England under the Angevin Kings, Volumes I and II

Six months of quiet followed, the treaty was ratified in October 1160, and young Henry did homage to Louis for Normandy. Around the same time, Louis’s queen died, and he married Adela of Blois, daughter of Theobald the Great, irritating the Angevins. The death of Stephen’s last surviving son Earl William of Warren led to a dispute: his sister Mary, abbess of Romsey, was pulled from her convent to marry Matthew of Flanders by papal dispensation. Thomas unexpectedly protested as a defender of monastic discipline, gaining only Matthew’s enmity and a preview of the king’s wrath to come three years later. Henry also sought to recover the Vexin, ceded to Louis in 1151 for Normandy’s investiture. The 1160 treaty made it the dowry of infant Margaret, to be transferred to Henry when she married young Henry after a three-year wait. At Thomas’s instigation, Henry had two papal legates marry the children at Neubourg November 2 1160, fulfilling the treaty’s letter exactly, and the Templars holding the Vexin castles transferred them to Henry; Louis banished the three Templars in response. The house of Blois resented the loss of crown lands, so Louis and Theobald fortified Chaumont; Henry stormed the castle, taking 35 knights and 80 men-at-arms, then fortified Fréteval and Amboise, spending Christmas 1160 with Eleanor in Le Mans. A year of peace followed, during which Henry garrisoned Norman castles, restored royal strongholds, and oversaw Rouen palace repairs; Thomas was given full charge of his seven-year-old eldest son. In spring 1162 Henry sent the boy to England and required barons to do him homage as heir, a measure Thomas carried out with a calm facility that astonished all present, which Henry could not have achieved with his personal presence; Henry planned the boy’s immediate coronation, but Canterbury was vacant, and when he turned to Thomas for help, he was refused.

THE LAST YEARS OF ARCHBISHOP THEOBALD. 1156–1161.

Henry’s core policy was restoring Henry I’s state of affairs, but the religious and intellectual movement begun under Henry I had grown during the anarchy, peaking at Henry’s accession with the elevation of Nicolas Breakspear—the only English-born pope (Adrian IV)—on December 2 1154. The son of a poor clerk at Langley near St Albans, whose father retired to the abbey leaving him too destitute for school, Nicolas made his way to Paris, excelled as a student, then rambled to Provence, joining the Austin canons of St Rufus and being elected superior, only to be removed after the canons appealed to Pope Eugene III. Eugene made him cardinal, bishop of Albano, legate to Norway and Denmark, and his secretary until Eugene’s July 1153 death. After Anastasius III’s short 16-month reign, Nicolas was elected pope, to the delight of the English Church, which hailed him as one of their own and a disciple of Eugene’s reforms.

Archbishop Theobald’s Canterbury household, the Curia Theobaldi, drove the English Church’s revival, sending out top scholars to renew legal and ecclesiastical learning and rebuild ties with western sister churches. The first to leave was John of Canterbury, treasurer of York from 1153, followed by Roger of Pont-l’Évêque, consecrated archbishop of York in 1154. Theobald consecrated Roger without requiring a profession of obedience to Canterbury, a mistake with long-term unhappy consequences for the English Church. Roger, older than Theobald’s other favorites and a lifelong friend of Gilbert Foliot, had tormented Thomas Becket so badly in Theobald’s house that Thomas twice quit; he had held the archdeaconry of Rochester since 1148, before his elevation to York.

A quieter member was John of Salisbury, whose soft, calm nature reflected the archbishop’s spirit. The son of Reinfred, he studied in Paris under Peter Abelard, then Alberic and Robert of Melun, where he likely first met Thomas Becket and Nicolas of Langley. After three years at Provins with his friend Peter, he returned to Paris for theology, was destitute, and worked as secretary to Peter, now abbot of Celle. St Bernard recommended him to Theobald, and he became one of the household’s busiest members, crossing the Alps ten times in thirteen years, visiting Apulia twice, and handling most of Theobald’s correspondence with Pope Eugene III, though he never sought the limelight, counting Thomas’s friendship his highest honor. His connection to Nicolas made him Theobald’s key link to Rome, and after Nicolas became pope, John’s visits were Adrian’s greatest pleasure. John was sent to Rome soon after Henry’s accession to secure papal authorization for the Irish conquest. He longed to leave court life for quiet theological study, but Thomas kept him busy; Thomas finally suggested he write a book, and after the court left for the Toulouse campaign, John wrote the Polycraticus on the Triflings of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers in Canterbury’s quiet cloisters.

The Polycraticus mixes moral and political speculation, personal experience, and social observation, notable for John’s pure, childlike character and its value as a record of 12th-century English social conditions. He criticized excessive hunting and forest law abuses, slow royal justice, corrupt judges, declining chivalric valor (knights neglecting military training for court pleasures, with dangerous consequences on the Welsh border), simony in ecclesiastical offices (now disguised as court favor rather than open sales), corrupt worldly churchmen appointed straight from court, and false ascetics who sought exemption from diocesan jurisdiction from Rome. His ideal state was rooted in a just reading of the divine right of kings, rejecting the perverted theory that royal will has the force of law; he trusted societal regeneration in individual duty, with knights dedicated to protecting the Church, suppressing treason, and defending the poor, and priests as fellow soldiers of the Cross, represented by the two swords of the Gospels.

The English episcopate had improved under Theobald’s influence; the only inactive senior bishop was Henry of Winchester, retired to Cluny. The most powerful and influential bishop was Gilbert Foliot of Hereford, a highly gifted scholar with unrivalled mastery of legal, political, and ecclesiastical lore. Though his extensive surviving correspondence never mentions his youth, we learn from an appeal he made for his old benefactor’s orphan children that he was the favorite pupil, almost adoptive son, of Master Adam; he was a Cluny monk for years before 1139, rose to prior of the mother house, then became prior of Abbeville before his episcopal promotion.