at i.74, 358, 359. Their quarrel with King John appears at ii.396, 399, 400, and their decline at ii.434, 435. Cross-references include Cîteaux, Clairvaux, Fountains, Newminster, Pontigny, Rievaux, Tintern, and Waverley.

The English Church under Henry I is treated at i.63; the Augustinian revival at i.64–69; the Cistercian revival at i.69–74; new bishoprics at i.68, 69; its national character at i.80; the political position of bishops at i.20; conditions during the anarchy at i.347–360; relations with Rome at i.378; its position at Henry II's accession at i.474; vacant sees of 1161 at i.503; Henry II's reform schemes at ii.17–20; the "two swords" question at ii.22, 23; effects of the Henry-Thomas quarrel at ii.46–50; the course of the revival after Theobald's death at ii.432; and conditions in Henry II's later years at ii.433–438.

The Irish Church's early glory is referenced at ii.82, 86; its condition in the eleventh and twelfth centuries at ii.91–93; the settlement at the Synod of Kells at ii.94; and its submission to Henry II at ii.115.

The English Chronicle is referenced at i.81, 82, covering the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and related historical writing.

The Clergy's position under Henry I is treated at i.63, 64, with regular and secular clergy distinguished at i.64, 65; their attitude in the civil war at i.321; and the matter of criminal clerks at ii.19.

Coinage is discussed in terms of debasement under Stephen at i.293; the new coinage of 1149 at i.402; and the new coinage of 1158 at i.453.

A Commune existed at Le Mans at i.222, and at Gloucester, London (ii.309, 310, 344), and York, all at ii.469.

The Constitutions of Clarendon appear at ii.26, 27, with papal condemnation at ii.42.

The gildhall of the citizens of Cöln in London is noted at ii.485, with a cross-reference to Reginald.

The Donation of Constantine, a forged imperial grant, is referenced at ii.95.

Coroners: their origin is discussed at pages 338–339 of volume ii, situated within the chapter on Crown Pleas and the development of royal judicial administration in Norman and Angevin England.

Councils: a lengthy cross-reference list directs readers to entries on specific councils including Argentan, Armagh, Beaugency, Beauvais, Bermondsey, Bonneville, Carlisle, Cashel, Clarendon, Clerkenwell, Chinon, Geddington, Gloucester, Inispatrick, Kells, Lisieux, London, Neufmarché, Northampton, Nottingham, Oxford, Pavia, Pipewell, Poitiers, Rathbreasail, Tours, Wallingford, Westminster, Woodstock, Würzburg, and York. The Great Council's character is treated at page 20 of volume i.

Cowton Moor: referenced at page 289 of volume i, the site of the battle in which David I of Scotland was defeated by English forces during the Anarchy of King Stephen's reign.

Crown Pleas: the pleas of the Crown are treated at page 337 of volume ii, addressing the special judicial jurisdiction reserved to the king over serious offenses.

Crusades: the second Crusade is covered at pages 361–363 of volume i; a proposed Crusade in Spain by Louis VII and Henry II is mentioned at pages 453 and 497; the third Crusade is treated extensively at pages 318–321 of volume ii.

Curia Regis: cross-referenced to the entry for the King's Court, the central institution of royal government encompassing the king's household, advisers, and administration of justice and finance.

Customs: "paternal customs" are noted at page 16 of volume i; royal customs are treated at pages 22, 26, and 27 of volume ii; the customs of Newcastle-upon-Tyne appear at page 37 of volume i.

Danegeld: the Anglo-Saxon land tax is noted at page 25 of volume i, with its abolition by Henry II recorded at pages 16 and 44 of volume ii as a key development in royal finance.

David I of Scotland: his reign, invasion of England, defeat at Cowton Moor, treaties with Stephen, knighting of Henry Fitz-Empress, support for the Empress Matilda, escape from Winchester, and death are chronicled across multiple page references in volume i (pages 95, 282, 286–291, 300, 323, 328, 377, 399).

Dublin: its origin (page 83, vol. ii), status as metropolis of Leinster, capture by Dermot and allies, Viking attacks, blockade by Roderic O'Conor, Henry II's presence, colonization by Henry, and privileges granted to Chester merchants are detailed across volume ii (pages 83, 94, 105, 106, 109, 114, 115, 118, 484).

