England under the Angevin Kings, Volumes I and II

CHAPTER V. — THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE, 1175–1183

For seven years after the rebellion Henry II’s power stood at its zenith. Within the four seas of Britain he was master as no king had ever been. The English people had been with him; the Church was reconciled by his penance; feudalism was broken for ever; the Welsh princes were his obedient vassals; the Scot king his liegeman; a new subject-realm was beginning to grow upon the coast of Ireland. From his island throne he could treat the kings of Spain, Sicily, and even the Eastern Empire as near-equals.

Henry used the peace to push forward reforms. He arrived in May 1175 with his eldest son; on Rogation Sunday at Westminster he was formally reconciled with the Church under the new primate Richard of Dover, returned from Rome with the pallium and a legatine commission. A great council at Woodstock filled vacant bishoprics and abbacies, forbade the late rebels to come near the king’s person except by special summons, and forbade the wearing of arms on the English side of the Severn. With one exception—a great forest visitation begun that summer and not ended till Michaelmas 1177, fining the people for trespasses even under the justiciars’ own licence—Henry took no measure of general severity against the late rebels. At the beginning of 1176 he issued the Assize of Northampton, re-enacting the criminal clauses of Clarendon with new terrors: the forger, robber, murderer and incendiary were now to lose a hand as well as a foot and quit the realm within forty days. Other articles regulated the inheritance of freeholders—the assize of mort d’ancestor—and required every man to swear homage and fealty to the king before Whitsunday.

The Assize also set on foot a new organisation of judicial circuits. The kingdom was mapped into six divisions, to each of which three justices were sent—the first official appearance of the title “justitiæ itinerantes.” In 1178 Henry reduced the number of itinerant justices, and from the eighteen attached to the Curia Regis chose five—two clerks and three laymen—who should remain at his court and hear all complaints, the most difficult cases reserved for the king’s hearing in council with his wise men. From this small committee grew the Court of King’s Bench; the reservation of weighty cases marks the beginnings of the judicial Privy Council and of Chancery. In 1179, when Richard de Lucy retired to the Austin priory of Lesnes, the chief justiciarship was given jointly to three bishops—Richard of Ilchester, Geoffrey Ridel and John of Oxford—all trained in the Exchequer and Curia Regis. The northern circuit, after 1179, was entrusted to Ralf de Glanville alone as chief justiciar; from then until his death Henry left the management of English justice in his hands. The last great legal measure, the Assize of Arms of 1181, revived and regularised the old English fyrd: every free layman was required to equip himself according to rank—the knight with full harness, the burgher with mail-coat, steel cap and spear, the poorer freeman with such arms as he could compass. Justices were to enrol the names of all under each category and compel them to provide their arms before St Hilary’s day. The weapons were to be used only for the king’s service and to descend to the heir.

In Wales Henry had little serious trouble after the 1165 campaign, when he penetrated from Shrewsbury to Pencader, taking the homage of Rees Ap-Griffith and other princes. A last Welsh rising in 1174 was avenged by the king sending his Brabantines and a thousand Welshmen under Rees Ap-Griffith into the south to storm Tutbury; a lasting settlement was made at personal interviews with Rees, who became “the king’s justiciar” over all South Wales. The highland border remained imperfectly pacified, but Henry had only to ride to Worcester in 1184 to bring the western princes again to his feet.

Ireland gave more constant anxiety. During the war Henry had recalled Richard of Striguil and Hugh de Lacy to Normandy; in 1176 Richard died, and his brother-in-law Raymond the Fat, who succeeded him, was driven into quarrel with the Geraldines by the king’s seneschal William Fitz-Aldhelm. William was recalled in disgrace in 1177; Hugh de Lacy took his place and with one brief interval held the office for seven years. On October 6, 1175, a treaty at Windsor admitted Roderic O’Conor to a tributary relationship: he was to be Henry’s liegeman for the whole island except Leinster, Meath and Waterford, paying a hide’s tribute for every ten head of cattle. In May 1177 Henry publicly announced his intention of bestowing Ireland upon his youngest son John, and parcelled out the southern half among feudal tenants who did homage to John at Oxford. Alice of Maurienne dying within a year of her betrothal, John was affianced to his cousin Avice, heiress of the vast Gloucester estates—the bride’s wealth to support a loftier title.

The settled years after 1175 saw the full maturation of Henry’s twofold policy. England and her satellite realms of Wales, Scotland and Ireland were one thing; the continental empire was another. Over the first group Henry was supreme lord; over the second he was at best the mightiest vassal of the French Crown. The two characters could never be merged; he kept them carefully distinct. As king of England he laboured to build a strong national state with dependent allies around it. As head of the Angevin house he carried forward the work of Fulk Nerra and Geoffrey Martel—consolidation, not conquest; he never dreamed of defying the king of France for the mastery of Gaul. His foreign alliances were the work of the king of England: the marriage of Matilda to Henry of Saxony, of Eleanor to Alfonso of Castille, of Jane to William of Sicily—all arranged in great councils of English bishops and barons. The marriages of his sons were his Angevin business.

To his eldest son he could not give Anjou or Normandy as a subordinate fief without abandoning his ancestral dignities. All he could do was provide for a fair partition after his own death: young Henry was to step into his place as king of England, duke of Normandy, count of Anjou and overlord of Britanny and Aquitaine. Meanwhile the real government of these duchies was to remain in his own hands; the partitions of 1175 were intended only for his posthumous settlement.