Eleanor of Aquitaine: her marriages to Louis VII of France and to Henry II, divorce, claims on Toulouse, attempted divorce from Henry, imprisonment, regency for Richard, diplomatic missions, homage to Philip Augustus, retirement to Fontevraud, and death are traced extensively across both volumes (vol. i: 383, 392, 393, 457, 458; vol. ii: 61, 129, 135, 235, 273, 282, 295, 296, 303, 314, 390, 396, 405, 406, 426).

England under the Angevins: this major entry provides a comprehensive overview of Angevin governance including relations with Rome and Normandy, invasions, internal peace under Henry I, settlement of Flemings, town and rural life in the twelfth century, religious revival, effects of the second Crusade, the 1173 rebellion, royal strongholds, condition of rural population, fusion of races, and growth of national feeling, with page references spanning both volumes (vol. i: 1–3, 15, 23–24, 48, 52, 54–62, 64–95, 356–358, 362; vol. ii: 138–139, 144–145, 152, 153, 473–480, 489).

Exchequer: the court of the Exchequer is treated at page 21 of volume i; its organization under Bishop Roger at pages 25–27; headquarters at page 31; the Black Book of the Exchequer at page 125 of volume ii; and the Norman Exchequer at pages 194 and 197 of volume ii.

Flemings: their settlements in England and Wales (vol. i: 52, 53), presence in England under Stephen (vol. i: 285), plot to kill Henry (vol. i: 403), expulsion (vol. i: 427), and landings in Suffolk and Hartlepool (vol. ii: 155, 162) are chronicled.

Forest Assizes: the assizes of the forest are noted at page 285 of volume i and at pages 171, 177, and 356 of volume ii, addressing the administration of forest law under Norman and Angevin kings.

France: the kingdom of France's early history, condition under Hugh Capet and Louis VI, relations with Normandy, Toulouse, and Rome, union with Aquitaine, and overall development are treated extensively across both volumes (vol. i: 24, 103, 105, 111, 124, 144, 145, 230, 383, 457, 458, 501, 502; vol. ii: 357–361).

Fulk III the Black: this detailed entry covers the count of Anjou's character, significance, military campaigns, castle-building, control of waterways, pilgrimages, founding of Beaulieu abbey, marriages, victory at Pontlevoy, conquest of territories, rebellions, and death, with extensive page references throughout volume i (pages 136, 143–169, 172, 173, 175, 188, 192–196) and a note on the fulfilment of a prophecy at pages 187 and 373 of volume ii.

Geoffrey V Plantagenet: this entry covers the duke's knighting, marriage, character, quarrels with wife and father, invasions of Normandy, conquest of Normandy, cession to his son, siege of Montreuil, cession of the Vexin to Louis, death, burial, and will, with page references throughout volume i (pages 244, 258–270, 281, 306, 307, 330, 337, 338–342, 343, 369, 377, 384, 386–390, 444) and additional references at page 449 and other locations in both volumes.

Gerald de Barri (Giraldus Cambrensis): treated at pages 452–460 of volume ii, with cross-references including entries for Gerald of Montreuil-Bellay (vol. i: 384, 385, 386, 388) and the Geraldines (vol. ii: 108, 183).

Gilbert Foliot: this entry covers his career as abbot of Gloucester, bishop of Hereford, his earlier history, relations with Archbishop Theobald and Henry II, his role in the Becket quarrel, translation to London, attendance at the council of Northampton, excommunication, denial of the primate's jurisdiction, absolution, and death, with page references throughout volume i (pages 369, 370, 371, 478, 479, 492–497) and volume ii (pages 3, 6, 13, 14, 31, 35, 36, 37, 39, 47–49, 67, 70, 72, 277).

Gilds and Merchant Gilds: gilds are noted at page 29 of volume i, with further treatment under Henry II and Richard at pages 469 and 470 of volume ii; specific references include leather-sellers' gilds (vol. i: 30), merchant gilds (vol. i: 29, 36, 40, 43; vol. ii: 481), and weavers' gilds (vol. i: 30, 52; vol. ii: 481).

Glastonbury: referenced for the invention of Arthur at pages 447 and 448 of volume ii, addressing the abbey's role in medieval historical and legendary traditions.

Henry I., son of William the Conqueror: covered from his early life and character through his election and coronation, his charter and marriage, his dealings with traitors and Norman campaigns culminating in victory at Tinchebray, his policy and struggle with Anselm, the character and work of his reign, his love of "foreigners" and ministers, his sobriquet "the Lion of Justice," and his charters to York, Norwich, and London. Further references include his palace at Woodstock, court at Oxford, "good peace," settlement of Flemings in Pembroke, dealings with the Church, foundations of the sees of Ely and Carlisle, the revival of literature, his relations with Maine and France, wars with France and Anjou, treaties with Fulk, victory at Brenneville, meeting with Calixtus at Gisors, treaty with Louis, the wreck of his hopes, quarrel with Fulk, suppression of revolt in Normandy, alliance with Henry V., proclamation of Matilda as his heiress, last years, death, possible successors, state of England after his death, burial, and court.

Henry II. Fitz-Empress: traced from his birth, fulfillment of Eadward's prophecy, and the Witan swearing fealty to him, through his early life, tutors, duchy of Normandy, first visits to England, knighting, return to Gaul, siege of Torigni, homage to Louis, marriage to Eleanor, war with Louis and Geoffrey, landing in England, siege of Malmesbury, colloquy at Wallingford, treaty with Stephen, reception of homage, plot to kill him, return to Gaul, resumption of Norman demesnes, peace with Louis, crowning, and his work. Further covered are his person, character, and court, first ministers, relations with Becket, charter, settlement of the country and succession, subduing William of Aumale and Hugh of Mortemer, court at S. Edmund's, journey to Anjou, scheme for conquering Ireland, effects of his early work in England, demands on Northumberland, receiving Malcolm's homage, crown-wearing at Wigford and Worcester, comparison with Cnut, relations with France, homage, subduing Geoffrey, proposal for Margaret's marriage, seneschalship of France, Britanny grants and Nantes, designs on Britanny, claims on Toulouse, great scutage, allies, knighting Malcolm, taking Cahors, withdrawal, treaty, quarrel with Thomas, driving Louis from Chaumont, principle of reforms, projects of crusade, religious revival, relations with Adrian IV. and Germany, acknowledgment of Alexander III., appointment of Thomas archbishop, meetings with Alexander and Louis, homage of Welsh princes at Woodstock, quarrel with Thomas, plans of criminal legislation reform, propounding customs at Westminster, meetings with Thomas at Northampton and Oxford, Constitutions of Clarendon, council of Northampton, envoys to the Pope, confiscation and banishment, effects of the quarrel, departure to Normandy, envoys from the Emperor, plans for his children, conquest of Britanny, correspondence with Arthur, meeting with Raymond, attempt to divorce Eleanor, homage at Montmirail, council at Chinon, appeal to Rome, driving Thomas from Pontigny, meetings with Thomas at Montmirail, Montmartre, Fréteval, Tours, and Chaumont, journey to Rocamadour, rash words at Bures, absolution, promises to Dermot, forbidding war in Ireland, summoning Richard of Striguil, journey to Ireland, fleet, submission of Irish princes, settlement of Ireland and Dublin, return to Normandy, relations with the barons, legal and administrative reforms, inquest on Norman demesnes, alliance with Maurienne, homage of Toulouse, quarrel with young Henry, revolt, visit to England, adherents, taking Dol, meeting with Louis, subduing rebels in Touraine, regaining Saintes, return to England, pilgrimage to Canterbury, news of William's capture, taking Huntingdon and subduing Hugh Bigod, relief of Rouen, subduing Poitou, reconciliation with his sons, treaty with William the Lion, treatment of rebels, end of the struggle, his position after it, administrative work in England, forest visitations, homage for Scotland, dealings with Wales, treaty with Roderic O'Conor, appointing John king of Ireland, character of his empire, continental policy, arbitration between Castille and Navarre, administration in Normandy, buildings, religious foundations, hospitals, _Levée_, bridges, relations with Aquitaine, quarrel with Louis, treaty, taking Châteauroux, buying La Marche, house of Blois seeking his help, making peace in France, trying to make peace among his sons, conference at Mirebeau, siege of Limoges, arrest of rebel leaders, forgiving young Henry, submission of Aquitaine, interview with Bertrand de Born, homage to Philip, proposal to transfer Aquitaine to John, making John governor of Ireland, mediation between France and Flanders, submission of Galloway, receiving the patriarch Heraclius, meeting Philip, march into Berry, truce, reinstating Richard in Aquitaine, taking the cross, muster in Normandy, conferences at Bonmoulins and La Ferté, flight, return to Anjou, journey to Chinon and Azay, submission to Philip at Colombières, learning of John's treason, last days, death, burial, pointing out Arthur's tomb, and grants to Chester and the Jews.

John "Lackland," son of Henry II. and Eleanor: from his birth, betrothals (to Alice of Maurienne, then to Avice of Gloucester), appointment as king of Ireland, proposal to give him Aquitaine, knighting and dispatch to Ireland, misconduct there, recall, proposal to crown him, discovery of his treason, reconciliation with Richard, dealings with Rees, lands in England, marriage to Avice, growing power, quarrels with the chancellor, calling up the barons, entry into London, regency, alliance with Philip and its terms, acknowledgement as heir by the English barons, negotiations with the chancellor, struggle with the justiciars, truce, charge of treason, reconciliation to Richard, help against Philip, acknowledgement in Anjou, investiture as duke of Normandy, burning of Le Mans, journey to England, coronation, administrative arrangements, quarrel with Philip, treaty, visits to England, receiving Arthur's and Raymond's homage, doing homage to Philip, divorce from Avice, marriage to Isabel, joint coronation, meeting the Scot king at Lincoln, founding Beaulieu abbey, coronation at Canterbury, summons to Portsmouth, journey to Paris, seizure of Driencourt, charges against the Poitevin barons, citation to the French court, condemnation to forfeiture, troops into Britanny, relief of Mirebeau and capture of Arthur, destruction of Tours, quarrel with Otto, citation by Philip for murder, condemnation, apathy, plan for the relief of Les Andelys, letter to the garrison of Château-Gaillard, journey to England, ambassadors to Philip, summoning and dismissing the host, sailing to La Rochelle, taking Angers, flight back to England, comment on Hubert Walter's death, and charter to London.

Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester: from his early life and support of Stephen, through his legateship, summoning Stephen before a council at Winchester, advice at the siege of Arundel, escorting Matilda to Bristol and receiving her at Winchester, councils there, declaring again for Stephen, his fortress of Wolvesey, siege, firing the city, council at Westminster re-proclaiming Stephen, his Church policy, character, position as legate, election to Canterbury, rivalry with Theobald, loss of the legation, journey to Rome, foundation of S. Cross, suspension, appeal, absolution, consecration of S. Thomas, presence at the council of Northampton, and death.

Hugh of Puiset: from his excommunication as treasurer of York and absolution, through his bishopric of Durham, rebellion, truce with the Scots, fortifying Northallerton, calling in the Flemings, submission, taking the cross, justiciarship, earldom of Northumberland, character and antecedents, quarrels with the chancellor, relations with York, quarrel with Geoffrey, mission to France, siege of Tickhill, resignation of Northumberland, attempt to regain it, death, and his _Boldon Buke_.

Hubert Walter: from his deanery of York and bishopric of Salisbury, election to Canterbury, justiciarship, suppression of revolt, early life, rivals, legateship, policy, administration, firing Bow church and hanging William Fitz-Osbert, defeat in council at Oxford, Welsh expedition, resignation of the justiciarship, negotiations with Philip, regency for John, crowning John, chancellorship, persuading John to dismiss the host, death, and his proposed college.

Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony: betrothed to Matilda, daughter of Henry II., married, exiled, and regained his lands.

Henry II., count of Champagne, king of Jerusalem: briefly referenced.

Henry I., king of France: from his joining Odo II. against Fulk Nerra, attempt to drive Odo from Sens, revolt against him, grant of Tours to Geoffrey Martel, relations with Normandy and Anjou, visit to Angers, invasion of Normandy, defeat at Varaville, and death.

Henry the Liberal, count of Champagne: joined the invasion of Normandy and was betrothed to Mary of France.